The Gita wasn’t the first book that connected me to Krishna, yet it remains the most impactful reading experience of my life. I remember that first reading clearly – I stayed up late, drawn into the story of Arjuna and wondering what decisions he yet might make. The ending didn’t disappoint.
I’ve returned to that good book recently, for an hour a day, soaking in its words as if reading it again for the first time. I am now older and wiser in the practice of Krishna Bhakti and yet it still moves me, still delights, still informs.
Besides reminding me that I am a spirit soul, individual and with an eternal form, what else about the Gita do I love?
First, the generosity of the invitation to a relationship with Krishna. Again and again Krishna says, anyone, no matter from what level or sphere of life one is in, can directly interact with Him. Race, country, status, or what we have done or not done, cannot exclude us from our individual choice to reconnect with Krishna. His door is wide open, always.
Secondly, the reminder that it’s all about love – not peace, not liberation, not becoming one with. Not winning, not losing, being right, or being the best. It’s about pure, exuberant, unconditional love for the source of all life, Sri Krishna. The experience of it, the exchange of it, the absorption in it. How nice is that? We are meant to love and be loved. Why we run from that is our great misfortune.
Thirdly, the absolute simplicity of the process. Just hear about Krishna. Of course, this simplicity is complicated by the messy and miserable material world that we are part of. Our body is a mass of emotions and fears which successfully distract us throughout the day from thoughts of Krsna. The Gita is a loving reminder – Krishna is everywhere. Call on Him, think of Him, feel His presence. When we put our mind, our attention to that, amazing things happen. That’s the power of love, and the secret of love, to be found at the heart of the Bhagavad-gita.
I have many favorite verses and here is one from today’s reading:
“I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all. But whoever renders service unto Me in devotion is a friend, is in Me, and I am also a friend to him.” 9.29
And a sweet jewel from the Purport: “When a diamond is set in a golden ring, it looks very nice. The gold is glorified, and at the same time the diamond is glorified. The Lord and the living entity eternally glitter, and when a living entity becomes inclined to the service of the Supreme Lord he looks like gold. The Lord is a diamond, and so this combination is very nice.”
“Muslim women are supposed to be at home cooking, cleaning, and having kids. That’s what we do to some extent but we can do so much more. I am determined to smash those stereotypes”
By Gail Davis
Last Updated: 26/10/20 10:30pm
Zainab Alema shares her experiences as a black, Muslim, female rugby player
In the not too distant future, Zainab Alema hopes to be sitting on the sofa, cup of Earl Grey in hand, cheering on a Muslim woman playing for England.
If it happens, expect tears – lots of them – because this woman known to her team-mates as ‘Bulldozer’ has spent her playing days smashing plenty of physical, emotional and cultural obstacles to get out there.
1:42 Zainab Alema on ‘Bulldozer’ nickname
Zainab Alema on ‘Bulldozer’ nickname
Growing up, Zainab never thought about playing rugby – she didn’t even know women could. But from the moment she first got “stuck in” during a PE lesson at 17, she relished every second of “feeling free and just running”. The game became intertwined in her life “like an old friend”. But like old friends, there were times she’d question the relationship, feeling sometimes like an outsider, someone who didn’t belong.
From the moment she was born prematurely at only 26 weeks, she was a fighter and says she had an innate drive: “If I want to do something, I try my hardest to get it done”. She liked sport at school but until that PE class, she never loved any sport. That same PE teacher who encouraged her to give it a go got her into a training session at Ealing Trailfinders, but even then, Zainab’s rugby journey almost didn’t get started.
“I was so excited to go to my first session and I got lost and the coach came to find me and by then, the session was over. I was so mortified. I have lived in London all my life but I got totally lost.”
Accessibility, is she believes, one of the hurdles she had to overcome. “Often clubs are in secluded areas where you have to walk so far along the road before you actually get to the club. For me when I started at 17, I was going by myself by public transport. It was tough especially in winter, down dark streets. My team-mates had their parents dropping them off in cars but I had such a passion for the game, I just carried on.”
3:02 Zainab Alema on early challenges
Zainab Alema on early challenges
By far the biggest obstacle for Zainab has been her culture. She says she often gets stared at and commented on when she is in the park kitted up, complete with her hijab and rugby ball in her hand. Her dad couldn’t understand why an African Muslim woman would want to play rugby, “a male, elitist sport”. There are stereotypes she says of Muslim households: “Women are supposed to be at home cooking, cleaning and having kids. That’s what we do to some extent but we can do so much more. I am determined to smash those stereotypes.”
