1. Second Nine news executive leaves in wake of cultural review  Sydney Morning Herald
2. Nine executive quits embattled network  news.com.au
3. Another executive departs beleaguered Nine Network  Daily Telegraph

In May 2024, CC organized a strategic workshop in Lisbon to develop a roadmap for future action to advance our work towards a UNESCO instrument on open cultural heritage. In this blog post, we share the full report and some of its key highlights.

The post CC strategic workshop reveals big opportunities for open access to cultural heritage appeared first on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons (CC) is proud to launch the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage), a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. We are grateful to the Arcadia Fund for supporting this initiative. Below we share an overview of TAROCH and…

The post Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage appeared first on Creative Commons.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel warned on Tuesday of the downside of Europe's "cultural tendency" to "over-regulate" and called for a better "balance" between technological development and the defence of democracy and human rights. Read more. "Europe has a cultural tendency to…

Sometimes architecture is about much more than the materials and design of a building. This is the case for Pabellón Centro de Cultura Ambiental (CCA), a facility with the goal of increasing society's environmental awareness. Designed by Taller de Arquitectura, CCA stands as a model for urban planning that incorporates culture, history, economy and the needs of both the community and the environment. [...]

Humans living in harmony with nature and with each other is really the goal of sustainable, environmentally-friendly design. And it is hardly a hip and modern idea, not unless you think the Stone Age is trendy. Long ago, people banded together in groups to live and work together as one community, rather than as individuals. Now, Castlepoint Numa is bringing this ancient idea into the modern era with an innovative design.[...]

Review: The Cultural Revolution still haunts China The World Today mhiggins.drupal 30 January 2023

Tania Branigan’s searching ‘Red Memory’ reveals the costs to Chinese society of not addressing that upheaval’s lingering injustices, writes Nathan Law.

Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution
Tania Branigan, Faber, £20

The Cultural Revolution, a decade-long socio-political upheaval initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966, caused as many as two million deaths and reshaped China. Under the influence of Mao’s personality cult, an entire nation was mobilized to purge the ‘reactionary elements’ in society and the Chinese Communist Party through public denunciation and demolition of traditional heritages.

Children turned on their parents; pupils murdered their teachers, and those who survived the summary public trials were often banished – as a young Xi Jinping himself was, living in a cave for seven years, after his father fell from favour.

Impossible moral choices

In her engaging and sensitive narrative account of the revolution’s upheaval and its consequences, Tania Branigan, the Guardian’s China correspondent between 2008 and 2015, speaks to some of those who survived those terrible years, considers their impossible moral choices and explores the far-reaching legacy of the revolution in present-day China.

Mao urged the party to cleanse itself of its ‘class enemies’: ‘capitalists’ such as landowners and shopkeepers, but also artists, farmers and university professors. Often their family members were tainted by association and persecuted. Branigan captures the awful sense of intimate betrayal and tragedy nowhere more than in the testimony of Zhang Hongbing, a lawyer turned zealous Red Guard.

Zhang denounced his mother, a hospital worker, as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ because her father owned land. She was eventually executed but not before her son struck her twice during her arrest to show his party loyalty. ‘What I did to my mother was worse even than to an animal,’ the remorseful Zhang tells Branigan.

Zhang points out that his actions were far from uncommon: ‘The whole country was doing it.’ This unreconciled sense of betrayal and fear still blights China: ‘Our society is ethically hollow. If we trace these problems to their roots, we are likely to find them in the Cultural Revolution,’ one survivor is quoted as writing.

Branigan encapsulates the difficulties around reconciliation and remembering in the story of Song Binbin. As a schoolgirl in 1966, she and two classmates were the first to pin up a poster attacking teachers for urging students to focus on their work instead of the revolution. Song’s classmates then beat the school vice principal Bian Zhongyun to death in the playground. The case was never properly investigated, and the death was dismissed as an accident.

The pain of remembering

In 2014, Song apologized publicly for the poster and expressed a sense of guilt for not intervening on Bian’s behalf. But Bian’s widower rejected the apology. Song did not speak to Branigan herself, instead allowing her friends to speak in her defence. ‘They had spoken of truth and reconciliation, but not once of justice. Every remark brought them towards closure, not accountability,’ Branigan writes.

The inability to come to terms with the past pervades the book, most of whose interviewees express feelings of resentment, fear and shame about the Cultural Revolution. I sensed the same emotions when, as a boy, I talked to a neighbour in Hong Kong who was then in his 70s. He escaped from China in the late 1960s due to political and economic strains. He simply nodded and fell silent when I asked him to elaborate.

As Branigan writes: ‘Most Cultural Revolution survivors had learnt to bend with the will of the time; not only to do as they were told but to imply that doing so was their own idea. It was better – safer – to stay silent or lie.’

