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|Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
Security Council 1988 Committee Deletes Two Entries from Its Sanctions List
On 19 July 2012, the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1988 (2011) deleted the entries specified below from the Committee's List (the 1988 List). The assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo set out in paragraph 1 of Security Council resolution 1988 (2011) therefore no longer apply to the following individuals:
A. Individuals associated with the Taliban
TI.T.12.01. Name: 1: TAHIS 2: na 3: na 4: na
Name (original script): تاحیس
Title: Haji Designation: Deputy Minister of Civil Aviation under the Taliban regime DOB: na POB: na Good quality a.k.a.: Tahib Low quality a.k.a.: na Nationality: Afghan Passport no.: na National identification no.: na Address: na Listed on: 31 Jan. 2001 (amended on 3 Sep. 2003, 21 Sep. 2007, 29 Nov. 2011) Other information: Review pursuant to Security Council resolution 1822 (2008) was concluded on 27 Jul. 2010.
TI.M.29.01. Name: 1: ABDUL WASAY 2: MU'TASIM 3: AGHA 4: na
Name (original script): عبد الواسع معتصم آغا
Title: Mullah Designation: Minister of Finance under the Taliban regime DOB: a) 1961 b) Approximately 1968 POB: a) Jelawur village, Arghandab District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan b) Speerwan village, Panjwai District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan Good quality a.k.a.: a) Mutasim Aga Jan b) Agha Jan c) Abdul Wasay Agha Jan Motasem Low quality a.k.a.: na Nationality: Afghan Passport no.: na National identification no.: na Address: na Listed on: 31 Jan. 2001 (amended on 3 Sep. 2003, 9 Jul. 2007, 21 Sep. 2007, 3 Oct. 2008, 13 Feb. 2012) Other information: He is a Taliban fundraiser who frequently travels to Gulf States. Member of Financial Commission of the Taliban Supreme Council as at 2011. His family is linked by marriage to Mullah Mohammed Omar (TI.O.4.01). Believed to be in Afghanistan/Pakistan border area. Belongs to Sadat ethnic group. Review pursuant to Security Council resolution 1822 (2008) was concluded on 27 Jul. 2010.
The Committee's List is updated regularly on the basis of relevant information provided by Member States and international and regional organizations. This is the tenth update of the List in 2012. An updated List is accessible on the Committee's website at the following URL: http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1988/list.shtml.
* *** *For information media • not an official record


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Eskenazi Health Center and Local Community Team Up to Offer Free Health Screenings
Stroke is a leading cause of death and a
leading cause of serious, long-term disability, according to the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Stroke Association (ASA). The ASA reports that strokes kill about 137,000 people a year, accounting for about one of every 18 deaths. Find out more about stroke by taking this quiz, based on information from the AHA and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
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Eskenazi Health Foundation | Vendor Relations | Employee Access

subset: commoncrawl


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Both of these young stars have been locked up to long term deals by their franchises. It's obvious that both players decided to take security over a potentially larger reward down the road.
I'm really struck by the Braun deal. I understand Kazmir's actions to the extent that he's probably worried he'll blow his arm out and he wants to make sure his family is taken care of. However, Kazmir still hits FA in his 20's even with this deal. Ryan Braun has essentially forfeited his entire prime and with it, his chance at a mega deal unless he's still solid into his 30's. I really think Braun has left an absolutely astounding amount of money on the table by giving up 2 years of FA that mean he won't actually hit the market till he's comfortably north of 30.
These were both obviously great deals for the Rays and Brewers, but the hat tip really must go to the Brew Crew for the best young player deal since Omar bilked Reyes.


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A word of caution involving Obamacare numbers
The latest print edition of National Review offers a warning about the numbers Obamacare supporters have been using to support the dubious notion that the law is working.
Apologists for Obamacare are saying that it has allowed 10 million people to gain health insurance. Don't believe them. That number counts a lot of people who have simply re-enrolled in Medicaid. It counts everyone who is staying on his parents' insurance until age 26, even people who were guaranteed that option by state law before Obamacare. It counts all the people who sign up for the exchanges as newly insured, even though McKinsey, a consultancy, has just estimated that only 11 percent of them lacked health insurance. It is entirely possible that Obamacare will not produce any net reduction in the number of uninsured Americans this year (and even more possible that it will produce no net reduction outside Medicaid). An administration official was quoted saying that Obamacare has achieved "preliminary sustainability." Translation: We can't say the law's benefits are great, and we can't say the costs are low, but we can can say that the law is here. Watch for this argument-from-the-status-quo to loom ever larger in the liberal rhetoric.
Remember to subscribe to Katherine Restrepo's weekly health care newsletter for updates on the Affordable Care Act's impact in North Carolina.


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"Roman Candle" turns 20: Secrets of Elliott Smith's accidental masterpiece (slideshow)
Elliott and the friends with whom he recorded in middle school in Texas (photo courtesy of Dan Pickering)
Topics: Jeremy Hammond, Anonymous, Hacker, LulzSec, Aaron Swartz, cfaa, cybercrime, judge loretta preska, Solitary Confinement, Technology News, News
On Thursday morning, the judge overseeing Jeremy Hammond's trial for his alleged involvement in the famed LulzSec Stratfor hack refused to step down from presiding over the case, despite a reported conflict of interest. Hammond's attorneys had filed a motion to have Judge Loretta Preska recuse herself from the case after it emerged that her husband had been a Stratfor client with data released by the hack.
The legal system is such that it was up to Preska herself to step down — she opted against it, and Hammond will appear in court in April with the judge presiding. The same judge denied the activist bail (he has been held in a Manhattan federal prison for over a year, regularly placed in solitary confinement) and told the defendant that he could face life in jail for his alleged involvement in the hack.
On the same morning Judge Preska announced that she would not be stepping down from the case, Hammond released a statement of his own through his lawyers. The tract decries the criminal justice system's treatment of cyber activists, condemns government's persecution of dissent, and above all celebrates the work of the late Aaron Swartz.
In the statement, posted in full by SparrowMedia.net, Hammond writes:
The tragic death of internet freedom fighter Aaron Swartz reveals the government's flawed "cyber security strategy" as well as its systematic corruption involving computer crime investigations, intellectual property law, and government/corporate transparency…
It is not the "crimes" Aaron may have committed that made him a target of federal prosecution, but his ideas – elaborated in his "Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto" – that the government has found so dangerous. The United States Attorney's aggressive prosecution, riddled with abuse and misconduct, is what led to the death of this hero. This sad and angering chapter should serve as a wake up call for all of us to acknowledge the danger inherent in our criminal justice system.
Hammond's words echo those of, among others, Swartz's family and partner who blamed overzealous prosecutors and a flawed criminal justice system for driving the online activist to suicide over charges relating to downloading academic articles. Hammond sees Swartz's case in the context of growing persecution of online activism and dissent under the dangerously broad Computer Fraud and Abuse Act:
The rise in effectiveness of, and public support for, movements like Anonymous and Wikileaks has led to an expansion of computer crime investigations – most importantly enhancements to 18 U.S.C § 1030, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Over the years the CFAA has been amended five times and has gone through a number of important court rulings that have greatly expanded what the act covers concerning "accessing a protected computer without authorization." It is now difficult to determine exactly what conduct would be considered legal.
… The sheer number of everyday computer users who could be considered criminals under these broad and ambiguous definitions enables the politically motivated prosecution of anyone who voices dissent.
The 27-year-old alleged hacker then frames his own case in terms of a "fundamentally flawed and corrupt" legal system:
I am currently facing multiple computer hacking conspiracy charges due to my alleged involvement with Anonymous, LulzSec, and AntiSec, groups which have targeted and exposed corruption in government institutions and corporations such as Stratfor, The Arizona Department of Public Safety, and HB Gary Federal. My potential sentence is dramatically increased because the Patriot Act expanded the CFAA's definition of "loss." This allowed Stratfor to claim over 5 million dollars in damages, including the exorbitant cost of hiring outside credit protection agencies and "infosec" corporations, purchasing new servers, 1.6 million dollars in "lost potential revenue" for the time their website was down, and even the cost of a 1.3 million dollar settlement for a class action lawsuit filed against them. Coupled with use of "sophisticated means" and "affecting critical infrastructure" sentence enhancements, if convicted at trial I am facing a sentence of 30-years-to-life.
Dirty trial tactics and lengthy sentences are not anomalies but are part of a fundamentally flawed and corrupt two-tiered system of "justice" which seeks to reap profits from the mass incarceration of millions, especially people of color and the impoverished. The use of informants who cooperate in exchange for lighter sentences is not just utilized in the repressive prosecutions of protest movements and manufactured "terrorist" Islamophobic witch-hunts, but also in most drug cases, where defendants face some of the harshest sentences in the world.
For Aaron Swartz, himself facing 13 felony CFAA charges, it is likely that it was this intense pressure from relentless and uncompromising prosecutors, who, while being aware of Aaron's psychological fragility, continued to demand prison time, that led to his untimely death.
As noted here numerous times, following Swartz's death, efforts have arisen to reform the CFAA. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has proposed legislation, titled "Aaron's law," that aims to stop the government bringing disproportionate charges in cases like Swartz's. However, as I noted at the time, "the structural problems plaguing federal justice go far beyond Swartz's prosecutors and cyber crime law." Hammond expresses similar skepticism about the effectiveness of such reforms when it comes to ending government persecution under the CFAA, which he argues must be "found unconstitutional under the void-for-vagueness doctrine of the due process clause":
Due to widespread public outrage, there is talk of congressional investigations into the CFAA. But since the same Congress had proposed increased penalties not even one year ago, any efforts at reform are unlikely to be more than symbolic. What is needed is not reform but total transformation; not amendments but abolition. Aaron is a hero to me because he did not wait for those in power to realize his vision and change their game, he sought to change the game himself, and he did so without fear of being labeled a criminal and imprisoned by a backwards system of justice.
Meanwhile, following Judge Preska's decision not to recuse herself Thursday morning, anger at the government's treatment of Hammond is set to foment. In advance of Preska's decision, Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild which is putting support behind Hammond's defense, said, "The conflict of interest here is clear cut … Judge Preska is required to avoid the appearance of bias so that, even if she owned one share of Stratfor stock, she would be obligated to recuse herself. How can she be impartial when the case directly affects the man she wakes up to every morning?"
Hammond's twin, Jason, said of Preska overseeing his brother's case, "There's no way he can get a fair trial in her courtroom."
Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email email@example.com Natasha Lennard.
Elliott and the friends with whom he recorded in middle school in Texas (photo courtesy of Dan Pickering)
Heatmiser publicity shot (L-R: Tony Lash, Brandt Peterson, Neil Gust, Elliott Smith) (photo courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
Elliott and JJ Gonson (photo courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
"Stray" 7-inch, Cavity Search Records (photo courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
Elliott's Hampshire College ID photo, 1987
Elliott with "Le Domino," the guitar he used on "Roman Candle" (courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
Full "Roman Candle" record cover (courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
Elliott goofing off in Portland (courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
Heatmiser (L-R: Elliott Smith, Neil Gust, Tony Lash, Brandt Peterson)(courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
The Greenhouse Sleeve -- Cassette sleeve from Murder of Crows release, 1988, with first appearance of Condor Avenue (photo courtesy of Glynnis Fawkes)


