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This is what awesome looks like. And sounds like.
Jack: Mom, can you get my clothes ready for tomorrow? I need the black shirt and the black and red shorts plus the red long sleeve jacket with the sleeves rolled up because that's what awesome looks like, and the black socks. Okay?
me: Awesome looks like that?
Jack: Did you not just hear me?
He said that not in a snotty way, but in a "how could you misunderstand just exactly how awesome that outfit sounds??"
He's the kid that stopped letting me pick out his clothes as soon as he learned to talk and say "NO! I do it!" Seriously. We've had SUCH fights over clothes over the years, mainly when I have to tell him it's a "dressy" day and he has to wear a collar shirt or something. But on the other 364 days, he picks whatever. I couldn't care less if it matches, is the right size, or is weather appropriate. Seriously. That's the battle I chose not to fight. It kind of worked out like this:
me: Jack I think those shorts are a bit too small.
Jack: They're FINE!
me: Okay. Wear em.
Jack: Some boys in the bathroom picked on me and said my shorts were too short and I looked like a girl.
me: Really? Awww, sorry.
Jack: They were 5th graders so it's fine.
me: Fine?
Jack: They know I'm younger than them, and they do that to everyone. So it's fine.
(he pauses)
Jack: I think we can give these to the Goodwill now.
And that's one lesson learned. Here's another:
me: Jack: It's freezing out. Get your coat.
Jack: No! It's embarrassing! No one is wearing a coat Mom!
me: Okay freeze then. Let's go.
(outside at the bus stop)
Jack: (chatter chatter chatter) It's sooooo cold!!!!!
me: (just looking at him)
Jack: Yeah yeah, I know. I'll bring the coat next time.
That's how Jack learns. Does it sound mean? I don't think so. Just think of the other scenario. We fight and yell. He cries and still won't wear the jacket. I threaten and take electronics away. We're all cranky. Nope. Not for me. Instead he's cold and I'm fine. Hee hee! Hey, we parents have to get some fun out of this right? And guess what, Jack learned that when you don't have a coat, you might actually get … cold!
So anyway. I'm awesome at this. 🙂
I'll leave you with a tidbit from this past weekend. My birthday was on Friday, so I told Jack that he could make me a nice card or something at his dad's house over the weekend. He agreed.
me: Hey Jack, I never got that card from you. Did you make one with Daddy this weekend?
Jack: Nahh…
me: Awww, but that would have been special for me.
Jack: What would you rather have? A card or your real son? I think you got the good deal.
(Can I seriously argue with that?)
What is sexy? And do we really know it?
Luckily I'm speaking in the context of a 7-year-old mind, or else you'd get an earful! And photos! Ahhh, that's another blog entirely. (mind wanders)
Oh yeah, my story….
Jack: You look sexy!
me: I do? What do you mean? Do you mean pretty?
Jack: I mean pretty. But what's sexy?
me: It's what you might say to your girlfriend when you're grown up. It's a compliment, but not really from a little boy to his mom.
Jack: Oh. You explain things, but I never really get the full definition do I?
me: No.
Jack: Because I'm 7?
me: Pretty much. "Need to know" basis.
Jack: Why are the bases need to know?
me: It means, I give you the information you need as you need it. And no more. You're still little.
Jack: But you still look sexy.
me: Sigh.
Jack: Okay, "pretty".
me: That's better.
Jack: Now tell me again about how I'll call my girlfriend sexy?
me: Enough!
And I just wanted an excuse to post this video. 🙂
2 songs about toilets?
Jack: (singing) Girl look at that potty. Girl look at that potty… I work out!
me: (lmfao) Jack! It's "body" not "potty"! Hahahahaha!!!!!
Jack: Well they have the other song that's Potty rock is in the house tonight! So what about that??
me: It's "party". Sigh. Do you have to pee or something?
Jack: No! Why are you correcting me??
me: Don't whine about it, I'm just telling you the real words.
Jack: I'm not whining I'm griping!!
How do you cancel Halloween?
It's like canceling Christmas. Remember the Grinch? You can't stop Christmas from coming! The same goes for Halloween I say!
But cancel it, they did. Many towns throughout CT are without tricks or treats due to the freak storm we received on Saturday. About a foot of wet snow, then ice on top of that! It looks like a disaster area around here. So many homes without power, heat and water. Man. Just when you thought you could coast into the holidays on this nice warmish weather we've been having, mother nature zings the sh*t outta you.
Even though the weather was iffy, I still busted out the full LMFAO costume, much to the horror of my co-workers. And, since we couldn't go door to door tonight, we went to the mall and had the kids trick or treat at all of the stores. I kind of liked it! It was warm and well lit, and you could see everyone's costume. I taught Jack how to cut in line to get the candy at each store, and how he could go up to a store 2 or 3 times because the employees don't actually look at the kids, and therefore they would never recognize him if he went back for more. Life lessons people!
When I came into the kitchen this morning, in full makeup and wig, Jack looked up from his book.
Jack: Goodness, you're a fright.
He went back to reading.
I swear, he's like 80 years old inside that little body.


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"Containing the Remnants of Fort Atkinson!"
The story of Fort Atkinson is not the stuff of which legends are made. No famous battles were fought here. No glorious victories or ignoble defeats occurred in its vicinity. No great decisions were made within its walls. In this way, the story of Fort Atkinson is like that of most of the army posts in the upper Mississippi Valley. Fort Atkinson was built to keep the Winnebago Indians on Neutral Ground (a 40-mile-wide strip of land established by the Treaty of 1830) after their removal from Wisconsin in 1840, and to provide protection for them from the Sioux, Sauk, Fox and from white intruders on Indian land. On May 31, 1840, a camp was made on the site of the future fort. The camp was named Atkinson in honor of the commanding officer in charge of the Winnebago resettlement efforts. Of the six years regular army troops were garrisoned at Fort Atkinson, half were spent garrisoned at Fort Atkinson, half were spent constructing the fort. Despite crowded conditions, the fort was essentially complete by the end of summer, 1842. It included 24 buildings and a stockade wall. Outside the 11'9" wall were 14 additional buildings.
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Fort Atkinson State Preserve
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Hey there! We are a husband and wife photography team living in the St. Louis area. with our two cats. Eight years ago we began shooting weddings together and fell in love with celebrating alongside our couples.
You know that we're photographers but who are we?
We are two spirit led soul mates who are pursuing kindness, compassion, and creativity in our day to day lives! We believe in slow mornings, second breakfast, and embracing the imperfections that make this world unique and beautiful. Love is messy and we live for that.
Rosalie is a total weirdo, vegetarian/animal lover, snorts when she laughs, and is small. She paints, sings, looks at ads for dogs on Craigslist. (It's how we got Maddie.) and will steal a second piece of cake at your wedding.
Zach is funny, loves history, is a great listener, appreciates memes, and collects albums on vinyl. He is also the funniest person on the planet and loves spooky unsolved mysteries.
When we're not working you'll find us traveling, creating, or spending the night watching movies or rewatching The Office, Seinfield, andUnsolved Mysteries. We watch A LOT of movies and listen to A LOT of Bob Dylan!
Unsolved Mysteries
The X-Files
Bob Dylan
The Office
Lord of the Rings
Flight of the Concords
St Vincent
Hunting for vinyl
Japanese food
Ice cream
Abraham Lincoln
Good scary movies
Breakfast food
Frequently Asked Questions
and some answers
Where are you based?
We shoot weddings all over the country, but we love shooting local weddings as well! We serve the Poplar Bluff, Missouri, St. Louis Missouri, Springfield Missouri, Cape Girardeau Missouri, Paducah Kentucky, Nashville Tennessee, Memphis Tennessee, Kansas City Missouri, and Eureka Springs Arkansas areas.
What is your shooting style?
We are dedicated to shooting candid, authentic moments. We don't want you to feel obligated to look at our camera all day long, in fact we would rather you be absorbed in the moment and forget we're even there. We will be sneaking around all day, moving clutter, shooting connections and details you might miss while you're busy having the best time of your life.
Why should I hire a husband and wife team?
That's a pretty good question! Six years ago we were in your shoes: Engaged and so ready to be married already! We know the joy and excitement and, let's be real, HARD work that goes into the big day, We work as a seamless team. From the time we begin communication, to shortly after your wedding when we deliver your images and products, we are working together to ensure that you have the best experience possible. We know that these are the memories you'll both be looking at for the rest of your lives because that's exactly what we do. Our wedding photos are all we have from that day besides each other and we're so thankful to have hired a quality trustworthy photographer to capture it all.
Will you both be shooting our wedding/elopement?
Working together is our favorite thing, but we're perfectly capable on our own and often shoot solo or with a heavily tested and trusted second shooter, Currently Rosalie is our full time photographer and Zach works part time photo and full time as a pharmacy technician! (Let's be real, we have health insurance because of him woo!)
When will we receive our photos?
3-4 weeks after your wedding date. You can expect a 5-10 image sneak peak on Facebook and a 50 image blog post featured on our website before your gallery is delivered!
My wedding doesn't have a lot of details, does that matter?
No way. As much as we love a pretty table scape, none of that is why we started this. We are in love with capturing the complexities and subtle nuances of relationships. Where ever there is love, we wish to be present.


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GV Saigon Boutique Hotel is a brand new boutique hotel built in modern style design and is located in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, Vietnam. Shopping and night entertainment are all within walking distance.
GV Saigon Boutique Hotel with 49 luxurious guest room as was built in modern style with design mixed between traditional Europe and Asia. In 2016, Luxury Hotel is marked by refurbishment to become 3-star hotel, from the spectacular charm of the lobby, to the deluxe appointments of the rooms and to the personalized and courteous service.
GV Saigon Boutique Hotel will bring you relaxation as in your home, provides the ultimate accommodation and comfort and also take you home away from home through the honesty, hospitality and professional in service. Whether you're a tourist or here on business, The GV Saigon Boutique Hotel is a truly great place to stay.
