text:
Q: I have a significant collection of sex toys from earlier years. I'm thinking of getting rid of most of them, and it seems such a waste for them to end up in the landfill. What's an environmentally responsible way to dispose of dildos? I wish there was a place I could donate them where they could be used again. Many of them are quality silicone types, they've never been used on a person without a condom, and they've been thoroughly cleaned. I'd be happy to donate them to impoverished dildo users in need, if only I knew where to send them. —Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
A: Your question comes up frequently, RRR, and there really isn't a satisfactory answer.
In Seattle, where I live, a community tool bank recently opened in my neighborhood—but they don't collect and lend the kind of tools you're looking to donate. I've heard about dildo graveyards in other cities (spots in parks where people bury their used sex toys), but burying sex toys isn't environmentally responsible. And while high-quality dildos can be cleaned and safely reused, most people are pretty squeamish about the idea. Which is odd, considering that we routinely reuse actual cocks that have been enjoyed by others—so why not the fake ones?
But even if I can't tell you what to do with your dildos, RRR, I can tell you what not to do with them: Do not ship your used dildos to the antigovernment militia currently occupying a federal wildlife refuge in rural Oregon. After militia members asked supporters to send them supplies—via the, ahem, U.S. Postal Service—their spokesperson complained bitterly about all the dildos they were getting in the mail. So if you decide to put your used dildos in a box and send them somewhere, RRR, please make sure the address on the box doesn't read: Bundy Militia, c/o Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 36391 Sodhouse Lane, Princeton, OR, 97721.
Q: I understand that monogamy is not something people are good at—and that's fine. In fact, most of the people I know are in healthy poly or monogamish relationships. Here's the thing: I'm monogamous. Not the "I'm attracted to other people but won't act on it because it makes me uncomfortable or believe it's wrong" kind of monogamous, but the "I genuinely have ZERO desire to fuck anyone but my partner" kind of monogamous. Fantasizing about others is fun, so is looking, so is porn and role-play. There's a world of deliciously kinky, weird, and wonderful sex stuff I'd LOVE to explore until my sexy bits fall off. But I want to do those things with one partner and one partner only in a monogamous, intimate relationship.
Here's the kicker: I'd like my partner to feel the same way. I don't want someone to enter into a monogamous relationship with me if in their heart/groin they'd genuinely like to fuck other people. Am I a lost cause? Surely I can't be the only genuinely monogamous person there is? I'm 31 and still turn heads, but I worry my quest for a partner who feels as I do is impossible and a waste of my time. —One 4 One
A: You value monogamy, you want a monogamous commitment, and you want someone who feels the same. That great, O4O, and you have my full support. But you do acknowledge that fantasies about others can be fun, as can looking, as can porn (watching others) and role-play (pretending to be with others). In other words, you are attracted to other people—you just have no desire to actually fuck other people.
If you're having a hard time finding partners who want what you want—a monogamous commitment without the stress of maintaining the monogamous pretense/facade/fraud, i.e., pretending they don't at least think about fucking other people—either you're living in some sort of poly parallel universe where nonmonogamy is the default setting, or you're not giving others the same benefit of the doubt you've given yourself. You do wanna fuck other people, and you don't seem to think that disqualifies you from making, honoring, and genuinely wanting both a monogamous commitment and a monogamous sex life. (The two don't always go hand in hand.)
If you're breaking up with people for admitting to the same things you've admitted to in your question—you might think about fucking other people, but you don't want to actually fuck other people—then you're the reason your quest to find a partner has been so frustrating.
Q: I'm 33, blah blah blah, and live in a big city. I've been dating an age-appropriate person for a year and a half. Everything seemed fine (great sex, common interests and hobbies, similar work ethic, we even talked about raising children), but my partner is so damn angry and full of hate. Mostly it manifests itself in racism, and I really don't like it. He says that I "don't understand," like he's gone through experiences that would justify wholesale prejudice against entire groups of people. The passing of David Bowie has accentuated these differences between us. I want to live better and brighter, to love more, but my boyfriend just keeps hating. He's unrelentingly racist. I shouldn't have children with him—right? Better to be 33 and alone—right? This racist stuff is a deal breaker—right? DTMFA—right? —Racist Anger Gradually Ends Relationship
A: Right.
Q: My best female friend is marrying her boyfriend in March and wants to go on a gay bar crawl on the night of her bachelorette party. She says it won't be a problem because, as a bi woman, she's part of the LGBT community too and because gay people can get married now. As a gay man, Dan, do you oppose bachelorette parties in gay bars? —Queer and Questioning
A: I oppose bachelorette parties in gay bars—or anywhere else, QAQ, and I feel the exact same way about bachelor parties.
Q: A few weeks ago, you answered a letter from Seeks Discreet Call Service, a woman in an open marriage who was having Tinder hookups in hotel rooms while traveling for work. She was concerned about her safety and wanted to have someone check in on her, but she couldn't tell her partner about her hookups (DADT arrangement) or her friends (she's not out about her open marriage). She specifically asked if there was an app that might help, and you told her there wasn't an app for that. You were wrong, Dan! There are actually several apps. PCWorld published a roundup of a few of them a couple of years ago, and there's an app called Kitestring that has gotten some glowing reviews. The gist is that you use the app to set a timer, and when it goes off, you have to alert the app that you are OK. Otherwise, the app automatically contacts emergency services or a predetermined contact and lets them know you are in trouble at your location. So technology does have a solution for SDCS's problem! —Technological Enhancements Can Help
A: Man, I really blew that response—so thanks to TECH and everyone else who clued me in to Kitestring, StaySafe, Watch Over Me, bSafe, and all the other apps out there that are exactly what SDCS was looking for.
Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com.


