Geoeconomics
Category: Geoeconomics
Created by Conspecte Team
The national borders in Africa were drawn up by Europeans, with no concern for ethnic realities and tribal identity. More than ninety percent African States have conflict-ridden multiethnic identities (Glassner 1996). As if that was not enough, after the Second World War English-speaking countries expanded their territory at the expense of their neighbours, as Ghana did with Togo when they annexed those areas which were rich on natural resources (here first of all timber).
The banking system is wrecked in most African countries, likewise the insurance system. General corruption prevails. In the 1960s and 1970s many Western intellectuals imagined that the Third World could offer a superior value-system, a kind of liberation of the industrialized individual, a return to the essentials so to speak, to a simpler way of life. What do we find today? Most Third World projects have been failures, fostering corruption and nurtured the vilest dictators, ultimately creating social disorder. Some say that we decolonized too rapidly. Now it is too late to re-colonize.
Few young Westerners are willing to leave their comforts and work in a Third World country. Our missionary spirit has disappeared. Most Westerners who go to Africa today are either overpaid government-funded consultants, or civil servants searching for an exotic break in their otherwise monotonous careers.
China is succeeding where the Western world has failed in Africa. It is sending over thousands of its highlyeducated countrymen, who speak both English and French. Above all they are building, conferring gifts in the form of large-scale infrastructure projects in return for access to African consumer markets. Chinese are also being hired as executives in local companies.
As soon as African countries have generated their own elites, the members of these have moved to the Western world where they can live a more comfortable life. This is largely due to lack of national patriotism. Compare this with Korean students, who often write on their essays: “For the prosperity of my family and my country”. That spirit is unknown to many Africans. Forming an educated class in many of these countries means deposing their existing elites. Our involvement has often had a perverse side-effect: we have organized their non-development.
Hunger, indeed starvation, have been a major problem in much of the Sahara region, from Mauritania across to Chad, in Nigeria, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Angola, and Mozambique; and malnutrition is a problem for almost all of sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Johan Galtung, there are close to a billion people with no money, and 125,000 die each day from starvation (25,000)and from preventable and curable diseases (100,000). If you send money, it will be stolen. If you send food, you need to create jobs. By donating food we are easing our conscience, but neglecting our responsibility. The best thing we can do in Africa in the short run is to remove the subsidies we give our own companies to undercut African producers. We have been and are removing from Africans the only competitive advantage they have today: food production. Our export subsidies to Africa equal the amount we give in overseas aid.
If you take a closer look at the pot called “overseas aid”, you will see that most funds come back to our own companies and organizations in the form of administrative costs, consulting fees, accommodation, and educational programmes. But it looks very good on paper: “1 per cent of GDP”.
Sierra Leone was one of the biggest markets for arms during the first Gulf War. Like a number of neighbouring countries, its story has been a long series of social, political, and economic catastrophes.
The Islamic Sudanese government in the north sees no objection to killing their own (Christian) population in the South. In the meantime they have split into two countries. The Western world showed that it did not learn anything from the Rwanda massacre. We did not intervene in Darfur. There is not enough oil under the sand. Iran has terrorist camps in the Sudan to cause instability in Egypt. France has long supported the Islamic regime in Khartoum. Now they have changed to the Chinese. The American government supported the Christian guerillas in South Sudan (SPLA). France is losing country after country in Central Africa. The Anglo-American expansion is being checked by China.
When you have a quasi-democratic political system where the majority of the 155 million people large population belong to 250 different ethnic groups and live in great poverty, you get continuing despair and chaos. When a handful of people have access to all the easy (oil) money, you get rage. The only thing which is stopping Nigeria from going the same way as Sudan, splitting the country in two, into a northern Islamic state and a southern Christian and Animist state, is the question of how to split the oil revenues.
Somalia, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa
Somalia is in the hands of the local Taliban, the Shabaab, who are financing their armies of young devotees through piracy. Their influence stretches down along the coast of Kenya and over the border into Ethiopia. Somalia is as frightening as any country gets today. Not even relief workers dare come here anymore. The 62 per cent of Christians who live in Ethiopia are being squeezed from all sides: Islamists in Djibouti (north), Sudan (west), and Somalia (south and east), and border disputes with Eritrea in the north. Islamic extremists are slowly getting a grip on the Horn of Africa. Piracy pays better than fishing, even if it is more of a lottery.
Congo and the Great Lakes region
Congo is the crossroads of American and French interest in Africa. The Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) is under French protection, the Democratic Republic, formerly known as Zaire (Kinshasa), is under American influence. In addition there is rebel activity in South Kivu (Rwanda) and in the north-eastern corner of the country (Lord’s Resistance Army attacks in Uganda).
Congo is rich in minerals. It is the biggest producer of cobalt in the world (forty per cent of world share), and a major producer of copper and diamonds. Cobalt is essential for the electronics industry, for the manufacture of batteries, etc.
This used to be a region dominated by the interests of Belgium and France. That changed when Belgian mercenaries had Dag Hammarskjold (UN General Secretary) killed during a visit to Northern Rhodesia in 1961. Slowly the old powers were replaced by American and British interests. From their bastions in Rwanda and Uganda the British and Americans are continuing to push French diplomacy out of the Congo, the keystone of French interests in Central Africa.
Figure 13: World map of colonialism at the end of the Second World War in 1945
The Hutus are backed by France, the Tutsis by the USA. France has lost Rwanda. Congo will be next. This has been the deadliest battlefield since the Second World War, costing the lives of some 5.4 million people since the 1980s. The Tutsi-dominated RPF, led by former Ugandan intelligence chief Paul Kagame, now president of the Republic of Rwanda, is supported by the USA. His soldiers are conducting a secret war in Kivu Province.
Two days before the massacre in Rwanda, Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister at the time, said that a victory by the Tutsi Patriotic Front (RPF) was unacceptable. But ultimately France did nothing to halt the killing of more than half a million Tutsis by the very Hutus they had trained. When the French troops returned home many of them suffered mental breakdowns due to feelings of guilt.
The USA supported Laurent-Desire Kabila when he overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. But the senior Kabila was too Marxist for Washington’s liking. After he was killed, his son Joseph Kabila became president of the Democratic Republic. The US wanted to replace him with the more loyal Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi general. But Nkunda was killing too many innocent civilians. In the end Kagama had to call his dog to heel. The Americans have been trying to take control of the Congo for a long time. When Patrice Lumumba (the
first democratically-elected president of Congo) requested Soviet military help, the CIA initiated a secret war in the region. When the CIA caught Lumumba he was put on a plane and sent to his arch-rival Moise Tshombe, who had him executed (see e.g. Stockwell 1978: 10). In Congo the “ services speciaux” continue to support the Hutu militia against the government in Rwanda from bases in Equateur Province (Mbandaka).
Hired South African pilots fly in weapons bought in Eastern Europe. France is desperate in East Africa, and has made a series of bad choices “ dans la region des grands lacs”. Mobutu, who came to power in 1965, turned the Congo into one of the poorest countries in Africa. While in power he amassed an enormous fortune for himself, in gold, diamonds, and dollars, valued at 400 million francs, all deposited in Swiss banks. Chirac and Mobuto had known each other for a long time. Mobuto also supported the RPR election campaign with large donations in the 1980s. 10) In Uganda the USA is trying to defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony, a Christian fundamentalist and a self-righteous crusader.
Chad and Niger
Chad may be next in line. France is about to lose another African country where it has influence as the Franco- American geopolitical struggle moves further north. Niger is again an unstable country. Military coups occur here about every year or so, the latest on 18 February 2010. People are killed in the hundreds in this part of the world, but the stories seldom reach Western mass media. Niger was the last country where Kaddafi recruited his mercenaries from, the same people which are now being tortured in Libya with very few Western reactions Burkina Faso, Togo, Mali, and Senegal
The French are losing ground rapidly in the region. The Chinese are already everywhere. Only the French language is hanging on, so far. (The Chinese offer free courses in Mandarin all over Africa now, while the Western world is starting to charge more for their language courses). The Chinese are winning hearts and minds with their combination of gifts on one hand and access to consumer markets on the other.
Everyone wants cheaper products, especially in Africa where people are poor. In Mali you can now buy Chinese motorbikes for a tenth of the price that a Western product costs. There are already Chinese cars on sale for a fifth of the price. Imagine what that means. If you think America changed with Wal-Mart it is nothing compared to how fast African economic reality is becoming Chinese.
Malians used to receive considerable gifts from Russia (university education) and Gaddafi (television and radio stations). Now the Chinese are bringing many more gifts (airport infrastructure, major roads, major bridge, and new buildings surrounding the presidential palace). From the Western world they get the usual political talks which in the end give them next to nothing.
This is a country which receives about forty per cent of its GDP in overseas aid each year. Despite its “good student” reputation, it is a country with few economic prospects. Mainlanders (former Tanganyikans) feel themselves to be Tanzanians. Most people from Zanzibar feel themselves to be Zanzibaris, not necessarily Tanzanians. Zanzibaris in general have less education than mainlanders, and are sensitive to mainlander taking their jobs. This often leads to sabotage.