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Videos > Angelina Valentine > Filthy babe Angelina Valentine sits her bitchy pussy on a cock until she cums
Hustler The official site for the number one name in adult entertainment. Hustler.com has the latest hardcore porn parodies, the hottest pornstars in the world and the attitude that has made Hustler Magazine world famous.
Featured Pornstars:
- Angelina Valentine


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It looks like February 2013 will have a British accent when it comes to new R&B/Soul albums coming our way during the month. Of the handful of releases scheduled to drop in the U.S. during February, half of them are from English artists. They are: Soul singer Alice Russell, whose latest solo project, To Dust, is her second new release in 10 months; dance-Soul funkateer Jamie Lidell, who has a self-titled project coming out; and newcomer Emeli Sande, who follows up her 2012 debut project with a live album recorded in her native UK. Also releasing projects this month are American romantic crooners Avant and Will Downing, Southern hummingbird Tweet; and underrated, eclectic vocalist Bilal. For the full details, have a look below.
1. 'Face the Music,' Avant
Avant's seventh studio album, which comes out Feb. 5, is the follow-up to 2010's The Letter.
- Toast to Love
- 80 In a 30 (feat. Kajun and J'Lyn)
- You & I (feat. KeKe Wyatt)
- More
- Excited
- Don't Know How
- Nobody's Business
- Best Friend
- Like You
- When It's Over
- No
- Gratitude
2. 'To Dust,' Alice Russell
British Soul singer Alice Russell, who released a well-received collaborative album called Look Around the Corner with DJ Quantic less than a year ago, is back with an all-new solo album. It comes out Feb. 26 -- except in the U.S., where it'll be released April 30.
- A To Z
- Heartbreaker Pt. 2
- For A While
- Heartbreaker
- I Love You (Interlude)
- Hard and Strong
- To Dust
- I Loved You
- Twin Peaks
- Heartbreaker (Interlude)
- Let Go (Breakdown)
- Drinking Song (Interlude)
- Citizens
- Different (Bonus Track)
3. 'Jamie Lidell,' Jamie Lidell
British Dance-Soul singer-musician Jamie Lidell produced his latest album in his Nashville, Tennessee studio. It'll be in stores Feb. 19 in the U.S.
- I'm Selfish
- Big Love
- What a Shame
- Do Yourself a Favor
- You Naked
- why_ya_why
- Blaming Something
- You Know My Name
- So Cold
- Don't You Love Me
- In Your Mind
4. 'A Love Surreal,' Bilal
The eclectic and avant-garde singer Bilal's fourth studio album (but only his third to be released commercially) comes out Feb. 26.
- Intro
- West Side Girl
- Back To Love
- Winning Hand
- Climbing
- Longing and Waiting
- Right at the Core
- Slipping Away
- Lost For Now
- Astray
- Never Be the Same
- Butterfly (feat. Robert Glasper)
- The Flow
- Outro
5. 'Simply Tweet,' Tweet
It's been a long eight years since southern hummingbird Tweet released a full album. And although she's not putting one out this month, this new five-song EP is a good step in the right direction. It'll be available on iTunes and amazon.com starting Feb. 26.
- Intro
- Day Dreaming
- Way To Love
- Sorry
- Enough
6. 'Silver,' Will Downing
Will Downing's latest project, which comes out Feb. 12, contains a combination of a handful of new songs, some previously-released ones and a live medley of some of his best tracks.
- Stuff That I Like
- One Step Closer
- Falling
- Send For Me
- The Blessing
- What Would You Do?
- Sexy
- You Were Meant Just For Me
- Never Find Another Love
- Ooh Baby Baby
- Only One
- I Go Crazy/Wishing On a Star/I Try
7. 'Live at Royal Albert Hall (CD/DVD),' Emeli Sande
The first live album by British songbird Emeli Sande is due out in the U.S. Feb. 26. It's the follow-up to her 2012 debut album, Our Version of Events.
Disc 1: CD:
- Daddy
- Where I Sleep
- Breaking the Law
- Enough
- My Kind of Love
- Clown
- River
- I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
- Suitcase
- Read All About It, Pt. III (feat. Prof. Green)
- Wonder
- Mountains
- Heaven
- Beneath Your Beautiful (feat. Labrinth)
- Maybe
- Next to Me
Disc 2: DVD:
- Menu Screens (Read All About It, Part III)
- Daddy
- Tiger
- Where I Sleep
- Breaking the Law
- Enough
- Pluto
- My Kind of Love
- Abide With Me
- Clown
- River
- I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
- Suitcase
- Read All About It Pt. III (feat. Prof. Green)
- Wonder
- Mountains
- Heaven
- Beneath Your Beautiful (feat. Labrinth)
- Maybe
- Next to Me


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TonyG Blog
Back to Poker
I've been away and enjoyed every minute of it but I'm ready to come back to the world of high stakes heat, TV poker, and all the action anyone can throw at me. I will be playing the Poker Lounge in Wales on the 22nd. From there it will be the Poker Millions Event Heat 1 in London on 28th. It will be a busy day and a fair bit of poker on TV that day as I will be doing two shows that day on the Poker Lounge.
My next poker ventures will be the WSOP Europe, and WPT events as well as all the EPT events. I will focus on playing in London.
I sent my Angels out to bring you a report of the WSOP Main Event Final Players, enjoy the report as they find answers and news from each player that you won't hear about anyplace else.
Tony's Angels
Come play with Tony on www.partypoker.com
Short and Sweet from Nida Lithuania
The WSOP main event started without me and I'm sure they aren't missing me at all and it's probably more amplified from my side since I'm really glad I am where I am. I am doing great. I've been watching the soccer world cup. I love watching the game and the competition.
I have been spending time with my kids and really enjoying being out of poker for awhile – just taking it easy and relaxing. I won't be playing poker until the WSOP Europe comes up and other EPT events in Europe.
Come play with Tony G at www.partypoker.com
- 2013
- 2012
- 2011
- 2010
- 2009


