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NDMP restores sanity to NAS backup
NDMP has emerged as the best way to provide plug-and-play connectivity between backup software and filer-attached tape drives.
Here's a classic storage manager's nightmare: Suddenly end users can't access 100GB of critical data because of a bent pin on a SCSI connector. And here's what really makes you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night: There's no backup copy.
That happened at SAS Institute a few years ago and it ignited an effort to revamp how backups were done. Backup at the Cary, NC, software company is serious business - at stake are millions of lines of code and dozens of simultaneous software builds.
Kelly Wyatt, a senior systems programmer at SAS, knows these challenges all too well. Her team, which supports more than 4,000 people involved in maintaining the 47 individual applications within the company's product portfolio, is continually looking for better ways to manage the company's nearly 8TB of live production data.
The immensity of SAS' storage needs made it clear to Wyatt and her team that simply relying on backups by trying to coordinate independent local tape systems was never going to provide adequate manageability. The firm installed filers from Sunnyvale, CA-based Network Appliance, which not only made highly scalable file servers, but also had worked closely with Intelliguard - now part of Legato - to develop the flexible backup management protocol, Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP).
Although initially designed to improve backup of NetApp filers, NDMP has taken on a wider role: Most network-attached storage (NAS) vendors have endorsed the protocol, saying it's the best way to provide plug-and-play connectivity between backup management software and filer-attached tape drives. If you've got to back up NAS boxes, you need to know about NDMP. It's now maturing as a standard, and gaining storage area network (SAN)-like features such as snapshot.
"It's about ensuring that you're backing up everything that needs to be backed up," says Jay Desai, data protection solutions manager with NetApp. "This is a universal backup agent for all applications. If you have a lot of IP investment, this is a complement to that solution just like Fibre Channel [FC] attached tape drives are in a SAN. That's one of the reasons people implement NDMP - to leverage their investment in large tape resources."
NDMP eliminates the need for data to be funneled from remote locations through a central backup server, then dumped into a single backup repository. Initially, it enabled centralized management of multiple local tape drives in each filer. Newer versions allow you to use centralized tape repositories. Built in a client/server model, NDMP has hooks in both backup management software - the client - and virtual state machines built into compliant networked storage devices - the servers.
At SAS, IT uses Veritas' NetBackup to manage backup of 18 NetApp filers, which provide 11.5TB of NAS space used to store data from Windows and Unix systems spread across multiple logical volumes. Some 30 locally attached DLT 7000 drives are involved, with four drives on each of two NetApp filers dedicated to backing up data from non-NetApp file systems.
Wyatt explains the impracticality of the alternative - going to each filer, typing DUMP and then trying to make sense of all the tapes. "We offsite hundreds of tapes a week, and don't want to have to hand label what they are. With NDMP, we are able to very effectively and efficiently back up 8TB of data on 18 filers, and it's really helped us with consolidating data on fewer servers."
NDMP's expanding role
As NDMP has evolved, its expanding scope has forced a redefinition of terminology. A NDMP client is now also referred to as a Data Management Application (DMA), while a NDMP server is now also called a Data Service Provider (DSP). Various DSPs have been defined, including data (e.g., servers with internal storage, NAS devices, SAN-attached storage subsystems), tape (jukeboxes, general servers with shared tape drives or writable CD-R libraries) and SCSI pass-through DSPs. The upcoming NDMP v.5 adds a Translate DSP, including N to M stream multiplexers and data compression.
Building a storage strategy around NDMP can deliver faster performance rather than relying on the indirect paths taken in conventional backup models. This is because NDMP streams - which only carry a small volume of management-related information - direct the data flow between servers and their locally attached storage devices. If you opt for locally attached tape, data itself isn't transmitted over the corporate network, eliminating the congestion that can degrade application performance and push backups perilously close to the edge of their backup windows.
If you're interested in centralizing tape in a large library, NDMP v.2 and v.3 support sophisticated three-way backups. These allow NDMP-compliant filers to direct their data to backup devices that may be connected to a different filer altogether. By combining this configuration with a restore from attached storage, a user can automatically schedule redundant backups of stored data.
For example, data from one filer-attached tape drive can be shuttled to another tape drive using NDMP. Three-way backups allow data to be pushed to tape jukeboxes, from one filer to another - allowing maintenance of online backups instead of pushing data to tape - or from a filer without local tape storage to one that's connected to a library. Data can be sent from multiple filers to a single tape library, or split across multiple, individually attached tape libraries to increase backup performance.
Because it's built around TCP/IP and not the expensive FC connections required for distributed SAN backups, NDMP is an easier and faster approach that delivers similar functionality into the NAS environment. That makes it a godsend for companies that have struggled with the personnel burden of expanding backup tasks as their corporate data grows.
"We have quite a few techniques for heterogeneous backup and recovery on the SAN side," says Mike Adams, product marketing manager for NetBackup with Veritas. "The question is, do you want to have a box that's very easy to manage? People choose a NAS device because they want file sharing that's simple and easy; SAN folks decide they want to do block-level sharing of information. Depending on your business needs, that can be more technology than you want to deploy."
Support for Windows and Linux
Because NDMP is now supported in Windows CIFS (common Internet file systems) and Unix NFS (Network File System), it can back up data from both environments while retaining each one's file attributes and other idiosyncrasies. This capability led Honeywell Satellite Systems (HSS), Glendale, AZ, to implement NDMP along with an upgrade of its tape drives intended to speed backup of its 700GB Auspex NS2000 file server. Although most configurations maximize speed by directing data to locally attached libraries, NDMP's TCP/IP heritage also provides more backup flexibility by allowing aggregation of backup data from multiple NDMP-compliant filers onto libraries that aren't physically attached to them. This allows customers to put backup data where it's needed over standard networks, while still retaining full manageability over those backups from the central backup software.
Wherever backup data is ultimately stored, the NDMP-compliant tape device transmits confirmation of the write-back to the central backup server. At the same time, data is directed straight from the server to the tape library, often as quickly as the tape can take it. This reduces costs and improves the speed of NDMP solutions.
Integrated circuit maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Sunnyvale, CA, boosted backup speeds to 60GB/hour, per filer using Workstation Solutions' NDMP-compliant Quick Restore to back up 15TB of Unix, Linux and Windows data from 27 NetApp filers to six tape libraries, including 35 SCSI-attached tape drives. The move has improved the robustness of the company's backup strategy, paved the way for future growth and eased management of AMD's backup environment.
Vendors jump on NDMP bandwagon
NetApp originally envisioned NDMP as a way to free itself from the need to write proprietary hooks to link its filers with every proprietary management environment on the market. By giving the data servers the ability to proactively notify backup software about the files being backed up, those servers could take a more hands-off approach once the backup or restore had commenced.
This promise was a major part of the reason Legato snapped up Intelliguard for $52 million early in 1999, then rushed NDMP-compliant versions of its products onto the market later that year.
Since then, broader support for NDMP has largely solved the major headache of NAS device interoperability. At least 39 product families from 30 vendors now support the protocol, allowing customers to choose backup software and NAS devices based on their individual characteristics, not compatibility.
NDMP is based around just eight specific operating system interfaces. Connect, configure, data, tape and SCSI provide a direct interface and control over remote tape drive and SCSI devices from NDMP-compliant vendors. Notify, file history and logging interfaces allow backup software to manage file histories of NDMP-based remote backups.
In theory, any company can easily make its products NAS-capable by implementing these interfaces (SDKs for each version of NDMP are available from http://www.ndmp.org/download). This ease of use has allowed many smaller startups to quickly bring devices such as storage appliances into the NAS market without having to first win support and certification from individual backup software vendors.
"One of the things that's key to our success is ensuring that customers don't have to change anything," says Geoff Barrall, chief technology officer of storage appliance maker BlueArc. "NDMP removes all the driver hassles customers used to have."
It certainly seems to have served this purpose: customers generally report NDMP implementation to be relatively painless, although tweaking can be necessary. For example, SAS had to increase the NDMP timeout to allow for often long delays while filers searched through hundreds of gigabytes of files to identify those that had changed. Such issues, however, are small given NDMP's ability to overcome the massive challenge of interoperability.
Lack of standards
Still, all isn't necessarily well in the world of NDMP standards. Because vendors initially installed NDMP for use with their own products, there were many interpretations of what was actually needed to ensure full compliance. And with no formal standards body to set the record straight, there have been reports of inconsistencies between implementations causing headaches for storage managers keen to take advantage of the protocol's flexibility.
Furthermore, not every vendor supports every form of NDMP transfer. One common inconsistency is support for Direct Access Recovery (DAR), a NDMP capability that allows NDMP-compliant servers to address individual files contained within volume backups. DAR support is far from ubiquitous, but its appeal to customers should make it more common in the future.
In recognition of the growing support for NDMP after the release of NDMP v.3 - now common in most implementations of the standard - its development was handed over to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), which in mid-2000 formed a NDMP working group to refine the details of NDMP v.4. This year has finally seen vendors release products based on that version, which includes a range of enhancements including improved restartability of interrupted backups and support for custom extensions.
First among these extensions is NDMP Snapshot Management, a NetApp add-on that allows NDMP-compliant devices to take and operate on instantaneous backups of their data. This should allow companies to save considerably on hardware and reduce the complexity of managing massive tape archives.
"With this technology you don't have to worry about [backup] window time anymore," says Hieu Le, senior network system administrator with programmable semiconductor manufacturer Altera, San Jose, CA, which is using NDMP-compliant products from CommVault Systems, BlueArc, and Quantum to back up 2TB of data accessed by a staff of more than 600. NDMP's seamless scalability will help Altera expand its backup strategy to meet storage demand expected to top 5TB by the end of the year.
With NDMP v.4 out the door, work has already begun on the next major upgrade, v.5. This time, the standardization is being driven under the auspices of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), a move that was made to help NDMP tap into the organization's extensive knowledge base pertaining to areas such as security, authentication, operation through firewalls and congestion control. An initial specification is expected by mid-2003.
Now that NDMP is firmly entrenched within the panoply of backup vendors, it has emerged as the great unifier: a means of resolving potential incompatibilities and adding greater flexibility to relatively inexpensive and well-understood NAS environments. Coming versions will add even better features, but NDMP's already considerable growth and successful implementation confirms its value for the long run.
|NDMP roadmap: an evolving protocol


