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Event Details

FLIX: Fermented

Time: November 13, 2017 from 6pm to 9pm
Location: The Lot
Street: 2620 Truxtun Rd
City/Town: San Diego
Phone: (619) 312-1212
Event Type: food, &amp, wine, festival, film
Organized By: Hannah Takekawa
Latest Activity: Nov 7, 2017

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Event Description

Food and film converge at this year’s San Diego Bay Wine + Food Festival opening night party and film screening of celebrity Chef Ed Lee’s new documentary, Fermented. From beer and wine, to cheese and bread, fermentation serves as a catalyst to many of the incredible foods we eat and drinks we consume. Join a screening of “Fermented”, followed by a panel discussion and post-screening party featuring cocktails, beer, wine, music and tasting stations from some of the city’s top chefs who are taking the art of fermentation to new heights.

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Historic Crack House
2009, Porcelain Enamel Sign, 5 1/2" x 4 1/4"

Always bugs me when a neighborhood gets gentrified and suddenly all the "historic" district signs go up.
This house was a crack house in the early 90's. It was built in 1908 by the Millers, who were Volga Germans. This house sits on land in the Portland metro area, which rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other tribes and bands. All of this land was under the ocean 50-70 million years ago.


text:
Lovejoy Lost
2004, paper, chalk and video installation, silent
cinematography: Vanessa Renwick, Gus Van Sant

Every district has its last wolf.

Whatever happened to the Lovejoy Columns? For years, concrete columns held up the Lovejoy ramp, a viaduct heading west off the Broadway Bridge that dropped you into the now-gone flatlands of the SP&S railway yards in the Northwest industrial district. Greek immigrant and train night watchman Tom Stefopoulos covered the Lovejoy columns with his fanciful artwork in the 1940s. Over the years, the murals have made starring appearances in the films “Foxfire” with Angelina Jolie and Gus Van Sant’s “Drugstore Cowboy,” plus “Lucky Three”, Jem Cohen’s short film featuring Elliot Smith.

It had always been an adventure to walk those urban plains. Under the Lovejoy ramp, with the ba-thump of cars traveling overhead was being like being in a cathedral of the wilds. Wandering the district was always a delight, there was invariably discovery; the former train roundabout or 6 pairs of embroidered Chinese shoes lined up at the base of a column.

Tom’s paintings of mythical animals and the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic reached deep inside and touched the soul. It was the emptiest–“the largest part of portland that was so close in to the core of the city” but that emptiness was filling and fulfilling.

When the city demolished the ramp “to be rebuilt just a few inches over to make room for the new trolley track” it was like the bursting of a dam. The development of what is now known as the Pearl District crashed in, engulfing the once wild and open terrain in the center of the city.

Many good people went to great lengths to save the Lovejoy columns, with disappointing results. The now-defunct art and architecture team of Rigga, spearheaded by James Harrison, was the foremost voice of dissent when the demolition of the ramp was imminent. Art conservator Claire Dean worked to keep the 60-year-old murals intact. There were meetings with the Portland Department of Transportation, City Commissioner Hales, and Mayor Katz, and Commissioner Erik Sten’s assistant Marshall Runkel, where politicians and advocates wrestled the topic of how to preserve the hallowed columns. Concurrent with those meetings were rituals performed by Rigga, the first of which was a eulogy in 1998 when it seemed the columns were doomed. Later came a Suspension Ceremony in 1999 as the columns were cut down and moved, followed by a Sleep Ceremony to bless the resting place in transition until their hoped-for resurrection. Ritual, political pressure and community activism failed in their efforts to reinstall the columns to a new location in the Pearl District.

Tom Stefopoulus’ urban canvases slept patiently in a lonely storage lot for over four years, until developer John Carroll happened upon Lovejoy lost installed in the PDX Window Project. He became aware of the fruitless work to save the columns and after learning about the whole sad story through this video installation, he stepped in to help. Now two of the columns stand in the courtyard of the Elizabeth Building, 333 NW 9th Avenue in the Pearl District, and a small beam of Diogenes’ lantern still shines out over the city.

Aug 10 - Sept 4, 2004  PDX Window Project/PDX Contemporary Art


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This note has aims to draw out findings on capacity and capacity development from the six Country Reports of the 2009 Fragile States Monitoring Survey, and to assess changes in approaches which might be appropriate to improve development effectiveness. It was prepared by Ms. Heather Baser (Consultant) for the OECD DAC Capacity Development Unit.

A review of the factors limiting capacity in the 6 countries

All six countries face major problems of capacity and weak state capacity is seen by some either as a major cause of conflict (DRC p.12) or as the main challenge for the country and at the heart of statebuilding (East Timor p. 9 and 25).  Capacity shortages are further seen to be exacerbated by:

  • Lack of common vision among actors and interests – In East Timor, donors compete with each other for influence (East Timor p. 48).  In Haiti, the context is not analyzed systematically, a situation which risks creating incoherence in the approaches of different development agencies (Haiti p. 5).  In the DRC, diagnostic studies, thematic studies and sector evaluations did not circulate systematically (DRC p. 15) and hence the information needed to arrive at a common vision was not available to all.  In the CAR, the gap between the capital and the interior of the country make the development of a common vision and the identification of clear priorities challenging (CAR p. 6 and 9). Afghan participants believe that the donor agenda is politically driven rather than needs driven (Afghan p. 16).  Conflicting visions of donors about the role of the police and the institutional changes needed have limited change and progress (Afghan p 28).
  • The desire of donors and country partners to see short-term results – This contributes to supply-driven approaches and undermines broader capacity development efforts (East Timor p. 47). In Afghanistan, this has meant that a number of mechanisms have been put in place to substitute for state capacity in the delivery of regular state services such as parallel implementation units, international and national technical assistance and external implementation through NGOs or private contractors (Afghan p24).  This has weakened direct attention to civil servants and generated “a certain level of resentment among ministry staff” (Afghan p. 25).
  • Heavy bureaucratic procedures at all levels – This applies to the executive and legislature of partner countries as well as to donor countries (DRC p.9 and 46, Afghanistan p. 9).  In Afghanistan, there are, for example, a multiplicity of coordination and consultation mechanisms and platforms involving more than 60 international donors.
  • Unnecessarily high standards for the conceptual model of the state and correspondingly excessive requirements for documentation and formal explanation (Sierra Leone p.12 and East Timor p. 9 and 23).
  • Little use of national systems and overuse of PIUs – This reduces the opportunity for public servants to acquire experience in project and program management (DRC p.37) and to access and understand the organization, activities, dynamics and needs of counterpart ministries (Afghan p. 36).  Because of corruption and weak implementation capacity, PIUs are, however, seen as necessary to ensure the effective implementation of development activities (Haiti p.5).
  • The short-term nature of much funding – This allows limited time to develop national capacity In the DRC, for example, only 10% of funding is for more than 3 years (DRC p. 47.)  In addition, donor investment in capacity is seen as too hurried and with a tendency towards short cuts (DRC p.38).  In East Timor, forward budget and contractual commitments do not reflect long-term engagements (East Timor p. 11).  On the other hand, where programs have benefitted from long-term commitments, Afghanistan has been able to fine tune project activities and improve their quality (Afghan p. 41).
  • Assistance concentrated on central governments, with little attention to rural areas - This is often because of the absence of visible government organizations in many parts of the country (East Timor p. 23).
  • High salaries offered by donors and international organizations - These encourage brain drain out of the public service (Haiti p.10, East Timor p. 8-9 and 27 and Afghan p. 25).
  • Top ups of salaries – These “may leave a new legacy of public servants who believe themselves specially entitled but with no means to reward themselves except through corruption” (SL p.3). In addition, top ups favour those who have been well educated and “who fit the paradigm of donor expectations of competency”, usually the children of the elite (SL p. 11).  In Sierra Leone, this exacerbates divisions between those from Freetown and those outside.
  • The lack of coordination of the decision-making cycle of the partner countries with those of donors – This creates expenditure pressures. To meet targets, there is a tendency to use expatriate personnel rather than national (Haiti p.22).
  • Weak evaluation and monitoring - Monitoring is often limited and does not provide feedback to on-going programs, thus reducing the chances of their success (DRC p. 15).  There is inadequate attention to applying lessons from previous projects.  In addition, donors try to do evaluations too quickly and don’t take into account the need for contextual understanding (SL p. 6).
  • Heavy country reporting requirements to donors – This requires significant human resources (DRC p.24).

