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Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Sweden: Breaking The Rules

SWEDEN

Breaking the Rules

Conventional wisdom has it that low taxes spur businesses to invest and grow, and that social-welfare programs breed lazy people looking for handouts. Sweden’s booming startup scene – call it Silicon Valley North – suggests otherwise.
Known for multibillion-dollar firms like Spotify and King (the developer of the Candy Crush games), Sweden also boasts one of the world’s highest tax rates and most robust social-welfare systems. Yet its capital, Stockholm, is home to more “unicorns” – or startups with $1 billion valuations – per capita than any other city in the world, the Independent reported.
Gothenburg, too, is spawning a new generation of promising startups. And Sweden’s success has spilled over into Norway, where Oslo’s startup scene has gone from nonexistent to thriving, partly thanks to government investment, over the past five years.
They’re not all “fun” firms like Spotify and King, either. iZettle, a commerce platform that competes with Paypal, is also knocking on the door to the unicorn club. TechCrunch reported last month that iZettle had recently attracted an additional $47 million in investments and valued the company at $948 million.
Local entrepreneurs say the social safety net actually encourages Sweden’s culture of innovation by reducing the risk associated with failure. Meanwhile, a tax system that limits inequality, transparency policies that make salaries public knowledge, and a culture that discourages the flaunting of wealth have helped foster the collaborative spirit that’s key to startup success, they argue.
“In Sweden, you have more people who aren’t from a wealthy background that are daring to create startups,” said Victoria Bastide, who moved back to Sweden after working in Silicon Valley for 15 years to join Lifesum, a health-tracking app company.
The Milken Institute, a think tank based in California, recently ranked Stockholm as Europe’s second-best-performing city when it comes to offering opportunities for prosperity, reported the Local Sweden, a website for Sweden-based expatriates.
“Stockholm has one of the top ecosystems in the world for creating and launching new firms, with a thriving early-stage financing community that would rival American tech centers such as Austin or Portland,” the think tank concluded. Among the main factors: government investment in education.
“Its educated population is an asset; 38 percent of working-age residents have tertiary qualifications (7.3 percent above the European average),” the institute noted.
Interestingly, the recognition of Nordic success comes as Silicon Valley is taking heat for a so-called “bro culture” that breeds sexual harassment, the Independent noted, and as rising inequality is driving far-right and leftist populist movements around the world
In 2017, allegations of inappropriate relationships and harassment hit Google’s Andy Rubin and David Drummond, as well as Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Amit Singhal, along with a number of others. Meanwhile, a 10-page memo written by former Google engineer James Damore exposed the race and gender fault lines running under Silicon Valley after it was leaked to the internet.
Does that mean California has something to learn from Sweden?
Maybe, bro. Maybe.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Friday, January 26, 2018

California To Start Expunging Marijuana Convictions

Expunging old Marijuana Convictions – Criminal Records Program

“Our new program can help the nearly 500,000 people arrested for pot crimes in California, between 2006 and 2015. We can help,” says DeMarr.
We are hearing from the courts that record numbers of criminal defendants have petitioned for expungement of misdemeanor convictions for pot crimes.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA, UNITED STATES, January 26, 2018 Private investigator John A. DeMarr, P.I., in response to intense demand for criminal records arising from California’s new marijuana legalization, has announced a court-based program for obtaining criminal records. The new program covers all 47 courthouses in Los Angeles County, and all 58 counties in California.
“California’s new marijuana law might allow you to have your record wiped clean, or expunged,” says DeMarr. “Or, if you were convicted of a felony, you can petition the court for reduction of the charge to a misdemeanor, and THEN request expungement.”
“We are hearing from the courts that record numbers of criminal defendants have petitioned for expungement of misdemeanor convictions for pot crimes,” reports DeMarr. “Proposition 64, approved by 57.1% of California voters in November 2016, has resulted in at least 4,000 petitions for expungement of pot convictions across California.”
And, says DeMarr, “we know the State of California wants to reverse decades of marijuana convictions. These convictions can make it difficult to get a job, join the military, pass a background check; and these convictions disproportionately affect low-income and minority citizens.”
“Our new program can help the nearly 500,000 people arrested for pot crimes in California, between 2006 and 2015. We can help,” says DeMarr.
We can help.
• First, we can get you a copy of your criminal record, from the Superior Court that rendered the conviction. We have relationships with courts all over California.
• Second, if your conviction was a misdemeanor, Penal Code section 1203.4a sets up criteria under which you can request expungement.
• You will need to complete California Judicial Council Form C180. If your conviction was for a felony, the procedure is more complicated. You will need to request the court reduce the conviction to a misdemeanor. You should probably hire a lawyer. If that effort is successful, you can proceed with the Form C180 procedure.
• The court filing fee for such a petition ranges from $100.00 to $400.00. Attorney fees and court costs would add to that total.
John A. Demarr, Private Investigator’s new statewide criminal records search and copying service program provides important new tools for job hunters, and most importantly, for ordinary citizens seeking to cleanse an old pot conviction from their record across California.

