text:
juli 2004 [5]
door John F. Sitton
The author is since 1987 Assistant Professor of Political Science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He has written the following books: Marx's Theory of the Transcendence of the State: A Reconstruction (1989), Recent Marxian Theory: Class Formation and Social Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1996) en Habermas and Contemporary Society (2003).
This article was first published as 'Hannah
Arendt's Argument for Council Democracy.' in: Polity Volume XX, nr 1, autumn
1987 pp. 80-100. It was published again in: Hinchman and Hinchman (red.), Hannah
Arendt: Critical Essays, SUNY Press,
|Critics of Hannah Arendt's argument for council democracy have focused primarily on structural questions, generally to the neglect of both the alternative political principles she believed council democracy embodies and her interpretation of historical examples of council democracy. The result has been a certain ambiguity, which the author of this article seeks to dispel. He analyzes what Arendt has had to say about the idea of council democracy, reviews and criticizes the critics of her position, and concludes with his own critique of her theory.
One of the most puzzling aspects of the political thought
of Hannah Arendt is her support for some kind of council democracy. It is one
Arendt actually answers in advance the charge that she
did not sufficiently specify the structures of council democracy: "But we can't
It is necessary to re-examine Arendt's argument for council democracy in order to dispel same of the ambiguity surrounding an issue that was
clearly very important to her. To this end I will (1)
briefly summarize the important problems of representative democracy that Arendt
believed council democracy could avoid, (2) explicate her conception
of council democracy and the principles it embodies, (3) outline the objections
Problems of Representative Democracy
In what has become a commonplace of partisans of political
participation, Arendt, like
In a like manner, Arendt argues that the meaning of freedom was reduced to the essentially private and non-political concern with civil liberties, Arendt does not deny that civil liberties are important but believes that they have less to do with political participation than with the idea of limited government, however constituted, These private liberties must not cause us to
"mistake civil rights for political freedom, or to equate these preliminaries of civilized government with the very substance of a free republic, For political freedom, generally speaking, means the right to be a participator in government' or it means nothing". [On Revolution, p. 218]
The American Constitution destroyed this positive sense of freedom, at least for the mass of the citizenry, In the place of public freedom, public happiness, and public spirit were civil liberties, the happiness of the greatest number (an aggregate of private happinesses), and the rule of a privatistic, uneducated public opinion. [On Revolution, p. 221] The American system can be called democratic insofar as the popular welfare and private happiness of the citizens are secured, but must be called oligarchic in that "public happiness and public freedom have again become the privilege of a few". [On Revolution, p. 269]
Besides this normative criticism of representative democracy, Arendt also has certain practical concerns, the primary one of which has to do
with Arendt's concept ion of what constitutes a properly political topic, According to Arendt, political life cannot be concerned with matters
about which there can be truth, whether rational truth or factual truth, Political life is concerned solely with matters that have no right answer [In the phrase of George Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil, 1984, p. 121], with topics that not only allow discussion and various opinions but demand them for proper judgment: "debate constitutes the very essence of political life". [Arendt, 'Truth and Politics' in: Between Past and Future, 1983, p. 241] Topics which allow certainty are the province of specialists, not the public at large. [Arendt, 'On Hannah Arendt' (roundtable discussion with H. Arendt) in: Melvyn A. Hill (red.), Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, 1979 p. 317]
Arendt circumscribes political topics in this manner
in order to protect the unique political experience from those "'{ho would
reduce politics to
In contrast, a truly political question is one in which
one's preference cannot be determined by objective criteria which would compel
all. "Their validity depends on free agreement and consent; they are arrived at
by discursive, representative thinking; and they are communicated by
Arendt therefore argues that political life, if it is
to maintain its experiential integrity, must be concerned exclusively with subjects
about which
That truth bas no place in political activity does not
mean, however, that all opinions are equally valid, any more than is the case
in matters of
"The more people's stand points 1 have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how I
would feel
and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative
thinking and the more valid my final
For Arendt, given that politics only concerns topics
which are not subject to truth, the validity of political opinions rests on consideration
of a
"Herein lies one of Arendt's practical criticisms of representative democracy: representative democracy cannot provide the experience of a
plurality of perspectives for the majority of its citizens. Therefore representative democracy disrupts proper opinion formation on political
topics. In fact, according to Arendt, in the specific sense of the term, "opinions" simply do not exist in representative democracy.
"In this system the opinions of the people are indeed unascertainable for the simple reason that they are non-existent. Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinion exists, there may be moods-moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the farmer-but no opinion". [On Revolution, p. 268/69]
To put it another way, there may be "public opinion," uneducated moods, but no public "opinions".
Arendt's argument is that citizens must have personal experience in public de bate for proper opinion formation to take place on political
topics. For this, council democracy, a number of public
spaces or "elementary republics" around the country, is necessary. [
In contrast to council democracy, representative democracy
depends on the registering of public opinion through the vote. According to Arendt,
this is unsatisfactory for two related reasons. First, the vote is the citizenry
acting in its private capacity, without political experience or well-formed opinions.
This means the encroachment of private concerns on the public world, which cannot
be allowed if the public world is to maintain its integrity as a public world.
Arendt argues that
Following from this, a second limitation on voting is that it does not create a meaningful relation between the individual and issues of the whole. Such a relation can only occur if a space for political experience is established in which people can participate outside of their personal network of concerns, beyond instrumental considerations, i.e. if a space of equality is established. Such a political organization would allow a direct, undiluted confrontation with issues that concern the whole. One's political participation would then be meaningful, not in the sense of being given a goal, a direction, or a function, but in having a place in a collectivity of multiple perspectives and having that place acknowledged by others. At best representative democracy can only provide a "certain control of rulers by those who are ruled", and even this resembles blackmail and force more than it does "the power that arises out of joint action and deliberation". [On Revolution, p. 269
Arendt's Council Democracy
The basis of all of Arendt's criticisms of representative democracy is her insistence that politics is an irreplaceable kind of human experience, one that can only unfold within a participatory structure of equality and multiple perspectives. It is only in this place that individuals can experience public happiness, freedom in a positive sense, and a plurality of perspectives on which proper opinions on political topics can be formed.
As an experience, politics cannot be reduced to goals of political action, although the latter are not excluded from politics, as Arendt's critics frequently charge. [See, for example, Martin Jay, "Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views," Partisan Review XLV, No. 3, 1978. The "pro" Arendt view is given in the same article by Leon Botstein.] James Knauer and Hannah Pitkin have demonstrated that an interpretation of Arendt as excluding all instrumental concerns from politics simply cannot be supported textually.[1] Arendt repeatedly allows for an instrumental dimension of political action, as shown above in the phrases "joint action and deliberation" and politics as activities of "expressing, discussing, deciding".
There are two problems with this discussion, however,
that must be pointed out here, although they can only be addressed after we consider
The second is that it is not obviously clear why council democracy would necessarily encourage the multiplicity of opinions. The common experience of small groups seems to indicate the opposite, that small groups are as likely to be narrow-minded on political issues as are the isolated citizens of representative democracy. That is, even if we. Accept Arendt's argument that proper opinion formation cannot take place under representative democracy, that is no argument for how council democracy can avoid this difficulty.
Some of the objections to Arendt's criticisms of representative
democracy can be dissolved by examining her proposed structure for council democracy.
This will allow us to see the alternative principles she espouses. At the outset,
a very important distinction must be made. Many of the examples Arendt cites as
instances of council democracy were actually complex political configurations
of workers' councils, neighborhood
councils, direct democratic organs of the military, councils of cultural groups,
etc., e.g. Russia 1917, Germany 1917-18, and Hungary 1956. The form she specifically
wants to praise is that of "neighborhood
councils", i.e. to use her distinction, the Revolutionary Councils rather than
Workers' Councils. [Arendt, 'Epilogue: Reflections on
the Hungarian Revolution' in: The Origins
of Totalitarianism, 1958, p. 498] The former is territorially based
rather than functionally-based, although historically they have overlapped. It
is because she bas in mind primarily territorially-based councils that she could
The primary problem for Arendt is how to reconcile the tension between authority and equality among federated councils. [On Revolution, p. 278] That is, how can the federation be organized such that the integrity of each local council as an arena of free act ion is maintained while also articulating the local councils into a national federation which can act for the whole. This is always the primary problem for theories of council democracy.
In Arendt's proposal, the local councils would be open to all who wished to participate and higher councils would be constituted of representatives of the lower. It is important to Arendt's conception that the representatives to the higher councils are not bound in any way to those who selected them on the lower level. The relationship is one of trust, not an imperative mandate of any sort. [On Revolution, p. 278; The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 499] Neither are those who participate on the lower level bound to those who do not participate. The participants are self-chosen, as Arendt said, and do not owe their political position to anyone else. [On Revolution, p. 280] Although the federated councils would take pyramidal shape, authority would be derived neither from the top down nor from the bottom up. Deputies would not be subject "to any pressure either from above or from below". [On Revolution, p. 278; Crises of the Republic, p. 230] In some manner, authority would be generated, "on each of the pyramid's layers".
Through this arrangement, Atendt hopes to escape any
assertions of sovereignty which, in her conception, reduces politics to ruling
instead of
The problem remains, however, of coordinating decision-making
by the lower and higher councils. Any argument as to Arendt's solution to this
problem is conjectural, but it appears to proceed from her understanding of the
principles of the American republic, especially the separation of powers: "that
only 'power arrests power,' that is, we must add, without destroying it, without
putting impotence in the place of power". [On Revolution, p. 151] Each of the councils would be autonomous;
each would possess its own power and authority. But if the power and authority
According to Arendt, authority is neither coercion norpersuasion. [Arendt, 'What Is Authority?' in Between Past and Future, p. 93] In fact, she argued that one of the most important characteristics of those with authority is that they do not have power to compel obedience. [Arendt, 'What Is Authority?' in Between Past and Future, p. 93] In our context of the relations of councils, it would appear that the councils would be related through mutual respect, coupled with the practical recognition that coordinated action is necessary. No single council would have to be persuaded that the course of action upon which the others had decided was the correct one. Rather, each council would have respect for the opinions of the others and realize that certain things must be clone, whether that particular council agreed or not. To the ex tent that this relation to authority is realized, Arendt believes the tension between authority and equality would be alleviated among the federated councils. The very phrase "higher council" would therefore not refer to any coercive power but to the fact of including a larger territorial area as the primary, but not exclusive, focus of deliberations.
This attempt to exclude any notion of sovereignty from her council system led Arendt to a very striking proposal: "the end of general suffrage as we understand it today ……". [On Revolution, p. 279] Bhikhu Parekh, for one, insists that Arendt obviously did not intend the abolition of general suffrage, but he neither supports his interpretation nor is he correct. [Bhikhu Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy, 1981, p. 171] Arendt argues forcefully that those who would choose to participate demonstrate by that very fact that they care more for public affairs than for their purely personal concerns. They have amor mundi: they are "self-chosen." Those who will not participate are self-excluded and will have no voice; they will simply enjoy their negative liberty of freedom from politics. On Revolution, p. 280] "Anyone who is not interested in public affairs will simply have to be satisfied with their being decided without him. But each person must be given the opportunity". [Arendt, 'Thoughts on Politics and Revolution' in: Crises of the Republic, p. 233] Abolition of suffrage is precisely in accord with Arendt's notion of a political elite, self-selected by its intense concern with public affairs at the expense of its members' private worlds. This is why she can describe her federated council system as an "aristocratic form of government".
The last major structural feature of Arendt's council democracy is her insistence that the personal qualities necessary for leaders hip in the councils are not necessarily the qualities of a good administrator. [On Revolution, p. 274] Arendt believes that one of the historical problems of councils is their repeated attempts to administer the economy directly in the public interest. Arendt bas workers' control of factories specifically in mind which she asserts have always "ended in dismal failure" and "earned the council system its bad name". [On Revolution, p. 274] To avoid repetition of this mistake, Arendt insists on a strict separation of participation, whose principle is freedom, from management or administration, whose principle is necessity. [On Revolution, p. 274]
This separation clearly follows her general argument in On Revolution that concern with the "social question" destroyed the ability of the French revolutionaries to establish freedom. It is also closely related to Arendt's argument in The Human Condition that non-political concerns have invaded the political realm, threatening the possibility of truly political experience. The occasion for this threat bas been the emergence of a modern category, the social. This is a hybrid realm (from the standpoint of the ancients) because it' is public but is concerned with the realm of necessity, i.e. product ion to satisfy immediate need and concentration on making (animal laborans and homo faber, respectively). [Arendt's distinction in The Human Condition, 1958] Attempts to subject the social to the political bring questions of necessity into the realm of free action. This violates the principle, outlined above, of a properly political question and corrupts the political. Thus Arendt maintains a strict division between politics and administration..
This feature of councils will be criticized below. Suffice it to mention that there is no indication by Arendt of how administrators are to be chosen, what they will ad minister, or what their relationship to the councils will be. The line between political affairs and administration is extremely ambiguous and, I will argue, untenable.
Arendt is convinced that such a system of councils at
least holds the promise of durability. She agrees with
Arendt believes that such a system of federated councils-founded on principle! of non-sovereignty, participation of those who would place public affairs before their personal interests, and authority relations in the true sense of authority-could protect the autonomy of the political sphere. It would secure for the mass of the citizenry the possibility of true political experience, the experience of a plurality of perspectives on issues concerning the whole. In this manner, this "new concept of the state" [Arendt, 'Thoughts on Politics and Revolution' in: Crises of the Republic, p. 231] presents the possibility of breaking up the modern mass society. [On Revolution, p. 279]
