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International
Edward Snowden, NSA leaker, says U.S. should show evidence of Russia election hacking
Russia likely interfered in last year’s U.S presidential election, according to former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, but the American public deserves to see evidence of its involvement, he said in an interview published Wednesday.
“Everybody is currently pointing at the Russians,” Mr. Snowden, 33, told Germany’s Der Spiegel. “They probably did hack the systems of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party, but we should have proof of that.”
The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence has concluded that Russia interfered in last year’s election race by using state-sponsored hackers and propagandists to target Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in an effort to hurt her odds of winning the White House.
Officials have blamed Kremlin-tied cybercriminals with security breaches suffered by the likes of the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s former campaign manager, John Podesta, among others.
But Mr. Snowden, a computer expert who previously worked for the National Security Agency and CIA, said the U.S. government isn’t being forthcoming with respect to supporting its claims, especially when compared to another recent security breach attributed to state actors.
“In the case of the hacking attack on Sony, the FBI presented evidence that North Korea was behind it. In this case they didn’t, although I am convinced that they do have evidence. The question is why?” Mr. Snowdenasked.
“I think the NSA almost certainly saw who the intruders were. Why wouldn’t they? But I am also convinced that they saw a lot of other attackers on there, too,” Mr. Snowden added.
As many as six or seven separate actors may have infiltrated the DNC, Mr. Snowden suggested, calling it a “big target” with apparently lax security.
“I think the reality here was the narrative shaping about the Russians,” added Mr. Snowden, who received political asylum from Moscow in 2013 and currently lives in the region as a lawful permanent resident.
Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently agrees with Mr. Snowden’s last point on account of previously labeling allegations of election hacking “hysteria” whipped up by Washington.
“Does anyone seriously think Russia can somehow influence the choice of the U.S. people? Is the U.S. some kind of banana republic?” Mr. Putin said last year. “The United States is a great power. Please correct me if I’m wrong.”
Mr. Snowden admittedly leaked a trove of classified intelligence in 2013 concerning the NSA and its international surveillance operations. He was subsequently charged with violations of the U.S. Espionage Act and theft by the Justice Department, but has evaded prosecutions by residing in Russia ever since.
Russia was the only country willing to grant Mr. Snowden asylum, he told Der Spiegel.
“I have been quite critical of the Russian government on Twitter and in my statements, and that probably doesn’t win me any friends. They haven’t bothered me in the period until now, but who knows what that will look like in the future,” he said. | {
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Trump to hold series of meetings as he assembles new administration | Reuters
WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump will hold a series of meetings on Sunday in New Jersey as he continues to put together a team for his incoming administration, Trump spokesmen said.They said Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence will meet with: talent agent Ari Emanuel; civil rights attorney Peter Kirsanow; Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach; Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson; Bridgewater Associates President David McCormick; and retired Marine Corps General John Kelly.Trump and Pence will also meet with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers; Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives T.W. Shannon; American investor Wilbur Ross; and Jonathan Gray, global head of real estate at Blackstone Group, they added during a call with reporters.
(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Will Dunham)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. | {
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Eastport in Annapolis is home to yachts, art galleries, residents, spas, and restaurants, just to name a few inhabitants. If you take Duke of Gloucester Street toward Annapolis Marriott, you meet the bridge into Eastport. This bridge takes travelers from downtown Annapolis into the neighborhood of Eastport and leads to a wealth of entertainment, pampering, history, and full bellies. If you’re lucky enough to frequent Eastport, you’ll know many of the establishments and perhaps even the history we cover here. If you haven’t yet visited Eastport, stay tuned as we travel over that bridge.
History
Just like any neighborhood or area, Eastport has experienced change and growth. What was once farmland and open water now holds modern businesses and vast amounts of yachts and small boats. Tours of Eastport will show its oldest house, The Barge House (which is now known as Annapolis Maritime Museum), and boatyards. Eastport is, without a doubt, a place that requires learning from experience and viewing from beyond a computer screen. Fortunately, Annapolis Maritime Museum offers walking tours of the neighborhood; book one here: http://www.amaritime.org/EWT/index.htm.
Shops and Such
As aforementioned, Eastport houses plenty of intriguing and utterly necessary establishments. Of these, you’ll find Fleet Feet Sports Annapolis, a sports supply store that doubles as the starting line of many jogs around the city. With everything from sports bras to energizing granola bars, Fleet Feet Sports Annapolis empowers Eastport to move. Visit http://www.fleetfeetannapolis.com/ to learn more about upcoming jogs from Fleet Feet and more. Fleet Feet is located at 318 Sixth Street.
Carrol’s Creek Cafe sits at 410 Severn Avenue, right off the Annapolis Marina. With views of the water and carefully crafted food, Carrol’s is ideal for any hungry guest. For those lazy Sundays, Carrol’s accommodates with a brunch buffet from 10 to 1:30. Another special occurs on Tuesday nights, when guests can enjoy half price wine bottles with dinner. Head to http://www.carrolscreek.com/ to inquire further and see the menu.
Vin 909 was created with the love of wine in mind. Eastport’s very own wine bar serves seasonally-inspired dishes like littleneck clams and stuffed zucchini squash. The wine is too extensive and varied to even describe here. However, it is easy to relay that Vin 909’s wine glasses cost $6 to $12 and the bottles cost $21 to $42. The establishment also sells beer. Visit http://www.vin909.com/index.html to view more on Vin 909, located at 909 Bay Ridge Road.
Ken’s Creative Kitchen is another Eastport business that centers on delicious food, but does so predominantly via catering. Weddings, corporate lunches, birthday parties, baby showers, you name it, and Ken’s can cater (pun intended). Visit them on-site at 980 Awald Road, Suite 201, or go to http://www.kenscreativekitchen.com/ to learn more.
Admiral of the Bay, LLC is the epitome of an Annapolis business. The appointment-only company operates as part event planning, part rental company. Host a nautical wedding aboard one of Admiral’s yachts, or just rent a boat for the day. To learn more about these seafaring opportunities, go to www.admiralofthebay.com.
Eastport Design offers graphic design and advertising services by appointment. Let them wow you with new styles, ideas, and techniques your business needs. Call 410-268-2772 to make an appointment.
Take a hint from celebrities and renew your body and mind with spa treatments at Even Keel Wellness Spa at 31 Old Solomons Island Road. This Eastport spa offers skin care, body treatments, private yoga, waxing, and massages. Renew, relax, and rejuvenate because you deserve it. Go to http://www.evenkeelspa.com/ to learn more about treatments and services offered.
Inspired by gorgeous Annapolis architecture, you may want to revamp your home or start anew. Eastport offers several skilled architects, like Bill Trulio and Tobias M. Sullivan to aid in the creation of something great. To reach Trulio, call 301-261-1795; to reach Sullivan, call 410-280-1695.
Naturally, the most prolific businesses in Eastport involve boating. Annapolis City Marina houses many of the area’s most beautiful boats, but also overlooks Eastport Yacht Club. Situated at 317 First Street, this club not only offers sensational views but entertains with club and public events. Their calendar can be found here: http://www.eastportyc.org/.
One requires decked out attire to properly sail the seas. If you bought Converses instead of Sperrys years ago, head to Annapolis Performance Sailing and join the boating scene. The company also sells sailing hardware and apparel for when the seas aren’t so placid and the skies open up. Visit them online: www.apsltd.com, or in the store at 104 Severn Avenue.
Still on the theme of travel, the free and incredibly convenient company, eCruisers, LLC, also calls Eastport home. Call dispatch (443-481-2422) and ask for a free pick-up by the shuttle. This service greatly alleviates the parking troubles that are often associated with downtown Annapolis. To learn more, go to www.ecruisers.com.
Sailing, shopping, and eating can be tiresome. Rest your head at Inn at Horn Point, a bed and breakfast in Eastport. Located at 100 Chesapeake Avenue, this lovely inn believes in casual comfort and hearty breakfasts. Book a room with them for an Eastport excursion: 410-268-1126 or www.innathornpoint.com.
A trip to Eastport (and all of Annapolis for that matter) would not be complete without a tidbit of history. Learn about Bay harvesting practices, boating, and more at Annapolis Maritime Museum at 723 Second Street. Take the kids to see exhibits and participate in events. Go to www.amaritime.org to discover more.
The Eastport Gallery, located at 419 Fourth Street, is another essential stop on the quest to learn about Eastport and Annapolis. In addition to the educational experience, Eastport Gallery also awards its guests with the pleasure of viewing Marion E. Warren’s artwork. Bask in the beauty. Call 410-268-2898 or visit the gallery on-site. | {
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Tale of International Forgery and Intrigue Makes Headlines…
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BUT WHY NOT THE OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGERY?
by Sharon Rondeau
(Mar. 18, 2017) — On Wednesday, Buzzfeed News produced a lengthy exposé of a scenario stretching from the U.S. to Israel to Italy, Russia and beyond involving fraudulent documents purported to have contained evidence of a questionable transaction carried out by Exxon-Mobil, where Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was Chairman before becoming part of the Trump administration.
The article contrasted sharply with one the outlet published on January 10 with admittedly unverified documents alleging that “Trump Has Deep Ties to Russia,” a theme which persists to the present day but which remains unsubstantiated.
Although Buzzfeed’s report was quickly discredited and condemned as having been published for a “ridiculous” reason by The Washington Post, Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith justified its publication with “You trust us to give you the full story; we trust you to reckon with a messy, sometimes uncertain reality.”
Other left-leaning media questioned the story’s “journalistic fairness” and ethics. Without publishing the documents, CNN wrote on January 12, “Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October, in which he wrote, ‘It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States.'”
Last month, CNN continued the story by reporting, “For the first time, US investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN. As CNN first reported, then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier prior to Trump’s inauguration.”
The media has maintained the story line, with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees reportedly investigating any connections Trump or his associates may have had to the Russian government. And NBC News report dated March 16, 2017 stated that, “Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who endorsed Hillary Clinton and called Donald Trump a dupe of Russia, cast doubt Wednesday night on allegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.”
The article continued:
Morell, who was in line to become CIA director if Clinton won, said he had seen no evidence that Trump associates cooperated with Russians. He also raised questions about the dossier written by a former British intelligence officer, which alleged a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
One of the bylines in Buzzfeed’s Russia story, Ken Bensinger, also appears in Wednesday’s article. Both columns bear three co-authors.
Wednesday’s article is replete with photographs, images of the documents reported to have been found fraudulent, captions, and documented attempts to reach various players and potential players in the saga. The article concludes with an admission by the principal of the story that despite all of his efforts, he ultimately could not validate the documents he had paid $9,000 plus expenses to obtain.
On Thursday, The Daily Caller published its own article on the subject, referring to Buzzfeed’s extensive piece and Ben Smith’s column published the same day warning that “The strange tale published today by BuzzFeed News of anti-Trump activists duped by a dramatic forgery is the latest sign that the Russia story is veering out of control.”
The article detailing the Israeli man’s quest for what he was led to believe was a “smoking gun” showing a bribe of sorts on the part of Exxon-Mobil made to effect the nomination of Tillerson as Secretary of State contains a warning of sorts:
Such forgeries escalate the phenomenon of “fake news,” the Facebook- and Twitter-friendly lies that tell readers what they want to believe and that are packaged to look like authentic journalism. In this case, evidence was deliberately fabricated that could make fictional allegations seem authentic. Such forged documents also feed the hunger of a growing audience on the left that seems willing to believe virtually any claim about Trump’s supposed bad deeds.
Forgeries that have duped the public and influenced American politics aren’t new, of course. Fake documents (also with roots in Italy) led the George W. Bush administration to suggest that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, for example, and questionable records of Bush’s National Guard service ended Dan Rather’s career at CBS News.
While going to great lengths to document the story and analyze the documents generated by the massive scam, Buzzfeed has not acknowledged that the image posted by the White House on April 27, 2011 purported to be a scan of a certified copy of Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate was determined by two sets of analysts contributing to a criminal investigation to be a “computer-generated forgery.”
Rather than disclosing that conclusion, on Tucker Carlson’s January 25 show, Smith invoked the Obama “birth certificate” issue (beginning at 4:05) as an example of “nonsense” as it related to Trump’s public questioning of Obama’s eligibility and pressing for the release of his “long-form” birth certificate.
Following more than five years of work and three press conferences, there is little doubt that mainstream and secondary media outlets are aware that investigators commissioned by then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio not only found probable cause as to the forgery of Obama’s birth certificate image early on, but also were later supported in their conclusions by subject-matter experts.
However, a dearth of reporting by the mainstream media shows their aversion to the findings. In its efforts to quell the dissemination of the results of the investigation and their significance, the mainstream media has often provided its own story line.
At the third and final press conference on December 15, 2016, investigator Mike Zullo reported that Italy-based Forlab and Hawaii-based Reed Hayes, both forensic document analysts but from different disciplines, agreed that the image posted at whitehouse.gov cannot possibly be authentic based on nine identified points of forgery taken from a document bearing someone else’s name.
On January 2, Bret Baier of Fox News’s “Special Report” obliquely mentioned the birth certificate investigation while at the same time erroneously reporting that Arpaio had served as “Metro Phoenix sheriff” rather than Maricopa County sheriff.
The city of Phoenix has its own police department, and Maricopa County is the “third largest sheriff’s office in the country.”
In his report, Baier focused on the criminal contempt charge Arpaio faced from the U.S. Department of Justice stemming from a racial-profiling civil suit brought by the ACLU in 2007. He acknowledged the findings of Arpaio’s investigative team in regard to the birth certificate image and reported that after seeking comment from the White House, an unidentified spokesman had called the forgery conclusion “ridiculous.”
That claim had not been made before. Rather, the Obama White House had been silent on investigators’ findings until days before Obama left office, when Press Secretary Josh Earnest unexpectedly told reporters during the daily briefing, “that the charges against the president — that were lobbed against the president — were false.”
Baier did not specifically refer to the December 15 presser in which Zullo first made public the involvement of the two forensic analysts and their conclusions, although a Phoenix Fox affiliate said that the Fox News Channel monitored the event.
The day after Smith’s interview with Carlson, Zullo told The Post & Email:
Strikingly, in every news report, they do not address the newly-released findings verified by two forensic disciplines. In doing so, they avoid bringing attention and credibility to the issue. They can’t refute the findings, but they still want to put the propaganda out there as if it were some kind of conspiracy theory. But the press conferences have not been debunked.
Even in a manufactured crisis such as what they did with the release of the Russian “dossier,” they are still spewing propaganda to put in the public’s mind that there’s no merit to the birth certificate claim. They’re using that as a vehicle again to place in your mind that it’s a crazy idea. They’re using this crisis to further another cause. They are pronouncing that birth certificate good without doing any research.
“Hawaii-based Reed Hayes, both forensic document analysts but from different disciplines, agreed that the image posted at whitehouse.gov cannot possibly be authentic based on nine identified points of forgery taken from a document bearing someone else’s name.”
Interesting because this is what Reed Hayes’ website says:
“In short, there are indications that the Obama Certificate of Live Birth released by the White House in April 2011 may be a manufactured document or perhaps even an outright forgery. But without examining the original document housed at the Hawaii Department of Health, there can be no absolute certainty.” Reed Hayes, August 3rd, 2016
Hardly a definitive statement. Members of Congress who see this equivocation by Hayes will have the excuse they need to ignore the whole December 15th press conference.
Someone needs to clear this up. Release the Reed Hayes report and allow him to comment on it.
Jeffrey Harrison Sunday, March 19, 2017 at 7:49 PM
Thanks CDR Kerchner for your links.
Indeed, all familiar and new to this info would be well served to examine the two sites you presented. I just did, and while I knew lots of the info here, I still absorbed more info than
I knew/had before.
Also, here at Kerchner’s web site it is full of other related information. Here one can download
lots of stuff to either to personally utilize or share with others or aid in contacting those in power.
Perhaps send some of his info to some other medias and our elected representatives.
President Bush Sr. spoke about being a thousand points of light, I say every candle counts.
Gary and Bob, Thanks for your info and insights. Both of you said it as well as it could be said.
Indeed, this hoax has gone on for far too long. As far as I am concerned, “the fat lady has not yet sung “. Many citizens have known Obama is a fraud and have taken little if any opposition nor have they “raised their voices” to our elected officials, their Democrat or Republican leaders, or the media.
For many reasons, these noted citizens have remained mute. However, others have been in
the fight. I am aware of citizens from all walks of life and those from both political parties who
have been fighting this issue from the beginning. And they still are.
Therefore, I will continue to fight with these other fine citizens as long as necessary. As long as
there is no time limit for treason, I’ll keep on course.
Bob68 Sunday, March 19, 2017 at 11:20 AM
When the media and politicians became complicit in the Obama fraud in 2008, (and before), and Congress allowed Obama to be sworn in as the putative president in 2009, the die was cast for their future, (and ours). Once they became part of the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people and allowed Obama to be sworn in as president and commander-in-chief, with no objection or investigation, many rich and powerful people recognized there was no acceptable way out which did not have a high probability of prison time, or worse, so they chose to continue the charade of Obama being legitimate……to protect themselves from criminal prosecution for being part of the Obama fraud. The fact that Obama is a known criminal with fake documents, rather than getting him arrested and prosecuted, is what prevents that from happening.Those who are part of the success of Obama’s usurpation because they either assisted him, or did nothing to stop him, believe they can’t just say “Whoop’s, we messed up” and be told, “That’s OK. we understand”. It is not an overstatement to say hundreds and maybe thousands of people gave America’s government and her military to the enemy and have protected that enemy right up until this moment….and they will continue to do so to keep themselves free and wealthy. Nothing which can happen to America is important enough for them to give that up and to face charges for their involvement in the Obama fraud and/or the 8 plus year and counting cover-up.
That is the basic reason Obama has been so successful in avoiding prosecution, or even the discussion of anything which night result in him being prosecuted. Obama’s prosecution would subject those complicit with him to very serious charges and those people still, so far, have the ability to stop that from happening. In Congress, those most complicit have stopped those who appear to be weakening and willing to expose the truth about Barry before they actually did anything. I believe they were stopped by whatever means necessary and others complicit observed this and remain quiet and ignore the proof of Obama’s identity fraud.
President Trump has the ability to get the truth about Barry out there, but so far this is still a crime too big to prosecute. Those complicit know what Trump has and that is a major part in creating their irrational actions and panic over Trump being President. Hillary would have meant both parties could have relaxed and believed
the issue was put to rest forever. With Trump they cannot be sure of that and their behavior shows their extreme concern the truth will eventually expose their many crimes….and they will be held accountable……..
So many people were and still are involved in the Obama fraud and it’s cover-up, and fear of the consequences of the truth is so high, even among many of those who would expose the truth, that nothing happens. Obama would not go down alone might be the understatement of all time.
Gary Wilmott Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 2:15 PM
Amazing the left’s obsession with Trump’s tax returns. Yet where was the interest, i.e., the intellectual curiosity to question aka Obama’s continued resistance to provide proof of his constitutional eligibility to be POTUS by simply providing his certified copy of his long form birth certificate? And then when the usurper arrogantly foisted a FORGED birth certificate upon the American people two years into his term there was no effort by the leftist media and Congress to verify its authenticity despite compelling evidence to the contrary. The continued hypocrisy of the leftist loons and the media including the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity is absolutely breathtaking and their willingness to perpetuate the Obama fraud is a fundamental betrayal of trust to all American citizens. | {
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A trade panel hearing is scheduled in Edmonton June 1 into a Calgary liquor importer’s complaint that Alberta’s system of beer taxation violates trade agreements.
The province has imposed a $1.25-per-litre markup on beer, but last August introduced a rebate for Alberta craft brewers to support the local industry.
Artisan Ales, which imports craft beer into Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, says in a news release its sales have dropped nearly 40 per cent because of what it calls a discriminatory policy.
The company argues the tax violates Canada’s Constitution Act and the Agreement on Internal Trade by erecting barriers to out-of-province competition.
“The intent of these policies was to shield the provincial craft brewing industry from competition by driving up prices on beer from outside … Alberta. But far from promoting economic development and diversifying the economy, these policies have had the opposite effect for many businesses.”
It says the Government of Saskatchewan is intervening in support of Artisan, which is also backed by the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
The Alberta government has said it does not believe the new markup system violates the terms of any interprovincial trade agreements since it does not restrict any brewer from selling beer in the province.
Defenders of the system have also argued Alberta brewers face barriers in other jurisdictions, where government-controlled liquor stores encourage the promotion and sale of local products above others.
The number of craft breweries and small brew pubs in the province has almost quadrupled in the last three years, rising to 52 from 14.
Last November, a judge granted an injunction against the beer mark-up policy requested by Ontario-based Steam Whistle Brewing and Saskatchewan’s Great Western Brewing Company, which said the rules are unconstitutional. | {
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SCARECROW VIDEO
Residents of Seattle have a lot to brag about and Scarecrow Video is at the top of the list. This labyrinth of movie lore is one of the largest rental collections in the world. A claim which might sound like hyperbole until you actually see it for yourself; it is right out of, well, a movie.
Scarecrow's sweet spot is the rare, the obscure, and the impossible to find; the staff are scary-smart. You know that one movie, where that guy gets lost and then he runs into that other guy? They know it. Scarecrow Video is not just a rental store, it is a celebration of pop culture, and a museum of all things film. | {
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Meek Mill, 30, whose real name is Robert Williams, along with members of his entourage and two airport staffers got into an alleged physical altercation back in March after an employee asked the musician for a photo, Philly.com reported at the time.
Williams and two of the employees were charged with misdemeanor assault and were handed a court summons in lieu of being arrested, according to TMZ.
Though, Williams' attorney, Joe Tacopina, said that the case would be dropped as long as he completed community service at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. Tacopina told the website that Williams already completed the hours. | {
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Minogue set to be axed from X Factor? WENN reports Nov. 5th . The 37-year-old Aussie, who mentors the over 25s on the show, won’t be asked to return for the next series, according to reports in the Daily Mail newspaper. . And a source tells Heat magazine, “Dannii was brought in to be the […]
(Click on the headline to make the photos appear) Dannii Minogue has joined the cast of the British film Vauxhall Crossed. She will play MI6 Agent Rio Ruse in the spy thriller. The X Factor judge joins Hugo Speer, Ewen MacIntosh and Sarah Jayne Dunn. Producers are also keen to cast Rhys Ifans as […] | {
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Democraciv is a gaming community on reddit. It is one of the biggest "demo-games", with ~2.500 subscribers. We have even once been featured on Kotaku! Right now, we are starting our fourth game, so it is the perfect time to join this project!
We play a single player game of Sid Meier's Civilization 5 as a democratic nation, quite similar to a model government. We have everything a real government has: a constitution and political parties. We have pro-war/world-domination parties, liberal parties, religious parties, progressive/green parties, communist parties and much more. A simulated economy (banks, stock market) aswell as different press institutions are part of Democraciv as well.
We elect a legislature that can pass laws on how the game is to be played. Our executive actually plays the game (usually live on Twitch), and makes active in game decisions. A judicial branch obviously exists too.
Currently we are in the process of deciding which Civ we should be playing as. This is a great time to join as parties are just being formed and discussion is high. Once we have voted on the Civ, we will move into the first round of elections which usually includes good debates and lots of campaigning.
You can find us on r/democraciv, but we also have an active Discord, where all the fun, chatter and debate is.
Thanks for reading this and I hope we will see you guys in Democraciv!
Created by rumsod (of BLOC and POST), POWER is a free, burgeoning political and economic simulation game where you can compete with others to be elected to office, found a corporation, or even rule your nation.
Its unique and elegant gameplay is ideal for political buffs looking to roleplay as their favorite politician, and the fact that there’s no in-game-purchase element means you won’t have to worry whether your opponent is sitting next to their laptop with a credit card. In this game, all you need is skill, tenacity, and minimal theory of mind.
If you decide to join us, check out the Pragmatist Party in the US. We’re a recently founded and quickly growing party with the most advantageous positions in the game. Unlike other parties, we let you do what you want once you feel secure (or even if you don’t feel secure but want to carve your own path), and our party fees will never exceed 5%.
Welcome to the Online Crisis League – the premier political simulation game on the internet! We are a close but expanding community focused on providing unique content on multiple platforms. You can visit our website, though our main platform is our Discord Server, Online Crisis League, which can be found by clicking the Register button on the main page. If you’d like to know more about us, be sure to click About in the menu of the site.
Our previous round didn't quite take off, and we've learned from our mistakes. We're developing a far better gameplay system than before, and would love for you to join us right now!
Our current round is the world of Rione – a fantasy universe set in medieval times! Come join us and play the role of a serene doge, leading a merchant republic to prosperity and growth - or play as the sovereign of a fanatic theocracy, poised to convert her surrounding neighbors in the name of the true faith!
Hello, r/politicalgames, POWER is another one of rumsod's online browser games and in this one you rush to be a US politician or CEO. YOU CAN ALSO JOIN OTHER COUNTRIES (The UK,France,Germany,China,Mexico,Japan and Russia)
You can become a senator and propose and vote on bills and debate on them by posting a comment on the bill. you can also filibuster bills but it is quite expensive to do so. You can also be a governor and run your state and modify the tax rates, education funding, infrastructure funding, healthcare funding and if that does not suit you then you can play as a Tycoon and fight other companies over commodities and stocks.
One of the best aspects of the game is the community around it, a lot of it is memes/shitposting on the discords related to the game.
We'd like to ask you if you could join our discord, we currently control a majority in the Senate and the House but are constantly under attack by the GOP so here's our discord and we'd really like it if you could join https://discord.gg/6fJ8jR5
If you do join, please wait until our chair or vice chair assigns you a state or house district.
Here is the game's website http://oppressive.games/power/index.php
I plan on starting a Live Stream series on my Twitch/Youtube (TacticalMonkeyTV) around Saturday 1pm Eastern Time.
I am planning on playing as the United States and showing you guys how I grow my economy into over a Trillion Dollar Surplus and immersive growth in under 1 year in office, as well as having various different military campaigns in the Middle East, Asia and perhaps even Europe & Africa throughout the playthrough, while also trying to keep things realistic.
Besides economic challenges which I will be showing you how to deal with, I would like to hear your suggestions on which national & international problems & challenges you would like to see me focus on. Join me on Facebook or Twitter & Subscribe to my Youtube Channel for upcoming videos.
What would your dream political game be? Would it be a modern simulation, or a historical one? A full on political simulation, election simulation, war simulation, or all of the above? Which developer would you want creating it? What features missing from a lot of political games would you want included?
So I'm looking for a game where you own a political party and have to win the elections, after that you do what any government does, like voting on laws and such, I'm looking for something to play on Windows, could be an older game though. I appreciate your suggestions!
To me most forum sims fizzle out pretty quickly and are borderline junk advertisements. It takes minimal effort to make a forum and advertise it so it might take away from people who develop more long lasting games. So I support not letting new forum games be advertised.
That said I am interested in what others think as well. Let's talk about it. | {
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Allergy information for: Bell pepper (Capsicum annuum )
Occurrence:Bell pepper can be eaten raw or can be added as a seasoning to cooked foods.
Allergy Information:Allergy to bell pepper is commonly reported with respiratory symptoms rather than reactions of the mouth or skin (most commonly rhinoconjunctivitis but also asthma) which is slightly unusual. Headaches were also reported which are sometimes associated with allergic rhinitis but are otherwise rarely reported as a symptom of food allergy. Allergy to bell pepper is often associated with the celery-birch-mugwort-spice syndrome.
The thaumatin-like proteins (TLPs) contain 8 disulfide bridgesand so it might be expected to be thermostable. The TPLs are generally resistant to proteases and pH-induced denaturation (Breiteneder, H. 2004) [1001]
This protein is thought to be heat stable since it was also present in the dried powder of paprika and able to inhibit IgE binding to the corresponding protein in the protein extract (Jensen-Jarolim et al. 1998) [913]
Nature of main cross-reacting proteins:Not known
Allergen properties & biological function:Cap a 1has significant similarities to other thaumatin-like proteins belonging to pathogenesis-related protein group 5 and are thought to be produced in response to pathogen infection or to osmotic stress. (Inschlag et al. 1998) | {
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The Virtues of Intolerance
The form of tolerance that pretends there is no such thing as evil is itself wrong.
Feb 17, 2002 -- Europeans always thought of George Bush as a Texas yokel, and now they have their proof: his "axis of evil" speech to the US Congress. "Absolutist," harrumphed European Commissioner Chris Patten. "Simplistic," shot back French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine. Any rube knows that North Korea, Iran, Iraq are neither "evil" nor linked in an "axis," says European sophisticates, appalled that they must share the same planet with riff-raff who claim otherwise.
The Europeans, of course, know full well that the regimes fingered by Bush are about as evil as they come. But even in America, words like evil are not normally used in polite company, let alone in public discourse. Modern people don't talk like that. Just a short time ago, the Clinton State Department decided to stop referring to the same states as "rogue regimes," preferring instead the less judgmental label: "countries of concern." Good people are tolerant, we Westerners like to believe. The march of progress is marked by an ability to understand the Other, and a commitment to cure humanity of the vicious hatreds that poisoned the last century. To the extent there are people who haven't gotten the message, say good Westerners, we certainly do not want to become like them.
If there is anything that is simplistic, it is acting as if tolerance is an absolute good.
If there is anything that is simplistic, however, it is acting as if tolerance is an absolute good. Of course tolerance is a necessary antidote to racism and all sorts of irrational phobias toward people and cultures whose only sin is to be different. But a form of tolerance that pretends there is no such thing as evil is itself wrong.
At some level, this is understood. Who today would argue with Edmund Burke's adage from over a century ago: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Yet there is little doubt the West has preferred to err on the side of tolerance.
What George Bush has done, and Ronald Reagan before him with his "evil empire" slam at the Soviet Union, is similar to a child crying out that the emperor has no clothes. We can treat tyrants and terrorists as if they are acceptable members of the community of nations, but that does not change who they are. And it is impossible to begin the fight back without saying the truth: they are evil.
Intolerance, far from being an anathema to progress, it is essential to it.
In a wonderful essay in the Wall Street Journal last week, Michael Novak recalled just how powerful that single judgmental word can be. "You know what caused the downfall of the Soviet Union?" Reports Novak on a conversation with an ex-Soviet general, "That damn speech about the evil empire! That's what did it!" To the questioning eyes of one American, the general added: "It was an evil empire. It was." As odd as it is to say it, intolerance, far from being an anathema to progress, it is essential to it. Progress depends on intolerance for the status quo. In the ancient world (and in some cultures today) there was no notion there could be a better future – there was only Fate. The Western idea of progress began with two Jewish concepts: that time had a moral direction, and that one people could judge another.
The Bible said history is linear: Time began with creation, and its destination was a messianic era in which there would be peace on earth. The idea that history was going somewhere and that people could do something about it was new. Though taken for granted in the West, there is nothing inevitable about this notion, and it is not shared by all cultures.
An even more fundamental concept is that God's realm extends beyond a single people. All politics is local, we say, but in ancient times, so were all gods. The Bible vividly rejected such boundaries with stories such as that of Jonah, in which God could not be escaped by setting sail on a ship.
Without monotheism and its offspring -- universal morality -- the bedrock Western notion of universal human rights is judgmental par excellence.
Without speaking of evil, it is impossible to make fundamental distinctions.
Bush seems to realize that without speaking of evil, it is impossible to make fundamental distinctions, such as between regimes that must be toppled before they obtain nuclear weapons, and countries in whose hands the same weapons can help produce peace. The significance of Bush's speech is not just in the regimes he singled out, but his frontal challenge to the idea that silence in the face of evil is sophisticated and willful blindness is moral.
The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.
Visitor Comments: 7
(7)
Gregory Keith Tobkes,
February 21, 2002 12:00 AM
Wow
You have hit the proverbial "politically correct" nail on the head.Although this concept of "intolerance" flies in the face of the anthropologists I studied in the sixties I can't help but wonder if they would not agree today with your assessment!
(6)
Anonymous,
February 21, 2002 12:00 AM
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's sick and tired of living in an entirely too tolerant society..
If we know, in our hearts, that something is "evil", why on earth do we insist on looking the other way or even going to the ridculous extreme of searching for virtues where they just do *not* exist?!? Gangsta rap and porn? Can we just call a duck a duck, please and be able to point out that these things are evil without being ridiculed for our "intolerant" perspective?? Haven't we looked the other way long enough, and is anyone willing to see the progression of evil in our society because those with moral standards have been challenged time and time again with that wonderful first ammendment argument? Is anyone else sick and tired of the way in which the first ammendment has been perverted to suit the "rights" of perverts??
And *when* will we begin applying this new and improved sense of morality to society in general?? To our media?? To our relationships and dealings with others??
Let's not stop with politics and terrorists.
(5)
Anonymous,
February 18, 2002 12:00 AM
Let's not repeat the mistakes of WWII and try to negotiate with the Hitlers of the world.
(4)
Anonymous,
February 17, 2002 12:00 AM
Judging Others
Excellent article. "Judge not, lest ye be judged." This foolish expression is in fact followed by much of the West. Sunday, 02/17/02 c.e.
(3)
Tamara Adler,
February 17, 2002 12:00 AM
off the mark
While I believe that evil should not be tolerated in the name of "Tolerance", I don't think that just by calling a nation evil you can destroy it. The problem with the "Axis of evil" is not that it morally clarifies the situation, it is that the simplistic tone coming from a shallow "sheriff" President has enraged our enemies and put us farther from peace (witness N. Korea). I don't believe that Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" won the Cold War, I believe that the phrase provided clarity to a system already in it's death throes. Also, why was Yasser Arafat and the PA not included in this so called "axis"?
(2)
Anonymous,
February 17, 2002 12:00 AM
The stumbling block of mankind
The cry for blind tolerance is destroying our nation. Are we supposed to be tolerant when terrorists fly airplanes into our buildings? What about when evil men strap bombs to themselves and go to the highest populated areas they can find to kill many innocent people? These things aren't just "not good". They are wrong, bad--evil. May we all refuse to go along with this facade and stand for what is right and what is true. And may we be blessed in the process.
(1)
Barbara Holtzman,
February 17, 2002 12:00 AM
Just call it the Dark Side
tolerance can be just as evil. Acceptance would be a better term- but not of behaviors. Contrary to Jummy Carter, there is a difference between "in your heart" and for real. Hate me in your heart, i'm still alive; hate me and shoot me, i'm dead.
Another answer- look at history. Has there ever been any kind of conflict where "good" hasn't had to conquer "evil" in military terms before they can make peace? i'd really like an answer to that. Evil people don't see reason, they don't care if they hurt you- they are the ultimate in selfishness. the problem is, "civilized" tolerant people don't see it until it's too late.
My nephew is having his bar mitzvah and I am thinking of a gift. In the old days, the gift of choice was a fountain pen, then a Walkman, and today an iPod. But I want to get him something special. What do you suggest?
The Aish Rabbi Replies:
Since this event celebrates the young person becoming obligated in the commandments, the most appropriate gift is, naturally, one that gives a deeper understanding of the Jewish heritage and enables one to better perform the mitzvot! (An iPod, s/he can get anytime.)
With that in mind, my favorite gift idea is a tzedakah (charity) box. Every Jew should have a tzedakah box in his home, so he can drop in change on a regular basis. The money can then be given to support a Jewish school or institution -- in your home town or in Israel (every Jews’ “home town”). There are beautiful tzedakah boxes made of wood and silver, and you can see a selection here.
For boys, a really beautiful gift is a pair of tefillin, the black leather boxes which contain parchments of Torah verses, worn on the bicep and the head. Owning a pair of Tefillin (and wearing them!) is an important part of Jewish identity. But since they are expensive (about $400), not every Bar Mitzvah boy has a pair. To make sure you get kosher Tefillin, see here.
In 1944, the Nazis perpetrated the Children's Action in the Kovno Ghetto. That day and the next, German soldiers conducted house-to-house searches to round up all children under age 12 (and adults over 55) -- and sent them to their deaths at Fort IX. Eventually, the Germans blew up every house with grenades and dynamite, on suspicion that Jews might be in hiding in underground bunkers. They then poured gasoline over much of the former ghetto and incinerated it. Of the 37,000 Jews in Kovno before the Holocaust, less than 10 percent survived. One of the survivors was Rabbi Ephraim Oshri, who later published a stirring collection of rabbinical responsa, detailing his life-and-death decisions during the Holocaust. Also on this date, in 1937, American Jews held a massive anti-Nazi rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden.
In a letter to someone who found it difficult to study Torah, the 20th century sage the Chazon Ish wrote:
"Some people find it hard to be diligent in their Torah studies. But the difficulty persists only for a short while - if the person sincerely resolves to submerge himself in his studies. Very quickly the feelings of difficulty will go away and he will find that there is no worldly pleasure that can compare with the pleasure of studying Torah diligently."
Although actions generally have much greater impact than thoughts, thoughts may have a more serious effect in several areas.
The distance that our hands can reach is quite limited. The ears can hear from a much greater distance, and the reach of the eye is much farther yet. Thought, however, is virtually limitless in its reach. We can think of objects millions of light years away, and so we have a much greater selection of improper thoughts than of improper actions.
Thought also lacks the restraints that can deter actions. One may refrain from an improper act for fear of punishment or because of social disapproval, but the privacy of thought places it beyond these restraints.
Furthermore, thoughts create attitudes and mindsets. An improper action creates a certain amount of damage, but an improper mindset can create a multitude of improper actions. Finally, an improper mindset can numb our conscience and render us less sensitive to the effects of our actions. We therefore do not feel the guilt that would otherwise come from doing an improper act.
We may not be able to avoid the occurrence of improper impulses, but we should promptly reject them and not permit them to dwell in our mind.
Today I shall...
make special effort to avoid harboring improper thoughts.
With stories and insights,
Rabbi Twerski's new book Twerski on Machzor makes Rosh Hashanah prayers more meaningful. Click here to order... | {
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Vineyard Policies
In order to ensure that each of our guests enjoys a relaxing and pleasant experience, we ask that these policies be followed at all times during your visit:
In accordance with the New Jersey Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, we ask that no outside beverages be brought into the winery. A selection of non-alcoholic beverages are available for purchase for $1 at any of our tasting bars.
Since we do not have table service, we ask that you please return all glassware and trash to the nearest bar or trash receptacle. Thank you!
Please do not rearrange tables and/or chairs on our patio or other seating areas.
Large parties of 7 or more guests must have a reservation prior to arriving at the winery for a tasting and/or to enjoy a bottle of wine. Please call in advance, as our facility has a limited number of spaces that can accommodate large parties.
Please see our “Events” page to learn more about hosting a special event at the winery.
We are a pet friendly facility, but ask that pets remain on a leash at all times. Water bowls are available upon request!
Children must be attended by an adult at all times.
Smoking is strictly prohibited on vineyard property.
We are constantly tending to our crop to ensure that we produce the best quality wine for you to enjoy! Because of this, we ask that you refrain from walking through the vines and leave the grape picking to the professionals. | {
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Report Cards Available
Report cards for Whitman students are available on the parent portal (and mailed) today, February 5th; Stimson and Silas Wood report cards will be available on the portal (and mailed) Wednesday, February 6th. Please note, for some students, the 2nd quarter report card will contain an inaccurate attendance number. The grades, however, are correct. As soon as we fix the inaccurate attendance numbers, report cards will be re-posted to the parent portal. | {
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Nippon Life affiliate gearing up for November IPO in India
Reliance Nippon looks to fund growth as middle class expands
TOKYO -- Nippon Life Insurance Group's Indian asset management arm will make its stock market debut in that country next month, looking to fund expansion as India's middle class puts more of its money in the market.
Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management's initial public offering on India's National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange will open for subscriptions in late October, with the listings set for early November. Nippon Life's stake in the company will fall from 49% to 42.88% with the IPO. The fresh capital will help Reliance Nippon expand operations as its assets under management rise, fueled by growth in India's middle class.
Cooperation between the two companies will continue, and Reliance Nippon products will remain available through Nippon Life's asset management subsidiaries. The Japanese insurer has seats on Reliance Nippon's board and keeps personnel at the company.
Nippon Life is expanding its asset management operations at home and abroad, targeting 70 billion yen ($623 million) in profit from group companies by fiscal 2020, through dividend payments and other income. That would be 60% more than in the year ended last March. The insurer is also considering investing in American asset management heavyweight TCW. | {
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3
3 Current State of Play Process –Viewed as monad/comonad –Three cycles in each direction: One reflective – monad Other anticipatory – comonad –Handles transaction concept In databases (ACID) In universe
4
4 Example of Adjointness LR F G Endofunctor T = GF If conditions hold, then we can write F ┤ G The adjunction is represented by a 4-tuple: η and ε are unit and counit respectively
7
7 Definition of CCC paraphrased CCC-1 There is a terminal object 1 CCC-2 Each pair of objects has a product with projections CCC-3 There is only one path between the product and the related objects.
8
8 In more detail: CCC-1 For every object A in the category, there is exactly one arrow A Τ - Τ is the terminal object Category is closed on top Τ
9
9 CCC-2 Each pair of objects A and B of the category has a product A Χ B with projections π l : A Χ B A π r : A Χ B B Category has products and projections –Giving route to relationships
10
10 CCC-3a Notion of currying: change function on two variables to a function on one variable For function f: C X A B Let [A B] be set of functions from A to B Then there is a function: λf: C [A B] where λf(c) is the function whose value at an element a ε A is f(c,a) Equivalent to typed lambda calculus Examples: f : multiply(_,2) R curries to λf: double(_) R f : exponentiate(_,2) R curries to λf : square(_) R
11
11 CCC-3b For every pair of objects A and B, there is an object [A B] and an arrow eval: [A B] Χ A B with the property that for any arrow f: C X A B( C is product object) there is a unique arrow λf: C [A B] such that the following diagram commutes:
12
12 CCC-3c B C X A f eval λf X A [A B] X A [A B] is termed B A : all arrows from A to B, A is the exponent of B One path from product
13
13 Uniqueness The category is CCC if (other conditions satisfied) and : –λf is unique (one path) Notes –eval is also a function –eval: [A B] B refers to one A object and its associated B object -- eval: [A B] X A B refers to all A objects and their associated B objects
14
14 Finite Products CCC is not restricted to binary products Can have finite products For any objects A 1, …, A n and A of a CCC and any i=1,…,n, there is an object [A i A] and an arrow: eval : [A i A] X A i A such that for any f: Π A k A, there is a unique arrow: λ i f : Π A k [A i A] (k > 1) Finite products give construction of n-tuples which can represent strings. Note: this notation may offend Gödel’s theorems!
