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A Time for Wolves
The Wolves of Vinland are Building a Tribe Outside the System
Brothers will battle to bloody end, and sisters’ sons their sib betray;
woe’s in the world, much wantonness;
axe-age, sword-age — sundered are shields — wind-age, wolf-age, ere the world crumbled;
will the spear of no man spare the other.
— “Völuspá”
Grimnir moved barefoot through the dirt at Ulfheim like he didn’t know he wasn’t wearing cowboy boots.
He rolled his shoulders, shook out his neck, and called out to Frejulf. This would be Grimnir’s third match of the day, and it wouldn’t be his last.
Frejulf seemed chipper for a kid who knew was about to get his face fucked up. He was a junior patch member of the Wolves, and this was going to be a disciplinary beatdown. Grimnir, leader of the Lynchburg chapter, had promised that if Frejulf didn’t get some extracurricular mixed martial arts training within a few months, he would show him why he needed it. Frejulf knew his time was up.
A red bearded patch with an algiz ᛉ rune tattoo on his freckled shoulder started picking out a tune on the banjo.
Grimnir and Frejulf touched their MMA gloves. Then hoots, hollers and brawling.
The fight was over in less than a minute.
Frejulf had blood on his face when he got up. He looked a little dazed, but he was smiling. He’d taken his medicine like a man, and hadn’t made too bad of showing — all things considered.
Paul Waggener, who you know as Grimnir, gave him a quick hug and a pat on the back.
There’s this video making the rounds designed to convince people that the worst thing you can tell a young male to do is “man up.”
It’s far worse to let a young men luxuriate in his own tears and fears and fantasize that he’s something special for doing nothing special. That’s a degradation of his spirit and a waste of a perfectly good Y chromosome.
A fat lip is just a fat lip.
Grimnir grabbed a wifebeater, cleaned the mud off his face and called out for a prospect to bring him a beer. He looked on as the fights continued. A few more serious matches, and a lot of light sparring. Another bloodied smile, a mild concussion and some vomiting. All in good fun.
Grimnir told me that the fighting was just a warmup for the main event at dusk. His brother, Jarn-nefr, who runs the Wyoming chapter, added later that the greatest achievement of the Wolves has been their ritual practice.
The Wolves of Vinland officially identify themselves as “a tribe of folkish heathens.”
About seven years ago, Grimnir and Jarn-nefr were running a black metal venue in the Lynchburg, Virginia area, and they decided to start a regular Viking theme night. They drank beer, played Icelandic folk music, and started reading the Eddas. As more of their friends became interested, they decided to move things outside. The Wolves started holding regular sumbels in a National Park.
The sumbel is a common practice in Germanic paganism, derived from ancient texts like Beowulf, Lokasenna and Heimskringla. Sumbel loosely means “feast” or “gathering” and often involves “boasting” or “toasting” with drinking horns filled with mead.
As the Wolves entered their second year, the guys started wrestling at sumbel, and some of the members started wearing motorcycle gang style “battle jackets.” From the initial “come one, come all” approach, a natural hierarchy and sense of collective identity emerged. The men felt the need to determine who was “in” and who was “out.” Oaths of loyalty were taken, and new members were filtered through a prospecting system. As Grimnir said to me, “why hang out with just anyone?”
By the end of the third year, the current system was more or less in place, and all new members had to be voted in unanimously at the Lynchburg group at Ulfhiem. The Wolves have members in eleven states and a handful of international prospects. They’ve been denounced as “luckless bastards” by some more “settled” heathen organizations, so they decided to make a joke of it. Several of the Wolves wear “luckless bastard” patches on their battle jackets.
Ulfhiem is a 12-acre property owned by the Wolves. There’s a small cabin, a tool shed, and a structure for smaller fires where music is played. In 2013, the group crowd-funded the construction of a massive longhall, which is almost finished. The majority of the group’s activities, however, are funded by dues.
The afternoon of fighting was part of the Wolves’ monthly “moot” — a word with deep Indo-European roots that means “meeting” or “gathering.” It’s where “moot point” comes from. Originally, “moot point” meant an issue that needed to be resolved by an assembly of a people, but has come to indicate an issue already resolved and therefore irrelevant. Part of the moot’s purpose is for patched members of the Wolves to discuss official business. At some point during the afternoon, Grimnir called them over and they disappeared to vote on patching in a new member — and other subjects unknown to outsiders.
As Sköll chased the sun across the sky, I joined some of the prospects at the top of a hill. They were cutting themselves and using their own blood to draw runes and sigls on a large piece of white fabric. It was the sail for a fifteen or twenty foot long mock wooden ship they’d built earlier. I helped them fill the hull with branches for the night’s ritual — a yearly celebration of Baldr’s funeral.
The women of the tribe prepared food and we ate as home-brewed mead and beer were passed around. Grimnir joined a few of the other musicians and played country music. A couple of kids had their own wrestling matches. Everyone was restlessly waiting for dusk. As golden hour approached, a tall guy with several runic brands on his lanky frame came over to talk to me about the ritual. His name was Finnulfr, and he’d given a workshop on sigils earlier in the afternoon. He invited me to come down and “get crazy” with the guys in their ritual pre-funk.
Grimnir handed me the end of a bottle of home-brewed mead and told me to kill it. It was deliciously dry compared to the sugary meads I’d tasted in the past. I followed him and a few others into the woods and down a hill to a place called the Ve. There was already a small fire going, and Finnulfr and the others were busy preparing for the ritual. It was almost dark, and the failing light beyond the crackling fire of the Ve seemed cold and blue. Three black, rune-painted drums were beaten in a steady, ominous rhythm. The men took off their cuts and shirts and passed around a bowl full of black ash, blood and mead. Each Wolf smeared it on his face, chest and arms. One of them asked me to draw algiz ᛉ on his forehead. I wasn’t sure how much I should participate as an outsider, but I was glad when he smeared the black goop across my face in some unknowable configuration.
After they’d all anointed themselves, they gathered around one of the drums and started a group death drone that sounded a bit like low Mongolian throat singing. Different men picked up different registers, adding growls and howls to an otherworldly mix of primal sounds.
This is the point where you decide whether you want to remain a smug “objective” outsider, or allow yourself to be moved by the experience and become part of it. You decide whether the movie is good enough to lose yourself in it.
I wanted this experience. I traveled across the country for it. I closed my eyes for a while and let go.
Somewhere between the drums and the hums and wild throat singing, out here in the darkness, we folded into the headspace of our barbarian fathers. Men, magic and nature were all the same thing, and the world was alive again.
After a few more minutes, the drumming reached a climax and stopped. The men got up and there were embraces and pats on the back and shoulder and the hand-to-forearm handshake the Wolves favor. There was some joking and quiet laughter, but the Wolves reminded each other to keep the mood.
I was seated beside an eight foot wooden stretcher covered in black cloth that symbolized Baldr’s corpse. Grimnir came over and handed me a plastic milk jug full of wormwood-infused homebrew.
“This should get you in the mood.”
I took a few pulls, but Grimnir and Lyðulfr insisted that I keep chugging it until I’d swallowed what I’d guess was at least a full pint. I drank until they were satisfied and joked about being an old man, but the truth was that I wanted to make sure I’d be able to remember the night.
It was whispered that we had about twenty minutes before the actual faining would begin. Finnulfr explained later that it was called a faining instead of a blot because no sacrificial blood would be spilled during this particular ritual. Some of the guys relaxed, and some of them focused on final preparations. Grimnir, Jarn-nefr, Finnulfr and Lyðulfr had each prepared readings for Baldr’s funeral and they quietly coordinated them.
The story of Baldr’s death, harrowing and rebirth comes from the Völuspá in the Poetic Edda, was developed in the Gylfaginning in Sturluson’s Prose Edda, and was retold by poet Matthew Arnold in 1855.
Baldr was the son of Odin and brother of Thor. As the god of light and purity, he was known as the most beautiful of all the gods. He and his mother, Frigg, dreamed of his death, so Frigg asked all of the plants and animals and stones to swear they’d never hurt him. She overlooked the mistletoe, because it seemed harmless and too young to swear. Because nothing could hurt him, he became invincible, and the gods made a game of hurling things at Baldr — knowing he’d be unharmed. Loki, ever mischievous, made an arrow (or a spear) of the mistletoe, and gave it to the blind god Höðr to shoot at Baldr. When he shot the arrow, Baldr fell dead.
The gods wept and placed his funeral pyre on a ship to burn at sea, “for that is what the dead desire.” In death he went to the underworld, with Hel, and although his mother tried to broker his release, he was forced to remain there until Ragnarök, the end of the world. After the other gods die and the giant Surtr sets fire to the world with his flaming sword, Baldr will be released from the underworld and begin a new age with the survivors of the cataclysm.
The story of Baldr is a story of hope and the rebirth of beauty and purity following an age of darkness and despair.
We saw lights following the path down the hill. The drums started up again and everyone took their places. The women and other members of the tribe gathered above the Ve.
When everyone was settled, Finnulfr called out the directions with a spear — invoking the land spirits, gods and ancestors. Grimnir, Jarn-nefr and Lyðulfr gave fiery, nearly Nietzschean speeches about self-overcoming through discipline and will, and increasing the honor of the group by becoming a higher version of oneself. Grimnir reminded the assembled heathens that they were in a place “out of time,” consciously revolting against the modern world and becoming a different kind of man. He spoke about the evils of the encroaching world and concluded that it was a good time to be a wolf, because the future belongs to wolves. Lyðulfr spoke about the rebirth of Baldr and knowing that light will come from darkness. He ended his grim, pagan sermon by shouting “LONG LIVE DEATH!”
After all of the men had spoken, Jarn-nefr introduced a prospect who had travelled from Wyoming to moot. He was a tall, solid guy with white-blond hair. I’d watched him win a boxing match earlier that day. Jarn-nefr wrapped a wolf skin around his shoulders and directed him to a stone podium to read out his oath to all and become a full member of the Wolves of Vinland. His name was “Ref the Fox.”
At that point Finnulfr and the others “loaded” some mead with galdr, meaning that they sung sacred songs over it. The women of the tribe took the sacred mead around the group and filled each horn with enough for one toast to the gods. After drinking, we each spit in a bowl that was passed around, and the contents of the bowl was poured out onto the ground.
Jarn-nefr initiated the procession back up the hill, and told everyone to prepare their thoughts for sumbel and take a moment to be sure their words would be “worthy of the gods.”
The Wolves carried Baldr’s body carefully and somberly up the switchbacks, and laid him on his pyre.
We gathered in a circle around the ship, and sumbel was held, with toasts made by all to gods, heroes and ancestors followed by a round of more personal boasts and oaths. Some toasts were serious, some were grand, some were sad, and some were funny.
When we’d gone around the circle three times, someone placed a rune-painted plaque in front of Baldr’s corpse. Some words were spoken in his honor, and Jarn-nefr set the ship on fire. We watched the conflagration grow from a light crackling of hay bales and branches to a blazing bonfire with flames jumping fifteen or twenty feet in air.
The tribe dispersed, with folks going back to the smaller fire to check on children or to grab musical instruments or more booze. Several songs were sung in unison, including the Wolves’ own battle hymn, “I’m A Good Old Rebel” and some old seafaring tunes. I pulled out a pack of cigars, offered one to Grimnir and a couple of the other guys. We smoked them by the calmed fire, which still glowed in the outline of a ship. Grimnir put the moves on an unattached female and disappeared into the woods. Some of the Wolves retired to tents, some to cars and some just passed out in the dirt next to the glowing coals.
The Wolves wouldn’t want me to trivialize my experience by comparing it to something as bougie as a television show, but I have to admit that my time at Ulfheim felt like a cross between Sons of Anarchy and the Vikings.
The exception is that, unlike those shows, Ulfheim is not just a set up for another go-girl narrative or another hair-pulling drama between women. What happens at Ulfheim is designed to create authentic brotherhood between men. It’s about escaping to another world, not just for an hour or even a day, but for good. The Wolves of Vinland are becoming barbarians. They’re leaving behind attachments to the state, to enforced egalitarianism, to desperate commercialism, to this grotesque modern world of synthetic beauty and dead gods. They’re building an autonomous zone, a community defined by face-to-face and fist-to-face connections where manliness and honor matter again.
If they can do it, what’s stopping you?
——————————-
Jack Donovan is the author of The Way of Men. His latest book is a collection of essays, titled A Sky Without Eagles. To read more of his work on masculinity and tribalism, visit www.jack-donovan.com/ |
Former Prime Minister and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Raja Parvez Ashraf proudly took credit of persecuting a minority Muslim group while speaking at a political rally on Saturday April 29th. Ashraf served as the 17th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 2012 to 2013 and is a senior figure of the Pakistan People’s party.
The rally which which was held in Kotli, Azad Kashmir was also attended by the PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and another former Prime Minister from the PPP Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani. While addressing the attendees Ashraf boasted that his political party, the Pakistan People’s party ‘shut up the Ahmadis’ and ‘broke their neck’, He said:
“No one has been able to compete with Pakistan People’s Party, If someone has served Islam ! Only the Government of Martyr Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto did it. 90 Year Old Problem, the Problem of Qadianis [Ahmadis] who challenged the Prophethood of Prophet Muhammad PBUH, (The PPP) shut them up, broke their neck and buried the [Ahmadi] Problem”
The former PM’s statement comes at at time when the attacks against Ahmadis are on the rise not just in Pakistan but also in countries like the UK. 40-year-old Ahmadi Asad Shah was stabbed to death by another British Muslim in Scotland last month. In the past Pakistan has been accused of exporting extremism.
Reacting to Ashraf’s statement prominent Ahmadi rights activist Kashif Chaudhry urged PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto to condemn former PM’s statement.
Dear @BBhuttoZardari, will you condemn this anti-Ahmadi hate speech by senior PPP leader & former PM of Pakistan? https://t.co/AN8HNuF1g7 — Kashif N Chaudhry (@KashifMD) April 30, 2016
In 1974, PPP founder and then Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto pushed a law which declared the minority Ahmadiyya Islamic sect to be non-Muslim. The law made the Ahmadis the most persecuted community of Pakistan. In 1988, daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and then Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, refused to meet Pakistan’s only Nobel winning scientist Dr Abdus Salam because he belonged to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam. |
A quick update on the proposed redevelopment of the Playdium site in Albany, which has been a prominent of example of two recent trends in the city: 1) the construction of new, large residential projects and 2) pushback from neighborhoods about the taller, denser development...
The Albany Board of Zoning Appeals granted an area variance for the height of the project at its meeting the evening before Thanksgiving.
That variance will allow the 109-unit apartment project to be four stories tall if it ultimately gets approval from the city planning board and moves forward.
Background
We've written about this project before -- both the details and some of the skepticism -- so we won't rehash everything. But here are the basics of the proposal:
+ Demolishing the Playdium bowling alley building at 363 Ontario St.
+ Building three new residential buildings with a total of 109 apartments.
+ The Ontario St-facing building would also include a cafe/shop on the first floor with a laundromat.
+ Roughly 150 parking spaces. The three buildings would include parking underneath, and the site would also have some outdoor parking.
+ Rents ranging from $1,250 for a 1BR apartment up to $1,600 for a 2BR.
+ Estimated project cost: $19 million
So what was important about this decision?
In the big makeover of the city's zoning code that took effect this past summer, The Playdium site is zoned "Mixed-Use, Neighborhood Center" -- a designation that allows buildings to be 3.5 stories tall.
The Jankow Companies -- the developer for the project -- originally proposed that three new apartment buildings on the site be 3.5 stories, with the top half story incorporated into a mansard-style roof. The look of that version didn't seem to go over well. The roof design was criticized for not really fitting the neighborhood. (It also just kind of looked odd at that size.). So the development team reworked the design with a flat roof -- and four stories. And that required the variance.
That four-story design actually ends up being about five feet shorter than the original 3.5-story design because of the shape of the roof(s).* But the height has still been a point of contention because neighborhood residents already concerned about the impacts of adding 109 units on the site also pointed out that a four-story building would stand out from the mostly 1- and 2- and 2.5-story homes nearby.
At Wednesday's meeting, two neighborhood residents again voiced their concerns during the public comment period. Common Council member Judy Doesschate -- who has been a consistent skeptic at earlier meetings -- was not there, but she filed an 8-page document with the BZA detailing her doubts about the project and its qualifications for the variance, citing concerns about the project being too large, too dense, and out of character with the neighborhood.
The development team argued throughout the process that the project would not create significant traffic, that the design would include aspects to minimize storm water runoff -- and it said the inclusion of 109 units was necessary to make the investment numbers work. (The team filed pro formas outlining the numbers with the BZA -- they're in the project's file on the city's website.)
"This building will be an asset to the neighborhood," said real estate agent David Phaff, who's been one of the project's representatives, to the board Wednesday citing new lighting, new sidewalks, and the planned cafe. And of the skepticism to the project: "Anything different in the neighborhood will be considered intrusive."
How the decision was made
The BZA voted 5-0 to approve to the variance, which is technically what's known as area variance.
Afterward board chair Richard Berkley explained the bar for granting an area variance -- which is essentially a request to bend a rule for zoning of an area -- is relatively low. That contrasts to a use variance, which asks for a completely different use from the one specified in the zoning. Berkley said a use variance is almost never granted.
"But with area variances, a lot them get granted because there is an explicit balance between the benefit to the proponent of the project and the burden and benefit to the community," he said.
Specifically, here are the considerations straight from the city code (pdf p. 261):
In making its determination regarding a request for an Area Variance, the BZA shall take into consideration the benefit to the applicant if the variance is granted, as weighed against the detriment to the health, safety and welfare of the neighborhood or community. In making such determination, the BZA shall also consider:
1. Whether an undesirable change will be produced in the character of the neighborhood or a detriment to nearby properties will be created by the granting of the area variance
2. Whether the benefit sought by the applicant can be achieved by some method feasible for the applicant to pursue, other than an area variance.
3. Whether the requested area variance is substantial.
4. Whether the proposed variance will have an adverse effect or impact on the physical or environmental conditions in the neighborhood or district.
5. Whether the alleged difficulty was self-created, which consideration shall be relevant to the decision of the BZA but shall not necessarily preclude the granting of the area variance.
Berkley gave some examples of some the specifics the board considered for the project.
"We asked for the traffic safety office to put something in the record for us because we had some concerns based on what we heard, that perhaps there would be a lot of traffic," he said. "And everybody knows the Playdium hasn't been very active and so we thought it was important to hear about the ability of the infrastructure to handle it. You know the sewer of the water and all that and they've met all those concerns over time."
The BZA decision isn't the last hurdle for the Playdium redevelopment project. The planning board has yet to give the OK. Its next meeting is December 21 -- and though the agenda isn't out for it yet, it's a good bet this project will be on it.
A taller, denser Albany
The proposed New Scotland Village project across from St. Peter's, with a new retail strip (top) and apartment building.
As mentioned up top, the Playdium redevelopment has been interesting to follow because it's part of a trend
in which new residential projects -- both planned and completed -- hold the promise of making the city's built landscape taller and denser. There's also been significant pushback from neighborhood residents to many of these projects.
The Playdium project, the proposed New Scotland Village project across St. Peter's Hospital, and the proposed private dorm on Western Ave are just the latest examples.
As the chair of the Board of Zoning Appeals, Richard Berkley is often thinking about the issues connected to these sorts of projects. So we asked him Wednesday night what he thought about everything that's going on right now. A clip from his answer:
People get concerned when they see change around them and a vote to have [Rezone Albany] go forward was a vote for positive change in the city. And what we've been seeing since the zoning code was passed is a lot of positive change.
Now as someone who you know lived half my life in New York City or other large cities. The issue is not density but it's good density versus bad density. So we have a lot of dense buildings for example some of the Ploof properties where you had a building that was built for six floor-through flats and had 26 -- I don't want to call them studios -- but had 26 things in there. And that's bad density.
But when you build a new building, you know, with [networking cable] in the walls and with all the modern fire suppression and underground garage and commercial on the bottom and it's a little more dense than what you have around you, which are essentially single family houses that have over time turned into threes or fours -- that's a good density.
Because there are certain types of neighborhood amenities and city amenities as a whole that you can't support unless you have sufficient density. Remember that we're almost 30,000 people below the size of what Albany was only a short time ago. And that extra 30,000 people, or even more if we go to some more good density, will bring in more of the walkability and more of the amenities that we all say that we want -- unless we see it happening in our neighborhood.
And the conversation continues.
____
* About stories and building height
The new zoning code specifies story limits for buildings, not physical heights. So buildings with fewer stories could end up being taller than buildings with more stories depending on floor height. The thinking behind this way of writing the rules was to try to keep developers from squishing (technical term) a bunch of floors into a building to meet height limits. But it also potentially opens the way for buildings to end up being taller than maybe intended. So look for this topic to maybe come up, and be adjusted, when the city reviews Rezone Albany next month. |
A jury of peers saw Brock Turner the rapist who sexually assaulted an incapacitated woman by a dumpster. A Santa Clara County judge, evidently, saw Brock Turner the Stanford University swimmer, a promising young athlete inveigled by scandal.
In the end, the 20-year-old was convicted as a predator but sentenced as a swimmer. Probation recommended a year in prison. State guidelines called for at least two—14 at most. Judge Aaron Persky gave him six months in jail, with a shot at getting out in three.
“A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” Persky reasoned in court earlier this month. “I think he will not be a danger to others.”
The leniency of the punishment—rare in an age of mass incarceration—and that it favored an athlete already privileged by affluence and whiteness sparked public protest. The victim’s searing courtroom account of the January 2015 assault fanned the flame into moral outrage.
“You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me,” she began her 7,138-word statement, “and that’s why we’re here today.”
Those thousands of words, which pulled millions of people into her pain with their vivid detail, went insanely viral. Those words flipped the narrative. In the court of public opinion, if not in Judge Persky’s chambers, justice was not served.
As if to complete Turner’s rebranding from champion swimmer to rapist, police released two mugshots after his June 3 sentencing, one taken the morning of his initial arrest and the other during his recent booking. Newspapers and TV stations swapped school photos of a clean-scrubbed and smiling all-American athlete with the watery-eyed deer-in-the-headlights mug shots of a perpetrator caught in the act.
The Stanford case has become emblematic of what feminists call rape culture, a culture that blames victims and normalizes male sexual violence. It’s a culture that judges women by their past and men by their future.
During the trial, Emily Doe defended her reputation while Turner talked up his potential, his Olympic aspirations, and blamed what his dad glibly called “20 minutes of action” on drinking and promiscuity.
The public directed their anger not only toward Turner but Judge Persky, a former prosecutor appointed to the bench in 2003 by Gov. Gray Davis.
On Monday, a juror in the case told the Palo Alto Weekly the outcome “makes a mockery of the whole trial” and that the judge should be ashamed for going easy on Turner. That same day, the District Attorney’s Office successfully filed a motion to remove Persky from an upcoming trial for a male nurse accused of sexually violating an unconscious patient.
Meanwhile, as the judge coasts to perfunctory re-election this November for lack of a challenger, he faces a petition for his recall that’s racked up more than a million signatures. Several state legislators have joined the cry to oust him over “prejudicial misconduct.”
“Judicial rulings like Judge Persky’s … discourage the reporting of these devastating crimes by reinforcing the fear that justice will not be served,” reads a letter to the California Commission on Judicial Performance signed by 13 state Assembly members. “[T]hey demonstrate that there are two systems of justice: one for people of privilege such as elite athletes, and one for everyone else.”
Salient points. But the growing demand to right this wrong raises important questions that have been reverberating throughout the legal community and at Stanford, where the conversation about campus sexual assault has reached a fevered pitch.
Does justice equal more punishment? Should a judge lose his or her job over an unpopular ruling? What effect would that have on other jurists, many of whom face the political pressures that come with elected office? Would a recall undermine the constitutional provision for judicial independence? How can victims and their advocates channel the intense interest in the Stanford case to teach people about sexual consent? What about cases in which the victim is something other than a cisgender woman? What about cases with several more shades of gray?
At Turner’s alma mater, where the U.S. Department of Education tallied 26 reported rapes in 2014, a group of victims launched an online petition for the school to publish the names of students found guilty of sexual assault. The campaign has drawn backlash, however, including from other victims. Erika Lynn Kreeger, a 23-year-old rape survivor and trans student at Stanford, has been trying to foster a more nuanced dialogue about sexual crime, punishment and consent among peers.
“I’m very deeply horrified by what Brock Turner did,” the earth science major tells San Jose Inside. “But I’ve been very disturbed by how people are talking about this in ways that absolve everyone else from blame. We’re further entrenching this idea that some of us are incapable of harm and others are scum of the earth who do these horrible things and need to be locked up. In reality, the vast majority of us live somewhere in between. There’s this idea that someone’s a rapist because they rape instead of seeing them as a product of this culture of non-consent that implicates all of us.”
The reality of sexual assault, of course, is vastly more complicated than the dichotomy of ruthless predator and defenseless victim. Rather than focusing on a limiting term such as “rape culture,” Kreeger wants to explore the broader idea of non-consent and how it teaches people that their identity privileges them to other people’s bodies.
“[W]e are taught that … white people can touch black and brown women’s hair without permission,” Kreeger and fellow Stanford scholar Lily Zheng wrote in an op-ed for The Stanford Political Journal. “[T]hat cisgender people can bluntly ask transgender, gender-variant and intersex people about their genitalia; that men are always entitled to women’s/femme’s/non-binary folx’s [sic] energy, emotional labor and bodies.”
In the absence of education about consent and communicative sex, they argue, latent entitlement can morph into unwanted advances or assault. Accounts that have surfaced after Turner’s sentencing shed light on his upbringing in an affluent Ohio suburb, where families expect academic and athletic excellence but hesitate to tell their children “no.”
At Stanford, there’s a century-old tradition called “Full Moon on the Quad” in which hundreds of freshmen engage in a liquored-up free-for-all make-out session. Last year, Turner’s swim team tied new guys up with rope and wouldn’t release them until they swapped spit with a stranger. It’s a small thing and doesn’t absolve Turner of guilt, Kreeger says, but it illustrates the type of cultures that shaped him, the context that may have emboldened his sense of entitlement to his victim’s body.
Systemic neglect of sexual assault victims has turned the Stanford rape case into a flashpoint that may portend a shift in public attitudes. The 23-year-old victim—known anonymously as Emily Doe—told a probation officer that she didn’t want her attacker to “rot away in prison,” but she hoped for more than a “soft timeout” in a local jail.
Though District Attorney Jeff Rosen decried the light sentence, saying the punishment did not fit the crime, he said it should not cost Judge Persky his job. The Santa Clara County Bar Association echoed that sentiment. “Judges have a duty to apply the law to the facts and evidence before them, regardless of public opinion or political pressure,” the association of lawyers declared last week. “In that role, judges provide an important check against other political forces.”
Public Defender Molly O’Neal—reportedly a vocal feminist with a college-aged daughter—joined them in Persky’s defense. The verdict that confirmed Turner’s guilt and rendered him a cautionary figure, she says, has already vindicated Emily Doe.
Not many would agree. Restorative justice, at least to Kreeger, should err in favor of the ones wronged. For now it seems that more vindication in this case came outside the courtroom, in Emily Doe’s eloquent words that voiced the plight of other victims.
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Jennifer Wadsworth is the news editor for San Jose Inside and Metro Newspaper. Email tips to [email protected] or follow her on Twitter at @jennwadsworth. |
Wayne Rooney has ruled out an appeal against the red card which will leave him suspended from Manchester United action until November after admitting that he had only himself to blame for the sixth sending off of his career.
Rooney, the United captain, will miss the Premier League matches with Everton, West Bromwich Albion and Chelsea after the referee Lee Mason dismissed him for a crude challenge on Stewart Downing during the tense victory against West Ham United at Old Trafford on Saturday.
With Louis van Gaal’s team out of the Capital One Cup and not involved in European competition this season, the reduction in United’s first-team fixtures ensures that Rooney will not be eligible for selection until the derby clash with Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Nov 2.
Despite Rooney’s sending off, which forced United to play with ten men for almost half an hour, the home side were ultimately able to hold onto the 2-1 half-time lead secured by strikes from Rooney and Robin van Persie.
But following the challenge on Downing – which was described as “crazy and irresponsible” by Sam Allardyce, the West Ham manager – Rooney conceded that it would be futile to contest Mason’s decision to issue a red card.
“It was probably the right decision,” Rooney said. “I saw the West Ham player making a counter-attack and I tried to break-up the play, but I just misjudged it.
“It was a dangerous situation in that they were trying to break on us and I have misjudged it, simple as that, but I have no complaints.
“I haven’t absolutely volleyed the lad. I have tried to trip him up and, to be fair to him, he got further away from me and that is why my leg is straighter than it should have been. But it is a red card and I don’t think it will benefit anyone to appeal against the decision.”
Rooney, who apologised to his team-mates following the dismissal, admitted that he was now prepared for the debate which will now follow over his suitability for the captaincy role for club and country. “I expect people to say that, but at the end of the day, I was just trying to break up the play. As a result, I am now going to miss three games and that’s the most disappointing thing.
“Obviously we got away with it by getting the win, but I am really gutted I am going to be missing the next three games. It is hard to take. Of course I did [apologise to his team-mates]. I think everyone knew [I was in the wrong], so I am just grateful the lads were able to hold on.”
As a player who is widely accepted to lose sharpness when not playing competitive football, Rooney admits he must now take advantage of England’s forthcoming fixtures against San Marino and Estonia before focusing on a prolonged diet of training ground preparation. “It helps that the England games are coming up, but the training here is really good,” Rooney said. “It is tough and it is getting my fitness up there, so I just have to make sure I train well and be ready for when I come back.”
Prior to his dismissal, Rooney had produced arguably his most impressive performance of the season for United, scoring a fifth minute opener with a crisp half-volley from Rafael da Silva’s cross.
Operating at the tip of Van Gaal’s diamond formation, behind Van Persie and Radamel Falcao, Rooney linked play and displayed the vision which suggests the number ten role is the one which he will claim for the remainder of his career. But after Van Persie had doubled United’s lead, with a right-foot strike from Falcao’s pass, Rooney’s combustible demons began to resurface once Diafra Sakho had halved West Ham’s deficit with a thirty-eighth minute header.
As captain, Rooney appears to take every setback or contentious decision against his team personally and the foul on Downing was the culmination of those frustrations.
Van Gaal, nonetheless, backed his captain, insisting he merely paid the price for committing a professional foul – no more and no less. The Dutchman had a point, with United captains of old, such as Roy Keane and Nemanja Vidic, earning enough red cards while wearing the armband to put Rooney in the shade.
However, the dismissal placed his team under the cosh and they almost capitulated, with teenage debutant Paddy McNair forced to produce one crucial headed clearance before Kevin Nolan saw an 89th minute equaliser ruled out – correctly – for offside. United survived, displaying the good fortune under Van Gaal that was non-existent under David Moyes, but it was no thanks to their tempestuous captain. |
By Nam Sang-so
No doubt that the subject of problematic relationship between woman and man has been one of the most important issues since the ancient time. A flood of adultery news, rapes, and homosexuality and so on in recent years proves that the human's sexuality remains basically the same. They fall in love and after a courtship man and woman eventually tie the knot so they can raise a family together, happily at first. And then, momentarily men, women too, often get weary of the partner and start look around.
Mysteriously, humans keep their reproductive activity private, while animals don't hide it. As such, men find a great interest in others' carnal activities and it's one of the important police jobs to punish the peeping tomes. And as men have a tendency to get tired of monotonous life, most men lose interest in the activities of others as soon as they realize that the others are doing about the same thing.
Men and women have the same noble purpose for the production of their next generation but each gender has quite a different idea in pursuing the same object. It has something to do with different productivities of their gametes, says biologist Kiyohiko Ikeda in his book "Manners of male and female" that the male who produces unlimited numbers of sperms finds the eggs very precious and bewitching, and won't usually choosy of its partner. But female is very much fussy about it. This built-in mechanism in male and female, says Ikeda, creates the games of bargaining between the two opposing sexes and then they start cheating.
Koreans too nowadays generally don't think adultery as a serious crime anymore although it's still grounds for a divorce and is considered to be immoral and punishable. The nation of amour, however, has quite a different view on the issue. The Court of Cassation of France in December last year ruled that (in a rough translation); "It cannot say that an illicit love affair is unethical." The case was involved by Madame Valerie Trierweiler, a journalist and author, who has been the partner of the most important politician of France until January 2014.She had three children from her second marriage. Madame Trierweiler met her monsieur during the parliamentary elections of 1988 while he was living with Madame Segolene Royal who was still married to another man.
A French law promulgated in 1975 exempt infidelity from a punishable crime; "The concept of the moral changes by time so that a suspected adultery among husband and wife should not be considered as defame for human's honor and dignity."A half of French is known to believe that adultery should be morally permitted. Le magazine du Monde attempts to answer; probably French are becoming less faithful to god.
Korea has many churches and temples yet people are getting about the same thoughts as the French judges of the Court of Cassation. If it has something to do with god, then He is probably introducing a new way of sexual evolution. Otherwise we cannot find a plausible answer to why even a senior judge was caught red-handed having a fling with the other woman.
It seems God still has a different homework in His hand; Japanese government was recently not pleased to know a new survey that found almost half of single young men and women are virgins while shrinking population is a big issue. Fortunately, Korean youngsters seem to have a hotter blood than the Japanese counterpart as they don't hide their flirting in the public. |
Apparently, she can still sing them. Earlier this month a New Yorker reporter got an earful of a live Mariah Carey set, including, per the resulting article, "the high notes of 'Hero.' "
How often do the ladies of Hollywood dye their locks? I've never seen one with faded color. I find that if I color my hair dark or red, as opposed to going blond, the color barely lasts two weeks! Is dying it every 10 days the secret?
—Deep Roots
"The secret is not how often you dye it, it's how you dye it, it's in the application," says Rick Wellman, colorist for Petra Nemkova and Mariska Hargitay. "I have some clients who come in 10 to 14 days, but I only touch up the roots. The other secret is sealing with a glaze, which locks in the color."
What are the three seashells in the bathroom to replace toilet paper in the movie Demolition Man?
—Azaraff
Per Sylvester Stallone himself, who was interviewed on this very subject by Ain't It Cool News, the three shells were an actual substitute for bath tissue. "OK, this may be bordering on the grotesque," Stallone said, "but the way it was explained to me by the writer is you hold two seashells like chopsticks, pull gently and scrape what's left with the third. You asked for it. Be careful what you ask for, sorry."
Hey! How about a question about Brenda Song?
Got a question about Hollywood? ASK IT: [email protected]
Oh, and subscribe to my free podcast, 'kay? |
A new book by former Progressive Conservative prime minister and foreign minister Joe Clark takes dead aim at Stephen Harper. The current prime minister has proven unable to build relationships with other governments. Adopting an "almost adolescent" tone internationally, Harper has preferred making bold statements that lead nowhere, to taking concrete action in support of peace-making, international development and human rights.
Clark sees Harper with his obsessive controlling attitude to politics forcing his partisanship agenda into foreign policy decision-making. Traditional Canadian goals and concerns get lost, and diplomatic advice from foreign policy professionals counts for nothing.
Like everything else about the Harper regime, matters of government, including foreign policy, are secondary to party fundraising. The permanent election campaign being waged by the party office demands all issues be framed to appeal to the party base.
The creation of the Conservative Party of Canada was very much the work of Stephen Harper. It has become increasingly apparent that a main outcome has been to bury the doctrine that animated Conservative party leaders before Harper: Canadian conservatism.
There is no doubt the prime minister identifies with American Republicans who call themselves conservatives. His policy ideas would be familiar to any reader of the American conservative organ The Weekly Standard for instance.
Harper embraces Conservative with a capital C because it is his party label. What he has succeeded in burying is Canadian small-c conservative thought, as exemplified by Canadian leaders of the Conservative party since Sir John A. Macdonald and Georges Étienne Cartier at the time of Confederation in 1867, and brought forth by other Conservative party leaders, at least until Brian Mulroney (more of a big-business liberal than a conservative) forced Joe Clark out of the party leadership.
Sources of Canadian conservative thought are to be found principally in Britain, not the United States. Canadian conservatives resembled the British Tory party in their attachment to country, institutions and history. For conservatives, abstractions such as democracy and reason were better left to liberals.
Conservatives knew that the human race was weak, and that individuals needed support from society if they were to make something of themselves. The church, the army, the judiciary, universities, and parliamentary government were what moulded character.
While liberals looked to individual success through the "free" market economy, conservatives built government infrastructure, and being no great believers in "competition" tolerated business monopolies.
Ontario is the homeland of Canadian conservatism. Its conservatives championed commercial capital, insurance, real estate, agriculture and banking. Protectionist tariffs invited foreign owners to take major positions in manufacturing industries.
The "national policy" enacted by Macdonald produced its greatest success under the Liberal Laurier, whose term in office (1896-1911) coincided with the end of the world economic depression, and the beginning of the Canadian wheat boom. When Laurier championed "free trade" with the U.S., Ontario threw him out of office.
Canadian Tory times were tough times: R.B. Bennett governed during the Depression; but his institutional creations, the CBC, Canadian National Railways, and the Bank of Canada, served Canada well for decades after.
As Gordon Laxer and Trevor Harrison showed in their 1995 book The Trojan Horse the misuse of the Conservative party label began in Alberta when Ralph Klein introduced a false populist rhetoric, using a bombastic appeal to the people, to trash so-called elites (people who disagreed with him) and push a smaller, lesser government agenda.
In Ontario, Mike Harris claimed to be the tax fighter. His small government workout included public boxing matches with teachers and other public sector workers.
Like socialists, traditionally conservatives have understood that societies are made of social classes. Whereas socialists wanted to overthrow or reform the social order, conservatives have worked to maintain and enhance it.
Conservatives see Canadian society as layered by income, education and social status. A conservative answer to the question of who should govern is a noble one: the best qualified, the most capable individuals should take up public service in the interest of the country as a whole.
This conservative ideal of service provides a sharp contrast to the false populist rants against elites heard from Klein, Harris or Harper.
The traditional conservative message for citizens to heed authority, the rule of law, and do pretty much as they were told to do, suffered when compared to liberal ideas about freedom and individual choice.
Attempts to portray conservatives as "progressive" opened a new conflict with so-called "social" conservatives, and "theo-cons" with strong religious convictions, people like Stephen Harper, conservatives who simultaneously embraced market liberalism.
Once an aide to Progressive Conservative MP James Hawkes, Harper joined the Reform Party of Preston Manning (later the Canadian Alliance), and took up its fight against Mulroney Conservatives for right-wing hegemony in Western Canada. By the time Harper became leader of the Canadian Alliance in 2002, he was ready to make peace with the Conservatives, and in 2003 became leader of the new CPC.
A modern Conservative party would be a leader on the environment, not leading a fight against the environmental movement. A true conservative would want to protect water resources, not trash environmental protection for lakes and other sources of fresh water. A true conservative would strengthen environmental regulations and promote scientific research, not promote resource exploitation, and attack knowledge-based institutions.
Duncan Cameron is the president of rabble.ca and writes a weekly column on politics and current affairs.
Photo: Dave Cournoyer/flickr |
Moderator Chris Wallace appeared to find humor in Hillary Clinton saying that Donald Trump is the most dangerous modern presidential candidate and his slight chuckle was caught by voters on social media during Wednesday’s final presidential debate.
The candidates were discussing Bernie Sanders when Clinton said the senator from Vermont thinks that Trump is “the most dangerous person” to run for president in the modern history of America.
“I think he’s right,” Clinton said, which prompted a laugh from Wallace, who made history as the first general election debate moderator from Fox News Channel.
Also Read: The Great Puppet Debate: Trump, Clinton Fight Over Who Pulls Their Strings (Video)
This is harsh, and Chris Wallace's laugh at the end is something else https://t.co/od8OLya3XG pic.twitter.com/czUS3puirc — Colin Jones (@colinjones) October 20, 2016
Earlier in the night, Wallace was forced to quiet the crowd when they laughed at Trump saying he respects women.
Watch: Chris Wallace had to shush the crowd after they laughed when Trump said "nobody has more respect for women than I do." pic.twitter.com/bkathsU3Lu — Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 20, 2016
Check out Twitter reaction to the chuckle:
My favorite part of this debate is Chris Wallace openly laughing at both of them #debatenight — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 20, 2016
I think Hillary Clinton's last burn just made Chris Wallace laugh — Logan Rhoades (@LoganRhoades) October 20, 2016
LOOOOL DID CHRIS WALLACE JUST LAUGH ALONG WITH HILLARY — super tasty katsudon (@alisonrapp) October 20, 2016 |
The Radical Fictions of Third Way
The Political Establishment’s Dangerous Gambit to Make Populism a Dirty Word
Kathleen Frydl Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 22, 2017
This week Politico published news that the group Third Way — “a centrist think tank” that lobbies for conservative economic plans along with liberal social policies—launched a $20 million effort to better understand the Democratic Party’s abysmal election results, and what can be done to improve them.
Their recommendations won’t include any elements of economic populism. Third Way President Jonathan Cowan ruled out any consideration of the politics of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren from the outset, and added: “Populism is inherently anti-government.” “That works if you’re a right-wing conservative, like Donald Trump,” he told Politico, but it “doesn’t work if you’re the party of government.”
If any assertion could be said to be historically obscene, Cowan’s characterization of populism as “anti-government” would definitely qualify. In fact, it runs counter to so much history that a retraction is in order — or, at a minimum, a lot of embarrassment running up and down the hallways of a self-described “think tank.”
Definitely the history of populism is an unwieldy one. Like other momentous and complex phenomena, it’s difficult to advance robust generalizations about the populist movement in the United States. Historians still argue about the nature of its most formal phase, during the turn of the twentieth century, as well as the degree it was shaped by what came before, and how much it influenced what came after.
But one of the few things beyond dispute is the pro-government inclination of populism.
Throughout history, its adherents most basic ambition was to place government in service of the people rather than the financial elite. Supporters facilitated mechanisms of direct democracy — whether it was leaders who campaigned directly to the people, the enactment of electoral devices like ballot initiatives, or a constitutional amendment to allow voters, not state legislatures, to elect Senators.
Proponents of populism denounce a government devoted to making the “rich richer, and the potent more powerful,” in words spoken long ago by Andrew Jackson that still bear meaning for us today. For this reason, populists press for agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that insist on fairness, and ensure that the extravagantly rich follow laws just the same as ordinary people.
The New Deal, a consummation of cresting industrial populism and a receding but still powerful agrarian one, gave birth to programs and institutions that form the predicate of the modern welfare state and survive to this day. To list Depression-era legislative accomplishments of populism would be to recite an alphabet soup of agencies and policies that Americans continue to count on and embrace. Townsendites marching for pensions, or agrarian populists like Gerald Nye, who advocated for the Tennessee Valley Authority, would have been shocked to discover that they were “inherently anti-government” as they went about the business of forging some of its most cherished instruments.
But Cowan’s description of populism is more than just ludicrous or incorrect. It is alarming. By declaring that a government that works for the people is, by necessity, a threat to governance, I can only conclude that Cowan and Third Way are the real danger, intent on replicating the same establishment indifference that paved the way for the election of Donald Trump. |
Regardless of whether you consider yourself to be a self-confessed scaredy-cat or a hardened expert of the genre, John Kramer is a name that ought to strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers.
After seven feature films in the Saw franchise, the demented serial killer has gone on to become one of cinema’s greatest architects of fear, subjecting his victims to a series of grotesque experiments each more horrifying than the last. His mission? To push his hapless test subjects to the absolute brink and, ultimately, examine their will to live. The fact that Kramer is nursing an inoperable brain tumor adds an extra layer of intrigue to his nightmare-inducing acts, and the upcoming Saw: Legacy is poised to delve a little deeper into what makes (or should that be made?) John Kramer tick.
But it seems Lionsgate employed the rather uninspired Saw: Legacy as something of a placeholder, as Bloody Disgusting now reports that the studio is mulling over Jigsaw as a possible title for Michael and Peter Spierig’s horror flick. What makes this claim particularly interesting is the fact that James Wan and Leigh Whannell initially planned to release the original Saw as Jigsaw more than a decade ago, so it would seem Lionsgate is contemplating the possibility of going full circle.
Regardless of the title on the masthead, Lionsgate’s horror revival has been rated R for “grisly, bloody violence and torture.” So definitely a Saw film, then. What’s more, those plot details that slithered online back in March point to a potential comeback for Tobin Bell’s criminal mastermind.
Bodies are turning up around the city, each having met a uniquely gruesome demise. As the investigation proceeds, evidence points to one man: John Kramer. But how can this be? The man known as Jigsaw has been dead for over a decade. Or has an apprentice picked up the mantle of Jigsaw, perhaps even someone inside the investigation?
Casting-wise, Liongate and the Spierig brothers have tapped the likes of Mandela Van Peebles, Laura Vandervoort, Brittany Allen, Callum Keith Rennie, Matt Passmore, Hannah Emily Anderson, Josiah Black, Shaquan Lewis, Michael Bolsvert, and James Gomez to fill out the casting docket.
Saw: Legacy (Jigsaw?) will serve up another dose of nightmare fuel on October 27th, at which point Lionsgate’s horror flick will be competing with God Particle (AKA Cloverfield 3) for the lion’s share of the box office. |
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) issued a warning to his fellow Democratic lawmakers this week not to get enamored by talk of Donald Trump’s impeachment.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, the New York Democrat sounded far more bullish than at any time this year about his party’s prospects for the midterm elections. And he based his optimism in large part on the Republican Party’s legislative ineffectualness and the president’s growing list of scandals and foibles. “I had hoped that he would grow and learn with the job,” Schumer said from his office on Capitol Hill. “He has not. In fact he has less talent in that White House today than he had when he started.”
Still, there were notes of caution peppered into Schumer’s words—a subtext of concern that Democrats may very well mess up the promising political landscape they’ve been given. There were no quick solutions, he warned, for getting rid of Trump.
“I would say that if you’re a congressman or senator and actually have to vote, you want to wait,” Schumer said of impeachment talk, gingerly searching for the right words. “Let me put it the right way. There may be a time. It is premature. And to call for [impeachment] now you might blow your shot when it has a better chance of happening. It is serious, serious, serious. And so... [pause]... you wait.”
Not everyone shares his patience. Already, a number of lawmakers in the House have begun pushing for Trump’s removal from office, on grounds that he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Others have pushed the 25th Amendment route, which would rely on a majority of the cabinet to determine that Trump was physically or mentally unable to do his job. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has tried to muzzle such chatter. But she can’t control what happens outside her chamber. On Thursday, California billionaire Tom Steyer said he was poised to spend $20 million on television ads advocating impeachment.
“I’m not against him doing it but I think it is premature,” Schumer said of Steyer. Asked if the money would be better spent on, say, supporting campaigns, he wryly noted that Styer, with his prodigious wealth, “can do both.”
Schumer’s relationship with Trump is both adversarial and ever-evolving. He declined to say that his primary objective was to ensure that the president served a single term (a rhetorical misstep that dogged his counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) when he made such an utterance about President Obama in 2010). Though Schumer didn’t suppress his pride with his ability to jam Trump’s agenda—“any place we could have stopped him we did,” he proclaimed—his official position remains that he will work with the president when it suits his party’s interest.
Those instances have been rare. And when they’ve occurred they haven’t been long lasting. Schumer learned that the hard way this fall, when Trump accused him of facilitating the terrorist attack in New York City and appeared to renege on a deal they’d struck to shield young undocumented immigrants whose legal protections the president had ended, leaving the fate of those so-called DREAMers up in the air.
“That’s been the problem here,” Schumer said. “He says one thing one day and another thing the next. He makes a deal and it doesn’t even matter. And his grasp of policy, and even substance, is so ephemeral.”
Despite it all, Schumer still expects that he will score that DACA-deal; that it will be on the terms he discussed with Trump (legal protections in exchange for enhanced border security that didn’t include a physical wall); and that he won’t have to facilitate a government shutdown at the end of the year to produce it.
The president and the Republican Party are on the defensive, he believes. And though Schumer plainly stated “no” when asked if he considered Trump a friend, he also sees potential pitfalls in over-the-top demonization. There are deals to be made and elections to be won and no time for impeachment talk or personal grievances.
“Look,” Schumer explained, “he sometimes praises me in tweets. He sometimes tweets and calls me names. It doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect me politically, it doesn’t affect me internally. That’s who he is. I think it is demeaning for a president to do it but it doesn’t bother me.” |
Instabill has announced that it will offer merchant and banking accounts to companies working in the Isle of Man’s digital currency industry.
The news comes just one day after Capital Treasury Services, a company that connects digital currency companies to banks on the Isle of Man, moved broadly to close the accounts of clients dealing in cryptocurrency, under pressure from partner banks.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Instabill founder Jason Field said his firm will be able to offer stable banking relationships to digital currency firms because it works with banks in various jurisdictions.
Field told CoinDesk:
“We work with banks located in Europe, Asia and North America. We are not just working with one acquiring bank or operating out of one jurisdiction.”
Field would not say which banks his firm works with, but did say he has discussed the possibility of opening accounts for bitcoin businesses with Instabill’s current banking providers.
“We have had multiple discussions with our acquiring banks, they understand the business and they are interested in entering and facilitating processing solutions,” he said.
The announcement coincides with Field’s visit to the Crypto Valley Summit, a two-day confab on the Isle of Man that was meant to call attention to the Crown dependancy’s favorable policies to the industry as well as the wide support from the bitcoin industry the island has received.
Startup launch scuppered
Despite the emergence of a new banking option, the conference threatened to be overshadowed by the news that CTS was cutting off banking facilities for the cryptocurrency firms currently based on the island.
One startup that recently incorporated on the island with an account with CTS is AltXE, which aims to become a payment processor for merchants along the lines of BitPay and Coinbase. Its co-founders Chris Wood and James Carter, had planned to launch the service at the conference, but hours before it was due to start, they were notified by CTS that that it would be closing bitcoin-related accounts in two weeks.
Carter said:
“The plan was to tell people about [the startup] today. But CTS pulled out and it has really been disappointing. We spent [eight months] talking to various jurisdictions.”
Carter and Wood, based in Manchester, say they will be exploring the option of using Instabill now that their business can’t proceed with CTS. They will delay their startup’s launch, as well.
Terms of service
Instabill is a New Hampshire-based company that offers merchant account services to high-risk companies. This includes setting up credit card processing facilities for its customers, including debt collectors, dating websites and travel agencies.
A representative from Instabill told CoinDesk that the price of its service varies by industry, but that there’s an initial $499 set-up fee due on approval for new accounts. To accept payments, digital currency merchants would need to pay a 3%–4% discount rate, plus approximately 35 cents per transaction.
Instabill allows merchants to accept major credit cards including China Union Pay, MasterCard and Visa, and its payment gateway supports 160 currencies.