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Marc Emery Prison Blog Post Number Twenty Four
Marijuana Activist Marc Emery Prison Blog
[Editor's note: Marc has begun writing regular "newsletters" that he photocopies and mails to supporters who write to him. We are posting these newsletters online as part of Marc's blog. Find out more about Marc Emery, including how to help bring him home to Canada, and how to send him a letter, at www.FreeMarc.ca. Marc's blogs are also posted at FreeMarc.ca]
January 10-17th 2011: I have had many complaints about this concentration camp for foreigners. No US citizens are incarcerated here, where nothing ever seems to improve. But one aspect of my situation has gotten better.
The photocopier for inmates is finally available for use after this place has been operating 3 months. My fingers are so aching from writing five or six 8-10 page letters every day that I have decided to type up the whole story so I can mail it to people and add personalized parts at the end. I am falling behind in my correspondence; I've about 35 to 40 people I want to get back to but it's not possible, so I hope this new format will suffice to keep them informed.
Marc Emery posing with his visiting wife Jodie in a photo from SeaTac FDC, July 4th 2010.Nothing at D. Ray James, this private prison run by GEO Group, ever can be an exclusively good thing, so while the photocopier is functioning, the typewriters have not had correctable ribbon for 3 weeks now, so typos will abound this original hand-written newsletter, and there is little I can do about it.
This typewriter is vintage 1983. I hadn't seen a typewriter for over 20 years until I got to D. Ray James. Even though US citizens in a "low" security prison have access to email (hours a day), computers, word processors, and printers, that is far too much for the 'foreigner scum' housed here at DRJCI. My apologies in advance for numerous typos in this letter I am unable to correct. [Note from Jodie Emery: typos and errors have been corrected for this online version.]
My job here at D. Ray James is to keep the inmate reading library in good order, straighten the shelves, prevent theft, keep the noise level down, and try to encourage the powers that be to spend some money on obtaining current books and magazines. The lady that is the Head of Library Services is Doctor Davis.
I was dismissed from this job on December 20th, 2010 because I love the library too much to see it dysfunctional. Not a single book or magazine in the English Language has been acquired in 3 months since D. Ray James Correctional Institution opened "for business" on October 4th 2010. There were 20 or so beat up magazines from July and August 2010 (although the only copy of Rolling Stone Magazine was from August 2009) and about 7 Spanish magazines (for about 1,000 Spanish-speaking inmates!). The library is made up of 3,332 books (I did the official inventory), 2,930 in English, all 10-40 years old, beat-up beyond belief, decrepit, ex-library, obsolete. There are 400 books total in Spanish. These were acquired when the prison opened, but are largely classical novels. That is the only purchase I have seen this facility make for the library.
So I ordered magazine & book purchasing catalogs. I, with the kindly librarian, Mr. Folk (not a real librarian; he actually applied to be head of security, but they made him the librarian instead — and he has since retired) giving me permission, filled out requisition forms to order magazine subscriptions. I was told by Mr. Folk to order 20 subscriptions to popular magazines.
One day, Dr. Davis came in and was alarmed by a library aide (me) filling out the GEO Group Requisition forms. I nonetheless read her the magazines I had chosen: Car Craft, The Sporting News, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, TV y Novellas, National Geographic… "Oh we aren't getting National Geographic," Dr. Davis said. "That's way too sexually explicit. I know what the inmates are looking for when they read National Geographic. No, we won't be subscribing to that."
"But" I responded, slack jawed, "National Geographic is the single most subscribed magazine by libraries the world over. Every elementary school has a subscription to National Geographic."
"Well, we won't be subscribing to it here. Way too sexually explicit."
It's noteworthy that National Geographic is specifically EXEMPTED in Bureau of Prison Policy and Procedure from being considered indecent even if it does show aboriginal tribes with exposed nipples or genitalia (which isn't common anyway). So that's the kind of mind-set of the HEAD of Education and Library Services.
The next day, my personal subscription copy of National Geographic arrived with "King David and His Times" on the front cover, perfect for backward southeast Georgia, with articles inside on the 12th century Christian church architecture of Spain. No naked aboriginals anywhere to be found. So I put it up on the magazine rack, and it is without question the most popular magazine amongst the inmates.
We have not received any magazines through subscriptions by the institution since the time Dr. Davis took the magazine subscription requisition form. Then, as you might be aware, I had Jodie announce to my Facebook supporters — now numbering over 35,000 — Marc Emery's D. Ray James Library Resuscitation Program. Since this penny-pinching place won't improve the library, I took it upon myself to do it. I asked supporters to send me like-new current magazines, and they did. Dozens of them. I asked for contemporary Spanish-language novels and fans responded by sending dozens of them, and over 100 books in English. I was sent current law texts, hardcover Spanish to English dictionaries (the library — incredibly — had none), and large pictorial books, all for donation to the inmate library.
Then the people working here started going on the internet, and they learned of my plan to improve the library despite the best effort to keep the inmates in the dark and stupid, without any current reading material (except the atrocious newspaper, USA Today), and dismissed me after 100 items for donation to the library arrived. The mailroom stopped me from receiving any books or magazines. They rejected numerous letters sent to me. They cut off my phone access over the Christmas Holidays from December 22nd to 27th, 2010, as they did to every Canadian here, and some Canadians had not even had their phone access restored 16 days later (but more of that D. Ray James perfidy later). In short, my effort to do what this institution refuses to do — make the law library and reading library viable and current — was stymied and I was punished for caring too much about the inmates' welfare. It's clear the people who run this facility do not care, and want the library to be moribund and of little use to inmates.
In the law library, I am still doing paralegal work. I have supplied the other paralegals, a team of 4 other inmates, with information and texts and newsletter subscriptions and contacts on the outside to help us because the institution here provides no resources other than a clunky version of Lexus/Nexus, a program that will show all existing federal statutes. The five paralegals do virtually all the documents, inquiries, motions, appeals, grievances, requests, for all the 1,000 inmates, who largely don't speak English, and very few write credibly in English. This is a huge task, to which they get paid 12 cents an hour (in my case) up to 40 cents an hour (in the case of Guy, a Pakistani-born British man who has a college education).
Of course, we can't use a computer for all these formal documents! We have to use these ancient, obsolete typewriters, using non-correctable ribbon. Using the word processor, which is here, connected to a printer, which is here, would be a standard at every "Low" security prison for US citizen inmates, but we foreigners are too contemptible to be entrusted with the word processor so all our work for the inmates has to be done on these ridiculously time-consuming typewriters. Even though every one of the inmates is here for a non-violent offense, many are just illegal residents within the United States, working without permits. We are treated like we are in a medium-high security prison.
I was dismissed on December 20th, 2010, but on January 6th, 2011 I was reinstated. The warden was away for 2 weeks, and on his first day back he saw me. He said, "Emery, you shouldn't have been fired from the Library. You're reinstated."
"Excellent, Sir," I said. "There are issues with the mail room I'd like to discuss. My mail is being rejected, books are restricted to me —"
"Let's talk about that later," he said. "Right now, can you tell your people to stop the emails and phone calls to my office and GEO Offices in Boca Raton?"
So, I'm back in the library, and at some point I can donate books and magazines to the library. I've never figured out the reason the top brass forbid inmates from giving books and their own subscriptions to the library. The library is, after all, for the inmates, it is common practice at any other prison. It's all about control here. Any initiative here by the inmates is a threat to their control mentality. That's the whole reason. They do not have any rationally grounded reason. At first it was some invented rule about the Dept. of Justice forbidding donations, but in reality it's just that donations require a bit of 30-second paperwork, which I did when I donated any book or magazine. But it's all about control really.
The library is unfortunately extremely pathetic. All the books are beat-up, decrepit condition ex-library books 10-40 years old. They are obsolete, largely book club fiction hardcovers. There are, inexplicably for a male-only prison, about 300 Harlequin romance novels; one of the biggest — if not the biggest — category in the library. The library hasn't spent a dime on any new magazines since opening, so the dozen or so that have survived from summer of 2010 are falling apart now. In December there were 15 magazines that were current once my donations from people like you started coming in: Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Runners World, Dog World, Time, Beautiful British Columbia, Newsweek, and others. Donations were the only source of current material, other than the atrocious USA Today. I would donate my personal daily New York Times for actual newspaper content.
I'm going to lend around any magazines I get, but the mailroom has me on this bizarre program that in order for me to receive books I have to mail out an equal number of books. So on Tuesday, I'll go to the mailroom, and pick up to 5 books, but I have to bring 5 books back to the mailroom to be mailed to my friend Loretta Nall. In any other prison, I could just donate to the library, give them away or put them in storage in my property, but not at DRJCI. There is no policy or procedure in their own book of rules specifying this; it's just made up and applies only to me, as no other inmate is required to do this. But as I shall point out later, there is a whole routine of discrimination against the Canadians here by our American overlords.
[Note from Jodie: Marc has been told that the 5-book rule no longer applies, and he is now getting all of his mail and books, but only because the warden spoke to the mail room. Please keep sending mail. Address at www.FreeMarc.ca]
The Canadians, being from an English-speaking country with a modicum of civilization, know what's rational and normal in these circumstances, and are all bitching and complaining about the bizarre conditions here and about the unequal treatment we are receiving in this concentration camp for non-US citizens. A full comparison of the differences in treatment for Canadians in the US Federal Prison system vs. how an American is treated in a US Prison comes later. Canadians know it's wrong and we speak out.