This collective trauma is exacerbated by official unwillingness to address the past. The Cultural Revolution warrants no more than a few paragraphs in official textbooks with no mention of the suffering it unleashed. Documents of the period that might tarnish the CCP remain unavailable; any attempts to interrogate the Cultural Revolution are condemned as ‘historical nihilism’ by the party.

The EU’s Un-Common Agricultural Policy 21 October 2019 — 8:30AM TO 10:00AM Anonymous (not verified) 27 September 2019 Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE

Nuclear Disarmament and the Protection of Cultural Heritage Research paper sysadmin 6 October 2017

States possessing nuclear weapons should be called upon to consider and publish the risks posed to cultural heritage, and their mitigation strategies, in their nuclear-weapons doctrines and policies.

Summary

• Renewed risk assessments for nuclear weapons and policies are taking place around the world in light of nuclear modernization and the changing geostrategic environment that is making the use of nuclear weapons more likely. As such the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons and tests have received increased attention. However, the effect on cultural heritage has so far been neglected.
• The potential for armed conflict to destroy cultural heritage has been recognized in international law since 1954. There is significant evidence on the impact of nuclear weapons on cultural heritage including the consequences of their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the effect of nuclear-testing programmes in places of cultural significance since 1945. States that possess nuclear weapons have increased liabilities and responsibilities to protect cultural heritage and cultural rights. The need to protect cultural heritage should strengthen the case for reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons.
• Failure to take into account the protection of heritage in the development of nuclear weapons policies – including disarmament, non-proliferation and arms-control negotiations – significantly undermines states’ existing commitments to protecting heritage threatened by conflict.
• Risk assessments of the impact of nuclear weapons on cultural heritage and important cultural artefacts – and methods of preventing such catastrophic damage – should be part of protecting cultural heritage in every country and the subject of informed public debate. A new body of knowledge on the full range of nuclear weapons impacts would introduce a fresh perspective to inform decision-makers, international organizations and the public in thinking about nuclear weapons policies and practices.
• Risk and resilience frameworks, which provide sets of solutions for risk assessments, would allow assessments of nuclear weapons threats to heritage and highlight vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. Such frameworks would provide a basis for policymakers to identify the world’s cultural heritage most at risk and help develop mitigation strategies to ensure that it is protected. In particular, states possessing nuclear weapons should be called upon to consider and publish the risks posed to cultural heritage, and their mitigation strategies, in their nuclear weapons doctrines and policies, as a contribution to transparency and confidence-building, and as a responsibility to the world’s shared heritage. International organizations, such as the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), have a role to play in bridging security perspectives with protecting cultural heritage.

Bilingual individuals demonstrate different personality characteristics when speaking different languages. Marketers making media and language decisions when addressing multilingual markets should add this finding to their list of influencing factors.

The post Cultural Frame Switching: Different Language, Different Personality appeared first on Neuromarketing.

In this fourth installment on the growth in dual-language learning, the director of dual-language education in Portland, Ore., says schools must have a clear reason for why they are offering dual-language instruction.

February’s international symposium, entitled “The role of agricultural biotechnologies in sustainable food systems and nutrition”, will explore how the application of science and technology, and particularly agricultural biotechnologies, can benefit [...]

The report will be released during a presentation on Monday, 17 September, at 11:30 CEST, in FAO-HQ, Sheikh Zayed Center.

This new edition of the report focuses on the complex [...]

Rome - The experience of farmers who manage agricultural heritage can help achieve the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration's main goals: support and scale-up efforts [...]

Rome - The FAO - Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems Programme opens the process of establishing a new Scientific Advisory Groupfor the 2021-2022 term.  The Programme is seeking for [...]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, through the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) Programme, will organise the International Symposium on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and Family Farming from [...]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), through the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) Programme, is organizing the International Conference on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems 2021 [...]

Information Note.

Three sites in China - an ancient tea-producing area, a nomadic livestock-rearing region and a rain-fed stone terrace farming system - were formally recognised  as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage [...]

2022 marks the 20th anniversary of the FAO GIAHS Programme. FAO launched the GIAHS initiative at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002. Since its inception, [...]

This edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO) discusses how trade policies, based on both multilateral and regional approaches, can address today’s challenges for sustainable development. 

Rome - Two new sites in Japan - an inland fisheries and associated paddy farming system centred on the country’s largest lake and a traditional fruit-growing area  believed to have been the [...]

This edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO) discusses how trade policies, based on both multilateral and regional approaches, can address today’s challenges for sustainable development. Trade policies [...]

For the first time ever, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will be hosting two back-to-back conferences looking at the challenges and solutions for sustainable livestock [...]

Salzburg – Austria, marked a significant milestone as it celebrated the formal recognition of Traditional Hay Milk Farming in the Austrian Alpine Arc as a FAO Globally Important Agricultural [...]