19
19 Locally CCC Satisfied when: –The category C has pullbacks and either: The pullback functor has a right adjoint OR For every object A in C, the slice category C/A is cartesian closed Pullbacks express relationships over objects in a particular context Locally CCC provide more expressiveness in capturing the real world
20
20 Product vs Pullback A X B A B πlπl πrπr Product and projections A X C B A B πlπl πrπr C Pullback of A and B in the context of C
24
24 Kleene Closure Given a set A: –The Kleene closure A* of a set A is defined as the set of strings of finite length of elements of A In adjointness terms: F : A A* G : A* A The closure is then GFA F is the free functor, adding structure G is the underlying functor, removing structure
25
25 Example A = {a, b, c, d, …., z}(alphabet) F(A) = A* = all finite strings constructed from A by F G(A*) returns the alphabet The closure relies on adjointness –F can be free and open (all possibilities) –G can check for language rules
26
26 Example 2 The adjoint (if it exists) is –F constructs all possibilities –G applies the language rules –η defines the change from A GFA in the alphabet –ε defines the change from FGA* A* in the language
27
27 Summary Category Theory provides a number of routes for generating strings: –n-tuples through cartesian closed categories –String expansion through substitution as in Kleisli categories –String generation through free functors as in the Kleene closure | {
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Kinky Sex Freak
Cast: Courtney Cummz
They ran across Melanie waiting for a cab or something. She was on her way to the airport and was already 45 minutes late. The boys give her a lift and, according to Dirty, it was over. Melanie immediately revealed herself to be the kinky sex freak she is! See for yourself! | {
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Willard Hotel
Swan and Dolphin Resort
Courtyard by Marriott
Swan and Dolphin Resort
Lake Buenavista, FL
Courtyard by Marriott
Federal Way Seattle, WA
Hyatt Orlando Airport
Orlando, FL
Hyatt Orlando Airport
Orlando, FL
Swan and Dolphin Resort
Lake Buenavista, FL
Welcome to Land-Ron, Inc.
Land-Ron, Inc. is a full-service General Contractor specializing in interior finishes for the hospitality industry since 1993. We have the capability and resources to successfully complete projects of all sizes throughout all of The United States and The Caribbean. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
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Life's Creative Process
by Peter and Esther Fisher -
The greatest secret in the world is that you and I are incredibly powerful and aware creators. We are immersed in and responsible for the creative process, which dictates the outcome of our individual and collective lives in every moment.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Our world is exactly what we collectively design it to be -- all of the time and that our universe operates as if we knew that we were powerful creators. Our world expects that we know that what we think and say is what we create and what we get. God has not left us but the reality is that we have left God! The time has finally come for us to wake up! The prerequisite for conscious creation is that we must have a strong belief if we are to be effective creators and that this strong belief is called "Faith."
We are part of God and we participate in creation -- as creation continues in every moment -- with us responsible. Creation did not happen sometime in the past and then end, it continues right now.
The entire world is God. Everything there is -- is God.
The trees, the grass, the buildings, all of humanity are all part of God. A beautiful sunrise and a breathtaking sunset are part of God. The "good" folk as well as the terrorists are all part of God. "Good" and "evil" are part of God. There is no duality, no "they and we;" we are all part of One thing. We are all One. Everything and we are therefore part of God.
We live in a spiritual world.
We are spiritual beings expressing and living as human beings with tangible, palpable forms. The spiritual realm we "come from" is an invisible world to us from our point of awareness. The spiritual entities that we are are invisible but none the less very "real."
The invisible spiritual realm is controlling. Everything that we can see in form from our human vantagepoint first proceeds from the invisible spiritual realm - from our thoughts. Spirit encompasses form; form is encompassed by spirit. Creation is the movement of spirit into form, the progression of the invisible to the visible, the progression of thought to form.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not the reverse.
What the Creative Process Is
Each of us has an invisible aura of creative energy around us that we can call our spiritual realm or our God selves. It is this energy or Invisible Cause that we each express and emanate in every moment of every day of our lives. invisible, its effects are very, very real and visible all around us.
Our very world is as it is because of the creative process.
We are each powerful creative beings. We are creators of the physical forms in our lives. We are also the creators of all the outcomes in our lives and in our world. What we think, say and believe is what we get. In spite of what we may wish it to be (because we wouldn't have to assume responsibility), our world is exactly what we collectively design it to be -- all of the time.
Our universe operates as if we knew that we were powerful creators. It expects that we know that what we create is what we get. The universe doesn't know that many of us don't yet understand that it is all up to us! Many of us still want to blame the situation in the world on someone else (like the terrorists!) or on God somewhere "out there.") Some of us ask why God has "left us" to a world that doesn't seem to work for us when the reality is that we have left God!
The time has finally come for us to wake up! We might just as well become consciously aware that we are powerful creative beings and get good at it because we haven't done such a hot job up to now -- in our ignorance and misunderstanding. We have been as children and it is now time to mature and grow up. This is not meant as a criticism or blame, for we did not know.
The truth is that our invisible, spiritual realm is orchestrated completely by us -- individually and collectively. Our ideas, emotions, prayers, intentions and thoughts orchestrate our lives. This is why we say, "Watch what you think, for thoughts are things!" And especially "Watch what you say, because words are also things!"
Isn't this exactly how God works? This is why we are all creators right along with God -- we are all part of God. God is the energy that is all around us, everywhere. There is one universal energy, which is the one God. Everything in our world is God and we are part of God.
The Law of Creation
Our thoughts, prayers and intentions assemble the invisible "particles" of the invisible spiritual realm into visible forms via a very specific "Law" - the particles are energetically assembled by our words, thoughts and emotions into things. We are the ones doing it!
The Law of Creation exists for our use and works equally for everyone.
It is well known, for example, that human beings, all animals and other inanimate forms are comprised of photons -- or the particles that emanate from the sun. We are literally, then, "Light Beings." As light beings it is our heritage and natural way of being to assemble these invisible particles into yet other forms by relying on the Law of creation.
How the Creative Process Works
The invisible particles in the spiritual realm are organized into specific forms by energy coming from us, from humans and generate visible forms. A prerequisite for conscious creation is that we must have a strong belief if we are to be effective creators. This strong belief is called "Faith." We must have a strong belief, or a strong faith that we are indeed creators and that we can indeed create forms and outcomes. When we know this we can proceed to consciously create a world we want! A world that works! A world of love and peace! We have choices in every moment.
The natural Law of creation is available to all of us and whether we are aware of it or not the law is in operation continuously without fail.
If all of this is difficult for you to believe or to comprehend, then please intentionally suspend your disbelief for just a moment. Then "act as if" you believe. Proceed as if you knew deep in your heart, deep in your consciousness that you are an aware creator and then allow your manifestations and creations to prove to you how this process works. Keep at it consciously.
To help us understand the creative process even better, think of those times when your prayers were answered, when what you were strongly thinking about happened or what you verbalized over and over or were obsessed about came into being.
Electricity as An Analogy
To help us explore this creation/manifestation process more deeply, let's review the well-known scientific facts about the generation of electricity. You don't have to be scientific to consider this analogy.
Electricity - a substance or energy we all use everyday but cannot see and must accept on faith - is essentially created out of "thin air." No one knows what electricity is, but the laws of using electricity are well known. These well-known laws of electricity are analogous to the well-known (but previously hidden) law of creation. These laws work, they exist, they are "there," but their why is still a deep mystery.
Electricity as many of us already know is created by moving two magnetic fields close to or within each other. The act of moving those magnets generates or creates electricity out of thin air. Its that simple! The specific electrical laws of the universe have been discovered over a hundred years or more and are well known. Again, however, to amplify, no one knows why electricity works! But we surely know that it does work. We don't give electricity a second thought yet it is exactly analogous to spiritual creation, which we are exploring here. The Law of creation is likewise well-known.
To complete this analogy, lets look at radio and the early days of television - or satellite television today. By broadcasting electrical energy through the "ethers," a program produced in one place is invisibly transmitted to another place where there is a receiver, which recreates the program. We still do not know why this happens, even though we do understand the hows and the laws involved. We don't give a second thought to why we can listen to a radio or see a television picture broadcast through thin air.The LAW of the energy of spirit works the very same way.
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“Just as the wave cannot exist for itself but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean - so must I never live my life for itself but always in the experience which is going on around me.”
--Albert Schweitzer
"We are the crossover generation from one phase of evolution to the next. Although barely perceptive at origins, as were the earliest humans in the pre-human world, the young Homo universalis are emerging everywhere, in every culture, faith, and background. The signs of our emergence are a powerful, irresistible passion to unite with Spirit within, and to join with others to co-create a world equal to our love and our capacities." --Barbara Marx Hubbard
"Our vision is to create a world that gives expression to the highest potential of the human spirit—a world in which every individual manifests the very best in themselves. The time has come for all of us to become courageous pioneers— to venture beyond our personal, cultural and national interests and come together in wisdom, spirit and intention for the benefit of all." --Hiroo Saionji | {
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Cleveland’s daily newspaper is changing even faster than we thought. On the heels of our January 2007 article (“The New Dealer”) looking at tumultuous changes at the PD and how the newspaper is adjusting to industry shifts, Editor Doug Clifton announces he will step down June 1. We talk to publisher Terry Egger and Clifton himself about the announcement.
Erick [email protected]
Cleveland’s daily newspaper is changing even faster than we thought. Plain Dealer editor Doug Clifton has announced he’ll retire on June 1 — doubling the stakes for the newspaper, already perched between the excitement of a new era and fears of decline.
Clifton and publisher Terry Egger broke the news at a 10 a.m. newsroom meeting on Thursday, Jan. 18. He’ll leave eight years to the day after he took over as editor — eight years that saw The Plain Dealer turn more aggressive, challenging two mayors, our local economy’s decline and any government official who tried to keep public records secret.
Politics reporter Mark Naymik says the PD’s reporters and editors weren’t surprised at the news. Top editors usually stay at major metro newspapers for about five to seven years, he says.
“A majority of people are disappointed,” Naymik says of Clifton’s departure. “They think he made it a better paper. I think Doug brought out a hard news edge to things. He kept our eye on the public records ball.” When reporters got tough with prominent newsmakers and the newsmakers fought back, Clifton always supported his staff, he says.
“No one can ever accuse him of protecting a sacred cow,” Naymik says. “Doug didn’t kowtow to anyone.”
Clifton, who’s 63, says he plans to retire to his house in Vermont, learn Spanish, find more time for reading, make “a perfect piece of cabinetry” and maybe take American history classes at Middlebury College. “I might even consider going into the classroom,” he says, “not to teach journalism, but to teach the value of journalists to non-journalists.”
Clifton leaves as the PD is going through tumultuous changes, trying to adjust to radical shifts in the newspaper industry. (See our January issue article, “The New Dealer.”) Egger, publisher since May, is trying to repair the paper’s ailing bottom line. One-sixth of the newsroom staff left this fall, taking advantage of a generous buyout offer. After dragging their feet for years, top PD editors made a major push in 2006 to improve the PD’s online news efforts.
But Clifton assured the staff he’s not leaving because of any of that. He thinks it’s an exciting time to be in newspapers, he wrote in a letter to the staff, and that the PD is confronting the industry’s new challenges “with vigor and vision.”
Rumors of Clifton retiring have buzzed around the PD for months, even years. But when his name didn’t appear on the list of the staffers who took the fall buyout, some on his staff suggested to Cleveland Magazine that his retirement was probably not imminent. In our Nov. 16 interview, Clifton said retirement was “not something beyond the realm of possibility” for him — but he demurred, calling himself “a young 63.” The next day, Clifton appeared on PD columnist Regina Brett’s WCPN radio show, and Brett asked her boss on the air when he planned to retire. Again, he was vague.
On Jan. 18, Clifton told his staff he was “letting the cat out of the bag now” because “I can’t tolerate this telling of little white lies.” His announcement, he tells Cleveland Magazine, was timed “to avoid the kinds of things I was frequently confronted with: the line of questioning you pursued, the magazine piece you did. I was on Regina Brett’s show. She asked me point-blank. It was becoming uncomfortable.”
Clifton says he wanted to retire in May 2006, but Egger took over as publisher that month, and he didn’t want it to look like he was leaving because of that. Instead, he told Egger in late November that he wanted to leave in June 2007. They decided to announce the news in the new year, after the buyouts were over.
My January story on the state of the Plain Dealer echoed one editor’s educated guess that Clifton would retire after leading the coverage of the 2008 elections. Asked about that in November, Clifton didn’t say much. Now he says another political race wouldn’t motivate him. “It is true I like politics,” he says. “But presidential elections come and go.”
The day of Clifton’s announcement, the City Club happened to host a forum of media critics. There, veteran alternative journalist Roldo Bartimole reported being angered by Cleveland Magazine’s report about Clifton telling his staff he sees bias in the journalistic slogan, “Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.” Bartimole argued that the paper should afflict more local figures with tougher coverage, from Sen. George Voinovich to state Republican chairman Bob Bennett to developer Dick Jacobs. “I’d say the comfortable are pretty comfortable at The Plain Dealer!”
But Bartimole changed his tone when asked about Clifton’s retirement. “I’m sorry to see him go,” he told the crowd. Clifton seemed to tire later in his tenure, he said, but he did a good job early on. In fact, Bartimole said he thought the aggressive City Hall reporting Clifton encouraged was one reason Mayor Mike White didn’t run for re-election in 2001.
WKYC-TV3 anchor Tim White, who attended the forum, said Clifton had been a strong, principled leader. “I think he has infused an ethical and deliberative thread through what the paper has covered and not covered.” Whether you agreed with his decisions or not, White says, “you could tell Clifton had his hand on things and was willing to be held accountable.”
When Cleveland’s economy began its decline of the 2000s, the PD “did an increasingly good job at trying to help other people understand the business climate here and all the different forces at play,” White says.
Clifton thinks his accomplishments include “building up a reverence for accuracy, aggressive pursuit of stories, and pursuit of open records.”
I tell him what Bartimole said about PD coverage helping to nudge Mike White to retire. “That’s probably true,” Clifton says. | {
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Almost 20,000t of EU milk powder now in intervention
Almost 20,000t of skimmed milk powder has now been offered to public intervention, according to latest figures from the Milk Market Observatory.
Its figures show that, last week, a further 2,100t was offered to intervention. To date nine countries have used the measure in recent months as global dairy markets continue to offer poor returns for dairy products.
Last week, France became the ninth country to offer skimmed milk powder to public intervention joining Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Latvia, Lituania, Finland, UK and Poland.
Ireland has to date offered over 1,600t of milk powder to intervention.
Recent months have seen continued calls for the European Commission to increase intervention prices.
However, the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan has been clear all the way through the current dairy market downturn that he is against raising intervention prices.
He doesn’t believe that such a measure is the right response to what is expected to be a relatively short-term market imbalance, recalling that the co-legislators reconfirmed the intervention price level as recently as 2013.
Hogan said it would send a wrong signal to the marketplace, as operators would not be encouraged to reduce milk production.
How does public intervention function?
One of the traditional safety net measures of the CAP is public intervention whereby, if market prices drop to a particular reference threshold, operators can then sell it to the Commission at this level.
For dairy, the reference price is equivalent to 21.7c/L and intervention only covers the basic products of butter and Skimmed Milk Powder (SMP).
The product then belongs to the Commission, and it is the Commission which is then responsible for selling these volumes back onto the market in future when prices have recovered.
Under current rules, there is an annual limit of 30,000t of butter and 109,000t of SMP on public intervention purchases. If there is still demand for intervention above these volumes, then this should be done via a tendering system, where the Commission has the right to reject offers according to the price that is offered. | {
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News
THN.com Blog: Jokinen deal makes bad Panthers situation even worse
Seriously. Whenever I tell anyone that, yes, I wore a Panthers jersey as a kid in minor hockey practice, the same flabbergasted look always comes back at me.
It’s the same look of shock and horror that would cross your face if you watched the chef who just tossed up your pizza pie walk out of the bathroom without washing his hands.
I’m used to it and I accept it.
And I think the Panthers are used to and accept the fact they are stuck in a perpetual rebuild, because after the latest episode, I’m convinced they’re not even trying anymore.
You’d think after the Roberto Luongo debacle the Panthers would have made their next blockbuster trade count.
You’d think after acquiring a game-stealing goalie in Tomas Vokoun for draft picks Florida would start trying to use their resources to close in on a playoff spot, their first since 2000.
You’d think if they wanted to fill out their defense corps, they would spend a little money on a free agent market that includes Brian Campbell, Wade Redden, Michal Rozsival and John-Michael Liles.
But no, GM Jacques Martin – the mere fact he still holds a job with the franchise is a testament to how poorly it is run – chose to trade his franchise player for two defensemen, the likes of whom you can find pretty much anywhere, just before the unrestricted free agent market opened.
The Panthers have a reputation for making big draft day deals, so maybe this was a move just to keep tradition. And what would a Florida Panthers draft day trade be without a few snickers – or full-on outbursts of hysterical laughter – from the peanut gallery?
Maybe management figured having it so good with Luongo and Jokinen – whom they stole from another mismanaged organization - was just a curse.
Maybe they just wanted to rid the organization of any bad karma from past trades that, looking back, were woefully one-sided.
Maybe they were just returning the favor.
Nothing surprises me with this franchise anymore.
The team is constantly flushing prospects, players and picks under the guise that, one day, maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but one of these years, the rebuild will be complete in Florida and the payoff will taste sweet.
But if they want their fans to keep eating the crap management feeds them, the Panthers have to wash their hands of any and all incompetence that has broken out after years of gross negligence.
Because, one of these years – maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but one of these years – the jokers in the front office will really not have any fan base, or team, left to rebuild. | {
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In this special episode, the LPT crew has an honest and open discussion about the current changes in the park. This topic is spawned from the recent Rolly Crump interview in the Los Angeles Times. In addition, we dissect the impact that StarWars: Galaxy's Edge will have (or is having) on the general landscape and theme of the park. We weigh the options and see if this is really all worth it. Share your thoughts with us on this interesting and important topic. Thank you so much for listening!!
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Feature Presentation
The LPT crew has an honest and open discussion about the current changes in the park. This topic is spawned from the recent Rolly Crump interview in the Los Angeles Times. In addition, we dissect the impact that StarWars: Galaxy's Edge will have (or is having) on the general landscape and theme of the park. We weigh the options and see if this is really all worth it. Share your thoughts with us on this interesting and important topic. Thank you so much for listening!! | {
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} |
OPINION: The bare necessities
Manolo Quezon - The Explainer
Before there was Francis Magalona, there was his grandfather, Enrique Magalona, assemblyman for Negros Occidental. In 1936, he wrote a letter to the president proposing a minimum wage for government laborers.
The reply he got on August 5, 1936 contains two interesting nuggets of information. First, it was laborers in Davao City, in that same year, who first petitioned for a minimum daily wage. So if we want to be thankful to anyone for whatever minimum wage exists, thank those anonymous laborers in Davao 81 years ago.
Second, in the response to Magalona, it was pointed out that one problem with a national minimum wage was that the cost of living differed throughout the country, and that should be considered a factor in determining wages.
By November of that year, 1936, Commonwealth Act. No. 211 was passed, establishing a daily minimum wage for government laborers. This was part of a package of legislation we now take for granted: it was in 1936, too, that the eight-hour work day was set, and overtime established for those working beyond eight hours. The amount of that original minimum wage was the princely sum of one peso, soon raised to one peso, twenty-five centavos.
This discussion from 1936 continues to this day. Eighty years after the first minimum daily wage was enacted, NEDA rejected a proposed nationwide daily wage in 2016.
But we have seesawed between regional wage-setting, and nationwide wages over the years. We got a nationwide, public and private sector minimum wage law, under the administration of Elpidio Quirino. This established one minimum wage for the entire country in 1951. By the time President Marcos decreed the Labor Code in 1974, the philosophy had changed to different sectors having different minimum wages. Then in July, 1989, the present setup was established, where geography and industry determined minimum wages. Nowadays, Regional Wage Boards determine the minimum wage essentially on an annual basis.
The basic logic of a high minimum wage was best put into practice by Henry Ford, father of the modern assembly line. His logic was simple. If you pay your workers a high daily wage, they will have a higher disposable income. That income would allow your Ford Factory worker to buy Ford motorcars. Everybody happy. Later on, however, when Ford workers decided they should unionize, Henry Ford became one of the most ruthless union-busters. Which tells you one problem labor has with capital: capital views benefits and wages as a favor; laborers view it as a right; the clash, if it isn’t to get out of hand, requires government to step in, which is why we have labor laws to guarantee minimum benefits and rights to workers.
Of course government plays a balancing act: political leaders are financed by capital, not by labor. But labor has the votes. Which is why, regardless of the screaming of capital when it happens, at least once a year, government likes to play Santa Claus and decree wage hikes to please labor.
But is there such a thing as going back to basics and testing to see if data really backs up the whole idea of a minimum wage? Let me share with you one interesting effort in this regard.
It’s a December 2016 paper published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies or PIDS. It tackles this question: what does the minimum wage aim to achieve? And, does it achieve those aims?
A couple of 2014 studies quoted by the PIDS on the legal minimum wage brought up four troubling points. Let me summarize them for you.
1. Following an increase in the minimum wage, the hours of work significantly declined, and the probability, or chances, of getting a job or keeping it, fell by 8%.
2. The minimum wage had a “significant” negative effect on the ability of all individuals to find work. But it had a particularly negative one among young, inexperienced, less educated, and women workers. The researchers assumed this was because these types of workers had lower levels of productivity compared to older, more educated, experienced and male workers. The study suggested that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would lead to the following declines in the labor participation rate: “by -6.36% (for all workers), by -5.97% and -3.64% (among teenagers and young adults relative to 50 years old and over), and by -2.36% (no schooling relative to college educated).”
3. The average real income of households would have grown by about 20% if the minimum wage had increased more slowly. Not only that, but household poverty would have been lower. The reason for this is that if you had one minimum wage worker in your family, you would be earning less than another household in which the wife and perhaps the older children, were also working but at non-minimum wage jobs. The study also observed that a faster rate in the increase of the minimum wage significantly increases povery incidence by 1.7 to 3 percentage points.
4. Finally, the minimum wage, according to one of the studies, had a “significant” adverse impact on employment by smaller firms. These are companies defined as having average assets below 1.1 Billion pesos. On the other hand, larger companies (those with an asset size above 1.1 Billion) had less of a negative, and sometimes a positive one.
So what did PIDS conclude?
First, there is a difference between theory and reality. Theory, PIDS says, actually puts forward three possible effects of a minimum wage on employment: positive, negative or zero, “depending on one’s assumptions about the market situation and the underlying mechanisms governing wages and employment decisions.”
Second, by looking at the actual empirical data, the result is a mixed story. PIDS says in developed countries, the effect of a minimum wage “tends to be negligible or slightly positive.” This is the basis for proponents of a large minimum wage increase here at home.
Third, when PIDS conducted empirical studies that it says “were rigorously done using Philippines data,” what works abroad did not work here at home. PIDS said that raising the minimum wage “had [a] statistically and quantitatively significant negative impact on employment and hours of work.” It added that raising the minimum wage had an even greater negative impact on already disadvantaged sub-groups. It also observed that larger hikes in the minimum wage “tend to reduce average household income and raise the prevalence rare of poverty.”
The lesson PIDS drew from all this is a simple one: what works abroad does not necessarily work at home. Before you think the study should be a cause for celebration for capitalists who hate the idea of minimum anything for workers, think again. All PIDS calls for, is a more scientific, evidence-based approach. Go back to the drawing board, in other words. Find a better way to give labor its due.
Disclaimer:The views in this blog are those of the blogger and do not necessarily reflect the views of ABS-CBN Corp. | {
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[Photos]: Museveni shows off gifts received from Ethiopia PM
Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni has showed off gifts that were given to him by the Ethiopian prime minister during the latter’s recent state visit.
Abiy Ahmed was the guest of honour at Uganda’s National Heroes Day and was
awarded the highest national accolade for his contribution to Africa’s liberation struggle.
Abiy gave Museveni a colourful Ethiopian made jacket while the Ugandan president gave his counterpart an art piece depicting Uganda’s natural beauty.
The president who posted the pictur | {
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Armando Ramirez issued a six-page document that in part tells women and men what they can and can't wear.
The document requires women with dresses to wear panty hose if they are in the presence of a jury and bans skirts more than three inches above the knee. The document also contains pictures of what types of shoes employees can wear and not wear.
Ramirez signed the document saying, "So let it be written, so let it be done," -- a line made famous by actor Yul Brynner in the movie "The Ten Commandments."
"When a document or policy crosses his desk, he gives his stamp of approval. He wanted to use that. It doesn't have anything to do with the Pharaoh in Egypt being a dictator or whatever," said public information spokesman for the clerk's office, Marvin Cortner.
After WESH 2 News' original story on the document, Ramirez sent an email explaining himself.
In the email he quotes a passage from the Bible saying in his opinion, "Women must adorn themselves in well-arranged dress, with modesty and soundness of mind not with style of hair braiding and gold or pearls or very expensive garb, but in the way that benefits women professing to reverence God, namely through good works." -- 1 Timothy 2:9
This response has touched off another round of controversy, but some in Osceola County applaud Ramirez.
"I think it is refreshing to have a public official in this county who will do something that is morally courageous and politically incorrect," said Ernest Mullins.
Others said he has gone too far.
"Leave it alone," said Vicki Trimboli. "Let the Bible and the people go to their church and practice the Bible if they want to leave the state alone."
When WESH 2 News asked for a clearer understanding of the email, Ramirez's spokesman sent an email saying, "No aspect of the dress code was drafted to fit anyone's religious philosophy or beliefs." | {
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Seattle, WA
Sep 1 - 4, 2017
Schedule
Twitch Town Hall
Fri 09/01 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Hydra Theatre
It’s not PAX without a Twitch Town Hall. Make sure you’re there to learn new details about this year’s TwitchCon in Long Beach, vote in the 4th Annual Global Emoticon Vote, and find out what else we have in store for the second half of 2017. | {
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Michigan tops Nebraska to reach Big Ten semis
The Associated Press
Friday
Mar 2, 2018 at 6:16 PMMar 2, 2018 at 6:16 PM
NEW YORK — Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman scored 21 points and Moe Wagner had 20 as No. 15 Michigan dealt a significant blow to Nebraska's NCAA hopes, beating the Cornhuskers 77-58 in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament on Friday.
The fifth-seeded Wolverines (26-7) face top-seed Michigan State on Saturday in the first semifinal at Madison Square Garden.
Wagner and Abdur-Rahkman were both limited by foul trouble in Michigan's opening tournament victory against Iowa. The Wolverines' stars fouled out in the overtime game against the Hawkeyes, but Michigan survived without them.
Against the fourth-seeded Huskers (22-10), Wagner and Abdur-Rahkman were full-go and Nebraska could not do much to stop them. Wagner drove the baseline for a dunk late in the first half that helped the Michigan go up 34-24 at the break.
Abdur-Rahkman's 3 with 6:01 left in the second half made it 61-42 for the Wolverines. The many Michigan fans at the Garden spent the rest of the game singing the school's familiar fight song — "Hail to the victors valiant" — chanting "N-I-T" at Nebraska and savoring a chance to knock off the rival Spartans.
Isaiah Roby led Nebraska with 18 points.
BIG PICTURE
Michigan: The Wolverines lost by 20 at Nebraska back in January in one of their worst offensive showings of the season. Abdur-Rahkman said Michigan failed to adjust to the Huskers' defensive switches. Whatever the issue was in Lincoln, it was solved the second time around. The Wolverines got to the basket effectively in the first half, and the 3-point shooting that was off against Iowa (3 for 19) was on against Nebraska (11 for 23).
Nebraska: Selection Sunday is more than a week away with the Big Ten playing its tournament earlier than usual to get it into the Garden. It figures to be an uneasy wait for coach Tim Miles and his Huskers. Despite a fourth-place finish in the Big Ten, and winning eight of nine to end the regular season, many observers have Nebraska firmly on the bubble for an at-large NCAA bid. The Huskers best regular-season victory is probably against Michigan. If Nebraska is left out, the Big Ten is looking at getting only four teams in the tournament, barring an upset winner at the Garden.
UP NEXT
Michigan: The Wolverines beat the Spartans 82-72 in January at East Lansing.
Nebraska: NCAA or NIT?
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Tag Archives: Goforth
Randall Goforth intercepted an Alex Bridgford pass and returned it 85 yards for a touchdown to bring Poly within 17-12 of Mission Viejo with 5:16 to play in the game. The two-point conversion pass failed. | {
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George Lomas Birch Bradshaw was educated at Methodist College Belfast (where his father was a French teacher) and played for Belfast Collegians, the club founded in 1890 for former pupils of the school.
He was a regular member of the club's side between 1898 and 1904, before business took him to Scotland. He won his only cap for Ireland from the Collegians club, playing right-wing marking the great Teddy Morgan of Wales at Cardiff Arms Park in March 1903. Wales won 18-0 on a muddy pitch, scoring six unconverted tries with only 14 men on the field for most of the match after George Boots had withdrawn just before half-time with a broken collar-bone.
Bradshaw was only the third player from the Collegians club to win Ireland rugby honours. The photograph of that 1903 Irish fifteen at Cardiff shows him as a young man of 21 sitting on the floor beside Alfred Tedford as part of a group that includes the famous Irish out-half, Louis Magee.
A dual international, George Bradshaw also represented Ireland at lacrosse. He was reported missing from his Edinburgh home and presumed dead in 1917. He was 35. | {
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An Open Letter to those Opposed to Penn State Honoring the Late Joe Paterno
An Open Letter to those Opposed to Penn State Honoring the Late Joe Paterno
For Immediate Release:
September 16, 2016
STATE COLLEGE, PA – This Saturday, September 17th, the late Joe Paterno will be celebrated in recognition of the 50th anniversary of his first game as head coach to our university. Paterno spent sixty-one years of his life with Penn State football, and under his direction, he gave the university 409 wins, twenty-four bowl victories, and five undefeated seasons. His unwavering dedication to the Nittany Lions never faulted, even as he was offered several times to coach in the National Football League.
In the wake of the negative press coverage following the decision to honor Joe Paterno, we felt it necessary to explain why honoring a football legend like Joe Paterno is not only warranted, but well deserved.
One word: Loyalty.
One of the toughest lesson to pass on to our youth is the importance of loyalty. Not only was Joe Paterno an effective and loyal leader on the field, he was one off the field and created an example that we as a school want to set for our students.
For those asking, “Why is Penn State honoring a man who purposely covered up a child sexual abuse scandal?” We ask, “Why isn’t everyone?”.
Imagine how difficult it was for Joe Paterno to be told that Jerry Sandusky was seen raping a child in Penn State football showers. What about how trying it was for Paterno to tell his then superior, Tim Curley? And how awful it was for Curley to then tell his superior, Gary Schultz? The turmoil those three men faced and the antagonizing decision to never tell the authorities or speak of it ever again is empowering. That kind of traumatic event stays with you.
We honor that sacrifice.
Has anyone taken the time to consider how strenuous it would be to cover up a sexual abuse scandal with a minor, one with an eye witness, while knowing Sandusky was already being investigated by the state in another case of sexual assault on a child?
They did that for the Nittany Lions – they did that for us.
With unwavering loyalty, Paterno saw the future through those coke bottle glasses and knew it would be grim if all of Sandusky’s sexual assaults came to light. Penn State would be the real victim. The fans, the staff, the alumni and most of all, the donors, would not have what they looked forward to every fall – another winning season under Joe Paterno. He couldn’t take that away from us, we deserved that right.
To everyone looking at Penn State as the enemy for valuing a coach over the children who were sexually abused, we say look within yourself. Ask yourself if you have that kind of loyalty and commitment to anyone or anything, that you could do what Joe did for us. | {
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Rajasthani Sentence Examples
Rajasthani is the chief language of the country, one or other of its dialects being spoken by 7, 0 3 5,093 persons or more than 72% of the total population.
The chief of these languages are Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Rajasthani, Marathi, Oriya, Telugu and Dravidian dialects.
There are six main divisions of the people: the Dravidian tribes, who formerly held the country; Hindi-speaking immigrants from the north and north-west into Saugor, Damoh, the Nerbudda valley and the open country of Mandla and Seoni; Rajasthani-speaking immigrants from Central India into Nimar, Betul and parts of Hoshangabad, Narsinghpur and Chhindwara; Marathi-speaking immigrants from Bombay into Berar, the Mahratta districts and the southern tahsil of Betul; the Telugu castes in the Sironcha and Chanda tahsil of Chanda and the south of Bastar; and the Hindu immigrants into Chhattisgarh, who are supposed to have arrived many centuries ago when the Haihaya dynasty of Ratanpur rose into power. | {
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Senator Sonny Angara on Tuesday urged Malacanang to include an expert on fiscal policy in the Charter change (Cha-cha) consultative committee that will review the 1987 Constitution to address the question of resource sharing and taxing jurisdictions under the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
According to Angara, chair of the Senate Committee on Local Government, the inclusion of an expert on the subject matter in the consultative body will ensure that the contentious issues on fiscal autonomy are reconciled.
"We have to make sure that our fiscal policies are aligned. As it is, there are fiscal provisions in the proposed BBL that need to be clarified vis-à-vis the functions and powers of the national government," Angara said.
The senator also said that removing the uncertainties on jurisdiction will lend an appeal to Mindanao as an investment destination and augur well for a smooth transition.
"With the inclusion of an expert on wealth-sharing and fiscal policy in the consultative committee, hopefully we can resolve major issues and come up with a BBL that is acceptable to the people, veto-proof and TRO-proof," he added.
President Rodrigo Duterte has created a 19-member Cha-cha consultative committee chaired by former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, whose task is to review the Constitution and come up with recommendations which the Chief Executive will submit to Congress for consideration.
Angara, along with some members of the Senate, last week visited the provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-tawi and Zamboanga as part of the committee's "listening tour" to get the inputs of stakeholders in crafting the final version of the BBL.
"We will need to go deep into the details and make sure the fiscal autonomy and revenue sharing stipulations in the BBL are clear," he added. | {
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A global expert on power with IFC, the International Finance Corporation, says Papua New Guinea is blessed with natural resources and hes optimistic the country can deliver more renewable energy. The comment by IFCs Stratos Tavoulareas, came at …A global expert on power with IFC, the International Finance Corporation, says Papua New Guinea is blessed with natural resources and he’s optimistic the country can deliver more renewable energy.
The comment by IFC’s Stratos Tavoulareas, came at the end of a trip to Papua New Guinea, assessing the prospects for meeting the country’s energy needs, as part of IFC’s work under its Pacific renewable energy advisory project.
Tavoulareas said there was the will and interest to do more to bring clean, affordable power to the people of PNG through renewable energy.
Rates for electricity access for households in Papua New Guinea are among the lowest in the world with less than 15-percent of people with access to grid power.
Tavoulareas said IFC was working with the government of Papua New Guinea, as well as IFC’s sister organisation, the World Bank and donors to try to help the government achieve its goal of 70-percent of the population having power by 2030.
IFC’s advisory work on energy in Papua New Guinea is supported by the governments of Australia and New Zealand under the Papua New Guinea Partnership.
Describing Papua New Guinea’s goal as ambitious but achievable, Tavoulareas said Papua New Guinea had under-utilised sources of renewable energy including hydro, solar and biomass – the use of waste materials from plants or animals to produce energy. He said only a little over one-percent of hydro potential was being utilized.
He said that the National Electrification Plan developed by the World Bank on behalf of the Government seems rational and suggests that part of the country should be electrified through extension of the grid and part of it through off-grid/small grid systems.
He said the use of biomass, or waste material from plants or animals, to produce energy was another under-utilized resource in PNG.
“Papua New Guinea should look seriously and develop biomass in a sustainable way, but this doesn’t mean you should start cutting down trees here and there,” he said.” He said there is a lot of biomass in PNG that could help address part of the country’s energy problem.
Meanwhile Subrata Barman, who leads IFC’s energy advisory program in the Pacific, said parts of the country offered good opportunities for solar.
“The prices of solar have come down almost 80-percent in the past five years,” he said.
Tavoulareas said when batteries became cheaper, and electricity could be stored and used when needed, solar would become more attractive.
“Batteries are expensive, but we expect the prices will come down in the future but it’s difficult to predict when and by how much” he said.
Tavoulareas said IFC was bringing its experience in advising on renewable energy in other countries to PNG, citing the example of India, a country now making far greater use of renewables to generate electricity.
He said wind is another source of renewable energy and PNG has the potential to harness this, but wind is typically deployed in large scale and it needs to be carefully studied in PNG. The World Bank is currently undertaking wind resource mapping in PNG.
IFC’s Lighting PNG program, launched in 2013, has already helped 1.6-million people, or 20-percent of the population, gain access to phone charging and solar lighting for the first time. This project is being funded by Australia and New Zealand.
IFC is supporting PNG Power to trial a grid-connected rooftop solar power program for commercial and small industrial businesses in Port Moresby. IFC recently supported a hands-on training program for PNG power staff on rooftop solar, that was undertaken in Port Moresby.
IFC is further promoting solar energy in PNG by taking a village road show featuring quality solar products and live theatre to the provinces with some of the lowest electricity rates in the country.
Using the campaign slogan ‘Gutpla Solar, Gutpla Life’ the roadshow is currently touring the Highlands and Momase regions. | {
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Background
Multiple studies have shown that colorectal cancer (CRC) disparities exist between African Americans and Caucasians. African Americans have higher CRC incidence and mortality than Caucasians [1, 2]. Furthermore, African Americans present with more advanced CRC [3] and at younger ages [4]. However, little is known about the impact of hereditary CRC syndromes in African Americans on these disparities. In the University of Chicago Cancer Risk Clinic, we see a diverse referral population for evaluation of hereditary syndromes based on personal or family history of CRC. We sought to compare clinical characteristics of our African American and Caucasian patients to determine if differences exist in a high-risk CRC referral population.
Method
We retrospectively collected data on self-reported African American and Caucasian individuals who were referred for a personal or family history of CRC from 1992-2010. Available clinical characteristics including number of individuals, number of families (probands with family members who followed-up in our clinic), personal or family history of CRC, age at cancer onset, and number of individuals who underwent genetic testing for APC or mismatch repair genes were collected. Pedigrees were reviewed to determine Revised Bethesda, Amsterdam II and PREMM1,2 scores. Statistical analysis included Student’s t-test for continuous variables and Pearson’s chi-square for categorical variables. Comparison of independent proportions was done using z-ratios.
Results
A total of 949 Caucasian and 254 African American individuals were referred to the Cancer Risk Clinic for a personal or family history of CRC. The average age of CRC diagnosis, number of family members with CRC, and those meeting Bethesda and Amsterdam criteria were similar between populations (Table 1). Fewer family members of African American probands were seen compared to Caucasians (p =0.002). More African American females with CRC were seen in our clinic (p=0.04). Importantly, despite overall similar clinical characteristics, fewer African Americans had genetic testing compared to Caucasians (p = 0.02).
Table 1 Clinical characteristics of individuals referred for personal and/or family history of CRC by race
Conclusion
Despite many similarities between our high-risk CRC populations, there exists a difference in the number of family members of African American probands seen in our clinic and the number of African Americans who had genetic testing when compared to Caucasians. Less genetic testing may mean African American mutation carriers are not being identified. This can significantly impact appropriate cancer screening recommendations and knowledge about hereditary CRC syndromes in this population. Future collaborative studies are needed to address why these differences may exist.
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | {
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Tag: Monte Carlo
I got called a “rare gem” today based on being willing to have a conversation with a stranger. I don’t share that to brag, as that isn’t something, a title, I want to own. As much as it flattered me at the moment, it bums me out both then and now. It’s something I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t strike up a conversation with a stranger. They won’t all be gems, some you’ll want to escape almost immediately, but you’re going to learn something every time. It’s a guaranteed new experience.
I guess it’s something that takes confidence, I guess you can’t be shy… But ask any of my girlfriends. I’m not a walking mountain of confidence – heck, I have been and can be a massive ball of insecurity. A little less every day, a lot less lately, but it’s there.
I see people all the time on trips similar to mine avoiding eye contact, brushing off conversation – not being giggly and shy but rather simply deciding not to give me or the others around them the time of day. I wonder why and how that is. What a miserable existence that must be, to filter who you think you should spend your valuable time talking to. How do you make new friends? Job contacts? How do you ever intend to meet the one?
I’m not suggesting you strike up a conversation with every shifty-eyed man you come across. If you’re in a sunny public area and they smile, why wouldn’t you say hello?
It was 10:30 a.m. and I was getting ready to catch the 22-minute train ride to Monte Carlo, Monaco. I wasn’t going to catch the 10:53, but definitely the 11:23. There was a knock at the door – “housekeeping” – and a guy came in and asked if he could strip the beds of my two departed roommates. I peeked out of the bathroom, face covered in moisturizing lotion because I do girly things like that on occasion. “Sure!”
We spent the next two hours talking.
He’s from New York and moved here recently. He’s 33. “I’m older than I look.” 100% true. Twenty minutes later he would tell me I seem way older than I am.
I really hope when I’m thirty I seem thirty.
We talked politics, travel, life. He explained how he had always wanted to come to France. He had done a trip like mine and always wanted to come back. He told me how it took him ten years to return and now he sleeps dorm style in Nice, France, the furthest place from “real” France. “It’s like you decide you want to live in America, and you move to Las Vegas. It’s not real.”
We talked about the how the world is small and how everyone is stressed. Everyone is mad at their governments, everyone has the same needs. Every place is the same people, same cares, different tourist attractions. We talked about the Occupy movement. We talked about the difference between building a career and building a life.
We talked about the different points in our lives we’re at. He said, “I can’t afford to waste time anymore.” He says I’m not like most California girls that come through the hostel, and we make fun of the four girls at the hostel bar last night who sat there stirring their drinks and making eyes at the bartender all night. Granted, bartender is cute. I bought dinner from him and walked to my respective table across the room. Bartender then offered to wash my dishes for me, not the typical hostel way. I think he was relieved I wasn’t sitting there making him entertain.
My new friend’s shift at the hostel isn’t over, but his work is already done. He’d come to clean my room as a favor to a coworker. It’s an hour later, and we’re still sitting on bottom bunk beds chatting.
“And there’s this girl.”
This conversation is about to take a fun, less serious turn.
He tells me she works at a coffee shop he goes to often.
Okay, really fun turn. Anyone who knows me knows I spent Summer 2011: Part One hoping the boy at the coffee shop downstairs would know my name, and Part Two not paying for coffee… Among other, way better things as well.
He says he’s afraid to get attached. He’s too logical. All head, not heart, but he feels differently about her, more than any way he’s ever felt. She stuns him. She leaves him “speechless.”
“But she’s leaving town.”
Where?
“She’s going on her own tour of Europe… Or the world, or something.”
When?
“Two months.”
Two months?!? Friend, you can do a lot in two months. That’s plenty of time. You’ve at least got to have a first date!
“I know! That’s my problem, isn’t it? Why am I not allowing this to happen? For all I know, I could be rejected, but it could be two months of bliss. Even if it’s just those two months.”
Exactly! You never know what’ll happen. You might even end up on the Def Leppard guest list.
True story. Top ten best nights of my life, easy.
“So what do you think I should do? I should ask her out, right? I should. I’m going to. I’m going to. Life is too short.”
The entire time we were talking, his coworkers thought we were hooking up.
Couldn’t be further from the truth.
Only after a jog to it, I caught the 12:53 to Monte Carlo. Oh the luxury, the glamour, the beauty… The money! All I did was walk and climb hills, walk down hills, climb other ones.
I’d gone to Monaco without a map. I’d left the train station and walked neighborhood streets downhill for quite awhile.
So, train station is up. That’s as far as I know.
I got myself super lost. I found a place called “Villa de las Garages” and that’s exactly what it looked like.
I was way up high and I wasn’t seeing a train station. I was seeing a setting sun and neighborhood streets that led to darker neighborhood streets.
I finally walked into a little hotel and asked the way to the train station. She laughed at me. I was 150m away from it. Above it.
I’d climbed the hill too dang high.
On the way out of the Nice Ville train station, a really tall guy said something to me, I apologized for not speaking French, he asked where I was from and then said “American, there is no oil here.”