The Hispanics, for now, know that there is little they can do about any inequities, so they tolerate them. But by summer there will be 2,500 inmates, and right now Georgia is cool in winter. When it gets hot and humid in summer, day after day, and this institutional insanity carries on, we shall see what they will and will not tolerate.
Starting on Monday, January 10th, I'll be getting the reading library in order. It's a mess now. The shelves haven't been straightened. There is no method for tracking down overdue books, and many books loaned out are overdue. I get most of the paralegal books and newsletters so I'll continue to help various inmates but that will fall to Guy, Darren, Miguel, and Eugenio to do, although many inmates come to me because they've seen fellow inmates get their paperwork done by me.
I had a visit from Richard Malloy Barnes, the staff lawyer for Georgia NORML. He drove 8 hours from Atlanta largely just to meet me and see how I was doing. But I asked him if he would be our prison lawyer at pro-bono rates, maybe $60 or $70 an hour, to send letters to the prison in matters of extreme neglect or obstruction of clearly defined legal rights. I figure a good letter taking 30 minutes could be sent to the prison here on a really egregious matter. For example, there is an inmate where who had his dentures lost by GEO last June, now 7 months ago. He has put in 9 requests to have his dentures replaced, but even though GEO Group lost them, they have still been unwilling to replace them. Now, after 9 refusals, GEO Group at D. Ray James Correctional Institution is saying that because he is now less than a year to go on his sentence, they don't have to replace them! Meanwhile, his gums are in pain from 7 months of trying to eat without his dentures, and swollen too. The prospect of going another eleven months without dentures is very discouraging for him. Yet that's what GEO Group (DRJCI) is telling him. So I looked up dental care court precedents in my Prisoners' Self-Help Litigation Manual, a fabulous 900+ page huge tome by John Boston, and found out that "willful indifference" in the case of serious dental need — "serious" meaning there is pain and swelling of the gums — constitutes an actionable negligence. This fellow, having done 7 months now without dentures, now constitutes a willful negligence; to go another eleven months makes it a certainty. On his last grievance form, I attached the relevant court cases and law to underscore his request. Even if they didn't lose his existing dentures, they are obligated to maintain his dental regime of adequate dentures.
In an FCI (Federal Correctional Institution) for US citizens, this would not even be a problem. It would be a routine issuance of dentures. For us foreigner scum in the US Federal System, all these for-profit prisons we are warehoused in care about is spending as little money on us as possible. There is one doctor here for 1,100 inmates, and one dentist. As you'll see in the chart that follows, we are deprived of virtually every amenity, opportunity or facility that Americans in the US Federal System get.
So I asked lawyer Barnes if he could send some letters on behalf of prisoners here who really need a little outside help, and I would have my supporters try to raise $1,500.00 or so to retain him to do these letters and some follow-up. "It's got be cheap," I said. So we're going to discuss these things further, but I think having a Georgia lawyer keeping an eye on this prison and the inmates in here is a good idea if it can be done inexpensively. If you are interested in helping with a financial contribution to legal representation on behalf of the inmate population here at D. Ray James Correctional Institution, email my wife email@example.com and discuss how you can make a $25.00 or $50.00 donation to this retainer.
I've received many legal texts thanks to my friend Dana Larsen. Paralegal Procedure, Burtons Legal Thesaurus, a US Jailhouse Lawyers' Manual, Prisoner Self-Help Litigation Manual, and subscriptions to Prison Legal News (see their website at prisonlegalnews.org). The US Jailhouse Lawyers Manual is an excellent primer for understanding and doing writs of Habeas Corpus, despite there being 178 typographical errors in the first 50 pages of the book. Yes, I said 178 errors; it's self-published I think, and maybe he put the first rough draft disc in the printer, but I hope to send him my edit and maybe I can get an editor credit in the next edition.
A writ of Habeas Corpus, a term seldom used in Canada (an American legal term that does, however, stem from British common law), is a demand to be in court requiring the state/authorities of the prison to demonstrate that the prisoner's detention follow the letter of the law/rule of law. It is a mechanism to seek relief, from the court, of unlawful or unjust conditions, treatment, or detention. So I learned in this book when an inmate can file a writ of Habeas Corpus. The courts require an inmate, for example, to exhaust all internal remedies via the internal grievance process. D. Ray James is sneaky in that regard. Many times you file a form or grievance, the staff here simply do not answer back. What are you going to do? This is a rogue facility. They often don't even make the proper forms available so you cannot file a proper grievance. Then they didn't have a photocopier available so you couldn't make copies of your documents.
It's very complicated, all the forms, the grievance process, etc. Considering 97% of inmates here are non-English speaking and hardly literate in English, that makes the paralegal advisers very valuable. Most staff here at D. Ray James Correctional Institution do not know the correct procedure to recommend to any inmate requiring a grievance form.
All appeals about the treatment of an inmate here go to GEO Group, not the Bureau of Prisons, so there is no government agency that oversees these grievances or requests. It's handled as a business or corporate matter, incredibly. I believe the only real way to get any help for inmates is media exposure, outside pressure, getting the truth out to the Canadian and American public. I think most Canadians are surprised to find out that Canadians in the US Federal Prison System are ghettoed into a concentration camp completely different from what US citizens in the US Federal System experience.
I've gotten all these great books on jailhouse lawyering from my friend Dana Larsen, who is currently campaigning very seriously for the leadership of the British Columbia New Democratic Party. It's a quixotic campaign centered on Dana's sound views on repealing marijuana prohibition. I fear Mike Farnsworth will be the next leader of the BC NDP. Farnsworth is a prohibitionist; he has always parroted the 'more cops, more laws, more prisons, more punishment' mantra that the BC Liberal Party and upstart BC Conservative Party already advocate. The only ideological alternative in the case of Farnsworth taking over the BC NDP leadership would be the BC Green Party, who seem to be poorly led by Jane Sterk, a hard-to-like, prickly matron of a leader who clearly dislikes people and politics, and certainly does little to improve her party's standing with the people of British Columbia. Ineffectual as leader, she may as well be invisible. In the 20 months since the most recent BC provincial election, her distant personality and her lack of any common touch, along with inaction and lethargy, have made the BC Greens irrelevant and a non-factor in BC Politics, even though the brand itself is polling 12%. My wife Jodie is on the executive council of the BC Greens but she has become somewhat disillusioned. Sterk is certain to be ignored in the next election, trounced on the day of the vote, which could be this spring or this fall if a provincial election is called. It's a huge missed opportunity that the BC Greens cannot take advantage of the political vacuum that exists in BC right now. With both the BC Liberals and NDP searching for new leaders, and the Greens as the third party of BC (the Conservatives are just starting up), no one has captured the public imagination from either party. After the BC Greens get no results in the next election, Sterk will have to resign and then the BC Greens will have only one more opportunity to get a leader with charisma, gravitas, vision, toughness and an enthusiasm for campaigning virtually non-stop. Plus some good ideas that contrast with the NDP/Liberal line, and a vision that can be clearly articulated to the voters of BC. It may take a generation to alter the way we treat the environment and the planet, so the BC Greens should focus on what can be done immediately in the field of social justice in appealing to voters. That means police reform, ending prohibition, more civilian oversight, a viable and accessible citizen initiative process that cannot be undermined by the legislature, more choice in schooling, giving more power back to the people, empowering the cynical mass of citizens who are weary of government being the problem when the solutions stare at us.
I did have a visit with MLA (member of the provincial Legislative Assembly) Guy Gentner, on Sunday, January 2nd. This thoughtful and intelligent elected representative from British Columbia (NDP — North Delta) was visiting his daughter in Gainesville, Florida, when he announced in a newspaper interview he was planning to visit me while in Florida. It took him two hours to drive here, two hours to drive back, and he spent four hours with me. We spoke of the conditions here at this peculiar place, and private prisons more generally. I supplied him with my chart outlining the discrimination faced by Canadians in the US Federal system, and urged him to take up the view that while Canadians are being treated in this segregated manner, no Canadian should ever be extradited from Canada to the United States. Prosecute them in Canada until such a time when Canadians receive the identical same regime in the US prison system as Americans. We discussed various things: the ruinous policies of prohibition, the conditions for the ten Canadians here, and our activist/political backgrounds. It was a serious talk with much discussed and I was honored to have such a gentleman take 9 or 10 hours out of his holidays to investigate my current circumstances.
So, I explained to Mr. Gentner some of the differences between what Americans receive in the way of services and amenities compared to what is provided for Canadians in the US Federal system. Firstly, all US citizen federal inmates are housed in Dept. of Justice/Bureau of Prisons facilities, subject to oversight by the courts and Dept. of Justice policy and procedure.
All Canadians, once sentenced, are housed in for-profit prisons run by GEO Group or Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which don't have to adhere to BOP policy and procedure, have little oversight by the Dept. of Justice/BOP, and whose primary imperative is warehousing inmates at the lowest possible cost. These private prisons are contracted by the US Dept. of Justice for the 20 facilities that house foreigners exclusively, even though the cost to the taxpayer is no less than the cost of housing a US Citizen in a BOP facility.
One of the most glaring inequities for Canadians is that all Americans in the US federal prison system have Corrlinks email. At $3.00 per hour (at no cost to the taxpayer), all US citizens in a federal prison have email, hours a day, with up to 30 correspondents. (Correspondents can be added or deleted). This is extremely important for communication with loved ones, and accessing news and legal material, because both Canadian and Americans only receive 300 minutes of phone time in total for a whole month. Most months, it's less than 10 minutes a day! This is way too little time. But when an inmate has access to hours of email a day, it makes a huge difference. Currently, sentenced Canadians have no access to email, while all federal American inmates in the corrections system have access to email.