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What's an environmentalist to do when she has some extra time on her hands in New York? Here's a recommendation: Track down the editor of Treehugger.com and harass him for a coffee! Highly enjoyable — and yes, this was precisely what I did when I went to the Big Apple a couple weeks ago. At 8 a.m. on a Friday morning, I met Graham Hill at Earth Matters, a hippie café in the Lower East Side. It was absolutely sweltering and there was no air conditioning available (what with the establishment being green and all), so I ordered a smoothie. Graham got himself a latte and some fruity granola; then we both pulled up a seat and began to chat. Here's the transcript of our Q&A:
Thistle: How long has Treehugger been running now?
Graham: It started about five years ago, in 2004. My friend Nick Denton (of Gawker.com) and I felt there was a need for the green movement to be a bit more cool and convenient. I mean, hippies are awesome, but they're a very small group. And we realized that while most people will care about the environment, it can take a while to figure out what exactly is happening and how to do something about it. So we wanted to repackage green and make it more accessible.
Thistle: When I first began checking the site, all the posts seemed more about sustainable design than anything else.
Graham: Yeah, it was very design-oriented at first, but there's been a natural shift towards news stuff. That said, I've been complaining to people recently that we've really lost the whole design element, so I'd like to work on bringing that back.
Thistle: What types of posts generate the most hits?
Graham: Any meat-related or animal-themed stories, for sure, especially something like seal-clubbing, which always leads to controversy and a lot of comments. But we just want good, compelling stories.
Thistle: How does one get a job writing for Treehugger? Is it a difficult application process?
Graham: We hire our writers based on their resumés and previous work experience; we make sure they agree with our general manifesto, then we work with them on a few stories, holding their hand for a bit before letting them post on their own. The full-time staff tend to be more beat-oriented, whereas the part-time writers will maybe focus more on their location. They're anywhere between 22 and 60 years old, male and female, chemists, architects and journalists, and from all over the world.
Thistle: What's the current goal for the site?
Graham: Well, right now, we really want to focus on helping people understand their impact on the planet and how they can actually change this in concrete ways. The symptoms of the Earth, as a patient, are not looking good. Carbon dioxide is increasing rapidly as though the green movement never even happened, so we need to get people to understand the scale of their behaviours and make actual changes. It's all well and good to be really diligent about unplugging your cellphone charger every night and using tote bags, but that accounts for less than 1% of your carbon footprint. And even if the whole world starts doing this, then we've still only reduced everybody's collective footprint by 1%. Small steps are only good if they lead to big ones.
Thistle's Inside Voice: I wonder if he realizes my challenge was all about taking 366 small steps?
Thistle: So how much change is actually occurring right now? And who needs to be making the majority of them?
Graham: The reality is, the vast majority of people like to blame suburbia, blame the red states and so on. But I can't even tell you the number of panels I've been on about the water crisis where everybody has plastic water bottles sitting in front of them. I mean, if we can't even get these little symbolic things right, it's pretty bad.
Thistle: How is Treehugger's relationship with Planet Discovery?
Graham: They're in 52 million homes right now. The partnership has been great — they've left us alone and let us do our thing. I'm still here two years after that happened, so that proves something.
Thistle: In your time as editor, has there been any one story, person or book that's really inspired you?
Graham: Some of the most inspirational stuff to me is the basic, old-school way of doing things; really simple technologies that anyone can use. Like awnings, for instance — New York used to have awnings all over the place and we lost them, but they can seriously reduce heat in the summer. You can also just wear appropriate clothing. And offices really need to turn down the air conditioning and look at ceiling fans again — you should never be cold in the summer.
Well, unfortunately, it's been pretty darn cold and rainy in Toronto all summer; on the one hand, this means no need for air conditioning, but it also means that even my vegetable garden is starting to complain. And last weekend, it was no exception: Sunday afternoon began with a massive thunderstorm — but it wasn't enough to deter me from stopping by the Alters' place so my friend Lloyd (who writes for Treehugger) could interview me about Sleeping Naked. So, if you're not completely sick of hearing about my book yet, watch the video below!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Update of quantity
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You can book your Hilti tools in for repair from the Hilti website.
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Register today and if you are an existing Hilti customer register with the email address that you use to communicate with Hilti in the past because this will automatically load all your account information including your order history and previous tools purchased from us will automatically appear in your tool list.
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Advanced Search
Critics say the purity of research is in jeopardy as discoveries are shopped
around instead of submitted directly to software vendors so they can quickly
develop a fix.
"I don't like there being an incentive to turn this into a market,"
said Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer for security company BT Counterpane.
"Then you create incentives for the bad guys to start finding this stuff
and selling it, and if the bad guys charge more, the good guys have to charge
Some companies already have been offering payments for such information --
hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the severity of the flaw -- and a
Swiss-based auction site opened this month to encourage bidding for such knowledge.
Software vendors so far have refrained from purchasing the information themselves,
reluctant to encourage extortion -- researchers holding out or threatening to
sell to criminals unless they get the right price.
A black market has long existed for trading information about vulnerabilities
in software from Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and other vendors of products
crucial to running computers and sending data over the Internet. The information
could then be used to break into systems holding credit card numbers or secretly
plant spying software within a company's network.
Experts say government agencies also have been buying such knowledge -- not
to warn the public but potentially to break into computers for national security
or criminal investigations. Charlie Miller, a former National Security Agency
employee, said one agency he wouldn't name paid him $50,000 in September.
To keep up, security company iDefense, now part of VeriSign Inc., pioneered
the "white hat" market for exploits about five years ago, creating
the Vulnerability Contributor Program to reward legitimate researchers who submit
information on flaws. TippingPoint, a unit of 3Com Corp., followed with a similar
program three years later.
In both cases, the security companies buying the information then work with
vendors and avoid disclosing the flaws publicly until a fix is developed. The
information is valuable because the security companies can sometimes use the
knowledge to protect their own customers in the interim.
Although researchers historically have shared knowledge for free, "there's
been a market that has naturally evolved where this information is power,"
said Ken Durham, director of the rapid response team with VeriSign-iDefense.
"Our concern is people would start to turn to the dark side unless they
had a responsible avenue."
Terri Forslof, who runs TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative, said programs like
hers can never pay as much as the black market, but most legitimate researchers
are willing to accept smaller payments knowing the buyer would handle the information
The newly opened auction site, WabiSabiLabi, doesn't require buyers to work
with vendors on a fix before disclosing the flaw. Operators of the site say
they try to validate both buyers and sellers -- for example, requiring copies
of passports and bank account information -- but many people remain skeptical.
"You potentially do not know who is buying that vulnerability," said
Mark Miller, Microsoft's director of security response communications. "The
potential for customer risk can be increased."
Roberto Preatoni, strategic director for WabiSabiLabi, said criminals have
no need for his site because they can remain anonymous in the black market.
He also said his auction functions more like eBay Inc.'s site in connecting
buyer and seller, and thus questions of legal liability and disclosure are strictly
between those parties.
So far, the amount of vulnerability research that's sold pales in comparison
to what's submitted directly to vendors or discovered by the vendors' own research
staff. But there are signs the market is growing.
"It's new territory. It's uncharted," said Russell Smoak, head of
Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team. "I have been approached
by researchers that have asked [for payment] and to date, we've said no."
Charlie Miller, now the principal security analyst at Independent Security
Evaluators, said the demands for payments stem from frustrations that vendors'
in-house researchers "are making a lot of money to look for bugs and whenever
someone from the outside finds something, they don't get paid anything."
Preatoni described his auction as a way for researchers to receive what their
knowledge is truly worth, saying the security industry is currently built on
top of research that is undervalued.
Matthew Murphy, who received hundreds of dollars for each of about a dozen
submissions to iDefense's program, said that while payments aren't enough to
replace a full-time job, they earned him enough in high school to buy his parents
a new computer and give him spending money for dinner with friends.
But Miller, after trying to sell two separate vulnerabilities himself including
the $50,000 one to the government, concluded it wasn't worth the trouble. He
said it was difficult identifying potential buyers, and in one case the vendor
had fixed the problem before he could complete the sale.
"I would have loved to start a business out of it," he said. "One
of the lessons I learned is that it's impossible to do that."
And that's been one of the challenges of the WabiSabiLabi auctions. Potential
sellers must reveal enough to entice buyers, but revealing too much can help
others find the flaw independently, negating its value. Preatoni said the site
does verify all claims before starting an auction.
Microsoft, which makes the oft-targeted Windows operating system, said it has
no plans to start paying contributors, noting that many researchers have eagerly
submitted their findings with only the promise of credit, which can be added
to resumes to boost job prospects.
"They've clearly told us that by working with us, that model also works
for them," Microsoft's Miller said.
Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer at eEye Digital Security, said he,
too, has refrained from paying contributors, saying such sales "are pretty
much supporting a market which eventually turns into a bidding war. It drives
people not to report [problems] to vendors."
Microsoft Teams will be receiving new and updated features, including support for its AI-powered Designer tool.
Windows 11 users are getting new features, which are expected to arrive at latest in July, per a Microsoft announcement this week.
The Microsoft Edge browser is getting lots of enhancements, as announced this week at Microsoft Build.
Multiple Microsoft products reached "general availability" (GA), or commercial release, at the Microsoft Build event for developers ongoing this week.
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'Sure the underground was elitist: we were an elite. We were the cutting edge of ongoing bohemianism at that point.' Mick Farren in Days In The Life by Jonathon Green
The last time I spoke to Mick Farren (May, 2013) he was waiting for the doctor to come round. He was, he told me, in pretty poor shape but welcomed our interview as it gave him something else to think about. Farren's ill health had been known for some years, but it didn't stop him going on stage with his old band the Deviants every now and then. It was while performing at the Borderline last night (Saturday, July 27) that he collapsed and died.
It seems crude to say that is how Mick Farren would want to go, but it's certainly no great surprise that this vivacious ball of hair and action, the closest thing London ever came to producing an Abbie Hoffman, should die while giving it all to his great love rock and roll. (The following, and all subsequent quotes, are from my interviews with Farren.)
'Essentially, from when I was in art school through to Joe Strummer the major communication medium of the counterculture certainly in the second half of the 1960s was rock and roll music. You start with that and everything else was peripheral to it.'
Farren's Deviants were pre-punk noise terrorists whose self-distributed debut album, Ptooff! was one of the first records to come directly out of the London counterculture. When I spoke to Farren for Uncut about the Rolling Stones free gig at Hyde Park in 1969, I asked him whether the Deviants had wanted to play the show. He said,
'We asked if we could play. We were vetoed, it was probably Jagger. Everybody said I wouldn't behave myself and start rabble rousing, which was fair enough.'
I put this to Pete Jenner, who co-organised the gig, who responded.
'Well, there was that and also the fact they were a rotten band. I really like Mick [Farren] but they were a rotten band who smashed instruments on stage. It wasn't kick out the jams motherfucker, it was let's have a joint and a buttercup sandwich.'
The Deviants weren't really a rotten band, but Farren certainly saw them as London's answer to the MC5. He was heavily active in the political end of the counterculture, forming the London branch of John Sinclair's White Panther Party and leading the occasional putsch at the International Times when he felt it was getting too bourgeois and boring. Farren was a key figure in so much of what happened in the counterculture, running the door at UFO, writing for and editing alternative newspapers, organising free festivals while playing shows and really meaning it, man. He was fixer and a doer, a wit and sometimes a sage.
'IT came out of the Beats – poetry, jazz and art with a bit of lefty politics. I told them this was fucked up, they weren't talking about the weird changes going on with The Who, or where The Beatles were coming from. I'd say that with all respect to John Coltrane there's this black geezer in the Bag O' Nails who has long hair and plays guitar with his teeth, what are we going to do about THAT?'
His politics though, always came with a sense of fun – at one anti-war demo the Deviants played he annoyed the po-faced organisers by being more concerned with getting on stage without splitting his trousers than with espousing the cause. He was once described to me by a fellow traveler as being one of the three coolest men in London in 1967, and that made him one of the three coolest men in the entire world.
"We were always condemned as frivolous and philosophically disorganised, and the counter-accusation was they were just boring totalitarians who wanted to sing the Red Flag when we'd rather listen to Voodoo Child and smoke pot.'
When the alternative press disintegrated, Farren – like many from the underground – went on to write great pieces like this for the NME:
'The immediate legacy of the underground papers was the NME because we all went there. They had a very profound effect on the visual effect of magazine publishing, but much more important is that the spirit of the thing is now preserved on the internet. It's all still there, it's just become more specialised and you have to go looking for it.'
Farren is one of the dominant figures in Jonathon Green's essential history of the British underground, Days In The Life, and also wrote brilliantly, if unreliably, about his own activities in Give The Anarchist a Cigarette. What resonates from those books is what an unlikely fit Farren seems in the upper-middle-class world of the counterculture, which was largely run by public schoolboys and Oxbridge graduates imbued with that remarkable confidence that comes with a good education. Farren was different, his confidence was self-generated and less polite, while his art school experiences meant he 'learned to manage chaos'. Indeed, he relished it. Take a look at the clips below if you don't believe me.
In his own writings and when interviewed, Farren always came across as funny and incredibly sharp but there was more to it at than that. He was fundamentally, intrinsically, decent. A man without edges. As Jonathon Green told me when hearing the news of his death: 'Of the underground 'stars' he seems, and always did, to have been one of the good guys.'
RIP Mick Farren. He will be missed by many.
Farren invading The Frost Show.
Farren recollecting the Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam riot of 1968.