It made me laugh. Ali is originally from Mali, has family in Morocco and lives in Nice playing reggae music. I told him I went to Morocco in 2009 and he said “Oh you travel a lot. That is why you are a good communicator.”
And at the stoplight, we two-cheek kissed goodbye and that was the end of my three-minute friendship with Ali. | {
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Toyota Motor began facing complaints of runaway cars years ago, but the company did not install "brake override" systems in those vehicles, even as several other automakers deployed the technology to address such malfunctions.
The brake override systems allow a driver to stop a car with the footbrake even if the accelerator is depressed and the vehicle is running at full throttle. The systems are an outgrowth of new electronics in cars, specifically in engine control.
"If the brake and the accelerator are in an argument, the brake wins," a spokesman at Chrysler said in describing the systems, which it began installing in 2003.
Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz also install such systems in at least some of their cars, the companies and industry experts said, some as far back as 10 years ago. General Motors installs brake override in all of its cars in which it is possible for the engine at full throttle to overwhelm the brakes.
"Most other automakers have adopted this technology," said Sean Kane, a former researcher at the Center for Auto Safety who now works at Safety Research and Strategies. Not adding the systems "is one of the mistakes that created this perfect storm for Toyota."
Toyota did not respond Thursday to questions about its decisions involving brake override.
But at the Detroit Auto Show in December, Toyota North America President Yoshi Inaba said the company would begin equipping its vehicles with brake override. His comments followed a November statement from the company that the override system would be made standard on Toyota and Lexus vehicles starting with some models in January 2010.
The precaution comes too late, however, to forestall a tsunami of negative publicity that has engulfed the company since it halted production and suspended sales of eight popular models after reports of unintended acceleration. For a company that famously aimed to become the largest automaker in the world by touting a reputation for reliability and safety, it has been a striking turnaround.
The company has blamed the accelerations on faulty floor mats and their installation, as well as defective accelerator pedals, which they are seeking to redesign. The brake override systems, when they come, will provide a measure of redundancy.
It was not immediately clear how much it would cost to install the brake override systems, and industry experts said the costs of the control technology are difficult to measure.
"There's really no cost, but it's a critical skill issue -- we can only find so many people who can do this kind of work," said a senior engineer at a major automaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It would require a bunch of software and development people to design it, but spread across lots of cars, the money involved would be negligible. . . . No one wants a runaway."
As far back as 2004, government investigators were looking at 2002-2003 Toyota Camrys and Solaras and Lexus ES 300s to determine whether they were defective, gathering information about 37 owner complaints of sudden acceleration, according to the Center for Auto Safety.
Automotive experts said that in at least some of those incidents, a brake override system could have prevented harm.
In the accident that has drawn perhaps the most publicity, a 2009 Lexus ES 350 raced through San Diego, weaving at 120 miles an hour through rush-hour freeway traffic. Veteran California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor was at the wheel, with his wife, teenage daughter and brother-in-law aboard.
"We're in trouble. . . . There's no brakes," Saylor's brother-in-law told a police dispatcher over a cellphone. As they approached an intersection, and the end of the road, the passengers could be heard urging each other to pray. All four died.
Afterward, investigators said that it appeared the brakes had been applied for so long that the brake pads melted, according to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Had a brake override system been at work, the engine would have been depowered -- not turned off, but slowed.
Until recently, an accelerator pedal opened the throttle mechanically. But newer pedals control the engine via sensors and a computer.
The new throttle electronics and software have often themselves been the focus of some suspicion in the runaway crashes.
Whatever the causes of accidents, engineers noted that there are trade-offs in using brake override systems. For example, some customers prefer to be able to apply the brake and step on the accelerator without reducing power to the engine, especially in high-performance driving.
Toyota, moreover, is not the only automaker to eschew the fail-safe technology.
In an e-mail, Honda spokeswoman Christina Ra said that "Honda and Acura vehicles do not apply any override logic between brake and accelerator pedal inputs. . . . We continue to accept application of the accelerator and brake pedals as representing the driver's intention."
But experts said that the value of the brake override systems is that they can mitigate acceleration problems no matter where they come from. Toyota, as well as the NHTSA, appear to have struggled in diagnosing exactly what is causing the trouble.
"A brake override system can paper over a multitude of mistakes," Kane said.
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Share 'RE: The American PBS Documentary "Breaking The Silence The Childrens Stories"'
What Breaking the Silence Means
By Dominique Lasseur
Documentary film producer Dominique Lasseur set out to explore the failures of the family court system in "Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories." But when public television broadcast the program in the fall of 2005, the father's rightsmovement was quick to react with scathing criticism and a deluge of viewer complaints. What compelled you… | {
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} |
Meta
It’s just not for me.
The Argument: Your faith (belief) is cool, but it’s just not really my thing. It’s fine for you, but it’s not for me.
I can say in all confidence that having peace and contentment and purpose in life through God are everybody’s ‘thing’. I hope that someday you come to a realization that those are what you’ve actually been seeking in your life, and that you’ll remember some crazy guy saying they can be found by following God and maybe give it a shot. 😀
I don’t exactly understand this statement although a lot of people seem to make it. The only logical conclusion I can come up with is that the person who says this really doesn’t comprehend what it is they are actually saying is not for them.
If someone told me back when I was full of bitterness and hate and frustration that there was a way to get rid of all that stuff and get true peace and contentment and purpose regardless of my circumstances through following God, I would have said something along the lines of, “Religion doesn’t work. You are only fooling yourself into thinking you’re happy, I cannot be so easily convinced, unfortunately.” Or a similar line. I would definitely NOT have said “That sounds nice but it’s not for me.”
I mean, of course that is for me, that’s exactly what I wanted, how could it not be for me or for anyone else? Everyone wants to be happy, no one likes being miserable. Despite me not thinking it would work, I still would never have said I didn’t want it.
Even people who, according to society should be the happiest, most content people in the world, are miserable. We’ve seen it time and time again in the wealthy and famous, people who we dream about being, who commit suicide and turn to drugs or alcohol or other coping mechanisms because despite their great lives that should leave nothing lacking, they are empty.
I firmly believe God is for everyone; not just a few, not just whoever feels it’s the ‘right’ thing for them personally, but everyone. | {
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While history usually isn't kind to teams that try to buy their way to contention in one offseason (think the 2010 Red Sox and 2011 Angels, to name 2 . . . not to mention the Albert Belle Orioles or too many Mets teams to count), the Jays are hoping that they're an exception along the lines of the 2009 Yankees, who rode Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and even A.J. Burnett to 103 wins a World Series title.
The Jays are clearly going for broke this year, thanks to their megadeal with the Marlins that netted shortstop Jose Reyes, starters Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson, and jack-of-all-trades Emilio Bonifacio. They later added NL Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey, whose knuckleball should benefit from playing so many games indoors, between Toronto and Tampa.
If the Jays have a hole, it's at the back of their bullpen, which makes it so surprising that they've yet to target one of the best players on the market -- Rafael Soriano.
Because the Yankees made Soriano a qualifying offer of roughly $13.3 million, any team that signs him would be required to surrender draft pick compensation. This has become an issue across baseball this winter, with only three such players (Josh Hamilton, Nick Swisher, B.J. Upton) signing deals with new teams. Players like Soriano (and until last week, Adam LaRoche) have languished with nary an offer all winter.
But if there's a team to throw caution to the wind on a draft pick, it's the Jays. GM Alex Anthopoulos probably won't survive to develop any draftees from the class of 2013 if the Jays fall on their faces. The one issue they could still address is closer, particularly after Sergio Santos was such a colossal disappointment during an injury-marred 2012, and Francisco Cordero failing to take the reins as well.
Soriano, however, would solve that problem and return Casey Janssen to a setup role, strengthening the bullpen in the process.
The views expressed in any comment section are not those of the Herald or endorsed in any way by the Herald; the Herald reserves the right to remove any comment which violates its Rules of Conduct; and the Herald is not liable for the consequences of any posted comment as provided in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the Herald's terms of service. | {
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phuket
Things to do in Phuket
The beaches will no doubt be at the forefront of your mind when you land in Phuket. To find them you'll have to head to the western side of the island. Granted, it's not hard to find a perfect stretch of sand to lay your towel down, however some do boast better scenery than others. As a rule of thumb, the harder it is to get to the beach, the better it is likely to be. Examples include Freedom Beach and Paradise Beach. An exception to the rule though would be Kata Beach. Despite being a popular tourist haunt, Kata's beauty is undeniable while its surrounding restaurants and breezy nightlife make it an ideal place to set up a beach umbrella and never leave.
Spend your entire Phuket holiday on a beach though, and you'll be missing out on a lot. Like Phuket sailing tours around the Phi Phi Islands, elephant trekking in Phang Nga, day tours of Phang Nga Bay and the list goes on.
But pace yourself. Phuket at night offers just as many options. Witness the dazzling Fantasea show, a popular cultural night that blends tradition with fantasy. Then there is the infamous nightlife, a smorgasbord of backpacker bars, nightclubs, live music venues and kathoey cabaret clubs - all found huddled along Patong's notorious nightlife strip of Bangla Road. You'll find that the gender-bending ways of this legendary nightlife strip are indeed true. Just remember to play safe, be respectful and don't overindulge too much - a spectacular beach awaits you in the morning.
If you venture out from your resort to do just one day tour, make it a trip to the Phi Phi Islands. Renowned as some of the most beautiful islands in the world, the archipelago spans a total of 6 islands, of which only one is populated.
An icon of Phuket, Fantasea is the island's biggest show. In what can only be described as a nightlife extravaganza, the exotic show is set in a theme park and performed by a cast of thousands as well as elephants and other animals.
If you’re a Bond fan, you might recognise Phang Nga Bay for the appropriately Ko Tapu or ‘James Bond Island’ - known for its distinctive shape. Limestone rocks and cliffs jut out from the emerald-green water and are featured in the movie, ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’.
In Phuket, there’s plenty of time for bucket-sized cocktails and hedonist pursuits but if you want to level the playing field, perhaps a visit to Wat Chalong, Phuket’s most important Buddhist temple, is in order. | {
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Google I/O 2018: Ai Takes Over The First Day Highlights
And Google will offer new features that help you understand your digital habits and wean you off your 24/7 relationship with your devices and apps so you can power down and spend more time with friends and family.
Kicking off the tech giant's annual developers conference, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai argued that its AI-powered digital assistant had the potential to free people from everyday chores. The AI-driven Assistant is getting more sophisticated with each passing year and will soon be able to carry out simple day-to-day tasks for you, such as placing a call to make a restaurant reservation or book a hair appointment when you're too busy to do it yourself.
This ethical tension could be partly resolved if Duplex was required to announce that a computer is on the phone calls, but Google has been vague and will not confirm if Duplex will be made to self-disclose.
The original voice for Assistant is called "Holly". One thing that was missing from this feature was the ability to create custom routines as until now you could only use one of Google's presets such as I'm home, Good Night, and others.
"We recently started our Google News Initiative and committed $300 million over the next three years to work with organizations and journalists to develop innovative and programs that help the industry", Pichai said.
"Also, the call took all of a minute or less, but didn't include the time it took to find somewhere to eat, tell Google what you wanted it to do and have it give you the response after it finished".
There are a lot of buzzwords and bits of jargon that get passed around, but one of the more common ones popping up lately is "artificial intelligence".
Of course that can be creepy, but we should all be quite used to this tradeoff of personal information for services by now. The company says, "it uses artificial intelligence to analyze all the content published to the web at any moment, and organize all of those articles, videos, and more into storylines".
When a user wants to see what stories the world is reading, he or she can switch over to Google Headlines to see general news, sports and features from around the world.
Which brings us back to Duplex and its timing. Another important feature are the "newscasts". The creepy part is the other party has no idea they are talking to a machine, something that can be abused in any number of different ways.
The feature is clearly a reaction to the problem of "fake news". There is also the more straightforward fact that Google has thus far behaved much like Facebook in that it tries its best to remain neutral, and in doing so has allowed a series of negative effects to flourish, allowing popularity or virality rather than quality to determine how often something is seen.
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Jada Pinkett-Smith Kicks Off First 'Red Table Talk'
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Cardiff promoted to English Premier League
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Copies of his medical records from the years 1997, 2003, and 2011 showed cholesterol levels below the recommended threshold. I have a cholesterol of 160. "I spend a lot in the summer time going for walks", he said in February. | {
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Chasing shadows shows Neyland's sunny and shaded seats
Aug 30, 2013: Want to know when you'll be frying in the sun or made in the shade in Neyland Stadium? 10News' Jim Matheny chased the shadows and mapped the answers for Saturday's home opener between the Vols and visitors Austin Peay.
http://www.wbir.com/video/2639193387001/1/Chasing-shadows-shows-Neylands-sunny-and-shaded-seatshttp://download.gannett.edgesuite.net/wbir/brightcove/29913744001/201308/3659/29913744001_2639241854001_Still0830-00005.jpg?pubId=29913744001Chasing shadows shows Neyland's sunny and shaded seatsAug 30, 2013: Want to know when you'll be frying in the sun or made in the shade in Neyland Stadium? 10News' Jim Matheny chased the shadows and mapped the answers for Saturday's home opener between the Vols and visitors Austin Peay.Footballwbirneyland stadiumcollegesportsNewsheat10n@6shadowsmathenysunnySeating Chartshade04:34 | {
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Heart Award nominees announced
NEWS ARTICLE
2014 Heart Award nominees for the World Group and World Group II first round
The ITF has announced a shortlist of ten players to receive the first four Fed Cup Heart Awards of 2014.
Awards will be presented in four categories based on performances in the Fed Cup by BNP Paribas World Group and World Group II first round ties, and the three Zone Group I events that took place in February.
Belinda Bencic (SUI), Angelique Kerber (GER), Karin Knapp (ITA) and Agnieszka Radwanska (POL) have all been shortlisted for the World Group/World Group II award.
Kiki Bertens (NED) and Simona Halep (ROU) have been shortlisted for Europe/Africa Zone Group I; Montserrat Gonzalez (PAR) and Teliana Pereira (BRA) for Americas Zone Group I; and Luksika Kumkhum (THA) and Sabina Sharipova (UZB) for Asia/Oceania Zone Group I.
The players were shortlisted by the Heart Award judging panel, consisting of ITF President Francesco Ricci Bitti and a mixture of former players and members of the international media.
A public vote, running on 3-28 March, is being held on FedCup.com and FedCup.com/es to decide the four winners, who will all receive a cheque to be donated to their chosen charity. The winners will be announced during the week of the Fed Cup World Group semifinals and play-off ties on 19-20 April.
ITF President Francesco Ricci Bitti said: “The Fed Cup Heart Award is entering its sixth year and continues to recognise the outstanding contributions made by players to their country and the competition.
"I would like to acknowledge the efforts of all the players who have helped Fed Cup grow to enjoy the success that it does today.”
The Fed Cup Heart Award is an ITF initiative that was first presented to USA's Melanie Oudin at the 2009 Fed Cup Final.It aims to recognise players who have represented their country with distinction, shown exceptional courage on court and demonstrated outstanding commitment to their team.
A total of five players will be recognised in 2014. Voting has now closed. | {
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I voted B, but I felt the exact same way last year. I'm chided by other Cleveland fans all the time for my optimism, but for 2 years now I haven't been able to shake the feeling that this team has destiny written all over it.
As well as Orlando has been playing the last couple of months, I can't help believing that we have the answers for that team this time around. And I really can't believe a LeBron James team will ever lose in the crunch to a team with The Vince Carter as a go-to guy.
It'll be tough- really tough- but we can beat Orlando. And if we beat Orlando we'll beat Los Angeles. The Lake Show simply can't handle us.
hermanfontenot wrote:As well as Orlando has been playing the last couple of months, I can't help believing that we have the answers for that team this time around. And I really can't believe a LeBron James team will ever lose in the crunch to a team with The Vince Carter as a go-to guy.
It'll be tough- really tough- but we can beat Orlando. And if we beat Orlando we'll beat Los Angeles. The Lake Show simply can't handle us.
the problem is, vince isn't their go to guy. dwight howard is. i worry about orlando a lot. i've watched a lot of their games trying to 'scout' them and i am very worried about them. worried about mo getting set afire by jameer. worried about delonte going goofy and disappearing. worried about lebron going le-iso for entire halves of games. and most of all i'm worried that a much younger and hungrier dwight howard finally decides to put old shaq in his place. i'm not saying the cavs cannot beat them. they might be able to. but i already know orlando can beat cleveland because i've already seen it happen.
all of these 'wait until the 4th quarter to turn it on' efforts by the cavs only make me question them even more. if they think they can jack off for 3 quarters and then get after it in the 4th and beat out a team like orlando and even boston for that matter, well, we're all gonna be some sad fans pretty soon.
"Meh. Calling me names on the internet is really no big deal, happens all the time." - e0y2e3
Beating Orlando is going to be very difficult. That series, if it comes to pass, is going to be a war. If Orlando wins it, they'll win it in six again. If the Cavs win it, it will take seven games. Bank on it.
I'm not really concerned about the Cavs pissing around for three quarters in the closing weeks of the regular season with virtually insurmountable leads over every other team. Can't read too much into that.
What really concerns me about the Cavs is that they don't seem to shoot as well as the other contenders from outside. It's odd because AP and Mo are among the league leaders in 3PT percentage, but it really seems like teams like Orlando, Boston and even Atlanta can be carried by their outside shooting. They can lose some of the battles in the paint and still be OK if they're hot from outside.
The Cavs just aren't going to shoot well enough to do that. Doesn't help that LBJ and Co. tend to jack up a lot of ill-advised shots. The Cavs need to score inside and win the battles close to the basket, because they're generally not going to win a perimeter pissing contest with other playoff teams.
That's what has me a little wary. Scoring is much harder for the Cavs (sans LeBron) than other teams like Orlando that can put up 12 points in the span of four or five possessions without hardly entering the paint.
There is nothing easy about the way the Cavs play. They have to work very hard at both ends of the floor to get the stops and scores that sustain them. The Cavs will be relying on their depth in the playoffs more than some prognosticators might realize. "Play eight, trust seven" might be more like "Play ten, trust nine."
You have to fully believe that this team IS capable of winning it all but it isn't gonna be no cake walk. If the Cavs draw the Bucks (with a healthy Bogut), Charlotte or even Miami is is gonna be tough. Boston or Atlanta is gonna be a battle and Orlando is going to be an all out WAR. Then, maybe, we can talk Lake Show.
But the bottom line is, unlike last year, the Cavs are capable of beating each and every one of these teams... but it is not going to be easy.
So get ready for some up and downs, some ball-kicking defeats and a few sh!t shows thrown in. It's going to happen.
DrPoove wrote:You have to fully believe that this team IS capable of winning it all but it isn't gonna be no cake walk. If the Cavs draw the Bucks (with a healthy Bogut), Charlotte or even Miami is is gonna be tough. Boston or Atlanta is gonna be a battle and Orlando is going to be an all out WAR. Then, maybe, we can talk Lake Show.
But the bottom line is, unlike last year, the Cavs are capable of beating each and every one of these teams... but it is not going to be easy.
So get ready for some up and downs, some ball-kicking defeats and a few sh!t shows thrown in. It's going to happen.
But believe that this team is capable of and going to win it all.
My 10 pesos.
It's why the playoffs are the playoffs. It's supposed to be tense, brutal, and series are supposed to be capable of swinging on a couple of plays one way or the other.
Cavs are definitely capable of winning a title, but it's going to be a meat grinder. We need to get ready for it. | {
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Stanford University researchers recently announced the development of the first functioning computer that uses only carbon nanotube transistors. The researchers say replacing silicon transistors with carbon nanotubes could make any electric device smaller and more powerful and could lead to a new generation of faster electronic devices that use less energy than those built using silicon-based transistors. "Hypothetically, if researchers can remove the current issues by using carbon nanotubes, and manufacturers adopt it, they could build smaller everything with less power required," says analyst Patrick Moorhead. He notes that if carbon nanotubes become a viable alternative to silicon, major manufacturers will quickly look to move to the new technology, despite the high cost of reworking their manufacturing processes. "The new technology would impact every device that uses chips, from cars to watches to phones to computers," Moorhead says. Analyst Dan Olds says the carbon nanotubes could enable a revolutionary leap in electronics technology. "It takes much less power to change the state of a carbon nanotube versus today's transistors," Olds says. "We would see devices that can do a whole lot more useful work while using a whole lot less juice--and that's a great combination."
Visually Impaired Turn to Smartphones to See Their World The New York Times (09/29/13) Nick Bilton
Advocates for the visually impaired say smartphones and tablets could be the most helpful assistive aid to emerge since the invention of Braille. The visually impaired can employ a smartphone's voice commands to read or write, navigate using global positioning systems and compass apps, determine denominations of money with a camera app, and also take photographs. The Apple iPhone includes features designed to help people with vision problems snap pictures. For example, an assistive mode enables the device to vocalize how many heads are in a picture and their position in the frame. Another Apple technology of help to the blind or near-blind is VoiceOver, billed as the world's first gesture-based screen reader. The app lets blind people engage with their devices using multi-touch gestures on the screen, for example prompting the phone to read displayed text aloud by swiping two fingers down the screen. Additional apps can help users visualize colors by pointing their phones at an object to trigger a detailed audio description of its hue. The iPhone also supports more than 40 distinctive Braille Bluetooth keyboards.
People with minimal programming skills can quickly build cellphone apps designed to assist disaster relief efforts through new tools created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Qatar Computing Research Institute. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Jim Handler says the project is one of the first to focus on two key issues of disaster relief at once: how to acquire and pull together the needed data, and how to make that data available to the people who need it. The tool combines new Web standards and the intuitive, open source MIT App Inventor software, which enables non-programmers to create apps for devices running Google's Android operating system by integrating color-coded graphical elements. The tool requires that the accessed data be formatted in accordance with the resource description framework, which is used by many government agencies. "We're hoping that we'll have a kind of cyclic effect," says MIT's Lalana Kagal. "As people use these apps more, they will automatically generate structured data. And as there's more structured data out there, there will be people building more apps to consume them, which will in turn generate more structured data."
The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is planning to recruit hundreds of reservists as computer experts to work alongside regular forces as part of the new Joint Cyber Reserve Unit, which aims to protect computer networks and safeguard data. The creation of the Joint Cyber Reserve Unit will enable MoD to draw on individuals' talent, skills, and expertise gained from their civilian experience to meet cyberthreats, according to a Ministry of Defence statement. "We will build in Britain a cyberstrike capability so we can strike back in cyberspace against enemies who attack us, putting cyber alongside land, sea, air, and space as a mainstream military activity," says MoD's Philip Hammond. "Our commanders can use cyberweapons alongside conventional weapons in future conflicts." MoD says that starting next month it will target current and former reservists, as well as civilians that have the necessary skills and expertise. "People think of military as land, sea, and air," Hammond says. "We long ago recognized a fourth domain--space. Now there's a fifth--cyber."
NSA Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens The New York Times (09/28/13) James Risen; Laura Poitras
In November 2010, the National Security Agency started exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans' social networks, according to newly discovered documents and interviews with officials. The computer analysis of such data, which was designed to "discover and track" connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, previously was permitted only for foreigners because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens. However, a January 2011 NSA memorandum authorized the agency to conduct "large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness" of every email address, phone number, or other identifier. In addition, NSA can enhance the communications data with material from public, commercial, and other sources, such as bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration, and global positioning system location information, according to documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden. NSA officials declined to reveal which phone and email databases are used to create the social network diagrams, and Snowden's documents do not specify them. NSA also will not disclose how many U.S. citizens have been monitored, but an agency spokeswoman notes that "all of NSA's work has a foreign intelligence purpose."
Employers are increasingly joining the massive open online course (MOOC) fray, allowing workers to acquire skills with market value at a low cost. Although MOOCs have made top-quality courses available to a much larger pool of students, most have not offered any type of credentials--but that situation is starting to change. Udacity last week announced the Open Education Alliance to offer online courses developed in collaboration with companies including Google and AT&T, and providing students with a free certificate. In addition, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and MOOC partner edX are launching their XSeries courses, with assistance from about 50 companies. Students will be able to earn a verified certificate in computer science, supply-chain management, and other subjects for about $700. Open Education Alliance companies will create at least one class at a cost of about $250,000, for which they will receive access to a talent pool with desired job skills, says AT&T's Scott Smith. Although critics worry that corporate involvement will slant the educational experience in favor of companies at the long-term expense of students, many students are looking for ways to make education more affordable. "What we are really establishing are educational pathways for people who want skills that are relevant to contemporary jobs," says Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun.
The formula underlying the Google search engine has been overhauled as part of Google's Hummingbird update, with the goal of yielding better answers to increasingly complex queries. Google's Amit Singhal says the retooling will impact the analysis of about 90 percent of Google's search requests, and give the search engine a more secure grasp of comprehending concepts rather than words. Singhal notes the change was necessary because people have become so dependent on Google that entering lengthy questions into the search box instead of just keywords has become routine. Also informing Google's decision to launch Hummingbird was the emergence of smartphones and Google's voice-recognition technology, which has intensified people's habit of submitting search requests in sequences of spoken sentences similar to an ongoing dialogue. Google also announced updates to search features geared toward more concise information provision so people will not need to go to another website. For example, Google's Knowledge Graph now can compare the attributes of two different things, and it also can be queried to sort through certain types of data. Google's updates to its search engine have thus far not engendered widespread animosity from other websites, suggesting that the changes have not prompted a dramatic reordering in how sites rank in the Google recommendations.
Some Robots Are Starting to Move More Like Humans Technology Review (09/27/13) Aviva Hope Rutkin
University of Zurich researchers have developed Roboy, a four-foot-tall humanoid robot with a set of muscles inspired by the human musculoskeletal system. The plastic muscles work together via electrical motors and artificial tendons, enabling Roboy to mimic the flexible mechanics of biology, and could lead to a new class or robots that are lighter, safer, and able to move in a more natural way. "If you're interested in more natural kinds of movements, tendon-driven technology needs to be explored," says Zurich researcher Rolf Pfeifer. Robots designed to mimic human movement can help researchers explore how biomechanics can lead to more intelligent behavior. "I think [Roboy] can be a really interesting research platform for learning in systems with many degrees of freedom," Pfeifer says. However, one of the biggest obstacles for tendon-driven engineers is finding a way to effectively model the human body's complex motions. "The calibration of tendons is a challenge for [artificial intelligence] research," says the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sisir Karumanchi.
Santander, Spain, has become a model for high-tech smart cities worldwide, equipped with 12,000 smart sensors that are transforming daily life in the small port city on the Bay of Biscay. Funded by the European Union, the sensors transmit information about parking availability, surf conditions at local beaches, and trash receptacle levels. Sensors gather data that travels to antennas, which transmit it to a command and control center. From there, information can be sent to digital panel displays, for example, in parking lots to inform drivers of space availability. Data also is sent to applications on individuals' smartphones, with real-time information on road closures, bus delays, and the pollen count. University of Cantabria researchers manage the sensor system, and use Santander as a testing ground for digital experiments. Santander mayor Inigo de la Serna now uses an app called the Santander City Brain daily as a forum for communication with citizens. Furthermore, the city has reduced electricity bills by about 25 percent and garbage costs by 20 percent. De la Serna plans to expand the smart city program by adding wireless water and electricity meters.
A group of theoretical physicists are using supercomputers to calculate the decay of one type of subatomic material with hopes of answering why the early universe ended up with an excess of matter. Without that excess, the matter and antimatter created in equal amounts in the Big Bang would have completed annihilated one another, and our universe would have contained nothing but light. Physicists believe there was a violation of symmetry, and they call it charge conjugation-parity (CP) violation. They sought to develop a theory to explain the decay of a subatomic particle known as a kaon into two other particles called pions, which are composed of quarks. This mathematical description could be used to calculate how frequently it happens and whether or how much it could account for the matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe. The team has developed complex algorithms and has written sophisticated software packages that some of the world's most powerful supercomputers use to describe the behavior of quarks and solve the problem. Thus far, the results of the calculation show how frequently CP-violating weak interaction occurs and the strength of the CP violation at the quark level, says Taku Izubuchi at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
A computational analysis of language used online could provide as much insight into personalities as traditional methods used by psychologists, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. Seventy-five thousand people voluntarily completed a common personality questionnaire through a Facebook application and made their Facebook status updates available for research purposes The interdisciplinary team drilled into more 700 million words, phrases, and topics to look for overall linguistic patterns, an open-ended language that more meaningfully correlates with specific characteristics. The researchers used machine-learning techniques to build computer models that were able to predict the individual's age, gender, and their responses on the personality questionnaires they took. The researchers note the prediction models were surprisingly accurate. For example, the team was correct 92 percent of the time when predicting users' gender based only on the language of their status updates. The method also suggests a new way of conducting research, by having volunteers submit their social media feeds for anonymized study.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Diego used National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center supercomputers to test the efficacy of a new treatment for stroke victims that could be safer and more effective than either surgery or drugs. The group used the supercomputers to model the effectiveness of microbubbles and high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for breaking up clots that cause strokes. "One day, HIFU could be a useful medical treatment for people who are stroke victims," says Berkeley professor Andrew Szeri. "But before this can happen, we need to establish some fundamental background work, which includes understanding how HIFU accelerates damage to a clot when bubbles are present." The supercomputers are enabling the researchers to gather adequate data to make the case for further study. | {
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HOW TO LICENSE YOUR INNOVATION CONCEPT InventHelp New Products
In Case You Have actually grown or have the Intention ahead up with something unique that might be beneficial to mankind, getting a license on your suggestion is the very first measure to earn sure that nobody could duplicate your concept or trick you from cash.
You definitely don’t want your initiatives to go thrown away.
Notes
• After procuring a license you should see to it your technology is one-of-a-kind and not currently in use. Inning accordance with a license standard, if the production or idea is utilized in one nation or an additional, you cannot patent it Get More Information.
• Furthermore, guarantee you do not hurry the license process if your development isn’t really yet functioning. This is because after you obtain a patent, the following patent would certainly be demanded if there are any adjustments made to the item or tool.
• Obtaining a License Right
Initially, you need a patent lawyer who could Guide you with the license procedure. He/she will certainly send and file your planned development to Patent as well as Hallmark workplace. Obtaining license may guarantee as well as shield you against any prospective troubles in future. You could not do so in your own; you should utilize an experienced patent lawyer.
• Try to find The Right Company
Speaking to the appropriate company to display Your thought would be the following line of task. Nowadays, there are so many businesses readily available have an interest in supplying aid for an ingenious suggestion worth investing in. After all, good ideas never locate it difficult to find a new home why not try these out.
You could visit a Patent and also Trademark Many organizations are searching for brand-new items, as well as if your concept isn’t aligned with that of their business’s requirement, no one will decline a sophisticated goods worth spending for. It’s furthermore feasible to utilize an individual to manage this area of the treatment.
•
In your meeting with the Perfect organisation, First ask him/her to authorize a Discretion Contract that specifies that you will certainly expose them identified details is to be pondered for the company’s item schedule in addition to your suggestion is safe and secure.
•
After you both involve word, it’s time to Send your proposal recognizing they’re anticipating your product, they intend to figure out just how it works, which they typically aren’t most likely to take your suggestion.
• Establish Contact With business
After submitting your recommendation, ensure You speak with the company. Bear in mind, a bargain is not legitimate prior to an agreement has actually been authorized go right here.
If genuinely your innovation high potential For earnings as well as development, it’s definitely worth the moment and also effort to comprehend If you Don’t have a notion regarding just how patenting work, don’t be prevented! You are Suggested to speak with a license attorney prior to making any type of relocate any way. | {
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Personal Testimonies are supposed to be three to five minutes. I suspect that my written version of how I met Jesus violates that rule. But, since many of you have known me a while, I think that I have to add a few details that I don’t when I am speaking to people who know less about me.
Thus, here is my personal testimony of how and when I met the Lord. I break it into sections so that perhaps you can abbreviate your reading where necessary. The over arching truth of my life is that the Lord kindled a fire that did not die away, despite trials and personal failings. Thanks be to God, here is how I met Jesus.
I. Death to life – I know by faith that I met Jesus the day I was born. I know this because I was baptized the day that I was born. Having complications with something called “RH factor” in my blood, it was likely I might not survive the day, so the priest was summoned and I was baptized at once. It was July 10, 1961, St Francis Hospital, Evanston, Ill.
And thus, Jesus came, and saved my soul, he also saved my life in this world. For here I am, still alive all these years later.
And though I know by faith, that I met him that day, I have no memory of it. But indeed, he did establish a powerful relationship with me at that moment. I say this because my earliest memory is of talking with Jesus. I have a few memories from early childhood but my clearest and oldest memories were of how Jesus spoke to me.
I think I was approximately five years old. There was a Sacred Heart statue in my room. It was unique because the Lord’s robes were not red, but blue. And in my room I could go, and the Lord spoke to me, tenderly, and in the way a five-year-old could understand. I do not say that the statue talked, it did not, but it did signal the Lord’s presence, and I always knew that I could go to my room and there experience the Lord’s presence and talk with him.
I also want to be clear, Jesus was not just some “imaginary friend.” I had those as a child, and I knew the difference. Jesus was real, and He spoke to me in a different way. I knew I was not making it up, that he was initiating it. With my imaginary friends, I ran both sides of the conversation. But Jesus was no imaginary friend, he was someone who was quite real, who loved me, and spoke tenderly to me.
Yes, these are my earliest memories. At the dawning of my life, my first memories are that Jesus was already there in a relationship with me, simple, intimate, and very reassuring.
II. Dormition –I do not know when or why exactly, but this connection ended. I have a sad memory, though vague, of speaking to an adult in my life, (probably my mother) and explaining that Jesus had gone. I remember even offering some sort of explanation, that perhaps he had to go help other people who need his help more.
This was a time in my life where I began to discover there was a very big world out there, and there were some very awful things happening there. Perhaps my clinging to Jesus seemed selfish. But I attributed his disappearance to the fact that others “needed his help more.”
My awakening in regard to the worse sufferings of others happened when I heard that my father had to go to a far away place called Vietnam, where people were killing each other. Things were very sad there, and there were many orphans and much sorrow.
I was seven years old when my daddy left for the war. And I don’t know if there’s a direct connection, but it was at that time that mysteriously I stopped experiencing Jesus so personally. Yes, I figured he had to go help someone else. I knew Jesus was up in heaven, and I knew he knew and cared about me still, but I no longer heard his voice.
III. Deepening Darkness –At this point, my spiritual life and relationship with the Lord went into remission. I went through the motions: First Confession, First Communion. I knew I was receiving Jesus, but my relationship was less personal, more theoretical, more intellectual.
My father came back from the war, a changed man somehow, sadder and with more anger. My family was uprooted from my boyhood home in North Chicago, as my father’s next duty assignment was down in Florida.
My spiritual dormition (sleep) deepened, and soon enough became a great darkness. At age 10, (1971) as a result of several family crises, I began having my first panic attacks and I remember once saying to my mother that I understood what older people meant when they said that life was hard. I did not think at that time I wanted to live long, and hoped to die young.
As I edged towards my teenage years, I went from being a fretful child, to a teenager often plagued by bouts of severe anxiety and phobias: I feared fire, home invasion, and domestic violence. My parents sent me to a counsellor, and I was placed on psychotropic meds for the first time.
I prayed little in these years and though required to attend Mass, I was uninspired by it, and almost never thought of God or had any interest in things spiritual. My spiritual sleep was all but complete, and the darkness of my anxiety also began to manifest as well as intense anger. Loud and angry rock music connected with my soul and gave voice to my anger and the rebellious spirit of my early high school years.
I developed hostility to things religious, to the Church, to the Bible, and I did not like being told what to do. In a sense, this was typical teenage rebelliousness, but I was about as far as I could be from those early tender years when Jesus used to speak to me quietly in my room.
IV. Dawning –And then Jesus called! I didn’t know it at first, but it was him, I know it now.
Among the “curses” in my life at that time was having to go to Mass on Sunday. And then one day, a high school choir formed at the Church that I attended, and I noticed there were very pretty girls in the choir. I could not sing at all, and did not like to sing, but I accepted an invitation to join the choir to meet the girls.
And I did meet them, and dated two of them seriously, and several of them more casually over the 4 to 5 years that followed. Strangely, I actually began to like the music, and was impressed with the sound of the mighty pipe organ.
I was not praying yet, I was still not spiritual, but through the goodness, truth and beauty of the music (and yes, the girls) The Lord was calling. The darkness had not passed, but light was on the horizon.
V. Development – I cannot fully develop every step which took place, but in varying stages in late high School and early College, I became cantor, the Church choir director, and an organist. That led to liturgy planning, studies of God’s Word, and entering more deeply into the life of the Church.
A strange and uncomfortable yearning began to develop within me, for though while completing my computer science degree and already working for the Army Corps of Engineers, and while dating a girl I intended to marry, a strange desire for the priesthood began to dawn on me. And it was strange. I was not really praying all that much, and I was working for a pastor in Virginia I did not respect. But in your twenties, sometimes you think you can make a difference, and somehow the priesthood seemed that sort of path for me: something I could do to make a difference.
My college sweetheart, for various reasons, mostly my fault, turned cool on me, and one day, I received my walking papers. One door closed, but I sensed another door still stood open: priesthood. I contacted the Archdiocese of Washington. Within two years, I was walking through the doors of the seminary.
I will not tell you that I had met the Lord again. Not yet, that was still to come. But I entered with pride really, thinking I could make a difference. Yet still, despite my sinful pride, the Lord was still calling.
He reached my mind first. I had entered the seminary poorly catechized, emerging from the “silly 70s” with “butterfly theology” at best. Yet in the seminary, despite dreadful dogmatics, and certain dubious scriptural classes, there were some very wonderful teachers and classes: Liturgy, Patristics, Church history, and Moral Theology were all solid. And that lit up my mind with joy. I supplemented the shortcomings of some of the scripture classes, and the dreadful dogmatics with wonderful books like Ralph Martin’s Crisis of Truth, and Fr. James O’Conner’s The Father’s Son, and The Hidden Manna etc.
Suddenly the beauty of Catholic truth entered the vacuum of my silly 70s mind, and I could hear the voice of Jesus speaking through Scripture and Tradition. I was thrilled with this wisdom, and the great deposit of faith. I was hungry and spent long hours in study. I graduated at the top of my class at Mount St. Mary’s.
But I still cannot say I had yet met Him again. Surely I heard his voice mediated through Scripture and Tradition but it was still not the same as that young boy at five years of age who knew Jesus very personally, that was still yet to come. In Seminary years I prayed an hour each day, but it was a struggle to really experience God at all during those times of prayer.
The Lord reached my heart in my deacon year. It was my canonical retreat, prior to ordination to the priesthood, and Fr. Francis Martin came to the seminary and set forth for us a powerful and cogent proclamation, that through the Word of God and the Sacraments, The Lord Jesus revealed himself to us, and invited us into a relationship that could and would totally change our lives, wherein we would see sins put to death and every virtue come alive.
And so, my heart was on fire and in every liturgy, every proclamation of the Word I began to hear the Lord Jesus, and experience His powerful ministry. My life to begin to change, I saw many sins put to death, and many graces come alive.
But still, I will not tell you, though having a new mind and heart, I had met him again. I knew him through his Word, and through the effects of his sacraments in my life. I knew by faith he existed, but I had not yet met him again. But he had my mind and my heart, and I was well along the path of what the mystics call “the purgative way.”
One final, and painful stage awaited me before I met him again.
VI. Distress –My early years of priesthood, were not without struggles, but they were largely pleasant and productive. Yet, my long history of anxiety and my tendency to fret continued to plague me.
An early promotion to the pastorate, seemingly a great compliment, plunged me into a period of great distress. Panic attacks, and unremitting anxiety robbed me of sleep for weeks, then into months. Demons found an easy doorway and added to my crisis, such that I became despondent. A dark presence enveloped my room, tormenting me and further robbing me of sleep.
It was clear I could not take up my pastoral duties, and I found myself to St. Luke’s Hospital for a week of mental evaluation. And yet, in this great crisis, through this great distress, there seemed to come some purification.
VII. Deliverance –Shortly thereafter, one morning in my holy hour I was praying,… and there he was! It was November of 1994, I was 33 years old.
I cannot describe to you his glory, for it is beyond words, analogies or pictures. Words like spaciousness, openness, wideness, glorious light, and deep serenity come to mind, but they are wholly inadequate. But there he was.
I said nothing, and He said nothing, yet everything was communicated. Words were not necessary at all. It was Cor ad cor loquitur (Heart speaking to heart). Here was what the mystics call “contemplative prayer,” or at least the first murmurings of it. Beyond words or images, not the devoid of them, but beyond them.
Yes there He was and I with him. I had met him again, whom my heart sought, and my mind delighted in. He was here and I with him.
Over the years, my experience of him in prayer has deepened. It has also become more gentle. Some days his presence is deeper than others, some days I struggle to see him at all. But quite consistently and faithfully throughout the years I have known his presence.
And as his presence in my prayers has deepened and become more contemplative, it has overflowed into my daily life. Increasingly, I have become a mystic on the move. Throughout the day, I see his presence beautifully displayed his creation, and in so many people I have come to know and love.
I remain startled at those say there is no evidence of God’s existence. His whole creation shouts “I am designed and it is he who holds me in existence.” I am powerfully aware of his presence in my prayer, and throughout the day, also in the liturgy, and in the glory of his Word and Sacraments.
And yet, I cannot forget those years when I knew him not. I am in no way unsympathetic to those who struggle to see him, but thanks be to God, I can say I know him, I have met him (again), and he is very, very real in my life. I feel his presence now, and a moved to tears as I write this.
He has been good to me, and I am so grateful, so very very grateful, that he looked beyond my fault and saw my need.
An old song says “Within our darkest night, you kindle fire that never dies away!” And that is my story, a fire he kindled that never died away, by his grace.
And I’m also grateful, for those who prayed for me in my darkest hours, especially my grandmother and my mother and so many parishioners who saw me through and witnessed to me of the glory of God in their life.
Yes, Jesus is real, I have met him, and speak to him each day in prayer. He kindled a fire in me when I was baptized. I knew it at age five, and strangely lost sight of it. But the fire he kindled never died away. And He, by the fire of his presence is changing my life. I am not what I want to be, but I am not what I used to be.
Thank you so very much for sharing your beautiful journey with the Lord. You have been greatly blessed to have known Him since you were a child. I didn’t meet the Lord until I was 51 years old. I so regret the many years I did not love Him. My heart is filled with sorrow for everyone in the world who has not met Him. Maybe, this is the time the Lord has chosen to reawaken our hearts to Him and for Him and maybe, our stories will open the eyes and hearts of those around us. The Lord has given you such a great gift of words and I know my journey with Him has been aided by reading them. Thank you again.
Monsignor, thank you for telling us your conversion story. Those of us who have converted to the Catholic Faith know the many times we have had to convert (conversion to the Faith is not usually instantaneous) and what a painful process it was–and sometimes continues to be. Many Catholics don’t seem to understand that ALL of us are called to conversion, every day (St. Josemaria Escriva used to say that each day is a blank sheet at the top of which we must write in a bold hand, “Serviam”). Thank you for being a priest who has chosen to let God take over completely; I thank God for the many priests I have known who bring me Jesus and especially those who are letting God make them holy. I am not saying what I am thinking and feeling very well, but I truly appreciate your humility in telling this story. I think it will help other people understand their trials.
