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Click here to go straight to Auntyji's Approach Punjabi Bridal Traditions.
The bride's house is a very busy place the night before the wedding as a number of Punjabi bridal traditions and rituals take place. Family and friends are gathered to either perform or witness the choora ceremony and await the formal bath time of the bride. As the bride is bathing, the women gather together to sing wedding songs related to the event.
Both the bathing and choora ceremony can be held on the same night as maiyan are done.
Traditional Bridal Bath
The first bridal ritual the night before the wedding is the bridal bath. The traditional custom was to have the sisters of the bride get water from the well of the local gurdwara for bathing the bride, which was done after midnight. Today, water from bathing facilities in one's home is usually used for this purpose.
The bath takes place just before the choora ceremony. Once the bride is dressed in a brand new outfit, the maternal uncle carries – this can be as brief as picking the bride up for a quick second – the bride out of the bathing area.
Preparing for Bridal Bath
Materials Required:
- Phulkari
- New outfit for the bride (salvar kameez)
Time of Day:
8:00pm or later
How it's Done:
- The bride bathes and dresses in her new outfit
- While she is bathing, the women sing traditional wedding songs that fit the occasion, for example, Aaj Savarah Koi Karma Valai Navai.
- The maternal uncle drapes the phulkari over the bride's head and shoulders and carries her out of the bathroom. Rather than literally carry, this can be as brief as picking the bride up for a quick second
- He then escorts her out of the bathroom to where the choora ceremony is about to take place
Choora Ceremony
The final Punjabi bridal tradition of the night is the choora ceremony. Choora are wedding bangles worn by the bride. Traditionally, brides wore 21 red and ivory coloured bangles on each arm, but now brides choose the number of bangles they would like to wear. As is considered auspicious in Indian tradition, the number on each arm should be an odd number.
In the past, chooras were worn up to one year after the wedding. They either broke off through daily wear and tear or at the one year mark, the groom removed them. Today, they are worn for as long as the bride decides to keep them on. In respect for the tradition, some brides ask their husband to break or remove one bangle and then she removes the rest.
The wedding choora is given to the bride by her maternal uncle or uncles. The uncle or uncles are also the ones who put the bangles on the bride. The bride can choose the design and should be involved in selecting the appropriate size, but the maternal uncles are responsible for buying the choora. Once the choora is on the bride, kalira (dangly gold ornaments) can be tied onto it by the sisters of the bride.
Preparing for Choora Ceremony
Materials Required:
- Choora given by maternal uncle
- Money as sagan
- Mixture of milk and water
- Bowl
- Chaadar
- Indian sweets place on a tray
- Kalira
Time of Day:
Night time just after the bridal bath
How it's Done:
- Soak or wash the choora in the milk and water combination.
- Place a blanket (chaadar) on the ground
- Sit the bride on the chaadar
- Have bride's maternal uncles and their wives, if they are married, carry in the bowl with the choora and sweets
- Taking three to four bangles at a time, the maternal uncle begins to place the choora on the bride. If there is more than one maternal uncle, each uncle, in hierarchical order, takes turns doing this
- After the choora is completely put on the bride's arms, each uncle (and his wife) feed the bride a bite of the sweet and giver her money
- Other guests in attendance may also now step forward and give the bride money as sagan
Auntyji's Approach
Bachai lok your Auntyji recommends these rituals be done as early in the night as possible. Some families perform these Punjabi bridal tradition after midnight on the day of the wedding, but as the next day will be extremely busy and an early start, perhaps having this completed earlier would benefit all involved.
If the bride's home has been bustling with maiyan and mehndi parties throughout the week leading up to the wedding, the night before can also be kept small so only the actual parties required to do the rituals are asked to come. This ensures traditional practises are followed and bride and her family are somewhat rested on the wedding day.


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Kids intuitively grasp a lot of advanced concepts. They don't understand the science behind them, naturally, but they get the idea.
Case in point: When I was four or five years old, I remember my dad getting me out of the tub to dry me off.
He started drying my hair first, and I protested, "no no, dry my body off first!" Dad replied, "but your hair will just drip down, honey – you'll get all wet again." I insisted, because I was cold, and I knew that the little singular trickles from my hair wouldn't make me as cold as my whole wet body did. At that point in time, I had no idea what "evaporation" was (at least, I assume I didn't;) I just understood the idea.
We periodically have homeschooler-oriented days here at the library, and today is just such a day. One of the toddler game computers was having mouse problems. A tiny girl, barely even verbal, was on the one having problems. As I was approaching, she was trying to "fix" it herself – she had unplugged the giant, kid-sized trackball from the malfunctioning computer, and plugged it into the (working) computer next to her. I think that shows a pretty good understanding of stuff, albeit not applied correctly. 😉
She then experimentally moved the trackball, saw it wasn't working, and looked up at me with these big, giant, blue eyes.
"Mouse?" she asked.
I am beginning to understand why parents have a difficult time saying "no" to their kids.

