The campaign has been conceptualised and executed by Mixed Route Juice.Edible oil brand, Dhara has re-launched the tune Dhara Dhara Shuddh Dhara, that takes the audience back to the glorious days of past. Back in the early 90s this tune had kick-started the Anokhi Shuruat of a dynamic journey for the edible oil brand.

Dinesh Agrawal, business head Dhara, Mother Dairy, said, Dhara has been deep rooted in the Indian value system since 1988. This phase of lockdown has taken us back in time when people enjoyed even the smaller joys of day to day life. As we spend time with family and travel back the memory lane, we want our consumers to also travel back and relive those moments with us on an emotional journey. Dhara tune has ruled our hearts then and continues to rule now and forever. With this campaign we want to hold our consumers in an emotional bond and stir nostalgia with the melody of the ad.

Amrita Sharma, creative head, Mixed Route Juice, said, Indian Ocean brings back to ones mind space the memories from a golden era, where bonds amongst people were stronger. The current situation too has brought an all new realisation that has given family time more precedence over the rest of the things. With this campaign, we wanted to bring back the same goodness that once a prime part of everyones life. The connect of the band with what we wanted to do for the brand was perfect.

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Dhara brings back memories from the yesteryears - ETBrandEquity.com

Don Farber is a photographer deeply influenced by his understanding of Buddhist practice. In March, Throckmorton Fine Art opened a show of his Buddhist pictures in New York and Don was heading there to be part of it when his plans were disrupted by Covid 19. The show stayed up but few got to see it and thats a shame because these are pictures worth seeing. The good news is you can view them here today and also learn something of how they came to be in this interview.

Hi Don, Lets start here. How did you start taking pictures?

When I was a kid, I had a few Brownie cameras and a Polaroid camera, too, but my main connection to photography then was spending hours poring over the great photography magazines including Life, Look, Vogue, and National Geographic and the books, The Family of Man and the 1950s Year annuals of picture history. My parents were both artists and graphic designers and we lived in Laurel Canyon. I used to ride the school bus which would stop at a corner where there was a wall with the words LET UNDERSTANDING GUIDE hand painted across it. Those words were seared in my mind. This was mainly a community of artists, musicians, and all sorts of creative, left-leaning people kind of a utopia.

The Vietnam War was raging and there was no way I was going to fight in that war. I had a friend who told me that he was going to Australia and that if you registered for the draft before your 18th birthday outside of the Western Hemisphere, you wouldnt be drafted. So, I planned to do this by going to Europe and registering for the draft in England.

In the summer of 1968 when I was 16, I took a class with photographer Seymour Rosen who brought us to see an exhibition of Dorothea Langes photography at LACMA. I was so inspired by her work that I decided right then to become a photographer. I flew to Europe and hitch-hiked around with my backpack, guitar, and cameras photographing the beauty I found myself in. I was a young hippie and I was introduced to Yoga philosophy and vegetarianism by some Western yogis I met in the south of France. I always wanted to see a bull fight, and while photographing one in Madrid, very high on weed, I witnessed a bull being killed by a matador seeing it through the magnification of a telephoto lens. This was a major catalyst for me to become a vegetarian (Ive been a vegetarian ever since).

In my senior year at Hollywood High School, I got into a work-study program to apprentice with Seymour and I worked with him every day after school to learn camera and darkroom technique. He inspired me to know the work of many great photographers and I began collecting photography books starting with the work of Henry Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, and Edward Westin.

When I was 17 and had just graduated high school, I returned to Europe to avoid the draft and study at Manchester College of Art and Design. At the school, I was introduced to the photography of many European photographers less known in America and I received a solid technical understanding of photography, plus I got a lot of support to explore photography artistically.

After about ten months, I was too homesick to stay any longer, so I returned to LA. I would take my chance with the draft with the hope that I could keep a student deferment or get out of the draft through the lottery. It was the summer of 1970. My mother designed a calendar datebook for the anti-war group, Another Mother for Peace. I volunteered to do the photography for the datebook by photographing mothers and their children around Los Angeles. Then in the fall, I began studying as a photography major at the San Francisco Art Institute. Among the teachers I studied with was Richard Conrat who had been Dorothea Langes assistant, John Collier, Jr. who was Langes colleague as a photographer in the Farm Security Administration, and the historian of photography, Margery Mann. One day, I had a giant sigh of relief when I received news that I wouldnt be drafted to fight in Vietnam because I had gotten a high lottery number.