You’ve clearly had a wide and varied experience in which you have played the roles of being a person of sacrifice, a consultant, a team leader and visionary in one particular area. You have had hands-on experience in the development of mixed drinks, choosing the right blend of scotch, and for tackling the glass at hand head-on.
In the past, few have accomplished the benchmark imbibing you’ve demonstrated. Your prowess for getting to know dysfunctional philosophies of life has also caused the blogosphere to fall in love with the sadness of you. Indeed, you are a total study in pity for no other reason than its sheer loveliness.
Your love for working in areas of low responsibility make you legendary. You make optimal use of the excuse so well that all expectation of motivation falls away upon hearing your dove-like shrills for attention and never ending emotional stroking. I applaud you.
I saw a terrible sight of this one at the Corn Maze last evening. He was clearly not himself again. All sorts of murmurs arose outside of his earshot I assure you. As I see it, this one is certainly lost in a maze of his own making.
Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful and inspirational testimony. It was very moving and really touched my heart and my soul. So much I could relate to, so much I pray, hope for and look forward to that you described.
Thank you for saying YES to Jesus’ call. The world is in desperate need of faithful, holy priests like you!
God Bless you now and forever – and please, if you remember, offer a prayer for my son who is preparing for the priesthood.
Two weeks ago, I received a subtle, but utterly clear message from God, that even in my most rebellious time of life, He was with me. The dormant grace baptism was a little spark that was waiting for a breath of air to return to flame. The words of the song you shared are another confirmation of His message, and I remember the love that He has for me, which is often hard for me to accept. Thank you for your story and your sharing of it at this time.
Dear Rev. Msgr. Thank you for sharing your wonderful experience
I Was also born in 1961 . I used to pray before the tabernacle for the last 15 years or more, After about three or four years of prayers before the tabernacle I started to see the face of Jesus, yes literally His face as a live drawing formed out the tabernacle cloth with expressions , on the tabernacle , it is still continuing, and I am more and more drawn towards the Eucharistic Adoration.
Christ is our Friend who comes and be with us when everyone has gone away and we are left stranded somewhere without any consolation or comfort.
GOD Bless you, Monsignor. Thank you for your sharing of your conversion story. I, for one was called back by GOD after 40 years in the dryness and thirstful desert of my life. I went out of the Church searching for a church of convenience that will cater to my whims only to return back to the Church of which I was baptized. Then HE let me realize HIS Presence in my life was and is always there all along. Yes, I see HIS Face and I am blest and still pray ‘LORD JESUS CHRIST, SON of The LIVING GOD, have mercy on me a sinner’ beating my breast and crying out from the depths of my heart. ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the House of the LORD forever.’ AMen. I offer my pains and sufferings for you. YHWH MEKODDISHKEM
Thank you for sharing your wonderful experience, Father. I too was baptized on the day I was born because my twin sister who was born before me had her umbilical cord rapped around my throat and I turned blue. I have often thought that if after I was baptized I had died I would have went straight to heaven. I guess the Lord had other plans for me.
Thank you for your testimony and the witness of Our Lord’s presence in your life.
I must say, for your readers, that I knew Msgr. reasonably well (or so I thought) during his years of seminary. In those days, I was enrolled as an undergraduate at a different part of the same institution. What surprises me the most, maybe even shocks me about this article, is Msgr’s description of his spiritual life during that time, as not having yet met the Lord in a real and powerful way.
Even prior to his diaconate ordination, Msgr (I’m sure he was unaware) powerfully radiated the presence of Christ. The good Lord’s attractiveness and joyfulness was strongly present in then-Mr. Pope. When I spent time with him, I came away wanting to be a better person, to be holier, in short, to be more like him. To think that internally he was going through such a profound struggle of growth, given what he outwardly communicated astonishes me.
I thank the great God for his presence in the life of Msgr and am terribly greatful to count Msgr a friend for over 25 years.
Msgr – May the Great God grant you many, many more years of fruitful ministry filled with the joy that surpasses understanding or desire. Ad multos annos
Cor ad cor loquitur. Heart speaks to heart. All of us must open our hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and let Him come in and fill us with His love. I’m sure He has done that for you, Monsignor, and I’m grateful as I’m sure many others are for the frankness and honesty of your testimony. I’m glad you mention Tradition as well as Scripture. It’s surely both, not one or the other. When we try to read Scripture without taking the Church’s Tradition into account, even when we try to read it by the Analogy of Faith, we have a tendency to think that the institutional embodiment of the Faith by Peter and the other Apostles, in a living Tradition, is unimportant, and we can be tempted to veer off into various sorts of fundamentalism. Jesus is the vital center of our lives, but it is the Holy Spirit Who sustains the Church. Who has reminded the modern world–and reminded us more clearly than any other modern writer–of the Church’s Tradition? Who has reminded us that the Holy Spirit guided the Apostles to allow the Church Fathers to do their writing? Who has reminded us of the divine wisdom that has guided the Magisterium when dogmas and doctrines have had to be defined down the centuries? John Henry Newman. His personal motto? Cor ad cor loquitur. Let’s hope he’s soon proclaimed a Saint. Blessed John Henry, pray for us.
I wept at your description: “I cannot describe to you his glory, for it is beyond words, analogies or pictures. Words like spaciousness, openness, wideness, glorious light, and deep serenity come to mind, but they are wholly inadequate. But there he was.”
I wish everyone might one day have even a glimpse of that. It changes everything. These stories need to be shared! I think they make real for people the possibility that we really can have that kind of intimacy with Christ. Thank you.
Thank you. I was there, from the beginning, but did not heed the call to the Priesthod when it was so very there. I pray for your soul and mental peace. Please pray that I handle this life and serve Our Lord. Saint Dymphna, ora pro nobis.
Msgr please when you are in HIS presence again please pray for me. I have never seen HIM but I have always had the sense of something holy even though I have ruined much. I have always had the thought of HIM in my mind and more increasingly so since my reversion and increase in prayer. Please pray for my family Msgr!
Thank you for sharing the experiences of a priest which should be the experience of every priest of Christ who is baptized, ordained and take the body and blood of Christ. If only such priests lead the church, the Church on earth will be a heaven on earth. I am longing to have a personal encounter with Him very personal that I can say, Jesus touched me, I am cured.
Wow! That was so wonderful.
Yesterday I did a Communion Service at church and gave my testimony. I hope I’ve touched one person as much as yours did for me! I, too, have felt His presence and it has filled me with joy and peace beyond understanding. Thanks again.
Thank you for your testimonial: you have been granted a special grace – courage – to reveal such intimate details of the Lord’s presence in your life. Just when I thought I mastered G. K. Chesterton’s language, you introduce me to “butterfly theology:” please explain. And, while acknowledging your meaning, I would like to suggest this change to one of your sentences: “..the whole creation shouts ‘I am designed me, and it is I am who holds me in existence.” Again, my thanks, Gonzalo T. Palacios, Ph.D., author of The Virgin Mary’s Revolution, of love and do what you will. http://www.americanerasmus.com
“Butterfly theology” was a summation of 70s pop theology wherein the Christian life was often explained as analogous to a caterpillar which went into a cocoon and emerged as a beautiful butterfly. In addition to being overused and a little dopey, there were lots of theological problems with the image. For the butterfly’s change was really more of a metamorphosis, rather than a transformation, and the process was natural, not supernatural. Further, The caterpillar doesn’t die and rise to new life as we do in baptism…. etc., etc. It was all so typical of 70s pop theology, and exemplified how the catechesis of that era was weak and off the mark.
WHO ARE YOU MSGR.? I some how found you yesterday on the internet, by going from one link to another. I have been asking the Lord to put in my path holy priest(s)someone to help increase my faith and take it to a higher level. I guess He answered my prayers. I will surely follow your blog and all that you write. I will pray that you will not waiver like many other religious are doing today. Tell it like it is, just like Jesus did and wasn’t afraid to offend anyone. My prayers are with you………
This is really really beautiful Monsignor Pope & so wonderful to know that you are an organist!I also have been lost & found by God again & I also can say He’s very very very real & present in my everyday life:) Have you read Practice of the Presence of God? It’s a very wonderful book & has totally transformed my spiritual life! http://cgsorder.com/lawrencebretext04brola10.pdf
Amen I say to you my Brother,
I had witnessed here before as I grew up in the 60’s among an Evangelical Catholic Irish household.
We went to Animosa Iowa State prison to celebrate Mass among the imprisoned. We gathered clothing for those that were in need, housed migrant workers and my first real friend was a madam from a local house of prostitution. After my mother administered penicillin to her ladies,Miss Ruby would then accompany my mother and myself to Church to celebrate Mass. My mother was always in the front row and I was always right next to Miss Ruby in the last row, Miss Ruby was always waiting to go up in Flames for being there and mother told me why when I was in the Navy.
I became more fearful of death than sin so I became a slave to drugs and alcohol, paid for love, played Russian Roulette and was ashamed every time I looked into my mother’s eye’s. She never said a harsh word about my affairs other than I chose a path she found difficult to follow with all of my guilt. She embraced me in the arms of Jesus Christ and loved me for my soul and not hating me for the things I had done as she always would say “Jesus said we were to Love neighbor, but he never said anything about liking them and right now I do not like you very much”.
She was the first face I saw as I left the county jail, right next to her was my father and my brother, the one I attempted to kill. They all embraced me, told me I was loved by them all, forgiven for my sins and could I find it in my heart to forgive them for having me arrested. All I could think about was the story of the prodigal son and I have been an active Evangelist ever since I turned my life over to Jesus and felt his warm embrace fill my heart and soul.
Spiritual Combat by. Don Scipolli is an excellent read as is Confession by St. Augustine Heppo
Msgr. Pope, thank you for your shining ode to Joy! I have my own too. Jesus does love each of us and is truly our companion in this life even if we don’t all ways feel Him. He is faithful to Himself that He is love and mercy for us.
Thanks for sharing Msgr. I too experienced meeting Jesus and your correct, there is no human way
you can describe the experience. It was at a Mass and there are no words. I have only told two people
what happened and it was twenty years ago that seem like yesterday. The love was beyond human
description. Your in my prayers. Pax.
Msgr when time permits you to be in ontario,CA there is a catholic movement there called holy studies, please visit that, mostly filipino-americans are members. Very phenomenal group, even priests and bishops and a cardinal from other countries have things to utter. Very simple people, mostly came from dark lives, but now works like you do and speaks like you do. The world will witness the greatest evangelization the world has never known. Observe them.. God has already made a move 45 years ago for the new heaven and new earth.
god bless you msgr and my prayers always with you.
Msgr, your testimony inspires me! I too was a product of the well-meaning but sketchy catechism of the 70s, and I strayed so far. Praise God that He called me back. I have spent the Year of Faith immersed in catching up on my catechism– and you have helped! I think that the new liturgical year needs to be a year of prayer, at least for me. I’ve tried to bring my mind up to speed; now it’s time for my heart. I yearn for a deeper relationship with Jesus. Your testimony and everything else in my faith life is pointing me toward more discipline in my prayer life.
Very touching story and thank you for sharing. I am beginning to experience his presence in prayer sometimes as I have surrendered my live to Jesus. I then went to confession and came back home. It isn’t always easy to change but by his grace I’ve purged many sinful actions from my life. As you’ve said there is a fire of love for him in my heart now. May God bless you Father
Thank You. Your testimony touched me, and I saw myself, and the journey I am on in it. Thank you for sharing it. I have a song that was given to me to sing, and in the singing of it I broke through to a new, much more deeper, peaceful place were I go to to rest and be with Him. I no longer have to sing the song to remember how to find the place, but it comes to mind when I go to settle myself there time and again. It is “And He Blessed My Soul”. I pray God continues to bless yours as well.
I’m sorry if this gets repeated, but I have submitted in once already and for some reason it did not display. Perhaps I pressed a wrong button, or something. So to be on the safe side, I will try again.
Dear Fr Charles
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your incredibly honest and humble story of your life with Jesus – from birth – to losing personal touch – to coming back into a personal relationship with Him. If anybody ever doubted the very real existence of Jesus, they have only to read your testimony.
It certainly has made me realise that this is not just a ‘one-person’ story – it is my story too and, I know, the story of many others also – and like you, I praise God for dragging me back – and I had to be ‘dragged’ – from the very depths, I confess!
Born into and raised by two truly loving and holy evangelical Christian parents, who knew the fire that you talk of, I was taught and experienced the love of Jesus from a very early age, but then went through my ‘rebellious’ teenage years – only to find myself being physically as well as spiritually drawn back to God through the truth of the teaching of the Catholic church. I then experienced one of the most life-changing moments of my life – adult baptism at the age of 19 on the Feast of Christ The King, 1965. I truly felt that ‘fire’ of the Holy Spirit kindled in me at that evening Mass.
My story, however, differs from yours in one very sad respect. Having been accepted for training for the priesthood just two years later, I commenced at the seminary – but the rot had already set in and I was declining rapidly and eventually left – something I have always regretted bitterly. I felt lost after that; that I was no good and that God was no longer with me – that there was nothing worth going on for and sadly, rapidly fell into every kind of sin and degradation known to man, I have to confess. But – Praise God – whilst my decline was proportionate to that of King Manasseh – (although I did not go as far as murdering my own children, I am glad to say!) – the good Lord proved that His forgiveness was also the same for me as it was for this truly penitent King, and showed that he was still with me in the darkness through the prayers and ministrations of so many loving Godly people – friends, prison chaplains and many others – that I was forced to my knees whilst I was still a time-serving prisoner and I experienced my very real, new meeting with Jesus all over again.
And, praise God, I felt the fire, which I found had been smouldering away in the background throughout, had again been re-kindled in me so forcefully that, even with the struggles of trying to rebuild a useful and decent life and many setbacks, I was still able to praise Jesus and His father God, by humbly trying to walk with my hand in His, in an ongoing daily, prayerful re-commitment to Him and His loving kindness for me – the sheep that had been lost, yet brought back rejoicing!
I just felt the need to share this with you and others and pray that anyone who feels that they are too far off from God and the light and love of Jesus, has only to ask His forgiveness in a spirit of true penitence and Jesus WILL put out his hand, rekindle the fire, and invite you to take it again and walk with Him.
God bless us all.
Thank-you Msgr.
So many are hungry for the witness of those who have known the darkness and know they have been rescued. Thank-you!! I am a physician and people need to know their identity in Christ far more than they need medications for depression. My own journey took me through darkness and my own sin into the light of His grace–and I am thankful that medications did not rob me of this profound healing. We need priests who understand the profound need for healing of all people that comes from the knowledge of who we are in Christ—the fire that all need kindled to be fully alive. Thank-you! We are LOVED!!!!
The most characteristic feature of the Catholic priest is his horrid thirst for alcohol. By booze he sustains and nourishes his own pleasures, he prolongs his lust and depravity of mind. Booze he seeks and booze he must have. It is the doorway to sin and his escape from conscience. In Ancient Rome we find that the priest might be seen drunk, and also that booze is required by him, if he is to regain some measure of joy and a certain fulfillment of lechery. Nay more, the priest is he when he thus appears and has been given his meed of alcohol acquires sufficient liberty of self to engage in outright debauchery, to contest in wrestling the weak, to beget children, and self-gratify, all of which legend attributes to the hypocrisy of any priesthood founded on lies. But there is one point, and this a most important feature, which sharply clarifies the fundamental idea. The priest is a man ineffably evil, most hideous and foul. In Ancient Rome, and today, almost without exception, he is the happy, drunken one, the gay one, the charismatic predator nourished with booze to lend him his license to accomplish his tasks of appetite.
I go in and out on my spiritual slumber. It is so frustrating. I want to be free. Sometimes the mind and spirit are in constant conflict. I need prayer. I knew Jesus much more as a child. I wish everything could fall by the waste side and that I could get onto the path Jesus wants for me. Please please keep me in your prayers. Thank you for taking the time to write about your walk. Please continue to write so many of us can relate.
He looks awful up there. He just can’t do mornings anymore. He’s still sleeping each day at noon. Just try making a morning appointment and you’ll see the dance he does to get you to an afternoon time. Not too late though because when he takes that first sip at mass, the day is over. What a mess this is. But everybody just looks the other way. Where’s the charity in that? Where’s the Christian love in that?
One of my fondest memories growing up was the Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This was followed, of course, the following day by the CommunityBeer Can Clean-up, a three day event. Now, if I were in Ohio right now, I’d have to take about 10 minutes explaining what that is and why we made such a big deal over this event. But here in Montreal, I can just say “Festival of the BVM” and know that you all know what I’m talking about. My favorite event of that festival was the Virtus Training Parade. My family would take our Xanax and arrive downtown hours before the start time to make sure we got a good seat. We set up our camp along Main Street and during the wait, which seemed like an eternity, I would look down the street, imagining what it would be like when I heard the first faint notes of the Virtus marching bands or saw the first Accuser break free from the stands and thrash his way toward the bishop. I remember one year the Grand Marshal was William Shatner, himself. I remember thinking, “Wow, William Shatner! Who’s William Shatner? Oh, that guy from some hotel commercial.” I can remember my little-kid excitement as I watched him pass by, and the disappointment I felt when we left and we packed up our lawn chairs and headed back to the car. But you might ask “what’s the meaning of this story?” Well, let me tell you. You see, that particular day of Summer, it was unusually warm in Montreal. In fact, it was hot as Hell and we were all out of of Schlitz and the imported Soviet equivalent of Schlitz, Quebecstov. Well, on the way through the parking lot, who did I run into but Bill himself. He was sitting in his 1979 Tercel drinking a six-pack of iced, cold Schlitz and listening to “Hotel California” while doing the head-bob. I don’t know what possessed me, but I went over to him and asked if I could have a beer. He said “well………….yes. Join me in this…..overwhelmingly……. Tasty….. (Smirk) Beverage.” I jumped in and grabbed a beer. Next thing I notice is that Bill puts his hand on my knee and is leering at me and speak-singing: “So I called up the Captain, Please bring me my wine” He said, “We haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine” And still those voices are calling from far away, Wake you up in the middle of the night, Just to hear them say…” At that point, I just put the beer down calmly, got out of the car and ran like Hell. He just kept speak-singing as I ran away. To this day, I cannot attend a parade of any kind or even watch one on TV. I DO, HOWEVER, DRINK schlitz constantly. I can honestly say that meeting the him was one of the scariest, and strangely exciting, moments of my empty, directionless life. I’ve always thought about what might have happened if I’d not given into the total creep-factor of that encounter and left. Thanks be to the BVM I’ll never know.
I recommend my “spirituality” to those who can pull it off. As a priest, I don’t have to sell anything, produce anything, or be accountable for anything. I do pretty much what I want when I want. The level of freedom I enjoy keeps me in the priesthood. I pursue my interests at will while recieving good pay and nearly unlimited respect from others. It’s a dream job and I love it. Want to be happy? Now that’s spirituality. | {
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Events
Black to Basics Spring Training
MAPA’s 6th Annual Black to Basics Spring Training will be held February 20-21, 2019, in Columbia, MO. Next year’s training will span two days and offer three different educational tracks. This training is geared towards not just contractor staff, but also public works officials, city engineers, and consultants. | {
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Snowrunner
SnowRunner Hides the Mud, Brings the Cold
Siberia hasn't seen mud in 30 years.
2059
Surprise co-op hit Spintires: MudRunner is getting a sequel and developer Saber Interactive is trading in the browns for whites. SnowRunner is the game's official sequel that changes not only the visuals, but improves on just about every aspect of the original game.
SnowRunner puts you in the driver’s seat of powerful vehicles as you conquer extreme open environments with the most advanced terrain simulation ever. Drive 40 vehicles from brands such as Ford, Chevrolet, and Freightliner as you leave your mark on an untamed open world.
Overcome mud, torrential waters, snow, and frozen lakes while taking on perilous contracts and missions. Expand and customize your fleet with many upgrades and accessories including an exhaust snorkel for heavy waters or chain tires to battle the snow.
The game's world is four times the size of the original offering players plenty of opportunities to get stuck in the snow while delivering folks Instacart orders. Players can also fully customize their rigs and rides to their heart's content. Of course the best thing the game has to offer is full four player online co-op play as you work together to complete challenges and various missions. You can bet you'll be towing each other out of 6 foot snow banks!
SnowRunner is shipping for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on April 28th. You can snag a copy of it over at Amazon right now supporting Co-Optimus in the process. In the meantime, enjoy this launch trailer detailing all the game has to offer. | {
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Cutback Management Versus Optimization
Optimizers look for opportunities, even as resources become more constrained. Rather than asking, “How can we reduce costs?” optimizers attack a business challenge by taking a long, hard look at each step of an operation and asking, “What is the best way of doing this? How can we add value by getting more from the assets that are available to us?” In other words, “How can we optimize?” Instead of looking to “take away” or impose limits, optimizers look for ways to open up infinite opportunities.
An excellent example of how this shift in mind-set works can be found in a company’s call center. When it comes to customer-service calls, the command from management is typically, “Cut call-center costs.” But an optimizer, looking at call-center operations, would suggest a very different mandate. To a quant, the objective becomes, “Optimize the way that customer-service calls are handled.”
Reducing call-center costs entails lowering the cost per call, which can be done either by employing lower-salaried reps or by reducing the time that reps spend on each call. But when you approach the challenge by looking for a way to optimize service calls, numerous alternatives suddenly become available, and chances are, these will not entail paying lower salaries or alienating customers. If instead you improve the speed and quality of solutions to customer problems, each of your existing reps can handle more calls. Cost per call is reduced, but the solution is optimal. Everyone wins: employees, customers, and the company.
Thus, having a different mind-set and asking different questions can result in a very different outcome. It can also send very different messages to stakeholders. The graphic below summarizes the differences in the messages sent to employees and customers by “cutback” managers and those sent by optimizers. Which company would you choose to work for or do business with?
In tough economic times, leanness is often a virtue. The question is, do you have to get lean by being mean? Over time, cutback management decreases employee morale, compromises product quality and innovation, diminishes customer satisfaction and loyalty, and casts a shadow over your brand. If cost-cutting is your mission, then your actions project a sense of scarcity and survival. But if your mission is to be the best, your actions should connote, “We are the best and we can do better.”
This post is excerpted from The Optimization Edge: Reinventing Decision Making to Maximize All Your Company's Assets (McGraw Hill) by Steve Sashihara, www.optimizationedge.com. | {
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What is PTSD?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after being involved in, or witnessing, traumatic events. A wide range of experiences can cause it, from being in a car crash, a traumatic childbirth, losing someone close to you in upsetting circumstances, being raped or assaulted, to surviving a terrorist attack or being in a war. Rachel Boyd, of the mental health charity Mind, says: “If you experience trauma, it’s natural that it has an impact on your life.” But not everyone will develop PTSD. However, she says, if you are affected for a long period or have intense symptoms – such as anxiety, reliving the event or nightmares – you could have PTSD. And it can take years for symptoms to emerge.
Symptoms
PTSD can cause disturbing flashbacks and recurring nightmares. You may feel “hyperalert” – unable to relax your guard, sleep or unwind. Or you may go to unusual lengths to avoid thinking about the trauma by avoiding places, people or situations that remind you of the event. PTSD may also cause physical symptoms associated with anxiety, such as palpitations, diarrhoea and headaches. Alcohol and medication are common props, but trying to blot out the trauma can make it harder to deal with.
Risk factors
PTSD is not a sign of weakness; anyone can be affected. But if you have experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse and neglect as a child, you are more vulnerable because vital relationships of trust may not have developed normally. This early damage may affect all relationships in future. Your personal resilience is a complex mix of genetics, temperament, hormones, mental and physical illness, support systems and previous experiences. But even the most resilient person can be knocked for six by PTSD.
Recognise your risk and know the signs
Having a good support system and looking after your physical and mental wellbeing makes sense, but may not be within your control. Your workplace should offer training, support and risk management. Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) is a peer support system developed by the army and widely used in workplaces where personnel are exposed to a high risk of trauma.
Debriefing can do more harm than good
People with mild symptoms of PTSD may get better within a month without treatment. But if the initial response to the trauma is severe, treatment should start sooner rather than later, otherwise it becomes harder to treat. Everyone who has experienced trauma should be given practical support in an empathic manner by health and social care-workers, but offering everyone one-to-one debriefing that focuses on the event isn’t recommended and may do more harm than good.
Treatments
The recommended treatment depends on the kind of trauma you have experienced and how the symptoms of PTSD affect your life, says Boyd. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but recommended therapies include trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing treatment, which focuses on helping your brain to process the trauma. Medication can be used alongside other treatments. Some people find exercise, mindfulness and art therapies helpful. Your GP should be able to refer you for specialist help if necessary.
Other approaches
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is a modified form of CBT developed by te US psychologist Marsha Linehan. CBT focuses on helping to change unhelpful thinking and behaviours, but DBT also focuses on accepting who you are and puts a lot of emphasis on your relationship with the therapist. The goal is emotional self-regulation, which means you can keep your emotional responses tolerable and within your control.
Because of the sensitivity of the subject, comments on this article are being pre-moderated. | {
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Adopt-A-Mascot
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Behind Enemy Lines: Lions
John Crist/Nate Caminata
07/16/2007
The Bears are heavily favored to win their third straight NFC North title, but could one of their division rivals make a run at it? Lions expert Nate Caminata drops by BearReport.com to detail everything that has happened in Detroit this offseason. Why is Jon Kitna so confident? How good can Calvin Johnson be right away? Who will replace Dre' Bly at corner? Find out the answers inside.
John Crist: A lot of players have been running their mouths lately as to how good the
team is going to be this season, specifically quarterback Jon Kitna and wide
receiver Mike Furrey. Are you drinking their kool-aid, or are your
expectations a little more in check?
Nate Caminata: I've personally never understood the criticism of players that have
high expectations or a positive outlook. Are they expected to respond
to the question, "We're looking mediocre, maybe 7-9 or 8-8"? Morale
and confidence play as big of a role in success on the football field
as talent, so I don't think it's kool-aid as much as it is players who
believe in each other and the team. It's too early, in my opinion, for
any media member of any team to form any kind of reasonable season
forecast. Many things happen between now and the end of training camp,
for both the good and the bad.
I do feel the Lions roster has
witnessed significant upgrades, the coaching staff has another year
under its belt, and many of the fresh faces in 2006 have had a chance
to build chemistry – and none of those factors can hurt the team's
chances in 2007.
JC: Review what Detroit did in free agency and trades this offseason. Who are
the key additions, who was sent packing, and who might be missed?
NC: The team did a nice job acquiring support in the offensive backfield,
both via trade and free agency. The addition of T.J. Duckett (Atlanta)
and Tatum Bell (via trade/Denver) are significant because of two
reasons. First, Kevin Jones, while the most talented back on the
roster, isn't the most reliable. And two, it gives Mike Martz more
toys to operate with in his offense. Defensively, the key acquisition
was defensive end DeWayne White. White shores up the absence of James Hall (traded to St. Louis) but gives the team an every-down threat
that has experience in Rod Marinelli's version of the Tampa 2
defense.
The biggest loss would easily be Dre' Bly. While Bly was a locker room
cancer and on the downside of his career, it's difficult to argue his
on-field production. Quite simply, he was the most productive Lion in
the past several years. Making matters worse, the team didn't
necessarily make an effort to replace him in the secondary. That could
haunt the team in 2007.
JC: Look back at the Lions' draft and evaluate how they did. Most everyone
agreed that wide receiver Calvin Johnson was the best player available, but
who else do you believe can step in and contribute right away?
NC: Johnson will obviously be an immediate impact player and improve the
players around him. However, much of Detroit's draft was concentrated
on depth, or at least providing it to positions of need. Martz will
groom Drew Stanton to eventually unseat starting quarterback Jon Kitna
in the next two years, while later round selections – cornerback A.J. Davis,
linebacker Johnny Baldwin and offensive guard Manuel Ramirez – are long-term projects.
Two players of interest are defensive end Ikaika Alama-Francis and safety Gerald Alexander. Each possesses incredible athletic prowess
and could see immediate playing time should they transition well.
Alama-Francis is built in the Jason Taylor mold, making him a player
that both the coaching staff and media will be watching intently.
Brian Bahr/Getty Images
JC: Offensively, what's the status of running back Kevin Jones' injury? When
does the team expect him back, and does he have a chance to finally live up
to his immense talent this season?
NC: The prevailing thought is Jones will be OK, but only time will truly
tell. The type of injury he suffered can end careers, or it can be
shrugged off during an offseason depending on the severity. It
isn't thought that the injury he suffered did extensive damage, but
given his hard-nosed, north-south mentality, it has the potential to
give him long-lasting affects.
I believe if he can make it through the
last portion of training camp – he'll likely be heldout in the initial
weeks – and the preseason and emerge as the better of the running
backs, he will be fine. However, if his repetitions drop and Bell or
Duckett share the bulk of the duties, it could be early signs that the
injury will have a disastrous affect on what could be a stellar
career.
JC: As for the defense, who is going to take the place of Dre' Bly at
cornerback? The secondary wasn't especially good in 2006 with him, so could
it be even worse in 2007 without him?
NC: No one will replace Dre' Bly, and I think the Lions knew that when
they traded him. Still, Bly did not fit the Cover-2 mold, and
privately the team felt he hurt more than helped the locker room in
Detroit. They will turn to Stanley Wilson, who doesn't have the
explosiveness or big-play ability of Bly but is a solid replacement.
The Lions will still seek potential corners during the remainder of
the offseason, but if Wilson struggles, they will pursue a big name
in next year's free-agency market.
The rest of the secondary is still iffy. The team has a nice set of
safeties in Daniel Bullocks and Kenoy Kennedy, and Fernando Bryant is
a tested – albeit health-challenged – veteran at one corner spot. If
there's any preconceived weakness in 2007 for the Lions, it's in the
secondary.
To read Part II of this series, where John answers five questions from Nate, Click Here. | {
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Thursday, February 19, 2009
GM Beet Sugar
Last year nearly the entire nation's supply of sugar beets was planted using Monsanto's Round Up Ready GM sugar beet seeds. There wasn't a broad industry announcement about this conversion, but rather the change slipped quietly, almost secretly, into fruition. A lawsuit set for April 3rd petitions the court to stop the sale of GM beet seed and require the USDA to conduct a thorough investigation of the safety of these seeds.
The more companies that express the desire for non-GMO beet sugar, the more likely there will be beet producers willing to plant the non-GMO seeds. GMO sugar beet crops are being planted close to other types of beets and chard, other plants of the same species, that risk cross-pollination. Cross-pollination presents immediate danger to those farmers planting non-GMO crops near GM sugar beets.
4 comments:
You tell me. We are reducing a plant's biodiversity to one seed manufactured by one company. Monopoly on beet sugar? Perhaps.
Moreso, the USDA has not conducted extensive research on the safety of these seeds and their impact on the environment. Farmers who make a living selling other types of beets, those not genetically modified, are at risk of being put out of business if cross-pollination from the genetically modified crops occurs in their crop. This will happen, undoubtedly. It's nature's way.
Like Jurassic Park, we are genetically manipulating life without a full understanding of the repercussions of our actions. I do not believe that there is conclusive evidence that what we are doing is harmful or not - but I think we need to get closer to a safe conclusion before unleashing our manmade plants on mother nature. What we are doing isn't Mendel's selective breeding, but taking DNA from other species and introducing them to plants without any understanding of the ripple down effects.
Aside from environmental concern, there are health concerns surrounding GM crops. Hidden allergens may pose a risk if, say, the gene from a peanut plant were inserted into sugar beets. Could the sugar beet then induce a reaction in those allergic to peanuts? Studies have shown people having allergic reations to only GM varieties of certain crops.
Further, these plants are being designed with attention to disease resistance, yield, and pesticide tolerance. Little attention is being paid to nutrient content or flavor. Nutritional values of food may be at risk. Studies have shown diminished nutritional value of fruits and vegetables since we began selecting them based on the above factors, ignoring nutrition. | {
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IBM's Corporate Citizenship office created a social and organizational innovation in public education through a business-school partnership. IBM's Stanley Litow was the key architect in designing Pathways in Technology Early College High School, known as P-TECH. The open enrollment high school located in New York City's Brooklyn was launched in 2011 through a joint partnership between IBM, City University of New York (CUNY), and the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE). The innovative design incorporated career and technical education (CTE), STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), and early college. Students could graduate with an associate degree (essentially, two free years of college) and be "first in line" for jobs at IBM. The school was already seeing remarkable results; one third of the inaugural class entered P-TECH below grade level and nearly all students were promoted to the 10th grade and more than half of them took college courses before the end of their sophomore year. This case explores the motivation behind P-TECH (a growing skills gap), how it was developed along with the challenges, and the attention generated by the unique school design.
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Alfred Seta, Jr., Robin Benner, Tammy Reed and Jerome Crone appeal from their jury convictions for conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846. We affirm their convictions.
2
In the late morning hours of October 16, 1980, agents of the Northern Kentucky Narcotics Enforcement Unit were on a stake-out at the Shenandoah Apartment complex, located in Florence, Kentucky. These agents had received information from an informant which indicated that possible drug-related activities were occurring there. Early in the afternoon, the agents observed a silver Lincoln Continental automobile arrive at the complex. The driver of this vehicle, after parking it, entered the apartment at 6820 Shenandoah Drive. Twenty minutes later, the agents observed three males return to the car, open the trunk and remove three large, burlap-covered packages. The agents suspected that these bundles contained marijuana. These packages were subsequently taken into the apartment.
3
At approximately 4:00 p. m., Officer John Prindle left the scene of the surveillance and traveled to the office of the Boone County Attorney in order to obtain a search warrant for the premises and automobile. Once at the County Attorney's office, Officer Prindle relayed information to a Boone County prosecutor who inserted it into a standardized "Affidavit for Issuance of a Search Warrant" form. However, the search warrant affidavit did not list, in the properly designated space, any of the property to be seized, although references to marijuana could be found on the second page of this form. Also the affidavit recited that Officer Prindle, along with an informant who had previously supplied information that had resulted in arrests and convictions, personally observed the marijuana bales being carried into the premises. After reviewing the affidavit and questioning Officer Prindle, without the presence of a court reporter or transcriber, state judge Robert Hall issued a search warrant for the apartment and motor vehicle and authorized the seizure of "marijuana."
4
Officer Prindle then returned to the apartment building in order to execute the warrant. During his absence, however, the motor vehicle and its driver departed. Its driver, subsequently identified as Jerome Crone, was stopped and arrested by the Florence police for driving with a revoked license. A search of the automobile netted a small quantity of marijuana.
5
The search of the apartment was commenced shortly after 9:00 p. m. The agents found in the apartment approximately 125 pounds of marijuana, a triple beam scale and a quantity of Ziploc storage bags. All three persons found in the apartment, Tammy Reed, the lessee of the searched premises, Alfred Seta, her roommate, and Robin Benner, were arrested and charged with trafficking in a controlled substance. Also, nine photographs depicting Tammy Reed, her son and Alfred Seta seated near a large plastic swimming pool full of marijuana were seized. Ultimately, a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment against all four defendants alleging violations of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846.
6
Prior to trial, all four defendants moved to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the search warrant issued by state judge Robert Hall. These motions were consolidated and heard before a magistrate. The magistrate issued a proposed order that the motion be denied with respect to the marijuana, scale and plastic bags. However, the magistrate ruled that the photographs should be suppressed because they were neither listed in the search warrant nor fell within the "plain view" exception. District Judge Bertelsman entered the proposed order with one modification. He ruled that in the event that defendant Reed took the stand and testified in her own behalf, one photograph could be admitted into evidence for impeachment purposes only. At trial, Tammy Reed did, in fact, take the stand in her own defense, and pursuant to the district court's ruling, the government did introduce one of the seized photographs on cross-examination. Defendant Benner, pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 14, moved for a separate trial after introduction of this photograph. This motion was denied. After three days of trial, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against each defendant on both counts.
7
On appeal, all the defendants attack the validity of the search warrant issued to search defendant Reed's home. Specifically, they allege that Officer Prindle's affidavit did not provide the requisite probable cause because: (1) it failed to list the items to be seized in the search; (2) it failed to list the time and date on which the affiant observed the activity upon which the probable cause was allegedly based; and (3) it failed to establish both the reliability and credibility of its unnamed informant as required by Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964). While the affidavit present in the instant case was not artfully drawn, we cannot conclude that it did not meet the mandates of the Fourth Amendment. Affidavits must be tested and interpreted in "a commonsense and realistic fashion." United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108, 85 S.Ct. 741, 745, 13 L.Ed.2d 684 (1965); United States v. Hatfield, 599 F.2d 759, 761 (6th Cir. 1979). Moreover, omissions resulting from negligence or good faith mistakes should not invalidate an affidavit which on its face establishes probable cause. Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 155-56, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 2676, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978); United States v. Townsend, 394 F.Supp. 736, 744 (E.D.Mich.1975). A court, in determining whether an affidavit is sufficient to require issuance of a search warrant, must consider whether the items sought are sufficiently described so that its exercise of judgment in respect to the items seized may not be deemed to be arbitrary. United States v. Melville, 309 F.Supp. 829, 832 (S.D.N.Y.1970). Reading the affidavit as a whole, we do not find the errors asserted by the defendants to be fatal.
8
The document provides a sufficient description of the materials to be seized. Not only does the affidavit make two references to marijuana on its second page but, the search warrant itself, presented to the issuing judge at the same time as the affidavit, specifically lists marijuana as the item to be seized. In considering the two documents together, it is clear that the issuing judge had no difficulty in determining that marijuana was the object of the search. Further, the document also indicates when the personal observations of the affiant were made. Officer Prindle recited that at 2:00 p. m. on October 16, 1980, he received information from a confidential informant concerning the activities at the Shenandoah Apartment complex. He also asserted that, acting on this information, he observed the activities described above. We note that the affidavit fixes 7:53 p. m. as the time it was submitted to the issuing judge. A "commonsense" reading reveals that Officer Prindle's observations were made some time during this interval.
9
Similarly, the language used in the affidavit both demonstrates the unnamed informant's basis of knowledge and establishes his trustworthiness as required by Aguilar v. Texas, supra. The affidavit states that the informant "personally observed" the defendants carrying "large quantities of marijuana into the ... apartment." The personal observations of an informant have been held to be sufficient to demonstrate his basis of knowledge. See Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 416, 89 S.Ct. 584, 589, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969); United States v. Rollins, 522 F.2d 160, 164 (2d Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 918, 96 S.Ct. 1122, 47 L.Ed.2d 324 (1976). Moreover, the trustworthiness of an informant may be satisfied by a recital of the prior occasions on which he proved to be credible. Officer Prindle in his affidavit noted that the informant had "furnished information which has led to several arrests and convictions." Courts have found similar language to be sufficient. See, e.g., United States v. Dudek, 560 F.2d 1288, 1292 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1037, 98 S.Ct. 774, 54 L.Ed.2d 786 (1977); United States v. Fleming, 566 F.2d 623, 624 (8th Cir. 1977). In sum, we conclude that the present affidavit contained no defects which would invalidate the search of defendant Reed's apartment.
10
The defendants also contend that the trial court erred in its determination of whether probable cause existed by considering testimony concerning the colloquy between Officer Prindle and the issuing state judge where no record of transcript was kept pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 41(c). The defendants' position cannot be supported for it is clear that the trial court did not consider this testimony, but rather, permitted the government to make a proffer for purposes of appeal. After hearing arguments concerning the admissibility of such testimony, the trial court remarked:
11
The ruling is that the Court will not consider any oral statements made by the officer to Judge Hall who issued the search warrant. That is the ruling. But I will allow the officer to testify as if by avowal for the purposes of allowing the United States to make its record. I am not considering any oral statements that were made by the officer to Judge Hall on the issuance of the search warrant.
12
Finally, defendants argue on appeal that the introduction of the photograph to impeach defendant Reed was error. This argument is meritless. In United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620, 100 S.Ct. 1912, 64 L.Ed.2d 559 (1980), the Supreme Court made clear that evidence suppressed because it is the product of an illegal search and seizure can be introduced to impeach the testimony of a defendant. The Court stated:
13
We ... hold that a defendant's statements made in response to a proper cross-examination reasonably suggested by the defendant's direct examination are subject to otherwise proper impeachment by the government, albeit by evidence that has been illegally obtained that is inadmissible on the government's direct case, or otherwise, as substantive evidence of guilt.
14
446 U.S. at 627-28, 100 S.Ct. at 1917. A review of the record clearly demonstrates the photograph was introduced to impeach certain statements made by defendant Reed on direct examination. There was no error. We also note that the trial court instructed the jury on the purpose of such evidence and thereby limited the amount of possible prejudice.
15
We have considered the separate contentions of defendant Benner and find that they are without merit.
16
Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED with respect to each defendant. | {
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Monthly Archives: August 2012
Discharged Ashley today. The results will only be out in a few days time. All the tests cost $1.300,- so far. The spinal tap alone was $600.- but no choice have to give him a chance of diagnosis and treatment. | {
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Wasn't it on Dale Street? Did they have another den in L12 ? Was always a treat to visit, got some Mexican jumping beans in there one time.
Back in the 60's-early 70's it used to be tucked in on the right hand side of Moorfields as you walked up to Tithebarn Street towards Exchange Station, just about where Moorfields Station was later built back then and is now.
I think that photo is of it when it was at that place.
It may well then have moved to Dale Street when the original premises got demolished for the Station construction but I can't confirm.
It was a great little shop for every mischievous schoolboy and prankster.
Logged
I don't do polite so fuck yoursalf with your stupid accusations...
Right you fuckwit I will show you why you are talking out of your fat arse...
Back in the 60's-early 70's it used to be tucked in on the right hand side of Moorfields as you walked up to Tithebarn Street towards Exchange Station, just about where Moorfields Station was later built back then and is now.
I think that photo is of it when it was at that place.
It may well then have moved to Dale Street when the original premises got demolished for the Station construction but I can't confirm.
It was a great little shop for every mischievous schoolboy and prankster.
Showing my lack of age there , I am sure it was on Dale St near the courts in the 80s and 90s. Pranking, wigs and itching powder sadly less in demand these days.
The first one shows where I remember the Wizards being, just about where that canopy is on the right hand side looking up to Exchange and it even looks like it might be a school lad in shorts that may well be peering in the window. That's where Moorfields Station now stands
The second shot has some detail about the (original) shop in Moorfields being purchased by the Corpy for the redevelopment in 71 and in the text it also mentions that it then relocated to Lord Street Arcade before moving back to Moorfields in '74 (I think 1924(!) is actually a misprint).
The third shows what I suspect was the 'new' Moorfields location on the other side of the road that some of you remember it being in.
The Mini seems to be an O or P reg, hard to tell, which dates it to mid 70's, so it would fit.
Gully, as far as I can make out the reg number of the Mini is LBG845R which a Liverpool/Bootle plate from 76/77, if my memory serves me right.
The Mini looks like it is suspiciously parked outside of the medical supplies shop which sold gentleman's accoutrements for the weekend. The man who ran it must have been a registered medical practitioner because he wore a white coat, so I've been told.
The first one shows where I remember the Wizards being, just about where that canopy is on the right hand side looking up to Exchange and it even looks like it might be a school lad in shorts that may well be peering in the window. That's where Moorfields Station now stands
The second shot has some detail about the (original) shop in Moorfields being purchased by the Corpy for the redevelopment in 71 and in the text it also mentions that it then relocated to Lord Street Arcade before moving back to Moorfields in '74 (I think 1924(!) is actually a misprint).
