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President Trump began his tour of Eastern Europe on Thursday with a rant that cast U.S. intelligence agencies as untrustworthy in their assessment that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Trump even deflected blame away from Moscow for election-related hacking.
“I think it was Russia, and I think it could’ve been other people and other countries,” Trump said. “Nobody really knows for sure. A lot of people interfere. It’s been happening for a long time.”
Trump appeared with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw en route to the G-20 summit, where the commander in chief is set to have his first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Independent cybersecurity firms, relying on a host of technical indicators, began fingering the Russian government for the hack of the Democratic National Committee in the summer of 2016. Putin has even admitted that “patriotic” Russian hackers may have been behind the breach.
Speaking in Warsaw, Trump said he doubted how many U.S. intelligence agencies assessed the Kremlin's effort in a January report.
“We did some heavy research,” Trump said. “It turned out to be three or four. It wasn’t 17.” It is unusual for a U.S. president to attack his own intelligence agencies, who are responsible for guarding against overseas threats, on foreign soil.
Trump also erroneously claimed the U.S. press corrected its reporting after his supposed “research,” another virtually unprecedented action overseas. The unsubstantiated attack on the press was made next to the chairman of Poland’s Law and Justice party, which “transformed the public broadcaster into a propaganda mouthpiece for the government,” according to The Economist.
Remarkably, Trump did not mention whether he planned to discuss the meddling with Putin in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday.
Trump has consistently refused to blame the Kremlin for interfering in the election that landed him in the White House, but he did point fingers at former President Barack Obama on Thursday.
“Why did he do nothing about it?” Trump asked. “He was told it was Russia by the CIA, as I understand it. He did nothing about it. They say he choked. Well, I don’t think he choked. I think what happened is he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election and he thought ‘Well, let’s not do anything about it.’’
“He did nothing about it,” Trump repeated. “Why did he do nothing?”
“Mistakes have been made,” he continued. “I agree, I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and other countries. Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure.”
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. may begin working with the Russians to stem the loss of lives in Syria’s civil war.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, released a statement on Thursday claiming that Trump’s remarks in Poland “undermine U.S. interests.”
“This is not putting America first, but continuing to propagate his own personal fiction at the country’s expense,” Schiff wrote. “President Trump must have the courage to raise the issue of Russian interference in our elections directly with President Putin, otherwise the Kremlin will conclude he is too weak to stand up to them. That would be a historic mistake, with damaging implications for our foreign policy for years to come.”
Trump also used the opportunity to slap down CNN.
He noted that the network “has some pretty serious problems.”
“They have been fake news for a long time,” he continued.
“They’ve been covering me in a very dishonest way. Do you have that also, by the way, Mr. President?” he asked Duda.
“NBC is equally as bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with The Apprentice, but they forgot that,” he said.
“We want to see fair press. We don’t want fake news.”
Trump also addressed—for the first time—North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile launch Tuesday. Officials believe the weapon is capable of striking Alaska.
“It’s a shame they’re behaving this way—they’re behaving in a very, very dangerous manner and something will have to be done about it,” Trump said.
“I don’t know, we will see what happens,” he said, refusing to elaborate. “I have some pretty severe things that we are thinking about. That doesn’t mean we are going to do it. I don’t draw red lines.”
In a turnaround from the joint press conference, Trump targeted Russia during his speech to a raucous crowd just hours later, calling out the Kremlin for “destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes, including Syria and Iran.”
He publicly asked that Russia “instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.”
Trump also said that NATO must “meet new forms of aggression, including propaganda, financial crimes, and cyberwarfare,” adding that the alliance “must adapt to compete effectively in new ways and on all new battlefields.”
He reiterated that more member countries must contribute more money, while at the same time affirming that the U.S. stands behind Article 5, the organization’s principle for common defense.
“To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would point out that the United States has demonstrated not merely with words, but with its actions, that we stand firmly behind Article 5,” he said.
Even still, he added: “Europe must do more.” |
This morning I couldn’t help but remember that last year, when Time Magazine announced that Donald Trump was their person of the year, the president-elect couldn’t even be gracious about getting the kind of adulation he is addicted to. Instead, he took his usual decent into divisiveness.
I have no idea of the process Time uses to determine their person of the year, but their announcement today took direct and decisive aim at that kind of sexism. Their choice this year is the “Silence Breakers” of the #MeToo movement.
The writing and reporting on this story from Stephanie Zackareck, Eliana Dockterman, and Haley Sweetland Edwards is stunning. For example:
When movie stars don’t know where to go, what hope is there for the rest of us? What hope is there for the janitor who’s being harassed by a co-worker but remains silent out of fear she’ll lose the job she needs to support her children? For the administrative assistant who repeatedly fends off a superior who won’t take no for an answer? For the hotel housekeeper who never knows, as she goes about replacing towels and cleaning toilets, if a guest is going to corner her in a room she can’t escape? Like the “problem that has no name,” the disquieting malaise of frustration and repression among postwar wives and homemakers identified by Betty Friedan more than 50 years ago, this moment is borne of a very real and potent sense of unrest. Yet it doesn’t have a leader, or a single, unifying tenet. The hashtag #MeToo (swiftly adapted into #BalanceTonPorc, #YoTambien, #Ana_kaman and many others), which to date has provided an umbrella of solidarity for millions of people to come forward with their stories, is part of the picture, but not all of it. This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don’t even seem to know that boundaries exist. They’ve had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can’t afford to lose. They’ve had it with the code of going along to get along. They’ve had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.
From that and the video they produced, you can see that they didn’t confine themselves to the stories of famous actresses and journalists. The women they included ran the gamut from entrepreneurs and college professors to hotel maids and dishwashers. This is exactly the kind of reporting that I suggested yesterday is necessary in order to signal that these issues go beyond race and class to include all women.
I can’t help but think of something Franklin Foer wrote back in March 2016.
Donald Trump holds one core belief. It’s not limited government. He favored a state takeover of health care before he was against it. Nor is it economic populism. Despite many years of arguing the necessity of taxing the rich, he now wants to slice their rates to bits. Trump has claimed his nonlinear approach to policy is a virtue. Closing deals is what matters in the end, he says, not unbleached allegiance to conviction. But there’s one ideology that he does hold with sincerity and practices with unwavering fervor: misogyny… Trump wants us to know all about his sex life. He doesn’t regard sex as a private activity. It’s something he broadcasts to demonstrate his dominance, of both women and men. In his view, treating women like meat is a necessary precondition for winning, and winning is all that matters in his world. By winning, Trump means asserting superiority. And since life is a zero-sum game, superiority can only be achieved at someone else’s expense.
As we begin the process of reflecting on 2017, we will remember that it began with the twin events of Donald Trump’s inauguration and the swelling of the resistance demonstrated by the Women’s Marches all over the country. From the women who are following that up by organizing in their living rooms and running for office to the emergence of the #MeToo movement, a groundswell is forming to take direct aim at the kind of misogyny this president represents—and a theme appears to be emerging that ties it all together.
As I’ve often quoted, Rebecca Traister nailed all of this back in 2015:
Whatever their flaws, their political shortcomings, their progressive dings and dents, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton mean a lot. They represent an altered power structure and changed calculations about who in this country may lead… This is our country in an excruciating period of change. This is the story of the slow expansion of possibility for figures who have long existed on the margins, and it is also the story of the dangerous rage those figures provoke.
Pay attention. History is being made. The 2016 election was definitely not the last word on this struggle. |
Terror group ISIS’ newly appointed spokesman made wild threats on Monday promising attacks against Turkish embassies around the world. The spokesman also urged hardline militants in the flashpoint Iraqi town of Tal Afar near Mosul not to flee as the group fights offensives on different fronts.
“Destroy their vehicles, raid them … in their shelters so they can taste some of your misery and do not talk yourselves into fleeing,” Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer said in an audio recording posted online.
Muhajer also said that ISIS supporters would target “the secular, apostate Turkish government in every security, military, economic and media place even every embassy and consulate that represents it in all the world’s countries.”
It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the recording said Reuters. ISIS has been fighting Turkish-backed rebel groups in Syria and U.S.-backed forces in Iraq.
Asharq Al-Awsat English Asharq Al-Awsat is the world’s premier pan-Arab daily newspaper, printed simultaneously each day on four continents in 14 cities. Launched in London in 1978, Asharq Al-Awsat has established itself as the decisive publication on pan-Arab and international affairs, offering its readers in-depth analysis and exclusive editorials, as well as the most comprehensive coverage of the entire Arab world. More Posts - Facebook - Google Plus - YouTube |
Heroin addiction exacts a terrible toll. For many addicts the condition lasts a lifetime–a lifetime shortened by health and social consequences of addiction. NIDA-supported researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), examined the patterns and consequences of heroin addiction over 33 years in nearly 600 heroin-addicted criminal offenders and found that their lives were characterized by repeated cycles of drug abuse and abstinence, along with increased risk of crime or incarceration, health problems, and death.
Drs. Yih-Ing Hser, Valerie Hoffman, Christine Grella, and Douglas Anglin of UCLA’s Drug Abuse Research Center studied a group of 581 male heroin addicts admitted between 1962 and 1964 to the California Civil Addict Program (CAP), a compulsory drug treatment program for criminal offenders. By 1997, nearly half of the group had died, roughly 40 percent of those still living reported using heroin within the past year, and fewer than 10 percent of the survivors were currently enrolled in methadone treatment.
The death rate among the members of the group is 50 to 100 times the rate among the general population of men in the same age range. “The high mortality rate is evidence of the severe consequences of heroin use,” Dr. Hser says. “Even among surviving members of the group, severe consequences such as high levels of health problems, criminal behavior and incarceration, and public assistance were associated with long-term heroin use.”
Researchers first interviewed the participants during the period 1962 through 1964 and conducted followup interviews at roughly 10-year intervals–in 1974 and 1975, 1985 and 1986, and 1996 and 1997. In the most recent interviews, the UCLA researchers found that 284 (49 percent) of the 581 addicts enrolled in CAP between 1962 and 1964 had died. The most common cause of death (21.6 percent) was accidental poisoning or drug overdose. Homicide, suicide, or accident accounted for 19.5 percent of deaths, and the next most common causes were liver disease, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases (15.2, 11.7, and 11.7 percent, respectively). Fifty-five original participants could not be located, refused to be interviewed, or could not be interviewed.
Of the 242 surviving members interviewed in 1996 and 1997, 135 (55.8 percent) were not currently using heroin, 50 (20.7 percent) were actively using heroin, and 23 (9.5 percent) refused to provide urine samples for testing. In addition, urine samples were not available from 34 men who were incarcerated at the time of the interviews.
During any given year, roughly 10 percent of participants were in treatment, according to Dr. Hser. “Although many of the survivors reported that they had been able to stop using heroin for extensive periods, fewer than half reported abstinence for periods of more than 5 years,” Dr. Hser says. “Abstinence for 5 years significantly reduced the likelihood of relapse, but even among those who achieved 15 years of abstinence, a quarter still relapsed.” Those who achieved abstinence for more than 5 years were more likely to be employed and less likely to report that they had health problems that prevented them from working, were receiving public assistance, or had been involved in criminal activity than were the rest of the cohort. Rates of HIV, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted diseases did not differ very much between those who had achieved more or less than 5 years of abstinence.
Dr. Hser adds that the results of the 33-year followup study should be considered in light of the fact that all members of the study originally were selected from a corrections-based treatment program and may not be representative of addicts who would have voluntarily sought treatment in community-based facilities had those programs been available 30 years ago. “Nevertheless, we believe the findings on patterns of heroin use and related consequences have important implications for the study of heroin addicts generally,” Dr. Hser says. “These results suggest that heroin addiction treatment programs should prepare addicts for the fact that relapse is a very real possibility. Most people go into treatment thinking that they will be cured and not return to addiction, but abstinence is very difficult to maintain.”
Heroin addicts and treatment providers should understand that treatment is a way to achieve abstinence and that recovery consists of improvements resulting from those periods when they are free of addiction, Dr. Hser says.
Source |
Bots go bust Deep learning goes commodity AI is cleantech 2.0 for VCs MLaaS dies a second death Full stack vertical AI startups actually work
With AI in a full-fledged mania, 2017 will be the year of reckoning. Pure hype trends will reveal themselves to have no fundamentals behind them. Paradoxically, 2017 will also be the year of breakout successes from a handful of vertically-oriented AI startups solving full-stack industry problems that require subject matter expertise, unique data, and a product that uses AI to deliver its core value proposition.
Bots go bust
Over the past year a mania has risen up around ‘bots.’
In the technical community, when we talk about bots, we usually mean software agents which tend to be defined by “four key notions that distinguish agents from arbitrary programs; reaction to the environment, autonomy, goal-orientation and persistence.”
Enterprises have decided to usurp the term ‘bot’ to be mean ‘any form of business process automation’ and create the term ‘RPA’, robotic process automation.
While business process automation will of course continue to play out for decades to come, the current mania around ‘bots’ defined as conversational interfaces over voice and chat will begin its collapse in 2017. Here’s why:
The social vs. personalization wars in consumer internet provide a good guiding light. Ultimately the winning personalization platform was facebook, which was the winning social platform. People still like to interact with other people for most things, and i suspect that many of the chatbots will go the same way as the non-social media platforms that tried to bet on personalization without social curation. A lot of the thinking around bots is naively utilitarian and lacks the social intelligence to recognize the range of human needs being met by person-to-person interaction. For this reason, most bots will fail to retain users even if they can attract them initially. There are a lot of misguided signals being drawn from the global messaging app boom, the rise of slack, and the success of certain interactions on platforms in china like weibo. A lot of folks have extrapolated from these trends to bet on platforms like AI-powered digital personal assistant. Per #1 above, these social platforms are solving for both utilitarian and emotional needs, and it’s not clear that we can extrapolate from this setting and apply it to pure utility AI-driven chatbots. Conversational interfaces are often very inefficient to accomplish tasks as compared to other more visual solutions. Conversational interfaces are interesting and have been around in the HCI community for decades. There are certain applications where conversational interfaces are awesome, but in reality i think we’ll see that for the vast majority of applications, there are far more efficient interfaces to get things done. Note that none of my reasons for the bot bust state that ‘the AI isn’t good enough yet.’ The issue with most systems like siri is more that they’re poorly implemented. We can build many interesting bot interfaces using modern techniques, the bigger issue in my mind is that its not clear humans want to use them.
Deep learning goes commodity
Deep learning is in full mania right now. For those without much of a sense of what various AI terms mean, deep learning is part of machine learning, which is part of of AI. Deep learning is not a different thing, its just a cool body of work that’s yielding state of the art results for lots of important problems, and so people are rightly availing themselves of it. If you want to understand the longitudinal picture here and how deep learning fits into the ever-evolving AI landscape, I wrote about this last fall.
Deep learning startup acquihires have replaced the iOS mobile apps startups of 5 years ago. A bunch of companies were blindsided by the ability of deep learning, especially for computer vision, to generate superior results and tackle new problems. As a result, we’ve witnessed a major wave of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Microsoft, and Salesforce running out an aggressive M&A strategy to fill the gaps.
So if this is so important and highly sought after, why do i think it’s going commodity this year? NIPS 2016 and the overall conference circuit of 2016. It’s very clear that deep learning is everywhere now. There are so many grad students coming out now with these skills. Four years ago the story was dramatically different. The market has adjusted to create more supply.
Now, all this being said, i need to make a clarifying statement. I am suggesting that deep learning will become more commodity among machine learning people this year, but i am not suggesting that machine learning itself will become commodity. The premiums on machine learning talent will still be incredibly high. The premiums on deep learning startup acquihires that we’ve seen in past few years will collapse after the second tier of tech companies and those outside tech (like the folks in detroit) finish their current wave of acquisitions. I expect a steady flow of late adopters this year coming in with dumb money, but that later in the year we may see that this wave of m&a deals starts to slow.
AI is Cleantech 2.0 for VCs
Let’s recall the salient properties of the recent cleantech bust that I think apply equally to AI.
Cleantech isn’t a market, it’s a cross cutting concern. Issues of climate change and sustainability are very serious issues and incredibly worthy ones to think about both as causes and for profit businesses. A cross-cutting concern isn’t a business though, a business is something that sells a product or service that customers want to buy. Tesla and solar city are arguably success stories for cleantech, but note that they are both ‘full stack businesses’ -- a car company and a solar energy company respectively. So when cleantech is an element of a full stack company selling a real product into a real market, it works, but cleantech for cleantech’s sake doesn’t work because it doesn’t start from the premise of a customer need. Great businesses start with customer need. Great missionary businesses start with a vision defined by customer need, and incorporate a mission that aligns to satiating the need. An organization with a societal mission but without a customer-centered vision is at best a moderately effective philanthropic organization. Great business put customer needs first, not a cross-cutting technology trend, even if its a missionary one. Green energy isn’t a market, energy is. Solar is king and growing fast -- because now it works economically. When Warren Buffett and Elon Musk are competing over a market, that’s likely a sign that it makes good business sense. Both view sustainability as an important mission, but also understand that it has to make sense as a business and for the customer first, and the mission much be achieved in service of the needs of the businesses customers and employees. Nothing is more ironic than an unsustainable business with a mission of sustainability. Self-important save-the-world mentality. In cleantech, there was a lot of the hubristic knight-in-shining-armor attitude that is characteristic of tech manias. In AI over the past couple years, we’ve started to see self-aggrandizing AI ethics committees and the like, people talking about what to do when the robots take all the jobs, and so on. It’s the attitude that those working in and around AI are now responsible for shepherding all human progress just because we’re working on something that matters. This haze of hubris blinds people to the fact that they are stuck in an echo chamber where everyone is talking about the tech trend rather than the customer needs and the economics of the businesses. This toxic reality distortion field is what allows the mania to draw large numbers of smart but self-important people into the impending web of doom. Cleantech and AI are both deeply technical problems, and a startup and VC community increasingly trained up on consumer internet and trivial SaaS services is increasingly incapable of adequately evaluating investment opportunities in deeply technical domains. Driven by the state of hubris outlined in #3, people dive in after reading a few blog posts and hearing a few pitches. Linked profiles are duly updated, and an era of ephemeral experts are born.
So how does this play out?
I have a theory that the information era of the economy fundamentally changed the mania-panic cycles we’ve experienced throughout human history. As a former hedge fund guy, I have read all the great books on financial history and market psychology. It’s been interesting to track how things have evolved differently since the mid-90’s.
I think that the rapid increase in social interaction and spread of information online created a self-heisenberging effect that pulls manias up to the front of a business cycle before it even really begins. Consumer internet is a great example, where the 90’s pre-mainia lead to a 2000 crash just as the actual business cycle was getting started. Two years later in 2002, Google, which had started in 1998, was hiring up all the talent at the bottom of the bust and defining the real business cycle for consumer internet.
Four years after cleantech was pronounced dead by wired, solar is cleanest and cheapest source of energy, Elon and Warren are all over it. Tesla and solar city are becoming a full stack cleantech empire.
So I think we are in this pre-mania for AI startups right now. Most of what I see out there right now is going to fail in the same ways that AI startups have been failing for 10 years now. There is a very tiny community of folks that have been doing AI startups for 10 years or more, and the batch that are diving in at the top of this pre-mania are making the same mistake that cleantechs did -- they are diving into AI instead of diving into a customer need.
AI startups right now are mostly hammers looking for nails. As this becomes more evident over the next 12-24 months, and the bigcos exhaust and ramp down their appetite for AI acquihires just as they did for mobile app dev shops, I suspect that we start to see potential founders and VCs realize that something is off. At that point, I will get fewer AI startup pitches on linkedin from people who have decided to get into AI in the past 12 months.
MLaaS dies a second death
Machine Learning as a Service is an idea we’ve been seeing for nearly 10 years and it’s been failing the whole time.
The bottom line on why it doesn’t work: the people that know what they’re doing just use open source, and the people that don’t will not get anything to work, ever, even with APIs.
Many very smart friends have fallen into this tarpit. Those who’ve been gobbled up by bigcos as a way to beef up ML teams include Alchemy API by IBM, Saffron by Intel, and Metamind by Salesforce. Nevertheless, the allure of easy money from sticking an ML model up behind an API function doesn’t fail to continue attracting lost souls.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all trying to sell a MLaaS layer as a component of their cloud strategy. I’ve yet to see startups or bigcos using these APIs in the wild, and I see a lot of AI usage in the wild so its doubtful that its due to the small sample size of my observations.
Whether services from the big cloud providers or from startups, the end will be the same, as they go sideways this year. Cloud providers will leave the services on but they won’t be big money makers, the MLaaS startups will start meeting their demise this year as growth goes sideways and appetite to double down on them dries up.
The problem here is a very practical matter; the MLaaS solutions have no customer segment -- they serve neither the competent nor the incompetent customer segment.
The competent segment: you need machine learning people to build real production machine learning models, because it is hard to train and debug these things properly, and it requires a mix of understanding both theory and practice. These machine learning people tend to just use the same open source tools that the MLaaS services offer. So this knocks out the competent customer segment.
The incompetent segment: the incompetent segment isn’t going to get machine learning to work by using APIs. They are going to buy applications that solve much higher level problems. Machine learning will just be part of how they solve the problems. It’s hard enough to bring in the technical competence to do machine learning internally, and its much much harder to bring in the ‘data product’ talent that can help you identify the right problems and means to productize machine learning solutions. the incompetent segment includes everyone outside of tech companies with established strong machine learning and data product teams. yes, that means the entire global business world across every industry. Its quite a large segment. If you buy into the “software is eating the world” thesis, then you think that every company in every industry more or less has to become a tech company at some level. The same will be true for becoming a data company. There’s already a very wide gap in technical competence between top tech companies like google and facebook and the top companies in each industry outside tech. This gap is dramatically wider when it comes to data competence.
Full stack vertical AI startups actually work
I have been working with AI for nearly 20 years, and building silicon valley AI startups for nearly 10. I’m a cofounding partner of DCVC, a leading AI and data focused VC. My experience makes me both broadly excited and soberly focused on full stack vertical AI applications.
I’m broadly excited because I think that every industry will be transformed by AI. I’m soberly focused because low level task-based AI gets commoditized quickly. I think that if you’re not solving a full stack problem that’s high level enough, then you will be stuck in a commoditized world of lower level AI services, and you are going to have to be acquired or wind down due to lack of traction.
Vertical AI startups solve full-stack industry problems that require subject matter expertise, unique data, and a product that uses AI to deliver its core value proposition.
While most of the machine learning talent works in consumer internet giants and related general tech companies, massive and timely problems are lurking in every major industry outside tech. If you believe the ‘software is eating the world’ hypothesis, then every company in every industry will need to become a tech company.
When you focus on a vertical, you can find high level customer needs that we can meet better with AI, or new needs that can’t be met without AI. These are terrific business opportunities, but they require much more business savvy and subject matter expertise. The generally more technical crowd starting AI startups tend to have neither, and tend to not realize the need for or have the humility to bring in the business and subject matter expertise required to ‘move up the stack’ or ‘go full stack’ as I like to call it.
New full stack vertical AI startups are popping up in financial services, life sciences and healthcare, energy, transportation, heavy industry, agriculture, and materials. These startups will solve high level domain problems powered by proprietary data and machine learning models. Some of these will hit 100M in ARR in 2017-2018. These full stuck AI startups will be to AI as Tesla and Solar City were to cleantech. |
Skyler Mornhinweg doesn't wear No. 17 anymore.
Florida's redshirt sophomore backup quarterback swapped his double digits for No. 8 in the offseason. Perhaps that is an effort to distinguish Florida's four scholarship quarterbacks — who wear No. 3, No. 6, No. 7, and No. 8 now — from its non-scholarship quarterbacks. Perhaps Mornhinweg is merely wearing his favorite number. Perhaps he's trying to make us forget his 2013 campaign. Who knows, really?
But Mornhinweg's three games as Florida's starting quarterback were unforgettable for all the wrong reasons — and the lessons of those games should be indelible for all of us.
The first one is simple: If you're down to your third-string quarterback, and that quarterback has never played college football before, you're probably in dire straits. I never got around to writing something I wanted to call "The Florida Test" this summer — basically, a sprawling piece that would have tried to contextualize exactly how much Florida lost to injury in 2013, and when, and how that would cripple many teams, if not any team — but, while Mornhinweg alternated between average and awful for much of his time under center, I'm really not convinced that he's that much worse than most third-string FBS quarterbacks. He's a limited player who was thrust into a very difficult situation, and though he actually kind of outperformed my minimal expectations in those three games, I suspect Florida will be better off if Mornhinweg never took a snap at QB for it again.
The second is also simple: You should probably take every possible precaution to prevent your team from getting down to its third-string quarterback. Florida's going to move Jeff Driskel around and use Treon Harris to give Driskel a slightly lighter load this fall, it would seem, and that — and Will Muschamp's repeated mentions of having to keep his quarterback healthy — evidence that that one lesson was learned.
The third lesson is more subtle, and one that didn't really sink in for me until the spring: Recruiting backup quarterbacks just doesn't work at Florida. Florida sort of had to go with Mornhinweg in 2012 because Charlie Weis left with six weeks left in a recruiting cycle, and had previously stocked the Gators with two starter-caliber prospects who would compete to be the Gators' quarterback of the future; Brent Pease was able to reel in Mornhinweg, which I thought, at the time, was a good move for depth.
But Florida already having a backup behind Driskel and Jacoby Brissett as it entered the 2013 recruiting cycle helped force the Gators to pluck Max Staver out of Tennessee as their QB for that class, and Staver's transfer at the end of the 2013 season qualifies his commitment as a bust.
There are negatives to recruiting two starter-caliber QBs in one year — Florida's done that three times in the last 15 years, or four if you count Rex Grossman and Brock Berlin, and it hasn't really worked out all that well — but recruiting more starter-caliber QBs leaves you with more starter-caliber QBs should injuries occur. Florida's got three of those on the roster in 2014, and having Will Grier as the emergency QB is dramatically better for Florida's hopes of winning games (and for my psyche) than having Mornhinweg in that role, with all due respect to Mornhinweg.
I don't know what his future holds, and I do wish him the best no matter what, but Skyler Mornhinweg's past has either scarred me for life or taught me valuable lessons, depending on your perspective. I wouldn't be disappointed if it's taught Florida some of the same lessons. |
As you may have heard, the Super Bowl was this past Sunday. Apparently, this is kind of a big deal for sportsball fans, and thus, the SB Nation network. It’s usually one of our biggest traffic days of the year, so there is a lot of excitement/paranoia around it from the Product Team. While we were talking about all the things going on and what might happen, I had the thought that it would be cool to see a map of all the comments on our network during the game - so I made one.
In the video, comments from our Ravens community, Baltimore Beatdown are shown in purple, and comments from our 49ers community, Niners Nation are shown in red. Comments from any other community are shown in green. When there is a lot of comment activity in one area, the dots start drawing on top of each other and it’s more of dark colored blob than a colorful dot.
Between 4PM and midnight EST, we had 49,632 comments created on the SBN network. It is worth noting that only 35,861 of those are actually mapped here, since for some comments I was unable to determine location, they were not in the US, or I was already mapping something at that exact location in the same minute. Not surprisingly, most activity comes from major population centers, so it’s hard to tell who exactly they are rooting for.
The technical details of how this was made are a bit hacky, since this was just a fun side project. D3.js provides the backbone of this visualization. It was my first time using it, and I found it to be relatively straightforward and powerful. I opted to use d3.js rather than something like Processing (or Processing.js) because it has crazy easy mapping and geography support.
The data for the visualization was put together using a combination of SQL to get comment timestamps and IP addresses (which we store for every comment) from Chorus, Awk to format the result, and the geoip gem to approximate the latitude and longitude based on IP.
Unfortunately, the animation isn’t really as smooth as I hoped. I think this is partially my inexperience with D3 and SVG drawing, and partially that JavaScript isn’t the best way to animate 45,000 points. In general, I found that reducing the number of SVG path elements greatly helped the rendering. I started off rending just one MultiPoint path, but split it into many Points so that I could animate them separately. This brought rendering to a total standstill, so I started segmenting comments into buckets so that ones that would be drawn at the same time would be one MultiPoint object, and thus one path element. This helped rendering significantly. Each bucket is further divided into three MultiPoints so that they can be color coded according to community, which unfortunately made rendering a bit slower again, but the trade off seemed worthwhile.
If you want to try and run the animation yourself, the code is available here, but be warned that it runs even worse piggybacking off blocks/GitHub than it does served locally.
We’re building great things, and we need your talent! Check out jobs.voxmedia.com for our current job listings. |
'See no Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear no Evil' (1987) by Jamaican artist Stanley Barnes. Pastel on paper. #caribbean #caribbeanart #jamaica #jamaicanart #jamaicanpainter #stanleybarnes #art #cool #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #inspiration #womeninart #blackisbeautiful #gossip #girlsnight
‘Pan in Motion’ (2015) by Trinidad painter Antonio Butts. Acrylic on canvas. See more of his art: @antoniobutts1 #caribbean #caribbeanart #trinidad #trinidadart #trinidadpainter #antoniobutts #art #painting #cubism #contemporaryart #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #inspiration #steelpan #music #hearthemusic
‘The city’ (2013) by Haitian painter Mondy Pierre Auguste. Acrylics, 16’’x20’’. #caribbean #caribbeanart #haiti #haitianart #haitianpainter #mondypierreauguste #art #contemporaryart #instacool #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #instaart #inspiration #yellow #citylife #city
‘Bobo Warrior’ by Randy Chollette. From his 2018 solo exhibition at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. #caribbean #caribbeanart #caymanislands #caymanislandsart #caymanislandspainter #randycholette #art #contemporaryart #abstract #realism #instacool #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #instaart #inspiration #orange #yellow #noeyes
‘A Quiet Breath’ (2016) by St. Lucian painter Virginia Archer. Acrylic on canvas. #caribbean #caribbeanart #stlucian #stlucianart #stluciapainter #virginiaarcher #art #contemporaryart #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #inspiration #serenity #womeninart #pink #closedeyes
‘She is’ (2013) by Dominican Republic artist Hector Ledesma. Acrylic on canvas, 50"x40". See more of his work @hectorledesmaart #caribbean #caribbeanart #dominicanrepublic #dominicanrepublicart #dominicanrepublicpainter #hectorledesma #art #contemporaryart #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #inspiration #womeninart
‘Les reves d’Haiti’ (2014) by Haitian artist Jean Yves Fernand (aka Zantray). @zantraydayiti #caribbean #caribbeanart #haiti #haitianart #haitianpainter #jeanyvesfernand #zantray #art #instacool #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #instaart #inspiration
‘Nelson Street’ (1982) by Barbadian artist Hubert Brathwaite. #barbados #caribbean #caribbeanart #barbadianart #bajanart #barbadianpainter #art #instacool #followart #iloveart #arts_gate #instaart #inspiration |
LG
LG will want to sell the Optimus F3 it announced on Thursday to everyone, but the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean smartphone comes with some features specifically meant for blind and hearing-impaired users.
Most notably, the phone automatically integrates Google TalkBack, a text-to-speech accessibility app that you would ordinarily have to download and activate to use.
Students can also download the Accessible Education ID pack using Sprint ID. It contains Web apps that center heavily on math and target students who struggle to read print.
For hearing-impaired users, the Optimus F3 color-codes a spectrum of LED colors and pulse patterns to differentiate among phone calls, text messages, incoming messages, calendar appointments, and so on.
The Android handset's other features place it into the middle of the road, with a 4-inch LCD screen, a 5-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture, and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. Rest assured that Sprint's Optimus F3 is ready and waiting for 4G LTE.
Surprisingly, the phone promises pumped-up battery life on its 2,460mAh ticker; and LG adds its own apps for extra flavor, like the LG Tag+ feature for sharing content using NFC.
Customers of any type will be lured in by the price, just $29.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and a new two-year service agreement. The phone goes on sale in silver or purple starting June 14 online, or later this summer in-store. |
KATMANDU, Nepal — Even for Lakpa Rita, a revered Nepalese mountaineer who has reached the summit of Mount Everest 17 times, the roaring wall of boulders, rocks, ice and debris that pulverized much of the mountain’s base camp over the weekend signified a malign new twist in the peak’s destructive powers.
“Nothing like this has happened before at Everest base camp,” Mr. Rita said by telephone Monday from the camp in eastern Nepal, in the aftermath of the earthquake that set off the avalanche and geological convulsions there. At least 18 people died in the area of the camp, which is 18,000 feet above sea level. “This is a huge, huge avalanche,” he said.
The search for victims’ bodies around the camp, where mountaineers gather before trying to reach Everest’s summit, is likely to be long and difficult.
Rescue efforts stalled on Monday because of bad weather, after 20 stranded climbers had been evacuated and 11 bodies had been retrieved, Jhankanath Dhakal, the chief district officer of Solukhumbu District, which includes Nepal’s part of Everest, said in a telephone interview. That was after 60 people were evacuated from Everest on Sunday, he said. |
Rob Bell loves Jesus, and he wants as many people as possible to do the same. Perhaps this book will help. Indeed, there are passages in Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (HarperOne) [two stars], that should give the most stubborn pagan pause. Bell is a pastor with a substantial following not only at his Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids (with some 10,000 in weekly attendance) but all across North America. And he is at his usual best here, casting fresh light on biblical truths, engaging readers with the compelling metaphor, turning the arresting phrase, and reminding all that the love of God is more powerful and sweeping than we can imagine.
Along the way, he raises a host of theological issues upon which the proclamation of the gospel as good news hinges. Bell also proposes solutions, and it's those proposals that raise other questions not just for evangelicals, but for anyone who wants to see more and more people follow Jesus.
What works
For one thing, the title! Love Wins. That's what we all want and hope for. He says in the preface, "I've written this book for all those, everywhere, who have heard some version of the Jesus story that caused their pulse rate to rise, their stomach to churn, and their heart to utter those resolute words, 'I would never be a part of that.'" The book should give such readers reason to reexamine the story of Jesus.
He sets that story in its largest context, but without minimizing its individual dimension. He says it's true that Jesus came to die on the Cross so that we can have a relationship with God. "But … for the first Christians," he says, "the story was, first and foremost, ...
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Jamie Squire/Getty Images Diet is becoming an obsession among elite athletes.
Novak Djokovic, for example, credited his rise to the top of men's tennis to his new gluten-free diet. Kobe Bryant also has a strict diet to give him an edge at an age when his athleticism is declining.
Usain Bolt is not like most athletes.
In his new book, Bolt says he ate 1,000 McDonald's chicken McNuggets during his time at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
That's not hyperbole, it's a mathematical estimate. Here's an excerpt from the NY Post:
"At first I ate a box of 20 for lunch, then another for dinner. The next day I had two boxes for breakfast, one for lunch and then another couple in the evening. I even grabbed some fries and an apple pie to go with it."
He estimates that he ate five 20-piece boxes a day for 10 days, all because he found Chinese food "odd."
Bolt won three gold medals in one of the most electrifying Olympics performances ever, so clearly the chicken nuggets didn't hurt. |
Being Orlando's first women's professional soccer team was exciting enough. Fans were screaming and cheering before the game even began.
But they were in a frenzy by the end. The Orlando Pride (1-1-0, three points) won their historic home opener 3-1 against the Houston Dash (1-1-0, three points) Saturday night at the Citrus Bowl in front of a National Women's Soccer League record 23,403 fans.
"The crowd has taken this league to a new level," Pride coach Tom Sermanni said. "It wasn't just the number … it was the passion, it was the color, it was the way they supported the team. Hopefully we did enough tonight to make them want to come back and watch the rest of our games."
The match was billed as a star-studded competition between U.S. women's national teammates Carli Lloyd with the Dash and Pride captain Alex Morgan.
That hype lasted 12 minutes until Lloyd subbed off with an apparent hamstring injury.
"Losing Carli obviously was a big fall for them, but they have enough depth," Sermanni said, mentioning specifically World Cup champion Morgan Brian, who played 65 minutes for the Dash.
(Joe Burbank, Stephen M. Dowell)
After a scoreless first half, Sermanni subbed on midfielder Lianne Sanderson for Dani Weatherholt. The impact was immediate. Sanderson sparked the offense, creating opportunities, and the Pride began pressuring Houston more at the net.
The Pride took a 1-0 lead in the 46th minute off a Houston Dash own goal. Forward Jasmyne Spencer, who had been a threat offensively all game, tapped the ball to Morgan, who took an off-balance shot in the box that ricocheted off Houston's Andressa and into the net.
"She's a Duracell bunny," Sermanni said of Spencer. "I think somebody must have put batteries in her rib cage. She just keeps running and running and running. She's one of those players that just impacts games. She's a nightmare to mark because you just don't know what she's doing. She actually causes mayhem."
Orlando Pride midfielder Lianne Sanderson scores a free-kick goal in the team's home opener against the Houston Dash. Orlando Pride midfielder Lianne Sanderson scores a free-kick goal in the team's home opener against the Houston Dash. SEE MORE VIDEOS
Sanderson gave the Pride some breathing room 10 minutes later, firing a free kick from nearly 30 yards out. The ball bounced in front of the goal and over the head of Houston goalkeeper Lydia Williams.
The Pride still weren't done riling up fans, though. Morgan scored her first goal for the franchise in the 61st minute when Australian defender Steph Catley saved the ball from nearly rolling out of bounds, crossing it to Morgan directly in front of the net for the score.
"Everything was just going our way after those two goals," Morgan said. "Our rhythm picked up, our tempo picked up, we felt a lot more confident attacking. Scoring three goals in front of this crowd is something I'll always remember."
Brazilian midfielder Andressa blew by a Pride defender and shot a missile into the right side of the net, past diving Pride goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris, to put the Dash on the board 3-1.
As time wore on, Houston continued to press but Harris, a Satellite Beach native, made a series of impressive saves for the Pride in the final minutes.
The first half was a little sloppy, with missed opportunities and off-target passes for the Pride. They seemed to struggle with control and organization, but all of that began to fall into place as the game wore on.
"We want to be high pressure, we want to be high tempo, we want to be high energy and we want to be high quality," Sermanni said. "We want to have a team that's distinguished by those characteristics. We want to get there so that when any team comes up against us, they know they're going to be up for a torrid time."
Saturday was a good start.
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Real Salt Lake will take on Sporting Kansas City in a MLS Cup 2013 rematch on Saturday, with the Claret-and-Cobalt traveling to Sporting Park to take on the Eastern Conference power at 6:30 p.m. MT on ABC 4.
Saturday’s contest is the marquee matchup in MLS this weekend – you have fun up there on national TV, Portland and Seattle – and both sides are already amped for it.
“I’m excited,” RSL defender Tony Beltran told Bill Riley following RSL’s win over Toronto on Saturday. “I know the group is very excited. It’s going to be an interesting game, it’s going to be a fun game and I’m looking forward to it.”
Kansas City, as they are wont to do, took a bit of a different approach to express their – um – excitement ahead of Saturday’s match. Here’s Sporting midfielder Benny Feilhaber, following Kansas City’s 3-2 win at Colorado on Saturday:
Benny Feilhaber on @RealSaltLake: "They pride themselves on being the most possession-oriented team, but I don't know if I buy into that." — Andy Edwards (@AndyEdMLS) March 30, 2014
And here’s KC forward Dom Dwyer, who scored a 92nd minute game-winner at the Rapids on Saturday: |
WASHINGTON — It’s not an anti-Trump conspiracy and it’s not fake news. It’s a basic fact no longer in dispute: Donald Trump’s campaign tried getting help from Vladimir Putin’s government to win an American election, as revealed in emails released Tuesday in a watershed moment following a year-long controversy over suspected Russian election-meddling.
Emails released by the president’s own son show he was invited last year to meet a woman described as a Russian government lawyer, and was told this woman had dirt collected by the Russian government, in an attempt by them to smear Hillary Clinton and influence the U.S. election.
Donald Trump Jr. responded to the invitation by setting up a meeting at Trump Tower, inviting his brother-in-law and current White House staffer Jared Kushner, and bringing along Kremlin-linked campaign manager Paul Manafort.
”We have some time (to meet),” Trump replied to his friend.
”If it’s what you say I love it.”
The Trump team has spent a year denying ties with Russia, and denying collusion. But the president’s son released four pages of emails Tuesday, after the New York Times had reported on them.
Trump Jr. has agreed to testify before a congressional committee, pending an invitation.
The sudden twist in the Russia affair came after the newspaper reported on a meeting set up at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, by a globe-trotting music impresario who knows the Trump family through one of his clients.
A five-star nomad whose Facebook page features a string of pictures from exotic locales, Rob Goldstone informed the candidate’s son that a mutual friend had met with a Russian federal prosecutor who had dirt to dish.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump
”(This) would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” Goldstone wrote. ”This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
He offered to set up a meeting with Trump Jr. and someone he described this way: ”A Russian government attorney.”
The attorney in question, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has denied connections to the Russian government. But she told NBC News in an interview that the Trump team was very interested in what she had to say.
The Trump inner circle says the meeting was a bust; Veselnitskaya didn’t deliver anything of value, they say and the encounter ended after about a half-hour.
In a brief statement from the White House, President Trump said: ”My son is a high-quality person. And I applaud his transparency.”
The White House has referred all other questions to lawyers.
Three members of the Trump family have retained attorneys in the Russia affair as legal experts weigh in on whether the known facts already fit the definition of obstruction of justice, election-law violations, conspiracy, criminal failure to disclose foreign contacts on government security forms and even more serious charges like espionage and treason.
Republicans have circled the wagons, mostly ridiculing the story.
”Washington’s obsessed right now. It is the Democratic talking point du jour. But when I go back to Texas, nobody asks about Russia,” Sen. Ted Cruz said earlier Tuesday, before the emails were released.
”You know, I’ve held town halls all over the state of Texas. You know how many questions I got on Russia? Zero. Outside of Washington, people are focused on Obamacare… tax reform… regulatory reform… It’s just worth keeping in mind the absolute disconnect between the obsession of the Washington media and where the American people are.”
Yet there are now multiple congressional investigations, as well as a special counsel. In recent weeks, Trump father and son had been taking shots at the special counsel, using their social media accounts to suggest Robert Mueller is biased and that his investigation is a waste of time.
There was one more development late Tuesday: according to multiple reports, Trump Jr.’s email exchange and meeting is now being investigated by the special counsel. |
BREAKING: Obama Released TOP IRANIAN SCIENTIST as Part of Nuke Deal; Left Americans to Rot in Hell
On Wednesday Barack Obama lashed out at CBS reporter Major Garrett after he asked him about the four Americans left behind to languish in Iranian prisons.
Former Marine Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini and Vahid Salemi are being held in Iranian prisons. (Breitbart)
Obama was defending his nuclear deal with Iran when Garrett asked him about the US hostages in Iran.
Obama: I got to give you credit Major for how you craft those questions. the notion that I’m content as I celebrate with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails. … Major, that’s nonsense and you should know better.
Of course, that is exactly what he did.
The Obama administration did nothing to free American hostages during their talks with the Iranian regime.
Now we know…
Obama released a top Iranian scientist as part of the deal but left the Americans to rot in hell in Iranian prisons.
The Times of Israel reported:
Mojtaba Atarodi, arrested in California for attempting to acquire equipment for Iran’s military-nuclear programs, was released in April as part of back channel talks, Times of Israel told. The contacts, mediated in Oman for years by close colleague of the Sultan, have seen a series of US-Iran prisoner releases, and there may be more to come. The secret back channel of negotiations between Iran and the United States, which led to this month’s interim deal in Geneva on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, has also seen a series of prisoner releases by both sides, which have played a central role in bridging the distance between the two nations, the Times of Israel has been told. In the most dramatic of those releases, the US in April released a top Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, who had been arrested in 2011 for attempting to acquire equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs.
No wonder he didn’t want reporters talking about it! |
One of the 16 illegal immigrants allowed by a federal court to sue an Arizona rancher for stopping them at gunpoint after they sneaked across the U.S.-Mexico border is a convicted felon deported from this country after a 1993 arrest by U.S. authorities on drug charges, court records show.
Gerardo Gonzalez, described in a lawsuit brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) as a 38-year-old Mexican citizen, was convicted in September 1993 for possession of a controlled substance for sale and ordered deported to his home country.
Gonzalez, whose illegal re-entry after removal under U.S. law would be another felony, is among five women and 11 men detained by Roger Barnett, owner of the Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz.
The trial against Mr. Barnett on charges of civil rights violations began last week before U.S. District Court Judge John M. Roll in Tucson and is expected to conclude Friday.
Asked about Gonzalez, MALDEF spokeswoman Laura Rodriguez in Los Angeles said Thursday night that a gag order had been issued in the case and she could not comment.
MALDEF had sought Jan. 6 to preclude questioning, testimony or evidence regarding Gonzalez´s drug conviction and his removal from the U.S., saying it was “irrelevant to the factual and legal issues at hand and extremely prejudicial.”
Attorney Victor A. Rodriquez also sought to exclude at trial the numerous photographs and a videotape depicting vandalism and the transportation of illegal drugs through the Barnetts´ ranch. He said the photos and video did not involve any of the plaintiffs in this case.
On Jan. 8, Judge Roll denied both motions.
The lawsuit seeks $32 million for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other accusations - $1 million actual damages and $1 million punitive damages for each of the illegal immigrants.
Also named are Mr. Barnett’s wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, the sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The trial is based on a March 7, 2004, incident in which Mr. Barnett approached a group of illegal immigrants while carrying a gun and accompanied by his dog.
The lawsuit said the Barnetts “engaged in a private campaign and have conspired with each other and others to ‘hunt’ and detain against their will, and at gunpoint, Latino migrants or presumed migrants such as plaintiffs.”
