Category Archives: Freedom

How can you not know how to ride a bicycle? a man once asked me. What kind of a feminist are you? The kind of feminist who takes public transport! I said. I feel freest when I can get about on trains and cabs, by myself.

Many women like that. Maria, a 42-year-old senior analyst from Bengaluru, just moved jobs. People keep saying to her she must be so happy that her commute is down by an hour. Maria isnt. That hour of commute was my me-time between home and work. This leisure is writ large even in the sweaty sardine tin of the Mumbai local ladies compartment. Women chat, play video games, read, eat cheap idlis, buy hair clips, chop veggies, mend clothes, fight for space, are lost in thought or music or texting smiles. Some strategise for the spot near the door where you gaze at the horizon, hair and chunni flying, like Hema Malini, hawa ke saath saath, ghata ke sangh sangh.

I still feel awed that the Delhi Metro lets you come home late, something I never did through college, or tweet your people-watching observations.

That the citys buses allow working class women in a country where womens participation in the workforce has been steadily dropping the possibility of travelling free.

I took the DTC bus to college. I expected to be molested, although not as much as I was one day when six men did not let me get off at my stop and everyone laughed at my terror.

But I did not stop taking the bus or going to college. Those were the available choices.

Most women learned to drive as soon as they could to avoid the bus. They saved for two-wheelers and second-hand cars to resist family pressure to go everywhere accompanied because duniya is kharaab.

Angela, a young woman I knew, gave tuition to put herself through college. She walked everywhere and was always exhausted and late. Finally she saved up enough for a second-hand bicycle, fittingly called Devil.

She compensated for its missing bell by whistling to ask people to make way. Her smile became broader, her dreams bigger. Today she is an FM radio jockey. In my 2002 film Unlimited Girls, I interviewed Kanchan Gawre, Bombays first woman taxi driver. She chose to drive a taxi, to augment the family income, over homebound options of pickle- and papad-making. I love driving fast, she said, as I clutched the dashboard for support.

Look, if you want to go slow, you can take a bus, right? Greta lived on the ground floor of my tenement building, in a cloud of aata dust from dozens of chapatis.

Money from her husband in the Gulf had dwindled so she had begun making dabbas, delivering tiffins on foot.

Finally she saved enough for a moped and zoomed about precariously, vegetables hanging from the handlebar, offering me lifts which I timidly declined. Years later, I ran into her on a scooter, in sparkly gold jewellery.

Dont you look grand! I exclaimed. Yes, sweetheart, Im doing very well, she said. Greta Lambretta, as I think of her, had become Bombays only womens driving instructor for two-wheelers. Her photo album of students included grandmoms, modish teens, ladies in salwar kameez .

The male fantasy of a liberated woman on wheels is always a biker chick, grumbled a writer friend. But in truth, the abiding image of freedom are these women on two-wheelers and little cars. Whether it is the women of Puddukotai bicycling in saris, fetching water, dropping kids, going to work, or Saira Bano in a cherry-print shirt with her girl gang, singing, Main chali main chali, dekho pyaar ki gali, or women at smalltown traffic signals, covered head to toe against pollution and tanning.

Yet, for women, these measured personal freedoms, like the grudging, guilt-laden concessions of private family life and the unpredictable progress and minimisations of public life, are still a topography of watchfulness and inhibition.

In Dorothy Wenners documentary about the Mumbai ladies special train, a woman demonstrates things they must mind when boarding the train. Secure your pallu. Tuck your bag tight under your arm. Put your mangalsutra between your teeth so it cant be snatched in the melee.

I could add, squeeze every last drop of pee out before you leave home. Drink very little water till you have loo access. Wear a scarf to cover your breasts. Keep your elbows close to your body to prevent groping. Dont park in a deserted spot. Dont forget to fill petrol in case you get stranded at night. You get habituated to those wheels constantly turning in your mind, busy wresting the freedom to be a person, forgetting your worst fears.

Then one day some worst fear comes true. A young woman in Unnao is raped and burned to death. A vet in Hyderabad finds her scooter tyre punctured, is abducted, raped and killed. Uber admits it has had thousands of reports of sexual violence. You forget to forget your fear even as you persist with living your life.

Like many women who cannot drive, I frequently dream that I am driving a car or riding a bicycle. In these dreams, I am constantly, predictably, trying to escape from some predicament or save myself from some danger. After all, who else is going to?

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View: Women riding vehicles are busy wrestling their freedom to be a person, forgetting their worst fears - Economic Times

A much-awaited movie at this years IFFK is the national-award-winning Hellaro that ran to a packed house on Sunday when it was screened in the Indian Cinema Now section. Set in the arid Rann of Kutch, it portrays the urge of an unfettered mind to break free from social shackles in this case, treacherous patriarchy. And what helps to set the free spirit soar is the flowing movements of the body tuned to the beats of an ebullient drum in a dance genre that Gujarat has always been proud of garba.

The movie has won many hearts since its release in November this year. The biggest applause came as the National Award for the Best Feature Film and Special Jury award for the 13 women who play the protagonists who live in a nondescript village in Kutch where the norm is that women cannot dance or express their talents in any way. All they are allowed is to walk miles away through dry patches to fetch water.