subset: commoncrawl


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On a deceptively peaceful afternoon in the last week of July, Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah strategist, puffed on a cigar and spooned up a dish of ice cream. Three scoops: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. We were sitting in Lina's Café, on Rue Hamra, in downtown Beirut. For eleven days, the city had been shuttered, nearly empty of people and traffic, as the Israeli military pounded Beirut's southern suburbs and the south of the country, where Hezbollah, the "Party of God," had dug its tunnels and bunkers and stored thousands of Iranian-built missiles. Bridges, tunnels, roads, and apartment buildings lay in ruins, and almost three-quarters of a million Lebanese had fled their homes in fear. But for the moment, at least, Ali Fayyad ate his ice cream in peace. Some of the shops were open, and more people were out on the street, because Condoleezza Rice was in town to meet with the Lebanese leadership and everyone figured—rightly––that the Israelis would hold fire over downtown Beirut until she left.
Fayyad is a burly man in his forties. As a member of the Hezbollah politburo, he is close to the group's supreme leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and everything he told me at Lina's, about the cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others on July 12th, and the all-out armed conflict that followed, was an authorized version. "Our aim is to get Israel to return Lebanese lands"—he meant Shebaa Farms, a small strip of land occupied by Israel since 1967—"and to release three of our prisoners," Fayyad said. "One of the prisoners has been held for almost thirty years." He was referring to Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese man who, in 1979, killed an Israeli man and his four-year-old daughter. (Another daughter, who was two, was accidentally smothered when her mother tried to keep her quiet in the crawl space where they were hiding.)
"We've made many efforts to have them returned, and have tried everything, including diplomacy, with no results," Fayyad said. "So we were left with no other choice but to kidnap Israeli soldiers. The idea was 'prisoners for prisoners.' And we have exchanged prisoners with Israel in the past."
If that really was Hezbollah's plan, it went wrong from the beginning. Tensions were already high, because of the Hamas kidnapping of an Israeli soldier in Gaza, two weeks earlier, and Israel responded with bombing raids, including one, the next day, on Beirut's airport. That night, a rocket fired from Hezbollah territory hit Haifa, and more missiles, in both directions, soon followed, resulting in casualties and the threat of regional war.
Fayyad seemed both surprised and offended by the scale of the Israeli attack, which he said Hezbollah never expected. Although Hezbollah's rockets were landing in Haifa, Nahariya, Safed, and Nazareth, he also claimed that it had been reluctant to target civilians. "First, for humanitarian and moral reasons, and, second, because when civilians are killed we come out as the losers," he said. "Far more of our people get killed than Israel's." Still, for Fayyad, the events had the logic of reprisal: Israel had hit "civilian infrastructure," and so Hezbollah fired rockets into "occupied Palestine," by which he meant all of Israel.
The past two weeks have represented a return to first principles for Hezbollah, which was founded in the early eighties, after Israel invaded Lebanon. The group became known internationally when it was accused of bombing the United States Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing two hundred and forty-one American servicemen; that was followed by attacks on Israeli targets around the world. In Lebanon, Hezbollah draws support, in the Shiite community and beyond, for its role in driving the Israeli occupation forces out of the country in 2000. Since then, Hezbollah has presented itself as a political party, gaining two posts in the Lebanese cabinet and fourteen seats in the parliament. But, rather than disarming, it bolstered its military capacity, with Iranian and Syrian help. Now that it is under siege, the contradictions of its position—as part of the Lebanese state, but also as a clandestine body that subverts it—are plainer than ever. On July 14th, Nasrallah went on television and addressed Israel directly: "You wanted an open war. We are heading toward an open war, and we are ready for it."
The Israelis, led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his novice Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, quickly shifted their aims from retrieving the soldiers to destroying, or at least crippling, Hezbollah. Hundreds of Lebanese had already been killed, most of them civilians; dozens of Israelis had been killed, about half of them civilians. As Fayyad considered these numbers, he puffed on his cigar and said that Israel, and not Hezbollah, had made the greater strategic miscalculation.
"The real battle started four days ago, when the Israelis moved their troops into Lebanon, and it became a ground war," he said. "That is the preferred situation for Hezbollah. They fought four days to take Maroun al-Ras, just one mile from the border, on very open ground, with tanks—four days." A few days after our conversation, control of Maroun al-Ras was still in dispute, and Israel was facing more resistance than expected in the village of Bint Jbail.
But Hezbollah's interests are not reducible to the conventional terms of a casualty balance sheet. Hezbollah has embedded itself deep within Lebanese society, in effect creating a state within a state, with an extensive social-service network. Even if Israel manages to dislodge Hezbollah's fighters, Nasrallah will likely remain the most powerful politician in the country, in part because the chaos of the last weeks has exposed the weakness of the government. Most of the Lebanese analysts I spoke with said they believed that Hezbollah had, on its own terms, been significantly strengthened by the conflict.
The damage to Lebanon, meanwhile, has been catastrophic. Fayyad said that he had arranged to evacuate his father from the family home in a village near the Israeli border, but he emphasized that Hezbollah's forces would not leave south Lebanon without a fight. "You must remember that the point of resistance is not to hold ground and face off in front of another position," Fayyad said. "That is classical warfare, but we are guerrillas. If the Israelis want to take the territory all the way up to the Litani River, do you think they can do it without heavy casualties?"
Fayyad finished his ice cream and stubbed out his cigar. Before we left Lina's, he said, "This doesn't mean that the battle isn't difficult for us. It is. It's painful, too. But the longer it goes on the harder it will be for them."
Across town, the talks between Condoleezza Rice and the Lebanese faltered the moment she announced that the Bush Administration would not yet press Israel for a ceasefire. "It doesn't do any good to raise false hopes," she said after a meeting with Lebanese, European, and U.N. officials in Rome two days later. "It's not going to happen. . . . I did say to the group, 'When will we learn?' The fields of the Middle East are littered with broken ceasefires."
On July 23rd, the day before Rice's visit, I'd made my way toward the cities and towns of the Shia south––Hezbollistan, as some call it. I drove from Beirut with a few photographers, taking back roads to bypass the mangled highway interchanges and bridges. The only cars we saw were racing in the opposite direction, to the relative safety of the north, usually in caravans of seven or eight. Most were packed with families, who had attached makeshift white flags to the sideview mirrors. The previous week, an Israeli missile had hit a van full of refugees, killing sixteen of them. Some drivers flashed their lights, warning us not to proceed; most passed by at high speed, the expressions on their faces grim, intent, and scared.
Approaching Tyre, we saw that a bomb had gouged out a crater, twenty feet across and twenty feet deep, in the middle of the road. Nearby, a black S.U.V. sat accordioned and empty; it had crashed into a telephone pole. From the sky came the whoosh of a fighter jet and, much closer, the whine of a drone.
We pulled over to make way for a convoy of refugees. One driver, a man wearing a white T-shirt and steering a large black Mercedes-Benz, had several frightened-looking women and children in the back seat. As he slowed down to edge past the crater, he yelled out to us, in English, "We will never go back! We must leave this country." In another car, a woman pointed to a child and said, frantically, "Down syndrome." A teen-ager poked his head out of yet another car and exclaimed wildly, "U.S. Embassy!" A muffled explosion sounded, coming from beyond the city.
Over the next half hour, several more groups of cars made the run. One had its roof caved in and one of its sides smashed; it seemed impossible that anyone could drive it, but, as it came nearer, I saw an older man behind the wheel, his body bent and his head low to one side. As he passed, he called out that he had been with a woman—"a journalist like you"—and added, "She's dead." Later that day, news reports confirmed that a twenty-three-year-old Lebanese photographer, Layal Nejib, had been killed when an Israeli missile struck near her car on the road south of Tyre.
We turned north, to a hospital in Sidon. A large group of people—men, women wearing chadors, and children—were talking and crying at once. I recognized the man in the white T-shirt who had passed us by the crater. He appeared to be in shock, walking back and forth, trembling and shouting; several men were trying to calm him down. He was soaked with sweat. Three members of his family had been wounded. I walked up to the man and said that I had seen him less than an hour before. He turned and shouted, accusingly, "You were there and I talked to you—and then they hit us!"
Near the hospital, a mosque lay in ruins. Next door was a technical college and school run by the Hariri Foundation, which was established by the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in a car bombing in February, 2005. (A preliminary U.N. report implicated Syrian intelligence; the investigation is incomplete.) One of the mosque's white domes, still intact, was propped up, bizarrely, on top of the debris. Strips of the mosque's red carpet, shredded by the explosion, hung from the branches of nearby trees.
A man approached and told me that he was a teacher at the Hariri school. I asked him why he thought the Israelis had hit a mosque, and he said, simply, "It was a Hezbollah mosque." As he led me onto the grounds, a caretaker began yelling in Arabic about "Israel" and "America," but the teacher shooed him away. I found a leaflet that had been dropped by the Israelis. It showed caricatures of Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad; Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and Khaled Mashal, a Hamas leader based in Damascus, playing flutes around an urn; from it emerged the bearded face of Nasrallah. "At your service," the caption read.
A younger man came up to me and, when we were out of earshot of others, said that Hezbollah had kept bombs in the basement of the mosque, but that two days earlier a truck had taken the cache away. It was common knowledge in Sidon, he said, and everyone was expecting the mosque to be hit. When, the previous evening, displaced people from the south had gathered on the grounds, they had been warned away.
"Everybody wants to end this Hezbollah regime, but nobody can say anything," the young man said. He told me that he had been to the United States. "I know how the people are there, what they eat and how they live and think, and we don't have anything like that here. We would like to live like that, without all this"—he waved toward the ruined mosque—"normally, the way you do." He hoped that the Israelis would be successful. When another Lebanese man came up and joined us, he stopped talking. Before we parted, I asked him if he was a Christian. He looked surprised. "No," he said. "I am Muslim. Sunni."
Sunni and Christian politicians often publicly declare their solidarity with the Shiite Hezbollah, which routinely refers to itself as a Lebanese national "resistance movement." But the sectarian fault lines have been affected by the current crisis. The population is estimated to be thirty-five per cent Christian, thirty-five per cent Shiite, twenty-five per cent Sunni, and five per cent Druze, and government posts are allocated to specific groups—the Prime Minister must be Sunni, for example. "Civil war is on everyone's mind, but it's the one thing nobody wants to talk about," an affluent Maronite Christian businessman told me over dinner at a restaurant in a Maronite enclave in the hills above Beirut. I was there with two couples—the other man, also a Christian, was a well-known former government minister—on the restaurant's terrace. Like many people with money, they had moved their families to the hills. The restaurant's sound system was playing a song by Fairouz, Lebanon's most famous singer and a national idol, whose beautiful laments evoke emotions in the Lebanese the same way that Edith Piaf once did for the French in wartime.
My hosts had been telling me, with a certain pride, how the monasteries and schools in the area had taken in thousands of Shiite refugees from the south. "This kind of thing has never happened before," the former minister said. "Most of the people from these two communities have never had this sort of contact with each other. But they have been taken in, and they are getting along." He saw it as a promising sign of "inter-communal solidarity." After all, he said, the attacks had been directed not only against the Shiites but against Lebanon's infrastructure.
Down the table, the businessman said that he wondered why, with all the resources Hezbollah had at its disposal—it receives an estimated hundred million dollars a year from Iran—it hadn't done more to protect its civilian population. "Why didn't Hezbollah prepare for this?" he said. "Where is the food, the medicines? Where are the shelters for the people? Maybe, out of this, people will begin to question why they had to suffer because of the will of one man." He meant Nasrallah.
Speaking about the Shiite refugees, who were now dependent on aid handouts, his wife asked, "What will happen when October comes and winter begins? Will they stay? Will they have homes to return to? All through the civil war, I stayed in Lebanon—I never wanted to leave—but in just two weeks they have destroyed everything we have built in the fifteen years since the war ended, and now I don't want to stay anymore. This time, I want to leave."
A moment later, a distant rumble could be heard. "Are those bombs?" she said. "Is that what I am hearing? Here?" Neither her husband nor the ex-minister acknowledged her. But then there was another, louder explosion, and she asked again.
"We are hearing Fairouz," the ex-minister said sternly, cocking a thumb toward the sound system. He said this as if to tell her, "Don't spoil the evening," but afterward he brooded, and everyone at the table sat silently, listening to the music and, unavoidably, to the explosions in the distance.
When I arrived at the Hezbollah stronghold of Haret Hreik, in Beirut's predominantly Shiite southern suburbs, it had just been pummelled, as it had every day since the bombing began. Most of the residents, who lived in concrete apartment blocks, had left. It had been risky for reporters to go to the neighborhood, both because of the Israeli bombardment and because of the remaining Hezbollah sentinels, who were tense and suspicious. But now Hezbollah was conducting a press tour of its ruins.
I found my way to the rendezvous point, at a bombed-out highway interchange, where fifty or sixty journalists had gathered—reporters, photographers, and television cameramen. An energetic young man named Hussein Naboulsi, who runs Hezbollah's press office, announced that the tour would be fast, and that no one should stray from the group. He then headed off so quickly that people had to sprint to keep up. Hezbollah men kept an eye on the sky, and on us.
We walked past entire apartment blocks that had been flattened. The streets were littered with chunks of concrete, insulation material, twisted aluminum shutters, broken glass, and dangling electrical wires, and it became difficult to walk. Naboulsi paused and waved his arms and said loudly, "You see? This is where ordinary people live. This is what the Israelis do."
In front of a row of wrecked shop- fronts, he declared, "This is revenge against Lebanon, the only country that has shown itself able to defeat Israel." We reached an open area where the buildings had been completely levelled. Naboulsi pointed to some rubble and said, "This is where the Hezbollah Media Relations office used be. Now there's no place for me to work." He claimed that, apart from this and a center for social charity, there hadn't been any Hezbollah offices around there—only civilian targets. He then led the group away from the area where, I had heard, Hezbollah's security headquarters had stood. In Beirut, many people believed that Sheikh Nasrallah was still in the neighborhood, in a bunker, although there were also rumors that he was in Damascus or at the Iranian Embassy.
Naboulsi suddenly yelled, "Jet fighters in the sky!" He urged the journalists to hurry to their cars; the tour was over.
One evening, on a rooftop balcony in the eastern-Beirut district of Ashrafieh, I met with Jamil Mroue, a secular Shiite and the editor of Beirut's English-language newspaper, the Daily Star. Mroue, a big, handsome silver-haired man of fifty-six, nursed a glass of whiskey and looked out over the sea, where two gray American destroyers were prowling the Mediterranean. After staring at the ships for a minute, Mroue began to vent his frustration.
"Even after 9/11, there is this expectation in the U.S. and Israel that some unspoken middle class is just sitting there waiting to inherit the ruins of whatever country it is that they are obliterating. But there is no calculation that, if they flatten Lebanon and Nasrallah comes out of hiding and is given a microphone to deliver a speech, he can topple governments. He has been extraordinarily empowered by this. Israel and America are still obsessed with destroying hardware. But if you do this with Hezbollah you just propagate what you want to destroy"—that is, an unmoored fighting force. "Do I want to live under Hezbollah?," he said. "No, I don't. But the same errors that the Americans made in Iraq are the ones being made here. You get rid of Nasrallah not by destroying his guns but by helping to create a sustainable society."
Mroue went on, "In the beginning, in the eighties, Hezbollah controlled the night, but by 2000 it controlled the day, even as the Israeli soldiers were huddled in their bunkers." He said that it was unfair to ask Lebanon's fragile government to do what the Israelis couldn't in their eighteen-year occupation. "Do you want to use a sledgehammer? Well, do you remember the Israeli minister who compared Arabs to lice? Try hitting lice with a sledgehammer!"
Mroue sipped his whiskey and said, "Hezbollah will most likely come out of this with its infrastructure shattered, but then comes the soapbox with the highly cerebral underdog—Nasrallah—and there will be a camera crew there from CNN or Al Arabiya, and he will go on camera and say 'Do this,' and people will."
Mroue's point of view was common not only among secular Shiites but among Christians and Sunnis who normally had little use for Hezbollah yet despaired of the effect of Israel's bombing and the Bush Administration's refusal to rein in the Olmert government.
"Before the war, probably eighty or ninety per cent of Lebanese were against Hezbollah," Mroue said despondently. "But now I'd say it's around fifty, teetering on sixty per cent—in favor." Those numbers were guesses; the breadth and depth of Hezbollah's support is one of the great uncertainties in the crisis. Mroue cited an old Saudi tribal proverb: "If you know the price of a man's ransom, kill him." The ransom was the price that would be exacted by the slain man's tribe in revenge for his death. "In other words, if you know what the costs will be for your actions, and you can afford them, go ahead," Mroue said. "But here, who knows what the price of the ransom is?"
Hussein Rahal runs Hezbollah's information bureau, and, like other Hezbollah officials, he had gone underground. I met him by prearrangement in a borrowed office in a government building. Rahal was a study in gray: he wore a gray suit, had cropped gray hair, and had a gray stubble beard. He was taking the long view. "We have lived in this situation before. All wars end, and when this one does we will be victorious, because we will stand fast, and the situation we have now will be changed. Right now, the neoconservatives, as part of their strategy to reshape the Middle East, are encouraging Israel to escalate its war against Lebanon, which means that the U.S. Administration is taking a leading part in a war, one that the American people have no say in." Rahal paused, and added carefully, "But Hezbollah does not want to cause any harm to the American people." He went on, "The U.S. runs the risk of bringing down the Lebanese state it says it wants to support. And if this happens it could take the whole region into a new stage of the conflict—and who benefits from that?
"War is always two-sided, and you must test both sides' ability to stand fast. We have weapons that we did not have in 1996. The casualties for Israel in a ground war will be very high. And we have only one choice, and that is to survive."
The broadcast facilities of Hezbollah's television station, Al Manar, were bombed––the Israelis consider it the group's most powerful propaganda arm—but it somehow managed to stay on the air. When I asked Ibrahim Mussawi, the editor of foreign news at Al Manar, about the damage the country had sustained, he said, "We've managed with thirty-five billion dollars of national debt"—Lebanon's current debt. "What will it cost to rebuild the new damage? Four, five billion? If we could manage thirty-five, then we can manage forty billion. Bad as it is, maybe some good can come out of this; maybe after this it will be the right time to settle all our problems in Lebanon, all of the 'isms' we are famous for: nepotism, corruptionism." Mussawi seemed to be suggesting that the best solution for Lebanon's ills, when the war was over, was a government led by the Party of God.
For now, it is not clear who is running Lebanon. Rice came to Beirut in part to express support for Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who came to power after the "Cedar revolution," the mass protests against Syrian interference in Lebanon that followed Hariri's murder. Siniora, a Sunni, had criticized Hezbollah, but was openly in despair about the lack of U.S. support for a ceasefire; in Rome, he called the air war "barbaric."
One politician Rice pointedly snubbed during her visit was the country's President, Émile Lahoud, a Maronite who is widely seen as a tool of Syria. I met with him at the Presidential palace a few hours before Rice arrived. He was deeply tanned, and looked like an older, fleshier version of Tony Blair.
Lahoud told me how pleased he was that I had come to Lebanon to see the "truth" of what was happening. "Unfortunately, Americans have a very erroneous picture," he said. "It's—you know, they have a very strong media. Israel is all over the world."
He spoke vehemently about the "infamy" of the Israeli attacks. "The Israelis said it was because of the taking of two hostages. Well, it is not true. They want to break the infrastructure, because Lebanon is a very big competitor of Israel, from the touristic point of view and with anything—regional trade, finance. So the Israelis don't want Lebanon to prosper." He added, "But the most important reason is that they want to take revenge, because we liberated our land."
I asked Lahoud if he believed, as I had heard other Lebanese say, that Israel wanted to spark a civil war in Lebanon. "Yes," he said. "Israel is happy when Lebanese fight each other." He added, "Washington wants whatever Israel wants, unfortunately. For many reasons. The main one, you know"—Lahoud gave me a knowing look—"the lobby, and elections.
"Look, you can see the bombs from here," Lahoud said. He led me to the window, and we looked down at the southern suburbs. A plume of gray smoke was rising rapidly.
On July 27th—the morning after Israel lost nine soldiers in clashes with Hezbollah, and two days after its missiles hit a U.N. outpost, killing four observers—I met a Western diplomat in Beirut. He told me that, while both Hezbollah and Israel had miscalculated, Hezbollah, at this point, had the advantage. "The casualties inflicted by Israel's air campaign play right into Hezbollah's hands. Hezbollah certainly thinks it's winning. Even if it loses popularity among Druze, Sunnis, and Christians, its popularity remains high among Shiites, and for Hezbollah that's all that really counts."
Pointing to his head, he said, "In the end, the battle is between the ears. If, as a result of this, the Lebanese people get sick of Hezbollah, and if they turn on it and disarm it, that would be great." A less favorable scenario was for the fighting to end inconclusively, with Hezbollah allowed to return to its former status. Still, he said, that might at least "show the Lebanese that there are serious consequences for supporting Hezbollah."
The diplomat said that if anyone had benefitted from the confrontation, it was the government in Tehran. "Iran's role in this has been huge," he said. "I don't know what role, if any, it had in the abductions, but I think it does encourage Hezbollah's fighting on the border, and its arms shipments have been impressive. Without any cost to Iran, Lebanon is getting devastated, Israel is taking hits, and the Iranians are getting distraction from the nuclear issue. They must be very happy right now."
The degree to which Hezbollah, fortified by its sponsors in Iran and Syria, has constrained Lebanon's political dialogue was brought home to me by Nayla Mouawad, Lebanon's Minister of Social Affairs. Mouawad, a Maronite, is the widow of former President René Mouawad, who was assassinated in 1989, the main suspects being Syria or a domestic political opponent. When I asked about Hezbollah, Mouawad chose her words very carefully. "We thought we needed Hezbollah to be a part of the government, and we gave it ministries to give it confidence to join in the nation-building. We thought that we could not implement a settlement by force, but through national dialogue." Mouawad said that she wanted a ceasefire, but that afterward the Lebanese Army should assume control of the entire country. She was worried about it, though. "Divisions still exist in this country," she said. "If a comprehensive settlement is not implemented, we are going to have problems. There will be people counting their losses—and the losses are tremendous—and looking for someone to blame." She added, "Lebanon is paying the price for Syrian and Iranian interests."
She noted that the Lebanese government agreed with some of Hezbollah's demands, including the return of Shebaa farms and prisoners. "We need to convince Hezbollah that only a strong Lebanese nation and state could preserve its future as a party, as a Lebanese party—not as an armed political faction." Mouawad paused, and said, "I am very much aware that the moment we are living now may be better than the one we are going to live through."
Despite its losses, Hezbollah remains conspicuously in control in Beirut's southern suburbs. Outsiders are stopped and interrogated by men who seem to materialize out of nowhere, riding on motor scooters. A few days after the press tour, I returned to visit an underground refuge for displaced Shiite civilians; a Hezbollah official had approved the visit.
My car pulled up outside the Farms Superstore, a modern supermarket in a concrete-and-glass building. After a round of questioning, I was allowed to proceed but only in the company of a Hezbollah man, who carried a black portfolio. Like most Hezbollah men, he wore a light beard, in the Iranian fashion. He led the way down into the three-level parking garage beneath the store, a vast, clean space of rubberized gray floors and support columns. There were no vehicles in sight; instead, at every other column or so, there were Lebanese families sitting and reclining on reed mats and foam-rubber mattresses. Each family had neat bundles of blankets and plastic bags of clothing and food. A few had electric fans, and one group was gathered around a television. They were mostly women and children, with some older men and teen-age boys; I saw few men in their twenties or thirties. The Hezbollah man said that there were three hundred and sixty families in the garage—approximately two thousand people.
In one corner, children played on swings, a slide, and a small carrousel. Our escort said that Hezbollah had provided the equipment. He added that Hezbollah had set up a clinic and a pharmacy.
As we walked down to the next level, two teen-age boys, who had been squabbling, began throwing punches at one another. The escort grabbed them and sent them away with a reprimand. A few minutes later, we were approached by a young man named Ali. He held the hand of a wide-eyed girl of six or seven. He said he was from the southern town of Marjayoun. "I have been here six days," he said. "I am tired, but I'm not scared." He said that he had volunteered his services to Hezbollah, patrolling the refuge at night, "to see if anyone needs anything." Speaking of the Hezbollah leader, who the night before had made a television appearance, he said, "Sheikh Nasrallah said last night that it will last a long time. So here I am."
A middle-aged woman in a black chador came over. When I asked if she minded living underground, she smiled and said, in a gravelly voice, "It's all the same to me. If Israel and America want to do this to us, all we can do is to bear the situation, so if we have to stay underground we will. We don't mind staying here as long as the boys are O.K."—a reference to Hezbollah's fighters—"and as long as Sheikh Nasrallah is fine. We can bear anything. Death is normal to us, and, anyway, it means we'll go to heaven." She told us that four children had been born in the underground garage. Two were boys, and they had been named Waaed, which means "the promising one," and Sadeq, which means "the truthful one," "because Sheikh Nasrallah says, 'We have the promise of liberating the south.' " She added, "We don't think the Israelis will come to Beirut, but, if they do, we know what to do with them." A young pregnant woman standing next to her laughed and made lunging, stabbing motions with her hand. ♦