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A group of port workers in Los Angeles has filed for a rare union election, and another just ended a two-week strike that brought the Port of Seattle to a near standstill.
On December 12, as Occupy activists were preparing to shut down ports across the West Coast, five port truck drivers wrote them a letter. The drivers, elected by committees of their co-workers at seven ports, declined to take a stance on that week's controversy: whether dock workers and their unions should join the attempted shutdowns. But they praised the Occupy movement's vision and leadership, and asked for its help in publicizing their own terrible working conditions. And the port truckers made a promise; that they and their co-workers would "organize ourselves and do what is needed to win dignity, respect, and justice."
Two months later, one group of port workers has filed for a rare union election, backed by international solidarity. Another just ended a two-week strike that brought the Port of Seattle to a near standstill.
Outrageous Loopholes and the Employers Who Love Them
Many Americans picture trucking as a draining but sustaining middle-class job – a decent day's pay for a full day's work. In their December letter, the five drivers paint a very different picture.
"There are no restrooms for drivers," they write. "We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs." Despite working 60 or more hours a week, "we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part-time at a fast-food counter." These drivers, mostly immigrants, haul cargo for major companies like Starbucks and Walmart. The various "logistics" companies they work for provide them no healthcare or retirement benefits.
The drivers warn that their work conditions hurt not just them and their families, but everyone living around the ports where they work: New York, New Jersey, Seattle, Tacoma, Oakland, Long Beach, and Los Angeles. Because old trucks poison the air, "our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis." Management insistence on cutting corners "makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are 'starved out'" by being fired or simply not asked back to work.
An investigation by Seattle's King 5 News revealed that the majority (58 percent) of those container haulers pulled over by officials for Level 1 inspections were pulled out-of-service for having one or more safety violations.
These conditions are entrenched, as Tara Lohan reported for AlterNet in December, by misclassification. Because of trucking deregulation in 1980, 100,000 truckers are considered "independent contractors," not employees. As in other sectors of the economy, that title brings workers few benefits, many burdens, and restricted options. Increasingly, management doesn't provides drivers their trucks – workers buy them, or pay to lease them from the company. Management doesn't keep up the trucks, the workers do, and they pay the fines when they get pulled over, fail inspection, and get ticketed. Management often doesn't even pay an hourly wage – workers get paid by the delivery, and sit for hours in toll lines or traffic jams knowing their waiting is earning them nothing.
"Our rights have been taken," says Meconnen, who has been a port truck driver for four years. Despite his legal status, "I'm not a subcontractor, because they tell me, go from Point A to Point B, and I don't even know how much they'll pay me until the check comes." Along with paying all the costs of maintaining a truck, he's required to buy accident insurance directly from the company he works for. As for his own health, "Since I started working for this company, I never go to the doctor, because I never have insurance." After work-related expenses, he estimates, "you probably take home $20,000 a year."
And, like an increasing number of American workers, these "independent contractors" aren't considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act. That means that while workers can organize and act as a union, the law doesn't require their bosses to recognize or collectively bargain with them.
"The more underwater we are," the drivers wrote, "the more our restlessness grows."
Seattle Workers' Strike Forces Port Slowdown
That restlessness has been on full display this month, as hundreds of port truck drivers struck for two weeks, leaving the Port of Seattle in disarray. Instead of hauling cargo, drivers showed up at Washington's state capitol, where legislators were debating two pro-labor bills: one to crack down on truckers' classification as independent contractors, and another to shift the costs of trucking safety violations back to the companies that hire them. They stayed out for over two weeks. Many resumed trucking on Wednesday; others are still not returning to work.
A January 30 confrontation between Meconnen and management helped instigate the strike. He and a group of co-workers called out of work that Monday to attend a hearing on the misclassification bill. His boss turned out to be at the state capital as well, testifying against the reforms and citing wage statistics Meconnen says were nothing like his actual pay. When he returned to work on Tuesday, Meconnen says management asked him why he hadn't worked the previous day, and then, when he answered honestly, retaliated against him by giving him a different work assignment.
"They knew I did not have the right equipment" to do that assignment safely, says Meconnen, and "they said, 'Go do this.'" When he refused, citing safety concerns, he was told not to work for the rest of the week. Meconnen is filing complaints against his employer, Western Ports, for violating state and federal whistleblower protections. (Management denies this account.)
"Within 30 minutes," says Meconnen, "at least 20 of my fellow drivers…all decided that they would all come out." Over a few days, their numbers grew from dozens to hundreds. The Seattle Times reported that "Last week, they were largely successful in shutting down the movement of freight."
Since driving off the job, workers have been a daily presence at the state capital. Last week the Washington State House passed the misclassification bill, which now heads to the Senate. Change to Win's TJ Michels credits that victory to the drivers' action. While "misclassification clearly has fueled unrest at the ports for decades now," she says, it was due to the strike that "lawmakers in Olympia got a first-hand look."
Last week, a rally outside a small business founded by country-western singer Bob Edgmon won unpaid back wages from Edgmon Trucking for 24 drivers. Workers gathered at a Teamsters union hall Saturday to discuss truckers' working conditions with Seattle's Port Commissioner and a city council member. Hundreds of workers and supporters rallied on Monday. This week they recorded a video message to US Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, asking her to visit Seattle and see the abuses imposed by bosses on so-called "independent contractors."
Wednesday, drivers announced that most workers were returning to work. Meconnen says that decision was made for two reasons: The difficulty of continuing to go without pay, and the achievement of significant concessions from many of the companies drivers work for. Among those victories: pay will increase; management will cover more of the costs of insuring trucks; drivers will be paid for time they spend waiting, in excess of one hour, in line to go through tolls.
Workers who engage in collective action against their boss are always taking a risk, despite the legal protections for such actions on paper. But their status as "independent contractors" makes these drivers' action that much more risky. What they had to protect them was not the law, but each other; the hope that involving enough people, and drawing enough attention and sympathy, would make it practically or politically unwieldy for management to sack them.
Meconnen says that although he hasn't seen signs of retaliation yet, workers are watching for it, and ready to back up anyone targeted by management for their participation. "We don't want to do this again," he says. "But if something is going to happen again like retaliation, we will do it again. We will shut it down."
LA Workers' Election Showdown
Port truck drivers are making progress in fighting their misclassification. But as millions of American workers know, being covered by US labor law is no cure-all for exploitation. One of the truckers who signed the December letter, Xiomara Perez, is already legally recognized as an employee. Perez works for Toll, an $8.3 billion Australia-based logistics company that transports cargo for fashion companies like Polo and Ralph Lauren. Toll's 74 Los Angeles-area drivers are among the minority of port truckers not misclassified as independent contractors. Change to Win's Michels chalks that up to the high-end fashion industry's desire for "extreme control" over drivers. Last month, Perez and co-workers announced the filing of a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a union election to join the Teamsters.
Toll, which has 12,000 unionized transportation employees in Australia, has been bitterly fighting its American employees' attempt to win union recognition. As I've reported for AlterNet, it's not unusual for companies that play by more progressive rules in other countries to take full advantage of union-busting opportunities in the United States. The NLRB last month issued a complaint (similar to an indictment) against Toll for anti-union crimes including surveillance, retaliation, harassment, interrogation, and discrimination.
"I personally have been subjected to interrogation and intimidation by Toll managers," Perez said on a media call last month, "and many of my co-workers have been subjected to the same practice, but we remain strong and united…In the yard we are exposed to the elements with no place to sit down and take our lunch. No running water…and no toilets for women. We are treated like second-class citizens."
By using the NLRB election process, the Toll workers and the Teamsters are taking a risk. The prevalence of anti-union tactics, and the weakness of the legal remedies available for confronting them, have led some major unions to abandon the NLRB election process. Employers often gerrymander voter lists and use frivolous challenges to delay elections while trying to scare workers out of a forming a union. Even when workers win an election, they often never win a union contract, because employers appeal election results or intentionally deadlock negotiations.
Since it's nearly impossible to win a union contract under the NLRB process without tempering a company's desire to crush the union, increasingly labor is tackling the challenge differently: Using pressure from workers, consumers, media, and politics to break a company's will to crush the union before going through an election or other form of recognition process. In these campaigns, the real action takes place before the union is recognized, as workers and their allies demand a fair process under which the company gives up some of the union-busting opportunities under the law. (In other cases, unions offer management contract concessions ahead of time, or political assistance, or the chance to keep out a more militant union, in exchange for keeping the anti-union campaign holstered.)
The toll campaign isn't taking that approach. Michels says Toll sent a letter to workers last month goading them to file for a union election or drop their campaign. Despite the evidence that Toll saw an NLRB election as an opportunity to kill the union campaign once and for all, workers submitted the petition to the NLRB. "The workers understand the risks," says Michels.
"They wanted a fair process and that's what they were fighting for, but as the shenanigans were becoming more frequent…they assessed their support, they understood that they had a strong majority and…they decided, 'You know what, we're ready for this…it's going to be like going through a meat grinder, but we're going to be strong.'" Michels says labor will push back against the anti-union campaign through solidarity among co-workers, support and pressure from Toll's unionized Australian employees, and a team of community monitors that will monitor and publicize Toll's conduct.
These community monitors have no legal authority, and there's no agreement with the company recognizing their authority. But they're part of labor's effort to discourage or expose Toll's anti-union tactics in the campaign. A clergy delegation attempted to present its own proposed election principles to management at a Toll facility; Toll refused to let the pastors into the building. In a video posted by Clean and Safe Ports on February 6, student Amanda Mendoza says drivers report repeated mandatory anti-union meetings.
After urging a vote, Michels says Toll is now using legal stalling tactics to delay the setting of an election date. Toll workers in Los Angeles and Australia have been communicating regularly over the Internet, and a delegation of Australian workers will be visiting Los Angeles for several days in support of their US co-workers' election campaign. In Los Angeles, in Seattle and in Australia, workers are wearing wristbands with one message in multiple languages: "Our fight is your fight."
"It's a big job," Perez says. "We are exposed to everything…We are united and strong, and we will take the fight to the end."
Link to original article from AlterNet
States -
Alarmed that fewer than one-fourth of voters are showing up for municipal elections, the Los Angeles Ethics Commission voted Thursday to recommend that the City Council look at using cash prizes to lure a greater number of people to the polls.
On a 3-0 vote, the panel said it wanted City Council President Herb Wesson's Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee to seriously consider the use of financial incentives and a random drawing during its elections, possibly as soon as next year.
Depending on the source of city funds, the idea could...
David Zahniser | Governing 17 Aug 2014 Hits:143 California
As residents of California are urged to conserve water and the state considers placing a mandatory restriction on outdoor water usage, Nestlé is trucking away undisclosed amounts of the precious resource in the form of bottled water.
The Desert Sun has an in-depth report of controversy brewing around the company's bottling plant, which draws water from a drought-stricken area for its Arrowhead and Pure Life brand water. Because the plant is located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians' reservation, it's exempt from oversight by local water agencies and is able to keep...
Lindsay Abrams | Salon 03 Aug 2014 Hits:635 California
Jacque DelRio interviews Chris Silva (brother of David Silva) and the family attorney David Khon on PDA Radio on Saturday 6/21 at 3pm EST.
One year after the death of David Sal Silva, who was beaten by police outside a Bakersfield hospital, family, friends, and supporters gathered near Kern County Superior Court to commemorate his life and to put a spotlight on police brutality in the community.
Protesters greeted rush hour traffic with signs demanding accountability for police misconduct and exposed the names of the officers that were involved in Silva's death.
Alfred Camacho | New America Media 27 May 2014 Hits:248 California
This is the story of my attempts to speak publicly about my friendship with Todd Ashker, a reputed "leader" of the hunger strike in California's prisons. Since the latest hunger strike began on July 8, the California authorities have targeted Ashker for special attention, placing articles, editorials and op-eds in the California Press that paint him as some kind of neo-Nazi devil. The evidence they give for this portrayal is entirely from 1991 and before.
I know the Todd Ashker of 2013. For some years, I have corresponded with him and...
Denis O'Hearn | LA Progressive 25 Aug 2013 Hits:727 California
"It was like a dream. From the Rules Committee committing to end the packing of endorsement caucuses by elected officials, to our anti-fracking resolution coming out of committee stronger than when it went in and then passing on the consent calendar, to the sold-out PDA luncheon and the overwhelming win by RL Miller in the Environmental Caucus, PDA and other progressives hurried from win to win pinching ourselves to see if it was real."
As Dorothy Reik, PDA Santa Monica Mountains Chapter Leader so aptly put above, PDA was again what...
Dr. Bill Honigman, PDA California State Co-Coordinator 16 Apr 2013 Hits:962 California
California became the fifth and largest state this week to win federal approval for a new plan aimed at improving care for almost a half-million of the state's most vulnerable patients.
Called Cal MediConnect, the new three-year demonstration program initially will enable the eight counties to pool funding and resources for so-called "dual-eligibles," lower-income people who qualify both for federal Medicare and the federal-state Medi-Cal program for the poor (California's name for Medicaid).
In announcing the program Wednesday in a teleconference from Sacramento, California Health and Human Services Secretary Diana Dooley, said...
Viji Sundaram and Paul Kleyman | New America Media 30 Mar 2013 Hits:852 California
New tactics and hands-on organizing help California Calls redraw the Golden State's political map.
Progressives who want a path to a political future where an emerging electorate is bypassing the budget battles now afflicting Congress and where decades of damage wrought by right-wingers is slowly being repaired, should look to California. There, a historic coalition of local organizers and labor unions have been remaking the landscape since 2010 by engaging "overlooked" voters.
For much of the past decade, California had terrible state budget deficits, a legislature...
Steven Rosenfeld | AlterNet 01 Mar 2013 Hits:602 California
For the 8th year in a row, healthcare reform activists from all over the state gathered in Sacramento and Los Angeles to support the annual CaHPSA Lobby Day March and Rally. Health professional students from college campuses all over California come to Sacramento every winter to lobby their legislative representatives for a single payer healthcare system.
Nurses, doctors, and activists started the day by marching into the California Association of Health Plans, and serving them with an Eviction Notice, demanding they remove themselves from...
Campaign for a Healthy California 16 Feb 2013 Hits:593 California
From 2008 to 2011, metals stolen for resale to recyclers rose 81 percent nationwide.
The thieves strike in the middle of the night and work fast, in pairs or teams. They can make an entire neighborhood go dark in minutes. They screw open the street light maintenance boxes, find the copper wires and cut. Zip, zip.
While police nab copper thieves in the act, they can't be everywhere. Come nighttime, some streets are as black as caves. Even if thieves stopped today, utility crews would need up...
Evelyn Nieves | AlterNet 06 Feb 2013 Hits:697 California
As a lawsuit was filed to stop unregulated fracking in California, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and former Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast, claimed that fracking causes no environmental harm in the state.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a rapidly spreading, environmentally destructive new method of oil and gas extraction that is drawing growing opposition throughout the state by environmentalists, fishermen, tribal members, family farmers and...
Dan Bacher | IndyBay Media 01 Feb 2013 Hits:925 California
Henry Vandermeir, who cashed in a successful career writing computer books so he could spend much of the past 15 years as a political activist, was elected chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County on Monday night by the county party's governing Central Committee.
Vandermeir, who bested gay activist Jeff LeTourneau in a 36-21 vote, replaces Santa Ana attorney Frank Barbaro, who stepped down after leading the county party for the past 12 years.
"I am going to have fun beating Republicans," Vandermeir told Central Committee members.
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER 16 Jan 2013 Hits:854 California
Dr Ami Bera, a Los Angeles-born physician son of Indian immigrants, has increased his lead in the race for California's 7th Congressional district bringing him a step closer to making history.
If he wins, Bera will only be the third Indian-American elected to the US House of Representatives after Dalip Singh Saund in 1952 and current Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal in 2004.
Running for the second time the seat around Sacramento, Bera was ahead by a razor-thin 184 votes against Republican incumbent Dan Lungren, with 88,406...
Arun Kumar | Daily News 12 Nov 2012 Hits:1072 California
The shameless spectacle of billionaires drowning the airwaves should not numb us to the consequences of what is at stake if the super rich succeed in buying our elections.
While most of the national focus is on the Presidential race and some high profile Senate elections, the less profiled California ballot measures provide a disturbing portrait of what of a clearly broken system.
California Propositions 32 and 33 in particular and the onslaught of secretive political action committees that hide the names of their rich sponsors, are just...
Rose Ann DeMoro | Common Dreams 25 Oct 2012 Hits:1229 California
Prop. 30 - Tax Increases for Education, Public Safety
Recommended vote: Yes
This measure would mean an increase in fair funding for education, while its defeat would send California deeper into the revenue rabbit hole opened by Prop. 13 three decades ago.
In the two years of Jerry Brown's governorship, the state has cut $56 billion from education, health care, and police and fire services, making the state's stagnation almost permanent. Someone needs to run for governor on a platform solely focused on the disastrous cuts in public higher education. But...
Tom Hayden | Tom Hayden.com 24 Oct 2012 Hits:1639 California
The September 29, 2012 opening of the Green Music Center (GMC) at Sonoma State University (SSU) was nothing less than a grand celebration of wealth and privilege. Beaded dresses, tuxedos, and political elites blended in a glorious aristocratic coming out. The ceremonious inauguration was a joining of the regional symphonic upper elites in delusional expectations of continuing high-class cultural immersions.
Built in a time of an economic recession and including $47 million in public bonds, the $150 million GMC represents one of the most opulent expensive building projects in the history...
Peter Phillips | Project Censored 18 Oct 2012 Hits:910 California
The 2010 Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United trampled on America's founding principles, swamped our democracy in corporate cash and needs to be overturned," said Brad Newsham, the San Francisco…
High gasoline prices have become a political wild card in California, where several tight races are pivotal to Democrats' slim hopes of winning back control of the House
Hoping to build a larger coalition from the ranks of the Democratic Party, about 22 members of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains (PDSMM) gathered on…
LOS ANGELES — One year after federal law enforcement officials began cracking down on California's medical marijuana industry with a series of high-profile arrests around the state, they finally…
Two weeks ago, we got word that Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan would be in Fresno September 8 for a campaign fundraising dinner. The only details we had were that…
LOS ANGELES — Sebastian Flores walked out of Al Salam Pollería with a free bag of white-feathered chicken heads.
Mr. Flores, 26, an immigrant and a regular customer of Al Salam,…
Along Broadway here, in the heart of Chinatown, immigrants crowd around fruit and vegetable shops, asking prices in Mandarin and Cantonese. Men hawk huge red grapes from a…
As voter suppression laws spread across the country, voting rights advocates can take heart: the biggest state in the nation is on the cusp of passing a major voter…
California on Thursday became the largest state in the nation to urge Congress to draft a constitutional amendment to overturn the US Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.
The state…
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Galveston, Texas, has adopted revised setback requirements for new construction near the beach, according to a report in the Galveston County Daily News ("Galveston tightens beach-front construction rules," by Rhiannon Meyers). Already under consideration before 2008's Hurricane Ike, the new rule gained momentum after Ike swept away many beachfront homes, and eroded shorelines to put other homes closer to the water than before.
Under the new rule, new construction will have to stay Back 75 feet from the north toe of dunes, or 350 feet from the mean high-water line, whichever line is farther landward.
The new rule also applies closer scrutiny to the man-made artificial dunes that some property owners have constructed to replace natural dunes destroyed by the storm. Some of these constructed dunes are smaller and less vegetated than a natural dune, reports the Daily News; under the new rule, man-made dunes that are a different size, shape, or appearance from a natural dune can't be used to determine beach setbacks. (The Texas "Open Beaches" law that limits construction near the shore does not draw any distinction between a naturally occurring dune and an artificial one.)
Galveston's new rule echoes a measure adopted three years ago by authorities in Nueces County, which includes the city of Corpus Christi, south and westward on the Gulf coast from Galveston. Nueces County officials welcomed Galveston's vote as confirmation that they were "doing things right," according to a report in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times ("Galveston matches Nueces County's dune protection rule," by Jessica Savage). Fred McCutchon, chairman of the Nueces County Beach Management Advisory Committee, told the Caller-Times, "we had the foresight to plan for growth rather than deal for houses that are on the beach or in the water because of erosion and storm surges."
Meanwhile, work continues on teardowns of properties bought out with funding from FEMA. Houses more than 50% damaged by flood typically can't be rebuilt with federal flood insurance payouts, but may be eligible for government buyouts, with the land being devoted to other uses.
Corpus Christi, TX
Ted Cushman
FEMA's new Flood Insurance Rate Maps for Palm Beach County, Florida, are drawing mixed...
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Erik Kabik/Retna/ErikKabik.com
Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011 | 6:36 p.m.
In their last steps of dealing with the fallout stemming from two allegedly fraudulent ex-partners, Eva Longoria's Beso Restaurant and Eve the Nightclub at MGM CityCenter's Crystals have filed a controlled and organized Chapter 11 bankruptcy tonight.
More on the Sun
"It's a New Year, and we're making a new start," the dynamic Desperate Housewives star and philanthropist told friends. "This is a great opportunity to begin anew, and I look forward to an exciting and enterprising 2011."
VegasDeLuxe.com has learned exclusively that Eva and her new restaurant management team are immediately taking action in cooperation with MGM Resorts International to become hands on in the development and promotion of Beso and Eve. Eva anticipates further extending her restaurant career and expanding her relationship with MGM.
"I look forward to a more pro-active, hands-on approach in the coming years with my Las Vegas businesses," she tells friends.
The bankruptcy protection to give Beso and Eve a new start has just been finalized by Hollywood attorney and regular Las Vegas visitor Robert Shapiro. Insiders told me that MGM's executives at CityCenter have given Eva's plans their support.
I've also learned that the actress and businesswoman plans to be here next week to take charge of the new plans going forward.
Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world's premier platinum playground.
Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.
Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.
Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.


