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The Skeptics
Japan Still Sleeps
Michael Auslin of AEI writes at Foreign Policy that Japan is changing its defense posture in ways that "will have profound implications for the balance of power in Asia." I hope this is right, but I'm fairly sure it's wrong.
Last month, while I was in Japan meeting with industry and goverment leaders, including people close to the Ministry of Defense, I saw no evidence for this thesis. And Auslin's evidence is somewhat thin.
The article claims the Japanese government is laying the groundwork for a much larger military role in Asia over the next several decades. The evidence Auslin provides includes:
—A deal on realigning the U.S. military presence in Japan that avoids dealing with the biggest sticking point between the two sides (Futenma);
—A smattering of Japanese overseas deployments that Auslin claims have produced "a generation of [Self Defense Force] air, sea, and land officers with extensive operational experience";
—Japan's decision to buy the F-35;
—Tokyo's beginning of a process to revise the proscription on arms exports;
—and Japanese cooperation with the United States on missile defense.
These developments all indicate some militarization but nothing likely to produce "profound implications for the balance of power in Asia." Missile defense and experience conducting humanitarian-relief operations are all well and good, but they do not buy you the naval wherewithal to prevent China from taking over your sea lanes.
Auslin allows that the "overriding challenge" to a more normalized Japanese defense posture is the fact that these changes "lack a coherent political articulation and have not been supported by a national debate over Japan's role in Asia and in the world." Beyond that overriding challenge, however, there are a number of problems that could ground this vessel before it gets out of port.
First, demographics. Japan currently is swirling down the demographic drain. By 2040, 14 percent of the Japanese population is projected to be eighty years of age or older, with every five-year (i.e., ten-fourteen, fifteen-nineteen, etc) age cohort under sixty-five shrinking dramatically as compared to the same age group in 2010. Japan is likely to possess 40 percent fewer citizens under age fifteen and a 30 percent drop in working-age population by 2040, placing significant stress on its economy and its pension and health systems. This does not bode well for Japan's future economic performance and thus for its ability to generate the military investment that would underwrite a more assertive defense policy.
The demographic conundrum, coupled with expansive health-care and pension benefits for Japan's elderly, has built a tumor of structural debt into the Japanese economy. Meanwhile, the economic "lost decade" of the 1990s has turned into something that looks an awful lot like two lost decades. Maybe more. The attitude in Japan among young people is commensurately dyspeptic.
Relatedly, the big political issue in Japan today is whether to raise the consumption tax, which is essentially a value-added tax, from 5 percent to 10 percent in order to begin to close the gaping fiscal maw. What this would do, in essence, is redistribute money from high-consumption/low-earning Japanese (the large, politically powerful elderly cohort) toward lower-consumption/higher-earning Japanese (the smaller, politically weaker group of younger Japanese). But it is important to understand a) that whether this will happen is still anyone's guess, and b) even were it to pass, it would not come close to patching over the shortfalls in the Japanese welfare state.
In Tokyo, I heard a profound sense of resignation about Japan's ability to take a larger role in providing its own defense, even among defense intellectuals. When pressed on this point, Japanese-security scholars shrug and point at both public opinion and straight-trend-line projections of Chinese military spending and argue that they could not possibly keep up. True, but mostly irrelevant. They don't need to keep up, dollar for dollar; they need to do a limited number of things well. Some of those things they currently do well, like antisubmarine warfare and surveillance, but the China side of the China-Japan balance is shifting rapidly.
As I said, I'd like very much to believe that Japan is going to take on a much larger role in providing for its own security. But as long as Washington defines America's security as coextensive with Japan's, Tokyo would be foolish to stop free riding on America's exertions in Asia.
Image: An Honorable German
U.S. Taxpayers Subsidize Afghan Insurgents
Less than a week after President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan and proclaimed, "We broke the Taliban's momentum," the chairs of the Senate and House intelligence committees offered a candid assessment of the U.S. mission. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), alongside Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), said on CNN's "State of the Union," "I think we'd both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger."
Their observations are the type of unvarnished truth our military and civilian leaders typically avoid. U.S. and NATO officials meeting in Chicago later this month should take heed, especially since American taxpayer dollars are helping to fund the insurgents we're fighting.
In a not-much-publicized report last August from the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, researchers found that after the illegal opium trade, the largest source of funding for the insurgency was U.S. contracting dollars. It found that Afghan companies under the Host Nation Trucking program use private-security contractors who then turn around and pay insurgents and warlords who control the roads we must use. Although the Commission on Wartime Contracting report did not mention how much was funneled to the insurgency, a similar protection racket also was uncovered a couple of years ago.
Task Force 2010, assembled by General David Petraeus, examined the connections between insurgents and criminal networks on the one hand and Afghan companies and their subcontractors for transportation, construction and other services on the other. The task force estimated that $360 million in U.S. tax dollars ended up in the hands of insurgents and other "malign actors," including criminals, warlords and power brokers.
The $360 million "represents a fraction of the $31 billion in active U.S. contracts that the task force reviewed," Associated Press reporters Deb Riechmann and Richard Lardner explained. As the Brussels-based International Crisis Group observed in a depressingly frank June 2011 report:
Insecurity and the inflow of billions of dollars in international assistance has failed to significantly strengthen the state's capacity to provide security or basic services and has instead, by progressively fusing the interests of political gatekeepers and insurgent commanders, provided new opportunities for criminals and insurgents to expand their influence inside the government. The economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen.
Is it any wonder that pouring massive piles of cash into a broken and war-ravaged system resulted in failure? Those who follow the news from Afghanistan will see how rent seeking inadvertently strengthens that country's twin evils: corruption and insecurity. As journalist Douglas A. Wissing writes in his eye-opening new book, Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban, in addition to foreign-development advisers preoccupied with their own career advancement, development money itself was not countering the insurgency but rather paying for it. Combined with an enemy whose strategy was always about exhaustion, the result has been catastrophic.
Wissing writes, "I learned that the linkage between third-world development and US national security that foreign-aid lobbyists peddled to American policymakers was a faith-based doctrine with almost no foundation in research." Year after year, the American public was spoon-fed government reports that lacked honesty about why our top-down security and development programs were constantly failing. Buildings were poorly constructed. Projects were bereft of proper oversight. Schools were built without teachers to staff them. Road-construction contracts financed insurgent racketeering operations.
The undistorted evidence of a European-based think tank, a bipartisan congressional commission and a report from military experts assembled by the war's former commander leads to one conclusion: the war is inadvertently throwing American taxpayer dollars at insurgents killing American troops. What about this self-aggrandizing system is making Americans safer? Moreover, what about the safety of the Afghans whom planners in Washington swore to protect from the Taliban? In spite of the tripling of U.S. troops since 2008, a recent report by the U.N. mission concluded that 2011 was the fifth straight year in which civilian casualties rose.
As Feinstein said to CNN on Sunday, "The Taliban has a shadow system of governors in many provinces. They've gone up north. They've gone to the east. Attacks are up." After over a decade of inadvertently funding the enemy and alienating the local people, Americans should not be surprised with such a dire outcome. If anything, they should be surprised that their elected leaders are finally telling the truth.
Image: isafmedia
Why Al-Qaeda May Never Die
The first anniversary of the murderous raid on Osama bin Laden's hideaway presents an opportunity to evaluate the threat al-Qaeda now poses. For its part, the Obama administration/reelection campaign seems more interested in using the event to score political points against Mitt Romney. But terrorism alarmists are more focused on al-Qaeda itself and are in peak form explaining that, although the organization has been weakened, it still manages to present a grave threat.
Various techniques, honed over a decade, are applied to support this contention. If they are accepted as valid, al-Qaeda will cease to exist or be "defeated" only when we run entirely out of tiny groups or individual nuts operating with al-Qaeda-like aspirations.
One technique is to espy and assess various "linkages" or "connections" or "ties" or "threads" between and among a range of disparate terrorists or terrorist groups, most of which appear rather gossamer and of only limited consequence on closer examination.
Another is to darkly elevate the vague and the distinctly aspirational as if there were some tangible potential there. Thus, al-Qaeda's "ideology of the global jihad" still "survives," we are told, and the group is "making provisions for the long term;" is "poised to survive;" "is regrouping;" is "not entirely isolated;" might work with Iran because "they share a common enemy;" has been "embraced" by a Nigerian group with purely local concerns; has provided "strategic advice;" has "inspired" a number of inept would-be amateur terrorists here and there; and has been thinking about plotting the assassination of Barack Obama.
A third technique is to exaggerate the importance and effectiveness of the "affiliated groups" linked to al-Qaeda central. In particular, alarmists point to the al-Qaeda affiliate in chaotic Yemen, proclaiming it to be the "deadliest" and the "most aggressive" of these and a "major threat."
Insofar as it threatens the United States, the Yemen group has been elevated by two efforts at international terrorism, both of which failed abysmally.
It apparently supplied the 2009 underwear bomber with an explosive that he was unable to detonate, one that, a test by the BBC suggests, might not have downed his plane even if it had gone off.
The other failure is the foiled effort to set off bombs contained within laser printers on planes bound for the United States in 2010. The organization explained that one of their packages contained a copy of Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations to express its optimism about the operation's success even as the group promised more such attacks. The optimism, and thus far the promise, have gone unfulfilled.
With that track record, the group may pose a problem or concern to the United States. But it scarcely presents a "major threat."
Much of the alarmist perspective has been generated in opposition to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's contention last year that "we're within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda." Insofar as this declaration can be decoded, it actually seems to be supported by the alarmists' own admission that "the organization that brought us 9/11 is essentially gone" and that it no longer plays "a major strategic and operational role."
More important, however, is to supply some degree of quantitative heft to an evaluation of the "threat."
To the administration's claim that it is trying "to keep our country safe," Associated Press intelligence writer Kimberly Dozier rhetorically observes, "How safe remains in question."
But there is a perfectly valid method for assessing the question and for measuring the risk international terrorism presents to the United States. At current rates, an American's chance of becoming a victim of terrorism in the United States is about one in 3.5 million per year. In comparison, that same American stands a one in twenty-two thousand yearly chance of becoming a homicide victim, a one in eight thousand chance of perishing in an auto accident and a one in five hundred chance of dying from cancer.
These calculations are based, of course, on historical data. However, the terrorism data include not only 9/11 but also the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, and alarmists who would reject such history need to explain why they think terrorists will suddenly become vastly more competent in the future.
But no one seems to be making that argument. Indeed, notes Dozier, U.S. officials say al-Qaeda has become less capable of a large attack like 9/11.
