text
large_stringlengths 3
23.7M
| len
uint32 3
25.3M
|
|---|---|
Designer Info
Eall.cz is an exclusive fashion brand with the style of it is simple and elegant with pure colors. The fabrics are mainly in cotton and linen. For urban females, it represents the lifestyle of freedom and easy causal.
Model Measurements
Model is 5ft 9" tall and wearing a size L
Bust (inch): 33.5
Waist (inch): 23.6
Hip (inch): 35.4
Shipping & Returns
Return within 30 days from the delivered date.
Request:
1. Items received within 30 days from the delivered date.
2. Items received unused, undamaged and in original package.
3. Return shipping fee is paid by buyer.
Laundry Tips
1.Use the recommended amount of a premium detergent for delicate articles.
2.Silk articles need to be washed separately because they have a lower colorfastness than other
fabrics.
3.Hand washing is recommended for delicate items such as lace, lingerie, wool, silk or very dark
colors that may run. Using lukewarm or cold water under 30°C and squeeze gently. Turn inside out
when hanging up and do not dry clothes in full sunlight.
4.The clothes should be at least 3 quarters dry before ironing. Ironing temperature recommended from
100°C to 180°C depending on the fabric.
5.The steam setting should be on high since ironing silk requires a lot of moisture. After the silk
is lightly misted with water, it is placed face down on the ironing board and covered with a press
cloth.
6.Avoid washing or bleaching for leather articles. Dry Cleaning is recommended for them.
| 1,479 |
Top Coupon
5*
Sale Up To 90%
Top Tags
Website Policy
Products and prices are displayed by Shop Paaage is a reference. You need to contact the seller for a policy appropriate for each region, country... By using www.paaage.com services, you agree to comply with this regulation..
| 283 |
HIT Think
Is Bruce Sterlings 'Holy Fire' Our Future?
I’m a science fiction fan, as I’m guessing most of our tech-inclined audience is, and every so often sci-fi hits close to home. Right now I’m reading through Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling a second time. The first time I read it nearly three years ago, it didn’t resonate as powerfully as it does now—good story, but I didn’t feel it connecting to reality anytime soon.
Now, however, I’m getting a different take. In a tiny nutshell, Holy Fire is about life in a post-apocalyptic world that’s been ravaged by plagues, run by the lucky, now-elderly survivors, some of whom have benefitted from life extension treatments doled out by the government.
| 717 |
''World in Conflict'' is a 2007 [[RealTimeStrategy Real Time Tactics]] game by Creator/MassiveEntertainment. Set during the closing days of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, the game explores what might have happened had the Warsaw Pact countries decided to start WorldWarIII instead of allowing the gradual collapse of its constituent governments. Best described as Film/RedDawn1984 [[XMeetsY meets]] Videogame/GroundControl, the game eschews traditional [=RTS=] elements in favour of a more tactical approach: no base building occurs, units are air-dropped, and individual armies rarely number more than a dozen units.
The single-player campaign takes place in 1989. The Soviet Union, bankrupt and desperate, launches a surprise attack across its European borders, surprising the rest of the world. The conquest is at first a success, but as the months go by NATO rallies, and it becomes clear that the Soviets are overstretched and out of momentum, causing the conflict to settle into a stalemate. In a massive gamble, the Soviet Union smuggles several battalions into Seattle harbour on freight ships, counting on the fact that most U.S. troops are tied up overseas. The story is told through the eyes of a [[SupportingProtagonist subordinate]] to the legendary Colonel Sawyer, [[PlayerCharacter Lieutenant Parker]], as Sawyer's battalion fights a desperate war to contain the [[RedScare red menace]].
''World in Conflict'' is lauded for its multiplayer, which has the player assume a specific role in combat, commanding only a small, specialized force on the battlefield and working together with the other players to win. The matches are fast-paced and map types are strongly influenced by FPS games, with modes such as Domination[[note]]the teams try to hold more control points than their rivals for as long as possible[[/note]] or Assault[[note]]the two teams take turns defending or assaulting the control points[[/note]]. Since there are no [[CommandAndConquerEconomy resources to gather]], the game is instead based around strategical control points that need to be captured.
An ExpansionPack was released in 2009, titled ''Soviet Assault''. The expansion added six new missions interwoven into the existing campaign that covered the Soviet side of the story, as well as four multiplayer maps which were later released for free. The expansion pack was not well-received, as it did not have any new gameplay features at all. %%was it poorly received by players as well as press?
The game was well-received both by critics and by consumers, with common praise being the then-impressive graphics, the compelling gameplay, the entertaining team-based multiplayer modes and a strong single-player campaign and narrative. Since the sale of Massive Entertainment to Creator/{{Ubisoft}} by then-publisher Creator/{{Activision}} the only thing to come out of the series has been the delayed and poorly-received ''Soviet Assault'', and since Massive has since moved on to other projects, it is probably that ''World in Conflict'' has become an OrphanedSeries.
----!!This game features examples of the following tropes:
* AchievementSystem: In multiplayer, you gain medals and badges for various scoring points or winning matches, among other things. Medals and badges are tiered bronze, silver, and gold; the screen that displays them also explains (via tooltips) the requirements for unlocking them. You can also view players' medals in their public online profiles on the Massgate service website.* TheAlliance: NATO (duh).* AlternateHistory: What if the Communist states of the 1980s tried to prevent their collapse by attacking the West?* AnachronicOrder: The single-player campaign is told middle first, then beginning, then end. The Soviet missions are similarly paced, as they are interwoven into the vanilla campaign.* AnAsskickingChristmas: Played straight, and then [[TearJerker painfully subverted]]. Parker and the rest of the U.S. forces successfully drive the Soviets out of the festively-decorated Cascade Falls, only for fresh new Soviet reinforcements to arrive, [[spoiler: necessitating the use of a nuclear strike, and Captain Bannon stays behind to draw the Russians into ground zero. The entire ending cutscene is simply heartwrenching.]]* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: The player is given a fixed amount of points to buy units with, which limits the size of any given army. The points refill after a unit is lost or is disbanded, over time. In multiplayer, the most a player can command at once is 20 units (not counting the infantry squads consisting out of 4 soldiers), but generally no more than about 6 units will be deployed at the same time. Additional units can be deployed with air-drop Tactical Aids that don't count towards this limit.%% The below example needs an actual example of the types of stratagems used.%%* ArtificialBrilliance: The multiplayer bots are programmed to emulate player behaviour as much as possible, and are often capable of sophisticated stratagems.* BigDamnHeroes: In 3rd mission of American campaign you are taking part in defending the Pine Valley town against massive Soviet attack. When finally Reds are starting overrunning you, suddenly, the USS ''Missouri'' appears and starts annihilating the Soviets. And then you can use its guns to finish off the rest of enemy forces.** In 3rd mission of Soviet campaign, the Colonel Orlovsky arrives seconds before American civilians are about to be executed by Malashenko's mens in one of the cutscenes.** In the final mission of American storyline, [[spoiler: after a hard fight you manage to finally liberate the Seattle, thus preventing Chinese from making landfall here and, most importantly, prevent a strategic thermonuclear strike on said city. Everything looks good when suddenly ''massive'' Soviet force appears out of nowhere and start beating you ''hard''. And they jamming your communication so you can't call for reinforcements (fortunately, only temporarily). You fight in desperately all-or-nothing last stand when finally, Colonel Wilkins arrive with his tanks and start chewing Russians from the rear]].* BilingualBonus: Many unit barks are made in a language appropriate to their nationality. This is most noticeable with the NATO faction, which does not include two different unit types from the same country. German, French, Danish, Russian, English, Norwegian are but some of the languages spoken in the game, and most are recorded using native speakers. * BittersweetEnding: ** For the American Campaign: [[spoiler:Despite your resounding victory over the Soviet invaders and the lightheartedness of the final scene, much of Seattle and Washington State are in ruins and World War III still rages in Europe and now in Asia, leaving the future uncertain.]] ** For the Soviet Campaign: [[spoiler:The Soviets fail to take America and an AxeCrazy Malshenko kills Colonel Orlovsky. However, the sane Major Lebedjev orders a retreat back to the USSR where the Soviets are still in control of much of the union and Western Europe.]]* BlatantLies / PropagandaMachine: Before each Soviet mission, a propaganda reel plays showing the Soviet leaders' attempts to portray their war effort as way more successful than it actually is, and hide anything from their citizens that might be considered bad. Some of them are quite amusing....** During the missions that take place in America, the Soviet propaganda shows them occupying ''half of the United States'' by the third mission, even the nearby sections of ''Canada and Mexico''. They also claim the American civilian population is welcoming the invasion as a liberation and are joining the Soviets. In reality they only control the area of Washington State near Seattle and Tacoma, with the furthest they ever get being the Cascade mountain range. And the American civilians are ''extremely'' hostile to the invaders, grabbing any gun or weapon they can get their hands on and fighting back. Romanov even says in the mission briefing that Soviet troops were surprised at the level of resistance, and that ''everywhere'' they went they were greeted with gunfire.** A reel for one of the European missions claims that a NATO raid on a major naval base in Russia was just a "minor skirmish"... that took place in occupied Finland.** Possibly subverted by the final mission in which the propaganda broadcaster speaks in what seems to be a more reserved tone, saying that the Soviet premier gave a speech about "sacrifices made, and sacrifices yet to come", implying that the Soviet government is starting to realize that they are not going to get the quick victory they were hoping for... if they even win at all.** Also during the final American mission to liberate Seattle from the Soviets, the player can find Soviet propaganda posters covering the city. Smaller posters can also be seen in the earlier Pine Valley mission by placing the camera in front of the town's billboards. * BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:At the end of ''Soviet Assault'', Malashenko decides not to return to Russia and instead makes his way to Seattle to defend it against the inevitable American counterattack. Players who have already completed the first game know that [[ForegoneConclusion it won't end well for the Soviets]].]]* BookEnds: [[spoiler:The original game begins and ends in Seattle. And the expansion pack begins and ends in Lebedjev's limousine.]]* BreakTheHaughty: Captain Bannon, who's arrogance and careless tactics on the battlefield chafes Colonel Sawyer all throughout the campaign. And then he accidentally fires upon a group of surrendering Russian civilians, earning him the Colonel's wrath when they return home. And this is all ''before'' the Russians have even attacked Seattle. * CameraAbuse: Explosions and nuclear fallout will display static and other effects on the screen if they happen too close to the camera. In the campaign, [[spoiler:after the tactical nuke is detonated halfway through the story, [[http://youtu.be/Bsk_2tPIEMM?t=2m40s the entire next chronological mission]] is played with the static effect turned on.]]* [[spoiler:ChineseWithChopperSupport]]: [[spoiler:China enters the war on the Soviet side,]] forcing the Americans to take back Seattle before [[spoiler:a Chinese amphibious assault can be mounted.]]* ColonelBadass: Sawyer and his Soviet counterpart Orlovsky. Neither one is anything less than highly competent at what they do -- albeit Orlovsky finds out all too quickly that the invasion is nowhere near as easy as he was told.* CommonTacticalGameplayElements: ''[=WiC=]'' implements a lot of common RealTimeStrategy elements: Fog of War (with a caveat that you can see most of the terrain from the start -- but not what's happening ''on'' it), Scouting (the Infantry role's hat, with their insane viewing range), Movement Modifiers (moving downhill is faster than up), High Ground (firing down increases the tanks' range), Unit Specialization, Attack Range, Flanking (relevant when fighting tanks: they are much more vulnerable from the sides and back than from the front), Friendly Fire (as heavy choppers and artillery, but particularly with Tactical Aids), Taking Cover (infantry hiding the woods and buildings is harder to hit), Indirect Fire (artillery), Blind Firing (via Bombard command), Target Spotting (infantry/paratroopers in combination with any heavier ground unit), Concealment (infantry is invisible in the woods if not attacking or seen by enemy infantry), Smoke Screen (most heavy ground units can protect themselves with smoke, while heavy artillery can deploy a much larger screen at a distance).* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The multiplayer [=AI=], despite being well programmed, still cheats quite a bit. Enemy artillery can fire without needing to reload, can track your units extremely accurately, and the enemy will zero in on your drop zone eventually. This is particularly bad against the Soviets, as they have some very strong artillery. The [=AI=] doesn't respect the point system, either, and will replenish losses with the exact same units almost immediately.* CosmeticallyDifferentSides: All the factions have the same units with the same abilities. While the American heavy tank is the M1 Abrams and the Soviet counterpart is the T-80, they are statistically identical, and ditto for most of the other units. There are a few units that differ here and there, but this is mostly with units that don't see much use on the battlefield.* CosmeticAward: Singleplayer gives you a variety of medals, awards and promotions for completing every objective. Online has a achievement system with the same goals, but there are multiple medals for each category (bronze, silver and gold). Medals are awarded for things like reaching certain scores in one match, being the best player in a match or best of role, total points per role and total, winning matches and launching nukes. A medal system is also in place for clans. None of these awards actually do ''anything'', although reaching a certain rank may be required for some servers or clans.* CoversAlwaysLie: ** The cover prominently features the Statue of Liberty under attack. While there is a mission in New York centered around a surprise attack on Liberty Island, most of the game takes place in Washington State.** The cover art for ''Soviet Assault'' shows New York City getting nuked, even though the only nuclear weapons seen on-screen during the story of either game is a single, relatively small scale tactical nuke.* CreativeClosingCredits: ''Soviet Assault'' credits: lots of photos/videos of development team during work or at their free time and various HilariousOuttakes (like some funny glitches that can happen/happened during production and scenes created by authors just for fun). You can watch it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-RCk9pnTkg here]].* CriticalExistenceFailure: While most infantry units are composed of Squads that may lose individual members, this applies in full force to any other unit on the field. Buildings' HitPoints also do not effect its integrity and protection for infantry until they run out.* CripplingOverspecialization: All of the multiplayer roles are highly specialized in order to encourage team play:** Infantry are liable to die pretty much whenever they are out of cover to anything firing at them while being the slowest units in the game, though are enormously effective against what enemy the individual unit is made for fighting while they ''are'' dug in and the role is provided vehicle transports -- though the transports are soft-skinned and easily destroyed, with whatever was being transported being destroyed as well.** Armor has the slowest vehicles and is extremely vulnerable to air units, but firepower and hardiness gives it ground superiority.** Support is deficient at direct close-combat, but it provides the crucial anti-air units that prevent the rest of the team from being slaughtered by helicopters. Support also has repair tanks and artillery, with the latter's usefulness being highly situational.** Air is highly mobile and destructive, but the role is very vulnerable to anti-air, and air units can't capture control points.* DarkestHour: [[spoiler:Missions 5 and 11. America has been forced to use a nuclear device on itself, and it is unclear what may happen next. On a more personal level: Bannon is dead, amd Sawyer's company is scattered; stranded in a charred, radioactive wasteland. Bannon's last phone call to his mother really drives in [[TearJerker the mood.]] Only by pure, unshakable cooperation and determination is the company able to reform and fight again.]]* DeadlyGas: One of the Tactical Aid abilities is the Chemical Strike, which calls in a plane to drop gas bombs on a target. The effects aren't particularly graphic (infantry take damage over time), and it only affects infantry. * DeathFromAbove: Not all Tactical Aids spew death, but they all come from the air. They are all quite spectacular, however.* DeathOfAThousandCuts: Averted; attacking an armoured vehicle with weapons that should be incapable of hurting it will do nothing. Most units have a way of hurting armour anyway, but the basic machine guns won't work.* DespairGambit: The Soviet Union, bankrupt and on the verge of collapse, invades Europe and the United States in a desperate bid to save itself.* DestructiveSaviour: Faithful to real life warfare, saving areas is a messy endeavour. When Webb comments on the state of Seattle, Sawyer admits that the U.S. Army caused as least as much damage as the Soviets. There are some objectives based around avoiding this trope for notable buildings, but [[spoiler: the Nuke on Cascade Falls]] is this in full force. At least most buildings are implied to be deserted by civilians. Most missions end with "Victory!" being plastered over a scene of a town reduced to ruins.* DifficultButAwesome: The Infantry multiplayer role. They have the slowest and squishiest units in the game, unless they've gotten to a good position providing cover -- which they likely need to use a fragile transport to reach -- at which point their cover fixes the squishiest part while it holds and the squad easily takes out anything nearby.* DividedWeFall: In multiplayer matches teamwork is everything, as every game mode is team based.* {{Eagleland}}: ** Sabatier attempts to [[InvokedTrope invoke]] the Boorish form on Sawyer in the Mission 9 intro. [[BilingualBackfire It backfires when Sawyer understands Sabatier's insult spoken in French and retorts in the same language.]]---> '''Sabatier:''' ''Vous arrogants Americains, vous pensez que vous dirigez le monde comme il vous plais.'' (You arrogant Americans, think you can run the world as you see fit.)---> '''Sawyer:''' ''Nous avons une guerre à gagner et je vais faire ce qui me semble nécessaire.'' (We have a war to win, and I will do what I deem necessary.)** Played straighter in the mission after that:---> '''Sawyer:''' Okay. Try not to damage the church, Parker. It's apparently very old and has some cultural value to our allies.---> '''Sabatier:''' It was built in the twelfth century! ''Vous n'avez donc aucune culture.'' (Don't you have any culture...)* EasyLogistics: While reinforcements take some time to be air-dropped in (and there is another delay until the plane returns to the off-map base, during which the player can't order any more units) and Tactical Aids take a while to occur, fielded units have unlimited ammo, fuel and other supplies. Infantry units can replace losses in a short amount of time. Reinforcements never run out aside from a few scripted instances in the campaign.* EnemyExchangeProgram: The player can repair and take over vehicles left behind by the other side in certain missions; they apparently do not require crews. One mission features Soviet special forces using a ridiculously large amount of captured U.S. vehicles. Captain Vance, an Army {{Ranger}} [=CO=] helping out in that mission, actually lampshades this, saying that the local base was undermanned and over-supplied. Another mission has the player take over a lot of left-behind vehicles starting with nothing but 3 vehicles. Where the crews come from is a complete mystery.* AFatherToHisMen: Orlovsky is well-respected by his men, and cares deeply for them. Malashenko has these tendencies too, but they are also the catalyst for his StartOfDarkness.* {{Feelies}}: The collector's edition included a small, authentic piece of the Berlin Wall.* FogOfWar: As with Videogame/GroundControl, and unlike most other games in the RTS genre, this game doesn't use visible fog of war, although it is still functionally there. In addition, units are not automatically revealed when they open fire if the enemy can't see them; in particular, artillery units need to have their shots traced by sight to determine the position of the units.* ForeShadowing: Sebatier's lover dreamt [[spoiler:that he was killed, which is what happened in the next mission.]]* FragileSpeedster: The Air role's units are fast and do good damage - however, they are incapable of taking points and die quickly when targeted. Similarly, the Infantry role's transports are also fragile, although somewhat slower in comparison.* GameLobby: There's a lobby for clan matches, as opposed to free-for-all servers that can be joined by anyone at any time.* GarrisonableStructures: Riflemen and Anti-Tank squads become formidable against vehicles when garrisoned, but [[CriticalExistenceFailure do keep an eye on the structural integrity of the building]].* GatlingGood: The Americans have two units which use gatling-like weaponry: the [=M163=] Vulcan, which is used primarily for {{Anti Air}}[[note]]it can be toggled to fire on ground units if necessary, and it is effective against lightly armoured vehicles and below[[/note]], and the A-10 Warthog, which is called in as an [[AntiArmor Anti-Tank]] Tactical Aid.* GeneralFailure: Captain Bannon, through a combination of cowardice, glory-hounding and incompetence.* GlassCannon: The Infantry role's units. Their weapons are as effective as any vehicle's [[CripplingOverspecialization against their intended targets]], but without trees or buildings for cover, they tend to die when enemies look at them funny.* HeroicMime: Player characters Parker and (in ''Soviet Assault'') Romanov are never heard to speak in-game; Parker has a bodily presence in certain cutscenes but we never see his face, and Romanov is never seen at all. They are, respectively, white American and Slavic, though. [[spoiler: The intro to the final mission to retake Seattle reveals that the narrator of the U.S. missions (voiced by Alec Baldwin) is, in fact, Parker, though at that point it should be pretty obvious. By the same token, it is implied that the 2nd narrator of the Soviet missions -- the one talking about the realities of the war -- is Romanov.]]* HeroicSacrifice: At the climax of the first arc of the story, [[spoiler:the foolish and cowardly Captain Bannon redeems himself by volunteering for a holding action against an overwhelming Soviet force so that the tactical nuke intended for them can take proper effect.]]* HoldTheLine: A frequent mission objective in the campaigns. Often, the player will be tasked with taking a particular set of strategic points and holding them for a few minutes; after the timer is up, [=AI=]-controlled reinforcements will usually shift drop zones to cover the newly captured area, and bunkers will be set up. Storywise, during the Invasion of Seattle, a panicked Private is heard on the radio screaming about how the Soviets won't get one inch further. Whether he succeeded or not is left open.* HomeGuard: Most of the campaign has you commanding units of the Washington and Oregon National Guard.* HumiliationConga: For the Soviets, NATO's incursion into the north near Murmansk definitely qualifies; while the Politburo passes it off as a "minor skirmish", it is clear that the Soviet Army is both furious and shaken that such a devastating infiltration had been managed by their opponents before they were finally able to drive them out. * InferredHolocaust: If you fail to retake Seattle before the nuclear attack is launched, it is implied that this is what befalls the world as the Soviets also resort to nuclear weapons in response to the Americans having resorted to them ''twice'' in repelling the invasion. * ImpressivePyrotechnics: The game includes fire support options ranging from mortar bombardment through napalm drops and carpet bombing by B-52s all the way to tactical nuclear strikes, all depicted with massive amounts of sound and fury. * InfantImmortality: Mostly played straight onscreen; however, the occasional presence of children amid such scenes of open war, particularly in one cutscene where a little girl stops her bike and watches the Soviet paratroopers rain down from the sky are sobering reminders that yes, children are not free from the horrors of war. Those who live to tell of what they see inevitably lose all childhood innocence.** Subverted in ''Soviet Assault'', where [[spoiler:Malashenko's wife and newborn daughter are both killed offscreen during the NATO raid on Northern Russia.]] * InvadedStatesOfAmerica: The basic premise of the story; the game starts when Soviet troops manage to launch a surprise attack by using freight ships to get close to Seattle harbour without arousing suspicion until it is too late, and then start to make their way inland. This invasion occurs to the backdrop of WorldWarIII; the setting is explored later in the campaign.* InstantWinCondition: Since there are no bases, campaign missions usually have you fighting endlessly respawning enemy troops with your own army of respawning forces. After a while of not screwing this up, the game declares that you win, although the fight rages on behind the victory screen.* ItsAWonderfulFailure: If you fail the last mission in the vanilla game, [[spoiler:the Pentagon will authorize a nuke to destroy Seattle to prevent the Chinese invasion.]] That's not the trope, though. [[spoiler: The Soviets will see the Americans' willingness to use nukes, so they'll launch a nuclear strike of their own. The rest is history.]]* ItsRainingMen: Infantry unit creations and reinforcements parachute down to the field. In fact, ''all'' land units are air-dropped in, included the heaviest tanks.* JackOfAllTrades: ** The purview of the Infantry role, whose unique infantry units are capable of fighting off all the other roles... [[CripplingOverspecialization as long as they can get to cover first]]. The role also includes the Troop Transport unit, which is one of the few units that can repair vehicles. ** The Infantry squad is incredibly versatile, as the combined arms of the individual soldiers make the squad capable of attacking every unit in the game, as long as the soldier carrying that particular piece of equipment isn't killed.** The Armored Transport of the Armor role is capable of damaging every unit in the game.* JustAStupidAccent: Played with. [=NATO=] units are almost all from a different country, and this is reflected in their speech. Most responses to commands are given in a heavily exaggerated accent, likely to allow [[TropesAreNotBad quick identification of units]], but unit chatter is made in that unit's native language, and the voice actors are clearly native speakers. This applies to the Russian units as well; American units mostly have similar accents, however.* KillItWithFire: There are numerous incendiary weapons in the game. In particular, using napalm and fire-bombs to burn down forest cover is important to countering infantry; one of the Soviet missions has you field testing a particularly strong such bomb.* KindaBusyHere: Infantry units respond with this if you select them while they're engaged in combat.* KnightTemplar: Capt. Malashenko in the ExpansionPack. He does have a [[ItsPersonal convincing reason]], though: [[spoiler:his wife and baby daughter are killed during Sawyer's surprise raid near Murmansk]].* MajorlyAwesome: [[spoiler: The Player Character in the end. Going from 1st Lieutenant to Captain in a few months is unheard and would never be down in real life.... except for the man who saved the Statue of Liberty, held the line in the Cascade Mountains, and finally pushed the Soviets out of Seattle.]]* MauveShirt: A CGI scene shows many American soldiers in transport helicopters gearing up and readying themselves to fight. A bunch of those choppers then get shredded by anti-air guns.** ThoseTwoGuys whose B-Plot is about the (then) new CD player and how they can't get batteries for it in warzones. [[spoiler: The final scene is the two of them finally listening to it in liberated Seattle.]]* TheMedic: The Repair Tank, being one of the few units capable of repairing but is completely unarmed. However, it is still in the body of a tank and is fairly hardy. The Humvee also counts. * MercyInvincibility: Your units get several seconds of invincibility when they first spawn. Most noticeable if you get hit by a nuke the moment your units arrive and they all miraculously survive.* MissionControl: You always have a commanding officer who pops in to give you mission updates and assign new objectives. Usually it's Colonels Sawyer or Orlovsky, but Captains Bannon and Malashenko and Majors Lebedjev and Webb also do so on occasion.* MonumentalDamage: The various multiplayer and single player maps feature numerous recognizable landmarks; all of them can be destroyed in the former, but only some in the latter, due to the way each mission is scripted:** Subverted in Seattle -- the Soviets destroy the Kingdome, a sports stadium that is only really recognizable by Seattleites, and was demolished seven years before the game was released. ** The Statue of Liberty is endangered in one mission. If the player fails to save it, there is a special cutscene before the GameOver.* MoreDakka: There's ''plenty'' of dakka to go around on both sides, but the true firepower comes from the Tactical Aids you can call onto the map. The Americans, for instance, can call an air to ground strafing run in a straight line wherever on the map they like, and an [[GatlingGood A-10 Warthog]] will happily oblige.* MultinationalTeam: The NATO faction is an amalgam of units from different Western European countries. Their heavy tank and artillery units are German, medium and light tanks and artillery units are British, infantry are French, attack helicopters are Italian and transports are Danish.* MultiplayerDifficultySpike: ZigZagged; by pitting teams of players against each other, it both gives them access to all the destructive potential only glimpsed in the campaign, ''and'' enforces CripplingOverspecialization mostly absent from the single-player.* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Subverted in ''Soviet Assault''; Orlovsky doesn't seem to like invading the United States. In the vanilla campaign, Colenl Sawyer is a mixed example, as while he understands that sometimes sacrifices have to made, he normally would choose civilian lives over other things. However, after Cascade Falls is nuked, he becomes noticeably more 'determined' to achieve victory before another one is used, no matter the cost. See MyGreatestFailure below for more.* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: It's clear that [[spoiler:when Bannon kills a bunch of surrendering soldiers -- or possibly civilians -- accidentally]], he does not take it well.* MyGreatestFailure: Colonel Sawyer, yet unlike other examples it's not part of the backstory, but part of the plot. He sees having to use the tactical nuclear weapon at Cascade Falls to be his own horrific failure (over the objections of Captain Webb--see the Mission 12 introduction movie) and will do anything--even sacrifice American lives in high-casualty, head-on attacks--to stop another nuke from being used.* NeverTrustATrailer: One trailer for the game depicts Washington, D.C. being nuked by Soviet agents just as they are being intercepted by the US Air Force; no such event is seen or referenced in the game itself, but definitely serves a heavy dose of NightmareFuel. ** In the "Looking For Survivors" trailer as a US tank crew surveys the destruction of Pine Valley, one of them remarks "we're seeing the same thing all over the West Coast"; all the U.S. missions take place in Washington State; additionally, Pine Valley was not actually nuked either as depicted in the trailer. * NoodleIncident: The game hints at a black mark on Sawyer's military career prior to the cutscene showing him being re-activated to command forces in Europe.* NoCampaignForTheWicked: In the original single-player campaign, the Soviets are non-playable. In ''Soviet Assault'', however, they get 6 missions, interwoven into the 14-mission NATO and U.S. campaign.* NoOSHACompliance: Subverted. The opening cinematic when Soviet armoured vehicles are shown being directed off their transports by safety-conscious personnel, wearing professional-looking ear protectors.* PoirotSpeak: When playing as NATO or USSR, units will often speak a single phrase in their native language before delivering the rest of their statement in English.* PoliceAreUseless: [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since the police forces of Seattle and Washington State are not meant to engage professional soldiers, armoured vehicles and ''attack helicopters''. Arguably even averted, as they still manage to do their part, and are seen building and defending barricades with revolvers and otherwise helping during the evacuation.--> '''Port Authority Officer:''' [''Dodging a gunship's minigun with his car''] 11-99! [[note]] Officer needs Help. Extreme Emergency. [[/note]] Repeat, 11-99 emergency! They have gunships! I repeat, gunships! We need help immediately, America is under attack!* ThePoliticalOfficer: KGB Major Lebedjev in ''Soviet Assault''. He comments on the deep faith Captain Malashenko has in the Soviet system.* RatedMForManly: The opening cinematic. 30 seconds of gunfire, charges and armored vehicles.* RealityEnsues: The Soviets may have seized large parts of Washington State, but it gradually becomes obvious that for all their guns and tenacity that seizing a country as large and as hostile as the US by conventional means is a fool's errand. Lampshaded by Colonel Orlovsky, who by the time the Americans have launched their offensive to liberate Seattle has given up on any notion of victory, even with the incoming Chinese armada. This is in stark contrast to the Soviet propaganda that insists that the Red Army has encroached half the country, where the Soviets are under constant fire from a rebelling populace and unable to expand their campaign beyond Washington. * RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler: Bannon chooses stay behind at Cascade Falls to lure the Russians into the blast radius of the nuke.]]* RevengeBeforeReason: Subverted with the already angry Malashenko, who, when he learns his wife was killed by NATO back home, swallows his considerable anger and continues. [[spoiler:DoubleSubverted later as he orders his men to defend Seattle against the American counterattack when it is clear the very notion is completely hopeless, especially since the player knows that the Americans are planning to ''Nuke'' Seattle if they can't take it back. ]]* RightManInTheWrongPlace: At least for the Soviets. Parker and Bannon were in Seattle, either visiting family or getting reassigned for just being in the area when the Soviets attack.* RPGElements: Units gain experience and may rank up 4 times. Promoted units have faster cooldowns for their weapons and special abilities, as well as increased sight and accuracy. However, defense isn't affected in any way.* RunningGag: Mike's has a state-of-the-art portable CD player (it's 1989), but can't find any batteries for it. * SceneryPorn: Odds are you will find yourself admiring the lifelike scenery of every battlefield landscape even as you are laying waste to your opponents; the real-life locales in particular are rendered to stay as true to the real deals as much as possible; as such many prominent landmarks such as the Space Needle, the Brandenburg Gate, the Statue of Liberty, among others are shown in all their splendor.** Also doubles as SceneryGorn; most of the towns you fight in will be reduced to a wasteland of blackened craters and leveled city blocks before the carnage is over. * SeparateButIdentical: While each faction uses vehicles that they used during the Cold War in real life, they pretty much function identically to their counterparts on the other side. One notable exception is the Heavy Artillery unit. The U.S. and NATO use MLRS, while the Soviets use cannon artillery firing just a single powerful shell (yet it has a faster reload time than the Western counterparts).** The Heavy Artillery differences are significant however, as following the smoke trails of the MLRS tips you off to its general location, whereas the cannon artillery is not nearly as vulnerable. In addition, there are minor differences between the various units depending on the faction: for the most part, the U.S. units are more heavily armored than the Soviet units, while the Soviet units are faster. The NATO units also have a slight benefit in speed. Functionally however, two heavy tanks against two heavy tanks will result in a Pyrrhic victory for whoever wins, so it doesn't really matter that much.* SequelHook: [[spoiler:The battle for Seattle has been won and the Soviet invasion of America repulsed, but the war still rages across Western Europe and Asia, and Colonel Sawyer notes that the time may come again where Parker will be called forth to take the battle to the enemy.]] * SharedLifeMeter: An infantry unit has a single life bar, but the health of each individual soldier is tracked separately. This is clearly demonstrated by 100% accurate attacks with no splash damage only killing one soldier at a time (such as a sniper or a [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill heavy tank's HEAT shells]]). Medics can heal only living infantry, and replacements can be airdropped in to replace casualties.* ShortRangeLongRangeWeapon: Partly averted with tanks which have an impressive range (for an RTS unit, anyway) provided a forward scout, but artillery units have a drastically shortened range compared to their real life counterparts, However, this is only true for on-map artillery pieces - artillery strikes ordered through the tactical aid menu can hit anywhere on the map.* ShoutOut: One of the multiplayer maps is set around the Mekong river. The map's name? "[[Film/ApocalypseNow Apocalypse]]".** Captain Bannon is named after the rather more stable and competent protagonist of ''Literature/TeamYankee''.* ShownTheirWork: For a developer based in Sweden, Massive Entertainment did a hell of a job depicting downtown Seattle circa 1989.* SlapOnTheWristNuke: The nuke in multiplayer deals heavy damage and can be used for zone control thanks to the radiation, but it affects a relatively small area, and its huge cost makes it a highly situational tool.* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: In ''Soviet Assault'', Malashenko is the idealist, believing in most, if not all, of his country's propaganda, while Lebedjev is the cynical one. Incidentally, their wives are on the same ends of the scale as them.* StuffBlowingUp: There are a lot of explosions in the game. Most of the support powers involve explosions of some kind, and it is not uncommon for the battlefield to be turned into a carpet of flashes and smoke when things heat up. * StormingTheBeaches: The Soviets use disguised cargo ships to sneak their troops past the U.S. Navy and storm Seattle harbor, beginning their invasion of the United States.** The Soviets also invade southern France by way of amphibious assault.** The player gets to take part in a couple of his own during the New York and Puget Sound missions, as both involve retaking enemy held islands.* SupportingProtagonist: Lieutenants Parker and Romanov may be keys to the military victories of their respective armies, but the story of the game ultimately revolves around the fall and redemption of Colonel Sawyer and Captains Bannon and Malashenko.%% How?* TacticalRockPaperScissors: This is the essence of the multiplayer roles. Air>Armor>Support>Air with Infantry existing as a kind of JackOfAllTrades/contextually useful role on the side of the algorithm. * TakeCover: Infantry can do this in sufficiently dense woods, or [[GarrisonableStructures garrison buildings]].* TatteredFlag: In the multiplayer, there's a subtle example in the two flags shown at the top of the screen among other important match info. The flags start pristine and become increasingly tattered as units are lost. Since reinforcements are infinite and objectives are what counts, it's possible for the flag in worse shape to end up winning the match.* UnitsNotToScale: Averted; every unit is properly scaled in relation to the rest of the game area, which means infantry can be pretty difficult to spot, for good and ill.* WouldNotShootACivilian: ** During the flashback in northern Russia, [[spoiler:Bannon fails to listen to one of his crew and opens fire on surrendering soldiers and/or civilians. Once he finds out what he has done, all the hot air immediately goes out of him, and the event serves to explain everything about him as seen after that point in the timeline.]] ** Orlovsky is enraged at the idea of Malashenko wanting to shoot the Americans conducting guerrilla warfare against the Russians, as the former feels they are still civilians.* YouAreInCommandNow: Happens to Bannon in the open cinematic of the first mission.--> (Bannon is driving a Humvee through the increasingly debris filled streets of Seattle while on the Radio) "This is Captain Bannon! I'm trying to reach the Major!" *Beat* "What!? Well who's in command then? *Beat* "What do you mean 'I Am'?!"* WarIsHell: Played well, as said by the narrators in both Soviet and American sides.* WinterWarfare: A good chunk of the campaign missions take place in wintry conditions. There is a lot of snow and cold in the Cascades missions, to the point that at one moment the U.S. military has to limit the aircraft flying in. Then you have the missions that take place in northern Russia and Norway.* ZergRush: [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard The computer will be trying to do this all the time]]. ''All the time''. Use your artillery and tactical aid ''constantly''.
| 41,478 |
Redi Cube by MoYu
Redi Cube is a new puzzle by MoYu. Similar to the Skewb Cube, the corners of the cube turn. Even tho the Redi Cube has as many visible parts as the Rubik’s cube, it is much easier to solve!
This cube is entertaining and suitable for solvers any level.
The Inventor: Oskar van Deventer. Manufacturer: MoYu
| 325 |
Porto Novo Restaurant
Inspired by the soul of Mediterranean cuisine, the Porto Novo provides you with the best Portuguese gastronomy has to offer. The expertise of our Chef will enable you to enjoy the old flavours of the wood-fired oven kitchen, fish and shellfish of the day, and international specialities - a mixture of tradition and innovation.
| 350 |
How To Get The Body Of A Martial Artist
Every week I receive many emails from students. There are two questions I get asked the most:
What do I eat?
How do I get my body?
Most people assume I do weight lifting. This isn't true. Every now and again I may lift whatever's lying around and incorporate it into my workout but my main workout is 100% Shaolin.
Right now I'm training to make new DVDs. I will film 4 workouts a day for two days under hot lights so I need to be fitter than the exercises I'm teaching. In order to do this, every morning I run 10 or 12 k in my local park. I then do the Fundamental Moves from my Kung Fu Book and some circuit training from both of my circuit training DVDs. In the afternoon I do Qigong from my Upper and Lower Body DVDs, and in the evening, I teach private sessions and, if I have time, do some Iron Shirt or pad work with one of my students.
If you want to get a body like mine it's very simple. Focus on two things: your martial arts and your stamina. I've put together these four DVDs in a special bundle so you can start your training. Don't waste your time doing exercises that won't progress your martial arts. And don't think too much, just do! Action is what counts. Train a minimum of 5 times a week.
Every exercise that a Shaolin Martial Artists does works many muscles at the same time, shifts our centre of gravity, improves flexibility, strengthens us from the inside out, increases our longevity while making our body work as a whole. This, for me, is a better result than having a nice looking body.
3 comments
I’ve trained every day for the last five years. I feel like a twenty year old… Shifu yan lei has been a huge influence in my life from our first meeting
Jeremy TronOct 12, 2016
Nice message and life guidance!! I pretty think the same, in my own way, and I do too think that everyday training is most essential for human’s life. Too many people are deep in their capitalism routine they don’t care about their body, until it’s too late. #freeyoursoul #masterthetraining #nopainnogain #trainharder #calistheniclifestyle #workwithyourownbodyweight #shaolinfansincealways
| 2,156 |
content-writing Jobs in peshawar 2017 - RIGHTJOBS.PK
Search results - 0 Vacancies found
Are you looking for new job opportunities in Peshawar city? No need to worry let me assure you that you are at right place. RIGHTJOBS.PK is Pakistan's quickest expanding Online Jobs platform, which gives you new opportunities in Peshawar. Job seekers can search latest jobs positions in Peshawar according to their Educational Qualification, Experience, and Preferences. RIGHTJOBS.PK website is equally worthwhile for an employer as well as for the job seekers. RIGHTJOBS.PK is providing Latest Jobs in Peshawar and all over the Pakistan, for all those who wants Private Sector, Government Sector and Multinational Organizations' Jobs. Visit RIGHTJOBS.PK platform and search modern Jobs from top organizations in Peshawar, Pakistan. Make your online professional profile, upload your CV and apply for the freshest job opportunities in Peshawar and all over the Pakistan.
Keyword: Content-writing
City: Peshawar
No Vacancies Found
Jobs in Other Major Cities
Peshawar is the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It is the largest city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and according to the 1998 count was the 9th largest city in Pakistan. Peshawar is a modern city and the administrative capital and economic center for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated in a large valley near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, close to the Pak-Afghan border. There are a huge number of opportunities to get employed in Peshawar as compared to other under promoting cities.
Latest Jobs Opportunities in Peshawar
You can search best jobs in Peshawar by availing these jobs will change your financial condition and confer you a level of comfortability. You can apply to these top jobs as per your educational credentials and authenticity are to keep your living standards up to the mark.
Educational Jobs
Peshawar has a numerous number of Government and Private educational institute, Schools, Colleges and Universities for both male and female candidate. There comes a tremendous number of openings (Teacher Assistant, Subject Teacher, Lecturer, Professors, Tutor, Principal, Headmistress, Class Teacher, Lab Attendant, Lab Assistant, and Academic Coordinator) to teach the other students by joining numerous institutions like academicism, private schools, government schools, private tuition centers etc.
Medical Jobs
Health, Medical and Medicine Sector related job posts are also available in Peshawar. All you need is just go to a search of your acquired category and apply for desired jobs that mainly includes, Assistant Corporate Psychologist, Gynecologist, and Medical officer, Pharmacist, Doctors, Nurses, Health Officers, Surgeons, Specialist, Dentist, Lady Health Workers, Polio Education Officers, Health Coordinators and Day Care-Helpers. A great number of jobs opportunities being announced in Peshawar for medical students and professionals. Every year there comes a great number of professionals got free from medical institute to serve Pakistan.
Engineers Jobs
Engineer’s job opportunities in Peshawar come in a great number. This a great fortuitous to grab, new opportunities. Engineering jobs usually include Civil Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Site Engineers, Product Engineers, Maintenance Engineers, Chemical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Architecture Engineer and much more. Due to great number of governmental and private sector Development Projects in Peshawar are in progress and some have completed successfully, all of these project create new opportunities for engineers.
Bacha Khan International Airport Jobs
Peshawar Airport is a major passenger hub with 75% flights internationally bound. The airport is currently under evaluation to be upgraded to make it compatible with future needs of the geographical location. There comes a great number of jobs opportunities (Manager Airport Service, IT Job Officers, Logistic Assistant, Executive-General Administrator, Telemarketing Officer, Business Strategic Manager, Project Coordinator, Salesman, Sweepers/Cleaners) in Peshawar airport for fresh and experienced candidates.
Peshawar Mass Transit System (PMTS) / Peshawar Metrobus Jobs
Peshawar Mass Transit or Peshawar Mass Transit System (PMTS) is a proposed mass rapid transit system for the city of Peshawar. The project has been established by the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and therefore create a great number of jobs for the residents of Peshawar, Pakistan. The Peshawar Metro will be a comprehensive system for rapid movement of mass transport on the five different routes in Peshawar. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government approved construction of the 26-kilometer highway alongside the existing railway track to run the Metrobus from Nasirpur to Karkhano Market in Hayatabad. The project will be completed under a Public Private Partnership with an estimated cost of Rs14 billion. Peshawar Metro has proposed an elevated route spanning 27km km from Chamkani to Hayatabad with 12 stations. All platforms will be 70 meters (230 ft.) long.
Banking Sector Jobs
Banking is a largely growing field of industry that is growing deeper day by day and certainly requiring new representatives every year. There are a great number of jobs being advertised like Accountant (Senior, Junior, and Cost & Payroll Accountant), HR Officers, Sales Executive, Admin Officers, Office Manager, Office Coordinator, Project Officers, Accountant, Accounts Officer, Manger Accounts, Administrative Assistant, Manger Finance, Head of Management Accounting etc.
Defense Housing Authority (DHA Peshawar) Jobs
DHA Peshawar is a statutory body formed under an Act of Parliament called as DHA Peshawar Act 2009. The authority regulates the impeccable functioning with a well-managed and governed administration providing the best educational, recreational, cultural and civic facilities to the residents in an aesthetic environment. DHA has attained a valuable status serving as a benchmark for providing unparalleled living standards in Pakistan. Pakistan Defense officers Housing Authority Peshawar currently owns and manages over an area of 6000Kanals, aimed to house and serve thousands of families. Defense Housing Authority Peshawar is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities.
Visit RIGHTJOBS.PK platform and research latest Jobs from top organizations in Peshawar, Pakistan. Make your online professional profile, upload your CV and apply for the newest job opportunities in Peshawar and all over the Pakistan.
| 6,668 |
Hi all,
For those of you that are going to be at the Fort Wayne, Indiana Hamfest. I just wanted to let you know that the AMSAT Forum will be on Saturday, Nov. 13, at 1:15pm. Hope to see you there.
For more info check the following :
www.fortwaynehamfest.com
73 de Doug KA8QCU
| 275 |
We’ve worked hard to become that partner through our experience, education, certifications and accreditations.When you’re choosing a builder, it’s important to partner with a team who has the experience and knowledge to see your project completed to your specifications, in a timely manner and on budget.
| 310 |
Order Form Template Excel
Excel can offer a suitable option to some extent, but eventually a specialized solution will be required to ensure continuous compliance and, ultimately, commercial success. Launches a simple form that can be used to enter, delete and search records. It is one of the most used softwares in the digital world of today.
The way we are doing is short and is designed for individual use, so you will always know your progress in it. It is also possible to keep your table in the form of a spreadsheet. Or, you can produce the form available only to the particular devices or users you select. The form will remain active, so it is possible to observe the way it works. When the forms are easy, understandable and gather the necessary information, life goes on. Although the traditional printed document form will remain a part of our lives in the near future, an increasing number of paper will be replaced by web page forms and other screen formats.
The templates are prepared with the requirements and general standards in mind. Providentially, the templates in our next section will help alleviate a number of the financial stress that comes with such an important purchase. Even if you feel comfortable with Excel, you can think about using prefabricated templates simply to save time for your other priorities. Other people can buy exactly the same template you made and use it for your business as well. In the same way, it is even possible to customize the chosen templates to suit your client’s requirements. Today you can look up an invoice template on the web and get it in a couple of minutes.
If you consider it, 2 templates can be enough if your company is not too big. Templates can also be useful once you try to lose or maintain your current weight. Invoice templates do not need to be boring. If you have an invoice template that you want to share, Template Docs allows you to contribute to your site and display its content with the option to publish your service or product along with the template. Sometimes, you will find the best invoice templates in the most unexpected places.
The spreadsheet is not difficult to use. It can be completely customized, you can add or delete items quickly or revise the format to suit your needs. The Excel spreadsheet has the important elements to think about. Once you publish your spreadsheet, you should receive your spreadsheet ID. Obviously, you do not need to completely delete the Excel spreadsheet when you use the time tracking program!
There you can do a bit of magic with your data. After a few seconds you will have a large amount of data to play. The new data becomes easier to sort and search in the first instance, improving not only the speed but also the focus accuracy. When most people think about the data an organization has, they are likely to imagine a large server farm somewhere with terabytes of information in huge relational databases. It is vital that you are able to receive your data in the format you need and send it where you need it. This way you will understand a previous data in the dynamic table.
| 3,117 |
I think this tea was a pretty great value. To me, it’s easy to overdo the fruit or ginger tones on a flavored tea…this one had a really nice balance with actual tea leaves, so it still tasted like tea (and not just fruit-flavored hot water). It was strong enough for morning, but still pretty refined. My 4 year old even liked it (with sugar). We’ll def. be getting more of this.
| 385 |
Free Speech & Free Assembly Must Be Protected
The Law Offices of John G . Mateus, Esq. stands ready to represent you in asserting your constitutional rights.
Both the U.S. Constitution and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights guarantees that all people in the Commonwealth may peaceably protest, rally, and speak, no matter how “offensive” the speech may be. You also have the fundamental right to peaceably protest, rally, and speak against anyone else’s demonstration.
| 481 |
Coffee Talk Sideshow
As I’ve already mentioned before, we have far too many meetings on a daily basis here at Bill and Dave’s company. One of the methods upper management types like to use for communicating company propaganda is called a Coffee Talk. Generally a Coffee Talk is an hour long corporate spin session. To bait us into attending these gigs management usually serves up cookies and really shitty gas station coffee. When I first started working here I went to Coffee Talks because I was lead to believe it was mandatory to attend them.
I noticed a few trends about the corporate talking heads after my first year or so on the job. One, they never talked about anything that directly related to my job. It was all too general and vague. Two, when a manager told us about a new direction they were taking our business in or a decision that was going to be implemented company-wide, by the time anything happened many months later their story might have changed more than a half dozen times. The final outcome was almost always radically different from the bullshit they fed us in Coffee Talks. So I decided upper managers have close to zero credibility and I stopped going to their meetings. Cafeteria cookies and substandard coffee isn’t enough to get me to listen to their crap anymore. Many of our employees flock to Coffee Talks though. Some of them are genuinely gullible so they swallow just about everything that eminates from the mouth of management. Others go there just for the free grub and a paid hour long nap. Coffee Talks are real snoozers.
We had a big turnout last week for a lady from corporate HQ that held a Coffee Talk on site. I never heard of the woman before so it didn’t matter to me one bit what the hell she was going to yap about. A few minutes after she stepped up to the podium and began to spew forth with company propaganda at a couple hundred employees, I snuck into the back of the auditorium from the hallway and rifled through their baskets of cookies. My plan was just to grab a couple handfuls of oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies, then head back to the instrument line and munch out. While I was in cookie scavenger mode I spotted Unabomber. He got up from a seat in the audience and walked over to the side of the stage. I got a feeling he was about to do something very, very stupid. So I stuck around and observed.
Unabomber began to motion with his arms at the speaker in an attempt to get her attention. When she saw the jerk she left the microphone and walked over towards his side of the stage. That’s when he unloaded on her with both barrels blazing. Unabomber was yelling at her, almost shouting. She received his opinions concerning how messed up the company is, what he thought they should do to change, how much he hated his job, and it went on and on from there. It was kinda funny. If it had been me he was yelling at I would have called security and had his stupid ass hauled off the premises right then and there. Instead, the woman looked confused and took the beating. What a little trooper. I walked out snickering to myself with a pile of cookies in my hands.
I heard later on the manager lady Unabomber hassled thought the reason he was trying to get her attention was because of a family emergency or something. I guess that’s why she had such a perplexed expression on her face when Unabomber began his mentally ill tirade. She got his name from our department manager, apparently. So she knows who he is now but I seriously doubt anyone is going to do anything to him. Like hand him a written reprimand or sit him down for a serious heart to heart talk. It’s so strange working here in this environment. You can get away with just about anything and not have to worry about losing your job. For me, watching all this mayhem happen around me is like working in the Twilight Zone.
| 3,878 |
By signing up I agree to the Privacy Policy. I also agree to receive periodic emails with offers and promotional marketing messages from Closer Weekly.
Woo hoo!
Your life just got exponentially better and more stylish now you've signed up for our newsletter. Fabulousness awaits!
It seems that Queen Elizabeth very much values routine! We’ve previously learned that the royal has a favorite kind of cake — "chocolate biscuit," made by her Buckingham Palace chefs — that she has a slice of every single day. In addition, she’ll only wear one shade of nail polish, Essie’s Ballet Slippers, and, if we’re being really nosy, we also know that she eats her pears like a boiled egg by cutting off the top and scooping out the insides with a spoon.
And now, according to a report from The Independent, we know the queen imbibes four drinks per day! The report states the Queen enjoys a gin and Dubonnet with a slice of lemon and a “lot of ice" shortly before lunch. Then, during the meal, she’ll raise her glass for a tipple of wine. The monarch of more than six decades will then take a dry Martini and a glass of bubbly in the evening.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
The rather interesting insight into Queen Elizabeth's drinking habits follows the surprise departure of her current private secretary Sir Christopher Geidt, who recently resigned from the post. Sir Christopher, who has been with the palace since 2002, shared a statement explaining his decision. He also revealed his successor, Edward Young, will take over the role.
"It has been my very great privilege to serve the Queen since the Golden Jubilee in 2002 and, especially, as her private secretary for the past decade. In that time, as throughout her reign, Her Majesty's authority has brought stability, purpose and color to country and Commonwealth alike," he said.
Christopher continued to say, "With the Duke of Edinburgh's recent decision to draw back from public life, the Queen's own unwavering commitment as sovereign has the full and active support of the entire royal family. It is therefore with every confidence, and with Her Majesty's agreement, that I now hand over the responsibilities of the Queen's private secretary to my successor, Edward Young."
Christopher's deputy, Edward, first joined the royal household in 2004. Christopher's departure has been described as a shock, with the Mail on Sunday reporting that a dramatic shakeup is taking place as the Queen and Prince Charles try to impose greater unity on the rival "firms," or households, of the younger royals. The 91-year-old Queen and Prince Philip — who retires from royal duty this week, have made no secret that they're preparing to scale back their workload and hand the baton over to the younger generation.
Join our Facebook group for the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Prince William, and all things royal!
| 2,882 |
Top of the Morning: Chito Miranda, Neri Naig Marry
The Parokya ni Edgar frontman and the Dream Dad actress tied the knot twice: a civil ceremony on December 13, officiated by Taguig Mayor Lani Cayetano, and a garden wedding the next day in Tagaytay City. Chito, 38, and Neri, 28, had their families, close friends, and colleagues from showbiz and the music industry in attendance to witness the union, which caps their three-year relationship. Best wishes, Chito and Neri! (pep.ph)
2. Kourtney Kardasian gives birth to baby boy Reality stars Kourtney Kardashian and husband Scott Disick welcomed their third child December 14 —- the same day their eldest child Mason Dash turned 5. Big brother and sister Penelope Scotland, 2, together with the whole family is “freaking out with joy,” a source tells E! News. Congratulations on your growing brood, Kourtney! (people.com)
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge spread the holiday cheer when they recently released three official Christmas photos of Prince George —- and he is totally beaming with cuteness and charm in all three shots. The 16-month-old soon-to-be big brother is pictured sitting in a courtyard at London’s Kensington Palace. Releasing the photos is the couple’s way of thanking the media for continually honoring their request for their son to grow up without intrusion. (bbc.com)
4. Not breastfeeding can cost millionsThe cost of not supporting breastfeeding may be millions, according to U.K. researchers in Brunel University in London. The study showed that if more women breastfed for at least four months after birth, the healthcare cost savings and health benefits to moms and babies could be significant. And since culture and communities somewhat dictate a mom’s choice whether to breastfeed or not, the study calls for more support from the communities. The World Health Organization recommends babies be breastfed for at least six months to a year or more. (huffingtonpost.com)
5. Cure for dengue?A new treatment modality against dengue, a disease with no accepted or proven known cure, is now in development. Dr. Jaime Montoya, executive director of the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD), the government arm that conducts scientific health-related researches, confirmed that initial studies have shown that there were no significant negative side effects observed among the patients in the clinical trials. Research experts need a larger number of patients for the results to be more conclusive. (inquirer.net)
| 2,531 |
Terms of Use and Disclaimer for Alternative Energy.com.au
These terms of use is an agreement between You and Intaanetto ('Intaanetto'/'The Publisher'/'we'/'us'), the publishers of Alternative Energy .com.au. We reserve the right to alter the terms of use at any time without notice. Changes to the terms of use will be made available on the Website at which time the changes are made effective. Each time You login to the Website, You will be presented with the most recent version of this terms of use, of which You must agree to before accessing the Website.
General Terms of Use
YOU SHOULD NOT use Alternative Energy.com.au as a financial advice service. THIS WEBSITE IS NOT A FINANCIAL ADVICE SERVICE. YOU SHOULD NOT ACT IN ANY FINANCIAL MARKET BASED ON THE INFORMATION CONTAINED OR DERIVED FROM THIS WEBSITE. YOU SHOULD SEEK INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL ADVICE BEFORE MAKING AN INVESTMENT OF ANY SORT.
By agreeing to these terms of use, You agree to indemnify and hold Intaanetto, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, agents, co-branded partners or any associates free from harm from any claim or demand, including reasonable solicitor or attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to, or resulting from, any Information You submit, post, transmit or make available, in any way, through the use of this Website, Your specific use of this Website, Your violation of this terms of use agreement or Your violation of any rights of another. Furthermore:
You agree that should You find any offending Information or Information on this website that contravenes this terms of use, You will immediately notify by email [email protected] and request the deletion of such material. You also understand and agree that We have 96 business hours to remove the offending material.
Disclaimer
You understand and agree that the following forms a part of this TERMS OF USE and Your agreement to such forms a condition of use of this Website.
You access this Website at Your own risk. All Information, functionality and purpose of the Website is provided as is and as it is made available. Alternative Energy .com.au in every way disclaims all warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied and including (but not limited to) the implied warranties of merchantability, appropriateness of service and non-encroachment.
the Alternative-Energy.com.au Website will meet Your pre-conceptions or requirements,
that the Website will be available 24 hours a day,
that Website responds to requests in a timely, secure manner, or free or error,
that the Information obtained from this Website is accurate or reliable,
that the quality of any services, products and Information or other material purchased or accessed through Your use of this Website will be accurate, reliable or true,
Any errors in the software (bugs) will be corrected.Any Information downloaded or otherwise obtained through the use of this Website is done so at Your own will and risk. You are solely responsible for any damage to Your computer hardware, software and data and for any indirect damage caused to You personally, Your property or any third-part or the property of any third-party material cause as a result of Your accessing this Website.
NO ADVICE OR INFORMATION BE IT PRESENTED TO YOU ORALLY, WRITTEN, OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE OR OTHERWISE FROM Alternative Energy.com.au SHALL CONSTITUTE A WARRANTY ON BEHALF OF Alternative Energy.com.au.
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT Alternative-Energy.com.au SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY INDIRECT, DIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, GOODWILL, USE, DATA OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES (EVEN IF Alternative Energy.com.au HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), RESULTING FROM: (i) THE USE OR THE INABILITY TO USE THE WEBSITE; (ii) THE COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS AND SERVICES RESULTING FROM ANY GOODS, DATA, INFORMATION OR SERVICES PURCHASED OR OBTAINED OR MESSAGES RECEIVED OR TRANSACTIONS ENTERED INTO THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICE; (iii) UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR ALTERATION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR DATA; (iv) STATEMENTS OR CONDUCT OF ANY THIRD PARTY ON THE SERVICE; OR (v) ANY OTHER MATTER RELATING TO THE SERVICE.EXCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS
SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN WARRANTIES OR THE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. ACCORDINGLY, SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.NO THIRD PARTY BENEFICIARIES
As a member of Alternative-Energy.com.au, You expressly agree that unless otherwise expressly provided in these TERMS OF USE, there are NO third party beneficiaries to this agreement as formed by You and Us.
NOTICES
Alternativ-Energy.com.au provides notices to members, including notices of change to this TERMS OF USE, by email, post or on the Website.
GENERAL INFORMATION
These TERMS OF USE form the basis for the entire agreement between You and Us and thereby control Your use of the Website which supersedes any previous contract or agreement between You and Us.
The TERMS OF USE and the relationship between You and Alternative-Energy.com.au shall be governed by the laws of the State of Queensland without regard to its conflict of law provisions. You and Alternative Energy.com.au agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located within the district of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Service or the TERMS OF USE must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.
VIOLATIONS
MISCELLANEOUS
If any provision of these TERMS OF USE is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision shall be struck and the remaining provisions shall be enforced. Headings are for reference purposes only and in no way define, limit, construe or describe the scope or extent of such section. You may not sell, assign, or otherwise transfer Your membership. Alternative-Energy.com.au may assign or transfer its rights with regard to Your membership and these TERMS OF USE. Alternative Energy.com.au's failure to act with respect to any failure by You or others to comply with these TERMS OF USE does not waive Alternative-Energy.com.au's right to act with respect to subsequent or similar failures. These TERMS OF USE set forth the entire understanding and agreement between us with respect to the subject matter hereof. This paragraph survives expiration or termination of these TERMS OF USE.
Disclosure and warnings to people who view postings in the discussion forums on Alternative-Energy.com.au
Intaanetto does not endorse or vouch for the accuracy or authenticity of postings;
no-one is permitted to make postings as a licensed investment adviser, or as a representative of a licensed adviser;
postings are at best general information, not professional investment advice prepared by taking into account any individual circumstances and needs of particular investors. Therefore, before acting on the basis of what is said in a posting, you should:
consider consulting a licensed adviser (ASIC’s website at www.asic.gov.au has a list of licensed advisers); and
visit ASIC’s consumer website at www.fido.gov.au for general guidance about investing;[Historical note: RG 162.41(c)(ii) was amended on 4/7/2007 to refer to ASIC’s current consumer website.]
people making postings are individually responsible for the accuracy and authenticity of their postings;
because of the nature of the internet, it may be hard to identify or locate the person making a posting. The person may also be in an overseas jurisdiction, so it may be hard to take any legal action against them;
you will have no access to ASIC-approved dispute resolution schemes to recover any losses you may suffer by relying on the postings;
securities cannot be offered to you for sale or issue through postings on the IDS; and
it is advisable that you alert Intaanetto or ASIC Infoline on 1300 300 630 if you have good reason to suspect that any postings are inaccurate, are based on inside information or are likely to mislead or deceive people who view or use the postings.
Disclosure/warnings to people who post on Alternative-Energy.com.au
you are personally responsible for your postings (including any alterations you make to postings). Therefore, you should not include any misleading or deceptive information in your postings and not carry out illegal or unauthorised activities using the IDS. Information in postings may, where appropriate, be made available to ASIC. ASIC and people acting on such information may take action against you;
if you include hyper-links to other sites, you may be seen as endorsing the material on such sites. It may be advisable for you to warn people accessing other sites that you do not endorse or take responsibility for material in the hyper-linked sites;
if you own or have some other interest in a security, or you have any connection with a securities issuer that you might benefit from, you must disclose that fact. For example, you may be entitled to receive direct or indirect commissions, fees or other benefits from a financial product or service provider; or you may be associated with a particular securities issuer such as by being an employee or director of a securities issuer. If so, you must disclose that fact in your posting; and
if Intaanetto finds or reasonably suspects that you are making illegal or unauthorised postings, your right to make postings will be withdrawn.
| 9,675 |
A problem is brewing in Lumbridge this Thanksgiving. It seems that Phileas, the Lumbridge Sage, has happened upon some rather troubling manuscripts near his home and he needs your help to solve the my...
| 203 |
15 Artists And Labels Donating Their Proceeds To Essential Causes
After the election, these musicians are raising money for the people who will most need it.
Since the election result of November 8, a number of bands, artists, and record labels are donating proceeds from their sales to pro-women, pro-immigrant, pro-earth, or anti-bigotry charities. All of the people these causes raise money for expect to find the next four years difficult. They will all need help along the way. Of course you can donate directly —Jezebel— has a comprehensive list of charities, but here is a look at the artists who will donate money on your behalf as well as giving you new music to enjoy.
ADVERTISEMENT
Run For Cover Records
Modern Baseball by Christopher Leaman for The FADER
Boston independent label Run For Cover Records — home to Modern Baseball, Elvis Depressedly, and more — have made their entire catalog available as "pay what you want" on Bandcamp. The label will also match all donations up to $5,000 with all of the money going to Planned Parenthood.
Top Shelf Records
Top Shelf Records have made their back catalog pay what you want for the rest of 2016. All of their proceeds are being split between Planned Parenthood, NAACP, and The Trevor Project. Additionally, in 2017 they will start a new tiered label subscription service with each tier including a way to contribute to the three organizations.
Pinegrove
Pinegrove by Andrew Piccone
Pinegrove, makers of some of the year’s best music, are donating 100% of sales on Bandcamp to Planned Parenthood.
Near Mint
A photo posted by Near Mint (@wearenearmint) on Nov 10, 2016 at 12:08pm PST
DIY label Near Mint are splitting all sales until December 1 between the GSA Network, which funds middle school and high school clubs for members of the LGBTQ community, sexual violence charity RAINN, and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
Shigeto
Shigeto’s contemplative “What Are We Made Of?” samples a speech Detroit artist Tyree Guyton gave earlier this year in which he suggests "together we can change the world.” All money raised from the download will go to Planned Parenthood.
| 2,158 |
The Psychology of All Addictions (And Pathways to Treatment)
I have been a practicing psychologist in an outpatient setting for over thirty-two years. I run into the same issues and problems almost every day--addictions, anxiety, assertiveness, anger problems, divorce, weight management, parenting, children and teenager's behaviors, mood disorders, relationships, self-esteem, guilt, forgiveness, procrastination and ADHD/learning disabilities. This ebook is about the first subject. In it, I take you through the steps I go through to diagnose and treat addictions--ANY addiction
I start out with a NEW concept--the Universal Self-Test for Addictions (USTA). It's a self-test you can score for yourself or someone you suspect has an addiction. It comes with complete instructions for scoring and interpretation.
In this ebook, I answer a LOT of questions. Here they are:
What are the short and long definitions of addiction? What are the four major diagnostic components? What are the four additional concepts that define it? What are the symptoms? What four psychiatric illnesses mimic addiction?
What are the six major addictions? (Hint: Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling, Sex, Food, and Internet or Internet-related things) What are some other addictions? (I came up with 73...)
What are the seven categories and five schedules of drugs?
What are the current statistics for each addiction? How are all addictions the same or different? What are the myths and facts?
What are the seven stages of developing an addiction? (Another NEW concept: The Addiction Developmental Continuum)
What are the causes of addiction?
Habit or disease?
Triggers? What happens next? (Another NEW concept: The Addiction Reflex)
What happens to the brain?
What are the seven stages of treatment? Which is better? 12-Step Programs? Smart Recovery? Individual Therapy? Questions to get started--46 things to ask in treatment. What are the five most helpful therapeutic aids?
The deep stuff: Family-of-origin relationships, relationships with others, Self-Esteem. Cognitive Behavioral considerations: the relationship of thoughts and the emotions that follow, the kinds of thoughts that produce the kinds of feelings you have, your moods and last, the relationship between your thoughts, emotions, mood and behavior.
What if you live with an addict? What to do? What then?
Lastly, there is a section on quotes, followed by a lengthy bibliography.
Like my other publications, this ebook has no fat, but is full of the latest info, plus new original concepts.
Nobody has published what I present as the glue that makes the whole addiction concept really work. I thinkthis is why my ebook does a better job. The theory I espouse builds on the standard explanations in this fieldbut now offers many new ideas. These new concepts pull the whole idea of addiction together so it makes sense.I know, because I've been using it with clients as an outpatient psychologist for years. Want to know what addiction is and how to deal with it? Want to be able to really understand how it came to be and how to exactly plot where you are in developing an addiction? Want to understand and be able to deal with someone who has an addiction? This ebook is for you.
Ebooks are replacing standard books because they are easier and quicker to obtain. There is a need for immediate information, reasonably priced. I've priced this ebook to be at least twenty percent undermarket, considering what bookstores charge and the travel costs to and from. The ebook is now available for download.
I have been a practicing psychologist in an outpatient setting for over thirty-two years. I run into the same issues and problems almost every day--addictions, anxiety, assertiveness, anger problems, divorce, weight management, parenting, children an
People also Liked:
Earn cash by sharing
Simply share this product with your friends and family and earn affiliate revenue for every purchase made. Enter your email address below in order to get paid out via PayPal when a sale occurs. We take care of everything; you just share and make money!
We will keep your information private. We only use your email to create an affiliate tracking account so we can pay you directly via PayPal. By entering your email address, you agree to the PayLoadz Terms of Service.
| 4,324 |
Education Prices
Apple Education Pricing
Hi-Tec also supplies leading Mac third party hardware and software at special education pricing.
Qualifying organisations include universities, schools, colleges, teaching hospitals, museums, libraries and registered charities. Individuals qualifying include lecturers & teachers. Please see the education lists on this site or ring to ask for particular configurations.
Our staff will be pleased to visit your institution to help with selecting the best machine/software for your needs and we can arrange full installation and integration with your current systems.
| 611 |
Report: Kentucky’s Mark Stoops looking to familiar place to fill out coaching staff
Mark Stoops is reportedly going to continue his offseason raid of the Cincinnati coaching staff.
Stoops is preparing to add Cincinnati defensive coordinator Steve Clinkscale to his staff at Kentucky as defensive backs coach, according to a report by Josh Edwards of 247Sports. Clinkscale would replace Derrick Ansley, who left for Alabama earlier this month.
He would be the third coach to leave Cincinnati this offseason and join Kentucky. Stoops tabbed Eddie Gran to be his assistant head coach for offense and running backs coach and Darin Hinshaw to coach the quarterbacks in late December after Shannon Dawson was fired and Chad Scott left for North Carolina.
| 753 |
Jain Service give windows ac repair in jaipur,split ac repair in jaipur, ac repair in Jaipur, microwave oven repair in jaipur ,water cooler repair in jaipur. washing machine Repair in Jaipur, best Washing Machine Repair in Jaipur, top Washing Machine Repair in Jaipur and, Ac, water cooler, Home Appliances, Cooling Appliances, Microwave Oven, Refrigerator and Service with its spareparts is a substance of Jain Service.With the assistance of Fully prepared and most recent instruments equiped Engineers and Service men we turn into city’s best Multi mark AC Service Provider with in a brief timeframe jaipur.As the greater part of our new clients the individuals who were not happy with Companies Service Center as thier issue of Expensive Service Charge,Expensive Spare Part ,and holding up in ques to stop thier compalins,swapped thier Services to Jain Services which gave them quick ,bother free,cheaper Services to settle their apparatuses.
The most critical piece of any business is you, the client. That is the reason we influence client to benefit our most noteworthy need. We have specific offices to deal with your individual needs. Our administration office is accessible to you 10 hours per day, 6 days seven days. The upkeep division performs semi-yearly tune-ups on your framework when it is helpful for you, even on ends of the week. Our experts can meet with you whenever it might suit you to talk about your one of a kind framework needs. After an exhaustive examination they will make a suggestion that is ideal for you. All discussions are free and at no commitment. Reveal to us how we can help you.
| 1,622 |
Pages
Saturday, December 3, 2011
~WiNT3R**TRaInINg~ from Christian Hamrick on Vimeo.
see in this neck of the woods, since california is warm most of the time, we dont have indoor parks really. but in kansas city, christian hamrick, and his buddies matt and joseph have that luxury. looks like someone was about to get PLOWED at :07. anyway, lots of good lines in this one like christian's last hitter- feeble 180 and footplant for safety. smooth move tex.
| 457 |
Been a busy couple of weeks, but you can stop your fucking weeping and pining for the absent Finny picks. Because here they are, motherfuckers! For the occasion, I’m introducing the all new mathematical thingamabob, which I am calling Gnerd. Gnerd calculates team strength based on both offensive and defensive stats, and has a predictor function as well. Try to contain your fucking excitement and don’t piss on the floor, will ya?
The madness of the 2011 season continues. Tim Tebow can’t be stopped. The Ravens beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh, but (yet again) fall asleep and lose on the road to a shitty Seahawks team. The early season success of the Lions and Bills has come crashing back to earth. Otherwise intelligent coaches do stupid-assed shit (and yes, I am referring to Mike Smith going for it on 4th and inches from his own 30 in OT). Roger “Your Ass” Goodell fines everyone and everything for any delusional slight of the brand, while head shots to Steelers players go uncalled and aren’t fined. Fuck that.
All Tim Tebow does is win… against shit teams. OK, the Raiders are probably going to win the AFCW, but that’s damning with faint praise, and they’d just lost their starting QB when the Broncos beat them last time, so asterisk that win. Other wins for Tebow came against Miami and KC. Jets will likely load up the box and dare Tebow to throw on Revis and Cromartie-Species.
Sanchez is a hot pile of sick, but he’s nominally better than Tebow at throwing in the general direction of his receivers. If Bailey covers Holmes, Dirty will need to find Dustin Keller, Plax, and (if the knee is OK) LT. I expect Von Miller and Elvis Dumervil to get in Sanchez’s face, so this could be a low scoring game.
Big picture, Jets and Bills are both 5-4 and trailing the 6-3 Patriots. Worse, the AFCN has the 7-3 Steelers and the 6-3 Ravens and Bengals. That leaves very little margin of error for the Jets to make it as a wild card team. They have to take care of business, especially with one of the Ravens/Bengals going to 7-3 and the Bills meeting a beatable Dolphins team.
1. Green Bay Packers. Who else? Gnerd ranks the Pack 2nd overall (1st on offense, 18th on defense).2. Houston Texans. Playing the most balanced ball of any team outside of Green Bay, even without stars Mario Williams or Andre Johnson. Losing Matt Schaub will hurt in the post-season, but for now Leinart should guide them to a division title. Gnerd ranks the Texans 1st overall (4th on offense, 7th on defense).3. Pittsburgh Steelers. The bye comes at a good time, as this team needs to get healthy. In a three-way race with Ravens and Bengals, and the Ravens keep losing to shitty teams. Gnerd ranks the Steelers 5th overall (5th on offense, 12th on defense). 4. New England Patriots. Patriots defense showed up for a game, but we all know Belichick’s gamble is all-or-nothing, offense leads the way. Gnerd ranks the Patriots 6th overall (2nd on offense, 23rd on defense).5. Baltimore Ravens. The inverse Patriots. The losses to Jacksonville, Tennessee, and Seattle are unbelievable, but Ravens defense is always in the convo. Gnerd ranks the Ravens 4th overall (17th on offense, 1st on defense).6. San Francisco 49ers. Hard to argue with their record, but they also come out of the insipid NFCW, so I’ll temper my enthusiasm. Not a lot of quality wins aside from beating the Giants last week and Cinci on the road. Gnerd ranks the Niners 12th overall (18th on offense, 7th on defense). 7. Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys are an enigma, but if they can put it together they’re one of the more potent NFC teams, solid in all phases. That beatdown of the Bills may be a precursor. Gnerd ranks the Cowboys 7th overall (offense is 8th, defense is 10th). 8. New York Giants. Looks like the G-men and Cowgirls will be battling for the NFCE all the way. Loser of the division will be in a tight race for the wild card with NCFS and NFCN contenders. Gnerd ranks the Giants 9th overall (offense is 6th, defense is 11th). 9. Cincinnati Bengals. Bengals are playing solid fundamental ball, starting on the lines. Solid D, sturdy running game, and QB who’s not making a lot of errors makes Cinci sort of the San Fran of the AFC. Gnerd ranks the Bengals 15th overall (offense is 20th, defense is 13th). 10. New Orleans Saints. Important win over the Falcons may seal the division, but I’m not impressed by the New Orleans D this year, and they’re much worse on the road (3-3). Gnerd ranks the Saints 3rd overall (offense is 3rd, defense is 20th). 11. Chicago Bears. Bears are that steady as you go team that always climbs back into playoff contention. They’re just playing better now, plain and simple. Matt Forte has been a beast. Gnerd ranks the Bears 14th overall (offense is 21st, defense is 5th). 12. Atlanta Falcons. Favorable late schedule could see the Falcons wind up 11-5, if they win the rematch with the Saints. Gnerd ranks the Falcons 13th overall (offense is 13th, defense is 8th). 13. New York Jets. Jets also have a very manageable late schedule, so taking care of teams like the Broncos is necessary. Sanchez not sucking would also help. Gnerd ranks the Jets 10th (offense is 16th, defense is 2nd). 14. Detroit Lions. Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen. Losses to good teams (SF, Atlanta, and Chicago) aren’t egregious (see Ravens), but some of the shine is off. Not the same without Jahvid Best. Gnerd ranks the Lions 8th overall (offense is 15th, defense is 4th). 15. Buffalo Bills. Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen, Pt. 2. Tied with the Jets at 5-4 but with a better AFC record, Bills aren’t out of it yet. But they’re close. Lost to the Giants, Jets, and Cowboys; again, not egregious. But Cowboys game is a concern. Not the same without Kyle Williams. Gnerd ranks the Bills 17th overall (offense is 9th, defense is 26th). 16. Tennessee Titans. At 5-4, they’re well back of the 7-3 Texans, but not out of wild card contention. Aside from losing to Jacksonville in the opener, losses are not egregious (Steelers, Texans, Bengals). Late schedule isn’t going to be easy, but it is conceivable Titans could get to 9 or 10 wins. Gnerd ranks the Titans 16th overall (offense is 14th, defense is 16th). 17. Oakland Raiders. Possibly the best in a bad division, but at 5-4 and the rest of the AFCW at 4-5, even that’s not a given. Palmer looks like he’s rounding to form, and all the other teams have QB issues, including Philip Rivers’s apparent crack problem. Gnerd ranks the Raiders 19th overall (offense is 12th, defense is 26th). 18. San Diego Chargers. OK, if Rivers stops smoking crack, the Chargers could again assemble a run, but they’re definitely on the down cycle this year. Living off fumes of previous years’ hype. Gnerd ranks the Chargers 18th overall (offense is 11th, defense is 27th).19. Philadelphia Eagles. And that’s probably generous. There’s tons of talent on this team, and the potential to be a dangerous offense, but they’re a stone cold wreck right now. Nothing’s in synch. Defense is awful, OL is sorry, Vick’s hurt. Gnerd ranks the Eagles 11th overall (offense is 7th, defense is 17th). 20. Seattle Seahawks. Seattle’s a bad team that found a way to beat two good teams (Giants, Ravens). Marshawn Lynch is in beast mode. Gnerd rankes the Seahawks 27th overall (26th on offense, 15th on defense).21. Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tampa Bay has just fallen apart. Their offense is nonexistent, their DL misses Gerald McCoy, and their secondary is insipid. And before a 3-game losing streak they were sitting at 4-2. Gnerd ranks the Bucs as 29th overall (23rd on offense, 30th on defense). 22. Carolina Panthers. Panthers have shown some sparks with Cam Newton as QB, despite last week’s beatdown by Tennessee. The difference between Tim Tebow and Cam Newton? All Tebow does is win, baby. The other difference? Newton’s got an actual future as an NFL QB. Gnerd ranks the Panthers 20th overall (10th on offense, 31st on defense).23. Washington Redskins. Grossman. Beck. Grossman. Who gives a fuck? Seriously? Gnerd ranks the Redskins 22nd overall (29th on offense, 9th on defense). 24. Miami Dolphins. Chad Henne. Matt Moore. Who gives a fuck? Seriously? Gnerd ranks the Dolphins 21st overall (22nd on offense, 21st on defense).25. Cleveland Browns. Browns playing as I predicted the Bengals would, and vice versa. The Pat Shurmur era has been, shall we say, inauspicious. Good pass D though. Gnerd ranks the Browns 24th (27th on offense, 14th on defense). 26. Denver Broncos. Think this Tebow option offense shit will stick for a while? Sure, just like that Miami Dolphins Wildcat offense. That shit re-wrote fucking football. Gnerd ranks the Broncos 26th overall (24th on offense, 19th on defense).27. Jacksonville Jaguars. Defense has shown its mettle. Running game still has MJD. Blaine fucking Gabbert and that passing game are hideous. Nice fucking draft pick there, idiots. Gnerd ranks the Jaguars 25th overall (32nd on offense, 3rd on defense). 28. Minnesota Vikings. Ponder should develop into a solid QB and they still have AP. Defense ain’t what it used to be, and neither is the OL. Also, their wideouts suck. Gnerd ranks the Vikings 23rd (19th on offense, 24th on defense).29. Arizona Cardinals. Cardinals almost beat the Ravens, then turn around and beat the Eagles. And yet, they suck. How stupid was that Kevin Kolb deal in retrospect? Gnerd ranks the Cardinals 28th overall (25th on offense, 29th on defense).30. Kansas City Chiefs. Chiefs started the year as the worst team in the bigs, then showed signs of life, and now are ready to go back into their coma with Cassell out. Tyler Palko FTW! Gnerd ranks the Chiefs 30th overall (28th on offense, 22nd on defense).31. St. Louis Rams. In any other year, the Rams would again be the worst team in football. And the crazy thing is that they have some talent on both sides of the ball. Injuries, bad mojo, who knows. Almost made the playoffs last year but back to the cesspool this year. Gnerd ranks the Rams 31st overall (31st on offense, 28th on defense).32. Indianapolis Colts. The horror. The horror. Gnerd ranks the Colts 32nd overall (30th on offense, 32nd on defense).
Mrs. Finny thought I had fallen asleep while watching that abomination of a game, but actually it turned out I was in a fucking coma. A few pitchers of NyQuiltinis brought me around, but for a while there it looked like fucking Tebow had finally done it. Finally killed the old bastard. Seriously, what words to describe that game? Vile? Wretched? Mind-numbing? Rebarbative? Repugnant? Fucking Goodell should fine both teams... just fucking because. Here he does all this work to gay up the league and these two idiot QBs can't fucking do shit with the passer-friendly rules. Sure, we love defensive scrums, but not when the offenses blow dead wino dick. That's about as fun as watching buzzards eat roadkill. NO. WAIT. I'd rather watch a three hour documentary of buzzards picking at a fucking carcass than ever have to watch Tim Tebow against Sanchez or any of the other shitty QBs he's won against.
All the talking heads are A-fucking-GOG over how Tebow looks like utter shit for 55 minutes of reg and then pulls wonders out of his ass in the last 5. It's fucking simple, you fucking morons. He bores them to death. He rope-a-dopes even good defenses like the Jets, and after 55 minutes their brains start to hurt. And they don't have Mrs. Finny with a pitcher of 'Tinis to bring them out of their coma. Seriously, Erica Smith, how can you not have contain against a running QB? And did you see Antonio Cromartie hanging onto Eric Decker in the EZ so he wouldn't have to go and try to tackle Tebow? Hilarious. You jackals have probably just fucked your entire season. Have you seen the AFCN standings lately?
To say nothing of Mark Sanchez. Five trips to the Broncos side of the field, 3 points. What a fucking douche. How the fuck this team ever got the AFCC – twice – with this bobo under center defies logic. Sure, they have a solid defense, and their running game is good, or used to be. I’ll say it’s the Cotchery effect. Cotch leaves town, it all goes downhill for Nacho. Maybe Arians is being fucking brilliant, easing Cotch into the lineup sorta invisibly, just in time to make a big impact late in the season. Or, you know, not.
So my initial impulse was to say the Donkos would cover, a 16-13 kinda Jets win. Because, seriously, I couldn’t see the Jets missing the opportunity to beat the shit out of the Broncos. And even with the offensive ineptitude, I figured they had to get to 20 points. Well, shoulda stuck with my gut instinct. In next week’s power rankings, the Broncos won’t get a huge rise, but expect the Jets to fall. Here’s the question: the Jets and Jaguars both have a pretty decent defense, and some running offense, and fucking Blaine fucking Gabbert and fucking Mark fucking Sanchez at QB. How can anyone say the Jets are anything more than incrementally better than the Jags?