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has installed a large Robe Show Lighting moving light rig at The Willows Variety Club in Salford, UK – including the first Robe Spot 1200s to be installed in the UK. This makes The Willows one of the best-equipped social clubs in the country
The 700-capacity Willows has enjoyed a long and successful history at the forefront of the country's social club scene. The venue is owned by John Wilkinson OBE, Chairman of Salford Rugby League Club, and although sited adjacently, the two are run as completely different enterprises.The Willows intends to remain at the top, and recently invested substantially in the latest production technology.
The Willows Variety Club with its new Robe rig
As the name implies, 'variety' was the operative word when it came to looking for new lighting. They needed a rig that could deal with every type of performance, from comedians, magicians and single performers to duos, dance troupes and large live bands of all genres – and that could also double as a disco/dancefloor system.
The venue's general manager Dave Bell and lighting technician/operator Mark Bell originally approached Robe UK with a view to enhancing their existing large PAR can rig with some moving light elements. After several demos and trials, both at Robe UK and on site, they were so impressed with the various fixtures available that they radically altered their plans, opting to replace most of the old rig with moving lights.
The new lighting scheme was designed and programmed by Robe UK's Nathan Wan, and supplied and installed by Pat Wheelan of LS Direct.
Four Robe 1200 Spots are positioned each side of stage on two FOH bars, angled at 45 degrees. The zoom feature makes them ideal for gobo washes across the back wall, general stage work or for crowd skimming.
Over-stage are 8 MS Zoom 250s and 12 ColorMix 250s, used – depending on the act – for general rear lighting and beam and colour effects. Six 575 Washes are rigged on the front-of-stage bar for front lighting, and the picture is completed by six floor mounting 575 Spots.The installation had to be extremely neat and tidy as the club's low ceiling height means the lights are highly visible.
Nathan Wan specified an Avolites Azure Shadow for control. This integrates all the new moving lights with the remaining PARs. The Willows technical team – including sound operator Peter Fogg who occasionally also turns his hand to lights - attended training sessions at Robe UK and Avolites before taking delivery of the new system.
Mark Bell comments, "The Robes introduce so many new dimensions and layers to the lighting. The fixtures are brilliant for creating excitement and audience interaction – everyone is having a lot more fun and enjoyment with the lighting now as opposed to it just illuminating the stage." He finds the speed of the fixtures particularly good for the more pop-ish acts on the bill.
His favorite current effects from the 1200s are gobo looks and patterns. He likes intermixing and juxtaposing movement and colours on the 250 down-lighters and creating columns and pillars of light with the 575s on the floor. "The dynamics and the creative possibilities are endless" he adds.
The lighting has dramatically transformed the club for the performers who benefit from having their shows fabulously visually sexed up with all the new technology. The lights are also proving a massive hit with audiences, who regularly comment on the spectacle – which is over and above what you'd expect in this type of venue. Dave Bell is delighted with the investment, "The lights are brilliant, and an important element of The Willows' continued success "