It also said Mr. Barnett committed assault and battery, falsely arrested and imprisoned the 16 illegal immigrants, acted negligently, inflicted emotional distress and “engaged in a conspiracy to deprive plaintiffs of their civil rights.”
But in a statement of facts filed with the court, Mr. Barnett’s attorney, David T. Hardy, said his client’s 22,000-acre ranch is frequently crossed by illegal immigrants and drug smugglers and that Mr. Barnett was checking for damages when his dog started barking and ran off into the desert. He said Mr. Barnett followed the dog and came across a large group of people “apparently trying to hide.”
“Since drug smugglers are frequently armed, I drew my handgun,” Mr. Barnett said in an April 18, 2007, deposition. “I holstered it after assuring myself they were not armed. I then called Border Patrol on my cell phone, and my wife, Barbara, on my radio, and waited until Border Patrol arrived and took them into custody.”
A March 2007 deposition of Border Patrol agent Manuel Rodriquez found that after agents ran a records check of those detained on the Barnett ranch, other members of the party had made prior attempts at illegal entry.
Mrs. Barnett said during an April 2007 deposition that her husband would not have seen the 16 illegal immigrants had it not been for the dog.
“If the dog hadn’t gotten out and started barking, we would have never known they were there,” she said.
In a 2002 interview with The Washington Times, Mr. Barnett, now 64, said he first started to notice tracks and trash on his ranch in 1998, and learned later that his property had become a major route for illegal immigrants headed out of Mexico and for northbound drug smugglers.
The ranch sits in what Cochise County, Ariz., law enforcement authorities call “the avenue of choice” for illegal immigration.
“Thousands of aliens have crossed my property,” Mr. Barnett said during the interview. “There are so many that I can tell you that at times it looks like a slow-motion invasion. Literally, I feel like the guy with his finger in the dike, and I just don´t think I can hold back the flood.”
He said intruders on his ranch tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home. Some of his cattle have died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
Click Music is more than a music site. It is an organisation, a collective, a homepage for a scene which is more powerful, more corrosive and more relevant than ever.
We collectivise all that is best in our scene, championing bands, venues, industry insiders and more with an aim to redefine and reestablish our scene into the mainstream.
Based in London, Click Music has writers, promoters and talent on side all around the country. With projects taking place across the UK and beyond, this is only the beginning.
We launch on March 4th 2019 with a week of new content. Until then, watch this space!
Looking to contribute to our community? Have any questions regarding our work? Feel free to contact us via the link below!
Editor in Chief: Charlie Barnes
Contributors: Alysha Shariff, Conor Richards, Amelia Brockstark, Phil Mason |
Mark was not my biological twin brother, he was my spiritual and emotional twin. We met on March 9th, 1982. The room was up a narrow wooden staircase in an old brick building in the center of West Hollywood. From the window, you could see men quietly slipping into one of the area’s most popular gay bars, The Eagle.
The men in this room with its red brick mortar were familiar with that bar, but were no longer patrons. This was a meeting for recovery, and the first thing that Mark and I found out about each other that night was that we both had been sober the exact same amount of time: four days. We were the same biological age of 24. We each had our stories, but one thing was certain, we were both ready for our rebirth into recovery. And we got it.
Our bond was highlighted by little signs that we were meant to stroll this distance together as brothers. My last name is Watson, his was Holmes… so our deep friendship had the literary allusion of Sherlock and the Doctor. We were never romantic, the idea never even occurring to us, as we were too focused on establishing our new lives in recovery. In today’s terms, we were “BFFs”.
After meeting, we were in constant contact, checking our moods and sharing about our sober adventures, our hopes, our crushes…life. I remember the day I stayed at his house when we both attended our first sober convention—an event full of workshops, socialization (a challenge for newly sober alcoholics), and meetings. We sat quietly that morning, sipping tea, peaceful and content. I never felt so safe and grounded in my life.
Bliss was not going to be a long term condition for us. Shortly after our third sober “birthday”, Mark went to Palm Springs. Before I expected him to return, I got a call. He was in the hospital with some strange virus. I rushed over, and was horrified to see the set up outside his room… coverings and masks and rubber gloves. I was being asked to “hazmat” up to enter. I walked in and ripped the mask off immediately. “They think it might be AIDS,” he said.
I stood in the middle of his hospital room, shaking, angry and adamant. “GOD,” I declared, “Did NOT get you sober to let you die. That is NOT going to happen.”
Physical medicine at that time was not offering much. Years before, taking a brief sojourn from my bath in alcoholism, I had been deeply impressed by deep faith in spiritual means of healing. Now, I was certain that someone, somewhere HAD to be addressing this disease in that way. Certainly, if someone was looking to perform miracles, the opportunity was here.
There was someone who had taken up that mission. Her name was Louise Hay, and she had been documented in our local gay paper as hosting six men with AIDS in a prayer group in her living room. When Mark left the hospital, we joined them. The group had grown then to be about forty.
Soon, it escalated and hundreds were flocking to see Louise at the local community center. Louise called in many alternative healing visionaries. What ever did not occur in that throng in terms of successful conquering of AIDS, it was at least met by a new hope, dignity and a peace of mind that no one could have envisioned, given the situation.
That was true for Mark and myself. We stayed away from what Louise called the “Ain’t it awfuls” . Mark grew strong and confident, got a boy friend, and continued to live his life. He bridged the gaps with his family, and he carried hope to the newly AIDS-diagnosed as he did to the newly sober. We would meditate at the meetings and envelop ourselves in the mutual love and support we felt all around us in the room. It seemed to me that our spirits left our bodies and they danced and intermingled in the air… two little boys at play, running the hillsides..before returning to us, leaving us calm and serene.
I remember one night sitting in his car after our weekly Louise Hay meeting. It was many months after his diagnosis and things were going well. He looked at me and said, “I am so grateful for how well I feel right now, and I often wonder what has allowed me to stay here. I honestly think your love has kept me alive.” I was blown away by that statement. It came back to haunt me later when no matter how much I loved him …it was not enough to keep him here.
We also had episodes where the horror of the situation was something with which we had to deal. He called me over to his house one late afternoon. “The doctors have given me a choice,” he said. “I have an eye condition that is going to lead to blindness. They have a drug to cure that. They also have a drug that may save my life…a new one called AZT. The problem is… my body can’t handle both. I have to choose.” We sat quietly looking at each other. Which would be sacrificed… his sight, or his life? Mark came over to where I was and turned on the light and then went back to where he was sitting. He sat and stared. I realized he was memorizing my face. I also understood which option he was going to choose.
One of Mark’s big life dreams was to go to Hawaii. He went in the late fall, and when he returned, I noticed a change in him. Some of his drive was gone. I got the sense that he had lived his way down his “things before I go” check list, and he was done. From then on, he went into decline. A kind of senility started to set in, and he became increasingly feeble. Our outings were like me guiding around my grandfather. Mark was 28.
In early December, 26 years ago, Mark was again in the hospital at the UCLA medical center. I went to visit him, as I was about to leave on a quick business trip. He was sitting up in bed, and seemed fully THERE—no dementia, and almost with his youthful glow in tact. We were both almost 5 years sober at that point, with our “birthday” only a few months away, which would be marked by us “taking cakes” at meetings in Los Angeles and speaking about our milestone.
“I need you to do something for me,” he said. “And I know it will upset you when I ask you. You hate it when I talk about it.”
“Go on…” I answered.
“I need you to dedicate your first cake to me, “ he said quietly. “I have worked so hard for my 5 years of sobriety, and I really wanted to make it to take that cake.”
“I was going to do that anyway, “ I said. “Whether you were there or not. But, you WILL be there.” He and I looked at each other for a moment, both of us knowing that he would not be.
I kissed him good bye and went out into the night. I walked around Westwood village by the medical center for a while rather than hopping right into my car. The night was cold , crisp and wintery, yet there was something almost magical with a spirit in the air.
I never saw Mark again. The next day, as I left the city, he left the planet. I did dedicate my first cake to him a few months later, and many cakes and acknowledgement of my, our, sobriety ever since then. He is in my soul, yet there will always be a nagging pain that he does not continue on to be a part of my life.
Today is World AIDS day. Mark was one of over forty CLOSE friends I lost to that horrible scourge, and despite advances, it is not done yet. Please stop today and think about it a bit, remember, or if you weren’t alive yet…to imagine. Send some love back out into the world. Just as this disease has not yet left us, there are still hundreds of thousands of broken hearts that still need to be healed. Mine is one of them.
“Near a shady wall a rose once grew,
Budded and blossomed in God’s free light,
Watered and fed by the morning dew,
Shedding it’s sweetness day and night.
As it grew and blossomed fair and tall,
Slowly rising to loftier height,
It came to a crevice in the wall
Through which there shone a beam of light.
Onward it crept with added strength
With never a thought of fear or pride,
It followed the light through the crevice’s length
And unfolded itself on the other side.
The light, the dew, the broadening view
Were found the same as they were before,
And it lost itself in beauties new,
Breathing it’s fragrance more and more.
Shall claim of death cause us to grieve
And make our courage faint and fall?
Nay! Let us faith and hope receive–
The rose still grows beyond the wall,
Scattering fragrance far and wide
Just as it did in days of yore,
Just as it did on the other side,
Just as it will forever-more.”
A. L. Frink
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'They loaded up my Skoda and drove off': David Cameron reveals he has been burgled twice as he tells homeowners they can use disproportionate force against intruders
New laws could allow use of lethal force against criminals
The Prime Minister says homeowners could stab a burglar provided they are not unconscious
Law changes meant to 'dispel doubts' over right to fight intruders
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling to reassure homeowners over their rights
Tough new 'two strikes' rules will mean anyone committing two serious offences will be jailed for life
David Cameron was repeatedly put on the spot yesterday over how far somebody confronted by a raider would be allowed to go under a new ‘bash a burglar’ law unveiled by his party.
The Prime Minister – who recounted the ‘terrible’ experience of having his Skoda stolen in a burglary – said he believed intruders gave up their rights when they entered another person’s home.
When pressed as to what this meant in practice, he said that the new law would not permit, for example, the stabbing of a burglar who had been knocked unconscious in a struggle.
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Making a point: David Cameron said he believed intruders gave up their rights when they entered another person's home Bad memories: The Prime Minister recalled when his Skoda was stolen in a burglary (file picture)
Crackdown: Chris Grayling wants to 'dispel doubts' over the right to fight off intruders
But the announcement raised questions over the precise boundaries that would apply.
Mr Cameron told ITV News: ‘People need the certainty to know that unless they did something grossly disproportionate, as we’re going to put it, then they are basically in the right.’
He added: ‘And frankly when a burglar crosses your threshold and enters your home, we should worry less about their rights and worry more about the rights of the household, the home, the family whose privacy and whose place they are invading.’
He recalled how raiders once burgled his home then escaped in his car, telling Sky: ‘I’ve been burgled a couple of times when I lived in London, in North Kensington. There was one occasion when I left the keys in my car and they loaded up my Skoda and drove off. It is a horrible feeling when your house has been invaded.’
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s announcement that he would change the law to allow the use of ‘disproportionate force’ against burglars in the heat of the moment delighted MPs at the Tory conference yesterday. Only the use of ‘grossly disproportionate force’ will remain outlawed. Currently, householders are entitled to use only ‘reasonable’ force.
Campaign: Calls for a change in the law gathered strength after Tony Martin, pictured outside the Norfolk home where he shot two burlgars, was jailed in 2000
Plans: Theresa May tells the Tory conference that victims will have a greater say in the justice system
The plan was attacked by the civil liberties group Liberty, whose director Shami Chakrabarti said: ‘Terrified householders defending themselves are already protected, so the irresponsible announcement can only be designed to make people afraid or actually encourage vigilante execution.’
Mr Grayling also pledged that sex attackers and killers would be jailed for life in a new ‘two strikes and you’re out’ policy.
Life terms will automatically go to anyone twice given jail terms of ten years or more for rape, sex crimes against children, serious GBH and terrorism offences, and ‘causing or allowing the death of a child’.
The Justice Secretary said: ‘Everyone deserves a second chance. But those who commit the most serious offences cannot be allowed to just go on and on causing harm, distress and injury.’
Home Secretary Theresa May also unveiled plans to allow crime victims to decide how the thug should be punished.
They will be offered a menu of sanctions – such as ordering offenders to pay compensation or fix the damage they have caused.
Any offender who refuses to comply will face stiff action by the police or courts.
Mr Grayling, who will also promise to toughen community punishments, will delight the Right with his new law on burglars.
It will mean someone who is confronted by a burglar and has reason to fear for their safety, or their family’s safety and in the heat of the moment uses force that later seems ‘disproportionate’ will not be guilty of an offence.
Home Secretary... and unofficial minister for fashion: Theresa May's shoes on stage today
Rights: Andy and Tracey Ferrie, pictured, were confronted in their home by burglars This could include the use of lethal force. Only force which is ‘grossly’ disproportionate will not be permitted.
Mr Grayling said: ‘Being confronted by an intruder in your home is terrifying, and the public should be in no doubt that the law is on their side. That is why I am strengthening the current law. ‘Householders who act instinctively and honestly in self-defence are crime victims and should be treated that way. ‘We need to dispel doubts in this area once and for all, and I am very pleased to be delivering on the pledge that we made in Opposition.’ The demands for change began when Mr Martin was imprisoned for killing one burglar and wounding another who entered his Norfolk farm.
No sympathy: Judge Michael Pert QC spoke out after a lawyer for one of the men who broke into the Ferries' remote farmhouse, pictured, asked for leniency More recent cases suggest prosecutors and judges have been giving greater weight to the legal right of householders to use ‘reasonable force’ to defend themselves. Last month Judge Michael Pert QC spoke out after a lawyer demanded leniency for a criminal who, he said, had been hit with a shotgun by Andy Ferrie at his home near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, in ‘a form of summary justice’. The judge replied: ‘If you burgle a house in the country where the householder owns a legally held shotgun, that is the chance you take. You cannot come to court and ask for a lighter sentence because of it.’ Mr Grayling’s move follows changes made by his predecessor Ken Clarke, which removed a legal requirement for householders to retreat. |
1.Heroin– Popular street names include smack, skag, and junk. Street price is between £10-20/bag, 300,000 UK users and kills 700 people a year in the UK.
2.Cocaine– Often referred to as snow, flake, coke, and blow. Street price is £30-60/g powder and there are 780,000 UK users. There are 214 UK deaths a year.
3.Barbiturates– Popular slang names include yellow jackets, reds, blues, Amy’s, and rainbows. Street price is £1-2/tablet and they kill 20 a year in the UK.
4.Street Methadone– Street price is about £10/100ml, there are about 33,000 illegal UK users and 295 a year die.
5.Alcohol– Street price starts at £1 and a huge 40 million in the UK use the drug which is responsible for 40,000 deaths each year.
6.Ketamine– A powerful hallucinogen, often referred to as Special K. Ranging from £15-40/g Special K has about 100,000 users and there is on averag one death a year in the UK
7.Benzodiazepines– A family of sedative drugs. The 100,000 UK users pay about £1 for 4 x 5mg capsules and 406 people in the UK die each year.
8.Amphetamines– Known as billy or speed. Street price from £8-12/wrap, UK users: 430,000 and there are 35 UK deaths a year.
9.Tobacco– Easily available in shops, tobacco costs about £5 and there are 10m UK users. A massive 114,000 die each year.
10.Buprenorphine– Also called bupe or subbies. Street price is £2 for 4 x 8mg capsules and the nummber of users in the UK is unknown. There are about 2 UK deaths a year.
Source: The Lancet and the BBC |
View Caption Hide Caption Despite rumors, Isaiah McKenzie says he's not heading to Miami. (Getty Images)
By Seth Emerson, DawgNation.com
The social media and message board world around Georgia football has been aflutter with talk that Isaiah McKenzie, one of the team’s most dynamic players, will be taking his talents back to Miami. But is it actually true?
No, it is not.
“I’m staying in Athens with my boys,” McKenzie told DawgNation.com Tuesday via text message.
The speculation appeared to begin on Monday after Miami coach Mark Richt (who you might recall used to be Georgia’s coach) hired as cornerbacks coach Mike Rumph, who coached McKenzie and Bulldogs running back –Sony Michel at Plantation-American Heritage.
Soon after a post attributed to McKenzie – but not confirmed to be his account – on Snapchat said: “I am officially transferring to Miami.” But it appeared to either be a fake account or just a joke by McKenzie. No one around the program knew anything about any plans to transfer.
“We are not aware of any request that has been made regarding a transfer at this time,” UGA spokesman Claude Felton said on Tuesday morning.
(Note: A Miami spokesman made a similar comment Tuesday, saying he was not aware of any incoming transfers. The DawgNation report did not say whether McKenzie was asked if the Snapchat account was his, and if so, if he was kidding around. — Matt Porter)
McKenzie was with the team during bowl week and played in the team’s win over Penn State.
Since joining the Bulldogs last year McKenzie has injected much-needed life into special teams, returning four punts for touchdowns, along with one kickoff. He had two punt return touchdowns this year, averaging 12.8 yards on all punt returns, and 10.5 yards on four kickoff returns.
McKenzie had 21 touches on offense this year: 11 runs for 117 yards and two touchdowns, and 10 catches for 123 yards.
A nagging hamstring injury has been a problem for McKenzie both years, but he finished this season healthy.
Here is a link to the supposed McKenzie social media post: |
Officials have said it won't be a "European army," but others argue it sounds a lot like NATO.
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
European Union leaders agreed Monday to set up a military training headquarters in Brussels. But not all member states think this is a good idea.
Even though officials have said this won't be a "European army," some have argued this force sounds an awful lot like NATO, which includes 22 of the 28 EU nations.
Britain's been one of the strongest critics of this move, arguing a military headquarters risks undermining NATO. But the U.K.'s sway within the EU has dropped since the "Brexit" vote.
Supporters of the headquarters note while NATO includes most of the EU nations, six countries are left out. And several non-EU nations that are part of NATO may be less tied to European security.
Related Story Worried About Russia, Sweden Brings Back Its Military Draft
One of those is the U.S. President Donald Trump has alluded to focusing less on NATO if European countries don't boost their defense spending.
But France and Germany have argued the continent needs to be able to fend for itself.
To help prevent it from sounding like a new NATO, the headquarters will be run by a "director" instead of a "commander."
Also, the scope of the headquarters will start out small, taking over three existing EU training missions in Africa.
But The New York Times quotes the Belgian foreign minister, saying, "[As for] a European army, maybe later." |
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Rushing water at Twin Falls at Barton Creek Greenbelt on June 1, 2016, just south of Sculpture Falls. (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez)
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Rushing water at Twin Falls at Barton Creek Greenbelt on June 1, 2016, just south of Sculpture Falls. (KXAN Photo/Frank Martinez)
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Swimmers and water skiers in Texas are being reminded to take precautions to avoid a brain-eating amoeba.
PAM, or primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, is present in nearly all rivers, lakes, ponds and streams.
The Texas Department of State Health Services says even though the infection is extremely rare, it is almost always deadly.
Nine cases have been reported in the state since 2005, resulting in eight deaths, including a recent cases of a teen in Harris County.
DSHS says you can take these precautions to reduce the already low risk of infection:
• Do not swim, ski, dive or jump into stagnant water.
• Hold your nose or use nose clips when jumping, skiing, diving or wakeboarding in any fresh water.
• Avoid putting your head underwater in hot springs and other warm fresh water bodies.
• If you use a Neti-Pot or syringe for nasal irrigation or participate in ritual nasal rinsing be sure to use only sterile, distilled, or lukewarm previously boiled water.
• Avoid digging in, or stirring up mud and scum while taking part in water-related activities in shallow, warm freshwater areas.
The amoeba thrives in warm, stagnant water but may be present in any body of fresh water, the agency says. A combination of lower water levels, high temperatures and stagnant or slow-moving water may produce higher concentrations of the amoeba.
Infection can occur when water containing the amoeba is forced up the nose when participating in water-related activities. The organism has also been found in tap water and can be introduced to the brain when tap water is used for nasal irrigation or sinus flushes. Symptoms may include severe headache, high fever, stiff neck, nausea and vomiting.
The amoeba does not live in salt water or in swimming pools and hot tubs that are properly cleaned, maintained and treated with chlorine.
Closing lakes or other bodies of water is not a standard public health protection measure against PAM given that the amoebas are ubiquitous, naturally occurring microorganisms and infections are extremely rare. |
As if it weren't already a complete joy, air travel is now poised to become even more comfortable — with a new kind of seat that'll encourage you to get, um, real friendly with your neighbors.
Airbus has filed a seat patent that appears to pack people in without all the clunky cushions and awkward folding tables, in an apparent bid to save valuable space on its aircraft.
Its cushions are shaped liked bicycle saddles, and when the seats aren't being used, they fold vertically to save space. Cutting down all that "bulk," as the patent application puts it, lets you do a lot more with the limited real estate on board.
This could potentially make air travel even more economical than it already is. If you're willing to put up with it — and most people would be, Airbus predicts, so long as the flights are short — it'd be far more efficient than the way we currently fly, loading huge metal-and-plastic contraptions onto planes just so they can cradle our fleshy rear ends.
But if you squint, the thing looks more like a medieval torture device than lounging equipment. Not to mention all the features you'd lose: Do people eat from their laps? Plug headphones into that pipe-shaped thing? Do the cushions float? And even with all the leg room it looks like you'd open up, reclining looks practically impossible.
Airbus openly acknowledges that packing more passengers on board is going to result in reduced comfort, and that the goal is basically to figure out how far they can go without inciting an airborne revolt.
"Reduced comfort remains tolerable for the passengers in as much as the flight lasts only one or a few hours," Airbus sagely calculates, before going on to explain why reducing leg room provides diminishing returns:
"This second solution has also been pursued hitherto," the patent application reads, "and it is difficult to continue to further reduce this distance between the seats because of the increase in the average size of the passengers."
Yes, defending your God-given right to leg room has come down to using your waistline as a weapon.
Zooming out for a wider view only enhances the likeness to an ancient Greek galley. Windows might soon be replaced by oars, or a handlebar-bike pedal combination. On the bright side, perhaps manual labor might lead to modest airfare refunds.
Who am I kidding? Your complimentary in-flight beatings will continue until morale improves.
Hat tip: L.A. Times |
1 x Launcher
2 x Mortar Projectiles
1 x Co2 Charger
User manual and Protection Cover
The Hades Arrow is an Airsoft Mortar powered by C02 and Water. The projectiles can fly high in the sky and come down landing. In every package you will receive 1 Launcher, 2 Mortar Projectiles, and 1 C02 Charger.The Hades Arrow is designed for the extreme film makers and enthusiasts. The unit can travel a distance of 200+ feet and will provide an spectacular visual effect for any Airsoft mil-sim events. However, it is recommended to be used under controlled environment just like baseball or golf, the mortar should not be shot into the crowd or into the direction with helmet-less personnel. As the user of this product, you are solely responsible for operating it in a manner that does not endanger yourself and others or result in damage the product or the property of others. It is advisable to always keep a safe distance in all directions around this product, as the margin will help to avoid collisions or injury.Hakkatsu200+ feet
FPS: 1
About APS / Hakkotsu
APS Limited was established in 2001. APS started by specializing in designing and building Simulation Training Equipment (Real Action Markers & Powder Balls for training simulation). APS - the three words stand for Accuracy - Pneumatics - Shooting. With their knowledge and experience that has been gained from making Real Action Markers and Projectiles, APS launched a new product line - Electronic Blow Back (EBB) products to spur the current Airsoft Market. Since entering the Airsoft industry their line of Airsoft rifles, pistols and accessories have been incredibly popular. |
This Sunday, MLS commissioner Don Garber will hand MLS Cup to either the Portland Timbers or the Columbus Crew, and at that moment, perhaps the most memorable postseason in MLS history will come to a close.
Granted, there have been other years that have witnessed more goals per game in the playoffs. Heading into Sunday's final, the current campaign has seen 2.69 goals per playoff game. The 2013 and 2014 postseasons saw 2.8 goals scored per game. The 2003 playoffs -- which just so happens to be the first year the league started using two-game series in some rounds as opposed to three -- remain the high-water mark, with 3.0 goals per game. What has made this postseason so memorable, however, has been when the goals have been scored, as opposed to how many.
Over the 16 playoff games contested so far, a whopping 15 goals have been scored in the 80th minute or later. The next-highest average was in 2004 and 2006, when just seven "late" goals were scored in 11 playoff games. And the late tallies in the current playoff run weren't insurance goals, either: Thirteen of the 15 either broke ties or created them. Add in the epic 11-round penalty shootout involving the Timbers and Sporting Kansas City during the knockout round and you have a drama-meter that has been redlining for almost the entirety of the postseason.
Yet for all the playoff excitement, there is still a debate over how best to determine a league champion. On the one hand, there are soccer purists who believe that the best approach is a single table with a balanced schedule in which each team plays the other home and away, as is done in the vast majority of leagues around the world. On the other, there is the belief that playoffs work best, with MLS and Liga MX leading the charge on that front.
A strong argument can made that sustained excellence over the course of the season ought to be recognized as the league champion. It lessens the impact of luck or a single refereeing decision having an undue influence on the competition. In MLS, the Supporters Shield (awarded in honor of the team with the highest number of regular-season points) has seen an increase in attention, yet remains a distant second in terms of prestige. Most of this is down to its flaws, among them the imbalanced league schedule and the way MLS plays through international fixture dates, which robs teams of their best players for several weeks each season.
There is a clear path to fixing those faults, of course. A 38-game schedule doesn't seem that much more onerous than the current 34-game format, but the league's plans to expand to 24 teams (and beyond) make a home-and-away format impractical going forward. The desire of MLS to emphasize regional rivalries also works against such a format.
Portland and Sporting KC's dramatic shootout is just one of many playoff highlights this season, proof the system works.
The cultural heft in North America of using playoffs to determine a champion is considerable. While professional baseball was the pioneer in this area going back to the late 1800s, there is even some history in soccer with the use of playoffs. During the 1927-28 campaign, the American Soccer League went to a "split season" format, with the fall and spring champions squaring off to determine an overall champion. There was an intermittent use of playoffs ever since, though it became a staple in the days of the original North American Soccer League.
There are other reasons for opting for the playoff model besides logistics and history. A single table without a system of promotion/relegation would result in too many meaningless games and promotion/relegation is a concept that MLS is dead set against; the USSF is also understandably reluctant to impose.
This is not to say that the current format is a complete inoculation against meaningless games. The very forgiving nature of the playoff system, one that sees 12 out of the league's 20 teams qualify, creates a lack of urgency in the first half of the season. It also does little to punish mediocrity at the end. But it does sustain fan interest for most of the campaign and even accelerates it in some regions as the playoffs commence.
Which leads to the biggest reasons of all to have playoffs, namely money and a means to grow the sport.
"The playoffs help a lot more in terms of monetization in U.S. sports, where it's a single point of excitement," said Michael Colangelo, the assistant director of USC's Sports Business Institute. "You can draw more fans. It's better for the business end as well. The games always matter towards the end of the season."
San Jose Earthquakes president David Kaval added, "I think the reality is if you look at North American sports, the higher ratings and the time of year where you attract more casual fans and build interest in your sport is typically around the playoffs. That is something that is a tried and true system in sports business and sports media. That is certainly one consideration in terms of why a playoff system is important for the league."
The biggest knock against the playoffs is the lack of genuine reward for teams that win the regular season, like the Red Bulls.
While television ratings remain a challenge for the league, especially given the fact that Sunday playoff games require MLS to go up against the behemoth that is the NFL, other ways to engage both casual and hard-core fans have emerged.
"In many ways, the playoffs are like an on-ramp to getting interest in the league and some of the teams," said Kaval. "And I think it's more than just ratings. How many tweets are there? How many Facebook posts? Especially with our younger millennial fans, I don't think they're sitting at home with a Nielsen box. I think for us, we see the engagement going way up, and so we consider that a big success."
Colangelo is of the opinion that ratings are still critical, but not as much as in the past.
"Television ratings used to be the end-all, be-all," he said. "That's where any sort of sponsorship deal or advertising deal or on-field signage during the TV broadcast was generating revenue. Now, engaging digitally is a huge issue. Millennials just consume content in a different manner. The ratings are important. They still are the No. 1 way to reach viewers, but the shift is happening and we're kind of at a point where leagues and sponsors and anyone involved in the business end can spread out their money and hedge a little bit."
For a league still trying to acquire every last bit of mindshare that it can, it's difficult to see the same amount of end-of-season attention -- and drama -- being attained with a single table.
Are there ways the current system could be tweaked? Without question, especially as it relates to rewarding regular season success. Since the start of the aforementioned 2003 season, only two teams have achieved an MLS Cup and Supporters Shield double. That span has also seen just seven regular season conference champions reach the MLS Cup final.
Using regular season placing as a tiebreaker if two teams are tied after two legs and on away goals, as Liga MX currently does, would certainly be a step in the right direction. Using the same tiebreaker without away goals would tilt the scales towards the higher-seeded team even more. Regardless, more needs to be done to increase the value of excelling during the regular season.
All told, the use of playoffs by MLS has its flaws. But it's here to stay, and that's not a bad thing.
Jeff Carlisle covers MLS and the U.S. national team for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreyCarlisle. |
The following 50 DIY videos and project links cover everything from making flip flops out of duct tape to fabricating a turbojet.
THE WEALTH OF PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE represented by YouTube is kinda mind blowing. Search “DIY videos” and you get hundreds of thousands of results.
Of course, a good chunk of that includes potentially life-threatening misinformation and several villages’ worth of very eccentric video “hosts.” Which made researching this piece a bit frustrating…but also pretty funny.
1. Turn a soda bottle into a telescope.
Assuming you can find a “pocket magnifier” at a hardware or camping store, this is an incredibly simple design that seems to yield pretty decent results.
2. Amplify your acoustic guitar.
One to take on simply for the cool factor, as it’s probably not a whole lot more expensive — and definitely a whole lot easier — to go out and buy a used pickup.
This design is much more versatile, though — you can stick it to anything.
3. Turn an old ski pole into a GoPro mount.
A super easy and cheap method for creating a pole mount for your GoPro, so you can get those badass face shots next season.
4. Construct your own filming equipment.
If you’re looking for more than a simple GoPro pole mount, it’s possible to DIY all kinds of filming equipment that would run you thousands of dollars in the store.
Check out Eric Warren’s How to build your own video equipment, with guides to fabricating steadicams, vehicle mounts, dollies, jibs, and more.
5. Take your own passport photos.
The ~$20 you save on photos can buy a lot in Southeast Asia. These instructions are for Photoshop, but you could do the same with free software such as GIMP.
6. DIY Dia de Muertos.
Not just a tattoo motif for 20-somethings, sugar skulls play a significant role in Mexico’s holiday of remembrance, Dia de Los Muertos. If you’re looking for a creative and tangible way to honor your departed loved ones, consider making this unique effigy. Robyn Johnson shows how.
7. Fabricate wild new musical instruments.
Turn propane tanks, shower rods, weed-whacker strings, PVC pipe, and other random objects into workable instruments. The video above doesn’t get into details of construction (you can find that on his website), but I thought it was pretty sweet.
8. Design and bind your own travel journal.
There are tons of book-binding videos out there — I chose this one for its simplicity. You should be able to follow these instructions using items you already have around the house.
9. Create a travel guidebook.
Once you’ve got your DIY journal bound, let Matador member Noelle Tankard show you how to turn it into a one-of-a-kind travel guidebook for your next trip.
10. Mix up some homemade sunscreen.
We found a recipe for sunscreen that’s cheap to make, organic, and waterproof. Lather up.
11. Construct a turbocharger turbojet in your garage.
Not for DIY novices. This guy seems legit — apparently he’s built others since his first one here. Watch till the 8:30 mark to see the “hot start.”
12. Make dirt-cheap bicycle panniers.
Costs add up fast when you’re kitting up for a cycle tour. A pair of top-of-the-line Ortlieb rear panniers runs around $250.
The alternative — spend under $50 to construct something that’s just as waterproof and probably more durable.
13. Go homemade for your kegerator.
You can spend as much as $2,000 on a kegerator retail. Or, take an old mini-fridge, a drill, and the requisite hardware and make your own.
14. Urban garden on the 30th floor.
Not too much instruction on how to construct this hanging garden, but you can piece most of it together from watching the vid. If you’re worried about toxic leeching from the bottles, go ornamental instead of edible. Either way it looks cool.
Matador has more tips for starting your own container garden.
15. Become a travel writer.
First of all, you’ve got to commit to being a writer. You’ve got to believe that words matter. After that, begin with these 22 tips on how to become a travel writer.
16. Make a dollar-store parabolic mic.
This guy comes off as kind of ridiculous, but the mic he builds looks pretty solid. I could see this being portable enough to take on the road for your next film project.
17. Convert your van to run on used veggie oil.
Converting your vehicle to run on veggie oil is a good move economically and environmentally. And here’s what BP and Exxon don’t want you to know: it’s not hard to do.
For more, check out How to stop paying for gas and run on free vegetable oil in 8 easy steps.
18. Make wet suit repairs with dental floss.
Super clutch skill to have for surfers and divers. Find this vid over at Matador Sports.
19. Build the ultimate potato gun.
If you’re like this guy and find yourself in Appalachian Georgia for Christmas with nothing to do, you might as well make a potato gun.
It’s a good vid, with clear, step-by-step instructions for construction of the gun.
20. Build a washers pit in your backyard.
Washers is a poor man’s version of horseshoes and is played in various regions of North America. Use the video above to make your two pits, and then review the rules of the game if you’re not familiar.
21. Weave a Mayan basket.
From the harvesting of the base material (leaves of the jippi jappa plant), through the weaving and drying process, MatadorU Road Warrior Norbert Figueroa learns how the traditional Mayan basket is made in Belize.
22. Clean your laptop fan.
Dust buildup on your computer’s ventilation fan is a common cause of overheating and noisy operation. This kid shows you how easy it is to clean the component using only a screwdriver and a can of compressed air.
23. Go solar when showering on the road.
A worthwhile project if you’re spending large amounts of time in shitty hostels without hot water, or you don’t trust the ‘widowmaker’ electric systems. This is a two-part instructional video.
24. Practice slow photography with a pinhole camera.
Scope the net for the many methods of constructing a pinhole camera, and then check out Photo essay: Slow photography in New Zealand for some inspiration.
From the photographer, Glimpse Correspondent Chris Mackie:
These photographs were made to reflect the value that I have found in the precious resource of time. They counteract our distinctly postmodern ability to capture and share images instantaneously, drawing out the image-making process as much as possible to enhance my awareness of the places that I have been. I wanted to avoid the ease of holding something at arms length and pushing a button: I wanted to sit still, to squint into a too-small viewfinder. I wanted to fiddle and twist and to stick things together with duct tape. I wanted to make it as hard and as slow as possible.
25. Make a simple compost bin out of a trash can.
Since my wife and I started composting, we’ve cut our trash output by more than 50% and have tons of free compost for the garden. This is the method we followed. |
If you follow my Instagram you’ll know that I’ve been on a bit of a sunscreen bender. I’ve been trying to find a replacement for the Ombrelle Complete Kids SPF 50+. While I like that it has the modern UVA sunscreen filter Mexoryl SX, its cheap price and local availability…the texture leaves me wanting. It is thick, has a slight white-cast, becomes very shiny throughout the day because of its high glycerin content.
I was recently sampled a bottle of the Anthelios Ultra-Fluid Lotion SPF 60 and loved the invisible finish as well as its Mexoryl SX and XL content. I ended up gifting it though, because its high price meant it would not be a product I’d likely to repurchase. I found myself rationing it and probably not using enough to get the protection on the label.
I wanted to see if there were other sunscreens in La Roche Posay’s Anthelios line that had a similar finish but was more affordable. Oddly though, the Canadian La Roche Posay website doesn’t list the ingredients for their sunscreens! So, I headed to my local Shopper’s Drug Mart and took some photos. I’ve transcribed the ingredients here for your reference as well 🙂
The Anthelios XL Melt-In Cream SPF 45 in 100 mL size is not on the Canadian La Roche Posay website, but was available in the Shopper Drug Mart when I visited. The photo I have here is old, the packaging has been updated to match the Anthelios XL Melt-In Cream SPF 60. I’m not sure if this means it is being discontinued or not.
I’ll be posting a review of the products that I tried shortly, as I’m still in the process of testing one (The Anthelios Mineral Tinted Anti-Aging Primer SPF 50 for the curious!)
Mexoryl SX and XL are two patented sunscreens that are only used in the L’Oreal family of brands which includes La Roche Posay and Garnier Ombrelle. They are similar to Tinosorb S and M, but not the same. They tend to offer better UVA protection, as well as greater photostability, and less skin penetration.
Anthelios Ultra-Fluid Lotion SPF 50 For Body, 125 mL
Active Ingredients
Homosalate 10%, Oxybenzone 6%, Octisalate 5%, Octocrylene 5%, Avobenzone 3%, Ecamsule (Mexoryl SX) 2%
Other Ingredients
Aqua, Cyclopentasiloxane, Alcohol Denat., Cyclohexasiloxane, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Silica, Dicaprylyl Ether, PEG-30 Dipolyhydroxystearate, Dimethicone, Triethanolamine, Glycerin, Nylon-12, Polymethylsilsesquioxane, Caprylyl Glycol, Dicaprylyl Carbonate, Disodium EDTA, Disteardimonium Hectorite, Dodecene, Isostearyl Alcohol, Lauryl PEG/PPG-18/18 Methicone, PEG-8 Laurate, Phenoxyethanol, Poloxamer 407, Poly C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate, Tocopherol. (Code F.I.L.: C182364/1)
Anthelios Mineral Tinted Anti-Aging Primer SPF 50, 40 mL
Active Ingredients
Titanium Dioxide 25%
Non Medicinal Ingredients
Dimethicone, C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Dicaprylyl Ether, Dimethicone/Vinyl Dimethicone Crosspolymer, Talc, Triethylhexanoin, Isohexadecane, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Hydrogenated Jojoba Oil, Aluminum Hydroxide, Stearic Acid, Aluminum Stearate, Alumina, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Cassia Alata Leaf Extract, Diethylhexyl Syringylidenemalonate, Disodium Stearoyl Glutamate, CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499 / Iron Oxides, Laureth-4, Maltodextrin, PEG-8 Laurate, Polyhydroxystearic Acid, Silica Silylate, Tocopherol, Aqua. (Code F.I.L.: C179435/3)
Anthelios Dermo-Kids Lotion SPF 50, 150 mL
Active Ingredients
Titanium Dioxide 5.85%, Octisalate 5%, Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl XL) 4.5%, Avobenzone 3%, Octocrylene 2.5%, Ecamsule (Mexoryl SX) 1.5%
Other
Aqua, C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Alcohol Denat., Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Isododecane, Propylene Glycol, Dimethicone, PEG-30 Dipolyhydroxystearate, Glycerin, Lauryl PEG/PPG-18/18 Methicone, Synthetic Wax, Ammonium Polyacryloyldimethyl Taurate, Caprylyl Glycol, Cellulose Gum, Dimethicone Crosspolymer, Dodecene, Glycine Soja Oil, Isostearyl Alcohol, Pentasodium Ethylenediamine Tetramethylene Phosphonate, Poloxamer 407, Silica, Tocopherol, Triethanolamine. (Code F.I.L.: C171811/1)
Anthelios Ultra-Fluid Lotion SPF 60, 50 mL
Active Ingredients
Homosalate 10%, Oxybenzone 6%, Octisalate 5%, Octocrylene 5%, Avobenzone 3%, Ecamsule (Mexoryl SX) 2%
Other
Aqua, Cyclopentasiloxane, Alcohol Denat., Cyclohexasiloxane, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Silica, Dicaprylyl Ether, PEG-30 Dipolyhydroxystearate, Dimethicone, Triethanolamine, Glycerin, Nylon-12, Polymethylsilsesquioxane, Caprylyl Glycol, Dicaprylyl Carbonate, Disodium EDTA, Disteardimonium Hectorite, Dodecene, Isostearyl Alcohol, Lauryl PEG/PPG-18/18 Methicone, PEG-8 Laurate, Phenoxyethanol, Poloxamer 407, Poly C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate, Tocopherol. (Code F.I.L.: C182364/1)
Anthelios Targeted Protection Stick SPF 60, 9 g
Active Ingredients
Octocrylene 10%, Titanium Dioxide 6.25%, Avobenzone 3%, Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl XL) 2%
Others
Ricinus Communis, Isopropyl Palmitate, Polyethylene, Isohexadecane, Ozokerite, Theobroma Cacao, Butyrospermum Parkii, Dimethicone, Glycine Soja, Tocopherol. (Code F.I.L. C24262/1C)
Anthelios XL Melt-In Cream SPF 60, 100 mL
Active Ingredients
Octocrylene 10%, Titanium Dioxide 4.15%, Avobenzone 3.5%, Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl XL) 3%, Terephthalylidene Dicamphor Sulfonic Acid (Mexoryl SX) 3%
Others
Aqua, Propylene Glycol, Glycerin, Cyclopentasiloxane, Triethanolamine, Isopropyl Palmitate, Stearic Acid, VP/Eicosene Copolymer, Dimethicone, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Aluminum Hydroxide, Carbomer, Disodium EDTA, Glyceryl Stearate, Glycine Soja, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Methylparaben, PEG-100 Stearate, Phenoxyethanol, Propylparaben, Stearyl Alcohol, Tocopherol. (Code F.I.L.: C15709/2C)
Anthelios XL Melt-In Cream SPF 45, 100 mL
Active Ingredients
Octocrylene 10%, Avobenzone 3.5%, Titanium Dioxide 3.3%, Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl XL) 3%, Terephthalylidene Dicamphor Sulfonic Acid (Mexoryl SX) 2%
Others
Aqua, Propylene Glycol, Cyclopentasiloxane, Glycerin, Isopropyl Palmitate, Triethanolamine, Stearic Acid, VP/Eicosene Copolymer, Dimethicone, PEG-100 Stearate, Glyceryl Stearate, Stearyl Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Aluminum Hydroxide, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Methylparaben, Carbomer, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Disodium EDTA, Glycine Soja, Tocopherol, Propylparaben. (Code F.IL.: K17514/3)
Anthelios Lightweight Lotion SPF 60, 100 mL
Active Ingredients
Homosalate 10%, Octocrylene 7%, Octisalate 5%, Avobenzone 4%, Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl XL) 2.5%, Terephthalylidene Dicamphor Sulfonic Acid (Mexoryl SX) 0.5%
Others
Aqua, Glycerin, Alcohol Denat., Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Dimethicone, Propylene Glycol, PEG-100 Stearate, Glyceryl Stearate, Silica, Synthetic Wax, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Polyacrylate, Triethanolamine, Stearic Acid, Caprylyl Glycol, Palmitic Acid, PEG-8 Laurate, Xanthan Gum, Tocopherol, Disodium EDTA. (Code F.I.L.: K158295/6)
Anthelios Lightweight Lotion SPF 30, 100 mL
Active Ingredients
Homosalate 10%, Octocrylene 5.5%, Octisalate 5%, Avobenzone 3%, Drometrizole Trisiloxane (Mexoryl XL) 2.5%, Terephthalylidene Dicamphor Sulfonic Acid (Mexoryl SX) 0.5%
Others
Aqua, Glycerin, Alcohol Denat., Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Dimethicone, Propylene Glycol, PEG-100 Stearate, Glyceryl Stearate, Silica, Synthetic Wax, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Polyacrylate, Triethanolamine, Stearic Acid, Caprylyl Glycol, Palmitic Acid, PEG-8 Laurate, Xanthan Gum, Tocopherol, Disodium EDTA. (Code F.I.L.: K158303/4)
Anthelios Mineral Tinted Ultra-Fluid Lotion SPF 50, 50 mL
Active Ingredient
Titanium Dioxide 11%
Non Medicinal Ingredients
Aqua, Isododecane, C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Dimethicone, Undecane, Triethylhexanoin, Isohexadecane, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Nylon-12, Caprylyl Methicone, Butyloctyl Salicylate, Phenethyl Benzoate, Silica, Tridecane, Dicaprylyl Carbonate, Dicaprylyl Ether, Talc, Dimethicone/PEG-10/15 Crosspolymer, Aluminum Stearate, Pentylene Glycol, Alumina, Aluminum Hydroxide, Benzoic Acid, C9-15 Fluoroalcohol Phosphate, Caprylyl Glycol, Cassia Alata Leaf Extract, Diethylhexyl Syringylidenemalonate, Disteardimonium Hectorite, CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499, Magnesium Sulfate, Maltodextrin, PEG-8 Laurate, PEG-9, PEG-9 Polydimethylsiloxyethyl Dimethicone, Phenoxyethanol, Polyhydroxystearic Acid, Propylene Carbonate, Propylene Glycol, Stearic Acid, Tocopherol. (Code F.I.L.: K50867/4)
Anthelios Mist SPF 50, 155 g
Active Ingredients
Homosalate 10%, Oxybenzone 6%, Octisalate 5%, Octocrylene 5%, Avobenzone 3%, Ecamsule (Mexoryl SX) 2%
Other
Butane, Aqua, Cyclopentasiloxane, Alcohol Denat., Cyclohexasiloxane, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Silica, Dicaprylyl Ether, PEG-30 Dipolyhydroxystearate, Dimethicone, Caprylyl Glycol, Dicaprylyl Carbonate, Disodium EDTA, Disteardimonium Hectorite, Dodecene, Glycerin, Isostearyl Alcohol, Lauryl PEG/PPG-18/18 Methicone, Nylon-12, PEG-8 Laurate, Phenoxyethanol, Poloxamer 407, Poly C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate, Polymethylsilsesquioxane, Tocopherol, Triethanolamine. (Code F.I.L. C182096/1) |
On 4 April 1975, a Lockheed C-5A Galaxy participating in Operation Babylift crashed on approach during an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, South Vietnam. The cause was ascribed to loss of flight control due to explosive decompression and structural failure. The accident marked the second operational loss and first fatal crash for the C-5 Galaxy fleet, and is the second deadliest accident involving a U.S. military aircraft after the 1968 Kham Duc C-130 shootdown.[citation needed]
Background [ edit ]
In early April 1975, with much of South Vietnam overrun by communist North Vietnamese forces, the administration of U.S. President Gerald Ford began instituting the evacuation of American citizens. To avoid alarming the host country, U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin authorized Americans to be flown out under several conditions, one of which was Operation Babylift, in which American caregivers were paired with South Vietnamese orphans.[3]
Description [ edit ]
On the afternoon of Friday, 4 April 1975, C-5A, AF Ser. No. 68-0218, making the first flight of Operation Babylift, departed Tan Son Nhut Air Base for Clark Air Base in the Philippines. This first group of orphans would then transfer to charter flights and be welcomed by President Ford upon arriving in the United States at San Diego, California. At 4:15 p.m. the C-5A was over the South China Sea about 13 nautical miles (24 km) off Vũng Tàu,[4] South Vietnam, flying a heading of 136 degrees and climbing to an altitude of 23,000 ft (7,010 m). At that moment the locks on the rear loading ramp failed, causing the cargo door to open explosively. This caused explosive decompression, temporarily filling the cabin with a whirlwind of fog and debris. The blowout severed control cables to the tail, causing two of four hydraulic systems to fail, including those for the rudder and elevator,[5] and leaving the flight control with only the use of one aileron, spoilers, and power.