text: Entertainment Love and Romance 5 Great Vacation Deals for Military Families Your service can save you money on travel Share PINTEREST Email Print AleksandarNakic / Getty Images Love and Romance Relationships Sexuality Divorce Teens LGBTQ Friendship by Kim Wilson Updated March 05, 2018 To show their support and appreciation, many vacation clubs, resorts, and travel agencies offer exclusive deals to military families. Some of these resorts are exclusive to the armed forces while others offer special discounts. From Alaskan adventures to tropical vacations, there's something for any vacation you might want to take. If you're planning a family vacation, don't be limited by the resources we've listed here. If you spend a little time online, you'll discover a number of tour operators, destination resorts, and other vacation-related companies that offer significant discounts to military personnel. In some cases, discounts are open to active duty service members and families only. In others, serving in the Reserve or National Guard, or being an honorably discharged veteran will qualify you. Keep in mind that your savings don't end with travel and lodging. Don't be shy about asking for military discounts at restaurants, car rental companies, museums, amusement parks, equipment rental companies, or clothing stores. Just about any type of travel-related business might have offers that can save your family money. 01 of 05 Armed Forces Vacation Club JeremyMasonMcGraw.com / Getty Images The Armed Forces Vacation Club (AFVC, for short) offers worldwide travel deals to military families. Destinations include resorts in the U.S. and 100 other countries. From Orlando to Branson and Australia to Argentina, there's a great destination for every vacation. AFVC is primarily a "space available" (Space-A) travel resource, which can save a lot of money. The condominium stays they offer are the accommodations that are less likely to be booked. The off-season is the perfect time to travel through them, though you can still find deals during peak travel times. Also, if you're looking for a last-minute getaway, this is your go-to source. The cost is the biggest perk. Membership is free (there is a premium option) and some week-long vacations cost as little as $349 for the entire unit (not per person). They also have some nice travel planning resources and advice. To qualify, you must be an active duty or retired member of the military and that includes National Guard and Reserve personnel. Some people who work for the Department of Defense are eligible as well. Military veterans are not left out, either. AFVC runs a separate website just for you called Veterans Holidays. 02 of 05 Armed Forces Recreation Center Resorts Walt Dean / EyeEm / Getty Images The Armed Forces Recreation Center Resorts (AFRC) operates resorts in Florida, Hawaii, Germany, and Korea. Although AFRC resorts are operated by the Army's FMWR (Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation), they welcome service members in all branches and components of the U.S. Armed Forces. The resorts are high-quality, affordable, family-friendly, and located in some of the most beautiful spots in the world. They're also exclusive to military members and their families. Retirees, veterans, surviving spouses, and civilian employees of certain governmental agencies also qualify. The heart of military service is very apparent in every resort. For example, the Hale Koa Hotel on Waikiki offers a 50 percent discount for families who lost someone during active duty through the Survivors' Family Program. At the Dragon Hill Lodge in Seoul, South Korea, you'll find special offers, including some catered directly to military retirees. 03 of 05 Shades of Green Blaine Harrington III / Getty Images Shades of Green is one of the facilities operated by the AFRC. This one is located at Walt Disney World in Orlando, making it an ideal option for families. The facility, exclusive to military families, serves active duty, Reserve, Guard, retirees, and families of fallen and disabled servicemembers in all branches of the Armed Forces. They also participate in the AFRC Survivors' Family Program. Rates for the resort is based on your military rank at check-in. Shades of Green also offers discounted tickets to Orlando's theme parks and other attractions so your family can take in everything the area has to offer. 04 of 05 Seward Military Resort Bruce Yuanyue Bi / Getty Images Located in Seward, Alaska, Seward Military Resort is open year-round. You have the option of staying in the motel, a townhouse, log cabin, or yurt. RV and tent camping sites are also available. It is a fantastic choice if you're looking for a real adventure. The resort offers a variety of activities at pretty good discounts as well. These include Alaskan favorites like hiking, fishing, snowmobiling, sight-seeing, and glacier tours. If you want to go on a sled dog tour or kayak excursion, or even try out "flightseeing" from a helicopter, this is the destination for you. The resort caters to military families in all branches of the Armed Forces, including the National Guard and Reserve. Veterans with 100 percent service disability are also eligible. The eligibility list is long, so be sure to read through it before passing by this opportunity. A valid military ID is required at check-in and the rates you pay depend on your rank, with E1-E5 paying the least. Also, you can find better deals by traveling in their "winter season," which is actually September through May. 05 of 05 Royal Caribbean Cruise martypatch / Getty Images If a cruise is more your speed, you'll be happy to know that the major cruise lines also offer military discounts. Royal Caribbean, for example, has exclusive rates for military personnel as well as police and EMTs. That means you can save a good amount of cash and set sail to destinations throughout the world. For Royal Caribbean, be sure to locate the "exclusive rates" option while booking your cruise. The company does not offer a separate discounted rate section on their website. Carnival Cruise Line and Disney Cruises also offer military discounts. If you have any questions about the rates, give the company's customer service a call before booking. Continue Reading