Absorptive capacity of the 6 countries

The weak general capacity of the 6 countries reviewed often translates into weak absorptive capacity. The reports see this as a function of limited capacity in both the national governments and the development community. Some of the problems identified on the partner country side include:

  • Lack of firmly established priorities on the part of the Haitian executive (Haiti 18)
  • Inadequate negotiation capacities leading to a lack of concrete dialogue about key issues (Haiti p. 27)
  • Misunderstandings about the constraints of the political and institutional environment of donors (Haiti p. 28)
  • Delays in payment of salaries of public servants which de-motivate them in terms of work (CAR p.19)
  • An insufficient harnessing of national capacity and citizen participation in the reconstruction process (Afghanistan p. 23) – Senior representative of the Afghan private sector have suggested public communications campaign on shared responsibilities and managing expectations.
  • Ministries often did not have the capacity to properly place, introduce and use technical assistance within their teams (Afghanistan p. 25). Technical assistants were often isolated and not used optimally. Over time, ministries have become more strategic in their use of international technical assistance.
  • International technical assistants were often assigned to PIUs where they worked with national technical assistants. They transferred skills to them but not to civil servants (Afghanistan p. 25).  Language was a key obstacle to transferring skills to civil servants.

On the donor side, some of the issues raised include:

  • The time gap between commitments by development partners and actual implementation of programs work in the field (Haiti p.4).  – In the CAR, the credibility of the aid program is low because of interruptions to projects, delays in the implementation and a lack of visibility in the interior of the country (CAR p. 15).  There is a need to explain lengthy delays publicly to reduce the suspicion of corruption and inefficiency (SL p.13).
  • Capacity development aims sometimes undermined by the way technical assistance is provided (East Timor p. 9).  – In CAR, there were years of delay in delivering aid because of restructuring of projects and recruitment and contracting problems (CAR p.15). Capacity development efforts with counterparts have had limited success (East Timor p. 20).
  • Inadequate consideration by the development community of the political aspects of aid (Haiti p.6
  • Overly complex requirements - In Sierra Leone, “the complexity and volume of donor documents and associated activities overwhelms GoSL capacity…” (SL p.26).  In Haiti, too many sectoral groups result in “a multiplication de documents, tableaux, evaluations et inventaire sectoriel” resulting in “beaucoup de déperdition”. (Haiti p.25).  In the CAR, an official complained that there had been “assez de textes, c’est de moyens financiers et matériels pour les appliquer dont nous avons besoin” (CAR p. 33).  Too many structures don’t improve the impact of aid (CAR p.36).
  • Inadequate consultation by donors with country partners on the choice of expatriate personnel (Haiti p.10)
  • In Haiti, tension among members of the development community, creating “une image de chevauchement, voire de cacophonie entre acteurs” (Haiti p.24).

Results of capacity interventions

Despite massive investments, DRC and East Timor have shown few results from programs focused on statebuilding (East Timor p. 27 and DRC p. 24).  By contrast, Sierra Leone is seen as being “well on the road to recovery and has made significant progress in laying the foundation for a peaceful, well governed state” (SL p.2). One of the contributing factors has been the role of the donor community where the “cordial atmosphere between Agency senior leaders has helped establish the basis of exceptionally constructive relationships visible in working level meetings (SL p. 22). Furthermore, “The set of senior and upper mid-level managers encountered during the preparation of this report were very impressive and would score highly on any measure of dedication, contextual awareness and professional competence” (SL p. 23).  Afghanistan has also seen slow but steady progress in institutional and organizational terms as well as individual training and orientation (Afghanistan p. 25).  The government is taking an increasing role in the coordination and realization of projects (Afghanistan p. 35).

Projects which have helped marginalized groups such as ex-combatants or IDPs have created resentment in the CAR and East Timor respectively as a result of the perception that they are the sole beneficiaries of government support (CAR p.31 and East Timor P. 37).  Similarly, Afghans perceived ex-soldiers from different ethnic groups to be taking their rightful jobs on a donor-funded road construction program (Afghanistan p. 29). Appearing to be more even handed is an important ingredient in building the legitimacy of such aid programs.

The issue of the fragmentation of projects and programs vs. the management of large projects/programs creates a dilemma for many fragile states.   A multiplicity of small projects with different systems of administration, design and reporting puts a heavy load on partner countries, such as East Timor which has 169 projects below $100,000 each.  On the other hand, large programs require well developed management skills, expertise that is in short supply in most developing countries. As a result, there is a tendency to bring in expatriate personnel to run these programs and these people often push aside local personnel and undermine capacity.  There is evidence, such as Pierre Robert’s comment in his draft paper on the consultations on peacebuilding and statebuilding in DRC, that small grassroots projects have a better chance of success than larger ones and more local ownership (see page 9). They are more likely to fall within the absorptive capacity of the partner country and to allow for experimental approaches to test what works and what doesn’t before getting into large-scale programs.

Afghanistan has had a wide range of experimental approaches with many having moved the reconstruction process forward. It took 6 years, for example, to develop the Afghanistan National Development Strategy which donors are supporting. The internal revenue collection system is increasingly reliable and government institutions are constantly adjusting and seeking to improve their structure and delivery channels (Afghanistan p. 9).

Several of the reports identified concerns on the part of partner countries about the transition from recovery to development assistance.  CAR, for example, sees its humanitarian aid declining without a concurrent increase in development assistance (CAR p. 42).  East Timor may not be ready for such a transition and the country report insists on the importance of donors involved maintaining their funding flexibility to respond to the country’s needs and the rapidly evolving context (East Timor p. 56).  In DRC, on the other hand, the donor community has played an important role in making the transition from humanitarian aid to development assistance successful (DRC p.44).

There is an undercurrent of skepticism about the use of the concept of capacity by donors in some countries. In Sierra Leone, for example, “the Government view is that only one side of the equation gets attention – government incapacity” to meet complex requirements, rather than focusing on “strategies (which) can be selected and explained plausibly to voters based on quick and simple processes” to create “trust in government capacity”(SL p. 12).  Similarly, in the CAR, capacity is seen as a “voile” with the real issue being the need to build confidence rather than capacity (CAR p.22).

Despite the importance given by many donors to technical assistance as a mechanism to build capacity and the extensive use of it in most of the countries reviewed, only two of the reports gave it much coverage. In East Timor, most TA is short-term, project related, and donor-driven, characteristics which are not seen as positive in the Paris Declaration. A further problem is that technical assistance reflects different cultures and approaches which can be confusing for the country.  Afghanistan is also critical of the imposition of cultural values, especially those from the West, on a society with very different values and customs (Afghan p. 34).

Some of the problems cited above may have been exacerbated by inadequate thought about what capacity was required in each case and how to address it.  Most of the countries reviewed stressed building the competencies of individual public servants rather than concentrating on groups or systems (DRC page 53).  Afghanistan has tended to focus on capacity substitution rather than capacity development (Afghan p. 25) although capacity development programs are slowly being streamlined.

Proposed changes

The reports make some suggestions or changes which would affect the capacity of the countries concerned, including:

  • Reducing the complexity and cost of donor processes (SL p.10)
  • Taking care in using the European model of statehood as a basis for statebuilding in Africa (SL p. 7). Pay more attention to “good enough governance” – supporting systems, structures and approaches which represent the basic set of conditions for a functioning state and are appropriate for the local context (East Timor p.23). This implies getting away from the goal of international best practice – the application of one solution across a range of countries. Solutions need customization and what is “good enough” would vary for each country and would likely vary even between central and provincial levels in the same country.
  • Revaluating the level of risk donors are willing to accept and recognizing that empowering governments to manage their revenues is an essential step that must be taken (SL p.4).  This would boost confidence in national systems (Afghan p.22).
  • More publicity about the details of aid agreements and budgets to give civil society sufficient information to hold their own representatives’ to account (SL p.13).
  • “Attempts to reduce corruption must go hand in hand with Public Service Reform and salary increases” (SL p. 13).
  • Developing a better system of capacity building that is less donor dependent and “slowly evolves out of the present system that rests on outside inputs to make government work” (SL p. 24) including an alternative to top ups and harmonization of PIUs.
  • More attention to the strategic and effective use of technical assistance and the identification of effective capacity transfer and phase out strategies (East Timor p. 27).
  • Considering the human dynamics in place in Sierra Leone and how they might provide useful guidance in other countries, particularly the fact that there appears to have been “the right people in the right place at the right time” (SL p. 25).
  • Finding a balance between large complex projects (which require sophisticated management skills that are in limited supply in developing countries) and having too many discrete activities (which allow experimentation but are demanding in terms of reporting and administration). Caution is also required when considering project size as an indicator of aid fragmentation (East Timor p. 53).
  • Focusing on the capacity required by the context – The East Timor report suggests that, because of the low level of skills in the country, the focus in capacity development should be on basic skills such as work planning, budgeting, reporting and literacy and numeracy rather than on higher level skills (East Timor p. 28).  Soft skills such as leadership, negotiation and management are important, it says, but it is also critical to avoid importing non-indigenous values. In terms of peace building at the community level, interventions are required to build trust and develop more social cohesion.
  • Finding an appropriate and manageable division of labour among development partners so as to reduce the number of projects and the management burden associated with them (East Timor p. 51)

The reports present a rather negative overview of progress in enhancing capacity in 4 out of 6 of the countries and the constraints to doing better seem to be significant.  That said, the reports do offer a number of approaches that show promise of strengthening capacity in these countries, particularly those on Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. I would add to this list the need to come to some understanding of what capacity is required to achieve the goals set out for the country and to think about how to encourage its development. In addition, I would suggest using iterative and incremental approaches to try out new ideas through small experiments before getting into large-scale programs which attract more attention and hence are more risk averse. This process seems to have worked well in Afghanistan.