The pilot, Captain Dennis "Bud" Traynor, and copilot, Captain Tilford Harp, attempted to regain control of the airplane, and to perform a 180 degree turn in order to return to Tan Son Nhut.[6] The aircraft began to exhibit phugoid oscillations, but the crew countered them and maintained a controlled descent of about 250 to 260 knots (460 to 480 km/h). They were able to bring the plane to 4,000 ft (1,220 m) and begin the approach to Tan Son Nhut's runway 25L. While turning on final approach, the plane's descent rate suddenly began to increase rapidly. The crew increased power to the engines in an attempt to arrest the descent, but despite their efforts, the plane touched down at 4:45 p.m. in a rice paddy, and skidded for a quarter of a mile (400 m), became airborne again for another half-mile (800 m), crossing the Saigon River, then hit a dike and broke up into four pieces. The fuel caught fire and some of the wreckage was set ablaze.
Survivors struggled to extricate themselves from the wreckage. The crash site was in a muddy rice paddy near the Saigon River, one mile (1.6 km) from the nearest road. Fire engines could not reach the site, and helicopters had to set down some distance from the wreckage. About 100 South Vietnamese soldiers deployed around the site, which was near the site of an engagement with the Viet Cong the previous night. Out of 314 people on board, the death toll included 78 children, 35 Defence Attaché Office employees and 11 U.S. Air Force personnel; there were 176 survivors.[note 2][5] All of the surviving orphans were eventually flown to the United States. The dead orphans were cremated and were interred at the cemetery of the St. Nikolaus Catholic Church in Pattaya, Thailand.[4] The accident would also "stand as the single largest loss of life" in the Defense Intelligence Agency's history until the September 11 attacks because among the crash fatalities were five female DIA employees.[7]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Some members of the United States Congress called for a grounding of C-5s. In the end, the fleet was put under severe operational restrictions for several months while the cause was established. The U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board attributed the survival of any on board to Captain Traynor's unorthodox use of power and his decision to crash-land while the aircraft allowed some control. Captains Traynor and Harp, who both survived, were awarded the Air Force Cross for extraordinary valor.[8][9] Thirty-seven medals were awarded to crew members or their next of kin. USAF Flight Nurse, 1st Lieutenant Regina Aune, received the Cheney Award for 1975.[10][11]
Investigation [ edit ]
Rear doors of a C5 Galaxy
Given the explosive manner in which the rear doors failed, sabotage was initially suspected.[12]
Many of the components were looted from the crash site, thereby complicating the investigation; the U.S. Air Force paid a bounty for parts from the wreckage to recover them from the local populace. The United States Navy amphibious cargo ship USS Durham, frigate USS Reasoner, and command ship USS Blue Ridge were assigned to search for the flight data recorder in the South China Sea.[4] The recorder was found, and U.S. Navy ships and helicopters also discovered wreckage from the doors in the South China Sea as well as the body of a C-5 crewmember.[4]
When the rear doors were eventually recovered from the sea, investigation determined that some of the locks had not engaged properly. Maintenance records showed that locks had been cannibalized for spares, then subsequently improperly refitted so that not all the door locks were engaging correctly. Accounts also indicated the initial maintenance inspection noticed 5 of the 7 locks were not operating and failed the aircraft for flight. With external organizational pressure to get the flight airborne, a second off-shift maintenance team was called in. They subsequently missed the locks during inspection and the aircraft was cleared for flight. Furthermore, the flight crew confirmed that they had encountered difficulty closing the doors before take-off. As the air pressure differential increased with altitude, the few locks that were working correctly were unable to bear the load, and the door failed.[13]
Dramatization [ edit ]
The story of the disaster was featured on the seventh season of the Canadian made, internationally distributed documentary series Mayday, in the episode "Operation Babylift".
See also [ edit ]
Note [ edit ]
a b The number of fatalities vary depending on the source, but official accounts state 138 of 314 on board were killed.
References [ edit ]
Coordinates: |
By Davis Fields, Product Manager, Facebook
There are many people using Facebook, Messenger and Instagram on Windows, so today we’re excited to rollout Windows 10 Apps for Facebook and Messenger on desktop and Instagram on mobile. These new apps will load quickly and easily within Windows and have the most up-to-date features.
Facebook for Windows 10
We built the new Windows 10 Facebook app so it’s fast and easy to access your favorite features. Facebook is one click away from the Start Menu, and the app starts and loads your News Feed much faster than previous Facebook desktop applications. You can stay up-to-date with Facebook through desktop notifications, and you can pin a new Facebook Live Tile which shows you the latest updates from your friends, family and Pages you follow. It’s also easy to share photos to Facebook straight from your favorite apps or File Explorer.
We included the latest Facebook features in the new app, including Reactions, stickers in comments, and a right-hand column that shows birthday & event reminders, trending topics and more. We built an in-app browser to make it easier for people to read and share multiple articles from their News Feed.
Messenger for Windows 10
To keep your conversations going wherever you are, we’re also rolling out a Messenger app. Along with many of your favorite Messenger features – like stickers, group conversations and GIFs – Messenger for Windows has native desktop notifications that make your experience richer and more complete. You also can see when you have messages waiting for you with a Live Tile.
Instagram for Windows 10
When we first built Instagram for Windows, we were focused on bringing the app’s core features to the Windows Phone community as quickly as possible. Today, we’re rolling out Instagram for Windows 10 Mobile with all of the community’s favorite features — including Instagram Direct, Explore and video.
You’ll also see that Instagram for Windows 10 Mobile supports Live Tiles, showing you updates right on your home screen.
Facebook and Messenger for Windows 10 will both be available later today in the Windows Desktop App Store, and Instagram for Windows 10 Mobile will be available later today in the Windows Phone Store. We’ll be replacing the older Facebook Windows 8 listing in the Windows Store with the new Facebook Windows 10 app, using the below logo. People who have the Windows 8 app can choose to continue to use it, use Facebook in the browser or complete a free update to Windows 10. Later this year we’re excited to roll out the Windows 10 Phone Facebook and Messenger apps.
We hope you enjoy! |
Ahmad Brooks' previous contract with the San Francisco 49ers counted $2.425 million against the salary cap last season.
Brooks' new deal, worth $37 million if he remains on the roster under this deal through 2017, will count $2.85 million against the cap in 2012, according to Matt Maiocco.
Consider this yet more evidence showing how teams usually control the salary cap, not the other way around. While it's natural to wonder whether a team can afford a certain player, the salary cap generally isn't a primary barrier. Teams find cap room to sign the players they really want to sign.
As Maiocco notes, Brooks' deal carries higher cap figures in future years. In quite a few cases, teams are happy if they get three good seasons from a player signed to a relatively lucrative deal (and in this case, as PFT notes, the 49ers can easily bail after one season). At that point, they can usually move on from the player with minimal financial considerations if performance is a concern.
The 49ers have sought to reward their own players. They know what they're likely to get from Brooks. They know how he fits in their locker room. They know how he fits in their defensive scheme. They can feel better about giving him a $7.5 million signing bonus than they might feel paying a similar talent from another team. |
Gaël Kakuta is poised to complete a loan switch from Chelsea to Fulham until the end of the season.
The French winger began his medical at lunchtime today and if, as expected, there are no problems, he will end the manager Mark Hughes' search for a dynamic and creative midfield signing. Fulham, meanwhile, have dropped their interest in Manchester City's Shaun Wright-Phillips.
Carlo Ancelotti, the Chelsea manager, has agonised for some weeks over whether to loan out Kakuta, weighing up the benefit of him being able to enjoy greater playing minutes against whether the club might need him over the second half of the season.
He has been unable to grant the 19-year-old, who is rated as the brightest young talent in French football, the game time to accelerate his development, starting him only once in the Premier League this season and four times in total.
Ancelotti was on record as saying that he could not start his young players while the club were enduring their "difficult moment," which appeared to end last night with the 4-0 win at Bolton Wanderers.
Ancelotti finally decided that the change of scene would be the best course of action and, rather like the former Chelsea manager José Mourinho did in the second half of the 2005-06 season with Wayne Bridge, he has handpicked Fulham as the club for the loan.
Fulham have shown an interest in taking Kakuta since they became aware that Ancelotti was considering the move and they will not now pursue Wright-Phillips any further. They had held talks with City about taking the winger on loan but they were told that the only option was a permanent transfer, which they did not want. City have refused to soften their stance.
Chelsea are also close to an agreement with Leicester City for the loan of the 20-year-old Dutch left-back Patrick Van Aanholt for the remainder of the season. As with Kakuta, Ancelotti has high hopes for Van Aanholt but he has found it difficult to offer him sufficient playing time. Van Aanholt spent most of last season on loan in the Championship at Coventry City and then Newcastle United. |
Once again, it’s the same old story: police corruption.
Is it a return to the bad ol’ days — or did they ever really go away?
By all indications, it’s the latter: Something is eroding the system beneath the surface, and it is calling for attention, demanding to be cleaned out. I’m not just talking about the law-enforcement system but the judiciary and society itself, where all the players have come from in the past.
This begs the question: Will police corruption ever go away? In my humble opinion, it is here to stay.
Why? All corruption is nothing more than a business, a good old self-serving business, a money-making business at the expense of the little guy and society at large.
Some major corporations can destroy the environment, be responsible for the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of innocent people, the loss of thousand of homes and livelihoods and broken families and still escape prosecution. Some of these culprits even get rewarded.
Whether we want to face it, police — from New York City to Chicago to Detroit — only deal with the petit thievery in our society.
But when they lie, it eats away at all of our very fabric of decency.
The excuse is often that some police officers are exposed to great temptation to take part in, rather than prosecute, criminal activity.
Meanwhile, the good police officers who attempt to expose corruption often become the victims of those they confide in instead of being rewarded for doing the right thing.
When will that change? Only the man at the top can answer that one.
Not only does corruption not go away, but every time it gets uncovered, it’s a new opportunity for rogues to hone their corrupt money-making strategies.
The business of corruption gets more sophisticated. Just like any drug-resistant bacteria or insect adapts and becomes stronger, especially with today’s electronics, anyone with a cellphone can open an offshore account and put a money-laundering scheme in operation.
The NYPD’s new corruption probe should come as no surprise, nor should the usual lip service given by the man in charge, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, now on his second watch.
Bad cops should be treated like common criminals: Face jail or possible bail and be put through the system. Then, perhaps some will better reflect on what they have to lose and the disgrace they bring upon their profession and their families.
Yet time and again, police who cross the line get put on leave — essentially paid vacation.
My intentions in my octogenarian lifetime have never been to attack just one rogue cop or department but all of those who stand to benefit from the corruption. In my opinion, they are benefiting from the petty favors they buy without ever getting caught.
As a friend once said to me, “Frank, the big guys will always need the little guys to pull the chestnuts out of the fire to keep from getting their fingers burned.”
I am not excusing anyone’s behavior. Everyone is responsible for their own action.
But more often than not, corruption requires the collaboration of many parties.
There will always be a few cops who will take advantage of their authority and betray the sacred privilege, honor and trust bestowed upon them.
It is up to every individual to be and do the best they can in some small way, with the opportunity apportioned them, to create the kind of society we wish to live in for our selves and our families.
Frank Serpico is a former Brooklyn detective who became the most famous whistleblower in NYPD history, appearing before the Knapp Commission in 1971 to expose rampant police corruption. He was played by Al Pacino in the Oscar-winning 1973 movie “Serpico.” |
Madrid is unfathomable. If the city itself is immense, it´s examples of interesting architecture are overwhelming. For over a half a century, Madrid has been an experimental laboratory for modern and contemporary architecture in Spain. With numerous examples of innovative and experimental architecture, as well as many failures, few of which are valued and recognized. This selection seeks to show archetypal examples of architecture that have transcended time; it does not intend to be an exhaustive list of the city´s architectural works. Many will think that the list lacks important buildings and personally, I couldn´t agree more. That is perhaps the beauty of Madrid: there is a diversity of opinion, there are thousands of sites to see, the city surprises you with every step you take.
+ 22
As part of this selection, we have the works that gave form to Spanish modernity. Buildings created from the minds of the modernity geniuses of the likes of Sota and Oiza. But these alone wouldn´t do the city justice. We have also included the great exponents of the first contemporaneity, pioneers of a movement that was rejected in its time but that gave shape to the current contemporaneity. Lastly, we have included urban references that have shaped the city, undervalued projects that have had great importance to the way of city making in Spain.
The list doesn´t include everything, but I believe that the selection will help the reader understand Madrid. Welcome.
Save this picture! Terminal T4, Barajas Airport. Image © Estudio Lamela + Richard Rogers Partnership
Paseo de la Castellana
Save this picture! © Wilhelm Lappe [Flickr], License CC BY 2.0
Calle Génova 31
Save this picture! Colón Tower. Image via Antonio Lamela [Wikipedia], License CC BY-SA 4.0
Av. de América 37
Save this picture! Kio Towers. Image via Drow Male [Wikipedia], GNU Free Documentation License
Av. de América 37
Calle Castellana 81
Save this picture! BBVA Tower. Image © amaclasvecino [Flickr], License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Calle Sauceda 28
Paseo del General Martínez Campos, 14
Save this picture! Giner de los Ríos Foundation. Image © José Hevia
Calle Princesa de Éboli, 13-21
Save this picture! San Chinarro Lookout. Image © Wojtek Gurak [Flickr], License CC BY-NC 2.0
Paseo del Prado, 36
Paseo de la Chopera, 14
Save this picture! Nave 8B, Madrid´s Matadero. Image © Carlos Fernández Piñar
Bulevar de la Naturaleza, 13G
Carabanchel, Madrid
Save this picture! Housing in Carabanchel. Image © Miguel de Guzmán
Calle Libertad 17, Rivas-Vaciamadrid
Save this picture! Iglesia Parroquial en Rivas Vaciamadrid. Image Cortesía de Vincens + Ramos
Hydrographical Studies Centre/ Miguel Fisac
Paseo Bajo de la Virgen del Puerto, 3
Calle Joaquín Costa 21, Madrid
Save this picture! Gimnasio Maravillas. Image Cortesía de Fundación Alejandro de la Sota
Autovía del Noroeste (A-6), kilómetro 8
Save this picture! Rascainfiernos. Image Cortesía de Fundación Fernando Higueras, Lola Botia
Avenida Nuestra Señora de Valvanera / calles Laguna, Ariza, Escalonilla, Gallur, Vía Carpetana y Glorieta de los Cármenes
Save this picture! Poblado Dirigido de Caño Roto
Parque de Castilla-La Mancha en Alcobendas, Madrid |
The latest in an ongoing series wherein legendary Detroit label Motown revisits their back catalogue through alternate versions of their hits and lesser known tracks, Motown Unreleased 1966 gathers up 80 songs that have never previously been released on CD.
Now released exclusively through the US uDiscover Music store as a four-disc collection with an additional booklet, Motown Unreleased 1966 was previously available through digital platforms during 2016, but is now receiving its official physical release – in a limited pressing of just 1,000 copies.
Motown Unreleased 1966’s four discs reveal a trove of treasures. Included are alternate versions of classic tracks such as Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ ‘Flower Girl’, The Temptations’ ‘Ain’t Too Proud To Beg’ and The Isley Brothers’ ‘Got To Have You Back’, in addition to numerous rare recordings from artists such as The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Billy Eckstine, Brenda Holloway, Barbara McNair and The Four Tops. The fourth disc also features a collection of remarkable gospel tracks including The Miracles’ ‘Nearer The Cross’ and Kim Weston’s solo reading of ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee.’
Previous titles in the digital Motown Unreleased series have included Motown Unreleased 1962: Girls, Motown Unreleased 1962: Gospel, Motown Unreleased 1963, Motown Unreleased 1964 and two Motown Unreleased volumes covering 1965. Motown Unreleased 1966, however, is the first of the series to be granted a physical release.
Scroll down to read the full tracklisting of the 4CD edition of Motown Unreleased 1966 and order it exclusively from the uDiscover Music store, here.
Disc 1:
The Miracles: ‘The Soulful Shack’ (Alternate Version)
The Temptations: ‘Ain’t Too Proud To Beg’ (Alternate Version)
Marvin Gaye: ‘Suddenly I Was Alone’
Billy Eckstine: ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’
The Mynah Birds: ‘I Got You (In My Soul):
The Mynah Birds: ‘’’ll Wait Forever ‘
Jr. Walker And The All Stars: ‘Road Burner (Son Of Road Runner)’
Billy Eckstine: ‘For Once In My Life ‘
Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston: ‘That’ll Be The Day’
Earl Van Dyke: ‘Don’t Mess With Bill’
The Miracles: ‘Flower Girl’ (Alternate Version)
Brenda Holloway: ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’
Brenda Holloway: ‘Whenever You Need Me’
Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston: ‘Just Too Much To Hope For’
Earl Van Dyke: ‘Stand By Me’ (Live At The 20 Grand, Detroit/1966)
The Four Tops: ‘A Taste Of Honey’
The Four Tops: ‘Wives And Lovers’ (Take 1)
The Four Tops: ‘Wives And Lovers’ (Take 3)
The Four Tops: ‘Wives And Lovers’ (Take 4)
Disc 2:
Brenda Holloway: ‘The Lonely Heart And Lonely Eyes Of Lonely Me’
Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston: ‘Give A Little Love’
Brenda Holloway: ‘What Good Am I Without You’
Jr Walker And The All Stars: ‘Pucker Up Buttercup’ (Alternate Version)
Earl Van Dyke: ‘Monkey Talk’
Barbara McNair: ‘A World Without You’
Brenda Holloway: ‘I Still Get Butterflies’
Gladys Knight & The Pips: ‘In My Heart I Know It’s Right’
Gladys Knight & The Pips: ‘I’m Losing You’
Gladys Knight & The Spinners: ‘All These Things’
The Four Tops: ‘Hello, Young Lovers’
The Four Tops: ‘I Wish You Love’
Barbara McNair: ‘Put On A Happy Face’
Barbara McNair: ‘The Second Time Around’
Barbara McNair: ‘Smile’
Barbara McNair: ‘Day In – Day Out’
Gladys Knight & The Pips: ‘Nothing But A Fool’
Gladys Knight & The Pips: ‘You’re Gone (But Always In My Heart)’
Chris Clark: ‘Never Stop Loving Me’
Gladys Knight & The Pips: ‘Don’t Compare Me With Her’
Barbara McNair: ‘You’ve Got Possibilities’
Chris Clark: ‘Never Trust A Man’
Disc 3:
The Marvelettes: ‘Sweet Talkin’ Guy’
Brenda Holloway: ‘I Feel Your Love Growin’ On Me’
Brenda Holloway: ‘Without Love You Lose A Good Feelin’
Brenda Holloway: ‘You Got A Little Of Everything’
Brenda Holloway: ‘Baby I’ve Got It’
Brenda Holloway: ‘Keep Me’
The Miracles: ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’ (Alternate Version)
Spinners: ‘Can’t Let You Go’
Little Lisa: ‘Keep Away’
Spinners: ‘Tea House In China Town’ (Alternate Version)
Marvin Gaye: ‘I Found Something’ (Alternate Version)
The Isley Brothers: ‘Save Me From This Misery’
Chris Clark: ‘I Still Love You’
The Isley Brothers: ‘Got To Have You Back’ (Alternate Version)
Gladys Knight & The Pips: ‘I Can’t Take You Back’
The Temptations: ‘Then’
Brenda Holloway: ‘I’m Giving Up’
Brenda Holloway: ‘Spellbound’
Spinners: ‘For All We Know (Alternate Version)’
Disc 4:
Brenda Holloway: ‘Can’t Hold The Feeling Back’
Billy Eckstine: ‘The Impossible Dream’
Marvin Gaye: ‘Dear Miss Lonely Hearts’
The Underdogs: ‘Need Your Lovin’ (Want You Back)’
The Underdogs: ‘One Of These Days’
The Four Tops: ‘On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever)’
The Supremes: ‘More (Theme From Mondo Cane)’
The Supremes: ‘Somewhere’
The Supremes: ‘Michelle’
Debbie Dean: ‘I’m So Helpless (When I’m With You)’
Marvin Gaye: ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’
Kim Weston: ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee’
Kim Weston: ‘Never Grow Old’
Kim Weston: ‘How Great Thou Art’
Gladys Knight & The Pips: ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee’
The Supremes: ‘Were You There’
The Supremes: ‘What Do You Choose’
Marvin Gaye: ‘Steal Away’
The Miracles: ‘Near The Cross’
Martha & The Vandellas: ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee’ |
More people are searching online for UKIP in the run-up to the election than any of the three main parties.
In the fight for search clicks, the party is dwarfing others online, driving more than four times the amount of traffic to websites than any of the other parties.
Since January, searches for the party's name have lead more people to click on websites than searches for the Conservative Party, Labour Party and Liberal Democrats.
There has been a particular upsurge in the past month, with the percentage of readers sent to websites by searching for UKIP more than doubling since March 28.
The other parties have all seen a relatively modest increase, with the Conservatives more than doubling their searches since March 28, but they still have less than a fifth of UKIP's search traffic.
Nigel Farage has also attracted more interest than Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg or David Cameron.
The UKIP leader is significantly ahead of the Deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister on searches, and ahead of Ed Miliband by almost a third.
Stats showing how people came from Google through to news and media websites also show that Nigel Farage’s party is streets ahead in terms of online search traffic.
Searches for the party seem to be driving large numbers of people specifically to media websites, far more than for any other political party.
The party is the 71st most frequent term to lead searchers to media websites, significantly ahead of all the other parties.
Farage's party also appears several times in the rankings, under ‘UKIP manifesto’ and ‘UKIP news’ as well as the party name alone.
Figures from Google suggest that on the whole more people are coming to media websites by searching for the fringe parties than for mainstream parties.
There were more than 300,000 searches for UKIP in March, and around 95,000 for both the Green Party and the SNP.
Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats are all out of the top 1,000 search terms, the SNP are at 198 and the Greens are at number 575.
Farage is the 195th most popular term, beaten only by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister and leader of the SNP, who appears in the 115th spot.
Polls open in : : : Days Hrs Mins Secs
The trends also show that the biggest group of visitors to UKIP’s website were relatively young people living in modern housing, followed by healthy, active retired people, and well-educated people with young families.
By contrast, visitors to the Conservative websites tended to be older and wealthier, with the vast majority falling into the second-wealthiest group, dominated by older people with grown-up children.
People arrived at the UKIP website by searching for related terms including 'ukip manifesto' and 'ukip policies', but also for 'hs2'.
Nigel Farage has previously said that Britain is too "skint" to afford the high-speed rail project. |
Jodan Peck and Hadden Kennedy
A California man was nearly stabbed to death by two men shouting racial slurs.
The 60-year-old black man is expected to survive multiple stab wounds and other injuries after a confrontation with two white men, reported the Visalia Times-Delta.
The assailants — identified by police as 39-year-old Jodan Peck and 25-year-old Hadden Kennedy — were known to their Goshen neighbors as racists, and detectives believe the attack was racially motivated, reported KFSN-TV.
Kennedy is Peck’s son-in-law.
The victim’s family said the two men stuck around after the Sunday afternoon attack, as the man lay bleeding in the street, and threatened neighbors who tried to help.
“(They were) making faces, saying he got what he deserved — I mean, just like a kid when you’re little and hold your hands up and stick your tongue out, they were doing that,” said the victim’s sister-in-law, Linda, who asked to use her first name only.
The suspects live just a block away from the victim, who was airlifted to a hospital for treatment, and had been harassing the man for days, according to neighbors.
“It’s a very sad situation,” neighbor Gina Torrez told the Times-Delta. “Seems like a racially motivated hate crime, so upsetting that these issues are still present. I know the victim personally. He’s always been very warm and pleasant with me (and) he’s helped me several times with putting my trash out.”
Peck and Kennedy were each arrested on attempted homicide and hate crime charges.
“A victim of a violent crime suffers from physical injuries of the assault and also from the mental trauma that comes with an attack,” said Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward. “What can make a violent attack even more egregious, more traumatic, more hurtful, is when that attack was motivated by something as vile as racial hatred.”
Peck’s wife told the newspaper that her husband and son-in-law had prior run-ins with the victim, who she said had previously threatened to “blow them up” — but she said the man was not charged because he didn’t specify that he would use a bomb.
The wife, Erin McNutt, said the black man threatened her family with a baseball bat during the altercation that led to the stabbing.
“It happened so fast,” McNutt said. “It may not have been the best to stab him but it wasn’t about race. It escalated to that point.” |
The Story
“Civil War” is a 2006–2007 Marvel Comics crossover storyline built around a seven-issue limited series of the same name written by Mark Millar and penciled by Steve McNiven, which ran through various other titles published by Marvel at the time. The storyline builds upon the events that developed in previous Marvel crossovers, particularly “Avengers Disassembled”, “House of M”, “Decimation”, and “Silent War”. The tagline for the series is “Whose Side Are You On?”
The plot of the series follows a framework storyline in which the U.S. government passes a Superhero Registration Act ostensibly designed to have superpowered characters act under official regulation, somewhat akin to police officers. However, those opposed to the act, led by Captain America, find themselves in conflict with those in support of the act, led by Iron Man, with Spider-Man caught in the middle; the X-Men take a neutral stance. The pro-Government superheroes led by Iron Man, Dr Reed Richards and Ms Marvel increasingly become autocratic and evil, eventually leading to the murder of Captain America. The events of the series touch upon themes of liberty, moral responsibility, and civil order, with well-intentioned superhero characters finding themselves upon different sides. The series received polarizing reviews but was a commercial success, spawning many media adaptations.
Free Marvel Comic Download
Marvel Civil War Complete Free Download
Language : English | Year : 2006-2007 | Size : 1.5 GB
Screenshots :
Notes : |
German police think that the man from Pakistan who was arrested as a suspect in the attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people on Monday was not the actual perpetrator, Die Welt newspaper reported, citing senior security sources.
"We have the wrong man," said a senior police chief. "And therefore a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause fresh damage," the paper quoted the source as saying.
Police in the German capital said that 12 people died and 48 were injured, among them tourists, after a truck with Polish plates crashed into the market shortly before 8 p.m. on Monday near the Kurfuerstendamm in the heart of west Berlin.
"I don't want to use the term 'attack,' though there’s a lot that suggests that it is," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in an interview on ARD television.
Berlin police said that a suspect believed to be the driver was arrested after fleeing the scene and that a passenger in the truck was among the dead. German media including Die Welt newspaper reported that the driver was a refugee from Pakistan.
“Whether this was an intentional attack or an accident -- all of this is subject of the investigation,” Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told reporters. “We don’t have firm evidence in one direction or the other.”
While police refused to speculate on any connection with terrorism, the incident is reminiscent of an attack in the French city of Nice in July, when more than 80 died after a truck plowed through late-night crowds celebrating Bastille Day. The deaths in the German capital threaten to further undermine Chancellor Angela Merkel’s domestic political standing going into an election year. Her open-door refugee policy of last year polarized voters and fed support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party.
“We mourn for the dead and hope that the many injured can be helped,” Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman, said in a Twitter statement. He added that the chancellor was in contact with her interior minister after hearing of the incident.
Smashed Windscreen
Police spokesman Neuendorf, speaking to reporters at the scene, said that the suspect was apprehended a few hundred meters from the market after descriptions were given by witnesses. There is no information on the suspect’s nationality, he said.
Images from the scene showed a dark Scania-brand truck with a Polish license plate, its windscreen smashed and its long trailer parked across the street where it had come to a standstill in front of the luxury Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Politicians in the capital were quick to express their shock. Thomas Oppermann, parliamentary leader of the Social Democratic Party, which is part of Merkel’s governing coalition, said he was “horrified” and called the incident a deliberate attack. Julia Kloeckner, a vice chairwoman of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told Bild newspaper that it was a “barbaric” act, adding that “terrorists are cowards.”
In the U.S., President-elect Donald Trump issued a statement saying that “our hearts and prayers are with the loved ones of the victims of today’s horrifying terror attack in Berlin.”
Germany suffered a spate of violent attacks in July that shook the public and sparked renewed criticism of Merkel’s migration policies. The four unconnected assaults over the summer -- a shooting spree, ax attack, suicide bombing and machete strike -- left 13 dead and sparked anxiety over terrorism.
Day of Violence
The Berlin deaths capped a day of violence in Europe, with the shooting dead of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey and three people injured in a shooting in a mosque near the main train station in Zurich.
Blaise Misztal, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s national security program in Washington, said the attacks in Ankara, Berlin and Zurich appeared to be “more coincidental than really connected.”
"There’s going to be a temptation” to connect them, Misztal said in a phone interview. "It’s going to feed into a temptation to weave a single narrative that this is Islamic terrorism coming out of Syria.” Yet this a “mistaken assessment,” as “it’s not a monolithic threat.”
Cordoned Off
In Berlin on Monday evening, police cordoned off the site, with police vans and cars parked around the main streets accessing the square and red and white tape blocking access for pedestrians and cars. Police with machine guns guarded the area near the Berlin zoo and the upscale KaDeWe department store. Fire engines and sirens could be heard wailing while people still strolled near the area of Europa Center, with its many shops and offices.
Wolfgang, a 62-year-old Berliner who didn’t want to give his last name, said he came out of the Europa shopping center next to the market shortly after the truck drove into the crowd.
“There were at least four people under the truck who looked badly injured,” he said. "Just an hour earlier I had been at the Christmas market and it was filled with so many happy people.” Despite the horrors, people remained the calm, he said. “There was no panic -- which really surprised me.”
‘Barbaric’ Act
The Breitscheidplatz is a large rectangular square in the heart of west Berlin adjacent to the main Ku’damm shopping mile that is among the busiest parts of the capital in the days before Christmas. The square is the site of the Kaiser-Wilhelm church whose ruined facade has been preserved to commemorate World War II and is a popular tourist destination.
Christmas markets are located across Berlin and are a common feature of German cities during the festive season, with vendors in wooden stalls typically selling everything from sausages to candles to pottery. De Maiziere said that there may need to be consequences for markets across Germany in light of the incident.
“This is a shock for us all,” Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller told journalists. “In these times, it’s truly difficult to experience something like our friends in other cities have experienced in recent months or years.” |
By Guy Bentley
The gender wage gap is almost none existent in the developed world, according to a Korn Ferry Hay Group analysis of 33 countries around the globe.
The study examined more than eight million employees across dozens of countries and found the pay gap between men and women working in same types of roles, with the same responsibilities, in the same companies was 1.6 percent in favor of men.
The United Arab Emirates was the only exception, with women earning two percent more than their male counterparts. The study attributes the gap to there being fewer women in the labor force with higher levels of education.
The gender wage gap, as described by the White House and progressives, refers to the overall gap between what all men earn and what all women earn. Using this measure, women on average earn 18 percent less than men.
Economists often criticize this measure as it doesn’t account for the different choices men and women make — like having a child — and it does not represent a gap between men and women working the same jobs with the same responsibilities. (RELATED: Equal Pay Day Revisited: Why The Gender Pay Gap Is Still A Myth)
Women make up 40 percent of the global workforce for clerical jobs but only 17 percent of executive roles, according to study.
One of the reasons men earn more on average than women, is they work more hours. According to Mark Perry, economist, and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the average male working full-time labored almost two more hours per week in 2014.
In the same year, female full-time employees were found to be two and a half times more likely to have shorter workweeks of 35 to 39 hours, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
One of the most obvious reasons why an earnings gap arises is because many women leave the workforce temporarily to have children. “Anything that leads you to want to have more time is going to be a large factor,” says Harvard economist Claudia Goldin.
Women who choose to have children and take time off can suffer a significant hit in earnings compared to their male peers. “But we also see large differences in where they are, in their job titles, and a lot of that occurs a year or two after a kid is born, and it occurs for women and not for men,” Goldin adds. “If anything, men tend to work somewhat harder.”
A study from the University of Massachusetts found that for each child a woman has, her earnings decreased by four percent.
Part of the apparent disparity between men and women’s pay also comes down to career choice — men often go into higher-risk, higher-paying professions.
A Department of Labor study released in 2009, which reviewed upwards of 50 peer-reviewed papers, concluded the wage gap, “may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”
“Women, more than men, show a demonstrated preference for lower risk occupations with greater workplace safety and comfort, and they are frequently willing to accept lower wages for the greater safety and reduced probability of work-related injury or death,” Perry argues.
Men made up 92.3 percent of workplace deaths in 2014, “Because men far outnumber women in the most dangerous, but higher-paying occupations that have the greatest probability of job-related injury or death,” says Perry.
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Do you buy orange juice at the store? If you do, I’m sure you’re careful to buy the kind that’s 100% juice and not made from concentrate. After all, that’s the healthier kind, right? The more natural kind? The kind without any additives? The kind that’s sold in the refrigerator section so it must be almost as good as fresh-squeezed orange juice?
If I’m describing you, then you’re either going to hate me or love me by the time you’re done reading this post. The truth is, that orange juice you feel so good about buying is probably none of those things. You’ve been making assumptions based on logic. The food industry follows its own logic because of the economies of scale. What works for you in your kitchen when making a glass or two of juice simply won’t work when trying to process thousands upon thousands of gallons of the stuff.
Haven’t you ever wondered why every glass of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice tastes the same, no matter where in the world you buy it or what time of year you’re drinking it in? Or maybe your brand of choice is Minute Maid or Simply Orange or Florida’s Natural. Either way, I can ask the same question. Why is the taste and flavor so consistent? Why is it that the Minute Maid never tastes like the Tropicana, but always tastes like its own unique beverage?
Generally speaking, beverages that taste consistently the same follow recipes. They’re things like Coca Cola or Pepsi or a Starbucks Frappuccino. When you make orange juice at home, each batch tastes a little different depending on the oranges you made it from. I hope you’re hearing warning bells in your head right about now.
The reason your store bought orange juice is so consistently flavorful has more to do with chemistry than nature.
Making OJ should be pretty simple. Pick oranges. Squeeze them. Put the juice in a carton and voilà! But actually, there is an important stage in between that is an open secret in the OJ industry. After the oranges are squeezed, the juice is stored in giant holding tanks and, critically, the oxygen is removed from them. That essentially allows the liquid to keep (for up to a year) without spoiling– but that liquid that we think of as orange juice tastes nothing like the Tropicana OJ that comes out of the carton. (source)
In fact, it’s quite flavorless. So, the industry uses “flavor packs” to re-flavor the de-oxygenated orange juice:
When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals, the decanals say, or terpene compounds such as valencine. The formulas vary to give a brand’s trademark taste. If you’re discerning you may have noticed Minute Maid has a candy like orange flavor. That’s largely due to the flavor pack Coca-Cola has chosen for it. Some companies have even been known to request a flavor pack that mimics the taste of a popular competitor, creating a “hall of mirrors” of flavor packs. Despite the multiple interpretations of a freshly squeezed orange on the market, most flavor packs have a shared source of inspiration: a Florida Valencia orange in spring. (source)
Why aren’t these flavor packs listed as ingredients?
Good question! As with all industrial foods, it’s because of our convoluted labeling laws. You see, these “flavor packs are made from orange by-products — even though these ‘by-products’ are so chemically manipulated that they hardly qualify as ‘by-products’ any more.” (source) Since they’re made from by-products that originated in oranges, they can be added to the orange juice without being considered an “ingredient,” despite the fact that they are chemically altered.
So, what should you do about it?
First off, I must ask: Why are you drinking juice?? Juice removed from the fruit is just concentrated fructose without any of the naturally-occurring fiber, pectin, and other goodies that make eating a whole fruit good for you. Did you know, for example, that it takes 6-8 medium sized apples to make just 1 cup of apple juice? You probably wouldn’t be able to eat 6-8 medium apples in a single sitting. (I know I can barely eat one!) But you can casually throw back a cup of apple juice, and you would probably be willing to return for seconds. That’s why fruit juice is dangerous. It’s far too easy to consume far too much sugar.
So, my first piece of advice is to get out of the juice habit altogether. It’s expensive, and it’s not worth it.
My second piece of advice is to only drink juices that you make yourself, and preferably ones that you’ve turned into a healthy, probiotic beverage (like this naturally-fermented lemonade my own family enjoys). Sally Fallon Morrell’s Nourishing Traditions cookbook (pictured at right) has several lacto-fermented juice coolers that are pleasant, albeit expensive. (I especially like the Grape Cooler, Raspberry Drink, and Ginger Beer.) Want to make juicing easier? See here for where to buy juicers and Vitamix blenders.
And finally, opt out of the industrial food system as much as you can. If you learn anything at all from this post, it should be that you never know what’s in your food unless you grow it, harvest it, or make it yourself. Second best (and more practical for many, including myself) is to pay somebody I trust to do it — like the farmers at my Farmer’s Market, the cattle rancher I buy my annual grass-fed beef order from, or the chef at my local restaurant who’s willing to transparently answer questions about how he sources ingredients and what goes into the dish I’m ordering.
Edited On 7/29/2011 To Include:
I’ve gotten a number of comments and emails accusing me of being afraid of “science” or “chemicals.” To those readers, I suggest that you are missing my point entirely. As I wrote in a comment below, I think what bugs me the most about the flavor industry is that they manufacture flavor for otherwise flavorless or unpalatable foods. I think if a food needs to have synthetic flavors added to it for us to enjoy it, then we ought to question whether or not it’s actually good for us and worth eating. It’s not so much that I think the flavors are unnaturally engineered chemicals (although sometimes, as with MSG, there is cause for concern). In this post, I’m not questioning the health or merit of added chemicals (“natural” or “synthetic”); I’m questioning the health or merit of so-called foods that are so devoid of flavor or color that we have to add back in chemical flavorings and colors to make them palatable. Furthermore, I’m questioning the judgement of our regulatory bodies which allow misleading product labeling to continue. |
Wedding reception goes wild in Girard
Staff report
girard
A wedding reception will be memorable for a newlywed couple from Struthers — but not in the usual way.
Police charged the groom, Dustin A. Beach, 24, with felonious assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after an incident Saturday night at Mahoning Country Club. His bride, Ashley A. Drvoledic-Beach, 20, was charged with disorderly conduct. Both are of 51 Highland Ave., Struthers.
Police gave this account: Several calls were received about a fight in the parking lot at the country club. When police arrived, they found a 33-year-old club employee bleeding profusely from the face and nose. The victim, of Youngstown, told police he had tried to stop Beach from damaging club property and was assaulted. He told police that Beach beat him around the face.
An officer approached Beach, who was being detained by others at the reception, on the west side of the parking lot. As the officer tried to get control of Beach, the bride ran toward the officer, yelling and pulling the officer away. The officer freed himself; then the bride threw herself on top of the groom. The officer tried to get the bride away, but another man grabbed the officer and then he, too, was pushed away. At one point, the groom’s grandmother approached officers and wanted to talk to Beach.
The crowd, numbering about 15, surrounded the two police officers and yelled obscenities. Pepper spray and batons were used on the crowd, who had interfered with officers, police said.
The officers managed to get Beach onto the ground, where he was handcuffed. By then, backup had arrived from Liberty and McDonald police departments along with an ambulance.
Once placed in the cruiser, Beach continued to kick, curse and threaten police, officers said. At the scene near the fight, police found a small bag of marijuana.
Police noted that the victim’s injuries were serious enough that surgery was needed. The victim provided police with photos of his injuries that included fractures of the nose, eye socket, sinus cavity and injuries to his jaw, teeth and vision.
Beach was in Trumbull County Jail on Sunday and Monday and arraigned Monday in Girard Municipal Court. A preliminary hearing will be at 1:30 p.m. June 2. He was released on $10,000 personal recognizance bond. |
The Associated Press
CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Donald Trump's presidential campaign has all but thrown in the towel in Wyoming ahead of Saturday's Republican convention.
The billionaire businessman's campaign made a conscious decision not to commit resources to Wyoming, according to Alan Cobb, a senior Trump adviser.
Trump picked only up a single delegate in last month's Wyoming county conventions while rival Ted Cruz scored nine. There are 14 more delegates at stake at this weekend's state convention.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from the convention site in Casper, Cobb said Friday that he expects Cruz to sweep what remains of the 29 delegates up for grabs in the Wyoming convention.
"This process is favourable toward party-insider folks," Cobb said. "When you don't have a vote of the people, it just favours (Cruz)."
While Cruz' campaign has been working for months lining up support among Wyoming's Republican insiders, Trump's campaign has limited mobilization in the state, and the candidate has not spent any time campaigning there. Cruz is scheduled to attend Saturday's convention.
The state party's arcane system of allocating delegates through county meetings followed by the state convention doesn't favour the disorganized.
If Cruz performs as expected, Wyoming's result could mirror that of Colorado, where Cruz swept all 34 delegates earlier this month. Trump encouraged supporters to demonstrate against the Colorado party's presidential nominating process Friday at the state capitol in Denver.
"The very insider, narrow pathways like Wyoming, they just don't work very well for us," Cobb said. "Campaigns make strategic choices on where to go and where to invest, and just given your process here, it just doesn't lend itself to our kind of campaign and candidate."
Sarah Palin had been scheduled to speak for Trump in Casper on Saturday but the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee cancelled her appearance on Thursday. Cobb said he may wind up giving Trump's address.
Even so, Cobb said he still sees Trump on track to win the 1,237 delegates required to secure the Republican nomination on the first ballot at the national convention this summer. "We've got the Northeast states," he said. "I think we'll do well in California, Oregon, Washington."
By contrast, the Cruz campaign in Wyoming has been well organized for months. Ed Buchanan, a former Wyoming House speaker, is state campaign chairman.
"Of course, we've been working at this since last fall, and really attempted to identify folks at the precinct level, and the caucus level and then at the county conventions, and that's why we had some success on March 12," Buchanan said Friday. "And so we've just continued that effort."
Buchanan said he sees Cruz as a natural fit for voters in Wyoming, a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by roughly 140,000 to 41,000. Buchanan said people support Cruz because of his conservative values and the fact he's a fellow westerner.
Ogden Driskill, a Republican state senator from Devils Tower, was chosen as the party's only uncommitted delegate in the March 12 county conventions. He's trying to organize a slate of uncommitted delegates at the party convention with the hope the candidates would pay more attention to the state's concerns if they had to work to woo delegates ahead of the national convention. He said he expects Wyoming delegates ultimately to support Cruz.
On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders arrived in Rome on Friday to attend a Vatican conference dealing with his lifelong passions of economic and social justice, briefly departing New York just days before its critical primary to show solidarity with the teachings of Pope Francis.
Sanders made the trip hours after Thursday night's Brooklyn debate with front-runner Hillary Clinton and said the opportunity to address the Vatican conference was too meaningful to pass up. The roughly 24-hour visit will precede the crucial New York primary on Tuesday.
"The theme from the conference, which is essentially how we create a moral economy, is one that has occupied my attention for decades. And the teachings from Pope Francis have moved me very much," the Vermont senator said. |
Democrats Outnumber Republicans In Early Voting
In most states that allow early voting, more Democrats than Republicans are casting their ballot. In the past, more Republicans have tended to vote early. Voters are turning out in higher numbers than is typical for this point in the election cycle.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The rise of early voting is transforming the final weeks before the presidential election. More than five million people have already voted, and estimates suggest a record one-third of the electorate may cast ballots before November 4th. NPR's Libby Lewis reports on the demographics of early voters.
LIBBY LEWIS: Who's voting early? In most states, more Democrats then Republicans are. That means they're either voting in person at the polls, or they're voting with a mail in absentee ballot. In the past, more Republicans have tended to vote early. And this time, voters are voting in higher numbers than typical for this point in the election cycle.
Michael McDonald is a voting expert at George Mason University. He's analyzing the numbers from some states. He says, traditionally, early voting is like a spicket being turned on, one that starts out with a trickle that builds as election day grows closer.
Dr. MICHAEL MCDONALD (Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University): This year, we're seeing almost like a spurt at the very beginning, like there was some sort of pressure in that pipe. And as soon as that valve turned on, we've got a flush of early voters coming out to vote.