But their chance meeting with a drummer gives them the spark to express their rebellion and their freedom through dance something only men are allowed to do in the village. The bond between the women in Hellaro reminds us of Ketan Mehtas Mirch Masala where women fight gender bias with spices they prepare for a living.

The movie is Abhishek Shahs first. It competed at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in the best debut film category and even opened the festival. Mr. Shah, who took to theatre when young, got the idea of the movie from real incidents when he felt that freedom of expression, among women especially, remained subdued. He then read it along with a Kutchi folkore in which women get attracted to a drummer who helps them dance in gay abandon.

When he narrated the story to us, we were excited. Everything fell in place from then with veterans like Saumya Joshi helping with the script, lyrics, and dialogue and Sameer Tanna choreographing the beautiful garba dances that fill the frames with a fiery grace. The real hero of the film is garba, says Aayush Patel, one of the producers. He and another from the producer team, Mit Jani, are attending the IFFK.

Even while portraying the dark world of ruthless conventions, the film celebrates the rustic, earthy flavours of Kutch, the richness of its dialect, and the delicate imprints of art that is part of the regions everyday life.

Hellaro in Gujarati means an outburst that gives rise to a wave of change. The film has done exactly that, coming in as a wave of change in Gujarati cinema.

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Dancing their way to freedom - The Hindu

I daresay humankind has asked this question, Where was God? trillions of times over the centuries when it comes to facing and dealing with tragedy, illness, death, wars, and chaos. I recently heard a quote which somewhat settled an enigma for me about Gods ways and our ways. I heard the quote recently at a concert I attended entitled Hours of Freedom, The Story of the Terezin Composers.

The composers consisted of 15 musically gifted Jewish prisoners trapped in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in the now Czech Republic. The composers and musicians destinies would have been fame and notoriety if they had lived after World War II. Most of them were in their 20s and 30s before they were shipped off to their deaths at Auschwitz.

The Terezin story skillfully interwove narrative, film, soloists, photographs, and the Hours of Freedom Chamber Players. Not only was the presentation of their Nine Chapters of music and narrative moving, I was struck by the composers will to live; and not just to survive but choosing to rely on the arts, humanities, and retention of life-giving activity to escape the raw realities of their lives under the Nazi Regime.

The Hours of Freedom referred to their times of composing and writing on tiny pieces of foraged scrap paper and then playing their instruments after horrific 15-hour workdays and scant food. The Nine Chapters included titles like The Broken Heart, Longing, and The Eyewitness. Some of the music was agonizingly mournful yet brilliant in composition. I especially noticed a fascinating interplay of cello and violin notes which portrayed a dissonance, an inharmoniousness, which remarkably expressed the paradox of pain and pleasure amid horror. Surprisingly, some of the compositions were upbeat as if to recall better times and future hopes.

The Hours of Freedom concerts are a modern reality now due to Maestro Murry Sidlin, a famous conductor and President of The Defiant Requiem Foundation which promotes the concerts worldwide. Its his quote which I found so compelling. Atlantas Ahavath Achim (AA) Synagogue hosted the event and Stuart Eizenstat, former Ambassador to the EU and lifelong AA member introduced his friend shown here.

In his glowing remarks, Eizenstat noted that over the years Murry was asked Where was God when the Holocaust happened?

Murrys reply: Where was God? Instead the real question is, Where was man, who had free will?

When Mr. Eizenstat-also the Board Chair for The Defiant Requiem Foundation-referenced Maestro Sidlins quote, I co-opted it right then and there. I consider it one of the best, most succinct answers Ive ever heard for the age-old question about lifes tragedies.

To punctuate the horror and deceit of Terezin, the program included two Nazi propaganda films produced at Terezin in 1944. The Nazis designed the films to fool the world about the so-called humane treatment of Jewish prisoners. One of the films at the concert showed a hundred imprisoned Jewish children singing. A dreadful thought ran through my mind; Its as if the children were singing at their own funeral. Later, all of them were among the million and a half children murdered during the Holocaust. I felt as if I was walking again, after many previous times, through the Childrens Memorial at Yad Vashem listening to their names in a darkness only lit by dim candles reflecting into thousands of lights. This photo shows candles placed at a Theresienstadt memorial event to honor the victims.

Shedding more history on the propaganda films, an archive entitled Terezin Diary, gives more detail: Terezin was the so-called model camp established by the Nazis in 1941 at Terezin (Theresienstadt),an old fortress town near Prague. A 1944 Nazi propaganda film, The Fuhrer Gives a Town to the Jews, presented the camp as an idyllic setting where children, their parents and old people could live, work and play far from the cares of a world at war. About the same time, a Red Cross team inspected the camp and gave its approval. Beyond comprehension and description.

