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In the two revolutionary years of 1848-49 the League proved itself in two ways. First, its members everywhere involved themselves energetically in the movement and stood in the front ranks of the only decisively revolutionary class, the proletariat, in the press, on the barricades and on the battlefields. The League further proved itself in that its understanding of the movement, as expressed in the circulars issued by the Congresses and the Central Committee of 1847 and in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, has been shown to be the only correct one, and the expectations expressed in these documents have been completely fulfilled. This previously only propagated by the League in secret, is now on everyone's lips and is preached openly in the market place. At the same time, however, the formerly strong organization of the League has been considerably weakened. A large number of members who were directly involved in the movement thought that the time for secret societies was over and that public action alone was sufficient. The individual districts and communes allowed their connections with the Central Committee to weaken and gradually become dormant. So, while the democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, has become more and more organized in Germany, the workers' party has lost its only firm foothold, remaining organized at best in individual localities for local purposes; within the general movement it has consequently come under the complete domination and leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats. This situation cannot be allowed to continue; the independence of the workers must be restored. The Central Committee recognized this necessity and it therefore sent an emissary, Joseph Moll, to Germany in the winter of 1848-9 to reorganize the League. Moll's mission, however, failed to produce any lasting effect, partly because the German workers at that time had not enough experience and partly because it was interrupted by the insurrection last May. Moll himself took up arms, joined the Baden-Palatinate army and fell on 29 June in the battle of the River Murg. The League lost in him one of the oldest, most active and most reliable members, who had been involved in all the Congresses and Central Committees and had earlier conducted a series of missions with great success. Since the defeat of the German and French revolutionary parties in July 1849, almost all the members of the Central Committee have reassembled in London: they have replenished their numbers with new revolutionary forces and set about reorganizing the League with renewed zeal.
This reorganization can only be achieved by an emissary, and the Central Committee considers it most important to dispatch the emissary at this very moment, when a new revolution is imminent, that is, when the workers' party must go into battle with the maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie as in 1848.
We told you already in 1848, brothers, that the German liberal bourgeoisie would soon come to power and would immediately turn its newly won power against the workers. You have seen how this forecast came true. It was indeed the bourgeoisie which took possession of the state authority in the wake of the March movement of 1848 and used this power to drive the workers, its allies in the struggle, back into their former oppressed position. Although the bourgeoisie could accomplish this only by entering into an alliance with the feudal party, which had been defeated in March, and eventually even had to surrender power once more to this feudal absolutist party, it has nevertheless secured favourable conditions for itself. In view of the government's financial difficulties, these conditions would ensure that power would in the long run fall into its hands again and that all its interests would be secured, if it were possible for the revolutionary movement to assume from now on a so-called peaceful course of development. In order to guarantee its power the bourgeoisie would not even need to arouse hatred by taking violent measures against the people, as all of these violent measures have already been carried out by the feudal counter-revolution. But events will not take this peaceful course. On the contrary, the revolution which will accelerate the course of events, is imminent, whether it is initiated by an independent rising of the French proletariat or by an invasion of the revolutionary Babel by the Holy Alliance.
The treacherous role that the German liberal bourgeoisie played against the people in 1848 will be assumed in the coming revolution by the democratic petty bourgeoisie, which now occupies the same position in the opposition as the liberal bourgeoisie did before 1848. This democratic party, which is far more dangerous for the workers than were the liberals earlier, is composed of three elements:
- The most progressive elements of the big bourgeoisie, who pursue the goal of the immediate and complete overthrow of feudalism and absolutism. This fraction is represented by the former Berlin Vereinbarer, the tax resisters;
- The constitutional-democratic petty bourgeois, whose main aim during the previous movement was the formation of a more or less democratic federal state; this is what their representative, the Left in the Frankfurt Assembly and later the Stuttgart parliament, worked for, as they themselves did in the Reich Constitution Campaign;
- The republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federal republic similar to that in Switzerland and who now call themselves
because they cherish the pious wish to abolish the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital, by the big bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeoisie. The representatives of this fraction were the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the democratic associations and the editors of the democratic newspapers.
After their defeat all these fractions claim to be republicans
or reds
, just as at the present time members of the republican petty bourgeoisie in France call themselves socialists
. Where, as in Wurtemberg, Bavaria, etc., they still find a chance to pursue their ends by constitutional means, they seize the opportunity to retain their old phrases and prove by their actions that they have not changed in the least. Furthermore, it goes without saying that the changed name of this party does not alter in the least its relationship to the workers but merely proves that it is now obliged to form a front against the bourgeoisie, which has united with absolutism, and to seek the support of the proletariat.
The petty-bourgeois democratic party in Germany is very powerful. It not only embraces the great majority of the urban middle class, the small industrial merchants and master craftsmen; it also includes among its followers the peasants and rural proletariat in so far as the latter has not yet found support among the independent proletariat of the towns.
The relationship of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position.
The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible. They therefore demand above all else a reduction in government spending through a restriction of the bureaucracy and the transference of the major tax burden into the large landowners and bourgeoisie. They further demand the removal of the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital through the establishment of public credit institutions and the passing of laws against usury, whereby it would be possible for themselves and the peasants to receive advances on favourable terms from the state instead of from capitalists; also, the introduction of bourgeois property relationships on land through the complete abolition of feudalism. In order to achieve all this they require a democratic form of government, either constitutional or republican, which would give them and their peasant allies the majority; they also require a democratic system of local government to give them direct control over municipal property and over a series of political offices at present in the hands of the bureaucrats.
The rule of capital and its rapid accumulation is to be further counteracted, partly by a curtailment of the right of inheritance, and partly by the transference of as much employment as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to remain wage labourers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable. The demands of petty-bourgeois democracy summarized here are not expressed by all sections of it at once, and in their totality they are the explicit goal of only a very few of its followers. The further particular individuals or fractions of the petty bourgeoisie advance, the more of these demands they will explicitly adopt, and the few who recognize their own programme in what has been mentioned above might well believe they have put forward the maximum that can be demanded from the revolution. But these demands can in no way satisfy the party of the proletariat. While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one. There is no doubt that during the further course of the revolution in Germany, the petty-bourgeois democrats will for the moment acquire a predominant influence. The question is, therefore, what is to be the attitude of the proletariat, and in particular of the League towards them:
- While present conditions continue, in which the petty-bourgeois democrats are also oppressed;
- In the coming revolutionary struggle, which will put them in a dominant position;
- After this struggle, during the period of petty-bourgeois predominance over the classes which have been overthrown and over the proletariat.
1: At the moment, while the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach to the proletariat general unity and reconciliation; they extend the hand of friendship, and seek to found a great opposition party which will embrace all shades of democratic opinion; that is, they seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This unity must therefore be resisted in the most decisive manner. Instead of lowering themselves to the level of an applauding chorus, the workers, and above all the League, must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers' party, both secret and open, and alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes a center and nucleus of workers' associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence. How serious the bourgeois democrats are about an alliance in which the proletariat has equal power and equal rights is demonstrated by the Breslau democrats, who are conducting a furious campaign in their organ, the Neue Oder Zeitung, against independently organized workers, whom they call socialists
. In the event of a struggle against a common enemy a special alliance is unnecessary. As soon as such an enemy has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties will coincide for the moment and an association of momentary expedience will arise spontaneously in the future, as it has in the past. It goes without saying that in the bloody conflicts to come, as in all others, it will be the workers, with their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory. As in the past, so in the coming struggle also, the petty bourgeoisie, to a man, will hesitate as long as possible and remain fearful, irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it for itself and will call upon the workers to behave in an orderly fashion, to return to work and to prevent so-called excesses, and it will exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It does not lie within the power of the workers to prevent the petty-bourgeois democrats from doing this; but it does lie within their power to make it as difficult as possible for the petty bourgeoisie to use its power against the armed proletariat, and to dictate such conditions to them that the rule of the bourgeois democrats, from the very first, will carry within it the seeds of its own destruction, and its subsequent displacement by the proletariat will be made considerably easier. Above all, during and immediately after the struggle the workers, as far as it is at all possible, must oppose bourgeois attempts at pacification and force the democrats to carry out their terroristic phrases. They must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers' party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction. During and after the struggle the workers must at every opportunity put forward their own demands against those of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the democratic bourgeoisie sets about taking over the government. They must achieve these guarantees by force if necessary, and generally make sure that the new rulers commit themselves to all possible concessions and promises – the surest means of compromising them. They must check in every way and as far as is possible the victory euphoria and enthusiasm for the new situation which follow every successful street battle, with a cool and cold-blooded analysis of the situation and with undisguised mistrust of the new government. Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers' governments, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers' clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers' suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the common victory for itself.