(Prepared 11 December 2009 by Heather Baser)

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Superb and Creative Works by Javi Bueno

Javi Bueno is graphic designer and illustrator based in Zaragoza, Spain. Part of being a designer is to be able to create your vision and ideas through any kind of mediums and variant styles. As you can see below, Javi is a creative designer and we truly admire his versatility.

More information about Javi Bueno: http://www.javibueno.es/index.php, and follow Javi on Behance: https://www.behance.net/javierbueno. All Rights to Javi Bueno

Don’t forget to check out more fun images and videos.

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Legislation Preventing Child Trafficking Passes Ohio House
HB 63 addresses online "re-homing" for adopted children

House Bill 63 was passed by the Ohio House today, which expands the crime of endangering children to prohibit a person from selling or transferring, or attempting to sell or transfer, a child for any value.

The bill, sponsored by State Representatives Dorothy Pelanda (R-Marysville) and Cheryl Grossman (R-Grove City), combats the latest form of human trafficking to emerge, which is the unregulated placement of an adopted child in another individual’s custody, also known as “re-homing.”

Re-homing occurs after a family adopts a child and then the parents no longer wish to keep the child because they are not integrating into their family. They then choose to re-home the child oftentimes by putting them on a website such as Amazon or eBay to find a new home for them.

While many have good intentions through re-homing and do it legally, it can open up a means for the child to end up in the hands of human traffickers.

“It is horrific to think that children are literally being advertised on the internet to be re-homed,” Grossman said. “I am pleased to joint sponsor this important legislation on behalf of protecting children.”

Since the legal guardian is not following the formal adoption process, a child can end up in the care of someone without any legal documentation necessary for guardianship. Without this proof of guardianship the child is then unable to enroll in school or receive any medical attention.

In Ohio, only through a legal pathway of parental consent, home assessment, and a filed petition can a minor be placed for adoption with a new parent. House Bill 63 simply establishes guidelines so that guardians follow this process when re-homing their child.

Should the proper steps not be taken to transfer custody, the legislation provides the potential for both the placer and receiver of the child to be charged with a felony.

“House Bill 63 is an instrumental step in combatting the latest form of human trafficking to emerge in Ohio,” Pelanda said. “I am pleased to see my colleagues move this needed legislation onto the Senate today.”

In addition to expanding the crime of child endangerment, HB 63 also requires pre-adoption training to include information about re-homing. The bill also encourages mandatory reporters and Children’s Services Agencies to investigate the potential of a child being in an individual’s care for more than a year without custody.

House Bill 63 was passed by the Ohio House unanimously and will now receive consideration from the Ohio Senate.

Featured Posts

Representative Pelanda, Senator Burke Attend Bill Signing

State Representative Dorothy Pelanda (R-Marysville) and Senator Dave Burke (R-Marysville) were present for the signing of House Bill 177 by Governor John Kasich on December 19th 2013.

Rep. Pelanda Encourages Constituents To Submit Online Legislative Survey

In an effort to obtain feedback from the residents of the 86th Ohio House District, State Representative Dorothy Pelanda (R-Marysville) encourages her constituents to fill out and return her legislative survey, which seeks feedback on issues such as the states economy, taxes and education funding.


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Oil Offshore Marine Careers in Onshore and Offshore Drilling Energy Industry Oil Offshore Marine: Oil & Gas Jobs & CVs Online recruitment services (job vacancies, resume/cv database search) for Oil Industry, Energy, Offshore, Petroleum, Engineering, Construction, Drilling, Subsea, Marine, Shipbuilding, Shipping, Petrochemical. Have your own FREE account! free cv upload registration on Oil-Offshore-Marine.com recruiter benefits: free job postings and cv search on Oil-Offshore-Marine.com
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CV Strong knowledge on Oracle database release: 8, 8i, 9i, 10g

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CV/Resume ID no.: 76431

Location (Residence): Villacidro, Italy
Citizenship: Italy
  Native: Italian Standard
  Other: English
Education & Experience: Work Authorization & Relocation:
  High School in Electrical

Years of Experience: 11 years
Authorized to work in:
   European Union
Present Location:
   Italy, Cagliari
   European Union
Category Subcategory Ability Experience
IT/Communications Database Administration Expert 18 years
IT/Communications Support (Op. Sys.) Experienced 4 years
IT/Communications Administrator Expert 18 years
CV/Resume Details
1. Summary (Cover Letter) - CV/Resume Part 1 [Mandatory]

I'm working in IT environment since 1996. Before 1996 I was working as electrical specialist.
I'm really interested on database technologies, especially related to Oracle, the product in which I wish to further specialize my skills.
I'm looking for good opportunities and challenges which can improve my knowledge and my career.

2. Work Experience - CV/Resume Part 2 [Mandatory]

In the middle of 1995, I realized that the job I really wished to do, was in IT world. So I started to look for opportunity in this environment.
The first chance came from a little computer shop in my village. I worked there after my normal job as electrical employee. I learned the basics of PC hardware and operating systems (windows 3.11 and DOS 5 at this time..so far..). After about one year spent studying and experimenting I found the first important job in IT. The company was a multivendor support company. I worked as support specialist for all the customers in Sardinia. The job assigned to the team in which I was introduced, was essentially to give support for failing systems, taking care of h/w and OS. I worked on a lot of different hardware vendor such as IBM, Olivetti, Bull, Digital, Cisco and so on.

The next job has been as support specialist at Synstar Computer Services (www.synstar.com). I worked here from 1998 to 2000.
In these two years I have managed all customers located in north Sardinia. From a technical point of view I've improved my skills on hardware and OS unix like (Aix, Linux, Solaris, Olivetti OsX). Furthermore, I took care about spare parts warehouse, personal contacts with customers and everything related with daily activities.

In 2000 I arrived in Tiscali as senior Unix engineer. In the same year I started the courses to become a Dba. In a couple of months I did the 4 basic courses and I started to work as Oracle dba, managing all oracle databases in charge of ISM team.
IMS means Internet Services Management: it's the team which manage all production servers that provide services to final customers over internet: AAA, web, mail, Advertising, sms, fax, subscriptions and many others.

Working on production environments, I have to operate conjugating
precision and speed. Having in charge services that have to guarantee as much
uptime as possible, I'm always taking attention to performance and stability.
All databases I manage are providing services under SLA, so the main goal of
my job is to have database uptime close to 99,99 % of year-based time.

In details, the activities in my charge are the following:
- Installation and configuration of new instances/databases;
- Upgrading and patching;
- Backup & recovery;
- Tuning and configuration for best performances;
- Performances monitoring;
- Troubleshooting;
- Day by day management;
- Support to development area;

I offer a strong knowledge on Oracle Database - version: 8.0, 8i, 9i, 10g on
Solaris platform in all their aspects:
- General architecture;
- Memory architecture ad management;
- Storage sub-system and related objects, such as tablespaces and segments;
- Options like partitioning, materialized views, parallel processing and so on.

I have a strong experience in moving/re-organize/split very large database
installations. Below some examples of the last activities I have led in two
different services which are database based:

- ADV (Advertising) platform. This service provide all is needed to serve the
banners in Tiscali sites and in many customers platforms. Built as a single
installation for all countries, it has just split in three different platforms
to achieve performance and usability goals. The responsibility of this plan
has been in my charge: I studied feasibility, effort, implications and any other
problem related with this project. The original database has been used as
source to populate the final three databases: each of them now stores only
records related to his country. The only down required to the service, has
taken about 4 hours, just to synchronize the latest data.

- Legal searches: as TELCO provider, Tiscali is often asked to provides
connection, authentication and a variety of different logs to the judicial
authority. I've led the creation of the platform to provide such kind of
information: the relevant rows have been duplicated into a dedicated database,
studied specifically to achieve very fast answers (tables with more than
4,000,000,000 rows constantly synchronized with live systems).
The front end application, with strong authentication layer, has been developed
over the database system. It can be accessed only using protected protocols
(HTTPS, IMAP over SSL and so on).