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> Delivering on the promise of a fair, effective and independent Court > ICC and the Netherlands > Permanent Premises of the Court
Permanent Premises of the Court
The International Criminal Court is currently housed in interim premises on the eastern border of the city of The Hague in The Netherlands. The host state, The Netherlands, is providing the building known as the Arc free of charge until 2012. The interim premises do not fulfil the Courts requirements in terms of office space and security in the long term, and therefore the Court is scheduled to relocate to new permanent premises in 2015.
The permanent premises are to be built on the site of the Alexanderkazerne, a former military barracks complex on the outskirts of The Hague near Scheveningen. The site is provided free of charge by the Host State.
Architectural Design Competition
A worldwide architectural competition was launched in February 2008 to find a design for the permanent premises. 170 candidates from 32 countries took part. A Jury made up of representatives of the ASP, the Court, the municipality of The Hague and architectural experts was convened to judge the entries. By ASP resolution, the Coalition participated as an observer on the Jury, issuing a statement CICC Statement to Premises Architectural Competition Jury on the importance of the process. Three prizewinners were selected by the Jury in October 2008 and at the Eighth Assembly of States Parties in November 2009, a decision was taken requesting the Project Board to finalize the negotiations, including on the terms and conditions of the contract, with Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects (Denmark).
Permanent Premises The Design
The new premises of the International Criminal Court will consist of six connected building volumes including a larger Court Tower. For more information on the main characteristics of the design, please visit the ICC webpage on the Permanent Premises.
Project Phases
In 2011, the preliminary design of the permanent premises was approved and the project has now entered its final design phase. The construction phase of the project is scheduled to commence in 2012 and the foreseen end of the construction phase is mid-2015.
Negotiations and delays in the design process have led to the Courts delayed relocation into the permanent premises (2015 at the earliest). The additional time period of occupation of the interim premises will mean additional rental and inflationary costs which will have to be borne between 2012 and 2015.
The budget for the permanent premises project is 190 million. States Parties have each been allocated a share of this budget. A Trust Fund dedicated to the construction of the premises was established at the sixth ASP session in 2007. It is to be funded through voluntary contributions from governments, international organizations, individuals, corporations, or other entities.
Oversight Committee
The Oversight Committee on Permanent Premises (OC) was established by resolution at the sixth ASP session in December 2007. The OC is a standing subsidiary body of the ASP and provides strategic oversight to the project. Since the seventh ASP session, the OC has led the discussions on permanent premises by monitoring negotiation and design processes, as well as the management and financing options for the construction project. In 2011, Mr. Roberto Bellelli (Italy) took over the role of Chairperson of the Oversight Committee from Mr. Martin Strub (Switzerland).
Project Directors Office
The Project Directors Office is responsible for the day-to-day management of the project. The Project Directors office was established by resolution at the sixth ASP session in December 2007. As of June 2011, the Project Manager is Mr. Neil Bradley (UK). The Project Manager has final responsibility for the overall management of the project and reports to the ASP through the Oversight Committee.
For more information on this issue and on the Coalition Team on Premises, please contact Matthew Cannock on [email protected].


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Got to shoot for Narval New York's show at Globe Fashion Week. It was my first time up in the new Freedom tower. The views are so breathtaking! Such a great night of incredible people.
Producer: Raymond Casas @casa.nyc // MUA: Josephine @silvernoir and Belinda Ni @belindani_makeup // hair: Jenna Iva Wimmerstedt @ivainsane


text: Once in a while, an architect gets a call for the dream job. Several years ago, Graham Greene, a principal with Oglesby-Greene Architects, got that call. The client wanted a timeless home built on a beautiful lot that would capture its natural setting Green went above and beyond, creating an architectural icon at 40 Braewood Place in Glen Abbey. Every iconic home needs a name, so we're christening this estate the Glen Abbey Glass House.


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The Metropolitan Police Department arrested a man suspected of assaulting two transgender individuals, also described as members of the Latino LGBT community, shortly after the incident on Saturday, March 13.
According to a report released Monday, March 15, by Sgt. Carlos Mejia, who heads MPD's Special Liaison Units (SLU), police were called to 14th and Sheperd Streets NW on Saturday. There they found two "transgender individuals," one of whom suffered injuries from the attack and received medical treatment.
"The investigation further revealed that the suspect attacked the complainants because of their gender identity," Mejia says in the report, adding that the suspect was charged with bias-related assault with a dangerous weapon.
The victims were attacked with a "metal pole."
Local activist José Gutierrez, president of the Latino GLBT History Project, confirmed that one of the victims was Latino, and that both victims were transgender women.
"The trans community that I have spoken to about this are really concerned about what happened," Gutierrez says.
Joe Montoni, co-chair of Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), said the incident confirms what GLOV has been hearing from activists within the Latino community.
"[V]iolence against transgender people in that area is on the rise," Montoni said in an e-mail to Metro Weekly responding to reports of the Petworth neighborhood attack.
"I urge all members of the trans community to report any incidence of harassment or assault and to be vigilant in their personal safety."
Kelly Pickard, GLOV's other co-chair, says this recent incident "underscores the concerns we have expressed from the outset about the reorganization of the GLLU regarding the need for open communication with community groups like GLOV."
GLOV is hosting a meet and greet with MPD officers trained in services provided by the city's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU) on Thursday, March 25.
"Education and awareness are important parts of staying safe," Pickard adds, "and as D.C.'s community-based advocate for anti-violence, GLOV can be a resource to both the community and the MPD if and when incidents are reported and incident-related information is shared with the community."
GLOV hosts a meet-and-greet event with the officers of the Metropolitan Police Department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU), 6-8 p.m., The Center, 1810 14th St. NW. thedccenter.org.


