Tatiana and Klebb (Number 3) have a chat – From Russia with Love
***********
Listening: It really is the difference between life and death
***********
How to effectively hold others accountable.
***********
Blame
***********
Bad Work
***********
Killing TIME will kill your success
***********
Garbage-Truck Motivation: How to keep on keeping on
***********
***********
Carrie Lam
Hong Kong’s leader is being paid in cash due to US sanctions. Carrie Lam earns $56,000 a month and says money is piling up at her house.
by Naina Bhardwaj | Business Insider
- Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, said she has to keep “piles of cash” at home due to US sanctions.
- She said: “The government is paying me cash for my salary because I don’t have a bank account.”
- Lam earns $672,000 per year and is one of the highest-paid leaders in the world, according to the BBC.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said that she has to keep “piles of cash” at home since she has no bank account due to US sanctions.
In an interview with local English-language TV channel HKIBC on Friday, Lam said: “Sitting in front of you is a chief executive of the Hong Kong SAR who has no bank services made available to her.
“I’m using cash every day for all the things.”
“I have piles of cash at home. The government is paying me cash for my salary because I don’t have a bank account,” she said.
In June, China imposed a new national-security law that threatened Hong Kong’s autonomy and also made it easier to punish protesters who have been demonstrating against Chinese attempts to impose more state control, the BBC reported.
Following the controversial law, the White House applied what are thought to be the toughest sanctions yet on Lam and 14 other senior city officials, according to AFP.
The move means any of their American properties can be seized, any US financial transactions criminalized, and assets frozen.
During her interview, Lam added that she did not want to deter people from serving in a public position and said: “To be so unjustifiably sanctioned by the US government, it’s an honor,” AFP added.
The chief executive earns $672,000 a year and is one of the highest-paid leaders in the world, the BBC reported.
Social media users began posting images comparing their own savings at home to Lam’s while others questioned how her salary was transported to her, according to Channel News Asia.
In August, the Hong Kong leader told reporters that the US sanctions had caused her a “a little bit of inconvenience” because she couldn’t use her credit cards, Channel News Asia added.
On Wednesday, Lam said during an annual policy address that her urgent priority was to restore Hong Kong’s constitutional order and pull its political system out from “chaos.”
***********
Dr. Birx on her relationship with Trump: ‘Respectful in public but very clear in private’
She said it will be up to Biden’s team to determine if she’s of any “utility.”
By Meg Cunningham | ABC News
Dr. Deborah Birx’s rapport with President Donald Trump is “respectful in public and very clear in private” when it comes to discussions about the coronavirus, she said on ABC News’ “Powerhouse Politics” podcast Wednesday.
Birx faced some backlash following White House coronavirus task force briefings for not loudly correcting the president on claims he made about how to treat the virus, like using bleach or sunshine, but she told ABC News Political Director Rick Klein and Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl that her “interpretation of the epidemic” was “very clear” behind closed doors.
“I think no one really knows what I’ve done inside the White House,” she said. “That will all come to light because — this data — I write a daily report, so it’s very clear, my interpretation of the epidemic.”
“I served in the military for 29 years and I’ve always been very respectful in public and very clear in private. And having come out of the military, our one rule is you’re a soldier, and you follow command until it’s an unlawful order. And I have to say, in my time in the White House, which is 10 months out of my 40 years in public service, I never received an unlawful order. And so I never had to break with that chain of command,” she added.
She said she and her team have also taken their messages to the press and to local government entities.
“I think you can talk to governors and mayors,” she added. “We’ve also been very clear with them in private. Then we also go out and do press and we try to be very clear to the people of their state. But I’ve often found it’s really important, if you have something challenging to deliver, that you deliver that in private and you work very hard to use everything that you have to convince people of what needs to be done.”
Karl asked Birx if she intends to work with the Biden administration in some capacity once he takes office.
“I’ve been in touch with the transition teams to give them how I see the epidemic in the United States, to send them slides and data so that they understand what I’m seeing,” she said. “As a civil servant, I would go back to where I came from, I imagine, and it would be up to the Biden administration to decide if I could be any utility … or not.”
Birx said she isn’t trying to get the vaccine just yet: She’s holding off until those in her age group with her comorbidities are next in line.
“I would love to get vaccinated, but I think I have to wait until it’s my turn, by my age and my comorbidities,” she said.
Klein asked her about where politicians and local leaders fall in line.