I have a good knowledge about all aspects relevant in a large IT farm, including network, tcp/ip, internet technologies, storage, multi-tier-platforms and so on.

3. Education & Training - CV/Resume Part 3 [Mandatory]

Istituto Tecnico Industriale Elettrotecnico - Oristano 1986

- Olivetti LSX - SNX with Unix OS 1998
-Digital VAX 6000 / 8000 "
-IBM RISC 6000 "
-Networking with CISCO 2000 series "
-Introduction to Oracle SQL e PL/SQL 2001
-Oracle Enterprise DBA part 1a: Architecture & Administration "
-Oracle Enterprise DBA part 1b: Backup & Recovery Workshop 2001
-Oracle Enterprise DBA part 2: Performance & Tuning 2001
-LDAP administration - Critical Path 2001
-Sun Enterprise Cluster Administration 2002
-HP-UX Performance & Tuning 2003
-BS 7799-2:2002 Introduction 2005
-BS 7799-2:2002 Auditor 2005
-Sun Cluster 3.1 Administration 2006
-Oracle 10g: RAC for Administrator 2007

4. Computer Skills - CV/Resume Part 4 [Mandatory]
strong knowledge on h/w;
strong knowledge on OS: linux, Solaris;
strong knowledge on database systems: Oracle, postgreSql
5. Other Skills - CV/Resume Part 5 [Optional]
6. Additional Information - CV/Resume Part 6 [Optional]
I like music. I studied piano for 7 years.

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Strong knowledge on Oracle database release: 8, 8i, 9i, 10g
CV/Resume ID no.: 76431

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5. Systems and Network Support & Administration, 10+ years experience, 5+ management experience
6. System Administrator (IT, Lan networking etc), procurement (buying & repairing), Inventory (stores)
7. HSE, QHSE, Health Safety
8. plc. electrician , maintenance electrician , rig electrician , experienced electrician ,
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13. Oracle database and system administrator
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17. Roustabout on the oil rigs anywhere within the world
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19. Roughneck Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration Field in Off-Shore and On-Shore
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24. Steel Structural Detailer Xsteel Detailer Familiar with British European American & Indian Standards
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26. Chef cook wide experience onshore and offshore
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28. Trainee electrical supervisor - B.Tech applied electronics and instrumentation
29. Electrical Designer Brush Transformers Gulf United Arab Emirates, Micron Electrical Bangalore India
30. Manpower Management, HR/Administration Management, Training of the individuals in Pakistan

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The Leo Gravitational Pull.

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javascript:void(0) Online Study Material Bank Clerical Exam : Free Online Study Material : Series 53 ~ Online GK

Online Study Material Bank Clerical Exam : Free Online Study Material : Series 53

Online Study Material Bank Clerical Exam: IBPS Clerical exam is going to happen shortly, we are here providing another series on online study material for bank clerical and bank PO Exam. We have been providing you quality online free study material from a long time. Almost 90% questions are appearing from the free study material we are providing to our visitors.

Under 19 World Cup: India win the under 19 world cup, they have defeated Australia in the final.
Federation Cup Throw Ball Championship-2012: Delhi teams, both in male and female categories, lifted 23rd Federation Cup Throw Ball Championship-2012. The Championship was held at sports ground Government College for Women M A Road Srinagar.
Andrew Strauss: England’s test team captain Andrew Strauss announced his retirement from international cricket on 29 August 2012. Under Strauss’ captaincy the England team witnessed back-to-back Ashes wins over Australia and reached to the top of the test rankings.
Naroda Patiya riots case: A special court on 29 August 2012 convicted 32 people, including former Gujarat Minister Maya Kodnani and Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi in the 2002 Naroda Patiya riots case. The communal riot in Naroda Patiya in Gujarat had claimed the lives of 97 people from the minority community.
Norman Borlaug Award: Aditi Mukherjee, a Delhi based scientist, won the prestigious Norman Borlaug Award in Field Research and Application. Mukherjee was picked for the award for her work in transforming access to water for thousands of farmers in West Bengal.
Hashim Amla: Hashim Amla, the star South African Batsman, became the fastest player to score 3000 runs in one-day international on 29 August 2012.
Hashim Amla took a total of 57 innings to become the fastest player to score 3000 runs.
Jammu and Kashmir Bank: Jammu and Kashmir Bank on 20 August 2012 won four national awards-The Sunday Standard FINWIZ-2012 Best Bankers’ Awards. The Bank was awarded Best Banker in Financial Inclusion and Customer Friendliness and declared runner up for Best Banker in Priority Sector Growth and Agricultural Credit.
Yu Wenxia: Yun Wexia won the Miss World 2012 title. Miss World 2012, the 62nd edition of the Miss World pageant was held on August 18, 2012 in Dongsheng Fitness Center Stadium, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China. Ivian Sarcos of Venezuela crowned her successor Yu Wenxia of China at the end of the event.
Victory for Apple: US technology giant Apple on 24 August 2012 won a 1-billion dollar patent case against Samsung after a California court ruled that the South Korean firm stole a series of Apple’s patents pertaining to software and design of mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad.
Delhi government's Lifetime Achievement Awards: Celebrated Sarod exponent Amjad Ali Khan, vocalist Girija Devi and famous writer Ruskin Bond were conferred the Delhi government's Lifetime Achievement Awards on 24 August 2012.
List of Important Castrol Cricket Award winners:
Castrol Indian Cricketer of the Year: MS Dhoni
Castrol Junior Cricketer of the Year: Unmukt Chand
Castrol Lifetime Achievement in Cricket Award: Ajit Wadekar
Castrol Indian Test Cricketer of the Year: Rahul Dravid
Castrol Indian ODI Cricketer of the Year: Suresh Raina
Castrol Indian Batsman of the Year (based on ODI and Test cricket performances only): Sachin Tendulkar
Castrol Indian Bowler of the Year: R Ashwin
Vanya Mishra: Vanya Mishra, Miss India World 2012 bagged the titles of 'Miss Social Media' and 'Beauty with a Purpose' at Miss World 2012 pageant.
More Reservations for SC/STs: The government cleared a proposal that would allow it to provide reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in promotion in state jobs.
The Union Cabinet, at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, approved the proposal for making provisions for quotas for SC/STs in promotions in government jobs.
Mamta Banerjee: The ‘Bloomberg Markets’ magazine has included West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee in the list of 50 most influential people in the finance category.
Andy Roddick: Andy Roddick the legendary tennis player from US announced his retirement during the US open on 6 September 2012 after facing a defeat from John Martin del Potro.
India slipping: India slipped down with 3 ranks to 59th position from its previous year ranking in the Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013 released on 5 September 2012 by the World Economic Forum.
Nehru Cup Football: India won Nehru Cup football tournament on 2 September 2012 after beating Cameroon 5-4 via penalty shoot-out.
Navy Chief: Admiral Devendra Kumar Joshi (DK Joshi) took over as the new Indian Navy chief on 31 August 2012.
US Open 2012: In one of the most thrilling women's tennis matches in a long time, Serena Williams defeated Victoria Azarenka by a score a 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 in US Open final.
This is Williams' second Grand Slam of the year to go with a gold medal at the London Olympics. She won her fourth U.S. Open title of the career.
ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year Award: The ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year Award has been conferred upon Virat Kolhi.
WSPD: World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD) is an awareness day observed on 10 September every year, in order to provide worldwide commitment and action to prevent suicides, with various activities around the globe.

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Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence

Public Awareness

Bulletins - Winter 2014 OPDV Bulletin

Table of Contents

Legislative Update

On November 13, Governor Cuomo signed into law a bill that prohibits victims of domestic violence from being held legally responsible for violation of an order of protection under which they are the protected party (Chapter 480).  The law takes effect immediately and applies to all orders of protection currently in effect.

This prohibition will be explicitly stated on all New York State order of protection forms:  “This order of protection will remain in effect even if the protected party has, or consents to have, contact or communication with the party against whom the order is issued. This order of protection can only be modified or terminated by the court. The protected party cannot be held to violate this order nor be arrested for violating this order.”

On December 18, 2013, the Governor signed into law Chapter 526, which addresses financial/economic abuse by recognizing certain crimes of identity theft, larceny and coercion as ways that abusers threaten and hold power over victims.  The law adds these crimes to the list of family offenses, allowing victims to seek relief and an order of protection in Family Court, as well as criminal court.  As family offenses, they will now be subject to mandatory arrest and the order of protection will be added to the statewide order of protection registry.