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The ability to lie and twist is legendary for the Chavista revolution. From illiteracy to oil production, facts are changed, twisted and massaged in order to fit what Chavez and the Government want to say they achieved, even if complete lies have to be said.
The latest is the new euphemism the Government has found for what constitutes building a new home. Given that the country's problem is the shortage of housing, estimated at over 2.5 million housing units, a new home should be a newly built unit, until Chavez decided he wanted to build 150,000 housing units in 2011.
It was an impossible task from a Government that has never built more than 80,000 housing units in one year and given the fact that his "Mision Vivienda" was announced in April. But by the end of the year Chavez was talking about completing 94% of the goal and the year ended with an official number of 146,714 units built by the Government.
The number has been repeated so many times, that it has become the truth, even if nobody believes it. But this week, Minister of Oil and Energy Rafael Ramirez explained the "miracle", Chavismo simply changed the definition. How? It now includes among new housing units built all rancho (shacks)"substitutions".And it says that a whopping 45% of all the "new" units, were actually "substitutions".
From what I have been able to understand, a "substitution" is the definition for a rancho (the type of elementary housing you see in the hills of Caracas) that has been upgraded in the materials that are used in its construction. Which means we have no idea what it really means.
Which also implies that we have no clue what it really meant when the Government claims to have built only 80, 692 new housing units, its best number in thirteen years, but still above other estimates.
So, maybe next time you drive by a barrio, look up and if you see a freshly painted rancho, you are seeing one such "substitution". Not much change beyond that.
Another way of hiding the revolutions inability to do anything, just change the definition and the goal has been accomplished and Chavez is certainly pleased.
As it should be.


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Trick or treat, if you dare!
Michele Hafner doesn't mind the graveyard in front of her house.
The family of skeletons sitting at her dining room table may be a little strange, but they're easy enough to get along with. And who can't love the human-sized spider hanging from the roof?
This Far North Peoria home, decked out and drawing attention from the neighbors, is an ongoing project for Hafner's Halloween-obsessed husband, John. Michele Hafner doesn't quite match her husband's passion for ghouls and ghosts, but she knows when December comes around, it's her turn to take over.
'I tell him it has to be elegant for Christmas,' she said. 'That's our compromise.'
The Hafner house, 1929 W. Geneva Road, is a trick-or-treater's paradise. Tombstones are scattered about the yard, with decomposing carcasses popping up here and there. A coffin complete with furry rats rests near the driveway, and an intimidating scarecrow keeps guard.
On Halloween night, Michele Hafner said eerie lights and fog pour over the yard from every direction, and Frankenstein makes himself at home in the science lab on the front porch. Thunder and lightning crash from speakers, and the monsters living in the spooky shack made from an old playhouse come to life.
'My dad is obsessed with Halloween,' said 9-year-old Nick Hafner. 'Last year we bought so much candy, we probably had like 30 pounds left over.'
Houses like the Hafners' are trick-or-treating magnets, often stirring up more oohs and ahs than even the most embellished winter wonderlands.
Dale Burklund, 4601 N. Grandview Drive, said his Halloween haven attracts about 800 kids each year. Lucky for him, he owns Burklund Distributors, a local candy distribution company.
'Christmas is my favorite holiday, but Halloween has the best decorations,' Burklund said. 'I like the unusualness of it. You get to be really creative.'
Pumpkins and strands of lights are sprinkled throughout the yard, but the giant spider web that nearly envelopes the house is the real work of art. Burklund said it takes four men from Hoerr's Nursery an entire day to decorate the yard.
Kathy Ramirez has opted for mostly inflatable decor at her 2638 N. Prospect Road home but also has some traditional spooks, like the evil camouflage-wearing clown who has made his home in a lawn chair on the front porch.
'We just love Halloween,' Ramirez said. 'We're so crazy, we put on costumes and decorate in September.'
Located near a bus stop, Ramirez's house is a playground for schoolchildren, who explore her yard in the mornings, checking out the always-growing sights and sounds of the Halloween hub.
'I think it's just a fun holiday,' Ramirez said. 'And we make the most of it.'
Erin Wood can be reached at 686-3194 or email@example.com.


text:
|Oracle® Database Reference
11g Release 1 (11.1)
Part Number B28320-01
|View PDF
This appendix lists Oracle enqueues. Enqueues are shared memory structures (locks) that serialize access to database resources. They can be associated with a session or transaction. Enqueue names are displayed in the
LOCK_TYPE column of the
DBA_LOCK and
DBA_LOCK_INTERNAL data dictionary views.
A resource uniquely identifies an object that can be locked by different sessions within an instance (local resource) or between instances (global resource). Each session that tries to lock the resource will have an enqueue on the resource.
Note:The names of enqueues and their definitions may change from release to release.
See Also:"DBA_LOCK_INTERNAL" and "DBA_LOCK"
The Oracle enqueues are:
FP, File Object
KO, Multiple Object Checkpoint


text:
Know your gear
The Dynamics 365 for Team Members subscription is a named user subscription designed for users who are not tied to a particular function, but who require basic Dynamics 365 functionality. This license includes read access as well as some write access for select light tasks across any and all Dynamics 365 Apps. As a result, as more Dynamics 365 applications are adopted across an organization, any user previously licensed with Team Members subscription would be licensed already to access those additional applications.


text:
A Turkish official said he thought Jamal Khashoggi's body was split up after acid cleansing.
According to Yasin Aktay, "the only logical conclusion" was that those who killed the journalist in Istanbul destroyed the body "so that they do not keep track of it."
Saudi-Saudi national and well-known critic of Saudi rulers, Khashoggi was killed and his body split on October 2nd.
There is no evidence that the body has dissolved.
"The reason for chopping Khashoggi's body has made it easier to untie its remains," said Aktay, adviser to the President of the Turkish President, "said Hurriyet Daily.
"Now we can see that not only his body was disintegrated but also evaporated."
According to claims, Khashoggi's bride, Hatice Cengiz, has called on world leaders to "bring off perpetrators for justice," in the editorial section of five newspapers, including the Guardian and the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, reports denounce King Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi king who told the United States that Jamal Khashoggi, a killing journalist, considered dangerous Islam.
The phone call to the White House was preceded by Saudi Arabia, acknowledging that Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul at the Saudi Consulate.
Saudi Arabia denies the comments or that the royal family participated in the assassination and claims that it is "determined to know all the facts".
Istanbul prosecutor on Wednesday confirmed that the writer was strangled.
What was the Crown Prince's alleged phone call?
President Donald Trump, President of Jared Kushner, and John Bolton's National Security Adviser, Prince Mohammed said Khashoggi was a member of the Washington Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist organization, according to the Washington Post report.
The phone call was reported on October 9, one week after Khashoggi disappeared.
Prince Mohammed allegedly urged the White House to preserve the US-Saudi alliance.
In his statement to the newspaper Khashoggi denied that he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and said that the murdered writer had repeatedly denied this in recent years.
"Jamal Khashoggi was not a dangerous person at all, because otherwise it would be ridiculous," said the statement.
What did the study find so far?
There is still no agreement that Khashoggi died. He entered the consulate to arrange documents for the marriage of the Turkish bride Hatice Cengiz.
On Wednesday, however, Turkey said it was strangled immediately after the consulate's enrollment, and its body was torn up "in accordance with pre-prepared plans".
Turkish media have previously cited sources in Turkey that sound recordings have been made to prove that Khashoggi was tortured before he was assassinated.
Saudi Arabia has changed the Khashoggi events.
When he first disappeared, he said that Khashoggi was alive out of the building. Later he admitted he was assassinated, asserting that the murder was deliberately considered and the result of a "rogue operation".
He was arrested 18 suspects who claim to be brought to justice in Saudi Arabia. Turkey wants the suspect to be released.
Turkey has abolished Saudi Arabia's public abuses of murder.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Salman Saudi king last week and the two participants agreed to continue cooperating with the investigation.
What are the other countries saying?
Saudi Arabia has resisted death, including its allies, who asked for answers.
President Trump said he was "not satisfied" with Saudi accounting. At the same time, he also said he was unwilling to sacrifice profitable arms trade with the country.
Although their US visas were withdrawn, State Secretary Mike Pompeo said "a handful of more weeks" would be before the United States knew that it would impose sanctions on individuals who had killed Khashoggi.
Mr Pompeo said that the United States had "deep and long-term strategic relations" with Saudi Arabia and said, "We want to ensure that these relations remain good."
On Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Khashoggi's death was "sin" and "nervous".
He said France did not "depend on their economic relations with Saudi Arabia," and that the country was sanctioned, but no details were given.
United Kingdom Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt also said it was a terrible plot, adding that "probably" gave the United States and the United Kingdom the chance to put pressure on Saudi Arabia on other issues.
Earlier, the United States called for a rapid shutdown of each other's fighting in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition fought against the enemy-backed rebels.
What did your bride say?
In the five international newspapers, Mrs Cengiz said that Khashoogi had just bought a house and wanted to start a family.
He described the "pain" that he has experienced since his "brutal, barbaric and cruel" death.
"We must all send a clear message that authoritarian regimes will never be able to kill journalists anymore."
He called governments from all over the world to take action to uncover the truth, accusing the United States of "not having the moral foundation".
"If the world's democracies do not take the real steps to bring the perpetrators of this cruel, spooky act – causing universal indignation among their citizens – what moral authority will remain?" – asked.
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text: Recreational Properties How and when you use your recreational property is important to your insurer. You can typically list your vacation home as a secondary or seasonal location on your existing policy. Insurance for seasonal or secondary properties works differently than insurance for your primary home. This is because these properties are often occupied only on weekends, for weeks or months at a time. Seasonal properties are used primarily for recreation at certain times of the year or month. Secondary residences are typically used all year long.How Is The Property Used?Insurers consider:how frequently a property is usedhow often it is occupiedif it is rented.Ideally, your recreational property can be listed on your home insurance as a secondary or seasonal location. You can also have property insurance as a separate, stand-alone policy.Insuring Named Perils OnlyDue to the risks associated with part-time occupation, recreational property insurance is generally provided on a named perils policy instead of a comprehensive or all risks policy. Named perils policies cover specific risks such as fire, explosion or smoke damage. Coverage for certain risks, such as water damage or vandalism, may be more difficult or expensive to arrange, due to part-time occupancy. For example, if a water pipe bursts or if vandals break in while your property is vacant, damage is likely to be more severe because it could take longer for it to be discovered.Common ExclusionsCommon exclusions to secondary and seasonal home insurance policies include sewer backup and damage to, or loss of:fencesfood in a freezergarden equipmentoutdoor plantstrees and shrubs.Remember, every policy has limits for watercraft. If you have a boat at your seasonal or secondary residence, speak to your insurance representative to make sure you have adequate coverage. Even a "fixer-upper" of low value still requires third party liability coverage. This protects you if someone is hurt on your property or if you start a fire that accidently spreads to neighbouring properties.3 Additional Coverages to ConsiderContents. Some insurance packages automatically include contents up to a certain percentage of the dwelling limit. This applies to contents permanently kept at the vacation home. Anything you take back and forth (such as clothing) is covered by your primary home insurance policy. If inadequate, you can buy additional coverage.Detached private structures. Some insurance packages include limited coverage for outbuildings such as boathouses, garages or sheds. This is generally a percentage of the dwelling limit. If inadequate, you can buy additional coverage.Replacement cost. This covers the cost of repairing an item or replacing it with a new one, without any deduction for depreciation.Contact your insurance representative for more information about your options. Insurance for Cottages, Camps and Other Vacation PropertiesDid you know that insurance for your vacation property works a bit differently than insurance for your primary residence?All about Home InsuranceA house is often the single largest financial investment you can make. Without insurance, your most valuable asset is vulnerable to fire, theft and other disasters. Related ServicesBoatIf your boat is financed, docked at a local marina or stored in your private boathouse, insurance can protect your liability risks. While boat insurance is not mandatory it can cover damage, liability and other unforeseen events.CottageRecreational property insurance works somewhat differently than insurance for your primary home. How your cottage is used and how often it is occupied will dictate which insurance packages are appropriate. Useful LinksBuying Home InsuranceAs a homeowner, you need to insure your house for replacement costs so that in the event of serious damage or destruction you have adequate coverage. Be sure to keep your home insurance current by reporting material changes or upgrades.Home Inventory ApplicationA current inventory of your belongings makes it easier to file a claim. Keeping your records off-site is wise in case a fire or flood damages your property. Consider updating your home inventory each spring and advise your insurer of any major purchases.Heritage PropertiesWhen insuring your heritage home, shop around, reduce risk, keep accurate records, document unique characteristics and buy sufficient insurance. If the property is damaged, be mindful of planning approvals, appraisal expertise, by-laws, claims settlement costs, distinctive features and contaminants.