The hotel consist of 49 elegant and cozy rooms, designed nicely with high class equipment, amenities. Once going to GV Saigon Boutique Hotel, you will surely be pleased with our services such as: Shopping, F&B, Entertainment and Relaxation. In fact, you will be served by our Hotel team comprising devoted, caring and professional staff.
Lotus Restaurant offers a fine selection of delicious international cuisine & Vietnamese Cuisine. Perfect for every occasion. This 50 seats Restaurant is open till 10:00 pm with 24 hour room service. The breakfast buffet is served from 06:30 to 09:30 am. The à la carte menu is available for lunch and dinner.
Many kinds of services from GV Saigon Boutique Hotel
+ Fax, internet
+ Carpark at basement
+ Flight information and booking air ticket
+ Pay by credit card: Master, Visa
+ Tour information
+ Room services
+ Car rental
GV Saigon Boutique Hotel is perfectly situated in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, just 20 minutes from Tan Son Nhat International Airport by Taxi. It is quite convenient for tourists to visit tourist points, recreation areas and shopping centers. In particular, the hotel is an ideal destination for business people and experts during business trips in Ho Chi Minh City GV Saigon Boutique Hotel.
4A Thi Sach St, Ben Nghe Ward, Dist 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
+84 8 3824 1695


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Phone number: 0427 94....
Email: Click to view
URL: http://marinecharters.com.au
Business Info
We have fully customisable options for Corporate and Social events, parties including bucks and hens nights, special events such as Weddings, as well as recreational cruises including overnight.
Choose your departure point (along the Swan River between Barrack St and Fremantle), choose your time, duration and destination.
We can also help with catering and beverage suggestions.
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Pizzerias in New York are a dime a dozen, so I buy my dough pre-made from them. The rest I do myself. If you don't have a pizzeria near you, you're stuck making your own dough. Here's a link with a recipe for that.
(Pizza Dough)
The Margharita Pizza is for the kids and the Goat Cheese one is for us grown-ups. Don't be turned off by its name, as I was for years. This cheese is nutty and mild all at once.
Olive oil
2 lb. pizza dough, divided in half
I medium yellow onion
1 can peeled crushed tomato
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 container crumbled goat cheese
1 cup arugula
balsamic glaze (or you can make a balsamic reduction by bringing balsamic vinegar to a boil and lowering it to a simmer until it turns syrupy)
Kosher Salt
Preheat the oven to 425. Spread each lump of dough out on a pizza pan (round and non-stick) lightly coated with olive oil. Flatten with your fingers until each lump of dough is thin like a pancake.
For the margharita pizza, spread 2 to 3 tbsp. of the tomatoes in a thin coat on top of the pie. Leave about 1/2 along the outside diameter of the pie. Use a pastry brush to pain olive oil along the edges without sauce. Sprinkle kosher salt and mozzarella cheese on top. Bake until the crust is golden brown, about 20 minutes. Let cool slightly, and cut into triangular pieces.
For the goat cheese pizza, cut the onion into long strips. Place in a frying pan with 1 tbsp. olive oil on medium-high heat. Allow the onion strips to caramelize, turning a dark brown color.
Spread a thin layer of crumbled goat cheese on the top of the other helping of dough, leaving a half inch diameter on the outer edge. Use a pastry brush to paint olive oil on the outer edge. Sprinkle a small amount of kosher salt over the entire top of the pie. Add a bit of arugula. Using a slotted spoon, generously place the caramelized onions over the top of the pizza. Bake at 425 for approximately 20-25 minutes. After removing from the onion, drizzle the balsamic glaze delicately over the top. Cut into triangular slices and enjoy.


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Megalodon, Kiss Sport
Technology and Guts Text by Bart Bjorkman Imagine using diving equipment so different from known technology that it is truly radical. Yet technology was only a part of the picture; the other, perhaps more important aspect was "guts". The divers involved exhibited almost unbelievable courage in an escapade that would humble even the best cave divers today.
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Representations of post-modern spaces in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down
"Tu'un me loose, fo' I kick the natal stuffin' outen you," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'. She des hilt on . . .."
Michael Boughn
Space is of course as fundamental to war as war is to space, though we don't always think of it that way. We think of war as the extension of politics, or, more recently, politics as the extension of war. But however we choose to think of the meaning of war, of its content, it remains in every case determined by, even as it determines, fundamental qualities of space. Space, in that sense, is not a container for war. It determines the nature of war. Clausewitz, the great analyst of modern war, understood war in the context of a world in which nations competed for territory. The goal of war was the occupation, integration, homogenization and disciplining of space. In order for those tasks to make sense, space needed to be of a distinct nature. It had boundaries, surface, and depth. It was penetrable. It was capable of holding or containing fluid formations that became stable formations once the space was occupied. It was commensurable using Euclidean measure. But this space of nations, which is the space of modernity, is only one possible space.
Space, in other words, is both Taken and Given in equal measure. The shapes, textures and folds of space, its emptiness and vastness, its crowdedness and its intimate closeness are functions of imagination, and imagination itself is implicated (and explicated) in shared modes of being in the world. When decisive changes have been made in the thinking and practice of war, it has involved the recognition and creation of new space. Oliver Cromwell, a new kind of warrior from a new class, was able to see the space of battle not as a container of fixed positions, as his opponents did, but as a field of dynamic forces. He altered the organization of the military, its technology and its tactics, to successfully maximize the use of that space at Marston Moor and Naseby. The new English bourgeoisie never looked back.
As an institution and as an organization, the modern military is highly mobile, technologically advanced, and overwhelmingly powerful as we recently witnessed in Iraq. But its differences from Cromwell's New Model Army are quantitative rather than qualitative. Although it is bigger and faster and saturated with information, it continues to operate in the same space as Cromwell's army. For Paul Virilio, instant communication has led to a new kind of war which is sometimes called post-modern. That may very well be, but as the U.S. invasion of Iraq demonstrated, the objectives and the strategy remain determined by the State's push to penetrate, occupy, and homogenize space, and having done that to then recreate itself in viral and geometric fashion. It just does it faster and more efficiently, and always against someone who has no hope in that space of standing up to its overwhelming force.
Ridley Scott's 2001 film, Black Hawk Down, explores what happens when the modern military institution finds itself engaged in conflict in a different kind of space. Filmed in 2000, the movie's general release was held up until January 2002 because of worries about the how the movie would be received after the events of September 11, 2001. Even so the film opened to extremely mixed reviews. It was largely seen as an action movie and criticized from all political directions for lacking a political viewpoint. This is because Scott never makes any explicit moral claims in film. Rather than an epic tribute to the sacrifice of soldiers such as Saving Private Ryan was, or a moral condemnation of violence such as Apocalypse Now was, Scott's film explores in minute detail how the State's military is undone when it attempts to use its mobile technological might to penetrate Mogadishu. It is undone because it is unprepared to deal with the spaces of Mogadishu which are neither the space of modernity, the space of nations, nor the tribal spaces the colonialists encountered in their first occupation of Africa. Scott recontextualizes the notion of post-modern war imagined in terms of the U.S.'s advanced technology and information control. Of course all that's there in spades. Arguably much of the trouble the U.S. forces get enmeshed in is due to the arrogance overwhelming technological might breeds. But Black Hawk Down seems to propose that whatever makes this war other than modern, it's more than just changes in equipment, logistics, and communications within the modern State's military. Scott represents the very ground the war is fought on, both literally and figuratively, as of another world and another order, an order that cripples the State's might.
The spaces of Mogadishu in the film are the antithesis of the isotropic, homogenous spaces of modernity. Those spaces are represented in the American camp with its broad open spaces largely determined by the needs of its technology, and to a lesser degree in the invocation of suburban America itself during a scene where a soldier attempts to phone his wife before the mission begins. The spaces of Mogadishu are cramped, close, indeterminate, shifting, and hostile to communication. They are fold upon fold refolded. The channels are fluid and constantly moving. What was a street one moment becomes a dead end the next. What was a cul-de-sac unexpectedly becomes a passage. It's a place in which the progress of the fighting is utterly fickle and unpredictable, moving in fits and starts and swirling bursts. In one of the film's darkly comic moments, two American soldiers who have dug into a classic defensive position find themselves suddenly abandoned by the war which has swept around them in a chaotic tumult. They have to reluctantly abandon their fixed position and chase after the fighting. There is no stability in these spaces and the line of sight is limited to the other side of the street or across the square. No one can see what's going on. Increasingly, and significantly, this includes even General Garrison, the U.S. commander, back the base watching the events unfold through his not-so-panoptic eye in the sky.
These unsettled spaces of flows, of blockages and interferences and unpredictable discharges are unrelated to economic "development"—as in not enough, as if there were only one possible mode of becoming developed and ordered with all human worlds stretched out along its singular line. These spaces have been formed not out of want (not that there isn't want) but from the multiplicitous energies growing out of Europe's great sweep across the planet. They do not precede the space of modernity. They follow from it, multiplying in its wake. Postmodernity in the Mogadishu represented in Black Hawk Down has its own measure, one whose trajectory is heavily inflected both by its tribal heritage and its influences from Europe, but which is other than both.
This Mogadishu is anything but "primitive," undeveloped, or unordered as the Americans tend to think. The Somalis' access to technology, markets, and media all tend to level out many of the disparities that once characterized their relationship with the European powers. The 1964 film, Zulu, depicts a crucial moment in the European colonization of Africa where the Africans, though vastly outnumbering the English, are unable to overcome them, mostly because of an enormous gap in technology—rifles against spears and a different attitude to warfare. Black Hawk Down depicts a similar moment some 150 years later, the main difference being that the African warriors are now armed to the teeth with many of the same weapons that the Americans have including, most significantly, rocket-propelled grenades, arguably the Colt .44 of postmodern warfare. As well, the international markets in which the Africans purchase the arms, the changes in their organization because of new communications technology including conspicuously, cell phones, the knowledge and manipulation of the panoptic attentions of the international media, all contribute to an overwhelming sense of the sophistication of the Somalis—a sophistication all the more sharply etched for it's contrast with the Biblical conditions of their circumstance.
