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1994 Clinic Violence Survey Report
Law Enforcement Response Improves, Increases in Violence Related to Poor Law Enforcement Response
"Local police will not arrest picketers -- [it] is up to clinic staff/clients/escorts. [The] excuse given by local police is that 'we' are the victims and so we must do [a] citizen's arrest!"
--Clinic Director, 1994 Clinic Violence Survey
Our 1994 survey examined local, state, and federal law enforcement response to clinic violence during the first seven months of 1994. The survey also asked clinics to compare violence during this period in 1994 with violence over the same period in 1993. A final set of questions examined enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act during its first five months in force.
In May 1994, President Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act into law. The Act, which provides federal criminal and civil penalties for acts of force, the threat of force, and acts of physical obstruction targeted at those providing or seeking to obtain abortion services, was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and the Senate in November of 1993.
In addition to the FACE victory, abortion rights advocates prevailed in two major U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1994. In NOW v. Schiedler, the Court ruled in January that anti-abortion terrorists could be sued under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). In Madsen v. Women's Health Center the Court upheld the constitutionality of "buffer zone" injunctions created by a state court to protect clinics.
These legislative and litigation victories, along with the concerted efforts of abortion rights advocates urging prosecution of anti-abortion extremists, may have improved law enforcement response to clinic violence. Overall the majority of clinics described the response of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials to clinic violence during the first seven months of 1994 as "good" or "excellent." However, clinics that experienced moderate to high levels of violence were much more likely to characterize local, state, and federal law enforcement's response to complaints and incidents of violence as "poor. "
When asked to characterize the response of law enforcement agencies during the first seven months of 1994, over one-third (35.4%) of the clinics ranked local law enforcement response as good," with 30.3% reporting an "excellent" response and 11.5% experiencing a "poor" response; 22.9% of clinics were unable to characterize local law enforcement response.
Clinics had less contact with state and federal law enforcement officials, but the actions of these authorities still elicited a more positive than negative response. Of the clinics surveyed, 7.3% reported an "excellent" response from state law enforcement and 15.9% labeled state law enforcement response as "good;" 8.9% of clinics said state response was "poor." Two-thirds (67.8%) of clinics could not describe state law enforcement response and reported "don't know" on the survey. Slightly under two-thirds of clinics (60.2%) also could not ratefederal law enforcement response, while 10.5% said federal law enforcement response was excellent," 21.3% said federal response was "good," and 8% reported a "poor" response.
The majority of clinics reported that local, state, and federal law enforcement response had either improved or remained the same since 1993, with the greatest increases in responsiveness coming from local and federal officials. Close to half of -clinics (46.8%) reported that local law enforcement response remained the same in 1994, with 30.3% reporting improved response and 2.9% saying that response had declined. One-quarter (25.5%) of clinics said federal law enforcement response had remained the same, while 22.9% said federal response had improved and 1.3% reported the response had declined. Over one-quarter of clinics recorded that state law enforcement response had remained the same, with 14.6% reporting an improvement and 2.5% a decline in state response.
Law enforcement response improved since the July murders, but most clinics continued to rely on local rather than federal law enforcement involvement. Fifty eight percent of clinics reported increased sensitivity on the part of local law enforcement, with 4.1% experiencing decreased sensitivity, 24.8% no interaction, and 13.1% not answering the question. While fewer clinics interacted with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 34.7% reported increased sensitivity on the part of the FBI, 1.3% decreased sensitivity, and 53.2% reported no FBI interaction in the aftermath of the July murders. A similar pattern prevailed in regards to Federal Marshals. Of the clinics, 60.5% reported that they had no interaction with federal marshals, but 28.3% of clinics reported increased sensitivity on the part of marshals and 1% reported decreased sensitivity.
The importance of effective law enforcement is underscored by 1994 findings showing that the commission of certain violent acts is related to law enforcement response at local, state, and federal levels. Clinics that reported poor local law enforcement response were more likely than clinics that reported an excellent or good response to experience death threats (44.4%), stalking (36. 1 %), home picketing (44.4%), and blockades (30.6%). Of the clinics reporting poor federal law enforcement response, 48% faced death threats, and 52% had staff members who were picketed at home. Clinics that experienced poor state law response were more likely to face blockades (23.7%). Clinics that reported excellent state law enforcement response were more likely not to have had either bomb threats or bombings (82.6%) or arson threats or arson (78.3%) during the first seven months of 1994.
In addition, a statistically significant correlation was found between clinics who experienced higher levels of violence and the characterizations of local, state and federal law responses "poor. " Fifty percent of clinics experiencing high levels of violence (3-6 types) characterized local law response as "poor" as did 47.2% of clinics experiencing moderate levels of violence (1-2 types). Only 2.8% of clinics experiencing no violence reported a "poor" response on the part of local law officials.
Of the clinics that experienced no violence, 7.1 % rated state law officials as responding poorly to complaints of clinic violence. Over half of the clinics (57.1%) that experienced moderate levels of violence characterized state law response as "poor" and 35.7% of those clinics that experienced high levels of violence characterized the response rate as "poor."
Although the correlation between violence and a poor response was not as strong on the state level, it was once again apparent on the federal level. Forty-eight percent of all clinics that experienced high levels of violence characterized federal law enforcement as "poor," 40% of those clinics that experienced moderate levels of violence agreed and 12% of clinics that experienced no violence also characterized the response of federal law officials as poor.
One clinic administrator made a direct connection between active federal officials who operated on the local level and the lack of violence at her clinics, "[This clinic] has not experienced any violent activity this year; however, the local FBI agent has contacted us numerous times and has emphatically stated that her office, the Federal Marshals, and the U.S. Attorney for this district are closely monitoring anti-choice activities."
To combat violence clinics often were forced to turn to the courts for protection. Legal remedies were sought by over one-fifth (21 %) of the clinics during the first seven months of 1994. Five of the eight clinics seeking temporary injunctions received them. Yet permanent injunctions were granted to only 27.8% of the eighteen clinics seeking this form of relief. Of the sixteen clinics that sought restraining orders, 68.8% obtained them. Clinics experiencing multiple types of violence were most likely to seek legal remedies. Almost half (48.8%) of clinics that faced four or more types of violence sought legal remedies. Of clinics reporting three types of violence, 41.7% sought legal remedies, and 31.5% of clinics experiencing two types of violence sought legal relief.
FACE Enforcement Inadequate"On June 10, 1994, Paul Hill decided to step up his protests by trying to prevent patients from entering the [Pensacola Ladies Center] Clinic Property and screaming into Clinic windows. Since the FACE bill had been signed into law by the President the week before, I wanted him arrested under that law. Our local police had no guidelines for such an arrest. I then telephoned the local office of the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] to ask who had the authority to make such an arrest and was referred to the FBI and explained what had happened; they sent out an agent. The agent said he would "take down the information," but could not make an arrest as he had no guidelines.... I decided to go to the top. I telephoned the Justice Department, Attorney General Janet Reno's office, and after two explanations, was put in touch with Kevin Forder in the Civil Rights Division. I explained who I was, what had happened, and what I was seeking. Mr. Forder informed me he was familiar with the Clinic and Paul Hill's activities; but this was not the time to arrest him. He said, 'These problems have always been a local police problem, and would continue to be so..."
-- Linda Taggart, Clinic Administrator, Testimony before a hearing of the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice, September 21, 1994
During the first five months after FACE was enacted, 16.6% (52) of the clinics sampled reported FACE violations. The majority of clinics that reported FACE violations were non-profits (42.3%), followed by for-profit clinics (28.8%) and private doctor's offices (26.9%).
Federal officials rarely chose to pursue FACE claims themselves, instead directing clinics to seek assistance from local law enforcement or to pursue claims on their own. One quarter of the clinics that identified a FACE violation to federal law enforcement officials were either told that federal authorities would not prosecute or were directed to turn to local law enforcement officials for relief. (See Table 7.) Moreover, even though 55.7% (29) of clinics reporting FACE violations were visited by federal authorities, these visits rarely resulted in the filing of formal charges under FACE.
Table 7: Federal Law Enforcement Response to Clinics Reporting FACE Complaints
To date, only two FACE prosecutions have been sought by federal authorities. Blockaders were charged and convicted in November under FACE for physically obstructing the entrance to a clinic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Paul Hill was convicted of the murders of Dr. Britton and James Barrett and the attempted murder of June Barrett under FACE.
In responding to questions about FACE enforcement in the survey, one clinic director reported that, "[Since passage of FACE there has been] little change in response by local law enforcement. They don't appear to know how to handle complaints and are awaiting their legal department's "interpretation" of FACE law. Another particularly besieged clinic administrator reported that over the course of the first seven months of 1994 her facility experienced blockades, invasions, bomb threats and bombs, arson and arson threats and chemical attacks. Her staff was picketed at home and staff members received numerous death threats. When the administrator contacted federal law enforcement officials in order to report potential FACE violations, she was referred back to local authorities whose previous responses to requests for assistance was minimal.
Inadequate enforcement of FACE was a central concern expressed at oversight committee hearings of the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee held on September 21, 1994. At those hearings, clinic workers detailed continuing anti-abortion threats and harassment and the lack of federal response to possible FACE violations.
At the hearing, a four-member panel comprised of a physician, a clinic owner, a police sergeant and a clinic administrator related numerous incidents of anti-abortion violence and intimidation that law enforcement officials did not pursue as FACE violations. Susan Hill, President of the National Women's Health Organization, which owns nine abortion clinics across the country, testified that neither local nor federal law enforcement officials were making arrests under FACE.
Death threats, in particular, have not been dealt with by federal authorities even though FACE expressly prohibits the use or threat of force in connection with the provision of abortion services. While this survey shows that the number of clinics reporting death threats has climbed dramatically, FACE charges have not been instituted against anti-abortion extremists issuing direct death threats to specific health care providers. |
© Simon Mahony, 2011. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence
Citations from the text of this article should be by paragraph number (found on the ID attribute of the p element).
The so-called Web 2.0 technologies bring with them new opportunities
and new challenges in the field of scholarship. There is no clear definition of what constitutes Web 2.0 but it is rather a
set of characteristics such as being able to add and edit content in online
media via a web browser; internet services that allow (and perhaps encourage)
interaction, collaboration and sharing; blog and social networking sites. In this context, the term
There is no clear definition of what constitutes Web 2.0 but it is rather a set of characteristics such as being able to add and edit content in online media via a web browser; internet services that allow (and perhaps encourage) interaction, collaboration and sharing; blog and social networking sites.
In this context, the term
This paper was originally written for an earlier publication of the Digital Medievalist, Issue 4 (2008),
Though much is taken, much abides: Recovering antiquity through innovative digital methodologies
The focus here is on the Digital Classicist wiki (http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/) as an example of openness and how this approach can be used to enhance the research process. This paper will discuss the research and pedagogic value of the project, and situate the wiki within the sphere of the advances in the scholarly application of digital tools for the humanities. It will consider discovery and collaboration in the research process and say something about openness before lastly commenting on the need for such projects.
By way of introduction: the Digital Classicist (DC) is hosted at the
Centre for Computing in Humanities (CCH) at King’s College London and has been set up
by and for practitioners interested in the application of the digital humanities to
the study of the ancient world (http://www.digitalclassicist.org/). It provides a web-based focus for
research interest in this rich, diverse and multi-national field of scholarship. One
of the stated aims of this project is to bring scholars together and to address
head-on the issues of collaborative working; hence the use of a wiki (for more on the
Digital Classicist see Bodard and Mahony 2008).
Cooperation and collaboration are central to the DC's philosophy so rather than
setting up in competition with other projects, partnerships were established with
other institutions such as the Digital Medievalist, the Stoa Consortium, the Centre
for Hellenic Studies, and the Perseus Project. This has helped to construct a central
hub linking these together and giving focus to scholarship in this diverse area. For a full listing of partner institutions see the DC wiki members page: http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Members See respectively the DC wiki (http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Scaife_Digital_Library ) and APA 2010. For more on classicists advancing
scholarship in the digital sphere see Blackwell and Crane 2009.
For a full listing of partner institutions see the DC wiki members page: http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Members
See respectively the DC wiki (http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Scaife_Digital_Library ) and APA 2010. For more on classicists advancing scholarship in the digital sphere see Blackwell and Crane 2009.
More on the DC wiki:
… as well as sharing information about themselves and their own work, members collaboratively compile, review and comment upon articles on digital projects, tools and research questions of particular relevance to the ancient world. They also list guides to practice, introduce the discussion forum and, most importantly, list events. It is these events that more than anything else define the Digital Classicist community by providing a showcase for our members' research and a venue for discussion, introductions, and inspiration for new collaborative relationships and projects (Mahony and Bodard 2010, 2).
Although wiki technology has been around since the mid 1990's, it is
now becoming more widespread, with the most well known public example probably being Wikipedia. For an extensive up to date literature review and the results of a research
project into the application of blogs and wikis see Watson and Harper 2008. As this paper is
concerned with the use rather than technical aspects of wikis, the term
inherently democratic process according to Ward
Cunningham, who is credited with the development of the first wiki software (Leuf and Cunningham
2001). Not only does this facilitate the creation of
collaborative works but it also tends to level out the playing field with all
contributors being able to have their say. This is one of the great strengths of the
wiki but also one of the greatest obstacles to its scholarly use.
For an extensive up to date literature review and the results of a research
project into the application of blogs and wikis see Watson and Harper 2008. As this paper is
concerned with the use rather than technical aspects of wikis, the term
This ability to add content rather than just view pages on the web is
also more in-tune with Tim Berners-Lee’s original conception of the World Wide Web,
[t]he idea was not just that it should be a big browsing medium. The idea
was that everybody would be putting their ideas in, as well as taking them out
(Berners-Lee 1999). Berners-Lee has
reinforced this point more recently:
the web was driven initially by the group
work need, … [although] the most rapid wealth growth has been outside of the work
environment, in public information and he continues
the web use is
returning … to the original goal of facilitating workplace collaboration (Berners-Lee 2003, xiv). From this original vision,
for many the Web has become an online marketplace and entertainment centre but it is
being reclaimed here for scholarly use. These tools enable and indeed encourage
collaborative working with the possibilities for openness and transparency, which were
Tim Berners-Lee's original claimed intention.
A wiki has no preset design structure and so tends to grow
organically in response to the user group. It accelerates knowledge creation and
dissemination (as we will see) but at the same time raises concerns among some
scholars about attribution and how they might personally benefit from the work they contribute. For a good discussion of this including the amount of time, effort and money
that has gone into the construction of Wikipedia see the section titled
For a good discussion of this including the amount of time, effort and money that has gone into the construction of Wikipedia see the section titled
wiki wayits philosophy must fit with the culture of the user community (Leuf and Cunningham 2001).
The Digital Classicist was always conceived of as a community, a
network of users (Mahony and Bodard 2010), and
this is demonstrated by the DC wiki's opening page, illustrated in fig. 1, where the
access statistics and Creative Commons icon are clearly displayed in the footer. The
interactive tools chosen to facilitate this were the weblog and the wiki. After an
initial phase the DC blog was joined with the Stoa Consortium with an RSS feed
supplying links to the latest postings on the homepage of the DC website. The DC wiki
is set up as a collaborative tool and although freely viewable has a defined list of
members and editorial team. This means that anyone can look through and download any
material they wish All pages of the DC wiki display the CC (Creative Commons) logo which links to
a description of the
All pages of the DC wiki display the CC (Creative Commons) logo which links to a description of the
This was seen as a necessary step to prevent being spammed following the
experiences of the Digital Medievalist and the TEI wiki http://www.tei-c.org/wiki/ which
still has a notice on the front page:
locked due to spamming. This has
become common practice due to the large numbers of spammers and robots.
The DC discussion list uses JISCmail and is described at http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Discussion.
As with all wikis, this one is fully searchable with an index which
lists such things as Projects, Tools, Resources, Members and Events. Central to this
wiki is the FAQ list which provides the means for collaborative authoring of
full-blown guides to practice (see fig. 3). These guides to practice derive from the
research experience of the practitioners involved and so should be considered
research outputs in themselves. See for example:
See for example:
As a community driven enterprise all approved members may add and edit material on the wiki pages. Again, as with other wikis, alerts may be set up to notify an author if any change is made to their material.
The argument that follows is supported by the published findings of
the Summit on Digital Tools for the Humanities. This Summit was convened in 2005 at
the University of Charlottesville Virginia. Participants identified areas where
innovative change was taking place
enabled by information technology that
could possibly lead to what they referred to as
a new stage in humanistic
scholarship (Summit 2005, 5). The style of
collaboration enabled by digital tools was identified as one such area. This has been
further reinforced at the 2007 National Endowment of the Humanities Summit Meeting of
Centers and Funders at Maryland. On the summit wiki among the areas of research
priorities and funder priorities John Unsworth lists
[i]t is hard to learn how to collaborate(Summit 2007,
Collaboration with joint works, publications, and analyses has long been with us but online interactive tools such as the wiki enable a new kind of collaboration. The material held in an online environment can be searched, analysed and edited all in a very short time by a number of editors regardless of their physical location. This in turn opens up the prospect of dramatic increases in productivity. Authoring material, annotation of that material, changes, corrections, and amendments are greatly accelerated, and knowledge creation is therefore greatly accelerated as a result.
This process represents in effect a shift in academic culture away from the paradigm of the isolated scholar towards one where no single person has control or ownership. I have argued elsewhere that this perhaps needs humanities research practice to shift closer towards models in operation in the sciences and that we may need to develop protocols that borrow some aspects of science research practice where many areas consist of teamwork, where no single person has complete control or ownership, and where publications have multiple authors (Mahony 2007). This is also far more common in the Social Sciences and Library Studies where publications also have multiple authors and is becoming more usual amongst digital humanists.
Classicists have always been at the forefront of innovation and
collaborative thinking brought about by working with a disparate range of materials. For a full exposition of the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the
Digital Classics community see Terras 2010.
For a full exposition of the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the Digital Classics community see Terras 2010.
An example of a recent collaborative initiative on the DC wiki is a collection of articles started up by Sebastian Heath and Matteo Romanello on
As well as the research issues there are also the pedagogical implications of this wiki. There are links to other sites useful in the study of the ancient world; lists of projects and tools including learning tools; and help with issues needed to guide students through the learning process. One example of this is the Philoponia project, the result of a research group at Cambridge which has created electronic tools to assist Latin language teachers integrate unseen translation exercises into their classes (http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Philoponia; http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Category:Projects).
The DC wiki has always been useful as a case study for teaching when illustrating collaborative working, community projects, or Web 2.0 initiatives. This author currently uses the DC wiki as a specific example in an Electronic Publishing module and is aware of a colleague (Gabriel Bodard) who has similarly used the wiki to set up a discussion about Web 2.0 followed by an online one posted to the Stoa blog; the former is on an institutional intranet but the latter is publicly available and illustrated in fig. 5.
It is always difficult to quantify usage and measure effectiveness of any of these resources. We can track material, edits and comments that are uploaded to the wiki, but tools are not available in a standard wiki setup to monitor what is being read. This is in contrast with a Virtual Learning Environment such as Blackboard which can record the number and length of visits and the material accessed. However, even these statistics would not tell us if the material that was accessed had actually been read. The DC wiki has built-in statistics to display on the footer of each page the number of times that page has been accessed, but, again, that does not tell us if that page has been read. The same holds for the discussion mailing lists: some people actively contribute and generate further discussion and exploration, and others only read these discussions. Nevertheless people in both categories are equally part of the community; reading the discussion lists keeps members up to date with the current thinking and scholarship on key issues whether they contribute to that discussion or not.
One more important aspect of the wiki is its openness, including allowing users to view the editorial history of the site. As discussed above, all changes on the wiki are tracked and made available to the user, as is authorship of pages and changes. If you know where to look, it is clear who has authored or amended a specific piece of information and the names often link back to a brief self-authored profile of the contributor. For example, looking at the
historyat 30/10/10 shows the last edit to be
14:50, 30 October 2010 SimonMahony. This tells us that the last change was made by Simon Mahony (DC editor) and gives the time and date when the change was made (it is a requirement that all users register with their correct name rather than a tag). Clicking on
SimonMahonytakes you directly to his profile on the DC wiki, where you can see where his authority comes from and contact him if there is the need (see fig. 7). In other words, it is possible to see who authored the change and when any changes were made. The effect is ongoing peer review – if you don’t agree with an entry you are able to change it. For each page there is also the possibility to set up a discussion (a Talk page) to allow exchanges over any contentious issues (see fig. 8). The DC has a discussion list so this facility has never been implemented but I add the
What we have here with the DC wiki is a medium for cooperative research and cooperative learning. The
The skills required to make the most effective use of these modern
tools must be taught alongside traditional writing and communication skills. Students
should be actively encouraged to engage with each other both inside and outside of
the classroom. With social software, students are already building networked
communities and with the application of the blog and the wiki we now have the tools
to build communities of learning and scholarship. Examples of social software include Facebook (
a social utility that
connects you with the people around you: http://www.facebook.com/); MySpace
a place for friends: http://www.myspace.com/); Multiply (
…for your friends, your
family, or your entire social network: http://multiply.com/); and Bebo (
popular social networking site which connects you to everyone and everything
you care about: http://www.bebo.com/). Note that Facebook is now the second most
visited website (only coming behind Google): Alexa http://www.alexa.com/topsites
Examples of social software include Facebook (
It is not advocated here that these social networks be used for the
purpose of teaching and learning. Many Facebook users will be aware that some
institutions do set up such groups, but the problem with doing this is one of
separating the personal from the academic sphere. The report recently published by
JISC (2009) highlights the problems associated with
using social networks for learning. Their findings show that for young people
Facebook and MySpace are avenues to get away from learning not to help
learning (p. 22). The so-called Web 2.0 social networks develop a sense of
community spirit, but that in turn
leads to the formation of a clear sense of
boundaries in web space between the private and personal space as opposed to
the public and published one (JISC 2009, 24). It seems
that students are defensive about the former and are uncomfortable with
staff-initiated discussion groups in social networking space [such as Facebook
and Bebo] when they are at ease with those they set up themselves for
study-related purposes (JISC 2009, 24). It is
perceived as an invasion of what is regarded as a personal
In contrast, wikis can be deployed as experiential and formative learning environments outside of the lecture hall or IT lab where students can create their own content, comment on each others', and share resources. It can be a group space on the web located somewhere between the study and the social domains to support teaching and learning (JISC 2009, 24). A good example of the way in which the wiki has been deployed as a pedagogical tool can been seen at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a course taught by Alan Liu in the English department called
Social bookmarking sites such as
Building communities of learning has been the subject of much study
by those in the distance learning community One example is The Centre for Distance Education, part of the University of
London External System, set up in 2005 http://www.cde.london.ac.uk/.
One example is The Centre for Distance Education, part of the University of London External System, set up in 2005 http://www.cde.london.ac.uk/.
Teaching programmes should incorporate critical awareness of the
possibilities of new innovations to develop skills to enable upcoming scholars to
adapt to new technological advances as they happen. The most important of these are
Another important issue that the DC wiki addresses is the needs of a variety of user groups. These range from the specialist, who requires full details, to the beginner who simply needs the basic information to get started and does not want to be swamped with too much information, especially of a technical nature. If you look through the wiki you will find that this material is often research output which is made available to be picked up and re-used by other practitioners.
This environment encourages ideas and information about the creation and use of digital resources to be shared and discussed between experts in their respective fields; again making the results available to expert and non-expert alike. Much discussion is facilitated through email lists to which users can subscribe. Ongoing examples currently range from electronic critical editions of text, through copyright issues, open standards, and obtaining digital images of manuscripts.
Here it is necessary to consider what it is that we are implicitly
doing when conducting such an activity. We are engaging, contributing to and
developing what might be considered the basic building blocks of scholarship or the
fundamental operations that are performed during the research process. John Unsworth
has written much about this process and uses the term
scholarly primitives to
describe these fundamental operations (2000). These
primitives are relatively low level methods that combine and interact to form the
basis for higher-level scholarly activity throughout the humanities—or to use his
words, they are
the irreducible currency of scholarship and
scholarship across eras and across media. Unsworth defines them as
discovering, annotation, comparing, referring, sampling, illustrating and
representing, although he does not claim that his list is exhaustive. These
primitives are explored more fully elsewhere (Unsworth
2000) but two of them will be considered here in the context of the DC wiki:
discovery and annotation.
Discovery is at the heart of all educational and research practice.
Discovering implies finding something that you did not already know, and there have
been consequences here with the advent of digital scholarship. In what ways are
discovery facilitated and achieved? In general terms we learn from each other by
discussion, argument and persuasion. This can be in the form of conversation, the
printed word and now the electronic word. Traditionally a library or catalogue search
for something we knew existed was always supplemented by expanding the search to
those works adjacent on the stack shelf in the hope of finding something unexpected
but relevant to our study; indeed this has been a spin-off benefit of the Dewey
decimal classification system. The search in question was normally initially prompted
by a course bibliography, bibliographic searches and suggestions from colleagues.
Serendipity now becomes a useful tool such that something we find by accident will
hopefully assist us in our search for knowledge. We have Google and Google Scholar to
find things for us—often things that we had no prior knowledge of and so could not
have looked for. We must all have learned from experience (as Unsworth notes)
value the serendipity of the unlooked-for search result (Unsworth 2000) just as now we must strive to record
all that we find as again through experience, by the nature of the web, (just like
the misplaced library book) it may not be there next time we look.
Libraries and archives have always been sites of discovery for
scholars. Digital scholars also discover through the internet, university network,
CDs and DVDs, and the rapidly expanding range of digital resources. Much is also
discovered, as previously, through conversation and dialogue with others but now the
medium for this form of communication is frequently the Internet. Humanities scholars
have used online discussion groups heavily for many years, such as Humanist,
international online seminar on humanities computing and the digital
humanities which started in 1987 and predates the Web (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/). Communities of scholars who
correspond and work together using a mixture of electronic and conventional means
have also emerged: the DC mailing list, the Digital Medievalist and the Stoa
Consortium to name a few. The majority of projects involving digital scholarship are
highly collaborative, and collaborative websites, wikis, and blogs mark the next
phase of the development of discovery through communication with others.
Let us also consider annotation. Marginalia dating back many hundreds
of years is evidence that annotation has always been an important research technique
and a legitimate area of scholarship in its own right along with
One key issue here is often not how to facilitate annotation but rather how to share these annotations between scholars in a way that is open but also secure from abuse or accidental damage. This is a great advantage of the wiki where the process of authorship can be tracked and preserved, although this is also true with many social network applications such as blogs, and indeed The Library of Congress are endeavouring to archive all public postings on Twitter since March 2006 (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/10-081.html).
Academic disciplines have historically grown up in separate boxes and it is our academic culture that distinguishes so greatly between the arts and humanities on the one hand, and the sciences on the other. The Presocratic thinkers would not have recognised this distinction, and natural science (as we call it today) would have been indistinguishable to them from philosophy. The etymology of science as knowledge is very different to our modern understanding of the term. This is very much a Nineteenth-Century construct, and the
1. knowledge (of a fact or situation)…1.b as implying certainty, opp. mere belief.
In modern use, often treated as synonymous withNatural and Physical Science, and thus restricted to those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws, sometimes with implied exclusion of pure mathematics. This is now the dominant sense in ordinary use.
1867 W. G. WARD in
Dubl. Rev.Apr. 255 note, We shall use the wordsciencein the sense which Englishmen so commonly give to it; as expressing physical and experimental science, to the exclusion of theological and metaphysical.
The emergence of digital scholarship in the humanities has had considerable impact on disciplines such as Classics and the study of the ancient world. The example of the DC wiki is used here to demonstrate the possibilities for collaborative authorship, the creation of reusable research output, the opportunities to add thoughts and comments in the form of annotation, and to facilitate the exchange of ideas. These are all central to building communities of learning and scholarship, but the most important is the exchange of ideas. It is in this way that knowledge grows and we are able to push the boundaries of scholarship.
The standard way of accessing web resources is via the web browser which allows only limited interaction with what are effectively static webpages. The user can follow a list of links, view the content and (if his browser allows) print these off for future reference. Wikis and blogs allow interaction in a way that the traditional browser and webpage does not. These pages are dynamic and mutable as they can be edited by the user through their web browser. This gives users the ability to enrich the material and make them available for others, unlike a print publication where the reader may add notes in the margin but only for personal use. The model that develops here is one where the user moves from being a passive reader of other people's material to one that actively engages with that material, moving from reader to interpreter and contributor.
Putting all this in the wider context, as argued above, it is by
building a community of learners that we will instil the cooperative, collaborative,
and reflective skills needed for a community of humanities scholars—skills that are
equally in demand outside of the academy. In addition the DC wiki fills an important
gap in the existing scholarly documentation by creating concise, reliable and
critical guidance on crucial technical issues. The DC wiki also facilitates both
community building and collaborative working, and this is the most striking and
successful aspect of Digital Classics.
Digital Classicists do not work in
isolation; they develop projects in tandem with colleagues …; they collect data,
conduct research, develop tools and resources, and importantly make them available
electronically, often under free and open licenses such as Creative Commons, for
reference and for re-use by scholars, students and non-specialists alike (Mahony and Bodard 2010, 2).
Collaboration and interdisciplinarity have always been at the heart of Classical Studies. This is nothing new, but we must always look to the future and push the boundaries of scholarship forward. We must be reactive to new technologies and proactive in our approach to their use.
The complexities of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and issues surrounding the sharing of thoughts, ideas and scholarship are not a new phenomenon. The following quote is taken from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1813 on the subject of ideas and copyright. It fits the purpose here.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it (Jefferson 1813).
The author notes that this is also quoted at the end of the report published as Summit 2005.
The important piece for this discussion is the final sentence:
one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. An idea
is not diminished when it is shared.
aesthetic indeterminacy: a model for text analysis tools
cultural hegemonyin Humanities Computing: Pliny |
||This article needs additional citations for verification. (October 2009)|
|Small forward / Power forward|
September 16, 1934 |
|Listed height||6 ft 5 in (1.96 m)|
|Listed weight||225 lb (102 kg)|
|High school||Spingarn (Washington, D.C.)|
|College||College of Idaho (1954–1955)
|NBA Draft||1958 / Round: 1 / Pick: 1st overall|
|Selected by the Minneapolis Lakers|
|1958–1971||Minneapolis / Los Angeles Lakers|
|1974||New Orleans Jazz|
|1975–1979||New Orleans Jazz|
|Career highlights and awards|
|Career NBA statistics|
|Points||23,149 (27.4 ppg)|
|Rebounds||11,463 (13.5 rpg)|
|Assists||3,650 (4.6 apg)|
|Stats at Basketball-Reference.com|
|Basketball Hall of Fame as player|
Elgin Gay Baylor (born September 16, 1934 in Washington, D.C.) is a retired Hall of Fame American basketball player and former NBA general manager who played 13 seasons as a forward for the NBA's Minneapolis Lakers/Los Angeles Lakers, appearing in eight NBA Finals.
Baylor was a gifted shooter, strong rebounder, and an accomplished passer. Renowned for his acrobatic maneuvers on the court, Baylor regularly dazzled Lakers fans with his trademark hanging jump shots. The No. 1 draft pick in 1958, NBA Rookie of the Year in 1959, and an 11-time NBA All-Star, he is regarded as one of the game's all-time greatest players. In 1977, Baylor was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Baylor spent twenty-two years as GM of the Los Angeles Clippers, being named the NBA Executive of the Year in 2006, before being relieved of his duties shortly before the 2008-09 season began.
Early life in D.C.
Elgin "Rabbit" Baylor had two basketball-playing brothers, Sal and Kermit. After stints at Southwest Boys Club and Brown Jr. High, Baylor was a 3 time All City player in High School. Elgin played his first 2 years at Phelps in the '51 and '52 basketball seasons where he set his first area scoring record of 44 points vs Cardozo. During his 2 All City years at Phelps he averaged 18.5 and 27.6 points per season. He did not perform well academically and dropped out of school ('52-'53) to work in a furniture store and to play basketball in the local recreational leagues. Baylor reappeared for the '54 season playing for the newly opened Spingarn High School and the 6'5, 190 lb senior was named 1st team All Met and won the SSA's Livingstone Trophy as the Area's Best Basketball player for 1954. He finished with a 36.1 average for his 8 Interhigh Division II league games. On Feb 3, 1954 in a game against his old Phelps team, he scored 31 in the first half. Playing with 4 fouls the entire second half, Baylor scored 32 more points to establish a new DC area record with 63 points. This broke the point record of 52 that Western's Jim Wexler had set the year before when he broke Rabbit's record of 44 .
College career
An inadequate scholastic record kept him out of college until a friend arranged a scholarship at the College of Idaho, where he was expected to play basketball and football. After one season, the school dismissed the head basketball coach and restricted the scholarships. A Seattle car dealer interested Baylor in Seattle University, and Baylor sat out a year to play for Westside Ford, an AAU team in Seattle, while establishing eligibility at Seattle.
Baylor led the Seattle Chieftains (now known as the Redhawks) to the NCAA championship game in 1958, falling to the Kentucky Wildcats, Seattle's last trip to the Final Four. Following his junior season, Baylor joined the Minneapolis Lakers in 1958.
In his three collegiate seasons, one at Idaho and two at Seattle, Baylor averaged 31.3 points per game. Baylor is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
NBA player
The Minneapolis Lakers used the No. 1 overall pick in the 1958 NBA Draft to select Baylor, then convinced him to skip his senior year at SU and instead join the pro ranks. The team, several years removed from its glory days of George Mikan, was in trouble on the court and at the gate. The year prior to Baylor's arrival the Lakers finished 19-53 with a squad that was slow, bulky and aging. Baylor, whom the Lakers signed to play for $20,000 per year (a great amount of money at the time), was the franchise's last shot at survival.
With his superb athletic talents and all-round game, Baylor was seen as the kind of player who could save a franchise, and he did. According to Minneapolis Lakers owner Bob Short in a 1971 interview with the Los Angeles Times: "If he had turned me down then, I would have been out of business. The club would have gone bankrupt."
Rookie of the Year
As a rookie in 1958-59, Baylor finished fourth in the league in scoring (24.9 points per game), third in rebounding (15.0 rebounds per game), and eighth in assists (4.1 assists per game). He registered 55 points in a single game, then the third-highest mark in league history behind Joe Fulks' 63 and Mikan's 61. Baylor won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award and led the Lakers from last place the previous year to the NBA finals, where they lost to the Boston Celtics in the first four game sweep in finals history. Thus began the greatest rivalry in the history of the NBA. During his career, Baylor helped lead the Lakers to the NBA Finals seven more times.
Middle Years
From the 1960-61 to the 1962-63 seasons, Baylor averaged 34.8, 38.3 and 34.0 points per game, respectively. On November 15 of the 1960-61 season, Baylor set a new NBA scoring record when he scored 71 points in a victory against the New York Knicks while grabbing 25 rebounds. In doing so, Baylor had broken his own NBA record of 64 points that he had set in the previous season. Baylor, a United States Army Reservist, was called to active duty during the 1961-62 season, and being stationed in Washington state, he could play for the Lakers only when on a weekend pass. Despite playing only 48 games during the 1961–62 season, he still managed to score over 1,800 points. Later that season, in a game five NBA Finals victory against the Boston Celtics, Baylor grabbed 22 rebounds and set the still-standing NBA record for points in an NBA Finals game with 61.
Baylor began to be hampered with knee problems during the 1963-64 season. The problems culminated in a severe knee injury, suffered during the 1965 Western Division playoffs. Baylor, while still a very powerful force, was never quite the same, never again averaging above 30 points per game.
Baylor finally retired nine games into the 1971-72 season because of his nagging knee problems. The timing of his retirement could not have been worse as this caused him to coincidentally miss two great achievements. First, the Lakers' next game after his retirement was the first of an NBA record of 33 consecutive wins. Second, the Lakers went on to win the NBA Championship that season, something that Baylor never achieved.
Career Achievements
Baylor was the last of the great undersized forwards in a league where many guards are now his size or bigger. He finished his playing days with 23,149 points, 3,650 assists and 11,463 rebounds over 846 games. His signature running bank shot, which he was able to release quickly and effectively over taller players, led him to numerous NBA scoring records, several of which still stand.
The 71 points Baylor scored on November 15, 1960 was a record at the time. The 61 points he scored in game 5 of the NBA Finals in 1962 is still an NBA Finals record. An underrated rebounder, Baylor averaged 13.5 rebounds per game during his career, including a sterling 19.8 rebounds per game during the 1960-61 season — a season average exceeded by only five other players in NBA history—all of whom were 6'9" or taller.
A 10-time All-NBA First Team selection and 11-time NBA All-Star, Baylor was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1977. He was named to the NBA 35th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1980 and the NBA 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1996. in 2009, SLAM Magazine ranked him number 11 among its Top 50 NBA players of all time.
NBA coach and executive
In 1974, Baylor was hired to be an assistant coach and later the head coach for the New Orleans Jazz, but had a lackluster 86-135 record and retired following the 1978-79 season. In 1986, Baylor was hired by the Los Angeles Clippers as the team's vice president of basketball operations. He stayed in that capacity for 22 years before resigning in October 2008 at the age of 74. During his tenure, the Clippers managed only two winning seasons and amassed a won loss record of 607 and 1153. They also won only one playoff series during this time.
Baylor was selected as the NBA Executive of the Year in 2006. That year the Clippers won their first playoff series since 1976, when the franchise was located in Buffalo, New York and named the Buffalo Braves.
In February 2009, Baylor filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against the Clippers, team owner Donald Sterling, team president Andy Roeser, and the NBA. He alleged that he was underpaid during his tenure with the team and then fired because of his age and race. Baylor's claim was rejected by a Los Angeles state court jury on March 30, 2011 by a unanimous 12-0 vote.
NBA highlights
- NBA Rookie of the Year (1959)
- All-NBA First Team 10 times (1959–65, 67-69)
- Eleven-time NBA All-Star (1959–65, 1967–70)
- NBA All-Star Game Co-MVP (1959)
- Holds NBA Finals single-game record for most points (61) on April 14, 1962 against the Boston Celtics
- Scored 71 points (8th highest in history) against the New York Knicks (Nov. 15, 1960)
- No. 4 all-time with 87 regular season 40-point games
- Scored 23,149 points in only 846 games (27.4 points per game, fourth best all-time) and averaged 30 points or more three times (1961–63)
- Retired as NBA's third all-time leading scorer
- Retired as fifth leading scorer in All-Star Game history (19.8 points per game)
- Ranked sixth in NBA Finals all-time scoring (26.4 in 44 games)
- Ranked seventh in NBA playoffs all-time scoring (27.0 in 134 games)
- NBA 35th Anniversary Team (1980)
- NBA 50th Anniversary Teams (1996)
- NBA Executive of the Year (2006)
Career highs
Regular season
|Points||71||at New York Knicks||November 15, 1960|
|Points||64||vs. Boston Celtics||November 8, 1959|
|Points||63 (3 OT)||at Philadelphia Warriors||December 8, 1961|
|Field goal percentage|
|Field goals made||28||at New York Knicks||November 15, 1960|
|Field goals attempted||55 (3 OT)||at Philadelphia Warriors||December 8, 1961|
|Free throws made, none missed||16–16||vs. Syracuse Nationals||November 5, 1960|
|Free throws made, one miss||20–21||at St. Louis Hawks||December 21, 1962|
|Free throws made||20||at St. Louis Hawks||December 21, 1962|
|Free throws attempted||24 (3 OT)||at Philadelphia Warriors||December 8, 1961|
|Rebounds||31||vs. Philadelphia Warriors||November 6, 1958|
|Rebounds||31 (3 OT)||at Philadelphia Warriors||December 8, 1961|
|Rebounds||30||vs. Cincinnati Royals||January 14, 1961|
|Assists||16||vs. Phoenix Suns||February 9, 1969|
|Points||61||at Boston Celtics||April 14, 1962|
|Points||49||vs. Detroit Pistons||March 15, 1961|
|Field goal percentage|
|Field goals made||22||at Boston Celtics||April 14, 1962|
|Field goals attempted||46||at Boston Celtics||April 14, 1962|
|Field goals attempted||45||at St. Louis Hawks||March 27, 1961|
|Free throws made, none missed||15–15||at St. Louis Hawks||March 26, 1960|
|Free throws made||18||at St. Louis Hawks||March 17, 1960|
|Free throws attempted||23||at St. Louis Hawks||March 17, 1960|
|Rebounds||23||vs. Boston Celtics||April 10, 1962|
|Rebounds||23||vs. Boston Celtics||April 17, 1963|
|Rebounds||23||vs. Chicago Bulls||March 24, 1968|
|Assists||12||vs. Atlanta Hawks||April 20, 1969|
|Minutes played||53 (OT)|
- "He was one of the most spectacular shooters the game has ever known", Baylor's longtime teammate Jerry West told HOOP in 1992. "I hear people talking about forwards today and I haven't seen many that can compare with him."
- Bill Sharman played against Baylor and coached him in his final years with the Lakers. "I say without reservation that Elgin Baylor is the greatest cornerman who ever played pro basketball", he told the Los Angeles Times at Baylor's retirement in 1971.
- Tommy Hawkins, Baylor's teammate for six seasons and opponent for four (and later a basketball broadcaster) declared to the San Francisco Examiner that "[P]ound for pound, no one was ever as great as Elgin Baylor." He also said, "Elgin certainly didn't jump as high as Michael Jordan. But he had the greatest variety of shots of anyone. He would take it in and hang and shoot from all these angles. Put spin on the ball. Elgin had incredible strength. He could post up Bill Russell. He could pass like Magic and dribble with the best guards in the league."
See also
- List of National Basketball Association career scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career free throw scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career playoff scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career playoff rebounding leaders
- List of National Basketball Association career playoff free throw scoring leaders
- List of National Basketball Association players with most points in a game
- List of National Basketball Association players with 50 or more points in a playoff game
- List of highest playoff series scoring averages in National Basketball Association history
- List of NCAA Division I men's basketball season rebounding leaders
- List of NCAA Division I men's basketball career rebounding leaders
- List of NCAA Division I men's basketball players with 30 or more rebounds in a game
- List of NCAA Division I men's basketball players with 2000 points and 1000 rebounds
- List of NCAA Division I men's basketball players with 60 or more points in a game
- "Elgin Baylor: Complete Bio". nba.com. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
- "Hall of Famers". Basketball Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2009-08-02.
- "Elgin Baylor". nba.com. Retrieved August 10, 2010.
- "Top 10 Teams In NBA History: 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers". nba.com. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
- Elgin Baylor Sues Los Angeles Clippers for Employment Discrimination ESPN.com, February 11, 2009
- Lance Pugmire, "Elgin Baylor's lawsuit rejected by Los Angeles County jury", Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2011.
- The Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia. Villard Books. 1994. p. 382. ISBN 0-679-43293-0.
- Elgin Baylor Bio from NBA.com
- Basketball Hall of Fame page
- Elgin took the game to new heights
- The Forgotten Pioneer
- Baylor's page at Basketball Reference |
Irv's rocky entry to the F1 world
- Mattijs Diepraam
- 8W Autumn 2001 issue
- Onyx/Monteverdi - Recipe on how to destroy a fledging team, by Mattijs Diepraam
- Ayrton Senna - "I'm the leader!", by Mattijs Diepraam
What? Ayrton Senna driving an Onyx? No, not quite. In the year Eddie Irvine promoted to F3000 after losing a season-long battle in British F3 to JJ Lehto - he received his first interest from several F1 teams. The Onyx squad run by Mike Earle and Joe Chamberlain had had a promising debut season culminating in Stefan Johansson's terrific third place at Estoril. By that time Eddie's F3 rival and Pacific F3000 team mate Lehto had replaced Bertrand Gachot as the number-two driver at Onyx and things started to rumble at Onyx' top management level, Earle and Chamberlain falling out with their prime backer, the eccentric Belgian millionaire, Jean-Pierre van Rossem.
The founders' struggle with van Rossem was a lost cause from the start, Earle and Chamberlain abandoning the team in December 1989 - just after Eddie Irvine's Ricard test. And so Eddie's chances to become a Formula 1 driver for 1990 evaporated, as the Pacific team he drove for in F3000 happened to be under the ownership of one Mr M Earle… Lehto, also having driven for Pacific in 1989, already had a 1990 contract under his contract so didn't have to worry about his 1990 seat. In fact, JJ would sit out the entire embarrassment that the Onyx - later Monteverdi - effort for 1990 would be.
Instead, Irvine signed to drive one of Eddie Jordan's F3000 Reynards for 1990, teaming up with Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Emanuele Naspetti and Vincenzo Sospiri - and generally outpacing them and outscoring them with ease. Now you see why Irv the Swerve regards himself as the second-best driver to Schumacher? There have been days that HHF was regarded as Michael's equal, and if Eddie managed to decisively beat Heinz-Harald in a similar car - well, there you have it!
In a season that belonged to the all-conquering DAMS Lola team Eddie claimed third position in the final standings, taking the Hockenheim round in the process, and everyone was expecting him to move up. It didn't happen. Instead, with no money to bring to an F1 or top F3000 team he decided that he might as well ask some for his services, moving his lot to Japan, signing for the Cerumo team to race in the then well-funded Japanese F3000 series. The only consolation was that Frentzen, instead of being the latest addition to that newly discovered flavour in Grand Prix racing called Germany, followed him to the Far East the following year, after another dreadful season of F3000.
By 1993 Irvine was in the thick of the Japanese action, slugging it out for the F3000 championship with local stars Kazuyoshi Hoshino, Toshio Suzuki, Masahiko Kageyama and Takuya Kurosawa, and gai-jins Ross Cheever, Jeff Krosnoff, Mauro Martini, Marco Apicella, Andrew Gilbert-Scott, Roland Ratzenberger, Thomas Danielsson, Paolo Carcasci, Mika Salo and an again underperforming Heinz-Harald Frentzen, in one of the most competitive and hard fought single-seater seasons ever.
After the final round, the Million Card Cup race at Suzuka, Eddie had 33 points, Hoshino was on 32, with Cheever on 31. But then the JAF's dreaded lesser-results deduction rule came into play, costing Eddie deerly. Instead of being declared the deserving 1993 Japanese F3000 champion he had to watch race winner Hoshino being heralded the new champ. The veteran had more retirements but two wins while Eddie's consistency and a single win in the fourth round at Suzuka meant that he had to deduct the one point he earned for taking sixth in round 8, the Fuji Inter race. Now they were both level on 32 points, with the pendulum swinging towards Kazuyoshi by virtue of his two wins. Although crowned World Champion for the fourth time, Alain Prost will have commisurated with Irvine that 14th November of 1993…
Still, Eddie had made a lasting impression on F1 team bosses, who thought Irvine was a suitable candidate for solving some of the end-of-term cash-flow problems that the lesser F1 teams were suffering from at the end of 1993 and '94. And so before missing out on the Japanese F3000 title the Ulsterman made his F1 debut at the same track in October. He had track knowledge, local funding arranged by Cerumo and at the same time the attraction of being, well, British, but Irish enough for Eddie Jordan to repay his namesake for Irvine's third place in the 1990 International F3000 championship. As with nearly all ex-EJR/Jordan drivers, they always come back for a second time - from Heinz-Harald to Hill, from Jean to Giancarlo. Irvine was no exception.
Soon Irvine and his orange-and-green helmet would become a familiar sight on the Grand Prix tracks - not least because of his spectacular first few races. The Senna helmet was a thing of the past and Eddie was his own man. So Mr Edward Irvine used to be a Senna fan? Well, yes, he was, although it's hard to believe after having read this particular heated conversation at Suzuka in 1993, the scene of Irvine's debut with Jordan… This is a transcript from ayrton-senna.com:
The scene: Eddie Irvine is sitting alone on a table in the Jordan cabin. Jordan's commercial manager, Rubens Barrichello and several other people, mostly team members, are also present. Suzuka was Irvine's first ever F1 race and everyone is watching a re-run of the Senna-Hill-Irvine incident.
Suddenly the door opens and in walks Ayrton Senna accompanied by Norman Howell, director of communications for McLaren and Giorgio Ascanelli, Senna's engineer.
Senna is looking for Irvine, but either he doesn't see him or he doesn't recognise him. Eddie Irvine raises his hand and Senna walks over to him...
Irvine : Here!
Senna : What the **** do you think you were doing?
Irvine : I was racing!
Senna : You were racing? Do you know the rule that you're supposed to let the leaders come by when you're a back marker?
Irvine : If you were going fast enough, it was no problem.
Senna : I overtook you! And you went three times off the road in front of me, at the same place, like ****ing idiot, where there was oil. And you were throwing stones and all things in front of me for three laps. When I took you, you realised I was ahead of you. And when I came up behind Hill, because he was on slicks and in difficulties, you should have stayed behind me. You took a very big risk to put me out of the race.
Irvine : Where did I put you in any danger?
Senna : You didn't put me in any danger?
Irvine : Did I touch you? Did I touch you once?
Senna : No, but you were that much from touching me, and I happened to be the ****ing leader. I HAPPENED TO BE THE ****ING LEADER!
Irvine : A miss is as good as a mile.
Senna : I tell you something. If you don't behave properly in the next event, you can just rethink what you do. I can guarantee you that.
Irvine : The stewards said "No problem. Nothing was wrong."
Senna : Yeah? You wait till Australia. You wait till Australia, when the stewards will talk to you. Then you tell me if they tell you this.
Irvine : Hey, I'm out there to do the best for me.
Senna : This is not correct. You want to do well. I understand, because I've been there I understand. But it's very unprofessional. If you are a back marker, because you happen to be lapped ...
Irvine : But I would have followed you if you'd overtaken Hill!
Senna : You should let the leader go by ...
Irvine : I understand that fully!
Senna : ... and not come by and do the things you did. You nearly hit Hill in front of me three times, because I saw, and I could of collected you and him as a result, and that's not the way to do that.
Irvine : But I'm racing! I'm racing! You just happened to ...
Senna : You're not racing! You're driving like a ****ing idiot. You're not a racing driver, you're a ****ing idiot!
Irvine : You talk, you talk. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Senna : I was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Irvine : Yes. I was battling with Hill.
Senna : Really? Really? Just tell me one thing. Who is supposed to have the call? You, or the leader of the race who comes through to lap you?
Irvine : The leader of the race.
Senna : So what have you done?
Irvine : You, you were too slow, and I had to overtake you to try to get at Hill.
Senna : Really? How did I lap you if I was too slow?
Irvine : Rain. Because on slicks you were quicker than me, on wets you weren't.
Senna : Really? Really? How did I come and overtake you on wets?
Irvine : Huh?
Senna : How come I overtook you on wets?
Irvine : I can't remember that. I don't actually remember the race.
Senna : Exactly. Because you are not competent enough to remember. That's how it goes you know.
Irvine : Fair enough. Fair enough. That's what you think.
Senna : You be careful guy.
Irvine : I will. I'll watch out for you.
Senna : You're gonna have problems not with me only, but with lots of other guys, also the FIA.
Irvine : Yeah?
Senna : You bet.
Irvine : Yeah? Good.
Senna : Yeah? It's good to know that.
Irvine : See you out there.
Senna : It's good to know that.
Irvine : See you out there ...
Appearing to turn away Senna then turns back and hits Irvine with his left hand. The blow lands on the right side of Irvine's head. Irvine loses his balance and falls off the table. Senna is still shouting as he is hustled towards the door.
Irvine yells "Insurance claim there!"
Senna (leaving) retorts "You got to learn to respect where you're going wrong!"
Did you ever think that conversation was that funny? "Insurance claim there!" That one falls in the same category as Kevin Kline shouting "Disappointment!" in the epic A fish called Wanda… All in all, Eddie's sense of humour seems to have been lost on Ayrton at that moment. Now where was Gerhard? |
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Anticipate obstacles and enhance opportunities with this reading focused on the next ten years of your life. Recognize the best times to reach out and advance, as well as when to hold back and conserve.
What does 2013 hold for your love life? Could it be for keeps? Discover what lies ahead and be in a position to make the most of your relationship with the help of this powerful 4-card reading for two!
Use the powerful Moon energy to your advantage with your day-by-day one-month Lunar Forecast. The Moon is the ruler of our emotions in astrology. The fast-moving Moon is responsible for setting the tone of our daily lives -- it controls when we are up or down, laughing or crying, naughty or nice, Discover when to speak, when to stay silent, when to act and when to pull back. Get started today!
Have you ever wanted to know exactly when the time is right for planning vacations, asking for a raise, meeting someone special or hanging out with your family? This forecast, available in three, six and twelve month increments, will give you detailed knowledge of how the passing planets can enhance your life!
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Use the 2013 Travel Forecast to guide you through the planning of your next vacation! This reading will guide you through a day-to-day analysis of the best traveling days for you. Whether you are leaving on a short business trip or a long-awaited adventure, discover the most powerful astrological influences you will encounter.
Get essential astrological information about all your business needs! Based on the birth information for a new or potential business owner, founder or major associate, this forecast will show you the best times to start a new business or business-oriented project.
Uncover the secrets to a successful career! Learn the best days to move full-force with your plans, and how to deal with obstacles when they arise. Your Jupiter forecast even provides a bit of motivation to keep you going if days seem like a struggle. Discover just how far you can take your career with this useful and insightful three-month forecast!
The Chinese Almanac, or 'Tung Shu', has been consulted for centuries in China to determine lucky or unlucky days and times for performing common activities. Discover auspicious dates and times with your own personalized Chinese Almanac, and make the most of opportune times.
Make your public conversations perfect and your personal ones passionate! Discover how to compose yourself and make your best connections. Talk the talk so that you broadcast your best qualities and become a formidable force.
Your amazing, three-month forecast, based on Mercury's transits, can help you plan the best days for focusing your attention on loved ones, meeting with superiors, or even writing reports. This reading covers everything from important interactions to writer's block. Discover just how big a role Mercury plays in your life, and how you can make it work for you!
Astrological insight into the choices at your disposal and the influences of your destiny. Satisfy your soul-searching and learn to take better advantage of opportunity. Uncover auspicious times and quench your quest for self-fulfillment.
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Knowing how to keep control is just as important as knowing when to let go. Check out your Saturn forecast to learn when you should keep pushing to get your way, and when you're better off stepping back and letting fate take over. With this insightful three-month forecast, you can start taking real control of your life and your surroundings today!
Find out which days you'll be most driven to succeed and plan your schedule ahead for even greater achievement! Or maybe you'll want to plan ahead for lazy days so you can get cozy on the couch. Either way, your three-month Mars forecast will give you all the information you need so you can get the most out of your life!
Discover how your spirituality and your imagination impact all aspects of your life! Your Neptune forecast breaks down exactly which days Neptune will impact your world and helps you figure out how you can make the most of each transit. See what Neptune has in store for you in the coming months!
If you're looking for insight into your deepest thoughts, then look no further! This unique, day-by-day Uranus forecast breaks down your innermost motivations to help you understand what prompts you to act. You'll also learn which days are best for pursuing creative, innovative ideas, and when you should lay low. Find out what Uranus has in store for you in the next three months!
Discover how Venus's transits shape who you are and how you love! With your personalized three-month forecast, you can see how each of Venus's movements affect you in a personal way. Plan ahead for good romance days, and find out when obstacles might hold you back. Check out your forecast now and get your love life back on track!
Define your goals, explore key relationships in your life and understand the factors that have molded the person you have become. In this very accurate reading, every set of tiles represents influences through the major phases of your life.
Pluto is the planet of transformation, and it can wreak havoc with your life if you're not prepared. Fortunately this three-month forecast provides you the tools you need to take Pluto's influence in stride. You can even make Pluto's transits work in your favor, and improve your whole life! Get started on a whole new you today!
An astrological road map through your teens. This forecast explores the issues relevant to this transitory time. Learn of the influences that impact your identity, relationships, decision making, and responsibilities. |
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Citizen's Independent Report
Material Errors, Omissions, Inconsistencies, & Curiosa
The 1994 US Senate Whitewater Hearings Documents *
* Report 103-433, Volume I &
Hearings 103-889, Volumes I & II
Hugh H. Sprunt
(214) 484 - 7136
July 20, 1995
© Copyright Notice
Please Contact The Author Regarding Any The Right to Reproduce
Factual Data Not Correctly Extracted From This Work Commercially
The Three Senate Volumes Listed Above. Is Not Granted.