It’s not been straightforward. While studying to be a neonatal nurse at university, she joined the rugby team but sometimes struggled to fit in, not just because of the way she looked.
“I felt a bit out of place because a lot of the time, socialising was so alcohol-based. Not that the team would do it on purpose. We would have a pint for the Woman of the Match and I would win it quite a lot, and then have to nominate someone to have it, and it was so uncomfortable I wanted the ground to swallow me up. It may seem like something little to someone else, but it was those little experiences that were so difficult for me.
“I was the only black person on my team wearing a hijab and leggings under my shorts. I look different and all of that stuff played on my mind. I would end up just playing and then go, and when I look back, it makes me feel a bit sad. I didn’t get that time to connect with my team off the pitch, just because of that awkwardness.
“People say, you could just sit down and have a coke, which I do now, but I think in uni it is a bit different. I guess you go to the bar a lot more too.”
When she left university and began nursing, she found something was missing in her life. She needed a way to release the stress so she began looking for a new rugby club.
“What I did was have a little nosy at them on social media. What’s the vibe of the club? Is there a black person? Is there an Asian person? Is there someone that I can relate to?”
She settled on Millwall and earned herself her ‘Bulldozer’ nickname. Her job as No 8 was to pick the ball up at the back of the scrum and smash straight into the opposition fly-half.
“The name is sort of a metaphor for what I’m doing and who I am. It smashes and demolishes things, it’s like what I am doing with stereotypes. I kind of like it and it has stuck.”
2:15 Zainab Alema on barriers
Zainab Alema on barriers
Zainab currently plays at Barnes Rugby Club. “They’re amazing and it’s weird even though Barnes is a very middle-class area and there are barely any black people at the club, I feel so at home.
“I guess because I’m an adult, I know how to take control of my emotions and I can say no if I don’t want to be in an environment. We had another black woman join us recently because of me, and that’s brilliant.”
Given that, perhaps things are beginning to change – “there is a slow progression,” she says. Her hero was World Cup winner Maggie Alphonsi and now she loves watching England’s Shaunagh Brown.
“There is more visibility and I like to be active on my social media, because I want people to know that yes, if you’re black and a woman, you can play rugby. I know how difficult it is so I want to be open with my journey so that other people like me coming through, or thinking maybe I want to try rugby, can look at me and say you know what, I can do it.”
Zainab runs ‘Studs in the Mud‘, where she uses rugby to try and change people’s lives for the better, shipping out kit around the world to give people, particularly women and children, the chance to play. She also has a project which aims to encourage more Muslim women to give rugby a go.
“It’s about making a safe space. We are so underrepresented – I thought I was the only one at one point so I’m trying to amplify our voices and create somewhere for them to play. We’re here for you to come and give you advice. I’m hoping that we can go and watch each other’s games, have little social things together, and have a sense of belonging within the rugby community.”
Zainab goes on to talk about the one time she very nearly did turn her back on rugby. “I was ready to say you know what, I’m done, I can’t see myself in this space. It was quite emotional.
“I went on to the World Rugby guidelines and I wanted to see for myself if someone like me could play in a headscarf, a hijab. I was ready to leave but seeing that it was OK to play in one cemented it for me. There in black and white, it said I can practise my faith and play the game. I can be a Muslim rugby player.”
2:37 Zainab Alema on belonging in Rugby
Zainab Alema on belonging in Rugby
What does your dad think of rugby now?
“Oh, he’s so proud. I was in The Telegraph a while back and he was straight off to the newsagents to buy a copy and get it framed to put it up on the wall and I thought, ‘hey, are you the same person who was asking me why do I want to play rugby?’ He’s so super proud of me right now.”
“You have to see it to be it,” she concludes.
Zainab will carry on ‘bulldozing’ her way through the game – being different and standing out is no longer a negative for her. She’s using it to make rugby truly diverse. She’ll deserve that celebratory cup of tea if and when her rugby ambition is realised, and there’s a Muslim woman wearing the red rose of England.