LEWIS: A new Pew Research Center survey of 2,500 registered voters conducted October 16th to 19th found 31 percent of those interviewed said they plan to vote before Election Day. In most states, Democrats are driving those numbers. In North Carolina, for instance, Democrats constituted 56 percent of in person early voters so far. In Iowa, it's 51 percent.
A lot of factors are driving these early voters, the experts say. The Pew survey shows that younger people and older people say they're more likely to vote early. Frances Madigan (ph) voted Tuesday at the Boca Raton Community Center in Boca Raton, Florida. Like many here, she is an older voter. She didn't share her party affiliation or who she voted for.
Ms. FRANCES MADIGAN: I just felt that I was ready, and I couldn't be more ready.
LEWIS: And it's easier to vote early now. More than 30 states allow voters to cast ballots early without requiring an excuse. Convenience figures in. Andy Kohut directs the Pew Research Center.
Mr. ANDREW KOHUT (Director, Pew Research Center): You know, one of the most important things is that in states like Oregon, people are voting by mail. In fact, 54 percent of the people in the western region in our poll said, Well, of course I'm voting early.
LEWIS: But Kohut and McDonald say there's another significant factor here. Call it pent up demand by Democrat Barack Obama supporters.
Mr. KOHUT: The Obama supporters are just so enthusiastic. They're chomping on the bit, so to speak. So, in effect, while 31 percent of voters overall said they're going to vote early, 41 percent of Liberal Democrats say they're going to vote early. And I don't think that's only geography or generation going on. I think it's a bit of the Obama mania on people who plan to vote for him.
LEWIS: Count Joy Armstrong in that category. She waited in line the first day of early voting in Charlotte, North Carolina so that she could work for Obama for the next two weeks.
Ms. JOY ARMSTRONG: I waited almost 50 years to vote for someone black who's candidate, a black candidate for president who's really qualified, and I would not miss this opportunity, even if I had to wait for two days.
LEWIS: The Obama campaign has been pushing early voting to its supporters hard. The McCain campaign volunteers are canvassing neighborhoods and sending out mailings to boost early voting. Does it make a difference though? Kohut says it can.
Mr. KOHUT: If there's a last-minute trend either furthering Obama's margin or bringing McCain back, a goodly share of the electorate may miss it.
LEWIS: McDonald says that helps explain why GOP candidate John McCain is so focused on Pennsylvania. Most Pennsylvanians won't vote until election day. That's 12 whole days. Libby Lewis, NPR News.
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Parents at Academy Charter School (ACS) in Castle Rock, Colorado are outraged that “Challenge” programs presented at the school, during which 5th– and 6 th -graders were required to share intense personal feelings and information about themselves and their families with their classmates, were conducted without parental consent.
Brandi Butticaz, whose 6th grade daughter attends ACS, told Breitbart News that she has been asking school officials for information about the classes which she states are actually Challenge Day activities that are part of a program for 7th-12th graders that urges students to reveal personal feelings about issues such as intolerance, racism, sexism, bullying, violence, and homophobia in a large-group setting during one school day.
Butticaz said she learned an “empathy” class given last spring when her daughter was in 5th grade was very much like a Challenge Day activity, though parents were not asked to give consent for their children to participate in it.
According to Butticaz, her daughter participated in a “Cross the Line” activity that is demonstrated in videos on the Challenge Day website. She notes adult leaders asked children to “Cross the Line” marked on the floor of the activity room if:
You have/had drug or alcohol abuse in your family.
You have been discriminated against because of your skin color.
You have/had a family member in a life or death situation.
You have experienced death in the last year.
You have been called a “bad kid”.
You have ever attempted to run away.
You have ever thought negatively about yourself.
You have ever isolated yourself.
You once considered someone a friend who turned out to be an enemy.
You have ever been made fun of by someone you trusted.
You have ever been bullied.
You find it offensive if someone says you do something “like a girl”.
You are under the age of 18.
Other students were urged to provide “empathy” and caring responses to students who “crossed the line” and admitted they experienced these issues.
“Following this class, children were picked up from school emotionally distraught and visibly upset after what they had experienced,” Butticaz said. “Children told parents, ‘It was the worst day of school ever,’ and ‘I don’t want to go back to school.’”
In email documents sent to Breitbart News, another parent wrote to ACS counselor Angela Krautz McWilliams:
It is not fair to use sadness as a tool to teach empathy to children and I did not know “empathy” is now part of academic curriculum. I am alarmed that you felt it was acceptable to ask such private and sensitive things of the children with no parent approval or involvement…I think pulling those emotions out of children in a public setting is not your place and can make children feel embarrassed and vulnerable around their classmates. This kind of “exercise” is a parents job and to be done in a safe private comfortable environment.
A document sent to Breitbart News shows the ACS counselor’s email sent to parents on the day of the “empathy” exercise:
I came into Mrs. Kelly’s class today to have the kids participate in an empathy exercise. It was great to see the kids come together as a class and show each other care and concern, as well as empathy. Some students were moved by their emotions in this. Please ask your kiddo to share with you…
In September, Butticaz asked McWilliams to provide her with a list of the specific vendors she used in these guidance classes, and whether data was being “shared, collected, or stored” from student involvement in the programs.
“I attended our local school district’s board meeting recently, hoping for some kind of assistance,” Butticaz said. “I got very little, only lip service from the district attorney saying he was communicating with parents, trying to set up a meeting. But, this has been ongoing for weeks.”
“I also have tried submitting a Colorado Open Records Request (CORA) where the school tried overcharging me for fulfilling the CORA,” Butticaz continued.
“Parents are afraid to comment publicly,” she added. “When I made public comment last week, the school district is taking the ‘there isn’t anything we can do because they are a charter school’ stance.”
ACS held a day for 7th and 8th-graders identified as Challenge Day on January 14.
An email was forwarded to Breitbart News with the following message from school counselor McWilliams on January 5 regarding the Challenge Day:
Middle School Parents, Your 7th and 8th grade students have been selected to represent ACS at our upcoming Challenge Day Program on January 14th. Challenge Day is a transformational day of fun, leadership and power that can change the way people view one another forever. The goal of Challenge Day is to help stop the teasing, violence and alienation that is so deeply a part of the school experience for millions of young people every day. Through a variety of games, trust building activities and presentations, students will be given a unique opportunity to see themselves and the people around them through a new set of eyes. For more information on the program, please see the attached documents and visit the program website at www.challengeday.org
McWilliams enclosed a permission form that tells parents participation is “voluntary,” and that “Challenge Day and the sponsoring school/organization, its officers, employees or agents assume no liability either directly or indirectly for injury or accident resulting from or in any way connected with this event.”
In an accompanying letter to parents, the “Challenge Day Staff” write:
Please note that while our program focuses primarily on global and community issues and concerns, individual students can and often do share personal difficulties and experiences with the group. The process of sharing is often both empowering and emotional. For this reason, it is important that your child/ward be aware that while confidentiality is one of the primary norms for program participation, we can never guarantee confidentiality on a large group level following the day…
Challenge Day is a nonprofit, founded by husband and wife Rich Dutra-St. John and Yvonne St. John-Dutra, that provides 6 ½ –hour programs to students in grades 7-12. According to the letter sent to parents, “Challenge Days successfully address the issues of violence, teasing, social oppression, racism, harassment, conflict management, suicide, peer pressure, alcohol and drugs.”
ACS Dean Yvette Brown and school counselor Angela McWilliams did not respond to Breitbart News’ telephone and email requests for comment. |
In addition to plans for infilling Jack London Square, the CIM Group is pushing forward with two options for a new Uptown Oakland tower to rise on the current parking lot site at 325 22nd Street. And based on current building heights, one of the options could yield the tallest tower in Oakland.
As designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), Option A calls for a 250-foot-tall tower, with 408,000 square feet of office space over 7,400 square feet of ground floor retail and a garage for 181 cars:
But the plans could be stretched for Option B, a 34-story tower rising up to 450 feet in height, with 820,000 square feet of office space over 7,400 square feet of retail space and a garage for 342 cars:
In the words of Oakland’s Planning Department, the 450-foot-tall tower “has a more elegant, refined mass that supports the success of the Central Business District as a densely developed, vibrant commercial center,” while the 250-foot-tall plan “appears bulky and squat” when compared to the taller scheme. But “both options are generally well-designed.”
And while both options include a signature “sky terrace,” the taller plan could yield some rather spectacular views. |
There has been a trend across the country in recent years. A simple Google News search for “aquaponics” highlights school system after school system implementing aquaponics programs in the classroom.
At Keystone Oaks High School in Pittsburg, environmental science teacher Maddie Key has transformed a neglected storage room into an aquaponics learning space. In it, the students are raising small mosquitofish in tanks. Herbs – such as basil, oregano, and chives – are fertilized with the waste matter of these fish. Exciting stuff? YES, says principle Keith Hartbauer.
“We’re ecstatic about what Maddie has done. She’s made learning relevant for a lot of kids who would have shut down otherwise. This group of kids seems to do really well with these types of activities.”
In Georgia, River Eves Elementary School has recently opened an aquaponics lab. This initiative broadens its experiential STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) lessons for all grades at the school.
“After a lengthy search for the right addition to our STEM curriculum, we’re excited to dedicate a classroom for aquaponics with turtles, bluegill, bass, and plants for experiments and study,” says Neil Pinnock, River Eves Elementary School Principal. “It’s equally exciting to kindergarteners through fifth graders and teachers to develop eco-awareness and additional problem-solving skills through aquaponics.”
So with teachers across the country finding value in this type of hand-on learning, how do we implement this educational teaching method across the country? If aquaponics in the classroom keeps students – with otherwise short attention spans – engaged and interested, why not replicated this on a larger scale?
Is aquaponics a solution to our nation’s educational shortcomings? Should it be mandatory in ALL school systems? Or will there simply be a select few school systems choosing to implementing aquaponics in the classroom? We hope more educators look to aquaponics for hands-on lessons which teach conservation and symbiotic ecosystem relationships. |
Gowdy on Harry Reid's Statement: "I Didn't Know Mormons Use Drugs"
Rep. Trey Gowdy responds to Sen. Harry Reid's claim that FBI Director Comey's decision to re-open the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server was politically motivated.
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS: Here is Harry Reid's letter tonight to Jim Comey: 'Your actions have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive investigation and what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party ore another. I'm writing to inform you that my office has determined these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election. Through your partisan actions,' this is Harry Reid, 'you may have broken the law. The double standard established by your actions is clear.'
Your reaction, Congressman?
REP. TREY GOWDY: Thank God he's leaving, is my initial reaction. My second reaction is: I did not know Mormons used drugs. And anyone who is capable of sending out that press release has to be under the influence of something.
The person responsible for this fact pattern is Secretary Clinton.
Jim Comey did not tell her to use her private server. He did not say to mislead the public about whether or not you turned over all of your work emails. And he certainly didn't say, Secretary Clinton, why don't you say you neither sent nor received classified information. So, look, Senator Reid is a political hack and Jim Comey is a law enforcement officer.
He's not a Republican or a Democrat. I've had my differences with him in the past, but he's not a political hack like Senator Reid is. |
Whatever you think is good ramen in St. Louis currently is not. In fact, when comparing it to real ramen, it's downright bad. Ramen isn't just one type of noodle soup either. Going to Japan and proudly professing "I LOVE RAMEN!" is not unlike someone standing up and yelling "I LOVE SOUP!" in the US.
Educate yourself: ramen is regional and varies hugely. The big 4 are shoyu (soy), shio (salt), tonkotsu (pork bone broth), and miso (fermented bean paste), but there are tons more. Chicken ramen is becoming more prominent, some with thin broths and some with schmaltzy, unctuous bases. Some ramen isn't even a soup - it's noodles dipped into broth as you eat. Spend some time reading Lucky Peach's Regional Ramen Guide.
If I sound smug or arrogant, like some kind of ramen elitist, it's because I am. I lived off that shit in Singapore. Kara (spicy) miso ramen coursed through my veins.
Here's a glimpse of the madness that went on that weekend: egg making, pork tasting, broths galore, noodle measuring, and, finally, ramen eating. |
This incredibly moving snapshot from my WWII collection captures a wide range of emotions. The only identification I have for the photo is that it was taken in a town/village/city named Poules during the tail end of the war. A US GI followed a joyous parade of French citizens and Free French (FFI) underground soldiers as they proudly walk down the streets of their newly liberated city. It’s a photo that speaks volumes.
After nearly four years of German occupation, a contingent of the French population were eager to fight back against the oppressive rule of their German visitors. In this post’s main photo we see a young, attractive female underground soldier causally smoking a cigarette, toting German “potato masher” stick grenades while holding a captured German rifle and briefcase. To her left we see a group of young French women who have been publicly shamed. Their shaved heads were shaped to show a swastika. A joyous moment for the FFI, yet a horrible moment for the women who were caught up in the frenzy of the German occupation. This photo has never been digitized for display on the web. You’re the first to see it!
US Signal Corps Footage of Collaborator Hair Cuts
Similar Photos From the Web |
Documents leaked to a Thailand-based rights group show evidence that the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar is official state policy, with copies of government directives released that order authorities to restrict Rohingya families to two children and tightly control the Muslim group’s movement. The documents, released on Tuesday by Fortify Rights in a report titled "Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies Against Rohingya in Myanmar," represent the first proof that abuses against the group are codified in law and ordered by the highest level of government. One order dating from May 2005 and circulated among authorities in northern Rakhine state’s Maungdaw says that “those who have permission to marry must limit the number of children, in order to control the birth rate so that there is enough food and shelter”. Since then, according to Fortify Rights, Rohingya have been made to sign agreements that they will not have more than two children. Violation of this agreement can result in a 10-year prison sentence. Another directive states that any Rohingya deemed to have had extra-marital relations can be imprisoned for up to one year. In order to enforce population control measures, officials are urged to demand that Rohingya women breastfeed in their presence “if there is suspicion of someone being substituted” in the family. Like the rules that prevent Rohingya travelling outside of their townships without permission, these policies are reserved only for Rohingya, and not other ethnic groups. This has led observers to conclude that they are being targeted because of their ethnicity and/or religion, which amounts to a crime of persecution. “These policies are being supported by the highest levels of government, the same officials now being courted by Western governments,” said Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights and a co-author of the report. “These officials don’t see the need to end abuses of the Rohingya as part of wider reforms.” Western Myanmar’s Rakhine state has been beset by several waves of violence between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists since June 2012. Like the government and the majority of Burmese, the Rakhine consider Rohingya to be illegal Bengali immigrants, and thus deny them citizenship status and the accompanying rights to healthcare and education. In the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe, Rohingya have been forced to either leave their homes and move into refugee camps, or remain in Muslim-only ghettos where armed guards patrol barbed wire barricades and prevent residents from leaving. One Rohingya man in Sittwe's Bhumi quarter who spoke with ucanews.com in February said he was forced to seek medical treatment in a clinic in a nearby refugee camp because police had denied him permission to visit Sittwe’s main hospital. “It’s plain to see authorities have made life so intolerable for Rohingya that in many cases they have no option but to flee to another country,” Smith told ucanews.com. While these abusive practices have been known to human rights monitors for some time, he said that “it’s a whole other thing to have documents that prove intent and knowledge of the government of systematic abuse”. The material contained in the report would meet the evidentiary threshold for state-directed persecution, one of the most serious international crimes. Smith said he believes these policies are “just the tip of the iceberg” of internal government communications – more recent lobbying of the government by Rakhine politicians to have these restrictions further tightened could worsen the situation. Work on a nationwide census will begin on March 30, but a requirement to list ethnicity could further inflame tensions. A recent briefing by the International Crisis Group said that the last census in 1983 may have artificially lowered the population count for Muslims, meaning that an accurate figure this time round could be used as proof by anti-Muslim nationalists that the Muslim population is expanding rapaciously. Fortify Rights has called for an immediate end to abusive state policies in Myanmar, but warned that thus far, investigations carried out by the government into the violence in Rakhine state have not addressed the need to bring to a stop the persecution of the Rohingya.
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For years, Apple remained steadfast in its position that smartphones with bigger screens were unwieldy and not user friendly. In fact, Apple in 2012 released an iPhone 5 commercial boasting that the device, on account of its 4-inch form factor, could be operated comfortably with one’s thumb.
DON’T MISS: This must be the sketchiest iPhone 7 rumor we’ve seen yet
“That’s either a) an amazing coincidence,” the commercial says, “or b) a dazzling display of common sense.”
Despite Apple’s best efforts to persuade people that larger screened devices were unnecessary, it eventually became apparent that Apple could no longer continue to ignore a market that was seemingly itching for devices with huge displays.
And so Apple in 2014 decided to dive in head first into the world of larger screened smartphones, unveiling the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus.
Since then, Apple has broken numerous iPhone sales records as consumers flocked to these bigger devices in unprecedented numbers. Indeed, Apple’s larger iPhones proved to be so popular that we haven’t even seen the release of a more accommodating 4-inch iPhone model in nearly two and a half years.
With that said, one might reasonably assume that no one is really using smaller iPhone models anymore. Recently compiled data from Mixpanel, however, reveals that older iPhone models that predate 2014’s iPhone 6 are still in use and, in fact, quite popular.
In fact, you might be surprised to learn that the second most used iPhone on the planet is the iPhone 5s, a device that was released all the way back in 2013.
Broken down by model, here are the most used iPhone devices as of Saturday, February 6.
iPhone 6 – 35.06%
iPhone 5s – 19.1%
iPhone 6s – 13.73%
iPhone 6 Plus – 8.54%
iPhone 5 – 7.64%
iPhone 5c – 5.87%
iPhone 6s Plus – 4.27%
iPhone 4s – 4.03%
iPhone 4 – 1.74%
Older iPhones – .03%
Is the iPhone 5s’ enduring popularity the result of people not wanting to trade up for a larger model? Or, perhaps, does it speak to the durability of Apple hardware, which is to say most iPhone 5s models are still running smoothly, thereby negating any performance issues that typically motivate an upgrade?
Either way, the data here is interesting and perhaps suggests that smartphones have advanced to a degree such that upgrade cycles are now a little bit longer than the traditional 2-year time frame we’ve known since the original iPhone was introduced back in 2007.
What will really be interesting to keep an eye on is how the public takes to the iPhone 5se. If iPhone 5se sales come in at the high range of expectations, it would indicate that the market for 4-inch iPhones is much larger than people might have otherwise assumed. |
UNITED NATIONS — The uproar over allegations of child sexual abuse by French soldiers in Central African Republic spread on Friday, as the United Nations top human rights official accused France of delays in investigating its troops, the United States pressed for an inquiry, and the United Nations faced new scrutiny over the accountability of peacekeepers who exploit civilians they are sent to protect.
In his first public remarks since the allegations surfaced that French troops had sexually abused several boys from December 2013 to May 2014, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, sharply questioned why France had not investigated its own soldiers before United Nations staff members began their own investigation.
The United Nations collected testimonies from six boys, some of whom described in detail how they had been sexually abused; others said they witnessed it.
“How is it that nobody knew about these abuses between December and May?” said Mr. al-Hussein, a former United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia who, in a previous role, had pressed the United Nations to improve how it handles sexual abuse allegations in its peacekeeping missions. |
Indiana Jones is the last pulp avatar standing. The two-fisted tomb robber/archaeologist/Nazi puncher has survived through four decades and will see in his fifth, appropriately, at the head of his fifth movie.
Of course the first question everyone asked when this was announced was “WHY?!”
But I’d argue the more interesting question is “How?”
Ford will be 76 by the time the next movie is released. He’s clearly in excellent physical shape and The Force Awakens showed just how good he is when he engages with the material…but there’s a credibility issue that the movies themselves have set up. Much of Crystal Skull was about Indy realizing he’d lost a step; that this was not as easy as it used to be. And let’s face it, things have never exactly been easy for Doctor Jones. So Ford playing his age isn’t an issue, but Indy playing his age may have to be.
Then there’s the fact that Crystal Skull gave the pulp hero the one thing he’s always successfully avoided: change. Finally married to Marion Ravenwood and with a grown son, Indy’s life changes dramatically and there’s a clear sense of him accepting that. The movie may end with him not quite being done with adventuring—but it also ends with him finally, definitively, not alone. That has to be addressed in the fifth movie and addressed in a manner other than “oh Marion died and Mutt’s at school.” If ever a pair of characters have earned a disreputable old age it’s the Ravenwood-Joneses.
So those are the issues going in: Indy’s age and Indy’s changed life.
Then there are the aliens. Or, more specifically, what they represent.
You can, and God knows people will, debate the relative merits of Crystal Skull until the heat death of the universe. But the one truly interesting thing it does is change the fictional frame of reference Indy operates in. The Nazis are gone, the war is over, Communism is on the rise—and with it, science and the insatiable hunger for strategic innovation. Everything in the movie, from the infamous nuclear detonation to the UFO in the finale is built around the idea of a scientist finally being forced to accept that the frontiers of science have been expanded. Indy is a passive force in Crystal Skull and that’s a problem, but the reason why he’s passive is a massive asset. The world’s changed and he’s watching it change around him. The man of action he’s been is becoming the academic he’s always run from: watching, learning. Understanding.
But let’s face it, a movie which was just two hours of Indy going “Hmmm” and thinking a lot would entertain very few people. I’d be one of them, but still.
So, you have a hero who’s slowing down, has a family and is starting to realize the events that define him are ones that are finally in his past. That’s really interesting ground to cover, especially given the change in pulp fiction that occurred in the 1950s. More importantly, the change in how pulp fiction reacted to its artefacts of power.
At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Military Intelligence assure Indy that they have top men working on the ark. In reality they’re doing the most sensible thing possible; locking the thing away and hoping everyone forgets about it. Both Raiders and Last Crusade are about attempts to weaponize the past. Crystal Skull is about that weaponization succeeding. The fifth movie needs to expand that concept and run Indy’s fundamentally decent world view up against the complex moral ambiguities of the Cold War.
Because while Spalko’s plan didn’t work—and was one of Crystal Skull’s problems—it happened and that can’t be ignored. Her attempted direct engagement with and attempt to industrialize the unknown is the root of pulp tropes that still exist today. The Roswell crash, the reverse engineering of alien technology, the attempts to turn psychic powers into quantifiable strategic assets, the Montauk Experiments, Zero Point Energy, the truth behind Area 51. All of these things blossom and grow into the pre-millennial tension that gave us The X-Files. Better still they, along with Edward Snowden, Anonymous, and Wikileaks sow the seeds of the modern, hyper-aware conspiracy thriller.
This is the broader universe that Indy, by simple dint of survival, finds himself in. It’s also thematically near identical to the moral dilemma explored (and shot at, and exploded) in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There you had a man out of time faced with an amoral choice by the country he’d given his life, in every way, to defend. The end result remains one of the most satisfying and well produced Marvel movies to date.
It’s also, I’d argue, a blueprint for how a fifth Indy movie could and should be done. Have the villains as not simply Communists or foreign spies but the auspices of the US military industrial complex and government: terrified of global nuclear annihilation, convinced of the superiority of the other side, absolutely prepared to end the world even as their hand trembles on its way to the button. The villainy not just a product of evil but of fear.
Now, drop a veteran with a clear set of morals, an academic world view and a family to think of into the middle of that.
That’s incredibly compelling, rich thematic ground and I desperately hope the movie goes for it. There’s an opportunity to not only honour the character and explore a new side of him but to do something extraordinary: use an established and beloved character to throw new light onto a complex, terrifying period in history. After all, Indy’s always been a character defined by his need to discover the truth. What better place for a man like that than a time when truth was mutable and in scant supply?
Alasdair Stuart is a freelancer writer, RPG writer and podcaster. He owns Escape Artists, who publish the short fiction podcasts Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Podcastle, Cast of Wonders, and the magazine Mothership Zeta. He blogs enthusiastically about pop culture, cooking and exercise at Alasdairstuart.com, and tweets @AlasdairStuart. |
61 Pages Posted: 30 Nov 2012 Last revised: 30 Jul 2013
Date Written: November 29, 2012
Abstract
Social psychologists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like societal risks. This paper describes a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information processing by members of the public; ideologically motivated cognition; and personality-trait correlates of political conservativism. The results of the study suggest reason to doubt two common surmises about how these dynamics interact. First, the study presents both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with closed-mindedness: conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on an objective measure of cognitive reflection; and more importantly, both demonstrated the same unconscious tendency to fit assessments of empirical evidence to their ideological predispositions. Second, the study suggests that this form of bias is not a consequence of overreliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning; on the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the most likely to display ideologically motivated cognition. These findings corroborated the hypotheses of a third theory, which identifies motivated cognition as a form of information processing that rationally promotes individuals’ interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups. The paper discusses the normative significance of these findings, including the need to develop science communication strategies that shield policy-relevant facts from the influences that turn them into divisive symbols of identity. |
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MOGADISHU, Somalia — Three suicide bombers attacked the temporary residence of the new president of Somalia as he was giving a news conference on Wednesday, killing an African Union soldier but failing to assassinate any political leaders, witnesses and officials said.
The Somali president, Hassan Sheik Mohamud, had only just been elected to his post by the newly created Parliament on Monday, taking the helm of a fledgling government that is supposed to represent a tangible step toward permanent governance in a country that has been without it for more than 20 years.
Two of the suicide bombers struck, one near the gate and one at the back of the Jazeera Hotel near the airport as the president was giving a briefing for the news media with the visiting Kenyan foreign minister, Samson K. Ongeri.
Another attacker was shot as he tried to scale the walls of the compound, according to a statement from the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
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The attack did not interrupt the news conference and the president continued his speech. “This is the Mogadishu we are trying to change,” he said. |
New University of Central Florida football coach Scott Frost’s ties to Nike and desire to shake up the program helped usher in a dramatic new look for the Knights.
The UCF football program gave fans their first look at the team's new uniforms Thursday morning on the school's website after months of hype surrounding Frost’s plan to help update the apparel.
Four different white, gold, anthracite and pewter helmets, jerseys and pants were mixed and matched to form 64 different looks created by Nike football senior graphic designer Josh Iverson. Players jerseys also will bear their last names for the first time since 2004.
In addition to the expanded colors, the school's new catchphrase “Rise & Conquer” is inscribed inside the neckline on the back and the university’s Pegasus logo is featured on both sleeves.
“The unique thing for UCF is where it is and how the school is set up. So we really rally around that, just being in Orlando, the connection to the space program, mascot and the Pegasus [university logo.] Those are a few very cool things to look at with UCF,” Iverson said in a statement announcing the new designs.
UCF and Nike revealed the Knights' new uniforms for the 2016 football season. (UCF Knights) (UCF Knights)
“Overall, very bold, very tough, high-contrast uniform that hopefully will look very tough on [the] field, but very fast. One of the things the school asked for was an interchangeable system that they could mix and match. Instead of having three or four uniforms, they have multiple, multiple combinations so you can create a unique look for almost every game. … Really it’s almost an unlimited possibility set of uniforms that they have now.”
The uniform unveiling came just a week after the school inked a two-year extension and expanded deal with Nike that ends in 2022. Financial terms of the deal were not released.
Frost said in an interview touting the new designs fans should prepare themselves for more changes on the horizon.
“This is the first design, and I’m sure these uniforms we’re wearing this year will make it to next year. I don’t think they will make it much farther than that,” he said. “I want to keep moving the ball down the field with our uniforms and I think we will come up with some new things down the road. But with this first effort, I think we wanted something that was new and different but also played back to the tradition that UCF has had. So there’s some obvious changes and some good ones, but we haven’t really pushed the envelope yet.”
UCF athletics director Danny White told the Orlando Sentinel he was impressed by the reaction Thursday to the uniforms.
“It’s amazing to me how our young fan base is so excited about uniforms,” White said. “I’ve never seen uniforms become this important of a topic. I’m constantly reminded about how passionate are fans are for being such a young fan base.
“Our average alumni base is 36 years old and getting younger every year. Everything we do on social media is gobbled up. From what I heard, every Twitter handle associated with the new uniform was trending in Orlando. We have an engaged, young alumni base that’s active on social media and that’s exciting.”
Players practiced in their 2015 game uniforms during spring workouts, indicating they would not need them this upcoming season.
It’s all a significant change from the more traditional uniforms favored by former UCF coach George O’Leary, who did not list players’ names to the back of uniforms.
Frost quickly agreed to add the players’ names.
“I'm new here, so I'm gonna need names on jerseys so I can remember kids' names to start with,” Frost said soon after he was hired in December. “Listen, these kids should be proud of their families and proud of the opportunity that they have to play in a place like this, and I see no reason not to let those kids sport their family name on the back of their shirts.”
Staff writer Mike Bianchi contributed to this report. [email protected] |
Nothing comes cheap in Canada’s northernmost territory. In Nunavut, Orange juice can go for $14. Christmas turkeys for $200. An Ikea couch for $1,000,000,000.
This Ikea screenshot shows the estimated shipping. ( SUPPLIED )
Wait. What? That was precisely Jordan Grenke's reaction when the store’s online checkout quoted a 10-figure fee for delivery to Iqaluit. That’s steep, even for Nunavut. Especially considering the Klippan loveseat Grenke wanted was only $399.
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“I just thought it was Swedish humour that maybe I didn’t get,” Grenke told the Star from Iqaluit. The shipping fee was not a joke, but a glitch, a spokeswoman for the Swedish furniture maker said. “Obviously it’s an error,” said Madeleine Frick. “I assure you that’s not the correct shipping cost to Nunavut.” Grenke’s complaint to Ikea Canada has been brought to the attention of the global brand, Frick said, and the website will be fixed. Grenke, originally from Milton, Ont., has been living in Iqaluit for a year and a half. He works as postmaster at Canada Post and can list off shipping fees – based on a good’s size, weight and delivery location – off the top of his head.
Anything weighing less than 50 kg can be delivered by Canada Post. Anything over must go through airline cargo. Heavy items are also brought up by sealift. Grenke knew that delivery by any means, even of a flat-packed fiberboard couch, wouldn’t be cheap.
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“There’s a difference between expensive and one billion dollars,” he said, adding jokingly that “it would have been great for our Aeroplan points but it was a little out of our price range.” Out of curiosity, Grenke also tried to order a lamp, a lightbulb, even a pack of batteries. All the potential purchases came with the same exorbitant shipping fee. “It’s kind of a slap in the face. If you can’t ship to Nunavut, then just say it,” Grenke said. Frick said Ikea does ship to the northern territory, filling 16 orders since July 2009. But delivering goods to remote areas can be logistically difficult and expensive, and sometimes the store advises customers that delivery is not available. In this case, Frick said, Grenke’s couch could be delivered by air for a cost of $5500. |
I’ll live where I want when I retire. I’ll get to it later. I’ll just work in the corporate world for ten years, and then I will create a life I enjoy. I’ll do it tomorrow.
How many times have we promised ourselves tomorrow only to find it never arrives? In today’s world, we often put aside our dreams for comfort, our passions for security, and we let our fears take away our power. We choose unfulfilled lives for freedom, thinking that we can always do it differently tomorrow.
People don’t follow their dreams because they are afraid. They are afraid of losing security. They are afraid if they do what they want, they will die. They have become comfortably numb.
What should scare them is that life is short. The reality is if we don’t follow our purpose, our passions, our joys, that’s when the death begins. And the soul’s death is one hundred times worse than the body’s.
The problem is we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. We are only guaranteed this present moment. And we are telling the Universe who we are by the actions we display in only this moment. That’s it. That’s all we have. That’s who we are.
We also miss some of the most special moments of our lives because we think we will have time for them later. We tell ourselves that we will do the things we enjoy when we retire. We will go fishing, we will travel, create art, we will do so much…..later. But, later never comes. There is always something standing in the way.
So, I want to propose that we change this way of thinking. I want to propose that we encourage and inspire each other. I propose that we start a Twitter campaign now. Let’s take the world by storm. You think you have time, but right now, time has you. Let’s change this.
Using the hashtag, #youthinkyouhavetime write your dreams, the thing you always wanted to do. But, don’t stop there. Write about the things in each day that bring you joy. Write about the things that you are saving until later. Write the name of your favorite beach. You know. The one that’s your screen saver that you promised yourself you would visit later.
Let’s get inspired. Let’s find a way to do them now.
I also want to offer a free 15-minute Skype session to anyone who wants guidance to start living their dreams now. Because time is running out. And, I want to help. #youthinkyouhavetime. Let’s do it now.
Email me at [email protected] to get some encouragement from me, and let’s all make use of the time that we have. Let’s change the world one second at a time. |
Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch sat during most of U.S. anthem and stood for the Mexican anthem before their game against the Patriots at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
Lynch has not stood for the national anthem since returning from retirement this season.
There did not appear to be any other protests during the anthem as the afternoon games kicked off. Five NFL players protested during the national anthems before early games.
The Dolphins’ Kenny Stills, Julius Thomas and Michael Thomas took a knee before their game against Tampa Bay.
Giants defensive lineman Olivier Vernon took a knee, as he has done most of the season. The opposing Chiefs stood scattered on their sideline, though cornerback Marcus Peters remained in the tunnel until it was over.
Peters protested during the anthem earlier this season, but the last couples games he has stayed in the locker room to keep out of the spotlight. |
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With the number of coworking spaces in the city on the rise, Stephen Elliott-Buckley and Kevin Harding are on the brink of creating Vancouver’s first such space built on a “community first” co-op model.
After learning about successful coworking cooperatives in Ontario and Quebec, the two consultants—both members of Incipe Workers’ Cooperative, which specializes in advocacy communication, research, and strategic advice—realized how well a similar space might fit into Vancouver’s creative market.
“We know that coworking spaces have this amazing capacity to put people together to work on projects, and that’s the magic of the cooperative model; it is really one that seeks to empower its users,” Harding said.
Coworking spaces, touted as an alternative to the cafes or kitchen tables frequented by the self-employed, offer individuals a comfortable office space with all necessary amenities—coffee included—at a monthly rental rate.
Spaces like the Network Hub, with offices in Vancouver, New Westminster, and Whistler, operate on a for-profit model and charge members between $5 per hour and $500 per month, depending on location and amenities.
Though similarly priced, HiVE, located in Gastown, operates on a not-for-profit model and offers members the opportunity to give back to the community “within the social entrepreneurship, sustainability, tech and creative sectors” through various organizations.
“With the co-op model, everybody is an owner and there’s no layer of profit that has to be paid out to investors. Members have a stake in ownership, they have a stake in operations, and any profit that comes from it is something that they get to share equally,” Elliott-Buckley explained.
Though keen to bring the cooperative to fruition by early autumn, the duo has yet to lease a space, but Elliott-Buckley says that it’s all part of the process.
“One of the biggest things I read about in terms trying to make coworking viable is trying to create some kind of community among a whole bunch of individuals who are shut off in a space to work with each other, and try to convert that into working together. Our goal is to build the community first and then create a space out of that,” he said.
Freelancers, contractors, activists, researchers, and even students are just a few of the types of individuals that Elliott-Buckley and Harding consider to be prime candidates for membership, which they hope to price competitively.
“There is a way of creating a coworking space that can cost close to $100 or $200 less than some of these other places, and looking at our initial tinkering of numbers, it looks like it might be viable.”
An inception meeting will be held on March 31 at Tipper Restaurant (2066 Kingsway), where the specifics of starting the co-op will be discussed with those interested in taking part.
“I know it’s become a bit of a cliché, but if you’re spending $5 or $10 an hour in a coffee shop, that’s well within the financial model of the space we’re looking to create. Individuals who need some space to be with people in a place that’s a little more connected than a Starbucks—this would be the space for them.” |
Fracking Gas Drilling’s Environmental Threat
For the last eight years, Pennsylvania has been riding the natural gas boom, with companies drilling and fracking thousands of wells across the state. And in a little corner of Washington County, some 20 miles outside of Pittsburgh, EQT Corporation has been busy – drilling close to a dozen new wells on one site.
It didn't take long for the residents of Finleyville who lived near the fracking operations to complain – about the noise and air quality, and what they regarded as threats to their health and quality of life. Initially, EQT, one of the largest producers of natural gas in Pennsylvania, tried to allay concerns with promises of noise studies and offers of vouchers so residents could stay in hotels to avoid the noise and fumes.
But then, in what experts say was a rare tactic, the company got more aggressive: it offered all of the households along Cardox Road $50,000 in cash if they would agree to release the company from any legal liability, for current operations as well as those to be carried out in the future. It covered potential health problems and property damage, and gave the company blanket protection from any kind of claim over noise, dust, light, smoke, odors, fumes, soot, air pollution or vibrations.
The agreement also defined the company's operations as not only including drilling activity but the construction of pipelines, power lines, roads, tanks, ponds, pits, compressor stations, houses and buildings.
"The release is so incredibly broad and such a laundry list," said Doug Clark, a gas lease attorney in Pennsylvania who mainly represents landowners. "You're releasing for everything including activity that hasn't even occurred yet. It's crazy."
Linda Robertson, a spokeswoman for EQT, said in a statement that the company had worked hard and conscientiously to address the concerns of the residents. She said consultants had been hired, data collected on noise and health matters, and that independent analysis had shown the company was in compliance with noise and air quality requirements. She would not comment in detail on the financial offers.
"When landowner and leaseholder concerns arise, it is a standard practice for EQT personnel to work diligently to listen to and understand their concerns, particularly those related to the temporary inconveniences of living near a production site," Robertson said. "Regarding the neighbors on Cardox Road, the majority of whom are leaseholders, we have been in regular and ongoing communications with residents and local officials to address and resolve questions as they arise."
Hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – has provoked a litany of health and environmental concerns since it gained popularity within the last decade. Many environmentalists and public health experts contend that the practice can pollute groundwater aquifers, drastically reduce air quality and endanger the health of residents living near wells.
Over the years, the industry has vehemently denied that its work is a threat, and has often pointed to a lack of conclusive proof that gas drilling operations are to blame for any harmful health or safety issues. The industry has undertaken an array of efforts to quell these worries and preserve its business — lobbying state legislators, conducting its own scientific studies and occasionally settling quietly out of court with landowners who have threatened to sue.
The liability agreements EQT has used in Finleyville — they are often known as nuisance easements — have been used in other circumstances. Residents living close to airports, for instance, are often offered such easements as compensation for having to bear with the noise, vibrations and fumes from air traffic. Property owners close to landfills and wind farms may also sign similar agreements.
But experts say such easements are rare in the oil and gas industry.
"This is only the second time I've seen one," said Clark, the Pennsylvania attorney. "They're absolutely not common at all."
Clark says it is unlikely that companies will start handing out such agreements en masse, saying doing so could decrease landowners' confidence about the safety of the company's operations and their personal health.
"People are going to say the gas companies must be concerned about air pollution because they're offering these easements," said Clark. "Everybody's going to get suspicious."
Earlier this year, a couple in Texas was awarded $3 million in a lawsuit against a gas drilling company. The couple alleged that the company's operations had affected their health, decreased their property value and forced them to move away. The case was one of the first successful lawsuits alleging that air pollution from gas drilling activity caused health issues.
Experts say that verdict and others like it have emboldened landowners to take their claims to court. Nuisance easements may be one way to ensure that the company can easily block landowners from claiming damages.
Apart from drilling and fracking wells, EQT also builds and operates the infrastructure — pipelines and compressor stations — necessary to move natural gas to market. Its operations are headquartered in Pennsylvania but it also owns wells in Kentucky and West Virginia.
In 2008, landowners in Finleyville signed a gas lease for drilling with Chesapeake Energy. The company only drilled one well, but last year it sold its leases to EQT, which has since drilled 11 additional wells.
So far the company's strategy to reduce its liabilities has worked with some landowners.
Muriel Spencer, whose house is about 500 feet from the drilling, took the money. She said she did not consult with a lawyer, but had asked the company to put a five-year time frame around the release. The initial contract released the company from liabilities indefinitely.
Muriel Spencer, who lives about 500 feet from EQT Corp.’s gas well, says she has no complaints about the company’s operations. (Courtesy of Robert M. Donnan)
"I cannot complain about the drilling to this point," Spencer said, adding that EQT "has been nothing but fair with me."
The company's spokeswoman would not comment on how many landowners EQT approached with the proposed agreements, but said that "approximately 85% of the residents" had signed them.
An initial version of the proposed standard agreement listed 30 Finleyville residents and required that they all sign the agreements in order to receive the $50,000. When the residents refused, EQT modified the agreement such that the compensation was not contingent on all landowners signing it.
ProPublica found that at least four of the 30 residents have agreed to some version of the initial agreement that EQT proposed and have received $50,000 in exchange. It is unclear what changes were made to the agreement during negotiations.
Robertson, the company spokeswoman, said in her statement that "any changes made to the agreements during negotiations were based on requests directly from the resident, and/or their attorney."
But some of the residents have refused to negotiate with the company.
"I was insulted," said Gary Baumgardner, who was approached by EQT with the offer in January. "We're being pushed out of our home and they want to insult us with this offer."
Baumgardner says his house is like an amphitheater, constantly vibrating from the drilling. At times the noise gets up to 75 decibels, equivalent to a running vacuum cleaner, he said. Earlier this year, EQT Corp. put up a sound barrier to limit the noise, but Baumgardner says it has made little difference to his quality of life.
"We took the pictures down in the bedroom because they still vibrate at night," he said.
Baumgardner says he has had to leave his house at least three times so far because the gas fumes from the well site were too much to bear. A local health group has installed air quality monitors in his home and several of his neighbors. Last year when the one of the monitors began flashing red, his daughter, pregnant at the time, fled the house. She has since moved away after her doctor advised her not to live close to a drilling site.
"Our house is most often not livable," said Baumgardner. EQT's response to his complaints, he said, has been "constant dismissals, excuses, delays and broken promises."
Robertson would not respond to Baumgardner's specific assertions. She did point to several mitigation efforts she said the company had taken, including the sound wall, but also involving switching to quieter machinery and applying for permits to transport water via pipes instead of trucks.
Baumgardner believes the nuisance easement he was offered is a part of the industry's tactic to silence landowners.
"Throughout the last several months, an EQT regional land manager, one of our community advisers, and our community relations manager have all been engaged in phone calls and personal meetings with residents, attended township meetings, and visited the production site on multiple occasions to identify and confirm the reported issues, if any," Robertson's statement said.
"The easements are part of our overall consistent and ongoing effort to address leaseholder concerns."
If you've been approached by the oil and gas industry with an overly broad agreement, email [email protected]. |
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The Florida police chief whose department failed to arrest neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the February shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was fired on Wednesday, the city of Sanford said.
An estimated eight-thousand people showed up for a public rally to honor the memory of Trayvon Martin, at Fort Mellon Park in Sanford, Florida March 22, 2012. REUTERS/Octavian Cantilli
Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee had been on paid leave since March 22 amid outrage over his handling of the racially charged case in the central Florida city of 50,000.
“I have come to this decision in light of the escalating divisiveness that has taken hold of the city,” Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte said in a statement. “The police chief needs to have the trust and respect of the elected officials and the confidence of the entire community.”
After Martin’s shooting, Sanford police, under Lee’s command, declined to arrest Zimmerman based on his claim of self-defense. That led to a wave of civil rights protests around the country and a media firestorm.
Lee contended that Zimmerman was protected under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows shooters who feel threatened wide latitude to fire rather than retreat.
However, police documents released later showed that the lead investigator in the Sanford Police Department believed there was enough evidence to arrest Zimmerman for manslaughter. The investigator wrote in his summary that Martin was not involved in any criminal activity, and that Zimmerman could have avoided the encounter.
The case was transferred by Governor Rick Scott to a special prosecutor who subsequently charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder.
Lee will receive a severance of three months and one week of salary, plus payment for any earned time off, the city said.
The city has already begun a nationwide search for a new chief, according to Bonaparte. Richard Myers is serving as acting police chief.
Lee previously offered to resign under a separation agreement negotiated with Bonaparte, but that offer was rejected by a 3-2 vote of the city commission on April 23.
The city did not comment on why Wednesday’s action did not require a commission vote. |
Food News: Bacon & Blue Dog and Kickin’ Coney from Sonic
Posted August 31st, 2011 | 5:54pm by Adam
Sonic is adding on to its 100% all-beef hot dog line again this fall, introducing two new hot dogs in the form of the Bacon & Blue Dog and the Kickin’ Coney. Here’s a little more information:
Bacon and Blue Dog: It’s a hot dog made with 100% pure beef, covered in crisp bacon, fresh lettuce, ripe tomato and blue cheese dressing on a poppy seed bun (450 Calories, 27 grams fat, 9 grams sat. fat, 17 grams protein.)
Kickin’ Coney: A hot dog made with 100% pure beef and topped with chili, cheddar cheese, crispy onions and chipotle BBQ sauce (480 calories, 27 grams fat, 11 grams sat fat, 19 grams protein)
In addition to the new hot dogs, Sonic is also introducing a fall-themed Pumpkin Pie Milkshake that comes with “real ice cream, real pumpkin, nutmeg and cinnamon blended with pie crust pieces.” It clocks in at 710 calories for a 14. oz shake and 1040 calories for a 20 oz. shake. I wonder if it’s as good as that Arctic Circle Pumpkin Pie Milkshake I had last year? |
In an effort to give her point of view on the ever-growing scandal surrounding Harvey Weinstein and sexism in Hollywood, “Big Bang Theory” star Mayim Bialik has opened herself up to some sharp ridicule from fans.
The star clarified in a Facebook live video Monday that she regrets how her lengthy op-ed for The New York Times about the Harvey Weinstein scandal has been received. In the piece, the actress condemned a culture that puts women in situations like the ones Weinstein’s accusers found themselves in.