Buffalo Bills (5-4) +1 at Miami Dolphins (2-7). After a brilliant 4-0 start, the Bills have hit some tough surfing. Losses to the Giants, Jets, and a blowout loss to the Cowboys have rattled this team. NT Kyle Williams is out for the year, and the rush defense has slipped. C Eric Woods is likewise done for the year, and WR Stevie Johnson’s shoulder is dinged. Meanwhile, the Dolphins have started to cohere a bit, winning two straight over KC and Washington, after narrowly losing to the Giants and the Broncos.
That smells an awful lot like a potential win for the home team. The Bills have a chance to leapfrog the sorry-assed Jets and remain in contention for an AFC wild card, so long as one of the AFCN teams falters. Losing sends them to the purgatory of 5-5 along with the aforementioned Jets and their pathetic fucking vanquishers, the Donkeys. Expect plenty of running in this one, with the score bubbling along and making under 43 look smart. But I think the Bills passing game breaks out late.
Finny says: Bills 24, Dolphins 23. Gnerd predicts: Bills by 1.
Cincinnati Bengals (6-3) +7 at Baltimore Ravens (6-3). Let’s see if I can get this right. Against the Steelers, Fucco looks like a pretty decent QB. The defense is in top form. But against the turds of the league, these guys look like they spent the pregame shooting heroin into their fucking eyeballs. I mean, the Sea-fucking-HAWKS? Seriously? And now it looks like that juke Marshawn Lynch gave Ray Ray might have broken Uncle Stabby’s toe, as he’ll be out this week and possibly more.
Bengals have won 6 of the last 10 against the Ravens, and Andy Dalton is completing over 60% of his passes, while Fucco is struggling to get to 55%. My gut says the Ravens, at home after a loss, should win decisively to even their record with the Steelers. But my head says that the Bengals will cover and possibly spring the upset, even with CB Leon Hall done for the year.
Finny says: Another defensive chess match, but can’t see the Ravens dropping this one at home. Ravens 24, Bengals 21. Gnerd predicts: Ravens by 8.
Jacksonville Jaguars (3-6) +1 at Cleveland Browns (3-6). Remember when Colt McCoy was the Andy Dalton of 2010? Remember when Blaine fucking Gabbert was… well, he did beat the Ravens, or at least didn’t get in the way of his team. This could be the best week 11 matchup of shitty QBs since Tebow-Sanchez! Seriously, if this was the only game on, I’d watch the documentary on buzzards eating carcasses. I’d nail my finger to an oak board just to alleviate the pain that watching these teams would cause. I’d shit all over the neighbor’s lawn in broad daylight. Well, that would have nothing to do with the game per se, and everything to do with my needing to be out of my mind drunk to sit through the game.
Browns get Montario Hardesty back, what with Peyton Hillis sidelined with the sniffles or whatever the fuck. Has anyone figured out what the fuck is up with that situation? McCoy is starting to get some production out of Greg Little, but he’s still very raw. On the flip, the Jags run D will probably shut Hardesty down and dare McCoy to win through the air. With CB Rashean Mathis out (ACL), the Jags will rely on CB Will Middleton, a Furman grad who had to delay starting med school due to getting a shot in the bigs.
Blaine fucking Gabbert won’t be able to do shit, especially on CB Joe Haden’s side of the field. MJD will pile up his yards against a Browneye defense that can’t stop the run. Field goal fiesta with one TD coming off a broken coverage?
Finny says: Browns 16, Jaguars 12. Gnerd predicts: Browns by 4.
Oakland Raiders (5-4) -1 at Minnesota Vikings (2-7). Raiders have to be annoyed at Tebow and the Broncos moving to 5-5. That whole division is a fucking mess, with Oakland at 5-4, and SD and KC both at 4-5. Raiders will definitely be motivated to keep some distance over the Broncos, and Old Noodle Arm seems to be clicking with the offense now. Even without Darren McFadden running, Palmer to Moore should take advantage of the loss of CB Antoine Winfield.
The Vikes should feed AP the ball plenty, against a sorry Raiders run defense. Poor Christian Ponder actually looks like a decent player, with no line help and a shitty group of receivers to throw to. Even if the Vikings aren’t as bad as the Packers made them appear to be, they’re still plenty bad.
Finny says: Vikings can only hope to take the air out of this game with AP. Don’t see that being enough. Raiders 27, Vikings 21. Gnerd predicts: Raiders by 1.
Carolina Panthers (2-7) +7 at Detroit Lions (6-3). Lions, like the Bills, need to get back to winning to stay relevant in the wild card race. With the Bears clawing back to 6-3 as well, Lions need to shake off some injuries to Stafford and Johnson, and do a better job of protecting the QB. Panthers should get their ground game going again, but figure Suh & Co. will harass Newton. Lions get a Panthers defense that can’t stop anyone, expect them to score a bunch. And actually, I can see this being a shootout.
Finny says: Lions will be hard pressed to look as good as they did over their opening stretch, but eke a much-needed win. Lions 34, Panthers 30. Gnerd predicts: Lions by 9.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-5) +14 at Green Bay Packers (9-0). The Packers are clicking. The Bucs are fading. Really, how much analysis do you need?
Finny says: Packers 42, Bucs 13. Gnerd predicts: Packers by 12.
Dallas Cowboys (5-4) -7.5 at Washington Redskins (3-6). Both defenses are pretty solid, but the Cowboys offense is blazing just as the Redskins offense is going out. I expect DeMarco Murray to key the offense and open up the passing game, which looks very, very dangerous at just the right time.
Arizona Cardinals (3-6) +9.5 at San Francisco 49ers (8-1). So John Skelton is the savior in Zona or something? Because the Cards beat an atrocious Rams team (in OT) and upset a fractured Eagles squad? Doubt the Niners fall into a trap of overlooking the Cards, but at 8-1, with the division all but in their ass pocket, they might not be as up for this game as the line suggests. They blew out TB but other games have been much closer, so I suspect a division game will be more about playing mistake-free and utilizing ball control than thumping the Cards by 2 TDs.
Seattle Seahawks (3-6) +3 at St. Louis Rams (2-7). Easy to think the Seahawks win this after beating the Ravens, but coming off that win I can see them flat on the road. Marshawn Lynch is running like a beast, and Seahawks are stout against the run, but losing RT John Carpenter and RG John Moffitt spells trouble, as do concussions for Tarvaris Jackson’s top two wideouts, Doug Baldwin and Sidney Rice.
Go with the Rams to get by a damaged Seahawks team in what looks to be another awesome NFCW divisional game. Simply tremendous. Can’t wait.
Finny says: Rams 17, Seahawks 16. Gnerd predicts: Seahawks by 2.
Tennessee Titans (5-4) +6 at Atlanta Falcons (5-4). Titans and Falcons are solid against the run, so this game would seem to set up as a passing contest. Except that Julio Jones and Roddy White are dinged for the Falcons, and the Titans’ top WRs are Nate Washington and Damian Williams, which is to say, not scary.
Atlanta knows that at 5-4, they’re playing catch up to the 7-3 Saints the rest of the season. Last week’s disastrous OT loss to those Saints means that now the Falcons will be vying for a wild card against the NFCN’s 6-3 Bears and Lions, and the NFCN’s 5-4 Cowboys. Bottom line, the Falcons have little room for failure if they want to play in the post-season.
Finny says: Go with the home team desperate for a win, but not for 6 points. Falcons 24, Titans 20. Gnerd predicts: Falcons by 6.
San Siego Chargers (4-5) +3.5 at Chicago Bears (6-3). The Bears have actually started to fix some of their OL problems and have apparently duct-taped OC Mike Martz and thrown him into a trunk in some New Jersey swamp. What else explains the fact that they’re running Matt Forte more?
Meanwhile, Phil Rivers has suddenly become addicted to crack. I came to this realization when I saw Rivers break huddle last week with smoke trailing out of his nostrils and a glass pipe in his hand. The Chargers OL is a mess, and with LT Marcus McNeill woozy after a stinger and LG Kris Dielman done for the season. I’ve been saying the Chargers are over-rated for a couple of years now, but the shit is truly hitting the fan now.
Since their bye, the Bolts have dropped four straight. Their two road games, they lost to the no-offense Jets and the crappy Chiefs, and their two home games they gave up 45 to the Pack and lost by a TD to Oakland. A year or two ago, a four game losing streak by the Chargers would have been unthinkable. It would be assumed they would just pull out of it sometime, what with their zesty offense and statistically appealing defense. But now they’re in full nose dive.
Finny says: Bears 31, Chargers 17. Gnerd predicts: Bears by 6.
Philadelphia Eagles (3-6) +5.5 at New York Giants (6-3). Speaking of nose dives
The theme song for the Eagles defense, which couldn’t stop the pathetic Cardinals for fuck’s sake, should be the Dead Boys’ immortal Down in Flames. What else? Leading receiver Jeremy Maclin is likely out with a shoulder. And QB Vick is out with busted up ribs. That means Vince Young gets the start, which could be good and bad.
There’s one train of thought that says a backup QB will have some success out of the gate because there’s not enough film on him and his tendencies. Backups have something to prove, especially if they’re former starters.
On the downside of that theory: the Eagles just don’t have the defense to keep up. Vince will keep it interesting until the Giants start to pull away in the third quarter, and it just gets ugly.
Finny says: Giants 34, Eagles 20. Gnerd predicts: Giants by 6.
Kansas City Chiefs (4-5) +14.5 at New England Patriots (6-3). Nevermind that the Broncos-Jets game highlighted that you don’t need a defense to shut down Mark Sanchez. Let the Patriots feel as though their defense is getting better. It just won’t matter against a Chiefs team that lost QB Matt Cassell and is starting Tyler Palko.
I’ll let others parse out the ironies of former Patriots coaches and players now with the Chiefs. It just doesn’t tickle my gonads to do so. Patriots see the chance to start putting some room between themselves and the Jets in the standings, and take advantage.
Where are you seeing the Bills as 2.5pt. road favorite? They're an underdog just about everywhere I've looked. Pretty sure the line started at Bills (+2). You just press the wrong key after a Nyquilitini binge?
Where are you seeing the Bills as 2.5pt. road favorite? They're an underdog just about everywhere I've looked. Pretty sure the line started at Bills (+2). You just press the wrong key after a Nyquilitini binge?
| 24,001 |
With updated crystal mine information, this book tells you the best places to collect quartz crystal and gives the tips, tools and techniques of how to collect crystal. It also shares the secrets of cleaning and preparing crystal for display. Discover the varietites of collectable crystal from one of the world's most important and accessible quartz-producing areas. Maps and travel guides make this text an invaluable guide for the beginning as well as the experienced collector. 100 black and white photographs and illustrations.By Darcy and Mike Howard of RockhoundingAR.com
Paperback book: $16.95This book is now out of print in paper copy.
A CD version of Collecting Crystals is also available for reading on your computer. The photographs are in color, which is a really big help to show how the crystals look in the ground, how the crystals look before and after cleaning, and gives an overall better view of how lovely the quartz crystals really are. The maps of collecting sites are printable; other text is read only.
CD version: $12.00
Mineral, Fossil-Fuel, and Water Resources of Arkansas, 1997
Edited by J. M. Howard, G.W. Colton, and W.L. Prior, AGC Bull. 24 – If you want to know what has been mined in Arkansas, and where generally, then this is the definitive book for you to get your feet on the ground! Contains 26 figures, 2 tables, an Appendix, Glossary and selected references on each commodity. 115pp.
$14.00 Shipping weight 15 oz.
Molybdenum in Magnet Cove, Arkansas, 1948
By D.F. Holbrook, ARDC, Div. of Geology Bull. 12., table and 2 maps. Summary of the discovery and exploration of the Mo-Ti property at Magnet Cove. 12pp.
$5.00 Shipping weight 3 oz.
Quartz, Rectorite, and Cookeite from the Jeffrey Quarry, near North Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, 1964
By H.D. Miser and C. Milton, AGC Bull. 21. Mineralogy and geology of this famous quartz collecting locality, written while it was still an active quarry.29 pp.
$5.00 Shipping weight 3 oz.
Mercury District of Southwest Arkansas, 1976
By B.F. Clardy and W.V. Bush, AGC Info. Circ. 23, Index. The definitive site guide to all the mercury mines and prospects in southwest Arkansas. If you are tired of collecting quartz and want to hunt for cinnabar and related minerals, then you need this book! Covers 67 mines and prospects, 3 map plates, and 8 figures. 57pp
$7.00 Shipping weight 11 oz.
Antimony District of Southwest Arkansas, 1979
By J.M. Howard, AGC Info. Circ. 24, covers 23 mines and prospects, 3 figures, and large foldout colored geology map with mine and prospect locations. Something different to visit and collect in Arkansas…stibnite, jamesonite, and stibiconite, along with quartz with stibnite inclusions! Index and reference list. 29pp.
| 2,762 |
Measuring motor speed and display result on LCD using ATmega8 microcontroller
For measuring motos speed there can Optical interrupter used like H21A1. This is a device where IR LED and photo-transistor is coupled in to plastic housing. The gap between then allows interrupting signal with opaque material and this way switching the output from ON to OFF.
This device can be connected to Microcontrollers ICP pin and this way measuring PWM disk (with hole in it) speed can be measured. Disk has to me fixed to axis of motor. Each time the hole of disk passes the gap, optical interrupter will form a pulse which goes to ICP pin to trigger the timer. If take measuring interval 1s, then counted pulses will be equal to turns in Hz.
Lets take Atmega8 microcontroller which is clocked at 8MHz. For this lets use timer pre-scaler 8, then timer will run at frequency equal 1MHz(period 1μs ). Each time the pulse reaches ICP(Atmega8 – PB0 pin) pin then on falling front of pulse input capture interrupt occur. Interrupt service routine counts the number of timer pulses between two pulses. Number of timer counts define the disk speed (RPM – revolutions per minute).
RPM=60000000/T
T – duration of one disk turn. The results will be displayed on 2×16 LCD. LCD is connected to AVR as follows:
| 1,297 |
Bardem > Bane?
I’ve read your column enough times to know that you aren’t very impressed with matching names or alliterative names and well, we’ve done both. I have two boys, Maddox and Maxwell and I am pregnant with my third baby. The boys last name starts with “M” and to top it all off my husband and I both have “M” names… I don’t know how we got to this point but we are here now and I feel like we have to give this baby another “M” name or he/she will feel left out. I know you are likely rolling your eyes in disapproval right now but I am hoping that your fondness for a good challenge will persuade you to help us anyways. In addition to a name starting with “M”, we have a few additional requirements: my first language is French so we need a name that will flow easily in a French conversation, it cannot be a common name and it needs a good nickname (Maddox and Maxwell almost always go by “Maddy” and “Welly”). Any suggestions??? Please!!
___
Okay, the title of this column is a reference to the fact that the title of this email was “Duana Won’t Be Happy But We Need Help!” I went through all kinds of ‘when Mama’s not happy’ kind of titles, but I feel like calling yourself Mama is kind of awkward. So…
You know I can’t just roll over and pretend it’s super-keen that you’re going with matchy names, and I KNOW you know, but here’s a thought. How about names that SOUND like M? My big pitch? Emmett or Emmeline. Both names are probably going to wind up nicknamed “Emme”, so you kind of have it made.
What, that doesn’t stick to the letter of the law for you? My fondness for a good challenge does indeed win out. Okay, how about the glorious Marcel? The French is a fait accompli, you can call him Celly or Sal and it is equally as uncommon as your previous two. Or Marius? Maybe I’m just over here looking for an excuse to start singing “Do You Hear The People Sing” but I love it, and it’s nice with the ones you have.
What about if she’s a girl, though? The ‘m’ names are a lot more well-trodden but I’m not going to fall back on Madeleine (or even Margot, all you snarkers). However, Magdalena is somehow a brilliant take on the same name, so you can call my bluff there. Meredith is ever beautiful and underused and it grows-up your little girl quickly, so that’s a benefit if you want it to be. Mallory? Marcella? Somewhere, Dean is crossing his fingers hoping I’ll say Manon, so ….Manon?
| 2,500 |
Cells
A cell is the smallest unit that exhibits all of the
qualities associated with the living state. Cells must
obtain energy from an external source to carry on
such vital processes as growth, repair, and reproduction.
All of the chemical and physical reactions
that occur in a cell to support these functions constitute
its metabolism. Metabolic reactions are catalyzed
by enzymes. Enzymes are protein molecules
that accelerate biochemical reactions without being permanently altered
or consumed in the process. The structure of each enzyme (or any other
protein) is encoded by a segment of a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule
referred to as a gene.
Molecular and cell biology are the sciences that study all life
processes within cells and at the molecular level. In doing so, these sciences draw upon knowledge from several scientific disciplines, including
biochemistry, cytology, genetics, microbiology, embryology, and
evolution.
| 943 |
Search
Tallgrass Beef Hot Dogs for Memorial Day!
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Memorial day is just around the corner and this year I'm excited to be hosting a cookout with close family friends as we also celebrate our 'house welcoming.' We anticipate being all settled into our home with the Baron and can't wait to start entertaining. To kick off the summer season, we're firing up our new grill and hosting guests to a hot dog party!
And because we're all about making things special for our friends, our hot dog party will be complete with a full buffet of toppings, condiments and everything they need to customize and be creative with their hot dogs. For our hot dog party, not any old hot dog will do. In fact, I've partnered up with the Tallgrass Beef Company and highlight their newest offering... the Tallgrass Frank. These are 100% grass-fed hot dogs that are gluten, hormone, preservative and pesticide free.
I typically don't buy hot dogs regularly because I haven't found one that I felt comfortable serving with the number of preservatives pumped into so many brands. And of the 'healthier' hot dog versions I have tried, they didn't as good as I hoped. So with that, having a hot dog is a treat at our house. Knowing the amount of care and attention put towards making these hot dogs healthy, I'm pleased to say they taste amazing. We tried the hot dogs for lunch the other day and even my son, Joel, declared how it was the best hot dog he's ever had! From that point on, I knew we had ourselves a hot dog winner!
After learning more about the Tallgrass Beef Company and Bill Kurtis, I began to learn more about why grassfed beef was better...not just because it tastes great but because there are some healthy advantages for us as consumers, healthy living for the cattle used to make them, the benefits to our environment and so much more. You can read more about these positive points on their website.
So if you're anticipating a cookout for memorial day or anytime this summer, definitely give Tallgrass Beef Hot Dogs (or any of their other delicious products) a try! They're all great on the grill and you'll definitely feel great enjoying them for so many reasons! If you're still thinking of ideas on what to serve this holiday weekend with your hot dogs or burgers, I've included some tasty ideas below...
3 comments
Hello,Your blog has caught our attention because of the quality of recipes.
We would be delighted if you would join us at 'myTaste Australia' so that we could link to it. We send thousands of visitors to our blogs on a weekly basis.
MyTaste Australia is a search engine that compiles the best Australian cooking sites and blogs from the Internet and gives an opportunity for users to save and share recipes collecting them in cookbooks.
Hello,Your blog has caught our attention because of the quality of recipes.
We would be delighted if you would join us at 'myTaste Australia' so that we could link to it. We send thousands of visitors to our blogs on a weekly basis.
MyTaste Australia is a search engine that compiles the best Australian cooking sites and blogs from the Internet and gives an opportunity for users to save and share recipes collecting them in cookbooks.
| 3,224 |
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Turkey with a white table cloth
One of the things that bugged me while I lived in Berlin the first time was how Turkish food was rarely served anywhere except Imbisse (snack bars) or holes-in-the-wall (and in homes, of course), but rarely in sit-down establishments where you might go on a date or take your out-of-town parents. Most days, I'd rather eat Turkish food than German food, but I know this isn't how everyone feels. Older Germans I am acquainted with would never eat Turkish food unless there was no other choice and then they would probably grumble about garlic or spices or grease. It was also my impression that most Germans, though they were more than willing to eat Turkish food, found that it was acceptable for a quick meal or snack, particularly after a night on the town, but would never center an evening around a Turkish establishment.
So, it's a little strange that I went to a Turkish restaurant in the States right before moving back to Berlin, where entire neighborhoods seem to be powered by Turkish food, but .... what can I say... the alphabet made me do it. I will say that although Yayla Bistro was not bad, better Turkish food abounds in Berlin. Out of the four things we ordered, two were really good and two were OK. Our waiter recommended a glass of Turkish wine, which was really excellent - much better than I had expected. We also shared an appetizer of baby squid with honey vinegar. The squid was perfectly cooked and the honey vinegar added a really interesting component. Very few, if any, Turkish restaurants in Berlin serve such a dish. On the other hand, we also had a totally average spinach pie and really blah moussaka. Both seem to have been microwaved - the pastry in the spinach pie was really soggy and this totally ruined the dish. You could easily get microwaved food from a Turkish place here, but it would have cost a few Euros at most. What was notable about Yayla, was not how extremely friendly the owner and staff were (the owner was in front of the restaurant while we were looking for parking and went out of his way to tell us about free parking in the neighboring garage), rather the white table cloths, soft lighting, and older white clientele mixed with young white families. In my almost seven years in Berlin, the nicest Turkish place I ate was Hasir in Kreuzberg (I know the one is Mitte is a bit fancier) and it wasn't all that nice. I don't recall seeing any old white guys in loafers. While I was gone, there have been some developments in the Turkish food scene and I've read about the opening of two more traditional (real tables, waiters, etc.) Turkish restaurants: Defne and Osmans Toechter. The weather is basically unbearable and a jet-lagged toddler doesn't necessarily make for the best sidekick, but I think there may be room for a little optimism here. Yayla Bistro2201 North Westmoreland Street, Arlington
About Me
I've decided to put my complaining about the lack of international culinary options (sometimes referred to as "ethnic food") on hold and see what's really out there. I'm trying to eat in a restaurant from every country in the world starting with Afghanistan all the way to Zimbabwe.
| 3,213 |
Category Archives: US Secretary of State John Kerry
Post navigation
Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad (left) and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin (right). Given all that transpired in Syria surrounding the US, United Kingdom, and French military strikes, Putin, Assad and their respective senior advisers may very well have begun to ask questions about future of relations between their countries. Relations between Moscow and Damascus may have begun moving in a new direction to the dissatisfaction and disappointment of Putin, and the dismay and anger of Assad.
Correlative effects can result from airstrikes, cruise missile strikes, drone strikes, and artillery attacks. Those effects could include damage to surrounding structures, or could mean unfortunate harm to civilians, in or near a target struck. Correlative effects can sometimes include shaping the attitude and behavior of an opponent targeted, his ability think, what he thinks, his ability to fight, and even his interactions with individuals with which he is allied or tenuously unified can be others. A correlative result of the April 13, 2018 US, United Kingdom, and French military strikes in Syria may have been a hard blow upon the ties between Russia and Syria. Indeed, perhaps far more was accomplished by that US-led coalition than the Trump administration could have imagined. On April 13, 2018, US military forces, acting in coordination with military forces from the United Kingdom and France, took decisive action against the chemical weapons infrastructure of the Syria Arab Republic. It was in response to an April 7, 2018 chemical weapons attack against his own citizens in Douma. According to the Trump administration, the US has vital national interests in averting a worsening catastrophe in Syria, and specifically deterring the use and proliferation of chemical weapons. The military strikes took out “the heart” of the Syrian chemical weapons enterprise, but there were other facilities that were not struck due to concerns about civilian casualties. He declined to say exactly how much of the chemical weapons program was taken out. US Defense Secretary James Mattis explained that the strikes were “a one-time shot.” US Marine Corps Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Staff, explained in an April 18, 2018 press conference at the Pentagon that the US carefully plotted out the strength, length of time, and target set of the strikes. Efforts were made to minimize the potential for chemical weapons to leak out of the facilities, with McKenzie saying “we believe we successfully mitigated” the risk. He explained that while it is possible that some material and people were moved from the site in the lead-up to the attack, there were certain pieces of equipment that the regime would not have been able to relocate. McKenzie acknowledged that the three sites did not represent the totality of the Syrian chemical weapons program known to the US. However, McKenzie and Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White emphasized that future strikes in the region could not be ruled out, saying that it is entirely up to the Assad regime. They went on to explain that the use of chemical weapons in the future could lead to more strikes.
After everything, Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad sits ostensibly in relative safety and comfort in Damascus as the leader of all of Syria, even though he only controls a small part of the country’s territory. He only holds on to that with the assistance of Russia and Iran. Even more, he wields as much power as Russia will grant him to wield. To observers, there appears to be a blindness in Moscow about Assad. Yet, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin is well aware of his Syrian counterpart’s merits and deficits. He has an intellectual understanding of Assad, his habits, his ways. Indeed, at this point, Putin, with albeit some effort, very likely can track his thoughts, and likely has intimations about his moves whenever he thinks about Syria. For some, the optics of their interactions would support the idea that Assad is something akin to a ventriloquist’s dummy for Putin. Others would insist that they have a strong personal bond. Imdeed, there are Western foreign policy analysts and scholars would go as far as to say the relationship with Assad is indissoluble. Putin would likely assert that the two men simply have a better than average friendly rapport based on mutual interests and military, diplomatic, and economic arrangements. It would be practically impossible for the truly experienced not to see that in their relationship, Putin is the top, the leader, the senior party and Assad is the bottom, the follower, the junior party. Often, Putin displays choreographed support for Assad. When relationships are built on mutual interests and useful arrangements, and not a higher bond, sometimes conditions can change to such a degree that the relationship might be altered or ended.
Given all that transpired in Syria surrounding the US, United Kingdom, and French military strikes. Putin, Assad and their senior advisers may very well have begun to ask questions about future of relations between their countries. The interior thoughts, emotions officials in Moscow and Damascus play an important role in all that is happening with Syria. There was nothing but negative feedback for Assad regarding Putin. Assad likely had no doubt that Putin would stand with him against the West. Yet, as the Western military strikes were executed on April 13, 2018, Assad watched as Putin did nothing. The lesson for Assad was that he should not be so trusting of Russia and his other somewhat powerful allies. After all, when desires action from them, he has almost no way to aafely shape their behavior. While Assad did not publicly brood over what transpired on April 13th, he was likely resentful and bitter about it. Postulating that the military strikes in Syria were designed to have the effect of sowing seeds of mistrust and dissent between Russia and Syria would go a bit beyond conjecture. However, there may have been coincidental, correlative political warfare effects resulting from the April 13th military strikes. A glut of information about Assad is held by the intelligence services of the US, United Kingdom, and France. Amid what has been collected is undoubtedly information about the dynamics of Assad’s relationship with Putin. It may confirm that their relationship is now a bit different. The tons of information coming in from Syria may be at a constipation point. Information of that sort may not have been synthesised yet. Nothing has been made public or provided newsmedia reports on whether the April 13, 2018 military strikes had either a deliberate or correlative effect of rocking the boat between Moscow and Damascus has been produced. Still, one can ruminate, outside of the box, that a ball may have begun rolling in a new direction to the dissatisfaction and disappointment of Putin, and the dismay and anger of Assad. The possibility that the relationship may take a new direction is briefly examined here. Opinionis enim commenta delet dies, naturae judicia confirmat. (Time destroys the figments of the imagination, while confirming judgments of nature [God].)
Assad (left) and Putin (right). From all that is publicly known, scoring a political warfare victory was not part of the concept and intent of the US. Unless one was involved in the planning of the military strike, it would be impossible to posit with certainty that some consideration was given to how the military strikes would affect the Russia-Syria relationship. Still the features of a political warfare effort, even if coincidental, are discernible.
Detecting Political Warfare
Again, from all that is publicly known, scoring a political warfare victory was not part of the concept and intent of the US and did not factor into the planning of the military strikes in Syria. Unless one was involved in the planning of the military strike, it would be impossible to posit with certainty that some consideration was given to how the military strikes would affect the Russia-Syria relationship. Still the features of a political warfare effort, even if coincidental, are discernible. Under a definition offered by the RAND Corporation, political warfare consists of the international use of one or more of the implements of power–diplomatic, information, military, and economic–to affect the political composition of decision making within a state. Political warfare is often, yet not necessarily, carried out covertly, but must be carried out outside the context of traditional war. In the broadest sense, it could take the form of anything other than military operations. It could for example include: economic subversion, propaganda–not tied to the military effort, psychological warfare–as part of a military effort; conditional aid to a state; aid to political parties; aid to resistance groups; political accommodation; and, assassination. Renown security affairs analyst Brian Jenkins of the RAND Corporation explains that political warfare reverses the famous dictum of the 19th century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz that “war is the extension of politics by other means,” political warfare is the extension of armed conflict by other means. Political warfare does not focus exclusively on enemies who are at large or end with their capture. It targets those on their way in to enemy ranks, those who might be persuaded to quit, and those in custody. Political warfare sees the enemy not as a monolithic force, but as a dynamic population of individuals whose grievances, sense of humiliation, and desire for revenge, honor, status, meaning, or mere adventure propel them into jihad and resistance. Political warfare accepts no foe as having irrevocably crossed a line, but sees enemy combatants as constantly calibrating and recalibrating their commitment. It sees every prisoner not merely as a source of operational intelligence, but as a potential convert. Political warfare is infinitely flexible and ferociously pragmatic. It accepts local accommodations to reduce violence, offers amnesties to induce divisions and defections, and cuts deals to co-opt enemies.
Until recently, things have typically gone relatively well between Putin and Assad. There has rarely been reason for them to think too negatively of one another. However, as circumstances develop in which their perspectives grow in variance on matters of mutual concern. The atmosphere has already changed a bit. It will change even more if Assad decides to use chemical weapons again. Common wisdom in the West is that Assad would unlikely use chemical weapons again, not because his known chemical capability has been denigrated, not because he has been punished him excessively, but because Assad, according to Western thinking, Assad has already won the war with the assistance of Russia and Iran. Dropping more chemical weapons would have no strategic value any Western military analysts can think of. Moreover, it would not make sense to incur the wrath of the US and other Western powers as a result of using such weapons. All of that being stated, it appears the West must learn over and over again that Assad thinks differently than most national leaders, and military analysts as well. Assad has embraced his role as a tyrant. He is concerned mainly with holding power. In his conscious or unconscious mind, he may be haunted by the fear of facing retribution for violent acts ordered in defense of his power and atrocities committed against his own people. Everyone does not think the same and Assad is a perfect example of that. Putin, however, is certainly aware of how different Assad is.
The chief foreign linkage of Syria under Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, before him, have been the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union, respectively. The present Assaf has been useful to Russia as a figurehead, a symbol of resistance to the Syrian opposition, ISIS and Islamic terrorist groups and the West. He is undoubtedly viewed in Moscow as Putin’s man, and his ball to play with. It was the strength and realities of those ties between Damascus and Moscow that were poorly considered when the US injected itself in Syria in support of the anti-Assad opposition movement during the Arab Spring in 2011. By the Fall 2015, Assad appeared to lack the ability to remain in power against ISIS and perhaps US-backed Syrian Opposition forces. The military situation began recurvate after Russia, with the urging of Iran, moved its forces into Syria in September 2015 and supported Syrian military operations.
It is interesting how Putin and Assad, two men from desperate backgrounds have established a very positive relationship that goes beyond mutual courtesy and civility. Putin rose from humble beginnings, raised by a mother and father who respectively managed to survive the siege of Leningrad and violent battles during World War II. Assad, on the other hand, was the privileged, eldest son of the former President of Syria, General Hafez Al-Assad, who ruled from 1971 to 2000. Putin completed his studies in law at Leningrad University before embarking on a successful career in the Soviet Union’s Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (the Committee for State Security) known better as the KGB—the agency responsible for intelligence, counterintelligence, and internal security. Along with the well-earned praise of his colleagues and positive evaluations from his superiors, he had a record of service that led others to support his rise to the pinnacle of power in Russia. Assad was educated as a doctor, trained as a surgeon, and lived a comforrable life in London before being called home to take the reigns in Syria after his father’s death. Indeed, one man, Putin, was self-made, with his knowledge and capabilities shaped and polished by every obstacle and adversity he managed to overcome. The other man, Assad, had everything in life laid out in front of him, and there were few character shaping struggles. Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes viros. (Fire provides proof of gold, misery, proof of strong men.)
In crafting a fruitful relationship with Assad, Putin seems to have handled him much as he would have handled an operative during his days in the intelligence industry. During his one-on-one contacts with Assad he has likely spent time motivating, befriending, briefing, advising, counselling, debriefing, and perhaps paying and welfaring him. It has served to establish the bridge between them. It is the sort of interaction to which Putin is attracted. It has helped to shape the dynamic and apparent congenial nature of their exchanges. It is likely that somewhere, Putin keeps notes that are part of a personal study of Assad. At age 65, Putin as a man and a leader, and in terms of capabilities and shrewdness, is far more advanced than Assad who is 52. For Putin, there certainly would be advantage in maintaining the relationship as is, if he can. There is an expediency in working with something, someone that you understand, who has been predictable. It is hard to imagine Putin might be overly concerned with Assad’s feelings. Yet, while Putin might only relate to other leaders much as strangers on a train, his relationship with Assad has been something more. In all the years until this point, whenever he met with Assad, they likely simply picked up wherever they leave off. Assad was granted a ticket to the high table international affairs by Putin. Contrarily, Assad cannot do much independently to enhance Putin’s life.
Putin (left) and Assad (right). In crafting a fruitful relationship with Assad, Putin seems to have handled him much as he would have handled an operative during his days in the intelligence industry. During his one-on-one contacts with Assad, he has likely spent time motivating, befriending, briefing, advising, counselling, debriefing, and perhaps paying him. It has served to establish a bridge between them.
Putin almost never fails to publicly cover Assad’s actions that reach the world’s gaze. He has supported Assad with strong words, diplomatic maneuvering at the UN and bilaterally with a handful of receptive countries, mostly it neighbors. He has of course, supported him by deploying Russian military forces to his country to protect his regime. Moscow’s initial response to the Assad’s chemical attacks in Douma was a grand denial that the Assad regime had anything to do with it. Russia, a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, sought to fight fire with oil, giving credence to the idea that Assad did not and would not use chemical weapons and the entire matter was a hoax. This was made worse by Russia’s futile attempt make the investigation of the chemical attacks a joint venture in which Russia would work alongside the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at the site of the attack and in their research labs. It must not be forgotten that Assad should not have access to chemical weapons at all, but an intriguing diplomatic tact taken by Moscow in 2013 left the door open to that. On September 14, 2013, Moscow and Washington reached an agreement under which Russia guaranteed Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and all equipment for producing, mixing, and filing chemical weapons would be destroyed before the end of the first half of 2014. The OPCW would implement the agreement. The genesis of the agreement was an August 21, 2013 chemical attack by the Assad regime against several towns of the Ghouta agricultural belt to the West and East of Damascus. Reportedly the administration of US President Barack Obama was nearing a decision to launch US-led punitive strikes against Syria. A suggestion was made by the US Secretary of State John Kerry stated offhandedly at a press conference on September 9, 2013 that the US might not conduct military strikes if Assad placed Syria’s enture chemical weapons stockpile under international control within a week. Hours after that statement, Russian Federation Foreign Minister managed to have Syrian Arab Republic Foreign Minister Walid Muallem agree to the idea. On April 13, 2018, and back on April 6, 2017, the Trump administration, based on clear and convincing evidence took action against Assad contrary to decision of the Obama administration when it had the opportunity. Most importantly, however, action had to be taken because both Russia and Syria clearly failed to meet their responsibility under the 2013 agreement. There has been little no mention of the September 14, 2013 agreement by Moscow or Damascus after the April 13, 2018 chemical attacks. Moreover, rather expressing of concern over the use of chemical weapons, as could be expected, prevarications emanated from Moscow and Damascus concerning the attacks.
Moscow also made false claims that the majority of cruise missiles fired into Syria were shot down. Russian news outlets, as well as social media from the region, had claimed as many as 70 percent of coalition weapons were shot down by Syrian or Russian air defenses. But the Russian systems did not attempt to intercept the incoming weaponry, and the Syrian system launched around 40 surface to air missiles after the last targeted weapon hit its target, Referring to this type of activity by Moscow as information warfare perhaps gives it too much respectability as its purpose is to position it as master of the mob: anti-US, anti-EU, anti-West, and pro-Russian elements worldwide. Even Moscow must realize that in each case, all of its falsehoods would be overcome by the truth over time. Assad clearly had no concern over having frightful clouds hang over himself for atrocities committed before and during the Syrian War. There is not much that could further vulgarize his reputation. From experience of the Soviet Union as well as that of their own Russian Federation, officials in Moscow should have learned that the wounds Russia’s image suffers from such antics are all self-inflicted, deleterious, and all very unnecessary. Russia is reduced to a level akin to a “Fourth World” dictatorship, a so-called “Banana Republic”, when it prevaricates on matters concerning the US.
Every time Moscow distorts the truth, it confirms the worst about itself. The ugly image many policy makers, decision makers, and analyst in the West long since have had seared in their minds about Russia are reinforced. Few anywhere in the world can be confident what’ Moscow says is true, except those willing to be deceived. When Putin and his officials make claims on other occasions to the effect that Russia is a land of the mind, this questionable behavior, along with a lot of other things, puts that notion in doubt.
Intriguingly, Moscow puts significant effort into improving its image as a world leader, yet undermines that effort by backing Assad and destroying its image in the minds of many. There are consequences to the way one lives. He who walks with wise men will be wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed. On April 11, 2018, Trump wrote on Twitter: “You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”, referring to Moscow’s alliance with Assad. Assad, by his actions, has repeatedly immobilized Putin. He is left unable to smoothly move on to better things. If there are future chemical attacks by Assad, it is uncertain what the future of his relationship with Putin will be. A number possible scenarios exist based on questions Putin and Assad might ask themselves as well as steps they might take as the situation between them develops. Those steps would likely fall under the category of political warfare.
US President Donald Trump (above). It is intriguing to observe Moscow put significant effort into improving its image as a world leader, and then undermine that effort by lending unwavering support to Assad after he has acted against the norms of civilized world. On April 11, 2018, Trump wrote on Twitter: “You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”, referring to Moscow’s tie with Assad. By his actions, Assad immobilizes Putin, leaving him unable to move on to better things.
Is Assad Worth the Trouble?: Scenario for Putin
Due to flaws in his government, his own deficiencies as a leader, and perhaps a lack of empathy, Assad failed to spare the people of the old ills of war and crime. Without the support of Putin and Russia, one could reasonably conclude that Assad would have been brushed aside awhile ago. Indeed, in 2015, Assad appeared to lack the ability to remain in power against both ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups and the US-backed Syrian Opposition forces. Policy makers and decision makers in Moscow and Tehran doubted Assad could hold on to power in Damascus without assistance. They mainly feared the real possibility that Syria would fall in the hands of ISIS. One could only imagine what would have been needed to regain and retain control of the country if ISIS had forced the regime out of Damascus. Putin provided a rational for Russia’s intervention in Syria in a speech at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in Dushanbe Tajikistan, on September 15, 2015. In response to Western criticism of Russia’s move, Putin explained, “We support the government of Syria in its opposition to terrorist aggression. We have provided and will provide necessary military and technical support and call on other nations to join us.” Putin noted the exodus of refugees toward Europe and the crisis in Syria was a result of the support foreign powers provided the Syria opposition rebels. He said, “I would like to note that people are fleeing Syria because of the military actions that were largely imposed externally by deliveries of weapons and other special equipment. People are fleeing to escape the atrocities committed by terrorists.” Putin went on to state, “[The refugees] are fleeing from radicals, above all. And if Russia had not supported Syria, the situation in this country would have been worse than in Libya, and the stream of refugees would have been even greater.”Speaking to Western and Arab capitals, Putin declared, “We must sideline geopolitical ambitions, refrain from so-called double standards, from the policy of direct use of separate terrorist groups to achieve opportunistic goals, including the change of governments and regime that may be disagreeable to whomever.” Concerning Assad, Putin relayed that he might be willing to enter a power-sharing agreement with opposition but that the fight against terrorism was the priority. To that extent, Putin explained, “The Islamic State is providing ideological indoctrination and training to fighters from different countries including, unfortunately European countries and the Russian Federation, and many former Soviet republics. And of course, we are worried with the possibility of them returning to our territories.” As explained in a December 30, 2015 greatcharlie post, commanders of the Russian Federation Armed Forces reportedly believed the military objective of any ground operations in Syria should first be to create a regime stronghold in what is referred to as “Useful Syria” (Suriya al-Mufida) from Damascus up to Aleppo through Homs. That would require Russia and its allies to sweep up the Western part of Syria. The objective was to take pressure off Latakia, a pro-Assad, Alawite heartland and locale of an important airfield and take pressure off Tartus, a long-time Soviet Naval port passed on to the Russian Federation Navy. It is key for the delivery of military material to Russian and Syrian forces and important for the conduct of military operations in support of Syria. After reaching Latakia, Russia and its allies would turn toward Idlib. Part of the force could have pushed farther north to gain control of the Syrian-Turkish border west of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s (PYD) territory, blocking the US coalition and ISIS from access to it. In an additional phase of their offensive, Russia and its allies would press eastward. A key objective was to take Palmyra from ISIS and the oil and gas resources around it. Russia began to gain control of the situation on the ground in Syria soon after deploying significant forces there in September 2015. At this point, the fight to secure “Useful Syria” has essentially been won. Syria, however, is still reliant upon a military and security umbilical cord tied from Moscow to Damascus.
Discord obtains when things get mixed up. Assad would likely disagree with any assessment that described him as a follower, or stated that his existence is contingent upon Russian power. He would likely describe himself as partner with Putin and other leaders and that Syria is working jointly with its allies. It is imaginable that Assad believes he is delegating part of the job of using military power to defeat Syria’s enemies to Russia and others. For Assad, all arrows point his way, for he almost always thinks and acts in terms of self-interest. Assad would likely proffer that Syria in the aggregate has the capability and capacity fend off threats to its security. Trouble comes when Assad sets out to confirm his thinking with heinous acts of violence, such as the chemical weapons attacks, which he knows are antithetical to norms of the civilized world, counter international law, and in defiance of demands made of his regime by the UN Security Council through resolutions. Assad apparently has much to prove to his fellow countryman, to other regional leaders, to his allies such as Russia, and the rest of the world. When he has lashed out, and he has done so regularly during the war, he proves that he is truly a despot. Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum. (To err is human, to persist in it, is diabolical.)
Assad (left), Putin (center), and Russian Federation Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (right). Commanders of the Russian Federation Armed Forces reportedly believed the military objective of any ground operations in Syria should first be to create a regime stronghold in what is referred to as “Useful Syria.” Once Russian forces moved into Syria in September 2015, the military situation began to recurvate. The fight to secure “Useful Syria” has essentially been won. Syria, however, is still reliant upon a military and security umbilical cord with Russia.
In Syria, the Assad regime, through an unending propaganda campaign, projects an image of its president in a way in which he is in firm control. That image also serves to assure the Syrian people that they still live in a sovereign state and that they have control over their own destiny. That image is completely inaccurate. Yet, there is little in Syria to interfere with that imaginative process as the government has strict control over media. True, Syrians can see that Putin has provided thousands of Russian advisers, troops and airmen who are engaged in daily operations to fend off and destroy the regimes adversaries. Yet, Syrians supportive of the Assad regime would likely assure that the tie between their leader and Putin was unbreakable. Rather than feel threatened, they, in fact, welcome Russia’s presence and taken refuge in the umbrella of the added security provided by the Russians. They are happy to believe they need not fear for their survival as long Putin and Russia are working hand in hand with their country. Simultaneously, those same Syrian’s would argue that Assad is still the real power in Syria. Moreover, they are likely ignorant or unconcerned with the problems Assad’s actions have caused Russia. Vivit et est vitae nescius ipse suae. (Man lives in ignorance of his own life.)
Assad very likely believes his self-crafted, virtual image truly mirrors his real life. Looking at newsmedia video clips of Assad in Damascus, one might be bemused by the artificial size of his life. Syria is an authoritarian regime ruled by Assad much as, but albeit far less orderly and competently than his father before him. Politically, Syria is an odd hybrid, a quasi-national socialist, Islamic state. Assad is accepted by his beloved Alawites as well as elites from his own Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, other like-minded political groupings, business leaders, and leadership of the Armed forces and the security services. The People’s Council–the national legislature of Syria–and the Syrian judicial system cannot even provide a fig leaf of democracy for Assad regime. Syria’s elites appear satisfied with conditions in “Useful Syria”. It is something akin to a kingdom of gold for them. The coffers of Syria have serve the purposes of the elites and Assad. It is a type of larceny Assad inherited from his father. Those in Syria who have money, power are celebrities, heroes of the society, having what the majority can never attain. The Presidential Palace on Mount Mezzah is emblematic of Assad’s efforts to provide a venir of prosperity and power over a broken country in unimaginable suffering has visited countless homes.
None could doubt at this point that the life, happiness of the common man means nothing in Assad’s Syria. Assad does not have the type of government that elevates human beings. Assad has never used his words or events in the outside world to encourage Syrian to raise themselves up, to be more, to accomplish more. Assad uses words to stimulate nationalism, to cause Syrians to accept that the source of their country’s problems is the aggressive, greedy, external world, the West as opposed to any cause that comes from within, such as himself. An appropriate understanding among all Syrians about of what is happening in Syria will never be obtained as long as they are fed contradictory or insufficient facts. Even if the “have nots” in proximity of elites demanded some changes, an almost inexhaustible number of agencies among the security services would subdue them, punish those who do not revere the masters of their society. When the war is over, Syrians who can, would like to love the simpler lives they had once before. Syrians want to return to Assad’s version of peace and tranquility: the peace of submission to the regime; the tranquility of working in a secure position within the narrow confines of the regime’s dictates. Assad’s vision for future of Syria is most likely based on self-interest, his own well-being. The hope that anchors him is that he will remain in power, and the problems that have seized him since the civil war in Syria began in 2011 would eventually go away. Est enim unum ius quo deuincta est hominum societas et quod lex constituit una, quae lex est recta ratio imperandi atque prohibendi. Quam qui ignorat, is est iniusta s, siue est illa scripta uspiam siue nusquam. (For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.)
Perhaps it would not be judged as a fair comparison, but compared with countries in the West, Syria could hardly be viewed as a normal, functioning, sovereign country. A sovereign country that cannot defend its borders is not authentically sovereign. Moreover, Syria could be labelled derelict given the condition of most of its towns and cities. To Putin, who, unlike Assad, is thinking realistically about the future of Syria, it is very apparent that reconstruction in Syria will be another huge hurdle to overcome. The bellwether of Syria’s future condition can be observed in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Donetsk People’s Republic, and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Lacking any significant resources from the US and the rest of the international community to rebuild, that would be the only viable long-term condition that Syria could reach with Moscow’s assistance alone. Syria would simply become a larger version of those political, economic, and social disasters. Few other countries or international organizations appear willing to dive in to help Syria with signigicant financial assistance or investment. Few countries are in a rush to reopen or fully staff their embassies in Syria. They most lilely believe there would no benefit, but only difficulties in working with Assad. As a result, the Syrian people are shut off from those in the rest of the world who might be able to truly help them.
Optimists would hold out some hope that the situation would improve. However, no international conference, no guarantees from Russia to keep him in check, no surgical procedure even, could make Assad palatable to the West at this point, or to any government in the Middle East other than Iran. Manipulations that might ordinarily knock things back on track with Assad would likely have been exhausted or be seen as useless. It may be safe to say the Assad will never develop, never change. Luckily for Moscow, Assad is actually at its disposition. Given the strong influence Russia has on the Assad regime’s main elements of his power, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces and the security services, at the very least, the effort might be made to remder Assad’s presidency symbolic. In a more virile approach, Russia, perhaps in sync with Syria’s foreign benefactors, might seek to replace Assad with a leader who would be more acceptable among the Syrians, more palatable for themselves. As far as Assad’s well-being was concerned, the basing arrangements for Russian naval, air, and ground forces, and the relationship developed with Putin would no longer have meaning.
Assad would likely disagree with any assessment that would describe him as a follower, or that his existence is contingent upon Russian power. He would likely describe himself as partner with Putin and other leaders and that Syria is working jointly with its allies. It is imaginable that Assad believes he is delegating part of the job of using military power to defeat Syria’s enemies to Russia and others. For Assad, all arrows point his way, as he nearly always thinks and acts in self-interest.
Keep the Status Quo or Assert Himself?: Scenario re Assad
So far, Assad has been able to have his cake and eat it, too! He has defiantly launched chemical weapons against his own people, while savoring the general protection and support of Russia and others. How long this situation will last is uncertain. Surely, the Russians will have a say in that. There are still a lot of hand shakes and pats on the back from Putin meant to encourage. Yet, a handshake or pat on the back cannot supplant rejection. It cannot correct a problem or resolve a serious disagreement.
If Assad were to sense an undercurrent of dissention toward him inside Syria, he would undoubtedly physically thin out the ranks of those he would deem potential plotters and replace them immediately with a more loyal sort. He would do so taking care not disturb the defined ecosystem of power elites, sending the message that he demands loyalty but avoid starting another uprising particularly among those who have supported him.
Such events would certainly catch the attention of the Russians. Assad might conclude that Moscow may see some benefit in aiding an group of Syrian elites willing to remove him. An “organic rebellion” that could remove Assad would be more agreeable to Putin and elites in Russia who might have already concluded that his removal will lead to more beneficial outcome of Russia’s investment there. He may fear that removing him under such conditions might be more understandable to tyrants in rogue regimes worldwide who may also rely upon Russia to back them with military force, some level of economic wherewithal or payments. However, Assad would not willingly step aside for a successor albeit selected by friendly, outside power, even if he had some say in who would replace him. He surely would not sit idly by as the plot developed to put his reign to an end.
Looking at the US, United Kingdom, and French military strikes in the aggregate, it somewhat understandable that some analysts doubt that Assad and his advisers in Damascus would be so spun up by them. The US-led coalition has conducted airstrikes in Syria against ISIS and targets threatening coalition ground forces for many months. The Israeli Air Force has conducted regular strikes in Syria so precise and effective and with impunity, that one could say with some humor that the Israelis were using parts of Syria as a bombing range. The issue is that the military strikes of April 13th were the second time the US has deliberately attacked Syrian targets and the second time Russia did not act. That is the rub. Prior to the Western military strikes, Russia urged the US to avoid taking military action in response to an alleged chemical attack in Syria. On April 10, 2018, the Russian Federation Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzia stated: “I would once again beseech you to refrain from the plans that you’re currently developing.” He warned Washington that it will “bear responsibility” for any “illegal military adventure.” A threat from Moscow to down US missiles came from the Russian Federation’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, who said his comments were based on previous statements by Putin and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Federation Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov. The Russian Federation Armed Forces stated on March 13, 2018, that it would respond to any US strike on Syria by targeting any missiles and launchers involved. However, Russian air defense systems did not attempt to intercept the incoming weaponry, and the Syrian system launched around 40 surface to air missiles after the last targeted weapon hit its target, according to the Pentagon. The Pentagon noted that the S-400 systems were not turned off, simply not activated, leaving open the option their radar systems were used to tracking incoming threats but the weapons systems were not fired. The fact that those systems were active but not used may serve as evidence that the deconfliction line between the US and Russia, which was used to urge Russia not to escalate the situation, had been effective.
Within his own close circle in Damascus, it may very well be that Assad’s grievances are well-expressed. There may be lung busting exertions of his sense of being betrayed once again by Putin, driven by a nagging sense at this juncture that his relationship with him does not have much future. Assad may wish to take matters into his own hands. Seeing Assad interact with Russian emissaries in Damascus, he left little evidence of being riled emotionally by actions by his benefactors. The Interfax News Agency quoted Natalya Komarova, governor of Russia’s autonomous Khanty-Mansiysk district, made it a point to state: “President Assad was in absolutely positive spirits. He is in a good mood.,” To date, Assad has not publicly proffered any fevered dreams of conspiracy about the military strikes. His own officials and advisers are likely impressed by a type of controlled schizophrenia he displays. Nevertheless, the April 13th military strikes, and events surrounding them, may have set the stage for counteractions by Assad. It may very well be that Assad will launch additional chemical attacks to demonstrate that his regime does not feel threatened by US power, prove to himself that he is not being led by the nose by Putin, and ironically to pull Russia deeper into the situation as it has sought to full back by failing to act April 13th. To foreign policy and military analyst, it may all seem irrational, and that would be a reasonable response. Still, everyone does not think the same. Assad, the trained surgeon, has done so much that would be deemed improbable, it would seem counterintuitive to assume he will act in accord within any norms in the future. Scenarios for other ways in which Assad might seek retribution might include the following:
1) Assad might decide to establish some simulacrum of the US Lend-Lease arrangements of World War with China. Under it, China could possibly build its own military base or port. Assad could receive guarantees of significant assistance from China in Syria’s reconstruction efforts. China could also agree to provide Syria advanced command, control, communication and surveillance systems and agree to allow Syrian forces create garrisons and store Syrian military hardware on its new bases. Assad’s goal in that hypothetical situation would not be to allow a build-up in Syria by China that would establish it as a counterbalance to Russian military power. Assad’s goal in allowing a enough of a build-up that would lead Putin to better the value and importance of his ties to Syria. A decision by Assad to reach out to China might be viewed as injudicious given the possible consequences. Chinese ambitions in Syria might be difficult for Damascus to tame. The opportunity to build bases so close to Europe would present an I exhaustive list of possibilities for Chinese military planners. Putin may overreact to the decision and strongly suggest that Assad to rescind the invitation to China creating a genuine, visible rift between the two countries. Under circumstance, for Assad it would simply be a existential choice to create some counterbalance to Russia power in his country or at least convince Putin that he was willing to do so in order to better position himself with the Russian leader.
2) Assad may attempt to strike US or other Western troops with chemical weapons. Assad may seek to do this even if a suicide mission is required. While he and his advisers may view the operation as risky. Yet, they may also wrongfully believe that as long as the US-led coalition’s response does not result in a direct attack against him, they may view it as a calculated risk. If Russia decides not to respond in defense of it ally, Syria, Assad might be able to convince himself that he has proved at least to the Syrian people in Useful Syria that he is strong and that he can do powerful things. The US has about 2,000 troops on the ground in Syria, supporting the ongoing US-led Coalition mission to defeat ISIS militants that remain in the region. The April 13th military strikes have created some concern at the Pentagon that those troops could be vulnerable to retaliation from Syrian forces. Efforts by Assad to put his forces in a position near US-led coalition ground forces must be scrutinized and keep in the coalition’s cross-hairs. If multiple streams of intelligence indicate those forces pose a danger, they should be pushed back or destroyed. There is always the possibility and the danger of miscalculation by Assad. As long as Assad thinks rationally, logically, this scenario could never materialize, as he would be deterred by the thought that an attack on US or another coalition ground forces would be met by an immediate, devastating military response. The targets of the US attacks would hardly be limited to the forces that launched them. Attempts at deconfliction for such attacks might be made, but they would take place regardless of whose forces might be nearby or mixed in with Syrian forces. Depending the response of Russia if its forces were caught in the middle of it all, Assad might manage to drag Moscow into what was likely the worst nightmare it thought of when it deployed its forces to Syria.
If Assad wants to maintain conditions that will allow the march of time to move forward in his favor, he should be reluctant to bother Putin about matters surrounding the April 13th chemical attacks. Doing so would very likely raise even greater concern in Putin. Assad’s circumspection itself may have already awakened Putin’s curiosity. Putin, after all, is super observant. It is a quality that stirs admiration from some and or elicits terror in others. If any one could detect a hint of anger or dissention in the eyes, in mannerisms, in bearing and deportment, in the words of another, it would be Putin. If he manages to discern a new uneasiness in Assad, that might trigger Putin to take steps against him or at least begin peering into the regime with a nearly zoological interest in its main players, searching for a plot against its main ally. Yet again, it may be that Assad is not worried at all about Putin’s reaction. Rather, Assad’s primary concern may be managing Putin’s behavior. Assad may believe that he has been successfully doing that. A mistake in that possible “management effort”, however, would be to attempt to convince Putin that he can count on him. It would be an even bigger mistake for Assad to try to get the pulse of Putin, to find out what he is thinking about him. No one should ever ask Putin if he loves them. The answer in nearly every case would be “No!”
If Assad wants to maintain conditions that will allow the march of time to move forward in his favor, he should be reluctant to bother Putin about matters surrounding the April 13th chemical attacks. Doing so would very likely raise even greater concern in Putin. Assad’s circumspection itself may have already garnered Putin’s curiosity. Putin, after all, is super observant. If he manages to discern a new uneasiness in Assad, intimate trouble, it might cause him to take steps against him.
Is It Time to Wrap Things Up with Assad?: Scenario re Putin
Fata volentem, ducunt, nolentem trahunt. (Destiny carries the willing man, and drags the unwilling.) Moscow entered into all of its deals with Assad, strengthened links to him, with its eyes open. Putin would unlikely have engaged with Assad in a search for areas of common ground on handling chemical weapons. Putin is not conciliatory. He very likely set rules for Assad on the matter. However, leaving the door open for Assad somehow to use the weapons has come back to haunt him. Given what has transpired, Putin surely can reasonably be viewed as being complicit in Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Yet, while Putin may find Assad’s attitude toward those in the West, in the Middle East, and in his own country who oppose him to be understandable, he may also view his approach as reckless.
Syria is broken, and with someone such as Assad at its helm, hardly any outside of the country, capable of supporting its reconstruction, would be willing to do so. In Moscow, there must be some authenticity in its examination of Assad and what it will be able to do with him in the future. Putin most likely sees that there is nothing about Assad that would indicate he can be transformative, creative, or productive. After the April 2017 cruise missile strikes by the Trump administration, a discourse should have been initiated in Moscow on how to better handle the remnants of Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal and how to defeat their use against Russian Federation Armed Forces in Syria. If Putin can truly discern what billows in Assad’s mind, he may have already made the decision to move against him. Finding a leader or group of very senior leaders among elements of power in Syria may not be too difficult. Most in Damascus who are in the best position to know what is happening in Syria understand they live in privileged times. They may not speak of, or whisper, about being called on to be part of a change in leadership. Still, they may be considering where they will stand and how they will act if the situation arose.
To this point, nothing has been stated to indicate that there was anything time sensitive about Putin’s relationship with Assad. Syria’s standing internationally has not been good to say the least. Assad has not used any time or exploited any opportunities to make improvements in his situation. It is unknown whether Assad is ignorant, willfully ignores, or perhaps even suppresses thoughts about reconstruction, something Russia, by jumping into Syria may have committed itself to as a duty. Assad does not appear emotionally devastated by what has befallen his country. This was observed in his very congenial newsmedia appearances the day after the April 13, 2018 military strikes.
Assad is not a shy man, and is unlikely frozen in fear contemplating what Putin might respond the fact that he has rocked the boat so thoroughly. Even if only unconsciously, though, he likely has felt an elevated level of concern over his future since April 7, 2018 chemical attacks. Putting himself in Assad’s shoes, perhaps Putin could imagine that Assad is feeling a bit betrayed by his unwillingness to deter or defeat the Western military strikes in Syria, no matter how unreasonable that would have been. Putin can be sure Assad knows him well enough to realize that expressing his disappointment through impotent snarling will accomplished nothing useful or good. Yet, he also may sense that in the long run that Assad may not be truly able to move on. Putin might consider that when one is angry for a long time, one in a way becomes comfortable with that anger. Soon that anger becomes so familiar that the individual forgets feeling any other way. Assad is a calculator, although he albeit uses an odd calculus. Sed tamen ira procul absit, cum qua nihil recte fiery nec, considerate potest. (But still anger ought be far from us, for nothing is able to be done rightly not judiciously with anger.)
Putting himself in Assad’s shoes, perhaps Putin could imagine that Assad is feeling a bit betrayed by his unwillingness to deter or defeat the Western military strikes in Syria, no matter how unreasonable that would have been. Putin can be sure Assad knows him well enough to realize that expressing his disappointment through impotent snarling would have accomplished nothing useful or good.
Putin may eventually need to make a decision if Assad cannot restrain himself from using chemical weapons again. As mentioned earlier, It is possible that Putin has already has plan for responding to Assad’s future actions. Big issues likely remaining are exactly when and how to set things up. It is also possible that given the gravity of the decision to remove Assad from power, he has not made a final decision. He may prefer to mull things over until he is left with no choice. To decide exactly how to proceed, Putin would unlikely need to refer to any notes or look among huge piles of information collected from Syria to find pieces that answered his questions. He would only need his knowledge, experience, insights, intuition, and instincts. Putin would review what Russia really wants with Syria, what its goals are. He would then need to thoroughly consider how exactly removing Assad will better able Russia to reach those goals. Putin may decide to give Assad the benefit of doubt. He knows the margin between being very clever and being very stupid is very thin. If in some odd way, alien to most reasonable thinkers, the goal of Assad’s behavior only been to strengthen his position with Putin and ensure Russia’s investment and commitment to his well-being and the well-being of the country.
However, if Assad seems to be on the road to doing something spectacular, going astray and lashing out against its long time ally, Putin would invariably choose to act first and decisively. Assad would not have any lobby available to advocate for him in the Kremlin. Money is short in Russia. Decision makers would hardly sign on to allowing Syria to languish without end in a difficult and dangerous situation given the moves of its leadership. While Assad created an image of himself as a strong leader in Damascus, in Moscow, a portrait has most likely been painted that depicts him a being bad for the long-term interests of Russia and Syria. Russia never had the intention of sacrificing its own image to make Assad look good. As mentioned earlier, Assad has no problem with acting in a way that makes Russia look bad. Among likely steps Putin would consider are the following three:
1) After some convincing, have Assad voluntary depart Syria to begin exile somewhere in Russia. The Syrian people would be informed via a video recording that Assad is completely fine and well-aware for, and it was necessary to move him to Russia due to an imminent threat from Western powers to capture him and usher him to the Hague for War Crimes trial. Once, in Russia, it could be said Assad would never be surrendered to anyone and, that he would indeed be returned to Syria once Russia resolves the matter. In the meantime, the Syrian people would have an interim, acting president. In fact, Assad would never return to Syria. If Putin were to ask Assad to leave Damascus, he would have no need to ask twice. Damascus would become a far more dangerous place for him if he does not go.
2) Through a coup de main, Putin could have Assad suddenly captured and relocated to an undisclosed site in Russia. This would be done after making appropriate arrangements furtively with Syrian military officers, security service officials, and other elites in Damascus. Again, he could be brought to an undisclosed location in Russia. After some He would be strongly encouraged to made a video recording for broadcast in Syria indicating that he is safe, doing well, and was brought to Syria’s main ally, Russia, temporarily for his own safety. The specific threat Assad would not need to be disclosed. For security reasons, the source of the information would not revealed. Forcing Assad to leave would be an alternative to having him eliminated.
3) There is the possibility that after appropriate arrangements have been made again with Syrian military officers, security service officials, and other elites, Assad might be assassinated. Russia would be the arbiter of the matter with likely nods from Iran and Turkey,
With Assad removed, Putin would move quickly to install his successor. It would be necessary for Russia to have a central figure, a strongman, one in charge in Syria to assure it has a central conduit through which it could impose its will. Assad’s successor, certainly an Alawite, would be enabled to hold a degree of power similar to that Assad held as long as Russia remains in strength in Syria, and is willing to mitigate pressure placed on the regime from Islamic extremist groups as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the battered and tattered Syria Opposition forces as well. The change, no matter how necessary or expected, would be traumatizing to many in Damascus and in every capital that has supported him. It would be the end of a sad story concerning the misuse of power, the poor stewardship of a country. Moscow would likely dub the successor’s acting presidency as a caretaker government. Only with the insistence of the US and other P5 Members, would new elections be held.to replace him. The acting Leader’s presidency would be tainted by the irregular nature of his installment. At the UN Security Council, there would be reminders of Resolution 2254 (2015) concerning free and fair elections in Syria. Moscow would dance around it claiming there that new constitution had not been drafted as also required under the resolution. Moreover, Moscow would explain that conditions were not right for elections as the war was not over. Meanwhile, it would argue Syria was on the right path and seek aid for its reconstruction.
A more tense relationship may eventually ensue if possible future military strikes from a US-led coalition, or even Israel, are met with inaction by Russia. If Assad is able to detect real trouble from his benefactor, he might draw back, and walk back any statements. However, if he fears for his life, anything is possible.
Will He Bite the Hand That Saved Him?: Scenario re Assad
Although Putin has not heard grumblings from Mount Mezzah, he surely recognizes that his relationship with Assad has not been not perfect since the April 13th missile strikes. Putin cannot be sure that Assad accepts that he is concerned with him or Syria or that he has any real compassion for what has befallen his regime. Putin knows that he too would feel somewhat betrayed by any ally who promised to stand by him against an adversary, yet did nothing during an attack. Putin may sense that Assad, after constantly hearing rhetoric from Moscow about curbing the power and defeating its adversary, the US, has not seen any significant efforts in that direction even when opportunities present themselves, such as the April 13th military strikes. Putin cannot deny that he completely and correctly, abandoned his ally in the face of US diplomatic pressure and military power. Under such circumstances, Putin’s promise after the April 13th missile strikes to provide Assad with new, high performance weapons amounted to a bromide. It could not resolve problems facing the Russia-Syria relationship.
It seems unlikely that Assad will remain quiet if there were future Western military strikes in response to his further use of chemical weapons or other dark moves, and as on April 13th, Russia fails to act. Conspiracy theories are an element as ubiquitous as rumors in statements of officials and common conversation among citizens within rogue, authoritarian regimes. It is a corrupted version of thinking out of box preferred mostly because it typically points to behavior of external elements, enemies and false friends, as causality for a regimes disappointments and failures. Assad and his advisers may be discussing whether Russia even considered defending Syria from the military strikes of the US, the United Kingdom, and France. Some might postulate in confidential meetings that Russia may have been hoping the US would destroy Syria’s remaining chemical weapons inventory. Assad and his advisers know that Moscow was in contact with Washington in the days and hours before the military strike. US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff USMC General James Dunford explained that normal deconfliction channels were used to deconflict the airspace that we were using. Dunford further explained that the US did not coordinate targets or any plans with the Russians. Yet, in Moscow, the head of a Russian parliamentary defense committee, Vladimir Shamanov, said Russia was in direct contact with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff about the situation. Hearing this view from Russia would likely satisfy Damascus as it would support surmisals there that Russia assisted the US in identifying targets as the Russians certainly did not use any countermeasures interfere with US efforts to target sites. In an inner monologue, Assad may ponder whether the failure of Russia to act may mean that there was some truth to expressions made by Moscow and Washington in 2017 that there was a new, cooperative era in US-Russia relations. That would contradict what Russia insists in private, and what is strongly hinted public statements, that the US is its adversary. Assad could conclude that in the crafting of the April 13th military strikes, Russia had a figurative vote!
A more tense relationship may eventually ensue if possible future military strikes are met with more inaction by Russia. It is in that environment that Putin would very likely consider moving against Assad. He would most likely act without warning. If Assad is able to detect trouble, he would draw back, and walk back any statements. However, if he fears for his life, he will likely act. Indeed, there could be a final demonstration of his power. He will make a stand or lash out with vigor before he goes. His concealed stockpiles of chemical weapons might even allow him to strike any erstwhile allies with some effect.
Surely, Assad comprehends that Russia commands great power. However, Assad may also feel that there are limits to Putin’s ability to respond to his aggressive moves. Putin would be remiss not to explore whether that is Assad’s thinking. Assad may believe even now that as long as he has chemical weapons and has demonstrated a willingness to use them, he can deter the few allies he has from turning against him. People with the most absolute power in history have tried to hold on by their fingernails knowing when they let go, all will be gone. They have often self-destructed. Misused power is always built upon lies. Tyrannical figures redefine what exists into projections of their egos. There are no noble thoughts. They become wrapped up in themselves. Assad seems to find pleasure in what is evil. As time goes on, the more tragic he becomes as a figure.
Surely, Assad comprehends that Russia commands great power. However, Assad may also feel that there are limits to Putin’s ability to respond to his aggressive moves. Assad may believe that as long as he has and has demonstrated a willingness to use chemical weapons, he can deter the allies he has from turning against him. He could also use them in a final self-destructive act. Putin would be remiss not to consider that possibility.
The Way Forward
In Act I, scene iv, of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Generals Macbeth and Banquo have already defeated two separate invading armies, from Ireland and Norway. Following that, they encounter three witches as they cross a moor. The witches prophecy that Macbeth will be made thane of Cawdor and eventually King of Scotland, and Banquo, will beget a line of Scottish kings. Once the witches vanish, Macbeth and Banquo speak skeptically of their prophecies. However, some of King Duncan’s men arrive to thank the generals for their victories and tell Macbeth, just as the witches prophesized, that he has been named thane of Cawdor. The previous thane was executed for betraying Scotland by fighting for the Norwegians. Arriving at King Duncan’s castle, Macbeth and Banquo profess their loyalty and gratitude toward him. King Duncan announces Malcolm will be named heir to his throne. Macbeth declares his joy but notes to himself that Malcolm, the Prince of Cumberland, stood between him and the crown the witches also said he would have. Standing aside, Macbeth says to himself: “The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” Regarding the military strikes from the US, United Kingdom, and France, the most effective way for Assad to deal with the matter and maintain the status quo is accept that what happened, has happened, and no matter how upsetting it might be, it cannot be changed. Retribution is not a reasonable or rational option. Creating difficulties in Syria’s relationship with Russia by advancing the idea will only lead to additional problems does not need. Negative feedback from the Assad regime’s experience when it fought alone in Syria without Russia assistance may have helped convinced Assad not to make waves. Still, as the situation on the ground has changed somewhat with the US-led coalition’s efforts against ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other Islamic militant groups, he may feel that regime forces are in a better position to do more by themselves. Syrian elites and some average citizens may be welcoming, supportive of the Russian partnership and presence at the moment. However, after observing the effects of few months of rain and wind on the ruins of cities and towns, they may eventually recognize that Moscow cannot support “Useful Syria” in a way that would allow for its rebuilding. The situation would only worsen if pressure was placed on Russia over Syria through future sanctions.
If Assad continues launching chemical attacks, Russia will need to keep justifying his actions and its failure to control him. It may very well be that Putin has developed a negative outlook on Assad, particularly concerning his reliability and trustworthiness. Given Assad’s nature, perhaps Putin has foreseen that the time will come to wrap things up with him. Assad’s wrongs have been too big to successfully cover up using the usual public relations methods. His inadequacies have become stark. Russia is not dealing with a brush fires in Syria, but a serial arsonist in Assad. Syria exists in a condition that the Syrian people would not have too much difficulty moving forward and getting past Assad’s loss. They have been doing that for seven years now. They have faced one tragedy after another. Many Syrians may have been concerned about Assad’s safety after the April 13th military strikes. They only knew he was safe when they saw him on national television the next morning. If the Syrian people were to learn that Assad was gone, those outside of the regime’s good graces in Syria, those displaced, and those who live as refugees worldwide would likely roar and dance in celebration. Those in Useful Syria would be very likely be disappointed, distraught, and likely some in the North Mezzah and Ar Rabwah neighborhoods where he has resided, would be devastated. Still, the old, Assad, would be replaced by the new. With little choice otherwise, all Syrians would move on to the next phase. Omnia autem quae secundum naturam fiunt sunt habenda in bonis. (Whatever befalls in accordance with Nature [God’s will] should be accounted good.)
War-torn Damascus (above). Following Russian Federation-led peace talks between representatives of Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Opposition Movement on January 24, 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan, Moscow’s envoy, Alexander Lavrentyev, welcomed the US to take a more active role in efforts to resolve the conflict. The administration of US President Donald Trump will act regarding Syria when it chooses, in an appropriate, measured way. Moscow appears eager to know Trump’s plans for Syria. It seems to be engaging in a bit of guessing on it.
According to a January 24, 2017 Wall Street Journal article entitled, “Russia, Turkey and Iran Agree on Syria Truce Monitoring,” officials from the Russian Federation, Turkey, and Iran met in Astana, Kazakhstan for two days with representatives of Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Opposition Movement. On the second day, January 24, 2017, the officials agreed to jointly monitor a fragile ceasefire between the warring parties established on December 30, 2016. The latest deal was called a possible step toward a political solution to end the six-year war. The UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura was also present at the January talks. At a news conference in Astana, de Mistura said, “When we came here to Astana, our immediate priority was to ensure the consolidation of the ceasefire.” He went on to say that in the past that previous cease-fires broke down because of a lack of monitoring and agreement on how to implement them. Under the new agreement, the monitors are to ensure full compliance with the truce and prevent provocations, according to a joint statement issued by three sponsors. The arrangements for monitoring the cease-fire and enforcing it would be decided at later meetings. The Assad regime and Syrian opposition both said they supported the plan. However, significantly different views were expressed by the Assad regime and opposition rebels over what those systems to monitor and enforce should be. The parties planned to reconvene a month later in Geneva for UN-sponsored talks.
Russia, which supports the Assad regime, and Turkey, which supports some rebel groups, explained last week they hoped the talks would begin to map the outlines of a political settlement to end the conflict. As the talks progressed, however, both sides tempered expectations, saying the aim in Astana was to buttress the fragile truce as a foundation for more political talks later. The administration of former US President Barack Obama was a primary supporter of Syrian Opposition Movement and the effort by its armed rebels to shape events on the ground to force Assad regime to talks to discuss the transition to a new government. That effort has largely been unsuccessful. The new administration of US President Donald Trump did not push for a role in what were albeit at the Russian-led talks. Instead, the Trump administration chose not to send a delegation, and the US was represented by the US ambassador to Kazakhstan. Moscow’s envoy to the talks, Alexander Lavrentyev, told reporters that Russia would welcome the US taking a more active role in attempts to resolve the conflict. This was ostensibly an invitation for the Trump administration to fully participate in what Russia hopes will be on-going talks. Russia’s invitation “to take a more active role” on Syria appears to reveal a change of heart in the Kremlin on the US with the advent of the Trump administration. Perhaps it may even serve as evidence that at least on some foreign policy issues, Putin is not locked into a single intent, immutable. By the end of the Obama administration, the US-Russia relationship stood in ruins. So enervated was former US Secretary of State John Kerry, and other officials, with the search for common ground with Russia on Syria that the effort was essentially suspended.
While the invitation from Lavrentyev is laudable and was likely appreciated by the Trump administration, there is far more involved in repairing the broken relationship between the US and Russia than opening the door with an invitation to participate in Russian-led Syria talks. There is also far more to Syria than the talks. US administrations do not formulate their policies and action based on invitations or exchanges of short public statements but through the work of federal employees engaged in the daily task of analyzing situations, the development of policies and policy approaches, and the formal implementation of those policies through diplomacy, and when appropriate, the utilization of other tools of national power. That process has been somewhat disrupted by the resignation of the entire senior level of management officials at the US Department of State during the last week of January 2017. Reportedly, it was part of a spate of retirements by senior Foreign Service officers. There was boldness going forward with Syria peace talks without the US and working with Turkey and others instead to secure a sustainable peace. However, it seems Russia has found that the dynamics of bringing the warring parties in Syria together for anything is daunting. What Russia may really be doing is inviting the Trump administration to further tie the US to the morass in Syria beyond the anti-ISIS fight. That would be a step of significant consequence, requiring considerable review. There has been some mumbling in the US news media and in social networks about an unverified draft executive order that indicates Trump plans to use the US military, in tandem with the State Department, to establish and protect refugee camps in Syria and neighboring countries. Syria was genuinely broached in a telephone conversation on January 28, 2017 between Trump and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. According to the Kremlin, the most tangible outcome of the phone call was an understanding that jointly fighting international terrorism was a priority and that the two countries should cooperate in Syria. While admitting that Syria was discussed, the White House characterized the call more casually as “a congratulatory call” initiated by Putin. The Trump administration will act regarding Syria, but it will do so when it chooses, in an appropriate, measured way. A policy with varied approaches to the many aspects of the Syria issue will eventually be articulated. However, most intriguing has been Russia’s interest in connecting with Trump on Syria rather than any other faced by both countries. That is the focus of the discussion here.
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin (above). It should have behooved Putin to consider how significant cooperation between the US and Russia in the fight against Islamic militant groups during the administration of US President Barack Obama then might set the stage for close and effective cooperation between the two countries in the next administration, especially regarding the peace talks and postwar reconstruction in Syria. Now cooperation is somewhat uncertain.
Russia in Syria
On September 15, 2015, at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in Dushanbe Tajikistan, Putin explained Russia’s military support and intervention in Syria. He stated, “We support the government of Syria in its opposition to terrorist aggression. We have provided and will provide necessary military and technical support and call on other nations to join us.” Putin explained the exodus of refugees toward Europe and the crisis in Syria was a result of the support foreign powers provided the Syrian Opposition rebels. He said, “I would like to note that people are fleeing Syria because of the military actions that were largely imposed externally by deliveries of weapons and other special equipment. People are fleeing to escape the atrocities committed by terrorists.” Putin went on to state, “[The refugees] are fleeing from radicals, above all. And if Russia had not supported Syria, the situation in this country would have been worse than in Libya, and the stream of refugees would have been even greater.” Encouraged by advisers, Putin sensed not only a chance for Russia to shore up one of its remaining allies in the Middle East, but the chance to reassert Russia’s role as a global power. He was able to demonstrate that Russia could succeed where the Obama administration had floundered.
Since September 2015, Russia, along with its allies, have destroyed ISIS units, material, command, control, communication and intelligence and training facilities and has returned a considerable amount of Syrian territory back into the hands of Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad. True, there are many foreign military forces operating in Syria, but the effort of Russia and its allies is a very visible, full-scale, multidimensional military operation. Russia has managed to shape events on the ground in Syria in order to “stabilize the legitimate authority” of Assad. Russia also seeks to defeat ISIS by annihilating its military formations in the field, eliminating its leadership, and eviscerating its so-called Islamic Caliphate to the extent that the organization will never be able to resurrect itself. In the process, the fighting has claimed some of the Russian Federation Armed Forces’ most capable soldiers. Most recently, Russian Federation Army Colonel Ruslan Galitsky was killed in Aleppo, Syria. Putin personally announced that Galitsky had suffered fatal wounds when a Russian military field hospital in Aleppo’s al-Furqan neighborhood was struck by artillery fire on December 2, 2016. According to the Russian state-owned RIA Novosti news agency, Galitsky was acting as a military adviser to the Syrian Arab Army during its rapid three-week advance through about 75 percent of East Aleppo. It was reported that Galitsky was due to be promoted to the rank of major-general on December 12, 2016.
Since September 2015, Russia, along with its allies, have destroyed ISIS units, materiél, command, control, communication and intelligence and training facilities and has returned a considerable amount territory back into the hands of Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad. In the process, the fighting has claimed some of the Russian Federation Armed Forces’ most capable soldiers. Counted among those lost is Russian Federation Army Colonel Ruslan Galitsky (above).
A Russian Invitation for Cooperation on Syria: A Lot to Consider
Praeterita mutare non possumus, sed futura providere debemos. (We cannot change the past, but we anticipate the future.) Certainly, Moscow would be very pleased if its interactions with the Trump administration could begin at a point where it had any positive, constructive interactions the administration of former US President Barack Obama. That would require ignoring the overall tenor of the relationship it has had with Washington on Syria and many other urgent and important issues. The Obama administration was unsupportive of Russia’s intervention from the get-go. On September 30, 2015, then US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter forecasted about Moscow’s military involvement in Syria, “The Russian approach here is doomed to fail.” Obama stated on October 2, 2015: “An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work.” Almost immediately after Russia began military operations in Syria in September 2015, Obama administration officials were already regularly reproaching Russia over its repeated airstrikes upon “moderate” anti-Assad groups while ostensibly seeking to attack ISIS. Obama’s disappointment could be discerned in his statements. Concerning Syria, on August 6, 2016, Obama went as far as to say about Putin and Russia: “I’m not confident that we can trust the Russians or Vladimir Putin.” He continued: “Whenever you are trying to broker any kind of deal with an individual like that or a country like that, you have got to go in there with some skepticism.”
In diplomacy, words and behavior matter absolutely, and there must be a certain amiability and gentleness in communications and interactions in order to create the environment for the development of mutual respect and understanding. It seems very uncharacteristic of Moscow in the midst of what Russian officials touted as a foreign policy success to invite the Trump administration to become more engaged with it on Syria. Still, even knowing it would mean sharing the limelight with the US, Russia appeared to have the desire to include the US in the process. To make perfunctory or platitudinous gesture for the US to become more engaged in Syria without any real desire for such cooperation could have potentially created a negative situation. The Russia could have convince the US to work with it, only to discover that the approaches of the two countries were not compatible. Far worse than both of those possibility would be the discovery that the invitation was a hoax. Certainly, Moscow had to expect that although Lavrentyev spoke with such comfortable words, it could not be acted upon immediately. Trump administration undoubtedly has it own thoughts and plans for Syria, but at the same time, it would very likely want to discern the full meaning of Russia’s “suggestion.” The decision was based on some rationale.
There is the possibility that Moscow’s invitation for the US join the Syria talks was a trial balloon floated off with the hope that if the Trump Administration might be interested in investing itself in Syria as part of its policy planning on the Middle East, counter terrorism, and possibly its Russia policy. Moscow seems very open to engagement. On counterterrorism, specifically, perhaps it would like to secure a pledge from the Trump administration that it would work directly with Russia to destroy Islamic militant groups in Syria. Russia has been able to put significant pressure on ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and other Islamic militant groups using its special operations forces–Spetsnaz–and airpower.
A Russian Federation Tupolev Tu-22M3 bomber (above). Moscow appears very open to engagement with the Trump administration on counter terrorism. It seems Moscow would like to secure a pledge from the Trump administration that it would work directly with Russia to destroy Islamic militant groups in Syria. The Russian Federation Armed Forces have already been able to put significant pressure on ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and other Islamic militant groups using its special operations forces and airpower.