For my last year at the Art Institute, I did an independent studies project, spending 9 months photographing organic farming in North San Diego County, where I lived and worked on a communal farm. A woman I met on the farm kind of woke me up, basically saying theres more to life than being cool. Theres the spiritual life for you to discover. Someone else I met on the farm introduced me to the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood and I began attending talks and services there. While I had been listening to Alan Watts on the radio and read some of his books on Zen, going to the Vedanta temple in 1973 was my first direct experience with Eastern spiritual practices. I would listen to the talks given by the swamis and when they finished, they would chant, with their eyes closed, shanti, shanti, shanti, peace, peace, peace. As they did this, I could clearly see their auras radiating out around them, which blew me away. I moved back to LA and got a job as a staff photographer for public relations at Santa Monica Hospital. It was the beginning of my career as a freelance professional photographer.

During the 70s, I was also photographing demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the Anti-Nuclear movement of the late 70s. I became active with a group called the Alliance for Survival, designing their logo and photographing demonstrations and concerts we organized at the Hollywood Bowl. I also volunteered by doing graphic design and photography for political campaigns by Democratic candidates. While I believed and still do believe that these movements are critically important, I also found that more than a few of the people I worked with in these movements seemed to be afflicted by emotional problems and I began to think, if we are going to build lasting peace in society, we need to address the psychological and spiritual conditions of society. In the tradition of documentary photographers who were committed to making social change through photography, including those who photographed wars, famines, and all the ills humanity faces, I wanted to focus on spirituality as a path towards lasting peace.

As an extension of the Hippie movement, something of a spiritual renaissance blossomed in the 70s as people shifted from psychedelics to meditation. Seminars of the human potential movement were booming. I found great benefit from some of these seminars and attending talks given by teachers from the East including Krishnamurti, Swami Satchidananda, Swami Muktananda, and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. My first project to photograph spiritual life was documenting the rehearsals and performance of the Cosmic Mass, which was directed by the Sufi master Pir Vilayat Khan. People representing many faiths came together recognizing the underlying unity of the worlds religions.

In 1975, I met the Vietnamese Zen master Dr. Thich Thien-An, who had founded the International Buddhist Meditation Center in LA near downtown Los Angeles. He told me that when the Vietnamese refugees arrived in California after the Fall of Saigon, he met them at Camp Pendleton and brought many of them to stay at the meditation center. Soon after, he bought an old apartment building to serve as the first Vietnamese Buddhist temple in North America. Then in 1977, I had an assignment from a learning resource center to produce educational materials for the Vietnamese refugee children, so I met with Dr. Thien-An and asked him if I could photograph at the temple for this project and he welcomed me.

When I entered the courtyard of the temple, I saw an old Vietnamese barber giving haircuts, children in uniforms playing, and upstairs, elders, monks and nuns were chanting prayers and prostrating. It was about 1 years since the war ended and it was as if a small village from Vietnam had been transplanted or airlifted into LA intact. I was so moved, especially by the elderly women who welcomed me there that I decided that day to make a book about life at the temple. I became a disciple of Dr. Thien-An and I decided that Buddhism would be my path. I would go every Sunday for ten years to photograph, participate in the religious practices, and interview members of the temple. It was also a chance for me to heal from all the years of sadness I felt for the senseless death and destruction of the Vietnam War. This is where I developed my understanding of how to serve as a photographer in a Buddhist community. I learned to work as unobtrusively as possible and stay mindful of the sacredness of the moment while looking through the camera and carefully exposing the film.

How did you get into photographing Buddhist life internationally?

It started with photographing Buddhist life in Los Angeles. Dr. Thien-An invited Buddhist teachers from many Buddhist traditions to give teachings at the International Buddhist Meditation Center. I photographed many of the teachers who came there including the 16th Karmapa and His Holiness the Dalai Lama during his first visit to the US. Also, in those years going to the Vietnamese temple, I was photographing other Buddhist traditions including at Tibetan, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai temples. After Dr. Thien-An passed away in 1980, I spent a few years practicing and photographing at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, which was founded by the Japanese Zen master Maezumi Roshi.

In the mid-eighties, I became a student of Dr. Thien-Ans best friend, the Tibetan master Ven. Geshe Gyaltsen who had a Buddhist center in LA. I realized that the Tibetan Buddhist way of life was in great danger since China had destroyed many of the monasteries in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution and many of the Buddhist masters who had not fled Tibet were imprisoned. I decided it was critical to photograph the last of the great Tibetan Buddhist masters who had received their training in the old Tibet, so I began making portraits of these masters when they came to Los Angeles to give teachings.

In 1988, after my book, Taking Refuge in LA: Life in a Vietnamese Buddhist Temple was published and I had made two trips to Asia, I decided to move from photographing Buddhist life in microcosm in LA to photographing Buddhist life in macrocosm with the goal to photograph Buddhist life in all the traditionally Buddhist countries in Asia as well as Buddhism in the West. I took a leap of faith and gave up much of my freelance photography business and started traveling.