“Particularly when we see that the acting defense secretary, who has only got the job for another month, the governor of West Virginia, are among those who’ve gotten the vaccine before almost anyone else in the country, is there a medical reason to see political leadership essentially jump the line, go first? Or is that kind of a system breakdown when something like that happens?” he asked.
“I think he wanted to demonstrate to every West Virginian that you need to get this vaccine and it’s important,” Birx said of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice. “I consider myself a civil servant. So I consider myself in an everyday essential worker category. I do not want to jump the line” she added.
Still, she said she’s “totally supportive of vaccination.”
“I understand how this vaccine was made. I understand the safety of the vaccine. And critically, I understand the depth of the efficacy of this vaccine. This is one of the most highly-effective vaccines we have in our infectious disease arsenal. And so that’s why I’m very enthusiastic about the vaccine,” she added.
Birx says she estimates life will start to return to normal once the most vulnerable Americans receive the vaccine and it becomes available to other members of the population.
“I want to make it clear there’s two very important sides to that equation. There is herd immunity, which would prevent community spread, and then there’s absolute clarity on what people need, in an equity way, to prevent severe disease, hospitalizations and fatalities,” she said.
Birx said that by prioritizing essential workers and those in long-term care facilities, the most vulnerable Americans can be fully vaccinated by the beginning of March, at which point the country can begin moving toward herd immunity.
But before the country can reach that point, she said, Americans must get through the winter, which is why she is continuing her cross-country travels, which has taken her 25,000 miles to 43 states.
“We’ve been to 43 states, most of them more than two times, really in-depth communication with governors, mayors, community, our incredible hospital staff. And really trying to understand what people are seeing, and what needs to be done on the ground, and how we can be most supportive. And most importantly, what people are hearing when we’re talking,” she said. “And that’s been really quite important, because things are sometimes taken out of context. So we’ve been on the road since the end of June. I’ve learned a lot about the United States and our vastness and our different populations,” she said.
Karl asked Birx about a briefing where he sought to clarify discrepancies between Centers for Disease Control guidelines and recommendations coming from the coronavirus task force about testing asymptomatic individuals, saying her answer at the time misconstrued his question.
“You gave an answer that gave the implication that I was wrong. I was not. And then the president jumped on it,” he said. “I mean, that was an important issue, wasn’t it? Getting the CDC to finally change its guidelines so that we would see the testing of asymptomatic individuals. I know you advocated for it, it’s kind of why I asked you the question.”
Birx said getting the CDC to change it’s guidelines was part of the reason she joined the White House team.
“That has been a long-term advocacy of mine. It was part of the reason, to be frank, why I came into the White House. Obviously, this was not my job. I have a lot of experience with tracking pandemics and understanding pandemic curves,” she said.
“And I could see that we weren’t dealing with the core issues. You don’t have those kind of curves in Italy. You don’t have those kind of curves in New York City, with only symptomatic patients. It just didn’t make sense. So either you had to have amazing aerosolized and surface transmission or you had to have the majority of the transmission being silent and asymptomatic. And so that has worried me from the very beginning. I’ve been forcing that issue from the beginning because I think it’s core,” she added.
***********
***********
Kyrsten Sinema
***********
3 Stocks to Avoid This Week
***********
Northwestern prof Jackie Stevens says she’s been banned from campus
Reader TheBleader [EDUCATION / NEWS]
Posted By Deanna Isaacs on 09.02.16 at 12:30 PM
Courtesy of Jacqueline Stevens
Northwestern University professor Jacqueline Stevens hasn’t been shy about activism that shines a spotlight where the university might not welcome it.
A couple of years ago, for example, she was an outspoken supporter of the undergrad who brought a sexual harassment complaint against high-profile philosophy professor Peter Ludlow—it ended his career there.
And last year she was at the forefront of a successful campaign to squelch the appointment of retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Karl Eikenberry—a career officer whose military and government connections were stronger than his academic background—as head of Northwestern’s newly expanded research center, the Buffett Institute for Global Studies.
A tenured professor and recent Guggenheim fellow, Stevens founded Northwestern’s Deportation Research Clinic and has studied the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), private prisons, and “the militarization” of her own field, political science. An article she published last year in the journal Perspectives on Politics used Northwestern as an example of a private university with what she calls a “militarized Board of Trustees,” who have a complex tangle of corporate ties and interests. She continues to investigate those ties.
