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Mitt Romney isn’t a presidential a candidate this time, but his schedule is suddenly crammed with those who are — as the 2012 Republican nominee eagerly injects himself into the 2016 race. The former Massachusetts governor, who spent Fourth of July week at his Wolfeboro, New Hampshire home, swung east to Maine on Monday for lunch with Jeb Bush, just three days after hosting Chris Christie and Marco Rubio for a sleepover. Story Continued Below It’s enough that some who are close to the candidates are wondering about Romney’s agenda. Romney allies insist the onetime GOP stalwart isn’t vetting candidates for an endorsement, rather he’s embracing a newfound role he plans to play until the party elevates a presumptive nominee: political tutor. Romney, who flirted with a third presidential run early this year, fancies himself a mentor to the candidates he’d most like to see occupy the White House in his stead. He won’t endorse any of them but he’ll wield his clout by imparting a decade of campaign wisdom to his favored candidates. His unusually visible foray into the contested primary also enables the 68-year-old Romney to remain relevant in the twilight of his political career. One close Romney ally, who requested anonymity to speak about the governor’s mind-set, said Republicans haven’t had a figure with Romney’s pedigree in recent cycles. “The one thing that helps more than anything else is having done it before,” the source said. “Mitt knows better than anybody what it’s like to win and to lose the nomination. They all trust him. It’s very unusual to have somebody of his ilk you can call on. We didn’t have an ally of that stature to help us, particularly in the summer of ‘12.” Evidence of Romney’s strategy appears in his recent schedule: his meeting with Bush — which took place at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine — was the third with a presidential contender in the past week. Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, slept over at Romney’s New Hampshire home on Friday night, and Rubio attended as well. The meetings come less than a month after the former Massachusetts governor convened Republican prospects in Utah for an informal political summit. Even without an endorsement forthcoming, the timing and sheer number of gatherings smack of courtship. It’s partly because Romney has relationships with many of the GOP’s richest donors — including some who have yet to settle on a presidential candidate — and any perceived affiliation with Romney could help loosen their purse strings. For instance, after his failed 2012 presidential bid, Romney forged an unlikely relationship with Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has yet to endorse a candidate. While Adelson spent $20 million boosting Romney’s rival Newt Gingrich in the 2012 primary, sources say that last year he suggested he would have backed Romney in a 2016 primary. Yet Romney supporters say meetings like the one in Kennebunkport are not about campaign cash either. They’re about cultivating relationships. “Those are friendly get-togethers,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime Romney adviser, who said Romney’s all but certain to stay out of primary politics, so long as several candidates align with his views. There’s one scenario, however, in which the calculus could change. “If there are two strong contenders and one of them is focused on the issues that Mitt cares about, and the other was focused on things that were wrong or less important, I could see him helping the person closest to his views,” Fehrnstrom said. Bush aides say the lunch with Romney had been in the works for months — that it was scheduled to coincide with a visit to Maine by former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, who also attended the gathering. Jeb Bush’s son George P. Bush and his wife, Amanda, were also on hand. Mitt Romney allies insist the onetime GOP stalwart isn’t vetting candidates for an endorsement. | AP Photo That candidates are kowtowing to Romney at all is a sharp reversal from the months after Romney failed to oust President Barack Obama in 2012. Romney lost what many Republicans considered a winnable race, and his defeat deepened rifts among factions of the Republican Party who felt he was too moderate to excite the party’s conservative base. Christie’s pursuit of Romney’s friendship is particularly notable. Many in Romney’s orbit are still bitter about the final week of the 2012 race when Hurricane Sandy ravaged New Jersey. Christie, at the time, welcomed Obama to his state and praised him effusively amid storm recovery efforts. It was a PR boon for Obama. Christie had already been viewed as suspect by Romney supporters for a Republican National Convention speech that largely spelled out his own biography before voicing support for Romney. Last week, as he barnstormed New Hampshire, Christie recast the Sandy aftermath to point out Romney’s subtle role. “You know what Mitt Romney said when I called him on Sunday night? He said to me, ‘Don’t spend another minute thinking about me or this election. Do your job,’” Christie said. “That’s why he would’ve been a great president. Mitt Romney didn’t come to my state to showboat like he could have.” Eli Stokols contributed to this report. |
A live cam from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., captured the size of the crowd during the inauguration Friday, and during Saturday's women's march. Aerial images below show a much larger crowd for the Women’s March on Saturday than for President Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday in Washington, D.C. Of course, many more people viewed the inaugural proceedings on television than attended in person. Nielsen is estimating that 31 million viewers watched TV coverage of the inauguration. This isn’t the first time the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration has been compared to other events on the National Mall. Far fewer people were in attendance Friday than at President Barack Obama’s swearing-in eight years ago. Obama’s first inauguration drew more television viewers as well — 37.8 million. (The most-watched inauguration since 1969 was President Ronald Reagan’s first oath-taking in 1981, seen by 41.8 million people.) The images below — captured by an EarthCam atop the Smithsonian Institution’s North Flag Tower — show the crowds on the National Mall during the inaugural address of President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2017 (left) and around 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time during the Women’s March on Washington the following day (right). Drag the slider to compare for yourself. Correction: Information in this article, originally published Jan. 21, 2017, was corrected Jan. 21, 2017. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the EarthCam is atop the Washington Monument. The EarthCam is atop the Smithsonian Institution’s North Flag Tower. [Live updates: Women’s marches in Seattle, D.C. on day after President Trump inauguration] |
"The Guardian" newspaper says many of the users were not intelligence targets. NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden (Photo11: The Guardian via AP) Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, aided by the National Security Agency, has intercepted and stored the webcam images from millions of Yahoo chats by users who were not being targeted for any wrongdoing, The Guardian reports, quoting from secret documents. The British newspaper says GCHQ files dated from 2008 to 2010 show that a program codenamed Optic Nerve collected the still images in bulk and stored them in databases. The report about Optic Nerve is based on documents provided by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who has received political asylum in Russia. Yahoo "reacted furiously" to the reported interceptions when approached by the newspaper, The Guardian said. It said the company denied any prior knowledge of the program and accused the surveillance agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy." The article, written by Guardian reporters Spencer Ackerman and James Ball, says these images were stored regardless of whether the users were being targeted by intelligence services. The Guardian said the British surveillance agency collected images from more than 1.8 user accounts globally in 2008 alone. One secret document estimated that 3% to 11% of the Yahoo webcam imagery snared by GCHQ contains "undesirable nudity." The newspaper said that documents provided by Snowden show that Optic Nerve began as a prototype in 2008 and was still active in 2012. Bulk surveillance on Yahoo users was begun, the documents said, because "Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets," according to the report. In a statement to the newspaper, a spokesman for Yahoo said: "We were not aware of, nor would we condone, this reported activity. This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable, and we strongly call on the world's governments to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December." The Guardian said the NSA declined to respond to specific queries about its access to the Optic Nerve system, but did say that the the agency did not ask foreign partners such as GCHQ to collect intelligence that the agency could not legally collect itself. Alex Abdo, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the report "a truly shocking revelation that underscores the importance of the debate on privacy now taking place and the reforms being considered." "In a world in which there is no technological barrier to pervasive surveillance, the scope of the government's surveillance activities must be decided by the public, not secretive spy agencies interpreting secret legal authorities," Abdo said in a statement. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ftOscm |
The University of Minnesota Duluth remained lodged at No. 7 for the second straight week in the USCHO.com Poll after going 1-1 and claiming third place at last weekend's North Star College Cup.The Bulldogs, who are 14-9-1 overall and hold down third place in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference with an 8-5-1-0 mark, fell 4-0 to eventual tournament champion Bemidji State University this past Friday afternoon but bounced back to upend then No. 17 University of Minnesota 2-1 at the Xcel Energy Center. UMD accumulated 639 points in the latest USCHO.com Poll while the University of North Dakota (34 first-place votes and 982 points) regained the the top position after a two-week hiatus. Boston University (five first-place votes and 933 pts.) was next, followed by previous kingpin Minnesota State University-Mankato (11 first-place votes and 931 pts.), Harvard University (816 pts.), the University of Nebraska-Omaha (741 pts.), Bowling Green State University (686 pts.), UMD, Michigan Tech University (622 pts.), Miami University (595 pts.) and University of Massachusetts-Lowell (584 pts.).The Bulldogs are among five NCHC clubs that cracked the USCHO.com Top 20, joining No. 1 North Dakota, No. 5, Nebraska-Omaha, No. 9 Miami and No. 11 University of Denver. UMD, which still tops the nation in strength of schedule, will pay a visit to Denver this Friday and Saturday for a two-game set with the Pioneers.The Bulldogs are 12-7-0 this season against ranked opponents and 2-2-1 against the rest. |
This essay contains spoilers for The Winds of Winter Introduction Storm’s End had fallen to Aegon, and with that “impregnable” coastal fortress, the young dragon now held the most strategically and symbolically important foothold in the south of Westeros. However great this victory was though, Aegon’s situation was tenuous. The Golden Company was scattered across the Stormlands, Narrow Sea and Stepstones, and a Tyrell army was descending on Storm’s End. Though secure for the moment behind the massive curtain walls of Storm’s End, Aegon, Jon Connington and the Golden Company’s hope for long-term success did not reside at Storm’s End. Their only shot at victory lay in defeating the Tyrells marching for them and developing alliances and local support in Westeros. The bitter history of the Blackfyre Rebellions had proved as much. The Blackfyre pretenders’ inability to garner widespread support after the First Blackfyre Rebellion had led to their repeated failures. In that first rebellion, Daemon I Blackfyre and Aegor “Bittersteel” Rivers leveraged the grievances and ambitions of secondary noble houses into a broad political and military coalition. In particular, Daemon and Bittersteel brought disaffected nobles from the Reach, Dorne and Westerlands under the black dragon banner against their regional and royal overlords. Though the First Blackfyre Rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful, the coalition that the first Blackfyre pretenders assembled was instrumental to their near-success. Failed subsequent Blackfyre rebellions, like the Fourth (which had barely stumbled past its landing at Massey’s Hook) and the Fifth (which had never even reached mainland Westeros) had proved to the Golden Company that without widespread organic support, Westeros could – and would – cast them off. The Westeros upon which Aegon and his company landed, though, was much more favorably inclined to the young dragon’s particular foreign invasion than that of his Blackfyre forebears. The mood in Westeros had turned hostile towards the ruling class long before Aegon and his band of sellsword adventurers arrived; the Lannister-Tyrell alliance, which had been Westeros’ dominant political and military power since the Battle of the Blackwater, was crumbling. Better still for the would-be king, internal dissent against Lord Mace Tyrell was growing among some of his lords bannermen. The taking of Storm’s End had provided a foundation for Westerosi nobles to take notice of the young dragon, but Aegon desperately needed their homage and swords along with their notice. If it were to press Aegon’s claim to the Iron Throne, the Golden Company would have to do more than win the allegiance of its surviving Blackfyre allies. The Reach had proved fertile ground for Daemon I Blackfyre and Bittersteel when they rose against the Iron Throne. The Blackfyres’ ideological (and biological) successors would now turn to the Reach once again. The Optics of Victory Before we speculate on Aegon’s potential allies in the Reach, however, let’s examine the psychological impact of the young dragon’s victory at Storm’s End, how the Stormlands is starting to rally to Aegon as a result and how this serves as a likely microcosm for how southern Westeros will coalesce around Aegon. In the recent past, the stormlords had proved fickle in their loyalties. As we covered in Part 5, many of the stormlords had turned cloak up to three times prior to the arrival of Aegon – not to adhere to mere sworn loyalties, but to secure themselves by backing the strongest royal claimant. For many stormlords at the start of the War of the Five Kings, Renly was that strong horse; at Renly’s death, some switched to Stannis, while many others abandoned Stannis for Joffrey after the Blackwater. Aegon’s arrival and swift victories in the Stormlands provided yet another opportunity for these stormlords to turn cloak. Intentional or not, this very reliance on victories to gain allies had formed the foundation of the prince’s bold strategy: “Move fast and strike hard, and we can win some easy victories before the Lannisters even know that we have landed. That will bring others to our cause.” (ADWD, The Lost Lord) Aegon’s plan had borne fruit in the Stormlands. The chatter Arianne and her party heard as they passed through the Stormlands indicated that Aegon’s early victories were striking a chord with those left behind: In The Loom, Joss Hood learned that half a hundred men and boys from the Weeping Town had set off north to join Jon Connington at Griffin’s Roose, including young Ser Addam, old Lord Whitehead’s son and heir. (TWOW, Arianne II) Still, the reactions of these Stormlands knights and commoners was not universal. As Arianne made port at the same Weeping Town that had sent fifty men to Connington, she noticed the banners flying atop the town’s wooden walls: The Peregrine made port at the Weeping Town where the corpse of the Young Dragon had once lingered for three days on its journey home from Dorne. The banners flapping from the town’s stout wooden walls still displayed King Tommen’s stag and lion, suggesting that here at least the writ of the Iron Throne might still hold sway. (TWOW, Arianne II) Arianne’s observations speak to a town with divided Tommen and Aegon loyalties and hint at a greater regional divide. To that end, Aegon’s company had made a shrewd move to conquer castles possessing mixed Stannis and Tommen loyalists; the propaganda value in that move may have appealed to the sensibilities of the stormlanders. With Stannis ill-loved by his nominal bannermen and Cersei having unleashed a hostile army of non-stormlanders to besiege Storm’s End, the opportunity was ripe for Aegon to arrive as the “liberator” of the men he would make his bannermen. Even so, Aegon and the Golden Company had landed in a region whose lords, levies and loyalties were scattered. This had allowed for the early successes in taking castles across the Stormlands, but it also meant that Aegon could not count on large numbers of stormlanders to flock to his banner. Stormlanders had taken the lion’s share of the casualties during the Battle of the Blackwater and those who survived the battle had been incorporated into Randyll Tarly’s army at Maidenpool or had gone north with Stannis. Those few that remained were simply not enough to be decisive for Aegon’s cause. Weak Overlords, Overmighty Vassals Artwork by Tomasz Jedruszek “You Starks were kings once, the Arryns and the Lannisters as well, and even the Baratheons through the female line, but the Tyrells were no more than stewards until Aegon the Dragon came along and cooked the rightful King of the Reach on the Field of Fire.” (ASOS, Sansa I) The men and boys of the Stormlands racing north to join up with Aegon would be welcomed into the service of Prince Aegon, but they would not be enough to sustain the Golden Company’s early victories. However, one of the Seven Kingdoms had both the manpower and political prestige to significantly bolster Aegon’s chances at victory. Most of the Reach was nominally aligned with the Iron Throne and the Lannisters, under Lord Paramount of the Mander Mace Tyrell (and his daughter, Queen Margaery). However, this alliance was showing significant cracks by the end of A Dance with Dragons. More significantly, the banner lords under Mace Tyrell, drawing on old rivalries and recent injustices, might be ripe for turning cloak against both the Lannisters and the Tyrells. Once ruled by the Gardener kings, the Reach bent the knee to Aegon I Targaryen after Aegon, his sister-wives and their dragons annihilated the Gardener male line at the Field of Fire. In place of the Gardeners, Aegon appointed the Tyrells as overlords of the Reach. Officially, Aegon I’s choice of the Tyrells was a reward for their actions in opening the gates to the Targaryens and bending the knee. Unofficially, Aegon the Conqueror was punishing houses whose pedigree was nobler than the Tyrells by establishing “mere stewards” as Lords Paramount of the Mander and Wardens of the South: Afterward, a number of the other great houses of the Reach complained bitterly about being made vassals of an “upjumped steward” and insisted that their own blood was far nobler than that of the Tyrells. It cannot be denied that the Oakhearts of Old Oak, the Florents of Brightwater Keep, the Rowans of Goldengrove, the Peakes of Starpike, and the Redwynes of the Arbor all had older and more distinguished lineages than the Tyrells, and closer blood ties to House Gardener as well. Their protests were of no avail, however … mayhaps in part because all these houses had taken up arms against Aegon and his sisters on the Field of Fire, whereas the Tyrells had not. (TWOIAF, The Reach: House Tyrell) Though House Tyrell had the backing of the Targaryens and their dragons, its reign as overlord of the Reach proved less valuable to Aegon’s successors. The flipside to a dynastically unimportant overlord with overmighty vassals was that when a rebellion flared up, the Tyrells could not cow their lords into backing the crown by pointing to their own ancient legitimacy (as could, say, the Starks, Arryns, and Lannisters). Reacher families such as the Peakes, Stricklands and Costaynes bucked the Tyrells and supported Daemon and Bittersteel during the First Blackfyre Rebellions, and the Reach itself served as the core of Blackfyre support. Other major reacher houses, such as the Oakhearts and Hightowers, split their loyalties between both claimants to the throne. In the third century AC, House Tyrell re-focused its marriage efforts on internal stability. Luthor Tyrell was betrothed to Olenna Redwyne, the daughter of Lord Runceford Redwyne. This marriage reinforced internal Tyrell power by joining one of the mightiest of House Tyrell’s overmighty bannermen into its bloodline. The three children of this union became the instruments of securing Tyrell power in the Reach through marriage: Mina Tyrell was wed to Lord Paxter Redwyne to affirm the Tyrell-Redwyne bond, while Janna Tyrell was wed to Jon Fossoway to build bridges to another powerful Reach House. It was in Mace Tyrell’s betrothal to Alerie Hightower that House Tyrell did its most substantial work in solidifying its hold on power in the Reach. Arguably, House Hightower was House Tyrell’s most powerful vassal house. The Hightowers controlled Oldtown, the greatest population center and economic power in the Reach, and had been petty kings before bending the knee to the Gardeners. Since Aegon’s Conquest, House Hightower was House Tyrell’s historical rival for the power in the Reach, and had partially opposed the Tyrells during the Dance of the Dragons and the First Blackfyre Rebellion. By wedding Allerie, the daughter of Lord Leyton Hightower, to Mace Tyrell and re-solidifying the Redwyne-Tyrell union with the marriage of Mina Tyrell and Paxter Redwyne, Highgarden rested its power on the pillars of its strongest leal lords. All of these dynastic moves significantly strengthened House Tyrell’s power in the Reach, but there were some houses that were left out of the Reach’s power equation. Notably, Houses Tarly, Florent, Oakheart and Rowan were left out of the grand Tyrell betrothal rodeo, but they were at a disadvantage to press any disagreement – that is until one of House Tyrell’s pillars was knocked out from under them. Robert’s Rebellion might have been one of the few times in its history where the Reach was completely unified behind House Tyrell. Had the rebellion turned out differently, Mace Tyrell might have emerged from the war as the strongest lord paramount of Westeros: only he and Prince Doran of the paramount lords had backed the Targaryens, and the Reach far exceeded Dorne in economic and martial strength. Instead, House Targaryen was defeated and fell into exile, and the new Baratheon regime, while affirming Mace Tyrell’s paramountcy and wardenship, undercut some of the power that House Tyrell had established in the past fifty years. Stannis Baratheon was wed to Selyse Florent, a house left out of House Tyrell’s power paradigm (which itself had a strong, if not the strongest, blood claim to Highgarden).The elevation of the Florents implied that if House Tyrell ever rebelled against Robert or his successors, they could – and would – be replaced. There was a lesson here for Mace Tyrell’s bannermen as well: House Tyrell’s grasp on the Reach was already historically tenuous, and if Mace Tyrell backed the “wrong” claimant to the Iron Throne in the future, his bannermen stood to gain at the Tyrells’ expense. The Ambitions of Lord Puff Fish “We should have stayed well out of all this bloody foolishness if you ask me, but once the cow’s been milked there’s no squirting the cream back up her udder. After Lord Puff Fish put that crown on Renly’s head, we were into the pudding up to our knees, so here we are to see things through.” (ASOS, Sansa I) When Robert Baratheon died, some sixteen years after his rebellion, Renly successfully brought Mace Tyrell and the Reach under his banner. When Renly Baratheon himself died, however, several lords jumped ship from Mace Tyrell and backed Renly’s brother, Stannis, including the Florents and both Fossoway branches. These Houses may not have represented the majority of the Reach, but their move showed houses that may have hoped to gain at the expense of their liege lord by supporting the “correct” king. The defection of the Florents, in particular, may also have been a direct response to being shut out from three generations of Tyrell intermarriage with its vassals. The Florent and Fossoway hope of backing the correct king proved forlorn. After Renly’s death, Littlefinger reached Mace Tyrell at Bitterbridge and successfully brokered an alliance between the Lannisters and Tyrells. Stannis’ rightful kingship was cast into further doubt when the now-combined Lannister-Tyrell armies decisively defeated him on the Blackwater. Thereafter, the Fossoways bent the knee to Joffrey, the new “rightful” king, but the Florents remained in defiance of the Tyrells and their new royal overlords. The Lord of Highgarden was an assured opportunist; his backing of Renly had proved that fact. To put the new alliance on firmer footing, Tywin Lannister granted lands and titles to Mace Tyrell, his sons, and his bannermen after the Battle of the Blackwater, and betrothed Margaery Tyrell to King Joffrey. House Tyrell had been duly rewarded for backing the “correct” king, and even its vassals benefited from the arrangement – at least, on the surface. For the moment, all was well between the Lannisters and Tyrells. Then disaster struck. Tywin Lannister died, and his death would have a strong, negative military impact on the Reach. Mace Tyrell’s decisive alliance with Tywin Lannister had shifted the bulk of the Reach’s soldiers into eastern Westeros, but it also had significant consequences on the Reach. Before, Mace Tyrell had something in the range of eighty thousand to one-hundred thousand soldiers in and around King’s Landing split into two major divisions: To the north, Randyll Tarly had a large host of Reachmen and Stormlanders in and around Maidenpool. In closer vicinity to King’s Landing, Mace and his son Garlan had command of the rest of the Reach’s armies. Through the course of A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crowns, however, segments of this army would fall away. Randyll Tarly’s army saw action against the northmen at Duskendale early in A Storm of Swords, emerging victorious despite heavy casualties. Afterwards, his army marched back to Maidenpool and stayed there until the end of A Feast for Crows. After Cersei Lannister gave orders to Mace Tyrell to besiege Storm’s End, the Tyrell army in and around King’s Landing split into two detachments. Mace Tyrell and Mathis Rowan marched on Storm’s End, but Garlan Tyrell took “half” of the Reach’s strength back to the Reach to seize his post-Blackwater prize: “Mace is taking half the Tyrell strength to Storm’s End, and the other half will be going back to the Reach with Ser Garlan to make good his claim on Brightwater.” (AFFC, Cersei III) Internal power struggles between the Lannisters and Tyrells and the Ironborn invasion further divided the might of the Reach’s military as follows: Lord Mace Tyrell had an army of about thirty thousand surrounding Storm’s End. A detachment of Reachmen under the command of Loras Tyrell sailed to Dragonstone to take the island from Stannis’ rearguard. A roughly thirty thousand-strong force under the command of Garlan Tyrell, looking to seize Brightwater Keep from House Florent, have been redirected to throw the Ironborn into the sea. Lord Randyll Tarly still had an army positioned north of King’s Landing. Following Loras Tyrell’s “victory” at Dragonstone, Lord Paxter Redwyne and his fleet sailed back to the Reach to confront the “thousand ships” of the Ironmen.. Once a strong unified command, the various missions split the Reach’s combined military might decisively. That split, combined with the political undercurrent flowing away from Mace Tyrell by the end of A Dance with Dragons, will give Aegon, Jon Connington and the Golden Company a unique opportunity to score some quick victories and peel away some of Highgarden’s bannermen. The Griffin’s Strategy: Robert’s Rebellion Redux “Robert Baratheon won the Iron Throne without the benefit of dragons. We can do the same.” (ADWD, The Lost Lord) Lord Jon Connington recognized correctly that without dragons or allies, there was no hope for seating Aegon onto the Iron Throne. When Aegon declared himself the “only dragon the Golden Company would ever need” and ordered the sellswords to set sail for Westeros, it was a de facto abandonment of the (literal) dragon strategy. Without Daenerys or her dragons, the allies Aegon could make in Westeros would be the only pathway to victory. The Blackfyres and the Golden Company’s historical attempts at developing alliances and friendships in Westeros had mostly been unsuccessful; Daemon I had raised a potent coalition of powerful vassal houses, but the current Golden Company boasts no greater Westerosi connections than its “exiles and the sons of exiles”. However, there was one historical precedent that provided a gameplan for Aegon to acquire allies: Robert’s Rebellion. The allied rebels of Robert’s Rebellion had proved decisive in the fall of House Targaryen some seventeen years before, and while that alliance had been likely years in the making, the same ingredients and character archetypes were available for Aegon to weave a familiar-yet-unique path to the Iron Throne. In Jon Arryn, Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark had found a protector who was politically and military able with years of experience under his belt. When Aerys II Targaryen had Lord Rickard and Brandon Stark murdered and then demanded the executions of Arryn’s two young wards, the Lord of the Eyrie had a morally just casus belli and rose in rebellion against the Mad King. Jon Connington served the Jon Arryn role in what he hoped would be a similarly-successful war against the Iron Throne. He was a “second father” to Aegon and was politically and militarily experienced – having served as brief Hand of the King and commander of the royal army during Robert’s Rebellion. In the Griffin Lord’s mind, he also had “justice” to his cause. The murder of Elia of Dorne and Princess Rhaenys were crimes that could rally the nation to his cause. Likewise, the personal popularity and chivalric attitude of Aegon’s supposed father, Crown Prince Rhaegar, could help rally indifferent lords to the dragon’s standard. Connington’s old, ancestral stomping ground was the Stormlands, but he needed to expand his outreach from familiar grounds to the rest of southern Westeros. In short, Connington needed to form something like a anti-southron ambitions coalition. The Vale, North and Riverlands were decisively engaged in their own military and political power struggles, and their loyalty to an alleged descendant of Rhaegar Targaryen was already suspect. So, Connington’s path ran through the Reach and Dorne – the two regions that had supported House Targaryen during Robert’s Rebellion: “We will send out word secretly to likely friends in the stormlands and the Reach. And Dorne.” That was the crucial step. Lesser lords might join their cause for fear of harm or hope of gain, but only the Prince of Dorne had the power to defy House Lannister and its allies. “Above all else, we must have Doran Martell.” (ADWD, The Griffin Reborn) Unlike Jon Arryn though, the Griffin Lord did not have nearly the same amount of time to build alliances and friendships. To buy Aegon some time, Connington formulated a plan: “Let King’s Landing think this is no more than an exile lord coming home with some hired swords to reclaim his birthright. An old familiar story, that. I will even write King Tommen, stating as much and asking for a pardon and the restoration of my lands and titles. That will give them something to chew over for a while. And whilst they dither, we will send out word secretly to likely friends in the stormlands and the Reach. And Dorne.” (ADWD, The Griffin Reborn) Connington’s tact worked as King’s Landing was confused about who exactly was attacking the Stormlands: “We have had reports of sellswords landing all over the south,” Ser Kevan was saying. “Tarth, the Stepstones, Cape Wrath … where Stannis found the coin to hire a free company I would dearly love to know. I do not have the strength to deal with them, not here. Mace Tyrell does, but he refuses to bestir himself until this matter with his daughter has been settled.” (ADWD, Cersei I) Precious time was bought, but it would only last briefly. By the A Dance with Dragons Epilogue, the small council was aware of exactly who was behind the attack: “Connington may have more than the Golden Company. It is said he has a Targaryen pretender.” (ADWD, Epilogue) Fortunately for Aegon, the small council’s recognition of who they were facing had come far too late. The Reach’s military force disposition was divided, the Lannisters and Tyrells were at each other’s throats and some of Mace Tyrell’s vassals were ripe for turning cloak. It was exactly as Tyrion Lannister had put it to the young prince on the Rhoyne: “Westeros is torn and bleeding, and I do not doubt that even now my sweet sister is binding up the wounds … with salt. Cersei is as gentle as King Maegor, as selfless as Aegon the Unworthy, as wise as Mad Aerys. She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honor, for love. Tommen’s rule is bolstered by all of the alliances that my lord father built so carefully, but soon enough she will destroy them, every one. Land and raise your banners, and men will flock to your cause. Lords great and small, and smallfolk too. But do not wait too long, my prince. The moment will not last. The tide that lifts you now will soon recede. Be certain you reach Westeros before my sister falls and someone more competent takes her place.” (ADWD, Tyrion VI) Connington had amassed nearly all the hallmarks which had once helped win Robert’s Rebellion: he was a politically experienced lord, foster-father to a young, eager, battle-ready pretender, and he had moral and popular justifications that could win lords to the Targaryen cause. He had reached out tendrils to likely allies, but tendrils would not be enough. For Aegon to sit the throne of his ancestors, Connington needed to build a powerful coalition, just as Arryn had once helped direct, and he needed to do it soon. Laswell Peake predicted just where this coalition would be found: Laswell Peake rapped his knuckles on the table. “Even after a century, some of us still have friends in the Reach. The power of Highgarden may not be what Mace Tyrell imagines.” (ADWD, The Griffin Reborn) Laswell Peake may have imagined the old Blackfyre coalition rising around Aegon, but the young dragon would not be looking to the Blackfyres’ original friends to build his army. Still, Peake was more right than he knew: key Tyrell bannermen would hold the secret to victory. As such, Aegon’s first ally from the Reach was a reacher lord who had nothing to do with the Blackfyres – but everything to do with Robert’s Rebellion. The Lord Fit to Gag When Lord Mace Tyrell abandoned the siege of Storm’s End to rescue his daughter, he left behind a token force to keep Storm’s End invested in siege. In command of this force was Lord Mathis Rowan. Lord Rowan was a powerful reacher lord, and one of Mace Tyrell’s most important bannermen. House Rowan held the strong castle of Goldengrove, and had significant lands and vassals of its own. Like all of the most exalted families of the Reach prior to the Conquest, the Rowans could trace their lineage directly back to Garth Greenhand, claiming Garth’s daughter Rowan as their namesake and mythical ancestress. They had blood ties to the Gardener kings, and they were among those that Maester Yandel recounted as having “older and more distinguished lineages than the Tyrells”, who had since become their overlords. Lord Mathis Rowan himself is a gruff, middle-aged lord who is respected by his peers for his political acumen and military insight. As a politician, Mathis was so respected that both Jaime and Kevan Lannister thought that he would be a good fit as Hand of the King: “Mathis Rowan is sensible, prudent, well liked.” (AFFC, Cersei II) If someone other than a westerman was needed to appease the Tyrells, there was always Mathis Rowan. (AFFC, Jaime VIII) As a military commander and tactician, Mathis is a cautious, yet respected, leader. In A Clash of Kings, Mathis Rowan urged Renly to leave Stannis at Storm’s End and focus on King’s Landing: “Your Grace, I see no need for battle here,” Lord Mathis Rowan put in. “The castle is strongly garrisoned and well provisioned, Ser Cortnay Penrose is a seasoned commander, and the trebuchet has not been built that could breach the walls of Storm’s End. Let Lord Stannis have his siege. He will find no joy in it, and whilst he sits cold and hungry and profitless, we will take King’s Landing.” (ACOK, Catelyn III) Mathis’ counsel was a wise course. Storm’s End could hold out against an extended siege as it had demonstrated time after time. After Renly decided to go forward with his attack on Stannis, Catelyn Stark noticed Mathis Rowan and Randyll Tarly consulting over a map: Within, Catelyn found Brienne armoring the king for battle while the Lords Tarly and Rowan spoke of dispositions and tactics. (ACOK, Catelyn IV) That Randyll Tarly, the Reach’s best soldier (according to Kevan Lannister), was consulting with Mathis Rowan over tactics signified that Mathis’ military acumen was respected. Renly’s campaign had not been the first time Mathis had followed a Tyrell army to Storm’s End. During Robert’s Rebellion, Lord Mathis answered the Tyrell call to arms to back the Targaryens and marched with his liege lord to the Baratheon seat. When Ned Stark marched on Storm’s End, Mathis dutifully followed the lead of his liege and bent the knee to Robert Baratheon. Unlike Mace Tyrell though, Mathis Rowan seemed genuinely loyal to the Targaryens. When Catelyn Stark reported that Jaime Lannister alive in A Clash of Kings, Mathis was upset: “Jaime Lannister is held prisoner at Riverrun.” “Still alive?” Lord Mathis Rowan seemed dismayed. (ACOK, Catelyn II) Whether he was unhappy at the prospect of facing Jaime in battle or felt that the notorious Kingslayer deserved death for his “crimes” is unclear. However, Mathis was very clearly upset when Tywin Lannister blameshifted the deaths of Elia Martell and her children: “Prince Doran comes at my son’s invitation,” Lord Tywin said calmly, “not only to join in our celebration, but to claim his seat on this council, and the justice Robert denied him for the murder of his sister Elia and her children.” Tyrion watched the faces of the Lords Tyrell, Redwyne, and Rowan, wondering if any of the three would be bold enough to say, “But Lord Tywin, wasn’t it you who presented the bodies to Robert, all wrapped up in Lannister cloaks?” None of them did, but it was there on their faces all the same. Redwyne does not give a fig, he thought, but Rowan looks fit to gag. (ASOS, Tyrion III) Mathis Rowan was, thus, a natural mark for Connington to make his first inroad into the Reach. He was a Targaryen loyalist, seemingly more so than his own liege lord. Though he was a loyal subordinate commander who followed Mace Tyrell to King’s Landing and into the Lannister-Tyrell alliance, he couldn’t hide his own horror over Tywin Lannister’s anti-Targaryen war atrocities during Robert’s Rebellion. So, it was only natural that George R.R. Martin would leave lord-fit-to-gag outside of Storm’s End while Mace Tyrell rushed back to King’s Landing. In Part 5, I theorized that the guile that Jon Connington planned to use to take Storm’s End would allow Aegon, Connington and a detachment of Golden Company sellswords to bypass Mathis Rowan’s small army investing the castle in siege. Though there was tactical value in avoiding a tertiary engagement with the Reachmen outside of Storm’s End, the greater utility in Connington bypassing Rowan’s siege lines was that he could negotiate with the Reachmen outside of the castle after the battle was complete and he himself was in a secure, fortified position. After Storm’s End is seized, I think that Jon Connington will parlay with Mathis Rowan. With Stannis’ garrison all dead, the reachmen outside of Storm’s End will be in a strange spot. They had orders to take the castle from Stannis’ garrison, but no orders could have prepared them for an unrelated force doing their work for them and taking the castle for itself. This muddle might be broken when Connington presents young Aegon to Mathis Rowan. In Arianne’s first sample chapter for The Winds of Winter, Arianne reads the letter that Jon Connington sent to Doran Martell. Though the words were intended to appeal to Prince Doran Martell specifically, the letter’s contents applied equally to Mathis Rowan: To Prince Doran of House Martell, You will remember me, I pray. I knew your sister well, and was a leal servant of your good-brother. I grieve for them as you do. I did not die, no more than did your sister’s son. To save his life we kept him hidden, but the time for hiding is done. A dragon has returned to Westeros to claim his birthright and seek vengeance for his father, and for the princess Elia, his mother. In her name I turn to Dorne. Do not forsake us. Jon Connington Lord of Griffin’s Roost Hand of the True King (TWOW, Arianne I) Jon Connington’s words and presentation of the boy would almost certainly compel a reaction from the Lord of Goldengrove. Mathis would feel personally compelled to right the moral horror of Robert’s Rebellion. In The Winds of Winter, the first Reach House that will decisively join with Aegon will be House Rowan. Though his army is likely only a few thousand strong at best, its turn towards Aegon would significantly boost the Golden Company’s flagging numbers. More importantly, Mathis’ turn to Aegon would be a political coup for the young dragon’s cause. Mathis is a respected, powerful, and well-liked lord in the Reach whose political acumen