In this workshop, we will explore the role of innovation in supporting traditional practices that conserve agricultural heritage systems.  

Traditional agricultural practices, often rooted in the local communities and the knowledge [...]

Indonesia and Sao Tome and Principe receive their first designations from FAO along with Austria’s second system

The Ouija board might seem like a simple game that sparks spooky childhood memories, but have you ever pondered its mysterious history? Even more importantly, does it actually…work? Uncover the fascinating truth behind the game and its unusual origins. ___ A little more information: In the late 19th century, Americans were captivated by Spiritualism, the belief that the dead could communicate with the living. Charles Kennard saw the commercial potential in this trend, leading to the creation of the Ouija board. Yet, the backstory behind its invention, its rules, and even its name are all wrapped up in uncertainty. One thing is certain: the more turbulent the times, the more popular the game became – particularly during World War II and the social upheaval of the late 1960s. Ultimately, the allure of the Ouija board lies in its ability to tap into human imagination and curiosity. Whether regarded as a nostalgic artifact or a mystical tool, the Ouija board is here to stay. #OuijaBoard #Ouija #history #Smithsonianmagazine Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@SmithsonianMagazine Read more about the history of the Ouija Board here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/ Did you know that US Navy Officers rely on a system called the “ouija board” to track the movement of airplanes on a carrier? Learn more here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-things-work-the-ouija-board-10048217/ For more videos from Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/ Get More Smithsonian Magazine: Official Site: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smithsonianmagazine/ X: https://x.com/smithsonianmag Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SmithsonianMagazine/ Digital Editorial Director: Brian Wolly Director of Programming: Nicki Marko Manager of Programming: Michelle Mehrtens Scriptwriter: Dan Wolf Video Editor: Adam Benavides

A $1 million grant from the U.S. is the latest effort to support Ukraine's fight to preserve its rich past

Explore volume, open interest and other trading highlights across the suite of Agricultural futures and options with the Q4 2024 Agricultural Update.

OM team in Hong Kong breaks cross-cultural ground, learning how to reach out to the ethnic minority, largely ignored by the Chinese population.

Before the fall semester started, 19 honors students from Penn State DuBois embarked on an unforgettable journey across Europe, visiting Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France. The weeklong trip, part of the honors scholar program, allowed students to immerse themselves in new cultures, savor local cuisines, explore historical landmarks, and encounter diverse wildlife.

Five virtual programs to be streamed live on the Web for African American History Month.

Virtual programs celebrate women's lives and historic achievements.

Events include a virtual program on the blizzard of 1888 and a live concert by Musically Generated Organism.

Highlights include a lecture series on the War of 1812 and several Dutch-themed activities.

(DOVER, Del. — April 18, 2022) — The Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs will be sponsoring seven special events during the month of May 2022. A full schedule is included below. Except where noted, all programs are free and open to the public. Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs special programs, May […]

Secretary of State Jeff Bullock on Monday announced that Suzanne Savery will lead the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs as its next director after Tim Slavin’s departure on June 30, 2022. Ms. Savery most recently served as the deputy director of the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs and will assume the […]

Secretary of Agriculture Michael T. Scuse urges producers across Delaware to participate in USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) upcoming Agricultural Labor Survey scheduled for release in mid-October. The survey will collect information about hired labor from nearly 90 Delaware farmers.

SAS Visual Text Analytics can easily analyze similar words and phrases coming from various cultural heritage-related documents to construct a heritage wordbook that cultural workers can use to identify what relevant conservation technique to use on a structure/artifact.

Building a cultural wordbook via SAS Visual Text Analytics was published on SAS Users.

The Delaware Department of Agriculture (DDA), in partnership with the Division of Small Business, officially launched the Delaware Agricultural Financing Program (DAFP) today. This new program aims to increase the viability of Delaware’s agricultural industry by broadening lending opportunities across the agricultural sector.

Governor John Carney and Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael T. Scuse, along with members of the General Assembly, the Aglands Preservation Board of Trustees, and other agricultural advocates, joined together at Shadybrook Farms, home of the Cartanza family, to unveil a new farm sign celebrating Delaware’s Agricultural Lands Preservation Program.

The Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement opens new market access opportunities for Australian agricultural exporters.

Australian agricultural exporters will benefit from tariff eliminations when the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement enters into force.

The Mexican Government has suspended tariffs on a range of agricultural and fishery products.

India is one of Australia’s fastest growing tourism markets. Tourism businesses can realise the potential of the Indian market by learning about travellers’ culture and service expectations.

Kim Seung-ho initiated the idea to host an exhibition featuring artworks by 30 Chinese and South Korean artists born in 1992, when China and the Republic of Korea established formal diplomatic relatio

'On the Living and the Dead' dives into Israeli artist Hava Raucher’s fearless views on society.