The other Nazi propaganda film depicted the Hours of Freedom Chamber Players performing a concert at Terezin complete with its prison camp population applauding and trying to look content. They were somewhat well dressed, Im sure only for the film. At the concert here in Atlanta, the 15 Chamber Players on stage played WITH the 15 Terezin musicians while the film was shown. It was a jarring and sobering moment when the 30 musicians played together 75 years later. It was also a moment of remembrance showing honor for the Terezin musicians; their human dignity, courage, and hope for the future. A hope unfulfilled and violently extinguished.

Where was God?

My real question is, Where will I, and other pro-Israel Christians, stand against the malignant cancer of worldwide antisemitism on behalf of Israel and the Jewish community everywhere. Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hung at Flossenburg for his valiant efforts to save the Jewish people,summarizes it best: Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

Pro Israel Christian Advocate Arlene Bridges Samuels has held pioneering positions for almost two decades with Israel Always, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, (AIPAC) and International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA's project, American Christian Leaders for Israel. Traveling to Israel since 1990, she is now an author at the Times of Israel, contributor to The Christian Broadcast Network and The Jerusalem Connection. A speaker, consultant, and networker, her articles have appeared in Philos Project, The Institute on Religion and Democracy, Southern Jewish Life, ICEJ's Word from Jerusalem, Mercy Ships, and Concerned Women for America. She posts her devotionals, The Eclectic Evangelical, on Facebook and is an active member of a small Anglican church. After attending Winthrop University in her home state of South Carolina, Arlene earned her Masters degree at the University of Alabama.

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Where was God? Thoughts about the Terezin Hours of Freedom - The Times of Israel

Plans are already being made to raise the 18-ton Dallas County Freedom Rock, which fell when it was struck by a motor vehicle that left the roadway on U.S. Highway 169 in Minburn shortly after 4 a.m. Saturday.

The motorist, a 21-year-old man from Perry, told ThePerryNews.com that he fell asleep at the wheel and struck the rock. His vehicles airbags deployed, and he came away with a sore pelvis and sprained ankle but is otherwise unhurt.

The Minburn American Legion Post 99 owns the Dallas County Freedom Rock. Post Commander Mark Golightly said Saturday he will review the terms of the rocks insurance policy and discuss with his fellow Legionnaires the best way forward.

Golightly said the Legion wants to avoid erecting bollards or other security barriers around the Freedom Rock because they might detract from the monuments beauty.

After the automobile wreckage was towed away, Dallas County Sheriff Chad Leonard of Dallas Center and Steve Luellen of Bouton, both members of the Minburn Legion Post 99, covered the overturned monument with a dignified tarp.

Its going to take some work, Leonard said. I would assume we will need a crane to pick it up so we can dig under again before we set it back in place.

State Rep. Ray Bubba Sorensen of Greenfield, artist of the Dallas County Freedom Rock, said he would be available to repair and repaint to monument once it is re-erected.

Ill work with them, said Sorensen. You cant predict accidents when things like this happen. If they scratch the paint setting it back up, then they scratch the paint setting it back up. Well just have to redo it. I didnt get into this just to paint a bunch of them and then hit the road. Its important to me to help keep these up and keep this mission going. We owe it to the veterans.

Sorensen painted the Dallas County Freedom Rock in July, and it was dedicated Oct. 19 in a solemn ceremony. He said that of the 87 Freedom Rocks he has completed, only two have been damaged when they were wholly submerged by flood waters and only one has been vandalized: the Cedar Falls rock was spray painted by a vandal shortly before Memorial Day 2016.

Sorensen said he aims to establish a Freedom Rock Foundation that can accept corporate donations so that as things like this happen over time, I want to be able to provide low- to no-cost repairs. Thats my goal as I wrap up the whole tour because theres going to be maintenance things and things that happen with the landscaping, maybe a tree branch falls or another one gets submerged. I want to be able to help them quickly and at little to no cost so that these things arent a burden but just a continued joy for people.

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UPDATE: Plans in the works to restore Freedom Rock - theperrynews.com

In Okris The Freedom Artist (Akashic, Feb.), a man searches for a woman imprisoned after asking revolutionary questions in a dystopian world.

What inspired this book?

As Ive watched the world and watched people, its occurred to me that we carry prisons in our consciousness. These may be prisons of gender, race, class, art, literature, or prisons of ideas about how to run the world. Ive long wanted to articulate this persistent feeling, but events in recent years, like what has happened here in Britain, or what happened back in Nigeria during the Civil War, crystallized it for me.

What made you structure a political story around myth?

I wanted to tell the story of how power works on us by manipulating our myths. Politicians are most effective when they manipulate the deep myths that run inside of us, that move us and motivate us without our being aware of it. People who were good neighbors one day suddenly became warmongering and vicious and nasty to their neighbors overnight, because they were moved by this deep under-swell of myth.

Did you intend a message for readers?

I wouldnt call it a message, I would call it a songor maybe even an inflection. Theres really no point in telling a story if its not going to speak on all the levels of our being. The story operates on two planes, the personal and the spiritual, with Karnak looking for his girlfriend, lost to him because she asked a simple question, and Mirababa going through an initiation into the spirit of liberty. We dont really begin to ask questions about the things that blind us and the things that manipulate us, the things that chain us without beginning to ask those deep questions until the question also become spiritual. This enchaining, this imprisonment, its not just the intellect. Its only when the deep spirit asks questions that were moved to a big quest for true freedom.