Additionally, 10% of payment processing revenues are placed in a rolling reserve fund for the first six months. Customers then receive this 10% back each month beginning on month seven of the service. Instabill indicates that, while not a feature of many US banks, this money is necessary to cover contingencies, such as chargebacks and refunds.
Details aside, Field says digital currency firms on the island are rushing to find out what he can offer them:
“We’ve already had half a dozen companies approach us in the last half hour. They’re all digital currency businesses.”
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that digital currency merchants would need to pay 6% discount rate, plus 50 cents per transaction in Instabill service fees.
Disclaimer: This article should not be viewed as an endorsement of any of the companies mentioned. Please do your own extensive research before considering investing any funds in these products.
Rescue image via Shutterstock |
Victorians have narrowly backed a new rail tunnel under the city over the Napthine government's proposed east-west road connection.
An Age/Nielsen poll found 47 per cent of voters backed the metro rail tunnel from South Kensington to South Yarra over the $6 billion to $8 billion road project connecting the Eastern and the Tullamarine freeways.
But the results were finely balanced, with 43 per cent favouring the road project, which the government says will begin towards the end of next year.
The rival plans are set to be a key election issue in Victoria, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard backing the rail option and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott promising to help fund the road tunnel.
The finding came as Premier Denis Napthine predicted ''thousands'' of motorists would use the road tunnel daily. But Dr Napthine declined to give details about the expected patronage, arguing it formed a key part of the government's confidential business case, which is expected to be submitted to Infrastructure Australia in coming days. |
Written by Jason King of Sean’s Outpost and reposted with his permission fromreddit.
For over a week now, I’ve been trying to write a year in review piece for Satoshi Forest. The words, which usually just flow like a spigot when I’m passionate about something, seem to just dribble out. And what little ekes by is hardly print worthy. Maybe it’s just writer’s block? Writer’s block happens. Or maybe I’m not as passionate about Satoshi Forest as I used tao be?
But, I am passionate about Satoshi Forest, perhaps more than I ever have been. And writer’s block, if it is the culprit, cannot explain why I haven’t responded to Elizabeth Ploshay’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in a timely fashion. I guess I’ll have to donate now. You see it’s not just the Satoshi Forest year in review, it’s everything. Emails from friends I haven’t responded to, phone calls I let go to voicemail, new endeavors at Sean’s Outpost I let sit unannounced (http://blockchain.satoshiforest.com/). And then it hits me. I’ve been here before.
I’m really depressed.
And it seems to be going around.
Since the tragic suicide of Robin Williams, four (4) people close to me have also tried to kill themselves. One succeeded. An anecdotal survey of my friends has seen an equal uptick in the number of people talking about or attempting suicide.
It’s been really disturbing.
In the preparations for the Bitcoin in the Beltway conference this past June, I had one of the more surreal conversations of my life. An east coast sales director for Marriott called me wanting to know if bitcoin was linked to suicide. They had heard of the tragic death of Autumn Radtke in March (http://nypost.com/2014/03/06/bitcoin-firm-ceo-jumped-to-her-death-neighbor/) and were concerned about hosting a conference for a technology that was making people kill themselves. I was sure he was joking. He was not. The conversation I had with him must have allayed his fears. #BitcoinBeltway went great, can’t wait to do it again next year.
Obviously, bitcoin does not cause suicide. And while we are quick to sticky a “suicide prevention hotline” when the price crashes, bitcoin is not causing depression. What we may want to look into is something that is not bitcoin related, but more something that comes part and parcel with “bitcoiners”: the woes of entrepreneurship and startup culture.
Being an entrepreneur is f*ing hard. Really hard. Most people don’t even attempt it. It might not feel that way to you, but likely that’s because you surround yourself with other entrepreneurs. Your friends work at startups. Your trips are to startup conferences and conventions. Your news feed is r/bitcoin and hacker news. You are firmly in the echo chamber.
Most people will never try and build a product or company, so most people will never experience what it is like to fear you won’t make payroll and someone else will not be able to pay their rent because of you.
Most people will never know how difficult it is to raise money: to get someone else to believe in you enough to open their checkbook and support you financially…the hours you spend and the mental strain that comes from hearing “No” again and again and again. And if you get a “Yes” the pressure doesn’t dissipate! It increases! Now it’s your crazy idea and someone else’s money you’re responsible for.
Being an entrepreneur is really hard.
And we are really hard on ourselves. We are afraid to show any weakness, because we’ve been taught being weak or vulnerable is to be shunned. If someone asks you how your company is doing, “We’re killing it.” probably comes off your lips before you’ve even processed the question.
It is statistically impossible for everyone to always be “killing it.”
But ask at your next mixer or meetup and almost everyone will be “killing it.”
And that pressure to succeed, to perform, to win is immense. And I think that pressure may be even worse in bitcoin.
Not to everyone, but to a lot of bitcoin early adopters, and especially to a lot of early bitcoin entrepreneurs, bitcoin is a promise, a glimpse of a better world free from the inequalities brought by our legacy financial system. So if you fail in bitcoin, it is easy to feel that you are failing on that promise too.
I’ve felt that way – felt that if I screw up I am screwing it up for every non-profit and charity, that they will somehow not get the benefits of bitcoin because I failed. I see it in others. Just a week ago at #Cryptolina I talked with a group of brilliant entrepreneurs who were convinced that if they didn’t beat an incumbent payment solution to market, they had lost the war. And that whole segment of the market would NEVER benefit from cryptocurrency.
Being a bitcoin entrepreneur is hard.
And I don’t have the answers to how to deal with all the pressure and depression that come from doing what we do. But I have learned a couple of things and maybe someone else that is experiencing depression or having dark thoughts can read this and gain some value from what I’ve learned. And even better, maybe someone that has dealt with depression in the past can riff on what I’ve said and provide some insight into how they cope.
1) You are not alone.
When you are depressed, it seems like everyone else has it all together and you are the anomaly. That’s not true. They probably don’t have their s*t together either. And everyone has problems we don’t see. Everyone.
Some of the greatest entrepreneurs and investors of all time have had brutal fights with depression and suicidal thoughts.
READ:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201309/jessica-bruder/psychological-price-of-entrepreneurship.html
2) Bitcoin needs you and it doesn’t need you. And that’s ok.
Bitcoin needs you. It really does. But it doesn’t need only you, it needs all of us. You are not the single point of failure. Bitcoin’s success is just as decentralized as the blockchain. So give yourself a break. It’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to fail. It’s even okay to fail spectacularly.
Think back to how many times bitcoin has been declared dead. How many times has the price crashed? How many times has a major bitcoin institution been corrupted/hacked/found to be a scam?
And yet, here we are. An you are here too.
3) It is okay to ask for help.
This is hard to learn. We come from a self sufficient culture. And if you ask for help, people will realize that you are not as awesome as they thought you were…BULLSH*T. Asking for help has ZERO bearing on how awesome a person you are. In fact, your friends WANT TO HELP YOU. Being there for you in a moment of crisis is something your friends are probably really down for. But if you ignore them or won’t tell them you are having problems it is really difficult for them to help. Talk to someone. If all else fails you can always call…
THE NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
I know all of this might not make a difference. When you are caught up in your head in the middle of a depressive episode nothing seems to help. Try to find something that you can concentrate on just to get you through the worst of it. For me, I go play with my kids. It helps me, sometimes more than others.
If you are feeling down, try to talk to someone. And if you see someone feeling down, try to lend a supportive ear.
Bitcoin needs you alive. |
In his 1999 book, Dr. Ben Carson wrote that our nation's history on racial injustices made it impossible for the black community to think of the judicial system in anything but racial terms and that white Americans were only able to view racial violence in a modern context.
In his book, The Big Picture, released by Zondervan, Carson argued white Americans had "no grasp on the history of racial violence in this country." Carson wrote of a time his mother was thrown in jail for a minor traffic violation as an example of personal history of the racial injustice in criminal justice system.
Carson, who talked about how the incident shaped his own view of the Black Lives Matter movement in an interview with BuzzFeed News earlier this month, was writing about the different racial reactions to the O.J. Simpson case.
"Black Americans, on the other hand, find it almost impossible to think about 'fairness' or 'justice' in anything but racial terms — because of our nation's historical record of unfairness and injustice to our race," wrote Carson. "As I said in the previous chapter, no matter how often we are told we need to 'get over' the past, white people need to understand these things are not easy for us to forget."
Carson noted white Americans view racial violence only in a modern context.
"White people think of racial violence in a modern context — such as the black riots that erupted in the wake of the Rodney King verdict," he wrote. "They have no grasp on the history of racial violence in this country — as illustrated by their total unawareness of what Newsweek (Dec. 8, 1997) admitted were 'two [facts] that every American should know. Between 1885 and 1900, at least 2,500 blacks were lynched or murdered as the KKK consolidated its hold on the post-Reconstruction South. In 1741, 14 slaves were burned at the stake and 18 others were hanged because of fears of a slave revolt— in New York City.'"
Carson cited an example of his own personal history with racial injustice, an arrest of his mother for frivolous charges.
"Too many other incidents of injustice are not merely ancient history, but personal history, even current events, for the majority of black people. I remember in Boston when I was a child, my older cousins, sons of the aunt and uncle who took our family in, were arrested and thrown into jail for some minor infraction of the law. When one of my cousins protested that abuse, he was beaten so severely by the police that he almost died. I vividly remember seeing the results of that beating. A few years ago, when my own mother questioned a policeman who stopped her for a routine traffic violation in a Detroit suburb, the officer angrily told her she met the description of a woman wanted for abducting an elderly couple. He promptly arrested her, had her car impounded, and threw her into jail. I had to call a lawyer friend of mine, a fellow Yale alumnus, who used his contacts as a senior partner in a major Detroit law firm to get her released and to see that the bogus charges were dismissed.
Asked about how that personal history shaped his view of the Black Lives Matter movement earlier this month, Carson told BuzzFeed News the criminal justice system could be "improved upon."
"Well, I recognize that there are, you know, inappropriate actions done by policemen, just like there are inappropriate actions done by doctors, nurses, teachers, even journalists. It doesn't make all of them bad, and it doesn't create an overall impression of them all," Carson said.
"And I think it's probably not the most reasonable position to take — that because you have a police officer that does something bad that all the police are bad," he continued. "Having said that, do we always need to always be vigilant and pay attention to the justice system? Absolutely. Do we need to look at, you know, mandatory incarceration of people involved in nonviolent crimes? Of course we do. We don't want to send them to a university to make them into more hardened criminals. So yeah, all of these things are things that could be improved upon."
In 1999, Carson noted most black Americans could cite similar personal experiences of injustice.
"Most black people can cite similar personal experiences of injustice. President Clinton's commission on race specifically cited the injustice of 'racial profiling,' which many police use to identify potential criminals," wrote Carson. "It is employed most often in traffic stops, for a crime sometimes derisively referred to in the African-American community as 'driving while black.'"
"Statistics support what many blacks have never doubted, that our justice system metes out different treatment to blacks and whites," Carson continued. "The disproportionate percentage of black murderers versus white murderers who receive the death penalty is just one example. The 1998 race commission report cited another when it urged the president to reduce the disparity in sentences for crimes involving powdered cocaine and its concentrated form, crack. The board said longer sentences for crimes involving crack, largely involving poor, black, or Hispanic offenders are 'morally and intellectually indefensible.'" |
LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline will stop paying doctors for promoting its drugs and scrap prescription targets for its marketing staff - a first for an industry battling scandals over its sales practices, and a challenge for its peers to follow suit.
Britain’s biggest drugmaker also said on Tuesday it would stop payments to healthcare professionals for attending medical conferences as it tries to persuade critics it is addressing conflicts of interest that could put commercial interests ahead of the best outcome for patients.
The move may force other companies to act, since the entire drugs industry has been under fire for aggressive marketing tactics in recent years.
“Where GSK leads we must hope that other companies will follow,” Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal and an influential campaigner against undue industry influence in medical practice, told Reuters.
“But there is a long way to go if we are to truly to extricate medicine from commercial influence. Doctors and their societies have been too ready to compromise themselves.”
GlaxoSmithKline’s move comes amid a major bribery investigation in China, where police have accused it of funneling up to 3 billion yuan ($494 million) to travel agencies to facilitate bribes to boost its drug sales.
However, the company said the measures were not directly related to its Chinese problems and were rather part of a broad effort to improve transparency.
In the United States, the industry’s biggest market by far, many companies have run into conflicts over improper sales tactics and GSK reached a record $3-billion settlement with the U.S. government last year over charges that it provided misleading information on certain drugs.
A number of other firms have taken some steps to clean up their marketing practices and companies are being forced to disclose payments to doctors under U.S. healthcare law.
Similar laws requiring firms to make public the names of doctors they have paid will take effect in Europe from the start of 2016.
“This will undoubtedly change behavior and trigger a re-think of how some forms of continuing medical education are organized and funded,” said Richard Bergstrom, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.
Shares in GSK, hit in recent months by its woes in China and a resulting fall in sales, slid 1.4 percent against a 0.3 percent dip on London’s blue-chip FTSE index.
Colin McLean, managing director at SVM Asset Management, who holds shares in drugmakers including Pfizer but not GSK, said he would welcome other firms following GSK’s lead.
“Given the problems Glaxo had in China, it is important for investors to understand, at a deeper level, just how incentives work through an organization,” he said.
SELF REGULATION
AstraZeneca said in 2011 it was scrapping payments for doctors to attend international congresses but others, until now, have not followed suit and GSK’s actions go further.
An AstraZeneca spokeswoman said on Tuesday it had tightened up practices in 2011 so that its actions could not be seen as an inducement for doctors to prescribe its products.
Officials at other major drug companies were not immediately available to comment.
Tim Reed, head of Health Action International, an Amsterdam-based non-government organization critical of Big Pharma, said the GSK move would increase the pressure on other companies.
“I think other companies will follow suit - but one of the biggest problems is that the industry persists in regulating itself,” he said. “The only way to properly control promotion is strong and enforced regulation by the state.”
GSK’s Chief Executive Andrew Witty said in a statement that his company’s actions were designed to ensure that patients’ interests always came first.
“We recognize that we have an important role to play in providing doctors with information about our medicines, but this must be done clearly, transparently and without any perception of conflict of interest,” he said.
The decision to stop payments to doctors for speaking about medicines during meetings with other prescribers marks a big shift for a global industry that has always relied heavily on the influence of experts in promoting products.
GSK said it aimed to implement this move and a related measure to end paying for doctors to attend medical conferences by the start of 2016.
The company currently spends some 50 million pounds ($82 million) a year on paying doctors to speak or attend conferences, according to estimates from industry sources.
U.S. MODEL
The change in payments to GSK’s sales representatives will be implemented faster, following a successful test-run in the United States, where payments have been decoupled from the number of prescriptions generated since 2011.
The policy of ending individual sales targets will now be rolled out globally. GSK said it planned to implement the new compensation system in all countries by early 2015.
Its U.S. ‘Patient First’ program bases pay for commercial staff on a mix of qualitative measures and the overall business performance, rather than the number of prescriptions generated.
The shift is pragmatic to a certain extent, since many decisions about which drugs to use are now taken centrally by big insurers and governments, based on cost-effectiveness measurements, rather than by individual doctors.
Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said the approach made sense for patient care.
“It is pleasing to see a large pharmaceutical company like GlaxoSmithKline recognize that it can reduce the possibility of undue influence by rewarding employees for providing high-quality information and education for doctors rather than for their sales figures,” she said.
A no entry sign is pictured outside the GlaxoSmithKline building in Hounslow, west London June 18, 2013. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
GSK will still pay fees to doctors carrying out company-sponsored clinical research, advisory activities and market research, which it said were essential in providing insights on specific diseases.
($1 = 6.0715 Chinese yuan)
($1 = 0.6136 British pounds) |
As a young Israeli who had just completed five years of service in the IDF, I looked forward to my new job educating people in the Pacific Northwest about Israel. I was shocked, however, by the anti-Israel bigotry and hostility I encountered, especially in the greater Seattle area, Oregon, and Berkeley. I had been very liberal, a member of the leftist Zionist party, Meretz, but the anti-Semitism and hatred for Israel that I have seen in the U.S. has changed my outlook personally and politically.
As part of my work as an educator at StandWithUs, between January and May of this year, I traveled to college campuses, high schools and churches, sharing the history of modern Israel. I also shared personal stories about growing up in the Jewish state, and about my family. I always spoke about my military service as an officer in an IDF COGAT unit that attends to the needs of Palestinian civilians who are not involved in the conflict and promotes Palestinian civil society. Each time I would speak and take questions for an hour or more. I have shared my personal story with over 16,000 people at many, many college campuses and high schools, including UC Berkeley, Stanford, the University of Washington, Seattle University and many others. Many of those to whom I spoke were supportive, friendly, and open to hearing about my Israel. But, sadly, far too many were not.
When I served as a soldier in the West Bank, I got used to having ugly things said to me, but nothing prepared me for the misinformation, demonization of Israel, and the gut-wrenching, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic hostility expressed by many students, professors, church members, and even some high school students right here in the Pacific Northwest.
I was further shocked by how unaware the organized Jewish community is and how little they are actually doing to counter this rising anti-Semitism, which motivated me to write this article.
This new form of bigotry against Israel has been called the “new anti-Semitism,” with “Israel” replacing “Jew” in traditional anti-Semitic imagery and canards, singling out and discriminating against the Jewish state, and denying the Jewish people alone the right to self-determination. The new anti-Semitism is packaged in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS), which claims to champion Palestinian rights though its real goal is to erode American support for Israel, discredit Jews who support Israel, and pave the way for eliminating the Jewish state. One of BDS’ central demands is the “complete right of return” for all the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, subtle language that means the end of Israel as the Jewish homeland because it would turn Israel into a Palestinian-Arab majority state.
It is surprising that an extremist group like BDS is ever taken seriously, but BDS advocates have found receptive audiences in some circles. Their campaigns are well organized and in many cases, well financed. They have lobbied universities, corporations, food co-ops, churches, performing artists, labor unions, and other organizations to boycott Israel and companies that do business with Israel. But even if these groups don’t agree to treat Israel as a pariah state, the BDS activists manage to spread their anti-Israel misinformation, lies and prejudice simply by forcing a debate based on their false claims about Israel.
To give you a taste of the viciousness of the BDS attacks, let me cite just a few of the many shocking experiences I have had. At a BDS event in Portland, a professor from a Seattle university told the assembled crowd that the Jews of Israel have no national rights and should be forced out of the country. When I asked, “Where do you want them to go?” she calmly answered, “I don’t care. I don’t care if they don’t have any place else to go. They should not be there.” When I responded that she was calling for ethnic cleansing, both she and her supporters denied it. And during a presentation in Seattle, I spoke about my longing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. When I was done, a woman in her 60’s stood up and yelled at me, “You are worse than the Nazis. You are just like the Nazi youth!” A number of times I was repeatedly accused of being a killer, though I have never hurt anyone in my life. On other occasions, anti-Israel activists called me a rapist. The claims go beyond being absurd – in one case, a professor asked me if I knew how many Palestinians have been raped by IDF forces. I answered that as far as I knew, none. She triumphantly responded that I was right, because, she said, “You IDF soldiers don’t rape Palestinians because Israelis are so racist and disgusted by them that you won’t touch them.”
Such irrational accusations are symptomatic of dangerous anti-Semitism. Yet, alarmingly, most mainstream American Jews are completely oblivious to this ugly movement and the threat it poses. They seem to be asleep, unaware that this anti-Jewish bigotry is peddled on campuses, by speakers in high schools, churches, and communities, and is often deceptively camouflaged in the rhetoric of human rights.
The American Jewish community and its leaders are not providing a united front to combat this latest threat. Unfortunately, this repeats a pattern of Jewish communal groups failing to unite in a timely way to counter threats against us individually and as a community.
Shockingly, a small but very vocal number of Jews actively support BDS. They often belong to organizations that prominently include “Jewish” in their names, like Jewish Voice for Peace, to give cover to BDS and the anti-Semitism that animates it. A question that we, as a Jewish community must ask ourselves, is whether it is ever appropriate to include and accept Jews who support BDS and directly or indirectly advocate the ultimate elimination of the Jewish State of Israel.
I think it is not.
My experiences in America have changed me. I never expected to encounter such hatred and lies. I never believed that such anti-Semitism still existed, especially in the U.S. I never knew that the battlefield was not just Gaza, the West Bank, and hostile Middle Eastern countries wanting to destroy Israel and kill our citizens and soldiers. It is also here in America, where a battle must be waged against prejudice and lies.
I implore American Jews: do more.
Israel cannot fight this big battle alone. If you are affiliated with a Jewish organization, let it know you want it to actively, openly and unequivocally oppose the BDS campaign and those who support it. Inform yourself, your friends and families, by visiting websites of organizations like StandWithUs, Jewish Virtual Library, AIPAC, AJC and others that will update you and provide information about BDS and anti-Semitism.
I urge the organized Jewish community and its members to wake up and stand up for the Jewish state of Israel, and for all it represents, and for all it works to achieve. |
A disabled veteran collapsed while she was being arrested for unspecified actions at the Capitol on Friday. She was taken to the VA hospital, treated and released in stable condition. While there a Capitol police officer “unarrested” her for the mysterious offense. Another person was arrested and cited for disorderly conduct and taken to the Dane County jail to be charged with obstruct/resist as he attempted to come to her aid.
Dawn Henke, a Gulf War era veteran who lives in Wausau, WI, spent about 20 minutes in the Capitol rotunda after the noontime Solidarity Sing Along, which was held outside on Friday. She walked around the rotunda giving an impromptu speech about constitutional protections for free speech and about how she did not appreciate being referred to as a terrorist by Capitol Police Chief Erwin earlier this week.
Others joined her walking around in a circle on the ground floor, and someone began reading a long document containing new Department of Administration Capitol building access rules. They chanted out random words they heard the speaker say like, “Where’s page six? Where’s page six?”
As Henke and others were quietly exiting the building, a group of police officers cornered Henke and told her she was under arrest. At that point Ted Voth, Jr. stepped up next to her because he thought the police were acting like “wolves cutting weaker ones from the herd” in their pursuit of Henke. The police asked him to step back but he didn’t, and they took him away in handcuffs.
These dramatic arrests come at the end of two weeks of stepped up enforcement of constitutionally dubious administrative rules in the Capitol by new Capitol Police Chief David Erwin. Last week Erwin ordered the arrests of blood donors and free speech activists silently holding t-shirts distributed by a sponsor of the Red Cross blood drive. This week the tactic changed to videotaping people engaging in such prohibited behavior as holding a banner in the rotunda and hand delivering citations to them at their homes and places of work.
× Lisa Wells received a home visit from the Capitol Police with these two citations. Photo by Rebecca Kemble
Since making his first public comments in the press in August after being named Chief this summer, Erwin has waged a two-pronged assault on political dissent and free speech in Wisconsin’s Capitol.
The first part of his strategy is to carefully craft a narrative of chaos, disorder and fear. He describes the people who feel their voice is not heard in state government under the Scott Walker regime who use the rotunda as a public place to air their grievances as rowdy, noisy protesters who disrupt the business of the people who work in the building.
In tightly controlled appearances in a few selected media outlets, Erwin reproduces unverified stories of legislative staffers being harassed by citizens coming into their offices asking them questions aggressively, and young children being afraid of the loud singing that takes place every day at noon in the rotunda.
Erwin has given long interviews to rightwing public relations outfits Wisconsin Reporter and the MacIver Institute, as well as to Wisconsin Eye. In each of these he claims that he is a non-partisan public employee who respects everybody’s right to free speech. But in an interview with WKOW he said, “There is a time and place for free speech, and we reserve the right to regulate that a little bit.”
In the interview with Wisconsin Reporter that was published on Monday this week, a day before the 11th anniversary of the bombing of the world trade center and the Pentagon, Erwin said, “And so we have a group of people that come here, and last week they were holding signs and they are part of this group that, for lack of a better word, are terrorizing people at this Capitol.”
It is easy for Erwin to make these kinds of inflammatory, unsubstantiated statements to a rightwing publication who will never challenge him on the veracity of the statement. But when he does not make himself available for questions to a broader range of journalists and when his public statements are so few and far between, it’s easy for these lies to take on a life of their own, be picked up by other news agencies as truth.
The second part of the strategy is to harass and intimidate people by issuing citations to people for administrative code violations that the arresting officers do not seem to understand and cannot explain. They have also begun to step up their visible presence at the daily noontime Solidarity Sing Along. In addition to taking notes, now there are one or two officers walking around the building videotaping every person in attendance.
In a strongly-worded letter to Mike Huebsch, Secretary of the Department of Administration, a group of Dane County state legislators strongly objected to the recent arrests saying, “The Capitol police’s response to individuals peacefully protesting is now verging on ridiculous.” They called on Secretary Huebsch to meet with them after his assistant Wendy Coomer and Chief Erwin walked out of a meeting with Rep. Chris Taylor the week before.
It is difficult to understand where this so-called law enforcement strategy is heading, since it seems to be generating more negative publicity for the Capitol police than for the citizens who are asserting their constitutional rights. In his interview with the MacIver Institute, Erwin said that if his law enforcement efforts failed, he would have to consider restricting public access to the building.
This is something his boss Mike Huebsch has wanted to do since the historic protests erupted a year and a half ago. However, in March 2011, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Albert ordered the building be as open and accessible to the public as it had been prior to the uprising. Perhaps the strategy is to intentionally fail so they can justify turning the magnificent public space into a closed and closely controlled place of business for corporations, their lobbyists and their bought and paid for Supreme Court, Governor and Republican legislature. |
Motorists get 'accidental once-in-a-55-year bargain' at Perth petrol bowser, fuel company says
Updated
Dozens of motorists in Perth's south scored bargain fuel on the weekend after a petrol station mistakenly charged them 14.9 cents a litre.
The unmanned Puma petrol stop on Armadale Road in Jandakot had registered its Saturday fuel price with watchdog FuelWatch at $1.419 a litre, but it is believed an error was made when setting the price at the bowser.
Cars lined up at the petrol station to take advantage of the cheap fuel.
The technical problem which caused the error happened at 6:30am and was detected at 2:30pm, Puma Energy's state manager Rosemarie Vitalone said.
"The price then returned to the correct rate of 141.9 cents per litre," she said.
"Puma Energy prides itself in upholding best practice and complying with FuelWatch guidelines.
"While it is our intention to increase fuel competition in Australia and put downward pressure on fuel prices, reverting to prices not seen since the 1960s certainly wasn't what we had in mind!" she said.
Puma Energy apologised to customers for any delays or confusion at the petrol station on the day and said customers who purchased fuel at the wrong rate received an "accidental once-in-a-55-year bargain".
FuelWatch coordinator Kyle Huynh said an investigation would be conducted to determine whether the company breached legislation by selling fuel at less than the reported price.
"There is a range of actions that can be taken," Mr Huynh said.
"We look at the bigger picture, whether the trader itself has breached legislation previously, how many times etcetera.
"It depends on the severity and we'll have to have a look at the situation."
He said there was little the petrol company could do to recoup costs.
"It would be unlikely the trader would be able to pursue the consumers for the difference in price," he said.
"Reason being, the price advertised at the bowser was 14.9 and that's what was paid by the consumer.
"The transaction was completed and the fuel itself has been consumed, you could assume."
He said while missing a digit when entering a bowser fuel price seemed like an easy mistake to make, he had not come across an error of this kind before.
"Consumers had a win... for a short period," he said.
Topics: business-economics-and-finance, jandakot-6164
First posted |
As Tampa cops worked a special detail as part of the Deck the Malls holiday operation at International Plaza, they recognized a dude, Cedric Demar Sanders, 22, from a previous shoplifting arrest, according to a news release from the Tampa Police Department.
Sanders, who was dressed as a woman, was also cross-dressed at a previous bust.
Sanders and another suspect, Terral Norris, 21, both bolted when they saw the cops and threw their shopping bags, which contained about $700 in stolen loot, to the ground, the release stated.
Once outside, the suspects fled on foot through the parking lot, but cops caught up with them and hauled them to the pokey.
Inside the bags cops said they found skinny jeans, polo shirts and shorts from various stores. The duo also had a "booster bag," which is used to defeat anti-theft equipment.
More FloriDUH |
Kara Swisher, center, talks with Jane Metcalfe, co-founder of Wired magazine, at a Fourth of July party in San Francisco.
The technology journalist Kara Swisher likes to call herself Sherlock Homo, but on a spring evening in Austin, where she’d come for the SXSW Interactive conference, she wasn’t following any particular trail of clues. Padding through the crowd on the second floor of Perry’s Steakhouse, where a venture-capital firm and a money-management firm were throwing a party, she’d chatted briefly with Steve Case, founder of AOL, who greeted her with the wary intimacy one might show a pit bull of uncertain loyalty. (Swisher’s two books about AOL chronicled first its pioneering success and then its disastrous merger with Time Warner.) It wasn’t until she ran into an investor named Tony Conrad that she scented blood.
Swisher layers charm and aggression to truth-serum effect. When Conrad tried to embrace her, Swisher squirmed out of his grasp, saying, “I just don’t like being touched by you”; proceeded to flatter him as “a scene-maker” and “very good venture capitalist”; then, for good measure, threw in: “He also dresses like a lesbian, but it’s okay.” (This is a go-to Swisher barb; she told Twitter CEO Dick Costolo he dresses “like Ellen.”) Conrad, who was wearing a quilted vest, appeared to take minimal umbrage. “It’s my biking gear, man,” he said. A few minutes later, unbidden, he was proudly spilling the lucrative specs of his investment in the 3-D-printing company MakerBot. “Oh my God,” Swisher said.
Conrad announced that he had a VIP party to attend elsewhere in the restaurant and left, but Swisher was undeterred. After a few minutes, she marched downstairs and approached a private dining room. Its curtains were drawn, but Swisher pushed open the door and strode blithely through.
Around a U-shaped table, more than a dozen tech notables enjoying a meal with expensive wine looked up in surprise. They included Kevin Rose, a founder of Digg, and Gary Vaynerchuk, the social-media entrepreneur. Swisher, who was wearing jeans, black sneakers, and a Marmot jacket printed with the name of her startup website, Re/code, gestured toward Conrad, who’d taken a seat near the door, and announced, “He told me the fancy people were here.” Conrad reddened and denied it, but Swisher talked over him and made her way around the table, hugging Rose and insulting blogger turned venture capitalist MG Siegler to his girlfriend: “I don’t like him,” she said. By the time she left 15 minutes later, the guests seemed to have forgotten she wasn’t one of them.
The creators of Silicon Valley, Mike Judge’s show on HBO, salted its first season with cameos by real-life tech-world figures to enhance its verisimilitude, and in the June finale, which called for a journalist to grill an executive character, Swisher played herself: a short, defiantly unstylish reporter who wears aviator sunglasses indoors and asks blunt questions. “Quite honestly, our very first choice was: We’ve got to get Kara Swisher,” says Jonathan Dotan, the Valley insider the show’s producers hired to help get the details right. “She’s iconic.”
One of the reasons for Swisher’s unusual status in the Valley is her longevity. Now 51, she began covering tech in the early ’90s and was already a senior industry statesperson when the Web 2.0 generation was coming of age. People who are powerful today sought her advice when they were just starting out. She met Jeff Bezos when Amazon was in short pants, Marc Andreessen as Netscape was going public. She was at the pitch meeting for TiVo. “It felt like you were meeting Tesla, all these people,” she says.
A second factor is her role as one of two impresarios of a leading Silicon Valley tech conference that she co-founded and runs with her longtime business partner, the preeminent gadget reviewer Walt Mossberg; it’s an event where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates came together onstage for a historic conversation, where Mark Zuckerberg broke out in such a sweat as he was pressed on privacy issues that he removed his ever-present hoodie, and where products like Flip and Slingbox and Jawbone and Sonos and Siri (before Apple bought it) made their debuts. For years, Swisher and Mossberg did this and blogged, under the rubric AllThingsD, which was the property of Dow Jones. In January, they went out on their own with their website and conference: Re/code.
Above all, Swisher’s power derives from her reporting—driven, in turn, by her deep sourcing—and from the sense, unnerving to executives, that she has a red phone with a direct connection to the perma-class of venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road who fund their companies and fill their boards and decide their fates. She has regularly broken news about big deals (Google trying to buy Groupon, Yahoo buying Tumblr) and major personnel moves (Facebook’s hiring of Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft’s recent CEO search), and she dominates coverage of Yahoo (she broke the news of CEO Scott Thompson’s résumé lies and his subsequent resignation and won a Loeb Award for live-blogging one of the company’s earning calls). “I love all my scoop children,” Swisher told me. “But consistency and persistence is really my aim. I try to get one really good one a week.” The work she’s most proud of is less ephemeral and more crusading: her ongoing scrutiny of Yahoo, the spotlight she’s shone on the underrepresentation of women at the big tech companies, and, perhaps most personally, her reporting on the ethical laxity of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington’s journalism.
Over the past decade, Arrington and Swisher have ostensibly been the two major power brokers of tech reporting, though each would recoil at being lumped together. Arrington, who was a Silicon Valley lawyer before he became a blogger, has always been reflexively pro-entrepreneur and took to heart the cynical maxim of venture capitalist John Doerr: “No conflict, no interest.” Online, as the traditional ethical standard of recusal gave way to a standard of disclosure, Arrington was an absolutist who believed you could do just about anything, so long as you were transparent. This included taking stakes in small companies even as he was writing about them. His staff joked about what a poor investor he was—among his stinkers was DanceJam, MC Hammer’s company—but even they couldn’t stomach it when he started an investment fund confusingly branded as CrunchFund.
During Arrington’s tenure at TechCrunch—through its acquisition by AOL and his eventual dismissal by Arianna Huffington in 2011 following the CrunchFund fiasco—Swisher was outspoken about Arrington’s “hopelessly corrupt” ways as well as his so-called process journalism—applying the iterative, throw-it-against-the-wall approach of software designers to reporting—which she deems “a fancy word for being willfully inaccurate.” Arrington and Swisher publicly traded insults, with Arrington dubbing Swisher “the chief whiner,” and Swisher responding, “Oooh, burn!” She called Arrington “Yertle the Turtle” and said that “being lectured in journalism ethics by Michael Arrington is like getting parenting tips from Britney Spears.”
Arrington was also, until getting booted from TechCrunch, Swisher’s chief rival for big scoops, and “she and Mike Arrington hated each other more than anyone could,” says Paul Carr, an ex–TechCrunch writer who now edits tech site PandoDaily. “I think one of the reasons is they’re actually very similar: people who consider themselves people you don’t fuck with, who’ll storm into rooms and demand answers, and when you hold them accountable they say, ‘We don’t answer to anyone.’ ”
The questions of propriety that clouded Arrington’s work—and those of other sites funded, unlike Re/code, with VC or tech money—aren’t wholly irrelevant to Swisher’s. However much she may strive to stand apart from what she has called an “insidious, logrolling, back-scratching ecosystem,” she still runs a conference that depends on participation and high-priced attendance by the same people she writes about. Many of her subjects are centimillionaires and billionaires who seem typically to operate beyond the reach of press scrutiny, yet Swisher has become a power broker among them, in part by perfecting the art of reporting as hazing. A mutual source told another reporter about a phone call with Swisher: “She said, ‘I’m getting mad … I’m getting madder … I’m getting really mad.’ They weren’t giving her what she wanted. She was like: ‘Just tell me.’ ” “I’ll just search my email for ‘Kara’ and ‘stupid’ and probably come up with three or four things,” says Twitter’s Costolo.
All kinds of powers have been darkly imputed to Swisher. She’s heard of current Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer holding a meeting in which she graphed the impact on Yahoo’s stock price of various Swisher posts. In the past six months, Swisher has broken news of the ouster of two tech CEOs whose boardroom problems she’d assiduously covered: Mozilla’s Brendan Eich, whose donation to anti-same-sex-marriage Proposition 8 she’d also first reported, and RadiumOne’s Gurbaksh Chahal, who’d been arrested and charged with 45 felony counts related to beating his girlfriend. Chahal pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of battery; later, in a tweet, he blamed Swisher for whipping up a frenzy on Twitter and forcing his dismissal (of which he’d learned from a Swisher post). “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this,’ ” says Facebook’s Sandberg.
The combination of access and toughness has made Swisher a preeminent arbiter of status in a Silicon Valley where constant turmoil is taken as a sign of innovation and vitality. She isn’t exactly Bob Woodward, soberly transcribing the as-he-thought-it aphorisms of Washington potentates, nor is she Hollywood’s Nikki Finke, holed up in her secret lair and firing off incendiary, career-vaporizing emails. Instead, she might be the Valley’s Walter Lippmann, who occupied a nexus of journalist, counselor, and kingmaker in a mid-century D.C. being remade by the arrival of a new imperial Establishment.
People like talking to Swisher. She’s both direct and playful, and I heard several stories of her personal generosity. She gives good text. “I am a big proponent of being in touch with everyone even when I do not have a story to ask about,” Swisher told me. “Most reporters are so transactional, rather than strategic.” Swisher emceed Sandberg’s fund-raiser for (now-disgraced) Cambodian activist Somaly Mam. She has served as the Valley’s update provider, via video interviews, on Brett Bullington, an investor who suffered a traumatic brain injury. As much as the Valley sees her as a reporter and a conference host, they know her as a connector (and, with the launch of Re/code, as a fellow entrepreneur). In Vanity Fair’s 2012 “New Establishment” portfolio, in a photograph illustrating “The Rise of Women in Silicon Valley,” Swisher was one of six, sitting beside YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki. “People are afraid of her, and they trust her,” Barry Diller says. “That’s not an everyday combination.”
It’s a balancing act that Swisher doesn’t always pull off. She and Andreessen, Netscape creator turned prominent venture capitalist, didn’t speak for several years, because, she says, “some company he was involved with, he thought I was too mean to it.” After the disastrous onstage interview with Zuckerberg, Swisher says, she and Ron Conway, a prominent early-stage investor who’d backed Facebook, “had a big falling out … He thought we were unfair to him, ’cause we made him sweat.” Swisher continues: “Smart people know it’s a longer game, and I’m still going to be here. At least I know the history and context. I’m not going to give them a break, but I’m going to be fair, even if it’s not nice.”
Kara Swisher at home in San Francisco with her dogs, Phineas and Leroy. Photo: Bill McCullough
At the hillside home in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood that Swisher shared, until recently, with her wife, the Google executive Megan Smith, and their two sons (they’ve since separated after 15 years of marriage), a sign on the garage reads: IF YOU BLOCK THE DRIVEWAYS EVEN SLIGHTLY, VISUALIZE YOUR CAR BEING TOWED.
Swisher has always treated the world as a thing to be confronted without apology. Even when she was a toddler, her mother had named her Tempesta. When she was 5, her 34-year-old father, an anaesthesiologist, died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and until Swisher reached that age, she was convinced that she was going to die young. “There’s a theory, and a great book,” Swisher says, “about how kids whose parents die can be very high-functioning people, because the worst thing happened to them and they got over it.” Swisher’s brothers are a doctor and lawyer. “We work like dogs,” Swisher says.
Swisher arrived at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service thinking she might become a spy (her ringtone is the James Bond theme), but she was “terrible at languages,” she says, and “being gay was an issue.” Journalism seemed like an attractive alternative. While at Georgetown, she’d called up the Washington Post’s metro editor to harangue him about the “major errors” in a story about a campus event (“It was like an eight-inch story,” recalls the editor, Larry Kramer), and ended up stringing for the paper. There was a stint working for conservative pundit John McLaughlin, including ghostwriting his column for the National Review, an improbable job for a very liberal young woman (“He put in the right-wing invective”). Later, after McLaughlin was sued for sexual harassment, Swisher testified against him, and when the Post’s Eric Alterman wrote about his office loutishness, he included Swisher’s accusations (the case was eventually settled out of court). “I essentially called him a pig, with my name attached,” Swisher says. “You have to stand up and not be embarrassed or victimized.” When she subsequently saw McLaughlin at a party, she says, he told her, “ ‘Most people in this town stab you in the back, but you stabbed me in the front, and I appreciate that’. I said, ‘Anytime, you son of a bitch.’ It was such a moment of fantasticness … For an evil person, I got along with him rather well.”
Swisher wound up at the Washington Post’s business section, then a backwater, where she was assigned to the retail beat before David Ignatius, then the Post’s business editor, asked Swisher, an early adopter of email (to communicate with her girlfriend in Russia), to cover a small company called AOL, which had its office behind a car dealership in Vienna, Virginia. Because the internet had grown atop Defense Department infrastructure, many of the early companies seeking to commercialize it were based around D.C., and Swisher found herself present at the revolution, with few other mainstream reporters on her beat.
“These people were very accessible,” Swisher recalls of a younger Bezos and his cohort, “and you met them before they were who they are now. When people get rich, people lick them up and down all day, so some of them morph into thinking that being licked up and down all day is their reality and that everything that comes out of their mouths are golden nuggets. Everyone starts to rewrite history, but if you knew them, and have some historical knowledge …”
Swisher took a leave of absence to write a book about AOL, whose executives all seemed to be on her AIM Buddy List. “She would sit on instant messenger all day and harass the shit out of people,” Andreessen says. “She had the most extreme form of the thing where you play one source off the other. She’d say, ‘Well, X says this,’ and she’d word it in such a way that you’d get a sinking feeling, ‘I’m fucked,’ and rise to the occasion and tell her everything.” By early 1999, the Industry Standard was calling Swisher “the writer who has most influenced public opinion about the internet economy.”
It was through a shared interest in AOL that she met Mossberg, who’d written a prescient column for The Wall Street Journal touting it as the future. He soon recommended her for a job covering the web out of the paper’s San Francisco bureau, but a few years later, after Swisher became involved with Smith and Smith joined Google, Swisher saw that it was going to be a problem for her to cover tech when Google was clearly going to be a very important company in that sector. “There’s no disclosure long enough that I could do it in the newspaper,” she says. (At AllThingsD, and now at Re/code, she has offered a long “ethics statement,” now 1,207 words, much of which focuses on her relationship with Smith, her recusal from personally covering Google, and the meticulous separation of their finances, including Swisher’s legal renunciation of “future rights” to Smith’s wealth in the event of her death—“I’m the worst gold digger,” Swisher says.)
For a time, Swisher stopped covering the internet, and it was during this period that Swisher and Mossberg became partners. Mossberg has always been based in Washington, the better to represent consumers and not get too friendly with the industry whose gadgets he reviews, but he and Swisher would cross paths at soul-crushing tech conferences, and they became convinced that they could do better. No more dull slideshows and panels, no more speaker slots reserved for sponsors, no more vice-presidents from Cisco giving prepared speeches. Dow Jones already had a conference division, but Mossberg and Swisher were firm in their insistence that their conference be produced by the news division. It would be a different kind of news machine as much as a different kind of conference operation; they were going to do live journalism, interrogating the most compelling tech figures of the moment in front of an audience, breaking news and providing context. The first conference, in 2003, sold out and was profitable. It has only grown; every year since there has been a waiting list.
Soon after the conference debuted, Mossberg convinced Dow Jones to let him and Swisher start a spinoff blog, AllThingsD, which could accommodate more innovative reporting (and longer disclosures) than the staid newsroom would brook. Like him, Swisher was a voice-y, opinionated writer, not an easy fit at the Journal. “If there was ever someone born to be a blogger,” Mossberg says, “I think it would be Kara Swisher.” Mossberg has played a significant role in Swisher’s personal life as well, pressing her mother for years over her disapproval of Swisher’s sexuality. When Swisher married Smith in Marin Country in 1999, her mother initially said she wasn’t going to attend, and Swisher asked Mossberg to walk her down the aisle. (In the end, Swisher’s mother showed up and helped her daughter get dressed; Mossberg encouraged her to take over his bridal-escort duties, but she demurred, watched the ceremony from off to one side, and later gave a “great and moving speech,” Swisher says, about how proud her father would have been of her.)
Swisher and Mossberg’s separation from Dow Jones was a long time coming. Over the years there was near-constant friction about the company’s support for AllThingsD, much of it the inevitable chafing of entrepreneurs against the structures of a big corporation. “Every time we wanted to add a reporter, it was six months of negotiations,” Mossberg says. “It was ridiculous.” There were disputes over conference profit-sharing, over issues of links and credit and resources. “The staff of the Journal resented them because they were complaining all the time and going over people’s heads, so the situation soured,” a former colleague says. When Swisher and Mossberg suggested in 2012 that they might leave, the company didn’t oppose them. AllThingsD was a roughly $12.5 million business, of which Dow Jones owned a third; even if the business grew to $30 million, a source says, “you’re talking peanuts in the end. The math just didn’t get anyone very excited.”
All journalism about power runs on trade-offs. Don’t use my name, and I’ll tell you what you want to know. Wait to run the story, and I’ll speak only to you. If you’re fair, I’ll keep taking your calls. Silicon Valley is no different from Washington or Hollywood in this regard, but it’s still much more of a clusterfuck: In the land of the 23-year-old multibillionaire, unlike in D.C., some of the most powerful, newsworthy people are peers of the young reporters covering them, and thus more likely to form social relationships; and unlike in Hollywood, journalists aren’t automatically assigned lower social status than their subjects. Here, too, the investors backing tech media are often from the same industry they’re supposed to be covering, a uniquely sunny industry that encourages puffery. Most tech-media outlets, being start-ups themselves, are sympathetic to entrepreneurs, and upstart tech media don’t necessarily have the ethical proscriptions—such as gift policies—that traditional print institutions do.
Which makes it all the more unusual that a writer sometimes characterized as snarky or bullying has thrived in a subculture that venerates rosy, self-regarding idealism and that, in an industry that is constantly touting its transcendence of pedestrian mass media, a shoe-leather reporter should attain such stature. What’s most curious about Swisher’s role in the Valley is not whether her connections and conferences compromise her—beyond grumbling about her Google conflict, not even her rivals can name a big story she’s pulled up short on, and she’s broken more big stories in the industry than anyone else—but how she’s managed to elevate herself into Silicon Valley royalty by writing about Silicon Valley royalty, often acerbically.
Swisher turned 50 last year, and hundreds of people gathered in the Tonga Room at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel for a birthday roast. Among those who got up to tweak Swisher were Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg (who serenaded her), Twitter’s Costolo, Pinterest executive Joanne Bradford (who sits on Re/code’s board), and ex-Yahoo chief Terry Semel. The event’s inversion of power—with tech muckety-mucks paying tribute to their putative watchdog—raised a few eyebrows: “Mike Arrington is in a refractory period,” says one guest, “but a couple of years ago he would have made a big stink and said, ‘How could she do this?’ ” There were jokes about conflicts of interest and about Swisher’s interview style, and “lots of lampooning Kara’s status and her drive, which borders on self-parody,” according to the guest. But “Yahoo was certainly the main theme,” says Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, who did a skit about Swisher and the company. There were jokes about her having bugged its bathrooms, about its email running slow because she was filtering it.
Because of the fear she instills, or because she’s just not going away, or because of what her admirers would say is her fairness, Swisher has managed to keep professional relationships and even friendships with people she’s annihilated in print. During the unsuccessful CEO-ship of Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, her coverage could be sadistic—posts had titles like “Raise the Yangtanic, Again!”—but Yang visited her in the hospital after she suffered a transient ischemic attack, a sort of stroke, last year (as did Al Gore), and it was Yang who suggested she and Mossberg approach Semel to invest in Re/code. Semel himself was hardly an obvious choice, given that when he ran Yahoo, Swisher called him “box-office poison,” among other things. This didn’t stop him from becoming one of Re/code’s two backers (the other is NBCUniversal News Group), “which a lot of people thought was hilarious,” Andreessen says, “given how thoroughly she savaged the shit out of him. It’s like PTSD or Stockholm syndrome.”
One of Swisher’s secrets may be her selective discretion. “She knows way more than she ever writes,” Goldberg says, “because she doesn’t have it really carefully confirmed, or because she doesn’t want to write something that’s going to be personally painful to someone but isn’t relevant from a business standpoint.” It was Swisher who was chosen to break the news last year of Sergey Brin’s separation from his wife, Anne Wojcicki, but it was “not something I wanted to do. They called, and at first we said no, but then they made a good point that there was a lot of stock involved.” (Swisher assigned it to another reporter.) Even Yahoo’s Mayer, who doesn’t speak to Swisher, has been a beneficiary of her restraint. When Mayer was two hours late to a dinner with advertisers because she’d overslept a few weeks ago, Swisher says she declined to write about it “unless it was in the context of a larger and well-reported piece on her struggles with advertisers,” because it would be “carrying water for her enemies.”
Not that such magnanimity has led to any sort of détente. When Scott Thompson was CEO, the company produced multiple versions of documents to try to isolate who Swisher’s sources were. Mayer has clamped down on leaks even more than her predecessors. “Marissa hates Kara,” says another reporter.
Swisher dates Mayer’s antipathy to her to an incident six years ago when she teased then–Valleywag editor Owen Thomas about not receiving an invitation to a Mayer-hosted Sex and the City movie-premiere party. “She somehow figured out that I forwarded the invitation to him,” Swisher says. “So for some reason she’s got it in her head that I leak to Valleywag all the time. I mean, honestly, the stuff I know about people, if I was their source, it would be a much better blog.”
Swisher insists, in any case, that the animosity isn’t mutual. “She’s one of these CEOs who likes to be lauded,” Swisher says. “Personally, I think she’s remarkable. She’s really accomplished and smart, but she’s not perfect, and she wants to look perfect.” |
Care to know what dynamic Cisco routing is for and how to set up OSPF in Cisco? Then this article was meant for you!
Let’s look at the following network topology:
Suppose that we are using static routing in this network. Then a necessity arises to add a new router (R4). Routers “know” only about networks that are directly connected to them. In this case we have to manually add all routes to subnets on R4 and add routes to subnets R4 is servicing to other routers:
When network grows, it becomes a very time consuming task. Dynamic routing protocols allow automatic route sharing which simplifies network service. Dynamic routing protocols define best route for sending packages by themselves (we can influence this choice when needed) and choose alternative route when a channel fails.
For example, R3 can connect to R1 using several routes: 10.5.0.4/30, 10.5.0.8/30 -> 10.5.0.0/30 or 10.5.0.16/30 -> 10.5.0.12/30 -> 10.5.0.0/30. Routers using OSPF are constantly exchanging data about known routes and state of connections. When direct channel between R1 and R3 fails, traffic flows over R2 router.
Configuring OSPF
This is how the topology of our network looks like after adding new router (R4):
Let’s start by configuring R1 router. Example of the configuration process is shown further in this article.
Start ospf process:
R1 ( config ) # router ospf 1
Last number is a process ID which can differ for different routers. For the sake of convenience it’s better to use the same number.
