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Palace coup at Shambhala
Morning File, Thursday, February 21, 2019
by Tim Bousquet February 21, 2019 October 20, 2022
1. John Risley's South African adventure
Sometimes I get whiff of a story and just have to dive into it. This was one of those times:
On December 26, Boxing Day, I received an email with the subject line "JOHN CARTER RISLEY given his outrageous behaviour and bringing others to book in a huge scandal." I quickly scanned the text of the email, and saw that, like the subject line, it contained lots of all caps, run-on sentences, and nonlinear thoughts.
I get a lot of such emails and assumed this was from just another crank or attention-seeker. Besides, I had family visiting for the holidays and was taking a bit of time off work, so I set the email aside.
My family left later that week. Then, on New Years Day, it snowed. I shovelled the walk, made a fire, and settled in, catching up on old email, including that odd email I'd set aside.
I read it over three or four times, parsed the sentences, and tried to work through to understanding. It was from someone named William Humphreys, who claimed to have been a lawyer and a personal friend and advisor to John Risley, the Nova Scotia billionaire.
With a distinctive style I've since come to recognize — heavy on all caps and winding asides — Humphreys told me about a complex arrangement involving an apartheid-era arms sales, and the subsequent involvement by Risley and others respecting an outstanding debt an arms dealer named Jorge Pinhol says is owed him.
Frankly, I didn't believe it. But there was something about the tale that tweaked my interest and kept me wondering: could this story actually be true?
So I spent the next few weeks investigating Humphreys' claims.
The result was a seven-week investigation; a trip to London, England; the expenditure of many thousands of dollars; multiple hours-long confabs with my lawyer; and, finally, the longest news article I've ever written, a 10,000-word story. It's very long-form journalism.
You, subscribers, made this possible, and I very much appreciate it.
Click here to read "John Risley's South African adventure."
The subheadline:
How did a Nova Scotia billionaire end up as the cash and clout behind an international court battle claiming a South African government-owned arms company owes hundreds of millions of dollars to an international arms dealer who claims he lost money after Nelson Mandela's new democratically elected government refused to honour the arms dealer's deal with the apartheid regime? How indeed?
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I started the Halifax Examiner for a lot of reasons, but top of the list was my desire to dive into reporting in a way that almost all news outlets don't make possible for their reporters. I think I did that with the "Dead Wrong" series, and I hope I did so with this Risley story.
But I don't know. Maybe this story is too long, too complex, too abstract for most readers. I know that the story went directions I didn't expect it to go, and while I think that actually makes it a better story, I'll leave it up to readers to decide whether it was worth the effort.
One thing I need from this enterprise called the Halifax Examiner — which is to say, one thing I'm expecting from you subscribers — is the freedom to follow my instincts, to chase down a story, to see where it goes and, hopefully, to translate my research into a readable and interesting article for you.
Hopefully.
We hope you're enjoying our work. If you'd like to support us with a recurring subscription, please click this button. We really appreciate it.
The Examiner could produce more of this kind of work if more people subscribed. More subscriptions both allows me to hire more writers for investigations and frees up my time so I can work on more in-depth stories. One story comes to mind right now — I've been sitting on it for about two months simply because I haven't had the time to get to it or the money to pay someone else to do it. There are lots of these.
Anyway, as I say, I do very much appreciate those who have already subscribed.
2. Barho fire
The Barho family. Photo: Ummah Masjid And Community Center/ Facebook
"The mother of seven children killed in a house fire in Halifax told two people the blaze started when a baseboard heater caught on fire," reports Zane Woodford for StarMetro Halifax:
The Syrian refugee family had complained twice in the last month about the heating system in the seven-year-old house, and twice someone had come to fix it, according to a family friend.
Natalie Horne, vice president of HEART [the citizen group that sponsored the Barhos' refugee move to Canada], has been at the hospital with the Barhos. On Wednesday, she said no one will be sure what caused the fire until the investigation is finished, but Kawthar told her through a translator that a baseboard heater in the living room caught fire.
"The baseboard heater was behind the couch," Horne said. "The couch or sofa soon caught fire as well and it spread quickly toward (upstairs), where the children were sleeping at that point."
Ibrahim Al-Shanti, an imam at Al-Barakah mosque in Fairview, said Wednesday that Kawthar also told him the fire started next to a heater.
Woodford does important work here. Read the whole article and subscribe to StarMetro to support his work.
3. Dartmouth High
Police responded to a weapons complaint at Dartmouth High School yesterday. The school was under lockdown from about 3pm to 5:30pm, and streets around the school were closed as a great number of police officers responded to the scene.
A 15-year-old boy was arrested, and an "imitation handgun" was seized. It was a bit of a scare for everyone (including me; I had family members in the school), but thankfully no one was injured and all are safe, although of course the arrested boy faces challenges.
The school issued the following statement later in the evening:
Dear Parents/Guardians,
We have many people to thank for assisting us during the lockdown today.
First and foremost, we thank our students and staff who displayed amazing poise throughout the entire event.
We thank the police who responded quickly and took all steps to ensure everyone remained safe while they conducted their investigation.
In the course of their investigation, police did take a young person into custody and an imitation weapon was found. Police do expect charges to be laid.
We thank the Halifax Regional Centre for Education for sending communication to parents/guardians on our behalf during the lockdown. The HRCE will be providing additional supports in the school tomorrow.
We thank Stock Transportation and their drivers for rerouting their buses to take our bused students home after the "all clear" was given.
And last, but definitely not least, we want to thank our parents/guardians for your patience and cooperation during a very stressful period of time.
We expect classes to resume as regularly scheduled tomorrow [that is, today] but if you feel your child may require additional support, please don't hesitate to reach out to the school.
Eartha Monard
Police appear to have responded promptly and worked their way professionally through the scene. I imagine (I don't know) they train for exactly this kind of situation.
The public, however, oh boy.
I understand that everyone was stressed out and scared, but there was no need to post downright false information on Twitter. Posting "I'm worried about Dartmouth High" or "Pray for the students" is perfectly OK. Posting "Active Shooter at Dartmouth High!" or "Multiple gunmen!" when that information is not coming from police or other reliable sources is dangerously irresponsible.
4. Palace coup
Mipham Mukpo
The Shambhala Acharyas are "individuals that Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has empowered to represent him and the Kagyu, Nyingma, and Shambhala lineages he holds. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche chose these individuals because of their knowledge, wisdom, and commitment to the confluence of teachings found in Shambhala."
The Acharyas have revolted.
The Acharyas have sent a letter to the Shambhala "sangha," or community. The letter calls on Mipham Mukpo — the "Sakyong," in effect, the Shambhala king — "to step back from his teaching for the foreseeable future. We are shifting our emphasis from our role as representatives of the Sakyong to fully supporting the journey of the sangha. We will continue to teach and offer vows and transmissions for the benefit of the sangha and to help preserve the lineage."
I don't know… couldn't the Shambhalians form an autonomous collective or an anarcho-syndicalist commune? Seems to me the whole preserving the royal "lineage" thing necessarily preserves the violence inherent in the system.
How'd Mukpo get to be king, anyway? By exploiting the workers! By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society!
Sooner or later, usually sooner, pretty much everything can be reduced to a Monty Python scene.
5. Liberal cowards hide again
The five Liberal cowards on the Public Accounts Committee.
"Nova Scotia taxpayers are on the hook for renovations and border security at the ferry terminal in Bar Harbor, Maine, but the government doesn't want to talk about it," reports Bruce Frisko for CTV:
The Yarmouth ferry will use the terminal this season and on Wednesday, opposition parties tried to get the transportation minister to appear before the legislature's public accounts committee — but politics prevented that from happening.
Opposition members introduced a motion to summon the transportation minister to the meeting to talk about the ferry, but after a quick huddle, the government side amended the idea, referring it instead to another committee: resources and economic development.
"We meet soon, and I will ask the clerk to put it on the agenda for a future meeting," said Suzanne Lohnes-Croft, the Liberal MLA for Lunenburg.
But Halifax Needham NDP MLA Lisa Roberts said that's not good enough.
"Having that topic come to that committee is not a substitute for it being at the public accounts committee," Roberts said.
6. Weather
Weather today, they say.
Community Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee (Thursday, 10am, City Hall) — the Bus Stop Theatre is looking for government assistance:
[T]he Bus Stop Theatre Cooperative proposes a five year project that will entail the purchase of the properties in question, as well as the expansion of its facilities to include a new second performance space, two new rehearsal/gathering halls and new office space for arts organizations and non-profits. This project will require funding support from all levels of government and the private sector. The first and critical phase of this project is the purchase of the properties before the end of this year.
Also, Lake Banook will host the 2022 World Sprint Canoe Championships, and so a group called Canoe '22 is looking to upgrade the various racing facilities on and near the park. The unsigned letter to the committee reads:
To improve the already highly regarded but dated Lake Banook competition course (Field of Play) and Back of House Facilities (surrounding shoreline areas of Lake Banook). To rival and exceed the best water sport facilities in the World.
We are thinking of this planning project the way we would think if we were building a stadium. The project will include infrastructure scope that covers the entire area around the lake:
Race course: buoy system, start lines, start towers, return lane
Parks: Grahams Grove Park, Birch Cove Park, Oakwood Park
Buildings: judges tower, annex
Power and Information Technology – wifi, fibre network, media network, power, video distribution and presentation
Spectator area on Prince Albert Road
Medal presentation area
Public Information Meeting – Case 21880 (Thursday, 7pm, South End Baptist Church, 60 Hastings Drive, Dartmouth) — application by T.A. Scott Architecture and Design Limited requesting to enter into a development agreement for two six-storey mixed-use buildings at 358-364 Portland Street, Dartmouth, and to rezone lands and enter into a development agreement for one four-storey residential building at 36A Rodney Road, Dartmouth. Case website.