She also discloses that these officials made this brave disclosure only on condition of anonymity because they feared that "publicly identifying themselves could make them a target" of terrorists. Meanwhile, however, terrorism specialist Peter Bergen observed to Dozier in heroic full attribution mode that "The last terror attack (in the West) was seven years ago in London," that there "haven't been any major attacks in the U.S.," and that "they are recruiting no-hopers and dead-enders."
The problem is that there is an endless supply of no-hopers and dead-enders out there.
And also, it appears, of terrorism alarmists.
Image: Chris.M.G.
What's Wrong with a Little Uncertainty?
The author's views are his own and do not represent those of the Air War College, the air force or the Department of Defense.
Over at Shadow Government, Dan Blumenthal makes the case that if there is any Obama Doctrine it should be described as the Uncertainty Doctrine. In Blumenthal's words:
Businesspeople and economists make a good case that the uncertainty of Obama's domestic policies has slowed the economic recovery. The private sector does not know when and for what they will next be taxed or regulated, what the new health care law visited upon them means for the economy. The anxiety causes a freeze in economic growth. So too with Obama's uncertainty foreign policy doctrine. Allies and adversaries have no idea what we will do next and are acting accordingly…Just as uncertainty in economic policy can make an economy sputter, so too has Obama's uncertainty doctrine made the world a more dangerous place. With no one else to do the chores, the United States must lead with certainty. The rest of the world may complain about our arrogance, but that is better than complaining about utter chaos.
Among the examples of the Uncertainty Doctrine in action that Blumenthal cites are the Obama administration's simultaneous escalation and de-escalation of the war in Afghanistan, surging troops in while setting a date for their withdrawal; declaring an Iranian nuclear weapon unacceptable while restraining Israel from doing anything forceful about it; and "pivoting" to Asia while reassuring allies elsewhere that we are not abandoning them.
For those who have been around the block a few times, this line of argument should sound familiar: while the words "domino theory" do not appear in Blumenthal's post, it is domino logic that he is relying on. His basic argument is that the Obama administration is not demonstrating the requisite strength and resolve abroad, which will eventually lead allies to abandon us and adversaries to trample on our interests.
Rather than rehash why the domino theory should be consigned to the dustbin of history, let me provide two additional reasons why Blumenthal's criticisms are misdirected. First, the Obama administration has little choice but to be more equivocal in its commitments than Blumenthal would like. The fact of the matter is that the United States is badly overstretched, with a growing gap between the commitments we have taken on abroad and the resources available to meet those commitments. Under such conditions, great powers are wise to retrench by making some tough choices about which interests are worth defending and at what cost. What Blumenthal describes as introducing dangerous uncertainty into the mix I would describe as setting priorities and discriminating between vital and peripheral interests. In short, the Uncertainty Doctrine may be less a misguided choice on the part of the Obama administration than a prudent bowing to the inevitable.
Second, and as importantly, is introducing some uncertainty into the mix always such a bad thing? Blumenthal implies that there is no downside to backing allies to the hilt and facing down adversaries. But there is actually such a thing as too much reassurance, which can embolden allies to take dangerous actions that risk entrapping us in unwanted conflicts or, alternatively, lull them into under-providing for their own defense. Likewise, there can even be too much deterrence. If another state has no intention of threatening our interests, but we take strong actions to "deter" them, we may end up convincing them that we are hostile and set off a spiral of conflict.
The latter consideration can be discounted if an interest is vital enough to be worth defending even at some risk of war. But the fact that Blumenthal does not even concede any downside to certainty or upside to uncertainty suggests that he does not recognize any distinction between vital and peripheral interests. This, I would argue, is the common failing of any approach to strategy rooted in domino logic, which inevitably leads to overextension.
NATO: An Alliance Past Its Prime
On May 20, the 2012 NATO Chicago summit will bring together the heads of state from the alliance. The agenda reads like a rundown of major world events in the past two years: the Arab Spring, the Libyan civil war, the global financial crisis and the war in Afghanistan. It seems no problem is too big for NATO.
Of these topics, the most pressing and headline-grabbing will be the plan NATO and the United States establish to gradually turn responsibility for security in Afghanistan over to the Afghan national forces. But also of note are the topics—"lessons learned from Libya" and the "Smart Defense Initiative,"—that display the reliance of Europe on the United States for advanced military capabilities. Libya in particular showcased Europe's inability to act without Washington.
The lessons from Libya are twofold, and it is important to keep them in mind as policy makers and pundits in Washington call for the next U.S. intervention, possibly in Syria or Iran. First, the results so far have been disappointing for America's latest stab at coercive democratization.
Libya also was a disappointment as a supposed new model for U.S. intervention. In fact, that conflict reinforces the fact that NATO really stands for North America and The Others. Without the United States, the Europeans would be essentially helpless.
A new alliance study underscores Europe's relative ineffectiveness. Reports the New York Times:
Despite widespread praise in Western capitals for NATO's leadership of the air campaign in Libya, a confidential NATO assessment paints a sobering portrait of the alliance's ability to carry out such campaigns without significant support from the United States.
The report concluded that the allies struggled to share crucial target information, lacked specialized planners and analysts, and overly relied on the United States for reconnaissance and refueling aircraft.
This should surprise no one. After all, during the war against Serbia—another nation which had not threatened America or any American ally—Europe was estimated to have a combat effectiveness less than 15 percent that of the U.S. The Europeans had large conscript armies, but outside of Britain and France had very little ability to project power. Later European participation in Afghanistan has been marred by the dozens of national "caveats" limiting participation in combat.
Yet alliance expansion is also on the agenda for the May NATO summit in Chicago. The list of alliance wannabes includes such powerhouses as Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia. Former Soviet republics notable mostly for their tangled and/or troubled relations with Russia—Georgia and Ukraine—are also on the list. All of these nations would be security liabilities, not assets, for America.
As the NATO study demonstrates, should the alliance's Article 5 commitment get invoked, America would do most of the fighting. It would be one thing to take that risk where vital interests were at stake. But they are not in the Balkans, let alone in the Caucasus, which was part of Imperial Russia even before the Soviet Union.
Alliances should reflect the security environment. The Cold War is over. The Europeans have developed, the Soviet Union is kaput, and the potential European conflicts of the future—distant and unlikely—are linked to no hegemonic threat against America.
Instead of talking about NATO expansion, the United States should set down the burden of defending Europe. Let the Europeans take over NATO or create their own European defense organization, as they have discussed for years. The latest reminder of Europe's relative military ineffectiveness reinforces the case for ending the Continent's cheap ride. It is time to turn North America and The Others into simply The Others.
Great Gaming Russia in Central Asia
For the sake of Afghanistan, U.S. officials routinely invoke the importance of nurturing economic growth across South and Central Asia. But when it comes to advancing policies meant to increase regional trade, Washington has shown little effort to ease the geopolitical differences between itself and one of Afghanistan's key neighbors: Russia.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed late last year in Dushanbe, "we want Afghanistan to be at the crossroads of economic opportunities going north and south and east and west, which is why it's so critical to more fully integrate the economies of the countries in this region in South and Central Asia."
That sounds promising. So what is the problem? As George Washington University research professor Marlene Laruelle writes, present U.S. policies, like the "New Silk Road" initiative that Clinton hints at above, reflect an underlying economic rationale "to exclude Moscow from new geopolitical configurations."
Echoing this interpretation is Joshua Kucera, a Washington-based freelance writer and frequent contributor to Slate and ForeignPolicy.com. He points to Washington's call to tie together the electrical grids of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as Washington's placement of the Central Asian states in a new State Department bureau. He writes, "What these all have in common is that they attempt to weaken the economic (and as a result, political) monopoly that Russia, by dint of the centralized Soviet infrastructure, has on these countries."
Moscow already thinks that Washington's promotion of NATO's eastward expansion is a U.S.-led containment strategy. As we have seen in that part of the world, however, Washington's attempts to marginalize Russia in its Central Asian post-Soviet sphere will bump up against the region's deep historical ties, cultural influence and geographic contiguity with the Kremlin. This all might seem obvious, but it's apparently not, as it would require foreign-policy planners to appreciate the overriding interests of neighboring great powers as they pertain to Afghanistan, even the ones we abhore. That will be difficult, and it is important to illuminate why.
Too many in Washington consider a less confrontational approach a sign of weakness and militant internationalism a sign of strength. But in South and Central Asia, U.S. officials must understand that what they perceive to be in America's interest does not always line up with the prospect of regional connectivity. Washington's pursuit of primacy in this region is erecting hurdles to the very liberal-internationalist goals that it claims to promote. If economic growth is to have any reliable chance of success, then the United States should not be attempting to foreclose constructive avenues for increased integration.
Pursuing policies that place the region's general interest before America's does not convey weakness. Rather, it is a recognition that some countries are better positioned to be key players in the region, especially in light of the last eleven years, which have amply demonstrated the limits of Washington's ability to impose lasting change in Afghanistan.
As my colleague Doug Bandow alluded to the other day, Russia is not America's "number-one geopolitical foe"—it is a declining power with nukes. Whether officials in Washington are willing to countenance such thoughts is anyone's guess. However, given the disproportionate power of foreign-policy hawks inside the Beltway—of the liberal and conservative persuasion—I wouldn't bet on it.
A New Infrastructure for Intervention
On Monday, April 23, President Obama announced the creation of the Atrocities Prevention Board and an effort to develop government-wide strategies for finding ways to intervene before mass killings take place. The Presidential Study Directive (PSD-10) and the executive order on which these actions are based rightly note that the U.S. government has never had a comprehensive strategy for preventing mass atrocities despite having promised "never again" several times since World War II.
It is very difficult to criticize any presidential efforts to put pressure on human-rights abusers, especially at this point in history when so many publics are challenging autocratic governments over their futures. It is also difficult to contest the general logic of Obama's finding that the United States and its allies have been ill-prepared to prevent mass atrocities. What is less difficult, however, is to worry about where we might wind up if the United States finally puts its money where its mouth is and creates an infrastructure for intervention.
Obama's policy review identified several themes behind the failure to respond to mass atrocities, all of which can be traced back to the fact that there has been no single agency or group in the U.S. government responsible for monitoring and engaging situations that might lead to such acts. And without such a system, by the time the government realizes there is a problem it could be too late to coordinate an effective U.S. response, much less help coordinate an international response. The proposed cure, therefore, makes perfect sense—if the goal is to intervene much more frequently around the world.
There are at least three reasons to worry about the Atrocities Prevention Board. First, if it works as its creators hope, it will lead to many more interventions in the future. It will create a stronger lobby for interventions within the government, it creates tools that make intervention easier to manage and potentially by raises expectations of aid from endangered people around the world. As PSD-10 states: "Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States."