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It is 50 years since Pope Paul VI became the first pontiff to visit the Holy Land. British Pathé documented his journey in widescreen and Technicolor. The trip was brief, but historic. It took place on 4-5th January 1964. Click here to view the newsreel.
The archive also includes unused material that was not included in the final edit, as well as a black and white version of the film. If you're interested, you can see those here.
2013 was a big year for the Papacy, with the resignation of Benedict XVI and the election of Francis as the increasingly popular 266th Pope. British Pathé has a substantial collection of footage for past pontiffs:
Benedict XV – died 1922
Pius XI – British Pathé filmed the election of Benedict XV's successor, who served from 1922 until his own death in 1939.
Pius XII – Pope from 1939 until 1958.
John XXIII – Pope from 1958 until 1963.
Paul VI – Pope from 1963 until 1978.
View Paul VI's visit to the Holy Land here.


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It was getting late, and I was running behind schedule trying to carry well-paying tourists back to their destination. While they partied in the back of the limo, drinking and having a great time, I was stuck in the driver's seat trying to navigate a strange route through increasingly perilous territory. With my eyes glued to the clock and my foot on the gas, I was already doubting my latest career choice, and this was only my second trip. Fighting the growing urge to dump my passengers in the middle of nowhere and scream off into the night, I took a deep breath, and pressed the accelerator forward.
It was right about then that I dropped out of hyperdrive smack dab in the middle of the gravity well of a massive star, and immediately things went to shit. Ah, the joys of a space limo driver…
Alarms rang in my ears as the controls in my brand-new Saud-Kruger Dolphin started smoking. The ship's computer gently alerted me to a catastrophic temperature exposure. Suddenly everything stopped, and we were drifting.
Floating in space, with my cockpit panels shorting out and my temperature gauge through the roof, I glanced over at the cabin camera to check on my passengers, convinced that they were all cooked by radiation in their plush seats.
Still partying… Thank god for a decent shield generator.
As my shiny new Dolphin (now nicknamed Space Limo of Love, FYI) was relatively and slowly pulled toward a massive purple ball of gas, fire, and death, these guys are blasting music and falling over each other playing Twister.
"Anyone know how to find the escape vector from a purple giant star?" I yell over my shoulder, knowing well that they can't hear me. A few calculations and a frantic discussion with the ship's computer later, and we were burning away from the ball of death at speed.
Luckily for me, These guys didn't even notice that they'd nearly died tonight, and tipped well.
My morning was much better. Less alcohol and near-total-annihilation, more relaxing and listening to some music while dodging gankers. The Space Limo of Love is fast. I mean, real fast. I had the techs put in a new power unit and upgraded the scanner so I can handle some tougher sightseeing trips.
In the meantime I ferried a cushy trip one system away that paid out over a million credits, so yeah it was a great morning. It wasn't until midday when I picked up a few passengers headed to a nearby system that I ran into trouble again. It started fine, until I hit the jump button too soon and overheated, knocking us out of Supercruise and into the well of another star. It seems like this might continue to be an issue, so I might have to have a new shield put on.
The Star was easy since escape vectors are an old hag now, but not until I swung the boat around and saw our destination a good 30 minutes out from the jump point… I about shit. I was cursing the "damn bay full of prisoners" up one side of the galaxy and down the other, and hoping that if I kept leaning on the stick I could somehow will the Space Limo of Love (SLoL?) to travel faster than physically possible.
So lesson learned, check the distance on the next contract to make sure I won't be stuck humming ancient Glen Hansard tunes and reading the same diagnostic menus over and over with a ship full of prisoners.
Funny thing happened when we finally arrived, I noticed that the prisoners were actually Aid Workers I'd just delivered to a war zone.
No wonder the payout was so low! Fucking charity right?!
So far I've played about 20 hours of Frontier Games' massive online game Elite Dangerous, and already I'm lost in my space-geek imagination. After five years of Eve Online and a decade or two of X3: games, Elite is exactly the next best step in space sims.
Sporting a 1:1 scale map of the Milky Way Galaxy to explore, Elite Dangerous is an ambitious project. I blew my 11 year-old son's mind today when I showed him the game map. I zoomed all the way out to see the swirling arms of the galaxy, then slowly zoomed back in and focused on just a few of the passing dots of light. When he finally understood that every single one of those dots contained a solar system like ours with planets and moons and a sun or two, he lost it, exclaiming that there is no point to our existence before returning to Minecraft.
Unlike most conventional video games, Elite doesn't have levels or bosses, and in that sense is a lot like Eve Online, in what amounts to a strictly player-driven experience. When the game starts you are dropped in a space station in the middle of nowhere with $1000 credits to spend, a base-model Sidewinder, and the clothes on your back. It's up to you to make your own fun in a the biggest sandbox I've ever played in.
The only game that comes close in scale is No Man's Sky, which loses some the grandeur in its procedurally-generated, cartoonish landscapes and repetitive exploration. No Man's Sky is to GTA III like Elite Dangerous is to GTA V. It's bigger, it's meaner, it's less pixelated, and it's got long, long legs. The developers have mapped out the game for the next few years, and only just recently introduced landing on planets and driving wheeled vehicles.
While I watch Star Citizen from afar with longing eyes, Elite Dangerous is the closest thing I've played to a perfect sci-fi junky's dream come true. A completely intertwined galaxy with a fluctuating economy, an ever-changing war between human factions, and a mysterious alien presence on the edge of known space. While the learning curve is a little steep, the payoffs come fast. I quickly switched up the default control scheme to allow more intuitive play and I'm beginning to see a universe of possibilities in front of me.
I've run deliveries of goods and data from one station to another, I've sought out combat rewards, and I've made a small fortune from ferrying people around in my Dolphin transport ship, which came decked out with a passenger cabin and a sweet Flipper-esque hull. I don't know how often it will happen but one lady I dropped off in 15 minutes and made 1.2 million, another few sightseers paid for a mobile party bus that only required me to show them beautiful stuff out the window. As I heap more credits into my bank account, I can't wait to score a nice warship that I can use to mop up pirates or insurgents. I hear there is a nice income to be made for mercenaries in the Milky Way.
My only complaint is really only an inherent problem in all games of this type, and that's the lack of focus that means that there is no way to manage your game time in any way. I've logged on to play for an hour and ended up online for three trying to find the right job or contract, or traveling across the stars just to find that one station selling an upgrade I need. As a father of two with a full-time job and a marriage, my window for gaming is later at night 90% of the time… and spending an hour trying to adjust my controls or hopping for station to station looking for a decent payday can leave me feeling unfulfilled. However that's not necessarily the games fault, so like I said, any sandbox type game can swallow the hours quicker than you can spare them.
That being said, I would totally spend an entire weekend playing Elite Dangerous and having a blast doing it. I love a game that inspires me to write about it, that opens my imagination and lets me have unscripted fun. I just can't make money fast enough yet, but the journey is always more fun than the destination anyway. Just ask my drunk tourists.
Elite Dangerous is on PC, PS4 and Xbox, with Oculus Rift compatibility that puts you IN the spaceship. It contains microtransactions and will continue to have paid updates over the next decade, at least. Elite is always online, and is playable on a solo server, a public one, or you can jump into a private group as well. The other day I scored the base game for a measly $11 on the PlayStation Store, and there's also a $30 cumulative DLC package available as it's been out for a few years