Bruce Sterling, in an early dystopian critique of globalization (Islands in the Net), ended on a despairing vision of the Globalized Corporate State absorbing and commodifying the very technology that the resistance developed to fight it. Scotts' film proposes that the opposite actually has become the case in postmodern warfare. The enormous technological advantage of the State turns into its crucial weakness in a double sense. The State, even as it relies on technology to provide an advantage of force, cannot control the dispersal of that technology among those it intends to overcome. This is not even an issue of the so-called weapons of mass destruction that has become an obsession with the current Anglo-American axis. It's a matter of cell phones and rocket propelled grenades. Because technology itself is out of control, the resistance to the homogenizing push of the State gains access to critical means of communication and force that tend to equalize its relation to the State. The other problem for the State is that the more complex and powerful the technological force it mobilizes (and at the same time becomes enslaved to as Heidegger pointed out some time ago), the more vulnerable it is to the uncontrollable distribution and circulation of that technology. All it takes is one child with a cell phone to alert the warriors in Mogadishu to the impending U.S. attack, neutralizing the elements of speed and surprise the U.S. forces counted on. All it takes is one guy in a cheap nylon shirt with an RPG to bring down the first Black Hawk, bringing the entire American operation to a screeching halt.
In one of the early scenes in the movie the Americans capture a Somali arms merchant, Osman Atto. He is a fellow clan member with Aidid and a businessman who is supplying Aidid's militia with weapons purchased in international arms markets. He is interrogated by General Garrison, the American commander (played by Sam Shepard). Most of the scene is shot as a close up of Atto's perspiring face as he smokes a Cuban cigar and verbally jousts with Garrison over whether or not cigars made in Florida (which Garrison smokes, having declined Atto's offer of a true Bolivar) could ever match a real Cuban. Implicit in the exchange over cigars is a debate about international politics that sets up the extraordinary tension between these two men. The intensity of Atto's gaze, the sense of intelligence and malice that haunt his voice and eyes, position him not as a prisoner but as an opponent, and one who may very well have the better hand. At one point Atto admonishes the American:
Don't make the mistake, General, of thinking because I grew up without running water I am simple. I do know something about history. See all this? [He gestures toward the outside.] It's simply shaping tomorrow, a tomorrow without a lot of Arkansas white boy ideas in it.
But in fact, Garrison does make that mistake. In a response that seems prophetic given the situation in Iraq, Garrison says condescendingly, "Well, I wouldn't know about that. I'm from Texas." It's a moment that comes back to haunt him when he finds his precision operation suddenly entangled in a space it can't extricate itself from.
It is space without a heart, which is not the same thing as heartless space. There is no Kurtz there—by which I mostly mean Coppola's Kurtz who embodies a revelation of delusional frenzy at the heart of Imperial (American) culture at that relatively recent moment when it re-encountered its deep internal division as a kind of self-devouring psychosis. But his Kurtz is something more as well. If Conrad's Kurtz embodies the madness that flows from the revelation of the utter artificiality of good and evil, civilized and primitive, the whole structure of thinking that justified Europe's great adventure, Coppolla's anticipates, though only by a year, Gilles Delueze's and Felix Guattari's vision of the War Machine, a nomadic remnant of a pre-State warrior culture that not only exists outside the bipolar axes of the State (Dumézil's jurist-priest and magician-king), but in so doing acts to challenge the State's self-determined authority, including its military institution.[1]
The most telling revelation of this force in Coppola's film comes in Kurtz's camp. Sailing up the last leg of the river, Willard finds himself thrown into in an archaic hell. The boat encounters a final boundary of white ghost-like figures in dozens of primitive canoes that close behind the U.S. soldiers as they pass through. They finally penetrate into the heart in which bloody bodies dangle from palm trees, and anonymous dead drape the terraces of an ancient temple. It is the realm of the dead and the technology is primitive and direct—bows and arrows, spears, machetes, some small arms. Warriors in loin cloths squat with spears held loosely between their legs next to severed heads that dot the temple steps. Next to them are U.S. soldiers (Willard's predecessor) and regular Viet Namese army holding M16s.
The War Machine, as Deleuze and Guattari propose it, is an undisciplinable force. It is nomadic and exists on the borders of the State's order. Originally warriors and herders whose mode of being was an itinerant territoriality, they became part of a tradition realized in the unsystematized, skilled knowledges of itinerant labourers. Kurtz embodies the recognition that this War Machine, deterritorialized and unrestricted by the various disciplines of the Military constitutes a kind of pure violence untainted by the bureaucratic and political contaminations that can cripple (or pollute) the Military, making it the stereotype of absolute might and development.
Imagined as a heart, Kurtz both establishes the space of war as classically Euclidean in its penetrability, and at the same time sets in motion and maintains the physical and mythic action and their revelatory relation to one another. He doesn't move beyond Conrad's radical bipolarity. He embodies its revelation in revelation's very possibility, the possibility of the visible and hidden, the surface and the depth, the revelation of the heart as War Machine. He sets up a kind of metaphysics of war that determines the fundamental nature of the agon.
Mohammed Farah Aidid, the object of American desire in Black Hawk Down, is, in contrast, nowhere. Throughout the film he seems almost to float in a featureless room, never encountering anyone, never speaking. He sits and smokes. He is the counterpart, the weight of another world, the other player to Garrison in his panoptic war room. But whereas Garrison is increasingly frantic as he helplessly watches his forces become entangled and savaged in the complex, incommensurable spaces of Mogadishu, Aidid rocks and smokes alone in a room, preternaturally aware of the events unfolding outside.
In this mode the War Machine takes on a different sense than it does in Coppola's film. It is not a heart, not a revelation of some foundation, but a kind of remnant, a "minus-1," as Deleuze and Guattari might put it, a wild, diverse, antithetical force that actively resists the State's homogenizing might.[2] In Coppola's film, the War Machine is represented as a purity, an horrific purity, but a purity that both reveals the source of the state's might and the limit of its control. Willard's State sanctioned murder of Kurtz is required to return the State to the illusion of unfounded unity. The foundation must be obscured, though it remains the foundation. In Black Hawk Down the War Machine's antithetical trajectory is of another order. It exists utterly outside the State's parameters. It is another world, another space and a present time.
Aidid resembles a heart, but the resemblance is misleading. He is the trigger to the Americans' unilateral action and the focus of their animus. The operation represented in Black Hawk Down is one piece of a larger plan to capture or kill Aidid. But he is not locatable because the Americans think they are in one kind of space, but in fact are in another. And even if he was locatable, as Atto points out, it would make no difference—because there is no heart. The initiating penetration of Mogadishu falters when it becomes entangled in the complications of that space without a heart. The American force seems to penetrate the space, but then its thrust is blunted. The helicopters land on the roof and the warriors, moving like a machine, set up a perimeter, searching the building and securing the captured clan heads for transport back to the U.S camp. They do all the right things. But then comes the guy in the nylon shirt with the RPG. Suddenly the nature of the space is revealed as other than what the Americans thought it was. The surfaces, eddies, bursts and folds proliferate and circulate becoming a Tar Baby, an endless pellicular entanglement, the confounding of communication.
At that point, for all its pan-optic power (embodied in the image of Garrison back at the U.S. camp watching every move unfold on a T.V. screen with a live feed from a helicopter hovering over the action) all illusions of the invulnerability of the State vanish in an explosion of chaotic, random, uncontrolled force. And even though the Americans eventually extricate themselves (at the cost of 18 dead Americans and hundreds of dead Somalis), they have lost not just the battle but the "war" because the very measure of what's winning and what's losing has shifted into a new modality.
The old modality was determined by the penetration of space and its eventual occupation, manipulation, homogenization, and stratification, all geared toward the reproduction of the State on its pacified body. The essence of this modality is might, overwhelming power. This is the mode of the American assault, as we lately witnessed in Iraq. In the multiplicitous warrens of Mogadishu the US troops discover that that modality no longer functions in this strange space where all attempts to penetrate, whether "successful" or "unsuccessful" come to naught. They come to naught because the depth becomes an endlessly unfolding surface that generates an unpredictable circulation of force that in turn endlessly occupies the Occupiers. In Black Hawk Down, even though the "mission" is successfully completed (the tribal leaders who were the object of the attack are captured and removed), and the Americans kill hundreds of Somalis for every one of their own casualties, the battle is lost, and beyond that, so is the war, because the State's ability to continue its action is determined by a kind of late capitalist, neo-liberal, bottom-line contract with it's population; e.g. it can do whatever it wants as long as the "cost" (lives, money) remains within a manageable "budget," and the loss of eighteen lives (and more importantly, the public humiliation that flows from the entanglement) constitute an immediate and decisive deficit.
More recently a similar situation has occurred in Iraq, though the lessons of Mogadishu have allowed the Americans to more successfully disguise their defeat. The initial plans of the Bush administration called for recreating the State in Iraq specifically in the image of the U.S. State, the suspected fantasy of all American international policy towards everyone since at least Woodrow Wilson, if not Thomas Jefferson. Iraq was to be transformed into "a secular, pluralistic, market driven-nation."[3] This proposed transformation was not simply the gratuitous desire of ideologically driven theorists. It was the crucial foundation of a strategy to deprive Islamicists of a possible base and recruiting ground by transforming a large Arab country into a clone of the United States by imposing on it a State whose form was derived from the principles of the European Enlightenment. But the jubilation and triumphalism that followed the initial "penetration" of Iraq has given way to the recognition that the U.S. is now entangled in another kind of space and that in order to extricate themselves (especially before the Presidential election in November 2004) they must abandon their plans. In the last several months they have had to give up plans for free markets, a constitution, the abolition of militias (a.k.a the War Machine that operates within the dynamics of the anti-State forces of tribe and family and that is both the foundation of the resistance to the Occupation and a significant enabling condition of the future civil war), the overhaul of Saddam's national food rationing program, and the privatization of State owned businesses—in other words, the Works, the whole caboodle of born-again neo-liberal recipes for Utopia that were to have transformed Iraq into America-lite.