Again, no one wants more mass atrocities, but many do question the extent to which preventing them is actually a core national-security interest or moral responsibility of the United States. What Obama is calling for will make the default presumption one of U.S. involvement, rather than the opposite.
Now, instead of needing good reasons to intervene, the president will need good reasons not to intervene. This, in turn, leads to a debate that the current executive order does not answer: Which mass killings are we responsible for? All of them? What counts as a mass killing? Why is nine thousand in Syria almost enough to get the United States involved but several million in the Congo was not? Without a clearer articulation of the conditions under which the United States will act to prevent mass killings, this effort starts to look more like political theater and less like sound policy.
Second, a bigger intervention tool kit raises the chances of the United States engaging in conflicts more deeply than planned. Obama argues that without an infrastructure like the one he's building, U.S. options are limited to full-scale intervention or no intervention at all. At one level, he is correct. But at another level, the notion of partial intervention is a myth. Preventing mass atrocities is difficult, dangerous and time consuming. Very few conflicts that involve mass killings are the kind where the nudge of sanctions or vague threats of criminal prosecution are going to get the job done. Yes, there are cases where a relatively small investment of attention and action would have paid huge dividends—Rwanda comes to mind. But for every Rwanda, there are many that look more like Bosnia, Syria, Somalia or Sudan, where problems cannot be fixed without getting deeply involved in resolving multilateral civil conflicts and nation building. In those cases, getting involved at all risks getting involved all the way and, in turn, risks being involved for a very long time at great cost. Given our track record in those sorts of conflicts, I am not sure improving our infrastructure for intervention is a good idea.
Finally, the Atrocities Prevention Board, as noble as its goals are, illustrates just how militarized our foreign policy has become. In the wake of 9/11 the United States has spent billions of dollars intervening in an unprecedented number of nations in the Middle East and Africa without resolving any of the underlying problems at stake and at a cost of fueling the fires of anti-Americanism. More intervention—or even the threat of intervention—is not a great plan in this context. Moreover, the reliance on military means reveals a lack of imagination and moral sensibility. Waiting until the time people are organizing to kill each other in mass quantities to step in makes no sense, especially when your plan to make them stop is to kill some of them. The time to help people is before things get that bad. This is not always possible either, of course, but it does not require killing people, and it at least holds the possibility of creating the conditions for peace and stability that will make military intervention unnecessary.
Romney and Russia: Complicating American Relationships
Mitt Romney has become the inevitable Republican presidential candidate. He's hoping to paint Barack Obama as weak, but his attempt at a flanking maneuver on the right may complicate America's relationship with Eastern Europe and beyond.
Romney recently charged Russia with being America's "number one geopolitical foe." As Jacob Heilbrunn of National Interest pointed out, this claim embodies a monumental self-contradiction, attempting to claim "credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union, on the one hand [while] predicting dire threats from Russia on the other." Thankfully, the U.S.S.R. really is gone, and neither all the king's men nor Vladimir Putin can put it back together.
It is important to separate behavior which is grating, even offensive, and that which is threatening. Putin is no friend of liberty, but his unwillingness to march lock-step with Washington does not mean that he wants conflict with America. Gordon Hahn of CSIS observes:
Yet despite NATO expansion, U.S. missile defense, Jackson-Vanik and much else, Moscow has refused to become a U.S. foe, cooperating with the West on a host of issues from North Korea to the war against jihadism. Most recently, Moscow agreed to the establishment of a NATO base in Ulyanovsk.
These are hardly the actions of America's "number one geopolitical foe." Romney's charge is both silly and foolish.
This doesn't mean the U.S. should not confront Moscow when important differences arise. But treating Russia as an adversary risks encouraging it to act like one.
Moreover, treating Moscow like a foe will make Russia more suspicious of America's relationships with former members of the Warsaw Pact and republics of the Soviet Union—and especially Washington's determination to continue expanding NATO. After all, if another country ostentatiously called the U.S. its chief geopolitical threat, ringed America with bases, and established military relationships with areas that had broken away from the U.S., Washington would not react well. It might react, well, a lot like Moscow has been reacting.
Although it has established better relations with the West, Russia still might not get along with some of its neighbors, most notably Georgia, with its irresponsibly confrontational president. However, Washington should not give Moscow additional reasons to indulge its paranoia.
An Agenda for Negotiating with North Korea
I've argued previously that Washington's policies toward Iran and North Korea are futile, unsustainable and dangerous. U.S. leaders have painted themselves into a corner. The current strategy is unlikely to prevent either country from eventually having a nuclear capability, while guaranteeing that Washington will have a horrifically hostile relationship with two new, prickly nuclear-weapons powers.
The Obama administration needs to drastically alter that strategy, moving to normalize relations with Tehran and Pyongyang. And the administration should begin with North Korea, the easier of the two very challenging problems. U.S. policy makers need to prioritize their policy goals, decide what concessions they are prepared to offer North Korea and determine what concessions they can realistically hope to gain in return. Realism is especially critical regarding that last point. The notion that Pyongyang would abandon all nuclear ambitions was overly optimistic from the outset. Given that North Korea probably has processed enough plutonium over the past decade to build several nuclear weapons and has an active uranium-enrichment program, such a maximalist goal is now a pipe dream.
Instead of pursuing the chimera of Pyongyang's return to nuclear virginity, Washington should focus on getting the Kim regime to stop short of actually deploying an arsenal. That status of "one screwdriver turn away" from being a full-fledged nuclear-weapons power was the de facto policy of both India and Pakistan from at least the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. It's hardly ideal, and—as in the case of those two countries—the implicit bargain can break down, but it's probably the best we can hope for from North Korea.
In exchange for that restraint, the United States should offer the following carrots:
—Express a willingness to sign a peace treaty formally ending the armed hostilities on the Korean peninsula
—Agree to establish formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, including the establishment of embassies and consulates in both countries
—Agree to rescind most of the current U.S. economic sanctions directed against Pyongyang and to support the repeal of UN resolutions authorizing international economic sanctions
Advocates of the status quo will inevitably argue that the United States would be making major concessions while getting very little in return. But it is evident that the current policy has not worked in the past, is not working now and has little prospect of working in the future. Given that sobering reality, we would not be giving up much at all.
Moreover, there are some potential benefits to the United States that, while subtle, are very real. For example, the establishment of an embassy in Pyongyang and consulates in two or three other locations would give U.S. intelligence agencies unprecedented opportunities to gather information about the ultrasecretive country. Currently, Washington must rely heavily (if not totally) on information provided by the South Korean, Chinese, Russian and Japanese governments. The reliability of such data is frequently uncertain, and those countries all have their own agendas, which, although they may overlap with America's, are hardly congruent.
Getting a better view of North Korea would also be a benefit to opening bilateral commercial ties. One should not overstate the potential, since North Korea produces few products that American consumers desire, and the DPRK is hardly the most appealing investment arena for American businesses. But even limited exposure to U.S. firms and Americans routinely traveling to North Korea and interacting with North Koreans can help create low-key incentives for reform.
The bottom line is that we have little to lose by adopting a bold alternative to the current strategy. When a policy has been in place for decades and is producing utterly sterile results, only the intellectually lazy should advocate staying the course.
Romney's National-Security Problem
It appears some Republicans want to return to their familiar national-security playbook in their pursuit of the White House, accusing a Democratic president of gutting defense spending and undermining national security. An Associated Press story predicts that Mitt Romney's presidential campaign may feature the "hawkish and often unilateral foreign policy prescriptions that guided Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush." But the calls from Republican operatives and GOP hawks for Romney to slam Obama for cutting the military and drawing down in Afghanistan are hollow. Focusing on national security isn't likely to score Romney any political points. To the extent that foreign policy matters in this election, Romney's policies are both misguided and at odds with what the American people want.
For one thing, Romney's prescriptions for Afghanistan aren't so different from Barack Obama's; where they are different, they are politically unpopular. From Wednesday's New York Times:
For Mr. Romney, the evolving politics of the Afghan conflict suggest that he "wouldn't get a lot of juice for making the argument to stay," said Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University. "The problem he's got is, how he can criticize the president by adopting a policy remarkably similar to the president. He's obviously got to criticize him, but he doesn't have that much to work with."
But the problem extends beyond Afghanistan. The more Romney talks about "staying the course" in an unpopular war, the more he sounds like the last GOP presidential nominee. John McCain's campaign boast that he would rather lose an election than lose a war should haunt the party: he delivered neither a political victory for Republicans nor a military victory in Iraq. Romney's embrace of the Afghan quagmire could seal the GOP's fate as the party that happily defies the wishes of the American people in order to fight costly and interminable nation-building missions in distant lands.
On defense spending, Romney's approach has been "Fire. Ready. Aim." He has accused Obama of shortchanging the military, and he pledges to spend at least 4 percent of the nation's GDP on the Pentagon's base budget, a promise that would bring spending to levels unprecedented since the end of World War II. Romney has yet to spell out what other spending he would cut, or what taxes he would increase, in order to make up what I estimate to be $2.5 trillion in additional spending over the next decade. Or he could just add to the deficit, as George W. Bush did. Team Obama would be smart to press Romney for clarification.
But Obama himself is to blame for misleading the public about military spending. Although he boasts of having cut $487 billion from the Pentagon's budget over the next decade, his budget submission for FY 2013 represented only a slight decline from the previous year and is still above the average during the Bush years. If Obama gets his way, the Pentagon's budget will rise to near-historic highs again by the end of the decade. (For more on this, see here.)
Therefore, far from believing that Obama has gone too far in cutting military spending, as Romney contends, many Americans believe that the cuts could go much deeper. That is the takeaway from Yochi Dreazen's story in this week's National Journal. Noting that we have the biggest and second-biggest air forces in the world (the air force and the navy, respectively) and eleven aircraft carriers to China's one (which isn't exactly state of the art), Dreazen quotes an exasperated T.X. Hammes, a professor at the National Defense University, and a thirty-year Marine veteran, "the services keep saying that we need to be big. What's the justification? Based on what threat? I'm just not sure I see the logic."
A companion story at NJ by George E. Condon Jr. shows that Hammes isn't alone. A recent Gallup poll found that 41 percent of Americans think we spend too much on the military, as opposed to just 24 percent who think we don't spend enough. It is that latter segment of the population, presumably, that Romney has locked up with his four percent promise. But it is hard to see how his stance will win over the war-weary public that isn't anxious to repeat our Iraq and Afghanistan adventures and that isn't looking to boost military spending, either.
Image: isafmedia