Now we turn off sending hello packages for all interfaces. With a safety in mind we are going to explicitly specify interfaces used for neighbor relations.
R1 ( config-router ) #passive-interface default
Next let’s specify interfaces that will be used for sending hello packages. For R1 they are fa0/0 and fa0/1:
R1 ( config-router ) #no passive-interface fa0/0 R1 ( config-router ) #no passive-interface fa0/1
We can do two things using network command: tell which networks we want to announce to other routers over OSPF and which interfaces will be used for sending hello packages. That’s why previously we added specific interfaces for hello packages. For example, we need 3 networks for R1 router: 10.5.0.0/30, 10.5.0.4/30 and 172.16.0.0/26. But the last network will only include user devices and we don’t want somebody to be able to influence routing tables on the routers.
Format of the network command:
network 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 area 0
First parameter is a network number, second one is a wildcart mask and the last one is a zone number.
To put it simply, this command tells the router which interfaces are used to announce subnets over OSPF. In the example above we allowed to announce any subnets from any interfaces. Of course this method simplifies configuration but it is not recommended by Cisco since any interface configured on a router will be immediately added to routing tables on other routers. Cisco recommends connecting each network separately. In our network configuration on R1 it’s going to look as follows:
R1 ( config-router ) #network 10.5.0.1 0.0.0.0 area 0 R1 ( config-router ) #network 10.5.0.5 0.0.0.0 area 0 R1 ( config-router ) #network 172.16.0.1 0.0.0.0 area 0
To get a better understanding of the syntax, take a look at this example announcing both service networks (10.5.0.0/30 and 10.5.0.4/30):
R1 ( config-router ) #network 10.5.0.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
Basically it means: “announce subnets from interfaces beginning with 10.5.0”.
Let’s configure R2:
router ospf 1 passive-interface default no passive-interface FastEthernet0 / 0 no passive-interface FastEthernet0 / 1 no passive-interface Vlan30 network 10.5.0.2 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 10.5.0.9 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 10.5.0.13 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 172.16.0.129 0.0.0.0 area 0
Then we get the following notification:
* Mar 1 00:05: 29.875 : % OSPF- 5 -ADJCHG: Process 1 , Nbr 172.16.0.1 on FastEthernet0 / 0 from LOADING to FULL, Loading Done
It means that R1 and R2 have established neighbor relations and exchanged data on the known routes. Now R2 should have one neighbor:
R2# show ip ospf neighbor Neighbor ID Pri State Dead Time Address Interface 172.16.0.1 1 FULL / DR 00:00: 35 10.5.0.1 FastEthernet0 / 0
Take a look at the routing table on R2:
R2# show ip route Codes: C - connected, S - static, R - RIP, M - mobile, B - BGP D - EIGRP, EX - EIGRP external, O - OSPF, IA - OSPF inter area N1 - OSPF NSSA external type 1 , N2 - OSPF NSSA external type 2 E1 - OSPF external type 1 , E2 - OSPF external type 2 i - IS-IS, su - IS-IS summary, L1 - IS-IS level- 1 , L2 - IS-IS level- 2 ia - IS-IS inter area, * - candidate default, U - per-user static route o - ODR, P - periodic downloaded static route Gateway of last resort is not set 172.16.0.0 / 26 is subnetted, 2 subnets C 172.16.0.128 is directly connected, Vlan20 O 172.16.0.0 [ 110 / 11 ] via 10.5.0.1, 00:06: 39 , FastEthernet0 / 0 10.0.0.0 / 30 is subnetted, 3 subnets C 10.5.0.8 is directly connected, Vlan30 O 10.5.0.4 [ 110 / 20 ] via 10.5.0.1, 00:06: 39 , FastEthernet0 / 0 C 10.5.0.0 is directly connected, FastEthernet0 / 0
We got two routes over OSPF from R1 which is indicated by O letter in the beginning of the entry about the route.
R3 configuration:
router ospf 1 passive-interface default no passive-interface FastEthernet0 / 0 no passive-interface FastEthernet0 / 1 no passive-interface Vlan20 network 10.5.0.6 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 10.5.0.10 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 10.5.0.17 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 172.16.0.65 0.0.0.0 area 0
R4 configuration:
router ospf 1 passive-interface default no passive-interface FastEthernet0 / 0 no passive-interface FastEthernet0 / 1 network 10.5.0.14 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 10.5.0.18 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 172.16.1.1 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 172.16.1.65 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 172.16.1.129 0.0.0.0 area 0 network 172.16.1.193 0.0.0.0 area 0
After these manipulations the routing table looks as follows:
R1# show ip route ... 172.16.0.0 / 26 is subnetted, 6 subnets O 172.16.1.128 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00: 11 :05, FastEthernet0 / 1 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.2, 00: 11 :05, FastEthernet0 / 0 O 172.16.1.192 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00: 11 :05, FastEthernet0 / 1 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.2, 00: 11 :05, FastEthernet0 / 0 C 172.16.0.0 is directly connected, Vlan10 O 172.16.1.0 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00: 11 :05, FastEthernet0 / 1 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.2, 00: 11 :05, FastEthernet0 / 0 O 172.16.0.64 [ 110 / 11 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00: 11 :07, FastEthernet0 / 1 O 172.16.1.64 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00: 11 :07, FastEthernet0 / 1 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.2, 00: 11 :07, FastEthernet0 / 0 10.0.0.0 / 30 is subnetted, 5 subnets O 10.5.0.12 [ 110 / 20 ] via 10.5.0.2, 00: 11 :07, FastEthernet0 / 0 O 10.5.0.8 [ 110 / 11 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00: 11 :08, FastEthernet0 / 1 [ 110 / 11 ] via 10.5.0.2, 00: 11 :08, FastEthernet0 / 0 C 10.5.0.4 is directly connected, FastEthernet0 / 1 C 10.5.0.0 is directly connected, FastEthernet0 / 0 O 10.5.0.16 [ 110 / 20 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00: 11 : 11 , FastEthernet0 / 1
Now we can simulate uplink failure. Let’s trace the route from the R3 router to the client PC with IP 172.16.0.2:
R3# traceroute 172.16.0.2 Type escape sequence to abort. Tracing the route to 172.16.0.2 1 10.5.0.5 16 msec 16 msec 16 msec 2 172.16.0.2 24 msec 36 msec 44 msec
From a trace log we see that traffic goes directly to R1. Let’s turn off R1 interface that R3 is connected to:
R1# conf t Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL / Z. R1 ( config ) #interface fa0/1 R1 ( config-if ) #shutdown R1 ( config-if ) #end
R3 notice that channel from R1 has failed:
* Mar 1 03: 32 : 41.567 : % OSPF- 5 -ADJCHG: Process 1 , Nbr 172.16.0.1 on FastEthernet0 / 0 from FULL to DOWN, Neighbor Down: Dead timer expired
Now traffic uses an alternative channel (R3 -> R2 — R1):
R3# traceroute 172.16.0.2 Type escape sequence to abort. Tracing the route to 172.16.0.2 1 10.5.0.9 16 msec 16 msec 16 msec 2 10.5.0.1 40 msec 32 msec 40 msec 3 172.16.0.2 44 msec 48 msec 68 msec
We have finished configuring OSPF with one area (area 0). Now our network uses OSPF for dynamic routing.
Multi Area OSPF
When should we separate the network into several areas? First of all, when we need route aggregation. For example, in our topology R4 router announces 4 routes into the network, but all networks in 172.16.1.0-172.16.1.255 range belong to R4 exclusively. We want to announce only one route: 172.16.1.0/24. It’s especially relevant for large networks with a large routing table.
Secondly, taking into account nature of all link-state protocols of dynamic routing, each router in OSPF knows when any of the network channels fails. Of course this naturally improves the process of choosing an optimal route but significantly increases load. Suppose we have 15 offices in Khmelnytsky and 10 in Vinnytsia. Routers in Vinnytsia don’t need to know that some router in Khmelnytsky has failed. Separating network into several areas helps to solve this issue
First, let’s remove subnet announce from R4:
router ospf 1 no network 172.16.1.1 0.0.0.0 area 0 no network 172.16.1.65 0.0.0.0 area 0 no network 172.16.1.129 0.0.0.0 area 0 no network 172.16.1.193 0.0.0.0 area 0
Then add subnets from area 1:
router ospf 1 network 172.16.1.1 0.0.0.0 area 1 network 172.16.1.65 0.0.0.0 area 1 network 172.16.1.129 0.0.0.0 area 1 network 172.16.1.193 0.0.0.0 area 1
After that announce range for the area:
R4 ( config-router ) #area 1 range 172.16.1.0 255.255.255.0
Now only one route appears on routers with area 0:
R1# show ip route Codes: C - connected, S - static, R - RIP, M - mobile, B - BGP D - EIGRP, EX - EIGRP external, O - OSPF, IA - OSPF inter area N1 - OSPF NSSA external type 1 , N2 - OSPF NSSA external type 2 E1 - OSPF external type 1 , E2 - OSPF external type 2 i - IS-IS, su - IS-IS summary, L1 - IS-IS level- 1 , L2 - IS-IS level- 2 ia - IS-IS inter area, * - candidate default, U - per-user static route o - ODR, P - periodic downloaded static route ... O IA 172.16.1.0 / 24 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.6, 00:00: 30 , FastEthernet0 / 1 [ 110 / 21 ] via 10.5.0.2, 00:00: 30 , FastEthernet0 / 0 ...
About author Yvhen Hurynovych DevOps Team Lead Zhenya is reponsible for server configuration and automation of infrastruction configuration. He is experienced in creating horizontally scalable and fail-safe systems. Knows Puppet, Docker, Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
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CAMRA members angry after Boxford brewer’s beer banned from East Anglian Beer and Cider Festival
Tom Norton says he is disappointed that his new Suffolk sour beer has been banned by West Suffolk CAMRA's beer and cider festival at The Apex in Bury St Edmunds. Picture: PHIL MORLEY Archant
Officials have banned a talented young Boxford craft brewer from entering his very traditional ale into the East Anglian Beer and Cider Festival – because some people may not like the taste.
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Tom Norton of the Little Earth Project, Edwardstone, whose traditional Suffolk sour beer has been rejected by the organisers of the East Anglian Beer and Cider Festival. Picture: GREGG BROWN Tom Norton of the Little Earth Project, Edwardstone, whose traditional Suffolk sour beer has been rejected by the organisers of the East Anglian Beer and Cider Festival. Picture: GREGG BROWN
In an extraordinary move criticised by many CAMRA members, the organisation’s West Suffolk branch told Tom Norton they don’t want any of his Brett Terroir ale, 99% of which is brewed using Suffolk ingredients, at the event, which runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Apex in Bury St Edmunds.
In an email, the organisers said: “We would have loved to have one of your sour beers at our festival, especially a Suffolk one. However it was felt that an unknowing drinker trying the beer might think it was off.
“OK, we would have told them that it isn’t but the fear is that they would use social media to spread this comment around to the detriment of the festival.”
One angry CAMRA member said: “What utter nonsense – the whole point of a beer festival is that we can try out different ales. Of course this beer would have a taste that is different and not everyone would like it – but it is exactly how it would have been made in the heart of Suffolk a hundred years ago.”
Tom and John Norton - Tom's new Suffolk sour beer, Brett Terroir, has been banned from being sold at a beer festival at The Apex in Bury St Edmunds next week. Picture: GREGG BROWN Tom and John Norton - Tom's new Suffolk sour beer, Brett Terroir, has been banned from being sold at a beer festival at The Apex in Bury St Edmunds next week. Picture: GREGG BROWN
Mr Norton said: “I was very disappointed. The Brett Terroir is made with local ingredients – some from fields within sight of our brewery near Boxford. We have tried the beer in real ale pubs in Colchester and Norwich and it has gone down very well.”
However, in spite of the ban on draught Brett Terroir, some of Mr Norton’s beers will be available in bottles at the festival from a stall run by Bury’s independent beer shop Beautiful Beers.
Mr Norton, who runs the Little Earth Project, at Edwardstone, added: “Brewing a modern clean beer the brewer will know how the finished beer should taste long before the grain, hops, yeast and water combine.
“But sour beers by their very nature were unpredictable – aged in oak with plenty of yeast and bacteria no two barrels are the same.
Tom Norton, of the Little Earth Project, Edwardstone. Picture: GREGG BROWN Tom Norton, of the Little Earth Project, Edwardstone. Picture: GREGG BROWN
“Here we monitor the flavours created over months and then decide what would enhance and complement them. This beer should have a salt and a peppery bite to complement the earthy almost savoury nature of the beer.”
The West Suffolk branch of CAMRA, who are organising the festival, were asked about the ban but refused to comment. |
MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern will ask his EU counterparts to back Ireland in moves to definitively block the transfer to Israel and storage there of sensitive personal data on European citizens.
The Minister accepted that only a qualified majority of member states was required to endorse a European Commission initiative to declare that the EU recognises Israeli data protection standards as being sufficient to allow member states to transfer such personal data to Israel.
He said, however, that it was important to “make the point” in relation to Ireland’s opposition to the measure given the use of eight fake Irish passports by the alleged Israeli assassins of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last January.
“Having had experience of how the EU deals with Israel, particularly in the context of the Lebanese conflict when I was in foreign affairs, I’m acutely aware of how some of the bigger member states tend to talk tough but then when the comes to action they don’t take action,” he told The Irish Times.
Without the EU declaration, the transfer of data to Israel is prohibited. The declaration was set to take effect automatically a fortnight ago by way of a written procedure before the Government objected.
With EU ministers set for formal discussion on the measure in September, Mr Ahern said he would campaign among his counterparts for support for his view.
“I think the British would have to have some concerns given the fact that there was identity fraud as well of their citizens by and on behalf of Israel.” The Minister said “no” when asked whether he had heard anything from Israel thus far that would give him any reassurance.
“I do think the point needs to be made strongly that we need to get absolute assurances from any state outside the EU that we transfer data to that it’s going to be used in accordance with law,” he said. “It could be passed by qualified majority, but I do think we’ll use the period in between this and then to talk to as many people as possible.”
Asked if there was anything the Israeli authorities could say that would reassure him, Mr Ahern said: “That’s a matter that would have to be dealt with at diplomatic level between our foreign minister and theirs.
“But I think it’s important that we put down a marker, which we have, that given the history [we in] Ireland are worried.” |
A Year After The Bombings, There Was No Way An American Could Win Boston Alone – He Needed The Support Of Others
by Robert Johnson, LetsRun.com
April 22, 2014
Boston, MA – By now you know that American Meb Keflezighi did it. He broke the 30-year-curse and became the first American man to win the Boston Marathon since Greg Meyer in 1983. On Patriots’ Day, the soon to be 39-year-old (birthday on May 5) pulled an absolute stunner and ran a pb of 2:08:37 to win.
Meb pulled off something that we estimated on Thursday was likely to happen between .005 % of the time – that’s once every 19,137 years – and 3.7% of the time. For such an unlucky event to happen, clearly everything had to pretty much go perfectly.
That’s exactly what happened. What you don’t know however is the role that the Ryan Hall and the other elite American men in the race had in helping Meb walk off Boylston Street with the laurel wreath on his head.
This is the untold story of how Ryan Hall and the other elite Americans helped Meb Keflezighi win in Boston.
Catching Up With The Americans Not Named Meb
After the race, tracking down anyone who wasn’t in the top 3 in Boston is less than easy. Because the LRC audience is comprised of hard-core American fans, I scoured the hotel lobby for any and all elite American men not named Meb that I could fine.
Once I found them and talked to them, I learned of a story that is beyond touching.
Not that too many people noticed, but many of the elite American men behind Meb had a good day. Five other Americans were in the top 13 and either set a pb or came within 18 seconds of one as Nick Arciniaga, who was hoping for top 10, was seventh in 2:11:47 (pb 2:11:30), Jeffrey Eggelston was 8th in a new pb of 2:11:57 (previous pb of 2:12:03), Josphat Boit was 11th in a new pb of 2:12:52 (previous pb of 2:13:14), Craig Leon was 12th in 2:14:28 (pb 2:13:58), and Mike Morgan was 13th in 2:14:40 (pb 2:14:22).
One American who didn’t have a good day results wise, however, was the fastest marathoner in American history, Ryan Hall. In his first marathon since the 2012 Olympics, Hall, who ran 2:04:58 in Boston in 2011, faded to a 20th place showing of 2:17:50.
The 20th place showing and 2:17:50 clocking are only part of the story for Hall. From an American perspective, Hall may have had the best showing of any American not named Meb. In a race where Meb won by just 11 seconds and everything had to go nearly perfectly for Meb to win, Hall played a key role in helping his long-time friend (and rival) Meb win.
How you say?
Well during the race, Meb and fellow American Josphat Boit got clear of the main pack at a water station before 15k as the top runners were content to let Meb go as Meb had just the 15th best personal best coming into the field. As Meb kept churning out a steady 2:08 pace, his lead gradually grew as the top African entrants, eight of whom had personal bests under 2:07, failed to mount a challenge until after 30k.
As race runner-up Wilson Chebet explained after the race, the leading Africans just assumed that once they started to race for glory themselves and picked up the pace, they’d catch Meb as people out alone in marathons nearly always fade. Anyone remember last fall’s New York City women’s race where Buzunesh Deba built up a three-plus minute lead only to be gunned down late?
For much of the race, the leading entrants were enjoying a beautiful sunny day in Massachusetts. Their pace was so slow by their lofty standards that the slew of Americans behind Meb were able to stay with the chasers and then later regain contact with them much longer than they possibly could have hoped.
As Nick Arciniaga said, “They were just super relaxed and would go to the front and make some fake moves, surges and then just spread out across the whole road and just relax. I felt myself going from like 4:55 pace to like 5:20s in a couple of steps. I was like, ‘Ok these guys are just playing games.'”
The leading entrants were letting the pace sag so much and were so unfocused on going after Meb that the top Americans behind Meb and Boit started to get antsy. The Americans were running a more consistent pace and as they approached the leading African runners near halfway, a few of the Americans considered maintaining their steady pace and pushing ahead of the Africans, a move that almost certainly would be matched by the Africans who would use the Americans as rabbits.
Had this happened, Meb almost certainly would have been caught later in the race. Meb only had a narrow 11-second lead when he crossed the finish line and nearly everything had to go perfectly for him to keep that lead which at one point had been 1:21. If the lead Meb built up had been just a tad bit smaller, Wilson Chebet, not Meb Keflezighi, likely would be your 2014 Boston Marathon champion.
Many of the top Americans, including Craig Leon, Nick Arciniaga, and Jason Hartmann were poised to go ahead of the African group except for one thing – Ryan Hall wouldn’t let them.
As Nick Arciniaga explained:
Meb got ahead early on – before 15k even – him and JB (Josphat Boit) took off. I was in the lead pack with all of the other Americans and all of the Africans and about 15k to 20k, Ryan Hall and I were running side by side, in front of the lead pack but not really pushing it, and Ryan just kept turning over to me, talking (to me and saying), ‘Hey don’t push the pace. If they want to let those guys go, they are going to have work to catch back up to them. We are not going to help them out with that at all. If we want an American to win, this is how it’s going to be done.’
From then on, the game plan between myself and Ryan and we told Abdi and few of the other guys as well , ‘We’re trying to get an American to win this race. That’s one of the biggest goals for today.’ Basically the Africans would have to do all the work to to catch them.’
And it turned out perfectly, obviously.
It’s a small (impact) but it was just enough (for Meb to get the win).
Craig Leon told a similar story.
I remember at one point it was kind of yo-yoing and I was falling off the lead pack and then they’d come back. I think it was maybe halfway or a little past halfway and it had slowed kind of considerably and Jason (Hartmann) and I were kind of moving our way through the pack and were just going to maintain pace (and keep moving up), and at one point, Ryan he looked at both of us, and he was like, ‘Let’s give Meb a little bit of distance. I think he’s up there with JB. (Josphat Boit).’
So we kept it slow. I don’t know if that did anything to help. But those guys had to work to catch Meb. I think Ryan was really smart to (think to) be able to say that (in the middle of the race).
Hey maybe it was us working together against some of the Africans. It feels good to have that.
I think it’s a real testament to Ryan. I don’t (even) know how he finished up today. He knew maybe he wasn’t going to have it there over the second half and I think he was looking out (for Meb), ‘Hey let’s do this.’ It’s great team work.
That’s what I love to see – (especially since) Boston puts such an emphasis on Americans.
Hall, the fastest American runner in US history, has the stature with the other American runners that a team leader in the Tour de France has.
Runners technically may be independent contractors, but on this special Patriots’ Day in Boston, one year after the nation was terrorized, the US runners were clearly working together as a team. The country with the best team tactics on this day was the US of A led by Hall.
The rest was up to the 38-year old Meb. Meb took care of the hard part. He ran a negative split pb on the difficult Boston course for the historic win.
The tragedy of last year’s bombings brought us Boston Strong. The triumph of Meb this year showed us American Strong. On this Patriots’ Day, Meb got a key assist from Ryan Hall and the other American competitors compatriots patriots.
Comments or questions. Email me.
PS. I tried to get a comment from Ryan Hall after learning of this story. His agent Ray Flynn said a disappointed Hall had already left for the airport, just hours after the race, but did have Hall confirm that it took place.
Update Tuesday 2:37 pm ET. Today Ryan Hall has commented about Meb’s win and Hall’s role in getting the other Americans to hold back. At 9:33 am Pacific, the deeply devout Christian sent out the following tweet which linked back to this story:
Though yesterday was not how I had envisioned my race, I believe I fulfilled the purpose God had for me in it: http://t.co/XoGThj4zjA — Ryan Hall (@ryanhall3) April 22, 2014
Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden (@SITimLayden) then got in contact with Hall and posted this exchange he had with Hall on Twit Longer a little before 12 noon:
“It’s true. First it was Nick Arciniaga, then different American guys would go to the front [of the chase pack, after Meb and Josephat Boit had pulled away] and start pushing. I kept telling them not to, that we needed to give Meb as much space as possible. If the African guys were going to try to catch him, we weren’t going to do the work to help them. It wasn’t my day to win, as much as I wanted to. Meb winning was the next best thing and what the US needed.” Hall said he hadn’t talked to Meb about the tactic after the race. `I haven’t seen him since the race. I flew home right after the race. I don’t want to take anything away from his victory.””
PPS. Our interviews with many of the American finishers in Boston not named Meb appear below.
Editor’s note: Did you enjoy this story? Check out another story on Meb Keflezighi’s win by Dick Patrick, who co-wrote Meb’s autobiography: LRC Dick Patrick – Meb Strong: How Meb Worked His Magic Once Again.
Or this story about Meb that went viral last fall with 12,000+ facebook likes: LRC The Time of My Life: Staten Island Native Mike Cassidy Shares His Experience Finishing The NYC Marathon Hand-In-Hand With His Hero Meb Keflezighi
Or be a fan and discuss it in our world famous messageboard.
Be sure to come back daily to our homepage – LetsRun.com: Running’s Front Page – or go to or our Boston Marathon Special Section for even more coverage.
Nick Arciniaga
Jeffrey Eggleston
Craig Leon
Abdi Abdirahaman
Recommended Read: LRC Dick Patrick – Meb Strong: How Meb Worked His Magic Once Again Dick is the co-author of Meb’s autobiography. |
Artisan coffee chain Blue Bottle Coffee is set to open its new Berkeley location Saturday.
The cafe, located at 2118 University Ave., will offer various coffee drinks as well as menu items such as avocado toast and poached eggs. The company sells and serves responsibly sourced coffee beans within 48 hours of roasting, and is known for its pour over coffee and New Orleans-style iced coffee.
Although Blue Bottle Coffee has locations as close as Oakland and as distant as Tokyo, this is the company’s first cafe in Berkeley — and a return to its roots. The company’s founder started his business selling coffee at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, according to Alexandra Chan, regional director of retail for Northern California.
“We feel we’ve come full circle,” Chan said. “There’s just a really strong connection to the neighborhood.”
Blue Bottle Coffee reached out to community centers and schools before opening in Berkeley and will continue to emphasize community relations, possibly hosting events such as latte art competitions and pop-up shops for local businesses, Chan said.
“Ideally we’ll become a place where people can gather,” Chan said. “Our best locations are the ones where you walk in and everyone knows your name and asks how your dog is. Both baristas and guests crave that connection.”
Architect Lincoln Lighthill said he specifically designed the Berkeley location’s interior to promote interactions between the baristas and the customers. The counter is divided into smaller stations to “increase the feeling that you’re getting something handmade,” he said, while the “engine block-sized” espresso machines are hidden beneath the counters so baristas can talk with customers face to face.
UC Berkeley graduate student Elizabeth Gilbert said during a preview event Thursday that she appreciated the Berkeley location’s many tables.
“That’s what students usually look for — where they can come and spend a lot of time,” Gilbert said.
Though patrons at the preview event said the cafe will be popular among students, campus senior David Tsai said that the popularity may only last a few months.
“People on Southside will say, ‘Oh, it’s not worth it’ ” to make the trek to Blue Bottle Coffee, Tsai said, and will instead choose somewhere “closer and cheaper.”
A small cup of coffee costs $3.50 at Blue Bottle, compared to $1.95 at Starbucks and $1.50 at Yali’s Café, which are both located on nearby Oxford Street.
For campus senior Travis Buckman, the higher price is worth it for a “unique coffee experience.”
“You can go anywhere and get a cup of coffee for $2, (but) when someone sits down and takes the time to talk with you about your choice, the different experience makes it more valuable,” Buckman said. “I don’t have high standards but I do understand and appreciate the process of making good coffee.”
Contact Lillian Holmes at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @LillianQHolmes. |
Kennedy was only a peripheral subject of our discussions. Castro, I found, was preoccupied with the threat of nuclear war and proliferation, as one would expect him to be: He was one of the three key players in an episode, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, that nearly brought about the destruction of the planet. John F. Kennedy was his adversary; Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, was his patron. At one point, I mentioned to him the letter he wrote to Khrushchev, at the height of the crisis, in which he asked the Soviets to consider launching a nuclear strike against the U.S. if the Americans attacked Cuba. "That would be the time to think about liquidating such a danger forever through a legal right of self-defense," he wrote. In Havana, I asked him, “At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still seem logical now?" He answered: "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it at all.” I expressed relief that Khrushchev ignored his request.
Castro was also deeply concerned about the level of anti-Semitic rhetoric emanating from Tehran, and wanted to communicate his displeasure to then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, through an intermediary. (I wrote about Fidel’s views of Iran and Israel here.)
I brought with me on this trip a friend named Julia Sweig, who is a preeminent expert on Cuba at the Council on Foreign Relations. Julia and I wound up spending the better part of a week with Fidel. (You can read about our trip to watch a dolphin show at the Havana aquarium with Fidel and Che Guevara’s daughter here.) By the time of our meetings with Fidel, he was recovering from a serious illness, and he was already semi-retired. His brother, Raul, was running the country, although I was under the clear impression that nothing important happened in Havana without the assent of Raul’s older brother.
One afternoon, after a marathon interview session, we gathered for lunch—Castro, his wife Dalia, his son Antonio, a couple of aides, Julia, a translator, and myself—and an expansive Castro told stories of the early days of the revolution, and entertained a series of random questions from us. I knew, from Julia, who has studied Castro for years, that J.F.K. was seldom too far from his thoughts, but our discussion of U.S. policy actually began with other presidents. Castro spoke about a biography of Lincoln he had just read.
“Is Lincoln the most interesting American to you?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “but much more than Washington.”
“Much more than Kennedy?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, but unconvincingly. “Kennedy made many mistakes. He was young and dramatic.” Fidel reserved his animus mainly for Robert Kennedy, who was attorney general in his brother’s administration and loathed Fidel and his revolution. It was Robert Kennedy, Fidel believes, who was behind U.S. plots to have him assassinated. But he blames J.F.K. for the invasion, by a ragtag Cuban exile army, of the Bay of Pigs. “Kennedy was humiliated by his defeat at the Bay of Pigs, but all that we did was to protect ourselves.” |
Intel's "Next Unit of Computing" (NUC) mini desktops are apparently one of the few segments in the PC industry seeing some growth. A new roadmap leaked by FanlessTech shows that Intel is already planning three new NUC models based on next-generation Broadwell chips, all scheduled to launch toward the end of 2014.
Two of the new NUC models are targeted at consumers, and will use next-generation Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs codenamed "Rock Canyon." Like the current Haswell NUCs, they will include USB 3.0, mini HDMI, and mini DisplayPort outputs. The mini DisplayPort ports can power either a 4K display or three lower-resolution displays simultaneously. The mSATA slot that current NUCs use for their SSDs will be replaced by an M.2 slot , which can provide faster storage speeds via the PCI Express bus. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and an IR sensor will all be built in, as will a bay for a standard 2.5-inch hard drive.
The most interesting departure from current NUCs will be swappable lids that add either NFC or wireless charging capabilities. The idea of using a desktop as a wireless charging pad isn't entirely new—we saw a desktop or two that offered this capability at this year's CES—but a NUC-sized wireless charging pad could work nicely for smartphones and tablets.
Finally, there's one "commercial" NUC model, codenamed "Maple Canyon." This Core i5-based box loses the HDMI port in favor of dual mini DisplayPorts, supports Intel's vPro technology, and will include a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to provide better security and full support for Windows' BitLocker disk encryption feature. This NUC will also support M.2 and 2.5-inch drives, USB 3.0, and swappable lids (NFC is the only lid variety mentioned, so it's possible that the wireless charging version will be restricted to the consumer models). All of these features should make this NUC more desirable to businesses that need to lock down their desktops.
We don't know a whole lot about the Broadwell architecture that will power all of these boxes except that the architecture is a "tick" on Intel's roadmap, and that it's currently running a little behind its original schedule. Broadwell will be a refinement of the current Haswell architecture built on Intel's new 14nm manufacturing process, and Intel has said that Broadwell chips will use about 30 percent less power than Haswell. |
Allie Stuckey, also known as "The Conservative Millennial" took the social media platform by storm after some of her conservative rants went viral.
Her most recent video garnered over 1 million views, focused on the topic of feminism and the lack of masculinity in males.
"We need strong men," Allie says.
"Not scared men, not weak men, not men who are ashamed of being men, or men who are afraid of their strength," she adds.
For the full interview click above.
In her recent interview with CBN reporter Gary Lane, Stuckey claimed feminism is not focused on elevating or strengthening women.
"Instead of elevating women, strengthening women, telling little girls to be bold and strong, they are instead telling boys not to be strong. They are immasculating them, weakening them, making them feel embarrassed and ashamed for being men," she said.
"I wanted to send a word of encouragement not just to men, but to boys that you are appreciated for who you are and your maleness is something that is God-given and unique and it contributes to society in a way that frankly that females can't," she added.
Stuckey also confronted an MSNBC reporter who bashed Ivanka Trump for being too girly.
"It's such a conundrum when it comes to feminists, either you are too girly or too young or too immature or not strong enough or empowered enough, or you are too much the other way where you are denying your femininity and you're still wrong," she said.
"So you basically can't win, and the funny thing is about that is feminists claim to be about choice, that's their chief mantra," she adds.
Stuckey started her videos before she was asked to join The Blaze as a full time contributing host.
She took over for the popular conservative icon Tomi Lahren after Lahren announced she was pro-choice.
Stuckey, a Texan native, is pro-life. She made that abundantly clear on her blog and in a video on The Blaze after Lahren was fired.
"A baby is not an extension of a woman's body. I really don't know how else to explain that," she said in the video.
"The fact of the matter is, most cases of abortion have nothing to do with rape, incest or health. Abortion is most often performed for convenience for fear, for lack of preparedness," she noted in her blog.
"The pro-choice stance includes all of these valid reasons for abortion. When, the reality is, they're not valid reasons at all," she added.
She describes herself as having strong opinions, but open to arguments.
Stuckey also says that her blog is not meant to represent the thoughts of all millennials or conservatives, just her own. |
Kaleb Tierce: Teacher Trades Good Grades for Sex
, a 26 year old high school teacher in Tuscola, Texas until March of this year, has been indicted on three counts of attempted improper relationship between educator and student. If convicted of the 3rd degree felony he could be sentenced to 2-10 years in prison.
Tierce was charged on Thursday and turned himself in on Friday. He has been released on $30,000 bail for the alleged incidents that occurred in 2005 and came to light recently. Tierce, who taught English and served as assistant football coast at Jim Ned High School, was suspended last year after an investigation was mounted regarding his freshman English reading list. One book in particular, Child of God, is the story of a murderer who had sex with his dead victims.
During the ensuing firestorm over that controversy, several female students came forward regarding inappropriate behavior that had occurred with Tierce. He reportedly asked one female student what she'd do to get a better grade. Taylor County Sheriff Sgt. John Cummins said, "Tierce asked one girl over to his house under a normal pretense and then allegedly kissed her and exposed himself to her. A third girl reported that he asked her for sexual favors.
School trustees voted in March not to renew Tierce's contract based upon the Child of God book fiasco and well before the newest allegations 'hit the fan'. |
Tax Myths
Tax paradoxes abound.
Taxation is a vital component of government policy, yet most citizens profess little understanding of the tax system. Many Americans wish taxes were lower, but they want to maintain or expand most of the government programs taxes fund. Policymakers regularly pledge to simplify the tax code, yet it grows ever more complicated.
Tax myths are equally common. In recent years, social scientists have devoted greater attention to empirical study of taxes—how they operate, what effects they have, how the public perceives them. As it turns out, a number of things—four in particular—citizens and policymakers think they know about taxation are wrong.
myth #1: heavy taxation reduces economic competitiveness
Taxes distort the market’s ability to allocate resources toward their most productive use, and textbook economic theory tells us this is bad for the economy. Taxation may be necessary to fund government services and redistribution of wealth and resources in a way that conforms to the needs and norms of a modern society, but it’s a necessary evil.
But do taxes really harm the economy? And if so, how much?
One way to think about this is in terms of economic competitiveness. In recent years the World Economic Forum has scored most of the world’s countries on a competitiveness index that aims to assess the quality of nine components of a nation’s economy: public and private institutions, infrastructure, macro-economic policy, health and primary education, higher education and training, market efficiency, technological readiness, business sophistication, and innovation. The scores range from a low of 1 to a high of 7.
As the chart (right) suggests, as of 2007, the most recent year with available data, there’s no association across the world’s affluent countries between the level of taxation—the share of economic output (gross domestic product, or GDP) that passes through the government as taxes– and competitiveness.
How can this be? One hypothesis, suggested by economic historian Peter Lindert in his book Growing Public, is that high-tax countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Finland rely heavily on consumption taxes, the burden of which is shared broadly across the citizenry rather than concentrated on firms and affluent individuals. Other analysts, though, contend that heavy consumption taxes weaken the economy, especially job creation, by raising the price of goods and services.
An alternative view is that the effect of taxation on economic health depends not on the level or type of taxation but instead on how tax revenues are used. Sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen has pointed out that at least some of the hightax nations shown below devote a significant share of their revenues to providing public services and transfers—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, unemployment compensation, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and food stamps, among others—that tend to boost, rather than impede, economic competitiveness.
For example, a schooling system that begins with affordable and high-quality child care (“early education”), includes good general education through high school for even the poorest, and offers broad access to university education is likely to facilitate innovation and flexibility in a globalized, knowledge-based economy. As well, universal access to health care and generous transfers to low-earning households improve the chances of building strong cognitive and social skills throughout the population. Government-provided or -subsidized child care and parental leave encourage women’s employment, thereby boosting the economy’s supply of ideas and creativity.
These are just some of the ways effective use of tax revenues can help offset whatever negative impact taxes may have on economic performance.
Heavy taxation certainly doesn’t ensure a competitive economy, but it appears to be perfectly compatible with one.
myth #2: republicans favor tax cuts because they believe they’re good for the economy and key constituents
“The one thing that unites Republicans from Maine to Mississippi,” Mitch McConnell, the current Republican leader in the Senate, told National Public Radio in January, “is tax cuts.”
He’s right. And it’s been true for nearly three decades.
One reason why this may be true is many Republicans believe less taxation is good for the economy. Another is that tax reductions appeal to two of the party’s core constituencies: businesses and people with high incomes. Both of these explanations have merit, but in his recent book The Permanent Tax Revolt, sociologist Isaac Martin offers an equally, if not more, compelling account.
It comes down to, Martin says, the legacy of Proposition 13’s passage in California in 1978, similar victorious initiatives in other states, Ronald Reagan’s presidential victories in 1980 and 1984, and the Reagan tax cuts of 1981.
Proposition 13 was a California referendum that restricted property tax increases. Movements for state and local property tax limits had existed for a number of years, but prior to the late 1970s they had enjoyed limited popularity and virtually no ballot success. The victory of Proposition 13, itself a product of a peculiar conjunction of circumstances, provided credibility and political momentum to the cause in other states and led to Reagan’s conversion to tax cuts as a political strategy. Not long after there were several additional property tax cap wins at the state level in addition to Reagan’s two election triumphs. In 1981, the Reagan administration successfully pushed a major tax reform, which included sharp reductions in income tax rates, through Congress.
These successes shaped the thinking of a new generation of Republican leaders, advisors, and voters. For many, they created an image of the modern Republican party as the party of tax cuts. Just as a generation of Democrats identified theirs as the party of the New Deal following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s success and popularity in the 1930s and early 1940s, tax cuts became the core element of the political culture of the post1980 generation of Republicans.
Moreover, for many Republicans the lesson of the late 1970s and early 1980s was that advocating tax reductions is the key to electoral success. Reversals by two key Republican presidential candidates in subsequent years are illustrative.
During the 1980 Republican primary, George H.W. Bush ridiculed Reagan’s tax-cut proposals as “voodoo economics.” Reagan won the primary and was then victorious in two presidential elections, continuing with his tax-cutting pledge throughout. When again campaigning for president in 1988,
Bush switched his position—his mantra became “no new taxes,” even though the federal government’s debt had risen sharply during the eight years of Reagan’s presidency.
This story replayed two decades later with Sen. John McCain. In the early 2000s, McCain criticized president George W. Bush’s proposed tax cuts as fiscally irresponsible. When running for president in 2008, however, McCain switched his stance and argued forcefully for further tax reductions, despite evidence that the tax cuts of the 1980s and 2000s had contributed to sizable budget deficits. The circumstances of these turnabouts suggest that both Bush and McCain were swayed mainly by a belief that tax cuts bring electoral victory, I would argue.
Republican candidates’ and politicians’ emphasis on tax cuts since the late 1970s has put taxes front and center in American political discourse. This is a marked change compared to earlier decades when taxes were much less prominent in political debate.
Using survey data going back to the 1940s, political scientist Andrea Louise Campbell has found that as politicians have devoted greater attention to taxation, public dissatisfaction with income taxes has tracked actual taxation levels much more closely than in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. As a result, Campbell argues, when policymakers raise income tax rates, they’re more likely now to encounter opposition not only from Republicans but from the citizenry as a whole. Though this doesn’t render tax increases impossible, it surely makes them less likely.
myth #3: taxes reduce inequality
A good bit of the political debate about tax policy in the United States has to do with the tax system’s progressivity—the degree to which it reduces income inequality. Most citizens and policymakers assume the tax system is progressive. Conservatives often think it’s too progressive, while many liberals think it isn’t progressive enough.
Taxes do help reduce income inequality, but not in the way many people think.
The U.S. tax system as a whole is essentially flat, rather than progressive. Individuals and households throughout the income distribution pay approximately the same share of their market incomes—earnings and other non-government sources such as investments, gifts from friends, alimony, and so on—in taxes. How can that be, when tax rates on income are higher for those with higher incomes?
Income taxes are indeed progressive, but that’s offset by regressive payroll and consumption taxes. Payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare, are levied at a flat rate (7.65 percent) regardless of how much one earns. But earnings above a certain amount ($102,000 as of 2008) are exempt from the payroll tax, so the portion of earnings taxed is larger for low and middle earners than for high earners. Consumption is taxed via state and local sales taxes. These too are a flat rate, usually in the neighborhood of 4 percent to 8 percent. Yet, because those with lower incomes by necessity spend (rather than save) more of their incomes, a larger portion of their incomes is subject to consumption taxes.
In a report by the non-partisan educational nonprofit Tax Foundation, economists Andrew Chamberlain and Gerald Prante estimated the share of market incomes that each segment of the population paid in taxes to federal, state, and local governments in 2004. They divided households into five equally sized groups (called quintiles) based on their market income. The effective tax rate is roughly the same throughout the income distribution: households in the poorest quintile paid, on average, 31 percent of their market income in taxes, each of the next three quintiles paid approximately 28 percent, and the highest-income quintile paid 30 percent. Contrary to widespread opinion, then, taxes accomplish very little, if any, reduction of inequality.
This doesn’t mean there’s no redistributive effect of government policy. It simply tells us that taxes aren’t the locus of redistribution. Instead, transfers are. Far more poor than rich receive cash and noncash government transfers.
The United States isn’t exceptional in this regard. Transfers do most of the redistributive work in rich countries. The chart at left illustrates this, showing the degree to which income inequality is reduced by taxes and government transfers in 12 countries. Larger numbers indicate greater reduction of inequality. In most of the countries, virtually all income redistribution occurs via transfers. Taxes do little or nothing to reduce income inequality, and in several countries they increase it.
Actually, these data overstate the degree of inequality reduction accomplished via taxes, because consumption taxes, which are always regressive, aren’t included. Sociologists Monica Prasad and Yingying Deng have attempted to incorporate consumption taxes into calculations of tax progressivity. They’ve found that in the 1990s and 2000s none of the eight countries for which a calculation is possible have had a progressive tax system. All have been regressive.
However, taxes do play a vital role in reducing inequality. They fund the transfers and services that do the redistributive work. The chart above highlights a finding from my own research: countries that achieve more redistribution via transfers are able to do so because they collect more tax revenues. (The redistributive effect of services is very difficult to measure.) In other words, taxes are quite important for inequality reduction, but what matters most is their quantity rather than their progressivity.
myth #4: globalization makes heavy taxation impossible
Over the past two decades, a number of policymakers and social scientists have predicted that globalization and capital mobility would engender a “race to the bottom” in taxation. With firms and investors free to move to whatever country offers the lowest tax rates, governments have a strong incentive to reduce taxation in order to gain a competitive advantage. Others are then forced to follow suit.
This assumption is a perfectly reasonable one. Yet so far it’s proved largely wrong.
Governments indeed feel heightened pressure to reduce tax rates, but while most countries have lowered statutory tax rates on investment income and corporate profits, such reductions have been mostly or fully offset by scaling back tax exemptions and deductions and, in some countries, by increasing the rates for other types of taxes, such as those on consumption and payroll.
The result has been little change in tax revenues as a share of GDP, as the chart above indicates. It shows tax revenue levels in 1989 and 2007 in 20 nations (both years are business cycle peaks, so it’s fair to compare them). In a few countries tax revenues decreased, but in others they increased. In most they stayed more or less the same.
Why no decline? Various hypotheses have been offered. A particularly compelling one is suggested by sociologist John Campbell, who points out that domestic institutions shape both the perceived interests of economists and politicians in the face of globalization pressures and their ability to pursue those interests. He writes:
Where labor is well-organized and politically influential, unions and their political supporters are willing to support relatively high taxes because they expect it will help finance the programs from which they benefit. Similarly, where business is well organized, such as through business associations, firms tends to see that relatively high taxes support programs (health insurance, education, and research and development) that ensure social peace and help them remain competitive internationally. Moreover, the manner in which politics is arranged institutionally affects tax policymaking. Countries with inclusive policymaking institutions, such as corporatism or electoral systems that yield coalition governments, tend to be less inclined to race toward the bottom because these institutional arrangements encourage compromises that mitigate such behavior.
Despite very real pressures favoring lower taxation, we therefore observe little or no movement toward a reduction of revenues in high-tax nations.
The stability of tax levels over the past few decades doesn’t, of course, guarantee they won’t fall in the future. But it does suggest heavy taxation is feasible in a globalized economy.
Taxation is an integral component of a modern economy. But it’s complicated and operates much differently than most conventional assumptions and theorizing would have it. A better understanding of these realities not only makes manifest the necessity, it could lead to better, more informed fiscal policies.
recommended resources
Andrea Louise Campbell. “What Americans Think of Taxes,” in The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Examines U.S. public opinion on taxes from 1940 to the present.
John L. Campbell. “Fiscal Sociology in an Age of Globalization: Comparing Tax Regimes in Advanced Capitalist Countries,” in The Economic Sociology of Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2005). Assesses the notion that economic globalization forces countries to reduce tax rates.
Gøsta Esping-Andersen. “Equal Opportunities and the Welfare State,” Contexts (2007) 6(3): 23-27. Highlights how government investment in cognitive and noncognitive skill development expands opportunity.
Isaac William Martin. The Permanent Tax Revolt (Stanford University Press, 2008). Explores the causes and consequences of the property tax revolt of the 1970s.
Monica Prasad and Yingying Deng. “Taxation and the Worlds of Welfare,” Socio-Economic Review online release in April 2009. Analyzes the progressivity of various types of taxes in rich countries. |
Nowadays it becomes more and more relevant knowing which version of a package is installed and having an overview of the packages infected by some bugs or security holes. That way you could see which servers are possibly vulnerable for those on the dark side.
That's where pakiti comes in a clean web based overview of your servers listing all packages vulnerable against the CVE in particular.
It's a client server setup where the client reports the version of the packages to the pakiti server. The server on his turn checks those versions against CVE to see if there are issues.
It is only a reporting tool, so pakiti will never install any package update, that still is and should be a controlled step which prevents unforeseen calls in the middle on the night when auto updates are breaking stuff.
Pakiti server
On the pakiti website they provide packages you could download and install out of the box. The pakiti-server needs a mysql database to store his data.
The whole installation process is pretty well documented in the documentation section of their homepage
You also need a webserver to deliver the pakiti web service.
A final step is the configuration from where pakiti would fetch the information about which packages are or are not a possible security risk for the server.
Pakiti client
On the servers you want to monitor the pakiti client package should be installed. Once a day this client will send a list with all packages installed on the system to the pakiti server through HTTP.
The configuration file could be found in /etc/pakiti2/pakiti-client.conf
Puppet module
Since I believe in automation I also wrote a puppet-pakiti module which can be implemented in an existing puppet tree so you don't have to install and configure all your servers with the pakiti client.
Enjoy the overview, and happy updating ;) |
WPIRG’s Worrying Anarchist Underbelly
Daniel Kashepava Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 9, 2016
TL;DR: WPIRG claims to act in public interest, in reality promotes anarchist ideas and collaborates with subversive anarchist groups using student funds.
DISCLAIMER: The point of this post is to expose WPIRG’s affiliation with radical left-wing groups and ideas, not to necessarily argue against these ideas in principle. The cause for concern is that such a radical ideology is assumed to be in the “Public Interest” of the student population of a university in a democratic state. All emphasis mine.
1 What does WPIRG really stand for?
According to their mission statement (http://goo.gl/rxIqJC), WPIRG’s mission is “take action on environmental and social justice issues while: … Encouraging diversity and social equality for all people by opposing all forms of oppression such as those based on gender, “race”, class, sexual orientation, age, cultural heritage/ethnicity, religion, gender orientation, ability and physical appearance”. Indeed, applications for funding have to take the principles of social justice and anti-oppression into account, and all volunteers go through ‘anti-oppression training’ (http://goo.gl/umgrRI, “Volunteers are responsible for upholding WPIRG’s anti-oppression and consensus decision-making principles and practice.”).
As it turns out, WPIRG has a very particular definition of oppression and social justice which, rather than being the one commonly understood and used, is deeply rooted in anarchist and Marxist theory. In WPIRG’s 2015 School of Public Interest (http://archive.is/MdsdY), a workshop called “Anti-Oppression 101” was held by two WPIRG staff members, with the description containing the following phrase: “We also live within systems of structural oppression such as white supremacy, patriarchy, the State and capitalism”.
2 WPIRG’s Library of Anarcho-Communist Propaganda
This support of anarchism can also be seen in WPIRG’s library, which has a section devoted to “anti-capitalist thought” (http://archive.is/s3wxQ). Most of these are about left-anarchism, but some are particularly interesting: “God and the State” — the atheistic manifesto of Mikhail Bakunin, the anti-Semitic founding father of social anarchism; Russian Anarchist-Communist Peter Kropotkin’s famous book “The Conquest of Bread”; a biography of Ukrainian Anarchist Maria Nikiforova who fought for the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine; “Wobblies and Zapatistas” — a book in support of the Zapatistas, an insurgent anarchist terrorist group occupying parts of southern Mexico, as well as other Marxist-anarchist groups. A quick look at WPIRG’s library reveals their blatant political bias in their selection of books (even if they may not entirely agree with any one book), but surely that’s the end of their sympathies?
3 WPIRG’s Sponsoring of Anarchist-Themed Events
WPIRG has consistently held and sponsored events with strong radical anarchist leanings. Below are just two of the most recent examples, from WPIRG’s School of Public Interest:
3.1 (En)gendering Resistance (2013)
According to WPIRG’s website (https://archive.is/xbH1O), “Examining the social, political and economic realities of gender, as well as the liberatory possibilities of militant resistance to gender based oppression, WPIRG’s 2013 School of Public Interest will focus on the theme of (en)gendering resistance”. This radical feminist conference “does not seek the inclusion of marginalized identities within the dominant order, but rather, strives to unapologetically challenge the dominant order itself” (read: kick off an anarchist revolution), and asks “How can we develop a movement for gender justice that is necessarily anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and critical of state institutions?”
One of the posters for (En)Gendering Resistance. Note the references to militancy and violence (e.g. Molotov cocktails)
Its workshops (http://archive.is/aBpM6) included the following:
“Against the Butchest Insurrection: The Gendering of Queer and Anarchist Militancy and the Politics of Sissyhood”:
Inspired by critiques of pacifism, assimilation, and the state, trans and queer radicals have valorized physical confrontation and self-defense, property destruction, and riots as particularly queer tactics. Texts such as “Queer Ultraviolence” and “Towards the Queerest Insurrection” articulated a distinctly queer trajectory of insurrectionary anarchist praxis, focusing on the redemptive power of violence against state, capital, rapists, and queer-bashers…
Ultimately, we will explore what the figure of the “sissy”… can teach us about forging a politics of fierce resistance that truly refuses the allure of both hetero- and homo-masculine militancy.
“Fiercely Femme: Finding my Femme-Footing in Militant Anarchist Communities”:
Working with the elements, song, light and reflection, this space is meant to be a place to look at the unique challenges and opportunities of femme organizing strategies in militant anarchist communities.
