PRIMAL SCREAM THERAPY REDUX

Finnish ex-con opens 'rage room' to repay society

Issued on: 15/09/2021 -

Janne Raninen became embroiled in gangs while growing up in a disadvantaged suburb in Sweden Olivier MORIN AFP

Helsinki (AFP)

A Finnish man who spent two decades behind bars for murder is trying to repay his debt to society by founding a "rage room" -- letting clients vent their anger on household objects with a baseball bat.

Janne Raninen, a 44-year-old convicted of two gang-related murders, opened Helsinki's "Raivoomo" ("rage centre") two months ago using money borrowed from friends, and says he has been "fully booked" ever since.

"I was in prison until six months ago and I thought this kind of room could have also been good for me when I was younger," says Raninen, who became embroiled in gangs while growing up in a disadvantaged suburb in Sweden.

"I thought, when I come out I'm going to start this room and let people let out their anger here instead of doing the stupid things that I did in my youth," he tells AFP.

Raninen also gives regular talks to young people, trying to steer them away from gangs.

The pandemic is by far the main cause of anger but a divorce-themed smash-up room also proves popular 

Olivier MORIN AFP

"It's one of my ways to try and pay back society," he says, adding that the rage room is another -- not only through the taxes he pays but also through the wellbeing it can bring people.

- Smash hit with women -

Rage rooms are fairly common, particularly in the US, and Raninen's new venture has proven a particular smash hit with women letting out post-pandemic frustration.

"I feel fantastic, you just get swept along with it," says Sanna Sulin, who has come to celebrate her 50th birthday, letting rip on old printers, a vacuum cleaner and crockery, to a soundtrack of her favourite music.

I feel fantastic, you just get swept along with it,' says Sanna Sulin

 Olivier MORIN AFP

"My friend brought me here to try it and at first I refused, I'm more into repairing things," she tells AFP standing among fragments of metal, plastic and glass.

"We women are used to having to behave properly, having to control ourselves," she says.

Eighty percent of the customers are women aged 25 to 45, owner Raninen noted.

Despite Finland's reputation as a bastion of gender equality, Raninen agrees that "women's aggression is taboo, they're not allowed to let off steam".

The pandemic is by far the main cause of anger but a divorce-themed smash-up room -- painted pink with a suit and wedding dress hanging on the wall -- also proves popular.

'This is the best place for letting out steam and all the anxiety,' says Janne Raninen 

Olivier MORIN AFP

"In the long term it's always better to go and talk to a therapist and work with the issues inside you," he says.

But in the short run, "this is the best place for letting out steam and all the anxiety".

© 2021 AFP

THE PRIMAL SCREAM - Primal Institute

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Primal Therapy is based on the assumption that we are born nothing but ourselves. We are not born neurotic or psychotic. We're just born. Primal Therapy involves the …

How Primal Scream Therapy Has Survived Five Decades of ...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/9bgppa/primal-therapy-arthur-janov

2016-02-22 · How Primal Scream Therapy Has Survived Five Decades of Strangeness and Controversy. Arthur Janov's primal therapy 

Boston mayoral race narrows to Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George, two women of color, for the city's top job

By Gregory Krieg, Veronica Stracqualursi and Ethan Cohen, CNN
Updated Wed September 15, 2021


(CNN)Boston mayoral candidates Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George, both Democratic city councilors, will advance to the November general election, CNN projects, setting up a historic contest that will for the first time in the city's history end with a person of color voted into its highest office.

For two centuries, Boston has elected only White men as mayor. That will change in this fall. Wu took a clear lead once the reporting of the votes in Tuesday's nonpartisan preliminary election sped up overnight. She is Asian American and Essaibi George, who emerged to claim the second slot, is a first-generation American whose father emigrated from Tunisia and whose mother was born in Germany to Polish parents.

Despite their breakthroughs, there will be disappointment among supporters of Acting Mayor Kim Janey and City Councilor Andrea Campbell, who saw in this campaign an opportunity for Boston to elect its first-ever Black mayor. Janey took over the role on a temporary basis after former Mayor Marty Walsh left office earlier this year to join President Joe Biden's administration, but, like Campbell, has been shut out of the general election.

As of Wednesday morning, Wu has a strong lead with more than 33% of the vote, while George follows with about 22%. The winner in November will serve a full, four-year term.

The only man in the upper tier, John Barros, the city's chief of economic development under Walsh, was considered a heavy underdog. He trails well behind the other major candidates.

"It's been an honor to be part of this historic field," Wu told reporters early Wednesday morning. "For the last year, we have seen an incredible conversation all across every neighborhood, across every community, so I am humbled to be part of this moment in Boston and so excited to make sure we keep up the work, keep up the energy of getting out to every single voter, knocking on doors and having the conversations about what's possible in this city."

On Tuesday night, Essaibi George -- before the race had been called but with results shaping up in her favor -- projected confidence as she addressed supporters.
"Bostonians deserve results, real change and real progress," she said, after praising the "sisters in service" who became her campaign rivals. "I will be the teacher and the mother and the mayor to get it done."