Tanzanians are sensitive towards anything that might look like a master–slave relationship and remind them of colonialism. Religion is another sensitive issue. Muslims feel that Christians are favoured, since many Christians also have leading positions in business and political life. Native religions are practised by about thirty per cent of the population. Different tribes have different gods and religious practices. The political scene is dominated by one party, the CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi), even though the country has a multi-party political system. Investors who want to stay must ensure they are on good terms with CCM politicians.
Tanzania is a tribal society. People still favour one another on a tribal basis. Members of the larger tribes tend to have advantages over those from smaller tribes. Tribes in areas with more schools tend to have more influence on national politics.
All Tanzanians speak Swahili. This has served as a unifying factor for the people of this country in a way hardly seen elsewhere in Africa. “In Ghana and Uganda it can take one or two years to establish a business and become operational. In Tanzania and Mozambique, [it takes] 18 months to three years; and in Namibia, six months to a year” (te Velde 2002)
Once the best kid in the class, now the most hated. How did it come to this? Robert Mugabe simply became too fond of power, they say. It was too good to pass on. Slowly the State became more of a dictatorship. Now he feels he has to play out the game to the bitter end. It is an old familiar story.
It was the multinationals more than Western governments who put pressure on the apartheid regime. Apartheid was bad for business, and the system was corrupt: it did not help to foster a new middle class of consumers. Instead a bargain was made: we will give you political power, if we are allowed to keep the assets we have accumulated. The USA and its allies failed in Namibia (SWAPO won, and is now the majority party) and in Angola (FNLA and UNITA lost, and are now small minority parties), because they were on the wrong side, supporting the white minority against the black majority.
The new leaders in South Africa are reluctant to help overthrow Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, because they have shared a common struggle against the white minority.
Zuma coming to power marks the transition from meritocracy to mass democracy in South African, as conditions are getting worse. The South African homicide rate is four times that of the USA. Perhaps as many as forty per cent of the working population are unemployed. Poverty levels and social conditions have not much improved since the time of apartheid, and there are no obvious solutions in sight. As always in Africa, things will take time.


How and Why You Should Take Photos in Bad Weather
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Spanish-American Photographer and YouTuber Aows has published this 9.5-minute video that discusses a topic most photographers avoid: taking photos in bad weather conditions. Aows explains how he does it and why he thinks it’s worth it.
Aows says he has experimented with multiple methods for keeping his camera dry when venturing out into bad weather. While he has tried umbrellas and waterproof cases, he has found neither of them to be particularly effective. Umbrellas handle driving wind and rain poorly and waterproof cases restricted his lens choices too much. Instead of these options which might look nicer, Aows said that he thinks using a plastic bag with holes cut into it is probably your best and most reliable option even if it doesn’t look good.
For the rest of your camera gear, most camera bags have a rain cover that Aows recommends you take advantage of.
A post shared by adrian (@aows)
When you’re out shooting in inclement weather, it’s highly likely that it will either be cold, wet, or a combination of both. Because of this, Aows recommends using a car as a base of operations so that you have a place to go to stay warm or dry off. It also allows you to drive to different spots, get out and shoot for a few minutes, and then return to the relative quiet and safety of the vehicle where you can then change up equipment and plan your next shot.
“For me it’s about finding the right balance between finding the potential for a good image, and the potential for damage,” Aows says. “That’s also one of the main reasons I don’t use expensive gear.”
If his equipment cost several thousands of dollars, he says he would probably think twice about putting it through the rigors of bad weather. But since he only uses gear he knows he can replace, he’s less concerned about it.
“The health of my camera and lenses is not my first priority to when it comes to making images.”
On that note, Aows says it’s a good idea to have a “disposable” camera that functions, but that you are positive you won’t miss if it were to break. For Aows, that is a Sony point and shoot.
But why should you take all these precautions in the first place? What’s the advantage of making an effort to take photos in bad weather? Aows says that winter landscapes, rain, and mist are extremely beautiful and worth shooting.
“There are always images to be made out there,” he says. “Your camera gear is there to create images not to stay at home. Don’t limit yourself to sunny, clear, and warm days. There are very unique opportunities out there.”
To emphasize his point, Aows points out that he was the only person who was out the day he chose to shoot, meaning no one else was able to see or appreciate the scene except him and those who eventually see his photos.
For more from Aows you can follow him on Instagram and subscribe to his YouTube Channel.
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8 European spacecraft put in hibernation amid virus lockdown
BERLIN (AP) — The European Space Agency said Tuesday that it is putting eight of its spacecraft into hibernation as it scales down operations during the coronavirus outbreak.
The agency said it is further reducing the already limited number of staff working on site at its mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. As a result, the instruments and data collection on some space probes are being temporarily stopped.
They include the Cluster mission, consisting of four probes launched in 2000 to investigate Earth’s magnetic environment and how it is affected by solar wind; the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter launched in 2016 to investigate the red planet’s atmosphere; Mars Express, launched in 2003 and which has been capturing images of the surface of Mars; and the Solar Orbiter mission launched last month to observe the sun.
The eight spacecraft are among 21 currently flown from Darmstadt. The agency said one staff member there has tested positive for COVID-19.
“Our priority is the health of our workforce, and we will therefore reduce activity on some of our scientific missions, especially on interplanetary spacecraft, which currently require the highest number of personnel on site,” ESA’s director of operations, Rolf Densing, said.
He said putting the probes into hibernation would have “a negligible impact” on their missions.
The European Space Agency recently said it was postponing the launch of its joint Mars rover mission with Russia’s Roscosmos until 2022, in part due to travel restrictions resulting from the pandemic.
NASA has also temporarily suspended work on the James Webb Space Telescope in California due to the coronavirus, putting its spring 2021 target launch date in jeopardy.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company launched a new capsule into space Thursday to test all the astronaut perks before people strap in.
Thursday’s flight with a dummy named Mannequin Skywalker lasted 10 minutes and reached 66 miles (106 kilometers) above West Texas. Both the New Shepard rocket and the capsule landed successfully.


Judge in Marion County denies lawsuit to block Trump's rally in Ocala
OCALA — A lawsuit filed by a Santa Rosa Beach real estate lawyer on behalf of an Ocala woman with two children to stop President Donald Trump from hosting a rally in Ocala on Friday has been denied by a local judge.
In rejecting the motion, Circuit Judge Edward L. Scott states in a three-page order dated Oct. 15 that the "Complaint was neither verified by Jackson, nor was a supporting affidavit filed." The judge added, "furthermore, there were no sworn allegations that Jackson will suffer immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage if the injunction is not granted on an ex parte basis."
Attorney Daniel W. Uhlfelder submitted paperwork on Wednesday representing Chanae Jackson, a Marion County resident, who has two teenage children who were diagnosed with COVID-19 in July.
>> LIVE UPDATES: See the latest on the scene surrounding today's campaign rally
The lawsuit makes reference to Jackson's daughter having mild symptoms, and her son had a very severe case. He had a 103-degree fever and had breathing issues for 11 days, according to the suit. He developed pneumonia in both lungs.
Reached at his office, Uhlfelder told a Star-Banner reporter has requested an emergency hearing on Friday. A staff member in Scott's office said the judge has not reviewed the motion or set a hearing.
Uhlfeder has filed similar lawsuits for other Trump events, dressed as the Grim Reaper at a beach on the Florida Panhandle, and costumed as a shepherd with goats in Tallahassee to protest the idea of herd immunity to COVID-19.
The president was hospitalized after coming down with COVID-19 earlier this month. He spent three days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after he was cleared by doctors.
Since his release, there has been debate on whether or not the president should be out in public and interacting with people.
Trump is scheduled to speak at the Ocala International Airport on Friday afternoon. He was in Miami on Thursday for a town hall discussion, which took place instead of the second debate between the president and former Vice President and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
To counter the president's rally, the Marion County Democratic Women’s Club is hosting an in-person press conference and then plans to travel to the airport to wave their signs.
After the denial, Uhlfelder filed an emergency motion for a re-hearing and wanted another chance to plead his case before the start of the rally.
In the second motion, the lawyer notes the airport was served with their notice on Thursday. And, in an interview with a Star-Banner reporter on Friday, Uhlfelder said the president's team was given their notice on Friday.
Uhlfelder said he filed the motion as quickly as he could and made the parties aware of what he was doing. The lawyer said in the motion that if the rally goes off as plan, then the judge should issue an order requiring that all "necessary measures be taken to protect the health, safety, and welfare of Plaintiffs." He said the complaint is not only for Jackson, but "in the name of the State of Florida and the Marion County community."
Including in Uhlfelder's motion was an affidavit from Dr. Ron Staff, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Florida State University College of Medicine.
Staff said there has been more than eight million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., and more than 216,000 people have died from the illness. Statewide, Staff said they're at least 741,000 cases of COVID-19 with at least 15,500 deaths.
The professor said the president has "played down the severity of the virus," and has repeatedly ignored recommendations from "his own CDC director and NIH scientists."
He called Trump's rallies "reckless," saying most attendees do not wear masks or practice social distancing.
"The OIA Rally is likely to be injurious to the health of many Marion County, Florida citizens and potentially Chanae Jackson."