I had photographed the great Tibetan Buddhist master, Kalu Rinpoche, when he came to the US in 1988 and the following year, I went to India to photograph the last ten days of his 49-day funeral. Right after that, I rushed back to LA to photograph the Dalai Lama. Geshe Gyaltsen had invited the Dalai Lama to give the Kalachakra teachings in Santa Monica over a period of two weeks and he allowed me to serve as the official photographer.

After that, I began living in Japan part time. My teacher, Dr. Thien-An, had received a Ph.D in Buddhist studies in Japan, so through his friends who were fellow Buddhist priests in Tokyo, I was able to connect with people and organizations in Japan who believed in the work I was doing and they sponsored me. Tokyo became my base and from there, I would travel to photograph in many Buddhist countries.

In 1997, I received a Fulbright Scholarship to spend a year photographing and researching Tibetan Buddhist life in India and Nepal. With my wife Yeshi who is Tibetan and our daughter Palmo who was then two years old, we went to live in my wifes village, the Tibetan refugee settlement of Bir in Himachal Pradesh. I traveled to many parts of India, as well as Nepal, to carry out the work. Ive concentrated my photography mainly on Tibetan Buddhist life since then, including making portraits of more than 100 Tibetan Buddhist masters and my photography of the Dalai Lama spans nearly 40 years.

What made you want to focus on photographing Buddhist life?

I found great benefit from my experiences with Sufism, Taoism, Vedanta, and really from many of the worlds religions, including Judaism, which I was born into. I grew up in a secular Jewish family, but my parents were atheists, so I had little contact with my religion except from family Passover dinners at the home of my mothers cousin and her husband who were Holocaust survivors, which was deeply meaningful and precious. I came into life with a clean slate where I could freely find my own spiritual path. I mentioned the wall in Laurel Canyon with the words, Let Understanding Guide. As I journeyed through the various spiritual paths, somehow, I connected with Buddhism and its emphasis on direct experience. The Buddha taught not to blindly accept his teachings, but to check them out oneself through meditation and contemplation and applying the teachings in ones own life and seeing if its true or not. Then we have true understanding. Actually, I feel very connected with Sufism and its broad universal view embracing many faiths, but Ive specialized in Buddhism. Swami Muktananda said, choose one faith as though its like being on a magic carpet and I chose Buddhism. I gravitate toward Buddhist life because I find it endlessly inspiring to be a part of and I believe this way of life, which emphasizes loving-kindness, compassion, wisdom, and non-violence, can have a critical role to play in the survival of the planet.

Written by Andy Romanoff

Don Farber http://www.buddhistphotos.com

Throckmorton Fine Art https://dfarber.wixsite.com/throckmorton

Andy Romanoff words https://andyromanoff.zenfolio.com/

Andy Romanoff Pictures https://andyromanoff.zenfolio.com/

Go here to see the original:
Don Farber, Visions of Buddhist Life by Andy Romanoff - The Eye of Photography

My friend Susy Powlesland, who has died aged 90, was a radical educationist. With her husband, John, she set up the alternative Kirkdale school in south London in the mid 1960s. The school adhered to principles of self-sufficiency, equality and creative learning, focusing on the particular interests of the individual child. It ran for over a decade and created a community that still exists today.

Susy was an only child born to Jewish parents, Emilie (nee Preis) and Felix Michlowitz, in Vienna, where her father ran a watchmaking and jewellery business. When she was nine the family managed to get on the last train out of Austria before the border was sealed at the approach of the second world war. They were billeted initially in London but were driven out by the blitz, and taken in by a woman in Reading, where Susy never felt fully at home.

She attended local schools, and after leaving Kendrick girls grammar school at 16 trained as a nursery nurse in Reading, then was accepted for teacher training at the residential Gypsy Hill Training College, in Kingston, Surrey. She taught at primary schools in Stratford, east London, and in Leicestershire. She met John Powlesland when they worked together at Forest School camps. They married in 1954 and later settled in London.

Susy was keenly attuned to racial and religious intolerance, and had a passion in particular for the underdog and outsider. In his 2007 book The Islamist, Ed Husain describes a terrifying incident when a group of National Front thugs threatened him and other Muslim school children in a local playground. Susy and the other teachers raced to the side of the children and roared at the shaven-headed bigots.

Susy lived in Tower Hamlets for more than 40 years. During her headship at Sir William Burrough school (1980-95) she had a huge impact on the children and families. She went out of her way to support newly arrived Bangladeshi children, especially those without immediate family. In the 1980s, she learnt some Sylheti and travelled to Bangladesh to learn more about the cultural background of her pupils.

In 1984 she was the driving force behind the establishment of the Limehouse Housing Project, whose chief aim was to improve the lives of black and minority ethnic communities through the provision of good quality housing. In 2003 she co-founded a new local charity called the Globe Community Project, which aims to provide activities for young and old residents from diverse communities. She was appointed MBE in 2007 for services to BAME people in east London.