"It has become clear to me that there are people that think I implied, or overtly stated, that you can be protected from assault from the clothing you wear," Bialik said in a Facebook live video with the NY Times. "That is absolutely not what my intention was and I think that it is safe for me to [say]...there's no way to avoid being the victim of assault by what you wear or the way you behave."
She later added, "I really do regret that this became what it became."
Fans took issue with a portion of Bialik's op-ed in which she wrote how she avoided harassment in Hollywood by presenting herself in as a modest person.
While describing how she avoided such things by getting into the business at a young age and not being the typical Hollywood pretty-girl archetype, she mentioned how her choices in the business as an adult have helped her get by.
“I still make choices every day as a 41-year-old actress that I think of as self-protecting and wise. I have decided that my sexual self is best reserved for private situations with those I am most intimate with. I dress modestly. I don’t act flirtatiously with men as a policy,” she wrote.
Bialik immediately qualified the above statement by saying, “Women should be able to wear whatever they want. They should be able to flirt however they want with whomever they want. Why are we the ones who have to police our behavior?”
However, many still took her words as evidence that she was shaming the women who fell victim for the way they dressed or acted.
Bialik clarified on Monday, "How you dress and how you behave has nothing to do with you being assaulted. Assault and rape are acts of power...I really do intend to convey that I understand that." |
Yes, you read that correctly. The fevered dreams of crime scene investigators up and down the country are being brought to reality by Adobe , with just a single extra lens and some crafty software knowhow. Basically, a plenoptic lens is composed of a litany of tiny "sub-lenses," which allow those precious photons you're capturing to be recorded from multiple perspectives . The result is that you get a bunch more data in your image and an "infinite" depth of field, meaning you can toggle at what distance you want your image to be focused after the act of taking it. These plenoptic lenses are inserted between your shooter's usual lens and its sensor, though commercialization is sadly said to still be a fair distance away. Never fear, you can get hold of a video demo much sooner than that -- you know where it's at. |
Because the weather has finally turned cold and it’s officially winter, I thought I would share my top picks for the best nourishing winter skincare products in my beauty arsenal. There are a TON of products out there which claim to help with dryness, inflammation, and even acne during this cold time of year, but many are ineffective. I’ve tried, tested, and repurchased all of these in my line up. Every product in this guide and the linked articles are KEEPERS! So, if you’re looking to stock up on some tried-and-true hydrating face mists, creams, face oils, and nourishing balms for the winter, these are the best of the best.
Your Ultimate Winter Skincare Guide
The best organic face mists can make a HUGE difference to the hydration levels of your skin. The ones that are concentrated (meaning not 90% water + 10% floral waters and extracts) and include potent ingredients such as hyaluronic acid, floral extracts and hydrosols (waters from the plant) are wonderful for soothing your skin and holding moisture to your skin. These mists also help to increase the efficiency of all your favorite oils and balms as well. In order for your skin to hold onto moisture (water), we NEED to first apply a water-inclusive product BEFORE applying our balms or oils. Otherwise, your skin will still feel dry even if you apply a thousand balms a day. So, applying a toner or water based serum or cream BEFORE you apply any oils or balms will hold that hydration in (which is exactly what we want!).
Best Uses:
Applying before creams, oils and balms to help hold in hydration
Refresh your skin / makeup throughout the day
Soothe inflammation, breakouts, and redness
Nourish skin and lightly hydrate it
Give your skin a potent does of skin nutrients
Natural face creams are a wonderful addition to your winter skin routine if you prefer creams and want to focus on both hydrating your skin AND treating it (for acne, inflammation, or simply giving your skin more glow). It’s a great water based way to keep your skin nourished if you’re someone who doesn’t like oils or balms (for whatever reason).
Best Uses:
Hydrating skin if you prefer to avoid oils and balms (not sure why you would, but there it is!)
Treat acne, inflammation, or even out skin tone while hydrating it
Nourish skin using a water based product so it’s absorbed easily
For those who want healing, soothing, and skin hydration all in one, organic face oils are a GREAT choice! This is because oils and balms are more concentrated in ingredients. Since they are undiluted with water, they offer your skin a host of potent skin vitamins that are wonderful for soothing inflammation (redness, acne, etc.), healing any existing scars or discoloration, and also skin hydration (thanks to the amazing blend of oils). Paired with a balm or cream and a legit face mist, these are an unstoppable force in your winter skin routine!
Best Uses:
Soothing inflammation, redness, and breakouts
Healing skin issues such as acne scarring, dark spots, and discoloration
Giving your skin a healthy glow
Hydrating and nourishing your skin with vitamins and nutrients
Prepping your skin for makeup application (Especially serum foundations! You can also mix a little oil into any foundation formula for more hydration as well.)
Last, but certainly not least, are organic balms. Balms are great because, like oils, they have high concentrations of plant ingredients that are rich in skin-loving nutrients. The blend of plant butters, oils, extracts, and essences are wonderful for healing and soothing your skin at night. They’re not very practical for day time use, but they are incredibly valuable as a last step in your nighttime skin routine. That said, you can use them to prep your skin for serum makeup or something; I love using balms for that as they tend to smooth and hydrate your skin well so serum foundations like the one by Gressa won’t settle into dry patches (if you have any). Just make sure you use a SMALL amount to avoid making your skin look too oily. The amount should be no bigger than dime size. Your skin will get the benefits without making you look too shiny or feeling heavy. Other uses for balms include using them on dry lips and eyes, skin irritations, or as a moisture mask. You can use them on dry spots before showering to prevent moisture loss. They can even be used on areas of your body, hands or feet that need a little extra TLC.
Best Uses:
Deeply nourishing skin with vitamins and nutrients
Hydrating skin with plant butters and oils
As a deeply moisturizing night treatment
Soothing inflammation, redness, and acne
As a hydrating face mask or overnight treatment
Prep your skin for makeup application (wonderful for preventing foundations from settling into dry patches).
On dry lips, eyes, feet, hands, and other dry areas.
Apply onto dry areas of body before a hot shower to help retain moisture
Other Things to Try this Winter :
Check out my Fall Beauty Guide for more cold weather skincare and makeup tips!
What Are Your Favorites for Winter Skincare?
Come Chat With Me!
*Affiliate links in post; Not all links are affiliate |
Transparency & education through these smartphone apps.
It’s been said that the camera is the new gun. Well, a smartphone without a streaming app is akin to a firearm without ammo.
Download a streaming app today to protect yourself and others.
Bambuser
Broadcast low-latency live video and audio
to the web using 3G or WiFi! View incoming
chat messages, broadcast in public or in
private, geotag your broadcasts and share
to many social networks.
Cost: free
More: http://bambuser.com/broadcasts Call Recorder
Record your phone calls. Keep in mind that
if you’re in a location that’s not considered a
one-party consent state you’ll want to inform
the caller of the recording.
Cost: free
Download: Android
iPhone: iPhone Cell 411 (recommended)
With near-real-time alerts, support for
gravatar images, fast GPS updates and
instant access to issue alerts, Cell 411
is ideal for anyone in need.
Cost: free
Download: Android
Download: iOS Cop Block (recommended)
Access the latest Cop Block articles and
podcasts at the click of a button. Easy
interface makes sharing content easy.
Cost: free
Download: Android
Download: iOS Cop Recorder 2
Cop Recorder can secretly record audio
and then upload it to the OpenWatch
server along with location data.
Cost: free
Download: Android
Download: iOS FastCase
For the most part, police powers have
been federally defined; but there are
legal and procedural quirks that vary
from state to state, and FastCase is an
excellent resource for both state and
federal case law. FastCase goes way
beyond the scope of a traffic stop or
warrantless search—it lays out precedent
for landmark decisions in almost every
imaginable category—but that’s where
the searchable database become helpful.
Cost: 24-hr trial, then subscription fees
More: http://fastcase.com Fi-Vo Film
Use Fi-Vo Film to instantly and securely
record police misconduct any time you
witness it. As you record, your video
instantly saves to your phone and
uploads to your free
Dropbox account.
Cost: $1.99
More http://fivofilm.com GotYa!
GotYa! takes a silent snapshot through the
front facing camera of the criminal who is
attempting to use your device, whenever
the screen lock is entered incorrectly.
After taking the picture, it acquires the
location of your device and forms a Google
maps link, and then send it with the time
stamped picture to your email or Facebook!
Cost: $1.99
More: http://igotya.com I’m Getting Arrested
Alert your lawyer, loved ones, etc … that
you are being arrested with a click. I’m
Getting Arrested enables anyone, with
one click, to broadcast a custom
message to SMS numbers in the event
they are arrested.
Cost: free
Download: Android Instant Incognito
Capture audio to your Windows Phone in normal or incognito (stealth) mode.
Cost: free
Download: Windows Phone
More: via WMPowerUser.com
LiveStream
Watch live events from livestream.com.
Right on your mobile device.
Cost: free
More: http://livestream.com Oh Crap App
Oh Crap App is a revolutionary new smart phone application which educates users of their legal rights based upon the state they are located (GPS based); assists them in invoking their rights; documents and preserves evidence of their interaction with law enforcement; and also connects the user with a qualified attorney in their geographic area when needed.
More: http://oh-crap-app.com Open Watch
OpenWatch recorder can secretly record audio and video, and upload it to the OpenWatch server along with geolocation data.
Cost: free
More: https://openwatch.net
PocketJustice
After you’ve memorized the Bill of Rights, it’s time to move up to Supreme Court precedent, where the nitty-gritty of police powers are found. Most of you have probably seen this video of a legal student defending his Second Amendment rights in Portland, ME; you’ll notice that his ammunition is Supreme Court precedent, not just the text of the Bill of Rights. PocketJustice offers searchable transcripts of over 100 Supreme Court cases, as well as some audio of the oral arguments (good for brushing up in the car or on the metro). Most of the landmark police-powers cases are covered here, but it’s not so dense as to be overwhelming. If you want to go deeper, you can download the Pro version, which has transcripts for over 600 cases, and 300+ additional hours of Supreme Court audio. For people who want a basic understanding of their rights without a law degree, this is a great tool.
Cost: free through Oct., $4.99 for Pro
More: http://pocketjustice.com
Police Scanner 5-0
Police Scanner 5-0 brings you more than 2,500 police, fire, rescue and other radio feeds over 3G or WiFi. You can search for channels in the U.S. and other countries by country, state or province and county. Find channels close to your location based on GPS or 3G/WiFi triangulation. This app can be very useful when out Copblocking.
Cost: free version with short ads or $1.99 w/o ads
Download: Android
Download: iOS
Police Tape
Citizens can hold police accountable in the palms of their hands with “Police Tape,” a smartphone application from the ACLU of New Jersey that allows people to securely and discreetly record and store interactions with police, as well as provide legal information about citizens’ rights when interacting with the police. Related video: How Does it Work?
Cost: free
More: http://aclu-nj.org/yourrights/the-app-place
Scanner Radio Pro (recommended)
Listen to live audio from over 4,700 police and fire scanners. No ads. Record the radio traffic. Look up 10-codes. Browse nearby, keep your favorites, or access most-active. Bluetooth enabled.
Cost: $2.99
More: https://facebook.com/scannerradio
Secret Camera Recorder
Secret Video Recorder is the ONLY hidden camera app in the market that does background recording so you can use your phone as normal and NO ONE can tell you are recording video.
Cost: $5.99
Download: Android
Download: iOS
SneakyPix
Act like you’re on the phone while secretly and automatically snapping pictures or recording video.
Cost: $0.99
Download: iOS
Stop-and-Frisk
An easy way to hold the NYPD accountable for its actions. It has three primary functions: Record: This allows the user to film an incident with audio by simply pushing a trigger on the phone’s frame. Shaking the phone stops the filming. Listen: This function alerts the user when people in their vicinity are being stopped by the police. Report: This prompts the survey, allowing users to report a police interaction they saw or experienced, even if they didn’t film it.
Cost: free
More: http://nyclu.org/app
Trapster (recommended)
Trapster alerts you to police speed traps and other roadway hazards. Users submit speed traps, enforcement cameras, and road hazards, that then alert all Trapster users in the area. A high-tech version of flashing your headlights to alert drivers of potential road hazards.
Cost: free
More: https://trapster.com
UStream
Go live and watch live video on your phone or tablet – anytime, anywhere! Broadcast live to any number of viewers using the camera of your device.
Cost: free
More: http://ustream.tv
Vimeo
You can upload, manage and watch your videos right from your mobile phone or tablet, with great tools to share publicly or privately.
Cost: free
More: http://vimeo.com
Wickr (recommended)
Top-Secret Messenger. Select a time for your messages and media to expire. We are the only company to have publicly said no to an FBI backdoor. Encyrption Makes the World Better.
Cost: free
More: https://www.wickr.com
Related
CopBlock.org/Cameras [suggested cameras, dash cams, related gear, etc.]
CopBlock.org/FilmThePolice [tips on interacting with police employees]
Know of other apps that should be included in this list?
Let us know |
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be another step down the path to a completely neoliberal economic system for Australia, writes Dr Matt Mitchell and Bill Davis.
Neoliberalism is the system of economic reforms and international agreements that we have been told are necessary for our economy and thus our benefit and wellbeing. Yet after decades of this logic, we are now left wondering about some its effects.
One effect of our economic system that has certainly not improved over the past few decades is the damage to our environment. If we are to assess this system by its effects and benefits then what benefit do we get from dumping waste on the Great Barrier Reef? What benefit to us is a "free trade" agreement with China that doubles the numbers of cattle roaming over our fragile outback ecosystems so as for them to be exported to feed other nations? Even the supposed beneficiaries of this agreement – the outback beef farmers – appear to question this logic.
And then there are deeper questions. Given we are being moved towards a global economic system via trade agreements, why are other nations increasingly depending upon us to feed them? One reason seems to be because many have covered their own agricultural land first with houses and factories, then with the pollution produced by these factories. It is reported that at least eight million acres of farm land in China is now so affected it can no longer be used to grow food. This was done to manufacture goods to be sent to Australia and other wealthy nations — goods those nations once produced themselves.
Another argument given for these economic reforms is that these allow greater economic freedom. But we must ask: freedom for whom?
Australia's imminent TPP disaster: Crowning corporations, by Dr Matthew Mitchell. http://t.co/ts9rWLQmvo — IndependentAustralia (@independentaus) February 13, 2015
It seems not for the small business person, who now must compete with much larger companies sourcing goods globally from the lowest cost producers (Uber for example?).
Rather, it seems, these new freedoms are freedoms for a dwindling number of rich entrepeneurs. And how do these types get rich? Well, all too often it seems by promoting lies and deception — aided by their governments; perhaps looking to also gain wealth and power (Look what happened to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd when he tried to bring in a tax on mining super profits from public resouces: after an orchestrated campaign by rich miners, his own party turned on him).
We are told that under this new economic system everyone will become richer. In fact, inequality in Australia is growing – rapidly – as it is everywhere. These new economic reforms have largely been implemented. Now we are in a situation where we are told we cannot compete with China — a place where the vast majority of workers are paid subsistence wages, work in dangerous conditions, in a destroyed or decaying natural environment. And this is what we are asked to aspire to? Indeed, in Australia, we are now constantly encouraged to discard our own working conditions and destroy our own environment to double down in this great game of destruction.
I must say I feel very sorry for the poor Chinese. Any attempt by them (or any other developing nation) to improve their conditions and the multinationals, who have stitched up the world so nicely in their favour through trade agreements like the TPP, will up and move to yet another low wage nation. There is no shortage of poor nations in the world.
In Australia, bold steps have been made in the direction of destruction under the guise of neoliberalism. It began with the privatisation of our public assets, against the will of the people and again accompanied by neo-liberal myths. In Victoria – our beloved SEC (State Electricty Commission) was sold off to private bidders. We were promised the competition would give us lower prices. As anyone can tell you, that has turned out to be completely wrong.
Victoria’s electricity system is now used as an example as to why you should not privatise electricity. Nevertheless, political leaders in other states floating privatising power assets wrongly insist prices in Victoria have dropped since the privatisation? But who tells them that — a bunch of industry consultants who profit every time privatisation is considered?
But what about democracy? Just as people in Queensland showed in the recent state elections that they did not want their assets privatised, many in Victoria did not want the SEC privatised. The SEC gave jobs to our young people, taught them trades, invested in the community. Now public servants must work for corporate profits — to provide ‘rents’ to rich people.
Rich people who seem to be in a much better position today than in ancient aristocracies, as today they have managed to justify to everyone that they deserve their affluence. Today, kings are appointed by the market and the authority of markets is somehow seen as omniscient and beyond question. The primacy of markets seems to be an unquestionable assumption of neoliberalism.
Meanwhile, the poor workers in this neoliberal world are monitored and prodded and cajoled by "performance based measures". Measures that have nothing to do with their service to society and everything to do with the short-term profitability of the companies for which they work. Through such narrow measures and demands for profit, people are being deprived of the higher order motivations that may bring satisfaction to their lives
These neoliberal reforms are all sold on the promise of "lower prices". Take the Coles/Woolworth duopoly — recent evidence suggests they are gouging both their suppliers and their customers. This could, of course, be stopped. Large companies have been forcibly broken up before when they gained too much market power — Rockefeller’s Standard Oil is a classic example. It is almost impossible for individuals to have any impact on the big supermarkets given the position they are now in — this is a job for our leaders. So we must ask: who are our leaders serving?
Nine people have been diagnosed with Hep A after consuming berries from China #nannasfrozenberries #Today9 pic.twitter.com/eaxPfgGjjK — The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) February 16, 2015
Agreements like the TPP that allow global supply chains – where food, for instance, comes to Australia via New Zealand from China – appear to not only favour such large companies, but are promoted and pushed by such companies perhaps at the expense of local producers.
So what is going on with our elected leaders? Who supposedly pledge allegiance to their nations (although some won’t even do this) and then betray this pledge by preferring to promote and support what turns out to be myths propagated and promoted by mega merchants? Myths which are used to justify and promote policies and laws, like the TPP, that take us further down a path that seems to offer no means of return. By following this path, our leaders are allowing our industries to be destroyed through offshoring and our natural environments to be devastated, tying us to a globalised system that will last for generations. Trade agreements are not easily walked away from.
But it is not just the environment and industry that is affected. It also affects us and our families personally. Vast numbers of people are getting into massive debt and a result many families are under increasing financial stress. Justifiably so, as some then fall further into poverty.
Growing US #inequality in 90sec @LindaYueh explains why inequality has been on the rise in the land of opportunity http://t.co/uG1uoz2UQA — Cornell Inequality (@InequalityCU) February 13, 2015
How else have our leaders betrayed us? By not protecting us, and poor unfortunates in other countries, from the false promises of the "free traders".
Yes, free alright. Free to destroy our local industries without impediment — to ship work overseas. Free to allow other cheap workers to come here rather than training or employing local people. India and Africa provide us with a large number of new doctors. Here, we live in one of the supposedly wealthiest nations on earth and, instead of training our own doctors, we poach them from developing nations. This is but one part of a globalised economic system, whereby labour can be sourced from wherever, regardless of the effects.
Yet, under neoliberalism, this is all promoted as inevitable, an economic necessity.
Is it really an economic necessity to destroy the planet and reduce the wealth of 99 per cent of people to the benefit of the 1 per cent? Many Australians are not even guaranteed a bed and a meal at night — we can’t provide this for 100,000 Australians. Under neoliberalism – the battle of the richest – we can expect this number to rise sharply.
Are there those in power who are prepared to stand up against this?
We always hear talk about the power of the masses, the power of voters — the same voters that inevitably get beaten up and abused when they get too much support speaking out peacefully against these things.
Look at the Occupiers. Look at the laws brought in against protesters in Victoria. Look at the statue outside the Victorian state library (888). What about those in positions of influence and power? Why cannot they band together and demand something better?
It should not just be up to the masses to point out what a failure neo-liberalism is turning out to be. And we certainly should not be signing secret agreements like the TPP that only take us further down this path, especially when there is no return.
Important dates in relation to the TPP
(Courtesy of AFTINET)
FEBRUARY
Feb 27 - Senate Inquiry into Trade Process submissions close
MARCH
TPP Trade Ministers’ meeting March 14, possibly Australia
China FTA possibly signed and text tabled in Parliament. JSCOT Inquiry and possible Senate Inquiry (1-2 months)
MAY/JUNE
Formal signing of TPP text and tabling in Parliament for 20 sitting days. TPP JSCOT and Senate Inquiry
June 18 - Report of Senate Inquiry into Trade Agreement Process. China FTA JSCOT report and implementing legislation debated in Senate
JUNE/JULY
TPP Implementing legislation debated in Senate
Please contact your local MP to express your concern about this undemocratic trade deal, clearly designed to favour foreign multinationals for no benefit to ordinary Australians. Also, join GetUp!'s campaign against the TPP.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
Monthly Donation Frequency Monthly Annually Amount $ Single Donation Amount $ |
The EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has called on US President Donald Trump to stop applauding Brexit and become more supportive of the block. He threatened to hit back if Trump does not change his tune.
“Brexit isn’t the end. A lot of people would like it that way, even people on another continent where the newly elected US president was happy that Brexit was taking place and has asked other countries to do the same,” Juncker said on Thursday during a conference of the center-right European People’s Party in Malta.
“If he goes on like that I am going to promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas in the US,” he added.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the EU Commission boss called Trump's enthusiasm for Britain's departure from the EU "annoying" and "surprising."
Balkans to face new war if EU collapses: #Juncker warns US against anti-European stance https://t.co/17Begh4RDd — RT (@RT_com) March 24, 2017
During the election campaign, Trump has praised Britain as “smart” for opting out of the European Union. He welcomed the result of the June referendum, saying it was “a great thing” that the British voters “took back their country.” He added other countries could follow the lead and leave the block.
Trump also promised to draw up a trade deal with the UK “quickly” after Brexit.
They will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2016
When asked to comment on the UK’s triggering of Article 50, the White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the US president was a “leader in the effort to call Brexit.”
The US “respects the will of the British electorate,” Spicer added.
Last summer, Trump twitted “they will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT!” |
Tumblr only allows 10 pics per post, so here’s Part 1 (of 3, omg) of my pic spam of Akihabara, where I visited today on my trip to Japan!
I was lucky enough to get into the Love Live! Sunshine!! x Sega Collab café, since it was a cold January Monday today.
(1) The Club Sega building - home of games like SIFAC, and the aforementioned collab cafe. Shout-out to @kuuxkat for giving me the heads up that the café is on the 7th floor and isn’t accessible by the regular staircase. Luckily, there are signs inside the Sega building that point you towards where you need to go.
(2~8) Seiyuu signatures on the wall outside! Yoshiko’s is actually upside down haha, I wonder if Aikyan had lots of fun writing that one. I was especially amused by the drooling Maru. :3c I screamed a bit inside as I subtly touched Shukashuu’s and tried not to look like too much of a creeper 👀
The café has 90-minute slots for entering, starting at 10:30am (I arrived at 10:25 :P). Before you go in, the employee explains how the café works (my JP comprehension is complete shit, but I could sort of guess what she was saying so I managed to survive). The employee was super-duper cheerful and led us in doing the “From 0 to 1! Aqours Sunshine!” cheer (everyone gathered into a circle and stuck out a hand, then we made an L with that hand, changed it into a 1, and then raised our hands) right before we entered.
(9) The walls inside are covered in LLS official drawings - the wall I myself faced had screenshots from “MIRAI TICKET”. There are also two TVs, one on each opposite wall, that loop Aqours CMs.
(10) Here’s what the MIRAI TICKET wall looks like from up close! I sat in front of Ruby’s portion of the wall~
Continued in Part 2~ |
Two entries in this volume, “Psychological Operations” and “War Stories,” feel overly focused on how and why people tell stories (to communicate, connect, manipulate, mislead, etc.), threatening to tip over into self-consciousness and solipsism. But the lapidary construction of the other stories here creates a perfect container for — and counterpoint to — Mr. Klay’s raw, distressing subject matter: not just the physical horrors of war (death, mutilation, shattered bodies) but also the cruelty it can bring out, and its ability to overturn every deeply held assumption about the rational workings of the world.
It is these tales, which do not directly try to address the nature of storytelling, that make the reader most aware of the tools that memory and art can provide in trying to make sense of the chaotic experience of war.
Image Phil Klay Credit Hannah Dunphy
The stories in “Redeployment” are told in the first person, but from a variety of points of view, coming together to create a kind of choral portrait of the war. There’s a 19-year-old artilleryman, who had never killed anyone before (“Ten Kliks South”); a former Marine who has left the Corps to go to law school (“Unless It’s a Sucking Chest Wound”); a member of Mortuary Affairs, responsible for recovering the remains of the dead (“Bodies”); and a foreign service officer charged with leading a reconstruction team in Iraq (“Money as a Weapons System”). These very different stories attest to Mr. Klay’s ability to shift tone and mood with fluency, moving from ferocious realism to more meditative ruminations to “Catch-22”-like black humor.
“Money as a Weapons System” communicates the disastrous and absurd mismanagement involved in the American occupation of Iraq, reminding the reader of two revealing nonfiction books, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” and Thomas E. Ricks’s “Fiasco” (in which a colonel assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority memorably summarized his office’s work as “pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck”).
In Mr. Klay’s story, the narrator arrives in Iraq, a foreign service officer determined to get something substantial accomplished — like getting a much needed water treatment plant up and running. He is warned to think smaller, like a program to teach five Iraqi widows the art of beekeeping. “If you want to succeed, don’t do big, ambitious things,” a colleague says. “This is Iraq.”
Later the narrator must try to get a photo of Iraqi kids wearing donated baseball uniforms — because “the mattress king of northern Kansas,” an influential congressman’s key constituent, came up with the idea of baseball as the perfect way to promote Iraqi democracy.
In what is perhaps the most haunting story in this powerful collection, “Prayer in the Furnace,” a military chaplain reflects in a journal entry on what he’s learned from a Marine named Rodriguez, who came to him with a disturbing revelation about some of his compatriots. “I see mostly normal men,” the priest writes, “trying to do good, beaten down by horror, by their inability to quell their own rages, by their masculine posturing and their so-called hardness, their desire to be tougher, and therefore crueler, than their circumstance.
“And yet, I have this sense that this place is holier than back home. Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where we’re too lazy to see our own faults. At least here, Rodriguez has the decency to worry about hell.” |
If President Trump and his supporters want to know how his proposed tax cuts will play out, they should look at what’s happened in Kansas since 2012.
That year, Gov. Sam Brownback pushed through aggressive tax cuts very similar to what Trump wants Congress to do. The state increased the standard deduction and lowered taxes on corporations, individuals, and owner-operated businesses.
Like Trump, Brownback insisted that the cuts would unleash so much economic growth that the government would make up the lost revenue. The same economists, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, even helped draft Trump’s and Brownback’s plans. The cuts were supposed to give the economy “a shot of adrenaline,” as Brownback put it at the time.
Instead, the Kansas economy tanked. The state is in a fiscal mess, unable to properly fund its public schools. For two years in a row, the state’s credit rating has been downgraded because of its budget problems. Job creation and economic growth is far below the national average. The state is facing a budget shortfall of about $889 million in the next two years.
How did this happen? According to economists, one major factor was that Brownback’s plan eliminated taxes on owner-operated businesses, known as pass-throughs. Brownback promised this would kick-start economic growth by encouraging business owners to reinvest the extra money and expand their businesses.
Instead — according to new research from economists at the University of South Carolina, Indiana University, and the US Treasury Department — it led to massive tax avoidance.
Research shows these predictions were mostly wrong
The researchers analyzed federal tax returns for more than 1 million taxpayers in Kansas and four bordering states — Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Nebraska — in the two years before the tax reform went into effect in 2013, and two years after.
If Brownback’s theory had been right, the tax returns would have shown that business in Kansas was booming.
“The initial expectation was that lowering the tax rate would increase business activity,” says Jason DeBacker, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina and the lead author of the study. “You might see people earning more income or businesses expanding in employment or investment. But there was little or nothing of that going on.”
The analysis showed that while reported business income did go up, it was mostly from people who previously earned wages from an employer (in a W-2 tax form), and later reported earnings from the same employer as contract business income (in a 1099 tax form).
In other words, people were gaming a particular aspect of the new system. Owner-operated businesses are treated differently by the tax code than other businesses. Instead of the business paying corporate taxes on the profits, the owners pay individual income taxes on them. (Income you make as profit from a business you own is known as “pass-through income.”)
But Brownback got rid of the tax on pass-through income. So there was suddenly a big incentive for people to find a way to reclassify their income as business income. If you were an engineer working for a company, you’d pay individual income taxes on the money you made. But if you were a self-employed freelance engineer — a one-person business — who contracted with the company instead, you’d pay zero income taxes.
And that’s exactly what happened. Businesses did not expand and invest more as a result of the tax savings, the report says, though it was linked to a slight increase in wages. Instead, the research suggests it just led to widespread tax avoidance. People found ways to get paid for the same jobs they were already doing but paid much less in taxes.
The consequences were big. Economists believe tax avoidance was responsible for about 1.7 percent of the 8 percent drop in revenue for the state the year after the reform was enacted.
Kansas is struggling to balance its budget
Now moderate Republican lawmakers in Kansas are in open rebellion, scrambling to find ways to roll back the tax cuts as the state looks for how to balance its budget.
In recent years, lawmakers raised sales taxes and cigarette taxes to help balance the budget — a move that places a larger burden on low-income families. They also slightly reduced the tax deduction people can claim for mortgage interest and property tax payments. But even those moves weren’t enough to fill the state’s budget hole.
The budget crisis has collided with a long-running battle over public school funding. The state’s public schools are shouldering the burden of the state’s budget crisis, with $44.5 million cut from public education in 2015 alone.
The state was already tied up in a legal battle over school funding before Brownback took office. In March, the state Supreme Court ruled that funding for public schools was unconstitutionally low. The Court gave the state a June 30 deadline to find a new way to finance public education to close the achievement gap between white, affluent students and students who are ethnic minorities or poor.
Lawmakers are struggling to come up with the money, which has increased pressure to roll back some of Brownback’s tax cuts.
In February, Brownback vetoed a bill that would have raised income tax rates on individuals and would have ended the tax-free status of pass-through businesses. Lawmakers in Kansas are considering several different bills to increase tax revenues, including one that raises income taxes on individuals and businesses, which is expected to raise $1 billion over the next two years, according to the Kansas City Star. Still, lawmakers need to get enough support in the Senate to override the governor’s veto.
Brownback and Trump got advice from the same economists
Trump and Brownback don’t have the exact same vision of tax reform — Trump doesn’t want to cut all taxes on pass-through businesses. The impact on the federal government would be different, though, because lawmakers in Washington, DC, aren’t required to balance the federal budget: They can borrow more money and add to the deficit. However, Republicans have signaled that they plan to pass tax reform through the budget reconciliation process, which means the tax cuts can’t add the deficit after 10 years. This tool will allow Republicans to pass a bill with a slim majority (no Democrats needed).
Still, both plans have the same overall structure, because Trump and Brownback both got tax policy advice from the same two economists: Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore.
Laffer was an economic adviser for President Ronald Reagan and now runs an economic research and consulting firm in Tennessee. Moore is an economist at the Heritage Foundation.
For decades, these two supply-side economists have been pushing the notion that cutting taxes unleashes incredible economic growth. Both were the architects of the Kansas tax experiment, and both helped Trump craft the tax plan he touted during his campaign (which is nearly identical to the one he released last week).
Last month, they co-authored an editorial in the New York Times, urging Republicans to stop worrying about how much money the government will lose from cutting taxes.
President Trump and Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, should stop insisting on “revenue neutrality.” In the short term, the bill will add to the deficit. But President Trump’s tax bill, like those of Presidents Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy, should be a tax cut, and it should be sold to the American people as such.
Toward the end of their editorial, they added this: “If we are right that tax cuts will spur the economy, then the faster economic growth as a result of the bill will bring down the deficit.”
Mainstream economist do not share their idea that tax cuts will be so good for the economy that they will flood government coffers with more money. While some economic growth often happens as a result of cutting taxes, it’s not enough to make tax cuts pay for themselves, as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin suggests.
Last week, the editorial board at the Kansas City Star warned Trump not to repeat the same mistakes that Kansas did. It was strikingly different from the op-ed written by the economists who helped craft both plans: |
Over at the Emporium of Rogue Dreams, Mark Elster organised a summer competition to model and paint a Rogue Trader mutant, judged by Warhammer 40,000 supremo Andy Chambers himself. Seeing other people get their entries together (like axiom’s and asslessman’s) inspired me to make my own mutant. Presenting Steppenwolf, Mutant Outlander.
“I am a man wolf. I am a wolf man.”
In my trades and trawls I’d picked up a duplicate Inquisitor from the Adventurers range. One had his right arm with its chainsword/shotgun/railgun badly chopped away by the previous owner. I couldn’t save the arm at all, so removed it up to the shoulder.
The notorious Inquisitor Sixty Pence. He’s gonna party like it’s your birthday.
Then I went chop-happy and removed the head, saving the stetson for a future project. Wanting to keep the conversion components Rogue Trader 1980s I found a spare wolf from the original Leman Russ. At least, I think it was spare, I definitely have three and I hope it’s the duplicate I decapitated. I then added the tail peeping out the back of the trenchcoat. A wolf in a trenchcoat has a pleasing Shadowrun vibe.
“I have half a canine mind. I have half the mind of man.”
Mutation-wise, Steppenwolf has a “bestial face”, which the Rogue Trader rulebook describes as:
“The mutation changes the facial structure so that it resembles that of a beast. It is extremely common amongst mutated humans and has spawned the sub-race of Beastmen. Apart from leaving its victim in a state of sickening ugliness this mutation is neither harmful nor beneficial.”
Rogue Trader describes space pirates as particularly prone to mutation, so Steppenwolf will slot right into my Claw Nebula force. He will be a member of an Outlander squad, so I gave him a new arm with a bolt pistol to keep him compliant with the Book of the Astronomican army list.
Nebula Claw Pirates with the remnants of Squad Hawkwind.
Since I was listening to Hawkwind’s Steppenwolf while converting this figure, it seems only right to photograph him alongside the Imperial Army figures named after Hawkwind members in White Dwarf advertisements. Above you can see troopers Powell, Turner, Langton and Bainbridge. I hope to track down the other Hawkwind members to go full-on 1980s space rock.
Thanks to Steve at Eldritch Epistles for hooking me up with some more signature orange lichen recently.
Episode 9 will be brought to you you by sho3box. Here’s links to the previous episodes:
CYAO Episode 7 – Cinereal Jeannie, Inquisitional Psyker (axiom)
CYAO Episode 6 – Joan Grace, Null Maiden (sho3box)
CYOA Episode 5 – Nebuli Tsar, Ventolin Pirate (Curis)
CYAO Episode 4 – Short Jern Silvo, Ratling Cook (axiom)
CYAO Episode 3 – Garnier Wangst, Eldar Trader (sho3box)
CYOA Episode 2 – Paradox Zeeman, Pirate Captain (Curis)
CYOA Episode 1 – Obi-Wan Sherlock Clousseau, Inquisitor (axiom) |
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There's something very big here.If you look at the repercussions, this stats program does for police what the Leave No Child Behind program for schools does to teachers-- encourages them to shape the data. In this case, it may be putting us all at risk by fudging crime stats.
A new survey of over 100 retired NYPD captains and senior officers found that they believed that statistics were manipulated to portray lower crime rates for the compstat program that calculates crime rates..
The survey suggests that police have distorted crime reporting, dropping value of stolen goods so the theft is categorized as misdemeanor instead of felony. They drop categorization of crimes from felony to misdemeanor if suspects can't be found.
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One element of the compsat program is the theory that aggressive arrests for the smallest crimes, with a minimum of 24 hours spent in jail, lead to discouraging of repeat offenses.
Compsat, originally adopted by Rudy Giuliani's first police chief, William J. Bratton, is now in use by hundreds of police departments all over the US and the world, including LA, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Houston, Baltimore and Vancouver. Many former NYPD officers now operate as consultants to those cities, helping them run the compsat program.
The survey raises the question as to whether the use of this system literally encourages police and district attorneys to manipulate crime reporting.
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The NY Times, in an article title, Retired Officers Raise Questions on Crime Data, reported,
"
In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies -- felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat -- to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.
Others also said that precinct commanders or aides they dispatched sometimes went to crime scenes to persuade victims not to file complaints or to urge them to change their accounts in ways that could result in the downgrading of offenses to lesser crimes, the researchers said.
"Those people in the CompStat era felt enormous pressure to downgrade index crime, which determines the crime rate, and at the same time they felt less pressure to maintain the integrity of the crime statistics," said John A. Eterno, one of the researchers and a retired New York City police captain."
And an article in the NY Post, titled, NYPD stats were captain cooked reports:
But a growing chorus of complaints -- including those from Post interviews with dozens of officers and a new survey of retired captains -- allege that the pressure of CompStat leads precinct bosses to downgrade major crimes to minor offenses.
The evidence includes:
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* A new survey of 491 retired captains that found that respondents who worked in the CompStat era felt greater pressure from management to doctor major crimes. * The NYPD Staten Island Evidence Collection Team's fingerprinting of burglary scenes but not entering its findings if cops did not issue the victims a police report. The burglaries would then not appear on CompStat. * Sergeants' different attitude during roll call once CompStat began. Before, they would instruct officers to report all crimes. When CompStat came aboard, that speech disappeared. * Officers who purposely made it difficult for victims to file complaints. Cops responding to burglaries would ask for serial numbers and receipts for lost items and not file their reports until those had been produced.
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Last week Barnes & Noble lobbied United States regulators to investigate Microsoft, on the basis that its lawsuits and licensing agreements with Android OEMs constituted monopolistic behavior. The first fruit of this effort is a detailed look at the patents that Microsoft has been using to pressure manufacturers into licensing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Barnes & Noble seems determined to keep from paying Microsoft for its Nook line of e-readers and tablets.
Barnes & Noble contends that the patents are frivolous and trivial, most of them containing considerable prior art that existed long before the patents were awarded. There’s nothing to say that the six patents outlined in the case against Barnes & Noble are the same ones that have been used on the likes of Samsung and HTC, but it’s a fair bet that some or all of them are the crux of Microsoft’s arguments across the Android spectrum. In a letter to the Department of Justice, B&N said that the patents “cover only arbitrary, outmoded and non-essential design features,” but that Microsoft is charging extremely high licensing fees, essentially bumping up the price of “free” Android and giving Microsoft the power to stop individual features from being implemented.
Here’s all the patents Microsoft is using, and Barnes & Noble’s rebuttal:
I. ‘372 Patent (Web Browser Background Image Loading) The ‘372 patent was filed April 18, 1996. Very generally, the patent relates to an outmoded system for retrieving an electronic document like a webpage that includes an embedded background image, which may have a bearing on very old web browsers connected to the Internet via slow, dial-up connections, but has little application in the context of improved, modern Internet connections…. II. ‘522 Patent (Operating System Provided Tabs) The ‘522 patents was filed December 13, 1994. The patent relates to a single, simple tool provided by an operating system (such as Windows) that allows applications running on that operating system to have a common look and feel. Since operating systems provide many such tools, the patent amounts to nothing more than a trivial design choice. In particular, and despite the fact that this concept is in the prior art, the ‘522 patent’s method allows for the creation of tabs. The tabs are analogous to dividers like those found in a notebook or to labels found in a file cabinet, and allow the user of an application to navigate between multiple pages of information in the same window by clicking on the tabs…. III. ‘551 Patent (Electronic Selection with “Handles”) On its face, the ‘551 patent purports to claim priority back to a November 10, 2000 filing date. Generally, the ‘551 patent relates to another simple and trivial feature that is not only disclosed by numerous prior art references, but is certainly not central to an operating system like Android — selecting or highlighting text or graphics within an electronic document. The patent provides that a user selects a word or phrase, for example, by tapping on a touch screen display or clicking with a mouse. Such a selection may be shown by highlighting the selected word or phrase. The user is presented with “selection handles” on one or both ends of the selected areas. These “selection handles” can be moved by the user to highlight more or less text or graphics…. IV. ‘233 Patent (Annotation of Electronic Documents) The ‘233 patent was filed December 7, 1999. Like the other Microsoft patents, the ‘233 patent relates only to one small feature that has long been present in the prior art and is not central to Android or any other operating system. More specifically, the patent generally relates to a method for capturing annotations made in an electronic document (like an electronic book), without changing the electronic document itself…. V. ‘780 Patent (Web Browser Loading Status Icons) The ‘780 patent was not filed until May 6, 1997, long after the first web browser came to market. In addition to being late to the game, the patent is directed to a very simple and obvious feature — a temporary graphic element or status icon that is displayed to indicate that a hypermedia browser (such as a web browser) is loading content. When a browser is intended for use with a portable computer system with a limited display size, the ‘780 patent notes that it is desirable to maximize the browser’s content display area (the portion of the browser that actually displays a website, not the menus, toolbars, or buttons). Thus, the patent makes a trivial design choice and provides that the graphic element or loading status icon is to be temporarily displayed in the content display area of the browser as opposed to a separate space such as the browser’s menu bar, tool bar, or a separate status bar….
Barnes & Noble also outlined several other patents and points. For a full look at all the legalese (which is far beyond the analytical powers of this humble Android blogger) check out Groklaw’s post on the subject.
Barnes & Noble seems completely committed to breaking the cycle of Microsoft’s patent trolling legal action and licensing. I’d wager that Google couldn’t be happier, since none of the various companies going after Android OEMs have directly threatened the parent company with legal action. If Barnes & Noble succeeds in fighting off Microsoft’s suit and securing and investigation, it might (and this is a long shot here) means that the licensing deals already in place elsewhere are renegotiated or dropped. |
LONDON — Exhibition chain Curzon Cinemas is to give a theatrical release in the U.K. to Netflix’s first original movie, “Beasts of No Nation,” which is written and directed by Cary Fukunaga and stars Idris Elba.
The movie will open across the U.K. on Oct. 9, following its U.K. premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Oct. 8. Netflix debuts the movie in all territories where the streaming service is available on Oct. 16.
“Beasts of No Nation” screened to critical acclaim at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals in September. Newcomer Abraham Attah, who stars as Agu in the film, was awarded the Marcello Mastroianni Young Actor Award at Venice for his lead role in the film.
The movie is based on the novel by Nigerian author Uzodinma Iweala, bringing to life the gripping tale of Agu, a child soldier torn from his family to fight in the civil war of an African country. Elba dominates the screen in the role of Commandant, a warlord who takes in Agu and instructs him in the ways of war.
The film is produced by Amy Kaufman and Fukunaga, Daniela Taplin Lundberg, Riva Marker and Dan Crown for Red Crown Productions, along with Elba. |
Juan Zúñiga's challenge on Neymar in the World Cup quarter-finals shouldn't prove too costly to Barcelona, at least not financially speaking.
Compensation payments from FIFA's Club Protection Programme - which indemnifies clubs whose players sustain major injuries on international duty - will kick in from 2nd August, i.e. the forward's 29th day on the sidelines.
This compensation scheme is based on a player's fixed salary - in Neymar's case, €5.1 million a year (though he earns up to this amount again in add-ons and bonuses) - meaning FIFA will reimburse Barça to the tune of €13,972 a day.
Brazil team doctor José Luiz Runco has forecast that the fracture in the forward's third lumbar vertebra will keep the starlet in the treatment room for 45 days at the most and should in no way hinder him from resuming his career as normal once he regains fitness.
If this timescale proves accurate and Neymar returns to action after 45 days, Barça will pocket just shy of €238,000 in compensation from FIFA. These payments will be automatically terminated as soon as the 22-year-old receives the medical all-clear.
The Camp Nou higher-ups are staying in constant contact with the Brazilian national team's doctors in order to keep tabs on Neymar's fitness until he returns to the Catalan capital. |
Waiters at major restaurant chains say they are being forced to “pay to work” on some shifts because of a tipping policy that means they have to hand over cash to their bosses at the end of the night.
Las Iguanas, a chain serving Latin American food at 41 branches in the UK, and the Caribbean chain Turtle Bay, which has 19 restaurants, operate a policy that requires staff to pay back to their employer 3% of the table sales they generate on each shift. That figure rises to 5.5% in Las Iguanas’s London restaurants.
If a waiter sells £1,000 of food and drinks in an evening, they have to pay £30 back to the restaurant in cash at the end of the night. At Las Iguanas’s London restaurants, the payback would total £55. The money is meant to be paid by waiters from their pot of tips but, because it bears no relation to how much a waiter actually takes in tips, it can wipe out his or her entire income from gratuities in a busy night.
“This policy is far worse than that of Pizza Express,” said Perry Phillips, London regional officer at the GMB union, which is pursuing a complaint about Turtle Bay on behalf of some of its members. “The fact that these restaurants are taking money off the waiting staff regardless of the tips they earn is unjust, unfair and downright disgraceful.”
The policy appears to be a moneyspinner for the chains. The Observer has obtained figures that indicate that in one week this year Las Iguanas took £34,000 from its servers across all its branches from the sales charge. If this represents a typical week, over a year it would amount to £1.8m. The chain said it could not comment on the figures.
The companies justify the policy by saying that it allows them to share tips with non-waiting staff through staff development and reward schemes.
According to a Turtle Bay employment contract seen by the Observer, where tips don’t cover the 3% payment, staff “will be required to make up the benefit of any shortfall in the next or subsequent shift, or in the event of leaving the company by a deduction from wages due, such that the deduction does not reduce your effective rate of pay below the minimum wage”.