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The powers that be made moonshine whiskey illegal, but, thank goodness, it's still there.
What do you think would have happened in the school in Connecticut had the school staff been armed and gone through training on when and how to use their weapons? Do you think that maybe one of the six teachers killed could have gotten off one shot?
Kyle Smith

subset: commoncrawl


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v2.4.1 – Updated: 02.04.2014
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v2.0 – Updated: 21.02.2013
v1.2 – Updated: 21.01.2013
v1.1 – Updated: 07.01.2013


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You are Here
Financial help for DBE/WBE & Hub Certified Company
by antoinettenoz, Window Shopper
- Created: February 17, 2010, 8:27 pm
- Updated: August 20, 2013, 10:22 am
Can anyone help me find valuable and useful information on grants or guaranteed loans for minority businesses. I am in the construction industry, work zone traffic control, and I need financial assistance to take my company to the next level. I have been looking endlessly and have found little or nothing.
Thank you!!
Comments have been locked for this thread.
dlawso1984 | Window Shopper | 8/20/2013 - 2:13 am
I need assistance with getting DBE certified. Where should I go? I meet all
the criteria.
the criteria.
kmurray | Community Moderator | 8/20/2013 - 10:18 am
Show Replied Text…
I need assistance with getting DBE certified. Where should I go? I meet all the criteria.
Here's some information about disadvantaged businesses: http://www.sba.gov/content/disadvantaged-businesses
bones46 | Performer | 2/18/2010 - 1:09 pm
Not likely to get a grant. It is not how grants work. You might try finding a local investor or partner or try to qualify for a business loan.
phanio | Contributor | 2/18/2010 - 4:27 pm
Forget about grants - you will just be wasting your time. Have you thought about using current busienss financial assets to get funding. These are called assets based financing and can include purchase order financing, accounts receivable financing or business cash advances. There are also bank SBA loans you might qualify for or even the many non-bank lenders that would love to help your business since it is already established.
ChristineL | Former Moderator | 2/18/2010 - 3:50 pm
Hi antoinettenoz, Bones46 is right. Federal and state government agencies do not provide grants for starting a business, paying off debt, or to cover operating expenses. Government agencies do not provide 'special' grants for women, minorities, veterans or disabled entrepreneurs. Read more about it in our blog article, The Truth About Government Grants. However, other financing options, such as government loans, are available. Learn more about it in Business.gov's Minority Business Guide and our blog article, Financing for Women and Minority Entrepreneurs.
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That's not because of Steele...it's because of Baylor being Baylor. We have had Steele on the field before, and he did just fine. I don't care if he is on the field or not, I just want him to be able to recruit, which he will be able to. Great recruiter, and that's the last thing rivals of Bama want to see...Bama get another lockdown recruiter.
Alabama — winners of three of the last four BCS championships — in on the verge of hiring its second ex-head coach in a week to serve on Nick Saban's staff. CBSSports.com's Jeremy Fowler reports that ex-Florida International coach Mario Cristobal will be taking over the Tide's offensive line:
Cristobal served as the head coach at Florida International from 2007 through 2012. This past season he was on Al Golden's Miami staff as tight ends coach and assistant head coach.
Cristobal will replace Jeff Stoutland who departed Alabama to join Chip Kelly's new staff with the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles.
Just last week, Alabama added former Baylor head coach Kevin Steele to its staff as the director of player personnel. Steele will head up Saban's recruiting efforts, but he will not have an on-field coaching role in Tuscaloosa.


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David R. Vallejos is the new golf director at the Cocotal Golf & Country Club, a Sol Melia resort, in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Vallejos was most recently assistant professional at the Indian Spring Country Club in Silver Spring, Md.
Edward Trost has been named national director of sales for American Golf. He is based in American Golf's National Sales Center in Palm Springs, Calif. Trost was regional manager of Learning International's Melbourne, Australia, operation.
Wayne Kearney has been promoted to senior sales manager at Pinehurst in North Carolina; he has been with Pinehurst for the past nine years. His new market territory will encompass corporate accounts in the Southeast and California.