After retirement, she became interested in meditation and Buddhism and was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2003, taking the name Shraddhapuspa (Flower of Faith). She brought her dedication to children and families into her Buddhist life and remained active in her charity roles and her Buddhist teaching commitments until the final weeks of her life.

John died in 1977. Susy is survived by their children, Stephen, Helen, Frank and Ayen, and grandchildren, Zak, Jasmin, Zain and Zachran.

See the rest here:
Susy Powlesland obituary - The Guardian

In the Himalayas, where the ontology of water is not always premised on the creations of boundaries between nature and culture, the condition of water, whether abundant or scarce, has key implications for cultural life.

What causes water scarcity when water is understood on a paradigm that does not separate nature and culture? When water is seen not only as a substance, but as an element that binds the realms of the social and the ecological in principles of reciprocity?

In the Himalayas, where the ontology of water is not always premised on the creation of boundaries between nature and culture, an approach typical of the scientific rationality, the condition of water, whether abundant or scarce, has key implications for cultural life. Water is often conceived by local populations of the Himalayas as being part of a network of reciprocity and produced through ethical actions. Its materiality, that is, waters properties and qualities, is seen as a manifestation of how people are acting in the world according to a locally-defined set of moral values. As per these values, humans have a moral responsibility to care for the animals, the land, and divine beings.

Today, water stress is increasingly putting pressure on farmers and herders of the Himalayas. Snowfall and glacial melt, two crucial sources of irrigation water, have decreased, forcing some farmers to leave parts of their land uncultivated. These changes are taking place amid intensified production activities by different states in the Himalayas, from the building of roads, the development of hydro projects, heavy militarization, state management of natural resources in minority areas, and the promotion of tourist activities. While these changes bring with them a lot of anticipation and speculation about how the region will be transformed, they are also seen by some as having implications for the production of water as they do not hold the promise of preserving values with which communities have long identified.

In a recent study, Karine Gagn of the University of Guelph reviewed empirical studies that illuminate the realm of beliefs and practices linked to water in the Buddhist Himalayas, a notion that refers both to a geography, and to the perspectives that are informed by beliefs that can be associated with Tibetan Buddhism. While this illustrates how water is seen as being made through ethical actions in the Himalayas, it also offers insights on the perceived implications that developments currently taking place in the region have on the state of water. This review contributes to narratives about the Anthropocene, the era in which human activity impacts the planet. The Anthropocene is often conceived in terms of the major ecological crisis it signals. But as scholars have argued, the Anthropocene is not just an epoch characterized by the acceleration of the loss of nature, but also the loss of culture.

These reflections have much resonance with how people experience changes related to climate change in the Himalayas, which are often interpreted along registers of loss. While farmers and herders of the Himalayas understand the changes brought about by climate change through the same observations as those conducted by science for instance, receding glaciers they see these phenomena as having a moral origin. For in the Buddhist Himalayas, the secular, the sacred, and the moral intermingle in peoples interpretation of the world. Accordingly, changes to water (such as reduced snowfall, melting glaciers, drying water sources) brought about by climate change have a specific local cultural resonance. Here, climate change is not something that transcends the local scene, but rather, is a phenomenon for which local people have a direct responsibility. It is seen as a consequence of the erosion of human values and dispositions toward nonhuman others, or changing morals defined by increasingly prevalent anthropocentric values.

Considering water as the materiality of ethics means asking how the qualities of water resonate for people in specific localities, at a specific moment in time. To do so, the review focuses on three perspectives of the production of water: how water is produced as people interact with a sacred geography, how snowy peaks are produced as objects of morality through affective attachment and encounters, and how water is produced as part of multi-species assemblages, a process that has implications for the current changes in the climate, the weather, and the environment. Together, these three perspectives shed light on some of the specificities of the Anthropocene in the Himalayas. This is important because as a planetary narrative, the Anthropocene can obscure the fact that it has specific local realities.

Written by: Karine Gagn, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Guelph

Reference: Karine Gagn , The materiality of ethics: Perspectives on water and reciprocity in a Himalayan Anthropocene. WIREs Water (2020). DOI: 10.1002/wat2.1444

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Water, reciprocity, and the anthropocene in the Himalayas - Advanced Science News

A recent poll shows Trump is in the lead in 15 key states. Let's investigate.

Hannity reports Joe in Trouble: Trump Beating Biden in 15 Battleground States

A shocking new poll spells big trouble for Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden; showing President Trump beating Biden in 15 battleground states that will likely decide the 2020 election.

583 People Surveyed

The poll was conducted by SSRS for CNN.

The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS May 7-10 among a random national sample of 1,112 adults reached on landlines or cellphones by a live interviewer, including 1,001 registered voters and 583 voters in battleground states, defined as the 15 states decided by 8 points or less in 2016 -- Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Survey Math

583 people / 15 states = 38.9 people per battleground state.