Scott denied the emergency motion from Uhlfelder saying it "does not raise any new issues, and the attached exhibits fail to cure the legal insufficiencies previously cited by the Court." The judge said the plaintiff did not address "the fact that the Trump campaign rally is already underway, with thousands of people already in attendance."
The judge said the city and the county have no ordinance or mandates requiring people to wear masks in public or to social distance. It's left to the individual owners and operators of local businesses, the judge said. He also said if they were mandates, then law enforcement would enforce it, not the court.
The judge also denied the motion because he said it's too late as "the rally is underway," and secondly, the Trump campaign and the city of Ocala have a right to due process to be heard and that cannot be done.
"I'm disappointed. I felt we should've been heard," Uhlfelder told the paper.
Though he's disappointed, the lawyer thanked the judge for pointing out in the judge's order that "the court is mindful of the Plaintiff's concerns that the Trump campaign generally does not require its attendees to wear masks or practice social distancing and that this could potentially increase the risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus." In the same sentence, the judge said "the plaintiff has failed to provide this Court with any legal authority requiring the attendees to do so."
Uhlfelder said he's "praying for the people of Marion County," and hopes the event does not become "a super spreader."


Poll: What’s Your Favorite Country Song About America?
Max Whittaker, Getty Images
Evan Paul is the host of Taste of Country Nights, a syndicated radio show heard on more than 100 country radio stations nationwide. Producer Amber co-hosts the show with him every night from 7PM to midnight. Together they play the best new country music and interview today's top stars, like Luke Combs, Dan + Shay, Keith Urban, Luke Bryan, Garth Brooks, Brantley Gilbert, Lady A, Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert + more!
If you were to ask me what my favorite country song about America is, I would answer instantly with Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." That song — still to this day — gives me goosebumps every single time it comes on. We will for sure be jamming that really loud on the Fourth of July at my house.
As we all know, there are a ton of great country songs about America, the best country on the planet. It's hard to choose just one, but that is what I'm going to task you with: With July 4 coming up, what is your favorite country song about America?
Listen to 13 Great Country Songs About America:
Source: Poll: What’s Your Favorite Country Song About America?
Categories: Entertainment, Music News, Taste of Country Nights


The winds of change blow for Japan’s energy mix
Molly Lempriere 4 June 2019	(Last Updated June 9th, 2020 13:28)
Following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Japan has struggled as many of its nuclear power plants remain off the grid, forcing the country to turn to expensive foreign gas imports. A new report however by Wood Mackenzie highlights the potential wind power has for transforming the Japanese energy mix. Could a great leap see Japan become a wind powerhouse?
By the end of 2018, Japan had constructed 77 new wind turbines at 14 sites as the country moves towards a greater reliance on renewables. Credit: Σ64
Japan was once thought of as a nuclear pioneer. The country relied on nuclear for 30% of its power up until 2011, which was generated by 54 reactors, ensuring the country had a reliable source of clean power. Japan was also planning to greatly increase the number of nuclear reactors, up to 70% by 2030.
However, when a tsunami triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on 11 March 2011 all of its nuclear power plants were switched off. Now, some eight years after the disaster, only nine reactors are in operation again with a mere capacity of 9GW compared with 47.5 GWe in early 2011.
As such, Japan has become hugely dependant on imports, predominantly of natural gas, to meet its energy demands. As a nation it is resource poor, producing no oil or gas, and only a small amount of coal, which is all used domestically for power. Without nuclear it has had little alternative.
However, as an island Japan has huge potential for generating power using wind farms. A recent report produced by Wood Mackenzie says offshore wind could increase 62-fold over the next decade.
“In light of the power shortfall, Japan will need to increase its coal imports, supported by renewable energy capacity,” said senior analyst Robert Liew, “In terms of renewable energy, scale matters and offshore wind is at an advantage.”
Japan’s wind potential
Japans renewables transition has been slow by global standards. As of 2016, it has just 57 TWh (5%) of solar and wind together, 34 TWh (3%) of biofuels and waste 85 TWh (8%) of hydro.
Over the last few years this has been growing, with Japan ending 2018 with an installed capacity of 3,584MW of wind. This is up from 3,392 MW the previous year, with an increase of 77 new wind turbines at 14 different sites.
Wood Mackenzie’s report, Sunrise for Japan Offshore Wind, predicts that the offshore wind sector in Japan is looking very bright. By 2028, wind power is expected to provide 4GW of power to the country, a 62-fold increase from last year.
Offshore wind provides a much greater opportunity than onshore wind or solar. Especially as it typically offers capacities of about 300MW, versus just 40MW for a solar plant.
“Offshore wind power plants operate at higher capacity factors compared to onshore wind and utilities can balance intermittency with gas power, and potentially with battery storage technology in the future,” says Liew.
Companies such as Japan’s largest utility Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) are increasingly focusing on renewables. TEPCO, which owned the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, is seeking to switch the core of its business to wind and hydropower. The company, which currently relies on fossil fuels for 90% of its generation, announced last summer that it would spend 100 billion yen ($8.98 billion) on 7GW of renewable generation.
“Rising costs and a lack of public confidence in TEPCO’s ability as a nuclear operator has led the company to reconsider its future strategy,” said Liew. “TEPCO’s involvement in offshore wind is a crucial development which signalled to the market that offshore wind is commercially viable. This will make it easier for the government and local companies to accept offshore wind.”
In January, TEPCO signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Danish power giant Ørsted. This will help it to develop its Choshi offshore wind farm off the coast of the Chiba Prefecture, where it is currently carrying out feasibility studies.
This uptick in investment and interest in renewable power will be especially important as Japan is predicted to face a shortfall of more than 10GW by 2030, as the country struggles to bring its mothballed nuclear power plants back online. Despite the slow pace with which the nuclear plants are being restarted, the government is still planning for them to meet 20%-22% of the national power mix.
Could the burgeoning offshore wind sector ever match Japans nuclear legacy?
“That depends on the size of offshore projects,” says Liew. “The average size of planned offshore project in APAC is around 360MW, while the average size of a nuclear reactor in Japan is around 1,000MW. But we are already seeing planned offshore projects in Taiwan reaching 600MW.”
Regulation, opposition and developing a supply chain
There are a number of reasons why Japan’s transition has been slow, including the more pressing need for energy security. Following 2011, the country had to find ways to meet the 30% of its energy needs which had previous been met by nuclear. This required fast changes, and fossil fuel imports were the obvious choice. As such, speed was a priority over CO2 emissions.
There have been other challenges to overcome as well, such as governmental support.
“In the past, there was a lack of regulation regarding offshore wind development in general sea areas (which is the preference for offshore developers) which resulted in policy uncertainty,” explains Liew.
This has been eased recently though, with the Japanese Cabinet approving an offshore promotion law. This secures developers’ rights to occupy an area for 30 years, during which time they can construct and decommission wind projects, in general sea areas.
Furthermore, the government has established a working group to develop maintenance and management guidelines for the sector.
Offshore tenders for potential sites in Aomori and Nagasaki prefectures are expected in 2019 H1. How to streamline the application process for port and harbour projects such as these is currently under discussion.
There is likely to be a small amount of resistance to offshore wind power, while this is unlikely to stop the development of large farms it is something that potential developers will have to bear in mind.
“It is common to see local fisheries opposed to offshore wind power plants so developers must work closely with local communities to get their projects approved and promote the benefits of offshore wind to the local economy,” says Liew.
The final challenge will be to establish a local supply chain, in order to create the maximum local benefit. This could be hampered by Japanese company Hitachi’s announcement in January that it will no long manufacture wind turbines, instead focusing on selling German company ENERCON GmbH’s turbines.
Without a local supply chain, increasing the share of wind power in Japan’s energy mix will likely be more expensive. However, the technology presents such potential for the nation; even having to reply on foreign imports is unlikely to stop the shift.
“The medium to long-term outlook for offshore wind in Japan looks especially promising with TEPCO’s involvement in offshore wind, the growing offshore pipeline and new policy measures to support wind development,” Liew said. “We expect Japan to emerge as a key offshore wind market in Asia.”


Christina Lamb is one of the world's leading foreign correspondents. She has reported on Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1987. Educated at Oxford and Harvard, she is the author of five books and has won a number of awards, including Britain's Foreign Correspondent of the Year five times, as well as the Prix Bayeux-Calvados, Europe's most prestigious award for war correspondents. She currently works for the Sunday Times and lives in London and Portugal with her husband and son.
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GQ Middle East names Adam Baidawi as Editor-in-Chief
GQ Middle East has appointed Adam Baidawi as Editor-in-Chief. The twenty-first edition of the title will launch in September and will be published under licence agreement with ITP Media Group.
At the age of 28 years old, Baidawi joins GQ Middle East as the youngest editor of the global brand. He has reported extensively on global, technology, style, politics, migration and technology issues and most recently held the post of Australia correspondent for the New York Times.
Since 2011, he has also worked as a writer and photographer for GQ Australia, where he profiled celebrities, athletes and politicians. He has written feature stories from Colombia, Iraq, the United States and North Korea for the magazine. His writing and photography has also been published internationally by British GQ, Mr Porter, CNN, Vanity Fair Italia and Esquire UK. Born in Abu Dhabi to Iraqi parents, Baidawi was raised and worked in Australia.