Scott's analysis of this situation extends from the external spaces of Mogadishu to the internal spaces of subjectivity, to the nature of the warriors engaged in this decisive battle. Kurtz as heart holds space to an economy of repression and revelation in which subjects, like the space they are in, are informed by a "dark heart." They are both implicated and explicated in that space. They have "depth," "character" and "act autonomously," though each of these terms signifies only within a specific kind of space. This is the case as well with the Americans in Black Hawk Down. There is an identity confusion among them at the beginning of the film caused by all the identical haircuts, but it quickly resolves into the recognizable personalities of a classic war film. The soldiers are proposed as being "persons," important to the State, as is asserted in the often-repeated slogan, "No one gets left behind." This is in sharp contrast to the Somalis of whom only three are ever identified as persons. Aidid's space leaves no room for the illusion of the depth of subjects. Instead they are represented as what might be seen as a mass.
But not all masses are massive, nor do we necessarily understand what is involved in being individuals. Farimbi draws attention to the complications of these concepts in his interview with the captured pilot, Michael Durant. After asking Durant if he is one of the Rangers who has been killing his soldiers, Firimbi appeals to something very like individualism (whose absence among the Somalis some critics of the film deplore), suggesting that he and Durant can negotiate "soldier to soldier." Of course Durant can't, and his obvious inability to do so reveals the illusion of individuality—or perhaps more accurately reveals the price the Military extracts from its soldiers. The Americans are of course all "individuals"—they have names, faces, play chess, call their wives, make fun of each other, debate the purpose of the war—but there is cost for this "individuality" and one measure of it paradoxically is that they must become part of the machine, a cog in a hierarchical Institution with carefully and precisely defined roles.
It's as if the individuals aren't really individuals, or as if being an individual is not quite what we think it is. In the same sense, then, perhaps the mass of Somalis is not a mass, at least not as we have been trained to think of it in relation to individuals, but something else. The very idea of mass is determined in the sense of a "loss" of something and so tied to an implicit defense of the presence of that thing. The OED has "mass" as "a multitude of persons mentally viewed as forming an aggregate in which their individuality is lost." That "loss," at its most obvious, has been represented in war films largely through caricature that renders it grotesque, simultaneously laughable and despicable. That's the stuff of open propaganda. Think of the representation of the NVA in Green Berets, a movie whose determining gesture, following the propaganda films of WWII, was to caricature "the enemy" as mindless and soulless and the U.S. soldiers as having inherently special, almost supernatural, "human" characteristics. More recently and more subtly, the Randall Wallace/Mel Gibson film, We Were Soldiers, rises slightly above caricature, but still manages to imply a kind of implicit evil to the faceless "enemy."
These images are very different from those Scott creates, with their extraordinary energy and seemingly undirected intelligence. When the Somalis pour out of various buildings to seize the second downed helicopter they flow like water from the structures surrounding the Black Hawk, a pliant force that erupts into uncontainable and unpredictable flows of bodies riding untranslatable energies. Rather than singular Might directed by pan-optic vision, Scott gives us an image of an a-centered force in which all individuals are interchangeable. They are a multitude, not a mass. Their numerousness is not to be confused with facelessness or unity, and especially not with the loss of something. They are another kind of force. We could say tribal if that's understood as a fundamentally different form of social organization, a different kind of machine, say, than the Military Institution of the State. It's not a question of "mechanical" as opposed to "organic," but rather of different modes of connection (industrial, tribal), different machines, unfolding into different modes of force. One is orderly, disciplined, and requires individuals trained and drilled to work as a unit, while the other is random, spontaneous, and chaotic and requires members who respond with absolute precision and knowledge to unpredictable flows.
The entire body of the people—men, women, and children—comes alive in this space to maul and expel the Occupiers, something the Americans never understand. In a remarkable scene at the beginning of the U.S. operation, a number of children call in to report the approaching Black Hawk squadron. One holds up a cell phone to transmit the sound of the helicopters back to the city, and an American soldier, misinterpreting the gestures as a sign of welcome, waves at him in a moment that reveals the incommensurability of the two worlds. These children are everywhere. As the fighting intensifies, every member of the community seems to join in, picking up the guns of the fallen to continue the attack.
Farimbi says that in this world, to kill is to negotiate, and that "there will always be killing, you see, in our world." What's at stake here, then, is the question of killing that has not been appropriated and legitimated by the State but remains the provenance (and responsibility) of the multitude. The Somalis have what might be characterized as an active, social relation to death, or perhaps even an intimate relation, and within that relation resides the ability, even the responsibility, to negotiate. For the Americans that relation has been co-opted by the State in exchange for the promise not to be left behind. But even that promise, Farimbi points out, is part of a world in which the Americans lead "long, dull boring lives" which to each of them is divinely unique, preordained, dramatic—and fatal in any deviation from the prescribed norm.
Atto suggests that the U.S. attempt to capture Aidid, while ostensibly for "humanitarian" reasons, is actually governed by the mythologies of individualism associated with the American west. "What do you think this is," he asks Harrison, "the K.O. Corral?" He implies that the American "strategy" of getting Aidid is governed by a deep mythic compulsion toward individual shoot-outs, that the Americans see themselves in the position of the Earps in a showdown with the Clantons, and that such a mythos will not signify within the "space of Aidid." Harrison's response, a condescending snigger and a smug correction—"You mean O.K. Corral"—dismisses Atto's critique by asserting his own superior knowledge of American pop culture, while at the same time ignoring the meaning of it.
Apart from raising the issue of the ways in which differing illusions of forms of subjectivity affect the strategies of the opposing forces, Atto's comments also raise the question of the role of governing narratives in the film. Perhaps he's right, and at some deep level, the OK Corral lurks as governing narrative for the Americans. But it's not one that circulates openly as rationale for the military adventure. It doesn't serve as master narrative in the sense that Jean-François Lyotard has proposed.[4] The fundamental arguments for the American presence are covered in an informal exchange between two soldiers just before the mission is launched. One (Eversmann), characterized by his comrades as an idealist, articulates the idea that the U.S. must act to relieve the suffering of the Somali people. The other, represented as a hardened warrior (Hoot), counters that all that matters once the fighting begins is to take care of yourself and your comrades: "They won't understand it's about the man next to you, that's all it is." These attempts to provide narrative coherence are supplemented by others during the course of the combat: "watch out for the man next to you," "nobody asks to be a hero, they just are," "it ain't up to you, it's just war," "no one gets left behind," and so on. Each of these narratives in turn has been put forward by various critics and marketers as the master narrative for the movie. Yet their sheer plenitude makes it impossible to single out one to play that role. No one of them dominates the discourse and provides coherence. Instead they all circulate freely, contesting and competing for legitimacy.
Strangely missing is the master narrative that informed the last 50 years of American military and political mission: the defense of "liberty" and "freedom" in the struggle with fascism and communism. That defense focused on a real or perceived threat to the security of the State, and established a space of unity within which the State could reproduce and introject its singular self under the rubric of defending freedom. The resulting massification of fractured American experience continues to serve, as Fredrick Jameson has argued, as "the great Utopian moment of national unification."[5] In Scott's film, the absence of such a master narrative is glaring, though the nostalgia for it is everywhere. There is simply no way to mobilize that narrative in this space. The local stories that circulate among the soldiers do not replace that master narrative. Instead, they circulate within the space left void by it and draw our attention to the black hole of its absence.
In that sense Black Hawk Down, unlike Coppolla's film, is not interested in making moral judgments about war and violence. If there's a sense of horror, it's local rather than global. Rather than the horror of violence, it's about disaster, the disaster the State's military institution faces when it engages the War Machine in the territory of post-modernity. The War Machine—tribal and nomadic—exists outside the parameters and structures determined by Modernity and so evades its symbolic metaphysics of emanation and penetration. Scott's sense of the War Machine is not as a deeper or more penetrating moment of violence, a revelation of primal integrity. It is of another order, one that is impenetrable to the State because it is all surface. Its organization is anarchic and spontaneous, unpredictable and contingent rather than technological and disciplined.[6]
Absent any rationalizing uber-narrative, what's left is the drive by the State to recreate itself. The pursuit of Aidid is part of a larger plan to remove power from the competing (and brutal) multiple centres of the War Machine and resettle "Somalia" in the form of a unitary State under the rubric of a "transition to democracy." Although it's not part of the material of the film, such a move presumably is a step toward integrating "Somalia" into the State's globalized Empire of capital. It is as simple and blunt as that. Everything about the American undertaking is geared toward and defined by the massive unity of the State, the State's desire to eliminate difference and to reproduce itself: E pluribus Unum. But in the end as the American troops run through the gauntlet of the Mogadishu Mile, Atto's observation about the future hovers over them.
If his reference to "Arkansas white boy ideas" refers specifically to William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. president at the time of the Mogadishu events, it also resonates beyond that to challenge the assumption of those representing the State that the political institutions of Euro-American Modernity are universally applicable and desirable. This Utopian vision of a single world united by one market and one State form has, as John Gray has eloquently argued, unleashed as much violence on the world as any of its competitive utopian visions, including Marxism and Islamism.[7] Like any utopian movement, its greatest weakness is its belief in its Truth. In Black Hawk Down, that belief staggers and stumbles in the final scenes of the film. It's an astonishing moment. Finally rescued by the Pakistani U.N. forces that they initially dismissed in their unilateral assault (in another of Scott's prophetic moments), the American Rangers and D-boys are forced to run out of Mogadishu on foot pursued by the Africans. It's a running battle in which men, women, and children pick up the guns of the fallen to join the pursuit. In one telling scene, an African-American soldier shoots down an African warrior, and then watches as a woman in a chador runs to pick up the fallen man's weapon. "Don't do it," he mutters, "don't do it." But she does reach down and pick up the gun, as she must. And he does shoot her, as he must. The film makes no judgment. It doesn't question the integrity of the soldier's plea. But the disaster of the moment is absolute and unspeakable.