However, one Turtle Bay waiter claimed there were occasions when she hadn’t made enough tips to cover the charge and had been asked for the money anyway. “The other night I had a lot of tables that didn’t tip me and one that spent close to £150 but gave me a £2 tip,” she said. “The tips didn’t cover 3% of the sales I’d made, and by the end of the night I had to get £20 out of my pocket and give it to my manager.”
Turtle Bay did not comment on the allegation. In a statement about its tipping policy it said: “The 3% is a calculation on a server’s total sales, and in the vast majority of cases customers will leave in excess of 10-15% of their bill as tips. In addition, a 10% service charge is added to all tables of five or more, which the server also keeps. We are not aware of any occasion where a floor server has not earned any tips.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Turtle Bay operates a policy that requires staff to pay back to their employer 3% of the table sales. Photograph: Alamy
One waiter who works for Las Iguanas says she pays back an average £25 to £30 a shift because of the 3% policy. “Over five shifts in a week is a substantial loss of my tips,” she says. “Sometimes it works out as if I am paying to work, as for a five-hour shift I am paid £32.50 before tax.”
Waiters are paid the minimum wage of £6.50 an hour, which is due to rise to £6.70 in October. A general manager at one of Las Iguanas’s branches spoke to the Observer on condition of anonymity. He is charged with the job of calculating the amounts that servers owe at the end of the night and then asking them for the money. “I am lucky as the company pay the general managers well, but morally I find it totally wrong to take money off the waiting staff,” he said. “One night recently I felt terrible because a staff member had made £125 in tips and I had to ask her for £65 back.”
He added: “Most of these waiters are just kids. The way the policy is sold to them is that the money is for recognition and development, but that is no way to take care of your staff.”
Las Iguanas, whose founder, Ajith Jaya-Wickrema, was also one of the founders of Turtle Bay, has just been bought by the Casual Dining Group, the chain that owns Bella Italia, Café Rouge and Belgo. The tipping policy across the Casual Dining Group chains is to take 10% of tips paid on cards as an admin fee. The group said no changes had been made to Las Iguanas since it was purchased last month.
Las Iguanas said that although it did charge 3% of sales, it only took this where the tip pot would cover it and that staff never had to pay back money from their wages. “Our tipping policy has been well-established for around 20 years and, among other things, enables us to ensure that tips generously given by our guests are shared throughout the whole team so everyone feels rewarded,” said a spokesman. “Over many years we have always made our staff very aware of how we distribute and share tips and we believe the vast majority like and accept the approach we take because of the wider benefits they receive.”
It has also emerged that another restaurant chain in London, Gaucho, which serves steak dishes that cost up to £99, takes 16% of staff tips and puts part of this towards “staff incentives and competitions”. It also takes a further 2.3% each month from sales generated by each waiter, which is shared among non-waiting staff.
A Gaucho employee told the Observer that in one month they earned close to £500 in tips but, because of a combination of the two deductions, more than £400 of that was retained by the company. “I am all for sharing with other staff. However, with this new system we are literally coming away with none of our card tips,” she said. “This is very unfair as we work very, very hard and we have a very high level of wine knowledge and expertise. Aside from not being justly paid for our knowledge, we have rent to pay and mortgages.”
Gaucho said: “The earnings of waiters in Gaucho are well above the industry standard, and waiters in Gaucho share their tips and service with hourly paid kitchen, reception and bar staff on the basis of their seniority and length of service.”
Last week a further tipping scandal came to light when the London Evening Standard reported that a French restaurant chain, Côte, retains the entire 12.5% service charge that it adds to customers’ bills rather than giving it to their staff .
Restaurants’ tipping policies have always been controversial but appear to have become worse since Labour was ousted from power. The Labour government put in place a voluntary code of practice for restaurants that was meant to tackle some of the worst tipping policies. However, that has since “died a death”, says Dave Turnbull, officer for the food and drink sector at trade union Unite.
“The coalition came in and did not review the code of practice to see that it was being followed,” he says. “That has effectively opened the doors for restuarants to go back and find new ways to extract money from their staff.” |
What do the numbers say about the Manning vs. Brady battle?
Just like the media tells us, quarterbacks - not teams - win football games. Right?
Tom Brady's won 10 of 14 contests against Peyton Manning, including last night's thriller in Foxboro. Tom Brady's won three Super Bowls, while Manning's only lifted the Lombardi once. Tom Brady's won a higher percentage of his games than Peyton Manning has. And, perhaps most importantly, Tom Brady doesn't have a fivehead.
Brady's clearly the better passer. Right?
Not so fast. While win-loss records can tell part of a quarterback's success story, advanced metrics can tell us just as much. And when it comes to Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, rings and victories may not mean everything.
Manning vs. Brady: The Numbers
Perhaps you're new to the site and unaware, but here at numberFire, we look at a metric called Net Expected Points (NEP). Unlike traditional statistics, NEP looks at game situations and down-and-distances to provide context around numbers. You can read more about the metric in our glossary.
Passing NEP, in essence, looks at how many points a player is adding to his team's bottom line through the air. We'd expect two studs like Manning and Brady to have high Passing NEP scores, while someone like Mark Sanchez would score below zero, making him a detriment to his offense (no surprise there).
Since 2001 - Tom Brady's first year as starter - Brady and Manning have put together some of the most prolific seasons we've ever seen under the metric. Thanks to the boss man, Nik Bonaddio, the results, listed by Passing NEP, are below.
Player Year Passes PNEP PNEP/P Tom Brady 2007 599 259.40 0.43 Peyton Manning 2004 510 231.10 0.45 Tom Brady 2011 643 213.43 0.33 Peyton Manning 2006 571 191.77 0.34 Peyton Manning 2009 581 188.80 0.32 Peyton Manning 2005 470 187.33 0.40 Tom Brady 2012 665 186.79 0.28 Peyton Manning 2013 422 182.81 0.43 Peyton Manning 2012 604 164.88 0.27 Peyton Manning 2007 535 160.11 0.30 Tom Brady 2010 517 152.66 0.30 Peyton Manning 2008 569 148.93 0.26 Peyton Manning 2003 584 139.85 0.24 Peyton Manning 2010 696 138.36 0.20 Tom Brady 2009 581 137.16 0.24 Peyton Manning 2000 591 134.80 0.23 Tom Brady 2005 556 100.73 0.18 Tom Brady 2004 500 100.60 0.20 Peyton Manning 2002 613 69.12 0.11 Tom Brady 2006 542 59.34 0.11 Tom Brady 2013 407 30.96 0.08 Tom Brady 2003 558 29.17 0.05 Tom Brady 2001 454 19.43 0.04 Tom Brady 2002 631 13.80 0.02 Peyton Manning 2001 576 10.77 0.02 Tom Brady 2008 11 -6.96 -0.63
In all, Manning owns four of the top-six Passing NEP seasons between the two, and seven of the top 10. And he's been more consistent. Since 2003, Manning hasn't finished a single season with a Passing NEP of less than 138.36, while Tommy Boy has seen six seasons under this mark during that time span (excluding his 2008 torn ACL season). To put this in context, a score that high typically places a quarterback in the top five among all NFL passers in a given year.
Though Manning takes the cake (pretty clearly, too) in terms of passing efficiency, it wouldn't be fair to not mention Tom Brady's historic 2007 campaign. His 50-touchdown season with Randy Moss still ranks as the best one our numbers have seen, and although he may not be as reliable as Manning year to year, there've certainly been times where Brady was the better passer.
Manning vs. Brady: The Defenses
Offenses are mostly dictated by quarterback success, and as shown above, Manning has been the more effective quarterback. But again, he doesn't have the winning resume that Tom Brady does.
As I sarcastically pointed out in the intro, the masses want us to believe that quarterbacks win and lose games, not teams. The Ravens didn't win the Super Bowl last year - Joe Flacco did. Though it's the most important position in football, no doubt, we always have to recognize and remember that football is the ultimate team game, and other aspects of a pigskin squad can change a team's overall dynamic. Like the defense.
That's where Brady's benefited most over the course of his career compared to Peyton. Since becoming the starter in New England, Brady's been on teams that have averaged an Adjusted Defensive NEP total of -19.43. Need some context? That average would have placed the Patriots in eighth last year in total defense. And keep in mind, the "adjusted" part of that metric tells us that strength of schedule has been factored into the output.
No defense was better than New England's 2003 version, one that posted an Adj. DNEP score of -153.85. That certainly helps the average, but even so, the majority of Tom Brady's defenses throughout his career have been above average units.
You can't say the same about Peyton Manning. Number 18's defenses could've starred in The Replacements, averaging a 22.01 score across his career. Performing well below average, Manning played with just two defenses that executed above expectation during his time in Indianapolis.
The difference in defensive play has been sizable throughout these two quarterback's careers. If we take these defensive averages, Brady's teams were seeing a 41.44-point advantage across an entire season compared to the Colts, which comes down to nearly a field goal advantage per game. In an NFL where games are won and lost at the last second each weekend, that's pretty significant.
Manning vs. Brady: The Verdict
numberFire CEO and Founder, Nik, made a great comparison that only Canadians may understand. Peyton Manning is the Wayne Gretzky of football, while Tom Brady is the Mario Lemieux. Gretzky was healthier than Mario throughout his career, and certainly put up better numbers, forcing many to call him better. But to plenty of hockey experts, Lemieux was more talented. Lemieux had seasons of absolute greatness, making unskilled players skillful.
That's why this argument will never be won. You're not talking about Christian Ponder vs. Mark Sanchez. You're looking at two quarterbacks with historic pedigrees that are nearly perfect.
It comes down to what you, individually as a football fan, want to put more emphasis on. Is winning with a better supporting cast the most important factor in determining who the better player is? Is it the rings? The Lombardi lifts?
Or is it the player who has done so much with so little defensively, breaking statistical barriers en route to a winning, though not as much winning, career?
As a quarterback, Peyton Manning is better. But as a winner, that may not be the case. |
A large group of friends and supporters got a sneak preview of what National Hockey League officials will see later this weekend.
Kelowna film maker Adam Scorgie premiered a six minute demo video to a packed house at the Paramount Theatre Friday night.
The proposed documentary, 'Ice Guardians' focuses on the life of a hockey enforcer -- a fighter.
The fast paced demo reel featured comments from players past and present including Dave Semenko, Nick Fotiu, Clark Gillies and former Kelowna Rocket Mitch Fritz.
Scorgie will unveil the demo to the National Hockey League Saturday during Heritage Classic weekend in Calgary in hopes the league will give him its blessing to go forward.
"Every time I have met with them before they don't get the concept of what I am trying to do," says Scorgie.
"I'm not trying to glorify fighting and Im not trying to put a negative spin on it. Im just trying to humanize the guys who do this role and give them justice for what they have done for this sport."
Scorgie, who produced the critically acclaimed 'The Union: The Business Behind Getting High,' doesn't think the NHL can say no to his concept.
"It's that good."
While 'The Union' did not glorify the marijuana industry, Scorgie says 'Ice Guardians' will not put professional hockey fighters on a pedestal.
"We are focusing on what it was like to go through that. If you think that it is pugilistic and it's savage, what was it like to be the guy that had to do that to pay his bills. Find out what it's like from him," says Scorgie.
"I want to follow these guys through a season and see what it's like day in and day out, the stress, the pressures. Kind of do what they did with the 24/7 series which was a huge success on HBO."
He says if the NHL does give the project the green light, he'll begin filming in the fall.
"We would literally jump into production during pre-season this year, we'd shoot all next year and probably push to have the editing done for the Toronto Film Festival next year."
The Toronto Film Festival takes place in September. |
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Yazoo City, MS — A cop in Yazoo, Mississippi, has an apparent affinity with livestreaming his dereliction of duty to Facebook. Clearly having no forethought about any chance of being caught in his unprofessional — and illegal — acts, this cop appears to love the attention he gets from bragging about his dirty police work to his Facebook fans.
The disturbing video of the two officers starts out with them bragging about killing a dog. The officer who is doing the livestreaming, Officer Facebook Live, is apparently so hungry for likes and shares that he could not care less about bragging to the public about him and his partner’s puppycide.
“Man, we shot the shit outta somebody’s dog,” Officer Facebook Live callously says as he turns the camera to his partner for confirmation.
“Yeah, that’s right,” says his partner in uniform.
“It ran to him, ruff ruff ruff, pow pow pow pow pow, like damn…..’Shots fired! Shots fired!'” the cop brags.
So caught up in the moment bragging about their puppycide, the uniformed officer continues talking about it even after his buddy moves to another subject.
“Pop, pop, pop, pop! I shot him four damn times and that sucker was like,” he then made sounds to mimic the dying dog as they both laughed.
Apparently, his viewers were so upset at the notion of laughing at dog killings that they began telling him to talk about geese. Pandering to his audience, he did. However, that was short-lived.
After a few minutes of nearly incomprehensible jabbering over geese, the cops then began to brag about their tactical gear which they say is for “ass whoopins.'”
“See that right there? My boy got a whole shelf in there. Thems right there, them are some ass whoopin gloves. Knuckles on the gloves!” the derelict cop brags.
Apparently becoming bored about just talking about beating people up, the pair decides that it is now time to begin pulling random people over. And, just like that, they decide to seek out an unwitting motorist and target them for revenue collection.
After a brief spat of dancing and rapping, the cop filming says to his partner, “Hey yo, let’s go pull somebody over. I wanna pull somebody over.”
So, the two ‘model police officers’ get in the car to find their next victim.
In what seems to be a reference to a hot spot, the cop agrees with his partner about going to a certain area, and notes, “oh, you’ll fuck em up over there.”
The duo then pulls over a car and film themselves in some selfie version of Cops.
The attention starved cop then begs his viewers for more hearts and tells them if they stop liking his video, he will turn it off. Shortly after, the video ends.
One would think that after publicly broadcasting video of yourself in such an unprofessional manner, you may be more reluctant about doing it a second time. For most people, that may be true — but not for officer Facebook live.
In his next video, however, this Yazoo police officer would film himself breaking the law.
In 2015, the Mississippi Legislature passed House Bill 389, banning texting and posting to social media while driving. Not only was officer Facebook Live breaking the law and filming himself doing it — he was on duty and in his patrol car.
What these videos illustrate is a glaring ‘above the law’ attitude of many police officers. The officer, who is ostensibly tasked with upholding the law, is so detached from reality that streaming himself breaking the law didn’t even cross his mind as a bad idea.
The Free Thought Project has sent these videos to the Yazoo City police department, but we’ve yet to receive a reply.
Here is their Facebook page too, if you would like to peacefully let them know how you feel. |
Unions have made no bones about their upcoming involvement in the midterm elections of 2010.
In short, unions are scared to death that they will lose their grip on their control of the House and the Senate unless they spend tens of millions of dollars and force their members to campaign for Democratic incumbents.
Unions have been able to run the table when it comes to getting what they want from the White House, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
This is what President Obama recently said to a gathering of big labor, "I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem," he adds. "To me, and to my administration, labor unions are a big part of the solution."
The president and the leadership of the Democratic Party has heaped great praise on unions for helping pass the over 700 billion dollar stimulus bill, the auto industry bailouts and most recently health care. Democrats believe that they could not have "accomplished" these efforts without the help of unions.
Now unions are fearful that their "gravy train' could be derailed by the midterms and they are gearing up to influence elections nationwide in a way that may eclipse the efforts of individual candidates or even the Democratic National Committee.
Unions have made no secret that they plan to spend $100 million dollars to keep Democratic incumbents in office in 2010. In addition, they plan to use hundreds of thousands of man-hours with their members "campaigning " and "organizing" in key election districts all across America.
Here is what the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) said with regard to the midterm elections, "We have got to protect the incumbency in the House. We have got to protect the incumbency in the Senate...It is going to be hard. Those tea-baggers are out there. There is an anti-incumbency mood out there." As far as I'm concerned, this sounds more like a statement from a party chairman than a union president.
Here is what communications director Steve Smith of the California labor Federation said with regard to their upcoming election efforts, "We are going to devote more resources to the 2010 campaign than we have ever done in any prior campaign."
Unions have been emboldened to act as a shadow political party. They have used the law to act brazenly and shadowy when it comes to their support of candidates. Unions today can coordinate with the DNC and candidates to strategize and place resources without restrictions.
The Federal Election Commission promised new rules in light of the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizen's United Case to insure candidates and parties do not lose control over campaign messaging and spending.
The fear is that in the aftermath of Citizen's United, unions would not only be permitted to spend without limits but they will also no longer have time restriction on when monies can be spent and restriction on direct coordination with campaigns and parties.
Without new rules set by the FEC, unions and corporations will be able to spend freely without disclosure to the FEC, shareholders or the SEC. In addition, without new rules corporations and unions who greatly benefited directly from legislation would be able to "reward" their friends and punish their enemies without disclosure.
Unless new rules are put in place to govern union and corporate coordination and disclosure, political parties will be eclipsed by non-political entities that are selfishly motivated.
The American people should demand that the FEC act now before the 2010-midterm elections.
The people not powerful unions and corporations should decide elections.
Bradley A. Blakeman served as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-04. He is currently a professor of Politics and Public Policy at Georgetown University and a frequent contributor to the Fox Forum.
Fox Forum is on Twitter. Follow us @fxnopinion. |
Associate Minister of local government Louise Upston has pulled the pin on online voting at this year's local body elections.
Wellington's deputy mayor says the government's axing of a proposed online voting trial for local body elections is a "lost opportunity".
Justin Lester said Wellington City Council had put a lot of work into the proposal and the outcome was "disappointing".
The proposed trial for local body elections later this year has been canned amid "real concerns about security and vote integrity".
Associate Minister of local government Louise Upston said more work needed to happen to "ensure a trial meets public and government expectations".
READ MORE:
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"Due to timing restrictions, preparations for the proposed trial have not yet met the legislative requirements and cannot guarantee public confidence in the election results.
"Security testing has been planned but has not yet occurred. Without seeing the results of testing we cannot be confident the systems are secure enough, and the trial could not be authorised," she said.
Some councils and service providers have already done work ahead of the proposed trial and Upston said she understood their "disappointment that the trials cannot go ahead this year as originally hoped".
"Voting is a fundamental right of New Zealand citizens and public trust in electoral systems and results is paramount. Maintaining public confidence and understanding of local electoral processes is more important than trialling online voting this year."
But Lester said getting the trial over the line would got a long way to "increasing voter turnout" at elections in October.
While he could appreciate the system needed to be "hack-proof", Lester said it was vital the government continued efforts to make online voting available at both local and national level as soon as possible.
Labour backed up Lester's concerns saying it was a "kick in the guts" for councils who had done the ground work for the trial.
"This is a lost opportunity to address declining voter participation and the councils involved in the trial felt they had done everything possible to meet the requirements for it to go ahead," Labour's local government spokeswoman Meka Whaitiri said.
"Make no mistake, if National were genuinely motivated to get this trial off the ground, it would have gone ahead."
But there was still lots for the government to learn about online voting and Upston said issues with it overseas prompted the brakes going on the proposal.
"There are significant timeframe pressures in preparing for a trial in this year's local elections and these issues and pressures exacerbate the risks inherent in a trial."
The government was open to looking at proposals in the future "as part of a programme of gradual steps towards online voting in local elections," she said.
Eight councils had expressed interest in the trial this year, which were Selwyn, Wellington, Porirua, Masterton, Rotorua, Matamata-Piako, Palmerston North and Whanganui. |
Some of our reader might remember the tiny Polaroid Cube camera that was first unveiled at CES at the beginning of this year.
Well if you have been patiently waiting for the Polaroid Cube camera to be made available through retail you will be pleased to know that it is now available to preorder for $100 with shipping commencing next month.
The Polaroid Cube measures just 2 inches square and is capable of capturing 1080p HD video and is equipped with a 124 degree wide angle lens for more dynamic action shots.
The cameras electronics are encased in a durable, rubber, shockproof and water-resistant exterior and ebbed magnets allow you to easily mount the camera to any metal surface when required.
“The Cube, from the fine folks at Polaroid, is the newest and brightest way to shoot videos and snap pics no matter where your adventures take you.
Stick the tiny (less than 2 inches!) Cube in your pocket, and use the built-in magnet to mount it quickly to any metal surface. Record high quality 1080p HD Video. You can even snap photos while it’s video-ing.
Capture the moment in wide-angle as you cover your morning pancakes with whipped cream and sprinkles or bring it to the park to make super-actiony videos of puppies, frisbee enthusiasts and those who are both.”
The Polaroid Cube Camera is now available to pre-order over at the Photojojo website for $100 and shipping will commence next month.
Source: Photojojo
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Update: Check out our FAQ at goo.gl/7425U for all your Ravaged questions! We're also building a WIKI at ravaged.wikia.com
Let's bring back the fun!
As video game developers we often get pulled into the land of publishers. While its good to have someone backing your game, it also tends to focus games towards trends, numbers and executive goals. This has sucked the life out of most games and killed off many good studios.
Well here is your chance to be part of a game where the fun is the focus. To do this, we are going to need your help to put the finishing touches on the game, join our beta and help us get the word out.
The Kickstarter funding will be used to
Finalize marketing and publishing material for Steam
Finish production of the game trailer
Set up beta testing equipment
Develop more vehicles and weapons
Add finishing touches to gameplay and levels
The game is called Ravaged, a post-apocalyptic vehicular first-person shooter. Think Mad Max meets Battlefield where a group of resistance soldiers fight for humanity while scavengers look to control it all.
The game features over 30 vehicles and weapons, amazing post-apocalyptic maps and 10 classes to choose from.
Check out our Development Diary videos to see some of our vehicles in action!
Why is this different from other first person shooters?
Focus on Fun
Vehicles are fun to drive
Crazy melee combat
Fast-paced mayhem
Cool characters
Great new game modes
Skill is Needed
Vehicles and weapons require skill to use, noobs beware!
Teamwork is Essential
Tactics required! If you go it alone, your team won’t win. Many levels feature Capture the Resources game modes which requires teamwork and planning.
Amazing Levels
Level have great depth, amazing places to climb and hide
What if scenarios: snowed in cities, dried-up oceans and more
Battles range in players from 16 (8v8) to 64 (32v32)
Focus on Community
We care about your ideas and feedback and at every step of testing will be asking for your thoughts and working to make this the fun game you want to play!
We solemnly pledge 5% of the profits from the finished product back to the Kickstarter community to help fund other people's dreams.
http://kickingitforward.org
About the Team
Established in 2009, 2 Dawn Games is a team of AAA game and indie developers dead set on bringing the fun back to games. Our team is made up of passionate gamers who have worked on games such as Desert Combat, DCON, the Battlefield series and more. We want this game to be fun and without the restrictions of a publisher, we can support the community the way we want to. |
A Houston-area sheriff's deputy has fatally shot an armed man after seeing gunfire exchanged between two moving vehicles.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office says the deputy was not hurt but a driver was wounded by the suspect in the incident early Saturday.
Authorities say the deputy was on patrol when he observed a shooting involving two vehicles. The deputy pursued one vehicle, which crashed in a field.
Lieutenant Joe Ambriz says an armed driver got out of the vehicle, refused to drop his weapon and the officer opened fire. The suspect died at the scene.
Investigators believe the suspect earlier shot the other driver, who was transported to a hospital for treatment of unspecified injuries. Further details weren't immediately available.
The name of the man who died wasn't immediately released. |
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*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Of course, not all are dancing in Alberta's streets: oil men, investors, some media pundits, and suddenly retired politicians. They didn't believe the polls saying the Tory dynasty would end; that their once-solid world would melt away, and be wrapped in a mournful dirge.
An Iranian friend says he remembers a similar feeling. It was 1979. He heard the shah had fled the country, but at first did not believe it. Then he noticed one of his older professors uncharacteristically dancing in the street, and he believed.
The feeling is strange. I like it, but the reality has not sunk in yet. I'm not sure how to describe it. I search in vain for a comparison. I wonder, is this how East Berliners felt when the wall came down in 1989?
It's hard to describe, but every day since May 5, I've awakened with the sense of a large weight lifted. I am not alone. Many of us in Alberta feel lighter since the New Democrats' electoral victory.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/5/2015 (1385 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/5/2015 (1385 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
It's hard to describe, but every day since May 5, I've awakened with the sense of a large weight lifted. I am not alone. Many of us in Alberta feel lighter since the New Democrats' electoral victory.
The feeling is strange. I like it, but the reality has not sunk in yet. I'm not sure how to describe it. I search in vain for a comparison. I wonder, is this how East Berliners felt when the wall came down in 1989?
An Iranian friend says he remembers a similar feeling. It was 1979. He heard the shah had fled the country, but at first did not believe it. Then he noticed one of his older professors uncharacteristically dancing in the street, and he believed.
Of course, not all are dancing in Alberta's streets: oil men, investors, some media pundits, and suddenly retired politicians. They didn't believe the polls saying the Tory dynasty would end; that their once-solid world would melt away, and be wrapped in a mournful dirge.
But for the rest of us — and this includes even some lapsed Tories — euphoria reigns. A warm, fresh light has broken through.
How to describe it? The thing is, living in Alberta these last few decades has not been horrible. Money has flowed — to some. The air has been breathable — most of the time. There have been no tanks in the street. Life has been pretty good.
But it has also been oppressive and stifling; even dismissive, as in, only corporate lawyers and CEOs — the "job creators" — matter.
And, more than anything, gnawing fear: fear that the schools will close; that the health-care system will fail; that the roads will go unpaved; that scores of workers will be laid off, and peoples' homes seized.
Add to this, the grinding fear of speaking out; of standing out from the crowd; especially, of being on the government's wrong side.
When a colleague and I co-edited a book critical of the Klein government in 1995, some PC members in the legislature called for the academics who contributed to the text to be fired. The president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers attempted to have the credentials of one writer reviewed by the dean of management at the University of Calgary. Critics, including myself, regularly received hate-filled letters and phone calls from people telling us that if we didn't like Alberta we should leave.
But, comparatively, we academics had it easy; not so, a lot of others. I remember a woman from a small northeast town telling me that she and her husband were afraid to not support the local Conservative MLA in elections because he might find out and their small business would suffer. Her story was not singular.
The members of municipalities, boards, and universities had similar fears. Until the practice was banned a few years ago, some regularly used public money to buy tickets to Conservative party events. They felt they had to or be left out of the government spoils.
How many other groups, organizations, and individuals were shaken down is unknown, but there is no doubt that many Albertans felt they had to go along with it.
But suddenly, things seem changed.
We are not exactly walking on sunshine. We know our oil wealth has been squandered or given away. We know there are tough times ahead. We will do our penance and move on. But Albertans are today walking with a lighter step into a future that for the first time in a long time is bathed in hope.
Trevor W. Harrison is a professor at the University of Lethbridge and director of Parkland Institute. |
Pork barrel politics by a different name
Each addition carries a disclaimer that says a decision to spend these budgetary requests must be based on competition or merit.
AP reports that despite banning earmarks, tea party-backed Republicans are planning to quietly funnel millions of dollars to pet projects in their home districts using a mechanism they call "member requests." The difference between member requests and earmarks?
Of course, given that Congress controls the purse strings, the Pentagon won't ignore their requests, and Republicans, who are eagerly touting their "member requests" in their home districts, know it.
A provision added to Obama's budget request would provide another $2.5 million for weapons and munitions advanced technology, money for the Quad City Manufacturing Lab at the Rock Island Arsenal in freshman Rep. Bobby Schilling's Illinois district. The lab conducts research and development on titanium, lightweight composites and other advanced materials. ... Another tea party-backed lawmaker, freshman Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri, won an additional $20 million for "mixed conventional load capability for Air Force bombers." Hartzler's district is home to Whiteman Air Force Base, keeper of the nation's B-2 bombers, and Fort Leonard Wood. ... Freshman Rep. Steven Palazzo, who unseated longtime conservative Democrat Gene Taylor in Mississippi, told voters during the campaign he favored banning earmarks, saying it would "help restore the people's faith in their government." After the committee approved the defense bill, Palazzo hailed the $189 million he secured, including $10 million to buy land for training facilities for the Army National Guard and $19.9 million for ship preliminary design and feasibility studies.
There's a decent argument to be made for earmarks as long as the process is open and transparent, but Republicans spent 2010 arguing that any congressional directed spending was the equivalent to corruption, no different than stealing money from taxpayers. One of their first official actions after winning the election was to pledge that they would ban earmarks. Yet here we are less than six months later and earmarks are alive and well, just with a different name. |
During an impromptu press conference on New Year's Eve, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump responded to a question about cybersecurity by stating that, "no computer is safe and if you have something important, write it and send it by courier". While that statement might be a little dramatic, many experts across the cybersecurity landscape agree that 2016 was just a warmup for what’s to come. The explosive growth of IoT, the introduction of new types of malware and the cybercriminal exploitation of AI and machine learning are sparking alarm bells for cybersecurity specialists worldwide. Here’s what we believe is in store for organizations to contend with in 2017.
Evolution of IoT based DDoS attacks
Cybercriminals love IoT devices because they are making for easy targets. More often than not, IoT devices are not designed with security in mind and share weak default passwords across multiple devices or even classes of devices. As a result, most IoT devices are extremely easy to hack into. What is even more troubling, is that by breaking into one device the hacker gets access to multiple devices, rapidly growing his botnet army.
Putting the lack of security-centric approach aside, advanced security features on IoT devices are often not feasible as they require too much disk space to be practical for devices that typically have only as much processing capacity and memory as needed for their highly limited tasks.
These flaws can lead to massive IoT-based DDoS attacks, like the one that hit Singapore’s StarHub a few months back. Multiple IoT devices, such as CCTV cameras and routers were hijacked by Mirai botnet to perpetrate a massive DDoS attack on StarHub servers, leading to downtime and disruption of service.
Mathew Bing, a Research Analyst at Arbor Networks laid out five reasons why IoT devices are becoming the favorite method to create DDoS bot armies. IoT devices usually:
Contain a weak version of Linux, which allows for easy malware penetration. Have limited or no bandwidth limitations, meaning they have unfettered access to the internet. Maintain simple operating systems that do not allow for extensive security features. Share default passwords. Share software from other classes of devices.
While the above five shortcuts might save time during the development stage, it ends up costing companies and consumers heavily down the line.
Following the massive IoT-powered DDoS attack on KrebsOnSecurity, the source code behind Mirai malware has been publically released. “Mirai,” spreads by continuously scanning the Internet for IoT systems protected by factory default usernames and passwords. In all, there were merely 68 username and password pairs in the botnet source code. However, many of those are generic and shared across multiple devices, including routers, security cameras, printers and DVRs. To make matters worse, these credentials are hardcoded in the firmware of the product and cannot be changed, so there is nothing to remedy this vulnerability at the moment.
How has Mirai evolved? Initially Mirai only attacked IoT devices via default usernames and passwords to create a botnet of IoT devices. However, as Mirai became more advanced, it began also perpetrating multiple and simultaneous types of attacks like SYN, UDP, VSE, GRE and ACK flooding against even unrelated targets. Additionally, once a device is infected and connected to a Mirai botnet, the infected device begins scanning and corrupting more devices and thus the botnet zombie army grows.
IoT device based DDoS attacks are certainly on the rise and new more dangerous breeds are developing, as the recent massive Mirai powered DDoS attack on Dyn via 100,000 IoT devices demonstrates. While individual websites have been overwhelmed before by IoT bots, this attack succeeded in disrupting a major internet provider and harmed access to multiple sites like Amazon.
The rise of Gooligan-like threats
It appears that Ghost Push has risen again, but this time in the form of Gooligan. This new and furious super-malware is perhaps the fastest growing malware on the planet, hacking over 13,000 Google accounts per day and compromising over 1 million accounts over the last few months. The malware infects mobile devices like Android 4 and 5 and steals google authentication tokens on a number of OS versions like Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, KitKat or Lollipop.
According to Checkpoint, Gooligan accounts for the largest Google breach to date, and is boosted by a growing number of fake apps. Checkpoint clearly spelled out how the scheme works.
The fake app is downloaded by an unsuspected user, either via a malicious link or a third-party app store, and the malware starts to automatically transmit data from the device to a C&C (Command and Control server). The C&C then downloads a rootkit to take advantage of exploits like VROOT and takes over the control of the phone. Gooligan can then steal Gmail accounts, install more fake apps and rate them to boost ratings and even install adware to generate revenue.
According to a report by Business Insider, the Gooligan malware is generating $300,000 in ad revenue from fake ad views, which is probably the biggest cyber-fraud affecting media industry in history.
Gooligan has been joined by a number of related fake apps that carry malware and specialize in targeting banks like "The Trojan", which has already hacked 94 major banking apps in the US and Europe. Major targets like American Express, PayPal Deutsche Bank among others have been hit. There is no doubt that malware will continue to evolve and grow even more dangerous going into 2017.
Exploitation of A.I. and Machine Learning
If all the above problems were not enough, artificial intelligence and machine learning are presenting new concerns for the IT community. The NY Times ran an article mentioning that as the $75 Billion computer security industry begins to openly talk about how to incorporate A.I. into cyberdefense the bad guys are already one step ahead. New technologies allow for automation of cybercrime, making it exponentially scalable.
For instance, the article cited the use of Blackshades, which was developed to allow technically inept people to easily deploy ransomware to perform video or audio eavesdropping. This has become known as a “criminal franchise in a box", because actions are executed with the click of a mouse. While the developer is now sitting in a US jail, the high demand means that we will encounter more and more of such “user-friendly” solutions in the future.
With A.I. the opportunities are endless and now the criminals can even take advantage of voice-recognition technology like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortan, Amazon’s Echo voice-controlled speaker and Facebook’s Messenger chatbot. In fact, back in 2015 UAB researchers found that cybercriminals could steal someone's voice and use voice morphing tools to perpetrate identity theft or steal bank account information.
Organized cybercriminal campaigns
2016 was witness to an increase in highly organized cybercriminal campaigns that have affected everyone from mega banks to the mom-and-pop jewelry shops. Politically or economically motivated cyber-gangs are growing more organized and dangerous. The “lone hacker” stereotype is becoming a thing of the past.
In May 2016, "Anonymous" launched a 30 day DDoS campaign against banks worldwide targeting Guernsey, Cyprus, Panama, Jordan, British Virgin Isles, Dominican Republic, Netherlands and Maldives among many others. They are claiming that they will soon run the mother of all campaigns to wipe out world debt. While this might make some people happy, it would certainly throw the world into chaos.
From the exploitation of A.I. by organized hacker groups to the ever-evolving nature of DDoS with the help of an IoT zombie army, cyber criminals are moving in sync with the latest developments in technology. That is why it is now imperative for companies of all sizes to redefine their cybersecurity strategy and move from a defensive to offensive posture. When facing a cutting edge cyberattack, the firewall and antivirus are simply not going to do the trick.
Contact Cyberint and learn to keep your organization one step ahead and protect itself beyond the perimeter. |
House Republican leaders on Friday pulled their bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, signaling defeat on what was supposed to be a major legislative accomplishment for President Donald Trump.
The news was first reported by Robert Costa of The Washington Post, who spoke to the president directly, following a meeting between Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
Trump said he agreed to pulling the bill once Ryan made it clear the legislation lacked the votes to pass.
In subsequent remarks, both Trump and Ryan indicated they were ready to move on from health care to other issues.
The failure to pass the bill represents a devastating defeat for Trump and Ryan ― and throws into doubt a crusade that has defined Republican politics for over seven years.
“We came really close today, but we came up short,” Ryan said at a press conference. “This is a disappointing day for us.”
The news capped a week of chaotic activity at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, as Trump, Ryan and their lieutenants tried desperately to round up votes for the measure they introduced less than three weeks ago ― which they were attempting to move through the legislative process at breakneck speed.
Less than 24 hours before, Trump had issued an ultimatum to the House, demanding a vote on what both he and Republican leaders had identified as a top legislative priority ― and threatening to move on to other legislative items if they refused.
Trump’s demand was an audacious act of political brinkmanship, designed to rattle and win over dissident Republican lawmakers who, for various reasons, were objecting to the bill.
But the gambit failed, and it failed spectacularly.
As for the current health care law, on which some 20 million people depend for insurance, its odds of survival seem better than at any time since Trump’s election, when its repeal seemed nearly inevitable.
“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” Ryan admitted Friday. “I don’t know what else to say other than Obamacare is the law of the land.”
What The GOP Bill Would Have Done
The American Health Care Act, the Republican proposal to replace the ACA, would have amounted to arguably the single biggest rollback of a social welfare program in American history.
The bill would have ended Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility and cut funding for the rest of the Medicaid program going forward. It would have scaled back regulations on what insurance covers. It also would have redistributed financial assistance, so that people with lower incomes and higher insurance costs would get less than they do today ― even as more affluent people would qualify for substantial new subsidies.
The bill would have made some other major changes, as well ― such as ending the “individual mandate,” the unpopular financial penalty for people who do not get health insurance, and rolling back new taxes on the wealthy and health care companies that the government uses to finance the law’s coverage expansion.
During the 2016 campaign and in the early days of his presidency, Trump had promised not just to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but to replace it with “great health care” and “insurance for everybody.” But when the Congressional Budget Office analyzed an early version of the GOP proposal, it predicted the number of people without insurance would increase by 24 million over the next decade, going up by 14 million in 2018 alone.
Declining government spending would reduce the federal deficit, the CBO predicted in that report, and average premiums for people buying coverage on their own would end up lower than they would have been otherwise. But those lower premiums would be a byproduct of older and sicker people dropping insurance altogether ― because insurers would have made it too pricey for them, and because the plans available on the market would have tended to cover much less.
Why GOP Leaders Couldn’t Get The Votes
Those findings, which the CBO published early last week, halted the political momentum the repeal legislation had gained when it sailed through two committee votes earlier this month. As Trump administration officials and House Republicans began preparing for consideration by the full House, they quickly realized the bill lacked enough support to pass.
Over and over again, GOP leaders argued that their proposal represented the party’s best chance to kill Obamacare. But efforts to corral Republicans failed, in part because leaders were dealing with two separate groups with divergent interests.
More conservative members, led by the House Freedom Caucus, were angry that the bill left some of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations in place. Those regulations, they suggested, would keep premiums from falling further ― although the precise relationship between each of these regulations and actual premiums is murky.
More moderate members, many of them from Democratic-leaning states and states that used Affordable Care Act money to expand Medicaid, worried that the bill would take away insurance coverage from too many people ― and that, if premiums really did come down, they would do so only by increasing out-of-pocket costs for people who held on to their coverage.
Put more simply, conservatives worried that repeal didn’t go far enough, while moderates worried that it went too far. Every effort Republican leaders made to appease one group alienated the other.
Complicating matters further, Republicans have been trying to pass repeal legislation through “budget reconciliation” ― an expedited process that would allow Republicans to get a bill through the Senate without the threat of a Democratic filibuster, so that a simple majority vote would be sufficient.
Reconciliation rules stipulate that only provisions with a direct effect on the federal budget may get consideration through this process. That could exclude many of the regulatory changes that more conservative Republicans want to make, like changes to rules regarding what insurance covers. These rules also require the legislation, on net, to reduce the budget deficit.
And on top of everything else, Republicans were fighting an increasingly skeptical public. Multiple polls have suggested the GOP measure is deeply unpopular, while the law it aimed to replace, long the subject of controversy and the object of scorn among conservatives, is now becoming more popular.
Late this week, Trump and GOP leaders agreed to modify the bill by eliminating a requirement that all insurance plans cover “essential” benefits, such as mental health and maternity care, and then offering special funds to cover the costs of precisely those services. Experts immediately warned that making these changes could dramatically alter health insurance markets, making it difficult to find comprehensive coverage as insurers would gravitate toward offering less generous policies.
The precise effects of those changes on insurance coverage and the federal budget are unknown ― because Republican leaders, determined to rush a vote, would not allow time for the CBO to analyze the changes. In fact, it wasn’t until late Thursday evening that leadership posted the text of the changes.
In the end, however, the effort was for naught. Leaders couldn’t come up with language that would draw enough votes from the two holdout GOP factions to overcome the unified opposition of Democrats.
“I think that there were mistakes in many corners from the beginning of the process,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) told The Huffington Post on Friday. “The responsible thing to do is keep legislating. My reaction is that when something fails, you keep trying.”
Why The Health Care Debate Isn’t Going Away
Regardless of what happens now, health care is likely to remain a subject of controversy.
The Affordable Care Act is responsible for historic progress, bringing the number of uninsured Americans to a record low, thereby improving access to care and bolstering financial security. But millions of people are unhappy with their coverage, and in some states, newly regulated insurance markets have struggled ― with premiums rising even higher and insurers, stung by financial losses, pulling up stakes.
The Obama administration expended tremendous effort shaping and nurturing the new system during its infancy and addressing problems as they came up. Now the Trump administration is in charge of managing these marketplaces, and its intentions are not clear.
Trump has said more than once that politically speaking, the easiest choice for Republicans would be to sit back and let the system operate on its own. Doing so, Trump predicted, would lead to a total collapse.
This article has been updated with Amash’s comments. |
From Wimbledon’s dress code to shaking hands after a match, tradition runs rampant in tennis. However, the greatest tennis tradition has to be overzealous relatives living vicariously through their loved ones in an attempt to defend their honor. Yesterday, one man paid homage to “tradition” and stepped up to provide us his unneeded opinion on his kin.
Like a rapper’s irritating hype-man, Christos Kyrgios, brother to wunderkind Nick Kyrgios, went off on “the haters” after the young Aussie’s win over Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin. In the profanity-laced tirade, Kyrgios blasted everyone from the players to the media.
He starts off with a short congratulations to his brother on his win before the post unravels into its true intent. The first shots fired are towards other players on the tour or, as he refers to them, the “stiffs” and “zombies” compared to passionate frontrunners of the next generation like his brother. Hopefully “stiffs” like Rafael Nadal and Gael Monfils will read this bit of advice and learn to have a little more flair while competing.
Discussing the media’s focus on Kyrgios’ attitude on court, his brother slams the press in the most effective way possible (if you’re in middle school): he calls them fat. He raves, “Keep your unqualified, useless & shit opinion next to your packet of chips on your desk where you are resting your fat ass.” Sadly for Kyrgios, this isn’t middle school, and my bag of chips is actually in the drawer next to me. The rest of the Facebook post is a bungled mess of praise for his talented brother and creative insults to all of the “naysayers.”
However, between the childish attacks, Kyrgios does makes some good points. In the midst of the cringe-worthy diatribe, Kyrgios remarks, “This is a 19 year old doing things that the sport has never seen, in his own way. A way that is entertaining and loved by not only his fans, not only lovers of the sport, but people who love seeing character.” This portion of the post could have been used to provide a wonderfully positive message of support for his brother, but unfortunately, he decides to take things to their logical extreme.
Christos Kyrgios also has some advice to give to his brother, asking him to “quietly say, ‘Please be patient haters, there is so much more to come.'” Let’s pray that he rereads what he wrote later and decides to use the advice he gives the next time he decides to go on a Facebook rampage.
The post finally reaches its denouement with a plethora of scathing hashtags including #uselessopinions, #hatersbehindkeyboards, and my personal favorite, #uselesslifestryingtofindrelevance. No offense to all of you “useless lifes” out there.
Next time, Kyrgios should learn from Taylor Swift and just shake it off. Or listen to this kid:
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Warning: This Article May Cause Discomfort for the Eyes
Marketing Hong Kong movies to a western audience has always been a tricky business, especially when it comes to DVD releases. Amongst the countless latest Hollywood titles fighting for your attention and shelf space, arguably the most important asset a DVD can have is an attention grabbing cover. Hong Kong movies in particular have been subjected to some ‘interesting’ design choices since the inception of the DVD format, and while plenty of titles have been released with artwork that captures the essence of the movie perfectly, those aren’t what this article is about. Instead, we’re going to take a look at some of the worst cover designs that the movies we love have been stuck with, whether it be questionable design choices, completely misleading images, or the just plain bizarre, take a look at the list below and see if you agree.
1. New Fist of Fury
Released by Beverly Wilshire in 2001
In 1976 Jackie Chan was still relatively unknown, and his contract under Lo Wei saw the director trying to style Chan as a character in the vein of Bruce Lee. What Lo Wei can never be accused of though, is attempting to style him as a Chinese version of Rambo (by pasting Jackie’s head on Stallone’s body from the First Blood poster), which is what seems to be the message being conveyed on the cover of this 2001 release of the movie. Sporting a legless (literally, not the drunken kind) Chan set against the backdrop of the Japanese Imperial Flag, the fact that he’s brandishing a huge machine gun, complete with a belt of bullets wrapped around his torso, gives no indication to the old-school kung fu movie behind the title. Still, the designer of the cover certainly can’t be accused of not being creative. Note: The artwork originally appeared on the film’s 1985 VHS release by All Seasons Entertainment.
aka High Risk /The Blacksheep AffairBoth released by Sony Pictures in 2001
Poor Jet Li and Vincent Zhao, not only do each of their respective movies here have nothing to do with each other, but they both had their heads poorly photoshopped onto the body of other Hong Kong stars. Clearly doing a Google search of ‘muscular Asian body’ wasn’t enough for Sony, so here we have Jet Li’s head stuck on top of Donnie Yen’s body, and Vincent Zhao’s head stuck on top of Bruce Lee’s body. Ironically Zhao doesn’t even get billing on the cover, instead having Shu Qi and Andrew Lin steal his limelight. As for Meltdown, a re-title of High Risk, the cover gives no allusion to the fact that the movie is in fact a zany mix of Die Hard meets a satire of Jackie Chan, with Jacky Cheung aping the stars claims to perform all his own stunts.