No public meetings.
No public meetings today or Friday.
The Memorialist: Keynote Address (Thursday, 7pm, Room 406, Dalhousie Arts Centre) — from the listing:
…a performance that accompanies the exhibition The Memorialist by D'Arcy Wilson. Departing from the lecture hall as a traditional site of knowledge exchange and academic research, Wilson employs the podium to deliver a lecture about the first public zoo in North America: Andrew Downs' Zoological Gardens. Yet, facts break down into storytelling, oscillating between truth and whimsy, while addressing Andrew Downs' early ideals of wildlife conservation. The hour-long PowerPoint is comprised of imagery and new media created and collected by Wilson, that laments the colonial mistreatment of nature, presenting narratives of conflicting care and harm that fueled the artist's research.
Free admission, limited seating. Reception with cash bar to follow in the Gallery, with a community welcome to Laura Ritchie, Director/Curator of MSVU Art Gallery. Facebook event here.
Molecules Under Torture: Lasers, Forces, Voltages, and Beyond (Friday, 1:30pm, Room 226, Chemistry Building) — Ignacio Franco from the University of Rochester will speak.
David Comissiong. Screenshot from Youtube.
Towards an understanding of Reparations as a creative, holistic and powerful tool of Black Liberation (Friday, 7pm, Room 265 in the building named after a grocery store) — David Comissiong will speak.
In the harbour
06:00: Jennifer Schepers, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from New York
07:00: Nolhanava, ro-ro cargo, arrives at Pier 41 from Saint-Pierre
16:00: Drive Green Highway, car carrier, sails from Autoport for sea
16:45: Acadian, oil tanker, arrives at Irving Oil from Boston
21:30: Jennifer Schepers sails for Kingston, Jamaica
We'll be publishing an article written by Joan Baxter later today.
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Tagged: Bar Harbor, Barho fire, Bruce Frisko, Dartmouth High lockdown, John Risley, Shambhala community, subscriber supported journalism, Zane Woodford
Tim Bousquet
Tim Bousquet is the editor and publisher of the Halifax Examiner. Twitter @Tim_Bousquet Mastodon More by Tim Bousquet
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Tony Walsh says:
I knew I subscribed to the Halifax Examiner for a reason. But seriously, thanks for what you do and I'm looking forward to reading 10K words on John Risley.
Oh, and peak Spitting Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxEweP2TiMk
Ben Sichel says:
I tried subscribing to Star Metro when they had a promotion last week, but I had questions about it, so I emailed and my email bounced back. I searched their site to find the right address (.ca instead of .com) and got an ambiguous answer to my question, and then had to email a second time to clarify. In the meantime I tried calling the 1-800 number which gave me a weird busy signal and then a hangup. I missed the deadline for the promotion. I'm happy to pay for some news but work with me here, Star Metro.
Trevor Parsons says:
I too had problems. Even after I subscribed successfully, I kept getting pop-ups telling me to subscribe. It's good now on desk top, but mobile is still messed up. Perhaps they should contract the Examiner to supply IT services.
gordohfx says:
I subscribed 5 months ago and the mobile app still defaults to Toronto news though the masthead says THESTARHALIFAX and my profile location is Halifax.
Love Zen Woodford's local coverage but the online experience leaves quite a bit to be desired.
Colin May says:
The homes in Quartz Drive,Spryfield are where cold winds sweep across an elevated and barren area. Fires from baseboard electric heaters are rare if they are properly installed and clear of curtains and furniture. Plug in heaters are a greater risk. The cost of electric heating this winter will be high; our oil consumption this winter is significantly higher than previous years and we are not living in an exposed area.
Richard Sanders says:
RE: Shambhala Palace Coup
All Shambhala Acharyas need to tell us
1. What did they know?
2. When did they know it?, and
3. What did they do about it?
This information would remove suspicion of silent complicity, or even, perhaps, complicity enabling.


OLDSTYLE
TALES PRESS
CLASSIC HORROR BLOG
Illuminating Classic Ghost Stories,
Gothic Horror, and Weird Fiction
— from Mary Shelley to M. R. James —
M. Grant Kellermeyer
Arthur Machen's The White People: A Two-Minute Summary and a Literary Analysis
Written one year after "The Turn of the Screw," the story which many consider Machen's masterpiece shared several elements with Henry James' chef d'oeuvre: both concern found manuscripts retelling the exploits of an unreliable female narrator who is now dead; both are spurred forward by the idea of a child's sexual violation and the imperilment of a young girl monitored by an exploitive servant; both explore a naïve female's erotic awakening; both are fascinated by the motif of children wandering off to do "bad" things (which are never entirely described); and both reap a harvest of terror from the way that their youthful characters' lack of worldliness prevents them from fully understanding (or articulating) the experiences they undergo – experiences which may either be entirely harmless, or utterly depraved. There are also elements of Lewis Carol's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass": a young girl, on the cusp of puberty, goes into the countryside by herself, discovers a tunnel that leads to an alternate dimension of awe and strangeness where she is forced to grow up amid the chaotic forces of magic.
All three works – by Carol, James, and Machen – have undergone stringent Freudian psychoanalysis, and all three have become infamous for their erotic undertones and hidden messages. All three have also been critiqued (mostly by casual readers) for the opaqueness and reading difficulty. In Machen's case – as you shall see – it is the lack of paragraphs in the story-within-a-story, "The Green Book," which raises the ire of readers. Machen seemed to almost write in a frantic stream of consciousness (there are only three paragraph breaks in "The Green Book," creating a dynamic, fluid gush of poetic prose), that sounds very, very much like the meditations of a patient on a psychiatrist's couch. In one moment she recalls a fond memory from when she was eight, then suddenly slips into a recollection of watching her nurse fornicating in the woods at an earlier date, before returning to a hypnotic description of her explorations of the hidden witch country, after which she sashays into a vivid retelling of her nurse's favorite ghost legends.
The story flows and drips and splashes with lyrical language that easily distracts the unobservant reader from the outrageous violations and insidious indoctrinations that this girl is undergoing. It has attracted virulent criticism from some feminists for demonizing Wicca, female sexuality, and the natural maturation of little girls to women. I very seriously disagree with such a reading: Machen does not demonize the curious child so much as he builds fear and mystique around her exploitative nurse and the unknown, Outer Powers that she eventually worships (to whom she is a vessel to be exploited and sacrificed). Lovecraft adored the story, calling it his second favorite horror tale (after Blackwood's "The Willows"), and "a triumph of skilful selectiveness and restraint, accumulates enormous power as it flows on in a stream of innocent childish prattle … less famous and less complex in plot than The Great God Pan, but definitely finer in atmosphere and general artistic value … [a] dimly disquieting chronicle."
It continued to attract attention well into the 20th century. In his 1986 Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, T.E.D. Klein declared it '…the purest and most powerful expression of what Jack Sullivan has called the "transcendental" or "visionary" supernatural tradition. Most other tales in that tradition … merely describe encounters with the dark primeval forces that reign beyond the edge of civilisation; The White People seems an actual product of such an encounter, an authentic pagan artefact…' Some of Machen's biographers would agree quite literally with that analysis, and some have read this story – widely considered his masterpiece – less as a piece of fiction and more as a childhood memoir – and a confession.
The story begins with a fairly academic framing device: a mutual friend introduces the intellectual bon vivant Cotgrave to the moral philosopher and professional eccentric Ambrose. Both men quickly get along well as they discuss morality, ethics, and the nature of sin. Something of an iconoclast, Ambrose challenges the notion that saints are defined by goodness and sinners by badness. In his estimation, sin and saintliness are so closely related (each being a means of escaping a tediously unspiritual life mired in the duldrums of materiality) that they can be confused for one another. While the mass of men are content to live the unstudied life, some – saints and sinners – risk everything to experience the awe and beauty of a spiritual life, and do so by violating the established laws of society. The only difference he recognizes is that saints live lives of ideal naturalism while sinners are idealists who break with the natural order. But sin can be beautiful, he argues, and sainthood austere: if roses began singing or stones began to bloom, the human mind would recoil in terror, regardless of its beauty.
Fascinated, the younger Cotgrave wonders what a sinner would look like, and Ambrose accommodates him by loaning him a diary – one of his most prized possessions – which tells the story of a preteen girl's induction into sin. Here we are submersed into the girl's luscious, hypnotic, and even psychedelic world, illustrated in dreamy prose which (barring a few exceptions) is told in one massive, unbroken paragraph.
She tells of how her nurse first lead her to a clearing when she was five, introducing her to the White People: fairy folk, other dimensional creatures, spirits, or elementals – we know not which – whom she witnesses (we suspect) having sex in the woods. The nurse is aware of what the girl saw, and commands her to keep it a secret in exchange for fantastical tales and legends which illuminate the experience. She tells her of spells and folk magic which she learned from her grandmother, and of stories of witches and covens.
At the age of thirteen – a day she calls the White Day – she journeys into the woods and finds a strange brook which snakes its way through a bizarre valley populated by heavy thickets and carved monoliths representing grotesque heads and monsters. Sitting amongst them, they start to spin and dance overhead, enchanting her. As she walks further through the strange land, she finds a golden river, the water of which tastes like sweet wine, and washes her feet in an ancient well. As night falls, she senses that she is being watched, and sees the shapes of men in the hills around her. She finally winds her way to a clearing where she witnesses something which is so beautiful but confusing that she shudders and runs off, unconsciously stumbling back home.