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Blog Archives
10 Summer Health Tips for Your Kids
Keep summer fun and safe for your kids with these helpful tips. Summer is near. School is out, and the kids are enjoying the seasonal freedom. With less time spent indoors, there is more time to have fun and potentially … Continue reading


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LaRue County voters defeated a pair of incumbent school board members in Tuesday's election.
L. Dawn Williams Connor defeated Norbert Skees 592-405 for the District 1 School Board seat. Linda Pearman defeated incumbent Ronnie Chelf, 554-417 in District 2.
Connor and Pearman will join Joanna Hinton, who ran uncontested in District 5 to give the five-member board a female majority. Price Smith and Michael Hornback won the other two four-year terms.
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Looking for a new job? Your first job? Patch is searching local employment ads and will feature, weekly some local opportunities.
Good luck in your search!
- ASBA is looking for an inside sales representative (Columbia)
- AVON is looking for full-time and part-time sales representatives (Columbia)
- St. John's Jewelers is looking for a marketing Coordinator (Ellicott City)
- PBD Worldwide is looking for a material handler - warehousing/shipping (Savage)
- An Ellicott City resident is looking for a dog sitter (Ellicott City)
- TSS Photography is looking for a green screen photographer (Elkridge)
- Radnet Management is looking for an MRI technologist (Ellicott City)
- Complete Healthcare Staffing is looking for a medical assistant (Columbia)
- Newwave Technologies is looking for a .NET developer (Elkridge)
- Coastal Sunbelt Produce is looking for an asset analyst and a building maintenance supervisor (Savage)
- Aerotek is looking for a warehouse worker and construction Foreman (Elkridge)
- UPS is looking for a part-time driver helper, hourly (Columbia)


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Merrimack Valley
Bachelorette Contest Kick-Off
- Merrimack Valley
Lawrence man pleads guilty to gun possession
BOSTON – A Lawrence man was convicted yesterday in U.S. District Court for being a previously convicted felon in possession of a firearm. Germaine M. Rivera, 20, pleaded guilty to being a previously convicted felon in possession of a firearm. SentenContinued ...
26.2 miles of disease-ending desire
Every stride of the Boston Marathon's 26.2 miles traveled by Byfield resident Julie Ogden on Monday will be fueled by a desire to end a disease, honor family both living and passed and celebrate a personal milestone. It was a perfect coming togetherContinued ...
Lawrence High School juniors encouraged to attend college
LAWRENCE — Lawrence High School juniors were encouraged to attend state colleges and universities after high school. "This really opens up your eyes to the options that are available to you," junior William Maldonado said. About 800 Lawrence High juContinued ...
- Emerald Pines project clears final local hurdle
- Clergy from seven area Episcopal churches to celebrate Easter Vigil in Haverhill
- Law school hosts animal rights day tomorrow
- Finegold gets the signatures for ballot
- Degnan files appeal of bribery convictions
- MVRTA cities and towns sending Ambu-Bus to Boston Marathon
- Marblehead's Flanagan wants to make American history
- 'Everybody feels the need to get out there'
- Clergy from seven area Episcopal churches to celebrate Easter Vigil in Haverhill
- Stronger than ever
- Candidate debates director of Massachusetts gun lobby
- North Andover High School rocks with rhyme during Poetry Jam
- Schools to hire 3 math teachers to boost seventh-grade scores
- Staying 'Collier Strong'
- 'Pesky Pole' back for another attempt
- Man raising funds to help battle breast cancer
- Giving mint its due in a savory lemon chicken wrap
- Addiction expert called critically important
- Thursday, April 17, 2014
- Chief, Zanni agree to deal
- Lost and found
- Two arrested in Lawrence carjacking
- West Andover crime meeting draws 300
- Gay, lesbian nightclub to open in Haverhill
- Merrimack Valley Police Logs
- Bill prods housing authorities on contact info
- Longboard for Life competition to aid fight against cancer
- Lawrence man pleads guilty to gun possession


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Medians: Raised Pedestrian Refuge Island
Raised pedestrian refuge islands are located in the center of a street. The island allows the pedestrian to cross the street in two stages.
- Reduces pedestrians' crossing distance
- May reduce the speed of vehicles
- Allows the pedestrian to cross the street in two stages
- May impair access and encourage wrong-way traffic if blocking driveways
- Some on-street parking may be eliminated
Eligibility Considerations
- Requires sufficient street width
- High pedestrian volume
|Reduced Speed
|Reduced Volume
|Enhanced Safety


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The annual U.S. Navy Blue Angels Air Show is a huge event for Pensacola Beach, Fla. In just one day, this quiet beach town can swell into a small metropolis with more than 250,000 anxious fans flocking to the emerald waters to see death-defying maneuvers performed by the Navy's finest pilots.
But on July 12, 2008, that showcase event turned into a nightmare as a huge thunderstorm cell swept over the islandparadise and created a public safety meltdown. A major problem accompanying this weather event was that shelter was limited for the thousands who were trapped on the beach when the storm hit. Condominium and hotel lobbies quickly became areas of refuge from the lightning, torrential rains, and flying debris that eventually hospitalized 12 patrons of the show. Good event pre-planning and professional execution of an emergency plan probably prevented loss of life.
Any event, whether a large public street party, a convention for thousands, or a wedding in a hotel ballroom, presents certain risks that can put the planner into the role of crisis manager in a heartbeat. Without effective planning for disasters or security issues, venues and organizers can unknowingly place themselves, and their attendees, in precarious situations.
Communication Is Your Best Friend
Communication is one of the most important tools in an event planner's toolbox. Build solid relationships with local public safety and emergency management officials well before your event if it is going to involve any large gatherings at private or public facilities, but it is especially important for outdoor gatherings. Getting to know key personnel on a first-name basis and including them in the planning process will reap many rewards in executing a flawless event.
The components of a Pre-Event Emergency Action Plan often vary, depending on the type of event, crowd anticipated, weather, and venue. However, the main point to remember is that the process is the plan. Translation: the very effort of getting serious about event safety is the first step toward a successful outcome. Some main areas of focus are:
Anticipated Size of Crowd. Knowing in advance how many people will be attending is critical in order to arrange your resources to accommodate fire codes, evacuation plans, and other important logistical issues. Meeting with your local Fire Marshall ahead of time will help you plan how to legally manage the crowd and offer safe exits from the area, if necessary.
Purpose of Gathering.Whether your venue will be used for a convention, wedding, company party, political rally, or protest (sometimes associated with large association meetings) often determines the type and level of resources necessary. In simple terms, will the crowd be happy or is there a potential for conflict? Protests and political rallies are always vulnerable to tempers and expressions of anger, which can turn into chaos if not managed properly. Local law enforcement must be alerted ahead of time and invited to help in event planning to lessen the chances of things getting out of control. Additionally, events that serve alcohol can produce impaired patrons who might need more assistance in an evacuation scenario.
Emergency Medical Services Preplanning.If your event will involve attendance in excess of, let's say, 1,000 people, contact your local EMS provider and arrange a meeting. Medical First Responders will be interested in staging areas at the event site to set up a triage area to serve patrons who might need assistance. Also, they will want to pre-plan the best place to set up an LZ, or landing zone, for a med-evac helicopter.
Weather Conditions for Outdoor Events.As mentioned above, the Pensacola Beach Air Show incident is a prime example of how weather can transform a relaxing event into a chaotic ordeal. Event planners should develop relationships with their regional National Weather Service office and learn how to get quick and accurate forecasts and changing weather condition alerts. Events happening during extreme heat situations should include planning for hydration stations with plenty of fluids and, if possible, the presence of portable fans that produce a water mist that can bring down skin temperature for treatment and prevention of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Don't forget that you must communicate the location of your hydration stations to the crowd regularly.
If thunderstorms are possible, where will you evacuate outdoor patrons for refuge? What is your policy for canceling your event due to impending storms? These are issues that must be decided with clear parameters during the planning process and not during a weather emergency.
Broadcast Your Commitment to Safety.Second only to the actual process of emergency planning is the declaration that you are ready for an emergency. Believe it or not, your attendees do appreciate the fact that the event organizers are committed to safety and are prepared to respond in case there is a need. After you have crafted your emergency action plan, have a PDF link available when advertising your event, and on your Web site.
Working the Updated Facility Plan. Event facilities should have an updated Emergency Action Plan of their own. These plans should deal with crime, overcrowding, evacuations, fires, bomb threats, and many other issues. Make it a high priority to get a copy of the venue's plan at the onset of the planning process. A good emergency plan will establish the crucial communications process that will offer clarity through pre-defined procedures and notifications protocols.
Note: Most hotels and convention centers have pre-established relationships with local first responders, freeing event planners of that task.
Learn From the Mistakes of Others
History is always the best teacher! When developing the Emergency Action Plan for your event, study the successes and mistakes that others have experienced during times of crisis. By studying what has happened in the past, and what should have been done during an emergency in order to improve the situation, planners can better anticipate what to do in case their event is challenged by an unexpected circumstance.
Tommy Jones is the fire chief in Griffin, Ga. With 25 years of experience, Chief Jones delivers lectures on crisis communications and is passionate about helping organizations better prepare themselves for crisis events. He holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Mercer University in Macon, Ga., and a master's degree in public administration from Columbus State University in Columbus, Ga. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com