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Vittoria Morsa G Plus TNT Tire - 29in
Select style & size:Select options
- Anthracite, TNT G+, 29x2.3sale $33.99
Tech Specs
Just fly.
Step up and drop in on the Vittoria Morsa G Plus TNT 29in Tire. With an audacious open tread and sharp, squared-off knobs, this tire provides an abundance of grip for any enduro or downhill shred session in a wide range of conditions. The knobs also feature ramped leading edges to reduce rolling resistance when you're doing the work instead of gravity.
The Morsa G Plus incorporates Vittoria's TNT casing, which is compatible with both tubes and sealant-based tubeless systems and reinforced with a Kevlar bead and sidewall protection. This tire also boasts the revolutionary new G+ Isotech compound, utilizing graphene within the compound mix to reduce rolling resistance and overall weight, increase durability, and improve grip in wet weather compared to tires without the G+ Isotech compound.
- Fast rolling tire for trail riding and enduro
- Open tread design works well for dry and loose conditions
- Ramped leading edges minimize rolling resistance
- Curved siping provides maximum tactile grip
- Graphene-infused rubber compound improves durability
- Sidewall protection resists cuts and tears
- Tubeless ready, but can be used with tubes
Great value and tough
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
I use the Morsa 2.3 as my rear tire in Tucson. Most trails in the Tucson area are very loose and have a lot of sharp rocks. This tire has held up very well and gives me good traction.
I run it with 3 oz of Stanâs and at about 28 psi.
When the Morsa is on sale, grab a couple :)
Really great out front
- Familiarity: I've used it several times
150-200 miles on it so far, and it looks and feels good as new. Great front tire for an aggressive XC set up.
Love 'Em
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
These things are great for the area I ride in...Bone dry, fast running hard-pack with occasional rock garden and sharky toothed tech sections. They run fast and punch above their weight class in toughness. They are not going to excel in mud or anything exceptionally loose. What they do do well is go fast and rip berms in dry, hard conditions. Excellent rear tire, pretty durn good front tire. All-in-all, a great all around, do everything, go-fast tire for trail riders.
Solid rear tire
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
I've got about 3 months of hard use as a rear on socal hard pack, its showing some wear which is why I'm back here shopping. I'm a big fan of the performance in the rear but I'll be honest I probably wouldn't use it as a front (I do like the 2.4 Goma as a front). Much like the Goma is like a less aggressive DHF, the Morsa is like a less aggressive and faster rolling version of a High roller. So, it's versatile and predictable and has nice volume, it's noticeably larger than a 2.3 high roller.
Grip for days!
- Familiarity: I've put it through the wringer
This has become my favorite front tire this year; have been using in my XC bike, and am extremely impressed by the amount of grip, especially when leaning the bike over.
I would recommend this as a great trail or rear enduro tire.


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'Lucky': To Harry Dean Stanton, with love
Harry Dean Stanton, who died Sept. 15 at age 91, was an esteemed character actor who could play cantankerous or melancholy or plain idiosyncratic, all in unforgettable ways. It's hard to imagine a better send-off for the gaunt-faced performer than "Lucky," in which he portrays a Stantonesque codger living in a tiny desert town who must come to terms with his mortality.
The movie's nonagenarian hero is named Lucky, but make no mistake about it: he is, in large measure, Stanton himself, and the film borrows from the actor's life and career as it recounts Lucky's unvarying daily routine, with glances at some of the bigger questions that confront us all.
Viewers who know Stanton's extensive body of work — including "Paris, Texas" (one of his rare leading roles), the original "Repo Man," "Wild at Heart" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (and other Westerns) — will relish spotting references. What others will make of "Lucky" I can't even guess, but I hope they will sense that first-time director John Carroll Lynch, himself a character actor of some accomplishment, and some familiar faces that pop up in the movie were motivated to participate by love and respect for the actor.
Lucky's desert shack, style of dress and laconic affect all scream "cowboy," and he is indeed a rugged individualist, albeit one whom advanced age has reduced to a fairly simple circuit of activities. He gets out of bed looking every day of his 90 years, does some stretches, and strolls to the diner to drink coffee, wrestle with the crossword puzzle and engage in some terse conversation with the friendly proprietor (Barry Shabaka Henley).
On the way home, he stops for cigarettes and milk (which he seems to live on), spends the afternoon watching TV game shows, and at night toddles off to the tavern for a Bloody Maria and the companionship of the regulars (including the owner and her boyfriend, played with gusto by Beth Grant and James Darren). He's a crusty old cuss, but he softens a bit when he encounters his best buddy, played by none other than David Lynch (no relation to "Lucky's" director), who had cast Stanton in several films and considered the actor a dear friend.
Howard, Lynch's character, is thrown when his ancient pet tortoise, named President Roosevelt, wanders off among the cacti. Lynch is pretty good at this kind of drollery, and he's not the only actor here who registers strongly in a smaller role: Others include Ron Livingston as a lawyer; Ed Begley Jr. as the doctor who examines Lucky after a mysterious fall; and Tom Skerritt as a veteran who swaps World War II stories with Lucky.
This is a film that takes its time, and why not? At his age, it's a little late for our hero to be in a rush about anything, and even his doctor advises him not to bother giving up cigarettes. We are free to enjoy at leisure the movie's many small delights, the most moving of which is when Lucky, unexpectedly attending the birthday party of a Mexican American boy, surprises everyone by rendering a beautiful song in Spanish (in real life, Stanton was a talented musician and singer).
A couple of other odd moments to savor: Lucky, seeking a crossword answer, reads a dictionary definition of "realism" that's perfectly to the point. And listen as he plays "Red River Valley" on the harmonica. Either one is a great way to remember Harry Dean Stanton.
Walter Addiego is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Drama. Starring Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, Ron Livingston, Ed Begley Jr., Tom Skerritt, Beth Grant, James Darren. Directed by John Carroll Lynch. (Not rated. 88 minutes.)


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It was a week that saw some of the worst examples of government collusion with property developers, staggering indifference to real concerns over children's welfare and, just to cap it off, a nasty piece of political revenge.
Even by the dismal standards set by the Leung Chun-ying administration, the last week of August has come to resemble a perfect storm.
It is hard to pinpoint the center of this storm, but anxious parents with children going back to school will have no doubt where it lies.
Thanks to an initiative by two schools, working without government assistance, lead poisoning has been discovered in their water supply.
The obvious response, given the sensitivity of this matter, would have been for the administration to launch its own citywide testing of water in schools.
However, on Thursday it wheeled out a long line of second-tier officials (their bosses remained out of sight) to announce that widespread testing could not be done for all the usual reasons that come under the category of it being too bothersome, but in case this level of indifference was deemed to be insufficient, one of the bureaucrats had the temerity to explain that testing would only cause "unnecessary alarm".
Yes, he actually accused Hong Kong parents of unnecessarily worrying about their children's health after two months of a lead-poisoning scandal that has been bungled and bungled again by an administration that initially thought it could get away with pinpointing the blame for the whole affair on one single plumbing subcontractor.
Instead of conducting water tests, the government will provide water filters for schools built after 2005 — in other words, for less than 10 per cent of Hong Kong's schools.
Private kindergartens, where 167,000 children are schooled, will have to fend for themselves.
So far, so very bad, but meanwhile, by the day, new discoveries are made of water supply contamination in public housing estates.
The government response is to whine about the lack of resources to tackle the problem.
New World empire
However, resources can, apparently be found, for accommodating the wishes of one of Hong Kong's biggest property development companies.
In 2004, the government scandalously handed over control of the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront to New World Development Co. Ltd. (00017.HK), which then created a tacky "Avenue of the Stars" to draw visitors into its adjacent properties.
Apparently this did not satisfy New World's appetite for control of the waterfront, so it applied to extend its empire eastwards.
As ever, a mock public consultation exercise was held, but its results were not up to standard, because practically no one liked the idea of handing over this iconic part of Hong Kong's landscape to the property developer.
The exercise was thus ignored, and the plan was rubber-stamped by the weasels who populate the Town Planning Board.
This was followed by a flurry of almost unbelievable government explanations for the decision to give New World a new management contract lasting until 2035.
Among the explanations advanced, which threaten to give satire a bad name, are that New World has done a great job so far, that there was no need for a competitive tender because this was a not-for-profit undertaking and that — don't laugh too loud — the Leisure and Cultural Services Department will set up an advisory committee with "experts and community personalities" to help manage the project.
Apparently, New World has become a born-again non-profit organization, and it never entered the heads of the company's management that the adjacent buildings it is busy putting up will in any way benefit from the project.
And, in case satire was not enough to cap off this week, the Department of Justice came up with that dish best served cold – otherwise known as revenge.
Justice delayed
On Thursday, three prominent student leaders were charged with offenses allegedly committed 11 months ago at the outset of the Occupy protests.
Only the willfully blind will seriously believe that politics has played no role in this matter.
The timing, nature of the charges and their selective nature wreaks of political manipulation by a regime that had resolved to ensure that the biggest challenge to its authority should not go unpunished.
This is not to say unlawful acts were not committed during the Occupy protests, but when they involved police beating up a protester, no charges have been laid.
Selective application of the law is a sure way of undermining rule of law.
Moreover the old legal adage "justice delayed is justice denied" has a real meaning here, as the timing of these cases was clearly maneuvered to suit a political agenda.
What a week!
– Contact us at [email protected]
Water contamination saga reveals government insensitivity
Why a proactive approach to everything is a bad idea
Hypocrisy, evasion, incompetence and indifference