She isn't sure whether the experience is real or not, but compares it to her nurse's strange fairy tales about witchcraft, sex, and Celtic voodoo. One memorable episode describes how a beautiful witch would go to the woods and mate with hordes of serpents, and how she used wax dolls to manipulate her suitors. When she was discovered, both her and her dolls were burned at the stake. Shortly after this story, the nurse teaches her how to form and worship a clay man.
Eventually it becomes clear to the young diarist that her nurse has been inducting her into some kind of coven – or at least a tradition of magick – and decides to answer the spiritual call that she has been hearing all these years; she makes a clay doll and returns to the strange valley. This time, as she approaches the clearing where she had first shaken and run, she blindfolds herself and feels her way around. On the third pass, she locates what she is seeking and is overcome with euphoria. Earlier the nurse had prophesied that she would see the White People again, and this appears to be accomplished as she views her own reflection in the ancient well. The diary ends shortly after, with the girl describing how she met a dark nymph who transforms the water into fire.
Stunned and perplexed, Cotgrave returns to Ambrose for clarification. Ever the Socratic tutor, Ambrose doesn't answer his disciple's questions directly other than to point to the symbolism of alchemy for clues to its meaning. What he can say, though, is that the girl commited suicide (barely "in time") and that she was found in a clearing with a Roman statue which Ambrose had destroyed.
So what just happened? This is the question lingering with most readers when they finish "The White People." In his dissertation, "Man is Made of Mystery: the Evolution of Arthur Machen's Religious Thought," Geoffrey Reiter notes that the story has become infamous for its opaqueness: '"The White People" leaves its readers with many questions, even after it ends. The most obvious is simply, "What just happened?", and even after several readings, one cannot be certain of everything that has occurred.' The story does not seem to hold a key to its unravelling, and Machen – it would seem – did not appear to have one in mind. There is heft and import in Ambrose's solemn response to Cotgrave's request for clarification: "No, you must remain unconvinced." The rituals and vocabulary of the White People are nonsense because it doesn't matter what they mean: it doesn't matter what the material shape of the evil is, only that it is clearly evil. I believe that Machen is speaking here to his perplexed readers. "You miss the point," he seems to say, "if you think that you will be comforted by having it explained; you miss the point if you think that this has been about the arrival, not the journey." Ambrose says as much in the closing lines: "No, for me, it is the 'story' not the 'sequel,' which is strange and awful, for I have always believed that wonder is of the soul."
Ambrose himself, as many have claimed, may be a living embodiment of evil. In the philosophical prologue he comments on this several times, alluding to the fact that Cotgrave could be cozying up with pure wickedness with no clue to alert him. Ambrose – who seems to know much about the White People, and whose name means "immortal" – the philosophical "lunatic," would be a perfect candidate for the very theory that he espouses with such pathos and personal sadness. Most scholars believe that it is deeply based in Machen's own childhood experiences (he claimed to have encountered weird forces in the Welsh hills as a stripling), and in a sort of Freudian free association of fears, delights, and temptations. Machen was ever fascinated by the idea of parallel evolutions of mankind: one ascendant to the spiritual, and one descendent to the carnal. The "Little People" embodied this second force in his Dyson Cycle, and the first force can be recognized in many of his later stories which were more influenced by mystical ecstasy than transmutational horror ("The Great Return," "The Hill of Dreams," etc.)
As to the ultimate fate of the narrator, many critics have rejected Ambrose's remonstrance to Cotgrave, and attempted to interpret the final pages of her diary. As Reiter remarks, the most popular theory is that she has gone the way of the poor mothers of Helen Vaughan and Jervase Cradock: 'Whether at the nurse's behest or her own willing 116 involvement, the girl becomes a participant in some such ritual, apparently orchestrated by the eponymous "white people," who seem to be akin to the "little people" of the Dyson stories. It is not entirely clear what occurs next, though perhaps she is impregnated by some non-human entity.' She has been selected by the White People as the surrogate mother for a hellspawn, and has been trained – by her corruptive nurse – to be the virgin mother of an Outer Power (demon, alien, elemental, fairy, god, or monster – it does not matter which). Lovecraft, who adored the story wrote to a correspondent who had been confused by the plot, offering his personal interpretation (while I hardly think his interpretation is exact or perfect, there are elements of insight to it which bear sharing – if you can get past his revolting egotism):
"As for the essentials of the plot-you haven't quite got 'em yet, though you probably would have if I had sufficiently stressed the relationship between this tale & THE GREAT GOD PAN. This, then, is the dope:
"I. The image found in the woods was that of two entities locked in a monstrous & obscene embrace-from which, had they been living things, would have been born a Thing of non-human horror….like Helen Vaughan in THE GREAT GOD PAN, or the boy in THE BLACK SEAL.
"II. On account of a sympathetic action like that described in the prologue, the now-adolescent child-though without contact with any creative element-became pregnant with a Horror, to whose birth (knowing what she did of dark tradition) she could not look forward without a stark frenzy far beyond the fear of mere disgrace. Thus she killed herself. If she had not, a nameless hybrid abnormality of daemonic paternity would have been loosed upon the world.
"There seems to be very little question about the correctness of this interpretation, since several small allusions towards the end-especially regarding the girl's age & and the nature of the image-join with earlier allusions to sketch the implications. Most analytical readers get this idea without much difficulty, & others see it unmistakably after being tipped off. This kind of plot was what the 1890's regarded as the acme of horror-& it certainly does pack a pretty sombre shiver. But as I said before, that isn't the real crux of the tale. The big thing is the tense, insidious atmosphere-landscape, half-hinted legendry, & all that."
So, according to Lovecraft, that is "the dope." Alternative interpretations are certainly possible, but it is difficult to deny that – pregnancy or not – the story is inescapably wrapped up in the protagonist's sexual coming of age. The overt – and at times potent – sensual subtext of the story has divided many feminist critics, some of whom interpret it as a misogynistic demonization of the female libido, while others have seen it as an insightful, (if mansplained) narrative of female victimization, repression, and ecstasy. Reiter notes that the girl, ultimately, is a victim of multiple agents who use and abuse her: "But while the girl is clearly complicit in her own pagan indoctrination, she nonetheless comes across as more of a victim than a malevolent force. She is the victim of a business-minded father who leaves her in the charge of the nurse; a victim of the nurse, who uses her authority to twist the girl's mind from a young age; a victim of the white people, who seem to be using her for their own enigmatic ends; and, if some critics are correct, a victim of a Pan-like force that impregnates her. The girl does not always willingly accept the nurse's intents, and her early dabbling with the fairy forces of the country seem more innocent curiosity than active evil." Machen returns, once again, to a meditation on evil: what is evil? Evil is the desire to transcend – to transmute – from the natural condition of humanity. It is a temptation that he himself felt frequently throughout his life.
You can read the original story HERE!
And you can find our annotated and illustrated collection of Machen's best weird fiction HERE!
#arthurmachen #twominuteanalysis
OLDSTYLE TALES PRESS | FORT WAYNE, IND.
oldstyletales@gmail.com


Posted in Tour News
Kisstory presents The Blast Off! Tour featuring NELLY, SHAGGY, SALT N PEPA + MORE: Glasgow SSE Hydro, 8th Mar 2020
14th October 2019 Leave a comment
We're very excited to announce a one-of-a-kind arena tour for early 2020 featuring some of the biggest names in RnB, Hip-Hop, and Garage from the 90's & 00's!
Kisstory presents The Blast Off! Tour featuring NELLY, SALT N PEPA, SHAGGY, MYA, BLU CANTRELL, DJ LUCK & MC NEAT and many more, hosted by the one and only FATMAN SCOOP.
Prepare for a blast from the past as smash hits such as Nelly's 'Hot In Herre', Salt N Pepa's 'Shoop', Shaggy's 'It Wasn't Me' and Blu Cantrell's 'Breathe' are brought to life in arenas up and down the country.
The Blast Off! Tour heads to Glasgow SSE Hydro on the 8th March 2020. A full list of tour dates can be found below.
COMING TO UK & IRELAND
FEBRUARY & MARCH 2020
FEATURING AN ALLSTAR US LINE-UP
NELLY / SALT N PEPA / SHAGGY / MYA / BLU CANTRELL & MORE
SPECIAL HOST FATMAN SCOOP
Next year a very special, one-of-a-kind tour is coming to arenas across Ireland and the UK in February and March. With a huge all-star line-up, The Blast Off Tour! features live performances from top US artists Nelly, Salt N Pepa, Shaggy, Mya and Blu Cantrell.
This is the first time a tour of this format has been done in the UK and will be coming to Cardiff, Nottingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Birmingham throughout March while kicking off in Dublin on February 28th.
The show will also be hosted by American hype man and hip-hop personality Fatman Scoop and includes exclusive appearances from UK garage stars So Solid members Lisa Maffia and MC Romeo, scene pioneer MC DT and the British duos Oxide & Neutrino, DJ Luck & MC Neat and Sweet Female Attitude.
Speaking to some of the iconic artists performing about the tour they say;
"It's been over 30 years since we first got together, and we're still out here. We can't put into words how much we're looking forward to coming over to the UK to perform on this tour. The bill is incredible, and we're so excited to get up on stage and play some songs for y'all."
"I'm really looking forward to this tour and performing again in the UK. It's a fun bill and I'm excited to share the stage with these great artists."
