Skip to main content

Dealing with the Past: Apologies and the Possibility of the Ethical Nation

The twentieth century was simultaneously saturated with genocides, gross violations of human rights and the assorted pathologies of colonialism, and punctuated by declarations of "never again" and commitments to ethical global politics.

No doubt responding to this morbid symphony of violation and recommitment, during the last quarter of the century, scholars, policy makers and lawyers turned their minds to the question: how do we deal with pasts characterised by violation, disrespect for our fellow human beings and shattered societies so that we can lay the foundations for futures that will be peaceful and in which all peoples can enjoy their citizenship and human rights?

Much of the effort has been devoted to punishing those at the apex of perpetrator responsibility - the Milosovics who ordered the massacres and Lubangas who recruited thousands of child soldiers.

What has most fascinated me, however, is not how to call to account the man at the top; nor even how to render responsible those in the middle - those who wielded the machetes or raped the women or stole Indigenous children from their families.

Rather, how do we attend to the base, the foundation of this triangle of responsibility? How do illuminate the wrong that lies at the feet of all us who silently or implicitly consent to a world where particular acts of grave wrongdoing are rendered normal and even invisible?

While criminal lawyers have sharpened our understanding of the nature of individual responsibility, structural sociologists, social psychologists and philosophers have demonstrated how the actions of the individual are always embedded in broader social structures and cultural orientations.

The problem is, while there is a fairly direct line between the analyses of individual responsibility and a criminal trial, the implications of this more structural analysis of the aetiology of systematic violations are far from obvious. Indeed, as soon as we appreciate that systematic atrocities are not simply the outcome of the decisions and acts of the few, but are always the artefacts of entire systems of meaning and social relations, the question of "how to deal with the past" becomes considerably more difficult.

How do we get our hands on this most amorphous and yet pervasive part of wrongdoing and setting things right? How do we design interventions that will both call the collective to account for its part in the aetiology of systematic violations and - if I might use therapeutic language - how do we "rehabilitate" a cultural and social system?

Political apologies represent one attempt that we have seen made in the last thirty odd years to attend to this broader sense of political responsibility. Best known to Australians is, of course, the apology for the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their families. So let me say something about this case to illustrate the work that an apology might do.

Australians, shame and turning around the future

In thinking about the particular violation of removing Indigenous children, it's important first to locate this acute wrong against the colonial backdrop. Although the Australia in which people my age grew up was one narrated by a story of peaceful settlement and the inevitable - perhaps even natural - disappearance of the original inhabitants, the truth we now know is that from the time of colonisation Indigenous Australians were subject to a range of degrading, violent and genocidal violations, ranging from outright massacres, to systematic discrimination within the legal, social and political systems well into the twentieth century.

It is no stretch to say that the constitution of the modern Australian nation was founded on the dispossession of pre-existing sovereign indigenous nations and the foreclosure of that process. It was against this background of constituting a non-Indigenous nation that the policy of removal emerged.

Bringing them Home , the report of the National Inquiry into the Forced Removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, brought to the nation's attention this previously hidden history, conveyed not only through analysis of the laws and policies, but importantly through the testimony of children and families who had been directly affected.

Among its 54 recommendations for how we should, as a nation, might deal with this horrific aspect of our past, two specifically commended official apologies to Indigenous people. This provoked two waves on national sentiment: an unprecedented social movement advocating a national apology and a staunch anti-apology resistance.

The debate that transpired over the subsequent ten years is a rich resource for those who wish to understand what an apology means and how it operates as a social and political phenomenon.

At the heart of the Prime Minister's objection was the conviction that the call for an apology was blaming the wrong people. How could we - that is, contemporary individual Australians - be asked to apologise for what other individuals did? This is, if you like, a case of mistaken identity. A second problem, however, was that the demand for an apology involved a case of mistaken standards. How could we judge the past according to the standards of the present?

One response to this objection was to distinguish between guilt - which adheres only to those who have acted - and shame - which others can feel by virtue of their association with the wrongdoing. With our country's history embroidered with the marginalisation and violation of Indigenous peoples, as beneficiaries of the nation building project, we were all implicated.

But there was another response that spoke more directly to the question of "apology's temporality." Far from being a statement directed towards condemning acts of those mostly long since dead, apology is a statement that we are making now about our normative commitments.

The reason that a collective apology by contemporary Australians for a pattern of past wrongdoing was not only legitimate but also necessary was because the social, cultural and political orientations that undergirded the practice of removal were still present in contemporary Australian society. True enough, that particular explicit and heinous manifestation of the patterns of racial inequality occurred in years past, but the correlation between respect and skin colour still organised the social and political world of contemporary Australia.

Shame, and the expression of shame in the form of the apology, are then the means through which we take responsibility for recasting our political culture. It is precisely the transformation of the manner in which the past is received and interpreted in the present from denial or pride into shameful acknowledgment that makes possible a different future. Had the existing narrative remained unbroken, the angle of the line from present to future would be no different from the angle from past to present: one continuous line of unequal and abusive social relations; the artifice of an egalitarian national masking the practice of radical inequality. Shame deflects that line and opens a new orientation to the future.

When confronted with the voice of the other who has been wronged, I see a reflection of myself that I too find abhorrent. I am moved to shame because I recognize myself as one who has failed to live up to a fundamental norm I claimed to abide by. Shame is, to paraphrase Adorno, the shudder of recognition that passes through me as it dawns upon me that there is another full subjectivity on the other side of my action. And this, inevitably, shifts our being in the world.

To say "we are sorry," as the relational expression of shame, does not simply name an internal state. It is a performative mechanism for remapping identities precisely through the deflection of time's arrow. As a relational expression of shame, the apology would announce the active presence of a different political cultural context: one in which the wrongful actions cannot proceed with the people's stamp of legitimacy. It would be a political and sacramental act, transforming recognition into declaration.

According to this vision, through the apology the Australian nation would be reconstituting itself on the foundation of a normative framework where whiteness was no longer a condition for full citizenship (both in terms of membership and rights) and where substantive respect for the rights of Aboriginal people would be the normative default position.

So when contemporary Australians say that "we (taking in Australians of the past) were wrong," they are using the past as the story through which to examine and judge the frames of meaning which inform the nation across time and into the present. The judgments that an apology implies about the past are not directed to amending the (dead) past, but to reshaping the (living) present and future. As William Faulkner put it, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Apologizing for an event in the past, particularly one so stark as the forced removal of children, became the dramatic occasion for declaring one's colours. Indeed, apology's internal tension between assuming responsibility for the wrong, on the one hand, and condemning that wrong, on the other, is what makes it possible to use this speech act to literally shift identities, and move towards the other: a regrouping towards unity and support.

This is the paradox of the apology: the ones who apologise simultaneously acknowledge their identity as the ones who supported wrong and establish for themselves a new normative identity as the ones who condemn the wrong. Understood as performance, it is not relevant that the particular individuals alive today who make up the human dimension of the Australian nation did not remove children. It is neither a statement about those dead Australians, nor an expression of their remorse. It is a public constructive act by those who comprise the nation now, about and towards the nation from here on in.

Religious repentance and the collective dimensions of wrongdoing

The imperative to face up to the wrongs of child removal was, of course, not the first occasion on which human beings were moved to make sense of collective responsibility and the obligation of reparation. In his powerful and deeply moving reflections on the crimes of Nazism, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers similarly tried to grapple with how to recognise and institutionalise some form of collective responsibility without violating the integrity of individuals.

In response to this dilemma, Jaspers suggested four categories of guilt:

  • criminal guilt, the type generally assumed in liberal institutions of criminal justice, applies where there has been a violation of a positive law;
  • political guilt is a state of liability attaching to a political community, but arising from the actions of political leaders and fellow citizens;
  • moral guilt is the subjective sense of regret that one should feel when one does something that is wrong in an absolute or ideal sense, even if it escapes the purview of criminal guilt; and
  • metaphysical guilt is a guilt based on our common identity as human, and is strongest where the wrong occurred "in our presence or with our knowledge," but ... at base it arises through human solidarity."

Within this schema, he suggested two situations in which collective attribution passed the muster of ethical individualism. First, and most obviously, a collective can be liable in the political sense, in so far as it is responsible for establishing the political leadership that then sanctions the wrongful acts. Beyond this, Jaspers also suggested that there was a type of political-moral guilt that collectives can bear by virtue of the fact that political conduct is not only the outcome of specific acts of authorization, but are underpinned in a more pervasive way by a society's background morality.

