text:
|Asian Slaw with Peanut Sauce
TGIF everyone! This one is short and easy. I promised to post the salad I made with the Peanut Sauce I made the other day. Asian Slaw's are really easy to make. I packed this one full of various raw veggies and so it had a tremendous amount of flavor in one bite. An easy way to give variety to your salads is to vary the cutting methods used. In this case I tried to Julienne, shred and thinly slice a lot of the ingredients.
2 cups Shredded Cabbage
1/2 cup Jicama, Julienned (Or Diakon Radish)
1/2 cup Cucumber, Sliced or Julienned
1/2 cup Cilantro, chopped (I love cilantro, so I proably added about a cup!)
1/2 cup Leeks, Sliced or Julienned
1/2 cup Red Radishes
1/2 cup Green Onions, chopped
Avocado to garnish
Peanut Sauce or your favorite vinaigrette or asian salad dressing.
You can also top it with your favorite nuts. Mine would be these Sweet & Spicy Cashews, which I can't believe I forgot to use!
Enjoy and have a fabulous weekend!


text:
Fight Club Will Be Getting a Sequel [POLL]
Breaking the first two rules of Fight Club, we are going to tell you about Fight Club... THE SEQUEL!
Tyler Durden lives!
For me, one of the best stories from the 2013 Comic-Con was that Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the best selling book, "Fight Club" has started working on a sequel. (I did not read the book, I am a fan of the movie.)
The sequel will be in the form of a graphic novel. The author posted on his tumblr.
About the graphic novel, it's true. Chelsea Cain has been introducing me to artists and creators from Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, and they're walking me through the process.
It will likely be a series of books that update the story ten years after the seeming end of Tyler Durden. Nowadays, Tyler is telling the story, lurking inside Jack, and ready to launch a come-back. Jack is oblivious. Marla is bored. Their marriage has run aground on the rocky coastline of middle-aged suburban boredom. It's only when their little boy disappears, kidnapped by Tyler, that Jack is dragged back into the world of Mayhem.
It will, of course, be dark and messy. Due to contract obligations it can't come to light for a while. Next year is "Beautiful You," followed by the story collection. But since the Fight Club sequel will appear serialized in graphic form, my book publisher might allow me to launch it earlier than 2015."
For now, there are no plans for a movie, (I am betting there will be, I would watch. Otherwise, I will probably never know what happens.)
Did you read the first book? If you did, will you read the sequel?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
APVM Body Repair
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At APVM Body Repair we provide quality body repairs and re-finishing for cars, vans, motorhomes and caravans. We also pride ourselves in Classic car restoration. We only use the best materials including paints from Standox and Glasurit, which means your repairs will remain showroom quality for years to come. We are so confident in this we guarantee all our work.
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text:
I mentioned in passing recently that in my adoption process I had become so stressed for a while that I couldn't sleep without a shot of alcohol to knock me out many nights. Well, now I'd like to share about how said alcohol became an idol.
First of all, my father has German and Swiss roots and alcohol is just simply a normal part of his life, and therefore it has been for me as well since I was relatively young. Not abuse of alochol by any means. My father seldom had more than one beer per day, and now drinks mostly whiskey, but even that without any kind of regularity and seldom more than one. In the last year or so I began drinking more regularly than I used to. Having on average a beer or two per night.
Yes there was the occassional three, in fact for years I have limited myself to just drinking beer on the weekends, because it's so easy for daily beer to become two beers and two to become three. But I was stressed, and that was the excuse I used for drinking more than usual.
Now for the record, I do not (personally) see one to three drinks a night as abuse (maybe it is for you, please don't allow me to justify a sin for you). A recent New York Times article suggests that if a man is to obtain the full benefit of alcohol he should drink four drinks per day. Four seems a bit much to me.
Anyhow, about six months ago I started to feel like the Lord was encouraging me to drink less. But I would push back and argue, "This isn't too much, why are you suggesting less?" Or think, "This must not be God, why would He tell me to stop drinking reasonable amounts of alcohol."
Well, first of all, arguing with the Lord rather than just listening isn't ever the best idea. That was my first mistake. But finally around December, in discussion with a friend about it, I tuned in to the fact that alchol had become what I was turning for comfort. I couldn't sleep. So I'd take a quick drink of alcohol to knock me out at night. It worked. But I wasn't getting any better. I was stressed as stressed could be. More than I had ever been in my life. Stressed and arguing and wrestling with the Lord in prayer over my boys. Why won't He just open up the heavens I know He is powerful enough to open and make them come home?
Well, with the revelation that this had turned in to idolatry, I immediately stopped drinking during the week. This also helps control how much I'm drinking. But the more interesting thing is how quickly I began to find peace. Comfort. God is the Great Comforter afterall. Alcohol is something the Lord created, and it makes for a good drink (in moderation) and a crappy God.
I was at the same time convicted that I should confess this to my team. I did. I think confession is something we miss much too much in our Christian circles these days. As a necessary hallmark for revival I wish we would confess our sins and pray together more often than we do. But we as Christians think we save ourselves through our own righteousness, and like it or not, this our reason not to confess—because we miss/forget/misplace/misuse/abuse/deny the gospel. Thinking lack of confession proves we've got our act together, and our sinlessness is our ticket to heaven. But the wonderful gospel that says we NEED a savior.
Confession and my desire to see more of it is a large part of why I want to share this here too. Especially because I do talk about beer here. I like beer, I don't think everyone should drink, but I definitely believe the freedom to partake is a gift and freedom from the Lord. That said, it's also been interesting for me to see how the Lord taught me that abuse of something is not necessary for it to become idolatry. All that's needed is a sinner's heart.
It's been about two months now, and I'm sleeping better than I have in a while. My heart is torn over my boys. I still wrestle in prayer with God over my sons. When will they come home? I still don't know. But my heart is at peace. I'm with the Great Comforter and it's much better than being an moron pursuing comfort elsewhere.
I'm also writing this for my own benefit. Me of the future: if you find you're not at peace, who/what are you seeking for peace? And if it's not the Lord, you idiot, of course you're not finding it.
Thank you Lord for your comfort. Thank you for your peace. Thank you for your grace and the graciousness of my teammates when I told them I've been a fool. And thank you for delicious beer. Help me to say thanks to you when I partake rather than thanks to it.


text:
This is an article written for the University of Southampton Digital Champions Blog, detailing my experiences of helping out at what was a fantastic event!
Last week, myself and whole swathe of DigiChamps swung into action to support a unique live-stream as part of the MOOC, Power of Social Media. This event was a live-streamed, live-tweeted and live-blogged panel discussion that aimed to answer some questions raised by learners on the MOOC, and by those tweeting in. The event was streamed using both Periscope and by Panopto, to allow learners to watch the discussion in real time, and this attracted over 130 viewers. As well as answering the questions of the learners, the event was designed to showcase the potential of Social Media in supporting live-events, to show those on the MOOC another dimension of the capabilities of Social Media, by means of practical demonstration.
Returning to the discussion, the panel itself consisted of a number of experts on Social Media. The first was Dr Lisa Harris, who is the lead educator on the Future Learn course. Then, also from the Web Science Institute were Professor Leslie Carr and Dr David Millard. The panel was completed by Nic Fair and Sarah Hewitt, two Web Science PhD students (and Digichamps) with a keen interest in Social Media.
This esteemed panel answered a number of questions from the course, the audience and from Twitter. One of the first questions answered was whether Social Media was blurring the boundaries between personal and private, and the panel seemed to suggest that it was not just Social Media doing this, but the use of the Web as a whole. This was linked to another question about disadvantages in finding a job, and Dr David Millard noted the lack of guidelines for employers. Perhaps one of the most interesting questions posed, was "Which is your favourite Social Network any why?". Appearing to debunk recent concern on behalf of it's investors, all bar one of the panel said Twitter. The other, Dr David Millard, interpreted the definition of Social Network differently, and opted for Wikipedia. There were of course many more questions asked, and you can have a watch back of the recorded stream to view these.
As I pointed out earlier, the event was also intended to showcase the power of Social Media at live-events, and this is where the DigiChamps came in. We had Tim filming and facilitating the streaming process, Ashley taking some great pictures of the event and Alex and I live-tweeting. This worked really well, and we hope that it was clear those who watched it live, and those who are reading this now, the power that Social Media can have. We also would like to thank iSolutions, for their support in the live-streaming using Panopto.
Now, I'd like to sign post you to some of the media that came out of the event. Firstly, the recorded version of the discussion itself is available to view below from YouTube:
Their are some photos taken by Ashley are available on the DigiChamps Flickr Page:
And finally a Storify put together by Hannah, including the tweets from the day, is available to view here.
Many thanks for reading this post, and if you're interested in learning more about what we do, or about the Social Media MOOC, please don't hesitate to get in touch!