How are the existential themes introduced by the narrator important to the story?

Ive always wanted to tell the story of the body and the story of the spirit in our difficult times in one book. The intellect can get in the way of our emotional, spiritual, and even personal questionsthe questions we need to ask. Whats needed is an awakening of the whole man and woman. All the different parts of us. Our bodies, emotions, and soul. We need to come up close to the fire of our current destiny and have this existential awakening.

A version of this article appeared in the 12/09/2019 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: A Song of Freedom

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A Song of Freedom: PW Talks with Ben Okri - Publishers Weekly

WHEN YOU MAKE the decision to live in a van and travel the country alone, problems are to be expected: engine trouble, financial strain, maybe even bear attacks. However, the lastthing I expected was a case of mistaken identity.

But thats exactly how my adventure kicked off. Knowing Washington was Number One on my to-go list from my home in Houston, I considered driving straight there. But it felt like a direct trip would miss out on too much in between. So I mapped out stops in Wyoming, Minnesota, South Dakota and a couple destinations in Canada, all before dropping down into Washington.

The Backstory:While living in a van built for adventure, I had a life-changing epiphany

As I crossed the border from Canada, the good andfaithful U.S. Border Patrol was adamant that there was a felony warrant out for my arrest inTexas. Their six assault rifles corroborated and confirmed their adamance.Fivehours and one ransacked van later, I was released. I didnt even get a Welcome toAmerica, let alone an apology for the mix-up. Honestly, the most terrifying part was thenumber of hands that had rummaged through my underwear.

That was my introduction to the Pacific Northwest. I almost drove straight throughback to the South, stopping in Seattle only for coffee. But I just didnt have it in me to skiphiking to another glacier; or miss seeing the Northern Lights rumored to bevisible that far north; or worse, waste gas money on simply driving rather thanadventuring.

Life has a way of revealing truth through experiences. I came to that realizationsomewhere between buying an empty cargo van, building it into a house, quitting myjob and getting lost on several backcountryAmerican roads. These experiences showedme that Id never get new results with the same calculations. I had to venture into the unknown and expand my palate, despite a few bad tastes.

I suppose its somewhat implied that major shifts in any part of life can result in a newperspective. But for those of you who have never created such transitions in your life, letme tell you: The world out there isvastly different from the one you know.

Born and raised in Houston, I knew only city life. The way I grew up likely would provoke frustration in some of yall. No joke: Just two years ago, my perception ofnational parks was that they were no different from the nicer parks you found in richneighborhoods. I wasnt introduced to the outdoors. I didnt give special notice tosunrises or sunsets, and I never had the desire to hike.

Isnt hiking just walking, but in the forest? said outdoor-uninitiated me.

Being a product of your environment is a real thing; believe me. This made mylife on the road a blind jump. By myself.

During the preparation phase for this jump, I was working a government job in Houston, creating videos and television content. From the outside, I was working with my passion, but my internal desire was for more. I wanted something substantial out of life that didnt consist of just making as much money as possible. I needed my interactions with people to stretch beyond taking a break from work or trying to make connections to further my career. In short, I felt life had a better way of being lived, one that didnt revolve around a career.

What I wanted was the one thing coveted by a range of cultures, communities and household incomes: freedom.

THE WHOLE TIME I was preparing toquit my job and convertthe van, I wondered what all my family and friends were going tothink. I mean, my cousins and I never watched orcas tread water in the ocean; none ofmy friends was trying to backpack through the Pacific Crest Trail; and, to us, if you livedin a van, then, my brother, you were homeless.

But once again, reality superseded perception. My family and friends reaction to my decision was one of love and even envy. They not only empathized with this move but could see themselves doing it, in a perfect world a world where the logistics of where to park/sleep, how to poop and shower, and what to do for money were irrelevant questions.

The reality is: We never will have a perfect world, and we always will have to find somewhere to wash our behinds.

I decided early in my vanlife-planning process that I was going to prepare as much as I could and learn the rest on the road. Additionally, I had saved enough money to where, if I couldnt find the frequency of video-production freelance work I wanted, I wouldnt have to transition into panhandle mode.

So with that mentality and practice, the logistical part of vanlife came somewhat easily. I already had outfitted my van with a fridge, solar power, a bed, dressers, running water and a compostable toilet. I built it out myself, which took close to six months, working after work in the evenings and on weekends.

The key to vanlife is the same as any other endeavor: You just have to pull the trigger and execute.

From research into others whod done this before me, I had a plan to shower and work out at gyms wherever I was. When that wasnt an option (more often than not), I simply exercised in the open outdoors. Then I showered right there: I would pop open my collapsible shower-tent at the rear of the van, pull out the showerhead connected to the electric pump/water tank combo and get clean (everything was biodegradable).

Hygiene was the biggest vanlife problem. The next biggie was: Where would I sleep? National parks were easy, as there are plenty of campgrounds, and theyre cheap. The real issue I had was the in-between, going from city to city and state to state.

