text:
John Stewart Service
John Stewart Service was a U.S. State Department official and Foreign Service Officer during World War II, who was caught red-handed by FBI surveillance delivering the Nationalist Chinese Order of Battle to secret Communist Phillip Jaffe. He was for decades popularly portrayed as an innocent victim of McCarthyism, but later admitted that he had falsified intelligence on the Communist Chinese because "I wanted them to win."
Subversion in China
In 1944, Service was Second Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Chungking, China. There he shared a house with two Communist agents: U.S. Treasury attaché Solomon Adler[1] and Chinese Ministry of Finance official Chi Chao-ting (Ji Chaoding).[2]
Adler had been identified five years before by confessed former Comintern-GRU courier Whittaker Chambers as a member of the Communist underground apparatus.[3] In 1945, defecting NKVD courier Elizabeth Bentley would idependently identify Adler as a Treasury official in Chungking who was also a member of an NKVD espionage ring known as the Silvermaster group.[4] In 1948, Chief of Soviet intelligence in the U.S. Anatoly Gorsky identified Adler (in KGB archives summarized by former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev) as the agent code-named "Sachs,"[5] who appears in Venona as an NKVD source on China.[6] Chi, meanwhile, was a Communist propagandist[7] and intelligence agent.[8] After the fall of China to the Communists, both Adler and Chi would abscond to Beijing, where they would become officials of the new Communist government, Chi as a propagandist,[9] Adler as a foreign espionage official.[10]
During the early war years, Service and Adler wrote favorable reports on the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek, which were keeping the Japanese busy, so they could not attack the Soviet Union. But once the defeat of Japan became likely, Soviet policy shifted to hostility toward the Nationalist government, and support for the Communist rebels seeking to overthrow it. Service began an increasingly harsh series of attacks on the Chinese government as "fascist" and "Gestapo-like,"[11] writing that "the Kuomintang intensifies its drive for 'Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer'."[12]
In contrast, Service praised the Communists as "progressive" and "democratic."[13] According to Service, the Communist (or as Service put it, "the so-called Communist") rebels merely advocated "agrarian reform, civil rights, the establishment of democratic institutions."[14] "[T]he Communist political program is simple democracy," he wrote. "This is much more American than Russian in form and spirit."[15] He reassured Washington that Mao's policy involved "abandonment of any purely Communist program."[16] The Communists "are carrying out democratic policies," insisted Service, "which they expect the United States to approve and sympathetically support."[17]
When Vice President Henry Wallace visited China in June 1944, he was given a 68-page briefing, officially written by Service, although Service would later admit he actually co-wrote it with the Soviet agent Solomon Adler.[18] Service and his Soviet-agent housemate Adler wrote that the Communists were doing most of the fighting against the Japanese, while the Nationalists were sitting out the war or actually collaborating.[19] For example, Adler reported (attributing information to Service): "The Communists have successfully resisted the Japanese for seven years... with no active support from Chungking."[20] In contrast, General Albert Wedemeyer, commander of American forces in China reported: "No Communist Chinese forces fought in any major battles of the Sino-Japanese war.... Chinese Communist leaders were not interested in fighting the Japanese," he wrote; "their main interest was to occupy the territory which the Nationalist forces evacuated in their retreat."[21]
"[T]he war was to [Mao] an opportunity to have Chiang destroyed by the Japanese," agreed Jung Chang, a former member of Mao's Red Guards. "He ordered Red commanders to wait for Japanese troops to defeat the Nationalists, and then, to seize territories below the Japanese line."[22] As Mao put it, "Our determined policy is 70 percent self-development, 20 percent compromise, and 10 percent fight the Japanese."[23] In July–August 1943, 20,000 Chinese troops were wiped out at Shantung when attacked simultaneously by the Japanese from the north and the Communist rebels from the south.[24] Indeed, in May 1945, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) team code-named "Spaniel" that parachuted into China to link up with Communist forces was instead taken prisoner by the Communists, whom they found coexisting with Japanese troops. The Americans were held incommunicado until October, some two months after the end of the war. When finally freed, they reported, "The amount of actual fighting being carried on by the 8th R.A. [the "Eighth Route Army," i.e., Communist Chinese rebels] has been grossly exaggerated. It was their policy to undertake no serious campaign against the Japanese..."[25] Even so ardent a pro-Communist as Theodore White[26] would have to admit, "The Communists...claimed that they held down most of the Japanese troops in China and that they bore the main weight of resistance; this was untrue." In fact, wrote White, "it was the weary soldiers of the Central Government who bore the shock, gnawed at the enemy, and died."[27]
On July 30, 1944 Service wrote, "...the Communists base their policy toward the Kuomintang on a real desire for democracy in China under which there can be orderly economic growth through a stage of private enterprise to eventual socialism without the need of violent social upheaval and revolution." [28] On June 6, 1945, he wrote to John Carter Vincent, Chief of the State Department's Division of Chinese Affairs, that the Chinese Communists had a "moderate policy of preserving the interests of the middle class, including landlords and private business, and protection of the institution of private property and capitalism," and that "it is unnecessary and not likely for them to turn toward radicalism," concluding that "Kuomintang-Communist reconciliation seems more than ever to depend on Kuomintang concessions."[29]
Jonathan Mirsky, former East Asia editor for the Times of London, reported that shortly before his death in 1999, Service admitted to him that he "purposely ignored Mao's persecution, including executions, of his perceived enemies at Yan'an." (Asked why he had "covered-up" for the Communists, Service confessed, "I wanted them to win.")[30]
Return to the U.S.
According to an FBI report, "A highly confidential source, which is completely reliable, has advised that Max and Grace Granich, both of whom have been engaged in Communist and Comintern activities for many years, were advised in the fall of 1944 that Service was returning to Washington from China, and that they should contact him because he could furnish fullest details as to the latest developments."[31] Max Granich (brother of Communist Party cultural commissar[32] "Mike Gold") was the bodyguard and chauffeur of C.P. General Secretary Earl Browder; Grace Granich was Browder's personal secretary. During the 1930s they had been Comintern agents stationed in China.[33]
Upon his arrival in D.C., Service met with[34] White House aide Lauchlin Currie, who would be identified by Gorsky as the Soviet spy code-named "PAZh/Page,"[35] who is recorded in Venona giving information to Iskhak Akhmerov,[36] the leading NKVD illegal in the U.S.,[37] and "handing over documents" to Nathan Gregory Silvermaster.[38] Currie was also the NKVD agent[39] in the White House[40] who tipped the Kremlin off in 1944 that the U.S. was on the verge of breaking the Soviet code.[41]
Service also met with FDR's personal emissary to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Harry Hopkins, whom Akhmerov called "the most important of all Soviet war-time agents in the United States," according to Oleg Gordievsky, the highest-ranking KGB agent ever to defect.[42] The late U.S. Air Force historian Eduard Mark identified Hopkins as Venona's Soviet agent "19."[43]
In addition, Service met with Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White, the "most important member of the Silvermaster network and the most highly placed asset the Soviets possessed in the American government."[44] Finally, Service also visited the Washington headquarters of the Institute of Pacific Relations, which would be identified by the Senate Judiciary Committee as "a vehicle used by the Communists to orientate American far eastern policies toward Communist objectives."[45]
Amerasia scandal
FBI surveillance recorded that Service then met with the secret Communist[46] Philip Jaffe on April 19, 1945 at D.C.'s Statler Hotel, reporting: "Service, according to the microphone surveillance, apparently gave Jaffe a document which dealt with matters the Chinese had furnished to the United States government in confidence."[47] Among the documents Service gave Jaffe was a report by his and Adler's other Soviet agent housemate, Chi, about which Service warned Jaffe that his source would "get his neck pretty badly wrung"[48] if it got out. The surveillance also caught Service admitting to Jaffe, "what I said about the military plans is, of course, very secret."[49] According to Emory University History Professor Harvey Klehr, co-author of The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism:
" | [One] wiretap picked up a conversation in which Jaffe informed Service that Chi Ch'ao-ting, his upstairs neighbor in Chungking, was Jaffe's cousin, and that Jaffe was anxious to keep that information secret. Even though Service was well aware of Jaffe's pro-Communist leanings, he agreed not to let anyone know—including his State Department superiors....[50] | " |
OSS investigators broke into in the offices of Amerasia, finding hundreds of government documents, many labeled "secret," "top secret," or "confidential."[51] Among the papers seized were "a hundred-odd items from the pen of John Stewart Service";[52] Service was arrested as a suspect. In the wake of the arrests, the Soviet agent Currie told New Deal "fixer" Thomas Corcoran he wanted the charges against Service dropped.[53] An FBI wire tap then caught "Tommy the Cork"[54] trying to "throw a monkey wrench into the Amerasia prosecution"[55] in the form of a "political fix."[56] One FBI memorandum, under the heading "Political Manipulations," citing "technical surveillance on the offices of Thomas J. Corcoran," reported:
" | Considerable political pressure and maneuverings were exerted on behalf of Service, involving directly or indirectly Lauchlin Currie, then an Administrative Assistant at the White House; the then Attorney General, Tom Clark; James McGranery, then Assistant to the Attorney General; James McInerney, then General Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the Criminal Division; and Robert Hitchcock, Special Prosecutor for this case."[57] | " |
The FBI surveillance logs in question recorded the Soviet agent Currie talking to Corcoran about Service, telling him, "the important thing is to get him out"; Corcoran telling Service that he had informed Attorney General Tom Clark "about the understanding we had below about the cutting out of your name"; James McGranery, assistant to the Attorney General, telling Corcoran, "Your man is Service. I got it" (to which Corcoran replies, "Yeah. So that we can cut him out. OK?"); Service telling Corcoran that federal prosecutor Robert Hitchcock told his attorney "we want to have Service cleared"; Corcoran telling Service, "I have a flat deal like that you are going to be cleared"; etc.[58]
When congressional investigators asked why the Justice Department dropped the case, Hitchcock claimed that department attorneys were concerned that the case would be thrown out because the initial documents had been obtained without a warrant. Asked why Justice had begun the prosecution, having known the origin of the evidence, MacInerney said, "I guess I was just overzealous." In fact, the courts in 1945 held that evidence obtained without a warrant, though inadmissible in court, could be used in investigation to develop other, admissible evidence. It would not be until the 1960s that the courts would adopt the so-called "tainted fruit" doctrine. According to Time magazine, "An FBI agent said flatly: 'The FBI secured no documents through any means … except incident to arrest. They were all legally obtained.'"[59] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover later wrote, "in the event I had been asked at the time the arrests were made whether I thought we had an airtight case, I would have stated that I thought we had. Further, if I were asked today, I would have to so state."[60] Hitchcock left Washington later that year to take a job with the law firm of Kate Mitchell's uncle.[61]
According to Mirsky, Service would later confess that he had given Jaffe "a top-secret document revealing the Nationalist Order of Battle, which showed the exact disposition of the forces facing Mao's troops." Service admitted that he knew this might be regarded as treason, but said, "I want to get this off my chest."[62] As Richard M. Fried admits, "Conservative suspicions of a high-level fix were correct."[63]
PSI investigations
Service was accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being a security and loyalty risk. Between the years of 1942 and 1945, Service submitted memos to the U.S. State Department supporting the Chinese Communists and Mao and advocated that the U.S. destroy Chiang Kai-shek. According to Senator McCarthy, "Service was named by the U.S. Ambassador to China as one of the men who was serving the cause of Communism in China. He asked the President to remove Service. He said that this man's actions are not good for the United States, they are good for Russia. While in China, Service, in secret recommendations to the State Department, urged that the Communists were the only hope for China. On June 6, 1945, Service was arrested by the F.B.I. for, "having transmitted, without authority, classified documents to the editors of Amerasia, a Communist magazine". Service had in effect turned over to a known Communist, not only State Department documents, but also secret military information. In December 1951, Service was fired from the U.S. State Department, "as a result of an adverse finding as to his security qualifications by the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission." [64] [65] [66] He was rehired in 1957 at the instruction of a federal judge, but was never again given a policy-making or China-related post, and never received another promotion. Service eventually admitted that "the evidence had been sufficient to support his firing as a security risk." In 1963 he retired from the State Department to the University of California at Berkeley, where, according to Mirsky, "he was admired by students and colleagues and regarded as a witch-hunt victim." "For many years no expert on China stood higher in the opinion of American students of China, including myself," than Service, writes Mirsky. However, in light of Service's confession, concludes Mirsky, Service "can no longer be viewed as an innocent victim."[67]
See also
- ↑ FBI recording summary, Philip Jacob Jaffe, April 19, 1945 (FBI file: Amerasia, Section 39); "A highly confidential source has advised that Sol Adler was the roommate in Chungking, China, of John Stewart Service." (FBI summary: The Comintern Apparatus, March 6, 1946, p. 20 PDF p. 24); "I moved into an apartment in the city [Chungking] with Solomon Adler." United States Department of State Loyalty Security Board Meeting in the Case of John S. Service, May 26, 1950, State Department Employee Loyalty Investigation: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1950), Part 2: Appendix, p. 1967 (PDF p. 491); The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970), p. 592
- ↑ "During 1944, Service was sharing a house in Chungking with Solomon Adler... Upstairs, in a separate flat, lived Chi Cha'o-ting." Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0807822456, p. 21
- ↑ Adolf Berle's Notes on His Meeting with Whittaker Chambers. Under the Heading "Underground Espionage Agent," Berle listed (Under "TREASURY") "Shlomer Adler (Sol Adler?)"
- ↑ Statement of Elizabeth Terrill Bentley, November 30, 1945 (FBI file: Silvermaster, Volume 6), p. 26 (PDF p. 27)
- ↑ A. Gorsky, "Failures in the USA (1938-48)," Dec. '48, in Alexander Vassiliev, Black Notebook, original, p. 78 (PDF p. 40), transcribed, p. 78, translated, p. 78. Under "'Sound' [Jacob Golos] and 'Myrna's' [Bentley's] group," Gorsky listed "'Sachs' – Solomon Adler, former employee of the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury"
- ↑ 14 KGB New York to Moscow 4 January 1945, p. 2
- ↑ Gregory Lewis, "Bridging the Guomindang-Chinese Communist Party: Ji Chaoding in New York, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Beijing, 1933-1963," Zhongguo Shangye Shi (Chinese Business History), Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 2001) ISSN 1090-834X, p. 1; Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, Institute of Pacific Relations, S. Rpt. 2050, 82d Cong., 2d sess., Serial 11574, pursuant to S. Res. 306, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 67
- ↑ Lifu Chen, The Storm Clouds Clear Over China: The Memoir of Chen Li-fu, 1900-1993 (Hoover Press, 1994) ISBN 0817992723, p. 181; Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator (Simon and Schuster, 1999) ISBN 0684836254, p. 126
- ↑ Sidney Rittenberg, The Man Who Stayed Behind (Duke University Press, 2001) ISBN 0822326671, p. 253
- ↑ John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300077718, p. 144
- ↑ Senate Internal Security Committee, The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970), pp. 577, 592, 1015
- ↑ Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, U.S. Senate, 82d Cong., 1st sess., Institute of Pacific Relations, Part 3 (Washington: GPO, 1951), pp. 817, 818
- ↑ Senate Internal Security Committee, The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China, January 26, 1970, pp. 406, 410, 577, 579, 589, 1014
- ↑ Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, U.S. Senate, 82d Cong., 1st sess., Institute of Pacific Relations, Part 3 (Washington: GPO, 1951), p. 828
- ↑ Hongshan Li and Zhaohui Hong, Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.-China Relations (University Press of America, 1998) ISBN 0761811583, p. 182; Michael M. Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United States (Princeton University Press, 1997), ISBN 0691016356, p. 78
- ↑ United States. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, Volume 6 (Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1944), p. 562
- ↑ Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 82d Cong., 1st-2d sess., Institute of Pacific Relations (U. S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952), p. 5419
- ↑ M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (New York: Crown Forum, 2007) ISBN 978-1-4000-8105-9, p. 105, fn. Cf. "I worked on the translation and also provided some of the material and assisted in drafting the memorandum of comment on the book. However, the major part of the comment and the summary was done by Mr. Adler." Report of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, 1950, Vol. 2, appendix, p. 2456 (PDF p. 980)
- ↑ Edward M. Collins, Myth, Manifesto, Meltdown: Communist Strategy, 1848-1991 (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger/Greenwood, 1998) ISBN 0275959384, p. 93
- ↑ M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (New York: Crown Forum, 2007) ISBN 978-1-4000-8105-9, pp. 99-106
- ↑ Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports (Holt, 1958), p. 285
- ↑ Jung Chang, Mao: The Unknown Story (Jonathan Cape, 2005) ISBN 0-224-07126-2, p. 211
- ↑ Subcommittee No. 5: National and International Movements, Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, United States 80th Congress, 2d session, The Strategy and Tactics of World Communism: Report Document no. 619. (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), p. 24. Cf. Edward M. Collins, Myth, Manifesto, Meltdown: Communist Strategy, 1848-1991 (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998) ISBN 0275959384, p. 60
- ↑ Robert Henry Winborne Welch, Again, May God Forgive Us (Belmont, Wash.: Belmont Pub. Co., 1971), cited in James Perloff, "China Betrayed Into Communism," The New American, July 24, 2009; cf. Felix Wittmer, The Yalta Betrayal: Data on the Decline and Fall of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1961) p. 37
- ↑ Maochun Yu, OSS in China (Yale University Press, 1997) ISBN 0300066988, pp. 220-223
- ↑ Edward Carter, head of the Communist front American Russian Institute confided to White—in the midst of the Nazi-Soviet pact—"A trusted member of the IPR staff is about to take a journey on my behalf to certain countries that are not too popular at the moment in Wall Street or in Jewish circles." (Edward C. Carter to Theodore H. White, January 8, 1940 [FBI file: Institute of Pacific Relations, Vol. 54, Sec. 11, PDF p. 120])
- ↑ Theodore Harold White, Thunder out of China [Da Capo Press, 1980] ISBN 0306801280, p. 210)
- ↑ E. J. Kahn, Jr., The China Hands: America's Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them, New York, 1972, pg. 118
- ↑ Excerpts from Memorandum by Mr. John S. Service to the Chief of the Division of Chinese Affairs (John Carter Vincent), Washington, June 6, 1945, The Grand Alliance and the Future of China, 1945, TeachingHistory.org
- ↑ Jonathan Mirsky, "In Whose Service?" The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2009. The Communists Service thus helped, whom he said he thought "were better than the Nationalists," would eventually murder some 70 million Chinese. Courtois et al. estimate Communist China at 65 million (Stephane Courtois, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin [Mark Kramer, ed.; Jonathan Murphy, trans.], The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999] ISBN 9780674076082, p. 4); Jung and Halladay estimate "well over 70 million" (Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story [London: Jonathan Cape, 2005] ISBN 0224071262, pp. 3, 560, 651); Rummel estimates 77 million. R.J. Rummel, "Death by Government: Stalin Beat Hitler but Mao Surpassed Both," Orthodoxy Today, December 4, 2005
- ↑ FBI Report: Soviet Espionage Activity in the United States, November 25, 1945, p. 46
- ↑ Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Taylor & Francis, 2004) ISBN 1579584578, p. 240
- ↑ Historical/Biographical Note, Guide to the Grace Granich and Max Granich Papers, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives, New York University
- ↑ M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (New York: Crown Forum, 2007) ISBN 9781400081059, p. 111
- ↑ Vassiliev's Black Notebook, p. 78
- ↑ 1463 KGB New York to Moscow 14 October 1944
- ↑ Christopher M. Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (HarperCollins, 1990) ISBN 0060166053, p. 286
- ↑ 253 KGB Moscow to New York 20 March 1945
- ↑ Robert J. Hanyok, Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945 (Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2005), pp. 118-119 [PDF p. 123-124], n. 185; John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300077718, p. 146
- ↑ "Cold War Counterintelligence," A Counterintelligence Reader: An American Revolution Into the New Millennium, Vol. 3, Chapter 1 (Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive) pp. 30-31 (PDF pp. 29-30); Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2001) ISBN 0895262258, p. 167
- ↑ FBI memo: Belmont to Boardman, February 1, 1956, p. 9 (FBI file: Venona, p. 71); Robert Louis Benson and Cecil Phillips, History of Venona (Fort George Meade, Md.: National Security Agency, 1995), p. 37; Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds., Venona: Soviet Espionage and The American Response (Washington: National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), pp. xiv, xxiv; John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009) ISBN 0300123906, p. 263; Kathryn S. Olmsted, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2002), ISBN 0807827398, p. 49; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 2000), ISBN 046500312, p. 130
- ↑ Peter B. Niblo, Influence: The Soviet Task Leading to Pearl Harbor, the Iron Curtain, and the Cold War (Oakland, Ore.: Elderberry Press, 2002) ISBN 1930859147, p. 65. In 2008, Gordievsky would become partially paralyzed, as a result, he told Scotland Yard, of what he suspected was an assassination attempt.
- ↑ Eduard Mark, "Venona's Source 19 and the 'Trident' Conference of 1943: Diplomacy or Espionage," Intelligence and National Security, Summer 1998
- ↑ John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009) ISBN 0300123906, p. 258
- ↑ Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, Institute of Pacific Relations (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 225
- ↑ Philip Jaffe, The Amerasia Case from 1945 to the Present (New York: Philip J. Jaffe, 1979), p. 1
- ↑ Report of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, 1950, Vol. 2, appendix, p. 2051
- ↑ Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0807822456, p. 60
- ↑ Subcommittee on S. Res. 231, Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 81st Cong., 2d Sess., State Department Employee Loyalty Investigation, Vol. 1, (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), p. 1404 (PDF p. 1420)
- ↑ Harvey Klehr, "Secret Service," National Review, December 7, 2009
- ↑ Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 0-8078-2245-0, p. 131
- ↑ Henry M. Adams, "The Betrayal of Asia," Modern Age, Vol. 14, Nos. 3-4 (Summer-Fall 1970), pp. 338-340
- ↑ Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors (Regnery Publishing, 2001) ISBN 0895262258, p. 168
- ↑ David McKean, Tommy the Cork: Washington's Ultimate Insider from Roosevelt to Reagan (Steerforth Press, 2004) ISBN 1586420682
- ↑ Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 0-8078-2245-0, p. 112
- ↑ Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 0-8078-2245-0, p. 125
- ↑ FBI memorandum: D.M. Ladd to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Re Philip Jacob Jaffe, was., et al, Espionage – C, May 11, 1950, p. 7 (FBI file: Amerasia, Section 54)
- ↑ FBI recording summary, May 31, 1950: Philip Jacob Jaffe, June 10, 1945-April 19, 1946 (with cover memorandum, Ladd to Hoover, June 30, 1952)
- ↑ "The Strange Case of Amerasia," Time, June 12, 1950
- ↑ FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Peyton Ford, Assistant to the Attorney General, re Philip Jacob Jaffe, was., et al., Espionage, May 4, 1950 (FBI file: Amerasia, Section 54)
- ↑ Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0807822456, p. 172
- ↑ Jonathan Mirsky, "In Whose Service?" The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2009
- ↑ Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1991) ISBN 0195043618, p. 61
- ↑ Buckley, Jr., William F. and Bozell, L. Brent (1954, 1995 Printing). McCarthy & His Enemies, The Record And Its Meaning. Regnery Publishing Inc.. ISBN 0-89526-472-2.
- ↑ McCarthy, Joseph (1953). Major Speeches and Debates of Senator Joe McCarthy Delivered in the United States Senate, 1950-1951. U. S. Government Printing Office. ISBN 0-87968-308-2.
- ↑ Klehr, Harvey and Radosh, Ronald (1996). The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-80782-245-0.
- ↑ Jonathan Mirsky, "In Whose Service?" The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2009