GQ Middle East aims to be an essential guide to fashion, culture and lifestyle for the modern men of the GCC. Baidawi will oversee the editorial direction of the brand across various platforms including a bi-lingual website, social media and a monthly magazine.
"GQ has been an integral part of my life for nearly a decade. It’s a huge honour to be chosen to launch the brand into the region where I was born. We’re looking forward to creating a magazine that’s relentlessly smart and stylish – and also something that will start and support important conversations in the region," remarked Baidawi.
GQ Middle East is the twenty-first edition of the brand worldwide. GQ is published in the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Russia, Japan, China, Taiwan, Mexico & Latin America, India, Korea, Brazil, Australia, Portugal, Turkey and Thailand.
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The Shot That Stopped Basketball
Everything about Damian Lillard’s game-winning shot made you question your own eyes.
By Thomas Beller
Everything about Damian Lillard’s game-winning shot made you question your own eyes.Photograph by Sean Meagher / The Oregonian / AP
The nature of basketball is such that its most cathartic moment—when the ball goes decisively and irretrievably through the hoop—is the same every time. The ball piercing the basket is both a discrete event and a continuous waterfall of motion that, for active players, is constant throughout their careers. They shoot in practice, they shoot in the game, they shoot and shoot and shoot. The motion becomes so ingrained in their muscle memory that the gesture requires only its activation; everything else—the elevation, the aiming at the basket, the cocking of the elbow and the follow-through of the hand—is programmed.
I found myself thinking about the waterfall of shots in the wake of one of the more dramatic ones in recent N.B.A. history: Damian Lillard, of the Portland Trail Blazers, hitting the game-winning, series-ending shot against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game Five. He shot the ball from thirty-seven feet out, with 1.7 seconds on the clock, over the outstretched arms of Paul George, one of the league’s best defenders, and it splashed through the net as the buzzer sounded.
The blocking of the play resembled a mostly empty chessboard at the endgame stage: Lillard is alone near half court while the four other Blazers and their defenders are spread out on the perimeter, far away. Lillard looks toward the teammate nearest to him on his left, Al-Farouq Aminu (the speaker of the most chillingly profound remark I have ever heard directly from an N.B.A. player: “Your body is your business”), and summons him. The conventional play here would be to set a screen so that a lesser defender has to switch over to Lillard.
But then Lillard changes his mind and waves Aminu off, not with an extravagant arm movement but with a smaller gesture, using his right hand. The first signal to Aminu is a beckoning: come here. But then, with the compact precision of an assembly-line robot, he rotates his wrist and, making the same motion but now in reverse, waves him away. As with so much that Lillard does, the whole thing happens so quickly that Aminu barely has a chance to react.
Now Lillard and George are alone near the center court. Then Lillard does the thing that has fascinated me most about his basketball style. Even more than his stellar drives to the basket where he curls into the shape of a cannonball, only to extend his arms out at the last possible moment to release the shot; even more than the remarkable efficiency of motion in his piercing, long-range jump shot; even more than his Swiss Army knife versatility—in 2014, he became the first player to participate in every single event (the skills challenge, the dunk contest, the three-point-shooting contest, the rising-stars challenge) in an All-Star game—what has most captured my imagination about Lillard is the way that he will sometimes stand very still with the ball. There is a tensile, almost vibratory quality to this momentary pause.
The shot that he took in Game Five came off the dribble, but it, too, had this quality of pressure accumulated, unseen and then seen. But not believed. Everything about the shot made you question your own eyes. This included the sight of Lillard, normally so taciturn, turning around to wave goodbye to the Oklahoma City Thunder. The sight of his wave might endure as a more iconic image than the one of the shot itself. The whole arena is on its feet in a frenzy, and Portland players are rushing toward him, but, like a surfer with the wave closing around him, he is still in his own space, and he makes that hand gesture.
Lillard is a three-time All-Star and a first-team N.B.A. point guard, and yet he has remained a stealthy figure who always seems to be hovering just outside a charmed inner circle of superstars. Part of the drama of his shot involved the way that Oklahoma City’s two stars, Paul George and Russell Westbrook, have, in particular, treated Lillard with a palpable disdain. A further ripple in the iconic-image department came in the form of a photograph taken just as Lillard extricated himself from the swarm of delirious players who had piled on top of him. The look on his face is so inscrutable and rich. There is a hint of joy, without question, and a hint of defiance, since all these celebrations, even the ones the amateurs make alone, when it’s just them and the ball and a hoop and the endless narrative loop of them taking and making shots, are stories of redemption.
Yet behind the singularity of Lillard’s shot itself was the endless waterfall of shots taken in practice, chucked up during games, the shots discussed, watched on film, dreamed of with either pleasure or horror—but mostly just shots, “getting up shots,” practicing shots, over and over, endlessly. Repetition as religion. The game continues; the shots go up and splash down like water. But for a moment, after that shot, the waterfall ceased. It was so definitive as to briefly stop basketball time.
Thomas Beller’s books include “Seduction Theory,” “The Sleep-Over Artist,” and “J. D. Salinger: The Escape Artist,” which won the New York City Book Award for biography/memoir. He teaches at Tulane University and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.
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Justin W. Safady
+1 713 255 4132p+1 713 357 5160f
vCardBio (PDF, 602.9 KB)
University of Texas School of Law, J.D., 2015
Colorado State University, B.S., Accounting Honors, 2012
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas
Justin is a trial lawyer who represents plaintiffs and defendants in construction, energy, commercial, and business disputes in state and federal court as well as arbitration. He has defended and prosecuted breach of contract claims, construction defect claims, energy torts, partnership disputes, product liability claims, business torts, and a variety of other claims. Justin’s significant second-chair trial and arbitration experience—particularly at the state court level across Texas—allows him to effectively steer clients through the complex litigation process.
Prior to joining the firm, Justin was an associate at a litigation boutique in Houston, where he handled commercial, construction, and product liability litigation matters for a range of Texas-based companies.
Notable Experience
Successfully defended (as second chair) the general contractor in a $30 million construction defect and contract dispute. Secured a full defense verdict in arbitration.
Successfully defended (as second chair) an international industrial engine manufacturer in a $12 million hydraulic fracturing product liability lawsuit. Secured a full defense jury verdict after a two-week trial.
Secured a summary judgment dismissal of all claims in a $25 million construction defect lawsuit. Upon appeal, assisted in drafting the appellate brief to the Houston First Court of Appeals. Secured an appellate court victory affirming the summary judgment dismissal.
Houston Young Lawyers Association


One in three women are affected by GBV during their lives. It is a leading cause of death and disability of women of all ages and a barrier to equal participation and gender equality. It also has negative consequences for women’s reproductive health and their access to and control over resources and livelihoods. Building on experiences from the previous strategic period’s Gender Justice programmes, the goal of the GBV programme is for women and girls to live a life free from genderbased violence. The focus is on changing dominant social, cultural and religious norms, attitudes and practices that uphold and condone GBV and gender discrimination. The programme seeks to increase protection of women and girls, prevent GBV, and offer a safe and adequate response to GBV survivors both in NCA’s humanitarian and long-term work. This is done in adherence with international standards for GBV responses. Partners include community and faith-based actors, women’s and other civil society organisations, and relevant networks. Together they facilitate and promote dialogue for raising gender sensitive issues in religions in order to change social and religious norms which condone GBV.
The majority of the countries where NCA implements its GBV programme can be classified as either conflict or post-conflict. Increased sexual violence in war and conflict is a silent weapon of war which seriously affects not only girls and women, but also boys, men and whole communities. Whilst NCA’s global GBV programme addresses this issue, it is the main focus of NCA’s Thematic Programme for Reduction of GBV in Conflict and Post Conflict Settings (GBV CPC) 2015-2017 which is funded by the Norwegian MFA. This programme has seen the scaling up of ongoing GBV projects as well as specific interventions for prevention of GBV and protection of GBV survivors and at risk populations. Examples include the integration of GBV components in WASH projects and capacity building of staff and partners on GBV case management and guidelines. Further highlights from the programme’s 2016 results are presented below and the full report as presented to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) is available upon request.
The GBV programme is comprehensive in terms of its geographic coverage and has a diverse funding base (ref. pie chart below). This includes funding from the Norwegian MFA for the GBV CPC framework agreement which covers 7 of NCA’s GBV programme’s 14 countries. As part of NCA’s cooperation agreement with Norad, NCA’s country programmes in Somalia and Ethiopia implement two GBV programmes, focusing on female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage (CM), together with Save the Children Norway. These multi-year programmes build on experiences from previous programme phases, and both Ethiopia and Somalia are pilot countries in the Norwegian Government’s Strategy for intensifying international efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation for the period 2014–2017.
Results case
Trafficking law to end violence on women and girls in Malawi
Prior to March 2015, Malawi did not have a human trafficking law in place and was rated a tier 2 country in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA)8.