In the final stretch of the campaign, Wu, the first woman of color to lead the city council when she took over as its president in 2016, emerged as the clear favorite to finish atop the pack. Campbell, Janey and Essaibi George were bunched together, separated by only a few percentage points, according to a recent Suffolk University and Boston Globe poll.

"The race for second place will not only be determined by undecided voters and the respective get-out-the-vote efforts by the candidates, but also by soft Wu voters who may opt to vote for their second choice instead in order to control the selection of both finalists," Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos wrote with the poll's release.

That survey was conducted before back-to-back debate nights last week, two mostly tame affairs following weeks of intensifying clashes, most notably between Campbell and Janey. Ultimately, though, it appears that Essaibi George benefited most, as she successfully staked out the moderate lane with a more police-friendly platform. Others, like Wu and Campbell, are pushing for deeper structural changes to the department. Essaibi George, meanwhile, won the support of former Boston police commissioner William Gross, the first Black person to hold that job.

Janey, who as a young child took part in the city's school busing program, an initiative designed to integrate Boston schools that was met with fierce backlash in some predominantly White neighborhoods, assumed office in March following Walsh's confirmation to Biden's Cabinet as labor secretary. In April, she announced she would run for a full term.

"To think that we would have a Black mayor in my lifetime, even though we've had a Black president, still kind of felt out of reach," Janey told CNN in April. "That we have one and that it's actually me is kind of mind-blowing."

Turnout tends to be low in preliminary elections, which lent further uncertainty to the race as it entered its final days. Some operatives believed the state's new no-excuse, vote-by-mail option could lead to a slight uptick in the numbers, but early indications from Tuesday night suggest the swell never materialized.

Though Walsh did not endorse in the preliminary, the state's highest-profile Democratic elected official, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, is backing Wu, one of her former students at Harvard Law School. Wu volunteered for Warren's Senate run in 2012 and was first elected to the city council a year later.

"Michelle has always been a fighter -- as one of my students, as a Boston city councilor, and now as a candidate for Mayor," Warren said in a statement announcing her endorsement in January. "She is a tireless advocate for families and communities who feel unseen and unheard."

The Sunrise Movement in Boston is also backing Wu, along with other leading environmental groups and unions, including Teamsters Local 25 and the United Auto Workers Region 9A. But the race for labor support has been largely split. AFSCME Council 93, along with the firefighters union and IBEW Local 2222, all supported Essaibi George, while SEIU Local 888 and 32BJ SEIU endorsed Janey.

Campbell was the choice of the Boston Globe's Editorial Board, which made her case earlier this month.

"She radiates a sense of urgency, a palpable hunger to confront Boston's hardest, most politically fraught challenges -- its uneven schools and a law enforcement system that has lost the trust of too many residents," the board wrote. "That drive, paired with her nuanced thinking about what can make the city more vibrant and equitable, is what distinguishes her from her opponents in this year's mayoral election."

In a close race, Somerville chooses two progressive candidates for mayor

Current City Councilors Will Mbah and Katjana Ballantyne will be on the ballot in November.S

omerville City Councilor at-Large Will Mbah (L) and Ward 7 Somerville City Councilor Katjana Ballantyne (R) will be competing for mayor in Somerville's November election. Handout, Marfione Studio


By Julia Taliesin

September 14, 2021

Like Boston, Somerville also voted in a hotly contested, historically diverse mayor’s race on Tuesday. According to unofficial results, current City Councilors Will Mbah and Katjana Ballantyne will be on the ballot in November.

Somerville had four candidates on the ballot Tuesday: Mbah, Ballantyne, Mary Cassesso, and William “Billy” Tauro. It was a close race between the three progressive, Democratic candidates — Mbah, Ballantyne, and Cassesso — with Tauro lagging behind.

Mbah, an at-large councilor and state environmental analyst, took first place with 30% of the vote. In a statement to Boston.com, he thanked the voters and volunteers, and Ballantyne and Cassesso for running honorable campaigns.

“Only in Somerville, could an immigrant from Cameroon be elected City Councilor and now have the opportunity to make this city a place for all those who dream of a better life,” Mbah said. “I’m incredibly proud of the grassroots campaign we ran, all without taking a dime of developer money. I look forward to using the coming weeks to speak with voters about my progressive vision for Somerville, which will include dramatically expanding our affordable housing, a Green New Deal for Somerville, a commitment to make developers pay their fair share, and making public transit accessible, efficient, and free for everyone.”

Ballantyne thanked Somerville voters in a statement.

“They’ve showed that they want the next mayor to share our progressive values, be an inclusive leader, and have the skills and experience to lead our dynamic city on day one,” she said. “I’m looking forward to earning the support of Somerville voters across the city in November.”

Mbah received 4,498 votes and Ballantyne received 4,162 votes — putting them in the lead and on the November ballot — but Cassesso was not far behind, with 4,083 votes. Tauro received 2,215 votes.