[This Is Release S-03; October 8, 1995]
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Vincent W. Foster, Jr.
Davidson College, '67
January 15, 1945 - July 20, 1993
Requiescat In Pace
Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas
[Let Learning Be Cherished Where Liberty Has Arisen]
The author gratefully acknowledges the superior fieldcraft, original ideas, logistical acumen, damn-near infinite patience, unflagging editorial assistance, and near-magical powers proffered by his "District of Columbia Associate" during the course of this Foster investigation. For once, no "Smoke and Mirrors" were required in order to complete one of DCA's successful missions!
An ardent believer in the public's right-to-know and in the direct accountability of individual government officials, DCA understands that, for the well-being of its citizens, the USA must not merely be a place on a map, but must espouse a set of principles that will permit all of us to live together in harmony and abundance. DCA advised the author to remove all hints of sarcasm from the analysis herein. He therefore has, in particular, no responsibility for any that the author "missed!"
Email, fax, vox, snail-mail, or in corpus, you never disappoint, and I reluctantly honor your request to remain incognito given the current political environment. I'm up for a medium-rare cheeseburger (hold the onions) and sushi with you and the delightful MT anytime! Domo arigato gozaimasu, MT!
Special personal thanks go to DCMB, ambassador extraordinary from the Land-of-Please-and-Thank-You and quintessential practitioner of rational comme il faut, for shelter, for sustenance, and for her valiant efforts to elevate the author's understanding of the finer things in life, both at Wolf Trap (what a name!) and other venues. Prima ballerina lured to beer blast! Film at eleven!
DCMB's skills behind the wheel rescued this Baker Street Irregular during the high-speed disengagement phase of a reconnaissance run to Fort Marcy Park (and environs!), not to mention the near-continuous availability of an extremely resilient and attractive pair of ears during waking hours.
DCMB, given their therapeutic effect, I should have done a few more crossword puzzles and not become quite so focused. I don't know about that gargouille assise, but I do love the omnipresent umbrella girl! Along those lines, I can think of no one else with whom I enjoy examining the dynamic tension between certain poems of Byron and Pope. Finally, DCMB, I commit to ongoing contemplation of the concept that Verbosity Virtue. I could use more help with that sometime. . .
Last to be acknowledged, but first in the author's heart, is his family: ESS, ADS, & EDS. Bemused tolerance is commendable enough, but tolerance beyond the point of bemusement is extraordinary indeed! My humble thanks for your forbearance throughout this Foster investigation. "Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Here am I, send me." Wider den Tod ist kein Krautlein gewachsen! Too bad for those like me who manage to improve, if at all, only at a glacial pace!
All "Errors, Emissions, Inconsistencies, & Curiosa in this Report are solely the author's!
"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." -- John 8:32
The facts in this "Citizen's Independent Report" on the death of Mr. Foster have been extracted directly from the raw evidence the Senate released in January 1995 (2726 pages in three volumes). This voluminous Senate material is presented here in a much more coherent and logical fashion.
This report contains many citations to the official record, should readers wish to check the accuracy of the quotations and other facts in this report against the record. This report contains evidence from the US Park Police Case Jacket on the death of Vince Foster, from later FBI witness interviews, from testimony and depositions taken in connection with the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings, and from the huge number of documents gathered by official investigators. For a quick overview of some of the disturbing facts taken straight from the official record, see the next section of this report.
The US Park Police Report, The Fiske Report, and the 1994 Senate Report (the "Reports") selectively included data that supported the officially-sanctioned "suicide verdict" and ignored, or gave little weight to, those that did not. Therefore, many facts in this report will be "new," even to those who have followed the prior investigations via the media. The author is putting the disturbing raw data from the record before the public in an attempt to convince Congress to hold the open and unrestricted inquiry into Vince Foster's death that should have occurred in July 1993.
Examples of the selectivity of the official Reports: 1) Two witnesses at Fort Marcy Park the afternoon of Vince Foster's death described individuals whom they saw in the vicinity of Mr. Foster's Honda about a half hour before his body was officially discovered. One of these individuals was seen sitting in the Honda. The other stood by the Honda which had its hood raised. Mr. Foster was nowhere to be seen. These individuals were not considered important enough to be a factor in the conclusions reached by the official Reports. 2) One of these witnesses told the FBI that information recorded in her prior official interview did not accurately reflect what she had said, but the official Reports ignored that unpleasant circumstance.
Witness statements and other useful data were ignored by the official Reports unless they bolstered the "suicide verdict." Examples: 1) The decision to treat the death as a suicide was made before the Criminal Investigation Branch investigators had even seen the body and 2) The Park Police closed its investigation before learning whether the gun found with Mr. Foster could shoot.
There are gross contradictions in the record evidenced by the official photographs, the FBI interview of the doctor who examined the body at Fort Marcy, the official autopsy report, and the statements made by US Park Police and Fairfax County personnel. Times in the record are often contradictory and items that disturb the official consensus are given short shrift in the Reports. There is strong evidence that Foster's White House connection was known not later than 6:35 PM (at least an hour before its "official" discovery), although the White House was not notified until 8:30 PM per the Secret Service memo in the record. Are the various contradictions significant? See the next section.
Mr. Foster's body and his Honda were searched, but no car keys were found at Fort Marcy Park. This raised the possibility that someone else had driven his car to Fort Marcy Park. Mr. Foster's car keys were located in his previously-searched pants pocket hours later and miles away from the park on the key ring holding his "personal" keys. Another key ring, with his White House keys, was discovered at that time along with his personal keys. The White House key ring held a high-security type key, a plastic tab, a key for double-bitted cam locks, and two keys for standard door locks.
This report offers no "ultimate" reason for Mr. Foster's death. Instead, it describes the very sizable errors, omissions, and inconsistencies latent in the record, items that have not been part of the public debate about his death. It's time they should be. They are amazing enough all by themselves.Overview of the Record
Very few individuals, whether members of the media or not, have had the time and the inclination to examine carefully the official record and summarize the evidence found among the 2726 pages that are the official public record of investigations into the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster on July 20, 1993. The three 1994 Senate Hearings and Report Volumes cited on the title page of this report and released by the Senate in January 1995 contain a wealth of raw data that is neither well-organized nor selective. This report has extracted the most important official evidence and presents it in an organized fashion.
Some of the more striking facts and witness statements extracted directly from the official record are below. The citations allowing the reader to locate the evidence described in, and quotations copied from, the official record are in this report along with the supporting detail. This report also contains some analysis of the facts in the record, but the list below is of factual data taken directly from the official record and gives readers a taste of the matters discussed in detail in the body of this report.
The author believes that these items will be a great shock to most readers because they are so damaging to the conclusions about Mr. Foster's death contained in The US Park Police Report, The Fiske Report, and The 1994 Senate Report Volume. Facts such as these have caused the few people at least somewhat familiar with the raw data justifiably to question the processes that controlled the prior investigations of Mr. Foster's death. The author believes that the death of Mr. Foster may be the "thin edge of the wedge" that, if examined carefully and without guile, will demonstrate the need for fundamental reform at the Federal level.
The author hopes the information in this report will allow those that have, until now, heard only selected information from the official Reports (and only after that information was, in turn, culled by the media), to understand why some people believe there is more to Mr. Foster's death than meets the eye. There is certainly more to his death than meets the casual and superficial glance that has been provided by the mainstream media!
The first official to discover Foster's body, a US Park Police officer, was quite clear that he never saw the gun. His testimony on this point is repetitive and quite clear. He was a few feet from the gun for several minutes, but he says he never saw it. The Fiske Report ignores this fact.
Two civilian witnesses, interviewed about the vehicles they saw in the parking lot, describe a vehicle that could only have been Mr. Foster's Honda. They saw individuals around this car: the hood was up, one individual was standing by the Honda, and the other was sitting in it some 30 minutes before Mr. Foster's body was found. The descriptions of these individuals make it impossible that either of them was Mr. Foster. The official Reports say these two individuals have no connection with Mr. Foster or simply ignore them completely.
A civilian witness told the FBI that, for reasons unknown, information, which she had previously provided to US Park Police investigators, had not been correctly recorded in her US Park Police interview report.
Six of the seven US Park Police and Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department personnel who responded to the 911 calls told the FBI (with varying degrees of certainty and specificity) that there was at least one "extra" civilian vehicle in the parking lot when they arrived at Fort Marcy, a vehicle that the official Reports either ignore or treat as completely irrelevant.
The Report concluding Mr. Foster's death investigation by determining the death was a suicide was signed before the US Park Police had taken the time to confirm that the gun Mr. Foster is said to have used could actually fire a shot.
The US Park Police officer who found Foster's body described the presence of "volunteers" who were in the park when the body was found. He said these volunteers were working on the park trails. None of these "volunteers" was ever named, interviewed, or mentioned in the official Reports, though Mr. Foster's body was found lying on a pathway that a witness insisted to the FBI had clearly been recently disturbed.
Five civilian and government witnesses at the park that afternoon stated (with varying degrees of certainty and specificity) that there was a briefcase in the Honda. This briefcase is not mentioned in the Reports (other than to state it was not at Fort Marcy Park), even though there is allegedly great interest in the fate of Mr. Foster's White House papers on the part of the Senate Special Whitewater Committee.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at Fort Marcy stated: "It seems to me that we made that determination [that the death was a suicide] prior to going up and looking at the body." The senior EMS Sergeant at the scene reported "Obvious suicide. . . with gun" 25 minutes after he arrived at the park.
The US Park Police crime scene perimeter extended over 1,000 feet from the body in some directions. However, the lead US Park Police Investigator at Fort Marcy was not aware that the park entrance closest to the body, or an old road on the western border of the park, existed. Access to the body site from these directions was therefore not sealed off.
The lead Emergency Medical Services representative at Fort Marcy who called in the suicide report for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department and examined the body at the scene stated that the hand holding the gun was palm down. He had no idea why he was later shown crime scene photos depicting the hand palm up.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at the body site reported that the palms were up. This conflicts with the one crime scene photo leaked to the media. That photo shows the right hand palm down with the hand holding a revolver.
The Report of the only Medical Doctor to examine the body in place at Fort Marcy is, for reasons unknown, not a part of the record. This Medical Examiner told the FBI he arrived and departed Fort Marcy an hour before the official Reports say he did.
The Fiske Report: "Those present observed a large pool [sic] of blood located on the ground where Foster's head had been." The Fiske Report: [the doctor who examined the body in place at Fort Marcy] "Observed a large exit wound in the back of the skull." However, the doctor told the FBI that the blood volume was "small" and what blood there was had "matted and clotted." The lead Investigator had this to say about the head wound he observed: "I still can't believe the hole -- it's a small hole. . . I probed his head there was no big hole there. . . I initially thought the bullet might still be in his head." The Reports ignore these statements.
The experienced Evidence Technician who took the 35-mm crime scene photos reported that none of these photos were usable because they were underexposed. The camera he used was never tested to determine why these pictures were no good.
Mr. Foster's glasses were found 19 feet down slope from his head. The Fiske Report stated that they must have "bounced" there (through heavy vegetation) due to a gunshot to the mouth.
The doctor who performed the autopsy stated that he took no X-rays of the body. The US Park Police report, produced because it sent four observers the autopsy, stated however, that the doctor conducting the autopsy told the US Park Police Detective in attendance that "X-rays indicated that there was no evidence of bullet fragments in the head."
The second US Park Police officer at the second took seven Polaroids of the body. The Polaroids he took are not among the thirteen of the body that are inventoried in the record. The record contains no explanation why they vanished.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at the body site had this to say about some of the Polaroids he took: "I know I took Polaroids of that. I am not sure how many I took, but I don't recall seeing those Polaroids again. I mean I had them at the office that night, I did reports, and I know what happened. . . I don't have those photos. I put them in a [US Park Police case] jacket. . . and I don't know what happened." The Polaroids he is speaking of are not inventoried in the record. The record contains no explanation why they vanished.
The lead US Park Police Investigator at the body site searched for a suicide note, identification documents, or other items in the victim's pockets. The investigator found no car keys on the body. No car keys were found in Mr. Foster's Honda either. Why wasn't the death immediately treated as a homicide as soon as the investigators realized their suicide theory required the decedent to have driven himself to the park without using his car keys?
As soon as the investigators realized there were no car keys to be found, rather than search the Honda again or search the area where the body had been found (his glasses had, after all been found 19 feet from his head), they drove to the morgue and searched the body's pockets one more time. There, the investigators not only discovered they had missed Mr. Foster's personal key ring in the right front pants pocket (with his car keys), but also found his White House keys on a separate key ring that held a high-security type key. Did this search of the body took place before or after the body was also visited at the morgue that night by White House staffers?
The only paper in Mr. Foster's wallet at Fort Marcy that the lead investigator at the body site considered "unusual" was never explained in the official Reports. It contains groups of initials that correspond to the President, the First Lady, and to their daughter. It contains a variety of dates and numerical amounts along with several Arkansas city names. Mr. Foster was known to be involved with the formation of blind trusts for all the Clinton family. The private attorney involved talked with him the day before Mr. Foster died and tried to reach him the next day a few minutes after Mr. Foster left the White House for the last time.
The Fiske Report and the gun: "When shown the gun, Foster's sister, Sharon Bowman, identified it as appearing very similar to the one their father had kept in his bedside table, specifically recalling the pattern on the grip." However, Lisa Foster, in the words of the report of her interview said: "Not the gun she thought it must be. Silver, six gun, large barrel." The gun officially found in Mr. Foster's right hand at Fort Marcy was a dark-colored gun per the photographs of it in the record. Per Sharon Bowman's interviewer: "I asked if she remembered any other features [other than the web-like detailing on the grip mentioned in the Fiske Report quote above]. She did not." The Fiske Report statement is misleading.
Despite the official conclusion that financial concerns had no role in Mr. Foster's death, the family checking account had been overdrawn for the two or three weeks prior to his death. The credit union had shifted from "working with" the Fosters on a "bi-weekly" to a "weekly" basis the week before he died. Mr. Foster visited the credit union the day before he died.
To support its conclusion that Vince Foster was under great stress, The Fiske Report states that "It was obvious to many that he had lost weight" in the months before his death. Medical reports in the record show that he actually gained weight in the six months prior to his death.
A Fairfax Country Fire and Rescue Department worker observed the US Park Police "gaining access" to Mr. Foster's Honda (his White House ID was on the front seat) before 6:37 PM. The White House position is that it was not informed of Mr. Foster's death until 8:30 PM. Another Fairfax County emergency worker said it was known within his group (that left the park at 6:37 PM) that Mr. Foster was employed at the White House.
The Fiske Report refers to the lack of damage done to Mr. Foster's teeth and the soft tissues of his mouth by the barrel of the gun in support of the official suicide theory (Mr. Foster presumably must have put the gun into his mouth voluntarily since there were no signs of a struggle). However, the Fiske Report does not mention the damage that should have been done to the soft tissues and teeth from the powerful recoil of the Army Special Colt .38 Revolver (and its unusually high front sight). The recoil must have been sizable since it carried Mr. Foster's right arm away from his mouth and forced it neatly down by his side.
A US Park Police Investigator at the body site somehow knew to write the name of a US Secret Service uniformed officer and his White House Phone number (in Room 058 in the White House basement) in his investigator's notebook, apparently around 6:40 PM. However, according to official Reports, the US Park Police itself did not learn of Mr. Foster's White House connection for at least another hour, probably an hour-and-a-half. The official position (in a Secret Service memo) is that the White House did not learn about the Mr. Foster's death until 8:30 PM.
Several Fairfax Country Fire and Rescue Department personnel state that the Honda was locked when they examined its exterior (and viewed the interior through the windows) sometime before 6:35 PM. The official Reports indicate that the Honda was found unlocked well over an hour later when it was "officially" searched for the first time. No one on the investigation knew where the Honda keys were during this interval, so these keys could not have been used to unlock the car during this period of time.
The Fiske Report states that the body was bagged back by the second cannon at Fort Marcy Park at about 8:45 PM before being transported the 750 feet to the parking lot and then taken on a 15-minute trip to the Fairfax County Hospital. The ambulance log indicates the body arrived at the hospital 15 minutes before the Fiske Report says the body was put in a body bag up by the second cannon at Fort Marcy. Times given by the doctor who pronounced Mr. Foster dead at the hospital corroborate the ambulance log, not the Fiske Report. Furthermore, the Medical Examiner told the FBI he arrived at Fort Marcy an hour before the Fiske Report says he did. The Medical Examiner told the FBI that Mr. Foster's White House connection was known to those in the park while he was on the scene.
In the words of the FBI interview of the only doctor who examined the body at Fort Marcy, the doctor "believed the wound was consistent with a 'low-velocity weapon.'" The revolver, especially with the high-velocity ammunition the Fiske Report said Mr. Foster used, is not a "low velocity weapon." How does the Fiske Report reconcile the doctor's statement in the Report? The doctor's statement is not mentioned in the Report at all.
Are These Kinds Of Discoveries Sufficient To Cause A Reasonable Person
To Question Fundamental Conclusions Of A Death Investigation Or Not?
CONSUMER WARNING! *
The Author Of This Report Is Neither
A Democrat Nor A Republican.
The Author Of This Report Is Not A Conservative.
The Author Of This Report Has Never Sold Any
Books, Newsletters, Or Videotapes That
Concern The Death Of Vince Foster Or
The Whitewater Matter Generally.
The Author Of This Report Does Not Consider Himself
A Scurrilous Kook, Right-Wing Or Otherwise,
But Will Graciously Allow His Readers
To Decide That For Themselves!
The Author Reasons For Writing This Report
Are Given In The Transmittal Letter To
Chairman Alfonse D'Amato Of
The Whitewater Committee.
The Author Of This Report Has Personally Borne
The Entire Cost Of His Investigation Into The
Death Of Vincent W. Foster, Jr.
* Note: As of September 1, 1995, the author began to write about the death of Vince Foster for money in an effort to recoup some of his expenses and to reach a wider range of readers.
However, this report (the "CIR"), the author's core work on the death of Vince Foster continues to be a totally pro bono effort for which he receives not a cent. Various copy shops continue to provide copies of the CIR directly to readers for their normal printing and shipping charges ONLY. Indeed, the full text of the CIR has been available for downloading from the Internet since early September 1995 and many on-line individuals have done so at no cost to them except possibly the marginal cost of the download time itself.
It is the author's intention to update the CIR periodically. Updated CIR releases will continue to be provided completely pro bono. Updated master copies will continue to be provided to print shops and updated releases will be placed on the Internet for downloading.
Why Is It No Longer Acceptable To Seek The Facts About This Death?
It was not always so.
For some reason, a lot has changed in our country since the summer Vince Foster died. Today, anyone who seriously questions any aspect of the results of the official investigations into his death runs a sizable risk of being branded a "kook," or worse ("scurrilous kook?"). For many months, the "mainstream media" have, in general, scornfully heaped ridicule upon the relatively few individuals (both within and without the media) who have dared to speak up about Vince Foster's death. The author is sorely tempted to quote samples of this ridicule, but will resist doing so. Virtually everyone reading this page knows what the author means, whether she or he believes the mainstream media's scorn is deserved or not.
Expressing concern about the Foster death investigations and gaining a meaningful personal understanding why he is gone have become "politically incorrect" in the extreme. Questions that intelligent, sensitive, individuals posed in the weeks following his death are now beyond the pale, "Verboten!" as it were, in the eyes of the mainstream media. Why? There is a subtle reason for this behavior that the author will save for another day. The obvious reason is discussed below.
A sampling from a single "mainstream media" article follows below from a piece that ran in the Sunday New York Times the day before Labor Day in 1993. It looks back on Vince Foster's death less than two months after his body was found at Fort Marcy. The quotations below are from the Sunday Times Magazine's "Endpaper" piece entitled "Public Stages" written by Mr. Frank Rich. Apparently, the author of the report in your hands once was in respectable company indeed when he wondered about Vince Foster's death and decided it might not be merely a "simple suicide."
"The Washington Murder Mystery, the whodunit death of the deputy White House counsel, Vincent Foster." [Frank Rich]
"Of a thousand people, of those who might commit suicide, I would never pick Vince." [Hillary Rodham Clinton as quoted by Frank Rich]
"The most normal person who worked in the White House [with] no known history of mental illness or erratic behavior." [The Washington Post as quoted by Frank Rich]
"Widely admired as a portrait of poise. . . a man who seemed to glide through life." [The New York Times as quoted by Frank Rich]
"But if Foster's White House pressures fully explained his self-destruction, virtually every major government official should be placed under suicide watch." [Frank Rich]
The artistic collage created for his piece lends credibility to the "mysterious" interpretation Mr. Rich puts on Vince Foster's death (Mr. Rich does not appear to challenge the suicide verdict, except possibly when penning phrases such as "Washington Murder Mystery" and the "whodunit death of the deputy White House counsel, Vincent Foster," at least until one examines the collage).
The color artwork depicts dark storm clouds over the dome of the US Capitol. Much of the Capitol's dome and façade are shown as if taken from a film negative: everything that one would expect to be light is dark and everything one would expect to be dark is light. The famous Washington Cherry trees are in bloom. They frame and surmount a statue of President, "I cannot tell a lie, I chopped down the cherry tree", George Washington. Washington is positioned on his back in the collage, as if someone had laid him carefully on the ground. Intended or not, presumably readers of this piece would be forgiven if they saw parallels with Mr. Foster's death in this collage.
Mr. Rich was not taken to task for implying there might have been (was?) a cover-up regarding the Foster death. [The US Park Police report concluding that suicide was the cause of death was signed a month before the piece appeared.] Mr. Rich was not chastised in the establishment media for scurrilous insinuations that Mr. Foster's death was not a suicide, nor told that his shameful article would upset Vincent's distraught widow and young children, appearing as it did in the premier newspaper magazine in the nation.
The author will now address the more obvious reason why people asking about Vince Foster's death have been declared "Persona Non Grata" by the mainstream media. The reason is the superficial credibility of the official Reports on Vince Foster's death. The Park Police Report, the 1994 Fiske Report, the 1994 Senate Report -- they all said Foster killed himself, didn't they? However, the author of this report says: Look at the raw data in the record before you decide!
There is a constant (and reasonable-sounding) drumbeat in the mainstream media (and elsewhere) that goes something like this: "There have been four different investigations into this guy's death. The US Park Police, The Fiske Investigation (and its FBI agents), the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings, and the House Banking Committee Hearings. They all said it was suicide. Why don't you let the poor guy and his family rest in peace?"
As indicated in the body of this report, it is the nature of raw evidence uncovered by these investigations (latent in the two Senate Whitewater Hearings Volumes' 2,672 pages, all pages that the author has studied with care) that is being called to the reader's attention. What if the official investigative record contains astounding information that, while technically public, has not been publicized by those charged with doing so? The author assumes (charitably) that most individuals, and virtually all members of the media, are not familiar with the wealth of material contained in the official record detailed and detailed in this report.
Ignore the analysis in this report if that makes the basic expositive material easier to examine. In the author's opinion, the expositive material herein is tied extremely closely to the officially record via exhaustive citations throughout this report [That they were exhausting citations, the author has no doubt!]. Read the expositive material herein and then ask if those who question the death of Vince Foster or challenge the official "suicide verdict" just might have legitimate reasons for doing so.
What do you do with your answer once you've found it? Look in the mirror. Deal with it. I did.
Summary Table Of Contents *
Report Section Page #
Title Page - - - - - - - - - - 0
Dedication And Acknowledgments - - - - - - - 1
Executive Summary - - - - - - - - - 2
Overview of the Record - - - - - - - - 3
Consumer Warning! - - - - - - - - - 7
Why Is It No Longer Acceptable To Seek The Facts? - - - - 8
Summary Table Of Contents - - - - - - - 10
Letter Transmitting This Report To Chairman D'Amato - - - 11
July 20, 1993: Vince Foster's Body Is Found At Fort Marcy Park, Virginia - 13
How To Obtain Government Information On The Death Of Vince Foster - 14
Introduction - - - - - - - - - - 15
Tables, Photos, Maps, And Aerial Imagery Of Fort Marcy Park & Environs - 25
Abbreviations Used In This Report - - - - - - 28
Selected Foster-Related Events Prior To Monday, July 19, 1993 - - 29
July 19, 1993: Foster's Next-To-Last Day At The White House - - - 41
July 20, 1993: Foster's Last Day At The White House - - - - 51
July 20, 1993: Fort Marcy Park - - - - - - - 57
The Autopsy And Related Matters - - - - - - - 132
The Torn Note Found In Foster's Briefcase - - - - - 136
Appendix I: Tables Of Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body - - 138
Appendix II: Selected Maps Of Fort Marcy Park And Environs - 140
Appendix III: ABC News Photo of Foster's Right Hand With Gun - 144
Appendix IV: 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings Locator Table - - 146
Appendix V: Table Of Civilian Vehicles Seen At Fort Marcy Park - 151
Appendix VI: Table of Fort Marcy Park Arrivals And Departures - 157
Appendix VII: Table Of Principal Persons - - - - 159
Appendix VIII: Author's [Kook-Proof?] Biographical Summary - - 165
* This fifth release [S-03, dated October 8, 1995] corrects some typographical and grammatical errors and adds a modest amount of new material to the third release dated August 31, 1995, just as that release did for the first and second releases, dated July 20, 1995, and July 31, 1995, respectively. The fourth release [S-02CR, dated September 30, 1995] was provided to Reporter Chris Ruddy only, via a 3.5" diskette, in anticipation of the "60 Minutes" segment on the death of Vince Foster aired on Sunday, October 8, 1995.
Hugh H. Sprunt
Thursday, July 20, 1995
Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, Chairman
The Whitewater Committee
Room SD-534, Dirksen Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Re: The 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings
Dear Senator D'Amato:
It is appropriate for me to explain why I had sufficient interest in the death of Vincent W. Foster, Jr., to generate the enclosed analysis. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I spent significant time in east Arkansas when I was younger and was generally familiar with Mr. Clinton and Arkansas politics when he sought his party's 1992 Presidential nomination as a "New Democrat." Two acquaintances ran the Clinton Campaign in North Texas, where I now reside. One of these individuals, whom I particularly respect, was a Special Assistant to the President during the first seven months of the Clinton Administration.
My father and other close family members were graduated from Davidson College, Mr. Foster's Alma Mater (an uncle was a psychology major like Mr. Foster). Mr. Foster was President of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Davidson, as was I at MIT. We are each law school graduates, both of us at mid-year. Furthermore, I strongly identify with the address Mr. Foster gave on May 8, 1993, at the University of Arkansas Law School, although I do not agree with the "spin" given the speech by the Fiske Report.
Most important, some twenty-five years ago, my grandfather, terminally ill with cancer, took his life on Christmas Day by shooting himself in the head using a Colt .38 Special revolver with a four-inch barrel, precisely the type of weapon with which Mr. Foster is said to have taken his own life at Fort Marcy. At his request, I had helped my grandfather into his dressing room where he kept his .38, was necessarily first-on-the-scene a few seconds after he fatally shot himself, and could do nothing for his massive head wound.
I thus have direct experience with suicide-by-gunshot and with the huge amount of damage a .38 Special "HV" round from such a revolver does when fired point-blank into the head. I was therefore amazed when I read the Autopsy Report on Mr. Foster (The June 30, 1994, Fiske Report at Tab 8) and subsequent official descriptions of Mr. Foster's far less dramatic head injury (also from an "HV" .38 round).
My professional précis is in Appendix VIII. I trust that you will be able to satisfy yourself that I am no "kook," right-wing, or otherwise. This report could have been completed within three or four weeks of the publication of the Senate volumes last January, but "Baker Street Irregular" that I am, I have normal day-to-day professional and family responsibilities. I am not commercially involved with any individual or group calling for further investigation of the Foster death, nor do I sell video tapes, books, or newsletters concerning the death of Mr. Foster or other Whitewater matters. I deal openly on a non-exclusive basis with the members of the media who contact me. My work to-date in connection with Mr. Foster's death is available gratis to those who request it. I hope you, and the other members of the Committee, will take what I say seriously enough to make your own evaluations of my report and act accordingly.
My analysis is based on the information contained in the 1994 Senate Report (Rept. 103-433, Vol. I) and Senate Hearings Volumes (S. Hrg. 103-889, Volumes I & II) that cover the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr. I believe you and the other members of the Committee will find this report useful in connection with the hearings that began this week and in any related subsequent congressional proceedings. Open hearings can put vital information before the public that would otherwise remain closely held (witness my reliance on the published volumes from last summer's Senate hearings). Perhaps Mr. Fiske's "Final Report" and related documents can be released in addition to the Senate Report and Hearings volumes based on the 1995 Whitewater hearings.
Committee staff tell me that the wording of the resolution governing the 1995 hearings does not explicitly authorize further inquiry into Mr. Foster's death. However, I also understand that the resolution in no way bars the Special Committee from undertaking such an inquiry should it choose to do so. You and the other members of the Committee should unquestionably re-investigate the death of Vince Foster. Why? The amazing information latent in the 1994 Senate Report and Hearings volumes and detailed in this report!
My report demonstrates that numerous and material errors, omissions, and inconsistencies are submerged in the public record of the 1994 hearings. Furthermore, the Committee is directed to investigate the fate of Mr. Foster's White House papers, and there is evidence in the record that a now-unaccounted-for briefcase was seen in Mr. Foster's Honda at Fort Marcy Park. Also, the two key rings Mr. Foster carried were not found at Fort Marcy, despite a thorough search of the body and Mr. Foster's Honda. It appears from the record that these office, personal, and Honda keys may have been retrieved from Mr. Foster's right front pants pocket by the Park Police only after the body was visited at the morgue by White House staffers.
If one needed to search Mr. Foster's office (or other spaces under his control), or move his car after he left the White House on the day he died, these keys could be quite useful. It has long been admitted that senior White House officials entered Mr. Foster's office the evening of his death, despite standard investigative prohibitions and notwithstanding assurances given the US Park Police that Mr. Foster's office would be sealed forthwith. This report also analyzes pages from a Park Police notebook and other items in the record indicating that Mr. Foster's White House connection was known to the Park Police at about 6:30 PM, some two hours before the White House officially admits having been informed of his death. If the Park Police knew at 6:30 PM, what use did the White House make of the additional two-hour window?
The enclosed report is drawn from the three Senate volumes cited above. Specifically, I have had no access to data contained only in Mr. Fiske's unreleased "Final Report," in the unreleased work-product of the US Park Police, the Fiske or the Starr Offices of Independent Counsel (including that developed by the FBI), or that of congressional investigators working on the 1994/95 hearings, or to evidence developed for (or by) the currently sitting Federal Grand Jury convened in the District by Mr. Starr.
I do not espouse any "conspiracy theory" regarding the ultimate reason for Mr. Foster's death (there are quite a few, many of them extremely bizarre, as you know). I have merely attempted to study the public record of the Foster death investigations and comment reasonably thereon. The enclosed analysis describes what I believe are numerous material errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and curiosa submerged in the public record. Voluminous citations to the record are provided to permit an efficient evaluation of the care with which the enclosed report is directly tied to the Senate volumes.
I have no particular desire to become publicly involved with any congressional hearings, but I will speak to Committee members or staff if such discussions would advance the cause of truth. I love my country, but I am not in the habit of using the American flag as a blindfold. The analysis I have made gives me little confidence in the processes that influenced the prior Foster death probes by placing limits on the investigations, including prior congressional hearings. I hope that you and the other members of the Whitewater Committee will read my analysis, put partisanship aside, and do what must be done. No "Wise Men." Certainly no "Star Chamber" in Congress (or in the Office of Independent Counsel).
/s/ Hugh H. Sprunt
cc: Members of the Whitewater Committee Special Counsel
Ms. Laura Tolson, Federal Grand Jury Coordinator Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr
Deputy White House Counsel Bruce R. Lindsey Chief of Staff Margaret Williams
Chairman James Leach, House Banking Committee Mr. Miguel Rodriguez
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich FBI Director Louis Freeh [& Others]
[Note to the October 8, 1995, release: The author's mother and Vince Foster's widow, Lisa, both graduated from Sweet Briar College. This indirect personal link was not mentioned in the above transmittal letter out of deference to the widow, who had not yet broken her public silence about her husband's death. This status changed with the publication of the lengthy September 11, 1995, New Yorker article, "Life After Vince."]
July 20, 1993: Vince Foster's Body Found at Fort Marcy Park, Virginia
Per the official record, the body of Vincent W. Foster, Jr., Deputy White House Counsel to President Clinton, is first found in Fort Marcy Park, Fairfax County, Virginia, at about 5:50 PM on Tuesday, July 20, 1993, by a person who later asked that his identity be kept a secret when he came forward some eight months later, the so-called "Confidential Witness."
After discovering the body, the Confidential Witness drives his white construction van from the Fort Marcy parking lot to the Turkey Run maintenance facility, a little over two-and-a-half miles northwest of Fort Marcy off the George Washington Memorial Parkway. While remaining in his vehicle, the Confidential Witness asks two maintenance workers he sees outside at the maintenance facility to call 911 and report the body and one of the workers agrees to do so.
The younger worker calls Fairfax County 911 at 5:59:59 PM (EDT): ". . . this guy told me there was a body laying up there by the last cannon." Per the request of Fairfax County 911, the worker quickly makes a second call to the US Park Police describing what he had been told: ". . . He said you got a dead body down there at the Ft. Marcy's. . . . He said it was back up there by the cannon." Fairfax County also notifies the US Park Police: ". . . can you respond with our ambulance to Ft. Marcy Park, near the last cannon gun, there is supposed to be a body." Since Fort Marcy is a United States Park, the US Park Police has law enforcement jurisdiction at Fort Marcy Park.
The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department responds promptly to the 911 call with two vehicles, Engine 1 and Medic 1. Engine 1 arrives in the parking lot at Fort Marcy at 6:09:58 PM, with Medic 1 arriving 18 seconds later. The First US Park Police officer, who volunteered to respond to the call, also reaches the parking lot quickly, arriving there at 6:11:50 PM.
The US Park Police officer locates the body first, reporting its discovery at 6:14:32 PM, two-minutes-and-forty-two-seconds after his arrival in the Fort Marcy parking lot, and requests by radio that Investigators from the US Park Police Criminal Investigation Branch's Anacostia Station respond to the scene because he believes the death is "suspicious" (meaning only that the officer does not believe the death is due to natural causes).
Per the official record, when found the body is lying neatly on its back, both arms at its sides, near the northern end of the western earthen berm of Fort Marcy, the head closest to the top of the earthen berm, 14 feet 3 inches west of the axle of the so-called "second cannon" at Fort Marcy. The deceased is wearing a white dress shirt with the top button undone, gray pin-striped suit pants, and dress shoes. The White House Communications Agency Motorola Bravo pager (#052943) he checked out is clipped to the right side of his waist.
The body lies some 775 feet over-the-ground northwest of the Fort Marcy parking lot where Vince Foster's 1989 taupe-gray four-door Honda Accord (with Arkansas plate, RCN 504) is seen by the US Park Police officer and by the six Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department personnel who respond to the scene. Vince Foster's tie, suit coat, wallet, and his White House ID are inside his unlocked Honda Accord in the fourth slot on the left hand side of the Fort Marcy parking lot as the emergency units enter the parking lot, having jumped the median strip from the southeast-bound George Washington Memorial Parkway to take the Fort Marcy exit off the Parkway.
Vince Foster is dead, and thereby hangs a tale that sorely needs telling.
How to Obtain Government Information on the Death of Vince Foster
The 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings began two days ago on July 18, 1995. The 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings began with an examination of the fate of the papers located in Vince Foster's White House office on the day he died. The Senate Banking Committee "Hearings Hot Line" phone number is (202) 224-0791 and plays a taped message about currently scheduled hearings, the subject matter thereof, the witnesses who will be called, and so on. The House Banking Committee has scheduled its own 1995 Whitewater Hearings to begin sometime the week of August 7, 1995. The House Banking Committee "Hearings Hot Line" phone number is (202) 225-7588.
The 1994 Senate Hearings and Report Volumes that cover the death of Vince Foster can be obtained by contacting the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Room SD-534, United States Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510. The Senate Banking Committee phone number is (202) 224-7391. The two Hearings Volumes and the Report Volume cited on the title page constitute the official "record" on which the report you have in your hands is based and were released to the public by the US Senate in 1995. The two 1994 Hearings Volumes total 2672 pages and the related Report Volume is 54 pages long, for a total of 2726 pages. Presumably the Hearings Volumes for the 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings will be released by the Document Clerk sometime after those proceedings are complete in late 1995 or early 1996.
The Senate Banking Committee Document Clerk's phone number (the Document Clerk actually ships the volumes) is (202) 224-1578 [Fax: (202) 224-5137]. The author has dealt with the Senate Document Clerk's office since the end of the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings in August 1994 and has found the individuals in that office to be extremely helpful.
The Fiske Report, released to the public on June 30, 1994; can be obtained by calling (202) 514-8688 [Fax: (202) 514-8802]. This is the phone number of the DC Office of Independent Counsel for Whitewater and Related Matters (headed since August 1994 by Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, replacing former Independent Counsel Robert Fiske). The text of the entire Fiske Report is contained in the Senate documents so, if small print is not a problem, the Fiske Report can be obtained by ordering the two Senate Hearings Volumes above. The so-called "Final" Fiske Report has never been made available to the public nor has any significant part of the investigative work-product of his successor, Mr. Kenneth W. Starr.
A copy of the US Park Police Case File #93-30502, Death Investigation 7/20/93, Ft. Marcy/G.W.M.P.) can still (possibly) be obtained from the US Park Police, Anacostia Station. Captain C.W. Hume (Badge #823) signed off on the US Park Police Report on August 5, 1993, and it was released to the public in July 1994. It is the least formal of the three substantial government reports on the death of Vince Foster. The address of the US Park Police Criminal Investigation Branch unit that handled the US Park Police investigation of the death of Vince Foster is United States Park Police, Anacostia Station, 1901 Anacostia Drive, SE, Washington, D.C. 20020. The phone number is (202) 690-5000. Virtually all of the US Park Police Case File is also contained in the two Senate Hearings Volumes.
The Ranking Republican on the Committee on Government Operations issued an eight-page "Summary Report" on August 12, 1994, on the Death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr. This committee is now called the Government Reform & Oversight Committee, and is currently chaired by the former ranking member, Representative William F. Clinger, Jr. (R-Pa.-5). His address is 2160 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515 [Phone: (202) 225-2121]. The "Oversight Committee" is now located in Room 2157 of the Rayburn Building [Phone: (202) 225-5074].
The Official Readers For Whom This Report Was Written
The primary readers for whom this report was written are the Members of the US Congress, particularly the Senators on the Special Whitewater Committee (see the transmittal letter to Chairman D'Amato). The author believes that an open and unfettered inquiry into the death of Vince Foster should be made by the Senate due to the constraints placed on prior investigations such as those undertaken by the US Park Police and the Office of Independent Counsel under Robert Fiske (constraints that the author believes must have existed, given the content of the record).
The report is written with that "official" goal in mind. Convincing the Senators on the Special Whitewater Committee (or the Representatives on the House Banking Committee) to conduct such an inquiry is going to be difficult for a variety of reasons that will not be discussed here, but, like anything else, "all you can do is give it your best shot." Wide knowledge of the contents of the of the official record of the Foster death investigations (contained in the Hearings Volumes) should, if acted upon by a sufficient number of individuals, may produce results.
Length Of This Report
This report, analyzing the 1994 Senate Report and Hearings Volumes concerning the death of Vince Foster that were released in January 1995, is by no means a short one, but it does selectively summarize and comment upon the entire 2726 pages in the official public record of the 1994 Senate Hearings in about one-sixteenth the number of pages that comprise the record.
Caveats: After reading this report, the author would suggest that readers consider carefully whether the author better belongs in the category of those who "know nothing and say all" or those who "know all and say nothing."
In the author's opinion, although the evidence in this report permits readers to cut through one "layer of the onion" surrounding the death of Vince Foster, there are at least two more layers yet to be pierced. This report, linked as tightly as it intentionally is to the official record, can take its readers only so far.
More tears will be shed, whether more "layers of onion" are pierced or not. The concepts "defense-in-depth" and "modified limited hang-out" also spring to mind. Naiveté is not a concept the author espouses, notwithstanding the contents of the official Reports concerning the death of Vince Foster.
The Privacy Concerns Of Non-Government Witnesses
The Senate volumes released to the public include the names (and sometimes the Social Security numbers, work & home phone numbers, and work & home addresses) of many of the civilian witnesses. The author has suppressed this information in order to respect their privacy, instead referring to these individual witnesses without mentioning their names or otherwise effectively identifying them (for example, "the couple in the white Nissan with MD plates," and so on).
All references in this report to "the record" are to the three Senate volumes listed on the title page. References to the "Reports" constitute a collective reference to the US Park Police Report, the Fiske Report, and the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings Report Volume. The Reports are a part of the record. Individual reports are cited by name.
Persons familiar with the record (rare though they may be!) and interested in amplification of the points raised in the Executive Summary should focus on the italicized analyses below and refer to the expositive plain text material in this report only when necessary.
Times In The Record
The times given in the record are sometimes witness estimates and sometimes quite precise, such as those generated by computer-driven chronological logging systems. The times in the record often are internally inconsistent. The author is aware that the times encountered in these situations are sometimes mere estimates since people are involved with doing, not taking notes and looking at their watches, especially in the early, more fluid, phases of some sort of an investigation.
As with other investigative issues, the author will make points from time to time about the times events occur if the consensus in the Reports is materially different from what the author believes the consensus should be, based on a careful reading of the raw evidence in the record. If the times provided in this report seem confusing, the author hopes that the blame can be shared with the record, because it is difficult to decipher at times! The times events occur are critical to understanding the events on July 20th, so readers should be particularly careful to challenge any estimates or conclusions of the author (or the Reports!) as they see fit regarding the time events are alleged to have occurred.
Citations To The Record
Citations in this report are to page numbers of the two 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings Volumes [S. Hrg. 103-889, Volumes I & II] and of the 1994 Report Volume [Rept. 103-433, Volume I]. These three volumes constitute "the record." Relatively rare citations to page numbers in the Senate Report are identified by a leading "R". All times in the body of this report are Eastern Daylight Time and use a 24-hour clock (unless, of course, a time is part of a quotation). Although multiple cites to the same specific subject matter are often given, no systematic attempt has been made to provide every such citation to the record in a particular case.
Quite often in a quotation an author wants to emphasize a portion of the remark being quoted. To accomplish this, those words are sometimes in boldface type like this. A normal convention is to place within brackets [ ] the words "emphasis supplied" so that readers will know that the words being quoted were not in boldface in the original material.
In order to save himself the trouble of typing "[emphasis supplied]" dozens of times, this author is putting the reader on notice that he has entered in boldface all such words within quotation marks in this report.
Boldfaced material that is not in quotation marks is simply text written by the author that he wishes to stand out. Italicized words identify material that is primarily of an analytical, rather than expositive, nature (cites to the record are also a part of the italicized analysis where appropriate).
Sometimes, in a frenzy of attention-seeking, the author will both boldface and italicize analytical material that he thinks is particularly noteworthy. [Like many amateur report-writers who survived grammar school before the advent of word processing software and PCs, your author is somewhat font-happy. Though not apparent, restraint was exercised].
Use of Headings and Sub-headings
Each Comment is prefaced by a short underscored sub-heading arranged in approximate chronological order under a large boldfaced heading. Voluminous citations are provided in the Comments to the appropriate page number(s) of the record.
This approach permits an efficient review of the report in conjunction with the Hearings and Report Volumes themselves and allows the reader to see how intimately the expositive material in this report is in fact linked to the record.
A certain amount of repetition is necessary in this report to tie together the various factual threads. For example a reader, interested in learning about the activity of Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department and US Park Police personnel near the body immediately after it was discovered, and another reader, curious about the precise location of the body at Fort Marcy Park, will both need to know some of the same information.
Although the author would prefer that all readers study this report with the care with which he believes it was written, he expects that many users will initially just read the Executive Summary and then skim the rest of the report for individual topics that attract their eye, rather than study the report carefully (that assessment might be optimistic!). A certain amount of repetition across Comments, including the titles of officials, is therefore necessary in order to be fair to the former group, so the indulgence of serious readers is requested.
Government Agencies Present At Fort Marcy Park
The two primary agencies present at Fort Marcy Park, per the record, are represented by 1) the uniformed and plainclothes officers of the US Park Police and 2) by personnel from the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department (The FCFRD includes both firefighters and emergency medical services workers employed by Fairfax County, Virginia).
Although the fire-fighters and the emergency medical services personnel are all employees of the FCFRD, persons operating fire-fighting vehicles are sometimes identified in this report as FCFRD workers, as in "FCFRD Smith," and persons operating emergency medical service vehicles and providing emergency medical services are often identified as EMS, as in "EMS Jones," in an attempt to make the reader more aware of their roles late on the afternoon of July 20, 1993, when Mr. Foster's body was found at Fort Marcy (persons operating fire equipment also often have some EMS training).
If readers become confused about who is who, they should refer to the Table of Principal Persons in Appendix VII.
The Purpose Of This Report
Like all tools, this report has at least one purpose. The author, of course, would like the report to be the "Swiss Army Knife" of Foster reports analyzing the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings documents. Like a Swiss Army knife, folded within this report are many "devices" intended to make it "all purpose," at least within the limitations imposed by basing this report only on the official record.
The primary purpose of this report, drawn almost exclusively as it is from documents published by the US Senate (the major exceptions: the publicly available data in Appendix I, Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body and the three maps in Appendix II), is to delineate what the author believes are material errors, inconsistencies, omissions, and curiosa latent in the record waiting for all to discover (assuming everyone had the inclination and the time to study the 2726 pages).
The primary audience is intended, as stated previously, to be the members of the "Special Whitewater Committee" of the US Senate. The secondary audience is intended to be the Members of The House Banking Committee (and certain officials within the Executive Branch).
This report is also designed for the use of anyone who has been at least mildly curious about the "official facts" surrounding the death of Vince Foster. Use it to learn more about his death. Take the information herein and build on it intelligently. This report is intentionally subtle at times. In general, it adapts a "lead the horse to water" approach in the hope that readers will, as a result, read this report with care.
Many individuals have strong feelings that the death of Vince Foster was just a "simple" suicide. Others believe it was something else and (unlike the author) also claim to know the "ultimate" reason for his death. Sadly, in many instances members of both groups have relatively little knowledge of the raw data in the record itself. Analyses aside, one function of this report is to extract (and cite) information from the record and present it in more usable form.
The final potential audience for this report are those (apparently the great majority, if one believes the mainstream media) who believe that the prior official investigations demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Foster died by his own hand at the spot where he was found in Fort Marcy Park and that anyone with the temerity even to question the official consensus is by definition totally incorrect and either 1) deranged or otherwise suffering from some sort of mental impairment or 2) a political nut case.
The author believes that no one reading this report with an open mind (even if some of the analytical material in italics below is rejected) will come away thinking that the record brooks nothing less than a substantial uncertainty that the death was a suicide committed a few feet in front of the barrel of the second cannon at Fort Marcy. The author may be foolish to think that his readers will decide the official Reports are indeed fatally flawed, but he is an optimist at heart.
Relevant Data Not Yet Available To The Author (Or To Any Other Private Party)
The author states that he has had no access to the wealth of information that has presumably been developed by various official entities involved with the Foster death investigation and simply not yet released to the public (though the second anniversary of the death has arrived).
The author expects that some, if not most, of the issues raised below could be resolved (albeit at great political cost to the two current major political parties) by public access to this as yet unreleased material. Unreleased materials, of which the author is aware, are listed in the transmittal letter to Senator D'Amato.
Performance of Officials
Should any of the basic expositive material or analyses in this report appear to impugn the professional reputation or performance of any public official, it is the explicit and implicit position of the author that shortcomings, if any, can be accounted for and reconciled only by a thorough understanding of the de facto chain-of-command and the broader context of the events surrounding the death of Vince Foster.
The present record does not provide this context. This is one of its greatest failures: the unjust and incomplete treatment of the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department and US Park Police personnel (particularly the latter) who responded to the scene so quickly after 911 was dialed.
The author believes that the US Park Police, the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department, and other Fairfax County personnel who are discussed in this report were adequately trained for their duties and made an effort to perform those duties under what rapidly became extremely trying circumstances (for a variety of reasons that are not mentioned in the record).
The author believes the underlying reason that so many errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and curiosa are latent in the record can not be laid at the feet of the US Park Police, the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department, or other Fairfax County personnel. The author believes the reason can only be discovered by looking elsewhere. Now is the time to do so.
Every Potential Issue Re The Death of Vince Foster Is Not Addressed Herein
Although numerous issues are the subject of Comments below, they were selected by the author and no attempt has been made to raise every potential issue submerged in the record. Additional releases of the report may well introduce other issues drawn from the official record. As described above, this report in general adopts a "lead the horse to water approach" and to that extent is "optimized" use by thirsty horses.
The author hopes that at least a few of this report's addressees will realize they "could really use a drink!"
If the author had had access to a sophisticated relational database, an optical scanner, and a high-end workstation, he is certain that this report would be both somewhat longer and certainly more unsettling than it already is. Perhaps this procedure will be adopted for both the 1994 and 1995 Senate Hearings documents when the latter documents are officially released.
With very limited exceptions, no background information external to the Senate Volumes is assumed that cannot be gleaned from a so-called US "newspaper of record" (The Table of Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body in Appendix I contains straightforward, publicly-available, geographical and property ownership data, not in the record, that was gathered by the author, as do the maps in Appendix II).
Reasonable People Do Not Always Agree.
This is a truism for the author but, sadly, a concept rejected by many of those on both sides of the debate who have chosen to comment openly upon the death of Vince Foster ("A simple suicide, the man was obviously clinically depressed" versus "This was a suspicious death, something is not right").
All of us should remember that reasonable people make different evaluations constantly. Everyone will not give the same factors the same weight for many reasons, but it is not therefore legitimate to infer that a particular individual is unreasonable per se. Regrettably, there is too much of this sort of thing going on in our country today.
A simple example shows how common it is for reasonable people to differ: if everyone valued a product and its sales price equally, no markets of any kind would exist. The person selling some bread for $3 values the $3 he will receive more than the bread he will give up. The person purchasing the bread values the bread he will receive more than the $3 he will have to part with. We do not make a habit of condemning bread-purchasers and bread-sellers as money-grubbing nut cases or bread-crazed fanatics (and for good reason).
A few potential Comments were omitted because the author considered them too peripheral. Some other potential Comments were deleted during the editing process because the author considered them too controversial -- that is, the author believed they were inappropriately speculative (one of those value judgments), given the nature and extent of the data in the record (another value judgment) supporting the particular hypothesis.
The reader is again cautioned that reasonable people constantly differ when it comes to making such judgment calls. All of us learn from experience, ideally with objective reality as our constant coach.
As indicated above, a few of the analyses in this report may appear to be something of a "stretch," but were retained because the author believed they remained within the "reasonable range" and constituted the best explanation the author could produce, given the data in the record. The people who enjoy being branded a "kook" are few and far between, and the author is no exception!
No Attempt Is Made Here To Discover The "Real" Reason For Mr. Foster's Death
The author has intentionally not attempted to divine the "real" or "ultimate" reason for Vince Foster's death in this report. There are many theories out-and-about in the land, the great majority of which the author considers too bizarre for words.
For this reason, the author has concentrated here on reporting and analyzing the officially true and genuine material contained in the record published by the United States Senate. The author does not rule out one or more sequels, however.
The Analyses In This Report -- Active Involvement Of The Reader's Mind Is Sought
The great majority of the analyses in this report is quite straightforward and the author expects most readers will readily agree with much that is in the italicized analytical statements within the Comments below without finding them particularly controversial (although, of course, the mere discovery that many material inconsistencies and apparent errors in the record exist will come as a shocking surprise to almost everyone reading this report).
Other analyses in this report are less straightforward and doubtless will be more controversial. These analyses usually involve the author's attempt to reconcile a complex set of conflicting data in the record by putting forward one or more hypotheses that the author believes have good potential to contribute to a better understanding of the events in and near Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993.
Reasonable people will differ. In fact, any effort to fashion a realistic acceptance of the conflicts and ambiguities within the particular record released by the US Senate virtually ensures that different reasonable interpretations of the events described therein will exist. In this context, otherwise reasonable people would be unreasonable if they did not differ! The author endorses further investigation to reduce the substantial uncertainties he believes the current record fosters.
The first rule of any investigation is a healthy intellectual skepticism coupled with an emotional appreciation that when you probe the unknown, by definition, you do not know what you will find. There is a widespread tendency today, when probing the unknown, to decide up-front what will be discovered and then examine the evidence only for data that support one's a priori conclusion. This attitude makes for bad science, defective engineering, naive public policies, and irresponsible journalism. In the author's opinion, the Reports of the Foster death investigations are guilty of this particular sin against logic, as well as other contemporary philosophical failings.
For this reason, notwithstanding the statements in the official Reports, there is strong evidence in the record that Vince Foster's death was considered a suicide from the get-go and evidence was gathered, analyzed, and, in some cases, ignored with a view toward supporting the "suicide verdict."
Since there is no reason to believe the officials involved 1) lacked the requisite intelligence or 2) did not have the fundamental substantive knowledge critical to carry out their duties, the author believes the reason the record contains as many material errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and curiosa must lie elsewhere.
The author is the first to admit that some readers may find some of the analyses herein to be less than totally convincing. Why? Reasonable people can differ!
Readers are welcomed to construct hypotheses of their own that more clearly reconcile the raw data in the record in a less-controversial or non-controversial manner whenever they balk at a particular interpretation proffered by the author. Perhaps our government can help us with this effort if it so chooses.
If a novel and substantial "breakthrough" in understanding is achieved by any reader, please let the author know what has been discovered. Obviously, the same request is made if any reader finds an error was made when the author extracted any of the contents of this report from the record!
Before getting into the body of this report, the reader should ask "What variety and volume of irregularities in a death investigation would cause me to question its conclusions?" After finishing this report, the reader should decide if such irregularities were present in the Foster death investigations conducted to date.
Those who insist the conclusions in the official Foster Reports must be correct, because of the large number of co-conspirators required by any other theory, miss the point. In the author's opinion, this report contains overwhelming evidence that major differences in witness statements exist! Those providing information to the investigation often differ in fundamental ways from the consensus officially reported to the public in the Reports.
The author questions the results of the Foster death investigations to date, not because the detailed information provided by witnesses demonstrates such a clear-cut consensus that the conclusions reached could have been achieved only via a conspiracy of silence, but precisely because the record is so extremely inconsistent that it bespeaks the fundamental rejection of a monolithic conspiracy, not the creation of one.
At Bottom, A Detective Story
Putting aside the extremely significant human and, in the author's opinion, political, tragedy that the death of Vince Foster represents for a moment, please remember that the record contains the raw data of any good detective story. The body of this report first provides background information concerning events in the final weeks of Vince Foster's life. Next, the pace picks up considerably when the body is found at Fort Marcy and evidence concerning the death is described.
Some mysteries within the overall story are more easily solved than others. Examining the data with an open mind and striving to construct workable hypotheses that have real explanatory value is the essence of all detective work. The data is in this report. Readers are invited to give it "their best shot," too. In return, the author guarantees that this report contains subtleties that will reward discerning readers. Generally, the trend has been to make each subsequent release of this report less subtle, but careful readers should continue to reap the benefits of being "led to water" as opposed to being "made to drink."
This report provides a huge amount of "worm's-eye level" evidence straight from the record, but it has been organized in a way that is much easier for the reader to cope with, while providing voluminous citations directly to the record. The author would not wish multiple readings of the undigested evidence in the Hearings Volumes upon anyone, having done that (and more) himself!