text:
crappyJoe V2 Fonts
<link href="//db.onlinewebfonts.com/c/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6?family=crappyJoe" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>#2 Using @import CSS directive, put the following line in add to your css file.(http | https)
@import url(//db.onlinewebfonts.com/c/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6?family=crappyJoe);#3 Use font-face declaration Fonts.(http | https)
@font-face {font-family: "crappyJoe"; src: url("//db.onlinewebfonts.com/t/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6.eot"); src: url("//db.onlinewebfonts.com/t/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6.eot?#iefix") format("embedded-opentype"), url("//db.onlinewebfonts.com/t/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6.woff2") format("woff2"), url("//db.onlinewebfonts.com/t/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6.woff") format("woff"), url("//db.onlinewebfonts.com/t/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6.ttf") format("truetype"), url("//db.onlinewebfonts.com/t/502d5d4f64adc0a5d7df9fb8027954e6.svg#crappyJoe") format("svg"); }
J O E B O B graphics 2000
LUELLA Ornaments B W95 Regular
Cultivated MindAuthor
Cindy KinashTrademark
LUELLA Ornaments B is a trademark of Cultivated Mind.Copyright
Copyright (c) 2013 by Cultivated Mind. All rights reserved.License
By downloading this font package, you are agreeing to be bound by the terms of this Agreement. This Agreement, in conjunction with the receipt that accompanies each purchase from MyFonts.com (MyFonts), constitutes the complete agreement between you and the respective Foundry.1. Allowed usesYou may use the licensed fonts to create images on any surface such as computer screens, paper, web pages, photographs, movie credits, printed material, T-shirts, and other surfaces where the image is a fixed size.You may use the licensed fonts to create EPS files or other scalable drawings provided that such files are only used by the household or company licensing the font.2. Number of usersThe maximum number of simultaneous users is specified in the applicable receipt. All users must belong to the same company or household purchasing the font.3. Third partiesYou may provide the font to a graphic designer, printer or other service bureau that is working on your behalf only if they agree to use the font exclusively for your work, agree to the terms of this license, and retain no copies of the font on completion of the work.You may not provide the font or make it accessible to any other third parties.4. EmbeddingYou may embed the licensed fonts into any document you send to third parties. Such documents may be viewed and printed (but not edited) by the recipients.You may not under any circumstances embed the licensed fonts into software or hardware products in which the fonts will be used by the purchasers of such products. Such use requires a different license which may be offered by the Foundry through MyFonts. Please contact email@example.com for further information.5. ModificationsYou may import characters from the font as graphical objects into a drawing program and modify such graphical objects.You may not modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works based on the licensed font itself without Foundry's prior written consent. 6. Copyright The font and the accompanying materials are copyrighted and contain proprietary information and trade secrets belonging to the foundry owning the font. Unauthorized copying of the Product even if modified, merged, or included with other software, or of the written materials, is expressly forbidden. You may be held legally responsible for any infringement of the foundry's intellectual property rights that is caused or encouraged by your failure to abide by the terms of this Agreement. 7. Termination This Agreement is effective until terminated. This Agreement will terminate automatically without notice from MyFonts or the Foundry if you fail to comply with any provision contained herein. Upon termination, you must destroy the written materials, the Product, and all copies of them, in part and in whole, including modified copies, if any.8. Product UpgradesMyFonts may, from time to time, update the Product. Product upgrade pricing may apply. 9. Disclaimer and Limited Warranty MyFonts warrants the Product to be free from defects in materials and workmanship under normal use for a period of twenty one (21) days from the date of delivery as shown on your receipt. MyFonts' entire liability and your exclusive remedy as to a defective product shall be, at MyFonts' option, either return of purchase price or replacement of any such product that is returned to MyFonts with a copy of the invoice. MyFonts shall have no responsibility to replace the product or refund the purchase price if failure results from accident, abuse or misapplication, or if any product is lost or damaged due to theft, fire, or negligence. Any replacement product will be warranted for twenty one (21) days. This warranty gives you specific legal rights. You may have other rights, which vary from state to state. EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY PROVIDED ABOVE, THE PRODUCT, IS PROVIDED AS IS. NEITHER MYFONTS NOR THE FOUNDRY MAKES ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Product rests upon you. Neither MyFonts nor the Foundry warrants that the functions contained in the Product will meet your requirements or that the operation of the software will be uninterrupted or error free. NEITHER MYFONTS NOR THE FOUNDRY SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING DAMAGES FROM LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, AND THE LIKE) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE PRODUCT EVEN IF MYFONTS OR THE FOUNDRY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. Because some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, the above limitation may not apply to you. 10. Governing Law This agreement is governed by the laws of the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Jeunesse W01 Bold
Monotype Imaging Inc.Author
Johannes BirkenbachTrademark
Jeunesse is a trademark of Johnannes Birkenbach and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.Copyright
Font software Copyright 1993, 2008 Monotype Imaging Inc. Typeface designs Copyright (c) 1993 Johannes Birkenbach. All rights reserved.License
NOTIFICATION OF LICENSE AGREEMENTThis typeface is the property of Monotype Imaging Inc. and its use by you is covered under the terms of a license agreement. You have obtained this typeface software either directly from Monotype Imaging or together with software distributed by one of the licencees of Monotype Imaging.This software is a valuable asset of Monotype Imaging. Unless you have entered into a specific license agreement granting you additional rights, your use of this software is limited to use on up to five (5) workstation for your own publishing use. You may not copy or distribute this software.If you have any questions concerning your rights you should review the license agreement you received with the software or contact Monotype Imaging for a copy of the license agreement.General information:www.fonts.comFor license terms and usage rights, please visit our web site at:www.monotypeimaging.com/html/type/license.htmlLizenzbedingungen und Nutzungsrechte finden Sie auf unserer Webseite:www.monotypeimaging.com/html/type/license.htmlPour plus d'informations concernant les droits d'utilisation et les questions contractuelles, veuillez consultez notre site:www.monotypeimaging.com/html/type/license.htmlPara obtener informacin acerca de los trminos de licencia y los derechos de uso, visite nuestro sitio en el Web en:www.monotypeimaging.com/html/type/license.htmlPer le condizioni contrattuali ed i diritti d'uso, visitate il nostro sito web all'indirizzo:www.monotypeimaging.com/html/type/license.html
Rabid_Science V1
1.00 November 22, 2003Trademark
Comppo Trademark of your company.Copyright
Typeface your company. 2003. All Rights ReservedDescription
Comppo is created with the Font Creator Program from High-Logic.com
Xerography V2
2005 Vic FiegerCopyright
2005 Vic FiegerDescription
This font was created using Font Creator 5.0 from High-Logic.com
MR FUGLESANG REMIXStyle
Copyright 2006 JohanAuthor
Copyright 2006 JohanDescription
Ainslie Slab W01 Norm Rg Ital
Jeremy DooleyAuthor
Jeremy DooleyTrademark
Ainslie is a trademark of Jeremy Dooley.Copyright
Copyright (c) 2014 by Jeremy Dooley. All rights reserved.Description
Copyright (c) 2014 by Jeremy Dooley. All rights reserved.
Portland LDO Bold Italic
Style : Bold ItalicPackages
Portland LDOStyle
Bold ItalicVersion
1.000 2004 initial releaseCompany
LDO FontsAuthor
Luke OwensTrademark
Portland LDO Bold Italic is a trademark of LDO Fonts.Copyright
Copyright LDO Fonts, 2004. All rights reserved.License
This font is copyrighted 2004 by LDO Fonts and Luke Owens. All rights reserved. This software is the property of LDO Fonts and its licensors, and may not be reproduced, used, displayed, modified, disclosed or transferred without the express written approval of LDO Fonts. Distribution of this software is restricted without prior written permission. If you wish to distribute this software commercially, contact LDO Fonts for details on obtaining a license. You may not rent or lease the software, nor may you modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software. You may not make derivative fonts from this software. THE SOFTWARE AND ANY RELATED FILES ARE PROVIDED AS IS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
Hooper dooper V1
Hooper dooperStyle
Shareware V1 - email@example.com
Chris Brown (visual designAuthor
Chris BrownTrademark
Copyright: Chris Brown (c) 1998 (all rights reserved)Description
HOOPER DOOPER is a fun irregular font with a modern surf look.The name came from my daughter's (then 5) attempt to saythe phrase hipster doofus. (go figure!!)License
HOOPER DOOPER was made by Chris Brown (visual design) It is not FREE, it is SHAREWARE.If required to use commercially, please email first.Chris Brown (firstname.lastname@example.com)A license fee is applicable. HOOPER DOOPER is not in the public domain and remains the exclusive property of Chris Brown. HOOPER DOOPER may not be redistributed in any way. That is: it may not be distributed commercially, it may not be sold,it may not be included on any form saleable package,it may not be converted or renamed,it may not be made available for download without the express written permission of Chris Brown.Chris Brown shall, in no event, be liable for any damages arising out of the use of this font.Remember HOOPER DOOPER is not free, it is shareware.
OilCrisisA-Regular V1
Style : APackages
Oil CrisisStyle
OTF 3.000;PS 001.001;Core 1.0.29Company
Ray LarabieAuthor
Ray LarabieTrademark
Oil Crisis is a trademark of Ray Larabie.Copyright
(c) 2002 Ray Larabie. See attached license agreement for more information. If EULA is missing, visit www.larabiefonts.com for an updated version of this font.Description
To see more fonts by Ray Larabie, visit Typodermic.com and LarabieFonts.com


text:
Ten minutes with Nasheed
Mohamed Nasheed must be the busiest man in town. For the last 500-odd days Nasheed has been moving non-stop criss-crossing the country, dropping into every other house for a chat, and walking every street of Male' going from door to door, from morning to night. His energy is truly astounding. 'How does he do it?' people wonder aloud. Then they stop wondering and try to keep up, working harder (almost all voluntarily) than they had ever before, for the same purpose as Nasheed: to restore democracy in the Maldives.
A visiting foreign journalist asked me two days ago if Nasheed can inspire people. Apparently, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has expressed the opinion that Nasheed cannot be a proper leader because he cannot do so. To be inspired by Nasheed you have to see him at work, and see the commitment he brings to the cause.
Today began with a round of ten minute one to one interviews with twelve journalists from various media outlets in the country. I am second last on the list of local journalists, before JJ Robinson, the editor of Minivan News.
Nasheed is multi-tasking. He is listening to questions and answering them, all the while he is signing letters he will send to all 240,000 plus eligible voters in this election. He could have let the signature be printed, but that won't be him. Each letter has to be signed personally, so he has at least a thousand of them with him whenever he sits down. When he went to Colombo earlier this month to meet Maldivians voting in Sri Lanka, the letters he took with him to sign weighed over three kilos. He used to sign 1000 letters an hour, now it's up to 1300-1400 an hour. I find it slightly disconcerting, talking to someone while they are doing something else, but his ears are mine for ten minutes.