Leap of Faith?: No Firm Basis for Moscow’s Hopes on Trump and Syria
On one occasion, Putin has mentioned the 1973 comedy, science-fiction film from the Soviet Union, “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession.” Putin would quote one of the film’s characters as saying to another: “How am I supposed to understand what you’re saying if you don’t say anything?” This really is the case with Moscow and Trump administration. To an extent, the January 28, 2017 telephone conversation between Trump and Putin confirmed essence of Lavrentyev’s statement in Astana. Yet, there were no details discussed that would indicate cooperation on Russia’s terms. More specifically, the statement generated by the White House after the conversation noted that “The positive call was a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair.” It stated further simply, “Both President Trump and President Putin are hopeful after today’s call the two sides can move quickly to tackle terrorism and other important issues of mutual concern.”
There has been no formal articulation of a Syria policy and immediate approaches for its implementation by the Trump White House or State Department. That makes it difficult to see what could have impelled Russia to suggest greater US involvement in Syria. Lacking any formal statements from the Trump administration on Syria to analyze, it could very well be that some in the Kremlin have turned to US news media interpretations of political events and decisions of the Trump Administration. For example, on January 26, 2017, theGuardian reported: “Trump had earlier also appeared to fall into line with Russia’s approach towards Syria, which had been to bomb the anti-Assad opposition into submission, before turning its attention towards a mutual foe, ISIS.” As for taking an unconventional, high profile approach to diplomacy, it may have been an effort to match the idea popularly promoted in the US media that it is the Trump administration’s preferred foreign policy tack. When one is less certain about the objective truth, the possibility that one might be drawn elsewhere for answers increases.
In addition to the fact that no formal policy documents exist that could have caused Moscow to believe the Trump administration’s policy on Syria, once articulated, would be compatible with its own. No publicized contact has taken place between Trump administration and the Kremlin, particularly one that would even approximate a complex conversation on bilateral relations. As mentioned, there was the late-January 28, 2017 Trump-Putin telephone call. However, no other conversations during the campaign or in the period before Trump’s inauguration could have reasonably caused Moscow to be certain of what his administration’s policy approaches would be on Syria. Additionally, decisions that might be made by the Trump administration on Syria at this point would be made with every fact, every judgment, the US government has available. Eventually, a formal policy on Syria will be presented. Verba volant, scripta manent. (Spoken words fly away, written words remain.)
Diplomacy via Public Statements: Russia’s Effort to Bypass the US Policymaking Process
It is unclear how Moscow thought Lavrentyev’s invitation would be processed within the US foreign policy apparatus. Most recently, there have been significant changes in the US Department of State. According to the Washington Post, on January 25, 2017, Patrick Kennedy, Undersecretary for Management, Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond, and the Director of the Office of Foreign Missions, Ambassador Gentry Smith resigned from their posts. In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired January 20, 2017, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. While the Trump might have eventually replaced these officials, career Foreign Service officers as them are crucial to the State Department’s many functions, particularly the implementation of an administration’s agenda.
Officials in the Kremlin or the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs should not hope to impact US foreign policy by just making statements and expecting a reaction. Foreign policy is still formulated at the White House and US Department of State as a result of a thorough examination of facts by policy analysts.In the current environment, the analytical process on Russia must be akin to a crucible in which social media rumors, falsehoods, and fake news must be burned off. Those facts are analyzed, with the concepts and intent of senior department officials and those of national leaders firmly in mind. Then others, enlightened with truths, based on real facts presented by the analysts, formulate policy options. US Department of State uses diplomacy to implement policies. Employees in other departments whose work concerns US external relations engage in a similar processes utilizing their particular tools of national power. For example, in the US Department of Defense, employees formulate policies entailing the possible use of the military power. It is a daily enterprise in which thousands of federal employees are engaged. In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum reddiderit iunctura novum. (When putting words together it is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice.)
When Trump stated “America First” during his inaugural address, he was not presenting a policy plan for any region. Rather, he presented “America First” as a concept, a guiding principle, indicating that his administration would consider the interest of the US over anything else. An explanation of the concept was posted on the White House website on January 20, 2017 as the “America First Foreign Policy.”
A US-Russia Relationship on Syria:Thinking It Through in Moscow
Faced with the predicament of having no formal articulation of a Syria policy and immediate approaches for its implementation by the Trump White House or State Department from which it could work, Moscow’s decision to authorize Lavrentyev’s invitation may have been based on assessments developed from the abstract by Russian foreign policy analysts of the Trump administration’s most likely Syria policy or greater Middle East policy. If anything, from what Trump has stated, analysts admittedly might have gleaned and constructed his likely key foreign and national security policy concepts on which his decisions might be based. True, when Trump stated “America First” during his inaugural address, he was not presenting a policy plan for any region. Rather, he presented, “America First” as a concept, a guiding principle indicating that his administration would consider the interest of the US over anything else. An explanation of the concept was posted on the White House website on January 20, 2017 as the “America First Foreign Policy.”It reads in part: “Peace through strength will be at the center of that foreign policy. This principle will make possible a stable, more peaceful world with less conflict and more common ground.” It further states: “Defeating ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups will be our highest priority. To defeat and destroy these groups, we will pursue aggressive joint and coalition military operations when necessary. In addition, the Trump Administration will work with international partners to cut off funding for terrorist groups, to expand intelligence sharing, and to engage in cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable propaganda and recruiting.”
It could very well be that policy analysts in Moscow, as much as policy analysts in other national capitals, may have used their analysis of the “America First Foreign Policy” to base conclusions on prospective Trump administration policies. Judgments made would need to have been deemed satisfactory enough to take action on. Given the statement’s mention of counterterrorism and the determination to pursue the issue vigorously, it would naturally follow that the judgments on which Russian analysts would have been most confident would concern counterterrorism and how it might relate to Syria. Absent this possibility, what impelled Russia to suggest greater US involvement in Syria truly becomes a mystery.
Ut desint vires tamen est laudanda voluntas. (Even if it is beyond one’s power, the will [to try] is still worthy of praise.) Surely, Moscow would prefer that Western foreign policy analysts saved their ministrations for officials of their own countries. Nevertheless, how Moscow may have perceived relations with the Trump administration on Syria before authorizing Lavrentyev’s invitation, what it perceived the US footprint in Syria would be following a renewed investment there, and how the US role might impact Russia, as well as its current partners on Syria is worth considering. If Russia’s decision on cooperating with the US on Syria was based on conclusions reached by Russian analyst as postulated here, it would be interesting to consider gaps that likely existed in their understanding of Trump’s concepts and prospective decisions on US foreign policy. The list of issues which Russian analysts would need to consider and for which they would need the right answers would be lengthy. Some of the important considerations for Moscow would likely have been: 1) bridging the diplomacy gap on Syria; 2) connecting on counterterrorism and safe zone; 3) establishing an understanding on Assad; 4) handling the Syrian rebels; 5) managing the peace talks; 6) getting the US to accept Iran’s role in Syria; 7) discerning US-Turkey cooperation; and, 8) postwar peace-enforcement and reconstruction.
1) Bridging the diplomacy gap on Syria
One could postulate that Russia’s interest in including the US in its Syria peace talks now is a display of newly found respect for the US Presidency, a very congenial welcome to the new administration with hope it would be perceived a sign of Moscow’s desire for improved relations, or an attempted appeal to the pride and ego of new US officials. While on the outside, Trump may appear to some as audacious, unpredictable, aggressive, on the inside Trump is thoughtful, disciplined, under control, and tough. The Kremlin might keep in mind is that much as Putin, Trump will hardly interested in diffusing tension by amiability, a hug or a slap on the back, an affected joviality to initiate dialogue. Trying to diffuse tension with Trump in this way is to play the minstrel. It will signal insecurity.Russia has not provided a useful articulation of its hopes for relations with the Trump administration which would be helpful to the White House on some policy planning. It would also be helpful if Moscow articulated a reasonable cause for Russia’s decision to break contact with the Obama administration on Syria, or exclude the US in its talks in Astana. Anger is not an acceptable rationale but very often the basis for poor decisions. Moscow should realize that the Trump administration indeed represents a new beginning. It will seek better ties with other countries and better deals on anything negotiated by the Obama administration. Still, that does not necessarily mean everything that was Obama’s must be deracinated. Trump is very patriotic, and while he may not have agreed with Obama’s policies and approaches, he would certainly want other governments to display respect for a sitting US president. The reality is Russian behavior toward Obama Presidency at some level may factor into his perceptions of Russia.
It is unclear whether there are any other steps other than Lavrentyev’s invitation, planned to help bridge diplomatic gap between the US and Russia on Syria. Having taken the uncongenial and provocative step of excluding the US from its peace talks in Astana, and terminating discussions on Syria with the US, Russia’s attempt to revive what has been broken is being attempted with almost no diplomatic foundation to build upon. Former US Secretary of State John Kerry very likely explained to his counterpart Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin, himself, that reaching an agreement during the Obama administration on Syria and coordinating effectively under that agreement and others that might have been reached, would increase the possibility that US-Russian coordination at that level would be preserved by the next US administration. It would have been a simple statement of truth as much as an effort at fence mending. It should have behooved Putin to consider how significant cooperation between the US and Russia in the fight against Islamic militant groups then might set the stage for close and effective cooperation between the two countries in the next administration, especially on a postwar reconstruction and peace-enforcement mission in Syria.
A feasible point on which Russia might build new diplomatic relations on Syria would be US-Russian military coordination cooperation on Syria to ensure that the two countries’ air forces operate safely and that the risk of accidental confrontation or collision is minimized. Those talks were set up as a result of a proposal proffered by US Secretary of State John Kerry to share intelligence with Russia and coordinate airstrikes against ISIS and other Islamic militant groups. Russia might want to provide a positive assessment of the status of US-Russia air coordination on Syria.
A US B-52H bomber (above) Even without a formal articulation of its foreign and national security policies, the Trump administration’s intentions regarding counterterrorism have been explicit. Trump is ready to respond to terrorists groups with varied means to include stealthy, covert special operations raid executed with surgical precision to airstrikes of unimaginable destructive power.
2) Connecting on counterrorism and safe zones
Given that diplomatic efforts between the US and Russia on Syria near the Obama administration’s terminus were discontinuous, it is difficult to see how Moscow would have any confidence that the Trump administration would be interested in diplomatic efforts on Syria that would bridge the gap. Prospective diplomatic efforts might include talks on the US role in the Russian-led Syria peace talks, a new US-Russia partnership in Middle East, or counterterrorism. The draft executive order circulating on social media in January 2017 was first obtained and published by the Huffington Post, Trump envisioned establishing “safe zones” both inside Syria and in neighboring countries that will be used to “protect vulnerable Syrian populations” while they “await firm settlement” either elsewhere in Syria or in other countries. The document alludes to Trump’s controversial calls to prevent people fleeing the war-torn country from entering the US. It further explained that according to a draft executive order along with other steps with the goal of preventing future terrorist attacks in the US. Trump indicates he wants to see a plan by late April. The draft executive order was unverified. Some believe Trump will likely withdraw the matter due to tough logistical and political challenges associated with it.
Even without a formal articulation of its foreign and national security policies, the Trump administration’s intentions with regard to counterterrorism may have been explicit enough. He appears ready to respond to terrorists groups with varied means to include stealthy, covert special operations raid executed with surgical precision to airstrikes of unimaginable destructive power. As the capital of ISIS’ now dwindling Islamic Caliphate is located in Syria, it could be postulated that the country should hold some relevance regarding the administration’s foreign policy. It could seen as prospective rationale for Trump administration to invest time and effort on the political situation in Syria. Still, it would be difficult to discern solely from that angle what the administration’s interest and approaches to other aspects of the Syria issue might be.
It is uncertain whether Russia could establish a purely anti-ISIS linkage with the US on Syria or whether such a tie would be desirable. While the Trump-Putin telephone call albeit occurred after Lavrentyev made his statement,Moscow’s desire to make counterterrorism the foundation for establishing US-Russian relationship focus was reflected by the conversation. The aspect of the call that the Kremlin primarily focused on was counterterrorism. The Kremlin noted, “The presidents spoke in favor of setting up genuine coordination between Russian and American actions with the aim of destroying Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Syria.”
3) Handling the Syrian Opposition Rebels
It is uncertain how the Trump administration will respond to Syrian Opposition Movement rebels on the ground. The Obama administration in 2012 to provide the Syrian Opposition Movement with its support in the hope that Assad could be pressured to the negotiating table by Free Syrian Army advances and eventually agree to step down under a settlement. However, the US effort in Syria was designed and recognized by many as work on the margins. For nearly five years, the rebels were, for the most part, a disappointment as a military force. Indeed, after the Obama administration took on what proved to be the thankless task of supporting the Syrian Opposition rebels on the ground, complaints were frequently heard from senior commanders of the Supreme Military Council, the opposition’s military wing and commanders of their forces in the field, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), as well. Their grievances belie the fact that the Syrian opposition military leaders, after four years of war, have failed to unify the many groups in the Free Syrian Army into a cohesive fighting force and have been unable, without foreign assistance, to enhance their fighters capabilities. Only with US direction were FSA units and People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in the northeast Syria able to unite as the Syrian Democratic Forces. The rebels’ leaders had been remiss in devising their own plans for the effective use of their forces against ISIS and the Syrian Arab Armed Forces. From the beginning of their movement, Syrian opposition leaders should have been mature enough, and worldly wise enough, to understand that neither US nor any other country owed them anything. The Syrian Opposition’s Supreme Military Council, and senior FSA commanders should have expected more from themselves before demanding so much of others. The chance that Syrian Opposition Movement rebels on the ground in Syria and its political leaders would gain and retain the support of the Trump administration will be slim if their predilection toward being demanding and difficult to coordinate politically persists.
There are presently 500 US Special Operations troops in Syria training, equipping, and assisting Syrian Opposition rebels. Their help has allowed the rebels achieve some big things. The rebels march toward Raqqa is an example of that. Through the assistance of US Special Operations advisers, the rebels have been able to coordinate their movements with planners of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition air campaign. However, there is still no evidence that the rebels possess any capability to shape the overall struggle in a way now that would put real pressure on Assad. For many rebels scattered around Syria, everyday is fight for survival as they hope for a miracle.
ISIS and other Islamic militant groups linked to Al-Qaeda, such as the former Jabhat al-Nusra and its reported offshoot Khorasan, have managed find advantage in the Syrian opposition’s failings throughout the war. By attacking mainstream FSA units that were trying to defeat Assad’s troops and allies, the Islamic militants have succeeded in making the Syrian opposition’s situation far worse. On top of the damage caused by their attacks on the FSA, Islamic militant groups continue to commit countless atrocities against the Syrian people. The Islamic militant groups were never oriented toward Syria’s transition to a democratic form of government. ISIS has included territory they hold in Syria as part of a massive Islamic State, an Islamic Caliphate, crossing into Iraq that is solely under their control, ruled under Sharia law. A syncretistic merger of mainstream opposition and Islamic militant ideas on governance was never going to occur. Meanwhile, ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other Islamic militant groups became stronger almost daily. Their strength has long since passed the point at which mainstream Syrian Opposition forces could independently contend with them.
US Special Operations troops in Syria (above). With the help of 500 US Special Operations troops who were sent into Syria to train, equip, and assist them, the Syrian Opposition rebels have managed to achieve some things. Their march toward Raqqa is an example of that. However, there is still no evidence of a capability to shape the conflict in a way now that would put real pressure on Assad. For many Syrian Opposition rebels, everyday is fight for survival as they hope for a miracle.
An authentic Russian assessment of the Syrian opposition rebels at this point could only be that they will not be able to shape the military situation on ground in a way to force Assad to talks for arranging his removal from office and setting up a transitional government. The rebels have lost many fighters, and a significant portion of their territorial gain. They clearly have not influenced Assad’s thinking or decision-making. From a Russian military perspective, there is not too much for the Trump administration to go into Syria to support. Russia has been effective at halting rebels efforts on the ground. In reality, the US has been the only obstacle to ensuring the rebels’ destruction by Russian Federation and Syrian Arab air power. Some analysts believe the Battle of Aleppo truly signaled the end for rebels. Russia apparently plans to remain in Syria at relatively high levels and continue to provide military assistance to Assad’s forces. Without any US assistance, there is no chance whatsoever that the rebels could keep fighting at all. Given that, the Moscow may find it difficult to believe that Trump administration would pump more time, blood, and money into the rebel effort.
4) Managing the Peace Talks
As there is no path for the Syrian Opposition Movement to secure a role in the Damascus government, Moscow may doubt that the Trump administration would be willing to negotiate for them at the Syrian peace talks. Pressing for the demand of the Obama administration that a transition government be created in Damascus and that Assad commit to stepping down would be unreasonable. Likewise, it might be considered unnecessary for the Trump administration to seek a settlement on territory. The Syrian Opposition Movement was a political movement not territorial one, in which an autonomous state is sought. The movement of the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party, however, is a struggle for autonomy. To that extent, it may be an issue which the Trump administration could get behind.
On the other hand, despite glowing reports on what had been achieved in Astana, Moscow discovered in December 2016 and January 2017 that managing peace talks with the warring parties was not easy. There was difficulty getting the Syrian Opposition to agree to anyrhing. This was repeatedly the case when the Obama administration was involved. Moreover, during previous talks, foreign diplomats were required to devote a significant amount of time acting as mediators to hold the Syrian Opposition’s diverse groups together. While the opposition delegation was formed mostly of rebel commanders rather than political leaders, it was still quick to reject proposal for direct talks with the Assad regime because of its continued bombardment of opposition-held areas. Russia drummed up political support for the talks in Astana, which appeared aimed at leveraging its rejuvenated ties with Turkey and to simply give Moscow a greater voice in efforts to broker a settlement. However, Russian officials have lowered expectations that a major breakthrough would result from its efforts. Making things worse, during the talks, fierce infighting between rebel groups erupted in Syria, pitting at least one faction that supported the talks against another that was excluded. The rebels went into the talks at their weakest point so far in the war and this new eruption of violence threatened to fracture the opposition even further. Moscow may very well sense that it needs the assistance of the US to manage the talks.
5) Establishing an Understanding on Assad
Before its next contact with the Trump administration, Moscow will undoubtedly consider what cooperative role the US could play that would allow for the full exploitation of its capabilities in the anti-ISIS effort. However, if Moscow wants to cooperate with the administration on Syria, it must create an environment that will facilitate such cooperation. There is the likelihood that Trump administration will not accept Assad. For the moment, the transition of Assad regime to new politically inclusive government is the standing US policy. If the Trump administration by chance decided to cooperate with Russia on Syria at the moment, it would signal its acceptance of Assad’s presidency as it is Russia’s policy to fully support it. To believe that might happen is to deny reality. Russia must decide how it will negotiate on Assad before it discusses anything about Syria with the Trump administration.
If the Trump administration has no interest in working with Assad, it could hardly be expected that the administration would provide US financial assistance for Syria’s reconstruction, helping to rebuild his regime. Russia needs to assess whether there any strong motivation might exist for the Trump administration to be involved. At best, the administration would only give reconstruction consideration if it was presented with some opportunity, a role of clear benefit to the US. Alternatively, Moscow could make itself completely open to responding to the Trump administration’s wishes on Syria. Absent either, there would hardly be any point to pursuing the matter. Russian analysts should have assessed that Assad’s future would need to be an important factor in the Kremlin’s calculus on reconstruction.
Despite glowing reports on what had been achieved in Astana, Moscow actually found that managing the peace talks was not easy. It faced particular difficulty keeping the Syrian Opposition together. It has repeatedly been the case during Syrian peace talks that foreign diplomats were required to devote much time acting as mediators to hold the Syrian Opposition’s diverse groups together. Moscow may very well sense that it needs the assistance of the US to manage the talks.
6) Getting the US to Accept Iran’s Role in Syria
Russian analysts should have assessed that the Trump administration may not want to work in conjunction with Iran on Syria. The Trump administration has explicitly indicated that it is an avid supporter of Israel, whose leaders have referred to Iran as an existential threat. Further, during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, Trump expressed the desire to alter or scrap the Iran nuclear deal. His administration’s thinking and approach to the nuclear deal may impact its desire to participate in the Syria peace talks while Iran was present. Russia would also need to establish what Iran’s reaction would be to possible US involvement in the talks. Reportedly, Iran has made huge sacrifices in blood and money in Syria, and is still doing so. Its leaders will most likely feel that their country deserves standing greater, but certainly no less than the US on any issues concerning Syria. It is unclear whether the Russians would want to do anything to negatively affect the strong ties it has developed with Iran in order to establish cooperation with the US.
There are other matters that might greatly concern the Trump administration. At a UN meeting in Vienna on November 14, 2015, Kerry is said to have proposed allowing all Syrians, “including members of the diaspora” participate in the vote. He was betting that if Syrians around the world can participate in the vote, Assad will not be able to win, his regime likely has a limited degree of influence within Syria and the Syrian diaspora worldwide, including among refugees in massive camps in Jordan and Turkey or on their own elsewhere. As December 30, 2015 greatcharlie post explained, Russia and Iran would hardly allow the situation to slip from their hands so easily. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), IRGC-Quds Force, the Iranian Army, and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security would do much to influence the outcome on the battlefield but also will likely do much to help the Assad regime influence the result of elections despite UN monitors, by helping to “create support” for Assad and “coping” with regime opponents. Reportedly, the Assad regime and the Iranians have engaged in a bit of ethnic cleansing. For example, Sunnis in West Damascus were forced to resettle in Kefraya and Fua. Iraqi and Lebanese Shias among those who replace them. Shia residents in Kefraya and Fua have been moved to formerly Sunni areas near Damascus. The Trump administration will likely point to this matter and will unlikely approve of Iran’s actions. Moscow will need to develop responses to Trump administration questions about that.
7) Discerning US-Turkey Cooperation
Russia analysts would likely assess for Moscow that if the US enters the fray on Syria, Turkey would be forced to establish a balance between the relations with Russia and the US. While Turkey has a new linkage with Russia on Syria, it has a strong linkage with the US, its long-time NATO ally, on Syria as a result of an agreement with the Obama administration to take on the role of supporting US-backed Syrian Opposition rebels. Moreover, how Turkey intended to proceed regarding its support of those US-backed rebels’ campaign is unknown. This issue will take on even greater importance if the Trump administration decided to reduce or halt financial support to Ankara that may have assisted Turkish military forces and intelligence services working with Syrian Opposition rebels.
Safe zones have been a core demand of the Syrian opposition and were central to Turkey’s Syria policy for much of the past five years. However, Ankara is apparently lukewarm about idea of new safe zones, believing that under its auspices, a sufficient safe zone has already created. Indeed, Turkey has set up its own zone of influence, a de facto safe zone, between the Kurdish enclaves of Jarablus and Irfin, which is aimed primarily at keeping Syrian Kurds from forming a presence along the entire length of its border with Syria, but is also being used as a refuge by some fleeing civilians. Russian analysts may have already assessed that if the US receives significant push back from Turkey on creating new safe zones in Syria, it may temper the Trump administration’s interest in investing the US further in the Syria situation. Countries as Turkey and Jordan would be critical to any plan to create safe zones in country because they would need a steady line of support in order to be sustained.
Aleppo (above). US cooperation on reconstruction would be most desirable after any conflict.There would hardly be any motivation for the Trump administration to provide US financial assistance for reconstruction of Syria for Assad. At best, Trump would only give reconstruction consideration if there was a clear benefit to the US. Unless Russia would be open to responding to US wishes on Syria, it is hard see what would draw the US to the enterprise.
8) Postwar Peace-Enforcement and Reconstruction
Russian analysts may have assessed that convincing US to cooperate on the Syria peace talks could create a possible path for for US participation at an important level in the country’s postwar peace-enforcement mission and possibly reconstruction. It is a monumental task that lies ahead. Leaving Syria without at least initiating some complex comprehensive plan for reconstruction and peace-enforcement would be a mistake. That would create ideal conditions for the rejuvenation of ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, or the establishment of another Islamic militant group to fill the vacuum of power around the country. That was what occurred in Iraq after US forces departed, the problem in Libya with the removal of the regime of Muammar El-Ghaddafi, and it is a growing problem in Afghanistan.
US cooperation on reconstruction would be most desirable after any conflict. Surely, Russian Federation EMERCOM, developed and led by the current Russian Federation Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu for many years, would have an significant impact on that effort. However, without the financial wherewithal and expertise of the US, Russia’s investment in Syria might amount to nothing in the end. In the international reconstruction effort launched in Bosnia in 1995 under the Dayton Peace Agreement and the creation of the multinational peace-enforcement force in support of the agreement’s implementation, I-FOR (Implementation Force). The US and Russia cooperated as members of that force and the follow-on force, S-FOR (Stabilization Force). US participation in the peace-enforcement and reconstruction effort may also do much to encourage participation from those Arab countries and Western countries as well. Russia, itself, has sought stronger ties with Arab countries, bolstering economic ties with Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Kuwait and diplomatic overtures with Algeria, Iraq, and Egypt. Russia’s hope was that courting those countries would make them more receptive to its’ calls to assist in finding a political solution for Syria. It was also hoped those countries would eventually be responsive to a campaign by Russia to gain financial support for Syria’s reconstruction. Still, there is sense of stability that may come from US participation in the Syria effort. Knowing the US and Russia were cooperating on the ground might create a sense of security among the other countries.
The Trump administration, in its nascent days, has set out to accomplish many things, but approaches matters in a way a bit different from previous administrations. Its intent is not to reject or break the US policymaking process, but the change still worries many. Government professionals will soon be put to work implementing numerous administration policies. Once cabinet members and senior executives of the various departments are seated, policy statements on Syria and other issues will be produced.
The Way Forward
In William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Polonius is a Danish Lord and chief counselor to the king. In Act I Scene iii, his son Laertes is leaving home for France. While sending his son off, Polonius offers him advice on how to behave with integrity and practicality overseas. At the end of a long list of guidelines, Polonius tells Laertes: “This above all: to thine ownself be true. And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Taking an unconventional approach can be called creative, but when it leads to successful outcomes, it must be considered effective. The Trump administration, in its nascent days, has set out to accomplish many things and it is doing them in a way different from that of previous administrations. Change can be disturbing. On foreign policy, it is not the intent of the Trump administration to reject or break the policymaking process. Inevitably, professionals serving in government departments will be put to work implementing numerous administration policies. Trump is aware of the very large foreign affairs and national security apparatus made available to a US president, and knows it is very capable. As its cabinet members and senior executives of the various departments are seated, the Trump administration will begin to produce policy statements not only on Syria, but many other issues as well. Moscow’s invitation for the Trump administration to join the Syria effort seems to indicate that Russia would prefer, and if possible encourage, the White House to circumvent the normal policymaking process. Taking approach will put Moscow on nothing but a bad road. Indeed, accomplishing anything that way will be impossible. Despite what may become a persistent voice from overseas, the administration will formulate its policies and advance them at its own pace.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar (above). It is comprised of a joint US military and Coalition team that executes day-by-day combined air and space operations and provides rapid reaction, positive control, coordination, and deconfliction of weapons systems. On September 17, 2016, CAOC was monitoring a Coalition airstrike over Deir Ezzor when Russian Federation forces informed it that the attack was hitting a Syrian military position. The attack impacted a US diplomatic effort with Russia on Syria.
According to a November 29, 2016 New York Times article entitled, “Unintentional Human Error Led to Airstrikes on Syrian Troops, Pentagon Says,” the US Department of Defense identified “unintentional” human mistakes as the causality for the US-led airstrikes that killed dozens of Syrian government troops in September 17, 2016. The strikes occurred as a deal to ease hostilities in Syria, brokered by the US and Russia, was unraveling. They particularly undercut US Secretary of State John Kerry’s diplomatic efforts with Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to coordinate the US and Russian air campaigns over Syria. Russian Federation military units, which were working closely with the forces of Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad to fight ISIS and other rebels, said the attack had killed 62 Syrian troops and wounded more than 100. The attack marked the first time the US had engaged the Syrian military since it began targeting the ISIS in Syria and Iraq two years ago. It was determined as result of the investigation, led by US Air Force Brigadier General Richard Coe, that the attack was conducted under the “good-faith belief” that the targets were ISIS militants. It also concluded that the strikes did not violate the law of armed conflict or the rules for the US military. Danish, British and Australian forces also participated in the airstrike. Coe said, “In my opinion, these were a number of people all doing their best to do a good job.”
As Kerry was engaged in a crucial effort to persuade Russia to coordinate its air campaign in Syria with similar US efforts when the airstrike occurred, greatcharlie has been fogged-in over why the risky attack was ever ordered. In a previous post, greatcharlie stated that Russian Federation military commanders could benefit greatly from working alongside US air commanders and planners. It was also suggested that the US might provide a demonstration of its targeting and operational capabilities to encourage Russia’s cooperation. However, the errant attack was certainly not the sort of demonstration greatcharlie had in mind. On better days, US air commanders and planners have demonstrated a practically unmatched acumen in using air assets of the US-led coalition’s anti-ISIS air campaign to shape events on the ground in support of the goals of US civilian leaders. US air commanders and planners have very successfully conducted No-Fly Zones and sustained air campaigns over the past three decades, in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, where political goals endured, and in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Those experienced enough in life fully understand that it has its promises and disappointments. Whether events go well or negatively for one, an authentic truth is revealed in the outcome from which valuable, edifying lessons as well as new ideas can be extrapolated. The errant bombing of September 17, 2016 and findings of the investigation of it have come late in the administration of US President Barack Obama. Too little time is really available for lessons from the incident to influence any remaining decisions that the administration might make on Syria or military coordination and cooperation with Russia. The subsequent collapse of the negotiations on military coordination may have assured such decisions would not be required. Yet, for the incoming US administration, they may offer some useful hints on negotiating military coordination and cooperation with Russia on Syria or other countries on other issues if the opportunity arises. A few of those lessons are presented here with the hope they might mitigate the potential of an unfortunate military incident as witnessed in Syria that might also derail a crucial diplomatic effort. The overall hope is that the next administration will be tended by an honorable peace. Quidquid ages, prudenter agas et respice finem! (Whatever you do, do cautiously, and look to the end!)
The airstrike undercut US Secretary of State John Kerry’s (right) diplomatic effort with Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (left) to coordinate the US and Russian air campaigns over Syria. Bringing Russia over to the US view was already dicey. A few days before the incident, the US and Russia exchanged charges of noncompliance with a ceasefire agreement reached on September 12th in Geneva.
This Was Not the Demonstration of US Capabilities Imagined
The Obama administration may not have actually been enthused about working with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin on Syria, but it recognized that Russia, with its considerable military investment in Syria, can play an important role in ending the war. To that extent, it sought to have Putin agree to have agreement crafted by Kerry and Lavrov to cooperate militarily. The agreement called for formation of a US-Russia Joint Implementation Center to coordinate strikes against ISIS as well as Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic militant forces after there had been seven consecutive days of reduced violence in the civil war and humanitarian aid had begun to flow to besieged communities in Syria. Bringing Russia over to the US view was already dicey enough. A few days before the incident, the US and Russia exchanged charges of noncompliance with the ceasefire agreement that Kerry and Lavrov reached on September 12, 2016 in Geneva.
On August 20, 2016, greatcharlie suggested the US could increase the value of its assistance through an actual demonstration of US capabilities to further encourage a change in Putin’s perspective on Kerry’s proposal on military cooperation. Included among recommendations was providing Putin with a complete US military analysis of the setbacks Russia and its allies have faced in Syria, and the relative strengths and weakness versus their Islamic militant opponents. The exact manner in which intelligence resources the US proposed to share with Russia and US military resources would have been of value to Russia could have been demonstrated by targeting and destroying a number battle positions of ISIS and other Islamic militant groups in Syria. Where possible, US airstrikes could have disrupted and destroyed developing attacks and counterattacks against Russia’s allies. Through a video of the attacks, Putin could have been shown how the unique capabilities of US weapons systems could enhance the quality of Russian airstrikes. He might also have been provided with US military assessments of those attacks.The US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, told the Russians in advance about the planned strike on an airfield in Deir Ezzor Province, calling it a “professional courtesy.” A senior US official said the Russians had acknowledged the message, thereby assuring they would the audience for the US attack. However, after the attack, the Russians had no reason to express appreciation or compliments to CENTCOM. The strike began in the early evening of the next day. According to Russia, two A-10s, two F-16 fighters, and drones of the US-led Coalition were deployed to attack the airfield. They began hitting tanks and armored vehicles. In all, 34 precision guided missiles were erroneously fired on a Syrian Arab Army unit. The attack went on for about 20 minutes, with the planes destroying the vehicles and gunning down dozens of people in the open desert, the official said. Then, an urgent call came into CENTCOM’s Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which provides command and control of air power throughout Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and 17 other nations. The Russians relayed to the CAOC the disappointing news that the US strike was hitting Syrian forces. Four minutes later, the strikes were halted.
A “bombed up” A-10 Thunderbolt II fighter (above). In the early evening of September 17, 2016, two pairs of Coalition A-10 and F-16 fighters along with drones were deployed to attack an airfield in Deir Ezzor. They began hitting tanks and armored vehicles. In all, 34 precision guided missiles were erroneously fired on a Syrian Arab Army position. The attack lasted about 20 minutes, with the fighters destroying the vehicles and gunning down dozens of Syrian troops in the open desert. If not halted, the entire Syrian unit might have been wiped out.
In Syria over 95 percent of Russian Federation Air Force sorties are flown at 15,000 to 20,000 feet primarily to evade enemy air defenses. As aircrews cannot identify targets, bombs are dropped in areas where air intelligence reports the enemy is located. In attacking urban centers, that can result in collateral damage in the form of civilian deaths and injuries and the destruction of nonmilitary structures. US Permanent Representative to the UN, Samantha Power pointed to the issue of targetting by Russian Federation Air Force and Syrian Arab Air Force jets. On September 17, 2016, Power stated the Syrian government, assisted by Russia, has tortured and bombed its people. She added, “And, yet, in the face of none of these atrocities has Russia expressed outrage, nor has it demanded investigations, nor has it ever called for . . . an emergency meeting of the Security Council” on a Saturday night or any other night.
Air intelligence provides commanders with information on enemy targets to the extent that visual searches of enemy targets is no longer required. Given the speed of fighters and the need to protect aircrews and aircraft from anti-aircraft weapons and other arms, flying at lower altitudes with the goal of identifying targets by visual search is no longer feasible. Even friendly forces are often required to mark targets with flags or smoke for their own safety. US air commanders ordered the attack in the proximity of Syrian forces, calculating that the conclusions of air intelligence about the target were accurate. Informing aircrews that they would be operating in close proximity to Syrian troops did not create any requirement for them to engage in a time consuming, very hazardous, visual search of the target before going into their attack. Nevertheless, as US Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, the commander of US Air Forces and Combined Forces Air Component in CENTCOM aptly explained, “In this instance, we did not rise to the high standard we hold ourselves to, and we must do better than this each and every time.”
The Russian Federation armed forces and intelligence services use their intelligence tactics, techniques, procedures, and methods to meet the needs of air commanders and planners. However, over 95 percent of Russian Federation Air Force sorties in Syria are flown at 15,000 to 20,000 feet primarily to evade air defenses. Bombs are dropped where air intelligence reports state the enemy is located. Attacks in urban centers have resulted in civilian deaths and injuries and the destruction of nonmilitary structures.
Intelligence Analysts Erred
The Russian Federation armed forces and intelligence services proudly use their own intelligence tactics, techniques, procedures, and methods to meet the needs of commanders and planners. Russian Federation commanders and planners would certainly like to believe that by intensifying their own intelligence gathering activities, they can achieve success without US assistance. However, the summer of 2016 proved to be particularly difficult for Russian Federation forces and their allies as progress eastward toward Raqqa and Deir Ezzor was slowed. ISIS was able to apply pressure, infiltrating into areas retaken by the allies and launching counterattacks. The fight for Aleppo became a greater strain than anticipated. Beyond human intelligence collection–spies, the US gathers continuous signal and geospatial intelligence over Syria. Those multiple streams of intelligence could assist Russian Federation commanders and planners in pinpointing ISIS and other Islamic militant groups on the ground even if they are dispersed. Air assets of the Russian Federation and its allies could destroy them, disrupt their attacks, and support ground maneuver to defeat them. In support of the proposal, Kerry and Lavrov already agreed that a map could be drawn up indicating where Islamic militant forces are positioned. They also agreed that US and Russian military personnel working in the same tactical room would jointly analyze the intelligence and select targets for airstrikes.
Reportedly, US surveillance aircraft had been watching the erroneously-labelled Syrian unit for several days. According to a redacted copy of a report that summarized the investigation, a drone examined an area near an airfield in Deir Ezzor Province in eastern Syria on September 16, 2016, identifying a tunnel entrance, two tents and 10 men. The investigation found that those forces were not wearing recognizable military uniforms or identification flags, and there were no other signs of their ties to the Syrian government. On September 17, 2016, a CENTCOM official, who at the time requested anonymity because the incident was still being investigated, said military intelligence had already identified a cluster of vehicles, which included at least one tank, as belonging to ISIS. Coe stated, “In many ways, these forces looked and acted like the Daesh forces the coalition has been targeting for the last two years,” using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
In a statement on the investigation of the incident, CENTCOM outlined a number of factors that distorted the intelligence picture for the airstrike. Included among them were “human factors” such as “confirmation bias”; “improper labelling”; and invalid assumptions. The Syrian Arab Army unit observed at Deir Ezzor was wrongly identified or labelled as ISIS early in the analytical process. CENTCOM’s statement indicated that incorrect labelling colored later analysis and resulted in the continued misidentification of the Syrian unit on the ground as ISIS. Further, the statement laid out a series of changes to the targeting process that the Defense Department has already made to include more information-sharing among analysts. The US Air Force has independently placed its process for identifying targets under review.
Qui modeste paret, videtur qui aliquando imperet dignus esse. (The one who obeys with modesty appears worthy of being some day a commander.) What appears to have been needed at the time beyond issues concerning tactics, techniques, procedures and methods for conducting air operations was better coordination of its own diplomatic and military activities regarding Syria. As a sensible precaution, US air commanders and planners should have been informed that operations conducted at that time could have considerable positive or negative impact on US diplomatic efforts in Syria. (The publicized record of the investigation does not touch on this point.) The delicate nature of diplomacy would have been factored into planning, not shrugged off. Interference by civilian leaders in military units’ tactical operations is surely not desired by commanders. Yet, by failing to call attention to the unique political and diplomatic environment in which they were operating over Syria, the matter was left open to chance.
MQ-1 Predator drone (above). Reportedly, US surveillance aircraft had been watching the erroneously-labelled Syrian military position for several days. A drone examined an area near an airfield in Deir Ezzor Province on September 16, 2016, identifying a tunnel entrance, two tents and 10 men. The investigation found that those forces were not wearing recognizable military uniforms or identification flags, and there were no other signs of their ties to the Syrian government.
Confirmation Bias and Hormones: Decisionmaking on the Airstrikes
Decipimur specte recti. (We are deceived by the appearance of right.) In the conclusions of the US Defense Department’s investigation, causality for the incident was found to be in part the thinking of US air commanders and planners. It was determined to have been a bit off-kilter and confirmation bias was pointed to specifically. Confirmation bias is a result of the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When individuals desire a certain idea or concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are driven by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to cease collecting information when the evidence gathered at a certain point confirms the prejudices one would like to be true. After an individual has developed a view, the individual embraces any information that confirms it while ignoring, or rejecting, information that makes it unlikely. Confirmation bias suggests that individuals do not perceive circumstances objectively. An individual extrapolates bits of data that are satisfying because they confirm the individual’s prejudices. Therefore, one becomes a prisoner of one’s assumptions. The Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar has been quoted as saying “Fene libenter homines id quod volunt credunt,” which means, “Men readily believe what they want to believe.” Under confirmation bias, this is exactly the case. Attempting to confirm beliefs comes naturally to most individuals, while conversely it feels less desirable and counterintuitive for them to seek out evidence that contradicts their beliefs. This explains why opinions survive and spread. Disconfirming instances must be far more powerful in establishing truth. Disconfirmation requires searching for evidence to disprove a firmly held opinion.
Cogitationem sobrii hominis punctum temporis suscipe. (Take for a moment the reasoning of a quiet man.) For the intelligence analyst, appropriately verifying one’s conclusions is paramount. One approach is to postulate facts and then consider instances to prove they are incorrect. This has been pointed to as a true manifestation of self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to look for instances that pleases one’s ego. For group decision-making, one can serve a hypothesis and then gather information from each member in a way that allows the expression of independent assessments. A good example can found in police procedure. In order to derive the most reliable information from multiple witnesses to a crime, witnesses are not allowed to discuss it prior to giving their testimony. The goal is to prevent unbiased witnesses from influencing each other. US President Abraham Lincoln intentionally filled his cabinet with rival politicians who had extremely different ideologies. At decision points, Lincoln encouraged passionate debate and discussion.
At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, research is being done to better understand the biological basis for decisionmaking using lab experiments and biological data. Some of the findings of research scientist, Gideon Nave, who came to Wharton from the university’s neuroscience department, prove as relevant to this case as much as confirmation bias. Nave explains that the process of decision-making is influenced by their biological state. Factors that can influence that biological state naturally include hunger, sleep deprivation and stress. However, Nave is also looking deeper at the influence of hormones on decision-making. In dominant situations, different hormones fluctuate in people. For example, stress creates a clearly measurable biological stress response that consists of elevation of several hormones in our body. Nave has focused on noradrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol specifically affects decisionmaking.
In examining decisionmaking, Nave recognizes that people trade-off by people accuracy and speed when making decisions. Cortisol, Nave has found, influences people’s will to give the simple heuristic, or “gut answer” faster, as if they were under time pressure. There is a simple test Nave uses through which one can observe their own responses. It come in the form of a math word problem. There is a bat and a ball for the US sport baseball. Together, they cost $1.10. Now, the bat costs a dollar more than the ball. What’s the price of the ball? More often than not, individuals tested will give their intuitive answer. Indeed, as the ball is 10 cents, and the bat is $1 more, they typically believe it means that the bat is $1.10, so together the bat and ball would be $1.20. However, that would be incorrect. The correct answer is 5 cents and $1.05. When the answer 10 cents is given, it usually has not been thought through. There is no time limit set for providing an answer. There is no incentive offered by the tester for answering with speed. It seems the only real pressure is the desire of an adult, who may be paid for being correct at his or her job, and may be achievement oriented, to correctly answer what is an elementary school-level math woth word problem with speed and confidence.
In analysis at the tactical level, target identification can require splitting-hairs. Much as a bank teller dispensing cash, a mistake by an intelligence can lead to a crisis. Doubt and uncertainty can be mitigated with sufficient, timely redundant assessments. In a sensitive political and diplomatic environment as the one faced in Syria, the slightest uncertainty should have been cause enough to deliberate and think through a target’s identification. While normally action-oriented, in a sensitive political and diplomatic environment, the commander, for that brief period, could order unit commanders and planners exercising caution in targeting and launching attacks.
In anew initial statement (above), CENTCOM, still uncertain, recognized the possibility that Syrian forces were hit in Deir Ezzor. For the intelligence analyst, verifying one’s conclusions is paramount. One approach is to postulate facts and then consider instances to prove they are incorrect. It requires the ability to look at the world without the need to look for instances that pleases one’s ego. For group decision-making, one can set a hypothesis and gather information from each member, allowing for the expression of independent assessments.
Ensuring the Right-hand and the Left-hand Know What the Head Wants
Perhaps civilian leaders in the Obama administration failed to fully consider or comprehend issues concerning measures used to identify and decide upon targets. Perhaps they were unaware that it was more important in that period of intense negotiations with Russia to minimize or simply avoid attacks on targets in close proximity to the forces of Russia and its allies. Under ordinary circumstances, the matter could reasonably be left for Russia commanders in the field to handle without concern for any implications in doing so. If in the future, an effort is made to demonstrate to Russia the best aspects of US capabilities and the benefits enjoyed by US-led Coalition partners in operations against ISIS and Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic militant forces, some guidance regarding urgent political goals for that period, and the need for enhanced diligence and perhaps restraint in the conduct of operations must be issued. It was either determined or no thought was given to reviewing and approving relevant procedures and initiatives at a time when crucial diplomatic efforts needed to be, and should have been, supported.
Historia magistra vitae et testis temporum. (History is the teacher and witness of times.) During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, civilian leaders recognized the need for enhanced diligence and perhaps restraint in the conduct of a Naval blockade of Cuba. The effort US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to inform US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral George Anderson of that resulted in a renowned angry exchange between them. The sources on which Graham Allison relied upon in the original edition of his seminal work on the crisis, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Little, Brown and Company,1971), claimed that the US Navy failed to implement the President John Kennedy’s orders to draw the blockade like we closer to Cuba ostensibly to give the Soviet Union’s calculating Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Nikita Khrushchev, more time to decide to half Soviet ships, and that Anderson resisted explaining to McNamara what procedures the Navy would use when intercepting the first Soviet ship to approach the line.
According to Allison’s account of the confrontation between McNamara and Anderson, US President John Kennedy was worried that the US Navy, already restive over the controls imposed on how the blockade of Cuba was to be executed, might “blunder into an incident.” McNamara was closely attuned to Kennedy’s worries and resolved to press the Navy leadership for additional information on its modus operandi. Confronting Anderson, McNamara minced no words: “Precisely what would the Navy do when the first interception occurred?” Anderson told him that he had already covered that same ground before the National Security Council, and the further explanation was unnecessary. This answer angered McNamara, proceeded to lecture Anderson on the political realities: “It was not the President’s design to shoot Russians but rather to deliver a political signal to Chairman Khrushchev. He did not want to push the Soviet leader into a corner; he did not want to humiliate him; he did not want to risk provoking him into a nuclear reprisal. Executing the blockade is a an act of war, one that involved the risk of sinking a Soviet vessel. The sole purpose of taking such a risk would be to achieve a political objective. But rather than let it come to that extreme end, we must persuade Chairman Khrushchev to pull back. He must not be ‘goaded into retaliation’.” Getting the feeling that his lecture did not sink in, McNamara resumed his detailed questioning. Whereupon Anderson, picked up the Manual of Naval Regulations, waved it in McNamara face and shouted, “It’s all in there!” McNamara retorted, “I don’t give a damn what John Paul Jones would have done. I want to know what you are going to do, now!”
Other sources that Allison utilized claimed that civilian leaders believed US antisubmarine warfare operations included using depth charges to force Soviet submarines to surface, raising the risk of inadvertent war. According to Richard Betts in American Force: Dangers, Delusions and Dilemmas in National Security (Columbia University Press, 2011). Subsequent research indicated that these stories were false. Indeed, Joseph Bouchard explains in Command in Crisis: Four Case Studies (Columbia University Press, 1991) that McNamara actually ordered antisubmarine procedures that were more aggressive than those standard in peacetime. Harried civilian leaders may not have fully comprehended the implications of all these technical measures, or may have had second thoughts. Nevertheless, the relevant procedures and initiatives did not escape their review and approval.
US President John Kennedy (left) with US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (right). During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, civilian leaders recognized the need for enhanced diligence in the conduct of a Naval blockade of Cuba. McNamara’s effort to inform the US Navy of that resulted in a renowned exchange between himself and the Chief of Naval Operations, US Navy Admiral George Anderson. Well before the errant Syria airstrike, civilian leaders should have told US air commanders and planners of their operations’ potential to impact crucial, ongoing US diplomatic efforts.
The Way Forward
In William Shakespeare’s comedy, The Tempest, Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, although forced to take refuge on an island for twelve years after his brother Antonio seized his title and property, refused to use his extraordinary powers, magic, to take revenge when the opportunity presented itself. Prosperous remarks, “The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.” The best definitions of virtue can be found among teachings of various religions. However, to avoid being impolitic by choosing one religion and its tenants over others, its definition can be drawn from philosophy. From a philosophical perspective, virtue is well-defined by the “Golden Mean” proffered by Cleobulos of Lindos, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. The Golden Mean manifested an understanding that life is not lived well without following the straight and narrow path of integrity. That life of moderation is not what is popularly meant by moderation. The classical Golden Mean is the choice of good over what is convenient and commitment to the true instead of the plausible. Virtue is then the desire to observe the Golden Mean. Between Obama and Putin, no confidence, no trust, no love existed, and relations between the US and Russia have been less than ideal. Regarding the errant Syria airstrike, the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said it perhaps served as evidence of US support for ISIS and an al-Qaeda affiliate fighting the Syrian government which the US sought to remove. Churkin’s statement could be viewed as indicaing that insinuated into his thinking was the notion commonly held worldwide of the US as virtuous country, a notion proffered, promoted, and purportedly fashioned into its foreign policy. It appears that he, too, would have liked to believe US actions and intentions are guided by virtue. Yet, it would seem that was a hope unfulfilled as a result of the bombing Syrian troops, coupled with all the disagreements and disputes, trials and tribulations between the US and Russia, and led to his expression of so much disappointment and discouragement. Nihil est virtute pulchrius. (There is nothing more beautiful than virtue.)
The US must be a role model, a moral paragon as the world’s leader acting as virtuously as it speaks. The US leaders must act virtuously not just because others worldwide expect it, but rather because they should expect it of themselves. Diplomatic relations with Russia must be transformed in line with a new policy necessitating efforts to end misunderstandings and to exploit opportunities in which the two countries can coordinate and cooperate. However, achieving that will require the effective stewardship of US diplomatic, military, political, and economic activities by US leaders. Micromanagement can often result in mismanagement in certain situations. Still, in the midst of on-going efforts to resolve urgent and important issues, US leaders must take steps to ensure that all acting on behalf of the US. They must thoroughly understand the concept and intent of the president, the implications of any actions taken individually or by their organizations, and perform their tasks with considerable diligence. All must make a reasonable effort to ensure errant actions are prevented. Melius est praevenire quad praeveniri. (Better to forestall than to be forestalled.)
US Secretary of State John Kerry (right) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (left) are the central points of diplomatic interaction between the US and Russia. They have worked together on a variety of urgent and important issues concerning their countries. They are now slogging away trying to find a way for the US and Russia to jointly end the Syria War and establish peace. Kerry has proposed US-Russian military coordination with preconditions. However, to secure an agreement on it, Kerry must convince Putin, not Lavrov, to change Russia’s positions.
According to an August 15, 2016 New York Times article entitled, “Under Pressure over Aleppo Siege, Russia Hints at Seeking Deal with US,” Russia suggested that it was close to an agreement on a military collaboration with the US to attack ISIS fighters in Aleppo, Syria as part of a solution to the unfolding humanitarian disaster there. US officials had no immediate comment on that claim. That joint effort would represent a new level of cooperation between the two countries which seek an end to the five-year-old Syria War. They support opposing sides. The New York Times reported foreign policy analysts believe Russia was negotiating in an attempt to avoid the appearance of blocking humanitarian aid to civilians in war-torn Aleppo by its airstrikes in Syria, Russian Federation Foreign Minister noted however, “It is of utmost importance that terrorists would not be getting reinforced with militants, guns, and munition [sic] supplies under the humanitarian aid disguise.” Russian Federation Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was the official who made the statement on the possible agreement. He explained in a measured way: “We are moving step by step closer to a plan—and I’m only talking about Aleppo here—that would really allow us to start fighting together to bring peace so that people can return to their homes in this troubled land.”
Russia and its Syrian, Iranian, and Iranian-led allies have faced significant setbacks on the battlefield as a result of their opponents’ abilities to capitalize on their inadequacies and mistakes. Russia will need to decide whether its actions will remain in the gap between contributing significantly to the efforts of allies fighting in support of the regime of Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad and working with the US to act more effectively and more decisively against mutual Islamic militant opponents. The prospective agreement, to which Shoigu referred, would stem from military talks underway in Geneva. Those talks were set up as a result of a proposal proffered by US Secretary of State John Kerry to share intelligence with Russia and coordinate airstrikes against ISIS and other Islamic militant groups. However, Putin and senior Russian officials seem to view the proposal less from how it will help end the war than how it may present the chance to get compromise from the US on Syria and promote Russia’s immediate objectives there. Kerry’s proposal has been put forward as the administration of US President Barack Obama comes to a close. Still, after eight years of contacts, a inordinate amount of obloquy has recently been hurled back and forth from officials in Washington to Moscow. Failure to get an agreement on coordination will undoubtedly make it more difficult for Russia to get an agreement from the US on reconstruction and peace-enforcement which would be important for Russia to have. Reconstruction in Syria will be a decades-long, very expensive effort. Russia will need to gather partners to help with its costs and its execution. A peace-enforcement mission, perhaps under UN auspices, will likely be needed to ensure that peace would be given a chance to take hold. Russia should keep in mind that the US has proven to be an invaluable partner in such complex reconstruction efforts and peace-enforcement missions worldwide in past years.
The Obama administration may not be enthused about working with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Syria, but it seems to recognize that Russia, with its considerable military investment in Syria, can play an important role in ending the war. Putin must recognize that much could be accomplished with US know-how and resources in both efforts. If he cannot recognize the good that cooperation would bring at first glance or simply refuses to make mutual compromises with the US to gain its assistance, what is left for the US is to get him to understand via diplomacy. US Secretary of State John Kerry has slogged away seeking the right approach to make that possible. A few recommendations are offered here. The Syria War appears to be getting worse. Experience may make US and Russian officials averse to finding compromise on military coordination on Syria. Pride and ego can also harden attitudes. If such influences cannot be set aside, the two sides may remain locked into their relative positions for a long while. Praeterita mutare non possumus, sed futuraprovidere debemos. (We cannot change the past, but we can anticipate the future.)
Often poker faced in talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry, a statesman, speaks in a manner that is easy, comfortable, assuring, and logical. He is an agile thinker who seeks creative solutions to problems, often requiring him to be discreet. He worked well with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the removal of chemical weapons from Syria in 2013. They worked on the same side during the Iran Nuclear Talks during two years of negotiations from 2013 to 2015. He may achieve similar success with Lavrov on Syria.
US Inaction Leads to Russian Action
Obama made it clear from the start that he was skeptical of using US military force in Syria. In a notable August 18, 2011 speech, Obama made the direct statement, “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” There were many additional declarations, insisting that Assad step down. Yet, having taken that maximalist position, there was an unwillingness to act. Within the Obama administration, it was truly believed that Assad would simply fall away, but that did not occur. That led the Obama administration in 2012 to provide the Syrian Opposition Movement with its support in the hope that Assad could be pressured to the negotiating table by Free Syrian Army advances and eventually agree to step down under a settlement. However, the US effort in Syria was designed and recognized by many as work on the margins. Obama would begrudgingly authorize the creation of a US-led coalition to airstrikes against the ISIS juggernaut that ran through Iraq in 2014. Those operations against ISIS were expanded to include ISIS targets in Syria. Obama sent US special operations forces to Iraq to advise and train Iraqi Security Forces and Iraqi Kurd military formations. Still, there would be no US combat units sent to fight ISIS in Syria.
Putin, however, did what Obama said he never wanted to do in Syria. In September 2015, Putin took the option of solving the conflict in Syria on his terms using a strong military hand. He explained that Russian Federation forces were sent into Syria both to “stabilize the legitimate authority” of Assad and to fight ISIS. He put a limited number of troops on the ground to protect Russia Federation military sites, and to serve as advisers and instructors for Syrian Arab Army units and volunteer units loyal to the regime. He would join Syrian, Iranian, and Iranian-led ground forces in battle against opponents using Russian Federation air power. Putin’s actions were mulled over, well-plotted, and implemented as to apply a calibrated amount of pressure on opponents of the Assad regime using measured amounts of military resources and controlling expenses. He was willing to accept a certain amount of risk in operations and was prepared to contend with some loss of personnel. Russia’s succor has benefitted Syrian, Iranian, and Iranian-led forces fighting on the ground not only in terms of military resources but also through guidance in the use of them.
Russia’s intervention did not mean an end to US-Russia diplomacy on Syria. Russia has supported talks between the Syrian Opposition and the Assad regime. Even before Russia went into Syria, Lavrov engaged in talks with the US to episodically establish a variety of cease-fires, nationwide and in specific provinces and negotiate humanitarian corridors. When Russian Federation military operations began, Moscow initially sought cooperation with Washington on Syria, but it was sought, however, solely on Russia’s terms. Those terms, in line with Putin’s concept for intervening in Syria, included providing diplomatic and military shelter to Assad and attacking, not only ISIS, but Western-backed rebel groups of the Free Syrian Army that oppose the Assad regime. Obama and other Western leaders sought to bring Putin into a US-led coalition. However, that would occur with the understanding that the goal of the coalition was the removal of Assad from power. Given the disparity between their positions, on November 27, 2015, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, played down the idea of cooperation at a Kremlin press conference. That announcement was surprisingly slow in coming given that the Obama administration was unsupportive of Russia’s intervention from the get-go. On September 30, 2015, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter forecasted about Moscow’s military involvement in Syria, “The Russian approach here is doomed to fail.” Obama stated on October 2, 2015: “An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work.” Interestingly, Kerry was still authorized and ordered by Obama to negotiate some arrangement in which the US and Russia would coordinate in the ISIS fight.
Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has prying eyes that rarely turn away. He has masterfully used diplomacy to turn policy into action in accord with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s concepts and intent. At this point, the Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry are well-versed on each other’s idiosyncrasies. They are able to gain insight from every inflexion, tone, and or change in voice.
Kerry-Lavrov Diplomacy
Diplomacy requires finding some middle ground, typically through some compromise, upon which an agreement can be reached and better relations can hopefully be built. Despite a divergence in interests, the US and Russia achieved early diplomatic success on Syria when an agreement was reached on a list of rules to ensure military aircraft from the US and Russia would not mistakenly run into or fire on one another as they conducted airstrikes. However, Kerry and Lavrov are the central points of diplomatic interaction between the US and Russia. Diplomatic success on Syria would eventually be achieved by them. They have worked together on a variety of urgent and important issues concerning their countries. They worked well together on the removal of chemical weapons from Syria in 2013. They worked on the same side during the Iran Nuclear Talks as the P5+1, the UN Security Council’s Permanent Five Members (the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China) plus Germany managed to construct an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program after nearly two years of negotiations from 2013 to 2015. Often poker faced in talks, Kerry, a statesman, speaks in a manner that is easy, comfortable, assuring, and logical. He is an agile thinker who seeks creative solutions to problems, often requiring him to be discreet. Lavrov has prying eyes that rarely turn away. He has masterfully used diplomacy to turn policy into action in accord with Putin’s concepts and intent. At this point, the two diplomats are well-versed on each other’s idiosyncrasies. They are able to develop insight from every inflexion, tone, and or change in voice. In oculis animus habitat. (In the eyes their character lives.)
A product of efforts by Kerry and Lavrov to find common interests among the warring parties in order to stop the violence in Syria was the December 18, 2015 UN Security Council vote on Resolution 2254 on Syria. It called for a ceasefire and a peace process that held the prospect of ending the Syria War. The resolution was agreed upon unanimously, 15-0, but sharp differences remained between the US and Russian positions. Russia’s key demand was that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be allowed to remain in power. It is a position also supported by China and Iran. Removing Assad from power in Damascus remained a US requirement. Yet, the resolution made no mention of whether Assad would be able to remain in power or run in any future elections. UN Security Council Resolution on Syria 2254 essentially called for the following: a ceasefire had to be established and formal talks on a political transition had to start in early January 2016; groups seen as “terrorists,” including ISIS and the erstwhile Jabhat al-Nusra were excluded; “offensive and defensive actions” against such groups, referring to US-led and Russia airstrikes, could continue; UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was asked to report by January 18, 2016 on how to monitor the ceasefire; “credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance “ should be established within 6 months; free and fair elections” under UN supervision to be held within 18 months; and, the political transition should be Syrian led.
What followed Resolution 2254 was UN Security Council Resolution 2268, unanimously adopted on February 26, 2016. The new resolution, brokered by Kerry and Lavrov, called for an immediate “cessation of hostilities” in Syria upon which the Assad regime and the Syrian Opposition agreed. Countries with influence on the parties agreed to press them to adhere to their commitments.. Then, on March 14, 2016, the Geneva Talks resumed. They were the first talks in two years and came at a time when a marked reduction in fighting was perceived. Still, what created real hope that the war might soon end was the surprise announcement by Putin on the same day as the resumption of the peace talks in Geneva that he was “ordering the withdrawal of the main part of our [Russia’s] military contingent” from Syria. Putin explained: “The effective work of our military created the conditions for the start of the peace process.” He continued, “I believe that the task put before the defense ministry and the Russian armed forces has, on the whole, been fulfilled.” Only the day before the announcement, Putin and Obama spoke by telephone, after which the Kremlin said the two leaders “called for an intensification of the process for a political settlement” to the conflict, but Assad’s future was not discussed. Putin’s decision pull his fprces put of Syria seemed to fall in line with that pledge. In addition to the withdrawal announcement, Russian Federation UN Permanent Representative Vitaly Churkin explained “Our diplomacy has received marching orders to intensify our efforts to achieve a political settlement in Syria.” Regarding what lied ahead in Syria for Russian Federation forces, Churkin noted, “Our military presence will continue to be there, it will be directed mostly at making sure that the ceasefire, the cessation of hostilities, is maintained.”
If a feigned retreat by Putin was synchronized with the “cessation of hostilities” and used to manipulate opponents of Russia and its’ allies, the move was effective. Islamic militant groups that were not included in the ceasefire agreement engaged in firefights and fired artillery across battle lines prematurely seeking to better position themselves to exploit expected advantages resulting from Russia’s departure. Ire over the shaky ceasefire and the Assad regime’s violations of it reportedly drove some moderate Opposition fighters over to ISIS and other Islamic militant groups.
Putin’s “Feigned Retreat?”
Russia Federation forces withdrew from Syria, but estimates are that only 10 to 25 percent actually left. Moreover, Russian activity in Syria increased. Reuters reported the “Syrian Express,” the nickname given to the ships that have kept Russian forces supplied via the Black Sea Russian port of Novorossiysk to the Russian naval base at Tartus, Syria. It shipped more supplies, equipment, and munitions into Syria in the two weeks following Putin’s withdrawal announcement than it had two weeks prior. Russian Federation Air Force and the Syrian Arab Air Force continued to destroy the opponent’s units, material, and command, control, communication and intelligence, training facilities, and other targets. The ground forces of Russia’s allies remained active and returned a good portion of Syrian territory back to the Assad regime. Kerry and Lavrov carried on with their diplomatic efforts, but the ceasefire did not hold.
The Obama administration seemed to view Putin’s withdrawal announcement as a type of feigned retreat. The feigned retreat is a military tactic said to have been introduced to the West in the 8th century by the Frankish Duke and Prince Charles Martel. Under it, an army would pretend to withdraw or behave as if it has been routed in order to lure an opponent into a position of vulnerability. It was a difficult tactic to execute, requiring the use of well-trained soldiers. Once the opponent presses into the withdrawing army, undisciplined troops would panic and lose coherence, and the rout would become genuine. Charles Martel used the feigned retreat to defeat the army of Chilperic II and Ragenfrid of Neustria at Ambleve in 716. He attacked their army as they rested midday, he then feigned retreat to draw them from their wooded defensive positions into open ground where the situation was reversed. Charles Martel used the tactic again to draw an invading Islamic army into attacking at Poitiers in 732 by leaving his defenses relatively open. He did not construct pits and other obstacles and positioned his horsemen in a way to convince the Islamic army that it would not be enveloped if it charged in. The feigned retreat reportedly was used with moderate success by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
One might postulate that Putin’s feigned retreat included synchronizing his withdrawal announcement with the resumption of the Geneva talks, and while the “cessation of hostilities” was in effect. In that environment, opponents of Russia and its allies were perhaps considered more apt to be manipulated. The maneuver, if actually executed, appears to have worked. Mainstream opponents of Assad were unable to control the actions of some Islamic militants some of which they were tenuously aligned. Islamic militant groups, not included in the internationally sponsored ceasefire, engaged in firefights and fired artillery across battle lines, apparently seeking to immediately exploit Russia’s departure. Accusations of ceasefire violations were heard from all sides around Syria. Ire over the shaky ceasefire and the Assad regime’s violations of it reportedly drove some moderate Opposition fighters over to ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other Islamic militant groups. A coalition of Free Syrian Army units, Islamic militant groups already existed in the form of Jaysh al Fateh. The ceasefire became untenable once Russian Federation Air Force and Syrian Arab Air Force jets provided air support for Syrian Arab Army units and pro-Assad regime allies in those exchanges. Putin’s feigned retreat also ostensibly allowed Syrian, Iranian, and Iranian-led units to rearm and resupply for offensive action toward Palmyra.
The Russian Federation armed forces and intelligence services use their own intelligence tactics, technique, procedures, and methods to meet the needs of Russian Federation commanders and planners. Russian Federation commanders and planners certainly would like believe that by intensifying their own intelligence gathering activities, they can achieve success, particularly by using air power, without US assistance. However, their concern over recent successes of their opponents and their failure to effectively respond to them indicates they are not so certain of their capabilities
Obama’s uncongenial words could be characterized as a shot across Russia’s bow and perhaps signaled fatigue over the diplomatic process with Russia had set in. However, in diplomacy, words and behavior matter absolutely. Kerry knows that diplomacy must be handled with a certain amiability and gentleness in order to create the environment for the development of mutual respect and understanding. In talks on Syria, he would hardly omit what some anonymous US officials have called “inconvenient facts” about Russian actions. He surely broaches such matters, but in way that avoids closing any doors and avoids igniting a negative exchange with Putin, Lavrov, or any official of the Russian Federation government. Regardless of any personal feelings he might have over an issue, he must maintain his balance in spite of them.
Russia will not be able to use its military wherewithal alone, at least in a limited way, to secure victory on its terms in Syria and “get out of Dodge.” Enough support exits for Islamic militancy in the world that a struggle over US and Russian interests in Syria is being overshadowed by the continuous rise of Islamic militant groups there. This was evident at Aleppo where Russia’s allies could not maintain their siege. Commanders of Islamic militant groups seem capable of constantly making adjustments and replenishing with fighters (as above) by the hundreds, creating a more vexing situation on the ground.
Kerry remains authorized and ordered to establish cooperation. Obama did indeed say with opprobrium, “The US remains prepared to work with Russia to try to reduce the violence and strengthen our efforts against ISIL [ISIS] and Al-Qaeda in Syria, but so far Russia has failed to take the necessary steps.” Kerry and Lavrov continued their diplomatic efforts, sponsoring the International Syria Support Group, a multinational effort seeking to create the conditions for peace talks. Moreover, remaining on the table was Kerry’s proposal offering to share US intelligence with Russia and coordinate airstrikes against ISIS and other Islamic militant groups, with the precondition that the Syrian Arab Air Force halt its airstrikes against mainstream Opposition military units. As mentioned earlier, senior US and Russian Federation military officials have been negotiating in Geneva over how they would coordinate under Kerry’s proposal as well as restore an overall ceasefire. The Russian Federation armed forces and intelligence services proudly use their own intelligence tactics, technique, procedures, and methods to meet the needs of commanders and planners. Russian Federation commanders and planners would certainly like to believe that by intensifying their own intelligence gathering activities, they can achieve success without US assistance. However, they have unquestionably been unsettled by the recent successes of their opponents and their failure to respond effectively to them. Beyond human intelligence collection—spies, the US gathers continuous signals and geospatial intelligence over Syria. Multiple streams could assist the Russian Federation commanders and planners in pinpointing ISIS and other Islamic militant groups on the ground even if they are dispersed. Air assets of the Russian Federation and its allies could destroy them, disrupt their attacks, and support ground maneuver to defeat them. In support of the proposal, Kerry and Lavrov have already agreed that a map could be drawn up indicating where Islamic militant groups are positioned. They also have agreed that US and Russian military personnel working in the same tactical room would jointly analyze the intelligence and select targets for airstrikes. Est modus in rebus. (There is a middle ground in things.)
Nevertheless, at this juncture, Kerry is not oriented primarily on drawing out compromise from Lavrov, Shoigu, or senior Russian military officials in Geneva. Indeed, Kerry knows he must convince Putin, himself, that it would be in Russia’s interest for him to change his position. Putin hardly believes that US assistance would have significant value to Russia. Regarding Syrian Arab Air Force airstrikes, Putin has said he has no control over what Assad does with his forces and has explained the Syrian leader does not trust the US. Much as Obama has negative impressions of Putin’s actions and intentions, Putin holds certain negative impressions of Obama. Putin may also feel uncertain about making any deals on Syria with one US leader now, only to face another in a few short months. Certainly, at the State Department, Defense Department, and other elements of the US foreign and defense policy establishment, legions of diplomats and officials are working on what was called in Ancient Rome a maremagnum, a complicated issue requiring the efforts of many to solve. As no approach has wangled compromise from Putin so far, new approaches are needed. Some alternative approaches are offered here.
The value of US assistance might be increased in Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin’s mind through a demonstration of US capabilities. The US could also demonstrate how US assistance would have value by using the intelligence resources it proposes to share with Russia in order to target and destroy a number battle positions of ISIS and other Islamic militant groups in Syria, and disrupt and destroy developing attacks and counterattacks against Russia’s allies. Russian Federation officials could also be given a US battle damage assessment.
Recommendations
To help Putin countenance Kerry’s proposal, Kerry could explain that cooperation on intelligence and an airstrikes against Syria will speed the end of the conflict. Russia may not be able to use its military wherewithal alone, at least in a limited way, to secure victory on its terms in Syria and “get out of Dodge.” Enough support exits for Islamic militancy in the world that the struggle by the US and Russian over their respective interests in Syria is practically being overshadowed by the continuous rise of Islamic militant groups there. Commanders of Islamic militant groups seem capable of constantly making adjustments and replenishing with fighters by the hundreds, creating a more vexing situation on the ground. That was evident at Aleppo where Russia’s allies could not maintain their siege. Indeed, Putin could be reminded that on July 28, 2016, after a month of negotiations and immense pressure from Qatari and Turkish representatives, Jabhat al-Nusra announced that it broke with Al-Qaeda and had officially changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. Almost immediately, reinforcements for Jabhat Fateh al-Sham began to flow into Syria from the border with Turkey. At least 100 new fighters arrived in Aleppo each day, together with numerous convoys carrying arms, ammunition, and supplies. During the effort to break the siege, Opposition forces and Islamic militant groups were observed fighting side by side under the banner of Jaysh al Fateh. Even after the siege was broken, it was explained in a briefing at the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense, Russian Federation Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoi that about 7,000 Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters were massing south-west of Aleppo for over a week and still being joined by new fighters. Rudskoi said the fighters had tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery and vehicles with weapons mounted on them. Kerry could explain that the problem will grow exponentially over time as commanders of Islamic militant groups make further adjustments and reinforce by the hundreds, creating a new, more vexing situation on the ground. Kerry could point out that so far, Russian Federation Air Force has barely isolated the battlefield and has failed to deny their opponents reinforcements and supplies needed to win engagements. At best, its efforts could be measured by its contribution to the destruction in Syria to include civilian deaths and the obliteration of nonmilitary structures. As it was discovered after the destruction of the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy during World War II, Germans troops were afforded better concealment from Allied airstrikes and ground attacks in the structure’s debris. One might assume senior US military officers are discussing these matters with their Russian Federation counterparts in Geneva. However, these disconcerting facts about Russia’s Syria campaign may not have reached Putin.
To further encourage a change in Putin’s perspective on Kerry’s proposal, the US could increase the value of its assistance through an actual demonstration of US capabilities. That might be accomplished by providing Putin with a complete US military analysis of the setbacks Russia and its allies have faced in Syria, and the relative strengths and weakness versus their Islamic militant opponents. It might be demonstrated exactly how US intelligence resources it proposes to share with Russia and US military resources would have value to Russia by targeting and destroying a number battle positions of ISIS and other Islamic militant groups in Syria, and disrupt and destroy developing attacks and counterattacks against Russia’s allies. Putin could be shown via video how the unique capabilities of US weapons systems could enhance the quality of air strikes. He could also be provided with US military assessments of those attacks.
Kerry might also seek to connect with Putin by reminding him that leaving Syria without at least initiating some complex comprehensive plan for reconstruction and peace-enforcement would be a mistake. That would create ideal conditions for the resurrection of ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, or the establishment of another Islamic militant group to fill the vacuum of power around the country. That was what occurred in Iraq after US forces departed, the problem in Libya with the removal of the regime of Muammar El-Ghaddafi, and it is a growing problem in Afghanistan. Putin must consider that cooperation between the US and Russia in the fight against Islamic militant groups would set the stage for close and effective cooperation between the two countries on a postwar reconstruction and peace-enforcement mission in Syria. Without it, Russia’s investment in Syria might amount to nothing in the end. In discussing postwar Syria, Kerry could give assurances on how the US will respond with regard to certain hot issues. For example, at a UN meeting in Vienna on November 14, 2015, Kerry proposed allowing all Syrians, “including members of the diaspora,” participate in national elections, betting that if Syrians around the world participated in it, Assad would lose. Putin was never going to standby for that and has used force, in addition to the fight against ISIS and other Islamic militant groups, to best shape the situation in Syria to secure Russia’s interests. Mending that fence may require a very hard decision concerning Assad by the Obama administration. Further, Kerry could point to the international reconstruction effort launched in Bosnia in 1995 under the Dayton Peace Agreement and the creation of the multinational peace-enforcement force in support of the agreement’s implementation, I-FOR (Implementation Force). The US and Russia cooperated as members of that force and the follow-on force, S-FOR (Stabilization Force.).
By reaching an agreement now on Syria and conducting effective airstrikes against ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and other Islamic militant group, there would be a greater chance that US-Russian coordination would be preserved by the next US administration. Further, that military cooperation might influence a US decision to assist at some important level in reconstruction and possible peace-enforcement mission in Syria. US participation in those efforts could encourage participation from other countries.
Regarding Russian concerns over the future of US leadership, Kerry could explain that Russia should act quickly now with the assurance that the US will be working directly to destroy ISIS and other Islamic militant groups. An agreement will at least allow for a US-Russian working relationship for few months, putting tremendous pressure on ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and other Islamic militant groups from the air. Kerry could emphasize the reality that reaching an agreement now on Syria and coordinating effectively under that agreement would increase the possibility that US-Russian coordination at that level would be preserved by the next US administration. Further, that cooperation could greatly influence a US decision to assist at an important level in postwar reconstruction and a possible peace-enforcement mission in Syria. Russia has recently sought stronger ties with Arab countries, bolstering economic ties with Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Kuwait and diplomatic overtures with Algeria, Iraq, and Egypt. Russia’s hope is by courting those countries they would become more receptive to its’ calls for a political solution in Syria. It is also hoped those countries would become responsive to an eventual campaign by Russia to gain financial support for Syria’s reconstruction. However, US participation in those efforts may do much to encourage participation from those Arab countries and Western countries as well.
Kerry’s words alone may no longer have any impact on Putin. To provide a new perspective on the proposal, Kerry could try to bring third parties that have some standing with Putin into the negotiation process. There are no national leaders who could serve as independent third party to address Kerry’s proposal with Putin. However, Kerry could perhaps seek assistance from Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church or Kirill Patriarch of Moscow and Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church to speak to Putin. They could discuss the need to forgo placing primacy on national interests and focus on the global threat posed by ISIS and other Islamic militant groups, and the tragedy that has befallen the Syrian people. They cannot support war, but they can support collaboration between the US and Russia to halt the evil of Islamic militancy in Syria.
These approaches should not be presented as guesswork on the potential success US assistance may bring. Rather, they should be presented as hard facts to get Putin to see what is possible and change his perspective on cooperation. Finding success from the approaches presented here may be a long-shot. Kerry knows that you miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin (above) and senior Russian officials are apprehensive over US actions and intentions on Syria. However, many US officials have been expressing concerns about coordination with the Russians. They doubt Putin will compromise. They believe that Putin cannot be trusted. On Syria, it may be best for the US and Russia to work as partners. Choice itself is not good. It is the right use of choice that counts. Nothing could be worse than thinking of what might have been if things had been done thusly. Hopefully, that will not be the case for the US or Russia on Syria.
The Way Forward
Tot capita, tot sententiae. (So many heads, so many opinions.) Putin and other Russian officials are quite apprehensive of US actions and intentions on Syria. However, many US officials have been expressing concerns about coordination with the Russians. They doubt Putin will compromise. Moreover, they believe Putin cannot be trusted. Trusting Putin may be difficult for them, but trust us not so relevant in this case. Senior US and Russian military officials would be working together on targeting and sending down missions to unit commanders in a joint operations room. If some shift in Russian behavior, no matter how slight, is discerned by the watchful eyes of senior US military officials, the entire operation could be halted immediately. Under Obama’s concept, what seems most important to him is that a good faith effort at coordination be made. Besides, doing the job of targeting ISIS and groups such as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham will be difficult enough as they are now intermingled with many mainstream Opposition units. Many US officials have expressed concern that sharing intelligence with Russia could result in revealing US intelligence sources, methods, and capabilities. Yet, deciding what to share and reveal is a puzzle that can be resolved. Putin seems attached to the Assad regime. However, given what has been reported on Kerry’s proposal, it does not include a precondition on Assad’s presidency.
The problem of Islamic militancy in Syria emerged during the struggle between Assad and the Opposition and given the international threat it poses, it is an urgent problem. US President Franklin Roosevelt did not easily accept Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union as an ally, but given the threat of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, the choice was clear. On Syria, it might be best for the US and Russia vraft an agreement to coordinate their efforts. Choice itself is not good. It is the right use of choice that counts. Nothing could be worse than thinking of what might have been if things had been done thusly. Hopefully, that will not be the case for the US or Russia on Syria.
A Russian-built BM-30 Smerch multiple rocket launcher (above) fires on ISIS’ positions in Syria. Despite airstrikes from a US-led anti-ISIS coalition, the impact of Western countries on the ISIS fight has been limited. Since September 2015, Russia, Iran, and Syria have been driving the true ISIS fight on the ground. Given their progress, many capitals have sought to get in on the planning for the creation of political, social, and economic conditions in Syria that will allow for its rebuilding. Yet, before broaching those matters, ISIS still must be defeated militarily.
According to a July 20, 2016 New York Times article entitled “Military Leaders Discuss Plans to Counter ISIS Beyond the Battlefield,” officials from the US and its’ coalition allies in the ISIS fight hammered out details in how to stabilize and govern the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, strongholds of ISIS, in the event that Iraqi and Syrian fighters retake the cities in the coming months. The French Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who was present at the meeting at Joint Base Andrews in the US state of Maryland, noted the many setbacks ISIS had suffered, pointing to its losses in Iraq as well as its loss of Qaiyara and Manbij in Syria. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter stated, “We need to destroy the fact and the idea that there can be a state,” adding that battlefield success in Iraq as well as Syria was “necessary.” After those statements, US General Joseph Votel, the commander of the US Central Command, explained that discussion at the meeting mostly centered on how to stabilize Mosul in Iraq, assuming Iraqi forces can take it back from ISIS. Focusing on Iraq at the Joint Base Andrews meeting was reasonable given the efforts of the US and its allies there. The need to resolve struggles for power among Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurdish groups is pressing. However, focusing on what might be done in Syria is somewhat surprising given that the US and its allies, despite US-led coalition airstrikes, are not playing the main role in the ISIS fight there. The fight in Syria is being driven by a Russian-led coalition.
Since September 2015, Russia, along with its Iranian and Syrian allies, have destroyed ISIS units, material, and command, control, communication and intelligence and training facilities and has return Syrian territory back to the hands of Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad. True, there are many foreign military forces operating in Syria, but the effort of Russia and its allies is a very visible, full-scale, multidimensional military operation. As its main objective, Russia seeks to shape events on the ground in Syria in order to “stabilize the legitimate authority” of Assad. Russia also seeks to defeat ISIS by annihilating its military formations in the field, eliminating its leaderhip, and eviscerating its so-called Islamic Caliphate to the extent that the organization will never be able to resurrect itself. Western complaints and commentary on Russia’s combat operations in Syria have been nonstop since its’ first sorties in country. The US and United Kingdom have constantly accused Russia of attacking mainly “moderate” anti-Assad groups, rather than ISIS. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, called Russia’s role a “game changer” and said “It has some very worrying elements.” Putin has ignored such insistent voices from the West. He would likely prefer Western governments saved their ministrations for their own operations on the margins in Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has engaged in multiple talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Syria. They have discussed the possibility of acting jointly against ISIS. However, on the ground in Syria, Putin has decided to get on with the matter rather than allow it to languish in the halls of inaction. Russia has been on the move, propelling Iranian, Iranian-led, and Syrian forces forward rapidly. Yet, most recently, Russian Federation commanders and planners have noticed that their allies have faced difficulties in responding to new challenges from ISIS on the ground. Russia must resolve that problem. Much as officials at Joint Base Andrews acknowledged, the end of the war in Syria has begun to take on defined features. Questions exist over what type of peace will take shape in Syria. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin said that he fully grasps the challenges that lie ahead regarding the rebuilding of Syria. Putin explained, “We must act carefully, step by step, aiming to establish trust between all sides to the conflict.” He also explained that a new and effective government could be formed in Syria once such trust is finally built. Putin said that a political process is the only way to reach peace, and he claimed Assad “also agrees to such a process.” However, the war has not been won yet. Before fully broaching those matters, ISIS still must be defeated via the military operation and peace must be secured. Only then can the focus become creating political, social, and economic conditions that will allow for Syria’s rebuilding. Festinare nocet, nocet et cunctatio saepe; tempore quaeque suo qui facit, ille sapit. (It is bad to hurry and delay is often as bad; the wise person is the one who does everything in its proper time.)
Disconcerting Breakdowns Among the Allies
Following the Battle of Palmyra, Russian, Iranian, Iranian-led and Syrian Arab Army units, were at a point of high morale on the battlefield. The scent of victory was in the air. However, in that positive atmosphere, there was the danger for troops among the allies to feel too strong, lose their heads, become undisciplined, and fail to perform in a military fashion. ISIS seemed to have found an advantage in this situation. Indeed, ISIS units have displayed a surprising new capability to organize effective counterattacks. Iranian, Iranian-led and Syrian Arab Army units were often unable to protect their forces.