Given its length, the author would be astounded if there are not a few factual errors remaining herein (all made in good faith). The reader is cautioned not to allow a factual error or a given analysis that the reader believes is a "stretch" ipso facto to taint either the rest of the analyses or the routine expositive information in this report. The author assembled and wrote this report in the evenings over 4-5 weeks, staying up until one and two AM (running on hot showers and cold lemonade) after handling the requirements of his day job, so modest mistakes of some kind are virtually guaranteed!
Along these lines, the author is not exactly a fantastic typist (excuse me, keyboarder), so there are going to be some typos and similar mistakes made in this report that the author and his loyal spell-checking software did not catch.
Subsequent releases of this report will strive to eliminate any remaining typos and grammatical errors and generally to improve the readability of this report while also adding new substantive material. If were the author a superb proofreader, this entire Comment could have been eliminated!
This report on the death of Vince Foster unlike other non-governmental efforts, in books, newsletters, or on video tapes, is a gift, at least to its official readers, to many of those in the media and to a few unofficial readers. Some readers obtained the report for the cost of duplicating and shipping it simply because the author could not afford to duplicate and ship a copy to everyone who wanted the report (paying for 200 of these reports to date was painful enough!).
As the reader will remember from the letter transmitting this report to Chairman D'Amato, the author has significant personal reasons why he would like to discover the truth about the death of Vince Foster. There's more to it than that, though, also per the transmittal letter. "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Remember them? It's not baseball: one-hit-in-three-at-bats is not a decent average.
The author found the first printing of this report, dated July 20, 1995 (the second anniversary of Mr. Foster's death) to be useful in an "up-by-your-own-bootstraps" manner when he reread the first print himself. For that reason, and due to the volume of material in the record, the author intends to update this report from time-to-time, in an attempt to improve the grammar and the writing style, decrease the number of spelling errors, and to add substantive material and additional references to the record that are useful in understanding the death of Mr. Foster.
On the occasions when a new print is released, the supplemental print number will appear on the Title Page and in the Summary Table of Contents. A printing history will appear in this Comment. This release is the fourth supplemental printing [S-03] dated October 8, 1995. The prior formal release, dated August 31, 1995, was the second supplemental release and that dated July 31, 1995, was the first supplement. The release dated July 20, 1995, was the original print.
The third release, dated September 30, 1995, was triggered by rumors that Reporter Chris Ruddy (and others?) would be the subject of a so-called "take-out" piece on an October segment of "60 Minutes." Chris Ruddy (and others) are the author's co-belligerents vis à vis the death of Vince Foster, not necessarily his allies. Readers are reminded that everyone seeking to re-open the investigation into the death of Vince Foster does not have the same motivation and are not reading the same script!
For example, it should be noted that the first time the author of this report contacted Chris Ruddy (directly or indirectly) was in January 1995 in connection with problems this author had with the sketch map of Fort Marcy Park contained in the July 18, 1994, "Special Report on the Fiske Investigation of the Death of Vincent W. Foster, Jr."
Tables, Photos, Maps, & Aerial Imagery of Fort Marcy Park & Environs
Appendix I -- The Table of Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's Body
The information in Appendix I was developed by the author and his incognito associate, DCA, from aerial imagery of Fort Marcy park and environs and from publicly-available Fairfax County, Virginia, property records. This table and the Maps in Appendix II are the only significant Foster-related information in this report not taken directly from the record. As explained therein, the Table of Homes provides specific examples of incorrect information and other investigative failures this author associates with the Fiske Report
Appendix II -- Three Maps of Fort Marcy And The Surrounding Area
Three maps of Fort Marcy Park and the surrounding area [Maps IV, V (R), and VI] are found in Appendix II. The reader should review these maps prior to reading this report. These maps should be referred to as necessary thereafter. The reader is directed to the maps by the text from time to time, but not on every occasion on which they might prove useful to the reader.
Map IV is an engineering drawing of Fort Marcy itself (Fort Marcy is part of Fort Marcy Park) lifted from the National Archives and annotated in the author's puerile hand. Map V (R) is a map of Fort Marcy Park and nearby homes traced by the author from an aerial photo run flown on the morning of April 7, 1993. Map VI is a portion of a Fairfax County plat map showing the outline of Fort Marcy Park with the surrounding residential lots and subdivisions annotated by the author. Immediately following Map V(R) is a color photocopy derived from an aerial photo run using color infrared film.
No such maps (or aerial photographs) are part of the record, although Mr. Fiske informed the 1994 Senate Whitewater Committee that "Large aerial photographs of Fort Marcy Park are available for viewing at the OIC should you so desire [1345; see also 947,971]." The record does contain numerous not-to-scale extemporaneous freehand sketches of limited utility.
The author has very large-scale black and white (1:500) and color infrared aerial imagery of Fort Marcy Park and the surrounding area from tracks flown both before and after Mr. Foster's death and timed to minimize leaf cover. Very little of this aerial imagery is part of this report due to cost and size constraints (the larger black and white photos are 20" by 20" and 18" by 18"), but Map V (R) and in Appendix II, having been traced from aerial imagery, should serve as a passable (and cheaper!) substitute, especially when viewed in conjunction with the single color infrared photocopy following Map V(R). The author has several dozen ground-level photos of points of interest at Fort Marcy Park. While useful, they are not included in this report because doing so would also increase the production cost significantly, too significantly for this author, anyway.
[The FBI has been in Fort Marcy Park more or less continuously since the afternoon of September 12, 1995. The park has been essentially closed to the public since September 12th. Tens of thousands of square feet of vegetation have been removed, save only the large trees, downrange of the spot where Vince Foster is said to have shot himself some five yards west of the so-called "second cannon". A thorough search, including the trees themselves, is apparently being conducted by a half dozen agents for "the bullet" that is said to have killed Vince Foster. As of October 7, there has been no announcement that the bullet (or anything else on consequence) has been found by the FBI in this, the third search for the bullet.]
Appendix III -- The Photo Of The Hand With The Gun That Was Leaked To ABC News
Appendix III contains a photocopy (originally taken from the image on a color TV screen) of the picture of Mr. Foster's right hand and the revolver therein. This image is referred to several times in the body of the report in different contexts. It is the only image purported to be of the body that has ever been released to the public. The photographic image originally appeared on ABC News Friday, March 11, 1994.
In the original color image (which the author believes was provided to Reuters at the direction of the White House and then given to ABC News), the gun contrasts even more sharply with the hand and the background. There has been some speculation, commencing as soon as it was released, that this photo is not what it purports to be. However, no person involved in the official Foster death investigations has called it into question. Presumably Reuters and ABC News were (and are) professionally satisfied as to its authenticity as well since those two organization have not questioned the authenticity of the photo since they released it.
Appendix IV -- The Locator Table
Appendix IV contains a Locator Table that should aid readers in finding the particular page in the Senate Hearings Volumes on which the testimony or deposition of a given witness begins, an FBI interview with a particular individual is to be found, a US Park Police internal report authored by a particular individual commences, and so on. An effort has been made to include all witnesses covered by the Hearings Volumes, whether the author believes their evidence is significant or not.
The Locator Table in Appendix IV also contains the Hearings Volume page number for what the author believes are the more significant documents found in the Hearings Volumes. The table is sorted by the name of the individual involved or the title of the document being referenced.
If nothing else, Appendix IV should provide a great deal of assistance to those who have found the "organization" of the 1994 Hearings Volumes frustrating. The Hearings Volumes are supposed to contain raw data from the investigation and that they definitely do, but the author wonders why the information in the Hearings Volumes could not have been put in a more logical order and the duplicate documents culled before it was printed.
Appendix V -- Civilian Vehicles Seen At Fort Marcy The Afternoon of July 20, 1993
Appendix V contains a listing of each description of a civilian vehicle that made an appearance at the Fort Marcy Park parking lot on the afternoon of July 20, 1993 (unless a vehicle in the record managed to "slip past" the author -- a certainty if it was not mentioned in the official record).
Often a vehicle was seen by more than one witness and the descriptions they gave differed somewhat (as should be expected), so one vehicle may have multiple entries in the table. Multiple descriptions that the author believes describe one vehicle are grouped together in the table. The vehicles that the author believes are sufficiently interesting are covered at the appropriate places in the body of the report.
Appendix VI -- Table Of Official Comings And Goings
Appendix VI contains data on the "comings and goings" of selected individuals on the afternoon and evening of Mr. Foster's death. It is necessarily incomplete since, somewhat surprisingly, the record is often silent about the time someone arrived at (or, more commonly, left) a location. Estimated times are given if a witness provided a time-range, or if an approximate time can be gleaned from witness accounts.
Questions marks are used when in the author's opinion, there is substantial uncertainty (one of those judgment calls again!) concerning the time someone arrived or departed one of the listed locations. In significant situations, the body of this report will discuss the particular arrival-departure issue.
Appendix VII -- List Of Principal Persons
Appendix VII is a Table of Principal Persons, their job titles, and a short comment referencing a significant connection each has to the body of this report. Unlike Appendix IV, numerous individuals mentioned in the Hearings Volumes are not listed (as unimportant) and there are no cross references to their location in the Hearings volumes (see Appendix IV for those).
This is the best table to refer to if the reader does not recognize the name of a person appearing in the body of the report. The author suggests this table be read before starting the body of the report. It is one of the last appendices because the author hopes readers will use scanning Appendix VII as an opportunity to page this entire report to get a feeling for it before putting it to the use(s) they choose.
Appendix VIII -- Biographical Summary
Appendix VIII contains the one-page biographical summary of the author that was referenced in the cover letter to Chairman D'Amato in an effort to persuade the Senator that the author is not a kook.
There Is Only One Table Within The Body Of This Report
That table is on the following page and lists the abbreviations used from this point forward.
Abbreviations Used In This Report
Full Name * Abbreviation Full Name * Abbreviation
Vincent W. Foster, Jr. VWF Fort Marcy Park FMP
United States Park Police USPP Chain Bridge Road CBR
Office of Legal Counsel OLC George Washington Parkway GWMP
US Secret Service USSS Fairfax County, Virginia FC
WH Communications Agency WHCA Little Rock LR
The Confidential Witness CW Arkansas AR
Department of Justice DOJ Emergency Medical Services EMS
Rose Law Firm RLF FC Fire & Rescue Dept. FCFRD
The White House WH FCFRD Ambulance Unit 1 A01
The President WJC # FCFRD Medic Unit 1 M01
The First Lady HRC ## FCFRD Engine Unit 1 E01
Chelsea Victoria Clinton CVC FCFRD Truck Unit 1 T01P
Criminal Investigation Branch CIB Assistant US Attorney AUSA
* By custom and tradition, the abbreviation, "FBI" [like "IRS"], is well known to all Americans and therefore is not listed as one of the Abbreviations Used In The Report.
# Lest the reader think otherwise, no disrespect is meant by use of the President's initials in this report. Independent Counsel Robert Fiske referred to the President as "WJC" in connection with the President's Deposition , and his doing so was "Okay" with the President. The author infers that any American would be granted this privilege by WJC if the occasion arose.
## Lest the reader think otherwise, no disrespect is meant by his use of the First Lady's initials in this report. VWF referred to the First Lady as "HRC" in the torn note found in his briefcase at the WH OLC six days after his death . The author is quite certain that VWF meant no disrespect when he did so and the author intends no disrespect to HRC either.
Selected VWF-Related Events Prior to Monday, July 19, 1993
VWF's Arkansas Law School Commencement Speech on May 8, 1993
The Fiske Report cites the words of VWF's commencement speech to support its conclusion that VWF took his own life.
In a speech to the graduating University of Arkansas Law School class on May 8, 1993, VWF stated [360-363]:
Following the bar exam, your most difficult test will not be of what you know but what is your character. Some of you will fail.
The class of 1971 [VWF's class] had many distinguished members who also went on to achieve high public office. But it also had several who forfeited their license to practice law. Blinded by greed, some served time in prison.
I cannot make this point to you too strongly. There is no victory, no advantage, no fee no favor which is worth even a blemish on your reputation for intellect and integrity. . .
The conviction that you did the right thing will be the best salve and the best sleeping medicine.
Take time out for yourself. Have some fun, go fishing, every once in a while take a walk in the woods by yourself. Learn to relax, watch more sunsets. . .
If you find yourself getting burned out or unfulfilled, unappreciated, or the profits become more important than your work, then have the courage to make a change.
In the author's opinion and in light of other information in the record analyzed below, the author believes it is quite reasonable to think that these are not the words of a man contemplating suicide, but rather the words of a man who shortly thereafter summoned the courage to "make a change" of his own and resign as Deputy White House Counsel, but died before he could do so. VWF told many among his family, friends, and associates that he was considering resigning (see Comment below).
In passing, it should be noted that VWF's belief that taking "a walk in the woods by yourself" is fun would be an unlikely attitude for a man who, officially at least, took a solo "walk in the woods" some ten weeks later and fatally shot himself.
This Speech Is A Good Way To Learn How To Understand VWF
According to Webster Hubbell's FBI interview, "Hubbell said if you really want to understand Foster, to take a look at his recent speech at the University of Arkansas ." Sheila Anthony told the FBI that VWF had personally prepared this speech .
Strangely Different Opinions About VWF's Delivery Of This Speech
Per the Fiske Report, one of VWF's sisters described VWF's delivery during the speech in the following way: "Sheila Anthony [Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs] recalls that during his address Foster's voice was unnaturally strained and tense, reminiscent of their father's voice when he was distraught during the period before his death in 1991 ." Lisa Foster told the FBI that VWF's delivery was "very stiff" .
Sheila Anthony's remarks are a powerful specific description of VWF's strained and tense delivery, are they not? She even goes so far as to link the sound of VWF's voice during the speech to the distraught tone of voice used by their father shortly before his own death.
However, that is not the way two long-time friends and associates of VWF remember the speech. Phillip Carroll of the RLF, who had known well VWF for about twenty years and had been his mentor when VWF first joined the firm, told the FBI, in the words of his interview report "Carroll said at a commencement ceremony at the University of Arkansas Law School, Foster gave a splendid delivery with no stress showing during the speech ."
Loraine Cline of the RLF who had been VWF's secretary for six years, also attended this speech. In the words of her FBI interview, she described VWF the day of the speech "He acted excited and 'up' and he looked good ."
What is going on here? How can different adults listening to a speech delivered by someone they all know extremely well have such diametrically opposing views on its delivery? What is truth and what is "Pravda?" The speech was videotaped, but the author has not had access to it. A review of this tape ought to indicate who is right and who is wrong re the nature of VWF's delivery.
VWF's Security Clearance
According to the Fiske Report , VWF told his sister Sheila Anthony, that he hesitated to see a psychiatrist in connection with the problem she told the FBI was depressing him because he feared it would "jeopardize his White House Security clearance." This statement is also contained in Sheila Anthony's FBI interview .
In light of the difficulties that many on the WH staff experienced when applying for and obtaining the legally-required high-level security clearances in early 1993, one might ask whether VWF was concerned that his temporary clearance (or his application for clearance) might be threatened or whether he was worried that his pre-existing "permanent" clearance would be jeopardized. If the latter, one might ask how his permanent clearance was obtained so quickly or if he had obtained a top secret security clearance that pre-dated his service to the Clinton Administration.
VWF was not described in the record as a person who had required a top-secret clearance prior to joining the Clinton Administration. For example, the only military service the record reveals was a short stint of some sort in the late 1960s when VWF served in the New Jersey National Guard . [No other association between VWF and the state of New Jersey is in the record.]
James Lyons' July 21st Trip to DC
The Wednesday or Thursday before his death on Tuesday, July 20, 1993, VWF called James Lyons, a trusted advisor, at Lyons' law firm in Denver and requested that he hold himself ready to travel to DC on short notice in order to meet with VWF . VWF called Lyons again the Sunday night before his death and confirmed that Lyons would be flying to DC to meet with VWF on Wednesday, July 21, 1993 [172,1682].
It is not clear from the record when the date of the July 21st meeting was originally decided upon [see also 195]. Perhaps the date was set in a phone call not documented in the record.
You contact a trusted friend to make sure he is available to fly across the country to see you on short notice, you re-contact that friend, set a date for a meeting, confirm the date three days in advance, and then commit suicide the day before the meeting? Such behavior would be unusual to say the least unless, conceivably, a snap decision to commit suicide was made after the meeting date was confirmed.
Did VWF make a snap decision to take his own life between late Sunday night and the Tuesday afternoon he died? As analyzed below, in the author's opinion, the record does not support the conclusion that VWF ever made a decision to commit suicide, and certainly does not support the conclusion that VWF made the decision to kill himself between Sunday night and Tuesday afternoon.
The conclusion that VWF made the decision to commit suicide between Sunday night and Tuesday afternoon might make some sense if there had been some evidence that VWF was in the depths of depression or manifested substantial out-of-the-ordinary behavior during the 36 hours before he was found dead at FMP.
However, the record, if anything, gives the opposite impression: while VWF may well have been troubled about some matter or other one to several weeks before his death, his mood had materially improved during at least the four days prior to his death.
If his mood only seemed better because he had finally made the extremely difficult decision to take his own life, why did VWF still call Lyons in Denver (not the other way 'round) and set up an appointment for the day after VWF knew he would be dead? Everything in the record about VWF's values as described in this report makes it clear that he would not play such a gratuitous and evil trick on a trusted friend, especially a deception that would in all likelihood impose a severe psychological burden on that friend after he learned of the suicide.
VWF's Knowledge of the Search of David Hale's LR Office A Factor?
The possibility that VWF killed himself because of records he knew would be found once a search warrant issued for the LR offices of Judge Hale was a concern of those investigating VWF's death.
Fletcher Jackson, AUSA for the Eastern District of Arkansas, reported to the FBI that VWF could have learned of the search of David Hale's office in the following manner (quoted from Jackson's FBI interview on May 16, 1994):
The only other avenue through which Vince Foster could possibly have known about the search was that the morning of the search [apparently not later than the morning of July 20, the day VWF died -- VWF obviously could not have found out about the search after his own death!] sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 AM agents went to Hale's office in Little Rock and Hale was not there but he was at a location six or seven miles away where he was fulfilling magistrate responsibilities. He found out that a search was being conducted of his office and he made a phone call that morning. Jackson advised that he does not know who that phone call was made to but that whoever it was may have been a possible conduit of Foster finding out about the search if indeed he did .
It is of course possible that the person who called Hale may have called VWF directly, that Hale called VWF directly, or that there was more than one intermediary That is, the assumption (of Fletcher's) in the FBI interview that another party would be necessarily interposed between VWF and the information about the search is not necessarily a valid one.
Was a search made of calls to the White House (whether or not placed through the switchboard) that morning to determine what individuals called the White House from AR and whether any calls (from AR or not) were to private lines to which VWF had access in the WH? Phone records could also be checked to determine whether any non-AR-source calls to such private lines received a call from AR shortly before the call to the private WH line was made.
This research would not be as laborious as it sounds. An impossible task? No. Why not?
The Fiske Report & The White House Phone System: VWF Calls A Psychiatrist
It is possible to determine the particular telephone instrument at the WH used in connection with a particular call. How does one know this?
According to the Fiske Report, WH telephone records were used to determine that the telephone located at VWF's desk was used to make two calls to a psychiatrist on Friday July 16th : "At 12:41 p.m. and again at 1:24 p.m., Foster called the psychiatrist from the telephone in his office [sic], and charged the calls to his home phone."
The call was made to a psychiatrist who practices in Chevy Chase, Maryland [166,2135], but Chevy Chase is a local call from the WH. The calls from VWF's desk phone apparently connected (otherwise there presumably would have been no charges recorded on VWF's home phone number), reached the psychiatrist's voice mail , and no message was left by the caller.
This psychiatrist indicated to the FBI that a third party (name redacted) called him on Friday, July 16th, to ask whether he would speak with a Sheila Foster Anthony about a relative of hers who was "in a crisis situation" because he was "dealing on a daily basis with Top Secret matters" that were causing his "depression." He agreed to take the call and Sheila Foster Anthony called him later on Friday concerning her brother, VWF (time of day not provided in the FBI interview report). Sheila told the psychiatrist that VWF would be in contact with him later that day but, according to the psychiatrist, VWF never reached him.
What a phone system! It is a wonder everyone in the WH was not paranoid about using the phones! Mr. Fiske did not find it too difficult to search diligently for two telephonic attempts made using the telephone on VWF's desk to reach the Chevy Chase psychiatrist, so the additional telephonic record-checking proposed here should not be too difficult for others to accomplish.
VWF Was An Amazingly Punctilious Public Servant
It should be noted in passing that VWF must have certainly been a punctilious public servant indeed to have charged what were toll-free calls to his home phone number. . . One might also wonder whether this was a counter-intuitive step for a person who the record states was concerned to prevent any contacts with psychiatrists from being discovered by WH security [see above under the Comment, "VWF's Security Clearance"].
Indeed, it is almost as if VWF were acting to preserve a record that he did call a psychiatrist from his WH office during the work day around the lunch hour. . . Why might VWF wish to do this?
The list of psychiatrists (provided VWF at his request by his sister, Sheila Anthony, Assistant US Attorney General for Legislative Affairs) was found in VWF's wallet in his Honda at the FMP parking lot [197, 211], or possibly the list was not inside his wallet, merely inside the Honda itself [481,1603].
Based upon USPP Investigator Rolla's July 27, 1993, report , the list of psychiatrists (apparently in VWF's own handwriting) was actually found in VWF's wallet the night of July 20th at FMP, waiting to be discovered, as it were. As it happens, the torn note found by Stephen Neuwirth, also officially in VWF's own handwriting, was found on July 26th , though its existence was not disclosed to the USPP for some thirty hours.
A student of coincidences might ask why Rolla's written report describing the list of psychiatrists was not drafted until July 27th, even though the listing of psychiatrists was officially discovered in VWF's wallet the night of the 20th and Rolla's report gives no reason for the delay in his documenting the existence of the list of psychiatrists, nor any intervening event that occurred between July 20th and July 27th that triggered his written report on July 27th.
What About Communications To And From VWF Not Via The WH Phone System?
Strangely enough, there was no effort made (at least by the USPP) to determine what email messages VWF sent or received in the several weeks before his death, nor any attempt to obtain records relating to calls to and from VWF's home phones [850-851] or family cell-phones, if any. If these records were eventually obtained, the information therein has not been made public.
VWF was carrying a WHCA Motorola Bravo pager clipped to the right side of his waist when found at FMP .
The quote from the May 16, 1994, FBI interview with AUSA Jackson (long after the interviewee would have known the date of VWF's death) commented upon above is particularly important in light of FBI testimony that the warrant was "issued" on July 20th, but [the search itself was?] not "effected" until July 21st [see also 194].
In short, there is an apparent conflict in the official record [194 vs. 177]: Did the search in question actually take place the morning of the 20th or the morning of the 21st? The possibility that VWF learned of the issuance of the warrant prior to the scheduled search should also be pursued to a firmer conclusion in light of the Jackson FBI interview (of which the FBI agent testifying before the committee might have been unaware).
A letter to the Senate Whitewater Committee from an FBI agent [374-375] on August 3, 1994, states that the FBI "found no evidence" that VWF had any information about the search or the issuance of the search warrant, includes a reference, inter alia, to the interview the AUSA Jackson quoted above that describes the existence of a first link in the chain to VWF.
Given the rapid and aggressive recovery of the pager by the WH (see the Comment on the pager below), is it impossible that the pager contained evidence that VWF was contacted regarding either the issuance of the Hale search warrant or (if the search was conducted while VWF was still alive, as implied by AUSA Fletcher) the start of the search itself?
Alternatively, persons as yet unknown may have thought it possible that VWF had been contacted regarding the warrant or the search itself [or some other matter as yet unknown] and arranged the rapid release of the pager from the USPP to ensure its contents, if any, would be protected from disclosure in any case. Could VWF's WHCA pager be paged only by the WH, or could anyone with his pager number page him? Better safe than sorry?
The Blind Trust(s)
VWF was the WH liaison for the execution of the legally required blind trust(s) for the Clinton Family (for HRC, for WJC, and possibly separate trust(s) for CVC) [179,1822] that were drafted by Brantley Buck of the RLF. [See the Comment below concerning the "unusual" "CHB" sheet found in VWF's wallet at FMP.]
For reasons unknown, it had apparently been previously decided that HRC would execute the required blind trust documents when she was in LR (she arrived there about 2026 [EDT] on July 20th , according to publicly available records), but that the equivalent documents for WJC's signature would be signed by him at the WH (even though he stopped over in LR himself during the weekend of July 17th-18th).
Given Buck described VWF's duties in connection with the blind trust(s) as being merely "ministerial" [177,1735], one might wonder that he called VWF regarding the trust arrangements on the 19th, again at 1217 EDT on the 20th, and also tried to reach VWF at about 1300 EDT on the 20th (apparently just missing VWF who had left his office at the WH, never to return, at that time or possibly a couple of minutes later).
Perhaps one can be forgiven for believing Mr. Buck was doing a lot of telephoning in connection with the merely ministerial function VWF was performing in connection with the blind trusts.
William Kennedy of the WH OLC indicated in his FBI interview that VWF had had a habit for years of "doing personal things for [the Clintons] and assisting them as needed such as with tax returns ."
One matter that might have concerned VWF involves the ethical duty of an attorney professionally associated with the creation and funding of blind trusts to ensure that all the assets required are properly marshaled and placed in trust. Might VWF have had some concerns along these lines? The record does not pursue this question.
It is the author's opinion, VWF reached a decision, a week or two before he died, if not more, not to commit suicide, but to begin what VWF felt would ultimately be a successful disengagement process from the Administration. In one way or another, the author believes that VWF was finding the "heat too hot to take," so he "got out of the kitchen" (or tried to, anyway).
In the author's opinion (considering the analysis below) that neither the Travel Office Matter, the Wall Street Journal Editorials cited in the Fiske Report , or the other concerns cited therein were the decisive factor(s) in VWF's desire to resign his position, let alone his alleged decision to kill himself.
VWF's Workload In The Weeks Prior To His Death
There seems to be some official confusion on this point. According to page 10 of the Fiske Report "During the particularly busy period of late June and July, however, Foster was virtually uninvolved." This, despite the following statement :
Foster's position at the White House generally demanded that he work from between 7:30-8:30 in the morning until 9:30 or later at night, either six or seven days a week. He took no vacations or weekends off until the weekend immediately prior to his death [His trip to AR to give the commencement speech on May 8th apparently did not count as a vacation]. The demands of the Counsel's office were severe, and Bernard Nussbaum heavily relied upon Foster to assist him in accomplishing a wide range of tasks.
One might wonder whether VWF was, during the period from late June until the "weekend immediately prior to his death," 1) "virtually uninvolved" in the work of the WH OLC or 2) working 80+ hours a week.
Until there is a confirmed sighting of a "married bachelor," it seems safe to assume that 1) and 2) cannot both be true in the 4-5 weeks prior to July 20!
Why was VWF uninvolved? Was he assigned no work to do by his superiors? Did he refuse to undertake duties given to him by White House Counsel Nussbaum? Nussbaum was not asked, and did not comment upon, these questions in the record. If VWF was refusing to perform his assigned duties, what were those duties?
Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, told the FBI VWF sometimes had "lulls" in his work of a couple of hours . Such short lulls can be expected from time-to-time even if one were working 80+ hour weeks. However, beginning the week of the 12th , VWF spent much of the day writing a lot of personal "thank-you" letters. Gorham further noted that VWF had a "major and uncharacteristic lull" in his work on Monday, the 19th (see under that heading below).
The Fiske Report States That VWF's Weight Loss Was "Obvious To Many"
The Fiske Report paints a picture of a man under heavy stress, so much so that he was apparently forgetting to eat properly. According to the Fiske Report "Although no one noticed a loss of appetite [why not?], it was obvious to many that he had lost weight ."
Sounds pretty incontrovertible, doesn't it? There is a problem with this statement, however. According to VWF's doctor [1674-1677] (in his FBI interview, during which he is clearly consulting VWF's medical records), VWF weighed 194 pounds on December 31, 1992. VWF's weight at the autopsy is given as 197 pounds. Thus, relying only on medical records, VWF actually had a net weight gain (3 pounds) during the months in 1993 when the Fiske Report states that he was under heavy stress and his weight loss was "obvious to many." Who are these "many" and why did they think VWF's weight loss was "obvious?"
Dr. Watkins gives VWF's weight in August 1990 as 204 pounds, so VWF lost weight during the 30 months or so prior to working for the Administration at the WH (10 pounds) and gained weight, net, during the last 6-1/2 months of his life while working for the administration (3 pounds). Why does the Fiske Report have it backwards? Why did "many" people have it backwards?
The weight data provided by Dr. Watkins (194 pounds on December 31, 1992) was available to Fiske on May 16, 1994, some six weeks before the Fiske Report was released with the above quotation . The autopsy results (weight 197 pounds) had been available to Fiske for roughly 11 months before the Fiske Report was released. Note that Lisa Foster's FBI interview report agrees with Dr. Watkins: "She believed that most of the weight that Foster had lost by that time [June 5, 1993] had been lost prior to his arrival in Washington, D.C." Why did the Fiske Report say what it did about an obvious [but nonexistent] weight loss between VWF's arrival in Washington and his death?
A bit of lagniappe: The Fiske Report also refers to the "large pool of blood" on the ground under VWF at Fort Marcy Park from the "large exit wound ." However much blood VWF lost before the autopsy, it is clear that the official position is that a substantial amount of blood was involved. [More will be said about the blood loss and the large exit wound later.] If it is assumed that VWF lost about a quart of blood (twice what a blood donor provides in one sitting) and, given whole blood weighs roughly the same as water, then the 197 pound autopsy weight, corrected upward for the lost blood, would mean an actual weight of 199 pounds. Two quarts of blood lost would mean a date-of-death weight of 201 pounds, and so on.
Furthermore, VWF probably did not strip down fully for Dr. Watkins' nurse to weigh him on December 31, 1992. However, the author assumes that the weight of a body in an autopsy report is just that, the body's weight. It would be technically unsound to include the weight of an arbitrary amount of clothing with the body's weight in an autopsy report. It thus seems eminently reasonable to assume that the 194 pound weight, corrected downward to a fully-stripped weight, would be 193 or 192 pounds. Bottom line: it seems reasonable to conclude that, net, VWF gained around six pounds during the period the Fiske Report says his weight loss "was obvious to many."
The author concedes that it is possible that VWF gained a little weight over a brief period, say while staying with the his sister and brother-in-law, the Beryl Anthonys, for a couple of months prior to moving into his Georgetown rental . After all, he was without his family in a new city until after his youngest son's junior year of high school ended in AR, was probably eating out more than usual, and doubtless consuming too much "junk food" during the day (cheeseburgers, after all, were VWF's favorite food ). Even so, the author believes that 5-6 pounds up or down is not a weight loss "obvious to many" for someone weighing around 200 pounds.
Why did the Fiske Report claim that VWF had obviously lost weight during this period? Whether to make an issue of VWF's weight change was a "judgment call" made by the authors of the Fiske Report. Given the Fiske Report introduces weight loss as another evidence of stress (just as it did Assistant Attorney General Sheila Anthony's impressions of VWF's delivery at the commencement speech on May 8th, blatantly contradicted by the impressions of others who also heard the speech), it was somewhat "scary" to this report writer when he discovered that the data in the government investigators' own witness interviews explicitly contradict the findings of the Fiske Report.
Sheila Foster Anthony also supported the Fiske statement about VWF's weight loss. Per her FBI interview: "Foster began to lose weight during the last six weeks prior to his death and weighed much less than he had weighed in January 1993." Per Dr. Watkins, VWF weighed 194 pounds on December 31, 1992, and the autopsy report indicated VWF weighed (not adjusting for the weight of blood lost) 197 on the day he died, so Ms. Anthony's assertion seems a bit dicey. VWF weighed "much less?" Did Mr. Fiske transmogrify Ms. Anthony, turning her into the "many?" Bill Kennedy, a member of the WH OLC life VWF, make a generic statement to the FBI that VWF had lost weight after he came to Washington as did Denver Attorney Jim Lyons, author of the now discredited Lyons Report that supported long-standing WH claims that WJC and HRC last lost $68,900 on their Whitewater investment. .
What Projects Was VWF Working On In The Five Weeks Prior To His Death?
Whatever these projects were, "Lisa Foster said that Foster received no joy from his work during that time ." Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, told the FBI she did not remember what VWF was working on during the last few weeks he was alive , even though she typed all his correspondence and memos from Dictaphone tapes that he gave her. It is known that VWF completed the filing of three years of delinquent Whitewater Development Corporation income tax returns and also did some work in connection with the Clintons' blind trust(s) shortly before he died [63; also see the Comment, "The Blind Trusts" above].
VWF And The Travel Office Matter
VWF was said to be concerned that Congress would hold hearings into the Travel Office Matter and that he would be called to testify about his role therein . According to the Fiske Report, the Travel Office Matter was one of the primary reasons VWF was over-stressed and depressed.
Per White House Counsel Nussbaum, VWF urged him to hire outside counsel [private attorneys] to represent the WH OLC attorneys involved in the Travel Office decisions (principally VWF and Bill Kennedy), even though James Lyons, the Denver attorney whose firm issued a report confirming the Clintons' Whitewater losses at $68,900 (a figure subsequently discredited), had read the WH report on the Travel Office on VWF's behalf and did not see a conflict of interest for VWF between his actions in the Travel Office matter and his objectivity in advising the Clintons .
One might wonder why VWF would be concerned in the summer of 1993, when the Democratic Party controlled both Houses of Congress, that hearings on the Travel Office matter would come to pass and that he would be required to testify before a somehow hostile committee controlled by fellow-Democrats. Surely his brother-in-law, Beryl Anthony, a former member of Congress, would have advised VWF that Congressional Hearings into the Travel Office matter were highly unlikely, given the Democratic Party's control of Congress (whatever the experts' predictions were at the time, hearings have yet to be held on the Travel Office Matter). Apparently, Mr. Anthony did not do so , although he was never questioned in the record regarding his opinion of the likelihood of Travel Office hearings.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland -- VWF's Final Weekend
The Fiske Report describes as "coincidence" that VWF and his wife, Lisa, spent the weekend on the eastern shore of Maryland at the same time the Webster Hubbells were in the same area staying with the Michael Cardozas, also friends of the Fosters . Although the Fiske Report does not establish exactly how the connection was made [Hubbell apparently knew exactly where the Fosters were staying], the three couples linked up and spent Saturday evening and Sunday together .
Mr. Cardoza had been Deputy White House Counsel in the Carter Administration , coincidentally the same position VWF held at the time of his death. He also had spent four months at the DOJ during the early days of the Clinton Administration , involved with some of the same matters that concerned VWF, such as the failed Zöe Baird nomination.
Coincidentally, Hubbell apparently knew precisely where the Fosters were staying since he (not the Fosters' ostensible hosts, the Cardozas) called the Fosters up and invited them over to the Cardozas' home where Hubbell and his spouse were staying near Easton, Maryland, on Saturday the 17th . Felicitously, it happened that the Fosters were only fifteen minutes away. Hubbell and VWF ended up spending Saturday and Sunday at the Cardozas.
This was officially advertised by the Fiske Report to be the first big weekend in many months for VWF to "get away from it all." Did he?
Strangely, the Cardozas were not interviewed by the USPP, the Fiske OIC, or the Senate Whitewater Committee regarding anything they might contribute to an understanding of VWF's mental state the weekend before he died, notwithstanding the great interest in the outcome of the weekend later expressed by VWF's close Administration associates (if there were such interviews with the Cardozas, they were redacted from the official record for reasons unknown).
The record does not say if other political persons of note were at the Cardozas' that weekend beyond these three men, nor was anyone ever asked if there were other personages in attendance from the WH or if there were senior civil servants from the Executive Branch about.
In response to numerous inquiries, VWF told his associates that the trip to the eastern shore of Maryland the weekend of July 17th and 18th, had gone well .
The Weekend: WJC Was Curious How VWF's Visit With Hubbell & Cardoza Had Gone
On the evening of Monday, July 19th [see an additional Comment below], WJC called VWF at home [200,1829]. One reason for the call: WJC wanted to ask VWF how the weekend in Maryland with Hubbell and Cardoza had transpired too. WJC had also heard that VWF was "down" about the Travel Officer Matter. WJC made an appointment to see VWF (not the other way 'round) for Wednesday, July 21st. The subject: unspecified "organizational changes" being contemplated at the WH .
VWF Was Contemplating Resigning As Deputy White House Counsel
The record is clear that VWF was considering resigning his position as Deputy White House Counsel.
VWF told his wife, Lisa , his sister Sheila Anthony, and his co-worker William H. Kennedy (an Associate White House Counsel) that he was thinking of resigning [188,195,1614,1647]. His predicament, whatever it was, was so serious that his sister Sheila Anthony told the FBI she had hoped that VWF would resign as Deputy White House Counsel .
According to the Fiske Report, Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, VWF ". . . did little work during the week of July 12, and instead concentrated on 'cleaning up' matters that he had not been able to get to for some time, such as dictating thank-you and congratulatory notes ."
White House Counsel Nussbaum was never asked in the record what work VWF was supposed to have been doing during this time period. Was there no work to be done (apparently so, since VWF did little work from July 12th onward)? Or was VWF refusing to do his assigned work? Why? What work was that?
The piddling described by Ms. Gorham is at least as likely to be done by someone who has made a decision to quit his job as it is to be the action of someone planning to commit suicide, especially in light of VWF's statements to those he loved that he was thinking of resigning his position (after all, people quit their jobs far more often than they commit suicide over them). Did VWF submit his resignation sometime in the first half of July or sound out any Administration officials about leaving the Administration? Was he waiting for some sign from the Administration when he died?
Why take the time to write thank-you and congratulatory notes to friends before you commit suicide, but fail to prepare your family in any way for your death? In the author's lay opinion, a person might easily do neither or do both, but people who do the first also take care of the second.
Shouldn't VWF Have Been Accustomed To Long Hours In High Stress Environments?
One would think that VWF, the former Senior Litigator (and Chief Operating Officer) of the RLF, partner since 1973, and in the prime of his professional life, drawing almost $300,000 a year from the top AR law firm prior to joining the Administration, ought to be made of stronger stuff than the VWF depicted by the Fiske Report (something of a shrinking violet, however intelligent, stung to the point of suicide by newspaper editorials, the threat of Congressional Hearings that never occurred, and a Travel Office-related reprimand that he never received; a high-powered trial attorney somehow unaccustomed to working long-hours in a high-stress environment).
Although the Fiske Report characterizes much of the text of the torn note (see the Comment below) found in VWF's briefcase [192,353] as the opening argument for his defense in anticipated Congressional Hearings on the Travel Office matter, the note could at least as easily be interpreted as a list of bullet points for the first draft of his letter of resignation (or something else entirely).
VWF was nothing if not an orderly man who first thought through a problem and then acted accordingly. More than one friend used the word "meticulous" to describe VWF in the record. That is one reason why the lack of any preparations for (or warnings to) his family prior to his suicide seems particularly unusual. "Spontaneous" is not a word anyone in the record associated with VWF, though he clearly did care deeply for his wife, Lisa, and the children.
In the author's opinion, if VWF had decided to consult with a psychiatrist (see the two phone calls above that were cited by the Fiske Report), he would have had at least a session or two before deciding whether therapy was right for him. By all accounts, he was a man who parsed difficult problems carefully and, having decided to act (make the calls to the psychiatrist), would not have changed his mind on a whim or otherwise failed to follow through.
Although its importance should not be overstated, VWF's blood pressure when taken at the WH on Friday, July 16, 1993, was 132/84 . Not bad at all for a man of 48 supposedly working 80+ hours a week in a high-stress environment and, as it came out in official statements made by his close friends in the Administration (commencing en masse a week or two after the fact), obviously in the throes of a profound depression. The blood pressure reading in itself is not an indication that VWF was over-stressed; if it means anything at all, it is some evidence supporting the opposite conclusion.
July 19, 1993: VWF's Last Full Day at the White House
Straightening And Cleaning Plus An Unusually Long Meeting With An Old Friend
VWF continued what this author believes was his goal of disengagement from the Administration, begun not later than July 12th , on Monday, July 19th .
Although Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, described Monday as a day of "straightening and cleaning ," VWF apparently spent much of this time with his door closed, including time spent in a long closed-door visit with Marsha Scott , Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence, a meeting that Linda Tripp, one of the Executive Assistants to Bernard Nussbaum, remembered as being "out of the ordinary" and 1-2 hours in length .
According to Tripp's FBI interview, "two things" occurred that were out of the ordinary on July 19th : "Marsha Scott, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence, came to see Foster for a closed-door session that lasted over an hour, possibly as long as two hours. This was highly unusual, both her coming to see him and anyone taking up that much time with Foster." Tripp noted that Scott was part of the "core" Arkansas group who went to dinner together every Tuesday night.
Nancy Hernreich, Deputy Assistant to the President for Appointments and Scheduling, confirmed that VWF was part of the "core" Arkansas group that often had dinner with each other on Tuesday nights . Bruce Lindsey also confirmed that VWF was a member of this group .
VWF died on a Tuesday afternoon. It is not known whether some of the Arkansas "core" group had gotten together for their usual Tuesday evening activities before the time the record states that the WH was informed of VWF's death at 2030 [see the USSS memo at 2551].
Marsha Scott described her relationship with VWF to the FBI as a "personal friendship ." She had known him since 1967. Marsha Scott's FBI interview states "She does not remember what topics they talked about ." However, she later told the FBI that she had stopped by to ask him how the weekend on the eastern shore of Maryland had gone .
Many people were intensely interested how the weekend in Maryland with Hubbell and Cardoza had gone. In the author's opinion, it is almost as if the weekend had an agenda other than merely permitting a weary and care-ridden VWF some rest and much-needed recreation. If so, this agenda appears to have been well-known to many within the core AR group (including WJC, see the material below on WJC's called to VWF on Monday night), and they wanted to know what the weekend's outcome had been.
Was VWF's "disengagement" from the Administration on the weekend's agenda? Was VWF about to become a free agent? Was a quid pro quo negotiated or did VWF merely believe one had?
Marsha Scott's statement to the FBI does not seem quite complete. You have an unusual closed-door solo meeting with a personal friend whom you have known for 25 years. This meeting lasts one to two hours. The next day, your friend happens to commit suicide, and you don't remember what topics were discussed?
The author has mentioned that some of his hypotheses in this report might be seen as something of a "stretch" by a reasonable person. The author hopes the same reasonable person would find some of the statements in Ms. Scott's FBI interview a "stretch" if identically strict standards were imposed. She came to see him, after all. Ms. Scott was not having a casual social conversation with the FBI. The FBI agent (assigned to the Fiske OIC) was interviewing her as part of a formal inquiry into the death of VWF.
This is as good a time as any to mention the author's understanding of the difference between "giving a false statement" and "perjury." The author believes the penalties for perjury are much more severe than those for merely "giving a false statement." As the author understands it, only those whose depositions were taken or who provided testimony before the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings were under oath.
The author has no training whatsoever in psychology or psychiatry, but believes Ms. Scott's is a surprising memory lapse under the circumstances! Reminiscences about VWF's final days around the WH must have had quite a few gaps in them if no one remembered any more than Marsha Scott told the FBI she recalled about her last conversation with VWF.
WJC himself encouraged top staffers in the WH family to "talk to each other" about VWF, but not to take that talk "outside of our family ."
Lisa Foster was apparently at least as "in the dark" as anyone about his alleged mental condition, perhaps more so, given the official pronouncements about VWF's "depression" that surfaced in tight formation a week or two after his death.
Scott told the FBI that most of her conversations with Lisa Foster since July 20, 1993, had concerned the reason VWF had killed himself and what could have triggered it . What transpired during the one-to-two-hour VWF-Scott meeting? Ms. Scott was not particularly forthcoming or specific in her first FBI interview on this subject. This author believes the non-productive first interview was the reason Ms. Scott had a second interview with the FBI.
Hubbell and Sheila Anthony Learn How The Weekend In Maryland Went
Webster Hubbell stopped by VWF's office for a visit on Monday, the 19th [199,1477], but does not remember the business matter, if any, that was discussed.
The business matter may have been inconsequential at the time, but it seems to the author that a person would likely long remember the topics of the last conversation he had with a friend of many years who killed himself the next day.
Hubbell's FBI interview describes the once-a-week "Arkansas Nights" frequently attended by VWF. Bruce Lindsey, Marsha Scott, and the Anthonys were among the other typical attendees . According to what Linda Tripp, one of Nussbaum's Executive Assistants, said in her FBI interview, "Nobody outside the Arkansas 'group' would be considered a confidante [of VWF's] ."
VWF called his sister Sheila Anthony to tell her the weekend had gone well and that he was contemplating getting away more often [199,1578]. Why the gratuitous lie to his sister? Unless he made a snap decision to kill himself later than Monday, he knew he would be dead the next day.
Presumably, the WH phone records vouch for the existence of all calls that the record indicates were made to or by VWF from telephone instruments at the WH. Per the Fiske Report, the system certainly had that capability .
VWF told Webster Hubbell that the weekend in Maryland at the Cardozas had gone well, too .
It's not clear why Hubbell had to ask. After all, he had been present too. Did Hubbell instead want to find out about anything that transpired between the time he last saw VWF on Sunday at the Cardozas and the time Hubbell dropped by to see VWF on Monday? Could VWF have had some information for Hubbell instead?
VWF had spoken to his wife, Lisa, about going away the following weekend as well, but no definite plans had been made as of the time of his death . Why another gratuitous lie, this time to his wife? A man discusses his plans for the following weekend with his wife and friends the day before he commits suicide? It is certainly possible. But is it likely? Does the hypothesis jibe with the rest of the information in the record?
VWF Sends A Letter To His Mother
According to the Fiske Report, on Monday the 19th (the day before he died), VWF mailed some oil leases to his mother and included a cover letter of instructions for her . Somewhat surprising to the author, in light of his decision to kill himself the next day, he included no personal message for her of any kind nor any hint that he was depressed or was contemplating suicide.
The Fiske Report's source for its statement is the FBI interview with Gorham [1446-1447] conducted on April 19th and 26th 1994.
The author has a concern about Gorham's statement. The FBI had interviewed Linda Tripp one week earlier on April 12th. In that interview, Tripp had given the FBI a detailed description of what she had learned from Gorham "soon after the death."
In the words of Tripp's FBI interview:
Gorham told Tripp that the morning of his death, much earlier than his leaving [the WH that day for the last time at about 1300] Foster placed three pieces of correspondence in the outgoing mail. The pieces were definitely personal, Foster having addressed them by hand and used stamps instead of officially franked envelopes. This was sufficiently unusual that Gorham noted it, and told Tripp who two of the items were addressed to. Tripp was unable to recall one of the items, but said the other was to Foster's mother [1534-1535].
Tripp also told the FBI that she had urged Gorham to report the mailing of these letters [the morning of his death] to the USPP.
It is not clear from the record what day the letter to VWF's mother was mailed. Was it Monday, the 19th or Tuesday the 20th? Does it matter?
The author believes it is quite possible that VWF's mother (or Sheila Anthony) retained the cover letter and envelope sent to VWF's mother, if only for sentimental reasons A postmark of the 19th would clearly vindicate Gorham's statement that the letter was mailed on Monday. A postmark of the 20th would be some evidence that VWF mailed the letter to his mother on Tuesday, the 20th (not conclusive, of course, although the record indicates that the letter in question was picked up relatively early in the day by an internal WH courier ). However, a postmark of July 21st (or later) would be strong evidence, given the same-day courier pick-up and morning "mailing," that Tripp (interviewed by the FBI before Gorham) is correct: the letter was mailed to VWF's mother on Tuesday morning.
Again, is the exact mailing date of interest? It has long seemed improbable to the author that a man, especially a southern-style "True Gentleman" , who sent his mother a letter 30 hours or so before he shoots himself to death did not also take a moment to include some expression of personal feelings for her, certainly not along the lines of "I'll be dead by the time you get this," possibly not even a veiled reference to his troubles, but at least some sort of modestly intensive and out-of-the-ordinary identifiable expression of personal sentiment.
VWF's letter did not contain any noticeable expression of feelings toward his mother at all. According to Sheila Foster Anthony (who was with VWF's mother when she opened the envelope) [in the words of Anthony's FBI interview]:
The letter from Foster concerned oil leases which had been passed on to Foster's mother from her late husband's estate. . . . In attempting to recall what was in the envelope, Anthony now believes that there was an extremely brief cover letter which had been typewritten [apparently not by Gorham -- VWF apparently typed it at home, though, of course, for some reason he did not mail it from home], and which contained one or two sentences asking Foster's mother to sign the enclosed form and return it to the oil company .
If Tripp's account is correct, VWF mailed a letter to his mother roughly six hours before he killed himself. That letter contained no particular personal sentiments of any sort, nor apparently any other information of interest to the investigators.
Whatever VWF's relationship with his mother might have been (and there is no evidence in the record that it was other than excellent, similar to the other family relationships VWF enjoyed that are described in detail in the record), the author, however surprised he might be that VWF would not include a personal message of some kind in a letter mailed 30 hours before his death, would be dumfounded to learn that VWF included no such personal message to his mother (widowed just two years earlier) in a letter mailed roughly 6 hours before the record states VWF drove to Fort Marcy and shot himself dead. Unless of course, VWF made a snap decision to kill himself late Tuesday morning after the letter had been mailed.
One problem the author has had from the beginning with the claim that VWF committed suicide is that such an act does violence to the author's sense of VWF's personal style, as revealed in the record. The author realizes that his beliefs in this area merely those of a layman and based on data that is necessarily "soft," but "everybody has to be somewhere." In the author's opinion, the evidence on the other side (represented by the Fiske Report) is nowhere nearly so compelling.
In the author's opinion, stipulating for this purpose only that VWF had indeed made the decision to kill himself, the lack of sentiment in the letter to his mother is beyond bizarre: the omission is something that is "just not done." Such an uncaring gesture would not have been consistent with virtually any son's sense of propriety, let alone that of the VWF described in the record.
Finally, let it be said: The author is sure, to a moral certainty, that if the letter contained any wording that could be interpreted to support the Fiske Report's suicide hypothesis in any way, that Report would have spared its readers none of the particulars.
VWF Makes Two Trips Out Of The Office On Monday, One Of Them Unexplained
VWF vanished from his office twice during the day on Monday. One trip was to visit the WH Credit Union . The other was an unexplained absence that Deborah Gorham described as "very uncommon" since he was in the habit of telling her where he would be during the business day . David Watkins saw VWF Monday morning at 1100 as VWF was entering the WH . In the words of Watkins' FBI interview, "Foster's demeanor was cheerful." Presumably this encounter with the WH Director of Personnel took place as VWF was returning from one of his two Monday excursions.
The record does not reveal any attempt by the official Reports to discover where VWF went during the unexplained absence. If he had had a meeting within the WH compound during this time interval, presumably it would not have been too difficult to discover with whom he met and why. The author does not recall whether the credit union is inside the White House compound or not. If not, VWF could have been returning from the credit union when seen by Watkins.
According to Loraine Cline, VWF's secretary for his last six years at the RLF (FBI interview), "He [VWF] was very good about keeping in touch with her. He would always let her know where he was and when he was going to be back. He was meticulous about keeping an accurate and complete calendar. . . She could not picture Foster as having a problem he could not figure out how to solve ."
VWF Left Work Earlier Than Usual -- Monday's "Lost" Hours
VWF left the office much earlier than usual on Monday, July 19th, leaving before Gorham departed at the end of the work day .
It is not known what VWF did between his early departure on Monday the 19th and his arrival home that night at 1945 , an interval of at least 2-hours (excluding his commute time to Georgetown from the WH).
His wife had expected home around 1845 , so presumably something unexpected came up or he had matters to take care of that he had not told Lisa Foster about. A projected 1845 arrival in Georgetown is consistent with VWF's having left the WH around 1800, perhaps a little after [the author will here gladly defer to DC's expert commuters], which is not consistent with Gorham's statement that VWF left the WH before the end of a normal 9-5 workday. Whatever he had to do, it did not appear too stressful. According to Gorham's FBI interview, when VWF left his office early that day "He did not seem stressed, just simply left ." He smiled at his wife when he came in the door of their home in Georgetown .
[It is only about 1.8 miles over-the-road from VWF's parking space in Slot 16, Executive Boulevard West , to his rental home in Georgetown; VWF's address has been suppressed by the author.]
Anyone married for 25 years, as VWF and Lisa Foster had been as of the prior April 20th , will tell you that spouses don't always greet each other after work with a smile, so an inference that VWF thought Monday was a fairly good day is clearly reasonable. Per the record, VWF certainly gave no particular indication to his wife that he had plans to make the next day his last day on earth!
No effort was made by the various official investigations (at least not one revealed by the record) to determine what VWF did 1) during one his unexplained absence during the work day nor 2) what he did in the minimum 2-hour period between the time he left the WH and arrived at home.
Since Gorham did not know the time of his departure other than that he left much earlier than normal and before she left the office, these "lost hours" in mid-to-late afternoon on Monday were likely significantly more extensive than the minimum 2-hour estimate above that assumes he departed around the end of the normal workday, not significantly before it. The events that took place during this interval may be especially important since WJC called VWF that night at his home, a relatively unusual event in its own right.
Why was there no interest on the part of the USPP or OIC investigators in these "missing" hours? That understates the point. The existence of these "lost hours" on Monday is not even identified in the official Reports.
VWF's Overdrawn White House Credit Union Checking Account
VWF made a trip to "the bank" (the WH Credit Union) on the 19th , the day before he died. On the prior Thursday, the 15th, Lisa Foster had called Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, at work . She told Gorham that the Foster family checking account was overdrawn. "Check stub filed. All Gone anyway ." Lisa Foster was in the habit of calling VWF at work, especially if she needed money [1634-1635]. An overdrawn account means bounced checks.
The credit union had been contacted by VWF the week of the 12th and it had agreed to "work with" the Fosters on a "weekly" rather than "bi-weekly" basis, presumably in connection with the ongoing problems in connection with the overdrawn checking account ["ongoing" since the credit union had agreed to start "working with" the Fosters on a "weekly" basis instead of the former "bi-weekly" basis, implying to the author the existence of some sort of previous bi-weekly arrangement that had lasted for an unknown period of time].
It is not known if the Fosters had other dealings with the credit union besides the difficulties with their checking account. They presumably had accounts at other financial institutions, but there is no evidence that these other accounts were drawn upon to solve the overdrawn credit union checking account problem. Why not? What was the purpose of the trip to the credit union on the 19th?
VWF should not have had any cash flow problems associated with his AR home (in "the Heights" section of LR) since he had been able to rent it when he came to work with the Administration , certainly none that are part of the record. Furthermore, his modest townhouse in Georgetown was rented, not purchased. Finally, VWF's youngest child, John (called "Brugh") was scheduled to start his senior year at the Sidwell Friends School in September, but the first check (70% of tuition) was not due until August 1st, so that expense had not yet depleted the checking account at the time of his death.
In short, the classic causes of cash flow problems when one takes a job in a new city did not apply to VWF. Why was the family checking account overdrawn and what was the connection, if any, with the death of VWF?
Furthermore, VWF had been a partner with RLF for almost twenty years prior to joining the Administration, earning some $295,000 his last year at RLF according to newspaper reports. There is nothing in the record that would indicate he (or his wife) was a lavish spender or used money pretentiously. The man drove a four-year-old Honda filled with the debris from his kids' social and academic lives [505,506] to and from the WH while he was the number two person in the WH OLC. Why was there apparently no money available to replenish the overdrawn checking account?
The overdrawn checking account may amount to nothing, but no financial details were pursued by any of the investigations per the record [limited exception: R30,461 -- checking account not addressed as such] A "very smart. . . meticulous man " overdraws his checking account for at least the two weeks before he commits suicide. He makes an "unusual trip" to his credit union the day before he kills himself. We have nothing latent in the record to account for the overdrawn checking account. What do we have about the Fosters' general financial condition or the forensic accounting investigations that support the decision in the official Reports to avoid this issue?