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Microsoft, Novell, Mono and the More Expensive GNU
"The core of this trial is consumer choice and the premise is that consumers ought to make that decision, not Microsoft. Microsoft's argument that says Java would have died anyway is a little bit like saying if somebody shoots you they can defend [themselves] by saying you have cancer."
–David Boies, lead trial attorney at the DOJ
Microsoft now sells Windows for as little as $18 apiece. It's not sustainable. It's because of GNU/Linux, which Microsoft considers its #1 threat. The company can try to pretend that this is not an issue, but occasionally it frankly admits it all. Margin erosion can be tolerated more than an actualising risk of GNU/Linux gaining a foothold and a critical mass.
Methods for slowing down GNU/Linux adoption cannot rely on price. GNU/Linux is just too affordable and Microsoft's business model is not prepared to adjust to it. FUD tactics, interferences and the SCOs of our time were attempted before, but it never works out. In some cases, it backfires.
As last reported a day ago, Microsoft continues trying cheap (or gratis) against free (or libre). It's an old an failing strategy and Matt Asay has just explained why.
Microsoft tries to battle free with cheap. It won't work
Crappy but cheap? It isn't going to stop open source. Open source wins, in part, because it's cheap, but anyone that has run Linux, Apache, Zimbra, etc. knows that there is plenty of open source that wins because it is awesome…and just happens to be cheap as an added benefit.
Microsoft knows that GNU/Linux and Free software are brilliant. It uses them to get work done. So Microsoft, as baffled as its latest filings reveal, might try something else. What if it managed to make its competition more expensive? That's just what the Novell deal is about (among a few other things).
The Mono/vell unrest is due to the fact that Microsoft is no true friend. It views open source not as a friend but as a thief. Here are some more new articles that have not been cited yet:
- Open Source: A 'Growing Challenge' to Microsoft
- Microsoft Fears The Open Sou[r]ce Penguin
- Did the bad cop gremlins get at Microsoft's annual report?
And here is a new article that stands out: Microsoft accuses open source programs of theft
Microsoft accuses open source programs of theft
Software producer Microsoft has noted in its annual report that its business model is being threatened by open source software after it claimed that many vendors have stolen its intellectual property, it has been reported.
Microsoft does not like to compete based on price. Throwing accusation seems easier, albeit impulsive and baseless. It's a poor long-term strategy
Microsoft is likely to try subjugate GNU/Linux users. Novell was merely a first stop and plans for the Silverlight-powered desktop are just a trap, which seems very unwelcome based on Slashdot's feedback and some of the comments here.
Our reader Vexorian has just left a good comment in Slashdot (pointed out by Groklaw). Pamela Jones also points to this old page, adding: "Written in 2004. Anything changed since?"
One person has already published Mononono. What is Mononono? Here you have it.
Introduces an intentional conflict with Mono packages
By creating an intentional conflict with mono packages, this package can be
installed to prevent Mono from being installed (or at least force you to
address the conflict)
Conflicting files/packages
At the end of the day, in order to effectively and broadly reject Mono, its source needs to be convinced to change direction. That would be Novell, which sponsors Mono projects such as Banshee.
Already, as many of us know, Microsoft sacrifices margins to ensure the crippling of GNU/Linux laptops (last mentioned yesterday). On top of this, assuming one buys SLED, there is a software patents fee, which means that people who buy GNU/Linux actually pay Microsoft. And it's not getting any better based on this new press release.
Lenovo to Present More Linux-pre-loaded Laptops
Lenovo was reported to plan to launch a full array of laptops pre-loading Novell's Linux operating system, to provide wider product options for consumers to choose from, according to sources.
"Wider product options," it says. Really? It's just Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Linux. Great choice, eh? Microsoft is paid either way. As stated here a month and a half ago, Lenovo stopped offering those cheaper FreeDOS (or no-O/S) laptops, so Microsoft tax need be paid no matter what O/S you choose now. For those who think that Novell and Microsoft are separable, just watch this new press release from Novell.
With expanded platform support for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, this latest release extends Novell's leadership in identity-based, cross-platform system management. ZENworks Configuration Management SP1 helps customers efficiently manage both medium and large scale enterprise IT environments by offering streamlined operations, greater flexibility, better compliance and increased performance.
Novell and Windows: so happy together. Take II. █


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I love working in the field! Being outdoors watching insects do their normal things in their normal places is an incredibly pleasant experience for me. I can literally spend hours sitting in one spot just watching the world around me or sloshing through some stream looking for/sampling bugs. However, for maximum field work comfort, you have to dress the part. Today I am going to share my wardrobe essentials for a variety of field situations. Bet you never expected the world of high fashion and entomology to come together in a single blog post, did you? :)
Working in Clean Water
Working in water means you're going to get wet, even if you don't intend to. If I'm going to be working somewhere I can park near the water (i.e., I don't have to go traipsing through the desert) and I am not going to be covered in pollutants and/or cow urine while I'm there, this is what I most like to wear:
Cotton shorts/capris or nylon board shorts dry quickly. I like wearing tank tops in the field, but I also like to keep the sun off my skin, so I wear a cotton or SPF fabric shirt too. The wide-brimmed, floppy hat and polarized sunglasses are a must for keeping the sun off your face and out of your eyes. On my feet: Keen water sandals (great for when I'm kicking rocks like in the image above) or my fabulous Crocs trail sandals. They don't make the latter anymore, which is sad: they float marvelously if they get yanked off your feet, they stick to slippery rocks like nothing else, and you can't tell they're Crocs by looking at them! Love my Crocs…
Working in Cold Water
I am reasonably hardy when it comes to climbing into cold streams with exposed skin. But climbing into a sub-alpine stream in early April is an entirely different kind of cold. Then you need something like this:
Waders might not keep you much warmer, but they keep you dry and that makes a huge difference in cold water! I look like the abominable snowman in this photo, but it was a very cold day (high of something like 35 degrees), we were over 9500 feet, and it kept drizzling this awful freezing rain. I wasn't about to get in that stream without two layers of socks, long pants, long underwear, and waders! I probably would have lost a few toes to frostbite otherwise.
Working in Polluted Water
Working in nasty water means you want to keep the water off your skin, so waders are essential:
However, waders and the desert don't mix at all. You've just got to wear shorts under waders or you're going to get heat stroke. Thin fabrics that dry easily are the best choice because you are going to sweat, a lot. I usually top this combo off with my standard tank/long-sleeved shirt combo and some sort of ridiculous looking wide-brimmed hat. I own a lot of those things…
Working On Grasslands
I wish I were the kind of person who could go wandering through the gorgeous grasslands of southern Arizona and northern Mexico in shorts like everyone else I know, but I can't. No, I'm allergic to grasses and I come home with welts, hives, and rashes all over my legs if I wear shorts. I usually have to wear something like this instead:
Long cotton pants keep me as cool as possible. I usually wear my high top hiking boots in grasslands, just to minimize grass-on-skin contact. I also have to wear long-sleeved shirts that are actually buttoned up, to keep the grasses off my arms. I thought this shirt was brown when I bought it, but it only looked that way under the horrible yellow light bulbs at the rummage sale. So, I made it even uglier by drawing an enormous hellgrammite on the back. I kind of love my flaming pink hellgrammite shirt. Entomologist chic! And, no one ever loses me in the field. :)
Working in the Desert
Working in the desert is its own special kind of experience. When I did the BioBlitz at Saguaro National Park last fall, I stupidly thought that I could get away with wearing sandals. I had spines in my feet for days! Normally, when I'm not being a total idiot, I wear something like this:
Canvas pants or jeans are great for keeping your legs cactus spine free, and you can maneuver through dense brush without getting all scratched up. They don't dry quickly, but sometimes it's better to save your legs at the expense of staying wet a few hours. Hard core, heavy leather boots protect your feet from cacti, rocks, and rattlesnakes. Then there's my standard tank, over-shirt (in my bag because it's cloudy), hat, and sunglasses. The shirt in the pack has a big aquatic beetle I screenprinted on the back. More ento chic!
Okay, so I lied about the high fashion part at the beginning. Instead, I treated you to 5 glorious pictures of me looking rather scuzzy. (Muah ha ha ha ha!) But I'm not trying to look fashionable in the field. I'm trying to stay comfortable and safe. I also rip my clothes all the time, wear holes in them, drip acids and other chemicals on them, stain them, and otherwise beat the hell out of them, so I don't like to spend more than $10 on anything I wear in the field apart from my shoes. But, my field wardrobe keeps the sun and grasses off my skin, dry quickly when needed, and I don't have to worry about coming home a bloody mess because I had an up close and personal encounter with a cactus. My field clothes get the job done, and in the end, that is all that really matters.