'If you are elected, how do you plan to deal with the Baaghees [coup-makers]?' I ask. Nasheed's insistence on magnanimity as the best solution for the legacy of pain Gayoom's torture tactics left behind has meant a large number of Maldivians are still waiting for justice. I have talked to hundreds of people about their views on how to deal with Baaghees if they are no longer in government. The word magnanimity was not in their vocabulary. Justice is what people want.
'An MDP government will make sure they are dealt with according to the law. Investigations will be carried out, the Prosecutor General must prosecute on behalf of the State, and judges must give proper verdicts.' Rule of law, Nasheed says, is the answer.
'But we don't have an independent judiciary. How can we assure justice for the people without one?' I asked. Judicial reform will take priority in a Nasheed government. 'Implemented on a parallel tract [to prosecution of the Baaghees] will be efforts to reform the judiciary.'
Some key figures in the local legal and political sectors have floated the idea in recent times that judicial reform will require a constitutional amendment. 'It is not appropriate to play with the Constitution. What we need is a good judiciary, capable and willing to interpret it well,' Nasheed said. What he said will happen for certain are changes to the Judicial Service Commission, one of the key forces in obstructing judicial reform during Nasheed's government.
All contesting parties—(even PPM) have brought out manifestos in recent days. The pledges are very similar. What makes MDP's different except for being 'costed and budgeted'? A good manifesto, Nasheed said, comes out of a good consultative process. 'Manifesto building', is what he called the process. 'That's what MDP did, and that's why MDP's manifesto is different from the rest.'
There is so much I want to ask him, but I have only ten minutes. I know the ten others before me would have asked about all the 'serious stuff.' I want to know more about Nasheed, the person.
After living such a hectic life for the last eighteen months or so, visiting three islands a day on average, how will he cope with the change of pace? 'I will be just as busy,' he said. 'Of course, I won't be able to travel as much, or meet with as many people. I do like other work,' he smiles. 'The work [in government] will be more technical, I really enjoy that, too.'
Nasheed admits, however, that he will miss the travelling, especially meeting with the people. If elected, he intends to dedicate one day a week to continue the Door to Door policy launched during the current campaign. The most valuable lesson he learned from visiting all those houses, he said, is that 'nothing is small.' What someone tells him when he visits them maybe a story about their gutter, their roof, or their sewerage pipe. They may seem trivial, but it is these stories that help reveal the big picture. 'Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.'
How confident is he of winning the election? His response is the beaming smile that has won him thousands of more supporters over the course of the last year and a half. 'It's a forgone conclusion', he says. 'All the signs are there, all the evidence is there,' for an MDP win in Ehburun [One Round].
'Unless', he adds, 'something completely outrageous happens.'
It's all over too soon. We shake hands, and before I left he wonders aloud why Dhivehi Sitee was the only media outlet to have interviewed him in English. I told him a few others have complained about Dhivehi Sitee not being in Dhivehi. 'Why is it a bad thing?' Nasheed asks. 'It's just a wider interpretation of what a Dhivehi Sitee can be.'
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text:
Is travel to Cuba still legal?
Heck yes it is! According to the Department of Treasury, you are still allowed to travel to Cuba with American tour operators (us) with proper licensing (also us) on group educational tours. We pepper in the required educational aspects of the tour, a walking tour of Old Havana, a horse ride through a tobacco plantation with rolling lessons and meetings with local artists. We like to keep it smart AND super entertaining! We are very happy to keep providing legal, culturally immersive trips to the island! Try and stop us!!
What makes Coast to Costa "experts" on Cuba??
What makes us experts on the island is that we have organized over 24 trips in the last two years and we have gathered an AMAZING team of local, professional guides, drivers, translators, tobacco rollers, mojito makers etc. to ensure that we will make your experience in Cuba the MOST authentic, local experience you can get. Also, I and everyone on our team speaks fluent Spanish, so we can explain all the hard to understand aspects of visiting the country! You want to make sure you're traveling with the best of the best, and that you're interacting with the locals. We know the secret recipe, and we tweak and refine it every time we visit – to give you an experience that is eye-opening and lotsa fun, but also safe and smooth. You want to make sure you're going with someone who knows how to navigate this colorful, but sometimes tricky destination.
Is the country changing? Should I go now?
Yes and YES! While we DO believe that the change happening in Cuba is very necessary and important for the local people, the fact is it is changing very rapidly and the time to go is now! It's an incredible time in Cuban history.
So, Havana, right?
Other trips take you to Havana. Only. But there's much more to Cuba than just Havana – and we want you to experience it. We will spend time traveling the east side of the island, with stops in the colonial town of Trinidad, a private lunch and swimming on the Bay of Pigs, the French town of Cienfuegos, the beautiful tobacco region of Viñales and all the oxcart countryside you can imagine!
Are Visas and airfare included?
Even though travel restrictions to Cuba are being lifted, it's still not a place you can visit on the fly. You need a bunch of proper documentation – and we provide it all for you (fine print: you need a Visa, a reason for travel, an OFAC number, Cuba travel insurance…bored yet?). Don't worry about it – we've got you covered. And airfare is included in all our pricing, which makes things even that much more simple.
Are Cuban people at all "anti- American"?
Quite the opposite! They are very happy to meet and try to speak English with all of
us Americans. They are friendly, outgoing, kind and warm. They feel like the embargo and any bad feelings will be left between our governments and is something that has nothing to do with the people!
They are happy to interact with us so be a good ambassador!
Is it dangerous?
Violent crime in Cuba is almost non-existent. The people are friendly and chatty and will come up to you, but they have no intention of harming you. There is a lot of, "let me show you around for a dollar". Just a friendly "no thank you" works just fine.


text: Our colocation center just delegated the rDNS to our name servers. We are running Ubuntu 10.04LTS and Bind. I am not sure exactly what to do as they told us to name the rDNS file domain.tld.8.0.192.in-addr.arpa Where would this file go and should I not use the ispconfig control panel to a the dns pointers? Also how would I make sure that the info got passed to my secondary name server I see zone records in /etc/bind/ and they start with pri.domain.tld I found this and it kinda gives me some light but I do not want to break my working dns http://etwiki.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/11_25/WHMDocs/RdnsForBind


text:
|Photo credit to ACLU
My own personal point of view tends to relegate much of what happens in politics and government to an issue of money. I will elaborate after posting this chapter with a separate essay to explain my thinking, but will briefly summarize those ideas here.
Richard Nixon crawled away from politics in 1962 after losing the 1960 election for President and the 1962 election for governor of California. He told the newsmen at his concession press conference, "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more." But he was so wrong.
Two wealthy businessmen, in particular, sought Nixon out, believing they could succeed in getting him elected him in 1968. These corporate executives who financed Nixon were clients of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander, when they convinced the law firm to bring in Nixon as its senior partner in 1963.
Elmer Bobst and Donald Kendall would pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into Nixon's election campaign in 1968, but what did they expect in return? Bobst, it appears, especially wanted passage of the National Cancer Act to fund cancer research, to benefit his company, Warner Lambert Pharmaceuticals. And as for Kendall, who headed Pepsi Cola, he may have considered profits that went from heroin sales, using the Pepsi bottling center in Laos as a cover, according to Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia:
Rather than buying heroin through a maze of middlemen, [Vietnam's Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao] Ky's apparatus deals directly with a heroin laboratory operating somewhere in the Vientiane region. According to a U.S. police adviser stationed in Vientiane, this laboratory is supposed to be one of the most active in Laos, and is managed by a Chinese entrepreneur named Huu Tim Heng. Heng is the link between one of Laos's major opium merchants, Gen. Ouane Rattikone (former commander in chief of the Laotian army), and the air transport wing heroin ring.That Kendall knew how this bottling factory was being used has not been proven, though his complicity in the CIA overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973 is documented by both Seymour Hersh and Thomas Powers. The message conveyed by Nixon and his administration was that power was for sale to the highest bidder. The old adage that money doesn't smell rang true in his case.
From the viewpoint of the narcotics traffic, Huu Tim Heng's most important legitimate commercial venture is the Pepsi-Cola bottling factory on the outskirts of Vientiane. With Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna's son, Panya, as the official president, Heng and two other Chinese financiers began construction in 1965-1966. Although the presence of the prime minister's son at the head of the company qualified the venture for generous financial support from USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the plant has still not bottled a single Pepsi after five years of stop-start construction.
The completed factory building has a forlorn, abandoned look about it. While Pepsi's competitors are mystified at the company's lackadaisical attitude, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics has an answer to the riddle. Bureau sources report that Heng has been using his Pepsi operation as a cover for purchases of chemicals vital to the processing of heroin, such as ether and acetic anhydride, and for large financial transactions.
Nevertheless, the rationalization was that the stored gold which had been discovered and stockpiled at the close of WWII had run out, and in 1971 Nixon had to hide behind Treasury Secretary John Connally when the announcement was made that the Bretton Woods Agreement was no longer the rule; they "closed the gold window." The bankers knew there were two main reasons this step had to be taken: First, too many U.S. dollars were being spent abroad for heroin, which went primarily to French refiners; and second, the French demanded payment of deficits in gold rather than in U.S. currency. French heroin pushers would no longer be able to trade U.S. dollars for gold.