There is no exercise equipment here of any kind. Americans in every federal prison facility have treadmills, steppers, and other equipment (in each unit's gym). There are no plans to bring in exercise equipment here. There are only the most rudimentary courses or vocations available here. In a US federal prison for American inmates, courses are plentiful and accredited, with accredited instructors also required. For Canadians and others here, the instructors are not accredited. Nor are the courses accredited. Currently, DRJCI is offering welding classes, horticulture, and culinary arts course, but these are largely bogus course with little relevant skill-building going on.
Canadians have real difficulties putting money into a Canadian inmate's commissary account here. Americans can have their family send money orders or wire money via Western Union, using their credit cards or cash. Canadian families cannot send money orders, nor use Western Union, nor can Canadian families of Canadian inmates use a Canadian-based VISA or MasterCard. Canadian families must travel to the USA to buy at Wal-Mart or some such place, a US-based prepaid MasterCard or VISA or Debit Card, and then place money in their loved one's account using the Keefe Commissary Network monopoly at http://www.accesscorrections.com, where service charges are considerable. It is commonly thought that Keefe, which supplies all the items for inmates that we buy in commissary purchases as well as the deposits to our accounts, is owned principally by the Bush Family.
American inmates sent to a Low Security FCI are largely housed in 2-man cells. The "low" my judge recommended I get sent to, Lompoc FCI, has 2-man cells. In fact, a man from Sea-Tac FDC — a 9-time bank robber using a bomb threat while robbing banks — was sent to "low" security Lompoc, replete with email, exercise equipment, outdoor visitation, and dozens of courses & vocations, while I, a political prisoner who sold cannabis seeds, am at a "low" security concentration camp for foreigners without any basic amenity American prisoners take for granted. He was sent to the nearest "low" security FCI near his home in Washington State, as Bureau of Prison requirements are that an American should be placed at a facility within 500 miles of their home (though that often doesn't happen anyway). I am 4,000 miles from my home, requiring my wife to travel by airplane for 9 to 13 hours in flight, and up to 48 hours in total transit time getting here, as has been the case on two occasions so far. All the Canadians here are in the private prison furthest away from their home, the exact opposite situation to what is mandated for American inmates. There is no Federal facility further away from Vancouver than this corner of southeast Georgia (Florida having no Federal prisons for foreigners).
The Law Library here has Lexus/Nexus, which is the complete compilation of US law statutes. That is all. Anything else here, I have brought in: the dictionaries, paralegal procedure, jailhouse lawyer manual, Prisoners' Self-Help Litigation Manual, newsletters, etc. Without email, we cannot make requests for assistance or legal material, addresses of government agencies, or prisoner assistance groups. With only 300 minutes and a set list of phone numbers permitted for us to call, we cannot call outside legal help to send us or provide materials. Americans therefore have a far more advantageous ability to do legal work on their and other inmates' behalf.
The reading library is supposed to have 30-50 magazine subscriptions to provide inmates with a variety of current reading material. There are no contemporary novels or reference books in either English or Spanish. 400 Spanish books, largely classical fiction, were delivered when DRJCI became a federal prison, but nothing contemporary or illustrated was amongst these books. Essentially, the library has largely useless obsolete books and management here refuses donations from outside sources, the inmates, as well as refusing to spend money on a regular infusion of new materials. A certified librarian is required in any BOP inmate library, whereas DRJCI has a part-time teacher sit in on the library, under the controlling auspices Dr. Davis, to ensure that no progress of any kind takes place.
Foreigners have unique needs here, yet there is no way they can be accommodated. No inmate is from Georgia, so any lawyer would be extremely expensive to visit an inmate here. There is no information of treaty transfers for foreigners here, or addresses of their consulates, representatives. There is not a single legally trained individual with any experience in deportations, immigration law available to any inmate here. Without email, this becomes extremely difficult to get information, ensuring each inmate stays here as long as possible.
Americans in the Federal prison system can use word processing programs (Word, for example), and have these programs connected to printers. That is not available to Canadians here, and no explanation is ever offered, even though this is a low security facility, and none of us were convicted of computer crimes. Dr. Davis even tries to restrict the law library photocopier to "legal" material only, even though inmates are supposed to be able to buy a photocopy card, and pay 10 cents a copy. The photocopier was paid for out the inmate trust fund! Canadians must use ancient typewriters instead of word processing.
Americans in US federal facilities are able to have photographs taken of themselves and their loved ones visiting on all federal holidays for a nominal cost (2 prints for $1 per photograph, up to 5 photographs, was the rule at Sea-Tac FDC). Canadians here at DRJCI have not been able to have photographs taken on Christmas or New Years, even though it requires only one inmate taking the photographs. It's incredibly simple, but they simply don't care here, so it doesn't happen, like everything that ought to be provided as an inmate right for US citizens in their system.
In Federal facilities for Americans, visitation can happen in outdoor visitation areas (when weather permits). Here at DRJCI, there is no such outdoor visitation area, just a windowless room with a prison guard booth, cameras, and mirrored windows to be watched from.
In Bureau of Prisons facilities, fresh fruit is served one or two times daily, rotating between oranges, apples, and bananas. Here at D. Ray James Correctional Institution, we get the scrawniest orange imaginable once every two days. All lunch and dinner meals are virtually identical:
1) Ground up chicken or ground up beef
2) Corn product, niblets, grits or tortillas
3) A sweet cake
4) Shredded lettuce
5) Brown beans
6) White rice
Breakfast is essentially shredded potatoes and tasteless scrambled eggs with tortilla. Occasionally grits (creamed corn) too. If they don't have a scrawny orange to give out, they give us canned mandarin slices or peach slices, but neither contain any nutrients. Fresh fruit or vegetables are almost never to be seen here. Nor can we buy fresh fruit or vegetables as can be done at other federal facilities (for example, Taft and Moshannon Valley sell vegetables in the commissary).
Americans in the Federal system have upright metal lockers. Canadians have two bins under their bunk to put all their possessions in. They had lockers in this prison when GEO took over this facility. They took the lockers out!
Americans qualify for early release, home release, and drug rehabilitation sentence reductions, none of which is available to Canadians stuck in this system.
Canadians working a long day in the kitchen, a long 8-hour day, get paid 12 cents an hour. Most inmates here get 12 cents an hour for their work. Americans get 40 cents to $1.40 an hour in their facilities.
Photo by Jodie EmeryThe staff here is almost always unaware of their own D. Ray James rules on procedures. For example, an inmate is trying to get married, and has been getting the runaround for three months. Yet the rules by GEO in their rule book are clear: the case manager puts together the request, confirms the fiancée is willing come to the facility to marry, forwards the request to the warden, who, if there are no security concerns, then arranges for the Justice of the Peace to come perform the ceremony. The inmate pays all costs of the Justice of the Peace. It's simple, but they just can't be bothered here, like just about everything. The mailroom, for example, makes up all its rules. There is no procedure or policy that is in the D. Ray James Correctional Institution policy and procedure book dealing with mailroom procedure.*
*Note by Catharine Leach (supporter and transcriber of this newsletter for online publication): the Warden of DRJCI, Joe Booker, affirmed to me in an email (after I sent a letter to him complaining of Marc's mail issues and other treatment) that DRJCI follows established rules and regulations for mail policy, namely the Mail Management Manual 5800.10.
In an Americans-only federal "low" security prison, all toilets are in the cells or have doors on them in the range, and showers have doors on them. In my 64-man dorm, there is no privacy of any kind, and certainly no doors or curtains on the showers or toilets.
Yet the US taxpayer pays the same or more in taxes per inmate to house a Canadian as an American, but the executive and shareholders of these private prison corporations are instead pocketing the money.
The Bureau of Prisons, their mission statement (Policy 551.90) states: "Bureau staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, NATIONAL ORIGIN [Note from Jodie: emphasis Marc's own], sex, disability, or political belief. This includes the making of administrative decisions and providing access to work, housing, and programs."
Considering DRJCI is a ghetto completely based on apartheid of national origin, this mission statement is fraudulent on its face. Wages paid to Americans are greater, housing is clearly better, and programs (email, exercise equipment, music, law & reading libraries, vocations, etc.) are all clearly superior for Americans.
Currently, this prison houses 1,100 inmates, adding 300 monthly until capacity of 2,500 is reached in August. Of the 1,100 inmates currently warehoused here: 1,025 are Hispanic — 800 Mexicans, 75 Hondurans, 50 Cubans, 50 Guatemalans, 15 Salvadorans, 15 Colombians, 10 Argentinians, 5 Peruvians — and 40 are English-language born — 20 from the Caribbean (Jamaican, Bahamian, Dominican), 10 Canadians, 3 Nigerians, 1 from England, 1 from South Africa, 2 from Guyana, 1 from Belize, 10 Asians (2 Laotians, 3 Vietnamese, 4 Chinese), 10 Europeans, and 6 Middle Easterners (1 Swede, 2 Romanians, 2 Armenians, 1 Lebanese), and we have 2 from Brazil (Portuguese-speaking) and 5 from Haiti (French).
As to the staff here, the ordinary C.O.'s (Correctional Officers), while completely untrained in BOP procedure (most have never ever worked in corrections before and receive only the most cursory on the job training here), are decent people trying to do their job as pleasantly as they can. Many admit to seeing documentaries, movies, and TV shows that I have appeared in. Very few of the regular C.O.'s show mean or hostile tendencies. Most of them are probably very nice people in regular circumstances.
The inmates here I get along with are fine also. In my 59 days here at the time of this writing, I cannot say I have had any conflicts at all with inmates or C.O.'s who do guard or supervision duty. The problem is with management and the corporate dictates that come from GEO. This place has no budget of any kind devoted to inmate amenities.