Following the Battle of Palmyra, Russian, Iranian, Iranian-led and Syrian Arab Army units were at a point of high morale on the battlefield. The scent of victory was in the air. However, in that positive atmosphere, there was the danger that troops among the allies would begin to feel too strong, become undisciplined, and fail to perform in a military fashion in combat. ISIS seemed to find an advantage in this situation. ISIS began to display the capability to organize effective counterattacks which the allies were unable to beat them back.
In tranquillo esse quisque gubernator potest. (Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.) The situation stood in great contrast to that in the days immediately after Russian, Iranian, Iranian-led, and Syrian forces captured Palmyra. The allies appeared to have coalesced as a team and it seemed possible that they would soon rush into Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. ISIS engagements units of the allies repeatedly developed into routs. ISIS showed no signs of having contingency plans for the loss of cities, towns, and villages in its so-called Islamic Caliphate. The allies did observe ISIS laying mines and setting booby traps on avenues of approach to their battle positions. However, counterattacks, which would be expected from a professional fighting force to regain territory or cover its’ withdrawal, were not seen. Since that time though, ISIS has learned how to retreat, and has repeatedly generated difficult situations for the allies.
Many of the top commanders and planners in ISIS are former officers of Saddam Hussein’s military or security services. In 2014, those Iraqis were behind the impressive capability of ISIS to move its units with a professional acumen. Their skills were seemingly brought to bear again when ISIS units came out of their battle positions all around Syria to push the allies back. There were even clashes with ISIS units around the main Jazal Field near Palmyra. Intense Russian Federation airstrikes were required to push ISIS back. Unexpected difficulties, friction, should be expected in any military operation. Yet, the problems that beset the allies to a large extent resulted from bad decisions and inadequate military moves. Syrian Arab Army commanders have been unable to avail themselves of Russian Federation air support and artillery. Iranian, and Iranian-led forces, specifically, continued to take a one-dimensional approach to ground maneuver in Syria much as it has in Iraq. Both forces had the ability to request support from Russian surveillance technologies, air power, and artillery, but those resources were not utilized to pound attacking ISIS units.
ISIS fighters (above) organize for an attack. As Russian, Iranian, Iranian-led, and Syrian forces began to take territory from ISIS, it seemed at first that the terrorist group had no contingency plans for losing territory in its so-called Islamic Caliphate. However, ISIS appears to have learned how to retreat. Many commanders and planners behind the movement of its’ forces across Iraq and Syria in 2014 were former officers of Saddam Hussein’s military or security services. Their acumen was brought to bear again when ISIS units came out of their defenses around Syria and pushed the allies back.
Shoigu Investigates
Experto credite. (Trust in one who has experience.) Russian Federation Defense Minister, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu arrived in Syria on June 18, 2016 to meet Assad and surely to examine the problem of increased ISIS infiltration and counterattacks. The added significance of Shoigu’s arrival was the fact that he is known as Putin’s “Do It” man. His ability to achieve success in almost any undertaking is the basis for what greatcharlie.com calls the “Shoigu factor.” Once Shoigu allayed Assad’s concerns over ISIS’ new moves and Russia’s military cooperation with Syria, Shoigu likely discussed the problem in granular detail with the commander of the Russian Federation’s Military Expeditionary Group in Syria, Russian Federation Army Colonel General Aleksandr Dvornikov, and his air and ground commanders. Shoigu was concerned. He was well-aware that the allies would not be able to limp into Raqqa and Deir Ezzor while ISIS clawed their units to pieces with counterattacks.
Volo, non valeo. (I am willing but unable.) At first look, Shoigu likely recognized how difficult it was for the three main allies perform with assorted forces under their control, each possessing varied degrees of size, strength, military capabilities, experience, and leadership. Regarding leadership, Shoigu likely discovered how much the acumen of militatry commanders among Russia’s allies differed. Those rdisparities and others should have been underscored and factored into planning, and when possible, compensated for. Instead, perhaps to promote goodwill and unity among the allies, they seemed to have been played down. Indeed, there was probably plenty of head nodding in agreement in meetings between Russian, Iranian, and Syrian military officials when there was discussion on topics as how to win the war, the need to maximize advantages resulting from the inoperability of Russian-built weapons systems all of the allies used, the integration of ground and air capabilities, and the coordination of action against ISIS.
When Russian Federation military advisers and instructors began trainnig Syrian Arab Army troops in September 2015, they discovered that regular army units needed to be retrained from the squad, platoon, company, and battalion level. Shortages of competent officers and noncommissioned existed throughout the Syrian forces. Advisers and instructors did their best. However, deficiencies that were present before the Russians arrived, managed to resurface as ISIS began to put pressure on the allies via counterattacks.
Shoigu, himself, was likely part of a number of meetings of that type. As recently as June 9, 2016, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General (Sartip-e Yekom) Hossein Dehghan welcomed Shoigu, and Syrian Arab Republic Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff of the Army and the Armed Forces Colonel General Fahd Jassem al-Freij for a meeting in Tehran. Shoigu stated prior to the meeting that topics discussed would include “priority measures in reinforcing the cooperation between the defense ministries of the three countries in the fight with the Islamic State” and Jabhat Al-Nusra. Yet, when ISIS applied pressure, infiltrating into areas retaken by the allies and by launching counterattacks, it was revealed that what was being proffered in theory at senior military meetings was not being translated into practice. Iranian, Iranian-led and Syrian Arab Army units could not act fully in a unified, coordinated way with Russian Federation forces in response to unexpected and creative maneuvers by ISIS. Effectively working alongside very sophisticated Russian Federation forces required an agility and flexibility in thinking that Syrian Arab Army commanders and paramilitary unit commanders did not possess. Unable to respond otherwise, they held fast to their own ideas for the command and control of their forces and their own plans and timetables for moving their forces against ISIS.
Interestingly when Russian Federation military advisers and instructors set out to train Syrian Arab Army troops in September 2015, they immediately discovered that regular army units, despite having a good amount of discipline and combat experience, needed to be retrained from the squad, platoon, company, and battalion level. Shortages of competent officers and noncommissioned officers existed throughout the Syrian Arab Army due to battle casualties and a large number of defections to both the Syrian Opposition forces and Islamic militant groups such as ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra. Platoons that supposedly held 20 to 30 troops held around 5 to 10 troops, the commander included. Even before the war, signalmen, gunners, engineers, and other military specialist for the most part were only assigned on paper. Russian Federation military advisers and instructors also discovered that there was the need to instruct Syrian Arab Army commanders on better coordinating actions at the brigade and division levels and among higher military authorities. Before Russian military advisers and instructors arrived, “maneuver” in Syrian Arab Army amounted to chaotic movements of companies, battalions, and paramilitary units. No single commander’s concept or operational plan guided them. Artillery and air units acted independently, ignorant of the positions or movements of friendly ground troops.
Troops of the pro-Assad paramilitary group, the Desert Falcons (above), are being addressed by their commanders. Military advisers and instructors not only trained Syria forces, but also distributed new field uniforms, flak vests, and protective helmets from their inventories. Before Russian military advisers and instructors arrived, “maneuver” in Syrian Arab Army amounted to chaotic movements of companies, battalions, and paramilitary units. Artillery and air units acted independently, ignorant of the positions or movements of friendly ground troops.
Regarding paramilitary units (shahibas) loyal to the Assad regime, it was observed that all of them needed to be retrained. That was a difficult task. Despite the fact that many troops in the paramilitary units had seen several years of war, few were aware of how to properly shoot and move on the battlefield. Few had any worthwhile physical training. Volunteer commanders were typically appointed by paramilitary unit members despite the fact that they had no training or experience in leading troops in battle, properly making appropriate decisions in complex military situations, as well as making decisions in everyday situations on the frontline. The discipline of paramilitary troops was a problem that reared its head when the paramilitary units manned checkpoints. A further problem was the unwillingness of paramilitary units to defend areas other than their hometowns. Paramilitary unit volunteers had to be provided basic training then instruction on fighting as part of part of a squad, platoon, company, and then the battalion. Iran, itself, had already deployed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)-Quds Force (special forces) officers and advisers to Syria. They have mobilized pro-Assad paramilitary units into the 70,000 strong National Defense Forces to fight alongside the Syrian Arab Army, brought in Shi’a volunteer brigades from Iraq and Afghanistan, and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Only Republican Guard and Special Forces units and a few mechanized brigades possessed satisfactory levels of readiness. Republican Guard units were well-equipped and staffed with professional soldiers and stood practically self-sufficient with organic artillery, airborne, and special purpose forces. Still, its units were only 70 percent manned at best.
Russian Federation military advisers and instructors, as well as those of the IRGC, and IRGC-Quds Force, were unlikely delinquent in their duty. They likely did their best to prepare Syrian Arab Army units for the fight to eject ISIS from their country given the troops and time available. Their solicitude extended to the distribution of new field uniforms, flak vests, and protective helmets from Russian inventories among the newly trained Syrian Arab Army units. Those units were also provided with new Russian vehicles to enhance their mobility. However, deficiencies that were present before the Russians arrived, resurfaced despite those efforts
Russian Federation Air Force Tu-22M3 bombers (above) strike ISIS targets in Syria. Russian Federation air power can hit ISIS hard, destroy its units, and delay and disrupt their movement. Iranian and Syrian forces must be able to fully avail themselves of that Russian military resource if the allies hope to defeat ISIS. When air power is synchronized with, compliments, and reinforces friendly ground movement, it can help drive friendly units forward.
Effects of the failure of Russia’s allies to avail themselves of Russian military resources included a decrease in the tempo of the allies’ offensive action and near loss of the initiative. It resulted in a need for more sorties during air support missions and increased firefights with ISIS, creating the potential for greater friendly casualties. Robust Russian Federation air power should have been used liberally all around Syria to delay and disrupt movement by ISIS units and when possible destroy them. Russian Federation air power should have been synchronized with, complimented, and reinforced movement by friendly ground forces.
Russian Federation commanders and planners are aware that in the fights for Aleppo, Idlib, and other urban centers, the ground forces of allies could do more than simply chisel away at enemy lines. Numerical advantages are rare on the frontlines in Syria, yet an attacker can economize in less active areas in order to develop local superiority at the point of his main effort. The attacker, after concentrating quickly, can strike hard at an unexpected place and time to throw the defender off balance. Once the attack is underway, the attackers’ chance of success can be improved if he moves fast, aggressively pressing every advantage, and if he capitalizes on opportunities to destroy the enemy’s forces and the overall coherence of his defense.
Russian Federation commanders and planners also know air power can greatly impact enemy moves in urban centers. If forced to move quickly in the face of Russian air power, an enemy commander would be allowed less time to ensure his unit’s concealment. It could cause him to move when conditions would not impede aircrews’ search of his unit. Rapid movement could also decrease the effectiveness of his air defense systems, allowing aircrews greater freedom to search for his unit, increasing the chance for it to be spotted. So far in Syria over 95 percent of Russian Federation Air Force sorties are flown at 15,000 to 20,000 feet primarily to evade enemy air defenses. When aircews cannot identify targets, airstrikes are made in areas where air intelligence reports the enemy is located. In attacking urban centers, that can result in collateral damage in the form of civilian deaths and injuring and the destruction of nonmilitary structures.
Russian Federation Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (above) arrived in Syria on June 18, 2016 to address the problems of increased ISIS infiltration and damaging counterattacks. In meetings with Russian Federation military commanders and planners, Shoigu surely explained that it was not feasible to wait for their Iranian and Syrian counterparts to communicate with them when they are on the attack or facing counterattacks. He undoubtedly directed them to better coordinate with their allies.
Shoigu’s Diagnosis
In his meetings with Russian Federation military commanders, Shoigu surely emphasized that it was not enough to simply stay in communication with Iranian and Syrian Arab Army commanders while they are on the attack or when they are facing counterattacks. Shoigu likely stressed that they had to maintain situational awareness, and authentically coordinate their actions with their allies and help them exploit opportunities created. There was also a shake up in the Russian Federation’s military command structure in Syria. Russian Federation Lieutenant General Aleksandr Zhuravlev replaced Dvornikov. Zhuravlev is known best for helping to plan the Palmyra offensive.
Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov on March 28, 2016 stated Palmyra was “liberated thanks to the support of Russia’s air force and special operations forces.” It seems Russian Federation air power and spetsnaz will also be relied on to underpin the allies’ ultimate victory in Syria. Responding to the problem with resources available, Shoigu ordered increased air strikes and the increased deployment of Russian spetsnaz advisers among Syrian Arab Army units. The goal would be to improve the direction of artillery fires against ISIS counterattacks along the Syrian Arab Army’s axis of advance toward Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and in support of battle positions of allies all around Syria. Russia had already supplied Russian-built heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems to its allies, to include: 152-milimeter MTSA-B guns, BM-27 Uragan and BM-30 Smerch rocket launchers, and TOS-1A Solnitsa rocket launchers. Spetsnaz units could assist Syrian Arab Army units in coordinating ground assaults with air support and artillery fire, in building hasty defenses, and in improving unit security. By degrading enemy forces with fire in support of assaults, the goal is not to create attrition battles but to enable the successful, rapid maneuver of friendly forces.
Soon after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made improvements in Syria, desired results seemed visible on the frontlines. The 60th Brigade of the Syrian Arab Army’s 11th Tank Division (above) supported by the 67th Brigade of the 18th Tank Division and the National Defense Forces were liberating points along the International Highway en route to the besieged city of Deir Ezzor. As they push forward, commanders of these Syrian units will be better able to coordinate with their Russian Federation counterparts and to avail themselves of Russian military resources.
Soon after Shoigu’s visit to Syria, improvements seemed visible on the frontlines. The 60th Brigade of the Syrian Arab Army’s 11th Tank Division supported by the 67th Brigade of the 18th Tank Division and the National Defense Forces were liberating towns and villages along the International Highway en route to the besieged city of Deir Ezzor. In Deir Ezzor’s Industrial District, the Syria Arab Army’s Special Task Force “Al Qassem Group” undertook the task of clearing the remaining ISIS fighters from the district’s streets. They joined the Republican Guard’s 104th Airborne Brigade and 137th Artillery Brigade of the 17th Reserve Division in the fight for Deir Ezzor. The Syrian Arab Army High Command also ordered a change in command of the 17th Reserve Division from Syrian Arab Army Major General Mohammed Khaddour to Syrian Arab Army Major General Hassan Mohammed.
Regarding fights in urban centers, it was reported from southern Aleppo that a mix of Iranian-led units, primarily Iraqi Shi’a militias such as Harakat An Nujba, Katayb Hezbollah, and Assaib Ahl Al Haqq — two of which are operating Russian-made T-90 main battle tanks acquired by the IRGC in early 2016 —launched repeated counterattacks against the Jaysh Al-Fateh coalition, and Free Syrian Army units. Allies loyal to the Assad regime to include private military companies such as Liwa Suqour As Sahra and Liwa Dir As Sahel, Shi’a militias such as Liwa Nussr Az Zawba’a and Quwwat Al Galilee as well as a Lebanese Hezbollah unit, have launched attacks in southern Aleppo. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation Air Force is engaged in a campaign in western Aleppo and targeting the towns of Hayyan, Anadan, Hreitan, Kfar Hamra and Ma’arat Al Artiq positioned along avenues of approach into northern and eastern parts of Aleppo city. Most recently, Russian Federation Air Force airstrikes have targeted Castello Road, the last route out of the Syrian opposition-held eastern part of the city. As for the Syrian Arab Air Force, it continues to hit targets in Idlib city, Ma’arat An Nauman and eastern Aleppo.
Russian Federation Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu led to questions about the progress of the Russian Federation Military Expeditionary Group in Syria. After his visit with Russian Federation commanders and planners, the decision was made to replace Russian Federation Colonel General Aleksandr Dvornikov with Russian Federation Lieutenant General Aleksandr Zhuravlev. Zhuravlev will oversee the allies’ capture of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and the final destrustion of ISIS in Syria.
Retaining the Initiative to the End
In the April 6, 2016 greatcharlie.com post entitled, “How Russian Special Forces Are Shaping the Fight in Syria: Can the US Policy Failure on Syria Be Gauged by Their Success?,” it was stated that ISIS could potentially establish a redoubt east of Deir Ezzor along the Khabur and Euphrates Rivers, and Syria’s border with Iraq. The goal of that theoretical defensive line would be to forestall the ultimate collapse of the Islamic Caliphate in Syria and to inflict as many casualties among attacking forces as possible with a suicide defense. However, well-planned offensive action by Russia and its allies might serve to obviate that possibility. The military principle of offense prescribes that maintaining the initiative is the most effective and decisive way to dominate the battlefield. On the offensive, there must be an emphasis on the commander’s skilled combination of the elements of maneuver, firepower, protection, and intelligent leadership in a sound operational plan. The initiative must be retained. Moving forward, firepower, the allies’ greatest strength, must be used to its’ maximum advantage. Firepower can serve maneuver by creating openings in enemy defenses, but also destroy an enemy’s vital cohesion, his ability to fight, and effectively act. Indeed, one of the most important targets is the enemy’s mind. The allies should engage in actions that will sway moves by ISIS to enhance the opportunities to destroy it.
The drive against Raqqa and Deir Ezzor in a way resembles the circumstances in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The Israelis, after defeating the Syrians, pushed up to the Golan Heights at its northern border, and then executed an economy of force operation. Israel kept a portion of its forces on its border with Jordan, even though hostilities did not break-out between the two countries. Israeli forces in the Golan Heights conducted artillery attacks on Damascus with long range guns to give the impression that they were going to seize that city while sizeable Israeli forces were concentrated south against Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula to their southwest. After concentrating against Egyptian forces in the Sinai, Israeli forces threw their strength at Egyptian weakness, the gap between the Egyptian Second and Third Armies. The Israelis subsequently encircled the Third Army eliminating it as a threat to Israeli territory,
Before the final push against them begins, Russian military spetsnaz units could be positioned in the gap between Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to perform the task of detecting and thwarting efforts by ISIS to establish lines of communication between the two cities. They could also be positioned to block ISIS infiltration into Syria from Iraq and territory now controlled by the Assad regime. Spetsnaz units could conduct raids, set up ambushes, and establish kill zones. They could operate vigorously at night when ISIS units might try to conceal their movement.
Much as with the Egyptian Second and Third Armies in the Sinai in 1973, ISIS units in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, albeit in a limited way, could move units into territory controlled by the Assad regime. They could also become hubs for the reestablishment of lines of communication between ISIS in Iraq and Syria. By hunkering down in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor in the face of an onslaught from Russia and its allies, ISIS can claim that it held on to the capital of its Islamic Caliphate. Raqqa, in particular, would likely become a symbol of resistance and power for ISIS to a greater extent than it is now and its narrative on the city’s defense would become an invaluable recruiting tool for the organization. For Assad to claim that he has retaken control of Syria, he must control urban centers and the surrounding areas of Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and other cities such as Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Homs, Palmyra, Darra and certainly Damascus. For Putin to claim that it stabilizes the legitimate authority of Assad. Putin must destroy ISIS in Syria or, at a minimum, leave it scattered and tattered, reduced to a size and strength incapable of forcing Assad from power and unable to resurrect itself. If Raqqa and Deir Ezzor cannot be taken rapidly, Russia and its allies must encircle the cities. After assembling overwhelming force to direct against ISIS units, both cities could be attacked. Before that fight would get underway, spetsnaz units could be positioned in the gap between Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to perform the task of detecting and thwarting efforts by ISIS to establish lines of communication between the two cities. Spetnaz could also be positioned on known and suspected ISIS infiltration lanes into Syria from Iraq and lanes into territory now controlled by the Assad regime. They could block those lanes coconducting raids, setting up ambushes, and establishing kill zones for air strikes and artillery fire. Spetsnaz could operate vigorously at night when ISIS units might try to conceal their movement.
The loss rate of ISIS could be increased by having aerial platforms capable of stand-off attacks continuously engage ISIS defenses, and by stationing fighter jets and bombers in orbit 24-hours a day above ISIS locations identified by spetsnaz to engage in continuous strikes. They could also hit targets of opportunity identified by aircrews whenever they might be authorized to fly at lower altitudes.
The Way Forward
According to the Alexandrian Life of Aeschylus, as they walked on stage during the first performance of Eumenides, the chorus of furies was so hideous and frightening in appearance that “they caused young children to faint, patriarchs to urinate, and pregnant women to go into labor.” ISIS, during its grand entry on the world stage, in Syria and Iraq, put on full display its very bloody, murderous side. ISIS mercilessly murdered hundreds of military prisoners, foreign hostages, and innocent civilians. ISIS left no doubt that it is not only a terrorist organization, but a pagan death cult. While concerned about the rise of ISIS, Putin was never impressed with the group. In a speech on his deployment of Russian Federation forces to Syria, Putin remarked on ISIS’ behavior in a disdainful tone, saying, “We know how they do such things; how they kill people; how they destroy cultural monuments. . . .” In that same speech, Putin explained that in the ISIS fight, Russia would provide Assad and other allies “the necessary military and technical support.” Russia has done that and ISIS may soon be defeated in Syria.
Omne initium difficile est. (Every beginning is difficult.) Once Russia and its allies squeeze the life out of ISIS in Syria, they must not allow ISIS to resurrect itself. A capable military presence must be set up in Syria to keep ISIS out or at least under control. The success of the joint military efforts of Russia and its allies may provide the foundation for a peace enforcement mission in Syria and an eventual reconstruction effort. With reconstruction costs in mind, the possibility exists that Russia and its allies would cooperate with the US over what remains of the ISIS fight in Syria and the US-led fight against ISIS in Iraq. Among other possibilities, Iranian and Iranian-led forces, in support of the Assad regime and their Syrian Arab Army allies, could coordinate actions with units of their comrades in Iraq. Both forces fall under the command of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force Commander General (Sarlashkar) Qassem Suleimani. Locking down the border will collaterally support the ISIS fight in Iraq. It was hypothesized in 2015 by the Middle East Institute that Syrian Kurds’People’s Protection Units (YPG) might be co-opted to help establish a security zone incorporating their own territory and some more along the border with Iraq to help keep ISIS out of the area and help maintain a sustainable peace. How Putin will proceed is uncertain, but right now, Russia is playing a central in Syria and he is free to decide as he pleases.
For the administration of US President Barack Obama, the reset with Russia was a major foreign policy initiative. For three years, a business-like tenor existed in relations, making the administration comfortable enough in 2011 to turn its attention toward Asia under what it called the “pivot to Asia.” Its hopes were dashed when Vladimir Putin returned as Russian Federation president in 2012, seeking to restore Russia’s power and influence. Soon after, there were numerous disagreements between Obama and Putin particularly over Europe. Relations deteriorated, and Europe again faced a threat from Russia.
What is most noticeable about US-Russia relations today is the uncongenial relationship between US President Barack Obama and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. While that relationship may seem in perpetual retrograde, there initially was real potential for positive ties and real progress on a variety of issues if the interests of both countries were considered. The Obama administration approached Russia with the idea that the relationship between the two countries could be “reset.” The reset with Russia was one of the administration’s major foreign policy initiatives. Relations with Russian Federation President Dimitry Medvedev were positive. For three years, a relatively smooth and business-like tenor existed in relations with Russia. That contrasted with the contentious relations that followed the Georgian War in 2008 while Putin served as president. It boded well for Obama’s legacy over which White House officials publicly admitted being absorbed. With its Russia policy on track, the administration was comfortable enough to turn toward an even greater priority at the end of 2011 which was referred to as the “pivot to Asia.” Then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained it all in an edifying discourse in the October 11, 2011 edition of Foreign Policy magazine.
In her essay entitled “America’s Pacific Century,” Clinton wrote: “In the next ten years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values. One of most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in the Asia Pacific region.” Bringing to memory the historic US commitment to Europe after World War II, Clinton declared: “At a time when the [Asia-Pacific] region is building a more mature security and economic architecture to promote stability and prosperity, [the] U.S. commitment there is essential. It will help build that architecture and pay dividends for continued American leadership well into this century, just as our post-World War II commitment to building a comprehensive and lasting transatlantic network of institutions and relationships has paid off many times over—and continues to do so. The time has come for the United States to make similar investments as a Pacific power, a strategic course set by President Barack Obama from the outset of his administration and one that is already yielding benefits.” The administration’s plans were ambitious and admirable, but its hopes for a benign pivot to Asia were soon dashed. Europe once again faced a threat from Russia. There were numerous actions and reactions by Obama and Putin particularly concerning Europe. Relations deteriorated. Omnia iam fient quae posse negabam! (Everything which I used to say could not happen, will happen now!)
Candidates in the 2016 US Presidential Campaign, perhaps already considering how to deal with Putin and formulating policy approaches for Russia for their possible administrations, should get beyond us-them simplicities and avoid conceptualizing prospective relations solely on where they are at this moment in time. Rather, the course of the collapse of US-Russia relations and how to repair, and avoid, policy missteps witnessed over the past eight years should be anatomized. Part of that process would entail fully understanding those mistakes. Some of them are reviewed here. Further, it is important to genuinely understand the thinking of Putin and his advisers on Russia’s relations with the US. A truncated analysis, in the abstract, of such thinking inside the Kremlin is also presented here.
Igniting Putin: A New Russian Threat Excites Europe
From 1945 to 1989, US geo-strategists assessed that if a new world war were to occur, the battleground would be Europe. However, in the first term of the Obama administration, it was assessed that Europe had become more tranquil. There was a crisis in the eurozone, but Europe remained the most prosperous and peaceful parts of the world. The threat from China was the new focus of geo-strategists. That threat was ostensibly the underlying rationale for the pivot to Asia. In Europe, the announcement of the pivot to Asia was greeted with ambivalence, even alarm. The Europeans understood the renewed commitment to Asia would come at their expense. Obama administration officials tried to prove that was not the case at the time. However, with planned defense cuts of $500 billion over the next decade and the expressed intent to avoid reducing expenditures in Asia, Europe would be the only place to make cuts. The costs were conceivably higher given the possibility budgetary pressures would increase. Key defense commitments in Europe at the time included a missile defense system being developed with a possible nuclear Iran in mind. The administration had already announced that it intends to withdraw two of the four US Army brigades deployed to Europe—with overall military spending on Europe set to decline by 15 percent. Yet, US Army units stationed in Germany were considered in the context of rotations to the Middle East or Africa, not combat in Europe. There remained the potential threat of a breakdown in relations with Russia which would put Europe’s security at risk, but it was practically considered de minimus, negligible. The Obama administration considered the possibility that if Putin returned to Russia’s presidency, he would seek to exert pressure against the West where and when he felt it would pay dividends. It is unlikely the administration foresaw things would go so badly.
Obama was at ease with Medvedev. He went as far as to declare a new era between the two former Cold War adversaries existed. He seemed to measure all possibilities on relations with Russia on his interactions with him. However, maintaining a constructive relationship with the Russian leader is not a personal matter; it is part of the business of being president. Both the US and Russia possess the unique and mutual capability to annihilate one another, and the world, with their nuclear arsenals. Talks between the leaders of the two countries build confidence, eliminate ambiguities about positions, and prevent guessing over actions, intentions, and motives. Talks allow leaders to “clear the air” regarding any personal concerns they had within their own high-level relationship. A strong personal bond between leaders can develop, but it is not essential. When Putin began his third term as Russia’s president on May 7, 2012, the low yield of the reset and the underestimation of Russia as a potential threat became apparent. Putin returned to the Kremlin on a mission to restore Russia’s global power and influence. He was not interested in anything that might diminish or prevent that effort. Perhaps as a consequence of that, old ills that were part of US-Russian relations began to resurface, and new ones arose with frequency. Among them were: Putin’s decision to allow US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to reside in Russia; ongoing espionage efforts between Russia and the US, including the activities of Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (Foreign Intelligence Service) or SVR officer Anna Chapman and other Russian “illegals” captured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2010, and the allegations of US spying on Russia revealed by Snowden and Wikileaks; and the US admonishment of Russia on human rights issues. Putin fumed over Operation Unified Protector, during which multinational forces including the US, were placed under NATO command and imposed a no-fly zone and destroyed government forces loyal to then-Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi. Putin felt NATO-led forces went beyond UN Security Council Resolution 1973’s mandate by helping local forces overthrow Gaddafi. Gaddafi, who had been a friend of the Soviet Union and Russia, was killed. The world saw how poor the relationship between Obama and Putin was after observing their body language when they met in Northern Ireland on June 17, 2013.
Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office and Sergei Ivanov (above). Ivanov is an anti-US ideologue. He believes the US has taken a foreign policy course aimed at holding on to US leadership in the world by means of the strategic containment of the growing influence of the Russian Federation and other centers of power.
How Relations with Putin Went Wrong Way
Perhaps the administration did not fully grasp just how poorly things were going with Putin. The Obama administration was confident enough to push agendas for nuclear arms reductions with Russia and EU and NATO expansion in Europe just as the administration of US President George W. Bush, his predecessor had. The administration referred to its effort to attain further nuclear arms cuts before leaving office as a “signature effort.” The reduction of nuclear forces and reductions in conventional forces have been issues US and Russian leaders have dealt with for decades, but Obama was not going to resolve any nuclear issues with Putin. Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are not a mere policy issue or bargaining chip for Putin, but a means of survival for Russia. Putin had no intentions of acceding to proposals for deep cuts in its nuclear arsenal repeatedly sent to Moscow by the administration. It was at this point in 2013 that relations with Putin and Russia truly began to collapse, falling to a very low point when the Obama administration cancelled a September summit meeting between Obama and Putin. The cancellation was in retaliation over Putin’s decision to reject the administration’s nuclear proposals. Administration officials lamented that Putin’s decision ended the president’s “signature effort to transform Russian-American relations and potentially dooming his aspirations for further nuclear arms cuts before leaving office.”
There were other very public affronts. The next year, during preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, there was a constant drum beat of doubt expressed by US security experts on the capability of the Russian security services to protect Sochi from terrorism. A leader’s public declaration of his decision not to attend has practically been a tradition among US and Russian leaders during a period of disagreement in international affairs. In addition to the Olympics, Obama would later decide not to attend the 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe. The celebration, hosted by Putin, was a time to recall the legacy of cooperation established during the war and a real example of what US-Russian cooperation could be in a common cause. It offered a chance for Obama to privately address his dispute with Putin. It was the best time for him to say that as with the alliance between their countries in World War II, relations between their countries now were important, bigger than both of them. Attending would have required Obama, as Rudyard Kipling would say, to “bite the bullet,” in terms of personal pride, but not in terms of his role as US president. By being absent, that day became one more reminder of the two leaders differences and their uncongenial relationship. Occasio aegre offertur, facile amittitur. (Opportunity is offered with difficulty, lost with ease.)
Between those years, the US and EU took Putin to task for his annexation of the Crimea. Harsh sanctions were levied and Russia was cast out of the Group of 8 industrialized democracies. Even tougher sanctions against Russian interests were threatened by the US if aggression against Ukraine escalated. Putin responded to it all with sanctions against US and EU products. In a March 18, 2014 speech declaring Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin vented his anger at the US and EU, enumerating some Western actions that fostered contempt in Moscow. He mentioned: Russia’s economic collapse, which many Russians recall was worsened by destructive advice and false philanthropy of Western business and economic experts that did more to cripple their country; the expansion of NATO to include members of the Soviet Union’s own alliance, the Warsaw Pact; the erroneous Russian decision to agree to the treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe, which he refers to as the “colonial treaty”; the West’s dismissal of Russia’s interests in Serbia and elsewhere; attempts to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and the EU; and, Western efforts to instruct Russia on how to conduct its affairs domestically and internationally. Incursions of Russian bombers and fighters in NATO airspace and Russian warships in NATO waters were regularized. The only public bright spot in US-Russia relations was diplomacy between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, mainly on Syria and Iran. Still, that activity was more reflective of their countries’ roles on the UN Security Council, not the tenor of relations between Obama and Putin.
Russian Federation Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (above). In response to what Russian officials refer to as “NATO’s preparations along our borders,” Shoigu announced on January 12, 2016 that there would be a major military build-up along its border with Ukraine.
Putin’s Pushes Westward
The poor US relationship with Russia, just as much as the Ukraine crisis, affected Europe’s relationship with Russia concerning business, economics, and security. In the summer of 2013, the EU Council sharply condemned Russia’s mounting pressure on members of the EU Eastern Partnership, countries with association agreements with the EU. In 2012, the EU accounted for 52 percent of Russia’s exports, 68 percent of which consisted of fuel and energy. Following the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the EU suspended virtually all cooperation. Still, Putin’s thinking on the EU was not positive even before the Ukraine crisis. Putin saw the EU as a project of deepening integration based on norms of business, law, and administration at variance from those emerging in Russia. Putin was also concerned that EU enlargement would become a means of excluding Russia from its “zones of traditional influence.” Certain Russian actions indicate Moscow actively seeks to encourage members to withdraw from the EU sphere and discourage countries joining it. Joint projects with European countries have allowed Russia to exploit their differences on political, economic and commercial issues creating a discordant harmony in the EU. As much as making money, a goal of such efforts has been to undermine EU unity on sanctions. The Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline, for example, has provided Putin with the means to disrupt, weaken European unity. A murmur exists in Europe that solidarity ends at the frontiers of some countries. Ad mores natura recurrit damnatos fixa et mutari nescia. (Human nature ever reverts to its depraved courses, fixed and immutable)
Regarding NATO, in an interview published on January 11, 2016 in Bild, Putin provided insight into his thinking then and now. During the interview, Putin quoted West German Parliamentarian Egon Bahr who stated in 1990: “If we do not now undertake clear steps to prevent a division of Europe, this will lead to Russia’s isolation.” Putin then quoted what he considered an edifying suggestion from Bahr on how to avert a future problem in Europe. According to Putin, Bahr proffered: “the USA, the then Soviet Union and the concerned states themselves should redefine a zone in Central Europe that would not be accessible to NATO with its military structure.” Putin claimed that the former NATO Secretary General Manfred Worner had guaranteed NATO would not expand eastwards after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Putin perceives the US and EU as having acquitted themselves of ties to promises to avoid expanding further eastward, and arrogating for themselves the right to divine what would be in the best interest of all countries. He feels historians have ignored the machinations and struggles of people involved. Putin further stated: “NATO and the USA wanted a complete victory over the Soviet Union. They wanted to sit on the throne in Europe alone. But they are sitting there, and we are talking about all these crises we would otherwise not have. You can also see this striving for an absolute triumph in the American missile defense plans.” Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. (Fortunate is he who understands the causes of things.)
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office and Foreign Policy Adviser Yuri Ushakov (above). Ushakov, much as Ivanov, is not a fan of the US. He was present at former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s meeting with Putin. Kissinger seemed to confirm many of the worst notions Putin and his advisers held on US thinking.
In the years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, many European countries cut their defense spending, allowed their military preparedness to drop, and reduced the NATO footprint in their own territories and in countries east to occasional drills and small exercises with former Warsaw Pact members. They stood unprepared to confront Russia. Some allowed fear and resignation to infiltrate their perceptions of the matter. They sought to veil the fact that they were intimidated by Putin, and seemingly tried to mollify him, speaking skeptically about the clear threat Russia posed. Others seemed to fear signaling a military reaction to Putin. Yet, they signaled insecurity by appearing ambivalent about committing to the costly requirements of collective security despite: the “Crimea-grab”; the Russian push in the Donbass; a looming threat to the Baltic States; Moscow’s threats to use nuclear weapons; and, Russian military air and naval incursions from Britain to Estonia. (It would be unconstructive to name specific countries regarding this point.)
Putin did not stand by while the EU and NATO expanded. He decided to pull independent states that were once part of the Soviet Union back into Russia’s orbit. Accomplishing that required Putin to create something that did not preexist in most near abroad countries: ethnic-Russian communities forcefully demanding secession and sovereignty. That process usually begins with contemptuous murmurs against home country’s identity, language, and national symbols and then becomes a “rebel yell” for secession. It was seen in Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and more recently in Crimea, the Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine. Each time an ethnic-Russian space is carved out of a country, Putin gains a base from which he can exert his influence in that country.
Secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council Nikolai Patrushev (above). Patrushev is Russia’s most senior intelligence official. He asserts that the US has always sought to have levers of pressure on Russia by making use of NATO on its own terms and using its political and economic pressure to prevent vacillations by allies and partners.
Inside the Kremlin: Putin’s Advisers Speak
Audiatur et altera pars! (Let us hear the opposite side!) In February 2016, a doyen of US foreign policy, archetypal Cold Warrior, and master architect of détente, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, visited Russia in order to speak at the Gorchakov Foundation. While in Moscow, he met at the Kremlin with Putin, the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office and Sergei Ivanov and the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office and Foreign Policy Adviser, Yuri Ushakov. Ivanov and Ushakov are anti-US ideologues. In his Gorchakov Foundation speech and his meeting at the Kremlin, Kissinger, albeit unintentionally, confirmed many of the worst notions Russian officials held on US thinking. Kissinger stated that “Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily a threat to the United States.” Noting that “divisive issues” existed, Kissinger suggested that rather than establish its own sphere of influence near its border, Russia should share influence in its’ periphery with the West to avoid raising alarms around it. For example, he asserted that “Ukraine needs to be embedded in the structure of European and international security architecture in such a way that it serves as a bridge between Russia and the West rather than an outpost of either side.” To Putin and his advisers, Kissinger’s ideas were hardly acceptable. Enough examples of Moscow’s behavior exist to challenge the suggestion that some sea change in thinking at the Kremlin could occur. Consider the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. In a March 6, 2014, BBC.com article entitled, “Ukraine Crisis: Obama Urges Putin to Pursue Diplomacy,” it was reported Obama told Putin in a phone call that there was a solution available that suited all parties, involving talks between Kiev and Moscow, international monitors in Ukraine, and Russian forces returning to their bases. Yet, Putin would never entertain a solution that would “suit all parties.” What suits Russia in the near abroad was, and remains, Putin’s only concern.
When Kissinger went on to state that there must be a willingness “to move beyond the grievances and sense of victimization . . . ,” Putin and his advisers sat unruffled, but were surely irritated. They likely perceived Kissinger was being dismissive of their strong concerns over EU and NATO expansion eastward. His statement likely supported their perceptions that US officials have an instinctive need to assert moral authority over Russia.
Russian Federation Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev (above). Obama was put at ease when Medvedev was Russia’s president. Obama went as far as declaring a new era existed between the two former Cold War adversaries. Now Medvedev states: “NATO’s policies related to Russia remain unfriendly and opaque—one could go as far as to say we have slid back to a new Cold War.” Medvedev is not a friend of the US. He is Putin’s comrade.
During the final plenary session at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia on October 22, 2015, Putin mentioned the 1973 comedy, science-fiction film from the Soviet Union, “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession.” Putin quoted one of the film’s characters as saying to another: “How am I supposed to understand what you’re saying if you don’t say anything?” Senior Russian political leaders and foreign and defense policy officials have recently made some unambiguous public statements about US, EU and Russian relations. Clearly, their statements were biased by the view that US holds an unyielding hostility toward Russia which is manifested in its policies and actions. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on February 13, 2016, Russian Federation Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev, Putin’s political comrade, accused NATO of restarting the Cold War amid increased military maneuvers and troop deployments to Russia’s neighbors. Medvedev told the meeting of national leaders, senior defense officials, and top diplomats that sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and new moves by NATO “only aggravate tensions.” He argued: “NATO’s policies related to Russia remain unfriendly and opaque—one could go as far as to say we have slid back to a new Cold War.” He went on to state: “On an almost daily basis, we’re called one of the most terrible threats either to NATO as a whole, or Europe, or to the United States.” Medvedev called for lifting sanctions imposed on Russia concerning Crimea, saying they are “a road that leads nowhere.” He suggested the West would only harm itself if it did not lift the sanctions soon. He warned: “The longer the sanctions continue, the more chances fade for Europeans to keep their positions in Russian markets as investors and suppliers.”
In his meeting with Putin, Ivanov, and Ushakov, Kissinger stated that Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium concerning what he dubbed “divisive issues” such as Ukraine. He suggested Russia should share influence in its declared near abroad with the West. He also explained there must be a willingness to move beyond grievances and sense of victimization. Putin and his advisers sat unruffled, but were surely irritated by his statements.
In an interview with the official government newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta, the Secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council, one of Putin’s most important advisers and most senior intelligence official, Nikolai Patrushev, proffered: “. . . Washington has always sought to have levers of pressure on Russia. Thus, in 1974 the famous Jackson-Vanik Amendment was adopted, restricting trade relations with our country. It appeared to have completely lost its relevance immediately after the breakup of the USSR, but it was still in force right up to 2012, when the so-called “Magnitsky List” was promptly adopted in its place.” Referring to current US and EU sanctions against Russia, Patrushev explained: “The current sanctions are in the same category. The US administration’s activity in the Ukrainian sphere is taking place within the framework of an updated White House foreign policy course aimed at holding on to American leadership in the world by means of the strategic containment of the growing influence of the Russian Federation and other centers of power. In this context Washington is actively making use, on its own terms, of NATO’s potential, seeking to use political and economic pressure to prevent vacillations on the part of its allies and partners.”
In response to what Russian officials refer to as “NATO’s preparations along our borders,” on January 12, 2016, Russian Federation Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that there would be a major military build-up along its border with Ukraine. Shoigu reportedly stated: “the task of utmost importance for us this year is to form three new military divisions in the western direction.” Shoigu stressed that it was not only a necessity not just to form the bases but also to re-equip locations for permanent deployment, create appropriate training grounds, storage space for equipment and accommodations for personnel. Shoigu further explained that “special attention should be paid to monitoring and analysis of the military-political situation in the world, as well as timely responses to its changes.” One base is being constructed in the town of Boguchar in the Voronezh region, located 45 kilometers from the border of Ukraine’s Luhansk province, now the self-declared, independent Luhansk People’s Republic. The base would accommodate at least 5,000 troops and would be able to house 1,300 pieces of military equipment. A similar base will be constructed near the settlement of Valuiki in the Belgorod region, approximately 20 kilometers from Luhansk.
For the Obama administration, the end is closer than the beginning. Only so much can be done in the amount of time left to halt the trend downward, much less, turn things around with Putin or its Russia policy. The challenge of improving US-Russia relations will likely be left to the next US President. O si sic omnia. (Oh, would that all had been done or said thus.)
The Way Forward
A little more than four years after Clinton provided her 2011 discourse on the pivot to Asia, General Breedlove essentially assessed the path had not been paved for Europe to go without a US presence, US leadership, and significant US support. In the US European Command Posture Statement 2016 presented on February 25, 2016, Breedlove explained: “I cannot emphasize how important European nations, in particular our NATO Allies and Non-NATO Partners, are to ensuring America’s security and safety. Many of our most capable and willing allies and partners are in Europe, playing an essential role in promoting our vital interests and executing a full range of military missions . . . Europe is not the same continent it was when I took command, as new threats and challenges continue to emerge.” The grand notion of pivoting away from Europe to focus more on Asia withered once the clashes between Putin and Obama began. Some may parse out the collision of Obama and Putin as representing the natural balance of things as their worldviews are so divergent. Even if true, some syncretistic existence should have been established for the benefit of their countries and their people. Authentic geopolitical thinking was subsumed by a satisfying substitute for reality concerning long-term US-Russia relations. Indeed, decisions in the Obama administration on Putin and Russia were based on relations with Medvedev early-on and what was best for Obama’s legacy. That got the administration into trouble with Putin from the get-go. Relations languished in misunderstanding.
Discord obtains when things get mixed up. One might speculate, with levity, that Russia experts at the State Department, the Defense Department, and CIA, who understood Putin, were seemingly exiled to isolated garrets on the top floors of their headquarters buildings by the administration to keep their impressions out of the way. Hopefully, there is not an irreversible trend downward for US-Russia relations. Yet, the end is closer than the beginning for the Obama administration. Only so much can be done with time available to halt the slide, much less, turn things around. Improving US-Russia relations will be a challenge left for the next US administration. Kissinger suggested Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium. However, creating that global equilibrium will be tough as Russia will likely remain intransigent over its interests in what Putin calls the near abroad. Some recognition of Russia’s positions would be required to improve relations (although creating an arrangement in Europe that would satisfy Russia may not be possible at this point). Resetting relations would also require a new administration to recognize the limits of US power projection. How much the US will be able to handle in its sphere of influence in the future must be determined through a hard-headed assessment of possibilities based on capabilities both available and in development.
In his State of the Union Address, US President Barack Obama painted a picture of the US with a better standing in the world after seven years of his leadership. In 2016, Obama will make many speeches about his accomplishments to audiences at organized events. Yet, triumphalism does not equate to triumph. There is a continuous threat from terrorist groups. Countries such as Russia, Iran, and China remain in fierce competition with the US. They may seek to establish a new dynamic in which the power and interests of their countries are enhanced and the power and interests of the US are weakened.
In a January 12, 2016 New York Times article entitled, “Obama Confronts Americans’ Fears in State of the Union Speech,” it was reported US President Barack Obama painted a hopeful portrait of the nation after seven years of his leadership with a better standing in the world. Concerning foreign policy and national security, Obama defended his approach to taking on the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) describing it as a dangerous threat to the US that must be dealt with but not an existential one, and not a force that warrants a commitment of US ground forces in Iraq and Syria. Obama highlighted his work in forging a nuclear deal with Iran, opening a new era of relations with Cuba, pressing for a global accord reached in Paris to combat climate change and efforts to stop the spread of Ebola. He also explained the US is uniquely positioned to rally other countries to solve global problems.
In 2016, Obama will make many speeches about his accomplishments to audiences at organized events. Loyal Obama supporters and fans and other Democrats will be at every venue, a flutter at every word he utters about his presidency. Doyens of the political realm in the US will make glowing public orations, descants and publish paeans in honor of the president, celebrating his administration’s accomplishments. Having twice vanquished all opposition to Obama in national elections, and after completing nearly eight years of work, some measure of triumphalism is expected to be heard from him, his senior officials, and his staff. It would be expected even more of an administration marked particularly by its obsession over the president’s legacy. The final year of his last term is the ideal time to set the record straight and control the narrative. Iucunda memoria est praeteritorum malorum. (Pleasant is the memory of past troubles.)
Still, triumphalism, highlighting the administration’s perceived achievements on foreign policy, does not equate to triumph. Real success cannot be determined by levels of applause from fans. Doubts have been expressed even among Democrats over many of the administration’s foreign policy efforts. The forces of tyranny and darkness still hold a prominent place on the international stage. Whether signature efforts by the administration have created real change or will be sustainable remains uncertain. The renowned wit and retired late night US television talk show host, David Letterman, once joked, “every military operation has to have a name so people can get behind it and they now have a name for the war against ISIS: Operation Hillary’s Problem.” Whether Letterman engaged in a successful dalliance as a visionary regarding former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s election as the next US president remains to be seen. Still, his main point was clear. The Obama administration has not successfully acted against ISIS and was seemingly passing on that problem, and other important ones, to the next US administration. However, sitting on issues in order to hand them over to a new administration is not a wise choice. In addition to the continuous threat of terrorism from ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other groups worldwide, countries such as Russia, Iran, and China while interacting with the US still remain in fierce competition with it strategically, ideologically. They may now hope to exploit perceived advantages and establish a new dynamic in which the power and interests of their countries are enhanced and the power and interests of the US are weakened. Approaches exist to prevent that from occurring or at least minimize any negative results. They may not allow the administration to declare triumph, but may allow it to honestly claim it left a satisfactory foreign policy legacy.
Creating a Foreign Policy Legacy
During Obama’s campaign for the 2008 Presidential Election, he was recognized as a man of vision, a seeker, filled with smart words, no less than the breath of life. His speeches were indeed balanced, teeming with inspiration. In photos, videos and in his writings and speeches during that first presidential campaign and during the initial stages of his first term, it was clear that Obama was very passionate, a man seemingly haunted by his vision of an even brighter future for the US. Yet, having is not the same as wanting. As time passed, there were some successes, but there were also failures. Mistakes were also made, particularly in the area of foreign policy. They came to office believing the policy issues have been misunderstood and solutions are only temporarily hidden. In decision making, spirit and vision would be given primacy over vested interests, realism. That was the case of the US response toward countries in the Middle East during the Arab Spring and to the opposition movements in Ukraine. The administration’s foreign policy seemed driven by a self-neglectful virtue that would allegedly melt all physical and ideological boundaries with a charity that the US believes gives hope to those it perceives as helpless. The administration wished to become no less than an anathema to tyrants, pointing always to the hallmark of their oppressive regimes which is a lack of respect for the dignity of others. The administration would contest how those regimes would typically act upon citizens: not with constitutional authority, but with raw power. Yet, the Obama administration also in no way wanted to be associated with the policies of the previous administration of US President George W. Bush which was perceived as willing to lash out without delay at its adversaries. Instead of projecting authentic US strength globally, the administration proffered the idea that the US could rely upon multilateral solutions. That would allow it to minimize US intervention on the ground, but require joint action from allies and partners who were undertaking dramatic military cuts and were facing economic difficulties. Those countries were also very aware that warfare lately has been asymmetric, not set piece engagements to win quickly. No Western European country with real military capabilities would commit requisite or robust forces to take on risks globally, especially if its political leaders felt that the issue at hand did not fall within their interests. Countries possessing far less capabilities than the US in regions where there were urgent and important crises brewing, were also hesitant to act unless matters fell directly in their interests. Obama repeatedly presented his notion of multilateralism to a US public confused about the contrast between the certitude with which Obama spoke, and regular breakdowns in the administration’s foreign policy initiatives that were being implemented. When the administration thought efforts under this multilateral concept coalesced as an outcome of initial success in Libya, things soured resulting in multiple failures from the controversial loss of US diplomatic and military personnel to the development of struggle between competing factions and Islamic militants aligned with ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
The Obama administration did not invent the US Government. The government that the administration took control of has always been viewed as stable, solid, reassuring. It has been the source of so much hope not only of foreign capitals but individuals worldwide. Now, the image has grown of the US in retreat, perhaps wounded by its ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is no longer seen by all as a champion of right but as a cold calculator. Its leaders know the price of everything but not the value of relationships the US once held close. Seeing the failed results of its approach, exasperated European leaders have not responded with mockery, sarcasm, or insolence; at least not publicly. Leaders of Germany and the United Kingdom have tried to give courage, to fortify the administration. Viciousness has done much harm in history. Still, the worst crimes, the worst disasters in history have been the work of the timid, the mediocre. For years, many will feel the Obama administration stood passively in the face of evil.
As an authentic military superpower, the US has a clear upper hand over all of its likely opponents. Any assessment otherwise would not be genuine. The administration has been reluctant to use US military power. Adversaries, upon recognizing this, seemingly downplayed concerns over US capabilities to impose its will and simply considered how to impose their own will, regionally and globally. Soon their narrative exposed a defective perspective that the US lacked the ability to deliver a knockout blow. Subtly, opponents worked tirelessly on the US, enjoying the freedom to act in the world, knowing that beyond the diplomatic table, using economic weapons such as sanctions, and revoking membership in collective economic groups, little else would occur. Possible limitations on what could be done would only be set by the Obama administration’s time in office. It is already clear that the dynamic between the US and many countries has changed. It remains to be seen whether US opponents will attempt to administer some type of coup de grace in the administration’s final months, ensuring that it will not have a positive foreign policy legacy. The following are some possibilities, “stripped to the bone”.
Above is a photo of a deep underground military base in Iran. The Obama administration hopes to be known for attempting to create better relations with long time foes such as Iran and Cuba. However, results of its efforts may very well prove that the administration was acting on a charming fantasy. It approached those countries unlike previous administrations. In Tehran, the Obama administration has no friend. Tehran would not hesitate to exploit the administration or betray it.
Iran
Certainly, the Obama administration will be known for attempting to create union with long time foes such as Iran and Cuba. Its approach to those countries was unlike that of previous administrations. In past cases, the US projected that strength, and US diplomacy was supported in many cases by the credible threat of force. Indeed, the previous US administration emphasized to Iran that the US had the intention and capability to impose its will on them and it had no ability to impose its will on the US. Leaders in Tehran rejected that approach. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated in his 2013 inaugural address, “To have interactions with Iran, there should be talks based on an equal position, building mutual trust and respect, and reducing enmity.” Iranian negotiators managed to acquire that “requisite” degree of equality. To facilitate the establishment of talks with the P5+1 (the US, United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, and Germany), the Obama administration did not impose its will on Iran using strength, rather it negotiated with Iran under the fiction that all parties to the talks were equals. US strength was negated. Having managed to arrange the environment to maximize their ability to achieve success, Iranian negotiators came to the talks confident in their positions. The Iranians flatly denied they wanted to develop a nuclear weapons capability, insisting Iran’s program is limited to the peaceful generation of electricity and medical research. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohamad Javad Zarif, and the Iranian negotiating team were under extraordinary pressure from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other hardline elements in Iran, to secure an agreement that recognized Iran’s right to have a nuclear program, including the right to enrich uranium and held the line on that issue. As Zarif told the ISNA news agency in November 2014, “Not only do we consider that Iran’s right to enrich is unnegotiable, but we see no need for that to be recognized as ‘a right’, because this right is inalienable and all countries must respect that.”
Close contact with US negotiators for months allowed the Iranians a real chance to look into their thinking of US negotiators. The Iranians discerned they were witnessing the impact of the Obama administration’s “legacy quest.” White House officials and US political pundits spoke and wrote about US President Barack Obama’s desire to establish his legacy. US negotiators were pushing for a deal in order to claim an historic foreign policy success. So strong was the sense that the US might be willing to make risky concessions, that Zarif stated in the Iranian media, “There are indicators that John Kerry is inclined [to advance the nuclear matter in Iran’s interests].” The Iranians became more tenacious than ever in the talks. There was also a discernible change in Obama’s discussion of taking military action against Iran as the talks progressed. Threats vanished. The administration went as far as to say there was nothing effectively could be done militarily to halt Iran’s program. The narrative of the US changed.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed on July 14, 2015. With safeguards, the administration believes the framework agreement will cut down Iran’s breakout time capacity to the point that it would take at least 12 months to amass enough uranium enriched to weapons grade for one bomb. Enhanced international inspections and monitoring would be set up to help discourage Iran from violating the agreement. The hope is noncompliance by Iran at declared or potential undeclared sites would be detected through enhanced monitoring by the international community and promptly disrupted. The consequence of noncompliance would likely be limited to economic sanctions which may not be enough to restrain hardliners driven to build a weapon. The results of the administration’s efforts may prove that it was acting on a charming fantasy.
Reportedly, Tehran took part of its nuclear program outside of Iran long before signing the Iran deal. One possibility, found in news reports unearthed by Christian Thiels of ARD German TV, is that Iran is working with North Korea to develop a weapon. Alleged evidence was their joint operation of nuclear complexes located at Deir al-Zor and Kibar in Syria. It is possible that the January 6, 2016 North Korean nuclear test may have been a cooperative test of Iranian warheads or a test of warheads made by North Korea for Iran.
There have been reports that Tehran took part of its nuclear program outside of Iran long before signing the JCPOA. One possibility, found in news reports unearthed by Christian Thiels of ARD German TV, is that Iran is working with North Korea in other countries to develop a weapon. (During the Cold War, the US encouraged joint work by its allies such as France, the United Kingdom, Israel, and South Africa, on the development of nuclear capabiltites.) The first evidence was their joint operation of nuclear complexes located at Deir al-Zor and Kibar in Syria. On September 5, 2007, Israeli aircraft and special operations forces attacked and destroyed them. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Kibar was a nuclear weapons development site. There is the possibility that other facilities exist in Syria. According to Der Spiegel, one may be underground, west of Qusayr, about 2 km from the Lebanese border. It is possible that the January 6, 2016 North Korean nuclear test may have been a cooperative test of Iranian warheads or a test of warheads made by North Korea for Iran. The Obama administration has no friend in the regime in Tehran. Tehran would not hesitate to exploit it or betray it. Equo ne credite! (Do not trust the horse! [Referring to the Trojan Horse.])
European governments and large European firms now seek to renew economic ties and develop business with Iran. As those linkages are established, the chance that the US could pull allies away from potential profits due to a “potential threat” a nuclear Iran might pose is lessened. The argument would be made that economic ties would serve to lessen hostilities between Iran and their countries. Threats to use force against Iran would have little meaning at that point as too many statements on why US military power should be withheld have already been made. At best, the Obama administration could increase sanctions on North Korea over nuclear weapons tests showing Pyongyang that it would be impractical to support any possible Iranian covert Iranian overseas nuclear program. It could also make it publicly known that the US is still developing greater capabilities to destroy deep underground military bases as those in Iran. If Iran is trying to cross the line or has crossed the line, at least the next administration would be better able to back diplomacy with force.
ISIS on parade in Mosul. When the ISIS blitzkrieg in Iraq began in June 2014, the Obama administration’s response included pushing then Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to establish a representative government, to include Sunnis and Kurds. As the Iraqi Security Forces were being routed by ISIS, Obama refused to give the Iraqis military aid unless they tried to bridge their divisions. Maliki stepped down. Haider al-Abadi took over with a mandate to create a government reflecting Iraq’s ethno-religious diversity and gain the trust of disaffected Sunnis so they would fight ISIS rather than support it.
Iraq
When the ISIS blitzkrieg in Iraq began on June 9, 2014, the response of the administration of the US President Barack Obama included pushing then Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to establish a representative government, to include Sunnis and Kurds. It was designed as an effort to heal the rifts being exploited by the insurgents. ISIS was able to capture large parts of the country’s western and northern provinces during their offensive because Sunni residents threw their support to it after the Maliki government stopped paying the Sunni tribal fighters who had previously helped fight ISIS’s precursor, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. As the Iraqi Security Forces were being routed by ISIS, Obama insisted that no US military help would be provided unless Iraqis tried to bridge their divisions. US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to make headway with Maliki. After a protracted political crisis, the Iraqi Parliament voted to have Maliki step down. Haider al-Abadi took over with a mandate to create a government more representative of Iraq’s ethno-religious groups and gain the trust of Iraq’s disaffected Sunnis so they would fight ISIS rather than support it. His early performance encouraged US and Iraqi officials.
In support of Abadi’s government, the US deployed 3,500 US troops to Iraq with the mission to help train and reorganize the highly fractured Iraqi Army. It had dwindled to nearly half its size from the 50 brigades it had when the US forces left in 2011. US military troops prepared the Iraqi Army for its fight to retake Ramadi. A fight to retake Mosul was being planned for 2016. Iran would hardly tolerate any loss of control or surrender its interests in Iraq due to the Obama administration’s actions. Knowing the representative government that the US sought for Iraq could not be easily created, Iran’s leaders likely assumed the US would not succeed. Tehran went ahead and expressed reserved support for Abadi. Yet, by late 2014, Abadi began to lean toward Iran and challenge the US regarding its level of support. Causality for his change in perspective was likely a combination of weariness from political infighting in Baghdad, the struggle to balance his ties to sectarian groups, pressure from his own Shi’a community, and Iran’s battlefield efforts. Abadi may have also questioned the Obama administration’s will to engage in long-term fight with ISIS. His rebellious attitude was evinced in a December 1, 2014 interview with the Lebanese-based Al-Mayadeen Television. Abadi reportedly stated, “While the United States was hesitant to help Iraqi armed forces amid security threats to Baghdad, Iran was swift to provide assistance to its crisis-torn Arab neighbor.” Iran has heavily committed itself to Iraq. With greater control over the Shi’a community and increased influence with the Kurds through its military efforts, Iran has placed itself in a better position to shape Iraq politically and economically. How Iran would ameliorate Iraq’s sectarian struggle is uncertain.
To support Abadi’s government, the US deployed 3,500 US troops to Iraq to help train and reorganize the highly fractured Iraqi Army. Yet, by late 2014, Abadi began to lean toward Iran and challenge the US regarding its level of support. While the US was hesitant to help Iraqi Security Forces as ISIS marched toward Baghdad, Abadi observed that Iran was swift to provide assistance. Having established greater control over the Shi’a community and increased its influence with the Kurds through its military efforts, Iran is now in a better position to shape Iraq politically, economically, and perhaps socially, with effort.
The road Iran is creating for Abadi may be either a path toward a stable, secure and unified Iraq, with a representative government or a blind alley which will lead to greater sectarian violence. If Iran’s efforts concern it, the Obama administration should consider how it can create a straight path for Abadi to travel. That does not mean pushing him from behind with demands. It means leading the way with concrete steps and working closely with Abadi, as a partner, to accomplish things. Baghdad should have positive ties with its neighbor, Iran. Yet, the US can improve its relationship with Iraq. Surely, it could further enable Iraq’s fight against ISIS, and help stem the flow of foreign fighters into the country. Even more, it could further advance Iraq’s position on the world stage by helping it generate significant business and economic ties worldwide, beyond the oil and gas industry, even while Baghdad copes with ISIS and sectarian issues. Clarior e tenebris! ([I shine] out of the darkness more brightly!)
The Obama administration decided to provide the Syrian Opposition Movement its support in 2012 with the hope that Assad could be pressured to the negotiating table by Free Syrian Army advances and eventually agree to step down under a settlement. So far, Assad’s hold on the reins of power remains unaffected. Moreover, Syrian Opposition leaders discovered that taking on the Syrian Armed Forces and their allies is an enormous task. Now with Russia in the mix, they are well out of their depth. The Obama administration has implemented a failed policy against Assad’s regime.
Syria
The Obama administration decided to provide the Syrian Opposition Movement its support in 2012 with the hope that Assad could be pressured to the negotiating table by Free Syrian Army advances and eventually agree to step down under a settlement. So far, Assad’s hold on the reins of power remains unaffected. Moreover, Syrian Opposition leaders discovered that taking on the Syrian Armed Forces and their allies is an enormous task. Rebel fighters found themselves in trouble early on and now with Russia in the mix, they recognize that they are well out of their depth. Just keeping the Opposition together politically has been difficult. Foreign diplomats must regularly act as mediators to hold the Opposition’s diverse groups together. Opposition military leaders have not shown any greater ability to unify their forces. The Obama administration has implemented a failed policy of battling Assad’s regime to force him to step down via negotiations. Obama expressed that view on CBS NEWS “60 Minutes”, saying: “. . . I’ve been skeptical from the get go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria. My goal has been to test the proposition, can we be able to train and equip a moderate Opposition that’s willing to fight ISIL [ISIS]? And what we’ve learned is that as long as Assad remains in power, it is very difficult to get those folks to focus their attention on ISIL [ISIS]? He went on to state: “. . . There is no doubt it did not work.” A new government in Syria favorable to the West could not have been created by the Opposition at the civil war’s start and cannot be created by it now. The Opposition could fight on against the Assad regime minus support, but it would lose, especially with ISIS present. Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare. (Anyone can err, but only a fool persists in his fault.)
ISIS and Al-Qaeda linked Islamic militant groups in Syria have reached a considerable size and strength. The goals of ISIS and similar groups were never compatible with those of the Opposition. While mainstream Opposition forces were directed at creating the basis for a transition to a democratic style government in Damascus for all Syrians, ISIS and Al-Qaeda affiliated groups sought to create an Islamic State on Syrian territory. At one point, the Obama administration seemed willing to let the entire Syrian episode pass, while continuing a small, questionable assistance effort, projecting toughness through legal maneuvers, and allowing Assad to remain in power. Certainly, Assad is not immortal. It could have been surmised that the Assad regime, under great strain and facing endless warfare, would not survive in the long-run. It seems the Obama administration assumed Assad’s benefactors in Moscow and Tehran would grow fatigued with high-expenditures and losses without advancing their cause. US military action in Syria has been limited to airstrikes by a US-led anti-ISIS coalition. That tack left the door open for others to operate freely in Syria to impose their will. Since 2013, Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force has trained and equipped the National Defense Forces (organized shabiha or paramilitary units), and has fought alongside Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi’a militiamen. Moreover, Iran has since moved up the “ladder of escalation.” Syrian, Iranian, and Iranian sponsored troops have managed to coordinate and cooperate well on the battlefield. Some 2000 fighters from Hezbollah, sponsored by Iran, were also part of the main attack on Qusayr and took on the mop-up operations there. Syrian and Iranian troops took on rebels in Homs and other points in Homs province. Russia more recently intervened militarily in Syria, it has targeted leaders of ISIS—and other Islamic militant groups such as Al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra—when identified. Since October 2015, command, control, and communications centers of ISIS have been struck, limiting ISIS’ ability to direct its fighters. Training centers have been destroyed. Fighting positions of ISIS in front of Russian allies have been degraded with close air support and heavy strikes by Russia. Presumably they will provide close air support for an offensive by their allies.
US military action in Syria has primarily been airstrikes by a US-led anti-ISIS coalition. That has left the door open for other countries to impose their will on the ground. Since 2013, Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force has trained and equipped the National Defense Forces, and fight alongside Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi’a militiamen. Iran has since moved up the “ladder of escalation.” In Syria, Russia has targeted ISIS’ command, control, and communications centers. If Russia gets a handle on the situation there, the US might need to tolerate an Assad regime strongly influenced by Russia and Iran.
New talks have been set up under UN Security Council Resolution 2254. However, long before factions of the Syrian Opposition might get their act together for the UN Talks, and before the first vote is cast in UN monitored elections, Russia and its allies may take steps to keep Assad in power. If Russia gets a handle on the situation there, despite UN Talks, the US may be given little choice but to tolerate an Assad regime strongly influenced by Russia and Iran. For the Syrian people, some trapped in the clutches of ISIS and knocked around in the middle of the war zone, others situated in giant refugee camps in neighboring states, or relocated as ex-patriots in Western and Arab states, a sustainable, secure peace in their country would be the best outcome.
Putin may want to maintain an environment of confrontation for the US and EU leaders. He supports countries behind many of the foreign policy problems that the Obama administration faces. Enough speeches and statements heard from the Obama administration on why US military power should be withheld have been made to create doubt that the US would respond to Russian actions outside its borders.
Russia
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin wants to change the narrative which has Russia coming in a distant second to the US. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Putin has been the authentic face of the Russian government. Putin and his closest advisers share a view that the greatest danger to Russia comes from the West. They believe Western governments are driven to weaken Russia, create disorder, and make their country dependent of Western technologies. Dimitry Medvedev was Russian Federation President when Obama came to office. So comfortable was Obama with Medvedev that he went as far as to declare a new era between the two former Cold War adversaries existed. Little was done to build a relationship with Putin who was serving as Russia’s Prime Minister and was the real power in Moscow. Putin began his third term as Russia’s president on May 7, 2012. Based on positive signals from Medvedev on nuclear arms reductions, administration officials got the idea that Putin would also consider proposals on it. When Putin expressed disinterest, administration officials insisted that he agree to reductions in both nations’ nuclear arsenals. Putin then out rightly rejected their proposals. Obama administration officials reacted poorly. Putin’s decision was viewed within the Obama administration as ending the president’s signature effort to transform Russian-American relations and potentially dooming his aspirations for further nuclear arms cuts before leaving office. Apparently retaliating against Putin over his decision on its nuclear proposals, on August 7, 2013, the White House cancelled a September summit meeting in Moscow for Obama and Putin. Relations were so bad in 2013 that Andrei Piontovsky, executive director of the Strategic Studies Center in Moscow was quoted in an August 7, 2013, New York Times article as saying, “Putin sensed weakness in Mr. Obama that could lead to more dangerous confrontations.” He further stated, “Putin openly despises your president, forgive my bluntness.”
There was no easy way to repair the relationship. In our media conscious culture, timidity easily takes the form of affected joviality, hoping to diffuse tension by amiability, a hug or a slap on the back and then the dialogue can begin. Any political leader who thinks the way to diffuse the tension with Putin is to play the minstrel is only signaling insecurity. This was the case at a news conference between Obama and Putin in Northern Ireland in June 2013. When Obama tried a little levity stating, “We compared notes on President Putin’s expertise in judo and my declining skills in basketball and we both agreed that as you get older it takes more time to recover.” Instead of playing along, Putin retorted, “The president wants to relax me with his statement of age.” By 2014, Putin’s anger toward the US and EU worsened. Soon, there were regular incursions of Russian bombers and fighters in NATO airspace, Russian warships in NATO waters, and Russian claims made on the Arctic. Putin had already shown a willingness to intervene in the former Soviet republics. Examples include his actions in Georgia and Ukraine and his proposal for a “Eurasian Union”, an economic alliance that would include former Soviet Republics such as Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. By taking action in Syria, Putin showed he is also ready to secure Russia’s interests abroad.
The leaders of Germany (despite some controversial energy sector matters) and the United Kingdom are not fans of Putin and have encouraged Obama to stand firm in his dealings with him. Yet, some other European allies fear facing greater problems from Putin. Coping with his abrasive side can be tough. Still, Putin has also shown considerable restraint in tough situations as the Turkish shoot-down of a Russian Federation fighter jet. What Obama could try to do is create a dialogue with Putin about opportunities missed, opportunities still on the table, and the need to establish better relations for the US and Russia, not just for Putin and Obama.
Putin may want to maintain an environment of confrontation for the US and EU leaders. He supports countries behind many of the foreign policy problems that the Obama administration faces. Enough speeches and statements have been made by the Obama administration, on why US military power should be withheld, to create doubt that the US would respond to Russian actions outside its borders. Keeping all European allies unified and resolute could become more difficult as some may fear facing greater problems from him. The administration will have diplomatic contact and telephone communications with Putin, but keeping a brave face on while coping with his aggressive side will be tough. Still, Putin has also shown considerable restraint in tough situations such as the Turkish shoot-down of a Russian Federation fighter jet. What Obama could do is create a dialogue with Putin about opportunities missed, opportunities still on the table, and the need to establish better relations for the US and Russia, not just for Putin and Obama. The more meetings the two can have in 2016, the better. That would be to the benefit of the people of both countries long-term. Gutta cavat lapidem [non vi sed saepe cadendo]. A water drop hollows a stone [not by force, but by falling often].
The Way Forward
Graviore manent. (Heavier things remain.) Panegyrics for Obama and his administration have already begun to make their way into the media. Still, the specter remains of unresolved policy issues with the potential to worsen and become far more intractable. Arguments can be made that an environment in which such problems could grow was allowed to exist due to the delinquency of the administration. The result of such perceived inadequacies and failures could possibly be passed on to the next administration. A decision to simply sit on problems or contain them would be wrong and likely viewed as a pitfall of fear and resignation. There are approaches the Obama administration could take to defeat or defuse problems it may face from its adversaries. A few were presented here more boiled to the marrow than stripped to the bone as originally promised.
Candidates for the presidency have expressed concern over the same issues in campaign speeches and during debates. Perhaps those who can do better will take office and actually do better during their time in office. It is impossible for deeds to be undone. The Obama administration has done what it wanted to do on foreign policy. When God gives his grace to us, he gives us what we do not deserve. When God gives his mercy to us, he does not give us what we deserve. The Obama administration may very well be able to ride out its final year reflecting publicly on things that are pleasing to remember. However, it is always best to act than react. Setting an agenda for action would be the best action to take.
| 290,765 |
Gold Beach Brew & Art Festival September 8, 2018
Gold Beach will hosts its annual Brew & Art Festival on Saturday, September 8, 2018. This is THE place to sample microbrews, check out different arts and crafts, satisfy your appetite and enjoy live music.
All proceeds go to the co-sponsors, Soroptimists of Gold Beach and Curry Arts, to provide scholarships for furthering education and careers and other charity services.
Mark your calendar and join us during some of the best coastal weather of the year and spend a weekend of fun in Gold Beach tasting your favorites or try new craft beers. The Annual Gold Beach Brew and Art Festival promises to be bigger and better each year with more brew selections, new local art, enticing artisans, great bands and a classic car show.
Advance tickets will go on sale in summer 2018 and will be available at in Gold Beach at Dan’s Ace Hardware, Gold Beach Books and Interior Coverups. You will also be able to purchase tickets at Wright’s Art and Custom Framing in Brookings and at the Sassy Seagull in Bandon.
All of Curry Arts’ Brew & Art Festival proceeds go directly into the art and music classrooms. These donations are made to a “290 Fund” that is managed by the classroom teacher and used to purchase art supplies and musical instruments. The donations cannot be used to replace school funding that is diverted for other purposes.
| 1,395 |
Several bureaucrats, politicians give up subsidised LPG voluntarily
New Delhi: Several Bureaucrats and politicians have voluntarily given up the subsidised cooking gas in the wake of the government asked the rich to give up subsidies on cooking gas to make them available to people who deserve it.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Setting an example, has also voluntarily given up use of subsidised LPG, joining a growing list of well-to-do people who have opted to buy cooking gas at market rate.
“Hon’ble Finance Minister has set an example by giving up subsidy on LPG; other colleagues and people who can afford should join this initiative,” Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan tweeted.
Pradhan, who gave up his subsidised cooking gas several months back, made a renewed appeal to the affluent class to give up using below market price LPG.
“Volunteering to give up LPG subsidy amounts to contributing for national development and empowerment of poor people, who will be the beneficiary,” he tweeted.
He has urged ministers, MPs, MLAs, senior government officials and executives of public sector companies to give up their subsidies.
Public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) have given an option to existing LPG consumers to convert their existing domestic LPG connection into a non-subsidised domestic connection. This can be done by submitting a written request to the distributor or electronically via www.MyLPG.In.
Consumers are currently entitled to twelve 14.2-kg cylinders or 34 five-kg bottles in a year at subsidised rates. Any requirement above that has to be procured at market price.
A subsidised 14.2-kg cylinder is currently available at Rs 417 per bottle in Delhi. The subsidised cooking gas is also available in 5-kg packs, costing Rs 155 per such cylinder in Delhi.
Any requirement beyond the subsidised quota is to be met through purchase of cooking gas at market price – Rs 708.50 per 14.2-kg cylinder and Rs 351 per 5-kg bottle.
Giving up subsidised LPG will help cut government’s subsidy bill which was Rs 46,458 crore on the fuel last fiscal.
| 2,121 |
i think in this one there is finally a answer to the big mysterie about who god is,its who you see him if that is god or allah or mother earth,evryone has his own believe but there are al one,no believe is the ultimate greatest one because its al about the same power only with another name or rituals.
therefor you have to respect every ones believes.
(for some reason the subject god is coming on my path the last couple of years in places you wouldnt suspectit i have a little feeling there is a call,maybe i should finally try to answer that call)
yes the world is hard and unfair but on the other end its so great to be a life and there is also so much beauty.
and if you want and try and believe there is so much possible.
thanks again for this beautiful poem and discussion especially since there is so much losses currently among members of the zone,its good to remember the beauti of live,thanks ladies.
greetings,'
es
We don't know if Johnny is religious. He said he does believe in something, but is not sure what to call it.
That is what I read in this stanza: it's good to believe in something that gives you comfort and helps you being a better person. It does not matter what to call it. The word God can be replaced in this poem by : destiny, Buddha, mankind, nature, Neverland, for instance. To me personally it could be coincidence, or even: Johnny.I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I realize Johnny absolutely does not want to be seen as a kind of god, but you cannot deny we dò worship him, in a way, in a positive way. He is a good spirit (inspiritional he is, isn't it Chocolat ?! ), makes us love him and care for eachother. We love the ones he love. I cannot think of anything bad he could do to us. He has such good influence on so many people, as KYWoman described so beautifully in her post on the 6th Stanza. I do believe he makes this place a little bit better.
Oh yes, it's still a beautiful world, let's be cheerful !
I'm sorry I could not contribute more to this beautiful topic, but I have read all posts with much pleasure. I enjoyed reading Desiderata and all your points of view and the wonderful way so many of you can put it into words. Thank you Liz and Dithot, this was a very good idea !
Those are both beatiful thoughts, es and AnaMaria, thanks. I like these last parts, they seem like a very fitting close to the poem. Again, I find them very peaceful. I think the first part, about being at peace with God, "whatever you concieve him to be" is important, because it's part of that all-encompassing, connectedness that I felt with the sixth stanza. I think he included that to try and reach out to anyone - it's like letting them know that these words can be used in any way, by any type of religious person. I think Ehrmann was very wise in the ways he has stated the entire poem, and he spoke a universal message, that can include anyone, and anyone can take it and use it for their life, no matter what religion they follow. That is what is important to me. That also may account for why Johnny is so interested in it. Like AnaMaria said, he has never said specifically that there is one God or religion that he believes in, but I like to think there is a mix of several in his heart. Simply by looking at who he admires and looks up to, I would say that Kerouac's Buddhist influence could be at least one part of it, and he has said that he might believe in some sort of kismet, karma about things sometimes. I would never try to presume what his personal beliefs are though, don't get me wrong.
Like Liz mentioned earlier, just by looking at the poem's history, you can see that many different people have taken it to their hearts and loved it and lived by it over the years. I'm just thankful that Johnny has, as well -- and that now many of us have.
These have indeed been very inspirational and touching discussions, especially with all the troubles that seem to be touching people in our community lately. Thank you, sincerely, DITHOT, Liz, and everyone who has contributed to these threads because it has really brought some great words of wisdom into my life, and brought me in touch with some really interesting, insightful, and admirable people. I'm more glad for those who are going through harder times now, that they may be able to read this poem, look at these discussions, and see hope, see love, and most importantly, see peace.
This definitely strikes a chord with me. One of my expressions is, In the silence of my soul... when I am doing my soul-searching and accounting for myself. I do think it is vital to do that.
And it is still a beautiful world.
Thanks for posting this. One to treasure.
"Luck... inspiration... both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment."
You all have said everything I wanted to say and said it much better than I would have! This whole week has been very inspiring and touching. It is indeed a beautiful world!
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -
Wow! What a ride!
thank you Liz and all the zoners contributing so much for this discussion on Desiderata
i havent had much time to spend in the zone lately, caught up with work blah blah blah
but its been great to read this thread,
reminding me of what is important in life
i remember in the 70s when Desiderata came out as a kind of a spoken song on the radio
it caught my attention then and i sort of forgot about it until i caught this thread
i havent got much to add at all to this for everyone has said it, i guess God is called by many names but is the same for all
i remember when i had my daughter years ago, i was on my own and the midwife came to visit me and my baby
and said its a tough world, but its also a very beautiful world too
i think that these threads remind us of that beauty
we all need that in our lives so thank you again for bringing some of that beauty in these writings
"One time he, (Marlon Brando), says to me: 'How many films do you do a year?' I said, 'I dunno. Two or three.' He says, 'You've got to watch yourself. We've only got so many faces in our pocket.' "
Keep peace with your soul-if you can't do that then maybe the world does become overwhelming.But there is always hope-hope for oneself,hope for others ,hope for the world. ...Let me add my thanks to Liz and DITHOT and to all the contributors.You're an amazing bunch.
| 6,613 |
Pages
A.R. Von
A.R. is not just a reviewer at Romance Book Junkies. She's my partner and a very close friend. She helps in all aspects of the blog on top of her Writing Career as A.R. Von. She can be contacted @ [email protected]
Danielle
I am a romance book junkie myself and love to share great books I've read with other book junkies. I'm a 32 year old wife, mother and did I say book junkie? :) I read almost anything but mostly paranormal, historical and fantasy romance and preferably hot. Just a note: Blogging for me is a labor of love. I don't blog for money. I will always post an honest review of a book I've read.
Followers
Follow Me
Rating System
An amazing story! Definitely a keeper.
A must read. A good page turner.
A enjoyable read. An average book.
A book that has flaws and is hard to finish.
Terrible and couldn't finish it.
Giveaways
Monday, October 11, 2010
Olivia Cunning's Blog Tour & Giveaway
I am so excited that Olivia Cunning is here today on her Blog Tour. She's promoting her debut novel "Backstage Pass" which I had the pleasure of reading.
Welcome Olivia!
About Olivia:
(Copied from her profile on Goodreads)
Combining her love for romantic fiction and rock ‘n roll, Olivia Cunning writes erotic romance centered around rock musicians. Raised on hard rock music from the cradle, she attended her first Styx concert at age six and fell instantly in love with live music. She's been known to travel over a thousand miles just to see a favorite band in concert. As a teen, she discovered her second love, romantic fiction -- first, voraciously reading steamy romance novels and then penning her own. Growing up as the daughter of a career soldier, she's lived all over the country and overseas. She currently lives in Nebraska, but never stays in one place too long.
The first in a new erotic romance series, Backstage Pass is a sizzling mix of sex, love, and rock n' roll It's been months since Brian Sinclair, lead guitarist for the famous rock band, Sinners, composed anything. Unable to write the music that once flowed so naturally, Brian is lost without his musical mojo. But when sexy psychology professor Myrna Evans comes on tour to study groupie mentality, Brian may have found the spark he needs to reignite his musical genius. When lust turns to love, will Brian be able to convince Myrna that what they have is more than just a fling, and that now that he's found his heart's muse, he doesn't want to live without her?
In honor of today being Columbus Day Olivia has written a post about discoveries that your really going to enjoy.
Discoveries Worth Celebrating
by Olivia Cunning
Columbus Day means different things to different people. To bankers and federal employees it means a day off work. Lucky them! Some people don’t give it much thought at all. It’s just another Monday in a seemingly endless string of Mondays. Others find the holiday offensive and protest its commemoration. To me, Columbus Day is a celebration of discovery—not only discovery of the “new” world (which happens to be as old as the rest of the world), but of discovery in general.
A major theme in my debut novel, Backstage Pass, is discovery. You might be wondering if extra spicy, erotic romances about rock stars even have themes. When I write them, they do. Both main characters embark on a journey of discovery. Brian Sinclair, the hero of the novel and the sexy lead guitarist of the rock band Sinners, discovers love and inspiration in an unexpected place. Myrna Evans, the heroine and a human sexuality professor, embarks on a journey of self-discovery and reclaims both her sexual identity and her ability to love.
Brian has been looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces. He dates women who are ultimately wrong for him and who break his heart—mostly because they hop into bed with Sinners’ lead singer, Sed Lionheart. What Brian discovers in Backstage Pass is a woman unlike any he’s encountered in his past. Because she is so different and offers a challenge, it drives him to distraction. Myrna is highly educated, intelligent, and damned bossy. She knows what she wants out of life and it isn’t love and marriage or Brian’s affection. It also isn’t Sed Lionheart—bonus points for Myrna. Brian’s not sure he’ll ever win her heart, but he is smitten almost immediately. An incurable romantic, Brian knows Myrna is destined to be his. When he makes love to her for the first time (and thereafter), he hears music in his head. Exquisite and unique guitar compositions. Brian has discovered, not only the woman who can be faithful to him while still offering him the challenge he craves, but also his muse.