was identified as sufficient for a Hand and whose military counsel was respected by the best soldiers and commanders in Westeros. Mathis won’t simply bring himself and his small army into Aegon’s service. Instead, the banners of Goldengrove that will fly under Aegon’s red dragon banner will serve as clarion call to the nobility of the Reach – especially the ambitious and treacherous variety. Stolen Valor and General Grievance: Lord Tarly Artwork by Kevin McCoy Tarly is the real danger. A narrow man, but iron-willed and shrewd, and as good a soldier as the Reach could boast. – Kevan Lannister’s thoughts on Randyll Tarly (ADWD, Epilogue) Rowan, however, would not be the only reacher lord to join the dragon’s banner outside Storm’s End. Moreover, while Rowan’s motivation would likely stem from his idealism about the Targaryen cause, the other reacher lord would be motivated by his stern sense of personal justice and grievance. The Reach has long boasted both statecraft-minded nobles who could turn the political engine of Westeros and chivalrous knights whose storied histories extended back into the Age of Heroes, but there was no lord like ruthless Randyll Tarly. The Lord of Horn Hill was an austere man known for his strict legalism and capability for Tywin-esque cruelty. Also like Tywin Lannister – and distinguishing from his reacher peers – Tarly was recognized as perhaps the finest soldier in the Reach. During Robert’s Rebellion, Randyll Tarly met Robert Baratheon in battle and issued the would-be Usurper his only defeat. Tarly, in command of the the Reach’s vanguard, smashed Robert Baratheon’s stormlander host at the Battle of Ashford. However, the glory of that sole victory against Robert hadn’t gone to Randyll Tarly or his men: instead, it went to Randyll’s liege lord, Mace Tyrell (a fact not lost on another able commander, Stannis Baratheon): “Your father is an able soldier,” King Stannis said. “He defeated my brother once, at Ashford. Mace Tyrell has been pleased to claim the honors for that victory, but Lord Randyll had decided matters before Tyrell ever found the battlefield. He slew Lord Cafferen with that great Valyrian sword of his and sent his head to Aerys.” (ASOS, Samwell V) Randyll had won the battle for his liege lord, and for this prodigious feat, he was edited out of Maester Yandel’s official recounting of the event: The present Lord of Highgarden, Mace Tyrell, fought loyally for House Targaryen during Robert’s Rebellion, defeating Robert Baratheon himself at the Battle of Ashford. (TWOIAF, The Reach: House Tyrell) To further aggravate Randyll Tarly’s wounded pride, the Lord of Highgarden parlayed “his command” at the Battle of Ashford into a persona of keen military experience: Mace Tyrell spoke up. “Is there anything as pointless as a king without a kingdom? No, it’s plain, the boy must abandon the riverlands, join his forces to Roose Bolton’s once more, and throw all his strength against Moat Cailin. That is what I would do.” Tyrion had to bite his tongue at that. Robb Stark had won more battles in a year than the Lord of Highgarden had in twenty. Tyrell’s reputation rested on one indecisive victory over Robert Baratheon at Ashford, in a battle largely won by Lord Tarly’s van before the main host had even arrived. The siege of Storm’s End, where Mace Tyrell actually did hold the command, had dragged on a year to no result, and after the Trident was fought, the Lord of Highgarden had meekly dipped his banners to Eddard Stark. (ASOS, Tyrion III) Randyll Tarly’s place of honor had been erased by the history books and the Fat Flower’s own retelling, but this fact did not prevent Mace Tyrell from using Randyll Tarly again and again in dangerous and morally flexible ways. Randyll rode with his liege when Mace declared for King Renly, but after Renly died, Randyll Tarly got down to the business of committing war crimes: “Lord Tarly has seized Renly’s stores and put a great many to the sword; Florents, chiefly.” (ACOK, Tyrion X) When Mace Tyrell agreed to join with Tywin Lannister and force-marched to lift Stannis’ Siege of King’s Landing, Randyll Tarly took the dangerous, yet prestigious, command of the center of the Lannister-Tyrell army. Though the vanguard won much of the battle (paralleling the Battle of Ashford), Tarly’s command of the center signified his place as among the best commanders in Westeros. The center in a medieval battle usually held the best troops, and Randyll Tarly’s place there was crucial. However, Tarly likely did not want to be in the center so much as in the vanguard. When he was still sworn to Renly, the Lord of Horn Hill had wanted to be in thick of the fighting on behalf of Renly: “It takes more than a pretty cloak to charge a shield wall,” Randyll Tarly announced. “I was leading Mace Tyrell’s van when you were still sucking on your mother’s teat, Guyard.” (ACOK, Catelyn Tarly had led the vanguard at the Battle of Ashford, and it would have been natural to commission him to a similar role in Renly’s army. However, Renly awarded that role to Loras Tyrell. When the Lannister-Tyrell alliance formed, Randyll might have expected to lead the van in the attack on Stannis’ army. Instead, he was given command of the center. Though being placed in the center of the Tyrell lines at the Siege of King’s Landing was an essential command, it was not the place of greatest honor on the battlefield. Instead, the honor of leading the vanguard was once again granted to Loras Tyrell (along with his brother Garlan). Randyll’s exclusion from leading the vanguard would have consequences later on. When that battle was won, the Lord of Horn Hill was not granted leave to rest his weary soldiers. He was ordered north to fight another battle (this time against the northmen at Duskendale), winning a decisive victory on behalf of the Iron Throne. Thereafter, he took Maidenpool and began to put the region to rights. Randyll Tarly had arguably done more militarily for the fledgling Lannister-Tyrell alliance than any other lord or knight in its service. So, it probably came as a shock to Randyll Tarly when he heard about the rewards for those who participated in the battles: Highgarden reaped the richest harvest. Tyrion eyed Mace Tyrell’s broad belly and thought, He has a prodigious appetite, this one. Tyrell demanded the lands and castles of Lord Alester Florent, his own bannerman, who’d had the singular ill judgment to back first Renly and then Stannis. Lord Tywin was pleased to oblige. Brightwater Keep and all its lands and incomes were granted to Lord Tyrell’s second son, Ser Garlan, transforming him into a great lord in the blink of an eye. His elder brother, of course, stood to inherit Highgarden itself. Lesser tracts were granted to Lord Rowan, and set aside for Lord Tarly, Lady Oakheart, Lord Hightower, and other worthies not present. (ASOS, Tyrion III) Mace Tyrell had received a royal betrothal for his daughter and was further rewarded with a lordship and castle for his second son. Randyll Tarly likely had no personal qualms against Garlan becoming a lord, even one as great as the Florents: Garlan the Gallant had led the vanguard courageously during the Blackwater. Instead, the issue was that greedy, overly ambitious Mace Tyrell had once again profited from Tarly’s hard battlefield work. Even worse, Mace Tyrell was now stealing not merely Randyll Tarly’s fame and honor, but his legitimate spoil of war. Alester Florent, Lord of Brightwater Keep, had forsaken the Tyrells and Lannisters, allying with Stannis after Renly’s death. Alester’s heir, Alekyne, had followed in his father’s footsteps and bent the knee to Stannis. Their support for the Baratheon pretender had legally stripped father and son of any right to Brightwater Keep. What likely upset Randyll was that, by rights, the next heir of House Florent was Alester’s elder daughter, Melessa … who happened to be wed to Randyll himself. Nor had the Lannisters merely appropriated Randyll’s legally expected prize. Lord Tarly was not recalled from Maidenpool for this small council meeting; if he had been present, it’s very possible that he would have objected to the arrangements made or voiced private protest to Tywin Lannister over awarding Brightwater Keep to Garlan Tyrell. As he was not present, though, Randyll had to suffer upjumped, former stewards profiting at the expense of House Tarly, and learning about this decisions only second-hand and belatedly. If Lord Randyll nursed grievances over the theft of Brightwater Keep by the Tyrells, however, he kept it private. No POV character was near Randyll Tarly when he heard about Brightwater Keep. He and his army remained positioned around Maidenpool doing the hard work of clearing the roads of bandits and securing the Crownlands for the Iron Throne. However, Randyll Tarly was making political moves of his own to enhance Tarly power. Perhaps stealing a page from his liege lord’s playbook, Randyll Tarly set to make his son an advantageous betrothal: “Mooton’s daughter, she’s a maid,” the man went on. “Till the bedding, anyways. These eggs, they’re for her wedding. Her and Tarly’s son. The cooks will need eggs for cakes.” (AFFC, Brienne III) House Mooton was a noble Riverlands House which controlled the once economically prosperous town of Maidenpool. Its current lord, William, had seen Maidenpool sacked thrice during the War of the Five Kings, and had hidden behind his castle’s walls each time. Not all of the Mootons had proven as cowardly as Lord William, however. William’s brother, Myles, been one of Rhaegar Targaryen’s squires turned knightly friends, and died fighting on behalf of the Targaryens at Stoney Sept. Randyll’s betrothal and eventual marriage of Dickon to William’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, had little to do with Lord William himself. By betrothing his son and heir to Eleanor Mooton, Randyll ensconced himself in a key Riverlands family – a family that had personal ties of loyalty to House Targaryen. The Lord of Horn Hill’s extended stay at Maidenpool would be broken up by the arrest of Margaery Tyrell and the cracking of the Lannister-Tyrell alliance. Perhaps sensing an opportunity to gain power at the expense of his liege lord, then at Storm’s End, Lord Tarly marched his entire army down the kingsroad and reached King’s Landing before Mace Tyrell: “[Randyll Tarly] was the first to reach King’s Landing when this storm broke, and he brought his army with him.” (ADWD, Cersei I) Randyll might have felt a sense of schadenfreude at the current misfortune of his liege lord, but he had a sworn duty to him still. His first course of action in King’s Landing was to free Margaery Tyrell from the Faith Militant, but he was only able to do so after swearing a holy vow that he would remand Margaery Tyrell back to the Faith for her trial. Mace Tyrell and Kevan Lannister arrived in King’s Landing shortly after Randyll Tarly: Kevan named himself regent and quickly began to re-sort Cersei’s small council. Randyll might have expected that now he might receive his reward for good service and named Hand of the King: he had won resounding victories for the crown, freed his liege lord’s daughter and had brought his army to bear against the Faith Militant in a show of force. Instead, he would be thwarted yet again by his liege lord. Kevan named Mace Tyrell as Hand of the King while relegating Randyll to the subordinate small council seat of justiciar (formerly “master of laws”). Lord Randyll Tarly was a prime target to be won over by Jon Connington. His grievances against his liege lord were great, and they provided a prime opportunity for Connington to pick up another friend in the Reach for his would-be king. Mathis Rowan’s turn to Aegon would bring a few thousand soldiers and notice to Aegon, but Randyll Tarly would bring his renown as Westeros’ best soldier – along with perhaps twenty thousand swords. What I’ve wondered about for some time while writing this essay is whether one of Jon Connington’s secret messages had already reached Randyll Tarly by the end of A Dance with Dragons. We glanced the Lord of Horn Hill at Kevan Lannister’s small council meeting, and his conduct at the meeting might be construed as suspicious. Much like Aurane Waters did before him, Randyll Tarly downplayed the threat of the Golden Company: “If this truly is the Golden Company, as Qyburn’s whisperers insist—” “Call them what you will,” said Randyll Tarly. “They are still no more than adventurers.” (ADWD, Epilogue) Randyll then cast doubt on whether it was truly Jon Connington who had arrived in Westeros: “And now we have reports that Connington is moving on Storm’s End.” “If it is Jon Connington,” said Randyll Tarly. (ADWD, Epilogue) Randyll’s counsel neatly dovetailed with Connington’s desire to disguise who was actually invading Westeros and what their intentions were. Randyll also seemed to dismiss Aegon as truly being Rhaegar’s son as well: “Connington may have more than the Golden Company. It is said he has a Targaryen pretender.” “A feigned boy is what he has,” said Randyll Tarly. (ADWD, Epilogue) The other notable declaration that Randyll Tarly made in the small council was to speak antagonistically of the Faith Militant: “His High Holiness insists upon a trial.” Lord Randyll snorted. “What have we become, when kings and high lords must dance to the twittering of sparrows?” (ADWD, Epilogue) Antagonizing the Faith Militant was definitely not in the small council’s best interests by the end of A Dance with Dragons (something we’ll get into in a later part). However, it might be fit a pattern of a cunning lord who had already turned against the Lannisters and Tyrells and was offering intentionally poor counsel. It is impossible to know whether Tarly has turned against his overlords by the end of A Dance with Dragons, of course, or whether his council opinions represented the expressions of the blunt soldier, dismissive of sellswords or lords and their feigned pretenders. Regardless, Tarly was “the real danger” according to Kevan Lannister. His loyalty to the Tyrells and Lannisters was suspect prior to Aegon’s landing due to Mace Tyrell’s stolen valor and “theft” of Brightwater Keep from him. The young dragon provided the means by which Randyll could soothe his wounded pride and win “his” seat back from the historically upjumped Tyrells. If Randyll has not already turned to Aegon by the end of A Dance with Dragons, he will in The Winds of Winter. With Tarly in hand, Aegon will have a dangerous and powerful lord and his twenty-thousand swords. More than that, Aegon will have an army extraordinarily well-positioned around King’s Landing and a lord in command with a willingness to do anything on behalf of the his benefactors. Conclusion The Halfmaester glanced at another parchment. “We could scarcely have timed our landing better. We have potential friends and allies at every hand.” (ADWD, The Griffin Reborn) The decisive turn of the Rowans and Tarlys towards Aegon and against their Tyrell overlords will be one of the more momentous events in The Winds of Winter. Though these houses from the Reach will be vital for Aegon’s military efforts in southern Westeros, they won’t be enough for Aegon politically. The Blackfyre Pretenders of old dreamed of Westeros uniting under the great black dragon banner. So too will the descendants of the Blackfyres look for the whole of southern Westeros to rally politically under Aegon. Jon Connington’s greatest hope for politically uniting Westeros was not in the Reach. Though their swords would be welcomed into Aegon’s service, they would not be the whole of a region. Lord Connington needed a great lord – a lord paramount – to swear to Aegon. Thus, Jon Connington will turn to one of House Targaryen’s oldest friends to bring his spears under the “red” dragon banner. Before all that can happen, battle must be joined. The Tyrells have finally woken to threat of Aegon, and an army was marching for the young dragon at Storm’s End. This army, likely tens of thousands strong, had two purposes: annihilate the Golden Company and put the young dragon into the ground. Shockingly though, Aegon would not be content to hide behind the walls of Storm’s End. The young dragon was marching out to meet the Tyrells in battle, and the battle that would be fought would decide Aegon’s crusade for the Iron Throne. Update Here’s a little video Q&A I did answering some of the questions below and some of the questions on facebook: Thanks for reading. I invite you to follow me on twitter at @BryndenBFish. Additionally, I invite you to follow the Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire twitter, facebook and tumblr to stay abreast of all that we’re doing! Further Reading/Listening Next Up: Agincourt |
Via Reason, the economists at e21 take a long look at a new study by Daniel Wilson at the San Francisco Fed on the effect on employment from the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, which indicates that the impact was a lot less than advertised. Instead of adding two million jobs to the economy, the Fed finds that any new jobs added had disappeared by August of this year (via The American Thinker): It is difficult to properly calculate the effects of the 2009 ARRA bill, as it was a nation-wide program. Though employment and growth failed to respond to ARRA as the Administration had suggested, fiscal stimulus advocates have argued that employment levels would have been lower still without the program. Wilson’s study makes an important contribution to this debate by focusing on state-by-state comparisons. A large portion of stimulus funding at the state level was based on criteria that were entirely independent of the economic situation that states faced. For example, the number of existing highway miles was used to calculate additional transportation spending. The study uses this resulting variation in state-level stimulus funding to determine what impact ARRA funding had on employment — including both the direct impact of workers hired to complete planned projects, as well as any broader spillover effects resulting from greater government spending. Administration economists have repeatedly emphasized the importance of this indirect employment growth in driving economic recovery. The results suggest that though the program did result in 2 million jobs “created or saved” by March 2010, net job creation was statistically indistinguishable from zero by August of this year. Taken at face value, this would suggest that the stimulus program (with an overall cost of $814 billion) worked only to generate temporary jobs at a cost of over $400,000 per worker. Even if the stimulus had in fact generated this level of employment as a durable outcome, it would still have been an extremely expensive way to generate employment. Well, all anyone needed to do was look at unemployment over the last 19 months to figure that much out. We have had 19 months of joblessness at 9% or higher, a record in the post-WWII era, despite the administration’s insistence that the outlay would curtail the extension of unemployment. That number is lower than it should be, thanks to a generational low in the workforce-to-population ratio, too. The number of the unemployed and discouraged workers didn’t drop; in fact, those numbers have grown since Porkulus. The rebuttal from the White House has been to argue the counterfactual. Just imagine, they say, if we hadn’t spend $800 billion in stimulus! The analysis by e21 addresses that argument as well: It is also difficult to determine the counterfactual employment growth that would have resulted in the absence of the fiscal stimulus law. To address this issue, Wilson includes other variables predictive of future employment growth. However, it is possible that employment would indeed have been worse in all states without a stimulus. It is also possible that employment would have been better than projected — for instance, if the Fed or Treasury had responded to higher unemployment through their own interventions. Still, this result should be taken seriously, as it represents one of the few actual analyses of the stimulus program that does not rely on outdated multiplier estimates that assume their result. Importantly, the results are also consistent with another recent analysis of government spending during Great Depression by economists Price Fishback and Valentina Kachanovskaya. During a period in which unemployment was extremely high and the costs of implementing a public works program were far lower than today, one might expect that fiscal stimulus might have proven more effective. Yet Fishback and Kachanovskaya find that a similar state-by-state analysis suggests that fiscal stimulus during the Great Depression failed to yield durable employment gains. But Reason notes that the people pushing the counterfactual never provided any reality-based metrics in the first place: Backers of the stimulus have always had to contend with two big problems: The first is measurement. How do we know how many jobs were created, saved, funded, whatever? Do we count new permanent jobs, or partially funded contractors, or grocery clerks whose paychecks are dependent on added business from stimulus-funded workers across town? And even if you can verify that those jobs are funded by stimulus money somehow, how do you know that the same jobs would not have been created in the absence of the stimulus? It’s a thankless task, and the administration has tended to respond by skirting the issue and relying on models that don’t really measure output at all. Wilson’s study, with its state-by-state comparisons, attempts to partly address this problem. But his tentative conclusions lead to the second problem, which is value. Even if you find that the stimulus did create jobs, then the question becomes: Were the results worth the price? The findings in Wilson’s study suggest that they weren’t. Finally, we come to the basic argument used by the administration, which was that the stimulus was intended to prevent joblessness from going above 8%. Now that we’re heading back towards 10% having never gotten below 9%, that should certify the program as a flop. The White House and its defenders claim that no one knew how bad the economy was at that point (January 2009), but that’s simply not true. We had already lost over 3 million jobs by that time, and we were losing 600K a month or more by then. If all the President’s men and women couldn’t have figured out that the economy was in very bad shape, driven there mainly by the collapse of a bubble itself driven by government interventions, then we certainly can question their expertise in crafting a solution that ended up doing nothing — and costing us a lot of money in the process with yet another government intervention. The real question at the end of the day is this: opportunity costs. Had the government acted to restrain regulatory growth and allow investors to keep an extra $800 billion in early 2009, would we have created more net jobs by August 2010 than zero? |
Supporters of Herman Cain’s failed 2012 presidential bid received an email on Tuesday warning them that the nation is headed toward the apocalypse because of President Obama’s leadership, Time magazine reported. The message was reportedly sponsored by Nathan Shepard, a self-described “Bible scholar” and “survival expert.” According to Time, Shepard said the U.S. will experience “the end times” in January 2017 when the country will by destroyed by Russia during World War III. The email was sent to the campaign listserv, Time reported, because the former GOP contender merged the email list with that of his business, which supports his conservative talk radio show. The editor-in-chief of Cain’s site told Time the decision to send sponsored emails was a private matter. “HermanCain.com is a media organization,” Dan Calabrese told the magazine. “You have no more business demanding the details of our business relationships with our advertisers than we do demanding the details of yours.” The sponsored email linked to a website where a video showed a photo of President Obama and Pope Francis and warned of a “secret sinister pact.” (Screengrab from the video shown above.) At the end of the video, users were redirected to a page that described how “our church and government are engaged in a massive cover up.” Below is Cain’s email: |
'The Wrench Case' : Inventor vs. Sears: 17-Year-Old Saga Continues In December, 1969, he filed a lawsuit claiming Sears defrauded him when it paid him $10,000 for his patent. Sears claimed that the patent was "legally valueless." Although the federal judicial system has provided a partial resolution of the dispute, it has yet--17 years later--to provide full and final answers. Roberts was a teen-ager when he made a stunningly successful invention--a major advance in socket wrenches--that would make tens of millions of dollars in profits for Sears, the world's largest retailer. In the Federal Circuit, the first visit ended last November, when the court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Bernard M. Decker, who, on June 5, ordered a new trial. The second visit began recently, when Roberts petitioned the Federal Circuit to hold that a third trial would violate his constitutional rights. WASHINGTON — The "wrench case"--Peter M. Roberts vs. Sears, Roebuck & Co.--has shipped eastward from the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to Washington. Twice it made round trips to the Supreme Court, which declined to review rulings of the 7th Circuit Court. Twice later, it came to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Unusual Situation Seldom have the wheels of civil justice ground more slowly in a case brought by an individual. Rarely--and, attorneys say, maybe never--has the system taken so long to resolve a dispute between an individual and a corporation over a patent or other intellectual property right. Neither side is willing to talk about the cost of the case, but legal experts say it must be in the millions. Meanwhile, Roberts has moved from young manhood to his early 40s and fatherhood, and from Gardner, Mass., to Newport, Tenn.; from Newport to Air Force service in England; and from military duty back to Tennessee, where, in Red Bank, he holds down two full-time jobs while his wife holds down a third. His original lawyer, Louis G. Davidson, became ill and, before his death late last year, was replaced as lead counsel by his son, John B. Davidson. Sears, after suffering a severe court setback in the spring of 1982, dropped Arnstein, Gluck, Lehr, Barron & Milligan, which had represented it throughout the case, and hired Latham & Watkins. Peter Roberts' story began in Gardner in 1963. He was 18, had a high school diploma and clerked full-time for Sears. It was still the Dark Ages for socket wrenches, there being none that did not force automobile mechanics, do-it-yourselfers and others into an often awkward use of both hands to replace a socket of one size with another of different size: one hand to hold the wrench, the other to make the replacement. Invented Simple Device On his own time, Roberts transformed wrenchery by inventing a simple quick-release device to enable a user to change sockets easily and quickly with just one hand. He also did the tooling for a prototype and produced one. Then he hired lawyer Charles Fay of Worcester, Mass., to file a patent application. But, aware that Sears was selling about 1 million wrenches a year, Roberts also decided to show his invention and the prototype to his store manager. Roberts was persuaded to submit the invention and the prototype--the only one in existence--as an employee suggestion. He sent them to Sears' office in Chicago on May 7, 1964, noting on the form that a patent application was pending. Soon thereafter, Sears closed its Gardner store, and Roberts moved with his parents to Tennessee. On receipt of the prototype, Sears sponsored physical tests, which showed that the quick-release feature was practical and did not weaken the wrench, and market-acceptance tests, which showed that garage mechanics were enthusiastic. Then, in October, 1964, Sears ordered the quick-release device incorporated into a completely new line of ratchet wrenches that was being prepared for marketing. |
Photographs by Giles Price/Institute, for The New York Times Late on the evening of Sept. 20, 2015, Basim Razzo sat in the study of his home on the eastern side of Mosul, his face lit up by a computer screen. His wife, Mayada, was already upstairs in bed, but Basim could lose hours clicking through car reviews on YouTube: the BMW Alpina B7, the Audi Q7. Almost every night went like this. Basim had long harbored a taste for fast rides, but around ISIS-occupied Mosul, the auto showrooms sat dark, and the family car in his garage — a 1991 BMW — had barely been used in a year. There simply was nowhere to go. The Razzos lived in the Woods, a bucolic neighborhood on the banks of the Tigris, where marble and stucco villas sprawled amid forests of eucalyptus, chinar and pine. Cafes and restaurants lined the riverbanks, but ever since the city fell to ISIS the previous year, Basim and Mayada had preferred to entertain at home. They would set up chairs poolside and put kebabs on the grill, and Mayada would serve pizza or Chinese fried rice, all in an effort to maintain life as they’d always known it. Their son, Yahya, had abandoned his studies at Mosul University and fled for Erbil, and they had not seen him since; those who left when ISIS took over could re-enter the caliphate, but once there, they could not leave — an impasse that stranded people wherever they found themselves. Birthdays, weddings and graduations came and went, the celebrations stockpiled for that impossibly distant moment: liberation. Next door to Basim’s home stood the nearly identical home belonging to his brother, Mohannad, and his wife, Azza. They were almost certainly asleep at that hour, but Basim guessed that their 18-year-old son, Najib, was still up. A few months earlier, he was arrested by the ISIS religious police for wearing jeans and a T-shirt with English writing. They gave him 10 lashes and, as a further measure of humiliation, clipped his hair into a buzz cut. Now he spent most of his time indoors, usually on Facebook. “Someday it’ll all be over,” Najib had posted just a few days earlier. “Until that day, I’ll hold on with all my strength.” Sometimes, after his parents locked up for the night, Najib would fish the key out of the cupboard and steal over to his uncle’s house. Basim had the uncanny ability to make his nephew forget the darkness of their situation. He had a glass-half-full exuberance, grounded in the belief that every human life — every setback and success, every heartbreak and triumph — is written by the 40th day in the womb. Basim was not a particularly religious man, but that small article of faith underpinned what seemed to him an ineluctable truth, even in wartime Iraq: Everything happens for a reason. It was an assurance he offered everyone; Yahya had lost a year’s worth of education, but in exile he had met, and proposed to, the love of his life. “You see?” Basim would tell Mayada. “You see? That’s fate.” Basim had felt this way for as long as he could remember. A 56-year-old account manager at Huawei, the Chinese multinational telecommunications company, he studied engineering in the 1980s at Western Michigan University. He and Mayada lived in Portage, Mich., in a tiny one-bedroom apartment that Mayada also used as the headquarters for her work as an Avon representative; she started small, offering makeup and skin cream to neighbors, but soon expanded sales to Kalamazoo and Comstock. Within a year, she’d saved up enough to buy Basim a $700 Minolta camera. Basim came to rely on her ability to impose order on the strange and the mundane, to master effortlessly everything from Yahya’s chemistry homework to the alien repartee of faculty picnics and Rotary clubs. It was fate. They had been married now for 33 years. Around midnight, Basim heard a thump from the second floor. He peeked out of his office and saw a sliver of light under the door to the bedroom of his daughter, Tuqa. He called out for her to go to bed. At 21, Tuqa would often stay up late, and though Basim knew that he wasn’t a good example himself and that the current conditions afforded little reason to be up early, he believed in the calming power of an early-to-bed, early-to-rise routine. He waited at the foot of the stairs, called out again, and the sliver went dark. It was 1 a.m. when Basim finally shut down the computer and headed upstairs to bed. He settled in next to Mayada, who was fast asleep. Some time later, he snapped awake. His shirt was drenched, and there was a strange taste — blood? — on his tongue. The air was thick and acrid. He looked up. He was in the bedroom, but the roof was nearly gone. He could see the night sky, the stars over Mosul. Basim reached out and found his legs pressed just inches from his face by what remained of his bed. He began to panic. He turned to his left, and there was a heap of rubble. “Mayada!” he screamed. “Mayada!” It was then that he noticed the silence. “Mayada!” he shouted. “Tuqa!” The bedroom walls were missing, leaving only the bare supports. He could see the dark outlines of treetops. He began to hear the faraway, unmistakable sound of a woman’s voice. He cried out, and the voice shouted back, “Where are you?” It was Azza, his sister-in-law, somewhere outside. “Mayada’s gone!” he shouted. “No, no, I’ll find her!” “No, no, no, she’s gone,” he cried back. “They’re all gone!” LATER THAT SAME day, the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria uploaded a video to its YouTube channel. The clip, titled “Coalition Airstrike Destroys Daesh VBIED Facility Near Mosul, Iraq 20 Sept 2015,” shows spectral black-and-white night-vision footage of two sprawling compounds, filmed by an aircraft slowly rotating above. There is no sound. Within seconds, the structures disappear in bursts of black smoke. The target, according to the caption, was a car-bomb factory, a hub in a network of “multiple facilities spread across Mosul used to produce VBIEDs for ISIL’s terrorist activities,” posing “a direct threat to both civilians and Iraqi security forces.” Later, when he found the video, Basim could watch only the first few frames. He knew immediately that the buildings were his and his brother’s houses. The clip is one of hundreds the coalition has released since the American-led war against the Islamic State began in August 2014. Also posted to Defense Department websites, they are presented as evidence of a military campaign unlike any other — precise, transparent and unyielding. In the effort to expel ISIS from Iraq and Syria, the coalition has conducted more than 27,500 strikes to date, deploying everything from Vietnam-era B-52 bombers to modern Predator drones. That overwhelming air power has made it possible for local ground troops to overcome heavy resistance and retake cities throughout the region. “U.S. and coalition forces work very hard to be precise in airstrikes,” Maj. Shane Huff, a spokesman for the Central Command, told us, and as a result “are conducting one of the most precise air campaigns in military history.” American military planners go to great lengths to distinguish today’s precision strikes from the air raids of earlier wars, which were carried out with little or no regard for civilian casualties. They describe a target-selection process grounded in meticulously gathered intelligence, technological wizardry, carefully designed bureaucratic hurdles and extraordinary restraint. Intelligence analysts pass along proposed targets to “targeteers,” who study 3-D computer models as they calibrate the angle of attack. A team of lawyers evaluates the plan, and — if all goes well — the process concludes with a strike so precise that it can, in some cases, destroy a room full of enemy fighters and leave the rest of the house intact. The coalition usually announces an airstrike within a few days of its completion. It also publishes a monthly report assessing allegations of civilian casualties. Those it deems credible are generally explained as unavoidable accidents — a civilian vehicle drives into the target area moments after a bomb is dropped, for example. The coalition reports that since August 2014, it has killed tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and, according to our tally of its monthly summaries, 466 civilians in Iraq. Yet until we raised his case, Basim’s family was not among those counted. Mayada, Tuqa, Mohannad and Najib were four of an unknown number of Iraqi civilians whose deaths the coalition has placed in the “ISIS” column. Estimates from Airwars and other nongovernmental organizations suggest that the civilian death toll is much higher, but the coalition disputes such figures, arguing that they are based not on specific intelligence but local news reports and testimony gathered from afar. When the coalition notes a mission irregularity or receives an allegation, it conducts its own inquiry and publishes a sentence-long analysis of its findings. But no one knows how many Iraqis have simply gone uncounted. Our own reporting, conducted over 18 months, shows that the air war has been significantly less precise than the coalition claims. Between April 2016 and June 2017, we visited the sites of nearly 150 airstrikes across northern Iraq, not long after ISIS was evicted from them. We toured the wreckage; we interviewed hundreds of witnesses, survivors, family members, intelligence informants and local officials; we photographed bomb fragments, scoured local news sources, identified ISIS targets in the vicinity and mapped the destruction through satellite imagery. We also visited the American air base in Qatar where the coalition directs the air campaign. There, we were given access to the main operations floor and interviewed senior commanders, intelligence officials, legal advisers and civilian-casualty assessment experts. We provided their analysts with the coordinates and date ranges of every airstrike — 103 in all — in three ISIS-controlled areas and examined their responses. The result is the first systematic, ground-based sample of airstrikes in Iraq since this latest military action began in 2014. We found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. It is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history. Our reporting, moreover, revealed a consistent failure by the coalition to investigate claims properly or to keep records that make it possible to investigate the claims at all. While some of the civilian deaths we documented were a result of proximity to a legitimate ISIS target, many others appear to be the result simply of flawed or outdated intelligence that conflated civilians with combatants. In this system, Iraqis are considered guilty until proved innocent. Those who survive the strikes, people like Basim Razzo, remain marked as possible ISIS sympathizers, with no discernible path to clear their names. BASIM WOKE UP in a ward at Mosul General Hospital, heavy with bandages. He was disoriented, but he remembered being pried loose from the rubble, the neighbors’ hands all over his body, the backhoe serving him down to the earth, the flashing lights of an ambulance waiting in the distance. The rescuers worked quickly. Everyone knew it had been an airstrike; the planes could return at any minute to finish the job. In the hospital, Basim was hazily aware of nurses and orderlies, but it was not until morning that he saw a familiar face. Mayada’s brother placed a hand on his shoulder. When Basim asked who in his home survived, he was told: nobody. The blast killed Mayada and Tuqa instantly. A second strike hit next door, and Mohannad and Najib were also dead. Only Azza, Najib’s mother, was alive, because the explosion had flung her through a second-story window. With his hip shattered, his pubic bone broken and his back and the sole of his left foot studded with shrapnel, Basim would need major surgery. But no hospital in Mosul, or anywhere in the caliphate, had the personnel or equipment to carry it out. The only hope was to apply for permission to temporarily leave ISIS territory, which required approval from the surprisingly complex ISIS bureaucracy. A friend put in the paperwork, but the ISIS representative denied the request. “Let him die,” he told Basim’s friend. “There were four martyrs. Let him be the fifth.” Basim was moved to his parents’ home on the city’s southern side. For two days, close friends and family members streamed in, but he hardly registered their presence. On the third day, he found himself able to sit up, and he began flipping through the pictures on his phone. One of the last was taken the evening before the attack: Tuqa grinning in the kitchen, clutching a sparkler. For the first time, he began to sob. Then he gathered himself and opened Facebook. “In the middle of the night,” he wrote, “coalition airplanes targeted two houses occupied by innocent civilians. Is this technology? This barbarian attack cost me the lives of my wife, daughter, brother and nephew.” Suddenly, it was as if the whole city knew, and messages poured in. Word filtered to local sheikhs, imams and businessmen. Basim’s own fate was discussed. Favors were called in, and a few weeks later, ISIS granted Basim permission to leave the caliphate. There was one condition: He must put up the deed to some of his family’s property, which would be seized if he did not return. Basim feared traveling to Baghdad; whoever targeted his home might still believe him to be part of ISIS. Turkey seemed like his only option, and the only way to get there was to cross the breadth of Islamic State lands, through Syria. For Basim, the next few days passed in a haze. A hired driver lowered him into a GMC Suburban, its rear seats removed to accommodate the mattress on which he reclined. They drove through the Islamic State countryside, past shabby villages and streams strewn with trash. In the afternoon, they reached Mount Sinjar, where a year earlier, Yazidi women were carted off by ISIS and sold into slavery. “I’m sorry, I have to go fast now,” the driver said, revving up the engine until they were tearing through at 100 m.p.h. Yazidi guerrillas were now taking refuge in the highlands and were known to take aim at the traffic down below. The country opened up into miles and miles of featureless desert. Basim could not distinguish the small Syrian towns they passed but was aware of reaching Raqqa, the capital of the caliphate, and being lifted by a team of pedestrians and moved to a second vehicle. Soon a new driver was rushing Basim along darkened fields of wheat and cotton on narrow, bone-jarring roads. At times, the pain in his hip was unbearable. They stopped to spend the night, but he did not know where. At dawn, they set out again. After a while, the driver reached under his seat and produced a pack of cigarettes, forbidden in the caliphate. Basim was alarmed, but the driver began to laugh. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re now in Free Syrian Army territory.” Before long, the traffic slowed, and they were weaving through streets crowded with refugees and homeless children and Syrian rebels. Basim was pushed across the border on a wheelchair. Waiting on the Turkish side, standing by an ambulance, was his son. Weeping, Yahya bent down to embrace his father. They had not seen each other in a year. Basim spent the next two months in and out of a bed at the Special Orthopedic Hospital in Adana, Turkey. In the long hours between operations, when the painkillers afforded moments of lucidity, he tried to avoid ruminating on his loss. He refused to look at photos of his house, but occasionally at first, and then obsessively, he began replaying his and Mayada’s actions in the days and weeks before the attack, searching for an explanation. Why was his family targeted? Some friends assumed that an ISIS convoy had been nearby, but the video showed nothing moving in the vicinity. What it did show was two direct hits. “O.K., this is my house, and this is Mohannad’s house,” he recalled. “One rocket here, and one rocket there. It was not a mistake.” Basim’s shock and grief were turning to anger. He knew the Americans; he had lived among them. He had always felt he understood them. He desperately wanted to understand why his family was taken from him. “I decided,” he said, “to get justice.” Basim belongs to one of Mosul’s grand old families, among the dozens descended — the story goes — from 40 prophets who settled the baking hot banks of the Tigris, opposite the ancient Assyrian metropolis of Nineveh. Though the city they founded has since acquired a reputation for conservatism, Basim could remember a time of cosmopolitan flair. When he was growing up, domed Yazidi shrines and arched Syriac Orthodox churches stood nearly side by side with mosques and minarets; cafes in the evenings filled with hookah smoke and students steeped in Iraq’s burgeoning free-verse poetry movement. On Thursdays, visitors could find bars, clubs and raucous all-night parties or head to the Station Hotel, built in the central railway depot, where travelers liked to congregate for a drink (and where, to her eternal amusement, Agatha Christie once met the manager, a Syrian Christian named Satan). The wealthy tended to sympathize with the old monarchy or nationalist causes, but the working-class neighborhoods, particularly the Kurdish and Christian quarters, were bastions of Communist support. Islamic fundamentalism was nearly unheard-of, a bizarre doctrine of the fringe. In the 1970s, as Saddam Hussein consolidated power, Mosul’s pluralism began to erode, but Basim would not be around long enough to witness its disappearance. He left for England in 1979 and soon made his way to the United States. Settling into Michigan life was easy. Basim bought a Mustang, figured out health insurance, barbecued, went to cocktail parties and dated a woman he met in England. This development alarmed his parents, who began to pester him to settle down and suggested that he marry his cousin Mayada. He resisted at first, but the allure of making a life with someone from back home proved too great. He married Mayada in 1982, in a small ceremony at his uncle’s home in Ann Arbor, Mich., in front of a dozen people. As the oldest son, Basim felt increasingly concerned about his aging parents, so in 1988, he and Mayada made the difficult decision to move back home permanently. The city they returned to had undergone a shocking transformation. The Iran-Iraq war was winding down, but at a cost of as many as half a million dead Iraqis. The political alternatives of Basim’s youth were gone: Communism had long since been crushed, and Arab nationalism had lost its luster under Hussein’s Baathist dictatorship. Instead, people increasingly described their suffering in the language of faith. The culture was transforming before Basim’s eyes; for the first time, Mayada wrapped herself in a head scarf. Not long after, small networks of religious fundamentalists began appearing in Mosul, preaching to communities devastated by war and United Nations sanctions. Then, in 2003, the United States invaded. One night just a few months afterward, the Americans showed up at the Woods and took over a huge abandoned military barracks across the street from Basim’s property. The next morning, they started cutting down trees. “They said, ‘This is for our security,’ ” Basim recalled. “I said, ‘Your security doesn’t mean destruction of the forest.’ ” Walls of concrete and concertina wire started to appear amid the pine and chinar stands. The barracks became a Joint Coordination Center, or J.C.C., where American troops worked with local security forces. Basim came to know some of the Americans; once, before the center acquired internet access, he helped a soldier send email to his mother back home. Sometimes he would serve as an impromptu translator. Across Iraq, the American invasion had plunged the country into chaos and spawned a nationalist resistance — and amid the social collapse, the zealots seized the pulpit. Al Qaeda in Iraq recruited from Mosul’s shanty towns and outlying villages and from nearby provincial cities like Tal Afar. By 2007, sections of Mosul were in rebellion. By then, the Americans had expanded the mission of the J.C.C., adding a center where Iraqis could file compensation claims for the injury or death of a loved one at the hands of American forces. When the Americans withdrew in 2011, Basim felt as if almost everyone he knew harbored grievances toward the occupation. That same year, on one of his customary rambles around the internet, Basim came upon a TEDx Talk called “A Radical Experiment in Empathy” by Sam Richards, a sociology professor at Penn State. Richards was asking the audience to imagine that China had invaded the United States, plundered its coal and propped up a kleptocratic government. Then he asked the audience to put themselves in the shoes of “an ordinary Arab Muslim living in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq.” He paced across the stage, scenes from the Iraq conflict playing behind him. “Can you feel their anger, their fear, their rage at what has happened to their country?” We visited the locations of nearly 150 airstrikes across northern Iraq, seeking to determine which air force launched them and whom they killed. The American-led coalition now acknowledges that it was the “probable” source of many more of those strikes than previously disclosed. Below are the stories of some of the victims. A. K. and A. G. Basim was transfixed. He’d never seen an American talk this way. That night, he wrote an email. “Dear Dr. Richards, my name is Basim Razzo, and I am a citizen of Iraq,” he began. He described how Iraqis had celebrated the overthrow of Hussein but then lost hope as the war progressed. “Radical Islamists grew as a result of this war, and many ideas grew out of this war which we have never seen or heard before,” he said. “I thank you very much for your speech to enlighten the American public about this war.” Richards invited Basim to begin speaking to his classes over Skype, and a friendship blossomed. Years later, Richards saw Basim’s Facebook post describing the attack and ran it through Google Translate. He and his wife spent hours messaging with Basim, trying to console him. In the end, Richards had signed off, “This American friend of yours, this American brother, sends you a virtual hug.” Now, as Basim lay in bed in the Special Orthopedic Hospital in Adana, he found his thoughts returning to the old Joint Coordination Center next to his house in Mosul and the condolence payments they used to offer. He knew that he would never recover the full extent of his losses, but he needed to clear his name. And he wanted an accounting. He decided that as soon as he recuperated, he would seek compensation. It was the only way he could imagine that an Iraqi civilian might sit face to face with a representative of the United States military. The idea that civilian victims of American wars deserve compensation was, until recently, a radical notion floating on the edges of military doctrine. Under international humanitarian law, it is legal for states to kill civilians in war when they are not specifically targeted, so long as “indiscriminate attacks” are not used and the number of civilian deaths is not disproportionate to the military advantage gained. Compensating victims, the argument went, would hinder the state’s ability to wage war. Even the Foreign Claims Act, the one American law on the books that allows civilians to be compensated for injury or death at the hands of United States military personnel, exempts losses due to combat. Over the years, however, war planners have come to see strategic value in payments as a good-will gesture. During the Korean War, American commanders sometimes offered token cash or other gifts to wronged civilians, in a nod to local custom. These payments were designed to be symbolic expressions of condolence, not an official admission of wrongdoing or compensation for loss. During the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, war planners began to focus more seriously on condolence payments, seeing them as a way to improve relations with locals and forestall revenge attacks. Soon, American forces were disbursing thousands of dollars yearly to civilians who suffered losses because of combat operations, for everything from property damage to the death of a family member. Because the military still refused to consider the payments as compensation for loss, the system became capricious almost by design. Rebuilding a home could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, on top of several thousands’ worth of furniture and other possessions. Medical bills could amount to thousands of dollars, especially for prostheses and rehabilitation. Losing government documents, like ID cards, could mean years of navigating a lumbering bureaucracy. The American condolence system addressed none of this. Payouts varied from one unit to the next, making the whole process seem arbitrary, mystifying or downright cruel to recipients: Payouts in Afghanistan, for example, ranged from as little as $124.13 in one civilian death to $15,000 in another. In 2003, an activist from Northern California named Marla Ruzicka showed up in Baghdad determined to overhaul the system. She founded Civic, now known as the Center for Civilians in Conflict, and collected evidence of civilians killed in American military operations. She discovered not only that there were many more than expected but also that the assistance efforts for survivors were remarkably haphazard and arbitrary. Civic championed the cause in Washington and found an ally in Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont. In 2005, Ruzicka was killed by a suicide blast in Baghdad, but her efforts culminated in legislation that established a fund to provide Iraqi victims of American combat operations with nonmonetary assistance — medical care, home reconstruction — that served, in practice, as compensation. When the Americans withdrew in 2011, however, all condolence programs went defunct, and they were not revived when the United States began the war against ISIS in 2014. The Marla Ruzicka Iraqi War Victims Fund itself — the only program specifically designed to aid war victims still in effect — has turned to other priorities and no longer provides assistance to civilian survivors of American combat operations. When we asked the State Department whether civilian victims of American airstrikes could turn to the Marla Fund for assistance, they were unable to provide an answer. The two most recent military spending bills also authorized millions of dollars for condolence payments, but the Defense Department has failed to enact these provisions or even propose a plan for how it might disburse that money. In fact, in the course of our investigation, we learned that not a single person in Iraq or Syria has received a condolence payment for a civilian death since the war began in 2014. “There really isn’t a process,” a senior Central Command official told us. “It’s not that anyone is against it; it just hasn’t been done, so it’s almost an aspirational requirement.” With Mosul and Raqqa now out of ISIS control, the coalition is “not going to spend a lot of time thinking about” condolence payments, said Col. John Thomas, a spokesman for Central Command. “We’re putting our efforts into community safety and returning refugees to some sort of home.” While assisting civilian victims is no longer a military priority, some authorities appear to remain concerned about retaliation. About a year after the strike on Basim’s house, his cousin Hussain Al-Rizzo, a systems-engineering professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, received a visit from an F.B.I. agent. The agent, he said, asked if the deaths of his relatives in an American airstrike made him in his “heart of hearts sympathize with the bad guys.” Hussain, who has lived in the United States since 1987, was stunned by the question. He said no. In late December 2015, after three operations, Basim moved to Baghdad to live with Yahya in a five-bedroom house next door to his nephew Abdullah, Mohannad’s oldest son. Eight screws were drilled into his left hip, a titanium plate stabilized his right hip and a six-inch scar mapped a line across his abdomen. His pain was unremitting. He was out of work and had little more than the clothes he took when escaping Mosul. His computer, the photo albums, the wedding gifts Mayada had packed for Yahya — all of it was buried under rubble. Basim channeled his frustrations into proving his case to the Americans. With a quiet compulsiveness, he scoured the web, studying Google Earth images. He asked a niece, still living inside Mosul, to take clandestine photographs of the site, including close-ups of bomb fragments. He inventoried his lost possessions. He contacted everyone he’d met who might have links to the American authorities: acquaintances from Michigan, his cousins in Arkansas, a relative who was an assistant professor at Yale University. His best hope was Sam Richards, the professor at Penn State: One of his former students was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and she helped him get an appointment at the United States Embassy in Baghdad. On a rainy Sunday in February 2016, Yahya drove Basim to the perimeter of the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad. He proceeded into the fortified compound by walker and then boarded a minibus for the embassy, carrying a nine-page document he had compiled. Because there was no established mechanism for Iraqi victims to meet American officials, his appointment was at the American Citizen Services section. He pressed against the window and showed the consular officer his dossier. One page contained satellite imagery of the Razzo houses, and others contained before-and-after photos of the destruction. Between them were photos of each victim: Mayada sipping tea, Tuqa in the back yard, Najib in a black-and-white self-portrait and a head shot of Mohannad, an engineering professor, his academic credentials filling the rest of the page. The most important issue, Basim had written, was that his family was now “looked at as members of ISIS” by the Iraqi authorities. This threatened to be a problem, especially after the city’s liberation. The consular officer, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, was moved. “I have people coming in every day that lie to me, that come with these sob stories,” the officer remembered telling him, “but I believe you.” When Basim emerged onto the street, the rain was beating down, and a passer-by held out an umbrella as he hobbled to a taxi. Two months passed, and Basim heard nothing. He wrote to the officer and reattached the report, asking for an update, but he received no reply. He tried again the next month and was told that his case had been “forwarded.” Then more silence. We first met Basim not long after, in the spring of 2016, in a quiet cafe in Baghdad’s Mansour district. Basim’s cousin’s wife, Zareena Grewal, the Yale professor, had written an Op-Ed in The New York Times about the attack. We had already been investigating the larger problem of civilian airstrikes for several months, so we contacted him to learn more about his story. Nearly half the country was still under ISIS control, and all along Mansour’s palm-shaded sidewalks were the resplendent bursts of militia flags and posters of angelic-looking young men who had fallen on the front. Around the city, residents were living under a pall of suspicion that they were Islamic State sympathizers, a target for rogue militias and vengeful security forces, and Basim was eager to move north to Erbil. This was another reason he was determined to meet the Americans — not only for compensation but also for a letter attesting to their mistake, to certify that he did not belong to ISIS. “We’ll hear something soon,” Basim assured us. But as the summer months came and went, still without word, Basim’s confidence began to waver. In September, nearly a year after the airstrike, he tried emailing the embassy again. This time he received a response: “The recipient’s mailbox is full and can’t accept messages now. Please try resending this message later, or contact the recipient directly.” (The consular officer later told us that when Basim’s case was referred to a military attorney, the attorney replied, “There’s no way to prove that the U.S. was involved.”) In November, we wrote to the coalition ourselves, explaining that we were reporters working on an article about Basim. We provided details about his family and his efforts to reach someone in authority and included a link to the YouTube video the coalition posted immediately after the strike. A public-affairs officer responded, “There is nothing in the historical log for 20 SEP 2015,” the date the coalition had assigned to the strike video. Not long after, the video disappeared from the coalition’s YouTube channel. We responded by providing the GPS coordinates of Basim’s home, his emails to the State Department and an archived link to the YouTube video, which unlike the videos on the Pentagon’s website allow for comments underneath — including those that Basim’s family members left nearly a year before. “I will NEVER forget my innocent and dear cousins who died in this pointless airstrike,” wrote Aisha Al-Rizzo, Tuqa’s 16-year-old cousin from Arkansas. “You are murderers,” wrote Basim and Mohannad’s cousin Hassan al-Razzo. “You kill innocents with cold blood and then start creating justification.” “How could you do that?” wrote another relative. “You don’t have a heart.” Over the coming weeks, one by one, the coalition began removing all the airstrike videos from YouTube. When ISIS left a mortar in Qaiyara’s rail yard, a local informant passed on the coordinates for an airstrike. The strikes hit the rail yard (below), but ISIS had moved on. Instead, the homes of Salam al-Odeh and Aaz-Aldin Muhammad Alwan were hit. Salam’s wife, Harbia, hung on until she reached the hospital, where she told her relatives what happened, then died of her injuries. A few weeks later, her son Musab died of his wounds, too. Of the eight people living in the two homes struck, only Rawa (below), who was 2, survived. The Coalition’s air war in Iraq is directed largely from the Combined Air Operations Center, quartered inside Al-Udeid Air Base in the desert outskirts of Doha, Qatar. As a shared hub for the Qatari Air Force, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force and Central Command, among others, Udeid hosts some of the longest runways in the Middle East, as well as parking lots full of hulking KC-135 Stratotanker refueling planes, a huge swimming pool and a Pizza Hut. An alarm blares occasional high-temperature alerts, but the buildings themselves are kept so frigid that aviators sometimes wear extra socks as mittens. When we visited in May, several uniformed officials walked us through the steps they took to avoid civilian casualties. The process seemed staggeringly complex — the wall-to-wall monitors, the soup of acronyms, the army of lawyers — but the impressively choreographed operation was designed to answer two basic questions about each proposed strike: Is the proposed target actually ISIS? And will attacking this ISIS target harm civilians in the vicinity? As we sat around a long conference table, the officers explained how this works in the best-case scenario, when the coalition has weeks or months to consider a target. Intelligence streams in from partner forces, informants on the ground, electronic surveillance and drone footage. Once the coalition decides a target is ISIS, analysts study the probability that striking it will kill civilians in the vicinity, often by poring over drone footage of patterns of civilian activity. The greater the likelihood of civilian harm, the more mitigating measures the coalition takes. If the target is near an office building, the attack might be rescheduled for nighttime. If the area is crowded, the coalition might adjust its weaponry to limit the blast radius. Sometimes aircraft will even fire a warning shot, allowing people to escape targeted facilities before the strike. An official showed us grainy night-vision footage of this technique in action: Warning shots hit the ground near a shed in Deir al-Zour, Syria, prompting a pair of white silhouettes to flee, one tripping and picking himself back up, as the cross hairs follow. Once the targeting team establishes the risks, a commander must approve the strike, taking care to ensure that the potential civilian harm is not “excessive relative to the expected military advantage gained,” as Lt. Col. Matthew King, the center’s deputy legal adviser, explained. After the bombs drop, the pilots and other officials evaluate the strike. Sometimes a civilian vehicle can suddenly appear in the video feed moments before impact. Or, through studying footage of the aftermath, they might detect signs of a civilian presence. Either way, such a report triggers an internal assessment in which the coalition determines, through a review of imagery and testimony from mission personnel, whether the civilian casualty report is credible. If so, the coalition makes refinements to avoid future civilian casualties, they told us, a process that might include reconsidering some bit of intelligence or identifying a flaw in the decision-making process. Most of the civilian deaths acknowledged by the coalition emerge from this internal reporting process. Often, though, watchdogs or journalists bring allegations to the coalition, or officials learn about potential civilian deaths through social media. The coalition ultimately rejects a vast majority of such external reports. It will try to match the incident to a strike in its logs to determine whether it was indeed its aircraft that struck the location in question (the Iraqi Air Force also carries out strikes). If so, it then scours its drone footage, pilot videos, internal records and, when they believe it is warranted, social media and other open-source information for corroborating evidence. Each month, the coalition releases a report listing those allegations deemed credible, dismissing most of them on the grounds that coalition aircraft did not strike in the vicinity or that the reporter failed to provide sufficiently precise information about the time and place of the episode. (The coalition counts both aircraft and artillery attacks in its strike figures; we excluded artillery attacks.) In the eyes of the coalition, its diligence on these matters points to a dispiriting truth about war: Supreme precision can reduce civilian casualties to a very small number, but that number will never reach zero. They speak of every one of the acknowledged deaths as tragic but utterly unavoidable. “We’re not happy with it, and we’re never going to be happy with it,” said Thomas, the Central Command spokesman. “But we’re pretty confident we do the best we can to try to limit these things.” Because so much of this process is hidden — through March, the coalition released only one internal investigation from Iraq, a strike that hit a civilian vehicle in the Hatra district southwest of Mosul — its thoroughness is difficult to evaluate independently. The pre-eminent organization that seeks to do so is Airwars, a nonprofit based in London that monitors news reports, accounts by nongovernmental organizations, social-media posts and the coalition’s own public statements. Airwars tries to triangulate these sources and grade each allegation from “fair” to “disputed.” As of October, it estimates that up to 3,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in coalition airstrikes — six times as many as the coalition has stated in its public summaries. But Chris Woods, the organization’s director, told us that Airwars itself “may be significantly underreporting deaths in Iraq,” because the local reporting there is weaker than in other countries that Airwars monitors. The coalition sees the same problem but draws the opposite conclusion. In a September opinion article in Foreign Policy, with the headline “Reports of Civilian Casualties in the War Against ISIS Are Vastly Inflated,” Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the coalition’s former top commander, wrote: “Our critics are unable to conduct the detailed assessments the coalition does. They arguably often rely on scant information phoned in or posted by questionable sources.” Counting civilian deaths in war zones has always been a difficult and controversial endeavor. The Iraq Body Count project, which sought to record civilian deaths after the 2003 invasion using techniques similar to Airwars, was flooded with criticism for both undercounting and overcounting. The Lancet, a medical journal, published studies based on surveys of Iraqi households that detractors alleged were not statistically sound. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have conducted ground investigations, but usually for only a handful of strikes at a time. Yet the coalition, the institution best placed to investigate civilian death claims, does not itself routinely dispatch investigators on the ground, citing access and security concerns, meaning there has not been such a rigorous ground investigation of this air war — or any American-led air campaign — since Human Rights Watch analyzed the civilian toll of the NATO bombing in Kosovo, a conflict that ended in 1999. In our interview at the base, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, commander of the United States Air Forces Central Command at Udeid, told us what was missing. “Ground truth, that’s what you’re asking for,” he said. “We see what we see from altitude and pull in from other reports. Your perspective is talking to people on the ground.” He paused, and then offered what he thought it would take to arrive at the truth: “It’s got to be a combination of both.” In early 2016, an ISIS patrol forced its way into the home of Rafi al-Iraqi (below, with his children), demanding the family’s cellphones. Sama (right), Rafi’s 10-year-old daughter, burst into tears and produced her mother’s phone, which contained negative messages about ISIS that she had recently sent to her sister in Erbil. Rafi and his wife were arrested and interrogated, but only he was released. When Rafi asked about his wife, he was told, “We’ll bring her to you.” Not long after, the family received her bullet-riddled body. Almost precisely a year later, at the height of the Mosul offensive, an airstrike leveled Rafi’s house and two others next door. Only Rafi, his mother and his 12-year-old son, Mohammed (far left), survived. Investigating civilian harm on the ground is difficult but not impossible. In the spring of 2016, we began our own effort, visiting Iraqi cities and towns recently liberated from ISIS control. Ultimately, we selected three areas in Nineveh Province, traveling to the location of every airstrike that took place during ISIS control in each — 103 sites in all. These areas encompassed the range of ISIS-controlled settlements in size and population makeup: downtown Shura, a small provincial town that was largely abandoned during periods of heavy fighting; downtown Qaiyara, a suburban municipality; and Aden, a densely packed city neighborhood in eastern Mosul. The sample would arguably provide a conservative estimate of the civilian toll: It did not include western Mosul, which may have suffered the highest number of civilian deaths in the entire war. Nor did it include any strikes conducted after December 2016, when a rule change allowed more ground commanders to call in strikes, possibly contributing to a sharp increase in the death toll. The areas we visited had undergone intense attacks of all kinds over the previous two years: airstrikes, sniper fire, mortars, rockets, improvised explosive devices, demolitions by ISIS, demolitions by anti-ISIS vigilantes and more. Our approach required mapping each area, identifying the sites that had been struck from the air and excluding those damaged by Iraqi forces in close-quarters ground combat. Finally, we determined who or what had been hit. In addition to interviewing hundreds of witnesses, we dug through the debris for bomb fragments, tracked down videos of airstrikes in the area and studied before-and-after satellite imagery. We also obtained and analyzed more than 100 coordinate sets for suspected ISIS sites passed on by intelligence informants. We then mapped each neighborhood door to door, identifying houses where ISIS members were known to have lived and locating ISIS facilities that could be considered legitimate targets. We scoured the wreckage of each strike for materials suggesting an ISIS presence, like weapons, literature and decomposed remains of fighters. We verified every allegation with local administrators, security forces or health officials. In Qaiyara’s residential district, where small wheat-colored homes sit behind low concrete walls, one or two structures had been reduced to rubble on almost every block. We went to all of them. A significant part of our efforts involved determining which air force — Iraqi or coalition — carried out each strike. Either way, according to official accounts, the air war in Qaiyara was remarkably precise: The coalition has stated that it killed only one civilian in or near the town, while the Iraqi Air Force has not acknowledged any civilian deaths in the area. It was soon clear that many more had died. We visited one house that stood partly intact but for the rear alcove, which had been pancaked. A woman stepped out from the front of the structure, three children orbiting her. She told us her name, Inas Hamadi. “My children died here,” she said. “It happened so quickly.” One of the surviving children, Wiham, 11, remembered waking up to the sound of aircraft and running under the stairs to hide with her six siblings and cousins. Then the house was struck, collapsing the staircase onto them. Riam, 8, and Daoud, 5, did not survive. “Daoud’s body was full of shrapnel,” Wiham said. “Riam had a hole beside her ear and a hole in her brain. She looked around and was dizzy.” The strike was witnessed by neighbors, who helped rescue the children. Everyone agreed that the target was most likely the hospital or a pair of homes on the next street, all of which had been commandeered by ISIS. We collected the names and photographs of the dead and checked satellite imagery to confirm the date range of the strike. The deaths were never reported, were never recorded in any public database and were not investigated by the coalition. We continued in this fashion, door to door. What we found was sobering: During the two years that ISIS ruled downtown Qaiyara, an area of about one square mile, there were 40 airstrikes, 13 of which killed 43 civilians — 19 men, eight women and 16 children, ages 14 or younger. In the same period, according to the Iraqi federal police, ISIS executed 18 civilians in downtown Qaiyara. In Shura and Aden, we found a similar discrepancy between the number of civilian deaths on the ground and the number reported by the coalition. Through dozens of interviews at each site in all three locations, along with our house-to-house mapping, we tried to determine the reasons behind each airstrike that killed civilians. Coalition officials say ISIS fighters embedded in the population, making it difficult to avoid hitting civilians nearby. This appeared to be the case for about one-third of the deadly strikes — for example, a September 2016 strike on an ISIS-occupied primary school in Shura that killed three civilians in the vicinity. But in about half of the strikes that killed civilians, we could find no discernible ISIS target nearby. Many of these strikes appear to have been based on poor or outdated intelligence. For example, last fall we visited a bombed-out house on the edge of Qaiyara, near the rail yard. It belonged to the family of Salam al-Odeh; neighbors and relatives told us the family had been sleeping one night when they awoke to the shudder of an airstrike nearby. Sometimes strikes came in pairs, so Salam’s wife, Harbia, scooped up their baby, Bara, and ran out the door. Salam scrambled to save his other children — his daughter, Rawa, and his sons, Musab and Hussein. But then a second strike hit. Salam, the baby and Hussein were killed instantly. His wife hung on until she reached the hospital, where she told her relatives what happened, but then died from her injuries. A few weeks later, Musab died of his wounds too. Only Rawa, who was 2, survived. Several months later, we found the person who called in the strike, one of the coalition’s main sources in Qaiyara, a local Iraqi official we are not identifying for his safety. He told us that while on a walk one day, he spotted an ISIS mortar under a clump of trees near the rail yard and transmitted the coordinates. (Neighbors also told us that ISIS had occupied and then abandoned a house in the area a year earlier, which a different informant may have told the coalition about.) By the time the information made its way to the coalition and it decided to act, the mortar had been moved. Such intelligence failures suggest that not all civilian casualties are unavoidable tragedies; some deaths could be prevented if the coalition recognizes its past failures and changes its operating assumptions accordingly. But in the course of our investigation, we found that it seldom did either. In June, for example, we visited an electrical substation occupying several blocks of the Aden neighborhood in eastern Mosul. On the evening of April 20, 2015, aircraft bombed the station, causing a tremendous explosion that engulfed the street. Muthana Ahmed Tuaama, a university student, told us his brother rushed into the blaze to rescue the wounded, when a second blast shook the facility. “I found my brother at the end of the street,” he said. “I carried him.” Body parts littered the alleyway. “You see those puddles of water,” he said. “It was just like that, but full of blood.” We determined that at least 18 civilians died in this one attack and that many more were grievously wounded. News of the strike was picked up by local bloggers, national Iraqi outlets and ISIS propaganda channels and was submitted as an allegation to the coalition by Airwars. Months later, the coalition announced the results of its investigation, stating that there was “insufficient evidence to find that civilians were harmed in this strike.” Yet even a cursory internet search offers significant evidence that civilians were harmed: We found disturbingly graphic videos of the strike’s aftermath on YouTube, showing blood-soaked toddlers and children with their legs ripped off. A key part of the coalition’s investigation process is to match civilian casualty accusations against its own logs. Chris Umphres, an Air Force captain at Udeid who assesses allegations of civilian casualties, told us that military investigators possess the coordinates of “every single strike conducted by coalition forces,” crucial information unavailable to the typical journalist. “We have 100 percent accountability of where all of our weapons are employed.” We found this to not always be the case. For every location we visited, we submitted GPS coordinates to determine whether it was the coalition or the Iraqi Air Force that bombed the site. At first, the coalition told us it did not have the time or the staff to check more than a handful of the coordinates. But eventually, a team of Air Force analysts at Udeid agreed to compare the dates and coordinates of each of the 103 sites in our sample with those the coalition had recorded in its airstrike log. If a strike in our sample occurred within 50 meters of a strike that was recorded in the logs, they classified it as a “probable coalition airstrike,” while assessing those outside this range — that is, anything more than a couple of house-lengths away — as “unlikely.” By this measure, 30 of the 103 strike sites in the sample we submitted are probable coalition strikes. But other evidence suggests that the coalition was responsible for many more. Human rights organizations have repeatedly found discrepancies between the dates or locations of strikes and those recorded in the logs. In one instance, the coalition deemed an allegation regarding a strike in the Al-Thani neighborhood of Tabqa, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2016, as “not credible,” explaining that the nearest airstrike was more than a kilometer away. After Human Rights Watch dispatched researchers to the ground and discovered evidence to the contrary, the coalition acknowledged the strike as its own. We found many such discrepancies. For instance, the Air Force analysts said it was unlikely that the coalition had struck Qaiyara’s water-sanitation facility because the logs recorded the nearest strike as 600 meters away, which would place it outside the compound entirely. Yet we discovered a video — uploaded by the coalition itself — showing a direct strike on that very facility. (When we asked Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, director of public affairs at Udeid, about this discrepancy, he said he could only report “what the strike log shows.”) Similarly, we were told that a strike we identified on Qaiyara’s main bridge was unlikely to be by the coalition, because the nearest strike was on a truck 150 meters away. We again found a coalition video showing a direct hit on the structure. Pickart explained the inconsistency by saying the coalition had conducted multiple strikes on various targets within an hourlong period, only one of which was included in the official log. The most common justification the coalition gives when denying civilian casualty allegations is that it has no record of carrying out a strike at the time or area in question. If incomplete accounts like these are standard practice, it calls into question the coalition’s ability to determine whether any strike is its own. Still, even using the most conservative rubric and selecting only those 30 airstrikes the Air Force analysts classified as “probable” coalition airstrikes, we found at least 21 civilians had been killed in six strikes. Expanding to the 65 strikes that fell within 600 meters — for example, the strikes on the home of Inas Hamadi in Qaiyara and the electrical substation in Aden — pushed that figure to at least 54 killed in 15 strikes. No matter which threshold we used, though, the results from our sample were consistent: One of every five airstrikes killed a civilian. To understand how radically different our assessment is from the coalition’s own, consider this: According to the coalition’s available data, 89 of its more than 14,000 airstrikes in Iraq have resulted in civilian deaths, or about one of every 157 strikes. The rate we found on the ground — one out of every five — is 31 times as high. Last December, 15 months after the attack, following a long, tangled chain of emails and phone calls, the coalition confirmed that it had indeed carried out an airstrike on Basim and Mohannad’s homes. It acknowledged that it had, in fact, conducted an internal inquiry — a “credibility assessment” — the previous autumn after Zareena Grewal, Basim’s relative at Yale, wrote the Op-Ed in The Times. The assessment, completed on Oct. 30, 2015, concluded that the allegation was “credible”; this meant the coalition had known for more than a year that it had “more likely than not” killed civilians and that it had recommended a full investigation into the strike, even as Basim’s attempts to reach the coalition were being ignored. Despite this finding, the coalition neglected to include the incident in its public tally of deaths — which, in Iraq at that time, stood at 76 civilians — because of what Col. Joseph Scrocca, a coalition spokesman, called “an administrative oversight.” Basim’s case had now become impossible to ignore. Based on the evidence we provided, Maj. Gen. Scott Kindsvater, then an Air Force deputy commander, ordered an internal investigation to determine what might have gone wrong on the night of the strike. And then, on Feb. 14, for the first time in the 17 months since the attack, Basim received an email from the coalition. “We deeply regret this unintentional loss of life in an attempt to defeat Da’esh,” Scrocca wrote, using another term for ISIS. “We are prepared to offer you a monetary expression of our sympathy and regret for this unfortunate incident.” He invited Basim to come to Erbil to discuss the matter. Basim was the first person to receive such an offer, in Iraq or Syria, during the entire anti-ISIS war. Early in the morning of his scheduled meeting, Basim dreamed about Mayada. He could feel her skin next to his. He suddenly felt a surge of regret for things said and left unsaid, accrued over a lifetime together. He awoke in tears. “I washed my face,” he said, “did my morning prayer and sent her my prayers. It made me calmer.” It was March 17. The