The Americans are stunned. Jogging in full gear out of the city, dogged by African warriors in techs, they find the road lined on both sides with men, women, and children hooting at them, mocking them with what we finally realize must be traditional tribal gestures meant to humiliate a defeated enemy, gestures whose origins for the Americans lie in some alien and inaccessible world of ritualized war: a hand raised just so, the brushing of the hair with the hands, a certain movement of the feet. These are the same people shot down by Aidid's men in the opening sequence, the people one of the minor narratives claims the Americans are there to feed. It's a moment in which the two worlds confront each other 's utter incommunicability in a space that is all difference.[8]
[1] "1227: Treatise on Nomadology:--The War Machine." In A Thousand Plateaus. Tr. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987 [1980]. Coppola earlier develops the same thread in The Godfather where the Mafia families take on the same weight and significance.
[2] "The multiple must be made, not by always adding a higher dimension, but rather in the simplest of ways, by dint of sobriety, with the number of dimensions one already has available, always n – 1(the only way the one belongs to the multiple: always subtracted)." A Thousand Plateaus, p. 6.
[3] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. "Threats Force Retreat from Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq." Washington Post, Sunday December 28, 2003: A01.
[4] Lyotard, Jean Francois. The Postmpdern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Tr. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Theory and History of Literature, Volume 10. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.
[5] Jameson, Fredrick. A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. London: Verso, 2002: 212. More recently, the current representatives of the American State have attempted to renew this narrative in an attenuated form by raising the spectre of terrorism and claiming that exporting "freedom and democracy" can undo its "breeding grounds." While superficially similar to the much disparaged "root cause" argument, this argument differs in proposing the "root cause" as being the absence of the State rather than some injustice or exploitation caused or supported by the State.
[6] It's not a binary division. The State has access to the War Machine it contains, and vice versa. This occurs in the film when the panotptic power of the State breaks down in the chaos of Mogadishu and the Delta Force platoon attempting to reach the surrounded Rangers abandons the State's technology (and plan) and enters the city on its own terms.
[7] "The era of globalisation is over," The New Statesman, 24 September 2001.
[8] I should note that although Black Hawk Down is based on Mark Bowden's remarkable account of the actual events first published in the Philadelphia Inquirer and later expanded into the book, Black Hawk Down, this scene, as well as the other crucial scenes I have described, especially those in which Atto and Farimbi converse with Garrison and Durant, are not part of Bowden's narrative. They are the work of Scott and script writers Ken Nolan and Steve Zaillian.


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I have been a volunteer for UCP Central PA for almost 20 years and have always felt that it is an outstanding organization. From the Board down to the folks providing services to the consumers and everywhere in between they are focused on improving the lives of their consumers. Over the years I have recruited many others to the UCP Central PA cause, and they have routinely thanked me. I am always proud to be associated with this fine organization!
~ Great Nonprofits review
~ Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric Co.
Violet is the Director of Residential Services (CHS) for UCP Central PA. She is responsible for developing and maintaining effective operational systems, ensuring that all programs adhere to government regulations, standards and best practices.
Violet has over 15 years of experience in the field and was most recently the Regional Director at Keystone Human Services in the Downingtown area.
Prior to that she was the Senior Operations Director for Bancroft NeuroHealth, Mullica Hill Campus overseeing the Residential and Vocational Programs services for individuals with acquired brain injury, developmental disabilities, autism and other neurological and related disabilities. Other previous positions included ICF/ID Program Director at Devereux in Berwyn, Pa.
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The Board of Directors for UCP Central PA includes successful community and/or business leaders who desire to give back to the community in a measurable way. They often have an affinity for (if not a personal stake in) UCP, and are willing to put their time, talents, and abilities to work to help sustain and grow programs and services for people with disabilities. The Board provides direction to ensure that the activities of the organization move forward in a manner consistent with our mission and values.


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Album review - Ryan's Reviews, USA
Andrew Handrick: Distractions
by Ryan from Ryan's Reviews in Music Reviews.
Andrew Handrick (Vocals, Guitar)
Andrew Handrick's DISTRACTIONS makes we want to take a nap, before anyone freaks out, I'm not saying DISTRACTIONS is boring. It's calming, soothing, and dreamlike. Handrick describes his music as indy/folk, and guess that would be about the best easily assignable label for it. Handrick, a guitar, and a microphone, that's the ingredient list for DISTRACTIONS. There are rarely even any overdubs; I'm sure listening to Handrick performing these songs live would sound very very similar to DISTRACTIONS.
DISTRACTIONS is a very simple album with some complex themes. It is just Handrick and his
guitar, singing about the things songwriters sing about; happiness, girls, love, etc.
There's nothing that is really that different about DISTRACTIONS than most other
indy / folk singer / songwriter's albums; there's no crazy guitar shredding or odd dubstep
breaks or anything out of the ordinary, and that's good.
This is an album that will be greatly appreciated by those listeners that appreciate this genre of music,
because it does exactly what it is supposed to do, and it does it well.
Handrick's voice is calming and strong. While he's not doing anything outrageous with his performance (again, that would be strange for this genre) like any operatic solos or falsetto, Handrick's voice carries his music perfectly. His voice - which on rare occasion is backed up by his own voice doing background work, but is mostly just a single copy of Handrick - works really well with the acoustic guitar work he puts in. The guitar is mostly lightly strummed chords, nothing crazy, but it works and it fitting for what DISTRACTIONS is doing. There are occasional scales and riffs to break up the chords, and it works.
As a songwriter, Handrick again shines. His themes are mostly what you'd expect from this type of album, love and life and whatnot, but his does have some skill with the wordplay. I especially liked this bit from "Good Hearted Girl": You're a good hearted man / Never came with a plan / Just an honest word / In a dishonest world / Born on the 4th of a lie.
I felt that DISTRACTIONS could have been a bit stronger if it was not a one-man show. While I really like Handrick's voice, and he is a good guitarist, I really felt that a lot of the songs might benefit from some bass and drums to accompany them. I realize that this is probably not what Handrick does - he's a singer / songwriter, a man with a guitar and some lyrics - but some of the songs felt "flat" to me. The times that DISTRACTIONS does have some background singing adds depth, and I think that the album as whole would be stronger if there was more to it. Maybe not even the full band approach, maybe if there were just more overdubs, more layers of guitar, that might do it. I know that means that hearing DISTRACTIONS live would not be the same as hearing DISTRACTIONS on CD, but you don't have to recreate everything live One of the things that makes Smashing Pumpkins' SIAMESE DREAM so powerful is the fact that there are layers and layers and layers of music going on there. Sure, DISTRACTIONS doesn't have to be an indy shoegaze album, it doesn't have to have a wall of sound, but a bit more depth would suit it well.
Overall, DISTRACTIONS is a very pretty album. It is soothing, it is calming, and it is nice to listen to. It does what an indy / folk album should, and will be well appreciated by fans of that particular genre. For those of us that aren't so much into folk, it may be a bit underwhelming. Since I enjoyed the album even though folk isn't a genre I listen to much, I'm sure that those people that DO enjoy folk will love DISTRACTIONS.
Overall 6.5 / 10
Album Review - JP's Music Blog, USA
Irish singer/songwriter Andrew Handrick has recently released his second self-financed
independent album entitled 'Distractions'. The 10-song, acoustic album was also
recorded and produced by Handrick at his home studio in Italy.
The album is great to listen to when you just want to kick-back and relax as Handrick's vocals in 'Make It Right'
and 'Yellow River' put you right as ease with your problems.
You can feel Andrew spill his heart out on 'Forever' as his lyrics just fit in perfectly with his acoustic guitar.
The song 'Distractions' gives off a protest-folk vibe, while the contrast of 'Just For Tonite' gives us a warm, gentle feeling of love.
The album closes with that laid-back sounds of 'Bourdon Smiles' as you will surely press repeat to hear this album again.
Album Review - 2 U I Bestow, Music Blog, Peter N, Ireland
Brimming with charm, Andrew Handrick's stripped back album
has been my late Summer evening soundtrack. 'Distractions' is
all about the lyrics, Andrew's vocals and the sentimentality in the songs.
I really love the charm and qualities of this album. It has probably taken
Andrew Handrick a number of years to compose the ten tracks on his
second album entitled 'Distractions'. However it took three nights to
self-record them using just the one mic and adding the backing vocals. While
the recorded standard is noticeably below par the quality of the songs shine through.
Andrew has this 'Elliott Smith' - esque softness to his vocals which are
very pleasing on the ears. The vocals also bring to life the inter-personal
lyrics and stories being told within the ten tracks of 'Distractions'.
The title track and the album closer 'Bourbon Smiles' are two of the standout
tracks of the album. There's a lot of positivity on the album with songs
like 'A New Moon Today' and the opening track 'A Little Piece of Happiness'.
The most important aspect of 'Distractions' is that the songs have this
ability to immerse you into the song. When I listen to songs like 'Forever'
and 'Just For Tonight' I'm completely immersed within the vocals, charm
and sentimentality of the songs. Very few artists have the ability to do this
but Andrew Handrick is one of them.
There are limits to the sounds created by pleasant vocals and acoustic
guitar. While I wouldn't be in favour of a full band sound I feel the
addition of strings on certain tracks would've added to the mood.
Andrew Handrick - Distractions [10 out of 12]
Album Review - Musicreview.com
A collection of mellow tunes with elements of southern rock style melodies can be heard through out this album with the first track (Miss Califoria) kicks in with with a hypnotic grung tone on the vocals sounds a bit like early Smashing Pumpkins nice laid back strumming coming from the guitar and a pop cultured beat to gel it together, (Time) this tune has nice flowing rythem to it with uplifting vocals and a lazy groove.