The law also adds a new condition that can be included in orders of protection, requiring the abuser to return specified “identification documents,” such as a passport, immigration documents, birth certificate, benefits/insurance cards, etc., to the protected party.


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Employment Timeline

Employment History

PeriodEmployerTitleAdditional Info
MWW Group
Revolving Door Personnel: (33)
Firm lobbying profileMajor Donor profile
2005-2006GI Holdings
Revolving Door Personnel: (7)
Client lobbying profileMajor Donor profile
Bonior, David E
Revolving Door Personnel: (7)
Legislative AideMember profile
  Lobbying Firm     Private Sector     Federal Govt.     State/Local Govt.

For registered lobbyists, employment histories may be incomplete prior to 1998 because the Senate Office of Public Records does not make registrations and reports available electronically for those years.

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Mac OS X

When users attempt to launch a 32-bit app in 10.13.4, it will still launch, but it will do so with a warning message notifying the user that the app will eventually not be compatible with the operating system unless it is updated. This follows the same approach that Apple took with iOS, which completed its sunset of 32-bit app support with iOS 11 last fall.

This is good. I would prefer other companies, too, take a more aggressive approach towards deprecating outdated technology in consumer technology.

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RE[5]: Typical Apple
by feamatar on Wed 7th Feb 2018 00:43 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Typical Apple"
Member since:

High memory consumption is due to aggressive caching strategies to get you faster reload times. Many people visit the same sites over the day, and to improve load times it is reasonable to cache whatever is possible and keep it in memory. If you load a web page that is 40MBs, the next time you visit, it can load as little as 1MB, and no, it won't use hdd cache when you have enough ram available.

Reply Parent Score: 2


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OurBand.net - Showcasing DeathBoy from London

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From London in Greater London

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Jason Knight: Guitars
Phil Palmer: Drums
Adam Gelman: Bass

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AUDIO FILES not_loaded  |  not_loaded  |  not_loaded
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Little Charlie's first word is "Uh-oh!" He loves saying it when he drops toys or food off of the high-chair. Today, he's been saying it because he heard me talking to Luke's teacher on the phone. Around noon today, Miss Erica called. My greeting to her was, "Hi"--thinking, I love his teacher, she's sweet, why is she calling, then to WHY is she calling?? So my next response was "Uh-oh, what's happened?" Charlie was sitting in my lap getting a bottle and immediately starts saying "uh-oh" over and over.

Sure enough, Luke had an "uh-oh!" On their way in from the playground at school, Luke was running and fell on the concrete. They didn't actually see it happen, but he apparently he was initially gripping his arm. They looked at his arm, which does have a bruise and a scrape, but then saw his head, freaked out and wanted me to come get him! He has quite the goose-egg! Poor little thing. I'd say it's about the size of a half-dollar in diameter, but protruding from his head the size of a golf ball. He seems to be fine now---says it doesn't hurt, etc. It looks terrible---these pictures definitely don't do it justice. Dr. said via the phone, to make sure he's not vomitting, his pupils are the same size and he doesn't complain of a headache and he's good to go. So far, so good! My brave boy!!! And yes, Charlie, Luke had a BIG "Uh oh!"

A big ol' egg just in time for Easter! Poor thing!

Miss Angie said...

Yikes, Miss! I guess my hour 1 of Nanny time last week could have been worse! :)

Jennifer W said...

Poor sweet Luke!! He still looks cute even with a goose egg!!

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The new Spro Rat

I’ve known Bill Siemantel for close to 20 years now and he is unquestionably the most innovative lure designer and “out of the box” thinker I’ve ever met.

His tournament wins in California and Nevada are legendary and his Big Bass Zone (BBZ) books and videos are cutting edge.

Had a great visit with Bill this morning and got the “inside scoop” on his new Spro Rat.  If you think it is only for giant largemouth, wait until you hear the stories about smallmouth, northerns and muskies eating this thing.

Bill’s headed to Great Bear Lake in a couple of weeks time and is going to throw it up there for lake trout and pike.  They’re going to crush it.

The real story, though, is the “out of the box” thinking that went into this thing.  I’ll tell it to you when I get back home.

Bill Siemantel with one of the new Spro Rat baits
Bill Siemantel with one of the new Spro Rat baits

Gord Pyzer

Gord Pyzer

Fishing Editor Gord Pyzer is widely regarded as Canada's most scientific angler. Known in fishing circles as Doctor Pyzer, he worked for 30 years as a senior manager with Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources before devoting all his energies to fishing. A member of the Canadian Angler Hall of Fame, the award-winning writer is also an internationally sought out speaker, tournament angler and field editor with In-Fisherman Magazine and Television. As well, he co-hosts the Real Fishing Radio Show with Bob Izumi. Catch Gord on the Outdoor Journal Radio Show live every Saturday morning 8:05AM EST. If you're in southern Ontario, tune your radio to Sportsnet 590 The FAN AM or visit and listen live online.

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Re: old green streetcars, punchcards, tokens

07/08/07 - posted by jb

Thanks for taking this old wrinkled memory out of your wallets for an extra punch. I still tell any visitors I take into the City (and anyone else who will listen) about riding all over for a nickle.
Think I would buy mine at the Emporium in Stonestown and from there, would take busses and street cars just to see where they went. A regular prepubescent Kerouac, this was as close to hoppin' a freight train as a kid in suburbia could get. Hunter's Point, Visitation Valley, the outer Mission, I rode through these neighborhoods in states of wonder, marveling every time someone would pull the green cord and get off. I'd count the windows and imagine there was an entire TV sitcom going on behind each one, thinking the curved panes on the old victorians had a special advantage and infinitely more interesting stories to tell.

My favorite excursion was to Aquatic Park to see the old Italians play bocce ball and a swimmer if I was real lucky. Not much has changed for me, except the price of the ride.

The Western Neighborhoods Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.


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Tips For Learning Web Design

Previously we talked to you on our blog, about trends in web design for today, the difference between a designer and a web developer, or some tools that you should try as web designers. But what happens if you are not yet designers? If you want to introduce them to the world of web design, thanks to the enormous amount of information available globally, learning web design is at your fingertips. In this post, I will convey a series of tips that I consider essential when it comes to learning web design.

Know the evolution of web design to the present

To design a web page today, it is not necessary to have experienced at the user or designer level, with the web pages of the past. However, knowing what it is and knowing what the web pages were like, the trends and how they have evolved over the last two decades. Also, if you want to learn web design, I recommend you to know the evolution of tools, platforms, code languages or applications used in recent years to date. All this will allow you to start from a coherent base, which makes your design can, for example, avoid falling into old trends, discarded functions … or use inappropriate tools for the final result you pursue.

Assimilate and understand the basics to learn web design

One of the mistakes made by many of the people who want to learn web design is to try to tackle the final result, without stopping enough in the basics, not only plan but also fundamental aspects of web development, such as HTML, styles CSS, graphic design, etc. It will not help us when it comes to learning web design, create an image if we do not know where to put it or frame it with HTML, want to mount a grid in Bootstrap to create a web page about it if, for example we do not know what is bootstrap or how to use it, want to apply a CSS animation if we do not understand the basic concept of CSS, style sheets, etc. And so with any basic idea of web design. Learning web design is accessible, but as in most aspects, starting the house on the roof without a solid foundation can lead your efforts to failure.


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Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE ( © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 20 November 2018

Introduction: The Enduring Relationship of Religion and Violence

Abstract and Keywords

This Handbook describes four major dimensions: 1) overviews of major religious traditions; 2) patterns and themes relating to religious violence; 3) major analytic approaches; and 4) new directions in theory and analysis related to religion and violence. There is a much more nuanced interpretation of the presence of violence in so many different traditions. This chapter, which specifically presents overviews of traditions, patterns and themes, analytic approaches, and new directions in order to offer a roadmap to the academic field of studies in religion and violence, demonstrates both the range and diversity of areas of inquiry within this emerging field. The images and acts of destruction discussed in the chapters can be collectively described as “religious violence.” The study of religious violence and the religious dimensions of violent situations do much to shed light on the nature of religion itself.

Keywords: religious violence, religious dimensions, religious traditions, analytic approaches, religion

The dark attraction between religion and violence is endemic to religious traditions. It pervades their images and practices, from sacred swords to mythic conquests, from acts of sacrifice to holy wars. Though much has been written about particular forms of religious violence, such as sacrificial rites and militant martyrdom, there have been few efforts to survey the field as a whole, to explore the studies of religious violence historically and in the present, to view the subject from personal as well as social dimensions, and to cover both literary themes and political conflicts.