At the same time these events were taking place, OPEC (the oil trading countries' cartel) was plotting a way to prevent the collapse of oil prices. The Nixon administration, at the instigation of American- based international oil companies, agreed to send a high-ranking State Department official (Irwin Commission) to negotiate with the OPEC nations, led by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and the Shah of Iran. Nixon and Kissinger "caved in" to the Shah's demands, to the dismay of the Saudis. Once Nixon resigned, the Saudis apparently cut a deal with Gerald Ford. According to a review of Andrew Scott Cooper's book, The Oil Kings... explained Nixon's motivation as follows:
Why did Nixon agree to these terms, which, Cooper says, led directly to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980 and to the need for a war on terror? We will reserve our comments about this for the time being. Nevertheless, serious students of the war on drugs and terrorism need to be aware that nothing is ever as simple as we would like it to be.
By late 1969, Nixon was so friendly with the shah that he had granted the leader his own special oil quota. In exchange, the shah pledged to spend every cent of those additional oil revenues on US military and intelligence hardware. This worried Nixon's aides. "It was one thing to fly the flag for the West," Cooper writes, "another to arm it to face down Iraq, India and regional rebellions, pacifying a vast swath of the Middle East and Indian Ocean. Rearmament on the scale proposed by the shah," Cooper adds, "had the potential to bankrupt Iran."
Still, Nixon persisted, advising Iran's lead diplomat, Ardeshir Zahedi to "tell the shah you can push [us] as much as you want [on oil prices] ..." In short, the shah could "raise oil prices at will and pressure western oil companies and consumers" - all via a back channel implemented without cost assessment or risk analysis. Who cared what happened to the real Iranians not benefiting from oil dollars? The US had its precious outpost in the Middle East.
Selected Excerpts from
By Henrik Kruger; Jerry Meldon, Translator
South End Press©1980: Box 68 Astor Station, Boston, MA 02123
240pps - one edition - out-of-print; Orginally published in Danish
Smukke Serge og Heroien; Bogan 1976
Previous chapters:
Chapters 18 and 19
In August 1976 Lucien Conein's chum Mitch WerBell III (whose B.R. Fox Company had shared a Washington office with Conein's DEA Special Operations Group) was brought before a Miami federal court on charges of conspiracy to smuggle 50,000 pounds of marijuana a month from Colombia to the United States. He and several co-conspirators had allegedly hatched the plot in the summer of 1975, just when Alberto Sicilia‑Falcon was arrested in Mexico. Multi‑ton marijuana loads were to have been flown from Colombia to an isolated ranch in the Florida Everglades near the cowtown of Okeechobee.[1]
[See Editor's notes below.]
The star prosecution witness at the trial for Mitchell WerBell was scheduled to be the convicted cocaine and marijuana smuggler Kenneth Gordon Burnstine. However, weeks before he was to give testimony, he died in the mysterious crash of his P‑51 Mustang at an air show in the Mohave Desert. Without his corroboration, most of the vital tape recordings and films of meetings he had with WerBell and other defendants were not admissible as evidence in the trial.
[See Editor's notes below.]
The star prosecution witness at the trial for Mitchell WerBell was scheduled to be the convicted cocaine and marijuana smuggler Kenneth Gordon Burnstine. However, weeks before he was to give testimony, he died in the mysterious crash of his P‑51 Mustang at an air show in the Mohave Desert. Without his corroboration, most of the vital tape recordings and films of meetings he had with WerBell and other defendants were not admissible as evidence in the trial.
|Click to enlarge. See more Editor's Notes about Burnstine below.
WerBell's defense was that his role in the plot had been as an undercover agent for Conein. Both Conein and [Nixon aide] Egil Krogh were to have been witnesses on his behalf. But Krogh testified that he didn't know WerBell had worked for the DEA's Special Operations Branch, and Conein wasn't called at all. Another defense witness was the soldier of fortune Gerry Hemming, whose private army of Cuban exiles and Americans, the International Penetration Force [Interpen], appears, from Hemming's description of its missions, to have played an active role in Operation 40. During the trial, Hemming would stay late into the night in WerBell's hotel room.[2]
WerBell was found innocent and released, just like the Thai opium smuggler/CIA agent Puttaporn Khramkhruan before him in 1973. He went home to Georgia to pursue his weapons business and law enforcement training camp. According to writer Hank Messick, in 1978 he was involved in far Right politics with the likes of Major General John K. Singlaub (who had been relieved of his command in Korea after outspoken criticism of President Carter) and members of the American Security Council[3] — the key U.S. link to the far Right's international umbrella organization, the World Anti‑Communist League (WACL). As reported recently in the New York Times, the beneficiaries of his anti-terrorist training have included members of the far Right, anti‑Semitic U.S. Labor Party.[4] [Here, author Henrik Kruger is succinctly referring to Dennis King's revelations about Lyndon LaRouche, who contracted with Mitch WerBell to teach his organization about how to protect itself from being bugged or infiltrated and to provide security against an alleged threat on LaRouche's life. An excerpt from that book (highlighted in color) gives an insight into what WerBell was doing in the early 80's, shortly before his death:
If LaRouche and his followers wanted to meet some real live spooks, WerBell was willing to oblige. He arranged several meetings that included CIA personnel. "You're damn right he did--I was there," said Gordon Novel, a New Orleans private investigator who lived for several months at the Farm in 1977.
Editor's Note: Jim Garrison claimed he had proof during his prosecution of Clay Shaw in 1967 that Gordon Novel worked for CIA:
Novel's own lawyer, Stephen Plotkin, has admitted that his client is a CIA agent. On May 23, 1967, Plotkin was quoted in the New Orleans States–Item as saying that "his client served as an intermediary between the CIA and anti–Castro Cubans in New Orleans and Miami prior to the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion." And that same day, the Associated Press, which has hardly served as my press agent in this case, reported: "When Novel first fled from New Orleans, he headed straight for McLean, Virginia, which is the Central Intelligence Agency suburb. This is not surprising, because Gordon Novel was a CIA employee in the early Sixties." There is no doubt that Gordon Novel was a CIA operative.
Jim Hougan recalls attending two meetings in an apartment at the Crystal City Marriott near Washington--referred to as a "safe house" by WerBell--where the LaRouchians explained their theories about British control of the narcotics traffic to former and active-duty CIA men.
WerBell invited LaRouche and his top aides down to the Farm to regale them with stories about Vietnam and introduce them to more spooks. One of these contacts was Major General John K. Singlaub (U.S. Army), who had spent a large portion of his career assigned to CIA covert operations in Asia and had once been CIA deputy station chief in Seoul. He first met with them while stationed in Georgia. After his retirement in 1978 they showed up at his lectures around the country and at a ceremony where he and WerBell were given medals by the Taiwanese government.
Although Singlaub dropped the LaRouchians after learning of their extremism, some of WerBell's friends were less fastidious. Ex-CIA agent Mackem advised them on the international drug traffic in 1978 while they were writing Dope, Inc., and continued to help them off and on. By 1986 they were paying him over $1,000 a month. ...
At the outset WerBell learned that being LaRouche's handler could be a nerve-wracking job. LaRouche was persuaded in August 1977 that German terrorists were out to kill him. WerBell sent a Powder Springs police officer, Larry Cooper, to Wiesbaden to reorganize LaRouche's personal security. Cooper sat in on a political discussion with LaRouche and several top NCLC members during which LaRouche suddenly brought up the idea of assassinating President Carter, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, NATO general secretary Joseph Luns, and David Rockefeller. It could be done, LaRouche argued, with remote-controlled radio bombs activated from public pay phones.
WerBell had told Cooper that guarding LaRouche was a CIA contract job, and that Cooper therefore would be serving his country. But Cooper now realized that WerBell had not told him the entire truth. He called the Farm in a panic, and said he was coming home on the next flight and contacting the FBI. Gordon Novel was in the room with WerBell, and recalls that "the general went through the ceiling, immediately started calling Washington and canceling a lot of things and generated a kind of propaganda story, a cover story, to completely suppress the affair." Indeed, WerBell had cause for worry--his name had been connected with a radio-bomb assassination scheme once before: During the Nixon administration he had worked with a secret Drug Enforcement Administration unit under Lucien ("Black Luigi") Conein that had planned to assassinate Latin American drug dealers. As a consultant, he had devised remote-control bombs and had provided a business cover for Conein's unit. The plan was scotched when Senator Lowell Weicker found out about it and called hearings. WerBell refused to answer questions before the committee, earning the nickname "Mitch the Fifth" in right-wing circles. Apparently LaRouche had taken this incident and transmuted it in his own spy novel-saturated imagination into something that could land them both in deep trouble.
WerBell decided he'd better get LaRouche into a "reality state" fast or there'd never be an "accommodation between the CIA and LaRouche," Novel said. Shortly afterward, Novel had a falling-out with WerBell and left Powder Springs, He says he told the FBI about the Wiesbaden incident, but they showed no interest.