2: To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens' militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats' influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.
3: As soon as the new governments have established themselves, their struggle against the workers will begin. If the workers are to be able to forcibly oppose the democratic petty bourgeois it is essential above all for them to be independently organized and centralized in clubs. At the soonest possible moment after the overthrow of the present governments, the Central Committee will come to Germany and will immediately convene a Congress, submitting to it the necessary proposals for the centralization of the workers' clubs under a directorate established at the movement's center of operations. The speedy organization of at least provincial connections between the workers' clubs is one of the prime requirements for the strengthening and development of the workers' party; the immediate result of the overthrow of the existing governments will be the election of a national representative body. Here the proletariat must take care:
- that by sharp practices local authorities and government commissioners do not, under any pretext whatsoever, exclude any section of workers;
- that workers' candidates are nominated everywhere in opposition to bourgeois-democratic candidates. As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers' candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed.
The first point over which the bourgeois democrats will come into conflict with the workers will be the abolition of feudalism. As in the first French revolution, the petty bourgeoisie will want to give the feudal lands to the peasants as free property; that is, they will try to perpetrate the existence of the rural proletariat, and to form a petty-bourgeois peasant class which will be subject to the same cycle of impoverishment and debt which still afflicts the French peasant. The workers must oppose this plan both in the interest of the rural proletariat and in their own interest. They must demand that the confiscated feudal property remain state property and be used for workers' colonies, cultivated collectively by the rural proletariat with all the advantages of large-scale farming and where the principle of common property will immediately achieve a sound basis in the midst of the shaky system of bourgeois property relations. Just as the democrats ally themselves with the peasants, the workers must ally themselves with the rural proletariat.
The democrats will either work directly towards a federated republic, or at least, if they cannot avoid the one and indivisible republic they will attempt to paralyze the central government by granting the municipalities and provinces the greatest possible autonomy and independence. In opposition to this plan the workers must not only strive for one and indivisible German republic, but also, within this republic, for the most decisive centralization of power in the hands of the state authority. They should not let themselves be led astray by empty democratic talk about the freedom of the municipalities, self-government, etc. In a country like Germany, where so many remnants of the Middle Ages are still to be abolished, where so much local and provincial obstinacy has to be broken down, it cannot under any circumstances be tolerated that each village, each town and each province may put up new obstacles in the way of revolutionary activity, which can only be developed with full efficiency from a central point. A renewal of the present situation, in which the Germans have to wage a separate struggle in each town and province for the same degree of progress, can also not be tolerated. Least of all can a so-called free system of local government be allowed to perpetuate a form of property which is more backward than modern private property and which is everywhere and inevitably being transformed into private property; namely communal property, with its consequent disputes between poor and rich communities. Nor can this so-called free system of local government be allowed to perpetuate, side by side with the state civil law, the existence of communal civil law with its sharp practices directed against the workers. As in France in 1793, it is the task of the genuinely revolutionary party in Germany to carry through the strictest centralization. [It must be recalled today that this passage is based on a misunderstanding. At that time – thanks to the Bonapartist and liberal falsifiers of history – it was considered as established that the French centralised machine of administration had been introduced by the Great Revolution and in particular that it had been used by the Convention as an indispensable and decisive weapon for defeating the royalist and federalist reaction and the external enemy. It is now, however, a well-known fact that throughout the revolution up to the eighteenth Brumaire the whole administration of the départements, arrondissements and communes consisted of authorities elected by, the respective constituents themselves, and that these authorities acted with complete freedom within the general state laws; that precisely this provincial and local self-government, similar to the American, became the most powerful lever of the revolution and indeed to such an extent that Napoleon, immediately after his coup d'etat of the eighteenth Brumaire, hastened to replace it by the still existing administration by prefects, which, therefore, was a pure instrument of reaction from the beginning. But no more than local and provincial self-government is in contradiction to political, national centralisation, is it necessarily bound up with that narrow-minded cantonal or communal self-seeking which strikes us as so repulsive in Switzerland, and which all the South German federal republicans wanted to make the rule in Germany in 1849. – Note by Engels to the 1885 edition.]
We have seen how the next upsurge will bring the democrats to power and how they will be forced to propose more or less socialistic measures. It will be asked what measures the workers are to propose in reply. At the beginning, of course, the workers cannot propose any directly communist measures. But the following courses of action are possible:
- They can force the democrats to make inroads into as many areas of the existing social order as possible, so as to disturb its regular functioning and so that the petty-bourgeois democrats compromise themselves; furthermore, the workers can force the concentration of as many productive forces as possible – means of transport, factories, railways, etc. – in the hands of the state.
- They must drive the proposals of the democrats to their logical extreme (the democrats will in any case act in a reformist and not a revolutionary manner) and transform these proposals into direct attacks on private property. If, for instance, the petty bourgeoisie propose the purchase of the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these railways and factories simply be confiscated by the state without compensation as the property of reactionaries. If the democrats propose a proportional tax, then the workers must demand a progressive tax; if the democrats themselves propose a moderate progressive tax, then the workers must insist on a tax whose rates rise so steeply that big capital is ruined by it; if the democrats demand the regulation of the state debt, then the workers must demand national bankruptcy. The demands of the workers will thus have to be adjusted according to the measures and concessions of the democrats.
Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.


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subset: commoncrawl


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FREETOWN, 27 November 2012 (IRIN) - The new government is responding positively to health workers and youth groups who have long called for a change in the 1861 law banning abortion except in exceptional circumstances.
The Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law – Sierra Leone (CARL-SL) welcomed the Sierra Leone Parliament's enactment of the Sexual Offences Act 2012. In March this year, CARL-SL called on the Sierra Leone Government to step up efforts at enacting both the Sexual Offences Bill and the Legal Aid Bill. The fact that both bills have now been passed into law is significant, and CARL-SL would like to commend the Parliament of Sierra Leone for its timely enactment of the Sexual Offences Act.
Address: 5 Dundas Street, Freetown, SIERRA LEONE
Tel: (+232)-22-22 44 56; (+232) 77 85 78 00; (+232) 765 553 408
Fax: (+232)-22 60 31/22 44 39
Other Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
The author shows that female circumcision is not confined to the Horn of Africa, or the Muslim areas of the continent. Her study of the practice in Sierra Leone demonstrates its important role in the traditional initiation of females into both womanhood and society in parts of West Africa. The material sets out detailed and practical proposals for a 20 year programme to end "the crippling of women by this operation".
Nous représentantes de diverses organisations de la Société Civile Africaine réunies au Forum Mondial pour la Revue de Beijing 15 ans après et représentant les voix des millions de femmes et jeunes filles Africaines, Apres avoir eu des consultations avec différents acteurs avant et pendant le Forum Mondial des ONG sur les progrès enregistrés dans la mise en œuvre de le Déclaration et la Plate Forme d'Action de Beijing en Afrique,
29 March to 27 April 2010 (Global): The witchcraft epidemic in Africa is fueled by religious extremism. Practitioners of traditional African religions, traditional healers, witch-doctors and Christian missionaries and religious leaders incite witch-hunts on this continent. There are comparisons to be made between Africas current witch-craze, European Inquisitions and American witch-hunts. Perhaps the lessons to be learned in Africa are the same as those that needed to be learned by Europeans and Americans; there is no culture without human rights. All men and women, including Witches, have the right to live without being falsely accused, assaulted, persecuted or murdered.


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Parents consistently overestimate their children's optimism and downplay their worries, according to new research by psychologists at the University of California, Davis, Center for Mind and Brain.
The findings suggest that secondhand evaluations by parents or other adults of children's emotional well-being need to be treated with caution.
Many psychologists and researchers have long held that children under the age of seven cannot accurately report how they feel, said Kristin Lagattuta, associate professor of psychology at UC Davis, who led the study. So behavioral scientists frequently rely on the impressions of parents, teachers and other adults.