Trafficking in Persons (TIP) cases were addressed using other laws like the Penal Code, Immigration Act, Child Care and Justice Act and the Constitution of Malawi. In 2015, NCA collaborated with partners and the Ministry of Homeland Security to pass a TIP law in Parliament in March of that year. This was followed by the development of a National Plan of Action Against TIP (2017-2020).
Prior to the passage of the anti-TIP law in 2015, there was a lack of national response and effective action to combat TIP in Malawi. In 2007, NCA commissioned an evaluation to understand the magnitude and nature of trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation. This evaluation established that at least 2,000–5,000 children under 17 and 5,000–8,000 women were trafficked internally and across borders each year. In response, NCA and partners began the long process of lobbying the Malawi government to pass an anti-TIP law.
Since the Trafficking in Persons Act was enacted in 2015, NCA has made significant contributions to the further development of the National Plan of Action (NPA) by supporting partners and the Ministry of Homeland Security to learn from other countries through exchange visits and financial support. The NPA has five priority areas including:
Prevention of TIP
Support and protection of victims
Detection, investigation and prosecution
Partnership coordination, sustainable financing and research
M&E and reporting
Since the plan was developed, there has been progress towards the prosecution of human trafficking cases in Malawi. Additionally, NCA and partners have conducted sensitisation with community members and religious leaders, in addition to building the capacity of law enforcement agencies like the police, judges and magistrates, partner staff and community volunteers. Through this work, there has been an increase in reporting of TIP cases at the community level.
GIRLS WITH POWER AND DIGNITY
The Great Silence in War
Gender Justice Policy 2017
Engaging Faith Actors on Gender-Based Violence
JOINT REPORT NCA - SAVE THE CHILDREN ON FGM RH
GENDER TRANSFORMATION TOOLKIT
SIDE BY SIDE FAITH MOVEMENT FOR GENDER JUSTICE
RESULTS FROM OUR GLOBAL REPORT 2015
THE FUTURE FOR IMPROVING NURSING EDUCATION IN MALAWI
OVERCOMING VIOLENCE - STORIES OF GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE
MANUEL DE FORMATION SUR LE PLAIDOYER POUR LA RÉSOLUTION 1325
ADVOCACY TRAINING MANUAL ON UNSCR 1325 WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY, NCA GBV CPC PROGRAM, 2016
REDUCING GENDER BASED VIOLENCE AND BUILDING SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC) 2010 – 2012


Why won’t developers build housing in this Bay…
Why won’t developers build housing in this Bay Area city?
San Jose missed its annual housing production goals last year
SAN JOSE, CA - MARCH 20: One of he Silvery Towers rises up south of the SP78 townhouse being built, Wednesday, March 20, 2019, in San Jose, Calif.(Karl Mondon /Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE, CA - MARCH 20: Construction work continues on a large residential project on Park Avenue in the Midtown area of San Jose, Calif. Wednesday, March 20, 2019. (Karl Mondon /Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE, CA - MARCH 20: Construction work continues on the Silvery Towers across from San Pedro Square in San Jose, Calif. Wednesday, March 20, 2019. (Karl Mondon /Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE, CA - MARCH 4: Carpenters top off a residential building going up at the Ohlone development on West San Carlos Street in the Midtown neighborhood of San Jose, Calif., Monday, March 4, 2019. (Karl Mondon /Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE, CA - MARCH 20: Construction work continues on a large residential project off West San Carlos in the Midtown area of San Jose, Calif. Wednesday, March 20, 2019. (Karl Mondon /Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE, CA - MARCH 20: Construction work continues on a large residential project off Stockton Ave near Diridon Station in San Jose, Calif., Wednesday, March 20, 2019. (Karl Mondon /Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE, CA - MARCH 20: Construction work continues on the Silvery Towers behind the Fallon House in San Jose, Calif. Wednesday, March 20, 2019. (Karl Mondon /Bay Area News Group)
San Jose fell short of its annual housing goals last year, missing one marker by 1,000 homes and prompting the City Council to ask a key question: Why aren’t developers building here?
San Jose permitted 2,973 new homes in 2018, according to the city. That’s a far cry from the 3,986 annual goal set by the state, and an even farther cry from Mayor Sam Liccardo’s goal of 5,000 homes a year. To make matters worse, the number of homes permitted by the city actually dropped 4 percent last year compared to 2017.
Rising construction costs and flattening rents have made development increasingly difficult, cutting into builders’ anticipated profits, scaring away potential investors and preventing projects from getting off the ground, city officials said this week.
That shift has left San Jose struggling to meet its production goals, even as the city grapples with a housing shortage that’s making it hard for everyone from teachers to techies to live here. The problem raises a broader question for cities throughout the Bay Area: Will they be able to build their way out of the housing crisis?
“What I’m hearing from the development community is zero. They’re saying we’re stuck,” Liccardo said during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. “It’s not because they don’t want to. It’s because they can’t get a loan. They can’t get financing.”
Meanwhile, the San Jose metro area remains one of the most expensive places in the nation to rent or buy a home. The median price to buy a single-family house in Santa Clara County was nearly $1.1 million as of January, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic. And rents have increased 28 percent over the past five years, reaching an average of more than $2,400 a month at the end of last year, according to the city.
Despite seeing a construction slowdown in 2018, San Jose actually is on track to exceed its long-term, market-rate housing production goal. The state requires San Jose to build 14,231 market-rate homes between January 2014 and October 2022, according to the city’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation goal, or RHNA. San Jose already is 83 percent of the way there.
But when it comes to building housing that’s affordable for its low-income residents, San Jose is way behind. The city has permitted just 13 percent of the state-mandated affordable housing it’s supposed to produce by 2022.
That dearth of affordable homes is extremely concerning, said Jennifer Loving, CEO of Destination: Home, which works to end homelessness in Santa Clara County.
“These are the folks that are homeless, the folks that are in precarious situations every single month,” Loving said. “And this is the area that, in all jurisdictions, gets the least amount of attention.”
San Jose isn’t the only city struggling to build affordable housing. Last week, Oakland officials said while the city is on track to surpass Mayor Libby Schaaf’s ambitious goal of building 17,000 new homes by 2024, it’s falling behind on low-cost housing. The city has approved just 751 affordable units since 2016 — far less than the 1,785 units it should have permitted by now.
These days, San Jose is struggling even to get market-rate housing built within its borders. In 2017, Liccardo went above and beyond the state’s RHNA goals and proposed his own bold plan to build 25,000 new homes by 2022 — or 5,000 a year.
But after Liccardo’s announcement, San Jose’s housing production slowed. The number of residential building permits issued last year dropped 4 percent from the year before, according to the city.
On Tuesday, Liccardo said he was “aghast” to find that the city last year granted planning permits for fewer than 200 housing units — a step before issuing a building permit — signalling there aren’t many homes waiting to be built.
That may be because it’s getting harder for developers to make money here. Construction costs are increasing at a rate of 5 to 10 percent a year, according to a memo prepared for the city by real estate advisory firm Keyser Marston Associates. At the same time, average rents in the region grew by just 1 percent in 2017, compared to 10 percent in 2015, according to the firm’s analysis of local rents as reported by three major property companies. That discrepancy means many housing developments proposed in San Jose, particularly the type of costly high-rise apartment buildings the city is attempting to attract downtown, could end up in the red. Instead of taking that risk, developers are declining to build.
Liccardo on Tuesday suggested temporarily reducing fees and taxes for high-rise apartments downtown and exempting them from city rules that require builders to reserve 15 percent of their units for low-income renters.
Councilwoman Maya Esparza suggested the city also consider reducing fees for housing developments that include low-cost units reserved for San Jose’s poorest residents.
“We need to remember that there are those in our city that need a little more of our support,” she said.
Last year, San Jose approved just 62 of the 525 homes it was supposed to set aside for extremely low-income residents — those making $39,900 or less for a family of four.
Council members were supportive of both Esparza and Liccardo’s suggestions, which will be analyzed by city staff.
Oakland isn’t even close to meeting its lofty low-income housing goal
Even Habitat for Humanity can’t build Bay Area homes cheaply enough for lower-income buyers
San Jose has built just 64 of 10,000 affordable housing units planned for 2022
San Jose slated for 25,000 housing units, says mayor’s plan
But several housing advocates expressed concern Tuesday that Liccardo’s proposal to exempt developers from the city’s affordable housing requirements would further hamper the city’s low-income housing production.
Destination: Home applauded Esparza’s proposal to create new incentives to build below-market-rate housing.
“They need to fast track extremely low-income development,” Loving said before the council meeting. “They need to remove all the barriers to creating housing for the most vulnerable people.”


Ελληνικα	Greek	el
You are here: Home1 / News2 / Eurovision3 / Armenia4 / Iveta Mukuchyan: “I was invited to represent Germany in Eurovision...
Iveta Mukuchyan: “I was invited to represent Germany in Eurovision 2021, but got rejected because I raised the flag of Nagorno Karabakh
October 6, 2020 /0 Comments/in Armenia, Eurovision, Eurovision 2021, Germany /by Dimitris Argyropoulos
One of the events that stigmatised the Eurovision 2016 was the flag of the Republic of Artsakh ( formerly known as the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh), raised by the Armenian representative Iveta Mukuchyan, while in the green room during the 1st Semi Final. Through a post on her social media, Iveta reminded us the incident, and revealed that, due to this, she was rejected by the German national broadcaster for the representation of Germany in Eurovision 2021, despite the fact that she received invitation by the panel of 200 individuals who will choose the next German representative.