“Towards A Technique of Collective Responsibility for Interpersonal Violence”:
This session will begin from the proposition that rape culture is a symptom of a collective trauma caused by our experience of power under capitalism, but that this symptom takes different forms as conditioned by the structural position of the person manifesting them…
This recognition that rape culture is a suite of the symptoms of a collective trauma is informed by existing anarchist theory.
In all, the workshops page had 30 instances of the string “anarch”. Apart from paying for the events, WPIRG provided bus tickets, food, American Sign Language translation, and childcare for free to all attendees (using our student funds).
3.2 Breaking Bars, Building Bridges (2012)
The 2012 event organised by the School of Public Interest (https://archive.is/p8CCY) seems to be at first innocent enough, but according to the now-offline webpage for the event (http://archive.is/cSo0s), “The conference will focus on challenging criminalization, supporting prisoners and building alternatives, while providing a radical education venue for in-depth conversation on prison justice and abolition, opportunities for networking and strategizing”, and the links listed in the “Readings & Texts” section seem to be mostly about the abolition of prisons in general. Once again, free food, ASL translation, and childcare were provided.
4 WPIRG’s Partnerships with and Funding of Anarchist Groups
Much more interesting, however, are the lists of Participating Organisations (http://archive.is/aVyMH) and links to “Allies and Resources” (http://archive.is/v5v4V). Among the participating organisations are “End the Prison Industrial Complex” (http://archive.is/G5ORt) and “RedBird Prison Abolition” (http://archive.is/skjq2), both of which are groups whose goal is to abolish all prisons. Listed under “Tabling” were the anarchist groups “Iconoclast Zine” (http://archive.is/N5nj7), “Common Cause KW” (http://archive.is/YBhQl), “Guelph Anarchist Black Cross” (http://archive.is/PXgGr), and “Toronto Anarchist Black Cross” (http://archive.is/S5fIw, also listed under “Allies”).
This was not the first or only time WPIRG has dealt with subversive and anarchist organisations such as these. In 2013, WPIRG operated a table at the Kitchener-Waterloo Anarchist Bookfair (http://archive.is/yBHqr), and in 2011 supported an event on prisoner solidarity with the Guelph Anarchist Black Cross (http://archive.is/idQjH). WPIRG makes note of this collaboration (and others) in its 2012–2013 (http://goo.gl/0hMQkY) and 2013–2014 (http://goo.gl/OGnKrj) Annual Reports under the Partnerships & Funding sections (note that the Guelph Anarchist Black Cross is listed as “Guelph ABC”).
By far the most interesting of these is WPIRG’s collaboration with Common Cause, an anarchist group which publishes the Linchpin magazine. WPIRG and Common Cause jointly hosted an anarchist talk called “CLASS WAR ON THE WORKFLOOR” in 2011 (http://archive.is/x8I5m), the speaker being an anarchist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World union. Some sort of collaboration between Common Cause and WPIRG has existed from 2012 until 2014 at least (as evidenced by WPIRG’s documents). Furthermore, Alex Diceanu, WPIRG’s Coordinator of Projects and Organizational Development, and one of two full-time staff, was in 2010 (and may still be) a member of Common Cause (http://archive.is/5AQiZ).
5 Conclusion
After a bit of research, it has become clear that WPIRG does not act in the public interest of Waterloo’s student body, nor in the interests of the community at large, but instead uses its generous funding (provided by a levy from a state-controlled university, hilariously enough) to promote blatantly divisive and radical ideas. We have seen that WPIRG uses language such as “social justice” and “anti-oppression” to describe specifically Marxist and Anarchist utopian ideals rather than what most of us define these terms to be. WPIRG not only espouses radical anarcho-communist ideas and screens employees and volunteers for their ideological support, but also organises events which blatantly propagandise anarchist ideology and has regular dealings with other anarchist groups in the area. Thus, for all intents and purposes, WPIRG, far from the champion of students’ rights it claims to be, is actually an anarchist organisation which levies a fee on all undergraduate students.
It’s not fair for students to automatically pay dues to a political organisation which reflects the views of only a tiny minority at best. It’s time to make the WPIRG fee Opt-In. |
Nestled in the flat space between two steep granite mountains in the Andes lies the remote community of Huallhuaray, Peru. The stone houses with mossy thatched roofs almost blend in with the hillside, as if they simply grew out of the hill to house the hardy people who came here in the 16th century fleeing the advancing Spanish armies.
Huallhuaray is only accessible on foot — the nearest road dead-ends after winding its way down the side of a very steep cliff, two and a half hours downhill from the village. By 2018, that road should reach the village, and Huallhuaray’s residents hope that the road brings tourists.
No one in Huallhuaray is quite sure what life will be like when the road arrives and when tourists begin to trek through the valley. But experience in similar towns suggests that road access combined with adventure tourism can have an enormous impact on a town’s economy, its culture, and its environment.
The trekking economy
Each year, hundreds of thousands of trekkers pass through Peru’s Andes Mountains. The trekking industry has created thousands of jobs, from trail guides to porters to the cashier outside the trailside toilet, and it brings millions of dollars in tourism revenue to Peru.
At one time, the trekking trails were used to connect remote mountain villages like Huallhuaray with larger towns on the valley floors. Residents would walk the four hours over the mountains with a crop of potatoes in cloths on their backs, following footpaths that wind up sheer hillsides and through valleys decorated with lakes that reflect the mountains like mirrors. They would return to the village with staples like oil and salt.
Now hundreds of tourists trek through those trails each day to admire the natural beauty and to get a glimpse of what life is like in these rugged valleys. Some tour operators emphasize the opportunity to witness traditional ways of life as a key part of the trekking itinerary.
They take time to visit farms, schools, and weaving cooperatives, and encourage trekkers to bring small gifts for the village children. For many visitors, observing indigenous cultures is just as remarkable as viewing crystalline mountain lakes or exploring trailside Incan ruins.
The presence of so many tourists brings opportunities for work that would not otherwise exist. Huacahuasi, located a few valleys away from Huallhuaray, has seen immense growth over the past 15 years, due in part to its strategic location as a major stopping point on the Lares trek route.
Modesto, age 48, was born in Huacahuasi and has worked for several years as a porter on the Inca Trail. Now he is taking a year off to transform his family’s land on the outskirts of Huacahuasi into a trekking campsite, just like the ones he frequented while working on the Inca trail. He is building tent-size terraces into the hillside, and his major selling point is the private bathrooms currently under construction.
Similar opportunities exist in other trekking towns. Chaullay, for example, is carved into the granite cliffside and surrounded by cloud forests in the middle of the Salkantay Trek, not far from Machu Picchu.
Enterprising residents have built terraced campsites here as well, complete with shops that sell soft drinks and beer to the sound of American pop music. For a fee, weary trekkers can also enjoy a hot bath.
Both Chaullay and Huacahuasi are home to recently built luxury trekking lodges. Huacahuasi’s lodge, completed in 2014, employs locals to maintain the lodge and cook in the restaurant. It also includes spaces for locals to sell their handicrafts, like knit hats or traditional woven tapestries made from local alpaca hair.
And while most of the lodge’s profit goes to the owners living in larger cities, 20 percent is shared with the town. The lodge is so new that the impact of this money is still uncertain.
This kind of opportunity is not available in Huallhuaray or other towns that are not on trekking routes. However, trekking has still had an impact in these towns because so many residents can find work on the trails.
Many of the men in Huallhuaray work as porters on the Inca Trail, carrying a 50-pound pack over the mountains surrounding Machu Picchu. The porters carry the camping and cooking supplies ahead of the group, climbing the ancient stone steps fast enough to arrive at each stopping point in time to set up camp and cook a four-course meal before the tourists arrive.
It is difficult and tiring work, but many people from remote high mountain communities welcome the reliable, regular pay they get from tour agencies. Traditionally, people living high in the Andes farmed potatoes and kept alpacas for textiles and meat.
Farming at 12,500 feet above sea level feet is unreliable business — pests or an unseasonal wet or dry spell can ruin a year’s worth of income in just a few days, few crops can even survive at that altitude, and the short growing season makes it difficult to grow enough to sell after feeding the family. When there is no road, it is also difficult to transport crops to market.
Roads and the life of a town
The road to Huacahuasi was completed in 2009. It winds its way up one wall of the valley, and tiny trekkers are visible making their way up the trail on the other side. The valley floor is picturesque, with little stone homes and grazing llamas, alpacas, and sheep.
But the valley does not look frozen in time the way Huallhuaray does. With the road came access to the modern world, and this access has changed daily life in town. The first thing most residents will point to is the construction. In the past few years, the town has nearly doubled in size, and new homes have been built using imported materials.
Nearly half of the buildings have visible metal roofs, while only a small handful of structures in Huallhuaray were built this way. Bridges made of rebar and cement have replaced the old wood walkways, and the roads are wider to accommodate cars. There is a brand new school, completed in 2014, and a wifi tower that came with the lodge that sits on top of a ridge. The town simply looks different because of the road.
The road also makes it easier to get products to and from larger towns. Before the road, residents would walk three to six hours over the mountains with whatever they could carry on their backs. Now trucks arrive each week full of everything from underwear to tomatoes to natural gas canisters.
Residents can easily buy fresh fruits and vegetables to supplement their usual diet of alpaca, guinea pig, and potatoes, and they can cook these foods on imported gas stoves rather than the traditional open fires.
Curiously, many residents say they aren’t farming more potatoes than they used to, despite the trucks. They say that changes in weather have made harvests weaker, and many families have found that with the income from other opportunities, they don’t rely so much on selling potatoes.
There is a complicated relationship between the roads, the trekkers, and the changes in Huacahuasi. Trekkers passed by with their money, and the men left town to work as guides and porters and cooks on the tourist routes before the road came.
But the road brought about widespread changes in the way the valley looks and the way its people live on a daily basis, and it enabled private investments like the lodge, which in turn brought more trekkers and more jobs to Huacahuasi.
Locals don’t agree on whether the road would have come so quickly if tourism had not put the town on the map. Huacahuasi resident Ricardo Castillo, age 25, felt that the government only pays attention to Huacahuasi because of the influx of trekkers. Eder Taboada, a trail guide, believes the government builds roads based on local politics, without giving priority to tourist needs beyond basic access to trailheads.
After all, the government is building a road to Huallhuaray, a place with no history of tourism at all.
Modernization and cultural change
Not all of the changes in Huacahuasi are as visible as the new construction. The culture is changing, too. Before the wifi and the electricity, people went to sleep at 6 or 7 pm and woke up at 5 am to tend the animals. Now the young people stay up playing online video games or watching TV until 10 pm, and the community’s elders call them lazy.
The elders and many of the women only speak Quechua. But for the younger men, working in tourism means that they have to learn Spanish, and so gradually the everyday language is changing as well.
Working in tourism has also exposed people to different towns, different cultures, and new ideas for businesses that could be profitable in their hometown. The younger generation of women have also started wearing Western-style clothes instead of the traditional full pleated skirts, layered knit sweaters, and colorful stiff hats topped with flowers.
In other parts of Peru, even on trekking routes, the children will more or less ignore foreign visitors unless they are spoken to. In Huacahuasi, they approach foreigners with hands outstretched.
It has become something of an expectation that trekkers bring gifts for the children — rolls of wheat bread, little candies, or pencils. Rolando, age 10, guesses that he receives about five such gifts each day.
Some of these changes may be the inevitable product of time and economic development. They might have occurred without tourists, and maybe even without the road. But tourists played a role in increasing the speed of growth, and in selecting the types of opportunities that would be most profitable.
The tourists are a key part of the complex system of factors that drive the economic, social, and environmental changes that are increasingly obvious in Peru’s remote valleys. The irony here is that tourists, often motivated by a desire to connect with traditional cultures, are hastening the irreversible changes to these same cultures.
Yet when local residents consider the rapid changes happening all around them, their first response is that the economic opportunities make all the change worthwhile.
People like Mario, another Huacahuasi resident, say they want their children to have better opportunities for education and meaningful work, even if it means their children will move away or live a life that differs from tradition. These feelings are likely familiar to parents in many other parts of the world.
Environmental impact
The most popular trekking route is the famous Inca Trail, which takes visitors up a winding set of ancient stone stairs, past Incan ruins, and into the mountaintop citadel of Machu Picchu.
In response to the erosion along the trail and damage to the stone steps caused by the hordes of trekkers on the trail, Peru’s government began issuing trail permits in 2001. Only 500 people, including tour staff, are allowed to pass each day, and the trail is closed in the month of February for maintenance.
This quota is one of the reasons that more tourists are trekking along alternate routes like Salkantay and Lares. However, the same types of damage that prompted regulation on the Incan Trail are now evident on these routes as well.
Along the Salkantay route, the trail is wide and crumbling where groups of mules burdened with heavy packs full of camp equipment make their daily passage. Llamas, a native species in the Andes, are much lighter and cause less erosion on mountain trails, but they are fickle and stubborn, and cannot carry as much weight as mules. So the packed mules haul equipment ahead of the tourists, then make the return journey back to their pastures.
Human excrement and toilet paper can be found behind any large boulder or scraggly bush, alarmingly close to streams that serve as water sources for communities downhill. While most people boil their water before drinking, the abundance of untreated human waste still carries potential to spread disease. Some tour operators carry portable toilets along the trail so that they can haul this waste out of the valley, but evidence on the trail suggests many do not.
The future for Huallhuaray
Not all towns with roads and tourists see the same changes as Huacahuasi. The Salkantay trek starts near in the windswept Soraypampa valley high above the tree line, which had once been inhabited by a handful of families who grew potatoes and kept alpacas in stone enclosures.
Now the village is composed of campsites, bathrooms, geodesic dome huts (for midnight stargazing in defiance of frigid mountain wind), and a grandiose mountain lodge, all to accommodate the many thousands of tourists who trek through each year. There are no alpacas in sight, the fields are fallow, and the families who lived here have moved elsewhere.
Instead of growing in the presence of a new road and an influx of tourists, the village of Soraypampa essentially disappeared.
Other farming villages along the trekking routes remain seemingly unaffected by the tourists. Many kilometers of the trail are located on private property and pass right through farms carved into the hillside, yet in most places the owners are not compensated for use of their land. They simply work the terraced fields as they usually would while thousands of visitors walk across their property admiring the orchids or the granite hills.
Why is it that some towns end up like Huacahuasi — communities that thrive and evolve with the help of public and private investments coupled with tourist dollars — while others simply die off or do not change at all?
Answering this question is critical for communities like Huallhuaray that face major changes in the near future. Eder Taboada, the trail guide, says the answer will depend on how Huallhuaray manages the transition.
In some places, the money that tourism brings in ends up concentrated in a few families, and this can breed discontent between neighbors. In other places, people eventually sell their land to tour operators and leave the town as a shell of its former self.
Other options exist that could help Huallhuaray maintain its culture while also making life easier for residents. Taboada believes that towns along the trekking routes should charge an entrance fee for the use of their land, and that the proceeds should be used to improve the town or provide resources for more efficient farming practices.
Towns in the Lake Titicaca region of Peru have done this, and they have collectively decided to continue to speak their traditional language and wear traditional clothing, sometimes requiring visitors to do the same.
These kinds of local reactions to the changes brought on by tourism and infrastructure investments create a complex feedback loop. If trekkers are primarily interested in observing indigenous cultures, they will begin to avoid towns that appear too modern, thus changing the character of the trekking itineraries and the local economic opportunities that arise from the tourists.
Tour operators could work to improve declining environmental conditions on the trail, provide itineraries that are respectful of local cultural norms, and ensure that tourist dollars flow toward the people and communities who bring in trekkers. Private and public investors may change their strategy in response to changes in local economic prospects and tourist activities.
The culture and environment of Peru’s most remote Andean communities will continue to evolve as towns, tourists, and local investors adapt and react to one another. If all goes well, these forces will eventually create a sustainable balance between the economic opportunities that locals seek and the culture changes they are willing to endure in order to achieve these opportunities.
It will take years for Huallhuaray to find this balance. But if neighboring communities — just a few years ahead in their transition to modernity — are any guide, tourists interested in observing indigenous cultures may soon find that what they are looking for no longer exists.
Angelyn Otteson Fairchild is an economist, writer, and avid traveler based in North Carolina. |
“The army will continue to support democratic process in the country,” General Kayani said in remarks to troops stationed in the northwestern tribal areas where the army is struggling to contain the Pakistan Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan insurgent movement, according to a military statement released Friday.
The statement said that General Kayani, on a visit on Thursday, told the soldiers that talk of a coup was being “used as a bogey to divert the focus from the real issues.” But, he emphasized, there would be “no compromise on national security.”
Photo
The military did not elaborate on what General Kayani meant. But his remarks were seen as a reference to allegations that Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, backed by the elected government, had sought Washington ’s help in heading off a coup and asserting civilian control over the military in the wake of the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May. The allegations are particularly inflammatory because many Pakistanis see the United States as an enemy, despite the nations’ long-standing alliance.
A Pakistani-American businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, has claimed that Husain Haqqani, then the ambassador, wrote a memo containing the appeal and asked Mr. Ijaz to convey it to Adm. Mike Mullen , who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . Mr. Haqqani has denied writing the memo, and the civilian government has backed him. But he was forced to resign, and his passport was confiscated upon his return to Pakistan in late November.
Suspicion has since spread to President Asif Ali Zardari , who this month had admitted himself to a hospital in Dubai , in the United Arab Emirates , complaining of chest pains. His sudden departure helped to incite the latest round of coup rumors, though he has since returned, and he began working again on Friday.
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The military has signaled that it believes the memo was the work of Mr. Haqqani, and possibly the president. It has urged the Supreme Court open an inquiry, a decision the justices are weighing.
Ikram Sehgal, a defense analyst and former army officer, said that Mr. Gilani’s statement on Thursday had “strengthened the military’s conviction” that the government was behind the memo. He warned that any attempt by the elected government to remove General Kayani would lead to a mutiny by the military’s rank and file, who have little faith in civilian authorities.
“Things don’t look stable at all,” Enver Baig, a former senator from the governing Pakistan Peoples Party, said in an interview on Friday.
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But in one positive sign for the government, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said Friday that he would not validate a military coup. Past military rulers have gotten the court to endorse their takeovers.
Relations with the United States, meanwhile, appeared to sour further. Pakistan’s military, at the order of General Kayani, canceled a meeting with the chief of the United States Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis , a senior Pakistani official said. The meeting, to have been held Monday, had been called to explain the findings of the American investigation into the November airstrikes that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers at posts on the Afghan border, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the meeting had not been previously announced.
The Pentagon on Thursday acknowledged mistakes before and during the airstrikes. But it also said that the Pakistanis had erred. Pakistan’s military responded by calling the investigation “short on facts.” |
Amy Schumer has lashed out at Internet “trolls” she claims launched an online campaign to tank the reviews of her latest comedy special.
One week after its March 6 debut, The Leather Special had received hundreds of one-star reviews from Netflix members. Schumer responded to the backlash Wednesday on her Instagram account, quoting a news report from Splitsider that claims hundreds of trolls purposefully flooded her comedy special with negative reviews.
“The alt right organized trolls attack everything I do. Read the @splitsider article,” the Trainwreck star wrote. “They organize to get my ratings down. Meeting in sub Reddit rooms. They tried on my book and movies and tv show. And I want to thank them.”
Schumer also chided journalists for reporting on the news that her Netflix special is a critical dud.
“I am only alarmed by the people printing their organized trolling as ‘news.’ [T]his is what the current administration wants,” she said. “Journalists do better it’s embarrassing.”
“I thank you trolls so much,” the comedian added. “It fills me with hope and power to see you all furiously posting so as always accuse me of whatever lies you want. Call me a whale. Call me a thief and I will continue to rise and fight and lead. I know who I am. I am strong and beautiful and will use my voice my whole time on this earth.”
While Schumer says the Netflix members who called her special “awful,” “unfunny,” and “unwatchable” were organized by Reddit users who mounted a troll campaign against her, negative reviews for The Leather Special could be readily found on other online rating platforms.
For example, Schumer’s Netflix special currently holds a 4.4 out of 10 rating on The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) — down from 5.5 less than a week ago.
The Leather Special is also showing a 22% audience score of viewers who “liked it” on Rotten Tomatoes.
Reviews from television critics have also been lukewarm. The Los Angeles Times‘ Lorraine Ali writes that the special features Schumer’s signature brand of dirty humor, but “ironically, the dirtier it gets, the less daring it feels.”
“‘The Leather Special’ not only relies on many of those familiar and explicit themes, but kicks it all up a notch so there’s more of it — with more frequency and extremities. And as it turns out, that’s not a good thing,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, Newsday’s Verne Gay gave the special a “C” grade.
“It’s all there. She’s all there. Every bit of her,” Gay wrote. “As usual, it’s mostly also all one subject, or variations on that subject, along with every imaginable word to describe that subject, along with some physical pantomime or gesture to add texture and meaning to this subject, just in case the words themselves didn’t quite suffice. As if.”
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson |
Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte has said the Government is concerned about diversity of ownership and diversity of content in the Irish media.
Mr Rabbitte was responding to questions about the resignation of Gavin O'Reilly as chief executive of Independent News and Media, amid attempts by Denis O'Brien to take control of the company.
He said: "The media is different. The media affects the character of our democracy.
"Our public affairs depends on a diverse media. And I don't mean diversity just in terms of content but diversity of ownership.
"I hope the new legislation ... will be published as soon as possible, if not before summer, then immediately after it."
Mr Rabbitte said that upcoming competition legislation will bring responsibility for the issue to his department.
Asked if he was concerned that Mr O'Brien owned too much media in Ireland, he said that since he was likely to be the minister with responsibility for all the media, he did not want to be seen to pre-judge the situation.
Mr Rabbitte said: "But I can leave out personalities and say to you, that generally, Government is concerned about diversity of ownership and diversity of content, and it doesn't matter who the person is or what the undertakings are, that's our principled position." |
Next week, participants in Hack Reactor's software engineering program will be embarking on a two-week-long sprint devoted to open-source projects. If you're a project maintainer and would like some or all of the twenty hungry coders to tackle your issue backlog, please read on.
Background
Hack Reactor is the coding school that teaches software engineering the way you wish it was taught. Our curriculum is intensely practical (git-based, project-oriented) but we focus on establishing strong fundamental skills (rigorous thinking, confidence in unfamiliar environments, managing complexity through modularity and interface design).
Our programming bootcamp students come from varied backgrounds (professional software developers, CS program dropouts, lawyers/scientists/financiers) but they're uniformly smart and awesome to work with. At this point in the program, they're all capable of tackling fairly complex issues without hand-holding.
Read more curriculum details here, and about our programming school's instructors.
The Open-Source Sprint
From 7/16 to 7/26, the upcoming graduates will be embarking on the open-source portion of our curriculum. This part of our program is designed to give participants more experience with working in larger codebases. We'd also like them to all consider themselves open-source contributors prior to leaving the program, and to demystify the open source process and give them a template for future contributions.
What We're Looking For
Active open-source projects with involved maintainers that merge good PRs quickly. A solid backlog of github issues to address (or a maintainer that's excited about building one), ideally with some issues tagged as "easy." Optional, but very sweet: a collaborator that is excited about building the number of open-source contributors. Cherry on top: local to the San Francisco/Bay Area; willing to visit 944 Market for a kickoff and/or other visits.
What You Can Expect
Tests. Clear commit messages. Quick turnaround on PR feedback. Awesome, motivated contributors. Active mentorship from our staff, including former developers at Google, Twitter, and Adobe and contributors to Sails, Salt, Meteor, and more.
Next Steps
Email [email protected] with a repo link + a short personal introduction. We'll select projects by Friday, 7/12.
Also
If you're interested in hiring our development bootcamp engineers, come to the October 22 hiring mixer. |
Image caption Devi made complex mathematical calculations
Indian maths wizard Shakuntala Devi, who died at 83 in the southern Indian city of Bangalore on Sunday, was often called the "human computer".
She made complex mathematical calculations and was a household name in India.
Shakuntala Devi's dazzling computational powers revealed themselves in early childhood but she had no formal education.
Among her adult feats, she was able to multiply two random 13-digit numbers in a few seconds.
She once calculated the 23rd root of a 201 digit number mentally in under a minute.
When given a date in the last century she could instantly calculate which day it fell on.
She was featured by Guinness World Records for this facility with numbers.
"God's gift. A divine quality," said Ms Devi once when she was asked about her ability.
She also said nobody in her family had shown a head for numbers.
"Not even remotely, although my father was a stage magician," she said.
According to reports, he discovered his three-year-old daughter's abilities with numbers when playing cards with her.
He apparently found that she beat him not by sleight of hand, but by memorising the cards.
Devi was already being called a "child prodigy" when, at the age of six, she demonstrated her skills in a public performance at an university in her native state of Karnataka.
DC Shivdev of an education trust run in her name said Shakuntala Devi "strove to simplify math for students and help them get over their math phobia".
He said her "techniques to simplify math were not used by educational institutions".
"It is a pity that her techniques died with her," he told The Hindu newspaper.
Devi wrote a number of books with titles like Fun with Numbers and Puzzles to Puzzle You.
She also had an alternative career as a successful astrologer, and she often toured to give lectures and offered astrology consultations. |
Tens of thousands of people across Romania have rallied for a fourth day, protesting against what they deem an alarming retreat in the country's fight against corruption.
The marches on Friday came as the political crisis over a controversial decree showed no sign of easing.
Earlier, Romania's ombudsman went to the Constitutional Court to challenge the decree that decriminalises abuse of power offences in which the sums do not exceed 200,000 lei ($48,000).
A separate bill, to go before parliament, would free some 2,500 prisoners on short sentences.
PHOTOS: Protests surge as Romania decriminalises corruption
The government insists it is bringing legislation into line with the constitution and that it wants to reduce overcrowding in prisons.
Ombudsman Victor Ciorbea's move echoed a plea from the general prosecutor and added to challenges to the top court by centre-right President Klaus Iohannis and the council of magistrates.
General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar said he welcomed the court challenge and that his office had its own case before the Court of Appeals.
Biggest protests in decades
The street protests have been on a scale not seen since the fall of communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.
On Friday, some 180,000 people marched across the country, with the majority in the capital, Bucharest.
Al Jazeera's David Chater, reporting from Bucharest, said: "It's becoming a fight for survival for the Social Democratic government.
"The Social Democrats are determined to ignore this huge protest. It's turning from a protest against these amendments, to a protest against the government itself, and demands for the government to resign."
The decree potentially scuttles an ongoing trial of the governing Social Democrat party chief and benefits dozens of other public officials.
Laura Codruta Kovesi at DNA, a corruption prosecuting agency, said: "Indirectly, the entire Romanian people will suffer ... The damages from these cases over the past three years is over $1bn. It's worth mentioning that this money will never be recovered if these amendments pass."
The government has rejected calls to rescind the decree.
OPINION: Romania - Keep the corrupt in jail, where they belong
On Thursday, after a meeting in Bucharest of his ruling Social Democrats, Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu said: "We took a decision in the government and we are going to press ahead."
But cracks in cabinet unity emerged with the resignation on Thursday of a minister and a call from a vice-president of the ruling party for the measure to be withdrawn.
Protesters said they would return every day until February 10, when the contentious decree - issued by the government late Tuesday - is due to enter into force.
A major demonstration in Bucharest was planned for Saturday afternoon, with protesters expected to march to the parliament. |
Twelve years ago today Buffy Summers and the Scooby Gang closed the Hellmouth for good (but there's another one in Cleveland!). Although they destroyed Sunnydale in the process, it still lives on in our memories and on DVD and Netflix. In honor of this monumental day in television history—which I'm currently petitioning to be made into a national holiday under the She Saved the World a Lot argument—I thought it would be nice to celebrate Buffy's place in popular culture by revisiting some of the series' best episodes and the moments that stick out to me as personal favorites.
It's universally acknowledged that "Hush" is one of the greatest episodes of all time, everyone loves singing along to "Once More With Feeling," and we all know the words to Whistler's speech from "Becoming, Part One," but not everyone feels the same way about Spike and Buffy or Xander's speech about Crayon-Breaky Willow or even Dawn's entire existence (just kidding, we're all in agreement Dawn was the worst, right?). We all remember different quotes and moments and stories from the show, so I'll start us off with a few of my personal favorites and then you jump in with your own in the comments!
This Line By Spike in "Chosen"
Spike's arc over the entire series is one of the greatest redemption stories in television history, and his love for Buffy was a driving force in that. I know a lot of fans would probably choose Spike's sacrifice at the end of "Chosen" or his speech to Buffy from "Touched"—you know, the one in which he told her he loved her but it wasn't because he wanted her or couldn't have her, but rather because he was in awe of everything she did and how she tried (so maybe I have that one memorized, too)—but to me, these four words sum up, not just Spike and his journey, but so much about the series itself. Spike was introduced as a villain and antagonist, and by the end he'd retrieved his soul, fallen in love, and changed for the better without drastically changing what made him Spike. He was a hero and he "died" a hero.
All of "Tabula Rasa"
I've rewatched Season 6's "Tabula Rasa" more than any other episode except maybe "Hush," "Fear Itself," and the aforementioned "Once More With Feeling," and I have to tell you, it really holds up to repeat viewings. A prime example of the series' trademark humor, it's fun watching everyone forget who they are, but still remain the same as they fall back into their natural roles within the group. It was a great hour in a season that is largely considered to be the worst of the show's entire run.
"You'll never be friends."
William the Bloody may have been a terrible poet, but Spike definitely had a way with words.
Everything Xander Has Ever Done or Said
Xander Harris was not the brightest of the Scoobies, but he was the heart and soul of their ragtag group of heroes. He was the first TV character I ever personally identified with thanks to his sarcasm and sense of humor and when he lost an eye in Season 7, I lost my shit.
Buffy Summers, Class Protector
She really did save the world a lot.
I could go on for days ("Restless" "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered," everything Anya ever did, Cordelia!, Andrew in "Storyteller") but what are YOUR favorite episodes and moments from the series? |
A couple days ago I wrote that ABC’s “ My Diet Is Better Than Yours A couple days ago I wrote that ABC’s “” might be the most ridiculous diet show ever. Friends, I stand corrected. A&E gives us a show so absolutely, batshit ridiculous that it may require adjectives that have not yet been coined.
In the show “Fit to Fat to Fit” trainers will intentionally gain weight in an effort to “better understand the struggle of their clients as they lose weight together.” Holy shitballs this is fucked up.
In a promo video a trainer tells his client “I’m going to be gaining sixty pounds from where I am now, so I can better understand and relate to where you’re coming from.”
The client, having eaten a bowl of (diet) No Shit Sherlock flakes (with skim milk of course) responds “I don’t recommend that.”
Nor would anyone who was driven by something other than a desire for TV ratings. A personal trainer who thinks that (very publicly) intentionally rapidly gaining weight just to immediately attempt to lose it will tell them anything about what it’s like to be a fat person, let alone a fat person attempting weight loss, should probably lose their certification immediately and permanently.
misuse of the fat suit This is a lot like the. Even if the experience of intentional rapid weight gain and loss had anything to do with being a fat person – and let’s be clear that it doesn’t – this is a still a hot mess. We don’t need thin people to rapidly and very temporarily become fat to understand what it’s like to be fat, we need thin people to listen to fat people when we tell them our experiences of being fat, and then believe us.
People are allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies, including attempting rapid weight gain and/or loss. But as fat people living in a world where we are shamed, stereotyped, stigmatized, bullied and oppressed, we don’t need personal trainers to be involved in dangerous rapid weight gain and loss to better understand us. We need personal trainers to be speaking out against weight-based stigma.
research says about weight loss We don’t need very temporarily fat people to speak for us, when that airspace could be filled by actual fat people talking about our real experiences. We need Personal Trainers to know what theand stop promising things they can’t deliver. Fat people’s almost non-existent likelihood of weight loss success doesn’t increase if their trainer doesn’t understand the difference between body diversity and binge-eating for rapid weight gain.
dropping ratings for The Biggest Loser We’ve been successfullyby not watching it anymore, I’m thinking that we can be way ahead of the game with this show if we just don’t start watching it at all.
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The Senate health care bill will aim to penalize Americans who have breaks in insurance coverage, an updated draft released Monday shows.
The new bill includes a six-month waiting period for those who want to purchase individual market coverage but have had a more than two-month break in coverage at some point in the past year. Vox broke the news Saturday that Republicans planned to include this provision.
The six-month waiting period fills a big policy gap in the first draft of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which required health plans to accept all patients — but didn’t require all Americans to purchase coverage, as the Affordable Care Act does. Experts expected that this would cause a death spiral, where only the sickest patients purchase coverage and premiums skyrocket.
The new six-month waiting period aims to fix that problem. It is meant to nudge healthy people into purchasing coverage because they may fear the consequences of getting locked out of the market down the road.
But it will also complicate Senate Republicans’ repeal efforts, because it may run afoul of the chamber’s complex budget reconciliation rules. Republicans are using budget reconciliation to pass their health care bill with a bare majority of 50 votes and avoid a Democratic filibuster. But the rules governing reconciliation restrict what policies the GOP can include in their bill — the waiting period is one of the provisions thought to be in doubt.
Why Senate Republicans added an individual market waiting period
All health insurance markets need healthy enrollees and sick enrollees to keep premiums affordable. The healthy people end up subsidizing the high medical bills of the sick people — and also purchase protection against financial ruin should they become one of the sick people themselves.
The Affordable Care Act required all insurance companies to accept all Americans regardless of preexisting conditions. It also required all Americans to purchase coverage or pay a penalty, a way to push healthy people into the marketplace.
The individual mandate is the least popular provision of the Affordable Care Act, and Republicans have promised for years to repeal it. But policy experts agree that they need some other policy to replace it — or else risk sending the individual insurance market into collapse.
Many were puzzled to see that the Senate bill released Thursday contained no such provision. Former Republican Senate health policy adviser Rodney Whitlock tweeted that the Senate bill looked like the “definition” of a death spiral. Avik Roy, a supporter of the bill, agreed that this issue would need to be revised.
Something I missed when tweeting about the Senate HC bill earlier: no continuous coverage / waiting period provision. Important to fix. — Avik Roy (@Avik) June 22, 2017
Senate Republicans have settled a six-month waiting period as their replacement policy. This means that those who show up during open enrollment to purchase coverage, but have had a break in coverage longer than 63 days, will have to wait six months from the date of their application for their coverage to kick in. They would not have to pay premiums during that time period.
The idea would be to encourage healthy people to buy coverage during open enrollment regardless of whether they expect to use significant medical care, with the threat of being locked out of the market should they want to purchase coverage in the future.
The provision still needs to comply with the Senate’s “Byrd Rule”
Several lobbyists and outside experts theorized that the waiting period had been excluded from the initial draft of the Senate’s health care bill because of concerns about the “Byrd Rule.”
The Byrd Rule, which Vox has explained in greater detail, limits what policies can be included in legislation considered under reconciliation. The provisions in the bill must directly affect the federal government’s spending or revenue — it’s a way to restrict what policies can pass under the special privileges of reconciliation, which allows a bill to advance with only 50 votes instead of the usual 60.
Several provisions in the Senate plan could be in jeopardy under the Byrd Rule, but the waiting period is one of the most important, given its policy consequences.
The House bill had included a different kind of continuous coverage provision — a surcharge people would have to pay on their premiums if they went without coverage — and some procedural experts thought it ran afoul of the Byrd Rule.
The House provision “seemed to me like a strong possibility of a Byrd Rule violation,” Sarah Binder at George Washington University told Vox’s Dylan Scott. “It seemed pure policy — and thus ‘extraneous’ under the Byrd Rule.”
It’s not yet clear if the Senate’s proposal, a waiting period instead of a premium surcharge, would be permissible. Republicans and Democrats will be negotiating with the Senate parliamentarian, who oversees the chamber’s rules, this week to decide what can be included in the bill and what cannot. |
Bunches of mountain tea are on sale in a shop in Athens, on Saturday, July 1, 2017. Greek authorities and conservationists say bands of impoverished Albanians make regular forays over the border, illegally harvesting donkey loads of wild herbs and medicinal plants such as mountain tea, also called ironwort, hawthorn and primrose, but also eradicating rare or endangered species. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis)
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — In the rugged, herb-scented mountains of northwestern Greece, where the border with Albania is a snaking invisible line, trouble is brewing over tea — the wild herbal variety.
Greek authorities and conservationists say bands of impoverished Albanians are making regular cross-border forays, illegally harvesting donkey-loads of herbs and medicinal plants. They mostly pick mountain tea — also called ironwort — hawthorn and even primrose, but they are also destroying rare and endangered species in the process.
The looters then sell the herbs for export to pharmaceutical or cosmetics companies, a business that nets Albanian wholesalers tens of millions annually.
It’s illegal in Greece to pick more than a tiny quantity of wild herbs for personal use in traditional infusions. That ban doesn’t exist in Albania, one of Europe’s poorest nations. But, more significantly, the plants are usually uprooted in the looters’ haste to pick as much as possible and be off undetected. This stops natural regeneration, threatens delicate ecosystems and leaves entire mountainsides denuded.
Albanians contend the herbs are there and the Greeks don’t pick them, so why shouldn’t somebody profit?
Christos Toskos, an environmentalist in Greece’s Kastoria border area, says the depredations have increased over the past five years, with incursions now coming on a daily basis.
“There is very large destruction in areas covering thousands of acres,” he said.
Vassilis Filiadis, who grows his own herbs in Kastoria, lamented the fate of an old wild ironwort patch in the Grammos mountains.
“It covers about 3 square kilometers (740 acres). In past years, the mountain tea grew there like a sea. The plants formed waves,” he told The Associated Press. “I went this year and was shocked, it’s all been uprooted.”
Greece’s flora is among the richest in Europe, with about 6,500 native plant species.
In targeted operations over the last few months, Greek police have arrested at least ten Albanians and seized dozens of kilograms of herbs. In one case in late June, three people were caught with 136 kilograms (300 pounds) of ironwort loaded on two horses and a donkey.
Albanian exporters pay illegal gatherers up to 6 euros ($6.80) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) for ironwort and 7 euros a kilogram for hawthorn, Greek officials say.
“They illegally enter Greece and quickly gather the plants to avoid being seen,” said Brigadier-General Panagiotis Ntziovaras, head of police for the border region of western Macedonia.
Those caught have been given suspended prison sentences of one or two months and been deported.
Many poor Albanians are crossing the mountains into Greece this year because of an herb shortage in Albania due to freezing temperatures last winter, said Filip Gjoka, president of Albania’s Association of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants and owner of an herb and spice trading company.
He said they sometimes take whole families and camp in the mountains with their horses or mules.
“There are a lot of herbs in Greece, where they are not collected due to labor force shortages or lack of interest,” Gjoka told the AP. “We here collect those herbs, and these people take the risks to support their families. They can bear a few months of jail since there are no other jobs.”
In 2016, 24 Albanian companies exported some 17,000 tons of medicinal and aromatic plants and herbs — 186 varieties — worth a total of $40 million. They process only about 30 percent of that amount in five factories and export the rest raw.
The U.S. is a main importer, while others include France, Germany, Spain and even Australia.
Kastoria agriculturalist Dimitris Natos said the international market for herbs, particularly for use in cosmetics and foods, is expanding rapidly.
“Annual turnover growth is in the double digits, at around 15 percent,” he said.
Gjoka said the Albanian companies employ 10,000 workers and another 80,000 people as independent contractors for whom seasonal herb picking is their only source of income.
Eleni Maloupa, director of Greece’s Institute of Breeding and Plant Genetic Resources in Thessaloniki, says some of the 14 kinds of ironwort that grow in Greece are threatened with extinction and there is a blanket ban on their collection, even in small quantities.
She said Greek and Albanian authorities should cooperate to solve the problem, as Greece has already done with neighboring Macedonia.
“The increased arrests may perhaps discourage (illegal harvesters) but I believe we should use all available means, such as drones or cameras, to control the border and illegal plant picking,” she said.
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Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Greece, contributed to this story.
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Follow Costas Kantouris at http://twitter.com/CostasKantouris |
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 4.58 KB [5:54pm] ArchangelleFarrah: /msg MobileFalc0n oh hey huey I need you to ban MRC next please he's being a butthead [5:54pm] stopscopiesme_art: it's cool su [5:54pm] ArchangelleFarrah: ah shit [5:54pm] aboynamedsu: aww [5:54pm] greendrinking: um i think you fucked that up [5:55pm] greendrinking: too many drugs for you, farrah dear~ [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: ;___; [5:55pm] MobileFalc0n: Oh is this an actual archangelle? [5:55pm] greendrinking: yes [5:55pm] MobileFalc0n: !mods shitredditsays [5:55pm] stopscopiesme_art: hah! [5:55pm] redditBot: /r/shitredditsays has 40 moderators: ArchangelleMichaelle, ArchangelleGabrielle, ArchangelleRaguelle, ArchangelleUrielle, ArchangelleZadkielle, ArchangelleJophielle, ArchangelleAzraelle, ArchangelleRaphaelle, ArchangelleArielle, ArchangelleHanielle, ArchangelleRazielle, ArchangelleSamaelle, ArchangelleDworkin, ArchangelleFalafelle, ArchangelleDonatello, ArchangelleWeezyelle, ArchangelleLucifer, FempireGynquisitor, ... [5:55pm] redditBot: ... ArchangelleJor-El, ArchangelleFarrah, ArchangelleSyzygy, ArchangelleTenuelle, ArchangelleBarachiel, ArchangellePretzelle, ArchangelleLowtax, ArchangelleStrudelle, ArchangelleOtherMod, ArchangelleEzekielle, ArchangelleNoodelle, ArchangelleCaramelle, ArchangelleHueyelle, ArchangelGabeNewelle, ArchangelleCastiel, ArchangelleCatselle, ArchangelleArtemis, AsciiBot, BenHemmer9004, BenHemmer9005, ArchangelleBird, and ... [5:55pm] redditBot: ... ArchangelleJazeera [5:55pm] ChemicalSerenity: So it is alleged [5:55pm] greendrinking: oi [5:55pm] greendrinking: that was a terrible idea, MobileFalc0n [5:55pm] greendrinking: youre fired [5:55pm] Daemon_of_Mail: taxidermy wtf: http://i.imgur.com/1Lacz.jpg [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: I am indeed an actual archangelle [5:55pm] ChemicalSerenity: Daemon_of_Mail: lol [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: plz don't dox me [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: oh sorry dox [5:55pm] kronikwasted: !mods theredditbucket [5:55pm] redditBot: /r/theredditbucket has 3 moderators: kronikwasted, BipolarBear0, and redping [5:55pm] greendrinking: im verifying and stuff~ [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: for highlighting you when I said dox [5:56pm] HexagonSun: I can't believe that you don't remember the SA megathread. That's really bizzarre [5:56pm] epyos joined the chat room. [5:56pm] ChemicalSerenity: Daemon_of_Mail: That thing needs to be Ecce Homo'd. [5:56pm] Daemon_of_Mail: it seriously looks like whoever made that just stuffed a piano bench into a skin [5:56pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: hahahahah [5:56pm] GhettoWizard: noone wants to dox you farrah, youre not a ridiculous trainwreck whose life is a joke [5:56pm] Daemon_of_Mail: someone send that thing to chuck testa [5:56pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: oh godd [5:56pm] epyos: I say we kill all the white people. [5:56pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: I AGREE [5:56pm] Daemon_of_Mail: kill whitey [5:57pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: KILL WHITEY [5:57pm] epyos: KILL WHITEY [5:57pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: white people eat amyonnaise and listen to shitty music [5:57pm] MobileFalc0n: !ban MittRomneysCampaign [5:57pm] [META] set a ban on MittRomneysCampaign!*@*. [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: http://i.imgur.com/yn4Lg.jpg [5:57pm] ArchangelleFarrah: yay thanks [5:57pm] MobileFalc0n: By your command [5:57pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: AM I EDGYPOSTBRO YET? [5:57pm] HexagonSun: Fucking patriarchorapecultureciswhiteevilimperialist scum [5:57pm] ChemicalSerenity: Daemon_of_Mail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3grk-slP0LU [5:57pm] kronikwasted: just wanna point out mrc is hawt [5:57pm] ArchangelleFarrah: well I don't want you to think it was a command, even though it came from a superior officer [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . /\ /\ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . ______________ //\\___//\\ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . / U SRS \ / \ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | FAK U FALC0N | --| 0 0 |-- [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \ ___________ | --| (_/\_) |-- [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \ \ --| \/ |-- ____ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \__> \ / (___ \ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \_________/ \ \ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | ----- | | [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | | | / \ | | [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | | | / \___/ / [5:58pm] idio3|drinking: . | | | _ \ /___ / [5:58pm] idio3|drinking: . \_/ \_/|_______\ [5:58pm] idio3|drinking: ah, shit [5:58pm] epyos: FAK U FALCON U SRS SHILL
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[5:54pm] ArchangelleFarrah: /msg MobileFalc0n oh hey huey I need you to ban MRC next please he's being a butthead [5:54pm] stopscopiesme_art: it's cool su [5:54pm] ArchangelleFarrah: ah shit [5:54pm] aboynamedsu: aww [5:54pm] greendrinking: um i think you fucked that up [5:55pm] greendrinking: too many drugs for you, farrah dear~ [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: ;___; [5:55pm] MobileFalc0n: Oh is this an actual archangelle? [5:55pm] greendrinking: yes [5:55pm] MobileFalc0n: !mods shitredditsays [5:55pm] stopscopiesme_art: hah! [5:55pm] redditBot: /r/shitredditsays has 40 moderators: ArchangelleMichaelle, ArchangelleGabrielle, ArchangelleRaguelle, ArchangelleUrielle, ArchangelleZadkielle, ArchangelleJophielle, ArchangelleAzraelle, ArchangelleRaphaelle, ArchangelleArielle, ArchangelleHanielle, ArchangelleRazielle, ArchangelleSamaelle, ArchangelleDworkin, ArchangelleFalafelle, ArchangelleDonatello, ArchangelleWeezyelle, ArchangelleLucifer, FempireGynquisitor, ... [5:55pm] redditBot: ... ArchangelleJor-El, ArchangelleFarrah, ArchangelleSyzygy, ArchangelleTenuelle, ArchangelleBarachiel, ArchangellePretzelle, ArchangelleLowtax, ArchangelleStrudelle, ArchangelleOtherMod, ArchangelleEzekielle, ArchangelleNoodelle, ArchangelleCaramelle, ArchangelleHueyelle, ArchangelGabeNewelle, ArchangelleCastiel, ArchangelleCatselle, ArchangelleArtemis, AsciiBot, BenHemmer9004, BenHemmer9005, ArchangelleBird, and ... [5:55pm] redditBot: ... ArchangelleJazeera [5:55pm] ChemicalSerenity: So it is alleged [5:55pm] greendrinking: oi [5:55pm] greendrinking: that was a terrible idea, MobileFalc0n [5:55pm] greendrinking: youre fired [5:55pm] Daemon_of_Mail: taxidermy wtf: http://i.imgur.com/1Lacz.jpg [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: I am indeed an actual archangelle [5:55pm] ChemicalSerenity: Daemon_of_Mail: lol [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: plz don't dox me [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: oh sorry dox [5:55pm] kronikwasted: !mods theredditbucket [5:55pm] redditBot: /r/theredditbucket has 3 moderators: kronikwasted, BipolarBear0, and redping [5:55pm] greendrinking: im verifying and stuff~ [5:55pm] ArchangelleFarrah: for highlighting you when I said dox [5:56pm] HexagonSun: I can't believe that you don't remember the SA megathread. That's really bizzarre [5:56pm] epyos joined the chat room. [5:56pm] ChemicalSerenity: Daemon_of_Mail: That thing needs to be Ecce Homo'd. [5:56pm] Daemon_of_Mail: it seriously looks like whoever made that just stuffed a piano bench into a skin [5:56pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: hahahahah [5:56pm] GhettoWizard: noone wants to dox you farrah, youre not a ridiculous trainwreck whose life is a joke [5:56pm] Daemon_of_Mail: someone send that thing to chuck testa [5:56pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: oh godd [5:56pm] epyos: I say we kill all the white people. [5:56pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: I AGREE [5:56pm] Daemon_of_Mail: kill whitey [5:57pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: KILL WHITEY [5:57pm] epyos: KILL WHITEY [5:57pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: white people eat amyonnaise and listen to shitty music [5:57pm] MobileFalc0n: !ban MittRomneysCampaign [5:57pm] [META] set a ban on MittRomneysCampaign!*@*. [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: http://i.imgur.com/yn4Lg.jpg [5:57pm] ArchangelleFarrah: yay thanks [5:57pm] MobileFalc0n: By your command [5:57pm] Sciarrillo|Drinking: AM I EDGYPOSTBRO YET? [5:57pm] HexagonSun: Fucking patriarchorapecultureciswhiteevilimperialist scum [5:57pm] ChemicalSerenity: Daemon_of_Mail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3grk-slP0LU [5:57pm] kronikwasted: just wanna point out mrc is hawt [5:57pm] ArchangelleFarrah: well I don't want you to think it was a command, even though it came from a superior officer [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . /\ /\ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . ______________ //\\___//\\ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . / U SRS \ / \ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | FAK U FALC0N | --| 0 0 |-- [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \ ___________ | --| (_/\_) |-- [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \ \ --| \/ |-- ____ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \__> \ / (___ \ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . \_________/ \ \ [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | ----- | | [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | | | / \ | | [5:57pm] idio3|drinking: . | | | / \___/ / [5:58pm] idio3|drinking: . | | | _ \ /___ / [5:58pm] idio3|drinking: . \_/ \_/|_______\ [5:58pm] idio3|drinking: ah, shit [5:58pm] epyos: FAK U FALCON U SRS SHILL |
Donald Trump’s running mate refused to answer questions about big donations and alleged political “puppetry” on Sunday, despite Republican accusations of a “pay to play” system run by the Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton.
Clinton camp says Trump in 'sewer' as debate looms and fight gets dirty Read more
Last month, Trump accused Clinton of using her family-run foundation as a “pay-for-play” conduit through which to exchange political favors, saying: “If it’s true, it’s illegal. You’re paying and you’re getting things.”
He has also labeled Clinton the “most corrupt candidate ever” and mocked fellow Republicans for soliciting money from wealthy donors such as the Koch brothers.
“I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc from the Koch Brothers,” Trump wrote last year. “Puppets?”
Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Indiana governor Mike Pence struggled with questions about his running mate’s allegations, saying the businessman was not against big money in politics.
“I don’t think that that’s the point that he’s really been making,” Pence said. “I think his point is that we’ve had a system in this country that really has benefited the favored few. That, you know, from Wall Street to Washington DC, we’ve seen, we’ve seen money flowing in to politics.
“And … and the … and the American people really, really end up, really end up on the losing side one time after another.”
Host John Dickerson noted that Pence has himself received support from the Koch brothers, one of whom is a top donor to him and whose political groups avidly support the governor’s plans to reduce government regulation. Pence did not reply directly.