Released by Miramax in 2004/Tartan in 2005
With the original Infernal Affairs being a taut thriller played out between a cop working undercover as a triad, and a triad working as a mole in the cops, you would never guess from the cover Miramax decided to place on it. If anything, you would presume it’s about a love triangle between Andy Lau, Tony Leung, and a generic Asian female holding a gun. Generic Asian Female – 1, Integrity of the movie – 0.
The sequel to Infernal Affairs is unique in that it’s just as good as the original, however it’s certainly not an action flick. Thankfully proceedings play out in such a way that at one point, a minor character played by Chapman To, breaks out a pair of handguns and starts blasting away. It’s a brief flash of violence, but it gave Tartan Video the solution they needed. Take a screenshot of To in action, then awkwardly photoshop one of the movies main stars, Shawn Yue, onto his body for the DVD cover. The resulting composition has Yue seemingly with no neck, with Edison Chen menacingly feeling his butt from behind.
Released by Metrodome Group in 2011
This pompous overly long movie was commissioned by the Chinese government in 2009 to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Telling the tale of how the Communist party rose to triumph, it was notable for having cameo appearances by just about every actor working in the Chinese/Hong Kong movie industry you can think of. Amongst those cameos were Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen. The resulting release by Metrodome Group sneakily saw them use the trio’s names as headlining stars, photoshopping them to wear matching white kung fu garments, with their images above a traditional Chinese landscape. Enticing as the cover may seem, it couldn’t misrepresent the movie anymore if it tried.
Released by Dragon Dynasty in 2008
Johnnie To’s quietly enthralling 2003 police thriller was released by the Weinstein’s Dragon Dynasty label 5 years later, and they’ll be damned if they’re going to believe anyone would be interested in buying such a movie. So instead of creating a cover which represents what PTU is actually about, we get a photoshopped Simon Yam brandishing a pistol in each hand, an exploding building behind him, and a helicopter that may or may not be the reason why the building is exploding (it is flying pretty low). Anyone wanting to find answers to the events playing out on the cover by watching the movie would be sourly disappointed, as none of them actually happen, but as the expression goes, never let the truth get in the way of a good story!
Released by – too many to mention
The legend of Jackie Chan and his black t-shirt has many variations, the most popular one seems to be that at some point during the late 90’s/early 00’s, he did a photo shoot to promote his image as an action star in the States. Since then, images of Chan and that damn black t-shirt have appeared on so many of his movies DVD covers, that there’s enough to make a separate Top 10 all together. But we won’t. Instead, check out the thumb nails to flick through a fashion catalogue of Chan and his favorite t-shirt, being used on everything from Project A to Police Story. Possibly the most iconic piece of clothing since the white vest Bruce Willis wore in Die Hard?
Released by Dragon Dynasty in 2011
While some of the Shaw Brothers movies that were put out on the Dragon Dynasty label sported perfectly suitable covers, others veered off into the bizarre. Take the cover of Five Shaolin Masters for example, who exactly is that in the centre of the cover!? Why is Fu Sheng brandishing nunchucks!? What’s Gordon Liu doing there!? Then you have Avenging Eagle. So Fu Sheng is fine to appear on the cover of Five Shaolin Masters, but here his sleeve blade wielding character has his face replaced by…who even is that!? It looks like some strange composite of several actors faces put together. The same strange characters seem to appear on both the covers for Flying Guillotine (Chen Kuan Tai after going through some Mickey Rourke style procedures?) and Executioner from Shaolin, which has someone that looks like Norman Chu destroying a dummy with a flaming fist. Great.
Released by Dimension in 2000
The only thing worse than the re-titled, cut up, dubbed, and newly scored versions of these movies which were put out by Dimension, were the covers that came with them. Featuring scenes from different movies (The Enforcer has a scene from Fists of Legend on its cover, while Twin Warriors features an image of Michelle Yeoh in Project S, re-positioned in what we’re supposed to believe is a flying kick). Burdened with tag lines that reference every cliché in the book, from Fists of Fury to my personal favorite – ‘Loyalty. Honor. Vengeance’. If anyone was foolhardy enough to pick up one of these DVD’s, they quickly learned that the only collection these releases deserved to be a part of, was the one pre-faced with the word ‘garbage’.
aka: Coweb Released by Lions Gate in 2013
In 2008 a new female kung fu talent made her debut with Coweb, a tale of underground fight tournaments that are broadcast on the web, and featuring some solid kung fu talent in the form of opponents like Kane Kosugi and Mike Moller. The modern day set actioner was picked up by Lions Gate, and released in 2013 under the bizarre title of Ninja Masters. Featuring a DVD cover with a male dressed in full ninja garb, and a pagoda in the background, Coweb feature zero ninjas or pagodas, nor is it from Japan. Sporting the tagline ‘They are the Perfect Weapon’, to further mislead buyers, one can only wonder what someone who bought this would think, once they find it’s a tale of a tough femme fatale battling it out in modern day Hong Kong.
aka: Looking for JackieReleased by Phase 4 Films in 2010
Jackie Chan marks his fourth appearance on the list, this time for his 2009 Chinese family drama Looking for Jackie. The family friendly tale of a teenage boy who goes off to find Jackie Chan in Beijing, believing he’ll be able to learn kung fu from him, the movie is a torture to get through, and what’s more, features Chan for just a few mere minutes at the end. Undeterred by this, Phase 4 Films picked up the title in 2010 and released it under the name Kung Fu Master, featuring a gigantic Jackie Chan who’s about to kick a bunch of miniature sized battling soldiers and monks into oblivion. Needless to say, anyone who was expecting to see kung fu, Jackie Chan, or miniature sized soldiers and monks would be left feeling severely misled.
That wraps up the list, but we’d love to hear what some of your personal picks are for the worst DVD covers that Hong Kong movies have been subjected to? Who knows, perhaps we’ll get enough for a Part 2. Now, where did I leave my black t-shirt? |
Russia is concerned that talks with the United States on Syria are not going very smoothly and says the chemical weapons deal may have only delayed US military action.
"Unfortunately it's necessary to note that in contacts with the Americans, things are not going so smoothly...they are not quite going in the direction they should," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in parliament on Tuesday.
Ryabkov said Russia hopes the UN Security Council will reach agreement this week on a resolution supporting a deal for Syria to abandon its chemical weapons, but there is no guarantee.
He said US officials "always mention that plans to punish Damascus remain in force. We draw certain conclusions from that and assume that the threat of aggression in violation of international law is so far only delayed, not dismissed fully."
Ryabkov slammed the "illogical" position of the US and its Western allies for seeking to threaten the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the resolution.
Ryabkov reiterated that Russia would not accept a resolution that would trigger automatic punitive measures in the event of Syrian non-compliance with its obligations.
Controversial resolution
He said a UN Security Council resolution on Syria could mention Chapter VII of the UN Charter which allows force or sanctions, but stressed that the measure could be invoked only if a chemical weapons accord is violated.
"Chapter VII can be mentioned only as an element of the measures against violators... if there is a refusal to cooperate, carry out obligations or if someone -- it does not matter who -- uses chemical weapons," Ryabkov said, quoted by Russian news agencies.
"There can be no discussing the adoption of a resolution under Chapter VII about the automatic implementation of sanctions or all the more the use of force," he told the State Duma lower house of parliament.
The invocation of Chapter VII in a UN resolution has been a point of controversy between the US and Russia ever since the two Cold War foes forged a landmark agreement in Geneva this month to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
He emphasised that the resolution to be adopted by the UN Security Council should be aimed at bolstering decisions by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
He said that the Assad regime had already shown its good will to adhere to the accord by joining the convention for the prohibition of chemical weapons. |
Works as a Repeater for Your Z-Wave Network For the Remote Controller device to work with your network, it must be within approximately 130 feet (via line of sight) from your Z-Wave Controller or the closest Z-Wave Repeater. However, this device also works as a repeater, extending your network up to an additional 130 feet via line of sight to reach other elements of your Z-Wave network that would otherwise be out of range of the hub or controller.
Compatible with All Other Z-Wave-Certified Products Like all Z-Wave-certified products, the GoControl Garage Door Opener Remote Controller (Z-Wave) is compatible with other Z-Wave devices, including those made by other manufacturers. The GoControl family of Z-Wave products also includes switches, dimmers, outlets, thermostats, light bulbs and lighting retrofit kits and plug-in modules as well as security devices, including alert sounders, passive infrared motion detectors, and door/window sensors. |
by
A study of red drapes
I’ve struggled a bit for a title to today’s essay. Through the course of my investigation into other forms of art – perhaps investigation is a bit too strong a word; meandering or exploration is probably closer – I’ve noticed that photography stands apart for two reasons: perception, and origin. They’re really one and the same if you dig a bit deeper, and this also applies to a lesser extent to its derivatives – film/ video, mixed media etc. I suspect I may open a can of worms with this piece, but I’m also hoping it’s going to provoke some interesting discussion below the line in the manner of some of the classic posts of old…
Holding on
Let’s start with the simpler of the two: origin. Photography is what I think of as a secondary medium. For the most part, the output is a recreation or representation of something, where the something – the originating object, subject or scene – is clearly defined and recognisable in its original form. There is no attempt to suggest that a photograph is anything other than a facsimile of the scene, with adjustments for the bias of the observer – the photographer. Let’s take the example of an apple: if you paint it, no matter what you do, you’re not going to paint it exactly the same; even if you try. And you’re probably going to paint the idealised idea of an apple, not an apple itself: the artwork that comes to mind is Rene Magritte’s ‘this is not a pipe – the treachery of images’ (which is itself a photorealistic painting). It is a representation of what the artist believes that object should look like, the sum of his or her expectations. Not the object itself.
Treachery of Images by Rene Magritte, image from Wikipedia. I’ve been lucky enough to see this painting in person, and it’s both small and unassuming – it doesn’t have very strong visual impact, but give it a moment to register and you’ll see just how successfully Magritte transcended the limits of the medium and painted not a picture of a pipe, the idealised representation of a pipe, but an idea.
No matter how much a photograph uses technique or light or exclusion, it will still be recognised and – this is the important bit – interpreted by the audience – as being a representation of that specific object. Though this may be generalised to type – a photograph of ‘a rose’ as opposed to ‘the rose’, for instance – for the most part, photography is very specific in its depiction. Other forms of art are not, because the interpretative filter of the artist is opaque – not translucent. This distinction is perhaps best made through that of light itself: in a photograph, light from the object passes directly to the recording medium (and for arguments’ sake, the final output). What the photographer sees is what the camera sees. In a painting, it must first pass through the eyes of the artist, the interpretation of their brain and motor skills, and then only to canvas or sculpture or whatever media happens to be their choice.
The window
Recognizability of the subjects within a photograph drives perception of the audience: it looks like the subject, therefore it is. It is not always recognised as being an artist’s interpretation – perhaps that is the fault of the artist for failing to see their own vision in the subject or scene, or perhaps it is their lack of technical chops in the execution. Whatever the case may be, few photographs are mistaken for anything but photographs. This has two consequences on the art itself: firstly, the perception of an image that is not instantly identifiable as a photograph may confuse the audience, but it may just as likely surprise and engage them for its difference; secondly, the commercial value of a photograph no doubt takes a beating.
Double take
Even though we have seen stupendously expensive photographs – Gursky’s Rhein III, for instance – in recent times, we still think ‘that’s expensive, for a photograph.’ It is still significantly less than say the value of a decent Monet. Undoubtedly reproducibility has something to do with it: the artist could simply make a copy, if we so chose. That wouldn’t halve the value of each image, it would lower it by significantly more, owing to exclusivity and so on. More prints beyond that lower value further still, but I think there does come to a point where you are better off making more copies at a lower price than fewer at a higher one. That said, I personally believe the ceiling for the value of a photograph is heavily influenced by people believing they could not only do the same themselves, but probably do it better. Certainly the artistic merit of the output is subjective, and the result may well be better in their eyes. But will it be exactly the same? That is unlikely, because every image captures a moment in time that is never to be repeated (in our lifetimes, at least). Even in a studio situation where the scene is fully within the control of the photographer and repeatable, there are entropic changes happening at smaller scales than we can resolve: invisible on the short term, but nevertheless still present.
Inversion
I think the biggest hurdle photographs face is that the creation simply appears to be ‘too easy’ to the layperson compared to a painting (or sculpture, or carving, or any other medium). Most people harbour memories of painting from primary school and wince slightly at how poor the output looked; however, modern camera phones and general lack of visual education mean that pretty much everything is acceptable – and the difference between outstanding and great, great and good, good and acceptable, acceptable and mediocre isn’t always apparent. A painting takes time, paint and canvas, or whatever other media the artist chooses to work with*. Never mind the fact that it requires just as much time to master photography, the equipment cost may well be significantly higher, and I don’t think many people manage to output what they intend – the perception is there.
*I use painting as a continued example throughout this essay because it’s an easy analog to relate to since it’s visual and two dimensional; the same could well apply to any other choice of medium.
Conceptually, photographers have to be aware of the fact that the medium is one of conscious exclusion, not conscious inclusion. Every single act of framing is one of isolating out and discarding the bits of the work which are not relevant or interesting to the idea; this is the complete opposite to say painting or drawing, where everything that is visible in the final artwork has to be created by the artist – therefore they will have had no choice but to decide what form those objects or elements are to take. This is not the case for photography; the danger is that a photographer simply ignores the less prominent parts of the frame and lets them slide so long as they are not distracting. This is a mistake because it is coherence even through the smallest details that makes the difference between an excellent image and a truly outstanding one. I don’t think one method is necessarily easier than the other: the task of creating something entirely from scratch down to the smallest details is probably just as onerous as deciding whether each and every single element in a found scene is relevant or not, and how relevant.
Transparency
There is of course a middle ground, formed of two types of photography that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. I’m referring to still life (or general studio/ controlled environment work)n and abstraction. In the former case, the scene has the potential of being fully within the control of the photographer, and the image made repeatable and tuneable; the latter removes the instant identifiability of the donor subject from the photograph and therefore prevents it from being instantly recognisable as one. Though in controlled environments the photographer is generally in control, they are probably not in control to the same extent as the painter: you may want an orange, but you can’t decide exactly which shade of orange and how many dimples it has in its skin – you can pick from a selection, but that is finite. The painter has no such constraints. Similarly, it’s much easier for the photographer to use strict perspective and depth of field controls to emphasize or de-emphasise elements in a scene; the painter can do it too, but it’s much more difficult to replicate convincingly. And if you’re a sculptor or mixed media artist, you’ve got the added consideration of physical viewing point to take into account, too.
The barrier.
This is where I think controlled abstraction is an opportunity to raise photography to another level – to some extent it still has to be serendipitous or found as the photograph depends on the donor subject, but here the strength of the photographer’s interpretation can be made to clearly dominate over the subject. It can be done through perspective, scale, physical proximity/ magnification, removal of depth cues, certain lighting, reflection, or any one of many other ways. However, if certain specific visual cues are removed or carefully controlled – quality of light, color palette, depth of field, final reproduction medium – then it may not be entirely clear at all whether it is a photograph or not to begin with. Such photographs transcend both the medium and more importantly, the audience’s expectations of the medium. Sadly, they are not at all easy to execute.
Solidity of shadow
We must also consider of course that not every photographer wants to transcend the medium; a lot of they time they just want to make faithful, interesting, storytelling or client-satisfying photographs. I personally find the idea of transparency and the idea of making the photograph merely a conduit into a hyperrealistic representation of that instant in time and space very interesting too – hence my development of the Ultraprints. But for those who do – and sometimes that includes me, too – keeping in mind the ideas of conscious inclusion vs exclusion, questioning whether every single small element in a scene is necessary, nice to have, neutral or distracting, and thinking about abstraction – some very interesting results can happen. I believe the images in this essay are a good example of that; some of them consciously seek abstraction; some attempt to replicate the visual cues of a painting; others are simply an unusual perspective. Regardless of which, I personally find them visually interesting – compelling – because they don’t always immediately read as photographs, or if they do, they force the viewer to pause and contemplate a little. And isn’t that what any art form is about? MT
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CHITS FOR CHARLES | FALL 2015
** THE CHITS FOR CHARLES PROGRAM IS OFFICIALLY COMPLETE **
Thanks for showing your support to the Charles Street Corridor businesses!
(Businesses will no longer accept any Chits for Charles vouchers.)
_________________________________________________________________________
They've weathered the 'construction' storm...now it's time to celebrate!
Since early Spring, the businesses along the Charles Street Corridor have endured the challenges of a major construction project. It's nice to see the holes in the road being filled, tracks being laid, curbs installed and paving is not far off. All the businesses in this corridor have something to offer and the Downtown Kitchener BIA wants you to experience it!
Pick up your Chits for Charles Voucher from the Downtown Kitchener BIA's Office:
29 King St E, Kitchener - 9-3PM Monday-Thursday; 9-1PM Fridays
Use your Chits for Charles $10 Voucher between NOVEMBER 5TH - 30TH
towards any of these Charles Street Corridor businesses:
-Aqua Lounge & Restaurant -Assurance Driving School -Balzac's Coffee Roasters -Cafe Pyrus -Crowne Plaza -DNA Screening -Downtown Auto Centre -Downtown Crepe Cafe -East African Cafe -Electronic Repair -Ellison's Bistro -Encore Records -Far Out Flicks -Full Circle Foods -Games Exchange -Hasty Market/Kabab House -Jamiesons -Kava Bean Bistro -KW Vintage Games -Lookin' for Heroes -Luxeappeal Salon -Mi Tienda Latina -Mon Ami Pizza -Northern Thai -PHO DAU BO -Phoenix Games & Hobbies -Queen Shawarma & Kebab -Rakita Family Dentistry -R'Chyees Frozen Yogurt -Sara's KW Driving Academy -Sassy Hair Salon -Schreiter's Home Furnishings -Sharper Images -Shayne's Hair and Skin Care -The Firkin at the Tannery -The Sports Link -Transfer's Café -Ultimate Drivers -Yan Health Spa
RULES & REGULATIONS:
The Chits for Charles campaign runs from November 5, 2015 to November 30, 2015. This ten dollar voucher may be used towards a purchase at any participating business - CHANGE WILL NOT BE GIVEN. While quantities last. A larger duplicate of this voucher can be seen in all the windows of participating businesses along the Charles Street Corridor.
For more information, give us a call! The Downtown Kitchener BIA: 519-744-4921 |
Summary Now when I think back to the war, …we were not as frightened as now. Fear of a bomb, fear of a bullet–it’s something we could live with…. But this … utter humiliation–I just cannot deal with it, I’m ashamed of myself. Every day, they take away another piece of my dignity…. It’s like always walking a mine field, always…waiting for them to drag you away. -Resident of Chechnya, July 2016 For close to a decade, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic, has steadily tried to eradicate all forms of dissent and gradually built a tyranny within Chechnya. Kadyrov has been in this post since 2007 by virtue of appointment from the Kremlin, but he now faces elections for the head (governor) of Chechnya scheduled for September 2016. In the months before those elections local authorities have been viciously and comprehensively cracking down on critics and anyone whose total loyalty to Kadyrov they deem questionable. These include ordinary people who express dissenting opinions, critical Russian and foreign journalists, and the very few human rights defenders who challenge cases of abuse by Chechen law enforcement and security agencies. The increasingly abusive crackdown seems designed to remind the Chechen public of Kadyrov’s total control and controlling the flow of any negative information from Chechnya that could undermine the Kremlin’s support for Kadyrov. Residents of Chechnya who show dissatisfaction with or seem reluctant to applaud the Chechen leadership and its policies are the primary victims of this crackdown. The authorities, whether acting directly or through apparent proxies, punish them by unlawfully detaining them—including through abductions and enforced disappearances— subjecting them to cruel and degrading treatment, death threats, and threatening and physically abusing their family members. These abuses also send an unequivocal message of intimidation to others that undermines the exercise of many civil and political rights, most notably freedom of expression. Even the mildest expressions of dissent about the situation in Chechnya or comments contradicting official policies or paradigms, whether expressed openly or in closed groups on social media, or through off-hand comments to a journalist or in a public place, can trigger ruthless reprisals. This report documents a new phase in the Chechnya crackdown and is based on 43 interviews with victims, people who are close to those who paid a price for their critical remarks, as well as with human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, and other experts. In one case documented in this report, a man died after law enforcement officials forcibly disappeared and tortured him. In another, police officials unlawfully detained, threatened, and ill-treated a woman and her three children in retaliation for her husband’s public remarks criticizing the authorities. Police officials beat the mother and the eldest daughter, age 17, and threatened them with death, in an effort to force them to persuade the father to retract his critical comments. In another five cases documented in this report, law enforcement and security officials, or their apparent proxies, abducted people and subjected them to cruel and degrading treatment; four of those individuals were forcibly disappeared for periods of time ranging from one to twelve days. Launch Map Expand Share The authorities subjected five of the people whose cases are documented in this report to public humiliations, in which they were forced to publicly apologize to the Chechen leadership for their supposedly false claims and renounce or apologize for their actions. In Chechen society public humiliation and loss of face can lead to exclusion from social life for the victim and his or her extended family. Human Rights Watch is aware of other similar cases of abuse against local critics but did not include them in this report because victims or their family members specifically requested us not to publish their stories or because we could not obtain video materials and other evidence to confirm their accounts. There is also little doubt that some abuses against local residents in Chechnya may never come to the attention of human rights monitors or journalists because the climate of fear in the region is overwhelming and local residents have been largely intimidated into silence. The Chechen leadership has also intensified its onslaught against the few human rights defenders who still work in the region and provide legal and other assistance to victims of abuses. In the wake of the 2009 murder of Chechnya’s leading human rights defender, Natalia Estemirova, only one human rights organization, the Joint Mobile Group of Human Rights Defenders in Chechnya (JMG) had been able to stay on the ground in Chechnya to provide legal assistance to victims or their family members in cases of torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions by law enforcement and security agencies under Kadyrov’s de facto control. However, towards the end of 2014 the Chechen leadership seemed determined to push JMG out of Chechnya. In the past two-and-a-half years law enforcement officials or their apparent proxies have on three occasions ransacked or burned the JMG’s offices in Chechnya, thugs who appear to be acting as Chechen authorities’ proxies have physically attacked JMG’s activists numerous times, and the pro-Kadyrov Chechen media has engaged in a massive smear campaign against the group. JMG withdrew its team from Chechnya in early 2016 for security reasons. Chechen authorities have also been making it increasingly difficult for journalists to work in Chechnya. They have fostered a climate of fear in which very few people dare talk to journalists, except to compliment the Chechen leadership. And journalists who persevere with Chechnya work also find themselves at greater risk. This report documents a recent case of a journalist receiving threats, including death threats, another of a journalist who was arbitrarily detained while investigating a story, and a third case of a violent attack against a group of visiting journalists. In March 2016 a group of masked men attacked a minibus driving a group of Russian and foreign journalists from Ingushetia to Chechnya, dragged the journalists from the bus, beat them, and set the bus on fire. The attack was so shocking that it triggered an immediate, unprecedented reaction from President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, who called it “absolutely outrageous” and said that the law enforcement should ensure accountability for the crime. However, at this writing, the investigation, to the extent there is an active one, into the attack has not yielded any tangible results. One of the key requirements of a free and fair election is for the public and media to be able to express their views, including those critical of the authorities, without fear of reprisal. With authorities engaged in severe and sweeping repression, ordinary people in Chechnya and local media simply cannot express their views freely. The Chechen Republic is a “subject,” or administrative unit, of the Russian Federation, and its authorities are duty bound to uphold the rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in Russia’s domestic legislation and international human rights obligations. Russia’s leadership is clearly aware of the extent to which Chechen authorities have violated human rights, including freedom of expression. But it has done little more than issue rare words of concern. Human Rights Watch calls on the Russian government to ensure Chechen authorities fully comply with Russia’s legislation, including Russia’s obligations under international human rights law, and put an immediate end to the crackdown on free expression in the pre-election period and beyond. Russian authorities need to provide effective security guarantees to victims and witnesses of abuses and bring perpetrators of abuses to justice.
Recommendations To the Government of the Russian Federation Ensure all Chechen authorities, including law enforcement and security agencies, fully comply with Russia’s domestic legislation and international human rights obligations.
Ensure Chechen authorities put an immediate end to the crackdown on free expression by Chechen authorities.
Ensure Chechen authorities immediately stop collective punishment and public humiliation practices in Chechnya.
Ensure victims have effective access to meaningful remedies and accountability mechanisms for violations of human rights, including cruel and degrading treatment, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, punitive house-burnings, and other violations perpetrated by security services and law enforcement agencies.
Bring perpetrators of abuses to justice and ensure transparency regarding investigations and/or prosecutions undertaken, including their outcome.
Provide effective security guarantees to victims and witnesses of abuses.
Ensure effective implementation of European Court of Human Rights rulings on Chechnya including by bringing perpetrators of violations to justice and taking concrete steps to prevent similar violations from reoccurring.
Foster a favorable climate for journalists and human rights defenders to do their work in the region. To Russia's International Partners The European Union, its individual member states, and the United States should advance the recommendations contained in this report in multilateral forums, including at the Human Rights Council, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and the Council of Europe, and in their bilateral dialogues with the Russian government, and should react publicly to attacks against human rights defenders and media professionals in the North Caucasus. To the Council of Europe The Parliamentary Assembly should include the crackdown on free expression as well as the use of collective punishment and public humiliation practices in the agenda of its ongoing monitoring and reporting on the North Caucasus, with a view to holding, as soon as possible, a public debate on the situation.
Methodology This report is based on 43 interviews with victims of abuses, their family members, witnesses of abuses, human rights lawyers, and representatives of independent Russian and international organizations. Most interviewees from Chechnya asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals against themselves or members of their families. In the interest of interviewees’ security Human Rights Watch chose not to specify locations or modes of interviews. Communication with interviewees was conducted either in person, by telephone or Skype, or with the use of internet-based messaging applications. Each interviewee was made aware of the purpose of the interview and agreed to speak on a voluntary basis. Human Rights Watch spoke to all interviewees separately and in private. Human Rights Watch did not provide any financial incentives to interviewees. All the interviews, except those with English-speaking foreign journalists, were conducted in Russian. Human Right Watch chose not to interview some of the victims and witnesses to avoid reprisals against them and instead analyzed cases based on information from secondary sources, publicly available video materials, and other media publications. Human Rights Watch also carried out extensive desk research, which included in-depth monitoring of mass media and social networks, analysis of video, photo, and audio materials and, where possible, analysis of legal and medical documents. Human Rights Watch chose not to carry out field research in Chechnya for this report in order to avoid subjecting interviewees to the high risk of reprisals by the authorities for speaking with us.
I. Background Ramzan Kadyrov’s Rise to Power In the 1990s two wars over Chechnya’s status in the Russian Federation devastated the republic. In the early 2000s, after Russia’s large-scale military operations brought Chechnya back under Russian federal rule, the federal government gradually began to hand responsibility for governing the republic and carrying out counter-insurgency operations to pro-Kremlin Chechen leaders. This process was completed by 2004. Seeking a figure who could gain the trust of important strata within Chechen society, the Kremlin chose Akhmat Kadyrov, the former mufti, or leading religious authority, of Chechnya, who then became president of Chechnya in October 2003 elections organized by the Kremlin.The federal government aimed to place most responsibility for law and order and counter-insurgency operations on Chechen security structures. An important factor in this process was Akhmat Kadyrov’s personal security service, known as the Presidential Security Service, which was headed by his son, Ramzan, and initially consisted mainly of Kadyrov’s relatives and co-villagers. The Presidential Security Service (known by its Russian initials, SB), informally referred to as “Kadyrovtsy,” soon became the most important indigenous force in Chechnya. The SB’s units were legalized in 2004 as Interior Ministry units, which made it easier to finance them and provide them with arms. In May 2004 a bomb attack killed Akhmat Kadyrov and Russian authorities held a presidential election to find his replacement. Twenty-seven-year-old Ramzan inherited his father’s influence but could not yet run for president as the Chechen constitution establishes 30 as the minimum age for presidential candidates. Alu Alkhanov, a candidate chosen by the Kremlin, was elected president, and Ramzan Kadyrov was appointed first vice-prime minister in charge of security. Kadyrov soon began to muscle out those who were loyal to Alkhanov and to intimidate and punish those who refused to answer to him in an effort to extend his power and control. In 2005 and into early 2006, he gained direct influence over local law enforcement agencies. In spring 2006, he became prime minister ofChechnya. In February 2007 his ascent to power was completed through Alu Alkhanov’s apparently forced resignation as president. Taking the place of Alkhanov, Ramzan Kadyrov was sworn in as president of the Chechen Republic in April 2007, following his nomination to the post by President Vladimir Putin.By 2008, Kadyrov firmly established himself as the only real power figure in Chechnya. Kadyrov’s War on Opponents Lawless Counter-insurgency Tactics For the past decade, there have been persistent, credible allegations that while aiming to root out and destroy an aggressive Islamist insurgency in the region, law enforcement and security agencies under Kadyrov’s control have been involved in abductions, enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial executions, and collective punishment. The main targets have been alleged insurgents, their relatives, and suspected collaborators. Kadyrov also largely equates local Salafi Muslims with insurgents or their collaborators. Calling them Wahhabis, a term widely employed with pejorative connotations to designate dissident Islamist movements and militants inspired by radical Islam, he has been publicly asserting that they have no place in Chechnya. Kadyrov has specifically instructed police and local communities to closely monitor how people pray and dress and to punish those who stray from the Sufi Islam, traditional for the region. In recent years, police raids against Salafis–or suspected ones–have become widespread. According to Memorial Human Rights Center (Memorial), a leading Russian rights group that has worked on the North Caucasus since the early 1990s, in the last three months of 2015 alone, local law enforcement and security agencies detained several hundred men in the course of these raids. The detentions however are not officially registered, and the detainees’ families are not informed about the detainees’ whereabouts or well-being. The detentions typically last from one to several days, but despite their unlawful nature, when detainees are released they do not file complaints or like to discuss what happened to them due to acute fear of reprisals. Autocracy Under Kadyrov Numerous experts on the North Caucasus describe Kadyrov’s orders as being, in practice, the only law in the republic. They label Kadyrov’s rule over Chechnya as a “personality cult regime.” In a recent report Memorial describes contemporary Chechnya as a “totalitarian state within a state,” featuring Kadyrov’s interference in virtually all aspects of social life, including politics, religion, academic discourse, and family matters. The cult created around Kadyrov and his family consolidates his full control over the republic. The main engine of this cult is Grozny TV, the state television and radio broadcast company. Most of its news and “current affairs” programs are linked to Kadyrov, and it often broadcasts segments in which Kadyrov is shown giving orders and chastising people for their errors, including senior local officials. Kadyrov also actively uses social media to set his public agenda, demand obedience, designate and vilify enemies, and basically dictate the law. His Instagram account, which he launched in February 2013, gained a million subscribers by spring 2015. He also has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and VKontakte, and according to Chechnya’s Ministry for Press and Information, his total number of subscribers on social media is over two million. Testing the Kremlin’s Tolerance Ramzan Kadyrov frequently and zealously professes his loyalty to the Kremlin and to President Vladimir Putin personally. However, Kadyrov’s insistence on having a free rein in Chechnya has apparently begun to test the Kremlin’s patience. Until recently it appeared that Kadyrov enjoyed carte blanche to run Chechnya as his own personal fiefdom. However, starting in late 2014 the Kremlin, including Putin himself, began to respond to some of Kadyrov’s more outrageous actions with words that, though seemingly mild, were unmistakably rebukes. On December 18, 2014, following Kadyrov’s public pledge to destroy houses of insurgents’ families and several highly publicized episodes of house burnings that followed, President Putin issued a mild rebuke saying that no one, including the head of Chechnya, has the right to impose extra-judicial punishment. The significance of that seemingly gentle reprimand cannot be underestimated, as this was the very first time the Kremlin criticized Kadyrov publicly. However, the reprimand did not stop punitive house-burnings in Chechnya. Ten days later, Kadyrov gave a dramatic speech in Grozny’s soccer stadium, in front of thousands of armed members of his security forces. “We’re telling the entire world that we are the combat infantry of Vladimir Putin,” he said. Several analysts assessed this flamboyant display of loyalty as Kadyrov flexing his muscles, as if to caution the Kremlin that withdrawing political or financial support could cost dearly. Notably, less than four months later, in response to a special operation in Chechnya by federal security forces, Kadyrov ordered his law enforcement officers to “shoot to kill” if they encountered Russian federal law enforcement or security personnel from outside Chechnya who come to the republic to carry out operations without his consent. In February 27, 2015, Boris Nemtsov, a leading Russian political opposition figure and a staunch critic of Ramzan Kadyrov, was assassinated in central Moscow. The investigation quickly identified seven suspects, four of whom were either active or former members of Chechen law enforcement and security agencies; the others were either also from Chechnya or of Chechen origin. The authorities arrested five of the suspects, however they have been unable to arrest or even question a key suspect, Ruslan Geremeev, who at the time of Nemtsov’s murder served as deputy commander of a law enforcement battalion in Chechnya that is under Kadyrov’s control. According to numerous media reports, Geremeev is in Chechnya. While denying any involvement with Nemtsov’s killing, Kadyrov spoke of the suspects fondly, said Geremеev had no other choice than to go into hiding, and hinted that he had been framed. Investigative authorities eventually designated Geremеev’s personal driver, Ruslan Mukhudinov, who had somehow “disappeared” without a trace soon after the murder, as the crime’s organizer. At this writing, the case against the arrested suspects has moved to trial. Although Kadyrov has for years sharply criticized, often in aggressive tones, Russia’s political opposition, investigative journalists, and human rights defenders, in 2016 these comments have become more menacing. In January 2016, when speaking to the press in Grozny, Kadyrov attacked Russia’s political opposition, accusing its members of anti-Russian “sabotage” and calling them “enemies of the people and traitors.” A member of the local municipal council from Krasnoyarsk, Konstantin Senchenko, posted an emotional retort to his Facebook account: “Ramzan, you are the shame of Russia. You discredited anything that could possibly be discredited.” The next day, a short video of Senchenko apologizing for his “rushed” and “emotional” statement was published on Kadyrov’s Instagram account, along with Kadyrov’s comment, “Apology accepted.” Notably, in the video Senchenko makes it clear that his decision to apologize was triggered by a visit from “representatives of the Chechen people” who apparently made him realize his mistake. In the same month, the Chechen authorities organized a mass pro-Kadyrov rally under the slogan “Our strength is in unity.” People employed in the public sector were required to attend the rally under the threat of losing their jobs and to bring one unemployed relative each. Also, college students and schoolchildren attended the rally in an organized way. Local officials who spoke at the event said that leading figures of Russia’s political opposition were engaged in subversive activities and called out the names of some of them, describing them as “paid puppets” of the West and “national traitors.” When commenting on the rally, Kadyrov repeatedly used the word “enemies” in relation to members of the opposition and announced a “war in every sense of the word” against them. Also in January, Magomed Daudov, the head of Chechnya’s parliament, posted to Instagram a photograph of Kadyrov with a fierce Caucasian sheepdog, claiming that the dog’s “fangs are itching” for opposition activists, journalists, and human rights defenders and providing disparaging descriptions of some of those the Chechen leadership apparently thought particularly irritating. On January 20, 2016 when commenting on the Chechen leadership’s campaign against Russia’s political opposition, Putin’s press secretary urged journalists “not to blow things out of proportion.” However, Kadyrov continued to test the boundaries of the Kremlin’s patience. On February 1, Kadyrov published a video on his Instagram featuring Mikhail Kasyanov, one of Russia’s most prominent Russian opposition politicians, in a gunman’s crosshairs, accompanied by the caption, “Kasyanov came to Strasbourg to get money for the Russian opposition.” The video, which appeared shortly after Kasyanov’s visit to the January 2016 session of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, triggered a wave of outrage in Europe and was widely covered in the Western and Russian media. Towards the end of the same day, it was removed from Kadyrov’s account, allegedly by Instagram’s administration. In response to numerous press inquiries, Putin’s press secretary said that the Kremlin did not follow Instagram in general or Kadyrov’s account in particular but promised to look into the issue. The Lead-up to Kadyrov’s Interim Endorsement by the Kremlin Kadyrov’s term in office as the Kremlin-appointed head of Chechnya was set to expire on April 5, 2016. By that time, elections for regional heads were reinstated across Russia, including Chechnya. With regional elections scheduled to take place on September 18, 2016, along with the nationwide parliamentary vote, Kadyrov needed Putin to extend his mandate until then and to signal that he would welcome his participation in the election for the head of Chechnya. However, on February 24, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, implied that the president was still deliberating whether Kadyrov’s mandate would be extended. The decision, Peskov said guardedly, “will be made at the end of his term of office.” Meanwhile, as the Kremlin kept its distance, Kadyrov intensified the crackdown on his critics in and outside Chechnya, including journalists, human rights defenders, local residents active on social media, and even active members of Chechen diaspora in Europe. By doing so, Kadyrov may have been trying to cut down on the flow of negative information from the region that could influence the decision-making processes in the Kremlin and undercut the Kremlin’s support for Kadyrov. On February 27, Kadyrov told the press that it was time for him to step down from his post. His statement immediately triggered a flood of pleas for him to stay on from loyal, whether genuine or terrified into loyalty, residents of Chechnya. A campaign under the hashtag #Рамзаннеуходи [#RamzanDon’tGo] was launched and went viral, with Chechen supplicants eventually joined by some Russian politicians and other prominent Russian public figures. It wasn’t until March 25, that President Putin announced Kadyrov would remain as acting head of the Chechen Republic and encouraged him to run in the September election for the head of Chechnya. However, Putin’s remarks included a note of warning: he specifically stated that Kadyrov must work on building cooperation with federal authorities and ensure Chechnya’s compliance with Russian laws. Both the delay and the warning suggest that Moscow has become apprehensive of Kadyrov, however not enough to change Chechnya’s leadership. The September election clearly has special significance for Kadyrov, as this is the first time his authority in Chechnya will be re-affirmed through direct popular vote, as opposed to appointment by the Kremlin. It is in these circumstances that the Chechen authorities have been viciously and comprehensively cracking down on outside critics and those local residents whose loyalty they deem questionable. Although on paper three other candidates are also running for the head of Chechnya, they have no political clout or wide public recognition, and effectively there is no competition for Ramzan Kadyrov. Most importantly, the intense crackdown does not allow people in Chechnya to express their views freely and fosters an environment in which free and fair elections simply are not feasible.
II. Attacks on Dissenters Inside Chechnya Since mid-2014, the global drop in oil prices, coupled with the effect of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and European Union over Ukraine, has taking an increasing toll on the country’s economy. It has had a serious impact on Chechnya, where local elites, used to luxury, began squeezing the public, demanding greater kickbacks from businessmen and public servants alike. Towards the end of 2015, worn out by stifling extortion, some local residents began to vent their frustration not only in private conversations but also on social media, including Facebook and VKontakte, Russia’s most popular social network, as well as WhatsApp and other messaging applications. In response, the Chechen leadership launched a full blown witch hunt on local critics, punishing them ruthlessly through abductions by law enforcement officials; unlawful detention; cruel and degrading treatment; death threats; and threats and physical abuse against family members. These abuses send an unmistakable message of intimidation to others that undermines freedom of expression. One person living in Chechnya described the fierce crackdown and the level of fear in the region as “simply unbearable”: Now when I think back to the war, I realize that back then we were not as frightened as now. Fear of a bomb, fear of a bullet–it’s something we could live with, I can live with… But this relentless pressure, this utter humiliation–I just cannot deal with it, I’m ashamed of myself. Every day, they take away another piece of my dignity. They tick me off every day, they drill me, they make me toe the line. It’s like walking a minefield, always looking over your shoulder, waiting for danger, waiting for them to take you away. In one case documented below a man died following his enforced disappearance and torture by law enforcement officials. In another a woman and her three under aged daughters were unlawfully detained, threatened, and ill-treated by police officials in retaliation for her husband’s public remarks criticizing the authorities. The mother and the eldest daughter, age 17, were both beaten and threatened with death, with the objective of convincing them to persuade her husband to retract his comments. The mother was also subjected to a mock execution. In another five cases documented below law enforcement and security officials abducted people and subjected them to cruel and degrading treatment; four of those individuals were forcibly disappeared for periods of time ranging from one to twelve days. Five of the people whose cases are documented in this report were forced to publicly apologize to Chechen leadership for their supposedly untruthful claims and renounce their actions and comments. Personal and family honor are of enormous value in Chechen society, and loss of face through public humiliation is viewed in highly negative terms there. Numerous local residents interviewed by the International Crisis Group (ICG) for a 2015 report said public humiliation was one of the two main root causes of the paralyzing fear in contemporary Chechen society, the second one being collective punishment. One said: “It’s not even violence that is scary… You won’t be able to live with dignity in this republic anymore. This is worse than death.” Another resident of Chechnya told Human Rights Watch, “I cannot think of a worse fate than being put in front of a camera, like all those unfortunate people, to grovel before the authorities in an act of contrition, beating your breast, calling yourself a crook and a liar.” The cases of abuse against local critics documented below are possibly only the tip of the iceberg. Human Rights Watch is aware of other, similar cases but could not include them in this report because victims or their family members specifically requested us not to publish their stories or because we could not obtain video materials and other evidence to confirm their accounts. There is also little doubt that some abuses against local residents in Chechnya may never come to the attention of human rights monitors or journalists because the climate of fear in the region is overwhelming and local residents have been largely intimidated into silence. Khizir Ezhiev (forcibly disappeared, tortured, killed) On December 19, 2015, unidentified gunmen abducted Khizir Ezhiev, a senior lecturer in Economics at the Grozny State Oil Technical University. His broken body was found on January 1, 2016 some distance outside Grozny. At around 6 p.m. on December 19, four gunmen in civilian clothes approached Ezhiev, 35, at the service station where he was fixing his car, put him in their vehicle and drove away. His relatives later found out that they took Ezhiev to a police precinct in Grozny. On December 28, Kheda Saratova, a member of Chechnya’s human rights council, which reports directly to Ramzan Kadyrov, wrote on Facebook that Ezhiev’s wife chose not to file a missing person report with the authorities out of fear that it could create problems for her husband, and expressed hope Ezhiev would soon return home. Saratova also wrote that a police officer apparently told Ezhiev’s relatives that Ezhiev had been detained but then escaped from the police. On New Year’s day, Ezhiev’s dead body was discovered in a forest near the village of Roshni-Chu, approximately 40 kilometers from Grozny. A forensic report stated he allegedly died from internal bleeding after “falling off a cliff,” with one of his six broken ribs piercing a lung. No further investigation has been carried out into his death. A close acquaintance of Ezhiev’s told Human Rights Watch that Ezhiev had participated in a closed group on VKontakte that discussed the situation in the republic and expressed critical views of the Chechen leadership’s policies. The acquaintance said that on December 19 Chechen police detained several other members of the group. Not long before their detention, the group’s members apparently made derogatory comments about Kadyrov’s pilgrimage to Mecca, and Ezhiev wrote, “apparently, all sorts are welcome there these days.” Ezhiev’s relatives quickly established, through personal contacts, at which police station in Grozny Ezhiev was being held. Their source told them he was in “bad shape” and could barely move after a beating. The relatives hoped to get him released in exchange for money but a police official told them a few days later that Ezhiev had “escaped.” “The other young men were eventually released. But it seems that Khizir died from the beating and they [police authorities] were trying to cover it up,” Ezhiev’s acquaintance said. There is no official record of Ezhiev’s detention. He is survived by a wife and four small children. The family has not pressed for investigation into his death. Khusein Betelgeriev (enforced disappearance and torture) On the evening of March 31, 2016 two men who said they were from Chechen law enforcement forcibly disappeared Khusein Betelgeriev, a middle-aged Chechen poet, songwriter, and performer. They drove up to the Betelgeriev’s home in Kalinina village, a suburb of Grozny, in a black VAZ-2109 vehicle, forcibly entered the house, ordered Betelgeriev to follow them, and refused to tell his wife where they were taking him. When his relatives tried calling Betelgeriev on his mobile phone 15 minutes later, nobody answered. On April 2, still having no information regarding Betelgeriev’s fate and whereabouts, his family members filed a missing person report with police in Grozny. His disappearance was widely reported in social media. He returned home 12 days later, beaten. Independent experts and people close to Betelgeriev tied his abduction to his pro-Chechen separatist views. On the day of his enforced disappearance, Betelgeriev had posted, in a closed Facebook discussion group called “History of the Chechen Republic,” comments praising the Chechen separatist movement. On April 3, Anastasia Kirilenko, a freelance journalist who follows Chechnya closely, posted to her Facebook page a selection of these comments. She wrote, “on the morning [of March 31] he had written about Ichkeria [independent Chechnya] being immortal and in the evening [of the same day], he was abducted.” Ekaterina Sokirianskaia of the International Crisis Group also connected Betelgeriev’s disappearance to the fact that he did not hide his separatist views and “sang of freedom and dreamed of independent Chechnya.” Betelgeriev’s spouse told Caucasian Knot, an independent media portal covering current developments in the Caucasus, that his disappearance could be related to his Facebook activity, which might have displeased the Chechen authorities. Furthermore, a friend of Betelgeriev told Human Rights Watch that local authorities were frustrated with his reluctance to take part in pro-Kadyrov public activities. On April 4, Chechnya’s chief prosecutor ordered the local investigation authorities to prioritize the case, and the Investigation Committee for the Chechen Republic promptly stated on its website that it was looking into reports of Betelgeriev’s abduction. On April 11, Kheda Saratova, a member of Chechnya’s human rights council, told the press that Betelgeriev had returned home safely. She claimed however, that she had no information as to where Betelgeriev had been for the previous 11 days and could not comment on the circumstances of his return. One of Betelgeriev’s acquaintances confirmed to Human Rights Watch that Betelgeriev had “returned home,” that his captors had “beaten him to pulp,” and as a result he had broken bones and the state of his health was “devastating.” The acquaintance declined to provide any information about where and by whom Betelgeriev had been held. The source also flagged that Betelgeriev’s family did not want to be contacted by any journalists or human rights organizations, citing profound fear. Igor Kalyapin, the head of the Joint Mobile Group of Human Rights Defenders in Chechnya, told Human Rights Watch that the group approached Betelgeriev’s family offering to send a private ambulance for him and organize quality medical assistance for him outside of Chechnya. However, the family refused and asked Kalyapin not to contact them again. These details suggest that Betelgeriev was released from captivity on condition that he maintains complete silence about what had happened to him, a common practice in such cases. A member of the Russian Union of Writers, Khusein Betelgeriev was also a senior faculty member at the Chechen State University, until his sudden dismissal in 2015. An acquaintance of Betelgeriev’s told Human Rights Watch that he had lost his job at the university because of his separatist views, his lack of obsequiousness to the authorities, and his reluctance to support Ramzan Kadyrov publicly. Taita Yunusova (arbitrary detention) On October 10, 2015, between 3 and 4 a.m., unidentified men took Taita Yunusova, a women’s rights activist, from a relative’s house near Grozny. Around that time, a friend received a text message from her, which said, “That’s it, I’m done for!” and that was the last known communication anyone had from her until about 20 hours later. Taita Yunusova, 49, the leader of a local activist group Live Thread, is one of several women rights activists featured in Grozny Blues, a documentary by European filmmakers about the legacy of the protracted armed conflict in Chechnya. Since April 2015, the film had been screened at several festivals in Europe and South Korea, and at the time of Yunusova’s apparent detention it was about to be screened at Artdocfest Film Festival in Moscow and St. Petersburg. On October 7, a clip from the film, which showed Yunusova and several other women activists, appeared on YouTube. Though the women did not explicitly criticize the Chechen leadership on camera, internet users from Chechen diaspora communities made online comments about Chechen women supposedly mocking Kadyrov. One of the women was unofficially detained by Chechen police the following day and allegedly beaten for several hours, humiliated and threatened with execution, and another immediately left Chechnya. On October 10, the producers of Grozny Blues sent a letter to Ramzan Kadyrov expressing alarm about Yunusova’s apparent disappearance. They also posted the letter to Kadyrov’s Instagram page, from which it was deleted several hours later. The chair of Artdocfest Festival, Vitaly Mansky, posted an open letter to Kadyrov on Facebook, urging Kadyrov to “ensure the security of Taita Yunusova.” Several prominent artists publicized the case, alleging a connection between Yunusova’s apparent abduction and her role in the documentary, and it immediately generated media attention. At around 11 p.m. on the same day, a colleague of Yunusova’s called Caucasian Knot and said, “They have just let her go, and she is OK. She is alive, and that’s the most important thing.” On October 11, Kheda Saratova from Chechnya’s human rights council, wrote on Facebook that she visited Yunusova at home in the morning and Yunusova “is all right, there was no abduction and there especially was no violence.” Later the same day, Yunusova publicly denied that she had been detained. She gave a video interview claiming that she was “shocked” to “find out about own abduction from the media,” and that the stories about her supposed abduction “discredit [her] in the eyes of the public and the [Chechen] leadership.” She said media reports about her disappearance were a “provocation,” vehemently denied allegations that she had been abducted, and said that she spent the day in an oncology ward taking care of a sick relative.