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William R. Polk on American Grand Strategy for Iraq, Syria, and the Region
"We win each battle, but the battles keep happening. And to our chagrin, we don't seem to be winning the wars. By almost any criterion, we are less 'victorious' today than half a century ago."
The diplomat and scholar William R. Polk (right) first wrote about the Middle East in The Atlantic back in 1958, in an article called "The Lesson of Iraq." Repeat after me: "The past is never dead..." In the past few years, I've quoted his updated analyses many times, for instance on U.S. prospects in Afghanistan and on the tragedy in Syria.
Now he is back with an assessment of how the United States ended up in the situation it now confronts throughout the Middle East, and what if anything it might do to improve—or at least avoid worsening—its and the region's prospects. Whether or not you agree with all details of his analysis, I hope you will find it useful and clarifying, as I have, in showing the connections among the crises throughout the region, and in suggesting guidelines for U.S. response. I am posting this in full, with his permission and at his request. Now, over to William Polk:
The Mental Block and The Broadside
by William R. Polk
Analysis of foreign affairs problems often ends in a mental block. As we have seen in each of our recent crises—Somalia, Mali, Libya, Syria, Iraq, the Ukraine and Iran—"practical" men of affairs want quick answers: they say in effect, 'don't bother us with talk about how we got here; this is where we are; so what do we do now?' The result, predictably, is a sort of nervous tick in the body politic: we lurch from one emergency to the next in an unending sequence.
This is not new. We all have heard the quip: "ready, fire, aim." In fact those words were not just a joke. For centuries after infantry soldier were given the rifle, they were ordered not to take the time to aim; rather, they were instructed just to point in the general direction of the enemy and fire. Their commanders believed that it was the mass impact, the "broadside," that won the day.
Our leaders still believe it. They think that our "shock and awe," our marvelous technology measured in stealth bombers, drones, all-knowing intelligence, our massed and highly mobile troops and our money constitute a devastating broadside. All we have to do is to point in the right direction and shoot.
So we shoot and then shoot again and again. We win each battle, but the battles keep happening. And to our chagrin, we don't seem to be winning the wars. By almost any criterion, we are less "victorious" today than half a century ago. [continued]
Professionally, I find it disturbing to keep repeating such simple observations. Like some of my colleagues, I had hoped that the "lesson" of Vietnam would be learned. It was not. Indeed, the guru of the neoconservatives, Sam Huntington, memorably proclaimed that there was no lesson that could be drawn from Vietnam. He led the way, but today he has had many acolytes. They are still acting as guides of our government and the media.
So what do they tell us? Like Huntington they say that we have nothing to learn from the expenditure of our blood, sweat and tears—not to quibble about the trillions of dollars. As each crisis explodes, our guides told us that it is unique, has no usefully analyzed background, is not to be seen in a sequence of events and decisions. It just is. So it requires immediate action of the kind we know how to take—a broadside.
Also never-mind what motivates the "other-side." What they think might be of interest to ivory-tower historians or a few curious members of the chattering class, but in the real world they do not command attention. Real men just act!
Examples abound. Take Somalia: those wretched people are just a bunch of terrorists living in a failed state—the pirates of the modern world. Simple. We knew what to do about them! That "appreciation," as they say in the intelligence trade, was reached some years ago , and we are still doing "our thing."
As a few of us pointed out, "our thing" did not stop out-of-work, hungry and able men from doing "their thing." When fishermen found their fishing sites virtually destroyed by industrial-scale fleets, armed with sonar, radar and mile-long drag nets and, unable to catch fish and they faced starvation, they discovered piracy. Since they already had boats, were good sailors and were near a major cargo-shipping lane, transition to that new trade was easy. We knew the answer: military force. However, we have seen that sending the Navy is expensive and it did not stop desperate men. No one considered stopping the overfishing before the fishermen turned pirate.
Also, in Somalia, we smugly talk about the "failed state." But, as the Somalis see themselves, they are not a state at all; rather, they are a collection of separate societies living under a shared cultural-religious system. That, in fact, is how all our ancestors lived until the nation-state system evolved in Europe. Now most of us find it almost inconceivable that the Somalis do not adopt our system. Why are they so backward? If they would just shape up, piracy would end and peace would come. So we try to attach our institutions to their social organization. But, when the Somalis stubbornly try to retain their system, we try our best to modernize, reform, subvert or destroy it. We are still trying each of these or all of them together.
Variations on the Somali theme can be witnessed around the world as we jump from one crisis to the next. We prove to be good tacticians but not strategists, shooters but not aimers, and, above all, loud talkers but poor listeners.
In Syria also we see exemplified our penchant to rely on force, for leaping before we look. From almost the first days that it emerged from under an oppressive French rule (that included artillery barrages on its capital), we have been engaged in subversive actions designed to overthrow its inexperienced leaders and the fragile institutions they represented. Only recently have our actions been documented for us, but, having been affected by them, the Syrians have long known about them. Cumulatively, over more than half a century, our actions have created a record of threats and subversive acts of which we are largely oblivious but which is common knowledge to them. Consequently, it is the rare Syrian of any political or religious persuasion who believes that our aims are benevolent.
Thus, when Syria suffered four years of devastating droughts that created conditions like the American "dust bowl" of the 1930s, and we turned down their request for emergency food aid, many Syrians read into our action a sinister purpose. Our public proclamations substantiated their interpretation. And not only proclamations. We and our allies trained, supplied and financed forces, about which we knew practically nothing, to overthrow their government. And we came within hours of a military strike that would have gotten us into another messy, illegal, ill-conceived and probably unwinnable war. That danger appears to have subsided (temporarily?) but we are still engaged in the actions we began in 1949, trying to overthrow the Syrian state.
Let us be clear: the Syrian state is not an attractive organization. Few states are. All states, even democracies, are to one degree or another coercive. We do not let this bother us when we deal with those states that are important or valuable to us and, truth be told, we apply the criterion of freedom rather loosely to our own actions. America's domestic record in civil rights is hardly unblemished, our dealings with the Native Americans constituted genocide and what we did in the Philippines would today be regarded as a war crime. We have engaged in over 200 military actions against foreigners—an average of one a year since we became a state. But, even if we put legality and morality aside, the fact is that we have never managed to find ways to reform other peoples in the idealized image we have of ourselves. So we keep proclaiming the image while acting as our interests appear to demand.
What are those interests? I think that most Americans would today define them largely if not almost exclusively in terms of security. We don't want to live in fear, and we believe that the danger is foreign. The irony, as one of the authors of our Constitution already put it over 200 years ago, is that our principal danger is ourselves. Of course, he could not have guessed the extent: we murdered almost 200,000 of our fellow citizens in the first decade of this century. (That was with guns and knives; we killed about twice that many in the same period with our most dangerous weapon, the automobile.) The number of Americans killed by foreign terrorists in America was less than 3,000. The odds of an American being killed by a terrorist were said to be about 1:20,000,000. But, the number of Americans killed in foreign wars (not counting Vietnam) is approaching 10,000 and the number with long-term disabilities caused by wounds several times as high as the total of all these figures (including Vietnam).
Logically, we should ask why we are willing to pay all the costs especially since they have not accomplished our aim of becoming more secure. I find three answers: first, some of us make money from our "military-industrial complex;" second, politicians find that they win elections by catering to our fascination with war and the arms industry has cleverly parceled out production so that virtually every congressional district contains one supplier and many workers whose jobs depend on it. More directly, lobbyists rent their services by giving them large scale donations. Thus, they have added "congressional" to Eisenhower's identification of the military-industrial complex. And, third, the lesson our military drew from the Vietnam war was to keep those of us who counted politically, the white, still-relatively prosperous middle class, from getting hurt. A large part of those deployed in harms way today are not "us" but politically and economically marginal members of our society or even foreigners.