“Well, look, Donald Trump has his own way of speaking in public life,” he said. “And, look, in a political campaign, things can get a little rough and tumble.”
The Koch brothers have not backed Trump this year, instead focusing their election spending on the House and Senate.
Pence insisted that “when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, that pay-to-play system is going to come to an end”.
Trump is himself under investigation for possible illegal quid pro quo practices. His Trump Foundation illegally gave $25,000 to a political group connected to Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, while her office was considering an investigation into whether Trump University defrauded people of tens of thousands of dollars.
Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 fine for the illegal donation, but New York’s attorney general announced this month that he would investigate the Trump Foundation, which may also have committed illegal “self-dealing” practices.
Bondi declined to investigate Trump University, but the now defunct organization is subject to a federal lawsuit brought by former students. The case is due in court in San Diego on 28 November, 20 days after the presidential election.
In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Pence struggled with questions about possible malfeasance at the Trump Foundation. After host Chris Wallace corrected the governor’s false claim that “the Trump Foundation has responded to those questions” and had corrected reporting by the Washington Post, Pence deflected any further questions to the Trump family.
Dark Money review: Nazi oil, the Koch brothers and a rightwing revolution Read more
“The family can answer all of those questions about that specific instance and others,” Pence said.
The Trump campaign has accused the Post of inaccuracies but failed to specify or explain what is incorrect.
Trump has also bragged publicly about exchanging donations for favors. At a debate last year, he bemoaned “a broken system” by citing his own experience within it.
“I give to everybody,” he said. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”
On CBS, Pence did not broach his running mate’s controversial history, instead speaking at length about their shared vision to “rebuild our military, revive our economy, make appointments to our supreme court that will uphold our constitution”.
Dickerson eventually ended the exchange.
“All right, governor,” he said, “we’ll have to leave it there with the issue of puppetry unresolved.” |
Diaz: No foreign-born person is safe under President Donald Trump
A protester locked himself to the van carrying Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos that is stopped by protesters outside the ICE office on Feb. 8, 2017, in Phoenix. For the past four years, federal immigration authorities have given Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos a pass to remain in the U.S. rather than deport her back to Mexico. (Photo: Rob Schumacher/The Republic)
The alt-right is demanding that everyone who is in the country illegally be deported — no exceptions. And the radical left is demanding no deportations at all — under any circumstances.
But everyone else seems to understand the complexities of the immigration flow necessary to sustain a robust labor force and a social structure that makes this country accommodating.
The reasonable voices, though, are being drowned out amid a national furor over immigration raids and high-profile deportations, leaving little space for serious analysis that can lead to a sustained and coordinated campaign against President Donald Trump’s draconian policies.
Trump’s dizzying attacks on anyone who disagrees with him and his frenzied governing style make it difficult to focus, but we’ve got to try.
The president’s new immigration directives making every undocumented immigrant a target makes it imperative and urgent to forge a united front.
We’ve got to put our differences aside and appeal to those who can influence Washington and reasonable people across the nation to put the brakes on Trump’s state police.
In Arizona, Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake are getting an earful from all sides. It’s tempting, myself included, to demand no deportations at all. But even the folks most sympathetic toward immigrants find it hard to defend those who have committed crimes.
We’ve reached a point when we must put up a united front against a Gestapo-type of persecution against people whose only crime is being here illegally. These are the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters quietly working the fields, cleaning houses, cooking at restaurants, and students pursuing college degrees and professionals excelling in various fields.
RELATED: Arizona mom at center of immigration debate is deported
Let’s not forget former President Barack Obama deported more immigrants than any of his predecessors.
But this is different. Trump’s tactics are designed to sow fear and chaos by making it clear that no foreign-born person is safe.
He’s going after undocumented immigrants and immediately sending them back to their country of origin because they’re easy targets. But we’re already seeing signs that Trump won’t stop there and has already begun putting into jeopardy even U.S. citizens.
NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
A CBS television station in Dallas this month reported about how an American renewing his passport was told to turn in his “green card,” which he never had because, alas, he was born in this country.
I’m sure Tony Airitam, the Brooklyn-born man swept up in the drama, will eventually get his passport renewed, but meanwhile he may have to miss traveling abroad as planned.
This is yet another example of the persecution against anyone and anything that’s not acceptable to the alt-right: immigrants, civil rights, women, voting rights, reproductive rights, free trade.
Many of us doubted Trump’s ability to round up an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, but we know now he has a clear plan.
And it may be much easier than we thought given that most undocumented immigrants live in 20 metropolitan areas, according to the Pew Research Center.
Topping the list with the largest undocumented population is New York, followed by Los Angeles and Houston, the center’s study based on government data concluded.
“In 2014, the 20 metro areas with most unauthorized immigrants were home to 6.8 million of them, or 61% of the estimated nationwide total. By contrast, only 36% of the total U.S. population lived in those metro areas,” the report said.
The Trump administration can easily focus on those cities to make his point and deport the largest number of immigrants.
A united front to stop Trump is through the courts — as the ACLU did with the travel ban — and appealing to moderate, sympathetic Republicans.
And equally important, there must be a massive voter registration and aggressive get-out-the-vote campaign. We must set our eyes to the midterm elections to change the makeup of Congress.
Elvia Díaz is an editorial columnist for The Republic and azcentral. Reach her at 602-444-8606 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter, @elviadiaz1.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/2lsmOch |
No.
overall No. in
season Title Directed by Written by Original air date Prod.
code US viewers
(millions)
2 2 "Selina Kyle" Danny Cannon Bruno Heller September 29, 2014 ( ) 4X6652 7.45[11]
Gordon and Bullock start investigating the abductions of street kids by Patti and Doug, operatives of Dr. Francis Dulmacher, A.K.A. the Dollmaker,[8][9][10] and have been posing as members of the Mayor's Homeless Outreach Program. Mayor Aubrey James announces plans to help Gotham's homeless kids, rounding them up and shipping them out of town. Patti and Doug hijack one of the buses of street kids, including Selina. After Bullock's extreme interrogation of an informant, Gordon obtains a clue. Gordon and Bullock arrive and catch Patti and Doug while encountering Kyle. While Bruce has plans to find a way to help the children, Gordon meets with Kyle who states that she has been watching him during his visits with Bruce and might have some information on the person who shot the Waynes. Meanwhile, Cobblepot kills two men after they mock his walking pattern. He takes refuge in a rented trailer after his faked death, plotting his return to Gotham City, having kidnapped a teenager for ransom. Falcone confronts Mooney for her plans to overthrow him, having heard from Cobblepot. The former warns her by having her lover beaten. Allen and Montoya investigate Cobblepot's mother.
Gordon and Bullock track a vigilante who targets corrupt Gotham officials and nicknamed "Balloonman" for strapping his victims to weather balloons, which eventually implode in the cold atmosphere, giving the victim a long fall. Montoya and Allen question Gordon about Cobblepot, who returns to Gotham to get revenge on Mooney. He gets a job at Don Sal Maroni's restaurant, and is befriended by Maroni himself. Mooney arranges for Falcone's lover Natalia to be disfigured in response to her own lover's beating. Gordon realizes that "Balloonman" is social worker Davis Lamond, who was driven to vigilantism because of corrupt officials refusing to aid children on the streets. After arrest, he warns Gordon that more vigilantes will follow in his path. Falcone tells Mooney that he will investigate what happened to Natalia, also telling about the Arkham Plan. At his apartment later, Gordon receives a surprise visit from Cobblepot. Meanwhile, Barbara is revealed to be an addict and Montoya's former girlfriend. Selina is given to Gordon for his investigation; but she uses the chance to escape.
Cobblepot offers Gordon help in stopping the future war. The latter learns of the Arkham Plan from Alfred, who states that Falcone and Mayor James are backing the project that will improve the Arkham District, opposed by Maroni, who has another plan. An independent hitman starts targeting the city council members involved in both opposing sides of the Plan. After an armed robbery of Maroni's restaurant, Cobblepot is promoted to restaurant manager by Maroni, following the former's action of saving a bag of money and the death of the previous manager. Mooney pits two female singers against each other for her nightclub job opening, with the winner being Liza. In order to prevent the war, Mayor James holds a conference about a compromise on the Arkham Plan, that Falcone will handle small housing development projects and Maroni will be refurbishing the Asylum. Gordon urges Bruce not to lose hope in the city. Later, Cobblepot fatally poisons the restaurant robbers, who are revealed to had been hired for just that purpose by Cobblepot himself. Meanwhile, Barbara confronts Gordon about Cobblepot, telling him about her past with Montoya. She decides to end the engagement when he refuses to talk.
5 5 "Viper" Tim Hunter Rebecca Perry Cutter October 20, 2014 ( ) 4X6655 6.09[14]
Bruce plans to find a way to speak to the board members of Wayne Enterprises to learn their connections to the Arkham District Project. A new drug called "Viper", a prototype of Venom, is hitting the street, endowing the user with super-strength, but eventually killing them. Maroni plans to rob a casino owned by Falcone, and Cobblepot offers a less-casualty plan, forcing him to reveal his past, which Maroni believes after Gordon confirms it. The latter learns that "Viper" is being distributed at a charity event held by WellZyn and Wayne Enterprises. Gordon shoots the canister on the roof and former WellZyn employee Stan Potolsky is exposed, committing suicide after he suggests they check out Warehouse 39, where Gordon and Bullock later find nothing, observed by Wayne Enterprises operative Mathis. Maroni successfully robs the casino, admiring Cobblepot. As Mooney makes plans to conspire against Falcone with her lover and Russian mob boss Nikolai, a disguised Liza visits Falcone and begins seducing him.
Ten years ago, a masked killer calling himself the "Spirit of the Goat" targets the firstborn of Gotham's elite, leading Bullock and his partner Dix to investigate the case. They find the killer, Randall Milkie, who is shot down by Bullock after Dix falls through a trap door and ends up badly injured. In the present day, Bullock finds another elite firstborn murdered by someone with the same "Goat" motive. Upon surgery, Bullock sees Milkie's trademark, which only he and Dix knew, meaning that he was not a copycat. During a debrief, Dix tells Gordon about Bullock's enthusiasm for justice, to Gordon's surprise. Bullock deduces that hypnotherapist Marks coerced both Milkie and the new killer to become the Goat to scare Gotham's rich and corrupt, leading to Marks' arrest. The "murder" of Cobblepot is also investigated, with Gordon the prime suspect as Montoya and Allen finally find a witness near the river. When they attempt to arrest Gordon and Bullock, Cobblepot enters the precinct, causing friction between Bullock and Gordon. Meanwhile, CSU operative Nygma is revealed to be in love with archivist Kristen Kringle, who ignores him. Selina infiltrates the Wayne Manor and steals a component of Bruce's investigation.
7 7 "Penguin's Umbrella" Rob Bailey Bruno Heller November 3, 2014 ( ) 4X6657 6.63[16]
Exonerated, Gordon tells Barbara to leave Gotham. Cobblepot leads Maroni enforcer Frankie Carbone and two other henchmen to Nikolai's hideout, killing the latter and Carbone by buying the loyalties of the henchmen. Montoya and Allen begin cooperating with Gordon. The escalating mob war is settled with a land trade between Maroni and Falcone. A drunken Bullock re-evaluates his choice for helping Gordon, and the two partners attempt to arrest Mayor James and Falcone, but they give up when it is revealed that Falcone and hitman Victor Zsasz have Barbara, who had returned to try and negotiate with Falcone for Gordon. Falcone allows the trio to leave. In a flashback to the night they had met Gordon, it is shown that Cobblepot and Falcone had formed a deal, in which Falcone would place Gordon in charge of killing Cobblepot, giving Cobblepot a chance at surviving, and in exchange, Cobblepot would forge an alliance with Maroni, snitching for Falcone; and Cobblepot told Falcone about Mooney and Nikolai and their plan. It is revealed that Falcone spared Gordon's life due to Cobblepot's request.
8 8 "The Mask" Paul Edwards John Stephens November 10, 2014 ( ) 4X6658 6.35[17]
Bruce returns to school, where he has some trouble with bully Tommy Elliot; and Alfred agrees to teach the former how to fight. Gordon and Bullock investigate Richard Sionis, who is hosting an illegal and deadly fight club where the champions are accepted for Sionis Investments. Liza's loyalty to Mooney begins to falter when she learns of the latter's plan to eventually kill Falcone, but Mooney presses her to steal a ledger from the Falcone's office that may be used to incriminate him. When Gordon is caught at the site of the fight club, Bullock persuades other officers, who collectively despise Gordon due to blaming them for leaving him during Zsasz' attack, to help find Gordon. Mooney fakes a story about her past to convince Liza to stay on the mission. After Sionis and those involved are arrested, Gordon learns that Selina was apprehended after skillfully robbing a dress store. Barbara leaves Gordon. Cobblepot learns from Mooney's henchman of a spy close to Falcone.
9 9 "Harvey Dent" Karen Gaviola Ken Woodruff November 17, 2014 ( ) 4X6659 6.49[18]
Gordon has Selina placed at Wayne Manor for her safety. She and Bruce establish a friendship. She claims that her mother is an intelligence agent. During a prison transport from Blackgate Penitentiary to St. Mark Psychiatric Hospital, bomb maker Ian Hargrove is taken by the Russian mob, who are working against Falcone following Nikolai's death. Gordon meets with Harvey Dent, who suspects tycoon Dick Lovecraft for the Wayne murders. Gordon and Bullock realize that Hargrove intends no harm. Manipulated by Mooney, the Russians target Falcone's cache of money, but when a police standoff ensues, the Russians' armored truck explodes via remote control by Mooney's enforcer, Butch Gilzean. Cobblepot confronts Liza for spying on Falcone, whom the former claims will not tell. Mayor James announces his plans to reopen Arkham Asylum to house the mentally ill criminals, including Hargrove. Barbara is revealed to have a new relationship with Montoya.
10 10 "Lovecraft" Guy Ferland Rebecca Dameron November 24, 2014 ( ) 4X6660 6.05[23]
Assassins led by Copperhead[19][20][21] infiltrate Wayne Manor, but Bruce and Selina escape into the city. Alfred seeks Gordon and Bullock's help to find the pair. Dent suspects that Lovecraft hired the assassins to cover his tracks. However, Gordon learns Lovecraft is also being targeted to hide what he knows; the assassins kill Lovecraft in a staged suicide, planting Gordon's gun at the scene. Following the armory fiasco, Cobblepot tells Falcone that Mooney has a mole in his ranks, but does not reveal the identity. Selina determines the assassins are after her, and she and Bruce encounter Ivy Pepper,[22] Mario's daughter. The assassins find Selina and Bruce, but she escapes while Bullock and Alfred, who convinces Mooney to help, arrive and rescue Bruce. Selina later kisses Bruce and returns to living on the streets. Following Lovecraft's "suicide", Mayor James reassigns Gordon as a security guard at Arkham Asylum.
11 11 "Rogues' Gallery" Oz Scott Sue Chung January 5, 2015 ( ) 4X6661 7.06[26]
While working at Arkham run by Dr. Gerry Lang, Gordon investigates a series of attacks on inmates with the help of Dr. Leslie "Lee" Thompkins. Mooney discusses her plan to overthrow Falcone with underboss Jimmy Saviano, who has a disagreement with her on succession. Cobblepot is arrested by the police for trying to further extort some fishermen already paying protection money to Maroni. The former is freed by the latter, who initiated the arrest to warn Cobblepot about hubris. Montoya ends her relationship with Barbara. Gordon, Bullock, and Captain Essen discover that the person attacking inmates was Jack Gruber,[24][25] who then escapes from Arkham with his associate Aaron Danzig, after killing several guards and Dr. Lang. Saviano tries to convince Gilzean to change sides, but the latter kills him instead. Selina takes an ill Ivy to Gordon's. Barbara calls and mistakes Ivy as his girlfriend.
Gruber and Danzig go on rampage through Gotham. Gordon promises Commissioner Loeb he will arrest Gruber within 24 hours. Nygma learns Gruber is a former Mafia bank robber who was betrayed by Maroni. Gordon and Bullock put Maroni under protective custody to use as bait to attract Gruber to the precinct. Gruber and Danzig attack, but Gordon thwarts them by shorting out Gruber's electrical apparatus with water. For living up to his end of the deal, Gordon is reinstated as a detective. Meanwhile, Mooney makes her move against Falcone by "abducting" Liza and extorting him into signing his crime family over to Mooney's gang. Falcone nearly goes through with the deal, but Cobblepot informs him that Liza is Mooney's mole. Falcone confronts Mooney, has his mercenaries take both her and Gilzean prisoner, and strangles Liza to death. Cobblepot inherits Mooney's nightclub and what's left of her gang. Barbara visits her estranged parents. Maroni begins suspecting Cobblepot. Gordon and Lee develop romance.
Mooney is tortured by Falcone's henchman, but Gilzean frees himself and rescues her. A homicide witness is murdered while under custody at GCPD. Gordon comes to suspect Narcotics Detective Arnold Flass is behind. Learning that Flass is supported by influential figures, Gordon asks Cobblepot for help, who tasks his enforcer, Gabe. Bruce asks Selina about his parents' murderer, but she reveals she lied about seeing the man's face to avoid being sent to juvenile detention. Nygma gives Kringle a romantic greeting card, but Flass finds it and mocks him; Kringle later apologizes to Nygma and admires the card. Gabe gives Gordon evidence that exposes Flass' involvement in the witness' death, and Flass is arrested. Gordon learns that Gabe threatened the family of Delaware, Flass's accomplice, for proof. Mooney and Gilzean confront Cobblepot at the nightclub, but Zsasz arrives and recaptures Gilzean. Mooney escapes decides to temporarily leave Gotham, with Bullock revealed as her lover.
Gordon and Bullock investigate a serial killer who is targeting members of a phobia support group and extracting their adrenal glands. The killer turns out to be Gerald Crane, Jonathan's father; Gordon and Bullock are able to save one of his victims, but Crane evades capture. In light of Selina's recent claim of false witness, Bruce absolves Gordon of his promise to find the killer, intending to solve the case himself. Mooney informs Maroni about Cobblepot's treachery to him. Maroni tries to kill Cobblepot, who escapes. Nygma frames medical examiner Guerra for hoarding body parts after Guerra has him suspended for his repeated corpse probing. After Guerra's suspension and Nygma's reinstatement, Gordon informs Lee, who finds a clue in Crane's case, that a job has opened up for her as GCPD's medical examiner. Mooney is captured by mercenaries on a boat away from Gotham.
15 15 "The Scarecrow" Nick Copus Ken Woodruff February 9, 2015 ( ) 4X6665 5.63[30]
Gordon and Bullock investigate Gerald's background and learn his wife died in a fire that he was too scared to rescue her from; believing fear is a human flaw, he is now harvesting adrenal glands in order to create a serum that makes people confront and overcome their greatest fears. Bruce continues a yearly family tradition by going on a hiking trip in the woods, albeit alone for the first time. He finds himself unprepared for the dangers, but Alfred eventually joins him. Maroni speaks with Falcone and agrees to let Cobblepot live, but warns the latter that it will last until Falcone's eventual death. After using the serum on himself and overcoming his fear, Gerald injects Jonathan with a much larger dose. Gordon and Bullock arrive and kill Gerald in a gunfight. Jonathan is rushed to the hospital, but the serum has sent him into a state of constant terror, and he may never stop hallucinating his greatest fear: scarecrows. Mooney wakes up among other captives and befriends a man named Kelly. She kills the prisoners' leader and takes his place, learning that their captors are organ harvesters. Lee becomes the new medical examiner.
Barbara returns to Gotham to find Ivy and Selina squatting in her apartment. Gordon and Lee investigate the murder of Lila Valeska, a snake dancer with Haly's Circus, and the contesting families Flying Graysons and the Lloyds are suspects. Gordon determines that Lila's son Jerome is the killer, which he eventually admits maniacally. When business begins to decrease at Cobblepot's club, Zsasz brings in a brainwashed Gilzean for help. Taking advice from Selina and Ivy, Barbara attempts to reunite with Gordon, but changes her mind after she sees him kissing Lee. Bruce holds a board meeting at Wayne Enterprises and voices concern to the executives that the company is involved with the mob, threatening with legal action. John Grayson and Mary Lloyd get engaged after the dispute between the two families are resolved. Mooney manages to get a meeting with the captors' boss after uniting the prisoners against the captors.
17 17 "Red Hood" Nathan Hope Danny Cannon February 23, 2015 ( ) 4X6667 6.53[32]
An armed group robs a bank, and one wearing a red mask throws some of the stolen money into the crowd to ensure their escape. Gordon and Bullock identify the "Red Hood" as Gus Floyd, but find him dead in the hideout. After a robbery led by Carl Destro, who now wears Floyd's mask, and the Hood becoming a public hero, Gordon and Bullock track him to his house where they find him wounded and the mask gone. With information given by Destro, the police find and kill the remainder of the gang in a shootout. A teenage boy steals the mask. Meanwhile, Cobblepot struggles from Maroni's actions against the restaurant, but Butch uses some fake policemen to seize Maroni's supplies. Mooney discovers that the facility is owned by Dulmacher, meeting the manager, who tries to take her eye for organ trade purposes; but she removes it herself and destroys it before passing out. An old comrade of Alfred, Reginald Payne, visits him in the Manor and stays over night. On the next day, however, he steals some of Bruce's files, stabs Alfred to evade capture and reports to the Board that Bruce has no solid evidence.
At the hospital, Alfred refuses to implicate Payne. Gordon and Dent investigate the sudden release and reinstatement of Flass by Loeb, who announces his support of Flass as the new president of the policemen's union. Bullock reveals that Loeb has leverage to blackmail most officers; in Bullock's case, Loeb forced him to falsely confess to providing illegitimate evidence against Flass. Investigating a triad bookmaking office and interrogating Loeb's former partner, Gordon learns that Loeb has ties with Falcone. With Cobblepot's help, Gordon and Bullock investigate Loeb's uptown farm, where they find the latter's psychotic daughter Miriam, who confesses to her mother's murder, which Gordon uses to terminate Bullock's case by blackmailing Loeb, who announces Gordon as the new candidate. Meanwhile, Mooney finally meets Dulmacher, who provides her with a blue-irised eye and allows her to prove herself in order to become his right hand woman. She surrenders some of the prisoners, including Kelly. She discovers that the facility is situated on a snowy island. Selina visits Bruce and offers her help in his investigation, which he refuses. Nygma learns that Kringle has a new boyfriend in the GCPD.
19 19 "Beasts of Prey" Eagle Egilsson Ken Woodruff April 13, 2015 ( ) 4X6669 4.50[34]
Despite Gordon's warning, Bruce goes after Payne with Selina's help. Payne confesses that he was hired by the Board. Selina pushes Payne out a window after Bruce hesitates to do so, presumably killing him. Gordon and Bullock investigate an unsolved murder case. Upon Nygma discovering a painting of a broken heart as the key evidence, Bullock realizes that the serial killer called "the Ogre" is responsible. Harvey then states that everyone who tried to investigate the Ogre lost their loved ones. It is revealed that the Ogre keeps his victims prisoner for some time, until he realizes she is not a fit for his desire, so he kills her. Meanwhile, Oswald manages to convince a bar owner to do business, but his real intention is to kill Maroni in the bar. Mooney succeeds in escaping with Kelly and some other inmates by luring another group to a fatal deadend. She is shot during the takeoff by the "Catcher", the chief guard. It is revealed that Loeb had the case given to Gordon, but the latter decides to continue the investigation, knowing the threat upon Lee. Gordon promises Loeb that he will face justice too.
20 20 "Under the Knife" TJ Scott John Stephens April 20, 2015 ( ) 4X6670 4.44[35]
Lee refuses to leave town, staying at the GCPD. The "Ogre" calls Gordon and makes his typical threat. Following the incident with Payne, Bruce and Selina attend Wayne Enterprises' Charity Ball with Barbara, where Selina copies keys from Sid Banderslaw, one of the executives who hired Payne. Cobblepot allies himself with Irish hitmen in hopes of killing Maroni, who visits the club and reveals to the former's mother that her son is a psychopathic killer. Nygma tries to protect Kringle from her abusive boyfriend Tom Dougherty, but goes too far when he stabs him to death and has a psychotic breakdown. Investigating the Ogre's first victim, Gordon, Bullock, and Essen identify the killer as Jason Skolimski, who illicitly inherited the fortune of a woman, whose butler is his father, who covered up the murder. Gordon learns that Jason saw him with Barbara at a charity event some time prior, meaning she is the target. Jason approaches Barbara at the Ball and takes her to his home, witnessed by Selina.
21 21 "The Anvil or the Hammer" Paul Edwards Jordan Harper April 27, 2015 ( ) 4X6671 4.58[36]
Jason holds Barbara captive and forces her at knifepoint to choose his next victim. Nygma disposes of Dougherty's body and forges a letter from him saying a cold goodbye to Kringle. Bruce sneaks into Bunderslaw's office to open his safe, but Bunderslaw was expecting Bruce and has emptied it. He claims that Thomas knew of Wayne Enterprises' illegal activities but kept quiet. Junior executive Lucius Fox tells Bruce that Thomas did not approve of the company's crimes. Bruce confesses his and Selina's adventures, including Payne's death, to Alfred. Cobblepot sends the hitmen to attack Maroni, but is revealed to have set up the plan to frame Falcone and start a war between the two mob bosses. Gordon and Bullock locate Jason's apartment, but he and Barbara have already left for her parents' mansion. There, they find her parents dead, and Gordon kills Jason after a standoff. Later, Gordon reassures Lee that he no longer loves Barbara. Maroni begins attacking Falcone's men, and Essen calls all GCPD officers to remain on duty during the upcoming gang war.
22 22 "All Happy Families Are Alike" Danny Cannon Bruno Heller May 4, 2015 ( ) 4X6672 4.93[37] |
Initially these features were meant to be a part of the previous update, but I was afraid to jam too many of them into a single release. So it’s more like “1.8.0, Part 2”:
Added: New room - Sacrificial Chamber
Added: Auto-targetting for wands and missile weapons
Added: Read animation
Changed: Degradation system
Changed: Durability of all items is slightly increased
Changed: Wands of Telekinesis are replaced with Wands of Reach with a different effect on monsters
Changed: The way score is calculated
Fixed: Bugs and typos
…and more…
About changes in degradation system
When durability of an item decreases to zero, it doesn’t degrade now. Instead it keeps its level, but it breaks. For example, if you had a Venomous sword+3, it becomes Broken venomous sword+3. Broken items can be used as normal ones, but of course they perform worse. For fixing them the same means are used as for restoring durability: Scrolls of Upgrade, Scrolls of Enchantment etc. |
Policing Patient Privacy Patient Privacy and Medical Care
In 2008, outraged by a string of snooping incidents involving celebrities’ medical records, California legislators passed a groundbreaking law that compelled hospitals to quickly report patient privacy breaches and gave the state power to levy fines for such violations.
Since then, the state Department of Public Health has imposed more than 100 fines on hospitals and clinics, totaling more than $10.7 million. In just the past four years, state inspectors have written up hospitals more than 3,700 times.
But a ProPublica analysis of state data shows enforcement has been inconsistent.
Health inspectors in Los Angeles County — home to more than 100 hospitals — have issued only a handful of violation reports since 2012. Several of the biggest and best-known hospitals in Los Angeles have publicly acknowledged significant breaches during that time, but have clean records.
Meanwhile, inspectors in the neighboring region that encompasses the Inland Empire have cited hospitals repeatedly, some dozens of times, even for inadvertent errors. Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage has been hit with the most privacy-related deficiencies in the state, 278. The facilities with the second-most and seventh-most citations are also in Riverside County.
Most of Eisenhower’s deficiencies were minor and quickly corrected, records show, but some were not. In 2013, a hospital employee admitted she accessed the records of patients (who were also Eisenhower employees) to get their ages and marital status to find dates for a friend.
The state’s hit-and-miss enforcement isn’t confined to issuing deficiencies, a non-punitive report that requires hospitals to fix any problems identified. It also extends to the fines issued under the law, which often take years, if they come at all. Most of the fines meted out in 2015, for example, involved breaches that took place in 2012 and 2013. One went back to 2009.
ProPublica analyzed deficiencies cited against California hospitals since Jan. 1, 2012, excluding those for breaches before 2011, as well as all fines imposed since the law went into effect. (You can view them using our HIPAA Helper tool.)
Hospitals With the Most Deficiencies Below are the California hospitals that have received the most privacy-related deficiencies from the California Department of Public Health, from January 2012 to September 2015. Hospital name City # of deficiencies Eisenhower Medical Center Rancho Mirage 278 Riverside County Regional Medical Center Moreno Valley 120 University of California San Francisco Medical Center San Francisco 108 Contra Costa Regional Medical Center Martinez 101 Santa Clara Valley Medical Center San Jose 83 Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego 72 Riverside Community Hospital Riverside 65 Doctors Medical Center Modesto 65 Marin General Hospital Greenbrae 64 Community Regional Medical Center Fresno 60 Source: California Department of Public Health; ProPublica analysis
Brenda Klutz, a Sacramento health care consultant and former state health department official, called ProPublica’s findings significant and important.
“I think it’s something the department would certainly want to drill down on and get to the bottom of,” she said.
The California Department of Public Health declined interview requests but, in written responses, acknowledged the inconsistencies ProPublica found. Spokeswoman Anita Gore stated the department plans to address the discrepancies by providing more training to inspectors in district offices across the state and is in the process of hiring more inspectors.
“Medical and personal information breaches are a serious issue and are treated as such,” Gore wrote. She added that not all breaches are the same — some are accidental and others are malicious — and the state’s response will be different based on the facts.
Nowhere are the discrepancies starker than in Los Angeles County, where the county’s Department of Public Health is paid to inspect health facilities on the state’s behalf.
In part because of problems with the quality of Los Angeles County’s nursing home inspections, the state health department said it has provided extra training to the county’s inspectors and has added staff to increase monitoring of those county inspectors.
Los Angeles County’s public health department said in a statement that it follows the state’s policy for how to handle privacy incidents at hospitals. Under the policy — at least as Los Angeles County views it — citations are only issued if inspectors decide hospitals had a breach that’s “intentional, malicious or widespread” or if they don’t have adequate processes in place to prevent repeat breaches.
The county said it was not aware that its handling of privacy breaches varied from the state health department’s other offices, or that the state was concerned by this.
Kaiser Permanente operates multiple hospitals throughout California and has experienced firsthand the different approaches taken by the Department of Public Health’s various offices. Two Kaiser facilities — the South Sacramento hospital on Bruceville Road and the Sacramento hospital on Morse Avenue — ranked first and second for citations in Sacramento County, with 17 and 13. Meanwhile, Kaiser’s flagship in Los Angeles has had none, although it has reported privacy breaches to the state, a spokeswoman confirmed.
“We can’t speculate how this information is recorded or reported by the state, but we can tell you that we comply with all federal and state reporting requirements,” Vanessa Benavides, Kaiser Permanente’s chief compliance and privacy officer, said in a statement.
Citation numbers alone do not reflect whether hospitals are systematically violating patient privacy.
A spokesman at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles said the hospital has reported 164 privacy breaches to the state health department since July 2013. It hasn’t received a single citation since 2012. (It was fined in 2009 and 2010.)
The most-cited hospitals are not those with the most fines. Eisenhower, which has the most deficiencies in the state, has never been fined under California’s privacy statute. By contrast, San Francisco General Hospital had the most fines — seven — but ranked only 37th in total violations since 2012.
Troy Williams, San Francisco General’s chief quality officer, said he couldn’t say why the hospital ranked so high in fines when it hadn’t been cited all that often. Fines for other hospitals may be waiting in a queue, he said, or that the regulators that oversee San Francisco just recommend more fines.
“We had a privacy breach back in 2009 and we didn’t get penalized til 2012, and that’s about what we’ve been seeing, anywhere from two to three years,” he said. “It’s a pretty long time.”
Fines are recommended by district offices, but must be approved by health department officials in Sacramento. In a written statement, the department acknowledged that it takes a long time to assess fines, attributing the delays both to the agency’s workload and its “multiple layers of review.”
Klutz, the former state health official, said lengthy delays between violations and the resulting fines are problematic when the state’s goal is to prompt hospitals to change their behavior. “You want the consequence of a violation to closely follow the violation,” she said.
Recent audits of the state Department of Public Health have found inconsistencies in its licensing and certification arm, particularly oversight of nursing homes. A 2014 report commissioned by the department repeatedly cited inconsistencies and variability among its different regional offices. Another report from the California State Auditor in October 2014 found similar problems.
The California Legislature in 2008 passed two bills to safeguard privacy after hospital employees snooped in the records of celebrity patients including then-California first lady Maria Shriver, singer Britney Spears and actress Farrah Fawcett.
“Your private medical information shouldn’t be flapping in the breeze like an open hospital gown,” then-Assembly member Dave Jones, the author of one bill, told the Los Angeles Times. Jones, now the state’s insurance commissioner, declined a request for comment through a spokeswoman because he does not monitor the law’s implementation in his current job.
California’s law is distinct from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal patient privacy law known as HIPAA. Indeed, the state health department said it does not coordinate or consult with the federal agency that enforces HIPAA, even if the two agencies are investigating the same breach.
Officials at Eisenhower Medical Center said they weren’t aware the hospital had the most privacy deficiencies in the state until they were informed by ProPublica. “I don’t know why we would be number one except we do have a very strong program” to identify and report privacy violations, general counsel Michael Appelhans said. “We do a lot of training for employees” and do not discipline employees when they disclose unintentional violations.
Riverside County Regional Medical Center had the second-highest number of privacy deficiencies, 120. A number were quite serious: A patient’s HIV test results were released in response to an attorney’s subpoena, even though they should not have been; a staff member took a photo of a trauma patient with a knife stuck in his head and posted it on a social media site; an admissions clerk used a patient’s information to call and ask if she had a boyfriend; and the hospital sent the wrong patient’s information to the Department of Justice as part of a “Firearms Prohibition” reporting system.
Yet the hospital has never been fined by the state.
Riverside University Health System said in a statement that it has implemented “a series of corrective actions aimed at ensuring compliance” with the law. It hired new leaders to implement a “robust compliance” program, allocated more money to the effort, purchased new training software for staff, and hired a contractor to conduct a HIPAA security risk assessment. |
As Rich notes below, the Congressional Budget Office just released a report estimating that if Republicans pass a carbon copy of their January 2016 bill to partially repeal Obamacare, 18 million fewer people would have health insurance in 2018, and 32 million fewer in 2026. Premiums would go up by 20-25 percent in 2018, and double by 2026. Today at our Forbes blog, I have a post up detailing the problems with the CBO’s estimates. I’ll summarize them here.
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1. The CBO’s estimates assume no Obamacare replacement. Obviously, if you only repeal, without a replace, fewer people will have health insurance than they do under current law. Republicans have promised to repeal and replace the law, but the CBO could only score the repeal because the replacement has not yet been put into legislative language. Donald Trump promised over the weekend that his replacement would offer “insurance for everybody,” though his press secretary sought to dial back that promise.
2. The CBO massively overestimates the impact of Obamacare’s individual mandate. CBO believes that 18 million fewer people will have coverage in 2018 due to the fact that the partial repeal bill, H.R. 3762, immediately repeals the individual mandate. The CBO has long held a view of the mandate’s power that far exceeds reality. For example, CBO believes that 5 million fewer people will be enrolled in Medicaid as a result of repealing the mandate. But enrollees in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion are mostly exempt from the individual mandate, due to their low incomes.
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3. The GOP repeal bill is likely to treat Medicaid differently than H.R. 3762 does. In H.R. 3762, last year’s partial repeal bill, Republicans repealed the entirety of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. This time around, they may do something different, such as allowing states to continue their Medicaid expansions but with only 60 percent of the costs covered by the feds, like the old Medicaid program, instead of 90 percent as under the Obamacare expansion. Hence, the impact on coverage under Medicaid will be lower than in H.R. 3762.
4. The CBO has a poor track record of predicting Obamacare’s coverage numbers. In 2010, the CBO predicted that 21 million people would be enrolled in Obamacare’s exchanges. The actual number was 12 million. CBO does not appear to have significantly adjusted its thinking in light of these issues.
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The full article is here. For thoughts on how to cover the uninsured in a market-based way, read “Understanding FREOPP’s Obamacare Replacement in 10 Minutes or Less” at the website of our new think tank, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. |
There is no indication that a change behind the bench or in the uniformed personnel is imminent, but everyone’s antenna should be up around the Garden because what we’ve seen from the Rangers is not even close to good enough.
“I can’t think about whether there could be changes. That’s not my job or focus,” Mats Zuccarello said after the Blueshirts fell to 1-5 with Saturday night’s 3-2 defeat to the Devils at the Garden. “For me as an individual and for us as a team, we have to go day by day and try to improve.
“When you lose five out of six any time, it’s tough, and it’s probably tougher when it comes at the start. We’re just not playing well enough.”
It is difficult to determine whether the Rangers, who dominated the young and fresh Devils for the first 25 minutes and the final 15, but yielded three goals while going AWOL for those other 20 minutes, need shock treatment — Darryl Sutter, anyone? — or simply a tune-up.
This is a team that has had only three coaches since the NHL reopened for business in 2005-06 — Tom Renney followed by John Tortorella followed by Alain Vigneault — and whose ownership and management values stability. But 1-5, while looking disorganized much of the time, tends to prompt careful examination of the program.
It is also an organization that hasn’t pulled off a blockbuster in-season trade outside of the deadline in eons in a league where it is mighty difficult to do so. But 1-5, while looking disorganized much of the time, can prompt a general manager, in this case Jeff Gorton, to investigate his options.
Again. There is no signal that either a coaching change or a major deal is pending. But the last time the Rangers started 1-5 came in 1980-81 with Freddie Shero in his third season behind the bench, not even two years removed from taking his team on a wholly unexpected ride to the Stanley Cup finals before losing in five to Montreal.
Shero made it to the 20-game mark before he was replaced by Craig Patrick with the Blueshirts an ugly-as-sin 4-13-3. That was the time when 16 of the league’s 21 clubs qualified for the playoffs. And the Rangers, seeded 13th in the 1-16 draw, actually made it to the semifinals after upsetting high-seeds Los Angeles and St. Louis before getting swept out by the Islanders.
In other words, organizations could afford patience then as opposed to now, when eight of 16 in the East will qualify and the Blueshirts are in danger of losing contact after already losing three of their four at the Garden.
The Devils, whom the Rangers have finished ahead of in the standings for six straight years and by an aggregate 85 points the past three years, are 4-1 and feisty, speedy and innocent enough to believe that they can twist the recent imbalance of the Battle of the Hudson their way.
And there are Hurricanes, Leafs, Flyers and Puddy Tats in Florida, oh my, for a Rangers team that doesn’t yet seem quite a unit with which to contend. So far the Blueshirts are a takeoff of that timeworn campaign slogan: They seem tired and everyone else seems fresh.
The Rangers did put forth their most impressive segment of the season in gaining a 1-0 lead on Rick Nash’s goal from in front at 5:31 of the second. They had played with pace and set the tempo in outshooting New Jersey 16-5 at that point. But if the Blueshirts had seen the light, they descended into immediate darkness, turning the puck over for shift after shift after shift. They played panicky hockey.
After the goal, the Rangers did not generate their next shot from inside the blue line for another 21:24. Overall, though, they were an empty sandwich. Where was the beef?
“Teams aren’t doing it to us, we’re doing it to ourselves,” said J.T. Miller, who had a very strong game. “We played a strong north-south game, won battles, and then for whatever reason we got away from it. We just haven’t been able to play a full 60-minute game and you can’t win in this league without that.
“That’s been the story so far.”
The Rangers had best change the story themselves or the story is going to be changed for them. This cannot go on much longer. |
Christian Atsu scored five times in the Championship last season
Captain Jamaal Lascelles scored his second goal in as many games as Newcastle beat Stoke City to record their third successive Premier League win and climb inside the top four.
Christian Atsu put the hosts in front from a wonderful Matt Ritchie ball in the first half, before Xherdan Shaqiri curled in an equaliser from long range.
But Lascelles, who headed wide from a similar opportunity before the break, met another Ritchie delivery to win it.
Magpies forward Joselu had several chances to put the game beyond his former side, but found Potters goalkeeper Jack Butland in good form.
It was Stoke's first loss in the league since an opening-day defeat by Everton.
Ritchie inspires Newcastle win
It is the first time since 2000-01 that Newcastle have won three of their opening five Premier League games. They went on to finish 11th that season, but this Rafa Benitez side are flirting with the top four.
Their stay there may well be brief, but after what appeared to be a summer of frustration and missed transfer targets for the Spanish boss, he will be delighted by the performance of the squad at his disposal.
The wonderful left foot of Ritchie laid on both goals for the hosts, with Atsu drifting in at the back post to poke home a well-weighted cross for the opener.
Captain Lascelles said after the game Newcastle could have had "three, four or five" goals, but it was his header that proved to be the winner from another teasing Ritchie delivery.
The 28-year-old former Bournemouth man made three key passes as he and Ghana winger Atsu drifted between the lines to cause Stoke problems, especially in the first half.
Joselu, facing his former club for the first time since joining Newcastle in August, was one of those guilty of not putting more gloss on the scoreline, with only one of his five shots finding the target.
Shaqiri - the fox outside the box
Xherdan Shaqiri scored his first goal of the season in the defeat by Newcastle
Stoke winger Shaqiri does not score simple goals.
It was a fantastic finish to pull his side level from the Switzerland international, whose past six Premier League goals have all come from outside the box.
Shaqiri's brilliance was a rare clinical moment for the visitors, who saw Mame Biram Diouf head wide when unmarked in stoppage time having earlier sliced off target from inside the area.
Stoke have taken points off Arsenal and Manchester United in recent weeks, but Mark Hughes called for his side to be more "vigilant" after they were too easily prised open by Newcastle at St James' Park.
Hughes opted for a back three, in which Kurt Zouma shone, as the Chelsea loanee won 100% of his aerial duels and proved a starting point for Stoke to attack.
But it was fellow defenders Bruno Martins Indi and Kevin Wimmer who struggled with Joselu's relentless running before the ex-Potters striker was replaced late on.
Man of the match - Matt Ritchie (Newcastle)
With Atsu operating down the left, the left-footed Ritchie found most of his space down the opposite flank - as shown by his touches inside the Stoke half - from where he created the opening goal. Ritchie produced 10 crosses in total, more than any other player on the pitch and came away with both assists.
'The fans are thinking about Europe'
Media playback is not supported on this device Newcastle 2-1 Stoke: Rafa Benitez delighted by Magpies progress
Newcastle manager Rafa Benitez, who was back in the dugout after missing the win at Swansea last week following surgery: "Normally I am a little bit more agitated, but today I have to be careful, it will take some time to heal, but at least winning is always easier.
"This group of players works very hard. Sometimes we have some problems, but with the chances we can create we know they can give us the points.
"The fans, when you win so many games in a row, they are excited and thinking about Europe - for me it is one game at a time.
"It is a very competitive league and we are learning from that."
Media playback is not supported on this device Newcastle 2-1 Stoke City Mark Hughes rues missed chances for Potters
Stoke boss Mark Hughes: "We have played better than that in recent weeks and it's disappointing from our point of view. We were loose in our general play and the accuracy of our passing.
"We had to be vigilant, but towards the end of the game we made a mistake on the set-play after working really hard to get back on level terms.
"We went for it at the end, but it wasn't to be.
"Second half we controlled the game for the vast majority, they were just looking to break on us. We didn't quite do our jobs at a corner and Jack [Butland] wasn't able to save it. We'll move on to the next one.
"We are a good side and we can knock it around, but at key moments we have to be clinical."
The stats - Stoke's struggles on the road continue
Newcastle have won three consecutive top-flight games for the first time since November 2014.
Stoke have enjoyed just one win in their past 11 away league games, drawing three and losing seven.
Christian Atsu scored his first-ever Premier League goal in his 10th appearance in the competition (despite making his English top-flight debut in August 2014).
Matt Ritchie has provided 11 assists in the league since the start of last season, more than any other Newcastle player.
Ritchie has registered four assists in his past three Premier League games.
Only two of Xherdan Shaqiri's eight goals in the competition have come from inside the area.
The Swiss winger has been directly involved in two goals in his past two top-flight games (one goal, one assist), after none in his previous eight.
All four of Jamaal Lascelles' Premier League goals have been headers from corners.
What's next?
Stoke travel to Bristol City in the EFL Cup on Tuesday, before hosting Chelsea in the Premier League next Saturday (15:00 BST). Newcastle are not in action until next Sunday, when they visit Brighton (16:00). |
The House and Senate, fresh from passing separate tax bills, are now moving to make the combined product even worse.
It's quite an accomplishment. Both bills loot New Jersey's middle-class, explode the deficit, and engorge the rich. On that much, Republican leaders are in full agreement.
But the two bills are not identical. The Senate bill would repeal the mandate under Obamacare that requires everyone to buy insurance, while the House bill would not. That's the single biggest difference.
On Tuesday, we learned that the House is likely to surrender on this. That prediction came from Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Mean Committee, who drafted this monstrosity and will lead the effort to reconcile the two bills.
So, add it to the list. The Congressional Budget Office examined this, and found that 13 million Americans will lose coverage, and the rest of us will see premiums bump by 10 percent.
This fits with the continuing Republican crusade to widen the gap between rich and poor. The plutocrats are making their move, and it is brazen.
For the poor, it scatters a few crumbs, and then sets those provisions to expire in a few years. The result, according to their own official scorekeepers at the Joint Committee on Taxation is that most families earning under $75,000 will pay more in the end. It's a tax cut bill, but not for them.
The repeal of the Obamacare mandate will save $338 billion over the decade, since many of those who will drop care would qualify for a subsidy to purchase insurance. They are betting they won't get sick, driven to desperation by the cost of covering even their own share.
That $338 billion will cover about one-third of the cost of the corporate tax cut in the end. Shareholders and CEOs win, and low-wage families lose.
The deceit behind the GOP tax plan, exposed | Moran
The bills are packed with this kind of provision that shows the same tenderhearted concern for those of limited means. Families who are forced to borrow big sums to pay for college will take a hit, and so will graduate students who work to reduce their tuition payments. Who needs all that upward mobility, anyway?
To look at the impact on the rich, consider Donald Trump himself. We don't know exactly how fat his bounty will be, because he still refuses to release his tax returns. But it's hard to imagine a bill that is more fine-tuned to benefit him personally.
Forbes recently put his net worth at $3.1 billion, so eliminating the estate tax, as the House bill does, might save him more than $1 billion. The Senate would keep the tax, but scale it back.
Trump also operates dozens of "pass through" entities that will see their taxes cut by about one-third. And the House version eliminates the Alternative Minimum Tax, which cost Trump $31 million in 2005, the only year of his tax returns that has been made public.
All that was clear when Trump spoke about the bill two weeks ago in Missouri, and decided to flat-out lie again. "This is going to cost me a fortune," he said. "This is not good for me."
MacArthur's crusade to help red states loot Jersey | Moran
Is there no shame?
In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a bipartisan tax reform that cut corporate taxes deeply. But he worked on it with Democrats, including our own Sen. Bill Bradley, for over a year. They spread the benefits far and wide, and made sure it would not increase the national debt.
Today's nasty piece of work shows how broken our politics have become. It is a money grab by the rich, and polls show that the public knows that. It was done in haste and secrecy. It will leave us more divided, by region and by class. And it proves beyond doubt that the Republicans don't give a damn about the national debt after all.
Special thanks go to Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3rd), the lone Republican from New Jersey who supported this; and to Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th), who voted for it in the crucial early stages.
Tom Moran may be reached at [email protected] or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook. |
This week, temperatures in Dallas, Texas plunged into the low 30’s leaving many of the city’s homeless in extreme discomfort and even danger. Many of these people are not able to gain access to shelters and spend their days and nights on the street.
One Dallas taco shop, known as The Taco Stop, got a jump on the problem and decided to do what they could to help the homeless stay warm.
This is now the second year that shop owner Emilia Flores has set up the coat rack outside of her eatery. Flores first saw the idea when she was in Mexico and decided to bring it back with her to the states.
“This is a way of people not being embarrassed about asking,” said Flores. “They just come and pick what they need and leave.”
Whether the homeless, low income, or those just down on their luck, Flores’ only aim is to be kind to those in need.
“In small ways you can actually make a difference,” she said. “And this year particularly I thought that the world is so polarized and the country is so polarized, it’s just another reminder that it takes very little to make life easier for people.”
The entire wardrobe was stolen four times last year, but Flores and her customers replaced it each time. Rest assured, if the same happens this year, there will always be coats for those that need them at The Taco Stop.
Share and spread the movement! |
The governor of Puerto Rico is requesting an audit into how a small energy company from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Ryan Keith ZinkeInterior looking to rely on staffers with less training for park law enforcement: report DOJ investigation into former Interior chief goes to grand jury Overnight Energy: Zinke joins Trump-tied lobbying firm | Senators highlight threat from invasive species | Top Republican calls for Green New Deal vote in House MORE’s Montana hometown won a multimillion-dollar contract to restore power to Puerto Rico.
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló sent a letter Wednesday to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office requesting that the office audit how the Whitefish Energy company earned the contract.
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“I request that your office complete its review of the Whitefish Contract so that a final determination can be made as to the Whitefish Contract and address any other issues regarding the same by Monday, October 30, 2017,” Rosselló wrote in the letter.
He solicitado a la Oficina del Inspector General de EU que realice auditoría del proceso de contratación de Whitefish Energy por @AEEONLINE pic.twitter.com/fD7dTZMFZv — Ricardo Rossello (@ricardorossello) October 25, 2017
Rosselló said in the letter that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) representatives had also questioned how the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority had granted the contract to Whitefish.
He said the FEMA representatives said they had additional questions about the contract but that they initially believed it complied with FEMA regulations.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz earlier called for the contract with Whitefish Energy be “voided,” calling it “alarming.”
The tiny company reportedly only had two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico more than a month ago.
Whitefish later threatened to stop its work restoring power to the island over Cruz’s criticism.
“We’ve got 44 linemen rebuilding power lines in your city & 40 more men just arrived. Do you want us to send them back or keep working?” Whitefish Energy tweeted Wednesday.
House Democrats are also calling for an investigation into the contract. |
There were multiple reports a couple of weeks ago that Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), a longtime climate denier, has effectively muzzled state officials when it comes to global warming. Officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection claim to have been ordered not to use the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications.
Scott and his press office have insisted that the reports are wrong and there’s been no such order curtailing DEP officials’ word choice. In the governor’s defense, there’s no documented evidence to the contrary – only anecdotal claims from a wide variety of former employees at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, each of whom said they received unwritten instructions about climate-related words to avoid.