text:
For nine years the Terra di Tutti Film Festival (TTFF) brings in Bologna documentaries and social cinema from the southern hemisphere, with the aim of giving visibility to the situation in those countries, peoples and social struggles that are "invisible" in mainstream communication. The purpose is to provide a critical view on the South, without rhetoric, censorship or pietism, with a clear, responsive and never resigned eye to the realities around us.
TTFF is promoted by NGOs operating in the field of international development cooperation, GVC [link] (Civil Voluntary Group) and COSPE [link] (Cooperation for the Development of Emerging Countries), which select documentaries and films on the struggle for equal rights, gender equality, defense of freedom, citizenship and environmental and ecological awareness.
For the 2015, European Year of Development, TTFF has been chosen to offer a wider public - especially young people - the opportunity to discuss the relationship between migration and development, seeking to discuss the global and local implications, on new models of cooperation promoted by immigrant communities. For this reason the TTFF has become an Art Festival and was promoted within the Amitie Code Project, expanding the horizons of the Terra di Tutti Film Festival to all project partner Countries and employing a variety of artistic forms to reflect on the relationship between migration and development, cultural diversity and promotion of human rights.
Through a public competition, addressed to European associations, 12 projects dedicated to social rights, community and collaboration have been selected. The protagonists of these projects use a variety of artistic forms that, for the first time are employed in the festival: comics, music, audio-video installations, dance, theater, sports and show-cooking.
The Festival took place from 7th to 11th of October 2015 [link]. One of the first proposed activities was the conference "MIGRATION TO EUROPE: CULTURE MEDIA AND HUMAN RIGHTS" [link] which was attended by all the European partners of Amitie Code project, coming from: France, Germany, Latvia, Portugal and Spain. The meeting was also an opportunity to illustrate what they did during the previous Amitie project.
Join the Amitie Code Project: send your point of view on migration, development and human rights, and tell us your thoughts on these 12 communications projects.
Share your point of view, using Twitter: @AMITIEproject @TTFFestival or the hastag: #AmitieCode #TTAF2015
Stay tuned on www.facebook.com/AMITIEproject/ and www.facebook.com/terradituttifilmfestival/ - www.terradituttifilmfestival.org