According to USPP Investigator Rolla's testimony:
I have heard it so many times now that I don't know whether I am thinking it in my mind or I saw it, but whatever it was, the documents I looked through were -- I looked through financial documents to see if there was [sic] any major losses of money, withdrawals of money or anything crazy, and there just didn't appear to be any of that .
The Call From WJC On Monday Evening
The evening of the 19th, VWF received a call at home from WJC . WJC had heard that VWF was feeling "down" about the Travel Office matter and phoned to invite VWF to watch a movie at the WH (as touched upon in a previous Comment), but VWF declined, stating he was home with his wife and wanted to stay there .
Like many people, WJC asked about VWF's weekend in Maryland [no specific weekend topics in the call were covered, nor were they provided in the official Reports]. WJC told VWF that he was seeking VWF's advice on "possible White House organizational changes" [200,1830].
There was no indication in the record whether or not such changes involved VWF himself. Per the record, WJC had personally never heard that VWF had been telling his friends and associates he was considering resigning (many of those friends and associates were part of the same "core" Arkansas crowd that included WJC and HRC; VWF had been the "family lawyer" for many years). Although he had not heard that VWF was contemplating resigning, WJC had heard that VWF was "down" about the Travel Office Matter.
Coincidentally, Hubbell and Lindsey were with WJC when he invited VWF to the WH to watch a movie ("In the Line of Fire") on Monday night . As matters turned out, this might have been a doubly ironic "last movie" for VWF to have seen at the WH, concerned as it is with protecting the President. By the way, the normal "movie night" at the WH was Friday , not Monday.
In his deposition, the President indicated that he had invited VWF to the WH to see the movie because "It was a time of high stress for the Counsel's Office because of the White House travel office matter and other things ."
Nonetheless, neither Nussbaum, the White House Counsel, nor any other members of the OLC (including "core" group member Kennedy) were invited to the show. Furthermore, as indicated above, the record does not reveal that VWF had been doing much substantive work in the OLC for at least a week, so that work was presumably not the work to which WJC was referring. Note, too, the number of individuals in the record who remarked that VWF's mood had improved the week before his death and that he was in good spirits on Monday and Tuesday. WJC might have been a little behind the times. Perhaps VWF did not attend the movie because he was not "down" or perhaps he had nothing to talk about (if the movie was a screen for a substantive meeting).
One can almost picture these four senior Administration executives sitting in the dark together, communing silently in the WH theater as they watch Clint Eastwood protect his President. Almost. After all, VWF decided to stay home that night. Since VWF decided not to attend this gathering, did Lindsey, Hubbell, and WJC still watch the film together? None of them were asked that question by the official investigators.
VWF and WJC agreed to meet on Wednesday concerning the possible WH organizational changes but, of course, this meeting was pre-empted by the extraordinary WH "organizational change" on the following day. VWF did not sound downcast or depressed during this conversation according to WJC's deposition. Then why the later comments re VWF's depression?
The nature of the questions and responses when WJC was deposed concerning VWF and the call WJC made to him is of interest :
Q: "Yes, I will get to that. That's why up to now we are just up to the 19th."
A: "Uh-huh. But in that conversation, I referred in the briefest manner to the whole question of operational problems in the White House. So, when we get to that, we can talk about that."
Q: "We'll get there in just a minute. Was there anything else that you heard, right up to that phone conversation on the 19th that -- [question interrupted]
Q: "-- might be disturbing him?"
Q: "Had you ever heard that he was thinking of resigning his job?"
Q: "Had you ever -- [question interrupted once more]
A: "Not that I recall." [WJC answered before any question was asked!]
Q: "Okay." . . .
[Here is WJC's response to a question asking him to recall his phone conversation with VWF Sunday night, the 19th:]
A: " . . . Then I told him I wanted to talk to him about some matters relating to the White House and I wanted to ask his advice on some organizational issues, but that I could not see him the next day because we had the announcement of Mr. Freeh, the FBI Director, and several other things on my schedule, and could we please meet on Wednesday. And he said, yes, I have some time on Wednesday and I will see you then."
VWF tells WJC that he, VWF, has some time on Wednesday, and that he agrees to see the President then? Was VWF in the driver's seat? WJC seemed somewhat on edge during his deposition. Remember that VWF was at an unknown location for at least two hours after he left the office early the afternoon of the 19th.
There should be no misunderstanding: The record indicates WJC had not even spoken to VWF anytime during the "few weeks" leading up to VWF's death. In his deposition, WJC said "I called him [VWF] because I had not seen him in a while. . . And so, I hadn't seen Vince in a while and I hadn't had a chance to talk to him in a few weeks . . . As a matter of fact, I was just pleased that I was going to be seeing him Wednesday because I hadn't seen him in a while. I mean, whole weeks would go by and I wouldn't see him. . . ."
Per WJC, he saw VWF the morning of the 20th in the crowd at the Rose Garden ceremony announcing Louis Freeh's nomination to the Director of the FBI, but they did not speak. WJC was not asked in his deposition specifically when he last spoke to VWF prior to WJC's telephoning VWF on the night of the 19th.
FMP: Monday, July 19, 1993, 1500 Hours
Monday July 19th, like the Tuesday to come, was an extremely hot and humid day in the Washington, D.C., area. A 17 year-old girl was walking in the northeast portion of FMP, having gained access to FMP "where the tennis courts of the Dogwood subdivision border Fort Marcy Park ." This means she entered FMP from the west side by coming over the border fence or, more likely, coming through one of the gaps in that fence. She volunteered the following to the FBI:
At approximately 3:00 PM on July 19, 1993, . . she noticed at a distance of approximately 10 to 15 feet [up close!] a white male walking by himself in a direction leading from the George Washington Memorial Parkway into the northeast section of the park. [The interviewer did not ask her exactly where she was when the interviewee saw the man. This would have seemed an obvious question to the author, so he wonders why it was not asked.]
She stated that what caught her attention was that this white male, in spite of the heat, was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and a red neck tie. [She] further described this white male as being in his early 40's [VWF was 48], dark hair, approximately 180 pounds [VWF weighed about 200 pounds], and slightly over 6 foot in height [VWF was 6 foot 4.5 inches tall] . . .
This white male had no facial hair nor was he wearing eyeglasses [VWF was near-sighted and had astigmatism in both eyes; 245]. She further stated that when she noticed this white male, he immediately looked away from her and therefore she could furnish no additional details relative to his facial characteristics.
In a further attempt to determine the height of this white male, it was [the interviewee's] opinion that he was slightly over 6 foot tall, but did not approach 6 foot 4 inches in height. [The interviewee] was exhibited photographs of Mr. Foster but she was unable to make any determination as to whether these photographs resembled the white male she saw at the park on July 19, 1993 [1679-1680].
In the author's opinion, this individual was clearly not VWF. The author and his associate, DCA, have collectively spent enough time at FMP in the summer months to state categorically that seeing a man dressed the way this gentleman was is extraordinarily rare to say the least.
The author is curious whether the references to "the park" in the interview should have been references to "the fort." Fort Marcy itself is a small part of Fort Marcy Park. The fort is located northwest of the parking lot [see Map V (R)]. If the interviewee were truly on the northeast side of FMP (cf., the northeast side of the fort itself), she was on the far side of FMP from her home, a round trip over-the-ground distance of at least three-fourths of a mile, even if her home abutted the western border of FMP. The northeast corner of the fort itself is about 800-900 feet over-the-ground from the tennis courts that abut the western border of FMP.
The author has no idea who this trim and fit individual was ("fit" since he was strolling around in a dark suit unperturbed by a hot humid day). Note that he avoided eye contact with the witness. Notice, too, that he was at FMP around 1500. VWF left the WH at 1300 and was found at 1800. The midpoint of this five-hour interval is 1530. [Speculative analysis about FMP around 1500 on the 20th is omitted here.]
It is tempting to speculate that this individual was involved in some sort of reconnaissance of FMP in connection with the events of the following afternoon, but the very limited data are nowhere nearly adequate to support any analysis beyond that which precedes this paragraph.
The author will note that the failure of the USPP investigative team, for reasons unknown, to canvass the neighborhoods around FMP for additional witnesses who might have seen something out of the ordinary on July 20th was unfortunate. This young female witness came forward, apparently a volunteer in the purest sense of the word, on May 17, 1994, simply because she lived near FMP and remembered seeing a man in a dark suit walking in the park some ten months previously. In the author's opinion, this young lady's memory is as surprisingly good as those of some WH personnel are surprisingly bad.
The author infers the young lady was aware of FBI visits to FMP (accompanying various FCFRD and USPP witnesses) in the late spring of 1994 in connection with the Fiske OIC investigation into the death of VWF and came forward on her own at that time and for that reason.
July 20, 1993: VWF's Last Day at the White House
An Unusual Early-Morning Question For Lisa Foster
In her FBI interview, Lisa Foster remembered an "unusual event" before VWF left home on the 20th for the WH : He asked her about her schedule for the day. It was uncommon for VWF to ask her about her plans, she told the FBI.
Perhaps he needed to know where she would be during the day so as to be better able to contact her with some news of his own (such as the "word" on his letter of resignation?). There is no indication in the record that VWF tried to contact his wife in the hours before his death, despite his asking this unusual question.
Lisa Foster played tennis at 0830 Tuesday morning with Mrs. David Watkins, the wife of the White House Director of Personnel [82,1644], attended a charity meeting at 1145, had a late lunch with Mrs. McLarty, wife of Chief of Staff Thomas McLarty, taking a taxi back to VWF's home with Mrs. McLarty around 1530 and then driving to the McLarty residence, and finally returned to the Foster home at about 1700.
Mrs. Foster certainly spent a good deal of time on Tuesday with the "core" Arkansas crowd, even though it appears that her husband did not. Why would VWF ask an unusual early morning question about his wife's schedule on the day he planned to commit suicide? Did he really care what she was going to be doing when he shot himself? Did he plan to phone her just before his death? Unlikely, in the author's opinion.
However, VWF's concern about his wife's schedule (in the context of his alleged suicide) is not consistent with the total lack of effort he made to prepare his family (and extended family) for that suicide and, given he had decided to kill himself, the total lack of effort he made at FMP to make this shocking event as easy as possible on them under the circumstances [see the Comment below re his unlocked Honda and his having left his wallet inside].
Mrs. Foster called the WH around 1700 , asked for VWF, and was told by Deborah Gorham, VWF's Executive Assistant, that he was unable to come to the phone. Lisa Foster was not told that VWF had left the WH around 1300 and had not returned as promised. It is unknown how insistent Lisa Foster was when she tried to reach her husband late Tuesday afternoon.
A Routine Start To VWF's Last Workday
VWF arrived at his WH office about 0850 and attended the routine 0900 WH OLC staff meeting and then the Rose Garden ceremony announcing the selection of Louis Freeh to head the FBI . [The previous Director of the FBI, William J. Sessions, the first-ever FBI Director to be fired, had been dismissed the previous day.]
Beth Nolan, Associate Counsel at the WH OLC, saw VWF at the Rose Garden ceremony for Louis Freeh on Tuesday morning .
In the words of Nolan's FBI interview, "His mood had lifted in the last couple of days." She noted that he had been joking around in the staff meeting the prior Friday morning (the 16th, four days prior). When she had seen him on the 19th, he did not seem distracted and handled his exchange with her normally.
All this, notwithstanding that, on the morning of Tuesday, July 20th he "officially" had very likely previously decided to kill himself that very afternoon and in all likelihood already had the loaded gun in his possession (at the WH or in his Honda) or knew where he was going to get it.
VWF left his office for an hour the morning of the 20th between 1030 and 1130, saying "I'll be back ." He appeared "relaxed and normal" to Gorham on his return. He may have attended the Rose Garden ceremony for Louis Freeh during some of this time, but he was not a participant and was on the periphery of the event.
Did VWF meet with anyone in particular during this absence from his office? What did they talk about?
VWF's Sister, Sharon Bowman, Had Just Arrived In DC For A Visit
It should be noted that VWF's other sister, Sharon Bowman, had come to Washington D.C., apparently arriving on the 20th, and was staying with her sister, Sheila Anthony . Hubbell told the FBI that Sharon Bowman just happened to be in town that day , another coincidence.
Sharon Bowman was never interviewed directly by the USPP or the FBI. Ms. Bowman was the sister who lived in AR as opposed to Sheila Foster Anthony, VWF's sister who lived in the DC area and was an Assistant US Attorney General.
Whether or not there was a particular specific reason for his sister's visit from AR, VWF was a known family man. According to Hubbell's FBI interview VWF "loved his children more than anything, very close to them ."
Sheila Anthony told the FBI that she and VWF were extremely close and they spoke with each other often . The FBI interview with Sheila Anthony described VWF's family life in the following terms:
Anthony regarded it as warm and real. Foster was married to Lisa Foster for about twenty-five years. Anthony regarded Foster as an excellent father who spent much time with his children. In particular Foster was very conscientious about spending time with each of his children so that they each received individual attention. Foster would occasionally take one of the children on a trip with him just so the child could receive this individual attention. Foster was very interested in everything his children did ."
Your sister comes a thousand miles to see you. You kill yourself the day she arrives in town before she even has a chance to see you? The day before you promised her lunch at the WH and a personal tour? Anything is possible, but this sounds out of character for VWF, given the picture of him that emerges from the record.
Note, too, that he seemed to have crossed some sort of emotional hump several days before he died and was clearly more cheerful from at least Friday the 16th onward. In the author's opinion, as of Friday, VWF thought he was pedaling downhill [whatever hill he was on], not up it.
If he appeared more cheerful only because he had obtained the emotional peace that could possibly come (?) from making the suicide decision, why would VWF knowingly have caused Lyons to fly to DC from Denver to meet with him the next day, the day after VWF knew he would be dead? The Wednesday, July 21, 1993, appointment with Lyons in DC was confirmed by VWF just the prior Sunday. The record does not say why Sharon Bowman picked that particular day to fly to DC. No one bothered to ask her for the record.
Did VWF make a snap decision to kill himself between Sunday night and Tuesday lunch? Unlikely? It's certainly possible, but those who gave statements of one kind or another about his mood from Friday, July 16th, through Tuesday, July 20th, uniformly give evidence of VWF's general good spirits and unstressed demeanor.
A Brief Look Ahead: The White House Changes Its Stance On VWF's Death
At first, the death was pronounced a completely unexpected tragedy by the WH. After a week or two, numerous people began making statements about VWF's having been seriously depressed for a couple of months. The statements about VWF's improved spirits in the immediately prior Comment were all provided long after Administration figures had switched their statements (a week or two after his death) from, in effect, "This was a huge and totally unexpected surprise!" to "Well, you know, he had been really depressed for some time. I had noticed something along those lines, but I had no idea it was so serious. I should have paid more attention to it at the time, but I didn't."
Thus, the statements in the record about VWF's improved spirits the last few days he was alive are contrary to the "Pravda" about VWF's ongoing depression that began to be publicly bruited about some ten days or so after his death.
The day after VWF's death, the "huge and totally unexpected surprise" orientation was still on display. The author admits that the "who could have known" initial reaction is a common one for many people, but WJC had a bit more to say than that. Part of the approach included "marching orders" that, whatever their intention, certainly did have the effect of discouraging those who knew him from speculating with those outside the small group of senior WH staff why VWF died. The author does not think he is exaggerating when he makes this statement.
On July 21st, WJC spoke to the WH staff members that knew VWF well:
"In the first place, no one can ever know why this happened. Even if you had a whole set of objective reasons, that wouldn't be why it happened, because you could get a different, bigger, more burdensome set of objective reasons that are on someone else in this room [?]. So what happened was a mystery about something inside of him and I hope all of you will always understand that. . . Vince Foster had an extraordinary sense of propriety and loyalty, and I hope when we remember him and this we'll be a little more anxious to talk to each other and a little less anxious to talk outside of our family .
WJC's statement is somewhat elliptical, but the author believes that there were those present who understood these words far better than the author does, even today. Were these words a warning?
In his deposition months later [1827-1829], WJC mentioned knowing VWF was under a lot of stress in the WH OLC and also that VWF was "down" about the Travel Office Matter, but these factors were not mentioned when he addressed "the troops" on the 21st.
VWF Orders Lunch
At around noon on Tuesday, VWF asked Linda Tripp, one of Bernard Nussbaum's Executive Assistants [the other was Betsy Pond] to fetch the lunch he had selected off the daily menu of the WH cafeteria . His own Assistant, Deborah Gorham, had already left for her own lunch break. Thomas Castleton, a junior employee of the WH OLC, was soon dispatched to the cafeteria by VWF to discover what was taking Tripp so long to return with VWF's meal. Castleton told Tripp that VWF had sent him to find out what was taking her so long , but by then she was already on her way back with VWF's lunch.
Tripp delivered VWF's lunch to his office, having added some M&Ms to his tray, apparently on her own initiative. VWF relaxed on his couch and read his newspaper while he ate his meal . Tripp was surprised that VWF had sent Castleton to look for her since she had not been gone long at all .
Why was VWF in a hurry to get his cheeseburger? Had he scheduled the precise time of his suicide in advance?
VWF Leaves The White House For The Last Time
At about 1300 , VWF left his office, carrying his suit jacket, but without a briefcase.
The Fiske Report (issued about a month before the start of the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings), is at times shy on details and finesses some matters, but it explicitly states that VWF was not carrying a briefcase when he left the White House. The author does not know whether VWF owned more than one, but presumably the black briefcase that he did not leave with was the one in which Mr. Neuwirth found the torn note on July 26th (see that Heading below). The statement that VWF was not carrying a briefcase may be important since several witnesses at FMP later saw a briefcase in VWF's Honda in the FMP parking lot, although the official Reports reach the conclusion that this briefcase did not exist (see the sub-heading, "Was There A Briefcase In VWF's Honda At FMP?" below).
VWF told Tripp that there were still some M&Ms on his tray if she wanted them .
While the author does not believe that casual talk about leftover M&Ms a couple of hours before one is supposed to have committed suicide (after a leisurely lunch spent reading the newspaper) is that strong an indication that a suicide did not occur, he does believe that casual conversation volunteered about leftover M&Ms constitutes slight evidence that VWF did not leave the WH with the intention of killing himself that afternoon. The author claims no psychological or psychiatric training of any sort. However, to this layman, VWF as he left the WH, considering the information in the record about the prior week or two, just does not look like a fellow hell-bent on killing himself that Tuesday afternoon.
There is some question whether the letter to his mother (see the Comment, "VWF Sends A Letter To His Mother" above) was mailed on the morning of the 19th or the morning of the 20th. Since the Fiske Report states that it was mailed on the 19th, it is discussed in this report under that date.
VWF told Tripp, "I'll be back," just as he had when he had left the office for an hour that same morning between 1030 and 1130 [201,1449,2130].
This time he did not come back.
According to Gorham's FBI interview, "Foster had never left in the middle of the day before ." There was nothing unusual in his demeanor and he did not seem distressed . When he left his office shortly after 1300, he was not carrying anything with him (he was not carrying a briefcase, per Tripp, just his suit jacket) .
The author believes that it is reasonable to think that VWF's behavior around lunch time indicated that he had some sort of appointment outside the WH shortly after 1300. Was he on a "time-line" with a limited cushion in it? Hence his concern that Tripp not take too long bringing him his lunch.
However, since there actually had been little delay in obtaining his lunch, VWF had ample time to eat his medium-rare cheeseburger with fries and drink his Coke at his couch while working his way through the newspaper .
He was concerned enough, in light of his schedule that afternoon (killing himself?), about the onions on his cheeseburger to remove them , leaving only the onions and a few M&Ms behind on his tray.
Anything is possible, but one might wonder why thoughts of his impending suicide did not interfere with eating his entire medium-rare cheeseburger, reading his newspaper, or deciding whether he wanted onions on his burger that day . The author concedes there is some evidence that VWF removed the onions because he simply did not like onions. But, who cares about the damn onions, anyway? The FBI.
Some days after Tripp wondered to the FBI why VWF bothered to remove the onions from his cheeseburger (she, like the author, had thought it singularly unusual that VWF would have concerned himself with the onions on his cheeseburger shortly before he left the WH to commit suicide and had told the FBI her opinion) , the FBI elicited from Gorham that VWF always removed onions from his cheeseburgers . The FBI cared enough about the onions to ask a follow-up question to another interviewee.
The record shows no evidence how VWF filled the roughly five hours between departing the WH and the discovery of his body by CW in FMP just before 1800 (other than that he was presumably in transit and at FMP (dead, alive, or both) for some portion of the five hours).
Phone Calls VWF Missed At the WH on July 20th And The Relevancy Of His Pager
In addition to calls to VWF from Brantley Buck [see under Blind Trusts] and James Lyons [see James Lyons' Trip to DC] that did not reach VWF because he had already left the White House, Gordon Rather, a Little Rock Attorney at Bruce Lindsey's (and WJC's) old firm, happened to call VWF [202, 1733, 1449] concerning what Rather's FBI interview describes as a completely routine matter involving the business of the American Board of Trial Advocates. He too, failed to connect.
Maggie Williams, HRC's Chief of Staff, and William Kennedy also tried to reach VWF after he left the WH just after 1300 . Maggie Williams also tried to reach VWF at about 1820. She called the WH OLC for him and had Betsy Pond page him at that time. Since the body was first found per the record at 1814:32 had the pager been turned on, it would have gone off as USPP Officer Fornshill and the first two FCFRD EMS personnel were attending to the body.
Were records from his pager ever examined to determine if he was paged because he missed any of these calls (he had his WHCA Motorola Bravo pager, #052943 [438,2185] clipped to his waist), either before or after the body was found?
The official Reports are quite clear that the pager had been turned off when USPP Investigator Rolla reached the body about 1845. Do pager records reveal only pages that connect or do they also reveal unsuccessful attempts? The author would expect that only connections, not attempts, are preserved in the communications companies' records, but he does not know.
VWF's Last Official White House Contact, The Uniformed USSS Guard at Post E-4
The last WH person officially to see VWF alive was Officer Skyles, a uniformed USSS officer who was at the guard post in the west lobby (referred to as "E-4" [sic]) . He remembered seeing VWF leave the west wing of the WH through E-4 sometime "about lunch time" on July 20th.
According to the Skyles FBI interview, "He distinctly recalled that Foster did not appear to be at all depressed or preoccupied as he walked by. He said he was therefore quite surprised to learn that Foster had committed suicide ." This, from the last person in the WH compound who officially saw VWF alive.
VWF normally parked his car in slot 16 on Executive Boulevard West when he was at the WH , a short stroll from E-4.
There are no reports in the record of anyone employed by the WH having seen VWF after Skyles did. The author does not remember the WH compound well enough to say what other checkpoints or gates, if any, lay between Guard Post E-4 and VWF's Honda, presumably parked, as usual, in Slot 16, Executive Boulevard West.
July 20, 1993: FMP (Including USPP Excursions & Some Lab Results)
The General Environmental Conditions At FMP That Day
Tuesday, July 20, 1993, was a clear day with afternoon temperatures in the high nineties . There had been no significant rain for several weeks . The trees and bushes at FMP were, of course, fully leafed-out and visibility was much lower than in the winter and early spring months for that reason. The sun set that evening around 2030.
Witnesses See A Car Similar To VWF's Honda Turn Into FMP
A motorist traveling northwest on the GWMP saw a Japanese car, occupied by a lone white male, swerve into Fort Marcy Park between 1445 and 1500 on the afternoon of July 20th [202,1528,2145], cutting sharply from the left lane across the right lane and taking the FMP exit off the GWMP. The witness thought the car's license plate might have been an AR plate, but there is some uncertainty on that score .
Another man drove into the FMP Parking lot between 1615 and 1630 in a Thrifty Rental Vehicle and noticed an unoccupied brown Japanese made car with AR license plates parked in the lot, but when he was later showed photographs of VWF's Honda, he thought the car in the parking lot was somewhat smaller and darker in color, according to his FBI interview [203,1525,1631].
Interestingly enough, no physical description of the Thrifty Rental vehicle appears in the record, making it unnecessarily difficult to reconcile witnesses' descriptions of various cars in and near the FMP parking lot. This was a needless omission in the record since the Thrifty Rental driver could obviously have given a description of his own vehicle to his FBI interviewer. Presumably, the vehicle he saw was VWF's Honda, unless for some reason, another auto with AR plates was in the parking lot that afternoon.
The vehicle he described was parked in one of the first spaces on the left-hand side of the lot [the location in which VWF's Honda was found by the USPP] and had a man's suit jacket folded over [not "on"] the passenger seat (as did VWF's Honda) . See the Comment immediately following the Table of Civilian Vehicles in the FMP parking lot and their estimated arrival and departure times [Appendix V].
The Discovery of VWF's Body By The Confidential Witness
VWF's body was discovered in FMP at about 1745 by CW, a male witness who knew the park well and who requested that his identity be kept confidential. In contrast to the detailed personal identity data on many other witnesses casually revealed in the record, CW is not named or otherwise indirectly specifically identified therein. CW described a light-colored Japanese make car parked in the second or third slot on the left as he drove into the parking lot from the GWMP in his construction van [see Map V (R)].
In an FBI interview, CW described VWF's car as a "light tan or light brown Japanese vehicle ." The only other car in the lot was described by CW as a white Honda Accord parked near the rear (far end as one drives in) of the lot . The former [sic] car was apparently VWF's Honda and the latter was apparently the white Nissan with MD plates, according to the consensus in the official Reports.
CW said he turned into FMP off the GWMP because he had been drinking a lot of coffee and he badly needed to urinate. Having seen the two vehicles in the parking lot, he decided to walk some 750 feet to the northwestern corner of the earth-walled Fort, to a spot near the so-called second cannon to ensure his privacy.
This explanation for his long stroll from the parking lot is difficult to believe if CW were truly in extremis from having drunk a lot of coffee!
While standing on the top of the northern end of the western berm of the Fort and some 15-20 feet to the right (e.g., to the north) of the second cannon [see Map V (R)], CW noticed what he soon determined was a body below and to his left, the head just visible (thanks to CW's elevated position at the top of the berm) over the top of the earthen berm in front of the second cannon [205,2663].
The berm is sloped roughly 45 degrees (shallower in parts) and is some 20-25 feet in length . VWF was lying on his back on the western slope of the western berm, very neatly laid out, with his arms straight down at his sides and with both palms up , according to CW.
The body was bloating, there were "traces" of dried blood around the nostrils and mouth, and flies were crawling over those parts of the body [1461,1517], but CW did not recall seeing any blood or traces of dried blood running down the left or right side of the face , nor did he observe any blood or dried blood on the shirt.
This description contrasts sharply with the statements of the first officials to reach the body, which in turn do not jibe with the photos taken of the deceased's face taken at the death scene (see Comments below).
CW Sees Very Little Blood, And What He Does See Has Completely Dried
In a deposition, CW stated, "I saw blood traces on his nose and around his lips. There was not streams of blood on the side of his face. There was not trickles of blood as indicated in the [Fiske] report. . . I didn't see any signs of a gunshot on his shirt or clothes. . . There was no gun in his hand. His -- both palms were face up, thumbs out to the side ."
As to the small amount of blood that was seen by CW, "The blood was dried hard and black ." A bit later in his deposition, in response to a question, CW confirmed that what little blood he did see (on the nostrils and lips) was "hard and black ."
Later witnesses in general not only saw more blood, but the blood they did see was not as dry and hard like that described by CW.
Although the EMS and USPP personnel in the park who arrived at the body roughly 25 minutes after CW were generally surprised at the lack of blood coming from VWF's wound, given he had been shot in the mouth point blank with a Colt Army .38 Special (see Comment below), it is clear that CW saw even less blood on VWF's face and upper torso than did the first few EMS and USPP personnel to come upon the body.
A possible explanation for these two related observations (the greater amount of blood seen later on (whether that blood was dry or not) and that less blood in general was seen than expected) would be: 1) the body was shifted in place or even moved bodily after CW saw it, causing more (and fresher) blood to appear and 2) for some reason the .38 Special that was found with the body did much less damage than would normally have been expected from a point blank shot to the mouth from that particular weapon and cartridge combination.
The only medical doctor to examine the body in place thought the wound to VWF's head was caused by a "low velocity weapon (see the sub-heading, "More On The Nature Of VWF's Head Wound" below). The official record rejects the first possibility described above and simply ignores the doctor's statement. Why?
The Fiske Report Versus CW: The Gun and The Position of VWF's Palms
The right shoulder of VWF's shirt had a light purple-colored stain on it and there was a wine cooler bottle a couple of feet away from the body on the right, according to CW. CW did not see a gun in either of VWF's hands. According to one interview, "Witness was emphatic, saying he had spent several minutes observing the body closely and there was absolutely no firearm there ." CW confirmed the lack of a firearm multiple times in this interview.
However, the Fiske Report records that CW said "There could have been a gun in the man's [VWF's] hand that he [CW] did not see ."
The "could have been" wording in the Fiske Report is based upon numerous FBI attempts to have CW concede he might possibly have missed seeing the gun since it was largely covered by the right hand. CW agreed that was conceivably possible, though he did not understand how this could be so, and therefore asked the FBI to show him its photo of the gun hand to illustrate what the FBI had in mind. The FBI refused to do so despite several requests by CW .
The Fiske Report quotation and CW's own statements are thus in conflict as to whether CW thought there could have been a gun in VWF's right hand that, for whatever reason, CW did not see. CW is quite clear that he saw no gun.
How Sure Was CW That There Was No Gun And That VWF's Palms Were Up?
To understand why this is an important issue, see a black and white photocopy of the image of a color photo leaked to ABC News in Appendix III. The picture shows the gun with the gun hand palm down and the gun partially underneath the hand, but clearly visible. The gun is even more distinct in the original color image.
During a subsequent deposition, when CW was handed this photo of the hand with the gun in it for the first time [the FBI having refused to show it to him during its prior interrogations], CW said, describing what his reaction would have been if the FBI had originally shown the photo to him, ". . . I would have probably been -- know I would have been screaming. . . . That is not a picture of what I saw. The man's palms were straight up. . . The man's hands were against his leg ."
Q: "How sure are you that the palms were up?" A: "As sure as I am standing right here. I am absolutely and totally unequivocally, the palms were up. I looked at both palms. There was nothing in his hands. I didn't look at one and assume the other. I looked at both of them ."
The author interprets these comments to mean that CW's belief that the palms were up and there was no gun are strongly held! This question will be revisited herein once the USPP and FCFRD personnel appear on the scene. What CW saw will be then be contrasted to what the officials' reports say they saw.
The Fiske Report and CW's deposition [this one taken on July 28, 1994, after the Fiske Report was issued and in response to its contents] are thus in conflict as to whether CW thought there could have been a gun in VWF's right hand that, for whatever reason, CW did not see. How can this discrepancy be explained?
According to CW's deposition, the FBI ". . .led me to believe that the hands were up [CW agreed with that] and the gun was concealed on the other side ." However, the FBI would not show CW the picture of the gun in VWF's right hand at FMP (the photo showed the right hand palm down, hence CW's comment above that he would have been screaming. . . if the FBI had showed him the picture [see Appendix III] during the numerous occasions the interviewers attempted to get CW to agree it was conceivable he missed seeing the gun).
CW Sees The Path Is Trampled Beginning Immediately Down Slope From VWF's Body
CW stated he never touched the body . CW also told the FBI that VWF's were palm up . What else did he tell the FBI? CW said that the foliage below the body had been "trampled down as if the individual might have been walking or pacing in that area ."
But not only was the berm the body was lying on trampled directly immediately down slope from the body. According to CW:
Below this man's feet all the way down into the bottom of the ditch, approximately ten feet or better up the berm on the other side, over the hill to the walking trail everything had been trampled completely flat like the man had walked back and forth at least a dozen times or better. It was at least 24, maybe 30 inches wide that everything was trampled completely flat. Every twig, every leaf .
Could this trampling have represented evidence of the "passage" of a dead or unconscious VWF down the shallow grade opposite the berm, then up the berm itself? Only two significant berms remain at FMP, the southern and western berms of the fort.
This possibility was not explored by the Reports, despite evidence that there were people at FMP that afternoon "working on the trails" at the time the FCFRD and USPP officials responded to the 911 calls, individuals who were never interrogated or even specifically identified. There was a general reason for doing so: they were in the park around the time USPP Fornshill reached the body. More specifically: they might have been able to shed some light why the trail down the berm and up the adjacent slope from the body had the appearance of having been recently disturbed (the "volunteers" were working on the FMP trails, after all). Could some of these "volunteers" have done the "trampling" seen by CW?
For reasons unknown, none of CW's comments about the trampled vegetation below the body and up the opposite slope was included in the Fiske Report. This is an example of the Fiske's Report's selectivity that is apparent when the Fiske Report itself is contrasted with the raw data in the underlying witness statements.
"All the evidence that fits is printed?" "When the data contradicts what we want to say, we say it anyway?" Remember the weight loss issue? [Apologies -- the author had a weak moment there.]
In his deposition, CW had something to say about the omission by the Fiske Report of CW's statements about the trampled trail below the body: "The agents had known about this and known about this. Nothing in that report [the Fiske Report]. I don't know. I don't know. Did it disappear or what happened ?"
CW was asked to confirm that he told the FBI agents assigned to the Fiske OIC about the trampling when they interviewed him on several occasions. "Oh, I told them numerous times . . . A minimum of three. Once here and twice at the site with them."
However, USPP Investigator Rolla volunteered in his deposition when he was asked if he had seen any signs that the body had been dragged to the site from the parking lot: "There's not any. . . heavy trampling around the body ." Rolla and CW clearly disagree. The Fiske Report apparently decided to concur with Rolla since the trampling is not even mentioned in the Report. There is other evidence in this report that the body was moved bodily (or at least shifted in place) between the time CW first saw it and its discovery by USPP Fornshill. Though not absolutely conclusive, the Fiske Report ignored all witness statements or lab report data that suggested the body was moved.
CW Did Not See The Body Immediately When He First Stood Near It
CW did not know the object he had noticed on the berm slope was actually a human body until after he had finished urinating, walked over to it, and determined exactly what it was. He then stared at the body for two or three minutes from a position leaning directly over it as he stood just up-slope of the head. As he had started to go back to his van, he had seen what he thought was a bit of trash near the top of the berm to his left, crossed over to see what it was, and found the body. It was only then that he realized what he had seen .
Thus, if other persons just happened to have been in the vicinity of the body when CW first appeared, off to the north on top of the western berm, they would have had a number of seconds to conceal themselves from CW (in plain view as he was, standing on top of the berm, some 15-20 feet to the north of the cannon, taking care of business (probably looking down, as it were!), the dense vegetation shielding anyone further down the berm and to his left from his view), before he ambled over to ascertain just what it was that he had noticed on the berm slope.
CW Returns To His Van In The FMP Parking Lot And Drives Away
CW passed the Honda in the FMP parking lot on his return from the body site. He saw a gray suit jacket that matched the suit pants on the body tossed over the back of the front passenger seat . CW, as do some others who saw the Honda early on at FMP, states that the jacket was not on the front passenger seat, but was hanging from (or over) the back of the passenger seat [1511, 1515].
CW believes he saw a briefcase on the passenger floor of the Honda [1463,1518], but he is certain there was a wine cooler four-pack on the passenger seat floor [R11,2666].
The question whether VWF's Honda contained a now-unaccounted-for briefcase will be returned to later in this report.
There is some question whether CW confused the White Nissan (the other civilian vehicle officially in the lot at the time) with the Honda. The male half of the couple that drove to FMP in the Nissan stated that to the best of his recollection there was a bottle of beer and a wine cooler bottle in the Nissan and a high probability that he had left his blue blazer on the back seat of the Nissan. His briefcase was likely on the rear seat of the Nissan, he said.
Regarding whether the suit jacket he saw was in VWF's Honda (as opposed to the Nissan with MD plates), CW stated in a deposition "I thought sure that was his [VWF's] car since the jacket was so similar to the pants he had on ." Asked if he was sure the jacket matched the pants, CW replied "Exactly." [Per the Clinger Report (pg. 5) there was no jacket in the other civilian vehicle.]
The color, placement, and style of the jacket, the fact that CW identified the vehicle as a Honda, the fact that CW says he saw a wine cooler four-pack on the passenger seat floor (as opposed to a wine cooler bottle and a beer bottle somewhere else in the vehicle), and the fact that CW believed the briefcase was on the floor of the front passenger seat, not the rear seat, all reinforce the likelihood that CW was indeed describing VWF's car.
The female driver of the Nissan confirmed her male companion's statement to the FBI that any wine coolers in her car were not in a four-pack or a six pack, but loose . Whether CW was describing the Honda or the Nissan is, however, not entirely free from doubt .
Note that the FBI interview with CW has him going into the fort itself via the path at the far end of the lot (the northerly end, near the white Nissan) and returning via the same route [1518; see also 1610], whereas Liddy's FBI interview has CW returning to his van via a separate route . It is not known from the record whether these two "routes" refer to the two ends of the path that arcs from one end of the north side of the lot to the other [see Map V (R)] or to two totally separate routes to and from the body.
There are no paths that lead to the body from the parking lot. The "trail" or "path" that was under or near the body to which many witnesses at FMP referred is a short pathway down the western berm headed away from the barrel of the second cannon (headed west) and extending perhaps few yards up the much shallower opposite slope before quickly fading away in the woods.
The path near the parking lot forms a semi-circle (each "end" starting at a different "end" of the parking lot) just to the northwest of the parking lot. There is no path encountered when one enters the first open grassy area in the center of the old fort [observation of author June 1995 and confirmed by the configuration of this path on aerial imagery flown on April 7, 1993; see Map V (R).
CW had parked his construction van between the two other vehicles in the parking lot (The Honda and the Nissan. There is only one row of slots, on the left as one drives into the lot, with spaces for 21 vehicles). As he faced the northwest, standing by his van, the path entering the northern half of the park (where the earthen-walled fort itself is located) on his left would have taken him past VWF's Honda and the path entering the northern half of the park on his right would have taken him past the Nissan.
On the return to his van from the body site near the second cannon, CW says he passed by the vehicle at the end of the lot (which CW termed a Honda but, if at the northern end of the lot, was the Nissan). CW had gone into the fort via a different route. It is possible that CW passed VWF's car one time, the Nissan the other time, and confused the two vehicles and their contents. CW apparently traced his route in the park to and from the body on a sketch map he gave to talk show personality G. Gordon Liddy that is not part of the record. Access to the map of the routes taken by CW might clear up this ambiguity [1460-1463].
Why Did CW Wait Until March Of 1994 To Come Forward?
CW was interviewed by G. Gordon Liddy, the radio show talk personality, on March 22, 1994 , after deciding to contact Liddy and insisting his identity be kept secret. CW decided to come forward because the stories he had been reading in the press (that CW had assumed were true) about the discovery of VWF's body were "not right" .
In the words of Liddy's interview with the FBI, CW expressed to Liddy "a fear of some type of retaliation if his identity is surfaced, based primarily on observations that neither of Mr. Foster's hands held a gun at the time and location of his sighting by this witness ."
CW's concern about the body's location is unexpected and remains unexplained to this day since the Fiske Report, issued some eleven months after the death of VWF, and three months after CW first came forward, concluded that the body was clearly at the location described by CW. Did CW make a mistake about one of the reasons why he should be afraid? CW was never asked to clarify this point. What is the implication if CW was not mistaken in his reasoning that the location he reported for the body could cause severe problems for him?
CW told the FBI that one specific reason he came forward when he did was that he had recently read and heard reports in the media that the two Park Service maintenance employees whom he asked to call 911 from the US Park Service's Turkey Run maintenance yard (see the sub-heading, "The 911 Calls" below) had retracted their story about the "man in the white van" (CW) [1519,2663-2664], and were now claiming they were the ones who had found the body. CW was concerned that something very persuasive had caused these two civil servants to alter their previous statements about CW, his white van, and the provenance of the 911 calls.
If it is assumed that these press reports were indeed accurate, what motivated these two workers to change their story and deny that CW and his van ever existed, saying instead that they had found the body? Why were these individuals never questioned about the truth of these news accounts? Whether the news accounts were true or not, they had the effect of causing CW to come forward since he believed them.
Statement Of The Lady Who Drove Her White Nissan With Maryland Plates To FMP
This individual was the female half of a couple that was first interviewed at FMP by USPP Officer Spetz and then by two USPP Investigators. Spetz passed the basic information to Investigator Braun when Braun arrived at FMP with Investigators Rolla and Apt [498,522]. This couple were the only civilians interviewed at the scene the day of VWF's death and the occupants of the only car (that is, excepting VWF's Honda) that was officially in the parking lot when the first wave of USPP officers and FCFRD personnel arrived about 1811. Braun didn't think this couple was able to provide much information , but that was not the case. Readers should evaluate carefully what these witnesses said and decide whether they did not provide "much information."
This female witness to the "traffic" in the FMP parking lot and her male companion drove to FMP in her Nissan, arriving at 1715 plus or minus fifteen minutes (depending on whether the male's or the female's estimate of the arrival time is used) . She told the FBI that the only vehicle in the lot when they arrived was
A relatively old (mid-1980s) Honda, possibly a Honda Accord, either tan or dark in color, parked close to the entry of the parking lot, adjacent to a path leading to the northern section of the park. [She] believed this particular Honda was parked with the front of the vehicle facing the park area [meaning the fort itself] and to the best of her recollection believes a white male was seated in the driver's seat of this particular vehicle. . . she believed the occupant had dark hair and could have been bare-chested .
Based on this detailed description and the fact that the official Reports indicate there were only two vehicles in the parking lot when the EMS vehicles arrived at 1810, it is quite likely that this witness is describing VWF's Honda. It is extremely unlikely that the individual she described was VWF.
What is going on in the Fort Marcy parking lot about a half hour before CW discovered VWF's body, where is VWF, and who is sitting in his Honda?
The male companion of the Nissan driver also noticed just one other vehicle in the lot around 1725 (which he described as "a small station wagon or hatchback, brown in color" [words of his FBI interview]: "The hood of the vehicle was up and a white male was standing in the vicinity of the vehicle. He described the white male as in his mid- to late-40's, approximately six feet in height, medium build, long blond hair and beard, appeared unclean and unkempt."
After he and his female companion had sat in her Nissan for about 15 minutes , during which time they saw the two described individuals in and near VWF's Honda, they left the Nissan and took a path leading southeasterly from the northern end of the parking lot. The brown or tan car was still parked in the same place at the time they started on their walk (at 1730 plus or minus fifteen minutes, depending on whether the female's or the male's estimate of their arrival time in the FMP parking lot is used). Where is VWF and who are these people fooling around with his car? The Reports do not say. Nor do they even comment on these unsavory-looking individuals.
That is not quite true. There is an indirect official comment regarding these two individuals. The Fiske Report states: [Referring to the couple who drove to FMP in the Nissan] "Neither individual heard a gunshot while in the park or saw anything unusual." The author believes the two people in and around VWF's Honda should count as something "unusual." The USPP Report reads as if these individuals were not associated with VWF's Honda, but with other vehicle(s) that came and left while the Nissan couple were in the parking lot. [However, Fiske had access to the FBI interview of the female Nissan owner in which she "corrected" what had been written down when she was interviewed by the USPP at Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993.]
It is also noteworthy that, when the FBI showed the female witness a copy of her interview with the USPP, she stated to the FBI that she is positive her comments in that interview report concerning a light-colored older model car pulling in next to the Honda were not true . She confirmed there was no vehicle between her vehicle and the Honda except an unrelated white van or truck (see Table of Civilian Vehicles in Appendix V) whose occupant stopped to dump trash and left soon after.
The reader is also reminded of Investigator Braun's statement (at the beginning of this Comment) that this couple was not able to provide much information. They certainly did not provide much information that became part of the official Reports!
[Did her USPP interviewers (there were at least three: Spetz, Braun, and Hodakievic; see above in this sub-heading) record the female Nissan owner's statement incorrectly in the confusion?]
Based on the times stated, man who drove this white van into the park (the man who emptied trash into one of the barrels on the northwest side of the parking lot) does not appear to have been CW, but there is some uncertainty on this point. CW never mentioned emptying trash to anyone when he was interrogated, nor was he asked that question See Appendix V.
This female Nissan owner's male companion, while seated south of the parking lot, saw a jogger running from the southeastern half of FMP toward the parking lot . The jogger was an older man with graying hair, a thin build, and wearing shorts. If an official search was ever made for this jogger, evidence of it does not appear in the record. This individual was running toward the northwest from an area southeast of the FMP parking lot shortly after 1800 (VWF's body was found by USPP Fornshill at 1814:32 on the northwest side of FMP).
This jogger could easily have been a critical witness: shortly before CW finds the body, this person was jogging along, headed northwesterly in the general direction of the spot where CW saw the body. Was this jogger ever sought through advertising? Did anyone at FMP know who he was? Is he still jogging this route most days after work around 1800? Have and investigators checked?
The female Nissan owner, while she was sitting in the park south of the parking lot with her male companion, remembered a white male, 6 foot tall with dark brown hair who appeared to be in his late 20s to early 30s walking toward the parking lot. He might have been big and burly and wearing blue jeans [1471,1472].
It is not clear who this person in FMP was. Perhaps it was the "jogger" described above by the Nissan driver's male companion, but that seems unlikely based on the male companion's description of the jogger. The person seen by the female witness appeared quite close to the time CW first observed VWF's body, but the description does not match CW well either, who is a white male, 45-48, 210-215 pounds, stocky build, 5'-7" to 5'-8", with light brown hair worn short . This person would have made an ideal witness, just like the jogger. There is no evidence in the record that he was ever interviewed or sought out.
In the words of the Fiske Report : "Everyone known to have been in Fort Marcy Park on the afternoon or evening of July 20, 1993, also was questioned."
This statement is relatively unqualified ("known to have been") and is demonstrably not true. There were many people known to have been at FMP that afternoon who were observed by government and civilian witnesses who were never questioned. At the least, the Fiske Report statement gives an unmerited impression of thoroughness, a thoroughness that does not exist.
CW never entered the southeastern side of the park according to his statements. If he did not, he could not have been seen on the southeastern side of the park headed northwest toward the parking lot. See the Comments below concerning the evidence that "others" were also in FMP at this time.
CW told the FBI he stopped to take his shirt off before commencing his walk in the park [another indication he, and in particular, his bladder, was not in extremis, in addition to his apparent willingness to roam over 750 feet to find a private spot at which to urinate], but the couple in the Nissan were away from the lot on the south side of FMP when CW drove into the parking lot somewhere between 1730 and 1745 [1515, 1470, 1474].
Remember that the driver of the Nissan stated that the occupant of VWF's Honda "could have been bare chested." However, CW clearly does not match the descriptions of the drivers of the other vehicles this couple saw in the parking lot that afternoon [1471,1474-1475].
It is quite possible that CW arrived, emptied his bladder near the second cannon, spotted and observed VWF's body, and left, all unseen by the Nissan couple since they were sitting on the southeastern side FMP during the time CW indicates his van was present in the parking lot.
The 911 Calls
After returning from the body site to the lot (viewing VWF's Honda and the white Nissan with MD plates in the lot on the way as described above), CW drove his white van from FMP some two-and-a-half miles northwest on the GWMP to Parkway Headquarters' Turkey Run maintenance yard where he asked two Park Service maintenance workers to call 911 and report the body. CW did not give his name, nor did the workers record his license plate number. CW wanted to remain anonymous from the beginning (for the reasons described previously).
The younger maintenance worker made two 911 calls, one to Fairfax County at 1759:59 that ended at 1804:01 and another to the USPP at 1803:30 . Fairfax County itself also made a short call to the USPP in response to the 911 call it had received from the maintenance worker because FMP, a Federal Park, was also part of the USPP's jurisdiction.
[The fact that the call to Fairfax County by the maintenance worker apparently did not end until 31 seconds after he placed his call to the USPP can likely be attributed to slightly different clock times used by the two agencies that day.]
The FCFRD And A USPP Officer Arrive At FMP And Begin The Search For The Body
Fairfax County Emergency Medical Services units (part of the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department) and a USPP officer were immediately dispatched to FMP, with the three vehicles (FCFRD's E01 and M01, plus Unit 261, the USPP vehicle) arriving in the parking lot from 1810 to 1812 . Computer time records are available for the EMS vehicles . The fire engine (E01) dispatched with the EMS vehicle (M01) pulled into the parking lot in FMP at 1809:58 and the EMS vehicle followed 18 seconds later. The author assumes that the FCFRD computer-driven times are accurate.
Per a USPP communications record memo in the record that provides precise times, USPP Officer Kevin Fornshill, arrived one minute and fifty-two seconds behind E01 , and the six FCFRD workers on E01 and M01 . These seven individuals constituted the first official presence at FMP among those who responded to the 911 calls. E01 contained Pisani, Iacone, and Wacha. M01 contained Hall, Gonzalez, and Arthur.
Per the official Reports, USPP Officer Fornshill was the first official to find the body (in the same location and general position described by CW).
FCFRD Pisani stated there were no police on the scene when E01 arrived , although Fornshill arrived only about two minutes later and joined the northern search team consisting of EMS Gonzalez, EMS Hall, and Fornshill. According to EMS Arthur, the first USPP officer arrived while he and other EMS persons were searching FMP southeast of the parking lot [881,988], so maybe the southern search team left the lot a little ahead of the northern search team.
However, EMS Hall (one of the two EMS personnel to reach the body immediately after Fornshill and a member of the northern search team) told the FBI in his interview that some USPP officers [plural] were already in the parking lot when the Fairfax County EMS workers arrived .
FCFRD Iacone thought the first US Park Police officers arrived on the scene 5-10 minutes after the body had been found [1357-1358]. Presumably these would either have been USPP Ferstl, USPP Spetz or USPP Gavin (see Appendix IV) since the record indicates that Fornshill arrived within two minutes of the initial FCFRD units on the scene [1045,1392].
Iacone, like Arthur, didn't see any USPP until he returned to the lot from the unsuccessful search to the south. Hall and Gonzalez would have then been with the body and Fornshill, if not still at the body site, would have been preparing to leave FMP shortly.
Perhaps the discrepancy regarding the presence or absence of Fornshill at the beginning of the search can be explained in the following way: the southern search team (consisting of all the FCFRD personnel except Gonzalez and Hall who searched the northern half of FMP) left the lot to search just before Fornshill arrived, and Fornshill, seeing Gonzalez and Hall headed northwest into the park to search, joined them since they were the only EMS personnel he saw.
This may not be correct since the natural split of the six EMS people would have been three to the north and three to the south. Furthermore, the view of the park from the parking area (personal observation of the author) would tend to cause more searchers to head northerly rather than southerly since there is more open space visible to the northwest.
Another complication: Fornshill stated that no one had begun searching for the body when he (Fornshill) arrived at FMP .
It remains unclear who the additional USPP officer(s) (in additional to Fornshill) seen by Hall were.
Were There Still More "Unaccounted-For" People And Vehicle(s) At FMP That Evening?
When Fornshill drove his cruiser (Unit 261) into the FMP parking lot, the FCFRD vehicles (E01 and M01) had just arrived . According to Fornshill, when he arrived at the lot , excluding his own vehicle and the two EMS vehicles, there were two to three cars at the far end of the lot [where, officially, only the white Nissan was parked] and a Honda parked closer to the entrance [this apparently was VWF's car]. Were there one or two "extra" vehicles in the FMP parking lot when the USPP and FCFRD first arrived, vehicle(s) that were ignored by the official Reports?
EMS Arthur said he remembered a red car with its hazard lights flashing as his unit, M01, entered FMP [1381,1563].
EMS Hall, in his deposition, also states that there were two or three [civilian] cars in the lot when the EMS units pulled in.
Thus a third witness, in addition to EMS Arthur and USPP Fornshill, indicated he thought there might have been at least one 'extra' car in the parking lot about 1809.
A little more about the "extra" car(s) is known. One of these "extra" vehicles had its engine running according to Hall . In his FBI interview, Hall described this vehicle as being a brown car in the lot but not parked in a space. Since it was in the lot and brown, it was apparently not the blue Mercedes broken down (hazard lights flashing) near the exit off the GWMP 550 feet away from the lot [see Map V (R) and Appendix V]. According to the official Reports, neither the Nissan or the Honda had their engines running.
Whose vehicle was this and what was it doing in the FMP parking lot? Considering statements made by the Nissan couple and by CW, did this vehicle arrive in the parking lot between 1800 and 1810, after CW has left FMP and while the Nissan couple were sitting out of sight on the southeastern side of FMP away from the parking lot?
Hall did not recall whether the "extra" car was still in the parking lot when the EMS personnel departed the park at about 1837. The vehicle had been unoccupied when he first saw it.
Jennifer Wacha of Fairfax County Fire and Rescue's EMS team arrived at the FMP parking lot in Engine 01 with Ralph Pisani and James Iacone, also of Fairfax EMS , 18 seconds ahead of M01 containing Gonzalez, Hall, and Arthur. USPP Fornshill arrived 94 seconds after MO1. Like EMS Hall, Wacha noticed a car in the parking lot with its engine running (she also noted that its hazard lights were on) .
A fourth witness (four out of a possible seven, so far) sees an "extra" car in the lot.
The identity of this vehicle is unknown since E01 was the first non-civilian vehicle to enter the parking lot and both other vehicles there were exhaustively described as being VWF's Honda and the White Nissan [2504-2505] with MD plates, with no indication that either of their engines was running or their hazard lights were on. Wacha also said she separately remembered VWF's car in the lot.
Iacone, who arrived on E01 with Wacha and Pisani is still another witness who believed there were three or four civilian automobiles in the lot when E01 arrived, that is one or two "extra" vehicles not accounted for in the official Reports .
The running total has now reached five witnesses out of a possible seven who saw at least one "extra" vehicle in the parking lot when the first officials reached the lot.
What about the remaining two officials who arrived in the FMP parking lot with the first group of seven (6 FCFRD and 1 USPP)? Pisani noticed VWF's Honda which he described as a light-colored four-door compact sedan with AR plates (observation as he rode into the lot). He did not remark on the Nissan (parked at the far end of the lot), but he did notice a "light-colored vehicle located "at the entrance." This might have been the broken-down Mercedes driven by the female lobbyist (see Appendix V) that was officially accounted for in the Reports.
However, Pisani's statement does not make it clear whether the "extra" vehicle he saw was "at the entrance to the lot" or "at the entrance to FMP" itself (that is, at the beginning of the exit ramp off the GWMP into FMP). If the latter, it could have been the broken-down Mercedes. However, the Mercedes' hazard light were flashing and Pisani did not notice such lights on the "light-colored car" he saw. The author counts Pisani as the sixth out of a possible seven witnesses who saw an "extra" vehicle (that is, a vehicle that "officially speaking" was not in the lot) that afternoon. However, Pisani is a "weak" member of this group at best.
Gonzalez, the last of the seven officials, said there were only two civilian vehicles in the lot when he arrived. He described VWF's Honda and the white Nissan accurately.
Thus, it certainly appears that there was at least one civilian vehicle in the parking lot more than the Reports place there. There is no more information on these one to two additional vehicles in the official record. The official Reports make no attempt to reconcile these witness statements with the Reports' conclusion that the Nissan and VWF's Honda were the only civilian vehicles in the parking lot.
USPP Investigator Cheryl Braun believed that the Honda and the Nissan were the only two civilian vehicles in the lot when she arrived with Investigator John Rolla at, she estimated 1830-1845.
The Fiske Report states that the Honda and the Nissan were the only vehicles in the lot when the FCFRD personnel and USPP Officer Fornshill arrived . Why did the Fiske Report ignore six witness accounts (of varying degrees of certainty and specificity) of at least one "extra" vehicle in the FMP parking lot when the first group of police and emergency personnel arrived?
Was There A Civilian At FMP at About 1812 Who Was Unknown To the Search Teams?
Iacone arrived in the FMP parking lot on E01 with Wacha and Pisani. He thought a civilian, name unknown, directed the northern search team (he was not a member, having gone with the southern team) to the location of VWF's body .