The story took an unsettling turn last week when a DEP employee was “reprimanded, sent home and told to get medical clearance before returning to the office” after criticizing the Keystone XL pipeline project and talking about his concerns surrounding the climate crisis.
But as the Miami Herald reported , the story also took a far more amusing turn at a state Senate hearing last week.
Gov. Rick Scott’s chief of emergency management, Bryan Koon, testifying Thursday before the Legislature, had a half-dozen chances to use the term “climate change.” But he would not say the C-words.
To be sure, it’s sad to see a state official who oversees emergency management go to great lengths to avoid using the words “climate change” out loud at a public hearing, but in this case, hearing lawmakers and the audience literally laughing out loud at the Scott administration official, was also kind of hilarious.
State Sen. Jeff Clemens (D) asked Koon about FEMA requirements that states have “climate change plan” in order to receive preparedness dollars. Koon said he’s aware of the requirements, and going forward, Florida’s hazard mitigation plan will “have language to that effect.”
Note, Koon wouldn’t say “climate change,” only “language to that effect.”
So, Clemens pressed further joking that he’s tempted to use the phrase “atmospheric reemployment” as language the governor might be able to endorse.
Koon added that Florida would, in its next hurricane mitigation plan, include “language discussing that issue.”
“What issue is that?” Clemens asked with a smirk.
“The issue you mentioned earlier,” Koon replied.
If the governor didn’t order officials to avoid the climate-related phrases, it’s hard to imagine why Florida’s chief of emergency management would go to such lengths. |
American political consultant and criminal
Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant, and convicted felon. A Republican, he joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign team in March 2016, and was campaign chairman from June to August 2016. Formerly an attorney, he forfeited his license to practice in January 2019.[2][3]
Manafort was an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. In 1980, he co-founded the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R. Black Jr., and Roger J. Stone,[4][5][6] joined by Peter G. Kelly in 1984.[7] Manafort often lobbied on behalf of foreign leaders such as former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, former dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, former dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko, and Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi.[8][9][10] Lobbying to serve the interests of foreign governments requires registration with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA); on June 27, 2017, he retroactively registered as a foreign agent.[11][12][13][14] On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted by a District of Columbia grand jury on multiple charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014.[15] The indictment had been requested by Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation.[16][17] In June 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest,[18] and he was ordered to jail.[19]
Manafort was prosecuted in two federal courts. In the Eastern District of Virginia, in August 2018, Manafort was convicted on eight charges of tax and bank fraud. A mistrial was declared on ten other charges.[20][21] In the DC District Court, Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. On November 26, 2018, Robert Mueller reported that Manafort violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to investigators, and on February 13, 2019, DC District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson concurred, voiding the plea deal.[22][23][24] Mueller then advised the court that sentencing guidelines call for Manafort to serve 19 and a half years to 24 years in prison. Manafort will be sentenced on his Virginia convictions on March 8, 2019, and on his DC District Court convictions five days later.[25][26]
Early life and education [ edit ]
Paul John Manafort Jr. was born on April 1, 1949,[27] in the city of New Britain, Connecticut. Manafort's parents are Antoinette Mary Manafort (née Cifalu; 1921–2003) and Paul John Manafort Sr. (1923–2013).[28][29] His grandfather immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 20th century, settling in Connecticut.[30] He founded the construction company New Britain House Wrecking Company in 1919 (later renamed Manafort Brothers Inc.).[31] His father served in the U.S. Army combat engineers during World War II[29] and was mayor of New Britain from 1965 to 1971.[8] His father was indicted in a corruption scandal in 1981 but not convicted.[32]
In 1967, Manafort graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School, a private Roman Catholic secondary school, closed in 1999, in New Britain, Connecticut.[33] He attended Georgetown University, where he received his B.S. in business administration in 1971 and his J.D. in 1974.[34][35]
Career [ edit ]
Between 1977 and 1980, Manafort practiced law with the firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease in Washington, D.C.[27] He forfeited his Connecticut Bar license on 11 January 2019.[2][36]
Political activities [ edit ]
In 1976, Manafort was the delegate-hunt coordinator for eight states for the President Ford Committee; the overall Ford delegate operation was run by James A. Baker III.[37] Between 1978 and 1980, Manafort was the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, and the deputy political director at the Republican National Committee. After Reagan's election in November 1980, he was appointed Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House. In 1981, he was nominated to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.[27]
Manafort was an adviser to the presidential campaigns of George H. W. Bush in 1988[38] and Bob Dole in 1996.[39]
Chairman of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign [ edit ]
In February 2016, Manafort approached Donald Trump through a mutual friend, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. He pointed out his experience advising presidential campaigns in the United States and around the world, described himself as an outsider not connected to the Washington establishment, and offered to work without salary.[40] In March 2016, he joined Trump's presidential campaign to take the lead in getting commitments from convention delegates.[41] On June 20, 2016, Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and promoted Manafort to the position. Manafort gained control of the daily operations of the campaign as well as an expanded $20 million budget, hiring decisions, advertising, and media strategy.[42][43][44]
On June 9, 2016, Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner were participants in a meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and several others at Trump Tower. A British music agent, saying he was acting on behalf of Emin Agalarov and the Russian government, had told Trump Jr. that he could obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton if he met with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin.[45] At first, Trump Jr. said the meeting had been primarily about the Russian ban on international adoptions (in response to the Magnitsky Act) and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton; he later said the offer of information about Clinton had been a pretext to conceal Veselnitskaya's real agenda.[46]
In August 2016, Manafort's connections to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian Party of Regions drew national attention in the US, where it was reported that Manafort may have received $12.7 million in off-the-books funds from the Party of Regions.[47]
On August 17, 2016, Donald Trump received his first security briefing.[48] The same day, August 17, Trump shook up his campaign organization in a way that appeared to minimize Manafort's role. It was reported that members of Trump's family, particularly Jared Kushner who had originally been a strong backer of Manafort, had become uneasy about his Russian connections and suspected that he had not been forthright about them.[49] Manafort stated in an internal staff memorandum that he would "remain the campaign chairman and chief strategist, providing the big-picture, long-range campaign vision".[50] However, two days later, Trump announced his acceptance of Manafort's resignation from the campaign after Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway took on senior leadership roles within that campaign.[51][52]
Upon Manafort's resignation as campaign chairman, Newt Gingrich stated, "nobody should underestimate how much Paul Manafort did to really help get this campaign to where it is right now."[53] Gingrich later added that, for the Trump administration, "It makes perfect sense for them to distance themselves from somebody who apparently didn't tell them what he was doing."[54]
In January 2019, Manafort's lawyers submitted a filing to the court in response to the allegation that Manafort had lied to investigators. Through an error in redacting, the document accidentally revealed that while he was campaign chairman, Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to be linked to Russian intelligence. The filing says Manafort gave him polling data related to the 2016 campaign and discussed a Ukranian peace plan with him. Most of the polling data was reportedly public, although some was private Trump campaign polling data. Manafort asked Kilimnik to pass the data to Ukrainians Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov.[55][56]
During a February 4, 2019 closed-door court hearing regarding false statements Manafort had made to investigators about his communications with Kilimnik, special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told judge Amy Berman Jackson that "This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating," suggesting that Mueller's office continued to examine a possible agreement between Russia and the Trump campaign.[57]
Lobbying career [ edit ]
In 1980, Manafort was a founding partner of Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R. Black Jr., and Roger J. Stone.[4][5][6][58] After Peter G. Kelly was recruited, the name of the firm was changed to Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK) in 1984.[7]:124
Manafort left BMSK in 1996 to join Richard H. Davis and Matthew C. Freedman in forming Davis, Manafort, and Freedman.[59]
Association with Jonas Savimbi [ edit ]
In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism stance. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), The Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign, Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group.[60] Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.[60]
Lobbying for other foreign leaders [ edit ]
Manafort was a lobbyist for former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos
Between June 1984 and June 1986, Manafort was a FARA-registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. The Reagan Administration refused to grant Manafort a waiver from federal statutes prohibiting public officials from acting as foreign agents; Manafort resigned his directorship at OPIC in May 1986. An investigation by the Department of Justice found 18 lobbying-related activities that were not reported in FARA filings, including lobbying on behalf of The Bahamas and Saint Lucia.[61]
Manafort's firm, BMSK, accepted $950,000 yearly to lobby for then-president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos.[62][63] He was also involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre,[64] securing a US$1 million annual contract in 1989,[65] and attempted to recruit Siad Barre of Somalia as a client.[66] His firm also lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya (earning between $660,000 and $750,000 each year between 1991 and 1993), and Nigeria ($1 million in 1991). These activities led Manafort's firm to be listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturers' Lobby".[67]
The New York Times reported that Manafort accepted payment from the Kurdistan Regional Government to facilitate Western recognition of the 2017 Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum.[68]
Involvement in the Karachi affair [ edit ]
Manafort wrote the campaign strategy for Édouard Balladur in the 1995 French elections, and was paid indirectly.[69] The money, at least $200,000, was transferred to him through his friend, Lebanese arms-dealer Abdul Rahman al-Assir, from middle-men fees paid for arranging the sale of three French Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, in a scandal known as the Karachi affair.[60]
Association with Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency [ edit ]
Manafort received $700,000 from the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1994, supposedly to promote the plight of the Kashmiri people. However, an FBI investigation revealed the money was actually from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency as part of a disinformation operation to divert attention from terrorism. A former Pakistani ISI official claimed Manafort was aware of the nature of the operation.[70] While producing a documentary as part of the deal, Manafort interviewed several Indian officials while pretending to be a CNN reporter.[71]
HUD scandal [ edit ]
In the late 1980s, Manafort was criticized for using his connections at HUD to ensure funding for a $43 million rehabilitation of dilapidated housing in Seabrook, New Jersey.[72] Manafort's firm received a $326,000 fee for its work in getting HUD approval of the grant, largely through personal influence with Deborah Gore Dean, an executive assistant to former HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce.[73]
Transition to Ukraine [ edit ]
Manafort's involvement in Ukraine can be traced to 2003, when Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska hired Bob Dole, Manafort's prior campaign candidate, to lobby the State Department for a waiver of his visa ban, primarily so that he could solicit otherwise unavailable institutional purchasers for shares in his company, RusAL.[74][75] Then in early 2004, Deripaska met with Manafort's Partner, Rick Davis, also a prior campaign advisor to Bob Dole, to discuss hiring Manafort and Davis to return the former Georgian Minister of State Security, Igor Giorgadze, to prominence in Georgian politics.[76] By December 2004, however, Deripaska shelved his plans in Georgia and dispatched Manafort to meet with Rinat Akhmetov in Ukraine to help Akhmetov and his holding firm, System Capital Management, weather the political crisis brought by the Orange Revolution.[76] Akhmetov would eventually flee to Monaco after being accused of murder, but during the crisis Manafort shepherded Akhemtov around Washington, meeting with U.S. Officials like Dick Cheney.[74][75][76] Meanwhile, the Orange Revolution would push Deripaska to also hire Davis-Manafort, this time to work for Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions.[77]
Lobbying for Viktor Yanukovych and involvements in Ukraine [ edit ]
Manafort also worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of Viktor Yanukovych (and his Party of Regions during the same time span) from December 2004 until the February 2010 Ukrainian presidential election,[78][79][77] even as the U.S. government (and U.S. Senator John McCain) opposed Yanukovych because of his ties to Russia's leader Vladimir Putin.[39] Manafort was hired to advise Yanukovych months after massive street demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution overturned Yanukovych's victory in the 2004 presidential race.[80] Borys Kolesnikov, Yanukovych's campaign manager, said the party hired Manafort after identifying organizational and other problems in the 2004 elections, in which it was advised by Russian strategists.[79] Manafort rebuffed U.S. Ambassador William Taylor when the latter complained he was undermining U.S. interests in Ukraine.[60] According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department annual report, Manafort's company received $63,750 from Yanukovych's Party of Regions over a six-month period ending on March 31, 2008, for consulting services.[81] In 2010, under Manafort's tutelage, the opposition leader put the Orange Revolution on trial, campaigning against its leaders' management of a weak economy. Returns from the presidential election gave Yanukovych a narrow win over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 demonstrations. Yanukovych owed his comeback in Ukraine's presidential election to a drastic makeover of his political persona, and—people in his party say—that makeover was engineered in part by his American consultant, Manafort.[79]
In 2007 and 2008, Manafort was involved in investment projects with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecoms company) and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash (redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City).[82] The Associated Press has reported that Manafort negotiated a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005.[83] A witness at Manafort's 2018 trial for fraud and tax evasion testified that Deripaska loaned Manafort $10 million in 2010, which to her knowledge was never repaid.[32]
At Manafort's trial, federal prosecutors alleged that between 2010 and 2014 he was paid more than $60 million by Ukrainian sponsors, including Rinat Akhmetov, believed to be the richest man in Ukraine.[32]
In May 2011, Yanukovych stated that he would strive for Ukraine to join the European Union,[84] In 2013, Yanukovych became the main target of the Euromaidan protests.[85] After the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution (the conclusion of Euromaidan), Yanukovych fled to Russia.[85][86] On March 17, 2014, the day after the Crimean status referendum, Yanukovych became one of the first eleven persons who were placed under executive sanctions on the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN) by President Barack Obama, freezing his assets in the US and banning him from entering the United States.[87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][a]
Manafort then returned to Ukraine in September 2014 to become an advisor to Yanukovych's former head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Serhiy Lyovochkin.[77] In this role, he was asked to assist in rebranding Yanukovych's Party of Regions.[77] Instead, he argued to help stabilize Ukraine. Manafort was instrumental in creating a new political party called Opposition Bloc.[77] According to Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, "He thought to gather the largest number of people opposed to the current government, you needed to avoid anything concrete, and just become a symbol of being opposed".[77] According to Manafort, he has not worked in Ukraine since the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[98][99] However, according to Ukrainian border control entry data, Manafort traveled to Ukraine several times after that election, all the way through late 2015.[99] According to The New York Times, his local office in Ukraine closed in May 2016.[47] According to Politico, by then Opposition Bloc had already stopped payments for Manafort and this local office.[99]
In an April 2016 interview with ABC News, Manafort stated that the aim of his activities in Ukraine had been to lead the country "closer to Europe".[100]
Ukrainian government National Anti-Corruption Bureau studying secret documents claimed in August 2016 to have found handwritten records that show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Manafort, although they had yet to determine if he had received the money.[47] These undisclosed payments were from the pro-Russian political party Party of Regions, of the former president of Ukraine.[47] This payment record spans from 2007 to 2012.[47] Manafort's lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Manafort didn't receive "any such cash payments" as described by the anti-corruption officials.[47] The Associated Press reported on August 17, 2016, that Manafort secretly routed at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012 on Party of Regions' behalf, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy.[13] Associated Press noted that under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department, which Manafort reportedly did not do.[13] The lobbying firms unsuccessfully lobbied U.S. Congress to reject a resolution condemning the jailing of Yanukovych's main political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.[101]
Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million in debt to interests connected to interests favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump presidential campaign in March.[102] These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Russian oligarch and close Putin associate Oleg Deripaska.[102] This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a failed Ukrainian cable television business.[102] In January 2018, Surf Horizon Limited, a Cyprus-based company tied to Deripaska, sued Manafort and his business partner Richard "Rick" Gates, accusing them of financial fraud by misappropriating more than $18.9 million that the company had invested in Ukrainian telecom companies, known collectively as the “Black Sea Cable.”[103] An additional $9.9 million debt was owed to a Cyprus company that tied through shell companies to Ivan Fursin [uk], a Ukrainian Member of Parliament of the Party of Regions.[102] Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni maintained in response that "Manafort is not indebted to Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign."[102] During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Manafort, via Russian-Ukrainian Kiev-based operative Konstantin Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political developments to Deripaska, though there is no evidence that the briefings took place.[104][105] Reuters reported on June 27, 2018, that an FBI search warrant application in July 2017 revealed that a company controlled by Manafort and his wife had received a $10 million loan from Deripaska.[106][107]
According to leaked text messages between his daughters, Manafort was also one of the proponents of violent removal of the Euromaidan protesters, which resulted in police shooting dozens of people during 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots. In one of the messages, his daughter writes that it was his "strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered."[108]
Manafort has rejected questions about whether Kilimnik, with whom he consulted regularly, might be in league with Russian intelligence.[109] According to Yuri Shvets, Kilimnik previously worked for the GRU, and every bit of information about his work with Manafort went directly to Russian intelligence.[110]
2017 activities [ edit ]
Registering as a foreign agent [ edit ]
Lobbying for foreign countries requires registration with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Manafort did not do so at the time of his lobbying. In April 2017, a Manafort spokesman said Manafort was planning to file the required paperwork; however, according to Associated Press reporters, as of June 2, 2017, Manafort had not yet registered.[11][13] On June 27, he filed to be retroactively registered as a foreign agent.[111] Among other things, he disclosed that he made more than $17 million between 2012 and 2014 working for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.[112][113]The sentencing memorandum submitted by the Office of Special Council on February 23, 2019 stated that the "filing was plainly deficient. Manafort entirely omitted [his] United States lobbying contracts . . . and a portion of the substantial compensation Manafort received from Ukraine." [114]
China, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador [ edit ]
Early in 2017, Manafort supported Chinese efforts at providing development and investment worldwide and in Puerto Rico and Ecuador.[115] Early in 2017, he discussed possible Chinese investment sources for Ecuador with Lenín Moreno who later obtained loans worth several billion US dollars from the China Development Bank.[115] In May 2017, Manafort and Moreno discussed the possibility of Manafort brokering a deal for Ecuador to relinquish Julian Assange to American authorities in exchange for concessions such as debt relief from the United States.[116]
Manafort acted as the go between for the China Development Bank's investment fund to support bailout bonds for Puerto Rico's sovereign debt financing and other infrastructure items.[115] Also, he advised a Shanghai construction billionaire, Yan Jiehe (严介和) who owns the Pacific Construction Group (太平洋建设) and is China's seventh richest man with a fortune estimated at $14.2 billion in 2015, on obtaining international contracts.[115][117][118][119]
Kurdish independence referendum [ edit ]
In mid-2017, Manafort left the United States in order to help organize the September 25, 2017, Kurdish independence referendum, something that surprised both investigators and the media.[120] He was hired by the Iraqi Kurdish Leader Masoud Barzani's son Masrour Barzani who heads the Kurdish Security Council.[115][121] To help Manafort's efforts in supporting Kurdish freedom and independence, his longtime associate Phillip M. Griffin traveled to Erbil prior to the vote.[115] The referendum was not supported by United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis.[122] Manafort returned to the United States just before both his indictment and the start of the 2017 Iraqi–Kurdish conflict in which the Peshmerga-led Kurds lost the Mosul Dam and their main revenue source at the Baba GurGur Kirkuk oilfields to Iraqi forces.[123][124]
Homes, home loans and other loans [ edit ]
Manafort's work in Ukraine coincided with the purchase of at least four prime pieces of real estate in the United States, worth a combined $11 million, between 2006 and early 2012.[125] In 2006, Manafort purchased an apartment on the 43rd floor of Trump Tower for a reported $3.6 million.[126] Manafort, however, purchased the unit indirectly, through an LLC named after him and his partner Rick Hannah Davis, "John Hannah, LLC."[127] That LLC, according to court documents in Manafort's indictment, came into existence in April 2006,[128] roughly one month after the Ukrainian parliamentary elections that saw Manafort help bring Yanukovych back to power on March 22, 2006.[129] According to Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem, the Ukrainian Oligarch sponsoring Yanukovych, Rinat Akhmetov, paid the $3 million purchase price for Manafort's Trump Tower unit for helping win the election.[74] It was not until March 5 of 2015, when Manafort's income from Ukraine dwindled,[130] that Manafort would transfer the property out of John Hannah, LLC, and into his own personal name so that he could take out a $3 million loan against the property.[131]
Since 2012, Manafort has taken out seven home equity loans worth approximately $19.2 million on three separate New York-area properties he owns through holding companies registered to him and his then son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai, a real estate investor.[132] In 2016, Yohai declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy for LLCs tied to four residential properties; Manafort holds a $2.7 million claim on one of the properties.[133]
As of February 2017 , Manafort had about $12 million in home equity loans outstanding. For one home, loans of $6.6 million exceeded the value of that home; the loans are from the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, Illinois, whose CEO, Stephen Calk, was a campaign supporter of Donald Trump and was a member of Trump's economic advisory council during the campaign.[132] In July 2017, New York prosecutors subpoenaed information about the loans issued to Manafort during the 2016 presidential campaign. At the time, these loans represented about a quarter of the bank's equity capital.[134]
The Mueller investigation is reviewing a number of loans that Manafort has received since leaving the Trump campaign in August 2016, specifically, $7 million from Oguster Management Limited, a British Virgin Islands-registered company connected to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, to another Manafort-linked company, Cyprus-registered LOAV Advisers Ltd.[135] This entire amount was unsecured, carried interest at 2%, and had no repayment date. Additionally, NBC News found documents that reveal loans of more than $27 million from the two Cyprus entities to a third company connected to Manafort, a limited-liability corporation registered in Delaware. This company, Jesand LLC, bears a strong resemblance to the names of Manafort's daughters, Jessica and Andrea.[136]
Investigations [ edit ]
FBI and special counsel investigation [ edit ]
The FBI reportedly began a criminal investigation into Manafort in 2014, shortly after Yanukovych was deposed.[137] That investigation predated the 2016 election by several years and is ongoing. In addition, Manafort is also a person of interest in the FBI counterintelligence probe looking into the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election.[138][11]
On January 19, 2017, the eve of Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, it was reported that Manafort was under active investigation by multiple federal agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Director of National Intelligence and the financial crimes unit of the Treasury Department.[139] Investigations were said to be based on intercepted Russian communications as well as financial transactions.[140] It was later confirmed that Manafort was wiretapped by the FBI "before and after the [2016] election ... including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump." The surveillance of Manafort began in 2014, before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of United States.[141]
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed on May 17, 2017, by the Justice Department to oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and related matters, took over the existing criminal probe involving Manafort.[138][11][142] On July 26, 2017, the day after Manafort's United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing and the morning of his planned hearing before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, FBI agents at Mueller's direction conducted a raid on Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, in regard to the Russian meddling in the 2016 election.[143][144] Initial press reports indicated Mueller obtained a no-knock warrant for this raid, though Mueller's office has disputed these reports in court documents.[145][146] United States v. Paul Manafort was analyzed by attorney George T. Conway III, who wrote that it strengthened the constitutionality of the Mueller investigation.[147]
Concerning Paul Manafort's ties to corruption in Ukraine and Russia and to U.S. President Donald Trump, Sarah Kendzior, a journalist and scholar of authoritarian regimes, made the associations explicit, telling MSNBC television host Joy Reid:
"I remember when Manafort was selected to run [Donald J.] Trump's campaign, and I thought: 'O my god — you know, Paul Manafort, the dictator-lackey, the oligarch-lackey. Manafort has been under federal investigation before. Manafort is notorious for being involved in organized crime.'[148] "And of course he went in and actually did things. He changed the Republican national platform to please his benefactors in Ukraine. He has been working with people like [Roger] Stone and Trump, associated with them, for 30 years. You can trace the crimes of Paul Manafort, the crime machine, for 30 years. "Post-indictment, he went on to commit even more crimes. So there's such a wealth of information about Paul Manafort in the public domain that I don't think we quite need the Mueller report to see that information. What we need are indictments. We need people like Manafort to be put behind bars as a matter of national security and as a matter of public safety."[148]
After Joy Reid alluded to his prior service to Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and to Manafort having perpetrated electoral fraud in Ukraine, Kendzior continued:
"Why hadn't he been indicted? He's been indicted for crimes he committed decades ago. Why didn't they indict him before? Why did the media not go after Manafort as soon as he was selected as the campaign chairman, instead of putting him on the Sunday shows, as if this were a normal thing? None of this is normal. People have normalcy bias. They think: 'Okay, if it's really that bad, if he's really that much of a criminal, clearly someone would do something about it.' Well, guess what. No one did anything, and now you have a Russian asset as the president of the United States, backed up by a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. That's what you get when you don't act in time."[148]
Congressional investigations [ edit ]
In May 2017, in response to a request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Manafort submitted over "300 pages of documents...included drafts of speeches, calendars and notes from his time on the campaign" to the Committee "related to its investigation of Russian election meddling".[149] On July 25, he met privately with the committee.[150]
A congressional hearing on Russia issues, including the Trump campaign-Russian meeting, was scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for July 26, 2017. Manafort was scheduled to appear together with Donald Trump Jr., while Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was to testify in a separate closed session.[151] After separate negotiations, both Manafort and Trump Jr. met with the committee on July 26 in closed session and agreed to turn over requested documents. They are expected to testify in public eventually.[152]
Private Investigation [ edit ]
The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier,[153] is a private intelligence report comprising investigation memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele.[154] Manafort is a major figure mentioned in the Trump–Russia dossier, where allegations are made about Manafort's relationships and actions toward the Trump campaign, Russia, Ukraine, and Viktor Yanukovych. The dossier claims:
That "the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT" had "managed" the "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership", and that he used "foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries". [155] [156] [157] [158] (Dossier, p. 7)
(Dossier, p. 7) That former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych told Putin he had been making supposedly untraceable[159] "kick-back payments" to Paul Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time.[160] (Dossier, p. 20)
Criminal charges [ edit ]
Manafort's 2018 mug shot
Plea agreement by Paul Manafort providing full cooperation with the Special Counsel
Statement of charges Paul Manafort pleaded guilty and agreed were true, dated September 14, 2018
On October 30, 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign.[161][162] The indictment against Manafort and Rick Gates was issued on October 27, 2017.[162][163] The indictment charged them with engaging in a conspiracy against the United States,[17][163] engaging in a conspiracy to launder money,[17][163] failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts,[17][163] acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal,[17][163] making false and misleading statements in documents filed and submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),[17][163] and making false statements.[17][163] According to the prosecutors, Manafort laundered more than $18 million, money he had received as compensation for lobbying and consulting services for pro-Russian, former Ukrainian prime minister Viktor Yanukovych.[164][163]
Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to the charges at their court appearance on October 30, 2017.[165][166] The US government asked the court to set Manafort's bail at $10 million and Gates at $5 million.[166] The court placed Manafort and Gates under house arrest after prosecutors described them as flight risks.[167] If convicted on all charges, Manafort could face decades in prison.[168][169]
Following the hearing, Manafort's attorney Kevin M. Downing made a public statement to the press proclaiming his client's innocence while describing the federal charges stemming from the indictment as "ridiculous".[170] Downing defended Manafort's decade-long lobbying effort for Viktor Yanukovych, describing their lucrative partnership as attempts to spread democracy and strengthen the relationship between the United States and Ukraine.[171] Judge Stewart responded by threatening to impose a gag order, saying "I expect counsel to do their talking in this courtroom and in their pleadings and not on the courthouse steps."[172]
On November 30, 2017, Manafort's attorneys said that Manafort had reached a bail agreement with prosecutors that would free him from the house arrest he had been under since his indictment. He offered bail in the form of $11.65 million worth of real estate.[173] While out on bond, Paul Manafort worked on an op-ed with a "Russian who has ties to the Russian intelligence service", prosecutors said in a court filing[174] requesting that the judge in the case revoke Manafort's bond agreement.[175]
On January 3, 2018, Manafort filed a lawsuit challenging Mueller's broad authority and alleging the Justice Department violated the law in appointing Mueller.[176] A spokesperson for the department replied that "The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants".[177]
On February 2, 2018, the Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to dismiss the civil suit Manafort brought against Mueller.[178] Judge Jackson dismissed the suit on April 27, 2018, citing precedent that a court should not use civil powers to interfere in an ongoing criminal case. She did not, however, make any judgment as to the merits of the arguments presented.[179]
On February 22, 2018, both Manafort and Gates were further charged with additional crimes involving a tax avoidance scheme and bank fraud in Virginia.[180][181] The charges were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, rather than in the District of Columbia, as the alleged tax fraud overt actions had occurred in Virginia and not in the District.[182] The new indictment alleged that Manafort, with assistance from Gates, laundered over $30 million through offshore bank accounts between approximately 2006 and 2015. Manafort allegedly used funds in these offshore accounts to purchase real estate in the United States, in addition to personal goods and services.[182]
On February 23, 2018, Gates pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to investigators and engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the United States.[183] Through a spokesman, Manafort expressed disappointment in Gates' decision to plead guilty and said he had no similar plans. "I continue to maintain my innocence," he said.[184]
On February 28, 2018, Manafort entered a not guilty plea in the District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Jackson subsequently set a trial date of September 17, 2018, and reprimanded Manafort and his attorney for violating her gag order by issuing a statement the previous week after former co-defendant Gates pleaded guilty. Manafort commented, "I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence."[185] On March 8, 2018, Manafort also pleaded not guilty to bank fraud and tax charges in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Judge T. S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia set his trial on those charges to begin on July 10, 2018.[186] He later pushed the trial back to July 24, citing a medical procedure involving a member of Ellis's family.[187] Ellis also expressed concern that the special counsel and Mueller were only interested in charging Manafort to squeeze him for information that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to Trump's impeachment.[188]
Friends of Manafort announced the establishment of a legal defense fund on May 30, 2018, to help pay his legal bills.[189]
On June 8, 2018, Manafort was indicted for obstruction of justice and witness tampering along with long time associate Konstantin Kilimnik.[190] The charges involved allegations that Manafort had attempted to convince others to lie about an undisclosed lobbying effort on behalf of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Since this allegedly occurred while Manafort was under house arrest, Judge Jackson revoked Manafort's bail on June 15 and ordered him held in jail until his trial.[191] Manafort was booked into the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, at 8:22 PM on June 15, 2018, where he was housed in the VIP section and kept in solitary confinement for his own safety.[192][193][194][195] On June 22, Manafort's efforts to have the money laundering charges against him dismissed were rejected by the court.[196][197] Citing Alexandria's D.C. suburbia status, abundant and significantly negative press coverage, and the margin by which Hillary Clinton won the Alexandria Division in the 2016 presidential election, Manafort moved the court for a change of venue to Roanoke, Virginia on July 6, 2018, citing Constitution entitlement to a fair and unbiased trial.[198][199] On July 10, Judge T. S. Ellis ordered Manafort to be transferred back to the Alexandria Detention Center, an order Manafort opposed.[200][201]
Trials [ edit ]
The numerous indictments against Manafort were divided into two trials.
Manafort was tried in the Eastern District of Virginia on eighteen charges including tax evasion, bank fraud, and hiding foreign bank accounts.[20] The trial began on July 31, 2018.[202][203] On August 21, the jury found Manafort guilty on eight of the eighteen charges, while the judge declared a mistrial on the other ten.[20] He was convicted on five counts of tax fraud, one of the four counts of failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud.[204] The jury was hung on three of the four counts of failing to disclose, as well as five counts of bank fraud, four of them related to the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago run by Stephen Calk.[205] He was scheduled to be sentenced for his eight jury convictions in the Virginia court in early February 2019. However, on January 28 the judge in that case postponed the sentencing date until the controversy over his plea agreement in D.C. court is resolved.[206] On February 15, 2019 Mueller’s office advised the court that Manafort should receive a sentence of 20 to 24 years.[207]
Manafort's trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was scheduled to begin in September 2018.[208] He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, making false statements to investigators, and witness tampering.[209] On September 14, 2018, Manafort entered into a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to two charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering.[210] He also agreed to forfeit to the government more than $22 million in cash and property,[211] and to co-operate fully with the Special Counsel.[212] A tentative sentencing date for Manafort's guilty plea in the D.C. case has been set for March 2019.[213]
Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018, court filing that Manafort had repeatedly lied to prosecutors about a variety of matters, breaching the terms of his plea agreement. Manafort's attorneys disputed the assertion.[214] On December 7, 2018, the special counsel's office filed a document with the court listing five areas in which they say Manafort lied to them, which they said negated the plea agreement.[213] DC District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled on February 13, 2019 that Manafort had violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to prosecutors.[215]
In a February 7, 2019, hearing before U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson, prosecutors speculated that Manafort had concealed facts about his activities to enhance the possibility of his receiving a pardon. They said that Manafort's work with Ukraine had continued after he had made his plea deal and that during the Trump campaign, he met with his campaign deputy Rick Gates, who also had pleaded guilty in the case, and with alleged Russian Federation intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, in an exclusive New York cigar bar. Gates said the three left the premises separately, each using different exits.[216]
Surrender of law licence [ edit ]
In 2017, Massachusetts lawyer J. Whitfield Larrabbee filed a misconduct complaint against Manafort in the Connecticut Statewide Grievance Committee, seeking his disbarment on the basis of "conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation."[217] In 2018, after Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy, the Connecticut Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel brought a case against Manafort.[218] In January 2019, ahead of a disbarment hearing, Manafort resigned from the Connecticut bar and waived his right to ever seek readmission.[219][220]
Personal life [ edit ]
Manafort has been married to Kathleen Bond Manafort since August 12, 1978; she graduated from George Washington University with a B.B.A. in 1979, became an attorney after graduating from Georgetown University Law Center with a J.D. and passing her Virginia Bar exam in 1988, and became a member of the DC Bar in 1991.[221] They have two adult daughters.[108]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ [89][92] The individuals on the first list of United States sanctions for individuals or entities involved in the Ukraine crisis are Sergey Aksyonov, Sergey Glazyev, Andrei Klishas, Vladimir Konstantinov, Valentina Matviyenko, Victor Medvedchuk, Yelena Mizulina, Dmitry Rogozin, Leonid Slutsky, Vladislav Surkov, and Viktor Yanukovych.
References [ edit ] |
Graziano Pelle is set to swap Southampton for China in a £13 million deal, according to multiple reports.
Following an impressive Euro 2016, the Italy striker had been linked with a move to join outgoing Azzurri manager Antonio Conte at Chelsea.
Pelle is set to leave St Mary's this summer but Press Association Sport and other outlets reported the 30-year-old will be heading to the Far East rather than West London.
Chinese Super League side Shandong Luneng is believed to be the destination in a deal worth £13m, which would be a profit for Southampton of around £4m on a player signed from Feyenoord two years ago.
Pelle, who turns 31 next week, only has a year remaining on his Southampton deal and the Premier League club were reportedly reluctant to offer an extension.
According to PA Sport, the forward has been eyeing a move to China since January, which is part of the reason behind the timing of Saints' move for QPR's Charlie Austin.
A ready-made replacement, Austin will compete with Jay Rodriguez and Shane Long in the attacking positions if Pelle's move is completed.
Saints are actively searching for a defensive midfielder to replace Victor Wanyama and have already signed Nathan Redmond from Norwich in a £10m deal, just days before they collected a club-record fee when Sadio Mane moved to Liverpool. |
We see them everywhere — starring in TV commercials, delivering TED Talks, and smiling on magazine racks.
Great leaders are often synonymous with tremendous wealth and prestige. Yet, remarkably enough, most weren’t born into affluence. Many faced seemingly insurmountable odds and earned their red carpet time and exclusive interviews through hard work, intelligence, and tenacity.
The way I see it, there are five qualities that every successful leader embodies. Some of my biggest inspirations share all five traits, achieving unprecedented success in their fields. These characteristics aren’t magical or inaccessible. They’re qualities you can work on and apply to your own leadership style.
1. Vision
It takes guts to start something completely new. When Bill Gates began his career in technology, computers were earmarked for the wealthy and required a lumbering, 6-foot-wide machine to complete even a simple task.
But when you have a vision, you see things based on how they should be — rather than how they are. Gates saw that these machines could be household products, and with hard work and intelligence, transformed that vision into Microsoft.
Find something you’re passionate about, and ask yourself how it can be improved. When you can answer that question, make a move — no matter how bizarre. Gates dropped out of Harvard to pursue his vision. You don’t have to be that extreme, but it demonstrates how a clear vision can drive you to take a big leap of faith to bring it to fruition.
2. Resilience
Oprah Winfrey was born in the Deep South during the civil rights movement. She was sexually abused as a child, had a child as a teenager, and was raised by a single mother. But she bounced back from crippling poverty to become one of the world’s most successful women in entertainment.
Tony Robbins was raised by a single mother and lived in extreme poverty; he washed dishes in the bathtub of his 400-square-foot apartment. Still, he was determined to succeed. He became a life coach and motivational speaker and now has a net worth of more than $30 million.
What do these two people have in common? They’re resilient. Life did not deal them an easy hand, but they rose above their problems and found success. In business, you’re bound to encounter pitfalls, but without them, success wouldn’t be nearly as sweet.
You can’t just give up when you lose an important client or your market share plummets. Look at your failures through a different lens, and use them to fortify your next endeavor.
3. Intelligence
Richard Branson never went to college, but he’s a very intelligent man. Virgin America, Virgin Mobile, and Virgin Records — among other enormous enterprises — all flourished under Branson’s tutelage despite very little cash. In fact, Branson started Virgin Records from the trunk of his car.
Your level of formal education doesn’t necessarily indicate your intelligence. Branson took calculated risks by asking the right questions of himself and creating a plan. That’s all intelligence is: smart risks at the right time. Don’t judge yourself — or others — by the degrees you have under your belt.
4. Action
All the intelligence in the world will go to waste unless you act on your vision. Gates knew how to act. He saw a gap in the market that no one else did and put his vision in motion, which made him one of the most famous entrepreneurs of the home computer revolution.
Taking action isn’t as simple as it sounds. Procrastination or fear can easily paralyze you, but it’s important to remember that nothing great ever happened on its own. Connect with the present, block out emotional resistance, and carefully time your next move. Knowing the best time to act is something most successful people have mastered.
5. Intensity
I love my job. I get to help people realize their fitness and spiritual goals every day. To see a student of mine shine after months of hard work is a huge payoff, but I wouldn’t be a very good stockbroker, gardener, or mechanic. Why? I’m simply not interested in those things.
Every day for more than 20 years, Robbins would practice public speaking. With that much repetition, his fear of speaking dissipated, and he could focus on being passionate, intense, and driven for his audience.
Without intensity and passion for what you do, you won’t be very good at it — at least not as good as you could be. You may already be passionate about something, but for those who aren’t, experiment, ask questions, and explore new areas. You may find your interest in a place you never would have expected.
Each of these leaders had a vision to change the world and the determination to take action with passion and resilience. They wanted to see their vision become a reality, regardless of the obstacles or challenges they faced. It wasn’t great education or luck that made them successful, and it certainly wasn’t money.
With clear focus and determination, we’re all capable of achieving our greatest potential. Success is an inward step. Don’t look around you for validation for what you do. Get inside yourself and find the vision you want to create.
__________________
Shawn T. McIntyre is founder and CEO of Shawn McIntyre Fitness. Shawn is a professional fitness model and trainer who offers online training. He coaches clients to help them achieve success in fitness and life. |
On New Years Day, Colorado became the first state to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana. The new legislation has provoked a Denver-bound flood of "Ganjapreneurs" and kickstarted what is sure to be a very profitable pot tourism trade.
Yet the business is far less hippie and far more button-down than it appears.
The Colorado state government enforces the sale of marijuana with a set of regulations (500 pages in all) designed to shut out the black market. For one, it stipulates digital tracking of marijuana plants from seed to sale, using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.
The cannabis industry is generally eager to comply with even the most stringent government regulations, thereby proving the marijuana market can be both lucrative and legitimate. However, implementation problems have slowed the retail pot business's anticipated boom.
Mike Elliott, executive director of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group, a trade association that promotes and protects Colorado's medical marijuana industry, explains that business owners who want to continue using their current sales software still need to input data into the state-operated system manually. This leads to a doubling of information, wasted man-hours and the potential for human error in recording sales transactions.
"We have to use MITS (Marijuana Inventory Tracking Solutions) and that's fine," says Elliott. "But if we want to keep using our own point of sale systems, which has been such an integral part of making the business work, it's a problem. The state system has taken over and suddenly we're not as able keep track of things internally."
Cheyenne Fox attaches newly arrived RFID tags to pot plants maturing inside a grow house in Colorado. Image: Brennan Linsley/Associated Press
Since 2010, Colorado's medical marijuana growers and dispensaries have been required to report their plants' whereabouts to the Colorado Department of Revenue's Marijuana Enforcement Division. Earlier methods were analog and a little sloppy. The technology-reliant MITS was instituted in late 2013.
"People like MITS because it cuts down on the amount of paperwork they do," says Julie Postlethwait, a spokesperson for the MED. "The electronic manifests are automatically in our system. On the paper system, they would either email them in or fax them in, but we didn't acknowledge if we received them."
MITS was written into Colorado law before the sale of recreational marijuana was legalized. "It's an enforcement tool so that the MED knows how much marijuana is grown in the state of Colorado and where it is in the facilities," says Postlethwait. Its original goal was to digitize and facilitate the laws already on the books; the timing of the retail marijuana legalization was a happy accident.
In the medical and retail marijuana industry, marijuana plants are propagated by clipping a stem from one plant to create a new one. The new plant is issued an RFID tag with a unique 24-digit ID number, which is entered into the government's online system. When the plant is harvested, its leaves and buds are shipped to a marijuana retailer with a new RFID tag and a printed label detailing the plant's origins. The system is updated at every step of the production process.
The regulatory framework also requires 24-hour video surveillance of facilities, as well as routine compliance checks.
MITS's goal is to ensure that marijuana plants are coming from state-authorized grow facilities and being transported to state-authorized retailers, cutting off the black market. The system can also be reverse-engineered in case of contamination or illness — nothing of the sort has happened yet — by allowing the government to track tainted pot back to its seller.
"Our end goal is always public safety," says Postlethwait.
An employee trims away unneeded leaves from pot plants, harvesting the plant's buds to be packaged and sold at Medicine Man marijuana dispensary, which opened as a recreational retail outlet in Jan. 2014, in Denver. Image: Brennan Linsley/Associated Press
As an untested and controversial industry, marijuana retailers are intent on following these regulations to the letter. However, the government system hasn't made it easy. It relies on the store's own bookkeeping records to keep track of a plant from the moment it's harvested to the moment it leaves the store, and these two sets of software are mostly incompatible.
According to Elliott, around 500 marijuana retailers have been registered in the state of Colorado, along with 126 infused product manufacturers and 700 growers. Not all of those retailers were able to open their doors on Jan. 1, though: Weather delays and the holiday season meant some retailers did not receive the tags in time to open on "Green Wednesday," and implementing the new system requires time and training.
There have been complaints about the cost as well: $0.25 to $0.45 per RFID tag, depending on type, and the tags are not reusable.
Most significant is the state-mandated system does not integrate with the tracking and point-of-sale software medical marijuana dispensaries have been using to keep tabs on their products for years.
"Point of sale companies like MJ Freeway and BioTrack have very good, developed systems," says Elliott. "They've been very user-friendly. That's the biggest rub, though — the new system is not communicating with them. You have to manually input data a second time: once for the state's program and then again for this other system."
Doubling up inventory calculations not only means wasted man-hours, it leaves room for human error, Elliott says. The smallest mistake in calculating or inputting weights and quantities can be critical. (A medical marijuana facility that stocks more pot than what its patients require faces fines and penalties.)
Employees trim pot plants to be sold at Medicine Man marijuana dispensary in Denver, Friday Dec. 27, 2013. Medicine Man was among the first batch of Denver businesses to receive a license allowing them to legally sell recreational marijuana. Image: Brennan Linsley/Associated Press
The state government acknowledges its frustration, and Postlethwait says the state's RFID tag manufacturer, Franwell, plans to evolve its system to work in tandem with sales software. However, she can't specify when that might happen.
"We were always very open that [MITS] was something we were going to develop," she says. "We always said, 'If you want to buy software to do your point of sale, that is a business decision you're making on your own.'"
The regulatory challenges don't end with RFID. Marijuana businesses are almost exclusively cash-only, which makes precise auditing of store transactions a long process with potential for error. Retailers face stringent packaging regulations — on par with prescription drugs, says Elliott — and it has been difficult for manufacturers to meet their needs. Plus, stores that sell both medical and recreational marijuana face extra hurdles in complying with differing regulations for each business.
As a whole, the cannabis industry is striving to remain totally compliant with the state government's regulations despite the challenges. It's an industry under the microscope, after all, and what happens in Colorado over the next few months and years will likely affect federal and state governments' stance on legalizing marijuana. So despite the hiccups, "we're very supportive of the seed-to-sale tracking program," says Elliott. "It's helping to bring legitimacy, transparency, accountability to this program."
Elliott suggests the industry is simply experiencing growing pains as it evolves. He adds, "We're not coming anywhere close to meeting demand."
BONUS: The History of Marijuana in the U.S., Man |
Following the announcement that the UK Government has approved the expansion of UK airport capacity, including expansion of London Heathrow Airport, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has issued the following statement:
Emissions from aviation are a relatively small but increasingly important source of UK greenhouse gas emissions (making up 6% of total emissions in 2014). Since 1990, aviation emissions have doubled whilst economy-wide emissions have reduced by more than a third.
It is important that decisions about UK airport capacity are consistent with the UK’s commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050, as set out in the Climate Change Act.
It is the CCC’s role to monitor overall progress against carbon budgets and the 2050 target, rather than examine specific projects. Following the announcement about the Government’s preferred option to expand capacity at London Heathrow Airport, and in light of the recent UN-led agreement on controlling global aviation emissions, the Government should now publish a strategic policy framework for UK aviation emissions.
This should include a plan to limit UK 2050 aviation emissions to 2005 levels (implying around a 60% increase in passenger demand), which the Committee has previously advised is an appropriate contribution to the UK’s 80% target for 2050. The Committee’s advice on the level of 2050 aviation emissions was incorporated by the Airports Commission in their analysis and recommendations to Government.
The Government should also consider strategic options and innovation priorities to pursue deeper cuts in aviation emissions, consistent with the objective in the Paris Agreement to move towards overall net zero emissions in the second half of the century.
Aviation emissions are currently below the level they were in 2005. Ensuring aviation emissions do not exceed 2005 levels by 2050 could be partly achieved with continued improvements in fuel and operational efficiency and use of sustainable biofuels. Depending on technological and related progress, this could imply limiting the growth in demand to around 60% above 2005 levels by 2050 (45% above current levels).
The Committee will continue to monitor developments in aviation emissions and policy.
Notes |
A UK Independence Party spokesman has called on West Midlands Police to clarify their position on prosecuting female genital mutilation cases, following a tweet by the force shedding doubt on a zero-tolerance approach.
Jane Collins MEP, UKIP’s Home Affairs spokesman, said in a press release she was “worried” by a tweet put out by West Midlands Police (WMP) which seemed to suggest that prosecuting the perpetrators of female genital mutilation (FGM) was not a priority for the force as it was “unlikely to benefit the child”.
In case they delete it, a screengrab of that astonishing tweet by @WMPolice saying they don’t want to prosecute for mutilation #FGMletstalk pic.twitter.com/T28ZXLP00X — English Gardener (@Richard_1942) February 26, 2017
A follow-up tweet by Detective Gill Squires, FGM expert for WMP, intending to clarify the force’s stance merely further confused the issue by suggesting that the force will only prosecute if it is “in the child’s best interests” to do so.
@wmpsentinel @WMPolice How could it ever NOT be in the child’s interests? — Orwellian disciple (@AstlesLeftfoot1) February 26, 2017
Collins said: “It is in the best interests of everyone that this child abuse is eradicated. I cannot envisage a situation where the mutilation of a young girl which causes physical and psychological trauma, would result in a decision not to prosecute.
“It is only by prosecuting – and I agree with the Commons Home Affairs select committee that it is a ‘national scandal’ there has yet to be a successful prosecution in the UK since 1985 when it was made illegal – that people will realise we will not live in a country with more than one set of laws.”
WMP later deleted the original tweet, replacing it with a link to a 2015 article which they said would “help explain” the issue.
The article explains that FGM has been a specific offence since the mid-80s, while further legislation introduced in 2015 allowed for parents to be prosecuted if they fail to prevent their daughters being cut.
It goes on to quote DC Squires as saying, “We’re still trying to fully understand the prevalence of FGM in the West Midlands but as a force we’re much better now at identifying potential victims – and with teachers, healthcare professionals and social workers more switched on to the signs we are seeing an increase in reporting. […] When a child is born to a woman who’s undergone FGM, steps are in place to stress to the family the practice is illegal.”
Detailing how the force planned to use posters in “hard-to-reach” communities to tackle the practice, she added: “The poster has been developed with community members and support groups and will be placed in schools and prominent locations…it’s a ‘softer’ approach to try and work alongside communities to change attitudes about the illegal practice.”
FGM is not endorsed by any religion but supposed religious reasons are often used to justify the practice #FGMletstalk pic.twitter.com/k54SqHrwf2 — West Midlands Police (@WMPolice) February 24, 2017
But Collins called for a tough approach to the issue, saying: “I don’t care if people say it’s cultural – it is sick, wrong and illegal and must be enforced with stronger sanctions.
“That is why this kind of message put out in the tweet from WMP worries me.” |
For the plan to use nuclear weapons on tar sands, see Project Cauldron
Operation Cauldron was a series of secret biological warfare trials undertaken by the British government in 1952. Scientists from Porton Down and the Royal Navy were involved in releasing biological agents, including pneumonic and bubonic plague, brucellosis and tularaemia and testing the effects of the agents on caged monkeys and guinea pigs.[1][2]
The tests [ edit ]
The experiments were carried out at sea, off the coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, aboard a floating pontoon, supported by the ship Ben Lomond. The test animals were placed in cages on the deck of the pontoon and biological agents dispersed either from a bomb suspended from a boom or by being sprayed. After being exposed, the animals were taken aboard the Ben Lomond and those that died were dissected to determine the cause of death. 3,492 guinea pigs and 83 monkeys were used in the tests.[1]
The tests were initially judged to be a success, both in terms of the effectiveness of the biological agents and the test platform. However, a year later, this decision was reversed, with the tests on plague bacteria being described as a "failure" and the statement that "brucellosis has not increased its reputation as a dangerous agent."[1]
Carella incident [ edit ]
In the final test of the series, the Fleetwood-based trawler Carella, with a crew of eighteen, ignored warnings to steer clear and unwittingly sailed through a cloud of plague bacteria (Yersinia pestis) on its return from a fishing trip to the waters around Iceland, causing concern about a possible plague outbreak around its home port in north-west England. The Carella was not stopped for disinfection or medical examination but was kept under covert observation by a destroyer and a fisheries vessel for twenty-one days, and the ship's radio communications were monitored for any kind of medical distress call. The surveillance period included a period of shore-leave at Blackpool, during which the crew mixed with the people of the town as usual.[2] None of the crew became ill.
