text:
NICB Releases 2012 Heavy Equipment Theft Report
Thefts Decline 7 percent from 2011 – 19 Percent Since 2008
DES PLAINES, Ill., Oct. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Insurance Crime Bureau today released a report on heavy equipment thefts in 2012. This report, co-produced with the National Equipment Register (NER), examines heavy equipment theft data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and profiles that data according to theft state, theft city, theft month, equipment manufacturer, equipment style (type) and year of manufacture. The report also examines heavy equipment recoveries in 2012 based on those same criteria. NER is a division of Verisk Crime Analytics, a Verisk Analytics (Nasdaq:VRSK) company.
In 2012, a total of 10,925 heavy equipment thefts were reported to law enforcement—a decrease of 7 percent from the 11,705 reported in 2011. When compared with the 13,511 reported thefts in 2008, there has been an overall 19 percent reduction in heavy equipment thefts.
Texas ranked number one in 2012 with 1,401 reported thefts. In second place was North Carolina with 1,037 thefts followed by Florida in third with 890 thefts. In fourth place was California with 686 thefts and tied for fifth—Georgia and South Carolina with 595 each. The top five cities with the most thefts were Houston, Texas (163); Miami, Fla. (107); Conroe, Texas (83); Oklahoma City, Okla. (79) and Fresno, Calif. (64).See the full report here. The three most stolen heavy equipment items in 2012 were:
- Mowers (riding or garden tractor: 5,363)
- Loaders (skid steer, wheeled: 1,943)
- Tractors (wheeled or tracked: 1,459)
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text:
Old Line Bancshares, Inc. Reports Strong Organic Loan Growth Of 22.65% For The Year And Increased Earnings Of 157.9% For The Fourth Quarter Ended December 31, 2013
BOWIE, Md., Jan. 27, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Old Line Bancshares, Inc. (Nasdaq:OLBK), the parent company of Old Line Bank, reported net income available to common stockholders of $7.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. Net income increased $308,000 or 4.10% for the year, compared to net income of $7.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. Earnings were $0.87 and $0.86 per basic and diluted common share, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2013 and $1.10 and $1.09, respectively, per basic and diluted common share in 2012. The increase in net income is primarily the result of a $6.9 million increase in net interest income and a $5.2 million increase in non-interest income, offsetting an increase of $10.9 million in non-interest expense. Non-interest income increased as a result of $3.4 million in gains on the sale of approximately $22.6 million of loans acquired in the Bank's two acquisitions.
Earnings were $4.4 million, or $0.41 per basic and diluted share, for the three months ended December 31, 2013, compared with $1.7 million or $0.25 per basic and diluted share for the same three month period of 2012. The increase is primarily the result of an increase in non-interest income due to the previously mentioned gain on sale of loans. The $22.6 million of loans sold in the fourth quarter were primarily related to impaired loans acquired from previous mergers with Maryland Bancorp, Inc. and WSB Holdings, Inc. ("WSB"). This disposal was accomplished through brokered sale transactions and included approximately $12.0 million of loans that were over 90 days past due.
Total assets at December 31, 2013 increased by $305.4 million compared to December 31, 2012. Total net loans increased $20.8 million and $254.1 million, respectively during the three and twelve month periods ended December 31, 2013. The increase in loans during the three month period was primarily attributable to strong organic growth in the loan portfolio. The increase during the twelve month period is a result of organic growth of $134.8 million or 22.65% of total net loans as well as the completion of the merger with WSB Holdings, Inc.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Billy Crystal and Jimmy Fallon Remember Robin Williams
Crystal discusses his Emmy tribute.
Skip to content, or skip to search.
Skip to content, or skip to search.
Crystal discusses his Emmy tribute.
It was Crystal's first starring role.
"It's very hard to talk about him in the past because he was so present in all of our lives."
Actually, these photos are from two separate premieres.
It's kind of like Funny People, but with Crystal and Josh Gad swapped in.
Happy New Year, from Billy Crystal.
Hilarity, bathos, and his grandfather's gas.
Enough of Monsters Inc.'s original spirit remains in this prequel that it'd be absurd not to recommend it.
About a comedian.
Who do you think is going to win the "Scare Games"?
Argo set to the tune of "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go?" Yes, please.
Plus: Paul Rudd gave himself a goofy fro, and more, on our daily late-night roundup.
Would you wear an "essence" of Mel Brooks?
Well, that's unsettling.
Welcome back, Billy Crystal.
"It's a little bizarre to have people commenting on things you're doing as you're doing them."
The Academy Awards telecast is Hollywood's State of the Union address, and the message last night was not inspiring.


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Tag: Ballard
Bruins Charge Past Tigers
The host Bruins (5-3) defeated the visiting Tigers (4-3), 29-0 on Friday night.
Crimsons' Streak Continues
Manual (4-0) continued its winning streak with a 13-7 win over the Ballard Bruins (3-3).
Tigers and Weather Too Hot for Bruins
St Xavier kicked off their football season by hosting Ballard High School and triumphing 17-0 before the game was called at half-time due to a heat index of 105 degrees.
Ballard Cruise Past Male
Ballard strung together a 20-point run as they swept past Male 77-53 in the Seventh Region Tournament semifinal on Sunday at Valley. Kelan Martin scored a game-high 21 points, while Quentin Snider added 18 points, six assists and four steals as Ballard (29-5) advanced to face Trinity (28-5) in Tuesday's regional final. P.J. Scott high-scored [...]
Bruins Too Good For Crimsons
Quentin Snider high-scored with 21 points, including 9-9 at the free-throw line in the fourth quarter, to help Ballard slide past Manual 78-70 on Friday night.
Game of the Week: Ballard vs. St. X
Senior running back Charles Walker helped St. Xavier overcome a somewhat slow start — leading just 6-2 at halftime — to beat visitors Ballard 32-14 at Brother Thomas More Stadium.
Girls Game Of The Week: Eastern Vs. Ballard
Eastern High School defeated host Ballard 3-1 to win the 28th District softball title on May 23.
Region 7 Championship Ballard Vs. Trinity
Ballard avenged last year's crushing loss to Trinity in the regional semifinal, beating the Shamrocks 57-46 in the Seventh Region Tournament final hosted at Valley on March 2.
Game Of The Week: Eastern Vs. Ballard
Ballard took home the 28th District championship title, defeating Eastern 86-51 on Feb. 21.
Will Trinity-Ballard Winner Win Another Title?
Hang on tightly because we are moving fast today!


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Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Announces Second Quarter 2013 Results Revenues Grow 12%, EPS Increases 14% To $0.49 Raises Financial Guidance For Fiscal Year 2013
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (NYSE: WSM) today announced operating results for the 13 weeks ended August 4, 2013 ("Q2 13") versus the 13 weeks ended July 29, 2012 ("Q2 12").
Q2 13 Results
- Net revenues grew 12.3% to $982 million versus $874 million in Q2 12 with comparable brand revenue growth of 8.4%.
- Operating margin was 8.0%, equal to Q2 12.
- Diluted earnings per share ("EPS") grew 14.0% to $0.49 compared to Q2 12.
- Cash returned to stockholders totaled $120 million comprising $90 million in stock repurchases and $30 million in dividends.
Laura Alber, President and Chief Executive Officer commented, "Our second quarter results demonstrate the strong demand for our brands and the profitability of our multi-channel, multi-brand platform. We generated a 12% increase in revenue and a 14% increase in diluted EPS over last year. We achieved sales and profit levels that exceeded our expectations while making investments in our growth objectives and in the infrastructure to support them."
Alber continued, "We are on track to achieve another record year of revenue and deliver a double-digit increase in earnings per share. Due to our performance year-to-date and our confidence in the remainder of the year, we are raising our FY 2013 revenue guidance to a range of $4.26 billion to $4.34 billion and our non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance to a range of $2.69 to $2.79."Alber concluded, "Longer term, we remain confident in our ability to continue to grow sales, maximize profitability and capture market share as we build on our successes across brands and geographies. We are looking forward to expanding our company-owned retail presence in Australia and entering a new market in the United Kingdom later this year. Additionally, in advancement of our global expansion objectives, we are excited about today's announcement of a multi-year franchise agreement with Store Specialists, Inc. as the franchisee for our brands in the Philippines."
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text:
|Game Info
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Assassin's Creed: Revelations - Multiplayer Beta Results
Have you taken part in the Assassin's Creed: Revelations Multiplayer Beta? Are you curious to know how many deaths and bench attacks were made? Then check out Ubisoft's video below, which will fill you in on all the juicy stats from the Beta.
Did you take part in the Beta? Let us know what you thought about the game in the comments.
Revelations comes to your console on November 15th.
This Assassin's Creed: Revelations - Multiplayer Beta Results can be viewed below with more videos and screenshots for the game in our media area, if you wish to check out the full range of content we have on the site Click Here.
Let us know your thoughts on this video as well as your own views on the game by leaving your comments below.
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Novotel Libreville Rapontchomb
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TripAdvisor Reviews Novotel Libreville Rapontchomb
Travel Blogs from Libreville
First leg...
... drove was a crowd of people waiting en masse outside of a large bakery called Pain Victoire. This was obviously "the" baking company of Kinshasa from which many if not all bread re-sellers bought baskets of plastic wrapped loaves to carry around and sell during the day. The signs for Pain Victoire kept appearing. At one point, we even passed a large industrial facility that looked like the central production plant for the bread products. All kinds of other ...
Mpoko to Libreville (FOOL), Gabon
We left the Central African republic and Travelled back towards the west coast...to Libreville, capital of Gabon.
Libreville was founded 2 centuries ago by slaves freed by the French...the name means Free Town...it has gone on to become a true city, home ...
... br>
The one thing I can't forget, of course, were the smells coming from the kitchen when I first arrived. They were heavenly! About ten minutes after I arrived, lunch was put out on the table. Now, this was no ordinary lunch – it was garlic infused leg of lamb, with fingerling potatoes, green beans, and fresh mango for dessert. DELICIOUS! And that was only my first meal! Everything was prepared by a man named Thomas (pronounced Toe-mah as Gabon is a ...
Soweto and Back to Libreville
... the order in which the residents are slated for relocation to new housing). The housing we saw spans the spectrum from these shacks, to converted barracks for single men who were mine workers, average small homes which show much pride of ownership to what Kosai called "Beverly Hills" (still modest by our standards). There is much work being done and change is in the air. We see the coal fired power plant which the government deposited in the township ...
How did a layover become the Midnight Express?
... lounge. I saw the kindness of strangers and the potential for animosity among brothers. Would I do it again? No thanks! Am I angry at anyone....probably not. Did I always feel this way? Honestly, not really, but hopefully alls well that ends well. I suspect my day in Gabon would make a good training exercise for SAA on what not to do. Great practice for the Amazing Race!
Left Gabon at 1:30 am ...


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"Lazy Mike and the Rockin' Recliners" are one of the hardest workin' Blues Bands on Vancouver Island. These guys always bring their "A" game to the shows they play and have had the crowds jumpin' every time that I have had the pleasure of seeing one of their shows. Good solid musicians who know how to entertain an audience with high energy, enthusiasm, and an honest passion for the music they play. One of the hightlights of the "Powell River Blues Festival!" http://powellriverblues2012.com
Harp Driven Rockin' Blues
Lazy Mike and the Rockin' Recliners have been ROCKIN' the Island since 2007 with appearances at many Blues Festivals such as the "Vancouver Island Blues Bash", in Victoria, "SkyHigh Blues" in Rock Creek BC, and the Powell River Blues Festival, in Powell River, plus many other Fairs, Pubs, and Clubs all over the Island and the BC Interior. This year of 2014, the band has had the wonderful opportunity to be invited back again to play at the "SkyHigh Blues" in Rock Creek, and the "Summertime Blues" in Nanaimo and to have the Port Alberni Annual Toy Run return for their second year.
With the release of their second CD "Life's Been Pretty Good" to enthusiastic fans everywhere, the band is excited to have had the opportunity to share the stage and billing with such fine talents. Now the Band is Happy and Excited to have their second CD released complied of original Rockin' Blues with a few covers in the mix ~ "Rollin' Through this World...." Check out our Calendar for all the Dates!
Band members are:
"Lazy" Mike Mallon~Vocals & Harmonica
Bob "Blue" Berry ~Bass & Vocals
Carson "Blind Boy" Mallon ~ Lead Guitar & Vocals
Evan Matthiesen ~Drums & Vocals
If you like your Blues with a Rockin' Flavor, then DUST OFF YOUR DANCIN' SHOES and come on down!
See YOU there!


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Use this Region Guide to easily find and compare Crags.
Table of contents
- 1. Sandpit
32 in Region
- 1.1. Big Boulder 8 in Boulder
- 1.2. Little Boulder 3 in Boulder
- 1.3. Campbell's Kingdom 5 in Crag
- 1.4. A test area 5 in Area
Another Test 0 in Crag
- 1.5.1. Another Areas sub 0 in Unknown
- 1.6. test area bb 1 in Area
- 1.7. Pulse Indoor Climbing (DEMO) 10 in Gym
- 1.8. Campbell's Indoor Climbing 0 in Gym
- 1.9. Bouldering problems 0 in Area
- 1.10. Crag for Jack 0 in Crag
1. Sandpit 32 routes in Region
- Summary:
JFMAMJJASONDseasonalityBoulder, Sport and other styles
Long/Lat: -39.749707, -18.862514
- Description:
This is just a pretend area created for making screen casts, etc.
1.1. Big Boulder 8 routes in Boulder
- Summary:
All Boulder
- Description:
A very big boulder.
1.2. Little Boulder 3 routes in Boulder
- Summary:
Boulder and Sport
- Description:
A little boulder
1.3. Campbell's Kingdom 5 routes in Crag
- Summary:
Sport, Trad and Unknown
Long/Lat: 145.010264, -37.765905
- Description:
An imaginary crag with something for everyone.
1.3.1. Water 4 routes in Cliff
- Summary:
Sport, Trad and Unknown
1.3.2. Air 0 routes in Cliff
1.3.3. Fire 0 routes in Cliff
1.3.4. Earth 0 routes in Cliff
1.4. A test area 5 routes in Area
- Summary:
Trad and Boulder
Long/Lat: -39.751092, -18.862957
1.5. Another Test 0 routes in Crag
1.5.1. Another Areas sub 0 routes in Unknown
1.6. test area bb 1 route in Area
- Summary:
All Trad
- Description:
test desc
1.7. Pulse Indoor Climbing (DEMO) 10 routes in Gym
- Summary:
Boulder and Sport
Long/Lat: 151.718177, -32.941609
- Unique Features And Strengths:
Newcastle's heart of indoor climbing. We are the only dedicated indoor rock climbing gym in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley.
- Description:
Pulse Climbing is Pulse Climbing, Newcastle's heart of indoor climbing. We are the only dedicated indoor rock climbing gym in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. Our facilities cater for all levels of climbing from beginners just starting out, right up to elite climbers who are after a high class training facility. The atmosphere is relaxed and welcoming and our highly experienced staff are always on hand for safety instruction and to give tips on climbing technique and training.
10/122 Garden Grove Pde Adamstown
Opening Hours
Monday – Friday 2pm – 10pm
Saturdays 10am – 6pm
Sundays & public Holidays 10am – 4pm
During school holiday periods we are open 11am – 10pm Monday – Friday. Check our website for holiday updates.
Adults: $15
Concession: $13
Child: $10
Harness Hire: $5
Shoes: $6
Chalk bag: $3
Harness, Shoes and Chalk bag: $10
1.7.1. Bouldering Cave 5 routes in Sector
- Summary:
All Boulder
1.7.2. Wall 1 5 routes in Sector
- Summary:
All Sport
1.7.3. Wall 2 0 routes in Sector
1.7.4. Wall 3 0 routes in Sector
1.7.5. Wall 4 0 routes in Sector
1.7.6. Wall 5 0 routes in Sector
1.7.7. Archive 0 routes in Sector
- Description:
This is where old routes are saved. (We don't want to delete them or it will affect people's logbook, training stats, etc)
1.8. Campbell's Indoor Climbing 0 routes in Gym
- Unique Features And Strengths:
i am logged in as someone else, seeing if lockdown works
- Description:
This is a basic gym listing. It is locked and cannot be edited.
If you climb at Campbell's Indoor Climbing you can use the generic routes below to keep your training logbook up to date.
If you are from Campbell's Indoor Climbing and would like to unlock this page to make a more tailored and detailed listing please contact us (http://www.thecrag.com/article/ContactUs)
- Approach:
Cnr of High St and Mitchell St, Northcote


text:
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Agia Kiriaki Agia Kiriaki,
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Prefecture of Chalkidikis
Category: Camp Sites
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Suzi Hamilton as Carolina Beach Town Manager
Submitted by Gabrielle S. Barone (not verified) on Fri, 07/26/2013 - 1:41pm.
Isn't it a conflict of interest for a Representative of the North Carolina House to be a Town Manager? Someone should check the law on this one, but it is my understanding that in order to be a Town (City) Manager, one must resign from the North Carolina House...or Vice Versa. I'm surprised that the legalities of this situation were not considered and that someone in the press has not done relevant research.


text:
• Baldwin gets 'Tube'd: Alec calls Dora the Explorer.
• Slam dunk: Former CIA director George Tenant's new book, At the Center of the Storm, blasts Bush and Cheney for having never engaged in a "serious debate" about whether Saddam was a threat.
• Playing for the other team: Veteran L.A. Times sportswriter Mike Penner will soon be Christine Daniels after he undergoes a sex change.
• Weekend at Bernie's 4: Dead men need no tickets to travel by train in Jakarta.
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Spotlight Article:
California Residential Retrofits: Ten Important Lessons Learned
The potential for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions through retrofitting existing homes offers major incentives for future work.
Keep Reading
The New Deal in Energy Education: Workforce Guidelines for Home Energy Upgrades
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Inspired by Vice President Joe Biden's vision to expand job opportunities and make residential buildings more energy efficient, the Recovery Through Retrofit Workforce Working Group has developed and released the Workforce Guidelines for ... [continue reading]
Retrofit Is In
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It's easy to talk about building new houses that are energy efficient. When you build from the ground up, you can do anything—the thickest insulation, the best sealants, the most efficient ... [continue reading]
Raising the Bar for Home Performance
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New standardized work specifications aim to eliminate work defects and transform the retrofit industry. [continue reading]
The Robo Retrofit House
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Much is learned from a side-by-side study of a retrofit home and standard-built home. [continue reading]
Residential Building Research at NREL
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The Residential Building Research Team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) focuses on improving the energy efficiency of, and reducing carbon emissions from, approximately 130 million U.S. homes. Cost-effective improvements in the energy efficiency ... [continue reading]
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Learn how to weatherize homes with lead paint present while obeying the law, and keeping workers and home occupants safe from lead poisoning. [continue reading]
Unusual Wood-Burning Insert Installation
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Energy expert continues to learn from a deep energy retrofit of his Montana Home. This time he's installing a wood-burning stove to save money, add ambiance, and provide security during emergencies - like when runaway trains knock out a town's power. [continue reading]
Rebuilding Together Tulsa
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In 2008, Rebuilding Together Tulsa (RTT) introduced its Energy Efficiency program that, along with energy efficiency, incorporates broader green housing principles such as water efficiency, and indoor environmental health. This program provided 34 low-income homeowners with energy ... [continue reading]
Shawna Henderson
Energy Analysis: So Much to Know...
It's hard to wrap your head around the amount of number crunching that goes into energy analysis, and how to ...
Daniel Clark
How to Effectively Kill Bed Bugs Forever
Bedbug infestation is commonly seen in houses and especially in bedrooms. Bedbugs are small, brownish insects that feast on blood ...


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2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
My wife and I picked out a 2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L 5 1/2 years ago with 20 miles on it. We now have just over 73,000 on the vehicle, and we are even more happy now than when we purchased the van because nothing has gone wrong.
There has been several recalls such as the brakes, the transmission reprogramming, and cabin noise, but Honda was pretty good (once they acknowledged the issues) at taking care of them.
With a fully loaded van (family/cargo) on a flat road I can get 27/28 mpg easily. In town she avg. 18-20 depending on how much a/c we are using.
As for us we have had a good experience.
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey EX 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
I have had a few significant problems. First is was the soft break pedal which was a known technical service problem "fixed" by applying silicone to the known leak. At 9K mi transmission quit. They tried to blame me. They said they could find out what I had done for $180/hour. Needed my car so 2 days later they found a loose wire connector re-connected it "under warranty". Shortly beyond the 36 mo warranty (13K mi) again a soft to the floor brake pedal. I found the original TSB for the brakes and insisted they perform that "fix"a new VSA stability module I paid $400
for the part. Now they say soft is normal but I just got a recall notice for a brake defect, they got caught 5 yrs later
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
My first minivan due to kids. We left an x3 to get the van, as a left over from previous model year. Hard to beat for camping and any trip with the kids.
Comfortable and peppy for a vehicle well over 4000 pounds.
Leaking rear shocks at 50000 were a bit expensive. Warranty replacement of wheel bearing and piece of the steering pump. At 70000 now with no other issues. Mpg socks but you are pushing a heavy box through the wing. .. What do you expect?
The variable cylinder management is a joke for Mpg improvement.
With the volume of these cars sold, I am not surprised there are a few issues reported here.
My mazda 3 have been bullet proof to 70,000, still made in japan. Odyssey in A
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey EX 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
Honda Poor Customer Service
In just 5 years rust in around rear signal lights broke through the paint and started flaking off.
It was unbelievable.
I told Honda of the issue and they inspected the vechile and they concluded the vechile had not been in an accident or repainted.
They would not pay for the repair.
Van was well in perfect conditions otherwise.
Amazing van to drive but customer service. Terrible!
Be careful.
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey EX 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
I just spent $1K replacing the rear engine mount after 60K miles.
After researching further, discovered this is common part failure, and will re-occur every 50 - 60,000 miles.
Will definitely trade off this vehicle before another 60K miles and will never buy another again.
This is a vital part and should not fail so frequently.
I expected better quality from Honda.
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L 4dr Minivan w/Nav, Rear Entertainment (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
As much as don't like to admit it, I pushed my wife into getting a minivan.
We got the '08 EX-L in the summer of 2011 and are very pleased so far.
Honda hit the mark with the Odyssey and the new ones look even better.
We have not yet experienced any of the major negative issues that I have seen...knock on wood.
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey LX 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
Owned a 99 Honda Odyssey and had it for 9 years. Many recalls including transmission replacement on that model year. Purchased a new 2008 Honda Odyssey and have had good luck with it so far -- over 65,000 miles on it. Soft brake issue recall was resolved. Traveled 4,000 miles last summer to Colorado through the rockies and also to the east coast and it was a great travel vehicle.
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey LX 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
Traded a 2008 Grand Caravan, which was nothing but problems for a CPO 2008 Odyssey.
Had it for 6 months with no issues.
Extremely comfortable, and performed flawlessly on a 1,500 trip this summer.
However, the best feature is the safety of this vehicle.
My wife & daughter were rear-ended by a car doing 40mph while they were standing still.
Car totaled; Odyssey incurred $5,000 worth of damage.
Wife and daughter walked away unhurt.
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L 4dr Minivan w/Nav, Rear Entertainment (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
This is the second Honda I have owned..it will be my last.
The Acccord I purchased had a bad transmission in the model line, but I was lucky and it ran fine for me.
This time, I landed squarely on a terrible transmission.
It shifts constantly at highway speed.
55-60, 60-65, 65-70, 75-80mph...I've tried setting the cruise and it just keeps shifting.
It's like riding in a vehicle that is hiccupping all the time!!!
I've owned Toyota's and Nissan's in the past and have had great success, so long Honda!
Read the full review
2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L 4dr Minivan (3.5L 6cyl 5A)
It was love at first sight, but after 26,000 mi, I'm close to filing for divorce on my 2008 Odyssey! "How do I unlove thee? Let me count the Defects!" 1. Rattles and window whistles from day one. 2. Mushy brakes: Recalled 3. Shutter and maddening erratic shifting: Re- programmed Transmission. 4. Loud Power Steering noises: Replaced plugged Power Steering Reservoir. 5. And, finally, failed Torque Converter: Replaced. I really what to love her, but she's making it awfully difficult. I guess, like some beautiful women, she's great to look at but she's nothing but trouble on the inside! I hope Honda doesn't run out of parts before the warranty expires!
Read the full review
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Chandler Macleod
Chandler Macleod Jobs & Careers in Sydney
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Chandler Macleod Reviews
1 person found this helpful
"Big Company with no heart or soul left "
- Comp & Benefits
- Work/Life Balance
- Senior Management
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
I worked at Chandler Macleod full-time (more than 10 years)Pros
learnt about recruitment, enjoyed working with some of the staff, not a lot was positive from my experience of working at this company except that i became a better people person and i learnt what my strength are as a employee - no thanks to the company.Cons
too many people who had no training or even people skills involved in this company. Upper management are too concerned with the profit margin rather than the quality of the business - which was how the business was run when i first began working there. No accountability and too much passing the buck. they have a great list of values and cultures but nobody pays attention to them and if you do there is no recognition nor reward for it.Advice to ManagementAdvice
go back to focusing on high quality and improve the service to what it use to be. Make clients and candidates and staff feel they are wanted and or needed. Listen to the people who are making YOU the money as you ride their coat tails and pat yourselves on the back for their good work. With out the workers you do not exist - acknowledge this and the rewards will be 10 fold.Doesn't RecommendNegative Outlook


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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312832572014-12-15T12:47:22.735+01:00Michael Deibert, WriterMichael Deibert is the author of In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico (Lyons Press, 2014), The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair (Zed Books, 2013) and Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press, 2005). He can be followed at twitter.com/michaelcdeibert. He lives in Florida.Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-31203497252202913182014-12-15T12:47:00.000+01:002014-12-15T12:47:22.811+01:00A wish for Haiti

I leave Haiti today after traveling from Port Salut to Au Cap and many points in between, taking the measure of where the country sees itself at this moment. This visit has given me the opportunity to talk with tap-tap drivers, peasant farmers, fishermen, market women, hotel owners and many in between. I have concluded more than ever before that the Martelly-Lamothe government have done a great deal for this country over the last 3 years and, despite the violent naysayers in the political opposition here and those abroad who uncritically buy into their zero option game, a tiny light of hope now flickers in Haiti more than I have seen in the past. I truly hope that in the new year, and under whatever government replaces the recently-departed Lamothe's, that this light is able to burn even brighter in the new year. The people of Haiti deserve, more than anything else, peace. The peace of being able to walk through the streets of their cities without the worry that violent, paid-for demonstrations will terrorize their children and loot their shops; the peace of knowing that they will get a fair price for their rice after they toil away in the fields; the peace of knowing that after they get an education there will be some place for them here, in their home, and they will not be forced to migrate abroad to find work. So, Haiti, as I depart from your shores yet again, I wish you peace.

 Photo © Michael Deibert

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-30086728954579819142014-11-03T20:55:00.000+01:002014-11-03T20:55:14.372+01:00Congo in Harlem 6: Special Panel Discussion on DRC's 2016 Elections .

Kambale Musavuli, Alain Seckler, Jason Stearns and I discussing the Democratic Republic of Congo's looming 2016 elections.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-24293958266453570172014-10-08T17:39:00.001+02:002014-10-08T17:39:30.322+02:00Mexico's Endless War
Mexico's Endless War

By Michael Deibert

When 43 students disappeared last month amid a wave of shootouts and assassinations in the Mexican state of Guerrero, it demonstrated in vivid fashion the insecurity still plaguing the country nearly two years into the mandate of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

One of Mexico's most violence-wracked states, where the beach resort of Acalpulco once played host to the rich and famous, Guerrero has in recent weeks seen mass fatality gunbattles in the capital of Chilpancingo, the decapitation of the brother of a federal deputy and the gunning down of the state chief of an opposition party as he sat in an Acalpulco restaurant. Last month, at least 21 people were killed by Mexican soldiers in Tlatlaya, just across the border in Mexico State, in what witnesses charge was an execution of disarmed criminal suspects who had already surrendered.

Some of the missing students - only 14 have reportedly been located at the time of writing - were apparently driven away in custody of the state police after attending a protest in the city of Iguala, while others were fired upon as they attempted to talk to reporters. At least six people died in the initial attacks, which for many Mexicans bring back memories of such state-sponsored violence as the July 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City's Plaza de las Tres Culturas and the June 1971 El Halconazo killings, also in the capital.

After the discovery of mass graves in the state, two hitmen, connected to the Guerreros Unidos criminal group, have allegedly confessed to killing at least 17 of the students with police complicity.

But today's violence is not confined to Guerrero. In the border state of Tamaulipas, birthplace of the Gulf Cartel - the country's oldest criminal organization - gunbattles and roadblocks flare up with terrifying regularity, and only last week gunmen attacked a police station in Reynosa, across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas. In the coastal state of Veracruz, at least four mass graves have been found so far this year. In the western state of Michoacán, violence is rife and hardly a week goes by without another video or photograph surfacing of Servando "La Tuta" Gómez Martínez, leader of the state's Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug gang, meeting in apparent amity with a local official or journalist.

Though much was made of the supposed different approach Peña Nieto, from Mexico's long-ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI), would take to the drug war from the militarized battle that his predecessor, Felipe Calderón of the opposition Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party or PAN), had waged, the results have not been encouraging.

More people were murdered during Peña Nieto's first 20 months in office than during same period under Calderón, with Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (Inegi) also measuring an increase in kidnapping, robberies and extortions. One of Peña Nieto's first moves - to dissolve a law enforcement unit that Calderón leaned heavily on and seek to replace it with a gendarmerie reporting directly to the Interior Ministry - appears to have had little positive affect. Though some well-known drug traffickers, such as Los Zetas' Miguel Treviño and the Sinaloa Cartel's Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán have been arrested, others, such as former Guadalajara Cartel grandee Rafael Caro Quintero and Los Zetas' co-founder Rogelio "El Kelín" González Pizaña, have walked out of jail, with the government claiming ignorance about the circumstances of their release.

The United States, its ravenous appetite for illegal drug undimmed, has, for its part, also played and continues to play an integral role in abetting the criminal violence for which Mexico's citizens pay the price.

Much of the money Mexico's narcos make is laundered through the US banking system, with financial institutions such as Bank of America, HSBC and Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo) found by US investigators to have laundered billions of dollars of drug profits for groups like the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. Border states with liberal gun laws such as Texas and Arizona have long served as a one-stop shop for Mexican drug cartels, with many weapons purchased in the US later found at the scenes of lethal confrontations south of the border. The US also continues with the fallacy of federal prohibition of drugs, despite the evidence of countries such as Portugal that have decriminalized personal possession of narcotics with no marked increase in addiction. Fortunately, states such as Washington and Colorado are beginning to chip away at this deeply cynical policy with their own more progressive drug laws.

Despite the cheerleading, backslapping and nativist incitement that goes on when it comes to the violence that has been wrenching Mexico for a decade, the last 21 months of the Peña Nieto administration have proven that the bloodshed comes from a broken system on both sides of the border, one that is beyond the ability of facile good guy vs bad guy scenarios to fix. Despite flickerings of popular rejection of the power of the cartels and corrupt officials in states such as Michoacán (often quickly and definitively co-opted by the federal government), the Mexican people remain largely at the mercy of powerful, organized bands of ruthless criminals and government players who often appear organically linked with the criminal groups they are ostensibly trying to fight.

While some U.S. publications have myopically lauded Peña Nieto as "saving Mexico," the reality on the ground suggests something far different. Both Mexico and the United States have a role to play in ending impunity, increasing transparency and reforming frankly deadly laws when it comes to the financial sector, drug policy and firearms, lest Mexico's next president also inherit a country in dire need of "saving."

Michael Deibert is the author of In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico (Lyons Press)
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-12944969025033347502014-10-01T20:27:00.000+02:002014-10-01T20:27:26.186+02:00Bienvenido October!

Photo © Michael Deibert

Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-76008276467447501052014-08-31T23:45:00.000+02:002014-08-31T23:45:21.085+02:00Love Conquers

Photo © Michael Deibert

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-46053212874560804332014-08-31T18:36:00.001+02:002014-08-31T18:36:55.094+02:00Jupiter, Florida

Photo © Michael Deibert

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-32972842303862990602014-08-25T15:04:00.000+02:002014-08-25T15:04:00.999+02:00Gift from a friend

Photo © Michael Deibert

Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-17245317625458556912014-08-22T21:21:00.000+02:002014-09-02T23:08:59.152+02:00The Miami Herald's Gaza Problem
On the afternoon of Sunday, July 20, I attended a rally on Miami's Biscayne Boulevard in support of besieged citizens in Gaza, where, in the course of the last several weeks, the government of Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu has slaughtered over 2,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, including hundreds of children. The pretext was for this attack was the appalling kidnap and murder of 3 Israeli teens in the West Bank, but the result was an ethnic slaughter of which Slobodan Milošević would have been proud. As a U.S.voter and taxpayer, when my country provides billions of dollars of aid a year to enable such as policy, I feel it is my duty to speak up.

The rally itself was relatively uneventful as these things go, but what transpired since was illustrative to me about the rather sorry state of the media here in the United States at this time, and here in Miami in particular.

The protest was scheduled for around 3pm and I stood in front of the Israeli consulate. Two others arrived, one Palestinian, one Jewish, and then finally another man, a somewhat jittery fellow with a keffiyeh around his neck and a small camcorder also showed up. After standing in front of the consulate for a few minutes, we collectively realized the rally was in fact to be held at the Torch of Friendship and not at the consulate, so we ambled across Biscayne Boulevard to join the others assembled.

Shortly after we arrived, indicating the man in the kaffiyah, someone announced "This man is a Zionist [they did not say "Jew"] and he is here filming us to put it up on his Zionist website."

At this, a handful, I would say perhaps 4 to 5 people in a crowd that would eventually number about 200, started yelling at the man, who started yelling back at them. The man with the camcorder behaved in a fairly aggressive way, getting to within inches of the faces of the demonstrators and, it looked to my eyes, as if he might be trying to provoke some sort of physical confrontation in order to film it. However, having been around unstable types before in my work as a journalist in conflict zones, something about the man's demeanour alarmed me. At one point I advised the crowd "If you react, he wins" and "Don't take the bait." Some however did, and engaged in prolonged back and forths with the man which involved some shoving. At this point, I wandered off to another part of the demonstration.

A few minutes later the police showed up, took the man to the side and extracted off his person and put on the hood of their squad car for all the world to see a very large handgun. When the footage the man shot was later put online, it was revealed that he was a member of a Lake Worth, Florida-based group called United West, an organization designated as an "Anti-Muslim hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights group. Some demonstrators later told me that they had recognized that he was armed.

Whether or not the man was trying to provoke a fight with the the protesters I cannot say. The man eventually went away, and I stayed at the protest for about two hours, joined, at one point, by a Moroccan and a Czech friend. They demonstrators chanted "Let's go Gaza" some slogans in Arabic I didn't understand and some chanted "Let's Go Hamas," which, in the context of the rally, seemed to me a statement of support for resistance to Israel's savaging of Gaza's population. For the record, as an avowed secularist, I do not support religiously-based parties, but, then again, it is not my place to tell people in other countries who they are and aren't allowed to vote for, no matter how ill-advised I may think their choice may be.

There were lots of young people at the protest, quite a few old people and quite a few toddlers as well. There were Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Latinos, basically a cross-section of different groups one finds in South Florida. A group of pro-Israel protesters - about half a dozen - also showed up, waving an Israeli flag and hurling what sounded like invective in Hebrew that I, at least, couldn't understand. Police kept the two groups well apart. I saw no physical altercations or actual violent acts on the part of either side for the two hours I was there.

I posted photos of some of the protest on my blog here.

A few days later, I was made aware of a blog post on the Miami Herald's website by a journalist named Marc Caputo, whom I had never heard of before but who is apparently the Herald's chief political reporter [Florida's ossified, corrupt political scene holds little interest for me, I generally turn to the Herald for its alas dwindling foreign coverage]. The Herald had published extensive coverage of a pro-Israel rally in Miami Beach that same week. To the best of my knowledge, Caputo's blog post was the only mention of the Gaza rally that appeared in the paper or on its website.

In the post, which didn't generally fall dramatically to either a pro-Israel or pro-Palestine slant, the author alluded to how the video I saw being shot that day was picked up by the extreme right-wing news source Breitbart.com, which described the video with the words that a "Jewish reporter had been working undercover and was identified, then attacked by the demonstrators," which, as noted, is completely false. Caputo then quoted me by name from a comment I had made on the event's Facebook page about being proud to stand with the people of Gaza and my query who the armed provocateur was, before concluding "as with any dispute rooted in the Middle East, it's tough to tell who did what exactly, who started it, who's more at fault and what the ultimate truth is. The video posted by The United West is edited. We don't know the whole story. But we probably never will."

Caputo never made any attempt to contact me or, as far as I can tell, anyone else connected to the event, anyone who could have told him the cameraman from United West and the gunmen were one and the same. As neither Caputo nor any other journalist for the Herald had attended the rally, they missed making the connection that the man shooting the video and the man who had gun taken off him and registration checked by the police were the same person. To me, this seemed like a detail worth clarifying.

I wrote first to a Herald editor whom I had met and corresponded with before, explaining the situation and he thoughtfully put me in touch with the journalist in question.

Initially, Caputo was not receptive to this new information, and instead responded in a highly pompous, defensive and verbose tone that rather surprised me, but agreeing to contact the police to confirm my story that the cameraman was armed and that police had removed a firearm from him during the demonstration (I never said the man was arrested). I also found an additional attendee who confirmed my version of the story. The man apparently had a concealed weapons permit but, to me and others at the demonstration, at least, that doesn't make his behavior any less threatening.

At the conclusion of our exchange, Caputo wrote that "I think I'll do both: update and issue a separate post. The armed man is unreported and for search purposes on the Internet deserves a separate headline."

Had he done so, that would have been that. But up to this date (22 August 2014), however, Caputo has done neither, hence what I viewed as the necessity of this posting. This is a detail that should be known. The Miami Herald, likewise, has, as far as I can tell, made no public acknowledgement of this glaring omission. They have had this information for a month and have chosen, for whatever reason, not to share it with the public. What has resulted is another instance in which the U.S. media can blithely paint. perhaps not even intentionally, those defending the human rights of Palestinian civilians as sympathetic or tangentially connected to violence and terrorism.

Though the Miami Herald is significantly diminished from the days when it was one of the world's great newspapers - with the gaping, destroyed facade of the publication's former home in downtown Miami providing some unflattering symbolism - there are still some fine reporters there, and it's a paper I have been happy to contribute articles to, both from abroad and here in Miami, from time to time over the years. But if friends of mine such as the great Irish photographer Andrew McConnell, who I reported with from the Democratic Republic of Congo, can cobble together their own often meagre resources to get into Gaza itself and cover the violence there, is it too much to expect a Miami Herald reporter to get into their air conditioned car and drive a couple of miles to town to cover a demonstration that they will later write about? Now that the Herald has moved from its downtown offices in the heart of Miami to the antiseptic and distant suburb of Doral, it is in ever more danger of being cut off from the people of the city it claims to cover authoritatively.

The temptation to sit behind a desk in an office with minimal effort, tweeting and blogging away, is great but, even in this digital age, reporters must go out among the people and, well, report. If journalists want to wade into international reporting on fraught geopolitical issues such as this one, simply sighing those issues are "complex" does not cut it.

The Miami Herald failed the people of Miami and the people of Gaza in this instance.

These are matters of life and death.

Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-49556648829347067372014-08-21T22:23:00.001+02:002014-08-21T22:23:37.349+02:00Michael Deibert interviewed about Mexico on KPFK
My interview with KPFK in Los Angeles about my new book on the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas and the price of America's drug war in Mexico can be heard here.

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-40327909156675995282014-08-04T18:08:00.000+02:002014-08-04T18:09:58.795+02:00Frontera List interviews author Michael Deibert
1 August 2014

Frontera List interviews author Michael Deibert

Interview by Virginia Isaad

(Read the original article here)

Frontera List focuses on the number of deaths in Juarez which is higher than what's often published. After writing this book, how do you feel about how the war and the casualties are portrayed in mainstream media?

I feel that the generally accepted figures of those who have died in the war in Mexico since 2006, which, if one takes into account the 2012 Propuesta Cívica report of around 21,000 people who have had disappeared in addition to more than 70,000 killed, are actually quite conservative. As I mention in the book, after the Tamaulipas massacres in 2010/2011, one Zetas lieutenant said they he thought up to that point the Zetas had buried up to 600 bodies around Tamaulipas alone. I think the full number of those killed in Mexico may be many, many more. And people also like to forget, because of the drug trade and US drug policies, there are also bodies dropping in places like Miami, Chicago and New Orleans in the United States every single day.

You put yourself in some precarious situations while researching this book. What is one incident that stands out and why?

In Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in late 2013, while finishing up some interviews with people who had been deported from the United States, a contact and I were driving though a cartel-dominated part of the city to another interview across town. As we began to leave the first neighborhood we ran headlong into a Gulf Cartel roadblock of half a dozen guys with automatic rifles stopping cars and deciding who could pass and who couldn't. They let some go, and stopped some others. To me it looked as if they were scanning the cars for someone in particular, though my contact said that he thought they were actually coming out as a show of force to recruit young people in the neighborhood, something they do from time to time.

You quote an interviewee who says "a new culture and belief are taking hold." How would you characterize the war now versus five years ago?
Unfortunately, I think now, certainly among border communities in Tamaulipas but also in other parts of Mexico, there is a kind of collective PTSD among many people who live there, and a fatalism verging on despair. You send your kids out for school in the morning and don't know whether they wil be trapped there by a gunattle later in the day. You open up a business and someone shows up claiming they work for this or that criminal group and that you must pay la mordida or else there will be consequences. You get on the highway to drive from Reynosa to Matamoros and God only knows if you will get there alive or not.

America plays a large role not only as drug consumers but also gun suppliers. What needs to change in America in order to bring about changes in Mexico?

I think there needs to be a general decriminalization and regulation of narcotics in the United States similar to what what we saw with alcohol after the repeal of Prohibition. Since Richard Nixon's famous speech in 1971, which many view as the beginning of what came to be known as the war on drugs, the United States has spent more than $1 trillion fighting it, and yet we have seen violence related to the drug trade cut a bloody swathe through Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and elsewhere. All these year later, I could still step out the door of my apartment in Miami and cop any drug I wanted in about 20 minutes. Over half of sentenced prisoners under federal jurisdiction in the United States are serving time for drug offenses, for which African-Americans are sent to prison at 10 times the rate of caucasians. Does that sound like a successful, equitable system of justice to you? It doesn't to me.

In terms of the gun industry, I have a story in the book about a guy from Houston who helped facilitate the purchase of more than 100 military-style firearms, many of which ended up in the hands of Mexico's cartels, including at such locales as a February 2007 assault on the Guerrero state attorney general's office in Acapulco that left seven people dead. It is not an unrepresentative case and, as I'm sure you, know, for many years, at gun shows in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, unlicensed dealers were not even obligated to record the buyer's name, and in Arizona, no licensing or permit requirements whatsoever were imposed for purchasing firearms, including limiting the firearms a person could purchase by quantity or time period. The US is a great one-stop shop for the cartels.

My hope is, building on the example we've seen shown by states like Colorado and Washington, US drug policy will go the way of Portugal, which in November 2000 decriminalized "personal" drug possession and use up to amounts generally thought of to be able to be consumed by one person over a 10-day period, including for drugs such as cocaine and heroin. With an emphasis on dissuasion and prevention of drug addiction as well as treatment, in the 14 years since the law was passed, Portugal didn't see a significant increases in drug use among the population and rather drug consumption among 15 to 19 years olds, a particularly at-risk group, actually went down. Portuguese police are making fewer arrests but are seizing larger quantities of drugs because now, rather than low level drug use and dealing, they are free to combat organized crime.

A lot of media coverage focuses on capturing drug kingpins like El Chapo however you say it does very little to truly impact the drug trade. What needs to happen in order to cause the foundations of these cartels to unravel?

As I said, I think there needs to be a general decriminalization of narcotics, and we need to realize that it's not productive to put people – the users – in jail, for basically beings sick. As Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García, one of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel says at one point in the book, even if authorities might feel a momentary elation at the killing or capture of this or that drug lord, their replacements are already out there.

If there's one thing you wish readers would take from this book, what would it be?

The the policies of the United States with regard to the drug trade – from the prohibition of narcotics to the free flow of firearms to the private prison industry that jails so much of our population to the US banks that launder billions of dollars of drug money – have corrupted not only drug producing and distributing counties like Colombia and Mexico, but the United States itself. And it is time that these policies change.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-46060433154855297182014-07-21T16:01:00.001+02:002014-07-21T16:01:38.212+02:00Miami Demonstration in Support of Palestine and Against Israel's Massacres in Gaza

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All photos © Michael Deibert

Thanks to all those who came out to support the people of Gaza and greater Palestine in Miami yesterday. Even the pro-Israel fanatic who showed up with a gun and had to be disarmed by the police didn't deter a huge crowd. I have often said that Miami has the social conscience of a flea but yesterday, at least, I was happy to be proved wrong.

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-42390718323464033952014-07-17T00:41:00.000+02:002014-07-17T00:50:22.935+02:00Reading at Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon

Reading from In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico at the famous Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon.

Photo © James Rexroad

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-46159559540593792952014-07-16T18:01:00.000+02:002014-07-16T18:01:21.662+02:00Imperialism 2.0? Review of Howard French's 'China's Second Continent: How A Million Migrants Are Building A New Empire in Africa'
Imperialism 2.0? Review of Howard French's 'China's Second Continent: How A Million Migrants Are Building A New Empire in Africa'

By Michael Deibert

Posted on July 9, 2014 by AfricanArgumentsEditor

(Read the original article here)

When, midway through the American journalist Howard French's new book, a Zambian politician tells him dejectedly that "we are not a poor people but we have crowned ourselves with poverty," the phrase resonates with the experience of many countries is modern-day Africa. Resource rich but often misgoverned by autocrats who refuse to leave office – and whose depredations have been bankrolled by Western governments – Africa, despite some bright spots, remains a continent of unrealised hopes and unfulfilled potential. It is that potential, French demonstrates in his new book, that the Chinese have arrived to tap.

Between 2003 and 2013, China's investment in Africa grew from $77 million to $2.9 billion, and the ostensible "million migrants" from China (a figure that, after reading the book, seems wildly conservative) arrived in Africa with their government's blessing to continue their country's transformation, in French's words "from being a vessel" of globalization "to becoming an increasingly transformative actor in its own right."

French, a former New York Times bureau chief in both West Africa and China, brings a nuanced and familiar understanding of both regions to this tale. The book is scrupulously even-handed to its subjects and steers well-clear of anything smacking of jingoism.

The author meets many people, including a foul-mouthed farmer from Henan dreaming of building an empire in Mozambique, a factory owner from the ancient city of Chengdu in Senegal, and a Francophile construction company official in Mali. Almost all appear casually racist about the inhabitants of their new homes in a way that one might have thought had largely disappeared from public discourse (if not private thought).

With a middle class larger than that of India, the African continent is not simply a repository for much-needed natural resources to fuel Chinese economic expansion, but also as a market for the country's exports. Africa's population is expected to double over the next 40 years, taking us to just about the time that newly-discovered mineral reserves are expected to run out.

As French writes, "the continent's rapidly rising population means lots of new mouths to feed, lots more people to be clothed, devices and appliances and goods of all kinds to be sold."

The Chinese were aided in their quest to expand in Africa by a US government which, during the critical juncture in the early-mid first decade of the millennium, was led by George W. Bush, a man completely uncurious about the world except in the most broad terms, and whose diplomats seemed equally taken by surprise by the rapid expansion that many on the ground had seen coming for some time.

In truth, for nearly a decade before Bush – at least since the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia during which 18 US servicemen were killed by Somali militias – America had put Africa on the back burner. This has changed somewhat during the presidency of Barack Obama, but not dramatically so.

The picture that French paints of China venturing forth into Africa is not a pretty one, and despite banal slogans of a "win-win" relationship, the Chinese he meets seem surprisingly unaware of how often the ground they have entered has been trod before.

The reader is treated to a vivid account of a short-sighted policy of non-transparent deal-making in Guinea, the rebuffing or insulting of civil society in various countries (generating no small reservoir of ill will) and engagement in the payment of starvation (and often illegally low) wages and non-existent workplace safety.

For the government of China, Africa is just one backdrop among many where new opportunities lie and where much money can be made. But by the end of the book it is hard to argue with French's conclusion that "here [are] the beginnings of an empire, a haphazard empire, perhaps, but an empire nonetheless"

There are a few unexplored strands of this story that one wishes French had also included. The Chinese presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of Africa's most iconic and tragic countries (and one that French knows well, having devoted a large part of his 2005 book to it) goes unexamined. But perhaps this was a conscious decision on the author's part to highlight some of the rather less-known corners of the continent, such as the aforementioned Zambia, Mozambique and Namibia.

Towards the end of his book, French quotes the historian Peter Duus' history of Japan's colonial project in Korea: "[imperialism] requires an available victim – a weaker, less organized or advanced society or state unable to defend itself against outside intrusion."

Africa, bedeviled as it may be by misrule, today has a more vibrant civil society than at any time in its history. One that robustly confronts the excesses of local governments and also the intrigues of outsiders of many nationalities and political persuasions – all linked by their desire to profit from the continent's wealth.

Who will prevail in this David versus Goliath battle is unclear, as is whether the democratic gains made in countries like Ghana and Senegal will create the space needed for this side of the debate to succeed. As French clearly recognises, this remains one of the more pressing questions in Africa today.

Michael Deibert is the author of In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico (Lyons Press), The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair (Zed Books) and Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press).

Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-71422354942360733872014-07-04T15:54:00.001+02:002014-07-04T15:54:24.901+02:00The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico on Portland's KBOO
In advance of my appearance at Powell's next week, I spoke with Portland's KBOO yesterday on the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas and the price of America's drug war in Mexico. You can listen to the full interview here.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-44661171157923973142014-07-03T22:08:00.004+02:002014-07-03T22:08:37.985+02:00Interview with This is Hell! on Chicago's WNUR
I was interviewed about the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas and America's drug war in Mexico by Chuck Mertz on This is Hell! on Chicago's WNUR. During the interview, I suggest that if Americans want to know what a narco-state looks like, they step out the front door and have a look around. The segment can be heard here.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-47853295147866263392014-07-01T17:24:00.000+02:002014-07-01T17:24:28.791+02:00Tamaulipas, Cradle of Mexico's Drug War, Erupts

Posted: 06/26/2014 12:59 pm

Tamaulipas, Cradle of Mexico's Drug War, Erupts

By Michael Deibert

The Huffington Post

(Read the original article here)

The Mexican state of Tamaulipas, birthplace of the country's oldest criminal organization, the Gulf Cartel, is again awash in blood. Just across the Rio Grande from Texas and abutting the Gulf of Mexico, neither a change of presidents, seemingly endless battles within the cartel and with their former allies turned deadly enemies Los Zetas, years of high-profile killings and arrests of cartel leaders, or the United States' own seemingly endless war on drugs have made a dent in the violence.

While some U.S. publications have myopically lauded the government of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto as "saving Mexico" since he took over from his predecessor Felipe Calderón's militarized battle with the country's narcos, the reality on the ground tells a different story.

In the space of a few days in May, gun battles in the city of Reynosa killed at least 23 people, 16 bullet-riddled corpses were found in abandoned vehicles around the state, and the chief bodyguard for Tamaulipas governor Egidio Torre Cantú was arrested for involvement in the murder of state intelligence chief Salvador Haro Muñoz. Just south of Tamaulipas in the tropical port city of Veracruz, nine presumed cartel gunmen were slain in a shootout with Mexican armed forces, and earlier this month more than 30 bodies were found in a mass grave there, a grave it took the state's governor days to secure.

As I detail in my new book, In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico, (Lyons Press), the Gulf Cartel was a regional anomaly among Mexico's drug trafficking organizations, most of whose lineage harkens back to the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa. The organization traces its roots back to the failed U.S. policy of prohibition of alcohol, a time when millions of Americans were turned into criminals because of a substance they chose to put into their own bodies, and during when the power and reach of organized crime in the United States grew exponentially, much as it has in Mexico in recent decades.

The criminal band that would grow into the Gulf Cartel was founded by a Tamaulipas farm boy named Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, born in 1915, and who for years ran the organization from behind the doors of the Piedras Negras Restaurant in the city of Matamoros, its walls adorned with pictures of horses from his 500-acre ranch, El Tlahuachal.

In his dotage, by the mid 1980s Guerra had turned over the running of the organization to his nephew, Juan García Ábrego, who ran it until his arrest in January 1996. García Ábrego was eventually succeeded by Osiel Cárdenas, who, in a highly significant move for drug trafficking and for Mexico, around 1997 succeeding in getting a clique of Mexican special forces soldiers to defect and form a group of enforces, Los Zetas (the Z's). Eventually, many more Mexican (and Guatemalan) special forces soldiers, and ambitious common criminals, would follow.

The expansion of the Gulf Cartel, its allies and its rivals was helped invaluably by economic pressures north of the border.

According to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, with a population of 310 million, the United States consumes around $37 billion of cocaine a year, while Europe as a whole, with a population of 830 million, consumed $34 billion. Much of that money is laundered through the U.S. banking system, with financial institutions such as Bank of America, HSBC and Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo) found by U.S. investigators to have laundered billions of dollars of drug profits for groups like the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas.

Despite the United States having the highest rate of incarceration in the world (between 1989 and 2009, the private prison industry in the United States grew by an astonishing 1,600 percent), and despite more than half of America's federal inmates being in prison for drug-related offenses, no one ever went to jail for the banks' role in facilitating the cartels' bloody business. Meanwhile, border states with liberal gun laws such as Texas and Arizona have long served as a one-stop shop for Mexican drug cartels.

Osiel Cárdenas was arrested in Mexico in March 2003, yet more or less continued running the organization for behind bars until his extradition to the United States in January 2007. Both García Ábrego and Cárdenas are now held at the super maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, along with such inmates as the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and the Al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.

Eventually, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas would violently rupture, with ever more micronized versions fighting battles with heavy-weapons such as grenade launchers over specific towns and even individual streets. This past December, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the author of this article ran headlong into a heavily-armed Gulf Cartel roadblock set up in the border city of Reynosa, only a few minutes from the U.S. border.

Tamaulipas remains a bastion of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI), the party that ruled Mexico for decades until 2000, and to which current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who recaptured the presidency after it rested for 12 years in the hands of the opposition Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party or PAN), belongs.

Historically, residents of Tamaulipas, long a PRI bastion, would be unwise to look to officialdom for protection. In addition to Torre (who ran for governor only after his own brother, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, was murdered while campaigning in June 2010 in what many believe was a cartel-sanctioned hit), the previous governors of Tamaulipas have an interesting history.

Torre's immediate predecessor, Eugenio Hernández Flores, saw fit to entrust his personal security to a well-known Gulf Cartel hitman during his 2005-2011 tenure, and fled to Europe at the end of his mandate. Hernández's own predecessor, Tomás Yarrington, was publicly praised by Texas governor Rick Perry during his time in office, but his 1999 to 2005 reign saw an extraordinary expansion of drug trafficking in the state. Yarrington eventually disappeared entirely shortly before being indicted both in Mexico and the United States for aiding the Gulf Cartel. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

During Mexico's 2012 election - the one that brought the PRI back to the presidency - some residents of Tamaulipas claimed to receive anonymous calls claiming to be from the Gulf Cartel ordering them to cast their ballots for the PRI under penalty of death for failing to do so. This strategy did not work in Matamoros itself, where voters elected the PAN candidate for mayor, breaking the PRI's long domination of the city.

As a result both of Mexico's own institutional failings but, also, those of the United States -- where drug money is laundered in U.S. banks, the private prison industry spends millions of dollars lobbying for mandatory minimum sentencing statutes for drug offenses, and firearms manufacturers gleefully supply cartels with weapons -- Tamaulipas has been almost completely lawless for years, although it has received scant attention compared with Ciudad Juarez, over 800 miles to the west.
Until the United States is willing to face up to its own role in Mexico's drug war, both as the world's largest consumer of narcotics and a bonanza for cartels seeking firepower, it is unlikely that the long-suffering citizens of Tamaulipas can expect anything like peace.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-23884330457965232852014-06-22T20:45:00.002+02:002014-06-22T20:45:46.792+02:00An Inside Look at Mexico's Drug War
An Inside Look at Mexico's Drug War

The Takeaway

(Please listen to the full interview with The Takeaway's John Hockenberry here)

 As a country, we've become accustomed to the gruesome headlines out of Mexico. Things like "26,121 Missing During Mexico's Drug War" or "Mass Beheading Rocks Mexico City" regularly flash across screens and are printed across newspapers in bold fonts. We're in close proximity to a raging drug war, yet most of us couldn't be more removed from the realities occurring just over the border.

In his new book, "In The Shadow of Saint Death," author Michael Deibert chronicles the history and evolution of the warring cartels. Their influence, fueled by America's own drug policies and addictions, now permeates nearly every part of society, from the government to business owners to the military.

"What had been somewhat isolated now is violence that's affecting everywhere in Mexico practically, including places like Acapulco and places like Cuernavaca, which is very close to the capital," says Deibert. "So there has been, I'd say, a general disintegration of law and order in the country as a whole."

Beheadings are a preferred form of cruelty used by drug cartels. They are frequently video taped and are designed as a symbol used to instill terror in the hearts of Mexican citizens.

"They learned that basically by watching insurgent videos from Iraq," says Deibert. "The mass graves are a great testimony to the complete absence of the state in huge parts of Mexico."

Deibert says that is important to be very skeptical of about the number of people dead and wounded in the drug war.

"The number of people that we have dead now, which including the missing is somewhere around 70,000 to 75,000, but I think it could be much, much more than that," Deibert continues. "And that makes the drug war in Mexico since 2006 the most deadly conflict in Latin America aside from Guatemala's civil war, which was 30 years long and killed 200,000 people. But in the modern era, that's the most deadly."

Since the violence began there has also been a cultural shift in Mexico, says Deibert, spurring a controversial folk-music genre called narcocorridos, which romanticize drugs, guns, and violence.
 The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto are unable to get the situation under control, though they often project a contradictory image.

"They have a great PR machine and they're trying to project this image that the country is turning the corner, when in fact in Tamaulipas last year the murder rate went up 90 percent," he says. "If you talk to your average Mexican, they don't feel any safer now than they did four years ago."

Deibert says that Americans must accept responsibility for some of the conflict in Mexico. In 2012, an estimated 23.9 million Americans aged 12 or older—or 9.2 percent of the population—had used an illicit drug or abused a psychotherapeutic medication (such as a pain reliever, stimulant, or tranquilizer) in the past month.

"Felipe Calderón, who was Peña Nieto's predecessor, had something interesting to say once: 'It's not easy living next door to the world's biggest and richest drug addict,' which is the United States," says Deibert. "I think that's accurate, and something for us to ponder for us as Americans."

But it's not just America's demand for drugs that is fueling the Mexican drug war. Guns flow in the opposite direction from the United States and south of the border.

"So many of these guns come from the United States, and that's something that people have to understand," says Deibert. "There was one guy that I write about in the book who, over the period of a couple months, bought over 100 assault rifles in Houston, many of which were found in different crime scenes around Mexico, including an attack on the state prosecutor's office in Acapulco that killed seven people."

While most of the drug cartel violence is contained to Mexico, the U.S. is not impervious.

"There's piles of dead bodies in Chicago, in New Orleans, in Baltimore, and in Miami," says Deibert.
"The death and destruction that has been caused by the criminalization of narcotics in the United States, and the perfect market environment that's been created for criminals by that criminalization, is really what has to end, along with a more restrictive gun policy."

Deibert suggests that the United States adopt a model that is similar to that of Portugal. In the year 2000, he says that Portugal decriminalized small amounts of drugs. He says that in 14 years there hasn't been an increase in drug use or abuse—in fact, among usage among those age 13 to 19 actually decreased.

"I don't think Americans can eternally watch Mexico go up in flames and claim they don't have a responsibility for it," he says.

Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-51155337409477602872014-06-09T01:37:00.000+02:002014-06-09T01:37:57.420+02:00Journalist paints an ugly picture of Mexican cartel violence in 'In the Shadow of Saint Death'
Posted on Fri, Jun. 06, 2014

Journalist paints an ugly picture of Mexican cartel violence in 'In the Shadow of Saint Death'

By Connie Ogle
firstname.lastname@example.com

(Read the original article here)

Journalist Michael Deibert doesn't believe America's war on drugs is a battle that can be won.

"I think if most Americans saw the cost that the prohibition of narcotics exacts in places like Mexico and Guatemala and Colombia," he says, "the idea of decriminalizing drugs might not seem so far
fetched."