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PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says the bill pushed by social conservatives that would have allowed people with sincerely held religious beliefs to refuse to serve gays is unneeded and could cause unintended damage.
Brewer vetoed the measure that had stirred up a national debate, including sharp criticism from major corporations and political leaders from both parties.
Loud cheers erupted outside the Capitol building when Brewer made the announcement about Senate Bill 1062, which she says she discussed with lawyers, citizens, businesses and lawmakers.
(Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)


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Cosmology & Astrophysics
- Astronomer Biographies
- Cosmology Books (11)
- Cosmology's Search for the Origins of the Universe (2)
- Parallel Universes (5)
Why Do Stars Burn and What Happens When They Die?
Stars don't last forever. Why do stars burn? What happens when a star dies? How does its collapse manifest?
What Is Inflation Theory?
Inflation theory is the idea in cosmology that in the very early stages after the universe's creation it underwent a rapid expansion, the effects of which can still be seen in the universe today.
History of the Universe
Images of the cosmic microwave background radiation and how the universe evolved.
What Is the Anthropic Principle?
As physicists explore the parameters that control the universe, it's amazing how perfectly the universe seems to allow for life. How can physicists possibly explain this? Learn about the fascinating principle at the heart of scientific understanding of the origins of the universe.
What is the Big Bang Theory?
One of the most impressive theories of the 20th century, the Big Bang explains the origins of the universe ... at least up to a point. Find out what the theory actually says, what it does not say, and what it may or may not say.
What is a Black Hole?
A black hole is a curvature of spacetime geometry due to an intense gravitational field. The effects of a black hole are so extreme that even light cannot escape it, thus the name.
What Is Olbers' Paradox?
Olbers' paradox is an ancient question: Why is the night sky dark? If space goes on infinitely far in all directions, then light from all of those stars should be making their way to us, turning the night sky as bright as day (or brighter). The fact that it's dark is in itself a good reason to believe in a non-static universe.
Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion
Kepler's Laws describe, in three concise rules, the motion of orbital bodies in the solar system.
Heliocentric Universe Model
The heliocentric model of the universe tells us that the Earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around. How was this model arrived at? What is the evidence to support it? Why did it take so long to accept?
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS)
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment, in the Soudan Mine in Minnesota, seeks to discover direct observational evidence of dark matter.
What is Hawking Radiation?
Hawking radiation is an explanation of how radiation can be emitted from a black hole, despite its attractive power, due to quantum effects.
About.com Astronomy & Space Guidesite
For more detailed information on space and astronomy, check out the About.com Astronomy Guide.
What Is Cosmology?
Cosmology is the discipline of physics that involves the study of the origins, history, and evolution of the universe and the objects within it.
Astronomy magazine
The major popular magazine in the space sciences, Astronomy provides excellent information for those interested in the physics of space, or those who just like looking with wonder into the night sky.
Eric Weisstein's World of Astronomy
Eric Weisstein's World of Astronomy is a site full of astronomy information, located on the Wolfram Research website.
Cosmic Journey: A History of Scientific Cosmology
This fantastic website on the history of scientific cosmology is maintained by the American Institute of Physics.
Astronomy Now Online
Astronomy Now is a popular UK-based astronomy magazine, which features a wide range of content and articles in its online publication.
The Astrophysical Journal
This journal of astrophysical research publishes abstracts and full papers online.
What is the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow Paper?
The Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper is a famous paper in the history of physics. In addition to laying the groundwork for how particles in our universe was created, it is amusing because the names of the three authors (one of whom wasn't directly involved) sounds like the first three letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha-beta-gamma.
Official NASA Website
This is the official website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which maintains a lot of great information on the space sciences.
NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
This Astronomy Picture of the Day is featured on the NASA website, accompanied by a description of the picture with commentary by a professional astronomer.


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(6:00) Kanye West has had it President Obama -- and totally calls him out.
(10:00) Jay-Z chooses NOT to cut ties with Barney's after the company was accused of racially profiling African Americans ... we'll tell you why he made the decision.
(14:00) Alec Baldwin's daughters comes to his defense -- but there's a fundamental flaw in the family's excuse for his rants.
(18:00) Kandi Burruss joins to talk "Housewives" brawls, TLC (she wrote "Scrubs" and her new musical.
(24:00) A Nick Cannon impostor makes off with tons of jewelry ... you won't believe this story.
(27:00) We apologize in advance -- but one of our staffers has a problem with the Batkid story. Did we apologize for it yet? Well we do.
(32:00) A shooting near the set of "House of Lies."
(36:00) The floor is yours!
(41:00) Jennifer Lopez does her own stunts ... in high heels. Respect.


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Ciaran Caldwell moves from Cliftonville to Glenavon while striker Tiernan Mulvenna goes in the opposite direction.22 Aug » BBC Sport
Glenavon restore some pride by scoring two second-half goals in their Europa League second leg tie with Hafnarfjordur.10 Jul » BBC Sport
Glenavon concede late goals as they lose their Europa League first qualifying round first leg tie at Hafnarfjördur.03 Jul » BBC Sport
Irish Premiership clubs Crusaders, Glenavon and Linfield begin their Europa League campaigns on Thursday night.02 Jul » BBC Sport
Glenavon's preparations for their Europa League first leg against Halfnafjorder of Iceland are disrupted by a flight cancellation.01 Jul » BBC Sport
Irish Cup winners Glenavon swoop to sign former Portadown striker Kevin Braniff on a two-year-deal.12 Jun » BBC Sport
Linfield confirm they will play their Europa League home game in July at Glenavon's Mourneview Park.12 May » BBC Sport
Joel Taggart presents BBC Sport NI's video review of the Irish League as Glenavon beat Ballymena United in the Irish Cup final at Windsor Park.05 May » BBC Sport
Mark Patton scores the winner as Glenavon beat Ballymena United 2-1 in an Irish Cup final which saw three players sent off.03 May » BBC Sport