(Come Around) this has nice upbeat melodie, the vocals sound really well but the guitar seems to be cutting into the mix too much but sounds well, (Learning Curve) this tune has a nice feel to it vocals are placed very well with a nice ambient feel chorus has a catchy theme with a driving melodie (90 Miles An Hour) you can feel a nice summer tone from this tune a real country rock feel with some great vocals and some great dynamics in the verses.
(City Morn') this tune has laid back feel with some nice lyrics it's great to hear songs like this from a Dublin artist it has more of a American tone but cool. (Ground Down) there is more of a folk/rock tone with a nice melodie like a 60's San Francisco song, great vocals and composed very well. (Stolen) Andrews deep vocal in this song works really well a bit like Lou Reed, the latin rim shot is nice too and lifts to a cool rock tune again the dynamics are fantastic great song.
(An Answer) this is a more upbeat happy tone song with some great vocals but the mix maybe over eq'ed. (Wendy) here is a fantastic grooving tune with a upbeat country rock feel vocals sound great with a very friendly radio tone.
Overall the album sounds great for a self produced product but has the making of a fantastic album.
review by T.Halpin
"The True Riches Of Life"
ANDREW HANDRICK a folk-like singer/songwriter and do-it-yourselfer just recently relocated to California from Ireland offers a great album, "The True Riches Of Life." The album generally deals with life experiences, relationships and every-day happenings neatly packed into 10 tracks. In each track you will find acoustic-like guitars, drums and bass fronted by gentle folksy vocals, some of which you'll find yourself singing along to (such as "Time" - one of my favorite tracks). The music though it has a folk element would also appeal to those tuned into the softer rock styles of music (bands such as the Goo Goo Dolls and Soul Asylum come to mind). All in all, it's a great album that will perk up any soft rock/folk rock collection. [Wednesday Elektra]
The True Riches of Life Andrew Handrick Unsigned
A bundle of folk tunes with a gentle but uplifting effect comprises the feel of Irish singer / songwriter Andrew Handrick's new album, The True Riches of Life. Handrick's songwriting remains soulful and open throughout, but the reflective nature of the tracks does not take away the poppy attraction of the songs, something which draws you in and captivates you.
Highlights of the album include Learning Curve (which is available for download at the bottom of this interview), and the powerful City Morn', as well as the intro track, Miss California. A country feel can be heard in the closing song, Wendy, something which adds further flavour and diversity to the album.
Handrick shies away from openly borrowing from his cited influences (which include Elvis and The Smashing Pumpkins), and his style is plesantly unique. Although the album has some weaker points (one of which includes the slightly flat production, which lets the songwriting down a little on occasion), it holds up to be a solid, well written album; something which the now-California based singer / songwriter can be confident in building upon through his live performances
This is one great CD. If you don't own a copy yet then buy one now! and start enjoying some great music and help support the Indie Artist . And if you already own this CD you know what I am talking about, Right! Cool then buy one for a friend.
The True Riches Of Life
Andrew Handrick
Andrew Handrick has spent the last 12 years of his life struggling through the genesis of this, his first collection of original alternative rock and folk-flavoured songs. Andrew hails from Dublin, Ireland where his musical life began but he currently lives in Austin, Texas; a fantastic music city and one in which he hopes to continue to shape his career. Andrew credits such diverse bands as The Rolling Stones, REM, The Who, The Velvet Underground and The Jam as his influences. He has been a singer/songwriter for the past four years, before which he played in and wrote songs for the bands Grover and Booster in Ireland. As a founding member of these bands he recorded a session for the famous Dave Fanning show on 2FM National Radio in Dublin. In April 2005 Ireland's favourite music magazine, Hot Press, named Andrew's CD "Pick of the Fortnight" - a distinctive honour indeed. An accomplished musician, Andrew plays guitars, bass and keyboards on The True Riches of Life and produced it with his engineer and bazouki player, Andreas Nolan.
I imagine that Andrew Handrick, like most of us, has traveled a challenging road stumbling over self-doubt and a broken heart now and again while accumulating life experiences to write about. His efforts were not in vain because this is a lovely, reflective and subdued look into Andrew's world that is reminiscent of an Elliott Smith record but far less tortured. It's perfect fare for a rainy day when you're curled up on the couch with your favourite book. His music is heartfelt but unobtrusive. I can't think of a single artist I could compare his voice to as it's quite unique and one which might be an acquired taste for some as he sings in different registers on parts of The True Riches of Life as in the songs "City Morn'" and "Stolen" (its music is very striking) and the lower registers aren't his strength because his voice just sounds flat. However, on the whole this record illustrates that Andrew holds great promise as an artist. Among the nine songs on this CD my favourite is the melodic yet plaintive "Miss California":
"If this was the last time, would you let me know? If this was the last time, would I see you go. Don't answer…It's a yes and it feels like silence."
I also really like the more effervescent "Come Around", the reflective love song "Learning Curve" and the aching "Ground Down" and though I love the optimistic music of "Wendy" I just don't see how lyrically and thematically it fits in with the rest of the album.
The True Riches of Life is somewhat flawed but it is those flaws that make it interesting and I'll look forward to hearing new songs from Andrew Handrick in the future.
Andrew's CD can be purchased at his official website at www.andrewhandrick.com and isound.com/music/andrew_handrick. You can also drop by www.myspace.com/andrewhandrick and tell him what you think of it yourself.
Christine Bode
Pick of the Forthnight
Andrew Handrick
Perhaps a man with a better chance of cutting a swathe through the morass of singer-songwriters is Andrew Handrick from Wicklow. He has a deep, sometimes frail voice ideal for the fragile, reflective songs he writes. Most of the instruments on his CD have been played by himself, with a litle help from Andreas Nolan. `City Morn' gets into a real soft-rock groove after an indecisive start, musically and lyrically depicting a musical landscape of the dawn with all its hopes and fears. `Learning Curve' is more acoustic but marries Handrick's literate lyrics to an arrangement that always keeps you guessing. 'An Answer' is more untogether and suffers accordingly, especially in the vocals. Handrick occasionally let's a whine into his voice that he might be better off dropping, but other than that, he might be well worth watching. Early days indeed.
Jackie Hayden – Hot Press - First Cuts


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Repository Policy¶
The ProCKSI respository can only be accessed by designated developers after having logged in.
Repository Overview¶The most important sub-repository within the global procksi repository are:
- ProCKSI
Current main project, which will be split into the following sub-projects.
- ProCKSI-Database (to be discussed)
Will contain the design for the ProCKSI and Protein Multiverse database, and an SQL dump of the database structure including fixed data such as definition for methods, measures, etc. Additionally, it contains the code that should be used by all associated projects in order to access/ammend the database
- ProCKSI-Server (to be discussed)
Will contain the specifications and code for the management, front-end and framework components. It will use the ProCKSI-Database and the ProCKSI-Standalone components.
Other suggestions for labeling this sub-repository: ProCKSI, ProCKSI-Framework
- ProCKSI-Standalone (to be discussed)
Will contain the I/O specifications and the code for the ProCKSI and Protein Multiverse standalone "core" application, which can be used separately from the Database and the Server components.
Other suggestions for labeling this sub-repository: ProCKSI-Lite, ProCKSI-Local, ProCKSI-Engine, ProCKSI-Core
- ProtCompVNS
Contains the Maximum Contact Map Overlap code using a Variable Neigbourhood Search
- Max-CMO_tools
Contains tools for the visualisation of contact maps, overlaps, ...
- HyperTree
Contains the code for the visualisation of Hyperbolic Trees
Each of these sub-repository for code development contains a trunk, tags, branches sub-directory. Please make yourself familiar with the internal SVN repository structure and how to commit code in this document.Further sub-repositories are:
- Corporate Design
Contains all ProCKSI related pictures, documents, ... providing a corporate design
- Datasets
Contains standard datasets for protein structure comparison
- Externals
Contains third-party software, e.g. similarity comparison methods, OS and cluster software, ...
- Hardware
Contains hardware specifications, invoices, ...
- Publications
Contains all internal publications (papers, posters, presentations, ...) for protein structure comparison in their original format (PPT, DOC, ...), but packed and compressed in TGZ-format.
Please make yourself familiar with the Publications Policy before commiting publications to the repository.
Committing Code¶
When committing your code to the SVN repository, comment your action you are going to perform using the following abbreviations:
|Type of Action
|New code corrects a bug/defect
|New code improves an existing feature
|New code implements a new feature
|Perform an administrative task, e.g. renaming files/directories
|Perform a general change, which does not fall in any other category
Please refer to the TicketingPolicy on how to handle tickets correctly.
It describes how to reference and even close existing tickets while committing your code.
Committing Publications¶
When committing publications (paper, posters, presentations, ...) to the repository, please refer to the Publications Policy on how to label them consistently.


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GST Return Filing
India has around 1 crore registered organisations that generate over 5 billion invoices. If each of these invoices need to get to the GST system from all parties involved in the transaction, it would require the businesses to adapt new age technological solutions that automate compliance and ensure integrations with both the GST system and the couter parties.
We are a qualified Application Service Provider (ASP), with technical collaboration with leading GSPs, enabling customers to file their returns easily through our software.
Taxpayers' biggest challenges today such as reconciliation of GSTR2A and purchase ledger and authentication of data are easily solved through our software.
We are integrated with biggest accounting software such as Marg, SWIL, and also support ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle.
We have simplified solutions for Tax Consultants. Sign up for our free CA dashboard to file returns for all your clients through one log-in.
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Jared was born and raised in Decatur, GA and is a graduate of the University of Georgia. He earned his bachelor's degree in Marketing with an emphasis on digital and social media marketing. While attending the University of Georgia, Jared served in leadership positions on and off campus and also interned with the southern region of a top luxury vehicle manufacturer. Post-grad, Jared has experience in both the private and public sectors, working for a Dallas based consulting and solutions firm and serving as an aide for the 2017 Georgia House of Representatives legislative session.
In his free time Jared enjoys collecting music and sneakers, playing basketball, working with youth in the community, and frequenting Hibachi steakhouses.