97% of the inmates speak Spanish, but because all staff is local, virtually none of the staff do. I believe there are no more than 4 staff members here who speak Spanish. There is no local lawyer or legal help for these inmates. All their attorneys are in California, Arizona, Canada, Mexico, etc. All legal work for these inmates is done by 5 English/bilingual paralegals, also inmates (I'm one of them), getting 12 cents an hour. Any legal work on appeals, motions, grievances, writs of Habeas Corpus, divorces, requests, treaty transfers, access to government services, etc. is done by us on these ancient model typewriters.
Compare the time involved for an American in a federal prison requesting information or legal information. Each email takes about 90 minutes from inmate to recipient and return, so that is 3 hours. Here at D. Ray James Correctional Institution, a request by mail to Canada takes 6 to 8 days each way, meaning what might take an American 3 hours to obtain would take me, a Canadian, possibly 15 days or longer. Americans can print out their emails and have permanent copies of them too on email printers that are available for every American. So making any kind of legal claim is much harder here for numerous reasons.
I live in a 64-man dormitory with no privacy, as I have said. All 64 of us share one microwave to cook and heat up coffee. You get line-ups! American facilities have 4 televisions per range (Spanish, sports, news, and variety). Here we have two televisions: Sports and Spanish. I watch neither. There are few if any good rock and roll radio stations in this part of the world, though 3 country western stations come in clearly, as is always so true about rural America. I was spoiled at Sea-Tac FDC, having a 2-man cell, numerous great radio stations, email (Jodie says I sent her over 1,000 emails in the 5 months I was at Sea-Tac; that shows you how important email is to an inmate!), more fruit, no weird rules on books or magazines in the mail, and my newspaper came the day of issue or the day after. Here in nowheresville Folkston, Georgia, my New York Times arrives 3 or 4 days after publication.
In my 64-man dorm, I'm one of 3 native English speakers; the Armenian and Nigerian are fluent in English. The 1 Romanian and the 60 Hispanics speak Romanian and Spanish. I have no locker, but two plastic bins under my bed for all my belongings. Quite the stuffing of belongings going on there.
An ear splitting grinding-sounding (just evil!!!) fire alarm has gone off 28 times in the 50 days I have been here. It is frightening and painful on the ears. It is always a false alarm. It has actually gone off over 70 times in total since DRJCI opened on October 7th, 2010, but they refuse to fix the defective sensor in pod 6. I have been outside or at the library on about 10 occasions when it has gone off. This is not included in the 28 times I've experienced it first-hand. It grinds away for 5 to 15 minutes and I always have to put my fingers in my ears to deal with it. It certainly constitutes as torture, as they refuse to fix the problem. Yet when an inmate is burning baby oil to make jailhouse ink for their illegal tattooing that goes on, the fire alarm never goes off, even though a fair bit of putrid smoke is produced (that's how they make the black ink, from the soot of the burning baby oil!).
At least I am busy. I do lots of work I consider helpful and useful to other inmates. At this time, I can't solicit magazines and books for donation, but I give my newspapers and magazines that I subscribe to away. Currently I have to mail out a book for every book the mailroom lets me have so I can't very readily donate any books at this time. This whole prison has way too much razor wire, frisking, and high security behavior to call it a "low" security facility. A "low" has essentially one single fence and far more open movement than this place allows inmates. It is run like a strict medium-high security facility. I've had an atlas in the mail refused to me because they believe all maps will be used to plan escapes! I've had large books refused to me because the weight or size of them ("75 years of DC Comics" was 18" x 13" x 2" thick — large enough, the mailroom felt, to be used as a weapon). An 8" x 10" hand-made Christmas card was rejected because it was too large. Where do they get these rules? Newspaper clippings are seized. I'm limited to three magazines sent from the public every few weeks or so. Over 20 letters from correspondents were rejected without notification and returned to sender. And so on and so on.
Trevor is from Vancouver, just a few blocks from where I used to live. He's here for cannabis in a vehicle while traveling through the USA. When his parents came to visit him from Smithers in BC, over 5,000 miles away, they arrived one day early in their rented vehicle, and decided to drive around the perimeter road that encircles the prison, so they could see what it looks like, because the road is unblocked nor is there an advisement prohibiting it. The next day, when the parents visited, prison staff noticed the vehicle the parents used as the one that drove around the perimeter road, and cut short the visit after an hour, handcuffed Trevor, accused him of plotting an escape with his parents, and put him in solitary confinement for 9 days! Of course, it took 9 days to realize their idiotic presumption was absurd on the face of it, releasing Trevor from SHU (Special Housing Unit — the "Hole") and reinstating his parents' visiting rights.
Shortly afterward, Trevor, like all Canadians here, lost his phone access to Canada when the prison telephone control computer "unintentionally" cancelled all Canadian phone numbers from the database. Whereas I lost 6 days over Christmas (sadistic timing you have to agree), Trevor lost his access to the 604 and 250 area codes (his family in BC) for 16 days, from December 22nd to January 7th! Trevor works for 12 cents an hour, 40 hours a week in the kitchen.
Bradley, resident of Pender Harbour, is here on a weird charge, "Theft of Honest Services", the same charge Conrad Black had overturned in the US Supreme Court. Bradley is a fine fellow with many skills, a certified sailor, and a licensed pilot. He has been trying to take a correspondence course in advanced aviation from Ohio University's Prisoner Correspondence course. For two months he has been refused on the basis that — you guessed it — he'll try to escape, steal an airplane and fly back to Canada! The mailroom rejected a map of Croatia he received as part of his ingenious (non-existent) plot to escape. It's why I had an atlas of the world seized as contraband last week when someone sent it to me in the mail. We Canadians are thought to be obsessed with escape! This is a "low" security facility whereas the maximum-security facility Sea-Tac FDC where I was at, allowed me to have detailed road maps for all fifty states (so I could advise & direct FREE MARC rallies across the USA and Canada on Sept. 18th 2010).
Randy, of New Westminster, is here on a three-year sentence for marijuana transport. When Randy arrived, DRJCI lost his paperwork so he was put in solitary confinement for 14 days until the paperwork arrived. I remember walking around the yard explaining to Randy how fucked up this place is and he said, "Oh, it doesn't look so bad." I said, "give it a few days, you'll see how dysfunctional it really is." Sure enough, each passing day, Randy became more and more annoyed at the absurdities that pass before our eyes each passing day, and then one day last week, Randy got put in the "Hole" for allegedly inciting a riot, which all witnesses say is nutty. A very disliked C.O. was pissing off all the inmates in his unit. Randy uttered to another inmate, "What a Bitch!" and so far, he's spent 5 days in the "Hole" on that. In between his two visits to solitary confinement, Randy's phone access to his daughters and family in Canada was "accidentally" suspended from December 22nd to January 7th, sixteen days, pretty well the only time he was out of solitary since he's gotten here in early December.
Peter is from Aylmer, Ontario, and he is a slave in the kitchen 40+ hours a week at 12 cents an hour. By the way, if an inmate refuses to work their slave-labor job assignment, they get put in solitary confinement until they "reconsider" and go back to work. It is reputed that there are about 15 inmates in solitary for refusing kitchen work. An inmate is allowed to pay another inmate to do his kitchen job; the going rate is a one-time payment of $35 - $50 dollars, which is a bargain price to permanently avoid kitchen detail.
Photo by Jodie EmeryWhen an inmate arrives here, each of us is issued a pair of work boots, decidedly uncomfortable ones, but in Peter's case he was issued two left feet as his pair of boots. When he complained that they were two left feet, that his right foot was hurting as he worked on his feet 8 hours a day, the management refused to issue him a proper right & left foot pair of boots. Eventually all his right socks developed holes in them, and his right foot was in considerable pain, but still the DRJCI refused to issue a proper set of boots. Only after eleven weeks of complaining, did the inmates in the clothing section replace the boots. Peter's phone access to Canada, like all the Canadians here, was down during Christmas December 22nd — 27th. Peter has now worked in the kitchen three months, and after three months in one job, you are supposed to be permitted to change "assignments", but so far they are refusing to let Peter change jobs, so desperate is this place for kitchen workers. Of course if they paid the workers properly (like American inmates get in their FCI's), say 45 cents to $1.00 an hour, you'd have line-ups to work in the kitchen.
And so it goes. Me, I keep busy, writing five or six letters to correspondents daily, reading voraciously when I'm not writing or working in the library. I'm 80% through Keith Richard's autobiography "Life". I just finished reading all the material I received from Prison Legal News (online you can see their stuff at prisonlegalnews.org). Next up after the Richard's autobiography is "On the Road to Freedom (A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Era)", and then "Dumbing Us Down, the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling", then the "Dark Tower" graphic novel, and then "The Flag: An American Biography", which is a history of the development of the US flag from its earliest incarnations.
I read perhaps the best graphic novel not written by Alan Moore, originally from 1993, called Marvels (#0 - #4), a brilliant painterly reinterpretation of the Marvel Comics stories of their superhero universe from 1939 to 1975, seen through the eyes of an ordinary human observer. Another wonderful comic I enjoyed was a two-part "Enemy Ace" comic by Garth Ennis and Russ Heath. Strange and beautiful was this very exciting reinterpretation of Shakespeare in a graphic novel called "Kill Shakespeare", very original and surprising and beautifully illustrated. I read "The Return of the Supreme", another collection of terrific Alan Moore stories. This Alan Moore fellow wrote the greatest comic book stories ever, full of references throughout all his work (though especially in "Promethea" and "Supreme") of the artists and styles of the comic books of the golden age (1939 — 1947), the EC Comics period (1950 — 1956), the Adventure and science-fiction pulps, the cartoon comic strips of newspapers, the late 50's DC Comics universe (Supreme), and of course the 60's Marvel Comics world. My favorite Alan Moore comics, highly recommended, are: Promethea Vol. 1-6 (#1 - #36 in comic book form), Tom Strong Vol. 1-4, #6, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1 & 2, Supreme and Return of Supreme. If you are a comic book historian and scholar as I am (I collected comic books and sold vintage 1940's, 1950's, 1960's Marvel, DC, EC, comics, science-fiction and adventure pulps, newspaper comic strips and Sunday Color pages from 1925 — 1955 and managed to meet Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Mike Kaluta, Len Wein, Jeff Jones, Vaughn Bode, and other great comic book creators in the 1970 to 1974 golden era of comic book collecting) — this is a wonderful tribute to that era. Watchmen — still terrific after three readings.