The third shows what I suspect was the 'new' Moorfields location on the other side of the road that some of you remember it being in.
The Mini seems to be an O or P reg, hard to tell, which dates it to mid 70's, so it would fit.
Never expected that from you, there was never an 'O' registration, jumped from N to P.
I think it's a warehouse, those middle doors on each floor, and I'm guessing by the way the light is hitting the photo, perhaps the shot could have been taken around here so that it was possibly behind on Parr Street.
Can't find anything there on streetview these days nor via Google for old warehouses/blitz damage etc.
I think it's a warehouse, those middle doors on each floor, and I'm guessing by the way the light is hitting the photo, perhaps the shot could have been taken around here so that it was possibly behind on Parr Street.
Can't find anything there on streetview these days nor via Google for old warehouses/blitz damage etc.
Do you reckon thatís all the same building Gulley? Even the part with knobs on? Certainly looks to be taken from that central part of Dukey.That shop didnít look like it took much demolishing.
The warehouse looking building and the one with the spire are two different buildings arenít they? The spire one being behind the warehouse.
I think it's the same building. It would be a quite remarkable coincidence of alignment if it wasn't.
The eleborate bit at the top is probably to enclose the 'jigger loft' (something I learn't from here. Pity there's no pictures showing..), the place that held the hoist mechanism for lifting and lowering stuff from the storage floors. That round hole is probably where the hoist would poke out from.
Logged
I don't do polite so fuck yoursalf with your stupid accusations...
Right you fuckwit I will show you why you are talking out of your fat arse...
Not much help from this photo taken 6 years later, although the lamps compare nicely. I assume the whitened bottom part is a black-out requirement, but why the white sections on the glass? Not many 2 storey buildings though.
Not sure on that. I initially thought the whitewash(?) inside the lamp might be a method of shielding the light but early black out regulations involved absolutely no street lights being lit at all. Perhaps the was just an attempt at a light diffusing method tried out before the war.Also, most pics I've seen of the blackout era seem to have black and white stripes on the lamp bases and other street furniture though perhaps it was variably applied, down to the local corporations and paint availability. Needs a bit of research to be definitive.
Logged
I don't do polite so fuck yoursalf with your stupid accusations...
Right you fuckwit I will show you why you are talking out of your fat arse...
Not sure on that. I initially thought the whitewash(?) inside the lamp might be a method of shielding the light but early black out regulations involved absolutely no street lights being lit at all. Perhaps the was just an attempt at a light diffusing method tried out before the war.Also, most pics I've seen of the blackout era seem to have black and white stripes on the lamp bases and other street furniture though perhaps it was variably applied, down to the local corporations and paint availability. Needs a bit of research to be definitive.
All electric by this time I assume? Not that it's relevant.
The original pic: was it taken from the corner of a street? looks like to me. If so there is only one street at that end of Duke st(west side) that doesn't lead across to a street on the opposite side, that's York* street.Line of sight from there would take you through that Art Deco? car park and through Wolstenholme Sq/Parr St.
I've scoured the Internet for a picture, or sketch, of the Rosalind street Wesleyan methodist church in Kirkdale, to no avail.It was built in 1877 and lasted til the second world war when, I think, it was bombed.My wife is doing her family tree and some of her relatives were baptised there in the early 1900's.Any help in tracing down an image would be greatly appreciated
From Google it seems to have been known to have been either in Bootle or Kirkdale. depends on what search criteria you use, ie take out the 'Wesleyan' and you get slightly different results.
I've had a quick looksee around but nothing is coming up on images despite various search variations though I'll persist for a while, it's a challenge...
Annoyingly, there probably is an old photo that features it, or a sketch, though likely it's currently misattributed or under a different title on somewhere like Yo! but it wouldn't be identifiable as such unless we have an original picture of what it looked like.
I know that the enormous scale of the Liverpool Blitz damage was heavily censored at the time but it would be nice to think that the official Blitz damage photos, possibly even of before and after comparisons, still exist somewhere (I'm convinced they would have been taken for official records) but they just haven't yet been located or uploaded yet.
Logged
I don't do polite so fuck yoursalf with your stupid accusations...
Right you fuckwit I will show you why you are talking out of your fat arse...
From Google it seems to have been known to have been either in Bootle or Kirkdale. depends on what search criteria you use, ie take out the 'Wesleyan' and you get slightly different results.
I've had a quick looksee around but nothing is coming up on images despite various search variations though I'll persist for a while, it's a challenge...
Annoyingly, there probably is an old photo that features it, or a sketch, though likely it's currently misattributed or under a different title on somewhere like Yo! but it wouldn't be identifiable as such unless we have an original picture of what it looked like.
I know that the enormous scale of the Liverpool Blitz damage was heavily censored at the time but it would be nice to think that the official Blitz damage photos, possibly even of before and after comparisons, still exist somewhere (I'm convinced they would have been taken for official records) but they just haven't yet been located or uploaded yet.
Aye, it does look like a forlorn quest unfortunately.It would probably be in someones family album somewhere as well as official records.Thanks for trying anyway mate
It seems that the move to convert the gas lights to electric started around '47
I can certainly remember the local gaslight lamps in the late 50s, and it was the mid 50s before our landlord saw fit to convert our house to electricity; I won't forget the struggle to lump the accumulator home.
It was indeed a gents urinal Gulley, you can just see the top step at the far end of the railings. Smelled like an ammonia plant. The church is the Baptist variety on Princes Avenue.What I'd like to know is where the trams/buses (26,72 and 73) that should be coming in from the right had to go instead. | {
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UFC 119 weigh ins: CB Dollaway
CB Dollaway
Training: A typical day training for me varies from day to day. One morning it might be a total sprint workout, and the next it might be grappling at Arizona Combat Sports, and on some occasions I find myself back at my roots in the Arizona State wrestling room. I really like to mix it up, it keeps it more enjoyable for me rather than the same old routine day after day. In the evenings though, I focus on my striking and actual full on MMA sparring with my teammates Aaron Simpson, Joe Riggs, Ryan Bader, Steve Steinbeiss, Seth Baczynski, and Jesse Forbes. We have a great camp full of middleweights, so it’s a great environment in which to get better at every aspect of MMA.When and why did you start training for fighting? I started training about a year and a half ago to continue competing once college wrestling was over
What does it mean for you to fight in the UFC? This is my pro league. This is where I can get paid to do what I love. Since there is no real pro wrestling, the UFC is the next best thing. And in all actuality, I like fighting better.
Did you go to college and if so what degree did you earn? I went to Arizona State University and Graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Sociology and Justice Studies.
What was your job before you started fighting? I was a recruiter/Headhunter working for a company called MGA that specialized in the IT and Telecom fields.
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Not even a downpour slows the pace of Times Square. The Crossroads of the World glistens as New Yorkers rush to Broadway shows or to hail taxis. In partnership with The New York Times Archive, we’re proud to offer this historical photograph, which captures the beauty and nostalgia of 1940s New York in the rain.
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Sunset Boulevard
I watched “Sunset Boulevard” tonight. Familiar with it? William Holden? Gloria Swanson? 1950? Black and white? Yes? No? It was on the Bonnet Channel tonight.
I remember the first time I saw it. I was in New York City staying at my usual hotel at 34th and Lex. I saw it after a long day of meetings and I was enthralled. It was one of those films that I’d heard about from my Mother since childhood – the line “I’m ready for my close-up” was commonly heard around our house. It just took on a whole new significance when I finally saw the film.
Viewing it tonight, it took on a different quality for me. Perhaps that’s the mark of a good movie – it can somehow match its message to your mood, as if it holds some universal hidden code that is only revealed to you piece by piece when you’re ready for it.
Tonight, I was caught up with the madness of the character of Norma Desmond. Her obsession with staying young, with staying the star, with ensuring that her public still noticed her, with her devotion to living in the past and with her frantic desperation of staying in control of William Holden, her insanity around her “love” for him. It was a brilliant portrayal by Gloria Swanson – even if she perhaps did ham it up a bit in spots. I was so entranced by her and the message of madness that I paid very little attention to William Holden’s character, which is surprising as he has become one of my more favorite actors from the ’50s.
If you’ve seen the film, you know how it ends. In fact, if you’ve seen the beginning of the film, you probably know how it ends. But if you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it for you – as long as you promise to watch it. (Go. Go on!) It’s a worthwhile way to spend a chilly evening, and as our world spins crazily around these days, it’s a voyeuristic view inside the mind of a madwoman.
And heaven knows there are too many of those roaming loose these days.
9 comments
Great flick! I could spend all night watching those classics. Kind of bums me that I have like 60 Movie Channels on the satellite and there are so darn few old classics on. I’d like to see a HBO CLASSIC channel showing nothing but pre-1960 BW films. I’d be hooked! 🙂
I know!! I rarely watch anything else much to Kelsea’s dismay. I get so irritated with TCM when they pull into films from the 1960s. If I was alive when it was filmed, how could it be considered a classic? I’m mean, it’s not as if I’M a classic, is it?
” . . .it can somehow match its message to your mood, as if it holds some universal hidden code that is only revealed to you piece by piece when you’re ready for it.” That is exactly right on. I’m having great insightful fun rewatching a ton of movies I first saw as a kid or teenager or undergraduate, and this holds true for ever last one of them. And I dig this one, too, the Blanche DuBois-goes-to-Hollywood quality, the Velvet Underground “What Becomes a Legend Most” Twilight Zone “Queen of the Nile” thread. . .
I too watched this movie last night and I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the movie somehow struck a cord with me too. An obsessed madwoman, mad woman, trying to control the men in her life. I’ll have to ponder this a bit to see if I can draw some corollary in my own life somehow. In any event, as a guy, I liked the car.
You and the Bonnet Channel, sage? Amazing. Do contemplate any paralells in your own life, but just make sure you don’t wind up like William Holden’s character. At least the outdoor pools around you are drained by now. And as a girl, I liked the car. | {
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For people living in Europe, or Japan or the US the past few years have been associated with serious bank crises. Think of the Lehman Brothers, Bank of Cyprus or the Kaupthing bank of Iceland ban... But actually there is a country very close to us which has managed to navigate brilliantly through all this turmoil: Canada. 4 of the 5 major Canadian banks reported a profit for 2008, and all of them reported a profit in 2009, needless to say that none of them asked the Canadian government for an emergency loan which was the rule in the US and Europe at the time. Actually it is not the first thing that the Canadian bank system outperformed the others. During the Great Depression of 1930s, 9000 banks went bankrupt in the US but not a single one made default Canada. It is a fact that the Canadian banking system is extremely stable, which is due to the way lending is done in Canade. First, the Canadian banks have a strong track record of being careful lenders: they only do lend to people who can demonstrate a capacity to repay their loans and especially with regards to mortgages. Canadian banks require that the borrower makes a down payment of typically 20% during a house purchase, and they will be very strict with amortization periods. Second the mortgages are government-backed, meaning that if borrowers cannot repay their loans, the government will step in to make the payments which makes a huge difference for the banks in terms of credit risk. Last but not least Canadian banks are authorized by the government to take big margins on all the products and services to their customers. Similar fee practices would be criticized by most governments but they are encouraged by the both Canadian government and finance regulatory body. And you bet that the Canadian banks use this opportunity to increase their revenues in terms of crisis and build up their treasury. All this regulated by the Canadian Bank Act which is a very good regulation: both strict and pragmatic for the business. The conclusion we draw from this is very clear: Canadian banks, are low-risk money machines with good returns to investors. They are exactly what bank should be. How to buy shares from Canadian banks? First, the stocks of the five major Canadian banks are traded in the New-York Stock Exchange:
Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS)
Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RBC)
Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE:TD)
Bank of Montreal (NYSE:BMO)
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (NYSE:CM)
Or if you have a limited capital to invest we recommend that you subscribe to the Exchange Traded Fund from Blackrock: iShares S&P/TSX Capped Financial Index Fund traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (ticker TSX:XFN):
To find a broker to invest in Canada follow the link HERE.To learn more about exchange-traded-funds follow the link HERE. | {
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
Putting a face to a name - most of the time
I'm in Sydney at the moment, and am getting a chance to look at family photos. I remember this photo from my childhood - who wouldn't? The face cut out, of 'Clyde Ewer' always intrigued me, and I was told he was the back sheep of the family. Luckily my grandmother wrote names on the back of photos at some point before she died so we could tell who was who.
My grandmother Jean Hall nee Staniland (her mother is Ruby at top right of photo) wrote the following on the back: | {
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a writer wanders
Red Mountain: Travel Blogged
I spend a hell of a lot of time going on about how I feel trapped by routine these days— going to work, coming home, frequenting the only bar in town, occasionally grocery shopping, and doing “what everyone else does” for fun. But really, I’m selling poutine to tourists over small talk about travel and snow, hanging out with awesome people all the time, and on my days off, shredding the pow, as they call it around these parts. I should really shut the hell up, so after almost 3 full months of skiing Red, here’s my proper travel blogger review— Some reasons why, when I think of my mountain, I get butterflies in my stomach.
It’s fucking gorgeous
Mountains: You’d best believe you’re in them
At Red, it’s really obvious that you are not simply on a mountain, but IN the mountains. (Shoutout to Will & Wes from North Carolina!) There’s the 3 mountains that are officially skiable, chairlift accessible and all that good stuff: Red, Granite and Grey. Then there’s the one’s people with backcountry gear are always talking about hiking: Kirkup and Roberts. And then there’s the endless peaks in every direction, none of which I know what to call. It would take a lifetime of looking around to get all their names down. But who cares? They’re pretty.
It’s our little secret
Proudly repping Red underneath our desk, next to laundry and wine bottles not finished at the last party
“Ditch the Crowds” is Red Mountain’s big slogan for trying to attract… the crowds?
Before I got here, I didn’t quite buy it, but it’s true. The other day at work, a man with a young son said to me, “We didn’t wait to get on a lift once!” like he was telling me something I’d never believe.
He was in town on a bit of a slow weekend, but as far as week days go, 90% of the time I can literally ski straight up to the load line, coasting off the speed of my last run.
Take a look around you on just about any run (groomers not withstanding), and you probably won’t see anyone. Maybe not even the buddy you were skiing with. Hopefully they’ll be at the bottom when you get there.
It pushes your limits
ATTENTION
When I first got here, I had no interest whatsoever in skiing trees. Trees are scary and turning just slows you down anyways. I was the teenaged skier who spent every weekend bombing the same run over and over, and I basically planned to turn back into that animal for my season in Rossland.
However, what actually happened is that I got real bored, real fast. With over 50% of the runs rated black or double black, that happens to just about anyone like me. I’m pleased to report that I now shred Mini Bowls on the regular, as a warmup even. And, when pressured, I drop a double black every once in a while.
There’s so many surprises
Everything from the entire ridge that you’re not sure how you overlooked the existence of for so long, to fresh tracks days after the last snowfall, to the picnic tables on skis next to the large supply of firewood. I’m not even going to try and pretend I’ve seen a respectable fraction of the crazy stuff, but I’ve seen enough to know that this is not your average mountain.
It’s chill as fuck
Pretty much anyone you ever load a chairlift with could be your new best friend at Red. It doesn’t matter if you’re a skier and they’re a snowboarder, or if they’re born and raised local and you’re a rookie, or even if there’s a 50 year age difference between the two of you. It is not at all unlikely that someone cruising past their 70th birthday without even noticing with ask you to smoke a joint with them.
Really hip mothers are probably the largest demographic to pick me up when I’m hitch hiking to and from work. And the fact that I hitch hike to and from work isn’t even sort of weird.
The vibe is built right into the infrastructure, with runs named things like “Beer Belly” and “The Chute Show”. The free shuttle bus, which has a capacity of something like 25, will cram easily double that amount of people on it if there’s a party happening at Rafters. And speaking of Rafters, the managers actually condone an activity known as “table crawling”, which is the act of maneuvering one’s body under and around the surface of a very tippy bar table without touching the ground.
Also— Yes, you can just hang out in this random cabin in the woods. No, nobody leaves it trashed every Monday morning. And YES, this place is real!
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So you guys went to the ski-bum life, hey? I tried to work at RED, they didn’t want me. That was shitty. But I went hitchhiking instead. It wasn’t that great. Maybe your opportunity to be “there” isn’t so bad? Although I totally know what you mean about the bro culture on mountains. It pains me every time I go or work on them.
Hey, speaking of better humans, and now communities, perhaps your best choice isn’t to find such a community, but rather to create one? Allie, you and Adrian are very charismatic and interesting people. During my entire two years living in Vancouver, I never met people quite as real and awesome as you guys. GOOD THING IT WAS ONLY RIGHT BEFORE YOU LEFT FOR VAGABONDING ADVENTURES, HUH? Ah well, that’s life; beauty is ephemeral.
Anyway, “hello from China”, and also, I don’t think I’ve talked with you about it, but I plan to buy some land when I come back to Canada and start one of those aforementioned communities. Let’s dream. | {
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Nunavut’s environmental review said no to a mining proposal but Ottawa said yes. What happened? Hoping to finally make a profit at its four-year-old Mary River operation, Baffinland Iron Mines asked permission to boost production from 4.2 million tonnes annually to six million tonnes.
Worried about possible environmental effects, the Nunavut Impact Review Board recommended in late August that the federal government reject the proposal. But it was the NIRB recommendation that got rejected. Five cabinet ministers approved the mine’s request, for the time being anyway.
Swaying the decision was the support of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, whose members “strongly support the Production Increase Proposal as a method of furthering Inuit aspirations in the region,” Ottawa stated. Support also came from Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq, who urged a swift decision in favour.
It wasn’t long coming. Just one month after the NIRB forwarded its recommendation, Ottawa announced its approval, expressing concern about the socio-economic effects of shutting down the mine for part of the year once the 4.2-million-tonne limit is reached and about the mine’s long-term viability.
Increased production will “allow the Inuit of the region the opportunity to maintain and more fully realize the economic and other benefits of the mine.” That’s not to dismiss environmental concerns. Monitoring will take place until the end of next year, when permission comes up for review. | {
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5/3/16 YoungLife by Sarah A. Miller
Volunteer Art Reilly talks with John Tyler High School student Paul Williams, 15, during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
Volunteer Nathan Ledkins talks with John Tyler High School students Demonte Robinson and Emmanuel Daniels while he grills hamburgers during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
Volunteer Nathan Ledkins talks with John Tyler High School students Demonte Robinson, left, Emmanuel Daniels and Demetri Moore while he grills hamburgers during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
John Tyler High School students eat cookies during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
Volunteer Kat Ledkins passes out hamburger condiments to John Tyler High School students during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
John Tyler High School student Ta'Mia Johnson, 15, laughs during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
Group leader Jane Rogers, center, is pictured with John Tyler High School students during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
Group leader Jane Rogers, center, is pictured with John Tyler High School students during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
John Tyler High School students eat homemade hamburgers during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)
John Tyler High School student Paul Williams, 15, talks with group leader Jane Rogers during Young Life Wednesday night May 4, 2016 in Tyler. Young Life Tyler is an organization that seeks to share God's love with kids through the simple act of being present in their lives. Tyler Young Life is the longest consecutive running young life club in the world and has grown.
(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph) | {
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MIXTAPE MONDAY: STREET PHILOSOPHER AKA ELLIS
By: admin
Whether you know it or not, Baltimore is on the come-up with a new sound and accent that hasn’t quite reached the masses. In the same city where Tupac attended high school, there is a new generation of conscience emcees making their mark on the industry.
ELLIS is definitely one of them. He’s been on his grind for several years and both he and his manager Toni are not waiting for any opportunities to come their way. Instead, they are aggressively spreading his music one video, show and city at a time.
ELLIS is a kind of personality that just comes across as a down-to-earth duuuude. (That’s a Baltimore pronunciation) That’s the impression I get when talking to him and listening to his music. It’s the perfect blend of street knowledge mixed with scholastic sophistication.
Now, let’s let the music speak for itself. You can download the link below. MIXTAPE – The Education of ELLIS | {
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Dance
You've seen them at weddings, the couple of a certain age gliding across the dance floor. It wasn't so long ago that people could Jitterbug, waltz and fox trot with ease. Popular TV shows and growing enrollment in dance classes may be an indication that coming generations are also looking at dance as a skill, or a form of self-expression that needs to be acquired. But are there still places to cut a rug in Iowa? Or, has the heyday of the dance hall long since past? Host Charity Nebbe will find out on Talk of Iowa. Guests include, Tamara Kenworthy, President of Castle Club in Des Moines, Janice Baker, Dance Faculty at ISU, Myron Kelleher, compiler of www.iowaballroom.com, and Jim Juve, owner of Country View in Decorah. | {
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How To Use Your Phone if You Have Neck Pain
Nowadays, using technology on a regular basis such as smartphones, laptops or tablets, we use them so often and for such an extended period of time, that they can be a contributing factor towards experiencing or exacerbating cases of neck pain. According to a recent report by Ofcom this year, people are on average spending on average 24 hours a week online, with around 1 in 5 adults spending up to 40 hours. Their research accounted the huge rise in time spent online, to the explosion in popularity of smartphones over the last 10 years. In fact, it was shown we can check our phones around every 12 minutes.
What is ‘Tech Neck’?
Most people when using their mobiles tend to have less of an awareness about their posture, therefore there is a growing number of patients developing a particular neck position that has been called ‘tech neck’. As people tend to lean their head down in order to look at the phone, or their laptop or tablet if it’s on their lap, whether this be in the morning or evening on the commute to and from work, or in their spare time in the evening, it’s common to develop more of a forward head carriage as the weight of the head can alter the neck curve. This position is quite unhealthy for the spine as it places more pressure on more delicate areas of the spine that are not designed to bear that weight, this can lead to the accelerated level of degeneration in the discs or more serious conditions developing such as nerve compression or eventually disc bulging or herniation. Early signs that you need to adjust your posture in your day-to-day life can include neck pain, upper back or shoulder muscle tension and frequent headaches.
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Avoiding Neck Pain
There are several ways you can avoid developing neck pain, or worsening the problem if you’ve already been suffering with it, as there are healthier ways you can use your technology devices. Firstly, if you’re using your phone regularly start to become more conscious of how you’re holding your mobile phone. Rather than holding it down so your neck is forced to look down, try holding the phone higher at eye level. This small adjustment can go a long way to avoid developing stiffness and tension down the back of your neck. Also, try not just limiting this change of behaviour to only your phone. If you have a desk job, try to make sure your neck is a neutral position when looking at your computer screen. This may mean you have to stand the monitor on books in order to lift it higher, or lower your desk chair.
Holding your Phone at Eye-Level
Our next tip is to purchase ‘pop sockets’ in order to help you manage to hold your phone high, at eye level, for sustained periods of time. If you’ve ever held your phone in front of your eyes while lying on your back, you know how difficult it is to hold your phone in that position for any length of time. Making this step easier for yourself will help to make it something you are able to comfortably maintain as a lifestyle change, rather than something that you stick to for a couple of days and gradually revert back. Pop sockets are small sockets that attach onto the back of your phone or case, they can lie almost flat and can also be pulled up so that you can prob your phone up – but they also serve as a helpful aid to your hands in order to have something to grip to when you’re holding your phone at eye-level. These sockets are inexpensive and can go a long way to help make the change more sustainable for you in the long-term.
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Neck Pain taking Telephone Calls
The last tip that we have at this time, is to avoid holding your phone to your ear in order to take telephone calls. Most people if they take a telephone call where they’re holding their phone (this could be a mobile or an office phone) to their ear, tend to crook their neck slightly or extremely if they’re supporting the phone between the shoulder and ear without holding it with their hands at all. If you’re regularly taking phone calls, you may find that taking a hands free approach with either a Bluetooth headset or opting for headphones will help your neck in the long-run to avoid unnatural neck positions especially if you’re on a long call and hold the position for an extended period of time.
Making these subtle changes to your everyday life can contribute towards a much healthier neck in the long term. It’s common to underestimate the effect the weight of your head leaning forward can have an impact on the curve in your neck. A forward head carriage over a long period of time can even contribute towards a hump forming at the base of the neck, as well as causing a multitude of unpleasant symptoms that can make your daily life, as well as sleeping, uncomfortable or painful. Your neck also carries vital information from your brain to the rest of your body, so in order to help your body function effectively for as long as possible, taking care of your neck is highly recommended.
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I have been very impressed with the care and attention I have received from Michael, Joe, Lara and Kerryn at the Mayfair Clinic. I believe that this clinic is at the forefront of holistic care for people suffering from back pain. As well as their hands on approach to the patient they also require the patient to be proactive in taking part in a personal and gentle exercise programme.
Jai Brodie
08:16 03 Oct 18
Michael and his team are very professional, competent and friendly. After years of misinformation, they have now set me on the path to recovery. Highly recommend the Mayfair Clinic
Isabel Trillo
21:08 17 Sep 18
Joe was amazing with my treatment. Would recommend to any one.
FatimaBintou Haase
10:37 16 Sep 18
Incredible experience of reducing the root causes of my back pain and patient care:
I had back pain all my life, and faced a particular bad episode of back pain since 6 month when I came to the Mayfair clinic. I wasn't able to bend forwards and in constant pain. Not only did Michael reduce this to almost zero pain in just a few weeks, but he also helped me to adjust my exercise routine to my spine and back condition. I couldn't recommend it enough - an investment that really pays out!
Victor Agboola
14:13 11 Sep 18
How can you get away from a terrible lower back pain without surgery?.
Try "Mayfair Clinic".. I'm a living example.
I was told by my Surgeon that the only option is to get me under his knives which i refused.My inner mind keep telling me "there should be another option than surgery, then my work colleague gave my MAYFAIR CLINIC telephone number off chance.
Believe it friends, Miracles still happen.
The healing process is slow but significantly improved. Just follow the exercise procedures.
Mayfair Clinic is God sent when I needed it most. | {
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Looking For Answers Beyond The Cosmic Horizon
This spectacular image of the large spiral galaxy NGC 1232 was obtained by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 1998. NGC 1232 sits in the constellation Eridanus (The River) at a distance of about 100 million light-years and is about twice the size of the Milky Way galaxy.
ESO
Where does the Universe end? Or, to put it differently, does the Universe have an edge? When cosmologists say that the Universe is expanding, people tend to think of an exploding bomb. They see galaxies as shrapnel, flying off in all directions. Even if intuitive, this image is dead wrong.
The cosmic expansion is an expansion of space itself. Since Einstein's theory of general relativity, space has been endowed with a plasticity that allows it to expand, shrink or fold like a rubber balloon in response to the presence of matter (and energy).
Galaxies are like islands in an ocean (in three dimensions, though), distance markers that are carried along by the expansion. Think of floating logs on a river, for example. If the galaxies have any additional motion, say, when two are near each other and attract gravitationally, this motion is superimposed on the inexorable cosmic drag. (It's actually called "peculiar motion.")
One of the consequences of the cosmic expansion is that the Universe has no center. (An assumption here, which has been confirmed so far by observations, is that the Universe, which includes all of observable space and matter in it, is homogeneous, that is, the same everywhere when averaged over large enough distances.)
Imagine that you, from your galaxy, observe other galaxies around you. Due to the expansion, most of them are moving away from you. You'd then conclude that you must be the center, since every other galaxy is receding from you. However, an observer in another galaxy will see the same thing: every one else receding from her. The same with each and every galaxy. In the Universe, space is the ultimate democracy: all points are equally important.
But if this is true, how to explain the smallness of space near the Big Bang? If the Universe is expanding, in the past distances were shorter. Astronomers can measure the recession speed of galaxies and, from them, project when they would have been "on top" of one another in a tiny volume. This moment marks the beginning of our cosmic history. According to modern measurements, this happened some 13.7 billion years ago, about three times longer than the age of the Earth. Even here, as long as we can talk about space, all points on it are equivalent.
Only when we reach the "singularity" do things break down: however, the notion that space shrinks to nothing at time zero is an extrapolation based on classical ideas and is surely wrong: new physics kicks in when the Universe is very small.
When we consider the finite cosmic history and the speed of light together, we arrive at a key concept, that of the cosmic horizon: since the speed of light delimits the speed with which we can receive information, in a Universe with a finite age we can only receive information from objects situated at the maximum distance that light could have covered within this time. Somewhat like the horizon at the beach, that delimits how far we can see.
But the ocean doesn't end at the horizon: there is more water beyond. What about the Universe? It also keeps on going. Probably. We can't be completely sure since we can't get information from beyond the horizon. And how far is that? If the Universe weren't expanding, the distance to the horizon would be 13.7 billion light-years. But since space gets stretched with the expansion, light waves get lift and we can see further than that: the cosmic horizon is roughly at 42 billion light-years away.
Beyond the horizon, the Universe could keep on going, if space is indeed infinite in all directions. It could also be closed on itself, like the surface of a balloon (but in three dimensions, not something easy to visualize), or be really weird beyond what we can see. The existence of a cosmic horizon implies a fundamental limitation to how much we can know: we are partially, if not totally, blind to what lies beyond. There could even be a multiverse out there.
To eventually find the answers to these questions will surely take a lot of ingenuity and, possibly, a new set of physical laws.
You can keep up with more of what Marcelo is thinking on Facebook and Twitter @mgleiser | {
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Protei is an unmanned shape-shifting sailing robot developed Open Hardware by a global community of makers called Open-H2O (former Open_Sailing) the collective randomwalks and Amorphica. Protei has no rudder nor centerboard : the entire hull bends to control this sailing robots providing it unprecedented sailing properties. Originally developed to clean up oil spill, Protei will be used to measure radioactivity, plastic debris, monitor fisheries, coral reefs, algae blooms, provide general oceanographic data or serving as surface satellite link to underwater vehicles. Protei has been produced by the V2_in Rotterdam, NL. Protei has been generously funded by over 300 backers on Kickstarter. Everyone is welcome to join, contribute, modify, produce, distribute the design and share their findings.
Eight of these robots are now prowling the Gulf, driven remotely by researchers from institutions across the country. The gliders carry sensors to measure everything from water temperature to organic material that could mark the presence of dissolved oil.
The idea, said Rutgers University oceanographer Oscar Schofield, one of the collaborators on the effort, is to track the spill and provide data on ocean movement to improve predictions of where the oil will go next.
The gliders look like torpedoes with wings. They move by sucking in seawater, which causes them to tip forward and sink. When the glider reaches the desired depth, it expels the water, causing it to tip back toward the surface. The cycle, controlled by a driver hundreds of miles away in a laboratory, propels the glider forward in a saw tooth pattern. This low-energy propulsion means that batteries that could run a propeller for mere days can keep the glider going for months.
Each glider carries sensors to measure ocean properties like temperature and salinity. That data can be entered into models to predict the movements of ocean currents — and of the spreading oil slicks.
Other sensors sample the water chemistry in an effort to measure the effects of the spill. Chlorophyll detectors measure plankton blooms, and a device called a flourometer measures colored dissolved organic material, which can include oil. Each time the gliders surface, they beam this data back to researchers in the lab.
The gliders in the Gulf launched in late May, and are currently off the coasts of Florida and Louisiana. A map of the robot’s real-time location is available atrucool.marine.rutgers.edu/deepwater, along with the data collected. | {
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Tim Roadley, author of Learning Core Data for iOS: A Hands-On Guide to Building Core Data Applications and the upcoming book "Learning Core Data with Swift" discusses Apple's Core Data Framework with Pearson Senior Acquisitions Editor Trina MacDonald. They talk about the challenges developers face when trying to learn how to use the framework and how Apple's Swift programming language makes those challenges easier.
From the author of
Trina MacDonald: Apple’s Core Data framework seems designed to take a lot of the effort and tedium out of coding, specifically when dealing with data objects. Yet it seems a lot of iOS programmers struggle with learning how to use it, and some avoid it altogether. Why do you think that is?
Tim Roadley: I think part of the reason some programmers avoid Core Data is the perception that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. They just want to save a few objects to disk and don’t have time to learn a whole new framework. It’s tempting to instead save data to a file like JSON or XML because it’s easy. Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for that; however, it’s not scalable and can introduce memory pressure down the road.
For those who struggled to learn Core Data, I think this can historically be attributed to the lack of quality step-by-step learning material. When I first started learning Core Data I was frustrated that there wasn’t a clear path beyond examining existing apps and deciphering class references. Particularly having come from a traditional database background I felt that Core Data obscured areas that I was used to controlling directly. What I understand now is that I don’t have to worry about that stuff any more. Just focus on designing a good data model and let Core Data handle the rest.
Trina: What, if anything, does Swift bring to the table that might make Core Data more accessible to programmers?
Tim: I think Swift code is easier to understand because it’s easier to read. Once developers have a handle on Swift, this will help minimize distraction and make learning new frameworks easier. That said, at this point in time Swift is new to everyone so will take a bit of getting used to. Thankfully Swift is pretty simple to pick up for an Objective-C programmer once they understand optionals and a handful of other day-to-day changes.
Trina: Apple’s announcement of Swift has changed the game for iOS application development in general. But traditionally working with Core Data has required some fairly deep knowledge of Objective-C. So, how has Swift impacted working with Core Data?
Tim: Fortunately the introduction of Swift hasn’t impacted working with Core Data much at all. NSArray has taken a back seat to typed swift arrays; however, for the most part everything else is the same. There are a few gotchas with syntax and NSManagedObject subclasses to be aware of; however, converting from Objective-C to Swift has been pretty straightforward.
Trina: How is your upcoming book "Learning Core Data with Swift" any different from your previous book “Learning Core Data”?
Tim: I was overwhelmed with the positive feedback for the Learning Core Data title, so I wanted to hold true to that winning formula. Of course, everything will be updated for Swift using the latest versions of Xcode and iOS. The Groceries application (built from scratch in the book) will use CloudKit instead of StackMob. This will demonstrate how you can now share data between iCloud accounts, in this case to share a common shopping list. I’ll also be refactoring the helper classes to make them even easier to reuse in to your own projects.
Trina: With Apple continuing to innovate at a fairly rapid pace, and given the likelihood that more exciting developments will be announced at the 2015 Worldwide Developer’s Conference, what changes or improvements would you like to see made to Core Data in the coming year?
Tim: I would like to see a set of convenience classes developed by Apple to replace what readers build with my upcoming book "Learning Core Data with Swift." There are so many things common to every application that could be made boilerplate code to save developers time. For example, in my book readers develop a reusable class that sets up the whole Core Data stack in one line of code. As another example, a reusable Core Data Table View Controller class is created that provides an NSFetchedResultsController backed UITableViewController with only few lines of customization code needed. Apple could extend this to UICollectionViews, UIPickerViews etc. | {
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Moscow Circus at Raue Center (Crystal Lake, IL), February 19
For children and adults alike, each show begins as soon as the audience enters the theatre. The foyer is filled with Russian musicians, clowns, costumed performers and dancers. Theatregoers walk directly from the street into a traditional Russian Folk Festival atmosphere. The show, “A Russian Folk Fair,” is based on centuries-old Russian traditions and fables and is narrated by mythical Russian characters. The production is a dramatic tale told and based on the foundation of the circus arts, and the famed performers of the Moscow Circus, in a theatre-circus format. | {
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U.S. Senate candidate Joe Arpaio has repeatedly pledged his unwavering support for President Donald Trump, but the divisive retired sheriff is unwilling or unable to elaborate on the president's policies. Arpaio declined at a news conference Tuesday to explain how Mr. Trump's earlier plan to impose tariffs on Chinese imports would affect Arizona residents and whether the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal would make Americans less or more safe.
* * *
"I am not a 'yes man,' but I do support the majority of his policies, his agenda, and I'm going to continue doing that," Arpaio said. He was unable to name any Trump policies he opposed.
* * *
Asked to say how the tariffs threatened by Mr. Trump would affect Arizona residents, Arpaio said only that he wants products to be made in the United States and doesn't believe the approach to tariffs would hurt the state.
He also was asked whether he knew what a tariff was.
"I know what tariffs are, but I'm not here to do a history — to educate you on what a tariff is," Arpaio said.
Similarly, he declined to say whether the Iran nuclear deal would make the United States safer.
"I don't have all the foreign information," Arpaio said. "You expect me to know everything. I am not in the Senate yet."
Kelli Ward, a top contender in the hotly contested Arizona Republican Senate primary, told supporters last month that President Donald Trump once told her that Joe Arpaio “shouldn’t get in” the Senate race.
The Arizona Republic obtained video of the former state senator addressing supporters on May 24. She recalled a conversation with Trump last year at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Ward said she was with her husband and daughter and was introduced to Trump. She said he recognized her and “basically knew everything that was going on in Arizona and in the race.”
“You know, he had his opinions,” she said. “He was like, 'You're up 15 points on Martha (McSally), and, you know, Joe shouldn't get in' — he had a few other things to say about that. I'll keep that to myself."
Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) surged into first place with a commanding 14-point lead in Arizona's closely watched GOP Senate primary, according to a new poll.
A poll conducted by Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights (OHPI) has McSally ahead with a little over 39 percent of the vote, followed by former state Sen. Kelli Ward at 24.5 percent and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio trailing far behind at nearly 14 percent. About 22 percent of voters remain undecided.
This is a big shift, since OHPI's last poll, from April, had Ward in first place and leading McSally by 9 points in the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake. Arizona will hold its primary on Aug. 28.
Opinion: Attorney General Jeff Sessions doesn't need to look far to see why Joe Arpaio lost his last sheriff's race.
Making a desperate leap for Donald Trump’s coattails – or maybe just an excuse for another fundraising drive – Joe Arpaio is asking U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate why voters tossed him out of office in 2016.
The 86-year-old ex-sheriff, now a candidate for the Senate, has decided that Barack Obama’s Justice Department had it in for him.
He’s not alleging that the Russians were involved – just Murray Snow, the federal judge who ultimately found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt of court.
* * *
Arpaio is in a three-way race for the Republican nomination for the Senate. He can't win. He can, however, serve as a nice money tree worth shaking one last time.
And so comes this ridiculous appeal to Jeff Sessions.
“An investigation will shine light, once and for all, on the obvious corruption within the DOJ and FBI while there is time to reverse the evil trends," Arpaio's attorney wrote. “If not rooted out now, the rot will spoil much of what is good about our nation.”
Ariz. Rep. wrote:Making a desperate leap for Donald Trump’s coattails – or maybe just an excuse for another fundraising drive – Joe Arpaio is asking U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate why voters tossed him out of office in 2016.
In his bid for the U.S. Senate, Joe Arpaio is relying largely on small donations from donors outside Arizona.
While his top-tier rivals are collecting four-figure checks, the former Maricopa County sheriff touts his $25 donations from California to Washington, D.C., as evidence of his popularity with everyday Americans.
* * *
U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, one of his Republican rivals, counts her campaign contributions in the millions. By contrast, Arpaio raised just $500,000 in the first three months of 2018, even though he entered the Senate race three days before McSally.
Campaign-finance records show that during the last quarter, most of Arpaio’s disclosed donations — those totaling $200 or more — came from California. Eleven of those donations, representing about $4,700, came from Sacramento.
Texans are also fueling his candidacy: 46 donations came from the Lone Star State, mostly from Houston.
And while Arpaio is campaigning to help President Donald Trump to drain the Washington, D.C. swamp, records show he has received 32 contributions worth nearly $14,000 from Washingtonians.
About a dozen Arizonans contributed during the last quarter, disclosed donations show, including multiple donations from a Wickenburg retiree.
Joe Arpaio, the former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona revealed that if he wins the U.S. Senate race in his state he would push for the deployment of the U.S. military inside Mexico to stop drugs, gangs and illegal aliens before they reach the American border.
* * *
Unveiling part of his policy agenda, Arpaio explained his proposal to deploy U.S. troops inside Mexico:
My idea, which is maybe out of the box: Since we have agents that are government employees working with foreigners, why don’t we use another government agency that happens to be the U.S. Army and send them across the border to work with the foreign authorities, the Federales and the Mexican army? Not to invade Mexico.
We have been doing it anyway with other types of government employees so who is going to argue with this? Because something has to be done before the drugs come over the border. Stop it before it gets to the border. That is how you solve the problem.
Arpaio explained that Mexico would need to first agree to the deployment. He suggested that President Trump could use pressure tactics, such as withholding foreign aid, if Mexico resists.
Conservative megadonor Robert Mercer has cut a $500,000 check to a super PAC backing Arizona Senate hopeful Kelli Ward, a major cash infusion that comes ahead of the Aug. 28 primary.
Polls have shown Ward, a conservative former state senator, trailing GOP Rep. Martha McSally. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an immigration hard-liner, is also running in the primary for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.
Mercer, a reclusive billionaire and a former hedge fund executive, has emerged as a major Ward benefactor. With his latest contribution, he has given KelliPAC a total of $800,000 in support of Ward this election cycle.
Mercer also funded Ward during the 2016 election season, when she waged an unsuccessful primary challenge against Sen. John McCain.
Smith is a vice president and member of the board of directors at Sinclair. His father, the late Julian Sinclair Smith, founded the company.
* *
Smith donated $1,000 to Arpaio’s Senate campaign on May 23, according to Arpaio’s most recent Federal Election Commission filing. Like Sinclair’s political action committee, Smith has largely donated to Republicans this election cycle. As Politico reported, Smith also donated $1,000 last year to “Rep. Greg Gianforte's campaign the day after the Montana Republican was charged with assaulting a reporter.” The Guardian reported in April that Robert E. Smith, who is Frederick Smith’s brother and a member of Sinclair’s board of directors, donated the maximum amount of $5,400 to Gianforte's campaign.
The American Civil Liberties Union is spending $720,000 in the U.S. Senate race in Arizona to send people into neighborhoods to hand out fliers and run a TV commercial critical of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s treatment of immigrants.
The legal advocacy group normally stays out of political races, but it is getting involved in the Arizona campaign and other races across the country to emphasize the importance of civil liberties to voters, said Steve Kilar, a spokesman for the ACLU’s affiliate in Arizona.
“Joe Arpaio’s record in particular is so emblematic of what can happen if people aren’t paying attention to civil liberty records of the people they are electing,” Kilar said, adding that the group doesn’t endorse candidates and instead gives voters information so they can make decisions on issues affecting civil liberties. The $720,000 spent by the ACLU in the Arizona race includes $400,000 in expenditures reported Wednesday.
* * *
Arpaio said the ACLU is worried that he’ll win the Aug. 28 GOP primary and will move on to beat U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, considered the front-runner among Democrats, in the Nov. 6 general election. “I am pretty happy that they are worried about me,” Arpaio said.
Technically this is a voter-education campaign not specifically aimed at Arpaio, but this does not seem like money well spent.
Frederick Smith, a senior executive at Sinclair Broadcast Group, recently donated $1,000 to Arizona Republican Joe Arpaio’s Senate campaign.
* * *Smith is a vice president and member of the board of directors at Sinclair. His father, the late Julian Sinclair Smith, founded the company.
* * Smith donated $1,000 to Arpaio’s Senate campaign on May 23, according to Arpaio’s most recent Federal Election Commission filing. Like Sinclair’s political action committee, Smith has largely donated to Republicans this election cycle. As Politico reported, Smith also donated $1,000 last year to “Rep. Greg Gianforte's campaign the day after the Montana Republican was charged with assaulting a reporter.” The Guardian reported in April that Robert E. Smith, who is Frederick Smith’s brother and a member of Sinclair’s board of directors, donated the maximum amount of $5,400 to Gianforte's campaign.
Sinclair did not respond to a request for comment.