Myrna’s discovery is not so concrete. It’s more internal. Her journey in Backstage Pass is of self-discovery. At first, all she wants from Brian is a good time, which he delivers frequently with skill. There’s a reason Myrna avoids love. Her ex-husband was emotionally abusive. He made her question her self-worth, called her a whore, accused her of cheating, and did everything in his power to control her. She’s glad to finally be rid of him and refuses to give a man that kind of power over her again. Myrna fears she will lose herself if she slips even a little. She is terrified that she might end up doubting herself again. Brian is nothing like her ex-husband. He encourages Myrna to be who she is and to explore her sexuality. And boy do these two explore! They explore in a bed, in a bath, on a table, on a dresser, against a tour bus, in a bunk, in a tour bus, in a men’s room, on a motorcycle, in a car, on the beach, in a shower, backstage, chained to the ceiling, against a friend, with a friend, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some stops on their journey of sexual exploration. While her ex-husband belittled her for her sexual inhibition, Brian loves that quality in her. If there’s anything new she wants to try, he’s eager to assist and please. He’s equally uninhibited, so he’s the perfect companion for her journey. Emotionally and mentally, the voyage is very difficult for Myrna. Physically, she’s all systems go from the start. Brian is wonderful. He’s exactly what she needs, but until she discovers that for herself, he can’t break through her emotional barriers. Sometimes you can’t see what right in front of you because you’re hiding within yourself. By exploring her sexuality with Brian, Myrna rediscovers and embraces who she really is. Ultimately, this allows her to discover the magic of love. I’d say that’s a discovery worth celebrating.
Have you ever discovered something about yourself in an unexpected way?
Thank you Olivia for stopping by my blog today on your blog tour!
Now for the Giveaway:
1. This giveaway is only open to US residents due to shipping costs. Sorry :(
2. I'm going to make this giveaway really easy. The drawing will be held on October 18th using random.org.
3. Leave a comment answering Olivia's question.
4. +2 entries each for spreading the word about the giveaway. Leave the links in your comment.
5. (Optional) Leave you email address in your comment and I will also email you if you win or you can check back here on October 18th when I announce the winners
25
comments:
Ok, this is a little bloddy and ugly.. here it comes: I though i was a blood-o-phobic or something, but once i was forced by a teacher to asist an authopsy and I found that in a non-psicotic-way blood and dead bodies are not that terrifing. (Told you it was nasty... Sorry!!!!)And im not psycotic!! im just a student trying to learn :)
Have you ever discovered something about yourself in an unexpected way?
Yes, I have. During several medical emergencies, I have remained calm and was able to instruct others (who were in shock) what needs to be done and who to contact. I was quite surprised by my reactions because I thought I would be one of those immobilized.
Good morning. I'm about to head off to work. I'm currently wishing I had a federal job and the day off.
Jolene- LOL! I hear ya!
Alejandra- As an Anatomy and Physiology professor (no lie, that's my day job), I don't know how many squeamish nursing students insist they can not dissect eyes. Almost all of them find it interesting once they get going. TMI? Sorry.
Tracey- Thankfully, I've never been in that kind of situation. I'd probably be the one flipping out. You can help calm me down.
Great article Olivia. I think you called it right. The sense of discovery comes across loud and clear in Backstage Pass. That's what makes the series so fascinating to me, each band member has journey to travel and it's a journey of fun as well as learning lessons.
Oh yeah, Backstage Pass is a fabulous voyage of discovery! And I've had a lifetime of discovering things about myself in surprising ways, and I hope I keep doing that for a long time! No need to enter me in the drawing--I've already devoured my copy of this sizzling, sexy book!
Hi Olivia & Danielle!I'm seriously loving this book and I haven't even read it yet:) Nice to see that it's part of a series. As for the question... I can't say that I have since nothing seems to be really jumping out at me at the moment. I'm sure there's gotta be something but I'll have to dig around my brain for a moment and get back to you:)
justpeachy36- I don't know how many times I've tried sushi and tried to like it. There are so many varieties, maybe I'll eventually find one I like. So far... no sale! I did unexpectedly like calamari though. Squid is tasty.
Hi, yadkny! You have just discovered my book unexpectedly on Danielle's blog. I think that counts. :-)
I love this book and need to add it to my collection (I borrowed it from a friend)!!!I never thought of myself as a strong person, but that all changed when I went through my husbands deployment to Iraq while I was expecting our first child. I grew and became a much stronger person because of that [email protected]
Hey, Olivia! Loved your post! I discovered the word, "no!" When I discovered how useful it was I gave it a permanent adjective ... you got it, "Hell, no!" It took two hospital visits with five days each in intensive care before I discovered it so I'm not about to let it slip away. Thanks for reminding me that life is a journey ... I love that thing about sliding into heaven all used up and out of breath yelling, "What a ride!" When I'm eighty I'm still going to be putting out five books a year!!! And I've got a feeling you'll be right there with me!
Yes, I found out I had courage when I had to face a mentally ill, homeless fellow where I worked. I took charge of the situation, defused the tension and arranged for the police to come while I kept the man occupied. A strange thing to find out about myself in my 50's.
I look forward to discovering the first book of the Sinners Tour. Congratulations. Great blog, Dnielle, if I win(crossing my fingers) I'm including my email here. aries18 at charter dot net
Wow! This sounds like such a great book! I love books that focus on the growth and development of characters, over coming past issues, etc., which this sounds like it does.
Great question, by-the-way! Definitely! After a horrible break up with an ex-fiance, I decided to move away and basically break contact with every one but my family. I felt like I needed some time to 'find myself' again, figure out what I wanted for myself again. It was such an eye opener, and the best decision I've ever made for myself!
I keep seeing amazing reviews about Backstage Pass, would love to finally see for myself and read it! :-)
I wasn't very self-confident when I started working, I had this idea that I wasn't very good since I just started and lacked the experience, but due to not only the constant praise of my boss, but due to his sincere amazement how well I resolved a problem or introduced a new solution, I realized that if he the very talented and respected boss was amazed, then it must mean I show potential :-)
| 12,062 |
On top of everything else, the rupee has to deal with the Modi govt-RBI clash
The discord over the RBI’s autonomy comes at a time when the Rupee has been routed by oil prices.
Mumbai: In the end, India’s rupee pared losses and stocks surged on Wednesday as the government sought to dampen concerns over its rift with the central bank. The turn in sentiment may prove fleeting as investors remain concerned that the tensions may simmer with a general election approaching.
The discord over the Reserve Bank of India’s autonomy comes at a time when the nation’s assets have been routed by oil prices and a crisis in the shadow banking sector. A global risk aversion has added to the bad news, with foreigners pulling a combined $5 billion from local shares and debt last month.
“There is uncertainty as to how various policies will play out,” said Frances Cheung, head of Asia macro strategy at Westpac Banking Corp. in Singapore. “If that gives the market a perception that the blame game will be there for a while, that’s not going to be good for the rupee when there are other risks, including the fiscal deficit and external imbalances.”
The Finance Ministry said in a statement Wednesday it respects the autonomy of the RBI. That was after news broke that officials sent the central bank letters citing special powers the state has, which if invoked, could lead to the government directing the RBI to do its bidding.
While the rupee clawed back some of its losses after the government downplayed the quarrel with the central bank, it remains more than 13 percent down for the year. Stocks surged on the last day of what was the worst October for local equities since 2009, and benchmark 10-year yields posted their first monthly decline in three.
Read: Why India’s Government and Central Bank Are Feuding: QuickTake
Relations between the two have deteriorated in recent months, with the government unhappy with the central bank’s interest rate policy ahead of an election early next year, and its decision to invoke the “prompt corrective action” rule that curbs lending by the weakest state banks, among others. The RBI is determined to resolve the bad loans problems even if it comes at the cost of growth.
“We see the story as potentially having further negative impact in the near term, and remain negative on the INR,” Credit Agricole said in a note. – Bloomberg
| 2,411 |
Ramdan's 5 round Ram Mock
1.) Julio Jones WR Alabama
2.) Christian Ballard - DE Iowa
I originally had Bruce Carter (OLB North Carolina ) here but I belive he will not be able to workoout until the fall and his stock has dropped. If we want to take a chance on him coming back from reconstructive knee surgery he should be available a round or 2 later when the risk is less. If the Rams think he'll recuperate and be the player he looked to be then I would love to have him on our squad - moreso than Ballard. But taking him here - at this point in the draft seems like a risky pick.
| 584 |
Sam Sarpong dead at 40
Sam Sarpong has died.
The 40-year-old British-born actor, presenter and model - whose sister is June Sarpong - has reportedly taken his own life by jumping from a bridge in Pasadena, California.
His family told Us Weekly in a statement: "It is with great sadness that the family of Samuel Sarpong Jr. must share the news that Sam has passed away. The circumstances surrounding his death are currently under investigation and no additional details are known at this time. ... The family appreciates the thoughts and prayers and other expressions of sympathy, and request that privacy be respected at this extremely difficult time."
Police were reportedly called to the scene after Sam, who co-hosted MTV's 'Yo Mamma' with Wilmer Valderrama, was spotted standing outside the bridge railing.
Police Chief Phillip Sanchez said: "It is sad and troubling when an individual has become so despondent that he or she feels their only option is to end their life. These incidents can often have a significant impact on the victim's loved ones, first responders, and the community as a whole. My prayers go out to the family."
Sam's management company, Advanced Management, tweeted: "Devastated to hear that our friend and client @mrsamsarpong is no longer with us. Prayers and thoughts to the entire Sarpong family."
Sam modelled for Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci and Versace.
He also made fashion history by becoming the first black model to do a Louis Vuitton editorial campaign.
Sam had acting success in 'Veronica Mars', 'Bones', 'Everybody Hates Chris', 'Cold Case' and a small part in the upcoming 'American Crime Story'.
| 1,641 |
ON LINE RESERVATION
domenica 19 marzo 2017
URBEM FECISTI - ENGINEERING AND EMPIRE (1)
Why comparing Egytian pyramids and the Colosseum?
They are the symbols of ancient civilizations, both important but deeply different. The Egyptian civilation, although stable and long lasting, reamined local while the Roman one has been global
What was absolutely new with Rome, at least in part of the world, was the ability to create a very large empire with a modern conception of the state that is still alive and that remained stable over several centuries, 15 if we consider the Eastern Roman Empire. How was that possible?
The Roman Empire was essentially a confederation of cities, each with a high degree of local self-government. Each city, and the countryside that was controlled by it, had the obligation to recognize the general authority of Rome, to send to Rome a certain amount of taxes but it was free to keep the local traditions if they were not in contrast with the authority of Rome. In that way local elites became part of the Roman power system. Eventually, most of the emperors were not born in Rome but their origins were in the provinces.
Promoting urbanization was a key to develop that model of government. In that way local elites were concentrated in a unique place rather than being dispersed here and there and control was easier.
In addition, people living in the cities were privileged over those living in the countryside.
The foundation of new cities and the growth of existing ones proceeded all along the existence of the Western Empire. Rome was the first megalopolis of the human history, surpassing 1 million of inhabitants between I and II century AD and remaining close to 1 million till the first half of the V century AD. Several other cities had more than one hundred thousands inhabitants and many between 20 a 100 thousands.
Ancient Rome
In the IV century AD about 30 % of the population of the empire lived in a city. That was an enormous number considering that the economy was based essentially on agriculture.
After the fall of the Western Empire, no European city reached the size of Rome before the XVIII century.Civil engineering played an essential role in that because it allowed cities to grow and to be good places where to live.
The Egyptian pyramids are absolutely impressive, especially when we consider the available technologies, but they were simply the burial place of one person, the pharaoh. There is a pyramid in Rome too, but it was built by a private citizen, Caius Cestius.
The Colosseum, the symbol of Rome, was instead a place that was thought to be used everyday by thousands of normal people attending to the shows.
And most of what we see today was built for general use.
Via Aurelia Antica
Porta Maggiore
Via di San Gregorio
Via Turati
Walking in Rome it is possible, for example, to see the remains of ancient aqueducts (by the way, one is still in use, the Aqua Virgo), of to cross the Tiber over bridges built two thousands years ago. Other examples of great engineering are the baths, such as those of Caracalla.
| 3,090 |
Oklahoma: The lone blemish on Oklahoma’s schedule was a 38-31 home loss to Iowa State in early October. It was shocking at the time, but the Cyclones did the same thing to TCU a few weeks later, making it a less and less shocking outcome as the season progressed. A win over Ohio State in Columbus was an early highlight. And after the ISU loss, OU had a few other close calls before cruising to an 11-1 finish. The offense is the story, averaging 45.3 points per game.
TCU: TCU jumped out to a 7-0 start and a No. 4 ranking, including a September upset over then-No. 6 Oklahoma State, before following in Oklahoma’s footsteps with an upset loss to Iowa State. The Horned Frogs lost to the Sooners 38-20 on Nov. 11, but won their last two to finish the regular season 10-2 and earn a spot in the Big 12 title game. The strength of TCU is its defense, which allowed just 15.7 points per game.
PLAYERS TO WATCH:
Baker Mayfield, QB, Oklahoma: After finishing as the runner-up to Lamar Jackson last year, Mayfield is the heavy favorite to win the Heisman this time around. For the season, Mayfield has thrown for 4,097 yards and 37 touchdowns with just five interceptions. His completion percentage (71.4) and his quarterback rating (203.3) are No. 1 nationally. He has thrown at least three touchdown passes in five straight games.
FILE – In this Nov. 4, 2017 file photo, TCU quarterback Kenny Hill (7) throws against Texas during the first half of an NCAA college football in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU will be without senior quarterback Kenny Hill and safety Niko Small because of unspecified injuries, when they face Texas Tech. (AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)
Kenny Hill, QB, TCU: If TCU is going to keep up with the Sooners offensively, Kenny Hill needs to play one of the best games of his career. It won’t be easy. Hill returned from a concussion to throw for 325 yards and three touchdowns in a win over Baylor. He’ll need a similar effort against OU. Above all, Hill needs to avoid turnovers, which plagued him early in his career. This year’s he’s thrown only five interceptions and is more of a running threat than Mayfield.
WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH: Every chance you get to watch Baker Mayfield is worth taking. Mayfield could put the capper on his Heisman Trophy quest and clinch another conference championship for the Sooners in the process. Mayfield put up 333 yards and three TDs the last time he faced the TCU defense, but that was on his home field. On a neutral field (that’s only 20 minutes from TCU’s campus), TCU could make this a much more competitive game.
WHAT’S ON THE LINE: A win would give Oklahoma its third Big 12 title in a row and clinch a spot in the College Football Playoff. If the Big 12 hadn’t brought back the title game, those tasks would already be completed. TCU is on the outside looking in for the CFP, but can win its second Big 12 title by pulling off the upset. A TCU win would pretty much seal another season without the Big 12 in the playoff, while opening up a bevy of scenarios for the rest of the field.
| 3,064 |
TL Windshield Issues
My 2006 TL has had 3 windshields so far and ALL have been optically distorted. The 2 loaner cars did too. One was so bad Iwas carsick. The service mgr was shocked that no one had pointed it out to them yet. Am I the only one with perfect vision seeing the imperfections ? Has anyone had this problem, and should I continue replacing them or start with Lemon Law ?I am ready to sell it and get a Lexus or Infinity.
Comments
Were you wearing polarized sunglasses? I noticed something strange in my windshield today. My sunglasses are polarized lens and tinted glass (not aftermarket tinting) can look different through polarized lenses. With the glasses off, I really didn't notice the distortion, which I only saw in the bottom right area of the windshield.
Yes, I do wear Polarized glasses, however, I had a Legend for 17 yrs & always worePolarized lenses and NEVER had this problem !! Nor have the problem in othercars - gotta be the TL's. One of the loaner cars I was given while they were replacingone of my windshields was even worse than any I had on mine. Service people wereshocked no one else had pointed it out to them sooner. The Pacific Ocean horizonis flat not rippled as it appears through TL windshields #1, #2 and now #3. Guess I'll go for #4 .......
Well, I took a rock to my windshield on I-95 and had to replace the glass. Acura dealership recommended a company that they use, and I called them to schedule a replacement. Replacement seemed fine, but my short (OK, petite) wife noticed some optical distortion along the bottom 1-2 inches of glass as well as in the corners. Her passenger at the time noticed it too. Glass repair outfit said that the windshield was under warranty and that the distortion was considered a defect, so they came out and replaced the glass again. Windshield #2 has identical problem. Both were PPG. OK, several questions:
Should I have the glass done yet again? Spoke with the dealer and he says there's no difference b/w the ppg and the "honda" marked windshield, though I'm considering getting "honda" glass next time around (although isn't it made by ppg?) as a possibility.
Is this a normal distortion due to the curve of the windshield? If so, why was it not apparent with the stock windshield? Is it normal for aftermarket windshields?
Would I be causing or risking a different problem by having the windshield taken out and replaced a third time? Or are windshield replacements no big deal.
Does such a distortion indicate a structural or unsafe flaw in the glass or is it just a distortion?
Any help and enlightenment I could get on this subject will be much appreciated. Many thanks in advance.
Done correctly, windshield replacements are no big deal... but the windshield is a structural part of the car and the job needs to be done by a reputable company.
Glass distortion is common, especially in aftermarket "OEM" windshields. It's often not noticed by most drivers.
Distortion in the glass is most likely not going to be a safety issue in terms of structural strength, but if the glass is distorted, I would have them do the job again, and see if they can use a Honda Windshield. If not, see if they can use a different brand then these first 2 times.Obvisously, the PPG glass is not a very good option for you.
Pilkington is a OEM supplier for car companies like BMW and Volvo and are supposed to be very high in quality, but I know people who have had Lexus windshields replaced with Pilkington glass and complain about this same distortion issue.
Distorted glass can cause dizziness in some drivers and if it is affecting you, it should be replaced.
When you break a windshield and have it replaced, it should be every bit as good as when you bought the car new.
Good to know - I just bought a used 03 TL and the existing Honda windshield has a rock crack that is starting to spider. I took that into consideration when I made my offer and will make sure I replace it with a Honda windshield.
After having 4 replacement windshields in the 06 TL, they ALL had some degreeof rippling in the laminate - some worse/bigger than others - and depending on wherethe ripples occur, really made driving feel like I was in a fun house, althoughnot having fun - the after market windshield was actually the best - good luck
So I'm a new TL owner and unfortunately I already have a crack on my windshield. The quote I received from the dealer is $900. I have found other glass repair shops that charge around $2-300. Should I go to the dealer to replace it or go to the cheaper shops? Thanks
| 4,582 |
Angeline has been on
the run from her sire, Linus, for centuries. She’s tired, and she’s lonely.
High from mescaline-induced blood, she sees a sign—a church that seems to glow
in the distance—and she knows. Her future mate is in that building.
Important Author’s
Note:
Dark Mercy is the
beginning of Hadrian and Angeline’s story, not the end. Their HEA will happen
later in their own full-length novel. This story is important both for the
overall series and for this couple, but it’s not their HEA. Just a mild
disclaimer so no one goes in with false expectations for this story.
My Thoughts
Dark
Mercy is a short story in the Preternaturals series that nicely sets the stage
for the full-length novel to come. As the author states, the story is important for the characters
and their situation. Which, by the way, is a situation that is completely unique
and not one I’ve ever read about before. So if you’re looking for something
different, this is it!
About the Characters…
Angeline is quite a tempestuous character. She’s fiery, temperamental and well, maybe
even a bit neurotic. However, I liked her. She has not had an easy time of
being a vampire and she showed enough vulnerability to arouse compassion.
Hadrian is the hero in this story. He’s conflicted like no other
hero I’ve ever read about. You’ll have
to read the story to find out what I mean by that because to say more will be going
into spoiler territory. He’s kind-hearted but is definitely no pushover. And he
does have a bit of a dark side that makes him attractive. He and Angeline make
quite a couple and I cannot wait for their HEA to come out.
Bottom Line
This is a novel that any lover of steamy Paranormal Romance will
not want to miss out on! It’s a great
short story even without the HEA and I’d recommend reading it.
I’ve read the first book in Winter’s Preternaturals series, Blood Lust, last year. Which was
awesome. I rated it 5 stars. I plan to soon
read #2: Save My Soul and #3: The Catalyst that was just released. In fact, how’s this for timing my lovelies, this week only, there’s
a huge sale on all three of the Preternaturals novels. Blood
Lust is 99 cents, Save my Soul is
99 cents and The Catalyst is $2.99. This is fate, yes?
Ooh Kat ... this does sound very intriguing to say the least. I have heard this authors name tossed around here and there and if I'm not mistaking I think I have a book by her (I will have to double check just to make sure ... hell for all we know I could very well have my authors mixed. LoL!) But back to the review ... STELLAR as always!
Guild Hunter Series Love
Night Huntress Love
First novel in my favourite Paranormal Romance series
First novel in my favourite Urban Fantasy series
My Intent
I started "Smitten with Bad Boy Heroes" with hope of bringing those of us who love the bad boys we meet in novels together to express our opinions. Since my favourite genres are Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy, most of what's here will be reviews of novels in that genre. However, you may see some Contemporary Romance as well. I strive only to share with other readers the amazing stories I've read from wonderful and talented authors. My reviews are based on my opinion alone and everything on this blog is written entirely for my love and affection of books. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do and I hope you enjoy my blog!
| 3,419 |
Month: March 2017
Is Twitter doing enough to prevent harassment and bullying? There’s a fine line between free speech and hate speech, and in recent months, Twitter has doubled down on policing hate speech on its platform. On Monday morning, Twitter briefly suspended David Duke’s account. Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, is known to tweet anti-Semitic and racist comments on the platform. Twitter has stated that hateful and abusive conduct is not allowed on its platform. So why, after only a brief suspension, did the company reinstate Duke’s account? Twitter previously banned white nationalist Richard Spenser, although his account was eventually reinstated as well. Twitter is sending mixed messages about reigning in hate speech.
David Duke later tweeted that he didn’t know why his account had been suspended. Twitter later admitted that the suspension was a mistake. In fact, Twitter not only restored David Duke’s account, but it also reinstated the ex-KKK grand wizard’s tweets about shutting down synagogues.
Twitter’s actions regarding David Duke’s account contradict CEO Jack Dorsey’s proclamations that the company planned to take a completely new approach to abuse. How does Twitter decide who gets banned and who doesn’t? Last year, the company permanently banned former Breitbart tech editor and far-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos for abusive attacks against Leslie Jones.
Twitter’s campaign to prevent harassment, bullying and abuse is more about generating positive news headlines than anything else. It’s safe to say the company wants to have its cake and eat it too.
Andrea McWilliams is known to many as a skilled strategist and fundraiser, who has been lobbying support to push for the implementation of actions that are vital to the development of certain communities. He is known for her attention to detail and she brings out a unique quality that portrays her as a tactful strategist and knowledgeable professional, who ensures all the issues she pursues are for the best interest of humanity.
She has been mentioned on national media including USA Today, FOX News, Wall Street Journal and NPR as a fundraiser who is concerned about changing the world and instilling an air of unity even among those who are neglected. Andrea McWilliams has also been featured in a number of publications for her effort to alleviate the challenges the world and communities face. Andrea McWilliams has had her profile highlighted on Texas Women’s Chamber of Commerce as a powerful person in politics and lobby groups.
Andrea McWilliams received a number of awards and profiles among them being the “Profiles in Power” offered by the Austin Business Journal. Andrea McWilliams was also recognized by the Girl Scout of Central Texas under the “Woman Distinction” category award. These are just few among the many awards and recommendations she has earned along the way while building her career as a lobbyist.
Community volunteer
In the community, Andrea McWilliams is renowned volunteer and supporter of courses of action that are directed towards alleviating the challenges different communities encounter through their daily lives. Andrea is a philanthropist and has been mentioned on many occasions among the “All-Stars” in the Fortune 500 list, Austin American Statesman. Andrea McWilliams has also been working with non-profit foundations to support the eradication of some diseases and ailments, and her push for action helped to garner support for positive action.
NexBank is a reliable financial institution based in Dallas, Texas with many services and features that save you more money in fees and assists you in maximizing your money. They have been proudly serving their customers for over 50+ years. John Holt is the president and CEO of NexBank. Holt says, he is working diligently with his upper level management to ensure the growth of their institution as well as holding the highest level of customer service. His strong leadership team is there to back Holt and NexBank towards their future growth.
Why Choose NexBank?
If you’re interested in ensuring that your money is backed with ample finances, NexBank has over $40 million dollars in assets. Their stock holders are proud of their success and continue to back Holt and his leadership team in every step of the way towards their growth. Holt spoke at a recent financial conference and vowed he will continue to put the needs of his customers first. PRN News has named them one of the largest growing online financial institutions in the industry. They have acquired over 12,000+ additional financial customers and are steady expanding.
NexBank Features
– Free online bill pay
– Free direct deposit
– Free checks
– IRA accounts
– Mortgage accounts
– Industrial accounts
– Business accounts
and more…
You can become a member of NexBank for registering for an account on their easy to read and navigate website. They offer amazing programs that are centered around their customers needs. For example, students and their parents have the opportunity to save on college tuition and other expenses through a merger with New Jersey based, College Savings Bank. Join NexBank today and become a part of a FDIC backed financial institution.
In the current financial climate, banks are less and less likely to give loans easily, with high rates and requirements. For people who need capital and fast, there have been many methods in which to get a loan. Equities First lending is gaining popularity in recent years as an option for those who need capital and pronto.
According to Al Christy, Jr, Founder and CEO of Equities First Holdings, loans collateralized by stocks is a unique alternative for many in the current day. During a typical three year loan term, using stocks as collateral works, because during a down market the borrower is lowering his investment risk. On top of this, says Christy, this loan allows the borrower to walk away at any time, despite depreciation, keeping the initial loan proceeds.
Stock based loans generally have a three to four percent interest rate and 50-75% loan-to-value ratios. These kinds of loans have no restriction, so they can be used for any purpose.
“Stock-based loans have been historically ignored as a viable borrowing option largely because a number of unscrupulous lenders have unceremoniously dumped borrowers’ collateral into the open market, failed to return stocks upon transaction maturity, or failed to address other concerns,” said Christy.
Equities First Holdings primarily provides clients with alternative financing solutions and has completed over 650 transactions worth almost $1.5 billion to date. They have offices in nine countries, including the UK, China and Australia. Alternative loans like those they specialize in are especially beneficial for a company or individual who seeks to look outside the box to gain capital and contact this company.
Social media campaigning is an ideal way to drive traffic to your social media pages, website and local business. With a successful campaign, you should expect to bring in hundreds of new customers all looking to utilize your services. With a campaign done on sites like Twitter and Facebook, you should put your full focus on specific business objectives. These goals might include building email subscription lists, increasing traffic to your site, getting feedback from clients or improving the overall engagement of your brand.
Your objective for running a successful social media campaign should be both measurable and discrete. Before the campaign is launched, you should obtain a baseline calculation of a targeted metric that will track any changes performed throughout the actual marketing campaign. Objectives should be calculated according to the message you wish to convey and your target audience. For example, varying demographics have different preferences for what they’d like to see on a social media platform. This encourages business owners to customize their campaign to the specific audience of their choosing.
Be sure to use tools to track the metrics of the campaign to ensure that it is bringing in the visitor traffic that you wish. There are a variety of free social media marketing applications that you can download that will track tweets, likes, shares and keywords regarding your brand. Some apps even identify who is viewing your social media posts and how they’re responding to them. You’ll be able to see how long a person is visiting your page and where they’ve come from.
A definitive timeline for the campaign needs to be established to avoid overspending. Campaigning on Facebook and Twitter can be incredibly expensive, so you need to keep it short and sweet. Get your point across, but don’t spend too much money trying to accomplish this goal.
There is strength in numbers and the Nine9 agency gets that. Touted as the “The UnAgency”, Nine9 represents the 99 percent of talent that isn’t represented by an agency and their approach is making huge strides in the entertainment industry.
For the past 12 years, Nine9 has stayed true to their mission of giving their talent (in 12 major cities) the tools, encouragement, and respect they might not get from other casting organizations. By cultivating nurturing and trusting relationships with their talent and utilizing the latest in technology, opportunities are seized upon in real time so that their talent is in the same room and given the same shot at commercials, runway, print, and film gigs as talent represented by well-known agencies.
Nine9 rightfully has pages of testimonials on their site. One of them is Lorena, a passionate young model who booked a Black Fashion Week USA runway gig in addition to an I Rock Fashion show through the agency. She credits posture, projection, and personality courses with helping her develop the technique, walk, and confidence needed to get hired for those jobs.
There are many dreamers taking advantage of Nine9 talent agency’s amenities that see results quickly, as Taija did. Less than two weeks after she signed on, she booked a four-figure Neutrogena skin care commercial and worked with Donna Grossman, a major casting director.
Frank has been with Nine9 for seven years. By going to Meet and Greets and taking classes, this former background actor’s career has been catapulted into a featured music video role, commercials, and he was in the most expensive fight scene of all time, thanks to being hired for a Batman movie. Nine9 The UnAgency clearly works for those willing to put in the work.
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter allow page owners to create campaigns, which are sponsored posts found on the front page of people’s timelines. What this does it help people find your page without having to do a search for it. You’re marketing to a wider audience that might not have been able to find you otherwise. After running a successful social media campaign, you could potentially bring in thousands of new customers who are visiting your pages and sites on a daily basis.
Campaigning isn’t just for the large conglomerate companies that have the marketing department to run this type of advertisement. Social media campaigns are great for new business owners and startups looking to bring in new clientele. Because it can be difficult to run a successful business in its first year, expanding your audience to include social media goers is essential. The issue with advertising on the front page of sites like Twitter and Facebook is the price associated with the creation of your ads. On average, you should expect to pay a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on your target audience. For example, Facebook charges a smaller fee to a business owner who only wants to reach 100 people and a much larger fee if you’d like to reach 1,000.
When you campaign on social media sites, you need to be prepared for a large flow of traffic to your page. This includes people who are going to have questions, leave comments and who might also write reviews. With your campaign, you need to have a good customer service team put into place who work hard to reply to client feedback. This gives your site a professional and responsive feel and this will encourage visitors to want to utilize your company’s services.
When you are a business owner, you need to incorporate the right marketing strategies into your company. You can have flyers, brochures and business cards made up, but you aren’t reaching a large enough audience. Online marketing is becoming all the rage for those who wish to reach a variety of people on the internet. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter allow users to create campaigns that get their page out there to expose their brand.
Social media campaigning can be quite expensive because you choose how large of an audience you want to market to. If you make the decision to reach over 1,000 people, you’ll probably be spending about $1,000 for this particular job. It’s not cheap to advertise on social media sites, but it is almost always worth it. If you’re advertising to so many people in a specific demographic, you’ll find that these individuals are apt to visit your page and utilize your services. This brings in more money for you and your business and helps to keep your company alive with a fresh flow of online traffic.
With social media campaigning comes the need for a solid customer service department. You need to understand that once you launch a campaign, you’re going to have a lot of people visiting your page and asking questions, leaving comments and writing reviews. When interacting with clients, you need to be professional at all times or else you’re going to do damage to your company. Once you’ve made a bad name for yourself, it is very difficult to recover and get your customers back. Before campaigning on any social media site, look at their prices and determine how large of an audience you wish to contact. This helps your advertising endeavors stay within your budgeting means to avoid overspending.
Social media campaign strategies typically apply best practices designed to spread the brand’s message across devices and platforms with clarity and consistency. A new look at social media as a medium could change this practice. Tom Goodwin, head of innovative Zenith Media, writes in TechCrunch that the medium is now less important than the message. In others words, strategizing a social media campaign based on user devices and platforms might not be the best way to go. Instead, brand message is most relevant.
Here’s how it breaks down. Since the beginning of media, consumers have chosen to receive their messages through various means. First, through newspapers and radio and later through television, cable and social platforms. Goodwin posits that we are now in the post-digital era of media consumption. In this era, consumers take digital for granted and understand that they can access newspapers, television, radio and all of the traditional channels via a digital medium. Indeed, not only have the old media silos broken down, but device silos have also been eliminated. In order to reach the widest audience, apps are available in both Android and iOS. Cross-platform compatibility is highly sought after and achieved and many platforms are capable of integration.
Of course, social media platforms remain siloed, to a degree. Tumblr will never be Snapchat, which will never be Facebook, which will never be Twitter or YouTube. Yet, we constantly see similar features across platforms, such as timelines and notifications. In addition, Facebook users post YouTube videos and Tweet screenshots. Memes translate across multiple social media platforms. In short, when developing a social media campaign strategy in the post-digital age, marketers should strive to clarify and control their message knowing that it can be carried across digital space in ways the sender might not have intended.
Cardiology is a branch in the vast field of medicine that deals with complications of the heart and circulatory system as a whole. A cardiologist is a specialist who diagnoses these matters. In addition to conventional medicine training, cardiologists receive additional grooming which makes them experts in their field.
On the onset of symptoms such as chest pain (angina), breath shortness and heart tremors, it is often recommended to visit a cardiologist. After consulting the expert, patients can establish the extent of the complication. If it is serious, the cardiologist will give the appropriate diagnosis. On the contrary, if it is mild the professional will be obliged to avail counsel on how to avert the risks of cardiovascular conditions by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
Before diagnosing a patient, most cardiologists carry out a series of tests. These include; an evaluation of the client medical history, ascertaining blood pressure, mass, the state of the blood vessels as well as lungs. If the preliminary assessments do not yield any meaningful results, advanced procedures are undertaken. The techniques employed for a deeper analysis include an echocardiogram (ECG), a sound wave representation of the heart’s structure, and cardiac catheterization, an evaluation of the electrical system of the heart. The physician may also recommend physical exercise, which seeks to establish how a patient’s heart behaves under certain activities.
After diagnosis, the cardiologist may administer treatment. A majority of cardiologists perform the light surgical procedures such catheterizations, fitting of pacemakers and angioplasty. However, not all cardiologists are surgeons. Complicated procedures such as transplants are left to the hands of trained doctors, where cardiologists only act as consultants.
About Edward Honig
Edward Honig is a renowned cardiologist, operating from the Glen Clove Hospital in New York. Over the years, Edward Honig has earned multiple plaudits through his exemplary work in the field of internal medicine. A testament to this is the accreditation bequeathed on him by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Throughout his practice, Edward Honig has upheld high operational standards. For this reason, a significant percentage of his surgeries have been a great success. The positive feedback from his clients further enhances his soaring reputation.
| 18,498 |
1955 Chevrolet Truck - First Time’s A Charm
Don’t let the title fool ya, though this may be the Carlson’s first crack at a full-size classic, it’s by no means their first rodstoration. Josh has been building cool custom mini-trucks for years and this awesome ’55 Chevy is the lucky recipient of years of home shop fabrication and customizing experience.
It all started one day when Josh just happened to spy the ’55 sitting forlornly in a yard on the outskirts of town. Josh had always liked the tri-five Chevy styling and, after mulling it over for a few days, decided it was time to build a full-size classic pickup rather than another mini-truck. He and his father-in-law Buzz swung by a day later and Josh left behind the wheel of his new project—rattling, smoking, and shaking away.
2/7
As is the case with any full-on rodstoration, Josh began by totally disassembling the ’55 right down to its bare frame. From there he rebuilt and/or replaced the suspension components, made his modifications, and sent the whole shebang out for powdercoating. Once the frame and components were back in his hands he assembled the chassis, installed the engine and trans, and sent the rolling chassis to the muffler shop for a custom exhaust system. With the pickups foundation under control the next order of business was the sheetmetal. Josh took care of a bunch of rust and rot, replacing the floor, the cab corners, inner and outer lower doors, and the door opening steps. While he was thrashing he went ahead and filled and smoothed the firewall, shaved the door handles and drip rails, and rounded the door corners as well.
With the cab reworked and back on the chassis the next step was the electrical wiring, Josh said this was his first try at a complete rewire and ended up really enjoying the experience. With the wiring done and tested Josh then fired up the pickup’s Dennis Grimm-built small-block Chevy for break in—the engine purred like a kitten bringing a smile to Josh’s face and giving him a fresh shot of excitement and motivation. The front sheetmetal came next and Josh, in keeping with his customizing prowess, decided that the Chevy’s front end deserved a bit of a makeover, too, so he welded and blended both fenders to the front upper and lower grille surrounds making the assembly a one-piece unit. He then Frenched the headlights and fabricated a custom one-of-a-kind grille bar and stood back to take a look. After a bit of chin scratching he decided on an additional modification—he trimmed the lower few inches off the front clip and fabricated a custom bumper which he tucked rearward into the area opened up by his trimming of the sheetmetal. Once the front end was modified Josh just couldn’t let the hood remain untouched—so he sliced it up and pancaked it, trimming 2¼ inches from its lower edge, and while he was cutting he went ahead and rounded the hood corners to match the doors, too. Having completed his handiwork on the cab and front sheetmetal, the next item on the agenda was the bed …
3/7
Josh decided that the rear of his pickup had to be every bit as custom as the front, so it was with that intent he rolled up his sleeves and went to work. First, he fashioned the perimeter walls of the bed out of 16-gauge sheetmetal and sections of both round and square tubing. He fabricated it so that the rear of the box ended at the rear fender lines and followed the curve of them as well. The upper side box rail area was narrowed to give the fenders a larger appearance and the tubing was carried all the way to and across the tailgate area. Josh also fabricated the custom bed side steps, too, fashioning them so the exhaust tips (also fabricated by him) fit tightly under the step edges. Since the box had been configured as a closed unit (no working tailgate) Josh fabricated a remotely controlled custom, doored cargo box that rises upward electromechanically (utilizing seven linear actuators, eleven relays, and six limiting switches) from inside the bed walls for secure storage. He also fabricated a one-piece rear bed wall/rolled pan combination and extended the fender corners to mount flush with the custom bed sides and rear panel.
Josh spared no imagination or elbow grease on the pickup’s interior either. He not only fashioned the custom consoles but, like the rest of the truck, he did everything aside from the actual upholstery and carpet installation—heck, he even fabricated his own steering wheel from scratch and handled the installation of the Vintage Air system and the stereo, too.
At this point, I’m sure I’ve left out a bunch of Josh’s custom modifications but I’m sure you gather just how much thought and work he’s invested in the Chevy. And, I’m sure you’ll agree that he’s done one heck of a job at that. Now all we have to do is bide our time and keep an eye open for Josh’s next full-size classic truck project, cuz I’m pretty darn sure this baby isn’t the last custom we’ll see rolling out of the Carlson garage.
| 5,049 |
Commissioners: Yankee Deal at “Breaking Point”, Renovations on Hold
This was to be the month that contractors were to begin renovations to PNC Field in Moosic in anticipation that the baby Yankees would be playing here in 2013, but so far, nothing has been done. The clock is ticking and still there is no deal to sell the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees.
Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien said negotiations to sell the team to the Yankees organization are at a breaking point. He added there should be a deal this week or there may be no deal at all.
This season, the Yankees are playing all their games on the road to allow for planned renovations at the stadium, but the more than $30 million project is on hold while the county negotiates the sale of the team.
“Right now we’re at a breaking point. We’ll either get a deal done or we won’t so we need to make sure we’re protecting our taxpayers and baseball and its future in Lackawanna County,” O’Brien said.
Lackawanna County majority commissioners O’Brien and Jim Wansacz said there are still three major sticking points in negotiations but would not elaborate on what they are.
“I think I expected negotiations to be done much sooner, quite frankly. I expected them to be done in 2011. The fact that it’s taken this long is a little frustrating,” O’Brien added.
The back-and-forth between the Yankees and the commissioners has pushed the PNC Field project back more than a month and work is supposed to be done by opening day of next year.
The plan is to demolish the top of the stadium, but keep the field the same. Lackawanna County commissioners said they are confident a year is enough time to get the project done. Even if it’s not, there are alternatives to make sure there is baseball at PNC Field in 2013.
“A lot of things can be done in a year, once there’s a contract in place, if there’s a contract in place, we’re pretty confident that we can get a stadium done on time,” said Commissioner Jim Wansacz.
Newswatch 16 contacted the contractor for the PNC Field renovations to see if they thought the stadium could be done in time. They did not return our calls for comment.
| 2,202 |
Southampton have only eight points after the first seven rounds and sit in the lower part of the table. The fans are not satisfied and manager Mauricio Pellegrino is feeling some pressure. Even more as the Saints are in mini series of two consecutive defeats. They lost 1:0 to Manchester United at St Mary and lost 2:1 to Stoke City at Britannia Stadium. Pellegrino is in danger of losing three successive Premier league matches, something that will surely increase the pressure on him. The players are well aware of the situation and I believe they will give the maximum on this match. Most of the players are ready, but Shane Long is rated as doubtful. The striker has missed the Republic of Ireland's game against Wales in the qualification for the World Cup because of a hip injury. According to the last news, Long is expected to recover in time for this match.
Newcastle are in the middle of the table with 10 points. I believe the fans are satisfied, especially because Newcastle are newcomers in the Premier league. However, the actual form is far from desired. The Magpies have one defeat and one draw on the last two games. They lost 1:0 to Brighton and played an 1:1 draw with Liverpool. The draw against Liverpool isn't a bad result, but the fact they were struggling to create chances surely is. Worst of all, the atmosphere in the squad is bad. Not because of the poor results, but something else - training ground fight between captain Jamaal Lascelles and Mo Diame. The situation is quite embarrassing for Newcastle and manger Rafa Benitez. Even more as midfielder Jonjo Shelvey fractured his finger trying to break up the fight between Lascelles and Diame. This isn't something new for Newcastle - in the match with Aston Villa in 2005, Kieron Dyer and his teammate Lee Bowyer were sent off after brawling with each other on the pitch. Benitez has some additional issues as five more players are struggling with injuries - defenders Paul Dummett and Massadio Haidara are definitely sidelined, while Christian Atsu, Matt Ritchie and Jonjo Shelvey are rated as doubtful. The last one could play wearing a special cast.
Head to head record is on Southampton side. The Saints have won 15 Premier League matches against the Magpies, more than against any other team. Even more, Southampton have won the last four mutual games played at St Mary. The results are clearly showing the domination - 3:1 in April 2016, 4:0 in September and March 2014, and 2:0 in November 2012. As You could see, the Saints have scored 13 goals on the last four home matches.
Southampton vs Newcastle Prediction:
According to me, Southampton are favorites on this match. To be honest, this is more against Newcastle. The atmosphere in their squad is bad at the moment. I've already wrote about the fight between captain Jamaal Lascelles and Mo Diame. Manager Rafa Benitez has difficult type of problem - Southampton are the worst opponents for him. He has suffered defeat in all three of his previous Premier League games away to Southampton - with Liverpool in 2005, with Chelsea in 2013 and Newcastle in 2016. I expect another defeat for Benitez.
| 3,141 |
Canadian Draw
Strachan cites the NHL’s state-side TV deal, expansion, which he labels as a “spectacular failure”, and then how American owners won’t want to see another Canadian team:
This is a league that does not share its attendance revenues. So a Canadian team might draw well at home, but an American owner couldn’t care less. He’s not going to see any of it. What he does know is that Canadian teams are traditionaly the NHL’s worst road draws. An owner in a major American city doesn’t want to try to sell tickets for games against teams from places like Winnipeg, Quebec and Waterloo — or even Calgary and Edmonton for that matter. He wants visits from New York, Boston, Los Angeles and so on.
Now, once Balsillie purchases the Predators, the battle will be on. He will want to move that team out of Nashville and into Canada. Perhaps, down the road, some other entrepeneur will try to follow a similar pattern with the Atlanta Thrashers or the Florida Panthers, and some of the other cities that Bettman brought into the NHL.
And while Canada is a nice place, it’s not the place to be if you’re trying to establish your sports league as a major league in the United States.
Strachan would be dead-on if this was a team other than Nashville. The Predators were last in the league in filling a building on the road this past season. The other teams Strachan mentions are actually #25 and #27 on the list.
Canadian teams stretch across the list, from #6 Vancouver to #26 Ottawa.
As the current schedules are very division-heavy, remember that division opponents are important here. Boston’s #3 on the list thanks to Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Buffalo, teams that collectively averaged sell-outs for the season.
For that same reason, you have to cut Nashville at least a little slack, having to visit St. Louis and Chicago as much as they did last season (about 20% of their road games right there). Divisional opponent Columbus, despite their perennial non-success, still keeps at least some crowd at home, but also falls short on the road, ranking #29. Detroit, generally a top draw around the league, ranks #12, the best road ranking from the Central division.
If a team is already the worst road draw, the other owners might just be willing to test out another locale, no matter where it is.
Strachan brings up a thought you’ve probably read a good amount the past few years:
In 1994, after the Rangers won the Stanley Cup, there existed another universal view of the game, a view that was diametrically opposite to the one held today. At that time, the NHL was seen as the league poised for stardom.
The NHL definitely looked like it was ready for that #3 spot, right behind the NFL and MLB here in the States. They never got there, and now the NHL would probably rather not look at any popularity charts.
However, one thing to remember is 1994 was when the league was at its all-time high in Canadian teams, with eight. It wasn’t a long time, just three seasons that the Ottawa Senators existed before the Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche.
| 3,108 |
@uiruki You don't happen to have any tips for Neptune do you? I'm struggling a little against her second form. I think I may have to create some stabby people to switch into my party setup as my magic users obviously aren't massively useful in the fight.
| 254 |
Hi Guys,now the time has come for my travelogue. I wanted to go to Bali for quite some time, but I never cared abouit it, and this year I got the chance spontaneously ;)Bali is a Hindu island - so every...
Hi Guys,a new season has started, and of course I put together a wish list again ... As you already know, bags are always my favourites. Yes, yes, I already told you 100 times before about my passion...
Hi Guys,I'm back from holidays and in with holdays new ideas come up ;) I had the idea that a permanent hair removal would be a great beauty project for this fall and winter - be free of hair in spring...
| 615 |
Industrial DIN Rail Power Supplies
Regulated AC to DC or DC to DC Conversion
UNO, STEP, TRIO and QUINT Switch Mode Power Supplies are used in a wide variety of sectors and industries, such as machine building and systems manufacturing, building automation, shipbuilding, or process engineering. They are designed to stand up to extreme temperatures, surges, vibrations, and shocks found in industrial automation, government, military, oil and gas, mining and outdoor applications. With their various functionalities, performance classes, and designs, you will find the right solution for your application.
| 607 |
Discover Us
Cameron Ventures Group
Cameron Ventures Group are proud owners of an established portfolio including marquee hire company First Choice Marquees, and property management and development company Cameron Developments.
Alongside these are three Cameron Ventures hotels; located on the main route into Bury St Edmunds is Cameron Ventures Groups Best Western Priory Hotel, whilst hidden between Norwich and Ipswich is Best Western Brome Grange Hotel, and the latest Cameron Ventures addition Ipswich Hotel, located in Copdock.
| 535 |
All of the knitted items are available in a wide range of colours (see colour cards of merino yarns). If the product you like is not pictured in your choice of colour please contact me for more information.
| 206 |
Give your table a new flavor with these healthy recipes
Posted March 17, 2014 by Sarasota Memorial Health Care System
Celebrate National Nutrition Month in March by enjoying the flavors of fresh, healthy food with these dietitian-inspired recipes! The dishes were created by Cathlyn Berning, RD, LDN, who has a culinary degree and is a lead in Sarasota Memorial’s Food & Nutrition Services and a manager of the hospital’s 1700 South restaurant.
Sesame Encrusted Tuna with Soba Noodles in a Ginger-Infused Tea
Makes 4 Servings
Ingredients:
8oz Soba noodles
4 (4-5 oz each) Tuna steaks – wild caught preferably
1/3 Cup Black/white sesame seeds
1 ½ Tbsp olive oil – cold pressed preferably
4 each Carrots, cut into 1 ½ by ¼ inch sticks
1 ¼ Cup Edamame – unshelled
½ lb Shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded and caps sliced thin
2 each Bell peppers
4 each Tea bag
1 Cup Water
½ piece Ginger, fresh, peeled, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp Honey
Directions:
In a large pot, bring water to a boil for the soba noodles.
Steep tea in a pot of hot water. Add the ginger and honey to infuse the tea for the broth.
Coat the tuna in the black and white sesame seeds. In a large, non-stick skillet, heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil over med-high heat. Add the fish and quickly sear on both sides, about 1 minute on each side.
In a large, non-stick skillet, heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil over med-high heat. Add carrots to skillet and sauté, stirring until just tender. Add bell peppers, mushrooms, edamame and scallions and continue to stir constantly until vegetables are tender.
Cook noodles in boiling water until al dente. Drain noodles in a colander.
| 1,658 |
There are some extremely impressive and inspiring works of art within the galleries of this site. I appreciate some of these creations must take a great deal of time and imagination to produce, but I post this request here hoping some might be interested...
The award-winning Fourth Age development team are looking to identify a minimum of 12 pieces of artwork, each either depicting a scene from Tolkien's Middle-earth or a piece that captures the mood of that world. These will be used as loading screens for the Fourth Age: Total War - The Dominion of Men. Both existing and new work considered. This is a fan-made work created by volunteers over a six-year period, and represents many thousands of hours of freely-given time and skill. As such we offer no pay, so it would probably appeal to those seeking exposure - or Tolkien fans ;)
The Dominion of Men (a modification of the Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion engine) will be released in 2011 and builds upon previous module releases since its inception in 2004. Based on Tolkien's little-known work, The New Shadow, the mod (modification) is set during the Fourth Age of Middle-earth (after the War of the Ring) and represents, we believe, the most sophisticated, polished and lore-accurate of Middle-earth mods in existence. It has been, and continues to be, supported by the artwork and music of some great people including the Tolkien Ensemble and the film scorers of the Born of Hope movie. We hope to be able to add to these by displaying some of the breathtaking matte painting that exists among talented digital artists, an art form that can capture Tolkien's world so well.
Menu credits (accessible in-game) will be provided, in addition to the signature on the piece of work itself. All works will be resized to 1024 X 402 pixels and put into truevision targa format.
Between 2006 (the first release of the Fourth Age series) and the present time, downloads of the mod have exceeded an estimated 300,000.
As the mod is based upon the books, we prefer artwork that is not - in obvious design at least - based upon the recent The Lord of the Rings movies.
| 2,129 |
There's nothing like the great American road trip: the open road, the scenery, the cramped seats, and the limited trunk space. Well, that's if you're hitting the road in a car. But if you decide to hit the road in an SUV, you've got plenty of room for all your friends and their gear, plus a rough ride and horrible fuel economy. Maybe an SUV isn't the best choice for a road trip either.
Whether you hit the road in a car or an SUV, you're going to face some choices. Cars get good fuel economy, but can only seat up to five, and don't have a lot of space for stuff. SUVs solve the space equation, but get bad fuel economy compared to cars and they often have rough rides -- not exactly the stuff a comfortable road trip is made of.
Choosing between a car and an SUV for your road trip can seem like one of those catch-22 choices you don't have to live with, but there's an option that gives you the benefits of cruising in a car (a comfortable ride, good fuel economy) and the pluses of road tripping in an SUV (plenty of space): you can take a crossover.
Keep reading to learn about the surprising benefits of cruising in a crossover.
| 1,140 |
4Videosoft PDF Splitter 3.0.76
4Videosoft PDF Splitter can split PDF files easily. It is the most helpful programs to help you split your large PDF files to several small PDF files with zero loss. You can split the PDF files in several methods. The interface is very concise and clear, and you are able to finish your process within several clicks.
Key features:
1. Split your PDF files as you like The 4Videosoft PDF Splitter can convert the multi-pages PDF files to small and readable files. You are able to choose the split modes as your preference. It enables you to split your files by every certain number of pages and split by bookmark. You are able to split your PDF files by page range. For instance, there is 10 pages PDF files, you can split the page 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, to one PDF file and the rest pages to another PDF file. It allows you to split the PDF file by specific page ranges to multiple PDF files and by average pages.
2. Save the output files You can reset the output settings such as you can save your output files in the same folder as source with this powerful PDF Splitter. And you can customize the output location.
3. Easy-to-use and efficient The PDF Splitter is very easy to operate and you are allowed to finish your split task within several clicks. Its split speed and quality is beyond your imagination.
Classic Menu for Office 2007 - The suite includes classic menus and toolbars for Word, Excel, Access, Outlook and PowerPoint 2007. Download and install this software to bring back the classic style menus and toolbars to... ...
| 1,567 |
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/intellectual-property-rights-in-india/useful-links-for-business
Links for business
IPO Representative - since March 2012, the IPO has based an attaché in the British High Commission in New Delhi, working with representatives from United Kingdom Trade & Investment (UKTI) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The position is central to the government’s plans to enhance trade relations and to support IP and innovation-led businesses abroad
British High Commission, New Delhi - offers advice on working with India, including details of cultural relations. It provides a full range of diplomatic, consular and business-related services
find out about the work and services of the British High Commission, New Delhi on the UK and India pages
UK India Business Council (UKIBC) - helps and supports British businesses to trade with India. Read about UKIBC membership on the UKIBC website
CBI India - CBI India’s adviser responds to members’ queries, offering strategic and practical advice both in India and during his visits to the UK. Find out more at the CBI India website
Department for Trade & Industry India - has a range of online information on doing business in India. Find sector-specific reports and guidance for trading in India on the website
Indian Copyright Office - the Indian Copyright Office is responsible for copyright registration. Although not mandatory for copyright protection, registration is a helpful way to prove your ownership of copyright. The Copyright Office also provides legal resources on copyright and enforcement
Law firms - local firms in India can offer you legal advice and services specific to your business. Search for law firms in India on the Chambers and Partners website
European Business and Technology Centre - have set up an IP Helpdesk to facilitate technology commercialisation and to offer advice on the management of IP issues in India
Help us improve GOV.UK
Help us improve GOV.UK
To help us improve GOV.UK, we’d like to know more about your visit today. We’ll send you a link to a feedback form. It will take only 2 minutes to fill in. Don’t worry we won’t send you spam or share your email address with anyone.
| 2,406 |
The author of the book, Pope Francis: Why He Leads The Way He Leads, Chris Lowney will be the featured speaker at the March 10 Catholics@Work breakfast.
A Jesuit-trained South American priest, Pope Francis is revamping the Curia. He goes head-on into highly charged social issues with a joy-filled personal style.
For Pope Francis there is no daylight between his faith and his actions. This man traded the Papal Palace for a small apartment and retired the bullet-proof Popemobile for an open air car, occasionally inviting people on the streets to ride with him.
Lowney first studied as a Jesuit seminarian, but eventually served as a Managing Director on three continents for JP Morgan. Today Lowney chairs Catholic Healthcare Initiative, a $19-billion healthcare and hospital system.
His first best seller, Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450 Year-Old Company That Changed the World, analyzed the Jesuits. In it Lowney maps out the foundational principles St Ignatius employed in forming the Society of Jesus; principles that have relevance today for Fortune 500 companies as well as individuals. It is this understanding of the influencing factors of the Jesuits that helped Lowney profile the “why” behind Pope Francis’ actions.
Additionally, Lowney talked with priests who had been guided in seminary by then-Fr. Bergoglio more than 30 years ago, gaining rare insights into the Pope's leadership style long before his elevation to the Papacy.
Lowney’s book is “an important, powerful book that is full of paradox,” according to reviewer Patrick Lencioni. “It is both deeply philosophical and immensely practical. It is timeless and completely relevant for our modern age.”
John Dunican, president of Catholics@Work says, “Pope Francis is the source of many debates among friends and family, and the news media. This is a rare opportunity to get a first-hand insight into what makes the Pope tick.
“Please put it on your calendar today, then go to our website and register.”
After signing up, put it on your Facebook page so your family and friends will have an opportunity to register before all seats are reserved.
To register: look to the left and you will see the blue "REGISTER" button. When you click on this button you will have three choices:
| 2,297 |
Inside the Times
Published: August 3, 2009
International
RIOTS SHOW PRECARIOUS LIFE FOR CHRISTIANS IN PAKISTAN
In Gojra, in central Pakistan, a mob killed seven members of a Christian family, the culmination of several days of rioting sparked by a claim that Christians had defiled a Koran. After breaking into the family's home, the mob shot the grandfather,
then burned the house with six family members inside. PAGE A4
ISRAEL EVICTS PALESTINIANS
Security forces evicted two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem, advancing a plan to settle more Jews in the mostly Arab area. The move prompted sharp international criticism. PAGE A4
CHINA ARRESTS 319 PEOPLE
The latest arrests -- in connection to last month's unrest in the far western region of Xinjiang -- were mostly of Uighurs, a mainly Sunni Muslim minority that China has blamed for the violence, which claimed 197 lives, mostly Han Chinese. PAGE A6
IRAN MOVES ON OPPOSITION
Iranian authorities, a day after beginning a mass trial of more than 100 reformists, intensified efforts to intimidate the opposition movement before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inauguration. PAGE A8
SPAT OVER IRAQI BANK HEIST
Two top Iraqi officials engaged in a bitter back and forth about the arrests, a day earlier, of three members of Iraq's presidential guard, who are suspects in a brazen bank robbery in Baghdad. PAGE A10
U.S. PILOT'S REMAINS FOUND
Marines in Iraq found the remains of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, an American fighter pilot shot down in the opening hours of the first Gulf War in 1991. PAGE A10
9 SOLDIERS KILLED
In the first two days of August, insurgents killed nine American and NATO soldiers, underscoring an increase in the sophistication and number of roadside bomb attacks, which were responsible for eight of the nine deaths. PAGE A11
National
ONCE A PLACE OF HOPE, NOW A SOURCE OF TENSION
The Silver Lining Ranch, in Aspen, Colo., which has given thousands of children with cancer a chance to experience the outdoors, is at the center of a stew of recrimination, entrenchment and talk of lawsuits. Aspen Journal. PAGE A12
GAY PRIESTS NOMINATED
Only weeks after the Episcopal Church ended a freeze on promoting gay men and lesbians into the church hierarchy, the Diocese of Los Angeles nominated two gay priests as assistant bishops. PAGE A13
New York
CITY FACES HUGE BACKLOG IN CONCRETE STRENGTH TESTS
A year after a concrete testing company was indicted on suspicions it failed to perform required tests and falsified results, New York City has retested the concrete in only a small fraction of the buildings the company inspected. PAGE A15
RESTING PLACES IN TURMOIL
Jewish burial societies, which sell gravesites, have gradually lost members and many no longer have people even to keep the books. The result: gravesites that people bought and expected to be buried in have been caught in a legal knot. PAGE A15
COUNTING CROWDS
Using no tools or devices, the city parks supervisor estimated that 120,000 people were on Coney Island's beach on Saturday. Parks officials know how unscientific their methods are, and they are trying to find a better way. PAGE A16
LOOKING FOR CLUES IN CRASH
Eight days have passed since a woman steered a vehicle full of children down the wrong side of the Taconic State Parkway, leading to eight deaths. Now, investigators are trying to determine why and how it happened. PAGE A16
Op-ed
PAUL KRUGMAN PAGE A19
ROSS DOUTHAT PAGE A19
Sports
FOR SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS, CULTURE AND STANDINGS SHIFT
San Francisco, which has not had a winning record since 2004 and has not reached the postseason since 2003, sits in an unlikely position: tied with Colorado at the head of the wild-card chase. PAGE D1
PHELPS EXITS ROME SATISFIED
Michael Phelps swam to his fifth gold medal at the world championships in the 4x100-meter medley relay, and Ryan Lochte was first in the 400 individual medley. PAGE D1
RED SOX AND STEROIDS
Two security staff members of the Boston Red Sox were fired last year after an investigation by Major League Baseball found that they were involved in steroid use, according to people in baseball with knowledge of the matter. PAGE D2
FILLY SEIZES THE CROWN
Crown the filly Rachel Alexandra right now. After first toying with and then torching six accomplished colts at the Haskell Invitational in Oceanport, N.J., Rachel Alexandra has ascended to the throne of horse racing. PAGE D3
Obituaries
SIDNEY ZION, 75
A journalist and author, he turned his daughter's death at New York Hospital in 1984 into a crusade that led to national reforms in the training, workload and supervision of young doctors. PAGE A20
| 4,684 |
The object of the corn maze is to locate the six hidden checkpoints, answer the “bee trivia” questions - and not get lost. Finding the ‘Hornet’s Nest’ will earn a seventh bonus point.
Depner's Annual Pie Eating Contest - free for all ages - will take place on Saturday, Oct. 5. A “Halloween Family- Fun Extravaganza” is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 19, featuring DJ Dave LeMaster playing spooky Halloween tunes inside the maze. Halloween costumes are optional, and all ages are welcome for this family-friendly event.
All activities are pending and subject to change without notice. Adult supervision for ages 12 and under is required for all events.
Depner Farms is open every Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting, until the end of October. A “family-friendly” flashlight maze, campfire, and movies on the big barn doors are scheduled every Saturday night at dusk. All mazegoers are required to bring their own flashlight or rent one at the gate.
This fall's fundraising efforts at Depner Farms will help support the Huron County Baby Pantry.
Cut-your-own Blue Spruce Christmas trees will be available starting Thanksgiving Day, on a self-serve basis.
Depner Farms is located at 5945 Griggs Rd. across from the Caseville Golf Course.
| 1,261 |
Dr KARL SHUKER
Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. Author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), The Unexplained (1996), Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003), and more recently Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (2013), A Manifestation of Monsters (2015), Here's Nessie! (2016), and what is already considered to be his magnum opus, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016), his many fans have been badgering him to join the blogosphere for years. The CFZ Blog Network is proud to have finally persuaded him to do so.
Friday, 28 September 2012
THE TWO-HEADED KESTREL THAT CAME HOME WITH THE GROCERIES!
I may be a cryptozoologist and animal anomalist, but even I have to admit that it's not every day I go into town to buy some groceries and return home with a two-headed kestrel – but today was one such day!
Browsing in a local market that contains a number of antique/collectors' stalls, I came upon one stall that I hadn't seen before. And there, directly before me, was this truly extraordinary exhibit – a two-headed taxiderm specimen of the European kestrel Falco tinnunculus.
To cut an extremely short story even shorter: reader, I purchased it! It is an adult female specimen (judging from its brown heads), is in excellent condition; and although I have seen various dicephalous chickens and ducks in the past, this is certainly the very first bicephalic bird of prey that I have ever encountered.
2 comments:
My own guess, although I could well be wrong, is that it's a fake although a good one, possibly a pre-1914 attempt to create an Austrian or Russian double-headed eagle. Do you have any more information on how old this piece is or where it came from?
SHUKERNATURE SURVIVAL
If you'd like to assist me in my ongoing crypto-investigations, even the smallest donation would be immensely appreciated. All donations are non-profit-making, going exclusively towards the updating/maintenance of my crypto-archives' source material and other necessities that enable me to continue researching and blogging my findings right here for you on ShukerNature. Thank you so much for your help! - Karl
ShukerNature Followers
Subscribe To
Contributors
DISCLAIMER
In Accordance with Title 17 USC Section 107, any copyright material on display here is under Fair Use without any claim of ownership or any profit accrued by the display. The Material herein is for non-profit educational or criticism puposes only. Notwithstanding the provisions of Sections 106 and 106a, the fair use of a copyrighted work including reproduction and distribution of said material as specified in that section, for purposes of education, news reporting, commentary or criticism, scholarship or research, to persons who have expressed a prior interest in receiving such material for such purposes, is NOT an infringement. Also: Unless stated otherwise, all illustrations in ShukerNature blog articles that are credited to a named copyright owner plus Wikipedia have been made available by the copyright owner and Wikipedia for third-person use under the conditions of the Creative Commons Licence. Should any copyright holder of any of the illustrations included on ShukerNature not wish those illustrations to be included here, please contact me and I shall of course remove them.
ATTRIBUTION
All original content on this blog is the exclusive copyright of Dr Karl Shuker, with all rights reserved by him, and must NOT be reproduced in any manner without his strict permission in writing.
| 4,092 |
Memorable moments abound as Spurs enjoy championship triumph
The Spurs’ fifth championship celebration was a memorable experience indeed, what with thousands jamming along the River Walk for Wednesday’s parade before the ensuing rally in front of a record crowd of nearly 77,000 at the Alamodome.
Between Gregg Popovich counting rings — perhaps a jab at LeBron James’ “not one, not two…” speech from a few years back? — and Patty Mills introducing the Spurs’ latest super hero, there were no shortages of highlights.
We just finished with the parade. Incredible! Thank you guys for coming to say hi. In a few minutes we head to the Alamodome. #five
| 669 |
Cowboys Going Streaking?
The Dallas Cowboys are on a two game winning streak and are on course to win out, which could possibly mean making the playoffs. That would be a huge feat after what they have been through since August. The team should be feeling good, especially when you consider they are one game away from getting Ezekiel Elliott back to bludgeon defenses again.
Will the Cowboys get a boost this week knowing that Zeke is returning and that if they beat the Oakland Raiders, their goals can still be accomplished? Is that something the team can feed off, just like they do when Elliott plays, knowing they are this close to becoming whole again?
Even without Elliott these last two games, has Dallas rebounded enough from a few poor performances to give you hope that they’ll be dangerous if they can manage to make the postseason? Or do you feel it was just the Redskins and Giants, and the quality of the teams they’ve beaten in the last two weeks matter?
Lots of hypotheticals right now with this team, that’s what playing without Zeke has created. As well as a ton of confusion over how good Dallas really is. There is no question Elliott’s energy is infectious, but he’s still a week away and not beating the Raiders would render his return meaningless in the grand scheme of the season. But there are signs the Cowboys are finding a rhythm sans Zeke, and they could be gearing up to play their best football of the season.
One of the biggest reasons is they are finally getting healthy again. Tyron Smith has now been good to go for three straight weeks and the running game is strong again. Alfred Morris and Rod Smith have done good work in Zeke’s absence, and even better since Tyron has returned. In the two games Smith missed, the Cowboys rushed for 107 and 112 yards with just one touchdown, but the Cowboys were converting at only 32% on third downs.
With Smith back in the lineup these last three weeks, the offense is converting third downs at 51.3% and ran for 79 yards against the Chargers (when they abandoned the run after falling behind), but 182 against Washington and 122 versus the Giants, with a total of four scores. The Cowboys are finding their groove again with Tyron Smith back in at left tackle, which has settled Dak Prescott down as well. It’s amazing what not getting hit on every other play will do for the confidence of a quarterback.
Getting Sean Lee back was also a big plus. The numbers always tell us the Cowboys’ defense is better with Lee on the field and the unit got smoked for much of his time on the bench, but the hero returned for a ridiculous game against the Giants.
All that’s left now is for David Irving to get back and for Zeke to return next week. The Cowboys are getting healthier, finding a groove with the returning players and improving with some of the lineup changes they’ve made recently (hello new, young secondary).
It’s a game of what ifs right now, but IF the Cowboys can beat the Raiders, Ezekiel Elliott returns and the Cowboys will have a chance to play their best football of the year. They might be hitting their stride at the right time and IF they can get some help, there’s no telling what damage they could do in the playoffs.
First things first, beat the Raiders; but IF they do, it has the feel of a team that can still accomplish what they set out to do.
| 3,378 |
There are apps in the Play Store that will make any song you own a ringtone. Rings Extended is one of those apps. You can use it to find the music and set it as a ringtone. I would caution against finding ringtones from the Internet that come from questionable websites, so stuck to legitimate ones to prevent future problems.
| 326 |
Three panel wooden internal doors
ROME wooden internal doors
The Eternal City’s history is written in its countless historic sites and monuments from antiquity and the Middle Ages, where traces of many generations are still present. While designing our classic doors we also take into consideration the longevity of our product and its durability. We choose the best material, we design the form, we carefully devise all the details to finally begin the process of creation. There are places on earth which, like Rome, emanate extraordinary beauty. Our stylish, wooden doors also emanate unique charm, what makes it a pleasure to have them in your home.
MILAN wooden internal doors
This fashion capital of the world dictates the latest trends in clothing design, but it’s also the financial and economic centre of Italy. It’s good to know the current fashion trends, but only with the right business and human resources you can successfully turn a good idea into a prosperous venture. Our employees can accurately estimate our customers’ needs to provide bespoke doors, exactly matching their expectations. All the beautiful places we visit inspire us in our creation of unique products for our customers. Classic internal doors are our pride, yet we don’t rest on our laurels, but keep constantly watching new trends and keep working on a new style and design.
FLORENCE wooden internal doors
The capital of charming and magical Tuscany encapsulates all that is best about Italy. Wonderful architecture, delicious cuisine and incredible atmosphere of this place attracts thousands of tourists visiting Florence every year. Our human sensitivity induces the need in us to be surrounded by beauty, and we can always spot when it’s real. Our respect to You and our love of beauty are the foundations of creating our interior doors. Simple lines, best materials and timeless elegance are trademarks of our carpentry. White internal doors seduce with its style and will perfectly complete many different interiors.
| 2,027 |
About >
5 Simple Things
Make these your "animal policies"
The most profound changes are the ones that you resolve quietly, in thought, honoring our creator. Think about these 5 simple things that you can do to help relieve animal suffering, and the essence of loving kindness will shine in your heart. Make them are your personal or family "animal policies." (Everyone should have them.) Remember, the "u" in humane means you.
Be a totally faithful and loving parent to your own "fur family." You have more influence than you know. Your high standards for pet care will influence your friends and family to be better pet parents, too. Spay or neuter your pets, train your young pets well, and care tenderly for your elderly pets. It's not always easy or inexpensive, but it's always the right thing to do.
Train yourself to be alert to pet suffering as you travel through your days. Remember, you might be the only lifeline for that injured or neglected companion or domesticated animal. Be a Good Samaritan. You will find the courage, if you just take the first little step.
Share a small portion of your pocketbook with your regional humane society or animal shelter. Consider giving small gifts regularly in memory of fur family members who have passed on. You'll feel the love every time you lick the envelope.
Hand out completed Sunbear Squad Wallet Cards to your family and friends. Then they'll be prepared to call for help, if they find a strayed, abused, or injured pet. You've helped make helping more convenient and timely.
Be cruelty-free by purchasing products that are not made by torturing animals.
—Avoid all fur-trimmed products no matter how small. Fur farmers in some parts of the world skin animals alive to maintain fur quality, and many of these pathetic animals are actually dogs and cats; their fur is later intentionally mislabeled as other fur to bypass American fur import restrictions. HOW TO IDENTIFY real fur: separate the hairs to look closely at the base. It should look like fabric. Also, the hairs will have blunt tips, not tapered.
—Purchase personal care products that are not tested on animals. Read labels; these products are becoming more widely available. Even large discount stores will carry some animal-safe products now. It might cost a bit more, but you won't be putting your money in the hands of research laboratories that use animals to test products.
A Prayer for Animals
Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends, the animals, especially for the animals who are suffering; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death.
We entreat for them all thy mercy and pity, and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals and so to share the blessings of the merciful.
| 2,884 |
Relegate Primary Elections To Dustbin Of History
OTHER VIEWS - MY WORD
Ihave nothing against Iowa and New Hampshire, but it's frightening that people from two states such as these have acquired a stranglehold on the presidency.
At a time when the United States is becoming more diverse in both population and culture, it is hard to see that either Iowa or New Hampshire has been affected by these changes.
To have two of the least representative of states making fundamental decisions about who will be the first to govern the country in the 21st century seems to me to be the highest form of folly. How did such a thing come to pass?
At the end of the 19th century, Americans were increasingly disgusted with the corruption of the democratic process. Senators, congressmen, state and local politicians, judges and delegates to political conventions were bought and sold like commodity futures on the Chicago Board of Trade.
If you didn't own a few politicians, you were obviously not a person of consequence. Those politicians not owned by corporations and captains of industry were controlled by the great and corrupt political machines of the cities.
To correct the problem, political reformers worked vigorously to increase democracy. One of the key reforms was the primary election. This, it was argued, would put the political system back into the hands of the people, and elected officials would find it necessary to be responsive to their constituents.
It seemed like an excellent idea, and reform swept the nation. Before long, primariy elections were everywhere. By the second half of the 20th century, the primary election had become the most significant part of the presidential-candidate selection process.
By late in the 20th century, something had gone terribly wrong. The primary election became the sole vehicle to get to the presidential nomination, and television became the major means to reach those small numbers of people who might vote in a primary. Advertising money became critical.
The early primaries came to carry disproportionate weight because any sign of early weakness could cut off the flow of funds to a candidate. Thus, the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary election are deemed major events, although they involve relatively few people.
A century after the reforms adopted to cure corruption, demand for advertising money in the primary elections has added another dimension of corruption. Bribery has been replaced by campaign contributions,'' and owning politicians has been replaced by access.'' The crude buying and selling of politicians have been replaced by a much smoother system hidden behind euphemisms suitable to the new millennium.
I never thought I would decry the political reforms of the Progressive Era in American history, but clearly the primary election has outlived its usefulness. Once designed to end corruption, the primary election has become corrupted itself. A handful of people in Iowa and New Hampshire, and truckloads of campaign contributions, have produced a need for a new era of political reform.
It may be time to roll back democracy, relegate the primary election to the dustbin of history, and give the nominating powers back to the boys in the smoke-filled rooms.
| 3,258 |
After scoring her first top 10 hit with “Boo’d Up,” Ella Mai follows it up with her latest Mustard-produced single “Trip,” which gets a sultry video.
The British singer-songwriter sets the mood with candles and a burning fireplace before putting her record on. She then creeps out late at night, parking outside her man’s house and hitting a basketball court, while reflecting on his love.
“Maybe it’s your love, it’s too good to be true,” she sings on the remorseful R&B jam. “Baby boy, your love, got me trippin’ on you / You know your love is big enough, make me trip up on you.”
“Trip,” which is currently No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, is a single off Ella’s debut album, due this fall.
Her big year continues. After selling out her first U.S. headlining tour, Ella will join Bruno Mars on his “24K Magic World Tour,” which kicks off at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Oct. 4. She is also nominated for two American Music Awards, including Favorite Female Artist — Soul/R&B and Favorite Song — Soul/R&B for “Boo’d Up.”
| 1,075 |
Kittens, Pill tips
The choice to adopt a kitten is both a love choice and important decision as it is a bond which lasts several years. When a kitten joins a new home it's a moment of pure joy, but it's necessary to pay a lot of attention at this first approach. Lots of doubts can come, most of all if it's our first experience with a kitten.
It is crucial to prepare a safe and appropriate environment to let it accustom to the new house, but we must take also care about other aspects of its future life like health, nutrition and education. In addition to all, some little advice can be useful.
FIRST RECEPTION
Cats are often considered independent, but this doesn't mean they don't need attention. Which is the best way to welcome a kitten?
First of all we must consider that when a kitten enters a new house it's a delicate situation because everything is new and undiscovered. This is why it may take some days to explore the new territory and decide to trust people around itself. At first, to feel safe, it needs a special place just for itself where to hide and observe what happens around. This will let it be much more confident in the environment that surrounds itself. Kittens need a lot of sleep. Cast usually are “nap champions”, they pass two thirds of their lives sleeping. Leave your pet asleep, don’t take it and wake it up just to cuddle, it’s better to leave it alone calm and safe.
SPACE ORGANIZATION
To let the kitten feel safe as soon as it gets home, it is advisable to reserve it a personal corner providing a bed where to rest, whatever it takes to let it eat and drink and, maybe the most important thing, a litter with appropriate sand. The kitten will get used soon to the litter and will use it for its business. It’s crucial to clean the litter once a day and to change the litter sand at least once a week. Give the kitten the time to accustom properly dividing the house in a play zone, a nutrition zone, cleaning zone and rest zone.
Never let a kitten sleep on the bare floor, it is too cold for it. To let it rest sheltered we can put close to it a clock: complete silence can intimidate it and the ticking hands could help it feel in company and safe.
HOW TO BEHAVE WITH THE KITTEN
Cats are often described like independent and lonely animals, actually physical contact is really important in the early months of a kitten’s life: to see the birth of a bond of trust with it you should hold it, pet it and cuddle it. This is the way to build a long-lasting relationship.
KITTEN EDUCATION
Cats are really active animals and curious as well, this means it’s important to ensure the kitten something to do inside the house. To avoid that the kitten plays with ornaments, tents or sofas it is necessary to let him have fun in a way suitable for its temperament. Some domestic toys can be helpful, but you need to remember to change them now or then to stimulate curiosity in the kitten. Never use hands as a toy or the kitten will learn to attack them.
KLEANING KITTEN
Cat is a clean animal and provides more times in a day by itself at its own hygiene. It is strongly NOT recommended to wash it with dry shampoo or other chemical detergents which are not welcome and can also be harmful: if the kitten feels to have dirty hair, it will lick itself and could ingest the chemicals sprayed. If we want to help clean the kitten, let’s just use a soft cloth mildly moistened with water.
HEALTH PRECAUTIONS
During the first week of cohabitation it’s recommended to go to your veterinarian for a complete visit and vaccinations, such as rabies and Chlamydia. This visit has also relevance in kitten’s education, because it will start to get used to other people and it will learn how to interact with them.
PROPER NUTRITION
Nutrition plays one of main roles in the moments to get close to the cat since its first days in the new house. It’s important to choose high quality food, but in a first period it is recommended to let it eat the food it is used to. To switch from a food to another you should proceed in stages, but it is crucial to follow your veterinarian’s recommendations. One kitten and one adult have different nutritional needs: kittens are usually more hungry and they will need to eat several times in a day.Discover Natural & Delicius Kittenthe proper natural food designed for your kittens' needs.
> N&D Grain Free KITTEN
| 4,400 |
FIFA 07 - Xbox 360
Product Media
Please click on an image to see a larger version
Pictures are for illustrative purposes only.
Description
From the first whistle, FIFA 07 throws you into the rollercoaster ride of a football season and the intense stadium atmosphere of every home and away match. Relish every satisfying victory over bitter rivals and live through every gut-wrenching poor performance at home. Savour the spine-tingling stadium atmosphere, home and away, as your team battles their way up the league table. Listen as your supporters chant your players' names and bellow all the rousing club songs through rain and shine. You have the power to shape your club's destiny in the EA SPORTS Interactive Leagues [F.A. Premier League, Bundesliga, French League, Mexican 1st Division], a new online mode that enables you to pit your club against supporters of your real-world opponents. Play your games according to the real-world schedule. When they play, you play. Track your team's progress as the aggregate results determine your club's position in the league table. Now you actually take to the pitch for the glory of your club.New intelligent AI ensures that your 11 men on the pitch make realistic decisions, finding space and passing like professionals. A complete overhaul of the game engine now means that you have to employ real world tactics, make realistic decisions and think like a player in order to win matches.Take on the updated and improved challenge of the Manager Mode. Player values and wages have been tuned to be even more realistic. Managerial decisions have even more tangible effects on player performance and welfare. Smarter CPU decisions mean rival managers are even more strategic in their own pursuit of silverware.
| 1,761 |
North Dakota, BLM look to curb natural gas flaring
Temperatures were in the single digits on North Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation in early February when Debbie Dogskin began to take off her clothes. In the throes of late stage hypothermia, people act irrationally as cold clouds their thinking.
The 61-year old was found dead in a friend’s mobile home, an empty propane tank outside. Trailers in this frigid corner of the northern prairie are often patched together with ill-fitting doors and drafty windows. Inside some homes, “you can find frost in the corners of rooms up on the ceiling,” Rev. John Floberg of the Standing Rock’s Episcopal Church told the Episcopal News Service.
Like many parts of the country, the Standing Rock Reservation experienced a severe propane shortage this winter. Unusually cold temperatures in the Midwest combined with the fact that farmers used more propane than they normally do to dry out a huge harvest of wet grain at the end of the season sent fuel prices through the roof. The week before Dogskin died, propane was selling for $4.57 a gallon in North Dakota. That’s almost three times higher than in winter 2013.
Yet some 250 miles away, oil rigs tapping Bakken shale were burning off millions of cubic feet of propane-rich natural gas a day – the same gas that, if captured, refined and sold, could have kept Dogskin’s trailer warm.
The waste is largely an infrastructure problem, says Ryan Salmon, the senior manager for the oil and gas program at Ceres, a national non-profit focused on sustainable investing. Unlike oil, which can be easily stored on site in a tank, natural gas is hard to compress and store. It must first be captured at the wellhead and transported via pipeline to a processing facility. The pace of new drilling has been so fast, Salmon says, that the pipeline infrastructure hasn’t caught up. Plus, comparatively low natural gas prices mean pipelines would take a long time to pay for themselves. In December 2013, flaring in North Dakota hit a new record: 36 percent of all natural gas produced as a byproduct of drilling for oil went up in smoke. The amount of flaring is even higher on the Fort Berthold reservation, the swath of tribal land at the center of the Bakken oil boom, where infrastructure is even more lacking than elsewhere in the state.
It doesn’t help that North Dakota makes it easy for oil companies to flare. Under existing rules, oil companies can flare unrestricted – without paying taxes or royalties on that gas – for one year before they need to hook up to a pipeline. But they can continue flaring indefinitely if they demonstrate that capturing the gas is not economically feasible. (In comparison, Texas only allows flaring for 6 months, and in Alaska, producers must re-inject the gas into ground if they aren’t going to capture and sell it.)
Now, people are starting to push back against the practice. Last October, mineral rights owners in North Dakota sued 14 oil companies for millions in unpaid royalties on wasted natural gas. Industry groups, recognizing how bad flaring makes them look, are offering to self-regulate. In January, the North Dakota Petroleum Council’s proposed new rules to help reduce the amount of gas flared to 10 percent by 2020. State regulators will hold a hearing to take public comment on that proposal on April 22.
The Department of the Interior is also looking to crack down on flaring and venting (releasing pure methane into the air instead of burning it to convert it to CO2) of natural gas on Bureau of Land Management and Indian lands like Fort Berthold, and is holding hearings around the country this spring to get input on how best to do so. President Obama’s Climate Action Plan targets methane leaks because of concerns that the emissions could give natural gas a larger carbon footprint than coal. There are also growing concerns over lost revenue: In 2010 the Government Accountability Office found that the public loses up to $23 million annually in royalties from venting and flaring of natural gas.