Because Arendt conceived of politics as primarily the securing of a place for a certain kind of experience, she could avoid the difficulties usually found in conceptions of positive freedom. Negative freedom was anathema to her because it did not allow the linkage between freedom and politics: freedom is conceived as something that takes place outside of the political sphere. By outlining what constitutes true political questions and by excluding the issues arising from the realm of necessity, Arendt could formulate the political sphere as a realm of free activity.
She could escape the problem of forcing people to be free by recognizing, even against some of her own statements, that there are a multiplicity of freedoms. Freedom from politics is just as real a freedom apolitical freedom. For this reason, no one is compelled to pursue on freedom above another. There is a place for Plato in her country, if not in her polis.
Objections to Council Democracy
Many criticisms of Arendt's discussion of council democracy
revolve around this proposed structure of council democracy. Especially of concern
is Arendt's intention to "end ….. suffrage as we understand it today". Even Parekh,
who does not interpret this to mean the outright abolition of suffrage, calls
this statement "ominous". [Bhikhu Parekh, Hannah
Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy, 1981, p. 171]
The chief problem is that many will not be able to participate whether they desire
to or not. As Margaret Canovan says, the sick, the elderly, the working, and the
inarticulate will be excluded from all political life. [Canovan, 'The Contradictions of Hannah Arendt's Political
Thought' in Political Theory 6, nr.
1, 1978, p. 19] Others have suggested that the councils will come}to be
dominated by those who have the time, especially the wealthy, and by professional
politicians and other "manipulators". [Sternberger, 'The
Sunken City: Hannah Arendt's Idea of Politics in: Social Research, autumn 1977, p. 144] If suffrage is ended,
this leisured elite cannot be checked by those who do not participate. Others
have asserted that, had they endured, councils would likely have been subject
to the same partisan pressures and fissures that occurred in
Some of these criticisms of the structure of Arendt's council system are well taken, and even as Canovan says, exasperatingly obvious. [Canovan, 'The Contradictions …..', p. 19] However, most of them assume the limitations that Arendt placed on political action, specifically that it would leave the social structure and present distribution of resources untouched. For this reason, the arguments of Arendt's critics do not advance the discussion of what would be necessary to realize such a structure; The solution to these problems is indeed very difficult given Arendt's assumption that politics must be "walled off" from social questions. However, if we reject that assumption, and if the social structure is altered such that especially leisure time is extended in a fruitful direction, these criticisms lose much of their force. Structural problems of council democracy would no doubt remain, but they are not obviously insurmountable.
A second kind of criticism of Arendt's conception of council democracy is that she failed to recognize the real accomplishments of representative democracy. She is accused of misinterpreting key concepts of representative theory in order to portray the citizenry of such democracies as passive sufferers of government. George Kateb, for example argued that Arendt gave a misleading interpretation of the phrase "government by the consent of the governed" such that consent appears as passive acquiescence in being governed. Kateb argues instead that this principle encourages resistance to government policy in that it places the legitimacy of government (i.e. whether it can truly claim consent of the governed) in constant doubt. [Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil, 1984, p. 126-31] Kateb contends that this doubt as to the legitimacy of government keeps alive the possibility of civil disobedience: "civil disobedience ..... is unthinkable without the institutions of representative democracy". [Kateb, 'Arendt and Representative Democracy' in: Robert Boyers (red.), Proceedings of "History, Ethics, Politics: A Conference Based on the Work of Hannah Arendt", 1982, p. 123] For example, the anti-war movement, a mass participatory political phenomenon that Arendt supported and compared to "the best in the revolutionary tradition-the council system",[2] is a case of representative democracy keeping alive an oppositional spirit.
It is argued further that Arendt fundamentally misrepresents civil liberties by grouping them all together as negative liberties. Kateb and Canovan both insist that it is through their defense of negative liberties that representative democracies entourage political participation. [Canovan, 'The Contradictions …..', p. 22] Representative democracy presents more possibilities for political participation than Arendt acknowledged. It even creates a space for political action in the "agonal" sense. In reviewing these accomplishments, Kateb simply asks: "How can we associate passivity with representative democracy?" [Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil, p. 132] He suggests that we should at least seriously consider representative democracy as a legitimate political system, even if only "second best". [Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil, p. 116]
Kateb's criticism of Arendt bas much to commend it. Arendt
did fail to recognize distinctions among the negative liberties and accordingly
underestimated the importance of certain civil liberties for maintaining the possibility
of participation. No doubt she also gave, in most instances, an excessively passive
interpretation to the phrase "consent of the governed". Kateb's critique, however,
leaves the thrust of Arendt's criticism of
Kateb also seems to over look an obvious point: the civil
disobedients of the anti-war period seized their participatory space in the face
of considerable institutional repression. Further, the political participation
of the sixties in this country and others was, although certainly not unique,
A final common criticism of Arendt's proposal for council democracy is that she was ambiguous as to exactly what constitutes a properly political topic. The problem this poses is that if one rules out administration of the public good or any social questions, then it is unclear what the participants in the councils will actually do and discuss. Mary McCarthy asked Arendt this question bluntly at a conference in 1972 and Arendt's response was exceedingly vague. [Arendt, 'On Hannah Arendt' in: Melvyn A. Hill (red.), Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, 1979 p. 315] Arendt's failure to answer this question satisfactorily bas led many critics to argue that her conception of properly political activity is so narrowly drawn as to empty politics of all content: politique pour la politique. [Martin Jay, 'Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views' in: Partisan Review XLV, nr. 3, 1978, p. 353] Political activity becomes a performance for its own sake, simple display.
We need not accept this criticism in its extreme form to see that Arendt's refusal to admit social questions or administration into the political realm does indeed reduce significantly the possible subjects of political discourse and action. The rigid separation of politics and economics in her conception bas been ably disputed before and we need not rehearse it in detail here. [See, e.g., Sheldon Wolin, 'Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political' in The Proceedings of History, Ethics, Politics, pp. 79-94; or Richard J. Bernstein, 'Hannah Arendt: The Ambiguities of Theory and Practice'' in T. Bali (ed.) Political Theory and Praxis: New Perspectives, 1977, pp. 141-158] However it is important to show how this separation caused Arendt to fundamentally misinterpret the council tradition and to fail to appreciate exactly what is at stake. This is the key weakness of Arendt's theory of council democracy and forms my criticism.
Assumptions and Limitations of Arendt's Argument
For Arendt, the principle of revolution is the establishment of freedom, However, she argues that when the demands of the poor, the social question, are allowed info the revolutionary process, revolution cannot achieve its goal. Her premier example is that of the French Revolution.
According to Arendt, it was as impossible to ignore "the
misery and unhappiness of the mass of mankind" in eighteenth century
Arendt's objection to this is not only that want leads a revolution away from its original goal, freedom, but that revolutions are incapable of accomplishing their new goal, to abolish poverty, i.e. to solve the social question. [On Revolution, p. 112] The reason is, simply, that poverty cannot be solved by political means:
"he whole record of revolutions - if we only knew how to read it - demonstrates beyond doubt that every at tempt to abolish poverty, i.e. to abolish the so-called social question, with political means is doomed to failure and for this reason leads to terror; terror, on the other hand, sends revolutions to their doom". [Arendt, 'The Cold War and the West' (symposium) in: Partisan Review XXIX, nr. 1, winter 1963, p. 17]
If scarcity is the human condition, the establishment of freedom through revolutions will be a failure.
However, Arendt argued that scarcity is no longer intractable.
Technology has made it possible to produce abundance and will even "force
us to fight superabundance". [Arendt, 'The Cold War and
the West' in: Partisan Review XXIX, nr. 1, winter 1963,
p. 17] Modern technology will soon
One of Arendt's basic assumptions is that technology is politically neutral, and it is upon this assumption that her strict separation of politics and administration in modern society is based. Administration is part of the cares of the household and, even when such cares are allowed to, enter the public realm (a modern phenomenon to which Arendt sometimes appears to be reconciled), she insists these matters must be "put into the hands of experts, rather than be considered issues which could be settled by the twofold process of decision and persuasion". [On Revolution, p. 91] These are, in Arendt's opinion, questions that allow of only one right answer, that can be determined with certainty, and are therefore not political questions. Arendt simply did not recognize any constraints of social structure on technological development.
Arendt tried further to separate politics from economics
with regard to council democracy by insisting that workers' control was unimportant.
She claimed that the Sovjet Union waited until the last to suppress the specifically
Hungarian workers' councils because "nothing more was at stake than the organization
of labor and the mode of consumption and appropriation of consumer goods". [Arendt,
'Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution' in The
Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958, p. 502] Arendt returned to the topic
of worker control in an interview in 1970 to insist that the notion of collective
ownership itself was a contradiction in terms: "Property is what belongs to me;
ownership relates to what is my own by definition". [Arendt,
'Thoughts on Politics and Revolution' in Crises
of the Republic, 1972, p. 214] This, however, failed to grasp the issue,
and Arendt almost immediately backed away from the position. She next mentioned
the self-management units of
This latter theory of property bas been argued by C. B. MacPherson as the right of an individual to be included in the use of a thing, i.e. as a right of access, rather than of exclusive disposal. Contrary to Arendt, it is not "new," an experiment, but rather is contained in precapitalist notions of property, such as that of the common as common property. [Zie MacPherson, 'A Political Theory of Property' in Democratic Theory; Essays in Retrieval, 1973, pp. 120-40] The point here is not to defend this conception but simply to show that Arendt's attempts to distinguish economic systems from pure political reforms meet great difficulties. [As is demonstrated in the discussion by Arendt in 'Thoughts on Politics and Revolution' in Crises of the Republic, 1972, p. 217/18]
Arendt's attempt to separate politics and administration,
to refuse to see the political dimension of economic and technological problems,
and to insist that workers' control is either dangerous or absurd, all seriously
weakened her understanding of council democracy. Furthermore they caused her to
distort the historical record of the Paris Commune of 1871 to give the impression
that the Communards did not desire socialism but
Analyzing the Hungarian revolution in terms of her framework presented Arendt with even more difficulties. She had continually to acknowledge the express intention of the participants to "reorganize the Hungarian economy on a socialist basis," the evaluation of the U.N. report which she called "truly admirable", [Arendt, 'Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution' in The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 498] and simultaneously to insist that this was not important to the participants, that the primary issue was "Freedom and Truth", and that workers' councils we re essentially a reaction against the communist trade unions. [Arendt, 'Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution', p. 494 and 498] She repeated these contradictions in On Revolution by saying, first, that the revolution intended "the reorganization of the political and economic life of the country and the establishment of a new order" and, three pages later, that "social and economic claims played a very minor role". [On Revolution, p. 271 and 274]
In contrast to Arendt's confusion over
It was a social revolution aimed not at restoring a previous regime but at creating a radically new social order, One which would be both more democratic than the capitalist West and more socialist than the communist East.[3]
The point here is not that Arendt fails to weigh political and economic demands properly in the Hungarian revolution or the Paris Commune of 1871. The problem is her very attempt to distinguish these two aspects in modern revolutions. It is this distinction that goes to the heart of Arendt's misconception of council democracy.
Hannah Arendt does not understand the significance of
the fact that most of the ex am pies of council democracy she utilized were attempts
It is easy to establish from the historical record that
major forces operating in the historic uprisings of council democracy, at least
from the Paris Commune on, we re guided by the notion that economic relations
are political relations. The recent Solidarity movement in
In a roundtable discussion of her thought in 1972, Arendt's distinction between political and economic (or administrative) topics was openly attacked in this manner by Albrecht Wellmer:
I would ask you to give one example in our time of a social problem which is not at the same time apolitical problem, Take anything: like education, or health, or urban problems, even the simple problem of living standards. [Arendt, 'On Hannah Arendt' in: Melvyn A. Hill (red.), Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, 1979 p. 318]
Arendt's response was that each of these problems bas
a "double face" and "one of these faces should not be subject to debate". However,
Arendt misunderstands the nature of the decisions in the realm of necessity. No economic administrators or committee of experts will ever be able to find an answer to questions of safety versus more production, leisure time or higher wages, environmental protection versus more production, or present consumption versus investment for consumption in the future. These are issues of opinion, not truth. These are value decisions that can only be solved by consensus of the participants: they are issues of discussion and persuasion if ever there were any. There is simply more at stake in the economic realm than "the citizens' right to choose their profession and their place of work". [Arendt, 'The Cold War and the West' in Partisan Review XXIX, nr. 1, winter 1963, p. 16]
In an age of an interdependent economy, rat her than
individual subsistence households, Arendt's conception of the economy as a realm
of necessity is an anachronism. It is ironic that her limitation of truly political
questions, which excludes all economic questions, moved her closer to Engels'
position, taken from Saint-Simon, that much of public life can be reduced to the
mere administration of things, a position she of ten criticized. Finally, even
in ancient
This is not to deny that the collapse of the economic
and the political as it bas developed in existing socialist societies is without
problems. Much recent work has begun exploring the theoretical implications of
the disappearance of civil society in
These criticisms aside, Arendt's discussion of council democracy is important for at least two reasons. First, she argues a separate political structural cause for the meaninglessness of contemporary politics. As Arendt suggests in several places, our politics is truly idiotic in the original Greek sense of "one's own", of isolation, the same sense in which Marx spoke of the "rural idiocy" of the French peasantry. This is not to deny that some form of political representation may be necessary. However, those who refuse to consider seriously the possible relationship between representation and meaninglessness or those who believe that our political problems can be resolved by purely social structural changes, as Arendt says, simply "don't hear the ticking". In this light, Arendt accomplishes what she set out to do: she defends the autonomy of the political.
Secondly, even in the details of her argument Arendt
is illuminating. Her discussion of the political principles of non-sovereignty
and authority in the ancient sense, and the relation between these structures
and the dynamic of political questions, indicates a political structure capable
Arendt may have intended her account of council democracy
as merely a people's utopia, a theoretical construction to reveal how much we
[1] James T. Knauer, 'Motive and Goal in Hannah Arendt's Concept of Political Action', The American Political Science Review 74, No. 3, September 1980: 721-733; Hannah Pitkin, 'Justice: On Relating Private and Public', Political Theory 9, No. 3, August 1981: 327-352. This position is also supported by Arendt's unpublished statement: "This is not to deny that interest and power and rule ….. are very important and even central political concepts …..The question is: Are they the fundamental concepts, or are they derived from the living-together that itself springs from a different source? (Company/ Action)" Quoted in Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment, 1983, p. 15. (Ellipses in Beiner.)
Arendt, 'On Violence' in Crises of the Republic,