Surveying less that 40 people per state then averaging them together is of course ridiculous.

So, let's dive further into individual state polls.

Latest State Polls

Those are not in date order. Rather, they are in the order in which FiveThirtyEight presented them.

The SSRS poll is clearly ridiculous, but that is what happens when you poll an average 39 people for 15 states then lump everything together.

Shocker

If you are looking for a shocker, look no further than Georgia.

Georgia was not supposed to even be in play for Biden, yet the more recent of the two polls has Biden in the lead.

Not a Shocker

Hannity all of a sudden believes a poll sponsored by CNN.

Mish

Continued here:

Trump in the Lead in 15 Battleground States? Don't Believe It - TheStreet

If, like MDJ editor Jon Gillooly, you want to visit your fragile grandmother, but dont want to infect her with plague, consider taking a spin by Kennesaw State Universitys main campus as he recently did to be tested for the coronavirus.

Jon drove over just before lunchtime on Wednesday, May 13.

If you have parked there over the years as he has to hear various campus speakers from Ann Coulter to Angela Davis, you may find it disorienting to see Georgia National Guardsmen in uniform and facemasks waving you in instead of students with backpacks walking this way and that.

The first guardsman instructs you to roll up your window and drive into the deck. Another asks for your license.

Do you have an appointment? You do not, but all is well. You simply call a number provided and tell the operator your information.

Next, youre advised to drive ahead to the testing station set up on the ground floor of the deck, a station with tables stacked with various testing paraphernalia. The masked nurses are washing their hands as a guardsman approaches your car door and tells you to put the car into park. This will prove important in a bit. A nurse, masked and wearing a face shield, greets you at your drivers side window and warns not to move your head as she unwraps a long strip of material.

Yes, she nods, at which point she inserts the strip into your left nostril, pushing it so deep inside your head its a good thing your car is in park.

Count to 10, she orders, but really, when youre impaled like this, all you can do is pray for it to be over.

Pulling out the first strip without any noticeable mercy, she inserts a second one, this time into the right nostril, driving it so far back it meets your earliest childhood memories.

For some reason you had thought the test would involve something easy, like licking a postage stamp. Wrong.

Eventually, though, a friendly guardsman appears to say its all over, and to call this number after 48 to 72 hours for the results.

You see him mouthing the words, not understanding a thing he said.

48 to 72 hours, he repeats.

He could be speaking in tongues as far as youre concerned.

He patiently repeats himself a third time, at which point you get the message and thank him for his service before driving out of the deck, never to return. All told, less than half an hour from entrance to exit.

Jons results came the following Monday, a little long to wait, in his opinion, but a relief that he could safely visit his grandmother, who is in her nineties.

Would he do it again, he is asked, now knowing what to expect?

Let's just say Grandma, sainted though she is, will be getting phone calls rather than in-person visits for the next good while.

OPENING UP: In an interview published by Education Dive, former Cobb Schools Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, now superintendent of the Dallas (Texas) Independent School District, was asked what advice he has for superintendents making decisions to reopen school. Hinojosa, who preceded Chris Ragsdale as Cobb super, answered the question this way:

Dr. Michael Hinojosa Staff/file

As you make these big, important decisions that a lot of people are depending on you for, you have to realize that you're at a different stage than everybody else. First, people are angry, then they're in denial, then they grieve, and then they accept.

So what happens is when you're making these decisions, you're probably already at acceptance.

But a lot of people are at different stages they're just now getting angry, they're just now going into denial. So you've got to take that into consideration.

No matter what you do, you're going to get criticized. So you need to think about what's in the best interest of your students, your families, your staff, your community. Realize you're going to take some heat. That's the cost of doing business when you're the CEO of a public entity like this. But you've got to be able to empathize that people are in different stages of [processing].

And then you can't be wishy-washy. Normally, you can be overturned by the school board and by the mayor. But at some point, people are looking to you for leadership. And that's the penalty of leadership: You sometimes have to make a tough call when you're out there by yourself.

But you have a lot more information than everybody else has as they're starting to process everything that's about to happen to them.

REPORT CARDS: The Atlanta Coalition for Educational Equity, a group of educators, administrators, parents, students and community leaders, who advocate for policies and practices that expand educational opportunities for metro Atlanta students, have given some of Cobbs school board candidates their report cards.

The group, created in September, has so far weighed in on Democratic Post 5 candidates Dr. Julia Hurtado and Tammy Andress, as well as Democratic Post 1 candidate Vickie Benson.

The boards Post 1 seat is held by Randy Scamihorn, and the Post 5 seat is held by senior board member and Vice Chair David Banks.