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What is a Chapel Designer? We get asked this question a lot! In a nutshell, a Chapel Designer is a member of an international collective of wedding and event floral designers called The Chapel Designers. Under the direction of founder Holly Heider Chapple, the organization not only educates, supports, and mentors creatives, but also encourages individual designers to be his or her most authentic self.
While we can answer the question based on Holly Chapple's vision, we thought it might be more helpful to pose the question to individual Chapel Designers and get their perspectives. Here's what a few of them had to say:
My definition of a CD has definitely been redefined in the last 9 months. A CD is the glue, the love, the support that held me together, lifted me up and inspired me during my battle with breast cancer. I can sincerely say that being a CD is what gave me the peace of mind that my business would not fail while I was forging this battle. Without the love and hands on support of my CD family, I'm not sure my business could have sustained viability. -Parie Donaldson, Parie Designs, Amarillo, Texas
I think a Chapel Designer is a florist/floral designer that loves their job so much they never want to stop learning, growing and improving this industry. That's what I see in this tribe! -Jil Peterson, Stables Flower Co, Coleraine, United Kingdom
They are magical, wonderful unicorns in the business of floral design. Extremely supportive and your biggest cheerleaders. -Ozzie Gromada Meza, Gromeza Floral Design Studio, Chicago, Illinois
We are a community of incredibly talented florists who inspire and raise each other up. We want to elevate the industry and expand our own knowledge and skills. Being a part of this group has most certainly pushed me farther both in creativity and in terms of business sense. It's an incredible resource and I have met some truly amazing people who I now consider to be friends, and people who I can call if I need an extra set of hands! -Blair Roberts, Sweet Blossoms LLC, Frederick, Maryland
For me being a Chapel Designer is about family ...the talent, support and experience in this group is unparalleled -we're all family, we're here for one another in all aspects, we help one another with our business needs as well as supporting one another in our personal lives and Holly makes sure each one of us feels her love. It's our safe place in this tough industry. - Lisa Radu, Aspen Florist, Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada
I think Chapel Designers are dedicated to "doing better" and running a business with integrity, professionalism and on-point mechanics & technique. We also share our knowledge freely with one another without fear of competition. -Alison Ellis, Floral Artistry, Jericho, Vermont
For me it's a safe place (my flower family) to ask questions, share and grow with like minded floral designers who are seeking quality designs while running profitable businesses with integrity & professionalism. -Janelle Gerestein, Flowers by Janie, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Being a CD is what brought me back and pushed me past my cancer. It gave me the confidence to re-launch my life in the direction that I love. It honored my inner warrior and helped me transition my strength back to living. It is a constant source of confidence, both professionally and personally. Such a unique energy. It's being part of a team. Having colleagues and coaches helps me take the risks necessary to run a business and be creative. It is really a family. -Lindsay Diminick, Yellow Twist Floral Design, Scarborough, Maine
As the sole CD in South Africa, the Chapel Designers have become my beautiful floral family - many of whom I have never met -but yet they all have a beautiful desire to assist their fellow CDs. I am in my 3rd year of being a CD and I can promise it is life changing, uplifting, and inspiring. As with any organisation, the culture comes from the top and I truly believe that the CD group is a massive testament to the huge heart of Holly Chapple and her love for her industry and peers/colleagues. -Coral Shortt, Green Goddess Flower Studio, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
A Chapel Designer is - or is seeking to become - an artist who uses flowers as their creative medium. They're open to traditional rules and techniques, but also willing to break them. There is strength in numbers and joining the CD community encourages floral creatives to flourish - personally and professionally. Floristry can be an isolating industry, however the CDs embrace you, emulating Holly, on every level! -Sarah Allen, Love at First Sight Styling, Watford, United Kingdom
For me being a CD is about altruistic creativity and support -Nadia Di Tullio Steele, Nadia Di Tullio Flowers, Ashbourne, Derby, United Kingdom
Validation, support and encouragement... with a little crazy thrown in. It is having people who understand your vocation and lifestyle but on a global scale who you might not have even met! -Sarah Richardson, Leafy Couture, Otley, United Kingdom
Being a CD is a journey of discovery. -Yvonne Ramsay, Ollie-Rose & Blu, Killearn, Scotland
We are family. Special family. So many good gifts shared by all. We have similar ideals and share in the love of all things beautiful. Flowers, tablescapes, creativity, china, ribbon, relationships! We are a tribe. We are diverse and like minded. We are magical and mystical, and somehow, woven together in ways that are difficult to describe. Yet, time after time I feel a connection with CDs beyond any other relationships I've known. And it feels safe and cozy and fun and funny and exciting and thrilling, changing all the time. Being a CD has never, for me, been a disappointment . And I've never met a CD that I didn't like! That's a lot of good stuff!! -Rebecca Raymond, Rebecca Raymond Floral, Vashon Island, Washington
Learning heart. Listening to my heart. Designing from it.
I have the formalities with coming from AIFD. But, these people over here design with their souls. It's not something that's easily trained. -Gina Thresher, From The Ground Up Floral, Kent, Washington
I've been thinking a lot about this for the last few weeks as it's all coming together for me on so many levels - and I know that the daily inspiration that I find with these creative, business savvy people has changed my life. And, I don't mean just my professional life. It's a blessing. I mustered the courage to reach out and become a Chapel Designer after volunteering at Flower House in Detroit. My role was minuscule but everyone was incredibly kind, happy, and there was such a collaborative spirit. Only in retrospect did I learn that most of the people that I was interacting with were Chapel Designers. And, so it goes on... Thank you for your giving spirit. Thank you for your kindness and your brutal honesty. Thank you for your inspiration. It's given me the confidence and knowledge to move forward in my business, contribute to my family and have more confidence in myself and my endeavors. -Julia Girdler, The Petal Lady LLC, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
A kind ear, listening heart. A tool. An open refuge of giving and receiving. A reservoir of knowledge and spirit of enthusiasm and genuine, honest, kind good will within the floral industry. -Christy Hulsey, Colonial House of Flowers, Statesboro, Georgia


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You may recall that President Obama's only real life experience before becoming a politician was his work for the [criminal] "community organizing" group ACORN. It has now been revealed that there are substantial and significant links between the Occupy protests and former ACORN activists.
UPDATE on ACORN involvement in the Occupy Movement.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
ACORN linked to Occupy movement
Posted by Dennis at 13:32
Labels: ACORN, Barack Obama--President, Occupy protests, The Left
1 comment:
- professor ed said...
Sort of gives another meaning to the old expression:
"the acorn does not fall far from the tree".
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Will Vatican's Chinese Site Be Blocked?
Some Church sources and diplomats said they feared the site could be blocked by Chinese authorities, as has been the fate of other websites.
The Vatican said on Monday the Chinese version of the website www.vatican.va will be launched on Thursday. It already has versions in seven other languages.
The pope's speeches and other content will be available in both traditional and simplified Chinese characters.
China's communist government does not allow its Catholics to recognize the Pope's authority and forces them to be members of a state-backed Catholic organization.
China's 8 million to 12 million Catholics are split between the officially approved church and an "underground" one loyal to the Pope.
While the Vatican statement said it hoped the site would be used by "Internet users from throughout the world," Church sources and diplomats said they feared the site would be blocked.
"As long as the website does not post anything the government objects to, it will be OK," said Father Bernardo Cervellera, head of Asia News, a web-based religious news agency that specializes on China.
"But once they start talking about the nomination of bishops or Tibet or the Dalai Lama, it will be blocked just as ours has been quite often," Cervellera told Reuters.
China regularly blocks sites it finds unsavory, particularly those critical of the Communist Party.
Access to the New York Times website and Chinese versions of the BBC, Voice of America and Hong Kong media Ming Pao News and Asiaweek have been blocked in the past.
China, which eased its rein on the Internet before and during the Beijing Olympics in August, has said that it is within its rights to block websites with content illegal under Chinese law.
Beijing's relations with the Vatican have alternated in recent years between ice and signs of thaws.
Last year a bishop from Hong Kong represented Pope Benedict at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in August and in May China's national orchestra played for the Pope at a concert in the Vatican.
But in October, China denied permission for Catholic bishops to travel to Rome for a Church meeting.
Benedict has made improving relations with China a main goal of his pontificate and hopes diplomatic ties can be restored.
China says before restoring ties, broken off two years after the 1949 Communist takeover, the Vatican must sever relations with Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province.


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5 big leeks, outer leaves trimmed back, washed
Olive oil
3 good knobs butter, divided
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
A few sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked
A small wineglass white wine
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pint good-quality vegetable or chicken stock
12 slices ham, preferably Parma
2 (8-ounce) packages fresh lasagne sheets
All-purpose flour, for dusting
2 handfuls freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving
For the Pangrattato:
1 small handful dried porcini mushrooms
1/2 ciabatta bread, preferably stale, cut into chunks
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 sprig fresh rosemary
Halve the leeks lengthways and cut at an angle into 1/2-inch slices. Heat a wide saucepan, add a splash of oil and a knob of butter, and when you hear a gentle sizzling add the sliced garlic, thyme leaves and leeks. Move the leeks around so every piece gets coated. Pour in the wine, season with pepper and stir in the stock. Cover the leeks with the slices of Parma ham, place a lid on the pan and cook gently for 25 to 30 minutes. Once the leeks are tender, take the pan off the heat.
To make the pangrattato:
Whiz the mushrooms and bread with a pinch of salt and pepper in a food processor until the mixture looks like bread crumbs. Heat a generous glug of olive oil in a frying pan. Add the garlic cloves and the rosemary and cook for a minute, then fry the bread crumbs in the oil until golden and crisp. Keep shaking the pan – don't let the bread crumbs catch on the bottom. Drain on paper towels, discard the rosemary and garlic and allow the bread crumbs to cool.
Bring a big pan of salted water to the boil. Lay the lasagne sheets on a clean working surface and sprinkle with a little flour. Place the sheets on top of each other and slice into 1/2-inch strips. Toss through your fingers to shake out the pappardelle, then cook in the boiling water 2 minutes or until al dente.
Remove the Parma ham from the saucepan, slice up and stir back into the leeks. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then stir in the Parmesan and the rest of the butter. Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the cooking water, and add the pasta to the leeks. Add a little of the cooking water if need be, to give you a silky, smooth sauce. Serve quickly, sprinkled with some pangrattato, extra Parmesan and any leftover thyme tips. Serve the rest of the pangrattato in a bowl on the side.