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Crime Stoppers and investigators with the Harris County Sheriff's Office are searching for the suspects responsible for a robbery at a check cashing store in Harris County, Texas.
On January 14, 2014, Harris County deputies responded to a call at a check cashing store located on the 6900 block of Lakeview Drive in Harris County, Texas. The victims reported two suspects entering the store at approximately 9:30 am. One suspect approached the service counter wielding a handgun and demanding cash from the register. The victim complied, and both suspects fled the scene on foot.
The first suspect is described as a Hispanic male, between 17-21 years of age, standing between 5'8" and 5'10" tall and weighing approximately 150-180 lbs. At the time of the offense, the suspect was wearing a black jacket, black and red baseball cap and black pants.
The second suspect is described as a Hispanic male, between 17-21 years of age, standing between 5'5" and 5'7" tall and weighing approximately 130-160 lbs. The suspect was also wearing a black jacket, black and red baseball cap and black pants.
Video surveillance equipment captured footage of the suspects. Video is available via the Crime Stoppers YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPwH74WUFjo&feature=youtu.be
Anyone with information about the identity of the suspects is asked to contact Crime Stoppers of Houston.
DOWNLOAD THE APP! Submit tips via photo, video, text or phone; stay connected with Crime Stoppers of Houston; locate police stations near you; search thousands of crimes and fugitives; earn up to $5,000.
Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for any information that leads to the filing of felony charges or arrest of the suspects in this case. Download Houston Crime Stoppers in the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store and the Blackberry App World. Call 713-222-TIPS (8477). Text TIP610 plus your tip to CRIMES (274637). Visit www.crime-stoppers.org.
All tipsters remain anonymous


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Reading post 607392 in main thread
China WILL rule the world.
September 15th, 2011
Funnily enough, I feel that there is a bloody good chance that he is a lot closer to the truth than we would like to admit, although it need not be necessarily achieved by force.
The Chinese are well on their way already, they are fast becoming the world's financial powerhouse, and while we have taken our eye off the ball by concentrating on the Islamic terrorism, they have made great inroads in many developing countries. Some, like the Congo are unbelievably rich in vital "war minerals", chromium, cobalt and other rare earths, they are also serious contenders for favor in a number of oil producing states.
The reaction in this thread reminds me of the way people wrote off the Japanese threat prior to their arrival in WWII. When they made such stupid remarks as, Asians will never be great troops because their eyes preclude them from being able to shoot accurately, they are too short, and suffer from poor nutrition,... and all manner of other rubbish.
It's attitudes like those being displayed here, thinking that our position is unassailable, that could well be our downfall.
"I am totally responsible for what I write,... however I cannot be held responsible for your complete inability to understand
Last edited by senojekips; September 15th, 2011 at
(c)02-14 Military-Quotes.com - Post # 607392


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Apple Store
Walnut Creek
1129 S. Main StreetWalnut Creek, CA 94596
(925) 949-5463Driving directions and map
|Store hours:
|Mon - Sat:
|10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
|11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Labor Day Holiday Hours:
|September 1:
|10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Apple Store
Walnut Creek
1129 S. Main StreetWalnut Creek, CA 94596
(925) 949-5463
How to get here:Back
The Apple Store is located at 1129 South Main Street in Walnut Creek, CA. Traveling I-680, exit at Olympic Boulevard and head east into downtown Walnut Creek. At South Main Street, turn left. The Apple Store is ahead on the left, next to Tiffany & Co. and across from Neiman Marcus. Use the Walnut Creek BART station and take free public shuttle #104 to the central shopping district.
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gino rizzi: recycled plastic artist
Gino Rizzi uses all kinds of domestic plastic that most people don't consider as valuable materials. He started recycling and looking for costless materials, when starting his artistic carreer in Paris after finishing his art studies in Urbino, Italy. He engaged children and their parents in this act of recycling, organising art workshops, this while working for a cultural centre and as an art teacher in public schools.
These experiences made him develop a whole new vision on plastic, which appeared an omnipresent waste and sculptling material. His series of plastic coral is poetic in his concern about our planet or in his own words 'the plastification of nature'.
Beside Gino Rizzi's free work, he embraced several project opportunities working for and with others. He made a series of jewellery for fashion designer Nina Ricci, assembled lamps for Greenage and presented prototypes for a broad-range of gadgets made out of plastic bottles in design gallery La Péripherie. He collaborated with illusionist Gérard Majax in building a walk through aquarium, in which the visitor could experience ingravity by using 'up-side-down' eye glasses. This exhibition was presented in the 'Cité des Science et de l'Industrie' and 'Le Palais de Congrès' in Paris.