"When I was asked about this tour, saying no just wasn't an option. Performing alongside some of my oldest friends and singing some of my favourite songs is going to be so much fun! I have so much love for the UK, and I can't wait to come back and perform for you all."
"This tour is gonna be DOPE. I've always felt welcome in the UK, and I'm honoured to be hosting such a huge bill. This is gonna be legendary, everyone involved with this tour is gonna kill it every single night."
Lisa Maffia
"There's nowhere I love playing more than my UK home, and what better way to play it than with a ton of the biggest and best in Garage? We all can't wait for this thing to get started, it's gonna be insane. You don't want to miss this!"
Tickets are available for O2 priority pre-sale on Wednesday 16th October, MJR pre-sale on Thursday 17th October and on general sale from Friday 18th October via www.themjrgroup.com
#BLASTOFF!
28th– Dublin 3 Arena
2nd– Cardiff, Motorpoint Arena
3rd– Nottingham Motorpoint Arena
5th– Leeds, First Direct Arena
6th– Manchester Arena
7th– Newcastle, Utilita Arena
8th– Glasgow, Hydro Arena
10th– Liverpool, M&S Bank Arena
11th– London, O2 Arena
12th– Birmingham, Resorts World Arena
Tagged Kisstory, March 2020, Nelly, Salt n Pepa, Shaggy, SSE Hydro, The Blast off! Tour, UK Tour 2020
DECLAN J DONOVAN releases new single 'Fighting With Myself' ahead of Glasgow Poetry Club headline date, 7th March
Steve Mason presents King Biscuit Time – UK tour
CALAN AWARD-WINNING WELSH FOLK BAND TO RELEASE BRAND NEW ALBUM 'KISTVAEN' ON 3 APRIL 2020 + NEW UK TOUR ANNOUNCED FOR SPRING 2020
Dan Croll announces new album 'Grand Plan' out August 21st through Communion Records / double a-side singles 'Grand Plan' and 'Work' out now
Katy J Pearson Announces details of 'Tonight', her debut single for Heavenly Recordings – 15th November 2019
Great Grandpa release new single 'Bloom' 'Four of Arrows' out October 25th


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The headless drummer
Paicey posted a video of him playing with the Buddy Rich Orchestra at the Ronnie Scott's Club in London last year. Watch out for the quick recovery at 10:52 — blink and you'll miss it.
Posted by Nick Soveiko on Friday, July 3rd, 2020, filed under News. You can follow comment on this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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6 Comments to "The headless drummer":
Adel Faragalla says:
I hope I would never see the day that those guys for DP would hang up their boots because it will be very painful for all the loving fans. To infinity and beyond Mr Paice. We love you and we admire your love to your fans.
July 3rd, 2020 at 21:01
Andra Purple Aribo Thompson says:
SUPERBY💜
@#1 You´ve said all…
July 5th, 2020 at 16:52
Paul Bernays says:
My second gig, after Whitesnake's first tour, at the Lyceum in London (best show and line up – sorry) was Buddy Rich at Ronnie Scott's. Boy I wish I'd seen Paicey do his thing with Buddy's orchestra last year. Both those skinsmen swing!
Aireight says:
We couldn't really get any closer. That was awesome. It always cracks me up how he recovers from a dropped stick. There was one during the concerto in 1999. If you didn't see it, you wouldn't know it happened.
Kiddpurple says:
That's my drummer!!
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Lake Zug
lake in Switzerland
(Redirected from Lake of Zug)
The Lake Zug (German: Zugersee) is one of the lesser known Swiss lakes, on the outskirts of the Alps and north of Lake Lucerne. It is fed by the Aa, which descends from the Rigi and enters the south end of the lake. The Lorze feeds the lake at the northern shore.
47°7′N 8°29′E / 47.117°N 8.483°E / 47.117; 8.483
Primary inflows
Primary outflows
204 km² (79 mi²)
Basin countries
Max. length
13.8 km (8.6 mi)
Max. width
4.7 km (2.9 mi)
38.3 km² (15 mi²)
Average depth
83.2 m (293 ft)
Max. depth
3.2 km³
Residence time
Surface elevation
see list
For the most part, the lake is in the Canton of Zug, but the southern end is up to 10 km in the canton of Schwyz, while the Canton of Lucerne stretches over a 2 km area by the Immensee.
At its northern end the shores are nearly level, while on the west shore the wooded promontory of Buonas (with its castles, old and new) projects picturesquely into the waters. The principal place on the lake is the town of Zug. Three railways follow the shore of the lake, one from Zürich via Zug and Arth-Goldau to the St Gotthard, one from Lucerne via Arth-Goldau to the St Gotthard and one from Zürich via Zug to Lucerne.
Many fish (including pike and carp of considerable weights) are taken from the lake, which is especially famous for an endemic kind of trout (Salmo salvelinus, locally called Rolheli). Because of farming runoff, it is not one of Switzerland's cleanest lakes.
List of cities and places on the lakeEdit
Oberwil
Historical notesEdit
In 1911, a railway was built around the lake.
The first steamer was placed on the lake in 1852.
Other websitesEdit
Waterlevels of Lake Zug Archived 2007-06-14 at the Wayback Machine at Zug
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lake Zug.
Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lake_Zug&oldid=7762932"
Last edited on 8 September 2021, at 04:05
This page was last changed on 8 September 2021, at 04:05.


Schemes of Arrangement and the Judgments Regulation: The New Authorities
Ryan Perkins
Ryan Perkins considers the application of the Judgments Regulation in the light of the recent DTEK and Global Garden Judgments
This article explores the application of the Judgments Regulation to schemes of arrangement under Part 26 of the Companies Act 2006. The true scope of the Judgments Regulation is a notorious issue among restructuring lawyers, and has been debated in numerous cases over the years. The debate has been reinvigorated by a series of new cases, including Re DTEK Finance plc [2017] BCC 165 (Newey J) and Re Global Garden Products Italy SpA [2016] EWHC 1884 (Ch) (Snowden J). These cases consider, among other things, whether a scheme with only one UK-domiciled creditor is capable of falling within Article 8 of the Judgments Regulation; and whether an asymmetric English jurisdiction clause is capable of falling within Article 25 of the Judgments Regulation. It is respectfully suggested that some of the provisional views expressed in Global Garden should not be followed.
The scheme of arrangement is a powerful restructuring tool. If a company proposes a scheme to restructure its debts, and the scheme is approved by a majority in number representing 75% of the creditors in each class, then the Court has the power to sanction the scheme such that it is binding on all creditors: see section 899 of the Companies Act 2006. However, before the Court sanctions the scheme, the Court must be satisfied that it has international jurisdiction to do so.
It is frequently the case that one or more scheme creditors are domiciled outside of the UK in another EU Member State. In those circumstances, the Court must consider whether its jurisdiction to sanction the scheme is affected by Regulation (EU) No. 1215/2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (recast) (the "Judgments Regulation", also known as the Brussels Regulation or Brussels I).1
The Judgments Regulation applies in "civil and commercial matters". Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation deals with jurisdiction, whereas Chapter III deals with the recognition of foreign judgments. The Judgments Regulation is something of a double-edged sword for scheme proponents. On the one hand, Chapter III has proven to be tremendously useful in persuading the English Court that schemes will be automatically recognised in other EU jurisdictions, and thereby achieve a substantial effect. On the other hand, Chapter II has proven to be something of a nuisance, and gives rise to a number of confusing jurisdictional issues.
The basic principle underlying Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation is that any person domiciled in an EU Member State must be sued in the courts of that Member State (the "Domicile Rule"): see Article 4(1). It is unclear whether and, if so, how the Domicile Rule applies to schemes of arrangement. It has been suggested that scheme creditors could be treated as being "sued" by the scheme company for the purposes of the Domicile Rule. This analysis would entail that creditors domiciled in EU Member States other than the UK should not be included in schemes of arrangement unless one of the exceptions in Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation is found to be applicable. The correctness of this analysis is currently unresolved, and has been left open in a number of cases: see Re Rodenstock GmbH [2012] BCC 459 at [60] (Briggs J); Re Seat Pagine Gialle SPA [2012] EWHC 3686 (Ch) at [13] (David Richards J); Re Primacom Holdings GmbH v Credit Agricole [2013] BCC 201 at [11]-[13] (Hildyard J); Re Nef Telecom BV [2014] BCC 417 at [38]-[39] (Vos J); Re Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group [2014] BCC 433 at [10] (David Richards J); Re Apcoa Parking Holdings GmbH [2014] BCC 538 at [24] (Hildyard J); Re Magyar Telecom BV [2014] BCC 448 at [28]-[31] (David Richards J) and Re Van Gansewinkel Groep BV [2015] Bus LR 1046 (Ch) at [41]-[45] (Snowden J), among others.
In order to avoid the need to resolve this issue, the Court has developed the practice of considering whether jurisdiction would exist under Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation on the assumption that it applies to schemes of arrangement. If jurisdiction can be found, it is not necessary to test that assumption. It is prudent to proceed, for present purposes, on the basis that Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation applies to schemes of arrangement.
Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation contains a number of exceptions to the Domicile Rule. An important task for any scheme proponent (where the scheme affects EU-domiciled creditors) is to identify which of those exceptions give the English Court jurisdiction to sanction the scheme. The most important exceptions, for present purposes, are set out in Articles 8 and 25.