There were not a few those who believe that Iveta’s stance in the semi final cost her several points in the Grand Final, since she ended up in 7th place even though her entry, LoveWave, was one of the hot favourites to win the contest. In fact, the public broadcaster of Armenia was fined by the EBU for their representative’s action in Eurovision 2016.
Iveta, who lives in Germany, made a reference to the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the quarrelsome region of Nagorno Karabakh, citing that the war has nothing to do with these two peoples, since both Armenians and Azeris have a lot in common, but instead this was is triggered by Erdogan and Aliyev against Armenians and Armenia.
I know how unpleasant it is to read about a war that is happening far away from where you are right now.I knew how unpleasant it was for millions of viewers at the Eurovision back in 2016 to engage a few minutes into the discussion about why I put up the Kharabagh flag in a contest that doesn’t want to be involved in politics. What many people don’t know is that this year I got an excited call from Germany that 200 experts voted, without me knowing about it, to discuss me representing Germany at the Eurovision 2021. Everybody was excited, me as well. Then I got a call that the press-department said unfortunately they decided last minute that they couldn’t take me, explaining that I already participated and that wouldn’t make sense for Germany. I knew from the first second that this explanation was nonsense but the real reason could only be, that I put up the Kharabagh flag up and Germany does not appreciate political involvement in the Eurovision and would get a shitstorm if they would choose me representing them since there are many Muslims living in Germany. Which I completely understand. I want to make everyone understand that this is not a war between Azerbaijan/Turkey and Armenia but a war against Alliyev and Erdogan. When Artsakh shoots back they warn the population of Azerbaijan to evacuate, while Azerbaijan is targeting peaceful civilians, not even telling their own people to hide in bunkers. After they told me kindly that even though they would like me to participate they decided not to, I was mad at myself…regretting that my past act of patriotism would influence my career once again…
Source: Iveta Mukuchyan
Tags: Armenia, esc2021, Eurovision, Iveta Mukuchyan
https://eurovisionfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Iveta-Nagorno-flag.jpg 529 940 Dimitris Argyropoulos https://eurovisionfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/eurovision-fun-transparent-1-3.png Dimitris Argyropoulos2020-10-06 19:16:302020-10-07 21:11:15Iveta Mukuchyan: “I was invited to represent Germany in Eurovision 2021, but got rejected because I raised the flag of Nagorno Karabakh
Lithuania: “We are the winners” was inspired by Helena Paparizou’s “My Number One”
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he University of Castilla-La Mancha came into operation in the year 1985 although it was officially created by law on the 30th of June 1982, as a result of the autonomy policy and collective desire shown by Castilla-La Mancha society which was shared by the regional government.
From its first days this academic institution was an element for cohesion and had a clear aim in mind: to act as a fundamental cog for economic, social, cultural and technological development for the Autonomous Community, providing solutions for its present and future needs.
In 1982, professor Javier de Cardenas y Chavarri was named chairman of the Management Commission entrusted with setting the University of Castilla-La Mancha in motion. This post was to be taken by professor Isidro Ramos Salavert between 1983 and 1988 who was succeeded by professors Luís Arroyo Zapatero (1988-2003) and Ernesto Martínez Ataz (2003-2011). Since November 2011 this became the responsibility of Professor Miguel Angel Collado Yurrita.
In its thirty years of operation, the UCLM has provided young people with access to higher education and has dynamized life in the cities where its four campuses have been established: Ciudad Real, site of its vice-chancellorship-, Albacete, Cuenca and Toledo. At present, teaching extends to the towns of Almaden (Ciudad Real) and Talavera de la Reina (Toledo).
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Diario Lanza: Inauguración del curso en la universidad (PDF)
Diario Lanza: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha "Alegrémonos pues" ... (PDF)
Diario Lanza: Universidad castellano-manchega Gaudeamus igitur (PDF)


17°Film Festival de la comedie MONTE-CARLO, PRINCIPATO DI MONACO, 5-10 OTTOBRE 2020
The prestigious film festival conceived and directed by Ezio Greggio President of the jury the world-famous director NICK VALLELONGA with SABRINA IMPACCIATORE, MAGGIE CIVANTOS and LOTTE VERBEEK MONTE-CARLO, PRINCIPALITY OF MONACO, 5-10 OCTOBER 2020 A predominantly female jury this year for the 17th edition of the Montecarlo Film Festival de la Comédie, the prestigious event conceived and directed by Ezio Greggio to be held from 5-10 October at the Grimaldi Forum in the Principality of Monaco.
The personalities called to be part of the Jury of the 17th edition of one of the most significant festivals exclusively dedicated to comedy, in addition to the 2-time Oscar-winning President Nick Vallelonga (“Green Book”, “Kingdom of the Blind”, “The Man with One eye is King “,” Choker and Stiletto “), I am the talented Sabrina Impacciatore (” A casa tutti bene “,” The Passion of Christ “,” The Last Kiss “), the eclectic Maggie Civantos (” Vis a Vis ” , “The girls of the Centralino”) and the Dutch actress winner of the Pardo D’Oro as best actress Lotte Verbeek (“Nothing Personal”, “The Borgias”, “Outlander”, “Blacklist”).
The first phase of the competition of the Festival de la Comédie of Montecarlo, one of the most important and significant film festivals exclusively dedicated to comedy, which over the years has enjoyed growing success with audiences and critics worldwide, has also ended: in the section dedicated to short films 5 author short films have been selected on the Filmfreeway platform, in the list for the Short Comedy Award which will award the best short film.
The finalist titles are: Snake Oil directed by Remy Archer (UK), That no one knows directed by Martin Guggisberg (Switzerland), The Line directed by Tim Butcher (UK), Cash Stash directed by Martin Darondeau and Enya Baroux (France ), Green Lake directed by Emanuele Daga (USA).
Ezio Greggio, “We are very happy to have a predominantly female jury this year apart from the president Nick Vallelonga, whom I respect very much. This new edition of the festival will take place in full compliance with the rules for the containment of the ongoing emergency and we are sure that this year, even if it will have a different flavor, it will still be a special edition “.
The event, in collaboration with EFG Bank (Monaco), has always been held under the High Patronage of S.A.S. Prince Albert II of Monaco and the Embassy of Italy. Radio Monte Carlo is the Official Radio of the Festival which, thanks to the commitment of Ezio Greggio and the late Maestro Mario Monicelli (co-founder of the Festival), has also re-evaluated comedy in other international festivals such as Cannes, Rome and Venice.
Ezio Greggio,Prince Albert
Michael Madsen,Ezio Greggio, Andrea Iervolino
Ezio Greggio
Ezio Greggio, Michael Madsen
Ezio Greggio,Romina Pierdomenico
Photo Gigi Iorio/Newspress
Ezio Greggio Montecarlo, Festival Comedie Montecarlo
MFW-Maryling Catwalk Spring/Summer 2021


Driven: Google, Uber, and the Battle to Build an Autonomous Car
Author Alex Davies talks about his new book, Driven, and the the prospects of a truly autonomous vehicle.
By Brett Berk
Anthony Levandowski stood at the center of the race between Google and Uber to build self-driving cars. He was there at the beginning of Google's program in 2009. By the time it became Waymo in 2016, he'd left, founded a self-driving truck company called Otto, and sold that (in 2016) to Uber for $600 million. He was eventually indicted on dozens of federal charges, accused of stealing 14,000 files containing Google's self-driving trade secrets. In August, Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
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“I think there’s a certain…egotism to the tech industry,” says Alex Davies, transportation editor for Business Insider and formerly for WIRED, and the author of Driven, a new book on the subject of the self-driving rivalry between Google and Uber. “The way the tech industry works today, it puts enormous value on the person who says, ‘No, no, no, no, no. You’ve all been doing it wrong. And I have the better way.’ And it rewards that with adulation, and incredible amounts of money.”
This turns out to be a toxic recipe for success, especially in a category as complex as autonomous cars, where one person’s vision cannot possibly triumph over the myriad of technological, social, cultural, political, economic, and logistical challenges. In their internal battles for dominance, the teams ended up wasting a huge amount of time, money, and energy.
Alex Davies
Christie Hemm Klok
“It’s shocking, the stupid fights these guys had,” Davies says. “Arguments over who deserved more money, who should have power over the team. Screaming matches over button configurations in a car that wasn’t a product, where none of these people had product experience. They weren’t even designers. They were robotics PhDs.”
Davies details all of these pitfalls, as well as the incremental successes, in a breezy 250-page narrative loaded with primary source reporting. And what develops is a sense that many of the higher-ups in these companies—for all their skills, all their monomaniacal focus, and all their desire to “disrupt”—were blinded by the hubris and potential payouts endemic to the tech industry. As Davies points out in the book, over the course of the past ten years, “thousands of engineers have been hired, billions have been spent, and there is still no product.”