However, several studies have shown that parents think their kids are smarter than they really are — for example, parents often overestimate how well their children will perform on math, language or other cognitive tests.
"We thought this 'positivity bias' also might apply to how parents perceive their children's emotional well-being," Lagattuta said.
Lagattuta, with Liat Sayfan, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain, and Christi Bamford, a former graduate student at UC Davis, made the discovery while conducting larger studies on individual differences in children's social reasoning.
Rather than rely just on parent questionnaires, the researchers decided to assess kids' views of their own emotions.
They developed a picture-based rating scale that children could use to rate how often they felt different kinds of emotions. The team got the children used to the scale with basic questions such as how often they eat a particular food or wear clothes of a particular color.
In three separate studies involving more than 500 children ages 4 through 11, they found that parents consistently rated their children as being less worried and more optimistic than the children rated themselves.
The questions involved common childhood anxieties such as being scared of the dark, or worries about something bad happening to a family member.
Lagattuta and her colleagues also found that parents' own emotions biased not only how they perceived their children's emotions, but also the degree of discrepancy between the parent and child reports.
The fact that there was a difference between adults and children in rating both anxiety and optimism showed that there wasn't a simple effect of children giving themselves higher scores for everything, Lagattuta said. Instead, children consistently provided higher ratings than parents when reporting their worries and lower ratings than parents when evaluating their feelings of optimism.
Previous research with parents suffering from anxiety or depression have shown that parents' own emotions influence how they evaluate their children's feelings, Lagattuta added. The current findings show that this is a mainstream phenomenon not specific to adults with mood disorders.
The results do not invalidate previous work involving parent reports of children's emotions, Lagattuta said. But they do show that secondhand evaluations by parents or other adults need to be treated with care. Ideally, researchers should get emotion reports of children from multiple sources, including the child, Lagattuta said.
Awareness of this parental positivity bias may also encourage adults to be more attuned to emotional difficulties children may be facing, she noted.


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Drop Ceiling Tiles Overview
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Babiak, as an industrial and organizational psychologist, encountered his first corporate psychopath in 1992. By studying operators like "Dave" in the corporate environment, Babiak not only brought into focus the methods by which psychopaths infiltrate and ascend the corporate ladder of success, he shattered previous illusions about what was and wasn't possible for psychopaths to accomplish. Many in the industry thought psychopaths wouldn't be able to succeed in business. They thought that psychopaths' bullying and narcissistic behaviors would be off-putting to potential hirers, and that their abuse and manipulations would inevitably lead to failure within the company. In fact, the so-called "experts" couldn't have been more wrong. They seemed to have neglected the uncanny ability of psychopaths to present an image of extreme normality, and even excellence, to their victims. And that is what we are to them: victims, potential "marks", suckers.
Against the prevailing beliefs and hubristic assumptions, Babiak found that psychopaths were readily accepted into the management ranks of prominent companies, and were even experiencing career success.1 Their extreme narcissism was apparently mistaken as a "positive leadership trait", and the murky morality and internal chaos typical of the mergers, acquisitions, and takeover environment seemed perfect for their type. Not only would they do well under the pressure - not having the ability to feel fear or stress - the potential personal rewards were too great to refuse, for the business and the psychopath. As Babiak put it, "the lack of specific knowledge about what constitutes psychopathic manipulation and deceit among businesspeople was the corporate con's key to success."2 Ironically, the very traits sought by corporations and other powerful entities are often the ones that do bring about their inevitable demise (witness the fall of Bernie Madoff, Enron, Nazism). And they are the traits we have been conditioned to see as ideal. For example, through the "rose-colored glasses" of those who do not know better, conning and manipulative become "persuasive" and "influential"; coldhearted behavior and lack of remorse become "action oriented" and the "ability to make hard decisions"; fearless and impulsive become "courageous" and "high-energy"; lack of emotions becomes "strong" and "controls emotions".3
In short, when we call a psychopath "persuasive and courageous" we should actually be charging a commission for doing the psychopath's PR for him, because that is all it is. It's like selling bleach and calling it holy water! On paper these qualities may look promising, but as coworkers, and especially as bosses, psychopaths are domineering, intimidating, frightening, and dangerous. Quick to take credit for others' work and to hire and fire employees on a whim, they tolerate only praise, are extremely short-sighted, and genuinely lack the insight that makes a good leader. One psychopath, described by Babiak, was "unwilling and perhaps unable to acknowledge that any of her decisions could have any negative consequences for the business."4 Even when leading superficially "normal" lives, psychopaths still cause problems in ways that fly under the radar of the law - economically, psychologically, emotionally.
How do they do it? By analyzing corporate cons, Babiak discovered the basic methods psychopaths use to operate in a hierarchical, corporate environment. But no matter in what environment the psychopath finds himself - a romantic relationship, a corporate strategy, a planned heist, an election campaign, a political coup ... the list of possibilities is endless - he uses the same, three-phase "Assessment - Manipulation - Abandonment" routine on his victims. In the first phase, the psychopath assesses the value of his "ally" and potential patsy - what he or she can do to further the psychopath's aims. Psychopaths are experts at identifying and pushing others' "buttons", their "likes and dislikes, motives, needs, weak spots, and vulnerabilities."5 Others' strengths are utilized and weaknesses exploited. Next, the psychopath uses messages carefully crafted for the specific target, utilizing information gathered in the Assessment Phase. He then adapts his manipulation to accommodate any new feedback from the target in order to maintain full control. As Babiak and Hare write:
They often make use of the fact that for many people the content of the message is less important than the way it is delivered. A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others ... they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan. They are known for their ability to don many masks, change "who they are" depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim.6Sounds an awful lot like the work done by intelligence agencies, doesn't it?
Psychopaths also use a variety of manipulation techniques, for example, gaslighting. When told a lie often enough, and with seemingly absolute certainty, normal people tend to doubt their own perceptions. "Amazingly, more often than not, victims will eventually come to doubt their own knowledge of the truth and change their own views to believe what the psychopath tells them rather than what they know to be true."7 In this phase, the psychopath ruthlessly exploits his victims, using them to acquire money, position, control, and power. When a person has ceased to be useful, they are discarded in the final, Abandonment Phase. Loyal to none, this often has devastating effects on those who were deceived by the psychopath's façade of lies and "good intentions". Whether a spouse who has been drained emotionally, an old woman whose bank account has been emptied, or a "friend" whose connections have finally paid off, the psychopath inevitably throws them out and moves on to the next target.
Within the corporate world, Babiak identified a more elaborate five-phase variation of this dynamic. First, psychopaths use their charm and gift of gab to feign leadership qualities, thus gaining entry into the company. Once hired, they identify possible targets and rivals among coworkers - from talented but naïve peers whose work can be stolen to secretaries who control access to important executives - in the assessment phase. Babiak describes the four groups of people that psychopaths employ in their games. Pawns are ordinary coworkers who have "informal power and influence", and who are deftly manipulated by psychopaths into wanting - or needing - to support and please them. Patrons are high-level individuals with formal power. By developing rapport with patrons, psychopaths secure protection from the attacks of lower-level workers who see through the mask. Patsies are pawns who have lost their usefulness and have thus been discarded. Lastly, organizational police are individuals like auditors, security, and human resources staff who are more experienced in detecting manipulation in the work place.8
In the third, manipulation phase, psychopaths create and maintain their "psychopathic fiction", setting up positive disinformation about themselves and negative disinformation about others using the network of pawns, patrons and "useful idiots" that they create. By creating conflict among the other employees, they divert attention away from themselves, preferring to operate behind the scenes and above the storms that they create and manage. In the confrontation phase, psychopaths discard rivals and pawns (now patsies), frequently using techniques of character assassination, framing, and other tactics using so-called "facts" that deviate significantly from the truth. They get away with this by relying on the highly placed patrons with whom they are now cozy. And in the final, ascension phase, they ultimately unseat their patrons, taking for themselves the positions and prestige of those who once supported them.9 In the psychopath's game, people exist solely to be manipulated, and he pursues his aims at any cost, even if that means backstabbing everyone who supported him in his ascent.
Interest in corporate psychopaths has risen significantly in the last decade, largely due to the publicity of corporate frauds and scandals like Enron in 2001 and Madoff in 2009. Oddly, given the number of political scandals and their striking similarities to their corporate cousins, the idea that psychopaths infiltrate governments - with disastrous results - has yet to receive the attention it deserves. In fact, the political massacres that are occurring today - the dark aspects of human history that both fascinate and repel us - and the corruption that inevitably leads to them, have their roots in the presence of psychopaths in positions of power and influence.