Article 8 provides: "A person domiciled in a Member State may … be sued … (1) where he is one of a number of defendants, in the courts for the place where any one of them is domiciled, provided the claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings …" Article 8(1) has been invoked in many recent cases to establish that, where some of the scheme creditors are domiciled in the UK, the English Court has jurisdiction to sanction a scheme affecting the rights of creditors domiciled elsewhere in the EU. Since it is normally possible to identify at least a handful of UK-domiciled scheme creditors, this line of argument has proven to be a powerful tool in practice. Indeed, it is one of the key ways in which restructuring lawyers have been able to prevent the Judgments Regulation from limiting the scheme jurisdiction of the English Court.
The other key provision is Article 25, of which paragraph (1) provides: "If the parties, regardless of their domicile, have agreed that a court or the courts of a Member State are to have jurisdiction to settle any disputes which have arisen or which may arise in connection with a particular legal relationship, that court or those courts shall have jurisdiction … Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive unless the parties have agreed otherwise." Article 25 is typically invoked where the underlying contracts between the scheme company and its creditors contain an English jurisdiction clause. In such cases, it has been argued that the English Court has jurisdiction to sanction the scheme irrespective of where the scheme creditors are domiciled, because the scheme creditors have contractually submitted to the jurisdiction of the English Court.
Thus far, every known scheme of arrangement has been held to fall within either Article 8 and/or Article 25 of the Judgments Regulation. However, if a future scheme does not fall within Article 8 or Article 25, and none of the other exceptions to the Domicile Rule are applicable, then the scheme company would have to argue that Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation does not apply to schemes at all. This would be a hard-fought argument, which would be fit for consideration by the Supreme Court and/or the European Court of Justice. Rather than engaging in such an argument, scheme companies have a strong incentive to find a way of establishing that their schemes fall within Article 8 and/or Article 25.
Two issues often arise in practice. The first issue is whether the existence of a single UK-domiciled creditor (potentially holding a very low proportion of the total scheme liabilities) is capable of bringing a scheme within Article 8. The second issue is whether an asymmetric jurisdiction clause is capable of falling within Article 25. These issues are considered below.
Article 8: how many UK creditors are required?
Pursuant to Article 8, the English Court has jurisdiction to sanction a scheme involving a creditor (C1) who is domiciled in an EU Member State other than the UK if two conditions are satisfied. The first condition is that at least one other scheme creditor (C2) is domiciled in the UK. The second condition is that the "claims" by the scheme company against C1 and C2 are so closely connected that it is "expedient" for the scheme to bind both creditors so as to "avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings".
It has never been entirely clear how Article 8 operates in the scheme context. The reference to "avoid[ing] the risk of irreconcilable judgments" is particularly difficult to apply to a scheme, which is designed to restructure a company's debts rather than to avoid irreconcilable judgments. Questions of numerosity also arise. How many creditors should be domiciled in the UK (by number and value) in order for Article 8 to apply? Is one creditor enough? Or will the Court expect more?
The authorities do not provide consistent answers to this question. Some of the authorities indicate that Article 8 can be satisfied if a single scheme creditor is domiciled in the UK: see Re NEF Telecom Co BV [2014] BCC 417 at [43] (Vos J); Re Zlomrex International Finance SA [2014] BCC 440 at [15] (Mann J); and Re Metinvest BV [2016] EWHC 79 (Ch) at [32] (Proudman J). An alternative view was espoused, at least to some degree, by Snowden J in Re Van Gansewinkel Groep BV [2015] Bus LR 1046 (Ch) at [51]:
"On the assumption that the recast Judgments Regulation applies, art.8(1) would be potentially engaged provided that at least one creditor is domiciled in England and it is expedient to hear the 'claims' against all other scheme creditors together with the 'claim' against him. In the instant case, the numbers and size of the scheme creditors domiciled in England were far from immaterial, and in my judgment they were sufficiently large that the test of expediency was satisfied. I therefore considered that I was entitled to regard all scheme creditors as coming within the jurisdiction of the English court under art.8(1) for the purposes of the exercise of the scheme jurisdiction in relation to them."
Snowden J thus looked at whether the numbers and size of the scheme creditors domiciled in England "were sufficiently large that the test of expediency was satisfied." Snowden J returned to this topic in his judgment in Re Global Garden Products Italy SpA [2016] EWHC 1884 (Ch) at [25]:
"In a number of cases, the courts have expressed the view that on the assumption that the recast Judgments Regulation applies to schemes, and treating the company as claimant which is suing the scheme creditors, provided that at least one such creditor is domiciled in the United Kingdom, art.8 is potentially engaged. The question will then be whether it would be expedient to hear and determine the application for sanction of the scheme as regards the other creditors to avoid inconsistent judgments from separate proceedings. On one view, this question will necessarily be answered in the affirmative because of the desirability of binding all scheme creditors to the same restructuring: see Re Metinvest BV [2016] EWHC 79 (Ch) at [33]. Alternatively, the answer may depend upon a consideration of the number and value of the creditors domiciled in the United Kingdom: see Re Van Gansewinkel Groep BV at [41]-[45]."
Snowden J went on to conclude (at [28]) that jurisdiction could be established under Article 8 "on the basis that sufficient creditors by number and value are domiciled in the United Kingdom and that it is expedient to determine whether the scheme should bind the other scheme creditors in these proceedings in England." Further, Snowden J specifically required the scheme company to adduce detailed evidence as to the number and value of UK creditors, and held that the original evidence was "inadequate" and "unsubstantiated": see the judgment at [27].
The most recent and detailed consideration of this matter is to be found in the judgment of Newey J in Re DTEK Finance plc[2017] BCC 165 (convening hearing) , which adopts a rather different approach. In that case, only two scheme creditors holding less than one per cent of the total scheme liabilities (by value) were domiciled in the UK. Newey J held that Article 8 applied, such that the Court had jurisdiction to sanction the scheme. Moreover, Newey J expressed the "provisional view" that the Court would have had jurisdiction to sanction the scheme even if only one creditor, holding a very low proportion of the total scheme liabilities, had been domiciled in the UK. He referred to the authorities set out above, and said (at [17]-[18]):
"Article 8(1) of the recast Judgments Regulation does not in terms require more than "any one" defendant to be domiciled in the jurisdiction. The article goes on to make reference to whether "claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings", but again it is not said that the number of domiciled defendants determines whether it is "expedient" to hear and determine matters together. On the face of it, the focus is on how "closely connected" the claims are rather than where other defendants are domiciled. In the circumstances, it seems to me, at any rate provisionally, that assessing "expediency" in this context must involve more than merely looking at how many creditors beyond one are domiciled in the jurisdiction or the value of the debts that they hold.
There is a persuasive argument that at least in the case of a company such as this one, which is incorporated in this jurisdiction and has its centre of main interests (or "COMI") in England, the existence of just one creditor with a domicile here will make it expedient for an English court to hear an application for a scheme of arrangement to be approved. In the case of an English incorporated company, with its COMI in the jurisdiction, there might be said to be a legitimate expectation on the part of creditors that any restructuring would occur either in this jurisdiction or, perhaps, in the jurisdiction of the law governing the debts. Creditors would seemingly have no expectation of a restructuring being the subject of proceedings in their own home jurisdictions, where those are different. In any case, the claim against the "defendant" domiciled here might be thought to be so "closely connected" to the claims against other "defendants" as to make it "expedient" for the claims to be dealt with together. As Snowden J noted [in Global Garden], the desirability of binding all scheme creditors to the same restructuring is, on one view, sufficient to establish the requisite expediency."
It is suggested that the provisional view expressed by Newey J is correct, and is preferable to the approach taken in Van Gansewinkel. The critical requirement under Article 8 is that at least one scheme creditor is domiciled in the UK. Beyond that, Article 8 does not impose any requirement for the Court to consider the number or value of UK-domiciled creditors, and the Court should not ordinarily need to consider this issue in detail.2 The Court must, of course, be satisfied that it is "expedient" for all relevant creditors to be bound by the scheme in order to "avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings". But this does not, or does not principally, involve any consideration of the precise number or value of UK-domiciled creditors. The better view is that, in the vast majority of cases, it is inherently expedient for all creditors in a given class to be bound by the scheme, because any creditors who were not so bound would be able to obtain judgment against the scheme company on the full amount of their claims, thereby undermining the restructuring. Although Newey J restricted his analysis to companies incorporated in the UK, the same analysis should logically apply to any foreign company which has a sufficient connection to the UK.3 From that perspective, it should not be difficult to show that a scheme falls within Article 8.
At the DTEK sanction hearing, the judge (Norris J) adopted largely the same approach: see [2016] EWHC 3563 (Ch). He said (at [22]-[25]):
"The gateway to article 8 is opened by the presence of a single defendant within the English and Welsh jurisdiction. It would therefore seem odd if the test of "expediency" should somehow sub silentio require more than one defendant in the jurisdiction. What the proviso to me seems to focus upon is not the number of defendants who are present in England and Wales, but the number of defendants who are domiciled in other Member States, and upon the significance of the risk of an irreconcilable judgment in the courts of the domiciles of those other defendants …
In the instant case it seems to me that an irreconcilable judgment in another Member State would be destructive of the scheme of arrangement as a whole …
I therefore take the view that if there is one defendant in England and Wales who is a scheme creditor then the risk of some other scheme creditor proceeding in the courts of his own domicile to resist a claim that he be bound as a dissentient creditor is such that that risk of an irreconcilable judgment of itself satisfies the proviso."
It is suggested that, contrary to Global Garden, scheme companies should not be required to adduce detailed evidence as to the precise number and value of creditors domiciled in the UK. Such evidence is not ordinarily relevant to determining whether Article 8 is engaged.