The statement outlines that the trading of shares with a European Economic Area (EEA) ISIN on a UK trading venue in UK pound sterling (GBP) by EU investment firms will not be subject to the EU STO. This currency approach supplements the EEA-ISIN approach outlined in a previous ESMA statement of May 2019.
This revised guidance aims at addressing the specific situation of the small number of EU issuers whose shares are mainly traded on UK trading venues in GPB. ESMA, based on EU-wide data, regards that such trading by EU investments firms occurs on a non-systematic, ad-hoc, irregular and infrequest basis. Therefore, those trades will not be subject to the EU STO, under Artcile 23 of MiFIR.
ESMA has done the maximum possible in close cooperation with the European Commission to minimise disruption and to avoid overlapping STO obligations and their potentially adverse effects for market participants. The approach put forward by ESMA will effectively avoid such overlaps if the UK adopts an approach that does not include EEA ISINs under the UK STO. ESMA however notes that the scope of the UK STO after the end of the transition period remains unclear at this stage.
In the absence of an equivalence decision in respect of the UK, the potential adverse effects of the application of the STO after the end of the transition period are expected to be the same as in the no-deal Brexit scenario considered in the previous ESMA statement.
The application of the STO to shares with a different ISIN should continue to be determined taking into account the previous ESMA guidance published on 13 November 2017.
NATO was created in 1949, with the dual aim of keeping the peace among the Allies and providing a security alliance against the Soviet Union, there has been a tension between whether or not NATO should drive the security agenda in Europe.
Since 1949, a number of European-wide organisations have tried to coordinate European defence policy – from the failed attempt at a French proposal for an integrated European Defence Community in 1954, to its alternative, Western European Union (WEU), former association (1955–2011) of 10 countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom) that operated as a forum for the coordination of matters of European security and defense.
The precursor to the EU, the European Community, didn’t really put security matters on its agenda. So it was in the mid-1990s following the Maastrict Treaty that the newly-formed EU began to develop its own common foreign and security policy and the relationship with NATO began to shift.
NATO had already developed a good working relationship with the WEU, but this really became relevant in 1996 with attempts to use the WEU as an institutional bridge between the EU and NATO. As long as the EU remained an organisation without a defence component to support its common security policy, and NATO an organisation focused strictly on collective defence of its members, the EU had little need to develop military ties with NATO. However, as some EU member states started to consider an autonomous EU defence and security instrument towards the end of the 1990s, this relationship became unavoidable.
After a 1998 joint summit between the UK and France at Saint Malo, the formal process began towards creating the EU’s Security and Defence Policy (ESDP – now termed CSDP). Attention started to focus on an alternative arrangement to the WEU as the bridge between the two institutions.
Once the EU formally adopted the WEU’s “Petersberg Tasks”, which set out the conditions under which militaries could be deployed, the relationship between the EU and NATO changed from one of informal meetings to something more institutionalised. Formal committees and structures began to be mapped out by 1999.
However, cultural and institutional differences between the EU and NATO still had to be reduced before any official arrangements could be finalised. NATO retained a very strict security regime dating back to its Cold War years, while in contrast, the EU was designed as an open and transparent organisation. In order to adapt to a stricter security policy, the EU modelled its security framework on NATO. This was also helped by the fact that most EU states have also been NATO member states – currently 22 are members of both.
A new Era of EU-NATO Cooperation
EU-NATO relations facing new challenges and these are confronting both the European Union NATO today are severe and complex, including terrorism, refugee and migration crises, hybrid threats, disinformation. The importance of EU-NATO cooperation, based on shared values and interests, has become more critical than ever.
Both organizations need to pay growing attention to hybrid threats. A shared understanding is gradually emerging about the need for active countermeasures and improved resillence to malicious influence by external actors seeking to undermine Western democracies and current international order. The EU in particular has an important role to play in strengthening Europe’s resillence, but has yet to buil a coherent response including shared analysis drawing on relevant EU policies and improved crisis-response mechanisms. The second major challenge, capability development, has been at the focus of EU-NATO cooperation ever since the creation of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, but with few results. New EU initatives are being developed which can potentially make an important positive contribution also to NATO.