After writing the book, we wondered if Davies is more or less of a believer in the viability of the self-driving car. “In terms of whether the fully autonomous car will ever exist—the car that you own, that sits in your driveway, that doesn't’ have a steering wheel or pedals, and you get in and tell it where to go and it takes you anywhere? I wouldn’t say that it’s impossible, but I think that’s decades away—like, 40, 50 years away.” He continues: “Someone who is in this industry and had kind of soured on the potential of it, told me, ‘At the end of the day, the whole self-driving car initiative has been one hell of a jobs program.’”
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Lauren Conrad looks beyond ‘The Hills’
KEEPING BUSY: Lauren Conrad is debuting a novel in June and is working on a new clothing collection.
(Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times)
By Denise Martin
” The Hills,” the MTV reality series supposedly following the life and times of rich Californian Lauren Conrad, isn’t so much about her as it is about “Lauren Conrad on ‘The Hills.’ ”
The show’s fifth season premieres (April 6) tonight and marks the beginning of the end of Conrad’s carefully orchestrated small-screen persona. The 23-year-old reality star, weary of living in front of cameras for the better part of five years, is after this season leaving the show that has showered her with pop culture fame.
“It’s been a long time coming,” she said. “I went through many phases when I thought I was done, but I’m at this point where I’m really ready.”
Tonight, viewers will see Conrad deal with yet another surprise from friend-turned-foe Heidi Montag, who crashes her birthday party, again in search of reconciliation. While her life on “The Hills” seems to revolve around the onetime friendship that turned the show into water cooler conversation, her off-camera reality seems to have moved past all the television-driven drama.
In Conrad’s off-screen life, she celebrated her birthday in Las Vegas with her boyfriend, “My Boys” actor Kyle Howard, whom she’s been seeing since last summer.
“I would never put a guy I really cared for on camera again,” she said.
Her friendships appear to be stronger than ever -- she shares a Westwood apartment with friends she’s had since high school, including “Hills” co-star Lauren Bosworth.
“We don’t fight,” she added. “It wouldn’t be entertaining to watch.”
She even wrote a novel, “L.A. Candy,” which comes out June 16, and, contrary to reports that her eponymous fashion line was going under, is working on a new collection.
“Neither is part of my social life,” she said.
Her strange trip into the land of reality television began in 2004 when she was cast as the girl next door in MTV’s " Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.” MTV executives hoped audiences would identify with the Laguna Beach native, particularly as she journeyed north to pursue a career in the fashion world.
As she came of age before the cameras -- dating, partying and slogging away at an internship -- Conrad had a bitter falling out with Montag that transformed “The Hills” into a pop culture phenomenon. The sensation came thanks to a nightclub fight sparked by rumors -- possibly spread by Montag and her boyfriend, Spencer Pratt -- about a supposed sex tape involving Conrad.
The show’s ratings immediately jumped, and suddenly Team Heidi and Team LC (Lauren Conrad) shirts were being sold. Though debates about its authenticity arose, one of TV’s hot new soap operas seized on this template for success and producers focused on betrayals like Montag’s.
In more than one sense, “The Hills” became a victim of its own success. Celebrity news blogs and the tabloids developed an insatiable appetite for all things of “The Hills.” It got to the point where by the time an episode ran, it was old news because a more comprehensive look at Conrad and the show had already been served up by other media sources.
“When we started the show, we got 100% of her life,” series creator Adam DiVello said. “As the show got [more popular], the part we wanted to follow -- her relationships with the cast, the parts of her life unaffected by fame -- got smaller.”
On-camera, Conrad would work through each heartache, while off-camera she went about establishing a life separate from the show’s plotting -- a life that would help her deal with the one she had on “The Hills.” She’d pursue her own projects, better friends and, eventually, romance.
“Finding happiness off the show” turned out to be the collateral damage, DiVello said. “But it’s how she lasted as long as she did.”
a victim of its own successAccording to Conrad, she filtered out her romantic life after her breakup with Season 1 boyfriend Jason Wahler.
“The boys I dated after him on the show, I knew they weren’t going to go anywhere,” she said.
What she couldn’t stop was the drama -- and many tears -- that followed between her and her girlfriends on the show. Whether they were staged or not, few who watch “The Hills” can doubt Conrad’s deep emotions.
But the tumult made working with producers hired to shape her reality, well, awkward. Conrad called her relationship with DiVello “weird.” After Montag showed up unannounced to the birthday party airing tonight, Conrad informed the producers she’d be taking a week off immediately as payback.
“He’s a genius, and I have a lot of respect for the show he’s created . . . but we’ve had a lot of arguments,” she said. “They’d put us in situations we didn’t want to be in. There were times I’d take my mike off and just stop.”
Conrad said she started looking at the show solely as a vehicle to promote her business opportunities. In that regard, she’s scored several notable successes -- a fashion label, a side career writing teen fiction, spokeswoman gigs, even the occasional guest starring role as herself.
“I can’t act at all!” she said. “I’m so not interested.”
For MTV, Conrad’s exit leaves the network’s top franchise in the lurch, and producers say they still haven’t decided whether to continue the show without her. Montag and Pratt, ever willing to drum up drama as her adversaries, are pressing for more.
“I don’t know that we need her,” Montag told MTV News on Friday.
Audiences, quicker to find out news on “The Hills” in the tabloids than on the show, might also sense the story lines stretching thin. Though the series is still MTV’s No. 1 show, ratings for the fourth season were down from the previous season’s average of 3.9 million viewers to 2.9 million.
But that’s of no concern to its ex-star now. Free of the pressure to emote weekly, Conrad said she’s eager to lighten up. Her biggest post-show plans are drama-free.
“I’m excited to not have everything scheduled in advance,” she said. “I can just call up a friend and grab lunch. I can wear white when I want to -- I could never do that on camera. I can go backless!”
“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “I’m going to be real rebellious.”
denise.martin@latimes.com


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Cecil Rhodes 6-Pack
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Cast : Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély	Screenplay : Jean Renoir	Release : June 8, 1939	Director : Jean Renoir	Genre : Drama, Comedy, Romance	Stream Now
1939: The discreet charme of the bourgeoisie
A recurring theme in our year-long review of the cinema culture of 1939 has been the awareness of filmmakers in those days of the coming war, almost like people in that year could predict the coming change in the whole structure of the western world that would result. In the English-language movies we've looked at so far, this has largely manifested itself in nostalgia: stories looking back in time to a (nominally) simpler age, when we didn't have to deal with All These Problems like Hitler and his goons. There's a certain undeniable thread of conservatism to be found in this kind of filmmaking, which I don't bring up as a judgment, but simply as an observation.
We have to go across the Atlantic, to France, a country where the threat of war was a great deal more imminent than in the United States or even Britain, to find a filmmaker who comes upon the idea, "a great change is coming, where all the ways of the world that have been for generations shall be wiped away, and a new age that has forgotten all the traditions of the past will rise to power", and replies, "thank God, it's about time". Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game is many things indeed - for example, the most flawless motion picture ever made - but one of the most prominent things is that it's savage, satiric attack on the mores of upper class and upper-middle class culture in the time between the World Wars, and how specifically it was the pernicious effects of these same mores that all but guaranteed that the war rumblings that were really becoming hot in 1938 would finally erupt in 1939. So damning indeed was the film's social satire, its unwillingness to let the narcissistic idleness of the bourgeoisie off the hook, that the movie incited honest-to-God riots in France during its very brief official release there, while watching its running time progressively slashed in increasingly desperate attempts to salvage something commercial out of the material. The film, meant to be the debut for Renoir's independent company, instead sent Renoir scuttling to Hollywood in search of work, and was considered lost for many years, prior to a 1959 restoration of nearly all of the film's material. A strange start for a film that has since gained as sterling a reputation as anything else ever put to film.
I shall have to beg the reader's indulgence with this essay. You see, I do not have any particular critical objectivity about The Rules of the Game. I do not want any critical objectivity about it. This is a film that I adore and worship with religious fervor, one of the small handful of movies that I have never been able to exhaust; like Citizen Kane or Seven Samurai, I have not yet been able to watch this film without discovering something new. I say this only because what I'm about to embark on is nothing but raw fanboyism; the greatest fan of The Dark Knight cannot beat me for uncritical enthusiasm; nor has any person yet watched Star Wars and walked away so profoundly touched as I by this French masterpiece. For this I apologise. You deserve more, my loyal readers, than the breathless slavering to follow.
The essential narrative elements, derived from the tradition of French stage farce, are these: a pilot named André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) is in love with a titled lady, Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Gregor), wife of Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio). Their past relationship is an open secret, but Christine, an expatriated Austrian, does not understand the cavalier attitude taken to marital fidelity in Paris, and has ended things with Jurieux, who stomps about like a petulant boy until his friend Octave (Renoir himself), a childhood friend of Christine's and current social acquaintence of Robert, arranges for André to come with him to a weeklong hunting retreat at La Colinière, Robert's country estate. Along for the trip are several other high society faces, including Robert's secret lover Geneviève (Mila Parély), not to mention the host of servants required to keep a country estate running. The most important for our present needs are Lisette (Paulette Dubost), Christine's fiercely devoted maid; her husband, Schumacher (Gaston Modot), the estate's gamekeeper, long-separated from his wife on account of his post so far from Paris; and Schumacher's nemesis Marceau (Julien Carette), a poacher hired by Robert to help keep the rabbits down for the hunt, who instantly and idiotically takes a fancy to Lisette, who is perfectly happy to reciprocate.