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SUU Digital Library
Branch Normal School girl's basketball team, (1914?). Top row (left to right): Coach Harold Wilkinson, Vera Pace, Fanny Kleinman, Lura Elder, Veda Bringhurst, Elsa Anderson Decker. Bottom row: Hortense W. Canfield, Evelyn McBride, Josie Barnson, Isabelle jackson, Bertha Robinson Jolley, Nina Jensen, Ella Stucki.
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Music Theater
Dream of being a vocal coach or producing events, like fashion shows, weddings or a film festival? Want to act, sing and dance? St. Kate's music theater major is unique because it's focused not just on performance. We teach you how to create and collaborate onstage, as well as behind the scenes. So, you're prepared for a variety of competitive careers and graduate study in directing, acting, voice and dance.
Major options
We offer a Bachelor of Arts in Music Theater, Music Studies and Music in the Church. Minors are available in theater performance studies, theater studies and music studies.
Rich and relevant curriculum
Our rigorous courses are designed to give you a wide range of communication, presentation and performance skills. You don't have to take them in sequence — except for Music Skills 1 and 2, which integrates sight-singing and keyboard skills with the analysis of harmony, form and contrapuntal procedures.
In the "Event Production" class, you learn the craft of directing and event planning, which includes how to analyze audiences, develop budgets and market your idea. In "Media Performance," you work with teleprompters and create public service announcements. "Voice in the Workplace" explores vocal theories and methodologies, so you understand the power of your voice.
Hands-on experience
St. Kate's intimate size gives you more hands-on experiences in acting, directing, producing and writing than at larger colleges or universities. You'll participate in four productions (at least two musicals), and present a research and performance project in your senior year. Many of our graduates have had notable success nationally and locally in theater, film and television.
Exceptional facilities
You have the chance to perform in a range of venues, including five locations on the main St. Kate's campus. The O'Shaughnessy has 1,800 seat-performing arts hall and one of the Midwest's premiere professional venues; Frey Theater, our black-box facility; Our Lady of Victory Chapel, Jeanne D'Arc Auditorium and the Recital Hall.
Performance opportunities
We offer year-round performance and classroom opportunities for all students, regardless of their major. One season typically includes three productions (comedy, drama and musical), and since 2009, we've taken at least one of those productions into the greater community — performing in a school, community center, nursing home or library.
In your junior year, we help you identify your strengths and guarantee you a role on stage — or behind-the-scenes, if you prefer. Auditions are open to all St. Catherine University and University of St. Thomas students.
Accessible faculty experts
Our faculty are mentors, too. They have a broad range of experience and collaborate with you to develop your strengths. All are active in theater performance on local and national stages. Assistant Professor Teresa Lyons Hegdahl, for example, has directed numerous plays including Hedda Gabler, Rumors and a traveling school tour of Cinderella Confidential. We also have a new faculty member, Pamyla Stiehl, whose particular expertise is musical theater.
Rich performing arts scene
The Twin Cities, with over 30 theater venues and 100 performance companies, ranks second to New York City in theater seats per capita. St. Kate's is located close to many of these venues, including the Guthrie Theater, the Children's Theatre Company and Penumbra Theatre — one of only three professional African-American theaters in the nation. This means more opportunities for you to network and find internships and full-time jobs.


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On this site you will find a series of trip planning tools and resources designed to help you plan a paddling excursion on the lower Missouri River. The Missouri River offers a truly unique opportunity to paddle through history. Using a canoe or kayak, a paddler can choose to solo camp on a sandbar in an apparent wilderness setting or stay in a bed and breakfast and tour a historic river town.
Several state conservation areas, state parks, federal lands and city parks can be found adjacent to the river. Many of these offer access points and camping opportunities. Katy Trail State Park runs besides the river for over 150 miles, and is the longest rail-to-trail system in America. This hiking and biking trail has spawned a multitude of privately run campgrounds, bed and breakfasts, unique shops, restaurants and many other services along its course - all very close to the river's edge. There are also several commercial campgrounds, boat clubs, marinas and bait-shops located along the river, often providing an opportunity to obtain supplies or a place to camp for the night.
If you are an experienced big river paddler you may wish to review the information on river safety and then jump straight to our interactive mapping feature to plan your trip. Those new to the idea of paddling the Missouri River may wish to review sections on the river's history, guidelines on reading navigation markers, river safety and general tips on paddling this amazing river. We believe you will find the river an untapped resource right in the heart of Missouri. The Missouri River is a dynamic river and every paddling trip is a new adventure.


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Venice is one of the most magical, timeless places I can think of. A floating city steeped in tradition and culture, and characterized by winding alleys and canals, it is truly a goldmine of inspiration. I have visited Venice many times and each time I go, I am awestruck by the city's rich colors. The crystal blue of Murano glass, the red brick of the palazzos, the dramatic black of the gondolas, the purple and pink of the traditional Venetian masks -- the eye-catching colors are endless.
Beyond color, Venice is a place of great architecture and design, which is why it is home of the Arts Biennale, an international festival of contemporary art (www.labiennale.org). Artists from around the world apply to have their art displayed in Venice's grand palaces and churches, transforming the city into an even more beautiful and creative space.
With the Biennale taking place now, I have Venice on the mind! Make sure to have a look at parts of the festival, but in the meantime, I'd like to share some images of the city. They are truly inspiring for my design ventures, and hopefully they will be for you as well.
Please enjoy!


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by Jenny Ambroise | Apr 03, 2014
The Marian University Senior Show Gallery Hop will feature the work of eight art department seniors: Sydney Shewmaker, Kacie Southerland, Hadeiyah Ameen, Veronica Belles, Alex Hodson, Cassie Sprinkle, Alex Perry, and Peter Hayes.
The graphic design, photography, art therapy, and fine art majors' work will be on display in the Marian University Theater Lobby and the hallway of Fisher Hall from April 14- May 2 and a gallery hop reception will be held in both locations on April 17 from 4:00-6:30 p.m.
read more...
Monday Mass
Indianapolis |
May 05
Come . Talk. Jesus
Night Prayer
Tuesday Mass
Indianapolis |
May 06