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Retail goes contact-free as COVID-19 restrictions lift
Retailers invest in touchless technology, expecting longer-term shifts in consumer behavior
As stores and shopping malls reopen, owners and retailers — already facing financial challenges — have a monumental task: making people feel safe in the age of coronavirus.
Retailers everywhere are using technology to address the concerns of a public with heightened germ awareness. From contactless payment systems and touchless bathroom fixtures to self-cleaning elevator buttons, nothing is off the table. While social distancing and disinfection procedures are needed in reopening stages, many companies are looking beyond that, investing in technology that will prepare them for longer-term shifts in consumer behavior.
"The innovation curve in the retail sector has accelerated by five years because of coronavirus," says Edward Wagoner, Executive Director, Digital Chief Innovation Officer, JLL, who is based in Chicago. "So have customer expectations of a touch-free experience."
Retailers are investing in technology with these new expectations in mind. At the upscale Siam Paragon shopping mall in Bangkok, customers enter through disinfectant misters and thermal scanners are used to check temperature readings. In South Korea, movie theater chains are using ticket-scanning AI robots and popcorn-vending smart kiosks powered by voice recognition to minimize human contact.
"There's a whole new wave of technology being developed as we speak," Wagoner says. "I think we're going to look back and say: 'Wow, remember when we used to touch the faucet to turn our water on?'"
Touchless payments
Some of the biggest shifts have taken place at checkout, where adoption of no-touch payments — made by hovering chip-enabled credit cards over payment terminals, or by paying ahead of time on a website or app — is spiking.
According to American Express, 58% of U.S. customers who have used contactless payments during the pandemic say they are more likely to continue using it in the future. Even Germany, a longtime cash holdout, is embracing the technology. The German Credit Agency reported that more than half of card charges were made without contact [OS1] as of March 21, 2020, compared to only 35% before the pandemic.
"Contactless payment not only removes angst around having to touch a pin pad or sign a receipt, it helps push people through the queue quicker," says Aaron Spiess, Executive Vice President and Founder of Big Red Rooster, a JLL company. "It facilitates a more seamless experience."
Target, which has seen its online sales grow during the pandemic, offers curbside contactless pickup for orders placed on its app. The company developed technology that allows customers to order directly through Instagram. Hudson, which has shops within airports, is one of many companies to expand 'tap to pay' capabilities throughout its stores.
"Handing someone your credit card is going away and touchless will become the norm," says Brad Lenz, Senior Vice President, Design, Facilities and Store Development, Hudson. "We want to keep everybody safe and give shoppers a high level of confidence when they walk in."
Beyond the surface
For aspects of the physical shopping experience that cannot be touchless, cleaning technology is key. Many shopping centers are investing in UV light technology to disinfect.
The Galleria Mall in Fort Lauderdale invested in call button covers that feature self-cleaning mineral nanocrystals that continuously break down surface containments.
"The implementation of technology requires a capital investment, but will reduce costs associated with manual cleaning processes, and provide consumers with a level of comfort," says Karen Raquet, Executive Vice President, Director of National Property Services, JLL.
Virtually open
To satisfy the shoppers who are not ready to return to stores, nascent technologies such as augmented reality (AR) could become mainstream, Raquet says.
Ikea acquired an AR startup during the pandemic, boosting its ability to help consumers visualize and purchase new furnishings from the comfort of their homes. Eyeglass maker Warby Parker began offering virtual vision consultations and a virtual try-on tool on its site. Sephora, a retailer built around high-touch experiences, is leaning on its app's facial recognition technology to help shoppers try on lipstick and eyeliner — no contact required. [OS2] Whether people will ever feel comfortable enough for in-store makeup applications is an open question.
"Once there is a vaccine, I think consumer comfort levels will increase significantly," Raquet says.