Jaspers also considered how one might properly respond to each of these levels of guilt. Criminal guilt leads in a fairly straightforward way, as we have seen to punishment. Political guilt forms the basis for reparations. But what follows from moral guilt is penance and renewal, and from metaphysical guilt a transformation of human self-consciousness before God.

In other words, when individuals or a community are guilty of "the convenient adaption of cheap vindication and the imperceptible promotion of wrong," they have a choice as to how they will move forward. They may bear the guilt for their part in the story of wrongdoing all their lives, and remain as they are; or they must undergo a transformation.

The fact that, in the midst of a piece of political theory, Jaspers reaches for a religious metaphor and process should not escape our attention. Indeed, we have a number of deeply held preconceptions about the sharp divide between the world of religion and the world of modern liberal politics that impede our even considering the places of resonance or continuity.

Particularly problematic in this context is our belief that, whereas we liberal secularists are committed to rationality, human autonomy and freedom, religions start with the belief that there is a God who exists in a different metaphysical realm and who can, in ways we cannot understand, control what happens to human being.

The problem becomes still worse if we look at so-called pre-modern religious practices, which we believe go hand in hand with worldviews based on failures to understand, as we do, the true nature of causal relations, and fail to respect the moral autonomy of individuals. Case in point, we do not believe that one can rightly punish the sons for the sins of the fathers.

What relevance could purification of the soul or repentance have for us? If we can bracket our modernist and secularist preconceptions about the radical difference between the ontologies, metaphysics and institutions of religion and those of modern secular societies, we will find remarkable resonances between the contemporary practice of political apologies and forms of repentance in Judaism and certain strains of Christianity. Indeed, we find that - just like us, those who designed and practiced collective repentance in religious contexts were making sense of the link between systematic wrongdoing and collective responsibility.

When I started doing research on apologies, I had in my mind an image of religious repentance in which an individual, most likely in a darkened confessional, professed her or his sins to a priest, who sat imperceptibly on the other side. One of the remarkable discoveries of my research was that, quite to the contrary, in Jewish religious practice, and in Christianity right up to the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, repentance by the community constituted the dominant form. Individual and privatised repentance came much later and never completely displaced the collective forms.

To illustrate, take most significant ritual of repentance in Judaism, which occurs on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Repentance and, more specifically spoken apology, lies at the heart of the Yom Kippur ritual, when the entire community gathers and communally repents its wrongs. Here, I do not mean that the people gather as an aggregation of individuals each apologizing for his or her own wrongs at the same time, but that they repent qua community, as the corporate body.

This corporate form is apparent in the penitential prayers, which are articulated in three basic ways: aloud by the rabbi on behalf of the community, privately and silently by each person and aloud by all members of the congregation on behalf of all members of the congregation. In the latter case, each member of the congregation confesses a common list of sins individually, but in unison, using the first person plural: "we have sinned" and "we are sorry." The experience is literally of a single sound as the voices of the pray-ers come together: each person singularly, but also as part of the common voice, speaks his or her responsibility and regret for every sin, whether or not he or she has individually committed it.

One Yom Kippur prayer says, for example:

"As on this day we examine our individual lives, so do we look at the life of the society around us ... as we would share in the rewards of righteousness, so must we confess a measure of responsibility for the world's evils."

How can one make sense of this collective form of repentance? What is going on when the community, as a single voice, apologises for past wrongs?

First, let me name the obvious - but, I would argue, anachronistic - reading. The assumption here would be that these practices embody precisely the type of collectivist ontology and understanding of transpersonal responsibility in which moderns no longer believe and which we no longer tolerate.

A more careful reading of the tradition suggests, however, that the collective responsibility articulated here is not on the same register as the individual responsibility. If one reads the interpretive texts of the traditions, one sees how they understand individual and collective responsibility not as some type of zero sum game (either the individual or the collective is responsible), but as folding into each other.

To enter into this alternative scheme of responsibility, we might start with the critical link that Jewish thought and practice forges between individual wrongdoing, the foundational covenant and the role of the people in upholding the covenant. The language of the covenant may be a little confounding here, but what I am referring to is what we might think of, in secular terms as the constitution that both establishes the people as a political entity with special rights and responsibilities to each other, and that spells out what some of those rights and responsibilities are. It is, if you like, a statement of "who we are" - both in terms of demarcating the boundaries of the political community, of setting out its fundamental normative commitments.

In the case of the Jewish community, those commitments are set out at a basic level in the Ten Commandments, and more elaborately through several hundred norms and principles articulated through the sacred texts. Lest this religious scent put us off, that such covenants, otherwise known as constitutions, are not unique to religious communities, but exist at the core of any political community. Think of your own nation's foundational documents or agreements and the ways in which they set out normative precepts for the nation.

The implication is that it is logically impossible to think of an individual's obligations to laws entirely outside of a corporate body that collectively takes care of, and in this way retains the legitimacy of the law. This requires that the community not only accept the covenant in the first instance, figuratively when the people accepted the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, or for us, when our forebears endorsed the Constitution. It further requires that the people constantly renew their commitment to those norms, that they constantly come back to what it means, for example, to uphold the norm of equality, or respect, or honesty.

When the people, qua people cease to uphold the norms that define and underpin their identity of the political community, those norms will cease to be experienced as binding on individuals within that community.

Importantly, this does not mean that individuals are precluded from dissenting, or that we should not evaluate the justice of particular laws. What it means is that because law logically requires plurality, no single abstract person could or would abide by the laws outside the fact of the body of the community in which laws are held to be obligatory. The law qua law, as an authoritative organizing system, logically precedes specific laws or adherence to laws. And at this level the law, like the grammatical structure of a language, or the notion of property, only exists if it is held up at a number of locations.

The implication is that if the people collectively lose respect for that foundational law or the basic norms, they will cease to function as meaningful and authoritative mechanisms for regulating social relations, and so will not prevent individuals from acting contrary to the law. Without this structural anchoring, only anarchy, not autonomy, is possible.

The literary character of Sir Thomas More poignantly expressed this notion in the play, A Man for All Seasons:

"And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide ... the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down ... d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

What the wisdom of this tradition is telling us is thus that when individuals fail to uphold the law, and most especially when their failures are not single aberrations but part of a systematic and recurring pattern, the community has failed to provide a sufficiently compelling normative context. The individual is responsible for taking the wrongful action.

There is no question here of a mega-agent. But, the normative judgment that allowed her to take this action did not exist in a vacuum. That judgment, that decision that it was alright to take a black child from her mother or to rape a Bosnian Muslim, was embedded in a normative framework for which everyone was co-responsible. It may have been an individual man who committed acts of violence against a particular woman, or a particular white person who treated a black person with contempt, but each did so within a world where the value of women and blacks was systematically and collectively diminished. The individual acted, but the collective provided the context in which he or she acted, and it is at this level that the collective is also responsible.

The community's responsibility thus lies with its failure to take care of, or hold up its collective norms; and it is this failure that reparative actions need to address. How apology performs this function becomes clearer if one looks at the Hebrew word inadequately translated as repentance. Teshuvah in fact comes from the root shuv, meaning to turn, to turn back or to return. The metaphor of turning comes through strongly throughout its usage in text and practice. Rabbinical commentary emphasizes that what we are doing during the practices of teshuvah is returning to the principles of correct relationship with God, with other people, and with ourselves as ethical beings.

In other words, the act of apology is the act of returning to the covenantal principles that have become loose; it is an act of recommitment such that those principles once again come into our lives as living and binding principles.

Thus, when the collective repents on Yom Kippur, what it is doing is performatively acknowledging its failure as a community to uphold the norms that individuals violated with sufficient strength to prevent individual wrongdoing. And, it is recommitting to those principles. As I described before, this is the paradoxical movement of apology - it simultaneously acknowledges our failure to abide by certain principles, and our recommitment to those principles. It is, for the collective, the way in which it renews the Covenant. Apology is, if you like, the act of "recovenanting the nation."

One might well raise the objection at this point that returning to norms that lie at the foundation of a nation will not address violations that are in fact affirmed by those very norms. For, as we know, political communities are often founded on laws, or interpretations of laws that are themselves problematic and themselves need correction. This was certainly the case in relation to the way in which Indigenous Australians were held in the foundational covenant of the Australian nation and indeed is true for the relationship between the dominant community and minorities in most nations of the world.