air outside was soft and cool; Erbil had finally experienced rainfall after a parched winter. The coalition had asked Basim to go to Erbil International Airport, where he would be picked up and taken to meet coalition representatives and receive a condolence payment. He invited us to join him, and we agreed. Basim did not know how much money the Americans would offer, but he had spent hours calculating the actual damages: $500,000 for his and Mohannad’s homes, furnishings and belongings; $22,000 for two cars; and $13,000 in medical bills from Turkey. We stood waiting in the parking lot. A white S.U.V. with tinted windows rolled by. A family emerged from a taxi, the father juggling two suitcases and a toddler, heading off on what appeared to be a vacation. Basim checked his phone to see the latest messages from friends in Mosul. It had been a month since Iraqi forces seized the eastern half of the city, but the Woods were still too dangerous to visit because ISIS controlled the opposite bank and was lobbing mortars across the river. On the west side, thousands were trapped in the Old City, and Basim heard stories that ISIS was welding doors shut to keep people in their homes, holding them hostage against heavy artillery and air power. That morning, an airstrike flattened almost an entire city block in the Mosul Jidideh neighborhood — killing 105 civilians, according to the coalition, or possibly double that number, according to Airwars, in either case making it one of the largest aerial massacres since the war began. It was late afternoon, 30 minutes past the meeting time, when an S.U.V. rolled up, an American in Army fatigues behind the wheel. We climbed in, and the truck moved off through the sprawling airfield, past rows of parked helicopters, toward a set of hangars. Basim struggled to maintain his composure. He’d imagined this day a hundred times, but now he wasn’t sure what to say, how to act. The driver made small talk about the weather, the winter drought, the needs of farmers. He pulled the truck around to a prefab trailer ringed by blast walls. Inside, sitting around a large wooden table, were more American soldiers. Capt. Jaclyn Feeney, an Army attorney, introduced herself and invited Basim to be seated. “We just wanted to start by expressing our deepest sympathies, not only on behalf of the Army but on behalf of myself,” she said. “We do take the closest care in what we do here, but it’s high risk, and sometimes we make mistakes. We try our best to prevent those mistakes, but we hope that since we did make a mistake here, we can do everything that we can to right it, as best we can. I know there’s nothing that I can say that can make up for the loss that you’ve — ” “The only thing that cannot be returned is the loss of life,” Basim said. His hands gripped the armrests, as if he were using every ounce of energy to stay seated. He struggled to keep his voice steady. “Everything else could be redone or rebuilt. The loss of life is unrepairable.” “Certainly. We are prepared to offer you a condolence payment,” Feeney replied. “It’s not meant to recompensate you for what you’ve lost, or for rebuilding or anything like that. It’s just meant to be an expression of our sympathy, our apologies for your loss.” Outside, a plane lifted off, and the room trembled. Feeney was holding documents in her hand. “And so for that reason, we are capped in the amount that we can give you. So the amount in U.S. dollars is $15,000, which we will be paying you in Iraqi dinars, so 17,550,000 dinars. And so, if you’re willing to accept that — ” Basim looked at her in disbelief. “No.” “You’re not willing to accept that?” “This is — this is an insult to me. No, I will not accept it. I’m sorry.” Feeney looked stunned. “I’m sorry also,” she said. Moments passed, and everyone sat in silence. Feeney explained again that they were capped by their own regulations. Basim replied, “This is, I have to say, I’m sorry to say, ridiculous.” Basim said he wanted official documentation proving his innocence, so that he could return safely to Mosul one day. Feeney promised to make some calls. The meeting quickly came to an end. Basim walked out into the late-afternoon air. Traffic at the airport had picked up: buses overloaded with families, children sticking their elbows out of taxis. Basim drove home in disbelief, as if he were living through an elaborate hoax and the Americans would call back any minute with a serious offer. The truth was, he never expected to recover the full extent of his material losses, and he knew the military was not in the business of compensation, only condolence, but after so many months, so much back and forth, the humiliation burned. “This is what an Iraqi is worth,” he said. At home, he considered his options. He wanted a lawyer — but from where? Could an Iraqi find an American attorney? The amount the coalition had offered exceeded its own guidelines, which stipulated $2,500 per Iraqi, but did not cover Mohannad and Najib, which meant he — or his sister-in-law — would potentially have to endure this process again. He considered traveling to the United States to find an advocate, but getting a visa was almost impossible. Once, in the first months after the attack, he even wanted to move there, seek asylum. Now the thought seemed absurd. Despite everything, Basim could not bring himself to hate Americans. In fact, this experience was further evidence for a theory he had harbored for a while: that he, fellow Iraqis and even ordinary Americans were all bit players in a drama bigger than any of them. A few weeks later, he spoke to Sociology 119, Sam Richards’s Race and Ethnic Relations class at Penn State. “I have nothing against the regular American citizen,” he told the class of some 750 students. “I lived among you guys for eight years. I was never bothered by any person — in fact, many of them were very helpful to me.” “This situation of war,” he continued, “big corporations are behind it.” This is where the real power lay, not with individual Americans. He’d come to believe that his family, along with all Iraqis, had been caught in the grinder of grand forces like oil and empire, and that the only refuge lay in something even grander: faith. He had rediscovered his religion. “There was some bond that grew between me and my God. I thanked him for keeping my son alive. I thanked him that my operation was successful. Now I can walk.” It was the same God who had written out his whole life from the 40th day in the womb. Basim’s faith in this divinely authored fate had become a calming current, coursing through his every waking moment. “Sometimes I go out with my friends,” Basim told the students. “But when I come back home, when I go to bed and thoughts start coming into my head about my wife, what would have happened probably five years from now, my daughter would be in college, she wanted to study this and that — there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about them. But in the end, life goes on.” Ahmed al-Layla tried to persuade his parents to escape from Mosul with his sister, Eaman, and join him in Erbil, but they were stubborn. His father, Mohammed Tayeb al-Layla (below left), a former dean of engineering at Mosul University, refused to abandon his prized library, shelf after shelf of books on engineering and soil mechanics. As the Iraqi Army approached, neighbors told us, several ISIS fighters broke into the home, climbed to the roof and assumed sniper positions. Ahmed’s father raced up in pursuit, with Ahmed’s mother, Dr. Fatima Habbal (below right), a prominent gynecologist, close behind. Not long after, an airstrike flattened the home, killing the snipers, along with Ahmed’s parents and sister. This spring, Iraqi forces pushed deeper into western Mosul, into the Old City, a hive of stacked houses that lean over narrow streets. The neighborhood was being pounded with airstrikes and mortars, while ISIS was refusing to allow people to leave. Basim learned that three in-laws of Abdullah, Mohannad’s son — a pregnant woman, her husband and his father — had tried to bribe their way to the east side but were caught and beheaded. Nearly everyone was telling such stories. Meanwhile, word spread that Basim had taken his case to the coalition, and aggrieved families started to reach out for advice. Basim felt like an elder statesman of heartbreak, and he offered whatever counsel he could. The strike on his house remained a great mystery, though, and not a day passed when he did not retrace the hours and days before the attack, wondering what could have brought it on. In April, through the Freedom of Information Act, we finally obtained a portion of the coalition’s internal probe of the strike on the Razzo homes. As Basim read though a dozen partly redacted pages, a story began to emerge — the coalition had been receiving intelligence that his and Mohannad’s houses were an ISIS command center. The report suggests that this may have been because of the J.C.C. next door; Basim recalled that ISIS briefly occupied the J.C.C. when it first conquered Mosul but had long since abandoned the facility. Yet the coalition’s intelligence source apparently passed along this outdated information and in the process confused his house with the J.C.C. Next, according to the report, the coalition dispatched a drone to surveil the property. Over three days, in 15-to-30-minute windows, his house was filmed. The investigation acknowledged that “no overtly nefarious activity was observed,” but nonetheless everything the coalition witnessed confirmed its conviction that it was filming a terrorist headquarters. No weapons were visible, but the report noted that ISIS “does not obviously brandish weapons,” so as to go undetected. Occasionally Basim or Mohannad would open their shared gate to the street, allowing a guest to enter. The coalition simply saw men opening a gate, an action that it determined was consistent with the activity of an ISIS headquarters. And, perhaps most important, the report stated that the coalition did not observe any women or children outdoors — although in the ISIS-controlled city, women rarely left the house to avoid the religious police, and most filming had occurred under the blistering afternoon sun, when almost everyone stayed indoors. Though the Razzos hadn’t known it, the burden of proof had been on them to demonstrate to a drone watching them from above that they were civilians — guilty until proved innocent. In the end, 95 minutes of unremarkable footage had sealed the fate of Mayada, Tuqa, Mohannad and Najib. The report concluded that there was “no evidence indicating carelessness or bad faith” on the part of the coalition and that its targeting process “remains sound.” (It also declared that because of an equipment error, the drone footage no longer existed for investigators to review.) Yet to Basim, the truth seemed just the opposite: The coalition had disregarded ground realities and acted on flimsy intelligence. Not long after receiving the report, Basim decided to return to the Woods. It was risky to visit — ISIS was still controlling neighborhoods on the opposite bank — but he wanted to see, to touch, what was left, and he took us along. We set out in the early morning, driving past dusty abandoned villages, through checkpoints sporting brilliant hoists of red, blue and green militia flags and onto a broad boulevard, teeming with pushcart vendors and street children. Whole city blocks were flattened. Basim was not caught off guard by the destruction, which he expected based on the videos he’d seen, but he was surprised by the traffic. He regarded the passing scenes as if he were a tour guide, recounting the history of each neighborhood. It appeared to be an affectation of calm, a studied attempt to withstand the torment of return, but the truth eventually surfaced. “I’m numb,” he said. “I’m just numb.” We drove past more ruined buildings. Around the wreckage of one stood a concrete wall, still intact, where ISIS had painted two hands open in supplication. Basim translated the inscription: THANK GOD FOR EVERYTHING YOU HAVE. IF YOU DO, HE WILL GIVE YOU MORE. We headed toward the Tigris River. As we approached, we could see the apartments, houses and minarets on the other side, still under ISIS control. And then suddenly, the city was gone. We entered the Woods, which remained a bucolic oasis. The trees were heavy with figs, apricots and lemons, and the air buzzed with mosquitoes. We pulled up to a pale yellow gate. Basim lingered outside for a moment, afraid to approach. He then opened it and stepped onto his property for the first time in 18 months. We followed him along an overgrown stone path. He stopped in front of a smashed-up wall surrounded by chunks of concrete. Rebar snaked out like hairs. “This was the laundry room,” he said. To the right stood what was once his kitchen. A faint rotten odor emerged from within. The remnants of a table and three chairs were visible. Scattered amid the shattered glass and charred metal bars were pages of recipes: Cookies & Cream Freeze, Chocolate Mousse Torte. We moved over the rest of the debris. Marble shards, concrete blocks, several mattresses, two satellite dishes, a Spalding tennis racket, an iron, a book of equations, a bathroom sink. The backyard was intact. “At least we still have a swimming pool!” Basim said, laughing absently. He circled back to the laundry room. There he spotted in a corner, poking out of the rubble, a white platform heel. It belonged to Tuqa. “I told her they were too high and that she would fall,” he said. He could picture her wearing them, coming down the stairs. |
Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world The press secretary for the Trump administration has said he “doesn’t know” whether the new President will repeal discrimination protections for LGBT people. Sean Spicer on Monday responded to a question from the Washington Blade in a press briefing, saying: “I just don’t know the answer.” The 2014 protections were introduced by President Obama in an order which banned federal contractors to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Also in 2014, Obama added protections for trans individuals to a nondiscrimination order which applied to employees of the federal government. Despite years of campaigning there is currently no federal law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Efforts to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the Equality Act with no success. The Trump administration took control at the weekend, immediately deleting all mention of LGBT rights from the White House website. As Donald Trump and Mike Pence were sworn in today, a mostly-seamless transition took place online, with the new administration taking control of the official Presidential media channels. But amid the exchanges of Twitter account handles and Facebook profiles, the official White House website has also been relaunched reflecting the new administration’s agenda. The new President has never released a policy plan on LGBT issues, and also has no policy plan on HIV/AIDS. He failed to detail policies on either issue during his election campaign. One of the new President’s only direct policy pledges it to sign the Republican-backed First Amendment Defence Act, a law that would permit forms of anti-LGBT discrimination on the grounds of religion. |
Jaap Stam, the Manchester United treble winner who takes his new Reading side to Old Trafford in the FA Cup Third Round on Saturday, has agreed that he aspires to manage a club of their pedigree. Stam has never returned in a competitive capacity to the stadium which he abruptly left when Sir Alex Ferguson sold him to Lazio in 2001 and he made it clear that eventually managing the club would be appealing, though he said he is no rush and it is not an aspiration for “next season.” Asked about the idea of eventually managing United, he joked: “That’s a tricky question [from] the press and the papers isn’t it?” But the 44-year-old continued: “Everybody wants to work at the highest level. I’ve been there myself and I know what is needed to get there. Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month “I need to start at the bottom. I’ve done that in Holland [as assistant to Ajax and the Ajax reserve team]. You need to wait for that chance [to manage a club of United’s size] as a lot of great managers don’t have the chance in the top level of football. I’m not looking at that [or thinking] that in the next couple of years I need to be there.” Despite having no experience in English football management before taking over at Reading this season, Stam has a genuine chance of reaching the top flight with his side, who have taken well to his possession based brand of football and are third, six points behind Newcastle United with a game in hand. He admitted on Friday that other clubs have “10 or 15 times” as much money to spend in the January transfer window as his own. But he did not dismiss the suggestion that Reading would sign Liverpool defender Tiago Ilori for £3.75m. “We are always looking for players with experience,” Stam said when asked about the Portuguese player. “We are looking for players who don’t cost that much.” Stam expressed admiration for Jose Mourinho’s contribution at Old Trafford, stating that he believes United can win the Premier League title. “I think they can,” he said. He characterised himself as an inexperienced manager with a huge amount to learn from Mourinho. “He is up. I’m here,” the Dutchman said, gesturing low. ”There’s no comparisons between the two of us. I need to learn a lot. I look to talk to certain managers. I speak a lot to several managers about how they work. You are sometimes surprised about how they are working.” But despite his deference, Stam insisted that Reading will not abandon their possession based approach to the game when they face United on Saturday lunchtime. “We are not going to change anything. We still want our possession and to play,” he said. “We need to think a bit differently in certain ways but most things are not different.” His side are regularly commanding 70 per cent of the ball in Championship games. Stam said he did not intend to use the opportunity Saturday offers to wave continuously at the United fans who adored him and make up for the fact he left too abruptly to say “goodbye” in 2001. “I’m not going to make a big thing of it because I’m not going to be waving,” Stam said, “because hopefully I’m going to be coming back again [in the near] future [with Reading].” He said he had not asked other managers about the key to beating United. “No. There’s a lot of managers who don’t beat United,” he said. Stam was asked if he could bring one player from '99 treble team to Reading, who? "I don't want my players to think they're not good enough," he replied. Keep up to date with all the latest news with expert comment and analysis from our award-winning writers |
“Human parity” achieved A study published last Monday, heralded as an historic achievement by Microsoft, details a new speech recognition technology that’s able to transcribe conversational speech as well as humans — or at least, as best as professional human transcriptionists (which is better than most humans). The technology scored a word error rate (WER) of 5.9%, which was lower than the 6.3% WER reported just last month. “[I]t’s the lowest ever recorded against the industry standard Switchboard speech recognition task,” Microsoft reports. The rate is the same as (or even lower than) the human professional transcriptionists who transcribed the same conversation. “We’ve reached human parity,” says Xuedong Huang, Microsoft’s chief speech scientist. The new technology uses neural language models that allow for more efficient generalization by grouping similar words together. The achievement comes decades after speech pattern recognition was first studied in the 1970s. With Google’s DeepMind making waves in speech and image recognition (and speaking like humans do), the technology is Microsoft’s timely contribution to the fast-paced artificial intelligence (AI) research and development. |
Thank God for CCTV. Local newspapers in suburban Melbourne have, over the last few months, reported a number of minor attacks in the northern suburbs of the city. Compared with some of the horrors of the world, none seemed too serious a man throwing a glass bottle of petrol – rag fuse lit - over a fence into a car-yard. It did not properly explode. A car reversing at speed into the locked gates of a car-yard. They failed to bust through the lock. One man prowling around his "target’s" house with what was reported to be a gun. He ran off when spotted by a neighbour who shouted. In the great scheme of things these are low-level skirmishes rather than examples of serious crime. Ordinarily, they would go largely unremarked, dismissed, mostly, as vandalism. They would remain local newspaper stories. But I was intrigued by the pattern of these incidents, and reports of the tensions behind them. What I heard was that behind the string of tit-for-tat attacks were believed to be different factions of Australia's Syrian community, bringing to Australia the same rivalries and disputes that lie behind the civil war back home. The trouble for making a TV report was that none of the attacks had left much of a permanent mark. What, on television, could I show? It was only when I went to see him that the owner of the car-yard mentioned that the most recent attack had been captured in full on his security cameras. The footage was the visual illustration I needed to be able to tell the story of intra-Syrian conflict in Australia. And there's another way in which the ripples of the Syrian are causing concern Australia's security forces are increasingly concerned about Australians travelling to Syria. In some cases, it is suspected, to fight. How many is very hard to say. People do not declare at Sydney airport exactly where they are heading to or why. And most of the 100-300 Australians thought to be in Syria are probably there to help with humanitarian projects rather than to fight. But if any are there fighting, what are they learning? And who are they learning it from? The ripples of the Syrian conflict may travel. The Australian government does not want to wake up to an attack on home soil that began on foreign shores. |
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, who is known to express his thoughts on Twitter, has come out in support of comedian Kiku Sharda. The veteran actor posted his views about the self styled Godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and Kiku Sharda who was detained because he had imitated the former at the show ‘Comedy Nights With Kapil’. Advertising Daring the followers of Dera Sacha Sauda Chief, Rishi Kapoor asked them to put him behind bars if they can. Sharing a picture of Gurmeet Ram Rahim, from his movie ‘MSG: Messenger of God, he wrote, “See this picture! I would like to play this rockstar in a film. Let me see who puts me behind bars? Go Kiku Sharda!” (Read: Comedian Kiku Sharda rearrested, Haryana CM Khattar says govt has no hand) See this picture!I would like to play this rockstar in a film. Let me see who puts me behind bars? Go Kiku Sharda! pic.twitter.com/8Dfre237NY — rishi kapoor (@chintskap) January 13, 2016 The actor sure has a nerve for everything and with this stint of his, we sure know that there is nothing that escapes him. (Also read: Twitterati slams comedian Kiku Sharda’s arrest for mimicking Gurmeet Ram Rahim) Kiku Sharda was arrested on Wednesday (January 13) for mimicking Gurmeet Ram Rahim on Comedy Nights With Kapil. The actor was flown to Haryana where he was questioned about the same. Kiku had also aplogised for his act earlier on Twitter. The actor plays the character of Palak on-screen. |
A Brief Biography In the spring of 1868, a young man came to Yosemite and changed the world. Muir had just turned 30 that year. His first 11 years were spent in Dunbar, Scotland. The next 11 he spent in the backwoods of Wisconsin, working through the daylight hours, clearing the forest, holding a plow to a straight furrow behind a team of oxen, digging wells through hard bedrock, and taking an adult’s part in subduing wild nature. Years later, in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, he stressed the rigors of his childhood, but he seemed to feel that his strenuous years in Wisconsin prepared him well for his later wilderness ramblings. He also prepared throughout his childhood for his life as a naturalist by a close attention to the wonders of nature. Everything, it seemed, drew his eye and his mind, and all creatures drew his sympathy, whether the mice that ate the grain he had wrung from the earth by the sweat of his brow or the intelligent old ox Buck, who figured out how to open pumpkins to feast on the succulent inner flesh. As a teenager, he had no time for school and little opportunity for formal study. Yet his mind hungered for knowledge. When his father grudgingly gave permission for him to rise before the rest of the family to read, he took to rising at one in the morning. He wrote, “I had gained five hours, almost half a day! ‘Five hours to myself!’ I said. ‘Five huge, solid hours!’ I can hardly think of any other event of my life, any discovery I ever made that gave birth to joy so transportingly glorious as the possession of these five frosty hours.” Much of this new-won time he gave over to his inventions. In fact, it seems he was an inventor of substantial gifts. He created a thermometer so sensitive that it would react to the heat radiated by the body of a person standing four or five feet away. Another creation was an alarm clock that, at the appointed time, tipped up his bed and dumped him on the floor. He called it an “early-rising machine.” These machines and his desire to escape from his overbearing father took him to Madison, Wisconsin and brought him to the attention of several people from the University of Wisconsin. He was admitted, though he had spent only a few months in school after the age of 11. In the following two and a half years, he followed an electic course of study, heavy on Natural Science, and left in 1863. Over the next three years he worked as a mechanic and took several short wilderness trips. Much of the Civil War he spent in Canada, perhaps to avoid the draft, though that is far from certain. What is certain is that in 1867 a momentous accident changed his life. He was adjusting some machinery with a file when his hand slipped. A point of the file pierced one eye. He lost the use of that eye. The other soon went dark in sympathy. It was the darkest moment of his life for his spirit, as well as his sight. As his sight gradually returned, over a period of months, he felt that he had been re-born. He resolved to spend the rest of his life immersed in the sights that had been denied him in his darkened sickroom — the forests, fields, lakes and mountains of pure, unspoiled nature. His first great wilderness adventure was a thousand mile walk from Louisville, Kentucky to Savannah, Georgia. From there, he hoped to travel to the headwaters of the Amazon and work his way to the sea. But a case of malaria laid him low in Florida and, by a wandering course, he ended up in San Francisco in March, 1868. He inquired the nearest way out of town. “‘But where do you want to go?’ asked the man to whom I had applied for this important information. ‘To any place that is wild,’ I said.” So he went to Yosemite. The next six years brought about another transformation. His first summer in Yosemite, he worked as a shepherd. Then he ran a sawmill near the base of Yosemite Falls. But all the time he was working, he was studying nature, the great truths that, he said, were written in “magnificent capitals” — the awesome stones of the Sierra Nevada. He became a guide for some of the most famous of Yosemite’s visitors, including one of his idols, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson tried to entice Muir away from Yosemite, telling him the world was waiting to hear him teach the lessons he had learned. But Muir chose to follow the ideal Emerson had set forth in “The American Scholar.” He stayed in his mountains, working, studying and learning. Eventually, he did leave the Valley. First for only a few months at a time. He would live with friends in San Francisco or Oakland and write about his glorious mountains, the scenery that drew tourists and the science behind the scenery. Gradually, he spent more time in the Bay Area and less time in Yosemite. In 1880, he married and moved to Martinez, California, 35 miles from San Francisco. He still traveled, sometimes to Yosemite, several times to Alaska. But the decade of the 1880’s saw him mostly in Martinez, applying his love of plants and fecund imagination to the task of raising Bartlett pears and Tokay grapes. He became fairly wealthy, but seemingly discontented. Each trip to the mountains presented him with more proof that, unless something were done, the glorious wilderness he had found in 1868 would soon be only a memory. Muir’s budding re-awakening to literary and political activity was brought to fruition by Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century, one of the most prominent magazines in the country a hundred years ago. The catalyst was their famous camping trip to Tuolumne Meadows in 1889. Each seemed to have thought the trip was a way to inspire the other to do something to save the High Sierra from the sheep which Muir felt were rapidly altering the sub-alpine environment. Muir wrote two long articles on Yosemite, advocating a National Park to surround what was then the state-run Yosemite Valley. Johnson published the articles and lobbied energetically. Congress complied with this emotional and literary onslaught, creating a National Park that included almost all the present-day park plus the southeastern area down to Devil’s Postpile that was excised in 1905 when the Valley was taken from state control and added to the National Park. Another fruit of this budding friendship was the creation, in 1892, of the Sierra Club, with Muir as President, apostle, guide, and inspiration. The purpose of the Club was to preserve and make accessible the Sierra Nevada. The Club grew slowly and quietly for a few years, then a little faster after 1901 with the start of the High Trips. But not until the City of San Francisco began its push for a dam on the Tuolumne at the mouth of Hetch Hetchy Valley was the whole idea of preservation vs. use articulated on the front and editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers. Muir summed up the basic arguments against the dam in some of his most elegant, most elevated prose: “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. “Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.” The Sierra Club, and the environmental movement as a whole, have grown most rapidly in times of severe, well-publicized threats to the environment. But over the years, slow and steady growth can be traced directly to those who have followed Muir’s adivce, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.” In 1900, Sierra Club Secretary Will Colby envisaged a mass outing for the Sierra Club, to introduce as many people as possible to the wonders of the mountains. The following summer, 1901, ninety-seven “Sierrans” including Muir and his two daughters assembled in The Valley and trekked to Soda Springs for a month of hiking, peak climbing, campfire entertainment and education. One woman wrote of the trip: “Muir, the prince of mountainlovers, was guide and apostle, and his gentle, kindly face, genial blue eyes, and quaint, quiet observations on present and past Sierra conditions impressed us unforgettably with the ‘sermons in stone, books in the running brooks,’ he knows so well.” These outings became an annual affair, and evolved into the Club’s current schedule of dozens of trips all over the world. Periodically, the Board of Directors reminds the membership that the outings were not the reason the Club was started. Will Colby himself wrote, in the January 1904 Bulletin, that membership was up to nearly 800, “mainly due to the annual Club Outing. … Our members should not, however, lose sight of the fact that this feature of the Club’s life is but a minor part … of the worthy objects for which the Club was incorporated … the preservation of the forests and the natural scenery of our mountains.” Marion Parsons, one of the few women leaders of the early Sierra Club, answered Colby in her own article in the 1904 Bulletin: “The Sierra Club has great and noble purposes, for which we honor it, but besides these its name has come to mean an ideal for us. It means comradeship and chivalry, simplicity and joyousness, and the carefree life of the open.” Thirty years later, twenty years after Muir’s death, another woman wrote of her own experiences on a High Trip. “Never had I really understood John Muir’s ecstasy until I wandered through this little valley.” That “ecstasy” was exactly what Muir found most lacking in California, even among his fellow “preservationists.” “The love of Nature among Californians is desperately moderate; consuming enthusiasm is almost wholly unknown.” It was this ecstasy in Nature that distinguished Muir from most other preservationists and it was this very emotionalism that made him so attractive to the women he met as well as others who weren’t embarrassed by their emotional response to Nature. Over the years, Muir developed from a guide for select individuals to a guide for the Sierra Club to a guide for the whole nation. Not just to Yosemite or any other specific place, but to the inner regions of the emotional response to Nature, especially Wild Nature. Muir died of pneumonia in a Los Angeles hospital in January, 1914. It was a unexpectedly prosaic end for a man who had repeatedly faced death on rocky crags and icy glaciers, who braved Alaskan storms with a crust of bread in his pocket. In the years since, his legend has grown. In 1976, the Calfiornia Historical Society voted him “The Greatest Californian.” The U.S. Geological Survey has suggested an even greater mark of his fame. In their guidelines on naming mountains and lakes after individuals, it gives Muir as the example of someone who has had so many things named for him already that they would not be likely to approve any further such commemorations. But perhaps the greatest tribute ever given to Muir took place in a private conversion between two great contemporary mountaineers. Galen Rowell once asked Rheinhold Messner why the greatest mountains and valleys of the Alps are so highly developed, why they have hotels, funicular railways, and veritable cities washing up against sites that, in America, are maintained relatively unencumbered by development. Messner explained the difference in three words. He said, “You had Muir.” |
An rash of alleged break-ins in southeast Burlington has prompted Halton police to issue a series of tips to prevent residents from falling victim to thieves. The break-ins, according to police, occurred between 6:30 p.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday, when at least six residential garages were entered. Bicycles and other items were reported stolen. Police believe a lone male suspect is responsible for the break-ins, which also include entries to a number of unlocked vehicles in the area they say spans the 5000 block of Lakeshore Road, east of Appleby Line. “The (alleged) suspect was captured on video at several homes and police are asking for the assistance from the public to help identify him,” said police in a release. The suspect is described as a white male in his early 20s, 5-foot-7 to six feet tall. He wore a toque, light winter coat with a checker pattern and running shoes. Anyone with information about these alleged residential and vehicle entries is asked to call Det. Ellie Bale of the Burlington Criminal investigations Bureau at (905) 825-4747 ext. 2312. Anonymous tips can be submitted through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS), through the web at www.haltoncrimestoppers.ca or by texting ‘Tip201’ with a message to 274637 (CRIMES). Residents are urged to report activity they deem suspicious to police. They should also make sure never to leave personal identification or valuable items in their vehicle — including the vehicle’s spare key. Vehicles should be locked and secured, and parked in a well-lit area whenever possible. If valuable items are kept in the vehicle, they should be locked in the trunk. “Don’t tempt thieves by leaving packages or purses in plain view or on the seat,” said police, who suggested that garage door openers, GPS units, cellphones and power cords be hidden from view when vehicles are left unattended. |
Valentine's Day can be a lonely holiday for those of us who aren't in a relationship. Holmen High School Senior Zach Peterson has what he calls an easy way to fix that - for everyone. "A lot of people don't get flowers, and then they get mad if they don't get flowers, or sad if they don't get flowers. I am handing out roses to every girl in the school," Peterson says. After weeks of planning, hours of prep work, and $450 later - Zack rolled in Valentine's Day morning with a cart filled with roses. "They came in direct from Ecuador, two-day shipping," Peterson says. Freshman through senior classes came in one by one. "We got in here, we were like 'what's going on?' And then we saw the flowers, and...everyone freaked out. The amount of girl noises was insane," says senior Maddy Piotrowski. Piotrowski said the single rose made her Valentine’s Day a lot better. "I just can't believe it,” she said. “This is the first time I've ever gotten flower from anyone." "I know a lot of them left the room crying which was really nice to know, that they actually care he went through all this work,” Zack's sister Abigail said. The flowers weren't just for the students, either. "Plus the lunch ladies, office ladies, guidance counselors, and my mom -- she got a bouquet this morning,” Peterson said. It was a simple reminder this Valentine's Day that love has no limits. Be sure and try our new SNOWCAST APP! It is the "snow equivalent to STORM SHIELD" - a great new product that gives you high resolution snow forecasts for any part of the nation! It has just been introduced for iPhones, but we are working on the Android version! Just search SNOWCAST in the App Store or click here. |