Best books I've read in prison so far would have to be the hero-smashing biography of John Lennon, "The Many Lives of John Lennon" by Albert Goldman, and "Hitch-22", the memoir by Christopher Hitchens, timely in view of Hitchens' current and potentially fatal battle with esophageal cancer that affected Hitchens immediately after its publication. Hitchens is simply one of the most erudite and entertaining writers of English prose in the world today. Vanity Fair columns of Sept/Oct/Nov 2010 addressing his cancer and the reactions to it are hilarious and poignant.
My magazine subscriptions have been slow to get transferred to the gulag here from Sea-Tac FDC. MacLean's, National Geographic, The Hockey News, The Economist have all finally been rerouted here, but no sign yet of Rolling Stone, Atlantic, Harper's, Mother Jones, Reason, Discover and a few others that escape my memory.
It is my supporter base that got my library job back and it is my supporter base that protects me from retaliation by the forces of evil here. MLA Guy Gentner reiterating in two newspaper interviews that I was a political prisoner is extremely helpful.
This is my 300th day in prison on this sentence, as I write this: 66 days in Canada, and 234 days in the US. With a good time credit of 235 days, that is 535 days off 1,825 days (5 years), so if I get stuck in the US Concentration Camp system for foreigners, I have 1,290 days to go, a release date of July 7th, 2014 — 42 months away.
If I get transferred back to Canada, I qualify under current Canadian law for full parole November 16th, 2011 — this year, 10 months from today. In the Canadian federal system, a non-violent first-time offender gets parole at one-third sentence, in my case, 20 months. Of course, I'll be on parole for 40 months after that date (Nov. 16th, 2011). So if I screw up, I would be put back in jail. But I'm retired from the seed business, and otherwise a law-abiding person, so I will be able to do my parole successfully as I was able to maintain my bail conditions (while awaiting extradition) for five years from 2005 to 2010.
But 10 months to go is far more appealing than 42 months to go. That is why I need a tremendous outpouring of support from citizens of the USA and Canada, and from elected officials in both countries, to assure that my transfer application to the US Dept. of Justice and Canadian Minister of Public Safety are approved. Instructions on the kind of letter to send are at FREEMARC.ca and CANNABISCULTURE.com.
It's only fair to say some good things about this place. The inmates like me and I get along with them. The working people, the ordinary C.O.'s, are polite and try to do a good job with the often-chaotic instructions they get. The weather here, in winter, is pleasant (although it will be hot & humid and I think unbearable in summer). My Case Managers, Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Maynard, are very responsive to me and have kept all their promises so far, and have always tried to be helpful with any requests regarding visitors, and transfer paperwork. The warden is a good person too, but he's given no budget to make changes, and I often think his subordinates try to undermine his innate sense of reasonableness.
Photo by Jodie EmeryMy greatest pleasure of my existence here is getting a visit from Jodie every 2nd weekend. Your donations to her are how she can afford to visit me. Otherwise, it's simply too expensive for us to afford. The visits are 6 ½ hours each day on Saturday and Sunday, and the upcoming weekend, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (Monday January 17th) is a visitation day also, so I'll get 3 days in a row of visits from Jodie!!! It requires Jodie to fly 4,000 miles from Vancouver to Jacksonville Florida, clear across the continent and back, which is grueling and exhausting for her. Sometimes, when bad weather strikes, flights get canceled and what would normally take 10 hours of flying and airport time can take 48 hours of waiting, flying, and airport processing time, as has happened twice already.
We are allowed a brief kiss at the beginning and end of each visit, and we can hold hands throughout the visit. After my visit with Jodie on December 18th, I was stopped by an officer on the walkway outside a few days later, and day before my phone access was cut off to Jodie for 6 days.
"Emery, you had a visit Saturday. Was that your wife?"
"Yes, sir." I responded.
"I was watching you on the hidden camera, and I observed your kiss at the beginning was too long. It's supposed to be a brief kiss, not a movie kiss. I don't think your kiss was brief."
I was stunned. I said "BOP regulations at Sea-Tac FDC in Seattle were a kiss under 30-seconds. What do you consider brief, 10 seconds?"
"10 seconds is more like what I had in mind. But if BOP rules are 30 seconds, I'll take that under advisement." He responded.
I wanted to say, "If you stare at any couple kissing after a long absence, their kiss is going to seem very long because you're intruding on a couple's intimacy, something normally a person might be a little self-conscious of. 10 seconds will seem like a minute if you just stare at a couple clearly in love, 30 seconds probably seems like 5 minutes. After traveling 4,000 miles and spending days in planes, airports and hotel rooms, that kiss is going to have a bit of urgency to it, you know?"
Jodie was in an extended malaise, a 6-week period that I would call depression from mid-November to January 1st. The death of my seed business partner, Michelle Rainey, at age 39 from cancer, hit her very hard at the end of October. By mid-November, with the dark, gloomy, rainy Vancouver weather, her first Christmas holiday period without me in 7 years, business pressures, and extraordinarily long travel to see me, it was all getting to her. She was exhausted, sad, having a hard time getting work done, her hair was falling out, her skin irritated, her sleep disturbed. Her visit of Saturday, January 1st was full of cynicism, doom and gloom. I spend the whole visit reassuring her we'd get through this ordeal, no matter how long it took. We have support from millions (I feel), her family, our close friends, and elected officials, and it was just rest and prioritizing her immediate tasks that she needed to do.
Finally, on Friday, January 7th, I heard over the phone, an invigorated, energetic, positive and powerful optimism. I said right away, "Hey, my Jodie is back!"
She said, "I feel like I've come out of a 6-week depression. I feel strong again, boo, I'm feeling improved. Guy Gentner the MLA, referred to you as a political prisoner in an interview today in a newspaper. I'll be strong for you now, Marc; I'll get you out of there. You were strong for me, you pulled me through. So now I'll be strong for you again."
Each day over the last 3 days, Jodie has rested, and gotten stronger so I am very relieved. I was worried about us, and with all these stresses, I was fearful of her health and her drive being compromised. So it goes for a couple like us, under all this turmoil and challenges!
Since her visit, MLA Guy Gentner has referred to me as a political prisoner in two media interviews. That reaffirmed to Jodie that even in the political establishment, there is widespread support and sympathy for the underlying activist nature of my life's work.
My treaty transfer paperwork is due in Washington in eleven days from writing this page. After that, the US Dept. of Justice will consider my application to transfer to the Canadian Correctional system. I would dearly love to be home in Canada this year, so please do what you can to help to that end.
The most important goals this year are, for Americans: 1) Getting legislation on the ballot in Washington State, 2) Supporting and working to make RON PAUL the Republican presidential nominee for 2012.
Petitioning for signatures begins in April to make Washington state the first state in the USA to repeal all state laws restricting the personal use and cultivation of cannabis. Polls in Washington show 56% of voters support legalization of cannabis. Last year, only 195,000 signatures of the 247,000 necessary were successfully collected. In large part this shortfall was due to rainy, cold weather in April and May, and zero funding. This year Sensible Washington will be better prepared, better organized. I hope Cannabis Culture can assist the organizers in a few live-streamed moneybombs, with a target of $10,000.00 per moneybomb, in February and April. Activists from California and Colorado, two states that I'm sure will attempt ballot initiative drives for legalization in 2012, should go north to Washington state as soon as university and college is over in April. Let's do it like they did in the 60's, just move to Washington state for 3 months and live and breathe the life of signature-gatherer! Petition unrelentingly! Even Canadian activists should consider going to Washington from BC and Alberta to gather signatures, whether for a weekend, a week, a month, or the whole campaign!
If Washington repeals cannabis prohibition on Nov. 1st, 2011, it will have a huge impact on the success of initiatives in Colorado and California in 2012, ultimately causing a change in federal law, and the likelihood of other states passing their own repeal bills!
RON PAUL, the greatest congressman ever, a great and true libertarian, my personal hero for many, many years, a friend to all in the cannabis legalization movement, will likely announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President for 2012. Ron Paul is truly a wonderful man, a principled man, and I so enjoyed campaigning for him in 2007 and 2008 when he first sough the Republican presidential nomination. Oh, how much improved America would be today if he had been elected President November 2nd, 2008!
If you have never heard of Ron Paul, or researched his brilliant ideas and proposals and writings, you must! Then be ready to join his campaign when it is announced!
For Canadians, the 4 goals in the upcoming year are 1) to stop Bill S-10, the mandatory minimum jail-time-for-drugs bill from becoming law 2) defeat the Conservatives in an election that hopefully will come soon, 3) urge all your American friends to support the Presidential aspirations of Ron Paul once he announces his candidacy, expected in early spring, and 4) please bring me home, if I can immodestly suggest this as one of your political goals for the upcoming year!
Upon my return to Canada and release from custody, I plan to run for elected office in a fully funded campaign, traveling across Canada and British Columbia extensively. I believe that whenever I am able to do this, in 2012, 2013, or 2014, once I emerge from this ordeal, my political star will finally be ascendant. I feel I will be able to capture the zeitgeist of the times. "It's broken, let me fix it." Clearly, our democracy is dysfunctional, much like prohibition. For over 30 years, Canadians have heard me relentlessly prescribe the correct treatment for the ills of my country, and for 30 years the voters have chosen to swallow more of the poison election after election. I believe Jodie and I together will be able to win over enough of Canada to put me in government, to finally undo so much of the damage that has been wrought on our country from the miscreants who have exploited the people's trust.
Jodie and I will be making a huge effort upon my return, in fundraising, touring Canada, speaking, meeting with Canadians, organizing, to finally once and for all bury this prohibition and restore liberty, principle, and greatness to the country that I love.
Until next newsletter,
Marc Emery #40252-086 Unit Q Pod 2
D. Ray James Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 2000
Folkston, GA
This article can be found at Cannabis Culture