Somerville Elections Commissioner Nicholas Salerno told Boston.com his office counted 12,124 ballots Tuesday, only about 10% of which were early or mail-in ballots. Official results, which include provisional, overseas, and military ballots, as well as a standard recount, will be posted in six to ten days. Salerno said a close race would be considered within 10 votes or less, and the machines are pretty accurate, so he doesn’t expect the results to change much.

Cassesso’s campaign told Boston.com she had not released a statement on the results, but will soon.

Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone told Boston.com he was not surprised by Tuesday’s results, and believes Somerville chose candidates that represent its community values. He noted that Cassesso was a first-time candidate, and praised her for running an excellent campaign.

“There were three highly ethical, progressive, hard working candidates, and I’m not surprised Somerville had a choice among those three well-qualified candidates,” he said. “They should all be commended on a job well done. …I’m proud of the city, there’s no pulling one over the voters of this city, people will come out and vote based on our values, and they voted for those three candidates.”

Will Bunch: 10 years ago, a ragtag army called Occupy Wall Street changed America, for good

2021/9/15
©The Philadelphia Inquirer

Day 13 of Occupy Wall Street begins with a march through the streets of lower Manhattan, at around the time the bell rings on Wall Street on September 29, 2011. - Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/TNS

First, they ignored Occupy Wall Street. On the late-summer morning of Sept. 17, 2011, there were no major news organizations present — not even the hometown New York Times — when a ragtag army of a couple hundred protesters fed up with America’s gross inequality tried to set up camp in the heart of Manhattan’s Financial District and were pushed back by a massive police response to an unknown spot called Zuccotti Park.

Then, they ridiculed it. As the crowds of campers in the park re-dubbed “Freedom Plaza” swelled and protests spread to scores of other U.S. cities and then around the world, the usual suspects in right-wing media rediscovered the canard about “dirty, smelly hippies” to whip up resentment — rather than address the issues that marchers were raising, such as (then) three decades of soaring income inequality, massive student debt, and U.S. military spending.

Then, they fought it. Big-city mayors like New York’s Michael Bloomberg or Philadelphia’s Michael Nutter stopped pretending to respect the free-speech rights of demonstrators and called in militarized police who squirted pepper spray and swung nightsticks to clear out the tent cities, or to kettle and arrest the Occupiers on trumped-up charges.

Today, on the cusp of its 10th anniversary, Occupy Wall Street is winning.

Scores of cities, several states, and even some large corporations have adopted the $15 minimum living wage that had seemed a pipe dream on that September Saturday in 2011 when NYPD officers ringed the “Raging Bull” statue in Lower Manhattan. The student loan crisis — which no one in power was talking about a decade ago, even as the debt load skyrocketed toward its current $1.7 trillion — is finally on the political front burner in Washington. A new president, who was still a cautious, centrist Democrat back when the Occupy protests erupted, has since adopted a progressive agenda — already cutting child poverty in half, as Congress debates a slew of ambitious social programs and funding them by taxes on “the 1 Percent,” a term launched by the 2011 protests.

It’s ironic, because conventional wisdom hardened within the mainstream media by the end of 2011 that Occupy Wall Street and its satellite protests were a briefly electrifying failure — lacking a central mission, riven by disagreements, its protest camps subsumed by the unhoused and others on the margins of a cruel society. Those pundits didn’t see the smoldering embers — the causes discovered and the relationships formed during that brief supernova — that would reignite in a Bernie Sanders presidential campaign that would move Democrats to the left, and in diverse movements like the Fight for 15 or eliminating student debt.

The fascinating thing about the Occupy protests is that no one — including the established stalwarts of the political left — saw them coming. Few people had heard of Adbusters, the radical magazine that announced the protest that summer with an illustration of a ballerina atop the “Raging Bull” statue and the question, “What is our one demand?,” or knew about secret planning meetings that New York activists like the late David Graeber were taking part in.

But timing is everything. Around the world, 2011 was a year of revolutionary upheaval, beginning with the so-called Arab Spring and the massive Tahrir Square uprising that toppled the Egyptian government and became something of a template for Zuccotti Park. Here at home, young people had initially channeled their angst over the Iraq War fiasco and the 2008 financial crisis into the “HOPE”-emblazoned presidential campaign of Barack Obama. But hope was fading two-plus years into his gridlocked presidency.

New Yorker Winnie Wong came out that first morning after seeing a Twitter hashtag for the protest. “We were fresh off the crash and in 2011 we were really starting to see the effects, and it became very clear the divide between middle class families — working people and the rich — was growing wider,” she recalled. “I saw this as a different type of call, because it didn’t specify a single issue.”

Before the summer of 2011, Joanne Stocker-Kelly — from Exton in Philadelphia’s western suburbs, then a 24-year-old student at Cabrini College — had never done anything more political than registering a few of her high school friends to vote. But the shocks of the 2008 crash — learning one day that the Dow had dropped 500 points as she sat through a class — and her mounting student debt, which was even worse for classmates who’d eventually owe as much as $100,000, shook her from the bubble of her suburban upbringing.