Pakistan: On The Other Foot

PAKISTAN

On the Other Foot

The most well-known cause of tensions between India and Pakistan is their dispute over territory in Kashmir – where New Delhi accuses Islamabad of helping insurgents sneak across the border to attack the Indian army and carry out terrorist attacks.
This month, a flare-up in cross-border firing has resulted in the deaths of 13 civilians and nine soldiers, as well as dozens of injuries, the Associated Press reported. But as India celebrates its Republic Day on January 26, in a similarly troubled region of Pakistan the shoe is on the other foot.
Former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav was arrested in the Pakistani province of Balochistan in March 2016. He was convicted of espionage and plotting to sabotage government projects there and sentenced to death – the latest in a long string of alleged spies arrested and used as bargaining chips by Islamabad, Reuters reported.
Shortly after Christmas, a fresh row erupted over Pakistan’s supposed attempt to show a bit of mercy, however. After a rap on the knuckles from the International Court of Justice – which in May temporarily barred Pakistan from executing Jadhav and insisted he be granted consular access – last month Islamabad allowed the accused spy a visit from his wife and mother.
But they were forced to meet from opposite sides of a glass wall. The two women were compelled to remove their jewelry, change into different clothes and give up their shoes before being allowed to see the accused. And India claimed Jadhav’s wife’s shoes were never returned.
“For some inexplicable reason, despite her repeated requests, the shoes of his wife were not returned to her after the meeting,” Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper quoted an Indian Ministry of External Affairs statement as saying. The Pakistan Foreign Office rejected India’s “baseless” allegations and said it does not wish to indulge in a “meaningless battle of words.”
Not long after that, a group of Indian-Americans and Balochs held a protest by the name “Chappal Chor Pakistan” (“Slipper Thief Pakistan”) outside the country’s embassy in Washington.
It would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high.
The boilerplate fears of the two longtime enemies touching off nuclear Armageddon – invariably mentioned in any article about Kashmir – are exaggerated, local analysts say.
But Jadhav faces the death penalty and the residents of both Kashmir and Balochistan face a military occupation and extrajudicial killings, Malik Siraj Akbar opined in the Huffington Post. And the specter of an Indian tit-for-tat response threatens to undermine the progress New Delhi has made in isolating Islamabad over its alleged support for terrorism. (The Trump administration’s freezing of military aid to Islamabad earlier this month marks a prime example.)
The US and many of its allies now take Pakistan’s apparent support for Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, and other dubious characters as an established fact. But Britain and others also take seriously the allegations that India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, is fomenting the insurgency in Balochistan, the WikiLeaks cables suggested.
The spat over shoes makes it harder to argue that New Delhi always takes the high road.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

"The Long Arm Of The Law" America's Department of Homeland Security Goes Worldwide