The incident was dealt with at the highest levels of government, going through the First Sea Lord to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rab Butler, who was deputising for the absent Winston Churchill. The event was successfully covered up and, after the danger had passed, most of the documents relevant to the case were ordered to be burnt.[2] Even the crew of the Carella were unaware of the incident until approached by a BBC documentary crew[3] more than fifty years later.[2]
Ministerial intervention [ edit ]
In 1994, the local Member of Parliament, Calum Macdonald called upon[4][5][6] the then-Secretary of State for Defence, Malcolm Rifkind, to commission an independent report on Operations Cauldron and Hesperus in 1952 and 1953, and all similar chemical weapons tests about which the public reasonably seek reassurance. An initial Commons question by him to the Ministry Of Defence was referred to the director-general of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire.
In his letter, Dr Pearson said: The papers on Operations Cauldron and Hesperus are classified, and it would not be in the national interest to make these available as the information therein could be misused by states seeking to acquire a biological weapons capability.
The pathogens used were as follows: (a) Operation Cauldron: the pathogens that cause brucellosis and plague. (b) Operation Hesperus: the pathogens that cause brucellosis and tularaemia. Dr Pearson added: The safety aspects of handling, transport and packaging were all carefully addressed to ensure there was no danger to any of those engaged in the trial.
There is no cause to believe that there was any hazard to the public or the environment and there is no evidence to the contrary.
Mr MacDonald responded at the time saying: This reply is deeply unsatisfactory and does not provide any of the reassurances which I and my constituents seek about the tests.
He continued to outline his belief that it was not satisfactory that the same Government organisation which carried out potentially highly dangerous experiments should be allowed to pass the final judgment on itself regarding the health implications both then and subsequently.[7]
Ruling against the MOD [ edit ]
On the 21st of January 2008 the Information Commissioner's Office ruled against the MOD to release a video they made on Operation Cauldron. The video contains images of identifiable individuals, and the MOD argued that it would need to obscure or mask the faces of the individuals, as this information would be exempt under sections 38, 40(2) and 44 of the Act. The MOD estimated that the process of masking would exceed the cost limit as set out in section 12 of the Act, and therefore refused the complainant’s request. The Commissioner found that the footage did contain images of identifiable individuals, some of whom may still be alive, but that disclosure of the footage would not breach any of the data protection principles. For this reason the Commissioner found that the MOD wrongly applied the exemption under sections 38, 40(2) and 44, and the cost limit under section 12. The Commissioner therefore directed the MOD to disclose the footage in full.[8]
The video released was about 47 minutes long and showed the pontoon which was situated off the coast of the Tolsta District on the North East of the Isle of Lewis. The exact location was between Cellar head and Tolsta head. Many of the Tolsta villagers can remember the ship and seeing white gas clouds in the testing. The video shows a flight coming in and describes the arrival of the biological agents from the Microbiological Research Department (MRD) at Porton Down. On the pontoon they placed the animals in small boxes and released the agents, before returning after to check the results and burning the dead animals.[9] |
And finally we have my favorite of the collection. This is Tiffany Case and boy do I love it. Never before have I been swatching polishes and been stopped in my tracks by the pretties. I ended up wearing this almost 2 full days before finally taking it off and swatching the others for you. This polish still has the fine glitter but unlike the others it also has some larger hex glitters in there and they give it some extra shine.
I highly recommending buying at least Tiffany Case and Jinx from this collection, but I love them all. I'm so happy with my selections. And I have some nail art ideas involving these, I just don't know if it's possible. I see some experimenting in my future.
Did you bring any Bond Girls home? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*all polishes featured in this post were purchased by me
OH HOLY CRAP PEOPLE! I've been obsessing over this collection since they announced it a few months ago. I may have been that annoying girl calling Ulta asking if they were in yet. And finally...finally I got my greedy little hands on the four colors I wanted. Also, this means that I am now officially on the textured polish bandwagon. So yeah, that happened. Anyways, lets take a look at these pretties.I picked up four of the six colors available. I've got Jinx, Pussy Galore, Tiffany Case, and Honey Ryder to show you today. Solitare (white with pink shimmer) and Vespa (dark purple) just really didn't do it for me, so I choose to leave them behind at the store. I'm sure someone else will give them a good home.Lets talk formula first. Overall, these polishes were great. They apply easily, dry fairly quick, and don't disappoint. I know the directions say don't apply with a base coat, but I always use my Orly Rubberized Bonder under these and never have any problems.Up first we have Pussy Galore. Bravo to OPI for naming a polish after the most controversial Bond Girl, namewise, out there. And let's face it, his girlfriends have had some jacked up names over the years (I'm looking at you Dr. Holly Goodhead).I kinda wish I had waited a while longer to take this photo, because the ring finger doesn't look totally dry in this picture. Pussy Galore is a soft baby pink and while it isn't my favorite of the collection, it goes well with my skin tone. It's the softest of the four shades I picked and in my book, it's a winner.Next up is Honey Ryder. Side story: I totally swatched these while watching Dr. No. Yes it was on purpose. I had to get in the mood right? Anywho... Honey Ryder is like the textured version of OPI Glitzerland. I didn't pull out my bottle to check, but I feel like they would be a perfect match. This is a warm shade of gold and I also love this softer shade from the collection.Next up we have Jinx. I know this polish is everyone else's favorite of the collection, but for me it's in second place. It's a close second, but my heart is elsewhere. I love the shade here. It's leans red-orange-coral with gorgeous gold shimmer. It's classy but with spice. |
Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced Thursday that a senior Hamas operative, who was arrested at the Allenby Bridge last month, revealed during his interrogation that Hamas uses the Islamic Movement in Israel as a front to advance its activities and goals in Jerusalem.
The operative, Mahmoud Toama, is a member of Hamas's General Shura Council, headed by Khaled Mashaal, which is the body responsible for making all of the organization's policy decisions in all fields, including military decisions, according to the Shin Bet.
Hamas uses the Islamic Movement to transfer money to projects in Jerusalem, such as paying for Arab youths to remain constantly on the Temple Mount in the guise of religious students in order to prevent Jewish pilgrimage to the holy site, Toama told the Shin Bet.Hamas pays the youths a permanent salary of NIS 4,000-5,000 each month. Toama added that Hamas keeps its ties with the Islamic Movement secret in order to prevent the movement from entanglements with Israeli authorities.Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch is in secret contact with the leadership of Hamas, according to Toama.The Shin Bet stated that in recent months there has been a rise in violent activity at the Temple Mount, in some cases causing police to close entrance to the holy site to Jewish visitors.Toama also told his Shin Bet interrogators about the connections between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.Toama began as a Muslim Brotherhood operative in 1983 and, like many other Brotherhood members, joined Hamas when it was formed in 1987 as the Palestinian arm of the Brotherhood.He told the Shin Bet that eight representatives of the international Muslim Brotherhood sit on Hamas's Shura Council, which sets the group's policy and manages its activities.Toama said that both Turkey and Qatar harbor members of Hamas's leadership, including many of the prisoners released in the Gilad Schalit deal.Both countries provide Hamas with financial aid, in addition to offering the group political support.Toama, who served in a key financial position in Hamas's leadership, told his Shin Bet interrogators that, until recently, Iran was the main source of Hamas funding. Iran stopped its funding in the last year, causing a financial crisis in the organization.Hamas also operates a number of companies that generate funds, mostly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, many of them in the real estate field.Other Islamic charity organizations in Saudi Arabia which receive donations from all over the world also help to fund Hamas, Toama stated.Toama said that Hamas had decided to enter into a unity government with Fatah out of necessity, and the move did not mark a change in the organization's world view.Toama was indicted Thursday at the Samaria Military Court.
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The 150 Thousand Dollar "P"
County Clerk's typo jeopardizes family's home
by Robert Franco |
This is a classic case that demonstrates why an owner's policy of title insurance is so important. A county clerk made a typo in the index that may cause an Ohio family to lose their home.
According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, Andy Mateja bought his home for $320,000 in 2001 and has made all of his mortgage payments on time. In August 2007, he was served with foreclosure papers. The previous owner, Dr. Subbarayudu Koppera, had a $150,000 second mortgage to Chase that was never paid.
The Chase mortgage went on record in 1998 but due to a typo by the Muskingum County Recorder's office it was indexed as "Koppe p a" instead of "Koppe r a."
Muskingum County Recorder Karen Vincent, whose office made the spelling mistake, testified that a correction was made in 2006. Vincent told the Dispatch that to her knowledge, it was the first time an error has been made, but she declined to comment further.
The first time? I seriously doubt that. Mistakes seem to be all too common these days. I blame the computer systems that have been adopted by counties. In the old book indexes, I doubt this lien would have been missed. First, "Koppera" and "Koppepa" would have most likely been indexed on the same page and the abstractor would have most likely caught it, even it was spelled wrong. Second, the method of entry in the books provided a forced error checking procedure. The entry was made initially in the books before the volume and page had been assigned. Then, when the volume and page was ready, a different county employee would have had to find it in the index to enter the volume and page.
With the computer systems, that "double checking" is not being done - at least not effectively. The first time the information is entered, the volume and page is assigned. Someone else may "look at it" to make sure it is right, but they aren't forced to "search" for it to make sure it can be found.
Though Mateja paid for a title search, it is clear why it did not disclose the existence of the Chase mortgage. Had he purchased an owner's policy of title insurance, it would not matter why the lien was missed - he would have had a valid claim and his clear title would have been protected. Unfortunately, in many areas of Ohio, owner's policies are not customary - perhaps they should be.
Dr. Koppera has since moved to New Albany, Ohio where he purchased a $682,000 home in 2004. He even modified the Chase mortgage in 2004, long after he sold the home encumbered by the lien. Apparently he had been making payments on it for quite some time. Unfortunately, Koppera and his wife have been slapped with several civil judgments for unpaid debts and federal, state and county taxes. There probably isn't a good chance that he is in a position to pay Chase at this point.
He believes the title company made a mistake. "They should've known it and stopped right there so the lien was clear. Instead of me taking the cash, I would've paid the lien," Koppera said regarding the sale of the house. "They didn't do their job, and they should pay for it."
Seriously? He failed to notify the title company that he also owed on a mortgage to Chase and he thinks the title company should pay for it now? Even after he continued to make payments, he never contacted the title company to alert them to the fact that the mortgage was missed. The lien was misindexed.... though it could have possibly been found, had a search been done with first few letter of the name (KOPP*), it is not the examiner's fault for failing to find a misindexed document. "Koppera" and "Koppepa" are not idem sonans (alike sounding names).
So, Chase has a valid mortgage and a right to foreclose on the collateral. It is not their fault that it was misindexed and missed on the title search. The title company did not discover the lien during the course of their title search, and I do not believe that it was due to negligence on their part. Regardless, the new owner opted NOT to purchase an owner's policy of title insurance. Clearly, Koppera owes Chase the money and he should pay it, but unfortunately, it appears that he is unable to do so. Clearly the county recorder's office was negligent in their duty to properly index the mortgage. So, to what extent may the Recorder be held liable?
In Ohio, the recorder is required to give a bond in the amount of $10,000 conditioned for the faithful discharge of the duties of his office. (ORC 317.02). If the county recorder does or omits any other act, contrary to Sections 317.01 to 317.33 of the ORC, the recorder shall be liable solely on the recorder's bond to any party harmed by the improper conduct. (ORC 317.33). If that covers a negligent misindexing, it would appear that the potential recovery would be limited to the $10,000 bond.
However, this is from a 1970 Attorney General's opinion that deals specifically with negligent errors and omissions.
County recorders and common pleas court clerks and their deputies are liable, both personally and on their bonds, to the persons who may have been injured through their negligent errors and omissions, including those arising from indexing and filing of papers within their respective offices. The principle of sovereign immunity does not apply to protect public officers and their deputies from personal liability in the performance of ministerial duties: OAG No. 70-077 (1970).
Personally, I believe the $10,000 bond is woefully inadequate. Typically abstractors and title agents carry limits of $500,000 to $1,000,000 on their E&O policies. County recorders and their deputies can cause losses just as severe and often times, there mistakes render it impossible for those searching the records to ever find a misindexed document.
This is certainly an unfortunate situation for Meteja and his family. He does not deserve the consequences that have been befallen him. Owner's policies should be the norm and hopefully this story will enlighten people to the value of title insurance. Though there are many people who tell homebuyers that they do not need title insurance, such advice is reckless at the very least. |
Borussia Dortmund have been hit with another set-back after learning their star striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will be sidelined through injury.
Aubameyang has been in blistering form for the German giants this season and has scored seven goals in seven games - placing him second on the Bundesliga goalscoring chart.
But the pacey forward will now be spending time on the sidelines after the club revealed he has picked up a calf injury.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is the latest name added to the Borussia Dortmund injury list
DORTMUND'S NEXT FIVE Union Berlin (H) DFB-Pokal - Oct 26 Schalke (H) Bundesliga - Oct 29 Sporting Lisbon (H) Champions League - Nov 2 Hamburg (A) Bundesliga - Nov 5 Bayern Munich (H) Bundesliga - Nov 19
Despite the season still being in its infancy Dortmund have found themselves plagued by injury, with several big name players in the treatment room.
Manager Thomas Tuchel this week confirmed several of his star men, including Aubameyang, are out.
'(Christian) Pulisic, (Ousmane) Dembele and Aubameyang haven't trained today,' Tuchel told a press conference, report FourFourTwo.
Dortmund's growing injury list has been a concern for manager Thomas Tuchel
'Pulisic and Dembele are both ill and Aubameyang has a swelling in the calf muscles.
'And it will take several weeks, at least, for Marco Reus to return,' Tuchel added.
Dortmund are preparing for their upcoming DFB-Pokal Cup clash against second division side Union Berlin.
Tuchel will be hoping his side will be able to get a win over the Berlin men and reignite their faltering season.
Dortmund, with their much depleted squad, are yet to win a league game in October and have only picked up two points from their last three matches.
Wonderkid Ousmane Dembele is also injured and cannot cover the absence of Aubameyang
Aubameyang's partner in crime Marco Reus (right) is also out of action for the German giants
The injury crisis is even more untimely considering the Schwarzgelb's upcoming fixture schedule.
A local derby against rivals Schalke lies ahead at the weekend while a clash with Bayern Munich awaits Dortmund in mid November. |
German Football League (DFL) president Reinhard Rauball has told Sport Bild he does not believe football is ready for gay players to come out.
Rauball was speaking a fortnight after four Bundesliga clubs, along with lower division clubs and politicians, signed the Berlin Declaration against homophobia in football.
The document is accompanied by a guide called Football and Homosexuality, released by the German FA (DFB), which will be sent to all clubs and county football associations.
The DFL, along with 14 Bundesliga clubs, has not signed the Berlin Declaration and, in his interview with Sport Bild - the media partner of the declaration - Rauball, 66, said: "With a good conscience, at this time I would not be able to advise footballers to come out in public.
"To advise a player to make this step - football is not ready yet. There is still a lot of work to do. That's disgraceful but, despite all the good talk, this is my 100% belief."
Rauball cited the example of Jason Collins, the only NBA basketball professional to have come out so far.
"Ever since then, he has not found a club," he said. "If I advised a 25-year old footballer to do it [come out], the danger is that his career might as well be over.
"There will certainly be not a problem between the players themselves or the club officials and the player. But that, during away games, the player gets the acceptance he deserves… I cannot guarantee that."
Rauball's comments were criticised by Berlin paper Der Tagesspiegel, which said: "The time for a coming out in men's football has not come, Rauball believes.
"But who else, other than a high-ranking official, could bring about a change of eras? Who else could make sure everything is set for young men, who fear for their careers, to end the hiding? Sadly, Reinhard Rauball missed that chance."
Anton Hysen, the son of former Liverpool player Glenn Hysen,and ex-Leeds United player Robbie Rogers, now at LA Galaxy, have both come out as gay in the recent past.
Asked when he believed a top-flight player in the UK might come out, Rogers said: "I have no clue when someone will feel they can do that. I hope soon."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd |
Russian media outlets are reporting that an 11 year-old boy named Yevgeny Salinder has uncovered the remains of a wooly mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago. After stumbling upon the extinct animal, Yevgeny ran home to tell his parents, who in turned alerted the local paleontologists (well, as local as these things can get in Siberia, anyway). And as their preliminary analysis has revealed, it may be one of the most pristine remnants of a wooly mammoth ever discovered.
The remains were found about three kilometers from the Sopkarga polar weather station in Taymyr, Russia, where Yevgeny lives with his parents. The area is in the far north of Russia in the most northern part of the Eurasian continent.
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Once the paleontologists started digging around the remains, it became obvious fairly quickly that it wasn't just bits of fragment or a badly decayed carcass, but the entire body of an approximately 15 year-old male that weighed half a ton. And incredibly, they were able to gather well-preserved fragments of its skin, meat, fat — and even several organs.
Because the remains were buried in the permafrost, the scienctists had to use traditional tools such as axes and picks, plus a specially designed device that allowed them to thaw ice layers with the help of steam. And even with the help of these tools, it still took them a week to get the entire thing out of the ground.
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Preliminary analysis indicates that the mammoth featured a camel-like hump — a fatty deposit that would have made life considerably easier for the ice age-era mammal. This may help to confirm a long standing hypothesis that mammoths did in fact feature such humps.
Speaking to Russia's Pravda, the deputy director of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexei Tikhonov said that, "For the first time, it was seen in Paleolithic drawings, and everyone tried to guess why the animals are humped. Scientists believed that it was so because the animals had very large neural spines of the thoracic vertebrae. Now it turns out that it is not true to fact. We can see that this animal was very well adapted to the conditions of the north. The animals were saving fat for winter."
The next stop for the wooly mammoth, which has been named "Zhenya" (a short form of Yevgeny, the name of the boy who found it) will be at the Zoological and Paleontological Institutes of Moscow and St. Petersburg where further analysis will be conducted.
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Sources: Pravda.ru, rt.com. |
The tech industry’s house is on fire but everyone is talking about the curtains.
Net neutrality is a principle that argues Internet service providers should treat all data the same regardless of the source or destination. This means that all websites and services are accessible to everyone. For much of its life, the Internet has been unbound, and we’ve seen our lives dramatically shaped by its innovations. We have devices in our pockets that keep us connected to the things and people we care about. We have the flexibility to consume and to spread information at an unlimited rate. And we have the freedom to build entire businesses that enhance people’s lives far beyond what was possible a decade ago. Creating the next Google or Twitter is simply a matter of our willpower and not our buying power. Eliminating net neutrality undermines our ability to use the Internet in the ways that have made it life-changing.
When I say “our” I’m thinking of more than just the collective our. I’m thinking of the millions of Egyptians who documented their efforts towards independence. I’m thinking about the men and women in Ferguson, Missouri who captured police abuse, even as they faced tear gas and guns. But in my heart of hearts I’m also thinking about a more specific our – the our I call my home. The tech community. We are the ones who use the Internet the most, but we take for granted a world where everyone has access to the things we make. Now we see more and more often that we may not have that freedom for much longer.
Earlier this year, the DC Circuit Court determined that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to enforce net neutrality rules. The decision came as the result of a loophole that doesn’t classify service providers as “common carriers.”1 The FCC dealt a second blow to net neutrality when it proposed rules allowing ISPs to create internet fast-lanes. These fast-lanes would prioritize the traffic of organizations with pockets deep enough to pay.2 The proposal is currently under review and open to public comment. The number of replies totals over a million and counting, with most opposing the plan. Even so, companies like Cox Cable, AT&T, and Comcast have already begun violating net neutrality on grander scales.
The largest case involves Netflix streaming. Comcast subscribers noticed poor performance when attempting to watch videos, but the quality improved when they routed their traffic through a virtual private network.3 Netflix accused Comcast of slowing down their connection to give an unfair advantage to its own Xfinity TV service.4 Netflix ended up having to pay Comcast to deliver its content to customers. Let me repeat that: a major ISP compromised the quality of a competing service until it agreed to payments. Net neutrality can prevent this type of extortion. Customers on Verizon soon complained of similar issues, forcing Neflix to begin making payments to a second service provider.
Comcast argued that the massive amount of bandwidth required was Netflix’s burden.5 This is a galling accusation when you consider the facts. The American people gave ISPs billions of dollars to support exactly the type of service that Netflix provides. In 1994, Verizon guaranteed the state of Pennsylvania that it would provide every home and business with high speed fiber in exchange for $2.1 billion in tax breaks. None of that infrastructure was ever built.6 To make matters worse, Verizon made the same deal a decade later in New York City with an expected completion date of 2014. Guess what? Verizon has still not delivered on its promise.
At its core, net neutrality is about regulating an industry that has seen its power grow unrestricted and without accountability. NYC is the poster child for necessary regulation. For many of us, Time Warner Cable is our only option. Ask any New Yorker about their Internet service and you’ll hear horror stories. I’ve dealt with the company since I moved here, and I’ve had nothing but problems.
In the last month I’ve called Time Warner support at least five times for connection issues. I’ve had two service technicians come to my home, I’ve replaced my router, and purchased a new modem. I’ve swapped out every cable, moved my router to a different location, and spent hours diagnosing my home network over the phone. And despite all that, I still have a poor connection that prevents me from loading my email and FaceTiming with my family. I have these problems despite being technology savvy and paying my bill on time each month. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Broadband internet is only part of the story. The most recent net neutrality violations have occurred in the wireless industry. Sprint introduced a new fee on their Virgin Mobile Custom plans for popular social media sites. Users who want unlimited access to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest can pay an extra $5 a month. Consumers can use these sites as long as they want, even when they run out of data. For another $15 a month, users can buy unlimited access to all four.7 It’s a lot like a cable bundle, but there’s a reason why people are canceling their subscriptions en masse. Cable companies force consumers to pay exorbitant prices for channel packages they don't need just to stream the few shows they actually want to watch. Net neutrality aims to prevent this type of bundling and protect innovative companies trying to improve the market. A new social site won’t ever be able to compete with Facebook if Sprint doesn’t include it in its plan. Sprint has no incentive to continue providing access to Facebook if it can charge users for the right by adding it to a bundle.
T-Mobile has a similar deal in place with music services.8 Users can stream an unlimited number of songs without the data counting against their usage. Again the same problem arises. Any new music service that isn’t blessed by T-Mobile is at a disadvantage. If the carrier ever got into the music business, it would have no incentive to provide access to its new competitors. Manipulation of our Internet access by mobile carriers prevents innovation and leaves products at the mercy of ISPs.
I’ve been active in the net neutrality debate since the 2010 FCC approval of The Open Internet Order. My most significant contribution is a website illustrating the importance of an open Internet. I’ve also marched with fellow advocates and called my representatives during every relevant vote. I bring it up every chance I get. Funny enough, I’ve even had conversations with people about it on dates, but for the record I let them bring it up. As a product designer I feel like I’m well equipped to speak on the matter because I understand technology. I spend my days working with software and I constantly have friends and family asking me for tech advice. People recognize me as an expert, so who better to help raise awareness? What baffles me is that I look around at my colleagues and I feel like I’m all alone.
I’m the only one talking about net neutrality legislation in Congress. I’m the only one calling my representatives to let them know I oppose efforts to restrict the Web. And I feel like when I speak to my colleagues about the importance of an open internet, most of them seem to shrug me off. There’s a fight happening in plain daylight and I feel like I’m the only one wearing boxing gloves.
Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight For The Future wage this war every day. They strive to push back rampant corporate abuses with well-crafted Internet campaigns that educate and inform. They make it easy for people to connect to their representatives so that their message is effective. Yet I look at the technology industry and all I see are people constantly tweeting about how they increased their sales. Another twelve articles about some irrelevant new startup. Personalities arguing about their opinions on rebrands, flat design, and content strategy. And you know what? I can’t bring myself to care.
Our hierarchy of needs is in disarray. It won’t matter how much money we raise or how good our work is if people can’t use our products. We should have a vested interest in seeing the Internet continue to be open, yet on a daily basis I don’t see anyone doing anything about it. Our house is on fire but everyone keeps talking about the curtains.
The public has an active part to play in our government, but this is especially true for the technology industry. We have the burden of responsibility because our livelihoods are at stake. I can imagine nothing more shameful than having the tools to make a difference and confronting the task with apathy. What’s happening to the Internet is a shame, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
When Facebook manipulated the activity feed, many people expressed their outrage, but few saw a solution. One voice argued that Facebook did no wrong. As part of the Internet we are subject to hundreds of experiments a day that collect our data and manipulate us. “That’s how websites work,” they argued. Then came the perfect reply. A resounding rejection that said loud and clear that no, the internet doesn’t in fact work this way. “This is how websites work if we make them work this way.”9
The struggle for net neutrality is no different. We may feel outraged or that the conclusion is foregone. But we have the power. We spend our days creating the things that make the Web valuable. We apply a limitless combination of care and creativity to problem solving and product building. This is our chance to take those skills and to make the Internet work for us. Websites, banners, campaigns, tweets, and more. The power to mobilize and to motivate others is within our grasp. We must take this opportunity to spread our voices far and wide so that it’s clear we aren’t going down without a fight. Our home — and our homes — depend on it. |
The national Brewer's Association, Mississippi Brewers Guild and Raise Your Pints are requesting that beer enthusiasts take action to oppose legislation detrimental to the state’s small and independent brewers and craft beer consumers. Mississippi Senators will soon meet to consider and vote on SB2590. This bill attempts to fundamentally change the relationship between small craft brewers and the community around them. Unfortunately, the language in the bill would have an immediate negative impact on the craft beer industry in Mississippi and threatens the ability of multiple existing breweries and some future breweries to remain viable. Additionally, the bill may impact relationships that currently exist between established breweries and the banks, landlords, suppliers, distributors, and retailers that support them. SB2590 has the unintended consequence of making normal every day, arm’s length transactions between brewers and retailers illegal, including store credit, gas cards, and renting space. This bill, and compliance with it, would likely put some small craft brewers in Mississippi out of business! The Senate bill has already cleared committee and is due to be voted on by the full Senate at any time now. Please reach out to your Senator TODAY by phone or email and ask them to VOTE NO on the bills. If you are unfamiliar with who your Senator is, you can find out here. You can find their contact information here and here. Please alert them to how damaging these bills would be to local craft brewers across the state of Mississippi. Be courteous and respectful, but let them know that you care about Mississippi’s new craft breweries and our positive impact on the communities we live and work in. Thank you for your continued support of Mississippi’s craft brewers. |
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — California lawmakers want to crack down on cannabis that looks like candy.
They’re called edibles, and with marijuana now legal in California, they’re sending more and more kids to the emergency room. Now a proposed law just passed in the Assembly would get the industry to stop making them.
The candy is often used to treat chronic pain.
“Patients like them because they can use them during the day time when they’re in high levels of pain,” said Richard Miller with the dispensary A Therapeutic Alternative.
But Richard Miller says “edibles”- sweet stuff packed with pot-aren’t just enticing for medical marijuana patients. Children try them too.
“Typically they are left at home and the parent doesn’t secure them properly,” said Miller.
At his Sacramento dispensary, there’s now a temporary solution: child-proof packaging.
“Pharmacy screw to put all your medicine right into it,” he said, pointing to a prescription type bottle sold to customers.
But state lawmakers say pill bottles don’t do go far enough to keep kids out of candy bags laced with cannabis. Assemblyman Rudy Salas is proposing banning edibles from looking like candy altogether.
“When you want to market a product toward children, unsuspecting children, and do them harm, yes i take that personally,” said Salas.
But edibles are a budding business.
“When Proposition 64 passed it was for adult use and let’s make sure it was for adult use,” said Salas.
Since recreational marijuana became legal in January, doctors say more and more children are ending up in the ER with pot poisoning.
UC Davis Emergency Room Doctor and Toxicologist Dan Colby says most of the cases are accidental.
“We’ve had young children, ages less than 2, all the way up to teenagers, who mistakenly ingest things they think are gummy bears or lifesavers or chocolate bars and they get quite intoxicated. They get high,” he said.
Miller promotes opaque packaging and expects to see a new batch of edibles hit dispensary shelves soon.
As for the edibles bill, it now heads to the senate for a vote. |
Spotify Defends Against New Music Backlash, Says It Will Pay Out $1B To Rightsholders By End Of 2013
Spotify, the music service with 24 million active users, says that it is on track to pay out $1 billion to artists that stream music on its platform by the end of 2013, and that it has already paid out $500 million so far as the “artist-friendly” streaming service. This speaks to how the company continues to push as the pacesetter in the world of streaming music, but also comes at a time when the company is coming under fire from small-but-influential acts who are pulling their music from the platform and claiming Spotify doesn’t pay well enough to be worth their while.
As Spotify becomes more mainstream, it is also bringing on more major musicians. In recent months, Metallica, Pink Floyd and the Eagles have all signed important deals to bring their back catalogues to the platform. But at the same time, smaller players are getting increasingly vocal about dissatisfaction with the Swedish-based startup.
There have been bands before who have chosen not to put their music on Spotify complaining of poor returns, but the exodus took a slightly more high-profile turn this weekend, when Nigel Godrich from the band-of-bands Atoms for Peace announced on Twitter that the band was pulling its titles from Spotify. (Other members of Atoms for Peace include Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Thom Yorke from Radiohead; Godrich is also a producer who has been called Radiohead’s sixth member.)
Calling their move a “small meaningless rebellion” — likely in reference to the band’s audience size and catalog size in relation to that of Spotify overall, not their own profile, judging by the online reaction to the move — Godrich explained that “new artists get paid fuck all with this model.. It’s an equation that just doesn’t work.”
Pandora, which has also come under fire for how it pays out royalties, has attempted to point out that it returns significantly more than radio broadcasters do, the argument is not that it pays worse than radio, but that it pays worse than albums ever did.
“If people had been listening to Spotify instead of buying records in 1973… I doubt very much if [Dark Side of the Moon] would have been made,” Godrich says.
Spotify, in its defense, notes that it’s still “in the early stages of a long-term project” and that it is committed to being “artist friendly”:
“Spotify’s goal is to grow a service which people love, ultimately want to pay for, and which will provide the financial support to the music industry necessary to invest in new talent and music. We want to help artists connect with their fans, find new audiences, grow their fan base and make a living from the music we all love,” said a spokesperson in a statement provided to TechCrunch today. “Right now we’re still in the early stages of a long-term project that’s already having a hugely positive effect on artists and new music. We’ve already paid $500 million to rightsholders so far and by the end of 2013 this number will reach $1 billion. Much of this money is being invested in nurturing new talent and producing great new music. “We’re 100% committed to making Spotify the most artist-friendly music service possible, and are constantly talking to artists and managers about how Spotify can help build their careers.”
So far, it doesn’t look like Atoms for Peace is taking its rebellion to all digital music platforms: it’s still on YouTube, for example, although it appears to have gone from Rdio. And this may not be the end of it. Yorke’s Radiohead has a history of striking out on its own in an attempt to find a better way forward with digital music, specifically when it chose to release In Rainbows online in 2008.
“For me In Rainbows was a statement of trust,” Yorke noted today, as he also got behind the move pulling additional material from the platform. “People still value new music ..That’s all we’d like from Spotify. Don’t make us the target.”
What will be worth seeing now is whether more bands follow in the wake, whether other streaming platforms come out with promises of better deals, and whether Spotify chooses to negotiate better deals with the long tail of musicians on its platform.
Spotify has never confirmed officially how the full economics of its platform works. Although there have been plenty of guesstimates, it’s hard to say whether they are being greedy or just trying not to lose as much money as they might otherwise.
What Spotify has said is that it pays “approaching” 70% of all its revenues back to rightsholders — labels and musicians and the rest. The cut that musicians get from that depends on the deal they have with labels and other distributors. There is a but more nuance behind this:
“In general…Spotify pays royalties in relation to an artist’s popularity on the service. For example, we will pay out approximately 2% of our gross royalties for an artist whose music represents approximately 2% of what our users stream. A popular song or album can generate far more revenue for an artist over time than it historically would have from upfront unit sales,” the company notes.
There is also the issue of external agreements with how all streaming sites pay out royalties. As the Future of Music describes it, “interactive audio-only webcasters and subscription services will pay 10.5% of their revenue to songwriters and publishers, minus any performance royalties already being paid to labels…A percentage rate provides a much more flexible system that allows for some pricing experiments, and an easier calculation for the music services to make.” These statutory rates are followed by Spotify, as pointed out in this HypeBot interview with Spotify “artist in residence” D.A. Wallach.
Ultimately, though, for smaller artists, this doesn’t seem to work out all that well, with the latest complaints one of the more recent examples.
For the 24 million active users, Spotify currently says it has 6 million paying subscribers, although those numbers were from March 2013 and are likely higher now.
In any case, it’s a model built on being big and getting bigger, so I suspect that we will only see a change if you started to see a significant part of artists behind the company’s 20-million-strong catalogue, or its users, demand it, or else do like Atoms let their fingers do the walking. |
PROTESTERS ACROSS EUROPE and the US are getting ready to take to the streets in protest against the overbearing Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
ACTA does what no one in their right mind wants, it hands over the policing of copyright infringement to rights holders and threatens to censor web sites and cripple internet freedom.
Protests will be held across Europe on Saturday and in a cluster of locations in the US. The protests have the vocal support of the Pirate Party, and it will back protests in words and in physical attendance.
Protests will be held in Glasgow, London and Nottingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast and Dublin, as well as in major cities across Europe.
"I hope to see many of my fellow citizens out next Saturday to demand that free speech and privacy online be eroded no further, and to let the political establishment know that they cannot simply bypass democracy like this without people noticing," said Pirate Party Scotland spokesperson Finlay Archibald.
Protest web site KillACTA is publishing a live map of protests that lets people check where and when they are happening.
"ACTA will let rightsholders use laughably inflated claims of damages (based on the disproven idea that every download or stream is a lost sale) to sue people. As if suing amazing artists, video makers and websites for millions wasn't hard enough!" warns internet rights group La Quadrature du Net.
"Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a backdoor track that, even though it creates new law, is miles removed from democracy." µ |
About ten miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, off of interstate 93 there’s a little island with a great, big monument on it.
It’s hard to see in the above picture, but easier to see here that the monument depicts a woman, who is holding a hatchet in her right hand and bunch of scalps in her left hand. When it was erected in 1874, this was the first statue to honor a woman in the United States. But despite this historic status, the monument is controversial because of the woman it memorializes and what she did.
The woman in the monument is Hannah Duston and in 1697 she was living in Haverhill, Massachusetts when she, her infant daughter and her nurse-maid, Mary Neff were kidnapped by a band of Abenaki Native Americans. The three were marched north and at some point Hannah’s infant daughter was killed by the Abenakis.
They stopped for the night in Boscawen, New Hampshire (on the island above with the monument) and while the Abenaki families slept, Hannah and her companions killed ten of them – including six children – and then scalped each victim before making their escape back to Haverhill.
After she returned home, Duston and her husband traveled to Boston where she told her story to a Puritan minister named Cotton Mather. Mather wrote it down and told it to rapt church-goers throughout the colonies. Mather’s account of Duston’s story can be read in full here.
Hannah Duston’s story was revived again in the 1800’s during the era of “Manifest Destiny” by writers such as Henry David Thoreau and John Greenleaf Wittier who were looking to tell the stories of American heroes and heroines. But as the original Cotton Mather version of the story was rewritten and retold, people changed the narrative to suit their purposes — often omitting the part of the story in which Duston and her companions kill the sleeping children.
In 1879 another Duston monument was erected in Haverhill, Massachusetts showing a more fierce Hannah Duston.
This monument also features bronze illustrations of other parts of Duston’s story:
In addition to the monuments, there are landmarks in her name — — memorial boulders, streets, a nursing home. There are kitschy items like this Hannah Duston whiskey decanter, commissioned by Jim Beam in the 1970s, as well as a Hannah Duston bobble-head, which you can still purchase at the New Hampshire Historical Society museum store. These items are offensive to some people who know the whole story, as are the monuments in Boscawen and Haverhill. The monument in Boscawen is often covered in graffiti; Duston’s nose has been shot off with a rifle. Every few years someone proposes to tear it down, or clean it up, or amend the signage to tell more of the history. With every proposal comes a public argument. Is she a heroine, or is she a villain?
The debate continues, but for now, the monument on the island remains neglected and crumbling. It’s fitting, too, as that’s probably the most accurate symbol of how people feel about Hannah Duston today — ambivalent about who she was, but not quite ready to let her go. |
Artificial intelligence technologies are advancing yet again, this time creating a robot simulation that “works just like humans.” It can move and interact with other robots without any instructions.
The simulation – created by Georg Martius from the Institute for Science and Technology (IST Austria) and Ralf Der from Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig – was developed as the two researchers were looking at how artificial neural networks can develop autonomous, self-directed behavior.
The researchers used “bioinspired” robots in physically realistic computer simulations. The robots received sensory input from their bodies, but were not given any instructions or tasks to complete.
‘We managed to crack mystery of brain neural system’: Siberian scientists step closer to AI http://t.co/3AZFLZ12Repic.twitter.com/W7uDR2G5nP — RT (@RT_com) August 17, 2015
They successfully developed sensorimotor intelligence, obtaining feedback from their surroundings to learn how to crawl, walk on changing surfaces, and cooperate with other robots. A video can be seen here.
“It works just like us humans,” Martius said, as quoted by the Local. “When we touch something, a signal is transmitted to the brain, processed, and converted into a muscle movement.”
The research, published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science), led the scientists to theorize that self-directed behavior can happen in the “synaptic plasticity” of the nervous system. Synaptic plasticity is described as a coupling mechanism that allows a simple neural network to generate constructive movements.
Stephen Hawking set to tackle dangerous AI & aliens in Reddit AMA http://t.co/NAkoWr28RKpic.twitter.com/r67krUSOLY — RT (@RT_com) July 29, 2015
Martius and Der suggested the results can help improve the understanding of evolution.
“It is commonly assumed that leaps in evolution require mutations in both the morphology and the nervous system, but the probability for both rare events to happen simultaneously is vanishingly low,” Martius said.
“But if evolution was indeed in line with our rule, it would only require bodily mutations - a much more productive strategy. Imagine an animal just evolving from water to land. Learning how to live on land during its own life time would be very beneficial for its survival.” |
Producers in the UK are finding themselves in an interesting predicament. In a recent article from Mixmag, an issue was brought to light that many people probably don’t put much thought toward. Most people are aware of the concept of royalties – paying for music that you use in a for-profit situation, such as a TV advertisement or a YouTube video (one that you make money from, at least). It’s not a new concept; royalties have existed in some form since the first federal law on copyright was enacted in the US Copyright Act of 1790, though regulation was much more lax back then.
To my knowledge, the DJ community has always prided itself on its process of sharing tracks and tunes that others can play out. Sure, releasing tracks on Beatport provides a certain amount of income for creators, but it has never amounted to enough to make a full-time living. Mixmag highlights the issue, referring to the Association for Electronic Music. I didn’t even know there was such a thing.
The organisation launched the Get Played Get Paid campaign at the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) on Tuesday to highlight the issue, with producers and songwriters in the UK alone missing out on an estimated £15 million a year, despite making its way to copyright and licensing bodies such as PPL and PRS.
Obviously, that’s a decent chunk of change. But how will DJs and producers be affected by this? Many, many hundreds of tracks are played at a club in any typical night and the original artists are not seeing any money from their tracks being played. And since the DJs are being paid to play, (as much as I can understand from the definition of royalties) the creators of the work they are using are entitled to payment.
However, it has been a by-and-large difficult endeavor to correctly gather data on which tracks are being played. Many DJs will use effects to manipulate and otherwise warp the sound to fit their own style, thus distorting the data. I reported on a system that was being developed by Future Audio Workshop back in June, and it seems like Pioneer has their own system called Kuvo. Kuvo has been supported by artists like Richie Hawtin and Seth Troxler, and provides a tracklist in “real-time and makes them globally available.”
Though the issue isn’t all on those who play the tracks; the content creators could also find themselves at fault.
[AFEM] CEO Mark Lawrence said: “Part of the problem is down to writers, artists and tracks not being registered at collection societies so the organisations don’t know who to pay, but even more significantly, most societies do not have accurate granular data on what is actually played in clubs.”
The Kuvo is tackling the latter issue, but most artists it seems do not have the wherewithal or knowledge to effectively secure their intellectual property to a higher degree. I’m all for getting paid what you’re due, but the issue is likely farther spread than it seems at first. For the EDM community especially, royalties for tracks played at a show have never been a salient problem. With more data and resources available to effectively find information on what is being played, it could shake the foundation of the principles the community was founded on.
And this isn’t just about individual artists. Big labels like Ultra Records have already shown that they will go after a YouTube celebrity for royalties. What is to stop Armada or Spinnin or other major labels from going after artists who play on stage? It’s a slippery slope accusation to be sure, and the worry-wart in me is rearing its ugly head. This could theoretically extend even to fans who are forced to pay extra fees to cover the royalty costs to hear others’ work from their favorite DJ. However, worrying about those kinds of issues at this point is premature, and it would be prudent to keep our eyes on this developing dilemma. While this mainly focuses on the UK, the issue could potentially manifest in other parts of the world.
H/T: mixmag |
Ed Mullins, president of the NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association, slammed New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner James O’Neil for lashing out at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a Friday Justice Department statement relating to the city’s non-compliance with federal immigration law and crime.
Mullins said in a statement issued Friday that “Sessions is absolutely correct to hold New York and other jurisdictions accountable for their so-called ‘sanctuary policies.’”
“For a long time, Mayor De Blasio and the NYPD’s leadership have failed to heed the warning that refusing to cooperate with federal immigration officials when it comes to criminals and suspected terrorists would have consequences beyond making our City less safe. They have placed officers in an impossible Catch-22: between obeying the directives and orders of their superiors and elected officials on one hand, and the obligation they feel to follow the direction of the law and to cooperate with federal immigration officials on the other,” Mullins said.
Mullins went on to say, “Now the City’s intransigence has placed in jeopardy millions in U.S. Department of Justice grant funds that we count on to help protect our communities. Despite what some politicians may think, law enforcement does not get to choose the laws we uphold, and it is our sworn duty to enforce all laws equally and without bias or preference. Attorney General Sessions is absolutely correct to hold New York and other jurisdictions accountable for their so-called ‘sanctuary policies.’ I just hope the Mayor will finally come to his senses and stop ignoring and harboring violent criminals before it’s too late.”
The DOJ statement released Friday warning nine U.S. cities that they were risking losing federal grants for not complying with federal immigration law. New York City, one of the municipalities that received a DOJ letter on the matter, was criticized by the department for having a “soft on crime stance.”
“The number of murders in Chicago has skyrocketed, rising more than 50 percent from the 2015 levels. New York City continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s ‘soft on crime’ stance. And just several weeks ago in California’s Bay Area, after a raid captured 11 MS-13 members on charges including murder, extortion and drug trafficking, city officials seemed more concerned with reassuring illegal immigrants that the raid was unrelated to immigration than with warning other MS-13 members that they were next,” the statement said.
Mayor De Blasio and Commissioner O’Neil both hit back at Sessions Friday. “It is unacceptable, it is outrageous and it is absurd,” De Blasio told reporters at a press conference.
Today’s @TheJusticeDept statement is unbelievably disrespectful to the hardworking #NYPD cops who fight crime and keep people safe everyday. pic.twitter.com/5F9EfvddgF — Commissioner O’Neill (@NYPDONeill) April 21, 2017
Ian Prior, principal deputy director of public affairs at the Justice Department, said in response to the Mayor and Commissioner O’Neil, “As made very clear in the department’s release, it is New York City’s policies that are soft on crime.”
Sessions later clarified the statement saying the dispute is with the city’s mayor over sanctuary city policies.
“New York has done some great things in criminal justice; they are following policies that have proven to reduce crime in America,” he said. “We have a disagreement with the mayor over sanctuary city policies.”
Follow Kerry on Twitter |
You can't sell something people don't like. I would know; I had a front-row seat for the Obamacare-fueled GOP wave in 2010. The parallels are striking.
Congressional Republicans in Washington on Dec. 21, 2017. (Photo11: Andrew Harnik, AP)
Only in Washington can people argue that doing something the public hates is better than not doing it. But that's where we are with the post-game analysis of the tax fight, where a historically unpopular president teamed up with a historically unpopular Republican Congress to pass a historically unpopular bill that further rigs the economy for the rich at everyone else's expense.
Anyone who thinks this bill will improve the Republican Party’s electoral prospects is ignoring history and common sense. In reality, 2018 just went from bad to worse for the GOP thanks to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.
More: After tax cuts, GOP may suddenly find Trump is more trouble than he's worth
More: GOP tax scam: How corporations and the rich are fueling inequality
The dynamic playing out now should remind everyone of what happened to Democrats in 2010. Though the policy ramifications could not be further apart, the political implications are strikingly similar. I remember it well, because I had a front-row seat at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. After beating back Republican challenges in consecutive special elections, we lost a special Senate election in a solidly blue state when Massachusetts elected Scott Brown.
The backdrop for that election was the Obamacare debate, which Democrats lost in the court of public opinion. We pushed it through, however, and we were right to do so, because our party believes in expanding access to affordable, quality health insurance. In retrospect, it illustrates a perfect contrast of priorities. But we didn't escape political consequences.
Back then, like Republicans now, we thought we could weather the backlash from voters. We believed that once people began to benefit from the policy changes and became better educated about the Affordable Care Act, they would come around. We just had to sell it.
We were wrong. We got beat in November of 2010 — badly, and in large part due to backlash to the new health law.
The same wave of backlash is coming for Republicans in 2018, only the data suggest this one is on track to be worse. The generic ballot is already favoring Democrats by double digits. Approval ratings for Congress and Trump continue to sink. Enthusiasm is off the charts on our side and depressed on theirs. And the GOP just lost a Senate seat in Alabama, one of the reddest states in the country, in part due to Democratic enthusiasm, depressed Republican turnout, and an unpopular tax bill as the backdrop.
What did the GOP do in response to that loss? They rushed through that bill, a scam that most of America is against. Now they’re hoping for the best.
More: Senate tax bill is life or death for Obamacare and millions who need it
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
In the coming days, Republicans will say they just have to sell the public on the plan. Of course, they’re wrong, because it’s too late. Not only is public opposition to this plan cemented, but their party also doesn’t have a credible messenger to change minds. McConnell, Ryan and Trump are three of the least popular politicians in the country. The idea that they can shift public sentiment is silly.
They’ll argue that once Americans start to benefit from the bill, they’ll come around. That also ignores reality, as a negligible change in a paycheck is more likely to go unnoticed. And that’s before people are hit with higher health care costs, which will create anger rather than goodwill.
They’ll also argue that the pending big money ad campaigns will have an outsized impact. But $70 million already has been spent on that effort so far with little to show for it. Hardly anyone is buying what the GOP is selling.
Add it all together and you have an electoral environment that was already toxic for the GOP, an unpopular bill that was forced upon the country, and a lot of ineffective spin.
The 2010 parallels are striking, and the Republicans ignoring them do so at their own peril. As someone who has been on the receiving end of a wave, I say this with certainty: thanks to this tax scam, 2018 just got a lot more daunting for Republicans trying to keep control of Congress. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Shripal Shah, a Democratic strategist, is vice president of the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter: @shripal734
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to [email protected].
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Simonne Butler, who was strangled and attacked with a sword by Antoine Dixon during their abusive relationship, supports the Law Commission's proposal that people accused of strangulation should receive harsher jail sentences.
The victim of a brutal samurai sword attack is backing a proposed law change that could see stranglers jailed for up to seven years.
At present, a gap in the law means offenders are often charged with the offence "male assaults female", which carries only a two-year maximum jail term.
The Law Commission was asked by the justice minister last year to look into whether it should become a specific criminal offence, as it is in some other countries.
PETER MEECHAM/ STUFF Simonne Butler, who was strangled by Antoine Dixon during their abusive relationship, was later attacked with a samurai sword, nearly severing her hands.
Simonne Butler, one of the victims of samurai sword attacker Antoine Dixon, said she supported the law change, because strangling was "a really common way for men to control women".
READ MORE:
* Killer Antonie Dixon dies in prison
* Sword attack victim fights back with book
* Court told of gruesome sword attack
* New rule means Corrections will advise CYF of the release of every child abuser
However, she was quick to admit that the new crime category would not have stopped the horrific attack she suffered.
TV3 Antoine Dixon during his trial in the High Court in Auckland in 2005 on charges of murder and attempted murder. He had earlier strangled victim Simonne Butler during a long, abusive relationship.
She needed 27 hours of surgery after Dixon, who was repeatedly referred to during his trial as Antonie, rather than Antoine, hacked into her hands and arms in a methamphetamine-fuelled rampage in 2003.
A year earlier, she had been in a relationship with Dixon in which domestic violence was a "weekly occurrence".
"One time, when he was raping me, he started off strangling me and it led to rape."
Thirteen years on she still remembers the panic. "You can't breathe - it's not like any other attack. When you are being strangled, you lose power in the whole rest of your body."
She remembered not being able to speak and having Dixon's finger marks on her neck for days.
She never went to police about his beatings, meaning the proposed law change would have had no benefit for her.
"I was too scared, I was too embarrassed. I didn't think they could help me."
She said: "There are a lot of times during a relationship when it [strangulation] is used as a tool for manipulation and fear.
"I think it's a very dangerous crime. I think anybody who is in a frame of mind where they think strangulation is is ... is [likely] to escalate to other forms of violence.
"It makes you almost incapable to fight back. Your life is literally in their hands."
Dixon killed himself in prison in 2009.
Ultimately, she said, she was happy he was dead, after all he had done to her. "I'm really glad that he's dead. But I don't really feel anything towards him."
Women's Refuge's chief executive Ang Jury, who helped work on the report, said strangling was a reliable indicator of subsequent killings, and many people underestimated both the risk and how commonly it was happening.
"You can die a day of more after - the tissue in your throat swells with no external signs."
Law Commission president Grant Hammond said the fact that police attended more than 100,000 family violence callouts a year was a "horror figure".
The commission's review led it to believe the criminal justice system was not treating strangulation as seriously as it should, he said.
Senior legal and policy adviser Linda McIver said research indicated no one ethnic or age group was especially at risk of strangulation, or likely to perpetrate it.
The commission said making strangulation charges stand up in court could depend partly on victims' testimony, but there were also several types of physical evidence which could help prosecutions.
The commission recommended that, as well as becoming a standalone offence carrying up to seven years jail, strangulation should increase the sentence if it occurred during other violence.
Police should specifically record whether a family violence incident involved an allegation of strangulation, it recommended.
Police and judges should be educated about the signs and risks of strangulation. The offence should require proof of strangulation, but not proof of injury.
Lead review commissioner Wayne Mapp said the risks to victims were under-recognised.
"It means that people who are making decisions designed to keep women safe are not giving sufficient weight to a significant risk factor."