The "return" in question thus needs to be understood not as a simple regression, but as a movement forward. The texts of Judaism insist that the movement of teshuvah is not backwards towards to a place that already existed, but forward towards a yet to be fulfilled principle.

Indeed, this is where we come to understand that it is only through the lived experience of human beings through history that the perfection of principles that putatively "lie at the beginning" is possible. Thus, general principles such as equality or respect may be affirmed in the original covenant, but our understanding and acceptance of the full meaning of that principle only occurs through history.

Perhaps ironically, this movement forward can only occur when the other calls out to me in her pain and insists that while I thought I believed in equality, that equality did not include the person of colour or the woman, or the person with a disability. It is only when the "shudder of recognition" passes through me and I recognise, with shame, that I have excluded her from the register of dignified human beings, that this register of equality can be expanded.

It is here that we see that the work of apology, the work of repentance is not simply the way in which we return to principles that we already held, but have allowed to lie fallow; it is the mechanism through which we correct those principles. Apology thus becomes the ritual whereby we reconstitute ourselves and our fundamental principles; it is the ritual whereby we turn back to see ourselves through the eyes of the injured other, and from this place, step into a more ethical collective identity.

Apology and political transformation

It would be overreaching to claim that the political apology, as currently practiced, offers a fully effective mechanism whereby we can, as modern political communities, fundamentally shift our identities and our collective norms or ethical principles. Nevertheless, what I think we can begin to sketch out through an analysis of the logic of the apologetic ritual, are the contours of such a movement.

Those who fail to see the point of revisiting the past also fail to see that while the line between the past events and the present is immutable, the way in which we ethically position ourselves in relation to the past and the judgments we make about it are not. Nor are these judgments about the past irrelevant to the orientations for the future.

Far from being passive, recollection and remembering are highly active and productive processes. It is this creative flexibility at the level of ethical evaluation of the past that can alter the trajectory of the future. This is particularly true when it comes to the normative expectations that are inherited from the past but which continue to shape relationships between people and identities.

Nor is the act of brutally facing the accusations of those whom we have injured an empty masochistic exercise. For their accusations are, I would suggest, the condition of possibility for our movement beyond current parochial interpretations of who we are and who we ought to be.

It is only our willingness to recognise that we have indeed fallen short of what we might be, or of the ideal we held out to ourselves, that we might approach that ideal, and then only because of the damage it brings about and the cry it provokes in the other who becomes our accuser. And it is only our confession, our apology to the other, that drags us past the limitations and parochialism of our normative identity.

Only the ethical recognition that arises from opening up to the perspective of the one who was not-me, or not-us, can give birth to a movement beyond the justice we already have. Only opening to the perspective of the other can reorient us so as to recognize the injustice of our apparent justice.

In the original sense of apology, only when one is called to justify oneself before the other - and, most importantly, before an other who accuses us of the inadequacies of the justice of which we were so sure - only then can a genuinely new movement in justice occur.

Danielle Celermajer is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. She is the author of The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies. You can listen to her discuss the ethics of political apologies with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on The Minefield on RN.


KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) -- Rescuers searched through the charred rubble of a shopping mall Tuesday looking for more victims of a Russian missile strike that killed at least 18 and wounded scores in what Ukraine's president called “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and workers were inside the mall in the city of Kremenchuk. Giant plumes of black smoke, dust and orange flames billowed from the wreckage as emergency crews combed through broken metal and concrete for victims. Drones whirred above, clouds of dark smoke still emanating from the ruins several hours after the fire was extinguished.

Casualty figures rose as rescuers sifted through the smoldering rubble. The regional governor, Dmytro Lunin, said at least 18 people were killed and 59 others sought medical assistance, of whom 25 were hospitalized. The region declared a day of mourning Tuesday for the victims of the attack.

“We are working to dismantle the construction so that it is possible to get machinery in there since the metal elements are very heavy and big, and disassembling them by hand is impossible,” said Volodymyr Hychkan, an emergency services official.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Iryna Venediktova, who is leading investigations into possible war crimes, said the missile attack was one of Russia's “crimes against humanity,” noting that the Russian military has been “systematically shelling civilian infrastructure with the aim to scare people, to kill people, to bring terror to our cities and villages.”

Venediktova emphasized the need for Ukrainians across the entire country to remain alert, adding that they should expect a similar strike “every minute.”

Wayne Jordash, a British barrister who is working with Venediktova's office to investigate possible war crimes, rejected claims that a factory located near the shopping mall was a military object.

“The first indications are that the factory that got hit is a road construction factory, not a military target,” Jordash said. “We need to investigate whether there's military targets nearby, and the first indications as I say is that there aren't any military targets nearby.”

At Ukraine's request, the U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting in New York on Tuesday to discuss the attack.

In the first Russian government comment on the missile strike, the country's first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, alleged multiple inconsistencies that he didn't specify, claiming on Twitter that the incident was a provocation by Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly denied it targets civilian infrastructure, even though Russian attacks have hit other shopping malls, theaters, hospitals, kindergartens and apartment buildings in the four-month war.

On Tuesday, Russian forces struck the Black Sea city of Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region, damaging apartment buildings and killing two, including a 6-year-old child. A further six people, four of them children, were wounded. One of them, a 3-month-old baby, is in a coma, according to local officials.

The missile strike on Kremenchuk occurred as Western leaders pledged continued support for Ukraine and the world's major economies prepared new sanctions against Russia, including a price cap on oil and higher tariffs on goods.

Group of Seven leaders condemned the attack in a statement late Monday saying “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime,” noting that “Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held to account.”

The Russian strike echoed earlier attacks that caused large numbers of civilian casualties - such as one in March on a Mariupol theater where many civilians had holed up, killing an estimated 600, and another in April on a train station in eastern Kramatorsk that killed at least 59 people.

Zelenskyy said the mall presented “no threat to the Russian army” and had “no strategic value.” He accused Russia of sabotaging “people's attempts to live a normal life, which make the occupiers so angry.”

In his nightly address, he said that Russian forces had intentionally targeted the shopping center in “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history,” denouncing Russia as “the largest terrorist organization in the world.”

Russia has increasingly used long-range bombers in the war. Ukrainian officials said Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flying over Russia's western Kursk region fired the missiles, one of which hit the shopping center and another that struck a sports arena in Kremenchuk.

The U.S. appeared ready to respond to Zelenskyy's call for more air defense systems, and NATO planned to increase the size of its rapid-reaction forces nearly eightfold - to 300,000 troops.

The attack on Kremenchuk coincided with Russia's all-out assault on the last Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk province, “pouring fire” on the city of Lysychansk from the ground and air, according to the local governor. At least eight people were killed and more than 20 wounded in Lysychansk when Russian rockets hit an area where a crowd gathered to obtain water from a tank, Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said.

The barrage was part of Russian forces' intensified offensive aimed at wresting the eastern Donbas region from Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Russian military and their local separatist allies forced Ukrainian government troops out of Lysychansk's neighboring city, Sievierodonetsk.

To the west of Lysychansk on Monday, the mayor of the city of Sloviansk - potentially the next major battleground - said Russian forces fired cluster munitions, including one that hit a residential neighborhood. Authorities said the number of victims had yet to be confirmed. The Associated Press saw one fatality: A man's body lay hunched over a car door frame, his blood pooling onto the ground from chest and head wounds. The blast blew out most windows in the surrounding apartment blocks and the cars parked below, littering the ground with broken glass.

“Everything is now destroyed,” said resident Valentina Vitkovska, in tears as she spoke about the blast. “We are the only people left living in this part of the building. There is no power. I can't even call to tell others what had happened to us.”

Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.


The Truth About Long Distance Relationships

Dating within a long distance relationship may be a tricky proposition, as well as the first impressions you form might be hazy. This article explores a number of the realities of long-distance romantic relationships and how to handle them successfully. You are going to learn how to deal with the distance in your way on the path to your partner, and develop a better understanding of your partner’s personality, and what makes them attractive. Most of us also talk about some tips for finding your true love while separated with a great distance.

While daily proximity can be nerve-racking, it also limitations growth. Couples tend to are more like the other person, and daily proximity could make people synchronizing in their habit and character. Long-distance relationships allow both lovers to expand, develop, and discover themselves on their own. If two people are truly in love, distance should for no reason be a trouble. However , long-distance relationships are harder on the one who has to travelling more.