Psychopaths can be found in prison for all sorts of violent and predatory crimes against individuals, including white-collar crime. University programs, academic societies, conferences, professional textbooks and manuals, all exist to get a handle on the problem and aid in prevention of these sorts of crimes. But what about their role in crimes against humanity? I haven't been able to find one academic paper examining the role of psychopathy in politics, whether in so-called democratic systems or overt dictatorships. Just as researchers at first doubted the ability of psychopaths to succeed in business, and the problem remained unexamined, the problem of psychopathy in politics remains steadfastly ignored. Political scientists refuse to look at psychopathy, and psychopathy experts refuse to look at politics. The results of such blindness are evident in history - and the present - for anyone to see. Genocides, dictatorships, state-sanctioned torture, "war without end", political assassinations, death squads, corruption, blackmail, spying on civilians, "state secrets", illegal "espionage", and on and on.
The situation is odd, considering the fact that experts have made it increasingly clear that psychopaths can occupy prominent positions in all professions: law, business, medicine, psychology, academia, military, entertainment, law enforcement, even - and perhaps especially - politics. As Babiak and Hare explain it, "Many [psychopaths] do manage to graduate from college or obtain professional credentials, but in most cases it is less through hard work and dedication than through cheating, getting others to do their work, and generally 'working the system.'"10
The Madoff case offers a great many implications concerning not only the Wall Street in general, but the political scene as well. Interestingly, the list of his victims lacks any US banking names or other serious institutional investors, who normally require the type of information that Madoff's firm kept off limits. In fact, the business was suspected as a fraud for nearly a decade, with evidence of misconduct from as far back as the 70s. And yet serious investigations were held off until his sons turned him in. Many knew for years, but remained silent, allowing Madoff to continue the scheme that would ruin thousands. Conveniently, Madoff's niece was married to a senior compliance official at the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005 and Madoff himself bragged about his close relationships with SEC regulators. Madoff's firm had close ties to Washington's lawmakers and regulators, with Madoff sitting on the board of the Securities Industry Association, and Madoff's brother sitting on the board of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). In Creswell's and Thomas's piece for the New York Times, a close associate of Madoff's relates that "He once mentioned to me that he spent one-third of his time in Washington in the early 1990s, late 1980s."
Not only was Madoff's fund a perfect money laundry for potential co-conspirators, he was protected by his close ties to the "organizational police" of the SEC and his domineering control over his employees. "Nobody left because they could never get another job that paid as well as this one. Some people, after his arrest, speculated that it was kind of like hush money; nobody asked any questions because the Madoffs were nice, protective, generous." (The Daily Beast) According to Babiak and Hare, "The level and intensity of psychopathic intimidation often keeps those who have been abused from coming forward."11 By controlling underlings and wooing regulators, Madoff protected himself from exposure. It was only after his arrogance got the better of him that it all fell apart.
But Madoff is only a symptom of a systemic problem that affects humanity from the level of interpersonal relationships to heights of political control. The "garden-variety psychopath" maneuvers for control and power in a relatively limited sphere of influence: from his immediate family to the wider group of coworkers and chance victims. Criminally versatile psychopaths move from victim to victim, acquiring a tally of women emotionally and physically destroyed; elderly people bilked of their life savings; charities robbed of their donations; children tortured and mutilated. The corporate psychopath not only affects everyone in the company's staff; his misdeeds have the potential to ruin the lives of thousands. But the political psychopath, in a position of the utmost prestige, power, and influence, has the potential to rule - and ruin - empires. His influence reaches level of society and his decisions have the potential to affect billions.
- Babiak (2007, 413).
- Babiak & Hare (2006, xiii).
- Babiak (2007, 419).
- Babiak & Hare (2006, 12).
- Babiak & Hare (2006, 37).
- Babiak & Hare (2006, 38).
- Babiak & Hare (2006, 51).
- Babiak (2007, 417).
- Babiak (2007, 418 - 20).
- Babiak & Hare (2006, 47).
- Babiak & Hare (2006, 52).


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Football Manager 2019 Mobile 10.2.3 Apk + Mod + Data for Android
- Current Version: 10.2.3
- File size: 18 MB + 942 MB
- Memorize: www.ReXdl.com
Football Manager 2019 Mobile 10.2.3 Apk + Mod + Data for Android
The world's greatest players in your pocket…
Football Manager 2019 Mobile delivers a stunningly slick and realistic management experience, with the world's most renowned football clubs awaiting your arrival.
Which one will be the first stepping stone in your trophy-laden career? There's hundreds to choose from 56 leagues across 19 countries.
Will you pick a team blessed with talent or take on a project that needs rebuilt from the bottom up?
All of the world's greatest players are literally in your pocket. Buy and sell them wisely to build a squad of winners and use the new training module to make them better.
The tactics board is where a squad of players become a team. Will you choose tactics to fit your players or find the players to suit your system? Whichever you choose, you'll find all the tools at your disposal…
When Match Day arrives, you'll take your place in the top-down digital dugout and watch your starting XI cross the magical white line. As the action unfolds, it's your decisions that will make the difference.
New additions and upgrades elevates FM19 Mobile to new levels ensuring that the 2018/19 season will be one to remember:
Russia and China are two brand new destinations to try your luck abroad and the wonderkid-laden Bundesliga is fully licensed for the first time in the series history.
Monitor and drive the improvement of your players like never before with the new, customisable training system. Tighten-up the weak areas and elevate strengths into something truly special, with your staff providing constant updates on where things are going well, and where they could work better.
You'll now negotiate with clubs and players in real-time for a more dynamic and faster experience. New clauses enable you to negotiate buy-back deals and minimum fee releases, while future real-life transfers are included for the first time.
Finally… you can now empower your players to make the shirts their own with the introduction of fully-customisable squad numbering.
For the first time in the series history you'll see licensed kits peppered throughout the game – and you can even design your very own in the 'My Club' mode.
– Match enhancements – including goal replays and VAR
– Refreshed user interface
– Improved tactical scouting
– In-game editor improvements
Privacy Policy: https://www.sega.com/FM_Privacy_Policy_EN
EULA: https://www.sega.co.uk/fm19_eula_en
© Sports Interactive Limited 2018. Published by SEGA Publishing Europe Limited. Developed by Sports Interactive Limited. SEGA and the SEGA logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGA Holdings Co., Ltd. or its affiliates. SEGA is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Football Manager, the Football Manager logo, Sports Interactive and the Sports Interactive logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Sports Interactive Limited. All rights reserved. All other company names, brand names and logos are property of their respective owners.
Tweaked conditioning, training and happiness
Fixed some issues with transfers
Fixed a couple of crashes
- "APK" install it on your device.
- "football.manager.games.fm19.mobile" folder "android / data" copy into.
- Enter the game.


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A sumptuous sea of flowers in white and pink – the annual blossoming of almond trees is a real feast for the eye. For over 4,000 years, people have been cultivating this graceful tree with its precious stone fruits. It feels particularly at home in the Mediterranean, in California, but also in East and Central Asia. The nature of the almond is shown in a harmonious relationship between the healthy, all-protecting shell on the outside, protecting a robust kernel, rich in oil and nutrients, on the inside.
The almond is full of minerals and vitamins. It provides unsaturated fatty acids, high quality protein and on top of that, tastes delicious. So it is probably no surprise that the almond scores high in skin care. Nowadays, our largest sensory organ, the skin, is exposed to all sorts of hardships: environmental influences, stress and an unbalanced diet among them. That's why it can become sensitive, dry and irritated. Almond oil is one of the most valuable skin care oils for helping to soothe irritated skin, enveloping it with a protective layer.
As the oil from the almond is similar in structure to the outer lipid layers of the skin, the skin can absorb its ingredients very well. The very high content of unsaturated fatty acids is not only healthy for the heart and brain but also strengthens the hydro-lipid mantle of the skin and protects it from water loss. The vitamin E in the almond is a known antioxidant that fights free radicals and thus counteracts the ageing process of our skin. Irritated skin is well protected and can recover and find its way back to natural beauty.