“It was this idea that democracy was supposed to be beholden to us, to the people,” Stocker-Kelly told me this week in a phone interview from Ireland, where she lives today. Instead, she only saw “corporate control of the country.” Drawn that September to New York for an event around getting big money out of elections, she ended up joining the Occupy Wall Street protest and camping out in Zuccotti Park for a couple weeks.

Like many of the Occupy participants, Stocker-Kelly was somewhat put off by the cacophonous and contentious daily general assemblies in the park, but found new energy and passion in the working groups around an array of issues that ranged from feminism to limiting campaign contributions to legalizing marijuana. While the Occupy movement was national news through the fall of 2011, the combo of internal dissension and a well-coordinated, heavy-handed police crackdown — here in Philadelphia, more than 50 people busted by cops were acquitted and settled an unlawful arrest lawsuit with the city for $200,000 — mostly ended the protests by that Thanksgiving.

Critics who called Occupy a failure — noting it never agreed on that “one demand” as called for in the Adbusters meme — missed the offshoots and alliances that continued working to re-energize a once moribund progressive movement in the U.S. For example, a then-31-year-old progressive filmmaker from Manhattan named Astra Taylor, who also joined the Occupy Wall Street protest that first September Saturday, was drawn to the working group around debt, which organized a nationwide protest that fall as outstanding student loans passed the $1 trillion mark. From that sprung the Debt Collective, an ongoing campaign that has helped everyday folks retire $2 billion in debt and is leading the fight for college loan forgiveness.

Other Occupy Wall Street veterans looked to target electoral politics. At the 2016 president election neared, former Occupiers like Wong and Charles Lenchner, who’d been the technical guru at Zuccotti Park in 2011, launched Ready for Warren hoping to draft Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a withering critic of Wall Street. When Warren didn’t enter the race, the group quickly morphed into the People for Bernie Sanders, and used its social-media savvy to play a key role in convincing young people to rally behind a septuagenarian democratic socialist senator from Vermont.

“I don’t think Bernie would have become a mainstream candidate if Occupy hadn’t happened,” Wong told me. It’s hard to argue with that. She recalled a moment in the 2020 campaign when Sanders told a large rally crowd to look at the person next to them and say, “I’m willing to fight for somebody I don’t know” — the essence, she argued, of both his campaign and the 2011 protests.

In what was becoming a familiar pattern, Sanders didn’t win his spirited battles for the Democratic nomination in 2016 and 2020. Yet the Vermont senator and a reconstructed American left were winning the war of ideas, pushing the Democratic Party in a much more progressive direction than seemed possible amid the stifling centrism of the Clinton era. Today, Sanders is one of the most powerful voices in Washington as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and both he and Warren have played pivotal roles in working with President Biden on his roughly $6 trillion agenda which — while much of it dangles in the air this fraught autumn — would would transform America on the scale of the New Deal or the Great Society.

In other words, Occupy Wall Street was the spark behind arguably the most important U.S. political movement of the 21st century — so why is that so hard to see?

For one thing, it’s had to compete for oxygen with the other, more arresting political movement of our time — the right-wing authoritarian populism led by Donald Trump. What’s more, there were times in the 2010s when the class critique of the Occupy movement felt at odds with the decade’s other major protest movement, the Black Lives Matter crusade forged in 2014 in Ferguson — although those differences melted a bit when veterans of both movements protested George Floyd’s 2020 killing. On the far left, the lack of progress on issues like single-payer health care and the long way to go on matters like college debt feels like the glass is more than half-empty, still.

But the legacy of the Occupy movement is everywhere — in the words and phrases like “income inequality,” “living wage,” and “we are the 99 Percent” that barely existed on September 16, 2011, in calling attention to the brutal militarization of the American police who pepper-sprayed them, in the progressive prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner who’ve been elected since, and in the serious attention paid to ideas like free public universities that felt unreachable on this date just 10 years ago.

But the greater impact from the brushfires of Zuccotti Park is arguably the way it changed the people who participated — people like Wong, who helped organize the 2017 Women’s March and was a senior adviser to Sanders’ 2020 campaign, and Stocker-Kelly, whose interests in women’s issues, conflict, and the Middle East propelled her into a career in journalism, writing about places like northern Iraq for publications such as The Guardian. She embarked on her journey without earning her degree from Cabrini — something she recalls ever month when she signs her $300 student-loan check.

“I don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing” if not for the Occupy protest, said Stocker-Kelly, who said the uprising taught her how to cover contentious social movements and to listen to voices of everyday people.

It’s one more way the momentum forged one decade ago, which once echoed down the concrete canyons of Lower Manhattan, can still be heard today.

____


The Philadelphia Inquirer

Seabirds starve in stormy 'washing machine' waves: study

In 2014 tens of thousands of sea birds washed up dead on the shores of French island Ile-de-Re Xavier Leoty AFP/File

Issued on: 15/09/2021 - 1

Paris (AFP)

Thousands of seabirds that wash up on Atlantic coasts every year could have been starved to death by cyclones that whip up "washing machine" waves, a new study says, with experts warning the phenomenon could worsen with climate change.

Puffins, auks and guillemots -- hardy little birds that nest in the Arctic -- head south each year to more hospitable but isolated islands off Newfoundland, Iceland or Norway.