Early in my trip, I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and I had found a prime parking location: near downtown, with no restrictions or time limits, and close to all the areas I wanted to visit. The problem was, someone didnt like it. They called the cops, and I had to leave. The police said it didnt look good.

Lesson learned: It wasnt enough to find a good parking place. I had to be invisible. Thats how the world is, baby. So for overnight or longer-term parking, I started uses places that were a little less conspicuous, like hotel/motel parking lots, truck stops, Wal-Mart or Home Depot.

This came in handy when I reached Washington, where I knew Id be spending more of my time. On my first run through the state, I logged a significant amount of time in Seattle and in the North Cascades, Mount Rainier and Olympic national parks. Not very many destinations in the grand scheme of things, but the nature of my exploration, brought to you by vanlife, allowed me to stay at least one week in each of those spots.

As I look back at my vanlife adventure, it blows my mind that Ive adventured more during the first year of my 30s than almost all 29 years before. Before, I had reached a point in my existence where I had robbed myself of the peace I had had as a bigheaded kid running around outside, carefree.

Vanlife helped get me back out. Not just outdoors, but on the outs of society: outside the typical job, housing, salary, perceptions and aspirations. I found new passions as an outdoorsman, adventure photographer and vanlifer, and as an agent of visibility for those with societal blinders. Social media, you are useful after all.

AFTER THE CANADA/U.S.A. border humiliation, my nextstop was in northernWashington, at North Cascades National Park. Here, theres a little pullout to anoverlook of Diablo Lake, a place with water so vivid, it inspired my poetic coining of itscolor as a bright, Kool-Aid blue. This proper reintroduction to the Pacific Northwesthooked andinspired me to discover more of the area.

I think the greatest tug at the old heartstrings came from seeing and photographing theMilky Way for the first time, on Rialto Beach onthe OlympicPeninsula. I had spent theday there, hoping for the lingering fog to break so I could witness the hugehorizon that had been left to my imagination, via Google, until then.

Instead of waiting on the fog, I hiked a few miles down the beach until I reached ahuge cliff that separated the coastline right down the middle. Inevitably, the better viewwas on the other side. At this point, sunset started to fall, and so did the fog.The vista I was hoping for had shown up, and now I had to make a decision: Keeppushing forward and hike back in the dark, high tide and all, or go back to the van andhope for clear skies the next day. Mother Nature had proved herself untrustworthybefore, so I pushed on.

Without swimming out far enough past the cliff to incite this novice ocean swimmers anxiety, the only way to the other side wasthrough. There is a reasonably sized opening in the wall to hike through, normally requiring wading through maybe 12 inches of water. But of course, today, the tides were too high, closing off the only easy way in. This meant scaling the cliff about10 feet and traversing the opening on a small 4-inch ledge.

I decided to wear moccasins that day, thinking water and sand equated to a less-strenuous time outdoors. The huge, rocky cliff I now had to climb spoke to me and said, Nah.Illspare you all thedetails of slipping off this little ledge into the ocean and justbarely saving my camera/tripod combo by holstering them above my head, looking likea fake Navy SEAL with a rifle. Just know that I had to put in some work.

I shot all the compositions of the Milky Way over the Pacific that I could find. I mustvestayed out there until at least 3 a.m., with another photographer from Belgium who also was shooting, just as miserably and excitedly as I was.

That set of pictures, and the adventure attached to them, inspired me to makephotography my new passion. This heightened my desire to explore even more; moreadventures meant more ambitious pictures. I came back to Rialto Beach three more timesbefore leaving the Olympics.

AFTERWARD, I WENT to Seattle to restock at Costco and figure out a game plan formaximizing my exploration in the Northwest. Living my entire life in a city led me to think I knew all major cities and what they had to offer, which was mostly true. But afterrealizing that all my internet searches for the best hikes in Washington resulted inseveral outdoor destinations only 30 to 90 minutes outside the city, I started to realizethis place was different.

Not to mention, almost everyone I met here was born and raised someplace else.Now, that easily could be attributed to the global phenomenon that is Free 2-dayshipping for Prime Members, but I wont give them all the credit. This place ismagnetic for the outdoor culture, the mountains behind the skyline and the proximity tovariety: sea, mountains and coffee (thatll be my last Seattle/coffee reference).

I ventured beyond Seattle to the Hoh Rainforest, Whidbey Island, Deception Pass and Rattlesnake Ledge, and eventually came to my favorite destination of all: Mount Rainier.Among Glacier National Park in Montana, Yosemite in California, Valley of Fire inNevada, Custer in South Dakota and Big Bend in Texas, Rainier always stood out to me. AsI traveled on from Washington, Rainier was always the place I compared othermountains, hikes and pictures to. Thats saying something.

LIVING ON THE ROAD and traveling thousands of miles creates so many experiences thatits hard to know when to call it quits versus reaching for more, because there always will be more. My constant pervading thought was that I was developing an entirelynew view of the world around me, and so I needed more of it. I was traveling into alifemetamorphosis and started to consider that it was because of the experiencesthemselves.