UNITED STATES

Home and Away

The US Department of Homeland Security has generated occasional controversy since its creation in 2002.
But the latest debate focuses on a new area: The domestic anti-terrorism agency’s rapid expansion of its operations on foreign soil.
Around 2,000 Homeland Security employees are deployed to more than 70 countries around the world, the New York Times reported, while hundreds more patrol the skies and seas of Central America, the Pacific and the Caribbean. Washington and various US allies say these patrols are making the world safer for everybody, as well as preventing threats from ever reaching American soil. But skeptics see Homeland’s activities as an unregulated and often clandestine infringement on national sovereignty and individual rights.
In countries like Ecuador, South Africa and Kenya, Homeland Security agents have helped make massive drug busts and trained local security forces in counterterrorism. And FranceGermany and various other countries have not only at times sought deeper partnerships with the agency, but also moved to reshape their own anti-terrorism outfits in its image.
After a meeting with former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in 2016, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere pushed for the creation of a similar outfit in Germany – where such agencies spark disturbing associations with the hated East German Ministry for State Security, more commonly known as the Stasi, Handelsblatt Global reported. Among his maneuvers: an airline passenger data-storage law that requires airlines to pass on passenger data for flights to and from Germany to the country’s Federal Criminal Police. This includes names, credit-card numbers, luggage information and dietary preferences, Deutsche Welle reported.
Similarly, in December Canada passed legislation that, when fully ratified, will expand the authority of US customs and border-control officers working at Canadian airports, the National Post reported.
The legislation, known as Bill C-23, or the Preclearance Act of 2016, allows Homeland Security employees to carry firearms and conduct strip-searches in Canadian airports, and gives them the authority to detain Canadians should they decide to withdraw from preclearance procedures, Al-Jazeera reported.
“The Government of Canada is committed to making the Canada-United States border more efficient and secure,” Ralph Goodale, Canada’s minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, said after the bill’s passage. He also assured Canadians their rights would be protected.
Not everybody is convinced.
In Germany, lawmaker Andrej Hunko has criticized that nation’s empowering of Homeland Security agents to investigate and interrogate travelers before they board planes bound for the US. The agency’s procedures are not transparent, he complained, and likely include racial profiling – despite Germany’s profession that it has “no evidence that such profiling is carried out.”
Union workers in Canada also protested that added security checks could eliminate union jobs – and tacitly reject Canadians based on their religion or ethnicity.
Meanwhile, the law “provides explicit blanket immunity” to US preclearance officers “from anything done or omitted” in the exercise of their powers and duties, according to the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

One Of My Most Beloved Actors Dies At 87 After A Full Life-Bradford Dilman

Bradford Dillman, Star of ‘Compulsion,’ Dies at 87

Bradford Dillman, the original Edmund in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and star of “Compulsion,” died on Jan. 16 in Santa Barbara after complications from pneumonia. He was 87.
Dillman began his Broadway stint as Edmund Tyrone in Eugene O’Neil’s play “Long Day’s Journey into Night” in 1956. He played the role for 390 performances and won a Theater World Award for his portrayal in 1957. He also starred in Katharine Cornell’s production of “There Shall Be No Night.” He then transitioned to film and signed a contract with 20thCentury Fox. He was awarded a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer – male, for his role in “A Certain Smile,” before taking on a series of darker roles.
He shared the 1959 Cannes Film Festival Award for best actor with co-stars Orson Welles and Dean Stockwell for his work as Arthur A. Straus in “Compulsion.” Among his other appearances were “Sudden Impact” with Clint Eastwood and “The Way We Were” with Robert Redford.
He also had guest starring roles on television shows including “Wild, Wild West,” “Mission: Impossible,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
His autobiography titled “Are You Anybody?” An Actor’s Life,” was published in 1997 following his first book “Inside the New York Giants” being released in 1995.
Born in San Francisco, Dillman acted in local theater productions in Santa Barbara before attending Yale University. He entered the United States Marine Corps as an officer candidate and served as a lieutenant during the Korean conflict. After being honorably discharged, he auditioned for Lee Strasburg and enrolled in the Actors Studio. He was classmates with James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.
He is survived by his six children, eight grandchildren, and two step-grandchildren.