Renoir does not feel hatred towards his characters, but nor does he soft-pedal their essentially heartless dalliances and casual betrayals, all of it perfectly moral and respectable as long as nobody gossips. This is the "game" of the title, and the filmmaker clearly has no use for it. While the rich enjoy their immensely shallow lifestyles, they barely even notice the roiling lives of the men and women keeping that lifestyle alive (a dichotomy that has been appropriated many times since, most recently and famously by Robert Altman's Gosford Park) - but Renoir issues no free passes to the underclass. They're just as greedy and foolish as the lovely people employing them. Not even the two people who don't like the game and don't seem to understand the rules, Jurieux and Christine, escape some measure of blame; he's a child, and she's far too willing to give up her principles to keep the game whirring along, even if she doesn't understand it. This is the danger of being an Other in a relentlessly insular society; knowing one doesn't belong fires up the desire to belong like nothing else. The more that Renoir subtly but continuously emphasises Christine's Austrianness (particularly with her accent, a nicety perhaps lost on American audiences, though anyone can notice that she alone pronounces Schumacher's name as "Shoo-mahker" while everyone else says "Shoomashayre"), the more he stresses that she is the single destablising element - which for the story, means the vehicle for tragedy, and for the thematic thrust of the film, means the tool by which the basic hypocrisies of the game are laid bare.
The chief joy of Rules of the Game, however, is not its narrative thrust, but how uncommonly well everything in the film aligns to that narrative; it is a particularly harmonious work, every element playing off of every other. Renoir does not tell us about the world of the bourgeoisie, so much as he shows it; and if we can agree that he was cinema's finest practitioner of the moving camera, so is Rules of the Game his own most glorious moment with that tool, uniting the work of four cinematographers (among them Renoir's son Alain). Under his watchful eye, La Colinière becomes maybe the most well-defined physical space in all of film history, the camera roving like a tourist in an art gallery, soaking in detail. And at the same time, the camera moves are strictly motivated by the story, revealing those parts of the setting that are most important for that moment, as plot and as emotional state. My personal favorite moment comes during the masquerade arranged in celebration of Jurieux's aviation triumph, as the camera tracks along the faces of the audience, showing the servants peeking in through doorways and showing in the furthest distance, just behind the rest, Marceau and Lisette hide from Schumacher, hunting through the crowd to catch them in an adulterous clinch. And since I've practically just now brought it up anyway: the use of deep focus in this film is absolutely exquisite. Virtually every plane of every frame is in crystal-clear focus at all points, inviting us to consider every last element of the mise en scène as sharing equal importance.
To save everyone's time, I will not speak of the acting, though it is perfect in all regards. I would briefly praise Renoir's own performance as perhaps the finest example of a director acting in all of the movies (discounting those like Keaton or Welles or several others, who are actors at least as prominently as they are directors), at least as far as the fact that he is the film's director influences the meaning of his character, the cautious voice of reason who is at the last revealed to be a fool like everyone else.
The plot structure in Rules of the Game, though, may be its most noteworthy element. It really is, almost without exception, the most structurally perfect film I know of: the first half of the movie contains almost precisely the same number of scenes as the latter, and they "mirror" each other. Specifically, the direction of conflict in the scenes switches at the midpoint, from scenes which move through chaos to resolution, over to scenes which move from placidity to chaos. Not my observation, by the way; thank you as always to Scott Curtis of Northwestern University, the man who made me the film lover I am today.
The film's structure also privileges its extraordinary, justly-famous hunt scene, which is just a bit off of dead center in the whole (and if the missing footage was ever restored, I believe it would be precisely in the dead center. The hunt! the very key to understanding the whole movie's thesis! Where there the rest of the film is taken up with stately, graceful long takes and nice framing, the hunt is rapidly-cut, shot in the uncontrollable outdoors, the camera darting about like a bird. Along it all is pure violence - a dozen animals die on camera, and while one could wonder if that adds a level of hypocrisy to Renoir's argument, it is a sad fact that this scene and thus the film could simply not have achieved the same impact with faked animal deaths made at the state of the art in 1939. What we find are legions of gamesman, soldiering through swamp and wood, beating animals out into the open, so that rich people could should them with impunity and josh each other over who's the better hunter; practically without ever taking a single step. And they certainly don't give a damn about the animals they're killing; oh, yeah, they'll be food, but it's mostly just sport. We in the audience, animal lover or no, don't tend to share that view, thanks to the merciless way the brutality is caught on film; particularly in one of the most wrenching shots in all cinema as a rabbit is hit by a bullet and tumbles on its side, flexing its paws in its death spasm and looking for all the world like it's stretching to go to sleep. Here, more than anywhere, is the callousness of the bourgeoisie, the inordinate selfishness that could blind whole countries to the crush tide of Nazism, exposed to the burning sun.
Ah, but with one exception. The most important character in the film, though few people ever seem to make this claim, is an unnamed general played by Pierre Magnier. He gets very little to do, one of several revellers wandering about and chatting throughout the movie, but there are two points where he delivers virtually the same sentiment, and one of these is given exceptional privilege of place, as the final line of the movie. That sentiment is, essentially, "Robert is a grand old man, for he always does intuitively what makes for the least socially-awkward moment, and in this he is a great heir to the history of France". The first of these occasions is right after Robert and Christine have successfully dealt with the embarassment of Jurieux; everyone knows the score, but they're so appreciative of the couple's flim-flam that they practically break into applause. It's an ironic, amusing moment in a film rich with amusing irony, although it does point out the emotional shallowness of everyone involved. But the second moment comes after a human being has died, shot in a fit of misaimed passion; the general has nothing but praise for Robert's line of bullshit designed to make all the guests feel at ease, noble about their part in remembering the dead man. That's what Old France is about, says the general, and Renoir agrees with the fact if not the sentiment. Damn Old France, with its fixation on surfaces; damn all societies more concerned with the face of things than their inner truth. World War II wasn't the last armed conflict to come about from a culture that couldn't get passed people who knew how to say the right thing, even if everyone knew that it was a lie, you know. For that reason if not for tens of others will The Rules of the Game remain absolutely essential cinema.
And still, I have not scratched the merest surface of those things that make this a masterpiece.
Categories: 1939, best films of all time, farce, french cinema, satire, sunday classic movies


Ira Glass at Zellerbach Hall on Sunday
Arts & Entertainment // Entertainment
Ira Glass: 'This American Life' host will talk about his radio show in Berkeley
Tony DuShane Feb. 6, 2013 Updated: Feb. 6, 2013 3:55 p.m.
Ira Glass in This American Life - Photo: Douglas Barnes/Showtime - Photo ID: thisamericanlife_dbp_3400 Ran on: 03-18-2007
Photo: Douglas A Barnes, Douglas Barnes/©Showtime
Every few weeks, Ira Glass leaves the comfort of "This American Life's" New York studios to give a talk about the nationally syndicated radio show.
Glass, the host and executive producer of "This American Life," has been doing a version of the talk since the show went national, in 1996.
The idea of the talk started as a business decision: The show, which now airs on more than 500 public radio stations in North America and boasts an audience of more than 1.7 million listeners, didn't have an advertising or publicity budget at the time.
"It's a way to remind people that you exist or to introduce people to the fact that you're still there," Glass says by phone. "We needed to figure out a way to publicize that wouldn't cost any money."
Glass will speak at Zellerbach Hall on Sunday.
"It's a combination of why we're making a radio show that's so different from other radio shows, what we're going for, how we do it and why we do it," he says of the talks.
When he first started doing the lectures, Glass would set the stage up to emulate a radio production studio and sit at a mixing console with CD players to stay close to the look of a production studio while mixing himself live.
"Since then the technology has changed so much, I can have an iPad and wander around the stage."
When Glass and his production staff do final edits for the radio show, they play the stories to each other over and over and with their staff, they bring in one person who has never heard the story to get their notes.
"But there's no substitute in the end for 1,000 people or 2,000 people in a room and you're telling a story and can feel just when it goes 10 seconds too long here or too quick there, but you can exploit some moment of it here and there," he says.
His talk is constantly changing, and Glass sometimes tells stories that have yet to air and uses the reaction of the audience to make changes. How does he remember what to tweak for the upcoming program?
"It's such a naked feeling onstage that I don't need to take notes," he says. "It's seared into your heart.
"When you're all alone in a room just talking into a microphone, you can tell yourself it's going great, but when there's a real audience you actually know if it's going great. Which has a good side and a bad side - when it's going great it's an amazing feeling."
Ira Glass: 7 p.m. Sunday. Advance tickets sold out. Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. (510) 642-9988. calperfs.berkeley.edu.
Find author readings and literary events at sfgate.com/books.
Tony DuShane is a freelance writer. E-mail: 96hours@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @tonydushane
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