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"As London prepares to throw the world a $14 billion party, it seems fair to ask the question: What does it get out of the bargain?" asks the Christian Science Monitor in a recent story on the 2012 Summer Olympics. "Salt Lake got to show that its Mormon community was open to the world," observes journalist Mark Sappenfield. "Turin got to show that it was not the Detroit of Europe. China got to give the world a glimpse of the superpower-to-be. And Vancouver got to show the world that Canadians are not, in fact, Americans."
And what is London showing the world? Sappenfield suggests that London is showing off its new ultramodern and efficient infrastructure, but if the security for the 2012 Olympics is anything to go by, it would seem that London is really showing the world how easy it is to make the move to a police state without much opposition from the populace.
It's what the Romans used to refer to as "bread and circuses"—the idea that the key to controlling the masses is by satiating their carnal appetites and entertaining them with mindless distraction. Thus, while the world loses itself in the pomp and circumstance of a thoroughly British Olympics, complete with Sir Paul McCartney rocking the opening ceremony, celebrity sightings galore and a fair share of athletic feats and inspirational victories to keep us glued to our TV sets, a more sinister drama will be unfolding.
Welcome to the 2012 Summer Olympics, the staging ground for the coming police state.
Under cover of the glitz and glamour of these time-honored Games, a chilling military operation is underway, masterminded by a merger of the corporate, military and security industrial complexes and staffed by more than 40,000 civilian police, British military and security personnel, as well as FBI, CIA, and TSA agents, and private security contractors. Appropriately enough, this year's Olympic mascot, Wenlock—a strange, futuristic blob with an all-seeing eye to "record everything" in the games—is being sold in Olympic stores dressed in a policeman's uniform. "As a metaphor for the London Olympics, it could hardly be more stark," writes Stephen Graham for the Guardian. "For £10.25 you, too, can own the ultimate symbol of the Games: a member of by far the biggest and most expensive security operation in recent British history packaged as tourist commodity."
In addition to the usual tourist sites such as Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and Big Ben, visitors to London may find themselves goggling at the military aircraft carrier floating in the Thames, the Typhoon fighter jets taking to the skies, ready to shoot down unauthorized aircraft, aerial drones hovering overhead to track residents and tourists, snipers perched in helicopters, an 11-mile long, 5,000-volt electric stun fence surrounding Olympic Park, and 55 dog teams patrolling the perimeter. Several locations throughout London will also feature surface-to-air missiles, including some residential areas in East London that will have them perched on top of apartment buildings. All these and more are supposedly part of the new security apparatus required to maintain security in an age of terror.
Roughly 13,000 private security guards provided by G4S, the world's second largest private employer, will be patrolling the streets of London, under a $439 million contract with the British government. Due to some last minute trouble recruiting and training guards, 3,500 additional British military troops will be called in, making a total of 17,000 troops scheduled to police the Olympics.
More than 500 American federal agents, trained in the methods of security theater, will be on hand to assist Britain's security forces. In fact, the CIA, State Department, and FBI have all been working closely with British authorities for well over a year in preparation for the Olympic Games. TSA agents—infamous for stealing large sums of money from passengers' luggage, patting down children and the elderly and handicapped, and, among other things, breaking diabetic passengers' insulin pumps—will also be on loan to the British to assist with airport passenger screening during the Games, which will include fast-track fingerprinting for Olympic athletes.
There's even a security patrol tasked with making sure that local businesses observe the government ban on symbols and words relating to the Olympics lest they cause economic harm to the "official" corporate sponsors, including Adidas, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and BP. These purple-capped government officials are authorized to enter businesses to look for violations, and can impose fines up to 20,000 pounds ($31,000). Included on the banned list are such words as games, 2012, gold, silver, bronze, summer, sponsors, and London. As Slate reports, "So far a London café has been forced to remove five offending bagels from its windows, as has a butcher who had the temerity to do the same with sausage links. Spectators have been warned that to risk wearing a garment adorned with the Pepsi logo may result in being banished from game venues and that nobody but McDonald's can sell French fries at any Olympic concession stand. An old lady got tagged for sewing the five rings onto a mini doll sweater."
Unwilling to risk anything taking the shine off London's Olympic games, government officials have also clamped down on protesters and journalists, two groups whose existence largely depends on their ability to exercise their free speech rights, as well as anyone voicing an opinion about the games publicly. The British police have even gone so far as to ban certain graffiti artists from "creating any graffiti (even sanctioned work) affiliated with the Olympics, traveling within a mile of any Olympic venue, associate with any individual also on bail or using any train, subway or other rail service for leisure purposes."
And then there's the surveillance. With one government-operated outdoor surveillance camera for every 14 citizens in the UK, Great Britain is already widely recognized as a surveillance society. However, in preparation for the Olympics, London has also been "wired up with a new range of scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition CCTV systems, disease tracking systems, new police control centres and checkpoints. These will intensify the sense of lockdown in a city which is already a byword across the world for remarkably intensive surveillance," reports journalist Stephen Graham. Even neighborhoods beyond Olympic park have been embedded with biometric scanners and surveillance cameras with automatic facial and behavior recognition technologies.
Keep in mind, these surveillance tools will remain in place long after the Olympic torch moves on. As Graham points out:
Many such systems, deliberately installed to exploit unparalleled security budgets and relatively little scrutiny or protest, have been designed to linger long after the athletes and VIPs have left. Already, the Dorset police are proudly boasting that their new number-plate recognition cameras, built for sailing events, are allowing them to catch criminals more effectively.
In Athens, the $300m "super-panopticon" CCTV and information system built for the Games following intense US pressure remained after the event, along with the disused sports facilities. In fact, the system has been used by Greek police trying in vain to control the mass uprisings responding to the crash and savage austerity measures in the country.
Unfortunately for the people of London and beyond, the UK's willingness to host the 2012 Summer Olympics has turned this exercise in solidarity, teamwork and nationalism into a $17 billion exercise in militarism, corporatism, surveillance and oppression. As Graham concludes:
Looking at these various points together shows one thing: contemporary Olympics are society on steroids. They exaggerate wider trends. Far removed from their notional or founding ideals, these events dramatically embody changes in the wider world: fast-increasing inequality, growing corporate power, the rise of the homeland security complex, and the shift toward much more authoritarian styles of governance utterly obsessed by the global gaze and prestige of media spectacles.
About John W. Whitehead: Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book "The Freedom Wars" (TRI Press) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.com. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.


text: Aside from having a very cool name, parasitic power is an innovate way to recapture already spent power. This power can come in the form of wasted heating or cooling of a building for example. Last week the Southern Methodist University activated the first commercial Green Machine from ElectraTherm. The unit recycles residual heat from the building into electricity. So far, the 50kW Green Machine has exceeded expectations. The company also says owners can recoup the units cost after about three years.


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What is Brainspotting?
Brainspotting (BSP) is a new form of therapy that can help people process and overcome trauma. Developed by a psychotherapist who has spent years working with survivors of trauma, brainspotting has been used by many mental health professionals to effectively treat a variety of mental health issues.
How Does it Work?
Brainspotting is akin to EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Essentially, the direction in which people look or hold their gaze affects the way they feel.
During a brainspotting session, the therapist helps the client position their eyes in ways that allow them to target specific sources of negative emotions. The therapist will slowly guide the person's eyes across their field of vision to find all the right "brainspots," which will then activate a traumatic memory or painful emotion.
Recent evidence suggests that trauma is stored in the body and can even alter how the brain works. Many of my own clients have experienced how trauma affects their memory and even physical health. Brainspotting seems to be able to activate the body's innate ability to heal itself and the trauma.
Who Can Benefit from Brainspotting?
Brainspotting is recommended for anyone who has experienced either physical or emotional trauma. BSP has been shown to be effective for those with anxiety, ADHD, anger issues, phobias, substance abuse issues, impulse control issues, and more.
If you are suffering as a result of trauma, or are dealing with any of the mental health issues I've just listed, you may want to consider giving brainspotting a try. I am a licensed therapist who has been trained in brainspotting and would be happy to discuss treatment options. Please feel free to call my office or email me.


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Sunday, January 09, 2011
The moral component to transparency
Please expect a combination of commentary on current events and issues. But also please expect an occasional lesson or two from my experience of the last nine years, all offered in the hope of being helpful to others in the field. I apologize in advance if some portions seem self-aggrandizing or self-praiseworthy. I don't mean them that way, but sometimes, to be historically accurate, I'll have to include a few good things about myself!