Article 25 and asymmetric jurisdiction clauses
In the rare case where no scheme creditor is domiciled in the UK, Article 8 will not apply, and the scheme company will need to rely on Article 25 instead. The paradigm case for the application of Article 25 is where the finance documents between the scheme company and the scheme creditors contain a conventional and straightforward exclusive jurisdiction clause in favour of the English Court. Article 25 will, in such cases, confer jurisdiction on the English Court to sanction the scheme.
However, many finance documents do not contain a straightforward exclusive jurisdiction clause. By way of example, the standard forms of syndicated facility agreements promulgated by the Loan Markets Association include the following asymmetric jurisdiction clause:
"(a) The courts of England have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute arising out of or in connection with this Agreement (including a dispute relating to the existence, validity or termination of this Agreement or any noncontractual obligation arising out of this Agreement) (a "Dispute").
(b) The Parties agree that the courts of England are the most appropriate and convenient courts to settle Disputes and accordingly no Party will argue to the contrary.
(c) This Clause is for the benefit of the Finance Parties and Secured Parties only. As a result, no Finance Party or Secured Party shall be prevented from taking proceedings relating to a Dispute in any other courts with jurisdiction. To the extent allowed by law, the Finance Parties and Secured Parties may take concurrent proceedings in any number of jurisdictions."
This clause confers exclusive jurisdiction on the English Court, but it does so "for the benefit" of the finance parties (i.e. the scheme creditors) rather than the scheme company, and the finance parties are expressly permitted to commence proceedings against the scheme company in other jurisdictions. Having regard to the extensive use of the LMA's asymmetric jurisdiction clause in finance documents worldwide, it is important to determine whether the clause falls within Article 25 of the Judgments Regulation so as to confer jurisdiction on the English Court to sanction a scheme of arrangement between a company and any of its creditors who are bound by the clause.
Four recent cases have considered this issue. The first case is Re Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group [2014] BCC 433 at [15]-[16], in which the scheme creditors were parties to a facility agreement modelled on one of the standard LMA forms. David Richards J held that the LMA's asymmetric jurisdiction clause fell within Article 25, such that the English Court had jurisdiction to sanction the scheme. He noted that non-exclusive jurisdiction clauses plainly fall within Article 25 (as is apparent from the second sentence of Article 25 itself); and that, in those circumstances, there is no reason why the LMA clause should fall outwith Article 25.
The second case is the decision of Snowden J in Re Van Gansewinkel Groep BV [2015] Bus LR 1046 (Ch). The jurisdiction clause in that case stated as follows: "For the benefit of each of the finance parties, each obligor irrevocably submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England for the purpose of hearing and determining any dispute arising out of this agreement and for the purpose of any enforcement of any judgment against its assets." Snowden J held that the clause fell outwith Article 25, such that the scheme company could not rely on that Article to establish jurisdiction under the Judgments Regulation. He stated (at [49]):
"… this was not a clause by which any of the scheme creditors submitted to the jurisdiction of the English court at all. It was a submission to the jurisdiction only by the scheme companies. But the scheme companies were voluntarily invoking the scheme jurisdiction of the English court in any event. In my view, the issue under article 25(1) whether the English court had jurisdiction over the scheme creditors. In that respect, the fact that the jurisdiction clause was for the benefit of the scheme creditors did not assist …"
It should be noted that the clause in Van Gansewinkel was rather different from the standard LMA asymmetric jurisdiction clause which featured in Vietnam Shipbuilding. The LMA clause states that the parties (including the finance parties) submit to the jurisdiction of the English Court; whereas the clause in Van Gansewinkel merely states that the obligors (not including the finance parties) submit to the jurisdiction of the English Court. It is suggested that this is an important distinction. Under the Van Gansewinkel clause, the finance parties are free to challenge the jurisdiction of the English Court if the company commences proceedings there. By contrast, under the LMA clause, the finance parties are not free to advance such a challenge. They are entitled to commence proceedings against the company outside of England, but they are not entitled to contest the jurisdiction of the English Court once it is seised (because they have submitted to its jurisdiction). Accordingly, Van Gansewinkel and Vietnam Shipbuilding should be regarded as consistent.
The third case is the convening judgment in Re Hibu Group Ltd [2016] EWHC 1921 (Ch), before Warren J. The finance documents contained the standard LMA asymmetric jurisdiction clause. Warren J held that the clause fell within Article 25, and cited Vietnam Shipbuilding in support of this conclusion. He said (at [71]) that "paragraph (c) [of the LMA clause], whilst preserving a creditor's right to sue elsewhere, does not allow a challenge to the jurisdiction conferred by paragraph (a) when the company commences proceedings in this court". Warren J accepted counsel's submission that the clause in Van Gansewinkel is distinguishable from the standard LMA clause.
The final and most problematic case is Re Global Garden Products Italy SpA [2016] EWHC 1884 (Ch), before Snowden J, in which the finance documents contained the standard LMA asymmetric jurisdiction clause. Snowden J suggested, obiter, that the clause did not fall within Article 25. He stated (at [31]):
"I would, however, indicate that my provisional view was that the alternative source of jurisdiction suggested by Mr Dicker, namely Article 25 of the Recast Judgments Regulation, would not have given jurisdiction … The jurisdiction clause in the Facilities Agreement … was expressed to be for the benefit of the finance parties only and, hence, could not be relied upon by the Company against those finance parties: see (for a similar point) Re Van Gansewinkel Groep at paragraphs 46 to 49."
It is respectfully suggested that this provisional view is wrong, for three principal reasons.
First, Snowden J's provisional view is inconsistent with Vietnam Shipbuilding and the Hibu convening judgment4.
Second, Van Gansewinkel does not support the view that the LMA clause falls outwith Article 25. This is because the clause in Van Gansewinkel is drafted in different terms from the LMA clause: see above. Snowden J rightly observed that the LMA clause is expressed to be "for the benefit" of the finance parties: but this simply enables the finance parties to sue the obligors in other jurisdictions, and does not negate the finance parties' submission to the jurisdiction of the English Court. Were it otherwise, the first two paragraphs of the LMA clause would be very difficult to understand.
Third, the correct construction of the LMA clause has been considered by the Commercial Court in a number of cases, unrelated to schemes of arrangement, and the views expressed by the judges in those cases are inconsistent with the provisional view expressed in Global Garden. For example, in Mauritius Commercial Bank Ltd v Hestia Holdings Ltd [2013] 2 Lloyd's Rep 121 at [40], Popplewell J held that the LMA clause involves a submission to the jurisdiction of the English Court by the finance parties, even though the clause is expressed to be for their benefit:
"Clause 24.1 [the LMA clause] is for the benefit of [the lender] in the sense that [the borrowers] are obliged to sue in England but [the lender] is not. But that does not disapply clause 24.1(a) to [the lender] completely. Where [the borrowers] bring suit against [the lender] in England, clause 24.1(a) is not disapplied by the operation of clause 24.1(c). [The lender] is thereby agreeing to be sued in England subject to the liberty conferred by clause 24.1(c). In those circumstances [the lender] has agreed to be subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts, subject to its right to bring claims (which may overlap) abroad pursuant to clause 24.1(c). Were it otherwise, clause 24.1(a) would be superfluous: if clause 24.1(c) permitted [the lender] to insist on suing or being sued anywhere, or anywhere of competent jurisdiction, that would include England (given that this is an English law agreement and forum conveniens is conclusively determined by sub-clause (b))."
Popplewell J's remarks have been cited with approval by the Commercial Court in a number of other cases – including, most recently, Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft v Liquimar Tankers Management Inc [2017] 1 Lloyd's Rep 273, in which Cranston J held, after considering a number of legislative materials and authorities, that the LMA clause falls squarely within Article 25 of the Judgments Regulation. Mauritius Commercial Bank is not cited in Global Garden, and Commerzbank was decided several months later.
In conclusion, it is suggested that the LMA asymmetric jurisdiction clause falls within Article 25 of the Judgments Regulation, and confers jurisdiction on the English Court to sanction a scheme against any creditors who are bound by the clause. The same analysis may not apply to other bespoke clauses, e.g. the provision in Van Gansewinkel.
On any view, the language used in Chapter II of the Judgments Regulation is ill-suited to schemes of arrangement. The valiant attempts of practitioners and judges to bring schemes within Chapter II often lead to something of a parallel universe, in which words take on unexpected meanings.
However, unless and until the Court is required to determine whether Chapter II applies to schemes at all, the Court will be faced with the difficult task of shoehorning schemes into the various jurisdictional gateways set out therein. When approaching this task, it is hoped that the Court will not seek to impose unnecessary constraints which go beyond the text of the Judgments Regulation itself, so as to avoid the creation of artificial limitations on the scheme jurisdiction.
As matters stand, it is unclear how the Judgments Regulation will be affected by Brexit. In the absence of a convention for the enforcement of judgments and the allocation of civil jurisdiction between the UK and EU, the perennial jurisdictional debates about schemes of arrangement may finally be killed off: but so too would the UK restructuring market, which relies heavily on the automatic recognition of UK judgments throughout the EU. The difficult drafting of the Judgments Regulation may, on balance, be a low price to pay.
1/. The Judgments Regulation is the successor of Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001, which contains many similar provisions.
2/. See also Re Hibu Group Ltd [2016] EWHC 1921 (Ch) at [67] (Warren J): "When applying the test of expediency under Article 8(1), there is no basis for imposing a precise threshold on the number or value of creditors who are required to be domiciled in the UK."