EU and NATO Member States are slowly waking up tp the new reality that there will be no bussiness as usual. It is hard to dispute the extensive progress the EU and NATO have made in deeping their cooperaiton. However, the direction in which the relationship should head is far from being decided. Some argues that there is a need for NATO to Europeanise as a result of the EU’s increasing strategic autonomy. The argument goes that if the EU were progressibely phase put its defence related dependence on the US, NATO could become primarily European. In contrasts, others see the feasibility of division of labour between the two, one that could eventually be conducive to an EU-US alliance in lieu of NATO as such. Others meanwhile argue for a US withdrawal form NATO and for leaving European security to the Europeans.
As Members of the European Parliament we will have to take important decisions that will make one or the other of these options a reality.
Ryszard Czarnecki: Politician from Poland, Former Vice-President of European Parliament, Minister of European Affairs and Minister in Prime Minister Office
The European Union achieved spectacular market success this month when it launched its new “Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency” bond programme (SURE).
The €100bn programme will be used by the EU to support member nations addressing pandemic job security and social welfare weakness over the next year.
The first €17bn bond issue off the SURE programme achieved perhaps the largest order book for a financial asset in history: €233bn in demand from investors.
That could mean a number of things — that investors just love the EU, or most obviously that the deal was mispriced too cheaply. And the 10-year bond tranche was sold at a negative yield.
But credit where credit is due, the deal’s success is truly remarkable. No doubt it will win every Debt Capital Award there is (yes, there are such things). It represents a real turnaround for the EU, which actually managed to agree an initiative to finance jobs and growth, and got the plan underway.
The staggering demand for the bond also highlights just how easily nations are financing the emergency costs of the pandemic in today’s ultra-low interest rate environment via increased borrowing — something the US and UK should be watching carefully.
The truth is investors value the European Central Bank Put: the ECB can buy up to 50 per cent of the deal via its quantitative easing programmes, therefore guaranteeing liquidity in the bond.
However, like all things involving Brussels, it’s really not just a simple success story.
For a start, the ECB is now tied into guaranteeing liquidity in perpetuity. The merest hint that the QE programme is not perpetual will cause the price of all its bonds to crash. Should the ECB ever try to raise European rates, the price of all bonds will demonstrate the effects of financial gravity — and destroy the reputation of the EU as an issuer.
The real story that the EU doesn’t want to talk about is how the SURE Bond Issue represents a massive step forward in the creation of the European Superstate — bypassing any meaningful discussion of what that entails for European democracy. What the EU bond achieves is the transfer of fiscal sovereignty from member nations to Brussels. And no one got to vote on it.
Back in Frankfurt (the not-quite-the-centre of European finance the Germans imagine it to be), that solo EU critic, Bundesbanker Jens Weidemann, has been desperately warning against EU joint-borrowing initiatives. If it happens, he argues, it should be strictly one-off, and should not become a common budgetary tool.
Sadly, no one is listening to Weidemann. He is a lone voice in the Frankfurt financial wilderness..
Pre-euro, the Germans had the curious notion that countries joining the Eurozone would meet the strict membership rules of the single currency by exercising sound fiscal responsibility, reforming their economies, and ensuring solid accountable finances. Silly Germans.
There are no doubts as to the credit quality of the EU bond. Moody’s, the credit rating agency, rates the EU as Aaa (the same level it rated a lot of stuff before 2008). Although Brussels is out raising new EU debt, the EU has still not agreed on banking union, common fiscal policy, or closer political tie-up. All that is agreed are the rules of the monetary union restricting how much states can borrow and the size of deficits — rules that are completely unenforceable in the current pandemic economy.
The new SURE Bond was sold as near-equivalent to the German Bund, but yielding 40 basis points more. Its equivalency to German state debt is “implicitly” true. Note the subtle difference: it’s true, but not “explicitly” true. (That’s what being a debt capital markets banker teaches you.) Although there is no joint and several liability requiring EU members to repay the bond, it’s hardly imaginable that the Germans would ever walk away if Brussels found itself unable to repay… or is it?
What all this essentially shows is that the implicit guarantee promises of the bond are yet another Brussels fudge, hoping the wobbly construct never gets tested. Every single investor who bought the bond understands this was a cheap Bund — just don’t tell the German political classes they are on the hook for it.