The ACEE flunked Banks and one of his Republican challengers, Matt Harper, for not answering a questionnaire sent to all candidates. Though a post on the groups Facebook page shows Republican Post 5 candidate Shelley O'Malley, Post 1 incumbent Scamihorn and Post 7 candidate and school board Chairman Brad Wheeler did not respond to the questionnaire, they have not yet been given a report card.

Democratic Post 7 candidate Lindsay Terrebonne is said to have answered but has also not yet received a grade.

The highest-rated candidate so far has been Benson, who the group gave an A.

The groups questionnaire includes four questions: 1. Will you fully commit to working with other board members to reopen board public comment? 2. Will you commit to supporting the creation and funding of a Chief Equity Officer role who will conduct an equity audit of Cobb County Schools? 3. Do you commit to supporting policy solutions that arise from the equity audit? 4. Will you commit to prioritizing the establishment of a Community and Family Engagement Office to serve as a liaison for families, community partners and school councils?

Candidates respond with a yes or no.

In Bensons case, every answer was yes, and from the candidates survey answers, the ACEE says it has concluded she has a strong commitment to equity, backed by a plan that is well thought-out.

The group says Benson advocates for the implementation of data-driven policy solutions and offers ideas about engagement activities outside of currently existing structures (i.e. PTA, school council, etc.).

Andress, meanwhile, has received a B. All four answers were yes. The ACEE says Andresss responses show she is committed to equity among students and supports a nonpartisan approach to governance. The group also says Andress believes in the need for better communication between the school board and the community.

Hurtado received a B-, placing her just below Andress. All four answers were yes. The ACEE says Hurtado is strong on issues of equity and believes an chief equity officer role should be a priority in the budget but lacks specifics on a plan for achieving equity.

SPEAKER CIRCUIT: The Cobb Chamber of Commerce is hosting a business recovery webinar on the legal guidance for reopening. The event is from 11 a.m. to noon on Wednesday. The panel includes attorneys Neera Bahl, Dave Cole, Scott Gregory, Christina Moore, Justin ODell and Chamber Chairman John Loud.

GALA CANCELED: The Center for Family Resources says it will not reschedule its postponed annual gala in 2020, opting to hold the next one in 2021. The CFR had to cancel its Diamonds in the Garden Anniversary Gala in March due to the pandemic.

The decision to reschedule the event will allow CFR staff and supporters to focus on providing emergency assistance to those financially impacted by the pandemic. The CFR staff are busy working through support requests from hundreds of families in need. More than 1,000 calls have been received since March from those impacted by COVID-19, the center reports.

See more here:

AROUND TOWN: On being tested for COVID-19 at Kennesaw State University - MDJOnline.com

Former presidential candidate Julin Castro has a convincing theory about why Everyone Hates Ted Cruz.

In Episode 11 of The New Abnormal, The Daily Beasts podcast for a world gone off the rails, Castro talks to co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson about Trumps chances to take Texas in 2020 (not great!), Joe Bidens you aint black comment (also not great!), and sycophantic fellow Texan Ted Cruz (even worse!). Remember when Trump insulted Sen. Cruzs family members? Yeah, everyone does.

If somebody goes to your face and insults your wife and your father and then you just go over like a dog, people start to think that youre totally insincere, Castro says.

Plus, Castro explains how Latinos are the key to getting Trump out of office and why he thinks Biden has a shot at winning over Democrats and independents alike: They want sanity back.

Then! Rick and Molly discuss Trumps amazing workout regimen, the chlamydia vs. COVID smackdown in the Ozarks, and golfs new turn as the dumbest of MAGA signifiers.

Theres this idea that because youve been locked up for a certain period of time with your family and your pets, that the whole thing is over and its very Trumpy. This idea of were good, were back to work, everythings on. Its all done.

And of course, the two discuss Trump tweeting a conspiracy theory about Joe Scarborough, aka, turning something absurd into a reality for the stupid.

Plus! Welcome to the resistance, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Ann Coulter! (J/K, youre both awful racists.)

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

Read more from the original source:

Julin Castro on Why Everyone Hates Ted Cruz - The Daily Beast

The answer is yes but it needs to toughen up.

At heart, Australian multiculturalism is a post-modern phenomenon. It is the ultimate manifestation of global psychology and the death of God. Only in a world in which secularism dominates can such a society exist.

That is, AM is a figment of enlightenment thinking. It is a pure social expression of hundreds of years of rationalist doctrine culminating in a liberal state in which all faiths and identities can co-exist peacefully.

The problem is, it now faces a pre-enlightenment system launching a sustained assault to control it. The Chinese Communist Party is pre-modern and fascist, preaching a rubric of total social control, obedience to a god-like emperor, equipped with cults of personality, technology surveillance and terror.

It is unabashedly pre-enlightenment.