Her efforts have not been universally appreciated on the Northwestern campus. And now, Stevens told me by phone this week, in retaliation for her activism and criticism, people in her department and the NU administration are trying to get rid of her. She says her research funds were cut last spring, and in late July she received a letter from dean Adrian Randolph banning her from campus and from any contact with students. According to Stevens the letter charges that other faculty members feel “unsafe” around her, and orders her to see a psychiatrist of Northwestern’s choosing to determine if she’s “fit for duty.”
Stevens has posted a detailed account of her Kafka-esque predicament, in which she writes that she has “never physically threatened, much less assaulted anyone.” She’s asking people who know her—colleagues and students who can vouch for her mental fitness and behavior—to write to Dean Randolph on her behalf.
Northwestern spokesman Alan Cubbage, responding to a request for comment, e-mailed: “Out of respect for due process and to protect Professor Stevens’ privacy, Northwestern will not be making public statements on the matter.”
Read Stevens’s story in her own words here.
COMMENTS (9)
The requirement to see a mental health professional of the university’s choosing is not unique to Northwestern. It’s used when people with tenure start acting unstable. There’s not much you can do to them unless you can show that they’ve gone nuts.
This might be in retaliation for her activism. It might also be that she’s an effective activist and a nutter.
“This might be in retaliation for her activism. It might also be that she’s an effective activist and a nutter.”
I read her blog; they haven’t scheduled a psychiatrist to test her. Prof. Stevens is afraid that they want to keep her off campus for this semester, then fire her later. NU is a private university and I’ve noticed that administration in such institutions see themselves as having the power of gods over faculty and students.
Oh Ben:”It’s used when people with tenure start acting unstable. There’s not much you can do to them unless you can show that they’ve gone nuts.” Do you mean that it occurs often that “people with tenure start acting unstable?” So there is a standard procedure to deal with these unstable tenured people? I hope not.
Claiming that dissidents were psychiatric cases was a well-known method used by rulers of the (luckily, now former) Soviet Union. (Anybody opposing the system must be crazy, no?) In the absence of visible problems, the insinuation of psychiatric problems in a professor looks indeed like an excuse to get rid of a critical tenured faculty member. This is exactly the reason why we have tenure for university teachers, to give them the freedom to voice unpleasant truths.
“In the absence of visible problems…” Well there you have it. If you knew Stevens, you’d know the problems are long-standing, have nothing to do with the Buffett center, and only seem to escalate as time goes by.
Jackie Stevens: “Yes, inspiring research, scholarship, and teaching occur here. Every day I wake up excited to work with the wonderful colleagues and the students I have encountered here, including in the Political Science Department. The Mafia-owned Rao’s restaurant served great food, but even a four star chef wouldn’t last if the family felt its illicit deals were being exposed.”
I’m a bit slow. What exactly is she saying there?
It sounds like she has very strong feelings, and a lot of words to say, about things that most people would ignore or fail to even notice.
Worth hearing Tillery’s perspective, which is completely missing from this piece: https://www.facebook.com/alvin.tillery/posts/10153825328246056
“The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_la…
Ah AAA, you make my point while trying to refute it. Are you, by any chance, an academic?
***********
***********
Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou, Star Trek: Discovery
***********
Depressed Workers
***********
QAnon
***********
3-secrets
***********
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
***********
Jacinda Ardern
Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern is a New Zealand politician who has been serving as the 40th prime minister of New Zealand and leader of the Labour Party since 2017. First elected to the House of Representatives as a list MP in 2008, she has been the member of Parliament for Mount Albert since March 2017
***********
happy
***********
***********
Tonya Harding
For those not in the know, Tonya Harding became famous because it was assumed that she paid for someone to break fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan’s leg right before the 1994 Winter Olympics.
The movie “I, Tonya”, featuring Margot Robbie, somehow made it possible for Harding to get spots in insurance commercials, though who *don’t* they hire for ads? Now then, let’s get back to making fun of other celebrities.
Tonya Maxene Price is an American former figure skater, retired boxer, and reality television personality. Born in Portland, Oregon, Harding was raised primarily by her mother, who enrolled her in ice skating lessons beginning at four years old.
***********
Republican Hotties, Democrat Notties
***********
Judi Dench
***********
Hillary Clinton
***********
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known by her initials, AOC
***********
The Rippers: Jayne, Jill, Jack, Jane, and Jane
***********
***********
***********