I built the doors for Fred's house overlooking Loch Raven. Small world. His brother Duncan is the one who told me what this country needs to solve all its internal problems is a dictator.
The MSCO's blatantly unconstitutional search of employment records (under Arpaio's leadership), and subsequent provision of the records obtained to ICE (with attendant press release), leads to later suppression of those documents in a civil proceedings (a very unusual result)
Former sheriff Joe Arpaio filmed a video at the U.S.-Mexico border with a former Florida cult member who goes by the name Michael the Black Man.
In the video posted on Thursday, Michael has his arm around Arpaio as the ousted former sheriff promotes his improbable race for Arizona's open Senate seat during a visit to the border fence in Naco, Arizona.
Michael was a follower of the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, a black-supremacist religious sect in Florida. In 1990, the feds charged Michael and over a dozen fellow cult members with conspiracy related to brutal murders in Florida.
Alongside Arpaio and Michael in the video is an independent Senate candidate in Massachusetts, Shiva Ayyadurai, who shared the live video on Twitter.
Born in India, Ayyadurai is a scientist and MIT graduate who claims that he invented email. He began his Senate campaign as a Republican before switching to run as an independent. Ayyadurai’s campaign uses the slogan, “Defeat #FakeIndian Elizabeth Warren,” as a derogatory jab at his Democratic opponent.
* * *
"Maybe you and I, we just go over and walk in there [to Mexico]?" Arpaio says.
"Let's do that," Ayyadurai responds, and the video cuts off abruptly.
But, of course, they didn't have the gumption to just walk "in there."
* * *
"We just need the rest of you to stop being patsies, and being so afraid of these Demon-crat Confederate rebel dogs and stop cowering down to them," [Michael said at another Arpaio event].
Quoting from the Book of Exodus to end his speech, a fired-up Michael suggests that the government should shoot people who cross the border illegally. If border-crossers knew that the government would shoot them, "you wouldn't run your behind through that wall," Michael says.
Before walking offstage, he tries to lead the crowd in a chant: "Latin, black, and white must unite."
* * *
Michael was charged and later acquitted on two murders stemming from the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult’s activities in Florida. He’s also a conspiracy theorist who has made wild-eyed accusations about Hillary Clinton, tying her to the KKK, and has called Oprah Winfrey the "devil" and a "hell-bound jezebel."
Michael has also become a familiar face at President Trump’s rallies. He often manages to get a prime spot behind Trump’s podium – at the president’s Phoenix rally last year, Michael held a sign that said “Blacks for Trump.”
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says his political opponent, former state Sen. Kelli Ward, made aggressive moves towards him during the 74th annual Mohave County Republican picnic, which was held July 28.
* * *
According to Arpaio, the alleged incident occurred as a Ward volunteer – identified as Mardi Allen Benedict in photos taken at the time – exchanged campaign trinkets with the 86-year-old former Maricopa County sheriff as the daylong event drew to a close.
“I gave the staffer one of my campaign stickers and she gave me a Kelli Ward pin,” Arpaio said. “I believe Ward saw the exchange … and grabbed the pin, got mad and threw it to the ground … but instead, it hit my director of communications.”
Prior to the alleged altercation that occurred following lunch, Arpaio says there was a separate purported event that raised concerns throughout his campaign team including Tania Burgess, Arpaio’s director of communications.
“Everybody wanted to engage and take pictures with Joe – including people with Kelli Ward shirts on – as soon as we arrived at the picnic,” Burgess said. “I thought that Ward started stewing and I felt that something was fixing to happen, so I started taking pictures.”
Burgess said that Ward made a beeline straight toward Arpaio, allegedly slapping him on the shoulder while making a “smart-alecky” remark.
* * *
What I did not expect was here comes Kelli Ward,” Burgess said. “I did not expect everything that happened to happen. I did not expect to see Kelli Ward grab the sticker out of her (volunteer’s) hand, screaming not to take that from him.”
Burgess added that Ward allegedly grabbed her campaign pin out of Arpaio’s hand, while inadvertently opening the clasp.
"Kelli Ward threw it back across Sheriff's Joe's chest, but it struck me right in the arm," Burgess said. "It was really only a pinprick, but it was mindboggling she would act like this."
America's toughest sheriff, indeed. (This is "newsworthy" only because Arpaio thought it made him look good.)
Miki Booth wrote:PAT BOONE ENDORSES JOE ARPAIO for US SENATE
"For 60 plus years I've sung to and for America, and I'm still going strong. Now I want to sing my support for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's current campaign to be a United States Senator representing Arizona. This strong man, this great Sheriff, has served your state and our country for 55 years and continues to have as much energy and passion as ever. He'll continue to help protect and grow both your state and America in support of our President. Please give him your vote both in the primary and general election.
* * *
Rick Brown wrote:Sorry, I love Sheriff Joe but he had his chance at this many years ago and turned it down. Now he cannot even get re-elected Sheriff. The anti Trump RINO McSally has admitted that John McCain her mentor and NOBODY wants anymore of the same old shit! I'll be voting Kelli Ward for US Senate 2018!
Miki Booth wrote:He may have turned it down but he has done so much to expose obama since then and as a sheriff. Kelli is fine but Sheriff Joe will do better.
* * *
Miki Booth wrote:This is not intended to be a sounding board for anti-Joe Arpaio mud slingers. Go away. Pat Boone and VP Mike Pence endorse Joe and so do I, not to mention the law enforcement community.
* * *
Miki Booth wrote:Have you considered that he was not elected because george soros funded his democratic opponent to shut Joe up and scuttle the birth certificate investigation which is the first official thing he did when he took over Joe's office?
* * *
Ed Sunderland wrote:We had Pat Boon on the radio show!
* * *
David Ward wrote:Still waiting on his scathing indictment on the Obama Birth Certificate caper.
Miki Booth wrote:He gave it December 15, 2016. President Trump has it now. | {
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The ServiceMaster Company, American holding company specializing in home and commercial services such as lawn care and landscaping, cleaning, plumbing, home security, and home inspection. It is characterized by a philosophy that combines goals of economic success with a mandate for “honouring God in every transaction.”
The company was founded by former minor league baseball player Marion E. Wade, who opened a mothproofing business in 1929. After recovering from temporary blindness caused by a chemical accident in 1945, Wade was inspired to create a company that viewed “each employee and customer as being made in God’s image—worthy of dignity and respect.”
Incorporated in 1947 as Wade, Wenger and Associates, ServiceMaster adopted its current name in 1967. Wade died in 1973, but his successors expanded the business, reaching $7.7 billion in annual sales by the end of the 20th century. In the 1990s ServiceMaster’s chief executive officer (CEO), C. William Pollard, balanced the company’s success in business with a Christian approach to management. His book The Soul of the Firm (1996) became a best seller. Yet by 1999 investors were criticizing ServiceMaster for declining profits and unproductive acquisitions. Questions were also raised about the company’s board of directors, most of whom were united either by family relationships or through ties with Wheaton College. Late in 2001 the company sold its headquarters and one of its divisions, and a new CEO was hired to revive the company while recognizing its religious roots.
ServiceMaster has established roughly 5,000 company-owned and franchised outlets in nearly 40 countries, operating under brands such as TruGreen ChemLawn, Terminix, American Home Shield, Rescue Rooter, and American Mechanical Services.
Learn More in these related articles:
private, coeducational liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois, U.S. Wheaton College began as a preparatory school, the Illinois Institute, built by Wesleyan Methodists in 1854. It became a college in 1860 and was renamed for an early donor, Warren L. Wheaton, who also cofounded the city of... | {
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Today (Friday, March 18) marks the third anniversary of my husband's prostatectomy. He sees his urologist/surgeon today for a 6 month check-up, and had his blood drawn on Tuesday for a 6 month PSA check. We got the excellent news on Wednesday that his PSA remains undetectable (our doctor uses the <0.1).
As many of you may remember, we had a bump in the road at the 17 month mark when John's PSA came back at 0.1, then 0.3 one month later. We began working on SRT, meeting with a lovely radiation oncologist and began planning for radiation. Both the urologist and rad onc wanted to have the third PSA test results before initiating treatment. In between, John had a bone scan which led to a CT scan...results were clean.
The third PSA - to confirm a recurrence - came back a few days before the initial set-up for SRT. The results showed that his PSA was back down to undetectable (<0.1)! The urologist called us at home on a Saturday to deliver this wonderful news...he wanted to check the PSA again in one month. That test also came back at undetectable, radiation treatment was deemed not necessary, and John went back on a 3 month PSA follow-up. Since that time (which was early Fall of 2009), John's PSA has stayed at <0.1.
Reading this board, it would seem that John was the exception. The urologist though said that this is more common than we're led to believe. Benign prostectic tissue often remains around the nerve bundles (in John's case, both nerve bundles were spared). Over time, this tissue can generate enough PSA to show up on a blood test. The PSA naturally dies off as does the benign tissue bringing the PSA level back to "zero." In our surgeon's mind, this is one of the reasons why he is not a fan of the so-called ultra-sensitive PSA tests. This is not a comment on the value or either assay just simply stating one doctor's opinion.
Sorry to retell this long saga but I know there are a fair number of new people here who are just beginning their journey. I share this to give them hope.
On a personal note, I extend a huge thank you (along with tons of hugs and kisses) to so many of my friends here who walked with us during our trials: Purgatory, Zufus, John T, Tony, James, Sonny, Corvetteman to name just a few.
I heard about Sephies' 'strange' PSA results on an other forum when I was having my own PSA rise. Happily, my developments have been similar to his so far. Hearing about Sephie has helped me to cope with my own situation. Radical prostactemy 10/2006 @42, PSA 3.9, Gleason 3+4PSA <0.2 2006-2009
Sephie, Congratulations - three years is a great milestone. I envy your calm cool decision making dealing with your husbands rising PSA. I thought about your circumstances many times while I was making my own decision. Good luck going forward.
All, thanks so much for your wonderfully good wishes...believe me, I wish I had a magic wand that I could wave over all who come here to help them through their fears and worries, and I wish I could hug each and everyone one of you during your trials.
Carlos, my post may sound like I was cool and calm but, believe me, I was not...I think I was more rattled by the "blip" in John's PSA 17 months after surgery than I was about the initial diagnosis. Perhaps that is because I knew so much more about this nasty disease than I did going in to the whole process. Hmmm...perhaps ignorance is bliss after all.
Pattersson, I didn't realize my husband's situation went "viral"...but I hope that his story (and mine because this is not a journey of one) has helped others facing similar situations.
Jeff, please do raise a glass (or three) for both of us...while we will not be there in person, we will be with you all in spirit.
Sonny, how wonderful to hear from you...I do hope you and your sweet Lynn are doing well. Believe me when I say you are both in my prayers regularly.
David, what can I say but thank you. You have been a rock to me and to many who visit our little corner of the world looking for hope and encouragement. I visit here more often than you know but simply don't post as often. There is such a wealth of information and comfort here from members that my two cents worth is often redundant. I have also found that PCa - dare I say it? - is no longer a primary focus in my day-to-day life. I think that's a good thing but it doesn't mean that I don't think about everyone here.
Thanks again guys and gals for your special way of caring about others.
I just saw your post - congratulations to you and John!!!Your story teaches all of us waiting for PSA results that even when there is a rise, there is hope.I am so pleased to hear that PCa is no longer the primary focus of your day to day life. That is where many of us aspire to be.
You were so kind and so supportive when I signed up to healing well last March, absolutely terrified about my husbands PSA numbers and the possibility he had PCa. I thank you for that and I am glad that you continue posting on this site.
Sephie & John, This is great news. I well remember that "bump" at the time it happened - and the incredible path it took - and it is an amazing outcome, but also an experience which must still give you chills when you think about it. Glad you are moving on with your life, and staying well. I talked to John in the chat room one night quite a while back, thinking it was you Sephie! And he was lovely....keep vigilant, and enjoy all the good things that come your way. Stay in touch when you can. Kind regards, Lana
Jonathan, thanks for the kind words. That's the beauty of this forum since each person goes through this disease differently.
Ed, Goodlife: yes, we are very happy and pleased with the results. When John visited with his uro/surgeon this past Friday, I asked him to tell the doctor thanks from me for doing such a good job. While John's stats going into surgery werent' bad...PSA of 6.4, Gleason 3+4, 2 out of 12 cores positive...one of those cores was very close to the edge of the prostate which had the surgeon a bit concerned. Fortunately (for us), he planned his approach to cut a wider than necessary margin in that area.
Lana, yes, my John is a sweetheart. We just celebrated our 30th anniversary in February and I truly do consider myself blessed to have him in my life. I've learned alot from him, and believe that he has made me a much better person.
An, you are more than welcome. I remember well when I first came to this forum and couldn't get the questions typed out fast enough. I would spend hours each day browsing through posts here and gleaming what I could from others experience and knowledge. What I've learned here has been invaluable.
great to hear good news.can anybody tell me how long after a radical can the cancer reoccur,i was told it was only about 2years unlike breast cancer which i think can reappear years after original treatment?
Don't really know the answer about PCa...as far as I know, I think that any cancer can reoccur at any time. I know that when my husband hit the two year mark after surgery, his urologist said this was an important milestone. However, PSA tests will be performed every 6 months until the fifth year, then he moves to an annual PSA check. In my mind that means that the first five years are the crucial ones in terms of recurrence, but that doesn't mean that the cancer won't rear its head again 10, 15 or 20 years later. Once you have been diagnosed with any cancer you need regular follow-ups with the doctor. I had basal cell (skin) cancer abut 6 years ago and still need a full body check every year with my dermatologist to look for signs that it has come back.
Great news Stephie,JT65 years old, rising psa for 10 years from 4 to 40; 12 biopsies and MRIS all negative. Oct 2009 DXed with G6 <5%. Color Doppler biopsy found 2.5 cm G4+3. Combidex clear. Seeds and IMRT, no side affects and psa .1 at 1.5 years. | {
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Video Report From ‘Day For Freedom’
I headed down to the ‘Day For Freedom’ event in London on Sunday 6th May. The event featured a host of controversial speakers that pulled in a surprisingly diverse crowd. I have plenty of thoughts to share on this event, so please subscribe to the Godless Spellchecker Podcast to hear them in an upcoming episode. In the meantime, please watch and share my three part coverage below: | {
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Biographical Analysis of Literature CAHSEE essay rubricpdf TestKVpdf; Thank you so much for being part of the BetterLesson community. Narrative Essay Biographical Essay Introduction In a biographical essay, you write about the life and personality of a Rubric for Self-Assessment. Cahsee Expository Essay Rubric PDF Document Cahsee rubric - esuhsd appendix a – cahsee scoring guides response to l Cahsee essay. | {
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Matt Barnes rips Doc Rivers over Blake Griffin trade
Posted - January 31 201805:04
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Matt Barnes rips Doc Rivers over Blake Griffin trade
The move comes just months after the Clippers wooed Griffin in free agency with a pitch that included raising his jersey to the rafters and likening him to historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi on a t-shirt.
If Dallas was set on obtaining a first round pick in the deal, the Pistons couldn't trade their 2019 first rounder, but could trade their 2020 first if needed. This season, he is averaging 22.6 points, 7.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists in 33 games, while the Clippers have a 25-24 record and are in ninth place in the Western Conference.
Eight years ago, Blake Griffin burst onto scene the with the Los Angeles Clippers, instantly turning a franchise that was a perennial National Basketball Association laughingstock into a relevant one.
Day needs extra day to win Farmers Insurance Open in playoffIt was the third playoff in as many weeks on the PGA Tour, all of them at least four holes and two of them lasting at least six. Despite his success on the European Tour, Noren is little known in the United States - and he's happy to fly under the radar.
FA Cup: Liverpool face West Brom hurdleLiverpool would be willing to accept a negotiate a two-year loan deal worth £1.75million with the obligation to buy for £25m. While it will not be very easy, but Liverpool should be able to win the tie and progress to the next round.
Detroit placed Bradley on the trading block on Monday after acquiring the former Boston Celtics star in July for Marcus Morris.
Hence, the Clippers are practically screwed after this season unless their draft pick is a top three pick and they can draft the new face of the franchise. Harris has been impressive for the Pistons this season, shooting a career-best 41 percent from 3-point range.
As a rookie, he was an All-Star, won the slam dunk contest and was named NBA Rookie of the Year.
In 504 career games, all with the Clippers, he's second overall on their all-time scoring list with 10,863 points and is third in rebounds with 4,686.
Apple is looking to revamp its e-books app with a new design and a better digital bookstore, according to a Bloomberg report . In the time since then, Apple has chosen to put its efforts into growing other digital services, such as Apple Music.
Wednesday, Jan. 24: Rachael Denhollander is the final victim to speak at the sentencing hearing, and lambasts MSU . Women's gymnastics coach Kathie Klages resigned last year after she was suspended for defending Nassar for years.
Meanwhile, The Usos will compete against the duo Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship . Randy Orton won the match past year and it led to an embarrassing slide show match with Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania .
First announced at WWDC previous year , the HomePod is Apple's first stab at the Amazon and Google-dominated smart speaker market. Compared with Amazon's Echo and Google Home , Apple's new HomePod smart speaker is noticeably lacking in third-party apps.
Billed as the world's first full-size luxury SUV coupe, there would be only 999 cars manufactured for the world market. Apart from the cabin, Land Rover has not revealed any other information on the Range Rover SV Coupe .
Under an Alabama law passed in 2017, judges can no longer do that in cases where defendants are eligible for the death penalty. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch were opposed to the stay, according to the order issued last night.
If anything else happens, at the moment I would say I don't know. "It's still possible, we are far from being closed". Mkhitaryan completed his transfer to the club last week, with Alexis Sanchez moving to Manchester United in exchange.
Differences over Syria policy have already strained Turkey's relations with Washington nearly to a breaking point. The Kurds played a large part in driving out Islamic State from most of northeastern Syria.
He came together with skipper Kohli to fix the early damages inflicted on India's openers by fiery South African bowlers. India back in the game! Amla and Philander were together when the umpires called an end to the second session.
Saudi billionaire Alwaleed 'released' from detention
The conditions of his freedom are unclear, and the country's ministry of information said it would not comment on his situation. According to the billionaire prince, the interview was granted in order to dispel rumours of mistreatment by Saudi authorities.
Serco Group (SRP) Stock Rating Reaffirmed by Peel Hunt
Texas Yale Capital Corporation stated it has 0.14% of its portfolio in The Restaurant Group plc (LON:RTN). (NASDAQ:TMUS). Moreover, Nwq Invest Mgmt Company Ltd Liability Company has 0.83% invested in The Restaurant Group plc (LON:RTN).
Volunteers Brave Cold to Count Kentucky's Homeless
The count respects confidentiality of those experiencing homelessness and does not obligate anyone for unwanted services. Volunteers from several local non-profit agencies are joining forces to conduct the count in Clearfield County.
A rare treat next week: Blue supermoon, lunar eclipse
According to NASA , "Most Blue Moons look pale gray and white, indistinguishable from any other Moon you've ever seen". It can be best seen along the West Coast, but those in the central US and East Coast will see a partial eclipse. | {
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Google Search
Chelsea have reportedly been offered the chance to sign Dortmund striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, but will have to splash out £70m to get him.
The 28-year-old continued his prolific form last season, scoring a whopping 40 goals in 46 appearances in all competitions for Dortmund, including 31 in 32 Bundesliga outings.
In turn, it’s a surprise not to see more top European sides battling it out for his signature, but according to Sky Sports, that could be to Chelsea’s benefit as they’ve been offered the chance to sign him for a stunning £70m.
Having missed out on Romelu Lukaku who has now joined Manchester United, coupled with the never-ending issues with Alvaro Morata’s possible switch from Real Madrid, it appears as though Antonio Conte has an alternative to now consider.
What is clear at this stage is that the Chelsea boss undoubtedly needs to bolster his attacking options ahead of next season, as he can’t merely rely on Diego Costa alone to fire them to success domestically and in the Champions League.
Further, with the ongoing speculation over the Spaniard’s future at Stamford Bridge, it’s not even certain that he will stay this summer.
As a result, although they’re likely to face competition from AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain for Aubameyang, it’s claimed that the Gabon international has been offered to Chelsea for £70m, and now it remains to be seen whether or not the Premier League champions make their move.
Sky Sports add that there was interest from China in Aubameyang, but with the CSL window closing on Friday time is running out for that to happen while the player himself will surely prefer to stay in Europe at this stage of his career. | {
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Pages
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Geolocating Photos in QGIS
Photos taken with GPS-enabled cameras, including smartphones, store location information in
the header of the file, in a format called EXIF tags. These tags are largely based on the same
header tags used by the TIFF image standard. If you have a directory full of photos, you can easily sort them by date or by name. But if you want to sort them by location, only a map will do. In this recipe, we'll use these tags to create
locations on a map in QGIS for some photos and provide links to open them.
Getting ready
You need to make sure you have QGIS installed as well as the Python Imaging Library (PIL) for the Python distribution that QGIS uses. QGIS should already have PIL included. You can download some sample geotagged images here or you can use any photo taken outdoors with your smartphone. Unzip these photos and place them in a directory accessible to QGIS.
How to do it...
PIL can parse EXIF tags. We will gather the file names of the photos, parse the location information, convert it to decimal degrees, create the point vector layer, add the photo locations, and add a QGIS action link to the attributes. To do this, we need to perform the following steps:
In the QGIS Python Console, import the libraries that we'll need, including the Image module (PIL) and its ExifTags module for parsing image data and the glob module for doing wildcard file searches:
Finally, we'll add an action that allows you to click on it and open the photo. Actions are a simple yet powerful feature of QGIS that let you define the result of certain user actions like clicking on features:
How it works...
Using the included PIL EXIF parser, getting location information and adding it to a vector layer is relatively straight forward. This action is a default option for opening a URL. However, you can also use Python expressions as actions to perform a variety of tasks. The following screenshot shows an example of the data visualization and photo popup:
There's more...
You can download the complete code sample here. Another plugin called Photo2Shape is available that performs a similar function, but it requires you to install an external EXIF tag parser while this approach uses the parser in PIL included with QGIS.
All depends on how you give your path. Secondly I tried out the code it works but the coordinates land in Alaska for my images which I took in Fresno and Madera. Don't know what to do I am new to this. Please if there is any recommendations email me at [email protected] | {
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San Francisco's three most walkable neighborhoods are: Chinatown (walk score 100, transit score 100, bike score 71), FiDi (99, 100, 79), and Downtown (99, 100, 73). As anyone who's spent some time in those neighborhoods can tell you, a 100 or 99 walk score doesn't necessarily translate to mean the most relaxing or pleasant walk (nor bus/bike ride). Sure, you're close to markets, restaurants, and shopping, but walking in those three areas also means dodging and weaving through crowds and around cars. Personally, not my idea of a great stroll.
Walk Score rates places by analyzing a neighborhood's routes to amenities. The closer to said spots on foot, the more points, which is why places like Downtown and Chinatown have such high scores. It also accounts for population density, street block length, and intersection intensity using various data sources, including Google, the U.S. Census, and Open Street Map.
Some of the less walkable areas in SF are the Outer Sunset (walk score of 74), Stonestown (69), and Diamond Heights (62). But in comparison, take note that the overall walk scores of nearby Silicon cities is way lower than these numbers: San Jose (48), Santa Clara (56), and Palo Alto (54). East Bay cities Berkeley (79) and Oakland (69) score a bit better. | {
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Friday, May 31, 2013
ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY..... TIME TO MAKE SOME
CHOICES!! THIS IS BULLSHIT. MOOCHER MICHELLE GOES TO IRELAND NEXT WEEK
AND STAYS in A $ 3750/ night suite and books 30 rooms for her
entourage....
Meanwhile at Camp Leatherneck...AFGHANISTAN.... OUR BROTHER AND SISTERS.... serving our country hear this..... SHOW YOUR ANGER AND OUTRAGE BY POSTING THIS IN AS MANY GROUPS AS POSSIBLE
BREAKING May 30, 2013>>>>>Marines at Camp Leatherneck
in Afghanistan will lose a key daily meal starting Saturday, causing
some to forgo a hot breakfast and others to work six-plus hours without
refueling on cooked food, according to Marines at the base and Marine
Corps officials.
The midnight ration service — known there as
“midrats" — supplies breakfast to Marines on midnight-to-noon shifts and
dinner to Marines who are ending noon-to-midnight work periods. It's
described as one of the few times the Marines at Leatherneck can be
together in one place.
The base, which is located in
Afghanistan’s southwestern Helmand Province, flanked by Iran and
Pakistan, also will remove its 24-hour sandwich bar. It plans to replace
the dishes long offered at midnight with pre-packaged MREs, said Marine
Corps Lt. Col. Cliff Gilmore, who has been deployed in Afghanistan
since February.
The moves, though unpopular with many Marines
on the ground and their families back home, are emblematic of the
massive drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan and the dismantling
of U.S. military facilities. More than 30,000 U.S. service members will
leave Afghanistan in coming months as the U.S. prepares to hand
responsibility for security to Afghan forces in 2014.
While no Marine at Camp Leatherneck agreed to speak on the record, many are privately angry about the hit on base morale.
"This boils my skin. One of my entire shifts will go 6.5 hours without a
meal. If we need to cut back on money I could come up with 100 other
places,” one Leatherneck-based Marine wrote in an email this week to his
wife and shared with NBC News. (The Marine declined to speak on the
record.) “Instead, we will target the biggest contributor to morale. I
must be losing my mind. What is our senior leadership thinking? I just
got back from flying my ass off and in a few days, I will not have a
meal to replenish me after being away for over 9 hours.”
U.S. Marines enter the chow hall for dinner, left, after taking turns
clearing ammo from the chambers of their weapons into a barrel, right,
at Camp Leatherneck, in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, in
September 2009.
Until Saturday, Leatherneck’s dining facility
will offer its customary four meals per day. After June 1, the menu
drops to three daily meals and, eventually, there will be only two hot
meals served, Gilmore revealed in an email to the impacted Marines,
adding: “Any time a dining hall meal is eliminated it will be replaced
from a plentiful stock of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat — or any one of
several creative acronyms our Marines have come up with.)”
“The
fact is our force in Afghanistan is shrinking fast and all the creature
comforts and services deployed military-members have grown accustomed
to over the past decade are going to be reduced," Gilmore wrote in an
email to NBC News. “When serving we are challenged to endure different
things — to face different challenges — over time. But we're an odd
bunch, we Marines — probably no surprise that we'll complain more about
losing the sandwich bar on the way out than we did about getting shot at
on the way in.”
The tactical reason for the cooking scale-down
is that the people who are assigned to “support services” — such as
food workers — “need to go home before the people who provide the
security which enables those services,” Gilmore wrote. “This is a
natural outcome of the drawdown process unrelated to sequestration or
the ongoing budget issues back in the States.”
Back home,
spouses and friends of the troops in Afghanistan are criticizing the
loss of hot meals as a poor logistical choice that will impact the
service members' overall nutrition, energy and spirits.
“MREs
are an alternative for when you can’t get to healthy food. They're
supposed to be for desperation,” said Babette Maxwell, founder and
executive director of Military Spouse Magazine, the wife of a Navy pilot
and an advocate for service members and their families. “These guys
have six to nine months left on their deployment. These are highly
athletic and highly physical people, toting guns, not working any less
now than before — and not working out any less either. Now, they’re
short a meal and they don’t have any healthy alternatives.”
According to the Marine Corps, a typical MRE may contain chili with
beans, cornbread, cheese spread, crackers, a toaster pastry, a
“dairyshake,” red pepper, a spoon, a flameless heater and a “hot
beverage bag.”
To fill the hot food gap in Afghanistan, a group
of U.S.-based military advocates and military-family members recently
launched a Facebook page — called “Breakfast for Bagram" — to spur food
donations that will be mailed to troops all around Afghanistan. The page
states: “We are here to help collect and send non-perishable breakfast
type foods to the deployed troops on the 17 bases in Afghanistan that
are not currently serving breakfast 'hot chow' and Midnight chow due to
the budget cuts.”
Gilmore described cooked-meal reduction as
part of a larger effort to “become increasingly austere” as the force
shrinks, but he said the base members will not face an unhealthy calorie
shortage.
“The Marines here at Leatherneck may have to endure
the monotony of a limited menu and sometimes an MRE — but they will not
suffer from malnutrition unless they choose not to eat,” Gilmore said.
At home, some military family members nonetheless called the change a mistake.
“Psychologically, midrats is probably the most important of all the
meals because that’s the big social time — where first (shift) crew is
coming off and second (shift) crew is coming on,” Maxwell said."That's
where you get the esprit de corps, the camaraderie. It's not just the
food you're taking away, it's their social sustenance.”
Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. was born on January 21, 1951 in the Bronx, New York and was raised
in Elmhurst, Queens. His father (1905-1970) hailed from Barbados and
worked as a real estate broker; his mother (Miriam) was the
American-born daughter of immigrants from Saint Philip, Barbados.
In 1969 Holder enrolled at Columbia University, where he became involved
in what he would later describe as the “rise of black consciousness”
protests on campus. As a freshman, he took a leadership role with the
Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded
that the school's abandoned ROTC (Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps)
office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge” -- “in honor of a man who
recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.” In
1970, while still a freshman, Holder participated in a five-day
occupation of that office; according to some accounts, the occupiers
were armed. In addition, Holder and SAAS also occupied the office of
Henry Coleman, Dean of Freshmen, until their demands were met.
Holder graduated from Columbia University in 1973 with a degree in
American history. Three years later he earned a J.D. from Columbia Law
School. During one of the summers between his law-school academic years,
Holder worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Holder was employed by the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity
Section from 1976 to 1988. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan appointed him
as a Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Five
years later, President Bill Clinton appointed Holder as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In 1997 Clinton nominated
Holder to replace Jamie Gorelick, the retiring Deputy Attorney General
in Janet Reno’s Justice Department; Holder was confirmed by
the Senate in a unanimous vote.
As Deputy Attorney General, Holder, as The Washington Post explains,
“was the gatekeeper for presidential pardons.” Indeed, Holder was a key
figure entrusted with the task of vetting the Clinton administration’s
176 last-minute pardons in January 2001. The beneficiaries of those
pardons included such notables as former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg
(who was involved in the deadly 1981 armed robbery of a Brink’s armored
car) and Linda Evans (who had used false identification to buy
firearms, had harbored a fugitive, and was in possession of 740 pounds
of dynamite at the time of her arrest in 1985).HOLDER AND THE PARDON OF MARC RICH
Holder played a particularly significant role in what was perhaps the
most infamous of Clinton's 176 pardons—the one granted to the
billionaire financier Marc Rich, a fugitive oil broker
who had illegally purchased oil from Iran during the American trade
embargo, and had then proceeded to hide more than $100 million in
profits by using dummy transactions in off-shore corporations. Rich
later renounced his American citizenship and fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution for 51 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, tax fraud, tax evasion, and the illegal oil transactions with Iran.
Over the years, Rich’s ex-wife Denise had funneled at least $1.5 million to Clinton interests. Some $1.2 million went to the Democratic National Committee, $75,000 went to Hillary Clinton’s
2000 Senate campaign, and $450,000 helped finance the Bill Clinton
Library in Arkansas. Mrs. Rich also had given expensive gifts to the
Clintons and, according to some rumors, had a very close relationship
with the President.According toThe New York Times:
“Mr. Holder had more than a half-dozen contacts with Mr. Rich’s lawyers
over 15 months, including phone calls, e-mail and memorandums that
helped keep alive Mr. Rich’s prospects for a legal resolution to his
case. And Mr. Holder’s final opinion on the matter—a recommendation to
the White House on the eve of the pardon that he was ‘neutral, leaning
toward’ favorable—helped ensure that Mr. Clinton signed the pardon
despite objections from other senior staff members.”
“Holder’s role in the Rich issue actually began … [a]t a corporate
dinner in November 1998, [where] Mr. Holder was seated at a table with a
public-relations executive named Gershon Kekst, who had been trying to
help Mr. Rich resolve his legal troubles. When Mr. Kekst learned that
his dinner companion was the deputy attorney general, he proceeded to
bring up the case of an unnamed acquaintance who had been ‘improperly
indicted by an overzealous prosecutor.’ … A person in that situation,
Mr. Holder advised, should ‘hire a lawyer who knows the process, he
comes to me, we work it out.’ Mr. Kekst wanted to know if Mr. Holder
could suggest a lawyer. Mr. Holder pointed to a former White House
counsel sitting nearby. ‘There’s Jack Quinn,’ he said. ‘He’s a perfect
example.’ Months later, Mr. Rich’s advisers settled on Mr. Quinn to lead
the legal efforts …”
Between October 1999 and January 2001, Holder and Quinn discussed the Rich case on at least six separate occasions. SaysThe New York Times:
“In February 2000, Mr. Quinn sent Mr. Holder a memorandum entitled ‘Why
D.O.J. [Department of Justice] Should Review the Marc Rich Indictment.’
About a month later, Mr. Holder spoke with Mr. Quinn again and told him
that ‘we’re all sympathetic’ and that the legal ‘equities’ in the issue
were ‘on your side.’ … By the fall of 2000, efforts to re-open the
criminal case were dead, and Mr. Rich’s lawyers had moved on to the idea
of a pardon. Again, Mr. Quinn turned to Mr. Holder. On Nov. 21, 2000,
at the close of a meeting on a separate topic, Mr. Quinn took Mr. Holder
aside, told him he was planning on filing a lengthy pardon petition
with the White House and asked whether the White House should contact
Mr. Holder for his opinion … In a separate e-mail message that Mr. Quinn
[had] sent three days before that to other members of the Rich team,…
he wrote: ‘Spoke to him last evening. Says to go straight to W.H. [White
House]. Also says timing is good.’ …
“For the next months, Mr. Rich’s team pressed ahead with the pardon …
On Jan. 19, 2001, Mr. Quinn called Mr. Holder and let him know that the
White House would be contacting him for his recommendation on the
pardon, which he said was receiving ‘serious consideration.’ Mr. Holder
told him that he did not have a personal problem with the pardon, and
Mr. Quinn quickly passed on the gist of the conversation to the White
House. Minutes later, Mr. Holder received a call from Beth Nolan, the
White House counsel, who had opposed the pardon idea and was surprised
to hear that Mr. Holder apparently felt differently.
“Mr. Holder, according to Ms. Nolan’s testimony, told her that if the
Israelis were in fact pushing for the pardon, he would find that
‘persuasive’ and would be ‘neutral leaning toward’ favorable.”
The next day, President Clinton signed the pardon. Clinton later cited Holder’s assessment as one of the factors that had persuaded him to issue the pardon. And once the pardon was granted, Holder sent his congratulations to Quinn.
Although he clearly had interceded on Rich’s behalf beginning in 1999, Holder in 2001 told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that “Mr. Rich’s name was unfamiliar to me” in 1999. Holder then elaborated that he had “gained only a passing familiarity with the underlying facts of the Rich case” during the months that followed.
But Holder's account was entirely untrue. As early as 1995,
when Holder was the Clinton-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of
Columbia, his office had conducted an investigation into Rich and his
business interests for tax evasion and other suspicious activity. Also in 1995,
Holder's office filed a civil suit against the Swiss trading company
Clarendon, Ltd. because that company, in obtaining $45 million in
government contracts, had concealed the fact that it was controlled by
Rich, whose history of fraud and his status as a fugitive rendered him
legally ineligible for government contracts. Ultimately, Holder agreed to dismiss the case in exchange for a payment to the government of $1.2 million.
A March 2002 congressional report concluded
that Rich's lawyers had tried to circumvent prosecutors (who they knew
would oppose the pardon), and instead had chosen to take their case
directly to the White House. Holder’s assistance in this process,
coupled with his failure to alert prosecutors of a pending pardon, was
crucial, said the report.
In 2009, when President Obama nominated Holder to be Attorney General,
Holder, at the nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
was asked by Senator Arlen Specter: “Were you aware of the kind of record this man [Rich] had?” Holder replied:
"No I was not. And that was one of the mistakes that I made. I did not
really acquaint myself with his record. I knew that the matter involved —
it was a tax-fraud case; it was a substantial tax-fraud case. I knew
that he was a fugitive. I did not know a lot of the underlying facts
that you have described."
In written follow-up questions, Specter asked: “Did you receive
information about the facts of the Rich case from anyone other than Mr.
Rich’s attorney, Jack Quinn?” Holder responded, “No.”HOLDER AND THE PARDON OF “FALN” TERRORISTS
Holder was also intimately involved in President Clinton’s August 11,
1999 pardon of 16 members of the FALN, acronym for the Armed Forces of
National Liberation—a violent Puerto Rican terrorist organization (as
designated by the FBI) that was active in the U.S. from the mid-1970s
through the early 1980s.
The FALN was a Marxist-Leninist group whose overriding mission was to
secure Puerto Rico’s political independence from the United States.
Toward that end, between 1974 and 1983 the group detonated nearly 130
bombs in such strategically selected places as military and government
buildings, financial institutions, and corporate headquarters located
mainly in Chicago, New York, and Washington DC. These bombings
were carried out as acts of protest against America’s political,
military, financial, and corporate presence in Puerto Rico. All told,
FALN bombs killed six people—including the Chilean ambassador to the United States—and wounded at least 80 others.
On April 4, 1980, eleven FALN members were arrested in Evanston,
Illinois. More of their comrades would also be apprehended in Chicago in
the early 1980s. All were charged with seditious conspiracy, but they refused to participate
in their own trial proceedings—claiming defiantly that the U.S.
government was an illegitimate entity and thus had no moral authority by
which to sit in judgment of them. All the defendants were found guilty
and were sentenced to federal prison terms ranging from 35 to 105 years.
On November 9, 1993, a self-identified “human rights” organization named Ofensiva ’92 filed a petition
for executive clemency on behalf of 18 members of the FALN and another
violent organization seeking Puerto Rican independence, Los Macheteros
(“The Machete-Wielders”). According to
a December 12, 1999 report issued by the House Committee on Government
Reform, the prisoners themselves “refused to take part in any process
that would legitimize the government’s actions against them, therefore
they refused to file their own petitions.”
This presented a problem because the Department of Justice (DOJ) traditionally stipulates
that clemency will be considered only if a prisoner first files a
petition on his or her own behalf, an act which the Department views as a
sign of contrition. Nonetheless, DOJ made an exception in this case and
accepted Ofensiva ’92’s petition, a document which cast the FALN
prisoners as blameless freedom fighters analogous to those Americans who
had fought in the Revolutionary War against Britain.
Among the notables who joined Ofensiva ’92’s clemency crusade were Cardinal John O'Connor, Coretta Scott King, Jimmy Carter, and the National Lawyers Guild. Perhaps the most passionate support came from Democrat Representatives Luis Gutierrez (IL), Jose Serrano (NY), and Nydia Velazquez (NY), each of whom echoed Ofensiva ’92’s claim that the FALN members were “political prisoners” who deserved to be released.
The attorneys and advocates who were fighting for the freedom of the FALN prisoners first met
with the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney on July 19, 1994. In
October 1996 they met with Jack Quinn, Counsel to the President. They
were unsuccessful, however, in their efforts to convey the legitimacy of
their cause to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA), which in 1996
contacted the Justice Department and recommended against clemency; that
recommendation, in turn, was forwarded to the White House.
But the matter was not over; OPA continued to meet with groups and
individuals lobbying for clemency on behalf of the FALN terrorists. Then
in 1997, Eric Holder—who was President Clinton’s new Deputy Attorney
General (in the Justice Department headed by Janet Reno)—became involved
in the case.In this role,
Holder was responsible for overseeing clemency investigations and
determining which of those requests were ultimately worthy of President
Clinton’s attention. As evidenced by a September 1997 memorandum from
the Pardon Attorney, the Justice Department was, at this point,
receiving numerous inquiries about the FALN and Macheteros—from the
White House and from supporters of the prisoners. The aforementioned
House Committee on Government Reform report stated:
“Throughout the closing months of 1997 it appears that Deputy Attorney
General Eric Holder was active in the issue. The privilege log reflects
at least two notes regarding his questions on the clemency or his
thoughts on the matter.”
On November 5, 1997, Holder met with Representatives Gutierrez, Serrano, and Velazquez to discuss the clemency issue. He advised
the legislators that they might greatly increase the likelihood of a
presidential pardon if they could convince the prisoners to write
letters testifying as to the personal remorse they felt for their past
actions. But no such letters would be produced for five months, during
which time the clemency issue remained on hold. Meanwhile, in a January
6, 1998 letter a senior Justice Department official expressly referred to the FALN members as “terrorists.”
Then on April 8, 1998, Holder
again met with FALN supporters. This time, they finally delivered
statements from the prisoners as Holder had advised in November. But all
the statements were identical—indicating that not one of the prisoners
had made an effort to craft his own personal expression of repentance.
Undeterred, Holder then raised the question of whether the prisoners
might at least agree to renounce future violence in exchange for
clemency. One of the prisoners’ backers, Reverend Paul Sherry, made it
clear that they surely “would not change their beliefs”—presumably about
the issue of Puerto Rican independence—but was vague as to whether they
were apt to eschew violence altogether.
Over the next few weeks, Holder and the Justice Department continued to
meet with numerous advocates of clemency and to review pertinent
materials which the latter brought forth on behalf of the prisoners.
Holder clearly was the point man for these clemency negotiations. As
Brian Blomquist wrote in the New York Post,
“A list of FALN documents withheld from Congress shows that many memos
on the FALN clemency decision went directly to Holder, while [Janet]
Reno’s role was minimal.” Similarly, New York Daily News reporter Edward Lewine wrote that Holder was “the Justice Department official most involved with this issue.”
Throughout the clemency review process, neither Holder nor anyone else
in the Justice Department contacted any of the people who had been
victimized (or whose loved ones had been victimized) by the FALN. Most
were never aware that clemency for the terrorists was even being
contemplated. And those few who were aware of the possibility were rebuffed in their efforts to participate in the review process.
On May 19, 1998, the Pardon Attorney sent Eric Holder a 48-page draft memorandum
“concerning clemency for Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners.” Seven
weeks later, on July 8, Holder sent President Clinton a “memorandum
regarding clemency matter.” Indeed the Deputy Attorney General was
methodically spearheading the march toward clemency—despite the fact
that the sentencing judges, the U.S. Attorneys, the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the FBI were unanimous in their opposition to pardoning the individuals in question.In late July 1999
an attorney from Holder’s office spoke to White House Counsel Charles
Ruff regarding the clemency matter. On August 9, 1999, Holder’s office
and OPA held one final meeting to hammer out the details, and two days
later the President made his announcement: clemency was granted to
sixteen terrorists, most of whom had served only a fraction of their
prison terms. Of the sixteen, twelve accepted the offer and were freed, two refused it, and two others, who already were out of prison, never responded.
Congress, for its part, was not pleased—condemning the clemencies by votes of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House.
In the aftermath of the clemencies, a Justice Department report stated
that the FALN posed an “ongoing threat” to America's national security.
And in late October 1999 the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report from Attorney General Janet Reno stating that the FALN members’ “impending release from prison” would “increase the present threat” of terrorism.
In an October 20th Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and again with reporters the following day, Eric Holder denied
that Reno was referring to the same FALN terrorists whose pardons he
had worked so long and hard to secure. Yet when Holder was asked to
identify whom Reno was in fact talking about, he responded as follows:
“I don’t know, no, I don’t know that. We might be able to get you some
more information on that, but, I mean, you know, there were certain
people who are due to be released, or who were at least eligible for
parole, had a release date in the next, as I said, three, four years. I
don’t know exactly who they were. Maybe—we might be able to get you that
information.”