Victoria is the test case today for this clash of post- and pre-modern. It is the most progressive, read post-modern, state in Australia. It has a leader steeped in this value-system such that he is happy to court all comers, via The Australian:

Meet Jean Dong. She is the 33-year-old Chinese-Australian businesswoman who by her own description is on a global journey of influence.

A professionally filmed and edited YouTube biography provides an extraordinary insight into the life of the young woman who is emerging as a key player in the unfolding political row over Victorian Premier Daniel Andrewss controversial decision to sign up to Chinas Belt and Road Initiative.

In the short promotional film, Ms Dong claims to have played key roles in bringing about the China-Australia free-trade agreement, and Victorias Belt and Road Initiative deal, telling the story of her journey from student journalist in Beijing, to rubbing shoulders with Australian prime ministers and premiers and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Even his own party cant hold a candle to the embrace, also at The Australian:

Anthony Albanese says Australia will not join Chinas Belt and Road Initiative if he wins the next election, after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was criticised for his governments agreement with the Asian superpower.

It was the first time the Opposition Leader has confirmed a future Labor government under his leadership would not support Chinas controversial global infrastructure and trade strategy.

When pressed several times if he supported Mr Andrewss BRI deal, Mr Albanese said he never backed it and would not support a similar agreement with China if he became prime minister by 2022.

There is nothing intrinsically pre-modern about Australian Chinese. They have taken to, and contributed to, the Australian multicultural phenomenon as well as, if not better, than many ethnicities.

But the community is also claimed by the pre-modern state from which they come. And they are vulnerable to its manipulations and intimidation, if for no other reason than many still have family trapped within the clutches of the fascist state.

This opens up a difficult and perhaps irreconcilable question for AM. Dan Andrews does not mind exploiting the Australian Chinese community, indeed as a pollie, thats his job, via The Age:

The Victorian Labor Party used the politics of the states controversial Belt and Road agreement with China as an electoral weapon to help the Andrews government win votes in three seats with a high number of Chinese-Australians in its 2018 election victory.

As the Labor government continues to shrug off pressure to walk away from its memorandum of understanding with China, a prominent Australian China-watcher has highlighted how Premier Daniel Andrews and his colleagues used the relationship with China to win votes.

A senior manager with Labors election campaign told The Age on Monday that the agreement, and the controversy it sparked, helped Labor gain the winning edge in three eastern suburbs seats with high numbers of voters of Chinese descent.

Mr Andrews signed the first Belt and Road MOU in October 2018, just a month before the first-term Labor government faced voters at the election.

In doing so, Victoria became part of the Chinese governments $1 trillion global infrastructure investment program that its critics say is an attempt by the Communist nation to exert economic and strategic influence around the world.

News of the deal sparked a storm of criticism from the Coalition at state and federal levels, with Victorian Liberals demanding to see what was in the text signed by the Premier. Mr Andrews eventually bowed to pressure and published the document.

A senior Labor operative said the signing of the agreement itself was not a vote driver in the Chinese community but that the the oppositions vitriolic response handed Labor the material for a negative campaign against the Liberals in the seats of Box Hill, Burwood and Mount Waverly.

Deputy campaign director Kosmos Samaras said the ALPs culturally and linguistically diverse campaign unit swung into action, deploying Chinese-language media adverts, videos posted on Facebook and the popular messaging app WeChat, all painting the Liberals as hostile to the Chinese community.

Chinese language phone banks were also used to speak directly to voters, spruiking Labors messages.

And so we find ourselves at a paradox and impasse. Post-modern AM welcomes all. But the pre-modern CCP abuses that very liberalism to undermine itself with the long term result that freedom itself dies. Yet, if we cut off the flow of Chinese immigrants, the principle upon which AM is based is debased.

Moreover, the Chinese Australian community itself requires protection from this menace.

The obvious and brute answer is to import no more ethnic Chinese. But that is a hypocritical outcome that fundamentally alters the compact of AM: that if you come to Australia then you will be an Australian welcomed to practice whatever notion of divinity or truth that you choose to believe in.

A better solution is to cut all immigration. Theres no need to go to zero. Halving it will take it back to a pace that bulwarks our society against CCP encroachments.

We are not helpless in this fight. We can and are pushing back to protect our marvelous post-modern system. But it needs to be protected from a pre-modern state that would impose its will upon the entirety of our little Nirvana.

He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.

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Can multiculturalism survive the new Cold War? - MacroBusiness

Of all the conspiracy theories to spiral out of control with baseless rumors to support its existence, the Illuminati has to be at the top of the list. Prior to some crazy chimera about a devil-worshipping cult and satanic rituals associated with its operations, the Illuminati used to be a very real group and even had some specific ambitious goals. When it seeped into popular culture is still a mystery, but the fact is that it does not exist anymore.