text:
Tips For Getting The Top HVAC Replacement System
Most experts agree that air conditioners in Atlanta, GA will need to be replaced, on average, every 15 years. This is just the average, with some operating with very limited need for repairs for up to twenty plus years. Typically, the air conditioners with routine maintenance will have the longest life cycle, but there is also some variation based on other factors, most importantly the amount of use the system gets over the summer.
When purchasing an HVAC replacement, it is a good idea to start shopping early. This will allow time to compare different models, possibly wait for sales and to talk to your HVAC company about the recommendations they would make based on their own experience with different models and manufacturers.
Before selecting your HVAC replacement, take the time to find out information on the following factors. Online research can provide an excellent source of customer reviews, energy efficient ratings and even comparing features side-by-side.
Check the Size
It is not uncommon for an existing air conditioner to be incorrectly sized for the area to be cooled. This can happen for many different reasons, including the previous homeowners trying to cut costs or if a remodeling or renovation added onto the home's living space.
Knowing the home's current square footage will be critical in choosing the right size and model for efficiency.
Consider the SEER
The SEER or Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating is essential to consider on any HVAC replacement. The higher the number, the more efficient the system will be. Typically, above 16 is considered to be a high-efficiency system with a SEER of 14 considered the minimum in the Southeastern Region of the USA, including Atlanta, GA, due to the hot, humid summers.
Choosing a higher efficiency replacement air conditioner will result in lower energy bills. It will also extend the lifecycle of the system as long as the correct size for the square footage of the home is taken into account.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Foreign Aid: USA is stingiest of the 22 most developed countries</a>
The USA claims to be, in absolute terms, the world's biggest giver and this is true. However, as a proportion of it's wealth the USA gives least when compared to all 22 of the worlds' most developed countries.
"[Americans] are regularly told by politicians and the media, that America is the world's most generous nation. This is one of the most conventional pieces of 'knowledgable ignorance'. [...For example Japan gives more even in absolute terms...]
Absolute figures are less significant than the proportion of gross domestic product (GDP, or national wealth) that a country devotes to foreign aid. On that league table, the US ranks twenty-second of the 22 most developed nations. As former President Jimmy Carter commented: 'We are the stingiest nation of all'. Denmark is top of the table, giving 1.01% of GDP, while the US manages just 0.1%. The United Nations has long established the target of 0.7% GDP for development assistance, although only four countries actually achieve this: Denmark, 1.01%; Norway, 0.91%; the Netherlands, 0.79%; Sweden, 0.7%. Apart from being the least generous nation, the US is highly selective in who receives its aid. Over 50% of its aid budget is spent on middle-income countries in the Middle East, with Israel being the recipient of the largest single share."
"Why do people hate America?" by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, 2002. p79
Not only that, but according to one source cited by Sarder & Davies, 80% of that aid itself actually goes to American companies in those foreign countries.
Full page:


text: Looking for Wylie Health Insurance? First of all, welcome to our portal. We are American Entitlements, a family-owned Insurance Broker with the goal of benefitting people in our local community. We know you need a helping hand to navigate through the confusing world of insurance companies. Surely, we provide Wylie Health Insurance coverage for all ages […]Read more The Best Wylie Health Insurance Broker


text:
Results 1 to 3 of 3
Thread: Java program is not loading
- 12-28-2009, 08:52 PM #1Member
- Join Date
- Aug 2009
- Posts
- 17
- Rep Power
- 0
Java program is not loading
When I make run a java program it does not appear. It is a swing program containing Jframe, JTextField, JButton etc.
When I want to make run the program it shows "Java Accessibility Bridge for GNOME loaded." as below and no window appears. Same program runs in other machine
Java Code:
shoeb@samserver> javac m.java Note: m.java uses or overrides a deprecated API. Note: Recompile with -Xlint:deprecation for details. shoeb@samserver> java m Java Accessibility Bridge for GNOME loaded.
Last edited by shoeb83; 12-28-2009 at 09:01 PM.
Weird! Are you using legacy SunOS SunOS Wiki or a current version of Solaris? SunOS became Solaris in 1994 when sun switched to a System V base instead of BSD.
Also, what version of java are you running? I suspect that if you are on a legacy system there is a problem between the JVM and (X Windows I'm Guessing?).
If its Solaris, well, thats weird.
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
- Location
- Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Posts
- 11,370
- Blog Entries
- 1
- Rep Power
- 26
Did you comes up with any error when installing? I came a across the similar issues, once check I found that installation cause the damage.
Bug ID: 6409883 Seeing "Java Accessibility Bridge for GNOME loaded" in headless installs
Similar Threads
Java and WebServices: showing a Loading windowBy BeRniTo in forum Advanced JavaReplies: 0Last Post: 11-06-2009, 05:33 AM
Problem in Java Class Loading processBy gppme in forum Advanced JavaReplies: 4Last Post: 04-18-2009, 05:04 AM
Loading Page Tutorial For JavaBy hitmen in forum AWT / SwingReplies: 0Last Post: 03-07-2009, 06:40 AM
Java Applet loading barBy genette in forum Java AppletsReplies: 2Last Post: 12-27-2007, 04:39 AM
Help with class loading in javaBy mathias in forum New To JavaReplies: 1Last Post: 07-31-2007, 09:51 PM


text:
Is Your Website Hosting Primed For Success?
Web design and digital marketing can be overwhelming for most small business owners.
We would like to help. Let us simplify things by giving you the top 5 things that determine why a website is not ranking.
5 web design secrets that consistently result in top search rankings
Secret #1 Ensure your site has a responsive design
SECRET #1 Is your website mobile-ready?
What is responsive design? A mobile-ready website will display beautifully on any device, without the need to scroll, or elements appearing in wrong places.
Action Items
- responsivetool.com
- Check that your website loads properly
on every device
Responsive Design Stats
Responsive design has become a CRUCIAL factor in search engine ranking
over the past years. The following statistics show why.
- Nearly 60% of all searches are now done on mobile devices
- On average, 8 of 10 users will leave a site if content doesn't display properly
on their device.
- 48% consider companies uncaring if their sites are not mobile-friendly
- 13% of adults exclusively use mobile to access the internet
- 2 of 3 minutes spent online is through mobile devices
Secret #2 Be original, check that your content is unique
SECRET #2 Is your web content unique?
- Duplicate content can impact your rankings
- Search engine algorithms will find copied text
- Depending on the severity, your rankings may suffer
Secret #3 Speed up if you want to win the race
Site Speed Breakdown
The speed of your website is CRUCIAL for ranking
due to several factors:
- Site speed is a well-documented ranking factor for most search algorithms
- Slow page speed can limit the number of pages on your website that are indexed
- Visitors will leave a slow website
Action Items
- Check your website speed here https://gtmetrix.com/
- Invest in premium hosting and optimize your website for speed
Website Speed Stats
The following statistics show clearly why page speed is such an important factor.
- 39% of the people across the world will stop engaging with a website if images won't load or take too long to load
- Web pages that load in 2.4 seconds had a bounce rate of 12.8%, whereas the pages that loaded in 3.3 seconds experienced a bounce rate of 20%
- A single second of added page load speed can cause sales to drop by 27%
- 47% of consumers expect webpage load speeds of under 2 seconds
- A 100-millisecond delay in load time can cause conversion rates to drop by 7%
- Sites that load in 5 sec. (compared to 19 sec.) see 70% longer average sessions
Secret #4 Move into the right neighborhood
SECRET #4 Is your hosting a 'good neighborhood'? What is a Good Neighborhood?
What is a Good Neighborhood? Websites containing terms like "gambling", "casino", "pornography" or "Viagra" are classified as Bad Neighbors. Sharing hosting with such sites puts your rankings at risk.
Action Items
- https://viewdns.info/reverseip/
- Find out where your site is hosted. Is it a cheap, shared server?
- Invest in premium hosting to avoid being penalized
Secret #5 Get your website SSL secured
SECRET #5 Does your site have a Security certificate?
What does SSL secured mean?
SSL certificates ensure data transmitted between your website and visitors is private and secure, deterring hackers. An SSL certificate adds HTTPS to your URL.
What is SSL important?
- Website security is rewarded by Google
- SSL websites are prioritized in search results
Action Items
- Check your site's URL, it should start https://…
- Contact your hosting provider if it isn't
Contact your hosting provider if your site doesn't have a secure SSL certificate, or contact us for more info here: https://localseoservices.co.nz/contact/