But many are found washed up on beaches in mass die-offs that scientists now think are caused by violent winter cyclones that prevent them from feeding.

"Imagine winds blowing at 120 kilometres per hour (75 mph), waves 8 metres high (26 ft) and turbulence in the water that disturbs plankton and schools of fish the birds feed on," said David Gremillet of the French CNRS research institute, which coordinated the study published Tuesday in Current Biology.

"They're caught in a big washing machine," he told AFP.

Unable to fly clear of the storms, some of which last days, the birds likely cannot dive into the sea to feed or are perhaps unable to see their prey in the troubled waters.

Researchers equipped more than 1,500 puffins, auks, seagulls and two types of guillemots with global location sensors 

LOIC VENANCE AFP/File

With small reserves of body fat, an auk can die if it goes 48 hours without eating.

Gremillet said that scientists had suspected that storms were responsible for killing the birds.

"But what we didn't know was where and how," he said.

- Emaciated -

To find out, an international research team decided to track birds from 39 different colonies in the North Atlantic.

Focusing on five species, they equipped more than 1,500 puffins, auks, seagulls and two types of guillemots with global location sensors.

Clipped to the animals' feet at their various summer nesting sites, the sensors then tracked the birds' winter migration.

By looking at about a decade's worth of bird movement data and comparing it to winter weather patterns scientists were able to determine where the birds ran into cyclones.

They used models to estimate how much energy the birds were using to fly through the storms and ruled out cold or exhaustion as the killers.

The birds are forced to wait out the storms and likely prevented from diving into the sea to feed NICOLAS TUCAT AFP/File

So Gremillet said the most likely explanation remains "that the weather conditions are so horrible that the birds are not able to feed".

When tens of thousands of dead puffins and guillemots washed up on French shores in 2014, their bodies were particularly emaciated, said the study's main author Manon Clairbaux of the University of Montpellier.

Worldwide populations of these birds have declined by half since the 1970s due to habitat loss, pollution, competition with fishermen and accidental capture among the main threats.

And Gremillet said that cyclones, which are expected to increase in "frequency and intensity" with climate change, could become a bigger threat.

Though little can be done to prevent the killer storms, experts say mapping them allows conservationists to push for added protection -- like reduced commercial fishing -- for habitats in their paths.

"It's important to understand the dangers that threaten them," said Clairbaux.

© 2021 AFP

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Kenyan ex-minister, Olympic official guilty of graft in Rio Games

Wario served as Kenya's sports minister from 2013 to 2018 

SIMON MAINA AFP/File

Issued on: 15/09/2021 - 

Nairobi (AFP)

A Kenyan court on Wednesday convicted former sports minister Hassan Wario and the 2016 Olympic team leader Stephen arap Soi of embezzling millions of shillings during the Rio Games.

Wario, who served as the country's sports minister from 2013 to 2018, was one of six Kenyan officials charged with abuse of office and the misappropriation of 55 million shillings ($545,000) during the Rio Olympics.

Nairobi chief magistrate Elizabeth Juma found Wario guilty of abuse of office and misuse of public funds, and ordered police to take him and Soi into custody, pending their sentencing on Thursday.

Four other officials, including the former secretary general of the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK) Francis Kinyili Paul, were acquitted of all charges.

Two-time Olympic gold medallist and former NOCK chief Kipchoge Keino was a key prosecution witness in the case.

Wario was Kenya's ambassador to Austria when he was arrested in October 2018.

He pleaded not guilty to the six charges levelled against him and was released on a one-million shilling bond.

But the authorities refused to return his passport to enable him to return to Austria and resume his diplomatic duties.

Wario and Soi were found guilty of diverting money and kit from US sports equipment manufacturer Nike worth millions of shillings which were later confiscated from a house in Nairobi's upmarket Westlands suburb.

The charges covered allegations of embezzlement, the purchase of unauthorised air tickets, overpayment of allowances and expenditure on unauthorised persons, to the tune of 55 million shillings in total.

Corruption is rife in Kenya, with millions of dollars of public funds going missing each year. The country was left red-faced during its 2016 Olympic campaign which also saw athletes' team uniforms stolen by officials.

© 2021 AFP

Afghan female youth footballers reach Pakistan, will seek asylum

Issued on: 15/09/2021 -

Members of Afghanistan's women's football team and their families pose for a photograph after they were greeted by officials of the Pakistan Football Federation, in Lahore, Pakistan, September 15, 2021

. © Waleed Ahmed, AP

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Players from Afghanistan's female youth soccer teams have arrived in Pakistan and will seek political asylum in third countries amid concern over the status of female athletes under the new Taliban government in Kabul.

Some 81 people, including female players of several youth teams, their coaches and family members reached Pakistan through the Torkham border crossing, Umar Zia, a senior Pakistan Football Federation official, said on Wednesday. A further 34 will arrive on Thursday, he said.

It was not clear when they actually crossed the border. Officials gave them garlands of red flowers as they stepped off a bus at the Federation's office in Lahore on Wednesday.