subset: commoncrawl


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Mr. X is looking for members who want to challenge him another year.
So give it a try, remember it is all for fun!!!
The rules are very simple:
- One standing or riding figure out of the box
- Neutral background (white, black, green, blue,...)
- No base
- Period chosen by the challenger
- 2 pictures (front and back)
- Send PSR link to communicate the figure
- All communication goes by email to email@example.com, email subject is the dueling month.
Mr. X would prefer to be challenged to paint sets released in 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018 to keep things fresh and duel using the most recent releases.
He don't want to know who the challenger is un till after the duel.
So pick your month and period and sign in for this challenge!
- January (lost by Mr. X)
- February (won by Mr. X)
- March (lost by Mr. X)
- April (won by Mr. X)
- May (won br Mr. X)
- June (lost by Mr. X)
- July (won by Mr. X)
- August (won by Mr. X)
- September (lost by Mr. X)
- October (won by Mr. X)
- November (both won)
- December (won by Mr. X)
The list is updated with a period when someone has signed in.
All communication will go by mail to: firstname.lastname@example.com.
So 2018 is again a lucky year.... There was always a duelway
For 2019 we are searching for a new mr. X, if you want to be the secret man or woman..
mail to firstname.lastname@example.com to take the new secret place...


text: What to do if your one-year old daughter is allergic to commercial cleaners? If you're a bad parent you might put the kid up for adoption. The Peris of Los Angeles let the experience lead them to create a waterless car washing system that uses low levels of chemicals. The product is apparently good for the environment both in terms of chemical use and water savings (heads up Georgia). The couple has already landed a Lexus dealership and the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, so this might end up being a sustainable business. If you're in the LA area and don't like spending hundreds of gallons washing your baby, check it out. [LA Times]


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During a trip to New York City this weekend, I learned that Jaime could not be more right about the value of the traditional promotional business card magnet. I was in the Big Apple visiting my college roommate, Amanda, and on my first night in town we ran into a group of girls that we were friends with in school but with whom we had since lost touch completely. Now, Manhattan holds the title of the largest city in the United States (based on population) and if I had to guess, I'd say the city is home to the most bars and restaurants too. With such an assortment of options, what are the odds of randomly encountering old friends at a restaurant? The chances are a lot smaller than one would think, when taking the company's effective use of promotional products into account.
Consider this scenario: Amanda was excited for my visit and, since our love of food has always been something over which we bond, she was looking for a fun, new restaurant to try. She narrowed down the various locales (she picked the slightly edgy Meatpacking District), but still seemed overwhelmed by the number of choices. After reading restaurant reviews online and coming up empty-handed, she needed a break and walked into the kitchen for a refreshing glass of water. And it was there, on the freezer, that she discovered the answer. Amanda's roommate had enjoyed the fine fare of a French restaurant in Meatpacking District the previous month and had subsequently brought home the restaurant's promotional business card magnet. As a personal recommendation from another foodie speaks highly about a restaurant, we decided to try to the French café.
The cuisine was delightful and so was the atmosphere, especially because we spotted our former friends as soon we walked into the quaint little restaurant. After the hugging and giggling subsided, I asked them how they picked the place. Their reply: "a business card magnet, of course!"


text: A very common issue with any vehicle is to do with your brakes pulsating. If you are pulling off a highway and your steering wheel is shaking, or your seat then you may have a problem with your brakes that needs to be looked into. On this particular video blog, the ford F150 we worked on, the customer was experiencing problems pulling off the highway and their steering wheel was beginning to shake as they slowed down to a stop. The issue he thinks was caused by the previous weekend where he used his truck for towing heavy loads and this highlighted the problem. There is some indifference in pad wear and it needs to be evened out to stop this problem continuing to occur. See video below where master technician, Mike Reynolds explains exactly what is going on and how we solve this problem; https://youtu.be/cBZBVeSOnfw Also on this vehicle, the pads were cracked as you can see by the picture to our left; Cracked pads are caused by one thing, excessive heat. When they are thin, there is not enough material left to help dissipate the heat and so it stays in the pads too long causing the big crack you can see here.   We can also show you pictures highlighting what it next. The next stage is the machining process to machine the run out out that will take care of the customers brake pulsation. The 3 pictures above represent three different stages of the cut. From left to right as you look; LEFT PICTURE - Cut #1 – Shows a lot of low spot and also shows where the bit did not contact the friction surface of the rotor uniformly. That is where there is a lot of "darker marks". This is caused by warpage of the friction surface. MIDDLE PIC – Cut #2 – The second picture shows the high majority of the low spot from the first picture has disappeared but if you look closely to the top of the picture, you can still see a thin darker line. RIGHT PIC – Cut #3 – now the entire friction surface I uniformed and we have completely machined the warpage out of the rotor that was causing the issue in the first place. The Video here shows Mike talk about the process also; https://youtu.be/hBpr_qWwToc The final step is to make sure after the machining process the rotor is still above the minimum thickness required. On this F150, we only removed about 0.6mm off the rotor and it still comfortably fit in the safety regulations recommended. With brakes, safety is clearly the main concern but this is a pretty simple fix and the car is taken on a test drive to make sure the issue has been resolved. Having problems with your brakes? Give us a call and we will be happy to give you a FREE brake inspection and go over any concerns with you at any of our seven locations.


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Blog Archive
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Blog Archive
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Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Bella Behind the Wheel
4:45 PM | Posted by BellaDaddy | Edit Post
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
2:15 PM | Posted by BellaDaddy | Edit Post
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Blast From The Past
8:13 AM | Posted by BellaDaddy | Edit Post
My friend Jeanna, whom I have known since we were both 5, (our birthdays are 10 days apart) came to visit for Thanksgiving. Jeanna and I had not seen each other in person, in over 20 years. We last saw each other in the early 80's and the pic here, is from that last visit. I was living in San Francisco, she married soon after, and moved away. we ended up losing touch with one another for about 12 years. I had searched for her off an on for years. Googling her name, looking on classmates, etc....then one day POP!, there she was, Googled and I caught her name on her cousins website...I was thrilled, to say the least. Eventually, she replied to my email and we were back in touch.
Little did I know at the time, but Jeanna was also back in touch with another friend of ours since the 5th grade, Debbie. To make a long story short, Debbie was planning on visiting her sister in a town very near my home...soooo, Jeanna emails me and says..."Wouldn't it be cool to have a reunion for the three of us"? Her boyfriend Richard agreed and made it happen. I picked them up at the airport and it was like we had never lost touch....she looks amazing...(I have grown prematurely old - see old posts LOL)
We met Debbie at her sisters Becky's home, saw her sister and mom for the first time in over 30 years. Mamma Jo looks EXACTLY the same, & has already viewed the blog.
Bella loved having company, and is still walking around, looking at pics and saying "Jeena and Rishard". She especially took to Richard, and let Jeanna read books to her several times...not to mention LOTS of playtime. One of the sweetest things said during the visit was one morning, Richard was sitting with Bella at breakfast and said to me, "she is just a breathe of sunshine ion the morning, isn't she"? AWWWWWW!
SUCH an amazing time, we all miss each other already and cant wait to do it again.
Enjoy the pics here, you should get a good laugh at my before and afters...and check out the slide show for all the other pics taken...
and of course, we hope all of you had as good a Thanksgiving Holidays as we did!
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- BellaDaddy
- Click "Our Story" below for more...


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Cookies are flying in fast. Click the map to see where they are coming from. Click here to see all of the cookies.
Submit your cookies from Southeast Asia, and you might win a copy of Sherry Yard's new cookbook. See details here.
Would you like to participate? See details here. You have until Dec. 24th.
Manggy of No Special Effects from The Phillipines. Manggy has sent us a classic Christmas cookie--Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookies. These are Manggy's first gingerbread cookies, courtesy of Cook's Illustrated, and they are simply precious. Children and adults will absolutely love them!
Vijaya of Daily Meals from Singapore. Vijaya appreciates the beauty of cranberries and knows that they're delicious in dishes other than Thanksgiving cranberry sauce (though I love that too). Indeed, Vijaya enlivens basic butter cookies with dried cranberries and pistachios creating tart-nutty-buttery Cookies with Dry Fruits and Nuts.


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In addition to fighting on the front lines of the legal battlefield, we at The Singleton Law Firm work to honor our moral commitment to our clients and our community. We will "EARN" your trust. Though we never underestimate the importance of recovering financially for our clients, we believe that our unwavering professionalism and strict ethical standards form stronger cornerstones for our practice than any amount of money ever could.
With offices in Shreveport and Lafayette, and with a vast network of attorneys around the country, our firm can assist with your every need. Contact us today for a free initial phone consultation.
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Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut Award Statement
Portes' and Rumbaut's book, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (University of California Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), is the first large-scale study of the teenage children of post-1965 immigrants in San Diego and Miami. Following 4,200 children over a period of four years, using interviews with students and parents and school records to chart the trajectories of acculturation, the authors identify three patterns (dissonant, consonant, and selective acculturation) to describe the teens' adoption of American ways and English language, and their relationship with their parents. By casting a wide net to assess school performance, self-esteem, racial identity, and language skills, Portes and Rumbaut have provided a rich narrative about the lives of second-generation immigrants and their parents. This book contributes a new theoretical framework for understanding assimilation, data on different ethnic groups and their experiences, myth-busting evidence about immigrants, and useful information to reconsider public policies and programs concerning immigration.


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Rice University | Next to being at your desk, you spend the most time in your bed at college. Make sure that you love it and don't sacrafice on great bedding! At OCM, we have a great selection of twin xl bedding, bedding sets, and more on sale! If you are looking to score a great deal on a complete twin xl bedding pak, or sheets & comforter to complete your look- look no further than the dorm bedding sale. You can find the same great value as our other college bedding items- at an even better price! With your savings from the dorm bedding sale you can splurge on that wall tapestry or twin xl mattress topper!