text:
SAN FRANCISCO -- The first retail signals from holiday shoppers showed gains Saturday, though not as much as last year's rebound from the 2001 debacle.
Based on its network of retail outlets, ShopperTrak reported $7.2 billion of sales Friday, up 4.8 percent from the same day a year before.
"[The number] is strong, especially against a year ago, which rose at 6.8 percent," said Michael Niemira, lead consultant for ShopperTrak RCT's National Retail Sales Estimates. "I expected it to be somewhat weaker this year, given the year-over-over performance. The fact that consumers were out there and spending is certainly a good sign for the holiday season as a whole." Listen to Michael Niemira interview
Privately held ShopperTrak said it uses Commerce Department data combined with data from 30,000 store traffic monitors around the U.S.
Retreat from discounting
Not only were the numbers strong, but the breadth of the data was optimistic as well, with strong buying across the nation, said Niemira.
And consumers, in some cases, have started reaching beyond the sales items.
"One of the encouraging things we've see is full-price retailers have done well also," said ShopperTrak president Tad Shepperd. "That's clearly a function of a higher level of consumer confidence and bodes well."
"We think that this year you'll see retailers trying to break the string of massive discounting," said Shepperd. "When retailers ordered their holiday merchandise eight months ago, they had a couple of year of serious discounting at the end of the season to clear out inventories," said Shepperd. This year, he said, they ordered "inventory lite."
"Inventory levels are at their lowest in two years. The message is to get out and shop early because at the end of the season your favorite item may not be left," said Shepperd.
Wal-Mart's results
Wal-Mart unwrapped the first package for retail analysts earlier Saturday, reporting a record $1.52 billion in sales.
In 2002, the world's largest retailer booked sales of $1.43 billion at its Wal-Mart, Supercenter and Neighborhood Markets on the Friday after turkey day.
As sales rose, the top-selling items remained the same: home electronics, small appliances and toys, Wal-Mart
The discounter tossed an early challenge at its rivals recently by cutting toy prices. Toys "R" Us
The latest Wal-Mart numbers did not include Sam's Club discount centers or its international divisions in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Canada. November sales at Wal-Mart for the four-week period ending November 28, 2003, will be released on Thursday. The company said earlier this week that same-store sales are currently tracking in its 3 to 5 percent growth range.
Rosy predictions for holiday sales
This shopping season is expected to bring in sales about 4 to 6 percent higher than last year, with the average shopper spending a little more, according to projections. See full story. Holiday sales in 2002 rose just 2.2 percent, to $205.6 billion.
The numbers will be adjusted as results arrive. See full story.
Though the Friday after Thanksgiving is not the top sales day, it is one of the busiest and a little more than 8 percent of holiday sales are rung up in the first weekend. The Saturday before Christmas, Dec. 20 this year, has become the chart-topper for single-day sales.
Friday after Thanksgiving revenue usually ranks between the fifth and eighth busiest days, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers' numbers. It's been called "Black Friday" because retailers go from red ink to black ink as the sales glut boosts the year's results.
The year of the gift card
Many people will be getting their holiday gifts in smaller packages this year -- in envelopes rather than boxes, as 70 percent of consumers plan to buy gift cards this year, according to a survey conducted by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation. That translates into $17.24 billion, or almost 8 percent, of the projected holiday sales this season, according to the NRF.
"Most consumers have been avidly watching their wallets for over a year and haven't been spending much on themselves," said Phil Rist, BIGresearch's vice-president of strategy. "Receiving a gift card for the holidays and actually being able to go to the store and browse for yourself can be a liberating and much more rewarding experience than opening up another shirt and tie."
But for the stores themselves, it means sales will be booked a little differently. Many retailers don't count a gift card as a sale until it is redeemed for merchandise, so some "holiday" sales may not show up until January or February, or even later.
Nationwide so far
Some stores are giving cards away in the hopes of enticing consumers to walk in the door. The L.A. Times found Gabriella Ortiz, 32, lined up outside Robinsons-May in West Covina at 5:45 a.m. Friday in hopes of being one of 300 customers to get a $15 gift card when the doors opened at 6 a.m. The Baldwin Park resident said she has been out of a job since February when the plastics manufacturer she was working for closed down. "I'm spending less this year, by a lot," Ortiz told the Times. "That's the reason I'm standing here." But by 6:05 a.m. the gift cards were gone and Ortiz didn't have one. She went on to hunt for discount linens and other household items on sale.
Patience was a definite virtue. In Oregon, a state with one of highest unemployment rate in the nation, Andrew Babcock, Kim Larsen, Kobie Priester and Wendy Taylor told The Oregonian that they had already been in line at the Beaverton Best Buy just shy of three hours by 10:30 a.m. "But we'll do it again next year," Babcock predicted.
Shoppers around the country cast aside any turkey-induced sleep and rose early Friday morning. The JC Penney in Taunton, Mass., had more than 5,000 shoppers go through its doors within 40 minutes of its 6 a.m. opening, according to the Boston Globe, and more than 200 people stood outside KB Toys stores in Burlington and Braintree before they opened at 5 a.m.
The San Antonio Express News caught up with mother-and-daughter team Carolyn Cole and Tracy Cole Morones. The two set to kick off their shopping day at 5:30 a.m. at the Wal-Mart at Loop 1604 and Culebra Road, the paper reported, but the parking lot was already full.
Yet even bad weather failed to deter the determined. Despite seasonally cold temperatures, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that shoppers descended on the malls before sunrise. "The weather is bringing people indoors, and they are going to the mall," Dave Casper, a spokesman for the Kenwood Towne Center, told the paper.
But in at least one case, things got ugly. A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Orange City, Fla., trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious, according to the Associated Press. Patricia VanLester, 41, was flown to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where doctors told the family VanLester had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend, the AP reported.
"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," the AP quoted said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey, as saying.


text:
Heart patients who had drug-coated stents inserted to prop open blocked coronary arteries should stay on anti-clotting drugs for at least a year, several doctor groups said in an advisory issued yesterday.
The advisory recommends that doctors tell their patients to take an anti-clotting drug like Plavix and aspirin for a year to reduce the risk of clotting, which could lead to a heart attack or death. The long-term safety of Plavix in stent patients has not been established.
Drug-coated stents are often chosen over bare metal stents because they slowly release medication that reduces the chance of arteries reclogging, which can mean follow-up surgery. However, the newer stents mean a small but significant increased risk of clotting.
The new advisory cited research showing blood clots in up to 29 percent of patients who stopped anti-clotting drugs early after receiving a drug-coated stent. The doctors also cited a study of 500 patients who received the drug-coated stents after a heart attack in which the death rate over the next 11 months was 7.5 percent for those who stopped taking anti-clotting medication compared to 0.7 percent for those who continued the regimen.
The recent information on drug-coated stents and the recommended drug regimen of up to a year means more dialogue between patients and doctors, said Dr. Cindy Grines, chair of the advisory writing committee.
�I think what�s happened with the drug-eluting stents is the patients are scared too much,� said Grines of the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.
The recent publicity about drug-coated stents is on patients� minds, said Dr. John Warner, medical director of the heart, lung and vascular center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
�Patients are very informed about this and most are asking the question before we even begin the conversation with them, which is good,� he said.
The new information means that before stent surgery, doctors must discuss with the patient whether there�s any reason they might not be able to keep up the drug regimen for at least a year, said Warner. If the cost of the drug � Plavix is $4 a day � or an upcoming surgery would require stopping the drug, he said it might be best to use a bare metal stent.
The new advisory � issued by the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, American College of Surgeons and the American Dental Association � recommends patients postpone elective surgery for a year.
�Before, we would put a stent in and (then) talk about aspirin and Plavix. Now we talk about it before,� said Warner, who was not on the advisory committee.


text:
- Men
- Women
- Sheep to Shelf™
- About
Your Cart is Empty
A quick guide on the benefits and properties of Duckworth 100% source-verified made-in-USA Merino wool.
The characteristics of Merino wool that makes it so desirable by such a diverse group of end users are its natural properties as a breathable, natural, and functional fiber. Merino wool is softer than regular wool due to its finer micron fibers. Merino wool is also amazingly breathable, which means quickly moving any sweat, moisture or humidity off your skin (keeping you dry) and into the atmosphere.
Merino wool will not itch. High quality merino wool will have a fine micron diameter and long staple length. There is a limited quantity of fine Merino in the world and that is why the cost of wool is more than cotton or polyester. The benefits of high quality Merino wool are its softness, stretch, loft and breathability, all with no itch.
One of the major benefits of Merino wool is its uses in keeping you warm in winter. However often overlooked is the fact that wool actually keeps you cool in summer too.
Wool as a summer fabric is not new; desert nomads have worn wool for centuries. The lightweight and breathability make it far more comfortable in warm conditions than polyesters or synthetics. Wool's high breathability makes it perfect for summer activities where wicking and comfort are critical.
Duckworth pioneered the ultimate fast wicking / quick drying fabric – Vapor Wool.
An intimate blend of Montana Merino, polyester, and cellulose that move humidity quickly across the surface of the fabric, creating a blotting effect for fast evaporation.
Vapor wool is the fastest wicking and quickest drying wool fabric we have ever tried and is a breakthrough for wool and wool blends for activities such as running, hiking, skiing, hunting, and biking.
The crazy science behind wool is that wool is made up of cortical cells wrapped in a cuticle, wrapped in an epicuticle – a fibrous skin that helps repel moisture. This skin helps draw moisture vapor into the center of the fiber where its absorbed by a chemical process. In this process the hydrogen bond of water is actually broken, creating a chemical reaction with the wool fiber molecules to actually generate heat when taken on a lot of moisture. Combining this with pockets of air moving around is why wet wool will create heat, and hence, feel comfortable when wet (unlike any other fiber).
Since wool simply grows on a sheep's back, we consider it the world's most sustainable fiber. The wool fiber is shorn once a year by skilled shearers and, as if by magic, it grows back over the course of the year, producing fiber to create the environmentally friendly clothing material. Eco friendly fabric techniques are then integrated at every possible step of the process.Why is Wool Odor Resistant? – NO STINK
The natural profile of Merino wool denies the odor causing bacteria (ammonia) the moist environment to thrive and deprives them of the damp environments to multiply. Because wool is constantly drawing the moisture up and away from your body, it prevents the sweat molecule from forming and bonding to the surface of your clothing.
Wool's inherent fire resistance comes from its naturally high nitrogen and water content. Because of these, wool requires higher levels of oxygen in the surrounding environment in order to burn. Wool may be ignited if subjected to a significantly powerful heat source, but does not normally support flame, and will instead smolder – usually only for a short time. In addition, wool's cross-linked cell membrane structure will swell when heated to the point of combustion, forming an insulating layer that prevents the spread of flame. This also means that wool produces less smoke and toxic gas than synthetic fibers.
Wool fabrics are the first choice for military and anyone else exposed to fire or explosives. Wool's attribute of only smoldering and not melting or dripping into the skin can be a lifesaver.