When it launched in 1987, the Arena Football League had four teams. The last time the AFL played a season with six or fewer clubs was 1990, when its schedule, then only eight games, revolved around six teams. The AFL's addition of a Baltimore franchise last month upped its team count to five, which, barring any more changes, would be its lowest for a season since 1989, when the league played with five clubs in Year 3. That's perfectly fine, Arena league commissioner Scott Butera told us in a recent phone conversation. "If we just had to go with what we have, we'd be OK with that," Butera said. "We are completely out of the mode of what do we have to do to be OK tomorrow? We don't want to sit here and say we have to add two teams to have a better process in 2017. We're going to get the right people, no matter how long it takes. "We don't care," Butera continued. "We'll play with five, we'll play with six. We'd obviously like to get to 12 to 16 teams in the next few years. We're working furiously toward that goal. This league has suffered in the past from starts and stops. We'd get an owner and the next year he's done. That doesn't help the league. You can't develop your league that way. We need people 100% committed to the long term. We don't want them to fail." That's happened far too often for the AFL over the years. Since the end of the 2016 season — which was played with eight teams, the AFL's lowest team count in 25 years — five teams have folded operations or moved to another league. The Jacksonville Sharks joined the National Arena League, which will play its first season in 2017. The Arizona Rattlers are now part of the Indoor Football League, and the Orlando Predators, Portland Steel and Los Angeles Kiss shut down. The massive fallout caused many observers, including us, to question the league's future. But Butera, who became the league's seventh commissioner in September 2014, said the turnover is part of the league's plan to build around experienced, well-heeled owners whose AFL team can play in an arena in which another major sports team already resides. The Cleveland Gladiators — owned by Dan Gilbert and a popular weekend attraction at Quicken Loans Arena — are the league's model franchise. "Everything has sort of been by design," Butera said. "We and the better owners always wanted this to be a really well-run, excellent sports league. We had a number of owners, and obviously we're fortunate in Cleveland to have a really strong one, who can make that happen and share that vision. And we had others that didn't. "We essentially turned around years and years of mismanagement," Butera added. "Major restructurings take a great deal of time. A lot of damage was done that had to be unwound. We thought it was important to keep the product showing well while we fixed the other issues. We always had excellent football, we just have not had excellent management. We said, 'Let's get through the year, we had an outstanding season and Arena Bowl, and use that as a launching pad to do what we want to do.' " Since the five teams left or folded, the AFL has added two teams — Baltimore and Washington — backed by billionaire Ted Leonsis, whose Monumental Sports & Entertainment owns the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, Washington Mystics and the Verizon Center. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Leonsis said his group's financial strength makes it much easier to undertake what he admitted could be the "crazy idea" of owning an AFL team during uncertain times. "None of the owners who left owned a building or owned other sports teams in which they could leverage that infrastructure," Leonsis told the newspaper, in reference to his AFL clubs having ticket sales, marketing and game-day operations teams already in place. That's precisely what Butera is trying to do. The question is whether the AFL can find enough owners who fit the mold of Gilbert and Leonsis. "When the season ended, we started negotiating to get out the folks who didn't reflect that (model)," Butera said. "We consolidated around the core group and will use that as a platform for growth. It might look like a little bit of a step back, but watch how it accelerates our growth. In discussions we've had (with potential owners), people weren't so sure (because of previous ownership problems). Now we don't have that. We have people working toward that goal." In October, a Cavs source told us it was "business as usual" for the Gladiators. The franchise hasn't revealed much else since, though it does remain committed to the AFL. Under the AFL's ownership model, when owners don't pay their bills, the costs get passed on to the other members of the league. "That's a problem," Butera said. "That's why you can't deal with that (happening). That's a huge problem. You gotta support the league. If somebody bails on you, you gotta pick up the tab. That's a hard pill to swallow." It's one that might make potential owners leery. That's why the addition of Leonsis is so crucial. His ownership group has a subscription-based network, Monumental Sports Network, that will broadcast the Baltimore and Washington AFL games online. Leonsis said he is banking on regional rivalries generating more interest. Butera told us the 2017 season will start in April, and the schedule "will look very similar," with one exception. "You'll have teams playing each other a bit more," he said. "We'll develop some rivalries." The AFL schedule expanded to 16 games in 2003. From 2011-15, the league played 18 contests in the regular season. Last season, the AFL reduced its slate to 16 games. If the league played with only five teams in 2016, a 16-game schedule would mean playing each team four times — plus create obvious complications because of the odd number of clubs. Still, the AFL will get everything sorted out, Butera insists. "We'll call it a reset here," the AFL commissioner said. "We're doing things in a very fundamentally sound way. We've done a lot of things internally to really professionalize the operation. It feels great. It's kind of like we're getting off a treadmill. It's boom, boom, rapid fire. I think the attitude toward the AFL externally has changed quite a bit. There are a lot of inbound inquiries. It's good to see there's good momentum. The other thing is with a few less teams, we're going to have some excellent football. There will be a lot of talent." Asked about an arena football market that, with the 10-team IFL and the eight-team NAL, looks crowded all of a sudden, Butera compared the difference between the AFL and its competition to that of national and local restaurants. "I think those are different models," he said. "I think those are for smaller cities that want to field a professional or quasi-professional team. I don't think those are models that are really leading toward franchise values or big media. The answer is yes, we can definitely exist the way local restaurants can exist with national restaurant chains. There's a home for both." The NAL is mostly made up of teams in smaller markets. The same goes for the IFL, which is littered with former Arena league franchises. The Rattlers have joined the Iowa Barnstormers (who left the AFL after the 2014 season), the Spokane Empire (formerly the AFL's Shock), the Colorado Crush (an AFL team until 2008), the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles (the AFL's Utah Blaze folded after the 2013 campaign) and the Green Bay Blizzard (an Arena2 team prior to joining the IFL in 2010). Is there enough arena football interest to go around? We'll find out soon enough. For the time being, Butera says the AFL is trying to add more owners, but what's more important is the ones who are on board now are exactly what the league needs to be successful long-term. "I hope there will be others," Butera said. "I'm not going to obviously say anything until things are done and owners are committed. If it's just that (the current five-team setup), that's a pretty darn good group. My attitude is you gotta look at who stayed and who left. That's where the answer lies. If it were the other way around, it would be, 'Houston we have a problem.' You can't ask for better ownership than what we have." You also can't have a five-team professional sports league and thrive. Butera knows that. He compared the AFL's current situation to Major League Soccer, which started play in 1996, but had some early difficulties. "They consolidated around the (Lamar) Hunt family and AEG, and had a small core group of owners," Butera said. "There were some league-owned teams at the time. They built it into the league it is today based on that formula. We said, 'We like that idea. Let's do that.' So that's what we did." The AFL commissioner said the recent departures "were all fairly friendly." He added that "the folks who left knew it was a different strategy. Some went to other leagues that allowed them to continue to play, with less dependence for capital and resources, if you will. They were all cities we really liked. Now we're just full bore in adding to this league. What you saw in Baltimore was really the tip of the iceberg." Butera had made bold proclamations in the past. Prior to the 2016 season, when the league downsized from 12 to eight teams, he told us the AFL would "probably add two to six (teams) in the following year." Technically, the AFL has added two teams, but that still leaves it three clubs short of its 2016 total. "Look, I think we are stronger than ever," Butera said. "I know the history of this league pretty well. The league is in the best shape for growth. It might not look that way to the naked eye, but you gotta look at the quality, not the quantity. Look at our ownership group and the ownership groups from the days that went by. Fraud, shell corporations, we've had it all. The integrity of this game, which has always been a bit of an issue, has never been more rock solid. If you don't just sort of rip the Band-Aid off, if you want to be great, you can't be accepting. You gotta get back to the fundamentals. That's what we've done." The Band-Aid was discarded rather abruptly. It's too soon to know, however, if the wounds are going to heal. You can follow me on Twitter for sports information and analysis, and you can follow the AFL for proof that the Philadelphia Soul and other clubs are looking forward to 2017. |
Northeast Afghanistan, 2009. As my wingman and I check in to RIP (remove in-place) Dude 51, a flight of Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles, we hear nothing but squelch breaks on the radio–the type of squelch breaks you hear when others are talking on a secure frequency and your KY-58 has the incorrect fill. We push our radios to Dude’s interflight frequency and my fears are confirmed that we don’t have the proper secure fill. They sound relieved that we are there due to the hectic nature of the ground situation, give us a brief SITREP, pass words to the Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) about our radio issue, then check-out and head back to Bagram. We are holding east-west, north of the valley, looking south towards the fight. About every 30-45” we see artillery rounds impacting the hillsides surrounding the valley, being shot from Combat Outpost (COP) Michigan, about 6 miles to the west. I attempt multiple low passes over a friendly vehicle convoy under coordinated attack from three different locations, hoping to visually contact them since voice thus far had been a no-go. I am finally able to establish weak comms with the JTAC on an FM team frequency, now operating in the plain, without a secure connection. He passes me an updated SITREP and a CAS 9-line for enemy troops in the hills to the east of their position. Additionally, he lets me know there is an Army OH-58D Kiowa helicopter operating in the area. His convoy has just taken an RPG to the turret of a Humvee, knocking the gunner out of the vehicle, rendering him unconscious. As I work the details of the 9-line, and positive identification (PID) of the enemy troops with the JTAC, my wingman climbs to get line-of-sight with COP Michigan to get the artillery turned off. The JTAC had attempted multiple times to stop the arty due to its current inaccuracies. The major communication problem the JTAC and I are running into is the fact their FM team frequency also happens to be a Pakistani music station. We are so close to the border that every time I climb higher than two thousand feet above ground level, gaining line-of-sight to Pakistan, I also hear their greatest hits in my helmet. With the arty turned off, 9-line complete, PID met, and deconfliction established with the Kiowa, I direct my wingman to roll-in and employ two Mk-82 airburst bombs on my laser spot, to the east of the convoy, from where they had taken the RPG shot. With fire from the east calmed, as well as from the small village to the convoy’s south, I send my wingman to the tanker so we can start yo-yo refueling operations. The convoy is moving out of the valley at a snails pace. The Kiowa is keeping an eye on the west wall of the valley as I scan the road in front of the convoy. My wingman returns about 20 minutes later, and just as I am about to head to the tanker, fire erupts from the western side of the valley, at both the convoy and the Kiowa. The Kiowa return fire with guns and rockets, but with little effect. The right seat Kiowa pilot goes so far as to open his door and shoot his M-4 when they run out of rounds. With one rocket left, and the JTAC and I finishing coordination for a Type III CAS control, they mark the exact location of the fire. For the next 10 minutes, my wingman and I unloaded over 1,300 rounds of 30-millimeter and seven white phosphorus rockets, ultimately killing multiple enemy combatants. The vehicle convoy safely exits the valley and returns to their FOB with only a few wounded-in-action, all non-life threatening. I elect to not get gas that day due to the urgent nature of the situation. We return to Bagram soon after the convoy exits the valley, and I end up flying a 3.3-hour un-refueled combat sortie. Not a bad day in the life of a Hawg Driver. I highlight my experience above to show the relevance of the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II in this visual, high-intensity fight that required a lot of ordnance–specifically a big gun with big bullets, and hours upon hours of on-station time. Whether it’s fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan or slaying ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the A-10 is the premier CAS aircraft we have…period. When we hear things like “the A-10 only executes 20% of CAS missions in Operation Enduring Freedom,” we never hear that a MISREP analysis conducted from 2006-2013 revealed the A-10 executed 42% of all attacks (an attack being defined as ordnance impacting targets in support of ground forces). An unfortunate aspect of categorizing aircraft is that we talk in “roles” instead of missions. The A-10 is one of the best multi-mission aircraft we have. Executing CAS, FAC(A), CSAR, SCAR, and AI, much like the F-22 executes OCA, DCA, and AI. We absolutely must think in terms of supporting and saving ground troops. We are customer support providers to the 18-year-old troops on the ground. When we have a purely air-to-ground dedicated platform, we are able to build and foster relationships with these ground troops that I have personally taken into combat. My fear as a tactical aviator who supports people is that as we transition to an all multi-role Air Force, we’ll only see smatterings of CAS, FAC(A), and CSAR on a RAP tasking memo because we have too many other missions to support, therefore providing worse support to ground forces, and we’ll be doing it with less capable weapons than described in my troops-in-contact scenario you just read. A look at the Letter of X’s from my last A-10 unit showed 82% of the pilots as qualified FACs, with all but two of them having NOT attended the Joint Firepower Course-Airborne. This course is a week-long FAC(A) program designed to prepare a pilot for the upgrade. It is also very heavy on Army/Marine operations and how the FAC(A) will integrate with the JTAC, FSO, and Ground Commander to ensure objectives are met. Additionally, an A-10 Initial Qualification student has hours of class about Joint Publications and Army/Marine integration. For those who attend USAF Weapons School like I did, the A-10 program has additional classes on Army/Marine operations, and how the A-10 Weapons Officer, working with the Ground Liaison Officer, can train for wartime operations. The A-10 and its pilots are extremely integrated in ground operations. This high level of integration cannot be achieved easily or quickly, and requires a dedicated platform and community to execute. Tying the above paragraph into the troops-in-contact (TIC) strives to highlight knowing and understanding the Army, their operations, and that of the JTAC. Searching through communication frequencies, pulling and pushing data to the JTAC to get a Type III control because I was tally/visual, all of these tasks are muscle memory to the A-10 pilot. Couple pilot capabilities with 1150 rounds of 30mm, and the ability to do it all over again under the weather (I have personally shot an ILS approach to Jalalabad, then once VMC, followed the river northeast to the Pech River Valley where I turned west and then checked-in with the JTAC, using F-16 or F-15Es as a radio relay when overhead) really separates the Attack community from others. Close Air Support, as well as CSAR and Interdiction missions (ATO or DOC statement assigned), are the only missions that fighter/attack aircraft execute in the Air Force that are governed by a Joint Publication; JP 3-09.3 for CAS, JP 3-50 for Personnel Recovery, and JP 3-03 for Interdiction. All missions that the A-10 does, two of which have A-10 pilots as the unquestioned expert and community leader. In the words of General Odierno (USA Chief of Staff), at a recent Senate Armed Services Committed hearing, “Soldiers like the A-10. They can see it, they can hear it, they have confidence in it. And that’s the one thing that we have to account for as we move forward.” ATTACK! A Hawg Driver |
If Americans were shocked when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his seat earlier this month in a Tea Party upset, the debate that’s ensued over whether to scrap the U.S. Export-Import Bank caught corporate America completely off-guard. Ex-Im, as it’s more widely known, is a state-owned agency that provides financing and insurance at below-market rates to assist foreign companies in buying American exports. By the end of September, Congress must vote on whether to re-authorize Ex-Im and renew its lending powers. But a rift has emerged in the Republican party over Ex-Im’s benefits and evils. While Cantor supported the bank, Kevin McCarthy, the new House Leader, opposes Ex-Im on the grounds that government should get out of the banking business. Many other Republicans agree. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, says Ex-Im is engaged in “crony capitalism” and wants it scrapped. The debate is even drawing defenders for Ex-Im from the ranks of Democrats—not the types to typically favour handouts to big biz. While running for president in 2008, Barack Obama called it “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.” In fact, in the ’80s and ’90s, killing Ex-Im was a “lefty cause célèbre.” It’s a muddled, deeply partisan showdown, the kind only a dysfunctional Washington can provide. But at least Americans are having the debate. Here in Canada, our own export credit agency, Export Development Canada, is dramatically expanding its lending role into private banking territory and signing financing deals with foreign companies, even when there’s no guarantee a Canadian company will benefit. Yet, aside from the occasional think tank report, there’s no push to rethink EDC’s role in the Canadian economy—even though EDC is far larger than its American counterpart on a relative basis. As I pointed out in a column a couple of months ago, in 2012, Canadians extended the equivalent of $2,534 per capita in export support to businesses through EDC, compared to Ex-Im’s $114 in the U.S. One thing that should raise red flags is the emergence of financing deals where EDC appears to be piling on loans to foreign businesses, such as India’s Reliance Industries, which have already borrowed many billions of dollars from eager export credit agencies in other countries, including Britain, Japan, Korea and America. Indeed, some in the U.S. argue Ex-Im is needed precisely because export agencies, from Europe to Asia, are doling out so many loans to boost their own country’s exports. It has all the makings of a taxpayer-backed, export credit agency-fuelled trade war. As Stephen Myrow, a former chief of staff at the Ex-Im Bank told Bloomberg, export credits are the “nuclear missiles” of global trade. “You have them because other countries have them, and the thought of unilateral disarmament is not realistic.” Is that really a battle we want a Canadian crown corporation to be engaged in? The potential for loans to turn sour is obviously going to be heightened when they’re issued in the frenzy of a lending arms race against other state-owned agencies. For its part, EDC is in the midst of a marketing campaign on TV and across the web to trumpet its value to Canadian businesses. And, with EDC’s former CEO Stephen Poloz now heading up the Bank of Canada, the agency’s position is more entrenched than ever before. So we’re left to watch the battle unfold in the U.S. For American libertarians, the Ex-Im reauthorization is an opportunity to deliver a symbolic blow to big government. At Reason, one editor described Ex-Im as “one of the nation’s most notorious spigots for corporate welfare. Killing it would put only a small dent in the corporate state, but it’ll still be a real dent—a genuine victory in the battle against business subsidies.” It’s not surprising that, for those on the receiving end of Ex-Im’s largesse, the bank’s demise is cause for dread. News of Cantor’s defeat and the prospect of upheaval at Ex-Im drove down Boeing’s share price, for good reason. The aircraft maker says Ex-Im will support $10 billion of its sales in 2014. Which gets to the point of why so many U.S. conservatives oppose the state-owned bank’s existence: It overwhelmingly helps a very small number of very powerful big businesses. Close to 80 per cent of Ex-Im’s support goes to just 10 companies, according to this paper from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, including Boeing, General Electric, Caterpillar and Bechtel. It says something that, in the hunt for a real-live example of a small business that’s benefited from Ex-Im support, a single, tiny Texas firm, Fritz Pak Corp., got calls from Boeing, G.E., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at least one Democratic representative and a couple of reporters, all looking for a success story. Depending how the Ex-Im fight unfolds in the coming months, the agency may well still find its future secured. It faced a backlash in 2012 during reauthorization, yet emerged unscathed. Even so, Americans will still be better off than us for having had the debate over the future of their export credit agency. It’s time to give EDC’s mandate a closer look. |
By Blaise Jones Sharks possess a very adaptable physiology which lets them thrive in almost any environment the ocean has to offer. Warm or cold water, deep and shallow depths, saltwater, fresh water – there are sharks for in every environment and habitat. Around the World Sharks can be found in almost every ocean in the world. The oceans of the world can be roughly placed into one of four categories: tropical, warm temperate, cold temperate, and polar. Sharks can be found in all of these regions, though their abundance varies. The vast majority of sharks can be found in warm temperate waters, where nearly every species of shark has been observed. The regions with the second highest concentration of shark species are the tropical regions, where approximately 450 species have been observed. An estimated 200 species have been observed in the cold temperate regions, and five species are known to live in the Arctic. The only region where sharks have not been observed is in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Since many sharks are migratory, they are often observed across multiple different regions. This is why the total numbers of sharks observed per region is higher than the estimated total number of shark species. Fair Weather Fish The vast majority of sharks live in temperate, shallow waters with lots of structure such as coral reefs or seagrass beds. Sharks are drawn to these environments because they are the ideal conditions for the fish that sharks prey upon. Sharks occupy all levels of the water column in these shallow seas. While some species of shark stick to one basic depth in the water column, such as whitetip reef shark, others travel freely up and down the column, such as hammerhead sharks. Some sharks, such as tiger sharks, have routine schedules of deep water to shallow water migration, which follow a day and night cycle. Living to the Extreme Due to their robust physiologies, sharks have been observed in some of the most inhospitable and unexpected places. Frilled and goblin sharks can both be found at depths reaching 4,300 feet (1,311 m) where no light penetrates, creating an aquatic habitat that is pitch black. The great lanternshark holds the record for the deepest that a shark species has been observed, plummeting to 14,763feet (4,500 m). Lemon sharks and blacktip reef sharks can be found in water so shallow that the tops of their bodies break the surface. Some sharks, such as the Greenland shark and porbeagle shark, can be found in the frigid waters of the Artic in. Hammerhead and silky sharks have been found swimming inside an active submerged volcano, Mount Kavachi in the Solomon Islands. The volcano is almost constantly erupting, greatly raising the acidity and temperature of the water. While all species of shark live in salt water, the bull shark is able to swim in fresh water with no problem. In fact, there are several subspecies of bull shark that are entirely freshwater. These sharks can be found in Lake Nicaragua and in the Ganges, Mississippi, Tigris, and Zambezi Rivers. SOURCES: http://www.sharkproject.org/haiothek/index_e.php?site=verhalten_2 http://www.sharksinfo.com/habitat.html “Sharks: The Mysterious Killers” by Downs Matthews http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/expedition-raw/150708-sciex-exraw-sharks-underwater-volcano “The Encyclopedia of Sharks” by Steve Parker “Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide” by Gene Helfman and George H. Burgess |
Raytheon You might assume that missile assembly is quite the precision job given the extra incentive to limit mistakes on the factory floor. But for decades, missile assembly hasn't changed much and errors are not uncommon. Technicians move large components around on rolling carts and then attaching those parts with hand-held tools. This has sometimes led to mismatched parts getting connected, raising the risks for factory workers as well as for the shipmen who later handled the weapons at sea. "Missiles have always been a heavily manually-intensive operation," said Randy Stevenson, the director of Raytheon Missile Systems' Weapon Integration Center. "There's lots of materials handling [and] loading onto fixtures to assemble. There's lifting, and moving by hands, for the most part. It hasn't always been the safest operation." Raytheon But in 2009, as Raytheon's Camden, Ark., facility edged closer to maxing out its production capacity, the giant military contractor set out to build a new assembly operation in Huntsville, Ala., home to the US Army's Redstone Arsenal, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and even Space Camp. It also gave the designers of the new plant an opportunity to take advantage of more efficient, high-technology already in use in other industries. "If we were king for a day -- we were given a blank sheet of paper -- what would we do differently?" explained Stevenson. "What we've done here in Huntsville is the end result." I had hoped to check out the Huntsville plant as part of my summer CNET Road Trip, but scheduling didn't work out. Instead, to get in the Road Trip frame of mind, I talked with plant executives by phone. It's not the same as a behind-the-scenes tour, but still a good chance to learn more about this high-tech missile factory. The timing of the new plant is propitious. Even though the global missile production industry is dominated by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, foreign rivals are nipping at their heels. According to recent press reports, the China North Industries Corp. may surpass the Americans in missile production sometime within the next five years. Raytheon says that it has built nearly 2 million missiles since the early 1950s and remains the biggest manufacturer in the world. Clearly, the technology-heavy Huntsville facility, which cost $75 million to build, ought to help Raytheon deal with the stepped-up competition from China. And if past is prologue, the early results offer an encouraging harbinger: Raytheon recently scored contracts worth $350 million for the SM-3, and $243 million for the SM-6, the two missiles being made in the Alabama plant. SM-3 and SM-6 Raytheon is reluctant to talk about how many of its missiles it makes. In a telephone interview, Huntsville plant manager Angel Crespo said the company can turn out between four and six SM-3s (for Standard Missile-3) and 10 to 12 SM-6s each month. Raytheon describes the SM-3 as "a defensive weapon used by the U.S. Navy to destroy short- to intermediate-range ballistic missile threats." Last month, the US Navy completed a successful test of an SM-3 to show that the weapon could be fired from both sea and land. The SM-6, Raytheon says, provides the Navy "defense against fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and land-attack anti-ship cruise missiles in flight, both over sea and land." Raytheon All told, Raytheon makes 20 different missiles for clients around the world. According to Stevenson, the Huntsville plant has been able to grow that production capacity -- which is larger than what Raytheon could turn out in Camden, Ark. -- thanks to efficiencies at the new high-tech facility. Fourteen technicians and about 36 support staff can produce more missiles than the staff of 80 to 100 that worked in Camden, he said. Perhaps the most important element in that boost in capacity is the suite of automated tools that limit the amount of manual lifting of ordnance-laden components. "One of the things you want to do with explosive components is minimize material handling of them," Stevenson said. "We wanted to get [manual push carts] out of our factories." The aha moment came when Raytheon representatives saw automatic guided vehicles, or AVGs -- essentially autonomous rolling carts -- in car manufacturing plants. In Huntsville, Raytheon has three of them, and may add more if production ramps up. But these are expensive, even by normal AVG standards. While the auto industry's AVGs run about $150,000 to $250,000, Stevenson said Raytheon's cost the company $700,000 apiece. The extra cost is due to the vehicles being specially outfitted to move missile components around with no human intervention. They're Wi-Fi enabled and aware at all times of their location in the facility via an active laser system that constantly scans 360 degrees for light targets mounted on the walls. Thanks to a map of the factory loaded in the AVGs' memory, they drive themselves to precisely where their payload is needed. When a new work order is begun, Crespo said, an AVG rolls automatically into the "kitting room" to pick up the "kit" -- the proper set of components for the job -- and then heads for the designated work station. This is big progress in the missile industry, Crespo suggested. Because that process is automated, there are no cases where an employee accidentally sends the kit to the wrong technician, an occasional problem in Raytheon's 10 other factories in three locations around the US. Manufacturing Innovation and Intelligence Another newcomer to Raytheon's missile production regimen is a graphical software interface deployed on the Huntsville factory floor. Known as the Manufacturing Innovation and Intelligence (MMI) system, it is meant to guide operators and technicians through their workdays -- making certain the steps they're taking and the components they're working with are exactly what's intended. Because the assembly process is highly regimented, with every component and fastener having a specific place to go, it's essential that things be done the right way. In the past, Crespo explained, though each step was documented as it was performed, mistakes were sometimes made thanks to typing errors, or mistakes in documenting a step. A very big part of the job of making a missile is connecting thousands of individual fasteners, each of which calls for the application of a prescribed amount of torque. Now, every single component and fastener has a bar code that must be scanned, and the MMI makes sure that workers are unable to proceed if they have the wrong parts. "A serial number gets automatically entered into the system," Crespo said. "No keystrokes, so no chance for wrong keystrokes to be entered." Raytheon At the same time, Raytheon is now using automatic torque controllers that feed information to automated screwdrivers about how much torque an individual fastener requires. "If for some reason, an operator...didn't [use] the screwdriver properly," Crespo said, he or she gets "an alert saying you did not torque that one right. You have to do it" again. If they try to ignore the alert, the MMI system won't let them move on to the next step. Ultimately, the MMI system is meant to record every step that goes into the assembly of a missile, generating an archived "pedigree" available to both Raytheon and military auditors. The system tracks who worked on a missile, when they did it, and which tools they used. "If it needed 148 fasteners," Stevenson said, "it can tell you every fastener installed, and the torque factors." Final assembly Before a missile is a missile, all of its components need to be put together in just the right way. After all those pieces -- guidance systems, propulsion, fins, control surfaces, and others are fit together -- technicians take them to a safe, controlled area for testing. This is the only time that the weapons get operated while still in Raytheon's hands. Assuming that all its systems function properly, the missile then gets returned to the factory floor for one final step: putting it inside its cannister. According to Stevenson, the cannister is considered as much a part of the weapon system as the rest of the missile. Meant to be physically connected to the Navy's ship, they're provided to Raytheon by the Navy. The job at this point is to assure the missile is "mission ready" and then seal it inside the cannister. The moment that's done, the weapon is complete. Known formally as an All-Up Round, or AUR, this is Raytheon's final product. But missiles often spend years outside the factory without being fired, and many of their components have a shelf life. That means that after 3-to-5 years, the factory will get back some of the AURs, which will be disassembled, their parts taken out and tested again, or replaced in the case of some time-sensitive components, and then re-assembled. Thanks to the implementation of all the factory's technology, this process has been improved as much as original assembly. It might seem odd that missiles are returned and taken apart, but that's the game. "At any given time," Stevenson said, "you would see product going in both directions." Keep an eye out for more behind-the-scenes stories and photo galleries as I travel throughout Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kansas during this year's Road Trip. I'll seek out most interesting technology, military, aviation, architecture, and other destinations our country has to offer. From US Air Force basic training to NASA's Johnson Space Center and FedEx's massive package-sorting hub, Road Trip 2014 will take you along with me. |
$\begingroup$ This is a nice question, as it confronts a very replicable and common experience with a well established yet seemingly contradictory fact. As you expected, the smell of metal has nothing to do with the metal actually getting into your nose, as most metals have far too low of a vapor pressure at ordinary temperatures to allow direct detection. The characteristic smell of metal, in fact, is caused by organic substances! There has been the focus on the specific case of the smell of iron (free-access article!). There are at least two ways in which iron produces a metallic smell. Firstly, acidic substances are capable of corroding iron and steel, releasing phosphorus and carbon atoms present in the metal or alloy. These can react to form volatile organophosphorus compounds such as methylphosphine ($\ce{H3CPH2}$ which have a garlic/metallic odor at small concentrations. From the article: The “garlic” metallic odor (see Supporting Information) of the gas product from the acidic dissolution of cast iron is dominated by these organophosphines. We measured an extremely low odor threshold for two key odorants, methylphosphine and dimethylphosphine (6 and 3 ng P/m³, respectively, garlic-metallic odor), which belong therefore to the most potent odorants known. Phosphine ($\ce{PH3}$) is not important for this odor because we found it has a much higher odor detection threshold (>10⁶ ng/m³). A “calcium carbide” (or “burned lime”/“cement”) attribute of the general “garlic” odor is probably caused by unsaturated hydrocarbons (alkynes, alkadienes) that are linked to a high carbon content of iron (Table 1, see Supporting Information). Also, it turns out that $\ce{Fe^{2+}}$ ions (but not $\ce{Fe^{3+}}$) are capable of oxidizing substances present in oils produced by the skin, namely lipid peroxides. A small amount of $\ce{Fe^{2+}}$ ions are produced when iron comes into contact with acids in sweat. These then decompose the oils releasing a mixture of ketones and aldehydes with carbon chains between 6 and 10 atoms long. In particular, most of the smell of metal comes from the unsaturated ketone 1-octen-3-one, which has a fungal/metallic odour even in concentrations as low as $1\ \mu g\ m^{-3}$ . In short: Sweaty skin corrodes iron metal to form reactive $\ce{Fe^{2+}}$ ions that are oxidized within seconds to $\ce{Fe^{3+}}$ ions while simultaneously reducing and decomposing existing skin lipid peroxides to odorous carbonyl hydrocarbons that are perceived as a metallic odor. In the supporting information for the article (also free-access), the authors describe experiments performed with other metals, including copper: Comparison of iron metal with other metals (copper, brass, zinc, etc.): When solid copper metal or brass (copper-zinc alloy) was contacted with the skin instead of iron, a similar metallic odor and GC-peak pattern of carbonyl hydrocarbons was produced and up to one μmole/dm² of monovalent cuprous ion [$\ce{Cu+}$] was detected as a corrosion product (Supporting Figs. S3 to S6). Zinc, a metal that forms $\ce{Zn^{2+}}$ but no stable $\ce{Zn+}$, was hesitant to form metallic odor, except on very strong rubbing of the metal versus skin (that could produce metastable monovalent $\ce{Zn+}$). The use of common color-tests to demonstrate directly on human palm skin the presence of low-valence ions (ferrous and cuprous) from the corrosion of iron, copper and brass alloys is shown in Supporting Figure S6. Alumina powder rubbed on skin did not produce significant odorants. These results provide additional evidence that it is not metal evaporation, but skin lipid peroxide reduction and decomposition by low valence metal ions that produces the odorants. The last paragraphs of the article summarize the findings: In conclusion: 1) The typical “musty” metallic odor of iron metal touching skin (epidermis) is caused by volatile carbonyl compounds (aldehydes, ketones) produced through the reaction of skin peroxides with ferrous ions ($\ce{Fe^{2+}}$) that are formed in the sweat-mediated corrosion of iron. $\ce{Fe^{2+}}$ ion containing metal surfaces, rust, drinking water, blood etc., but also copper and brass, give rise to a similar odor on contact with the skin. The human ability to detect this odor is probably a result of the evolutionarily developed but largely dormant ability to smell blood (“blood scent”). 2) The “garlic-carbide” metallic odor of phosphorus- and carbon-rich cast iron and steel under attack by acid, is dominated by volatile organophosphines. Corroding cast iron is an environmental source of C–P compounds that may lead to confusion in the verification and monitoring of the Chemical Weapons Convention (see also ref. [15]) As an aside, this may be why sometimes people recommend getting strong smells off your hands by rubbing them against a metal object. While it probably doesn't work for some metals and for some smelly compounds, it's possible that the metal catalyzes the decomposition of the malodorous substances into less strongly smelling ones. You can read a little more in this press article on the study. |
A personal message to all of our New Orleans Saints fans, and the die-hard members of the “Who Dat Nation”……. XHarahan WhoDat, AKA Barry, Staff Saints Writer In my dual capacity as both a Saints and Pelicans staff writer, I feel it’s necessary to address the NBA Pelicans for a few moments. The NBA Draft is now just 5 days away (Thursday, June 27th), and the Pelicans are picking 6th overall. With that pick, the Pelicans are expected to select point guard Trey Burke of the National Champion Michigan Wolverines, who is projected as the top point guard in the entire draft. If the Pelicans do in fact select Burke, it will be a significant move by the franchise in my opinion — one that could potentially impact their future direction for YEARS TO COME. What most people (particularly the casual NBA fan who is more interested in the happenings of our NFL Saints) here locally fail to realize about that, is that one move alone could propel the Pelicans franchise into a “worst to first” type of scenario. How so? Well consider this fact: the New Orleans Pelicans will in fact be one of the biggest spenders in free-agency, meaning that the team can quickly become a contending team almost overnight. In fact, the combination of youth and experience that both the potential selection of Burke and the additions to the roster that free-agency will bring, will transform this team from a young upstart into one that seriously challenges anyone that they’ll face. The key obviously is free agency (the free-agency signing period begins on Wednesday, July 2nd), where the Pelicans are expected to land any one of the top players on the market, with all of the available money under the NBA salary cap that they’ll available to them. Imagine a Pelicans team with Anthony Davis, rookie Trey Burke, and say — current free-agents Josh Smith (currently with the Atlanta Hawks) and Al Jefferson (currently with the Utah Jazz). That would be a NBA playoff team, at the worst. So as you see, in the NBA It’s much easier to turn around your franchise’s fortunes, than it is in the NFL. Look, I know that a majority of you football fans could actually care less about basketball — I get that. But what you should consider is that the Pelicans are also a professional team of NEW ORLEANS, and that they REPRESENT US. They deserve our support, just as much as any of our other teams (the Saints and LSU Athletics). When I was a kid, a legendary player named “Pistol” Pete Maravich and his team the New Orleans Jazz, demanded as much attention as the Saints did back at the time — especially when New Orleans Jazz fans would come out in droves to the Louisiana Superdome, breaking several NBA attendance records in the process. The sports world at that time was forced to take notice of what was going on down in NOLA: how this showman named “Pistol” Pete was doing things with a basketball that no one had ever seen before, and how he suddenly turned football-crazy New Orleans into a basketball mecca. The Pelicans need that type of support behind them, and I know that our fans are some of the best in the world……..and fully capable of doing so. Anyway, I challenge you Saints fans to tune in on the night of the 27th, and to start paying attention to the Pelicans. And know that no matter what happens, I’ll be keeping up with them and their exploits throughout the year and beyond; providing you with the very best coverage that I possibly can……… Pic courtesy of dimemag.com and the New Orleans Pelicans XThanks for reading guys & girls. If you like use this link to hop to our home page where you can leave an email address to get our Saints article updates sent to your email. Just sign up in the upper right column. XX Don’t be a stranger… WhoDat! This Is A Blank Line Space Share this with: Twitter Facebook Pinterest Reddit Tumblr Google |