3/. As to the concept of sufficient connection, see Re Magyar Telecom BV [2014] BCC 448 at [14] (David Richards J).
4/. The Hibu convening hearing took place shortly before the Global Garden judgment was released, but shortly after the Global Garden sanction hearing. In the Hibu sanction judgment, [2016] EWHC 2222 (Ch) at [6]-[7], Arnold J held that it was unnecessary (on the facts) to decide whether the provisional view expressed in Global Garden was correct.
Article / Just and Equitable Winding Up


Domain Adaptation for Visual Applications
Pre-recorded videos & PDFs
Friday PM, 28th August 2020
Part 1: Mathieu Salzmann: Basic Concepts and Traditional Methods [PDF slides] [video]
Part 2: Gabriela Csurka: Visual DA in Deep Learning Era [PDF slides] [video]
Part 3: Tatiana Tommasi (45 min): Beyond Classical Domain Adaptation [PDF slides] [video]
Part 4: Timothy M. Hospedales (45 min): Domain Adaptation for Visual Applications: Perspectives and Outlook [PDF slides] [video]
Recorded ECCV tutorial live sessions (including Q&A)
Gabriela Csurka is a Principal Scientist at NAVER LABS Europe, France. Her main research interests are in computer vision for image understanding, multi-view 3D reconstruction, visual localization, multi-modal information retrieval as well as domain adaptation (DA) and transfer learning. She has contributed to around 100 scientific communications, several on the topic of DA, received the best paper award at the Transferring and Adapting Source Knowledge in Computer Vision Workshop (TaskCV) in 2016, participated with success in DA related challenges (ImageClefDA'14, VisDA'17), and has given invited talks on domain adaptation (ACIVS'15, Task-CV'17, OpenMIC'18 and Task-CV'19). In 2017 she edited a book on Domain Adaptation in Computer Vision Applications.
Timothy M. Hospedales is a Reader at University of Edinburgh; Principal Scientist at Samsung AI Research Centre, Cambridge; and Alan Turing Institute Fellow. His research focuses on lifelong machine learning, broadly defined to include multi-domain/multi-task learning, domain adaptation, transfer learning and meta-learning; with applications including computer vision, vision and language, reinforcement learning for control and finance. He has co-authored numerous papers on domain adaptation, domain generalisation, and transfer learning in major venues including CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICML and AAAI. He teaches computer vision at Edinburgh University and has given invited talks on these topics at Task-CV and Deep Learning in Finance Summit as well as tutorials at ACM Multimedia and several Summer Schools.
Mathieu Salzmann is a Senior Researcher at EPFL, with a broad expertise in Computer Vision and Machine Learning. He has published several articles at major conferences and journals on the topic of Domain Adaptation, and has contributed a chapter on the topic of matching distributions in G. Csurka's book on Domain Adaptation in Computer Vision Applications. Furthermore, he has been invited to present his domain adaptation work at various venues, including the Workshop on Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning, the University of Oxford and ETHZ.
Tatiana Tommasi is an Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Torino, Italy and an affiliated researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology. She pioneered the area of transfer learning for computer vision and has large experience in domain adaptation, generalization and multimodal learning with applications for robotics and medical imaging. Tatiana received the best paper award at the 1st edition of Task-CV workshop at ECCV'14 and since then she has been leading the organization of the following workshop editions. She also organized a workshop on similar topics at NIPS'13,'14 and taught a tutorial at ECCV'14.
While huge volumes of unlabeled data are generated and made available in many domains, the cost of acquiring data labels remains high. On the other hand, solving problems with deep neural networks has become extremely popular, however current methods typically rely on massive amounts of labeled training data to achieve high performance. To overcome the burden of annotation, solutions have been proposed in the literature to exploit available unlabeled data from the same domain, referred to as semi-supervised learning; and to exploit labeled data or trained models available in similar, yet different domains, referred to as domain adaptation. The focus of this tutorial will be on the latter. Domain adaptation is also of increasing societal importance as vision systems are deployed in mission critical applications whose predictions have real-world impact, but where real-world testing data statistics can differ significantly from lab collected training data. Our aim will be to give an overview of visual domain adaptation methods, a field whose popularity in the computer vision community has increased significantly in the last few years, as attested by the proliferation of DA-related papers published during the last years in top-ranked computer vision and machine learning conferences.
The tutorial will be divided into four parts:
1. In the first part, we will present domain adaptation from a theoretical point of view. In particular, we will define the domain shift problem and illustrate its importance in computer vision. We will then introduce different ways to measure the distribution mismatch between two domains, referred to as the source and target domains. Specifically, we will review different distance metrics between probability distributions, such as the Maximum Mean Discrepancy and the Hellinger distance, as well as different ways to represent the source and target data, for instance using subspaces, so as to compare them. We will further explain how these techniques have been used in the past to design domain adaptation algorithms. In this context, we will first review the main historical contributions in domain adaptation, and then briefly study how these contributions have been translated to deep networks.
2. In the second part of the tutorial we will first discuss and compare different domain adaptation strategies that exploit deep architectures for visual recognition, such shallow models used with pretrained or fine-tuned deep features and deep architectures designed for domain adaptation. Then, we will overview recent trends in domain adaptation, including deep discriminative models with various discrepancy based and adversarial based losses, generative 2 and encoder-decoder based models, network parameter adaptation methods, semi-supervised and curriculum learning based models. We will present methods proposed in the literature for image classification, semantic segmentation, object detection and others.
3. In the third part, we will discuss all those particular cases that differ from the standard domain adaptation setting: source and target data may not cover exactly the same set of classes (partial, open-set), the target data may come as an online stream rather than being available altogether (continuous), several sources may be provided with different annotations levels (deep-cocktail, multi-source, predictive domain adaptation). Finally, domain generalization is the most challenging condition where no target data is available at training time. We will also relate domain adaptation and generalization with self-supervised learning.
4. The tutorial will conclude with an ending part dedicated to unifying perspectives and outlook. We will present deep tensor methods and meta-learning methods that provide frameworks to link domain adaptation and domain generalisation with related research topics including multi-task/multi-domain learning and few-shot learning. We will draw connections to related issues such as adversarial robustness, and further applications such as SBIR, VQA and deep RL.


Home Bollywood News Salman Khan Jokes That He Dubbed For Dabangg 3′ Tamil Version First,...
Salman Khan Jokes That He Dubbed For Dabangg 3′ Tamil Version First, Read To Know Why!
Salman Khan's Dabangg 3 is one of the much-awaited films of 2019. He will be back as the cop Chulbul Pandey and the audience can't keep calm to watch the film as the trailer looks entertaining.
Dabangg 3 will be releasing in Tamil, Telugu as well as the Kannada language. At the trailer launch today, director PrabhuDheva was asked who dubbed for Salman's voice in Tamil. The director couldn't recollect the name and immediately Salman interrupted and joked that he had first dubbed for the Tamil version.
Khan said, "He is very good. I have heard a little bit of dubbing. So I was going to dub it & all the other languages too. I went to the dubbing studio to dub it. I said one line in Tamil. So the person who was dubbing said 'Very good sir, okay.' So I said one more? He's like 'No, no sir. Okay, okay, okay, okay…' I thought this language is quite simple. Then he went to PrabhuDheva to check and he asked me, 'Sir, in what language you dubbed?' I said, sir your guy said okay, okay, okay. Now what do to? Dub again? He said 'No sir, you are sounding like some foreign language only. I am not understanding it'. So we got a voice that was very close to mine in Tamil Telugu & Kannada."
Salman Khan Says He Wrote The Script Of Dabangg 3 & The Reason Is Hilarious
Divyanka Tripathi: "I'm Not Very Comfortable With BOLD Scenes"
Well, we can't wait to know who dubbed for Salman Khan's voice in those three languages.
Dabangg 3 also stars Sonakshi Sinha and Saiee Manjrekar in the lead roles. The film is slated to release in December this year.
The post Salman Khan Jokes That He Dubbed For Dabangg 3′ Tamil Version First, Read To Know Why! appeared first on Koimoi.


Online Support Groups in Scotland
Unfortunately, due to the current situation with Covid-19, our face-to-face support groups have been cancelled. However, Fertility Network Scotland can offer digital support via our WhatsApp Groups and Closed Groups on social media.
Our online fertility support groups offer a chance to meet up online, chat and share experiences with others who are also trying to conceive. It is a space to share your journey and listen to others' experiences and provide mutual peer support and an opportunity to learn from others. You can participate as much, or as little, as you wish. There is no pressure to share if you prefer not to.
The groups in Scotland are made up of staff as well as volunteers, everyone in the group understands the struggles in trying to conceive.
We also try and organise the groups by area, where there are enough members, so some of you will share the same services or stay in a similar location.
WhatsApp Group – North East Scotland
Are you trying to conceive and live in the following NHS areas?
Highland; Grampian; Tayside; Forth Valley; Fife; Lothians.
Our North East Scotland WhatsApp group offers a community in which you can share your story as it unfolds and offer support to one another. It remains separate from other social media to maintain privacy.
For further details please contact Sarah, Educational Development Officer on
07849 712 967 or email: sarah@fertilitynetworkscotland.org
WhatsApp Group – South & West Scotland
Scottish Borders; Dumfries and Galloway; Ayrshire; Argyll & Bute; Clyde Valley.
For further details please contact Jenny, Educational Development Officer, on
07718 934 379 or email: Jenny@fertilitynetworkscotland.org
Closed Facebook Group – Glasgow
Are you trying to conceive and live in Glasgow?