text:
विश्व संगीत की खोज के लिए
कम्प्यूटेशनल मॉडल्स
मुख्य पृष्ठ
विषय संचयन
साईट में खोजें:
Latest news
Last two PhD thesis of CompMusic defended
14/12/2018 - 23:24
The last two PhD thesis carried out in the context of CompMusic have been...
European Research Music Conference in Barcelona
24/06/2018 - 09:29
The European Research Music Conference took place at the Universitat Pompeu...
MOOC on North Indian Classical Music by the MTG on the Kadenze platform
16/03/2018 - 15:36
The MTG, in collaboration with Ragasphere and on the Kadenze on-line...
ESSENTIA wins the Open-Source Competition of ACM-Multimedia-2013
शुक्र, 25/10/2013 - 11:03 पर admin द्वारा प्रस्तुत
, the audio analysis software library developed at the MTG and used in CompMusic, wins the Open-Source Software Competition of
ACM Multimedia 2013
, the worldwide premier multimedia conference that this year took place in Barcelona from October 21st to 25th 2013.
ACM Multimedia Open-Source Software Competition
celebrates the invaluable contribution of researchers and software developers who advance the field by providing the community with implementations of codecs, middleware, frameworks, toolkits, libraries, applications, and other multimedia software. The criteria for judging all submissions include broad applicability and potential impact, novelty, technical depth, demo suitability, and other miscellaneous factors (e.g., maturity, popularity, student-led, no dependence on closed source, etc.).
ESSENTIA is an open-source C++ library for audio analysis and audio-based music information retrieval released under the Affero GPLv3 license. It contains an extensive collection of reusable algorithms which implement audio input/output functionality, standard digital signal processing blocks, statistical characterization of data, and a large set of spectral, temporal, tonal and high-level music descriptors. ESSENTIA is behind a number of commercial applications and has been used by many academic research projects. It is responsible for the audio similarity search functionality of
and is the basis of all the audio analysis tools being developed in CompMusic.
For more information on ESSENTIA read the
that was presented at ACM Multimedia. For extensive documentation and for downloading the software go to its
Latest blogs
Interviews published in a Chinese Wechat Official Account
WeChat Official Accounts can be understood as the WeChat equivalent of a Facebook page. They are drawing a lot of interest these days, as WeChat has risen to dominate the Chinese social media space (Chinese users spend ⅓ of their smartphone time...
Final Report
CompMusic has finished, and our funding agency, ERC, asked us to write a brief report. Here is it. Achievements along the main objectives/activities The CompMusic project has been a big and long project with many achievements...
Technology and Multiculturality
[Article published in the daily newspaper La Vanguardia on Sunday 17th 2016. English translation of the original text written in catalan.] The violin, typewriter or mobile are examples of technological devices that were born in certain contexts...
Two evenings of Chinese traditional music
Last December (2015), Barcelona's Conservatori Municipal de Música hosted two sessions of Chinese traditional music, the first one devoted to the silk and bamboo music genre and the second one to jingju (Beijing opera). For this...
Nīla Saṅgīta - An evening of Indian Classical Music and Dance
Saṅgītarasikā, with the support of CompMusic organized a concert titled "Nīla Saṅgīta": An evening of Indian Classical Music and Dance, at Arts Santa Mònica, La Rambla 7, Barcelona on the 25th June, 2015. The ensemble included N...
All content is licensed under a
unless otherwise specified.
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
| Theme based on LiteJazz by
01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101101 01110101 01110011 01101001 01100011


text:
Jay7 wrote:
That makes sense,its about the only thing I've not tried. Never had much luck with ICS.
I don't think you're alone. I can tell you that their AK74M is god-awful and I've heard a fair bit about other ICS guns going wobbly. Though someone I know swears by their Galils.


text:
Graphical displays with Python and Pygame
Direct Execution
Once a script is finished, it is often ideal to call it directly by name without also having to call Python. To do this, I add the location of the file's interpreter to the top of my script. To illustrate, I'll work with a file called
viewer.py. (This process works for any text-based script, so I'm just using
viewer.py as an example file name, without providing a listing.)
Step 1. Find where Python lives. Enter
whereis python in a terminal.
whereis says to Linux, "show me where you go when I enter the command … ." In my case, it's
Step 2. Add the full path to the top of the script. Edit
viewer.py and add the path from step 1 as the first line, starting with
#! (pronounced "shebang," "hashbang," or "pound-bang"):
#! /usr/python
Usually, I add a blank line afterward, but it's not strictly required. Linux will find this line and call the interpreter automatically.
Step 3. Make the script executable. Text files are usually not marked executable when they are created, so I have to set the executable bit with
chmod +x viewer.py
for Linux to accept my script as executable.
Step 4. Remove the file extension. Now that my file is executable, I rename
viewer.py to
mv viewer.py viewer
so I don't have to type the full file name with extension every time.
Image Management Class
Listing 2 is an image management class that uses Pygame to provide some shortcuts when you need to show multiple images. It includes example usage of each method at the end of the listing as a working script.
Listing 2
01 import pygame 02 03 class imageHandler: 04 def __init__ ( self ): 05 self.pics = dict() 06 07 def loadFromFile ( self, filename, id=None ): 08 if id == None: id = filename 09 self.pics [ id ] = pygame.image.load ( filename ).convert() 10 11 def loadFromSurface ( self, surface, id ): 12 self.pics [ id ] = surface.convert() 13 14 def render ( self, surface, id, position = None, clear = False, size = None ): 15 if clear == True: 16 surface.fill ( ( 0, 0, 0 ) ) 17 18 if position == None: 19 picX = int ( surface.get_width() / 2 - self.pics [ id ].get_width() / 2 ) 20 picY = int ( surface.get_height() / 2 - self.pics [ id ].get_height() / 2 ) 21 else: 22 picX = position [ 0 ] 23 picY = position [ 1 ] 24 25 if size == None: 26 surface.blit ( self.pics [ id ], ( picX, picY ) ) 27 else: 28 surface.blit ( pygame.transform.smoothscale ( self.pics [ id ], size ), ( picX, picY ) ) 29 30 pygame.display.init() 31 screen = pygame.display.set_mode ( ( 640, 480 ) ) 32 33 handler = imageHandler() 34 handler.loadFromFile ( "images/network.png", "net" ) 35 handler.loadFromFile ( "images/laptop.png", "laptop" ) 36 handler.loadFromFile ( "images/presentation.png", "ppt" ) 37 38 handler.render ( screen, "net", ( 0, 0 ), True, ( 100, 100 ) ) 39 handler.render ( screen, "laptop", None, False ) 40 handler.render ( screen, "ppt", ( 200, 200 ), None ) 41 42 handler.loadFromSurface ( screen, "screenshot" ) 43 44 pygame.display.flip() 45 46 raw_input() 47 pygame.quit()
This class is written to handle the loading of multiple image files and reference them by a unique ID. The
render function draws an image onto the provided surface. The
imageHandler class uses three functions:
loadFromFileneeds a file name and an optional ID as arguments. If an ID is not provided, it defaults to the full file name, including extension. This method is called once for each image to be loaded.
loadFromSurfaceaccepts an existing Pygame surface as the first argument. The second argument, the ID to be assigned, is required because it has no file name to act as a default.
renderis where the majority of the work takes place. The two required arguments are a Pygame surface and an ID. The surface is what to draw on, and the ID identifies the image you want to draw. In the absence of any other arguments, the class draws the picture specified by
idin the center of the provided surface. Optionally, I can specify
clear, and
size. The
positionargument accepts a tuple and places the image origin (upper left corner) at the provided coordinates. The
clearargument accepts
False: If
True, the destination surface is filled with black before the image is rendered. A
sizeprovided as a (width, height) tuple defines the image size.
Usage examples start on line 30, where I initialize the display and create a 640x480-pixel window. Line 33 creates an instance of the class, then I call
loadFromFile as many times as I need to get the image files I want. Figure 2 shows the results of the provided example code.
Starting at line 38, I call
render to retrieve my stored images. In this example, I'm providing the screen surface directly so I can display images in my window. I could just as easily create a new surface and render images to it, perhaps for a grid of pictures or a photo collage.
Line 42 provides a glimpse of the flexibility of Pygame. Because
screen is a surface, I can provide it to my handler class to load a new image and essentially capture a screenshot of what I've created. The remainder of the program is identical to the simple image viewer, flipping the display, waiting for user input, and exiting.
Lines 9 and 12 add one new function call,
convert(). When
pygame.image.load completes, it returns a Pygame surface – the image I just asked for. The
convert() function changes the surface to match the format of the display window at a pixel level. Without this call, the surface would be converted "on the fly" during the blitting process. This slows down blitting (and thus your frame rate) significantly.
If you're just showing a few images, then this slowdown likely won't be noticed. For animation or when presenting a sequence of images, though,
convert() is essential.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)