Here we go. Act 2.
In a comment on a post below, author Charles Kenney asks:
Isn't there a compelling -- perhaps even overriding -- moral component to transparency?
The answer, of course, is yes. Doctors and others pledge to do no harm. How can you be sure you are living by that oath if you are unwilling to acknowledge how well you are actually doing the job? As scientists, how can you test to see if you are making improvements in evidence-based care if you cannot validate the "prior" against which you are testing a new hypothesis? At the most personal, ethical level, how can you be sure you are doing the best for people who have entrusted their lives to you if you are not willing to be open on these matters?
Back in 2008, the Boston Globe published a story entitled, "Errors test openness at Beth Israel Deaconess." There had been a series of errors at our hospital, and many in the city were questioning whether our policy of transparency with regard to clinical outcomes was sustainable. Some felt that it would inevitably result in a loss of confidence in the hospital, followed by a loss of business, and financial pressure to be less open about such matters.
I felt that transparency was essential as a way of holding ourselves accountable to the standard of care we espoused. I also believed that public trust would increase, not decrease, for a hospital that was open about its errors and its commitment to improvement.
But this had not yet had a market test, and so we were taking a chance (although we were already saving lives.) In later years, the strategy was rewarded in a business sense by the decision of Atrius Health to create a new clinical affiliation with BIDMC, transferring treatment of half of their patients from another tertiary hospital in Boston. I recall Gene Lindsey, Atrius CEO, calling me in March of 2009: "We really like what you are doing in quality and safety, process improvement, and transparency. That is consistent with our values. Would you have the capacity to receive a large share of our patients needing tertiary care?"
But that was later. At the time of this story, there were many doubters. How reassuring then it was for me to receive a number of comments that were helpful in maintaining my confidence about our approach. I want to share some of those with you now. As you will see, these observers nailed the issue, and I am grateful for the fact that these people contacted me at the time.
You need to understand that CEOs live in a somewhat isolated world, so this kind of feedback and encouragement is extremely important. (For those of you working in other hospitals, remember that!)
Dr. Lachlan Forrow, Director of the BIDMC Ethics Program, said:
Re today's Globe:
There are few reasons as truly fundamental to be proud of being part of BIDMC these days as our ethical commitment to, and courage in, being "the transparency hospital." If it weren't hard, it wouldn't be so important, or so worthy of feeling proud. One day it will be the ethical standard everywhere, in the same way as Beth Israel's 1972 precedent in articulating and living by "Your Rights as a Patient" set an ethical standard every licensed health facility in the U.S. now emulates.
In our weekly meeting today of the core Ethics Support Service staff, we agreed we should prioritize in everything we do during FY09 the opportunities to building a BIDMC-wide for safety and for pride, and the challenges of maximizing those as the "transparency hospital" culture of openness, safety, trust, and pride.
Specifically we are including in this:
At each monthly unit-based ethics rounds asking staff to identify cases, ideas, and concerns related to building this culture at BIDMC, with emphasis on a "preventive ethics" framework;
Encouragement to each of our >60 "Ethics Liaisons" to incorporate the themes of openness, safety, trust, and pride in the FY09 "ethics project" each of them undertakes in their clinical or administrative area;
Including these themes regularly in our monthly BIDMC-wide Ethics Case Conferences and in Schwartz Center Rounds; and
Reviewing regularly in our monthly Ethics Advisory Committee meetings ways in which we can foster this culture at BIDMC.
Thanks, as always, for serving as out CEO ("Chief Ethics Officer"). Please let us know if you have any other suggestions for ways in which we can make BIDMC even more a source of pride for everyone here – staff, Board/volunteers, patients, and their families.
A prominent attorney in town wrote a colleague, saying:
Tough article but I think what he is doing is courageous and that he should keep it up. More hospitals should do the same.
A respected cardiologist from one of the other Harvard hospitals said:
Read the article in Globe today and want to let you know that I think what you are doing is exactly correct. The pressures must be enormous, but I'm sure you will keep doing what you are doing because it's the right thing to do.
A knowledgeable industry observer in Boston said:
I didn't expect to see the article on you and BIDMC. I must say that the juxtaposition of your commitment to transparency against a series that will focus on market intimidation and control, left me even more proud of you that I normally am aware. I am confident that your courage will benefit the rich reputation of the BIDMC as well as paving a course of correction for the market.
My colleague Bob Wachter, at UCSF, said:
You're a brave man, and I know that what you're doing is right and making things safer.
A former state legislator said:
Stay the course buddy. No one ever said it was easy to do the "right thing" eh? You're a pioneer and I'm proud of you!
Steven Spear wrote a letter to the editor and sent it to me:
Paul Levy and his colleagues at BIDMC are exactly the right track in calling out errors, and they are setting an example that should be emulated energetically at other hospitals. Delivering care requires coordinating harmoniously an extraordinary number of individual disciplines. This means anticipating myriad interactions of patient, provider, place, and circumstance, and anticipating perfectly all circumstances is impossible. However, by responding when things go wrong, those working in and responsible for care delivery processes can see their vulnerabilities, identify their causes, and rectify weaknesses, leading to ever improving efficacy, efficiency, and responsiveness. This is not a hypothetical assertion: Order of magnitude improvements in care have been recorded in Pittsburgh hospitals, at Ascension Healthcare and Virginia Mason Medical Center, and elsewhere. Those hospitals not pursuing the same degree of openness are not any less dangerous. They are simply not admitting the reality to themselves, their staff, and their patients.
A local search firm consultant and former colleague wrote:
You continue to have my continued admiration for your openness and willingness to tackle some of the tougher issues. Have faith that your strategy will prevail!
The Vice President for Nursing at another tertiary hospital in Boston wrote:
I feel compelled to let you know how much I admire your fortitude around the safety issues you are so committed to.
Do everything in your power to keep BIDMC intact as you see it….your patients will reap the result!
One of our urologists wrote:
Just a word of appreciation and encouragement re the transparency issue. It's important, and eventually will benefit everyone. Congratulations on having the courage to keep after it.
One of our Nurse Practioners in Hematology/Oncology wrote:
My husband read this article on the Globe and forwarded it to me. He is a physician who now is only doing basic science at Harvard Medical Center. We often discuss about my life working as a nurse practitioner at BIDMC. I do tell him how great my working environment is and that we try our very best to be a honest hospital and staff to our patients and to each other.
Yesterday, after reading this article, he as once a resident and an ICU moonlighting attending for a year, was very proud of what you have achieved for our hospital. I wanted to say another thanks to your efforts and I am pretty sure that majority of BIDMC family support you all the way!
A member of the BIDMC Board of Directors wrote:
I believe we are changing the way medicine currently operates. I am so proud to be a part of this hospital. We are the future, cutting new ground, getting out the kinks so that others can follow. And they surely will be forced to do the same. I like choosing rather than being forced by outsiders. Trail blazers never have it easy. Who would want easy?
One of our young nurses wrote:
I am taking an Ethics course right now. We are talking about medical Ethics. The "CEO" of Beth Israel came up. All the recent stories came up (deaths, errors etc).
Our hospital was applauded for our transparency. The professor spoke and said that Beth Israel is "leading the way" towards a new future. I referenced your name, and blog, and said that I was proud to be employed by such a forward thinking institution.
What you are doing for our hospital is so important. It transcends beyond our own walls. It is aligning with a standard that I believe will eventually be embraced by the majority. I am not surprised that we are challenged the way we are with all the negative press. All great leaders are tested, as are their ideas! I believe that the good will always shine in the end...I guess we just need to be patient. I am learning a lot from this...
And, the most delightful was this note from my choreographer daughter, Rebecca, who was very used to getting critical reviews of her concerts:
I think that most of the health care industry is secretive and hard to navigate. BIDMC is friendly, the doctors are usually correct, and they treat people like humans. The main issue that you are dealing with, is HUMANS run the hospital and they are imperfect vessels capable of mistakes. These mistakes in this year are bigger ones, and because of your communication with the city and media people noticed. I mean, they notice all of the good things too...they just tend to forget because Boston loves scandal.
If your instinct tells you that total transparency is the right thing to do, which I assume is what it did, then continue being transparent, and just do your job to the best of your abilities. In my opinion, I think it's pretty great that you are willing to talk openly about what happened. Maybe people just want to hear that whoever is responsible feels badly about what happened.