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence provides a comprehensive examination of the field and introduces new ways of understanding it. The forty original chapters in this volume are written by authoritative scholars who address four major dimensions of the topic: 1) overviews of major religious traditions, each of which is examined with an attempt to understand how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundation of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of vengeance and warfare have been justified by religious ideas; 2) patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; 3) major analytic approaches, from literary analyses to social scientific studies, which are surveyed with an eye to showing the diversity of analytic perspectives; and 4) new directions in theory and analysis related to religion and violence, which are presented by some of the most innovative contemporary scholars and provide novel insights into the understanding of this important field of studies. In its entirety, this volume forges new paths in the analysis of religion (p. 2) and violence, anticipating the way that this field of studies will continue to evolve. The book should be useful for students and teachers for generations to come.

Our hope is that the handbook will help to unravel some of the perplexing aspects of the relation of religion to violence and will show how acts of destruction in the name of God (or gods) or justified by faith have been rooted in historical and literary contexts from early times to the present. Contemporary acts of religious violence, of course, are profuse. Since the end of the cold war, violence in the name of religion has erupted on nearly every major continent, and many of its perpetrators have been revered by those who find religious significance for such actions. Although no longer novel, religious violence and the adulation of its prophets continue to confound scholars, journalists, policy makers, and members of the general public. Some of them have argued that religious violence is not really religious—it is symptomatic of something else and thus is an anomaly, a perversion of foundational religious teachings. Yet it is precisely foundational religious teachings that are claimed to sanctify violence by many of its perpetrators. Others cite bloody legends of martyrs and heroes and argue that religions, or some of them, are violent at the core, their leaders masterminds of criminal behavior. Yet the chapters in this volume show that there is a much more nuanced interpretation of the presence of violence in so many different traditions. The relationship of religion to violence is vexing. The chapters in this handbook reveal a variety of ways in which religious violence can be understood. Some social scientists point to a resurgence of anticolonialism, poverty, and economic injustice; the failures of secular nationalism; cultural uprootedness and the loss of a homeland; and the pervasive features of globalization in its economic, political, social, and cultural forms. Alternatively, literary theorists and historians examine how scriptural traditions and founding cults are steeped in violent myths, metaphors, and apocalyptic expectations that support acts of violence in the contemporary world. Different still are analyses based in evolution, anthropology, and psychology. The various approaches represent the range of lenses from which one might view religion and violence within the total realm of historically situated human experience.

Is violence, then, the rare exception in religious traditions, or is it one of the rules? Adherents of most religious traditions almost universally regard their own faith as pacificistic, one that abhors violence and proclaims reconciliation among foes. Perhaps they are right, since the overwhelming message of scriptural writings and prophetic voices is that of love, peace, and harmony. Yet both historians and keen observers also see another side. They point to the legends of war, sacrifice, and martyrdom that cling to the histories of all the great religious traditions. The disconnect between these two points of view raises some profound questions: Is violence peripheral to the religious imagination or at its core? Is it religion that promotes violence or some other social or natural factor? Is religion even distinguishable from those factors? Some argue that the great global religious traditions, because of their long histories of intertwining clerical authority with political powers, are more inclined to violence than are local ones. Yet sources for local religions, collected often at the crossroad between tradition and modernity, also report many (p. 3) forms of ritualized violence, such as assault sorceries, martial initiations, and prebattle sacrifices. Thus, for scholars of the global and the local, the question looms: What is the link between religion and violence and how profound is it?

As the scholars included here explore the answers to this question, they have to deal with semantic complications. Religion and violence are each ambiguous terms. The search for a suitable definition of religion has exercised the scholarly imagination for centuries, luring psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, ethologists, and others into debates over its meaning. Must a religion be centered on supernatural beings? Does the term refer to social or private behavior? Is dogma or praxis the key to its essence? Is it a philosophical system or a poetic structure, a matter of art? Violence, too, is not an easy thing to identify. Immediate bodily harm, verbal assault, social manipulations, cultural destruction, injurious magic, political oppression—the range of ways of thinking about violence is enormous. From whose perspective and at what point is an act to be deemed violent? What act cannot be construed as violent in some way? For instance, are we talking only about war and genocide, or psychological coercion, social restrictions, and binding categorizations? The contributors to this volume have wrestled with these issues and many more. Their collective work reflects the complex and contested meanings of both religion and violence. While the contributors do not operate with a collective definition for either term, they use these words in a manner that illuminates relationships and deepens the understanding of particular phenomena.

The chapters that make up the volume are rich in their interpretive and descriptive quality. The four sections—overviews of traditions, patterns and themes, analytic approaches, and new directions—provide a roadmap to the academic field of studies in religion and violence. The chapters in each section show both the range and diversity of areas of inquiry within this emerging field.

Part I: Overview of Religious Traditions

Part I provides overviews of Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, African, and Pacific Island religious traditions as they have engaged with violence. While the ideas and adherents of most of these traditions have spread throughout the globe, they are anchored in distinctive histories and cultures that set them apart from one another. For instance, Jewish, Hindu, Chinese, and Buddhist traditions draw from their respective sets of sources that are thousands of years old. The Sikh tradition, however, emerged in the 1600s and is one of the youngest global religions. Some traditions, such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, are united by core beliefs and ideological frameworks; others, such as Hindu, Jewish, Chinese, African, and Pacific Island traditions, tend to be rooted in particular (p. 4) places and are linked with specific communities and social systems. The traditional religious communities differ also by size; Islamic, Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist traditions have more than one billion adherents each, while the numbers of Jewish, Sikh, and Pacific Islander followers are only in the millions. Together, however, these traditions influence more than six and a half billion people around the world. The histories of their relationships to violence are a part of the fabric of global history.

Each of the chapters in this section introduces readers to the diversity within the religious traditions. Within Christianity, for instance, the Protestant history of religious violence is distinctively different from that of the Catholic. In the Hindu traditions, the theology and history of devotees of Vishnu (Vaishnavites) are dissimilar to that of devotees of Shiva (Shaivites), and both differ from the communities related to the earlier Brahmanical and Vedic traditions in India. Differences also emerge between theological pronouncements in scripture and the actual instances of religious violence in society. In some cases, sacred texts do not just pronounce but describe forms of religious violence, such as sacrifice and warfare; these accounts are found in the Jewish Torah, the Qur’anic surahs, the Buddhist sutras, the Christian gospels, and the Hindu epics. Violence is also embedded in religious symbols. The sword of the Buddhist bodhisattva Manjushri, for instance, symbolizes the cutting away of illusion; the cross that represents Jesus’s persecution and death signifies the atonement of Christians from sin; the two edges of the blade in the Sikh symbol, the khanda, represent the spiritual and temporal power of the faith; the warlike tattoos of the martial Chinese gods are believed by adherents to invigorate warriors. The chapters review these theological and symbolic connections to violence and also the historical and social manifestations, including warfare, torture, ritual, or suicide. Through a historical lens, contributors intimate with the religious traditions provide intricate perspectives on the various ways in which each religious tradition is linked with violence. In addition to these nine chapters, other traditions are touched on in later sections of the volume. (See, for instance, the discussion of Mesoamerican religion in Chapter 11, “Sacrifice/Human Sacrifice in Religious Traditions” by Davíd Carrasco.)

The essay on Hindu traditions, by Veena Das, sets out the complex dynamic of religious attitude and violent practice as represented in the history of Indian ideology and poetics, focusing on ambivalent nuances in reports of animal (and human) sacrifice and in gendered violence. The essay on Bhuddist traditions, by Michael Jerryson, explores the paradox of irenic abstractions about Buddhist nonviolence versus culturally embedded customs prescribing acts of coercion and self-immolation, represented within Buddhist texts and social realities. By looking at the exception to the rule, Jerryson isolates key doctrinal passages that allow for violence and connects them to physical manifestations. The Sikh tradition is placed by Cynthia Keppley Mahmood within the context of the shifting sands of India’s religious history; she describes the reverence for certain Sikh gurus as being associated with martyrdom and violence and relates this history of religious violence to the militant drive for a Sikh homeland—Khalistan—in recent decades. In (p. 5) exploring the theme of religious violence in the Jewish tradition, Ron E. Hassner and Gideon Aran begin with divergences among ethnic Jews with regards to identity and scriptural adherence and then explore the way that violence is portrayed in biblical prescriptions and stories, as well as in postbiblical history and interpretation; they also cover the extracanonical books and Talmud and the legacy of violence in Jewish mysticism and messianism. In covering the diversity within the Christian tradition, Lloyd Steffen probes the multilayered Christian imagination with regards to violence, from the tradition’s inception in political executions and apocalyptic dreams, through the intertwining of Christianity with political empires, wars, and crusades to its internal struggles over heresy, slavery, missionary zeal, just war, and social justice. In examining the role of violence in Islam, Bruce Lawrence contrasts Islam in 611 with the Islam associated with terrorism on 9/11. He summarizes a complex trajectory of defiant moralism as well as ethical compromise, from Islam’s revolutionary roots in human rights through its early rules for how to and when to wage war, through the eventual (post-Mohammed) establishment of jihad as an instrument of state, the crystallization of its rules in response to the Crusades, the founding of “gunpowder empires” such as the Ottoman, and finally Muslim responses to European colonization.