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We knew the irritation ringing in our ears of the 'LeBron going back to Cleveland' narrative would be strong. The Cavaliers winning the first pick earlier this week, however, has transferred that attention meant for the offseason to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Category Archives: NBA Playoffs
Miami Heat: Game 2 Stats of Significance
Bearing a striking resemblance to the third quarter from Game 4 of the 2012 semifinals, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade combined to stifle any hope of Indiana taking full control of the series.
Had the dynamic duo not come through then, the Heat would have faced a 3-1 deficit. This time around, it would have been a 2-0 deficit, with 94% of teams previously going on to win series' when they win the first two games.
Wade and James wouldn't let that happen. In a critical fourth quarter, which featured Miami outscoring Indiana 25-20, Wade scored ten points on a perfect 5-for-5 from the field, while LeBron dropped 12 points on 4-for-7 shooting.
Norris Cole's three, off a LeBron assist, with 10:45 left were the only Heat points in the quarter not scored by either Dwyane or LeBron.
Those two alone combined to outscore Indiana in the final frame. And with 7:18 left and the Pacers holding a four-point lead, it became the LeBron James show.
James, who had struggled to score ten points going into the final frame, would score nine consecutive Heat points, and then assist on a Wade dunk to give his team an 80-75 lead with 3:17 left.
For all the early criticism he was bludgeoned with for most of the contest, LeBron still ended with a well-rounded 22 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 blocks, and 2 steals on 50% shooting. He struggled from beyond the arc, but hit his only three of the night to cut Indiana's four-point lead to one.
For as much attention as Lance Stephenson received for his five minute stretch of uncharacteristic brilliance, Wade was better, finishing with 23 points on 63% shooting, and also saving his best for last.
Stephenson, who had 23 points going into the fourth, scored two points in the final 12 minutes. You can thank Norris Cole, as well as the law of averages, for that.
Things certainly look your way when the uncontested shots you're taking are actually falling.
While this wasn't the case in Game 5 against Brooklyn or Game 1 against Indiana, it was in Game 2, with the Heat converting 58% of their 31 uncontested attempts.
Norris Cole, who finished with 11 points and his both of his three-point attempts, was a perfect 3-for-3 on uncontested shots. Mario Chalmers also hit both of open threes, while Dwyane Wade supported the squad with 4-for-6 shooting on uncontested shots.
Miami's 40% shooting from three marked the first time they've shot better than 34% from three since Game 2 against Brooklyn. Bosh and James combined to shoot 2-for-9, but it was the supporting cast who led the way, with Chalmers and Cole combining to shoot 4-for-4.
Even Shane Battier entered the fray, knocking down one of his two threes.
The Pacers, meanwhile, who shot 60% on uncontested shots in Game 1, were only 41% this time around. David West and Paul George were a combined 4-for-12, while Luis Scola went 0-for-3.
Lance Stephenson and George Hill were the only players to thrive on their open makes for Indiana, going 8-for-14.
Indiana was no better on contested looks, shooting 38%, while Miami shot 44%. However, they still managed to shoot near 50% on 19 three-point attempts, converting on better than 40% of their threes for a second consecutive game.
The Pacers were a middle-of-the-pack shooting team in the regular season. One has to wonder how much they continue to rely on George Hill going 3-for-5, Stephenson going 2-for-4, and Rasual Butler going 2-for-3.
The Heat were a travesty on the defensive boards last night. Although they somehow won the rebounding battle, they were annihilated going after defensive rebounds, and gave up 16 offensive rebounds, including eight alone to Roy Hibbert.
Roy had more offensive rebounds than the entire Heat team. He also had 12 points to go along with his 13 rebounds, furthering the now well-known anomaly of Roy Hibbert going completely insane when he plays the Miami Heat.
Naturally, it was his first double-double of the playoffs, and first since March 21st. The eight offensive rebounds was also a season-high.
But his numbers hardly measured up to that of Chris Andersen's, who once again proved he deserved more recognition for Sixth Man of the Year. In 29 minutes, Birdman brought down a team-high 12 rebounds, the third-most he had this year.
Although he only scored three points on 1-for-4 shooting, he was a game-high plus-25 and was instrumental, alongside fellow bench member Norris Cole, in Miami's fourth quarter run.
His 28% rebounding percentage was a game-high, as was his net-rating of 49.3 and defensive rating of 77.4.
In a season where apathy and malaise was a repetitive theme, Birdman has been the lone consistent source of energy, even at the age of 36, the second-oldest on the team behind Ray Allen.
It's for that exact reason why he shouldn't start, either. Miami needs that energy off the bench, and also doesn't need him picking up cheap, early fouls against Roy Hibbert, either.
Miami Heat: Game 1 Stats of Significance
54 points in the paint
As poor as the Miami Heat played on the defensive end, their offense beat up on the Indiana Pacers' interior as it rarely has before, dropping 54 of their 96 points in the paint.
56% of their total points came from the painted area, with both LeBron James and Dwyane Wade scoring at least 59% of their points in the paint. Chris Andersen also thrived in the paint with 14 points on 6-for-7 shooting and a pair of free throws.
Miami shot an impressive 51% against Indiana, the best field goal percentage they've given up in these playoffs, and was getting plenty from their two slashers. Unfortunately, their shooters, for a fourth straight game, shot well below 35%, despite, according NBA.com/stats, getting a fair number of open looks.
The Heat shot 44% on uncontested shots, just days after nearly dropping Game 5 against Brooklyn thanks to 34% shooting on uncontested looks. Lowlights from Game 1 included 1-for-7 shooting from Chris Bosh, who struggled heavily finding his stroke from beyond the arc, and Mario Chalmers going 1-for-5, including a pair of wide-open threes from the same corner.
The Heat were 0-for-6 overall on corner threes. LeBron James, 1-for-5 from beyond the arc, shot a pedestrian 4-of-8 on uncontested shots.
Meanwhile, the Pacers, who only took 21 uncontested shots to Miami's 36, shot 57%, with Lance Stephenson, David West and Paul George combining to shoot 9-for-14.
Plain and simple, the Heat are going to need their shooters to step up if they want a shot at winning another title. Norris Cole, Ray Allen, Udonis Haslem, Mario Chalmers, Shane Battier, James Jones, and Chris Bosh all had their moments in the past three playoff runs with their shooting.
The same obviously applies to this season. LeBron James already had to score 49 points for a below average shooting effort in Game 4 against Brooklyn. They can't rely on him to be better than great every night. At some point, more of his passes need to turn into assists.
For a moment there, the Heat looked poised to begin shooting the ball at an elite level after such an uncharacteristic year from beyond the arc. Expectations certainly rose as the Heat crushed Charlotte with 43% shooting from three, with Bosh, Chalmers, Cole and Jones all shooting 44% or better.
The shooting kept up in Games 1 and 2 against Brooklyn, but has petered off with four consecutive games of sub-34% shooting. Miami shot less than 36% overall against Brooklyn, but, as stated prior, it nearly cost them Games 4 and 5.
Miami opened up the Conference Finals with 26% shooting in Game 1. Although Indiana has held the Heat's three-point shooting at bay over the course of the season, Miami has also failed to capitalize on open looks in just about every meeting.
Needless to say, it'll be tough to see the Heat's uncontested shooting percentage continue to teeter around 40%.
26 bench points
More strong numbers from Miami, but from too few of names. Miami may have gotten 26 points from its bench, but all of those points were scored by two players, with Andersen scoring 14 and Ray Allen scoring 12.
Ray was the only Heat player with more than one three-point conversion, although he was only 2-for-6.
Norris Cole and Udonis Haslem were the only other bench players to play more than ten minutes, but both responded with no points to contribute to the effort. James Jones missed his only shot attempt and went scoreless in four minutes.
After hitting at least one three-pointer in his first seven playoff games this year, Cole has gone scoreless on 0-for-8 shooting in the past three games. He also has only two assists and is losing trust from the coaching staff, playing less than 15 minutes in the past three games with the team electing to go without a point guard entirely for stretches.
By comparison, Norris Cole scored a point in all but two games of last year's playoffs, and those came in the NBA Finals. He was imperative in Miami's semifinals victory over Chicago, shooting 9-for-11 from three, and played well in the Game 7 victory over Indiana, contributing eight points and four assists.
Without Mike Miller, and with Michael Beasley perpetually in the doghouse (as he should be), it's going to be up to guys like Cole to step into a role that asks of him to occasionally make threes and make wise decisions.
Shane Battier, who will likely come off the bench next game in favor of starting Udonis Haslem, will also be asked to shake the malaise of the entire season. After failing to shoot 35% from three this season, the second worst 3-point percentage of his career, Battier has had his playoff moments already, but not nearly on a consistent basis.
He only has one made three-pointer, on only three attempts, in the past four contests, and is becoming increasingly more hesitant when it comes to shooting. Too many times has he already dribbled or passed out of a feasible shot, which only leads to a hitch in the team's offense on that possession.
Even if the Heat aren't shooting well, you have to believe something has to got to give in the near future. The team that was mediocre all year shooting from three, after finishing second in 3-point percentage last year, will need guys like Battier and Cole to begin making their shots if they want to get through Indiana, and then face off with the well-balanced, well-oiled machine of San Antonio.
Miami is still reluctant to unleash James Jones for too long to fully scrap any Battier minutes.
Cole, too, has yet to lose complete trust. Although he's losing minutes, the Heat have not trotted out Toney Douglas in his place. There still hope that he'll catch fire as he has done in the playoffs many times before.
The Benevolent King: Heat Need all 49 of LeBron's to Take Control of Series
Paul Pierce asked for this. All of this.
Heat Pull Away Late, Beat Brooklyn Nets to Take 2-0 Series Lead
If you thought Game 2 would be as easy as Game 1 was, you haven't watched much Miami-based basketball.
Game 1 Playoff Recap: Miami Heat Stats of Significance
That was the Heat's points in the paint edge in their all-too-easy 21-point victory over a Brooklyn Nets team that had beaten them on all four occasions in the regular season.
Miami made a living in the paint, with nearly half of their 107 total points coming from that area. With the Nets failing to find any clear answer to guarding LeBron James, the eventual three-time Finals MVP feasted in the post, abusing the lanky Shaun Livingston, the smaller Joe Johnson, and the older Paul Pierce.
The Heat had 22 assists on their 42 makes, and shot an impressive 57% overall from the field. With the Nets attempting to match the Heat with a small lineup of their own, all the Heat had to do was feast on their individual matchups, and have constant player and ball movement until an open shot was found.
Although they were only rewarded with 16 free throws, including only a combined two between LeBron and Dwyane Wade, it had more to do with the Nets' matador defense, and their lack of a physical interior defender.
Yeah, Kevin Garnett's there, but he's 37-years-old and barely playing over 20 minutes anymore. With the only other interior presences featuring the likes of Mason Plumlee, Andray Blatche and Mirza Teletovic (seriously), Miami had open season going over or around the Nets' painfully small front line.
Ray Allen: 19 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists
The Heat couldn't afford a repeat of Ray Allen's sub-30% shooting against Charlotte in the previous round. So, to say the least, what the Heat got out of Ray Allen in Game 1 is more than they could have ever asked for.
In 26 minutes, Ray, going against his former teammates in Pierce and Garnett, dropped 19 points, outscoring the former Celtics duo by 11, and hit on four of his seven three-point attempts. It's the first time since April 6th that Ray hit four threes in a game, and only the seventh time all year he's converted four three-pointers in a game.
Three of those makes came in the second half, where the Heat outscored Brooklyn 61-43.
It's strange to say, but Ray looked as confident in his shot as I've seen this season. He took shots without hesitation and at any point he had a moment of breathing room. The prospect of going up against Pierce and Garnett in a playoff series for the first time may have spurred something.
Allen was actually the second-highest scorer in the game, trailing only LeBron and his 22 points. The 19 points he finished with was the most he's scored since dropping 25 in a March 16th win over Houston.
The Nets shot 42% from three…
and still received one of the worst losses since the All-Star break. Excluding a season-finale blowout loss to Cleveland, where most of the starters sat, the Nets previous worst loss came in a 110-81 defeat to the New York Knicks back on April 2nd.
Heat fans knew they'd be due for some frustrating shot-making by these Nets, and, sure enough, they got it.
Deron Williams hit not one, but two buzzer-beating threes, including one that was shot over Chris Andersen and banked in from about 30 feet, while Joe Johnson hit three of his own. Paul Pierce hit two, although both came in the first quarter.
Brooklyn shot 46% on 44 contested shots, with Johnson going 5-for-8, Williams going 3-for-4, Teletovic going 2-for-3, and Marcus Thornton going 3-for-6. Paul Pierce was the only perimeter player who struggled on contested shots, shooting 1-for-4.
As a team, the Nets shot 30% against the Raptors from three, and were a slightly above-average three-point shooting team in the regular season.
If the Heat continue to play defense the way they were last night, limiting Brooklyn to a paltry 11 assists on 33 makes, they'll soon see it pay off, with the Nets' contested field goal percentage sure to drop.
First Round Recap: Miami's Clean Sweep of the Charlotte Bobcats
For once, I was right on one of my predictions.
But selecting the Miami Heat in four games over the Charlotte Bobcats should have been what the consensus was predicting going into the series. Even had Al Jefferson remained healthy, the Bobcats simply didn't have the offensive firepower outside of him, and spurts from Kemba Walker, to combat the Heat's small lineup of shooters surrounding LeBron.
In an odd realization, the Heat were actually outscored by Charlotte when Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh were playing together. As a three-man lineup, their net rating of minus-9.5 and defensive rating of 107.7 points per 100 possessions actually hindered the team's effort against Charlotte.
A lot of that, however, has to do with the slow starts Miami got out to in three of their four games. The starting lineup's net rating of minus-19.4 was the worst lineup that played at least ten minutes Miami used. They only mustered 87.3 points per 100 possessions with the starting lineup, which was arguably limited by Udonis Haslem.
It was only when the bench hit the floor when the Heat were able to get things going. When Udonis, who finished the series with a team low minus-9 net rating, was on the floor, the Heat's offense stalled, and failed to get off the type of shot they could have passed into had more shooters been on the floor.
Miami's best lineup of the series featured Norris Cole, Ray Allen, LeBron James, Rashard Lewis and Chris Andersen. Those five had a net rating of plus-27.9, scoring 127.7 points per 100 possessions and giving up 99.8 points per 100 possessions.
But that was only one of four Heat lineups, among those that played at least 15 minutes together, that had a net rating of at least plus-20.4.
Haslem also had a team-low 91.6 offensive rating. By comparison, no other player on the Heat had lower than an offensive rating of 102.9, surprisingly owned by Dwyane Wade, who trailed off after a stellar Game 1.
Meanwhile, the players with the top offensive rating all came off the bench. James Jones led the way boasting an ORTG of 130.5 points per 100 possessions, while Chris Andersen finished close behind at 125 points per 100 possessions. Rashard Lewis, Ray Allen and Norris Cole rounded out the top five.
Decently impressive numbers against a Charlotte team that ranked sixth in defensive efficiency in the regular season. With the team focusing all of its attention on LeBron James, on account of there being no individual who had a chance at stopping him, the shooters thrived, but not nearly as much as LeBron did.
What a welcoming change it was to see the shooters actually make their shots. After finishing the season in the middle of the pack in three-point percentage, the Heat shot as well as they did in the 2012-13 season when they were second in the league in that category.
Although Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis struggled, and combined to hit only three of their 16 three-point attempts, it was refreshing to see Norris Cole regain some confidence lost, James Jones to get some minutes and respond with quality play, and Chris Bosh to regain the stroke he had earlier in the year.
It's only Charlotte, but guys like Cole and Bosh hitting shots is going to be huge in the long run. Ray Allen will eventually come around, because that's just what he does, but someone's going to have to replace Mike Miller when it comes to the team's shooting, and Cole, who dominated in the first two rounds of last year's playoffs, will be a necessity beyond the perimeter.
The same goes for Bosh, as he continues to push his game further and further away from the rim.
While the team shot 43% overall from three, led by Chris Bosh's 69%, Mario Chalmers' 45%, Norris Cole's 50% and James Jones's 44%, it was LeBron James that proved to be as overwhelming as we envisioned he'd be.
Without astute defender Jeff Taylor available, the Bobcats were forced to go with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, who is a good defender in his own right, but lacks the size and strength to combat LeBron. As expected, LeBron abused MKG, as well as Gerald Henderson, Chris Douglas-Roberts and whoever else was unfortunate enough to get the call from Steve Clifford, in the post, and on pick-and-rolls.
Near the end of Miami's Game 4 win, with LeBron scoring with ease over Henderson in the post, two points were as close to a guarantee every time James went into the post. It truly is remarkable when you recall just how poor LeBron's post game was as recently as the 2011 Finals, and compare it to what it has become today.
LeBron finished the series with averages of 30 points per game on 56% overall shooting and 35% three-point shooting, 8 rebounds, 6 assists and 2.3 steals per in 39.3 minutes per game. He didn't make it look difficult, either. LeBron feasted on Charlotte's lack of a sizable perimeter defender, as well as their reduced frontline.
With Jefferson already being limited, getting to the rim and scoring against the likes of Josh McRoberts and Bismack Biyombo was as easy as you could imagine for a player of LeBron's caliber.
But that's what we've come to expect from LeBron, which is why I didn't expect Miami to drop a single game of the series. As many strides as Charlotte took this season, and as much of an All-Star Jefferson appeared to be, Charlotte didn't have the all-around talent or depth to compete.
3. The JAAAAAAMES JOOOONES Show
2. LeBron gets kneed in the thigh, immediately knees Charlotte's playoff chances in the groin
1. LeBron stares into Michael Jordan's cold, envious soul