text:
Musk: SpaceX Making 'Progress' Toward Mars Colony
Billionaire Elon Musk said his private spaceflight company SpaceX has made some progress toward establishing a permanent colony on Mars — a longtime goal in the entrepreneur's push to help make humanity a multiplanet species.
Billionaire Elon Musk said his private spaceflight company SpaceX has made some progress toward establishing a permanent colony on Mars - a longtime goal in the entrepreneur's push to help make humanity a multiplanet species.
"The reason SpaceX was created was to accelerate development of rocket technology, all for the goal of establishing a self-sustaining, permanent base on Mars," Musk told an audience here after receiving the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award during the 33rd annual International Space Development Conference on Friday (May 16). "And I think we're making some progress in that direction - not as fast as I'd like."
PHOTOS: Dragon's Bounty: SpaceX Mission Complete
Musk cited the success of SpaceX's recent reusable rocket test on April 18 as a critical achievement on the road to Mars. During that test flight, SpaceX launched a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket from its Florida pad and then returned the rocket's first stage back to Earth to make a vertical "soft landing" at a target in the Atlantic Ocean, before splashing down. The mission also delivered supplies to the International Space Station using a SpaceX Dragon capsule. [Mars Sample-Return Idea with SpaceX Dragon (Images)]
While the returned Falcon 9 rocket stage ultimately broke apart in the water due to rough seas, Musk has said SpaceX aims to recover a returned Falcon 9 booster from the ocean later this year, attempt a landing on land by the end of 2014 and potentially reuse a Falcon 9 first stage in 2015.
"We're close to at least recovering and reusing the first stage," Musk said. "I think that if we can demonstrate recovery and reuse of the first stage, that will be really something."
BIG PIC: SpaceX Dragon Capsule Returns to Earth With a Splash
Meanwhile, SpaceX is also developing the Falcon Heavy rocket, a heavy-lift variant that aims to be the world's most powerful rocket since NASA's Saturn V moon rocket. That mega-rocket could make its first launch by the end of this year.
The Hawthorne, California-based company has also set its sights on a manned Mars mission concept that would send human explorers to the Red Planet. Musk said SpaceX's vision for a Mars explorationcalls for a next-generation rocket "much bigger than Falcon Heavy" that would use a methane-based propulsion system.
"I think that's the system that, at least according to my calculations, will enable someone to move to Mars for about half a million dollars," Musk said.
Musk admitted that not everyone would jump at the chance to pay $500,000 for a trip to Mars. But some adventurous people might.
ANALYSIS: Mining Asteroids: Not Mankind's Silver Bullet
"There will be those who can afford to go, and those who want to go," Musk said. "I think if we can achieve that intersection, then it will happen ... and, hopefully, it will happen before I'm dead."
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of advancing manned spaceflight and lowering the cost of rocket launches. The company has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to provide 12 cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station using its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft.
The April 18 Falcon 9 rocket launch marked SpaceX's third Dragon delivery flight for NASA. The Dragon spacecraft returned to Earth on Sunday (May 18) in order to return science experiments and other gear to Earth.
SpaceX has launchpads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and recently leased the history Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for future flights.
More from SPACE.com:
SpaceX's Reusable 1st Stage Test – Video Footage Badly Damaged Wildest Private Deep-Space Mission Ideas: A Countdown 6 Fun Facts About Private Rocket Company SpaceX Article originally published on SPACE.com. Copyright 2014 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Artist's concept of a SpaceX Dragon space capsule landing on the surface of Mars. The Dragon is a privately built space capsule to carry unmanned payloads, and eventually astronauts, into space.
On April 19, 2013, the Grasshopper rocket, designed and built by SpaceX, took to the skies over the company's rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. The rocket climbed to 250 meters (820 feet) where it hovered for a short time and then returned to Earth in a controlled descent.
The prototype rocket, that is being developed to launch payloads into orbit and then return to Earth in a controlled manner, tripled its previous altitude record (80 meters) during the April 19 one-minute test.
During the test, the private spaceflight company used a six-bladed "hexacopter" to fly around the rocket, capturing breathtaking video for further analysis by the team.
The rocket is around 10 stories tall and uses the company's Falcon 9 rocket first stage to accomplish its controlled flight.
Seen standing at the base of the rocket, "Johnny" (a cowboy mannequin) is "keeping things under control" according to the company's Twitter account.
The Grasshopper takes to the blue Texan skies on April 19.
The Grasshopper's single Merlin engine provides the thrust, while the four metallic legs support the rocket during launch and landing.
The Grasshopper hovers at 250 meters altitude. By developing a reusable rocket that can return to Earth under its own power has the potential to transform commercial spaceflight, slashing launch costs.


text:
Amazon Price: $13.99 (as of May 28, 2018 11:35 am -
Size Chart(approx) :
S: Bust: 38.6inch/98cm Waist(Up to): 28.3inch/72cm Length: 32.7inch/83cm
M: Bust: 39.0inch/99cm Waist(Up to): 29.99inch/76cm Length: 33.1inch/84cm
L: Bust: 39.4inch/100cm Waist(Up to): 31.5inch/80cm Length: 33.5inch/85cm
XL:Bust: 39.8inch/101cm Waist(Up to): 33.1inch/84cm Length: 33.9inch/86cm
Please allow 0.5inch differ due to manual measurement.As different computers display colors differently, the color of the actual item may vary slightly from the above images. We strive to make our colors as accurate as possible. However, colors are approximations of actual colors.
Package include:
1 x Cover Up Cardigan


text:
Look girl
Collection by Bapti
A great Army green Midlands, appears to be a trench coat. With a black sleeveless dress and belted at the waist. With great black booties.
Sara Snap Front Corduroy Skirt - Olive
Free Website Builder | Create a Free Website | Wix.com
Create a free website with Wix.com. Choose a stunning template and customize anything with the Wix website builder—no coding skills needed. Create yours today!
Korean Fashion – How to Dress up Korean Style – Designer Fashion Tips
"Untitled #323" by lindsjayne ❤ liked on Polyvore featuring Yves Saint Laurent, Topshop, Le Specs and Armani Beauty
Makeup, Style & Beauty
| #makeup
Where stories live
Read Juicy🍆 Charles Melton from the story Imagines 📕 by chocolatenurples with 4,773 reads. imagines, wattys2017, fanf...


text:
Educated donors who are financially literate understand why they are giving. Education leads to empowerment. Empowerment leads to action. Integrating an effective financial literacy and donor education program into your institution's goals and objectives is a mandatory component of an overall philanthropic plan.
Why Financial Literacy Is Important
Financial literacy adds significant value to donor education because it helps donors make the most of their wealth through giving. Financial literacy has been defined by The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as "the process by which financial consumers/investors improve their understanding of financial products, concepts and risks; and, through information, instruction and/or objective advice, develop the skills and confidence to become more aware of financial risks and opportunities, to make informed choices, to know where to go for help, and to take other effective actions to improve their financial well-being" (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/0/41/42271820.pdf).
Research suggests, however, that most Americans have extremely low levels of financial literacy, and that their lack of financial literacy has an impact on philanthropic giving.
Analyses show that, regardless of the actual financial resources held by donors, the size of their donations is negatively affected by feelings of retention (a careful approach to money) and inadequacy (worry about their financial situation).
It can be concluded that an understanding of money perceptions is an additional important factor in the understanding of charitable behavior. Since most people do not know how much they can afford to give based on their income, financial literacy can result in higher giving—once donors know the amount that they can afford to give based on their income, they can increase their giving. Given these findings, fundraising professionals should not only select potential donors based on their absolute financial capacities, but also take the potential donor's own financial perceptions into account when asking for donations. (Wieping and Breeze, 2011, 1)
Next week: Why Effective Donor Education Programs Are Important!
Patricia Annino is a sought after speaker and nationally recognized authority on women and estate planning. She educates and empowers women to value themselves and their contributions in order to ACCOMPLISH GREAT THINGS in the world – and in so doing PROTECT THEMSELVES, those they love, and the organizations they care about. Annino recently released an updated version of her successful book, Women and Money: A Practical Guide to Estate Planning to include recent changes in the laws that govern how we protect our assets during and beyond our lifetime. To download Annino's FREE eBook, Estate Planning 101 visit, http://www.patriciaannino.com.


text:
The Minnesota congresswoman has surged to the forefront of the Republican primary race in recent weeks, attracting criticism for her strident anti-gay views and former membership of a controversial evangelical church.
But her new prominence has now prompted former advisers to express doubt that her migraines would allow her to sit in the Oval Office, or even last a full campaign.
"As president, when she's in crisis management mode, is she going to have the physical ability to withstand the most difficult challenges facing America?" a former employee told the Daily Caller website. "It's a careful choice of words I used: 'incapacitated'."
Mrs Bachmann, 55, suffers attacks on average once a week and can be put out of action for days at time, the advisers said. Migraines are said to have landed the candidate in hospital on at least three occasions and require routine heavy medication and regular contact with her doctors.
"When she gets them, frankly, she can't function at all. It's not like a little thing with a couple Advils. It's bad," said one adviser.
"The migraines are so bad and so intense, she carries and takes all sorts of pills – prevention pills, pills during the migraine, pills after the migraine, to keep them under control. She has to take these pills wherever she goes."
In response, Mrs Bachmann said: "Like nearly 30 million other Americans, I experience migraines that are easily controlled with medication. My ability to function effectively has never been impeded by migraines and will not affect my ability to serve as Commander in Chief."
Alice Stewart, spokesman for the campaign, told the website that Mrs Bachmann "suffers from migraines and they're under control with medicine", but said she would not go into her "medical history".
An emergency visit to a Washington hospital in July 2010 was reported at the time but no cause was given by her then communications director, Dave Dziok, who has since left to work for a public relations firm.
Mrs Bachmann reportedly blamed the headaches on uncomfortable high-heel shoes, but those who have worked alongside her cited stress, a busy schedule and any sort of setback as possible triggers.
The report on her illness came as further ammunition emerged to arm Mrs Bachmann's critics both inside and outside the Republican Party, who see her as too extreme to be a mainstream candidate and as someone guaranteed to lose to President Barack Obama in 2012.
A recording is widely circulating on the internet of a prayer she is said to have delivered in 2006 at a ministry run by Bradlee Dean, a controversial preacher who has called for gay people to be locked up.
She predicted "we are in the last days" and declared "the harvest is at hand", an apparent allusion to the belief that God will take saved Christians from the Earth and leave non-believers behind to face never-ending torment.
"The day is at hand, Lord, when your return will come nigh. Nothing is more important than bringing sheep into the fold, than bringing life into the new kingdom," she prayed.
Such views are not unusual in the elements of the evangelical Christian community, said Marie Diamond of Think Progress, a liberal website. "But it's still disconcerting that someone campaigning to lead America into the future believes that its days are numbered and millions of its citizens are doomed," she said.
Mrs Bachmann has toned down her religious rhetoric since running for president, and is focusing her campaign on opposing the president on health care and government spending.
She has left her long time church, the Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Stillwater, which belongs to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, an arch conservative denomination that maintains that the Pope is the anti-Christ.
But her religious views were a fundamental part of her attraction to conservative voters in Minnesota when she was first elected, along with her vehement opposition to gay marriage and homosexuality generally.
The mother-of-five once lamented that involvement in "the gay and lesbian lifestyle" was a life of "personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement", while her husband Marcus has likened youth tempted by homosexual experimentation to "barbarians" who must be "educated" and "disciplined".
A Christian counselling clinic run by Mr Bachmann has provided an unwelcome distraction for his wife's campaign, after claims that it deployed controversial "reparative therapy" that tries to "cure" homosexuality. The therapy has been denounced by the American Psychological Association and others.
"Getting her elected depends on portraying her as mainstream when we have revealed she is extreme," said Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out, a gay activist group who sent an undercover researcher into therapy Bachmann & Associates.
A series of polls have shown that a majority of Americans now tolerate homosexuality and growing numbers approve of gay marriage.
"The world is changing and the idea that there is something wrong with being homosexual or that you can pray away the gay is seen as something radical," he said.