WerBell owns eight companies, most of them dealing in firearms used by law enforcement and intelligence units. One of the firms, Studies in the Operational Negation of Insurgents and Counter‑Subversion (SIONICS), specializes in the production of M10 and M11 silenced machine pistols. The latter two weapons, designed by Gordon Ingram and WerBell, are about the ultimate weapons for terror and extermination. Their sales agent was WerBell's Military Armament Corporation.[5]
Together with the anti‑Castro Cuban arms dealers Anselmo Alliegro and the mercenary Gerry Hemming, WerBell founded the Parabellum Corporation in 1971 in Miami.[6] [Editor's Note: Parabellum's office was in Room 305 of Jose Marti Building at the corner of S.W. 3rd Avenue and S.W. 8th Street. Room 309 of this building was in 1968 headquarters of Orlando Bosch, founder of CORU.] Parabellum was licensed to sell arms in Latin America. It was also the firm from which Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis planned to obtain weapons for Cuban exiles who were going to (but eventually did not) disrupt the 1972 Miami conventions.[7]
In 1974 WerBell-‑according to a motion filed by his own lawyer when WerBell, his son and his company Defense Services, Inc. were charged with illicit weapons sales-‑was involved in a "conspiracy among the CIA, Robert Vesco, and various corporations to finance clandestine guerilla activities in Latin America."[8] Vesco wanted to purchase WerBell's stock of 2000 silenced M10 machine pistols. When WerBell failed to secure an export license, he devised a plan to smuggle the weapons to Vesco. The two later negotiated the construction of a factory in Costa Rica which would be licensed to fabricate the pistols.[9]
Although the M10 and M11 could be acquired legally only with the special permission of U.S. officials, large numbers of silenced M10s turned up in the hands of European fascist terrorists in 1976‑77. when Pierluigi Concutelli, a leader of the Italian terrorist group Ordine Nuovo, was arrested in Rome in February 1977, police found in his apartment the silenced M10 which he had used to murder the Rome magistrate Vittorio Occorsio. [12] Occorsio had been shot down on the streets of Rome in July 1976 after announcing he would expose the close collaboration between Fascist terror groups and the Mafia.[13]
However, it was among Spanish terrorists in particular that WerBell's machine pistols appeared in quantity.[14] Most notably, a sizable consignment of M10s, sent to Spain under license from U.S. authorities, had been purchased by Spanish intelligence agency DGS,[15] which has allegedly coordinated the actions of Fascist terrorists.[16]
The fugitive IOS billionaire Vesco employed a large contingent of Cuban exiles in his Costa Rica sanctuary.[17] Moreover, his weapons negotiations coincided with the efforts of the fanatic antiCastro Cuban leader Orlando Bosch to assemble Cuban exile groups into an army of terror, CORU, that would later carry out assassinations and other dirty work for several Latin American regimes. [Editor's Note: Recall from above that WerBell's Parabellum office was in Room 305 of Jose Marti Building in Miami, while Room 309 of this building was Orlando Bosch's office.] During Bosch's 1974‑75 drive, a wave of murder struck Miami's Cuban exile haven. Most victims had been opposed to Bosch. With the obstacles to his plan removed, CORU was established in June 1976.[18]
While Vesco and WerBell were hatching their weapons deal Bosch's base of operation just happened to be Vesco's kingdom of Costa Rica, and Mafia heroin boss Santo Trafficante, Jr. was also reportedly there between January 1974 and the summer of 1975. Journalist Jim Hougan speculates in his book Spooks that the three might have joined forces in a CIA conspiracy to escalate anti‑Communist terror in Latin America.[19]
In 1973 some of the details began to surface in a series of scandals linking these individuals. DEA undercover agent Frank Peroff charged Vesco with financing extensive heroin smuggling. For his initiative Peroff was fired summarily and his life was threatened. Before the Senate Investigations Subcommittee could probe deeply the case was squelched through the intervention of the White House. The Oval Office had already helped Vesco-‑a friend of the Nixon family-‑in his run‑in with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had sought his prosecution for the trail of swindle he had left in the world of international finance. Midway through the subcommittee investigation of the heroin charges, the DEA announced the disappearance of its Vesco file.[20]
One year later, as the subcommittee investigated WerBell's weapons deal with Vesco, it learned that Vesco had once employed government narcotics agents. In 1972 two bugging specialists from the BNDD flew from Los Angeles to New Jersey to sweep Vesco's home and office of surveillance devices. According to the subcommittee, the sweeping tour had been arranged by an admitted friend of Vesco's who was also involved in supplying the fugitive with 2000 machine guns and helping him establish a factory for the weapons in Costa Rica.[21] Guess who.
[Editor's Note: Douglas Valentine avers that BNDD and CIA were working together in a program called BUNCIN — the Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network. Valentine's books are must-reads to get full story of the "War on Drugs".]
That was not the last heard of Robert Vesco in connection with drugs. In the summer of 1977 police uncovered the smuggling of large quantities of heroin and cocaine to Rhode Island. In one of the involved ships they discovered a ledger in which it was written: "to Vesco/6 million/he picked up w. shrimper (Lansky)/'Curier' beat UP. "[22]
Several things point to Vesco involvement in the long‑standing partnership of the CIA, the Lansky/Trafficante syndicate and the Cuban exiles, in a drugs‑for‑guns‑for‑terror deal to step up armed suppression and anti‑communism in Latin America. Journalist Hougan ventures that the conspirators might have used such go‑betweens and couriers as the beautiful Patricia Richardson Martinson. According to her ex‑husband, the former army intelligence agent William Spector, Ms. Martinson had very close relationships with almost everyone of importance in the drug business: Yussef Beidas, the Lebanese founder and managing director of INTRA Bank, known as one of the major financiers of the heroin traffic; Paul Louis Weiller, a French financier similarly alleged to be behind the narcotics trade; Eduardo Baroudi, a big‑time heroin and gun smuggler suspected of having arranged Beidas' mysterious death in Switzerland; Christian "Beau Serge" David; Conrad Bouchard, a top heroin trafficker heavily involved in Frank Peroff's Vesco heroin allegations; and Marcel Boucan, the skipper of the Caprice du Temps, which was seized in 1972 with 425 kilos of pure heroin.[23]
Yet another likely intermediary among the apparent conspirators is the CIA contract agent/arms dealer/art dealer Fernand Legros. In 1971 the CIA helped get Vesco released from Saint‑Antoine prison in Geneva, where he had been arrested in the Bernard Cornfeld/Investors Overseas Service case. Legros was in that same prison and spoke with Vesco. In January 1973 the two were reunited in Nassau.[24]
Legros was seen in the company of Beidas in Geneva and Rio de Janeiro. His closest friend was the convicted heroin trafficker Andre Labay, a close associate of Haiti's Duvalier dynasty. In Geneva Legros also met frequently with Evelyne Hirsch, the wife of the imprisoned bankroller Andre Hirsch, whose South American heroin contact had been Christian David. Just as the U.S. put the screws on the Paraguayan government for the extradition of Auguste Ricord, Legros was in Paraguay to close out a weapons deal with President Stroessner. Later, when Legros was placed in protective confinement in Brazil, newspapers speculated on his involvement in the David Mob's narcotics deals.
Recent years' investigations into the CIA/organized crime connection have resulted in an epidemic of sudden deaths. In the CIA/DEA/ Vesco/ Syndicate scheme alone one can mention Kenny Burnstine [see below]; WerBell associate Colonel Robert F. Bayard, who was shot down in an Atlanta parking lot in July 1975;[25] another WerBell associate and codefendant in his marijuana case, John Nardi, who was shot [sic] in Cleveland;[26] and Vesco's security chief Bobby Hall, who was shot to death in his Los Angeles home in July 1976.
After the Senate Investigations Subcommittee's attempted probe into the Vesco heroin case was sabotaged from the highest quarters, committee chairman Henry Jackson asked:
"Did the U.S. government wish to keep Vesco out of this country for some reason? Did he have some special information which he could supply to explain, in part, the national nightmare we have just lived through? "
One Senate investigator offered an answer: "More than any single person, Vesco has information which, if he talked, would make Watergate look like a picnic."[27]
1. T. Dunkin: "The Great Pot Plot," Soldier of Fortune, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1977.
2. Ibid. According to an interview with Hemming published in the April 1976issue of Argosy magazine, Hemming settled in Florida after contacting theCIA to tell the agency all he knew about Castro's operations. There he founded Interpen, which specialized in training anti‑ Castro Cuban exiles in special camps in Florida for long‑range guerilla warfare against the Castro regime. Thus began a long and friendly advisory relationship not only with the CIA, but with the Mob, the Hughes empire and other wealthy and influential Americans as well. About the financing of Interpen, Hemming said, "There were dribs and drabs from people connected with organized crime, some from the right wing, and even from some quite liberal sources." Hemming also said: "In 1961, some Mob people wanted my group to do a couple of jobs in Canada" — emphasis added — (against a ship with machinery for Cuba). . . "John Roselli I knew — but I didn't know who he was" . . . and about CIA/ Cuban terror in Latin America: "All this was a kind of Operation Phoenix for Latin America. There's a guy I know in Miami who worked on this more than once. Evidently he's now had a falling out with some Cubans involved in narcotics. He's a close friend of Bebe Rebozo, and Rebozo's interested in protecting him." Interpen reportedly disbanded in 1964.
3. H. Messick: Of Grass and Snow: The Secret Criminal Elite (Prentice‑Hall, 1979).
4. New York Times, 7 October 1979. According to the magazine Soldier of Fortune ["Terrorists Beware! - Werbell's Cobray School" by T. Dunkin] January 1980), WerBell established Cobray International, Inc., an antiterrorist school primarily for business executives, in Georgia in 1979. Its acting president, Col. Barney Cochran (USAF retired), served as "deputy commander for the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force EUROPE " in 1970‑74, and has also been chief of the Unconventional Warfare Branch and special assistant for counterinsurgency and special activities organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the latter post he was responsible for development of "hardware" for Global Special Operations and unconventional warfare. The school's chief marksmanship instructor, Bert Waldron, holds the record for sniper killings in Vietnam — 113.
5. J. Hougan: Spooks (William Morrow, 1978).
6. Ibid.; see also Gerry Hemming's interview in Argosy, April 1976.
7. Argosy, op. cit.
8. Documents of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, in criminal case no. CR 74‑471 A (cited in Hougan, op. cit.).
9. Hougan, op. cit.
10. "Die gefahrlichen Geschafte des Alberto Sicilia," Der Spiegel, No. 20,1977.
11. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Illicit Traffic in Weapons and Drugs Across the United States‑Mexican Border, Hearings,‑ 95th Cong., 1st Session (1977).