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You know you've done it -- stayed up too late and relied on coffee to get through the next day -- but new research suggests that caffeine can only do so much.
That cup or cups of coffee may keep you awake the following day, but your performance is likely to be subpar, especially when it comes to more challenging tasks.
"Caffeine will likely improve your mood and alertness and may help you to attend to simple tasks, however, it will do little to improve more complex tasks," said study author Kimberly Fenn, an associate professor of cognition and cognitive neuroscience at Michigan State University's Sleep and Learning Lab.
"Caffeine simply cannot replace a night of sleep, and it is critical that individuals prioritize sleep and if they must endure a night without sleep, that they take the necessary precautions and avoid driving a car or performing any high-stakes tasks," Fenn said.
To get a better idea of what caffeine can, or can't, do in the face of sleep loss, researchers asked more than 275 people to complete a simple attention task as well as a more challenging one that required them to complete tasks in a specific order without skipping or repeating steps. The latter is known as a place-keeping task.
Folks either stayed awake overnight in the lab or slept at home. In the morning, all participants consumed a capsule that contained either 200 milligrams (mg) of caffeine or placebo and completed both tasks again. (An 8-ounce cup of regular coffee may contain 75 to 120 mg of caffeine.)
Sleep loss impaired performance on both tasks. Caffeine helped people successfully achieve the easier task, but not the more difficult one, the study found.
"If you are sleep-deprived, using caffeine will only help you with reaction time, not with being able to remember the steps you need to do in a procedure, "said Michael Breus, a sleep medicine expert and clinical psychologist in Los Angeles. He has no ties to the new study.
The findings were published recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Other experts not part of the research were quick to point out that sleep loss is dangerous, especially in the long run.
"People wear sleep loss like a badge of courage and say things like 'sleep is a poor substitute for caffeine,' but this is not true and can be dangerous," said sleep medicine expert Dr. Raj Dasgupta, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and a spokesperson for American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
"Pulling an all-nighter is the worst possible thing you can do to succeed on a test," said Dasgupta. "You need good-quality, deep restorative sleep if you are taking a test or performing a complicated task at work."
The new study just looked at how caffeine counters one night of sleep deprivation, but sleep loss is often chronic, stressedThomas Roth, director of the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.
"If you sleep five hours a night, you accumulate sleep debt, so even if coffee helps you on the first day, it will help you less on the fifth day as you accumulate even more sleep debt," he explained.
You will also develop a tolerance for coffee and need more and more to feel awake, increasing your risks of side effects, said Dr. Camilo Ruiz, medical director at Sleep and Internal Medicine Specialists in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
"Caffeine has been used as a temporary stimulant to improve attention over many years," said Ruiz. "However, its effects are short-lived and side effects such as [heart] palpitations, jitteriness and [increased urination], to name a few, can be worse than the lack of attention or sleepiness itself."
More information
Learn more about healthy sleep habits from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
SOURCES: Kimberly Fenn, PhD, associate professor, cognition and cognitive science, Michigan State University Sleep and Learning Lab, Lansing; Michael Breus, PhD, sleep medicine expert, clinical psychologist, Los Angeles; Raj Dasgupta, MD, assistant professor, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Thomas Roth, PhD, director, Sleep Disorders and Research Center; Henry Ford Health System, Detroit; Camilo Ruiz, DO, medical director, Sleep and Internal Medicine Specialists; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, May 20, 2021, online


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The international society for stem cell association (ISSCA) will participate in CONGRESO ESTÉTICA MUNDIAL 2022. Córdoba , Argentina, on October 01 and 02.
ISSCA has announced plans to participate as a sponsor in the Estetica Mundial congress. The organization has been promoting advances in regenerative medicine especially focused on the aesthetic field and will continue to explore new medical events like CONGRESO ESTÉTICA MUNDIAL to educate the Argentine medical community
As part of the program ISSCA faculty members will have a presentation and a practical workshop showing the latest application of regenerative medicine. ISSCA complete program will cover all the different topics related to regenerative medicine applications, guidelines and clinical protocols
About the Speakers
Dr. Maritza Novas
Dr. Maritza is a research and Development Director of Global Stem Cells Group in the USA. She is a pioneer in using cell therapies for therapeutic procedures. pain management. and aesthetic applications. She has an outstanding reputation for training over 2000 physicians globally on procedures and protocols for harvesting and isolating adipose-derived stem cells for autologous and allogeneic reim plantation. She will be covering the topic of Allogeneic Therapies and stromal cell exosomes.
Dr. Silvina Pastrana
She is a chapter director of ISSCA in Argentina and medical director of the stem cell center in Buenos Aires. Dr. Silvina is a Regentherapy s.a. medical surgeon. She has a master's in aesthetic and anti-age medicine (AMA). an Ozonologist. and a master's in pain management. Her topic in this congress will be Fundamentals of cellular therapies: mesenchymal cells.
Dr. Andrea Lapeire
She is an aesthetic medical practitioner with a postgraduate in obesity. biological medicine. homotoxicology. and environment. Her workshop demonstration will be on advanced regenerative medicine in alopecia and its basics.
Prof. Dr. Julio Ferreira
He is from Argentina is a professional cosmetic surgery and aesthetic medicine expert. He is a university professor of medicine and is the president of the South American Academy Of Aesthetic Surgery. He will cover regenerative therapies in rejuvenation and facial harmonization in the workshop.
Benito Novas
Benito Novas is the managing director of the International Society for Stem Cell Application from the USA. He is the senior marketing consultant and founder of "Este'tica marketing INC". as an Author. he has authored several books among them: su clinica este'tica. Lo que dicen sus pacientes" Marketing Digital en su Clinica Estetica" and "Marketing en Tiempos de Crisis" for more information on Novas you can check on www.benitonovas.com. In this congress. Benito Novas will be covering Digital Marketing in Cash-based practices.
ISSCA at Global Perspective
ISSCA has been at the forefront of promoting excellent and standardized regenerative medicine. For more information and updates. visit us at https://www.issca.us/
The ISSCA is a multidisciplinary community of physicians and scientists with a mission to advance the science, technology, and practice of Regenerative Medicine to treat disease and lessen human suffering. Its members are leaders in setting standards and promoting excellence in regenerative medicine, related education, certification, research and publications.
- Published in News


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Formed in September 2009, Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to social, environmental and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests.
We are calling for the #WeThePeopleAmendment to the US Constitution that unequivocally states that inalienable rights belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns.
Move To Amend Statement of Values
Move to Amend is a non-partisan, broad coalition of organizations and individuals, who share common values, working together to end corporate personhood and demand real democracy. We welcome all organizations and individuals who embrace these values to join us:
- Accountability and responsibility, both personally and organizationally
- Transparency
- Community
- Movement building
- Political and economic independence
- Dedication to Move to Amend mission, goals and tactics
- Commitment to anti-oppression within ourselves, communities, workplaces, policies, and representation
Move to Amend reserves the right to disassociate with any organization or individual who fails to maintain these values.
Check out our full list of campaign founders and endorsers.
If your organization, business, union, faith community, or local governmental organization would like to sign on as a supporter of this effort, please let us know.
If you are a member of the news media and interested in learning more about Move to Amend, please contact us. If you are interested in starting a Move to Amend affiliate in your community, click here.


text: We are Carlsbad Pest Animal, a full service wildlife removal company servicing Coronado, CA. When gophers or moles are in your yard, they can destroy the beauty of your home. They ruin your beautiful landscaping, damage routes to trees and bushes, and can obliterate your garden. These nuisance animals can be quite destructive for sure, but getting rid of them is extremely difficult. This is why you need to call us. For over a decade now we have serviced this area, providing the removal of these types of critters. We use techniques that are proven to quickly capture and remove these animals without using harmful chemicals or poisons. We don't want to do anything that endangers you or your family. We just want to help you get rid of these animals. That's why we use techniques that have been proven to do the job each and every time. Once we have remove these animals, we assist you with any building repair that is necessary as a result of the damage that may have caused. If you have problems with other wild animals, we are here to assist you with that as well. No animal is too large or too small for us. We are experts in this field and have technicians on duty 24 hours a day to assist you. Call us today if you are in need of this type of service. Call us now at 442-232-2800 for a solution to your wild animal problem.