In order to speed up pipeline construction to transport natural gas, three U.S. senators from Wyoming and North Dakota recently introduced a bill that would exempt the pipelines on federal and Indian lands from environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. The exemptions wouldn’t apply in protected areas like national parks or wilderness, and tribes and individual Indian land-owners would still have to give consent.
With their long, cold winters and twice the national average propane consumption, North Dakota residents could benefit a lot from regulations that help increase natural gas and propane production in their state. In addition to increased royalties and taxes, air quality should improve with less flaring, since fewer VOCs will be belched into the atmosphere. And the light from hundreds of dancing flames will no longer spoil the dark prairie nights.
So it’s ironic that the biggest barrier to building gas pipelines is securing landowner permission, according to the North Dakota Petroleum Council. “On the one hand the flaring is an impact to communities in terms of light pollution and air quality,” says Salmon, of Ceres, “but to tackle the problem (companies) have to install a pipeline where landowners might not want them to.”
For landowners sick of the growing footprint of the oil industry – many of whom do not own their mineral rates and therefore don’t benefit from the drilling – making the decision to allow yet another piece of oil infrastructure onto their land won’t be easy.
Emily Guerin is a correspondent for High Country News. She tweets @guerinemily.
More from Energy & Industry
In the Wyoming Tribune-eagle last week was a short article on T Boone Pickens and a Casper, Wyoming manufacturer to use a generator at well sites that runs on the excess gas to supply electricity to the well site. They said that for now diesel powered generators supply the electricity. This new generator would eliminate hauling diesel to the well site as well as use the gas that is being flared. I don't have more information as the article was short.,
| 6,207 |
E-cigarettes in the spotlight for #Stoptober2017
Paul Hooper, Co-director of the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre reviews the launch of the 2017 Stoptober campaign.
Forty years ago, almost to the day, my father – a committed smoker – was leaving hospital following several heart attacks in a fortnight (nature’s way of telling you to stop smoking). The good news is that he never smoked again and lived for another relatively healthy twenty five years. I also went on to marry the coronary care nurse! Life-changing in many ways.
All this is by way of introduction to what could be a life-changing period in the lives of thousands of smokers. Once again we are gearing up for ‘Stoptober’.
Since Stoptober started in 2012 it is estimated that over a million people have used the month-long campaign in their quit attempts.
Stoptober is based on the insight that if you can stop smoking for 28-days, you are five times more likely to be able to stay quit for good. The campaign chunks down the quitting process, presents it as a more manageable 28 days and rallies people around a specific date to get started.
Stoptober encourages as many smokers as possible to prepare to quit from 1 October by taking part in the campaign and utilising the range of free resources and support available. Throughout October the campaign will continue to recruit smokers to take part, whilst also encouraging and supporting people to quit through the 28-day smoke-free journey.
The overarching objective is to trigger significant numbers of quit attempts, by increasing motivation to quit and providing products to make this quitting easier.
This year’s campaign, supported by PHE, which starts on 1st October, will feature e-cigarettes in the TV advertisement for the first time. (You can see this on through the website too)
Spokesperson for PHE, Professor John Newton, director of health improvement, said in their press release: “E-cigarettes are now the most popular way to quit in the country with half of all those taking part in Stoptober last year using an e-cigarette. The evidence is clear – vaping is much less harmful than smoking – a fraction of the risk. So, if you’ve struggled with quitting before, an e-cigarette may be the best option for you.”
However, there is still some controversy over e-cigarettes. NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) this week issued guidance expressing caution about the risks and benefits of vaping.
NICE said: “The draft guideline does not list e-cigarettes as recommended aids to stop smoking however it does say that advice should be offered on their use.
Whatever, your views on e-cigarettes, my father demonstrated if you quit smoking you can recover some of your life expectancy and go on to enjoy healthy family life for many years. Let’s hope more people than ever choose to do the same using the available resources of Stoptober – e-cigs and all.
| 2,951 |
ENG:
Terrence Kennedy "Terry" Mills (born 22 December 1957) is an Australian politician who was Chief Minister of the Northern Territory from 2012 to 2013. He has been a Country Liberal Party member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly since 1999, representing the electorate of Blain. He also led the Country Liberal Party in opposition from 2003 to 2005 and from 2008 to 2012 prior to his victory in the 2012 election. Mills served less than seven months as Chief Minister before being ousted by Adam Giles in March 2013 in a vote of his party's parliamentary caucus.
Political career
Mills joined the Country Liberal Party in the 1990s, and in a 1999 by-election, was elected to the seat of Blain in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. Initially, he served as Chairman of ...
... Drinker Register
Despite Northern Territory Police claiming that the Banned Drinker Register is the "best tool they had" to tackle alcohol related crime, CLP Opposition Leader Terry Mills wants to scap it.Minister for Alcohol Policy Delia Lawrie said Terry Mills has committed to ignoring the advice of police and to turn the grog back on for the 1300 alcohol offenders who have been banned.
Two weeks ago NT Police Assistant Commissioner Graham Kelly said in an interview with Channel 9 News the new alcohol measures were "probably one of the best tools" police had for "combating alcohol ...
THE turmoil in the Country Liberal Party reached a new peak yesterday with Opposition Leader Terry Mills surviving a challenge from David Tollner.
Mr Tollner caused a spill in the leadership yesterday morning but only won the support of one other MLA.
That MLA is understood to be Adam Giles.
Mr Mills won with eight votes to two. Retiring Member for Araluen Jodeen Carney abstained from the vote because she is leaving.
Mr Tollner has been stripped of his job as business spokesman and moved to the backbench as punishment.
A furious Mr Mills yesterday said his leadership had been ...
A resigning member of the Country Liberals management committee says the party's leader Terry Mills is likely to face more challenges.
Only one of the other elected MLAs supported Dave Tollner in his failed challenge for the leadership on Friday.
But former management committee member Steve Brown says the number of disaffected members is greater.
"That party split the other day didn't come the other day because two people are feeling out of whack," he said.
"It takes more than two to create the split and I'm well aware that the numbers are considerably greater than that.
"It's ...
For the Record - The Register-GuardFor the RecordThe Register-GuardArrangements by Smith-Lund-Mills Funeral Chapel in Cottage Grove. Wagnon — Kenneth David Wagnon, 65, of Oakridge, died Feb. ... 55, and Lahoma V. Perdue, 47, both of Cottage Grove. Katrina J. Terry, 24, and Nicholas S. Midnight, 32, both of Eugene.
Acadiana lawmakers react to Edwards speech - The Daily AdvertiserThe Daily AdvertiserAcadiana lawmakers react to Edwards speechThe Daily AdvertiserFred Mills, R-Parks, said Edwards' speech wasn't a surprise to most lawmakers who have either met with or been contacted by the new governor in recent weeks. “He has stayed in touch with most of the legislators that I know,” Mills said. “From the very ...
Things to Do on Long Island, Feb. 13 Through Feb. 21 - New York TimesNew York TimesThings to Do on Long Island, Feb. 13 Through Feb. 21New York Times$6 to $9. The Plaza Cinema and Media Arts Center, 20 Terry Street. 631-438-0083; plazamac.org. ..... Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Mills Pond House Gallery, 660 Route 25A. 631-862-6575; stacarts.org.
| 3,704 |
Blog entry
How to Dry Your Clothes Faster in the Dryer
When it comes to drying your clothes, nothing can beat the rapidity and the efficiency of the dryer that can obtain perfectly dried clothes in less time than leaving them hanging on a wire. If you don’t own a dryer and you are interested in buying one, we advice you to read the dryer reviews of Horace Rudd, in order to find the dryer best suited for your needs. If you already have a dryer, you should know that you can minimize the drying time even more if you take some advice on how to reduce the drying time and, implicitly, the energy consumption. To get the best results from your dryer, we teach you some tricks on how to dry your clothes faster in the dryer.
Increase the tumbling speed or time
A high-spin washing cycle will eliminate as much water as possible from your clothes, so they will dry faster in the dryer. Most washing machines have multiple tumble speeds and the highest one can limit the amount of moisture in the clothes. If the fabrics are solid enough, you can add a cycle of tumbling once the washing is over in order to reduce the drying time to the minimum.
Wring your clothes by hand
If you are not using a washing machine for any reason, try wringing the clothes before you put them in the dryer, so you will get rid of the excess moisture in them. Hold the garment with both hands and twist it as hard as you can so the water will come out and the garment will remain less wet. This way, the time spent in the dryer will be shortened by at least 10 minutes.
Use a dry towel to absorb moisture
If you want to dry thick garments like jeans, sweaters, or bed covers, you can use the towel trick, which will help you reduce the drying time. This trick consists of adding a dry towel or more into your dryer with the wet clothes. The dry towels will absorb the excess moisture in the wet clothes so they will need less time in the dryer. You can also wrap the clothes in a towel and twist them for a few minutes so the towel will absorb some moisture from the clothes.
Sort the clothes that require urgent drying
You will be unlikely to need all your clothes dried at the same time, so it’s best that you sort the clothes that you must dry right away from those that can be dried later. Put the urgent items in the dryer and select the Auto High Heat cycle for 15 minutes, which should be enough to dry a few clothes. The rest of the clothes can go in the dryer for longer at a future time.
| 2,488 |
Iberia had a minor share in this Chilean airline and Ladeco was an Iberia Group member in the nineties. I am actually not sure wheter this later statement was already true in 1991 or not , but it certainly was a bit later, in 1992. Anyhow, there never was a good understanding between Iberia and other Ladeco owners, and finally the Spanish airline sold its shares in 1997; Ladeco became under ✈LAN Chile control, and it eventually changed its name into LAN Express before being completely deprived of a name or identity of its own and being shut down.
Brochures and promotional material from British Midland, an airlie which in the mid-1990s was partially owned by SAS and was trying hard to beat British Airways in its own field. These publications are a good example of what a small or medium-sized "independent" airline such as this one was offering in the 1990s as a full service company which seeking to take advantage of the liberalisation of the European air market. Some years later Lufthansa bought SAS' stake and the airline joined the Star Alliance, until eventually British Midland was bought by IAG and integrated into British Airways...
Most of the images I post on this blog are from my personal collection and were obtained after scanning original materials on paper.
Unless otherwise stated (by giving credit to other sources), the images on this blog are under a CC[by] license.
| 1,401 |
Looking Forward; The Planets in August and September.
Mercury is between the Earth and the Sun, inferior conjunction, on the 9th of August but then moves into the dawn sky to give its best morning apparition of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. Greatest western elongation from the Sun (18 degrees) occurs on the 26th and from around the 22nd Mercury can clearly be seen rising on a compass bearing of 070 degrees around 90 minutes before sunrise. On the 26th it will reach nearly 15 degrees of elevation at sunrise, for mid-UK latitudes, and with great care it can then be followed into daylight. After the 26th the planet’s elevation will fall with each sunrise but it can be observed into September and even by the 8th of the month Mercury still has 10 degrees of elevation at sunrise. Its phase, close to 50% in this period, will be clearly visible and surface albedo features have been seen and imaged under excellent seeing conditions.
Venus is in the evening sky and reaches its greatest elongation to the east of the Sun (46 degrees) on the 17th of August. Sadly the position of the ecliptic in summer evening skies means Venus is only seen at low altitudes from the UK. On that date the planet should become visible from around 1930 Universal Time (UT), 20 degrees south of due-west but at only 10 degrees of elevation. Visibility is helped by the great brightness of the planet, at magnitude -3.6 even after atmospheric extinction, and it can then be followed for around an hour until it sets. By early September Venus has only 5 degrees of elevation at sunset so it is best observed in early to mid-August.
Mars was at opposition in late July so is visible for much of the hours of darkness however it also suffers from low elevation as seen from the UK. It is best observed around the time of transit, due-south, when it attains its maximum elevation. In early August this will be shortly before midnight UT with 12 degrees of elevation; mid-period transit is at 2130 UT, still at 12 degrees up and by late September Mars transits at 2010UT with 15 degrees of elevation. In the period Mars’s brightness will fall from magnitude -2.8 to -1.3 and its apparent size from 24.3 to 15.8 arcseconds however this is more than large enough to track the progress of the global dust storm currently encircling the planet.
Jupiter will start the period low to the south-western horizon for UK observers and sinking lower as the period progresses, so is best seen in early to mid-August when detailed observation is still possible. On the first of August look to the south-west half an hour after sunset to see Jupiter shining at magnitude -2.7 around 15 degrees above the horizon; it will then appear lower night-on-night as the period progresses. With good setting-circles or an accurate go-to system Jupiter can be found in full daylight and may then reveal more detail than in twilight skies.
Like Mars, Saturn is best seen close to its time of southerly transit. In early August this is around 2140 UT when Saturn achieves 15 degrees of elevation. By September 1st transit is at 1935 UT, still at 15 degrees, but this occurs in early twilight; Saturn can then be followed into darkness, sinking below 10 degrees of elevation by 2140 UT. By the end of the period look for Saturn from 1900 UT, now some 20 degrees past transit and sinking in the darkening evening sky.
The ice giants of Uranus and Neptune are the only major planets with significant night-time elevation in the period. Neptune comes to opposition on the 7th of September so can be followed for most of the hours of darkness for in this period, just over 3 degrees east of the star Hydor in Aquarius. At Magnitude +7.8 and 2.4 arcseconds in size Neptune is a telescopic object only but apertures of around 10 inches (250 mm) or more with suitable planetary cameras and infra-red filters may reveal cloud features on this distant world. At more than 30 degrees of elevation around the hours of transit, Neptune is above most of the atmospheric distortions that plague low-altitude observation.
Uranus gains even more altitude than Neptune but doesn’t reach opposition until October 24th so is best observed in the early hours and from later in the period. In early September it transits around 0330 UT at nearly 50 degrees of elevation; transit is at 0130UT by the end of the month. At magnitude +5.7 and 3.7 arcseconds in size it may be seen by the naked eye from a dark site, close to the border between Cetus and Pisces, but is best seen telescopically. It can be distinguished from the background stars as it appears distinctly blue-green, a very odd colour for a star, and at low magnification will look slightly unfocussed compared with the true stars surrounding it; higher magnification will reveal its disc. Uranus responds well to the same cameras and filters used to image Neptune and will show subtle shading from equator to pole and may also reveal storm patches in the infra-red.
| 4,977 |
A
more complete family history service including transcriptions of New South Wales
BDM records, retrieval of documents held at the NSW State Records Office, a
certificate service for English BDM records and a transcription service for
Tasmanian BDM and Scottish records. There is also a link for Irish and New Zealand
BDM records.
ABOUT
TURTLE CONSOLIDATED SERVICES
We offer a New South Wales BDM transcription
service, a New South Wales State Records retrieval service, a Tasmanian BDM
transcription service and an English certificate retrieval service. . Our
service is professional, timely and offers value for money.
Laurie and Lorraine conduct regular
research at the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. As well, we
regularly visit the repository of New South Wales State Records at
Kingswood. We transcribe Tasmanian BDM records up to 1899 and also
retrieve English BDM certificates.We can also give assistance with Scottish and South Australian BDM
records.
As a First Fleeter, Laurie has traced his
roots within Australia back to the very earliest days of white settlement.
His great great great great grandmother was Ann Colpitts who arrived in New
South Wales in 1788. She was one of the first women to give birth in the new
colony as she had a baby on the voyage out from England. Branches of this
family have various links to our convict and seafaring heritage, harking
back to Ireland, Scotland and England.
Lorraine's family has an equally
interesting lineage tracing back to some of the earliest Jewish immigrants
to arrive in this country. Benjamin Nelson arrived in Tasmania from Prussia
(now Poland) in the 1820's before doing very well out of the gold rushes in
New South Wales. Lorraine's family has links to Poland, Italy, England and
Scotland.
Laurie and Lorraine are passionate about
family history. They have both been tracing their family history for
many years. Laurie holds a Diploma in Family History Studies and has
completed the Archives Course at NSW State Records. Both Lorraine and Laurie
have been teachers in "former lives" and hold relevant
qualifications in these fields as well. Both enjoy working with clients to
help them solve their research. Lorraine has also conducted courses in
family history for U3A.
Laurie and Lorraine are also available for talks to
family history groups, although these need to be booked well in advance.
| 2,388 |
Company Profile
We are TeaM Energy, one of the largest independent power producers in the Philippines. TeaM Energy is a partnership among noted Japanese firms which include Marubeni, Tokyo Electric, Chubu and JERA.
With over 2,000 megawatts (MW) of installed generating capacity, we operate two coal-fired facilities; namely, the 735 MW Pagbilao Power Station in Quezon, and the 1,200 MW Sual Power Station in Pangasinan. In addition to these, we have a 50% stake in the 420 MW Pagbilao Unit 3 Power Project in Quezon, and a 20% stake in the 1,200 MW natural gas fired plant in Ilijan, Batangas. All these efforts are aimed at addressing the country’s energy needs towards sustainable economic growth and development.
Working together with the Philippine government, we have made significant strides in implementing programs that promote the ecological conservation and development of our host communities through various initiatives not only to protect, but also to nurture our country’s natural resources. Our Sual and Pagbilao power stations are both ISO 14001-certified, and have consistently complied with, and exceeded the environmental standards set by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the World Bank, making our operations truly world-class.
In addition to our strong commitment to the conservation and preservation of the environment, we give utmost importance to the occupational health and safety of our employees as well as all individuals working in our Sual and Pagbilao power stations. Both power stations are OHSAS 18001-certified and continue to add manhours to the 8M safemanhours without lost time accident.
In 2001, we launched our flagship CSR Program in partnership with the Department of Energy, National Electrification Administration and various local government units. Project Beacon (Barangay Electrification Assistance for Countryside Development) is a Php1B+ project that has energized over 1,000 far-flung villages and improved more than a million lives all over the country.
In this rapidly changing world, TeaM Energy continues to work for progress. We remain unwavering in our commitment to uplift lives, create value for our shareholders, and empower the Filipino people.
| 2,238 |
B.C. research brings possibility of end to seasonal flu shots with universal vaccine
Steve Mertl
Daily BrewMay 9, 2012
Every fall many of us wring our hands about whether to get the seasonal flu shot, even though it's estimated between 2,000 and 8,000 Canadians die each year of influenza and its complications.
Vaccination rates spiked during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, which killed 14,000 people worldwide, but appear to have dropped again even though flu kills up to half a million people globally each year.
But research by University of British Columbia scientists has raised the tantalizing prospect of taking just one shot or series of shots that would provide lifetime protection from many flu viruses, the Vancouver Sun reports.
The research team led by Prof. John Schrader, Canada Research Chair in Immunology and director of UBC's Biomedical Research Centre, found the vaccine triggers antibodies that protect against many influenza viruses, including the lethal avian H5N1 "bird flu" strain.
Here's how Schrader explains it:
"The flu virus has a protein called hemagglutinin, or HA for short. This protein is like a flower with a head and a stem. The flu virus binds to human cells via the head of the HA, much like a socket and plug.
"Current flu vaccines target the head of the HA to prevent infections, but because the flu virus mutates very quickly, this part of the HA changes rapidly, hence the need for different vaccines every flu season."
But there was something different about the 2009 H1N1 vaccine that produced more broadly protective antibodies that could fight different flu viruses.
"This is because, rather than attacking the variable head of the HA, the antibodies attacked the stem of the HA, neutralizing the flu virus," said Schrader. "The stem plays such an integral role in penetrating the cell that it cannot change between different variants of the flu virus."
The way the human immune system works makes it hard for flu vaccines to create broadly protective antibodies against the HA stem, said Schrader, but the 2009 swine flu was different because people had not been exposed to a similar virus before.
Schrader said there's evidence a vaccine based on a mix of flu viruses circulating in animals but not humans should have the same effect.
The prospect of one or two shots, as with measles or polio, to create a long-term immunity carries the potential for making flu pandemics and seasonal flu outbreaks a thing of the past, saving hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide.
Schrader cautioned it will take years to test a universal flu vaccine suitable for general use.
| 2,626 |
Bio
Originally from Athens Greece, Demetri Petsalakis is a Toronto based musician performing in a variety of styles with a focus on Greek and Middle Eastern lutes. He is involved with bands such as Ventanas, Nomadica, Near East, Zephyr, The Maryem Tollar ensemble, Samba Squad, The Ken McDonald quartet and the Heavyset Quartet where he is featured playing a variety of stringed instruments including guitar, outi(oud), lyra and baglama. Demetri has a Master of Music degree in jazz guitar performance from the University of Toronto, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in music from York University.
| 600 |
Back in July, Instagram expanded its testing of hiding like counts to a total of seven countries. Now, Facebook has confirmed that it may start testing the same on its platform. The change could come to News Feed posts and show users a few mutual friends who have like a Facebook post without a total like count.
Reported by TechCrunch, a prototype of the upcoming test was discovered by Jane Manchun Wong in the Android app and Facebook confirmed that removing like counts was being considered for testing.
When we asked Facebook, the company confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s considering testing removal of Like counts. However it’s not live for users yet. Facebook declined to share results from the Instagram Like hiding tests, its exact motives, or any schedule for starting testing.
Facebook’s interest in removing like counts is likely similar to what Instagram previously said was an effort to have “your followers focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get.” With Instagram’s testing, users can still see the like counts for their own posts but won’t see them for posts from others. It’s unclear if what Facebook is likely going to test will work exactly the same.
TC notes that hiding like counts may decrease self-consciousness and increase user activity. And Facebook prepping this test could be a signal that the removal of like counts for some Instagram users in Canada, Italy, Australia, and more have been postive.
Facebook wants to avoid scenarios such as “Look how many Likes they get. My life is lame in comparison” or “why even share if it’s not going to get as many Likes as her post and people will think I’m unpopular”.
| 1,702 |
The Skeleton Key Movie Review
Share:
If only Kate Hudson ran around in her undies more often. While the best parts are the scenes where Hudson roams around the house in her shorty-short underwear, "The Skeleton Key" is a surprisingly decent thriller that avoids the normal scare tactics and instead goes with a slower and more psychological approach to terror. While never superb, the movie is consistently tense and intriguing, and the ending is also a bit different as well.
"The Skeleton Key" has Hudson playing the young and beautiful Caroline, who moves into the bayous of New Orleans to care for an elderly man (John Hurt) suffering from a stroke and keep the company of the man's wife (Gena Rowlands). However, as she soon discovers, the house holds many secrets, some of which may be magical - if you believe in those kinds of things. At first skeptical, Caroline begins to suspect that the old man is not the victim of a stroke as much as he is a spell, and that there is something amiss about the wife. What she figures out is much more terrifying.
"The Skeleton Key" only has a few direct scares, but it slowly and methodically builds itself toward its conclusion, which is tense, creepy and at least marginally original. It never reaches its full potential, but good performances from Hudson, Rowlands and Hurt propel the story along. The movie embraces voodoo or whatever magic it is without making the film ridiculous. Not to say voodoo is ridiculous, but the movie never makes things unbelievable above and beyond your normal supernatural flick. In actuality, most of the events of the movie could actually happen.
The movie does have a few pacing issues, and it could have done more to round out the story, but "The Skeleton Key" is still an effective thriller that maintains a decent level of suspense. The ending is quite good, but it is one of those endings that seem people will love and some will hate with very little left over in the middle.
| 1,969 |
Trump reportedly told Flynn to ‘stay strong’ on same day Flynn was accused of breaking law
One month later, Trump fired James Comey.
On April 25, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) held a news conference where they accused former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn of breaking the law by accepting payments from foreign governments without receiving consent from Congress, and then not properly disclosing them on a security clearance application.
That news conference was held on the same day news broke that the White House was stonewalling the House Oversight Committee’s probe into Flynn’s security clearance application by refusing to turn over documents pertaining to his security clearance.
On Thursday, Yahoo reported that there was another previously unreported but significant development on that day. Michael Isikoff, citing two sources close to Flynn, reports that Flynn told “small group of loyalists” at a restaurant in northern Virginia that he’s still in touch with Trump. In fact, he heard from the president the very same day that Chaffetz and Cummings held their press conference.
“I just got a message from the president to stay strong,” Flynn reportedly told his companions.
What Trump meant isn’t totally clear, but within a month, Trump — who, by his own admission, was frustrated by the ongoing Russia probes in Congress and the FBI — fired FBI Director James Comey. That decision, coming as it did while his campaign is under active investigation, resulted in the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Trump-Russia shadiness and has sparked calls for Trump’s impeachment.
Flynn is at the center of that investigation. His lies about his pre-inauguration communications with the Russian ambassador led to him losing his job as national security adviser in mid-February. But the fact he even got the job in the first place is more puzzling in the wake of a bombshell report published by the New York Times on Wednesday — a report that might also shed light on the Trump administration’s reluctance to turn over documents to the Intelligence Committee.
“Flynn told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign, according to two people familiar with the case,” the Times reported. “Mr. Flynn’s disclosure, on Jan. 4, was first made to the transition team’s chief lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, who is now the White House counsel. That conversation, and another one two days later between Mr. Flynn’s lawyer and transition lawyers, shows that the Trump team knew about the investigation of Mr. Flynn far earlier than has been previously reported.”
Pence previously said he didn’t know about Flynn’s lobbying work for foreign interests until March, despite the fact lawyers for the transition effort he was leading were apparently informed weeks before the inauguration. His office released a statement Thursday saying he “stands by his comments in March,” but he later dodged questions from a reporter.
Pence ignores @tedbarrettcnn's questions about whether he knew Flynn was under investigation during the transition
Meanwhile, Flynn still isn’t cooperating with the congressional investigations. On Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) told reporters that Flynn’s lawyers “said he would not honor the subpoena, and that’s not a surprise to the committee.”
“But we will figure out on Gen. Flynn what the next step, if any, is,” Burr added. Later in the day, however, Burr walked that back, saying Flynn’s lawyers simply hadn’t yet responded to the subpoena.
Flynn might be stonewalling, but the Times reports that a grand jury in northern Virginia is investigating Flynn’s “foreign lobbying and has begun issuing subpoenas to businesses that worked with Mr. Flynn and his associates.”
Meanwhile, Trump tweeted on Thursday that he still thinks the investigation into his associates is nothing more than a “witch hunt,” despite the fact that the person who named the special counsel is a Trump administration official who Trump praised as “highly respected, very good guy, very smart guy” just a week ago.
The Times report wasn’t the one piece published this week that makes Flynn and the Trump administration look bad. Reuters reports that despite denials by Pence and other high-ranking officials that any contact took place, “Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race.”
Flynn, in particular, worked with the Russian ambassador to establish “a back channel for communication between Trump and [Russian President Vladimir Putin] that could bypass the U.S. national security bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations,” according to Reuters.
UPDATE: The Daily Beast reports that not only have Trump and Flynn been in touch since Flynn’s ouster, but Trump actually wants him back in the administration.
“Several sources close to Flynn and to the administration tell The Daily Beast that Trump has expressed his hopes that a resolution of the FBI’s investigation in Flynn’s favor might allow Flynn to rejoin the White House in some capacity — a scenario some of Trump’s closest advisers in and outside the West Wing have assured him absolutely should not happen,” the Daily Beast reports. “A longtime Trump confidant also confirmed to The Daily Beast that Trump had mentioned to him that he had communicated with Lt. Gen. Flynn in the past few weeks — long after Flynn had been given the boot from the Trump administration.
The Daily Beast notes that news of Trump and Flynn’s recent communications contradicts “repeated and adamant White House denials last week that Trump and his former National Security Adviser had been communicating since Flynn’s ouster.”
| 6,168 |
Educators from across the country gathered in Boston over the July 4th week to set the agenda for public education throughout the United States and the NJEA/SCEA delegates were at the forefront. It is often said that New Jersey is a force within the world of public education and it is never more apparent […]
| 311 |
Thursday, January 12, 2012
In a lot of ways, World of Warcraft raiding is an extreme meritocracy. The better a player is, the more highly skilled, the more weight her voice carries. All the guilds I've been in follow this general pattern. The players who are listened to are the ones who can perform the best. For this reason, it's very important that officers in a serious raiding guild be among the top half of the players.
In my experience, this pattern even holds in PuGs. I have never been treated badly in a PuG or LFR. It is really hard to argue with a person decked in high end gear, or topping the meters.
And yet, the high skill players are not always right. I mentioned in the previous post that:
There is a type of person who believes that all failure is caused by people playing badly. That skill is everything in this game. That the only response to any problem, any difficulty, is to tell people to play better, or recruit better people to replace the failures. That you must always take the "best" raiders you have to a raid to ensure success.
The people who espouse this view are always really good players. Of the players I've known with this view, the vast majority of them were far better than I am. Indeed, it is highly possible that they are this good because they hold themselves to this standard.
Not all of these players yell or are unpleasant. Many of them are nice and rational. They simply believe that all failure is a failure of personal responsibility.
A lot of the time these players are right. Enforcing standards makes people live up to those standards. Sometimes you'll encounter players who just will not live up to the necessary standards for the level you play at.
But sometimes these players are wrong. All my raiding experience leads me to believe that this style of play, where the only important thing is personal accountability, is brittle. When you get a good group going you can progress exceptionally fast. But sooner or later you lose people just through normal attrition, and have to recruit more and that leads to uneven progress. Or you hit a wall, and relations become acrimonious over who's failure it is.
But the problem is that all these highly skilled players just cannot see that. Suggestions that weigh any other considerations get met with comments that such suggestions are akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That the only thing that will lead to progress is the individual players stepping up and improving their play. Or under-performing players being replaced by ones who can perform.
And because they are highly skilled, their voice carries a lot of weight. And that is the part that is very hard to combat or argue against.
Edit: Copying this response to Kalon in the comments, because it may make things a little more clear.
Or there's a third option - that you lose people through attrition and instead of accepting recruits that are perhaps subpar you always recruit for the best and do not settle.
But then you don't actually raid. Because you don't always have the numbers to raid.
Part of this--which I left out because I though it was tangential, may have been wrong--is that this style of play is very hostile to maintaining a bench.
If you are always taking your 25 best raiders to new content, then your bench doesn't get to raid. And quality players will not hang around a mid-Aristocracy guild if they only get to raid 1 of 3 days at best. Maybe they'll feel that's okay in a Royalty guild, but not at my level.
And to be honest, that's my main issue with this playstyle. Personal accountability is a secondary priority. The first and greatest priority is maintaining a full raid force, with a deep enough bench that you are always able to raid with a stable group.
Basically, the personal accountability folks felt that because people didn't perform, we didn't progress fast enough in order to attract quality recruits.
I felt that because we couldn't retain people (especially people who were on the bench), we couldn't put together a consistent raid in order to progress consistently.
Posted by
Rohan
47 comments:
" But sooner or later you lose people just through normal attrition, and have to recruit more and that leads to uneven progress. Or you hit a wall, and relations become acrimonious over who's failure it is"
Or there's a third option - that you lose people through attrition and instead of accepting recruits that are perhaps subpar you always recruit for the best and do not settle. You force the culture of personal responsibility and accountability and make sure everyone is with that culture.
And as it turns out, once everyone is willing to actually analyze and quantify why they failed, it's a lot less painful to point fingers. Once you can accept that you screwed up, figure out how to fix it and do it again it's a lot less painful to be accused of messing up.
I do see your point that in mixed groups often you'll have to compromise simply because you cannot in any remote way rely on someone to do the most basic task. You do things like tell people to jump in lava in case they get parasites or whatever instead of doing the right thing because, well, they're idiots. Or you add 2 more healers to cover up the issue that your current healers are horrible.
Or there's a third option - that you lose people through attrition and instead of accepting recruits that are perhaps subpar you always recruit for the best and do not settle.
But then you don't actually raid. Because you don't always have the numbers to raid.
Part of this--which I left out because I though it was tangential, may have been wrong--is that this style of play is very hostile to maintaining a bench.
If you are always taking your 25 best raiders to new content, then your bench doesn't get to raid. And decent players will not hang around a mid-Aristocracy guild if they only get to raid 1 of 3 days at best. Maybe they'll feel that's okay in a Royalty guild, but not at my level.
And to be honest, that's my main issue with this playstyle. Personal accountability is a secondary priority. The first and greatest priority is maintaining a full raid force, with a deep enough bench that you are always able to raid with a stable group.
Basically, the personal accountability folks felt that because people didn't perform, we didn't progress fast enough in order to attract quality recruits.
I felt that because we couldn't retain people (especially people who were on the bench), we couldn't put together a consistent raid in order to progress consistently.
Good soldiers don't necessarily make good generals. And just because you have good reaction speed and can get out of the fire quickly doesn't mean you're good at organizing a raid, developing new strategies, or dealing with people.
To put it another way: not everyone can be a brain surgeon or rocket scientist. Brain surgery requires intelligence and good memory coupled with dexterity and steady hands. Rocket science requires great math skills. Not everyone has the required abilities. And not everyone has the visual acuity to spot the pale green circle on the pale green floor under the pale green smoke. Not everyone has the reaction speed to avoid the incoming fireball or jump over the moving laser beam.
Personal accountability is a great concept. I wish more people would apply it to real life. But people generally play games for fun. And, quite frankly, this obsession with "achievement" and "skill" in, get this, an utterly meaningless activity that most people engage in for fun, can be rather shortsighted.
When I was raiding at a high level in Wrath, the RL would always choose the same 10-12 people, no matter what. This would usually be the tanks, and a few key dps and healers. The rest of the spots where up for grabs, usually rotated daily or chosen if a specific setup was needed for some bosses.
Our guild started to have problems in TOC, because we where going for Tribute to Insanity, meaning finishing the instance without a single wipe. When doing something like that, you cannot rotate, ever. You need the same people every time, as you cannot afford to bring new people that might mess up. Even good players will mess up the first time they try a new boss. This nearly killed our guild, but we finally got our server first achievement. The guild leaders made sure we always rotated and kept a steady roster after that, which made ICC much more enjoyable.
Or there's a third option - that you lose people through attrition and instead of accepting recruits that are perhaps subpar you always recruit for the best and do not settle. ..."
Even if you manage to keep your numbers up enough to raid--see Rohan's reply--there's another point to consider: if you only recruit "the best" and "do not settle", eventually you will be the one that is holding the group back and cut in favor of a better player.
Skill elitism sounds good in theory, but ultimately everyone fails to consider that there is always someone more skilled than they are and the policies they promote apply to themselves just as much as it applies to those they consider lacking in skill.
But people generally play games for fun. And, quite frankly, this obsession with "achievement" and "skill" in, get this, an utterly meaningless activity that most people engage in for fun, can be rather shortsighted.
Mmmm, to an extent that's true. If you were so obsessed with achievement and skill that you refused to play at all with people that didn't meet your lofty standards, that would be rather shortsighted.
But when you're engaging in a specific area of the game, i.e. progression raiding, which genuinely does require a certain level of skill from players, you can't really ignore that.
I've seen both sides of the coin - I've been in raid teams that were held back because we simply had too many people who didn't have the required skill. And on the other hand, I've dropped out of a team because I was the one who couldn't cut it - after clearing all the 4.0 content in normal mode, I had to say to my guildies "sorry, I'm out, my middle-aged reflexes were pushed to the absolute limit beating Twilight Council and Cho'gall and Nef, there is no way I can do this stuff on hardmode."
Unfortunately, there -are- a lot of people who refuse to play with those they consider "noobs." And there are a lot who consider anyone to be a "noob" if they don't have the right reflexes or refuse to play a minmaxed build.
Honestly, I'd rather fail with people I like than succeed with people I don't.
And yes, I'm one of those people who voluntarily withdraws if it looks like my poor reflexes are going to hurt the team. DPS and rotations are not a problem: I'm a competent Rift theorycrafter and do a lot of research to fill in the gaps in my own knowledge. But given that my average reaction time is 400ms (twice as slow as the average person, as far as I can tell from Internet-based reaction speed tests), there are simply fights where I'm going to be a burden.
It's hard for me to react to a lot of this... I was excited when you came to my server, even thought about possibly joining but the times did not work out. My wife and I PUG fairly consistently on LB and we have run into several Ad Infinitum members and some members of the guild you merged and demerged with. I have to say, we have never met someone we did not like from AI and we've never met someone we did like from the other guild. I'm truly sorry that you had this experience. When it comes to players I think that the responsibilities lie with each individual member of a team to perform his or her best, and to live up to the standards set. It's the manager, or GM / Raid Leaders responsibility to put people where they need to be. If someone's not performing up to the standard, it's the managements responsibility to recognize and discuss it, get help if they can, and it's the member's responsibility to accept the offer for help or find help on their own to improve up to the standards.
If you've set a standard of the RL calling out every hour of twilight and someone dies when they forget to call it out, it's the managers fault. If the standard is set that each person is responsible for using boss timers and responding to them, then it's the members fault when they forget to hit that heroic will button.
It's a matter of guild culture. It seems like the AI friendly and helpful culture I've experienced is in direct contrast to the culture of the other guild.
Setbacks are difficult, and some guilds never get over them. I hope you do.
On not having the numbers to raid: again, it really depends a lot on how you recruit and who you recruit. If you recruit people with the belief that you will have 90%+ attendance and that this is the expectation set out from the beginning, you'll find that you don't have a lot of issues due to attrition. It'll occasionally happen, and it'll suck, but it's not the end of the world to raid with 23 people.
And yes, this style is completely antagonistic to a bench, but that's good. Benches suck. It's far better from a learning, cohesion and play perspective to have as shallow a bench as you can conceivably get away with.
You don't always have to take your 25 very best raiders to raid because (for starters) the difference between your 25th and 26th-best raider is incidental and often made up for by better comps. It's not like everyone groans when you take gimpy mcidiot; there is no gimpy mcidiot, most everyone sits at certain points and you work it out intelligently and reasonably - like whether or not people need drops or need achievements or VP on a given boss. For progression, you take the 25 people that are on at that time that you think will maximize your chance of killing that boss; that 25 is very rarely the same between boss fights. And if it is, you rotate people in.
Again, these problems that you say - things like shallow benches, taking the best people for the job - are also strengths if you recruit for it. You just have to be very, very good at recruiting. And that's hard - but it can be done. A shallow bench also means that you're very rarely sitting and you showing up to raid is Really Important. Taking the best people for the job means that you never feel like someone's not pulling their weight - and if you feel like you're not pulling your weight you'll almost certainly be the first person to bring it up and bench yourself because you don't want to let down others and you know others are able to take your place if needed.
I speak from some amount of experience - I'm still a member of skunkworks (also known as casually serious) which raiding all of WotLK and Cataclysm on two nights a week, 4 hours a night, and kept a roster of about 27-28 people with a high of 30. It's a US top 100 guild right now, and has had things like world 251 kill of HLK 25. There were tough times, we've had to replace leadership a few times now, but it's still been going strong. It can and does work - but the biggest thing to do is not compromise on recruiting.
@unknown: you're absolutely right. If you're recruiting so that everyone you get is better than the average player you currently have, you will reach a point where there is some kind of skill discrepancy. Fortunately there are options there as well - retirement, learning, alts, different roles. I've seen them all. And yes, it happens, but it's not so horrible as you think; a lot of times by the time it does happen 3 years have passed, and that's about as much as you can hope for attrition's sake as you really can expect.
finally - the tyranny of skill is better worded as the tyranny of skill inequity. When you have an imbalance - especially a large one - and those who are skilled, who have done their homework, who are busting their ass to get things to work the right way fail because some idiot didn't listen to directions or doesn't even know their basic rotation - yes, that is an issue, and at some point yes, it is that person's fault that guy with skill is failing. When everyone's closer to the same skill this becomes less and less of an issue. When everyone's about the same skill level the most disappointed person when someone fails is the failer.
All I know is that I saw the same pattern for three years. We recruited, bled down, had trouble getting 25 people for a raid, recruited more, repeat over and over. The people we recruited in the low times, when they could be guaranteed a raid spot, were always more reliable than anyone recruited during the high times. The bench guys didn't get to raid, and just faded away.
The times we had a consistent group always matched up to the time we had our best performances.
The other part that influenced me was that for a long time we had 3 Holy Paladins who to rotated sitting out. I thought that triad made things a lot more stable for the guild as a whole. There was a time period of several months where every single raid we fielded had two Holy paladins, who were all equally geared and comfortable with the entire guild. No other position could really say the same thing, and throughout that span I don't think we ever had significant issues with tank healing.
I just thought that trying to extend that stability to the entire guild would at least have been a worthwhile experiment. But instead we kept doing the same thing over and over, and getting the same results.
And I blame that on the "skilled" people I describe in the original post. The blind assertion that this was the only way, flying in the face of all our experiences so far.
What you describe here is the basic and very old dilemma of raidguilds, no? :)ideally you want the "best players", but you also want to fill raids - very often you can't have both. that's why almost every guild compromises in recruitment and also why almost every raidguild lives to see the situation of removing players that "were once good enough" or recruits players that are actually not the desired standard.
it's the biggest crux of any raidguild I've ever been in. I'd say they all know it, unless you are really among the top 0.1% that can pick more cherries than you can ever use (=lotsa applicants all the time).
to deal with this situation asks for a lot of wisdom from a GM/leading team. more wisdom than one individual can probably handle. i've never seen it handled perfectly, maybe there is no such thing.
"The people who espouse this view are always really good players." - wrong. They are bad players. They may have good dps but still they are bad players because they don't know what's going in the fight. Good player can distinguish if there is problem with bad performance or change in tactics is needed.
"If you are always taking your 25 best raiders to new content, then your bench doesn't get to raid." - if RL is doing this than he is an idiot. You have to have replacement in order to keep the raid going. And everybody must get its share of loot and achievments. Of course if someone can't keep the pace with overall performance you must replace him. To keep a player only as a backup is stupid. Either you can use him or not.
It works like a good company. You have employees/raiders. If the employee is good you give him the payment and try to keep him with benefits even if you don't have work for him right now. If he is bad you just fire him.
Of course there are players or officers who think the way you describe. But they are bad players and bad officers.
"If you recruit people with the belief that you will have 90%+ attendance and that this is the expectation set out from the beginning, you'll find that you don't have a lot of issues due to attrition."
And if someone has a change of RL circumstances and can suddenly only make 70% raids, you drop them and hope you can find a replacement?
Well, it's one way to run a raid guild I suppose. But it does assume an endless stream of 'appropriate' candidates who all want to raid with you, which in practice doesn't exist (except possibly for very high end guilds -- and you can't ALL run very high end guilds for that reason).
Truth is, Rohan's classification of guilds into royalty/ aristocracy etc is flawed from my POV because it implies that the royalty are somehow better than (for example) a friendly casual guild which knocks out normal modes every week. They're not better, just more obsessed, and actually running the latter may well be more difficult. Imagine what a 'royalty' guild might look like for a social player (in the terms of: a guild that player would be queueing up to join) and it would be very different.
Just to add: I think being overly results focussed can have detrimental effects in any organisation, not just raid guilds, and particularly when one of the results being measured is not "maintaining a stable, happy team."
It's simple. Being highly skilled and professional doesn't = leadership. I see this dynamic in IT all the time. a group of very skilled, very smart people take over and begin to drive thier vision. Usually those highly skilled people have low EQ and bad people skills because they don't find these things to be important. As a result they almost always get thier goal in sight only to have everything fall apart before they can get there.
The dynamic you described destroys companies as well as guilds. the skilled become a click that eventually turns into groupthink and then it's just a matter of time.
The problem you describe is an age old dilemma for raiding guilds. A catch 22.
You want better players so you can make better progression - but in order to progress you must have 25 first (with an even class/role distribution). You compromise standards to get there.
Then you get the guy who is performing very well and desires progression above all. This guy is not involved in management and cannot see past "X stands in fire get rid of X." He does not understand concepts like being unable to replace the weaker player easily or tailoring a strat to accommodate the lesser player. Ultimately this guy leaves to join a further progressed guild - leaving a big hole in your roster and further slowing progression.
At some point you find yourself in the middle of the progression pack. The players you want to recruit wont want to join you because you aren't progressed enough. And you can't progress further quickly enough because you can't retain good players long enough - you are forced to accept weaker players who will take much longer to learn mechanics.
"By their theory, even if you did raid with subpar raiders, you are just going to wipe anyways."
The wrongness is self evident because many guilds with less hardcore players do kill bosses. So unless you're on bleeding edge heroic content, raids are succeeding without having this recruitment criteria.
The trick is in getting the more elitist raiders to be a little patient and agree to work with the raid they've got until they beat the boss, rather than ditching players immediately and trying (fruitlessly) to recruit replacements.
Yes, it's one way of running things. But you =greatly= restrict your pool of candidates. First, you're trying to get the "best" people. Second, by requiring attendance, you're effectively requiring that your players be unemployed, college students, or have incredibly structured lives with little room for spontaneity.
To some it's worth it. They want to experience achievement in the game. They're willing to structure their lives around it, just as some people are willing to devote hours a week to Little League or varsity football.
Others are not willing to make that commitment. Neither side is necessarily "right" or "wrong." But you really, really can't mix them together in the same guild.
I think this comment thread is indicative of the entire issue. Kalon is a pretty smart guy, and his blog is a solid and useful one. He is definitely more skilled than you or me. And yet he holds to the failure of personal responsibility line, and credits it for his guild’s success in the game.
This is the tyranny of skill. It’s hard to argue with someone like Kalon, hard to argue with his success. He spends less time raiding and is more successful than I am.
Is it so hard to understand the idea that players like Kalon might be right, even if it offends your sensibilities?
I didn't play Little League baseball, either. I have no desire to waste my time seeking "achievement" in an activity that is essentially meaningless. I have enough difficulty finding "success" in the real world, thanks.
Kalon's approach is right for him. He finds value in the teamwork and the success. Good for him. But his approach is not valid for everyone.
Some people have different priorities. Some people would rather have fun in a casual way, without all the pressure and recriminations.
The good news is, most of us probably realize that and wouldn't dream of wasting our time, or theirs, by applying to a guild like Kalon's.
"This is the tyranny of skill. It’s hard to argue with someone like Kalon, hard to argue with his success. He spends less time raiding and is more successful than I am."
You've defined success in a very narrow way, bearing in mind you just wrote a blog post explaining how that attitude pretty much killed your guild and enjoyment in WoW.
But sure, collecting a group of players who are able to be on at exactly the same times, all have exactly the same goals, and all play at a similar level is one 'solution' to raiding. There's nothing specially clever about it, although props to anyone who can manage the organisation and finding the right minded players.
But it's not a solution that can work for everyone because there simply aren't enough players to fuel a) the eventual turnover rate and b) who all want to play at the most unforgiving of levels (or as he puts it 'you force the culture of personal accountability' etc). So selling it as the solution to everyone's raiding issues ever is misleading -- the best you can say is that it can work for some people. Gevlon's various schemes are also often well thought through also -- like his current one with the really large guild where you just keep throwing random players against the content and don't try to keep a fixed roster.
But I think doing the best you can with the players you have and building an atmosphere in which people aren't always two failed raids away from quitting in a huff is also a form of success. And I'm more interested in guild organisation strategies that can achieve that.
Hardmode raiding, as you say, is a solved problem. I just don't find it an interesting one because I'm not that achievement orientated and don't want to play in that kind of guild.
What Kalon (and Rohan in the original post) is outlining works, and works well.. as long as the leadership is willing to hold the line all the way. You have two weeks of unexpected 70% attendance? No more promised raid slot. Not keeping up? Sorry, you're out. I honestly admire the heck out of a team like Serious Casual. You not only need a solid leadership with a strong vision, but 20+ other people who are okay with, say, missing a week of raids because you only recruit the best.
The problem most of us have with this -- I certainly did -- is holding the line. Beloved guildie who is usually very prompt is taking a night class and will be 15m late every raid now? Do I hold the line but face bad feelings and recruiting for that spot, or do I be nice and accomodating? Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, but for the most part accomodating won. And then six months later you look up and realize that you've had to make some kind of special dispensation for half your raid team and you are probably never going to be the tight knit juggernaut of time-limited raiding you once desired.
But that's okay. I agree with Spinks' comment: what does success mean? Serious Casual is certainly successful! For me, though being generous and playing with people I liked turned out to be more important than having a meritocracy. It's easy to fall into the teeth-grinding "must progress faster" craze and god knows I've done it myself, but what it comes down to is.. is it important enough to you to tow the line? To make the tough calls? To tell someone they're not good enough? To tell the team you're not raiding because you haven't found a good tank replacement yet? It's not a tyranny of skill, per se, it's.. we're creating our own subjugation by expecting things beyond what we're willing to do.
Ultimately, it's less about skill than it is about unity of purpose. Problems arise when you have players who think that standard A is good enough, and a group of players who think that people should be held to the higher Standard B.
A guild that expects to clear normal modes within a month of content release is going to have trouble with a player who expects to clear normal content week one. Likewise, a guild that expects to clear normal content week one will have trouble with a player who performs at a level below that expectation.
People need to know their place. They need to have realistic expectations of their own abilities, the abilities of the other raiders, and the commitment of the raid group. The greater the gap between a player's expectations and reality, the more likely there is going to be a schism.
To me, it all goes back to the bowling analogy. If you just like to bowl, then go bowling whenever you have enough people and feel like it. If you sign up for a league, though, then you are expected to make the game, on time, every week. There are 24+ more people relying on you to show up. Common decency requires it, if nothing else.
From there, it all depends on the team. If you are playing on a scratch league, they expect you to roll 200+ every game. If you are on a handicap league, then that is where you are, but your team is still going to get pissed when you roll 50 pins under your average.
"And if someone has a change of RL circumstances and can suddenly only make 70% raids, you drop them and hope you can find a replacement?"
Sadly, yes. And it happens all the time. And if it doesn't happen fast enough then the other members get pretty pissed off, because that person is effectively wasting 24-28 other people's time. In Skunkworks what usually happens for most raiders is this:
1. Lifestyle change in a 4+ raid/week guild forces you to stop raiding so much, but you still want to raid at a high level2. Join Skunkworks, try the 2 raid/week thing. 3. Find out that lifestyle change is kicking your ass even more than it was before and then move on.
In a lot of ways, skunkworks is the halfway house of raiding - it's a step towards quitting altogether. Very few people quit Skunkworks and then go back to more hardcore raiding; I think I know of 2 in the last 2.5 years. But I know tons who are simply not playing WoW at all, including the GM, every officer I started with and every second-generation officer I started with save one.
As I said - this method of being completely brutal, serious and uncompromising on things like recruiting, attendance, personal performance and the like is one option. This means that if someone wants to reroll no matter how awesome they were as their prior toon you treat them as a trial at best (if they want to sign up as a tank, that might not be an option, frex). That means that if people need to take a break for a long while due to parental leave or a long vacation they may have to re-earn their raid spot back. Nothing is earned forever.
And that works when everyone buys in. When everyone gears to raid, cares a lot about progression and playing at a high level and doesn't want to spend time wiping because gimpy mcidiot doesn't know what the mechanics of the fight is.
However, it also doesn't work with couples. It doesn't work with friends. It doesn't work for a large chunk of the people who want to raid and don't care about looking at EJ to optimize their stuff.
It absolutely does not work for everyone.
I think this style absolutely can work for a lot more guilds than are currently doing things. I think a lot of guilds that raid 3 or 4 times a week could easily scale back to 2 and suffer no actual performance loss. I think a lot of guilds with a bench of 40 people could cut that to 30 and be better off for it. But it won't work for everyone.
For me, it's a no-brainer. I hate it when other people waste my time; my time is limited and if I dedicate a 4-hour block of time to play, I expect others will understand how hard that is on me and my family and will similarly be there. I expect that they will not need their hand held for every fight and will watch things. I expect that they'll shut up on vent when we go to srs bsns mode. I expect that we won't screw around on trash for 30 min because the tank went afk to smoke and his girlfriend tells everyone to wait on them. Those are the things that destroy raiding for me, personally.
I don't claim that it's the only way to do it. But I do claim that it's a perfectly good way for quite a few people to do it.
Obligatory Context:I am a retired Royalty guild Ret Paladin. I was with my (now disbanded as of the beginning of Cata) guild from Ulduar (US 12th Firefighter pre-nerf, US 15th Alone in the Dark), through ICC (Heroic mode kills in World top 15, and culminating the tier with a US 15th Lich King). I was raid leader for FL through ToGC (US 8th Anub). FL Raided 5 days/week, typically maintained a bench of around 5-10 people, depending on the number of Apps, and was a progression-oriented guild.
Ok, now that's over with, and you have some insight into where I'm coming from...
There are two points I want to make regarding your viewing "the Tyranny of Skill" in a negative light.
1) This philosophy, like most, can be handled in both a negative/destructive, and a positive/productive way. Which effect it has is mostly determined by the attitudes and actions of the guild's leaders.It sounds like your merged guild suffered more from the former, which is unfortunate, but doesn't tell the whole story.
There is a reason why a Personal Accountability mindset is so successful. If handled correctly, it starts a positive feedback loop, and your success (success measured in terms of progression as a group. Let's put arguments about whether that is the most important measure of "success" aside for now, because they only muddy the waters with arguments belonging elsewhere.) will increase exponentially. The reason it does this is because it provides a negative incentive for complacency, particularly when, as brought up by Kalon, there isn't a destabilizingly large skill inequality between the best players in the guild and the worst players in the guild. This is because no one wants to be the one to fail, and because a meritocracy encourages active competition, not only with peers but with yourself and your own previous performance.In an environment where it is agreed that the strat is at fault, or the raid composition at fault, or lack of practice at fault, complacency is seductive, contagious, and addicting. It is a big reason why players who used to be by far the superior performer in their entire guild apply to a bleeding edge guild and find themselves completely out of their depth. They have spent months resting on their laurels and not challenging themselves or needing to challenges themselves. Even if they DID fail before, it would have just been viewed as evidence that there was clearly some other issue than personal performance, because CLEARLY if the guild's best player was failing it cannot be a performance issue!
Ironically, when a guild has a Personal Performance mindset, 90% of the time they are correct, and it makes the other 10% of the time when there genuinely IS a strategy or a composition or a familiarity issue MUCH easier to recognize and then correct because the signs become isolated from variables.
2) This mindset only works when the social mobility of players between guilds is enough that players of similar skill levels are able to congregate together at around the plateau of their capabilities. As a result, it was extremely successful up through Wrath, but many guilds which espouse it in Cata have been dying. The new features of raiding (10/25-man equivalency, Guild Perks and reputation, increased stratification of difficulty modes combined with increased content nerfing, etc) have all moved things in the opposite direction: towards discouraging upward mobility of skill, and encouraging groups of players who aren't necessarily well matched to stick together anyway and just try to make things work."Guild Hopping" was given a really bad rap, mostly by frustrated recruitment officers, and perhaps justifiably so back in the days of difficult attunements and serious gear barriers (neither of which existed in Wrath), but was ultimately healthy in fostering an upward trend in increasing player skill and enabling motivated players to be able to place themselves with like-minded people.Now, meritocracies are failing because the recruitment pools have decreased steadily in quality over as part of a long trend. This means that losses need to be replaced by inferior stock, often widening the skill inequality gap and destabilizing the productive group dynamic.
The biggest lesson Recruitment officers in Royalty-but-not-world-first-level guilds have had to learn is that skill is not static, it can be taught. So you can compromise by simply identifying "potential" and then essentially using a sort of apprentice/buddy system to train recruits up. The Old Guard has been fading for a while, and since the game no longer inherently fosters upward trends in skill, guilds have to take responsibility for doing so themselves.
Something else people need to recognize: sometimes skill =can't= be taught. Modern society fosters a rather naive belief that anything can be solved by the application of sufficient education. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case.
Is it worth =trying= to teach people? Absolutely. But the idea that if they fail it has to be their fault is simply inaccurate. Sometimes people fail through no fault of their own. As long as both the teacher and the student recognize this possibility, practical growth is possible.
Are there natural limitations everyone has where they plateau due to things like varying decision making under pressure, speed of reflexes, and the latency of their connection? Sure, but 90% of the time there are even things you can teach/learn to make the person more effective in those areas too. Almost no one in the entire game of millions of players is able to actually reach one of the hard caps on their skill in a particular area, and no one caps everything that is under their control.
And the vast majority of the time the problem is more fundamental than that and can be solved with very basic coaching. Big examples include not realizing the min-maxing potential of various little-used or "I thought that was just for PVP/a different spec" class skills, or (this is a big one) having a self-sabotaging counter-productive UI/keybinding/mod use setup.
Skill can ALWAYS be improved, and empirically from the exponential skill rise from aristocracy guilds to royalty guilds to top 5 world guilds, in the case of almost every single person who will ever read this blog, it can be improved by A LOT, often by some very basic fundamental changes.
Are you a melee DPS or a tank and you don't use a key press/release inverter script? Boom, vast improvement.
Are you using windows and not using Leatrix Latency Fix? Boom, 200ms less latency.
Are you not binding /startattack to all your abilities? Boom, you are suddenly getting significantly more white swing damage on every fight with target switches, adds, or heavy movement.
The list goes on. And much of the things that make up high performance simply amount to knowledge and preparation, not having superhuman reflexes. The contribution reflexes can make is largely limited by the GCD anyway.
The thing that separates top world level performers from amateurs is mostly premeditated playstyle design strategy, practice, and a comprehensive understanding of every facet of their class and every other class and fight mechanic they interact with.
All of which is simply knowledge, and knowledge can be imparted.
It is rare for someone to fail through no fault of their own, and that can only happen if they perform every action they could have taken to mitigate and prevent that failure, which is simply hardly ever true in the non-bleeding edge level.To believe otherwise is to not only accept, but to purposefully seek and invite mediocrity.
Sorry, Brekkie, no amount of education will make someone who is bad at math into a rocket scientist or someone with shaky hands into a surgeon.
Similarly, no amount of practice or training will help you if you hit the wrong keys more frequently than most. There's a reason some people can type 100 words per minute but most people are limited to 40. No amount of practice or training will help you if you simply can't see the pale green ring on the pale green ground through the pale green smoke.
Granted, the vast majority of the "skills" involved in a game like WoW or Rift are pretty basic. And it's true that most people will be able to master them or find adequate workarounds.
But nonetheless, visual acuity, manual dexterity, and reflexes do play a part. And I can tell you this much: after twelve years of playing MMOs, I'm pretty darned sure exactly where my limitations lie.
To put it another way:
If every could do "it," they'd be doing "it." If they're not doing "it," you can either assume it's a flaw in their character, or you can accept that some of them are, in fact, doing their best and still can't quite do "it."
You justify the problem of subpar peformance with problem of orginization. You didnt note more than just 2 types of skill-based players so its constantly hard to which players you are constantly reffering to. Please input much more details, much much more player types and much more plausible examples.
Im raiding with guild on pretty normal state ( 3-4 days week ). Our Raid Leader is very good player and skilled. He is really into theoryfracting and focusing to maxmize his dps. His attitude is spreading on our whole dps team. I think it is good for everyone when you can see it is possible to play better without high end gear and improve your gameplay.
PS. Sorry for offtopic but could you explain this?
Are you a melee DPS or a tank and you don't use a key press/release inverter script? Boom, vast improvement.
@TrixThe way most keyboards work is that they do not actually send a signal to execute an operation when the key is PRESSED, they send the signal when the depressed key is RELEASED.
What this means is you are having to do two physical actions instead of just one, you have to press the key, and then let go. And it also means that the extra time it takes to do so is essentially added to your latency and creating dead space in between ability usages.
When top guilds evaluate a parse, one of the biggest things we look for is number of skill usages divided by time. This tends to be the biggest thing that varies when you have two players who are doing their rotation properly and generally making all the right decisions, but who are of different skill. Squeezing as many abilities out as possible, and riding the GCD as nearly as you are capable, is a big part of performance.
So top players utilize a script which inverts this functionality of their keyboard. It makes it so that abilities fire when they key is PRESSED, rather than when it is press-released. This, combined with key spamming like you should be doing anyway, positively impacts output.
The higher-end "Gaming Keyboards" like the G52, etc, tend to have this feature built into them, and it is honestly their only real advantage.
You can find a script that will do this by just googling "Key press/release invert", or some variation of that.It will be a script you run on your computer.
You are simply, empirically, wrong. I've never encountered a player who I coached and who was willing to TAKE coaching whose performance I wasn't able to dramatically improve.
There ARE variables in human ability, but unless you are working with players who are somehow physically disabled, they only come into play at the absolute HIGHEST levels. 99% of players simply are not playing well enough to come close to their natural human limitations.
The most useful question to ask is "Why is this person failing?"
Are they failing to notice and respond in time to an encounter effect? Chances are...-Their UI is non-optimal, distracting their brain processes with extraneous information-Their keybindings are non-optimal, requiring they devote more attention to their finger movements than is necessary, at the detriment of attention paid to their screen.-Their rotation is not automated enough, which could be a design, a mod, or a practice issue, or all three, once again to the detriment of attention.-They are not taking enough advantage of the warning tools available to them. Perhaps they are responsive to audio-cues, but only use visual warning signs because they think that is all their is because that's what is default and "what everybody else uses".
The list goes on endlessly. I'm only scratching the surface. Any player willing to take coaching from a world class player could be taken completely apart and put back together and come out the end with a vastly increased level of performance.
Why do more people NOT do this?
People do not escape to a fantasy world where they roleplay an epic hero because they like finding out that they are doing it wrong. Most people buy into the social dynamic that, as long as I am not the worst person in my regular group or "the one holding the group back", I am doing just fine.And on top of that, a lot of this knowledge is extremely specialized, uncommonly known, and many simply do not know it is out there or where/who to get it from.
It takes a very specific type of personality to never be satisfied with your own performance.Most people do not have that personality. So they, like you, truly convince themselves that they are doing "their best", and leave it at that.
I think we have a communications disconnect here. You're talking about WoW exclusively. And you may be correct, in the very limited context of WoW. I've never played WoW. I never could get past the cartoony graphics.
I'm talking about the concept of "education" in the grander scheme of things, which I believe =also= applies to MMOs, including WoW.
Tell you what:
You keep blaming it all on people not being willing to learn, I'll keep blaming it on people having unrealistic expectations of other people, and we'll both walk away from this conversation.
Because I simply have not had the same experiences with life, and MMOs, that you have had. And you very clearly have not had the same experiences that I have had. Be grateful.
You keep blaming it all on people not being willing to learn, I'll keep blaming it on people having unrealistic expectations of other people, and we'll both walk away from this conversation.
I think you have hit on it, being that it is a social issue that transcends gaming.
We used to talk about a thing called "talent." Now, we only accept its existence for the purpose of cheesy variety/game show combinations. People have different talents. Whether it is a product of genetics or nurture (most likely both) it exists.
Some people are good at certain things with little effort. Some people will never be good at certain things, no matter how much effort they put into them. No matter how much I study, I'll never be a Bobby Fischer or Gary Kasparov. No matter how often I lift, I'll never be a world-class weight lifter (which doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing it or liking it.)
On the other hand, in my profession (obscure litigation niche), I'm one of the world leaders. I have a natural talent for it. Being clever, highly stress resilient and a knack for analogies has given me an edge up on others that no amount of education can compete with.
It's the way the world works. To feel better about ourselves, we like to act like talent doesn't exist -- it's all about the "effort" or "dedication" you put into something. I'm sorry, but it isn't. Some people are smarter than others, faster, stronger. Some people are below average in all of those. It doesn't mean that we should shame them for it or that they can't have a happy, successful life, but we shouldn't pretend that someone with natural talent isn't going to run circles around them.
And if you are doing something that requires high performance at all times, then you should always pick the talented and dedicated over the untalented and dedicated.
Trying to draw universal conclusions out of the point Rohan is trying to make is stretching things a bit farther than is really supported by evidence. And it is certainly a tangent that merely muddies the waters of the discussion, rather than being helpful in any way.
For the record, in addition to being a raid leader of a prior world-level raiding guild, I am also a US Marine with a highly successful career.It has been my experience that the kind of person who reaches for success and demands personal accountability of not only others but from themselves is the kind of person who consistently is successful in EVERYTHING they do, not merely a single narrow field as would be the case if it was purely due to good fortune in "talent".
Does natural talent exist? Sure, but it's impact is overstated, and only really comes into play when you are already performing at the world-competitive level.Of much bigger importance is motivation.
On that we can agree, at least to an extent. Motivation is a very important ingredient for becoming the best you can be. And being the best you can be can have a very positive impact on your success.
Unfortunately, sometimes being the best you can be simply isn't good enough. Doesn't mean you shouldn't still try. But you're never going to be a great dancer if you can't hear the beat (I can't, BTW. The bass just sort of sounds like a blur, if that makes any sense.).
Part of being an adult comes from actually recognizing limitations when you encounter them. If you beat your head against the same problem for ten years, odds are you're not going to suddenly magically discover the answer. Sometimes you just have to accept that there is no answer.
As a relatively new player to the world of raiding, how do you recommend finding a coach? I've found that currently you (well, maybe just me) can only get so far in moving up the guild skillset before there's a big barrier. The next tier of raiders expects more, but seems unwilling to help. I'd love to be completely dissected and put back together and be able to contribute more, I just don't know how.
The best thing to do is make a friend. When you encounter someone better than you at your class, approach them with a genuine desire to learn. It might take a few tries, but by and large most people enjoy sharing knowledge because it makes them feel good about themselves as an expert.
When you've learned and mastered what that person has to teach you, find someone else, maybe who is even better, and then pick their brain too. And so on and so forth.
WoW is just simply not an activity where natural limitations come into play very much. If they do, it means you are sabotaging yourself by playing in a fashion which makes things harder on you than they have to be.
I know of a deaf woman in a top 20 world guild who gets along just fine. I've seen older and younger players, people who have played video games their whole life, and people for whom WoW was their very first game all reach a world-competitive level. And it was not due to some kind of innate talent, it was due to attitude and a critical mass of knowledge.
Unless a person is blind or somehow mentally handicapped (not intending this to sound as an insult), they are physically capable of improving their play to world level.The only barriers are generally overcoming complacency in your performance, the drive to find information that will make you better, and possessing the humility to accept that you are meeting only a fraction of what you are capable of.
The people who complain that some people just don't have the talent for video games are the same people who generally claim that minor differences in class balance only matter for the bleeding edge. But you can't have it both ways. Both factors are ultimately so minor that they indeed only really matter at the bleeding edge, and class balance probably makes a bigger difference than reaction speed reflex time differences between human beings.
What a very thoughtful and insightful blog. In Wrath I got a regular raiding spot in my guild's 2nd ten man team. We had a terrific RF and oddly we progressed much more quickly than the "A" team - full of all the best geared and more skillful guild members.
The only difference I could discern was that we had a very amiable group who genuinely liked each other and we had a blast. I listened in on vent to the "A" team several times and it was acrimonious and full of "people just need to pull their socks up try harder" sort of comments. My GF filled a free spot one time in the "A" team raid and was so upset with how everyone spoke to everyone else esp her - she never raided with the guild again.
Funnily, because the "B" team was progressing quite quickly - "A" team members pushed to get into the "B" team and the same sort of behaviours eventually poisoned "B" team and gradually all the inaugural "B" team members stopped turning up.
Again, thank you for such an insightful and intelligent analysis. Welcome to my favourites list :-)
I usually lurk here, but i am drawn to discussion. I dont find it completely either or situation. I am in a 2 day raiding guild that just finished with t13 on normal, and we are all happy with out progress.
However, we all show up in time if signed, our returns from wipes are quick (quicker then some guilds i was in that were more progressed), we all admit when we make mistakes and discuss what can be done better.
Not being in a top raiding does not mean you are raiding with idiot monkeys, which seems to be the opinion of some posters here.
However, it does mean you have to monitor some people closely, especially after patches, and that you have to read up some EJ threads for classes other than your own. It also means a lot of us dont use macros or have the skill to make them etc.
But we are happy with where we are (mostly), and the most important point, we are there to have a nice experience in a nice atmosphere, ie, shouting is not encouraged, discussion and suggestions are encouraged, comments like "you fail" or "if idiots could move" etc. are frowned on.
I have also been in guilds with same level of progression which also suffered from the blame sickness etc.
After my ramble, what i want to say is - pick what suits you and your guild culture, and try and draw people who are looking for it.
I personally cannot stand shouting and recriminations, im in a guild that discourages such behaviour.
| 55,437 |
CODING & DOCUMENTATION
Hospital admission and discharge
Q
This morning I provided initial hospital care for a patient who was treated in the emergency department (ED) yesterday evening by another physician. This afternoon, I decided that the patient was ready to be discharged and sent him home. How should I bill for my services? If the patient had been admitted and discharged on the same date, I would have billed an admission/discharge code (99234-99236); however, because the patient was admitted to inpatient status from the ED at 11 p.m. and I didn't see him until the next calendar date, that would not be appropriate in this scenario.
A
Actually, CPT defines hospital admission as the first encounter between the physician and the patient at the site of service, regardless of the calendar date the patient becomes an inpatient. In this case, the patient was assigned to inpatient status at 11 p.m., but you did not see him until the following morning. You then discharged the patient later that day, resulting in a same-day admission/discharge service, which should be reported with a code from the series 99234-99236.
Assessing older drivers
Q
How should I bill for a visit to determine whether an elderly patient should continue to drive?
A
If your patient is covered by Medicare and the visit is prompted by specific symptoms or complaints, you should report the appropriate evaluation and management (E/M) code. Because counseling will likely be the predominant service in this encounter (i.e., accounting for more than 50 percent of the total face-to-face time), be sure to document your time and the counseling you provided. This will allow you to select the level of service based on time rather than key components.
If you provide additional services as part of your assessment, such as a health risk assessment (99420), muscle and range of motion testing (95831), visual function screening (99172) or screening test of visual acuity (99173), you can bill Medicare for these separately.
For a patient who is not experiencing symptoms, you should bill a code from the preventive medicine, individual counseling series (99401-99404). In this situation, Medicare will not cover the assessment services previously mentioned because there are no symptoms or illness to establish medical necessity.
Tdap injections
Q
What is the appropriate code for a Tdap injection?
A
The CPT code for a Tdap injection, which is a combination vaccine consisting of tetanus toxoid, diphtheria toxoid and acellular pertussis vaccine, is 90715. To bill for the administration of the vaccine, use 90465-90466 or 90471-90472. You may report preventive services or other significant, separately identifiable E/M services provided on the same date as the vaccine by appending modifier −25 to the E/M code.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Send questions and comments to [email protected], or add your comments below. While this department attempts to provide accurate information, some payers may not accept the advice given. Refer to the current CPT and ICD-10 coding manuals and payer policies.
FPM E-Newsletter
To avoid a negative payment adjustment from Medicare in 2020, practices must achieve a MIPS final score of at least 15 points for the 2018 performance period. Here's how to meet this performance threshold.
| 3,323 |
Elsewhere
Nev is a fan of
Facebooks new advertising features are not only annoying me I’d probably say there are huge privacy implications too. I’m far from being the only one to be peeved by this. Zuckerberg was apparently confused as to why people would be concerned about the privacy implications during the press conference. It has become apparent that Facebook isn’t the best at privacy.The introduction of the news feed feature sometime ago was met with some amount of fury. At the very least listen to the same feedback as before and extend the preference sliders and let me turn down the noise for these new ads.I’m definitely not going to use it but if, for some strange reason, you’re interested in which brands and products I’m passionate about, here’s my list (in no particular order):
Apple
Crumpler bags
Herman Miller chairs
Mont Blanc pens
Specialized
Sennheiser headphones
JBL speakers
Moleskine notebooks
Aga
Wusthoff knives
Sony Bravia televisions
Bombay Sapphire gin
If I feel something is jaw-droppingly awesome, performs brilliantly, is better than a competing product or just has some fantastic marketing behind it then I’m much more likely to tell my friends about it myself by traditional word-of-mouth.
| 1,258 |
Victim's ex-boyfriend allegedly posted online that she had a rape fantasy
Below:
Next story in Crime & courts
CASPER, Wyo. — Authorities say a Casper woman was assaulted at her front door, raped at knifepoint in her living room and left bound on the floor, and they say one of the men charged in the brutal attack claimed that he thought it was invited.
Two men are accused in the crime. One is charged with carrying out the rape. The other, the woman's ex-boyfriend, stands accused of posing as the victim online and claiming she harbored a rape fantasy and wanted to be assaulted.
The case in the central Wyoming city of Casper, population 54,000, illustrates that middle America isn't immune to the dangers of Internet anonymity and predators who target victims through online ads that hint at sex and prostitution.
Prosecutor Mike Blonigen, the Natrona County district attorney, declined to comment on the specifics of the ongoing rape case. But he said Internet cases generally pose a challenge to law enforcement.
"Tracking down who's involved is relatively difficult," Blonigen said. "It's pretty easy to set up a false identity in cyberspace, so that's always an issue. And of course, they have to make some overt act to actually accomplish any of these things. We're not the thought police."
In the Casper case, Blonigen's office has charged Ty Oliver McDowell, 26, of Bar Nunn, a Casper suburb, with three counts of first-degree sexual assault, one count of kidnapping and one count of aggravated burglary. Jebidiah James Stipe, 27, a Marine based in Twentynine Palms, Calif., is charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree sexual assault.
A few days before the Casper woman was raped, she had complained to the Natrona County Sheriff's Department that someone had made a false Craigslist posting about her, including photographs and personal information. The ad read, "Need a real aggressive man with no concern for women," authorities said.
Craigslist took the advertisement down when the woman complained. Yet prosecutors say it was posted long enough to catch the attention of McDowell, a medical technologist.
'Rape fantasy'According to a statement filed in court by Natrona County Sheriff's Deputy Todd Sexton, McDowell waived his right to remain silent and talked to deputies investigating the case.
"McDowell admitted to going to the victim's residence ... and having sexual contact with (the woman) to fulfill a 'rape fantasy' for her," Sexton wrote.
McDowell told investigators that he had corresponded with a person he thought was the woman at an e-mail address featured on the advertisement, Sexton wrote.
However, prosecutors charge that McDowell was actually communicating by e-mail with Stipe, the woman's former boyfriend. They say Stipe posted the ad to set the woman up for the attack without her knowledge.
The San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff's Department on Dec. 16 arrested Stipe, a private first-class in the U.S. Marine Corps then stationed at Twentynine Palms. A spokeswoman for the Marine Corps said Stipe enlisted in July 2001 and, "was being processed for administrative separation as a result of a pattern of misconduct at the time of his arrest."
The Casper case is one of several sex crimes to grab headlines recently in which the Internet linked perpetrators and victims. Law enforcement officials around the country also have in the past accused Craigslist of promoting prostitution.
Scrutiny of Craigslist increased significantly when prosecutors in Boston last year charged that former medical student Philip Markoff used Craigslist to arrange a meeting with masseuse Julissa Brisman. He's accused of shooting her to death last April and of attacking other women he met through the site.
In 2008, Craigslist agreed to tighten its adult services advertisements as part of an agreement with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and with the attorneys general for 43 states and territories, including Wyoming.
Craigslist changesUnder the agreement, Craigslist started requiring a working telephone number and charging a small credit card fee for each such ad.
"Requiring credit card verification and charging a fee to post in this category raises accountability to a point where we expect few illicit ads will remain," Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said in November 2008 in a joint statement with the state prosecutors and the children's center.
Craigslist didn't respond to an e-mail sent to their San Francisco headquarters seeking comment on the Wyoming rape case, although a company phone message requests that press inquiries be made by e-mail.
Blonigen, the Casper prosecutor, said Craigslist was cooperative with Wyoming investigators.
"I would prefer that they maybe not run these ads," Blonigen said. "You know somebody's going to do it even if they don't."
Wyoming State Sen. Tony Ross, R-Cheyenne, is a criminal defense attorney and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the state Legislature. He said the committee may have to consider whether state law is up to the challenge of dealing with sexual predators who prowl the Internet.
"The world is changing so rapidly here, particularly with regard to Internet, cyber crimes, and things like that, that we're going to see a whole new evolution of law, it seems to me," Ross said.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
| 5,479 |
Female Orgasm - The Huffington Post
Every Friday on In fact, the majority of these women reported having experienced this at least six times. Steven universe garnet porn tubes, butt naked garnet from steven universe - Daily updated free porn videos! Videos Monster pussy porn hot mistress porn videos free porn group party sex. Yes! Yes! Oh, no! Coming oh so close to orgasm - Health - Sexual. I came I let out a loud moan and started moving my ass around trying to help her finger reach deeper.
For one, nothing takes the sexy out of sex quite like being accused of peeing on someone. Women cum hard from fingering, toy sex, and hot fucking with guys in female orgasm videos. Are you having trouble reaching orgasm? A guide for women.
| 737 |
Tag: Surgery
Understanding Liposuction Surgery
Liposuction surgery isn’t meant for those who would like to become rid of all their body fat. It is most suitable for that. It is a popular cosmetic procedure that can target fat in areas of the body and remove it permanently. Liposuction surgery in India, which is also called liposculpture suction lipectomy, is a sort of cosmetic surgery procedure that confiscates fat from diverse portions of the body.
A Secret Weapon for Liposuction Surgery
Most people want to understand what things to expect after the liposuction. Liposuction always clears fat cells, altering the state of the human body. Liposuction is the excellent technique that deals with your personality. Liposuction might also be desirable if you want to alter the contours of your entire body. Liposuction can help you eradicate the stubborn fat which has been unresponsive to work out and diets. By taking away the fat pockets, liposuction may also reshape the contour lines and enhance the body aesthetics.
Liposuction Surgery – the Conspiracy
Liposuction has two primary types. Liposuction makes enduring consequences. Liposuction isn’t an effective weight reduction method, and candidates ought to be within 20 pounds of their ideal weight. Liposuction is the procedure that may help you appear slim in an unbelievably speedy moment. Liposuction isn’t an alternative of suitable diet program and exercise. Liposuction usually results in dehydration for an extensive speed, so drinking a lot of water is essential to avoid swelling in the operated body parts. There are lots of distinct kinds of liposuction available.
Liposuction is done on particular body locations. Liposuction is a cosmetic surgery to receive back in your preferred body form. As liposuction is just one of the most well-known procedures all over the world, it is common to anticipate that most plastic surgeons have fairly a superb knowledge in performing liposuction. Smartlipo liposuction is a sophisticated cosmetic surgery choice to eliminate extra fat from the body and offer a more attractive body form.
The traditional and contemporary techniques of liposuction are suggested around the world. Liposuction is the distinctive and ultimate technique that will provide you with the absolute most pleasant and stunning body. Liposuction is the sole procedure which gets consistent, trusted and permanent outcomes. Liposuction is the technique to eliminate the excess fats from your entire body. Liposuction is among the most frequently offered cosmetic surgery procedures. Actually, liposuction was the 2nd most-requested aesthetic surgical procedure in the calendar year 2016. Liposuction will provide you with the body you will proud of.
Liposuction is removal of additional fat from body as a way to appear young and lovely. Liposuction is the thing that lots of pick with a particular end goal to have that body they generally needed. Liposuction gives you a desirable figure within shortest possible period of time. While liposuction isn’t a replacement for a healthful way of life, it can cause you to look and feel far better. Liposuction is a minimally invasive cosmetic procedure that intends to get rid of unneeded fat from a specific area of the human body to attain a sculpted appearance. Liposuction is a health procedure which makes it feasible to reshape and slim specific portions of your entire body. Tumescent liposuction is one of the most common techniques used today.
| 3,500 |
A first-time collaboration project between outdoor outfitters Poler and Nike Snowboarding, this season sees the release of the Poler x Nike Vapen Premium Snowboard Boot. Composed using a dusty palette of earthy browns with a crisp olive green, the boot features subtle camouflage accents at the tongue and lining, with a feel designed to balance aesthetic with performance. Priced at $240 USD, the Poler x Nike Vapen Premium Snowboard Boot is available here.
| 458 |
To create the replica Jerry had to sacrifice a beautiful 94 corvette and completely remove the front and back of the car, before putting a new fibre glass body back on it to etch out the long lines of the speed racer.
| 217 |
Most real-time strategy (RTS) games are modelled around sci-fi or fantasy themes but Ensemble Studios’ 1999 PC gaming classic, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, used an authentic historical backdrop and featured 13 different civilisations for players to control.
The brainchild of Peter Molyneux, Black & White was one of the most innovative and challenging PC games of the early 2000s. It didn’t adhere to the typical 2+2=4 gameplay formula, and instead allowed players to explore their own personalities in a vast, virtual world.
| 539 |
Chris Paul Will Be Dealt Shortly
Chris Paul will likely be traded to the Golden State Warriors within the next few days according to sources familiar with the Hornets internal decision making. Wonder why I say that? Among other reasons (Mr. Sources #4 told me), the team has supposedly been preparing biographies for players who would not be inbound if Paul weren’t on the trading block as well as drafts of press releases in case certain trades take place. Why do that if you aren’t preparing for a blockbuster trade?
The most likely team to acquire CP3, the Warriors, will reportedly offer Stephen Curry, Ekpe Udoh, and Klay Thompson as primary pieces of a deal regardless of whether or not their ownership is guaranteed that Chris Paul will re-sign. As Michael said, the Hornets are and should be very high on Curry.
That’s a big and bold move, especially considering CP3 hasn’t given any public concrete statement about playing out his career in the Bay Area. He also hasn’t publicly met with ownership there. That said, presuming the Warriors acquire Paul before the 1st of January, they will be the only team able to offer him a max deal heading into his next contract. Considering his past knee injury, smart money says they get him and keep him long term, especially if they amnesty Biedrins and then sign Tyson Chandler as they would be expected to do. Keep in mind that their owners are rich, even in relation to their peers.
Next up on the list, which would likely be the primary trade destination if CP3 convinces the Warriors there is NO F-ing WAY he would sign with them, is the Los Angeles Clippers, who will supposedly offer a package of Eric Bledsoe, Aminu, the 2012 Minnesota unprotected first round pick, the expiring contract of Chris Kaman, and some package that either includes DeAdre Jordan and/or Eric Gordon and/or future draft picks. Presumably as part of any deal with the Clippers, the Hornets could acquire a number of future first or second round picks in exchange for either Emeka Okafor, Trevor Ariza, or both. A third team would and should be involved if the Hornets are going to maximize their gain from trading a superstar such as Paul while removing quality veterans/long term financial obligations such as Ariza and Okafor from their lineup.