12. Time, 2 February 1977; F. Laurent: L'Orchestre Noir (Stock, 1978).
13. Time, op. cit.
14. Cambio 16, 20 February 1977. 15. Laurent, op. cit.
16. P. Chairoff: Dossier B ... comme Barbouzes (Alain Moreau, 1975); L. Gonzalez‑Mata: Cygne (Grasset, 1976).
17. Hougan, op. cit.
18. According to the November 1977 issue of the Dominican Republic Task Force Newsletter (cited in the January‑February 1978 NACLA Report), the Bonao, Dominican Republic site of the CORU founding was a club for executives of the Falconbridge Nickel Company, which is controlled by the Keck family of Houston, Texas. There is, however, some confusion about the date, which the same source indicated was June 1975. Counterspy, Vol. 3, No. 2 listed the date as June 1974. The summer 1976 date, however, is that used by Bernard Cassen in Le Monde Diplomatique of February 1977, by an anonymous contributor to the Nation of 19 March 1977, and by Blake Fleetwood in New Times of 13 May 1977. Bosch, incidentally, like Vesco and WerBell, was associated with narcotics, insofar as his daughter and son‑in‑law were arrested in 1977 for smuggling cocaine.
19. Hougan, op. cit. Vesco had his own contact in the Lansky Syndicate — Dino Cellini, with whom he had met secretly at Rome's Fiumicino Airport in 1972.
20. L.H. Whittemore: Peroff (Ballantine, 1975).
21. Ibid.
22. Messick, op. cit.; Boston Globe, 30 September 1977. 23. Hougan, op. cit.
24. R. Peyrefitte: La Vie Extraordinaire de Fernand Legros (Albin Michel, 1976).
25. Dunkin, op. cit. 26. Messick, op. cit. 27. Whittemore, op. cit. Somewhere among Robert Vesco's memorabilia floats the strange affair of the Brotherhood of [Eternal] Love. Through it thousands of potential activists were stoned for years on LSD, and enormous profits from the sales of tablets were reinvested through the Investors Overseas Service controlled Fiduciary Trust Company (Der Spiegel, No. 39, 1974).
In the same connection, it is interesting to note that when, in the fall of 1978, Italian police investigated the American Ronald Stark's close involvement with Italian terrorists, they discovered he had been heavily involved in the Brotherhood of Love until 1971, and had run one of its LSD labs in California. In his terrorist period Stark was closely in touch with the U.S. embassy in London, which had opened a letter to him with "Dear Ron" (Panorama, 31 October 1978).
Editor's notes:
The land on all sides of Lake Okeechobee, a hundred miles or so south of today's Disney World, has teemed with military or covert intelligence operations since Fidel Castro first seized power, and there is a long and sordid history in this area of real estate used as a destination for smugglers, according to a November 21, 1986 article by Jean Dubail in the Sun Sentinel:
Editor's notes:
The land on all sides of Lake Okeechobee, a hundred miles or so south of today's Disney World, has teemed with military or covert intelligence operations since Fidel Castro first seized power, and there is a long and sordid history in this area of real estate used as a destination for smugglers, according to a November 21, 1986 article by Jean Dubail in the Sun Sentinel:
Drug smuggling, after all, has become a leading industry in the sparsely populated counties bordering Lake Okeechobee. Wide, flat meadows and long, lonely stretches of road make ideal landing strips for light planes. Because there are so few people around, it's easy to unload planeloads of contraband without being seen. Glades County Sheriff Russell Henderson illustrates the problem this way:Burnstine had been born in Chicago in 1933, to Ralph A. and Dolores Edison Burnstine. Ralph was the son of Isador Burnstine, owner of an automobile dealership in Chicago. Isador's parents were born in Germany, and his wife (Ralph's mother) had immigrated from Latvia with her parents in 1890. Both Ralph and his brother Herman worked in their family's car sales business, founded by Isador and his brother Isaac:
"One time we took a map of Glades County," he says. "Every known strip we marked in red. The map was just about red when we got through."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim McAdams compares the lakeside counties with Everglades City and the Ten Thousand Islands, where smugglers have eluded customs agents for generations.
"What Everglades City was to the small go-fast boats, that area is to the small twin-engine aircraft," says McAdams, who works with the Miami-based Drug Enforcement Task Force. "Unless they happen to be trailed in by customs, they`re going to be able to land, dump their load, take off and mingle with the general public."
"It's always tough," says J.E. "Buck" Buchanan of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "A lot of smuggling going on, wide open spaces and damn few of us."
The problem is not a new one, Buchanan says. Smugglers have been bringing drugs to the lakeside counties since the early 1970s, when large two- and four-engine planes flew tons of marijuana directly from Colombia.
"We were eaten up with aircraft smugglers at one time," Buchanan says. "They were falling out of the sky."
Such planes, however, were relatively easy to spot and track. Buchanan says that fact -- plus increased demand for less bulky and more valuable cocaine -- led smugglers to start using small planes. Because these craft have a shorter range, smugglers began using the Bahamas as a jumping-off point. Lake Okeechobee is less than 125 miles due west of West End.]
The Riviera Motor Sales Company remained a Chrysler automobile dealership under the ownership of the Burnstine family through the 1930s, as did the Burnstines' Capitol Motor Sales Company on W. Lawrence. Isadore Burnstine then acquired another Chrysler franchise and opened the Burnstine Motor Sales Co. in 1928 at 2524 N. Milwaukee Ave. in the Logan Square neighborhood. He died in 1936 and his son Ralph took over control of the family's automobile dealerships. The Riviera Motor Sales Company operated out of the building until at least 1937 during the Great Depression. That year the Burnstine family turned over ownership of the building to the Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. Building, which owned the building until 1942, when it was sold to the 1211 Elmdale Corporation.The 1940 census showed Kenneth and his younger brother, Irving, living with their mother in Tucson, Arizona, but we are told by Jack R. Swike that Kenneth graduated from college in Chicago's Northwestern University, before enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1954. Data available at Ancestry.com informs us that he was selected for training as a Pfc to the First Training Battalion in Quantico, Va. and, by July 1954, had the rank of 2nd lieutenant. From there he went to El Toro, the permanent center of Marine aviation on the west coast as a member of the Service Squadron of the Air Fleet Marine Force of the Pacific (Trans Section Servron AirFMFPac). Within a few months Burnstine was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and sent to the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps in Great Lakes, Illinois. His name appeared on a Unit Diary on Jan. 18, 1956, addressed to MRI, El Toro, for Unit H and MS-11, MAG-ll, 1stMAW, FMF, location Japan. Under his name was the following: "Acc temp attp as 1Lt MCR rk 2Jan56 auth CMC 1tr DHD2742-kab of 3Jan56." His MOS was 0210, summarized in today's Marine Occupations Specialties Manual as follows:
Counterintelligence (CI) warrant officers serve in both CI and HUMINT billets. They conduct technical surveillance counter measures (TSCM), provide expertise in advanced foreign CI, and advise tactical commanders in force protection operations. Duties include serving as a CI assistant platoon commander and HUMINT Exploitation Team (HET) Commander within the HUMINT Company, service on a MEF staff, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and serving as a CI representative to unified commands and national-level agencies. CI limited duty officers function as supervisors, advisors and coordinators of counterintelligence activities and human intelligence collection operations. Duties may include serving as CIHO at the MEF or MARFOR headquarters, service with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, serving as staff officers within the CI/HUMINT Branch, HQMC, and serving as a CI representative to national-level agencies.The history of this MOS 0210 during the Korean War is described under Section 2 of a website called Counterintelligence History. A new duty sheet dated 9 Apr 56 addressed to Quantico, gave him a new assignment with MOS 7399 (IRC ATT) to the Naval Training Center at Great Lakes, Illinois. These codes could have been abbreviations or acronyms for a variety of possible meanings, as set out in the Department of Defense Dictionary. The first two digits (73) of the new MOS, however, indicates navigation officer or enlisted flight crews, and the 99 designated that he was a flight student.
Strangely enough, after all the Marine Corps' expense of training him, Burnstine resigned his commission on 16 Apr 56, based on unit diary from Great Lakes NTC to Quantico. However, Jack Swike tells us there were some very strange things going on with Burnstine at this time.
In 1956 he married Ann Mitchell and moved to Mobile, AL, where he became the treasurer of her father's real estate office, Gulf Coast Realty Co., later called the The Mitchell Company, Inc. Ann and her brothers, Mayer and Abe, were children of Joseph Benjamin Mitchell, son of a Russian Jews born in Germany who had immigrated to New York in 1889. Ann's grandfather, Meyer Mitchell, had worked in a factory that made knee pants in 1900, but had relocated with his young family, including her then-infant father, to Mobile in about 1901 and worked as a peddler of dry goods.
Joseph Mitchell, Burnstine's father-in-law, was also a co-owner in the Gulf Coast Tobacco Company with his sister Anne and her husband Samuel J. Ripps, who were prosecuted by Truman's Justice Department for tax evasion between the years 1940-45 and each man received jail time. The case was publicized in 1951 when the U.S. Attorney in charge of the tax division, T. Lamar Caudle, was fired and later investigated for taking bribes from taxpayers to prevent prosecution. Two years earlier Drew Pearson had mentioned the case:
In 1956 he married Ann Mitchell and moved to Mobile, AL, where he became the treasurer of her father's real estate office, Gulf Coast Realty Co., later called the The Mitchell Company, Inc. Ann and her brothers, Mayer and Abe, were children of Joseph Benjamin Mitchell, son of a Russian Jews born in Germany who had immigrated to New York in 1889. Ann's grandfather, Meyer Mitchell, had worked in a factory that made knee pants in 1900, but had relocated with his young family, including her then-infant father, to Mobile in about 1901 and worked as a peddler of dry goods.