This, however, was simply not true. It was the opportunity, not the experience, that ledto realizing my freedom.The main lesson I learned from being on the road was the power in simplicity, in both a mental and physical sense. I soon foresaw myself chasing that next high of a betterexperience, rather than appreciating my newfound strength of being content with less,with keeping to the necessities.

The truth was, I loved the fact the Pacific Northwest had much left to explore as I ventured into other terrain. All of that potentialwas enough for me to sit down and recognize what I had created for myself: the ability toopt out of what wasnt adding to my freedom.

So, at the end of spring, I ended (or paused?) my countrywide vanlife expedition and found a parking space/home in Seattle. Well several parking spaces, since vanlife in Seattle means moving every three days or getting towed. Ill be getting an apartment soon, though, after enough of you buy prints of my photography.

I couldve settled down in any other city, even back in my hometown. But this whole adventure was about re-envisioning how to do life. And there was no better way to start than in the place that kept tugging at my passions.

Now, I can drive an hour in either direction to kayak Lake Wenatchee, hike WallaceFalls, snowboard Snoqualmie or taste wine in Woodinville. Recently though, Im getting used to the Seattle gray and have been sleeping a lot, catching up on myrevolving schedule of hiking with the rising and setting sun.

Everything that makes life seemingly successful and important for most people the jobs,houses, cars, clothes, vacations are all fleeting and temporary. Eventually, we allcome back home and deal with the reality that is life. For all thereasons thataffect my mind, body and spirit, for me, that home is the Pacific Northwest.

Mike Brown is a native of Houston who says his home now is the Pacific Northwest. His website is nomadpixels.com.

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Mike Brown quit his job, outfitted his van for adventure, and discovered freedom and the power of simplicity in the Pacific Northwest - Seattle Times

On Thursday, I have another oral argument scheduled in my fight through the Connecticut courts to overturn my 2007 convictions. The lawyer I retained for that trial on identity theft-related crimes conducted no investigation, called no witnesses and, during closing arguments, advised the jury on three occasions that there was no reasonable doubt. In essence, my defense attorney told the jurors to convict me.

But thats not technically what this week's hearing is about. This hearing is about the ineffective counsel I had in 2013, during the appeal of my convictions, which was filed in 2010, over ineffective counsel. If I win, I might get a trial in 2021 to determine if my original counsel was ineffective. If I lose, I will have fought to prove my innocence for nearly 15 years, and only cemented an extremely low standard for attorney performance in Connecticut namely, that a criminal defense lawyer can work against his clients interests and face zero consequences for it.

In many ways, though, Im lucky: My bid to overturn my convictions outlasted my punishment I was released in 2014 while the freedom of many other incarcerated people is determined by a win in court and a win alone. If they lose appeals like mine, they remain confined.

The courts have held in theory that ineffective counsel is a strong basis to appeal an conviction but, in reality, they rarely hold bad defense lawyers to account. Just ask Adnan Syed, the subject of the hit podcast "Serial," whos challenging his 2000 conviction for murdering his high school girlfriend on the basis of ineffective counsel. The Supreme Court refused to even hear his case last week, even though his defense lawyer failed to call an alibi witness that placed him in the school library with her during the 20-minute time frame the prosecution argued that Hae Min Lee was killed.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, whose ruling was upheld by the court last week, recognized that Syeds attorney failed to do her job but held that it didnt matter because the jury could not that it did have had a different theory of the crime and could have viewed other evidence as sufficient for guilt.

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There are thousands more people like Adnan and I, despite laws that ought to protect us.

In 1984, the Supreme Court established in a case called Strickland v. Washington that, to succeed in proving that an attorney provided constitutionally deficient representation, an inmate has to prove two things: that the lawyers performance was deficient; and that the deficiency prejudiced him. In other words, he has to prove that the result would have been different if the lawyer had done his or her job properly.

The impossibility of defense under these circumstances lets attorneys off the hook. Having to prove that the outcome of someones trial would have been different is already a daunting, hypothetical task under Strickland, but allowing a conviction like mine or Adnan's to stand without further inquiry would eventually mean that any lawyer's performance would pass as effective and competent as long as jurors could just believe you're guilty even if the prosecution's case doesn't prove it.

And its not as if a dangerous erosion of criminal defense standards hasnt already started. Courts have already betrayed the clients of the attorney who slept through portions of a trial and the lawyer arrested for drunk driving on the way to jury selection. Thats how low the bar for effective lawyering is; its perfectly acceptable for an attorney to sleep during the proceedings or be intoxicated.

It seems from outside the system inconceivable that an innocent person can be convicted and sentenced in the United States for a crime he didnt commit, but it happens. The rate of wrongful convictions in the United States is estimated to be somewhere between 2 percent and 10 percent. In a sea of 2.3 million incarcerated people, that means anywhere between 46,000 and 230,000 people are wrongfully charged or convicted.

The University of Michigan tracks all formal vindications since 1989 in the National Registry of Exonerations and has found 2,521 cases where even the system admits that it got the case wrong. There have been 120 of those exonerations in 2019 alone. That means one prisoner's claims of innocence are being vindicated approximately every three days.