Friday, January 19, 2018

Russia Is Not In Good Financial Shape Now

https://www.stratfor.com/article/russias-fraying-financial-safety-net-hangs-thread

Thursday, January 18, 2018

A Brave Swiss Diplomat Saved 62,000 Jewish People From The Nazis

Unsung Hero

The names of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, who risked their own lives and fortunes during World War II to help Europe’s Jews escape death at the hands of the Nazis, have been immortalized.
But what of the Swiss envoy Carl Lutz?
According to a recent investigation into war documents by the BBC, Lutz arrived in Budapest in 1942 to serve as neutral Switzerland’s vice-consul to Hungary. Hungary had already sided with Germany. But when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, they expedited efforts to exterminate Hungary’s Jews by deporting them to Auschwitz.
Using his diplomatic resources, Lutz began fudging letters of Swiss diplomatic protection to save them. The Nazis granted Lutz permission to issue only 8,000 letters to individuals with a direct connection to Western powers, but he managed to duplicate the letters to save entire families.
Historians estimate that his efforts saved as many as 62,000 lives.
“It is the largest civilian rescue operation of the Second World War,” said Holocaust expert Charlotte Schallié.
After the war, though, Lutz was reprimanded for overstepping his authority rather than feted for his heroism – primarily due to Switzerland’s strict policy of neutrality.
“Ask most people in Switzerland about Carl Lutz, and the answer will be, ‘Who?'”

Saturday, January 13, 2018

The World's Most Unusual Military Museum


The world’s unusual military museums

(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Sadat Museum #1 (Cairo, Egypt), 2009 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
They recall scenes from Dr Strangelove, or Thunderbirds: the photos taken by Jason Larkin have a simplicity and shared aesthetic that is almost childlike – or shot through a Hollywood filter. Yet these images were taken in military museums around the world, and they reveal how different countries remember war and conflict. “It’s too easily sanitised,” says Larkin. “There should be much more context and nuance.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Vietnam Military History Museum #2 (Hanoi, Vietnam), 2016 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

The British photographer isn’t aiming to be political, however. His Past Perfect series – currently on show at London’s Flowers Gallery and set to be published in a book later this year – focuses more on how these museums put together their displays. “I didn’t want to make too much of a commentary on propaganda,” he tells BBC Culture.

“What I became interested in was what really reinforces this view on history and what makes the public think that it’s true – the ways in which this history is being presented, the aesthetic choices being made by the curators and the museum staff.” Between 2008 and 2016, Larkin travelled to Cuba, Egypt, Israel, the UK, the US and Vietnam, looking at how museums in each country take on roles in “constructing ideologies and interpreting cultural identities”.
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Herzl Museum #1 (Jerusalem, Israel), 2014 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
He found striking differences in approaches to the curation of artefacts and memory. “Every country has their own way of presenting the past and their overarching approach to museums and displays,” says Larkin, commenting that in Israel “it’s much more about experiences and less about facts and artefacts – more about immersing the viewers in history”.

Although he started out photographing a range of museums in Egypt, he narrowed his focus once he got to Israel. “When I was there I decided that in somewhere like Israel, that has such a conflicting narrative and has had so much conflict with its development, it was more poignant to focus the series on just the museums that deal with conflict, war and militaries in all their different guises.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Museo de Batalla de Ideas (Cardenas, Cuba), 2016 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

Larkin discovered another slant in Cuba. “It’s about the revolutionaries, the first hundred or so that were part of the initial waves of revolution – everything they’ve touched and worn, everywhere they’ve been has been turned into a sort of memorial and canonised in glass cabinets,” he says. “It’s a way of presenting the past that really turns these individuals into folk heroes and legendary figures.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
City Museum (Da Nang, Vietnam) 2016 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
In Vietnam, meanwhile, he photographed ways in which weapons and war machinery have been repurposed. “Vietnam deals much more with responses to artefacts – there are a lot of sculptures, and a lot of artists being employed to reconfigure war remnants and put tanks on top of each other, turning shrapnel into sculptures.”