People, however, continue to churn factless stories and live in paranoia passing off anything unconventional as the work of the Illuminati. Then there is the endless claims that Beyonce, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Madonna, even Ariana Grande are a part of it. However, only one of the several unfounded claims about the Illuminati stands true it was a secret society. And influential intellectuals and free-thinkers of the 18th century were a part of it.

In the historical sense of the term, 'Illuminati' referred to the Bavarian Illuminati which was a secret society that was in operation for only a decade, between 1776 and 1785. It was founded by Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt. He founded it as the 'Order of the Illuminati' and strongly believed in Enlightenment ideals. The organization opposed the Roman Catholic Church's influence on philosophy and science and sought to break religious control over society as well as the abuse of power by the state by enabling a space for critique, debate and promoting freedom of speech.

Inspired by the Freemasons and French Enlightenment, it also encouraged education for women and equality among all, and also aimed to 'enlighten' people tp free them from superstitious beliefs and prejudices. Initially, it began with six members after Weishaupt hand-picked five of his most talented law students and went on to expand from there. The members set out to disseminate Weishaupt's radical teachings and in its 10 years of existence, housed 2,000 members throughout Eastern Europe.

In retrospect, it is understandable why the conspiracies that have surfaced over the years point at the Illuminati being unusual. They had odd rituals, ideals and symbols. The members of the society would use symbols such as that of an owl as an emblem and pseudonyms to avoid being identified by authorities. They also had a very complicated system of hierarchy distributing divided ranks and an initiation ritual, as well.

While they were increasingly paranoid of their identities being discovered, they also went the extra mile to protect other members' secrecy. Their worldview endorsed Enlightenment ideals like rational thought and self-rule, and their motive was based more on revolution than world domination.

The Illuminati had some influential members including many dukes and leaders who with their contacts and power, managed to garner more people's attention and initiated them into the organization. Some Freemasons also became members of the group deepening their prominence.

However, the Illuminati was only mildly successful at being revolutionary before the Bavarian authorities sniffed them out due to their growing numbers and fully put a stop to the society. In 1785, the Duke of Bavaria, Karl Theodore Dalberg, banned all secret society and instilled serious punishments for anyone who became a member which included the death penalty. He went as far as to associate the Illuminati with branches of Freemasonry, which was an illegal organization at the time. The government then began to scour out and eliminate members of the Illuminati, which caused Weishaupt to flee Bavaria, and maintain long-distance contact with leaders of the order or Areopagites through letters.

The government searched the home of one of the Areopagite and seized documents that had more than 200 letters between Weishaupt and Illuminati leaders that detailed all of the orders' secrets. They immediately published the documents and made their information public knowledge.

Conspiracy theories sprang up as soon as the Illuminati was discovered and included accusations of infiltration by the Freemasons and even claims of the French Revolution being the organization's brainchild. In the later years, some Founding Fathers also managed to fuel the interest in the Illuminati in the US. George Washington for that matter, wrote a letter to address the Illuminati threat, saying he believed it had been avoided but nonetheless it only aroused the myth. Thomas Jefferson was also accused of being a member of the Illuminati.

Even so, the Illuminati still lingered in the background of popular culture. However, it made a full-blown comeback in the 1970s when a literary trilogy introduced the 'triangle and the eye' symbol that it holds today. 'The Illuminatus Trilogy', by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, depicted the Illuminati with ironic detachment. This trilogy became a countercultural touchstone, and its intermingling of real research Weishaupt is a character in the books with fantasy helped put the Illuminati back on the radar", writes Phil Edwards for a Vox article.

Then it was featured in popular cultures, like in Dan Brown's best-selling novel 'Angels and Demons', and other subcultures where it is often linked to Satanism, alien myths, and other ideas that were in stark contrast to the real Bavarian Illuminati's beliefs.

But are Jay Z and Kanye West a part of the Illuminati? For years conspiracy theorists have associated the two rappers to be Illuminati but they've both addressed these unfounded rumors before. Jay Z called the gossip revolving around his Illuminati membership "stupid", and Kayne West said it was "ridiculous". But then again, according to conspiracy theorists, that's exactly what a member of the Illuminati would say secret society and all, remember?

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Illuminati: Do Beyonce, Kanye West go to 'satanic cult' that originally was a revolutionary order opposing chu - MEAWW

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Global Vegan Ice Cream Market 2020-2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The vegan ice cream market is poised to grow by USD 601.21 mn during 2020-2024 progressing at a CAGR of 7% during the forecast period. The reports on vegan ice cream market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors.

The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The market is driven by the expanding global vegan population base and health benefits of vegan diet.

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Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

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4. Five Forces Analysis

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6. Customer Landscape

7. Geographic Landscape

8. Vendor Landscape

9. Vendor Analysis

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For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2orwi

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Outlook on the Global Vegan Ice Cream Market to 2024 - Key Drivers, Challenges & Trends - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire