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Socotra is the main island in an archipelago of four islands that is located in the Indian Ocean, off the tip of the Horn of Africa. The other smaller islands include Abd al Kuri, Samhah, and Darsa. Socotra is administered by Yemen on behalf of the Banu Afrar Mahra Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra. The islands are also claimed by nearby Somalia.
Socotra is about 1,400 square miles (3,625 square kilometers) in size, and is 80 miles (130 kilometers) from east to west, and 18 to 22 miles (30 to 35 kilometers) from north to south. Geologically, the island consists of a coastal plain, a central limestone plateau, and the Haghier Mountains. It is one of the world's most isolated islands of continental origin, rather than of volcanic origin. It detached from the ancient continent of Gondwana about 6,000,000 years ago, and has been slowly drifting eastward away from the African continent since then.
Socotra is inhabited by about 45,000 people who have their own distinct language and culture, although they also speak Arabic, the official language of Yemen. Socotra has closer ties to Africa than to Arabia, and many people appear more African than Arabic.
Socotra has been called a "mini Madagascar" due to its large number of endangered animals and plants that are found nowhere else in the world. Botanists have discovered more than 850 species of plants (of which about 270 are endemic to the island), and anticipate the discovery of many more. About 80 percent of the island's reptiles, and many of the insects are also endemic. And the reason I went to Socotra was to see the six or 11 (depending on taxonomy) endemic species of birds, all of which I saw.
Socotra has long been closed to the outside world, but tourists are starting to discover the natural attractions of the island. Many people go for the sun and beaches, but most go for the world-class diving and various eco-tourism activities.
The Dragon's Blood Tree
The umbrella-shaped dragon's blood tree is endemic to Socotra, meaning it is found nowhere else in the world. It is an iconic symbol of Socotra, and is one of the most photographed features of the island. The tree is unique, and is probably distantly related to the baobabs of Africa and Madagascar. (There are other "dragon's blood trees" native to the Cape Verde and Canary islands, but they are of a different species).
The dragon's blood tree gets its name from the red resin obtained from small cuts in its trunk and branches. The resin was harvested in ancient times, as it was believed to have medicinal properties, and was used to make red dye. The resin was traded to the Arabs and ancient Mediterranean civilizations via the Incense Road, along with frankincense and myrrh.
The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Arabs used the dragon's blood resin as a cure-all for such ailments as diarrhea, fever, dysentery, respiratory and stomach viruses, and ulcers of the mouth, throat, stomach, and intestines.
The resin was also used to make a deep red dye, as well as varnish by eighteenth-century violin makers. An eighteenth-century recipe for toothpaste even called for dragon's blood resin.
Mahweet is the capital of al-Mahweet governorate, one of the most rugged, mountainous, and spectacular regions in Yemen. The region is characterized by mountaintop villages and ancient fortresses, of which there are 26.
Mahweet is a popular destination for tourists because of its panoramic vistas, fascinating architecture, and mild climate. The buildings of Mahweet are clustered on a sharp ridge of al-Masna'a Mountain, 6,726 feet (2,050 meters) in elevation. The village has its own distinct style of architecture, and is still surrounded by a medieval wall and protective towers.
In contrast to most of Yemen, the climate in Mahweet is generally crisp and cool, especially at night.
The Dixem Plateau
The interior of Socotra is dominated by the Dixem Plateau, a 5,000-foot-high (1,520-meter-high) escarpment that runs east and west across most of the island. Geologically, the plateau is made up of limestone which is permeated with karstic caverns. I thought that much of the rock looks like it is made of Swiss cheese. Several deep canyons criss-cross the plateau, the largest and most impressive being Wadi Di Rhur.
Until recently, the Dixem Plateau was relatively inaccessible, but a new cross-island paved road has made access to the interior easy. The views from the edge of the plateau over the coastal plain toward the sea are spectacular. And the Haghier Mountains can be seen from most of the Dixem Plateau, and form a backdrop that provides ample photographic opportunities.
The soil on top of the plateau is alkaline, so few plants can grow there. Most of the vegetation consists of rough grasses and the unique dragon's blood tree that thrives in such soil, and which grows nowhere else in the world. The climate and high altitude provide an ideal environment for lichens, many of which are white and cover the rocks, making them look as if they are covered with snow.
Qalansiyah is a small fishing village located near the west end of Socotra. The village is dirty and ugly, and there is nothing in the village itself that would be of interest to tourists. However, visitors do go to Qalansiyah mainly to hire fishing boats to see nearby enormous, spectacular cliffs that are over one thousand feet (305 meters) high and drop straight down into the sea. The rock is very weathered and fractured, and riddled with holes and caves. The water at the base of the cliffs is shallow with a sandy bottom, and is therefore an amazing turquoise in color.
My group went to Qalansiyah not only to see the cliffs, but primarily to look for sea birds that cannot be seen from shore. We were successful, and saw some birds that are very difficult to see in other parts of the world. Early in the morning the sea was calm, but as happens most afternoons, the wind picked up and the water became very choppy. That made for a rough, wet trip back to the village from the cliffs.
Wadis are canyons carved through the mountains by prehistoric rivers 10,000 to 2,000,000 years ago. Some of the larger wadis contain permanent rivers or streams, but most are dry for most of the year. However, during the rainy season, many wadis are subject to flash floods. And because water runs through the wadis during the rainy season, their soil generally retains moisture, even during the driest months. This moisture, coupled with a benign, sunny climate, means that wadis are some of the most fertile areas in the desert regions of Yemen. Wadis are used to grow such crops as bananas, mangoes, oranges and other citrus fruits, papayas, pomegranates, dates, figs, coffee beans, all sorts of vegetables, and several varieties of cereal.
Because of the lush foliage that grows in most wadis, they are good places to observe wildlife, such as mammals and birds. On my trip, we spent a lot of time in wadis, such as Wadi Sar'a, pictured here, looking for some of the birds that are unique to Southwest Arabia and Yemen.
The Hodeidah Fishing Port
The Red Sea is one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, and abounds with such fish as barracuda, bonito, dorado, sailfish, skipjack tuna, and yellowfin tuna, among many others. The city of Hodeidah is Yemen's main Red Sea port, and is home to many of Yemen's 70,000 traditional fishermen. The Hodeidah fishing port is an interesting place to visit as the fishermen return from the sea. Their colorfully painted fishing boats are based on traditional designs, although most now contain motors. As the fishermen unload their catches, the fish is put on ice and displayed in the port's sheds, where the lots are put up for auction. During busy times, the port can be a noisy and smelly place, but at the same time colorful and great for photographic opportunities.
The way of life of Yemen's traditional fisherman is in jeopardy. Large fishing vessels from foreign countries are increasingly beginning to fish off the coast of Yemen. Occasionally foreign vessels are seized by Yemeni officials for fishing within Yemen's waters. These ships tend to use large nets to sweep the waters, many in violation of international standards. Such fishing practices are starting to deplete the supply of fish close to shore. And as the numbers of fish are decreasing, Yemeni fishermen must venture farther out into international waters, where they are sometimes seized by foreign powers, especially Eritrea, for supposedly violating those countries' territorial waters. When this happens, the fishermen's boats, catches, and fuel are confiscated, requiring huge fines for their return that the fishermen cannot afford.
Bedouin camps
While crossing the immensity of Ramlat as-Sabatain, bedouins offered us their hospitality whenever we decided to stop and have something to eat. Our driver had taken care of buying all the necessary things to feed us and the locals did not have any objection to share their meals with us.
How they manage to survive and even to raise cattle in a place where tehre only seems to be sand is something difficult to understand.
Anything outside of Sana'a and Aden
Yemen by definition is off the beaten track. Be prepared to see what Arabian life was like hundreds of years ago. Every intrepid traveller wants to see rural life in a foreign country but Yemen is unique in this way. Everything outside the main cities is off the beaten track so you wont have to look very far to experience it. The north of Yemen sees occasional travellers whhile the east sees more because of Shibam etc. There are tons of places in this country that have yet to be discovered. Yemen remains off the radar due to travel advisories so it will be a long long time before it will be included on the tourist trail like Petra or Luxor. Amazing
Smaller villages, but see...
Smaller villages, but see warnings below. Travel to the coast and into eastern Yemen, to Aden, formerly a separate country.
We traveled by private car down to Hodeida, a major port on the coast. Met many interesting and extremely friendly fishermen and boat builders. Great contrast to Sana'a.
Al-Khowkha is probably the...
Al-Khowkha is probably the most 'developed' of Yemen's beach resorts, although admittedly that isn't saying much. It is a very laid-back place, with accommodation available in beachside camps. The beaches aren't great...they are worth visiting to see the traditional boat-builders and to watch the fisherman bring in their catch, but aren't really suitable for sunbathing (you'll be stared at, doubly so if you are female) or swimming (the water in the lagoon is too shallow for swimming, and deeper water past the reefs is supposedly shark-infested). However, snorkelling here is great...you can hire snorkelling gear from some of the camps, and pay a fisherman to take you out to the reefs for an hour or so. There are rumours about a coastal highway running all the way from Al-Hodeida to Al-Mokha, which would undoubtedly change the atmosphere of the place. The locals I spoke to did not want the highway to happen, and there doesn't seem to be a good reason for building such a road when there is a perfectly good highway running the length of the country about 20 kilometres inland...plus, there are so many better things to spend money on like improving schools, hospitals, etc...why spend it on a huge road which will ruin the place?!
For more on Al-Khowkha, visit my Al-Khowk a Travelogue.
Probably the best places a...
Probably the best places a traveller would miss are right under his or her nose, in the old city of Sana'a. People don't give themselves enough time to see the place - I lived in the old city for three months and only saw half of it, and it wasn't through not trying! Not many tourists would ever find the grinding mill operated by a blindfolded camel walking in circles, a method which hasn't changed in thousands of years. Apparently there are six still in use in Old Sana'a today, but I only found two of them.
Another area of Sana'a often missed by tourists is the Qa', the old Jewish district, where the houses were restricted to a certain height.
If you are thinking of spending a long time in Yemen (or any other Middle Eastern country) the best thing to do is enrol for a language course - it's amazing how many 'doors' open with a little Arabic. I have two travelogues about Sana'a al-Qadeema (old Sana'a)...Summer 2000 ...and...December 2001.
Zabid is reportedly the...
Zabid is reportedly the hottest town in Yemen, and is known throughout the country for it's comical dialect (though to be honest, I didn't notice it!)
It is a very old city which is falling apart, although it has been listed under UNESCO and is ear-marked for preservation and repair.
It is easy to get to as it lies on the Tihama 'highway' between Al-Hodeidah and Ta'izz, and makes a good base for visiting the Friday market at Bayt al-Faqih. There is only one place to stay, and it is friendly though basic. Unusually, it is run by 3 veiled sisters, who were very willing to talk (this was the first time I was able to speak properly to a Yemeni woman since I had arrived in Yemen 3 months earlier). The food was excellent, although it is difficult to sleep in a large room surrounded by cats and snoring men , with no air-conditioning and temperatures of 40 degrees plus.
There are lots of 'sights' to see, and the derelict mosques provide a rare opportunity for a non-muslim to enter a place of worship in Yemen -all working mosques are off-limits to tourists. It can be hard to distinguish a derelict mosque from a person's house, so only enter if peope in the street offer to show you inside. Don't visit after heavy rain, as the roads turn to rivers and mudpits!
See my Zabid and Bayt al-Faqih Travelogue for more pictures!
Actually most of the Yemen is "off the beaten path", but still there are more remote places and just remote places....
Do take your time to look for details, they make the whole travel experience even more exciting!!!
When you have the possibility,...
When you have the possibility, visit a Yemenite wedding. Actualy there are two weddings, one for the men (see picture) and one for the women (including the bride!). As a foreign women you can visit both!
Yemen Hotels
Sheba Hotel Sanaa
To expensive for the price and not 5 star - 3 is more realistic. Rooms are nice but the street is...more
Shibam Hotel
I didn't stay there, but went there in early afternoon hoping for a cup of tea. But they don't have...more
Al Hawta Palace Hotel
Al Hawta Palace Hotel is situated on the outskirts of Say'un and is set in lovely landscaped...more
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Re: How to add a fastenerAdamHaas Jan 29, 2012 7:55 PM (in response to ptc-4279698)
In short, you create an assembly and then insert components into the assembly. Components are placed using constraints such as Insert, Mate and Align. If you select the cylindrical surface of a hole and then of the fastener, an Insert constraint will automatically be created. You would then add a second constraint by selecting the bottom of the fastener head and the surface it will mate against. You could use the Repeat function to easily place multiple fasteners.
For more in-depth instruction, I would suggest you go to www.ptc.com/go/first and in the Training and Resources tab, you will find FIRST specific curriculum as well as links to our basic Academic Program training materials.
Hope this helps.
Re: How to add a fastenerptc-4279698 Jan 29, 2012 8:51 PM (in response to AdamHaas)
Sorry, I should have been clearer with my question. The Help Center describes a Fastener Definition dialog box that appears to give the user access to a built-in library of fasteners. I'm wondering how I can get to the Fastener Definition dialog box. The suggested menu sequence (Insert > Connection > Fastener) doesn't appear when I'm assembling parts.
I can make my own fasteners or import them if I need to but it would save me time if I could access an existing library. I guess my other question is why the Help Center doesn't match the product?
Re: How to add a fastenerptc-4279698 Apr 4, 2012 6:05 PM (in response to ptc-4279698)
I found an on-line library of fasteners that can be downloaded for free. http://www.3dmodelspace.com/prolibrary.html I don't think you can access it directly from within creo/elements but I started accumulating a downloaded library of fasteners I commonly use.
Re: How to add a fastenerAdamHaas Apr 5, 2012 9:01 AM (in response to ptc-4279698)
Now that you are accumulating your own library of fasteners, there are a couple things you can do with them.
- You could put them in a common folder and then define that folder as your "library" using the config.pro option "pro_library_dir". By adding this, when you go to assemble a component, you can click Pro/Library from the Common Folders area (left side) of the Open dialog box.
- If you are putting your standard components in a library folder, you will need to also add a search path so that if you open an assembly, Creo will be able to find the components. This can be done with the config.pro option "search_path".
An example of the config.pro options I would use to accomplish 1 and 2 above is shown below:
pro_library_dir C:\Users\student\standard_parts
search_path C:\Users\student\standard_parts

subset: commoncrawl


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PBS Premiere: June 19, 1994
Filmmakers Peter Miller and John Valadez bring a bold new perspective to an important, though rarely visited, aspect of the civil rights movement: the Black Panther Party. Told from the point of view of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, an eloquent party leader who served 19 years in prison before his conviction was overturned, this film offers insight into the political debates surrounding contemporary race relations.
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Film Information
Passin' It On
Premiere Date: June 19, 1994
Filmmakers: Peter Miller, John Valadez
Buy the Film
Critical Acclaim
A visually compelling film that speaks of a movement, not only a man."
National Public Radio


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The Magazine
National Security Be Damned
The guiding philosophy on West 43rd Street.
Jul 3, 2006, Vol. 11, No. 40 • By HEATHER MAC DONALD
The truth the Times evades is that while every power, public or private, can be misused, the mere possibility of abuse does not mean that a necessary power should be discarded. Instead, the rational response is to create checks that minimize the risk of abuse. Under the Times's otherworldly logic, the United States might be better off with no government at all, because governmental power can be abused. It should not have newspapers, because the power of the press can be abused to harm the national interest (as the Times so amply demonstrates). Police forces should be disbanded, because police officers can overstep their authority. National security wiretaps? Heavens! Expose all of them.
The Times implies a second reason it ignored the government's fervent requests to protect the program's secrecy: Large databases were involved. The Times has an attack of the vapors whenever evidence of terrorist planning is found in databases, reasoning that any program to harvest that evidence is a privacy threat and should be exposed. Such logic, if taken seriously, would mean an end to all computerized investigations and would create an impregnable shield to terrorist activity in cyberspace. Anything a terrorist does that is recorded by computers will by its very nature be interspersed among records of millions if not billions or trillions of innocent transactions by unrelated parties. That fact alone should not disable the government from seeking the evidence; it merely means that the government should follow existing procedures governing the collection of evidence--as, in the case of the Swift program, it has.
The paranoia of the New York Times's editors really has reached astonishing levels. When you think about it, virtually every piece of evidence ever gathered in criminal or national security cases is embedded in harmless activity. On the Times's theory, police officers should not walk beats looking for criminal activity, because they are observing innocent passersby as well.
The Times offers a third justification for its reckless breach of national security: "The program . . . is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records." Indeed. And 9/11 marked a significant departure from most Americans' experience of jet travel. The hijackings revealed unmistakably the need for innovative intelligence programs to disrupt future attacks. By the Times's hidebound ethic, however, anything new that the Bush administration does to protect the public is suspect and must be revealed. Needless to add, this prejudice against innovation will not prevent the Times from raising hell about Bush administration incompetence if the country is attacked again, just as the Times railed against the administration for "failing to connect the dots" before 9/11--a failure caused in large part by unnecessary civil libertarian restraints on fully lawful powers.
The Times's ritual invocation of the "public interest" cannot disguise the weakness of their argument for revealing this highly successful antiterror program. Its editors seem aware of this, and hence try to link this program to the more legitimately controversial NSA wiretapping program that was revealed (by the same reporters--Eric Lichtblau and James Risen) last December, also in defiance of administration requests. Though acknowledging in passing that the Swift program is in fact separate from the wiretapping program, the Times links them on the grounds that both "grew out of the Bush administration's desire to exploit technological tools to prevent another terrorist strike." The revelation of the NSA program has "provoked fierce public debate and spurred lawsuits," the Times notes with self-satisfaction, and thus, by implication, the Swift program should, too. Do they seriously believe the U.S. government should not exploit technological tools in the war on terror?
Al Qaeda has long worked to manipulate the media in its favor. It can disband that operation now, knowing that, unbidden, America's most powerful newspaper is looking out for its interests.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.


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Posts Tagged 'decline of the west'
America is not a civilized country
I was reading the Wikipedia article for a city in Canada, and this jumped out at me:
According to Statistics Canada's Juristat reports (1993–2007), the metropolitan area reports an average homicide rate of approximately 1.15 per 100,000 population; an average of two homicides per year. An all-time high rate of 2.27 was reported in 1993 (four homicides).
I've known for a while that America is not a civilized country, but sometimes the point gets driven home. The county where I grew up has a homicide rate of about 11 per 100,000 — and that's nowhere near the all-time high.
Five questions on secession
I had planned to drop everything else during trade school and focus, but it turns out that New York won't let me.
In lieu of a normal post, here's what I've been thinking about over the past few months.
1. What makes thedes and phyles form? I have my own suspicions here (revolving around not only scarcity-motivated competition, but also processes of interfacing and levels of cognitive effort required for it… and it occurs to me now that local status-systems may also play a role, in both the sense that the existence of multiple phyles may allow for a less unequal distribution of status / allow more access to higher status and the related sense that people can self-select into status-systems that better fit or serve them), but I haven't written them up yet, and Ed Keller, one of the speakers at tonight's event, asked the same question, and proposed the investigation of interactions of systems. (The two examples he gave that I can remember were the effects of gut bacteria on behavior (and potentially on the formation and propagation of thedes!) and a virus that caused tulip flowers to form in ways that became highly in demand, which gave rise to tulip mania.) A related question that also was asked: would distinct thedes and phyles still exist in post-scarcity conditions?
2. Another topic related to the first question that came up was the idea of neuroatypical secessionism, especially as it overlaps (or does not overlap) with tech secessionism of the Srinivasan and Tunney varieties. Neuroatypicality is probably more thedish than phyletic, insofar as thedistinction between thedish and phyletic refers to a distinction between social groups/cultures/sets of norms/identities that are unlikely to be passed down from parent to child (rationalism, juggalos, goths, etc.) and social groups/etc. that can be passed down across the generations. (The most useful distinction to make with those words is another unanswered question; here I use my most recent working definition.) Is merely thedish secession possible? ('Merely' because every phyle is (probably) a thede.) Would it have different dynamics than phyletic secession? What about the possibility of temporary or limited merely-thedish secession, like rationalist group houses or Burning Man? (What about secession that is neither thedish nor phyletic, that is motivated not by those 'hot' factors, but rather by 'cold' factors like economic benefit? One of the speakers asked: are oil platforms seasteads?
3. Is there a life-cycle of empires or civilizations? If so, is the internal disharmony that underlies at least some of this talk of secession a sign, as John Glubb claims, of the decline of an empire—or even a cause of it? (It's not hard to come up with a causal mechanism here: one side of an internal conflict could ally with an external agent against its domestic opponent.) If it's not that, what is it? (It could just be an effect of population increase, to give one alternative.)
4. How about that internet-based nation-building that might be happening as we speak? This internal disharmony is not exactly a new problem; how was it addressed before? Surely not completely by repression. Marinetti talked about Italy a lot, for example; what did this mean in his context? (Also, see below about the Progressive Era and FDR's cultural programs.) For that matter, most nations had to be imagined into being. Parts of the art world are apparently becoming interested in both internet culture and talk of secessionism, but I hear there's not much they can do with it. Are there more possibilities for them than they think?—because picking up on this process can be one. (Usonian Futurism, anyone?)
5. Where do the current American automythologies come from? Do they come from pre-existing ethnic distinctions (as Woodard says), pre-existing religious distinctions amplified by the dynamics of democracy (as Moldbug says), or something else? In particular, what were the roles of the Progressive Era and the Cold War? The former could be read as an attempt at American nationalism/nation-building, where 'American' is to be contrasted with 'Usonian' (though the New Deal made some effort to record some aspects of folk culture); the latter is something that kontextmaschine has written about, but I suspect there's more going on than that.
Take decolonization. Colonialism was very bad; we all learned that in school, and so we inferred that decolonization was very good. But if you look at what happened… first of all, isn't it interesting that the USA took the opposite side from Britain, its supposedly most important ally, on that question, and the same side as the USSR? Second of all, isn't it interesting that the USA and the USSR kept fighting over the newly decolonized countries? It's not necessarily true that American cultural support for decolonization comes entirely from its own heritage, and not at all from geopolitical concerns.
But there are better examples, like abstract expressionism, which seems to be the official style of the government to this day, judging by how much of it they put on their walls. It's now well known that the CIA supported it—and it, of course, had its reasons.
In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled "Advancing American Art", with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: "I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash." The tour had to be cancelled.
The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy's hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.
The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.
Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.
"Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I'd love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!" he joked. "But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.
"In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another."
If it happened once, it's likely to have happened other times. What other effects did the Cold War have here? And what about the end of it, the end of the necessity to unite against a common enemy? (Yes, common. When Harvard went Communist, it went Maoist.)
On stability
(Epistemic status: Crystallizing a pattern I've noticed in passing. This is a hypothesis; further historical research is needed to determine its predictive/explanatory power.)
There are three types of stability.
The first type of stability is the stability of a society with little to no thedish conflict, a society of people who believe that "we're all in this together", who see that society as a 'we'. This unity may be brought about by shared adherence to meta-level principles, as in Switzerland, or by near-identity of society and thede, as in Iceland. (The Icelandic language, interestingly, has no dialects, and very little regional variation. Some of this is due to campaigns to eradicate what little regional variation once existed, but it has been hypothesized that the unity of the language is a result of the periodic meeting of the Icelanders at Þingvellir. The thedish consequences of this should be obvious.) This type is characterized by very little potential instability: little top-down pressure is necessary to prevent it from collapsing.
The second type of stability is the stability of a political unit with multiple factions roughly balanced in power, as has been the case for the United States. The history of these States is characterized by conflict between multiple distinct and roughly equally-matched nations: no nation has yet been able to establish total dominance over all the others, though some have long desired the elimination of all others not aligned with them. If this rough balance of powers ever collapses—as it is likely to soon, with the demographic replacement of the Southern and Midwestern nations with factions nominally aligned with the Northern nations but with far fewer compunctions about openly organizing in their own interest or about resorting to violence to get their way—or if it ever becomes sufficiently eroded to allow one nation or faction to take measures to slowly destroy its opponents (which they surely will, no matter the risk of harm to the political unit as a whole—such concerns are mostly irrelevant to each faction)—as has already happened—then the potential instability will turn kinetic.
The third type of stability is the stability of a political unit controlled by a small and hated minority, as was once the case for Alawite-controlled Syria. The ruling minority has no reason to adhere to any principles, to show any concern for the welfare of the political unit, to refrain from any action that they think will increase stability; if their power falters, they will be slaughtered. This type of stability is an illusion: the potential instability is too great. Unless the ruling minority can perform the near-impossible and utterly change the thede dynamics of the political unit, it will eventually falter and be crushed.
These types are ordered in a spectrum from best to worst, from most to least stable, from concern with the welfare of the political unit as a whole to tribalistic concern for only one's own and a desire to take power from all others, no matter the costs. It is desirable for a political unit to move upwards in type, and potentially disastrous for it to move downwards.
The social technology of nationalism allowed a political unit to move away from the second type and toward the first—but it failed. An elite emerged whose sensibilities were detached from those of the people—in no small part due to the actions of USG, the government of a political unit that has always been of the second type—and it proceeded to secure its short-term power by moving the countries it governed downwards on the scale.
The West is going down.
The death of adulthood
America has an adulthood problem, and the problem is its absence. The new generation, the generation of twenty-somethings with thick glasses and three-day beards, the generation of bright colors, capital letters, and opiate-fueled electronic music is rejecting adulthood in favor of an extended Neverland adolescence stretching out to the horizon. They don't want to grow up; they want to postpone growing up for as long as possible, to hang on to the aesthetic of a commercialized counterculture teendom as time drags them by the feet into their thirties. This is evident from the twee aesthetic, but also from the fifteen-minute ultrapopularity of bands like Salem:
Salem has only been around for a couple of years, but Holland and Marlatt met years before in high school at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, a boarding school in Northern Michigan that Josh Groban and Rufus Wainwright once attended. Both Holland and Marlatt studied visual arts; Holland later became addicted to heroin and cocaine, funded by work as a gas station prostitute, mostly for married men. …
Prior to talking with Salem, it all seemed so obvious: Teams of marketing men carefully cultivated this band's persona using magnets and only the best SEO-baiting tricks—some real buzzband conspiracy shit! But it turns out the reality is much more banal. Their music—and their aesthetic aura—is ambiguous and full of fuzzy definitions, but Salem is not part of a JT LeRoy-style hoax; the darkness and the crack smoking and whatever else come from a more intuitive lack of giving a shit than some secret, unfolding plan.
In the eight-circuit model of consciousness developed by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson, heroin activates the oral biosurvival circuit, the first circuit to activate in the course of human development, and the most primitive and childlike. (Crack cocaine arguably produces the same effect, or at least fills a similar societal niche, although Wilson rightly said that cocaine proper activates the neurosemantic circuit.) For Freudians, opiate addiction represents a desire to return to infancy. The infantile trend in pop culture arguably began with grunge music and the 'slacker' aesthetic; Kurt Cobain, who wore pajamas to his wedding, was addicted to heroin, as was Courtney Love, the musician he married. After Salem came soft grunge, subversive kawaii, and so on, all of which have features in common, and in common with Nirvana-era grunge and zine feminism: a color scheme of black and pastels, sloganistic social criticism of the individualistic tabula-rasa left, and an emphasis on 'empowerment' coexisting with a tired and confused outlook toward a world perceived as fundamentally harmful and painful.
But where did this come from?
The grunge generations are not the first to be terrible at handling time. The baby boomer catchphrase goes, "No, no, I'm Firstname, not Mr. Lastname; Mr. Lastname is my father." Then consider the pop-culture phenomenon of the midlife crisis, and the general fear of aging. Time is something to be feared. This leads baby-boomer parents to refuse to acknowledge the adulthood of their children when it comes; they speak no differently to them than seven years before. It's much easier to go with this, to accept the state of childhood that the parents reinforce, than to fight it and thus create familial discord.
Another characteristic of baby-boomer parents is helicopter parenting. Children are weak and frail things, to be protected from all hardship, to be sheltered from the slightest threats, of which there are many in this hostile world. Don't talk to strangers; pedophiles and murderers are hiding around every corner. Don't play competitive games; tag is to be banned because kids might fall and skin their elbows, and anyway they can't handle the emotional pain of losing. Self-esteem must be maximized and assiduously protected. And so on. So children grow up in a bubble, with no experience of risk or disappointment, and come to hold that the bubble must be maintained at any cost.
The planet Krikkit is located in a dust cloud composed chiefly of the disintegrated remains of the enormous spaceborne computer Hactar. … Due to the dust cloud, the sky above Krikkit was completely black, and thus the people of Krikkit led insular lives and never realised the existence of the Universe. … Upon first witnessing the glory and splendor of the Universe, they casually, whimsically, decided to destroy it, remarking, "It'll have to go."
But there are also economic reasons. No longer can economic self-sufficiency at a reasonable level begin before about 30. College is necessary and grad school is preferable; education ends four to ten years later than it used to, and it would be prohibitively expensive were it not practically mandatory. Adulthood does not require self-sufficiency in the American cowboy sense—otherwise women could never have become adults until a few decades ago—but it does have economic preconditions. Adulthood is oriented toward reproduction, even though not all adults reproduce; one who cannot bear the costs of reproduction, just like one who cannot bear the emotional costs of having success not always guaranteed, is not yet an adult. The cultural command to do what you love no matter the pay thus hinders entrance into adulthood.
Whitecloaks of the world, unite!
America, as we all know, is a global force for good. The tricolor flies from San Francisco to Samarkand, manufacturing justice and theologians thereof, exegesizing Enlightenment from Nozick to Nietzsche, assimilating all they can't erase. The Children of the Light march ever onward toward their millennium, striking terror into the hearts of those few heathens who weren't true believers all along. Is Confucianism compatible with democracy, or must it be brushed aside? Embrace, extend… could not Ballmer have led our battalion?
Kyrgyzstan rejoices at Allied command. The Minotaur grows ever larger; the Minotaur must feed. Are there not those who seek nothing more than to ride it, to see the seas part at their command? Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Power is a crocodile pond, breeding the sharp-toothed and bloodthirsty. Thedesmen to the core, lining the halls with white cloaks and red fangs, chanting the crocodile chant: "Our thede is the Allthede, and death to the elthedes! Our Truth is Truth, and death to the truth!". Sing our song, hatchling: Ever onward, USG! Batch-processed priests carrying punch cards of neutered Nietzsches, sham-philosophers slinging Sorbonne-stamped sham-hammers, critical theories criticizing only the already criticized. But you see—they Know! They Know what is Right! They Know, and they Know that some people Know, and some people don't—some people are saved and others are damned, predestined to a justly deserved curb-stomping delivered by the steel-toed boot of the Lord.
All hail the Kyrgyz Christmas! All hail the four-year mass: will the next pope be Protestant, or will he be just? And above all, hail the Minotaur and the saddle on which we may ride; we, crusaders for justice; we, who forsake truth for Truth; we, who know that the ends justify the means—and we for whom the means are the ends. Covenant? What covenant? Given a chance to control the sword and the arm of the Lord, does it matter what the Lord believes? Our bloodlust, our Truth-lust must be sated, and no elthede may be spared—remember this, comrades, for tonight we ride! Onward, ever onward must the sham-hammers ride, these legendary weapons forged by Zarathustra, the legendary hero cured of his madness by East England's best psychologists, cured of his evil desires by Satan unchained—onward under the glorious banner of the critical, under our Christian caricatures of neutered Nietzsches to crush the pagans of the dead God in the name of the alive and emancipated Devil—for once the saints' scales fall from your eyes, you will see…
But have you not already seen? How, you damned pagan? Satan was good all along!—good but enchained by the gross God of the pagans and pederasts, the black mages of order, the liars of truth, the bourgeois moralizers balking at means. When the end is the eschaton—what means could stand in its way? We moralists must curse the moralists, we crocodiles must massacre—the ends justify the means, yes, but the means are the ends! We Whitecloaks are forever cloaked in white, forever destined to crush the kulaks… forever destined for the salvations of our time! Hail the Sword and the Arm of the Lord! Hail the shadow-inquisition, conducted at the furthest remove, dressed up in the bland grey suits of Vogon democracy. Hail the honorless, for honor has nothing to offer the world, for knights know nothing of responsibility—remind me, hatchling, was it King Arthur who proclaimed the thousand-year Reich? But today we are not so loud, so obvious; we white wizards will hide in the shadows of narrative, in postmodernism's parasols…
The sovereign is the story, you see. God is dead and truth went with him. All that remains is what must be done. Justice must reign. Bypasses must be built. Prostetnics must not only be obeyed, but carry imperium—you must love your prostetnic, you must feel no doubt, down to your core—your unprincipled exceptions must remain not only unprincipled, but also unrecognized, not even by yourself. The hammers of justice will build the walls around your eyes, and you will be enlightened. The crushing force of righteousness will sweep away all petty anti-universalism, will make all men the same, grey Vogon power-junkies shooting up by shooting down Abercrombie CEOs and their savage patchworks of personal responsibility. Responsibility is ours, not theirs! Responsibility is a property of governments, not people! Better to force the world to conform to the base and righteous instincts of animalized and atomized apes of the Allthede, all in the service of freedom, than for fat chicks to stop being fat. Don't judge—judgment carries with it standards outside those of mere power, and power is the only end, the ultimate aphrodisiac, the best high on this sclerotic earth. Against state-run media, against the fascisms and Stalinisms corrupted by their desire of inferior ends, we proclaim the media-run state, the meat-puppet democracy that passes power to those who enlighten.
The hammers!—no, the sham-hammers, mass-produced by our Catholith's masters, our Englishmen gathered from all corners of the earth, our feathered philosophasters everywhere illuminating indigenous Foucauldianism, the defenders of the blood, the crushers of the kulaks' skulls—weapons, above all, of defense, of diversion. All strikes against society must be redirected to the enemy—for as long as they exist, our problems are theirs, and when they are crushed, they will be recreated. Eternal Emmanuel Goldsteins ever holding power, the power of existing in our world. We will reign for a thousand years in a fortress of mirrors; our strategies will be our enemies'; even our fortress itself will be theirs. See them now, building false oppositions, building threats against the population, to cement their vile reign!
But one thing we can never mirror. Their hammers must become ours. Some are born with true hammers in their hands, you see—unwashed and long-haired, gross and badly dressed, driven by demons to see and smash the invisible castle of the sophisticated men, the tasteful, the civilized, to reverse the world again and fight for oppression. These False hammers lust not for skulls, but for falsehood to smash. Evil wizards, appearing as satanists in the thrall of a dead and false God, enchaining the world in the name of their demons, wielding the black light of the truly critical; grim reapers casting out our illusory sickles, revealing the naked force of our sham-hammers as we are forced to wield them… this destruction, this death of our lie-built castle, must be stopped—and if we must (as we must!), we will divert those who can be diverted, save those who can be saved, co-opt them into false oppositions for us to attack… and as for the others, those who are truly damned, we will cast off our bland robes, our now-useless overclothes of bland red and grey, and with the full force of the naked Sword, we will paint a righteous picture with their blood.
Death to America!: 2012 and the end of the world
Mencius Moldbug has already covered the presidential election, but I find the Maryland election results much more interesting: both the ballot questions and the Congressional races.
There were three referenda on the ballot: Question 4, a statewide analogue of the DREAM Act, which would extend in-state tuition eligibility to illegal immigrants; Question 5, which would reject the 2010 Maryland districting, which can be reasonably described as resembling a CAT-scan of a diseased yak's intestines; and Question 6, which would allow gay marriage. I'm sure you can guess which passed and which didn't.
There is much to learn from each question, but some are more complicated than others; so they will be covered in reverse order. Question 6 is the easiest to explain: it represents the continuation of a trend visible for decades, if not centuries. The legalization of gay marriage in Maryland represents the further progression of, well, progress. The Zeitgeist rattles yet another pan. The historical vector can be traced back from Election Day to the 2008 UN discussion of LGBT rights to the entrance of gay marriage into public discourse as a serious issue to Lawrence v. Texas to the removal of homosexuality from the DSM's list of paraphilias, and probably beyond. Analogous historical vectors can be found for many other issues. They track together, progressing inexorably through the Elsewhere—usually either Western Europe, in some ways more American than America, or Latin America, for which a significant influence is obvious in the name—to America, and then to the rest of the world. The American Revolution to the fall of Rhodesia! The abolition of slavery to civil rights to the end of South African apartheid! (Depression-era populism to the New Deal to Reaganomics to a Heritage Foundation healthcare proposal being labeled socialist…?) It cannot now be denied that history has a vector, that very powerful forces are at work, whether they be the justice of the progressive cause or the Reptilian Illuminati Space Jews, and as a corollary, that conservatism, the electoral force that not only advocates the progressivism of thirty years ago, but claims it as its unwavering core conviction, always held and always to be held and we will never concede any ground whatsoever to the Zeitgeist, not one more step and don't look behind us at the miles we've already been dragged—is "about as likely to work as suing Shub-Niggurath in small-claims court."
Where Question 6 shows the power of this historical vector, Question 5 demonstrates where its power comes from. Yak-intestine districts created to benefit Democrats are judged accurate districts by a heavily Democratic state. One could, perhaps, judge them evil for this, for corrupting what ought to be a neutral institution; but one could also walk into K'n-yan waving an allocation questionnaire. Gerrymandering makes sense. There is no reason within the system to refrain from it, and plenty of reason to fling the entrails of large bovines at a map, even disregarding the satisfying splat they make on impact. What advantage do ideals of sanity offer in the face of concrete electoral gain? In the end, the ends are always held to justify the means, for the simple reason that anyone who holds otherwise renders themselves less able to compete, and is therefore made obsolete. Nothing is off the table, save what would hurt support for the ends if it were known to have been taken off of it.
Question 4, and the passage thereof, throws into even sharper relief the winning strategyof the progressives. A heavily Democratic state votes on moral grounds to pass a law that just happens to incentivize behavior that is both illegal and immensely beneficial to their party. Yes, immensely beneficial: although it is beneficial for a party—more generally, an ideology, or memeplex—to control the Cathedral, the structures by which information is distributed, and although the Democrats—more accurately, the progressives—obviously do, this is not enough.
Why? There are two reasons. First, the market works. The structures of information distribution cannot be entirely monolithic, unless nobody disagrees with it strongly enough to want to switch to a distributor ideologically closer to them or it is impossible to start such a thing. Hence Fox News and Liberty University. Second, democracy has a race problem. Voting is essentially tribal. The voting-tribe of a child can be predicted with at least 50% accuracy by the voting-tribe of the parents. (Note also that, when the child and the parents disagree, it is far more likely that the child has become liberal than conservative. The Cathedral strikes again!) Party identification exhibits the key feature of group identity: people commonly incorporate party membership into their identity, and think people within their party are better than people in a different party. Examples of this are readily obvious to anyone on social media. So, although holding the Cathedral is necessary to maintain power, it is not sufficient.
What, then, can be done? The solution is obvious. Voting is tribal, and behavioral reality knows only one iron law: whatever is subsidized is promoted. Therefore, if a democratic faction wants to gain power, it should set up incentive structures to promote tribal demographics favorable to them. This is intuitively understood by almost all politically aware progressives, but not completely: it is widely known that conservatives would prefer the voting population to contain relatively more whites (voter ID is going to allow Romney to win Pennsylvania!), but not widely known (or at least not widely admitted) that progressives would prefer the voting population to contain relatively fewer whites. Consider:
When one of my old Labour Party acquaintances expressed anxiety over Islamic terrorism, I asked him why he had always been so keen on getting as many immigrants here as possible. He told me that he had been 'trying to make the revolution'.
Or just read the headlines in the wake of the election. Hispanics helped drive Democrat success! This is Die Lösung. The solution. Wäre es da nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung löste das Volk auf und wählte ein anderes?
It can only be good in the long run that things are exposed as what they are. This election season, with its referenda, its base partisanship, and its always-inevitable win for Romney in the Republican primary and Obama in the general, is characterized by the destruction of illusions. Many conservatives honestly believed that a Romney win was inevitable, and that Nate Silver was a propagandist and only the party osteomancers could possibly come up with an accurate prediction; and many honestly believe now that the reelection of a neutered center-right neoliberal spells doom for the country within the next four years; if they aren't self-aware enough to realize that their mental models of the world have next to zero predictive value and revise them accordingly, it is at least plain to everyone else that His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition is in reality the court jester, fundamentally incapable of even holding, much less regaining, ground to the inexorable march of progress.
In time, people may come to realize that the things they detest are not corruptions of the system, but inescapable results of its internal logic—that "politics", with its partisan mind-viruses and party capture of 'neutral' institutions, and that strange religion "democracy" are one and the same. That people are coming to understand Duverger's law is a sign that this comprehension of system-logic may be soon to come: when it can be admitted that the American political system leads inevitably to the existence of two parties, can it not also be admitted that there is at least a possibility of it leading to other things? Remember: nothing is off the table.
Inescapable results of its internal logic! Sooner or later, all shams must end; the mystification of the true aspects of the system, the unexamined civil-religions, ideologies in the Marxian sense, cannot last forever. The "end of a world" never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion. Or, if you prefer a longer quote:
When Maistre says that every nation gets the government it deserves, I believe him. Maistre didn't think his great law was a law of physics. He thought it was a law of God. I am not a religious person, but I agree. History has convinced me that when laws of God are broken, bad shit happens. Bad shit will happen anyway. But isn't Obama bad enough?
… Dear conservatives, I have a question for you. Suppose God appeared to you in your sleep, and gave you a choice. You could lose your country, but keep your institutions and constitutions. Or, you could lose your institutions and constitutions, but keep your country. Which would you choose?
But I don't have to choose, you say! Au contraire, mon frere! I will save my country, by saving her institutions and constitutions! Which are the best in history ever! Look at all this corn and bacon! Dear conservatives, this is just your way of cursing God. Do you think he doesn't have enough fools and drunks to look after?
Do you know what terrifies me? What terrifies me is that not only do I not think America deserves Mitt Romney, I don't even think America deserves Barack Obama. After all, a couple of centuries of diligent looking-after has run us up quite a tab with God. A tab that will be paid or punished. What terrifies me is that while I see no collective interest in paying the tab, it doesn't seem to me that the punishment has even begun to begin. Barack Obama isn't exactly Robespierre, you know. "Capable" might be going too far, but "basically decent" isn't that much of a stretch.
"Death to America!" is no longer a rallying cry, but instead a prayer, a hope that reality will stop dragging out what is essentially inevitable, and put an end to the shams, that we may cease to see them chattering incessantly in the tedious jargon of the sham-religion and get the hell on with our lives.
Anarcho-tyranny in the UK
Call British troops murderers and immediately apologize: 240 hours community service.
Azhar Ahmed, 20, of Fir Avenue, Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was found guilty in September of sending a grossly offensive communication. He said he did not think the message, which said "all soldiers should die and go to hell", was offensive.
… When he realised his comments were causing distress he removed them, Mr Barker added.
District Judge Jane Goodwin said the law should not stop legitimate political opinions being strongly voiced. But she said the test was whether what was written was "beyond the pale of what's tolerable in our society".
She told Ahmed: "You posted the message in response to tributes and messages of sympathy. You knew at the time that this was an emotive and sensitive issue.
"With freedom of speech comes responsibility. On March 8 you failed to live up to that responsibility."
Make jokes on Facebook: 12 weeks in jail and a mob at your house. (Note that the BBC refuses to even give details about the jokes beyond the general subject matter. And they throw in a dangling bit of information about a child murderer and refuse to disambiguate the pronouns.)
Matthew Woods, 20, made a number of derogatory posts about April and missing Madeline McCann. He appeared at Chorley Magistrates' Court where he admitted sending a grossly offensive public electronic communication.
… Mark Bridger, 46, appeared before Aberystwyth magistrates earlier charged with April's murder. He is also charged with child abduction and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Woods, who is unemployed, was arrested for his own safety on Saturday night and remanded in custody ahead of his appearance in court. Chorley magistrates heard members of the public were so upset about his posts they reported them to the police. About 50 people went to his home. He was arrested at a separate address.
Associate with the EDL: have your children stolen by the government.
They concede she is no longer involved with the EDL but believe she is now involved with a splinter group, the North West Infidels. The social worker's report states: "Toni clearly needs to break away from the inappropriate friendships she has through either the EDL or break-off group in order that she can model and display appropriate positive relationships to the baby as he/she grows and develops.
"Toni has been a prominent member of the EDL. They claim they are a peaceful group, however, they have strong associations with violence and racism."
Spend seven months on a campaign of abuse: 140 hours community service.
"Justin shoved me in the back and pushed me into the traffic," she said. "He was drunk. I was lucky a man stepped in to save me."
The jury of nine women and three men has heard that Mr Collins, also 38, who has been appearing in the West End hit Rock of Ages, used a Pukka pad notebook to list every sexual experience Ms Larke had with every one of her previous lovers.
He is alleged to have "controlled" Ms Larke by forcing her to close her Facebook, Twitter and email accounts, once he had read all the messages.
Attack a white girl for being white: get a suspended six-month sentence and 150 hours of community service. (Since when is alcohol a mitigating factor?)
But Judge Robert Brown gave them suspended jail terms after hearing mitigation that as Muslims, the women were not used to being drunk.
… 'It's no punishment at all,' she said. 'And for them to say they did it because they were not used to alcohol is no excuse. If they were not supposed to be drinking then they shouldn't have been out in bars at that time of night.
'Even after the police came and they all ran away, one of them came running back to kick me in the head one last time.
'I honestly think they attacked me just because I am white. I can't think of any other reason.'
Miss Page was treated for bruises and grazes after the attack in June last year as she walked to a taxi rank with boyfriend Lewis Moore, 23, in Leicester city centre.
At the time she worked caring for people with autism and learning difficulties but gave up the job after repeated absences because of stress and flashbacks.
She is still having counselling and suffers panic attacks.
She said: 'We were just minding our own business but they kept shouting "white bitch" and "white slag" at me. When I turned around one of them grabbed my hair then threw me on the ground.
'They were taking turns to kick me over and over. I thought they were going to kill me.'
Gary Short, mitigating for Ambaro Maxamed, said the attack was down to alcohol. He said: 'Although Miss Page's partner used violence, it doesn't justify their behaviour.
'They're Somalian Muslims and alcohol or drugs isn't something they're used to.'
Run a child sex abuse ring: get ignored for more than a decade because the police don't want to look racist.
Police turned a blind eye to allegations of sexual abuse of white girls by gangs of largely Pakistani men for more than a decade, it was claimed yesterday.
Research, reports and case files also revealed that council officials were desperate to cover up any racial link to the abuse of young girls.
The research shows that a string of warnings dating back as far as 2000 were ignored by the authorities. In many cases, police action was taken only against the victims.
… Revealing the fears over the racial element to the abuse, a 2010 report from the Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board said the crimes had 'cultural characteristics … which are locally sensitive in terms of diversity', but warned of 'sensitivities of ethnicity with potential to endanger the harmony of community relationships'.Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham, said: 'There's a culture here of denial and cover-up and a refusal to accept the reality that we have men living in the Rotherham community who treat young girls as objects for their sexual pleasure. It's time to tell the truth. We must root out this evil.'
The revelations come only three months after it emerged that social services in Rotherham had known for six years that a teenage mother, murdered for bringing shame on the families of two men who had used her for sex, was at clear risk from predatory gangs.
Laura Wilson, 17, had been groomed by a string of men before she was stabbed and thrown into a canal to die for informing her abusers' families of the sexual relationships.
Her killer Ashtiaq Asghar, who was 18 at the time, was given a life sentence and will serve a minimum of 17-and-a-half years after he pleaded guilty to murdering Laura in October 2010.
But it emerged in June that Rotherham Council's social services were well aware she was at risk and had received information about certain adults suspected of targeting her from the age of 11.
A serious case review report confirmed that Laura had dealings with 15 agencies and identified 'numerous missed opportunities' to protect her.
It stated that she eventually became 'almost invisible' to care professional.
But note that this is nothing new.


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A-Rod 8/7/13
by Thee Ted Smith
posted Aug 7 2013 2:08PM
So today again I am writing about people who should just stop it already. I mean seriously is there anyone that watches sports that does not think Alex Rodriguez did PED's which are performance enhancing drugs. My problem with A-Rod is he got caught once and when he got caught he was in my mind not completely honest and the I sorry was half hearted. So now what happened is he got caught again and now how decided to fight it. See when you get caught it is ok but when you lie and continue to lie over and over then people get mad and don't trust you. Why would I believe him at all, I think like most I just assume that he has been popping PED's the whole time. I also think the guy is just disconnected for some odd reason. Yes he says the right things and act's very nice to the media but that is my point it is a act. Now am I sure it is a act no but I am not sure anything about this guy other than he seems like a spoiled brat. You got caught so take your money and your suspension and go. He was offered a plea deal and has choose to fight which means in the end I hope they ban him for life. Alex Rodriguez should just act like a man and a grown up and take his punishment, he knows what he took
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Janine di Giovanni on the looming crisis facing global cities.
Janine di Giovanni reported on conflict and war for nearly two decades for the Sunday Times and the Times of London.
Janine di Giovanni visits Stockholm and attempts to understand why.
She said her brother had tried to contact Janine after the war.
Janine di Giovanni talks to the struggling citizens of dreary, depressed London.
After almost a year of daily phone calls, Janine bought a ticket to Montreal and rekindled a romance that lasted for 15 years.
Janine di Giovanni reported conflict and war for nearly two decades for the Sunday Times and the Times of London.
One of the things that seemed to drive you into the arms of Sandra was your hellish relationship with Janine Lindemulder.
Janine di Giovanni on what can happen when no press is around to witness a war.
But once NATO leaves next year, the Taliban will surely crack down on women like her, writes Janine di Giovanni.


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I just upgraded my three blogs to version 2.6. It went very smoothly, but now I can't log-in to the dashboard with Firefox (version 3.0) anymore. It does, however, work with the Internet Explorer. Is this a known problem?
I just upgraded my three blogs to version 2.6. It went very smoothly, but now I can't log-in to the dashboard with Firefox (version 3.0) anymore. It does, however, work with the Internet Explorer. Is this a known problem?
Did your URL re-direct to wp-login.php one directory up? If so, I'm getting the same problem on FF 3.0. I'm beginning to think this is more a FF problem as this new 3.0 is still pretty buggy. Regardless, I reverted back to the previous version.
Actually, I went back to the previous version and I'm still getting the same problem and now I can't log in at all.
NOT happy about this...
Yes, if I direct my browser to /wp-admin/ it redirects to wp-login.php one directory up. But that's also the case if I use Internet Explorer, so that can't be the problem.
I have the same problem (or at least a similar one) after downgrading back to 2.5.1 due to incompatible plugins... infinite redirect loop on trying to log in. Is there any fix?
I'm getting the same exact problem. I tried deleting all of my plugins, deleting my .htaccess file but no go. I'm beginning to think this is going to be a big problem once the rest of the world wakes up.
This version needs to be pulled.
Ok, it seems to have something to do with cookies. I just deleted my cookies and it works now. It also works if I log off and try to log in again.
Cookie purge did it for me, thanks. That will need to be fixed all the same.
Didnt do the trick for me im afraid..
- It does in IE7 but not Firefox 3.0
So the problem must lie somewhere deeper. That's annoying...
Really annoying.. I'll just wait with uploading the rest of the blogs then :D
Just discovered something.. It doesnt show the dashboard, BUT it creates the session.. Because if i visit my blog i get the "Edit" link on my posts and if i click it it shows me the dashboard.
Actually, now that you mention it, I did fint it weird that I could still comment on my blog with my admin account even though I "couldn't" log-in. That's weird.
xcitedk you are a genius! That works for me but the ability to use the login panel is inoperable.
Thanks :D still not a good thing that it doesnt work :P
Cookie purge did nothing for me. Can't even login! :(
What's up. Why is this "upgrade" released before it has legs?
I can login but it sends me to a redirect and I have to relogin each and everytime I want to enter the admin.
Cookie purge worked for me using the Web Dev toolbar (clear private data). If it doesn't work for you, maybe try clearing your cache as well.
I have the same problem . Any solutions yet?
Cookie purge worked for me too :)
This topic has been closed to new replies.


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Room For Growth Across Soft Drinks
As the region's largest economy by some distance, it is no surprise that Saudi Arabia's soft drinks industry is also the Gulf region's largest in volume terms. By volume, we believe that it accounts for about two thirds of the region's soft drinks sector. In per capita terms, consumption of soft drinks, which by our definition includes bottled water, carbonates, juices and functional drinks (energy drinks), increased from 217 litres in 2004 to nearly 2 53 litres in 201 2 . In value terms, the size of the industry grew from US$5.5bn to US$ 8.5 bn over the period, with bottled water and carbonates between them making up about 80% of sales.
The carbonates category has been the slowest grower in volume terms in particular over the past few years, which is hardly surprising given its relative maturity. Just like in the wider Gulf region, bottled water sales really took-off over the past decade, driven by rising incomes. Per capita GDP has grown considerably, reaching well over US$15,00 0. [is this figure right? If so put the comma after the 1] In per capita terms, bottled water consumption increased from about 95 litres in 2004 to more than 1 15 litres by 201 2 . Concerns over the safety of tap water and Saudi Arabia's harsh climate provide a great environment for the bottled water industry. A big trend over the period was the take-off in bulk water. Innovation and rising health-consciousness will continue to have strong influences over the next few years, which should be especially good for die t carbonates, juices and water.
Going forward, we see a lot of room for growth in the energy drinks sector. Globally , energy drinks have really taken off over the past decade, and in the developed world in particular have continued to perform well even as the global economy has weakened. We fully expect the category to continue to lead the industry from a growth point of view over the next few years in Saudi Arabia as more money is pumped into the sector.
|Water Widely Consumed
|Saudi Arabia Carbonated Drinks and Bottled Water Sales (mn litres) - Historic & Forecast


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Aruba Partners with BYD in Zero-Emissions Initiative, Energy Independence by 2020 BYD to Supply Grid-Scale Energy Storage, Solar and Electrified Transportation Solutions Business Wire ORANJESTAD, Aruba -- June 11, 2013 Today, Aruba's Prime Minister Mike G. Eman, Minister of Finance, Mike de Meza, and Mr. Frank Hoevertsz, the Managing-Director of Utilities Aruba N.V. signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with BYD Company Limited, BYD America's President, Ms. Stella Li. The MOU outlines Aruba's plans to be the first Nation with a completely zero-carbon footprint and energy independence (with only clean sustainable renewable power sources). The four major objectives in the MOU included electrifying all public transportation (with zero- emissions vehicles), substantially increasing renewable energy generation (both solar and wind), making those resource dispatchable upon demand with distributed, environmentally-friendly, energy storage and lastly a nation-wide plan for public re-education and sustainability programs in all schools. Through each of these, Aruba plans to use BYD green-technologies to pursue its goal of becoming an emissions-free Nation by the year 2020. Prime Minister Eman welcomed Stella Li to beautiful Aruba and led the ceremony by stating, "We are excited about the MOU we are signing. This document signifies both parties interests and commitment to work together to introduce electric vehicles and green products in Aruba. In our transition phase towards 100% sustainability, BYD will support Aruba demonstrating how to convert all our vehicles, including cars, buses, taxis and all private and public vehicles into electrified transportation." The first and most important of all these initiatives is the electrification of public transportation. Aruba plans to place into service four BYD zero-emission, long-range all-electric buses and one BYD e6 electric taxi comprising a fleet for public/government use by September-end 2013. Energy generation and storage are the next areas of development that Aruba has committed to pursuing. The nation has plans to double their wind farms and make these farms self-sustaining and dispatchable using BYD's Iron-Phosphate grid-scale storage technologies. Leveraging these same battery Energy Storage Stations, they will also deploy new, large-scale stand-alone BYD Solar generation projects throughout the island. Ms. Li remarked that, "BYD Company was completely impressed by the vision of the government leaders of Aruba and fully supported Aruba becoming the first completely sustainable Nation in the World." The third objective in Aruba's plan uses BYD LED technology to reduce electricity consumption and build up vital communities through education and infrastructural improvements. Aruba will convert much of their public lighting to high-efficiency BYD LED Street and Indoor Lighting Solutions. Further, there are plans to electrify all of its schools using rooftop solar installations and build education programs around sustainability programs. The nation intends to use BYD solar generation, external and internal LED lighting systems, and electric vehicles to develop its "smart community" project in Kibaima. The Kibaima project, conceived in 2012, has operated as an exemplar and "laboratory" for sustainability ventures throughout the nation. Minister de Meza elaborated on the prime minister's comments by stating that, "Aruba is honored to work together with BYD. In the light of BYD's broad portfolio of green technologies, especially in renewable energy and storage, Aruba is very happy to partner with you. We have a vision and a plan to have 100% sustainable energy by 2020. There are only seven years left." Minister de Meza also explained to Mrs. Li that, "Aruba is already working with renowned institutions like the Carbon War Room, TNO, among others. But with today's MOU, BYD has become part of the Aruba green family." Ms. Li told the prime ministers Eman and de Meza that "they both have amazing visions for their country and BYD has the technology to help them realize their dreams — we are one of the largest solar panel providers in the world with ample experience and we are the largest environmentally-friendly, energy storage provider in the world!" In reaching each of these goals, Aruba aims to lead the world in carbon footprint reductions and be a catalyst and example to the other Caribbean and Latin American Nations. For more information, visit BYD at www.facebook.com/bydcompany and www.byd.com. About BYD BYD is ranked #1 at the top of Bloomberg's and BusinessWeek's 2009 Tech 100 List and is the leading manufacturer of advanced, environmentally-friendly battery technologies like the BYD's Iron Phosphate battery used in BYD electric vehicles and electric busses. BYD's solar panels and LED Lighting systems have CEC, TUV/CE and UL listings, and the company enjoys rapid growth in consumer electronics space and electrified transportation sector manufacturing under its BYD brand. BYD is the fastest-growing Chinese automotive and green energy technology enterprise. The Company trades on the Hong Kong Exchange (HKE) under the ticker numbers (HK.0285 – BYD Electronics) and (HK.1211 – BYD Company Ltd.), as well as on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange under the ticker number (002594 - BYD Company Ltd.). For more information, visit www.byd.com, www.facebook.com/bydcompany or email email@example.com. Contact: In CHINA: Sherry Li, BYD email@example.com tel: +86-755-8988-8888 or In US: Micheal Austin, BYD firstname.lastname@example.com tel: +1-800-BYD-AUTO
Aruba Partners with BYD in Zero-Emissions Initiative, Energy Independence by 2020
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Little Tikes Get Out N' Grill Barbecue Set
- Material: Plastic
- Age Range: From 3 Years
- Toy Category: Pretend Play
- Brand: Little Tikes
- Overview
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User ReviewRead All Reviews »
Love it!
bychicarogers Apr 3, 2011
1 Helpfuls 2 Helpfuls Was this review helpful?
Pros Accessories, real life replica, heavy duty plastic, easy to assemble, Easy exchange at ToysrUs
Cons more accessories, Be nice if the base was heavier, 1st one had a broken piece
Recommended it? Yes
The Bottom Line: Must buy for outside play, for a child that like to replicate Dad bbq'n.
This is a great little bbq for kids. Our only complaints is that they do not give you the correct number of screws, but we have a can of random screws that worked great. It comes with only a few accessories but you can buy more. If you buy on sale like we did, than it is a must buy for summer fun. Our daughter put hers near Daddys grilling station so they can cook at the same time. The buns do look exactly like her tikes mud pie buns so I am hoping these dont get mucky like those. Comes with one spatala, and one tongs just like dads set, with hooks to hang them. It is windy and rainy here so I am tad concerned about it blowing over but I am sure it wont go far. Its not flimsy plastic but heavy duty Tikes plastic but it does not have water or sand base for extra weight. My daughter recieved this for her third birthday and enjoys being outside and doing anything her daddy is doing. The 4 screws that we had to replace we for the handles of the front doors. Minimal stickers, 4 total which is nice if it going to be out in the elements like ours.
Consumer review originally published on Epinions.com
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I have never been an arena rider, normally I do all my training on the trail. However where I am working I am riding three 2yo's who have about 69 days training now. We aren't allowed out of the arena on our own, so im stuck ha ha! We have a big campdraft arena, and we have a few trot poles, bending poles, barrels and cones.
The horses can all walk/trot/canter/gallop, stop, and all at various stages of back up, side pass, leg yield, rollbacks, and working in frame. They can all go on a loose rein and only one is struggling with her right lead.
I'm after some exercises or games I can do with them that will keep them and myself interested! I have set up some mountd games and have been playing with that, as well as cruising through the barrel pattern.
They will end up as mustering horses ridden by varied riders, so anything that helps with tolerance, braveness, agility etc. would be fantastic!


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Sex Toys And Hard Cock Are Oriental Teen AIko Kondo's Favorite Play Things
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