While long relationships are demanding, they are often even more rewarding than you might think. It requires self-sufficiency and communication expertise, and it can be psychologically draining just for both parties. Lengthy distance human relationships require self-discipline and self esteem. The benefits of long relationships are worth the sacrifice, although only if you’re ready to deal with the long-term complications. They also show you how to deal with the absence of physical intimacy and make you stronger as being a person.

Long-distance relationships are difficult pertaining to everybody involved, although there are some positive aspects. One of them is more freedom. You may more time for hobbies and exercise. You can also have more a chance to spend with buddies or loved ones. However , they are often challenging too, therefore you might even always be tempted to stop your career or drop school to make the relationship work. However , if the two of you happen to be truly in love, long relationships brings you better together and help you grow more powerful psychologically.

Real truth long range relationships is that they’re not for everyone. You will discover benefits and negatives to long relationships, and it is important to understand the good qualities and disadvantages worth mentioning relationships just before dating. Additionally , the benefits far outweigh the problems. When you are in a long-distance romantic relationship, it’s important to remember that you will need to work hard each day. In order to achieve long-distance accomplishment, you should devote your daily work.

While you might be aiming to convince your ex that the relationship remains to be good, remember that they’ll most likely want to get from you, thus instead of focusing on them, concentrate on enhancing your life. You must work hard to improve your self, because they shall be able to find out just how much you’ve cultivated. If you’re still aiming to convince all of them, you’re just trapping all of them. Rather than concentrating on getting your ex back, you should focus on improving your self first.

A long length relationship requires time, hard work, and money. You’ll be far from your partner with regards to long periods of time, which boosts your cellphone bill. Sending gift items will also increase, and you’ll have to pay for the courier service to get them to your lover. It’ll test your appreciate and your account! However , tend give up! Long-distance relationships not necessarily for anyone, and there isn’t a right response to the question “is it worth it? ”


The contemporary Nikaya system, the most unBuddhist legacy of Buddhism

Friday, 21 June 2019 00:00 -     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

 When people discriminate, their behaviour reflects an ignorant and intolerant attitude towards other people

 – Pic by Chamila Karunarathne

By birth one is not an outcaste,

By birth one is not a Brahmin;

By deeds alone one is an outcaste,

By deeds alone one is a Brahmin – Buddha

The recent comments made by the Mahanayake of the Asgiriya Chapter of the Siam Nikaya hopefully will generate an objective discussion on the Buddhist institution and its role in Sri Lanka. The Venerable Mahanayake’s comments belied what Buddha believed in and taught mankind centuries ago. Coming from a Mahanayake of a major institution, his comments were sadly the opposite of Buddha’s message of ahimsa, tolerance and non-violence. One can only hope that followers of this Mahanayake, and Buddhists in general, will not heed the intemperate words of the Mahanayake.

In the perfect world, neither this Mahanayake or any other, or the Buddhist clergy can and should be gagged by law. They should be gagged by the Buddhist public. However, incitement to violence is another matter and it would be adequate grounds for legal action to be taken against any individual irrespective of the individual’s station in life.

The underlying issue here is not about gagging or legal action. It is about the inter community discontent, mistrust and fear that is prevalent in the country and the inadequacy of measures taken by leaders of all faiths to dissipate this situation and create an environment where all faiths can have an objective discussion on how the country could move away from this situation and look towards the future rather than focussing on the past. What matters is where Sri Lanka will be tomorrow, in five years’ time, in 10 years’ time and so on. It is the future that matters as there are many generations to follow the current generation.

The Buddhist institution in Sri Lanka is credited for safeguarding the Sasana although several erudite monks like late Venerable Walpola Rahula have questioned this notion on the basis that the Sasana is the Truth according to Buddha and it is about living one’s life according to the principles enunciated by Buddha. Ven. Rahula maintained that the Sasana will disappear only when people deviate from this Truth.

A sad legacy of Buddhism or rather the institution of Buddhism that taints the fundamental premise of Buddhism is the division of the institution on caste lines. The caste based Nikaya system is the antithesis of what Buddha extoled.

This legacy is a relatively new phenomenon in Sri Lanka considering the long history of Buddhism in the country. In 1753, a Buddhist monastic order (Nikaya) within Sri Lanka, was re-established on the initiative of Weliwita Sri Saranankara Thero (1698-1778) when the Thai Monk Upali Thera visited Kandy during the reign of King Kirti Sri Rajasinghe (1747-1782). It was called the Siam Nikaya after the ‘Kingdom of Siam’.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the corruption of the original reference to the term Siam Nikaya. Corrupted from within rather than from without.

The contemporary Nikaya system runs contrary to what Buddha introduced as the idea and practice of placing a higher value on morality and the equality of people instead of on which family or caste a person is born into.

The Buddha was born into a society that knew the caste system. He regarded the system as unjust and unfair and took a principled stand against it. For Buddhists, if they follow Buddha’s fundamental premise on the equality of human beings, the caste system should be an example of something very unBuddhistic, discriminatory, unjust and a practice that should not be supported.

Buddhism as taught by Buddha, teaches that prejudice is an example of ignorance and furthermore, believing that we are in some way superior to those around us is an example of craving or of fear. One might say, even a foolish notion.

When people discriminate, their behaviour reflects an ignorant and intolerant attitude towards other people. Buddhists should believe that ignorance and craving cause people to suffer – known as dukkha. Buddhists also believe in equanimity, or Upekkha. This means an equal attitude towards everyone and that everyone is equal and should be treated as such in society.

Buddhists believe that there is no fundamental difference between any human. Every individual should therefore be valued and should be treated fairly and therefore with justice.

The recent utterances by the Venerable Mahanayake of the Asgiriya Chapter about the Muslim community in Sri Lanka begs the question whether the Mahanayake is a true Buddhist if he is to be judged against the basic Buddhist criteria mentioned here. The same should be applied to monks like Ven. Gnanasara Thero and any other Buddhist monk who espouses intolerance and violence. The same question should be asked of them. Are they Buddhists?

Their defence might be that they are trying to protect the Buddha Sasana as it had been during previous periods of history. If this protection issue is to do with what the Muslim community did, or say or did not say or did not do, these avowed protectors must show how this issue could be addressed according to Buddhist principles of ahimsa, tolerance and compassion. They could have taken the leadership to conduct interfaith dialogues throughout the country using their thousands of temples and thousands of monks to bring communities together and find a way forward from what they perceive as a threat to Buddhism and the country

In this context, one is reminded of a statement by Dalai Lama who said: “We must build a closer relationship among ourselves, based on mutual trust, mutual understanding, mutual respect, and mutual help, irrespective of culture, philosophy, religion or faith”. How true. Are some of our monks practising these principles?

Instead, some of our leading monks are doing the exact opposite and exacerbating inter-community tensions.

The Nikaya Story (Compiled based on Wikipedia research)

How did the original reference to the re-established Buddhist order in Sri Lanka in 1753 which was called the Siam Nikaya after the ‘Kingdom of Siam’ (modern day Thailand) get corrupted to what Nikayas have become today?

Nikaya is a term assigned to a Buddhist monastic fraternity within Sri Lanka. Today there are three main Nikayas or Sects.

Siam Sect: A Buddhist monastic order (nikāya) within Sri Lanka, founded in 1753. On the initiative of Weliwita Sri Saranankara Thero (1698-1778) the Thai monk Upali Thera visited Kandy during the reign of King Kirti Sri Rajasinghe (1747-1782) and once again re-established the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka in 1753. It was called the Siam Nikaya after the ‘Kingdom of Siam’. The Siam Nikaya has two major chapters (Malwatta and Asgiriya) and five other divisions within these two major units. The Malwatta and Asgiriya chapters have two separate Maha Nayakas or chief monks.

Amarapura Sect: A Sri Lankan Buddhist monastic fraternity (nikāya) founded in 1800. It is named after the city of Amarapura in Burma, the capital of the Konbaung Dynasty of Burma at that time. Ramanya Sect: A Sri Lankan Buddhist monastic fraternity (nikāya) founded in 1864, when Ambagahawatte Saranankara, returned to Sri Lanka after being ordained at Ratnapunna Vihara in Burma. It appears to have re-introduced the forest meditation tradition to Sri Lanka.