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Disclaimer: This scientific independent research is provided by Aisle7 and is for informational use only. GNC provides this information as a service but does not endorse it. Likewise, Aisle7 does not recommend or endorse any specific products.I accept these terms
GNC Pro Performance® Pro-Crunch™ Lite - Cookies & Cream
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Pro-Crunch™ Lite
High Protein Energy Bar with Whey Isolate
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* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
- Supplement Facts
Enjoy Pro-Crunch™ Lite any time of the day for added protein and energy. Ideal as a snack in between meals or for healthy, on-the-go nutrition.
Serving Size 1 bar Servings Per Container 8 Amount Per Serving % DV Calories from Fat 70.00 Total Fat 7.00 g 11% Saturated Fat 5.00 g 25% Trans Fat 0.00 g Polyunsaturated Fat 1.00 g 0% Monounsaturated Fat 1.50 g 0% Cholesterol 20.00 mg 7% Sodium 150.00 mg 6% Total Carbohydrate 20.00 g 7% Dietary Fiber 3.00 g 12% Sugar Alcohol 12.00 g Calories 190.00 Sugar 3.00 g Protein 15.00 g 0% Vitamin A 0.00 1% Vitamin A 0.00 1% Vitamin C 0.00 0% Vitamin C 0.00 0% Calcium 0.00 6% Calcium 0.00 6% Iron 0.00 11% Iron 0.00 11% ** Daily Value (DV) not established † Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on
your calorie needs:
Calories: 2000 2500 Total Fat Less than 65 g 80 g Sat. Fat Less than 20 g 25 g Cholesterol Less than 300 mg 300 mg Sodium Less than 2400 mg 2400 mg Total Carbohydrate 300 g 375 g Dietary Fiber 25 g 30 g Calories per gram:
Fat 9• Carbohydrate 4•Protein 4
- Health Notes
Low-Carb Diets Beat Low-Fat for Heart HealthLow-Carb Diets Beat Low-Fat for Heart HealthWhen it comes to weight loss, one size doesn't necessarily fit allThe debate continues: Which is better for lasting weight loss-low-carb or low-fat diets? A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that both diets can help you lose weight and keep it off (when accompanied by a support program), but low-carb diets may actually be better for your heart.
What to give up?
The weight-loss industry is a booming one, with millions of overweight people worldwide hoping to shed some extra pounds. But what's the most effective strategy? Low-carb diets-such as the Zone, Atkins, and South Beach diets-may be more appealing and easier for some people to stick with than those that strictly limit fat intake. But critics of the low-carb craze worry that too much protein could lead to bone loss, and excess fat intake could raise cholesterol levels. On the flip side, some fats, like those found in nuts and salmon, protect heart health, so limiting these foods could also have drawbacks.
The new study compared weight loss, blood fats, bone mineral density, and blood pressure in 307 overweight adults who followed either a low-carb or a low-fat diet for two years:
- People in the low-carb group restricted their carbohydrate intake to no more than 20 grams per day for three months; after that they increased the amount of carbs they ate by 5 grams per day each week until their desired weight was attained.
- The low-fat diet was low in both fat and calories, with only 1,200 to 1,800 calories allowed per day, and no more than 30% of calories from fat.
- All participants received comprehensive behavioral counseling throughout the program to help them reach their target weight by improving self-monitoring skills, resisting cues to eat, and avoiding relapse into unhealthy eating patterns.
- They were also instructed to get some physical activity, mainly in the form of walking. Over time, they gradually increased the amount of exercise to four, 50-minute sessions per week.
Low carbs help heart health
By the end of the study, both groups had lost 7% of their body weight. People in the low-carb group tended to have lower diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number in a blood pressure reading), and bone mineral density decreased by 1.5% or less at the hip and spine in both groups, "suggesting that the hypothetical concerns that weight loss induced by a low-carbohydrate diet causes greater bone loss than that induced by a low-fat diet are unfounded," the study's authors commented. Triglycerides and LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels dropped in both groups to the same degree (which was not much), but HDL ("good") cholesterol levels were significantly higher in the low-carb group.
"When it comes to weight loss, one size doesn't necessarily fit all," says Clara Barnett, an NYC-based physician specializing in weight loss. "Some people respond remarkably well to low-fat diets, while others find them too limiting. It's reassuring to know that both of these diets seem to work equally well, so people can choose what works best for them and their lifestyle. If a person chooses to follow a low-fat diet, though, it might become important to do other things to help bring HDL levels up," she added.
(Ann Intern Med 2010;153:147-57)Kimberly Beauchamp, ND, earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Rhode Island and her Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine from Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA. She cofounded South County Naturopaths in Wakefield, RI, and now sees patients in East Greenwich and Wakefield. Inspired by her passion for healthful eating and her own young daughters, Dr. Beauchamp is currently writing a book about optimizing children's health through better nutrition.
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Comments about GNC Pro Performance® Pro-Crunch™ Lite - Cookies & Cream:
I would reccomend these to anyone, awesome bars, I enjoy the whole Pro Crunch line!
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Comments about GNC Pro Performance® Pro-Crunch™ Lite - Cookies & Cream:
I bring one to work coz i don't have time to eat in the morning. Rushing out of the house. This Protein bar is great. "LITE" not heavy in the stomach. plus it has 15g of protein. 3g of sugar. but the down part here is the sugar alcohol. but who cares bout the sugar alcohol lol. And then here comes the taste, omg its so good. It taste so good!! its like you're eating a chocolate marshmallow. I consume 2 bars a day. one in the morning and one in the evening as a meal replacement and for more protein intake aside from the protein shake i take. so it's all good. The best part, It's cheap. When u buy it during the gold card week, it's more cheaper! You'll never regret this protein bar! it's the best! (For me).
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Qualifying amount applies to merchandise only and cannot be combined with any other offer. Discounts apply to merchandise at retail dollar value only and do not apply to shipping, fees, taxes, or other non-merchandise charges. Not redeemable for cash, or valid toward any previously purchased merchandise. Valid online only.
Fleur De Lis Stationery Collection
This stationery collection features the Fleur de Lis, a stylized lily which is commonly associated with the French. It is widely used in family coat of arms as well as art and architecture across the world. The collection is both elegant and artistic, and of course available in a variety of colors. All cards are printed on a natural linen paper which serves to heighten the sophistication of the design.


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I LOVE the casing - packaging is always just a bonus feature for me but these little cases are really pretty.Just when you're done oohing and aahing on the outside, the ooh-and-ahh version 2.0 commences when you take a look at what awaits you inside.
Looovely looovely loooooovely. The eyeshadows were pressed to resemble woven mesh fabric - like glistening sequins on a glitzy dress. When swatched, you can tell that there tiny micro-sparkles are enmeshed in the silky eyeshadow - the micro-sparkles are smooth and create a subtle sparkling effect on the eye. Lancôme recommends that these eyeshadows can be used either wet or dry.These are swatches of all 3 shades I managed to take during the preview. The shot below is a better shot of the 2 shades I have with me right now, Fil D'Or and Fil D'Argent. The formula of these eyeshadows are stellar - very smooth and wonderful colour payoff. I like using these wet or with a damp sponge applicator - I usually use a brush with all my eyeshadows but I felt with these, they glistened and glowed the best when used with a sponge applicator.
Fil D'Argent is a warm taupe with very little grey or purple tones. Fil D'Or is a rich bronzed gold.
I used both the shades recently in a similar style - the Lancôme Petit Trésors all over the lids, paired with a deeper shade in the crease. I think I like them both paired with a warm bronzey brown in the crease, after experimenting with a few shades.Here, I paired Fil D'Argent with a wash of Make Up Store Jubilee (blackened gold) in the crease.
Base: Olay White Radiance Sunblock; Smashbox Hydrating Primer; Shu Uemura Smooth Fit Fluid Foundation in 743 Rich Beige; Laura Mercier Secret Camoflage Concealer in SC-&; Bobbi Brown Pressed Powder in Golden Orange.
Eyes: Lancôme Petit Trésor in Fil D'Argent; Make Up Store Microshadow in Jubilee; MAC Prolongwear Eyeshadow in Carefree (browbone highlight); Dollywink Liquid Eyeliner in Black; Clio Gelpresso (waterline); MUFE Aqua Cream in Black (lower lashline); Lancome Doll Eyes Waterproof Mascara
Cheeks: NARS Torrid
Lips: Lancôme L'Absolu Nu in Prune Resille
In this shot, I paired Fil D'Or with MAC Mega Metal Eyeshadow in Spectacle Of Yourself in the crease.
Base: Same as listed above
Eyes: Lancôme Petit Trésor in Fil D'Or; MAC Mega Metal Eyeshadow in Spectacle Of Yourself; MAC Prolongwear Eyeshadow in Carefree (browbone highlight); Dollywink Liquid Eyeliner in Black; Too Faced Perfect Eyeliner in Perfect Peacock (waterline); MUFE Aqua Cream in Black (lower lashline).
Cheeks: NARS Gold Member Creme Blush; Chanel Joues Contraste in Rouge
Lips: Lancôme L'Abosolu Nu in Prune Resille
I was tempted to pick up the other shade in the Petit Trésor range too and the lipstick in L'Absolu Rouge in 375 which was also released in the Holiday collection, pictured in the collage below (click to enlarge)With much restraint, I stopped myself ... only to allow myself to be tempted by the lure of the metallic eyeliners from the same collection - I picked up Taupe Brilliant with the kind help of Elaine and Lynn who purchased it in Hong Kong for me and I cannot wait to see it!
I love the Petit Trésor Eyeshadows - perhaps even more than the new Lancôme Ombre Hypnôse Mono eyeshadow formula and hope that they will release more shades in this gorgeous finish. Totally worth the money (even cheaper in Hong Kong, I hear)!
Thanks for stopping by always and have a beautiful day ahead!
Disclaimer: Fil D'Argent was provided for consideration, together with Les Paillettes Aux Yeux. Fil D'Or was purchased with my own money. All opinions expressed are my own and are unbiased.


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By Rabbi Nosson Scherman (Author)
List Price: $54.99
Online Discount: 10%
You Pay Only: $49.49Catalog #: SMYALM ISBN-10: 157819914X ISBN-13: 9781578199143Binding: Leather Maroon / Pages: 1113Dimensions: 5.125 x 8.125 inches / Weight: 2.15 LBSPublished: by ArtScroll Mesorah PublicationsIn Stock?: YES
"SH'MA YISRO-AYL."If you can read this, you can pray in Hebrew.The Seif Edition ArtScroll Transliterated Linear Machzor is now available for Yom Kippur. Understand the Dots, Vowels and Cantillations.Can't read Hebrew yet?- It's for you!Want the translation in front of you, phrase by phrase? Want it all, including an ArtScroll commentary? Want a Machzor to introduce your friends to Judaism? Want illuminating essays on every part of the prayers? Want clear instructions as the prayers proceed? Then this Machzor is for you!This Machzor has the crisp, clean, creative ArtScroll typeface and layout.The transliteration follows the Orthodox Union's phenomenally successful NCSY formula. The translation is from - and the commentary distills the best of - ArtScroll's classic Machzor. New introductory essays by Rabbi Benjamin Yudin exemplify his unique blend of scholarship and warmth.This is a Machzor that belongs in every household and synagogue - especially those with open arms to people who are sincerely searching for their Jewish roots. With the Seif Edition Machzor in their hands, no guests need ever feel like strangers in an Orthodox shul. See it. Try it. You'll want to have it. And you should
Browse Related Books:Books > Machzorim for Holidays & Festivals > Find the Machzor That is Right for YouBooks > Gift Suggestions > Deluxe Leather Editions > Machzorim for Holidays & Festivals > Machzor: Yom Kippur Holiday Prayer BooksBooks > Siddurim/Prayer Books > Prayer Books - Hebrew Transliterated with English > Prayer Books: Transliterated Yom Kippur
Other Selected Titles by Rabbi Nosson Scherman:
Bedtime Stories of Jewish ValuesHoshanosMinchah/Maariv: Hebrew/English: Weekday Pocket Size - Sefard - LeatheretteSiddur Hebrew/English: Sabbath and Festival Large Type - Ashkenaz White LeatherThe Book of Megillos
Click here for full list