They will stay there under tight security before applying for asylum in third countries, Zia told Reuters.

"They will go to some other country after 30 days as several international organizations are working towards settling them in any other country, including the UK, US and Australia," he said.

The Football for Peace international organisation helped to arrange their departure from Afghanistan and arrival in Pakistan.

Their flight is part of a broader exodus of Afghan intellectuals and public figures, especially women, since the Taliban took over the country a month ago.

When the Islamist group last ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, girls were not allowed to attend school and women were banned from work and education. Women were barred from sports and that is likely to continue in this government as well.

A Taliban representative told Australian broadcaster SBS on Sept. 8 that he did not think women would be allowed to play cricket because it was "not necessary" and would be against Islam.

"Islam and the Islamic Emirate do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed," SBS quoted the deputy head of the Taliban's cultural commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, as saying.

Several former and current women football players fled the country following the Taliban takeover, while a former captain of the team urged players still in Afghanistan to burn their sports gear and delete their social media accounts to avoid reprisals.

The sport's governing body FIFA said last month it was working to evacuate those remaining in the country.

(REUTERS)

$12m seized from ex-officials as cash crunch hits Afghanistan

Issued on: 15/09/2021 - 

A man walks past a wall mural depicting the Taliban flag in Kabul

 Karim SAHIB AFP


Kabul (AFP)

Afghanistan's central bank said Wednesday that the Taliban had seized more than $12 million in cash and gold from the homes of former government officials, as it called for all transactions to be made in local currency.

A foreign exchange crunch in the aid-dependent country threatens the Taliban's rule one month after they seized power.

Most government employees have yet to return to work -- and in many cases salaries had already not been paid for months -- leaving millions scrambling to make ends meet.

Even those with money in the bank are struggling, as branches limit withdrawals to the equivalent of $200 a week -- with customers having to queue for hours.

And while remittances have resumed from abroad, customers awaiting funds at international chains such as Western Union and MoneyGram complained Wednesday that branches they visited had run out of cash.

"All Afghans in the government and non-governmental organisations are asked to use afghani in their contracts and economic transactions," the central bank said in a statement Wednesday.

The bank later issued another statement saying Taliban fighters had handed over $12.3 million in cash and gold seized from the homes of officials from the former government -- a large part discovered at the home of former vice president Amrullah Saleh.

Some Afghans expressed happiness that security had returned to the capital 

BULENT KILIC AFP

"The money recovered came from high-ranking officials... and a number of national security agencies who kept cash and gold in their homes," the statement said.

"It is, however, still not known for what purpose they were kept."

- Thanking donors -

Abdul Rahim, a demobbed soldier in the former Afghan army, travelled nearly 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from Faryab to the capital to try and collect his backpay.

"The branches of the banks are closed in the provinces," he told AFP Wednesday, "and in Kabul thousands of people queue to get their money out.

"I have been going to the bank for the past three days but in vain. Today I arrived at around 10am and there were already about 2,000 people waiting."

Women wait in front of a bank to withdraw money in Kabul BULENT KILIC AFP

The Taliban on Tuesday thanked the world after a donor conference in Geneva pledged $1.2 billion in aid for Afghanistan, but the country's needs are immediate.

Donor nations, however, want conditions attached to their contributions and are loath to support a regime with as bloody a reputation as the Taliban.

The hardline Islamists have promised a milder form of rule compared to their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, but have moved swiftly to crush dissent -- including firing in the air to disperse recent protests by women calling for the right to work.

Still, UN chief Antonio Guterres said this week he believed aid could be used as leverage with the Islamist hardliners to exact improvements on human rights.

A man sleeps on a wheelbarrow at a market area in Kabul BULENT KILIC AFP

"It is very important to engage with the Taliban at the present moment," he said.

One month into their second rule, some Afghans are conceding there have been some improvements in their lives -- not least security in the capital, which for years was plagued by deadly suicide bomb attacks and targeted assassinations blamed largely on the Taliban.

"Currently the situation of the country is good, there is no war," said Mohammad Ashraf.

- Job satisfaction -

Laalagha, a street vendor, said he was no longer being shaken down by corrupt police officers -- although he had turned to selling fruit as no-one could afford to buy flowers.

"I am really satisfied with my new job. In the past the situation was like this... a policeman would come and puncture the stall's tyre and he would beat you.

A burqa-clad woman checks footwear displayed on a stall at a market area in Kabul BULENT KILIC AFP

"But now no one is disturbing or creating problems."

But at least half the population face the possibility of not having employment as the Taliban grapple with how to deal with women in the workforce.

"The Taliban have told us to stay home," said one women who worked in the telecoms ministry of the old regime.

"There is security, but if there is no food soon the situation will change."

The Taliban named an interim government last week and acting ministers have been holding press conferences spelling out policies that range from how women should dress at university to what sports can be played.

But they have been light on details of how the country will be run and when they will get the civil service functioning again.

"I am just happy they didn't kill me yet," said Abdul Rahim, the ex-soldier who served with the old army's 209th corps until surrendering just days before Kabul fell on August 15.