Aggie is a native of New Orleans and graduated from Vanderbilt University in May 2017 with a major in Human and Organizational Development and a minor in French. In her time at Vanderbilt, she spearheaded public health projects at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, and as a summer intern, she created organizational development projects for a bank in New Orleans. Her professional experience has fostered her passion for project management.
In her free time, Aggie enjoys distance running, food blogging, reading Steinbeck novels, brushing up on the French language, and cheering for the New Orleans Saints.
Myles "Mylo" Henry is a May 2017 graduate of Howard University with a degree in Supply Chain Management. Myles held many positions on Howard campus including Student Ambassador as well as serving on the Royal Court as Mr. School of Business. The skills he has learned on and off campus prepared him for a career in project management. Myles professional experience spans amongst many different industries. He interned for Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (the parent company behind NBA2k and Grand Theft Auto game series) and General Motors in New Model Availability. He also spent time in the fashion industry spending his summer working at Suitsupply, Inc. He joined the LEAD team with experience in marketing, public relations, radio communications, event planning, and logistics.
Myles' proudest accomplishment is being featured in the National Museum of African American History & Culture at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. His hobbies include reading comic books, dancing, and playing basketball. This New Jersey native is excited to made his dream city, Atlanta, GA his new home.
Originally from Dallas, Texas, Harry is a graduate of Vanderbilt University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Engineering Management.
After first learning the basics of project management through an engineering internship at ExxonMobil's Baton Rouge Refinery, he became passionate about the discipline. He took part in several projects at Vanderbilt, such as working with data analysts at Cisco to develop a more integrated sales enablement system and building a passive ankle exoskeleton to reduce the energy cost of human walking.
In his spare time, Harry loves cheering on his Dallas sports teams, and enjoys playing golf and basketball. An avid Whataburger fan, he is patiently waiting for one to be opened in the Atlanta area.
Hannah is a graduate of The Georgia Institute of Technology and majored in International Affairs and Modern Languages. Her favorite undergraduate experience was studying abroad in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil taking classes in history and economics. As far as professional experiences go, Hannah has worked jobs ranging from a cashier at Publix to an advertising intern at an advertising/PR firm in Atlanta. She enjoys a challenge in the workplace and is excited to bring a can-do attitude to the LEAD program.
In her free time, Hannah enjoys hiking, camping and kayaking with her friends and family. She has hiked through 12 of the 59 national parks in the United States, and eventually she plans on visiting all of them.
Originally from North Alabama, Jordan is a graduate of The University of Alabama where he studied Management Information Systems. During his time in the MIS program, he found a passion for working with a team and ultimately project management. His favorite experiences from UA come from his Capstone project where his team developed websites for startup projects.
In his spare time, Jordan enjoys concerts, playing sports, and college football Saturdays. Roll Tide!
Nini graduated from Emory University in 2017. At Emory, she studied at the Goizueta Business School, earning a Bachelors in both marketing and management consulting. She was able to realize her passions for both marketing and consulting during a summer internship at Restaurant Brands International: the parent company of Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Popeye's. During her summer internship, she worked in the North America Innovations department and helped oversee new product development, product improvement, product launch and also with pricing strategy. During her time there, Nini was able to learn about innovation processes, data analysis and pricing strategy.
Outside of academics and professional experiences, Nini is passionate about traveling, tennis, cooking and animals. She has traveled to Costa Rica to help rescue sea turtle and pursued her entrepreneurial passions by helping open a new restaurant venture.
Mike is a graduate of the University of North Georgia where he earned his undergraduate degree in business management. He is currently enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Georgia - Terry College. Although he comes from a military family, he considers himself from Savannah, GA and joined the LEAD program with nearly 6 years of professional experience, 1.5 years on active duty with the Army and over 4 years in the commercial real estate industry.
During his time at the University of North Georgia he was heavily involved in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity where he took on many leadership and event planning roles. Mike also deeply believes in community involvement. He is an alumnus of Leadership Lumpkin County which is sponsored by the Lumpkin County Chamber of Commerce and he was also a member of the Gainesville Jaycees. For charity, he is heavily involved in raising funds for the 1LT Weston Lee Memorial Scholarship Fund at the University of North Georgia for the Corps of Cadets.
In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his friends and family. Mike's hobbies include reading, flying, hiking, walking his dog, weight lifting and watching the Georgia Bulldogs between the hedges on Saturdays.


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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Evaluating Internet Resources Gretchen Greiner Technology Services Frederick County Public Schools Why Evaluate? Volume of resources Anyone can publish on the net No approval necessary Evaluation is Imperative!!
Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author.While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server.
Gretchen Greiner
Technology Services
Frederick County Public Schools
someone's opinion
If necessary, truncate the address back to the author's name
Copy the full address (but not http://)
Switch to a search engine
In the search box type link://pasted URL
Click on the search button
Search returns any web site linked to anything the author has written
.edu = education site (www.umd.edu)
.com = profit making site (www.netscape.com)
.gov = government agency (www.fbi.gov)
.org = nonprofit organization (www.mpbn.org)
.net = network organization (www.eclipse.net)
.mil = military (www.army.mil)
.fr = country domain for France (.ca Canada)
.nom = personal/individual Web sites
.firm = business organizations
.info = information services
.int = Internet organization (www.reliefweb.int)
.arts = culture and entertainment
.rec = recreation sites
.store = online shopping
.web = Web related sites
First Prize
First Prize
Design and Style


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.pr (Puerto Rico) Registered Domain Names List Download / .pr zone file
- .pr is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Puerto Rico.Domains and sub domains:
.pr – for businesses, professionals, individuals, companies, public relations, etc.
.biz.pr – for businesses
.com.pr – for companies, but not restricted to
.edu.pr – for educational institutions with presence in Puerto Rico
.gov.pr – for agencies of the government of Puerto Rico
- .info.pr – for informative websites
- .isla.pr – for people with presence in Puerto Rico
- .name.pr – for individuals
- .net.pr – for network oriented entities, but not restricted to
- .org.pr – for organizations, but not restricted to
- .pro.pr – for professionals
- .est.pr – for university students
- .prof.pr – for university professors
- .ac.pr – for academics
download .pr zone file
Includes:including .pr .com.pr .net.pr .org.pr .edu.pr .biz.pr .ac.pr
More than 500 domains included.
.pr domain names list
|Release date:
|November 11, 2015
|Last updated:
|December 1, 2018
|Software application type:
|File format:


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Writings of a Slightly Twisted Mind
"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser." John W. Gardner
Friday, November 18, 2011
Memoir - Life
The river runs slower and wider 'til it enters the sea
My life's river flows ... I go to class where I am the oldest student. I clean the house ... sometimes. I go to bed and rise the next day. I shower. I cook. I do the laundry. Occasionally, I make my bed. I dust and vacuum. I take care of the daily tasks of living ... just. I watch TV. I surf on the net. I am mostly solitary throughout the day. I grow older. When last did I plan a picnic? Go on a hike? Have a long, hearty conversation with someone? Where is the sponeneity of my youth? Little nuggets of it are found along the riverbed ... coffee with a friend, chatting with my children, dinner out. The challenge of being a young mother, constantly on the go, exploring, discovering, glad to have a moment to myself, are gone. The fast running, rocky river has widened, slowed, and I am heading for the sea.
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Yellow daisies
taken in Nanaimo
White daisies
field of daisies taken in Nanaimo


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Is this your first time here?
Each day, Clio connects thousands of people to nearby culture and history. Our website and mobile app are free for everyone and designed to make it easy to discover cultural and historical sites throughout the United States. You can search for nearby sites, take a walking tour, create your own itinerary, or simply go for a walk or drive and let Clio show you nearby sites using our mobile app. Clio is non-profit and free for everyone thanks to the support of people like you. Donations are tax- deductible! Click here to learn more!
A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum
Museums, Galleries and Archives ()
ListenIf it weren't for the establishment of the Michigan Technological University in 1885 (as the Michigan Mining School), this impressive museum might not exist. With a collection of over 25,000 specimens (including diamonds, rubies, emeralds and copper), the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum is one of the country's best mineral museums and the largest on the Great Lakes. It is named after one of the school's early professors, Arthur E. Seaman, who earned his earned his degree at the school in the mid 1890s and became a full professor in 1899. The museum opened in 1902 and Seaman became curator in 1928. Under his tenure, the museum acquired two of its most important collections: the Reed and Hubbard collections. The museum was located in a small, inaccessible spot on campus for many years before moving into its current location in 2011.
ListenArthur Seaman worked as a lumberman and surveyor in the U.P. beginning in the 1880s and during this time he began collecting mineral specimens. His company left but decided to remain and enrolled in the Michigan Mining School, where he would become a distinguished professor. He passed away in 1937.
Sourceshttp://www.museum.mtu.edu/information/history.htm http://www.mindat.org/article.php/1743/A.+E.+Seaman+Mineral+Museum http://www.lakesuperior.com/travel/michigan/353heritage-a-gem-of-a-museum/
Additional Information
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931
Houghton, MI 49931
Phone Number
(906) 487-2572
January 12 to April 30, 2016: Tuesday-Saturday 9 am to 4 pm
This location was created on 2016-05-03 by Ben M. . It was last updated on 2016-05-04 by Ben M. .
This entry has been viewed 434 times within the past year
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IT WAS a full house at Kintyre Dialysis Support Group's bingo night in Argyll Bowling Club.
The organisers would like to thank everyone who supported the event, which raised £731, from the venue, to businesses and those who provided donations. A spokesperson said: 'We very much appreciate the support of local people, it wouldn't have been possible to purchase the two new chairs recently without it.


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It's been a very busy week....