Our closed Facebook group offers a community in which you can share your story as it unfolds and offer support to one another. It remains separate from other social media to maintain privacy.
For further details please contact Sharon, Scotland Branch Co-ordinator, on
07411 752 688 or email: SharonM@fertilitynetworkscotland.org
WhatsApp Group – Secondary Infertility (Scotland)
Are you struggling with Secondary Infertility?
Join our WhatsApp Group where you can chat with others going through a similar experience and really understand.
Our WhatsApp group offers a community in which you can share your story as it unfolds and offer support to one another. It remains separate from other social media to maintain privacy. Everyone in the group understands the struggle with secondary infertility.
For further details and to join, please contact Jenny, Educational Development Officer, on
Men-only Support Group (online)
This group meets every month online via Zoom. You are more than welcome to join with your camera on or off. The informal sessions are led by Ian Stones, a fertility and wellness expert, and Toby Trice, a racing driver who is on a campaign to raise awareness for fertility and help the lives of others by offering support and someone to talk to.
Toby and Ian discuss their experiences and expertise, and you will be given the opportunity to share should you want to.
Check our events page for the next meeting.
https://fertilitynetworkuk.org/news-media/all-events/


Aztecs Football
San Diego State Football Season Preview: Quarterbacks
EVT SDSU Podcast
7 months ago Paul Garrison
Credit: Don De Mars/EVT
This first article in the East Village Times' 2022 Aztec football season preview series examines the quarterback position. At every school across the country, the outlook of a team rests on the ability of its signal-callers. Generally speaking, preseason prognostications begin and end with the person expected to be under center.
Even though there is less experience at the position heading into 2022 than last season, indications point to the current crop of QBs having a better chance for success than their predecessors. When coach Jeff Hecklinski took over as offensive coordinator, Carson Baker was the heir apparent who had won the confidence of his teammates.
Coach Hunkie Cooper said Baker's struggles, coupled with the lack of production in the passing game throughout 2020 from whoever was under center, was an issue the team has worked through. Last year, the offense began the season like it left off in the previous year, but signs of progress in the passing game emerged as the season progressed. Heading into 2022, belief in Hecklinski's offense is established, giving the QBs a better foundation on which to build.
"I think we had a lot of unknowns a year ago coming out of Covid," Hecklinski said in an exclusive interview with EVT. "Lucas was injured that whole 2020 season. We saw Lucas for what three quarters? We were still looking to get things right around the quarterback situation. I felt Braxton and Will came into a more stable situation from everybody else that was around them, to how we were presenting (the offense), to everything. I've grown a lot as a coach. You've heard me say that a lot too. I've grown a lot as a coach in understanding really from a starting point to getting to the first game, the presentation and coaching part of it, fundamentals, techniques. Playbook-wise, we're just farther along where we should be going into essentially year two and a half if you take that Covid year as a half year."
Before detailing the position, a word about our method, EVT writers Andre Haghverdian and Paul Garrison graded the various aspects listed below, which were averaged to arrive at the grades provided.
Talent: B+
Since Hecklinksi arrived on campus, the talent in the room has grown each season. Four QBs at SDSU have professional potential, which bodes well for the future of the position. Development will be key to actualizing what could become a strength of the team in the coming years. The question for 2022 is whether Braxton Burmeister can bridge the gap until the youngsters are primed to take over.
Down the depth chart, a battle is brewing between three freshmen, Will Haskell, Liu Aumavae, and Kyle Crum. Their work behind the scenes as Burmeister's backup is vitally important and will determine if the coaching staff uses the transfer market again for a QB to lead the team in 2023.
"Both (Braxton) and Will are having great summers, and so are Kyle and Liu," Hecklinski explained. "I think our quarterback room from when I first got here in 2020 to where we are now is a completely different room, a completely different set of athletic abilities that can throw the football. So I think we're right where we want to be."
Confidence in the starter: B
Expectations for Burmeister are deservedly high. Unlike past transfers at the position, he has extensive starting experience in his career- 4 with Oregon and 16 with Virginia Tech. He started every game a season ago for the Hokies except for the team's bowl game, which he missed only after deciding to transfer.
His numbers may not be eye-popping nationally, but his 2,468 yards from scrimmage, 14 touchdowns, and four interceptions were decidedly better than any SDSU QB from a season ago. They are even more impressive, considering he played half the year with broken ribs. Make no mistake, Burmeister is not just older than the rest of the QBs in the room. He is every bit as talented.
"I thought (with) the competition between Will and Braxton that somebody was going to separate themselves quickly (in spring camp)," Hecklinski explained. "You get a really good feel for Braxton's experience through this. It really wasn't anything that Will didn't do. It was just the amount of experience Braxton came in with and that confidence and that calmness that he plays with. You could tell he's played 20 plus games in the ACC and had a great feel … You could just tell as we were going, he was getting more and more comfortable."
Star Power: B
2022 looks to be the year Burmeister finally breaks out and reaches the potential that made him one of the more sought-after recruits in the nation when he graduated from La Jolla Country Day. The offenses at both of his previous stops featured a version of the Run-Pass-Option (RPO) offense SDSU employs. Burmeister is an expert at the offense, which will allow Hecklinski to use more variety in his play-calling and formations.
While Burmeister is adept at running the RPO, there is a difference in SDSU's version. Oregon and Virginia Tech leaned more to the run than the pass. The Aztecs want to be closer to a PRO than RPO, where the QB is more aggressive, pulls the ball, and throws as the first priority. Only three times last season did Burmeister throw more than 30 times in a game, while SDSU reached that mark five times over the final nine games of the season. With more opportunity, expect Burmeister's game-highs of 32 attempts, 19 completions, 254 passing yards, and three touchdowns to be topped next season.
"Braxton is the ultimate competitor," Hecklinski said. "The best thing about Braxton is when you tell Braxton he can't do something. He's going to find every way to prove that he can do it, and that's what you want at that position. What we probably didn't know going in, and what, I think, we saw very early, Braxton is a very accomplished thrower. We were able to really streamline a lot of fundamentals and techniques in the passing game with drops and footwork and things like that and really get his eyes in the right spot. Once that started to hit, you could really see when he was repping through spring ball. He really was able to take us down the field and did a lot of great things. That has continued."
Proven Depth: D
Behind Burmeister is where the question marks emerge. Provided he has no setbacks, Hecklinski expects Haskell to start the season as the primary backup. While Haskell's talent is evident, his game is not polished yet. He has a powerful arm but struggles at times with accuracy. His ability to elude defenders and be a threat as a runner is exceptional, but he sometimes forgets the subtleties of matching the correct drops with the play that is called.
Haskell has only thrown seven passes in his career. None have come in pressure situations. Behind him are two freshmen, who looked advanced in Spring Camp, but their next snap in a game will be the first of their careers.
Players improve the most between the end of spring camp and the beginning of fall. The coaches give each player clear areas to focus on, and with the carrot of increased playing time in the upcoming season, growth often ensues. This is Haskell's first time through this critical junction of the calendar. Hecklinski reports that he has made huge strides.
Aumavae and Crum are behind Haskell at the moment. Their choice to enroll early and participate in Spring Camp went a long way towards evening out the experience gap between them and Haskell. Their confidence that they belong at this level and can lead the team is an important step for them. All three freshmen left Spring Camp equal on the depth chart. Haskell has elevated himself with his work since. Burmeister is the best QB they have been around on a daily basis, and gleaning what they can from him will help them reach his level sooner.
"It's the same thing that coach (Hoke) said with Braxton, 'Braxton is the starter unless," Hecklinski said. "I would say the same thing with Will. Will is the backup to Braxton unless. And that 'unless' is you still have to perform. You have to come in every day, and you have to work at a level and to reach the expectations that we have, for the position, for the offense, and for the team. If at any point you don't do that, there's somebody there who's pushing to take your spot. That's competition, and that's the way coach has built this program since 2009, and that's why there's been the sustained level of success around here because of that competition."
Conference Rank: C+
Entering the season, four conference foes have better QB situations than SDSU. Boise State's Hank Bachmeier, Fresno State's Jake Haener, Air Force's Haaziq Daniels, and Utah State's Logan Bonner are all senior signal-callers with heavy experience. Burmeister would rank behind these four because of their established production at their current schools. The rest of the conference has a less enviable spot than the Aztecs when it comes to the QB position.
"Will is doing a great job of learning from Braxton," Hecklinski explained. That's hard when you're competing against that guy. That's hard because that's the guy you're trying to beat, but you still want to take and learn. You can really see Will's growth and maturity in what it's going to take to be a high-level quarterback. The notes that he's taking in the meetings that we've had. You watch him now in 7-on-7. He's right there with Braxton at (completing) seven out of ten almost every time and learning how to push the ball down the field while still checking down and coming down. You see a lot of good things from those two and a lot of competitiveness. … If you're 14 or 15 out of 20 during any course of a game, you're feeling pretty good about how you're moving the football, and that's where we want to be throwing the football-wise."
SDSU Quarterback Position Overall Grade: B-
Paul Garrison
My earliest sport's memory involve tailgating at the Murph, running down the circular exit ramps, and seeing the Padres, Chargers and Aztecs play. As a second generation Aztec, I am passionate about all things SDSU. Other interests include raising my four children, being a great husband and teaching high school.
Tags: Aztecs, Braxton Burmeister, Jeff Hecklinski, Kyle Crum, Liu Aumavae, SDSU, SDSU Football, Will Haskell
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