"If they revive the army I will join as a soldier again, but if not, I will have to find another job."

© 2021 AFP

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Elizabeth Holmes trial: Theranos’ use of workers’ blood led to whistleblower’s concerns

Elizabeth Holmes (C), the founder and former CEO of blood testing and life sciences company Theranos, arrives for the first day of her fraud trial, outside Federal Court in San Jose, California. - Nick Otto/AFP/AFP/TNS

2021/9/15 
©The Mercury News

Theranos whistleblower Erika Cheung’s first inkling that the company’s technology fell short of founder Elizabeth Holmes’ claims arose because the startup used its workers’ blood to check how well tests performed, the former laboratory assistant testified Tuesday.

“Employees would essentially donate their blood to Theranos for cash,” Cheung told jurors on the second day of Holmes criminal trial, without saying how much was paid. When Cheung’s blood was used to “validate” Vitamin D testing on Theranos machines, “it would always come up that I was deficient,” she testified. But her results didn’t show the same problem when her bloodwork was done on another company’s machines that Theranos kept upstairs to conduct tests its own machines couldn’t perform.

Cheung, who joined Theranos in 2013 straight out of college at UC Berkeley, said she’d been “star-struck” during her job interview with Holmes, who is charged with a dozen felony fraud counts. She saw Holmes, a rare high-profile female technology entrepreneur, as a potential example for other young women in science and engineering, Cheung said.

“She had a charisma to her,” Cheung testified. “She had a strong sense of conviction about her mission.”

Scarcely a month after Cheung started her new job, she said she began finding problems with the technology that was supposed to revolutionize blood testing by enabling a full range of tests on a few drops of blood. Ultimately, Cheung resigned and blew the whistle to the government on what she saw at Theranos.

Cheung’s internal email about quality-control issues in the Theranos lab caught the attention of Holmes, who asked in an email thread that was shown to jurors how the issue was resolved. A lab leader responded that the issue had been taken care of by getting rid of the data that showed a problem.

Holmes is accused of bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, defrauding patients, and misleading doctors and patients with false claims about her company’s technology. The Stanford University dropout, who founded the Palo Alto blood-testing startup in 2003 at age 19, and her co-accused, former company president Sunny Balwani, have denied the allegations.

Earlier Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, federal prosecutors and the defense presented a variety of Theranos financial data to jurors, much of it focused on revenue projections that prosecutor Robert Leach said had been approved by Holmes. But Holmes lawyer Lance Wade was quick to get the day’s first witness, former company finance chief So Han Spivey, to note that Balwani — who Holmes claims coerced and abused her during a long-running romantic relationship — was involved in producing the projections. Balwani is to be tried separately next year.

During Cheung’s testimony, Judge Edward Davila excused the jury so lawyers for both sides could argue over whether certain emails could be shown to jurors. Wade, with the jury absent, claimed that Holmes was unaware of much that went on in Theranos’ labs, which Balwani oversaw. Prosecutor John Bostic countered that “substantial evidence” showed Holmes’ involvement in the company in general, and the “pervasive nature” of her communications with Balwani was evidence of her awareness of lab matters.

“These issues filter upward to Ms. Holmes,” Bostic said.

Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison. Her trial continues Wednesday, when Cheung is scheduled to return to the witness stand.

Rich nations head to SA to secure deal giving future emissions the coal shoulder

Jessica Shankleman, Antony Sguazzin and Saleha Mohsin


iStock

Officials from the US, UK, France and Germany are looking for an agreement with Eskom, which generates almost all of South Africa’s power from a fleet of 15 coal plants.
South Africa’s use of coal has made it the world’s 12th biggest emitter of greenhouses gases.
Eskom alone accounts for more than 40% of South Africa’s emissions.

Four of the world’s richest nations will send a delegation to South Africa as soon as next week to seek a deal to begin closing the country’s coal-fired plants, according to people familiar with the matter.

Officials from the US, UK, France and Germany are looking for an agreement with Eskom, which generates almost all of South Africa’s power from a fleet of 15 coal plants. Any deal struck could be announced during the United Nations climate talks known as COP26, set to start in Glasgow, Scotland, on 31 October, one of the people said.

"The developed economies have a responsibility to fund the just transition to a low-carbon economy and climate resilient society," said Albi Modise, a spokesman for South Africa’s environment department. He confirmed that John Murton, the UK’s envoy to COP26, will visit the country "to assess opportunities for enhanced cooperation" but added that the dates are still being finalised.

Alok Sharma, the COP26 president, has said he wants to use the summit to "consign coal to history". But he’s met resistance from a number of middle-income countries that rely on coal. A Group of 20 meeting in July failed to reach an agreement on phasing out coal.

South Africa’s use of coal has made it the world’s 12th biggest emitter of greenhouses gases, ahead of the UK, which has an economy eight times its size. Eskom alone accounts for more than 40% of South Africa’s emissions.

Debt burden

While the utility has laid out plans to start closing down its coal plants and having them at least partially replaced with renewable energy, gas-fired generation and battery storage, its debt burden of R402 billion hinders it from borrowing more money to pay for the energy transition.