Rizvan Ibraghimov and Abubakar Didiev (forcibly disappeared, publicly humiliated) Rizvan Ibraghimov and Abubakar Didiev, two middle-aged Chechen researchers and publicists, disappeared for several days in April 2016 following on an abduction-style detention. Ibraghimov and Didiev are known in Chechnya for their unconventional interpretations of the history of the Chechen people and of Islam, which are out of line with those promoted by the Chechen authorities. On March 28, Ibraghimov and Didiev attended a roundtable on the problems of the ethnic origins of Chechens organized by representatives of the muftiat, or chief of the local religious authority, of Chechnya. According to Caucasian Knot and other sources, the purpose of the meeting was specifically to reprimand Ibraghimov for a lecture, “The True History of the Chechen People” which he had delivered at the International University al-Mustafa in Iran in February 2016, and to warn him and Didiev that their ideas were unacceptable. On the night of April 1, 2016, local law enforcement officers took both men from their respective homes. On April 4, Caucasian Knot and Novaya Gazeta reported that the men’s relatives said they knew the men’s whereabouts. The media also reported that the men had been taken away by Chechen law enforcement officials who also seized their personal computers, and that their social media and Skype accounts had been hacked or forcibly taken over. Both men retuned home in the evening of April 5. Earlier that day, Ramzan Kadyrov held a meeting with Chechen academics and opinion leaders. Kadyrov wrote about the meeting on his Instagram account, commenting that Ibraghimov and Didiev had “offered apologies to the academic community and religious leadership of Chechnya” for their flawed theories and publications. A video from that event, broadcast on Grozny TV, shows Ibraghimov and Didiev standing and apologizing to the meeting participants for their “mistakes.” Following the event, Ibraghimov and Didiev were able to return to their families. Rizvan Ibraghimov later wrote, but later deleted, a post on his Facebook page that he had spent the days he was missing at the Oktyabrsky District Police Station in Grozny: I, …Rizvan Ibraghimov, spent the last 4 days starting the night of April 1 to 2 in Grozny’s Oktyabrsky District Police Station. Nobody abducted me, but they held me in custody for fear of me fleeing. Today, there was a talk with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, after which I and Abubakar Didiev were freed. No coercive measures were used against us. More details will be given tomorrow. I express huge gratitude to those who worried about us. According to media reports, Didiev left Chechnya soon afterwards. In July, a court in Chechnya upheld a motion by the prosecutor’s office to ban as “extremist” several of Ibraghimov’s books.” Adam Dikaev (humiliating and degrading punishment) Adam Dikaev was publicly humiliated for his criticism of Kadyrov in social media. On December 11, 2015, Dikaev made unflattering comments about a video that appeared on Kadyrov’s Instagram account on December 2 featuring Kadyrov exercising, in a t-shirt with Putin’s photo, to a popular Russian song “My best friend is President Putin.” Dikaev’s comment implied that Kadyrov had dishonored the memory of the Chechen war by praising Putin, who launched the war in Chechnya in 1999. On December 20, a new video appeared on Facebook and other social media, which featured Adam Dikaev walking on a treadmill, without his pants, wearing just a hoodie and underwear. On the video, Dikaev renounced his actions and abased himself: I am Adam Dikaev from Avtury village. Thinking that no one can find me, I wrote in the Instagram what I should not have written. They found me and took my pants down. I realized I am nobody. From now on, Putin is my father, grandfather, and tsar. You can find this video on my Instagram account at adam chechenskiy. Human Rights Watch has no information about the circumstances under which the video of Dikaev was made, however forcing Dikaev to appear publicly in underwear was a form of humiliation clearly intended to deprive him of all public dignity. The manner in which Dikaev was ill-treated not only punished him but sent a powerful warning to other potential critics of Kadyrov to keep quiet or risk being publicly stripped of their dignity too. Aishat Inaeva (public humiliation) Aishat Inaeva, a social worker, was subjected to public humiliation in December 2015 for having openly appealed to Ramzan Kadyrov about Chechen officials’ alleged extortion practices. In the first half of December, Inaeva disseminated through the social media platform WhatsApp an audio appeal to Ramzan Kadyrov, complaining about what she described as the practice by local officials of collecting debts and advance payments for gas and electricity bills, and how this practice was pushing ordinary people below the poverty line. She noted the impact of these actions on public servants, who face forced deductions from their wages and threats of dismissal for refusing to pay. Her recording also alleged that Chechen authorities live in luxury and spend staggering amounts of money on entertainment, while ordinary people struggle just to get by, and suggested that Kadyrov had to be aware of how those practices affected Chechnya’s population. “People are dying of hunger but you don’t care,” she said. Her appeal went viral among Chechen users of WhatsApp. On December 18, Grozny TV aired a story about Kadyrov meeting with Inaeva and her husband. The segment, which is 16 minutes long, shows Kadyrov and other local officials chastising her as she renounced and apologized for her alleged “lies.” I apologize… No one asked me [to give extra payments]... You help [the poor]… I was confused and not able to understand [what I said]… I was mistaken. I acknowledge that. I do not know how and why I did that. In the video, Inaeva appeared extremely frightened and subdued, spoke quietly, and kept her head bowed, staring at the floor. Kadyrov also questioned Inaeva’s husband, who repeatedly said no one deprived him of salary, apologized for his wife and for “allowing her to spread all those lies.” Ramazan Dzhalaldinov (threats, house-burning, abuse of family-members, public humiliation) Ramazan Dzhalaldinov, 56, is an ethnic Avar from Kenkhi, a small village not far from Chechnya’s border with Dagestan populated mainly by Avars. On April 14, 2016 Dzhalaldinov published a video message for the nationally televised, live call-in show that Russian President Vladimir Putin holds annually. In the video, Dzhalaldinov complained, among other things, that the village was in ruins as a result of the Chechen wars and seasonal landslides. He pointed to the scenery of his village, with its ramshackle houses and washed-out roads and cited the 2003 government regulation on compensation to civilians who lost housing and property due to military operations in Chechnya. Dzhalaldinov argued that local Chechen officials are mired in corruption and embezzle the funds allocated for reconstruction. Dzhalaldinov and dozens of his co-villagers had previously sent multiple complaints on the issue to Chechnya’s leadership and law enforcement authorities, but the complaints yielded no tangible result. The video was not broadcast during the call-in show, but after Dzhalaldinov posted it to his VKontakte account it was swiftly picked up by the Caucasian Knot media portal. Dzhalaldinov fled Kenkhi to neighboring Dagestan, fearing for his safety. Several days after the video’s publication, Islam Kadyrov, chair of the Ramzan Kadyrov’s administration and his close relative, traveled to the Sharoi district, where Kenkhi is located, rounded up a group of local public servants and spoke to them on camera. They said that Dzhalaldinov’s claims had nothing to do with reality and that he was “unstable” and a “liar.” The story was broadcast on Grozny TV on April 18. At around that time, Dzhalaldinov’s cousins contacted him from Kenkhi warning him that a group of village officials paid them a visit, saying that the only way to “save” Dzhalaldinov from harm was to help spread the story about him allegedly being mentally unstable. On May 6, Ramzan Kadyrov and his entourage paid a visit to Kenkhi and spoke to local residents who, again, said on camera that they had no complaints and their co-villager was “unstable,” a bully, and a liar, infamous for making innumerable “false” and “fruitless” complaints. The broadcast story included no comments from those who attempted to support Dzhalaldinov and uphold his allegations and were harassed and threatened by officials in response. From mid-April through the early May, police officials visited Dzhalaldinov’s home several times, putting pressure on his family members to reveal his whereabouts and insisting that he was wanted for interrogation. On May 13, just after midnight, a dozen gunmen in masks and camouflaged uniforms forced their way into Dzhalaldinov’s house. Dzhalaldinov’s wife, Nazirat Nabieva, and their three daughters, 17-year-old Muslimat, 12-year-old Sabirat, and 10-year-old Tabarak were at home. (Nazirat’s adult sons had fled Kenkhi soon after their father for security reasons.) The gunmen ordered Nabieva and her daughters to get into one of their vehicles with their passports and the children’s birth certificates. When Muslimat picked up her phone to call their relatives for help, one of gunmen yelled at her and snatched the phone away. Another gunman pushed Nabieva to the floor with his automatic rifle when she begged them to leave the younger girls behind. The other gunmen dragged the crying children out of bed and, without letting Nabieva or her daughters get dressed, put them into the vehicle and drove to the Sharoi regional police department. At the police department, local police officials and their chief threatened and beat both Nabieva and her eldest daughter, demanding that they reveal the whereabouts of Dzhalaldinov and his sons and demanding that they call Dzhalaldinov a liar. A police official held Nabieva while a more senior official punched her on her back, on her ribcage, and in her kidneys and kicked her with his booted feet. He also hit her with the butt of his gun, put the gun barrel to her head and neck, threatened to kill her, and fired the gun three or four times above her head. All the while, he kept saying that he was punishing her for all the trouble caused by her husband. He also forced her to say that the allegations in Dzhalaldinov’s video were false, filming her statement with his cell phone. The same senior police official choked Muslimat and threatened to kill her, forcing the girl to give up the phone number of one of her brothers, which she originally claimed she did not know. He also hit her on the neck and the back of her legs, saying that her father was a bandit and if she wanted him and her brothers alive, she needed to persuade her father to retract all of his complaints. After more than an hour, police officials put Nabieva and her daughters back into the same vehicle, drove them directly to Chechnya’s administrative border with Dagestan and, without returning their identification documents, told them to go to Dagestan and never return to Chechnya. While Nabieva and the girls were being held at the station, unidentified men torched their house in Kenkhi and ordered the neighbors to stay silent. Later that day, Ramzan Kadyrov said that Dzhalaldinov intentionally “took his family out of Chechnya and simulated an arson attack.” A few days later, with the help of human rights lawyers, Dzhalaldinov filed complaints with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor’s office regarding the ill-treatment of his wife and daughters and house-burning by local police officials. He and his family members also spoke to the media. On May 15, according to media reports, unknown men tried to kidnap Dzhalaldinov in front of a mosque in the Tsumadinsky district of Dagestan, but the men who gathered in the mosque protected him. On May 21, Grozny TV showed a story about a petition to Putin from Kenkhi residents. Allegedly 455 men signed the petition claiming that “enemies of the state” and “pseudo-patriots, who call themselves human rights defenders,” were using Dzhalaldinov to wage an “information war against Russia” and incite “national discord among ethnic groups” in Chechnya. On May 30, Dzhalaldinov appeared on Grozny TV, giving an apologetic speech: Last Friday, I went to the mosque and with the help of the imam started looking for a way to approach Kadyrov. I asked Khasmagomed [Abubakarov–a respected elder in Chechnya] to apologize to Ramzan [Kadyrov] on my behalf. I apologize. I made a mistake. I ask other people not to repeat my mistake. The things those provocateurs have written [about Dzhalaldinov’s video message] are 99 percent lies. I never criticized Ramzan [Kadyrov]. No one persecuted me. I walked in parks, visited museums, and made photos freely in Makhachkala [in Dagestan]. I hid from no one and never received threats. Now many will say I was threatened or coerced [to say this]. I make this speech voluntarily… Ramzan [Kadyrov] rebuilt this [Kenkhi] village. On the same day, Kadyrov posted on Instagram that he accepted Dzhalaldinov’s apology. He noted that “some abnormal forces” were trying to use Dzhalaldinov “to achieve their filthy, harmful objectives,” subjected him to a “psychological and information attack,” and talked him into fleeing Chechnya, citing false security threats–but fortunately, Dzhalaldinov “found the strength and wisdom” to realize his mistake and to “publicly admit he was wrong.” Dzhalaldinov immediately returned to Kenkhi with his family. Approximately two weeks later, he withdrew his complaints about alleged abuses by police officials. Since then and until the time of this writing, he and his family members have been safe and even received some money from Chechen officials to rebuild their house.
III. Attacks on Human Rights Defenders The murder of a leading Chechen human rights defender, Natalia Estemirova, in July 2009 immensely contributed to the climate of fear in the region, making it nearly impossible for local human rights defenders to take up cases of abuses by law enforcement and security agencies under Kadyrov’s control without unacceptable risks to their lives and their families. Under those circumstances, Igor Kalyapin, the head of what is now called the Committee for Prevention of Torture, a Nizhny Novgorod-based group, organized the Joint Mobile Group of Human Rights Defenders in Chechnya (JMG). This initiative involves sending human rights lawyers and activists from a range of prominent human rights organizations in other Russian regions to work in Chechnya on a rotating basis. They provide legal aid and other forms of assistance to victims of human rights violations in Chechnya. The JMG has been operating since November 2009, with Kalyapin and his Committee in the lead, focusing on bringing to justice perpetrators of enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial executions in Chechnya. Until December 2014, the JMG was able to maintain an office in Grozny and work throughout Chechnya, despite the increasingly hostile climate and several security incidents. However, at the end of 2014, the Chechen leadership apparently became determined to push the JMG out of Chechnya, leaving victims of abuses by law enforcement without any means of pursuing justice. As of December 2014, the JMG’s office was attacked and ransacked or burned three times; its activists have been attacked repeatedly apparently by Chechen authorities’ proxies; and a massive smear campaign against the group has been raging in the Chechen media. Since early 2016, the JMG no longer has its team based in Chechnya for security reasons. The intense crackdown on JMG was apparently triggered by a complaint Kalyapin filed with Russia’s law enforcement authorities against Kadyrov. But the Chechen authorities’ hostility towards the group had been building since JMG’s launch as the only independent group in the region taking up cases of abuse by local law enforcement and security officials. Chronicle of the Crackdown against the JMG and its Leadership On December 5, 2014, armed Islamist insurgents carried out an attack in Grozny, killing 14 and injuring 36 law enforcement officers. The deceased included Ramzan Kadyrov’s 22-year-old cousin, Umar Kadyrov. In retaliation for the attack, Kadyrov promised to “raze to the ground” houses of insurgents’ family members and expel the families from Chechnya “with no right to return.” Within days, at least nine houses in five different towns were set on fire by unknown men and burnt down. On December 8, Igor Kalyapin petitioned Russia’s prosecutor general and the chief of the investigation authorities to examine Kadyrov’s statement for signs of abuse of official powers. Kalyapin argued that by asserting collective responsibility and referring to specific forms of punishment for relatives of insurgents, the head of Chechnya gave a green light to targeted criminal acts against civilians. On December 10, the Chechen leadership unleashed a smear campaign against Kalyapin and the JMG, starting with Kadyrov accusing Kalyapin of “defending bandits” and laundering money for insurgents. The same day, the speaker of the Chechen parliament accused Kalyapin of trying to make a name for himself by maligning Kadyrov. On December 11, unidentified men attacked Kalyapin and pelted him with eggs as he spoke at a news conference in Moscow about collective punishment in Chechnya. The next day, Chechen TV aired the program “Tochka Oporu [Support Point]” where the guest speakers vilified Kalyapin and his colleagues for supposedly “profiting from [the Chechen] war” and using human suffering to get grants from Western donors. On December 13, the Chechen authorities sponsored a mass rally in Grozny “against terrorists’ supporters,” supposedly at the initiative of relatives of killed policemen. Demonstrators held banners “Kalyapin, go home $$” and “Ramzan Kadyrov, protect us from the ‘Kalyapins’!” Speakers called human rights defenders “fascists” and asked the officials to get rid of “pro-Western” “supporters of terrorism.” On the same day, the JMG team noticed they were being followed by armed, masked men in a car believed to belong to Chechen law enforcement officials. In the evening, their office in Grozny caught fire in an apparent arson attack and was destroyed. The next day, police entered the apartment rented by JMG in Grozny for the team members and, without providing any explanation or a search warrant to the two JMG activists present, ransacked the apartment, confiscated mobile phones, several cameras, laptop computers, and other electronic equipment. They also conducted body searches of the activists, searched their car, and held the activists for several hours before releasing them without charge. Though local law enforcement authorities launched a perfunctory investigation into the alleged arson attack, it was soon suspended without result. On December 17, Kadyrov once again attacked JMG on Instagram: …US State Department and its henchmen launched a new project called ‘Kalyapin & Co.’ They created a beautiful story about some mobile group of young and athletically built men from Nizhny Novgorod who struggle for human rights in Chechnya. In reality, Kalyapin and his group do not care about human rights. They care about insurgents, terrorists, and their families. Why? Because he who pays the piper calls the tune. And who pays them? The UK Embassy and other Western sources gave the Committee [Against Torture] 44534000 rubles… In January 2015, five men in dark clothing and face masks forced their way into the office of the Memorial Human Rights Center in Gudermes, Chechnya’s second largest city, and pelted the staff with eggs screaming, “This is [for supporting] Kalyapin!” In May, the Grozny Information Agency published another smear piece vilifying JMG and accusing the group of setting fire to their own office in Chechnya: ...They tried to ‘kill two birds with one stone’: acquire ‘fame’ of persecuted human rights defenders and hid all of their financial irregularities – when they launder big money of their western masters under the guise of human rights protection in Chechnya… Grozny TV also alleged that Kalyapin and JMG were “pumping out funds from western backers for imaginary human rights issues and [imaginary] work.” On June 3, 2015, an aggressive mob surrounded the building in which the JMG had its office at the time, smashing the JMG's car in the courtyard with metal crowbars, before forcing their way into the building. They broke down the door and stormed into the JMG office. Several people also climbed onto the office balcony and tried to break in through the window. Two JMG activists who were in the office escaped through a window on the other side of the building. The mob ransacked the office, then broke down the door of the apartment rented by the JMG staff on the same floor of the building and continued with the rampage. Local law enforcement authorities did not intervene despite multiple attempts by JMG activists to reach them by phone. A few days later, Chechnya’s Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs said he had no desire to respond to a phone call from Kalyapin, a “representative of the security services of the US and other hostile states.” Meanwhile, Kadyrov claimed that the JMG staff deliberately provoked the attack to “earn fame in international mass media and receive new American funds.” At this writing, there has been no accountability for the mob attack. In October 2015, a JMG team took a crew of Austrian journalists to film destroyed houses of insurgents’ families in the Chechen village of Yandi. Unidentified men attacked the group, pelted them with eggs, and chased them away. The smear campaign against Kalyapin and the JMG continued in Chechen media in 2016, with the group and its leader being repeatedly accused of working in the interests of their alleged Western sponsors to discredit Chechen leadership and destabilize Chechnya and Russia. On March 9, as described below, a mob viciously attacked a bus with Russian and foreign journalists on a trip to Chechnya organized by the Committee for Prevention of Torture through the JMG initiative. Two nights later, Chechen police broke the door of the apartment in Grozny, which the JMG was using for work after their office was ransacked in June 2015. They broke the security camera, then ransacked the place, and finally left, sealing the doors shut. Local law enforcement authorities refused JMG’s requests to open an investigation into the actions by Chechen police. At this writing, JMG no longer has teams based on the ground in Chechnya due to security concerns. Violent Attack on Igor Kalyapin in Grozny On March 16, 2016, a mob assaulted Kalyapin in Grozny, where he had gone to look into a violent attack against a group of journalists one week before (see below). At around 7 p.m. approximately 40 minutes after he got to his room at the Grozny Citi Hotel, a hotel administrator knocked on his door, accompanied by a security guard, and another man. The administratortold Kalyapin he had to leave the hotel immediately because of the “unpleasant things” Kalyapin had said about Chechnya’s leader. Kalyapin gathered his belongings and left the hotel. As soon as he got outside, a mob of men, who were clearly waiting for him, pushed Kalyapin to the ground, kicked him, pelted him with eggs, and threw flour and bright green antiseptic liquid on him. Kalyapin suffered no injuries, but by the time his assailants fled, he was covered head to toe in flour, eggs, and green antiseptic. He told Human Rights Watch: It was a well-prepared effort. When they escorted me to the hotel lobby I wanted to leave straight away but I could not do this. A group of women, apparently hotel employees, were waiting for me downstairs. They surrounded me, not letting me move towards the exit. They were yelling something about me saying bad things about Kadyrov and how the people of Chechnya won’t tolerate it. I tried to engage with them but they would not listen to me. Their role was clearly to keep me inside while the team of assailants were gathering outside with their supplies ready. And then I was literally pushed outside and the show began. Police eventually appeared at the scene and took Kalyapin to the city police station for questioning. Kalyapin told Human Rights Watch that police took his statement and photographed all of his clothing. A federal investigator came to the police station at Kalyapin’s request, who felt he was still at risk, and they left Chechnya together. On the same day, Grozny TV aired a program on Igor Kalyapin, accusing him of anti-Russian sabotage and lies for the sake of publicity. The anchor once again cited the amount of funds provided by foreign donors to the group. On March 19, following a very strong statement by the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, President Putin’s press secretary said that the attack against Kalyapin in Grozny was “possibly a sequel” to the March 9 attack on journalists and stressed that it was “unacceptable” and “a cause for concern.” The local prosecutor’s office in Grozny has ordered an investigation into the attack three times, and each time police opened a preliminary inquiry but declined to pursue a criminal case. At this writing, no one has been held accountable for the attack.
IV. Attacks on and Harassment of Journalists In recent years, journalists have been finding it increasingly difficult to work in Chechnya. One of the main obstacles many media professionals have described to Human Rights Watch is the climate of fear in the region, where on the one hand very few people dare talk to journalists, except to compliment the Chechen leadership, and on the other hand, those who do put themselves at great risk could be punished for speaking with or helping journalists. In 2016, several local journalists and activists who helped foreign and Russian independent media outlets with their Chechnya-related work had to leave the region due to well-grounded fears of reprisals. In the words of Anna Nemtsova of The Daily Beast, who has covered Chechnya since the second war broke out in 1999: It's never been easy in Chechnya. I don't remember the time when I wasn’t worried about the security of [the people I write about] but in the last couple of years we’ve been constantly, overwhelmingly concerned about doing harm, creating problems for the people I interview. It’s been the same with other colleagues. Some of our [interviewees] and helpers have been punished by Chechen authorities for talking to foreign press–they were arbitrarily detained, threatened, humiliated. The risk for journalists working in the field has also increased dramatically. Covering crises is never risk-free, but I don’t know any other region in Russia, where the people are so terrified by state repression and where independent observers, including journalists, feel so threatened. Indeed, the situation has clearly become more dangerous not only for local residents who talk to independent press but also for journalists who persevere with Chechnya work. The cases documented below include a violent attack on a group of journalists, including foreign journalists, a death threat against a prominent Russian journalist, and a case of arbitrary detention of another well-known Russian journalist. In March 2016, a group of masked men attacked a minibus driving a group of Russian and foreign journalists from Ingushetia to Chechnya, dragged the journalists from the bus, beat them, and set the bus on fire. The attack was so shocking that it triggered an immediate, unparalleled reaction from President Putin’s press secretary, who called it “absolutely outrageous” and called on law enforcement authorities to ensure accountability for this crime. However, at this writing, although an investigation into the attack was nominally opened, it has not yielded any tangible results. Anna Nemtsova told Human Rights Watch that she and many other media workers regarded the attack and the failure to identify the attackers as a warning to independent journalists, “a strong signal that this is what’s going to happen to you if you dare to come and work in Chechnya.” Attack on Bus with Journalists On March 9, 2016, at least 15 masked men armed with sticks and knives attacked a bus carrying eight people and their driver as the group traveled from Ingushetia to Chechnya. The group which was badly beaten by the attackers included six journalists–one Norwegian, one Swede, and fourRussians–andtwo Russian human rights activists.All were injured, and five were hospitalized. The attackers set the bus on fire. The journalists and activists were on a trip organized by the Committee for Prevention of Torture through the JMG initiative. Sergei Romanov, a lawyer with the committee who was in touch with his colleagues during and after the incident, said that the group had noticed they were under surveillance by people whose identities they did not know from the beginning of the trip on March 7. Those attacked included Ivan Zhiltsov and Ekaterina Vanslova, staff members of the Committee for Prevention of Torture; Oeystein Windstad, a correspondent for Norway’s Ny Tid newspaper; Lena Maria Persson Loefgren, a Swedish state radio journalist; and four Russian journalists: Aleksandra Elagina of The New Times, Egor Skovoroda of Mediazona, and freelance journalists Anton Prusakov and Mikhail Solunin. Romanov told Human Rights Watch that on the evening of March 9, when they were near the village of Ordzhenikidzevskaya, close to the administrative border between Ingushetia and Chechnya, three cars carrying the masked men blocked the road, forcing the bus to stop. The men dragged the passengers out of the bus, kicked them and beat them with sticks, calling them “terrorists” who would “not be allowed to work on our land.” They then poured gasoline on the bus and set it afire, destroying the journalists’ equipment and some of the victims’ identification documents. Having torched the bus, they fled. Lena Maria Persson Loefgren, who suffered multiple bruises and a deep gash on her upper leg told Human Rights Watch: When those men attacked the bus, I dropped to the floor and tried to shield myself from glass fragments as they were breaking the windows. I thought they just aimed to frighten us… And then they broke the door, which the driver had locked, and they got in, through the driver’s seat–so I was the first person they faced as I was right behind it. They were screaming, “You are friends of terrorists!” And I look at this man wielding his stick and I try to reason with him, “I’m a Swedish journalist. I’m a 59-year-old woman, a mother, a grandmother. Will you really beat me?” And he did… It’s hard to come to terms with [it]… They beat us with their sticks, and kicked us. They pulled me out of the bus by my hair and they did the same with the young girl from the human rights group [Ekaterina Vanslova], who was on the floor next to me. They forced us face down on the ground, and they continued beating us, mostly on the legs… They were threatening to kill us while they were beating us. They were a mob. Local residents arrived at the scene, called an ambulance and the police. The ambulance took five of the victims, including the driver, to the Sunzhenskaya district central hospital in Ingushetia. Ingush law enforcement dispatched to the scene drove the others to the Sunzhenski district police station for immediate questioning. Those hospitalized gave testimony to police in the hospital the next day. The driver, Bashir Pliev, suffered particularly serious injuries–multiple rib fractures, an arm fracture, a leg fracture, and a concussion. Oeystein Windstad, who was on his very first trip to the region and does not speak Russian, sustained a concussion, multiple bruises, and stab wounds to his arms, legs, and face, a leg fracture and two broken teeth. He suggested to Human Rights Watch that he suffered so many injuries because he resisted when the assailants attempted to drag him out of the bus: It was dark and when those cars blocked our way and the men in masks with sticks jumped out, I thought, this is it, I’m going to die. I remembered that human rights defender [Natalia Estemirova] and how she was kidnapped from Chechnya and taken to Ingushetia to be killed… So, when they started to drag people out of the bus, I had no doubt it’s now my turn and they’ll just shoot us. I could hear my colleague, Lena Maria, screaming as they were dragging her by her hair, and I thought I won’t let them drag me outside, even if it only means making it more difficult for them and living 30 seconds longer… I crawled to the very back of the bus. They kept trying to drag me out, pulling on my limbs, hitting me, kicking me. They pulled off my winter jacket and then my sweater, probably thinking that this way it’ll be easier for them to push me out of the broken window… There were shards of glass everywhere… I raised my legs resisting their efforts and one of them stabbed me deep into the leg–it was either a knife or a nail, I’m not sure, but one of them had a nail attached to the top of his wooden club. They did everything to pull me out but I thought letting them meant death, a bullet in the head. And then suddenly, one of them screamed something at me–I could not understand but my colleagues later told me he screamed they’d be burning the bus and if I wanted to burn with it, whatever–and they all jumped out. I thought it was my chance to escape. I jumped out of the bus and ran… They chased me for some 100 meters and then there was a big bang and I could see the sky light up. They set the bus on fire. According to the Committee for Prevention of Torture, having examined the scene of crime and questioned the victims and witnesses, law enforcement authorities launched a criminal investigation into “hooliganism, assault, damage to property, and obstruction of journalistic work.” At this writing, the investigation into the attack is ongoing but has not yielded any tangible results. Ilya Azar, Meduza (threats, arbitrary detention) Ilya Azar, a journalist with Meduza, an independent online media outlet registered in Latvia but targeted at Russian audiences, was detained by Chechen law enforcement officials in May 2016 in a suburb of Grozny, where he was working on a story about punitive house-burnings in Chechnya. The officials forced him to get into their vehicle, took away his phones, documents, and voice recorder, drove him to the main police precinct in Grozny and held him there for four hours. They released him but treated him in a hostile manner, making it clear to him that he could not continue with his work in Chechnya. Azar attempted to look into the burning of the home of the family of a man who, on the morning of May 9, had attacked a security checkpoint in Alkhan-Kala, a village bordering Grozny. On that day, one man detonated explosives he was carrying at the checkpoint, killing himself and injuring six police officers. The police killed a second man who was accompanying him. The men were identified as 24-year-old Ahmed Inalov and 26-year-old Shamil Dzhanaraliev, both in their twenties, from the village of Kirova about 6.5 kilometers from Alkhan-Kala. Ramzan Kadyrov posted belligerent comments on his social media account about the attack and the men and announced “raids and preventive [counter-insurgency] activities.” On May 11, media reported the houses belonging to the families of Inalov and Dzhanaraliev had burned down. Ilya Azar, who happened to be in Grozny on assignment for Meduza at the time, went to Kirova village to interview local residents and take pictures of the burned houses. Azar arrived there at around 1:10 p.m. and had managed only to take two photographs of the Dzhanaraliev’s destroyed house when a man who introduced himself as a deputy head of the local administration appeared and forbade him to take pictures. When Azar approached a group of residents with questions about the burnt houses, an unknown man immediately volunteered to speak for the group, denied allegations of house burning, and prevented the others from answering Azar’s questions. Two police officers arrived on the scene at around 1:40 p.m. and immediately took away Azar’s passport, voice recorder, and two mobile phones, accusing him of working for the insurgents and having Syrian connections. A man in civilian clothing drove up to them a few minutes later, introduced himself as Magomed Dashaev, head of the Grozny police, and ordered that Azar be taken to the Grozny police department “to check for terrorism.” He put Azar into his car and drove to Grozny. Another police official rode in the car with them. On the way to Grozny, Dashaev kept telling Azar that he resembled the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He asked whether Azar had been to Syria and whether he liked ISIS. Soon after their arrival at Grozny’s main police precinct, the two police officers who had detained Azar in Kirova also arrived there. At the police precinct, Dashaev and several other law enforcement officials questioned Azar about his views on Syria and ISIS, insisted he resembled al-Baghdadi or funded al-Baghdadi, and alleged he had travel to Kirova as an ISIS recruiter. They took photos of Azar, searched him, went through his personal belongings, and went through the data on his cell phones and voice recorder, deleting the photos of the burnt house in Kirova from his phone and all the files on the voice recorder. Then, they told Azar that Meduza is a foreign-funded media outlet that is hostile to Russia and that mass media should be reporting good news only as opposed to exposing problems and spoiling the country’s image. Eventually, they had Azar write an “explanation” regarding the circumstances of his detention and sign a document saying he suffered no ill-treatment by police officials, before they returned his equipment and released him at around 5:30 p.m. Azar’s detention lasted close to four hours. When leaving the precinct, he walked by an office transformed into a makeshift cell with eight men in it, asked the police officials who those men were and was told that they had been all detained earlier on the same day for “having long beards.” Around 8 p.m. that evening, Dashaev called Azar, who had already left Chechnya out of concern for his security, and asked to meet immediately to discuss “something urgent.” Azar refused. When contacted by Meduza, Chechnya’s Ministry of Internal Affairs denied they had detained Azar and claimed he was merely brought to the police precinct for an identity check. In his interview with Human Rights Watch, Azar pointed out that the working climate for journalists in Chechnya was increasingly difficult: My previous trip there was in December 2014. Back then, I faced no serious problems while doing my job. But it’s clear that there are particularly sensitive topics and recently, the reaction [by the Chechen authorities] to those journalists that take up those topics took a turn for the worse. Elena Milashina, Novaya Gazeta (harassment, threats) In May 2015, Elena Milashina, a Russian investigative journalist with a leading independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, received several serious threats in connection with her Chechnya reporting. In mid-May, Milashina travelled to Chechnya on assignment to report on thearranged, apparently polygamous marriageof a 17-year-old Chechen girl, Kheda Goylabieva, to a Chechen police chief close to Ramzan Kadyrov. Milashina had received information from local residents that the girl was being forced into the marriage and traveled to the village of Baitarki to speak with Goylabieva. The girl’s family members prevented Milashina from meeting with Goylabieva, so she left. On her way back from the village to Khasavyurt, a large Dagestani town on the administrative border with Chechnya, Milashina and two activists from the JMG, who accompanied her on the trip, noticed surveillance. Several vehicles took turns following them all the way from Baitarki to Khasavyurt. The next day, May 12, Milashina attempted another trip to Baitarki but several law enforcement officials at a checkpoint by the entry to Nojai-Yurt district, where Baitarki is located, told her that the Chechen security services are “after her” and she “should better watch out.” Concerned about her physical security, Novaya Gazeta insisted Milashina return to Moscow. A May 19, 2015 editorial,Grozny Inform, Chechnya’s most widely read media outlet closely linked to the republic’s leadership, strongly implied that Elena Milashina could meet the same fate as Anna Politkovskaya, theNovaya Gazetajournalist murdered in 2006, and Boris Nemtsov, the Russian political opposition leader murdered in February2015. The editorial claimed both killings were provocations by the United States and Israeli intelligence services, among others, in a bid to destabilize Russia. Noting that Politkovskaya received awards from “Americans and Europeans” for “constantly vilifying her country,” the editorial warned that Milashina, also a recipient of international awards, could be killed for the same reasons. Toward the end of the lengthy editorial, the author suggested that nameless forces were preparing the ground for Milashina to be victimized “…[I]f you go through all the potential victims, then by all indications, the latest hero who will pay with their life for ‘the defense of human rights’ in Russia will be ourNovaya Gazetaspecial correspondent. It was not at all an accident that Secretary of State John Kerry gave Milashina the International Women of Courage award for her journalistic investigation. Let’s hope that it is not posthumous...” the editorial said. Milashina told Human Rights Watch that given the timing of the editorial, the nature of her work, andGrozny Inform’s links to Chechnya’s leadership, she believed the editorial is “saying I’ll be killed and it’s been decided…. It’s a new sort of a death threat–not by phone, not by SMS, not by email but rather published in a state-sponsored media outlet…. It’s an attempt to silence me by threats, death threats actually, to prevent me from continuing my Chechnya reporting.” The threats against Milashina ledNovaya Gazetato formally demand an investigation, as well as temporarily bar its journalists from traveling to Chechnya. At this writing, the investigation has yielded no tangible results. In February 2016, Grozny TV broadcast a program about Milashina, accusing her of working for the US State Department and making up stories to destroy Chechen authorities’ reputation at the behest of her alleged foreign masters. By way of “evidence,” the host referred to the fact that Milashina had received the U.S. Secretary of State's International Women of Courage Awardin 2013, the award referenced in the Grozny Inform editorial, and an award from Human Rights Watch in 2009. On March 10, Milashina published an article in Novaya Gazeta alleging that Kadyrov’s closest associate, the speaker of Chechnya’s parliament, Magomev Daudov organized a failed kidnapping of a local rights activist. Following the publication, Chechnya’s human rights commissioner, Nurdi Nukhajiev, well-known for promoting the interests and public image of the Chechen leadership, demanded that the investigative authorities open a criminal case against Milashina for slandering Daudov and thereby “offending the Chechen people who delegated the power to their legislative representatives.”
V. International Standards and Domestic Legal Framework Russia is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Both the ECHR and ICCPR impose negative and positive obligations on governments with respect to the right to life, prohibition of torture, right to liberty and security of a person, and freedom of expression. Right to Life Article 2 of the ECHR imposes legal obligations on the state to protect the right to life. The European Court of Human Rights emphasizes the determinant character of Article 2 for the realization of other rights in the Convention and stresses that, “Article 2 ranks as one of the most fundamental provisions in the Convention.” Obligations to protect the right to life include not just desisting from unlawful taking of life, but proactive measures to prevent and deter unlawful killings and threats to life including from third parties, and to investigate and punish unlawful killings and threats that occur. Article 6 of the ICCPR correspondingly states that, “Every human being has the inherent right to life” and “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” The Constitution of the Russian Federation stipulates the right to life for everybody, and the Russian Criminal Code criminalizes murder and other forms of deprivation of life. Freedom from Torture and Cruel and Degrading Treatment Article 3 of the ECHR, Article 7 of the ICCPR, and Article 21 of the Russian Constitution guarantee freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The prohibition on torture is absolute in international law and both the ECHR and the ICCPR allow no derogation from the obligation on the right to life and freedom from torture, including in times of emergency. The Russian Criminal Code Article 117 criminalizes “infliction of physical or psychological suffering” and Article 286 prohibits abuse of power by officials. This report documents instances of prohibited ill-treatment and cruel and degrading punishments against people in retribution for expressing their views and also as collective punishment for views expressed by their family members. Prohibition of Unlawful Detention/Arrest Under Article 5 of the ECHR, Article 9 of the ICCPR, and Article 22 of the Russian Constitution, everyone has the right to liberty and inviolability of person. Accordingly, arrest or detention should be sanctioned by a court of law. Russia’s Constitution and the Criminal Procedure Code specifically limit detention without court sanction to 48 hours. This report documents instances of unlawful detention in retribution against people for expressing their views and also as collective punishment for views expressed by their family members. Article 5 of Russia’s Criminal Code stipulating for “principle of guilt” provides that persons can be punished solely for “socially dangerous actions (lack of action) and resulting socially dangerous consequence” and only if their individual guilt has been established by a court of law. Freedom of Expression Article 10 of the ECHR sets some limitations that could be imposed on freedom of expression but any limitations “must be established convincingly” and justifiable only when prescribed by law, are in pursuit of a legitimate goal, are necessary in a democratic society. Article 19 of the ICCPR provides “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.” Though the exercise of the right to free expression “may therefore be subject to certain restrictions… these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary (a) for respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) for the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.” Freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and it extends not only to “information” or “ideas” that are favorably received, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb in such domains as “political discourse, commentary on one’s own and on public affairs, canvassing, discussion of human rights, journalism, cultural and artistic expression, teaching, and religious discourse.” With respect to criticism against public officials, the European Court of Human Rights has also made clear that “the limit of acceptable criticism is wider with regard to a politician acting in his public capacity than in relation to a private individual.” The UN Human Rights Committee, the independent expert body that monitors state compliance with the ICCPR, in its General Comment No. 34 on the right to freedom of expression, has stated with respect to criticism of government officials, that in circumstances of public debate concerning public figures, “the value placed by the Covenant upon uninhibited expression is particularly high.” The “mere fact that forms of expression are considered to be insulting to a public figure is not sufficient to justify the imposition of penalties.” Thus, “all public figures, including those exercising the highest political authority such as heads of state and government, are legitimately subject to criticism and political opposition.” Media freedom, plurality and the protection of journalists are a central part of the effective exercise of freedom of expression. While the media may be subject to some restrictions necessary for the protection of certain vital interests of the state, such as national security or public health, the media has a role and responsibility to convey information and ideas on political issues, even divisive ones and the public has a right to receive them. The ability to practice journalism free from undue interference, to peacefully criticize government, and to express critical views are crucial to the exercise of many other rights and freedoms. The European Court of Human Rights has emphasized that the media has a vital role to play as “public watchdog” in imparting information of serious public concern and should not be inhibited or intimidated from playing that role. The UN Human Rights Committee also stated that actors of journalism include “bloggers and others who engage in forms of self-publication in print, on the internet or elsewhere.” Russia’s Constitution guarantees freedom of thought and expression and forbids censorship. At the same time, the country’s recently amended broad anti-extremist legislation criminalizes defamation and public calls to extremist activities, including knowingly fraudulent public accusations against public servants, with bigger penalties if relevant calls or accusations are made with the use of mass media or internet. |
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has done really well for a kid’s TV show established just to sell more plastic toys. So well, in fact, that Hasbro decided to expand the franchise even further with a movie—My Little Pony: Equestria Girls opens Friday in theaters. It’s common for toy-based movies to either completely remake all the characters or introduce a whole new slate of characters so that the viewers now have a bunch more toys they need to buy to complete their collections—the 1980s Transformers movie being the most famous example for killing off huge numbers of characters so they could create a whole bunch of new ones. My Little Pony is no different. However, as New York Daily News reports, some mothers are up in arms because the new characters/toys-to-be are sexified teenage girls, all miniskirts and knee-high boots, adding the once-innocent horses to the growing pile of toys that parents fear will give their girls body issues as they grow up:
“They’re not ponies anymore! So what’s the appeal?” says 29-year-old Washington Heights mom Eynat Amir, who stables 30 of her original 1980s Ponies at her mom’s house. “These look more like Bratz dolls.”
Turning the ponies into human girls does seem like a baffling choice on its surface. There are plenty of teenage girl dolls for little girls to buy, from the aforementioned Bratz to the ever-popular Barbie, but the Ponies were really holding down the market by appealing to the apparently genetic affinity little girls have for all things equestrian that dates back at least to National Velvet. But what if the change wasn’t about little girls at all? What if there was another audience—an older, male, and kind of off-putting audience—that also loves the Ponies and wants nothing more than imagery of them as humans to appeal to their less-than-innocent fantasies about really getting personal with their favorite toys? If there was such an audience, they have a little bit more disposable income than little girls, and selling to them, even if you alienate parents of little girls, might end up being quite profitable indeed.
And lookie here, there is such an audience. They’re called Bronies, and they’re grown men who love all things My Little Pony and they don’t have moms around to tell them no if they want to rush out and buy all the Ponies, even the very expensive, oversized, and collector’s item ones, as well as all their accessories. My Little Pony didn’t set out to capture that cherished 18-45 male demographic when they started making cute little TV programs about pony friendship, but now that they have that demo, I suspect they’re going to do everything in their power to keep it.
Bronies have expressed a strong interest in seeing the Ponies in sexy, humanized forms—if you doubt this, I dare you to search for “my little pony porn” on Google—and it seems Hasbro has given them exactly what they want. If there was any danger of the Brony trend dying off any time soon, turning the Ponies into imitation sexy anime characters delayed that potential decline. A few mad moms is an easy price to pay when you consider the huge profits Hasbro will rake in with this move. |
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