A wide range of African customs and legends are examined by Nathalie Wlodarczyk who shows, among other things, that African traditional religion provides notions of a thriving spirit world that offers “sacred warriors” ritualized protections and martial enhancements when defense of community is urgent. Among the variety of Pacific Island religious cultures described by Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart, notions of violence vary hugely—from physical harm to slights of honor to mystical assault—but, generally speaking, more hierarchical societies have tended to be supported by ritual and cosmological structures that may be harnessed for revenge and war. Discussing religion in China, Meir Shahar points out that the category of religion eludes traditional Chinese thinking; nonetheless, he summarizes the periods of harmony between official Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, pointing out also the historical reverence for martial gods and practices of religiously sanctioned human sacrifice and self-mortification.

Part II: Patterns and Themes

In the second section of the book, leading scholars in their fields write on fourteen topics related to religion and violence that frequently occur within religious traditions or that cut across religious diversity. Some of these are patternsactivities that reveal the religious dimensions of political violence, cosmic war, genocide, terrorism, torture, and abortion-related conflicts—that are found in the social histories of many religious traditions. Others are themes—concepts and practices more centrally related to religious ideas and conduct, such as the concepts (p. 6) of evil, just war, martyrdom, and sacrifice. Still other chapters may be regarded as discussing both patterns and themes; these include topics such as contested sites, self-mutilation, death rituals, and violent death.

Through careful historical examination and innovative analysis, each of these chapters provides thick descriptions for critical terms such as self-mutilation or torture and how they connect to the discussion of religion and violence. For instance, the label of martyr was glorified in early Christianity, then highly restricted and contextualized at the inception of Islam; but at the end of the twentieth and in the first decades of the twenty-first century, the idea of martyrdom has gained a certain political notoriety. The theme of sacrifice is regarded in most contemporary religious communities as a concept or a symbol, yet it has a history in actual practice, including cases of human sacrifice in religious ritual. Its appearance among early Greeks and Romans, northwestern African Dahomey, Chinese, Mesoamericans, and others demands a fuller examination. The comparisons made in these chapters are not intended to generalize or blur the lines between different religious traditions but rather to burrow beyond limited religious frameworks of a concept in order to excavate its deeper meaning. In some cases the chapters are comparative, such as those on evil and on the concept of violent death across religious traditions. Other chapters, such as those on martyrdom and genocide, focus on one particular culture to explore the various aspects of concepts and practices.

The chapters that make up this section move roughly from themes in the religious imagination to social acts and practices and, finally, to conceptions of death. The opening essay is James Aho’s treatment of the anthropodicies of evil, which he identifies as “horrifying and beguiling, terrifying and wonderful,” paradoxically tied to the sacred. Aho surveys evil’s causes, motives, and purposes as perceived in a range of traditions. Animal and human sacrifice—diverse theories about it, its geographical and historical range, and its various forms—are studied by Davíd Carrasco, who delves especially into the Aztec cosmovision behind large-scale human sacrifices and the sacrificial symbolism extending from the heavens to earth.

The theme of martyrdom is explored within Islamic history by David Cook, who identifies respect for martyrs in the earliest battles, wherein the shahid who died fighting selflessly to defend the faith was understood to ascend to heaven and to intervene there on behalf of the living. The label later was extended to victims of plague, defenders of markets, and warriors fighting invaders, and, with the development of explosive devices, perpetrators of the controversial “martyrdom operations” associated with suicidal activists. Of course suicide and killing innocents are proscribed by traditional Islamic jurispudence. Violence to one’s self, as in self-mutilation and starvation, is explored by Liz Wilson, who illustrates how these behaviors have been used as strategies for change across traditions.

Several of the chapters are about warfare and the contest between good and evil. This confrontation is often portrayed in images of the apocalypse, as described by Jamel Velji. Great battles between absolute good and absolute evil, temporal urgency, compelling authority in the form of prophets or texts, and, of course, millennial expectations are some of the features of apocalyptic visions of the end of history. (p. 7) The notion of divinely sanctioned warfare is explored with relation to the concept of cosmic war, described by Reza Aslan, who outlines ten of its common features and traces its origins to ancient Near Eastern spectacles of warrior gods who exercise cosmic commands on earthly battlefields and secure sacred spoils for humans.

An imagined confrontation of cosmic forces can justify not only warfare but the extermination of whole populations of people and their cultures. The violent imaginaries that informed reports and deeds of the 1994 Rwandan genocide are the focus of the essay on genocide written by Christopher C. Taylor. To the violent demise of President Habyarimana and his supporters, Taylor traces the perseverance of precolonial notions of a sacred king whose “wild sovereignty” and inability to promote the flow of imaana—a diffuse, fecundating fluid understood to nourish the social and natural world—earns him fateful sacrifice. Images of a cosmic war between good and evil can justify also acts of terrorism. In his chapter on this topic, Mark Juergensmeyer describes religious terrorism as “performance violence”—acts that are performed for the purpose of creating a public event. These acts present a dramatic scene into which observers are unwittingly drawn; they are compelled to enter into the perception of cosmic warfare imagined by those who perpetrate the acts. Based on his conversations with accused terrorists, Juergensmeyer shows that performance violence is designed not only to achieve tangible goals but also to theatrically enact and communicate an imagined reality. Religious justifications for and against torture are addressed by Karen L. King, who points to the torturous narratives at Christianity’s foundations, the notion of redemptive martyrdom, and the various ways in which Christian ideology has challenged as well as supported the torturous suffering of fellows and foes.

Other chapters deal with public conversations about violence and the religious arguments that allow or disallow it. The ethical justification for war is famously promoted by the concept of just war. John Kelsay outlines Western just war thinking, from Roman Cicero’s exhortations for honorable treatment of conquered populations to the United Nations’ trial of Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity. Particularly within Christianity, Kelsay identifies traditional motivations for forcibly resisting anarchy and transgressions against public order, as well as for moral constraints on fighting and aggressive force. Abortion is a contentious public issue in the United States. After a glance at religious positions on abortion around the world, Julie Ingersoll surveys the thinking of the extreme end of the prolife movement in the United States, exploring its link with Christian reconstructionism, its use of violent and nonviolent strategies of resistance, and its identification of abortion with genocide and sin.

Public space and the impact of globalization are emergent themes in the conversation about religion and violence. Ron E. Hassner explores the conflicts over contested religious sites by communities invested in their integrity and for whom partition is abhorrent. States mistakenly overlook the complex forces at play in these contests, such as cultural memory and iconic identity, the felt presence of spiritual powers, and the expectation of sanctuary for fugitives. Monica Toft analyzes the resurgence of both religion and religious violence over the last decades, (p. 8) locating that resurgence at the intersection of local politics and three trends: modernization, democratization, and globalization.

The section’s final chapters are about death. Susumu Shimazono and Margo Kitts outline the rituals related to death and burial, such as corpse treatments, conceptions of death, and the etiquette of remembrance from ancient times to the present, highlighting the nexus of cultural themes that emerge at the site of burial. Finally, Margo Kitts explores the peculiar obsession of world religions with violent death, under three rubrics: when death is perceived as primordially wrong, when violent death is seen as cosmically right, and when violent death, particularly in the form of suicide, is enshrined as martyrdom.

Part III: Analytic Approaches

The third section provides insights into analytic approaches from specific disciplinary fields. The authors of the chapters represent six different academic disciplines in which scholars have wrestled with explanations of and treatments for religiously motivated violence: sociology, anthropology, psychology, literature, theology, and political science.

The chapters in this section have two objectives. On the one hand, they are attempts to provide an overview of the way that the aspect of religion and violence has been conceived as a field of studies within each discipline and how it has evolved. The sociological tradition of studies in religion and violence, for instance, reaches back to such important nineteenth-century theorists as Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx. Anthropological studies of this subject go back to the nineteenth-century theorist William Robertson Smith and the early twentieth-century scholar Bronislav Malinowski. Theological and literary analyses date back even earlier.

On the other hand, the chapters provide an opportunity for the authors to develop analytic approaches that they think are particularly appropriate to the disciplinary perspective from which they approach the topic. For this reason, the discussions are critical analyses of the studies of religion and violence in the various disciplinary areas.