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MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - For the third-straight week, the Central Michigan gymnastics team had a student-athlete honored by the Mid-American Conference as Kirsten Petzold was named the Co-Specialist of the Week.
Petzold set the tone for Central Michigan's victory over Ball State with a career-best 9.925 on vault to win the event and followed that up with another career best, this time on floor with a 9.825. Her performance helped CMU post the MAC's best team score this season with a 195.800. Her score on vault is the best in the conference this season.
Petzold joins teammates Emily Heinz and Halle Moraw as MAC honorees this season. Heinz was named the Gymnast of the Week on Jan. 14 while Moraw was selected Co-Specialist of the Week last Tuesday. Alyssa Nocella of Bowling Green was selected the Gymnast of the Week while Shelby MacDonald of Western Michigan shared the Specialist of the Week with Petzold.


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For Immediate Release:
SAINT PAUL, MN – Consumers and businesses in Minnesota often forget that their confidence in buying goods depends on accurate scales and measures that ensure consumers get what they pay for, and businesses compete on a level playing field. This is all due to the diligence of state weights and measures inspectors. The Minnesota Department of Commerce – Weights and Measures Division and the National Conference on Weights and Measures celebrates these public servants each year with Weights and Measures Week, March 1-7.
"Weights and measures enforcement is a basic, fundamental component of commerce and consumer protection," said Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman. "The accuracy of scales for groceries and goods, and the precision of our gas pumps and fuels serve both consumers and business owners."
The theme of Weights and Measures Week 2013 is "Common Cents." Referencing the fact that, on average, weights and measures enforcement costs Minnesotans very little each year for this fundamental regulatory presence in the marketplace.
Small errors in a grocery store scale can cost big money, either for grocery stores or consumers. For example, according to the Department of Commerce's Weights and Measurers Division, a typical large grocery store meat department sells 92,600 packages of meat per year. A scale with an error of $0.01 per pound can cost up to $17,000 on the part of either consumers or grocery stores.
The date for Weights and Measures Week commemorates the signing of the first United States weights and measures law by John Adams on March 2, 1799. Since then, there have been advancements from mechanical devices to highly sophisticated, software-based weighing and measuring instruments. Today's inspectors represent a new generation of trained professionals with expertise ranging from software security to motor fuel chemistry. Part of the long history of weights and measures in the United States, the Minnesota Department of Commerce's Weights and Measures Division was the state's first consumer protection agency – created in 1885.
Minnesota consumers with questions or concerns should contact the Minnesota Department of Commerce Weights and Measures Division at (651) 215-5821. To find out more about the Weights and Measures Division and helpful consumer tips including a handy conversion tool, what to consider when buying firewood, information about gasoline quality and pricing, or to file a complaint, visit the Weights and Measures website.
Copyright © 2013 Minnesota Department of Commerce. All Rights Reserved.
Minnesota Department of Commerce + 85 Seventh Place East + Saint Paul, MN 55101


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The best in contemporary and smooth jazz
This station plays recordings Produced, Engineered, Mixed or Performed by Audio Engineer John Plymale, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Los Quapos is a jazz band in Virginia Beach. For info and booking contact Ron by email at firstname.lastname@example.com contact. The music here is a mixture of sax, percussion and keyboards with a blend of voices. Hello to all our listeners in Europe.
Music variety is the spice of life... (Smooth) Jazz, Latin, Soul, R&B, Funk, Blues, World, Electronic, Dance, Lounge, Rock and whatever else may strike my whimsy. Let's explore worldly rhythms! Ritmo y Alma!
Cherrytree Radio
The kind of stuff that a chap might like to listen to when he's relaxing after a hard day doing all sorts of things. ''It's the wireless broadcast I myself would listen to. If I existed.'' - Biggles.
A freeform homage to the original Marconi Experiment
Streaming new & classic alternative, pop, and modern rock from the High Country. OK Go, Green Day, Weezer, Cage The Elephant, Jack White, Beck, Delta Spirit, Arcade Fire, Muse - best served loud
Now playing soundtracks and theme songs from movies from a mix of time period and genre with a focus on action, sci-fi, and animation titles!
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Catch a ride on the wild side of 'Easy' listening. Cool and Crazy Cocktail classics, Raging Surf guitars, Space Pop, Wailing Sax, Exotica & more.
GLP Funk, Soul & Jazz


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Truss finished with 87 yards rushing on 10 carries and scored the Golden Bears' final touchdown, sealing a 20-7 victory over Anniston at Lott-Mosby Memorial Stadium.
"TJ did great," Lincoln coach Ryan Herring said. "This was a big game for him and some of the other seniors. They really wanted this one.
"We have a good little rivalry going here with Anniston-Lincoln. He wanted me to feed him the ball, and finally I got smart and fed him the ball on the last drive and he scored.
Anniston struggled to move the ball on offense for most of the night. After returning the kickoff all the way to the Lincoln 26-yard line, the Bulldogs sputtered, failing to pick up a first down and turning the ball over on downs. The Golden Bears took advantage quickly.
Truss opened the game with carries of 22 and 20 yards to get the ball all the way down to Anniston's 27-yard line. Quarterback Chance Byrd picked up 10 yards on a third-and-8 play to get the ball all the way down to the 3.
Lincoln would go backward from there after a false start and a loss of three yards by Truss, but Tykey Sillmon picked up eight yards on third down to set up a clutch 3-yard touchdown run from Byrd, making the score 7-0 after a successful extra point.
Anniston moved the ball all the way to Lincoln's 24 behind the running back tandem of Rashard Williams and Zondrick Foster, but again failed to put up points.
"We made a few more mistakes than they did," Anniston coach Eddie Bullock said. "When you play a team that comes in like that, whoever makes the least amount of mistakes is going to come out victorious, and that's what happened to us.
"We had a couple of drives that we didn't punch in the end zone, and then we had a couple of assignments that we missed, and, of course, we had some penalties that kind of hurt us too."
Williams took a hard lick on the next drive and wouldn't return to the game, and the Bulldogs offense struggled to move the ball the rest of the way.
"(Losing Williams) hurt us a lot," Bullock said. "I ended up having to go with some guys that didn't get as many reps, and I had to go with an eighth-grader back there.
"We kind of had to change some things up to get them involved. That's part of the game though. That happens."
Lincoln went up 14-0 shortly after Williams left the game. A 29-yard pass from Byrd and a 13-yard run by Truss set up an 18-yard touchdown run from Sillmon.
Sillmon finished the game with 16 carries for 71 yards.
Anniston found some life just before halftime. Jamar Jones rattled off runs of 15, 17 and 10 yards on three consecutive plays to get the drive going. Quarterback Quintavious Dobbins then completed a 26-yard pass to Da'Monta Miller, setting up a 17-yard touchdown toss from Dobbins to Quin Jackson to cut the deficit to seven with 33.3 seconds before the break.
Defense was the name of the game in the second half as the teams swapped three-and-outs for the majority of the third quarter and early on in the fourth. The Bulldogs only managed one first down the entire second half.
"We played hard and we played fast," Herring said. "We just had a couple of mental errors. Other than that, I thought we played great. We had a couple of missed tackles and a couple of mental errors, but other than that I thought we played a great game on defense. But Anniston did too. Anniston played a great game on defense. They hit us in the mouth and made us like it."
After getting a big stop midway through the fourth, Anniston's Spencer Howard threw an interception that set up Lincoln's final touchdown.
Truss carried the ball in from 10 yards out to cap the scoring.


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Dead Man Down
Dead Man Down (R)
"The director of the original "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", makes his American theatrical debut with the new action thriller, Dead Man Down. The film features two strangers who are irresistibly drawn to one another by their mutual desire for revenge."No show times found for selected day.
Show times for all dates
Rated R for violence, language throughout and a scene of sexuality
Length: 110 minutes
Released: March 8, 2013 Nationwide
Score: 2.0
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Colin Farrell, Dominic Cooper, Terrence Howard, Armand AssanteDirector: Niels Arden Oplev
Producer: J.H. Wyman, Neal H. Moritz
Writer: J.H. Wyman
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
Distributor: FilmDistrict
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