Funding Europe directly from Brussels very much suits the agenda of the autocracy of EU bureaucrats whose objective is oversight over member states’ budgets (and everything else), and also of the ECB (for the same reason). ECB president Christine Lagarde is not a banker or economist, but a very smooth French political operative. She sees common issuance of “Eurobonds” to finance Europe as a convenient policy tool to quell dissent between members over the impossibly troublesome monetary rules, and to centralise control of European debt.
After next year’s Recovery EU bond binge, the next stage will be an initiative to coordinate and align the joint issuance of European debt. It already looks inevitable. It will be argued that a larger, more liquid single European sovereign bond market will improve funding and the economic relevance of the EU. The fact it further diminishes national sovereignty will be a small price to pay.
Lagarde wants joint issuance to be part of her armoury. That plaintive wail you heard in the wind was Weidemann’s warning that “closer political integration would be needed and for the EU to develop into a democratic state” before common bond issuance is even contemplated — but the reality is it has already happened. The fantastically successful SURE bond was the first step in Brussel’s state-capture of European states financial sovereignty.
European states will no longer need to go to the market to raise euros to bulwark unemployment or stem job losses — now they apply to Brussel for handouts. No longer will they need to finance much-needed projects via markets in their own name.The new EU funding programmes fit perfectly with the rules of single currency membership: independent nations can’t run up large state deficits under the terms of the euro, but client states beholden to Brussels just need to ask nicely.
GUYANA is a land of deeply religious people; regardless of whatever faith or denomination by which pathway each citizen communes with his/her Supreme Lord, their faith is deep and persevering.
Yet, although each religion in Guyana adjures the faithful to practise brotherly love, we remain a divided nation, distrustful of each other, with false prophets continually creating further rifts with inflammatory sermons preaching messages that create further rifts and widens the divide.
However, this aberration is an anomaly and not a common practice, because, increasingly, the socio-political situation in Guyana has been constraining the attention of caring religious leaders to a sphere outside of the box of orthodox religion and secular tenets – moving away from the dogmas, to incorporate the social dynamics of the country with its multiplicity of religions and cultures, and focusing less on theology and more on social problems.
This focus concentrates more on the role of God in human life, rather than in formal worship by any religion or denomination. The differences of how Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, or any other religion conceives of God are irrelevant. The only imperative is that this family of humanity recognises that there is a universal rock on which mankind can stand, and which should not create divisions is the basic foundation on which all religions are premised and take root. This is the sublime message underpinning the texts and guiding philosophies of every religion – to carry a message of unity in purpose to all religious and social communities; all-embracing and all-inclusive of religious covenances.
Government has been trying to reach out to the fraternities of religions to join forces and lift a collective voice in a national-front movement advocating peace and unity in Guyana because, as ably articulated by the head of one religious organisation: “All Guyanese need to stand together on one spiritual rock and feel comfortable.” His Holiness Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj, founder of the Guyana Sevashram Sangha in Cove and John, recognised the imperative of interfaith unity in Guyana’s multi-religious landscape and as far back as the 1950s when he began hosting the first interfaith services ever held in Guyana.
The philosophies of what some current-day religious leaders are expounding seek to accentuate what unites us. There is an element of belief and practice that unites all Guyanese and all humanity in terms of what we believe in, and in terms of what we practise. For example, no religion advocates divorce, or separation of families; nor does the Supreme Father advocate in any religious pathway that hatred rather than love is the way to seek his favour; but God embraces all of us and tells us to put our palms together and call His name – the name by which we know him, and be inspired deep within to find solutions together. That is something about which all religions are on the same platform – the same page.
One cannot divorce politics from social issues, and from time immemorial leaders of nations have been advised by religious seers, because of the recognition that only the spiritual pathway can resolve national problems where the confluences of all the national dynamics can find a common rock on which everyone can feel comfortable, and at one with each under the unifying force of the universal Lord.
What has become a parliamentary pastime: creating gridlocks that hamper the nation’s developmental processes, surely is a negative synergy that makes imperative a national day of prayer, because Guyanese are a deeply spiritual people and maybe the entire nation would feel comfortable to leave mediation on national issues in the hands of the Lord. Surely, if we search the scriptures answers could be found on vexing and perplexing problems that are hampering and inhibiting the upward socio-economic developmental trajectory of our country.
A professor at Dhaka University has been sued under the Digital Security Act for making “derogatory” comments on religion during a talk show on a private television channel.