Wikitext, as a Wikipedia editor has to type it in (above), and the resulting rendered HTML that a reader sees in her browser (below) When the first wiki saw the light of the world in 1995, it simplified HTML syntax in a revolutionary way, and its inventor Ward Cunningham chose its name after the Hawaiian word for “fast.” When Wikipedia launched in 2001, its rapid success was thanks to the easy collaboration using a wiki. Back then, the simplicity of wiki markup made it possible to start writing Wikipedia with Netscape 4.7 when WYSIWYG editing was technically impossible. A relatively simple PHP script converted the Wikitext to HTML. Since then, Wikitext has always provided both the edit interface and the storage format of MediaWiki, the software underlying Wikipedia. About 12 years later, Wikipedia contains 25 million encyclopedia articles written in Wikitext, but the world around it has changed a bit. Wikitext makes it very difficult to implement visual editing, which is now supported in browsers for HTML documents, and expected by web users from many other sites they are familiar with. It has also become a speed issue: With a lot of new features, the conversion from Wikitext to HTML can be very slow. For large Wikipedia pages, it can take up to 40 seconds to render a new version after the edit has been saved. The Wikimedia Foundation’s Parsoid project is working on these issues by complementing existing Wikitext with an equivalent HTML5 version of the content. In the short term, this HTML representation lets us use HTML technology for visual editing. In the longer term, using HTML as the storage format can eliminate conversion overhead when rendering pages, and can also enable more efficient updates after an edit that only affect part of the page. This might all sound pretty straightforward. So why has this not been done before? Lossless conversion between Wikitext and HTML is really difficult For the Wikitext and HTML5 representations to be considered equivalent, it should be possible to convert between Wikitext and HTML5 representations without introducing any semantic differences. It turns out that the ad-hoc structure of Wikitext makes such a lossless conversion to HTML and back extremely difficult. In Wikitext, italic text is enclosed in double apostrophes (”…”), and bold text in triple apostrophes (”’…”’), but here these notations clash. The interpretation of a sequence of three or more apostrophes depends on other apostrophe-sequences seen on that line. Center: Wikitext source. Below: As interpreted and rendered by MediaWiki. Above: Alternative interpretation. Context-sensitive parsing : The only complete specification of Wikitext’s syntax and semantics is the MediaWiki PHP-based runtime implementation itself, which is still heavily based on regular expression driven text transformation. The multi-pass structure of this transformation combined with complex heuristics for constructs like italic and bold formatting make it impossible to use standard parser techniques based on context-free grammars to parse Wikitext. : The only complete specification of Wikitext’s syntax and semantics is the MediaWiki PHP-based runtime implementation itself, which is still heavily based on regular expression driven text transformation. The multi-pass structure of this transformation combined with complex heuristics for constructs like italic and bold formatting make it impossible to use standard parser techniques based on context-free grammars to parse Wikitext. Text-based templating : MediaWiki’s PHP runtime supports an elaborate text-based preprocessor and template system. This works very similar to a macro processor in C or C++, and creates very similar issues. As an example, there is no guarantee that the expansion of a template will parse to a self-contained DOM structure. In fact, there are many templates that only produce a table start tag ( <table> ), a table row ( <tr>...</tr> ) or a table end tag ( </table> ). They can even only produce the first half of an HTML tag or Wikitext element (e.g. ...</tabl ), which is practically impossible to represent in HTML. Despite all this, content generated by an expanded template (or multiple templates) needs to be clearly identified in the HTML DOM. : MediaWiki’s PHP runtime supports an elaborate text-based preprocessor and template system. This works very similar to a macro processor in C or C++, and creates very similar issues. As an example, there is no guarantee that the expansion of a template will parse to a self-contained DOM structure. In fact, there are many templates that only produce a table start tag ( ), a table row ( ) or a table end tag ( ). They can even only produce the first half of an HTML tag or Wikitext element (e.g. ), which is practically impossible to represent in HTML. Despite all this, content generated by an expanded template (or multiple templates) needs to be clearly identified in the HTML DOM. No invalid Wikitext : Every possible Wikitext input has to be rendered as valid HTML – it is not possible to reject a user’s edit with a “syntax error” message. Many attempts to create an alternative parser for MediaWiki have tried to simplify the problem by declaring some inputs invalid, or modifying the syntax, but at Wikimedia we need to support the existing corpus created by our users over more than a decade. Wiki constructs and HTML tags can be freely mixed in a tag soup, which still needs to be converted to a DOM tree that ideally resembles the user’s intention. The behavior for rare edge cases is often more accident than design. Reproducing the behavior for all edge cases is not feasible nor always desirable. We use automated round-trip testing on 100,000 Wikipedia articles, unit test cases and statistics on Wikipedia dumps to help us identify the common cases we need to support. : Every possible Wikitext input has to be rendered as valid HTML – it is not possible to reject a user’s edit with a “syntax error” message. Many attempts to create an alternative parser for MediaWiki have tried to simplify the problem by declaring some inputs invalid, or modifying the syntax, but at Wikimedia we need to support the existing corpus created by our users over more than a decade. Wiki constructs and HTML tags can be freely mixed in a tag soup, which still needs to be converted to a DOM tree that ideally resembles the user’s intention. The behavior for rare edge cases is often more accident than design. Reproducing the behavior for edge cases is not feasible nor always desirable. We use automated round-trip testing on 100,000 Wikipedia articles, unit test cases and statistics on Wikipedia dumps to help us identify the common cases we need to support. Character-based diffs : MediaWiki uses a character-based diff interface to show the changes between the Wikitext of two versions of a wiki page. Any character difference introduced by a round-trip from Wikitext to HTML and back would show up as a dirty diff , which would annoy editors and make it hard to find the actual changes. This means that the conversion needs to preserve not just the semantics of the content, but also the syntax of unmodified content character-by-character. Put differently, since Wikitext-to-HTML is a many-to-one mapping where different snippets of Wikitext all result in the same HTML rendering (Example: The excess space in “ * list ” versus “ *list ” is ignored), a reverse conversion would effectively normalize Wikitext syntax. However, character-based diffs forces the Wikitext-to-HTML mapping to be treated as a one-to-one mapping. We use a combination of complementary techniques to achieve clean diffs: we detect changes to the HTML5 DOM structure and use a corresponding substring of the source Wikitext when serializing an unmodified DOM part (selective serialization), see below. we record variations from some normalized syntax in hidden round-trip data (example: excess spaces, variants of table-cell Wikitext). we collect and record information about ill-formed HTML that is auto-corrected while building the DOM tree (example: auto-closed inline tags in block context). : MediaWiki uses a character-based diff interface to show the changes between the Wikitext of two versions of a wiki page. Any character difference introduced by a round-trip from Wikitext to HTML and back would show up as a , which would annoy editors and make it hard to find the actual changes. This means that the conversion needs to preserve not just the semantics of the content, but also the syntax of unmodified content character-by-character. Put differently, since Wikitext-to-HTML is a many-to-one mapping where different snippets of Wikitext all result in the same HTML rendering (Example: The excess space in “ ” versus “ ” is ignored), a reverse conversion would effectively normalize Wikitext syntax. However, character-based diffs forces the Wikitext-to-HTML mapping to be treated as a one-to-one mapping. We use a combination of complementary techniques to achieve clean diffs: How we tackle these challenges with Parsoid Artist’s impression of the Parsoid HTML5 + RDFa wiki runtime Parsoid is implemented as a node.js-based web service. There are two distinct, and somewhat independent pieces to Parsoid: the parser and runtime that converts Wikitext to HTML, and the serializer that converts HTML to Wikitext. Converting Wikitext to HTML The conversion from Wikitext to HTML DOM starts with a PEG-based tokenizer, which emits tokens to an asynchronous token stream transformation pipeline. The stages of the pipeline effectively do two things: Asynchronous expansion of template and extension tags : We are using MediaWiki’s web API for these expansions, which distributes the execution of a single request across a cluster of machines. The asynchronous nature of Parsoid’s token stream transformation pipeline enables it to perform multiple expansions in parallel and stitch them back together in original document order with minimal buffering. : We are using MediaWiki’s web API for these expansions, which distributes the execution of a single request across a cluster of machines. The asynchronous nature of Parsoid’s token stream transformation pipeline enables it to perform multiple expansions in parallel and stitch them back together in original document order with minimal buffering. A table created with multiple templates; in Wikitext (below) and rendered HTML (above) Parsing of Wikitext constructs on the expanded token stream: Quotes, lists, pre-blocks and paragraphs are handled via transformations on the expanded token stream. Each transformation is performed by a handler implementing a state machine. This lets us parse context-sensitive Wikitext constructs like quotes. By operating on the fully expanded token stream, we can also mimic the PHP runtime’s support for structures partly created by templates, or even multiple templates. An example for this are tables created with a sequence of table start / row / table end templates as in this football article. Fully processed tokens are passed to a HTML5 tree builder. The resulting DOM is further post-processed before it is stored or delivered to a client (this could simply be the reader’s browser, but also the VisualEditor, or a bot processing the HTML further). The post-processing identifies template blocks, marks auto-corrected HTML tags, and maps DOM subtrees to the original source Wikitext range that generated the subtrees. These techniques enable the HTML-to-Wikitext reverse transformation to be performed while minimizing dirty diffs. Converting HTML to Wikitext The conversion from HTML DOM to Wikitext is performed in a serializer, which needs to make make sure that the generated Wikitext parses back to the original DOM. For this, it needs a deep understanding of the various syntactical constructs and their constraints. A full serialization of an HTML DOM to Wikitext often results in some normalization. For example, we don’t track if single quotes or double quotes are used in attributes (e.g. style='...' vs. style="..." ). The serializer always uses double quotes for attributes, which will lead to a dirty diff if single quotes were used in the original Wikitext. To avoid this, we have implemented a serialization mode which is more selective about what parts of the DOM it serializes. This selective serializer relies on access to both the original Wikitext and the original DOM that was generated from it. It compares the original and new DOM it receives and selectively serializes only the modified parts of the DOM. For unmodified parts of the DOM, it simply emits the original Wikitext that generated those subtrees. This avoids any dirty diffs in unmodified parts of a page. An additional problem that both serializers need to contend with is the presence of Wikitext-like constructs in text content. The serializers need to escape Wikitext-like text content (example: [[Foo]] ) to ensure that it remains text content when the Wikitext is converted back to HTML. This Wikitext escaping is not trivial for a context-sensitive language. The current solution uses smart heuristics and the Wikitext tokenizer, and works quite well. It could however be further improved to eliminate spurious and unnecessary Wikitext escaping, in particular for context-sensitive syntax not fully handled in the tokenizer. Examples Let us now have a look at some examples in more detail. Example 1: Wiki link Consider the Wikitext: [[Foo|bar]] The HTML generated by Parsoid for this is: < a rel = "mw:WikiLink" href = "./Foo" > bar < / a > The <a> -tag itself should be obvious given that the Wikitext is a wiki-link. However, in addition to wiki links, external links, images, ISBN links and others also generate an <a> -tag. In order to properly convert the <a> -tag back to the correct Wikitext that generated it, Parsoid needs to be able to distinguish between them. Towards this end, Parsoid also marks the <a> -tag with the mw:WikiLink property (or mw:ExtLink, mw:Image, etc.). This kind of RDFa markup also provides clients (like the VisualEditor) additional semantic information about HTML DOM subtrees. Example 2: Wiki link with templated content Let us now change the Wikitext slightly where the link content is generated by a template: [[Foo|{{echo|bar}}]] The HTML generated by Parsoid for this is: < a rel = "mw:WikiLink" href = "./Foo" > < span about = "#mwt1" data-parsoid = "{...}" typeof = "mw:Object/Template" > bar < / span > < / a > First of all, note that in the browser this Wikitext will render identically to Example 1 — so semantically, there is no difference between these two Wikitext snippets. However, Parsoid adds additional markup to the link content: The <span> -tag wrapping the content has an about attribute and an RDFa type. Once again, this is to let clients know that the content came from a template, and to let Parsoid serialize this back to the original Wikitext. Parsoid also maintains private information for roundtripping in the data-parsoid HTML attribute (in this example, the original template transclusion source). The about attribute on the <span> lets us mark template output expanding to several DOM subtrees as a group. The future Our roadmap describes our plans for the next months and beyond. Apart from new features and refinement in support of the VisualEditor project, we plan to assimilate several Parsoid features into the core of MediaWiki. HTML storage in parallel with Wikitext is the first major step in this direction. This will enable several optimizations and might eventually lead to HTML becoming the primary storage format in MediaWiki. We are also working on a DOM-based templating solution with better support for visual editing, separation between logic and presentation and the ability to cache fragments for better performance. Join us! If you like the technical challenges in Parsoid and want to get involved, then please join us in the #mediawiki-parsoid IRC channel on Freenode. You could even get paid to work on Parsoid: We are looking for a full-time software engineer and 1-2 contractors. Join the small Parsoid team and make the sum of all knowledge easier and more efficient to edit, render, and reuse! Gabriel Wicke, Senior Software Engineer, Parsoid Subramanya Sastry, Senior Software Engineer, Parsoid |
Evan Tanner figured he could survive the walk back to civilization. Just seven miles, the sign said. Seven miles to the nearest small town, The Dalles, here at the far end of the Oregon Trail. So he kicked the stand from under his Harley-Davidson and heaved the bike forward. He was one of the fittest men around, a world champion fighter, but he was pushing 700 pounds of motorcycle and gear, and he was exhausted from riding 1,200 miles in three days. But he took one step, then another, bending his mind against the distance and the weight. His mind had caused this trouble, as he saw it. He had known that little fuel remained in the bike’s tank, and there were no gas stations on this remote road near Oregon’s Columbia River. A few minutes earlier, riding along, he had mentally shrugged when he saw the sign noting the miles ahead. “Seven miles,” he thought. “I could push it seven miles.” That’s when the bike sputtered to a stop. He saw meaning in everything, and his bike conking out was no different. “It was a challenge,” he would say later. “I had unintentionally thrown it out there at myself.” Now, trudging along the road, he considered calling the friends he had been traveling to see. But midnight approached, and he didn’t want to inconvenience them. “It’s not going to be so bad,” he thought at first. But the road led slightly uphill from the river, and within a few minutes sweat dripped from his forehead. His massive shoulders burned, and his legs shook. Three hundred ninety-nine…. Four hundred…. he thought, measuring his steps between rests. Four hundred steps, rest. Three hundred, rest. Two hundred. One hundred. Throughout his life Tanner had faced challenges – he called them “adventures,” others called them demons – and triumphed in remarkable ways. He lived with extraordinary purpose, rising from the dust of Amarillo, Texas, into the glow of Las Vegas, and along the way he helped build an empire called the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). But he differed from his peers in significant ways; he studied philosophy, for one, and he felt he had a message to share with the world, something bigger than himself, bigger than men fighting for sport. First, though, he needed to reach the next small town on this misbegotten road. He pushed the Harley for hours, interrupted only by long-haul trucks that blew past in the darkness, missing him by inches. Finally he saw a light ahead: an all-night gas station. He had survived the journey unbeaten. But along the way he had conceived his next adventure: a motorcycle trip of even more epic proportions. He would ride deep into the mountainous California desert near the Mexican border, into forgotten places where his footprints would overlap those of forgotten Spanish conquistadores. Another journey. A new adventure. A challenge that would allow him, in the end, to chase his demons back into the lake of fire itself. Evan Tanner took on his first notable challenge – and, as became clear later, his earliest demons – many years earlier, on another remote roadside. It was the 1970s, somewhere in Arkansas. He was about six years old, riding with his mother in the family’s Volkswagen van while his stepfather, a man he regarded as a stranger, sat at the steering wheel. A tire blew out, forcing them to the shoulder. On closer inspection the parents realized they didn’t have a working jack. “What we need is a big, flat rock,” the mother said. The quiet boy spoke up. “I saw a big rock back there,” he said, pointing back down the road. “Get back in the car,” one of the adults said. They returned to the task of lifting the crippled car. It’s impossible to say what passed through the boy’s mind in that moment, beneath his buzz cut. Almost certainly, though, he sensed in those days that his family was fracturing around him. His father had left when he was a baby, and his mother moved in with his stepfather, but the boy and the new man never developed a relationship. Later his mother, who struggled with depression, would move out when Evan was in high school, leaving him to more or less raise himself while living with his older brother. On this day, though, on an Arkansas roadside, Evan could do something. His mother looked up and saw her little boy staggering toward them. In his arms he carried an enormous, flat rock, so heavy that his legs bowed under the weight. A rock that could, he hoped, solve their troubles. A rock to prop them up, if only for a little while. He differed from other fighters in striking ways. He studied philosophy and felt he had a message to share with the world. He grew up shy, so quiet in school that his classmates overlooked him. He loved to read and surprised his friends with a memory they all – to a person – describe as “photographic.” He could learn how to replumb a house, fix a car, or analyze the major religions in just one reading. “He was an anomaly,” one friend said. His great intelligence came with great anxiety, and he often hid in the deep folds of a big sweater and cap, even during hot weather. His mild nature made him an easy target for bullies. His friend Deana Epperson, who grew up across the street, asked him once why he never fought back, and he told her he couldn’t, “because God would be mad at me.” Then one day in middle school a pair of boys cornered him behind a dumpster and unleashed something larger and darker in him than they could have possibly understood. “He proceeded to whip them both, badly,” Epperson remembers. “Nobody could believe it. Sweet Evan Tanner? In his penny loafers? We really didn’t understand.” As he grew his physical prowess became undeniable. He excelled at pole vaulting, cycling, football, snowboarding, surfing, and even bowled a good game. He ran home from school each day, five miles. Midway through high school he took up wrestling, and in his junior and senior years he won back-to-back state championships. He appeared out of nowhere, the finest wrestler in the state of Texas. “It was unprecedented,” says Brent Medley, a close hometown friend who wrestled as well. “Most of those guys had been wrestling since they were knee-high, but none of us understood what Evan was doing.” As quickly as he had taken up the sport, he dropped it. Tanner’s physical skill couldn’t calm the restlessness that drove him, eventually, to become a self-described drifter – someone who, as he put it, had “gypsy blood.” He left Amarillo to attend tiny Simpson College in Iowa, thinking of becoming a doctor, and he triumphed there by making the dean’s list. Then, with no explanation, he left. He roamed. He visited towns that interested him and made money doing hard, physical work: construction jobs, laying cable, day labor. He traded the strength of his body for a chance to feed his mind. And when anxiety came, as it did from time to time, he would find a poorly lit corner of some local bar and drink until the demons fell silent. In 1997 he passed back through his hometown, Amarillo, to do some work climbing telephone poles, and he attended a fight of the sort that would eventually be called mixed martial arts. Tanner didn’t particularly care for fighting as entertainment. But he did love the sense of battle. What could be more existential than two men grappling in a cage? People in town still remembered Tanner for his wrestling as a kid, and a fight promoter approached him about climbing into the ring again. He gave it a try – and swiftly dispatched every hard-swinging hoodlum in sight. He fought three times in one night, winning a hometown tournament. Encouraged, Tanner bought a videotape about grappling that featured the famous Gracie family of Brazilian jujitsu masters. He lived alone in a cabin in a Texas wasteland at the time, so remote that he powered his VCR with a generator. People laughed – what sort of rube teaches himself to fight by mail order? – but Tanner absorbed the leverage, the pressure, the physics of it all, just by seeing it done. Then he proceeded to lay waste to anyone who stepped up to meet him, working his way in one year from Amarillo to Japan, where he manhandled the Japanese in something called the Neo Blood Tournament. He only needed one thing as a fighter: better opponents. Tanner arrived at the UFC in 1999, at a time when it was trying to rehabilitate its underground image, and he couldn’t have been better suited for it. Here came a handsome, articulate young Texan who looked like an athlete, not a street fighter. Tanner thrived at the UFC over the next few years, bringing his professional record to 30-4, and in 2005 he gained a shot at the world middleweight title. He fought as an underdog against David Terrell, who early in the match placed Tanner in a painful “guillotine” choke. Tanner managed to escape, climbed atop Terrell, and pounded him until the referee called the fight for Tanner. He was a world champion now living under the bright lights of Vegas, but none of it mattered to him. Ian Dawe, a Canadian fighter and friend who at one point lived for three months with Tanner, arrived to discover him living a monastic lifestyle in the heart of Sin City. Tanner had a one-bedroom apartment with one mattress – minus the frame – for himself and a futon for visitors, one plastic plate and cup for each, and a pile of books. “He knew I wanted to see the glamour side of Vegas,” Dawe says, “so one night when he was invited to a party at the top of the Palms, he went so I could have a look.” There the young Canadian stared at UFC superstar Tito Ortiz, porn star Jenna Jameson, and other self-promoters who reflected light like disco balls, all teeth and cleavage and sharkskin. Tanner, a champion fighter, walked in wearing a T-shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. “He really didn’t care,” Dawe says. “And that shocked people.” Tanner had triumphed in mixed martial arts, and so, true to form, he abandoned the sport. His timing couldn’t have been worse, really. The title bout had paid him only $38,000, but just afterward the UFC exploded into the national consciousness as a full-fledged sport, with millions of lucrative pay-per-view subscribers and much larger purses for its champions. Tanner didn’t care. Fighting, to him, had been like working in a construction yard or laying cable, but with an audience. “He never really wanted to be a fighter,” his friend Brent Medley says. “That’s the irony. He was good at it, but he didn’t particularly like it. For him it was just a way of traveling the world. People recognized him on the street for his fighting, but he wanted to be remembered for his ideas.” Tanner had one particular idea that he wanted to convey to the world, which he called “the power of one.” It’s the notion of small kindnesses, or as he later explained: “Your words and actions resonate out eternally, in a sense. It reaches one person, then two people, then four, and it expands out exponentially.” The books in his apartment would have surprised the opponents whose faces he had pounded: ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ ‘Doctor Zhivago,’ ‘Siddhartha,’ ‘Crime and Punishment,’ and, most unexpectedly, ‘The Tao of Pooh.’ Tanner had always guarded his sensitive, philosophical side. Once, when he was in grade school, his mother had found him reading a biography of Chief Joseph, the 19th-century peacemaker. The boy had turned away, with tears in his eyes. “Right now I’m just like a student,” he said later, as a man. “I’m doing the best I can with what’s put before me. Just getting ready.” Tanner decided to try the life of a sailor next, even though he’d never sailed. He tackled it in two steps. Step one: He bought a series of books about knots, rigging, navigation. Step two: He bought an antique 30-foot wooden-hulled, two-masted ketch. His friends advised him against it. “It was crazy, but hey,” says Jorge Gayoso, a Uruguayan boat repairman who worked with Tanner on his ketch in Oceanside, California. The two men, along with another friend, Dan Elliott, sanded and filled and painted the 70-year-old wooden hull and repaired the engine, and with time the three grew close. “That boat needed a lot of work,” says Gayoso with a laugh. Tanner and Gayoso hit it off particularly well. They were both wild men and scholars, tattooed thinkers who spent their days working on the old sailboat, riding their Harleys along the beach road, surfing, and arguing existential questions. And in the evenings, Tanner drank himself into oblivion. He always kept himself physically fit, but he’d been drinking hard for a dozen or more years. Once at a postfight party, Tanner – so shy when sober – picked up the wife of legendary UFC referee John McCarthy, then dropped her, hurting her head. The incident horrified Tanner, who fled further into alcoholism. Now he was drinking at an almost suicidal clip. On the nights he couldn’t make it back to his boat in Oceanside, he stayed with Gayoso or Elliott. Elliott worked a night shift as a physician’s assistant and sometimes came home at sunrise to find Tanner starting into a case of beer. At midday he’d go out for another. Then a third, in the evening. Elliott felt powerless to stop him. “Look,” Tanner told him. “I drink harder and deeper than most people with a drinking problem could ever understand.” He drank with a sense of purpose, calling it another challenge to himself. An adventure. He told friends he did it as an intellectual exercise, so that one day he could warn his own children – which he wanted someday, when he felt qualified – of the ravages of alcohol. However worthy his stated aims, his actions undermined them. He sometimes slept on a park bench. His friends had to check his refrigerator to make sure he had enough to eat. His teeth started to loosen in his skull. Tanner was a good-looking guy with a strong jaw and blue eyes, but he grew a long, gnarled beard that gave him the look of a homeless man, which, in a sense, he had become. And the one subject Tanner never spoke about, even in the deepest stupor, was his own childhood: the abandonment, and the pain. As months went by, Tanner and his wooden boat wore out their welcome at Oceanside’s guest docks, so one afternoon he launched himself into the heavy swells of the Pacific, hoping to sail for a more forgiving destination. Elliott went along, worried his friend would die if left alone. He had only sailed once before, during a lesson. About 10 miles out to sea the old boat hit a big wave – crack. Then came another: crack. Elliott looked below, into the hull. “The bilge pump isn’t pumping,” he told Tanner. “This thing could go down, man.” Tanner leaped below the deck to see, and sure enough the whole ocean seemed to be pouring into the hull. He grabbed an old tool bucket nearby and began bailing out the water. “I stayed up all night,” Tanner said later, “much of it spent down in the hold in the cold water, trying to save her.” He bailed water just long enough for the old boat to limp closer to shore, where a man in a dinghy rescued them. Then Tanner’s boat sank in spectacular fashion, within sight of a San Diego marina. The episode made the pages of a local boating journal and then into mixed-martial-arts circles online, where it made Tanner a laughingstock among baffled fight fans. Tanner publicly set a date to quit drinking: October 10, 2007. “And he did,” Gayoso said. “He just quit.” Tanner felt he’d had a voice as a champion fighter and lost it when he started drinking full-time. So he started training again. He joined gyms in Oceanside and Las Vegas and set up a network of friends and fans he called Team Tanner. They were his sponsors, because he refused to wear the logo of any product he didn’t believe in or use himself. Instead of slogans for energy drinks and online casinos, his T-shirts bore the phrase “Believe in the Power of One.” That astonished the mixed-martial-arts establishment. “I’d say, ‘Evan, these people want to give you free money.’ But nope,” says John Wood, a fighter and owner of Warrior Training Center, where Tanner worked himself back into shape. “He could have made a lot of money.” Tanner returned to the UFC last March when he took on Yushin Okami from Japan. The fight’s commentators noted Tanner’s incredible return to form. “Got himself way out of shape,” Joe Rogan said, ringside. “No training at all for two years. Just beer.” Few people knew, though, just how thoroughly alcohol had ravaged Tanner’s body. His hemoglobin – the oxygen-bearing protein that gives blood its red color – had fallen dangerously low. On television he looked fine, but internally his body struggled to move oxygen. The fight seemed balanced, for a while, but in the second round Okami wrapped his hands behind Tanner’s head and brought it down hard, smashing it against Okami’s upward-moving knee. Tanner dropped to the mat, unconscious. “It’s just so hot here,” Tanner kept saying to his friend on the phone, as the temperature hit 115 degrees. “There’s no water.” The second fight of his comeback ended only slightly better, when Tanner lost by split decision to American Kendall Grove. None of that really mattered. Tanner had triumphed again; he had drifted into drunken, sunken despair and then, at 37 years old, fought his way back to clear-eyed validation. He searched, once again, for a more difficult challenge. After that second comeback fight, Tanner took a break and rode his motorcycle to Oregon to see a girl. It was on that trip this past July that he forgot to check the fuel level in his bike and wound up pushing it back to civilization. The woman, named Sara, had intrigued him with romantic talk of the desert. Tanner later wrote in his online journal: I began to imagine what might be found in the deep reaches of the untracked desert. It became an obsession of sorts…. Today, I ran to the store to pick up a few things, and with the lonesome, quiet desert thoughts on my mind, I couldn’t help but be struck with their brutally stark contrast to my current surroundings, the amazing congestion in which we exist day to day. He described a plan to ride into the desert, where the emptiness of the landscape could allow him days or even weeks of reflection, like a modern Henry David Thoreau on his Walden Pond. That sort of lofty, lonely talk made his fans nervous, and they said so online. Fighters should stay focused on their bodies. Their world is physical. And now Evan Tanner spoke of spooky things, of abstract treasures and existential congestion. Some fans wondered aloud whether he would die out there among the cacti and tumbleweeds. “Come on, guys,” Tanner wrote on his site. “This isn’t a version of ‘Into the Wild.’ I’m not going out into the desert with a pair of shorts and a bowie knife, to try to live off the land. I’m going fully geared up, and I’m planning on having some fun.” Tanner set about preparing for his trek. He bought an enduro-style motorcycle, which he and Gayoso reconfigured for hard cross-country travel. They upgraded gaskets and put sealant in the tires. Rejetted the carburetor, attached aftermarket racks for his gear. Meanwhile Tanner made a careful study of the desert, reading a whole stack of books about outback navigation, finding water, desert terrain. He shaved his beard and prepared to enter a landscape he called “crisp and clean, pure and shimmering.” He studied satellite images of the area where he planned to camp, marking a nearby spring from which he could replenish his water supply. And he gathered all the proper equipment, from batteries to water containers. “Being a minimalist by nature, wanting to carry only the essentials, and being extremely particular, it has been a little difficult to find just the right equipment,” he wrote online. “I plan on going so deep into the desert that any failure of my equipment could cost me my life.” On September 3, Tanner waved to a friend as he left his beach apartment in Oceanside, saying he might return in three days or three weeks. He planned on seeking peaceful solitude in the desert, however long it took. He rode several hours inland, to the Palo Verde desert mountains, where he left the road and traveled across dry creek beds and through scrub brush. He pushed deep into the desert, into a valley. During the dry season even small animals struggled to survive on the washboard landscape, and signs in the area warned of a military bombing range. There Tanner unfolded a small cot and chair, a sleeping bag, a water bladder, a handheld GPS, his journal, and two pens. He set up a tarp overhead, to ward off the sun. On September 4, the day after Tanner left his apartment, Jorge Gayoso was wrapping up an afternoon’s work at the waterfront, loading tools into his truck, when he received a text message that stopped him cold. It came from Tanner’s phone: If I don’t contact you by 8 am, send out search and rescue. I am at Clapp Spring in the mountains west of Palo Verde. I set up camp a little south and east of Flat Tops. As Jorge stood staring at the message – search and rescue? – a second one arrived: I am out of water. Waiting for the sun to drop, then will try to hike the five miles back to camp. I feel like shit, but I’m okay. Gimme till 8 am, then worry. Gayoso stared again. What had happened out there? He dialed Tanner’s phone. “Hey,” Tanner answered. “I’m here, and–” The connection broke. Then Gayoso’s phone rang. “Man, it’s so hot here,” Tanner said. “I’m at Clapp Spring, but there’s no water. So I’m just sitting here under a tree in the shade, waiting for the sun to drop.” Gayoso pieced together what had happened from what his friend told him next. On his first morning in the desert Tanner had decided to walk five miles to the spring he’d seen on the satellite images, where he could refill his water bladder. Five miles meant nothing to him; as an athlete he could jog five miles and hardly get winded. “But it’s just so hot here,” Tanner repeated. By midday the temperature had reached 115 degrees. Even worse, outdated satellite imagery had deceived him; he had arrived at the spring to discover it was dry. So Tanner decided to hide from the sun beneath one of the desert’s malnourished trees. Worry rose in Gayoso’s mind, but he spoke lightly. “Well, what are we doing here?” Tanner said he planned to walk back to his camp after dark. Back to his motorcycle. He’d had enough of the desert. The two friends bickered. Gayoso argued that Tanner should start walking out before dark so he could see any snakes, holes, or rocks, and wouldn’t get lost. Tanner, normally the gentlest friend imaginable, seemed annoyed. He noted he had a GPS. He’d be fine at dark. “Do you have a flashlight?” “No.” The connection broke again. Heat is a strange thing. It makes men behave in strange ways and think strange thoughts. Cold works in a more merciful way. When a man finds himself caught outdoors, exposed to very cold weather, his body urges him to slow down, to hibernate. He falls asleep in the snow and slips away. Heat drives a man forward. It challenges him and awakens his mind. It makes him stagger forward, instead of falling asleep. “People tend to fight for it, in heat,” said David Pascoe, a professor at Auburn University and an authority on how the body reacts to temperature change. “Your body wants to unload that heat, which means increasing circulation. Which means movement.” When Evan Tanner woke up that morning he was probably already dehydrated. During the previous day’s long motorcycle ride from the coast, the wind had secretly siphoned off a great deal of his fluid. When the sun came up and the temperature began to rise, a little cone-shaped part of his brain, the hypothalamus, sensed the change and sent word to his heart. The heart beat a little faster to move blood from his core to his skin, where the heat could dissipate. His skin was cooler because, in the meantime, the hypothalamus had directed the sweat glands to excrete water. Water that came from his blood. It’s an ingenious system: Blood circulates both heat and water. But the system is expensive. It costs fluid. Without incoming water the blood becomes more concentrated, which means there’s less volume, which means the heart has to pump faster to move ever-thicker blood. Pascoe conducts experiments with people’s temperatures, dialing up the heat in a controlled way to see what happens. In one experiment, for example, he planned to raise his subjects’ temperatures two degrees centigrade. “The first degree was easy,” Pascoe said. “We had them doing a sort of walking workload, no problem. Then in the next half-degree, suddenly people weren’t so jovial. Not so happy. Then came the last half-degree.” People got aggressive, he said. They grew profane. They snapped, “Shut up! Leave me alone!” At higher temperatures, he said, people lose their mental acuity. “I’ve seen people mumble about things with no idea what they were saying,” he said. “It’s bizarre behavior.” Dizziness sets in. Then disorientation. All through the night Gayoso tried to reach Tanner. When morning came he remembered his friend’s first message about search and rescue. He paced his house in Oceanside, wondering what to do. Had Tanner’s phone simply lost power? Or was it something worse? The whole thing seemed absurd. How does one even call “search and rescue”? He went online to look for a phone number. A short while later, as sheriff’s deputy Justin Hettich made a rare traffic stop outside Palo Verde, he received a call. A man with an Uruguayan accent wanted to read him a couple of text messages. Something about his friend. An ultimate fighter. Evan Tanner. Hettich, other deputies, a search-and-rescue contractor, and a marine helicopter team searched the lonely countryside for Tanner’s campsite. Even knowing his general position, they took a couple of days to find the tarp and motorcycle. Soon after they found his body. He had made it almost four miles on the walk back to camp. He had sat down and taken pictures of himself, about 20 in all, right up to the moment of unconsciousness. Then he had laid his head against a rock as if it were a pillow; not because he was sleepy but likely because in his dizziness the rock provided orientation. A rock to prop him up, if only for a little while. Nature, in the end, forced him to submit. In October, in Amarillo’s dirt-floored cattle arena, a man with a microphone shouted a question to the crowd of about 4,000: “Are you people ready for a fight?” Yes, they shouted. They were ready. “I said, are you ready for a fight?” Yes!, they shouted. And this time they meant it. The fight’s promoters had known Tanner and organized the event as a tribute. They invited his family into the cage, then announced the creation of a college scholarship in Tanner’s name. The moment came with some awkwardness; Tanner hadn’t spoken to his family in years, and his friends say he didn’t care for them very much. Tanner’s mother, Sue Craig, is reluctant to talk about her son. “I guess what I’m wondering is, what’s in it for us?” she says. There may be money down the road, she explains, when Hollywood gets word of Tanner’s life. She offers some broad sketches, some sense of how his childhood had unfolded. The father gone, the mother gone. The cold relationship with the stepfather. She pauses, then adds, “I’m not sure how that’s relevant, though. I’m not sure that affected him.” Except of course it did. Throughout his life Evan Tanner drifted – geographically, emotionally, physically – searching for a home. Searching to calm his restless mind, to prepare himself for a fatherhood that never came, to discover a purpose for his great and varied talents. And then, when he came near to any acceptance, he abandoned it. The crowd in Amarillo was getting twitchy, after a few undercard matches and innumerable beers. Fights broke out in the audience and drew as much attention as the contests in the ring. A rowdy bunch, spoiling for action. Then, almost at the end of the night, Evan Tanner appeared on two giant screens, at each end of the stadium. When the crowd saw him they exploded with cheers. “Evaaan! Evaaaaan!“ His soft-spoken voice filled the place. He had something to say. “One of the ultimate things a human can learn,” he said, “is kindness for their fellow humans.” He might as well have delivered 4,000 simultaneous knockout punches, so complete was the silence. Onscreen he paused. He looked down, as though speaking to himself now. “I’d like to teach those things to my children.” The great tragedy of Tanner’s life, in the end, was that he was right about himself. In each of his endeavors – his adventures, his challenges – he was indeed only a student, preparing for some later task. But that was also his greatest triumph: At the end of his posthumous message in Amarillo, the restless, hard-bitten crowd rose to its feet and cheered, against all likelihood, for the abstract cause of simple kindness. |