“The 16 [FALN] terrorists appear to be most unlikely candidates. They
did not personally request clemency. They did not admit to wrongdoing
and they had not renounced violence before such a renunciation had been
made a quid pro quo for their release. They expressed no contrition for
their crimes, and were at times openly belligerent about their actions….
Notwithstanding the fact that the 16 did not express enough personal
interest in the clemency process to file their own applications, the
White House appeared eager to assist throughout the process. Meetings
were held with supporters, and some senior staff [i.e., Holder] even
suggested ways to improve the likelihood of the President granting the
clemency. Overall, the White House appears to have exercised more
initiative than the terrorists themselves.”
THE HOLDER-OBAMA ALLIANCE
After the end of the Clinton presidency, Holder left the Justice Department and joined (as a partner) the Washington, DC law firm of Covington & Burling (C&B). In 2004 he met Barack Obama at a dinner party hosted by former White House aide Anne Walker Marchange, a niece of Clinton friend Vernon Jordan.
In the spring of 2007, shortly after launching his White House bid, Obama asked
Holder to join his presidential campaign as a legal adviser and
strategist. At that time, Holder's firm, C&B, was representing 17
Yemeni detainees (and one Pakistani national) in Guantanamo Bay. A former client
of C&B was yet another Guantanamo detainee, from Kuwait, who had
contributed to an anthology of detainee poetry compiled and published by
Holder’s C&B colleague, Marc Falkoff. Falkoff likened the plight of
these “gentle, thoughtful” poets, to that of the Jews who had been held
in concentration camps during World War II. The aforementioned Kuwaiti
was released from Guantanamo in 2005 and promptly resumed his terrorist
activities. In March 2008 he blew himself up with a truck bomb in Mosul,
Iraq, killing 13 Iraqi army soldiers and wounding 42 others.
In the summer of 2008, candidate Obama tapped Holder to serve on the vice presidential selection team that ultimately chose Joe Biden
to be Obama’s running mate. In November 2008, President-elect Obama,
who was slated to take his oath of office two months later, selected
Holder to serve as his Attorney General.HOLDER'S LOW REGARD FOR CONSERVATIVES
At an American Constitution Society gathering in 2004, Holder made the following comments:
"Conservatives have been defenders of the status quo, afraid of the
future, and content to allow to continue to exist all but the most
blatant inequalities."
Conservatives have "made a mockery of the rule of law."
Conservatives try to "put the environment at risk for the sake of
unproven economic theories, to play to the fears of our citizens, and
not to their hopes, and to return the nation to a time that in fact
never existed."
Conservatives are "breathtaking" in their "arrogance," which
manifests itself in such things as "attacks on abortion rights," "energy
policies that are as shortsighted as they are ineffective," and "tax
cuts that disproportionately favor those who are well off and perpetuate
many of the inequities in our nation."
The hallmarks of the "conservative agenda" include "social
division, mindless tax cutting, and a defense posture that does not
really make us safer."
"The nation must be convinced that it is a progressive future that
holds the greatest promise for equality and the continuation of those
policies that serve to support the greatest number of our people. In the
short term this will not be an easy task. With the mainstream media
somewhat cowered by conservative critics, and the conservative media
disseminating the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and
you know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number of
people is not easily accessible."
HOLDER AND GUN RIGHTS:
In a 1995 address
to the Woman's National Democratic Club, Holder announced the launch of
a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns
in a vastly different way." "What we need to do," he explained, "is
change the way in which people think about guns, especially young
people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable,
it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our
attitudes about cigarettes." Holder added that he had already asked
advertising agencies to produce anti-gun ads rather than commercials
"that make me buy things that I don't really need"; that he had urged
local newspapers and television stations to devote prime space and time,
respectively, to anti-gun themes; and that he had asked the local
school board to make the anti-gun message a part of "every day, every
school, and every level."
During his tenure as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton
administration from 1997 to 2001, Holder was a strong supporter of
restrictive gun-control legislation. He advocated
federal licensing of handgun owners; a three-day waiting period on all
handgun sales; limits on handgun sales to no more than one per month; a
ban on the possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" by
anyone younger than 21; a law authorizing the federal government to shut
down all gun shows; and a national gun-registration mandate.
Holder also advanced
the notion that “Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in
this country die from gun violence”—a statistic that was true only if
one classified 18-year-old, gun-wielding gangsters as “children.” In the
wake of the 9/11 attacks, Holder wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Postcalling for a new law that would give the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms “a record of every firearm sale.” He also advocated that prospective gun buyers be checked against the secret “watch lists” compiled by the government.
While Holder served in the Clinton Justice Department, he oversaw
the “instant” background-check system for prospective firearm
purchasers. Under Holder's watch, constant breakdowns of that system
halted gun sales for hours or even days at a time. Even by the end of
the Clinton administration, from September 1999 to December 2000, the
system was down about one hour for every 16.7 hours of operation. The
breakdowns often came in big blocks of time; gun shows sometimes were
unable to sell guns during the entire weekend that they were open. Notably, the breakdowns were quickly resolved within weeks of President Bush assuming office in 2001, and the problems did not recur.
In 2008, Holder argued
that “the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right to keep
and bear arms,” but only protected government militias’ rights to guns.
Scholar and political commentator John Lott writes
that he “can’t find even one gun control law that Holder has opposed.”
“On every gun control regulation [Holder] has discussed,” says Lott, “he
has been supportive, including: bans, raising the age that someone can
possess a gun, registration and licensing, one-gun-a-month limit on
purchases, and mandatory waiting periods.”
HOLDER ON THE GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION CENTER
In the latter days of the Bush administration, Holder publicly condemned the Guantanamo Bay detention center as
an “international embarrassment.” He accused the U.S. government of
having “authorized torture and … let fear take precedence over the rule
of law.” Further, he demanded an immediate end to warrantless
eavesdropping by intelligence and counterterrorism officials.
HOLDER ACCUSES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION OF HAVING ABUSED AND TORTURED TERROR SUSPECTS
In a June 2008 speech to the American Constitution Society
(ACS), Holder, who was himself an ACS board of directors member,
condemned “the disastrous course” which the Bush administration had
followed in its efforts to combat terrorism. “Our needlessly abusive and
unlawful practices in the ‘War on Terror,’” he said, “have diminished
our standing in the world community and made us less, rather than more,
safe.”
Holder added
that the Bush administration had taken many steps that “were both
excessive and unlawful” in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
“I never thought I would see the day when a Justice Department would
claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse
constitutes torture, and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and
degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the
Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to
treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention, never thought
that I would see that a president would act in direct defiance of
federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA surveillance of American
citizens. This disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is
destructive in our struggle against terrorism.”
In April 2009, reporters asked Holder whether he might seek to prosecute
CIA agents who had carried out the Bush administration policies to
which the Attorney General now objected. He replied:
“It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to
protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the
Justice Department.” Four months later, however, Holder referred their cases to a special federal prosecutor with broad and independent powers. In making this decision, the Attorney General ignored the bitter opposition of CIA Director Leon Panetta and even attorneys in his (Holder's) own Justice Department.HOLDER AND ISLAMIC TERRORISM
In 2004 Holder filed an amicus brief on behalf of al Qaeda terrorist Jose Padilla, who had been dispatched to the United States by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
to carry out a post-9/11, second wave of terrorist attacks. In the
brief, Holder asserted that President Bush lacked the constitutional
authority to determine the parameters of the battlefield in the war on
terror. Padilla, for example, was arrested in an American airport when
returning from a trip to Pakistan, where he had met with Mr. Mohammed to
discuss plans for attacking U.S. interests. By Holder’s reckoning,
Islamic terrorists had a right to be treated as criminal defendants, not enemy combatants, unless they were captured on a traditional battlefield.
As former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy explains,
Holder’s Padilla brief was "a comprehensive attack on Bush
counterterrorism, an enthusiastic endorsement of the law-enforcement
approach in vogue during the Clinton era (when Holder was deputy
attorney general under Janet Reno, who also signed on to the Padilla
brief)."
Notably, when the U.S. Senate in early 2009 deliberated vis a vis Holder's nomination for Attorney General, Holder failed to disclose
seven legal briefs he had written or signed during the course of his
professional career—most notably Amicus briefs on behalf of detained
terrorists and enemy combatants like Padilla.HOLDER SEEKS TO TRY ISLAMIC TERRORISTS IN CIVILIAN COURTS
In May 2009, Holder announced that
Ahmed Ghailani—who had been indicted by a federal grand jury for the
1998 bombings (which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans) of two
U.S. embassies in Africa—would be transferred from the Guantanamo Bay
detention center to New York City for trial. This would make
Ghailani the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first
to face trial in a civilian criminal court. Said Holder:
"By prosecuting Ahmed Ghailani in federal court, we will ensure that he
finally answers for his alleged role in the bombing of our embassies in
Tanzania and Kenya.... This administration is committed to keeping the
American people safe and upholding the rule of law, and by closing
Guantanamo and bringing terrorists housed there to justice we will make
our nation stronger and safer."
On November 13, 2009, Holder announced that his Justice Department would
likewise try five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the
9/11 conspiracy, in a civilian court—the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The
defendants were Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz
Ali, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM).
In response to Holder's announcement, political commentator Mona Charen wrote:
“By granting a civil trial to KSM, while Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who
bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, will receive a military tribunal, the U.S.
telegraphs this message to terrorists: Wherever possible, attack our
civilians. You'll get more lawyering and a better deal than if you
attack our military. (And by the way, you'll get more rights than a
member of our military who commits a crime.)”MIRANDA RIGHTS FOR TERRORISTS
After Holder's announcement that Islamic terror suspects would be tried
in civilian courts rather than in military tribunals, many Americans
began to wonder if U.S. military and law-enforcement personnel would be
required to be read Miranda rights—which bar prosecutors from using, as
evidence, statements which suspects make before they have been informed
of their right to remain silent and to consult an attorney—to newly
captured terror suspects. In a November 2009 Justice Department
oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Lindsey
Graham (R-South Carolina) raised this issue in the following contentious
exchange with Holder:
GRAHAM: Can you give me a case in United States history where a (sic)
enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?
HOLDER: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made —
GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it
for you. The answer is no.... If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would
it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to
justice?
HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.
GRAHAM: Where would you try him?
HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried....
GRAHAM: If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?
HOLDER: Again I'm not—that all depends. I mean, the notion that we—
GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody
in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial
interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled
to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent. The big
problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught
bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him
over—to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence—for an interrogation
on the battlefield, because now we're saying
that he is subject to
criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people
fighting this war. What would you tell the military commander who
captured him? Would you tell him, "You must read him his rights and give
him a lawyer"? And if you didn't tell him that, would you jeopardize
the prosecution in a federal court?
HOLDER: We have captured thousands of people on the battlefield, only a
few of which have actually been given their Miranda warnings. With
regard to bin Laden and the desire or the need for statements from him,
the case against him at this point is so overwhelming that we do not
need to—
GRAHAM: Mr. Attorney General, my only point—the only point I'm making,
that if we're going to use federal court as a disposition for
terrorists, you take everything that comes with being in federal court.
And what comes with being in federal court is that
the rules in this
country, unlike military law—you can have military operations, you can
interrogate somebody for military intelligence purposes, and the
law-enforcement rights do not attach. But under domestic criminal law,
the moment the person is in the hands of the United States government,
they're entitled to be told they have a right to a lawyer and can remain
silent. And if we go down that road, we're going to make this country
less safe. That is my problem with what you have done.
The very next month, Holder's Justice Department elected to Mirandize the so-called “Christmas bomber,” al Qaeda
operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian-born Islamist who had
tried to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet with explosives
hidden inside his underwear. Informed of his right to remain silent,
Abdulmutallab promptly chose
to exercise it. Soon thereafter, several FBI agents traveled to Nigeria
to plead with the suspect's family for assistance. Ultimately (and
fortuitously), the family traveled to the U.S., where they persuaded
Abdulmutallab to cooperate.
In May 2010, Holder and the Obama administration abruptly shifted
their position regarding the highly controversial and politically
radioactive matter of Miranda rights for terror suspects. Specifically,
Holder and the administration said that they would thenceforth seek to
pass a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects
without informing them of their Miranda rights. As Holder put it,
interrogators needed greater flexibility to question such suspects than
was permitted by existing exceptions.HOLDER REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE ISLAM'S TIES TO TERRORISM
On May 13, 2010, Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee.
During that testimony, Rep. Lamar Smith tried to get the Attorney
General to acknowledge that radical Islam might have played a role
in motivating several recently attempted terrorist attacks against U.S.
interests—most notably: (a) Major Nidal Malik Hasan's
November 2009 shooting of 13 fellow U.S. soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas;
(b) Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab's attempted bombing of a Northwest
Airlines jet on Christmas Day 2009; and (c) Faisal Shahzad's attempted
car bombing in New York's Times Square on May 1, 2010. Holder
steadfastly refused to acknowledge Smith's assertion. A video and
transcript of Holder's exchange with Smith can be viewed here.Holder changes course and decides to try 9/11 mastermind in military tribunal
On April 4, 2011, Holder announced
that the Justice Department, in an abrupt reversal of its November 2009
decision, would now proceed to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed (and 4 co-conspirators) in a military tribunal in Guantanamo
Bay.HOLDER CALLS AMERICA “A NATION OF COWARDS” ON RACIAL MATTERS
In a February 18, 2009 speech to Justice Department employees marking
Black History Month, Holder alleged that Americans on the whole were
afraid to confront racial issues in an honest or meaningful way. Among
his remarks were the following:
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting
pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too
many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.... [W]e, average Americans,
simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we
have never been at ease with and, given our nation’s history, this is in
some ways understandable.... [T]his nation has still not come to grips
with its racial past ... [A] black history month is a testament to the
problem that has afflicted blacks throughout our stay in this country.
Black history is given a separate, and clearly not equal, treatment by
our society in general and by our educational institutions in
particular."
HOLDER AND STATE IMMIGRATION LAWS
On April 23, 2010, Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed
into law a bill deputizing state police to check with federal
authorities on the immigration status of any individuals whom they had
stopped for some legitimate reason, if the behavior of those
individuals—or the circumstances of the stop—led the officers to suspect
that they might be in the United States illegally. In the ensuing days
and weeks, Holder spoke out forcefully against the bill and indicated
that the federal government might challenge it. During the weekend of
May 8-9, he participated in a number of television interviews in which
he warned that the law could lead to racial profiling and might cause
Latinos to stop cooperating with police. But in a May 13 House
hearing, Holder admitted that he had not read the statute: "I have not had a chance to. I've glanced at it. I have not read it."
Eventually, Holder's Justice Department filed suit against Arizona in an
effort to prevent the immigration law from taking effect. The suit
resulted in court rulings that blocked key portions of the law. By November 2011, the Justice Department would file similar suits against three
additional states (Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah) that likewise had
passed laws designed to stem the flow of illegal immigration.THE NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY SCANDAL
On Election Day, 2008, twomembers of the New Black Panther Party—Jerry
Jackson and King Samir Shabazz—intimidated white voters with racial
slurs and threats of violence at a Philadelphia polling place. Bartle
Bull, a former civil rights attorney and campaign aide to the late
Robert F. Kennedy, witnessed the Panthers' actions and characterized
them as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" he had ever seen.
Because Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits
intimidation, coercion and threats to voters or those aiding voters, the
Bush Justice Department filed
a civil-rights lawsuit not only against the aforementioned Jackson and
Shabazz, but also against the New Black Panther Party and its national
chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz.
In 2009, the Obama administration inherited that lawsuit from the
outgoing Bush administration. When the defendants failed to answer the
suit, a federal court in Philadelphia entered a default judgment against
them. But the Holder Justice Department responded
by suddenly dropping the charges against the Panthers and two of the
defendants; the third defendant was merely barred from displaying a
weapon near a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years.
In June 2010, J. Christian Adams, a five-year Department of Justice (DOJ) veteran, resigned
to protest the “corrupt nature” of DOJ's dismissal of the case against
the Panthers. “I mean we were told, 'Drop the charges against the New
Black Panther Party,'” he told Fox News. In July 2010,
Adams gave damning public testimony about how the DOJ believed that
“civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and
should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.”
Christopher Coates—Voting Section Chief for the DOJ—testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
and corroborated Adams' assertion that the Department had routinely
ignored civil rights cases involving white victims. For more than a year
previously, Holder's DOJ had denied the Commission's requests
to hear Coates' testimony and had instructed Coates not to testify. But
in September 2010, Coates finally went public with his story and asked
for protection under whistleblower laws. For the full text of Coates'
testimony, click here.
In testimony he gave on March 1, 2011, Holder assured the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related
Agencies that politics had played no role whatsoever in DOJ's handling
of the New Black Panther Party case: “The decisions made in the New
Black Panther Party
case were made by career attorneys in the department,” said the Attorney General. But documents obtained in 2012 by Judicial Watch, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, revealed
that top political appointees at DOJ were intimately involved in the
decision to drop the voter intimidation lawsuit against the New Black
Panther Party. DOJ had initially refused to turn over the documents,
contending that they didn’t show “any political interference
whatsoever.” But Judge Reggie B. Walton in Washington, DC District Court
disagreed. Allowing the release of the documents on July 23, 2012, he declared
that they “reveal that political appointees within DOJ were conferring
about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in
the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in that case[.]”RELEASING A MARXIST TERRORIST FROM PRISON
In July 2010, Holder's Justice Department released the former Marxist
terrorist Marilyn Buck from prison, where she was serving an 80-year
sentence that began in the 1980s. Buck had helped the Black Liberation Army (BLA) member and convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur escape from prison in 1979; helped the BLA acquire weapons and ammunition; participated in the deadly 1981 Brink's armored-car robbery; and played a role in a number of bombings—directed
against the U.S. Senate, three military installations in the Washington
D.C. area, and four sites in New York City. Explaining the rationale
for Buck's release, Justice Department officials said that Buck had
learned her lesson and had “expressed a dramatic change
from her previous political philosophy.” After discovering in early
summer 2010 that Buck had contracted uterine cancer and was not expected
to live much longer, Holder’s officials released her even earlier than scheduled, on July 15, 2010. She died less than a month later.“ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE”
In a January 2011 address
to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Civil Rights,
Holder cited a 2005 report based on EPA data which showed that African
Americans were almost 80 percent more likely than whites to live near
hazardous industrial pollution sites. He said:
“In 2011, the burden of environmental degradation still falls
disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of
color.... This is unacceptable. And it is unconscionable. But through
the aggressive enforcement of federal environmental laws in every
community, I believe that we can—and I know that we must—change the
status quo.”
HOLDER'S OPPOSITION TO REMOVING INELIGIBLE NAMES FROM VOTER ROLLS
In 2011, Holder's Justice Department pushed to maximize Democratic voter turnout for the 2012 elections by filing “motor voter” suits
across the country, complaining that state agencies were not
circulating voter-registration forms in social service agencies. By
contrast, the Justice Department made no effort to enforce another section of the law requiring states purge voter rolls of dead persons and ineligible felons.
In late May 2012, Holder's DOJ ordered
the state of Florida to halt its efforts to identify and purge its
voter rolls of non-citizens. The DOJ’s lead civil-rights lawyer said
that his Department had not yet determined whether Florida's efforts
"neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of discriminating on
account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group."
Florida did not back down. “We have an obligation to make sure the voter
rolls are accurate and we are going to continue forward and do
everything that we can legally do to make sure than ineligible voters
cannot vote,” said
Chris Cate, a spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner. “We
are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible
voters from being able to cast a ballot. We are not going to give up
our efforts to make sure the voter rolls are accurate.”
Earlier in 2012 Secretary Detzner had worked
with Florida’s Department of Motor Vehicles to identify more than 2,600
people who were registered to vote despite being non-citizens at the
time they applied for a driver’s license. Further, Detzner said that
earlier efforts by his agency had identified 182,000 voters who were
non-citizens by comparing voter rolls and driver’s-license databases.
Detzner also revealed that he and his staff had been refused
access by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the federal
database containing more up-to-date immigration and citizenship
information. In other words, the DHS would not assist Florida in its
effort to be as non-discriminatory as possible, even as Holder's DOJ
insisted that Florida was engaging in discrimination.
Also in Florida, some 53,000 dead registered voters had been discovered when the state compared voter
rolls to federal Social Security files for the first time—as a result
of the passage of an election law by the GOP-controlled legislature.
When Florida failed to comply with Holder's demand that it stop purging
the voter rolls of dead people and non-citizens, the DOJ on June 12,
2012 filed a lawsuit against Florida.
Also as of June 2012, DOJ had already filed suit against
both Texas and South Carolina for enacting voter photo ID statutes; yet
a 6-3 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 2008 had already
upheld the right of a state (in that case, Indiana) to require such
identification for voting. Thus the DOJ suit implied that Holder and company believe each state must file individual suits to achieve the same right.
In a July 2010 column for PJ Media,
former DOJ Voting Section attorney J. Christian Adams had written: “In
November 2009, the entire Voting Section was invited to a meeting with
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes…to discuss Motor Voter
enforcement decisions. The room was packed with dozens of Voting
Section employees when she made her announcement regarding the
provisions related to voter list integrity: ‘We have no interest in
enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with
increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.’” HOLDER'S OPPOSITION TO VOTER-IDENTIFICATION LAWS
As U.S. Attorney General, Holder, who contends that nearly one in four black people lack photo identification, has consistently opposed
efforts to pass voter-ID laws designed to combat voter fraud. According
to Holder, such laws—which either took effect or became pending in 11 states
between 2008 and 2012—have the effect of disenfranchising nonwhite
minorities. “It is time to ask: What kind of nation and what kind of
people do we want to be?” Holder said
in a December 2011 speech condemning voter ID. “Are we willing to allow
this era—our era—to be remembered as the age when our nation’s proud
tradition of expanding the franchise ended?”
In a May 2012 meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus and black church leaders, Holder said
that during the preceding two years, the Justice Department had
challenged “two dozen state laws and executive orders from more than a
dozen states that could make it significantly harder for many eligible
voters to cast ballots in 2012.″ Added Holder:
“Despite our nation’s long history of extending voting rights to
non-property owners and to women, to people of color, to Native
Americans, and to younger Americans, today a growing number of our
fellow citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions and
problems that nearly five decades ago so many fought to address. In my
travels across this country I’ve heard a consistent drumbeat of concern
from citizens who for the first time in their lives now have reason to
believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble
ideals and some of the achievements that defined the civil rights
movement now hang, again, in the balance.”
Further, Holder asserted
that conservatives in a number of states were enacting
photo-identification requirements at polling places as a pretext for
blocking “access” to the voting booth for blacks and other nonwhite
minorities. According to the Attorney General, voter fraud was much too
rare to warrant such measures. Hoover Institution senior fellow Thomas
Sowell offered this assessment of Holder's position:
“Since millions of black Americans—like millions of white Americans—are
confronted with demands for photo identification at airports, banks and
innumerable other institutions, it is a little much to claim that
requiring the same thing to vote is denying the right to vote....
Holder’s pooh-poohing of voter fraud dangers, and hyping the 'threat' of
denying minorities 'access' to the voting booth, are completely
consistent with his drive to (1) maximize the number of votes by black
Democrats and (2) spread as much fear as possible among minorities that
they are under siege, and that the Democrats are their only protection
and salvation.”
THE "FAST AND FURIOUS" SCANDAL:
In the fall of 2011, controversy arose over Holder's role in endorsing “Fast and Furious,” a program which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms (ATF)—an agency of the Justice Department—had administered during 2009-10. In that initiative,
the ATF sold some 2,500 guns—including 34 sniper rifles with an
effective lethal range of approximately 2,000 meters—to “straw
purchasers” in the U.S. who agreed to subsequently smuggle the guns into
Mexico and put them in the hands of cartel leaders, who supposedly were
to be arrested at some subsequent point.
The entire "Fast and Furious" operation ended with only 20 indictments
of straw purchasers—all of whom were already familiar to U.S.
authorities from the outset. Moreover, the program was linked directly
to two weapons found on the scene
where U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona in
December 2010. By the fall of 2011, the weapons that had been
transferred as part of "Fast and Furious" had been used in at least 200 murders in Mexico. They also had been identified at 11 additional crime scenes in the United States.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter offered an insightful analysis
of the motivations that underpinned "Fast and Furious," which she
characterized as "the most shockingly vile corruption scandal in the
history of the country":
Administration officials intentionally put guns into the hands of
Mexican drug cartels, so that when the guns taken from Mexican crime
scenes turned out to be American guns, Democrats would have a reason to
crack down on gun sellers in the United States....
[I]t's curious that Democrats all started telling the same lie about
guns as soon as Obama became president. In March 2009, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton
announced to reporters on a trip to Mexico: "Since we know that the
vast majority, 90 percent of that weaponry (used by Mexican drug
cartels), comes from our country, we are going to try to stop it from
getting there in the first place."
As she sentimentally elaborated on Fox News' Greta Van Susteren show:
"The guns sold in the United States, which are illegal in Mexico, get
smuggled and shipped across our border and arm these terrible
drug-dealing criminals so that they can outgun these poor police
officers along the border and elsewhere in Mexico."
Suddenly that 90 percent statistic was everywhere....CBS' Bob Schieffer asked Obama on Face the Nation:
"It's my understanding that 90 percent of the guns that they're getting
down in Mexico are coming from the United States. We don't seem to be
doing a very good job of cutting off the gun flow. Do you need any kind
of legislative help on that front? Have you, for example, thought about
asking Congress to reinstate the ban on assault weapons?"
At a Senate hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said: "It is
unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico
and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the
United States."
And then, thanks to Fox News -- the first network to report it -- we
found out the 90 percent figure was complete bunkum. It was a
fabrication told by William Hoover, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives (BATF), and then spread like wildfire by
Democrats and the media.
Mexican law-enforcement authorities send only a fraction of the guns
they recover from criminals back to the U.S. for tracing. Which guns do
they send? The guns that have U.S. serial numbers on them. It would be
like asking a library to produce all their Mark Twain books and then
concluding that 90 percent of the books in that library are by Mark
Twain....
Obama backed away from the preposterous 90 percent claim. His National
Security Council spokesman explained to Fox News that by "recovered,"
they meant "guns traceable to the United States." ... Attorney General
Eric Holder told reporters that even if the percentage is inaccurate,
the "vast majority" of guns seized in crimes in Mexico come from the
United States. And he should know, because it turns out he was sending
them there!
Apart from the guns Holder was giving them, this was an absurd claim.
Most of the guns used by drug cartels are automatic weapons -- not to
mention shoulder-fired rockets -- that can't be sold to most Americans.
They are acquired from places like Russia, China and Guatemala.
Right about the time the 90 percent lie was unraveling, the Obama
administration decided to directly hand thousands of American guns over
to Mexican criminals. Apart from the fact that tracking thousands of
guns into Mexico is not feasible or rational, the dumped guns didn't
have GPS tracing devices on them, anyway. There is no conceivable
law-enforcement objective to such a program....
We also know that hundreds of people were murdered with these
U.S.-government-supplied guns, including at least one American, U.S.
Border Patrol agent Brian Terry....
No one has explained what putting 2,500 untraceable guns in the hands of Mexican drug dealers was supposed to accomplish.
But you know what that might have accomplished? It would make the
Democrats' lie retroactively true -- allowing them to push for the same
gun restrictions they were planning when they first concocted it. A
majority of guns recovered from Mexican criminals would, at last, be
American guns, because Eric Holder had put them there.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, some brave whistleblower inside the
government leaked details of this monstrous scheme. As soon as Congress
and the public demanded answers, Holder clammed up. He just says "oops"
-- and accuses Republicans of racism.
While being questioned under oath
during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3, 2011, Holder indicated
that he had known nothing about "Fast and Furious" until about April
2011. But soon thereafter, a newly discovered memo
(dated July 2010) showed that Michael Walther, director of the National
Drug Intelligence Center, had already told Holder that straw buyers in
the "Fast and Furious" operation "are responsible for the purchase of
1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking
cartels." Other documents
also indicated that Holder had begun receiving weekly briefings on the
program from the National Drug Intelligence Center no later than July 5,
2010. Moreover, former ATF special agent William Newell testified under oath that “the DHS, IRS, DEA, ATF, ICE and the Obama Justice Department were all involved” in the operation.
In 2011 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a subpoena
instructing Holder to turn over all internal Justice Department
documents related to the "Fast and Furious" program. As of late June,
2012, DOJ had supplied fewer than 8 percent of the 80,000 documents the congressional investigators sought. (Further, DOJ had blocked
48 of the 70 Justice Department officials who were involved in Fast
and Furious, from testifying.) House Republicans continued to pressure
the Attorney General to turn over the remaining documents, but Holder
refused.
On June 20, 2012, President Obama granted a request by Holder to exert executive privilege
over the documents in question. That same day, the House
Committee—having exhausted all other means of obtaining the documents
from the Justice Department—voted
23 to 17 (in a vote that was split along party lines) to hold the
Attorney General in contempt of Congress for failing to produce the
missing documents.
On June 28, 2012, the full House of Representatives voted
255-67 to uphold the criminal contempt charge against Holder. Most
Democrats walked out of the vote in a gesture of protest led by the Congressional Black Caucus,
but 17 Democrats sided with the majority Republicans. The vote
represented the first time a U.S. Attorney General had ever been held in
contempt by a chamber of Congress.
Minutes after the criminal contempt vote, the House voted 258-95 (with 21 Democrats joining the Republican majority) to pursue a civil contempt case against Holder in court.
In response to the contempt charges against him, Holder suggested
that Republicans were retaliating against him because he had blocked
voter-identification laws in a number of states. “Today’s vote may make
for good political theater in the minds of some, but it is, at base,
both a crass effort and a grave disservice to the American people,” he
said. “They expect—and deserve—far better.”
On September 19, 2012, the Justice Department's inspector general issued a report
saying there was no evidence that Holder had known about Fast &
Furious. Instead, the report blamed a total of 18 DOJ officials, most
notably the high-ranking Jason Weinstein (number two in the Justice
Department's Criminal Division) and Kenneth Melson (former head of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) for "a series of misguided
strategies, tactics, errors in judgement and management failures."
HOLDER REJECTS REFERENCES TO “RADICAL ISLAM”
In February 2012 it was reported
that radical Muslim groups in the United States had repeatedly met with
high-ranking Obama administration officials to complain that the usage
of the term “radical Islam” in FBI curricula was both “offensive” and
“racist.” In response, Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller issued
directives requiring all such language to be purged from FBI training
materials. Among the more than 1,000 items
destroyed or removed by the FBI and the DOJ were PowerPoints and
articles that defined jihad as “holy war,” and presentations that
portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood
as an organization which seeks to establish Islam's dominion over all
the world -- a goal the Brotherhood has candidly and publicly declared
for decades.
SUPPORT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
During a February 2012 forum at Columbia University, Holder voiced
his support for affirmative action, saying that he “can’t actually
imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease.”
Added Holder: “Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation
practices. The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin;
when do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are
entitled?”CLAIMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST BLACK SCHOOLCHILDREN
In a February 25, 2012 speech
to the organization 100 Black Men of Atlanta, Holder lamented the
findings of a 2011 study of discipline patterns in Texas schools. Holder
said the study showed that “83 percent of African American male
students and 74 percent of Hispanic male students ended up in trouble
and suspended for some period of time” -- as compared to 59% of white
male students. “We’ve often seen that students of color, students from
disadvantaged backgrounds, and students with special needs are
disproportionately likely to be suspended or expelled,” Holder stated.
“This is, quite simply, unacceptable.… These unnecessary and destructive
policies must be changed.” After citing the Texas study, Holder added
that “tellingly, 97 percent of all suspensions were discretionary and
reflected the administrator’s discipline philosophy as much as the
student’s behavior.” In his speech, Holder ignored data indicating that the different discipline rates were consistent with differences in actual schoolyard behavior.HOLDER PRAISES AL SHARPTON
On April 11, 2012, Holder delivered a speech at the 14th annual convention of Al Sharpton's National Action Network. Among his remarks were the following:
"...Reverend Sharpton ... I am especially grateful ... for your
partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for
the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on
the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill.... I am
honored to be included in this annual gathering once again -- and to
bring greetings from President Obama.... This organization's leaders,
members, and supporters have been on the front lines of our nation's
fight to secure security, opportunity, and justice for all.... [Y]ou are
carrying on ... the work of a leader [Martin Luther King, Jr.] who, I
believe, does stand as America's greatest 'drum major for justice' ...
"Despite the extraordinary progress that has marked the last four
decades and transformed our entire society, the unfortunate fact is that
-- in 2012 -- our nation's long struggle to overcome injustice, to
eliminate disparities, to bridge long-standing divisions, and to
eradicate violence has not yet ended...."
RACE-BASED “DISPARATE IMPACT” LAWSUIT
On April 23, 2012, Holder's Justice Department sued
Jacksonville, Florida, claiming that the city's use of written tests to
determine promotions in its fire department had "resulted in a
disparate impact upon black candidates," who registered passing grades
at significantly lower rates than their white counterparts.COLLABORATING WITH MEDIA MATTERS
On September 18, 2012, The Daily Callerreported
that internal DOJ emails (obtained via the Freedom of Information Act)
showed that Holder's communications staff had secretly collaborated with
Media Matters For America
in an effort to discredit and suppress further news stories about
scandals that were plaguing Holder and his agency. According to The Daily Caller:
"Dozens of pages of emails [sent in September and November 2010]
between DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler and Media
Matters staffers show Schmaler, Holder’s top press defender, working ...
with Media Matters staffer Jeremy Holden on attacking news coverage of
the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation scandal....
"At 9:50 a.m. on July 8, 2011, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote to
Schmaler asking for her help 'debunking what I think is a conservative
media myth about Operation Fast and Furious.'"
For further details about these and other collaborations between Media Matters and DOJ, click here.
HOLDER ORDERS THAT MIRANDA RIGHTS BE READ TO ISLAMIC TERRORIST WHO DETONATED BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON
In the wake of the deadly Boston Marathon bombing
by two Islamic terrorists on April 15, 2013, the surviving bomber,
Dzhokar Tsarnaev -- who had been wounded by law-enforcement officers
pursuing him -- was interrogated
by FBI agents in a Boston hospital. He was not read his Miranda rights
prior to the questioning, due to a 48-hour “public safety exemption”
that can be invoked in cases where there is reason to believe that a
suspect may be able to provide information that could help authorities
prevent additional, imminent acts of terror or destruction. During the
first 16 hours of questioning, Tsarnaev revealed a significant amount of
highly useful intelligence. But then, on orders from the Justice
Department, federal judge Marianne Bowler entered Tsarnaev's hospital
room and, in a move that stunned the FBI investigators who were present,
read him his Miranda rights. From that point onward, Tsarnaev refused
to talk.
HOLDER WARNS AGAINST ANTI-MUSLIM RETALIATION
Fourteen days after the Boston Marathon bomb attack, Holder declared
that the Justice Department would be on the lookout for any acts of
violence or discrimination indicative of a backlash against Muslim
Americans. Without mentioning the fact that the two perpetrators were
Muslims, the Attorney General said:
"[J]ust as we will pursue relentlessly anyone who would target our
people or attempt to terrorize our cities -- the Justice Department is
firmly committed to protecting innocent people against misguided acts of
retaliation. In the dozen years since 9/11, this commitment has led the
Department to investigate more than 800 incidents involving threats,
assaults, and acts of vandalism and violence targeting Muslims, Arabs,
Sikhs, South Asians, and others who are perceived to be members of these
groups. As Americans, we must not allow any group to be stigmatized or
alienated. We must not tolerate acts of hatred."
HOLDER CALLS IMMIGRATION AMNESTY A MATTER OF "CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS"
In an April 24 speech to the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund Awards Gala, Holder said: “The way we treat our friends and neighbors who are
undocumented – by creating a mechanism for them to earn citizenship and
move out of the shadows – transcends the issue of immigration status.
This is a matter of civil and human rights.”
HOLDER'S DOJ SECRETLY MONITORS PHONE CALLS IN ASSOCIATED PRESS
OFFICES
On May 13, 2013, it was learned
that the Justice Department had secretly obtained the records of
telephone calls that, in April and May of 2012, had been routed
through more than 20 separate phone lines assigned to the Associated
Press (AP); those lines had been used by over 100 AP reporters and
editors.
DOJ claimed
that its actions were part of an investigation into AP's May 7, 2012
publication of a story (based on leaked, classified materials)
disclosing the CIA's infiltration of an al
Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb
aboard an airplane. Notably,
the five reporters and an editor who had been assigned to that
particular AP story were among those who had their phone records
seized by DOJ.According
to strict DOJ rules, phone records from news organizations can be
obtained only with a subpoena that is issued after "all
reasonable attempts" have been made to get the same information
from other sources (which DOJ elected
not to do). Moreover, DOJ rules stipulate that the subpoena must be
approved personally by the Attorney General. But at a May 14, 2013
press conference, Eric Holder said
that he had recused himself from the DOJ investigation of AP, and
that Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole had signed off on the subpoena. Thus,
when reporters began asking Holder specific questions about the
seizure of AP's phone records, the Attorney General pleaded
ignorance. “I frankly don’t have knowledge of those facts,” he
contended. When Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin
asked Holder why he had recused himself, the Attorney General
replied:
"I was interviewed as one of the people who had access to the
info"—in other words, he was a potential suspect in the leak.
In a subsequent letter sent to Holder, AP president and CEO
Gary Pruitt stated:
"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad
collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press
and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications
with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities
undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to
AP's newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP's
activities and operations that the government has no conceivable
right to know."
AP reporters were equally upset. Said
one AP reporter: “We all know that confidential sourcing is the
lifeblood of what we do, and people can’t come to us if they think
they’re going to be compromised. It’s hard enough getting
sources, now we’re afraid this is going to have a chilling
effect.”
On May
16, 2013, the Washington Post broke a major story
explaining the real motives behind the Justice Department's actions.
Specifically, said the Post, AP was prepared to publish its
scoop about the CIA's infiltration of the al Qaeda plot on May 2,
2012. But the CIA—particularly its deputy director, Michael J.
Morell—told the news service that publishing the story at that
point would compromise a “sensitive intelligence operation” with
serious national-security implications. Morell said that the agency
would need several more days to protect whatever it had in the works,
and that AP could publish its story as soon as that had been
accomplished.
Then, on May 7, 2012, CIA officials told AP that
national-security concerns were “no longer an issue,” but
nonetheless requested that the news agency delay publication for one
more day. This was because the Obama administration was planning to
announce the CIA's successful counterterrorism operation the
following morning—May 8, 2012, when the president’s top
counterterrorism adviser, John
Brennan, was slated to appear on Good Morning America.
Given the fact that national security was no longer an issue,
however, AP disregarded the CIA's request and published the story on
May 7. That is what prompted Eric Holder's Justice Department to
illegally procure AP's telephone records.
HOLDER'S DOJ SECRETLY TARGETS FOX NEWS REPORTERS
On May 20, 2013, it was revealed that DOJ's efforts to intimidate the
media went beyond targeting reporters and editors at the Associated
Press. The Washington Postreported
that DOJ had not only seized the phone records of Fox News reporter
James Rosen, but had used his security badge to access records tracking
his movements at the State Department, traced the timing of his calls
with a Department security advisor suspected of giving him classified
information, and obtained a search warrant to access his personal
emails.
That same day (May 20), it was reported that two more Fox News staffers -- reporter William La Jeunesse and producer Mike Levine -- had also been targeted by DOJ.Rosen's case
in particular centered around his involvement with State Department
advisor Steven Kim, an arms expert with security clearance. Kim is a
naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for
telling Rosen that the intelligence community believed that North
Korea’s response to additional UN sanctions would be another test of its
nuclear capabilities. Rosen published a story to that effect on June
11, 2009, noting that the CIA had received the information form sources
inside North Korea.
That story was posted the same day that a top-secret report was made
available to Kim and 95 other members of the intelligence community.
Using the surveillance techniques described above, the FBI built a case
contending that the information Rosen received had come directly from
those documents, and that Kim was in violation of the Espionage Act. Yet
Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to top-secret information, steal
or sell documents or secrets, or collaborate with the enemy. He gave
exclusive information to a reporter, a reality that occurs every day.
Furthermore, according to the New York Times,
four months prior to disseminating the aforementioned information to
Rosen, Kim was asked by a State Department press officer to speak to
Rosen about North Korea, “and the two began to talk and exchange
e-mails,” the paper reported.
In building the case against Kim, DOJ -- invoking a wartime law known as the Espionage Act -- secretly (without notifying Rosen) issued a subpeona, personally signed
by Eric Holder, to gain access to two days’ worth of Rosen’s personal
emails and to all of his email exchanges with Kim. Notably, two judges
initially denied
DOJ's request for approval of the subpoena; finally a third judge,
Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge in the Federal District Court for the
District of Columbia, overturned the rulings of the first two judges
and approved the subpoena.
In an affidavit, FBI agent Reginald Reyes revealed
DOJ’s rationale for investigating Rosen: “From the beginning of their
relationship, the Reporter [Rosen] asked, solicited and encouraged Mr.
Kim to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and
intelligence information about the Foreign Country. The Reporter did so
by employing flattery and playing to Mr. Kim’s vanity and ego.” More
importantly, Reyes further declared that there was evidence that Rosen had broken the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
The fact that Holder personally signed off on the subpoena involving
Rosen is highly significant, because on May 15, 2013, the Attorney
General had testified,
under oath, to the House Judiciary Committee: "With regard to the
potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that
is not something I've ever been involved in, heard of, or would think
would be wise policy." But that is precisely
what the government was trying to do in the Rosen case; i.e., the FBI
alleged that there was “probable cause to believe” that Rosen was a
“co-conspirator and/or aider and abettor ... committing the criminal
offense…”
The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald explained the implications of the DOJ targeting Rosen:
“Under U.S. law, it is not illegal to publish classified information.
That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms,
is what has prevented the U.S. government from ever prosecuting
journalists for reporting on what the U.S. government does in secret.
This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ -- that a journalist can be guilty
of crimes for ‘soliciting’ the disclosure of classified information --
is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act
of investigative journalism itself.”
Fox News’ Brit Hume echoed
that assessment. “The Obama-Holder Justice Department is now prepared
to treat the ordinary newsgathering actives of reporters to seek
information from government officials as a possible crime,” he warned.
On May 21, 2013 -- the day after the revelations about DOJ's targeting
of Rosen, La Jeunesse, and Levine were made public -- it was learned
that according to documents from October 2011, the Justice Department
had seized phone records associated with several Fox News lines as part
of a leak investigation. The documents showed exchanges matching the
specific locations of Fox News' operations at the White House, Pentagon,
State Department, and elsewhere.
A few days after the news broke about how Holder had authorized DOJ to
seize Rosen's personal emails, the attorney general's aides reported that Holder felt “a creeping sense of personal remorse.”
ABOUT THIS BLOG
I AM A FEROCIOUS CONSERVATIVE
CONSERVATIVE RIGHT WINGER UNDERGROUND... IN EXILE IN AMERICA !