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Category — 1970s price controls
Milton Friedman Day (some energy quotations on the occasion of his 102nd birthday)
"Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail."
– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), pp. 219.
"It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis."
- Milton Friedman, "Why Some Prices Should Rise," Newsweek, November 19, 1973.
Milton Friedman is best known for Monetarism, a school of economics that effectively challenged fiscal-side Keynesianism. Friedman challenged statism in its many flavors to elevate free-market economics. "By century's end," stated Paul Krugman in the New York Review of Books, "classical economics had regained much though by no means all of its former dominion, and Friedman deserves much of the credit."
But as Friedman became a public intellectual, writing popular books and penning Newsweek columns, he became conversant in different fields, including energy. In the energy-troubled 1970s, Friedman focused on government intervention as the culprit rather than blame nature a la Harold Hotelling's fixity/depletion model.
Friedman's harsh negative reaction to President Nixon's wage and price control order of August 1971 is particularly important for the energy debate. It was Nixon's action, not the Arab Embargo, that created the oil shortages, price explosions, and the gasoline lines.
On the occasion of his 102nd birthday, some Friedman quotations on energy follow.
July 31, 2014 1 Comment
Energy Price-Control Lessons for ObamaCare (remembering a classic WSJ editorial from 1979)
[This MasterResource post from February 2011 is reprinted for its relevance with the start of ObamaCare today. An uncomfortable question must be asked: what will happen in the health waiting rooms given what happened in the 1970s gasoline lines?]
For decades I have enjoyed the opinion-page editorials of the Wall Street Journal, both the unsigned editorials and the guest opinions. During the 1970s energy crisis, and today amid climate alarmism and the futile crusade to regulate carbon dioxide, the Journal has been a bastion of sound economic thought.
I was recently reminded of perhaps my favorite WSJ energy editorial of all, "Buffer of Civility," published during the dark days of energy rioting in summer 1979 (yes, the U.S. experienced fuel riots from federal price controls that caused energy shortages).
What brought this to mind was another WSJ editorial, "Sebelius's Price Controls," which reported on a 136-page price-regulating rule under ObamaCare–and this message to state governors from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
urging them "to prevent unjustified and excessive health insurance premium growth." Apparently, "unreasonable" means rate increases that exceed 10% next year, except when it doesn't. If an insurer crosses this arbitrary threshold, "The review process would then determine if the increase is, in fact, unreasonable." So that's cleared up.
The Journal added: [Read more →]
October 1, 2013 2 Comments
Energy Policy Myopia: George P. Shultz Remembered (Republicans have been bad too)
[Ed. note: George P. Shultz has long been an errant voice on energy and climate issues. A leading Republican climate alarmist, Shultz's energy views from decades ago, still held, are the subject of the post below.]
"Shultz writes: 'The president requested service stations to voluntarily suspend the sale of gasoline on Saturdays and Sundays. The 90 percent compliance with his request resulted in long lines at gas stations on weekdays.'
Hogwash! The 'long gas lines' were the result U.S. government central planning with respect to oil. Notice how often those long gas lines have returned since controls ended in the 1980s."
When it comes to energy policy, President Obama seems to have learned nothing from the past. His ideas closely resemble the grandiose, failed policies of the 1970s.
But such historical ignorance knows no party. Republicans are just as likely to exhibit the same.
Case in point? An essay published in the Hoover Institution's Defining Ideas by Nixon administration cabinet member (labor and then treasury) George P. Shultz. His article shows that even with the benefit of time, he has learned nothing about policies he helped make 40-plus years ago.
When he came to Washington in 1969, Shultz was put in charge of a task force to reconsider the Eisenhower-era oil import quota policy. The Mandatory Oil Import Program (MOIP) was a mess. Ostensibly created for national security reasons, (reasons that no one could credibly articulate), it was soon encumbered with favors to numerous interest groups.
Shultz boasts that the task force urged "a sharply improved management system." But the recommendations of the task force were beside the point. The only solution for MOIP was its termination not its transformation. [Read more →]
September 20, 2013 1 Comment
Milton Friedman on the Energy Crisis (and ObamaCare to come)
July 31st is the birth date of one of the great intellectuals of the freedom philosophy. Milton Friedman (1912–2006) would have been 101 today.
Friedman Legacy Day is being celebrated at 144 events: 90 in 44 states and Washington,D.C., and 54 events in 25 countries abroad. Here in Houston, a "Milton Friedman Rocks" party is tonight.
Friedman was more than a technical economist and early Nobel Laureate in this field; he was a popularizer of the case for free markets. His shorter tracts and biweekly column for Newsweek covered a variety of in-the-news issues, including energy. And he became more libertarian and appreciative of Austrian School economics (market-process economics), the rival to his Chicago School of economics, as time went on.
Friedman's insight into the distortions from government intervention shortages are timeless. Consider this from Milton and Rose Friedmans' classic, Free to Choose (1979: p. 219):
Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.
Still the major example of our time is the 1970s energy crisis in the United States–the result of price and allocation controls by the Department of Energy. But get ready for a new chamber of economic horrors.
With ObamaCare's use of price and allocation controls–and the growing problem of Medicare today–shortages and strife are upon us in the all-important health care field. The Wall Street Journal article, More Doctors Steer Clear of Medicare, said as much this week: [Read more →]
July 31, 2013 3 Comments
Call for Energy Price Controls: Has the 1970s Experience Been Forgotten? (hidden perils of a $3.50/gallon federal price cap)
[Editor note: Tomorrow, economist Michael Giberson will critically assess government 'price gouging' laws.]
As an economist, whenever I hear the word "shortage" I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually "price control."
- Thomas Sowell, "Electricity Shocks California," January 11, 2001.
Like Bill Murray's weatherman character in the movie Groundhog Day, the American public is obliged to relive certain bad ideas again and again (and again).
Like the movie the idea of price controls for energy keeps coming back, but will we, like Murray's weatherman, reexamine what leads us to relive such unworkable concepts? The latest contestant in this march of folly was posted recently in the Atlantic Monthly's business blog.
The idea–called a buffer fund–is to establish a target price for retail gasoline (diesel, too, though they seem to have forgotten that part of the fuel supply) and use taxes or subsidies to maintain the target price over time.
Price Controls – Back by Popular Demand
The response from the readership was immediate, never mind how any of this would work, whether it has everworked as planned elsewhere, or what would happen to the economy if it were implemented. This is a great idea! Stick it to Big Oil! Let somebody else pay for my gasoline!
A sample of some of the comments on the Atlantic article includes the following gems:
· Normal market operations concentrate too much money in the oil industry
· Oil companies never put their earnings back into the economy
· We consume too much oil and only rationing can cure the disease (at least this one acknowledges that price controls accomplish nothing)
· It all stems from allowing (!) people to live in single family houses
· Speculators are behind all the problems!
This time the justification for a buffer fund and price controls is that every time the economy gets rolling, energy prices rise and snuff out the recovery in the crib.
Really, I am not making this up. [Read more →]
October 3, 2011 2 Comments
Jimmy Carter's 'Malaise Speech' of July 15, 1979: An Energy Moment to Remember
[Editor Note: Carter's April 1977 energy speech was also reproduced and commented upon at MasterResource.]
Thirty-two years ago today, President Carter and his energy advisor James Schlesinger got it all wrong in an emergency television address to the nation. Their neo-Malthusian, government-as-engineer moment should never be forgotten but stand as timeless warning about the anti-market, anti-energy mentality.
In the summer of 1979, many Americans were stuck in the gasoline lines. There was a lot of lost time and nervousness. There was fighting and worse. The market as a buffer of civility was gone. Americans were not used to such a predicament and had the common sense to know that something was very abnormal and not to be tolerated. They were mad.
Here is the background of his energy speech, considered as the most important speech of his presidency:
On June 30, 1979, a weary Jimmy Carter was looking forward to a few days' vacation in Hawaii, as Air Force One sped him away from a grueling economic summit in Tokyo. He had earned it. Two weeks earlier, Carter had successfully concluded the SALT II arms control negotiations with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna, the latest in a series of foreign policy achievements since the dramatic Camp David summit the previous September.
Aboard the plane, the phone rang. It was Carter's pollster, Patrick Caddell. "I remember getting on the phone and saying, 'You people have got to come home now,'" Caddell recalls. "We were all saying the same thing: 'You have no idea how bad it is here.'"
The so-called malaise speech and crisis of confidence speech, Carter's fifth address on energy to the nation, was different from the rest. As explained in the Wikipedia entry on Carter:
When the energy market exploded — an occurrence Carter tried to avoid during his term — he was planning on delivering his fifth major speech on energy; however, he felt that the American people were no longer listening. Carter left for the presidential retreat of Camp David.
For more than a week, a veil of secrecy enveloped the proceedings. Dozens of prominent Democratic Party leaders—members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, academics and clergy—were summoned to the mountaintop retreat to confer with the beleaguered president. His pollster, Pat Caddell, told him that the American people simply faced a crisis of confidence because of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Vietnam War; and Watergate.
Where was Milton Friedman or just about any economist worth his or her salt? The gasoline shortages of early 1974 and the natural gas shortages in the winters of 1971/72 and 1976/77 came from the same cause: federal price and allocation controls that did not let supply and demand mesh.
Good evening. This is a special night for me. Exactly three years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for president of the United States. [Read more →]
July 15, 2011 4 Comments
Jimmy Carter's Energy Speech of April 1977 (Is President Obama going Carter's way?)
"The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are simply running out.… World oil production can probably keep going up for another 6 or 8 years. But sometime in the 1980′s, it can't go up any more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that."
"To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful—but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs and to some greater inconvenience for everyone. But the sacrifices can be gradual, realistic, and they are necessary."
"We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and our grandchildren."
- Jimmy Carter, Energy Address to the Nation, April 18, 1977
Will Obama and his ilk learn the lessons of history?
One such lesson is don't count conventional energy out. In the 1970s, oil and gas shortages experienced in many parts of the U.S. were erroneously blamed on resource exhaustion rather than government price and allocation controls.
These shortages can be traced back to two presidents who made damning decisions that cost their country plenty. President Eisenhower fathered the natural gas crises of the 1970s when he unexpectedly vetoed a natural gas wellhead decontrol bill in 1956 (1); President Richard Nixon fathered the oil crisis with his wage and price control order of August 1971.
Peak oil, peak gas? The speech below is just another data point of warning against those who are wed to the fixity/depletion view of minerals rather than open-ended resourceship.
Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem that is unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge that our country will face during our lifetime.
The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly. It's a problem that we will not be able to solve in the next few years, and it's likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. [Read more →]
July 13, 2011 5 Comments
Remembering the Birth of Conservationism (Part II: Amory Lovins's "Soft Energy Path")
[Editor note: Part I on energy conservationism examined Richard Nixon's price control order of August 1971 as the birth of peacetime conservationism , with shortages leading to mandatory allocation law.]
A tract for the energy-shortage times was a 1976 essay in Foreign Affairs by Amory Lovins, the 29-year-old energy representative of the U.K. environmental group, Friends of the Earth. In "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" Lovins coined the term soft energy paths to differentiate energy conservation and decentralized renewable technology from the "hard" path of central-station power plants fueled by oil, gas, coal, or uranium.
Neo-Malthusians such as Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren sang his praises, and the article became the most reprinted piece in the history of Foreign Affairs. Lovins was soon testifying before the U.S. Congress and advising President Carter on the proposition that the least-cost energy option was not to produce energy, but to save it.
Unlike S. David Freeman of the Ford Foundation Energy Project (see post yesterday), Lovins, an Oxford don, specialized in the technical minutiae of energy and wrote, footnoted, and argued his opponents into despair, never mind how hypothesized and obscure his engineering-grounded pontifications were from demonstrated market preferences. Lovins became the most talked about energy guru in the world during the crisis period, with a deceptively simple message that less was more. To critics, however, Lovins was "selling a dream without presenting the bill."
Lovins held a deep-rooted suspicion—even phobia—about the energy market. "It is hard to think of any current energy technology in extensive use that does not hold the potential for serious long-term environmental risks—risks which may today be wholly unsuspected," he warned. From this premise came his worldview, later dubbed whole systems thinking, that saw current energy usage—thus production—as a massive market failure. "We must devise a science and a technology of energy impact analysis so that we can make energy a critical variable in all policy decisions, rather than leaving it to emerge de facto from decisions taken on other grounds," he wrote in 1975. "Boundary conditions on the energy inputs are now needed." This message was new to the United States energy debate, although the "small is beautiful" theme of E.F. Schumacher was already popular in Europe.
Lovins's first order of business was to push for a short-term phase-out of nuclear power—a signature issue for Friends of the Earth. Lovins feared that the rapid depletion of oil and gas would segue to super-abundant coal and nuclear—a bad transition and worse long-run lock-in to him. Lovins wanted "transitional technologies that use fossil fuels briefly and sparingly to build a bridge to the energy-income [energy-renewable] economy of 2025." However wrong this would turn out to be, Lovins would fare better with his second aim: full-scale deployment of conservation technologies to reach a "realistic long-term goal" of "modest, zero, or negative [energy] growth" per unit of output. [Read more →]
May 3, 2011 7 Comments
Remembering the Birth of Conservationism (Part I: President Nixon's price controls, not Arab OPEC, produced energy crisis, demand-side politicization)
[Editor note: Part II on energy conservationism tomorrow examines the energy conservation faddism of Amory Lovins.]
Richard Nixon (1913–94) got on the wrong side of economic law three years before his Watergate-related resignation from the U.S. presidency. In August 1971, in a surprise decision, Nixon imposed the first peacetime wage-and-price controls in American history.
Businessmen reined in their surprise to pragmatically offer support. John Kenneth Galbraith and Paul Samuelson offered quick congratulations. There was public approval of the 'temporary' action that was intended to just quell inflationary expectations (as if the problem was psychological and not the inherent consequence of expansionary money). The inflation rate was then running at about 4 percent per year.
Free-market economist Milton Friedman, knowing that shortages lay ahead, lambasted the move. So did Ayn Rand in the Ayn Rand Letter. Murray Rothbard was fiercely critical ("on August 15, 1971, fascism came to America," he wrote); he had seen price controls and shortages before.
Nixon's edict disabled the market process responsible for coordinating supply with demand and allocating resources to their most profitable use. Predictably, oil shortages developed, which resurrected long dormant depletionist thinking and pointed policymakers toward conservationism. After all, if price controls did not allow prices to rise and "regulate" demand to available supply, then government had to—at least according to the majority of policymakers and neo-Malthusians whose worldview dovetailed nicely with public sentiment against the energy industry.
Birth of Peacetime Conservationism
The oil crisis, contrary to popular remembrance, did not begin with the Arab Embargo of October 1973. It began with petroleum product shortages that arose in late 1972 when price controls became constraining. In February 1973, Senate hearings on fuel shortages demonstrated, in the opinion of committee chair Henry Jackson (D-Wash),
One, there has been an unprecedented breakdown in our energy supply and distribution system;
Two, the fuel shortages now being experienced are far more extensive than anticipated;
Three, more severe shortages of fuels, particularly gasoline, are in the offing. [Read more →]
May 2, 2011 No Comments
Energy Price-Control Lessons for ObamaCare (remembering a classic WSJ editorial from 1979)
For decades I have enjoyed the opinion-page editorials of the Wall Street Journal, both the unsigned editorials and the guest opinions. During the 1970s energy crisis, and today amid climate alarmism and the futile crusade to regulate carbon dioxide, the Journal has been a bastion of sound thought.
I was recently reminded of perhaps my favorite WSJ energy editorial of all, "Buffer of Civility," published during the dark days of energy rioting in summer 1979 (yes, the U.S. experienced fuel riots from federal price controls that caused energy shortages). What brought this to mind was another WSJ editorial, "Sebelius's Price Controls," which reported on a 136-page price-regulating rule under ObamaCare–and this message to state governors from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
urging them "to prevent unjustified and excessive health insurance premium growth." Apparently, "unreasonable" means rate increases that exceed 10% next year, except when it doesn't. If an insurer crosses this arbitrary threshold, "The review process would then determine if the increase is, in fact, unreasonable." So that's cleared up.
The Journal added:
This discretion is typical of the vast ad hoc powers that ObamaCare handed to regulators, though Ms. Sebelius's true goal is to punish the insurance industry for rising health costs that the new entitlement is already turbocharging. Like so much else in U.S. health care, no one seems to find it odd that the government is decreeing how much businesses are allowed to charge for a product that consumers want to buy, regardless of the economic reality.
Economic reality: maximum price controls cause shortages, and shortages cause social strife, even violence. This brings us back to June 1979 and a plea to recognize the real virtue of the free market, our buffer for civility.
Here is the classic editorial. [Read more →]
February 2, 2011 4 Comments