Now, as we watch day-by-day in the media, we can see that we are on the brink of a replay of our last failure: Iraq. So, at the risk of exposing myself to the charge that I am an ivory-tower historian, allow me a minute or so of "chatter" on how we got where we are and speculate on what might happen.
First, the sequence: like Syria, Iraq had a relatively short time to develop its governing institutions. When I lived there in 1952, it was "technically" independent but, as everyone knew, the British ruled the country though their proxies. The proxies were allowed to enrich themselves. In return, they raised no problems about the issue that was really important to the British, exporting at minimal cost Iraq's oil. Then, the proxies and the British then made a serious mistake. They allowed increasing numbers of Iraqis to get educated. Worse, those Iraqis began to copy their British and American teachers: they bit into the "apple" of nationalism. Iraq's expulsion from the British-ruled Eden was just a matter of time. And not much of that. When it happened, it was sudden. In 1958, the army made a coup d'état.
Coups d'état are not unusual. We have promoted many and not just in the Middle East but also in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Those that are successful are usually carried out by the single effective organ of weak states, the security forces. They alone are unified, armed and mobile. Those states most susceptible to coups rarely have functioning civil institutions that can balance the military. Iraq had none. So the country fell under the rule of successive dictators.
However we felt in principle about the dictators, in practice we either found them useful or at least did not object to their activities. Iraq was our ally against Iran; so we supplied Saddam with the weapons of war, particularly our satellite intelligence, and even with the stocks to manufacture poison gas. It was only when we thought we no longer needed him and he blundered into Kuwait (and seemed about to invade Saudi Arabia where we had the truly strategic interest of oil) that we decided to get rid of him. That was not a difficult task. Saddam's army was battle worn; its equipment was obsolescent; his treasury was empty; he had many enemies and few friends—even Hafez al-Assad's Syrian regime was on our side.
So the war looked easy. Wars often do to those who want to start them. But as Clausewitz warned, warfare is always unpredictable. Moreover, it changes those who fight: once the "dogs of war" are unleashed, they often turn rabid. They attack the good and the bad, the adults and the children, the people and their organizations. Thus, chaos almost always follows. We see this clearly in Iraq. Saddam was a ruthless dictator who refused to share political power and did some terrible things; however, in some spheres his regime functioned constructively. He used much of the increase of Iraq's income that resulted from the removal of British control of oil to fund economic and social development. Schools, universities, hospitals, factories, theaters and museums proliferated; education became free and nearly universal; the citizens benefited from the one of the best public health systems then in operation; employment became so "full" that a plan was developed to siphon off some of Egypt's vast peasant class to work Iraq's fields. Iraq became a secular state in which women were freer than in most of the world. True, Saddam suppressed the Kurds and the Shiis, but we don't object much to the practice of similar policies against minorities in Asia, Africa and parts of Europe and Latin America.
Saddam's sin was not what he did in Iraq but that he thwarted us on two issues America would not tolerate his interference: oil in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Israel's relation with the Palestinians and its regional dominance. War could have been avoided by adroit diplomacy but it was avidly embraced in 2003 by the George W. Bush administration and its neoconservative guides. Their policy convinced the Iraqis that nothing they could do would stop it. They were right. We fired the broadside.
In the broadside we destroyed not only Saddam's regime. Inevitably; we killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, our use of depleted uranium artillery shells is believed to have caused a seven-fold rise in cancer among survivors; our bombs, shells and the nearly 1,000 cruise missiles we fired destroyed much of the country's infrastructure and caused millions of people to lose their homes, their jobs and their access to education and public health care. And, most important, in the chaos that followed the invasion, the fragile "social contract" that had linked together the inhabitants was voided. Terror set the rules. Hope disappeared in misery. Whole neighborhoods were emptied as violent and newly empowered armed men "ethnically cleansed" them. Former neighbors became deadly enemies. The government we installed made Saddam's regime appear in contrast as civil libertarian.
A whirlwind, as the Old Testament warns us, is the inevitable reaction to the sowing of the wind of war. That is what we are seeing today in Iraq. Now, it seems, President Obama has decided to try whistling in the wind.
Whistling in the wind is the least dangerous interpretation of Mr. Obama's decision to put 300 "advisors" into Iraq—where have we heard of such a move before! Those of us who are old enough will remember that President Kennedy began in the same way. Arguably he was a bit more realistic, sending initially about six times that many "Special Forces" (then called "Green Berets") initially to Vietnam. Both Kennedy and Obama swore not to send ground troops, but Obama can at least claim credit for being more honest: our "advisors" are to be "combat ready."
So instead of "security," or even an approximation of what that word might mean, and certainly no reasonably clear strategy on how to attain it, we find ourselves in the following disarray:
Starting in the west and moving east: in Libya, having destroyed the Qaddafi regime, we unleashed forces that have virtually torn Libya apart and have spilled over into Central Africa, opening a new area of instability. In Egypt, the "non-coup-coup" of General Sisi has produced no ideas on what to do to help the Egyptian people except to execute large numbers of their religious leaders; he has also made clear his suspicion of and opposition to us. In occupied Palestine, the Israeli state is reducing the population to misery and driving it to rage while, in Washington, its extreme right-wing government is thumbing its nose at its benefactor, America. Our relations have never been worse. In Syria, we are engaged in arming, training and funding essentially the same people whom the new Egyptian regime is about to hang and whom we are considering bombing in Iraq. In Iraq, we are about to become engaged in supporting the regime we installed and which is the close ally of the Syrian and Iranian regimes that we have been trying for years to destroy; yet in Iran, we appear to be on the point of reversing our policy of destroying its government and seeking its help to defeat the insurgents in Iraq. And on and on.
Admittedly, in my day in planning American policy in the Middle East, we never had to find our ways out of such a disarray. My tasks were comparatively easy. So, perhaps, our actions are aspects of a shrewd, nimble and skillful policy that I am simply not clever enough to understand. I certainly hope so.
But, even if they are, what is the "bottom line," as businessmen like to say, in terms of our objective of being "secure?"
Allow me a personal answer. When I first traveled through the deserts, farm lands, villages and cities of Africa and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, unfailingly, I was welcomed, invited into homes, fed and cared for. Today, I would risk being shot into any of the areas most affected by American policy.
Get the broadside ready. But in which direction should we point it?
William R. Polk was a Member of the Policy Planning Council, responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, for 4 years under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, He was a member of the three-men Crisis Management Committee during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Later he was Professor of History at the University of Chicago, founding director of the Middle Eastern Studies Center and President of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of some 17 books on world affairs, including The United States and the Arab World; The Elusive Peace, the Middle East in the Twentieth Century; Understanding Iraq; Understanding Iran; Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency and Terrorism; Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs and numerous articles in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Harpers, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Le Monde Diplomatique. He has lectured at many universities and at the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, Sciences Po, the Soviet Academy of Sciences and has appeared frequently on NPR, the BBC, CBS and other networks. His most recent books, both available on Amazon, are Humpty Dumpty: The Fate of Regime Change and Blind Man's Buff, a Novel.