With about 20 000 power plant workers, 90 000 coal miners and many thousands more involved in the transport of the fuel, there are also social implications to take into account.

In July, Eskom chief executive officer André de Ruyter suggested a facility from development-finance institutions that would be paid over a number of years.

In an August presentation to the government, the company said it was in initial talks to raise R33 billion from five such organisations. Mandy Rambharos, the head of Eskom’s Just Energy Transition department, has previously said the phase-out could cost more than $10 billion.

How Signing Bonuses Spread From Ancient Rome to Amazon

Wednesday, 15 September, 2021 
Stephen Mihm

The signing bonus, once the province of elite athletes and corporate executives, has gone mainstream. In the tightest labor market in years, employers like Amazon are shelling out thousands of dollars up front to truck drivers, trash collectors, warehouse workers and other in-demand workers.

It’s a recruiting tool with a long history. But signing bonuses have evolved significantly over the years, scrambling the incentives that once defined the relationship between employers and workers. That history helps explain how this tactic can work – and why it could fail desperate employers this time around.

The first “employer” to offer signing bonuses was the military. The Roman Empire, for example, gave new soldiers an enlistment bonus known as a viaticum – typically, a few gold coins. This strategy enabled the Romans to staff their armies with volunteers who willingly went off to fight the barbarian hordes for a set period of time.Conor Sen: Amazon and Walmart are Winning the Labor Market Wars

In the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passed a resolution that offered a cash “bounty” in order to entice young men to sign up for what proved to be a long, protracted war. These bonuses were relatively modest at first: a mere three dollars, or about $100 in today’s money. In the Civil War, the Union handed out increasingly generous cash bounties to secure soldiers. Unfortunately, this practice fostered a practice known as “bounty jumping,” in which recruits would collect the bonus and then disappear – and repeat the trick elsewhere.

The enlistment bonus fell out of favor for the military, but it soon found a new home: professional baseball. By the late 1880s, several of the more successful leagues began competing against one another for the best players.

One of the first stars to earn a sizable bonus was Charlie Bennett, a catcher famous for refusing to wear protective equipment. He once continued to play through a game – and all the succeeding games – after a ball ripped his thumb to the bone. Such insane dedication prompted his team, the Boston Beaneaters, to give him a $6,000 signing bonus – a small fortune at the time. By 1914, the Boston Nationals, desperate to recruit second-baseman Johnny Evers, paid out a whopping $20,000 bonus – over $500,000 in today’s money.

Signing bonuses proliferated in a number of professional sports in the 20th century. The practice became so widespread – and expensive – that by 1960, professional baseball alone was handing out $7.5 million in bonuses to untested players. But this practice, much like the older military enlistment bonus system, obliged players to remain with a particular team for a set amount of time.


It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that the obligation-free bonus came into being. The first to receive them were CEOs who received bonuses upon jumping ship from one company to another. These “golden hellos,” as the financial press dubbed them, consisted of cash, equity or a mix of both. Unlike earlier bonuses, recipients of such largesse didn’t have a contractual obligation to the company which hired them.

In the 1990s, the signing bonus was extended down the food chain, mostly as a way to lure employees without increasing actual salaries. In 1997, for example, a survey of recent graduates of the top 11 business schools found that 80% received signing bonuses, up from 62% only three years earlier. These averaged around $10,000, though some grads received even more.

As workers became increasingly scarce, a wide range of employers began offering bonuses to entice workers. Burger King lured managers away from competitors with $5,000 checks and promised $150 for burger flippers. By 1997, a survey found that 39% of all companies had turned to the bonus as a recruitment tool, with everyone from software engineers to butchers benefitting. Cementing the trend in history was none other than the Department of Labor, the ultimate authority on employment in America. The agency used it to reel in economists.

These organizations quickly found that no-strings-attached bonuses worked best under very specific conditions. Companies that offered them first – before any competitors in a given area – tended to reap the greatest rewards, snaring the best workers and keeping them, too. The imitators, by contrast, discovered that it was hard to buy loyalty when others had beaten you to the punch.

These anecdotal findings anticipated the research on signing bonuses that has accumulated since that time. Researchers have found, for example, that signing bonuses can work when they successfully communicate to a prospective employee that a firm believes the individual is a good fit with the firm. When signing bonuses are relatively rare – because there’s a surfeit of workers, for example – these enticements mean so much more. But when everyone is offering them in a mad rush to fill vacancies, the bonus loses its power.

These finding suggests that our current mania for bonuses may be inevitable, but it’s unlikely to improve performance or increase loyalty. Once bonuses become ubiquitous, they become a transactional benefit that means nothing more than a few extra dollars.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that the obligation-free signing bonus won’t remain a fixture of ordinary employment for too much longer. Eventually, the labor market will tank, much as it did after the dot-com boom. When it does, the only people receiving signing bonuses will be the usual suspects: top executives, professional athletes and the genuinely rare individual whose skills remain in demand no matter what happens to the economy.


Bloomberg