This offers a chance to take a step back, and can give a more sophisticated take on conflict. 
“There are nuanced museums in most places,” says Larkin. “There are a couple of museums in Vietnam that are trying to present things in a more balanced way, and within the UK, the Imperial War Museum in London is incredibly nuanced – although there’s not much about contemporary conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s more artists’ responses, which is a comfortable way for museums to tackle something, presenting somebody else’s interpretation of it.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Imperial War Museum #2 (Duxford, UK), 2016 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

Yet Larkin believes “there are a lot of places that don’t do that” – including the UK. “The Imperial War Museum in Duxford, just outside Cambridge, is really just war machinery. Those spaces are sold very much as family days out – they can be entertaining, they put on big air shows – but most of the machinery on display is deadly, and has been used for deadly consequences.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Royal Air Force Museum #1 (London, UK), 2015 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

That hasn’t stopped him being drawn in. “I’ve got a one-year-old, and the last time I was in the Imperial War Museum in Duxford I thought: ‘I can’t wait til he’s two or three because I’ll definitely bring him along to these air shows, they’re amazing’.” He acknowledges the attraction of many of these spaces. “I can get pulled into it – it is awe-inspiring, being beneath a huge bomber – I’m not removing myself from it.”

But the way in which information is presented can be misleading. “It’s just a select few people at the top who get to decide on how museums are going to look,” he says. “There are a lot of people in the countries I’ve visited who would not agree with what’s in their museums – it’s just what the state or one rich influential group or the army want to say.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Museum of Fort San Carlos (Havana, Cuba), 2016 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

And what isn’t said can be as important as what is. “Rather than just having displays where you’re looking inside the mechanisms of a giant bomb, and admiring that engineering might, if you were to have a plaque next to it saying ‘this could destroy ten schools at once’, it might make people think.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
6th of October War Panorama #1 (Cairo, Egypt), 2009 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

Even the visual style in which war is depicted is significant. Some of the dioramas in Larkin’s images resemble toys, placing battles in an unexpected context. “There’s something interesting about that war panorama,” he remarks on an installation at the October 1973 War Museum in Cairo, “because it was painted by North Koreans – they built that museum for Egyptians, and their artists came over, because they’ve got a similar panorama in Pyongyang. It harks back to how the North Koreans see war – it’s a very American GI Joe style.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Churchill War Rooms #1 (London, UK), 2015 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

The cultural filter on war can mean that less overtly ideological museums are in fact more influential. “I think America owns the military aesthetic in many people’s psyches, we recognise an American military jeep before any other type of military equipment because it’s been so engrained in our visual memories through films and comic books.”

While captions hammering home a great military ‘victory’ are obvious in their intent, Larkin believes that “with the aesthetics it’s much more subtle, it’s like going to a movie in a way, you’re pulled in and think ‘I don’t really know what happened in that film or whether it was good or bad, but it was kind of enjoyable’. That tends to happen, and if you do that enough with certain scenarios, it becomes a form of propaganda.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Egyptian Military Museum (Cairo, Egypt), 2009 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

Larkin hopes that by photographing museums in this way, he can create a critical distance. Before this project, he says, “I’d never really questioned a museum space: I’d always taken it at face value, and taken their authority as the final word.”

But now “you’ve got to question why they need to run it in that way”, he argues. “That’s what photography and art allows – I’m taking pictures from the everyday world and then representing them elsewhere, and hoping that by doing that with a certain approach and aesthetic there’s a different type of engagement than what you get from actually being there.”
(Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)
Air Force Museum #1 (Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam), 2016 (Credit: Jason Larkin, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery)

Despite the need to question official narratives, however, there is a countering need to separate fact from fiction, especially in an era of ‘fake news’. “In some ways, it makes this project feel more relevant, but sadly it gets to this point where all truth is side-lined,” says Larkin. “All of a sudden people might look at my project and think you can’t trust anything anymore. But that’s so destabilising – where do we go from there, and who can lead us back into a place of authenticity?”

The exhibition Past Perfect is on view at Flowers Gallery, London until 13 January 2018.