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Why the sunflower?
According to the Eden Project in Cornwall, 'the sunflower is not a single bloom, it's hundreds of little flowers that combine together to create something that's greater than the sum of its parts'.
We think this neatly sums up the role of the CVS in linking up and serving member groups, to be 'better together'
West Lancs CVS
Supporting voluntary action, empowering local communities


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One of the most common arguments that school authorities use to justify public schools is that all children have a "right" to an education. Public-school apologists claim that all children have a right to an education, and that only the existence of a massive, compulsory, government-controlled public-school system can "guarantee" that right.
As I will explain below, the claim that all children have a right to an education ends up hurting the very children it was intended to help. I will therefore ask a seemingly shocking question — do all children have a right to an education? If they do, public-school apologists are correct in assuming that we need government to guarantee that right so no child gets left behind.
What is an economic "right" such as the alleged right to an education? A "right" means that a person has a claim on the rest of society (other Americans) to give him some product or service he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it or not. For example, if we claimed that everyone has a right to a car, that would mean if someone couldn't afford a car, government would give that person the money to buy it (the payment might be called a car voucher).
Similarly, if we say that all children have a right to an education, regardless of their parent's ability to pay tuition, then only government can guarantee this alleged right. Government has to guarantee this right because no private, for-profit school will admit a student if the parents don't pay tuition (unless the student gets a scholarship). If a private school doesn't get paid for its services, it soon goes out of business.
Local or state governments can guarantee this alleged right in two basic ways. They can own and operate all the public schools and force all children to attend these schools, or they can give subsidies (vouchers) to parents to pay for tuition in the private school of their choice. Since most school authorities strongly oppose vouchers, that means they support only a government-controlled system of compulsory public schools and school taxes to guarantee children this alleged right to an education.
But government produces nothing by itself. Government gets its money by taxing us. To guarantee this alleged right to a product or service, government tax collectors must therefore take money from one person to give it to another. They must take from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes. So, in effect, a person who demands food, housing, or medical care as an alleged right, is really demanding that government tax agents steal money from his neighbor to give him an unearned benefit he didn't work for.
Education, like housing or medical care, does not grow free in nature. Just as someone must pay doctors, nurses, and hospitals for all the services they provide, someone must also pay for teachers' salaries, textbooks, janitorial services, and school upkeep. Other than air, nothing that we need is free.
The average public school now gets over $7,500 a year per student, paid from compulsory taxes. To guarantee education as a "right," local, state, and federal governments must tax all Americans to pay for public schools. All of us are taxed, whether or not we have school-age children or think these schools are worth paying for. So when some parents claim that their children have a right to an education, they are really demanding that their local or state government steal money from their neighbors to pay for their children's education.
Here's an analogy that might help clarify this issue. Imagine that your unemployed neighbor comes to you and asks you to lend him money to pay for his children's education. You reply that, though you sympathize with his problem, your answer is no. He responds by saying that he is poor, points out that you have a big house and a job, and insists that his children have a "right" to an education. You say, "Sorry, my answer is still no because I need my money for my own children's education." Suppose that your neighbor then gets real mad, pulls out a gun, puts it to your head, and says, "I asked you nicely. I told you my children need an education. You have a job, and I'm unemployed, so you have a moral duty to give me your money." Then he clicks back the hammer on the gun.
Does your neighbor have the right to put a gun to your head and steal your money because his children "need" an education? He has no such right. Nor does he, or any number of your neighbors, have the right to rob you by getting government to be their enforcer — by pressuring local governments to take your money through school taxes. Any school system that uses compulsory taxes is a system based on the notion that theft is moral if it's for a good cause. No goal, not even educating children, justifies legalized theft.
It is only natural that all parents want the best education for their children, but do good intentions justify stealing from your neighbor? A mugger on the street who puts a knife to your throat and demands your money also has good intentions — he wants to make his life better with your money. One of the Ten Commandments says, "Thou shalt not steal." It does not say, "Thou shalt not steal, except if you need tuition money to educate your child." Since no one has a right to steal from his neighbor, no one, including children, has a "right" to an education.
Some might argue that I may be correct on this issue when it comes to adults, but surely we can't punish innocent children for their parent's failures? Just because parents are poor or unemployed, why should innocent children suffer and be denied an education? The answer to that question is one that many people find hard to accept, yet it is true — there are no guarantees in life, not for adults or for children. Good intentions to alleviate a problem do not justify hurting other people by stealing from them. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Moreover, if we agree that children have a right to an education because their parents are poor, then shouldn't they also have a right to food, a bicycle, a nice house in the suburbs, and designer clothes? If poor kids (and all children) have an alleged right to an education, don't they also have an alleged right to everything else that other kids have whose parents are well-off? Why not then say that anyone, poor, middle-class, or rich who has less money than his neighbor, has the "right" to steal from his neighbor? Where do we stop if some people can legally steal from others because they claim their kids need this or that?
The answer is, we don't stop, and we haven't stopped. That is why our country has turned into a devouring welfare state that is drowning in debt. When I use the word "welfare," I don't mean only for the poor. Rich, poor, and middle-class alike in America now claim the right to everything from corporate tax breaks and subsidies, to price supports for farmers, to Medicare, to rent subsidies for unwed mothers. When we let government steal money from taxpayers to give unearned benefits or subsidies to special-interest groups, we open up a Pandora's box. We become a nation of thieves stealing from each other. Is this what we want America to become?
It is true that a free market does not and can not guarantee that all children have enough to eat or live in a comfortable house. Likewise, a free-market education system in which all parents have to pay for their children's education obviously can't guarantee a quality education for every child.
However, government-controlled public schools also can't guarantee that every child gets a quality education. These failed schools can barely teach our children to read. Also, neither system can make guarantees because there are no guarantees in life, and because each child's abilities, personality, and family background are so different that such guarantees are impossible. The real question, then, is not which system is perfect, but which system is more likely to give the vast majority of children a quality education that most parents could afford?
Public schools fail and betray millions of children, year after year. The only "right" the public-school system gives to school children is the right to suffer through a mind-numbing, third-rate education for twelve years.
In contrast, the free-market, while not perfect, gives us all the wondrous goods and services we buy every day, such as cars, fresh food, computers, refrigerators, and televisions. The superbly efficient and competitive free market gives us all these marvelous products at prices that most people can afford. Even the poorest American families today have a car, refrigerator, and sometimes two televisions in their homes. If we want to discover which system would give the vast majority of children a quality education at reasonable prices, I think we have the answer — the free market, hands down.
We therefore don't need a failed public-school system to enforce an alleged right to an education, when there is no such right in the first place. Each parent should be responsible for paying for their own children's education, just as they pay for their children's food or clothing.
Finally, public-school apologists use this alleged right to an education to justify keeping the public-school dinosaur alive, in spite of these schools' never-ending failure. Many public-school apologists who claim that children have a right to an education do so out of good intentions. They want to give all children a chance to get a decent education. But good intentions mean worse than nothing if they lead to dismal consequences. This alleged right to an education lets government bureaucrats have tyrannical control over our children's minds and future.
The "right" to an education requires a massive government-controlled public-school system to enforce that right. But it is this same public-school system that cripples the education and lives of millions of children. So, ironically, the alleged right to an education is the worst thing we can offer our children.
Most low-income families don't need government education handouts anymore in the form of allegedly "free" public schools. Parents today can buy quality, low-cost food in a competitive, free-market food industry full of grocery stores and supermarkets. In the same way, parents today can give their kids a quality education using low-cost Internet private schools and homeschooling.
Only when we reject the notion that all children have a "right" to an education will we get government out of the education business, permanently. Only a fiercely-competitive free-market education system can give kids the quality, low-cost education they deserve.


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Cohen, Iftach. Israeli Judges in a Jewish State and the Decline of Refugee Protection, LL.M. Thesis. Florence: European University Institute, 2015.
URL: http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/39068/2015_Cohen_LLM.pdf (PDF)
In this L.L.M thesis I am following a number of eminent scholars who have attributed those ideological and political motivations to the mainly Jewish and Israeli actors who devote themselves to the furthering of the uniqueness thesis in their respective fields of knowledge. In my view, from the culmination of those corresponsive activities emerges a pattern that can and should be applied to the Israeli judges in their abnormal reluctance from interfering in administrative decisions by recognizing present day asylum seekers as refugees.
In the larger scope, there is a lot in common between Jewish and Jewish-Israeli historians, diplomats or museum directors, with their persistent effort to reject the calls of other victim-groups for recognition of their own tragedy as a genuine genocide, and the Israeli judges that in the same vain derogate from the constitutive theoretical principles of their field of work when it comes to the dealing with the Holocaust.
As much as the Jewish-Israeli genocide scholar may fear the decline in value, morally and politically, of the Holocaust, as a result of possible recognition of other tragedies as additional valid examples in line with the Holocaust, which all belong to the general category of the definition 'genocide', the Israeli judge must also believe that the Holocaust would lose its uniqueness if the legal definition of 'refugee' is applied to the situation of contemporary asylum seekers. Conceptually situating them in the same group of the Jewish -refugees who fled from Nazi-Germany, might then dissipate the "Israeli advantage" in "justifiably" keeping the whole moral capital to itself.
In the second chapter I shall present and elaborate about the Holocaust's uniqueness thesis, and its promotion by its proponents in different fields, and especially within history studies.
What might make the definition 'refugee' intimately associated with the Holocaust in the Israeli judges' mind is the Jewish context of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and the conventional wisdom about Israel's historical commitment to the refugee protection regime it has established. For them, the Refugee Convention connotes so strongly to the Holocaust, that when they examine its applicability and implementation in a specific case, the memory of the Jewish-refugee who fled his Nazi perpetrators is being instantly evoked. In other words, the Jewish context of the Convention serves as a nexus between the Holocaust with its Jewish refugees and the contemporary forms of persecution and the refugees resulting from them. Rather than considering the international refugee law as their only valid point of reference, the judges are more attached – consciously or not – to the Holocaust framework and to what lies at its center, the Holocaust's uniqueness. Compelled by the ideological imperative to distinguish the Holocaust from any other historical atrocity, and so to avoid such possible implication if comparing the legal situation of the Holocaust's refugees to the contemporary asylum seekers, the judges seem to mistake the unique form of persecution witnessed by the Jewish-refugees for the actual yardstick with which to measure the appellant's entitlement for the refugee status.
In the third chapter I examine the involvement of Israel and Jewish organizations in the drafting and acceptance of the Refugee Convention, as well as the sources for the conventional wisdom about Israel's historical commitment to the Convention, and its fallacy.
In the last chapter of this thesis I conduct an analysis of the figurative language used by the judges in trying to establish – through the allusions occasionally made by them to the Holocaust at large and more commonly to the Jewish context of the Refugee Convention – that when thinking about the asylum seeker appellant standing before them, they also bear in mind a phantom of the Jewish refugee, whose suffering's magnitude overshadows any possible fear of being prosecuted proclaimed by the actual appellant. Since present day asylum seekers do not withstand the unique standards of persecution witnessed by those poor phantoms of Jewish refugees, their asylum claims are inevitably being discarded and consequently they all pass for nothing but mere economical migrants, a fact that is exemplified in the inexistent refugee recognition rate both at first instance and at the Court level.


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Mumbai: Pakistan has temporarily banned gold imports for the second time in six months as it tries to stem smuggling into India, which has clamped down on its own bullion buying to rescue state finances.
India's import duty stands at a record 10 percent and tight restrictions on supplies have virtually dried up legal imports into what used to be the world's biggest bullion buyer, spurring a surge in smuggling and recycling to meet persistent demand.
"Credible reports have indicated that in the wake of steep increase in duty on import of gold in a neighbouring country there has been a surge in its smuggling activity," Pakistan's finance minister said, according to a statement on the ministry website.
It said the ban would be for 30 days and exports, mostly jewellery, would not be restricted. Pakistan last banned imports for a month in August, 2013.
Official imports into India shrank almost 90 percent in the six months to November as restrictions tightened. Between April and September - the latest data available - customs officials seizures of illegal gold nearly doubled compared to all of 2012.
The World Gold Council puts the amount smuggled into India at up to 200 tonnes in calendar 2013. Pakistan usually imports tiny amounts in comparison with its much larger neighbour, although imports surged last year and purchases in July - the last month before the previous ban - amounted to $514 million.
Pakistan said the ban would also check speculation on its currency. Gold is India's most expensive non-essential import and helped to swell its current account deficit to a record last fiscal year. But restrictions have worked and the deficit is now expected to be about $50 billion in the current fiscal year, down $20 billion from earlier estimates.
That has prompted the government to consider relaxing curbs, according to government sources speaking earlier this month. With India's wedding and festival season in full swing, demand remains strong, keeping premiums near record highs at around $130 per ounce. That has encouraged recycling of existing jewellery to meet demand and also boosted smuggling.
New Delhi's latest attempt to check illegal imports focuses on the biggest buyers, with jewellers now required to give details of any purchase of gold bars or jewellery worth over 500,000 rupees by the end of the month.
Source : ndtv.com
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