That's why Deibert has written In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico (Lyons, $24.95), about which he'll talk Tuesday at Books & Books in Coral Gables. In the book, he examines the history and legacy of the drug war, which he
traces back to President Richard Nixon, through the prism of the Gulf Cartel, a ruthless trafficking organization operating across the border from East Texas. In terms of the drug wars, Ciudad Juárez gets all the notoriety, but Deibert writes that this area has seen just as much violence as its sister city to the west.

Embroiled in a brutal battle with its former allies Los Zetas -- made up of "military special forces who became the enforcement wing and changed the dynamic of drug trafficking in Mexico," Deibert says -- the cartel has been around so long its founding members got started during Prohibition.

"Another great success that immediately made people stop drinking and undercut the criminal element," Deibert says wryly. "The U.S. had this 13-year experiment that was a total disaster. So I thought I'd look at the strategy that has been a more deadly disaster in my view."

Deibert is no stranger to dangerous territory. For his book The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair, he traveled through the killing fields of central Africa. He's also the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti, an account of the events leading up to the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But talking to ordinary people trying to
conduct their lives amid the cartel violence was eye-opening.

"People are living under a siege and have been for many years," he says. "It's amazing what the human spirit can adjust to."

Q: What parts of U.S. policy are most problematic in your view?

A: The kingpin strategy, taking out the leaders, makes no difference in terms of movement of narcotics to the United States. There are 100 people in line to take their places. ... The idea that somehow we have this secure fence act, that we're going to have a 12-foot wall at the
border, and the cartels are going to say, "We're going to stop trafficking drugs," is just ridiculous. The idea that corruption stops at the border in Mexico is false. ... I really, truly believe that decriminalization is the only way the violence will end.

Q: What prevents the United States from making policy changes?

A: Our economic system is intrinsically dependent on the drug war. Look at the billions of dollars that have been traced to drug profits laundered by banks like Bank of America and Wachovia. That's all part of the public record. Look at the growth of the private prison industry in the last 15 years, with multimillion-dollar companies dependent on having strict enforcement of drug laws and harsh
mandatory minimums.

We're in a unique situation in America. There's supply and demand, and we're demand. We consume more cocaine than western Europe. ... There's a narrative in the U.S. that we're being invaded by Mexican drug cartels, but I would say our need for drugs, our addiction, is being fought in Mexico along with places like Miami Gardens and Chicago and New Orleans.

Q: Do you think the recent decriminalization of marijuana in a handful of states could lead to significant policy changes?

A: I think change will come from the states themselves. There's even talk of medical marijuana being approved in Florida. I hope that happens. I don't know how long it will take, but there will be a
critical mass of states saying enough is enough. On the federal level, politicians are too cowardly. Look at Portugal and the Netherlands that have more permissive drug laws. When Portugal decriminalized small amounts of cocaine and heroin, people didn't run out and start sticking needles into their arms.

Q: Journalists covering this story haven't fared well in Mexico. Did you fear for your life while researching this story?

A: I never felt safe for a moment. ... I was stopped at a Gulf Cartel roadblock where people were getting pulled out of their cars. It was a Saturday afternoon, sunny, and they're able to set up a heavily armed roadblock in the middle of a city. ... I've done reporting over the years in Haiti or the Congo or Brazil, and I've had a lot of experiences where people have pointed guns at me. When you're younger you have this idea you're indestructible. But I've seen people killed in front of me, and that brings home the idea you're not. The older you get, that weighs on you a bit. I'll be 41 this summer...I'm
thinking this may be the last hurrah for the kind of reporting that I do. Very strange that on my last day of research I get stopped outside Reynosa at that roadblock. It just brought home again the idea that despite all this rhetoric in Washington that these guys have no fear.

Q: What's it like for the people who live amid all this violence?

A: I interviewed people who had to deal with this every day -- businessmen, school kids, prosecutors, journalists -- to see what it's like to live in this reality. ... I think there's a kind of collective PTSD people have. They're living under circumstances no one should have to live under. Imagine sending your kids to school not knowing if there will be a gun battle or not. In Tamaulipas, there's a general
breakdown in law and order, increases in extortion and kidnapping. People say they're from the Gulf Cartel to extort money even if they're not, because people are so scared they'll pay. I was talking
to someone in Ciudad Juárez in 2010, which was one of the worst years for the city, and he said, "Can you believe it -- it used to be no one would go into Mexico City because they said it was too dangerous."

What's sad is you feel Mexican society has been shredded over the past 10 years because of this. There's a great restaurant in Matamoros, Garcia's, across the bridge from Brownsville, Texas. Everybody from Brownsville would go over there, there was great food and a great atmosphere, Mexican music. You go there now, and it's empty. The last time I was there, we were one of two tables in the restaurant.

Connie Ogle is the Miami Herald's book editor.

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-73480376799560571182014-06-06T23:39:00.000+02:002014-06-06T23:39:04.338+02:00Inside Mexico's Drug War on on KERA Dallas
You can listen to my hour-long discussion on the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas and Mexico's (and America's) drug war on KERA Dallas here.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-38208241047310280292014-05-30T19:39:00.001+02:002014-05-30T19:39:50.598+02:00Spied by a friend...
...In the window of a bookstore in Lusaka, Zambia...

Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-10541311493516268212014-05-29T20:56:00.000+02:002014-05-29T20:57:33.742+02:00L'heure d'été

Seeing this picture for the first time brightened my afternoon. Albert Camus and his publisher, Michel Gallimard, Greece, 1958. It is important sometimes to remember that there are moments like this in life, too.
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-84289187959856008762014-05-15T14:53:00.001+02:002014-05-15T14:53:40.235+02:00Special delivery from La Flaca

Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-7412788567488477072014-05-10T00:37:00.000+02:002014-05-10T00:37:09.597+02:00So Very Miami

Photo © Michael Deibert

Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-45886094190935674352014-04-18T23:11:00.002+02:002014-04-19T04:21:17.585+02:00Bullet

Photo © Michael Deibert

In July 2006, I picked this shell casing up from the ground in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Martissant , during one of the worst bouts of gang warfare Haiti's capital had ever seen. I was there working on an article trying to explain what was going on, why the violence was happening. Two of the people I interviewed during those visits were killed shortly thereafter, and it was there that I finally learned the fate of an old friend who had disappeared the year before. I don't know why I keep it, but I do, right here next to my collection of books on Haiti.
Michael Deiberthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31283257.post-13733727527393364692014-04-18T18:38:00.001+02:002014-04-18T18:38:47.111+02:00Thoughts on the passing of Gabriel García Márquez (and Heberto Padilla)
Great writers are not necessarily great human beings. Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a rabid anti-semite and Nazi collaborator. Ernest Hemingway after about the age of 40 curdled into a nasty bully. William S. Burroughs spent much of his life as basically a sex tourist with "boys" whose ages can only be speculated at. Gabriel García Márquez was a great writer, but he was also a dictator's tool who, when the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla was imprisoned for his political beliefs (his words alone), sided with Fidel Castro, Mr. Padilla's jailer. Heberto Padilla paid the price for his convictions with jail, a forced grotesque "public confession" straight out of Stalin-era Soviet Union, a lonely exile and finally dying largely unremembered in Alabama. I wonder how many of those floridly praising García Márquez now - not just the man's magnificent writing but also his public image as some sort of pan-Latin American secular prophet - ever imagined what it would have been like to be in Heberto Padilla's position, rotting in prison and having a fellow author, who one would have thought would have been a natural ally, instead supporting your imprisonment as the price to be paid for a tyrant to create his kingdom?
Michael Deiberthttp://email@example.com


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Katie describes her experiences of studying MA History of Art at the University and the job opportunities that this has opened.
Richard completed an MA in History of Art in 2009 and is currently an Online Peer Review Assistant for Cambridge University Press.
"My studies, I believe, have directly led to where I am today. Without my MA in History of Art, I would never have had the subject knowledge nor depth of understanding to do what I have done thus far after university. Without getting involved at the Barber Institute at the University, I would never have had the opportunity to work at the V&A, and without my time at the V&A being spotted on my CV, I might never have been considered for the jobs here at the Press.
In terms of actual skills, I have demonstrated that I can synthesise and analyse more complex systems of thought, that I can articulate argument to a higher level and can deliver distinction-level presentations. All the stuff I got involved in, particularly with the Barber Institute, I believe was of tremendous benefit. What I missed in reading time through getting involved with everything, I made up for in practical experience and the general benefits of getting stuck in. Also, I have the brains too! Some of my marks for MA weren't too shabby."
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Book Wall
Pretty bad ass design but you would need a crap load of books!
2 Comments to Book Wall
Lets be honest, no self respecting white trash would own that many books.
Cris on
March 24th, 2014
That is the circulation desk at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. You're welcome.
Russell on
March 28th, 2014