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Aug 21, 2012 | ISBN 9780345530257
Feb 18, 2020 | 114 Minutes
"The Little Book of Talent should be given to every graduate at commencement, every new parent in a delivery room, every executive on the first day of work. It is a guidebook—beautiful in its simplicity and backed by hard science—for nurturing excellence."—Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit
"It's so juvenile to throw around hyperbolic terms such as 'life-changing,' but there's no other way to describe The Little Book of Talent. I was avidly trying new things within the first half hour of reading it and haven't stopped since. Brilliant. And yes: life-changing."—Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence


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De Valera's theory of external association
After a truce had been declared in July 1921, de Valera set about devising a concept which would satisfy both Irish and British aspirations and as a result, formulated his theory of external association. The concept entailed Ireland maintaining her sovereignty at home, i.e. controlling all domestic and international affairs while still retaining a connection with the Commonwealth. Under this compromise, Ireland would guarantee to remain neutral during any war in which Britain was a participant, and in return Britain would renounce any right to govern Ireland or legislate for it. One of the main problems he would encounter in the Dáil was getting all members to accept the proposals.
Although not all accepted his proposal, uncompromising republicans like Brugha and Stack, though not enamoured with it, were eventually won over by de Valera's mathematical explanations, which were based on set theory.
During the Dáil Éireann debates, de Valera drew a Venn diagram to explain his theory and explained it as follows:
The British Commonwealth was represented by a large circle within which were five smaller circles, each representing one of the self-governing countries of that group of nations. The President [de Valera] sketched in Ireland as a circle outside the large circle but touching it.Although each of the states is represented by a circle, which would lead one to believe that they were sets, they were more likely to represent elements. Therefore, though it may appear that each country is a subset of a larger set called the British Commonwealth (BC), the countries are probably elements of the set, BC.
Some difficulties arise when one tries to decide if de Valera meant the sets to be open or closed. A circular disc which is open does not contain the circumference; however, a circular disc which is closed contains the circumference, i.e. (BC, Ire) does not contain the tangent point; however, [BC, Ire] does. It is unclear whether he viewed the discs as open or closed.
Thus, it is difficult to ascertain whether the intersection of {Self-Governing Commonwealth Countries} and {Ireland} is empty or non-empty. If we are to assume it is a closed set and the point where Ireland is tangent is common to both, is this what de Valera envisaged when he proposed External Association? If so, to whom does the point belong, if it is a physical entity? Does it belong to both equally or not? In political terms, did de Valera want the connection to exist, but have no meaning or power? The idea he was trying to explain was that Ireland would be associated with the Commonwealth but not a member of it, i.e. Ireland would be tangent to the Commonwealth, but would not have any elements in common with it and most importantly, would not be an element of the Commonwealth as was the case with the other five states mentioned.
This is the most common example which was reported in the media and covered in biographies, but de Valera also drew other diagrams, depending on the political perspective of his audience. At the time, set theory was still a relatively new branch of mathematics, and though it may not have been covered in schools, it seems the Dáil members understood de Valera's explanation well enough to vote for it. Though de Valera had not been studying mathematics formally for some time, through instances such as this one it is clear he still used mathematics as a tool for solving problems.
Article by: Cáit Ní Shúilleabháin, University of Cork, email@example.com


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AlienWar.com » Entries tagged with "Neanderthal Man"
A robust thriving group that ruled the Earth for tens of thousands of years. (After sixty thousand years, who slaughtered them?!) For some sixty thousand years the Kingdom Of Earth was ruled by Neanderthal Man. Not too bright or inventive a group, they nevertheless did quite well for themselves. Making little settlements, shaping tools, building shelters…and they hunted very well. They were, in fact, so well adapted they could have happily survived right up into the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Sam Harrison's Blog


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The Leighton
This glam teething necklace is inspired by the ever popular bib style, but made to be bub friendly! The versatile Leighton can be paired with a dress for a night out or used to glam up your favorite comfy tee and jeans for a trip to the store. The chunky beads make a statement while providing ample teething space for your favourite bosom buddy.
Designed for mums, but pretty enough for anyone…
- Color: Matte Black & Natural Wood
- 100% Food Grade Silicone Beads
- BPA Free
- Unfinished wood beads, hand polished with organic bees wax and coconut oil
- Features our organic cotton ribbon hand dipped in our signature color
- Contrasting colors and textures that are visually stimulating for bub
- Chunky beads provide large surface area for teething
- The perfect tool to help bub focus on nursing
- Ribbon tie allows mum to adjust the drop length for optimal comfort and style. Maximum drop length 34″
- Designed without beads or clasps in the back that get tangled in mum's hair
- Each necklace is handmade with love – any variations add to the character of your piece
Out of stock


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A skin polishing scrub for all skin conditions. Finely-granulated Corn Cob Meal gently removes dulling surface debris, allowing for improved absorption of moisturizing treatments. Skin is left with a smooth, healthy-looking finish.Learn More
A skin polishing scrub for all skin conditions.Learn More
Perform the Dermalogica Double Cleanse that begins with PreCleanse, followed by prescribed Dermalogica Cleanser. Apply with damp hands to damp face and throat, avoiding the eyes. Massage gently onto face, avoiding eye area. Rinse thoroughly with warm water and sponges. Use three times a week.
Combine with Special Cleansing Gel or Dermal Clay Cleanser for an exfoliating power cleanse.
Water/Aqua/Eau, Disodium Cocoamphodipropionate, Glyceryl Stearate, Zea Mays (Corn) Cob Meal, Cetyl Alcohol, Stearyl Alcohol, Polysorbate 20, Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Citric Acid, Malva Slyvestris, (Mallow) Extract, Hedera Helix (Ivy) Extract, Cucumis Sativus (Cucumber) Fruit Extract, Sambucus Nigra Flower Extract, Arnica Montana Flower Extract, Parietaria Officinalis Extract, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Tocopheryl Acetate, Potassium Sorbate, Ascorbyl Palmitate, Sodium Benzoate, Disodium EDTA, Butylene Glycol, Benzyl Alcohol, Xanthan Gum, Ethylhexylglycerin, Phenoxyethanol , Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891).
Dermalogica is dedicated to maintaining the accuracy of the ingredient lists on this website. However, because ingredients are subject to change, we cannot guarantee that these lists are complete, up-to-date and/or error-free. For an accurate listing of ingredients in each product, please refer to your product packaging.
Start with Dermalogica's skin health essentials, designed to deliver your best skin daily.
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All Dermalogica products are made in the USA and are free of artificial fragrances, artificial colors, drying S.D. alcohol, and ingredients like Mineral Oil – all of which are known to exacerbate common skin concerns. With cutting-edge formulas and powerful ingredients, you can be assured you're giving your skin what it needs to be healthy, and stay healthy, for a lifetime. Maximize your product results! Use Dermalogica products as prescribed by your Face Mapping® skin analysis, available only from a Dermalogica Professional Skin Therapist.


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What Is World Book Day And Where Can I Spend My Voucher?
02/03/2017 @ 19:18:00
World Book Day is a charity event that takes place in the UK and Ireland on the first Thursday in March every year with the aim of celebrating books and reading. Schools often invite authors to come along for a visit and children (and even teachers) dress up as their favourite book character. By the end of the day every single child in full-time education will receive a voucher for a free book.
The selected World Book Day books for 2017 are:
1. Peppa Loves World Book Day by Neville Astley
2. Everyone Loves Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort
3. Wheres Wally? The Fantastic Journey by Martin Handford
4. Princess Mirror-Belle and Snow White by Julia Donaldson & Lydia Monks
5. Horrid Henry: Funny Fact Files by Francesca Simon
6. Blob by David Walliams
7. Good Old Timmy and Other Stories by Enid Blyton
8. Butterfly Beach by Jacqueline Wilson
9. Island by David Almond
10. Dead of Night: A Front Line Story by Michael Grant
11. Fast Forward by Judi Curtain (Ireland only)
The £1 voucher can also be put towards a full priced book or audio CD. World Book Day Ltd, the charity behind the event, is sponsored by National Book Tokens Ltd, publishers and booksellers. This year they hope to give away a record one million books.
WHERE IS MY NEAREST PARTICIPATING BOOKSHOP?Local bookshops, WHSmith, Waterstones and many supermarkets are participating in the scheme however vouchers can only be redeemed up until Sunday 26th March 2017 so dont delay! To find your local World Book Day book stockist simply search the booksellers association here.


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Intelligent and Reasonable
Fund: Total Technology Ventures
Posted by hsfx117 on 2009-07-01
We approached a number of VC's in different locations for our financial technology pitch. Most were located in New York and Boston with a couple in California. While we may have found some of the north east folks a bit more knowledgeable in our particular area of fin tech, the TTV folks were bright and did their research. That said, and perhaps this is due to the fact that they are based in Atlanta, the standout characteristic of the firm was their lack of arrogance and the fact that, whether we agreed or disagreed, they were a pleasure do deal with. The one lesson I have learned during this process, is you will almost never get everything you want, I will say in this case, we still closed a deal that we were comfortable and satisfied with.PRIVATE: Members Only (228 Characters)


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I am very honored to have been nominated for the One Lovely Blog Award by a very lovely lady, Cheryl who writes the blog
Tag: #cancersucks
The Wolf Road
The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis I was surprisingly absolutely blown away by this book. When first reading the description I was unsure of what
Duplicity, you see, is what divides the whole of me. I realized I have been away a bit from my posts…….well, dear readers, it's because
"From Root to Flower.." Uprooted by Naomi Novik was such a gem to find! I don't usually read this particular kind of
Arms of an Angel
Pay It Forward, we are all in this together.