In third, and last according to most sources, is the Boston Celtics who are supposedly quite desperate to replace their jump shot-less point guard, Rajon Rondo, with someone of Chris Paul’s caliber (that’s only one person). Dell Demps, just like me, doesn’t want Rondo as the centerpiece for rebuilding, so if this goes down you should expect a third team to be involved in a major way. Sorry Rondo, but you haven’t been the kindest person to fans of New Orleans over the years. I tell it like it is.
If you’re waiting to hear about the Knicks, hold your breath.
Keep holding.
…
Ok, fine. Let it out. I don’t like NY fans (I’m from NY, so that’s my right), but not enough to make them turn blue and pass out in hope of landing Chris Paul. You’re not getting him this year or next. There’s this thing called currency, and believe it or not, it’s a driving force behind where professional athletes decide to play ball.
As for Lakers fans, the Hornets don’t want the rejects from a team that barely even beat them last year. If they were that good, you wouldn’t be offering them up. Sorry, Lakers. I know that you want Paul and Howard (who doesn’t?), but that means nothing in terms of where Paul will actually go.
The Hornets also don’t want the garbage that Orlando has offered them. Oh, you will give us all of the players you signed last year for too much money? Thanks, but no thanks.
Confused as to what is happening? Read the first sentence. It’s all there.
guys, id much prefer the clips deal! We get aminu and bledso, who showed that they have real potenital last season! they will give in a give us jordan, who gives us that defence weve,ve always needed! and lastly, we get that minnisota pick, in a very good draft thanks to the lockout!
.....am I the only HORNETS fan sad about letting the face of organization go TWICE and possibly to the SAME TEAM! Baron Davis and now CP3! I WANT TO CRY! but....(wishful thinking coming) what if Chris Paul left for a season to pull in alot of players and then came back! That would be awesome....but I can't even....get happy...at all...because I know its not...true =(
Adding to this. Because it IS being discussed, and Klay Thompson and Stephon Curry are not happy about it and DON'T want to be moved to New Orleans. Especially after being told by Jerry West they are the only untouchables on the roster.
But...
This deal only happens if Warriors sign Chandler, and trade Ellis for Rudy Gay.
Chris Paul apparently wants to have his friends on the roster.
i dont see the Warriors parting with their young players but i like that deal, maybe even get a 1st rounder in there somewhere, re-sign Marcus Thornton and D-West. I would give up this season to get a Austin Rivers or someone in the draft and then imagine us in like 2 or 3 years ==> UNSTOPPABLE :)
Even know that Hawks wasnt even mention for this trade, I like to know that Chris Paul would been a wonderful pickup but I think that WF alum Jeff Teague will fit the bill nicely and you can have Josh Smith as well. To each its own, i say.
Derek da throne are a bunch of retarded morons CP3 wants to go i mean he's fooling you and the local media if you really think he wants to be here come on even Brees said during the NFL lockout he wants to test the market did they extend his contract no but it might happen.But with idiot naysayers saying PAul gone basketball in New Orleans is over but contray to popular belief Garnett left the T-Wolves their still in Minniesota.Theres no talent in Charllotte nor Detroit.So to some of you ninnies face the facts it wont hurt us with CP gone hell Cavs hanging in without Lebron.
Ok. Here's a HUGE question to the hornets Dell Demps.......CAN YOU NOT READ BETWEEN THE LINES!!!! Pauls agent ask for trade to knicks with no real possibility of that happening, paul straight up said he would not sign with celtics...his heart is in NOLA....He WANTS TO PLAY HERE! but the hornets are basically offering up no resistance..he also straight up said who ever gets chandler, he will re-sign!! Go F'n get chandler hornets...!! I will be sooo F'kin pissed if they trade him cuz they are dumb son of a b*ches and can't run a front office.....
Derek, dude. You ok?
You can't take anything these people say in public for real unless it's an outburst. Same for between the lines.
They aren't doing this `at' you or `at' anyone. Dell has a job to do, and if he eventually screws up up enough, he'll be shown the door. This move, if bad for the team, will have him shown the door. With a new owner coming in (we're getting one . . . how good is the question), the stakes are even higher.
Even if Dell didn't care one lick about anything but himself and Tre, he would be trying to keep his job. And the truth is that's not the case. He wasn't holes up in an office or at his house. He was on scouting trips and he was around town. I know because I saw him and talked to him. I don't mean at some press event either; I mean I saw him uptown. The Hornets' office is on Poydras, the man doesn't like uptown. Those are some lines you can read between.
Stick with us, man.
Non-zero, yes.
Are they looking at him, no.
Why would they? They have highly paid center. You want to renounce rights to players, create cap room to sign a free agent, then be stuck with 2 high priced centers? Or you want to find somone who gets paid millions a years to do trades well or get fired that the center you don't want would be great for them, all in the next 7ish days?
Let me see your plan.
We trade CP3 and basketball is done in New Orleans(provided we don't luck up and draft another superstar). I like Curry, but he can't carry a franchise and sadly I don't think he ever will. Without that kind of superstar (under the current salary structure) we will continue to be bottom feeders until the franchise is moved.
This will be the beginning of the end. Depressed.
Man I just watched some highlights of Klay Thompson the kid can ball but man I would really like that clipper trade to fall through so we can get our hands on that Minn. pick even though I don't think it will be a lottery pick.
Hornets suck, they had more than enough time to surround Paul with decent talent why should he resign even if he will get more money. No one wants to play for hick towns anyway the sooner most fans realize that the better off they will be.
Hey Oculus! UUUUUUUUUUUUU Suck more and take more than Pamela Anderson, Gianna Michels, Ava Devine, and Carmella Bing put 2gether!!! Hornets will always live forever in the Hearts of "HORNETS FANS." Regardless of who we have true fans Love the Hornets even of we don't have CP3. and by the way last time I checked New Orleans is a "CITY,"and the biggest city in "LOUISIANA" not a Hick Town!!
I'd be MORE excited for the Hornets if this deal goes through. This team needs a different identity anyway. I appreciate what Chris Paul did in helping keep the Hornets here in NOLA but if he doesn't want to be here then please leave. If this trade goes down i'm buying tickets for opening night.
I was depressed of Paul leaving, but now, I'm kinda excited, it would be really nice to see Curry in Hornets uniforms, I think with Curry and some nice FA's, Hornets will be a playoff team, but my heart is still beating and saying that CP3 will stay here, don't know, just a sense of feeling, sometimes people, feelings are too strong.
As I've already posted, I absolutely love this deal. Would be sweeter if we could also get Wright and/or GSW 1st round pick next year. But just the 3 guys already identified in the potential trade make me excited about the season.
Imagine a return of the same group from last year (including D West and Landry) but remove Paul for Curry, plus add 2 more young studs that can flat out ball. Rebuild? Noooo. I call it reload. We would be the 2011-2012 version on DEN last year but with much more potential.
For those that are sleeping on Klay Thompson, please youtube him. He's exactly what we've been looking for around here at SG. And with our new found cap space plus the trade exception from the Peja trade still in tact, who knows what else Demps can bring to the Big Easy. Hornets fans, this is the best thing that could have happened to us. Just pray the deal goes through ASAP and doesnt fall off. GEAUX HORNETS!
I cant believe im saying this, but the idea of Steph Curry running the point for the bees would actually be quite a relief. I love what J Jack brings to the table but theres no doubt that he's much stronger at the two, and Steph has shown some huge strides as a floor general, and that killer three point jumper will be huge for us in close games.
I'm not expecting us to be a particularly successful team in the early going with this Curry line-up, but for the first time since CP's rookie season, we would actually have some seriously talented youngsters running the show... I wonder if Mek would be able to help Ekpe the way PJ helped Dwest?
it's very hard to guess what trade will be the best for the Hornets, the Clippers have so much to offer for a rebuilding team.
That makes me think the Hornets have 10k season ticket holders and will be in rebuild mode.. That's bad timing and i don't know if that's good for the city in order to keep the team in New Orleans. I'm not sure dealing CP3 is the best thing that may happen to the New Orleans Hornets but, i don't know why, i believe in Demps&co.
Any ownership news? That's key if we really want to build something.
Afflalao will most likely stay in Denver as a restricted free agent. If this trade does go through, the Chris Paul years will be remembered fondly by all Hornets fans but with the team in a mode to rebuild and reconstruct the current squad as is, this is a deal that has to be made with Golden State. The assets you get from a guy like Klay to spread the floor with his jumper and vertical wingspan and can crash the paint is the banger the Hornets have been missing for a while. Steph Curry to me is an evolving point guard that already has shown flashes of Top10 PG status. Ekpe is a guy I've wanted on this roster when he came out of Baylor and with his size and raw talent, is a talent the Hornets cant pass up on a few years down the line when he develops more.
Maybe I'm just being greedy but I'd love to see GS throw in Dorrell Wright after the year he had last year. Just being greedy. I know. But make it happen Dell. Greatest Hornets GM of all time!
Look on the bright side you guys would still major stars on your team like David Lee D.Wright, ME8 and theres rumors that T.C. is coming to town. w/ CP3 there he will definitely sign GSW would be complete unless ME8 comes to Hornets some how as well w/ a 3-team trade!!!
All signs point to us not trying to fully rebuild. I'd call it restructuring. Dell Demps is trading Paul, but he's still going after guys like Nene, Crawford, and Afflalo. Sounds to me like Dell wants to keep our new season ticket-holders happy and try to put out a top 5 seed by next season. If anyone can do it, it's Dealer Dell.
I dont understand why Paul would agree to go to TOTAL suckage Golden State for potentially less money then stay with the better Hornets for more money. Would like to see the terms of the deal shake out. As it stands now it doesn't make sense.
i really hope we grab a draft pick or 2 out of this GS trade also. I like Curry and all the other players but i think for Chris Paul,you gotta get something else GS 2012 and maybe couple of second rounders
Warriors would be very foolish to give up Curry with no guarantee of re-signing Paul. That's way too risky of a gamble, if I was the Warriors. I doubt their front office is that stupid. Don't they have Jerry West there?
It seems that the new Owners are that desperate to erase yrs of sucking! They believe that they will sign Tyson Chandler and bring in some other players, enough to get CP3 to committ. I think over the course of the season it will prove to be the right move for them.
If CP3 signs with them and they have the cap room, i'd say the chances of tyson signing there are pretty high....CP3, chandler, and whoever they get for ellis could be a legit team and enough incentive for chris to stick around long term.
| 14,556 |
Pilot warned convoy of submarine presence, 45 miles SE of Valletta. Mechanical problems forced the crew to land on the sea. Aircraft drifted towards African shore, pilot and observer captured by local Arabs.
| 207 |
Racism and labor movement
Humphrey McQueen, in his influential book A New Britannia
emphasises the racism endemic in the Australian labour movement at the start of its development in the 1890s. Iggy Kim, of the Green Left Weekly
, in his pamphlet, The Origins of Racism
, locates the early Labor Party as the prime source of racism in Australia and then draws a very long bow to argue that you should vote in current elections for his small socialist party, because the Labor Party has these racist roots, and in his view, is still hopelessly deformed by them.
At the same time, Pauline Hanson accuses Labor of flooding Australia with unassimilable migrants, so that by the year 2050 we may be governed by a half-Indian, half-Chinese lesbian cyborg.
Journalist Paul Sheehan accuses the Laborites of stacking safe Labor seats with Asian migrants, and asserts that the whole migration practice of the 1982–96 Labor government was an attempt to unacceptably change the racial character of Australia. The Geoffrey Blainey, Robert Birrell, Katharine Betts bunch put a similar spin on current Labor attitudes and practices in migration.
News Weekly
, the fortnightly newspaper of the National Civic Council, founded by Bob Santamaria, also constantly denounces Laborism for encouraging multiculturalism and «unacceptably high» levels of family reunion. Finally, the Liberal government of Howard and Costello tip their hat towards all this perceived opposition to migration by reducing migration quotas and increasing obstacles to family reunion and to migrants receiving social welfare, obviously with the hope that they will gain electoral advantage from this.
This vortex of accusations against the labour movement about migration has the effect of arousing my latent labour movement patriotism, which has been mostly submerged during the last few years by my anger at the seemingly inexorable shift of the ALP to the right. My old instinct to defend the ALP is stirred up by all these contradictory, but possibly currently popular, conspiracy theories about the Labor Party and migration.
The main aim of most these attacks on Labor over migration is to damage Labor's prospects by appealing to what is perceived by many conservative pundits to be a latent racism and atavism in Australia. All this tends to make me feel that the trundling old ALP monolith can't be quite as bad as it often appears in other circumstances.
A more important question, ideologically and theoretically, and a very useful one strategically, is to try to understand what realities are reflected in these strange, contradictory attacks to equip us for the future. It is a very important question to ask: how we got from the labour movement racism of the 1890s to the relatively civilised policies and practices of the labour movement today.
It is really quite extraordinary that the same political party, the ALP, which fought extremely hard to entrench the White Australia Policy in Australian life, should now be denounced by the Hansons and Sheehans for «being the main agency flooding the country with Asian migrants and pouring them into safe Labor seats». A serious investigation of how the labor movement's attitude to migration, and particularly Asian migration, was changed, has a very practical bearing on how we can ensure that the labour movement develops and entrenches a civilised and realistic policy and practice in migration matters.
Some people interested in Marxist theory raise the question of the «reserve army of labour» in relation to migration. They say that the capitalist class encourages migration in order to create a pool of labour for the development of capitalism and that the capitalists do this with the intention of maintaining a sufficient surplus of labour to keep the price of labour down. They thus extend Karl Marx's discussion of the unemployment/reserve army of labour issue to the question of migration.
However, Marx never argued against the right of workers to migrate to other countries because they might then form part of the reserve army of labour. It is a fact that in whatever they do, including the encouragement of migration, the capitalist class pursues its own interests. They certainly wish to take advantage of a reserve army of labour.
It's worth making the point here that the working class itself has no intrinsic interest in attempting to prevent the development of capitalism as a social system. The working class itself develops its independent consciousness and its organisation as part of the development of the capitalist system, although in conflict with the capitalist class over wages, conditions and other workers' interests.
In Europe, the Americas and Australasia, working-class living standards in the 19th and 20th centuries could not have risen in the dramatic way that they did without the expansion and development of capitalism as a global social system. It's a kind of crude Luddism (machine-breaking) to think you can stop that process of development. It's worth noting the point that in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Latin America, the sites of European mass migration, all the periods of mass migration (the 19th century, and the 1950s and the 1960s in relation to Australia) have also coincided with a rapid rise in living standards.
It is almost a truism of trade union activity that the best time to press hard for improvement in wages and conditions is during the early stages of the upswing in the boom-bust cycle endemic to the capitalist system, and this upswing usually coincides with periods of increased migration.
What actually happens with mass migration is that the capitalist class always attempts to use the latest cohort of migrants as a source of cheap labour, to weaken trade unionism and the struggle for living standards. In most of the cases mentioned, the new migrants, being the objects of greatest capitalist exploitation, usually wise up pretty fast, and become involved in trade union and and other struggles for the economic and social interests of the whole working class.
It was like that in the United States and Australia in the 19th century and it has been like that in Australia in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The capitalist class wants a «reserve army of labour», but what mass migration produces is a proletariat with real class interests, which always poses in real life the question of working-class organisation.
It is always wrong and unprincipled, from a socialist point of view, to try to stop migration. It is unethical to do so from the point of view of the working-class ethics at the core of Marxism. It's impossible to stop anyway, because of the powerful dynamism of the so far not expropriated capitalist system, a dynamism that continues to operate in the same framework as the equally pronounced tendency of the capitalist system to devastating and periodic crisis, which is also inherent in the system.
In migration matters, it is far better, both from the point of view of socialist ethics and practical politics, to accept the reality of migration under capitalism and to turn all energies towards uniting the working class, both migrants and those already here, in common struggle for their economic and social interests. In my long experience of the labour movement, left talk about the reserve army of labour in relation to migration has usually disguised an essentially anti-migration, and often racist content.
From the commencement of white settlement in Australia there was a constant shortage of labour, which slowed down capitalist development and led the representatives of the different capitalist interests to explore different sources of migrants for the Australian colonies. A number of assisted migration schemes were organised from the British Isles by the British and colonial governments and they satisfied the labour demand to some degree, although one constant idiosyncracy was that the assisted migrants included far too many rebellious Irish to make the British Australian ruling class feel comfortable.
From the 1840s gold rushes on, the constant shortage of labor, combined with the development of embryonic but reasonably effective trade unionism in the Australian colonies, forced the price of labour quite high, particularly from the 1860s through to 1890. This caused considerable comment throughout the capitalist world. Australia became quite famous for the high cost of labour, which the capitalist class resented and the working class celebrated.
Because of this perceived high cost of labour, various sections of the squatting elite toyed with the idea of importing large numbers of Indian and Chinese coolies to keep wages down. They also kidnapped («blackbirded» in the racist language of the time) a lot of Kanaks (usually referred to in those times as Kanakas) from the South Sea Islands, with the same intention.
The ship owners tried to run coastal shipping in Australia with cheap Chinese crews. What they found very early on was that even the Chinese «coolies» and «Kanakas», once they landed in the Australian environment, started to get themselves organised. Kanaks in Queensland organised embryonic trade unions and had strikes. The Chinese started to organise a seamen's union, and Chinese in Melbourne organised a Chinese furniture workers union.
Despite the incipient development of trade unionism among the Kanaks and Chinese, the main response of the existing white colonial proletariat was to feel strongly threatened by «cheaper coolie labour». Such a response meshed in with, and even subtly expanded and extended, the prevailing racist ideology of the British empire, and it was a more simple although cruder response than the notion of working-class internationalism put forward by a small minority of progressives in the labour movement, and some other liberal-minded people.
In 1878 a major flashpoint was the engagement on a number of ships of Chinese labour at rates of pay much lower than the prevailing rate. This produced a bitter strike of white seamen, which was basically successful, and ultimately the Chinese seamen were removed. The sole Labor representative in parliament of that time, Angus Cameron, was an energetic and vocal leader in this anti-Chinese agitation.
This attempt of a section of the capitalist class, spearheaded by the shipowners, to import cheaper Asian labour for their own economic interests, was totally overwhelmed by the explosion of racist opposition, which gained such powerful force from the whole ethos of «British Australia», the ethos that had been so assiduously cultivated by the British Colonial Office and the Protestant churches for the previous 70 years.
As a direct result of the success of the anti-Chinese agitation, the White Australia line of least resistance in the labour movement became quite institutionalised by the use of the rhetoric of British racism to oppose migration from non-British areas. In times of economic downturn, it even became a very popular thing in the labour movement to oppose all migration, including British migration.
The Sydney Labor Council actually employed a young John Norton (paradoxically, a British migrant himself) the same man who later became famous as the pioneer of tabloid journalism, the lineal business ancestor of Rupert Murdoch, who founded one of the tabloid titles that Murdoch now owns. The Labor Council sent Norton to London as its official delegate to publicise and campaign there for the viewpoint that migrants shouldn't come to Australia because there was unemployment here.
At this time the Labor Council frequently passed motions against the assisted migration schemes and any further immigration. All this is recounted in Cyril Pearl's wonderful, scabrous biography of Norton, Wild Men of Sydney
. This book so infuriated the Norton family that they used their considerable newspaper influence to persuade the right-wing Labor government of Joe Cahill in NSW to push through the parliament a bill making it possible to take defamation actions on behalf of the dead. Happily the legislation was never used.
By far the best book about The Bulletin
is The Archibald Paradox
, by Sylvia Lawson, published by Penguin in 1983. Lawson describes how the unusual and inventive editor, J.F. Archibald founded and developed The Bulletin
in the 1880s and 1890s. This newspaper, with its carnival parade of styles in writing and black‑and-white art, opened its pages to many thousands of contributors, among them Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, who were first published there. In her introduction, Sylvia Lawson says:
The Archibald paradox is simply the paradox of being colonial…. The Bulletin
's republicanism and nationalism flowered out of the paradox. The republicanism worked as inspiriting argument for a time; but nationalism supervened. It was expressed strongly, through the late 1880s especially, as viciously chauvinistic racism – directed especially, but not only, against the Chinese. In this the editor, with all his compassionate, world-ranging perspectives, was not alone; but he was responsible. The Bulletin
would have seemed at the time simply to be playing out the stern logic of its economnic realism, and standing in necessary opposition to the laissez-faire tolerance of the pontifical daily press. The old world was murderously oppressive; the new must be just and free, untainted not only by poverty and caste but also by strangeness. Thus the paradox worked: the dominant culture, which in one breath The Bulletin
lampooned and disavowed, was upheld vigorously in the next. The prospective Utopia, the dream of «Australia» – federated, republican, democratic – was landscaped for white men only. The internationalist humanism, enacted so brilliantly in the journal's range of reference and its open-pages policy, was denied in the racist argument; it was also undermined and disfigured perennially in much of the Bulletin
's discourse on women.
The Bulletin
unquestionably left a considerable imprint on Australia, particularly on the labour movement. A general republican sentiment and opposition to the pretensions of the ruling class can be traced back to The Bulletin
but, unfortunately, so can the generalised anti-Asian racism that came to dominate the early years of the new century.
The strong editor, Archibald, had a veritable preoccupation with the Chinese. (The Bulletin
always referred to them as «the Chows», and this unpleasant obsession unhappily had a considerable cultural influence on Australia.)
After Archibald's death, The Bulletin
was acquired by other owners who swung over to the Tory side of politics while retaining all the exotic racism of the founder, and all through the 1920s, 1930s 1940s and 1950s, The Bulletin
was both viciously anti-Labor and rabidly racist, adding to Archibald's anti-Asian racism a vicious anti-semitism. Finally, in the 1960s, the magazine was acquired by the Packer family, and is now a rather pedestrian business magazine and appears to have shed the racism of the past. Thank heaven for that!
However, even in the 19th century there was a significant amount of opposition to racism in the trade unions. The following exerpt is from a chapter by Mick Armstrong in Class and Class Conflict in Australia
edited by Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln.
Consider the early Amalgamated Shearers' Union (ASU), notorious for its exclusion of Asians. There is no doubting the racism of the ASU leadership, which became more pronounced as a conservative bureaucracy strengthened its control, after defeats in the Great Strikes of the 1890s weakened the position of militants. Yet the union members were more open to ideas of inter-racial unity than most historians contend. In 1889 Robert Stevenson, a militant organiser, won the support of the Bourke branch for allowing Chinese shearers to retain their membership. The Bourke members, predominantly landless labourers, were more open to ideas of working-class unity than members nearer the coast, where small farmers predominated.
The ASU (shearers' union) paper, The Hummer
, in 1891 exposed the terrible conditions of Aborigines, and they were exempt from the racist exclusion clause. Indeed at the 1891 ASU conference the Adelaide branch moved to admit Aborigines for half the normal fee. A compromise was reached: Aborigines received full benefits by payment of an annual contribution, without the entrance fee.
It was not only militants who supported this measure. The more conservative general secretary David Temple thought it would be a «graceful act to those from whom the country had been taken», and that it would be good for the union's image.
Nevertheless, by the time of federation, labour movement opposition to migration had become solidly entrenched and the White Australia Policy had become an almost unchallengeable orthodoxy in the labour movement. The labour movement didn't produce the White Australia Policy. It was initiated by the British ruling class, emanating from the Colonial Office in London, and it oozed out of the general fabric of British‑Australia imperialist bourgeois ideology. Nevertheless, despite its ruling-class origins, this unfortunate attitude became extremely entrenched in the labour movement.
The heroic member of the Left Opposition in Russia, Victor Serge, towards the end of his life, was challenged by theoreticians who completely opposed the Russian Revolution. He responded to this by saying:
It is often said that the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs – a mass of other germs – and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in a corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is this very sensible?.
Much the same analogy can be applied to the argument put forward by Iggy Kim, that the germ of racism was absolutely dominant in the formation of the Australian Labor Party. That may have an element of truth, but there were many other germs present in the early years of the Australian labour movement and the ALP. While the racism was dominant, it was contested by significant and vocal minorities in and around the labour movement. My investigations have led me to the conclusion that there were two significant currents that dissented from the prevailing racism.
One location of opposition was the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which was an international outfit, the boss of which was an Italian in the Vatican in Rome, and it had a largely Irish flock in Australia, thoroughly alienated from the rhetoric of British Australia.
There were also quite a few Catholics who weren't British. Cardinal Moran defended the Chinese. Moran also, on a number of occasions, articulately exposed the imperialist activities of Protestant missionaries in the South Pacific. Caroline Chisholm defended Asian migration to Australia. Archbishop Duhig, the long-time and politically very right-wing Archbishop of Brisbane, nevertheless stood up strenuously in opposition to racism against Italians and Maltese in North Queensland, obviously partly because they were part of his own flock.
Some of the group settlements of Italians in North Queensland were actually organised by the Catholic Church. A bit later on, during the British‑Australia hysteria of the First World War, Archbishop Mannix strenuously defended German and Austrian Lutherans and Catholics against the prevailing madness.
While it wouldn't be accurate to idealise the racial attitudes of ordinary Catholics, who no doubt shared, to some degree, the prevailing racism of Australian society at that time, their Irish origins made their racism more equivocal than that of the majority. In addition to this, the international connections of the Catholic Church, and particularly the Catholic hierarchy, brought an international influence into play that implicitly contradicted the local racism.
Even the fact that some Catholic priests went overseas to Rome or Louvain to train, had a rather internationalising effect on the Catholic Church. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Catholics supported, and many were active in the labour movement, brought this influence to bear in the labour movement.
The other major site of opposition to racism was in the socialist, Marxist and secular groups and sects in or around the labour movement. Quite a few early socialists and left-wingers in Australia were themselves non-British migrants. Such groups as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were explicitly anti-racist from their inception.
The largest and most influential socialist group in Australia before the First World War was the Victorian Socialist Party. It was well entrenched in the ALP, and was, through linked socialist organisations in other states, influential all over Australia.
The VSP was repeatedly convulsed by debates and arguments over the White Australia Policy and the race question. There are three important sources on this debate. One is These Things Shall Be
, an objective but filial biography of his father, Bob Ross, by Edgar Ross; the chapter, A Socialist Dilemma: Racism and Internationalism in the Victorian Socialist Party 1905–21
by Graeme Osborne, in the book Who Are Our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working Class
, edited by Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus; International Socialism and Australian Labor
by Frank Farrell; and Doherty's Corner
, the biography of Marie E.J. Pitt, by Colleen Burke.
The major debate in the Victorian Socialist Party erupted in 1907. To quote Graeme Osborne:
The case for socialist brotherhood was put initially by a non-Party member, a remarkable Victorian public servant – Miss Amelia Lambrick – who wrote first under the pseudonym Hypatia. She launched the debate by urging socialists to recognise that they had not yet grasped the full meaning of socialism in Australia. When they did they would see as its unique essence an insistence on brotherhood which demanded freedom and equality for all peoples. Unfortunately Australian socialists who though quick to recognise the nature and beauty of brotherhood… are often slow to realise what it involves. We generalise loudly but particularise softly. We shout «Brotherhood» in the major and «White Australia» in the minor and seem quite unconscious of the discord…
Both «reason and righteousness» compelled socialists to recognise the antagonism between socialism and the White Australia Policy, and the inconsistency involved when «we repudiate the rights of a privileged class, and uphold the rights of a privileged race». Accordingly Australia's socialists must seek to open her abundance to her crowded northern neighbours…
Within the Party her principal support came from the poet Bernard O'Dowd. He acknowledged the delicacy of the issue when he wrote of Hypatia's «courage» and congratulated Tom Mann as editor of The Socialist
for running «this dangerous, but necessary discussion». Though conceding that immigration restrictions might be necessary on occasions to protect workers against unfair competition, he attacked the racist assumptions that frequently underlay such a view. European cultures were not necessarily superior, nor was it evident that interracial unions and their progeny were in any way inferior. Further, if such unions were undesirable it was not a matter for males alone to decide. For O'Dowd socialism meant democracy. To realise democracy it was necessary to absolutely eliminate… colour from all State and social policy, unless you would justify… caste, wealth, rank, birth and education, as giving title to privileged treatment…
Some in the Party, however, when discussing the immigration question, saw very definite reasons for limiting the application of the principles of democracy and socialist brotherhood. In advocating restricted immigration, they began by stressing the need to defend the economic position of workers, but nearly always eventually revealed a range of racial assumptions. Prominent in these assumptions were the inevitability of racial incompatibility, the dangers of pollution and contamination, and the horrors associated with sexual encounters across racial boundaries. W.J. Baxter and Mrs M.E.J. Pitt were the leading protagonists of such views…
Baxter's heroic depiction of woman's role as defender of the race and his sexual chivalry won the approval of Mrs Pitt, one of the first Party members to voice doubts openly over coloured immigration. Mrs Pitt found the prospects of sexual encounters across racial boundaries «repulsive» and under normal conditions «impossible». In her view «perfect brotherhood» would be quite as perfect «without any blending of the white and coloured races». She concluded:
«As a woman… I cannot allow the occasion to pass without very sincerely thanking Mr Baxter for his treatment of his subject as affecting the woman, and particularly for his able and singularly luminous expression of the instinct in the woman of any race which makes for racial purity – an instinct… as dear… as life itself, and… being so, should be equally dear to the nation to which she belongs.» Clearly, in Mrs Pitt's view the connection between racial purity and nationalism was indissoluble.
This debate continued in the Victorian Socialist Party for the next 10 years, with both anti-racist and pro-racist views having quite widespread support, both among the rank and file and the leadership of the party. The debate was still unresolved as the Victorian Socialist Party gradually declined in the 1920s after many of its supporters and members crossed over to the newly formed Communist Party following the Russian Revolution.
One very significant generally left-wing figure in the VSP was R.S. Ross, who through his own socialist magazine, Ross's Monthly
, widely popularised the Russian Revolution. Despite this, Ross remained a defender of the White Australia Policy, and this is discussed carefully and intelligently, but quite critically, in veteran Communist Edgar Ross's very useful biography of his father, Bob Ross.
A rather interesting sidelight on this debate is the personal story of the poet Marie Pitt and the poet Bernard O'Dowd, who clashed so sharply on opposite sides in this debate. As far as one can tell from the records, their views didn't change, but they got together personally and became quite a well-known couple in Melbourne intellectual circles. This was complicated by the fact that O'Dowd was married to a Catholic woman who would not give him a divorce, and so O'Dowd and Marie Pitt became quite a notorious item in the rather moralistic atmosphere of Melbourne in the 1920s, and remained together into old age, until Marie Pitt died. In their own way, they struck a considerable blow for civilised, modern living arrangements. This is all described rather nicely in Colleen Burke's book about Marie Pitt's life, which also contains an excellent selection of Pitt's poetry.
One significant opponent of White Australia at its inception was the quirky, independent-minded Melbourne bookseller, E.W. Cole. He published a number of pamphlets and articles at his own expense, opposing the White Australia Policy, which was quite a courageous line of action, considering that his large Melbourne retail business might have been, on one reading of the situation, affected by his public stand on White Australia. It did not seem to be, as his business went from strength to strength in the early years of the new century.
The most important bourgeois opponent of White Australia was Bruce Smith, the Free Trade MP for Parkes in NSW. He was a very significant figure in the capitalist class. He was the principal of Howard Smiths, the shipowners, and he was a fairly determined opponent of trade unionism.
He was obviously partly motivated by his antagonism to George Reid, the Free Trade leader, who had formed several Free Trade governments in NSW by getting Labor support at the price of enacting a lot of progressive pro-Labor legislation. Smith had been his main opponent within the Free Trade party of this parliamentary line-up.
Smith's lengthy and intelligent speech against all aspects of the bill embodying White Australia in the newly established federal parliament, was the only one against it, and he was attacked by his fellow politicians on all sides for his stand, which didn't seem to overawe him one bit.
He even subsidised the publication of a hardback book opposing White Australia, a large part of which consists of a reprint and discussion of his speech in the parliament.
This 235‑page book, printed in Rowe Street, Sydney, by R.T. Kelly and Sons, in 1903, a copy of which I own, is called Colorphobia. An Exposure of the White Australia Fallacy
, by Gizen-No-Teki (obviously a pseudonym) concentrates its criticism of White Australia on Smith's fellow Free Traders, particularly Reid, who supported White Australia, and on the labour movement advocates of White Australia. A curious feature of this book is that it is written from the point of view of the advocates of Henry George's single tax on land. Maybe Bruce Smith was a Single Taxer.
The conflict over conscription during the First World War had a number of complex and conflicting racial overtones. The British‑Australia racism of William Morris Hughes and the ruling class was used to whip up wild jingoistic hostility to Germans and Turks in Australia, and to the «disloyal» Irish Catholics.
Unfortunately the anti-conscription side resorted to a certain racism of its own, with accusations that the ruling class intended to flood the country with cheap labour from unacceptable places. This conflict came to focus around an unfortunate shipload of 214 Maltese migrants, who had the bad luck to arrive in Australia on a French ship, the Gange
, in the middle of the first conscription referendum campaign in 1916.
As the propaganda of the anti-conscription side against the government about Maltese migration was obviously damaging the government in the referendum, Hughes ditched the interests of the Maltese migrants, whom he had previously encouraged.
The unfortunate Maltese were first of all interned for some weeks in New Caledonia, and then they were detained for a further long period like convicts on a dilapidated old hulk at Berry's Bay in Sydney Harbour. A mad and virulent controversy ranged around the heads of these unfortunate immigrants for nine months.
They were defended by a courageous and redoubtable Maltese priest, Father Bonnet. After being thus interned for such a long time, they were finally allowed to land in Australia in March 1917, well after the first conscription referendum. Predictably, the most vehement advocates of deporting the Maltese were the bureaucracy of the Australian Workers Union.
One wonders whether Terry Muscat, the Maltese migrant, who was recently elected National Secretary of the AWU, may even have had the odd relative on the Gange
. The shameful incident of the internment of the Maltese, is described in detail in Barry York's very fine book, Empire and Race. The Maltese in Australia 1881–1949
.
The greatest atrocity perpetrated by British Australia against any cultural group after the enormous atrocities committed against indigenous Australians, the Chinese, and the Kanaks, was the ruthless cultural destruction of the German‑Australian community during the First World War.
This is described thoroughly and graphically in a 400‑page book Enemy Aliens
by Gerhard Fischer, published by University of Queensland Press in 1989. The large German‑Australian community was assaulted by anti-Boche hysteria in every possible way. All the German-language schools in South Australia and Queensland were closed down. Many Lutheran churches were locked up. Even the German names of villages of German settlement (like Hahndorf in South Australia) were changed. An arbitrary and brutal policy of internment was inflicted on the German Australian community.
Not everybody was interned. That would have been impossible, as there were about 70,000 people of some German ancestry. But all the significant leaders of the German community, and many others besides, were interned in a completely arbitrary way. They included Edmund Resch, the brewer, interned at the age of 71, a large number of Lutheran ministers, a Catholic priest, Australia's foremost orthopaedic surgeon, a number of musicians, a waiter in a German club who happened also to be a member of the IWW, the secretary of the Sydney Motor Chauffers Trade Union, who had committed the unpardonable sin of leading a successful strike of his members in time of war, a second-generation German Australian leader of the wharfies' union, and even a second-generation farmer in the Riverina who was interned just a week after his eldest son, a volunteer in the AIF, had been invalided back from France.
Many of the German‑Australians interned were Australian citizens and many had even been born in Australia. No evidence was ever produced of political activities on behalf of the German war effort.
The citizens of other belligerent countries on the other side in the war were also interned extremely arbitrarily, including Bulgarians, Austrians, Turks, and even some Afghans who were classed as sympathetic to Turkey because of their Muslim religion.
In Western Australia the then racist mineworkers union played an unpleasant role, succeeding in provoking the internment of 300 southern Slavs, Croatians and Slovenes, who were classed as enemy aliens because they were citizens of Austria-Hungary. These were mainly mineworkers at Kalgoorlie, who the racist union had been trying to exclude from the mines for years.
Even some Serbs, who were actually British allies in the First World War, were interned, so viciously confused was the attitude of authority. Later, a number of Russians, also ostensible allies, were interned, really because of their trade union and labour movement activity. Most of these people were locked up in an enormous concentration camp at Holsworthy near Liverpool, in NSW.
When the war ended, these prisoners, who by then numbered about 6000, were kept interned until after the signing of the Versaille Treaty in 1919, when the overwhelming majority of them were ruthlessly deported to their countries of origin. A few, like the brewer Resch, managed to stay in Australia after mounting an extensive and costly legal campaign, which he had the resources to fund. The overwhelming majority of the Germans were not so favoured by circumstances.
Many of the deportees were back-loaded on empty troop ships. A large and significant number of those deported were Australian citizens, and many were Australian-born. So much for «citizenship» in British Australia. According to Fischer's book, hundreds of migrants who weren't enemy aliens, but who were politically and industrially active on the left, were deported in the same sweep.
To quote Fischer: «The total number of deportees, based on the shipping lists of the nine transports, comes to 6150. Of these, 5414 had been interned, the remainder were family members and uninterned ex‑enemy aliens who either accepted the offer to be repatriated or were ordered to leave the country.» The major Australian figure who publicly opposed this atrocious witch-hunt was His Eminence Archbishop Mannix.
The intrinsic cruelty of all this is almost unimaginable. Six thousand people uprooted and implacably deported from this country where they had built their lives, and had lived for many years, to the chaotic and miserable Europe of the 1920s. The main instrument carrying out all this brutality was British‑Australian military intelligence, particularly one Major Piesse, whose name will be remembered in infamy for generations.
An examination of the written records of military intelligence suggests that all this cruelty was motivated by a kind of mad, but in a way logical, notion that the crisis of the war gave the British economic interests the chance to settle accounts with German business activity in Australia and the Pacific, which was seen as a major competitor with Britain.
The German‑Australian cultural community was cowed and crushed by this, and the old centres of German community settlement have never really regained their German multicultural aspect, which is a great pity for the cultural richness of Australian society.
Nevertheless, one of the ironies of all this is that after the Second World War substantial German migration to Australia recommenced, and when you refer to the redoubtable Charles Price and his computer breakdowns of Australian ethnicity, he presents convincing evidence that the German ethnic component in Australia is still the largest after the English, Irish and Scottish, and ahead of the Italian and Greek, at about 4 per cent of the mix. The current best-known German‑Australian is, of course, Tim Fischer, the leader of the National Party.
The foundation of the Australian Communist Party, as a section of the Communist International, in 1920, had considerable repercussions, over time, on the labour movement's attitude to the White Australia policy and racism. From its inception, the Communist Party had a formal opposition to the White Australia policy and racism, though many of its members were quite naturally still influenced by the prevailing racist mood of the labour movement as a whole.
Nevertheless, even the left-wing union bureaucrats, the 'Trades Hall Reds', led by Jock Garden, the Secretary of the Sydney labor Council, took, for that time, quite a courageous stand against racism. They affiliated the Sydney Labor Council to the Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, which had its headquarters in Vladivostok, which included unions in a number of Asian countries.
This gave rise to a hysterical clamour from the establishment and right-wingers in the labour movement, like the bureaucrats of the Australian Workers Union (AWU), who accused the Sydney Labor Council of thereby undermining the White Australia Policy, which was in fact true, and completely laudable.
At the ACTU Conference in 1930 there was quite a complex battle over affiliation to the Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, with the conference evenly split over the issue, the Sydney Labor Council and Garden in favour of the affiliation, and Bob Ross, who by this time had shifted somewhat to the right, opposing the affiliation.
The Australian Workers Union leadership became an entrenched force defending racism in the trade union movement. Throughout the 1920s they induced successive AWU conventions to oppose all migration and they even persuaded a couple of conventions to carry resolutions against the «southern European menace».
The Queensland AWU even attempted to prevent Italians and Maltese joining the union, and joined the extraordinary and unpleasant racist mobilisation against Italian and Maltese cane farmers and farm workers in North Queensland. North Queensland had also, however, a tradition of industrial militancy and the Communist Party grew rapidly in the late 1920s and the early 1930s in North Queensland.
The North Queensland communists, who were initially mostly Anglo-Celtic indigenous North Queensland militant workers, took a strong stand right from the commencement of their independent political activity, against the prevailing North Queensland racism. In the middle 1930s they led major industrial struggles, particularly the very effective strike in favour of burning the cane to prevent Weils disease, led by the notable communist militant Jim Henderson.
This struggle, despite the bitter opposition of the AWU leadership, was spectacularly successful, and Henderson and the other North Queensland communists were able to draw the Italian and Maltese cane cutters and cane farmers into the struggle, thereby largely defeating and pushing aside the racism.
Many North Queensland Italians and Maltese joined the Communist Party, and by the time the Communist Party was declared illegal in 1940, its influence in North Queensland was enormous, including a very considerable influence among the Italians, Maltese and Spanish immigrant farmers and workers. Fred Paterson, the Rhodes Scholar Communist, who was elected as the only Communist member of Parliament ever in Australia, for the seat of Bowen in the 1940s, got an enormous vote amongst the Italian, Maltese and Spanish migrants in the area.
All these developments in North Queensland are described in detail in Dianne Menghetti's excellent book, «The Red North». (It is one of the wonderful ironies of trade union history that in 1997 a bitterly fought election took place in the Australian Workers Union. Two teams were in conflict, one a coalition of some right-wingers and some left-wingers, and the other one the traditional leadership of the Queensland AWU. The left-right combination defeated the Queensland group, and even got 46 per cent of the vote in the large Queensland AWU branch.
The successful candidates of this team were Graham Roberts for President, a left-winger from Port Kembla, and a right winger, Terry Muscat, for AWU General Secretary, who also happens to be a Maltese from Melbourne. The Queensland AWU has come a long way in 60 years!)
Most of the 1920s and all the 1930s were a period of mass unemployment, and the labour movement tended to oppose all migration throughout the period. Also, the conditions of mass unemployment and some bitterly fought strikes at the onset of the Depression created an environment in which the use of some migrants as scabs in industrial disputes led to an explosion of chauvinism.
The most unfortunate examples of this were the waterfront strike in Melbourne, in which Italians were taken straight off the ship, so to speak, and used as scabs. This gave rise to many ugly incidents. There were also extensive race riots on the Western Australian gold fields in the early 1930s, directed at Yugoslavs and Italians.
During the race riots in Kalgoorlie the Communist Party played a heroic role, attempting to combat the outbreak of chauvinism directed at the Italian and Yugoslav miners, who were accused of competing with Australians for a declining number of jobs. This vigorous defence of migrant miners by the Communist Party led many Yugoslav and Italian migrants to support the Communist Party for quite a period afterwards.
Another feature of the 1920s and the 1930s in the labour movement was a certain amount of thoughtless anti-semitism. The notorious architect of the Premiers' Plan sent out by the Bank of England to put Australia «under orders», so to speak, was one Otto Niemeyer.
He was actually descended from Prussian bankers, «pure» Germans, who had come over to Britain with the «German Georges», who became kings of England. Nevertheless, the persistent urban myth grew up that he was Jewish, and this gave rise to a long lived and widespread popular propaganda about «Jewish bankers» which, unfortunately, became mixed up with the completely righteous opposition, in the labour movement, led by J.T. Lang, to the «Premiers' Plan».
This was particularly pronounced in Catholic circles, where the mild anti-semitism of G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, which was mixed with their anti-capitalist radicalism, had considerable influence. In the late 1930s, when Jewish refugees from Hitler began to knock on the Australian door, so to speak, the labour movement confusion between Jewishness and capitalist banking, gave rise to a certain unfortunate resistance to Jewish migration in some labour movement circles.
This is all documented in «Australia and the Jewish Refugees 1933–1948», by Michael Blakeney. Once again, a significant part of the left, particularly the Communist Party, were a notable and honourable exception to this anti-Semitism, and defended the right of the Jewish refugees to enter Australia. An example of this agitation was a couple of excellent Communist Party pamphlets by Len Fox debunking anti-semitism and defending the right of Jews to come here.
Julia Martinez, of Wollongong University, has been doing her PhD on the above topic. She published a most informative article, a preliminary part of her thesis, in «Labour History» magazine for May 1999. The picture that emerges from Martinez's pioneering research underlines the social dynamics in both Australian society and the labour movement, in the very special but culturally significant circumstances of the Northern Territory, that eventually undermined «White Australia» on an Australian national scale. Martinez's investigation shows the evolution of trade union and labour movement attitudes in the Northern Territory.
In 1901, when White Australia was adopted, Port Darwin, the main town in the Territory, had a small population of mixed origins and initially the White Australia Policy was supported by the trade union movement.
However, special objective circumstances prevailed because the workforce was actually of very mixed racial origins, including many people of mixed white, Asian, and Aboriginal origin and many non-British European migrants. British‑Australian racism was, in practice, very hard to enforce in the frontier conditions of the Northern Territory.
The tiny trade union movement paid strong verbal allegiance to the White Australia Policy, but even at the start a number of exceptions were made for people of mixed racial origins, both for practical reasons and for the more ethical reasons of basic human solidarity. Martinez describes a variety of arguments in the emerging Northern Territory trade union movement about these questions.
The 1911 census gave Darwin's population as 1387, including 442 Chinese, 374 Europeans, 247 «full-blood» Aboriginals, with the rest being Japanese, Filipino, «half-caste» Aboriginal and Timorese.
During the First World War there was a complicated industrial struggle by Darwin wharfies, which had the ugly side to it that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs attempted to use Aboriginal labour, compulsorily employed at slave rates, to undermine the interests of the unionised wharfies.
Another interesting feature of the Darwin waterfront was that most of the white wharfies were non-British migrants and were significant scapegoats for the mad British‑Australia racism of the First World War period. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) supporters in Darwin, who were quite numerous, attempted to organise all workers on an internationalist basis, but the endemic racism was more powerful at this period and non-racist internationalism remained a minority current, although it surfaced from time to time.
In one strike of white wharfies the leader of the strike said that their only friends were the Chinese and in another strike, the Japanese Pearl Divers Association, who were not allowed to join the North Australian Workers Union because of White Australia, gave money to the union in support.
In the 1930s things began to change quite rapidly. The two sources of civilised changes in relation to racism, were the two significant recurrent forces in the Australian labour movement, the socialist stream expressed in the Communist Party, pushed on by the Comintern's anti-racist policy, and the Catholic current.
To quote Martinez about Darwin in 1937:
If we look some 20 years ahead, to 1937, the social make-up of Darwin has altered and the unionists have formed themselves into a working-class community with close ties to the coloured population. This next section, considers the character of Darwin society in 1937 and three positive influences on Darwin unionism which had a tempering effect on White Australia. Those were the growing influence of communist internationalism; closer connections with Asian labour movements; and most importantly, a sense of community which included «coloured» workers.
| 48,222 |
Federal officials recently approved “reference pricing,” a new cost-control mechanism that allows insurers to put a dollar limit on the amount that health plans pay for some expensive medical procedures, such as knee and hip replacements. The decision affects most employer-based plans as well as plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. Plans must use a “reasonable method” to ensure “adequate access to quality providers.”
The following illustrates how reference pricing works:
Assume that a health plan sets a hard cap of $30,000 — known as the “reference price” — on what it will pay for hospital charges associated with a knee replacement surgery. The plan offers the insured a choice of hospitals within its provider network. If the insured chooses a hospital that charges $40,000 for the knee replacement, the insured could owe $10,000 to the hospital, in addition to the insured’s usual cost-sharing for the $30,000 covered by the plan.
The extra $10,000 is treated as an out-of-network expense and does not count toward the plan’s annual limit on out-of-pocket costs. This is important because, under the Affordable Care Act, most plans have to pick up the entire cost of care after the patient reaches the annual out-of-pocket limit (currently $6,350 for single coverage and $12,700 for a family plan). Prior to the federal officials’ ruling, it was unclear whether reference pricing violated this provision.
CalPERS, the California agency that manages health and retirement benefits for public employees, began using reference pricing in 2011 with regard to knee and hip replacements by steering patients to hospitals that were approved for quality and charged $30,000 or less. CalPERS’ health benefits director said the program has been a success and that patients are able to choose from about fifty hospitals.
However, reference pricing may be suitable only for a specific subset of medical care: frequently-performed procedures where the prices charged vary widely but the quality of results do not. This could include MRIs and other imaging tests, cataract surgeries, and colonoscopies.
More than a million California residents whose health plans were cancelled under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, will not be able to keep their existing coverage, despite President Obama’s directive that insurers keep such plans available for another year. The decision about whether to implement the president’s administrative “fix” rested with Covered California, the state’s new insurance exchange. The exchange’s board announced today that it would not allow insurers to revive plans that fell short of the ACA’s coverage mandates. Instead, California’s exchange will stay the course and continue to enroll residents into Obamacare.
Covered California made the best decision for consumers by supporting the success of our new health insurance marketplace,” said Patrick Johnston, President and CEO of the California Association of Health Plans. “Today’s decision comes with a renewed effort to ease the transition process for consumers in the form of a five-step action plan focusing on extending deadlines and increasing enrollment assistance.”
The decision will undoubtedly disappoint California residents who liked their previous coverage and had hoped they could keep their nonconforming plans for another year. The announcement also drew the consternation of state Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, who previously expressed support for President Obama’s directive.
Covered California rejected what President Obama and I asked for – that individual policyholders be allowed to keep their existing health insurance through all of 2014. Covered California’s decision denies Californians the same opportunity health insurers are giving to its small business customers who are being allowed to renew current policies throughout 2014.”
The board’s decision, however, does not come as a surprise. Allowing nonconforming policies to continue for another year poses a risk to Obamacare’s financial viability as the move could prevent young, healthy individuals from participating in the new exchanges. A risk pool disproportionately made up of previously hard-to-insure participants could cause premiums to soar. We will watch the developments and keep you informed.
On Tuesday, July 2, 2013, the U.S. Department of Treasury announced that it will provide an additional year before the mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) begin.
In a blog posting, Mark J. Mazur, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury, stated that the Administration has been engaging in a dialogue with businesses about the new reporting requirements under the ACA.
According to Mr. Mazur, "[w]e have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively."
The additional year will meet two goals, according to Mazur:
First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees."
In their article, LeBlanc and Ferrall note that the court focused on two key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: the individual mandate, requiring most Americans to have insurance coverage; and the Medicaid expansion requirement which, had the court not struck it down, would have required states to meet certain federal requirements to receive funding. The article provided legal context and background on the Affordable Care Act and discussed how the court came to the conclusion that the law was “mostly constitutional.”
“In doing so, the court emphasized that its role was not to address the soundness of federal policy, but rather to interpret the law and enforce limits on federal power,” LeBlanc and Ferrall wrote.
The first bill, Senate Bill 951 (Hernandez, D-West Covina), would require individual and small group health care service plans and insurance policies to cover essential health benefits beginning in 2014. Under the ACA, essential health benefits must include the following ten categories of items and services:
Rehabilitative and “habilitative” services and devices (to date, there is no guidance as to what the “habilitative” umbrella will include)
Laboratory services
Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management
Pediatric services, including oral and vision care
SB 951 designates the Kaiser Small Group HMO as the benchmark standard for essential health benefits coverage in California.
The second piece of legislation, Senate Bill 961 (Hernandez, D-West Covina), prohibits health care service plans and insurers from denying coverage to individuals based on preexisting conditions. It requires guaranteed issue of individual health service plans and insurance policies. The bill only allows health plans and insurers to use age, geographic region, and family size in establishing individual coverage rates.
The Minimum Essential Coverage Provision – referred to as the “individual mandate” -- requires that most United States citizens purchase health insurance by 2014 or face a penalty included in the individual’s tax return.
Because he found that this provision was not severable from the remainder of the PPACA, Judge Vinson declared the entire PPACA void.
The lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the PPACA was filed by the Attorneys General and/or the Governors of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indian, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, along with two private citizens and the National Federal of Independent Business (collectively the “Plaintiffs”).
Judge Vinson agreed, explaining in a 78-page opinion, that the provision attempted to impermissibly regulate “economic inactivity,” as the Commerce Clause only permits Congress to regulate “activity.” A copy of Judge Vinson’s opinion can be found here.
It is widely anticipated that the ultimate resolution of the constitutionality of the PPACA will be made by the United States Supreme Court.
The lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision in the PPACA was filed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The state contended, among other items, that the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision exceeded the power of Congress under both the Commerce Clause and General Welfare Clause of the United States Constitution. Judge Hudson agreed, explaining in a 42-page opinion, that the provision “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.”
Reports indicate that President Obama’s administration intends to appeal the decision. It is widely anticipated that the ultimate resolution of the constitutionality of the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision will be made by the United States Supreme Court.
While Republicans in Congress vow to repeal such enactment, key aspects of the PPACA went into effect on September 23, 2010, which marks the six-month anniversary of the legislation.
Although the following list is not exhaustive, here are some of the more notable changes in the health care reform law (effective September 23, 2010) that will apply to individual and group health plans:
Coverage Changes
No Lifetime or Annual Limits on Essential Benefits:
Health plans may not contain lifetime limits on the amount of benefits that will be provided for essential benefits. No regulations have yet been issued regarding the definition of “essential benefits, which in general include, but are not limited to, ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services, and chronic disease management. As for annual limits, for plan years beginning before January 1, 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (“HHS”) interim regulations adopt a three-year phase-in approach of removing annual limits on essential health benefits. For more information, click here.
Anti-Rescission Rules:
Health plans may not rescind, i.e., retroactively cancel coverage, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentations of material fact. These rules do not apply to prospective cancellations or any cancellation due to failure to timely pay premiums.
Mandatory Preventative Health Care Services:
Health plans must provide benefits without cost sharing (i.e., no co-payments, deductibles or co-insurance) for certain preventative services, including, but not limited to, immunizations recommended by the CDC, as well as preventative care and screening for infants, children and adolescents and for women as recommended by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Grandfathered health plans are exempt. (A grandfathered health plan is a group health plan that was created – or an individual health insurance policy that was purchased – on or before March 23, 2010, and a health plan must disclose in its plan materials whether it considers itself to be a grandfathered plan.)
Extension of Adult Dependents Coverage:
For health plans that elect to provide dependent coverage, such coverage must be extended to adult children up to age 26.
No Pre-existing Condition Exclusions for Children:
Health plans may not impose any preexisting condition exclusions for children 19 and under. (Grandfathered plans are exempt.).
Patient Protection Changes
Right to Choose Primary Care Provider (“PCP”):
For health plans that require designation of a PCP, the patient must be allowed to designate any participating PCP accepting new patients. For children, any participating physician specializing in pediatrics can be designated as the child’s PCP and, for women, any participating OB-GYN can be designated as a PCP.
Coverage for Emergency Services:
For health plans that provide coverage for emergency services, such plans must do so without requiring prior authorization and regardless of whether the provider of emergency services is a participating provider. Emergency services provided by a non-participating provider must also be provided at the same level of cost-sharing as would apply to a participating provider.
Appeals Process:
Group plans must provide for an internal appeals process that complies with the U.S. Department of Labor regulations and individual plans must provide an internal appeals process that comports with the standards established by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Both group and individual plans must also provide for an external appeals process that complies with applicable law or at a minimum with the NAIC Uniform External Review Model Act.
Additional health care reform changes will continue to take effect in 2010 and as late as 2018. More information about the PPACA can be found on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) website here.
For additional information on ERISA plans and the PPACA, the U.S. Department of Labor has posted information on its website here.
For additional information on the PPACA and individual policies and nonfederal governmental plans, the HHS has posted information on its websites here and here.
| 13,601 |
**************************************** Mother Earth is extremely important to us. She is the sacred vessel that contains the singularity that gave birth to our galaxy. She and she alone holds within her the Light energy stargate that sustains all the realities which make up our galaxy.
Sulforaphane, glucorophanin, and glucosinolates can work wonders in your body. They promote healthy aging, support your heart and liver, help fight oxidation and even boost your mood and energy levels, so it makes sense to ensure you're getting enough of them. Health Ranger Select Organic Broccoli Sprout Powder contains guaranteed levels of these along with an array of vitamins, nutrients and fatty acids--all in an easy-to-use "supernutrient" powder.
Last month, the House Appropriations Committee approved the Homeland Security spending bill for FY2019. During the markup, the bill's manager, Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas, allowed four troubling immigration provisions to be added to the bill.
After nearly two weeks of hearing about Saint John McCain (mostly from democrats) the bile in our stomachs built to a level that created a spontaneous eruption. Rather than recreate the true sentiment of Republicans, we decided to forward a piece that does an excellent job of framing his career. We will add a few missing highlights out of necessity and our desire for completeness. For example, did McCain hate Trump because Trump did something McCain could never accomplish, win the Presidency? To add insult to injury, Trump did it without any previous political experience or help from the Republican Party infrastructure (swamp). In fact he won with most of the Swamp opposing him. McCain is also a great humanitarian. He made it through the entire Vietnam War without killing a single Vietnamese soldier. Maybe that’s why he is so popular with them. And finally, he is the most recognized Republican in Arizona having been officially censured multiple times by the Republican Party. Maybe that is why Democrats love him. In fact, looking back it occurs to us McCain has always been dearly loved by whoever is the enemy. And what happened to the “dang fence” he said he wanted built? What has one of the “most powerful Senators” ever done FOR Arizona? Rather than drone on about issues you already know, with apologies for length, here is the promised summary: The ‘Family Man”...NOT !!!!
John McCain was a far more interesting, colorful and controversial man than most Americans and no journalists know. If you saw the Sunday political shows you would think a saint had passed on. John McCain was a man driven by two ghosts: His father and grandfather. Both were four-star Admirals in the US Navy so John’s appointment to the US Naval Academy was his destiny, but John McCain graduated 894th in his class of 899 students. He was known for being wild, chasing young women. He was in a student group calling themselves “The Bad Bunch.”
John married Carol Shepp, a swimsuit model who had been married to one of his classmates with whom she had two children. She and McCain were parents of a daughter in that marriage. At heart a playboy, John was soon bored with domestic life and as advancement was more likely in the military services in combat he requested active duty in Vietnam. While there Carol faithfully stayed at home looking after the children. His plane was shot down in 1967 when he ignored mission instructions to stay above 15,000 feet he went “down on the deck” and was shot down, survived and became a Prisoner Of War, POW. On Christmas Eve 1969, Carol and slid head-on into a telephone pole taking gifts to friends. She was thrown from the car through the front window. Her legs, spine, and right arm were crushed and she was in the hospital for six months. Ross Perot was an advocate of POW’s and paid her extensive medical bills. She requested John not be told feeling he had enough to deal with. McCain was released in 1973 and returned home to much fanfare. Carol’s several surgeries cost her five inches in height, and she gained weight. McCain told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again. But friends said he was appalled by the change in her appearance. As a war hero, McCain moved in elevated circles. Reverting to his old ways he started “running around with women.” according to Robert Timberg, a retired Marine, journalist, and author of four books, including “John McCain: An American Odessy.”
McCain admitted he started having many girlfriends and affairs during this time. On one trip to Hawaii, at a cocktail party. he met Anheuser Busch distributor heiress, Cindy Hensley. She was 17 years younger than McCain and worth $100 million dollars. He invited her to have drinks with him at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. He said by the end of the evening he was in love. They had an affair for nine months, while he was still married to and living with his wife Carol. McCain wanted to marry Cindy but needed to get a divorce. He and Carol separated in January 1980. He requested a divorce in February; the divorce was sped along and granted in April. John and Cindy married five weeks after the divorce was final on May 17, 1980. Carol and their children were devastated. McCain callously left his first wife and children behind. He and Cindy moved to Arizona. Cindy’s father was well-connected and helped McCain move smoothly into Congress representing Arizona in Washington DC. John McCain has been in Congress since 1983. McCain’s new wife and her family were extravagantly wealthy. Her father was one of the largest distributors of Anheuser Busch in the country and she an only child. The divorce settlement afforded Carol McCain full custody of their three children, alimony, child support, including college tuition, houses in Virginia and Florida, and lifelong financial support for her continuing medical treatment from the car accident.
Carol said the reason for the divorce was John turned 40 and he wanted to be 25 again. Carol was extremely hurt. She went to work as the press assistant for soon-to-be First Lady Nancy Reagan. She was respected in Washington and kept a dignified silence about the way John McCain had treated her. Some of the McCain friends were less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to “play the field.” They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen with a barn full of money. Ever the opportunist, John McCain ran as a Republican, but spoke, voted and collaborated as a Democrat. No wonder all the national television shows treated John McCain as a modern saint. He was not, but we can understand the “ants in his pants.” He lived haunted by his father and grandfather. Two bona fide war heroes. Ross Perot paid her medical bills years ago, says both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel, even by the standards of modern politics. Perot said, “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory.” Cindy has also had to learn the lessons about her husband the hard way. Even though she and McCain put on a perfect front for the public, especially when he is running for office, she is an invisible wife.
Tom Gosinski, who served as the Director of Cindy McCain’s nonprofit American Voluntary Medical Team, AVMT wrote in his journal of the McCain marriage: “During my short tenure at AVMT I have been surrounded by what on the surface appears to be the ultimate all-American family. In reality, I am working for a very sad, lonely woman. Her marriage of convenience to a U.S. Senator has driven her to distance herself from friends, cover feelings of despair with drugs, and replace lonely moments with self-indulgence. She became addicted to Percocet and had a doctor prescribing them for her illegally. When her parents learned she was taking them, they helped her stop. Washington rumors were saying McCain had an inappropriate relationship with the young and lovely lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. Ms. Iseman began visiting McCain’s offices and campaign events so frequently in 2000 that his aides were “convinced the relationship had become romantic.” One staff member supposedly asked, “Why is she always around?”
His staff members began a campaign to “save McCain from himself” by restricting Iseman’s access to McCain during the year 2000 Presidential Primary. According to the Washington Post, McCain’s political advisor John Weaver met with Iseman at Washington’s Union Station to tell Iseman not to see McCain anymore. It is not a real marriage between John and Cindy McCain. Real marriages involve living together. McCain and Cindy have not “lived” together for 20 years. To defend this, McCain brags the family takes two vacations together every year and Ms. McCain is the one who has always made that happen.” Two vacations per year! Little of this man was real. He had no compassion or empathy for anyone except himself. The only real thing emotion he was capable of was anger. He is famous for his anger.
His father and grandfather were both decorated Navy Admirals. He was given special privileges and extreme preferential treatment while he served in the Navy. He was a pilot but according to his colleagues, he was a very bad pilot. He actually crashed three planes. There was a horrendous incident that happened on his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Forrestal, that killed 134 men. There has been a rolling debate since the incident and some are convinced John McCain was responsible. Witnesses reported McCain attempted a “wet start.” When a pilot wants to be a show-off, with a “wet start” his engine start creates a large startling flame and lots of surprise noise from the rear of a jet engine on startup. McCain did the “Wet Start.” The flames torched the launch of a Zuni rocket on the plane behind him. Zuni rockets were notorious for problems. It shot across the carrier’s deck hitting other parked planes that were packing 1,000 high-explosive pound bombs which exploded. Destruction and fire went several decks below and nearly sunk this major 82,000 ton U.S. aircraft carrier.
This stunt caused the death of 134 sailors and blew off arms, legs, and caused blindness and burns to another 161 sailors. McCain jumped from his plane, rolled across the flames, and escaped. He watched the men dying and the burning from a closed circuit <x-apple-data-detectors://9> television on the ship. The ship off line for two years in port for $76 million dollars of major repairs, not including the cost of the airplanes or ammunition. Any other Navy pilots causing this type of death and destruction would have been arrested and still be in prison, but not John McCain III. McCain was not even reprimanded. When there is a cover-up, the soldier is usually simply assigned to another ship. McCain was quietly assigned to another ship. There is an ongoing debate about the incident to this day. John McCain’s lack of character was further demonstrated when he voted not to repeal Obamacare. He ran his 2016 Senatorial race under the banner he would lead the fight to repeal Obamacare! But, he hates Donald Trump so very much he gleefully held his thumb down for his vote rather than give a thumb up. He laughed afterward saying, “Let’s see Donald Trump save America now!”
Communism, Socialism, and Colonialism have been simultaneously present on the world stage since the late 19th century, but commencing in the ‘60s, many of the world’s political, social and technological directions were joined and created an ignition that was able to in influence institutions and people everywhere. Not long thereafter, it appears, the American political left conceived a plan to make use of this global discontent to transform our political identity and culture by moving America’s political position sharply leftward.........
And guess what? Suppose the op-ed is a total construction by the New York Times – it also proves the existence of the Deep State. For the fact is, the Deep State is not an individual, it is a cabal of people and entities who are determined to overthrow the results of a legitimate election, and to remove a president who was voted into office by millions who wanted Donald Trump to drain the swamp.........
I was asked recently by a concerned American, why do most democrats seem to hate people who want to strengthen our nation? To which I answered. Democrats and other people of the left detest our republic first and foremost. Democrats disdain those of us who understand that our unalienable rights come from God, not from government. Democrats do not believe in your right to self-protection, self -determination, or self-reliance........
NASA covered up what is arguably the greatest scientific discovery in the history of human civilization. In 1976, the Viking Landers found and documented proof of life on Mars. But it was "memory holed" and buried on purpose.
The name of the scientist who should have gone down in history alongside Einstein and Newton is Dr. Gil Levin. You've never heard of him because NASA ran a conspiracy to silence his scientific discovery.
Experience the unique taste and nutritional goodness of organic lucuma powder. Made from the superfood called the "Gold of the Incas," this sugar alternative adds a pleasant caramel-like flavor to your food and drinks, as well as plenty of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber.
The cockscomb is a natural painkillerThe cockscomb (Celosia cristata) you might have been growing in your garden as an ornamental plant – or vegetable – will come in handy if you ever need a natural way of relieving pain. ...
Study: Antibiotics are ineffective for eczemaIn addition to the side effects that come with antibiotic use, it turns out that most of them are ineffective. A study led by Cardiff University revealed that using either oral or topical ...
Experience the unique taste and nutritional goodness of organic lucuma powder. Made from the superfood called the "Gold of the Incas," this sugar alternative adds a pleasant caramel-like flavor to your food and drinks, as well as plenty of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber.
The mental health benefits of vitamin B12As it controls virtually all aspects of your life, the brain is one of the most vital organs of your body. It is also one of the most nutritionally demanding. Keeping the brain healthy requires a ...
Rep. Kevin Yoder, author of the FY2019 Homeland Security spending bill, announced this week that he now opposes an amendment that he first supported during the House Appropriations Committee markup that would block the Trump Administration's efforts to strengthen the credible fear standard for asylum seekers. Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions clarified that existing law does not allow individuals to receive asylum for fear of gang violence or domestic abuse perpetrated by non-governmental actors. The clarification, if implemented, would significantly reduce the number of fraudulent asylum claims made by illegal aliens and is one of NumbersUSA's 10 Steps for Fixing the Broken Immigration Enforcement System. The Department of Homeland Security issued guidance in late-July, instructing asylum adjudicators to follow AG Sessions' ruling, but Rep. Yoder and the Committee added a reversal of the guidance in the Homeland Security spending bill. After coming under significant fire from grassroots activists, the White House, and some in the media, Rep. Yoder says he will strip the amendment from the bill before it reaches the House floor. However, Rep. Yoder says he still supports the Committee's addition of H.R. 392 that would eliminate the per-country caps for employment based green cards. Also, he has not indicated if two other controversial immigration provisions in the spending bill that would expand the H-2A agricultural guest worker program and the H-2B low-skilled guest worker program would remain in the final bill. If you've yet to send the action we posted to your Action Board, expressing your concern over these provisions to your U.S. Representative, please do so today. It's unlikely that Congress will vote on the Homeland Security spending bill before current funding runs out on Sept. 30. Instead, Congressional Leaders have said that DHS will likely be funded through a short-term continuing resolution, and the larger spending bill will be addressed after the mid-term elections in November.
Chris Chmielenski
Action
Congress is back in sessions, and for the most part, its focus this month will be on spending bills to avert a government shutdown a the end of the month.
See where 2018 Congressional Candidates stand on immigration! The 2018 primary season is well underway, and so are the NumbersUSA Candidate Comparison pages. We rate most Congressional candidates on 12 different immigration issues and provide a side-by-side comparison grid for each Congressional race.
Feature
Order Our Perennial Favorite Free Foldover Cards
These cards are really effective at events, such as townhalls, to visually show the numbers that make so many Americans passionate about the mission of NumbersUSA to reduce total immigration to a level that serves the national interest.
Economic indicators are good. Employment is up and wages are increasing, albeit modestly. Congress can ensure that trend continues by cutting the inflow of foreign workers. The upcoming budget negotiations will show what commitment, if any, leaders in Congress have to improving conditions for American workers.
DHS proposed a rule that would establish standards of care for detaining all illegal alien minors. It includes a provision that would allow for the joint detention of illegal-alien parents and children until they win their asylum case or are deported. The rule would set aside a 2015 court order related to the "Flores settlement" that requires the release of illegal-alien minors and their parents after only 20 days.
The Department of Labor announced a new initiative to ensure that hotels that hire temporary foreign workers using the H-2B visa comply with wage requirements. Under existing law, employers must demonstrate in their request for H-2B workers that they have been unable to find American workers to fill the job and that the use of H-2B workers will not adversely affect wages and working conditions of similarly employed American workers.
When the Exchange Visitor Program was created in 1961, it was designed to "increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange." Participants are allowed to work so, for many years, the program enabled young adults to serve as au pairs, camp counselors and teachers in the U.S. But businesses are now using the program to secure seasonal workers, much like under the H-2B visa program, in ways not anticipated under the original program.
The below is a summary of information from the Internet. It would be up to the individual reader to do their own research and decide whether or not it is valid. Patience is a Virtue. Having Virtue is a sign of a good moral being. Good moral beings have the power to overcome evil and change the world.
Judy Note: Yesterday a link appeared on Dinar Chronicles that led to an FBI form asking people to file complaints on the RV. This concerned a very old investigation on a case that has long been resolved and was now closed. It was highly suspect why one would post such a link.
2. Sept. 5 Tony: On Mon. Sept. 3 the Banks held a meeting and set a timeline for the RV as between then (last Mon) and next week.
3. Sept. 5 Freeway Bill: This RV or RI could occur between tonight Sept. 5and Thurs. Sept. 6. I still think we are on an hour by hour and day by day alert.
4. Sept. 6 Bruce: Yesterday Sept. 5 the Tier 1 banks connected from the SWIFT system to the new CIPS system to do transfers.
5. Sept. 6 Bruce: Tier Four Group A likely has started, while Tier Four Group B (us, the Internet Group) could begin at over 4,000 redemption centers overnight tonight, tomorrow or dragged out over the weekend.
6. Sept. 6 Fulford: The financial dimension of the Cabal takedown involves “a gold-backed dollar and arrests next week,” says former CIA agent and Marine Intelligence officer Robert David Steele.
7. Sept. 6 Fulford: Trump proclaimed on August 31 that September is ’emergencies month’ and he may drop ‘truth bombs’ about 9/11 and 3/11,” Pentagon sources explain.
8. Sept. 5 Q+ Post, Sierra: Q post number 2094 from Q+ features a link to a recent President Trump tweet with just one word in it: TREASON?https://qanon.pub/
9. Sept. 6, Q Post, Sierra: 'Fellow Patriots: What you are about to learn should not only scare you, but intensify your resolve to take back control [Freedom]. The information that will become public will further demonstrate the criminal and corrupt [pure evil] abuse of power that the Hussein administration undertook in joint efforts w/domestic and foreign dignitaries. The snowball has begun rolling - there is no stopping it now. D5. Stay the course and trust the plan. Protective measures are in place. Remain BRAVE. We knew this day would come: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2qIXXafxCQ
Note the source that Q has used to tell us about the Alert System Test:breaking9/11.com. The Alliance is giving us all the information we need about the brilliant plan to save humanity, for those of us with ears to hear and eyes to see. This really is time to fasten your seat belts, friends. Stay alert, stay calm, and above all, know that ALL IS WELL.
1.The deadlock has ended in the undeclared U.S. civil war that lasted all summer, and the good guys have already begun a series of stunning moves against the Cabal, including shooting down their secret satellites, multiple sources confirm.
2. A complete reset of the global financial system has already begun, assert CIA sources connected to the self-described “good side” of the Rothschild family. This is just a prelude to what promises to be a very eventful month of September, the sources agree.
3. The satellite shoot-down was first reported by the mysterious blogger “Q” and has been independently confirmed by three separate sources. “On August 30, CIA satellites and supercomputers were taken down and likely seized by [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s new space force, and GCHQ [British Intelligence] was removed from the NSA database to also render cabal elements in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, and Israel deaf and blind,” Pentagon sources explained.
4. A CIA source in Asia who was involved in setting up the secret satellite network that was taken down last week issued the following warning to colleagues: “We are in potential danger. I hope your vehicles have fuel and you have emergency food and water on hand. There’s no telling who did this or why… and now that some of our satellites are down, God only knows what may be coming at us.”
5. Meanwhile, a third source says Nathaniel Rothschild’s faction was involved in the shoot-down, saying, “Nat is back in play. He is with us. We are dismantling the Nazi/Antarctica global grid of communications. This includes several orbiting satellites, one of which has already been eliminated.”
6. The communications takedown is a prelude to both a military and financial offensive against the Cabal, Pentagon and CIA sources agree. For reasons of operational security, the Pentagon sources cannot say much about the military action other than “a U.S. military offensive is under way to terminate the defenseless and disoriented Cabal.”
7. The financial dimension of the Cabal takedown involves “a gold-backed dollar and arrests next week,” says former (there is never really a “former”) CIA agent and Marine Intelligence officer Robert David Steele. Separate CIA sources linked to the Rothschilds add, “We are already in a global currency meltdown. It cannot be stopped. The financial reset is imminent. Watch what happens to the price of gold and silver. This all takes place before December 2018. Trump has a very big part to play. He is closely linked to the good side of the Rothschild clan. (Nat is in play again).”
8. “It appears the October Surprise comes early with the Guns of August, as Trump proclaimed on August 31 that September is ’emergencies month’ and he may drop ‘truth bombs’ about 9/11 and 3/11,” Pentagon sources explain.
9. “17 years after the Twin Towers were nuked, shadow Secretary of State for the deep state John McCain was executed 17 days before 9/11, as the storm makes landfall in September,” while “In a message to patriots, the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff showed up while McCain lying in state August 31 to declare victory.” Other Pentagon sources note “McCain’s casket was closed because he either blew his brains out or was not actually in the casket.”
11. “There is discussion of the President leaving Twitter, but only when a viable alternative emerges. The CEOs of Mastodon, Gab, Minds, and Plurk are being approached by a conservative billionaire ready to fund a seamlessly integrated new ecology that includes text messages, online blurbs (perhaps to be called Trumpets), videos (BitChute is locked in as the core there), shared files, and multi-level meeting and networking applications.”
12. “Russia is ending the Syrian war with a final assault on Idlib,” the Pentagon sources note.
13. What we need to watch for over the next few days and weeks is whether remaining senior Satanic Cabalists like Benyamin Netanyahu, George Bush Jr., Hillary and Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, and others are publicly arrested and frog-marched in front of the cameras. The other thing to see is whether Trump will finally go public with 9/11 truth, as he promised to do during his election campaign. If that does not happen, the WDS will take things to the next level.
1.The official version of events is that McCain died of a deadly Glioblastoma, where death usually follows in 12-15 months. It was announced he had brain cancer in July, 2017 – 13 months ago (a well-planned event). McCain previously fought deadly Melanoma skin cancer – so he was cancer prone (a well-planned excuse). Despite supposedly having radiation and chemo treatments, McCain didn’t look a day older in March, 2018 than he had in 2015. He died at home, where the circumstances of his “death” could be well controlled and concealed.
2. Q predicted McCain’s death to the day, the hour, and the minute. After hinting on May 10 of a “death/funeral” escape and on June 18 of an “end near”, Q stated on July 25 at 18:28:35 EDT that McCain would be “returning to headlines”. McCain obits state he died an exact month later on August 25 at 16:28 local time in Arizona. John McCain, War Hero, Senator, Presidential Contender, Dies at 81 August 25, 2018 at 4:28 p.m. local time.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/obituaries/john-mccain-dead
3. Q had stated on June 30 that “every dog has its day” and McCain died on National Dog Day. Yet more proof that the “death” was planned and that Q has inside knowledge that is highly accurate. Per the Zetas, McCain is not dead but at Gitmo.
4. The cleanup of the Deep State has reached the point where the public is going to be allowed to know the extent of treasonous acts during the 2016 Presidential campaign. McCain is intrinsically tied to the Steele Dossier, as was Brennan and Hillary.
5. It has been noted by many that the number of sealed indictments under the military tribunals run by Trump’s Junta is many tens of thousands above the average. Meanwhile CEO’s are resigning in droves and dozens of US Congressmen are choosing not to continue in office, opting out. Is there a relationship?
6. When the perpetrator is a well-known public figure, the Junta tribunals offer the offender a choice. Depending on their role, they can resign from a position of influence and remain silent, to be available to the media and thus humiliated when their crimes are exposed. Or they can disappear into a falsified death. If the individual cannot be trusted to refrain from public pronouncements, they are not trusted to fake their death. McCain was too opinionated and stubborn, so is now housed in Guantanamo with a number of similar individuals. A type of life sentence.
7. With the FISA issue under investigation by an AG reporting directly to Sessions, this is likely to expose McCain as well as Brennan this upcoming Fall for their crimes. McCain was rather obviously under House Arrestsimultaneously with Hillary last November, 2017 even wearing his boot on the wrong foot on occasion. Then in March, just months later, Q exposed McCain’s dealings with US backed rebels, ISIS associates, when he personally delivered chemical weapons to them in Syria. McCain could not be trusted. Q is now hinting that FISA abuses, and involvement with the Steele Dossier, could also potentially be revealed. Time for McCain to leave the stage.
Did you miss PAO's Galactic Activation Webinar on Color with Arlene Arnold?
If you were unable to register for PAO’s LIve Galactic Activation Webinar, hosted by Colleen and Miles, on Sunday, August 26, it is now available for downloading. This month, we invited color therapist Arlene Arnold to join us. Arlene specializes in helping those who struggle with the anxiety that comes of being highly sensitive and intuitive. She works with complementary color tools to help people de-stress.
Webinar Questions:
• How can your color tools connect us with our chakra system?
• How can we best utilize color in our meditations and visualizations?
• Why do we like or dislike certain colors?
• Does our choice of clothing colors matter?
• How can we use color to overcome darkness and despair?
• How can we use color for our highest good?
• Can using color help to unlock our hidden talents?
About Arlene:
Have you ever felt like you just 'knew' something, even though you didn't know why? I've developed tools to help those who struggle with the anxiety that comes from being highly sensitive and intuitive. Often, we may mistrust our abilities or not know how to deal with what we experience and "see". I've come to understand that what we are passionate about is most often the information, gift, or tool that we are here to offer to others. I know what it feels like to not fit in. Being like others isn't the answer. Finding others who value their own uniqueness, and value yours, allows you to relax. Perfection is not the goal. Instead, being authentic in your own unique way is what brings satisfaction. I want you to know that you don't have to muddle through on your own. In this Webinar, I will share how I came to work with colors and developed my Complementary Color Therapy. We use color every day. Learn how you can change your life with the use of color visualization and breathing exercises. It's simple. It's immediate. It's effective.
Links to Arlene's Website:
Discount Coupon offered to those who attended or downloaded the webinar! Use this code TT5 when checking out for a $5 discount. This applies to the following course and products.
From Self Doubt to Self Reliance: Learning to Thrive as a Highly Sensitive/Intuitive Person
PLEASE NOTE ~ being present and entering the 5th Dimensionally consciously ~ WILL require everything of YOU. A complete surrender TO BEING IT.
It is not a part time thing.
You either are or you are not. There is no faking being present.
Well you can try to fake it, everything sooner or later will come crashing down, TO BE shattered, dissolved removed from the subconscious. It takes bravery, trust, and self LOVE. Standing as the truth of your soul. TAKES Everything.
The greater the requirement, the greater the letting go ~ the GREATER the Miracles.
Therein are the LEVELS. Everything is always unfolding according to your level of consciousness. The levels of NON attachment.
If you ARE Expecting OUTCOMES that fit with your desires, LETTING go of that attachment as well, is the state of pure being here NOW.
I am not saying you will think it is perfect as you SHIFT…or it will feel perfect.
YOU will live as the Divine Being that lives as the limitless Being you eternally ARE.
Think about it ~ If we are trying to control an outcome we are being future orientated and not present with now. Stepping into the miracles of being…REQUIRES a level of trust…..and often times at the higher levels, blind trust.
As a small example (will share more) I was guided (heard a voice audibly) to MOVE, quit everything that involved an outcome NOT knowing how to even move let alone pay for place. I Moved, quit things…followed the guidance, and was at least ONE YEAR before I saw everything then change before my eyes.
The REQUIREMENT LISTENING TO my guidance.
Often times people fit the idea of intuition and guidance as referring to an OUTCOME other than now. Intuition is ONLY NOW. Not for a future result, ever. WE walk and talk through the higher dimensions….FOLLOWING what would appear to the mental body as impossible.
LETTING GO of the mental body thoughts and its desire for control as to HOW you live or not live in the present moment IS THE HUGE leap into the 5th dimension ~ Being.
YOU do not take with you my friends, your controlling beliefs of outcomes, YOU step into a new way of being…that says I DO NOT KNOW what will happen I am living as NOW for NOW only and I TRUST with all of my being. I have let go of beliefs. It is all about now and if I am still focusing on results I am holding on to beliefs and attachments in 3D consciousness.
YOU ARE not shown the full results of listening to your guidance and it almost ALWAYS (at the levels of complete miracles requires that leap in faith…Blind faith, whatever you want to call it. It is a LETTING GO OF ATTACHMENTS TO OUTCOMES.
IT may LOOK like the worst things will happen, that is when you know when you keep on going, keep on believing in THE Purity of NOW, that you enter being the INITIATE.
YOU receive initiation after initiation as you live without PROOF of the external, the ETERNAL truth within.
That is the BEING conscious in the 5th Dimension.
DO not know how, do not know when, only know NOW.
IT is a surrender a COMPLETE surrender of the old way of being as YOU enter the 5th Dimension consciously.
Let go now, applying I want this or that….bypasses the awareness of now.