Ineffective assistance of counsel complicates many more convictions than we know 453 of the overturned convictions in the National Registry of Exonerations were complicated by grossly incompetent defenses. But those cases are counted that way in the national registry only because the defendants were successful in their ineffective assistance of counsel claims.

The truth is that, statistically, Syed and I are not likely to succeed. The Strickland decision already makes proving ineffective assistance of counsel a vertical climb, but courts usually dont side with defendants who complain about their attorneys. In a study of the first 255 people to be cleared by DNA evidence, 54 of them claimed that their wrongful conviction was the result of ineffective assistance of counsel. Of those claims, 87 percent were denied; the court sided with the government.

If DNA testing hadnt come along, they might still be sitting in prison. About half of all habeas corpus petitions filed in state courts allege ineffective assistance of counsel; only about 8 percent of them are successful.

Just this February, Justice Clarence Thomas held in a dissent in Garza v. Ohio that defendants have a right to a lawyer, but not to any degree of reliability in that attorneys performance. Essentially, Thomas said you have a right to counsel but not effective assistance from that attorney. The majority didnt agree with him but the fact that Thomas scribbled such a sentiment endangers everyone in this country.

When I point all of this out, Im usually met with the same refrains: my case and Syeds are outliers and most criminal lawyers do their job competently and many ineffective assistance of counsel claims may be unfounded. Based on my experience, I disagree. But even if thats true, it shows that weve settled for most not all defendants to be adequately protected when theyre facing prison time. Most isnt enough when someone's liberty is on the line.

The Supreme Court could have taken the first step in reversing this Sixth Amendment rights crisis by hearing Syed Adnan's case. They chose not to do so, and have imperiled each of our freedoms not just Syeds.

Chandra Bozelko is the vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a 2018 John Jay College-Langeloth Foundation Fellow in Solitary Confinement Reporting.

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A bad defense lawyer cost me six years of freedom. I'm still waiting on my appeal 12 years later. - NBC News

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was launched by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2006 and since then annual meetings have been held across the world. This year, Germany for the first time was the host country and organized the IGF in cooperation with the United Nations from 25-29 November in Berlin.

At the IGF 2019, I attended various sessions of different formats, mainly around the issues of digital democracy and identity. Here are my main learnings in short:

Blockchain technology (BC) is neither the solution to privacy nor to authentification issues: Public BCs seem to have their main advantage in providing for a high level of protection against fraud; and if they are used to serve as identity proof (e.g., for world citizens), there seems to be no way of avoiding a trusted authority, e.g. a public registry office, as a starting point. But there is obviously no privacy in a public BC, although there seem to be several ways of using a public BC with non-disclosed data, e.g. personal data that have been translated into hashes. The BC hype meanwhile seems to have been replaced by a more realistic approach in which BC offers interesting options in various software environments and for different purposes.

Democratic political regulation of the internet has become essential, and several speakers said that a global regulation frame was required. To me this is very convincing and it is also an issue for Democracy Without Borders: inclusive and participatory global democracy will require global digital communication but this can only work with internet platforms that are protected against misuse and domination. A bottom-up approach that takes a free global internet for granted is apparently no longer realistic.

Taking a free global internet for granted is no longer realistic

Maybe the European General Data Protection Regulation is a good first step in the direction of supranational data protection regulation and a good example for others; at least this view was shared by several speakers. And there seem to be plans for an European AI regulation as well. Regarding supranational regulation, however, there is a time issue: Referring to the issue of AI regulation it was said that the UN is too slow, so multilateral agreements would be a more promising approach. This will also be true for any form of internet regulation. Even more important, however, every global approach to internet regulation will also bear the risk that governments with an anti-freedom and anti-democracy agenda will try to exert their influence on this. So, democratic political regulation of the internet is by any means a difficult task and every step in this direction needs to be considered very carefully.

The internet gets nationally or regionally fragmented. In addition, in 2019 alone there apparently have already been 35 internet shutdowns (and counting). In Iran for instance, there has apparently been an internet shutdown by the government for five days in a row and it was said that due to effective preparations by the government the national/regional internet during this shutdown was working just fine (and even faster sometimes). Controlling and restricting the internet has become an attractive model for dictatorships all over the world and this is a real threat to global democracy. And there seems to be no technical way to circumvent such shutdowns. When discussing satellite technology options, a speaker from Iran commented sarcastically that even if this was feasible, it would certainly come under US sanctions as well.

There is a lot of influencing elections nowadays, and it is getting more. This has nothing to do with the way an election itself is being held (paper & pencil, electronic voting, etc.) but is all about fake news, targeted influencing and the like that is primarily done via online platforms and social media. It was said that maybe fact checking does not really help here when influencing works with identity issues and thereby addresses emotions that even may ignore opposing facts. However, empirical proof of the effects of influencing seems difficult or even impossible.