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End the Violence
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000187 EndHTML:0000003853 StartFragment:0000002377 EndFragment:0000003817 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/peggyclifford/Documents/End%20the%20%20Violence We submitted the following plan to the SM City Council on Tuesday, Jan. 26th. This is a product of various conversations, past documents and meetings with the Juarez family and community leaders, You can read the media write up at: www.smdp.com. The City Council directed City... Read More
White Paper
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000024405 StartFragment:0000002541 EndFragment:0000024369 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/peggyclifford/Documents/White.doc Developing a Comprehensive Approach to Ending Youth Violence in Santa Monica and the Westside Framing the Challenge On November 3, 2009 Richard Juarez was murdered at Virginia Avenue Park. His death marked the 40th time since 1989 a family has had to suffer a loss due to homicide in Santa Monica,... Read More
Who's Running This Show?
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000214 EndHTML:0000006877 StartFragment:0000002406 EndFragment:0000006841 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/peggyclifford/Documents/The%201984%20iteration%20of%20the%20General%20Plan The 1984 edition of the General Plan spawned over 9 million square feet of new commercial development. As work began on the 2004 revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan (LUCE), which were touted as the residents' Constitution... Read More
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000005345 StartFragment:0000002294 EndFragment:0000005309 By Ava Tramer Beaches Rain yielding to partly cloudy skies Highs: 61-66; Lows: 44-52 Inland Partly cloudy Highs: 58-68; Lows: 36-44 Deserts Mostly sunny with possible showers Highs: 59-69; Lows: 40-48 And Santa Monica… Your may find yourself feeling confused, alone, and unsure these days – the unusually wet weather must make you feel as though... Read More
Urban Forest TourMay Be Postponed
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000003582 StartFragment:0000002515 EndFragment:0000003546 As you may have noticed, we're having a run of real-life weather—a possible tornado in Santa Barbara, hail in Thousand Oaks, a wading pool in your bedroom… If it persists, the scheduled tour of the urban forest on Saturday may be postponed. If so, people who signed up will be notified by 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. firstname.lastname@example.com Read More
S M Conservacy Annual Meeting Is Sat.
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000005468 StartFragment:0000002295 EndFragment:0000005432 The Santa Monica Conservancy will hold its annual meeting Saturday, January 23, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Miles Playhouse This program is free to members, and guests are welcome. The historic playhouse, a Santa Monica Landmark, has been beautifully restored. It's located at 1130 Lincoln Boulevard in Christine Emerson Reed Park. it was an important commission... Read More
Kids Run for Haitians
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000005828 StartFragment:0000002296 EndFragment:0000005792 Actor Josh Duhamel is teaming up with the American Red Cross of Santa Monica to host a "Youth Run for Haitian Earthquake Relief" fundraiser. The run will take place on Santa Monica Beach on Saturday morning, January 23 — rain or shine. Children of all ages are invited to Take part. n. Runners will meet in beach parking lot #1 at the west... Read More
Tour Our Urban Forest
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000007430 StartFragment:0000002293 EndFragment:0000007394 On Saturday, January 23, at 9:30 a.m., Santa Monica's new Urban Forest Task Force will begin a tour of the city's trees at 2600 Ocean Park Boulevard, Clover Park. The public is invited to accompany Them. The tour will be narrated by the City's Forester. He will focus on "critical elements of the urban forest." . If you would like to attend,... Read More
Serious Storm Warning
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000170 EndHTML:0000019436 StartFragment:0000002365 EndFragment:0000019400 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/peggyclifford/Documents/George From George Wolfberg, President, Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association The jet stream that is going to hit Southern California is as powerful as has ever been recorded on this planet before, over 230 mph. The jet is at an extremely unusually low altitude, not 30,000 to 60,000 feet, but... Read More
Genser Memorial Service Sunday
Share with othersTweet Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000176 EndHTML:0000007386 StartFragment:0000002599 EndFragment:0000007350 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/peggyclifford/Documents/Gemser%20mem Memorial services for the late Ken Genser, mayor of Santa Monica, will be held Sunday, January 24, at 1:30 p.m. at Barnum Hall at Santa Monica High School. Following the services, a reception will be held in the east wing of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. . Genser served on the ... Read More


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Impaired glucose tolerance happens when the pancreas either does not release enough insulin or the cells become resistant to the insulin. Insulin resistance (or impaired glucose tolerance) is classified as a fasting glucose level of 100 mg/dl to 125 mg/dl.
Several factors can contribute to the development of insulin resistance:
The Aging Process
As we age, our body processes can become slower or diminished. The pancreas is no exception. Sometimes the pancreas naturally produces less insulin as we get older.
When a person is overweight, the cells in the body become less sensitive to the insulin that is released from the pancreas. There is some evidence that fat cells are more resistant to insulin than muscle cells.
If a person has more fat cells than muscle cells, then the insulin becomes less effective overall, and glucose remains circulating in the blood instead of being taken in to the cells to be used as energy.
Where the Fat Is At
That spare tire around the midsection is visceral fat or abdominal fat. There is a correlation among abdominal fat, insulin resistance and resulting hyperglycemia. Visceral fat is very resistant to the effects of insulin.
The more fat concentrated in this area, the more insulin resistance occurs. Carrying extra abdominal fat can not only lead to diabetes, it can also increase the risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Activity Matters
When someone lives a sedentary lifestyle, using minimal exertion to carry out the tasks of the day, their body doesn't use insulin effectively, resulting in insulin resistance. The American Heart Association recommends 30 minutes of exercise five times a week for heart health. Incorporating this amount of exercise into your life also improves insulin sensitivity and helps with weight loss as well.
Medications that Cause Insulin Resistance
Some medications prescribed for other disorders increase the risk of insulin resistance. Some drugs used to manage bipolar disorder fall into this category. Other medications, such as some steroids, also can lead to insulin resistance.
Genetics and Family History
Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are at a higher risk for developing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. A family history of type 2 diabetes also increases the risk.
Is Insulin Resistance Inevitable?
Sometimes insulin resistance can be prevented or reversed. Although insulin production in the pancreas usually cannot be increased in the instance of reduced insulin excretion, weight loss, diet and exercise make a considerable difference in the body's resistance to the insulin that the pancreas is able to is produce.
Gastaldelli, Amalia (2008, May). Abdominal Fat: Does it Predict the Development of Type 2 Diabetes?. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 87, Retrieved July 19, 2008, from http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/87/5/1118
(2007, Oct. 17). Exercise and Fitness. Retrieved July 19, 2008, from American Heart Association Web site: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1200013


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Is this Assange that much different to Osama? NO. This Australian antiamerican sonofabitch has declared WAR on America. A TERRORIST.
Australians support Assange. Should be very serious diplomatic consequences in US Australian relationship.
US should tell Australia WE WANT THAT antiamerican ALBINIO's treasonous ass on a waterboard with cables attached to his nutsack in a Guantanamo cage.
If you don't hand him over, then get your kneepads out Australia and blow China's stiff 2 incher. We ARE DONE with you!


text:
The Malta Story is a curiously uninvolved account of the strategic Malta base in World War II and the role it and its people played in defeating the Axis powers. The main culprit is the screenplay, which, while not exactly hackneyed, is also not exactly bursting with originality. Its bigger flaw, however, is that this potentially exciting and engrossing story comes across as rather bland. Brian Desmond Hurst's so-so direction is also partly to blame, although he (with the very able assistance of cinematographer Robert Krasker) does make many of the action sequences come alive. Krasker's work is excellent throughout, with sun-drenched outdoor shots and some stunning aerial work. The cast is certainly capable, although they seem to have been hemmed in somewhat by the limitations of the script and the unwillingness of the director to explore interesting approaches. Still, Alec Guinness can always be counted on to provide at least a few good moments, and he delivers here. Even better is Flora Robson, whose solid work is more difficult than it may seem. She helps to make up for Muriel Pavlow's flat and Jack Hawkins' stiff performances.
by Craig Butler review