A civilian? If at least one 'extra' vehicle was in the lot per the prior Comment, could this civilian have been the operator of the "extra" vehicle? This report of a civilian who directed USPP Fornshill to the body is all the more interesting given the short time it took USPP Fornshill to locate the body after calling in on arrival at the FMP parking lot.
In an interview with the FBI [1157-1159], Hall stated that he might have seen a car on CBR instead of the (otherwise unaccounted for) person [sic] he mentioned in his deposition whom he saw near VWF's body. However, the foliage in the park was much thicker on the date of death (July 20, 1993) than when Hall was at FMP for his FBI interview (April 27, 1994), making it less likely (but possible) he saw all the way through to CBR from the body site.
One might be forgiven for wondering how a car driving either way on CBR might be confused with a person moving through the woods near the body site. The author has stood in this position at about the same time of year and time of day and cannot understand how a car (driving along CBR) could possibly be confused with a person moving through the woods near the body site close by the second cannon.
In the words of Hall's FBI interview, "During a cursory search of the area surrounding Foster's body, Hall thought he heard someone else in the woods. What sort of noise was it? A question he was not asked. He subsequently saw something red moving in the woods ."
Something red moving in the woods. Could he have seen one or more persons wearing those international red-orange traffic safety vests? Were the "volunteer" workers on the trails to whom USPP Fornshill referred (see the following Comment) wearing such safety vests? The USPP officers on the scene made no attempt to interview these individuals (assuming Hall did indeed see or hear one or more people).
Hall stated that Pisani and one other member of the FCFRD team (he did not name this individual) thought they saw two males getting dressed in a wooded area adjacent to the site (meaning the site where VWF's body was found) . These individuals were not interviewed either.
Perhaps the extra vehicle(s), if any actually were there, belonged to one of these two (or three?) persons. Was one of these individuals the 'civilian' that Iacone thought directed the northern search team to the body? Based on the raw evidence in the record, it surely looks as if there were some unaccounted-for people seen near VWF's body just after the FCFRD and USPP personnel arrived at FMP. This thread is not complete yet, however.
Remember the words of the Fiske Report : "Everyone known to have been in Fort Marcy Park on the afternoon or evening of July 20, 1993, also was questioned."
The "Volunteers" At FMP Mentioned By The First USPP Officer To See The Body
When asked if there were any other civilians (excluding the couple in the Nissan) in the park when he arrived, Fornshill stated in his deposition "I was told [By whom? No one asked Fornshill this critical question] later that some persons on, I think it was, they were doing some repair work on a trail, they were on the opposite end of the park. There is a nature hiking trail that I imagine they were doing some work on. . . They were volunteers [917-918]."
This is potentially a very important statement. Fornshill "was told" about these "volunteers" implying he did not also see them himself, although he nonetheless somehow was told they were volunteers working on the park trails. Did these individuals in fact have other duties that afternoon? They were "on the opposite end of the park" but Fornshill was never asked what "end" of the park [northwestern or southeastern] he was referring to. The earthen berm fort lies entirely northwest of the parking lot. VWF's body was officially found near the second cannon at the far northwest corner of the fort.
Numerous witnesses referred to in this report indicated the body was lying on a trail or path to the west of the second cannon (on the northwest side of FMP), for example, see Gonzalez' deposition , Gavin's FBI interview , and Pisani's statement . Dr. Haut, the Medical Examiner at the scene, also remembers the body lying on a "foot path' [1659,1661] and thought it peculiar that the body was located in the middle of a path. Arthur told the FBI that the body was lying near a path, but not on it, such that "if you were just walking the path you could miss it 1383]." Simonello stated that there was a path that led down [to the west] directly in front of the second cannon and that there was dense vegetation on both sides of the path .
CW also refers to the walking path near where he saw the body and the trampled-down area below the body. Since VWF's body was lying on a trail (indeed, a path that had been recently trampled according to CW's deposition cited above) one would think that volunteer trail workers would have made excellent interview subjects for the investigators at FMP that night. For reasons unknown, this statement of Fornshill's about the "volunteers" was never pursued in the Fiske Report (any more than the numerous other statements about unaccounted-for people near the body and extra cars in the parking lot were considered by the Reports). If any of these workers were interviewed, the interviews were redacted.
Other than the Park Police, the Fairfax County EMS personnel, and the two civilians who had driven into the parking lot well before any officials arrived (the male and female the Nissan with MD plates in the vehicle table), according to USPP Investigator Rolla's testimony there was no one else in the area when he arrived in the parking lot and proceeded to the body site . This is the official consensus of the Reports, exemplified by the USPP Case File and the Fiske Report.
There were never any FBI agents there at FMP nor any individuals that Rolla could not identify .
Remember that the Fiske Report states: "Everyone known to have been in Fort Marcy Park on the afternoon or evening of July 20, 1993, also was questioned .
One might ask how much stronger an indication of unaccounted-for persons and vehicles is required before that information is considered worth the space in the official Reports to even mention (if not analyze). The USPP does have its own SWAT team available if there is a need to deploy it .
The FCFRD Personnel Gather Around VWF's Honda In The FMP Parking Lot
When Iacone returned to the lot after his group of four FCFRD personnel had searched the south side of FMP, he noticed VWF's Honda, which he described as red or maroon in color with AR plates. Iacone and his crew all looked inside the Honda through the windows. Iacone told the FBI that he believes he and Hall tried to open the door of the Honda and found it locked . EMS Gonzalez had the impression when he checked out the Honda that is was also locked [1027-1028].
This contrasts with USPP information mentioned later in this report that the Honda was always unlocked at the parking lot, with its doors closed, until Rolla or Braun searched it. Since Rolla and Braun did not recover the Honda keys at FMP (see the sub-heading "VWF's Keys [Two Sets] Were Located At The Morgue Hours After He Died" below), if the Honda had been locked, it would have had to have been broken into before anyone could access its interior. An unlocked Honda takes care of that particular problem. Perhaps that is why the indications it was locked received short shrift in the Reports?
In EMS Hall's deposition, there is the following exchange about the Honda "Did you say that anyone tried to open the door while you were there?" A: "No, not by forcible entry, no." [The obvious follow-up question, at least in the author's mind, was not asked: Q: "So, are you saying you saw someone just open the door and go in?"] Q: "Did you know if the car was locked?" A: "I don't recall. I may have." [At this point, the official transcript states "(pause)"]. [Then] Q: "Tell me again what was the position of the head when you first saw the body?" [Clearly, a shift was made to a different line of questioning when Hall "paused."]
Most of the six EMS personnel surrounded the Honda before they left the parking lot. There was plenty of time for them to do so since the USPP officers were gathering their names and unit information for future use [However, strange as it seems, no FCFRD personnel were ever interviewed by the USPP during the its VWF death investigation]. Gonzalez thought someone among the group tried to open the car, but could not do so. "They were just trying [to get into the Honda] themselves. No one asked me, they just went ahead ."
Of course, if this effort to get inside the Honda was successful, then the interior of the Honda was accessed by the FCFRD personnel around 1830, much earlier than the time implicit and explicit in Rolla and Braun's various statements and in the Fiske Report (see the sub-heading, "The Official Search Of VWF's Honda Came Significantly Later Than 1830" below). If they did so, presumably they would have discovered VWF's WH ID in its official position on the front passenger seat.
If the effort was unsuccessful, then the car doors must have been locked, contradicting the official Reports (primarily derived from USPP sources) that the Honda was unlocked.
More On The Suit Jacket's Location
Iacone told the FBI he remembered Hall (the second EMS person to reach the body) remarking that there was a suit coat hanging [sic] inside the Honda.
There is a tendency for the earlier-arriving personnel to believe the suit jacket was hanging in the Honda or folded over the back of the front passenger seat. Later-arriving personnel tend to believe that the jacket was folded and resting on the seat itself as the Fiske Report concludes .
Pisani also remembers looking inside VWF's Honda (through the windows), seeing the suit jacket, and assuming it belonged to the dead man 1361].
Was There A Briefcase In VWF's Honda At FMP?
According to his deposition, Gonzalez also saw some sort of "paper attaché case" in VWF's Honda . In his FBI interview, however, this item was described as a black briefcase/attaché case 1048].
According to EMS Hall's deposition, he also thought he saw a briefcase in VWF's Honda . In his FBI interview he is more definite "Also contained in the car was a briefcase ." A fairly succinct statement. The car described was a four-door light blue sedan that also contained a suit jacket matching VWF's suit pants. VWF's Honda was a light gray (Lisa Foster also used the word "taupe") four-door Accord, so Hall's description matches the Honda pretty closely.
When he passed by the Honda on the way back to his cruiser, Fornshill stated in his deposition that he "possibly" saw a briefcase in the Honda. "It doesn't stick in my mind right now ."
There is an interesting exchange in Braun's deposition regarding her search of the Honda in which she volunteers that she was not looking for a briefcase in the Honda and, in any event, there was no briefcase in the vehicle .
CW also believed he saw a briefcase on the passenger floor of the Honda [1463,1518].
The witness who described the 1988-90 rusty brown Honda in the FMP parking lot (see Appendix V) also saw a briefcase in the vehicle.
At about 1300 , VWF left his office holding his suit jacket [The Fiske Report helpfully states he was not carrying a briefcase]. When VWF left his office shortly after 1300, he was not carrying anything with him (no briefcase, per Tripp, just his suit jacket) .
Was there a briefcase in VWF's Honda or not? Five witnesses indicate (with varying degrees of certainty and specificity, conceded) that there was. If so, what did it contain and why did it vanish? Despite the statements of many witnesses (generally speaking, not from the USPP, except for the "possible" sighting by Fornshill, the first USPP officer at the scene), the official Reports do not indicate that there was a briefcase in VWF's Honda. If present at FMP, could the contents of this briefcase be relevant to the presence of senior WH staff in VWF's WH office that very night who were apparently conducting a search of some sort?
Officials Assumed That VWF Killed Himself Even Before the Investigation Started.
USPP Officer Fornshill, the first official to find the body and call it in on his radio was asked about his radio call: Q: "And you said that it appeared to be a suicide based on what?" A: Based on the determination the person was dead ."
[Fornshill continues, trying to make a clarification: "Again, my assumption from the paramedic and that the gun was found in his hand, which is what the paramedic told me." Fornshill is clear throughout the record that he never saw the gun in VWF's hand. As the reader might expect, this topic will be turned to in detail below. Fornshill was the first official to discover the body, making his failure to see the gun, clearly visible in the photocopied picture in Appendix III, of great interest.]
Ferstl, the USPP officer whose beat that day included FMP, informed USPP Investigator Rolla upon Rolla's arrival in the FMP parking lot that a body had been found at the "second cannon," with a gun in the hand, an apparent suicide ." USPP Officer Julie Spetz and USPP Officer Ferstl were the second and third officers on the scene , arriving at about the same time in separate cars, both having departed from Glen Echo Station.
After confirming the person was dead, and having packed up the EMS equipment, Gonzalez returned to the parking lot and transmitted "Obvious. . . Suicide with gun " prior to departing the lot at about 1837.
The "suicide verdict" was thus reached very early by both the first USPP officer on scene and the lead EMS Sergeant Gonzalez , with the USPP evaluation being the more tentative one.
USPP Investigator Braun's deposition further reveals the mind set that prevailed from a time immediately after the body was found by Fornshill. (The news of his discovery was transmitted by Fornshill to the USPP communications center at 1814:32 (162 seconds after reaching the parking lot) when he requested that the Criminal Investigations Branch be sent to FMP ):
Q: "When did you first hear the word 'suicide' in Fort Marcy Park [522-523]?"
A: "When -- when we saw, I guess Sergeant Edwards." [The fourth or fifth USPP officer to arrive at the site; the fifth or fourth was Lt. Gavin, the USPP shift commander.]
Q: "Did he say he thought the death was by suicide?"
A: "I don't recall exactly how he did it, and he did show the pictures [sic] to it that he had snapped."
Q: "Was it your understanding that a determination had been made as to the cause of death?
A: "I think we [the USPP investigators] more made that determination. You know, like I said, when we first got the call it was for a dead body. Then I asked [Fornshill] if it was natural or of a suspicious nature. And I was told suspicious, so I had them close the gate.
Then once we [Rolla, Braun, and Apt, the three USPP Investigators] got there [at about 1835], maybe actually I do remember speaking to Lieutenant Gavin [the USPP shift commander who reached the body well before his own investigators], so maybe it was Lieutenant Gavin who might have -- it might have been Lieutenant Gavin then who actually initially explained what the scene was, because I had some knowledge of it when I went to speak with the couple [the ones in the MD Nissan] and ask them if they had heard anything or seen anything and ask them about other vehicles that were in the area. Yeah, I would say it was Lieutenant Gavin, actually."
Q: "Did Lieutenant Gavin mention anything about suicide?"
A: "I can't recall. I don't -- I don't recall if he did or not or if that was what we -- it seems to me that we had made that determination [that the death was a suicide] prior to going up and looking at the body."
The author hopes the reader will not think the hypothesis that the death was considered a suicide and investigated as such from the beginning is a "stretch" based on the evidence cited in this Comment! In fact, the team of investigators (three of them: Braun, Rolla, and Apt) were briefed by their shift commander and a sergeant in the parking lot, and the decision was made (before the investigators even saw the body!) to investigate the death as a suicide (subject, at best, only to the real-time discovery of evidence that blatantly indicated the death could not possibly have been a suicide). The failure to discover the Honda keys anywhere in the park constituted such evidence.
Note that neither Lt. Gavin nor Sergeant Edwards were ever interviewed or deposed concerning the briefing given Investigator Braun (and possibly also to Investigator Rolla).
Where Was VWF's Body Located At FMP?
Officially, VWF's body was just to the west of the second cannon with his head 14 feet 3 inches west of the axle of the second cannon , lying face up on the northern end of the western berm of the Fort itself, on the outer berm slope [see Map IV, Map V (R)]. The second cannon is located much closer to CBR than the "first" cannon .
USPP Officer Ferstl, whose "beat" included FMP, arrived at FMP at about 1830 [1628,2121], or slightly before that time, and was the second USPP officer on the scene after Fornshill.
According to the Fiske Report "One path from the parking lot leads up to two cannons dating from the Civil War ."
This is misleading.
Anyone visiting the park will note a semi-circular path arcing across the northwestern side of the parking lot, starting at both ends of the lot [see Map V (R)]. However, this path does not continue as one walks northwest and enters the first clearing within the Fort itself northwest of the parking lot [see Map V (R)].
There are no paths to guide anyone searching for a body near either one of the cannons, although there is a short trail that leads up the western berm in front of the barrel of the second cannon and some other trails in various states of repair within FMP (generally outside the perimeter of the Fort). The author bases these statements on his visits to FMP and on aerial imagery flown on April 7, 1993.
USPP Investigator Rolla provided one of the most detailed descriptions of the body's location "The hill, berm or embankment was dirt, there was [sic] other leaves and grass around him, but it wasn't like a pathway, it was too steep. You would break your neck walking down there, but yes, there was dirt, leaves, flies ."
Earlier in his deposition, Rolla gave another description of the location "I observed very thick foliage, trees, branches around him also. There was almost like a very steep embankment, it was dirt, but no grass or anything on it, but on the sides of it, and the bottom was broken branches, and like a gully [390-391]."
Although some allowance might be made for the alleged sifting of the soil by the FBI [222-223] in its search for the bullet, the steepness of the berm described by Rolla ("you could break you neck walking down there. . . the bottom was broken branches, and like a gully" and the lack of a true pathway corresponds more closely (in steepness, and considering the reference to a gully) to an area some yards west of the first cannon, at the western end of the southern berm and near the southern end of the western berm of the Fort where there are some steep narrow pathways leading down from the berms [see generally, Maps IV and V (R)].
Dr. Haut, the Fairfax County Medical Examiner who appeared at FMP about 1845 (see the Comment later) told the FBI the body was located about 150 yards from the parking lot . This is only about 60% of the over-the-ground distance from the parking lot to the official body site near the second cannon (some 775 feet).
However, this 150 yard estimate of Dr. Haut's jibes rather nicely with the distance from the parking lot to a specific area a few yards west of the first cannon: the over-the-ground distance from the parking lot to this area on the southern berm a few yards past the first cannon was estimated by the author from aerial imagery to be 470 feet before he read Dr. Haut's FBI statement.
The area along the southern berm several yards to the west of the first cannon is known as the location Reporter Chris Ruddy believes was the spot where the body was actually found based on his early 1994 interviews with numerous FCFRD and USPP personnel who were in the park that night [1118-1138; see Map V (R) where this approximate location is marked]. There is a shallow depression in this particular area at the top of the southern berm that Mr. Ruddy's work indicates is where VWF's body was recovered by the USPP and FCFRD personnel the evening of July 20, 1993.
[The first cannon was removed by the Park Service some months after VWF's death, but the permanent mounting peg for the cannon's "tail" is still in the park, per the author's observations in June 1995. The author's April 7, 1993, aerial imagery shows the first and second cannon with a resolution of several inches or somewhat less.]
Was Dr. Haut's estimate of 150 yards reasonably accurate? If so, the body, when viewed by Dr. Haut, was not in front of the barrel of the second cannon and reinforces the conclusion of Reporter Chris Ruddy. The author has some conjectures that could explain the discrepancies in the location of the body by the Fiske Report (and by CW) and the location of the body that Chris Ruddy believes is the correct one.
This conjecture is one of the ones specifically omitted from this report as too speculative (see the Introduction). Another report, another day. Note that the author is not branding Chris Ruddy's work as "speculative." The author is simply saying his own hypothesis that attempts to reconcile the location of the body in the Fiske Report (and as reported by CW) with the location suggested by Chris Ruddy is somewhat too speculative for inclusion here.
Rolla thought the GWMP ran north-south by FMP , but it in fact runs northwest-southeast [see Map V (R)]. Rolla testified that the body's feet were to the west and the head to the east, even though he (or Simonello -?- ) apparently made a drawing [2441?] that may show the body lying in a north-south direction . This matters since a body lying head to the north and feet to the south would be lying on the southern, not the western berm. If the body was actually found on the southern berm, the theory of the death put forth in the Fiske Report is in deep yogurt.
There also exists a "diagram of the death scene" that was drawn during the course of the USPP investigation, apparently a detailed drawing done by an ID Technician . If this drawing is present in the record, it is not obvious where it is located either.
Rolla believes he took a Polaroid of the second cannon at FMP, looking generally westerly from a position east of the second cannon . There is such a Polaroid in the Polaroid inventory , but the one listed was taken by Sergeant Edwards. A very poor reproduction that appears to be of this photo by Edwards appears in the record . What happened to the Polaroid that Rolla took? There will be a discussion below concerning numerous Polaroids taken by various USPP officers that went missing.
Simonello, who arrived at FMP at about 1830 , but after Rolla and Braun, agrees that the body was located at the second cannon as does EMS Gonzalez and essentially every one else in the park that night who claimed to be either knowledgeable enough or observant enough to express an opinion. The Fiske Report concurs: The body was found a few feet in front of (to the west of) the second cannon.
The USPP Locates The Body
When USPP Fornshill, the official who first found the body, located it, he advised his communications center by radio that he had come upon an apparent suicide and called out to the two emergency medical workers [EMS Gonzalez and EMS Hall] who had been searching the northern half of the park with him.
The USPP Officer Who Found The Body Leaves FMP After An Extremely Short Stay
Very shortly after finding the body, around 1820, Officer Fornshill was relieved by Officer Ferstl (the relief was approved by Sergeant Edwards, his supervisor, who was also on scene) [923-925], and Fornshill returned to the CIA where his duties were to constitute a uniformed presence at the exit gates during rush hour (it was apparently critical that he return to his CIA gate about 1835, well after peak traffic at this CIA gate).
According to Fornshill, he estimates he was relieved less than ten minutes after he originally arrived in the parking lot (in response to the 911 calls).
This is an incredibly short period of time in which to join the northern search team, coordinate the northern search effort, search the area thoroughly, especially the area around the first cannon [the searchers saw this cannon first since it is in plain view from the central area of the fort], find the body near the second cannon (over 750 feet from the parking lot), make sure the body was in fact dead in consultation with Gonzalez and Hall, be relieved by Ferstl after getting the approval of Sergeant Edwards, return 750 feet to the parking lot, observe the contents of VWF's Honda, and leave FMP. A busy "less than ten minutes ." As it turns out, Fornshill did other things as well.
This was a short stay for the officer who volunteered to respond to the 911 call regarding a body in FMP since the beat officer, Officer Ferstl, was temporarily occupied. In the author's opinion (and it is that and no more), along about 1800, the exit traffic at the CIA was winding down and, naturally enough, USPP Fornshill was ready for something more exciting than watching CIA day shift workers leave for home on a late hot July afternoon, so, when he heard the radio call about a body in the park, he volunteered to check it out. His radio request seeking permission to do so was approved, the "cop on the beat" being temporarily otherwise engaged, and Fornshill, having taken the initiative, "rolled" on the call.
Contrast this johnny-on-the-spot initiative with Officer Fornshill's stated desire to return to his gate at the CIA so quickly (even though he wouldn't have been able to get back to it until 1830-1835, hardly a peak time for exit traffic at the CIA).
While they were en route to FMP, the USPP Investigators (Rolla, Braun, and Apt) had Fornshill close the gate to the park at the exit on the GWMP after he found the body . He was still the only USPP officer on the scene per the record, although Ferstl, Spetz, Edwards, and Gavin were to arrive shortly.
As described above, USPP Fornshill spent less than ten minutes in total at FMP that day. Since he had to close the gate to FMP (down by the GWMP) in additional to his other activities within his stated time frame, the author wonders how he managed to close the gate and return to the body (to be relieved by USPP Ferstl with the approval of USPP Sergeant Edwards, according to Fornshill's evidence) on top of everything else.
The round trip distance-over-the-ground from the official body site to the gate down at the GWMP and back measured by the author (from aerial imagery) is about 2500 feet. Moving at four miles an hour (a brisk walk; the victim had been located and had been found to be dead, so there was no need to run), this round trip would alone require about seven of Fornshill's "less than ten minutes" in total at FMP.
USPP Officer Ferstl isolated the body site itself with crime scene tape immediately on seeing the body, but to do so he had to return to his police cruiser for the tape and Fornshill was still present at the body when he returned.
If Fornshill stayed at the body site while Ferstl made the 1400+ foot round trip to the parking lot and back with the crime scene tape, it appears all the more likely Fornshill could not have done all the things he did at FMP and left within the less than ten minute time period he stated. Did he do fewer things, did he stay longer than ten minutes, or did someone else assist him?
In this context, FCFRD Iacone's belief that an unknown civilian directed Fornshill and the rest of the northern search team (Gonzalez and Hall) to the body is of particular interest.
Is there any reason Fornshill would have to leave FMP so soon after he found the body [watching traffic dribble out of the CIA lot at 1835 does not sound like a convincing reason in the author's opinion, but there must have been a good reason. What was it?]
The searchers had no idea where the body was in FMP since they had no idea where the cannons were or even how many cannon there were. Nevertheless, the search was quite short.
The USPP Communications Memo Contained In The Record
A USPP communications memo indicates that Fornshill advised that he had arrived at the parking lot at 1811:50 . Fornshill's estimate that he was at FMP a total of less than ten minutes cannot be radically off since he had departed by the time USPP Investigators John Rolla and Cheryl Braun had arrived in the parking lot about 1835 [385,2123], or possibly five or ten minutes later, according to Investigator Braun's estimate.
Even though no one had any idea where the cannons were or how many there were and the park consists of a number of open spaces surrounded by trees with the body officially located at the extreme northwest side of the fort some 750 feet away from the parking lot, Fornshill called in at 1814:32 that the body had been found, 2 minutes and 42 seconds after he arrived in the parking lot .
Note that the communications memo in question was handwritten to Gavin, the shift commander, the night the body was found (and written in response to a request to provide Gavin with a record of the times of relevant USPP FMP radio calls and the subject of those calls), so the times therein should be quite accurate.
Even if no time is allowed to assemble the search team of three that searched the northern half of the park at a trot, and even if it is assumed that Fornshill called in on his radio the very second he spotted the body, 2 Minutes and 42 seconds is a very short search!
How was Fornshill able to find the body so quickly? Was FCFRD Iacone correct in his belief that a civilian directed USPP Fornshill to the body ? Who was this individual and why was his existence not considered or even mentioned in the official Reports, especially since there is ample other evidence that there were "unaccounted for" individuals in the park late that afternoon?
Fornshill's locating the body so quickly is as difficult for the author to comprehend as the laundry list of items above that USPP Fornshill accomplished at FMP in less than ten minutes. It is certainly true that one could trot directly to the second cannon from the parking lot in about 90 seconds if one headed right to it, but that was clearly not what he did, according to Fornshill's statements in the record.
The author stated in the Introduction that reasonable people will differ. In the interest of full disclosure, the person recognized in the acknowledgments as DCMB (familiar with the fort itself) did not think it particularly unusual that the body could have been found 2 minutes 42 seconds after Fornshill arrived in the parking lot. [DCMB is also more of an athlete, has longer legs, and is generally in better shape than the author, so those may be considerations as well.]
There were three individuals searching the northerly half of the park, after all. Key considerations are the time USPP Fornshill spent (if any) in the lot before departing with (or catching up to) Gonzalez and Hall, the time needed to "search thoroughly" in the vicinity of the first cannon, and for Fornshill to move (alone) to the vicinity of the second cannon and finally, the interval between seeing the body and making his radio call announcing its discovery.
Fornshill indicates he went into the northern half (actually northwest half) of the park with two EMS workers, one named Gonzalez [the other was EMS Hall; 988]. The large open area where the first cannon is located was "thoroughly searched." After doing so, he moved to the right and discovered a quasi-hidden clearing with a second cannon and located the body .
The area around the first cannon contains a number of steep trails going down either the southern berm or the southern end of the western berm of the Fort. Searching all these go-downs "thoroughly" would be more than a couple of minutes work in the author's opinion [the first cannon has since been removed by the Park Service, but the permanent "peg" for the cannon's tail is still there, per the author's visit to FMP in June 1995].
The two cannon are not visible from each other. Based on his aerial imagery, the author estimates that these two cannon were about 270 feet apart (line-of-sight distance).
What Did The USPP Officer See As He Approached The Body?
Although it likely had no impact on the speed with which Fornshill found the body once he had the second cannon in sight, Fornshill testified that "The closer I got [to the second cannon], I could see what appeared to be the top of a person's head ." As Fornshill ran up to the cannon, he was indeed climbing a slight grade [author's observation, June 1995]. Despite this grade, Fornshill stated he saw first saw the head when he was "approximately 30 feet away from the cannon ."
That statement placed the head roughly 45 feet away from Fornshill at the moment he saw it. It is difficult to see a head sticking above the top of the berm behind the cannon in any event [but see Rolla's comment immediately below], but impossible to see the head it if were on the far side of the berm, just below the berm top. CW, when deposed, stated that the head was slightly below the top of the berm . CW was only able to see the head since he was standing on top of the berm about fifteen feet to the right of the cannon, looking down the slope of the berm (and to his left) at the body.
If these two statements in the record are both correct, this means the body apparently slid up the slope in the roughly 25 minutes between CW first saw the body and Fornshill officially discovered it. How could this have happened? Officially, no one was at the body between the time it was seen by CW and the time it was seen by Fornshill. CW stated that the body did not look as if it had slid down the slope when he observed it , or perhaps only slightly , just enough to take the slack out of the pants legs.
Interestingly, Braun stated in her deposition: "His head was like just below [sic] the top ." Rolla stated: "Unless you got about -- right by the cannon, and you are looking over there, it would be very hard to see the body ." Also, per Rolla "When you are standing where the cannon is at, and I would say within a -- I will give you as much as ten feet in an area, the foliage is so thick. . . you can't see a body."
Dr. Haut, the Medical Examiner, told the FBI in his interview that the head was "close to the summit of the hill" and "more on the slope of the hill rather than at the top of the hill." EMS Sergeant Gonzalez said: "Right about that hill top with a small decline [meaning just below the top of berm?] is where we found the body ."
Braun, Rolla, CW, Dr. Haut, and (possibly) Gonzalez all differ with Fornshill: the head was just below the top of the berm, not just above it. If the majority is correct, how did Fornshill see the head at all as he climbed the slight grade toward the second cannon, let alone see the head just on the other side of the berm (and behind the cannon) from 45 feet away? Is a head 14 feet 3 inches west of the axle of the second cannon visible in the way described by USPP Fornshill?
The FCFRD Broadcasts: "Obvious Suicide With Gun"
According to Gonzalez' deposition, Fornshill found the body, Hall was on the scene next, and then Gonzalez arrived, all within a few seconds of each other . According to EMS Hall's FBI interview, he agreed that Fornshill found the body, followed by himself, and then Gonzalez . EMS Gonzalez used his radio from the parking lot at 1836 to tell Fairfax EMS that a body had been found (some 25 minutes after the EMS workers and Fornshill arrived in the parking lot). The computerized communications logs indicate that at 1836:46 Gonzalez transmitted ""Obvious. . . suicide with gun ."
Despite his radio call "Obvious. . . Suicide with gun," Gonzalez later said he doubted the death was a suicide . EMS Arthur also had doubts the death was a suicide . These statements by two of the first three EMS personnel to see the body were rejected in the Fiske Report because they were in large part based on wounds these EMS personnel saw on VWF's head, wounds that were not reported in the autopsy. The autopsy is discussed below.
How Far Was It From VWF's Honda In The Parking Lot To The Official Body Site?
The author estimates the distance over-the-ground from the fourth slot of the FMP parking lot (the consensus position for the Honda, per the official Reports) to the body's location some 14-15 feet west of the second cannon, via a reasonably direct route utilizing the grassy open area of FMP and the semi-circular pathway that exists near the parking lot, to be about 800 feet based on aerial imagery.
The distance-over-the-ground obtained by using a rolling distance-measuring wheel of the type employed by landscape architects is 775 feet, good agreement with the estimate from the aerial photos. The straight line distance, which no one would have walked due to impenetrable brush, is 600 feet. This distance over-the-ground of 775-800 feet corresponds reasonably well to the distance estimated in the record of around 700 feet, though the specific support for the 700 foot estimate is not in the record. This report has been using and will generally continue to use "about 750 feet" as the correct distance from the parking lot to the body site.
The Crime Scene Tape -- A Potpourri Of Connections To Events At FMP
When USPP CIB Investigators Rolla and Braun arrived at the body site, Rolla personally observed that the crime scene had already been taped off [78, 386, 478,1600]. The first Polaroid taken by Sergeant Edwards shows the crime scene tape [2112, 2392]. EMS Hall, who arrived and left before USPP Investigators Rolla and Braun appeared at FMP, also remembers the body site was taped with crime scene tape shortly after he arrived . Simonello, the USPP Evidence Technician, confirmed that crime scene tape was in place when he arrived at the body site with Investigators Rolla and Braun .
As EMS Arthur left the body site to return to the parking lot, the USPP "were roping off the scene ." Pisani also saw yellow crime scene tape at the body site . He, like Arthur was among the EMS personnel who arrived in the parking lot at 1810. USPP Officer Ferstl did the taping.
Officer Julie Spetz who was the third USPP officer to arrive at FMP after Fornshill and very shortly thereafter she placed crime scene tape across the entrance to FMP from the GWMP (the gate had already been closed by Fornshill, per the record).
Query: If Fornshill had already closed the gate, did Spetz put up crime scene tape across an already closed gate? Perhaps she did. However, if the gate was open when she arrived, who opened it? What are the possibilities?
Did Ferstl open the gate (a sizable gate that when open, as it usually is during daylight hours, vehicles can pass through to the parking lot) when he entered the park (if it is assumed he did not arrive before Fornshill closed the gate on Braun's orders immediately after Fornshill found the body) and then leave it open, even though he presumably knew via listening to his radio that Braun had told Fornshill to close it?
Another USPP officer could not have left the gate open before Spetz put up the crime tape since Spetz was the third USPP officer on the scene (the six FCFRD personnel had arrived just before Fornshill, so it could not have been them). There will be more on this gate shortly.
The USPP Crime Scene Perimeter: Large And Leaky
However, according to Braun's deposition, the body site had not been roped off. Q: "Had the area been roped off?" A: "No, we didn't actually because of closing the gate. That kept anybody else from coming into the area ." Braun merely ordered the gate at the entrance to FMP from the GWMP closed to isolate the crime scene.
The gate and the body are about 1250 feet apart measured over-the-ground (see the Comment, "The USPP Officer Who Found The Body Leaves FMP After An Extremely Short Stay" above) and about 1100 feet apart (line-of-sight) based on aerial imagery.
Braun told "the officers" in the park to close the gate across the entrance and exit off the GWMP once she was told the body was "suspicious ."
Officers [plural]? Fornshill was officially the only USPP officer to have arrived at that point, though, as shall be seen, many more would arrive soon.
Elsewhere Braun explicitly states she asked Fornshill to close the gate: Q: "Do you recall who that was you were talking with [on the radio]?" A: "I believe it was Fornshill." Q: "Okay." A: "I believe to my recollection he was the first on the scene." [Braun was unsure of the name, but was trying to refer to the first officer on the scene when she "believe[d] it was Fornshill."] . . . Q: "What was the rest of the conversation?" A: "He advised that it was suspicious [the body] and so I asked him to close off the gate to Fort Marcy and set up a, you know, perimeter around the crime scene ."
Cheryl Braun, the lead USPP Investigator at FMP that evening, thought there was no other way anyone could get access to FMP except via the GWMP exit to FMP. She did not know about the north side pedestrian entrance (complete with a few spaces for vehicles to park) [or about the old road running south from CBR along the west side of FMP]. This came up in her deposition. Q: "But you can enter the park through the Chain Bridge Road side, can you?" A: "No." Q: "You can't?" A: "No."
It is clear from Braun's statements that she missed seeing the crime scene tape and did not know there was a north side entrance into FMP [with spaces for several cars to park]. What else did she miss? Might she have missed a briefcase? Was there a briefcase in VWF's Honda? Had it been removed by persons unknown by the time the Honda was officially searched or otherwise not accounted for (well after the FCFRD workers left the park at 1837)?
Why attempt to create such a large crime scene perimeter? The author has no police training, but it seems to him that a better use of personnel (and crime scene tape) would have been to secure the area immediately around the Honda (once it was known to have been the dead person's vehicle) and to have secured the immediate area (out 25-50 feet or so) from the body itself.
A Male Driving a Mercedes 190, Opens The Gate To FMP and Drives In
A witness gave a detailed description of a man and a car she saw at the entrance to FMP sometime around 1800 (also see the Civilian Vehicle Table in Appendix V). The man had stopped his car and was in the process of opening the gate to FMP.
Did this individual have to open the gate because it had recently been closed by Fornshill? That seems likely since the gate had been open (as usual in daylight hours) before Fornshill shut it, around 1820.
If the man in this Mercedes entered the park shortly after about 1820 (the first time the gate was officially closed), and if he had left the gate open, it would have still been open when Officer Spetz arrived and decided to put crime scene tape across the entrance to FMP from the GWMP. Note that the FCFRD workers who responded to the 911 call and their vehicles did not leave FMP until around 1837, so they could not have been the ones who opened the gate (assuming Officer Spetz did indeed discover it open).
Officer Spetz' statement about her exiting from the GWMP and putting up the crime scene tape gives no indication that the gate was other than open when she arrived. FBI interview: "She stated that she initially stopped at the entrance to the park, got out of her car [nothing about having to open the gate to enter the road to the parking lot], and placed crime scene tape across the park entrance ."
Can anything else be said about the Mercedes 190 that the witness saw opening the gate to FMP other than it appears it was driving into FMP around 1820? Could this vehicle have been the one described in the Civilian Vehicle Table as "car, engine running?" It could not unless it happened to arrive before the FCFRD personnel at 1810, but that would have put him at FMP before the gate was closed by USPP Fornshill. The witness who saw the Mercedes 190 indicated it arrived around 1800, so it certainly could have arrived prior to the FCFRD and USPP personnel and thereby constituted the "extra" civilian vehicle in the parking lot (that is, a vehicle in addition to VWF's Honda and the white Nissan with MD plates) when the emergency vehicles arrived. This would mean that the gate was closed by someone unknown prior to 1810 or so. The driver of the Mercedes 190 could have, of course, closed the gate behind him.
Could this vehicle be the same vehicle as either of the blue vehicles in the parking lot seen by the female lobbyist about 1800? The lobbyist's Mercedes had broken down at the exit; the Mercedes 190 wasn't hers; the 190 also had a male driver) or by the Thrifty Rental driver (before 1615)? It might have been the blue car seen by the lobbyist, but probably not the car seen by the Thrifty Rental driver before 1615 (unless the vehicle in question was making multiple trips, which is unlikely, but not impossible).
The Mercedes 190 would not be as interesting but for the variety of information that swirls around it: many individuals reported an "extra" car in the FMP parking lot at the time the two FCFRD vehicles appeared , a vehicle that clearly was neither of the two civilian vehicles "officially" in the FMP parking lot, VWF's Honda and the White Nissan with MD plates. There is no evidence in the record that the Mercedes 190 sighting was explored by the official Reports or correlated with the statements of those on scene.
The USPP Investigators View The Body
USPP Investigators John Rolla and Cheryl Braun decided that Braun would be primarily responsible for the parking lot scene and Rolla would be in charge at the body site, even though Rolla was junior to Braun (who was about to be promoted), but after Rolla wrote down a visual description of the Honda, ran the tag number of the Honda, and recorded the results in his investigator's notebook (officially not learning of VWF's WH connection at that time), both investigators walked up to the official body site at the second cannon together, having waited briefly in the parking for Evidence Technician Simonello to arrive.
"I believe we both went up there at first [Rolla] [78, 386]." "We both went [Braun] [78; see also 499, 560]," but apparently not until Simonello arrived in the parking lot: "We all walked up there ." Rolla grabbed a Polaroid camera from the investigators' unit . Rolla was an advocate of taking lots of crime scene photographs [387,405,426].
However, it appears that Rolla and Braun may not have gone up to view the body together since Braun, according to her own written report stayed in the parking lot for several minutes interviewing the civilians who had previously arrived in the parking lot around 1700, driving a white Nissan with Maryland plates .
Simonello estimated he arrived in the FMP parking lot at about 1900, some 25 minutes after Rolla and Braun arrived . This is only an estimate since Simonello also indicated he arrived within "minutes" after Rolla and Braun did. He also says he arrived "right after" Rolla and Braun did.
Per Simonello, Sergeant Edwards was on the scene before Simonello arrived and Officer Fornshill was also still there (though Simonello may be confusing Fornshill and Ferstl; investigators Rolla and Braun indicated that Fornshill had left by the time they arrived, but Officer Ferstl was the one who met the investigators on their arrival at the FMP parking lot). Simonello confirms that the Fairfax County EMS personnel had left by the time he arrived.
How were Rolla and Braun occupied at the parking lot during the wait for Simonello before they all went up to the body site? Braun interviewed the couple in the Nissan and was briefed by Gavin and Edwards about what she should expect to see at the body site [522-523], but if Rolla did not participate in that interrogation, so what did he do? Perhaps he, too, was being briefed by Gavin and Edwards on the Honda and on VWF's WH connection which had actually been discovered, contrary to the official Reports, shortly before the investigators arrived in the FMP parking lot (See the Comment, "When Did The USPP Learn Of VWF's WH Connection?" below).
For the reasons stated above, in the author's opinion, the Honda's doors were first opened by officials around 1825 and then probably again by Rolla or Braun (or both) shortly after they arrived around 1835. This will be covered in detail. Opening the doors of the Honda could have taken place in conjunction with the briefing provided by Gavin and Edwards.
Rolla's statement to the FBI did not indicate that Braun went up to the body site with him, Ferstl, Investigator Apt (who came in the car with Rolla and Braun) and, possibly Investigator Hodakievic, where they joined up with Sergeant Edwards and possibly (but see immediately below) Officer Julie Spetz . It's quite a listing of USPP personnel, but Investigator Braun is not on it.
There were two uniformed officers already there when Rolla arrived at the body, Sergeant Edwards and one other officer. Rolla stated, of the other officer he said was present, "I can't place his face." He was asked if it was Officer Spatz [apparently referring to female USPP Officer Julie Spetz] and Rolla stated "Yes, I think it is Spatz. Right." A bit later in his deposition when asked who was at the body site when he arrived, Rolla stated "Edwards and I guess it was Spatz. That's the other name that was there ."
Rolla is not confusing uniformed USPP Officer Julie Spetz with Investigator Christine Hodakievic, a fellow investigator in plain clothes whom he knew relatively well . Having monitored the radio calls, Hodakievic stopped by FMP briefly on her way home at the end of her shift, arriving at FMP slightly before Rolla and Braun. Braun was still in the parking lot being briefed by Edwards and Gavin at that time.
Having said that there were two uniformed male officers present at the body site when he arrived, Rolla also mentioned that USPP evidence technician Simonello, whom he knew, was there when he reached the body site.
Who was the male officer Rolla said he thought was "Officer Spatz?" A mistake of some sort has occurred here since Rolla thought it was a uniformed male officer when he tried to visualize the identity of the second officer's face, but promptly agreed it was female officer Spatz/Spetz. There is no Officer Spatz referred to elsewhere in the record. Furthermore, in her FBI Interview Officer Spetz stated that she never went to the body site .
Who might this unexplained male officer have been? This may be simply a case of poor memory and nothing more. However, it might take on added importance since there is evidence in the record of USPP officers and others, unnamed in the record, in the park that evening, as discussed above in this report. Did Rolla remember a male officer at the park who is not named in the record for reasons unknown? Additional information not currently in the record might explain who this unidentified male officer was.
The VWF Gun Hand -- Palm Up Or Palm Down?
Although the photo apparently leaked to Reuters and to ABC News by persons unknown [see Appendix III; not authenticated, but the genuineness of this photo has never been denied; the authentication standards of ABC News were presumably also satisfied] of the gun in VWF's right hand shows VWF's right hand palm down with the gun partially under it, Investigator Rolla, the USPP person in charge of the body site was deposed thus: Q: "When you first saw the body, can you describe which position the hands were in?" A: "Like this." Q: "You are indicating palms up?" A: "Palms up, [arms] down by the side ."
According to the deposition of EMS Gonzalez who viewed the body and left before Rolla arrived [998; see also 1017-1018, 1049], the senior EMS person at the park that night, Q: Apparently, you recall the gun being in a different position from that what was photographed [That is, in a different position than in the photographs he had been shown]?" A: "That's correct." . . . Q: "How did the picture depict it?" A: "Hand out like this?" Q: The hand was out?" A: "Yes, right hand." Q: "With the palm up?" A: "That's what I remember." As for what Gonzalez saw (as opposed to what he later saw in the pictures): Q: "The palm was up or down?" A: "Down."
Clearly there is substantial confusion between Gonzalez and Rolla whether the right palm (with the gun in it) was up or down. The gun was not removed from the hand until much later by Evidence Technician Simonello. The photos shown to them by the FBI do not jibe with the witnesses' memories of the scene. Why? Earlier the reader will remember that CW indicated in no uncertain terms that the palms were up, and that there was no gun in either hand .
Did the missing photos taken by Ferstl and Rolla (see the sub-heading "Photographs Of The Crime Scene" below) show VWF's palms up (that was what Rolla and CW said they saw)? Was the gun hand (and the gun) moved or "rearranged" even though the official Reports give no indication that this occurred?
The Amount of Blood On VWF's Face And Clothes
The Fiske Report indicates (based on the Polaroid photos) that far more blood was present on VWF's face and clothing at the time the photos were taken than CW indicated in his description .
Pisani did not recall seeing any blood on VWF's face (Pisani was in the first group of EMS personnel who arrived in the parking lot at 1810) . Gavin, also one of the first on the scene, only remembers seeing a trickle of blood coming out of the mouth . Ferstl also did not remember much blood, just a small amount around the mouth and no blood on the shirt .
When Dr. Haut examined the back of VWF's head at the body site, he told the FBI that the volume of blood at the back of the head was "small" and that the blood was matted and had clotted .
This contrasts with the Fiske Report statement about what Dr. Haut saw "Haut observed a large exit wound in the back of the skull." There was a "large pool of blood" under the head . Compared to the statement of the only medical doctor at the scene, the blood volume per the Fiske Report is significantly greater and the blood is liquid, not matted and clotted. Why the divergence? Why is there no explanation in the Fiske Report attempting to reconcile the doctor's statement with the words in the Fiske Report?
The Fiske Report quote above concerning what Dr. Haut said thus contrasts strongly with what Dr. Haut himself told the FBI.
Dr. Haut's Report Of His Examination Of VWF At The Body Site
Dr. Haut's own report of the time he spent at FMP and provided to the Virginia Medical Examiner's office is not in the record for reasons unknown. One would have thought [the author does, anyway] that the report of the first medical doctor to view the body, and the only doctor to view the body in situ, might be of some importance! This is one of many unexplained omissions in the record.
Could the failure to include Dr. Haut's report have something to do with his having told the FBI he arrived at FMP at about 1845, whereas the USPP witnesses and the Fiske Report agree he arrived about an hour later, at 1940 or so? Clearly, one could expect Dr. Haut's report to include the time he arrived in the park and viewed the body. Dr. Haut's report might clarify many things, not the least of which being the time he arrived at FMP.
The Blood Stain Patterns on VWF's Face at FMP
The Fiske Report recognizes that the blood-staining patterns on VWF's face as described by the witnesses are inconsistent with the position of the head as described by the same witnesses .
The Fiske Report therefore assumes that some person at the site must have touched the body, though no one in the record admits to having down so until after all photographs of the site and the body were taken . "The FBI concluded that the pattern of the blood on Foster's face and on Foster's shoulder is consistent with Foster's face having come in contact with the shoulder of his shirt at one point," says the Fiske Report.
However, here is what the FBI Lab Report actually says: "The available photographs [sic] depict the victim's head not in contact with the shirt and therefore indicate that the head moved or was moved after being in contact with the shoulder. The specific manner of this movement is not known ." Nonetheless, the Fiske Report stated "The FBI concluded. . ."
In the author's opinion, the Fiske Report finesses the statement in the FBI lab report about these blood tracks in order to buttress the Fiske Report statement that the head must have been moved [220, 242] by some person who was officially at the scene.
The same FBI Lab report earlier uses some wording regarding the blood stains that could be important : "It is to be noted that a study of the above evidence alone can not substitute for an in person examination of the original/unaltered crime scene." Why say "unaltered" in addition to "original?"
See the previous comments to the effect that CW saw the least blood on VWF's body (just on the lips and nostrils) and the later-arriving personnel tended to see more, but still less than they thought they should have seen, given a point blank shot in the mouth from a Army Colt .38 Special firing high-velocity ammunition.
Could the change in the amount of blood seen between CW and everyone else (and some related confusion concerning how much blood the Polaroids showed compared to what people remembered at the scene) be some indication that the body was moved between the time CW saw it and everyone else did?
If the body was moved (by persons unknown) from the second cannon site (CW saw the body there) to another site (the site favored by Chris Ruddy to the west of the first cannon being one possibility), to what place was it moved and why? As stated above in another Comment, the author has some conjectures along these lines which will be omitted here for the reasons described in the Introduction.
The changes in VWF's palm positions reported by a convincing set of witnesses (and apparently by at least some of the photos) is evidence that VWF's palms, if not his whole body, was also moved between the time CW saw the body and the time it was hoisted into a body bag. Why was this thread not pursued in the official Reports, if only in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting evidence in the record?
The "Unofficial" Wounds On VWF's Face
EMS Sergeant Gonzalez (either the first or second medically-trained person to see VWF's body; he and EMS Hall arrived at the body site nearly simultaneously) and EMS Technician Arthur both had doubts whether VWF's death was a suicide . They based their doubts in large part on the wound they saw on VWF's face.
The autopsy report had no indication of any other wound than the entrance wound within VWF's mouth and the exit wound at the upper rear of the skull: no wound (entry or exit), caused by a bullet or anything else, on the right side of VWF's head [2031-2036].
According to Arthur's deposition:
Q: "Where was the blood coming from?"
A: To me it looked like there as a bullet hole right here."
Q: "In the neck?"
A: "Yes, right around the jawline."
Q: The neck and jawline underneath the right ear?"
A: "Somewhere there. I would have to see a picture to point it out exactly where [irony?] but there was a little bit of blood coming out of the mouth, too, and a little out of the nose but the main was right here. I didn't see any on the left side. I didn't see any on the chest or anything ."
Q: "With respect to the bullet wound you think you saw in the -- at the scene could you describe in some detail exactly what you thought you saw?"
A: "I saw what appeared to be a bullet hole, which was right around the jawline on the right side of the neck."
Q: "About how big?"
A: "It looked like a small-caliber entrance wound, something with -- I don't want to say a .22 or whatever, but it was a small caliber. It appeared to be a smaller caliber than the gun I saw."
Q: "How close to the body were you when you saw this?"
A: "2, 3 feet [903-904]."
In the word's of Arthur's FBI interview "He noted what appeared to be a small caliber bullet hole in Foster's neck on the right side just under the jaw line about halfway between the ear and the tip of the chin. He did not note anything else he thought might be a bullet hole ."
According to EMS Gonzalez' deposition:
Q: "Did you ever see an entrance wound or an exit wound?"
A: "I can only assume that there's an entrance wound and that was from the mouth, because there was a lot of blood within the mouth, you could see that. It was dark and some of it had clotted already. I didn't see an exit wound ."
. . .
Q: "So you were trying to remember where the entrance wound was?"
A: "Yes, for some reason, I was trying to recall. Something in my mind said it was on the side of the head. There could have been a spot or run of blood. . . "
Q: "And the side of the head?"
A: "Right side."
Q: "Upper part, lower part?"
A: "Let's see. If you want to break it up in four areas, say, and looking from the side profile, top right area."
Q: "So, near the temple area?"
A: "Yes, somewhere in that area."
Per Gonzalez' FBI Interview "The wound was recalled to be located in the upper right front portion of the skull ."
Gonzalez and Arthur were trained EMS workers with years of experience between them, so one might be forgiven for thinking they did in fact see some sort of injury on the right side of VWF's head. In the words of the Fiske Report "These wounds did not exist. The autopsy results [no X-rays were taken, see the Heading, "The Autopsy and Related Matters" below], the photographs taken at the scene, and the observations made by park police investigators conclusively show that there were not such wounds."
Given the 35 mm film taken at the body site by Simonello was apparently completely unusable, a number of the Polaroids taken at the scene cannot be accounted for, and a number of witnesses state that the Polaroids did not depict what they saw at the scene, perhaps one can legitimately ask how many of the 13 Polaroids taken at the body site and inventoried in the record include a good image of the right side of VWF's face.
From the descriptions of the photos in the inventory (all Polaroids) , it appears three or four photos might depict the right side of the head well, although the description of the last Polaroid taken by Rolla is truncated in the record
A review of the USPP case file (also in the record) covering the VWF investigation revealed that the USPP never interviewed any of the FCFRD personnel who responded to the park that night. The author does not consider it a "stretch" to classify this as a serious omission. There must have been some good reasons why the USPP failed to do this, especially since the USPP took the time to record the names and identifying particulars of all the FCFRD personnel while they were in the parking lot before they returned to the station.
This is particularly curious in light of the large number of medically-trained FCFRD personnel who were present and the large number of them that viewed the body. It seems particularly unusual that the first two EMS personnel who came upon the body (Gonzalez and Hall) were not interviewed by the USPP, nor was the other EMS person in Medic 01 (M01), EMS Arthur.
VWF's Eye Glasses Were Found Some 19 Feet Down Slope From His Head
VWF's eye glasses (he was near-sighted and had astigmatism in both eyes [244-245]) were found by Rolla some thirteen feet down the slope of the berm, that is, some thirteen feet west of VWF's feet as he lay prone on the berm, feet down slope and head up slope [209,479,629]. This places VWF's eyeglasses about 19 feet down the berm slope from the head. A single piece of ball powder was found on these glasses that was physically and chemically similar to the powder in the cartridge case removed from VWF's gun .
One might believe that the evidentiary value of this single piece of ball gunpowder on the glasses is entitled to even less weight than would ordinarily be the case since two other types of gunpowder were found in scrapings from VWF's clothes, types of powder that also were not consistent with the type of powder fired by the discharged cartridge found at the body site.
The Fiske Report dismisses the presence of these two powders as mere contamination , while using the single piece of similar gun powder found on the glasses to place the glasses on VWF's face or in his shirt pocket when the revolver was fired into his mouth.
The description in the Fiske Report places VWF's glasses roughly 19 feet [see also 391: 13 feet plus VWF's height of 6 feet 4.5 inches equals roughly 19 feet] down slope from VWF's head. Notwithstanding whatever evidentiary value is assigned to the single piece of powder found on the eyeglasses, it is difficult to see how the motion of VWF's head when the shot was fired (presumably throwing the head back, that is, up slope) could throw the eyeglasses some 19 feet in the opposite direction (the glasses moving down slope and the head and upper torso moving up slope as the seated body reclines to the neat prone position it was found in after the shot).
The Fiske Report nonetheless hypothesizes that the "glasses bounced down the hill" even though the Fiske Report also indicates that "there was dense foliage in the area where the body was lying " and ". . . the natural foliage around Foster's body blocked his view of Foster's hands ." One might wonder how the glasses bounced (this word is actually used in the Fiske Report -- see the quotation above) through all the foliage to reach their position at the bottom of the slope.
It is significant that the FBI Lab Report states "No determination can be made as to the position of the Q3 glasses at the time of death." The Fiske Report hypothesis that has the glasses flying 19 feet downhill due to the gun shot to the mouth is thus not supported by the underlying FBI Lab Report, any more than the conclusion in the Fiske Report that someone on scene must have moved the head before the Polaroids were taken. This is the FBI conclusion even though the FBI found the ball gunpowder on the glasses.
Note: None of the official documents indicate whether the glasses were found with their stems open, shut, or somewhere in between, though this should be determinable from one of the body site Polaroids taken before the glasses were touched [2112; the second Polaroid in the set of eight]. If the glasses shown on the ground in the Polaroid happen to have their stems closed, the official theory also requires the stems to spring shut while the glasses were "bouncing" 19 feet down slope (counter to the direction of motion of VWF's head and upper torso when shot). If the one photo in the record shows damaged eyeglasses (see below under in this sub-heading) how was that damage explained?
Were VWF's body to have been carried into the park, jolting over the uneven ground (a possibility never officially considered), from the northwest side of FMP, glasses in either his shirt pocket, his pants pocket (his suit jacket was in the Honda), or on his face might well have eventually fallen completely out (or slid off) when the slope changed from "downhill" to "uphill" as one progresses eastward down the opposite slope and then up the western berm on which the body was officially found.
An old road, not mentioned in the Fiske Report [see Maps V (R); Map VI, "old private drive"], is clearly the closest vehicular approach to the body site as well as the most discreet (at least in the summer months when the trees and shrubs have leafed out). This road is invisible from the western berm of the Fort in the summer although it is only 260 feet to the west at its closest point [see Map V (R)].
The entrance to the old road lies on the south side of CBR immediately to the northwest of the small home at 681 CBR. It is very easily missed from CBR since there is a small rise on the south side of CBR and the old road drops away to the south, largely obscured by the terrain and the circular driveway of 681 CBR. Given the entrance to the old road is quite discreet, if the old road was used to bring VWF's body into FMP, first by vehicle down the old road, then on foot through the woods to the fort, might one infer that the persons using the old road must have been familiar with it in order to have found it at all?
Familiar how? Perhaps if persons unknown were involved in transporting VWF down this old road (and through the gap in the western border fence of FMP near the old cabin [see Map V (R)]), one of the people involved might be familiar with the old road merely because he or she lived in the immediate area or otherwise have spent significant time in the neighborhood.
The position of the glasses and the trampling of the path below the body described by CW also support this possibility.
The north side pedestrian entrance to FMP off CBR is another route to the western side of FMP [See Map V (R)]. A vehicle parked at the pedestrian entrance could easily have shielded the passage of the body through the pedestrian entrance from observers along CBR or from those driving their cars on the road.