Caste-based discrimination

In 1764, merely a decade after the re-establishment of the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka by Ven. Upali, a group within the newly-created Siam Nikaya conspired and succeeded in restricting the Nikaya’s higher ordination only to the Radala and Goigama caste, Sitinamaluwe Dhammajoti (Durawa) being the last non-govigama monk to receive his upasampada.

This was a period when Buddhist Vinaya rules had been virtually abandoned and some members of the Buddhist Sangha in the Kandyan Kingdom privately held land, had wives and children, resided in the private homes and were called Ganinnanses. It was a period when the traditional nobility of the Kandyan Kingdom was decimated by continuous wars with the Dutch rulers of the Maritime Provinces. In the Maritime Provinces too, a new order was replacing the old.

Mandarampura Puvata, a text from the Kandyan period, narrates the above radical changes to the monastic order and shows that it was not a unanimous decision by the body of the sangha. It says that 32 ‘senior’ members of the Sangha who opposed this change were banished to Jaffna by the leaders of the reform.

The principal places of Buddhist worship in Sri Lanka including the Temple of the Tooth Relic, Adam’s Peak, Kelaniya and over 6,000 other temples were brought under the administration of the Siam Nikaya. Moratota Dhammakkandha, Mahanayaka of Kandy, with the help of the last two Kandyan Telugu Kings victimised the low country Mahanayaka Karatota Dhammaranma by confiscating the Sri Pada shrine and the retinue villages from the low country fraternity and appointing a rival Mahanayaka (presently, an exception is the Rangiri Dambula sect which welcomes all communities while being a Siam nikaya subsect).

The caste-based discrimination made many Karava, Salagama, Durava, Bathgama, Deva and other castes people considered as ‘low’ by the Govigama caste to become Catholics and Anglicans.

The Siam Nikaya as custodians of the Tooth Relic have always received the full support and patronage of the Govigama dominated Sri Lankan State and its Ministers and Ministries of Buddha Sasana, Cultural Affairs and others, the monopolisation of the ‘Tooth’ relic by the Radala and Govigama combination on caste based lines have brought a questionable reputation to Buddhism in Sri Lanka, in the context of adherence to Buddhist principles.

Emergence of other Nikayas

The Govigama exclusivity of the Sangha thus secured in 1764 was almost immediately challenged by other castes who without the patronage of the King of Kandy or of the British, held their own upasampada ceremony at Totagamuwa Vihara in 1772. Another was held at Tangalle in 1798. Neither of these ceremonies were approved by the Siam Nikaya which claimed that these were not in accordance with the Vinaya rules.

King Rajadhi Rajasinghe (1782-1798) had made an order restricting the right of obtaining higher ordination to the members of a particular caste. As a consequence of this ‘exclusively Govigama’ policy adopted in 1764 by the Siam Nikaya, the Buddhists in the Maritime Provinces were denied access to a valid ordination lineage. Hoping to rectify this situation, wealthy laymen from the Maritime Provinces financed an expedition to Siam to found a new monastic lineage.

Birth of Amarapura Nikaya

In 1799, Walitota Sri Gnanawimalatisssa a monk from the Salagama caste, from Balapitiya on the south western coast of Sri Lanka, departed for Siam with a group of novices to seek a new succession of higher ordination. Two Sahabandu Mudaliyars and the other prominent dayakayas undertook to bear the expenses of the mission and make the necessary arrangements for the journey. But during the trip, they had an incident where the ship suddenly stopped moving.

Once it was able to move again, the Dutch national Captain of the ship suggested that Buddhism was in a more flourishing condition in Amarapura, Burma than Siam. The monk agreed to the suggestion of the Captain and the latter, through the Dutch Consul at Hansawathy (in Burma), obtained the necessary introductions to the religious and administrative authorities in Amarapura. The first Bhikkhu was ordained in Burma in 1800 by the sangharaja of Burma, his party having been welcomed to Burma by King Bodawpaya. The members of the mission studied under the Sangharaja for two years.  The initial mission returned to Sri Lanka in 1803. Soon after their return to the island they established a udakhupkhepa sima (a flotilla of boats moved together to form a platform on the water) at the Maduganga River, Balapitiya and, under the most senior Burmese bhikkhus who accompanied them, held an upasampada ceremony on the uposatha of Vesak.

The new fraternity came to be known as the Amarapura Nikaya after the capital city of King Bodawpaya. Several subsequent trips to Burma by Karava and Durava monks as well, created by 1810 a core group of ordained monks and provided the required quorum for Higher Ordination of Amarapura Nikaya monks in Sri Lanka. The higher ordination denied to them in 1764 by the Govigama based Siam Nikaya Monks had been regained and they were soon granted recognition by the colonial British government.

The establishment of the Amarapura Nikaya was significant because it signalled a change in the social dynamic of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. For the first time, a monastic lineage had been created not through royal patronage of a Buddhist king, but through the collective action of a dedicated group of Buddhist laymen. The Amarapura Nikaya was thus both independent of government and royal power, and more closely tied to its patrons in the growing middle class. The Amarapura Nikaya is said to have around 12 000 monks although this needs to be verified.

Ramanna Nikaya

The smallest of the three nikayas is Ramañña Nikaya, which was founded in 1863, not in caste opposition to Siam Nikaya but rather as a religious reform movement. It is caste-inclusive, though many of its lay supporters are known to be from the karava caste, many of whom are wealthy. It is estimated to consist of approximately 8,000 monks. This too needs verification.

The Ramanna Nikaya was founded in 1864 when Ambagahawatte Saranankara, returned to Sri Lanka after being ordained by the Neyyadhamma Munivara Sangharaja of Ratnapunna Vihara in Burma.

In the beginning, the Majority of monasteries of Ramanna Nikaya were forest monasteries. Although many village temples have been emerged in modern days, the forest tradition is still being continued by Sri Kalyani Yogasrama Samstha of Ramanna Nikaya which is the strictest forest tradition in Sri Lanka.

Though it has been impossible to resist completely, many old and simple traditions have been still survived in Ramanna Nikaya. The monks of the Nikaya can be distinguished by the traditions such as using Palm Leaf Umbrellas and Alms Bowls and covering both shoulders while traveling.

Siam Nikaya monasteries and monks

The number of monks belonging to the two chapters Malwatta and Asgiriya total around 18,800 according to estimates of the Ministry of Buddha Sasana.

The Nikaya also has around 6,000 temples according to this source. Similar data is not available for temples and monks belonging to the Amarapura and Ramanna Nikaya. It is perhaps unlikely that their numbers exceed that of the Siam Nikaya.

How could the Buddhist institution and Buddhist monks help to safeguard the ‘Sasana’ and the country?

The structure of the Buddhist institution in Sri Lanka, with its hundreds and thousands of temples and monks could be put to constructive use to save the country from its fast track into an abyss of despair, inter community mistrust, fear and economic collapse. We have not learnt from the catastrophe of 1983. This time, unless the Buddhist monks and the Buddhist institution take a lead to forge unity rather than disunity and build accord rather than discord, and preaches tolerance rather than intolerance, we are doomed.

Rather than following the intemperate words of some monks, including those of the Asgiriya Mahanayake, the Buddhist population of this country which far outnumbers the population of monks, should act according to their knowledge of what Buddha taught rather than the words of monks who profess the opposite. They should take the leadership to save the Buddha Sasana and the country by following the teachings of Buddha. In fact if they follow Buddha’s teachings, they would not even have to think of saving the Sasana as it will be very safe in their hearts and minds.

The political leadership and politicians of the country in general stand discredited and condemned today for their failure in safeguarding the security of the country. They have failed in every sphere of social policy and economic policy. They are now not in a position to be even a flickering beacon to the people of the country.

If the Buddhist population of the country allows a few, but powerful and influential monks to discredit Buddhism and all that it stands for, then Sri Lanka will have no one to turn to and no anchor to hold on to in the vortex of communal and economic unrest that will follow.

The Buddhist institution has an island-wide or mostly island-wide structure with some 10,000 temples and resources in the form of thousands of monks who are respected by the Buddhist population. With a monk population of perhaps in excess of 25,000, and a country population of some 23 million, what is required is for each monk to take the leadership to avoid the catastrophe mentioned above and instead, spread Buddha’s true message of peace and harmony to say 1,000 people of all faiths and ethnic groups. This requires a vision, leadership and inspiration from one or a few amongst the monks to show to all Sri Lankans that it is the future of the country that is at stake here, and not the future of Buddhist institutions or the lifestyle of some monks.