SO simple, right in front of your face. YET it requires letting go of everything. IT is a new way of being. That is when you see and know, the true miracle of letting go of all attachments.
Who can do so?
The imitated BEINGS who master FORM. The Ascended ones. ALL NOW, and so it is!
Both Soros and his Open Society Foundations provide funding directly or indirectly to over 200 US organizations.
Advancement Project: This organization works to organize “communities of color” into politically cohesive units while disseminating its leftist worldviews and values as broadly as possible by way of a sophisticated communications department.
All of Us or None: This organization seeks to change voting laws — which vary from state to state — so as to allow ex-inmates, parolees, and even current inmates to cast their ballots in political elections.
Alliance for Justice: Best known for its activism vis a vis the appointment of federal judges, this group consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as “extremists.”
America Coming Together: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to coordinate and organize pro-Democrat voter-mobilization programs.
America Votes: Soros also played a major role in creating this group, whose get-out-the-vote campaigns targeted likely Democratic voters.
America’s Voice: This open-borders group seeks to promote “comprehensive” immigration reform that includes a robust agenda in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens.
American Bridge 21st Century: This Super PAC conducts opposition research designed to help Democratic political candidates defeat their Republican foes.
American Civil Liberties Union: This group opposes virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government. It supports open borders, has rushed to the defense of suspected terrorists and their abettors, and appointed former New Left terrorist Bernardine Dohrn to its Advisory Board.
American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: This Washington, DC-based think tank seeks to move American jurisprudence to the left by recruiting, indoctrinating, and mobilizing young law students, helping them acquire positions of power. It also provides leftist Democrats with a bully pulpit from which to denounce their political adversaries.
American Family Voices: This group creates and coordinates media campaigns charging Republicans with wrongdoing.
American Federation of Teachers: After longtime AFT President Albert Shanker died in in 1997, he was succeeded by Sandra Feldman, who slowly “re-branded” the union, allying it with some of the most powerful left-wing elements of the New Labor Movement. When Feldman died in 2004, Edward McElroy took her place, followed by Randi Weingarten in 2008. All of them kept the union on the leftward course it had adopted in its post-Shanker period.
American Friends Service Committee: This group views the United States as the principal cause of human suffering around the world. As such, it favors America’s unilateral disarmament, the dissolution of American borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, the abolition of the death penalty, and the repeal of the Patriot Act.
American Immigration Council: This non-profit organization is a prominent member of the open-borders lobby. It advocates expanded rights and amnesty for illegal aliens residing in the U.S.
American Institute for Social Justice: AISJ’s goal is to produce skilled community organizers who can “transform poor communities” by agitating for increased government spending on city services, drug interdiction, crime prevention, housing, public-sector jobs, access to healthcare, and public schools.
American Library Association: This group has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s War on Terror — most particularly, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which it calls “a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users.”
The American Prospect, Inc.: This corporation trains and mentors young leftwing journalists, and organizes strategy meetings for leftist leaders.
Amnesty International: This organization directs a grossly disproportionate share of its criticism for human rights violations at the United States and Israel.
Applied Research Center: Viewing the United States as a nation where “structural racism” is deeply “embedded in the fabric of society,” ARC seeks to “build a fair and equal society” by demanding “concrete change from our most powerful institutions.”
Arab American Institute Foundation: The Arab American Institute denounces the purportedly widespread civil liberties violations directed against Arab Americans in the post-9/11 period, and characterizes Israel as a brutal oppressor of the Palestinian people.
Ballot Initiative Strategy Center: This organization seeks to advance “a national progressive strategy” by means of ballot measures—state-level legislative proposals that pass successfully through a petition (“initiative”) process and are then voted upon by the public.
Bill of Rights Defense Committee: This group provides a detailed blueprint for activists interested in getting their local towns, cities, and even college campuses to publicly declare their opposition to the Patriot Act, and to designate themselves “Civil Liberties Safe Zones.” The organization also came to the defense of self-described radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in 2005 of providing material support for terrorism.
Blueprint North Carolina: This group seeks to “influence state policy in North Carolina so that residents of the state benefit from more progressive policies such as better access to health care, higher wages, more affordable housing, a safer, cleaner environment, and access to reproductive health services.”
Brookings Institution: This organization has been involved with a variety of internationalist and state-sponsored programs, including one that aspires to facilitate the establishment of a U.N.-dominated world government. Brookings Fellows have also called for additional global collaboration on trade and banking; the expansion of the Kyoto Protocol; and nationalized health insurance for children. Nine Brookings economists signed a petitionopposing President Bush’s tax cuts in 2003.
Campaign for Youth Justice: This organization contends that “transferring juveniles to the adult criminal-justice system leads to higher rates of recidivism, puts incarcerated and detained youth at unnecessary risk, has little deterrence value, and does not increase public safety.”
Campus Progress: A project of the Soros-bankrolled Center for American Progress, this group seeks to “strengthen progressive voices on college and university campuses, counter the growing influence of right-wing groups on campus, and empower new generations of progressive leaders.”
Casa de Maryland: This organization aggressively lobbies legislators to vote in favor of policies that promote expanded rights, including amnesty, for illegal aliens currently residing in the United States.
Catalist: This is a for-profit political consultancy that seeks “to help progressive organizations realize measurable increases in civic participation and electoral success by building and operating a robust national voter database of every voting-age American.”
Catholics for Choice: This nominally Catholic organization supports women’s right to abortion-on-demand.
Center for American Progress: This leftist think tank is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, works closely with Hillary Clinton, and employs numerous former Clinton administration staffers. It is committed to “developing a long-term vision of a progressive America” and “providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals.”
Center for Community Change: This group recruits and trains activists to spearhead leftist “political issue campaigns.” Promoting increased funding for social welfare programs by bringing “attention to major national issues related to poverty,” the Center bases its training programs on the techniques taught by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky.
Center for International Policy: This organization uses advocacy, policy research, media outreach, and educational initiatives to promote “transparency and accountability” in U.S. foreign policy and global relations. It generally views America as a disruptive, negative force in the world.
Center for Reproductive Rights: CRR’s mission is to guarantee safe, affordable contraception and abortion-on-demand for all women, including adolescents. The organization has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions (through Medicaid) for low-income women.
Center for Responsible Lending: This organization was a major player in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Phil Kerpen (vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity), CRL “sh[ook] down and harass[ed] banks into making bad loans to unqualified borrowers.” Moreover, CRL negotiated a contract enabling it to operate as a conduit of high-risk loans to Fannie Mae.
Center for Social Inclusion: This organization seeks to counteract America’s “structural racism” by means of taxpayer-funded policy initiatives.
Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS): Aiming to redistribute wealth by way of higher taxes imposed on those whose incomes are above average, COWS contends that “it is important that state government be able to harness fair contribution from all parts of society – including corporations and the wealthy.”
Change America Now: Formed in December 2006, Change America Now describes itself as “an independent political organization created to educate citizens on the failed policies of the Republican Congress and to contrast that record of failure with the promise offered by a Democratic agenda.”
Coalition for an International Criminal Court: This group seeks to subordinate American criminal-justice procedures to those of an international court.
Color Of Change: This organization was founded to combat what it viewed as the systemic racism pervading America generally and conservatism in particular.
Common Cause: This organization aims to bring about campaign-finance reform, pursue media reform resembling the Fairness Doctrine, and cut military budgets in favor of increased social-welfare and environmental spending.
Constitution Project: This organization seeks to challenge the legality of military commissions; end the detainment of “enemy combatants”; condemn government surveillance of terrorists; and limit the President’s executive privileges.
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: Defenders of Wildlife opposes oil exploration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It condemns logging, ranching, mining, and even the use of recreational motorized vehicles as activities that are destructive to the environment.
Democracy Alliance: This self-described “liberal organization” aims to raise $200 million to develop a funding clearinghouse for leftist groups. Soros is a major donor to this group.
Democracy 21: This group is a staunch supporter of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
Democracy Now!: Democracy Now! was created in 1996 by WBAI radio news director Amy Goodman and four partners to provide “perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media,” i.e., the views of radical and foreign journalists, left and labor activists, and ideological foes of capitalism.
Democratic Justice Fund: DJF opposes the Patriot Act and most efforts to restrict or regulate immigration into the United States — particularly from countries designated by the State Department as “terrorist nations.”
Democratic Party: Soros’ funding activities are devoted largely to helping the Democratic Party solidify its power base. In a November 2003 interview, Soros stated that defeating President Bush in 2004 “is the central focus of my life” … “a matter of life and death.” He pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush organizations. “America under Bush,” he said, “is a danger to the world, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.”
Demos: This organization lobbies federal and state policymakers to “addres[s] the economic insecurity and inequality that characterize American society today”; promotes “ideas for reducing gaps in wealth, income and political influence”; and favors tax hikes for the wealthy.
Drum Major Institute: This group describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit think tank generating the ideas that fuel the progressive movement,” with the ultimate aim of persuading “policymakers and opinion-leaders” to take steps that advance its vision of “social and economic justice.”
Earthjustice: This group seeks to place severe restrictions on how U.S. land and waterways may be used. It opposes most mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing businesses, and the use of motorized vehicles in undeveloped areas.
Economic Policy Institute: This organization believes that “government must play an active role in protecting the economically vulnerable, ensuring equal opportunity, and improving the well-being of all Americans.”
Electronic Privacy Information Center: This organization has been a harsh critic of the USA PATRIOT Act and has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in litigating two cases calling for the FBI “to publicly release or account for thousands of pages of information about the government’s use of PATRIOT Act powers.”
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: Co-founded by the revolutionary communist Van Jones, this anti-poverty organization claims that “decades of disinvestment in our cities” — compounded by “excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration” — have “led to despair and homelessness.”
EMILY’s List: This political network raises money for Democratic female political candidates who support unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
Energy Action Coalition: Founded in 2004, this group describes itself as “a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement.” For EAC, this means “dismantling oppression” according to its principles of environmental justice.
Equal Justice USA: This group claims that America’s criminal-justice system is plagued by “significant race and class biases,” and thus seeks to promote major reforms.
Faithful America: This organization promotes the redistribution of wealth, an end to enhanced interrogation procedures vis a vis prisoners-of-war, the enactment of policies to combat global warming, and the creation of a government-run heath care system.
Families USA: This Washington-based health-care advocacy group favors ever-increasing government control of the American healthcare system.
Feminist Majority: Characterizing the United States as an inherently sexist nation, this group focuses on “advancing the legal, social and political equality of women with men, countering the backlash to women’s advancement, and recruiting and training young feminists to encourage future leadership for the feminist movement in the United States.”
Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.
Funding Exchange: Dedicated to the concept of philanthropy as a vehicle for social change, this organization pairs leftist donors and foundations with likeminded groups and activists who are dedicated to bringing about their own version of “progressive” change and social justice. Many of these grantees assume that American society is rife with racism, discrimination, exploitation, and inequity and needs to be overhauled via sustained education, activism, and social agitation.
Gamaliel Foundation: Modeling its tactics on those of the radical Sixties activist Saul Alinsky, this group takes a strong stand against current homeland security measures and immigration restrictions.
Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: This group contends that when a state proves either unable or unwilling to protect civilians from mass atrocities occurring within its borders, it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene — peacefully if possible, but with military force if necessary.
Global Exchange: Established in 1988 by pro-Castro radical Medea Benjamin, this group consistently condemns America’s foreign policy, business practices, and domestic life. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Global Exchange advised Americans to examine “the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world — from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel.”
Grantmakers Without Borders: GWB tends to be very supportive of leftist environmental, anti-war, and civil rights groups. It is also generally hostile to capitalism, which it deems one of the chief “political, economic, and social systems” that give rise to a host of “social ills.”
Green For All: This group was created by Van Jones to lobby for federal climate, energy, and economic policy initiatives.
Health Care for America Now: This group supports a “single payer” model where the federal government would be in charge of financing and administering the entire U.S. healthcare system.
Human Rights Campaign: The largest “lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender” lobbying group in the United States, HRC supports political candidates and legislation that will advance the LGBT agenda. Historically, HRC has most vigorously championed HIV/AIDS-related legislation, “hate crime” laws, the abrogation of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the legalization of gay marriage.
Human Rights First: This group supports open borders and the rights of illegal aliens; charges that the Patriot Act severely erodes Americans’ civil liberties; has filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of terror suspect Jose Padilla; and deplores the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities.
Human Rights Watch: This group directs a disproportionate share of its criticism at the United States and Israel. It opposes the death penalty in all cases, and supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.
I’lam: This anti-Israel NGO seeks “to develop and empower the Arab media and to give voice to Palestinian issues.”
Immigrant Defense Project: To advance the cause of illegal immigrants, the IDP provides immigration law backup support and counseling to New York defense attorneys and others who represent or assist immigrants in criminal justice and immigration systems, as well as to immigrants themselves.
Immigrant Legal Resource Center: This group claims to have helped gain amnesty for some three million illegal aliens in the U.S., and in the 1980s was part of the sanctuary movement which sought to grant asylum to refugees from the failed Communist states of Central America.
Immigration Advocates Network: This alliance of immigrant-rights groups seeks to “increase access to justice for low-income immigrants and strengthen the capacity of organizations serving them.”
Immigration Policy Center: IPC is an advocate of open borders and contends that the massive influx of illegal immigrants into America is due to U.S. government policy, since “the broken immigration system […] spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place.”
Institute for America’s Future: IAF supports socialized medicine, increased government funding for education, and the creation of an infrastructure “to ensure that the voice of the progressive majority is heard.”
Institute for New Economic Thinking: Seeking to create a new worldwide “economic paradigm,” this organization is staffed by numerous individuals who favor government intervention in national economies, and who view capitalism as a flawed system.
Institute for Policy Studies: This think tank has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. Viewing capitalism as a breeding ground for “unrestrained greed,” IPS seeks to provide a corrective to “unrestrained markets and individualism.” Professing an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the United Nations, it aims to bring American foreign policy under UN control.
Institute for Public Accuracy: This anti-American, anti-capitalist organization sponsored actor Sean Penn’s celebrated visit to Baghdad in 2002. It also sponsored visits to Iraq by Democratic Congressmen Nick Rahall and former Democrat Senator James Abourezk
Institute for Women’s Policy Research: This group views the U.S. as a nation rife with discrimination against women, and publishes research to draw attention to this alleged state of affairs. It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, stating that “access to abortion is essential to the economic well-being of women and girls.”
International Crisis Group: One of this organization’s leading figures is its Mideast Director, Robert Malley, who was President Bill Clinton’s Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs. His analysis of the Mideast conflict is markedly pro-Palestinian.
J Street: This anti-Israel group warns that Israel’s choice to take military action to stop Hamas’ terrorist attacks “will prove counter-productive and only deepen the cycle of violence in the region”
Jewish Funds for Justice: This organization views government intervention and taxpayer funding as crucial components of enlightened social policy. It seeks to redistribute wealth from Jewish donors to low-income communities “to combat the root causes of domestic economic and social injustice.” By JFJ’s reckoning, chief among those root causes are the inherently negative by-products of capitalism – most notably racism and “gross economic inequality.”
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: This group views America as an unremittingly racist nation; uses the courts to mandate race-based affirmative action preferences in business and academia; has filed briefs against the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to limit the wholesale granting of green cards and to identify potential terrorists; condemns the Patriot Act; and calls on Americans to “recognize the contribution” of illegal aliens.
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights: This organization views the United States as a nation rife with racism, sexism, and all manner of social injustice; and it uses legislative advocacy to push for “progressive change” that will create “a more open and just society.”
League of United Latin American Citizens: This group views America as a nation plagued by “an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment”; favors racial preferences; supports the legalization of illegal Hispanic aliens; opposes military surveillance of U.S. borders; opposes making English America’s official language; favors open borders; and rejects anti-terrorism legislation like the Patriot Act.
League of Women Voters Education Fund: The League supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; supports “motor-voter” registration, which allows anyone with a driver’s license to become a voter, regardless of citizenship status; and supports tax hikes and socialized medicine.
League of Young Voters: This organization seeks to “empowe[r] young people nationwide” to “participate in the democratic process and create progressive political change on the local, state and national level[s].”
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee: IRS records indicate that Soros’s Open Society Institute made a September 2002 grant of $20,000 to this organization. Stewart was the criminal-defense attorney who was later convicted for abetting her client, the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, in terrorist activities connected with his Islamic Group.
Machsom Watch: This organization describes itself as “a movement of Israeli women, peace activists from all sectors of Israeli society, who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of Palestinians’ rights to move freely in their land.”
MADRE: This international women’s organization deems America the world’s foremost violator of human rights. As such, it seeks to “communicat[e] the real-life impact of U.S. policies on women and families confronting violence, poverty and repression around the world,” and to “demand alternatives to destructive U.S. policies.” It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: This group views the U.S. as a nation replete with racism and discrimination against blacks; seeks to establish an independent black nation in the southeastern United States; and demands reparations for slavery.
Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition: This group calls for the expansion of civil rights and liberties for illegal aliens; laments that illegal aliens in America are commonly subjected to “worker exploitation”; supports tuition-assistance programs for illegal aliens attending college; and characterizes the Patriot Act as a “very troubling” assault on civil liberties.
Media Fund: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to conceptualize, produce, and place political ads on television, radio, print, and the Internet.
Media Matters for America: This organization is a “web-based, not-for-profit … progressive research and information center” seeking to “systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation.” The group works closely with the Soros-backed Center for American Progress, and is heavily funded by Democracy Alliance, of which Soros is a major financier.
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund: This group advocates open borders, free college tuition for illegal aliens, lowered educational standards to accommodate Hispanics, and voting rights for criminals. In MALDEF’s view, supporters of making English the official language of the United States are “motivated by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments,” while advocates of sanctions against employers reliant on illegal labor seek to discriminate against “brown-skinned people.”
Ms. Foundation for Women: This group laments what it views as the widespread and enduring flaws of American society: racism, sexism, homophobia, and the violation of civil rights and liberties. It focuses its philanthropy on groups that promote affirmative action for women, unfettered access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, amnesty for illegal aliens, and big government generally.
Muslim Advocates: Opposed to U.S. counter-terrorism strategies that make use of sting operations and informants, MA characterizes such tactics as forms of “entrapment” that are inherently discriminatory against Muslims.
NARAL Pro-Choice America: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, and works to elect pro-abortion Democrats.
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: The NAACP supports racial preferences in employment and education, as well as the racial gerrymandering of voting districts. Underpinning its support for race preferences is the fervent belief that white racism in the United States remains an intractable, largely undiminished, phenomenon.
National Abortion Federation: This group opposes any restrictions on abortion at either the state or federal levels, and champions the introduction of unrestricted abortion into developing regions of the world.
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy: This group depicts the United States as a nation in need of dramatic structural change financed by philanthropic organizations. It overwhelmingly promotes grant-makers and grantees with leftist agendas, while criticizing their conservative counterparts.
National Committee for Voting Integrity: This group opposes “the implementation of proof of citizenship and photo identification requirements for eligible electors in American elections as the means of assuring election integrity.”
National Council for Research on Women: This group supports big government, high taxes, military spending cuts, increased social welfare spending, and the unrestricted right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
National Council of La Raza: This group lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate-crime laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
National Council of Women’s Organizations: This group views the United States as a nation rife with injustice against girls and women. It advocates high levels of spending for social welfare programs, and supports race and gender preferences for minorities and women in business and academia.
National Immigration Forum: Opposing the enforcement of present immigration laws, this organization urges the American government to “legalize” en masse all illegal aliens currently in the United States who have no criminal records, and to dramatically increase the number of visas available for those wishing to migrate to the U.S. The Forum is particularly committed to opening the borders to unskilled, low-income workers, and immediately making them eligible for welfare and social service programs.
National Lawyers Guild: This group promotes open borders; seeks to weaken America’s intelligence-gathering agencies; condemns the Patriot Act as an assault on civil liberties; rejects capitalism as an unviable economic system; has rushed to the defense of convicted terrorists and their abettors; and generally opposes all U.S. foreign policy positions, just as it did during the Cold War when it sided with the Soviets.
National Organization for Women: This group advocates the unfettered right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; seeks to “eradicate racism, sexism and homophobia” from American society; attacks Christianity and traditional religious values; and supports gender-based preferences for women.
National Partnership for Women and Families: This organization supports race- and sex-based preferences in employment and education. It also advocates for the universal “right” of women to undergo taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand at any stage of pregnancy and for any reason.
National Priorities Project: This group supports government-mandated redistribution of wealth — through higher taxes and greater expenditures on social welfare programs. NPP exhorts the government to redirect a significant portion of its military funding toward public education, universal health insurance, environmentalist projects, and welfare programs.
National Public Radio: Founded in 1970 with 90 public radio stations as charter members, NPR is today a loose network of more than 750 U.S. radio stations across the country, many of which are based on college and university campuses. (source)
National Security Archive Fund: This group collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to a degree that compromises American national security and the safety of intelligence agents.
National Women’s Law Center: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; lobbies against conservative judicial appointees; advocates increased welfare spending to help low-income mothers; and favors higher taxes for the purpose of generating more funds for such government programs as Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, foster care, health care, child-support enforcement, and student loans.
Natural Resources Defense Council: One of the most influential environmentalist lobbying groups in the United States, the Council claims a membership of one million people.
New America Foundation: This organization uses policy papers, media articles, books, and educational events to influence public opinion on such topics as healthcare, environmentalism, energy policy, the Mideast conflict, global governance, and much more.
New Israel Fund: This organization gives support to NGOs that regularly produce reports accusing Israel of human-rights violations and religious persecution.
NewsCorpWatch: A project of Media Matters For America, NewsCorpWatch was established with the help of a $1 million George Soros grant to Media Matters.
Pacifica Foundation: This entity owns and operates Pacifica Radio, awash from its birth with the socialist-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and hatred for capitalism.
Peace and Security Funders Group: This is an association of more than 60 foundations that give money to leftist anti-war and environmentalist causes. Its members tend to depict America as the world’s chief source of international conflict, environmental destruction, and economic inequalities.
Peace Development Fund: In PDF’s calculus, the United States needs a massive overhaul of its social and economic institutions. “Recently,” explains PDF, “we have witnessed the negative effects of neo-liberalism and the globalization of capitalism, the de-industrialization of the U.S. and the growing gap between the rich and poor …”
People for the American Way: This group opposes the Patriot Act, anti-terrorism measures generally, and the allegedly growing influence of the “religious right.”
Planned Parenthood: This group is the largest abortion provider in the United States and advocates taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
Ploughshares Fund: This public grantmaking foundation opposes America’s development of a missile defense system, and contributes to many organizations that are highly critical of U.S. foreign policies and military ventures.
Prepare New York: This group supported the proposed construction of a Muslim Community Center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan – a project known as the Cordoba Initiative, headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Presidential Climate Action Project: PCAP’s mission is to create a new 21st-century economy, completely carbon-free and based largely on renewable energy. A key advisor to the organization is the revolutionary communist Van Jones.
Prison Moratorium Project: This initiative was created in 1995 for the express purpose of working for the elimination of all prisons in the United States and the release of all inmates. Reasoning from the premise that incarceration is never an appropriate means of dealing with crime, it deems American society’s inherent inequities the root of all criminal behavior.
Progressive Change Campaign Committee: This organization works “to elect bold progressive candidates to federal office and to help [them] and their campaigns save money, work smarter, and win more often.”
Progressive States Network: PSN’s mission is to “pass progressive legislation in all fifty states by providing coordinated research and strategic advocacy tools to forward-thinking state legislators.”
Project Vote: This is the voter-mobilization arm of the Soros-funded ACORN. A persistent pattern of lawlessness and corruption has followed ACORN/Project Vote activities over the years.
Pro Publica: Claiming that “investigative journalism is at risk,” this group aims to remedy this lacuna in news publishing by “expos[ing] abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”
Proteus Fund: This foundation directs its philanthropy toward a number of radical leftwing organizations.
Psychologists for Social Responsibility: This anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-military, anti-American organization “uses psychological knowledge and skills to promote peace with social justice at the community, national and international levels.”
Public Citizen Foundation: Public Citizen seeks increased government intervention and litigation against corporations — a practice founded on the notion that American corporations, like the capitalist system of which they are a part, are inherently inclined toward corruption.
Public Justice Center: Viewing America as a nation rife with injustice and discrimination, this organization engages in legislative and policy advocacy to promote “systemic change for the disenfranchised.”
Res Publica: Seeking to advance far-left agendas in places all around the world, RP specializes in “E-advocacy,” or web-based movement-building.
Roosevelt Institute: Proceeding from the premise that free-market capitalism is inherently unjust and prone to periodic collapses caused by its own structural flaws, RI currently administers several major projects aimed at reshaping the American economy to more closely resemble a socialist system.
Secretary of State Project: This project was launched in July 2006 as an independent “527” organization devoted to helping Democrats get elected to the office of Secretary of State in selected swing, or battleground, states.
Social Justice Leadership: This organization seeks to transform an allegedly inequitable America into a “just society” by means of “a renewed social-justice movement.”
Shadow Democratic Party: This is an elaborate network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources — money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising, and policy iniatives — to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left.
Sojourners: This evangelical Christian ministry preaches radical leftwing politics. During the 1980s it championed Communist revolution in Central America and chastised U.S. policy-makers for their tendency “to assume the very worst about their Soviet counterparts.” More recently, Sojourners has taken up the cause of environmental activism, opposed welfare reform as a “mean-spirited Republican agenda,” and mounted a defense of affirmative action.
Southern Poverty Law Center: This organization monitors the activities of what it calls “hate groups” in the United States. It exaggerates the prevalence of white racism directed against American minorities.
State Voices: This coalition helps independent local activist groups in 22 states work collaboratively on a year-round basis, so as to maximize the impact of their efforts.
Talking Transition: This was a two-week project launched in early November 2013 to “help shape the transition” to City Hall for the newly elected Democratic mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio.
Think Progress: This Internet blog “pushes back, daily,” by its own account, against its conservative targets, and seeks to transform “progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world.”
Urban Institute: This research organization favors socialized medicine, expansion of the federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners.
USAction Education Fund: USAction lists its priorities as: “fighting the right wing agenda”; “building grassroots political power”; winning “social, racial and economic justice for all”; supporting a system of taxpayer-funded socialized medicine; reversing “reckless tax cuts for millionaires and corporations” which shield the “wealthy” from paying their “fair share”; advocating for “pro-consumer and environmental regulation of corporate abuse”; “strengthening progressive voices on local, state and national issues”; and working to “register, educate and get out the vote … [to] help progressives get elected at all levels of government.”
John Adams Project:This project of the American Civil Liberties Union was accused of: (a) having hired investigators to photograph CIA officers thought to have been involved in enhanced interrogations of terror suspects detained in Guantanamo, and then (b) showing the photos to the attorneys of those suspects, some of whom were senior al-Qaeda operatives.
New Organizing Institute: Created by the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, this group “trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations.”
Think Progress: This “project” of the American Progress Action Fund, which is a “sister advocacy organization”of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and Campus Progress, seeks to transform “progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world.”
Vote for Change: Coordinated by the political action committee of the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, Vote for Change was a group of 41 musicians and bands that performed concerts in several key election “battleground” states during October 2004, to raise money in support of Democrat John Kerry‘s presidential bid.
The consciousness codes within the DNA of the Millennials and the children have been activated and we have Ascended a quantum leap up the Spiral of Evolution. As a result of this miracle, Mother Earth has victoriously reclaimed her rightful place in our Solar System. Now, it is the responsibility of awakening Humanity to magnetize from the Heart of God the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity we will use to cocreate the patterns of perfection on the New Earth. These are the highest frequencies of Light the Earth has ever been able to withstand. The Company of Heaven said that we are only capable of receiving this frequency of Light because of the incredible shifts that have taken place this year and the fact that the consciousness codes within the DNA of the Millennials and the children have been successfully activated.
These events have allowed our I AM Presence and our 5th-Dimensional Body Elemental to greatly accelerated the Divine Alchemy taking place within our Earthly Bodies. This alchemy is transforming our carbon-based planetary cells into crystalline-based Solar Light Cells. This is enabling our physical, etheric, mental and emotional bodies to withstand higher frequencies of the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Solar Aspects of Deity than we have ever been able to assimilate at a cellular level.
Contemplate this information within the Flame of Illumined Truth in your heart and you will intuitively know how you can most effectively be the Open Door for this exquisite Light. The Company of Heaven said that at this time Humanity is experiencing major changes at a cellular level through our 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Spines and our Twelve Solar Chakras. This increase in vibration is actually altering and rebuilding our nervous systems. These pathways of Light are being strengthened to accommodate the greatly intensified Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity now flowing into the mental and emotional strata of Earth.
Our nervous systems are being recalibrated to withstand higher levels of Divine Wisdom and Sacred Knowledge. Our spiritual brain centers are also being altered in profound ways through this new infusion of Crystalline Solar Light. As Christ Consciousness filters into the conscious mind of every man, woman and child, our I AM Presences are releasing new visions of possibility in which Oneness, Divine Love and Reverence for ALL Life are gradually becoming tangible realities for every Human Being.
In order to accelerate the process of bringing the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity tangibly into our lives, the Mighty Elohim who are the Builders of Form, have created above the Earth and also upon the head of every single person, a Twelve-pointed Crown. This forcefield of Light is called the Crown of the Elohim. This Crown is the vehicle through which our Father-Mother God will breathe the highest 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar frequencies of the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity that the Earth and Humanity are capable of receiving. Since our Father-Mother God are now amplifying the Lightwork of every person on Earth one thousand fold through our Planetary Grid of Transfiguring Divine Love, the more we focus on this awesome Crystalline Light the faster the patterns of perfection for the New Earth will manifest.
Once the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity flow through the Crown of the Elohim above the Earth and through the Crown of the Elohim on every person’s head, this Divine Light descends down our 5th-Dimensional Solar Spine and is transmitted into every cell of our bodies through our Twelve 5th-Dimensional Solar Chakras.
Each of these Chakras is a sphere of Light that pulsates with all Twelve Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity simultaneously. These twelve spheres of Light are aligned along our spinal column from our Crown Chakra at the top of our head to our Root Chakra at the base of our spine. The Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity that simultaneously radiate through each of our Twelve 5th-Dimensional Solar Chakras form a circle within each Chakra that the Company of Heaven refers to as The Circle of the Sacred Twelve. In our 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Spine all Twelve Chakras reflect all Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity all of the time.
We have each been preparing in myriad ways to integrate and assimilate this vitally important Crystalline Light during this phase of our Ascension process. Our I AM Presence will guide each of us unerringly on just how to do that. In addition to our individual contributions and activities of Light, Mother Mary is giving us the opportunity to intensify our effectiveness by utilizing Crystallized Sacred Fire from the Elemental Kingdom that she has Consecrated with the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity in the most powerful ways. I will share with you some background on this profound Gift from Mother Mary so you can see if this opportunity resonates in your heart for you.
A Gift of Crystalline Sacred Fire from Mother Mary
In 1983 Beloved Mother Mary revealed to us that in order for the Earth to make it through the impending Shift of the Ages which was destined to occur in 2012, Humanity needed to begin integrating the initial frequencies of the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Solar Aspects of Deity. She asked if we would be willing to assist her in bringing the sacred knowledge about these powerful frequencies of Light to the outer world and the conscious minds of Humanity. In deep humility and gratitude for this blessed opportunity we volunteered and Consecrated our Life Force to be the Open Door for this 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Light.
To assist with this Divine Mission, Mother Mary gave to us what she called, “The Rosary of the New Age.” The Divine Intent of this Gift from On High was to give Humanity an easy way to invoke the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity, one by one, as we focused on the Divine Qualities and colors of each of the Twelve Aspects of Deity.
This is the Rosary, which was to be repeated twelve times, once for each Aspect of Deity:
“Hail Mother, full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb “I AM.”
Hold for me NOW the Immaculate Concept of my True God Reality from this moment unto my Eternal Ascension in the Light. I AM That I AM.”
For thirty-five years hundreds of thousands of Lightworkers around the world have been assisting Mother Mary with this facet of the Divine Plan. Now Mother Mary is asking us to take this Mission to the next level by working with Crystallized Sacred Fire.
As unformed primal Light flows forth from the Core of Creation in the very Heart of our Father-Mother God, it manifests as pure Light. As the Light of God descends into denser frequencies, it is transformed into Sacred Fire. As this Sacred Fire descends into denser frequencies and manifests in the physical plane of Earth, it is transformed into Crystallized Sacred Fire.
This crystallized substance forms the Crystals in Mother Earth’s Crystal Grid System and the other Crystals that are encoded with the Divine Qualities, colors and frequencies of the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Aspects of Deity.
Now that the Mighty Elohim have infused Mother Earth’s Twelve Solar Chakras with frequencies of the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity beyond anything the Earth and Humanity have ever been able to withstand, Mother Mary is asking us if we will be willing to serve as surrogates on behalf of Humanity and all Life evolving on this planet. She is asking us to assist the masses of Humanity and the Elemental Kingdom by focus our attention on the Crystallized Sacred Fire representing the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity. This will allow the I AM Presence of every person to integrate this Light at a cellular level which will greatly accelerate our Ascension process.
There will be myriad ways for us to accomplish this, however Mother Mary has asked us to make this as easy as possible for everyone by assisting her with the cocreation of tangible objects made from Crystallized Sacred Fire which she will personally Consecrate with the Twelve 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Aspects of Deity.
We have willingly complied by cocreating a beautiful Crystal Bracelet and a Strand of Crystallized Sacred Fire. I want to share with you the Love and dedication that goes into these sacred items as they are being cocreated, so you can intuitively know if they are appropriate for you.
Mother Mary’s Consecrated Strand of Sacred Fire and Crystal Bracelet
By having the Strand of Crystallized Sacred Fire in your environment or by wearing the Crystal Bracelet, you will be able maintain your focus of attention on the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity much more easily. These items will also enhance and clear your energy field.
As the Earth Ascends into higher and higher frequencies of 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Light, Mother Mary has made the heart commitment to Consecrate the Crystals in these Bracelets and these Strands, no matter who has them or where they are, into the higher frequency of Light. This means quite literally that the Crystals in the Bracelets and the Strands are Ascending in frequency with us and that they will always be lifting us into the next level of our Divine Alchemy.
Sacred Strands of Crystallized Sacred Fire
My Beloved Husband, Dickie, has accepted Mother Mary’s request to make the Strands of Crystallized Sacred Fire. I will share with you that he has accepted this honor with the deepest reverence and Love. Whenever he works on the Strands, he plays beautiful music, lights a candle and burns incense. He has always been exceptionally close to Mother Mary and he says he tangibly feels her wondrous Presence while he is working on the Strands of Crystallized Sacred Fire.
The Strands consist of twelve beautiful Swarovski Crystals each one representing one of the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity. At the top of the Strand is a ring that represents the double helix of our DNA. At the bottom of the Strand is a small disc with a Tree of Life engraved on it.
If you would like to order a Strand of Crystallized Sacred Fire that has been Consecrated by Mother Mary, please click on the link below:
One of our beautiful volunteers, Alma, who is very close to Mother Mary has accepted the honor of making the Crystal Bracelets. The Bracelets are also made from beautiful Swarovski Crystals representing the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity.
Alma also experiences the Presence of Mother Mary while she is making the Bracelets and is very aware of the shift in vibration when Mother Mary Consecrates the Crystals.
If you would like to order a Crystal Bracelet that has been Consecrated by Mother Mary, please click on the link below:
2018 proved to be a horrible legislative year for the convention lobby. It measures its success by the number of State Legislatures it cajoles into passing applications[i] asking Congress to call a constitutional convention (con-con) pursuant to Article V of the US Constitution..........by Judi Caler.
A Second Look At AG Jeff Sessions
I was watching Justice with Jeanine Pirro on FOX on Saturday, September 1st and was shocked at her rudeness when referring to A.G. Jeff Sessions, who has never been known for his boldness. She basically said, “Jeff Session has got to go” and she shamed him throughout her entire monologue along with guest, Mike Huckabee who said he liked Jeff, but she was spot on and Jeff had to go because he’s been so quiet on the Mueller Investigation.......by Betty Freauf
Chuck Schumer was visiting a Washington D.C. primary school and the class was in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.
The teacher asked Mr. Schumer if he would like to lead the discussion on the word 'Tragedy'.
So Mr. Schumer asked the class for an example of a 'Tragedy'.
A little boy stood up and offered: 'If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing' in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy. ''Incorrect,' said Schumer. 'That would be an accident.'
A little girl raised her hand: 'If a school bus carrying fifty children drove over a cliff, killing everybody inside, that would be a tragedy. ''I'm afraid not', explained Schumer, 'that's what we would refer to as a great loss'.
The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Schumer searched the room. 'Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?'
Finally, at the back of the room, little Johnny raised his hand and said: 'If a plane carrying you and Mrs. Pelosi and The Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton was struck by a 'friendly fire' missile & blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.
''Fantastic' exclaimed Schumer, 'and can you tell me why that would be a tragedy? ''Well', said Johnny, 'it has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn't be a great loss, and it probably wouldn't be an accident either!'
We are looking at the state of mind the church is operating under and we are seeing that far too many of those in authority in the church have set God’s precepts and laws aside. They may espouse one thing in public but in private they are no more a man of God than monkey is. Last week we were looking at the horrific report from the Catholic church in Pennsylvania were 300 priests molested over 1000 children..........by Pastor Roger Anghis.
Secret Op-Ed Trump-Bashing Published By NYT
Didn’t anyone from the New York Times go to journalism school? A reporter cannot publish defaming-libel claims on someone and then state that the writer is anonymous, or in other words, secret, as a way to attribute dirt assault on someone they do not like. However, that N.Y Times writer is not anonymous.........by Rev. Austin Miles
Hillary Clinton Still In ‘Danger’ Of Being Criminally Indicted, Say Nation’s Local Cops
Charles McCollough, the former intelligence community inspector general, spoke with Fox News Channel and talked about what he experienced when he reported the intelligence transgressions committed by then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her race for the White House against celebrity-businessman Donald Trump.........By NWV Senior Political News Writer, Jim Kouri
The Christian, Self Defense And War
The question is, "Is it ever right for a Christian to fight? To resist by force? To take up arms? To kill?" These are certainly questions for every sincere followers of Jesus Christ to consider. Obviously, the answer lies in The Word of God and from history, and has been taught by men of solid Christian character for centuries. Let's take a look at both God's Word and history!.........by Pastor Butch Paugh
Welcome to PAO's Live Galactic Activation Webinar for September with special guest ~ JARED RAND
Join Colleen and Miles for a lively question-and-answer discussion.
By coming together each month as a group, we can significantly assist the GF in speeding up the necessary processes that will lead us towards full consciousness. As always, the Galactics will envelop Webinar attendees in activational energy.
We will be joined this month by Jared Rand, who is well-known for his daily global meditation. Accessing a wealth of wide-ranging knowledge, Jared will answer our questions and give us his personal perspective on the astonishing future that awaits us.
My mission is to uplift the human civilization by increasing their vibrational frequencies so they RISE and assisting them in connecting with their higher selves or God Sparks. We will leave behind: anger, sorrow, hate, selfishness, envy, ego, greed, arrogance, pain, conflict, war, disrespect, dishonor, prejudice, dis-ease, poverty, starvation. GREAT ETERNAL LOVE will saturate all that there is. We WILL live in JOY, ABUNDANCE, KINDNESS, and PEACE. Blessings, Jared
After the Webinar we will answer your questions live. Within 48 hours after the live Webinar we will send you a link to a video recording
Sunday, September 23, 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. PDT
Please note: If you are unable to attend on Sunday September 23, you can still register. Within 48 hours, we will send you a link to the Webinar posted (privately) on YouTube. (After posting, the Webinar will be available for 1 week.)
We speak today of Focused Intent. It is a time of gathering in groups for ceremony as the Earth moves toward the Equinox. This season, in which there are equal amounts of light and dark, is when the Earth experiences a profound state of Balance. When there is planetary balance, it makes it easier for all to experience that state of consciousness.
This message is to reaffirm for you that the Heart-centered presence you so naturally connect to and radiate through your being is making a profound difference in the world. Most importantly, you are gaining momentum as many more are awakening. Your deep commitment to the Earth and your very presence is changing the consciousness of the world.
Your individual spiritual practice and your collective prayers have brought many blessings to the world. Know that over the past 25 years or so, the focused intent of the Lightworkers of the world has uplifted many of the most dire predictions for the Earth. As horrendous as the world events may seem to you now, the Earth was heading into greater peril than what is evident at this time.
The collective intent of all those who are participating in developing greater respect for the environment, equality within people, and free creative expression in the world has made a difference. All that you are doing, especially in community, will continue to empower those who are awakening. You are important to the shifting of consciousness toward a greater state of Well-being on the Earth. Together your loving kindness, your joy in Divine Light, and your open minds and hearts are demonstrating a way of living that many have been too timid to attempt.
Collectively you empower a spark of abundant freedom so many souls can awaken new vision, ideas and perspectives. This activation is radiating into the quantum field catalyzing the force of Divine Intent as it is streaming Light through the cosmos.
The shifting realities within the quantum fields are responding to your focused intent as more Lightworkers come together in groups. Especially in this time of Equinox, know how powerful it is when you work as a community to bring the Light of Balance to the world. Equanimity is the great need of the hour. Gathering together in group focus and prayer will be of tremendous benefit collectively. Many people will be able to awaken to the Divine Light that has expands exponentially from the power of your collective Intent for Balance in the world.
As your active personal spiritual practice is increasingly dedicated to more Balance and Hope for all hearts, you may find yourself feeling more free as well as supported to bring forth your Divine Expression and to fully demonstrate who you are to others. As you gain strength in the collective vision deepening in your heart, it is easier to let go of the old patterns. You are becoming more clear about what has priority in your life and what fully empowers the divine focus of your Soul to express who you truly are now.
The benefit of group support and awareness is not only personally empowering, it expands exponentially. In your prayer communities, you are expressing the collective voice of the Soul Imperatives for the Earth. All that you aspire to is now being empowered. The focus of your intent for yourself as well as your community is a catalyst of awakening that provides a beacon light leading others into a new way of life.
What you have done and are doing has had a tremendous impact on the consciousness of all humanity and on the Earth’s evolution. Do not doubt this. You are World Servers who need only to stay in your normal heart-centered consciousness to change the world. As you do this, you become a magnet to attract your soul’s community. When you work together, all things are possible.
MCT oil has been used in tropical locations throughout the world for thousands of years. The oil has become increasingly popular in western countries as the oil's tremendous health benefits have become more well known. MCT oil increases energy levels and is popularly used by athletes to enhance endurance during workouts. Adding the oil to your diet will also support your overall digestive and nervous system health. Our new Chief Originals MCT Oil (C8 MCT Oil) is a great addition to your daily nutritional intake and can be easily added to your everyday meals or smoothies.
A new report by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the federal government's central institution for monitoring and preventing diseases, confirms an across-the-board increase in disease since 2015, when Germany took in an unprecedented number of migrants.
Some doctors say the actual number of cases of tuberculosis is far higher than the official figures suggest and have accused the RKI of downplaying the threat in an effort to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.
"Around 700,000 to 800,000 applications for asylum were submitted and 300,000 refugees have disappeared. Have they been checked? Do they come from the high-risk countries?" — Carsten Boos, orthopedic surgeon, interview with Focus magazine.
A failed asylum seeker from Yemen who was given sanctuary at a church in northern Germany to prevent him from being deported has potentially infectedmore than 50 German children with a highly contagious strain of tuberculosis.
The man, who was sheltered at a church in Bünsdorf between January and May 2017, was in frequent contact with the children, some as young as three, who were attending a day care center at the facility. He was admitted to a hospital in Rendsburg in June and subsequently diagnosed with tuberculosis — a disease which only recently has reentered the German consciousness.
Local health authorities say that in addition to the children, parents and teachers as well as parishioners are also being tested for the disease, which can develop months or even years after exposure. It remains unclear if the man received the required medical exams when he first arrived in Germany, or if he is one of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have slipped through the cracks.
The tuberculosis scare has cast a renewed spotlight on the increased risk of infectious diseases in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed in around two million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
A new report by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the federal government's central institution for monitoring and preventing diseases, confirms an across-the-board increase in disease since 2015, when Germany took in an unprecedented number of migrants.
The Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report — which was published on July 12, 2017 and provides data on the status of more than 50 infectious diseases in Germany during 2016 — offers the first glimpse into the public health consequences of the massive influx of migrants in late 2015.
Germany has — so far at least — escaped the worst-case scenario: most of the tropical and exotic diseases brought into the country by migrants have been contained; there have no mass outbreaks among the general population. More common diseases, however, many of which are directly or indirectly linked to mass migration, are on the rise, according to the report.
The incidence of Hepatitis B, for example, has increased by 300% during the last three years, according to the RKI. The number of reported cases in Germany was 3,006 in 2016, up from 755 cases in 2014. Most of the cases are said to involve unvaccinated migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The incidence of measles in Germany jumped by more than 450% between 2014 and 2015, while the number of cases of chicken pox, meningitis, mumps, rubella and whooping cough were also up. Migrants also accounted for at least 40% of the new cases of HIV/AIDS identified in Germany since 2015, according to a separate RKI report.
The RKI statistics may be just the tip of the iceberg. The number of reported cases of tuberculosis, for example, was 5,915 in 2016, up from 4,488 cases in 2014, an increase of more than 30% during that period. Some doctors, however, believe that the actual number of cases of tuberculosis is far higher and have accused the RKI of downplaying the threat in an effort to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.
In an interview with Focus, Carsten Boos, an orthopedic surgeon, warned that German authorities have lost track of hundreds of thousands of migrants who may be infected. He added that 40% of all tuberculosis pathogens are multidrug-resistant and therefore inherently dangerous to the general population:
"When asylum seekers come from countries with a high risk for tuberculosis infections, the RKI, as the highest German body for infection protection, should not downplay the danger. Is a federal institute using political correctness to conceal the unpleasant reality?
"The media reports that in 2015, the federal police registered about 1.1 million refugees. Around 700,000 to 800,000 applications for asylum were submitted and 300,000 refugees have disappeared. Have they been checked? Do they come from the high risk countries?
"One has the impression that in the RKI the left hand does not know what the right one is doing."
Joachim Gauck, then Germany's president, speaks to doctors in the infirmary of a reception center for migrants on August 26, 2015 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Germany.
German newspapers have published a flurry of articles about the public health dimension of the migrant crisis. The articles often quote medical professionals with first-hand experience of treating migrants. Many admit that mass migration has increased the risk of infectious diseases in Germany. Headlines include:
At the height of the migrant crisis in October 2015, Michael Melter, the chief physician at the University Hospital Regensburg, reported that migrants were arriving at his hospital with illnesses that are hardly ever seen in Germany. "Some of the ailments I have not seen for 20 or 25 years," he said, "and many of my younger colleagues have actually never seen them."
Marc Schreiner, director of international relations for the German Hospital Federation (Deutschen Krankenhausgesellschaft), echoed Melter's concerns:
"In the clinics, it is becoming increasingly common to see patients with diseases that were considered to have been eradicated in Germany, such as scabies. These diseases must reliably be diagnosed, which is a challenge."
Christoph Lange, a tuberculosis expert at the Research Center Borstel, said that German doctors were unfamiliar with many of the diseases imported by migrants: "It would be useful if tropical diseases and other diseases that are rare in our lives played a bigger role in the training of physicians."
The German Society for Gastroenterology, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases recently held a five-day symposium in Hamburg to help medical practitioners diagnose diseases which are rarely seen in Germany. Those include:
Louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF): During the past two years, at least 48 people in Germany were diagnosed with LBRF, a disease that was unheard of in the country before the migration crisis in 2015, according to the RKI report. The disease, which is transmitted by clothing lice, has been prevalent among migrants from East Africa who have been travelling for months to reach Germany on a single set of clothes. "We had all forgotten about LBRF," said Hans Jäger, a Munich-based doctor. "It has a mortality rate of up to 40% if it is not recognized and not treated with antibiotics. The symptoms are like in malaria: fever, headache, skin rash."
Lassa fever: In February 2016, a patient who had been infected in Togo, West Africa, was treated and died in Germany. After his death, a Lassa virus infection was confirmed in another person who had professional contact with the corpse of the deceased. The person was treated at an isolation facility and survived the disease. This was the first documented transmission of the Lassa virus in Germany.
Dengue fever: Nearly a thousand people were diagnosed with dengue fever, a mosquito-borne tropical disease, in Germany during 2016. This is up 25% from 2014, when 755 people were diagnosed with the disease.
Malaria: The number of people diagnosed with malaria jumped sharply in 2014 (1,007) and 2015 (1,063), but declined slightly in 2016 (970). Most of those affected contracted the disease in Africa, particularly from Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo.
Echinococcosis: Between 2014 and 2016, more than 200 people in Germany have been diagnosed with echinococcosis, a tapeworm infection. This represents in an increase of around 30%. Those affected contracted the disease in Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Iraq, Macedonia, Morocco, Syria and Turkey.
Diphtheria: Between 2014 and 2016, more than 30 people in Germany have been diagnosed with diphtheria. Those affected contracted the disease in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Scabies: Between 2013 and 2016, the number of people diagnosed with scabies in North Rhine-Westphalia jumped by nearly 3,000%.
Meanwhile, Germany currently is in the throes of a measles outbreak that health authorities have linked to immigration from Romania. Around 700 people in Germany have been diagnosed with measles during the first six months of 2017, compared with 323 cases in all of 2016, according to the Robert Koch Institute. The measles outbreak has spread to all of Germany's 16 federal states except one, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a state with a very low migrant population.
The epicenter of the measles crisis is in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany's most populous state and also the state with the highest number of migrants. Nearly 500 people have been diagnosed with measles in NRW during the first six months of 2017; most of the cases have been reported in Duisburg and Essen, where a 37-year-old mother of three children died from the disease in May. Outbreaks of measles have also been reported in Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich and Frankfurt, where a nine-month-old baby was diagnosed with the disease.
On June 1, 2017, the German Parliament approved a controversial new law that requires kindergartens to inform German authorities if parents fail to provide evidence that they have consulted a doctor about vaccinating their children. Parents who refuse to comply face a fine of €2,500 ($2,850). "We cannot be indifferent to the fact that people are still dying of measles," said German Health Minister Hermann Gröhe. "That's why we are tightening up regulations on vaccination."
Some say the new law does not go far enough; they are calling for vaccinations to be made compulsory for everyone in Germany. Others say the law goes too far and infringes on privacy protections guaranteed by the German constitution; they add that parents, not the government, should decide what is best for their children. The fallout from Chancellor Merkel's open-door migration policy continues.
Those of you who know me, know that I have a deep concern for the cultural, social and moral issues of our day. The depths of depravity that our nation and world have fallen to, the likes of which we have never seen before. And I have an especially sorrowful heart for our young people, growing up in a world of mass confusion. Many of us often ask in desperation: “What is the world coming to?”..........by Rob Pue.
Defeating Iran’s Mullahs
In short, European countries must join the United States in ending the rule of these religious fanatics. Instead of throwing a lifeline to the sinking ship of the Mullahcracy, we must act resolutely in doing everything we can to help the Iranian people to defeat the Mullahs. This is our best bet to end the mullahs’ reign of terror.........by Amil Imani
Why In The Hell Are We Still Fighting In Afghanistan?
This week, several more soldiers lost their lives to the Afghanistan’s being trained, but turned around and shot their U.S. Army trainers. It’s occurred over the past 17 years nearly 100 times, but no one figures out how to stop them from killing our troops while training them to fight the enemy: which we really don’t possess a clue as to their identity.........by Frosty Wooldridge
Share with all holistic doctors: The government is coming for you... the pharma cartels are now taking out all opposition to their toxic profit schemes (even as evil Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are censoring natural health content to protect pharma).
MCT oil has been used in tropical locations throughout the world for thousands of years. The oil has become increasingly popular in western countries as the oil's tremendous health benefits have become more well known. MCT oil increases energy levels and is popularly used by athletes to enhance endurance during workouts. Adding the oil to your diet will also support your overall digestive and nervous system health. Our new Chief Originals MCT Oil (C8 MCT Oil) is a great addition to your daily nutritional intake and can be easily added to your everyday meals or smoothies.
The anti-depressive effects of the chili pepperResearch has found that chili pepper (Capsicum annuum) possesses anti-depressive properties, which makes it a promising treatment for depression. The study, published in the European Journal of ...
How to naturally boost brain cell regenerationYou’ve probably been told that brain cells are a one-time thing – they don’t regenerate. As it turns out, your body does produce new neurons all the time and there are steps you can take to ...
A pandemic scare is looming as airplanes in multiple countries reported to be full of “diseased” people are landing and being put in quarantine. However, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) sources say the incidents all appear to be fake ones involving crisis actors.
The pandemic scare comes as the execution of U.S. Senator John McCain sent shock waves through Khazarian mafia ranks, who are now activating all their resources in a desperate move to save themselves. Thus, this pandemic scare may be something like a schoolboy calling in a bomb threat to his school in order to avoid an exam he is going to fail.
However, it is also possible the U.S. military-industrial establishment may be preparing a pandemic scare as a cover to stop all airline flights worldwide in order to prevent Khazarian mafia from escaping, as over 51,000 sealed indictments begin to be acted upon.
In any case, the links below are just a partial indication of the scale of this planned “pandemic.”
The pandemic scare is just one of the many threads in the ongoing crisis at the top of the world, especially the Western power structure.
The center of action remains the U.S., where the military government backing President Donald Trump has intensified its takedown of the cabal. Pentagon sources are saying the next phase in the attack will involve...(Full report available Thursday. - OD)
Unfortunately, these hearings were more about confrontation than confirmation. Socialist democrats have learned their Saul Alinsky lessons well as they use both tyranny and mob rule to disrupt what should be respectful hearings for the President’s nominee to the Supreme Court. It was Hillary Clinton’s close friend, Saul Alinsky who wrote Rules for Radicals and made a literary allusion to Lucifer as “the first radical known to man” in an epigraph to his book..........by Kelleigh Nelson.
Jan 2019: Top Priorities For State Capitols, Part 2
Last week I covered the very real issue of the aerosol spraying of our skies and what is termed geo-engineering: weather modification. One gentleman wrote me and stated it really wasn’t what everyone is making it out to be. My stern recommendation is this: Unless you take the time to read and watch the research (and DVD) provided in my column via links, you will not fully understand what’s being done to us.........by Devvy Kidd
Millennial’s Are Confused; For They No Not What They Do By Calling For Golden Handcuffs
Not long ago a Facebook Friend started a conversation that took on a political dimension. Not able to let the pro-communist diatribes go without a response, I let loose. The retaliation was fast and furious. It was also looney as this long post will illustrate. Do note that I have answered Mr. Confused Millennial’s gyrations line by line, thought by thought. My guess is that it was effective because Mr. Confused Millennial has refused to answer me.........by Coach Mitchell Goldstein
Every time you turn around today, a new socialist politician rises up out of a subterranean, guano littered cavern to announce that socialism is the only right way for America. In primary elections the new socialist is beating long-term, well-known politicians, at least on the Democrat side. They are winning in some isolated cases because the new socialist makes big promises (with our money) just as the Democrats have, to their dumbed-down, socialist indoctrinated, usually big-city constituents..........by Ron Ewart.
Nike Betrays The People By Crowning The Traitor
Mao tse Tung was the responsible devil (John 10:10) that knew well enough to go reach out to the younger generation by teaching them that they were a democracy in hopes of overthrowing the older generation in the Republic of China. He easily succeeded because the older generation allowed their children to be indoctrinated by those who were overthrowing them (Hosea 4:6).........by Bradlee Dean
Local Legislator Defends The Unborn With The Law
Just last week Michael Anthony Peroutka, Chairman of the Anne Arundel County Council, introduced RESOLUTION 30-18 recognizing and declaring the humanity of preborn children. The resolution urged the citizens of Anne Arundel County to take all appropriate actions to prevent cruel and inhumane treatment of all human beings, including preborn children, as well as to promote and defend the dignity of all human beings within Anne Arundel County.........by Jake MacAulay
I thought these two states made for an interesting contrast. The first part is about Illinois and the second part is about Oklahoma!
PART 1 - Illinois
"A State with No Republicans"!
Some interesting data on the 'state' of the State of Illinois. There are more people on welfare in Illinois than there are people working. Chicago pays the highest wages to teachers than anywhere else in the U.S. Their average pay is $110,000/year. Their pensions average 80-90% of their income. Wow, are Illinois and Chicago great or what? Be sure to read till the end. I've never heard it explained better. Perhaps the U.S. should pull out of Chicago?
Body count:
In the last six months, 292 murdered in Chicago.
221 killed in Iraq ; AND Chicago has one of the strictest gun laws in the entire US.
This was Chicago's chain of command:
President: Barack Hussein Obama.
Senator: Dick Durbin.
House Representative: Jesse Jackson Jr. .
Governor: Pat Quinn.
House leader: Mike Madigan.
Atty. Gen.: Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike).
Mayor: Rahm Emanuel.
The leadership in Illinois - all Democrats.
Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago.
Of course, they're all blaming each other.
Can't blame Republicans; there aren't any!
Let us get ALL the facts out while we are at it:
Chicago school system rated one of the worst in the country. Can't blame Republicans; there aren't any!
This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois. And he was going to 'fix' Washington politics for us?
George Ryan is no longer Governor, he is in prison
He was replaced by Rob Blagojevich who is, by the way, also in prison.
And Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned and, that's right, he and his wife are both in prison.
The Land of Lincoln, where our Governors and Representatives make our license plates. What?
As long as they keep providing entitlements to the population of Chicago, nothing is going to change, except the state will go bankrupt before the country does.
"Anybody who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian."
Don't forget Detroit, another great example of a Democratic empire.
With all the bad news, there is hope, so let's go to:
PART 2- Oklahoma
OKLAHOMA- may soon have plenty of new residents!
THIS IS REALLY INTERESTING, AND TRUE... PLEASE READ IT!
Oklahoma is the only state that Obama did not win even one county in the last election... While everyone is focusing on Arizona's new law, look what Oklahoma has been doing!!!
An update from Oklahoma:
Oklahoma law passed, 37 to 9 an amendment to place the Ten Commandments on the front entrance to the state capitol. The feds in D.C., along with the ACLU, said it would be a mistake. Hey this is a conservative state, based on Christian values.. HB 1333
Guess what... Oklahoma did it anyway.
Oklahoma recently passed a law in the state to incarcerate all illegal immigrants and ship them back to where they came from unless they want to get a green card and become an American citizen. They all scattered. HB1804. This was against the advice of the Federal Government, and the ACLU, they said it would be a mistake.
Guess what... Oklahoma did it anyway.
Recently they passed a law to include DNA samples from any and all illegal's to the Oklahoma database, for criminal investigative purposes. Pelosi said it was unconstitutional SB1102.
Guess what... Oklahoma did it anyway.
Several weeks ago, Oklahoma passed a law, declaring Oklahoma as a Sovereign state, not under the Federal Government directives. Joining, Texas, Montana and Utah as the only states to do so.
More states are likely to follow: Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi and Florida. Save your confederate money, it appears the South is about to rise up once again.
HJR 1003
The federal Government has made bold steps to take away our guns. Oklahoma, a week ago, passed a law confirming people in this state have the right to bear arms and transport them in their vehicles. I'm sure that was a setback for the criminals. The Liberals didn't like it-
But...Guess what... Oklahoma did it anyway.
Just this month, the state has voted and passed a law that ALL drivers' license exams will be printed in English and only English and no other language. They have been called racist for doing this, but the fact is that ALL of the road signs are in English only. If you want to drive in Oklahoma, you must read and write English. Really
By the way, the Liberals don't like any of this either. Guess what... who cares.. Oklahoma is doing it anyway. If you like it, pass it on, if you don't then delete it... Thanks!
Sulforaphane, glucorophanin, and glucosinolates can work wonders in your body. They promote healthy aging, support your heart and liver, help fight oxidation and even boost your mood and energy levels, so it makes sense to ensure you're getting enough of them. Health Ranger Select Organic Broccoli Sprout Powder contains assured levels of these along with an array of vitamins, nutrients and fatty acids--all in an easy-to-use "supernutrient" powder.
Gardening tips for managing weedsIf you like gardening, you have probably had to deal with some weeds. While there are various ways to get rid of these pesky plants, not all weeding methods are effective. Audrey Kalil, ...
New Jerseyans take note! (Not a NJ resident? Please forward this to any family and friends in New Jersey so they can have their voices heard.) By now you are familiar with our support of the campaign to preserve and expand the Right to Practice individualized nutrition counseling. Bills affecting nutrition practitioners and consumers will continue to be advanced in different states, and we will remain vigilant in our efforts to bring you the latest info on the good ones - and the bad. New Jersey's Assembly Bill 1582 is the latest of these. On Thursday morning, the New Jersey Assembly Health Committee will hold a hearing on A1582. If passed it would prevent non-dietitian nutrition professionals from practicing their profession. This bill would curtail the existing broad access New Jersey residents have to nutrition care and put countless non-dietitian nutrition professionals out of work. It is very important that members of this Committee understand what’s at stake for their state if they advance this bill, and we need your help to ensure they hear that message loud and clear. This bill is misguided and the Assembly Health Committee needs to know that. Because the bill’s primary sponsor is also the Chair of this committee, we need to educate the remaining Committee members as much as possible so that they can speak out and stop Assembly Bill 1582 in its tracks. New Jerseyans deserve continued access to a wide array of nutrition practitioners, and practitioners deserve better than for politicians to ram through a bill that would put them out of work. Please use this link to contact the Committee now. When you arrive at the Action Alert, please edit the letter and explain to the Committee what this bill would mean for you personally.
Act now to preserve your right to a full range of resources when it comes to managing your health and wellness. Contact the members of the Assembly Health Committee as soon as you can, and urge them to reject Assembly Bill 1582. (If not a New Jersey resident, please share with friends or family who call New Jersey home.) The hearing is Thursday, so time is short. Thanks, as always, for your support of health freedom. The Citizens for Health Team
Please do not reply to this email, as replies will not be seen. The sender address is used just for sending our alerts. If you have a comment, please share it via [email protected].
I compare them to color analysts on a college football game. Limbaugh and his cohorts fill the airwaves daily with the color commentary on HOW the game is being played. For three hours a day you can tune in and listen to their expert dissecting of how the “Liberals” are doing this and the “Conservatives” are doing that but they never once do anything to organize any push back..........by Coach Dave Daubenmire.
Shameless, Pastor Uses Bible To Justify Abortion
Last week also featured Judge Brett Kavanagh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, a circus in itself, plenty of shamelessness to go around. But I thought the lowest of its many lowlights was the testimony of a supposed ordained minister of the Free Methodist Church, who told the U.S. Senate that the Word of God justifies the Obamacare abortion mandate which required some people to pay for other people’s abortions.........by Lee Duigon
Kaepernick Finances Abortion Clinics
This piece is admittedly published with bias against the subject, Colin Kaepernick. This writer is a veteran who was hit with Mustard Gas during the Korean Conflict which left me with severe lifetime health issues including horrific constant pain that I live under to this day.........by Rev. Austin Miles
Catastrophic Climate Destabilization: Florence’s Origins
Forecasters tell us that American summer temperatures rise ever higher in June, July and August. New record scorching temperatures announced monthly! We see endless wildfires raging across our tinder-dry forests. Last summer 2017, while cycling across America, my companions and I pedaled through Montana’s 300,000-acre wildfire.........by Frosty Wooldridge
The Health Ranger Store offers lab-verified Magnesium Liquid Deodorant and Organic Deodorant scented with pure essential oils. These products contain none of the harmful synthetic chemicals found in store-bought deodorants and are lab-tested for heavy metals. Their natural ingredients will nourish your skin and leave you feeling fresh all day.
Here are foods that cause or prevent inflammationInflammation is one of the ways through which your body fights off infections. However, there are some cases where instead of helping your body, inflammation becomes a problem. This condition is ...
President Donald Trump has just shocked Barack and Michelle Obama. In fact, Trump is making sure their worst nightmare comes true. As Michelle tries to distance herself from her husband’s huge problems, the Obamas must be burning up their cell phones with calls to their attorneys after Trump just gave them a final warning. Don’t miss this.
Well, for over 18 months Trump supporters have heard about how the Obama administration weaponized the FBI and DOJ, working hand in hand with crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign and an opposition research company called Fusion GPS, to organize a soft coup against Trump. It started back in the summer of 2016, right after candidate Trump sewed up the GOP nomination. In July 2016, the number four man at the DOJ, Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr who worked for Fusion GPS, were in contact with former MI6 spy Christopher Steele. Together, they fabricated the now infamous “Trump-Russia” dossier. Of course, this plot involved the highest ranking members of the DOJ, FBI, and CIA. It’s a complicated web of corruption, but the plot started with using that fabricated dossier to obtain illegal FISA warrants on an American citizen named Carter Page, who briefly volunteered on the Trump campaign. Page was the perfect target. The FISA warrant allowed the DOJ and FBI to spy on anyone Page contacted, and the contacts of those contacts. This is how those swamp rats like former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who both signed the illegal FISA applications, could spy on those close to Donald Trump and probably Trump himself. Most Americans are so frustrated thinking these rats would never be held accountable. And of course, there is a mountain of evidence to not only prove these claims but also incriminate former President Barack Obama.
You see, there is also ample evidence that Obama was briefed on this coup, recorded in the Oval Office’s “daily briefings” on this plot, which is called the “Insurance Policy.” Michelle Obama could possibly be in jeopardy to since Valerie Jarrett shares everything with her and was present at all the Presidental Daily Briefings (PDB). There is also good reason to believe there are actual recordings of the “Insurance Policy” being discussed in the Oval Office during the PDB. This is why Susan Rice in the 11th hour before leaving the White House emailed herself a cryptic letter giving herself an alibi for this illegal coup attempt.
Now, President Trump is going over the heads of the FBI and DOJ and he is de-classifying all the documents which will incriminate the cabal, and it goes all the way up the ladder to Barack Obama. Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller reports, “White House lawyers are actively reviewing controversial FBI and DOJ documents relating to the 2016 presidential campaign for possible declassification, multiple sources with knowledge tell The Daily Caller News Foundation. The review process is being led by Emmett Flood of the White House counsels office at the urging of an insistent president, two sources with knowledge of the process told The DCNF. Sources cautioned that declassification could occur as soon as this week, though the uncertainty reflects the nature of the review process itself.”
Trump doesn’t want the swamp rats to know exactly what day this will all go public, that is why he is being vague. You don’t tell your enemies what day you are coming to get them, and the president is a master at playing these high stakes games with the swamp. Trump chose 9/11 as the day to put Obama and his cronies on blast, in effect telling them: “I’m coming for you traitors.” The Daily Caller adds, “The White House did not respond to a request for comment. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders demurred on declassification in a Monday briefing saying ‘I can’t get into that right now.’ Trump himself told The Daily Caller in a recent Oval Office interview on declassification ‘we’re looking at it very seriously right now because the things that have gone on are so bad.'” The Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross is one of the journalists who has been spot on with breaking important news surrounding this story on the cabal and the “Insurance Policy.” Ross is also trusted by Trump, so take this news to the bank. Obama can run, but he can’t hide. No doubt Barack won’t be attempting any overseas trips, and he and Michelle must be burning up their cell phones contacting their attorneys. It’s what any smart person would do facing the mountain of evidence the House Intel Committee has made available, and now Trump’s declassifying the rest of it which the cabal has fought so hard to hide.
I’d bet a few of Trump’s most trusted assets are watching the Obamas and the other rats who thought they could dupe the American people and steal the 2016 presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton. Stay tuned, my fellow patriots. Things are about to heat up like hellfire on Capitol Hill.
According to the president of the phenomenal Judicial Watch, Senator Booker faces expulsion from the Senate for his violation of the rules. This isn't the first time Booker finds himself the target of a government probe. He was also the target of a corruption investigation after several of his Newark, New Jersey Mayor's top staff were indicted by a federal grand jury. Booker won his Senate seat at the right time so that he was able to avoid an indepth criminal investigation or grand jury indictment..........
The State Marijuana Cartel: The Sixth Phase Of The Democrat Plantation
Our extensive new Report: The Costly Fraud of Marijuana Normalization reveals the dark truths and frightful economic costs of the Democrat agenda. Progressives fooled everyone by claiming that “medical” marijuana (a subterranean synonym for “recreational” pot) must be legalized as a painkiller for victims of disease, old age, and ultimately minor pain and stress. In this report you will see that the sea of red ink caused by state-sponsored drug addiction is horrendous and unsustainable.........
The Mueller investigation against the Trump administration marks a new level of corruption. But it is merely part of an ongoing mission to literally destroy the one vehicle designed to free people from tyranny, lack and false religions. Throughout the annals of history people have sought to dominate over their fellow humans. It began when Cain slew Abel because he offered a better sacrifice with a sincere heart of love to toward our loving creator. Thus throughout the annals of history people with dark visions of control and overtaking others have tried their worst to dominate others either through physical force or mental indoctrination.........
This Issue: 17 years after 9/11, the feds still haven't implemented biometric entry exit system
Fri, Sep 14th
Earlier this week, the nation observed the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. With a connection between the attacks and immigration, it's a good time to revisit the 9/11 Commission Report and the recommendations the Commission made to help deter illegal immigration. The Report included two immigration-related recommendations. First, the Commission recommended the implementation "as quickly as possible" of a "biometric entry-exit screening system." The biometric entry-exit system is one of NumbersUSA's " Ten Steps to Fixing the Broken Immigration Enforcement System." Congress first required the creation of an entry-exit system in Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-Texas) 1996 legislation, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The biometric component was added in 2001 through the Patriot Act. And in 2004, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act to implement many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report. The law says: Consistent with the report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Congress finds that completing a biometric entry and exit data system as expeditiously as possible is an essential investment in efforts to protect the United States by preventing the entry of terrorists. Seventeen years after the 9/11 attacks and 14 years since Congress required the expeditious completion of the biometric entry-exit system, there's still no system in place to track visa overstayers. According to recent government data, more than 700,000 foreign visitors overstayed a visa in FY2017 alone. Pres. Donald Trump issued an executive order during his first week in office that called for the completion of the biometric entry-exit system, referring to the 9/11 Commission Report. Some progress has been made; the Administration has been testing facial recognition technology at ports of entry. But in all likelihood, we're still years away from the full implementation at all ports of entry. The Commission also recommended "standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses." This led to Congress passing REAL ID, which eliminates a reward for illegal immigration by preventing illegal aliens from using a driver's license to board a plane. It's been 13 years since Congress passed REAL ID, and only 33 states are compliant. Beginning this year, residents of states that weren't yet compliant weren't supposed to be able to board a plane using their state-issued ID. However, the federal government has granted an extension to the remaining 17 states, including the District of Columbia, essentially nullifying the intent of REAL ID. Furthermore, 8 of the states that are compliant -- Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont, and Washington -- issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens.
Chris Chmielenski
Action
Visit your Action Board for a new action that urges your three Members of Congress to do what they can to fully implement the biometric entry-exit system at all ports of entry.
Spotlight
See where 2018 Congressional Candidates stand on immigration!
Most primaries are over, and candidates have turned their focus to the general election. In the coming weeks, we'll fully update all of our candidate comparison pages.
We rate most Congressional candidates on 12 different immigration issues and provide a side-by-side comparison grid for each Congressional race. Please use this valuable resource: NumbersUSA Candidate Comparison pages.
Feature
Order Our Perennial Favorite Free Foldover Cards
These cards are really effective at events, such as townhalls, to visually show the numbers that make so many Americans passionate about the mission of NumbersUSA to reduce total immigration to a level that serves the national interest.
James Brantley, the owner of a Tennessee meatpacking plant, pled guilty yesterday to tax fraud, wire fraud, and employment of illegal aliens. ICE conducted an enforcement action at his Southeastern Provision slaughterhouse in Bean Station, Tennessee on April 5th. He faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced Feb. 4.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Monday that he plans to increase the number of immigration judges by 50% before the end of the year. The backlog of cases in immigration courts reached 746,049 at the end of August, representing a 38% increase since Pres. Trump took office.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute obtained data showing that, from 2012 to 2016, there were "39 million instances where names and Social Security numbers on W-2 tax forms did not match the corresponding Social Security records. The group said the Obama Administration's termination of no-match letters resulted in a "thriving black market where illegal aliens can obtain the Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens in order to gain employment."
In its eagerness to attack Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Shareblue Media has a new website post that encourages Central American parents to take their children on the perilous journey through Mexico to illegally cross the U.S. border. The attack includes outlandish claims and makes no attempt at offering a solution to discourage illegal border crossers from placing their children's lives under the care of the murderous, multi-national drug cartels that control much of the southern border.
The Health Ranger Store offers lab-verified Magnesium Liquid Deodorant and Organic Deodorant scented with pure essential oils. These products contain none of the harmful synthetic chemicals found in store-bought deodorants and are lab-tested for heavy metals. Their natural ingredients will nourish your skin and leave you feeling fresh all day.
Candida overgrowth: Facts and tips to manage itCandida is a fungus, or a form of yeast, that naturally occursin the human body. It can be found in the mouth and the intestines. It is normal to have this fungus in your body; however, the ...
Your SHTF guide to bugging out in an RVMany preppers will have the time and resources to prepare a retreat or hideout in the proverbial hills. You, on the other hand, might only be able to afford a recreational vehicle (RV). In that ...
Caring for skin boils with simple home remediesBoils are reddish, pus-filled bumps that can appear on any part of your skin. These painful nodes are the results of bacterial skin infections forming in oil glands and hair follicles. People ...
Because if we don’t, it will continue to get more extreme. This is not Islamophobia, as many Muslims and their leftist apologists claim. A phobia is a baseless irrational fear. Abomination of Islamism is based on irrefutable facts and it is not only rational, it is ethically imperative. Until the Western world understands the threat of Islamic ideology to their society and culture, people will continue to die. We simply cannot ignore this assault to our way of life..........by Amil Imani.
Bolshevism Done American Style And The Law Becomes An Ass
And we are reminded at how quickly ABC cancelled Roseanna Barr claiming the comedienne’s insult against Valerie Jarret was racist because she wrote that the former Obama administration official looked like the “muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby.” Yes, indeed, we do have a double standard in America because the Left gets away with such insults of conservatives.........by Betty Freauf
Are we going to say goodbye to the American way of life? VOTE ALL RED!
So England doesn't like the US recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel! Imagine that! I thought this might give you a better understanding of the insidiousness of Hijrah; that's the takeover of a nation without going to war. Don't think for a moment that America is not a target or that there are no American cities where Islamic and Sharia victories and takeovers have already occurred. It's time for border control, or start planning for a very big goodbye to the American way of life!
The British have passively succumbed to the Muslim invasion. Here's what has already happened to England within a few years of opening their borders without any entry control:
All the following achieved by just 4 million Muslims out of the 66 million population:
Over 3,000 Muslim Mosques
Over 130 Muslim Sharia Courts
Over 50 Muslim Sharia Councils
Muslims Only No-Go Areas Across The UK
Muslim Women...78% don't work and are on FREE benefits/housing
Muslim Men...63% don't work and are on FREE benefits/housing
Muslim Families...6-8 children planning to go on FREE benefits/housing and now all UK schools are ONLY serving HALAL MEAT! ....and we (the USA) can't decide on an immigration policy???
One of the ways to combat this is to keep circulating such information around our United States to inform the uninformed who mainly only listen and read the left leaning US radio/TV and newspapers. I have not seen this in the US media...have you?
Please Pass This On and encourage everyone to vote for those politicians who will support restricted borders to stop this insanity!
She’s seen the long list of endorsements for Rep. Jim Jordan keep on growing. And she knows America wants conservative champion Jim Jordan to be the next Speaker of the House.
Make sure the ENTIRE Congress knows it too by contacting your representative right now. Tell them you want Rep. Jim Jordan as the next Speaker of the House. Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Andrew Wilkow, Rep. Mark Meadows, and Rep. Matt Gaetz have all endorsed Jim Jordan for Speaker. They know he’ll stand up to Pelosi’s Democrat machine and force Congress to help President Trump shake up DC's swampy status quo. That’s why they’re doing everything they can to help Jim WIN! But Rep. Jim Jordan still needs the support of his colleagues in Congress to become Speaker.
Aerial view of the Sunspot Solar Observatory site on Sacramento Peak in New Mexico. Sunspot is part of the National Solar Observatory, which is funded by the US National Science Foundation.
It's been more than a week, and a National Solar Observatory (NSO) facility in New Mexico is still closed for an undisclosed "security issue."
The NSO's Sunspot Solar Observatory, on Sacramento Peak in the southern part of the state, was evacuated last Thursday (Sept. 6), as was a nearby post office, according to the Albuquerque Journal. FBI agents have reportedly been investigating the site, and they're apparently keeping local law-enforcement personnel in the dark.
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which manages the Sunspot observatory with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, hasn't said much, either. The organization released a statement saying that AURA "is addressing a security issue" at Sunspot "and has decided to temporarily vacate the facility as a precautionary measure until further notice." AURA "is working with the proper authorities on this issue," the statement adds, without specifying who those authorities are.
And we may not get answers anytime soon. At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) today (Sept. 14), AURA Corporate Communications Coordinator Shari Lifson sent out an email update, which stated that AURA "has decided that the observatory will remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing security concern."
Unsurprisingly, the dearth of information has led to a lot of speculation about what's going on. The rumors range from the downright silly (the feds shut Sunspot down to keep news about a deadly solar superflare from getting into our panicky heads) to the intriguingly believable (this may be an espionage investigation).
Observatory team members have shot down one of the more farfetched theories, however. The "telescope did not see aliens," Sunspot Solar Observatory director James McAteer, who's also an associate professor of astronomy, solar physics and space weather at New Mexico State University, told Albuquerque news station KOB4.
| 143,516 |
Cesare
-il CesareSole Absolute Triple
Exalted High Tastemaster Supreme
“In the entire world there are only a few sounds that bring joy to all but the most jaded. One is the murmur of a kitten purring. Another is the thwack of a well-pitched baseball hitting a perfectly swung bat. And the third is the pop of a cork being pulled from a bottle of wine.” —George Taber
mschauber
What's the shelf life on this stuff? I have some but my parents liked it, but a case is a lot of wine for them.
--Hey you, out there in the cold; Getting lonely, getting old; Can you feel me? - Pink Floyd/Roger Waters"First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure." Mark Twain"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Derek Bokq1
My CT--
mschauber
--Hey you, out there in the cold; Getting lonely, getting old; Can you feel me? - Pink Floyd/Roger Waters"First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure." Mark Twain"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Derek Bokq1
My CT--
mschauber
kylemittskus wrote:Low alc., moderate pH. It should last for at least a couple more years.
Thanks. that's sort of what I was thinking, but nice to get hear it from people that know more than I
--Hey you, out there in the cold; Getting lonely, getting old; Can you feel me? - Pink Floyd/Roger Waters"First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure." Mark Twain"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Derek Bokq1
My CT--
jchasma
Just finished a bottle of this tonight on day 3! I like this bottle for a "I don't feel guilty opening this" kind of night. The third day isn't the best but drinkable. Day 1 and 2 are good. It's light, a little sweet and fruity. Pretty light for a merlot actually. At this price, it's great!
tomatillo
From the August comments (below): I never did understand what Scott meant by wine 'talking to you.' Any help here?
Thanks.
losthighwayz wrote:
Mega Red, huh? Who would have known! I learn something new on here all the time! Is this addition why some wines literally remind me of Welch's juice, feel syrupy, etc.? I wonder if Scott regrets his posting since it has openned (it seems) a "small" can of worms?
(from Scott Harvey)
It is a can of worms I want the consumer to be able to look for and understand, because it tends to produce wines that no longer have the ability to talk to you. I want people to look for wines that do talk to you like this Tasi Merlot does.
rjquillin
TechDiva
jchasma wrote:Just finished a bottle of this tonight on day 3! I like this bottle for a "I don't feel guilty opening this" kind of night. The third day isn't the best but drinkable. Day 1 and 2 are good. It's light, a little sweet and fruity. Pretty light for a merlot actually. At this price, it's great!
Props to jchasma on your self control. I have never concerned myself with how a wine would be on day 3. For that very reason I am looking for good vaule. This wine is one.
ninaco
mschauber
Anyone know if this is a 2 day woot.off or if we will be deprived of sleep for another night?
--Hey you, out there in the cold; Getting lonely, getting old; Can you feel me? - Pink Floyd/Roger Waters"First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure." Mark Twain"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Derek Bokq1
My CT--
jbfowlertx
rjquillin wrote:Anyone have notes from the earlier woot to add to the thread here?
Yes, I poured mine down the drain (at least what I didn't waste on Sangria). I typically respect and agree with Scott Harvey on these boards, but this Tasi Merlot is the worst purchase I've ever made on woot. As others have pointed out, it's light for a merlot and a little sweet, but it lacks depth of flavor or subtlety. I'm not sure what else to say about this one since it was so void of anything other than off/chemical flavors with the light sweetness.
I try to be more descriptive about how a wine tastes, but each bottle I tasted of this had the same off flavors that didn't closely resemble well made (or even passable) wine.
nfurlong
Humm, I felt this was a so-so Merlot, made acceptable only by its price. When I saw it, my first thought was "gee, fourth time it's been offered on Woot, they must've bought a tankerful of it." My next thought was "so much for the Woot-off, this will take hours to sell out." Now if only they'd put up the Tasi Cab, I'd be in for a case for sure! (hint, hint)
Woot.com is operated by Woot Services LLC.
Products on Woot.com are sold by Woot, Inc., other than items on Wine.Woot which are sold by the seller specified on the product detail page.
Product narratives are for entertainment purposes and frequently employ
literary point of view;
the narratives do not express Woot's editorial opinion.
Aside from literary abuse, your use of this site also subjects you to Woot's
terms of use
and
privacy policy.
Woot may designate a user comment as a Quality Post, but that doesn't mean we agree with or guarantee anything said or linked to in that post.
| 5,038 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.