There is a separate photo taken by the FBI Lab of the glasses (poor quality) that appears to show the right stem has been broken off the frame . The FBI report on the glasses worn by VWF merely states: "The ear pieces on the . . . glasses move very easily ." There is no usable picture of the eyeglasses in situ in the record, so one cannot tell whether the frames were broken when found at FMP.
Given CW said there was a lot of trampled ground down the slope from VWF's feet, is it too much of a stretch to wonder if the foot of a person unknown happened to step on the glasses, which had previously fallen from VWF's face or shirt pocket, and break the stem when this unknown person walked back down the slope and returned from whence he came? This possibility was never examined in the official Reports, nor does the text in the record even mention that the right stem of VWF's eyeglasses had been broken off as shown in the lab photo of the eyeglasses at page 2448 of the record. (When? How? Why?). Were the eyeglasses broken in the crime scene photo (the photo inventoried on page 2112, but not in the record itself in usable form)?
VWF was a tall man at 6 foot 4.5 inches. If no one walked point, it would take a minimum of two persons to transport his body the distance involved, unless the body was dragged, presumably trampling down the vegetation below the body as described by CW. If one of these individuals had less strength than an average male in his 30's, then three individuals to transport the body is probably the minimum requirement (unless the two involved put the body down quite a few times to rest along the way or dragged the body).
The location described for the glasses places them at (or just east of) the bottom of the berm where the earth slopes upward to the west and to the east. The Fiske Report itself states that VWF's shirt had a pocket . The author is unaware of any underlying document that states VWF's dress shirt had a pocket.
Photographs Of The Crime Scene
Simonello took 35 mm film, Rolla took Polaroids, and Sergeant Edwards took Polaroids, both of the body and the immediately surrounding area . The 35 mm film was underexposed for reasons unknown and therefore were of little value, apparently despite the FBI Lab's attempts to enhance its quality [207,428].
Officer Ferstl, the second USPP officer on the scene, also took Polaroids . He believes he took seven and gave them either to Edwards (who appeared after Ferstl had placed crime scene tape at the body site and taken his Polaroids) or to one of the two investigators, Rolla and Braun . These Polaroids are not inventoried in the official record .
What happened to the Polaroids that Ferstl took at the body site?
Simonello was under the impression that the FBI had been amazingly successful in enhancing the 35 mm photos , but he may have been in error in that all the FBI might have shown him were blow-ups of some of the Polaroids taken at the body site and part of the inventory on 2112.
Simonello, who took the 35 mm photos that did not come out, stated in one place that they were "underexposed" and in another place that they were "overexposed" [631,637], but there was no follow-up to determine which. Based on further information supplied by Simonello , it seems the photos were underexposed (negatives almost clear).
The camera was never checked to determine what was wrong with it . Larry Roman was the USPP person who developed this film . He was apparently never asked on the record why he thought the film did not come out.
Note that Simonello took the photos around the body without using a flash, but that by the time he returned to the Honda, there was less light so he used a flash . Thus, the cause for the underexposed or overexposed 35 mm photos would have to be a cause that would ruin both natural light and flash photos. Whatever the error was, it was not a single simple failure to set the right shutter speed and f-stop.
Rolla never saw some of the Polaroids he took at the body site again (he also noted that he likes to take lots of crime scene photos to be sure he has plenty of them):
"I know I took Polaroids of that. I am not sure how many I took, but I don't recall seeing those Polaroids again. I mean, I had them at the office that night, I did reports, and I know what happened. . . I don't have those photos. I put them in a [case] jacket. . . and I don't know what happened. . . I may have taken a close-up of the back of the head [speaking of one of the "missing" photos], there may have been one, but I don't remember [425, 426]." (The Polaroids in question are not among those inventoried in the Hearings Volumes ).
What happened to some of the Polaroids that Rolla took at the crime scene? One would think that each Polaroid would be all the more precious to the investigation since the 35 mm film did not turn out properly. Seven of Ferstl's Polaroids are missing too. What happened to all these missing Polaroids? Why did these photos disappear? What precisely did these missing photos depict? Would these missing Polaroids have eliminated the discrepancy concerning the blood volume (a little or a lot) and state (liquid or clotted) between the Fiske Report and what Dr. Haut told the FBI he observed at the scene?
Hodakievic was shown some Polaroids by the FBI during the course of her interview . She told the FBI, in the words of the report, "They were not identical to the Polaroid initially shown to her by Sergeant Edwards [on the scene]." What was the difference? There was no blood on the decedent's face nor any blood on the decedent's shirt in the Polaroid shown her by Sergeant Edwards. This photo is apparently one of the missing Polaroids.
Hodakievic did not understand why the Polaroid shown her did not jibe with her memory of the body either.
Gavin also stated that he remembered there being less blood on the body than evidenced by the Polaroids he was shown by the FBI .
Gavin was only shown the thirteen Polaroids (in total) that were taken by Rolla and Edwards and inventoried at 2112. However, the FBI did not show him the original Polaroids since the photos he saw were all 8X10s. He was never shown either the Polaroids that Rolla took and never saw again or the Polaroids that Ferstl took that also went astray for reasons unknown.
What happened to the numerous missing Polaroids shot by Rolla and Ferstl? Why are they not inventoried at page 2112 of the record? Why do witnesses claim that the Polaroids shown to them do not depict what they saw? Witnesses were apparently shown photos that were not in the inventory of 13 Polaroids taken at the body site. Why? Were they expected not to notice the difference and confounded the situation by doing so?
Speaking of photos, in his deposition, Hall (one of the two first FCFRD workers to find the body) had something interesting to say when he was asked about the gun in VWF's hand. Q: "[When you were at the body site] Could you see the gun in the palm?" A: "In the picture you could see it." This struck the author as an unusual verbal formulation from a man who knelt over the body for some minutes (he, of course, did know he was under oath).
The Personal Effects Are Recovered From The Body
Rolla recovered the personal effects from the body: the watch, two rings, and the pager, just before the body was rolled over for the benefit of Dr. Haut, the Medical Examiner [393,421,481]. Rolla stated "The pager was on him ." According to Rolla, no one at FMP (or later) tried to turn on the pager which was officially in the off position when found. The pager belonged to the WHCA, not to VWF personally.
This seems curious, given the diligent search of the body, the Honda, and the personal effects for some sign of a suicide note or other clues that would tend to confirm suicide. Why wasn't the pager checked after it was recovered from FMP? Were the pager records ever subpoenaed?
As the senior investigator at FMP, Braun had directed Rolla to check all of VWF's pockets for identification, a suicide note, and anything else he could find .
Hodakievic specifically remembers Rolla checking the decedent's front and rear pockets at the body site.
A general search of the clothes at the body site, and the pants pockets in particular, revealed nothing else -- no wallet, no car keys . Braun's FBI interview states "She observed Officer Rolla check the pants pockets, both sides and rear, in an effort to find identification or possible suicide note [559-560]." According to Rolla "I searched his pants pockets. I couldn't find a wallet or nothing in his pants pockets ."
The Personal Effects Were Returned Within Twenty-Four Hours
Rolla testified that VWF's personal effects (his wristwatch, rings, and wallet which contained credit cards, driver's license, $292 in cash, and miscellaneous personal papers) were sought by the WH [100, 101], apparently on Wednesday night [462,467,735,2185-2186].
Certain WH personnel, whose names are not in the record for reasons unknown, were prepared to break into Rolla's desk drawer to obtain a key to the evidence locker where these items were stored . Rolla did not know who called his Lieutenant so that someone (name not mentioned) could get into Rolla's desk without forcing it open. Rolla remembered he had another key to the evidence locker in his locked briefcase in his office. He provided the briefcase combination, and thus his desk did not need to be forced open.
Rolla stated that the USSS "already had the beeper" [461-462] when the personal effects were picked up. This, despite the USPP Evidence/Property Control Sheet [2185-2186] that shows that the pager was picked up by Clifford Sloan at 1935 on the 21st, like the rest of the personal property.
Exactly when was the pager picked up? Note that the Control Sheet indicated that the pager was being picked up to be "return[ed] to the family," although this was obviously not the case since it was a WHCA pager.
The backs of some USPP evidence control sheets (showing the chain of custody) in the record are not readable [2194, 2196, 2198; see also 2161 -- no back side of the sheet is in the record]
An "Unusual" Paper Was Found In VWF's Wallet, Per USPP Investigator Rolla
According to Rolla, there was an unusual paper found in VWF's wallet that night at FMP:
There was one piece of paper that had some kind of abbreviations on it and a list of abbreviations and numbers. I don't know if it was years or what, I couldn't decipher it. That's the only thing I saw that was unusual [in VWF's wallet], except the fact that it's not regular handwriting, but people write things, notes to themselves, all the time. But the one thing that was unusual, yes, that was unusual .
If the assumption is made that the photocopy Rolla made of this sheet was included with the unredacted material in the USPP case jacket (and later reproduced in the Senate volumes), this sheet appears to be the sheet the author has termed the "CHB Sheet" since he first saw it in a copy of the USPP case file in the summer of 1994. It is reproduced at 2449 of the Hearings Volumes [See also R32] and its contents are produced below. This note sheet found in VWF's wallet may or may not be in his handwriting.
At the top of this sheet are four lines of writing grouped into four columns followed by one date entry in the left hand column followed by more lines of writing in the second column only:
2/80 C or H 1000 LR
2/80 C or [of?] B 100 N ["?]
3/80 C or B or H 50 Bentonville
3/80 C or B 50 Hot Sp
12/83 C or H
C or B
C or B
C or B
C or B
C or B
C or B
C or B
C or B
Given VWF was functioning, at least in part, as the Clintons' personal attorney and was involved on the WH end with getting the paperwork needed to fund the Clintons blind trust(s) executed [See that Comment], it appears reasonable to the author to infer that "C" is Chelsea Victoria Clinton, "H" is Hillary Clinton, and "B" is Bill Clinton. Of course, one of the ethical responsibilities of an attorney involved with the funding of blind trusts is to ensure that all assets, wherever located, that are required to be placed in blind trusts are in fact placed there.
Perhaps these initials represent the titling of accounts of some kind ("Chelsea or Hillary," "Chelsea or Bill," "Chelsea or Bill or Hillary"). After all, CVC was born on February 27, 1980, closely corresponding to the 2/80 and 3/80 paired dates above, and "C" always comes first, so a CVC-bank-account hypothesis might be a promising one (though those dates, February and March 1980, also roughly correspond to the Democratic primary season in Arkansas that year).
Continuing this necessarily tentative analysis, the numbers in the third column would indicate the dollar amounts in the four accounts on the dates listed in the first column. The fourth column would represent the cities in which the accounts were located. Although it would be unusual for an attorney to make notes about accounts with only $1,000, $100, $50, and $50 in them (such legal jottings more often concern dollars in "000"), let alone make and retain notes recording events from thirteen years prior concerning such small amounts, no other single explanation seems as likely to the author.
The amounts could instead represent the face value of savings bonds, often given to a child a birth, but then what would the city names mean? Surely, the city names do not refer to the locations of three or four separate safety deposit boxes containing the bonds? Why have so many? The amounts could also represent shares of stock, but if so, the name of the company is not provided.
Continuing this hypothesis, an additional event apparently happened in December 1983 to cause nine additional accounts to be opened (or the first four accounts closed and the balances transferred to the other nine accounts). Curiously, all these accounts start with Chelsea's name (presumably Chelsea Victoria Clinton or Chelsea Clinton) even though one parent's name (almost always the father's) is listed second on each account (if that is in fact what is being represented).
Even if only a total of $1,200 (and not $1,200,000) is represented by the 1980 amounts, the meaning of this sheet should be determined, if only because the lead USPP investigator at the body site believed 1) it was the one unusual item in VWF's wallet the day he died and 2) VWF was involved with the creation of the Clintons' blind trust(s) on the day he died [see the above sub-headings concerning Brantley Buck's calls to VWF].
Presumably, this sheet had nothing on the back and the photocopy obtained by Rolla was a photocopy of the entire sheet. There is certainly no evidence to the contrary in the record. There is also no evidence in the (unredacted) record that any official analysis of this sheet was pursued in any of the VWF death investigations. Why not?
The Secret Service arranged to remove the WHCA Motorola Bravo pager signed out by VWF (#052943 ) and found at his right side waist area from USPP custody the night after his death before any analysis of the pager could be done to determine whether any numbers were retained in the pager's memory [438,50].
There is some evidence in the record that it was not standard procedure for someone such as VWF to check out a WHCA pager. Why did VWF check one out unless he expected to be paged? Was he paged? Given he bothered to check the pager out, why did he turn it off?
There was uncertainty whether the pager in question could retain phone numbers when it was turned off [74,75,85].
Correspondence following the Senate Whitewater Hearings in the summer of 1994 [116,117] indicates that the pager was turned over to Clifford Sloan of the WH OLC at 1935 on Wednesday, July 21, 1993. Although Rolla [461-462] stated that the USSS "already had the beeper" at that time and even though the Control Sheet [2185-2186] shows that the pager and other personal effects were picked up by Clifford Sloan all at the same time. The current location of the pager was described in the correspondence as "unknown" since the pager had been issued to another party by the WHCA and a new Personal Identification Number assigned.
Even though any information in the pager would have long-since been erased, this statement is incorrect since the pager would have still been identifiable by its serial number. It should also be confirmed when the pager (as opposed to the personal property) was picked up since the WH "already had the beeper" according to Rolla even though all these items were signed for by the WH at the same time. There is an unusual redacted personal property control sheet at pages 2200-2201 that puzzles the author and may have something to do with this issue.
The pager has memory capability, but the subsequent correspondence states that any stored numbers would have been erased if the pager were turned off (the record states that the pager was in the off position when VWF's body was found ). There is an indication in the FBI letter that a subpoena may have been issued by the Fiske OIC to obtain the transmitting company's records, but the record does not reveal the results .
There should be no uncertainty whether the pager in question could or could not retain paging numbers when it was turned off since the individual pager's serial number was recorded. Was this issue ever unambiguously resolved using the particular pager's serial number and the records of the WHCA and of Motorola, the manufacturer?
In testimony, the statement was made that the pager phone records could be obtained if it was desired to discover who paged VWF that afternoon of his death .
Were these records ever obtained and examined ? If not, why not? The records of a single pager for a single day cannot be very voluminous. It would appear even more important to take this step since there was apparently no way anyone retrieving the pager from VWF's body could have recalled the numbers that paged him since the pager had been turned off.
It should be noted that an FBI agent, in a letter to the Senate committee [374-375], dated August 3, 1994, stated "We have no information about what, if any, messages may have been in the pager's memory at the time it was returned to the White House."
This comment raises interesting issues. 1) Although unlikely, did the pager have the capability to display messages as well as phone numbers? 2) Officially, the view is that it could store nothing if it were turned off and that turning it off erased any data previously stored in it. It is certainly possible that a pager that could store no new messages transmitted during a time the pager was turned off could still retain messages transmitted to it prior to the point in time that it was turned off. Presumably these records exit (at least for the "connects," if not also for the "attempts").
In any event, these ambiguities should be easily resolved by a subpoena for the relevant phone records and a check with the manufacturer of Motorola Bravo pager # 052943 .
The Gun: The USPP Officer Who Found The Body Never Saw The Gun.
The gun was untraceable in the sense that it could not be determined if anyone ever bought it at retail. The gun was sold at wholesale in 1913 and had apparently been assembled using components from two different weapons since the gun had two serial numbers . The wholesale purchases of the two components are the last official record of the components of the revolver that VWF officially used to shoot himself.
An untraceable fully functional weapon assembled from components. Who might have a need for such a gun? The author rather doubts VWF (or anyone in his family) did.
USPP Officer Fornshill is emphatic that he personally never bothered actually to view the gun in VWF's right hand even though it was pointed out to him by the two EMS workers [Gonzalez and Hall] who made up the team searching the northern half of FMP [207, 1144,1583-1585]. Heavy foliage blocked his view of the gun from where he was standing, and he never moved to bring the gun into his view.
Even the prolix author of this report is at a loss for words. What could explain this?
According to Fornshill's deposition "I am straining and looking for the gun. I couldn't see the gun ." Note that he makes this statement even though EMS Hall states that he called Fornshill back to the body site to tell him about the gun . See also the black and white photocopy in Appendix III that shows the gun quite clearly (indeed, the contrast of the gun with the hand and the ground is even starker in the color image).
However, according to Ferstl's FBI interview (Ferstl was second USPP Officer on the scene after Fornshill) "Ferstl advised that he did see a weapon in the victim's right hand, adding that he had already been told by Officer Fornshill that there was a gun in the hand, so he was probably looking for it ." Fornshill was perfectly clear that he never saw the gun (apparently because he physically could not even though he was standing over the body), but he advised Ferstl that a gun is present and Ferstl (standing on top of the berm looking down at the body ) saw the gun without difficulty. The author believes some "tap-dancing" is going on here, but exactly what? And why? There must have been good reasons. What were they?
Since Fornshill was the first police officer on the scene and stood within a few feet of the body it is bizarre, in the author's opinion, that he emphatically states he did not see the gun and did not take the trouble to view it. One would think that it was his duty as the first police officer on the scene to confirm the presence of the gun and secure the scene (until relieved) for the Evidence Technician (Simonello) who would arrive to collect the gun (once all the crime scene photos had been taken).
Rolla agreed that there was heavy foliage around the body . USPP identification technician Simonello removed the gun from VWF's right hand when Dr. Haut, the Medical Examiner arrived at the body site . Dr. Haut told the FBI, however, that he did not see the gun .
Strangely enough (and conceivably related to Officer Fornshill's never having seen the gun in VWF's right hand, even though he was the first police officer to find the body), the Fiske Report never states that the gun seen in VWF's hand by the two EMS personnel (Gonzalez and Hall) appears in any photos taken at the scene [208-209], although the report does make mention of VWF's injuries and other features (such as blood stains) that were recorded on film at the scene (presumably just by the Polaroids), including the powder residue on VWF's right thumb and along the edge of VWF's right index finger. Was this important linkage of the photos to the gun a casual omission?
The Gun: Despite Some Finesses In The Fiske Report, The Family Could Not Identify It.
Here is what Lisa Foster told the USPP when she was shown the gun nine days after VWF died (in the words of the USPP interview report): "She was presented with a photograph of the weapon that was found with Mr. Foster's Body, but was unable to identify it."
The gun itself was apparently unavailable so soon after the death because it was being analyzed. Lisa suggested the investigators give VWF's sister in AR, Sharon Bowman, a try to see if she could identify the gun since Ms. Bowman was something of a 'gun' person and Lisa Foster definitely was not.
The Fiske Report states "When shown the gun, Foster's sister, Sharon Bowman, identified it as appearing very similar to the one their father had kept in his bedside table, specifically recalling the pattern on the grip [213, see also 2169,2436]."
However, according to the entry in the interviewing investigator's notebook, Sharon Bowman actually viewed a only photo of the gun [2227; see also 741]. This is confirmed by an examination of the letter in the record "I visited with Mrs. Sharon Bowman and asked her if she could identify the pistol [actually a revolver, not a pistol] in the photograph you had given me last week."
The USPP never interviewed the Foster children about the gun (or anything else) since the family attorney decided not to make the children available for interviews . A nephew of VWF's was asked about the gun, but he was not of significant help. The children (they were not kids -- the youngest had just completed high school) were never interviewed during the course of any of the investigations (at least in the unredacted material).
The family attorney had said "No" and that was apparently that.
Lisa Foster, though indicating she was less familiar with guns than her sister-in-law Sharon Bowman , stated [the words in the notes of her interviewer] "Not the gun she thought it must be. Silver, six-gun, large barrel ." Lisa Foster thought the gun found at FMP might have been a silver-colored revolver she remembered having seen before, but the gun at FMP turned out not to be the one she thought since the gun from FMP was the opposite color (dark, not silver).
How could a gun be "very similar" (in the words of the Fiske Report) to the gun in VWF's hand (notwithstanding the similarity in the grips!) if the gun in VWF's hand is dark in color [2407-2412; see also 883] while the other gun (the one Lisa Foster had originally mentioned she thought might have been the gun she remembered from AR) was silver in color? Why is a superficial similarity (the webbing on the grip) relevant when the two guns are clearly not the same?
One item omitted from the Fiske Report (per the letter returning the photo of the gun shown to Mrs. Bowman): "I asked if she remembered any other features [other than the web-like detailing at the base of the grip]. She did not ."
There is also a curious change in the wording of the investigative reports as one works backward in time from the Fiske report to the underlying FBI interview report, and finally to the original USPP interview report describing Lisa Foster's inability to recognize the gun or tie it to her family.
In the words of the Fiske Report "Lisa Foster stated that the gun looked similar to one that she had seen in their home in Arkansas and that she had brought to Washington ."
Sounds like a pretty decent identification of the gun, so far.
However, Lisa Foster said something different to the FBI when she was interviewed on May 9, 1994, less than two months before the Fiske Report was released. "Lisa Foster then examined a revolver which had been brought to the interview by the interviewing agents. Foster examined the revolver which also had been found at Fort Marcy Park [not "in the right hand of Vince Foster at Fort Marcy Park"] on July 20, 1993, and stated that she believed it may be a gun which she formerly saw in her residence in Little Rock Arkansas . An unusual verbal formulation!
"Had seen" versus "Believed it may be a gun which she formerly saw." The quality of the gun ID is getting worse.
Recall what Lisa Foster had originally told the USPP investigators (cited at the beginning of this Comment)? Nine days after the death of her husband, "She was presented with a photograph of the weapon found with Mr. Foster's body but was unable to identify it ." The phrase in bold face is not much of a gun identification at all, in the author's opinion!
Sheila Anthony, with whom VWF lived for several weeks when he first came to Washington with the new Clinton Administration, was apparently never asked if she remembered whether VWF had a gun with him when he stayed in her home. This would have been an excellent question to ask. Perhaps VWF had the weapon in question among his possessions while living with the Anthonys? It is clear from the record that, whatever VWF's attitude about guns from his youth in AR, Lisa Foster did not like them and did not want them in their home.
If VWF did not have "a gun" with him before the family moved to DC and Lisa did not want guns in her home, why did she even take the "silver gun" (not a match to the revolver found at FMP) to DC with her? Any guns in the VWF Georgetown home were illegally held (not registered with DC).
The Gun: How Visible Was It At The Body Site?
The Fiske Report makes a point that the gun was "partially concealed beneath the hand and right leg [207-208]," presumably in an attempt to explain why some crucial witnesses at the body site did not see the gun (CW and Fornshill, the first two individuals officially to see the body, come immediately to mind).
The Fiske Report uses the heavy vegetation to this same end. To the extent that this statement implies that the gun was therefore difficult to see, it is incorrect, particularly if the gun hand photo leaked to ABC News and shown on the News on Friday, March 11, 1994 (which could only have come directly or indirectly from an official source and whose authenticity has never been officially questioned), is examined [see Appendix III].
The author does not think it a "stretch" to think that anyone standing over the body would probably see the gun pretty easily, given the image of the ABC News photo, if the gun were present at the time they looked. Note: The contrast between the hand and the gun is even higher in the color image than in the black and white photocopy in Appendix III.
Concerning the gun, EMS Arthur in his deposition states " . . . It was not tucked all the way under the leg. Just part of the barrel was underneath his leg. It was, I don't want to say pointed -- almost pointed towards his leg ."
The photo leaked to ABC News has been published several times and clearly shows cylinder of the revolver, most of the barrel, and the trigger guard with VWF's thumb hooked on it. The gun is plainly visible, only partly covered by VWF's right hand.
It should also be noted that much of the modest portion of the barrel that is not visible in the leaked photo cannot be seen only due to a long thin leaf of some sort (not close to the barrel) that happens to block the view of a portion of the barrel from the particular perspective from which the photo was taken [see Appendix III].
The Gun: Was There Any Ammunition For The Gun In The Family Homes?
There was no ammunition of any kind found in the VWF Georgetown home or any .38 caliber ammunition to be found in the VWF LR home . The gun, a Colt Army Special with a four-inch barrel [2170, 2171] contained two .38 Special cartridges , one of which fired the slug that killed VWF according to the official Reports. Both rounds were stamped "P" "HV" [meaning higher "pressure" and thus "high velocity" rounds, though this sort of round is a "standard" 38 revolver round today]. This round is not a "magnum" round, however The nearly identical caliber .357 revolver does fire a "magnum" round.
The author (in his transmittal letter to Senator D'Amato) and several medically-trained individuals at the body site noticed that VWF's wound was unexpectedly modest, given a point blank shot inside the mouth with the weapon and ammunition in question. Furthermore, the medically-trained people at the scene did not yet know that the revolver contained high pressure, high velocity, cartridges. Indeed, based on the wound he saw, Dr. Haut, the doctor who worked as a Medical Examiner in that part of Virginia, thought that a "low velocity" weapon had been used, not a .38 firing a full charge round as discussed above.
The Gun: Why Were VWF's Fingerprints Not Anywhere On It?
Even though VWF is supposed to have fired the gun inside his mouth while apparently holding it with both hands around the cylinder of the revolver (butt pointing upward?), there were no fingerprints on any exterior surface of the gun , even though VWF is supposed to have transported the gun while he walked some 750 feet uphill to the second cannon on a hot July afternoon near DC .
A "latent fingerprint. . . of value" was found on the underside of the right pistol grip about two inches from the bottom when the grip was removed from the revolver [254, 256,1742].
There is no indication that this print was compared to the prints of the various officials who handled the gun. If these officials' prints were found not to match the print (apparently it is possible to check this point since, after all, the print was determined not to be VWF's by the FBI; the body was fingerprinted), then the search should have been expanded to include family members (also not a large population). No attempt was made (the author realizes it was just one print) to run the print through computerized FBI fingerprint data banks (on the off-chance that tentative "hits" would be obtained, even if not a "conclusive comparison," to use the FBI's terminology).
One FBI report contains a page with a strangely inapplicable generic discussion why an object may not retain fingerprints (". . .rain, snow, etc."). The explanation goes on to state that one reason why there might be no fingerprints on the gun is the lack of sweat on the fingers of the person handling the gun (this on a 95+ F July afternoon near Washington, D.C., the hands being the hands of a man about to shoot himself in the mouth and, presumably, a little nervous about doing so). Anything is possible, but the author (admittedly a more or less a dolt about fingerprints) finds this hard to believe.
A better question would have been to have asked whether the state of the gun is consistent with a gun that has been wiped clean of prints. Another even better question to have asked would have been in what way were the expected skin, gun, and weather conditions at FMP that afternoon other than ideal for the retention of fingerprints? The parts of VWF's right hand that were in direct contact with the revolver at the body site apparently did not leave any fingerprints either. See the photo in Appendix III.
Why No Recoil Damage To Teeth & Lips After VWF Fired The Gun Inside His Mouth?
Poor quality reproductions of photos of the gun in the record show a dark-colored gun that, like the typical Army .38 Special, has a pronounced raised front sight. Neither the front sight, the 4" barrel, or the ejector rod head of this gun apparently caused any damage to VWF's soft tissues and teeth (upper or lower) as it recoiled forcibly from his mouth and fell to his side (still in his right hand with the right thumb wedged between the trigger and the trigger guard).
The Fiske Report used the lack of tissue and teeth damage only as evidence that VWF voluntarily placed the gun barrel in his mouth.
Why does the Fiske Report include no discussion about the lack of recoil damage? The report discusses the lack of damage to VWF's mouth only to infer that no one could have forced the gun into VWF's mouth.
The Fiske Report assumes VWF was conscious when shot simply as a spin-off from the Report's "suicide verdict." As a result, no physical evidence was examined that might have indicated otherwise (such as a hard blow to the back of the head that could have left some trace on X-rays of the skull).
Why was the complete lack of recoil damage (and the significance thereof, if any) not addressed in the Fiske Report?
The Gun: An Unusual Statement From A Witness
EMS Arthur thought the gun he saw in VWF's hand was an automatic, not a revolver [883,1564]. He drew a picture of a revolver and an automatic for the FBI to prove he knew the differences between the two. Although this statement from Arthur does not fit in with anyone else's [e.g., it appears to be a "sport," even though Arthur was quite firm about what he saw], it is worth noting that an automatic pistol, due to its spring-loaded slide, has less recoil than a revolver of similar caliber, slug weight, powder charge, and barrel length.
The author would not have mentioned this unusual witness claim except for the substantial confusion in the record about the gun and the gun hand. The author does not know what to make of Arthur's statement.
The Test-Firing Of The Gun And The Conclusion Of The USPP Investigation
USPP Captain Hume, Assistant Commander of the CIB , signed off on the USPP Synopsis/Conclusion Report on the death of VWF on August 5, 1993 [2114,2115]. This Report states:
Based on the aforementioned synopsis of the facts and circumstances presented, the writer requests that the investigation be "Closed" and that the Manner of Death ruled [sic] as "Suicide."
Some readers might read this and say something like "Well, it seems like the man died on July 20th and the investigation was closed on August 5th. That's not much time in which to complete the investigation of the highest ranking Federal employee to die under mysterious circumstances since JFK. But, my author says reasonable people can and will differ. This looks like a judgment call made by the USPP and who is to say the USPP had not done all that needed to be done by August 5th?"
The author points out to any such readers that a letter dated August 11, 1993, and signed by Captain Hume's boss, Major Benjamin J. Holmes, Jr., Commander of the Criminal Investigations Branch [2429,2430] submitted the revolver found in VWF's right hand at FMP to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The letter requests the BATF, inter alia, to perform several tests on the gun.
Here is one USPP request: "Could it be determined if the residue on the victim's right hand (see photograph enclosed) could have been the result of discharging Item #1 [the Colt Revolver] in a manner consistent with the other available evidence?"
Here is another USPP request: "Could it be determined if the primer on Item #3 [the shell casing of the round that had been fired] was struck by the firing pin of Item #1 [the Colt Revolver]?
The letter from the USPP goes on to state "These items have not and will not be examined by any other expert" and "please conduct any additional tests and examinations which you deem appropriate in connection with this case."
The BATF date-stamp reveals the letter, which transmitted among other items the revolver, the one unfired cartridge found in it, and the one fired cartridge found in the .38 revolver, was received by the BATF on August 12, 1993.
The BATF wrote back to Major Holmes on August 16th [2433-2434]: "Exhibit 1 [the revolver] was examined, found to function, and test fired twice for comparative purposes."
The author interprets these letters to mean that the USPP closed its investigation into the death of VWF six days before it asked the BATF to determine whether the gun would fire and about eleven days before it knew whether the suicide weapon even functioned.
The author hopes it will not be considered a "stretch" to believe that a death investigation concerning a person who has supposedly been shot with a revolver should not be closed before the investigating agency has ascertained that the gun will actually shoot! Imagine the bureaucratic embarrassment if the gun failed to shoot when test fired, but the investigation proving the gun shot the victim had already been closed. That would be a major "Point of Impact," would it not? Was there a good reason for closing the investigation so quickly?
[Thanks to Bob Lee Swagger and his "dad," Stephen! Additional thanks to VWF's Poet-Laureate, DC Dave.]
Just How Did VWF Carry The Revolver The 750+ Feet To The Second Cannon?
If VWF had driven his Honda into the FMP parking lot with a view toward walking some hundreds of feet (about 700 per the record, but actually closer to 775-800 feet as described elsewhere in this report) into the park and shooting himself, wouldn't he have been concerned about carrying the gun openly in his hands?
For that matter, he did not legally possess this gun in either DC (where he lived) or Virginia (where he died). All the more reason to be discrete.
What could have otherwise been a successful suicide might have been spoiled by someone's seeing him with the gun, calling the police, or watching him from a distance to see what he was going to do (certainly a distraction during what is presumably one of life's supremely private moments). It would certainly have been awkward to slip a Army Colt .38 Special with a four-inch barrel into a the pants pocket of a business suit and stroll about the park.
To stick the revolver in the waistband of one's trousers would still leave it in view as well as having it feel quite awkward during the walk to someone presumably unused to carrying a revolver in his waistband [based on the author's experience, hand guns stuck in one's waistband (unusual situation indeed) have a habit of slipping down inside one's trousers or falling completely out of the waistband].
FMP and even the fort itself are largely deserted on hot workday afternoons in mid-summer, but VWF could not be sure he would not encounter anyone as he searched for an appropriate location in which to kill himself in the unfamiliar park. How might VWF have handled this issue if he had actually been confronted with it?
One obvious and trivial solution (that VWF didn't use, per the record since his suit jacket was found in the Honda) would have been to have taken his suit jacket with him, carried casually over his arm, obscuring the gun. That way, no attention would have been attracted to him if he happened to have been seen by passersby. He certainly would have been less conspicuous than the man in the suit and tie seen at FMP on the 19th by the 17 year-old female (see the sub-heading, "FMP: Monday, July 19, 1500 Hours" above).
There is, of course, the opposite point of view: VWF shed his jacket and tie, leaving his wallet and WH ID behind in the Honda and turning off his pager(?) (symbolically leaving all his troubles behind), took a solo walk alone in the woods to end it all (but remember those solo walks in the woods referred to so lovingly in his commencement speech?).
He would have been just another office worker taking a stroll in the park, carrying his suit jacket over his arm. The fact that the record indicates clearly that his suit jacket was left in the Honda is slight evidence that he did not walk into the park from his car.
The author expects that it would be difficult for those who knew him well to visualize VWF striding some 750-800 feet through an open public park with a revolver in his hand. The distance in fact would have been much greater than that (and he would have been exposed with the gun in plain view for a longer time than otherwise) because he presumably did not exit his Honda and head directly for the area in front of the second cannon, but very likely wandered around a bit in the unfamiliar park seeking a good spot in which to kill himself. That is, if he did kill himself.
The Park Police Investigators Arrive At FMP
When USPP Investigators Rolla, Braun, and Apt arrived at the FMP parking lot at 1835, as estimated by Rolla [478,2123], or at 1830-1845 as estimated by Braun , Officer Fornshill had already left FMP . Rolla and Braun asked that he return to FMP, but Rolla was never able to talk with him at FMP that evening .
The CIB investigators at a death scene request the officer who found the body (who wrote no report and left the scene in less than ten minutes) to return to the scene, but he does not do so (having apparently (?) been told by his sergeant that it is more important for him to return to his post at the CIA gate to observe commuters beginning their journey home).
Why did the officer not return when ordered? Normally one would expect the reason to be that he had received countermanding orders from higher authority, but there is no evidence in the record that, however likely, these orders were issued.
The First Officer To Find The Body Did Not Write Any Report
Despite Rolla's expectations that the first officer on the scene would file a written report, Fornshill did not do so . Simonello stated in his deposition that the first officer on the scene at the body site should have filed a report. "He has to file it. The incident report is the initial report ."
Why did Fornshill not write a report? In his deposition, Fornshill said he did not write a report because he was told it was not necessary by another officer later that night at the station.
A Large Number Of USPP Officers Responded Rapidly To The Location of The Body
According to Braun, when the investigators arrived in the parking lot at FMP, Officer Spetz, Officer Fornshill, and Lt. Gavin, the shift commander, were already present , along with Sergeant Edwards. But Gavin left shortly after briefing her regarding what she would see at the body site . According to Gavin's FBI interview, he arrived at FMP around 1830-1845 . However, the initial two FCFRD crews (E01 and M01) who departed at 1837 were still in the parking lot when Gavin arrived .
The first USPP radio call from FMP after Fornshill located the body came at 1814:32 , 2 minutes 42 seconds after Fornshill arrived in the parking lot. Here is the text of that message: "261 [Fornshill's unit number] found body and asked for CIB ." The quotation may not contain all the words transmitted since the source document's primary function was to record the sequence of USPP calls . Within 40 seconds of Fornshill's call that he had found the body and requested CIB, Units 31 and 618 had rolled on the call.
It is not obvious from the record what officers were in units 31 and 618. Although most officers' unit numbers can be found in the record (with varying degrees of difficulty) these two were not found by the author (though they may be in the record somewhere). Unit 31 (a two digit number) might be Lt. Gavin, the shift supervisor. Unit 618 (a high three-digit number) might be some sort of specialty unit (Simonello's, the evidence technician's?). The names of the occupants of these units would be useful information to have and is easily obtainable from the USPP.
The unit number in which Rolla, Braun, and Apt responded to FMP is unknown to the author, so the investigators' unit might have been either 31 or 618.
Within a few minutes either side of 1830, the following USPP personnel (in addition to Fornshill) were on the scene, primarily in response to Fornshill's call asking for CIB assistance: Ferstl, Spetz, Edwards, Gavin, Hodakievic, Rolla, Braun, Apt, and Simonello. Schmidt, Watson, and "an intern" also appeared briefly at the scene.
Hodakievic stated that she arrived at the FMP parking lot about 1815. This seems a bit earlier than likely since, when she arrived, in addition to the six FCFRD personnel from E01 and M01 (Hall, Gonzalez, Arthur, Pisani, Wacha, and Iacone), the following USPP personnel were already on the scene: Fornshill, Ferstl, Spetz, and Edwards. Gavin apparently arrived shortly after Hodakievic did.
This makes a total of 12 USPP and FCFRD personnel at the scene relatively quickly after Fornshill's radio call. All this activity for what Fornshill reported to be an apparent suicide at 1814:32 and for what Gonzalez at 1837 transmitted was an "Obvious 10-61, suicide with gun ?" The total excludes Fornshill who left before Rolla and Braun arrived to return to his traffic duties at CIA.
This seems to be an unusually large response for an "obvious suicide with gun," particularly if the personnel situation was so tight that Fornshill had to leave FMP less than ten minutes after he arrived in the parking lot in order to return to the CIA to observe the traffic the employees created as they left the Agency [at around 1835 or so (well after normal day shift employees leave work), the earliest time he could have been back on station].
VWF's Name, Age, Sex, And Race Were Known To The USPP By 1837
Note that when they left at 1837, the computer time record clearly shows that the EMS workers knew VWF's name, age, sex, and race (address unknown) . This information could have been gleaned from Officer Ferstl who apparently ran the plate on VWF's Honda, assuming he did nothing more, such as enter the vehicle, having seen VWF's WH ID on the front passenger seat (This person couldn't have been Rolla by this logic since Rolla said the EMS personnel had left the parking lot before he arrived).
However, eyewitness accounts below indicate VWF's connection to the WH was widely known before 1837 and probably some minutes before that time.
The Body Was Important Enough To "Roll The Watch Commander" Pronto
Rolla was asked whether Lt. Gavin, the field commander for that shift was on the scene when he arrived. Rolla said he did not remember . Although Gavin responded to FMP, Rolla did not remember him "ever coming up to the crime scene ." However, Gavin indicated to the FBI in his interview that he did view the body, having been directed to the scene by Hodakievic , although he did not spend much time there which might explain why Rolla missed him.
As indicated above, Gavin got to the scene quite early. In any event, he and Sergeant Edwards apparently knew enough (whatever that was) to brief Braun sufficiently for her to consider the death as a suicide before she even saw the body. Was not Rolla in the lot while Gavin was briefing Braun? Was Rolla briefed too? If so, why did he not remember Gavin being there?
A Witness Sees USPP Officers Gaining Access To The Honda Prior To 1837.
Upon his return to the parking lot from the body site, EMS Arthur observed the USPP "gaining access to a cream-colored car with a suit jacket and tie in it, looking for identification of some sort" in the words of his FBI interview . This statement in the FBI report was not pursued in Arthur's deposition. The FCFRD personnel in M01 and E01 (including Arthur) had all left FMP by 1837 [1094,1102]. The official Reports ignore Arthur's statement.
When Did The USPP Learn Of VWF's WH Connection?
All the Fairfax FCFRD personnel had left FMP by 1837 [1094,1102], officially before Rolla and Braun arrived, so presumably the USPP personnel "Gaining access to the Honda" were either Ferstl, Fornshill (if he had not already left), Edwards, Gavin or possibly Spetz or Hodakievic.
Thus, contrary to the Fiske Report, this statement in Arthur's FBI interview is one of the items that shows that the USPP knew that VWF worked at the WH around the time Arthur was leaving the parking lot at 1837 [VWF's WH ID was under his jacket or, if the jacket were hanging over the back of the front passenger seat, VWF's WH ID would have been in plain view on the seat itself].
However, Gavin stated that the VWF-WH connection was not made until after he lad left FMP after a 30-45 minute stay . This time estimate would have Gavin leaving FMP at about 1900-1930. He explicitly stated that the WH ID had not been found by the time he left the park at roughly 1915. This statement of Gavin's does not agree with the analytical evidence presented in this memo.
With all these officers on the scene by roughly 1830, a body in the park, and one otherwise unaccounted-for vehicle in the parking lot with a suit jacket in it matching the decedent's suit pants, is the author to assume that no one enters that car for well over an hour and the WH does not learn of VWF's death until 2030? That is the conclusion of the official Reports.
Arthur's unit, M01 logged "available on radio" at the end of the run to FMP and preparatory to leaving the park at 1837 [1102,1421], so the USPP apparently knew of VWF's WH connection before 1837. This is consistent, in that the FCFRD personnel had already departed the park when Rolla and Braun arrived at about 1835 [Braun estimated they arrived 5-10 minutes later]. Note, too, that this information supports the inference that Rolla obtained Lt. Walter's name and phone number at Room 058 at the WH shortly after he arrived at FMP. Whoops! "Lieutenant Walter? Who's he?" The Walter connection is discussed in full immediately below.
William Bianchi remained at the station and did not respond to the 911 call. Bianchi told the FBI that Iacone knew when Iacone returned to the station that VWF was employed at the WH .
Bianchi instructed Hall and Iacone to make their incident reports detailed since a WH person was dead. It would be useful to see these incident reports, especially since the USPP did not interview any of the FCFRD personnel soon after the death, but they are not part of the record. Does the reader observe a trend here?
For what it is worth, the USPP Property Control Receipt that has the wallet (inside VWF's suit jacket in the Honda) as the first item listed indicates the wallet was recovered by the USPP at 1815 , just about the time that Fornshill called in by radio to say he had found the body.
However, according to Investigator Rolla, no one had gone into the Honda before Rolla and Braun arrived, although the license plate of the Honda had been run and returned as Vincent Foster with a LR address. The name meant nothing to Rolla or anyone else at the time according to his deposition -- no one was yet officially aware that VWF worked at the WH .
Didn't any of the USPP officers on scene tell Rolla and Braun about the victim's WH connection when Rolla, Braun, and Apt arrived at FMP?
How Did The Secret Service Phone Number Get Written In USPP Rolla's Notebook?
Does any information in the record provided directly by Rolla or Braun indicate that these two investigators knew of VWF's WH connection almost as soon as they arrived at FMP at about 1845? Yes.
Rolla was asked if he personally ever heard anything from the Secret Service [while at FMP]. He answered "No. I didn't talk to them at all ." Later in his deposition, Rolla reiterated he did not contact the Secret Service and stated he did not know who officially did notify the USSS about VWF's body .
In this context, another portion of Rolla's deposition and some notes he jotted down in his investigator's notebook at FMP are of interest. Rolla's attention was called to these notes during his deposition [474-475]:
Q: Officer, this is a copy of some of your notes that we were provided. Could you just take a look at one of the phone numbers in the middle of the page, I think it is just a seven digit number.
A: Yes. Lieutenant Walter?
Q: That one, yes. Who is that?
A: It could be Lieutenant Danny Walters [sic].
Q: Who is that person?
A: He is a Lieutenant on the Park Police. I don't know, call this number and find out.
Q: You don't recall who it is?
A: I don't know, maybe this is a Secret Service guy. Maybe I called him. I don't remember, but I don't remember [sic]. I say, let's call the number and find out now, then we will know. 395-4366, I don't know if that is a car phone or what it is.
A copy of the note sheet in question is at 488 of the record. Three of Rolla's note sheets are printed at 488-490.
The chronological order of the notes sheets is apparently page 489, page 490, and then page 488 of the record. Page 489 has Rolla's notes when his car first rolls from Anacostia Station on the way to FMP. It next lists the Mercedes that had broken down on the entrance ramp to FMP off the GWMP (not the Mercedes 190), just as Rolla would have seen it as his unit pulled into FMP.
Page 490 contains a visual description of VWF's Honda, both the exterior and the interior as viewed through the windows. This is consistent with Ferstl having directed Rolla's attention to the Honda as Rolla and the other investigators drove into the FMP parking lot.
Page 488, the third page in the chronological sequence, begins with the information one would obtain from running the license plate of the Honda (still registered in AR to VWF) at his former LR address.
Immediately following that notation is the name and number of a "Lt. Walter." Immediately following the name and number of Lt. Walter is VWF's local address in Georgetown (and a 202 area code number that was apparently VWF's home phone number at the time of his death).
If one calls the number given for Lt. Walter today, one reaches a Lt. McBride (or MacBride) who states that the phone number in question rings in room 058 in the WH basement. Lt. McBride (or possibly MacBride) informed the author that he is a uniformed officer of the USSS.
Based on the sequence of notes in his investigator's notebook, Rolla obtained the phone number of a Lt. Walter who was a uniformed officer of the USSS located in the WH basement immediately after he wrote down the information Ferstl had obtained by running the plate of the Honda. Although this particular note does not provide a time, Rolla appears to have written this name and number in his notebook sometime around 1840, based on his official arrival time at the FMP of 1835 and the relationship of the descriptive material in his notes to the rest of the record.
Rolla stated he never contacted the USSS. If so, how did he obtain Walter's name and number? Perhaps he was given it by Officer Ferstl or some other person in the park (such as Lt. Gavin -- the shift commander would doubtless have a phone list of some kind that listed USSS names and numbers)?
Why did this person, whoever it was is unknown, think it appropriate to give Rolla the WH phone number of USSS Lt. Walter [and perhaps VWF's Georgetown address too, since it was the next item recorded in Rolla's notebook with no obvious (at 1840) provenance for it since the Honda had (officially speaking) not yet been entered]? How could the connection have been made unless a person or persons unknown accessed the WH ID in the Honda (sometime not later than 1820-1835) or was VWF linked to the WH, perhaps much earlier than even 1830, via a mechanism that does not appear even implicitly in the record?
Rolla stated that he was briefed by Ferstl on his arrival at FMP and that Ferstl already knew VWF's name and that he was from LR [Information that could have been obtained from merely running the plate on the Honda -- no need necessarily to go inside the Honda for that particular information], but the presence of Lt. Walter's name at that point in Rolla's notebook raises some serious questions about the latest possible time the USPP actually knew there was a VWF-WH connection. It is clear from the questions they asked that the individuals taking Rolla's deposition were curious about this issue too.
One easy way for the person who cued Rolla to have known Lt. Walter's name and number at the WH would have been to have opened the (officially) unlocked door of the Honda, after having seen the suit jacket on the front passenger seat [or possibly draped over the back of the front passenger seat] that matched the suit pants VWF was wearing.
Having accounted for the only other car officially in the parking lot at that time (the MD Nissan with the couple having a late lunch [sic] at FMP, who had been located by Spetz), this individual would have opened the Honda, lifted the jacket if necessary, and seen VWF's WH ID lying under it.
The "problem" with this analysis for the official Reports is that it means that the WH, too, almost certainly would have learned that VWF was dead at FMP not later than 1840 or so, not the 2030 officially claimed [2076 & 2551(dupe)] That is, unless the USPP, with the WH ID of a dead person in hand, waited, for reasons unknown, about two hours to call the USSS.
For reasons also unknown, this line of questioning was not pursued further in the Senate Hearings in the summer of 1994. If the WH did know of the death sometime around 1830 rather than the 2030 officially claimed , what use, if any, was made of the additional two-hour window? [This should be of interest to those conducting the 1995 Hearings on the fate of VWF's WH papers.]
The Official Search Of VWF's Honda Came Significantly Later Than 1830
USPP Investigator Rolla ran the plate of VWF's 1989 four-door Honda Accord (AR license plate and parked in the fourth space on the left as one drives into the FMP parking lot) just after he arrived in the FMP parking lot at 1835 . According to Rolla's deposition, however, the plate was not necessarily run by him personally , but could have been run by one of the other investigators or by Officer Ferstl.
USPP Officer Ferstl apparently informed Rolla on Rolla's arrival that the Honda likely belonged to the victim: the suit jacket folded on the front passenger seat matched the slacks on the body. When Fornshill left the park (officially around 1825 or slightly sooner), he saw the jacket "neatly folded over the front passenger seat ."
Does this phrase mean the same as "folded over the back of the front passenger seat" in contrast to folded "on the front passenger seat?"
The jacket was also found "folded over the back of the front passenger seat ." Rolla wrote down the tag number, ran it using his car phone, and it "came back to" VWF, exact address unknown, LR .
Rolla states that a search of the Honda (referred to as the "official" search herein) found the wallet in VWF's suit jacket on the front passenger seat of the Honda , but he told the FBI that the jacket was "neatly folded over the back of the front passenger seat [1603, see also 2123]." The WH ID was on the front passenger seat by the time of the official search (under the jacket if the jacket had "migrated" to the front passenger seat).
Rolla also states that a search (after the body had been bagged ) of the Honda found the wallet in VWF's suit jacket on the front passenger seat of the Honda [393, 436]. The WH ID was apparently under the jacket. Braun indicated the suit jacket was on the front passenger seat when she searched the Honda .
Per the Fiske Report, the body was not placed in the body bag by the second cannon until about 2045 . Since Rolla did not begin searching the Honda, according to Rolla's chronology, until after the body was bagged at the 2045 time provided in the Fiske Report, how did the WH know that VWF was dead at no later than 2030 ? Why does the Fiske Report state that the body was bagged significantly later than the record it actually was?
According to Rolla, it was when he discovered the WH ID in the Honda [time not stated] that he first realized that VWF worked at the WH . This discovery took place after Dr. Haut had completed his examination of the body, according to Rolla.
Since Dr. Haut arrived at FMP (per the USPP, at 1940) and Dr. Haut indicated he stayed at the park about 30 minutes, the approximate time Rolla began to search of the Honda would have been around 2015, some 15 minutes before the WH officially knew of VWF's death .
This does not leave much time for the WH to have been called (via a call to Gavin from the park and a call by Gavin to the USSS) by 2030, especially since Braun said it took her two tries to get the information to Gavin.
This 2015 starting time for the search of the Honda, though derived directly from the record, is unlikely, given the timetable provided by Braun that states she was the first to search the Honda (below). Furthermore, given Dr. Haut told the FBI in his interview he arrived at 1845 (not 1940) and stayed at FMP about 30 minutes, the actual time Rolla began his "official" search of the Honda was probably about 1915, not 2015.
After completing his work at the body site and after Dr. Haut was finished with his work, Rolla said he returned to the Honda in the parking lot. Q: "Had the car been opened when you returned to the parking lot?" A: "I think it might have been opened with Simonello taking the photographs. No one had gone in and retrieved anything ." Retrieved? Retrieved what? The briefcase that several witnesses saw in the Honda but which was not in the Honda per the official Reports? Is this another interesting verbal formulation under the circumstances?
Rolla said he was the USPP person who "went through the car " after Simonello had photographed it. Braun says she was the one who began the search of the car .
According to Braun's deposition Q: "Back to your search of the car. Were any other Park Police Personnel involved in the search of the car?" A: "No." Q: "Did any other Park Police personnel touch or otherwise enter the car itself or any of its contents?" A: "No, not at the scene."
Something is wrong here. Rolla and Braun cannot both have been the first to search the Honda officially. In fact, since there is strong evidence the Honda was entered sometime earlier (1820-1830), they are both wrong: neither of them was the first official to go inside the Honda since it appears that the Honda was initially entered a few minutes before their arrival.
VWF's WH ID was inside the jacket in the Honda per the Fiske Report . According to Rolla, he found the WH ID under the suit jacket which had been placed on the front seat of the passenger side of the Honda . But a bit later in his deposition he says, "I think Cheryl Braun said he has a White House ID here ." The wallet was found inside the jacket .
Per Rolla, "I looked through the whole car. I looked at everything. . . Trust me, I looked. I looked under the seats. I looked in the trunk. I looked at every piece of paper I could find ." Per Braun, after spending 15-30 minutes at the body site, she returned to the parking lot to go through the Honda "I went through the car ."
According to Rolla and Braun, no keys were found in the Honda (or, earlier, with the body when it was searched by Rolla) . Who has the keys to the Honda (and VWF's second key ring with his WH keys) at this time? This mystery will be discussed below.
Watson, The Communications Link Between Braun and Gavin Was Not Questioned
Braun says she found the WH ID [time not given] and had "another officer" [name not given] inform the White House of VWF's death [502,561]. But she later (somehow) found out that the WH had not been notified. It might be interesting to learn how Braun found out that her prior message to Gavin was not delivered.
She then personally contacted Lt. Gavin and he let the WH know VWF was dead at FMP , estimating that she contacted Gavin at 1930-1945 . Later in her deposition Braun said she asked an officer Watson to tell Gavin (presumably so that the WH would be informed immediately).
Officer Watson is apparently not mentioned elsewhere in the official record, though one would think that this crucial official first link to notifying the WH of VWF's death would have been pursued. Watson and an intern apparently had gotten permission to tour the crime scene, so Braun took the time to escort them up (apparently after having finished her search of the Honda since that is how VWF's WH connection was officially established after Braun returned to the FMP parking lot). The name of the "intern" is not in the record.
In the words of the Fiske Report : "Everyone known to have been in Fort Marcy Park on the afternoon or evening of July 20, 1993, also was questioned." The intern and USPP Watson thus join the long list of those for whom this Fiske Report statement is "not operable."
Braun Says She Was The First Person To Search The Honda And Notify Gavin
Caution: These times may be hard to follow and somewhat confusing, but they are the times the information in the record provides.
After spending 15-30 minutes at the body site (after having tarried in the parking lot for a time interviewing the couple who had arrived in the Nissan around 1715-1730) Braun says she, not Rolla, found the jacket on the front [passenger] seat, not folded over the top of the seat [502,561].
Braun states that she personally advised Gavin of VWF's WH connection at about 1930-1945 based on her search of the Honda. Gavin had long since left FMP. However, roughly thirty minutes prior to that time was the first time Braun tried to notify Gavin of VWF's WH connection and failed.
The WH indicates it did not officially know of VWF's death until 2030 . If Braun's times are correct, Gavin did not notify the WH within the ten minutes or so of being notified himself as he stated in his FBI interview .
Keep in mind at all times that the VWF-WH connection was in reality known not later than 1830 (see the sub-heading "When Did The USPP Learn Of VWF's WH Connection" above) in the author's opinion. Even if Gavin were officially notified by Braun at 1930, that still would leave a one-hour gap before the WH claims it first knew officially that VWF had died .
The USSS Memo That Indicates When The WH Learned That VWF Was Dead
Page 2551 of the record is a copy of a USSS Memo written at 22:01 on July 20, 1993, that states that the WH learned at 2030 on that evening that VWF was dead. The memo says that the body of VWF was found "in his car. . . parked in the Fort Marcy area of Virginia near the GWMP Parkway."
The memo states that VWF apparently died of a self-inflicted gun show wound to the head [more evidence that the suicide theory was fastened onto relatively early in the evening]. The memo states that the time the body was found is not known to the USSS. The USPP found the body and USPP Gavin had contacted the USSS per the memo.
An aside: This USSS memo indicates that in addition to being Deputy WH Counsel, VWF was also a Deputy Assistant to the President. This latter title may simply be an ex officio title deriving from VWF's status as Deputy WH Counsel, but the author does not know for sure.
VWF's Jacket -- "Over" Back Of The Front Seat Versus "On" The Front Seat
There is evidence that the individuals who viewed the jacket in the Honda relatively soon after the body was found saw it hanging or folded over the back of the passenger seat while those who saw the jacket somewhat later in the evening saw it folded on the passenger seat itself.
If this turns out to be correct, then VWF's WH ID (which virtually everyone agrees was itself on the front passenger seat [that is, under the jacket when the jacket was on the seat itself]) would have been in plain sight sitting on the front passenger seat, making it more likely that one of the first USPP or FCFRD personnel would have seen it in plain view on the front passenger seat, and therefore made the reasonable decision to enter the Honda soon after the body was found.