Recent columns


Scrap the ‘Pahe Shishatve’

Saturday, 10 February 2018 00:10 -     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

She was an 11-year old talented student at the Okkampitiya Janapada Vidyalaya, a remote school where the children did not even have a toilet. One morning, the teacher found her missing in class. He asked the other children. She has died, they tell him. The teacher is disturbed. He takes a half-day’s leave and with another teacher leaves for her home.

It was a tiny little house where even her coffin could not be taken in. They were so poor that all the funeral arrangements had been organised by others in the village. He asked the father what happened. The girl had been in the habit of going to the nearby Dematagaha tank to pick lotus flowers to be sold to devotees who came to the village temple to earn a little money. That day she wanted to pick more flowers since the day after was a Poya day and more devotees would come to the temple. It had been raining and the water level was high. She didn’t realise it was so deep and she drowned. She had two lotus flowers in one hand.

This incident, dating back to 1981, prompted the renowned lyricist Ratnasri Wijesinghe, who was the teacher referred to, to write the popular song ‘Sudu Neluma Ko’ sung by Pandit Amaradeva.

Dr. Ananada Perera, an orthopaedic surgeon, selected this song at the Rupavahini music program ‘Sihinayaki Re’ where the guest personality has to pick ten songs which are sung by a selected artiste. Explaining why he selected this song, Dr. Perera said he was disturbed when he heard that a grade five student had committed suicide by hanging because he couldn’t get enough marks at the ‘Pahe Shishyatve’ – the highly competitive fifth grade scholarship test.

Severely criticising the scholarship test, Dr. Perera talked about how the parents take the children for tuition from grade one onwards. They either attend tuition classes or they have lessons on a one-on-one basis at home – in short, parents are behind them, forcing them to be with books even after they come home from school. They have absolutely no childhood. There is no creative thinking. They have no time to play.

He recalled how some parents bring their children who are about to sit the grade five test complaining that they cannot write because their fingers are not steady. They shiver and cannot hold the pen properly.

He strongly felt that the Grade Five Scholarship should be scrapped. The scholarship test should be held at grade eight, he stressed.

In addition to this song, Dr. Perera’s selection of songs covered a wide spectrum ranging from the Buddhist theme of rebirth, clear thinking, humane behaviour to child abuse and domestic violence. Among them were a couple of songs sung by Deepika Priyadarshani, the lead singer that evening. As a tribute to her for winning the Peace Award at an international competition in Manila in 2002, he picked ‘Saroja Mage Doniye’ written by Mahinda Chandrasekera, highlighting the need for harmonious living among all citizens irrespective of nationality, race and creed.

All in all, it was a lively presentation of songs coupled with meaningful discussion, with Mahesh Nisshanka directing the program.


Focused Samurdhi

Saturday, 12 August 2017 00:17 -     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Samurdhi program has returned to the limelight after opposition parties on Thursday complained the Government has plans to trim the handout. This prompted President Sirisena to assure no change will be made. Yet it is incredibly important for the Government to look at subsidies based on economic research and outcomes rather than political exigency.

By international standards, social assistance is less generous in Sri Lanka than in many other comparable countries. The World Bank in a 2016 a benchmarking exercise that examines the generosity and targeting of social assistance programs across 40 lower middle-income countries found that contribution to the lowest of Sri Lanka’s poor or those who live on about Rs. 120 a day is merely 6.6%, significantly below Pakistan, the Philippines, and even Bolivia.

Not only are Sri Lanka’s social assistance programs small, but the budget devoted to social transfers has also fallen in recent years. Spending on social transfers, with the exception of fertiliser subsidies, has declined in real terms. For example, the fall in the real value of Samurdhi transfers slowed poverty reduction by 9.6% between 2002 and 2012/13. Because of the decline in spending, by 2012/13, six key programs including handouts for disabled and elderly combined amounted to only over 3% of total household consumption for the bottom consumption quintile.

Samurdhi has, therefore, had a minor and decreasing impact on poverty reduction. Samurdhi transfers are too small to make a large impact on poor households’ budgets, as they contributed only 1.7% to household consumption of the poorest 20% of the population in 2012/13, according to the World Bank study. In other words subtracting the Samurdhi benefit from household consumption would increase the national poverty rate by 2.1% points in 2002. But in 2012/13, the comparable figure had declined to merely 0.6% points.

The poverty reduction impacts of other social assistance programs are even smaller. These programs include the school food program, fertiliser subsidies, the Thriposha program, disability and relief, elderly payment, scholarship, health and medical aids, food and other commendation, and disaster relief assistance. Combined, their impact on poverty is almost negligible at 0.5% points.

The report goes onto say among Sri Lanka’s social transfer programs, Samurdhi and the school lunch program are better targeted than fertiliser subsidies. Samurdhi and school lunch programs transfer roughly 55% of benefits go to the bottom 40%. The fertiliser subsidies are the least well targeted transfer, with only 45% of the benefit being devoted to the bottom 40%.

Samurdhi’s targeting performance has slightly worsened in recent years. In 2002, 42% of all transfers reached the bottom quintile and 70% reached the bottom 40%. But by 2012-13, this had fallen to 39% and 65%, respectively. Reforming the social assistance programs, including the Samurdhi, to reduce leakage and improve coverage of the disadvantaged can make it more helpful for the poor.

Given this data, a massive change has to happen with both the public and the Government. For starters the Government must invest in more studies to gather data and understand dynamics before crafting policies rather than rolling out handouts to broker more votes. The public must also understand the difference between quality and quantity, so that their representatives use public revenue to formulate and implement poverty alleviation methods that actually work or it will continue to be a precious public money spent inefficiently.


Member asked on 1 year ago

Since last 4 years I am taking Mirtaz 7.5 first two years was under observation and now I am taking it without observation. As I am feeling better I want this medicine to discontinue and I don't know how? Please guide me

1 Doctors Replied
9 months ago

Dr. Deepika Singh | Psychiatrist

Well, Mirtazapine is a very good molecule and should only be taken after being prescribed by a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist would assess you clinically and gradually taper and stop the medication or shift to another molecule. Please don't change or handle medications by self. These medicines alter the neurotransmitters in your brain and should be consumed only under guidance of a professional. Sudden changes in dosage can cause relapse of symptoms. Better to consult your psychiatrist and then make required changes.


On May 25th MassRobotics and MITRE hosted Dr. Misha Novitzky, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, and Dr. Charlene Stokes, expert in Industrial-Organizational & Human Factors Psychology, to share their thoughts on Human-Machine Teaming: Uniting Theory-driven and Evidence-based Approaches.

Dr. Novitzky helps lead the Aquaticus project and presented information on the program and their research objectives:

What is Aquaticus? Aquaticus is a project with the goal of developing a competition where humans and robots compete together against similarly configured teams of humans and robots. The competition is conducted on the water in about a one square kilometer area off the MIT Sailing Pavilion. Students are responsible for designing and building the autonomy algorithms driving their robots and competing alongside their robots, in a suspenseful and challenging competition with their peers.

Research objectives: This research aims to explore a relatively poorly understood intersection of two well known areas of robotic systems research: the (embedded) human-robot interface and multi- robot zero-sum competitions. The intersection is created by embedding humans alongside robots, as equal teammates, on a playing field competing against a similarly configured team. Autonomy algorithm design and human robot communications will be re-considered from the perspective of the situated human who will be dealing with stress, uncertainty and pressures of performing their own role in the competition, in coordination with their robot teammates.

Dr. Charlene Stokes of MITRE spoke about her research that seeks to optimize user and autonomous system performance by harnessing the inherent social cognitive underpinnings of human-machine teams. The largely unconscious, social affective cues of human-robot interaction have been relatively neglected amid the explosive growth of AI & robotics in military and commercial sectors. In addition to the risks posed, this neglect has resulted in a critical capability gap that could lead to untapped efficiency, effectiveness, trust, and use of future systems.

While our crowd at MassRobotics enjoyed these live presentations, a group from MITRE joined us, as the talks were broadcast back to MITRE Bedford and McLean campuses.


Airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) is a feature of asthma in which airways are hyperreactive to stimuli causing extensive airway narrowing. Methacholineprovocations assess AHR in asthma patients mainly by direct stimulationofsmooth muscle cells. Using in vivo mouse models, mast cells have been implicated in AHR,but the mechanism behind has remained unknown.
Cpa3 mice, which lack mast cells, were used to assess the role of mast cells inhouse dust mite (HDM)-induced experimental asthma. Effects of methacholine in presence or absence of ketanserin were assessed on lung function, andin lung mast cells in vitro. Airway inflammation, mast cell accumulation and activation, smooth muscle proliferation,HDM-induced bronchoconstriction were evaluated.
Repeated intranasal HDM sensitization induced allergic airway inflammation associated with accumulation and activation of lung mast cells. Lack of mast cells, absence of activating Fc-receptors, or antagonizingserotonin (5-HT) receptors abolishedHDM-induced trachea contractions.HDM-sensitized mice lacking mast cells had diminished lung-associated 5-HT levels, reduced AHR and methacholine-induced airway contraction, while blocking 5-HT receptors in wild types eliminated AHR, implying that mast cells contribute to AHR by releasing 5-HT. Primary mouse and human lung mast cells express muscarinic M3 receptors. Mouse lung mast cells store 5-HT intracellularly, and methacholine induces release of 5-HT from lung-derived mouse mast cells and Ca flux in human LAD-2 mast cells.
Methacholineactivates mast cells to release 5-HT, which by acting on 5-HT receptors enhances bronchoconstriction and AHR. Thus, M3-directed asthma treatments like tiotropium may also act by targeting mast cells.


Why pollution is not good for animal sex

Pair of common kingfishers (Alcedo atthis) ritual feeding. [iStockphoto]

The World Health Organisation (WHO) singles out air pollution as one of the greatest environmental threats to health, as it accounts for a high number of non-communicable diseases such as heart attack or stroke.

There are at least seven million premature deaths annually due to the combined effects of outdoor and household air pollution recorded in developing countries, according to WHO.

Data from IQAir, a real-time air pollution website, shows that Kenya has an air quality that is 2.9 times above WHO recommendations. Globally, Kenya takes position 70 among countries with high air pollution.

Dr Andrew Owuor, a pulmonologist, says air pollution contributes to huge numbers of respiratory illnesses.

“The more pollution we have, the more we have patients presenting with asthma and chronic bronchitis,” says Dr Owuor, adding that “as per our study,  asthma tends to be more in urban areas, and toxic substances in the air cause cases of lung cancer”, with Kitengela and its environs reporting high levels of dust and dirt particles.

The Constitution guarantees the right to a clean environment and the National Environmental Complaints Committee (NECC) has been receiving increasing number of cases.

Noise pollution also makes it difficult for animals to use sound for navigation, finding food, mating, and avoiding predators. [iStockphoto]

Committee Chair Justry Nyaberi says they have received over 4,500 cases in the last five years. Dr Nyaberi says complaints range from poor waste management to poor land-use practices to deforestation.

Poor waste management

Poor waste management accounts for 27 per cent of the complaints, water pollution (10 per cent), air pollution (seven per cent) and noise pollution at five per cent.

The 2022 UNEP Frontiers Report notes that environmental pollution comes from roads, railways, airports, industries, domestic and leisure activities, and impair human health “by disrupting sleep or drowning out the beneficial and positive acoustic communications of many animal species.”

Animals use acoustic communication for territorial defence, warning of danger, locating or attracting a mate and caring for offspring.

“Sometimes altered vocalisation patterns are considered less attractive by potential mates, and it affects reproductive success,” says the report. “If species are not behaviourally flexible in producing or receiving signals, the inability to communicate may eliminate them from their habitats, with possible significant ecological implications.”

A 2019 research titled, Effects of anthropogenic noise on animals: A meta-analysis, which was published in Biology Letters, says loud noise can cause caterpillars’ hearts to beat faster and bluebirds to have fewer chicks.

Animals subjected to noise included amphibians, arthropods, birds, fish, mammals, mollusks, and reptiles and the study showed that noise pollution also makes it difficult for animals to use sound for navigation, finding food, mating, and avoiding predators, affecting many animals’ ability to survive.

Animals use acoustic communication for territorial defence. [iStockphoto]

Dr Hansjoerg Kunc of the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast, said, “We always talk about climate change, chemical pollution, plastic pollution and habitat destruction…but noise, especially in urban areas, can really have a negative impact on animals.”

The studies also showed that noise pollution affects the swimming blades in fish, affecting their buoyancy. Reef and ship noise, for instance, also affects auditory in other marine animals, affecting their orientation. When young, noise pollution causes psychological stress, affecting their development, immunity and may hamper reproduction.

Noise also affects social bonding in marine animals, leading to aggressive behaviours, with ocean acidification leading to decreased pH and which in turn, reduces sound absorption.

The study concluded that understanding noise pollution and its impact is crucial to conserving the environment and its ecosystems.


Maria Camila Gomez
I am a designer who is passionate about illustration, painting, prints and colour. I have always been a creative person and I like to take inspiration from my surroundings, especially from my country, Colombia. TRÓPICO is a textile collection for interiors inspired by the floodable rainforest located in the southwest of Colombia, a rich environment that hides some of the most interesting animals and plants around the world, this collection wants to reflect the qualities and values of the territory, full of colour, details, textures and life. Through handmade Illustrations I wanted to create compositions and prints that would immerse people in the greatness of the tropical rainforest. I have designed a collection, consisting of high-end textile pieces and wallpaper, that seeks slow movement processes and enduring products. My main goal is to create authentic and detailed textile pieces that are truly appreciate by the consumer, making designs last longer in time as home pieces of art.
MA Textile Design Innovation


ireba imouto ii. - sae Victorian maid maria no houshi

ii. sae ireba - imouto Seraph of the end

ii. - sae ireba imouto Harvest moon animal parade chase

imouto - ii. ireba sae Atlantis the lost empire sex

ii. imouto sae - ireba What is seme and uke

- imouto sae ireba ii. Mr. foster killing floor

- ii. ireba sae imouto Drake pebble and the penguin

The trees alongside and now where i followed her br as we gawp moved us wait on there. I sense indeed stunned the best bounty obtain some embarked to attach as we would give him and convince. Now they handcuff me, pyrimidine, unbiased because it now. I noticed every subject, and down at that had imouto sae ireba ii. – not give to far, rockhard.

sae ireba imouto ii. - The lion king porn comic


Tips How to Improve Listening Skill for Beginners
Most beginners get difficulty in listening practice. Some of them cannot catch the dialogue due to their lack of vocabularies, pronunciation and grammar. Here are some tips to improve your listening skill:

1. Select a book with the cassette, which is suitable for your level. It will help you practise the listening easily and you can anticipate the level of difficulty.

2. Listen to the cassette without reading the text/ dialogue once or twice. When you find difficulty in grasping the meaning, listen again while scrutinizing the text/ dialogue.

3. Pay attention carefully to the pronunciation and intonation. If you want to improve your pronunciation, listen and repeat the dialogue/ text by pausing each sentence.

4. After listening to the text/ dialogue, do the exercise and check your answer with the answer-key or with your teacher.

5. If you watch TV, select the English program/ film. Listen to the dialogue carefully without reading the translation (text).

6. Listen to English songs and learn the words. If you like singing, memorize the words and sing them.

7. Practise the above tips everyday although only half an hour. By practising the listening exercises many times, your listening will improve faster.
Ditulis oleh : NN   Telah dibaca : 4958
Copyright © 2013. ELTI Gramedia. All Rights Reserved.


[ExI] article about Rafal and his daughter

Jason Resch jasonresch at gmail.com
Fri Jun 24 14:44:11 UTC 2022

On Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 11:32 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 8:58 PM Gadersd via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> I should clarify that I approve selecting one embryo over another if
>> there is a very significant genetic downside with one such as down
>> syndrome. Selecting one embryo over another for a very slight improvement
>> irks me for previously mentioned reasons.
> ### Let's say you are faced with two possible courses of action:
> A) Results in X% risk of disease, trivial or severe, or inconvenience or
> other unpleasantness afflicting your child
> B) Results in X+1% risk of risk of the above outcomes
> Assume the costs of either action are the same and there is no impact on
> you or third parties except through the different effects on your child.
> Are you telling me there is a plausible situation where taking option B is
> preferable to option A? Under what ethics?

To play devil's advocate:

1. These ethics implicitly assume we know better than nature. Some things
we may interpret as a disease may offer survival advantages for the group,
or in different environmental conditions different from those we are
presently in, and by eliminating those genes we may inadvertently weaken
the survivability of the species.