In some cases, the authors reach across disciplinary boundaries to incorporate ideas from scholars from other fields, such as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz or the literary theorist René Girard. Although guided by their fields of study, theorists of religion and violence connect well beyond their methodological homes. It is fair to say that, except within the interdisciplinary field of religious studies, typically scholars in particular disciplines are not brought into conversation with one another. They are here. Through short, concise summations of key theorists and their advances, this section provides a theoretical blueprint of interdisciplinary academic discourses on religion and violence.

The chapter from a sociological perspective, by John R. Hall, is qualitative in its analysis and draws on the tradition of reflective social thought. Hall combines (p. 9) insights from sociological case studies, comparative structural studies, and the humanities. After caveats about the interwoven categories of religion, violence, nation, and ethnic community, Hall explores the formations and circumstances that shape violent expressions of religion, particularly among apocalyptic groups, and suggests that understanding multitiered social processes is intrinsic to understanding the complex interplay of religion and violence. Anthropologists Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern succinctly outline a variety of anthropological approaches to religion from the work of Émile Durkheim through the contemporary cognitive theory of mind, exploring the culturally vast interplay of imagination with, for instance, divinatory processes that legitimate war, witch hunting, and revenge and with cosmic postulates that sanctify the imposition of suffering on others and on oneself.

In the chapter from a psychological perspective, James W. Jones disavows a singular perspective on the psychology of religion and violence, surveying studies that focus on individual psychology, social influences, psychodynamics, and trauma (as well as the lack of it) as expository models for understanding why some individuals are drawn to religious terrorism and others not. From the perspective of political science, Daniel Philpott surveys a variety of potential relationships between state and religion and degrees of accepted theological autonomy to account for two forms of religious violence: communal conflict and terrorism. He concludes that religious violence is least likely to originate—though it will sometimes operate—in settings of consensual, institutional independence, as found most commonly in religion-friendly liberal democracies.

A range of literary approaches are offered by Margo Kitts, who surveys theories that attempt to explain how and why violence pervades foundational religious texts, as well as the imaginative dynamics that emerge from those texts and shape acts of violence. Christian theological approaches are summarized by Charles Kimball, who traces the early Christian cult from its pacific origins through its nationalization and militarization with Constantine, Charlemagne, and the Crusades. He also addresses internal movements that complexly administered and mitigated violence, such as the Inquisition, internal church discipline, religious wars, just war thinking, monasticism, and what has been called the just peacemaking paradigm. Christian theological perspectives on violence resonate with other theological perspectives such as Jewish and Islamic, which are covered in the handbook’s first section.

Part IV: New Directions

This fourth section is a platform for describing new models for the study of religion and violence and for addressing new directions in the established approaches. A group of innovative scholars considers new directions in which the field is moving and offers novel analytic approaches. Some have taken as their task a consideration (p. 10) of the relationship of religion to violence in general. Others focus on particular components of religion and violence—such as religious conflicts within cities. Still others search for causation, attempting to produce an explanation for the phenomena of religious violence. Together the chapters in this section point to productive new possibilities in the study of religion and violence that will illuminate not only this specific topic but the range of ways in which religious culture interacts with other social phenomena.

The first chapter in this section takes an enduring theme in the study of religion and violence, sacrifice, and focuses on religious practices in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Walter Burkert shows that religion is perpetrated in the arena of death, that is, in the killings we call sacrifice. Such sacrificial killings—highly circumscribed by taboos, ritual prescriptions, and ceremonial significance—initiated all major collective institutions and decisions in ancient societies, accompanied often by a feast on the victim’s flesh. Why should killing animals for food become a religious act? To explore this question, Burkert ponders studies of empathy across species. He deduces, among other insights, that religious sacrifice harbors the truth of the “struggle for existence,” while creating an optimistic superworld that displaces it.

The next chapter shifts the focus from the ritual act of sacrifice as a concentrated locus of violence to the grand scenarios of violence as envisaged by war. Saskia Sassen sees some cities as ascendant theaters for asymmetric war—war between a conventional army and armed insurgents—and examines the instructive elements, both variable and contradictory, within the contemporary conflicts in Mumbai and Gaza. She describes the shift from an epoch dominated by secularizing forces to one in which organized religions are structurally part of cities in their global modernity. Warfare is also a part of one of the most important aspects of religious thinking—apocalypse—explored by Michael A. Sells, who compares contemporary militant apocalypticism in its American Christian (Dispensationalist) and Middle Eastern Islamic versions. Sunni Salafi illustrations are drawn from Saudi Arabia’s Safar al-Hawali and American Ali al-Timimi, whereas Shi’a illustrations stem broadly from Twelver traditions and American speculation about them. Each of these apocalyptic dreams anticipates messianic triumph, although the Salafi and Christian versions are more emphatic in portraying the religious other as evil, human peace efforts as demonic, and war as total, global, and culminating in the annihilation of everyone other than the faithful.

Philosopher Hent de Vries reflects on the deconstruction of religion and religious violence from the perspective of Jacques Derrida’s thought. Based on Derrida’s “Violence et m é taphysique” (1961−1962) and his reflection on wars of religion waged by finger and thumb (that is, mediatized, so less localized and predictable than ever before), de Vries observes that war and violence cannot be expunged from global politics and global religions, which are capable of astonishing evil masked by enlightened and universalistic intentions. On a similar theme, David Frankfurter contemplates the myriad religious suspicions of an evil that warrants preemptive purging—from witch burnings to ethnic cleansing. He sees prurient (p. 11) fascination and righteous revulsion with sinister conspiracies and stories of predatorial monstrosities as emboldening crowds as well as the charismatic authorities who instigate violent remedies to quell that evil.

Wolfgang Palaver focuses on the mimetic theory of René Girard in analyzing foundational myths of violence. Palaver sees Girard’s notion of the scapegoating mechanism, whereby a substitute victim absorbs the mimetic animosities of the entire group and thereby promotes peace, as applicable to the disturbing tendency to direct violence toward exogenous groups. Hector Avalos also sees violence as being endemic to the religious imagination, though he argues that this is due to scarcity, not competition. Avalos claims that all religions tend to create artificial shortages of supernatural blessings or beings and thereby promote violence.

The next chapters in this section also focus on the nature of religion in order to understand the phenomenon of religious violence. Candace S. Alcorta and Richard Sosis explain why, from an evolutionary perspective, the same religions that can at times inspire joy, love, and awe can also involve terror, pain, self-mutilation, deprivation, violence, and feelings of revulsion. Examining ritual communication and costly signaling theory, they show how emotionally powerful and highly memorable experiences—such as rites of passages—can trigger autonomic and neuroendocrinal changes in individuals and bonding experiences in groups. The chapter by Harvey Whitehouse and Brian McQuinn also looks at religious ritual in relationship to social conflict, as based on Whitehouse’s theory of divergent modes of religiosity and ritual. In the chapter in this volume, they contrast the social dynamics of contemporary rebel groups engaging in high-frequency, low-arousal rituals (the doctrinal mode) with groups bonded tightly by traumatic ritual ordeals (the imagistic mode), such as high-arousal and emotionally costly initiation rites. The latter tend to intensify cohesion and tolerance within groups while heightening hostility and intolerance toward outgroups.

The final chapter in this section looks at a recent shift in the social sciences and humanities that enables scholars to better understand the religious dimensions of social pheonoma such as acts of terrorism and violence. Mark Juergensmeyer and Mona Kanwal Sheikh observe that there is a “sociotheological turn” in contemporary scholarship that encourages social scientists to take stock of the religious justifications for social action and for theologians and scholars of religious studies to be more aware of the social significance of spiritual ideas and practices. Focusing on “epistemic worldviews” as the appropriate subject for sociotheological analysis, the authors outline useful guidelines for research, such as undertaking interviews and case studies with an empathetic awareness that allows for the emergence of relational knowledge.

The images and acts of destruction described in all four sections of this book can be collectively described as religious violence, though it is clear that there are many ways of interpreting that phrase. In some cases the ideas related to violence are (p. 12) rooted in the basic beliefs of the tradition; in other cases, they and the practices associated with them are not narrowly theological. Aside from ritual sacrifice, real acts of violence are seldom intrinsic to any specific religious experience—wars are often justified in the name of religion, for instance, when the primary purpose is to extend political power. Yet, because violence in both real and symbolic forms is found in all religious traditions, it can be regarded as a feature of the religious imagination. Almost every major tradition, for example, has some notion of sacrifice and some notion of cosmic war, a grand moral struggle that underlies all reality and can be used to justify acts of real warfare.

Thus the study of religious violence and the religious dimensions of violent situations do much to shed light on the intrinsic nature of religion. The chapters that make up this volume are intended to provide a guide to the emerging field of studies in religion and violence, but they will also be useful in understanding religion in all of its complexity, its myriad social, psychological, and theological forms.