Two cases were filed with the Cyber Tribunal in Dhaka against Md Ziaur Rahman, professor of DU’s Criminology Department, yesterday.
Shamim Al Mamun, bench assistant of the tribunal, confirmed this to The Daily Star.
Md Imrul Hasan, a lawyer; and Muhammad Mahbub Alam, editor of monthly magazine Al Bayyinat and daily Al-Ihsan, lodged the lawsuits separately, Shamim mentioned.
After the hearing, the tribunal took the cases into cognisance and recorded statements of both complainants.
It also directed the Cyber Crime Investigation Division of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit of police to investigate the matter and submit two separate reports to it by November 1.
According to the case documents, Ziaur made anti-Islamic remarks during a talk show of private TV channel DBC News recently, hurting people’s religious sentiment. Video clips of the talk show went viral on Facebook and YouTube.
The book cover for Spindlefish and Stars, written by Christiane M. Andrews. Cover art by Yuta Onoda; cover design by Karina Grande. Copyright by Hachette Book Group, Inc., of which the publisher, Little, Brown and Company is a division.
For Christiane Andrews, an Andover resident who has just had her first book published by New York Publisher Little, Brown and Company, the children’s story started out as something to read to her son. Later, she decided it was a story she really wanted to have published.
The result is Spindlefish and Stars, a book inspired in part by aspects of Greek mythology. In the author’s opinion, the content is aimed at children aged 10 to 14. In her estimation it took her close to a year to complete.
Andrews started writing for children when her son was little. At that time, her main genre was poetry which was published in various children’s journals. Her love of reading and writing arose from a childhood filled with books. Her parents (Ron and Don Andrews, whose jewelry shop Beachcombings Studio was just featured in the October Beacon) were “an enormous influence,” always reading to her, and her sister Sara.
In college she studied literature and language, which led her to a career in teaching. She taught at Kimball Union Academy from 2002 to 2007, where she held many roles. Along with her classes in Creative Writing, Modernism, AP classes, and Literature of the Absurd, she also acted as an advisor for the student newspaper.
She taught the students about writing and helped with the design and layout, for that publication as well as the student yearbook and a student literary magazine. “It was lots of fun!” Other teaching positions have included Colby-Sawyer College, and the New Hampshire Technical Institute.
As an avid reader from a young age, and then a mother who encouraged her child to pick up the same love of reading, Christiane said that she has been struck by how transformative books can be for young readers. She “wants to reach readers when they are young, when the effects on the development of critical thinking skills and empathy are strong.” This, she feels, could offset what she has seen over her years of teaching as a “decline in vocabulary and the ability to understand complex language structure.”
She wove some of this thinking into the creation of her main character, Clothilde, who has self-confidence from learning to live an isolated life, but who also lacks empathy and warmth.
The description of the story, as written on the book jacket reads as follows:
Clothilde has lived her whole life in the shadows with her (sometimes) thieving and (always) ailing father. But when he fails to meet her one morning, sending her instead a mysterious ticket of “half-paffage,” Clo finds herself journeying across the sea to reunite with him. The ticket, however, leaves her on a sunless island populated only by creaking fishermen, a rumpled old woman, a piggish cat, and a moon-cheeked boy named Cary. Clo is quickly locked away and made to spend her days in unnerving chores with the island’s extraordinary fish, while the old woman sits nearby weaving an endless gray tapestry. Frustrated and aching with the loss of her father, Clo must unravel the mysteries of the island and all that’s hidden in the vast tapestry’s threads — secrets both exquisite and terrible. And she must decide how much of herself to give up in order to save those she thought she’d lost forever. Inspired by Greek mythology, this spellbinding fantasy invites readers to seek connections, to forge their own paths, and to explore the power of storytelling in our interwoven histories.
Spindlefish and Stars is classified as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection and has received many favorable, and glowing, reviews. One such review, from Christiane Andrews’ website (CMAndrews.com) reads “Expertly written, full of beautiful imagery… Clo’s dynamic character growth is one to be applauded… [her] enlightening adventure teaches her to find beauty in tragedy, to help those in need, and to accept what cannot be changed while having the courage to change what she can. These timeless lessons alone make this title worth the read… an engaging and inventive novel.” School Library Journal. There are many more such reviews to be found on her website.