The greatest piece of feedback I ever got was, "be cool".
Oh, and just remember, you are never as bad or as good as the newspapers say.
I love you,
7 comments:
Paul, I am delighted to discover that you have not missed a beat in the high quality posts. I look forward to even more enlightening ones when you can further speak your mind.
As to the blog name, I look forward to a contest on Facebook or something! :)
You could not have selected a more important topic for your first 'next phase' post. Reviewing the book on Virginia Mason you recently recommended, I looked up 'transparency' in the index and found 3 citations, all pertaining to either financially-related transparency or to transparency within the organization - none encompass the public, morally imperative, uncomfortable type of transparency you address. And, your followup period demonstrates that in fact it did not hurt your hospital, did it. And the recent NEJM article in which the hand surgeon disclosed his wrong site surgery demonstrates that physicians' concerns can be successfully addressed.
So the question remains - when will this become an everyday process throughout the country to accelerate the criminally slow pace of progress in patient safety, and who now will follow your lead?
nonlocal MD - January 09, 2011 12:56 PM
Anonymous notes that in my book about Virginia Mason Medical Center, the transparency references in the Index connect to financial issues; that ``none encompass the public, morally imperative, uncomfortable type of transparency you address.'' A slightly deeper by Anonymous would have brought to light a section of the book recounting a tragic medical error made at Virginia Mason in 2004. This incident, in which a patient died, was disclosed publicly immediately by the leaders at Virginia Mason. The Seattle Times newspaper noted that Virginia Mason ``took the unusual step of publicly explaining, and apologizing for, the error.'' Virginia Mason's commitment in these matters is to disclose quickly and fully. One of the Virginia Mason physicians said at the time that the broader medical community cannot learn from events that are hidden. Thus, disclosure advances knowledge and perhaps prevents similar mistakes elsewhere. This story is contained within Chapter Four of the book, ``Safety Crusade.''
- January 10, 2011 8:49 AM
I apologize to Charles Kenney for being sloppy and looking in the index before I had read the book, which I had just received! Thank you for the correction and the book is next on my reading list. However, I believe the point stands that this is by no means a common practice - unless the evidence corrects me on that also.
nonlocal MD - January 10, 2011 11:06 AM
- Jeffrey N. Catalano said...
While efforts at transparency are always to be commended, we must understand that so long as peer review meetings about why an error occurred, whether it could have been prevented, and who is responsible remain confidential from the patient whose own body has been impacted, we will never achieve true and full transparency. A patient has a moral right to all information about why she is suffering and how it happened. We would not tolerate protected non-disclosure in other industries and should not accept it in the medical profession.
- January 10, 2011 7:45 PM
Mr. Catalano;
While I understand your point, I have been involved in peer review activities and can attest that, without the protection of nondiscovery of peer review, we simply would not obtain the necessary facts of an incident and therefore forfeit the opportunity to make systemic improvements. The malpractice risk is obvious. Look to the aviation industry for a parallel situation.
Perhaps as an attorney you could suggest solutions to this dilemma.
nonlocal MD - January 11, 2011 4:37 AM
- Jeffrey N. Catalano said...
When I represented physicians in the '90s and even after representing patients, I believed that the peer review confidentiality provisions served an important role. However, I have since learned that peer review protections have done nothing to improve patient safety, as evidenced by the recent study in the NEJM. Instead, the secretiveness of these meetings excludes the patient from obtaining valuable information. While it may seem that attorneys are only interested in obtaining this information so we can use it to sue, the truth is that many of us are in this profession because we want to seek ways to improve health care and physician-patient relationships by encouraging full disclosure. Your argument, although frequently made, is an implicit acknowledgment that physicians place individual concerns over being sued above improving health care and disclosure -- something physicians would have a hard time tolerating if they or their family were the victim. As VP of the Mass Bar Assoc and as a member of the Mass Academy of Trial Atty's Executive Board, I am always seeking means to work with the medical community to achieve a common goal -- less harm and deaths from medical errors. One suggestion is to amend the peer review statute to require PR information to remain excluded from evidence at trial, but available to the patient himself.
- January 11, 2011 9:19 AM
I have never understood why healthcare cannot comprehend that non-disclosure policies inflict lifelong emotional harm on patients that often exceeds the original physical harm. Non disclosure is not merely unethical it is barbaric. If providers were truly honest with themselves they would admit that their own lifelong guilt caused by non-disclosure was not worth the few sheckles that they may have saved avoiding litigation. Disclosure is the only sustainable choice that will preserve and health and soul of medicene. Thank you for standing up for the unfortunate few that continue to experience medicene's dark side.
- January 18, 2011 11:58 AM


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Roman cardinal and celebrated philologist, b. at Schilpario, in the Diocese of Bergamo, 7 March 1782; d. at Albano, 9 September 1854. At an early age he entered the Society of Jesus (he was a novice in 1779 [sic; 1799?]), was sent to the residence in Naples (1804) and was also stationed at Orvieto and Rome. However, on account of his proficiency in palæography he was appointed in 1811 to a position in the Ambrosian Library, Milan. This led to his initial discoveries: Cicero's orations: "Pro Scauro", "Pro Tullio", "Pro Flacco", "In Clodium", and "In Curionem" (1814); the correspondence of Fronto, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus (1815); the speech of Isæus, "De hæreditate Cleonymi" (1915); a fragment of the "Vidularia" of Plautus, and commentaries on Terence (1816); Philo, "De Virtute"; a discourse of Themistius; a fragment of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1816); a Gothic version of St. Paul; the "Itinerarium Alexandri"; a biography of Alexander by Julius Valerius (1817); and an Armenian version of the"Chronicle" of Eusebius (1818). So many new texts, almost all of which were found in palimpsests, not to mention some editions of already known texts, drew worldwide attention to Mai. In 1819, his superiors decided that he could render greater service in the ranks of the secular clergy; he therefore left the Society and was called by the pope to the Vatican Library. He then worked with increased zest in a richer field. His most brilliant find at this time was the "Republic" of Cicero (1822). To insure the regular publication of his discoveries, he began a regular series of Anecdota: "Scriptorum veterum nova collectio" (10 vols., 1825-38); "Classici auctores" (10 vols., 1825-38); "Spicilegium Romanum" (10 vols., 1839-44); "Novum Patrum bibliotheca" (7 vols. 1852-54), published by Mai himself. The profane authors who profited by Mai's labours are: Diodorus of Sicily; Polybius; Oribasius; Procopius; Cicero (especially the Verrine orations), and the Roman jurisconsults. Important discoveries were likewise made with regard to the works of the Fathers: Saints Augustine, Hilary, Cyprian, Jerome, Ambrose, Athanasius, Cyril, Basil, and Origen, Irenæus, Eusebius of Cæsarea, etc. To these ancient writers must be added the Italian Humanists, the Latin poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Poliziano, Sannazaro, Bembo, Sadoleto, and others, whose works he printed for the first time in the "Spicilegium Romanum". He gave to the world unpublished pages of more than 350 authors. Finally, he did not overlook the Bible. After long delays, inspired by timidity, he was at last authorized to make known one of the most important Greek manuscript of the Bible (Vetus et Novum Testamentum ex antiquissimo codice Vaticano, 1858). It has been stated that the gall nut used by Mai to revive the writings of the palimpsests half destroyed them. The truth is that all reagents injure parchments. Soon little will remain of the palimpsest of Plautus in the Ambrosian Library. But the work of Studemund, Mai's successor, will insure its perpetuity. Mai's brilliant discoveries won him the homage and affection of many. He was an intimate friend of Leopardi, the poet of New Italy, a friendship equally honourable to both. Mai was blamed for his great unwillingness to allow the learned to share in the treasures he guarded so jealously. He wished to enjoy them all alone. In 1838, the pope named him cardinal; but he continued his researches, and his publications were interrupted only by his death.
SOMMERVOGEL, Bibliothèque de la compagnie de Jésus, V, 323, till 1819; BONNETTY, Table alphabétique analytique et raisonnée de tous les auteurs sacrés et profanes qui ont été découverts et édités récemment dans les 43 vol. publiés par le cardinal Mai (Paris, 1850); POLLETO, PHINA, and others, Nel primo centenario del cardinale Angelo Mai, atti della solenne Accademia tenustasi in suo onore il 7 Marzo 1882 (Bergamo, 1882); POLLETTO, Del cardinale Angelo Mai e de' suoi studi e scoperte (Sienna, 1886); CHATELAIN, Les palimpsestes latins in Annuaire de L'Ecole pratique des hautes études (1904), 5.