We departed on Friday afternoon from LAX. I was all prepared to it to be chaotic, especially since it was the Friday of the holiday weekend. We left our house at 3pm for a 7:30pm flight. First sign that things were out of the ordinary came when we hit almost zero traffic to the airport. Like when does that EVER happen? Then we get to the airport where we not only checked in with ease (and got those bags just under the max weight limit!) but breezed through security. We figured we'd wander throughout the terminal, get some food, etc. Wrong! Who knew that there are absolutely NO places to eat at the gates - all the dining establishments are found outside of security. So i ended up skipping back out to get us some food to bring back (a much better idea considering the ordeal it was to pull out all the toiletries and shoes and computer devices at security, scan the car seat and stroller, etc.....)
See what i'm talking about....empty!
So off we went on the first leg of our trip - 11 hours to Zurich. I was so impressed with Keegan - he did awsome. We had brought his car seat on board with us (which let me tell you, BARELY fit in the seat) and strapped him in. He slept a good portion of the flight and while he woke up disoriented a few times, he barely got fussy. I'm sure all the people sitting around me were very thankful for that!
We landed in Zurich after some sleep for Keegan and very little sleep for mom and I. But i've decided that this is my favorite airport of all time. They have this great family space where diapers can be changed, highchairs can be used and where there are tons of toys for the kids just to go nuts with. They even have a little room where baby and parents can take a nap! This place seriously rocks!
Of course, K was quick to find the trains to play with.
Eventually we had to leave this fun place (but hey, we have another layover on our way home, so we'll get to play there once again!) Then it was off to Florence. It was just a quick flight, only about an hour. But what a magical hour it was. The sights out the window of the plane was just awe-inspiring. Here's one that i snapped out of the plane window (leaning over K's seat)....
Seriously, this picture doesn't even begin to do it justice.
Here's Mr. K....just hanging out.
We arrived in Florence and took a taxi to our hotel where we would spend our first night. Driving in an Italian taxi is like having a conversation with God. Actually all of the drivers are crazy. They fit their cars down these tiny streets and they zip and zoom around people. I'm surprised more people don't die from car accidents in this town, because they are indeed crazy!
The next day we were moved into our apartment. The school is located near Santa Croce, so most of us are living in apartments in the historical center of the city, with a few students just across the Arno river. My apartment is just 2 blocks away from the Duomo - in fact, we can see the top of the cathedral from one of the bedroom windows. Our apartment is very nice and much bigger than i expected, so it is very comfy for us.
Here's the view from our living room:
We actually have three bedrooms and two bathrooms, which is very nice. But the showers in the bathroom are VERY tiny - it should be interesting when K and I try and shower in the am....
And a few pics of us..... Here's K and Grammy.....
And then one of my little man and me!
After my first day of school today (yes, much to my students dismay, we had class on Memorial Day, which i had to remind them is NOT a holiday in Italy - :) we decided to go for a walk in the city. Things go on much later here - to go out to dinner earlier than 7 or 8pm is out of the ordinary. We've already tried Italian pizza, pasta and of course, gelato (i'll let you guess which one is everyone's favorite!). Tonight we headed out to wander around the Duomo (where i saw Mike "The Situation" from the Jersey Shore filming a scene with his entourage. Of course my students are thrilled with the fact that they might "bump" into them (ok, the female students), but the locals are very OVER them being here and all their crazy partying obnoxious ways. I might have to pretend to be canadian. I tried to get a picture (only to prove to my students that i actually did see him), but the "entourage" wouldn't let me.
So you'll have to settle for a picture of the Duomo....which is a much more magnificent sight in my opinion.....
Monday, May 30, 2011
Posted by The Brick Kid at 11:58 AM
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text: Mozambique Previous: #169 Turkmenistan Next: #171 Djibouti overall score46.3 world rank170 Rule of Law Property Rights35.4 Government Integrity28.2 Judicial Effectiveness36.3 Government Size Government Spending60.7 Tax Burden70.6 Fiscal Health0.0 Regulatory Efficiency Business Freedom58.0 Labor Freedom37.8 Monetary Freedom66.7 Open Markets Trade Freedom76.7 Investment Freedom35.0 Financial Freedom50.0 Embed This Data Create a Comparison Chart See how Mozambique compares to another country using any of the measures in the Index. vs Read more about Mozambique Economy. See more from the 2018 Index. Close Download PDF Quick Facts Population: 28.8 million GDP (PPP): $34.9 billion 6.3% growth 6.4% 5-year compound annual growth $1,215 per capita Unemployment: 24.4% Inflation (CPI): 19.2% FDI Inflow: $3.1 billion Embed This Data Mozambique's economic freedom score is 46.3, making its economy the 170th freest in the 2018 Index. Its overall score has decreased by 3.6 points, with steep declines in scores for the fiscal health and monetary freedom indicators overwhelming a modest improvement in judicial effectiveness. Mozambique is ranked 42nd among 47 countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, and its overall score is below the regional and world averages. Mozambique faces an unsustainable external debt burden, a sharp drop in capital inflows, and weak economic growth that threatens macroeconomic stability. Although the country had benefited from debt forgiveness and rescheduling, the government used state-owned defense and security companies to borrow an additional $2 billion from 2012–2014 without parliamentary approval or national budget inclusion. The scandal vividly illustrates the substantial institutional shortcomings, such as corruption and political influence on the judiciary, that are damaging long-term economic development. Read more about Mozambique Economy. Close Background The Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), headed since 2015 by President Filipe Nyusi, has been in power since independence from Portugal in 1975. A 16-year civil war between FRELIMO and the rebel Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) ended with a peace agreement in 1992. After several armed clashes with FRELIMO in 2013, RENAMO pulled out of the peace accord, and sporadic violence has followed. The buildup of unauthorized debt has prompted aid donors to suspend budgetary support. More than half of the population remains below the poverty line and reliant on subsistence agriculture. In 2010, one of the largest gas fields found in decades was discovered off the coast of Mozambique. Rule of LawView Methodology Property Rights 35.4 Create a Graph using this measurement Government Integrity 28.2 Create a Graph using this measurement Judicial Effectiveness 36.3 Create a Graph using this measurement The government recognizes and enforces the protection of private property and provides a mechanism that protects and facilitates its acquisition and disposition, but enforcement is uneven. Although constitutionally independent, the judiciary is understaffed, inadequately trained, and subject to influence from the executive and FRELIMO. Corruption is a problem in all branches of government and at all levels. Government SizeView Methodology Government Spending 60.7 Create a Graph using this measurement Tax Burden 70.6 Create a Graph using this measurement Fiscal Health 0.0 Create a Graph using this measurement The top individual income and corporate tax rates are 32 percent. Other taxes include value-added and inheritance taxes. The overall tax burden equals 29.8 percent of total domestic income. Over the past three years, government spending has amounted to 36.2 percent of total output (GDP), and budget deficits have averaged 8.0 percent of GDP. Public debt is equivalent to 115.2 percent of GDP. Regulatory EfficiencyView Methodology Business Freedom 58.0 Create a Graph using this measurement Labor Freedom 37.8 Create a Graph using this measurement Monetary Freedom 66.7 Create a Graph using this measurement In 2016, Mozambique made it harder to start a business by increasing registration and notary fees, but it also improved access to credit information by allowing a credit bureau to be established. Subsistence agriculture continues to employ the vast majority of the workforce. The government maintains interests in large enterprises such as an aluminum smelter, the largest bank, and the public energy company but reduced fuel subsidies in 2017. Open MarketsView Methodology Trade Freedom 76.7 Create a Graph using this measurement Investment Freedom 35.0 Create a Graph using this measurement Financial Freedom 50.0 Create a Graph using this measurement Trade is extremely important to Mozambique's economy; the combined value of exports and imports equals 112 percent of GDP. The average applied tariff rate is 4.2 percent. Nontariff barriers impede trade. Government openness to foreign investment is below average. The financial market, dominated by a competitive and growing banking sector, is fairly well developed compared to other economies in the region. Country's Score Over Time View Chart of Scores over Time Regional Ranking rank country overall change 1Mauritius75.10.4 2Botswana69.9-0.2 3Rwanda69.11.5 4South Africa630.7 5Uganda621.1 6Côte d'Ivoire 62-1.0 7Seychelles61.6-0.2 8Burkina Faso600.4 9Cabo Verde603.1 10Tanzania59.91.3 11Namibia58.5-4.0 12Nigeria58.51.4 13Gabon58-0.6 14Mali57.6-1.0 15Guinea-Bissau56.90.8 16Madagascar56.8-0.6 17Benin56.7-2.5 18Comoros56.20.4 19Ghana56-0.2 20Swaziland55.9-5.2 21Senegal55.7-0.2 22Kenya54.71.2 23Zambia54.3-1.5 24Mauritania54-0.4 25Lesotho53.90.0 26São Tomé and Príncipe 53.6-1.8 27Ethiopia52.80.1 28The Gambia52.3-1.1 29Guinea52.24.6 30Democratic Republic of Congo52.1-4.3 31Malawi52-0.2 32Cameroon51.90.1 33Sierra Leone51.8-0.8 34Burundi50.9-2.3 35Liberia50.91.8 36Niger49.5-1.3 37Sudan49.40.6 38Chad49.30.3 39Central African Republic49.2-2.6 40Angola48.60.1 41Togo47.8-5.4 42Mozambique 46.3-3.6 43Djibouti45.1-1.6 44Zimbabwe440.0 45Equatorial Guinea42-3.0 46Eritrea41.7-0.5 47Republic of Congo 38.9-1.1 See Entire Region List › View all countries ›


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Beijing: China on Friday said its move to authorise border police to board and seize ships in the disputed South China Sea will not affect international navigation through the troubled waters.
"China attaches importance to the South China Sea and there is no problem in this regard at the moment", Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Hong Lei told a media briefing here today while replying to questions on the concerns in different countries over provincial Hainan government authorising police to board the ships in the South China Sea waters.
China considers entire South China Sea waters in the Pacific as its own.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan dispute China`s claims to different islands in the sea.
"We insist that all relevant disputes with neighbouring countries should be resolved through friendly negotiation and consultation," Hong said.
Yesterday, a report in the state-run China Daily said that police in southern Chinese island of Hainan will be authorised to board and search ships that "illegally enter the province`s waters" from January.