When asked what she hopes children will get out of her book, Ms. Andrews referred to the quote on Amazon.com that states “Invites readers to seek connections, to forge their own paths, and to explore…” Another theme that she wants people to see is that of hope and courage and the idea that we would not have joy without the experience of sorrow. The book also refers to storytelling and how we connect to each other through the centuries. “We read stories for different reasons. Stories are retold over and over, but for different reasons. When we return to these stories, we are making connections.”
Christiane and her family moved to Andover in 2007 when her son, Oliver, was one year old (he is now 14). She and her husband, Dean Barker, had decided that the requisite hectic schedule involved in working for a preparatory school (Kimball Union Academy) made it difficult to arrange for childcare. Her husband applied for, and was offered, a job in the Kearsarge School District.
As someone who has lived in Maine by the seaside and in Vermont near the mountains, she said that they love it here in Andover. “It is a great little town.” Additionally, “we were so lucky to stumble into this amazing K to 8 grade school, and the great education our son received there.” She is referring, of course, to the Andover Elementary/Middle School.
Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, has Christiane Andrews under contract for a second book, but not a sequel to the first one. While she is working on the new title, she will be building up her presence on Facebook, Twitter, and her own website. There are no in-person book signings in the works presently, due to the pandemic. Visit Ms. Andrews’ website for more information, or better yet, visit Amazon.com or the Gibson Bookstore in Concord to purchase a copy.
The Andover Library has just added Spindlefish and Stars to its list of new acquisitions. When they heard about the book and its author, one of the Trustees said, “I would expect nothing but magic from this person.”
The European Union has allocated P3.76 billion in green financing as part of its commitment to support the Philippines’ sustainable economic activities.
“The EU, therefore, stands ready to continue its engagements with the Philippines on approaches to ensure environmentally sustainable economic activities,” said Thomas Wiersing, Chargé d’affaires of the EU Delegation to the Philippine in a speech at the webinar on ”State of Play: Green Recovery and Sustainable Reporting” organized by the EU.
According to Wiersing, the P3.76 billion fund under EU’s Access to Sustainable Energy Programme “responds to the Philippines’ goal to increase energy access, promote renewable energy sources to decrease the use of polluting power sources and reduce the negative impact on the environment and health.”
The fund also supports the Philippines’s thrust in making energy efficiency and conservation a national way of life, he said.
Wiersing cited the Philippines for pursuing the implementation of an ambitious climate adaptation and mitigation pledge with EU support in line with its ratification of the Paris Agreement.
On top of the financing aspect, the top EU official of the EU Delegation to the Philippines is also collaborating with the Department of Science and Technology on the delivery of a national support project on remote sensing centered on the EU Copernicus Earth Observation program.
He said, EU has reconfirmed its commitment to a green, digital, and resilient recovery and will stick to its goal to be climate neutral by 2050. “The European Green Deal provides an action plan to boost the efficient use of resources by moving to a clean, circular economy, restore biodiversity and reduce pollution,” he said.
Meanwhile, Finance Assistant Secretary Paula Alvarez, in a presentation at the same webinar, cited the EU assistance and international cooperation with EU countries for green finance or sustainable financing towards more green and resilient projects especially at this time that the effects of the pandemic have negatively limited the government’s budget.
Alvarez said that due to the COVID 19 pandemic and the impending threat of climate change, the Philippines is also one of the most disaster-prone economies.
She noted that strong typhoons such as Yolanda, Sendong, Pablo cumulatively
claimed over 3,000 lives and affected 10 million people. “The economic damages caused by these typhoons and the losses amounted to approximately P256 billion,” she said adding this amount is projected to increase on a long-term basis because of climate change effects.
The Philippines is also located in the Pacific Ring of Fire. In addition, there will an estimated additional 8.3 million vulnerable Filipinos by 2022.
This means the government has to spend more money to keep these Filipinos relocate to much safer areas.
The EU is now starting to work in earnest on what is likely to be its most important new law for the online world, the Digital Services Act (DSA). Techdirt wrote about this last year when the European Commission started sketching out (bad) ideas for the new law. The basic impetus for the DSA is to replace the EU’s e-Commerce Directive, which was passed 20 years ago and is clearly in need of an update. As the European Commission’s page on the DSA explains, there are two core elements:
First, the Commission would propose clear rules framing the responsibilities of digital services to address the risks faced by their users and to protect their rights. The legal obligations would ensure a modern system of cooperation for the supervision of platforms and guarantee effective enforcement.