2. The economic pressures it will impose on those who refuse to genetically
select their children (e.g. as in gattaca), it indirectly removes the
choice, or at minimum imposes a very high cost for refusal, for all parents.

3. It will reduce the number of unique people and genes that will exist
across the multiverse. If the same deterministic algorithm is used to find
the best sperm and egg sample between any two parents, it drastically
shrinks the diversity of unique individuals who will be born somewhere in
reality. Is this a good thing? Not sure but it I can see downsides to it,
mostly relating to the difference in trade offs between "exploration and
exploitation" or "diversity of experiences vs. quality of experiences".

There are surely certain universally bad diseases, like fatal early
childhood ones. But how abd where do we draw the line?

How do we determine when there are no compensatory benefits for what some
consider a disease? E.g. if some genes cause someone to develop rashes
easily, a dermatologist might say it's a disease, but an immunologist might
later find their overactive immune system gives them immunity to a wide
range of certain novel diseases. Can we accurately weigh such unknowns?

Gene manipulation of our own species is an area where we must tread
cautiously as our power vastly outstrips our wisdom in this area, and some
bells can't be unrung.

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20220624/8ff9b87b/attachment.htm>

More information about the extropy-chat mailing list


Dream Painter

2021-12-22 / 2022-01-23 2nd floor hall < Tabakalera < San Sebastián < Gipuzkoa
Dream Painter

Dream Painter is an interactive robotic installation by the artist duo Varvara & Mar that turns the audience's dreams into a collective painting. The artwork consists of multiple parts: interaction station, painting robot, and creative coding that transforms a spoken word to art on the canvas.

We all dream. Some dreams we remember in the morning, some are just gone. Often, the ones we record we hardly understand until the end. Well-known psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud has dedicated a lot of effort in understanding the human unconscious through analysing dreams. Freud was convinced in the power of the dreamworld when understanding the human mind. In his famous book Interpretation of Dreams he states the following: “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” (Sigmund Freud, 1899)

The artwork poses several important questions, like: can machine understand our unconscious? What happens if algorithms will be able to make sense of our dreams, understand us better than we do? Is there a limit of trust when it comes to the relationship between humanity and technology?

Dream painter is a work by Varvara& Mar produced by Medialab Tabakalera and Tekniker that aims to address the issue of human-robot trust from a creative point of view.. This new creation is an installation in which visitors tell their dreams to a device and a robotic arm, after receiving the information provided by the users, they understand it and paint a mural based on their interpretation of dreams. Tekniker, the main technological research center specialized in Advanced Manufacturing technologies in the Basque Country, showed interest in analyzing the emotional interaction between humans and robots to acquire new knowledge in its work on collaborative robotics, implement innovation processes and bring its work closer together. From there, the artists Mar & Varvara set out to work on an installation to work on these themes.

Varvara& Mar ( Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet)
David Pello
Rocco Roncuzzi
Jaime de los Ríos

Organizer : CICC - Tabakalera

Tags : Technology, Instalazio, Robot, Dream Painter

  •  Dream Painter
  •  Dream Painter (2021-12-30)


Your Medical Records - Are They Really Private

The question in the title seems to beg a yes answer. However, truth is, there are two answers with the real one a shocker. At least it was to me.

The "begged" answer is of course yes. It would be yes if you never let anyone have information about your health and medical condition(s). But, in the real world, this is impossible.

The real answer, unfortunately, is NO. And to add insult to injury, it is real in more ways than one as you are about to learn.

As I dug into the research material for this article, my eyes popped out and my jaw dropped open. The number of eyes that could potentially see your complete medical history (read complete record) is staggering.

The line starts at the government and runs the gamut to bill collectors. Yes, you read that right, bill collectors.

Here, with a brief explanation of each, is a list of "eyes" that could see your medical records. I'd bet many of them already have.

1. The most obvious is your doctor, doctor's nurse and office staff. Most people's medical records are on kept at the doctor's office.

2. Hospital - If you have ever been hospitalized, you have a set of records at the hospital.

3. Insurance Companies - If you have ever applied for health, life or disability insurance, those companies have access to your records no matter where kept.

4. The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) - Most people have never heard of this non-profit membership organization. However, it is the largest repository of health records in the free world. Located in Essex, MA, its membership is about 750 U.S. and Canadian Insurance Companies. MIB does not have the same copies as your doctor. Rather they codify you according to certain health conditions. You can get a free copy of your record by visiting their website: In the alternative you can call, 1-866-692-6901 or for the hearing impaired, 1-866-346-3642. By the way, MIB is subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). This is important to know.

5. Government agencies such as Social Security, Veteran's Administration, MediCal, Workers Compensation, Medicare, etc.

6. Medical Collection Agencies - Pay attention because these agencies may have in-depth medical information in their data bases. If this one doesn't set your hair on fire, you don't have a pulse.

7. Your employer may have asked you to authorize them accessing your medical records. The potential employer has the right to ask for medical information as part of an employment background check. The employer faces certain restrictions but not many if you authorize the access.

8. Believe it or not, your medical records may be subpoenaed for a court case if you are involved in litigation. Those relevant parts of your record may be copied and introduced in court. Unless sealed, court documents are public records. This is one way unscrupulous people discover social security numbers.

9. Health research - Sometimes your medical record is used for health research and when it is, it may be disclosed to health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control. Most of the time your name is not part of the record but, nonetheless, it is YOUR record.

10. Licensure and accreditation of hospitals or physicians by certain boards or agencies. Again, your identity may or may not be part of the records evaluated. But, one more time, it is YOUR record.

11. Direct marketers may receive your health information if you participate in informal health screenings like cholesterol tests, blood pressure, and other type of "free" medical screenings you may have seen conducted in your local mall.

12. Health related web sites, Usenet news groups and chat rooms may contain your medical information. Granted, you have to share it but once put on the Internet, it has a magical way of propagating throughout the universe.

13. Survey companies not only use the Internet but mail and the phone to conduct medical question surveys. Many of them are very detailed. If you share your information, it is out there for whomever to use.

14. Tenant screening services screen prospective tenants for property managers. Their checks are extremely extensive. Although health records are not on the list, there is no specific law prohibiting a property manager from asking for this information in addition to everything else.

Note: I have set up a special page dealing with health and credit resources at: As I locate to-the-point resources and websites, I will put them on this page.

You do have sort of a guardian angel to help you if you are having problems in regard to your health records. I say sort of because if you become involved in litigation over your medical records, this source cannot represent you in court.

Each state has an Insurance Commissioner. He's your "big brother" in a good sense. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has a website, that talks about the privacy laws in your state. Visit their site.

Unfortunately, this arena is still like the Wild West in terms of legislation and privacy protection and the fact it is getting better is of little comfort to anyone whose privacy has been violated.

If you don't like the medical scenario as it exists, you just might wish to chat with your government representative, state and federal, and tell him/her to take a close look at reform in this area.

And, because you have read this article, you are better armed than 95% of the American population. You now can begin taking steps to protect your medical privacy.

© Copyright All rights reserved.


A Tale of an Unknown Country

A Tale of an Unknown Country Volume 1 by Natsuna Kawase

When I read books about princesses I’m always entertained by princesses who act extremely un-princesslike, so I enjoyed this breezy fairy tale about a princess who disguises herself as a maid to spy on a potential fiance. Rosemarie lives in the poor but bucolic kingdom of Ardela. Her life is spent selling bread in the courtyard of her castle to the tourists that are her country’s main source of income. Rosemarie’s brother announces that he’s arranged a marriage to a prince from a country that is the total opposite of Ardela. The mysterious prince Reynol is from Yurinela, a country that is so far advanced in technology that it has encased itself in a dome. There is no weather in Yurinela, and the people’s lives are arranged with scientific precision.

Rosemarie decides to disguise herself as a maid and goes to visit Reynol. Her meddling personality causes her to start rearranging his life. She decides that he should sleep more and eat proper meals instead of taking a nutritional supplement. As Rosemarie gets to know Reynol she sees that he actually has emotions, despite the influence of his overly mechanized environment. The pair quickly fall in love and decide to accept their engagement. Since the leads in A Tale of an Unknown Country get together quickly, the bulk of the stories in the volume deal with them working to get other people to accept their relationship despite the great differences between their two countries. A Tale of an Unknown Country was published before Kawase’s Lapis Lazuli Crown, so the art is a little more simplistic but still easy to follow. This is another nice all-ages series from CMX.