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text: I hold my hands up, I'm an immigrant. I'm living in America on an immigrant visa. I know especially in the blogging community, the word 'Expat' is thrown around a lot and I admit this is what I tend to refer to myself as, but in fact, I am an immigrant. But can you really blame me for not really using this term at the moment? Just look at the news, it has so much bad press and I debated as to whether or not I should pipe up and say my view. But as an immigrant, and especially one that blogs about the visa process, I thought surely I should show what it's like through my eyes?


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GRANTS PASS, Ore. — Everett Skinner and his family have started keeping their windows closed at night after a bear broke into their home and he fatally shot it.
C'mon — what's not to like?
Hoof it over to Facebook to join the weird news herd.
- C'mon — what's not to like?
The bear ripped off a window screen and climbed into their den Saturday night, Skinner said.
Skinner's daughter Nicole awoke at about 11:30 p.m. local time to a strange shuffling sound and was the first to spot the bruin, the Daily Courier reported. She quickly retreated to her parents' room to get help.
Everett Skinner grabbed his shotgun and went to the den, where he and the bear saw each other at about the same time. He said the animal stood up and headed toward him, so he fired.
"It didn't even faze him," Skinner said. In all, he fired his shotgun four times, killing the animal.
Skinner said he tried to donate the carcass to a wildlife rehabilitation center that takes road-killed deer, but apparently none of the animals there eat bear meat. Eventually, he used his tractor to bury the bear.
The Skinners say they don't know why the bear invaded their southwest Oregon home.
"In hindsight, you start thinking of all that could have gone wrong," Nicole Skinner said. "We were very blessed that this didn't go badly."
Family members have done what they can to clean up the den, but Skinner says they're probably going to have to replace the carpet because of the "rather bloody mess."
And they won't be sleeping with the windows open anymore.
"That's the last fresh air we're going to get at night," Skinner said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.