What are the conclusions for Democracy Without Borders, particularly the Global Voting Platform (GVP) initiative? In my view, the GVPs bottom-up approach of direct world citizen participation will have to be linked stronger with a regulatory top-down-approach of enabling and securing a free global internet by supranational regulation. Initiatives such as Contract for the Web should be supported. This, however, does not mean that authentification and security issues will be less important; and the potential use of BC technology is worth a more detailed consideration. Beside its still enormous potential for free global communication the internet obviously has also developed into a means of political control, manipulation and surveillance. It is no longer a neutral platform but has become a field of global politics and internet freedom is more and more under pressure from autocratic regimes.

Link:

Internet freedom and security challenges: notes from the IGF 2019 - Democracy Without Borders

Is there anything more patently patriotic than an Air Force flyover? Think about it. Whether at a big game or Fourth of July celebration, seeing jets scream across the sky in tight formation just gives me goosebumps.

So, I guess its apropos that the Air Force led the way towards adoption of the AR-15, M16, M4 and all the other variants. You see, back in 1954 one Eugene Stoner, chief engineer for Armalite, a division of Fairchild Engine and Aircraft Corporation, met George Sullivan, chief patent counsel for Lockheed Aircraft.

Sullivan in particular had this weird idea to use advanced plastics and aluminum alloys in weapons design. The two men shared much enthusiasm over the possibilities. Over the next two years, the Air Force tasked Armalite to develop a light and compact survival rifle that would floatthats a handy feature when ejecting over water. This put some distinct objectives, and dollars, behind the idea of: What can we do with plastics and alloys in firearms design?

Anyway, this weapons work funded by the Air Force arguably shaped Armalites thinking when the Army began a search for a rifle to replace in the M1 Garand starting in 1955. While the AR-10 submitted by Armalite didnt float, it used plastic and alloys like the Air Force AR-5 Survival Rifle, so it was 3 pounds lighter than competing entries. This allowed users to carry more critical supplies, like ammo and beef jerky.

Fast forward some years, and while the Army requested development of a lighter version of the AR-10, hence the AR-15, it was the Air Force that placed an early order for 8,500 of the rifles. The Air Force liked it, renamed their version to the M16 and standardized on the new rifle.

Not to be outdone, the Army placed an order for 85,000 of the new firearms. Thus began the transition to the M16 and its variants, arguably led by the guys and girls who do patriotic flyovers. Whats more American than that?

There are few absolutely unique innovations in small arms design, but the direct gas operation of the AR-15 was a clear differentiating point between Americas rifle and those fielded by the bad guys. And guess what happens when all those M16 and M4 carriers muster out and want to buy a civilian rifle? Just as with previous classics like the Springfield 1903, theyll tend to opt for the familiar and buy an AR-15, which, as it turned out, was made available to civilians at the same time the U.S. military bought the internally very different M16that too is historically in keeping with American firearms design.

Today, when push comes to shove, if something is going to be deemed Americas Rifle, thered better be a lot of them. It is estimated there are now more than 16 million AR-15-type rifles in American civilian hands.

On a related note, America is all about freedom, including freedom of choice. Yes, the AR-15 is a rifle, but practically speaking, its a category. Its a platform. Its a universe of variants and compatible accessories. In a sense, its like a pickup truckanother uniquely American thing. Lots of companies make them, and even more companies make gear and accessories. That means that buyers have choice in exactly how their rifle will look and be equipped. Want a small one? No problem. Want a light one? Easy. Want one painted up with Hello Kitty graphics? Im sadly confident someone has done it.

Read more:

AR-15 Part 3: Why it is America's Rifle - America's 1st Freedom

In Spain, France and Italy, the political and social transformations of the 18th century led these three very different artists this show of 100 works contends to develop both a freer handling of paint, and a more fantastical choice of subject matter. Find out more from the Hamburger Kunsthalles website.

Preview the exhibition below |View Apollos Art Diary here

Christ in Gethsemane (after 1753), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Photo: Elke Ward; Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk

In this painting, Christ lies in the garden of Gethsemane, where he was betrayed and arrested. Tiepolos clever play of light and dark here communicates to the viewer Christs state of mental anguish an example of the Italian painters skill at engaging his viewers imaginatively in his paintings.

The Philosopher (c. 1764), Jean-Honor Fragonard. Photo: Elke Ward; Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk

In this early painting by Fragonard, the intensity with the philosopher directs his eyes towards his book is echoed in the impassioned flair of the brushwork with which his scholars robes and wisps of white hair are depicted. Characteristically exuberant, the work pre-empts Fragonards later, famous series of Fantasy Portraits, in arguing above all for the intensity of experience that is to be found in the imagination a belief the painter shared with Denis Diderot, the pre-eminent French philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Don Toms Prez Estala (c. 1795), Francisco Jos de Goya y Lucientes. Photo: Elke Ward; Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk

Stripped of all incidental detail, this depiction of the engineer Toms Prez is typical of Goyas portraiture. All of the force of the painting comes from the eyes, the heavily set features, and the slight twist of the torso. The Spanish artist is seen here as completing the process, begun by Tiepolo, of changing the way we read a painting forcing the viewer no longer to rely on visual clues, but to meet the painting on its own terms and thereby anticipating modernity.

Event website

Link:

Goya, Fragonard, Tiepolo: The Freedom of Imagination - Apollo Magazine