An Unusual Call From The White House After Gavin Contacts The USSS
Gavin explicitly stated to the FBI that "the White House identification was discovered in the vehicle after he left the scene." Sometime later, one of the detectives called Gavin (name not given in one recounting, but apparently USPP Watson; see the Comment above) to inform him of the White House connection to VWF and Gavin notified with WH within 10 minutes of being notified himself .
His call was returned in about ten minutes by Bill Burton, Assistant WH Chief of Staff. Burton's first question was whether the USPP had checked the registration on the gun and knew to whom it belonged. This struck Gavin as a strange first question for the WH to have asked him. Why was Mr. Burton never asked about this unusual first question to Gavin?
Gavin was not asked what time he notified the WH.
Photographs Of The Honda Were Taken In The FMP Parking Lot, But. . .
Braun, and apparently Simonello, took photographs of the Honda in the parking lot at FMP . By any chance did Simonello's 35 mm film of the Honda in the parking lot "come out" even though the ones he took at the body sight with the 35 mm camera did not? Apparently not.
For reasons unknown, all the reproduced photos of the Honda in the record are apparently of the Honda in the USPP Impound Yard, not at FMP, even though USPP Investigator Cheryl Braun took five Polaroids of the Honda at FMP that are inventoried in the record . Since officially, no one was investigating the death as a homicide, it appears that no notations were made as to the positions of the mirrors and the driver's seat. If VWF drove the Honda to FMP, the seat and mirrors would have been set appropriately for a man of his height, 6' 4.5" .
Due to the compact size of the Honda, if the seat were positioned fully to the rear (the expected position for the 6 foot 4.5 inch VWF), little could be inferred about the height of the person who drove the Honda to the FMP parking lot. On the other hand, if the seat were positioned any other way, a strong inference could be made that the Honda was not driven last by some one over 6 foot 4 inches tall. The mirror positions (inside and driver's side) would have been much more indicative of the height of the individual who drove the car last.
It is a pity that no photos of the Honda in the parking lot made it into the record, for this reason and others. Although no photos of the Honda at FMP apparently appear in the record, five were taken there by Cheryl Braun that are listed in the record . Do these Polaroids reveal the positions of the driver's seat prior to the search of the Honda? Presumably they do. What is the position of the driver's seat?
This is an example why evidence should not be altered (or released) until a homicide is clearly shown to be a suicide.
The Honda Was Dusted For Fingerprints, But None Were Found
The Honda was dusted for fingerprints while at the FMP parking lot . However, there is no mention in the record of the analysis of the results obtained. One might think that Evidence Technician Simonello would have been the individual dusting the Honda for fingerprints, but he told the FBI that he did not [639,2159]. Simonello believed another individual [apparently at the impound yard?] had dusted the vehicle for prints.
According to Simonello "I don't believe they found any [fingerprints when the Honda was "processed'"] [639,669]." This is particularly interesting in the light of the testimony of the couple in the Nissan who saw two individuals (not VWF) in and around VWF's Honda in the FMP parking lot shortly after 1700 (within 2-3 hours of the time the Honda was dusted for prints).
Although there may well be no connection with the Honda fingerprint issue, the FBI interviewed Simonello on June 1, 1994, telling him that the FBI Lab had completed the majority of the physical examination of the evidence provided to the FBI by the USPP, and informing Simonello that there were two issues that the interviewing agent wished to discuss with Simonello . The entire remaining portion of the FBI interview report is redacted, so the record does not reveal what questions the FBI had or what Simonello's responses were.
More On The Arrival Time of Dr. Haut, The Fairfax County Medical Examiner
There is an inconsistency in the record: the USPP indicates that Dr. Haut arrived at FMP at 1940. However, his own FBI interview indicates he arrived at FMP roughly one hour earlier at about 1845. In any event, Dr. Haut arrived well before Ambulance 1 (A01) that transported the body to the morgue.
The Map Braun Found On The Front Passenger Seat Floor Was Ignored
Braun found a map on the passenger seat floor of the Honda that had apparently been folded into a square to display just a part of the map . It was a map of the DC area.
Braun was never asked specifically to what area the map was folded. Why might this be an important? The author can think of two reasons. Per the record, VWF had never mentioned FMP and did not know of its existence as far as anyone knew . If VWF had merely selected FMP as a good drive-in suicide site on a real-time basis, he would have needed no map to guide him to an opportunistic venue.
However, if someone other than VWF was driving his Honda around to the vehicle entrance to FMP off the GWMP (from, say, a dwelling near the northwest side of the park), to foster [sorry] the impression that VWF drove himself to FMP, that individual might well have needed a map to help him locate the FMP exit off the GWMP which appears with little warning. Good directions to the exit would have been particularly important if, for some reason, the driver of the Honda were under significant time pressure. The Table of Civilian Vehicles indicates a Japanese car, possibly with AR plates, cut sharply across the lanes of the GWMP and took the FMP exit at about 1450.
Alternatively, and less controversially, the area to which the map was folded might have indicated the unknown location that VWF traveled to after leaving the WH (This would probably also mean he did not go there regularly -- he needed a map to help him find the place, presumably a rendezvous with persons as yet unknown). The Fiske Report regretted that the investigation could never uncover any leads where or how VWF spent these five hours, but apparently the folded-up map on the front seat was not considered of any importance in this connection.
VWF's Honda -- Locked Or Unlocked?
VWF's taupe gray Honda was always unlocked at FMP [150,436,501,2159] according to the official Reports.
One would think that VWF would have left his car locked, even if he had left it to commit suicide. By all accounts he was a careful man, a "meticulous" perfectionist per his friends' comments in the record. Surely, the last thing he would have wanted to occur would have been to have his family be forced to cope with his suicide and at the same time be hassled by the problems of a stolen wallet, bogus credit card charges, possibly a stolen Honda, and someone running around the Virginia suburbs with his WH ID. That VWF would have locked the Honda is by no means a certainty, but seems to be a reasonable position given the VWF described in the record.
Note that there is evidence above that the first EMS personnel on the scene (before the USPP investigators arrived) thought the vehicle was in fact locked (see the Comment above regarding the EMS personnel who gathered around VWF's Honda at about 1830).
If everyone after the FCFRD personnel had left says the vehicle was unlocked, who unlocked it, and with what? A critical point: the Honda keys were not officially found until much later (see Comment below).
Could someone have unlocked the locked car with a slim jim or similar tool? If it had been locked and the keys were not to be found in the park (officially because the keys were missed when the VWF's pants pockets were searched) what would have been an alternative way to open the Honda? After all, a man drives himself to a park, kills himself there, leaving his car locked, but with no keys on him or in his car? That is hard to believe, particularly if the car had not been rifled (as VWF's Honda had not been).
Ferstl was the USPP person who accompanied the Honda when it was towed away to the USPP CIB impound yard later that night at 2130 [2122,2440].
Bill Kennedy told the FBI the Honda was not retrieved from the USPP until "one and one-half to two months" after the death . In fact, Craig Livingstone picked up the Honda on July 28th, eight days after the death, at 1435 . There is an unusual fully-redacted property control receipt at 2199-2200.
FBI Lab Analysis Of The Clothing Worn By VWF at FMP
The FBI lab determined that VWF's clothing contained carpet-type fibers of various colors and that his shoes and clothing did not contain any coherent soil . Small particles of mica were found on VWF's clothing [222, 251] and mica is present in the soil at FMP, but one might wonder whether some of this mica, a relatively soft, sheet-like mineral, especially in the very dry weather conditions that existed at the time of VWF's death , might not be deposited by the wind on the abundant vegetation in the area, making it possible to find traces of mica in his clothes.
One might also ask why the presence of the carpet fibers, the location of the glasses some 19 feet below VWF's head at the turn in slope at the bottom of the berm, the lack of coherent soil on his shoes, and the body's neatly-laid-out position, taken in combination, do not merit discussion in the record that VWF might have been carried into the park from the north or northwest side inside a carpet or some similar material.
As far as the author can determine from the record, none of the investigations examined the seat of VWF's Honda to determine whether any of the fibers on his clothes matched those of the Honda seat or, more important, whether any of the carpet-type fibers present on VWF's clothes were also present on the driver's seat of the Honda.
Presumably, if VWF drove his Honda to FMP and was found on the ground near the second cannon with a sizable number of these fibers on his clothes, the same sort of fibers would also have been found on the driver's seat and seat back of the Honda a few minutes earlier. Had they not been found there (if the seat had been checked for them, which it was not), that would have been some evidence that VWF did not drive his Honda to FMP the day he died. The Honda has long since been released to the widow and sold to a relative.
Blond-to-light-brown head hairs of Caucasian origin that were not VWF's were found that came from some or all of the following clothing items: T-shirt, pants, belt, socks, and shoes. These hairs were mounted and preserved for future comparisons , but no comparisons apparently have been made.
Given these hairs were suitable for comparison (they were, after all, compared successfully with VWF's own hair and found to be dissimilar), it would be relatively easy to determine if these hairs matched those of any members of his immediate family. If no match was found, comparisons could then be made to the hair of VWF's day-to-day co-workers (again, not a large population).
The Search For The Fatal Bullet At FMP
The Fiske Report notes [222,372-373] that the extensive number of bullets and other metal objects (buttons, coins, nails, etc.) [about 60] detected during the FBI search of the body site for the bullet that was fired from the Army Colt .38 Special revolver found in VWF's right hand was conducted on April 4, 1994 [372-373]. There is no explanation why a previous USPP search of the scene with metal detectors did not turn up anything metallic, particularly given all the metal objects later located by the FBI search . The Fiske Report does not refer to the previous USPP metal detector sweep of the body site.
Although, according to the record, the soil where the body was found was hand-sifted by the FBI in April 1994 and screened by various other methods to a depth of roughly 18 inches [222, 223], none of the tree roots found at the surface of the ground under the body [228, 391] appear to have been cut as of mid-June 1995 [personal observation at the site by author].
The FBI search officially cleared out a lot of the vegetation that was in close proximity to the official body site [1019,1158]. Pisani recollected to the FBI in his interview that, although there was a lot of vegetation where the body was found at FMP, in May of 1994 there was no vegetation at the spot at the time he spoke with the FBI. Hall noted in his FBI interview that the area where the body was found did not contain the heavy vegetation in April of 1994 that it contained at the time of VWF's death .
Based on the time he spent at the site in June 1995, the author questions whether the site on the slope of the western berm neat the second cannon was heavily vegetated in recent years. If he is correct, this is some additional evidence indicating the body was actually located in another place within the park, perhaps the location favored by Reporter Chris Ruddy, some yards west of the first cannon on the slope of the southern berm (there was and is extensive vegetation in this area).
Why Was No Gun Shot Heard -- The Dwellings Near FMP
In discussing the reasons why no one in or near FMP heard the gun shot, the Fiske Report states "The closest building to the Park is the official Saudi Arabian Ambassador's residence located across Chain Bridge Road, a few hundred yards away from the spot that Foster shot himself ."
This Fiske Report statement is completely false. See the annotated "Homes" Table in Appendix I. See also Map V (R) in Appendix II.
As indicated in the annotations to the Table, not only is the Fiske Report mistaken in that there are a number of homes closer to the Park and to the location of VWF's body, but also no publicly accessible official VWF death investigation records indicate that the occupants of the five closest homes to the body were ever asked if they heard the shot on the 20th, saw anything unusual that day, or had any other information the might be of use to the investigation.
The M.E. Views VWF's Body, It Is Bagged, And Taken To The FMP Parking Lot
Braun said she was finishing her search of the Honda about the time Dr. Haut and the ambulance that was to take the body to Fairfax Hospital (the morgue) arrived .
However, according to his FBI interview, however, Dr. Haut arrived at FMP at approximately 1845, or about one hour earlier than stated in the Fiske Report . He left the scene about 30 minutes after his arrival , never having seen the FCFRD personnel who made a separate trip to FMP [Ambulance (A01) and Truck 1 (T01P)] to transport the body to Fairfax County Hospital. Before he left the scene, Dr. Haut knew that the USPP knew VWF's identity and that VWF was employed at the WH .
According to the Fiske Report Dr. Donald Haut, the Fairfax County Medical Examiner, arrived at the body site to examine the body at about 1940 or 1945 [480,2124,2127,2160,2521]. "Haut observed a large exit wound in the back of the skull" when the body was rolled over.
The Fiske Report states that Dr. Haut arrived at FMP at 1940, roughly one hour after Dr. Haut told the FBI he arrived at FMP (1845). The Fiske Report statement about Dr. Haut does not agree with Dr. Haut's statement about Dr. Haut. Who made this basic mistake and why was it made?
Was it useful to have it seem as if Dr. Haut appeared at FMP around 1940, not 1845, since he would (did) state in his FBI interview that he knew of the VWF-WH connection by the time he left the park (1915 at the latest according to Dr. Haut and about 2015 at the latest according to the USPP time in the record)?
If Dr. Haut's official arrival time was about an hour later than actual, then the fact that he knew of VWF's WH connection when he left FMP would not be as awkward, given the official time the WH was notified was 2030 .
Dr. Haut also told the FBI that he did not recall seeing any blood on VWF's face and shirt (unlike the photos the FBI showed him).
This is a yet another trained witness reporting a material discrepancy between the photos shown them by the FBI and what they actually saw. That this witness was the only medical doctor who examined VWF at the scene was apparently no reason for the investigators not to totally discount his statement.
Rolla estimated he had been at FMP about an hour when Dr. Haut arrived, maybe somewhat more . He told the FBI that Dr. Haut arrived at FMP at 1945 about an hour after Rolla's 1935 arrival but, according to Dr. Haut's FBI interview, he arrived just after Rolla (at about 1845).
Ambulance 01 Arrives At FMP After Dr. Haut Left The Park
Ashford and Harrison of Fairfax County EMS drove to the FMP parking lot for VWF's body sometime after Dr. Haut's examination of the body was complete after the doctor had left FMP. Their task was to transport VWF's body from the body site to the Fairfax County Hospital/Morgue . Ashford recalled what he thought was a "red Honda Civic" in the parking lot, but he was later informed that the vehicle was VWF's light gray four-door Honda Accord [1346,1559]. He noted to the FBI that the jacket was on a hangar in the back window of the vehicle .
This was around 2000. Perhaps the jacket had been put on a hangar by this time.
One Of The Ambulance Drivers Sees A Car In The FMP Lot Not mentioned Elsewhere
Ashford noted a black Cadillac in the parking lot when he arrived to transport the body at 2016 .
Whose vehicle was this? Certainly a CoDel was not on scene so quickly! The record does not say. It should not have been Dr. Haut's since Dr. Haut stated he had left before the ambulance drivers arrived. The car had to have been officially admitted into the FMP parking lot for Ashford to have seen it there. Thus, it must have been allowed to cross the "perimeter" Braun set up at the exit to FMP off the GWMP by ordering the FMP vehicle gate closed. Why was this vehicle allowed in the lot?
The Body Is Bagged Way Back By The Second Cannon
Ashford lifted VWF from the head and shoulders area (and Harrison from the area of VWF's feet, or possibly the head ), to place him in the body bag . According to Ashford's FBI interview "Ashford did not recall seeing any blood while placing Foster in the bag. Ashford did not recall any blood getting on his uniform or on the disposable gloves he wore while handling the body . Ashford also did not see any blood on the ground at the body site ."
In the words of Harrison's FBI interview, he "did not recall seeing any blood on Foster and did not recall seeing any blood on individuals handling the body." The reason given for his remembering this was that if blood had been present a hazardous materials report would have had to have been filled out and Harrison decided he need not complete one due to the lack of blood.
Still another apparent discrepancy about the amount of blood seen on the body.
According to Rolla's FBI interview, having been placed in the body bag, the body was rolled to the FMP parking lot under the direction of the Medical Examiner, Dr. Haut .
There are two problems with Rolla's statement. Dr. Haut, in the words of his FBI interview described his departure thus: "According to Haut, there were no paramedics on the scene while he was at the death site. Foster's body was still in place when Haut departed the death scene ."
Why does the author believe Dr. Haut is correct? Because Dr. Haut arrived at FMP at about 1845 [1659-1660], just like he told the FBI he did, not the 1940 provided by the USPP and the Fiske Report, and left about 30 minutes afterwards (1915, more or less).
The paramedics in the ambulance had not yet arrived to transport the body, so of course Dr. Haut did not see them. The computerized time record reporting system in Ambulance 1 (A01) show it "on scene" at FMP ready to depart for the hospital with the body at 2016:27 and arriving at the hospital at 2030:55 [1096,1428 read in tandem]. The time needed to drive to the hospital (14-15 minutes) is quite reasonable (the author has timed this run at about the same hour on a weekday). T01P, the truck, had accompanied A01 since the body was so far back in the woods. T01P arrived at FMP at 2002:25 and freed up for new duty at 2021:27 [1096,1428 read in tandem].
Since Dr. Haut did not see these people who arrived to transport the body, he did indeed leave prior to 2003, consistent with his estimate that he left FMP at about 1915 and inconsistent with the Fiske Report estimate that he arrived at FMP at 1940 (Still staying at FMP about 30 minutes).
VFW's Body Is Driven To Fairfax County Hospital/Morgue
VWF's body was driven to Fairfax County Hospital by Ashford and Harrison in ambulance A01 [1097,1377] where it was formally pronounced dead by a hospital physician, Dr. Orenstein . Ashford did not recall seeing any blood during the physician's brief examination (the doctor felt for a pulse and detected none) . The corpse was then driven to the morgue located within the hospital complex.
Truck 1 (T01P) also responded to the scene since the body was hundreds of feet back in the park . The body in its bag was transported to the parking lot on a wheeled stretcher. Bianchi told the FBI the path was rocky and that it was a long distance. At the parking lot, Bianchi unzipped the body bag and put a toe tag on VWF's right toe (no mention who removed the shoe(s), perhaps Bianchi).
According to the Fiske Report, the Fairfax County ambulance was despatched to FMP and VWF's body was placed in a body bag about 2045, put on a wheeled stretcher, rolled the roughly 750 feet to the parking lot where the body was given a toe tag, and the body was transported to Fairfax County Hospital where it was examined briefly by Dr. Julian Orenstein who officially pronounced the VWF dead, and then driven to the hospital morgue.
The record does not state the amount of time it took to roll VWF's body 750 feet over uneven ground to the lot or how long the body was at the lot before the ambulance left with it inside.
The ambulance then took VWF to Fairfax Hospital (and morgue) and Truck 1 returned to the station. Truck 1 responded to the scene at FMP at 2002:25 [1096,1428]. Ambulance 1 reported it started on its way to FMP at 1947:32. Ambulance 1 actually left with the body for the hospital complex at 2017:26 [1096,1428]. Andrew Makuch also rode Truck 1 that night , as did Victoria Jacobs [1373; see also 1390].
The Fiske Report is wrong. According to the computerized time log of the ambulance, it began transporting the body to the Hospital/morgue at 2017:26, and arrived at the hospital at 2030:55 [1096,1428]. Dr. Orenstein estimated he examined the body between 2030 and 2100, an estimate that matches nicely with the 2031 arrival time provided by A01 and not so nicely with the Fiske Report statement that the body was being bagged back by the second cannon at 2045. If there is a logbook at the morgue that notes the arrival time of bodies received, it should be of great help in establishing what time the body arrived at the morgue.
More On The Nature of VWF's Head Wound
Dr. Haut told the FBI, in the words of his interview report "Haut believed that the wound was consistent with a low velocity weapon ." [That is, something other than the Army Colt .38 Special with a four-inch barrel and the two high-velocity cartridges (one spent) that were found at the scene]. This remark by the only doctor to examine the body in situ was not mentioned in the official Reports. The author finds this judgment call by the authors of the Fiske Report remarkable indeed.
Ceteris paribus, a low velocity weapon would cause less damage to the skull and the slug would be more likely to remain within the brain case (see the Heading, "The Autopsy and Related Matters" for a discussion of the X-rays at the autopsy). A low velocity weapon is one that imparts a significantly lower muzzle velocity (when compared with the muzzle velocity of a "standard" round for that type weapon) to the fired slug, either due to shortness of barrel length, a reduced gunpowder charge in the cartridge (most common), or the presence of a silencer (or some combination of these reasons).
Such a weapon is typically used (when used at all) in contract killings in which a gun is used up close. In the lingo of the trade, first the victim is put at ease ("buttered") and then shot without warning ("toasted"). There are a variety of reasons for using a low-velocity weapon: less noise, less splatter and atomization of blood (less chance of getting blood on the shooter, or his clothes, that could be tied to the decedent via DNA-type analyses), etc. Further, deponent sayeth not.
USPP Investigator Rolla, like Dr. Haut (but unlike the Fiske Report), apparently found it somewhat surprising that the revolver found in VWF's right hand was responsible for his head wound. Per Rolla, "I still can't believe the hole -- it's a small hole." His head was not blown out. . . I probed his head there was no big hole there. There was no blowout. There weren't brains running all over the place. . . I initially thought the bullet might still be in his head ."
In the author's lay opinion, this comment by Rolla is consistent with the use of a low-velocity weapon as described by Dr. Haut. An Army .38 Colt Special with HV ammunition would normally thoroughly blow out the brain case when fired in the manner the official Reports suggest was used by VWF. Dr. Haut's comments agree with Rolla's.
[The Comment below about the X-rays at the autopsy is relevant to Rolla's initial thought that the bullet might still be in the head.]
EMS Arthur also stated in his deposition ". . .a .38 would have an exit wound. I've seen .38 gunshot wounds before to the head, and they have had exit wounds before. I don't know, maybe out of some weird coincidence or something this one didn't, but from what I saw in past times, .38s usually have an exit wound ." Thus, Arthur saw the body and, like Rolla and Dr. Haut, thought there was no exit wound.
EMS Sergeant Gonzalez was also surprised by the lack of blood and the modest extent of damage from the supposed point-blank shot to the head from the .38 .
Arthur stated he talked with EMS Ashford who put the body in the body bag and EMS Ashford told him there was no exit wound "He said the head was intact when he picked it up." As indicated above, Ashford told the FBI that he did not recall seeing any blood when he placed VWF's body in the body bag .
However, the Fiske Report states "Haut observed a large exit wound in the back of the skull ."
It would be interesting to be able to compare this statement about what Dr. Haut said to what Dr. Haut's report says (it's not in the record). It's clear that Dr. Haut and the Fiske Report differ about the time Dr. Haut arrived at FMP (Fiske: 1940; Dr. Haut 1845). It's also clear that Dr. Haut's statement to the FBI about the wound appearing to have been consistent with use of a "low velocity weapon" is inconsistent with the Fiske Report quote above about the large exit wound.
Simonello raised a related point "I wondered about the fact that I did not see a lot of blood spattered on his white shirt. Spatters -- when a high velocity bullet hits, blood is turned into teeny, tiny droplets. I saw one or two drops, but not indicative of a pattern ."
Fiske's statement does not agree with the ones made by these expert witnesses, nor did the authors of these reports believe any attempt to reconcile these differences was worth their time.
VWF's Body Arrives At The Hospital/Morgue
Dr. Julian Orenstein examined the body while it was still in the ambulance . The body was then driven around the grounds to the morgue.
At the morgue, Doctor Orenstein and Fairfax County Police (not USPP) Officer Dave Tipton lifted the body by the shoulders. Doctor Orenstein did not recall seeing any blood on the decedent's back [1656,1657]. This is in contrast to a statement in the Fiske Report: "At that point [when the body was still at FMP], Foster's body was rolled over and those present observed a large pool of blood located on the ground where Foster's head had been ."
The reason that Dr. Orenstein lifted the body by the shoulders was to observe the exit wound. However, Dr. Orenstein's FBI interview is silent as to whether he saw an exit wound when he lifted the body . It is surprising that the FBI interview report is silent on this point since the presence or absence of an exit wound is one of the few things (other than formally pronouncing VWF dead) that Dr. Orenstein's brief examination could be expected to reveal.
Rolla And Braun Picked Up David Watkins Before Making The Death Notification
Gavin also called Rolla while he and Braun were en route to VWF's home to make the death notification, telling them to call David Watkins, a friend of VWF's, pick him up, and take him to the notification too [397,481].
According to Braun, this call took place while she and Rolla were on the way to the morgue to retrieve VWF's keys from the body bag [5-7]. David Watkins lived in Georgetown only a couple of blocks from the Fosters [see also 443,508]. His wife followed Rolla, Braun, and Watkins to VWF's home in the family car .
VWF's Keys [Two Sets] Were Located At the Morgue Hours After He Died
After searching VWF's Honda, Braun stated that she noticed no car keys had yet been found [153,507]. Rolla and Braun were puzzled after the car was searched why there were no cars keys present in the Honda or on the body [393-394,479, 560-561].
NOTE: Even if the author concedes that the USPP/FCFRD "suicide verdict" was only a working hypothesis, AT THE MOMENT ROLLA AND BRAUN REALIZED THAT THERE WERE NO CAR KEYS ON THE BODY AND NO CAR KEYS IN THE HONDA, THERE WAS NO LONGER ANY REASON NOT IMMEDIATELY TO TREAT THE DEATH AS A HOMICIDE. If the working hypothesis had been that VWF drove himself to FMP and shot himself in the mouth over by the second cannon, WHERE WERE HIS CAR KEYS?
Some professionals would have said that the body's originally having been found by someone who refused to identify himself and left the scene should alone have made the decision to investigate the death as a homicide (and not a suicide) a clear-cut one. Couple the anonymous tip about a dead body from someone who left the scene with no car keys at the scene, and the "apparent suicide" working hypothesis (even if that is all it was) should have been thrown out immediately.
If the consensus in the record is that VWF drove himself to FMP and proceeded to commit suicide near the second cannon, the lack of keys on the body or in the car would be a big problem, would it not?
At some point in the evening (see the sub-heading, "To The Morgue First For The Keys Or Was The Family Death Notification First?") Braun and Rolla responded (no time given, but officially after they left FMP at 2045 ) to the Fairfax County Hospital Morgue to which the body had been taken by Fairfax County ambulance. Braun stated she located the keys to the vehicle in VWF's right front pants pocket (inside the body bag) [481,507,561].
It is strange that Braun would write in her report that she recovered the keys from VWF's right front pants pocket at the morgue at 2045 because, per the Fiske Report, VWF was being bagged by the second cannon for the trip to the morgue at 2045 . Braun herself also left FMP at 2045 with Rolla . Even realizing that all times cannot be expected to be exact, it is clear that several conflicting events all officially happened at 2045.
The Honda keys and other personal keys (plus another set of keys also found in the right front pocket during the trip to the morgue) were taken into custody by Braun. Braun was asked if she retained the keys after they had been found and she stated she did (either that or she gave him to Rolla) .
The Fiske Report avoids and ignores the two USPP Investigators' quest for these [two sets of] keys, merely stating "The keys to the car were found in Foster's pants pocket" [210-211], giving the impression that the keys were found on the body at FMP and that the second key ring did not exist. Why did the Fiske Report not mention the trip to the morgue for the keys?
This treatment implies that the important aspect of the keys was that they were found, not where they were found (at the morgue in the right front pants pocket of the body, a pocket that had already been searched at FMP) or when they were found. Where they were found, when they were found, and the fact there were two keys rings are the critical points in the author's opinion. There is no absolute time stated in the record when Rolla and Braun recovered the keys at the morgue. This is surprising: the lack of car keys would have been fatal to the suicide hypothesis, so the discovery of the keys on the body, however belated, was a critical event.
One key ring (the one with the words COOK JEEP SALES) of VWF's that was found at the morgue had four keys . One of the four keys bore the inscription "US PROPERTY DO NOT DUPLICATE" and had Medco type cuts . In the words of the FBI Lab Report, "Such cuts indicate that this key was intended for use in high security locks."
The WH OLC apparently had its own alarm system in place , so the key with the Medco cuts could have been to the alarm system in the Office of legal counsel suite, but could just as easily been to some other high security lock in the WH OLC (or other secure space belonging to the US Government).
Another key was of the type ". . . utilized in double bitted cam locks which are used for cabinet drawers, vending machines, lock boxes, etc." The last two keys were "conventionally cut keys which are utilized in standard door locks ."
Members of the 1995 Senate Whitewater Committee, the next paragraph is especially for you:
Presumably one focus of the 1995 Senate Whitewater Hearings will be the locks which these four keys were designed to open and close (presumably locks in the WH OLC offices). The uses of the keys on the second key ring (his personal keys, including the Honda key) will presumably also be documented as well.
Was VWF Left- Or Right-Handed?
This issue is of importance not only because some might believe a right-handed person would be more likely to commit suicide holding a gun held in his right hand. It is also of consequence because a right-handed person would be more likely to keep his keys in his right front pants pocket than in his left front pants pocket.
Strangely, given its evidential value, the official record does not specify whether VWF was left-handed or right-handed. Rolla indicated "Sometime I hear that he was left-handed ," but he was by no means sure. Dr. Beyer did not determine whether VWF was left-handed or right-handed during the autopsy [364-370]. Nobody who knew VWF was asked on the record whether he was right- or left-handed. Given the gun was found in his right hand, this question should have been asked for that, if for no other, reason.
If VWF were left-handed, then the official position that he retained the gun in his right hand becomes modestly less tenable. However, if VWF were left-handed, in the author's opinion, it becomes significantly less likely that VWF placed his two keys rings in his right front pants pocket for them to be discovered at the morgue.
Since VWF was an athlete in high school, perhaps one of his high school annuals shows him throwing a football, hitting a baseball, shooting a basketball, or in some other activity that might give some hint whether he was left- or right-handed. Several such photos that agreed would provide a high degree of confidence that the "handedness" depicted therein was correct.
The failure of the record to state that VWF was either left- or right-handed (in connection with the discussion of the gun being in his right hand, if nowhere else) is another omission from the record that the author finds curious.
To The Morgue First For The Keys Or Was The Family Death Notification Done First?
According to Rolla's deposition:
The wallet was in there [in the suit jacket in the Honda] with the cash, his ID, and I did not find the keys. As it turned out, Investigator Braun and myself went to the morgue in Fairfax Hospital after [sic] we made a death notification, to recheck him. At that point, investigator Braun located the keys in his pocket. . . The keys were in his right pants pocket.
Q: "Right front pants pocket?"
A: "Yes." .
[Also:] "After we left the scene, myself and Investigator Braun were heading to Mr. Foster's residence in Georgetown to make a death notification ," [presumably also meaning the death notification came before recovering the keys. Rolla and Braun did not leave the death notification until 2310 ].
Later in his deposition, Rolla makes conflicting statements about the trip to the morgue. Instead of going from FMP to make the death notification to VWF family first and then going to the morgue to try to locate the keys [441-442 and 481]: Q: "After you left [VWF's home], you went back -- did you go to the hospital or back to your office?" A: "We went back to our office ."
Braun was clear that the trip to the morgue for the keys came before the trip to Georgetown to notify VWF's family .
Since VWF's eyeglasses were found 19 feet away from his face (a fact that must have seemed unusual to Rolla and Braun at the time), one wonders why Rolla and Braun seized on the already-searched pants pockets as the most likely repository of the car keys and did not first return to the body site (or recheck the Honda) to make sure the keys were not lying a few feet from the body and had just been missed there. Instead, the two of them go to the morgue, per the record (though it is not clear whether the morgue run or the death notification came first after Rolla and Braun left FMP).
Rolla and Braun knew they had a long night ahead of them (they worked straight through until 0630-0700 the next morning). Rather than call the morgue and have the attendant or someone else secure the keys (it's not like Rolla and Braun were going to fingerprint them or subject them to sophisticated forensic analysis that could be spoilt by someone else touching the keys), they decided to head for the morgue themselves (it's not like the morgue is on their way to Georgetown either) and waste an extra half-hour at the beginning of what they must have known would be a long night.
Remember that Rolla and Braun were concerned with doing a proper death notification and getting there before friends of the family swamped the family by trying to pay their condolences. In fact, the latter is exactly what did happen [397-400,508-513]. As it was, VWF's body was officially discovered at about 1815, and fully identified by 1830 at the latest (according to the analyses in this report). According to the record, the death notification was not made until 2200 (some 90 minutes after the WH admits it officially knew of VWF's death). The trip to the morgue to search for the keys and, in particular, the timing thereof, does not sit well with the author, though he would be delighted to learn more on this subject that would address his concerns!
Given Lisa Foster called VWF at the WH at 1700 and was told he could not come to the phone by Deborah Gorham, did she make other attempts did she make to contact VWF between 1700 and the arrival of Rolla and Braun at her home to make the death notification? Although one would think Lisa Foster made a number of additional calls the later it got that night, there is no evidence of them in the record. Assuming she tried at least one other time to locate her husband, what was she told then (and by whom) regarding VWF?
Rolla's Contacts With Kennedy and Livingstone
According to Fiske Report, WH OLC Associate Counsel Kennedy and Craig Livingstone, a Special Assistant to the White House Counsel, went to the morgue to identify the body .
While Rolla and Braun were en route to VWF's residence, Lt. Gavin called Rolla on the unit's mobile phone and asked him to call Kennedy and Livingstone of the WH OLC. Although Rolla stated he and Braun were en route in their car to Georgetown to make the death notification, regarding the call he said he made to Kennedy and Livingstone, he states "I called them. I don't know if it was on a mobile phone or whatever [397; see also 442]."
In his FBI interview, Rolla stated that he contacted Kennedy after picking up VWF's keys at the morgue and after calling Watkins to arrange his pickup in Georgetown before Watkins, Rolla, and Braun (in the investigator's vehicle with Mrs. Watson trailing in the family car) all went to make the VWF family death notification .
Kennedy and Livingstone wanted to see the body to "positively identify" it even though VWF's WH ID and AR DL photos had been recovered and matched the face. Rolla could not understand why Kennedy's and Livingstone's trips to identify the body were necessary under the circumstances, but since Kennedy and Livingstone needed his permission to view the body in the morgue, he gave his OK without consulting with Lt. Gavin [442,481]. He called the hospital twice on this point, stating one time that he was in his car when he called the hospital morgue on his mobile phone .
Here is another indication that there was no need to "positively identify" VWF at the morgue. Kennedy in his FBI interview states that Livingstone was the one who called Kennedy to notify him that VWF was dead. Kennedy was at his house when Livingstone called him. This happened, per Kennedy, at around 2015-2030 (the WH says it first knew at 2030; Livingstone was copied ex officio as Director of WH Personnel Security (Mr. Livingstone is a security man of sorts) on the USSS memo ).
In response to Kennedy's statement that he did not believe VWF was dead and request that Livingstone confirm the death, Livingstone did so and made another call to Kennedy. In the words of Kennedy's FBI interview: "Livingstone called back to say he had confirmed the death and that the death was thought to be a suicide in a park."
Thus, it appears there really was no need for Kennedy and Livingstone to appear at the morgue to formally identify the body (whose face had already been matched by the USPP to his AR driver's license and to the picture on his WH ID).
A related point. When someone dies a violent death, it is somewhat unusual that the first thing an intimate long-time co-worker would want to do is visit the body at the morgue (especially if the head of personnel security for the company [Mr. Livingstone in this case] tells the co-worker his good friend is dead of a gunshot wound to the head, the co-worker asks for confirmation, and the head of his company's personnel security calls the co-worker back and tells him that it's been confirmed).
One would have thought Kennedy's first impulse, as a worker in the WH OLC with VWF and a fellow-member of the AR "core" group, would have been to go directly to VWF's home to console the family. He in fact did so later that night, but only after what in the author's opinion was a curious telephone call from his boss, Bernard Nussbaum, the WH Counsel.
Kennedy told the FBI he only decided to visit the VWF home that night when he called Nussbaum (after his morgue run with Livingstone) and Nussbaum indicated he was going to go to the VWF home (presumably it is quite late by now, certainly after 2200 and maybe after 2230). It seems unusual that Kennedy decided to make his condolence call that night only after he had heard that Nussbaum was going to go (a person much less close to the VWF family than Kennedy was).
Christina Tea, a nurse at Fairfax County hospital, had called Gavin stating that there were WH people at the hospital who wanted to see the body and should she permit this ? Livingstone may [?] have arrived at the morgue at 2210 [also?] and was refused entry until it had been cleared with Gavin, but it was probably much earlier in the evening based on what Kennedy told the FBI unless Livingstone made a second trip to the morgue. According to Kennedy, when Livingstone first called Kennedy at home around 2015-2030 Livingstone had already been told the body was en route to the hospital, and the two of them drove there separately, met, and visited the body together .
Per the Fiske report, the body was not even bagged at the site before 2045. However, the ambulance computer time log indicates it arrived at the hospital at 2031. Kennedy's statement lends further credence to the ambulance's computer time log and undercuts the time given in the Fiske report. The author notes in passing that the Fiske Report was issued on June 30, 1994, roughly a month before the 1994 Whitewater Hearings began.
Thus, Kennedy and Livingstone were already at the morgue, had asked to see the body, doubtless displaying their WH IDs, and had been initially denied permission by Nurse Tea before she contacted Gavin.
Officer Tipton of the Fairfax County Police [not USPP] also contacted Gavin about giving the WH staffers access to the body. Gavin said in his FBI interview that he told Tipton it was OK to "let them see the body, but make sure they do not disturb or take any effects ." Gavin's FBI interview states "Craig Livingstone and William Kennedy, identified as White House officials - both these men were at the hospital and wanted to view the body ."
Note: Braun told the FBI that she and Rolla talked with Kennedy while Rolla and Braun were en route from FMP to the Hospital (to retrieve the keys).
According to Braun's deposition, in contrast to Rolla, she did not think it unusual that Kennedy and Livingstone wanted to identify the body. Otherwise, she said, they would have had to have asked Mrs. Foster to do it . Braun indicated that Rolla and Kennedy were on the phone for a "very long" period of time. Sadly, there are no tapes of these conversations.
The record contains nothing specific about the times the body was accessed that evening, presumably once by Rolla and Braun to retrieve the keys and once again when it was visited by Kennedy and Livingstone (who arrived in two cars). Did Kennedy and Livingstone visit the body before Rolla and Braun? If any sort of morgue log exists, it could clear up when the two USPP investigators visited the morgue, when Kennedy and Livingstone visited the morgue, and who visited the body first.
According to Rolla's deposition "The morgue or hospital where somebody says I want to see the body and usual [sic] the hospital, if it's a loved one killed or something, I am sure the hospital will let them look at them, view the body."
Q: "What about the possibility that -- what about the possibility of disturbing the body or clothing or evidence as part of an ongoing investigation. Would you be concerned about that?"
A: "They are not viewing it alone."
Q: "Who are they viewing it with?"
A: "They have to be let into the morgue room to view it. Many times when you view a body, you are in a separate room and view it through the glass. This time, I don't think that happened [Why not? Is Rolla speaking here from first-hand knowledge?]. They [Kennedy and Livingstone] were in the morgue in the hospital, they were let in, the room attendant unzipped the body bag, they looked at it, he zipped it back up." [All this sounds quite specific.]
Q: "You can't touch the body or go through the pockets?"
A: No, nobody would be allowed to do that."
Rolla seems to know a lot of the specific events that took place when Kennedy and Livingstone viewed the body. Namely, he appears to know that Kennedy and Livingstone viewed the body directly and that the two of them were there together. The person questioning Rolla is clearly concerned about whether someone would be able to visit the body and specifically access the pockets. Why?
Braun agreed with Rolla as to what they were doing when Kennedy called them. In her deposition (cf. her FBI interview), she states that she and Rolla had left the morgue and were en route to notify VWF's family when Kennedy called them on their car phone and asked that he and Livingstone be allowed to visit the morgue to verify the body was VWF's . It is difficult to keep track of all the calls between Kennedy and Rolla. It is clear there was a lot of communicating going on that night.
Braun was specifically asked in her deposition whether she and Rolla had left the morgue when they spoke with Kennedy. Q: "So they [Kennedy and Livingstone] went to the hospital, but you had already left to go to the --." A: "Right. Right. Right."
The morgue attendant who watched people view and search the body was not interviewed in the record. Were the key rings merely picked up by Rolla and Braun or were they dropped off first and only then retrieved? The author believes this is a reasonable possibility based on the record. He would be delighted obtain information that would address his questions on this point.
Kennedy told the FBI that first he and then Craig Livingstone (who worked under Kennedy at the WH OLC and had the job title Director of White House Personnel Security) appeared at the morgue . Hospital officials (apparently Nurse Christina Tea and Fairfax County Police Officer Dave Tipton ) finally allowed Kennedy and Livingstone to view the body [after checking with the USPP as described above].
Braun was clear that after the death notification at VWF's home, she and Rolla returned directly to their office . Braun stated the keys and the rest of the personal property were put into evidence bags when they returned to their office .
It should be noted that William Kennedy also checked in with the WH personnel at VWF's home the night of the 20th , presumably after having visited the body at the morgue. The time of his arrival is of great interest. Did Kennedy or Livingstone encounter Rolla or Braun at the morgue?
Sealing VWF's Office at the WH
Although Braun testified she told David Watkins, the WH Director of Personnel to ensure that VWF's office was sealed the evening the body was found (Tuesday, July 20, 1993), and he indicated he would see that it was done forthwith, the office was not sealed that night .
According to Braun's deposition when she met Watkins the night of VWF's death when she and Rolla drove to his home to pick him up on their way to make the Foster death notification, she asked him to get VWF's office sealed and "He said that he would have that done."
That sounds pretty clear, but there were allusions in the 1994 Senate Hearings that VWF's office was not in fact sealed as the USPP had requested and the WH Personnel Director agreed.
Rolla And Braun Had To Leave Their Offices That Night To Handle Another Case?
Simonello and Apt returned to the office before Rolla and Braun returned from the VWF home after making the death notification. Rolla and Braun went out again that night in connection with some juveniles that had been arrested down at Haines Point. Both of them had to supervise the arrest of this juvenile, per Braun .
Later in the same deposition, Braun contradicts herself. Q "You said you were assigned to another matter on that same night [the night VWF was found]. Is that right?" A: "I wasn't, no. Investigator Apt was ."
What was the significance of Rolla's or Braun's responding (if either of them did) to a routine juvenile arrest call when they both knew they were going to be working till dawn on the high-priority VWF case? What was the necessity (if they actually made the juvenile run) of both of them being out again together that night in the middle of the VWF investigation? Did they meet with any officials unrelated to the juvenile arrest during this trip?
Did they go to the morgue during this trip to get the keys (very late at night)? As with everything in this report, the reader is encouraged to make up his or her own mind, making whatever use of the Senate Hearings Volumes she or he deems appropriate.
The Autopsy and Related Matters
The Autopsy Was Moved Up A Day At The WH's "Request"
Rolla and Braun worked straight through until about 0630 and 0700 respectively on July 21st [411,517], the day after VWF's body was found, and they confirmed with Dr. Beyer that the autopsy would not be performed until the morning of July 22nd (Thursday), but the autopsy was moved up to Wednesday morning, the day after the body was found at the specific request of the WH [89,411,517,551,825].
This apparently had to be done because the plan was to have VWF's funeral in LR on Friday . Dr. Beyer was relatively alone in his belief that the autopsy was not moved up [215, R28].
Since Rolla and Braun had been on duty for about 17 straight hours straight when they knocked off work on Wednesday morning the 21st at about 0630 , moving the autopsy from Thursday morning to Wednesday morning made it unfeasible for the two investigators (or anyone else who had been at the body site) effectively to attend the autopsy . This is contrary to the customary USPP practice. The autopsy commenced at 1000 on Wednesday, July 21 .
Since no one who was present at the body site the night before attended the autopsy (contrary to the usual practice), the autopsy was potentially compromised from the start.
The Autopsy and the X-Rays
The USPP sent four individuals to the autopsy, Investigator Morrissette, Sergeant Rule, and two ID technicians (none of them had been present at the body site at FMP park).
A USPP report on the autopsy mentioned Dr. Beyer's comments about the X-ray results : "Dr. Beyer stated that X-rays indicated that there was no evidence of bullet fragments in the head [95,2128]." Dr. Beyer had no explanation for the statement in the USPP report other than stating firmly that no X-rays were taken. It certainly does not sound like a casual misunderstanding: Dr. Beyer stated that no X-rays were even taken, let alone showed the specific result clearly stated in the USPP report.
As the records stand now, either the USPP Officer who attended the autopsy (one of four USPP officers there) and wrote the USPP report on the autopsy is incorrect or Dr. Beyer is incorrect. There can be no middle ground. Someone made a mistake, but who?
Dr. Beyer's autopsy report has a check mark indicating that X-Rays were taken [94, 95] and the doctor testified that he anticipated taking X-Rays although none were in fact taken because the new X-ray machine was not producing readable X-rays [see also 213]. Dr. Beyer stated that taking X-rays was a requirement in the case of penetrating (slug retained in the body) gunshot wounds but not in the case of perforating (through-and-through) gunshot wounds such as VWF's.
In contrast, Dr. Beyer stated in his FBI interview that taking X-rays was preferred in the case of all gunshot wounds .
Thus there were two reasons Dr. Beyer testified that X-rays of VWF's head were not taken: 1) The machine was not working and 2) There was no medical or forensic requirement to do so. Although the new machine was apparently under warranty, no attempts were made to have the machine serviced and Dr. Beyer testified that "I have no X-rays in my files between July 6 to the 26."
Given the X-ray machine had been broken for two weeks and the fact there was no medical or forensic requirement to take X-rays, one is certainly entitled to ask why Dr. Beyer checked the line on the autopsy form that X-rays were taken. One would not think the line was checked out of habit since the new machine had not produced readable X-rays for two weeks (which he said he knew).
Note that Dr. Beyer did not state this explicitly, he merely indicated that his files contained no X-rays for the period between two weeks before and five days after the VWF autopsy. One might be curious whether copies of the appropriate autopsy reports done within that twenty day period indicate that X-rays were or were not taken and whether any of those files contain X-rays.
In the course of his testimony Dr. Beyer indicated both that 1) "I saw no need to take an X-ray" and 2) "I had anticipated taking them" [X-rays].
Even the casual reader should notice the contradictory nature of these two statements, especially were he to remember that Dr. Beyer stated that the X-ray machine had not been working for two weeks. These discrepancies could be the result of some misunderstanding, but the record does not indicate that the four USPP autopsy attendees were ever interviewed (including the writer of the report covering USPP attendance at the autopsy) to clarify this important point.
Later on in his testimony Dr. Beyer stated "Some days we would get a partial readable X-ray," but this statement does not jibe with his statement that his files contained no X-rays at all between July 6 and July 26. Dr. Beyer was asked, "But in this case, if it were working, you would have done an X-ray?" He responded "Yes sir," despite his earlier testimony that an X-ray was needed only in the case of a penetrating gun shot wound, not a perforating gun shot wound, such as VWF's.
Remember that Rolla's initial impression at the body site was that the slug was still in the head. Remember, too, Dr. Haut's comment that VWF's wound appeared to have been caused by a low velocity weapon.
A Senator inquired, ""You were not able to do the X-ray because this machine sometimes works and sometimes didn't. It did not when it needed to in this case and you forgot to remove the check mark. . ." Dr. Beyer replied "That's correct ."
This exchange indicates that Dr. Beyer attempted to take an X-ray of VWF's head wound and it did not "come out." One might wish to confirm whether this X-ray was indeed taken and determine what the medical standard was in this case for not "coming out."
The Chairman made this comment and asked a question of Dr. Beyer :
I take it that report [the Autopsy Report] is two or three pages of which the front page is sort of the checklist of things that you intend to do with respect to this autopsy, and then it is the subsequent pages that, in fact, provide the analysis that you develop in the course of actually performing it, so that you have got to read all the way through to the end to really get to what you determine. Am I right about that?
[Dr. Beyer] Yes sir.
However, shortly before this exchange, in response to a question from another member of the committee, Dr. Beyer stated "To me the autopsy report is the first and second page which includes my findings." An examination of the seven-page autopsy report [364-370] reveals that the front page is not "sort of the checklist of things you intend to do. . ." Dr. Beyer's statement that ". . . the autopsy report is the first and second page which includes my findings" is correct. The Chairman's statement is incorrect, although Dr. Beyer agreed with him.
The pathological diagnosis and the cause of death are listed on the first page of the report. The second page of the report contains the "gross description" of the body. The check mark that indicated "X-rays made" is in fact part of the "Gunshot Wound Chart" that comprises the last page of the autopsy report. If one completed the Gunshot Wound Chart from top to bottom, one would come to the "X-rays made" line only after completing the rest of the chart first.
In passing, it should be noted that the "Cause of Death" listed by Dr. Beyer on Page one of the "Report of Autopsy" was "PERFORATING GUNSHOT WOUND MOUTH - HEAD." However, the Fiske Report section discussing the autopsy report finesses this conclusion and contains the statement "Dr. Beyer certified the death as a suicide.**" and states (in the footnote) "** The complete autopsy report is attached as Exhibit 8."
If the word "suicide" appears in the autopsy report itself, this author has not been able to find it, let alone a "certification" in the autopsy report that Mr. Foster committed suicide. Indeed, no inference can be drawn from the autopsy report that Dr. Beyer certified VWF's death "as a suicide" unless one makes the assumption that all fatal "perforating gunshot wounds mouth - head" are self-inflicted [see also 1132]. They clearly are not.
It is of course perfectly true that Dr. Beyer, under oath one year and eight days after performing the autopsy, agreed with a Senator's statement that Dr. Beyer "concluded that Mr. Foster's death was a suicide," but it is also true, the Fiske Report's footnote notwithstanding, that Dr. Beyer did not "certify the death as a suicide" in the autopsy report signed on July 28, 1993,
In his FBI interview, Dr. Beyer was asked whether there was a place on the autopsy report where the manner of death was written. He responded "We don't have that on the autopsy report." The first page of the autopsy report has a section entitled "Cause of Death" . Thus, the first time Dr. Beyer "certified" VWF's death was a suicide was during the 1994 Senate Whitewater Hearings.
The autopsy reported that VWF was shot through the mouth with the bullet exiting the rear of the skull . There were no other wounds, chipped teeth, or any other indication on the body that a struggle had taken place (or, as discussed above, evidence of any physical damage caused by the powerful recoil of the revolver). Gunpowder residue was apparently found on both index fingers, although more of it was on the right one.
Two days after the autopsy, a news service indicated that "Only one bullet was fired from the Colt revolver, and it was the one found in Foster." Right or wrong, this news story is consistent with the check mark in the autopsy report and the statement in the USPP Report of those attending the autopsy that X-rays were taken. Of course, the USPP Report indicated that Dr. Beyer informed the USPP at the autopsy that the X-ray of the brain did not contain any fragments of the bullet.
Some Background on Dr. Beyer
Information here is taken from Dr. Beyer's deposition at [564-593] unless otherwise noted.
Dr. Beyer was 75 years old when he performed the VWF autopsy (date of birth June 2, 1918).
He served in the US Army medical corps for 14 years. His specialty was surgical research (especially "wound ballistics"), duty with the US Army ordnance and chemical corps regarding the development of new weapons, and the development of body armor.
One wonders if other Federal agencies have made legitimate use of his expertise in wound ballistics in the past.
The Death Certificate And Dr. Haut's Report
According to the Clinger Report (Footnote 2, Page 7; see the heading, "How To Obtain Government Information" above), Dr. Haut signed the death certificate ("Medical Examiner's Certificate") and listed the cause of death as "self-inflicted gunshot wound mouth to head." The death certificate is not part of the "official record" as that term is used in this report (that is, not included in the three Senate Volumes released in January 1995). That could have been an oversight.
It is surprising, however, the Dr. Haut's report of his on-scene activities at FMP the night of July 20, 1993, is not part of the official record. One would have thought that the report of the only medical doctor to view the body in situ would be an important document and therefore included in the official record.
The Torn Note Found in VWF's Briefcase
Who Found It And When?
This note was found by Stephen Neuwirth of the WH OLC on July 26, 1993, six days after the death . The USPP had examined the briefcase the note was eventually found in without discovering the note .
What Kind Of Shape Was It In When Found?
It was torn in 27 pieces and one piece was missing. The typed transcript of the note is at 353; see also 2023 [see the sub-heading, "The Text Of The Note" below for a reproduction of the text of the note].
Was The Single Partial Print On The Note Ever Checked Out?
According to USPP Simonello, the partial palm print on the note was not compared to anyone else's prints . The missing piece of the torn-up note was in the lower right hand part of the rectangular piece of paper.
One might ask how a note sheet can be torn in 27 pieces and leave no fingerprints on the paper at all except for a palm print. If the paper "took" the palm print why did it not also "take" the fingerprints of the fingers that grasped it tightly to tear it up? If a palm print was left, how unlikely is that no other prints were left? Is the paper consistent with a sheet that has been wiped clean of prints and had a palm rested on it after it was wiped clean? If so, why was the note wiped clean and who did it?
Did It Look Like A Suicide Note?
USPP Evidence Technician Simonello had seen other suicide notes and stated in his deposition "I said this doesn't sound like a suicide note ."
If this note was some sort of "suicide note," why would VWF tear up his own note? Is there a stylistic break between the third and fourth paragraphs?
How Did VWF Usually Dispose Of Worthless Pieces Of Paper?
According to Loraine Cline, VWF's legal secretary for six years at the RLF [in the words of her FBI interview]:
He [VWF] was meticulous about keeping an accurate and complete calendar. With regard to how he handled trash, if he didn't need something he would crumple it up and pitch it in the wastebasket. He generally did not tear things up. She knew him to make lists of things -- not lists of things that were bothering him, but lists of things to do .
The FBI And The AG [Attorney General]
One of the statements on the note was to the effect that the FBI had lied to the AG [Attorney General], but Lisa Foster did not think that VWF thought that the FBI had done so . William Kennedy, Associate White House Counsel, felt the same way. According to his FBI interview:
Kennedy said he was surprised to see the word "lie" in Foster's note. He said he and Foster had discussed the issue in terms of differences in interpretation versus a lie. Kennedy doesn't think the FBI lied, but just remembered things differently.
Granted, Kennedy is being interviewed here by the FBI, but it is surprising that VWF's wife and one of his closest associates were both surprised by the same line of VWF's note.
A photocopy of the original handwritten note has never been released, but is available for inspection.
The Text Of The Note
Here is the text of the note found torn into 27 pieces in VWF's briefcase (no signature and the 28th piece is missing) at the WH OLC six days after the death, as rendered in the Fiske Report [there are wider margins below than in the Fiske Transcript]:
TRANSCRIPT OF NOTE
I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overwork
I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct
No one in the White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or standard of conduct, including any action in the travel office. There was no intent to benefit any individual or specific group
The FBI lied in their report to the AG
The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel staff
The GOP has lied and misrepresented its knowledge and role and covered up a prior investigation
The Ushers Office plotted to have excessive costs incurred, taking advantage of Kaki and HRC
The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and their loyal* staff
The WSJ editors lie without consequence
I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.
* A transcript of the note prepared by the Park Police identifies this word as "legal."
Table of Homes Nearest Mr. Foster's BodyHomes Nearest Mr. Foster's [VWF's] Body -- Estimated From Aerial Imagery
Street Lot Distance to VWF Same Side Apparent Legal
Address No. From Front Door Of CBR? Owner ****
------------------------------ ----------- --------------------- ------------ ------------------------------
640 Chain Bridge Rd.* 1A 720 Feet NO K. of Saudi Arabia
650 Chain Bridge Rd.** 37 700 Feet NO K. of Saudi Arabia
660 Chain Bridge Rd. 37A 300 Feet NO
Homes on Cricket Place Various ~550 Feet NO Various
[Merry Wood on the Potomac]
681 Chain Bridge Rd.*** 39 470 Feet YES
1315 Merrie Ridge Rd. 3 560 Feet @ YES
1317 Merrie Ridge Rd. 4 570 Feet @ YES Senator J. B. Johnston
[The Dogwoods] (Democrat of Louisiana)
* This address apparently is the Saudi Arabian Ambassador's Residence referred to in the Fiske Report as being the "closest building to the park." [There is a an outbuilding 420 feet from the body.]