I AM AN UNRELENTING FEROCIOUS CONSERVATIVE:
Ferocious = (fə-rō'shəs) “Marked by unrelenting intensity; to the extreme”
Conservative = (kən-sûr'və-tĭz'əm) “A political philosophy or attitude emphasizing respect for traditional institutions and distrust of government activism”
My page is a place for Unrelenting Ferocious Activist Conservatives across our country to gather and discuss and plan our next moves. I am tired of sitting around and playing “nice” while the Progressive Liberals have spent the last 50 years attacking and denigrating our values and our beliefs while our side sits around and tries real hard to be accommodating and “Nice”! (Political Correctness!) NO MORE!!
AS AN UNRELENTING FEROCIOUS CONSERVATIVES. I WILL ATTACK BACK! | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Murtha Laughs Off Cheney: At Least He Didn’t Blame Me For The British Pulling Out
Today on Meet the Press, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) laughed off Vice President Cheney’s attack that Murtha’s plan for Iraq would “validate the al Qaeda strategy.” “He didn’t blame me for at least getting the British out,” Murtha said. “I thought he might blame me for that.”
Murtha pointed out that Cheney “just does not listen to what I’m saying.” Cheney ignores the military’s readiness crisis and the fact that “the future threats to this country significantly increased in the last year because we have no ground strategic reserve. … He doesn’t talk about the policy and the results of what I’m saying.” Watch it:
RUSSERT: How does it feel to be linked with al Qaeda by a vice president?
MURTHA: It’s unfortunate that the vice president does not have the argument — he just does not listen to what I’m saying. We can’t send troops into combat without equipment. We can’t send troops into combat without training. We can’t extend them past the one-year boots-on-the-ground policy that they have, and we can’t continue to have them over in Iraq more than a year. That’s what he’s not saying, and he’s not saying our strategic reserve and the future threats to this country significantly increased in the last year because we have no ground strategic reserve. That’s what he is not saying. So he attacks my differences but he doesn’t attack the policy. He doesn’t talk about the policy and the results of what I’m saying.
…
RUSSERT: Did he apologize?
MURTHA: Oh, no. He said that overseas. He didn’t blame me for at least getting the British out. I thought he might blame me for that. | {
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Ames Scullin O'Haire, Inc - Worldwide Partners Inc. | Partner Page
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We're Ames Scullin O'Haire, an ad agency built around you. (Refer to our logo for details.) We are on the noble mission to once again regain some dignity to the ... | {
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The Nature Of Luxury
CAPE TOWN10-11 APRIL 2019
LATEST NEWS
9 January 2019: CEO of Tiffany & Co., Alessandro Bogliolo, to speak at the conference
Welcome to the CNI Luxury conference. The Premier Global Event for Luxury Business And Creative Leaders
The fifth annual Condé Nast International Luxury Conference will examine the promise and value of the African market for the global luxury and fashion industry, and the power of the continent as a creative, manufacturing and retail hub.
The programme will look at the true meaning of luxury, and how brands can build market share. In a series of panel sessions, keynotes and interviews, speakers will also discuss sustainable business and conscious consumerism, the importance of Afrocentric luxury, strategies for retail success and the ongoing influence of technology.
Luxury is changing
Join me in Cape Town to Discover the Power and Importance of the African Continent to the Global Luxury Industry.”
SUZY MENKES, EDITOR, VOGUE INTERNATIONAL
SUZY MENKES
EDITOR, VOGUE INTERNATIONAL
Suzy Menkes is fashion’s leading authority. As Editor, Vogue International, her articles and reports appear on the websites of 23 editions of Vogue in 17 languages, reaching an audience of over 67 million. | {
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Ash Borer- Bloodlands 12"
One of the more interesting paths in the last decade of extreme music has been that of the genre of black metal. After older groups largely became mired in the pristine offerings of orchestral black metal, newer bands began to shift their focus, pinpointing their favorite aspects of the genre, from its formative years on, to take it to strange and as-yet-uncharted places.
This specialization and hybridization within the genre spawned, among a host of others, Arcata, California's Ash Borer. They excel at extracting black metal's most astral and most abstractedly occult moments and stretching them across a canvas of trance-like, long-form song structures. Nowhere in their catalog is this approach and its lineage more apparent than their Bloodlands 12", the follow-up to their critically acclaimed second LP Cold of Ages.
The first sounds on the album, from A-side track "Oblivion's Spring," have more to do with what we think of as black metal in an atmospheric sense than a sonic one. Echoey, chiming guitars and a haunted-house organ synth pad wind into and out of synch with one another, creating a mood that feels pulled straight from the eerie opening credits of a horror film. Tension mounts with each introduced phrase and variation, but no blood is shed in the first few minutes of the song.That all changes when the track suddenly jump-cuts from that creepy (but relatively clean) introduction to a full-out, distortion-wrapped black metal sprint. What gives this shift an organic quality is the fact that the
organ riff employed in the introduction is carried over into the firebombing
extreme metal core of the song, tying the ambient, otherworldly aspects of the
band ably into the violent, immediate ones.
In the song's last half, the riff explored in the intro returns, but is at this point incorporated into the black metal meat of the song for a middle-paced buildup that caters equally to the part of the brain interested in repeated hooks and the ancient, primal one that feeds on music's violent, pummeling tendencies. Its eventual degradation into melting, howling
drones sees both of these aspects of the brain evolved into oblivion, leaving
the listener adrift in a post-mental wasteland that recedes in a long, siren whine
at the song's close.
On the record’s b-side follows the aptly-titled “Dirge,” an
atmospheric, swirling lament that builds at a more measured, deliberate pace
than the introduction to “Oblivion’s Spring.” Where the instrumental opening of
that piece felt like it was moving toward something and its draw was as a
vehicle for reaching that goal, the purpose of “Dirge” is in the journey
itself. Like time-lapse footage of a flower blooming, the track thrives
in individual moments, unfolding slowly to reveal a whole.
“Purgation,”
the b-side’s second half, is a blackened, accelerating slow burn that builds momentum
around an undulating, circular riff. Around the halfway mark of the nearly
20-minute second side, the band slides into a galloping traditional black metal
style (still hearkening back on occasion to that riff) that wouldn’t sound out
of place on one of Emperor’s first LPs. However, to quote the excellent and massively
over-quoted William Butler Yeats poem, “the centre cannot hold,” and within minutes the onslaught is reduced to a single guitar, buzzing against the emptiness. A thick doom
metal carapace forms around the riffing, which gives way to mid-paced, headbang-inducing
black metal and another inevitable return to the nullifying womb of piercing
feedback.
As well-liked as last year's Cold of Ages was, one of the complaints it received was that it seemed to lack some of the aggression and presence found on previous releases. While those hoping for another "Rest, You are the Lightning" may be disappointed, Bloodlands does sport a purer, more satisfying sound, thanks in part to its being recorded live and mixed down to 1/2" tape. This is the first of Ash Borer's records to be produced in this way, as the previous LPs were both recorded onto 2" tape and mixed digitally, resulting in a warmer overall sound and a more immediate delivery than any of their previous releases.
What most impresses about Ash Borer is the way in which they
can manipulate the black metal form while remaining firmly rooted in that
genre. Despite divergence into drone, doom and ambient instrumental territory,
their sonic aesthetic stays tied to the isolated, individualistic outlook of
black metal, in a stronger sense than many “roots” black metal groups of the
present day.
Bloodlands sees the further growth of the band, past the
transitional qualities of Cold of Ages
into something darker and more expansive. There’s no road map to where Ash Borer
goes from here, which only makes it all the more exciting to follow them there. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
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After fourteen-year-old classics prodigy Jack Perdu has a near fatal accident he meets Euri, a young ghost who introduces him to New York's Underworld, where those who died in New York reside until they are ready to move on, and Jack vows to find his dead mother there.
Opinion
From Library Staff
What happens at night when we're all asleep? The ghosts come out to use our public facilities, of course! In this gentle adaptation of the Orpheus myth, 14-year-old Jack meets a ghost by the name of Euri who takes him all around the best NYC haunts. Naturally, the main branch of New York Publi... Read More »
From the critics
Community Activity
Comment
This is the first book in the series featuring fourteen-year-old Jack Perdu. Jack's father is a professor of archeology at Yale, and he is studying the classics. When he has a close call after being hit by a car, his father sends him to New York City to meet a doctor there. The doctor visit is a bit odd, and while waiting for his train home, Jack meets a girl his age who takes him on a tour of New York that he will never forget. He finds himself in New York's ghost world, and tries to learn the secret of his mother's death, and the true story of the girl who is guiding him.
A story of love, unexpected consequences, and a revisitation of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
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timmins gold corp (TMM) Related Businessweek News
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timmins gold corp (TMM) Details
Timmins Gold Corp., through its subsidiaries, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of mineral resource properties in Mexico. It primarily explores for gold. The company owns and operates San Francisco Property, which includes the San Francisco open pit gold mine and the associated La Chicharra open pit gold mine in the state of Sonora, Mexico with approximately 200,000 hectares of exploration claims in and around the mines. It also owns 100% in the Caballo Blanco project containing 13 mineral concessions with approximately 23,694 hectares in Veracruz State, Mexico. The company also holds 100% interests in TIM Claims in the region of Mazapil-Concepcion del Oro; and Patricia, Norma, El Picacho, El Durazno, La Mexicana, and La Pima properties located in the state of Sonora. Timmins Gold Corp. was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.
timmins gold corp (TMM) Key Developments
Timmins Gold Corp. announced that the company has commenced drifting into the underground veins parallel to the south wall of the San Francisco pit. The drift is part of a pilot phase designed to test the mining and processing of the underground ore in preparation for full scale underground mining. The pilot phase will involve drifting 90 meters into the south wall of the pit to access the veins followed by 200 meters of lateral drifting to extract 14,000 tonnes of ore. The pilot phase will allow the company to test ground conditions, mining costs, grade and metallurgical recovery of the underground ore. Additionally, the pilot phase will provide efficient platforms for further underground infill and exploration drilling. Previous drilling by Timmins Gold in 2011 below the planned pit bottom identified high grade structures as deep as 800 m from surface below the north wall of the pit. These results support the theory of the company's geological team that the presently identified mineralized system may extend to greater depths. This is consistent in mesothermal systems, which have significant depth extent, and have the potential to yield high grade feeder systems at depth. Timmins Gold plans to process ore recovered from the pilot phase through selective fine crushing and heap leaching. The effect of crush size and heap leach parameters on the metallurgical recovery of the underground ore is being investigated. Timmins Gold estimates the pilot phase will take 3-4 months to complete. There is
no net cost budgeted for the pilot phase as the cost for the program is expected to be more than recouped by revenue derived from recovery of the gold contained in the bulk sample. A highly experienced Mexican underground mining contractor has been selected to carry out the underground operations.
Timmins Gold Corp. Appoints Mark Backens to its Board of Directors
May 26 15
Timmins Gold Corp. and Newstrike Capital Inc. announced the completion of the previously announced plan of arrangement pursuant to which Timmins Gold has acquired ownership of all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Newstrike, being 116,786,781 shares. Newstrike is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Timmins Gold. In connection with the closing of the arrangement, Timmins Gold increased the size of its board of directors to nine, with Mark Backens, a former director of Newstrike being appointed to the Timmins Gold board of directors.
Timmins Gold Corp. Announces Unaudited Consolidated Earnings and Operating Results for the First Quarter Ended March 31, 2015; Provides Production Guidance for 2015
May 5 15
Timmins Gold Corp. announced unaudited consolidated earnings and operating results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2015. For the quarter, the company reported metal revenues of $29,492,000 against $47,050,000 a year ago. Earnings from mine operations were $2,694,000 against $15,535,000 a year ago. Loss from operations was $222,000 against profit from operations of $12,861,000 a year ago. Loss before income taxes was $107,000 against profit before income taxes of $12,763,000 a year ago. Loss and total comprehensive loss for the period was $710,000 against profit of $8,105,000 a year ago. Diluted loss per share was $0.00 against EPS of $0.05 a year ago. Cash flows provided by operating activities was $7,500,000 against $12,259,000 a year ago. Expenditures on mineral properties, plant and equipment, exploration and evaluation were $8,656,000 against $9,874,000 a year ago.
The company produced 24,155 ounces of gold and sold 24,155 ounces of gold, compared to 35,413 and 36,763, respectively, during first quarter of 2014. The change from prior year is due to a decrease in overall production due to a decrease in processing grade partially offset by increased daily crushing throughput. The company also pre-sold 2,800 gold ounces for April 2015 delivery, which generated $3.5 million in cash held at March 31, 2015. Produced 15,309 ounces of silver sold against 26,647 ounces a year ago.
The company’s immediate strategy is to produce between 115,000 and 125,000 gold ounces annually and to achieve cash cost guidance of approximately $800 to $850 per gold ounce.
Our data partners will research the update request and update the information on this page if necessary. Research and follow-up could take several weeks. If you have questions, you can contact them at [email protected]. | {
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About Us
Situated in Denver, we started with an online invoicing platform that was developed to assist freelancers and small business owners. Throughout the years, we have assisted countless freelancers and business…
Product And Services
Getting consumers to trust your business and feel happy with your product and services throughout the whole client journey can increase sales. The secret is to surpass your special worth proposal (UVP) so that your consumers have a factor in enjoying your offerings and discussing your business within networks.
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Advocacy Marketing
Advocacy is the act or procedure of supporting a cause. Ours is making customers’ lives much easier so they can focus on what they do best.
Advocacy is the last phase in account-based marketing. This is where the net-new sales group ends, and the success group (customer shipment) starts. Similar to marketing supports, the sales unit markets the needs to support the success unit by assisting to broaden the account to grow and produce a fantastic brand name experience for retention. This is relatively different than standard marketing.
Producing a metric to keep an eye on consumer complete satisfaction is essential for advocacy marketing. Your digital marketing department has the innovation and marketing chops to support the success group like they do for the sales group.
How does your success group surprise your customers? Your UVP can be connected to retention and development, a reward for the success group.
The Account Journey
An account journey represents the phases of your consumer relationships, which marketing and the success group assistance after landing an account:
Land: Closing a brand-new consumer
Adoption: Onboarding and execution
User Growth: Increase of extra stakeholders
Expand: Increase just how much of your services or product they’re utilizing
Upgrade, Upsell, Cross-Sell: Offer brand-new items within the account, consisting of brand-new departments through the stakeholder function of champ
Supporter: The client produces chances for net brand-new service through recommendations
Advocacy marketing is an organizational effort. Everyone in your business adds to the client experience. This produces a thirst for department positioning that needs to be satiated for success in any advocacy project.
To do this, sales, marketing, and consumer success group need to remain in positioning. This guarantees each interaction with an account from prospecting to a happy consumer corresponds from the preliminary marketing touchpoint to your services or product is executed and utilized daily.
Line up around your cause and UVP, which supplies everybody with expectations of the brand name experience. Stacking business core values will provide a constant brand name experience.
Your present clients must select to remain with you. Even if your service is doing well, your consumers can leave as rapidly as they came. There’s more to business than directly a deal. Some clients are even ready to pay more for an item and service if they have an individual connection with a business.
Here are eight methods to purchase these relationships:
If they just recently positioned an order or you offered a service, ask them for feedback. It can also supply you with a chance to get insight into other items and services that you can use to get brand-new business.
Check to see how you can assist them if they have not done business with you in a while. It might also act as a suggestion that they might need your service or product.
If any of your interaction takes location through email, it’s still crucial to choose up the phone periodically to touch base with your consumers. Personal communication is an essential component in constructing a relationship.
You might have a specific target market in mind, however, to reach it doesn’t suggest that you network with simply that group. Discover groups that don’t mirror your target market and construct relationships with their members. Individuals you satisfy understand individuals who may be future consumers.
Stepping out to help somebody doesn’t constantly show you’ll get an instant return on your efforts. When they, or somebody they understand, are looking for an item or service that you provide, you’re most likely to be the first person in their mind. The more you get to understand them, the more you’ll be able to provide support by understanding their requirements.
Including the individual touch of a thank you, keep in mind to show consumers your gratitude for their business is valuable. For the best effect, send it right away after the occasion.
Your consumers differ in workload, design of interaction, and desire to share details, so your technique must be simply as varied. If your client doesn’t value your simply stopping in, then call in advance to set up a time or welcome him or her out for coffee.
Your method needs to be authentic and within your convenience zone, or it might backfire on you. If you aren’t comfy with in-person interactions, you might wish to begin by getting the phone.
It reveals your dedication to a high level of service and develops self-confidence in you and your business. In some cases, mistakes and how we fix them offer an extraordinary chance to reveal our dedication to the consumer, take a bad circumstance, and make it a favorite.
Structuring any relationship takes time, whether it’s an individual or business relationship. It’s a necessary part of your business to assist preserve and grow your consumer base.
When you’re networking, it’s simple to fall into a rut, asking each individual there the very same questions: what do you do? Asking fascinating and interesting questions will assist you to stand out, and will lead to more rewarding discussions.
How do you invest your time?
The question ‘what do you do’ does not constantly work on networking occasions. It’s a simple question to respond to and will offer you a much better photo of the individual you’re talking to than ‘what do you do?’
How can I be of service to you?
It’s simple to get captured up in what your business requirements are. What can you provide other individuals? How can you belong to raising other small business owners?
There are two primary factors you must feel comfy stating this to other business owners. It’s a kind thing to do. No guy is an island, and kindness has been shown to increase our joy, along with making the world a much better location.
In the little service world, we make it through by the aid that we get from others. You wish to extend the aid you need to others so that they’ll want to extend aid to you. You enjoy what you plant.
What’s the most significant obstacle in your type of work?
Asking this question opens up a lot of alternatives for the discussion. Either method, this question is most likely to lead to a really interesting discussion.
Networking can be hard, however, make it simpler on your own by asking these types of networking questions. Do not get caught in the usual, usual. Mix things up and leave with a much better understanding of who you consulted with these networking questions.… | {
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To purchase a printed version of this title, please visit www.caplaw.com.
Business persons negotiate regularly, even when they do not appreciate the fact they are negotiating, and many individuals employed in the business world have had minimal training with respect to this fundamental skill. This book carefully explores the relevant aspects of bargaining interactions. Topics include the impact of negotiator styles on encounters, negotiation preparation, establishing rapport, ethics, and value maximizing, to name just a few topics. It also addressing transnational dealings and the reasons they may differ from wholly domestic encounters.
Charles B. Craver
Charles B. Craver is the Freda H. Alverson Professor at the George Washington University Law School where he teaches two different courses on Negotiation. He also conducts the Peter Bronstein Negotiation Institute each fall at the University of Virginia. Over the past 35 years, he has made presentations on Effective Legal Negotiation to over 90,000 attorneys and business persons throughout the United States and around the world. He is the author of Effective Legal Negotiation and Settlement (7th ed. 2012); Skills & Values: Legal Negotiating (2d ed. 2012); and The Intelligent Negotiator (2002). He is coauthor of Skills & Values: Alternative Dispute Resolution (2013); Alternative Dispute Resolution: The Advocate's Perspective (4th ed. 2011); and Legal Negotiating (2007). He is the author or coauthor to eight other books dealing with labor and employment law, and many law journal articles pertaining to negotiating, dispute resolution, and labor and employment law. | {
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Why You Should Leave Your Partner Alone | And How
“Leave my partner alone? What the hell does that even mean? What the actual hell has gotten into you, NLv? Why in the world should I leave my beautiful, loving, adorable partner alone?”
The Why
— to show them how much I love and care for them? to show them I trust and cherish them and want them to be as moderately self-sufficient and independent as possible? to focus on my own self and improve myself in the process so that we can have an even healthier relationship?
Oh look, we got the why out of the way already. Bravo.
Now when we say leave your partner alone of course we don’t mean you should blatantly break things off with them out of the blue. We mean that it is of great advantage for you and your partner if you were to learn and master that great art which has kept relationships strengthened and unbreakable since the beginning of time: The Great Art of Space.
The What Now?
Is there even any sense to it? Leave my partner alone when all I want to do is be with them and cuddle them and show them just how much I love them and how much they mean the world to me? Isn’t this the most twisted and screwed up ideology ever? Leave my partner alone? yeah right.
And then you scoff. But before you make your final walk-away all we ask is that you hear us out for a few.
See, it’s perfectly normal to think this way. After all isn’t the point of being in a relationship the joy of companionship? Isn’t the actual obvious point of being together with someone the being together part?
Of course. But you see, life isn’t all one-directional, and this, in fact, is the beauty of it. Yes, companionship is essential in a relationship; might even be the entire reason you’re in it. But one of the greatest ironies of life is that having too much of everything you want, is actually quite bad for you.
Yes, we all need companionship. Yes we all want to be with our partners all the time. But doing that every single minute of every single day can get very tiring and worrisome, because pleasure palls.
No matter how sweet an endeavor is, doing it time after time without break has a way of scraping off the joy in it, bit by bit till we find out in a shocking moment of revelation: the magic is all gone.
Preserving the Magic
It’s hard to look your partner in the eye and tell them you need space without mincing words. You think of the implications: what if they think this means I’m not invested in the relationship? What if they think I meant to say they’re boring? What if they think this means I don’t love them enough even though I do so much?
So we make up excuses and take impromptu make-believe trips, which of course, leads to suspicions and rifts in the relationship.
And then again, even if somehow we find it easy to unequivocally tell our partners we need to be alone, sometimes we don’t feel this need as a crystal clear urge, which means it is indeed possible that there might be a need for space in the relationship but neither of the partners know it yet.
Which, then, necessitates that all parties in a relationship should learn the great art of space; the great art of knowing when to leave your partner alone and how.
Ying Yang
Again on the topic of whether or not it really does make sense to leave your partner alone as a means of solidifying relationship bonds, another answer lies in the unity of opposites.
Sometimes to arrive at a solution, you must move away from the question. It sounds like some complicated Zen exercise but you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to master this one.
To bring your relationship closer, sometimes the thing to do is step away for a while. Leave room for both of your souls to yearn for each other. Leave room for them to miss you and you to miss them.
Without these occasional longings, the relationship is as good as dead and even more extreme measures might be needed to bring it back to life.
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When You Need It
1. Mild Tension
So when do you need to leave your partner alone?
Well first of all you know you need space when things start to get mildly tense between you and your partner.
Perhaps you both have started to react to things more violently than before. Little things irritate you more than they used to and you find you can’t help cursing at the slightest thing.
Of course at this stage it’s all mild and you both apologize when it happens, or forget it and never let it escalate. But at that time is the best time to take that break and get away for a few days.
Relax. Breathe in fresh air. Watch the birds in the sky and sip aome margaritas. It works wonders.
2. Pretty Low Tension
Another time you need to take a break is when there is nothing happening at all. You’re both lethargic and drag out even the most enthusiastic of chores.
Conversations are active, but doesn’t quite flow as much as they used to. You know then that it is time for you to practice your knowledge of the great art. Leave your partner alone.
3. Disconnected
Another time you should leave your partner alone is when you feel extremely disconnected from the life around you; from the life apart from you.
Being madly in love sometimes also means being blindly in love. Which is great, to an extent. You get to get engrossed in you — in your own happiness and your own feelings and everything else cease to matter.
But sometimes it does get too much. You get too blind of the outside world, and even of yourself. During this time you should take the time to get away and enjoy the world. See the life out there and even reflect and work on your own self without being hedonistically engrossed in it.
When You Need it Badly
1. Really High Tension
This is when the tension has gotten to an almost unhealthy level. There is yelling and there is probably throwing. Now is the time to get on your own as fast as possible without packing a ounce of belongings.
2. Really Low Tension
This is when the conversations stop altogether. You seemingly run out of things to talk about and the conversations stop after the greetings.
Don’t panic, there’s nothing irrevocably wrong with your relationship. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re incompatible or falling out of love. Maybe all you need is a little space. Take a few days or even weeks if necessary. The relationship will emerge like a new born with fresh life.
When You Don’t Need It
When You’re Scared
We had to bring this up because there are certain times when we convince ourselves of the need for space when really what we’re doing is running away because of our fears, among which are:
The Fear of Commitment: where we’re scared of what happens if we stay; where we’re afraid we’re not ready; that we’re only going to screw things up should we continue, because that’s what happens. We fear that if it all goes south we’d have missed out on a lot. So we don’t.
Another is the Fear of Getting Hurt, where we’re scared we’re falling more deeply in love than we planned. It’s happened before and we ended up getting hurt but we don’t want it to happen again.
And then the The Fear of Losing the Spark, where we think we’re getting too close with our partners and the relationship is about to become vapid. Even though there’s no evidence to support it, we believe the spark might soon go out and it’s just so beautiful we seriously don’t want it to leave, and we’d do anything to keep it, including leave ourselves.
So because of any of this, we decide to go away, which is not necessarily the best way to go.
Most times our fears are just obstacles in the way of our happiness. Yes, what if we fail, but what if — oh what if — we succeed and things do end up beautifully?
What if there was nothing to be scared of in the first place. What if the joy really is as beautiful as they say and we don’t get to experience it? The joy that you deserve. So why not face your fears and just go for it!?
How to Do it and How to Overdo It
The way to get an alone time might be tricky and dependent upon your partner. Like we said some of us are cool with it while some of us might consider it a bruise on our egos.
For most, however, a shrewd explanation of the need to get away and catch up with other aspects of life might be enough. In the cases where it isn’t, you might need to get more innovative.
The only caveat is to not lie or go about it in a suspicious manner. You will still be telling the truth about getting away for your personal space, you’d just have to be more innovative and persuasive about that.
How hard could that be right?
Another related caveat is to not go away for years in the name of personal space. You may be surprised there’s nobody to come back to.
Also, do not go on exotic trips with funds you don’t have, or cheat or do things your partners wouldn’t approve of — all for personal space. These are all HOW TO OVERDO it.
Zen Master
Congratulations, if you have read this article in its entirety, you are now a Zen master in The Great Art of Space. Now go out there and make your relationship kick-ass again!
Striving to publish contents that are philosophically, emotionally, and intellectually resonant, our posts and articles are written based on questions, challenges, and topic suggestions provided by readers like you. Read more here on how to get your contributions to us and published. | {
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06 October, 2009
Pickled Lamb's Tongues
NOTE: THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS A RECIPE AND TUTORIAL TO HELP YOU MAKE YOUR OWN PICKLED LAMB'S TONGUES. IT IS NOT AN OFFER TO SELL OR SHIP PICKLED LAMB'S TONGUES TO YOU. NO, I DON'T SELL PICKLED LAMB'S TONGUES. NO, I WON'T SEND YOU ANY. READ THE POST AND MAKE YOUR OWN.
Some time ago, I used to buy jars of pickled lamb's tongues. Made by Rogers, a company that put up all sorts of pickled "tavern food" like pigs feet, ham hocks, pickled eggs, and sausages, they were tender, ready-to-eat, fully-cooked lamb's tongues, packed in a mild vinegar brine and sold in one of the local supermarkets from the chilly area right above the self-service meat case. They were delicious, but when the supermarket closed, I was no longer able to find pickled lamb tongues. I never stopped looking for them, but eventually I found that Rogers Company went out of business a few years back, a victim of changing tastes and the general decline in demand for "tavern food." Dave Fazer of Long Lake Foods believes that Rogers was the last commercial maker of pickled tongue, and my own searching leads me to agree. Apparently, the number of people who ask at their local stores and who email Mr. Fazer looking for lamb tongues just aren't enough to make commercial production viable.
It's possible, however, to make your own.
I have years of experience in canning, meat processing, and charcuterie. I make my own bacon, sausages, corned beef, patés, and more. But I had never put up any pickled meats, so I started by searching for some kind of recipe or written technique that I could study and use - or at least use as a starting point for my own recipe. I pored through my collection of vintage cookbooks and books on charcuterie and meat preservation, to no avail. And when I turned to the internet, the search was almost as frustrating - most Google hits for "pickled tongue" lead to message board postings by people trying to find the commercially prepared product.
Finally, a search on the Chowhound message board found this thread, in which Chowhound user Porker shares his recipe for pickled pork tongue. Lamb's tongue is smaller, more tender, and cooks more quickly than pork tongue, so I made a few tweaks to the recipe - including scaling it to handle the ten-pound wholesaale box of lamb's tongues my neighborhood butcher obtained for me. But without Porker's help and the groundwork he did in developing his recipe, this recipe wouldn't have been such a success.
So, follow along with this step-by-step photo tutorial.
Step One: Curing
Because the tongues are going to be canned for storage, they need to be cured to help prevent botulism (the combination of curing, the acidic vinegar pickle, and refrigeration keeps the pickled tongue safe to eat.) Normally, curing with Instacure #1 (formerly known as Prague Powder #1 or "pink salt") requires about 1 ounce for every 30 pounds of meat, but because we'll be using a simple overnight liquid brine, we need a stronger concentration.
Make as much brine as needed to completely cover the tongues using this baseline:
For the ten-pound batch of tongues I prepared, I needed 3 batches of this brine (2½ gallons.)
Mix the ingredients for the brine in a stainless steel (non-reactive) pot. Wash the tongues under cool running water. Place them in the pot, bring just to a boil on high heat, then remove from heat, allow to cool to room temperature, and store overnight in the liquid.
Because I was processing ten pounds of meat I had to do this step in a 21-quart stockpot which would not fit in my fridge. So, when the tongues had cooled down enough to handle, I divided them between three one-gallon glass jars and filled the jars to the top with the still-warm curing brine. Then, off they went into the fridge for their overnight soak.
Step Two: Cooking
The next day, drain off the curing brine and discard it, and rinse the tongues.
As before, make up as many batches as you will need to cover the tongues in the pot. Bring up to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer the tongues gently for two hours, until they are fork-tender. Drain the cooked tongues and shock them under cold running water. You'll notice that the tongues are covered in a loose yet tough membrane "shell" - this is the skin of the tongue and it has to be removed. Peel off the skins, and use a sharp knife to remove any roots, veins, and fatty tissues under the tongue.
The skinning process is very easy and although a little tedious will go quickly. When the skin cooks, it becomes hard and plastic-like, and most of the time will peel easily from the tongue. Once it's off, you can use the knife blade to scrape away any fatty bits under the tongue and especially under the thickest part, where you'll find fatty clumps and veins that you'll want to take out if only for appearances' sake.
With the tongues cooked tender, skinned, and ready for the final processing, you're ready to can them.
Step Three: Canning
NOTE: The USDA recommends that meats be canned using a pressure-canning process. I believe that the hot water bath process used here is safe because of the nitrite in the Instacure #1 and the acidity of both the cooking and the canning brines. However, I DO NOT KEEP THESE CANNED TONGUES ON THE SHELF AT ROOM TEMPERATURE, I KEEP THEM IN THE REFRIGERATOR AND I RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO THE SAME. I assume no responsibility for your actions in your kitchen; this is simply a chronicle of my own actions in my kitchen.
Wash your canning jars and prepare the canning brine: You won't need as much of the canning brine as you do cooking brine - only about eight cups or so. For this canning brine, you'll need:
4 cups of water
4 cups of vinegar
2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp of pickling spices if desired (I skipped this because I just wanted a nice clear brine.)
Pack the tongues in your canning jars, leaving at least 1½ inches headspace (two inches is even better - the tongues swell during processing and if you don't leave lots of headspace the brine won't completely cover the meat.) Add brine to cover the tongues completely and within ½-inch of the top of the jar. Cap the jars and process them in a boiling water bath for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool to room temperature and refrigerate 3 to 4 days before eating.
Special thanks for the info and encouragement from Porker at Chowhound, and to Anthony Caronna, my neighborhood butcher at Caronna's Market in Thompsonville CT, who was happy to get the lamb's tongues for me on special order. Caronna's, located on Pearl Street right next door to the yellow-brick art deco Thompsonville Fire Department, has been in operation since 1918.
PLEASE NOTE: I know that many of you reading this blog post have been brought here by Google and Bing as you search for the commercially-produced lamb's tongues you or your family members once purchased at grocery stores. Unfortunately, when the Rogers Company went out of business, pickled lamb's tongues became unavailable - they were the only company in the United States making them, and no one else has stepped forward to continue the tradition.
Because I enjoy pickled tongues and wanted to enjoy them again, I developed and published this recipe to help those who are interested in the product make their own, in their own home kitchen, the way I did. I am not a commercial supplier, just a hobbyist who likes to fiddle around in the kitchen.
If you decide to try making your own pickled tongues and have questions or want more information, please feel free to send me an email and I will do what I can for you to help make your job easier. Canning anything is a little intimidating - canning and preserving meat products can seem overwhelming to someone who's never done it before.
Please do not write asking to buy pickled lamb's tongues from me. I don't sell them and I won't send you any. I wrote this post to help you make your own, and the only way you're going to get any pickled lamb's tongue is if you get off your ass and get to work.
I used to eat pickled lambs tongue and pickled eggs at my grandparents house when I'd stay over for the weekend. Got the hankering for a pickled lambs tongue last night and figured I could sate it with a pickled egg....
I couldn't even find pickled eggs where I currently live... at least in the market I was at.
Guess I'll have to stock up next time I go home for a visit....
what do you think the odds are that there's a stray case of Roger's pickled lamb's tongue out there somewhere????
what did the ten lb. box of tongues cost ? i really didn't want to have to make them myself but i'm starting to climb the walls, sitting here with a cold beer and no pickled lamb tongues.i know i'm not the only one out there . . . hudson valley area, n.y.
I'm another big fan of pickled lambs tongue and when I get a hankering....it is generally overwhelming! ;-)I contacted this company and asked them if they got enough interest, would they consider producing and packaging these delicious victuals.Let's join together!http://www.longlakefoods.com/
I loved Roger's Pickled Lamb's Tongue. Do yours have the same flavor?I used to pickle pork, venison, and cow tongue and heart using a recipe from my former mother in law. We didn't go through the curing process, but did use the pickling spice. The flavor was good, but completely different from Roger's.
Thanks in advance for the recipe and detailed instructions. I do have a pressure canner and am planning to process them following standard directions for canning meat - 11psi/90 minutes for quart jars. Does that sound right to anyone since they are already pickled? I don't want to turn them to mush! Also - what type of vinegar has everyone used - white or cider? Any tips would be great - I'll report back next week after the big pickling attempt.
E.St.Clair - Since you're going to pressure can them I would suggest a small change.
When you first put the tongues into the brine, bring them up to a boil then shut down the heat and allow them to cook as in my recipe. But when it comes time to cook them, I would cook them only until the skin can be removed - perhaps 15 minutes to half an hour - NOT long enough to make them tender.
Remove the skins and pack them into the jars as directed. Then process in the pressure canning. Let the 90 minutes at pressure do the cooking.
My original method makes them soft and tender enough. I'm afraid that if I pressure cooked them after a 2-hour simmer, they'd be way too soft.
Also, use white vinegar for a beautiful transparent brine. I considered using cider vinegar but was afraid that the color would be unattractive.
Good luck and please keep in touch - I'm looking forward to hearing how it went for you!
Mission accomplished! The tongues turned out great, according to Jeff, our connoisseur friend. I thought they were pretty, um, interesting. Faintly reminiscent of Underwood Deviled Ham (which I haven't had for 40 years) but definitely with its own distinctive flavor. We're going to make our pickling adventure an annual event! Slight tweaks for next year - they seemed a little more tart than expected, and the pickling spice turned the vinegar yellowish - not very appealing looking. I chronicled the process, with some photos, here: http://jeffspickledlambtongues.blogspot.com/
Oh my God! This is so cool! I was raised on pickled lambs tongues and have been going nuts of late without them. Looks like a ton of work but sounds worth it. I know a whole ton of folks who would buy them if they could be made for the retail market again. I guess this will have to do. I can't wait to start. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Paul - Yes, they're a lot of work, but a wholesale box of tongues makes several jars, so it's worth the time spent. If you have any questions when you start diving into the project, feel free to email me through my "Contact Me" form and I'll offer whatever help I can.
I miss pickeled Lamb Toung. When I married my husband my parents, who are from the Boston area, sent me a whole case! Of coure that was 10 years ago and I have been dying to have more. I am very affraid that I will mess it up though and it wouldn't turn out. MAYBE i will try OR maybe someone else can try, taste and then sell me a ouple of jars! lol
I just found your post about lamb's tongue. I'm coming late to computer use, so that's why. I have always loved lamb's tongue (I'm 63) but didn't know it wasn't made anymore. I appreciate your figuring out a recipe, and may try it. Thanks again for the information. P.S. I used to buy all the jars available and shock everyone except my brother-in-law when they looked in my closet.
Thank you, Dave:My family & I have enjoyed Rogers lambs tongues for as long as I can remember(I'm 53), & we have so many wonderful & funny memories associated with this delicious product. Roger Bros. was located in Lunenburg, MA (01462), & there must be someone out there who still has the original recipe. If everyone who misses Rogers lambs tongues offered just $1.00 to that person for the recipe, I bet she/he could be a millionnaire. I know soooo many people who would be interested in that. Anybody have access to Lunenburg, MA newspapers to put an ad in the paper requesting the recipe or the whereabouts of someone who knows how to create it?Again, Dave, thank you for the recipe. We'll have to try it.
Dave,You are my hero! Rogers lamb tongues were by far my favorite sole food. Better than xanax to fight off the blues. How sad that Rogers is out of business but you've seriously made my day and as soon as I can figure out which butcher shop will accomodate me, I'll be whipping up a batch! You rule! Andrea, Lockport,NY
Dave , thanks for the recipe for pickled lambs tongues, just made them for my boyfriend, he said they are terrific!!!! He wants to start a mail order business and have me sell the pickled lambs tongue. I'm not sure, it sounds like a lot of work, but it is alot of fun making them..Thanks again.
like the rest of the people that come to Dave's Cupboard I love the Rogers Lambs tongue. I made a big batch about two years ago. Well, there gone. I am looking and looking for a place to purchase the raw lambs tongue. I just can't find a place even on the internet. Can some smart person help me out and give info as to where I can purchase raw lambs tongue at a reasonable price.
Charlie Dog - I don't know of any place to buy them on line, but I can get them by placing a special order with my local butcher. Do you have a small market in your town with a butcher shop where you can ask?
Kevin... I heard about the Rogers Co. going out of business about a yr.ago and thought that was it . I wasn't sure about making them but your post looks reasonable. But only one thing comes to mind , is the taste similar to Rogers?
My boyfriend and his family LOVED lambs tongue growing up. He asked me to look up how to find it. His 50th birthday is coming up. I thought it would be great to get him some. It looks like I better start cooking! I've never pickled anything so this will be interesting. I don't live far from Thomsonville. Is that Butcher still there that you used? If these come out right, maybe I will have an annual pickling party!
Hi Dave! We used to get Weber's brand in southeast PA. They too have gone out of business. Sad to see these and other tavern foods go away. Just a suggestion for you. You may want to add a little brown sugar to your final pickle. It cuts the bite from the vinegar and adds a nice sweetness. I use brown sugar and bay leaf with hot pepper flakes for pickling tripe. Another PA Dutch delicacy. Thanks for posting the information!
Hi Dave, I grew up eating pickled lambs tongue as well as many of my friends and relatives here in NY. I am a betting man and an investor. What type of investment would it take to put them back on the market?
Hi Dave, I grew up eating pickled lambs tongue as well as many of my friends and relatives here in NY. I am a betting man and an investor. What type of investment would it take to put them back on the market?
We raise sheep and were cleaning out the freezer in anticipation of the latest batch this spring. Of course, leftovers included lamb tongues. Why didn't I pickle these sooner? There are some steps to this recipe, but overall, the process is easy and not that messy. We used to play pool and eat sliced pickled tongue on saltines at a dive in upstate ny in the 1980's. The place is long gone. Now i can at least use the tongues and enjoy a snack and a memory. Look for a local farmer who might have tongues, or a meat processing plant. Must be sources online...Local Harvest's website could help. Thanks for the recipe!
Dave, I recently made my first batch of lamb tongues using your recipe. Absolutely delicious! I'm now making my second batch and can't wait to snack on them. It brings back fond memories of eating Roger's lamb tongues as a child in Coventry, RI. Thank you kindly for sharing the recipe!
Hello Dave. It's great that you figured out the recipe for pickled lambs tongue. My father used to get it once in awhile when I was a kid. Oh what a treat! I introduced the delicious treat to my kids. My oldest son loved it and we both wish it was available. One or several of us Roger's pickled lambs tongue lovers should really get them back out on the market!
Dave, I am going to give it a try. There is a lamb farm close by, I am going to see if they will sell me their lamb tongues (hopefully 5 lbs). Glad someone asked & you answered regarding which vinegar to use. Also, will try a bit of brown sugar & a bay leaf. If memory serve me correctly, I think Rogers used to have a bay leaf in teir jars. I am 70 years old and have fond memories of my brothers and my father & I having pickled lambs tongue with cocktail sauce on a Sunday evening. Thanks.
I fondly remember Roger's Lamb tongues. We used to get them in Montreal, PQ, Canada. When they went out of business, we switched to pork tongues. Still had to buy them in Montreal. Saint John,NB was a wasteland for pickled tongue of any kind. My daughter in law was in Costco, in Saint John, and they had a stack of pickled pork tongue. She bought 2 jars for me. I had my first last night and it was great.In searching for the shelf life, I found that you can order them online from Walmart.ca and have them shipped to your home or to the local store. Hopefully Costco will keep stocking them.
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Posts may contain Amazon affiliate links. These links are for products that I have personally tested and enjoy using, and I do not accept any consideration from manufacturers for providing the link. If you purchase a product through an Amazon affiliate link, your cost will be the same but Dave's Cupboard will automatically receive a small commission from Amazon. Thanks for your support! | {
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Tag: Online Casino Gambling USA
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Madras HC notice to EC on PIL for recovery of poll expenses
Madras High Court today issued notice to the Election Commission on a PIL seeking recovery of poll-related expenses from AIADMK and DMK nominees of two Tamil Nadu assembly constituencies, where polls had been cancelled last month on grounds of use of money power.
The PIL contended that the “corrupt” practices of the candidates of AIADMK and DMK forced the EC to cancel the elections in the two constituencies and hence, they should be required to bear the cost of the cancelled elections.
When the petition by PMK nominees M Baskaran and G Kunjithapatham for Aravakurichi and Thanjavur constituencies, respectively, came up for hearing, a bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan issued notice to EC’s counsel Niranjan Rajagopal.
“We would like to examine whether Election Commission in view of the recent episodes is examining the aspect sought to be raised in writ petitions,” the bench said, directing the EC counsel to file the counter by four weeks and posted the matter to August 9.
The petitioners sought a direction to the EC to recover all the expenses incurred for making arrangements for the polls from DMK and AIADMK candidates in Aravakurichi — KC Palanisamy and V Senthil Balaji, from whom the EC had seized huge amounts of cash in the run-up to the May 16 elections.
The petitioners submitted that in both the constituencies, mockery of electoral process reached unprecedented levels owing to which the EC was forced to cancel the whole process.
They further said ‘innocent’ candidates like them had incurred huge expenses for contesting the elections which was “a waste of money and time”.
They said they filed the PIL as there was no response from the EC to their representation on the matter.
The petitioners also sought appointment of a statutory auditor to calculate the expenditure incurred by all the candidates including them and recover it from the candidates whose indulgence in electoral offences resulted in the rescinding of the elections.
The EC had on two occasions postponed polls to Aravkurichi and Tanjavur Assembly constituencies following reports of large-scale distribution of money and gifts to voters by the candidates and political parties and later cancelled them. | {
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