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Lab Director
I am a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and part of Laurier's Social Psychology program. I am fascinated by people and how they behave, think, and understand themselves and their social worlds.
I am funded by SSHRC, MITACS and CFI. I am also a Fellow of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Each year I work with several graduate students, undergraduate honours students, and research assistants.
Some of my specific research interests include:
1) Identity over time: How do people construct their temporally-extended identity? In my lab, we think about identity at the level of the individual (personal identity, self), as well as relational and collective identity (the aspects of identity that come from relationships and group membership – for example, gender, ethnicity, nationality). Each of these kinds of identity cannot exist only in the present– they have a past and a future. How people reconstruct and remember their personal and collective past, and how they imagine and simulate their personal and collective future have implications for current identity. Temporally-extended identity also has implications for well-being, motivation and goal-pursuit, decision-making, and judgments of others.
2) Beliefs about the nature of change: People can be powerfully affected by their implicit beliefs, or lay theories, about how the world works. People diverge in their beliefs about whether people, groups, and particular attributes are changeable over time or are fixed and stable. Researchers in my lab are investigating how these beliefs alter people's memories, predictions, and judgments. We are also interested in the motivational and situational factors that cause people to adopt and sometimes alter their own beliefs about change.
3) Motivation and future goal-pursuit: How do individuals' representations of the past and future influence their motivation to pursue long-term goals in the face of immediate costs or temptations? This question – how people grapple with incurring immediate costs to reap long-term benefits - applies to many domains including academic goals, health goals (exercise and healthy eating), financial planning, and making environmentally sustainable decisions. We are also investigating the factors that lead people to misperceive the subjective likelihood of future risks and benefits, which in turn can affect their willingness to take action in the present. For example, if people underestimate the likelihood or risk of climate change, they will be less inclined to take action now that could help avert worse outcomes in the future.
4) The psychology of time: People's subjective experience of time can often differ markedly from calendar or clock time. Points in time in the past or future may seem close or distant, regardless of their actual proximity. A period of time may seem to pass quickly or slowly, regardless of actual duration. Subjective time can have a powerful effect on people's experience of events, independent of actual chronological time. Lab members are investigating factors that cause differences in subjective time perception as well as implications for identity, decisions, and social judgments. For example, people see past successes as subjectively more recent than past failures (even when they really occurred at the same time). Happy relationship partners view their relationship problems as further away than unhappy partners. People may also see future events they dread as further away than events they look forward to, which can affect their tendency to prepare for these events.
5) Sociocultural influences on the self: How does a society's cultural norms affect self-appraisals, behaviour, and relationships? In my lab we have examined sociocultural norms for ideal physical appearance and how they influence women's and men's self-image and beliefs about their social worth. For example, we find that women who are exposed to societal messages about beauty and thinness base their self-worth on appearance and are more attuned to beauty as a measure of their social worth. This can have disastrous implications for their security in close relationships.
Department of Psychology
Wilfrid Laurier University
CIFAR Fellow, Successful Societies Program


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January 9, 1940 | |
Dear Freida and Abe We got your letter some days ago and I thank you for the good wishes you sent for our wedding. We manage not bad, here in Rasinai. We have a good and warm room. The temperature of the room is very important since this winter has been very cold. Some days the temperature has been minus 25 degrees centigrade. It is very very cold. Freida you must remember how cold it was in 1928 it was just as cold. From home in Dotnuva I get letters very often and they are all in good health. I didn't get home for Chanukah, since the buses were not running because of the snow and ice. We hope to be able to go home at Pesach. They wrote to me in the last letter about Reizale (Shoshanna) marrying Leizer Vinitzky. [Eliezer Vinitzky was also from Dotnuva and had been Shoshanna's tutor. He left for Israel some time before Shoshanna left and they got together in Israel]. We wish them a good and happy life. In Resenai [the town where Moshe and Miriam were living] there is an uncle and aunt of Eliezer and we are going to see them in a few days. As to Freida's question, indeed we would like to come to the US and be with you, because of the difficult situation here, as you know. But I doubt whether you have the financial means to help us. Miriam's relatives don't seem to be interested in this matter. If you could do something to encourage them to act, please do. They must know that we have the money for the trip and that we will not be a burden on them. They only have to get the papers. It is important to get the family out of Dotnuva, and if there is any possibility, it must be done [he does not say who will do it, but only in general it must be done]. Be healthy and happy and write about what is going on. Moshe Dear Freida and Abe, When I saw you and met you in New York some time ago, I didn't think we would be relatives. The human being cannot know the future. I fully appreciate from my heart the warm wishes and would really like to see you and spend some time together, but I know it is impossible now. From here we don't have much to say. Surely you know from the papers about the situation. About our private lives, it would be good if we could speak face to face. We are both working. We live as students in one room and eat in a restaurant. The rest of the time after work we spend with our colleagues. Not a very interesting company, but it is the best we can do in this small and remote town. Two weeks ago I was in Vilnius and they offered me a job as a teacher in the Hebrew high school there. I didn't take the job because I would have to be separated from Moshe, who must stay here in Rasinai. In Vilna (Vilnius) I met Mordechai Boyed [we have no idea who this is - Danny]. Freida, I think you know him. In Kovno we met Rabbi Rubinstein. We traveled quite a lot lately. During Chanukah, we went to our home in Poniewież [Presumably, Miriam's family]. Then we've been in Kaunus and I've been in Vilnius and back to Kovno (Kaunas). The travels are very tiring. About coming to America, I don't know if we will be able to do it. My relatives don't seem to take this seriously; they've done nothing. I'm not going to write again because they didn't answer my previous letters that I wrote them last summer. It is hard for me to ask again the people who don't seem to be concerned about me. Nevertheless I will try and write to them again. What's new with you? Do you both work? Write us about everything. And the main thing I forgot: mazel tov to Shoshanna and Eliezer Vinitzky's with the occasion of their marriage. Eliezer I know; we went to the same high school in Poniewież. He is a good fellow and has great abilities.
Shalom, write often,
Translated by Norman and Danny on a visit of Maya and Danny in Norman's home. Oct 2009. |
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for verification.
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Updated 15 Feb 2013 by LA