Second, the Digital Services Act package would propose ex ante rules covering large online platforms acting as gatekeepers, which now set the rules of the game for their users and their competitors. The initiative should ensure that those platforms behave fairly and can be challenged by new entrants and existing competitors, so that consumers have the widest choice and the Single Market remains competitive and open to innovations.
Those aims mean that the DSA touches on several of the most contentious issues in the online world, such as the introduction of mandatory pan-European rules for tackling online hate speech and disinformation, and efforts to control platforms that are “gatekeepers” — basically US companies like Google and Facebook. In other words, the DSA is going to be important, and not just for the EU. One of the key players in the drafting of the DSA is the European Parliament. The good news is that in a series of votes MEPs have made clear that they want protection for key human rights to be an integral part of the new law.
The votes concerned reports from three of the Parliament’s specialist committees: those for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, Legal Affairs, and Civil Liberties (pdf). The three reports are couched in a rather impenetrable EU-speak; fortunately, the European Parliament has put out a press release on the votes that provides a more comprehensible summary of the three reports. The European Parliament is quite open about what the EU hopes to achieve with the DSA: “With the upcoming package, the European Union aims to shape the digital economy at EU level as well as setting the standards for the rest of the world, as it did with data protection.” One of the priorities of the DSA is tackling illegal content online. On this, MEPs say:
A binding “notice-and-action” mechanism must be set up so that users can notify online intermediaries about potentially illegal online content or activities. This would help online intermediaries to react quickly and be more transparent regarding the actions they have taken on potentially illegal content. Users should be able to seek redress through a national dispute settlement body.
The European Parliament wants a distinction made between illegal content and harmful content, with a legal liability only for the former. MEPs say that there should be no general monitoring of users, and that platforms should not use upload filters for controlling harmful or illegal content: “The final decision on whether content is legal or not should instead be taken by an independent judiciary and not by private undertakings”. It’s hard to square that with the awful Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive, which inevitably requires precisely this kind of upload filter to block allegedly infringing content. MEPs say that harmful content should be dealt with through “enhanced transparency obligations and by helping citizens to acquire media and digital literacy regarding the dissemination of such content.” According to the European Parliament, another priority of the DSA should be enhancing consumer protection and user safety:
Platforms and online intermediation services will need to get better at detecting and taking down false claims and tackling rogue traders, e.g. those selling false medical equipment or dangerous products online, as happened during the COVID-19 outbreak.
MEPs also call for a new “Know Your Business Customer” principle to be introduced, requiring platforms to check and stop fraudulent companies using their services to sell their illegal and unsafe products and content.
More controversial is a call for rules to prevent — not merely remedy — what MEPs called “market failures by big platforms”. The stated aim is to open up markets to new entrants. Some of the most striking ideas to emerge from the reports are: to allow online users to opt out of content curation, to be informed if a service is enabled by AI, and to ban microtargeted advertising:
Targeted advertising must be regulated more strictly in favour of less intrusive, contextualised forms of advertising that require less data and do not depend on previous user interaction with content. MEPs also call on the Commission to further assess options for regulating targeted advertising, including a phase-out leading to a ban.
As Techdirt has noted, such targeted advertising doesn’t really seem to bring much in the way of benefit to advertisers, but certainly causes people to be tracked relentlessly, and huge amounts of personal information to be gathered. Getting rid of it in the EU could encourage companies to re-think their advertising strategies globally, just as the GDPR has had a big knock-on effect on data protection everywhere. That would be welcome, as would a move to enshrine in the DSA a right to use digital services anonymously “whenever possible”. Adding a right to strong encryption without backdoors would be even better: at the moment, one report simply “Stresses the importance to apply effective end-to-end encryption to data”.
Two of the reports approved by the European Parliament are what are known as “legislative initiatives” (PDF). Although not binding on the European Commission, such initiatives require a much fuller response if any of the proposed ideas are rejected. This gives the European Parliament’s ideas more chance of making it into the final text of the DSA. Against that, some of the most powerful companies in the world will be deeply affected by the EU’s new law, which guarantees years of fierce lobbying and dirty tricks, as the dispiriting experience of the Copyright Directive demonstrated.
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