Every year thousands of Irish women travel abroad for abortions. Irish women's health organisations report increasing numbers are purchasing abortion-inducing products online and using them in their homes. However, the Irish government steadfastly refuses to confront the issue. Abortion is generally illegal in Ireland, but the sticking point is that it is not always illegal. Since a 1992 supreme court ruling in the case of a teenage rape victim, there is actually a small category of cases in which one has a right to access a termination: where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of a pregnant woman from carrying a baby to term. Not only is Ireland one of a handful of European states where abortion is restricted to this extent, but its government has avoided introducing comprehensive legislation or guidelines to determine whether someone falls into that small category where abortion is lawful. So there is no real way in which most women can exercise that limited constitutional right. Neither is it possible for medical practitioners to advise women effectively because they lack the guidelines they need. But today the European court of human rights handed down a judgment in the cases brought by three women, A, B & C v Ireland, that may compel the government into action. The court's decision does not really change Ireland's current legal position: they didn't find that the restriction of abortion violates the European convention on human rights. What the court did instead, when deciding in favour of Ms C, is to confirm that the failure to put in place a proper framework within which one's right to an abortion can be exercised, violates the right to privacy. This means that as a matter of international law the Irish government is required to do something about abortion; what it will do is not yet clear. There are a couple of options. First, a constitutional referendum to ask the people to either close off the exception or to extend the availability of abortion. Pro-life campaigners have called for a referendum; but the reality is that another national vote on this issue would be difficult to implement. Agreeing on the wording of the proposed amendment would be tortuous, and the referendum campaign would be as ugly as the three previous ones in 1983, 1992 and 2002. The second, more likely, option is that the government will introduce regulation. That will also be difficult: how many doctors' authorisations will be required? Will we need special consent where the woman is a minor? Difficult as crafting guidelines will be, they are necessary. Because it is unconscionable for a government to have spent the past 18 years, since the supreme court urged it to legislate, in a state of avoidance. Because there are cases where women's lives are at risk – a risk compounded by having to travel, borrow money and get abortions abroad. Because medical practitioners have no effective guidance when they are treating women who may fall into this small category of cases. Because although these women have a constitutional right to choose termination, the choice to have an abortion in their own country surrounded by their support networks is denied them in practice. Even legislation will not end the abortion debate in Ireland. Women will still have to travel if they want a termination. Today's decision doesn't address that; it leaves the question of how broadly to cast access to abortion to the state itself. With an election looming and speculation as to the role abortion will play, these issues are central to our national discourse. But behind that discourse lie real women, real stories, and a regulatory vacuum that must be filled. |
Bay Area Democrats are finding brethren among the GOP on Libya. Such is the rising opposition to the excursion among both parties that the White House sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to lobby House Dems to stop a resolution on the House floor today by Florida Republican Tom Rooney that would cut off funds for the operation. A competing resolution would provide congressional authorization for the action. Republican leaders and anti-war Democrats believe that the president has violated the 1973 War Powers Act and are not buying the White House line that the Libya action does not amount to “hostilities.” But Bay Area members of the Progressive Caucus such as Mike Honda, Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey who want an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Libya are opposing even the move to cut off funds, arguing that it allows too many exceptions. They argue that it would “permit the president to continue all the current operations by U.S. Armed Forces. The exemptions include: search and rescue; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; aerial refueling; and operational planning. These exemptions encompass much of what U.S. is already doing. We buy the bombs and the jet fuel, find the targets, and refuel the bombers. All NATO has to do is physically drop the bombs.</p >”The choices offered to members are either a ‘carte blanche authorization’ or ‘authorization light.’ We urge you to vote no on both resolutions and instead support efforts to cut off all funds for Libya in the 2012 Defense Appropriations bill. The power of the purse is Congress’s ultimate check on the executive branch. “ Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass. and John McCain, R-Ariz. are leading the Senate effort to block any action by the House to cut off funds and want to provide Obama with authorization. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been outspoken against the operation from the beginning, arguing that the administration is violating the law. Lugar is leading Senate efforts to limit the scope of the operation. |
1.3k SHARES Pin Share Print If you’ve ever told anybody about the things you’re doing to survive after the SHTF, you’ve probably been asked why. “Why would you want to survive the end of the world?” There are plenty of reasons. The human instinct to survive, for one. The folks who say they’d rather die than live through the end of the world have no idea how strong that instinct can be. Even if life after the SHTF is miserable, it’s worth going on if there’s any hope that the world can become a better place again. There’s no doubt there would be some serious downsides to surviving a catastrophe that leaves most of the population dead. But this is the part where you have to look at the silver lining. Yes, it would be brutal, but living on and helping rebuild society is a very good thing. You have to look for the good in the bad. The reason I say all this is so no one reads this article and decides they’d be better off dead if the SHTF. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point is that living through a horrific disaster will be much worse if you’re not prepared. If you are prepared, however, you’ll be much more comfortable and could even be a part of the first post-SHTF communities. But if you’re not prepared, you’ll have to deal with… 1. No Running Water That means you won’t be able to jump in the shower or turn on the faucet every time you feel dirty or want a drink. Water is critical to life. If you want to live more than a couple of days after the end of the world, you need to have a large supply of water stashed away or a way to purify the water you collect. 2. No Air Conditioning AC will be a distant memory. You are going to have to deal with the heat like your grandparents did. They survived and so can you. Plan ahead and make sure you have the supplies needed to stay cool in the summer. 3. Garbage Everywhere Without garbage men or waste disposal sites, the city will be a huge, stinky mess. You can do your part to keep your little corner of the world clean by storing plenty of trash bags and other supplies. Keep yourself clean if you don’t want to catch a disease. 4. No Law Enforcement The police won’t be available to help you when the bad guys are at your door. Just imagine: No one to save you from criminals or even lock them up. Instead, you’ll need to have plenty of home security measures in place and know how to defend yourself. 5. No Grocery Stores When you’re hungry, you won’t be able to run to the store and stock up on your favorite foods because there won’t be any stores, or food. That’s why you’ll need a large stockpile to rely on. Learning how to forage and farm will also be a necessity in a post-apocalyptic world. 6. No Gas Stations You won’t be able to put fuel in your car. Which means if you need to get somewhere, you’ll have to do it some other way. You can store gasoline, but it isn’t feasible to store a year’s worth of gasoline. Instead you’ll want to either learn how to make biofuel or have a bike or other means of getting around that doesn’t include walking. (Check out these fuel storage safety tips.) 7. No Banks You won’t be able to get money out of the bank, not that it would do you any good. Instead you’ll have to rely on barter items and get good at haggling. Paper money will likely be a thing of the past, so store necessities that can be bartered with, like chocolate, alcohol and cigarettes. 8. No Heaters Winter time without a functioning furnace is going to be brutal. You can’t flip a switch and wait for the house to warm up. However, you can stockpile wood and have a woodstove installed. Wood heat doesn’t require electricity and there will be plenty of fuel to burn with the destroyed houses and downed trees that are likely to be around after a calamity. Also stock plenty of winter survival items and learn how to stay warm without power. 9. No Clinics or Emergency Rooms You may be able to find a doctor willing to give you advice, but you won’t have the luxury of checking into a clean hospital loaded with supplies and medicine. You’ll need to stock up on medical supplies and learn how to take care of your own injuries. 10. Not Enough Medicine You won’t be able to go to a pharmacy to get cold meds or get a shot of penicillin when you have a wound that is infected. You’ll need to stock up on OTC meds and antibiotics. You’ll also need to learn the ins and outs of herbal medicines that can be found growing in the wild. 11. No Electricity You won’t have lights, television, or even the ability to charge your devices. Unless, of course, you have solar panels or another alternative way to generate power. Here are some questions to ask before that happens. 12. No Internet You won’t be able to check your email or find out what’s going on in the world. This will be a very difficult for those who are used to being connected to the world every second of the day. There isn’t a solution to this. It’s just the way life will be. These 10 SHTF communications will be your only alternatives to the Internet. 13. Phones Won’t Work You won’t be able to pick up your phone and check on your family or friends in another city. Instead you’ll just have to hope they’re okay. If communicating with people in other cities is important to you, check out these 3 ways to communicate after the SHTF. You may also want to learn how to use a Ham radio. 14. No Buses or Airplanes At least not ones you can use. You won’t be able to catch a flight out of town or get on the next bus or train. Best case scenario is you have a bug out vehicle and plenty of stored gasoline. But eventually you’re going to be on foot. If you do need to bug out, make sure you have a bug out bag ready and appropriate footwear. 15. No Coffee Shops Seriously, life without coffee or caffeine is going to be hell. At a time when you could really use the extra boost, you won’t be able to run to the coffee shop and grab a cup of Joe and a danish. Stockpile coffee if that is your thing, along with a way to make it. Here are some non-electric kitchen gadgets that will make your life easier. 16. No Junk Food It will be a thing of the past. We know it isn’t healthy but sometimes a soda and a bag of greasy potato chips is just what you need to lift your spirits. It would be wise to stock up on bags of hard candy and drink mixes. These little luxuries will help satisfy your craving for something totally bad for you. Here are some comfort foods and ingredients you’ll want to have. 17. No Malls You may or may not like the mall, but everyone needs clothes that fit and are intact. You won’t be able to buy new jeans when your current pair wears out, or new shoes when your old ones start falling apart. Stock up on clothes in a variety of sizes and hold on to those old boots. You’ll be doing a lot more manual labor which is hard on clothes. Have plenty of backups. 18. No Working Toilets They will be in short supply. With no city sewage systems, there will be nowhere for the toilet water to go when you flush. The water system will be shut down and flushing will not be a possibility. Get used to going outside or learn how to build a composting toilet. Digging a hole for an outhouse is also a possibility. Here are some other options. 19. No Instant Entertainment At times, you’ll be bored out of your skull without TV or technology to entertain you. If you happen to be a lone survivor or in a small group, you’ll need something to pass the time. Dwelling on the negative is going to bring you down, so find a way to entertain yourself. Books, puzzles and hobbies will be very important for keeping your mind off of the chaos around you. Don’t get bored. 20. Lots of Dangerous People During a long-term disaster, people can get crazy. Those who survived by pure chance and didn’t prepare for the long haul are going to be desperate. Ordinarily good people will thieve and even kill to get what they need. This goes back to self-defense. Be prepared to deal with an influx of dangerous people. Setting up a community of like-minded people before the end of the world will give you a leg up because you’ll have people to watch your back. A large group won’t be easy to take down. There is a term the military uses: “embrace the suck.” This is a good mantra to follow after the world ends. Embrace the suck and figure out a way to get around it. Don’t get caught up in the doom and gloom. It will bring you down. Instead, follow the recommendations here to help you prepare yourself to live, even when it sucks. Want To Prep But Not Sure Where To Begin? Join Our Newsletter And Get Your FREE One Year Urban Survival Plan! 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Work on a major hydroelectric dam in the Himalayas has been stopped after one of India's most eminent scientists came close to dying on the 38th day of a fast, in protest against the harnessing of a tributary of the sacred river Ganges. Professor AD Agarwal, 77, former dean of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi at Kanpur, last week called off his second fast in a year against Himalayan dam projects, after the Indian government agreed to speed up its inquiry into how electricity could be generated without the flow of the water being impeded. The free-running of the river is a crucial element of its sacred status. "The water ... is not ordinary water to a Hindu. It is a matter of the life and death of Hindu faith," Agarwal said, before his fast began in January. The 600MW Loharinag-Pala project is one of several hundred major dams and barrages planned or now being constructed by India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan for the foothills of the Himalayas. Together they are expected to provide 150,000MW of electricity for countries in which power cuts are frequent and demand is growing fast. But experts argue the dams will have profound effects on the environment and culture of the region, directly affecting the lives of millions of people. According to a recent report from the NGO International Rivers, the dams will fundamentally transform the landscape, ecology and economy of the region and will displace hundreds of thousands of people. Shripad Dharmadhikary, one of South Asia's leading water and energy experts who authored the report, said: "Damming and diversion of rivers [in the Himalayas] will severely disrupt downstream flows, impacting agriculture and fisheries and threatening livelihoods of entire populations." Tomorrow – designated International Day of Action for Rivers – the NGO is organising a global campaign against dams. Dharmadhikary's report said the dams are being planned and carried out with hardly any environmental assessment of individual or cumulative impacts. "If all the planned capacity expansion materialises, the Himalayan region could have the highest concentration of dams in the world. The dams' reservoirs, tunnels, transmission lines and related works will destroy thousands of houses, rivers, forests, spiritual sites and even parts of the highest highway in the world, the Karakoram highway." In addition, it warns that climate change could reduce the amount of electricity that the dams are planned to generate. This is because increased melting of glaciers is causing more silt to be washed down the mountains, reducing the capacity of the dams. "The impact of global warming is already being felt much more in the Himalayas than in other parts of the world. This is resulting in the accelerated melting of glaciers and the depletion of the massive water store of the region. There are real fears the snow-covered mountains [will turn] into bare, rocky mountains. As glaciers melt, water in the rivers will rise, and dams will be subjected to much higher flows, raising concerns of dam safety," it says. In the past few years, Pakistan, India, Bhutan and Nepal have all prepared plans for a massive programme of dam building in the region. Bhutan, one of the most remote but pristine countries in the world, is planning to expand its hydroelectricity capacity by about 10,000 MW - the equivalent of at least five British nuclear power stations - in the next 10 years. Among the projects planned for the near future in Bhutan are the giant 1,095 MW Punatsangchu-I and the 600 MW Mangdechhu projects. Nepal is planning to install hydropower capacity of 22,000 MW in the coming years and while some of the dams would be to meet its own acute needs for reliable electricity, the majority would be for export to India. Pakistan, with more than 150 million people, expects electricity needs to rise nearly 30% in the next five years. Hydropower is the cheapest form of energy production and the country has plans to add 10,000MW, through five major projects, by 2016, with a further 14 projects, totalling about 21,000MW, under study for construction by 2025. The biggest would be the $12bn, 4,500MW Diamer-Bhasha dam, which would impound nearly 15% of the river Indus and form a lake 100km upstream of the dam's site. "Degradation of the natural surroundings and a massive influx of migrant workers will have grave implications for the culture and identity of local people, who are often distinct ethnic groups small in numbers", said Dharmadhikary. The study did not consider dam-building on the Chinese side of the Himalayas. China recently announced plans to build 59 reservoirs, but its stated aim was to store water from its shrinking glaciers. |
Iran has pulled out some of its elite fighters from the Russian-led military campaign in Syria, Western military officials told Bloomberg News. The apparent retreat comes as some high-level Iranian officers have been killed and wounded in a campaign meant to help bolster the Syrian government by retaking key areas captured by Western-backed opposition forces, including Idlib Province. "They are losing lieutenants," Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, told Bloomberg. "When you lose lieutenants it means you are losing people fighting on the front lines." Iran reportedly beginning to withdraw some of its elite fighters from Syria - US officials cite schism with Russia: https://t.co/dbdiKOu3hz — Louisa Loveluck (@leloveluck) December 10, 2015 Iran has reportedly lost more than 100 of its fighters, including top generals. Some said the apparent retreat was simply a change in military strategy. Russia initially began its campaign in Syria in September with a plan to drive rebels out of Idlib and other cities within three months, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said at the Saban Forum at the Brookings Institution Friday. "It’s not going to happen because of the military difficulties," he said, adding the campaign appears to have failed. Early on, the campaign was criticized for its targeting of anti-regime rebels, many backed by the West and Gulf states, rather than focusing on weakening the Islamic State group. Rights organizations also said the Russian-led campaign was targeting civilian infrastructure. I’m skeptical this is an Iranian retreat from Syria, rather than just the end to a surge that was always temporary https://t.co/zDCPnAUw60 — Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) December 10, 2015 The Wall Street Journal reported there were some 7,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps soldiers and other militia volunteers in October. That number has since dwindled, with now as few as 700 Revolutionary Guard Corps members, according to an estimate by a senior Western defense official cited by Bloomberg. While International Business Times could not independently verify the purported Iranian retreat, the move could signify a shift in Iran’s role in the civil war in Syria. However, Iranian leaders have continued to demand Syrian President Bashar Assad remain in power. A top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said earlier this week Assad's future could be determined only by the Syrian people and that foreign intervention was a “red line” for Tehran. His fate has been a sticking point in talks among world leaders to bring about an end to the violence in Syria. |
see also 5 women claim they were sexually assaulted by Donald Trump A deluge of sexual misconduct allegations hit Donald Trump on... His campaign in turmoil, Donald Trump on Thursday launched an all-out counterattack against the women who have accused him of sexual harassment and assault — calling them “horrible, horrible liars.” “These claims are all fabricated. They’re pure fiction and outright lies,” Trump said at a rally in West Palm Beach, Fla. He blasted the media for giving credence to the claims — which he insisted are part of “a concerted, coordinated and vicious attack” on him. “It’s no coincidence that these attacks come at the exact same moment, and all together at the same time as WikiLeaks releases documents exposing the massive international corruption of the Clinton machine,” Trump said. Some of the shocking things Trump has said about women: The GOP presidential candidate claimed he has “substantial evidence” to disprove the accusations against him, which he will disclose “in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time.” At least six women have now accused Trump of inappropriate conduct — including a People magazine writer who said he tried to force his tongue down her throat during an interview at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2005. “Look at her. Look at her words. Tell me what you think. I don’t think so,” Trump said at the rally. He claimed there were “no witnesses” to the alleged sexual assault and the two were standing in a room with glass walls. In a tweet, Trump called a New York Times story detailing claims from two women who say he abused him “a total fabrication.” A “high-ranking” campaign official told CNN that “NYT editors, reporters, politically motived accusers better lawyer up.” Democratic operative David Brock and lawyer Gloria Allred both said they’re willing to pay for the legal defense of any of Trump’s accusers. In other developments: Trump canceled an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show that was scheduled for Thursday evening. The Times said it will not retract the article about the sexual-harassment allegations against Trump. “We welcome the opportunity to have a court set [Trump] straight,” the paper’s lawyer, David McCraw, wrote in a letter to Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz. At a Clinton rally at Southern New Hampshire University, Michelle Obama ripped into the billionaire, saying his boasts about groping women have, “shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.” The soap-opera star who greeted Trump in 2005 moments after he boasted to “Access Hollywood’s” Billy Bush about how his fame gave him license to grope women spoke out for the first time Thursday, calling his comments “offensive” but ”not shocking.” “They are offensive comments for women. Period,” “Days of Our Lives” star Arianne Zucker told NBC’s “Today” show. One Trump adviser told Bloomberg News that the candidtate intends to go “buck wild” on Clinton for her husband’s infidelities. Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon went a step further — saying the goal is to “turn [Bill Clinton] into Bill Cosby.” |
Jupiter's mysterious moon Europa, famed for its role in 2001: A Space Odyssey, may soon host an intense search for life. Alongside the tantalizing possibility of life under Europa's ice, the fact that the second of Jupiter's satellites is similar in size to Earth's moon, has more water than our own planet, and shows signs of organic chemistry makes it one of the most exciting destinations in the entire solar system. (See "The Hunt for Life Beyond Earth," in National Geographic magazine.) View Images An illustration of the surface of Europa shows compounds from its hidden ocean bubbling up to the surface and spewing into space. Photograph by NASA/JPL-Caltech Ice Moon Ahoy For the past 15 years NASA has been working on a design for a mission called the Europa Clipper. Launched sometime in the mid-2020s, it would travel in long, looping orbits around Jupiter and make at least 45 close flybys of Europa on a two-year mission. Mission planners are considering including ground-penetrating radar that can look through the icy crust, high-resolution cameras that can map its craggy surface, and spectrometers that can sniff out Europa's trace atmosphere. One fascinating surface feature NASA's mission will most likely target will be the bizarre reddish vein-like cracks that blanket the moon. The Hubble Space Telescope recently discovered geysers of water vapor erupting around Europa's south pole near these cracks. Speculation abounds that the vents may bring organic compounds up to the surface from the hidden ocean below. So NASA may fly the spacecraft straight through the suspected plumes, which may spout more than a hundred miles (161 kilometers) into space. That would allow NASA's instruments to taste and smell the blasts. But the Clipper mission won't be alone, since the European Space Agency is also planning a run at Europa with its own mission, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), scheduled for launch in 2022. The goal will be to investigate not only Europa but also its neighboring ice-covered moons, Callisto and Ganymede. Depending on what the Europa Clipper and JUICE missions stumble upon, an even more exciting lander mission could move from drawing boards and science wish lists to reality. NASA is working already on demonstrating technologies that would allow spacecraft to land and then drill into the many miles of Europa's thick ice sheet and release a robotic submersible into the ocean below. At that point, we may learn whether a large body of salty water lies hidden under all that ice and if there is life lurking in the darkness. View Images This skychart shows Jupiter rising in the early evening in the eastern sky. The insert shows the telescope view of Jupiter and its moons as they appear on February 6, 2015. Illustration by A.Fazekas, SkySafari See for Yourself For sky-watchers, Jupiter is now at its biggest and brightest in the night sky this year, making it a supereasy target to hunt down. That's because the giant planet is officially at opposition, aligned with Earth in its separation from the sun and consequently dominating the nighttime sky, rising in the east just after sundown. The planet will appear to rise high in the southern sky after midnight and then slowly settle down in the west by dawn. While to the naked eye Jupiter, 404 million miles (650 million kilometers) away, looks like a brilliant yellow star, a pair of steadily held binoculars will reveal its four Galilean moons. They will appear lined up like a row of ducks beside the planetary disk. Using the sky chart above, Europa can easily be identified. Keep tabs on all four moons over the course of hours and days, and you will notice that they change positions as they orbit their host planet. A small telescope, however, will reveal even more of the giant planet's beauty. At high magnification, Jupiter's brown cloud belts become visible, and with patience even the Great Red Spot comes into focus. It's amazing to ponder that this tiny feature, oval and pink, is a monster hurricane—large enough to swallow three Earth-size planets—that has been raging for at least a couple of centuries across the face of Jupiter. Happy hunting! |
Scientists, Nations Disagree Over Tuna Catch Limits Over the weekend at meetings in Paris, fishing nations decided to leave catch limits for the endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna virtually unchanged. That's despite scientists' concerns that the species is perilously close to collapse. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: The Atlantic bluefin tuna is endangered, but nations that harvest the tuna are refusing to catch less. Eleanor Beardsley has this report on an international meeting on tuna, that wrapped up this past weekend in Paris, and fishing nations decided to leave catch limits for the bluefin, virtually unchanged. BEARDSLEY: It took ten days for environmentalists, fishermen and representatives from the 48 member countries of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT, to hammer out a plan for the future of bluefin tuna fishing. When the meeting ended this weekend, ICCAT announced that fishing quotas would be reduced from 13,500 tons to 12,900 tons in 2011. Not only is that reduction insufficient, says Susan Lieberman of the Pew Environment Group, but ICCAT didnt do enough to combat the biggest problem illegal fishing. Ms. SUSAN LIEBERMAN (Pew Environment Group): France over-fished a couple years ago, so France now has to pay that back. But other countries that have engaged in all these problems with not reporting, etcetera, there are no consequences. Its just not enough to guarantee the future of this incredible fish. Ms. GEMMA PARKS (World Wildlife Fund): Bluefin tuna are one of the most amazing fish in the sea and I think theyre so undervalued. BEARDSLEY: Thats Gemma Parks with the World Wildlife Fund. Ms. PARKS: You know, they can accelerate faster than a Porsche. They grow to sometimes up to 300, 400 kilos. They can live for up to 40 years. Theyre a warm blooded fish, which is very unusual. Theyre highly migratory, you know, they cross the whole Atlantic Ocean. BEARDSLEY: Parks says over-fishing has nearly depleted bluefin stocks in the Atlantic. The WWF is now working to save the Mediterranean stocks. The organization accused ICCAT of selling out to the short-term commercial interests of Mediterranean fishing nations like France, Italy and Spain. But fishermen across the Mediterranean say their fleets have already been cut in half and thousands of jobs lost. Almudena Gomez is a representative for the Spanish fishing industry. Gomez says the quotas have been working and bluefin tuna is back on track to reach maximum sustainable yield by 2022. Ms. ALMUDENA GOMEZ: We dont have to give false alarms with false figures. The stock is recovering. The recovery plan is working quite well. BEARDSLEY: The red flesh of the bluefin tuna is a sushi delicacy, and one fish can fetch up to $100,000 at Japanese seafood markets. Eighty percent of the Mediterranean catch is exported to Japan. Masameeya Hara is head of the Japanese delegation to ICCAT. He says the Japanese have woken up to the problem. Mr. MASAMEEYA HARA (ICCAT): Of course, its big news in Japan. Eating too much tuna caused a problem. People are now thinking very seriously about sustainability of resources. BEARDSLEY: ICCAT scientists say bluefin tuna have a 70 percent chance of recovering by 2022 with the new quotas. But environmentalists say even a 30 percent chance of failure is too high. (Soundbite of knocking) Others agree. Giant retailers like Carrefour and Ikea and this sushi chain in Paris, have signed the World Wildlife Funds Tuna Market Manifesto, pledging not to buy or sell Bluefin tuna until a proper recovery plan is put into place. Mr. CYRIL MERVAL: (Foreign language spoken) BEARDSLEY: We want to do our part to save the planet, says sushi shop manager Cyril Merval. We dont serve bluefin tuna anymore, says Merval, and this is exactly why a lot of customers eat here. For NPR news, Im Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. (Soundbite of music) MONTAGNE: This is NPR News. Copyright © 2010 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. |
Krystal will be making her first foot back as an actress since her last drama 3 years ago. It’s been revealed that f(x)’s visual maknae, Krystal, will be returning to the drama screens as Hera in the upcoming tvN drama “Bride of the Water God”. Hera (Mura) is the owner of the second divine stone, who has been living among the people for hundreds of years – usually as an actress. She maintains a life of luxury as she knows of her God identity. Due to her one sided crush on Habaek, she grows to hate the girl named Soah. Krystal made her acting debut in 2009 on “High Kick!”, followed by “Heirs” in 2013, and her first main character roll in “My Lovely Girl” in 2014. She made a brief cameo on the hit drama “The Legend of the Blue Sea” in 2016, but will be returning to a full character in 2017. The main male and female role are currently rumored to be Nam JuHyeok and Shin SeKyung. The drama is already gaining attention for its impressive cast list, as well as its writer. Writer Jung YoonJung is famous for her work for “Misaeng”, “Nine”, “Three Musketeers” and more. The first filming is set to begin in the beginning of March with the first episode airing sometime during the last few weeks of the month. Must Read : Photo )) Krystal Photoshoot for GIORDANO 2017 |
Who doesn’t love engineering comics? Let’s face it—no matter how much you love your job and how great your co-workers and managers are, we all experience frustrations and adversity at work. And nobody epitomizes the plight of engineers quite like Dilbert, Alice and Wally. Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite Dilbert engineering comics, and from those, here are eight of the best ones relating to engineers and the difficulties that we face daily, in both our work and our personal lives. I hope you enjoy them! If you have a favorite Dilbert comic, especially one that relates to engineers, please share it in the comments. We love playing “the telephone game” with sales and customers. We’ve all seen maintenance manuals that were incredibly complicated or impossible to execute. Now we know why. Accuracy or timeliness. It’s a choice that engineers face all too often. Much to our dismay, logic doesn’t always apply. It works this way in reverse, too. Some goals are mutually exclusive. Einstein’s theories apply to meetings too. Apologies to my friends, colleagues, and readers in marketing, but I couldn’t help it. All images copyright Scott Adams, Inc. and can be found on the Dilbert website. |
AUSTIN, TX—Texas restaurant owners voiced concerns Friday over the recent decision of state prison officials to end last meals for death row inmates, claiming the ban would decimate a substantial portion of their industry's revenues. "How are dining establishments in this state supposed to stay afloat without their key customer base?" said Borboa's BBQ proprietor Tobey Barker, explaining that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's food orders for those about to be executed accounted for 75 percent of restaurant business in the state. "Our places get a little bit of walk-in traffic on weekends, but let's face it, we're in the business of catering meals for individuals who will be dead in the morning." While the ban remains in effect, experts have predicted it is likely to be reversed once the decline in demand for sirloin steaks begins to draw ire from the formidable Texas beef lobby. Advertisement |
Last month, RIAA-lobbyist-turned-federal-judge Beryl Howell ruled that three mass P2P file-sharing lawsuits before her in Washington, DC could proceed. The Hollywood Reporter called it, rather hyperbolically, "the most important decision to date in the ongoing mass-litigation campaign" (several other federal judges had already come to opposite conclusions). But Howell's work has had an impact—as far away as Illinois, more anonymous P2P defendants are coming forward to settle. So says Illinois' lone attorney bringing these mass P2P suits. John Steele, divorce-lawyer-turned-porn-copyright-specialist, has had a rough couple of months before judges for the Northern District of Illinois, based in Chicago. He tried moving a recent case downstate, to the Southern District, and he also tried to turn it into a "reverse class action" lawsuit against file-sharers. This hasn't gone well; a judge is currently staying Steele's discovery, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation is opposing his tactics. But, in a document recently filed with the court, Steele says that more people have recently been calling him without prompting. He chalks it up, in part, to Judge Howell's ruling. Since the Court’s stay of discovery, Plaintiff’s counsel has received unsolicited contacts from counsel for anonymous parties who wish to resolve outstanding liability with respect to the allegations in Plaintiff’s complaint—not just in this action, but in any action. In each instance, Plaintiff’s counsel disclosed the Court’s stay of discovery. Some parties elected to await the outcome of the April 11 hearing while others elected to settle. In absolute numbers, settlement activity in this case has been minimal, although a recent ruling from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seems to have spurred higher levels of settlement interest. Call of the Wild Movie, LLC v. Does 1- 1,062, No. 1:10-cv-00455, Memorandum Opinion, Doc. No. 40 (D.D.C. Mar. 22, 2011) (Howell, J.). In deciding on the exact arguments raised by the EFF in this case, Judge Howell rejected each and every one of the EFF’s views on First Amendment, personal jurisdiction, and joinder. This 42-page opinion is perhaps the most comprehensive and robust examination to date of the issues surrounding mass copyright infringement actions. Counsel for some Putative Defendants took notice of this decision and voluntary contacted Plaintiff’s counsel seeking resolution of all claims. Howell had ruled that suing hundreds or thousands of anonymous defendants at once was permissible, since the claims against them were all “logically related.” She had also decided that forcing copyright holders to file a separate suit against each individual would cost too much money early in the case, something that would “further limit their ability to protect their legal rights.” These decisions clashed with many others in which judges have said mass P2P cases are an attempt to unfairly litigate "on the cheap" and that the mass "joinder" of individual file-sharers is inappropriate. But Howell has recently started pushing harder on the P2P attorneys. On April 4, she told lawyers in the Donkeyball case to put up or shut up; by April 15, they need to dismiss every defendant that they do not "intend to sue for copyright infringement in this jurisdiction." Cases can't simply drag on indefinitely without defendants being named just so that lawyers can use the courts to extract settlements. Howell issued similar orders in her other two cases, as well. This appears to be a theme; judges across the country have finally seen enough of these cases to know exactly what they're about. As a Colorado federal judge put it last week in a Righthaven copyright suit, "Although Plaintiff’s business model relies in large part upon reaching settlement agreements with a minimal investment of time and effort, the purpose of the courts is to provide a forum for the orderly, just, and timely resolution of controversies and disputes. Plaintiff’s wishes to the contrary, the courts are not merely tools for encouraging and exacting settlements from Defendants cowed by the potential costs of litigation and liability." Still, in the short term, it looks like specific rulings can put a little more cash in P2P lawyers' pockets. |