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To understand how, in 2014, one man with a grudge managed to bring down some of the highest and mightiest in Bordeaux, you have to know a little about the background. The man in question was a Russian oligarch called Mischa Vious, the 187th wealthiest man in the world, according to a 2013 report in The Sunday Times.
Traditionally a vodka drinker, Vious had been introduced to wine by his third wife, an aspiring young flautist called Ella Fantine whose parents owned a pretty little Pauillac estate close to the village of St Laurent between Châteaux Mouton and Lafite-Rothschild. Château Oublié had belonged to the Fantines for generations, but its grapes had, until the1970s, been delivered to the Pauillac cooperative to be crushed and sold under the co-op's La Rose Pauillac label. When Serge Fantine, Ella's father, inherited the vines, he resigned from the cooperative and joined the association of Crus Artisans which was made up of estates that took pride in being humbler than the Crus Bourgeois.
Well-informed local professionals were well aware of the quality of the 2.5ha of Oublié terroir, and especially of the fact that its vines sat close to the hamlet of Milon on a small moutte – or hill – of the kind from which Mouton Rothschild had taken its name. The Fantines were not great winemakers and they could not afford high quality equipment, but their land was special enough and the price sufficiently modest for those in the know to buy the wine almost every vintage.
When Monsieur and Madame Fantine died after their insufficiently protected ski-lift was hit by lightning, their only daughter and her wealthy Russian husband had to decide whether to sell the estate or invest in it. The first option was made very appealing by the number of approaches they received from owners of neighbouring châteaux. It was said that their prime slice of old Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in Pauillac could usefully be swallowed into the Lafite or Mouton estates.
Unlike Burgundy whose grands crus can only come from vineyards that have been recognised as grands crus, Bordeaux classifications are based on brands. A second-growth château could legally sell all of its vineyards and replace them with cru bourgeois vines without losing its second-growth status. And Cru Artisan vines could legally be transformed into first growth vines as soon they are bought by a first growth château.
As the offers from top Pauillac châteaux poured in and grew ever more generous, Mischa Vious became increasingly determined to see what he could do with the estate. "They buy our land for peanuts and sell bottles for thousands" he growled in his thick Russian accent. "Maybe is more intelligent that I sell bottles for thousands myself."
Top experts were flown in and millions spent on improving the drainage, replacing ailing and dead vines and creating a state-of-the-art winery, complete with the latest concrete eggs and barrels. By the time the 2009, the first vintage, was released, Château Oublié was acknowledged by the select number of critics who had visited the estate to be one of the most painstakingly produced wines in the world. The 2009 went almost unnoticed when it was released, but when it was included in a major blind tasting in 2013, it came third only to Margaux and Lynch Bages. The 2011 was one of Robert Parker's few 100 point wines.
Despite the evident quality of its wine – selling for 50% more than any Cru Bourgeois, and more than many crus classés – Château Oublié's application to become a Cru Bourgeois was, however, shunned. The château apparently failed to fill several criteria, but Vious was reassured that, in time, promotion would not be out of the question. Be patient, an official said. In another ten or twenty years… Vious felt slighted – and angry. "It is just because I am Russian man not French", he thundered. "It is like 1855. Rothschild was only second growth because owners were Jewish."
"In any case", he growled, "I no longer want to be member of Cru Bourgeois or even Crus Classés. It is not clubs I need to join. My wine is too good for them…"
Meanwhile, another battle was quietly simmering in Bordeaux. The decision by François Pinault to withdraw Château Latour from the en primeur system had angered a number of prominent Bordelais. After much lobbying, in March 2014, an ultimatum was issued: Latour had to rejoin the system or it would be expelled from the Union des Grands Crus.
It was at this time that, by coincidence, Pinault and Vious happened to meet. Both had had tough childhoods; the Frenchman had been sent to a tough school in the mountains where he had been made to wear clogs and learn carpentry, while the Russian had grown up in the rigorous conditions of Siberia. Neither stood fools or unnecessary pretension easily and the conversation inevitably turned to the challenges they were both facing. After several bottles of Latour and some of Vious's best vodka, the two men had come up with a bold plan.
The announcement was made in Le Monde. For an initial ten years (there would be a renewable lease), Château Latour would cooperate with Château Oublié to produce limited volumes of an entirely new unclassified wine called Chateau Latour Oublié whose price- despite its lack of classification – would be 15% above that of Latour. Distribution would be handled by Château Latour and the wine, like Latour, would be sold when it was ready to drink.
Château Latour was apparently totally reconciled to its expulsion from the Union des Grands Crus. Latour, wrote the Le Monde journalist, was already above classifications and Unions, in the same way that the Louvre was above other museums and Versailles above other palaces. (And, as the writer continued, Pomerol's unclassified Pétrus was above most of the region's classified wines.)
That writer was one of a set of carefully briefed high-profile journalists in France, the UK, US and China, all of whom penned articles posing the same question. If the new top wine of the Médoc was no longer to be a Grand Cru Classé, surely the notion of an application for UNESCO world heritage status for the 1855 classification was out of the question.
The British blogger Sam Nutkin MW wrote a widely-read piece on his website demolishing the "immutable" quality of the 1855 Classification that was so vaunted by those seeking the UNESCO recognition. Until 1952, he revealed, Château Lascombes had only 15ha of vines. Today it has over 80. What relation did the current estate have to the one that was classified in 1855? To agree to requests for heritage status for the vineyards of Burgundy and the cellars of Champagne made sense, he argued: after all, the Burgundian boundaries were established by law and after centuries of experience and the crayères of Reims were dug by the Romans 2000 years ago. In this trio, only the 1855 Classification was a comparatively recent human conceit – a list of brands – whose internal shape has shifted ever since its creation.
Perhaps inevitably, the 1855 Classification not only failed in its application, but became the subject of much negative publicity in the crucially important Chinese market. UNESCO snubbed the Bordelais even more firmly by giving the Burgundians and Champenois the recognition they sought. Mischa Vious is still owner of Château Oublié and joint director of Latour Oublié. Both wines continue to sell at their super-premium prices to people who care more about their quality and/or prestige than their status as crus classsés, bourgeois or artisans. Mr Vious is not a particularly welcome guest at many black tie Bordeaux events.
The facts behind this month's whimsy: the 1855 classification is seeking UNESCO World Heritage status – along with the "climats" of Burgundy and the cellars of Champagne. While there is no such estate as Château Oublié, there is a Cru Artisan in Pauillac called Château Béhèré, situated next to Château Mouton-Rothschild which has under 5ha of vines and produces 33,000 bottles of wine that sells for under £15 apiece. In May 2013, the estate was sold to property magnate Jacky Lorenzetti who, according to Decanter outbid a first growth to get it. Its grapes were previously sold to the Pauillac cooperative.
There is a respected theory that anti-semitism lay behind Mouton Rothschild originally being classed as a second growth. The recent revival of the Cru Bourgeois syndicate has been plagued with legal efforts questioning the way inclusion in its membership is decided. François Pinault's decision to withdraw Château Latour from the en primeur system was greeted with anger by many in Bordeaux and with predictions that his move to selling his wines when they were ready to drink would fail. The first release sold out immediately, however – and at high prices. Pétrus, like several of its unclassified neighbours in Pomerol, continue to sell for higher prices than many Médoc châteaux that were classified in 1855.


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You are here
FromDual releases new version of its MySQL Performance Monitor
Sun, 2011-02-20 16:39 — sales_en
FromDual releases its new version v0.5 of its MySQL Performance Monitor working with Zabbix.
What has changed so far in this release:
- Recommended Location has changed to /usr/local
- FromDual agent log files are rotated now.
- There are now 2 different packages: One for the Agent and one for the Templates.
- Some of the graphs were improved.
- Missing status and system variable information were added and some were fixed.
- Verbosity of logging information was adjusted.
- A module for monitoring additional informations for Linux servers was added.
- Agent caches now the data if it has no access to server. This gives the possibility to run the agent without an installed Zabbix Server and load the data later on off-site.
- Start/stop scripts for running Zabbix agent and server under the mysql user were added.
- Status information for the Aria Storage Engine were added.
The MySQL Performance Monitor is free of costs and the modules are offered under GPL.
You can get it from our download page.
If you find some problems or have suggestions to improve this solution please let us know about.
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Zabbix vs Nagios?
On your download page you have both this Zabbix based performance monitor, and the Nagios plugins. Since I've used neither, it would be interesting to read a separate blog post comparing the two.
Also, you say this is free of charge and offered under the GPL. Does this now include also the InnoDB monitoring, or just MySQL Server without InnoDB?
Zabbix vs. Nagios
Hi Henrik,
Yes great idea!
Basically the differences are: Zabbix is an integrated Monitoring and Alerting solution where Nagios is an Alerting Solution with Monitoring modules.
Zabbix is technologically newer than Nagios. I have heard from some customers that they are not happy with how Fixes and Changes are included into Nagios. Incinga is a fork of Nagios and seems to address these problems.
More information you can find in the discussion: Can some one recommend some good monitoring tools for administration and checking server status?
And in our MySQL Monitoring Solution summary.
Our modules for Aria, Master, MyISAM, MySQL, PBXT, Processes, Linux Server, Slave and XtraDB are under the GPL and free of Charge.
The modules for InnoDB and NDB are free of Charge for FromDual customers or they can be purchased for a small amount of money. If you do not like to spend money you can spend in time and build your own modules. Zabbix is a great architecture because you are very flexible and can build whatever you like yourself.


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Eurofound's language policy is implemented in the context of its current work programme and guided by Eurofound's corporate communication strategy.
Three principles of the strategy inform Eurofound's multilingual approach.
- Eurofound's primary goal is to ensure that EU-level decision-makers are best served with the highest-quality, timely and policy-relevant information they require to shape the improvement of Europe's living and working conditions.
- Eurofound will reach out to the national level where it concerns the influencing or implementation of EU policy at national level or where Eurofound can clearly contribute useful comparative information to issues relevant at European level.
- Eurofound respects the role of multilingualism in communicating across the EU and recognises the importance of Europeans being able to access information in their own languages.
Against this background, some of Eurofound's outputs and web information are translated into multiple languages to facilitate access for all users across the Member States.
Eurofound's website is multilingual, to the following extent.
- Multilingual navigation is available throughout the website.
- A number of top-level landing pages are translated into all languages. 'All languages' refers to all 24 official languages of the EU, apart from Irish and Maltese, for which translation has been limited due to very low uptake. The same applies to selected key pages, such as the 'About Eurofound' content and pages relating to Eurofound surveys. The data visualisation tool presenting survey data is available in all languages.
- Translated publications are published online.
The translation programme for publications includes the following.
- Executive summaries of publications are translated into all languages.
- The Living and working in Europe Yearbook and certain other key publications are translated into French, German and up to three additional languages as required.
- Corporate and promotional material is translated as required.
- Ad hoc and on-demand requests for translation of specific publications are reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
Interpretation at events organised by Eurofound will be provided for the relevant language(s) where possible.
Eurofound will continue to adopt a pragmatic and cost-effective approach to implementing its language policy. Its intention is to enable wide-scale multilingual provision to optimise access for users across the Member States while also responding to demand-driven needs where appropriate. The language policy and its implementation are kept under review in light of Eurofound's work programme, communication priorities and available resources.