text:
"All Saints" is inspired by the true story of salesman-turned-pastor Michael Spurlock (Corbett), the tiny church he was ordered to shut down, and a group of refugees from Southeast Asia. Together, they risked everything to plant seeds for a future that might just save them all. Michael's first assignment as their new pastor is to actually close down All Saints, a dilapidated country church with a dozen devoted members ... and a mortgage well beyond its means. But when the church hesitantly begins welcoming Karen refugees from Burma-former farmers scrabbling for a fresh start in America-Michael feels called to an improbable new mission. Toiling alongside the Karen people, the congregation attempts to turn their fertile land into a working farm to pay the church's bills and feed its people. Jeopardizing his family's future by ignoring his superiors, Michael must choose between completing what he was assigned to do-close the church and sell the property-or listening to a still, small voice challenging the people of All Saints to risk it all and provide much-needed hope to their new community.
Notify me when All Saints is available.Already a member ? Login Here
16 users are already tracking


text:
Jonathan Romm
- firstname.lastname@example.com
- Website
- www.halogen.no
Jonathan Romm is currently employed as an associate professor at The Oslo School of Architecture & Design (AHO). He is also head of Application and Service Design dept. at Halogen, a Norwegian communications and design agency.
Until 2011 Romm was employed as the Institute Leader of The institute of design and vice Rector at AHO, in Norway. He has also been responsible for organising and teaching at the master course of service design at AHO.
Jonathan has been working in various international and local design projects with companies like Samsung, Telenor, Oslo Sporveier and The Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
He is an experienced project-manager and an enthusiastic coach and process facilitator. He has headed several innovative and inter-disciplinary collaborations and research projects with academic institutions, public organisations and commercial companies.
Innovation Management/Design management/Design Thinking
Service Design/Systems Oriented Design/User Expirience Design
Interaction Design/Industrial Design
Centre for Connected Care (C3)|delTA|Developing a service design lab for future healthcare|RECORD


text:
Scrap Car Margrove Park, TS14, Scrap your car for free
Scrap Car Margrove Park are your Margrove Park (TS14), West Yorkshire based free scrap car collection service. Scrap cars become a problem if you keep them for too long as you need to keep them taxed if they are on the road meaning you will be spending money on your scrap car. Don't pay to have your car towed away. We can collect your vehicle free of charge in Margrove Park!
Margrove Park (TS14), West Yorkshire - Breaking News
As well as offering a completely free collection, we are also currently able to offer cash for scrap cars in Margrove Park depending upon the weight of the vehicle!
If you'd like us to make you an offer just ask when calling or add 'CASH QUOTE PLEASE' in the 'Additional Info' box when submitting our online form.
- Convenient collection times
- Nationwide coverage
- Completely free collection!
- DVLA notification
- Environment agency approved recycling facilities
Why not simply fill out the form to the right or ring a member of the team 0800 043 5100!
Choose Scrap Car Margrove Park
We have built a reputation to be proud of after trading in the West Yorkshire area for over a decade. We can be with you in 30 minutes if needed, maybe quicker just call to find out. We set a time slot and we will not be late we have a reputation that is great for service and customer satisfaction. Our collection service is available at a time to suit your needs, we are open for business every single day of the year 24/7.
We ensure that your car is properly disposed of. Some scrap car companies might sell your car and not scrap it, sometimes not even informing the DVLA that your vehicle has changed ownership. This leaves you open to fines and tickets, sometimes resulting to points on your licence. When we tow away any old scrap car we always ensure that the DVLA are notified, giving you complete of peace of mind. Whenever we scrap a car we always recycle or reuse whatever we can, meaning we are doing our bit for the environment.
Please try to ensure that your vehicle is disposed of correctly as we want to keep West Yorkshire clean and tidy. If your area looks unsightly due to abandoned cars, we can help, call Scrap Car Margrove Park, we will help keep our streets clean and tidy. The free and easy scrap car collection company, call us today!
Reasons to scrap your car
There are a lot of reasons you may want to scrap your car. Experience shows that most of the time a car is scrapped as it is no longer road worthy, usually failing it MOT. If you have a scrap car that is unusable you need to either declare it off the road or scrap it, otherwise your will continue to need to pay road tax on the car.
The car scrappage scheme
The car scrappage scheme in Margrove Park might seem like a great idea at first. However, you are limited in what type of new car you can buy. You cannot simply go out and purchase any car you wish. This is a very frustrating issue as you have got to buy a car that is in the current scheme.
How to scrap your car
Its so easy to scrap your old car in Margrove Park. We have many lines into our offices and always answer the phone so call today. If you would rather not call you can find out the process on our how to scrap your car guide.
Just call us on 0800 043 5100 or fill out the following form:


text:
Is Zurich Europe's Next Great FinTech Hub?
Zurich may not be at the top of the tech hub list in Europe just yet, but it surely aspires to be. Banking and finance are key industries within Switzerland, and the country's reputation for a competitive economy may make it the perfect breeding ground for FinTech greatness.
In this week's edition of PYMNTS' Weekly Tech Center Roundup, we take our first trip to Switzerland to see how the country's largest city is looking to make a huge impact in the global FinTech scene.
Before we jump into the post, here are a few quick facts about Switzerland and its tech scene:
- Switzerland's population is estimated to be approximately 9 million.
- Zurich is the country's largest city and has landed in the top three of Mercer's ranking of most livable cities.
- Switzerland has a GDP of roughly $665 billion.
- The nation has been recognized as one of the most innovative and competitive economies in the world.
- With its well-known reputation for valuing data privacy and strict privacy laws, Switzerland has become an attractive hub for companies to house their servers and customer data.
- The country is home to 15 Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of European and EMEA headquarter offices.
- In 2014, Swiss startups attracted 450 million francs (approximately $466 million) of venture capital.
- There are approximately 190 startups in Switzerland.
Zurich's Recipe For Success
For the eighth year in a row, Switzerland has topped the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report for having the most competitive economy in the world. The country received high marks across 11 categories, including innovation, technological readiness, business sophistication and labor market efficiency.
"Switzerland arguably possesses one of the world's most fertile innovation ecosystems," the report states, adding that companies within the nation have "an unmatched capacity to attract the best talent and large multinationals."
As the largest city in Switzerland, Zurich is an innovation hotspot that many believe is on the fast track to become a standout European tech hub.
According to StartUs Magazine, Zurich has a unique blend of livability, finance and innovation that not only make it ripe for entrepreneurial success but also provides it with the potential to reshape the finance industry altogether.
Among its attributes, the city boasts a high-tech ecosystem, availability to capital, a high quality of life, bureaucratic efficiency and a top location in the heart of Europe.
A recent report from Ernst & Young recognized Switzerland for having a sound approach to digitization, stating the country is well ahead of the pack when it comes to investment and having a positive outlook in the digital technology space.
Sparking Innovation Through Collaboration
Two of the largest Swiss companies — Credit Suisse and UBS — are teaming up to support a new startup hub in Zurich that will continue to promote the city as a top destination for FinTech innovation.
The two financial institutions are working with telecoms group Swisscom and retailer Migros, as well as other local firms, to invest in and launch the Kickstart accelerator, Financial Times reported. The goal of the accelerator is to help an initial 30 startups across 19 countries pursue work in areas such as FinTech, robotics and drones.
"We want Switzerland to be ready for the future," Salvatore Iacangelo, head of digital transformation at Credit Suisse, told FT.
"It's not about trying to ringfence and keep competitors out. The goal is to establish the world's financial center also as a FinTech center, and as a consequence, everybody wants to join forces."
"This is a mentality we need to import, making Zurich attractive for entrepreneurs," Iacangelo added.
The selected startups will spend 11 weeks in Zurich to focus on digital technologies and work with larger companies.
"This could well serve as a new model of promoting startups and proving the viability of their business," Andreas Kubli, group managing director at UBS Switzerland, explained.
The concept of working together to establish greater FinTech innovation is also taking place on a global level in Switzerland.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) announced that they are partnering to foster more FinTech cooperation between the countries.
The agreement will support the sharing of information, the support of financial innovators, more dialogue between the nations and addressing any regulatory hurdles, Banking Technology reported.
Both nations are already known for maintaining strong global finance industries and being very active in FinTech, which makes the collaboration a natural move.
FINMA said its "FinTech Desk" will serve as a single point of contact for both countries and that a dedicated contact person will be available during any pre-authorization and/or authorization processes. The organization also stated it will support any FinTech innovator, regardless of whether they reside in Switzerland or not.
The initiative began during the second annual meeting of MAS and the State Secretariat for International Finance, where both sides conducted a financial dialogue that aimed to "deepen bilateral cooperation and exchange views on domestic and international financial market developments and policies."
New forms of alternative credit and point-of-sale (POS) lending options like 'buy now, pay later' (BNPL) leverage the growing influence of payments choice on customer loyalty. Nearly 60 percent of consumers say such digital options now influence where and how they shop—especially touchless payments and robust, well-crafted ecommerce checkouts—so, merchants have a clear mandate: understand what has changed and adjust accordingly. Join PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster together with PayPal's Greg Lisiewski, BigCommerce's Mark Rosales, and Adore Me's Camille Kress as they spotlight key findings from the new PYMNTS-PayPal study, "How We Shop" and map out faster, better pathways to a stronger recovery.