Structure Development There are two phases in which the testes grow substantially; namely in embryonic and pubertal age. Embryonic During mammalian development, the gonads are at first capable of becoming either ovaries or testes.[10] In humans, starting at about week 4 the gonadal rudiments are present within the intermediate mesoderm adjacent to the developing kidneys. At about week 6, sex cords develop within the forming testes. These are made up of early Sertoli cells that surround and nurture the germ cells that migrate into the gonads shortly before sex determination begins. In males, the sex-specific gene SRY that is found on the Y-chromosome initiates sex determination by downstream regulation of sex-determining factors, (such as GATA4, SOX9 and AMH), which leads to development of the male phenotype, including directing development of the early bipotential gonad down the male path of development. Testes follow the "path of descent" from high in the posterior fetal abdomen to the inguinal ring and beyond to the inguinal canal and into the scrotum. In most cases (97% full-term, 70% preterm), both testes have descended by birth. In most other cases, only one testis fails to descend (cryptorchidism) and that will probably express itself within a year. Pubertal The testes grow in response to the start of spermatogenesis. Size depends on lytic function, sperm production (amount of spermatogenesis present in testis), interstitial fluid, and Sertoli cell fluid production. After puberty, the volume of the testes can be increased by over 500% as compared to the pre-pubertal size.[citation needed] Testicles are fully descended before one reaches puberty. Clinical significance Society and culture Main article: Testicles as food Testicles of a male calf or other livestock are cooked and eaten in a dish sometimes called Rocky Mountain oysters.[16] Main article: Sex selection As early as 330 BC, Aristotle prescribed the ligation (tying off) of the left testicle in men wishing to have boys.[17] In the Middle Ages, men who wanted a boy sometimes had their left testicle removed. This was because people believed that the right testicle made "boy" sperm and the left made "girl" sperm.[18] Etymology One theory about the etymology of the word testis is based on Roman law. The original Latin word testis, "witness", was used in the firmly established legal principle "Testis unus, testis nullus" (one witness [equals] no witness), meaning that testimony by any one person in court was to be disregarded unless corroborated by the testimony of at least another. This led to the common practice of producing two witnesses, bribed to testify the same way in cases of lawsuits with ulterior motives. Since such "witnesses" always came in pairs, the meaning was accordingly extended, often in the diminutive (testiculus, testiculi).[citation needed] Another theory says that testis is influenced by a loan translation, from Greek parastatēs "defender (in law), supporter" that is "two glands side by side".[19] Other animals Gallery Testicle Testicle Testicle hanging on cremaster muscle. These are two healthy testicles. Heat causes them to descend, allowing cooling. A healthy scrotum containing normal size testes. The scrotum is in tight condition. The image also shows the texture. Testicle of a cat: 1: Extremitas capitata, 2: Extremitas caudata, 3: Margo epididymalis, 4: Margo liber, 5: Mesorchium, 6: Epididymis, 7: testicular artery and vene, 8: Ductus deferens Testis surface Testis cross section The right testis, exposed by laying open the tunica vaginalis. Microscopic view of Rabbit testis 100× Testicle See also Notes |
When Richard Cordray, now the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced his resignation Friday, he also named a temporary acting successor. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today announced that Leandra English has been officially named deputy director of the agency,” read a press release. Under Dodd-Frank, the 2010 law which authorized CFPB, the agency’s deputy director will “serve as acting Director in the absence or unavailability of the Director.” English had previously served as Cordray’s chief of staff. In a letter to agency staff announcing English’s status as acting director, quoted by the Washington Post Friday night, Cordray wrote that he had “come to recognize that appointing the current chief of staff to the deputy director position would minimize operational disruption and provide for a smooth transition given her operational expertise.” President Donald Trump had a different idea. “Today, the President announced that he is designating Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Mick Mulvaney as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB),” a paragraph-long press release read. “The President looks forward to seeing Director Mulvaney take a common sense approach to leading the CFPB’s dedicated staff, an approach that will empower consumers to make their own financial decisions and facilitate investment in our communities.” Mulvaney, memorably, said in 2014 that the CFPB was a “sick, sad joke” and that “some of us would like to get rid of it.” It’s safe to assume that, even as acting director, the current White House budget chief has a different vision for the CFPB than the former chief of staff to the Obama administration’s pick to lead the agency. A White House source with knowledge of the administration’s position told TPM Saturday that “the President is using his long-established authority under the [Federal Vacancies Reform Act] to designate Director Mulvaney as acting director of the CFPB. The President believes this appointment will ensure an orderly transition and proper management of the CFPB until a permanent director is confirmed.” The Associated Press cited unnamed administration officials who called Mulvaney’s appointment “routine.” One unnamed official, in AP’s words, “described Cordray’s move on Friday as designed to provoke a legal battle.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), perhaps the strongest champion of the agency in the Senate and a driving force behind its creation, disputed the White House’s legal logic on Friday. “The Dodd-Frank Act is clear: if there is a CFPB Director vacancy, the Deputy Director becomes Acting Director,” she wrote. “President Trump can’t override that. He can nominate the next CFPB Director – but until that nominee is confirmed by the Senate, Leandra English is the Acting Director under the Dodd-Frank Act.” Press representatives for the agency did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment. The White House source did not say whether the White House has been in touch with the agency. |
Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician who was the only woman ever to win a Fields Medal, the most prestigious honor in mathematics, died on Friday. She was 40. The cause was breast cancer, said Stanford University, where she was a professor. The university did not say where she died. Her death is “a big loss and shock to the mathematical community worldwide,” said Peter C. Sarnak, a mathematician at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. The Fields Medal, established in 1936, is often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics. But unlike the Nobels, the Fields are bestowed only on people aged 40 or younger, not just to honor their accomplishments but also to predict future mathematical triumphs. The Fields are awarded every four years, with up to four mathematicians chosen at a time. |
Most Torontonians think Mayor Rob Ford is doing a bad job but his core supporters are shrugging off recent gaffes, says a new Toronto Star poll. The Oct. 1-2 survey of 802 residents by Angus Reid Public Opinion also found that, midway through Ford’s term, Torontonians have a much worse impression of him than several potential challengers, including NDP MP Olivia Chow, who got double Ford’s approval rating. Ford Nation stands by Mayor Rob Ford but a new poll shows his support is slipping among other voters. ( Chris So / Toronto Star ) Respondents to the online survey, which has a margin of error of 3.4 per cent 19 times out of 20, were asked to give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to Ford’s management of eight different issues. New poll: Supporters approve of Mayor Rob Ford using city staff, resources for football Only for garbage collection — Ford oversaw the expansion of private curbside collection — did most Torontonians (58 per cent) give the mayor a thumbs up. Article Continued Below A majority gave the mayor a thumbs down on issues including managing the city budget (52 per cent) and collective bargaining with city unions (56 per cent). “It’s pretty condemning that, at this point in his mandate, on the majority of these issues that we expected him to own, he’s getting a thumbs down evaluation from voters,” said Jodi Shanoff, an Angus Reid Public Opinion senior vice-president. Ford got thumbs down from 55 per cent of people for “promoting Toronto as a good place to live and work”; from 56 per cent for keeping election promises; from 68 per cent for gangs and violence; from 73 per cent for the TTC; and from 89 per cent for his “personal image.” Respondents were also asked: “Overall, how good a job do you feel the following have been doing when it comes to providing leadership in Toronto?” Just over half ranked Toronto City Council, as a whole, as doing a good job, followed by councillors Adam Vaughan and Karen Stintz at 48 per cent each. Ford trailed at 39 per cent. While the Vaughan and Stintz ratings come with the proviso that many Torontonians “Don’t know,” or had no opinion, not so with Ford. For him, only 2 per cent were unsure. “Torontonians decidedly have opinions about Mayor Ford,” Shanoff said. “The fact that (his rating) is so negative at this stage in his mandate means that people are not in agreement with the choices he is making, as opposed to a less well-known public figure where people are waiting to weigh in. Article Continued Below “Overwhelmingly, Torontonians are saying they are not happy.” But a whopping 97 per cent of hardcore Ford fans — those who voted for him in 2010 and plan to do so again — think the mayor is doing a good job providing leadership. That was one of several results in the poll (weighted to reflect voting results from the last election) that suggest Ford’s political base — about 21 per cent of respondents — is sticking with him after a summer of controversy. “They are not looking to change their minds, they are satisfied with what they got and they plan to repeat it,” Shanoff said. The arch-conservative ex-councillor was elected in 2010 with 47 per cent of the vote. The next civic election is not until 2014 but a guilty finding on a conflict-of-interest allegation could force him out earlier and trigger a mayoral byelection. Asked if they would vote for Ford were an election held tomorrow, 51 per cent of Torontonians said they would “definitely” not while 12 per cent would “probably” not. Some 14 per cent said they would “definitely” vote to re-elect Ford while another 16 per cent “probably” would. Among those who voted for Ford in 2010, 65 per cent would do so again. But about half of those fans would only “probably” opt for four more years of Ford, suggesting some “cracks” in his support, Shanoff said. Respondents were also asked if they have a “positive” or “negative” impression of Ford, Chow, Vaughan, Stintz, Councillor Shelley Carroll and Newstalk 1010 host and politico John Tory. Chow got by far the highest approval rating at 60 per cent, followed by Tory (40 per cent); Stintz (37 per cent), who has said she would not run against Ford; Vaughan (36 per cent), a potential candidate; Ford (30 per cent); and Carroll (14 per cent), who is gauging support for a run. A February Star/Angus Reid survey gave Ford a 31 per cent approval rating. “There’s a halo around Olivia Chow,” Shanoff said, from her legacy as a Toronto activist and politician plus the wave of national support and then grief for her husband, NDP Leader Jack Layton, who died last year. The Star revealed this summer a campaign to convince Chow to run against Ford. She initially offered a flat “no” saying she needs to stay in Ottawa to fight the Stephen Harper government for a national transit strategy. But the former Toronto councillor recently softened her opposition to a mayoral run, saying: “We’ll see what happens down the road.” That 60 per cent approval would shrink, or expand, if Chow were an actual mayoral candidate with policies to defend, Shanoff noted. Many respondents were unfamiliar with Stintz and Vaughan, making their support questionable, she added, while Carroll’s 14 per cent “shows she’s really languishing in terms of overall familiarity.” ALSO ON THE STAR: Conservation authority nixes selling or turning zoo over to new operators City sells Enwave, CFO warns council it needs to shape upend Top Toronto city managers report culture of fear, bullying Read more about: |
Bed shortages at Canberra Hospital leave patients in corridors and trigger repeated Code Yellow status Posted Several patients at the Canberra Hospital Emergency Department have been treated in corridors this month as staff grapple with unprecedented demand and bed shortages. ACT Health Minister Simon Corbell has confirmed the hospital was forced to operate under Code Yellow status several times during March. "Certainly we have been running at or over 90 per cent at particular points in time over the last couple of weeks," he said. The Australian Medical Association (AMA) recommends that hospitals run at an 85 per cent bed occupancy rate for efficient and safe practice. As a result of the latest revelations about Canberra Hospital's capacity, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation secretary Jenny Miragaya said the association held fears for patient and staff safety. On one day this month 27 patients were waiting in the Emergency Department to be admitted. Ms Miragaya said eight of those were being treated on beds in corridors. "It is not good practice to be nursing patients in the corridor. The lack of privacy the lack of work health safety opportunities," she said. "I'm very concerned about the safety of the patients and also the safety of the staff." She said the Government needs to take more action to tackle the situation. "They are still, going to Code Yellow which is an internal disaster," Ms Miragaya said. "This is what we're dealing with. We haven't reached winter which means we will have historically an increased number of presentations." Patient safety not compromised: Minister Health Minister Simon Corbell said there was no evidence that patient safety was being compromised. "I have no doubt that our medical and nursing staff are providing a very high quality of care," he said. Work is due to start on an expansion of the Emergency Department within the next two months. But Mr Corbell said the 21 new beds would not be available for at least a year. "It's a complex project because we have to do it whilst keeping the Emergency Department operating," he said. The Government is considering a new overcapacity protocol for the hospital. The draft plan involves fast tracking the discharge process for patients on wards to make way for emergency admissions. The nursing federation has claimed the Government's plans to accommodate the "least sick" patients in beds along corridors. Mr Corbell said the draft protocol had not been finalised. Topics: healthcare-facilities, doctors-and-medical-professionals, states-and-territories, woden-2606, act, canberra-2600 |
Fitting Your Problems Take a look at this game of MLP CCG. You are about to lose. Whoever gets that 2 point bonus on your problem My Pinkie Sense Is Tingling will win. But you can't do it this turn and then your opponent's two readied Bulk Biceps will. What went wrong? When was this game lost? This game was lost when you constructed your problem deck. On 7 action tokens, you should be able to hit your problem that requires 7 power total. You aren't running any inefficient friends, so you get power equal to the actions spent on them. In fact you're even one AT ahead of par by moving Pinkie Pie to get 2:3 cost:power. But you can't do it, because your characters are the wrong size for this problem. You are running a problem with 4 pink requirement but no characters of 4 pink power! Likewise, that 3 non-pink requirement does not match the 2-power Blue Moons in your hand. Because of the mismatch between the size of your problem and size of your characters, you put yourself in a situation of needing to overkill your problem with extra characters. To confront My Pinkie Sense Is Tingling, you are going to need to play or move all four of these characters to the problem, costing 9 AT total. This is not inefficient on power deployment: you still get 10 power deployed for the 9 actions. But what you can't do correctly is deploy 4 and 3 of the colors you need. "Oops, I don't have enough pink for that problem." If you've played enough games of MLP, that has surely happened to you. You probably blamed it on a stroke of bad luck and the heart of the cards not going your way that day. But no. It happened with mathematical predictability as a consequence of what went into your deck. Let's fix it. The Correctly Tailored Fit The answer to "what problems should go in my deck?" is very often whichever problems in your colors have requirements that match the power of the characters you are using. BAD GOOD As another example, here's a favorite pair of buddies from a Taxes white/purple control deck, Rarity mane with Twilight Sparkle Ursa Vanquisher. Fashionable white players are always tempted to go with the white problems that do interesting things like Fashion Feast which puts cards in the discard for later reuse. But notice the hidden cost here. The 4 requirement on Fashion Feast will require paying for an additional white character along with Rarity, a cost that will likely subsume any advantage gained from the problem's effect. Rather, use Monitor Everything that these two characters can solve all by themselves for no additional cost. This makes a difference and you will win more games with problems correctly tailored to your characters' measurements. In particular, be very careful about any problem with a requirement of 4 in a color. No mane character does that by herself. Some colors (white, pink, yellow) don't even have a single 4-power friend outside of the overcosted Elements and ultra-rares! Blue and orange can do 4-power problems just fine thanks to Holly Dash, Full Steam, and Big Mac (either one). But be very careful about putting problems like Pinkie Sense or Fashion Feast in your decks of those colors. Match EVERYTHING! This concept can be taken to a far extreme: design a deck with nearly every one of the problems and characters sized in lockstep. In fact, this is the genius of the "Ballroom Blitz" yellow/white aggro deck that has dominated the first couple Regionals tournaments of Canterlot Nights. Notice the fantastic consistency in how the problem requirements match the friends. Just any single one of the white friends is enough to solve the white half of any problem. Most yellow characters can solve the yellow half of most problems, or at least the deck is flush with 1-cost critters to shim any gap. This consistency lends the deck enormous reliability in grinding through a long tournament, immune to any difficulties about being just one power short of a color requirement. We really don't care about what any of the problems actually do. The correct fit is more important and matters more towards winning games. Even Best Pet really just improves its own fit by fetching the free Forest Owl. This concept of matching numbers can extend further than problems. The colored requirements of your maindeck cards matter too, such as how Stand Still also precisely matches all of the white entry friends in Ballroom Blitz. More on this topic another time. Now go forth and deliver some precisely tuned problem decks along with your favorite colors and ponies. Have fun! |
John McDonnell adds support to letter sent to Crown Prosecution Service, while all five mayoral candidates plan third runway protest outside Parliament The shadow chancellor John McDonnell, lawyers and environmentalists campaigning to prevent a new runway at Heathrow have written to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), asking them to drop charges of aggravated trespass against 13 activists for a protest at the airport. The actions of the protesters, which prevented a number of planes taking off, were “reasonable, justifiable and honourable”, according to the letter. “We should be congratulating them for defending the planet, not prosecuting them,” it says. The letter was sent on Friday, the day before a protest outside Parliament at which the London mayoral candidates from all five main political parties, including Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan, will speak against the building of the third runway. The Airports Commission set up by the government selected Heathrow for runway expansion near London on 1 July, saying it was the “clear and unanimous” choice over options at Gatwick and elsewhere. But there has been strong opposition from local groups and politicians concerned about air and noise pollution and from climate change groups. Following a protest at Heathrow on 13 July, 13 people were charged with aggravated trespass and being in a restricted area of the airport without permission. All 13 have pleaded not guilty and the case is expected to be heard in January. Heathrow airport is in the Hayes constituency represented by McDonnell, who is a steadfast opponent of a new runway and will also speak at Saturday’s protest. He said last month that he could remain shadow chancellor even if Labour back the Heathrow runway, as it has previously. “We respect the individual constituency MP’s view to protect his constituency,” McDonnell said. The letter to the CPS, calling for the charges to be dropped “in the public interest”, includes human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas among a dozen signatories. It says: “Successive governments, including the present one, have failed to act appropriately [in cutting carbon emissions]. A new runway, and the many thousands of extra flights it would allow, would make the necessary cuts far more difficult to achieve.” A spokesman for Heathrow said: “Heathrow supports the right to peaceful protest within the law, but the safety and security of our passengers, aircraft and colleagues, together with the smooth running of the operation is paramount. We have been clear that anyone who breaks the law can expect to face legal action.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest An anti-Heathrow airport expansion protest sign in the threatened village of Sipson, adjacent to the airport. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters David Cameron has said the government will make a decision on the Heathrow runway before the end of 2015. In 2009, before becoming prime minister, he said: “The third runway at Heathrow is not going ahead, no ifs, no buts.” Like Labour, the Conservatives are having to deal with high-level opposition to a new runway. Foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, and international development secretary, Justine Greening, are firmly against a new Heathrow runway: both represent constituencies under Heathrow’s flight path. John Stewart, chair of anti-runway campaign group Hacan, which is a key organiser of Saturday’s rally, said: “Thousands are expected to send a clear message to the prime minister that they will fight any decision to give the green light to a new runway. And the message from all the key mayoral candidates is equally clear. They stand united on this issue. They are all firmly against a third runway.” Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven, who will also speak on Saturday and signed the CPS letter, said: “A double whammy [of air pollution and carbon emissions] isn’t a price worth paying to allow a minority of wealthy frequent flyers to fly even more, at the expense of the majority of us.” He said international business travel was declining and that aviation emissions would take up at least 25% of the UK’s entire emissions in 2050 under government plans. The Heathrow spokesperson said: “Independent analysis by the Airports Commission found building and operating a third runway at Heathrow is compatible with the UK meeting its long-term climate change reduction targets. The independent Committee on Climate Change has also shown that a 60% growth in passenger numbers can be achieved within climate change targets.” The other signatories of the letter to the CPS are: Natalie Bennett, Craig Bennett, Nnimmo Bassey, Bill McKibben, Suzanne Jeffrey, George Monbiot, Damien Short, as well as Stewart and Sauven. |
The Clippers stand at a precipice. Los Angeles got off to the hottest start in the league, and then injuries and malaise set in. They are just 26-24 since Dec. 1. The Clippers have Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and J.J. Redick all set for free agency and the talk more and more is that Redick will not return. There’s also talk that after all these years, if the Clippers can’t make that magical run this season, the team could look to make major changes, all the way down. Griffin could be gone. Paul could be gone. Redick is thought to be gone. All three could stay, and they could run it back. Anything could happen. Including Doc Rivers heading back to the Magic? Rivers is head honcho at Staples for the Clippers. He’s head of basketball operations and head coach. His tenure as GM has been pretty simple: He has kept the stars and tried to add veterans he trusted around them. The Clippers haven’t added younger talent like the Warriors have, outside of Rivers’ son, Austin. They have dealt draft picks regularly for short-term boosts. And yet, the team has been a contender each year and has been better under Rivers than under previous coaches. But if the Clippers decide to head in a different direction, will that include Rivers? If it doesn’t, ESPN’s Marc Stein reports that one team could look to reunite with its former coach, the Orlando Magic: There has been persistent chatter for weeks over the NBA’s front-office grapevine that the Orlando Magic and Rivers will explore a reunion down the road. Now, you’re certainly not alone if you’re wondering whether down the road in this case should be measured in months or years. More clarity, though, might not be far off. via ‘Down the road’ reunion for Magic and Doc Rivers is subject of latest coaching chatter - Marc Stein- ESPN. Rivers coached the Magic for four-plus seasons with a .504 regular-season mark and 5-10 record in the playoffs. He was fired in 2004 after starting 1-10 before heading to Boston the next season. After a great first year as Boston went 45-37 in 2005, the Celtics backslid, missing the playoffs the next two seasons until they traded for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. That covered up Rivers’ biggest issue -- managing a deep rotation -- and Rivers was essential to instilling the culture of “Ubuntu” that helped lead the Big 3 Celtics to the title in their first season together in 2008. Could Doc Rivers go back to Orlando? USATSI Rivers brings pull with the players to help with free agency, and experience, plus a comfort with the area. However, if Rivers does become available, the Magic need to tread lightly. The Magic don’t have a star. They’ve been trying to swing for the fences the past two years, clearing cap space in free agency only to whiff badly on attracting any interested players. Rivers isn’t going to want to oversee a rebuilding effort with young players. He’ll want to win immediately. Is that what’s best for the Magic, to keep trying to cut corners? Their efforts at doing so have proven disastrous thus far. Tobias Harris is helping Detroit and Victor Oladipo is quietly shining in Oklahoma City. They had to deal Serge Ibaka for peanuts. This seems more like another example of the Magic trying to leapfrog the process of building a solid foundation. They should be very cautious with that approach. If Rivers is willing to come in and just manage things from afar and commit to a long-term vision, great. But if the Magic want to add Rivers -- again, if he’s available -- to win now, they should tread lightly. They could make a bad situation worse. |
Mumbai: In an apparent attempt to link contemporary politics to pre-Independence history, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Maharashtra is launching a fortnight-long ‘Quit India 2 Swaraaj to Suraaj Movement’ on Tuesday to mark the 74th anniversary of the Quit India movement. Union minister for information and broadcasting Venkaiah Naidu will join chief minister Devendra Fadnavis at the historic August Kranti Maidan in South Mumbai on Tuesday morning to launch the initiative labelled as “freedom from illiteracy, farmers’ suicides, wastage of water, addiction, and corruption". The Maharashtra government has issued big newspaper advertisements to announce the programme. However, the opening will see a protest staged by Mumbai’s Congress unit, which is calling the programme “milking of the Quit India Movement" by the BJP, alleging that the party never commemorated the movement earlier. City Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam told reporters at a press conference on Monday that the Congress workers would stage a protest at the August Kranti Maidan on Tuesday. Nirupam claimed that the BJP government in the state had usurped the venue, by ensuring that the Congress does not get the required permission to hold a commemorative event. “The BJP has put up its own pandals and stage at the Maidan which is illegal. The Congress party commemorates this day every year in the Maidan, but this is for the first time we have been denied permissions," Nirupam said. He said the Congress party was in favour of fighting the problems of illiteracy, farmers’ suicides, wastage of water, addiction and corruption, and would even support the government’s efforts to achieve this. But Nirupam questioned the rationale in naming the initiative as Quit India 2 movement, which he alleged was an insult to the original movement. The Congress leader also raised questions over the BJP and its ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s “propriety" in commemorating the Quit India movement anniversary when they had never observed it in the past. “There has never been an event organised by the BJP and the RSS in recognition of this historic day. In fact when Mahatma Gandhi gave the Quit India call, the RSS opposed the initiative. Why have they now remembered Quit India movement? It is an attempt to re-write history and appropriate a great movement in which they never participated," Nirupam said. The BJP has, however, justified the event, saying that it has every right to celebrate the Quit India movement and applaud the contributions made by freedom fighters. In a press statement, BJP state unit president Raosaheb Danve said the main event would be held at August Kranti Maidan and similar programmes would be held all over the state. “BJP MPs, MLAs, office-bearers and workers will participate in these events and commemorate the sacrifices made by freedom fighters to achieve freedom," Danve said. |
Republican Party leaders agonize over the prospect that Donald Trump will mount a third-party candidacy that could undermine their nominee. They fear insulting the white working-class voters who admire him. They are loath to tangle with a threat-flinging firebrand for whom there are no rules of engagement. Since the start of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, a vexing question has hovered over his candidacy: Why have so many party leaders — privately appalled by Mr. Trump’s remarks about immigrants from Mexico — not renounced him? It turns out, interviews show, that the mathematical delicacy of a Republican victory in 2016 — and its dependence on aging, anxious white voters — make it exceedingly perilous for the Republican Party to treat Mr. Trump as the pariah many of its leaders now wish he would become. Even as a cascade of corporations and business partners — from NBC and Macy’s to the chefs at two planned restaurants — rush to sever their ties with Mr. Trump, Republican leaders seem deeply torn and paralyzed by indecision. |
As “Geek” Culture Assimilates, “Otaku” Remain Outcasts Do you know? Do you know? Have you heard the news? “Geek” is now “mainstream.” Several of the most successful movies in the world and most popular shows on television are adaptations of comic books and SF novels. Multiple sitcoms, dramas, and unscripted “reality” programs feature characters with “geek” interests that aren’t belittled for it. Bars are springing up across the nation with environments conducive to what was once considered children’s pursuits: gaming—tabletop, card, board, video, and pinball—cartoons, comics, and so on. Several of the top circulated newspapers in the country now feature dedicated sections for covering comics and the latest developments pertaining to superheroes. Dedicated websites devoted to “all things geek culture” proliferate, as do specialized retailers. There’s just one catch: “anime” and “manga” don’t count as part of any of that, and the people who like them don’t count either unless they happen to also like something else that already DOES count. In the convergent harmony of modern geekdom, “anime and manga” is the “rap and country” part of “I like all music except rap and country.” Your run-of-the-mill self-professed “geek” is likely to be aware of the latest developments in comics by Marvel/DC/Image, cartoons like Steven Universe, British television series like Doctor Who, American television series like Game of Thrones, and video games like World of Warcraft. But when it comes to talking about the latest developments in anime and manga, few are even aware of what’s aired on Adult Swim recently. There’s never been anime included in a “Loot Crate,” and the only manga in those to date was a volume of Attack on Titan included as part of a Titanfall bundle. Walk into a comic book store on a Wednesday and ask to see the section for “this week’s manga releases.” Chances are very high that you won’t have a fruitful outcome. Yet sales of manga are up, and in 2014 the ONLY type of physical media that saw its sales increase was anime. One Piece holds a Guinness World Record for copies in print. Its latest Japanese volume as of this writing, Volume 78, sold roughly 1.7 million copies in its first week of release alone to break 2015’s previous first-week sales record held by Volume 77. In July, Kodansha announced that 2.5 million copies of Attack on Titan were in print in English alone. This isn’t even counting all the people reading digitally! Yet such impressive feats merited barely a mention by either the mainstream or “geek” media, the same places that’ll post large headlines trumpeting sales of The Walking Dead or Saga, which sell a fraction of those figures. When the New York Times started to track bestsellers for graphic books in the late 2000s, by request of the American publishers “manga” was given its own separate category … because otherwise manga would dominate the Top 10. Presto! An “official” reason to declare that manga doesn’t count in “comics” media coverage. Media coverage is important, and anime/manga doesn’t really get any outside of places that have “anime” or “otaku” right in their name. Ownership of our information sources is consolidating, as is intellectual property ownership. Often, the same entities own both what we watch and read as well as the places that tell us about those things, and aside from Studio Ghibli titles anime and manga aren’t typically released in America through mega-conglomerates such as Disney or Viacom. They’re more inclined to promote what they own over what they don’t, and so anime and manga news goes ignored in favor of whatever this week’s gaffe by a Marvel or DC employee turns out to be. The number of US anime and manga fans is higher than ever, yet you’d be hard pressed to hear about it. The crown jewel of the “geekdom” crown is the San Diego Comic-Con. In the months leading to it, there are stories galore regarding how quickly it sells out and reaches its capacity of 130,000-150,000 attendees. The 56,000 people at GenCon is significant enough to merit articles about the booming success of tabletop gaming. When MineCon, a London convention dedicated to the Microsoft-owned videogame Minecraft, saw 10,000 attendees in 2015, the result was global coverage across tech, gaming, and business. Yet when more than 90,500 otaku came to Anime Expo mere days before SDCC and in the same region, that wasn’t deemed notable enough to mention. What little acknowledgment of anime conventions that does get made outside of the bubble is limited to, “Hey, check out these photos of girls in revealing outfits!” Indeed, “cosplay” is now considered separate from the fan community that originated the term. The message is clear: anime fans don’t count. If we did count, then one would certainly think we’d be brought up in conversations more often. One of the key discourses in geek media concerns matters of representation, such as the desire for more women and minorities in roles of significance both in stories and on the creative side. Week after week, geek websites post similar stories regarding this matter, and in July 2015 the New York Times actually had “Women All Over Comic-Con” as a page C1 headline. Yes, it was shocking news: women attend conventions too! Yet despite offhanded acknowledgments of Sailor Moon and cosplaying “Manga pixies,” nobody seems to pay much heed to the fact that anime and manga fans figured all this out ages ago. More than 60% of anime convention attendees are female—the majority!—and several bestselling anime and manga series are made by ladies, or feature ladies in the lead roles, or are largely enjoyed by ladies. Often it’s all of the above. Isn’t that worthy of acknowledgement? Apparently not. Perhaps we’re partly responsible for this. The average “American otaku”—so probably not you reading this—is only strongly interested for approximately two years, typically during their teens or 20s, during which their intense devotion often makes them defiantly distinguish what they’re into as distinct from “that other stuff.” “It is NOT a cartoon, it is anime!” is a statement equally likely to be spoken by someone who loves Japanese cartoons and comics as loathes them. Eventually, most move onto something else—typically something that “counts” as far as “geek mainstream” goes—such that their interest in anime/manga from that point on is secondary at best, negative at worst; many look back on their “anime phase” as an adolescent embarrassment and compensate in the other direction from that point on. This is part of why, despite the fact that there is no shortage of anime and manga for young children, teenagers, and older audiences available in English, few move beyond whichever category got them interested in the first place; they’re not around long enough, and once they’re gone they hesitate to come back. I don’t have an easy solution. I just know that we deserve a seat at the table. They know we’re here; there are too many of us and we’re far too visible. Go to any anime convention’s Artist Alley or check online anime communities, and you’ll see plenty of anime fans expressing their devotion not just to anime, but other interests too. Ones that “count,” even. But if you go to a general “media” convention, you’ll see that there’s little reciprocal relationship if any: “anime” gets relegated to its own corner, out of sight and out of mind. The “geek media” sites all say that they don’t cover anime and manga because such coverage doesn’t get enough traffic to justify doing it more. Of course, the reason they don’t get enough traffic is because they don’t cover it equally as everything else. A perfect Catch-22 of their own making. Perhaps you have the solution? Write us an email and tell us! Do you know? Do you know? Do you really know? Daryl Surat is an engineer, podcaster, and Otaku USA magazine contributor driven insane from pop culture overload and isolation. |
Press Gift It is officially December and that means I am in full Christmas mode! This month I will be sharing tons of great Christmas/Holiday nail art ideas, gift ideas, and of course more of my cute kitties and the holiday house decor. To start off the month I wanted to share some amazing Silver Swirls by KBShimmer that made for the perfect kickoff season manicure and my recent trip to Six Flags Over Georgia for Holiday In The Park. First the nails! For my first seasonal mani I started with three thin coats of Neptune Nirvana by Chaos & Crocodiles. While this is a bright shade for Summer, I love it during colder months too. Next I used Silver Swirls waterslide decals from KBShimmer. These decals were incredibly easy to use and even though metallic tend to be the most delicate, I got a pretty even look. Everything was then sealed with two coats of Clearly On Top Quick Dry Top Coat by KBShimmer. What do you guys think of my Holiday Swirls mani? I love the color combo and the metallic finish of the Silver Swirl waterslides is amazing! I have gotten so many compliments on this look, even the girl at the Burger King drive thru stopped everything and had to learn how to create this look too. The metallic finish really made them pop. You can pick these waterslides up for just $2.95 from KBShimmer to create your own holiday combo. Please take a moment to check out all that KBShimmer has to offer and please give them a follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for up to date info. Now for Holiday In The Park at Six Flags Over Georgia! For my nephew’s birthday my sister and I took him to Six Flags for his first theme park adventure. Holiday In The Park seemed like the perfect time go! Who doesn’t want to ride roller coasters with millions of lights twinkling around you?!?! Six Flags really goes all out to create the perfect Christmas fell!!! There were carolers, tons of trees, the smell of pumpkin spice, campfires, hot chocolate, holiday shows, and much more. Here are few shots from our adventures! As soon as you enter the park there was a giant Christmas tree and snow flurries in the air! Clearly he is having fun! These adorable campfires were set up and you could even buy the stuff to make your own s’mores! One of my favorite trees in the park, the peach colored lights were amazing! Good thing there was a barrier, I could totally use some glitter deer in my front yard! Another gorgeous tree, and more snow flurries in the air in this spot. Best hot chocolate ever!!! And thanks to this cup, I got free refills and sugar high that will take weeks to get over! Loving these bright white lights!!! Quick selfie! <3 This last shot was from the sky buckets as we were headed back to the front of the park for closing. If you live near a Six Flags that is doing the Holiday In The Park, you NEED to go!!! We had an absolute blast and certainly made some memories! Sadly the park was only open for 6 hours, we really needed more time to absorb all the awesomeness. I’m even considering going back closer to Christmas. Thank you so much for stopping by tonight and I will see you all again soon! <3 |
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