In at least half of all cases, choking did not result in an obvious external injury, even when victims suffered internal injuries or serious mental harm, he said.
"The perpetrators of strangulation are often getting away with a much lower sentence than they deserve."
Justice Minister Amy Adams welcomed the recommendation, which she said fitted within the Government's review of family violence laws.
She would take recommendations from the report to Cabinet in the next few weeks. |
Updated on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
Photo Credit: ESPN Images
Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer appeared on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” on Tuesday and discussed, among other topics, what ultimately led to him deciding to depart the Florida Gators – first after the 2009 season and then for good at the conclusion of the 2010 campaign.
“I thought I was dying,” Meyer said in the taped interview. “Absolutely [I was depressed]. Mentally, I was broke.”
Meyer tells a tale of stress and depression, explaining that he dropped a significant amount of weight (37 pounds) while self-medicating in order to simply go to sleep at night while the head coach at Florida.
“Now I’m taking two Ambiens. I would drink a beer on top of it, just to get some sleep. Not many people know that,” he said. “And I go from 217 pounds to 180 pounds. I lose 37 pounds…and we’re undefeated.”
Meyer also recounted incidents that have already been quite well-publicized, explaining how he locked himself in an office in Sun Life Stadium just minutes after the Gators won the 2009 BCS Championship – in order to recruit players – and felt what he believed to be serious chest pains after Florida fell to Alabama in the 2009 SEC Championship.
“The [doctors in the hospital] said, ‘We don’t believe it was a heart attack.’ So, OK, ‘Well, what is it?’ ‘We don’t know,’” Meyer remembered, “And then you start thinking, ‘There is something wrong with me mentally, you know? What is going on here?’”
The reason for all of this angst?
“I was addicted to winning,” he said. “You build this thing up and it’s hard to sustain.”
Meyer also discussed changing his mind and returning the Gators just 24 hours after his first resignation: “Probably [I chose work over my family]. I’m not very proud of that.”
As far as his year off?
“I was kind of living the life. But deep in my heart, I felt the burning sensation to go back.”
So what’s different now with the Buckeyes?
“It’s easy. I focus on my players. That’s it. When I do shut it down, I shut it down completely. And I wasn’t able to do that before,” he explained. “Can you win a national championship doing that? Absolutely you can.”
As journalist Andrea Kremer quickly noted in the piece: “That remains to be seen.”
Update: HBO released an “extras” video with Meyer and his wife, Shelley Meyer, in which they discuss Florida players being arrested dozens of times as well as their thoughts on Aaron Hernandez then and now. |
Brennan declined to comment about the controversy when contacted by Fairfax Media on Thursday. Controversy: The use of silicone-based substances to beat Hot Spot has led to questions over the dismissals of, among others, Kevin Pietersen. Pietersen was furious as he walked off the field. He launched an angry response at being linked to the allegations on Twitter on Wednesday night, describing suggestions he had cheated as ''lies''. The ICC has sent its director of cricket operations, Geoff Allardice, to Durham this week to meet both sides in an effort to clarify confusion over the DRS, which has marred cricket's showpiece Test series. The ICC said Allardice was going to Durham to meet both teams on Thursday to provide clarification and address their concerns on the DRS, but dismissed claims of an investigation into the use of silicon tape on bats.
"Geoff Allardice is meeting with both teams and umpires to see how we can best use the DRS and the available technology going forward in the next two Test matches," ICC chief executive David Richardson said. "It has nothing to do with any players." Sent packing: Peter Siddle of Australia sends Englishman Kevin Pietersen a message. Credit:Getty Images The ICC statement "dismissed reports linking it to any investigation into alleged attempts by any player to 'cheat' the effectiveness of the Hot Spot technology during the current Ashes series between England and Australia." The Pietersen incident was the latest involving DRS that has left players and fans mystified. Earlier, Australia's Usman Khawaja failed to have a caught behind decision corrected by the video umpire during the first innings despite clearly missing the ball, a dismissal that led to Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland to formally seek clarification from the ICC. Controversial: Kevin Pietersen leaves the field after his contentious dismissal on the final day of the third Test in Manchester. Credit:AFP
Australian captain Michael Clarke said players used Extratec fibreglass casing to protect their bats but he had no knowledge of players using silicone tape. The laws of cricket allow for the use of tape for the protection and repair of bats. The type of covering material permitted is not specified in the rules. ''If that's the case then we're talking about cheating, and I can guarantee there is not one person in the Australian change room that will cheat,'' Clarke said. ''It's hard for me to talk for other players but I've never heard any conversation about that in the Australian change room, and I can guarantee you my bat manufacturer [doesn't do it].'' The ICC has sent its director of cricket operations to Durham this week to meet both sides in an effort to clarify confusion over the DRS, which has marred cricket's showpiece Test series. "I find the accusation quite funny. I know no one is going to the extreme of saying 'put this on your bat because it will help you beat Hot Spot'."
Batsman Steve Smith denied any Australian player had tried to evade Hot Spot by using tape. ''I don't think any of us have done anything with silicone on our bats,'' he said. ''We put fibreglass tape on the front, and that's purely for protection of the bat and to make it last longer.'' Smith said the fibreglass casing did extend on to the edge of the bat, but he had never thought about it as a way to undermine Hot Spot. ''It's just in the spirit of the game not to do that sort of thing,'' he said. ''We haven't even discussed anything about trying to cheat the system at all.
''I've never actually even thought about it until it came up this morning. I've never seen silicone tape at all. I don't even know what it looks like, to be honest.'' England bowler Graham Onions defended his players including Pietersen. 'It's crazy. It just doesn't sound right and it isn't right. None of the England lads would use anything on their bats," Onions said. "Kevin (Pietersen) is a fair guy and the accusations are wrong. That's all I can say." A similar issue emerged two years ago when former India batsman VVS Laxman was embroiled in a controversy in a Test against England after he survived a referral for caught behind, prompting former England captain Michael Vaughan to tweet: ''Has Vaseline on the outside edge saved the day for Laxman?''
How it works * Silicone tape contains a thin layer of adhesive gel that fuses with the surface of an object - such as a cricket bat. * By attaching transparent silicone tape to the edge of a bat's blade, the outer willow surface of the bat would become much more smooth.
Loading * The ''heat'' identified by an infrared camera like Hotspot is generated by friction. The ball strikes the bat at speed and grates along the surface of the wood. * In theory, a bat treated with silicone tape would have a much smoother surface area than a standard bat, so less friction would be generated by a snick, and therefore less heat would be detected. |
Episode 8: "Creatures of the Night"
by Dan Tomasik
Quick Taste:
Eichorst licks his wounds, strigoi fill the night, Eph & co hold up in a gas station with Vasiliy.
Summary:
After last week’s blast from the past, “Creatures of the Night” brings the story back to a traditional horror scenario. A group of strangers inside a gas station try to escape before the monsters can break in. Joining the crew is the hacker responsible for crippling cell phones and internet. For being able to get under Eichhorst’s skin in her first appearance, she’s clearly much less cocky in this situation. Also joining them is Vasiliy, who proves himself to be on the same wavelength as Setrakian. These two are a vampire killing team from heaven.
It’s actually somewhat questionable how well Vasily and Setrakian get along. Never have two individuals in this series been so perfectly in-tune with each other, especially not when it comes to killing the undead. Both act decisively, no hesitation, no mercy. The question is, how long can two different individuals who both act so decisively work alongside each other towards a single goal? No matter their similarities, a rift will eventually appear between them. All it takes is a single disagreement to plant the seeds for division. One day the group will be forced to decide who to follow, Vasiliy or Setrakian? Alas, that day is not yet here. So for now, let the Slash Bros. reign.
The Strain has finally hit its stride. No more setup; the monsters are out to play and it’s kill or be killed. The survivors fend off attacks as they struggle to find a safe place to hide, but there are no safe places for them. Not whilst they have Abraham Setrakian with them. For him, The Master has special plans in mind. How cruel that the best weapon they have for combating these monsters may also doom them all.
The “trapped in a gas station” situation never quite reaches the level of great horror, but it’s a strong and extremely active episode after so much waiting around. Eph and Nora are still clinging to their old lives; particularly the fantasy that they can cure this infection without killing people. A new weapon is discovered in the form of UV lights, which not only reveal the parasitic worms, but also burn strigoi faces off within 4ft. Wicked. There is also a wonderful cameo by creature effects god Rick Baker. The greatest monster makeup professional in the business and he’s on The Strain. 10 minutes later he is killed on The Strain, but he has more than enough screentime to satisfy his fans & admirers.
Bring on more!
Violence:
Very, very much violence. Shooting, burning, slicing, hacking, smashing; so many strigoi, so little time. This will most likely become the standard for the series. Bring your slaughter bib.
Horror:
A classic “survivors trapped in a station by monsters” scenario. Outnumbered, outpowered, and time is running out as the beasties work on finding a way in. Can our heroes escape, or will this be their last stand?
Strigoi Kill of the Week: Abraham Setrakian
Three silver nails to the face, then decapitation with an ornate silver sword.
Biggest Shock:
Vasiliy shoots Jim in the face as a mercy killing, then puts three more into him after he goes down to make sure.
Runner Up:
A woman flees a gas station surrounded by strigoi...and actually gets away.
WIBTOVE (Why It’s Better Than Other Vampire Entertainment):
The strigoi don’t just burn up or turn to dust when they die. So much vampire media is about trying to make the death of one of these beasties beautiful, dramatic and mesmerizing. On The Strain, they bleed just like everyone else (in fact they have more fluids spurting out than most), and fall to the ground with a “thud”. The corpses stay put and there is rarely anything even remotely attractive about them. Teens, you don’t want to be a vampire, all it’s gonna get you is a 6-foot stinger protruding from your mouth and a silver nail in the face.
Score: 8.7/10
Comments |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tidal forces parallel to a segment of the San Andreas Fault in central California may be causing non-volcanic tremors that could help predict earthquakes, researchers said on Wednesday.
An Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar image of the San Andreas fault in the San Francisco Bay area just west of San Mateo and Foster City is shown in this image released by NASA June 17, 2009. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Handout
Low-level tremors have long been associated with volcanoes, because they often warn of impending eruptions.
A study published in the journal Nature says these tremors beneath the San Andreas Fault could provide similar clues about earthquakes.
The researchers say the faint tug of the sun and the moon on the fault causes tremors well below the level where earthquakes occur.
The finding suggests that rock far underground is lubricated with pressurized water, allowing the rock to slip easily and weakening the fault.
“If you could go down there and push the rock with your hand you would cause a tremor,” said researcher Amanda Thomas of the University of California, Berkeley.
Thomas and colleagues analyzed nearly 2,000 tremors detected over eight years in the Parkfield segment of the San Andreas Fault. They also looked at micro-earthquakes in the same area and calculated the stresses produced by the Earth and ocean tides.
The study says they found a strong correlation between non-volcanic tremor activity and extremely small, tidal stresses parallel to the San Andreas Fault.
Thomas says studying tremors could help seismologists better understand and, perhaps, predict earthquake activity.
“They’re looking at tremor as kind of an indicator of large earthquakes as tremors signal the buildup of strain below the fault zone,” Thomas said. “So we might be able to use tremor to tell us something about when the next large earthquake will happen.” |
The Remote X: Walter of Animalz
Keni Teh Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 1, 2017
The Remote X is a series by the Planetary team to feature the experiences of remote teams across the world (literally!). Every week, we interview people leading or working in remote teams and share their knowledge with others in the hopes that we can all grow and benefit from their experiences.
Art by Vince Joy.
Walter Chen is the founder and CEO of Animalz, an agency that creates high-quality content on the internet for B2B and SaaS clients. Previously, he founded iDoneThis, which helps remote teams across the world run their daily standups better. In this post, he shares more about his startup experience and gives us valuable tips for managing a remote team.
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Where are you based in right now?
We’re remote with team members around the world including the U.S., Bulgaria and Cyprus. We have an office in New York City on the Lower East Side.
Tell me more about yourself and what your role is in Animalz!
I’m the founder and CEO of Animalz. We help companies win with content marketing. My role is to build the team that creates really great blog posts for our customers.
I founded Animalz after I sold my previous business iDoneThis. Back then, I knew nothing about building a business — getting customers and growing revenue. We just started writing blog posts for the company blog, people read them, then they signed up for the product and started paying us. Other people started asking me to help them with content, and that’s how Animalz started.
Before co-founding iDoneThis, I practiced law, and before that, I worked as a software developer.
How do you structure your day while working remotely? Do you find it a challenge to keep yourself focused?
I’m the worst remote worker on earth. That’s why we have an office. I keep a regular workday with a nap in the early afternoon. Once I go home, I don’t do work.
On any given day, two to five people show up in the office. Having other people around periodically keeps me sane.
Why did you choose to grow a remote team?
We weren’t initially a remote company, but we had one of our writers leave NYC for a family obligation, and he was so critical to the team that we had to keep him on.
After that, we hired another writer who was so valuable to the company but could only work remotely, and from there we expanded our working processes to adapt to more remote people.
The company is now fully remote.
How often does your team meet face-to-face or do video conference calls?
We use Zoom for all scheduled video calls in the company, and Slack for all impromptu video and voice calls.
We used to use Google Hangouts, but we encountered a ton of audio and joining issues. When you’re remote, you video conference a lot, so that annoyance became too much for us. We switched to Zoom and we recommend it to all remote teams.
We do a weekly all-hands and we have 1-on-1 meetings throughout the week both for work and for just bonding and hanging out. We do all of it over Zoom.
How do you manage your team and keep them organized/productive?
We try to make the expectations really clear. With remote, you have to make the implicit explicit. If you don’t, you will run into misunderstanding and expectation mismatches over and over again.
We run our entire business on Airtable. It’s a relational database that lets us model out our entire business and add relationships as our business evolves.
We have our content pipeline inside of Airtable.
We built a mini-CRM inside of Airtable. All of our customer information is in there.
We have transparent salaries inside of Airtable.
“With remote, you have to make the implicit explicit.”
What are the top three apps or tools that your remote team just can’t do without?
1. Documentation is incredibly important for remote teams. Everything — and I mean everything — must be documented and written down somewhere.
We do this with a twist. We are heavy users of collaborative diagramming tool Gliffy. We map out all of our workflows, frameworks and processes with Gliffy so that everyone has a visual sense of how the business works.
2. When people aren’t sitting next to each other every day, chatting in the hallways, nipping out for coffee, one of the first things to go is alignment. People just aren’t on the same page anymore.
That’s why high-level goal alignment is so important. We do that through Andy Grove’s “objectives and key results” framework using Perdoo. That allows for a more autonomous working style that remote teams need.
3. We love Front. We use it to share all of our email, have conversations inside of email and help each other craft the right customer response.
It’s awesome for remote teams because every bit of shared information available in the company helps people do great work.
How much of an emphasis do you put on keeping your team members emotionally connected?
Not enough.
It’s definitely something we’re working on. We have scheduled social water cooler talks once every two weeks, and everyone has a one-on-one with our internal coaching team once every two weeks. People go for “virtual coffees” pretty frequently as well.
The challenge is that one of the major benefits of remote is the ability to control your environment and work uninterrupted. The more you build in different social activities into the workday, the more that you potentially impinge on the autonomy of individual team members.
Being emotionally connected is definitely important for a happy and productive team, but we’re still working on new ways to formally build it into our workday.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced while managing your remote team, and how did you solve it (if you have)?
We hire a lot of recent college grads who not only have to learn on the job, they have to learn how to work remotely at the same time.
Remote is a big perk for recent grads, because they’re far from settled. They still have friends and significant others back at school. They want to travel. We’re able to hire our pick of top grads in part because we offer a flexible work setup.
The problem is that young people don’t know themselves and they don’t know how they’re best able to work. They also often have a lot of bad habits they’ve developed in college that they need to unlearn.
We still haven’t solved this problem! We’re still just tackling problems ad hoc, as they come up, and it’s working reasonably well up to this point.
What’s the best thing/your favorite thing about your team?
Everyone here is passionate about learning and improving. We’re building the business together and it’s hugely motivating to have people just as invested as I am in doing great content for customers.
Describe your remote working experience in 5 words or less!
Trying to do it better
Any last advice for anyone out there working remotely, or thinking of doing so?
The #1 thing about working remotely is that you have choice. You can work from home, from a co-working space, or you can drop into the office if your company has one.
Given that choice, it’s vital that you think critically about how you work best. Continually assess how you’re working and how you can do it better.
—
Thank you, Walter, for taking the time out to share with us your experiences! Connect with him on Twitter at @smalter and at walterchen.org!
—
Having trouble coordinating timezones and scheduling meetings?
We created Spacetime to help you with just that.
Integrate it into your Slack team and give productivity a boost! |
Rbenv — How it works
Dealing with rbenv errors without Google or Stackoverflow
Sudhagar Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 22, 2016
Today I installed a new gem. When I tried to run the command provided by the gem, I got an error zsh: command not found: wheneverize.
I realized I forgot to run rbenv rehash. So I ran it and this is what I got rbenv: cannot rehash: /Users/shot/.rbenv/shims/.rbenv-shim exists. I searched about it and found a Github issues link that had a good discussion on why this happens.
The file .rbenv-shim gets created during the rehash process to indicate a rehash is in progress. If a previous rehashing was interrupted in the middle or couldn’t finish for some reason, the file will still be there. It then needs to be deleted manually, so that you can rehash again.
I deleted the file, did a rehash and everything worked fine. I have run across issues with rbenv before and every-time I would just search on the internet about it and apply the solution I find on a stackoverflow link. This time I thought I will try to understand how rbenv works. So, next time something goes wrong, I will be well equipped to handle it myself. And also I get a kick out of knowing how my tools work underneath.
Rbenv
rbenv is really simple at its core. You install different ruby versions with rbenv install version and pick a version for a specific project with rbenv local version and set a global ruby version with rbenv global version.
Rbenv puts different Ruby versions in ~/.rbenv/versions.
Shims
If you go into ~/.rbenv, you will find another directory shims. Shims? What is it? Here is its wikipedia description.
In computer programming, a shim is a small library that transparently intercepts API calls and changes the arguments passed, handles the operation itself, or redirects the operation elsewhere.
This is exactly what rbenv shims do. A rbenv shim intercepts a ruby related command and calls rbenv exec which takes care of running the right executable.
How does rbenv intercept ruby commands? It does so by putting all possible commands as separate executable files in ~/.rbenv/shims and adding this directory before all the other directories in $PATH env variable. So when you run ruby -v, the system will find the shim script ruby in~/.rbenv/shims directory and execute it.
Lets see what’s inside a file in shims directory.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
[ -n "$RBENV_DEBUG" ] && set -x
program="${0##*/}"
if [ "$program" = "ruby" ]; then
for arg; do
case "$arg" in
-e* | -- ) break ;;
*/* )
if [ -f "$arg" ]; then
export RBENV_DIR="${arg%/*}"
break
fi
;;
esac
done
fi
export RBENV_ROOT="/Users/shot/.rbenv"
exec "/usr/local/Cellar/rbenv/1.0.0/libexec/rbenv" exec "$program" "$@"
Something you will observe when you open different files in the shims folder is that all the files have exactly the same content. Be it .rbenv/shims/rails or .rbenv/shims/bundler they are all the same.
Here is a translation of that shell script into pseudo-code for those who aren’t familiar with shell scripting.
set ‘e’ so that the script exits when it encounters an error.
if RBENV_DEBUG is set, set ‘x’ to print every command executed in this session. (Just trying running `RBENV_DEBUG=1 ruby -v`)
store the command name into $program. (If the command was rails, $program == “rails”)
if $program == “ruby”
for ‘arg’ in (each command line arguments)
if `arg` startswith ‘-e’ or equals ‘ — ‘
break out of the loop
if `arg` matches the pattern ‘*/*’ and `arg` == a regular file
export RBENV_DIR=(first part of the path i.e directory name)
break out of the loop
export RBENV_ROOT=”/Users/shot/.rbenv”
exec “/usr/local/Cellar/rbenv/1.0.0/libexec/rbenv” exec “$program” “$@”
So a shim file on its own is not doing much. It sets up the environment variables RBENV_DIR and RBENV_ROOT. It then executes the command /usr/local/Cellar/rbenv/1.0.0/libexec/rbenv exec original-command original-args.
eg. rails s is interpreted by ~/.rbenv/shims/rails which then runs rbenv exec rails s.
rbenv exec
Rbenv exec script takes over from the shim script.
From the documentation:
Runs an executable by first preparing PATH so that the selected Ruby version’s ‘bin’ directory is at the front.
Lets examine how it works by going through the steps involved. We will use rbenv exec rails s here as an example.
Rbenv exec starts off by finding the right Ruby version to apply. To find the right version it runs rbenv version-name. rbenv version-name first looks at the current directory for a local version file named .ruby-version. If it exists it reads the version from there. Else it reads the version from the global version file at ~/.rbenv/version.
RBENV_VERSION=2.2.3
2. It then finds the command which is the first argument to exec script.
RBENV_COMMAND=rails
3. It then runs rbenv which cmd to find the path of the right executable by using the above found values.
-> rbenv which rails
/Users/shot/.rbenv/versions/2.2.3/bin/rails
RBENV_COMMAND_PATH=/Users/shot/.rbenv/versions/2.2.3/bin/rails
4. It then trims the last part of RBENV_COMMAND_PATH to the find the value of RBENV_BIN_PATH. This path is then prepended to the $PATH environment variable.
RBENV_BIN_PATH=/Users/shot/.rbenv/versions/2.2.3/bin
export PATH=”${RBENV_BIN_PATH}:${PATH}”
5. Finally the original command is run. Now the system will find the right binary instead of the shim.
rails s
So to summarize, when you run rbenv exec rails s, it is roughly turned into PATH=”~/.rbenv/versions/2.2.3/bin:$PATH” rails s by rbenv exec.
rbenv rehash
This commands jobs is to create shim scripts. After you install a gem, its shim won’t be there. Hence the need to run rbenv rehash every-time after you install a gem.
Here is step by step breakdown on how shims are created.
Rehash sees if the directory ~/.rbenv/shims exists. If it doesn’t, it is created. It then checks if the shim prototype file .rbenv/shims/.rbenv-shim exists. If it exists, it means there is already an instance of rehash running. So the current rehash exits. If it doesn’t, rehash creates prototype file and also acquires a lock on it. It then puts the contents of shim script(the script we saw earlier) into the prototype file. Next, it iterates through all the files in bin directories of all versions of Ruby installed. For each file, it creates a shim script in shims directory and copies the contents of the prototype file into the shim script. (Now you know why all the shim scripts are the same.) Finally, rehash deletes the prototype file.
So that wraps up this post on rbenv internals. I hope it gave you a good idea on how rbenv works. I will update this post if I happen to read more on other topics like rbenv hooks and plugins.
Happy hacking! |
Visual confirmation 100% cotton bodysuit can sense baby's temperature
Changes to white when baby exceeds 98.6 degrees
Goes back to normal when baby cools off
Congratulations, you are the proud parental unit of a tiny, squealing human being. Unlike many mammals, the human infant is 100% dependant on its parental units for survival. No pressure, right? It's only someone's TINY LIFE IN YOUR HANDS. We know you've already planned out your wee geek's education from preschool to grad school and the order in which you'll show them the Star Wars movies, but let's focus on something a little more basic to survival: how will you know immediately if baby is running a fever?
If your baby is wearing a BabyGlow bodysuit, you'll see right away if your wee geek's temperature is too high. The fabric will change from pink or blue to white as baby's fever rises, giving you the head's up long before your geekling begins to fuss and cry. As baby's temperature returns to normal, so does the color of the BabyGlow bodysuit. These cotton bodysuits are safety tested and approved for daily wear and can even be machine washed.
Product Specifications |
The latest edition features Olympic silver medalist and NHL All-Star Ryan Kesler:
Ryan Kesler's first season with the Anaheim Ducks has been rejuvenating for the 30-year-old center.
After a decade with the Vancouver Canucks, including 655 regular-season games, two Presidents' Trophy-winning seasons and a trip to the 2011 Stanley Cup Final, Kesler feels his game is where it needs to be, his balance off the ice is better than ever, and his belief in the Ducks as Stanley Cup contenders is strong.
Kesler has 45 points (18 goals, 27 assists) in 74 games heading into Anaheim's game Tuesday against the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Ducks lead the Pacific Division and are in the race for the Presidents' Trophy with 99 points.
"The real test is in playoffs; that's where we all have to show up," Kesler said.
Kesler talked about why he believes in the Ducks, a take on why they've been so good in one-goal games, and dove into some details on his success in Anaheim.
Here are Five Questions with Ryan Kesler:
You've been on some good teams in Vancouver; what can make this team in Anaheim special, or why can it do something special as the 2011 team in Vancouver nearly did?
"The way we come back is one thing. The way we never give up. You see we are down going into the third or down in the third and we find a way to battle back and find a way to win. Other than that, I think just how deep we are every position. Forward, 'D', goalie, you name it we're deep; we have the players to go the distance. But you need a lot of things to go right. You need to stay healthy. You need your special teams going. But those are the similarities I see. When we went on the Cup run in 2011, you look at that team and it's tough to compare the two, but we were good coming from behind that year, we were deep on 'D', deep on offense, deep in the net. This team has the same thing, if not better."
Why are the Ducks so good in one-goal games (29-1-7)?
"I think it's a mindset. We know we can score goals in this room and we know we can come back from two, three, four goals down. I think that's when we play our best hockey, to be honest. We're not holding back, we're just going. We have nothing to lose and we just go after it."
It was difficult for you at the start of the season getting traded, uprooting your family, getting settled and trying to become part of a team that you grew to hate while with the Canucks. Do you feel after all of that, you've become a leader on this team?
Ryan Kesler Center - ANA GOALS: 18 | ASST: 27 | PTS: 45
SOG: 190 | +/-: -5
"I definitely feel like I'm a leader on this team, that I'm part of the leadership group. A lot of great leaders on this team. Getzy [ Ryan Getzlaf ], [Corey] Perry, Beauch [ Francois Beauchemin ], those guys have the letters for a reason, but we have a lot of guys that lead by example on this team. That's what you want, you want guys that lead by example and play hard every night."
What was it like walking into a new dressing room at the start of the season and trying to get used to something totally new while trying to win games with a new group?
"Obviously the most comfortable you feel is when you're on the ice. It's in between games when you kind of feel out of the loop, when guys are talking and you don't really know what they're talking about. It was awkward for me. I just stayed quiet, saw how the room was. Over time things got easier. I can't really pinpoint a time, but slowly it evolved and I'm one of the boys now."
How about SoCal for you? What has living and playing in Southern California done for you and your career after a decade in a Canadian market?
"It's been amazing. I can just focus on hockey. It doesn't matter how bad you play you can always get away from the game. I think that's the biggest difference I've noticed. If I played a bad game or didn't play up to my standards I can still go relax because it's very easy to get away from the game there. I can go re-energize, re-focus and by the time I get to the rink the next day what happened in that game is not even on my mind anymore."
--- |
“The last 24 hours are a grim reminder of why we should not underestimate ISIS and how badly the pesh merga need more ground support in addition to continued air support,” said Masrour Barzani, the chairman of the Kurdish region’s security council.
After his meeting with Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish autonomous region, Mr. Carter signaled that the Obama administration would accelerate some arms deliveries to the Kurds, though that falls short of what Kurdish officials would like.
The United States had promised to provide the weapons and equipment for two new combat brigades if the Kurds followed through with plans to establish units that would integrate fighters from the Kurds’ two main political parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
But the Kurds have contended that forming the new brigades would be costly and time-consuming. So Mr. Carter said the Obama administration now planned to move ahead anyway with the delivery of the equipment, which is stored in Kuwait. The expectation, Mr. Carter made clear, is that the equipment will be used by the Kurds for the “encirclement of Mosul” after Iraqi forces retake Ramadi from the Islamic State.
During his visit here, Mr. Carter also met with several Special Forces commandos who were among the 50 who recently traveled to northern Syria to work with Syrian fighters and Kurdish forces there. A senior Defense Department official, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss a closed-door meeting, said that Mr. Carter was encouraged by their assessment of the effort to build a Syrian Arab force that could put pressure on Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s territory.
The landscape in northern Iraq is a complicated one. One coalition official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports, said that in recent weeks Turkey had sent about 1,000 troops, and a small number of tanks, to reinforce about 200 Turkish soldiers who have been involved in training local fighters.
The presence of the Turkish forces has been a major source of friction between Iraq and Turkey, and they were caught up in the recent fighting. |
President Trump on Monday said building a wall on the Mexican border will stop drugs from coming into the United States.
Trump offered the argument on Twitter the same day lawmakers return to Washington with a week remaining to fund the government. The White House would like to see money for the wall in the funding bill.
"The Wall is a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)!" the president tweeted.
He later added that without the wall, the "drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be!"
....the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be!#BuildTheWall — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2017
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Trump and top administration officials on Sunday talked up the importance of the border wall. The government will shut down at midnight on April 28 if Congress cannot agree on a spending bill.
Democrats and some Republicans have voiced strong opposition to using the spending bill as a vehicle to begin funding the border wall. Democrats have noted repeatedly that when Trump promised on the campaign trail to build the wall, he also promised that Mexico would pay for it.
Democrats are also demanding the spending bill include funding for ObamaCare's cost-sharing program, while helps low-income people pay healthcare costs.
Trump on Sunday criticized Democrats, saying they don't want money going to the wall even though it will "stop drugs and very bad MS 13 gang members."
He also expressed confidence he would fulfill his campaign promise to have Mexico pay for the structure.
"Eventually but at a later date so we can get started early," he tweeted, "Mexico will be paying in some form, for the badly needed border wall."
--This report was updated at 11:37 a.m. |
More than seven years after his last Swans appearance, the former midfielder is set to play some part for Tate’s Swansea City Legends side as they take on a Manchester United Legends XI at the Liberty Stadium.
Bodde’s playing career was ruined by a succession of knee problems, but he did enough during his time with the Swans to become a huge favourite among fans.
The Dutchman, now 35, was a hard-tackling midfielder who would never shirk a challenge, but he is best remembered for his sparkling ability on the ball.
Bodde’s knee issues began in November 2008, just months after he had helped the Swans romp to the League One title in his first season in English football.
He was linked with a move to the Premier League on a number of occasions, and was still on the Swans’ books when they were promoted to the top flight in 2011.
Sadly, however, Bodde’s injury woes meant he never played at the highest level of English football – and Tate feels that is a crying shame.
“I think Ferrie was probably the most talented player I played with at Swansea City and it’s such a pity that he was so unlucky with injuries,” Tate said.
“He was good enough to play in the Premier League when he joined us in League One and he continued to show how good he was in those early days in the Championship.
“I think the club paid around £50,000 to bring Ferrie in, and he has to go down as one of the very best signings Swansea have ever made.
“The only sad thing is the way things worked out for Ferrie. He was such a talent that there is a little bit of a sour taste because you think what might have been.
“I would have loved to see him play in the Premier League alongside some of the other top players we have had over the last few years.”
Bodde is the latest star name to sign up to play for Tate’s Legends line-up.
Roger Freestone, Angel Rangel, Leon Britton, Andy Robinson, Adrian Forbes, Roberto Martinez, John Williams, James Thomas and Lee Trundle will also be involved for the Swans, with more players set to be confirmed soon.
The United line-up is being put together by ex-Red Devils midfielder Darren Fletcher, who grew up alongside Tate in the Old Trafford youth ranks.
Tickets for Tate’s testimonial are priced at £12 for adults and £6 for children.
They are available through the Liberty Stadium website here https://www.eticketing.co.uk/ssmc/Events/Index the ticket office in person or by phone on 0844 815 6665.
*The cost to call this number is 7p per minute plus your standard network charge |
US whistleblower Edward Snowden | Berit Roald/AFP via Getty Images WikiLeaks releases secret German intelligence data Data dump is related to government inquiry into Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations.
WikiLeaks on Thursday released 90 gigabytes of information linked to Germany's parliamentary inquiry into the activities of its foreign intelligence agency and cooperation with U.S. intelligence counterparts.
According to a WikiLeaks statement, the leaked data included 2,420 documents from government agencies including the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The information related to a 2014 inquiry, launched in response to revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden that the U.S. National Security Agency had spied on top German officials and partnered with intelligence services across the world, including Berlin's.
"This substantial body of evidence proves that the inquiry has been using documents from Mr Snowden and yet it has been too cowardly to permit him to testify," founder Julian Assange said in the WikiLeaks statement. "Germany can not take a leadership role within the EU if its own parliamentary processes are subservient to the wishes of a non-EU state."
The most confidential documents related to the inquiry were not digitized and therefore not included in the leak, German newspaper Die Zeit reported. |
"I’d never been to an event where that many people were crazy about Dota or about anything," says Toby. Despite the lack of any official developer support, Dota was already massive in Southeast Asia, and its fandom was nothing short of a "fanatical movement" in Toby’s eyes. Still, the experience was "scary as crap" since he didn’t really know the game, and his personal highlight of the show would end up being when he stepped in for a late-night Call of Duty commentary. Saddled with a disinterested co-commentator on the main stage, Toby took over the entire match and "got so hyped and made so much noise that people started coming from the lower level up, and actually coming to watch the game."
Only a few months into his job as a volunteer commentator — which he was juggling with a 40-hour work week as a retail manager — Toby got his first opportunity to attend a LAN event, the first tournament where he’d get to commentate live. And it was all a big mistake, he says. Gamestah were preparing to head out to the World Cyber Games in Singapore and they needed someone to cover Dota matches. Toby wouldn’t have made the roster as a Call of Duty commentator, but he had played three (exactly three) games of Dota and knew that it stood for "Defense of the Ancients" and that made him the most expert member of the crew. So he went.
After being rebuffed by local e-sports commentary group Gamestah, Toby set up his own operation and got his first taste of what it was like to record and distribute game commentaries. Bandwidth was expensive and his methods were profoundly amateurish. "It was possibly one of the worst ways you could have ever recorded an audio file. We used Windows Sound Recorder, where there’s no way to throttle the levels, there’s no way to control it all, and you gotta do it in 10-minute blocks of recording." Such was the state of technology back in 2005. Predictably enough, he says, the whole thing was a disaster, but the community loved it, and Gamestah quickly rectified its initial error by putting Toby in charge of its Call of Duty section.
The tale of Toby’s involvement with competitive gaming began in his native Australia around 2003, at roughly the same time as the first Dota mods started emerging. But his gateway drug was actually first-person shooter game Battlefield 1942, which was quickly superseded by the original Call of Duty . Toby quickly progressed from joining Battlefield clans to managing them, and eventually even took over the running of small-scale Call of Duty tournaments. "I don’t like seeing things being done incorrectly, or not to their fullest potential," he says, which is what prompted him to take on the extra responsibilities. After a while, though, Call of Duty 2 showed up and people started transitioning to the newer game, much to Toby’s vanilla-COD-loving chagrin. He hated Call of Duty 2 and hatched up an ingenious plan to keep players interested in his preferred title: commentary.
Toby’s reputation on the Dota 2 scene is built on his ability to hype people up and stir excitement. But the thing that often goes unnoticed is the incredible amount of work he has put in behind the scenes to put himself in that position of hypemaster number one. In the years after the World Cyber Games, things progressed very slowly, with the only highlights being a series of experiments at "residential hotwiring of rigs" (including a successful Hackintosh machine) to improve the production quality of the commentary streams. Well, that and a few visits by the police who were called out to quieten down the irrepressible Dota commentator screaming at the top of his lungs while covering European matches in the middle of the Australian night.
"I actually had the cops called on me because I commentated so loudly."
It wasn’t until 2011 that a serious opportunity opened up in Berlin, where Toby would set up the joinDOTA website under the auspices of Freaks 4U Gaming and turn live streaming and Dota commentary into his full-time profession. Fortuitously, that same year Valve announced its first International tournament would take place at Gamescom in Cologne, and Toby was already the most prolific English-language Dota caster out there. He was in the right country and had all the right qualifications, so Valve handed him the job. All those countless hours toiling away before an audience of mere hundreds paid off in a big way when Toby served as the main English play-by-play announcer at TI1. Dota 2 made its debut at that tournament, and was about to take off in popularity, and Toby was in the perfect position to rise with it.
And yet, Toby’s path from The International 1 to The International 5 was not a linear ascent. He earned widespread disapproval for his hubristic conduct during TI2 — demanding control over which games he would commentate on — and had to work hard to reclaim the esteem of the Dota community. "This is something which every caster goes through at some point, where you believe you’re immortal because there’s a couple of guys who loved what you said, and then there’ll be a couple more guys, and they’ll keep piling up. And you’ll just be sitting there going, ‘I can do anything I want to,’ and you’ll realize very quickly that when you do anything you want to, you will be shut down." Still, after a contrite climbdown and many months of humble work to rebuild his viewers' trust and favor, Toby earned a second chance from Valve and the community. He’s now back at the top of the commentator hierarchy, emoting every moment of the game with an untarnished zeal.
If he was based in Silicon Valley, Toby Dawson might be thought of as a new media entrepreneur. He’s certainly done as much to advance his field as anyone else, whether it be in the methods and machinery of how live commentary broadcasts are made or in stirring and augmenting a community of dedicated gamers and viewers. Game commentary is easy now, at least logistically, exactly because guys like Toby worked out all the kinks and issues during the harder, earlier times. Like most success stories, his is one where hard work and passionate commitment are necessary but not sufficient preconditions, and it took a serendipitous confluence of events to propel him to where he is now. To get an account of it in Toby's own words, read the full interview below. |
And I thought my secret santa simply didn't ship my card...
Well, it turns out it was shipped on December 11 according to the timestamp and only got to me today (January 7). Nearly a full month after!
Not only was it a great surprise after thinking I was forgotten but there even was a $25 prepaid credit card in it!
The card warned that I could only use it in the US which I do not live in. No matter, challenge accepted!
So I ordered two somethings from the Something Store (http://www.somethingstore.com/), the store that sends you something for $10 ($12.75 including shipping to Canada) so with two something it's almost the full price on the card.
I'll PM you Santa when I get my somethings but it might take a while because apparently US-Canada shipping isn't terribly fast... |
No one has gotten more credit (or blame) for the recent turnaround at the Trump campaign than Kellyanne Conway, the always-on-TV Republican pollster who was promoted last month to campaign manager.
In the five weeks since Conway took the job, Donald Trump has grown gradually more disciplined and adult-like as a candidate — reading speeches from teleprompters, backing away from pet conspiracy theories, even dialing down the frequency of his signature Twitter rants. And as the race has narrowed, Conway has emerged in the popular imagination of politicos and pundits as the deft handler who's finally succeeded in domesticating Trump. When the candidate gives a measured TV interview, it is assumed that "Kellyanne must be standing off camera with a tranquilizer gun." When he exercises restraint on Twitter, the joke is that "Kellyanne changed the passcode on the old Android." In one soft-focus profile after another, she is presented as the "Trump-whisperer."
It's a meme that's only likely to grow if, as many predict, Trump uses Monday's presidential debate stage to debut a newly chivalrous persona — but some insiders question how much influence Conway actually has over the candidate.
Interviews this week with more than half a dozen GOP sources close to the campaign suggest her “Trump-whisperer” status is more made-for-TV myth than reality.
"She's there to go on MSNBC or Fox, or whatever. That's sort of her job. They think she's good on TV, and they like having her there as the face of the campaign," said one source with knowledge of the strategy.
"The narrative that Kellyanne is a woman genius and saving Trump helps him as he runs against a woman ... [but] Kellyanne spends nearly 100% of her time on TV. That's her role," said another Republican who is close to Conway.
Even her most ardent fans and allies inside Trump Tower concede that her supposed stage management of the candidate has been overstated in the media.
"Is she the Trump-whisperer? I don't know," said one campaign strategist, adding, "She's easily the best surrogate [Trump] has."
Responding to questions for this story, Conway emailed BuzzFeed News, "My role is broad. We have a great and mutually respectful working relationship. ... Mr. Trump likes the fact that part of my role is to be a public face of the campaign through TV appearances."
Of the "Trump-whisperer" designation, she said, "You are on solid ground to question that particular description. ... He is his own person."
That's not to say Conway hasn't had any effect on the campaign. Like other advisers, she is in regular contact with Trump, and is said to be especially close with his daughter Ivanka. Among campaign staffers, she is widely credited with raising morale and creating a more stable workplace — especially when compared to the macho infighting and disruptive turf wars that dominated the organization for much of the past year.
"She's incredibly friendly and approachable," said A.J. Delgado, a senior adviser and surrogate for the campaign. "I think people are happy working under her just because she's a nice person to work for. She's definitely set a tone of positivity."
Yet, Conway continues to be cast in the political press primarily as the savvy Trump-tamer — why? One reason may be her uniquely chummy relationships with Beltway journalists (many of whom refer to her only by her first name in public). Another is Team Trump's constant touting of her "historic" role as the first Republican woman to run a general-election presidential campaign.
But the biggest factor driving Conway's outsize public reputation is her omnipresence on television. She spends far more time in front of the cameras than typical campaign managers do, appearing constantly on cable news, network morning shows, and even Bill Maher's HBO talk show Real Time, where the liberal host recently accused her of "enabling pure evil."
Some have questioned whether it's possible for her to effectively manage a national presidential campaign from a green room. Conway acknowledged that her schedule is packed ("I've mostly sworn off seated meals or hot meals until mid-November") but said her frequent TV appearances haven't interfered with her other duties.
"All this does is add an hour to my day each in the morning and the evening," she said. "The rest of the day is spent on strategy, long-term scheduling, huddling with our internal and external teams, traveling with the candidate, and naturally, poring over data, news, and other 'inputs.'"
Frank Luntz, a veteran GOP pollster who has known Conway for years, also noted that Trump has "far fewer surrogates than the average presidential campaign" and therefore "needs all the articulate spokespeople he can get."
Conway, who once lived in a Trump building, has been a friend and informal adviser to the billionaire since 2011, when he publicly flirted with entering the presidential race. She conducted polling for him in 2014 when he considered running for governor of New York. But by the time Trump began staffing his campaign in 2015, she had apparently lost interest in his political pursuits. When Corey Lewandowski invited her to meet with him about joining the campaign, she stood him up, according to two sources. (Conway denied this, and said has "stayed friends" with Lewandowski.) She went on to spend the Republican primaries working with a super PAC supporting Ted Cruz.
Several people close to Trump said bluntly that his well-documented aversion to stage management could probably not be overcome by a woman — with the sole exception of his eldest daughter. Indeed, many inside the candidate's orbit believe that if there is any "Trump-whisperer" who deserves credit for his occasional forays into seriousness, it's Ivanka. Others attribute Trump's discipline to his own competitive drive and fear of losing the election.
Meanwhile, two sources close to Roger Ailes said the former Fox News chief is playing a much larger backstage role in handling Trump than most people realize. More than anyone, they said, it is Ailes — a master of political communications and media — that has succeeded in getting Trump to stay on script and soften his tone.
One source predicted that Ailes would get plenty of ink in the various post-2016 insider campaign books, but said he was "happy for now having his role downplayed." Though Ailes is not on the campaign's payroll, he is said to be actively advising the candidate ahead of Monday night's debate.
"Trump doesn't listen to anyone," said a Republican close to Ailes. "But he does listen to Roger sometimes." |
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has come and gone...and now it's back. The movie that sets the stage for the rest of the DC Superhero Movie Cinematic Universe still has work to do even after it has left theaters. While comic book fans spent the spring watching DC superheroes in 2.5 hour chunks, there's now an R-rated, three-hour version of the tale.
Are you on the fence about possibly checking this out? Watch the first 10 minutes of the Ultimate Edition, and get a glimpse of how much new material is waiting for you...
Video of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Movie - Extended Preview (2016) - Ben Affleck Action Movie HD
Batman v Superman Blu-ray Release Date
The Ultimate Cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice actually has two release dates. Beginning on June 28, you will be able to download the extended version of the film on Digital HD. But if you wish to wait a little bit longer, on July 19 (just in time for Comic-Con), there will be the full three-hour version and its loads of special features released on Blu-ray.
Batman v Superman Ultimate Edition Trailer
Enjoy snippets of new footage and even action in this below glimpse of the director's cut for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice...
Batman v Superman Rating
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA. Not because it's mandatory for any superhero movie not named "Deadpool" to be rated PG-13, but because it contains (via Box Office Mojo) "intense sequences of violence and action throughout and some sensuality." We haven't seen anything remotely resembling "sensuality" in any superhero movie in the last decade (unless you count the "International Women's Day" scene in Deadpool), so I can't imagine that there's anything particularly objectionable (or interesting) here in that regard.
Violence, though. Plenty of that to go around! And there will be lots more in that R-rated version on the Blu-ray!
Batman v Superman Blu-ray Special Features
Take a gander at all the featurettes awaiting you in this bleak abyss! |
The first twenty minutes of Star Wars: The Last Jedi might have warmed the heart of Billy Mitchell’s Force ghost. The opening scenes effectively replayed the American interwar debates between advocates of air and naval power, with fighters and bombers attacking huge capital ships. These debates revolved around two big questions that drove procurement and the development of doctrine: how effective are aircraft against capital ships, and what kind of aircraft are most effective?
The Scene
The opening moments of The Last Jedi depict a capital-ship-led attack against a Resistance base. Resistance X-Wing fighters manage to destroy the point defenses of the largest First Order capital ship, a Mandator-class dreadnought, enabling a force of B/SF-17 bombers to attack the dreadnought with gravity bombs. Although First Order interceptors manage to destroyer most of the bomber force, one ship gets through, delivering an attack that destroys the warship. The overall impact of the strike is mixed: the First Order loses one of its more powerful ships, but it apparently has other warships on hand. The Resistance loses its bomber fleet, which is the only weapon it has to deter First Order capital ships. On balance, the leaders of the Resistance seem to feel that losing the bomber fleet wasn’t worth it.
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The scene stands in some contrast to the last act of Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope , where a group of X-Wing fighters and Y-Wing fighter-bombers manage to deliver a precision attack that destroys the Imperial Death Star. Indeed, the fighters in the Battle of Yavin demonstrate greater survivability than the fighter-bombers. Nevertheless, the lessons seem reasonably clear; small craft can destroy capital ships if used in appropriate numbers and at appropriate times.
The Debate
During the interwar period, advocates of air and sea power endlessly debated the effectiveness of air attacks against capital ships. The U.S. Army’s Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell helped kick off the debate by orchestrating a demonstration of the decisive effect of air power in July 1921. U.S. Army Air Service level bombers repeatedly attacked the former German battleship Ostfriesland, recently acquired as war reparations, until the ship sank. Mitchell counted the demonstration as vindication for the power of bombers; critics noted that Ostfriesland was in extremely poor condition, that it had no crew for damage control, that it could not maneuver, and that it had no antiaircraft weapons to deter the attacks. Nevertheless, Mitchell argued emphatically that the advent of bombers had made most surface ships, including aircraft carriers, obsolete.
Another debate involved the type of aircraft necessary to defeat ships. Aviators in the U.S. Army, including Mitchell and his acolytes, generally argued that the missions of bombing cities and bombing battleship required essentially the same type of aircraft; heavy bombers capable of delivering precision, high-altitude attacks at long range from their bases. Indeed, the initial tenders for the legendary B-17 Flying Fortress emphasized coastal-defense capability. American naval aviators, by contrast, argued in favor of dive and torpedo bombers: fighter-sized planes that could launch from aircraft carriers, then avoid enemy defenses to deliver attacks against critical points on enemy vessels. These debates inevitably bled into other important debates, most notably the importance of having an independent air force, and the relative value of aircraft carriers and battleships.
The experience of the war emphatically vindicated the Navy’s approach. U.S. naval aviation devastated Japanese shipping, destroying numerous capital ships through torpedo and dive-bombing attacks, while Army Air Force heavy bombers inflicted very little damage in direct attacks against enemy surface ships. Army bombers made their primary contribution through the dropping of mines (which disrupted Axis coastal shipping) and through antisubmarine duties, both of which proved exceptionally effective, but were not generally expected to be decisive in prewar airpower thinking.
Who Wins?
The Last Jedi seems to settle on Billy Mitchell’s side; the bomber gets through and destroys the Dreadnought, even if the cost of victory is dear. To be fair, the Star Wars universe is not entirely consistent or coherent regarding the relationship between small fighter and bomber craft and the capital ships that can launch them, making it difficult to assess the balance between light and heavy fighter-bombers.
In the real world, technological progress has made many of these arguments irrelevant. The gap between fighters and bombers has closed, and both can deliver the ordnance necessary to destroy surface ships. Surface vessels themselves, with the possible exception of aircraft carriers, are no longer expected to absorb significant battle damage. And carrier aircraft now pack much the same punch as their land-based brethren.
But as George Lucas himself has acknowledged, Star Wars has its heart in World War II (Lucas once suggested that Red Tails , a chronicle of the exploits of the Tuskegee airmen, was the true sequel to Return of the Jedi ). It is not surprising that the debates that animated military thinking in World War II, from bombers to fighters to battleships, should also appear in the military milieu that Star Wars is built upon.
Robert Farley , a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book . He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat .
Image: USS Iowa fires a full broadside during a target exercise near Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Navy |
It was bitterly cold this morning. But very beautiful. Everything was thoroughly iced.
The sun started to break through, the mist. That photographer appears uninterested in turning his light gathering machine towards the dazzling display of light pouring through the trees.
Quinten Hermans was pretty much untouchable on the sheet ice in the U23 race.
He took a comfortable win on that sexy Euro champ's Boone.
The sun began to melt the ice and everything was steaming, it was like Top Of The Pops out there.
Christine Majerus was on a really good day and led out the women's race.
Thalita is RIPPED! Look at those sit bones! (I have to be careful saying things like that on the internet, I know, but for reals it's just a statement in reference to her athleticism.)
Maddie Gammons passes Top of the Pops, dry ice tree.
Thalita's crash was a big one at high speed onto solid frozen ground. I didn't know if she'd get up from it.
The line on the left was the only one. Drifting right meant almost certain calamity.
Of course Thalita got up. And when she did she just worked harder to get back in front to take the win.
Winner.
Bruce was here representing Team Kinesis UK. Look out for more from him and his weekend in Belgium later in the week.
Wout was super impressive again.
How these two come out swinging week after week is beyond me. Mathieu led the early stages but stumbled on the run up and let Wout by.
'Ou'est le parking pour les coureurs et les equipes s'il vous plaits?' For next time... You need to be following CXH on twitter to give this context.
Legs.
As the frozen ground began to thaw it started to get wet, alas not quite quickly enough.
Wout: Imperious
Mathieu: Will be back.
Toon Aerts: Super impressive.
Even late in the afternoon, parts of the course were still covered in frost and frozen solid.
It's good to have the American riders back in Europe, it seems slightly earlier than usual. Come ride the trophy next weekend! |
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