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Marketing Automation Tools
Automation Marketing gives you the ability to store some of the similar information
Some say that innovation is dead and that the world has changed, but one look at huge ideas like Twitter and Facebook pretty much squashes that rumor. If you think you have the next big idea or even if you want to start a basic, small business online, here are some of the best internet marketing tips around to help you get started. If you're looking to increase visibility for your own blog, you need to begin making the investment now in commenting on other people's blogs. Every time you post a blog comment, it links back to your own blog and will lead people back to your own page. By commenting actively, not only are your own comments boosting your online profile, you're becoming more engaged and encouraging others to do the same for you.
Internet marketing is often seen through banner ads, but these are not highly recommended. Do not invest much of your resources in banner ads if you want to successfully market your products or services online. Banner ads are increasingly being blocked with extensions in browsers, effectively deleting your ads from sites. Tell me how you can save me money and I'll be your customer for life! Everyone is looking for a way to buy a product or service which is easy to use and either saves or makes them money, so it's up to you to market what you're selling in that way. If you are the CEO of a company, make sure that you directly respond to readers once in a while. Readers love this, as they see that the highest level of the company is interested in what they have to say. This will improve your credibility dramatically, leading to more of a following.
To give your site or products better word of mouth, do a giveaway. A giveaway will get people talking about you, and will help you to stick in their minds. You may want to require people to follow you on various social media applications in order to enter your contest. Many of these people will keep following you long after the giveaway is over. When you are marketing a service online, make sure that your website represents your business well. Your website is the front face of your business. When a potential client lands on your website, he should be able to easily find out how your business will fulfill his needs, and why your business is better than the others. Your website has to convince him to stay.
When creating marketing materials for your website or campaign, emphasize the words "easy" and "simple" in your product descriptions and sales copy. Customers may enjoy hunting for bargains online, but they want browsing, selecting, and ordering processes, to be quick and painless. Highlighting a speedy ordering feature makes it easier for a client to get what they want, without abandoning their purchase mid-checkout. Try to use words and phrases like "new," "revolutionary" and "just released" in your online adverts. People are more likely to buy products or services that provide solutions to problems which can't be solved by products or services that they already own or use. So, using these words or phrases in your ads can increase sales.
Tweaking the appearance of your internet marketing website can result in an increase in sales for your business. Try moving your "Buy Now" button to a different location to see if it gets more use. Find out if a different color scheme induces your customers to linger a bit longer on your website. Get your credits when they are due! Some websites don't consider all the sales you may help bring them from mediums other than online. Make sure you find a company that is willing to pay you for all the revenue you bring to them, regardless of the method used.
Being too attached to your website may cause you to see it through rose colored glasses. Many people make the mistake of creating a website and settling in with it. They resist making any changes to it and in doing so loose edge and advantage. Your website is a megaphone for your business and the purpose of it is to make you money, not look good in pictures. Keep your site sharp and your strategies current. Catalog your website in many different directory sites. Every link to your site increases your search engine visibility. The more places that your site is linked, the more popular it is going to be. Try to find directories specific to your subject material so that your site will appear in searches related to that subject.
Getting started in a business is where people seem to have the most trouble, and that's because online marketing is something that explains itself once you learn a few basic principles and a handful of useful tactics. What you've read above will help you get started, so make sure you implement these tips to the letter.


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New Build project of 6 bungalows apartments in Pilar de la Horadada.
This project is based on 6 bungalows with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (one of them en suite), kitchen, living room, parking.
Ground floor bungalows with private terrace and top floor bungalows with private solarium, where are barbecue area with bench and sink.
Storeroom is an optional an extra cost.
There is a communal area for the use of the owners with swimming pool and outside shower.
Properties will be delivered with fully furnished kitchens, with furniture in the lower and upper part, with the refrigerator, the oven, the induction hob, the extractor and the washing machine or dishwasher, all of them with pre-installation of A / C through ducts, fully finished bathrooms with furniture, screen and mirror, in addition to heating in the floors of the same by electrical system, likewise all lights (Spot light) are included, both indoors and outdoors.
Residential complex located a few meters from all services and the centre.
Pilar de la Horadada is a typical Spanish village in the most southern part of the Costa Blanca.
The large main street has supermarkets, lots of shops, restaurants and bars and some lovely squares.
The beautiful beaches of Torre de la Horadada and Mil Palmeras with fine sand promenade is just 5 minutes away.
In Pilar de la Horadada there is also a well-developed cycling and walking path network, and there is also a large offer of various sports activities.
Lo Romero 18 hole golf course is just a short drive from town.
The airports of Corvera (Murcia) and Alicante are respectively 40 and 55 minutes away.
Compare listings


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You've got 525,600 minutes and a few spare seconds to work with in 2011. You know the speed at which they'll fly by. Grab a few of them for real reading, "Quiet Time," goal-setting, and other important things.
Image via wwarby.
Reading—Actual Sit-Down-and-Focus Reading
Right now, you do a lot of reading. In fact, you're probably reading more per day than you did in college (or maybe that's just how I feel). You're engaged every day in light communication with friends, relatives, and coworkers, over email, IM, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter.
But try and recall exactly three emails from yesterday—not just who they were from, but what they actually said. Think of three friends, and try to recall what they posted to Facebook or Twitter yesterday. Three IM conversations you had yesterday. You get the point.
If you're all about the paperless, less-stuff life, you can read a Kindle or PDF ebook on pretty much any screen you own. But commit a little time each week to actually reading—books, long magazine articles, journals related to your fields, anything. Scanning tweets and emails and IMs and updates gives you a quick jolt of short-term awareness of what's happening inside the realms you frequently travel. Reading, actual reading, provides you with an intimacy with an author, familiarity with ideas, and lots of new stuff to talk about to friends, bosses, and potential clients.
"Quiet Time"
It's not what you think, and it doesn't involve napping. "Quiet Time" is time you spend with IM shut off, your email app or tab closed, your door closed, and no get-up-and-do-whatever breaks. It's a pledge to get actual work done, and it's a time when you've trained people to know you're not available.
If you've got the kind of micro-managing boss that can't understand why you haven't read their email 10 minutes after sending, then you'll have to schedule your Quiet Time around them—earlier than they get in, during their times in meetings, or whenever. Then again, there's a good chance your boss (or clients) will appreciate the more details you're able to focus on, and output you're producing, during your Quiet Time.
I'm shamelessly stealing this concept, or at least this application of it, from Mike Canzoneri (@mikecanz) and Buffalo's own Synacor, where at least one department instituted heads-down, IM-off, email-down Quiet Time for actual coding in the afternoons. Substitute coding with the thing you're actually supposed to produce every day, and that's your Quiet Time. Image via dougww.
Passion Projects
As Adam Pash pointed out earlier this year, side projects are all about "grout." That is, they're something you should try to do in those little moments of idleness in your day, or your work, if you've got a pretty flexible work environment. They're the stuff you put in-between the big, responsible bricks of your life.
Unless you're working air traffic control or another extremely hands-on gig, you can't really pretend you're going to stare at one particular task for eight hours a day. In those moments when you need a quick break, and in those times at home when you've got just a little bit of time, pick away at your thing. Maybe your thing is software and web development, like Adam. Maybe your thing is slowly gaining confidence in your home repair skills, like this editor. Or maybe you've got a novel, blog, garden, cooking style, DIY project, or foreign language you'd like to work on, but you feel like you'll never get a good long stretch of time to work on. You're right—you might never get it, so cobble that time together from all your little space-filling times.
Your Weekly Review
If you're a dedicated follower of GTD/Getting Things Done, you set aside time once a week to go through your "capture buckets" and figure out what you're going to do with those snapshots, notes to yourself, and tasks without a specific to-do date (yet). But maybe you're not a GTD-er, or you roll with Simplified GTD. However you get things done on a day-to-day basis, set aside some time on Friday to look back at what you've done, what you didn't or couldn't do, and take a stab at outlining what you're going to do next week.
This is the simplest of all these take-time suggestions, but perhaps the most helpful. Reading, Quiet Time, and little bits of work on your side project can sometimes occur by happy accident; nobody is going to review the week that was except you. Then again, maybe your boss wants to review your past week, but you definitely want to beat him or her to the punch. Original image via stephenyeargin.
Personal, Written-Down Goals
Ugh. Just thinking about being that person, the "Bucket List" type, the kind who you think is secretly, constantly plotting to land on the moon by the age of 40—it makes you cringe. But you should risk dweebhood, suck it up and write down your goals. Writing down things you want to improve in your life transforms them from vague, nagging notions into things you've actually (gasp) thought about, and when you think about it, it's not all that different than the loose collection of ways you tell other people, and yourself, that you're going to change something. As Gina wrote a few years back:
Goals mean you're trying to be better. Ask anyone if they want to be a better person, and you'll get "Of course!" as an answer. Ask them what better means and how they're getting there, and you'll probably get a pair of blinking eyes in response. Setting a goal is simply articulating an improved state of being, thinking through the steps in between where you are now and where that better place is, and taking them. Setting goals means you're actively trying to be better. Frankly, it's a rare occurrence in a world where most people get up, take a shower, pour coffee, and go about their business as usual in exactly the same place they were yesterday.
What will you be making time for this year? We all try to do certain things regularly, and some are harder to stick to than others. Share your revelations from 2010, and goals for 2011, in the comments.


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Tip 496 has been removed
It is hard to find helpful information if there are too many tips.
Therefore, we are removing some tips that refer to obsolete versions, or which have been superseded, or which are no longer useful.
The original tip was at vim.org which may be in this archive Tip#496.
See Vim documentation for alternatives; no extra useful information.