APA citation. (1910). Angelo Mai. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09538a.htm
MLA citation. "Angelo Mai." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09538a.htm>.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster at newadvent.org. Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.


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This tool allows you to apply moving, rotating, shearing, perspective and scaling corrections using handles placed on canvas.
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EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ ALL OF THIS and HAVE CHILDREN READ IT TOO!
After tossing her books on the sofa, she decided to grab a snack and get on-line.. She logged on under her screen name ByAngel213. She checked her Buddy List and saw GoTo123 was on. She sent him an instant message:
Hi. I'm glad you are on! I thought someone was following me home today. It was really weird!
LOL You watch too much TV. Why would someone be following you? Don't you live in a safe neighborhood?
Of course I do. LOL I guess it was my imagination cuz' I didn't see anybody when I looked out.
Unless you gave your name out on-line. You haven't done that have you?
Of course not. I'm not stupid you know.
Did you have a softball game after school today?
Yes, and we won!!
That's great! Who did you play?
We played the Hornets. LOL. Their uniforms are so gross! They look like bees. LOL
What is your team called?
We are the Canton Cats. We have tiger paws on our uniforms. They are really cool.
Did you pitch?
No, I play second base. I got to go. My homework has to be done before my parents get home. I don't want them mad at me. Bye!
Catch you later. Bye
Meanwhile, GoTo123 went to the member menu and began to search for her profile. When it came up, he highlighted it and printed it out. He took out a pen and began to write down what he knew about Angel so far.
Her name: Shannon
Birthday: Jan. 3, 1985
Age: 13
State where she lived: North Carolina
Hobbies: softball, chorus, skating and going to the mall. Besides this information, he knew she lived in Canton because she had just told him. He knew she stayed by herself until 6:30 p.m. every afternoon until her parents came home from work. He knew she played softball on Thursday afternoons on the school team, and the team was named the Canton Cats. Her favorite number 7 was printed on her jersey. He knew she was in the eighth grade at the Canton Junior High School . She had told him all this in the conversations they had on- line. He had enough information to find her now.
Shannon didn't tell her parents about the incident on the way home from the ballpark that day. She didn't want them to make a scene and stop her from walking home from the softball games. Parents were always overreacting and hers were the worst. It made her wish she was not an only child. Maybe if she had brothers and sisters, her parents wouldn't be so overprotective.
By Thursday, Shannon had forgotten about the footsteps following her.
Her game was in full swing when suddenly she felt someone staring at her. It was then that the memory came back. She glanced up from her second base position to see a man watching her closely.
He was leaning against the fence behind first base and he smiled when she looked at him. He didn't look scary and she quickly dismissed the sudden fear she had felt.
After the game, he sat on a bleacher while she talked to the coach. She noticed his smile once again as she walked past him. He nodded and she smiled back. He noticed her name on the back of her shirt. He knew he had found her.
Quietly, he walked a safe distance behind her. It was only a few blocks to Shannon 's home, and once he saw where she lived he quickly returned to the park to get his car.
Now he had to wait. He decided to get a bite to eat until the time came to go to Shannon 's house. He drove to a fast food restaurant and sat there until time to make his move.
Shannon was in her room later that evening when she heard voices in the living room.
"Shannon, come here," her father called.. He sounded upset and she couldn't imagine why. She went into the room to see the man from the ballpark sitting on the sofa.
"Sit down," her father began, "this man has just told us a most interesting story about you."
Shannon sat back. How could he tell her parents anything? She had never seen him before today!
"Do you know who I am, Shannon ?" the man asked..
"No," Shannon answered.
"I am a police officer and your online friend, GoTo123."
Shannon was stunned. "That's impossible! GoTo123 is a kid my age! He's 14. And he lives in Michigan !"
The man smiled. "I know I told you all that, but it wasn't true. You see, Shannon , there are people on-line who pretend to be kids; I was one of them. But while others do it to injure kids and hurt them, I belong to a group of parents who do it to protect kids from predators. I came here to find you to teach you how dangerous it is to talk to people on-line. You told me enough about yourself to make it easy for me to find you. You named the school you went to, the name of your ball team and the position you played. The number and name on your jersey just made finding you a breeze."
Shannon was stunned. "You mean you don't live in Michigan ?"
He laughed. "No, I live in Raleigh. It made you feel safe to think I was so far away, didn't it?"
She nodded.
"I had a friend whose daughter was like you. Only she wasn't as lucky. The guy found her and murdered her while she was home alone. Kids are taught not to tell anyone when they are alone, yet they do it all the time on-line. The wrong people trick you into giving out information a little here and there on-line. Before you know it, you have told them enough for them to find you without even realizing you have done it. I hope you've learned a lesson from this and won't do it again. Tell others about this so they will be safe too?"
"It's a promise!"
That night Shannon and her Dad and Mom thanked God for protecting Shannon from what could have been a tragic situation.


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When Harmit Malik couldn't attend a molecular biology seminar at the Indian Institute of Technology due to a class scheduling conflict, the kindly professor invited the young chemical engineering undergraduate to his office to chat about biology one-on-one. Malik sat on a stool across from the professor and listened, transfixed, for two hours. He would visit the professor three times a week for the rest of the semester. "I never missed that appointment," says Malik.
Soon after receiving his degree in 1993, Malik traveled to New York to attend graduate school at the University of Rochester, one of a few institutions willing to admit a biology PhD student with no background in the life sciences. There, he studied the evolutionary relationships of retrotransposable elements, mobile genetic sequences that amplify themselves in eukaryotic genomes and induce mutations when they insert near or within genes. In 1998, he...
METHODS: In early 1999, Malik visited the home of Steve Henikoff of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle to interview for a postdoc position. Henikoff described a recent paper he'd read on an unusually complex protein in the centromere, a specialized chromosomal region that orchestrates sister chromatid separation during cell division. Malik had actually browsed the same paper on the long flight to Seattle, and suggested that the complexity might be due to an evolutionary arms race between chromosomes. "Within 20 minutes of meeting him, he explained to me what we should be doing, and he was absolutely right," says Henikoff. "He can quickly grasp a problem, even outside his area of expertise, and work out the issues better than anyone I know."
Two years later, the duo published their theory that centromere complexity is the result of rapid evolution driven by selection pressure for mutations that increase a chromosome's chance of making it into the egg during meiosis, as only one of the four haploid cells produced by meiosis becomes the oocyte nucleus.2
RESULTS: In 2003, Malik started his own lab at the Hutchinson Center. "I wanted to be in a place that wasn't all evolutionary biology, but where people study all manners of science," he says. He took advantage of the center's collaborative atmosphere, and in 2005, with virologist Michael Emerman, predicted and demonstrated the evolution of a gene, TRIM5a, coding for an innate immune protein that protects against HIV in primates.3 "He's incredibly creative," says Emerman. "He doesn't follow; he's a leader."
DISCUSSION: Malik has now turned his attention to ancient viruses, which he studies to understand the evolutionary struggle between viruses and humans. In 2007, he and Emerman re-created a chimeric version of an extinct retrovirus called PtERV1—which infected chimps and gorillas, but not hominids, 4 million years ago—and found that human TRIM5a, which does not defend against HIV, does protect against PtERV1.4 Because human TRIM5a likely evolved to fight PtERV1, it has seemingly left us vulnerable to HIV, says Malik.
Literature Cited
- H.S. Malik et al., "The age and evolution of non-LTR retrotransposable elements," Mol Biol Evol, 16:793-805, 1999. (Cited 315 times)
- S. Henikoff et al., "The centromere paradox: stable inheritance with rapidly evolving DNA," Science, 293:1098-102, 2001. (Cited 407 times)
- S.L. Sawyer et al., "Positive selection of primate TRIM5a identifies a critical species-specific retroviral restriction domain," PNAS, 102:2832-37, 2005. (Cited 274 times)
- S.M. Kaiser et al., "Restriction of an extinct retrovirus by the human TRIM5a antiviral protein," Science, 316:1756-58, 2007. (Cited 55 times)