Joseph Mitchell, Burnstine's father-in-law, was also a co-owner in the Gulf Coast Tobacco Company with his sister Anne and her husband Samuel J. Ripps, who were prosecuted by Truman's Justice Department for tax evasion between the years 1940-45 and each man received jail time. The case was publicized in 1951 when the U.S. Attorney in charge of the tax division, T. Lamar Caudle, was fired and later investigated for taking bribes from taxpayers to prevent prosecution. Two years earlier Drew Pearson had mentioned the case:
Joe Mitchell and his brother-in-law, Sam Ripps, organized the Gulf Coast Tobacco company during the war and sold millions of dollars worth of jewelry to army post exchanges. The boys in the Army camps would buy almost anything those days and Ripps and Mitchell made a killing. Then, a couple of years later, alert treasury agents caught them keeping two sets of books, and after long investigation, recommended criminal prosecution....Treasury agents claimed they owed a minimum of $700,000; perhaps as much as $1,200.000.
When Ann's brother, Mayer Mitchell, died in 2007, a resolution was read in the Alabama state senate stating that he had been "born in New Orleans in 1933 and grew up in Mobile, AL. He earned his bachelor of science degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance in 1953. He then served as an Army first lieutenant in Korea, earning a commendation ribbon with medal pendant for meritorious service. Returning home to Mobile with his wife Arlene in 1958, Mayer founded, with his brother Abe, the Mitchell Company, a commercial and residential real estate development firm. He went on to serve as its chairman and chief executive officer for the next three decades, selling his interest in the Mitchell Company in 1986."
By 1958 Kenneth's parents, Ralph and Dolores Burnstine, had moved to Miami Beach with Kenneth's brother Irving, who enlisted in the Marines that year. Calling himself "Moe" Burnstine, Kenneth and his wife Ann were also in Miami Beach where he worked as purchasing agent for the Carillon Hotel at 6801 Collins Avenue. He and Ann divorced in 1966, and he quickly married Carole Sue Tolbert in Broward County, Florida, but they divorced in 1974. Less than two years later his plane crashed, leaving nothing but a severed finger to identify him.


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The power to settle financial complaints.
March 2005
Personal accident policies are one of the clearest examples of non-indemnity insurance contracts. In other words, their aim is not to return you (so far as reasonably possible) to the position you were in before the actual occurrence of the event you insured yourself against. Instead, the policies simply pay a financial benefit if that event occurs.
If your car is damaged, your motor insurer can indemnify you — by repairing or replacing the car (or, if it chooses, by paying a cash sum in lieu of repair or replacement). If you accidentally lose an eye, your personal accident insurer cannot repair or replace the eye, but it can pay you a lump sum to compensate you for the loss.
Most personal accident policies pay out only if the policyholder suffers "accidental bodily injury or death solely and directly as a result of an external, violent and visible cause", or words to that effect. There are usually defined benefits for certain injuries depending on the level of cover purchased, for example, £10,000 for loss of use of a limb, £8,000 for loss of an eye, £80,000 for permanent total disablement, etc.
Many cases are relatively straightforward: if you are involved in an accident which results in permanent "bodily injury" as defined in the policy, then you receive the appropriate sum for that type of injury.
Sometimes there are issues about whether the injury was the sole and direct result of the accident, particularly in the case of orthopaedic injuries where pre-existing degenerative changes may have contributed towards the disability. However, these cases can usually be resolved by reference to appropriate medical evidence. If, for example, the evidence establishes that the accident caused only 10% of the injury — the other 90% being due to degenerative change — then we would usually ask the insurer to pay 10% of the benefit. This is on the basis of good industry practice: many insurers voluntarily make a proportionate contribution if the accident is shown to have accelerated pre-existing degenerative changes.
A recent High Court judgment — Blackburn Rovers Football & Athletic Club plc v Avon Insurance plc & others [15 November 2004] — indicates that only abnormal degenerative changes should be taken account of when limiting or excluding a claim. Mr Justice Moore-Bick held that a clause in a personal accident policy which excluded disablement caused directly or indirectly by degenerative conditions should not apply. The injured professional footballer suffered normal degenerative change for a man of his age and occupation. Accordingly, the judge considered this should be disregarded when assessing whether his injury was caused solely and independently of any other cause:
"I have reached the conclusion that [the exclusion] must be construed as referring to degenerative conditions that are abnormal in their degree and of sufficient severity to amount to an illness. For the same reason I do not think a normal degree of degeneration is to be regarded as a "cause" of injury when considering the definition of Accidental Bodily Injury."
The judge also stated that "it has been recognised for a long time that the court should lean against construing a policy of insurance in a way that would substantially deprive the insured of the protection which the policy is designed to provide." This corresponds with our view that it is neither fair nor reasonable to use the mere presence of degenerative change to exclude genuine personal accident claims, which such policies are clearly designed to respond to.
More problematic are cases that concern surgical complications. All surgery involves an element of risk. Even with a "textbook" procedure where everything goes according to plan, there is a chance, albeit minimal, that the patient will react badly during or after the operation. This is why surgeons are under a duty to warn their patients of the potential risks, however small. Indeed, in a controversial judgment a majority of the House of Lords recently held that a surgeon's failure to warn made him liable for all the reasonably foreseeable consequences of the surgery, even where the surgery itself was not carried out negligently: (Chester v Afshar, reported [2004] in Volume 4 of the All England Law Reports at page 587.)
Among the disputes referred to us, we have seen a number of cases where the policyholder died or was injured following surgery. The insurer has usually rejected the personal accident claim on the basis that the bodily injury or death was not caused accidentally and/or was not the sole and direct result of an external, violent and visible cause. When dealing with these cases, we try to distinguish between:
These cases are very difficult and we share many of the insurance industry's reservations about treating surgical complications as accidents. However, even case law indicates that we ought to distinguish between those situations where the injury is a potentially natural result of the procedure (for example, where cutting into a particular part of the body might result in injury) and situations where injury – although a possibility – is not the natural result of the procedure (for example, where the wrong part of the body has been cut).
All surgery carries some risk, but it is usually possible to isolate those cases where something accidental has caused the injury. And those are the cases that we consider it fair and reasonable for personal accident insurers to meet.
Mr T underwent minor surgery to correct a prolapsed disc. The operation appeared to be uneventful. However, during recovery Mr T complained of tightness in his neck and eventually he was rushed to intensive care, where he died. The coroner concluded that the cause of death was haemorrhaging from a vertebral artery. When the insurer rejected the personal accident claim brought by Mr T's widow, she complained to us.
complaint upheld
The weight of the medical evidence indicated that the surgeon had negligently torn or cut the artery during the surgery. We felt that this was not a natural consequence of the risks inherent in surgery. Something had gone wrong and this was not what any of the parties to the surgery had anticipated.
The injury was not the natural result of the procedure as it was solely and directly caused by external, violent and visible means. The injury therefore fell within the scope of the policy. When we put this argument to the insurer, it agreed to meet the claim.
Mrs G had an operation to remove a lump from her neck. During recovery, the wound started to bleed profusely, resulting in a massive haemorrhage. As a result of this, Mrs G died.
The insurer rejected a claim made by Mrs G's husband on their personal accident policy. It said that Mrs G's death had resulted from the complications of planned surgery – rather than from an accident. Mr G then brought his complaint to us.
complaint rejected
There was nothing to suggest that this was an accident. The medical reports and the coroner's inquest cleared the surgeons of any wrongdoing. No error had occurred during the operation. Mrs G was just one of the very few unfortunate patients who react badly to this type of surgical intervention.
The bodily injury here was a natural, though tragic, consequence of the surgery. It was an anticipated risk which Mrs G had consented to, insofar as the general risks of surgical complications had been explained to her. So despite sympathising with Mr G's situation, we could not agree that the insurer had acted unfairly or unreasonably.
ombudsman news issue 44 [PDF format]
ombudsman news gives general information on the position at the date of publication. It is not a definitive statement of the law, our approach or our procedure.
The illustrative case studies are based broadly on real-life cases, but are not precedents. Individual cases are decided on their own facts.


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Superficial angiomyxomas in the parotid region are
extremely rare. Rodriguez et al have previously reported
one such case in the parotid region in a 61-year-old male
The differential diagnosis includes benign and lowgrade
malignant myxoid lesions including aggressive
angiomyxoma, focal cutaneous mucinosis, myxoid
neurothekeomas, myxoid neurofibroma, acral fibromyxoma
and myxoid liposarcoma 7. It is important to differentiate
it from these lesions since superficial angiomyxoma has a
propensity for local recurrence.
Aggressive angiomyxoma is larger, situated deep, usually
in the female pelvis and the blood vessels are large, thick
walled and prominent. Focal cutaneous mucinosis lacks
lobular architecture, epithelial structures and neutrophils
in the stroma. Superficial acral angiomyxoma is almost
exclusively found on the fingers and toes in middle age and
lacks a neutrophilic infiltrate 8. Myxoid neurothekeoma
has a prominent lobular growth pattern and is characterized
by plump cells that are S-100 positive. Myxoid neurofibroma
has cells with buckled nuclei that are S-100 positive. Myxoid
liposarcomas are deeply situated and larger with chicken
wire vascular pattern and lipoblasts. Myxofibrosarcoma
has more marked nuclear atypia and hyperchromasia with
presence of curvilinear blood vessels lined by cells with
hyperchromatic nuclei 7.
At this site, the differential diagnosis includes parotid gland
tumors as well as cysts of the first branchial arch 5. Fine
needle aspiration cytology can be confusing as in our case.
Superficial angiomyxomas have an overall good prognosis
as these lesions remain superficial without affecting deeper
structures. Appropriate diagnosis, complete surgical
treatment and close follow up are advised.
In conclusion, the case highlights the importance of
distinguishing superficial angiomyxomas from other
lesions that occur in the parotid region. One should be
cautious about reporting pleomorphic adenoma on smears
showing abundant fibromyxoid stroma.
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
1) A llen PW, Dymock RB, Mac Cormac LB. Superficial
angiomyxomas with or without epithelial components. Report of
30 tumors in 28 patients. Am J Surg Pathol. 1988;12:519-30.