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Our real estate agency is composed of expert agents in the sector with extensive knowledge of the area, as well as a wide portfolio of properties.
As qualified professionals we will be happy to provide you with the best service so you can quickly find the house, villa, finca or any property you want to buy or rent always with the best possible conditions.
In our wide portfolio of properties, you can find various offers in:
Property under construction, new build properties, properties for rent, villas for sale or luxury properties as a great real estate investment in our area.
Also, if you want to sell or rent your property, we will help you to manage your real estate offer in the best way, and ensure that you get the best information and market orientation in your area of interest.
We will inform you of the different possible options so that you can achieve your interests quickly. You can count on a professional team ready to help you in any situation in which you are interested.
You can contact us through our telephone or email (located in the Contact section of the top menu).
Do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to help you sell or find the house of your dreams.


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Any media is a combination of channel and information. Media uses platform to build the channel to communicate with its audience. An audience chooses the media based on a suitable platform and the information it provides. Traditional media used to control their platforms completely. With the growth of social media, their pages became one of many on the platform. Those platform changes affected income source. Here are the media evolution milestones based on those two determining factors.
The infographic demonstrates the evolution of media platform and revenue source.
Print media
It was a long age of print media dominance. There was no other way to distribute information and to connect with each other, other than through publications in newspapers or magazines. The media brand was influential, and subscribers and advertisers were its income source.
Internet media
The emergence of Internet prompted print media to create their own web pages. While the subscription-based part of their income reduced, their business models didn't change. Banners and sponsored articles became their main source of revenue.
Social media
The struggle between the media and the platform started with the introduction of social media. Internet media use platform to attract an audience and to lure it to visit their web pages.
This does not align with platform goals.
The biggest asset of social media is user data and user-generated content. Their main source of revenue is highly targeted advertisement. While traditional internet-media also have become an element of the advertising networks, they have to share their revenue with content creators. The targeted ads generate too little revenue, that is also cut by an intermediary. Media just can't produce high-quality content with this source of income alone.
Meanwhile, social media have demonstrated the influence of individuals.
Next generation media
Closer and more instant interactions have become the main trend developing in the new media. This leads to the growth of messenger-like media and streaming functions. With our friends, we prefer to chat in messengers. To experience more, we go to specialized platforms, which display videos, photos, streams or blog posts.
The influencers are rising and claim their share of income. Traditional social platforms manipulate feeds and content to increase their revenue while authors of good content and active communities receive no support. The new revenue model of social media has to involve direct payments. Let's dive into the future of media and understand how it will benefit all of us.
How is social media landscape changing? Major platforms introduce a multitude of ideas and approaches with the ultimate goal – to stay influential and increase revenue.
Money has to be shared
Targeting used to be the goldmine for both advertisers and platforms. Companies just reaped customers who were ready and willing to buy. The art of targeting has become popular and now it is a very sophisticated process, while an audience is an object of interest for many companies. Within the traditional model it is becoming more difficult for brands to stand out there. They need influencers to create engaging stories for the brand audience. A creative approach will be more compelling for advertisers.
Media implements many options such as paywall, subscriptions and micro-payments. Direct payments for the specific content or to the user also become more and more popular.
The infographic shows trends in targeting. The bid competition increases and customer acquisition costs become higher. Companies are trying to target more precisely to reach potential customers. While the customers who are ready to buy attract the most attention, the top of the pipeline stays untreated. Brands can cover them by storytelling through different media, platform, and influencers and make real fans of these customers.
Outstanding content breakthrough
The business model of social platforms affects the content quality too. The requirements for content have become low, it just has to grab attention quickly. The channel has become more important for all the parties of social interactions: if you can attract the audience you can earn, regardless of the content quality.
Nowadays social media and other web sites are flooded with low-quality content. Platforms apply different approaches to handle it: moderators, AI, censorship. For example, YouTube introduces manual moderation and additional requirements for partnered channels. Huffington Post announced it will no longer work with contributors on its U.S. site.
The best way to identify quality content is to let users pay for it directly. Experts, educators, and outstanding showmen would thrive eventually.
People build trust
Don't forget the reason why we all gather here: to communicate openly with someone we like. Social media platforms want us to stay more on their pages and to click adds. For example, Facebook applies algorithms to make people stay longer there, at the same time audience engagement decreases. Facebook has become less social, more media: we scroll feed looking for stories, entertainment and news, and don't spend the time to comment, like or share.
The personal interactions move to other mediums, such as messengers and streams. Influencers gather people in communities and use group chats, streams, and comments. Communities motivate people to interact, rather than be merely informed. Information, news, memes, and other content spread very fast across communities, while algorithms address long-term processes.
The new business model
While most traditional networks and media are trying to catch some new trends, the new business model arises. It is that pivotal moment when media just can't use additional attributes to stay on the top. The new model would not complement traditional platforms, it substitutes them as they don't change their primary source of revenue based on targeting ads.
The social network, which wins the future, has to combine new business model, new technologies and the new type of content which attracts the young audience. Young people change their preferences fast. Currently, the most popular global social network is just number four in their top and tends to become even less popular. And this list is changing continuously.
Let's take a closer look at the new business model of media and the example that illustrates it. Monoreto is the social platform which brings together all trends and illustrates the upcoming model. This platform is based exactly on the new principle – direct payments to support excellent content creators.
The core of the platform is content, personal communications, and instant feedback. The platform allows to easily launch live broadcasts, create stories with photos and 10-second videos with overlaid text, and publish different types of content including photo and video.
Influencer: produces content and interact with users. Tells a brand's story.
Direct donations are the basis of the new model
The donation model of Monoreto implements blockchain technology. The minimum transaction is equal to 5 cents in Monoreto tokens (or more, up to donator), which users transfer with their likes.
There are several reasons why users already donate and will continue to do so:
They want to interact with a public person and to attract attention. During live streams donations have become a very popular way to interact with a broadcaster, to ask him to say or do something. This kind of interactions with influencer become a valuable experience.
Gamification: there are a plenty of ways to turn gratitude into entertainment. In Monoreto these are quizzes, lotteries, and competitions. For example, a world-famous sportsman is able to publish a post and announce that top 3 active donors to the post will get the opportunity to meet him (for dinner, at a training club, etc.) Millions of followers and fans crave to win the prize. The media easily and transparently conveys the procedure, and winners will gain recognition by everyone and will get their moment of glory.
They also want to be stars, so they explore the platform, interact with influencers and gradually become more active and start to donate. Donations help to stand out for users and even for brands, because accounts who "donate" likes promote their posts in the newsfeed. Brands are encouraged to tell their stories directly to the audience. By liking quality content of other users, a business account climbs upwards on Monoreto's smart feed and gives information to potential consumers through their content. A business owner thereby gets a real return on advertising investment and his money ends up going to his favorite photographer, blogger, actor, or even another business he decides to support instead of some advertising intermediary.
Find out more at the Monoreto Telegram Channel here.
Monoreto demonstrates a new vision for the social platform model. While the amount of content increases overwhelmingly, it is very important to highlight the best of it and put it on display. The platform distributes revenue from both users and advertisers directly to the content authors. Their motivation to create and form active communities increases. The social platform of the new generation benefits all parties: users, authors, and advertisers. The changes promise to be disruptive.


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July, 24, 2024, week 30 . It's 12:45 (hic et nunc), & at Greenwich 12:45 (UTC). en.wikipedia has 254,407 entries and 831,683 pages.
Hi, I'm 'Manel Capdevila' from Arenys (my birthday is on October 23). I started in the French VP by providing information about Mao Zedong, teaching a French friend the city where were born my wife and my son. Later I became involved again, trying to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar at the level of history. I have started a a few projects and participated in others "Catalanity of Columbus, but at the end I decided not to diversify and focus on what I like: Computer Science/Electronics, History of science: Nautical science or Catalan Gunpowder. Do you like my projects? As I've said, the first article in which I participated was (Mao Ze Dong, touriste a Qingdao - with IP:18.104.22.168 -), explaining that Mao Zedong used to go there on vacation, was on 25, October, 2006 and not without some difficulty. Remember that newcomers are welcome and should be helped. It took me two years to create my first entry into Virgin of Bonaire in Catalan and Spanish Wiki and load the first image on 12-08-2008. I did not understand the jumble of licenses. I recommend you to take photos, or maps, and do not hesitate to ask for help to know your status. Edit! This is my user page, but the page is not mine. This is a wiki, so do not hesitate to publish it. I trust the good faith and respect for the work that has been done. Let's talkchangeWikipedia has its control systems developed by consensus. As User I try to meet the requirements of the community. If you disagree with any action of mine, please let me know. I may have not explained myself good enough, or I was mistaken, or maybe we need to seek a third opinion. Everything has a solution if we speak:
Wikipediae maximaechangeMy personal opinions, or subscribed by me: * The WP is not politically correct, it is just in correct english. * Objectivity is not a goal of the WP, but neutrality. * We dont't have to authenticate the veracity, but to verify the authenticity. * The WP behaves as a "charming anarchy" (Gabriel Bibiloni) * The fair play it's a Far West law. * If you can, try it. It is more respectable the opinion of the one who has tried. |