2) Rosanowski F, Walther EK. Pre-auricular angiomyxoma in a
child. Laryngorhinootologie. 1993;72:618-20.
3) Khadilkar UN, Khadilkar NP, Rao PS, Chakravorty S, Goel G.
Superficial angiomyxoma of the external ear not associated
with Carney's complex: A case report. Kathmandu Univ Med J.
4) Ravindra SV, Raju MS, Sunitha JD, Taneja N, Chandra S,
Mahajan S, Panwar E. Intraoral superficial angiomyxoma of
the upper alveolus: Report of a unique case. Cas Rep Med.
5) Bedlow AJ, Sampson SA, Holden CA. Congenital superficial
angiomyxoma. Clin Exp Dermatol. 1997;22:237-9.
6) Rosado Rodríguez P, de Vicente JC, de Villalaín L, Blanco V.
Superficial angiomyxoma of the parotid region and review of
literature. Acta Otorrinolaringol Esp. 2012;63:147-9.
7) Shanthi V, Rama Krishna BA, Rao NM, Reddy RS, Chandra
Sekhar BHP, Venkata Harish C. Superficial angiomyxoma with
epithelial component a rare cutaneous myxoid tumour. J Biosci
Tech. 2011;2:318-23.
8) Fetsch JF, Laskin MB, Miettinen M. Superficial acral
fibromyxoma: A clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical
analysis of 37 cases of distinctive soft tissue tumors with a
predilection fingers and toes. Hum Pathol. 2001;32:704-14.


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Web uptime
1H knows that the most important thing for a web hosting company is to keep the websites of its customers online. That is why the services responsible for making the content hosted on your servers accessible are first in the list of what Guardian monitors and restarts:The web server: Apache, LiteSpeed
The database server: MySQL, PostgreSQL
The domain name system (DNS) server
Email uptime
The second most important service a web hosting company offers is email. To ensure your customers will be able to send and receive their email messages at all times, Guardian makes sure that the following are always up:The mail transfer agent (MTA): Exim
The IMAP/POP3 services: Dovecot, Courier
Other important services
There are several other services that web hosting customers use very often such as FTP, control panel, etc. By having Guardian watch over as many of these services as possible, any hosting company will avoid complaints from its customers that something is not properly working. Currently 1H Guardian monitors and fixes outages in the following services:The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server
The control panel: cPanel, DirectAdmin
The Cron Jobs daemon
1H services
The last group of services watched by Guardian is the 1H software services. Guardian monitors and will fix if needed even its own status checker!The 1H Guardian status checker
The 1H Hive statistics collecting service
The 1H Hawk intrusion detection system
The full list of services monitored by Guardian is regularly updated in our documentation. If you have an important service running on your server that is not included yet, we will be happy to add it for monitoring on request!


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- Heard recently that my MC (main character) is only as strong as his nemesis. I like that thought. If you think about it, the hero's that we all know and love all face very strong or dangerous villains. Harry Potter had Lord Voldemort. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader. Batman has the Joker. The list goes on and on. Odds are whoever you view as your favorite hero also has your favorite nemesis in the same story. You need that level of danger and evil if you want your hero to rise to his level of greatness.
So with that thought, we as writers need to spend as much, if not more time on developing our antagonists as we do our protagonists. Not just name them and call them evil, develop them. Know their back story, why are they evil? What do they want to accomplish? What are their human qualities? In what ways are they relatable? In what ways are they over the top? Are the pure evil, (not as likely and believable), or do they have some good qualities that are overshadowed and dominated by an evil desire that drives all their actions? Are they redeemable? Beyond redemption? You have to know your nemesis even better than you know your hero. Your hero will have his story told, but your nemesis probably won't, at least not as well and developed as your hero.. so you need to know their motivations more because you may not be able to develop them through conflict like your MC.
Just about the only story I've read recently that I really enjoyed that didn't have a true outstanding nemesis was The Hunger Games.. and really there the antagonist was the oppression of the people, the elitist Capitol City, and the corrupt government as much as it was President Snow. And beyond that, the protagonist in the Hunger games is almost an Anti-Hero(ine) anyway.
- Motivation. Sometimes it's lacking. That's when we all need our own internal Matt Foley, otherwise we may find ourselves eating a steady diet of Government cheese and living in a van down by the river.
Matt Foley: Now young man, what do you want to do with your life?
Brian: Actually Matt, I kinda want to be a writer.
Matt Foley: Well la-dee fricking daa.. we got ourselves a writer here
Hey Dad, I can't see real good, is that Bill Shakespear
over there?
Father: Well actually Matt, Ellen and I have encouraged Brian in
his writing.
Matt Foley: Dad I wish you could just shut your big YAPPER!So, excluding having Matt Foley shack up with you for a while, how do you keep yourself motivated? When it's late on Monday night and you've had a day to forget, how do you shut your big YAPPER and pound the keys for a couple of hours?
I don't think what you share here about an antagonist can be emphasized enough. Though I think a lot of the strength of the hero comes from a different source than that of the antagonist. Luke vs the Emperor, Luke's strength came from his faith in his father. He believed because he had once been touched by the light that it made enough of an impression that he still had good within him. Harry Potter was never the match of Voldemort, instead he refused to give into the darkness that surrounded him. It made him a not only a force, but a symbol for good in his world that rivaled Voldemort. I don't think the good guys are ever as powerful in the classical sense of power as the bad guy, but they have something unique which evens the playing field. Just a few thoughts!ReplyDeleteReplies
Jayrod, I posted a reply that somehow never made it onto the board so I'll rephrase what I wrote previously. I like what you said here about the good guys never being as powerful as the bad guys.. the Hero's Journey teaches us the weak-to-powerful arc, and I think there's a lot to be said for that, but the end result powerful isn't usually total power.. but an all new level of power that's never been achieved previously. I was watching the Avatar cartoons, (not the hideous live-action Last Air Bender movie).. and was thinking about how the character there, Ang, is powerful.. but he's constantly beaten and doubts his ability until the final fight where he finally realizes his power. I think that lack of confidence, but the courage to accept the challenge despite the lack of confidence is crucial in stories like these. Courage is not found in fighting when you expect to win, but in facing your fears when winning is not expected. I think that's what changes a character from mere participant in a story to 'hero', a showing of courage despite likely defeat. We have to bloody our hero's up, and make them fail and fail again.. only to rise ultimately to win because of what they've learned due to their failures. If Luke had defeated Darth Vader in their first fight.. the story is done.Delete
Great post. I went ahead and tagged you in that 11 questions meme, just so I could like your blog to mine. I do try to have well-rounded villains in my stories. In fact, I have a back story for even the most minor character on the page.ReplyDelete
This comment has been removed by the author.ReplyDelete
sorry, I didn't see that you already have been tagged.ReplyDeleteReplies
Thanks for thinking of me Cat. :)Delete
Hi! I'm a new follower from the campaign. Nice to meet you!ReplyDeleteReplies
Hi Margo.. I follwed you back. I think I got the better of the deal, great site you've got. :)Delete


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Then I went downstairs to see my ortho. She was extremely pleased that none of my brackets had come loose and moved me onto a new wire! I'm sore today but I really don't care, i'm so pleased everything is working as it should do. I got lilac ligs (shamelessly, because my nails are lilac at the minute and I wanted them to match - such a girl).
Unfortunately I left my memory card at uni and i'm home for a month for the holidays so I won't be able to post pictures until I get back on January 16th, but I can tell you that things are looking good, especially those teeth at the front. Dr Ellis even mentioned the possibility of not having surgery.. I was amazed at that! However if surgery is going to give me a better result then I 100% want it, firstly because it's covered by the NHS so I won't have to pay a penny, and also because I think now i've got the braces I might as well go all the way and get my jaw fixed too.
Merry Christmas to all my braced blogger friends!


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Why, hello there, Wednesday! You sure crept up on me.
Today, my son's school is having a fundraising event for cancer. His jazz band is playing again, so a bit later I'm off to his school to hear them.
This week's WIPpet is from a scene that gave me a lot of trouble. It felt dry, so one of my betas suggesting adding heat to the argument. I struggle to write good fictional fights—it's why I write love stories and not action! My beta was right, though, so I added a lot more tension.
When I changed the scene, I realized that I had an angsty teenager on my hands who was likely to say some things for the purpose of being as hurtful as possible. I've been back and forth on this one, and I've changed it more than once. I sensed it would be true to his character to use a particularly awful homophobic slur. However, I felt that it would be inappropriate and offensive for me to actually write it, for a number of reasons. So I didn't; I implied. Today's bit is the rest of that argument.
The title of the post is what my kids say whenever someone has taken things too far. Simple math: today's the 18th, so 1 + 8 = 9 dialog paragraphs.
The blood drained from Alex's face; he put up a hand. "Don't you dare ever call me that again."
Michael made an irritated sound in his throat. "I'm done listening to anything you have to say."
"Was there a time when you did?" Alex snapped. He wanted to take the words back the moment they left his mouth.
Michael's expression darkened. "Screw you," he spat.
"Your mom wouldn't be too happy if she heard you say that to me."
"You know what? I don't care. I don't need you to tell me what to do, and neither does Mom." He pushed away from the wall and stepped close to Alex. "Don't you get it? We don't need you."
Alex stared at him, his mouth open, trying to find words. "I—"
Michael huffed and rolled his eyes. "I'm going to wait outside." He turned around and stalked off.
"You're still wearing your tap shoes!" Alex called after him; Michael gave him the finger.
Be sure to go here and read the other entries. You can add your own if you like—just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date by whatever tangled means necessary, and enter the link in the collection. Thanks again to K. L. Schwengel for hosting!


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