** This structure is also owned by The Kingdom. Construction of this building was underway on the day VWF died, so this appears to be the Saudi construction work referred to in the Fiske Report. It was typical for workers' cars to be parked on the south side of Chain Bridge Road near the north pedestrian entrance to FMP.
*** This home is on a lot that abuts Fort Marcy Park [FMP] at the park's northwest corner.
**** Per public property ownership records of Fairfax County and contacts with the Tax Office.
@ These lots that are separated from the western edge of FMP by the unimproved portion of Lot 39.
The current corporate owner (McLean International, Ltd.) purchased from the individual owners on 9/7/93. The former individual owners are not obvious public personages, so their names are omitted.
The owner of this home is not obviously a public personage. Thus, although public, his name is omitted. The owner apparently rents 681 Chain Bridge Road [CBR] to others. The same individual also owns Lot 38, another lot that abuts the west side of FMP, on which an old abandoned cabin is located.
The owner of this home is not obviously a public personage. Thus, his name is also omitted.
Note: The Saudi Residence is not "the closest building to the park," despite this quotation from Page 55 of the Fiske Report (Whitewater Hearings Volumes, 230). The front doors of all of the non-Saudi-owned buildings listed above are closer to the official body location than is the Saudi Residence. [See Maps IV, V(R) & VI] Although the only known direct connection of the buildings to the death of VWF is merely geographic, one might ask how and why the Fiske Report contains such a fundamental error.
Furthermore, based on a review of publicly-released documents from the VWF Investigations (that is, the unredacted portions thereof accessible by the public), it appears that no one other than the Saudis was ever interviewed by the US Park Police, The FBI, or attorneys with the Fiske Office of Independent Counsel. None of the public official documents even mentions these non-Saudi dwellings.
The last three lots are separated from body's official location only by uneven, heavily-treed, park land, an old road that runs south from Chain Bridge Road through Lot 39, and the western border fence of Fort Marcy Park (the fence is collapsed for a few feet near the old cabin on Lot 38). The entrance to the old road on the south side of CBR is quite discrete. For comparison, the line-of-sight distance from FMP's north side pedestrian entrance to the body is 450 feet (and from his car, 600 feet).
Selected Maps of Fort Marcy Park and Environs
Spacing Page For Map IV
Spacing Page For Map V(R)
Spacing Page For Map VI
ABC News Photo of VWF's Right Hand With The GunSpacing Page For Leaked Photo
Senate Whitewater Hearings Volumes
Locator Table For Testimony, Depositions, Interviews, etc.
Locator Table For Testimony, Depositions, Interviews, Reports, & Documents
Body of Table Contains Senate Hearings Volume Page Numbers -- Duplicates Omitted
Senate Senate FBI USPP
Individual Testify Depose Interview Report
Charles Hirsch 43
Larry Monroe 43
William Colombell 43
James Beyer 77 564
Cheryl Braun 77 491 559 152,2125
John Rolla 77 380 478,1600 150,2123,2135,2516
Robert Hines 149 1179
James Lyons 171,1805 2157
Fletcher Jackson 177
Brantley Buck 178 2157
Richard Pence 376
Dale Bumpers 378
Kenneth Stoll 379
James Luke 610
Peter Simonello 621 1589,1713,1737,1742 [Smith too]1757,2141,2159
Charles Hume 697 1718,1779 2114
Richard Arthur 871 1381,1563
Kevin Fornshill 911 1582
George Gonzalez 979 1046
Todd Hall 1139 1157
Eugene Smith 1164
Robert Rule 1270
Corey Ashford 1346,1559
Jennifer Wacha 1353
James Iacone 1356
Ralph Pisani 1360,1548
William Bianchi 1364
Andrew Makuch 1369,1557
Victoria Jacobs 1373
Roger Harrison 1376
Female sees FMP gates opened 1379
Park Service 911 Caller 1439
Deborah Gorham 1443 2132
G. Gordon Liddy 1457,1508
Park Service Worker [CW ID] 1465 2144
MD Nissan - Male 1469,1474
MD Nissan - Female 1470
Webster Hubbell 1477,1745
CW 2659 [Burton] 1514,1542,1543
Female, Broken Down Mercedes 1522
Thrifty Rental Driver 1525,1631 2143
Saw Japanese Car Cut Into FMP 1528,2145 2145,2246,2509
Linda Tripp 1531 2134
James Charron 1539
John Skyles 1546
Senate Senate FBI USPP
Individual Testify Depose Interview Report
Patrick Gavin 1553
VWF Pharmacist 1569
Sheila Foster Anthony 1570
Renee Apt 1586
Christine Hodakievic 1594 2127
Julie Spetz 1597
Robert Denning 1607
Roger Bailey 1608
William Kennedy 1611,1758
Franz Ferstl 1628 2121
Elizabeth (Lisa) Foster 1633 2152
Foster Neighbors 1652
Potential VWF Psychiatrist #1 1654
Potential VWF Psychiatrist #2 1655
Potential VWF Psychiatrist #3 1662
Julian Orenstein 1656
Donald Haut 1658
Dennis I Foreman 1665
Joel Klein 1669
Larry Watkins 1674 2156
Dogwood Female sees Man at FMP 7/19 1679 2512
Marsha Scott 1689,1748
Joel Kleinman 1695
Stephen Silverman 1715
VWF Neighbor 1717
John Carroll 1724
Loraine Cline 1728
Gordon Rather 1731 2157
Brantley Buck 1735 2157
Stephen Neuwirth 1739 2150 [Redacted!]
Beth Nolan 1753
Timothy Keating 1762
Nancy Hernreich 1765
Roger Altman 1767
Wayne Johnson 1772
William Roelle 1773
Susan Thomases 1777
Senator Richard Shelby [VWF Neighbor] 1780
A Tow Truck Driver 1782
Man Who Spoke With A Tow Truck Driver 1783
Park Service Worker [CW ID] 1785
Todd Stern 1786
David Watkins 1789
Ricki Seidman 1793
Bruce Lindsey 1800
Lee Bowman 1806
William Clinton 1813 [by Fiske OIC]
Mack McLarty 2087
Hillary Clinton 2096 [by Fiske OIC]
James Morrissette (a) 2128,2137,2143
Senate Senate FBI USPP
Individual Testify Depose Interview Report
James Morrissette 2128,2144(?)
Bernard Nussbaum 2129
Ms. Pond [WH OLC] 2130
Tom Castleton 2134
E. J. Smith 2139
S. E. Hill 2140
Beryl Anthony 2146
Clifford Sloan 2155
Document Page Number
FBI Pager Letter 116
Senate Resolution 217 118
Senate Resolution 229 138
Foster Family Statement 154
Fiske Report [Body] 181
Fiske Report [FBI Reports] 234
Fiske Report [Hirsch et al.] 333
Fiske Report [VWF Note] 353
Fiske Report [VWF Speech] 360
Fiske Report [Autopsy Report] 364
Monroe Letter 374
Rolla Notebook Pages 488-490
John Hanchette News Story 615
FCFRD Computer Log, E01, M01 1045
FCFRD Computer Log, M01 1050
FCFRD Computer Coding Info 1054
FCFRD Computer Log (911 Call) 1075
FCFRD Computer Log Inventory 1079
FCFRD Personnel Listing 1080,1810 [Substitute Victoria Jacobs for James Sutton]
FCFRD Computer Logs, Various 1094
Washington Post Article 1113
Ruddy Report 1118
USPP Death Investigation Guidelines 1322
Fiske Letter, OIC Records To Senate 1344
FCFRD Personnel Listing 1392
FCFRD Computer Logs 1416
911 Call Transcript 1430
FBI Search of Second Cannon Area 1905,2039
William Clinton 7/21/93 Remarks 1914
USSS Memo - Death Known To WH 2076, 2551 [Dupe Listed]
USPP Polaroid Inventory Sheet 2112
USPP Report (Autopsy X-rays) 2128
Psychiatrists' Phone Numbers 2135
Letter from John Sloan 2169
Revolver - DC Police 2170
Revolver BATF 2171
USPP Property Control Receipt 2185
USPP Property Control Receipt 2189
Honda USPP Impound Record 2201
Document Page Number
VWF Checking Account Note 2217
No Briefcase - Tripp 2219
USPP Communications Memo 2251,2252
USPP Photo of Second Cannon/Tape 2392
USPP Photo of Revolver 2407
Lab Photo of Broken VWF Glasses 2448
"CHB" Sheet from VWF Wallet 2499
Table of Civilian Vehicles Seen at FMP [The Afternoon of July 20, 1993]
Civilian Vehicles Seen at FMP the Afternoon of July 20, 1993
[~ means "approximately" and < means "sometime before"]
Description Source Pages Arrival Departure Comments
Mercedes 210/152 1900 Broken down on exit from
1522 ~1800 GWMP to FMP parking lot
with hazard lights flashing;
towed away; female driver
left FMP on foot after the
breakdown; color: blue
Four-door white 1523 <1800 ~1815 Offered a ride to Blue
late model [Honda?] Mercedes lady on foot.
Driver: Well-groomed white
male, dark thick hair, summer
shirt on, medium build, age
38-42. Seen by the lady
lobbyist Mercedes owner.
Dark Blue Car 1523 <1800 Parked near beginning of
parking lot and unoccupied;
parked near a light gray or
silver car. Seen by lady
lobbyist in Mercedes.
Metallic Blue Car 1525 <1615 Japanese make, parked
several spaces into the
parking lot in vicinity of path
leading to north side of
park. VA license plate.
Relatively new. Backed in to
its slot. Occupied by a
Mexican or Cuban male in his
late 20s. Short, curly dark
brown or black curly hair.
Stared. Seen by man driving
the Thrifty Rental vehicle
Red Car 881 <1809 At entrance to park with
1563 hazard lights flashing. Seen
by Arthur. Possibly Blue
Mercedes with the color not
Description Source Pages Arrival Departure Comments
White Nissan Stanza 210 ~1700 Parked at rear of lot. MD
881 state plate. Owned by lady
1470 1715 who came to FMP with a
1730 friend for a late lunch in the
1474 ~1700 south side of the park.
Gray 1989 Honda Accord 210 VWF's car. Parked in one of
the first spaces on the left
(4th?) near the start of the
FMP parking lot. AR plate
1642 Note: Lisa Foster said the
Honda was a light "taupe or
Japanese Car 202/203 ~1450 Driven by white male. Out-of-
1528 ~1455 state plate, possibly AR.
2246 Possibly VWF's car? Vehicle
2509 made quick change from left
lane of GWMP and cut into
FMP entrance off GWMP.
May NOT be VWF Honda --
Problems with the certainty of
AR plate ID described by
witness, in particular A
dark smoke gray metallic
mid-sized four door Japanese
made sedan. Interior lighter
than the exterior. Looked
similar to pictures of VWF's
car according to eye-witness
who made the report.
Japanese Car 203 <1620 Unoccupied, AR plate,
possibly darker and smaller
than VWF's car. Parked in
one of the first spaces in FMP
parking lot as enter from the
GWMP. Man's suit jacket
folded over passenger seat.
Small car 152 <1700 1700+ Man w/o a shirt sitting in car.
Brown, Small 1474 <1700 On left as drive in. Front of
Station wagon? car facing Fort. Hood up,
white male near vehicle, mid
to-late 40s, 6 foot medium
build, long blond hair and
beard, unclean and unkempt.
Description Source Pages Arrival Departure Comments
1988-90 1525 <1615 Parked front end facing Fort
rusty or brown 1631 in one of the first parking
Honda with AR Plates R9 spots on left. Unoccupied.
Dark blue jacket draped over
driver's seat. Leather
briefcase or folder on the
passenger side seat. Briefcase darker than the interior which
was light or beige. Certain of
briefcase. Witness thought
car he saw was older and
shorter than VWF's Honda,
but he was sure it was a four
door Accord, and he is not
sure the color was as glossy
as VWF's Honda and thought
the license plate had fewer
Light color older model 152 ~1715 ~1730 White male, "scrungy" hair,
parks next to VWF Honda,
1630 puts up hood, walks into the
woods, returns, drives away.
Old, dirty, run down 1471 ~1715+ Drove into lot, made a U-turn
four-door sedan and exited FMP. White male
with long shaggy hair, large
build, 30-40 years of age.
Could have had no shirt on.
White van, blue lettering 152 ~1710 ~1715 Driver emptied his trash.
1471 ~1715+ 1715+ Driver was a white male
late 20s or early 30s with
light colored hair, of average
height and build, wearing a
blue short-sleeved company
work-shirt. Not CW [But see
White van, Blue lettering 1475 ~1715 1715+ White male driver, 25-30,
short dark hair, clean-shaven.
Wearing uniform. Not CW
[But see R13].
Description Source Pages Arrival Departure Comments
Thrifty Rental Vehicle 1526 1615 1620 In and out of park fast to
urinate [not CW]. Saw the
1988-90 Brown Honda
and also the metallic blue
Japanese car with VA plates.
Ford Passenger Van 1526 1620 Seen by Thrifty Rental man
as it slowed down possibly to
enter FMP as Thrifty Rental
driver was leaving FMP.
Could this van contain the
"Volunteers" who were at FMP "working on the trails"
the Fornshill mentioned?
Car, engine running 1148 <1809 Mentioned by EMS Hall. He
could not say whether it was
there when he left at 1837.
1354 <1809 Also mentioned by EMS
Wacha. She said the car was
brown, had its engine
running, and its hazard lights
flashing in the parking lot.
Older Model Light Blue 1379 ~1800 Slim white male, short brown
Mercedes 190 4-door hair, opens the gate to FMP. [This gate was not closed until USPP Fornshill closed it around 1820 that afternoon.]
Age 30s to early 40's. Dark
suit, average height. Seen by
a lady driving by on the
GWMP. Gate not closed
until after the body was
found. Seen by Mercedes
Lady-- who is this man?
Black Cadillac 1559 <2016 Seen by Ashford when his
1561 ambulance pulled into the
parking lot of FMP to pick up
VWF's body for transport to
the Fairfax County Hospital
& Morgue. Who's car was this? The Cadillac was pulled into the far end of the lot.
Description Source Pages Arrival Departure Comments
Unknown "extra 944 <1812 Seen by USPP Fornshill
vehicles," 1148 EMS Hall, and EMS Wacha.
one was brown 1354 At far end (away from the
entrance) of lot. The brown car was not parked in a space its engine was running, and one witness stated its hazard lights were flashing.
Comments on the Above Table of Vehicles
Most of these vehicles are discussed at the appropriate points in the body of this report. The author is of the opinion that all the vehicles within the pair of double-dashed lines above could well be the same vehicle, that is, VWF's 1989 taupe gray four-door Honda Accord with AR plates.
One thing is for sure, even allowing for multiple sightings of the same vehicle by different witnesses, a significant number of vehicles came, stayed, or went at the small (21 slot) parking lot at FMP the afternoon of VWF's death.
FMP Table of Arrivals and Departures
Arrival and Departure Times of Officials per the Record
[~ means "approximately"]
FORT MARCY PARK PARKING LOT
Individual Arrival Departure
USPP Fornshill 1811:50 1825~
FCFRD Gonzalez (M01) 1809 1837
FCFRD Hall (M01) 1809 1837
FCFRD Arthur (M01) 1809 1837
FCFRD Pisani (E01) 1809 1837
FCFRD Wacha (E01) 1809 1837
FCFRD Iacone (E01) 1809 1837
USPP Hodakievic 1830~ ?
USPP Ferstl 1820~ 2130
USPP Spetz 1825~ 1900~
USPP Edwards 1828~ ?
USPP Gavin 1833~ ?
USPP Rolla 1835 2045
USPP Braun 1835 2045
USPP Apt 1835 ?
USPP Simonello 1845~ ?
FC ME Haut 1845 1915
FCFRD Ashford (A01) 2000~ 2017
FCFRD Harrison (A01) 2000~ 2017
FCFRD Bianchi (T01P) 2002 2015~
FCFRD Makuch (T01P) 2002 2015~
FCFRD Jacobs (T01P) 2002 2015~
USPP Rolla 2200 2310
USPP Braun 2200 2310
FAIRFAX COUNTY HOSPITAL MORGUE
OLC Kennedy ? ? [The author could really use
OLC Livingstone ? ? some US Government help
USPP Rolla ? ? nailing down these times!]
USPP Braun ? ?
Table Of Principal Persons
Principal Person Job Title Comments Based On The Record
Charles Hirsch Doctor Medical Consultant for Fiske OIC.
Larry Monroe Special Agent FBI Agent assigned to the Fiske OIC.
William Colombell Special Agent FBI Agent assigned to the Fiske OIC.
James Beyer N VA Deputy M.E. Did VWF autopsy: X-rays -- yes or no?
Cheryl Braun USPP Investigator USPP overall "In Charge" at FMP, 7/20/93.
John Rolla USPP Investigator USPP "In Charge" at the body site 7/20/93.
When he first arrived, VWF's palms were up &
a .38 Army Colt Special revolver, four-inch
barrel, was in VWF's right hand.
Robert Hines USPP Major USPP Chief's Office, 7/20/93.
James Lyons Private Attorney Was to fly from Denver to meet VWF, July 21st.
Fletcher Jackson Ass't. US Attorney Did VWF know about Hale search?
Brantley Buck Private Attorney With RLF, drafted Clintons' Blind Trust.
Peter Simonello USPP ID Officer Took the gun from body's right hand for tests.
Charles Hume USPP Captain Ass't Commander CIB, signed USPP VWF File.
Richard Arthur FCFRD Paramedic Saw USPP "gaining access" to Honda at ~1830.
Kevin Fornshill USPP Officer First USPP at the body site; never saw gun.
George Gonzalez First FCFRD at the body site: arrived, VWF's
palms were down, revolver was in VWF's right
hand; saw facial wound not in autopsy report.
Todd Hall FCFRD Firefighter Saw "extra" cars in lot, early on scene, examined
body. Re gun: "In the picture you could see it."
Corey Ashford FCFRD EMS Tech Put body in body bag, did not see any blood.
Drove body to hospital, arriving at 2031.
Jennifer Wacha FCFRD EMT Saw "extra" car in lot, engine running, hazard
lights on. Member, southern FMP search team.
James Iacone FCFRD Firefighter Saw "extra" car in lot, examined VWF Honda
from outside. Thought Honda doors locked.
Principal Person Job Title Comments Based On The Record
Ralph Pisani FCFRD Firefighter Member southern FMP search team. Observed
that body was found on a trail.
William Bianchi FCFRD Lieutenant Said Iacone knew VWF worked at WH when
Iacone returned to the station (left FMP 1837).
Andrew Makuch FCFRD Firefighter On Truck 1, responded with Ambulance 1 to
bring body from site to FMP parking lot to be
transported to hospital by Ambulance 1.
Victoria Jacobs FCFRD Firefighter Driver of Truck 1
Roger Harrison FCFRD EMT Ambulance 1 driver, took body to morgue.
Female Driver on GWMP She saw a man opening the gate to FMP a little
after 1800 on July 20, 1993.
Deborah Gorham Executive Assistant VWF's Executive Assistant, VWF's wife called
her about VWF's overdrawn checking account.
G. Gordon Liddy Radio Host CW came forward and was interviewed by Liddy.
Park Service Worker CW asked him to call 911 from Turkey Run at
about 1759 to report the body at FMP.
MD Nissan - Male ------ Apparently observed VWF's Honda with hood
up and unkempt man with long blond hair and beard by the Honda in FMP parking lot.
MD Nissan - Female ------ Apparently saw dark-haired white male sitting
in driver's seat of VWF's Honda in FMP lot.
Webster Hubbell Formerly Deputy Spent VWF's last weekend with him at the
Attorney General Cardoza home near Easton, MD.
CW ------ First non-official to see the body; about 1750,
both palms were up and there was no gun in
either of VWF's hands or in the vicinity of the
body & very little blood on face (all dried).
Female, Broken Mercedes Lobbyist Walked through FMP parking lot looking for
telephone (none). Left FMP & walked up the
GWMP to call a tow truck for her Mercedes.
Thrifty Rental Driver ------ Saw dark blue jacket draped over the driver's
seat of VWF's Honda at the FMP parking lot.
Saw Car Cut Into FMP ------ Saw Japanese made car with out-of-state tags
quickly cut across the right lane of the GWMP
and take FMP exit into parking lot. Car may
have been VWF's Honda.
Principal Person Job Title Comments Based On The Record
Linda Tripp Executive Assistant Executive Assistant to Nussbaum of WH OLC,
Described VWF's 1-2 hour long doubly
"unusual" meeting with Marsha Scott the day
before he died. Brought VWF his last lunch.
John Skyles USSS Officer Last WH person officially to see VWF alive as
VWF passed through guard post E-4 around
lunch time on Tuesday, July 20, 1993.
Patrick Gavin USPP Lieutenant Shift Commander on day of death. Responded
quickly to park with 12 other USPP officers.
Saw body in middle of path. Notified WH of
VWF's death (2030 per WH). Tea and Tipton at
morgue called him seeking OK for Kennedy &
Livingstone to visit VWF's body at morgue.
Sheila Foster Anthony Assistant One of VWF's sisters, living in DC. Told FBI
Attorney General VWF hesitant to see psychiatrist because due to
Top Secret work VWF doing at WH.
Renee Apt USPP Investigator Rode to FMP with Rolla and Braun. Helped
Braun interview the couple in the MD Nissan.
Christine Hodakievic USPP Investigator Came by FMP when heard 911 call even though
shift over and on the way home. Remembered
Rolla checking the body for ID where body was
found at FMP. Arrived at FMP 1815.
Julie Spetz USPP Officer Third USPP officer at FMP. Brought Nissan
couple to Braun and Hodakievic to be
interviewed. Put crime scene tape across the
entrance to FMP off the GWMP.
William Kennedy Associate Counsel Visited VWF's body at the morgue with
Livingstone (exact time unknown, but
before Kennedy checked in at the VWF's
home the night of the death). Notified of VWF
death by Livingstone at 2015-2030.
Franz Ferstl USPP Officer Second USPP Officer to see the body. Unlike
Fornshill, he was able to see the gun.
Elizabeth (Lisa) Foster VWF's Spouse Could not identify the gun shown to her by the
USPP (photograph) or (actual gun) by the Fiske
OIC FBI investigators.
Foster Neighbors ------ No evidence VWF went home to get the gun after
leaving the WH around 1300 on 7/20/93.
Principal Person Job Title Comments Based On The Record
Julian Orenstein Doctor On duty at Fairfax Hospital complex when
VWF's body arrived in Ambulance 1 at 2031.
He was the doctor who formally pronounced
Donald Haut Doctor Responded to FMP at 1845. Body in "wooded
A Fairfax County area" about 150 yards from FMP parking lot.
Medical Examiner Stayed at FMP 30 minutes. Blood volume at
back of head small, also matted and clotted.
Knew VWF worked at WH before he left
FMP. Body located on a dirt path. Thought
VWF killed by a "low velocity weapon" based
on his examination of the wound.
Young Female She saw a man in a suit walking around
at FMP on 7/19/93, the day before VWF died.
Marsha Scott Deputy Assistant Had an "unusual" 1-2 hour closed-door meeting
to the President with VWF on Monday, June 19, the day before
he died, but could not recall the specifics of the
conversation when interviewed by the FBI.
John Carroll Private Attorney RLF partner and long-time friend of VWF's.
Thought VFW had an excellent delivery when he
spoke at the University of AR Law School on
May 8, 1993.
Loraine Cline Executive Assistant RLF employee who was VWF's assistant for
seven years. Thought VWF was in good spirits
when he spoke at the University of AR Law
School on May 8, 1993.
Gordon Rather Private Attorney Called VWF on July 20, 1993, out of sheer
coincidence (partner in same LR law firm as
Bruce Lindsey and (briefly) WJC.
Brantley Buck Private Attorney RLF Partner involved with drafting the Clintons'
blind trust(s), spoke with VWF several times
shortly before VWF died.
Stephen Neuwirth Found the VWF "suicide note" in a
briefcase that had already been searched
Beth Nolan Associate Counsel Worked with VWF in the WH OLC.
Remembered VWF joking around in a staff
meeting on Friday, July 16th.
Principal Person Job Title Comments Based On The Record
Nancy Hernreich Deputy Assistant One the AR "core" group that regularly
to the President went together Tuesday night. VWF was a
member of the "core" AR group.
David Watkins White House Picked up at home by Rolla and Braun
Director of and taken on the VWF family death
Personnel notification. Also met VWF the morning of
July 19 as VWF returned to the WH.
Bruce Lindsey With WJC and Hubbell at the WH the
evening of 7/19/93 when WJC invited
VWF to the White House "to see a movie."
President Clinton The President On Monday night, July 19th, scheduled a WH
meeting with VWF on July 21st to discuss
possible WH organizational changes. VWF died
on the 20th.
First Lady Hillary Clinton The First Lady Left west coast on the 20th of July. Landed in
LR at about 2026 EDT that evening, the day VWF
died. Reason given for not flying directly to
Washington as planned: to visit her mother.
James Morrissette USPP Detective Attended VWF autopsy conducted by Dr. Beyer.
Stated in his report that Dr. Beyer told him that
the X-rays taken of VWF's head indicated that
there were no bullet fragments in the brain. Dr.
Beyer states the no X-rays were taken of VWF.
Betsy Pond Executive Assistant Assistant to Mr. Nussbaum, White House
Counsel (Linda Tripp was the other assistant
to Nussbaum). VWF talked to her about what
he was ordering for lunch from the WH cafeteria,
but it was Linda Tripp who brought VWF his
lunch. She and Linda Tripp were in the WH
OLC when VWF departed for the last time
Tom Castleton Staff Assistant WH OLC. VWF sent him to see what was
taking Linda Tripp so long to bring him his lunch
on July 20th.
Beryl Anthony Former Husband of VWF's sister, Sheila. VWF stayed
with the Anthonys for several weeks in the later
winter of 1993 before renting a home for his
family in Georgetown.
Author's Biographical Summary: Kook Or Not?
HUGH H. SPRUNT, CPA/PFS
Hugh H. Sprunt is a Certified Public Accountant who has been providing tax consulting services to individuals and businesses for over sixteen years. He was a Tax Partner with a large international accounting firm for six years, concentrating in individual income tax and estate planning. His expert tax knowledge and presentation skills have made him a speaker of choice at financial planning seminars for fellow tax partners and a leader of tax workshops for other tax professionals as well as the general public. Hugh's most recent presentation to nonprofessionals was entitled, "How To Get The Best Service From Your Tax Advisor." He is also one of only some 900 CPAs nationwide certified as Personal Financial Specialists (PFS) by the American Institute of CPAs.
Hugh has devised and implemented successful multi-year tax strategies involving Fortune 500 corporations and does tax planning for individual clients, some with a net worth exceeding $100 million and single-year personal tax liabilities over $10 million. An IRS private ruling request he drafted for a client used a previously unexploited generation-skipping transfer tax "opportunity" Hugh discovered that reduced the taxes on a $14 million intrafamily gift by over $1 million. Hugh has also been the first to inform the IRS of substantive errors in the government's favor on various IRS tax forms, including Schedule K-1 (The IRS acknowledged its errors and corrected the official forms and instructions the following year).
Hugh is the lead author of a two-volume 750-page tax reference work, first published for CPAs, tax attorneys, and other tax professionals in late 1992. The fourth edition will be released in December 1995. Hugh has also written on technical tax subjects in The Journal of Taxation. Since 1991, he has supplemented his traditional tax consulting practice as the owner of Advantax - Your Tax Advantage, a live nationwide "900" tax planning and tax return advice line (900-933-3004, $3 Per Minute) carried by AT&T's MultiQuest Express900 service.
Advantax is known for the customized "call memo" available to each customer at no additional charge and has been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Smart Money, and NEWSWEEK. No one who has ever called the 900 number for tax advice has been dissatisfied with the service and failed to pay the 900 charges, an extraordinary record for any 900 number, let alone one in its fourth year of operation. Callers also use Advantax to obtain a quick "second opinion" or when they need real-time tax help with return preparation or tax planning software, especially after hours when they are "stuck" and need help now!
Hugh received an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a JD from Stanford Law School in 1979 through the GI Bill. Before joining the service, he obtained BS and MS degrees from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was elected to two national honorary societies. After working abroad for twelve months, he volunteered as a commissioned officer and saw service aboard deep-ocean Federal research vessels in the early 1970's, serving as Chief Ship's Diver and Senior Watch Officer.
His viewpoints have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Dallas Morning News. He is the author of the "Citizen's Independent Report" on the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster and has written extensively on various aspects of the Foster case. Hugh and his wife of twenty-two years live quietly with their son and daughter on Rawhide Creek. His favorite aphorism was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. . . Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are. . . To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." And, lest we forget: "Tell you what -- It's gonna be a gunfight, but I came here to bomb." -- Unknown Navy Attack Pilot, ca. 1970.
PLACE BLOWN UP B&W Photocopy of HS at WH Here
"Nothing changes but the uniform, the weapons, and the transportation."
Get Your Friends A Copy Of A Citizen's Independent Report On The Death of Vince Foster The Report Is Not Being "Sold," But The Author Can't Give A Free Copy To Each Person Who Would Like One! Get It [170+ Pages!] For Printing & Copying Costs Alone By Phone, With Your Credit Card, By Calling: (214) 239-2679 Or (301) 937-6500 Printing Is About $9-12 (+ Shipping Cost) [Webmaster's Note: These are independent copyshops with no financial ties to the author.] |
Verdict is in on Apple iPad: It's a winner
Months of speculation, feverish lust, an überhyped prize that could disrupt the status quo of computing. You wouldn't be the first person to compare the run-up to Saturday's arrival of the iPad to the prelaunch mania that surrounded the iPhone. Apple's freshly conceived slate-style computer promises to influence the media, mobile entertainment and publishing industries the way its close cousin the iPhone has affected wireless.
The first iPad is a winner. It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon's Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money. At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet computing in ways that longtime tablet visionary and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could only dream of.
For more than a decade, nobody, not even a deep-pocketed company like Microsoft, has successfully cracked the tablet market. Apple, based on my tests over several days, is likely to be the first. Back in 2001, Gates predicted tablets would be the most popular form of PCs sold in America within five years. That obviously didn't come to pass. Apple's roots with the tablet form of computing date at least to its ill-fated Newton, an early 1990s personal digital assistant pushed by then-CEO John Sculley and later killed by Steve Jobs.
These days, several large computing companies have shown off or announced some sort of slate-type computer, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. Netbook pioneer Asus told Forbes that it, too, plans to roll out tablets. But Apple's new tablet will do the most to spawn renewed interest in the category and could tap into markets as varied as medicine and education. This week, Pennsylvania's Seton Hill University announced plans to give every full-time student this fall an iPad. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster expects 2.7 million iPads to be sold in 2010 and 8 million next year. Endpoint Technologies analyst Roger Kay ups the sum to about 4 million units the first year.
An often-asked question after Jobs unveiled the tablet at the end of January was: What is iPad's purpose for being? I answered that question by surfing the Web, watching the movies Up and Michael Jackson's This Is It, reading the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's True Compass, playing Scrabble and an accelerometer-driven game called RealRacing HD, and boning up on the periodic table of elements.
The iPad is larger than a smartphone but smaller than a typical laptop. Depending on your perspective, the space between is either fertile ground for an electronic device or a no-man's land. Even Apple seems unsure to what degree the iPad may hurt sales of its MacBook or MacBook Pro notebooks.
The iPad is not so much about what you can do — browse, do e-mail, play games, read e-books and more — but how you can do it. That's where Apple is rewriting the rulebook for mainstream computing. There is no mouse or physical keyboard. Everything is based on touch. All programs arrive directly through Apple's App Store. Apple's tablet is fun, simple, stunning to look at and blazingly fast. Inside is a new Apple chip, the A4. The machine is the antithesis of the cheap underpowered netbook computers that Jobs easily dismisses. "Netbooks aren't better at anything," Jobs scoffed during his January presentation introducing the iPad. "They're slow, they have low-quality displays and they run clunky old PC software."
What does a successful iPad launch mean for traditional netbooks? They'll have to adapt or disappear — especially since their price advantage compared with the entry-level iPad isn't as great as some might have thought it would be. "You can use the iPhone as the blueprint for how this will play out," Munster says.
Early buyers (and those who were among the first to reserve the iPad online) can get one Saturday at Apple Stores and certain Best Buys. Those who preorder it now online must wait until April 12 because of apparent shortages.
Wi-Fi-only models will cost $499 for a 16-gigabyte version, $599 for 32 GB, and $699 for 64 GB. Models with Wi-Fi and 3G wireless — which lets you connect through AT&T's data network when Wi-Fi isn't available — come later in April, at $629 for 16 GB, $729 for 32 GB and $829 for 64 GB.
The latter models don't require a wireless contract. Monthly AT&T prepaid data rates are attractive: $14.99 for 250 MB or $29.99 for an unlimited plan. You buy 3G service directly from the iPad. The charge doesn't show up on your AT&T bill or through iTunes, but rather on your credit card.
You will have to buy into the iTunes ecosystem, of course, to watch movies, read e-books and sync up the apps.
The half-inch-thick, magazine-size iPad is thin and, at 1.5 pounds, light with a gorgeous, glossy, backlit 9.7-inch multitouch display. The fingerprint-resistant screen has an exceptionally wide viewing sweet spot for a movie and is terrific for showing off most of a Web page. The device resembles an iPhone on growth hormones. It shares many of the smaller handheld's design elements, down to the lone home button below the display. As on the iPhone, you can have up to 11 screens of icons.
IPad has the same kind of smart sensors that change the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape, depending on how it's rotated. (It's always right side up.) And, like the iPhone, it takes its cue from your fingers, whether you pinch to zoom in or out on Web pages, location-based maps and pictures — or flick to scroll up or down a page. You can easily search across all content.
There's a hidden microphone but no built-in voice recorder app (for leaving voice notes, say). The single speaker isn't stereo, but you can get stereo output when you plug in headphones.
The iPad will run just about all of the 150,000-plus iPhone or iPod Touch apps sold (or available free) in the App Store, presenting boundless "there's an app for that" possibilities. If you own an iPhone or Touch, you already have a stable of programs to work on the iPad.
Those older apps appear in a small window on the iPad display. You can blow them up to fill the screen through a process called "pixel doubling." It's more than adequate for many apps, but enlarging the characters reveals any imperfections.
None of this is lost on Apple, which is encouraging developers to write for the bigger screen. Apple expects more than 1,000 iPad-specific apps to be available at launch, and I've already sampled a few, including Reuters News Pro from Thomson Reuters, the Bento for iPad database from FileMaker, and the Twitterrific Twitter program from the Iconfactory.
I've enjoyed racing games and Labyrinth on the iPhone, but playing such titles on the iPad spoils you. The once-appealing iPhone screen looks puny. I played Scrabble over my home network, with one player using an iPhone, the other an iPad.
A larger screen is perfect for a recipe app such as Epicurious or the digital painting app called Brushes. The built-in Maps app also benefits from the larger display. As with the similar iPhone app, you can zoom in to a street-level view or locate nearby restaurants.
The iPad's splendor and power may be best shown by The Elements: A Visual Exploration. The $13.99 program is more electronic book than traditional app, but it's not like any e-book you've seen. The periodic table of elements comes to life when you touch your finger against any element. Handsome photographs of objects spin around so you can observe them from all vantage points.
Equally attractive: the Marvel Comics app, which closely replicates printed comics.
USA TODAY will be launching its own app.
Apple is taking solid aim at the burgeoning electronic-reader market dominated by the Kindle. Judged solely from a sizzle standpoint: There's no contest. Titles on the iPad such as Winnie the Pooh (which comes preloaded on the iPad) boast colorful illustrations. The 6-inch Kindle screen is grayscale.
You can change pages on the iPad by tapping the screen: The page turns naturally, like a book. On Kindle, you have to press physical buttons and wait an instant while the page refreshes. Rotate the iPad, and you'll see two pages side by side.
Newspaper and magazine layouts look vastly superior on the iPad compared with Kindle. The iPad is backlit, so you can read in the dark. You have to supply a reading light with Kindle.
The covers you buy in Apple's new iBookstore land on a handsome depiction of a wooden bookshelf, again more elegant and easier to navigate than Kindle's clunky menus.
But Amazon retains some bragging points for avid readers, starting with a cheaper $259 price that I suspect will need to drop a lot further. At 10 hours or so, the iPad battery life, while impressive, falls far short of the two weeks you might get off a Kindle charge. It remains to be seen whether reading on a backlit screen for hours will be as easy on the eyes as the Kindle is. Curling up in bed was more comfortable with a 10.2-ounce Kindle than with the weightier iPad.
Amazon has about 450,000 book titles in the Kindle Store vs. 60,000 in iBookstore. Many best sellers in Apple's store cost $12.99, though some are $9.99. Amazon is likely to charge similar prices after iPad arrives; Amazon wouldn't comment. Out of the gate, Apple has support from major publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. Random House remains on the sidelines; it does support the Kindle.
The iPad has its share of Version 1.0 inadequacies. It doesn't multitask, save playing iTunes music in the background. There's no webcam for those of us hoping to do video chats. The battery is sealed. It's too big for your pocket.
Videos failed to play at Hulu and ESPN, among other Web destinations. Why? The Safari browser on the iPad doesn't support videos based on the popular Adobe Flash Internet video standard.
The issue may be alleviated over time. Apple is backing an emerging video standard called HTML5. Just this week, Brightcove, whose video technology is used by many media companies, said it plans to offer HTML5 video streaming to its customers. The iPad can also display video at YouTube (there's an app for that), Vimeo and the White House website, whitehouse.gov.
Some will decry the absence of a USB port or other connectors, which might let you hook up a printer or bolster storage. Everything comes through the standard iPod-like dock connector on the bottom of the iPad. You can purchase a $29 iPad Camera Connection Kit, which lets you connect a USB camera or import photos via an SD card.
Another quibble: Controls to start a flick from the beginning or to resume where you left off are buried in settings rather than presented when you launch the videos app.
Many people will still need a more traditional computer. You can't edit video on an iPad. And the virtual onscreen keyboard that pops up when needed is fine for e-mails or scribbling notes, but I wouldn't want to regularly write articles using it.
You can employ a wireless Bluetooth keyboard, and Apple sells an optional $69 iPad Keyboard Dock. It's a full-size keyboard that connects to the dock connector.
Apple sells a $39 soft microfiber case that doubles as a stand for watching videos and slideshows. You can bank on third-party companies to provide other accessories and how-to books. (Disclosure: I'm co-writing one, iPad For Dummies.)
The iPad has built-in notes, calendar and contacts applications, and Apple sells slick, redesigned versions of its iWork productivity applications — $10 each for the Keynote presentation program, the Pages word processor and the Numbers spreadsheet. Still, for most folks, the iPad is more about consuming content than creating it.
Nowhere is this more true than with photos. The built-in Photo app is similar to the iPhoto program on Macs. Photos are placed in stacks. Tap one, and the picture album spreads apart so that each picture is visible. Tap a picture, and it swells up. Pinch and spread your fingers to zoom. The Faces and Places feature lets you find pictures based on who is in them or where they were shot.
Apple has pretty much nailed it with this first iPad, though there's certainly room for improvement. Nearly three years after making a splash with the iPhone, Apple has delivered another impressive product that largely lives up to the hype.
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TMF ESPN Bassmaster
In the world of Bassmaster on ESPN, every catch is big. With each strike, there’s excitement and drama. And what’s on the other end of the line could mean the difference between winning and losing a tournament. To bring this idea to life, we created a visually stunning campaign for both the Bassmaster Classic and Bassmaster Elite Series, highlighting many of the top anglers in the sport.
Mike Caguin Named CCO And Eric Husband Made ECD
Colle+McVoy Promotes Senior Creative Staff
MINNEAPOLIS, April 12, 2012 – Colle+McVoy announced today promotions in its senior creative leadership. Mike Caguin has been named chief creative officer and Eric Husband has been promoted to executive creative director.
“This is wonderful recognition for two leaders who have guided the agency through years of strong growth, transformation and record-setting recognition,” said Christine Fruechte, president and CEO, Colle+McVoy. “As we continue down this path of expansion, we have the leadership in place to drive growth for us and our clients.”
Colle+McVoy has experienced six consecutive years of growth fueled by a significant investment in its social media and digital offering, organic growth from existing long-term client partners and the addition of new clients inspired by its ability to revitalize iconic brands, including most recently Indian Motorcycle and Mountain Hardwear. The agency’s work has received more national and international recognition than at any other time in its history and has been recognized by the O'Toole Awards, the Effies, the Webby Awards, The One Show, Communication Arts and Cannes Lions. It was also named a Best Place to Work in 2011 by Outside magazine, Advertising Age and the Star Tribune.
“It’s a great time to be at this agency,” said Caguin, who has led the creative team for the last three years as executive creative director. “Eric is an exceptional creative, our talent is at an all-time high and our clients are doing exciting things.”
Under Caguin’s leadership, the creative department has grown more than 35 percent in the last year alone. In addition to his time at Colle+McVoy, Caguin has worked at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners and TBWA/Chiat/Day, among other agencies. He has worked with numerous leading national brands such as BMW MINI, Cannondale, Caribou Coffee, ESPN, GT, Indian Motorcycle, Infiniti, InterContinental Hotels, Land O’Lakes, Nestlé Purina, Nissan, Novartis, Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo! His work has been recognized by The One Show, The One Show Interactive, D&AD, the Webby Awards, Cannes Lions, the Effies and the Kelly Awards.
Husband (previously group creative director) has been with Colle+McVoy for more than six years leading creative on numerous accounts, including Caribou Coffee, Schwinn, Mongoose Mountain Hardwear, Nestlé Purina and Explore Minnesota Tourism. He’s also created work for Target, Kellogg’s, BMW MINI and Sun Microsystems and spent time at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, as well as several local agencies. He’s won every color of Effie award (bronze, silver, gold), been recognized by the Kelly Awards, the Webby Awards, The One Show, and Cannes Lions. His work has been featured as ESPN's Play of the Day and enthusiastically discussed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
C+M Wins Two Acclaimed Internet Honors
MINNEAPOLIS, May 5, 2010 - The Colle+McVoy creation, www.YearbookYourself.com, won two Webby Awards in the Best Use of Social Media category of The 14th Annual Webby Awards. Hailed as the "Internet’s highest honor" by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet.
"This is a tremendous honor since this category represents the most cutting-edge work in social media, an area that every company is looking to leverage." said Mike Caguin, executive creative director, Colle+McVoy. "This award recognizes the hard work of many people, as well as the forward-thinking vision of our client partner, Taubman Centers."
YearbookYourself.com won both the Webby Award given by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) and the People’s Voice Webby Award in the Best Use of Social Media category. The previous iteration of the site won the People’s Voice Webby Award last year in the Viral Marketing category. With nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 U.S. states and more than 60 countries worldwide, the 14th Annual Webby Awards is the biggest in its history and continues to be the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. YearbookYourself.com was one of only five finalists in its category and was voted the people’s favorite after more than 700,000 votes were cast online. The cross-section of winners hailing from 14 countries will be honored at an event hosted by B.J. Novak of NBC’s The Office. in New York City on June 14. A full list of winners can be found at www.webbyawards.com.
"The Webby Awards honor the very best of the Internet," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. "YearbookYourself.com’s achievement is a testament to the skill, ingenuity and vision of its creators."
The unparalleled Webby win is the latest award for Colle+McVoy, which was also recently honored with four awards in The One Show and won the 2010 Adweek Buzz Award for YearbookYourself.com in the online category.
Over the last two years, YearbookYourself.com became an instant hit and a pop culture phenomenon for client Taubman Centers. The site was featured on more than 45,000 Web sites, blogs and media, including USA Today, Tech Crunch, ESPN, VH1’s Best Week Ever, The Early Show on CBS and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Numerous high-profile personalities embraced it, including Lance Armstrong, Pee-wee Herman and Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, who changed his profile picture to a Yearbook Yourself photo. The fun was wildly infectious and there were more than 28 million total visits to the site in the last two years. Once "yearbooked," the site easily allowed people to send their pictures to friends and post them to blogs and social networking sites (this year alone, more than 16 million Yearbook Yourself photos were shared via email or posted to Facebook). And the Yearbook Yourself Facebook fan page garnered more than 70,000 fans.
C+M Wins 2010 Buzz Award
MINNEAPOLIS, April 13, 2010 - The Colle+McVoy-produced Web site www.YearbookYourself.com won the award in the online category of the 2010 Buzz Awards. The Buzz Awards honor the best in brand/media integration and recognize campaigns that catch fire, produce brilliant product placements and use media in innovative ways that invade pop culture.
"Winning this award in the online category is a real honor and a testament to our digital expertise," said Mike Caguin, executive creative director, Colle+McVoy. "Generating buzz for a client is one thing, but creating something that becomes a pop culture phenomenon is rare. We are grateful for our forward-thinking clients like Taubman who appreciate transformative ideas."
There is only one winner per Buzz Award category (17 total) and YearbookYourself.com is the only winner in the online category, which recognizes the most attention-getting and effective use of the online medium to market a product, such as through a blog, short film or a viral e-mail campaign. As a result, the site will be profiled in a full-color spread in the May 3rd Buzz Awards section in Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek and online. This is the second Buzz Award for Colle+McVoy, which won in 2007 for the Minnesota State Lottery Don’t Belittle Powerball campaign. A full list of 2010 winners can be found at www.adweekbuzz.com..
Over the last two years, www.YearbookYourself.com became an instant hit and a pop culture phenomenon featured on more than 45,000 Web sites, blogs and media, including USA Today, Tech Crunch, ESPN, VH1’s Best Week Ever, The Early Show on CBS and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Numerous high-profile personalities embraced it, including Lance Armstrong and Pee-wee Herman, and Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, changed his profile picture to a Yearbook Yourself photo. More than 15 million visitors uploaded photos to the site to see themselves with classic hairdos and in vintage outfits spanning five decades. Once "yearbooked," people sent their pictures to friends and posted them to blogs and social networking sites (more than 11 million Yearbook Yourself photos were shared via email or posted to Facebook). And the Yearbook Yourself Facebook fan page garnered 70,000 fans.
C+M Wins Caribou Coffee Account
Named agency of record for second-largest coffeehouse operator in America
MINNEAPOLIS, February 20, 2009 - Colle+McVoy received a strong shot of new business after being named agency of record for Caribou Coffee, the second-largest company-owned gourmet coffeehouse operator in the United States. The agency was selected after a very competitive and challenging search.
"Colle+McVoy’s approach was very courageous. Their creative ideas pushed our brand in a more innovative direction, which we believe will help differentiate it for today’s customers and future generations," said Caribou Coffee Senior Vice President of Marketing Alfredo Martel. "The team presented a comprehensive strategy to drive growth and create long-term value, as well as actionable solutions for our immediate needs."
"We have been given an amazing opportunity to help Caribou Coffee become the leading gourmet coffee brand in the world," said Christine Fruechte, president and CEO, Colle+McVoy. "Every idea we create needs to be engaging and tell the brand’s memorable story through groundbreaking programs." Colle+McVoy ended 2008 with revenues at an eight-year high, driven, in part, by high-profile assignments from ESPN, Yahoo! Messenger, Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, and Manhattan Toy Company, to name a few.
Colle+McVoy will share in the brand strategy and planning, as well as manage the day-to-day execution of all marketing campaigns for Caribou Coffee, including brand identity, package design, interactive, advertising and promotions. The scope includes consumer marketing via all channels (trade, retail and online). Program budgets have not been finalized. |
Reported figures on meth labs incomplete
The story published in Saturday’s Tribune contained incomplete numbers on meth-related incidents in Neosho County for the years 2009 through 2011.
The Kansas Bureau of investigation reports distinguish between three types of meth-related incidents: only the chemicals or only the equipment used to produce meth were found, but not both; a dumpsite where the chemical waste and used equipment has been discarded; and a full lab seiz...
Chanute man injured in early morning accident
An injury accident occurred in Chanute just before 2 a.m. Saturday morning.
Timothy James Mishler, 21, Chanute was southbound on S. Evergreen, driving a 1999 Ford Explorer, the Kansas Highway Patrol report said.
The vehicle crossed the northbound lane and struck a curb, then partially rolled and struck a tree. Chris Hayes, 1801 S. Evergreen, heard the crash as he was getting into bed late. The accident occurred j...
Kansas school children asked to help restore ‘Home on the Range’ cabin
Kansas school children are being asked to join the statewide “Coins for the Cabin” effort. Proceeds will help restore and preserve the cabin where the state song, “Home on the Range,” was written 140 years ago.
“It’s not every day we have an opportunity to preserve a significant piece of American history,” said Senator Bob Marshall, R-Fort Scott, who co-sponsored a Senate Resolution for Higley Cabin. “I hope that Kansans across the state will...
25 years ago (1987)
A grand opening is to be held for the new business, Wood ‘N Woodnot, located at 9 E. Main. Ralph and Jackie Scott are the owners. They will sell wooden crafts made by Ralph, and other items on consignment.
50 years ago (1962)
GALESBURG – The sale of Shaw Manufacturing Co. to Bush Hog Mfg. of Selma, Ala., was announced today. The plant will continue to make its line of garden tractors, power mowers and related items. Stanl...
Pitt State lists fall 2012 grads
PITTSBURG — Pittsburg State University has announced its fall 2012 graduates.
Area students receiving degrees:
Altoona —Troy Lawrence Eugene Dannels MS
Chanute — Emily Ann Alonzo MBA, Mark J. Perez MS, Shelli Rae Reed MS
Fredonia — Lindsay Brooke Hershey MBA
Yates Center — Marla K. Sterling MS
Buffalo— David A. Beck BA, Robert D. Eagle BSET
Chanute — Luke J. Bunch BBA, Steven Decoster BST, Douglas Wayne Drybread BBA,...
American Legion state commander lays wreath at Lincoln’s tomb
American Legion state commander Dale Allen, Chanute, and Legion Auxiliary state president Ida Meyres, Bazine, were on hand Sunday, Feb. 12 in Springfield, Ill. to commemorate the birth of President Abraham Lincoln during a wreath laying ceremony at Lincoln’s tomb.
Allen and Meyres represented the Kansas American Legion and Auxiliary at the event. 
Allen said 18 other organizations from across the U.S. were o...
Weekend night sky to show crescent moon, planets
Special to the Tribune
Have you noticed the two bright stars in the evening skies? The mild winter weather has been a treat and people are enjoying the evenings outdoors more than they usually do this time of year. People are asking about those two bright stars, and they are neat, but they are not stars, they are planets, and they are going to have a visitor this weekend.
If you wait till the end of twilight, when the sky has becom...
Collecting lifelong hobby for 90-year-old
Virginia Robertson has spent much of her adult life collecting antiques but her collecting hobby began as a child collecting arrowheads on her father’s Finney County farm.
Robertson, who turns 90 on Saturday, was born in Inman, less than 20 miles from Hutchinson. She married the late Fred Robertson who was employed as a traffic clerk for Santa Fe Railroad while Virginia worked 19 years as an accountant at the So...
Cherry Berry slated for March 3 opening
A first-of-its kind yogurt parlor is scheduled to open for business in early March in Chanute.
Cherry Berry Self-Serve Frozen Yogurt will open shop at its Chanute location at 2502 South Santa Fe at 11 a.m. on Saturday, March 3.
“We offer over 50 premium rotating healthy and fat-free frozen yogurt flavors and over 50 toppings including fresh fruit,” said owner Bryan Thummel. “The beauty behind Cherry Berry is th...
What may I do for you?
My friends and I were recently discussing our “bucket lists.” This ‘ol Kansas girl has never seen the ocean or a mountain. I said I had never been on a roller coaster either but in retrospect, I have been on a roller coaster ride for a long time. As some of you know, my husband just passed away after a lengthy illness. The ups and downs of it all were indeed an ongoing roller coaster ride. Now what I have to say next sounds like a paid announ...
Chanute native named Fittest over 50 in KC’s Ingram’s Magazine
Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.  ~ Plato
Mike Green has been on the move for more than 30 years. In fact, sitting still was never on the radar since his junior year at Chanute High School. A standout for the Blue Comets on the gridiron, Green also lettered in wrestling at CHS.
Following his high school ...
Altoona-Midway teacher wins Kansas Earth Science award
The Kansas Geological Society and the Kansas Geological Foundation presented its Kansas Earth Science Teacher award to an Altoona-Midway High School teacher. 
Robert E. Pearce, Neodesha, received the award at the organization’s annual banquet Jan. 20 at the Petroleum Club in Wichita. The award included an engraved plaque and a $1,500 check from the Kansas Geological Foundation.¬†
Pearce started teaching earth science in 1985 and now teaches ...
Chamber, museum network at Wichita Women’s Fair
The Chamber of Commerce had good exposure at a booth at the Wichita Women’s Fair this past weekend.
Chamber Director Jane Brophy said the Chamber shared a booth with Fredonia. and the Osa and Martin Johnson Safari Museum.
“The chamber went as part of our tourism outreach,” she said.
The fair ran noon to 8 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Brophy said the fair included booths ...
First session of Aerostructures Training Program complete
Seven students participated in the first aerostructures training program facilitated by Neosho County Community College. 
The class was held in the aerostructures lab located in the former National Guard armory building from Jan. 20 through Feb. 3 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
During the training, students were introduced to multiple types of aircraft rivets and fasteners and many different types of precision instruments.
Their goals were to...
Project 17 one of three grant recipient finalists
Southeast Kansas may be on its way to receiving $1 million.
Project 17, an intermediate organization representing 17 southeast Kansas counties, has made the final cut along with two other organizations from across Kansas for a $1 million Kansas Leadership Center grant.
The grant will target training and education for 400 leaders of charitable organizations in southeast Kansas – a number of them in Neosho Count...
Kiss A Pig fundraiser ongoing
Kiss A Pig fundraiser for Relay for Life
A Kiss A Pig fundraiser is being conducted for the Relay for Life team at Guest Home Estates 3, 7440 220th Road, Chanute. Residents and staff made donation cans and they have been placed at local businesses. The person who raises the most money, will choose who will Kiss A Pig.
The event is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 3:30 p.m. Piggy snacks and drinks will be available.
Openings available for F...
Ricky Nelson Remembered hits Iola March 10
Ricky Nelson will be honored by his twin sons Gunner and Matthew in a multi-media tribute performance at 7:30 pm, Saturday, March 10 at Iola’s Bowlus Fine Arts Center. Tickets are on sale at the BFAC box office.
Ricky Nelson Remembered is a nationwide series of concerts featuring the twin brothers performing the hits of their late father including “Lonesome Town,” “Travelin’ Man” and Nelson’s last hit, “Garden ...
Red Cross honors Diskin at blood drive
ST. PAUL — Last month at the age of 65, Verl Diskin died suddenly.
St. Paul lost a valuable member of the community, and the American Red Cross lost a dedicated blood drive coordinator and longtime blood donor. In fact, last summer Verl Diskin received his 13-gallon pin, and in December 2011, donated his 106th pint of blood.
The St. Paul / Erie Blood Drive will be held from 2 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb, 28 at St. Francis Parish Hall, St. Paul....
Neosho County Extension agent teams with Rotarians in India
Tara Solomon’s five-week trip to India wrapped up Feb, 10 in what she termed “a bittersweet, eye-opening experience.”
Solomon, who lives in Chanute, serves as a district Extension agent for K-State Research and Extension. Her visit to India was part of a Rotary Group Study Exchange. Rotary International holds several exchanges across the United States and other nations.
“Although I’m not a Rotarian, this progra...
County plans meeting on rough track crossing
ERIE — Charles Morse, Road and Bridge Department, and William Cook will be meeting with SKO Railroad officials at 10 a.m. Tuesday on 21st Street, commissioners were told on Friday. The meeting will be in regard to the county’s proposal to straighten out 120th Road so that it does not cross the railroad tracks, thus solving the problem of a rough railroad track crossing.
The commissioners also:
• Heard an update on the pre-construction work be... |
Unlike most other voltage transformers, PowerBright transformers can be used as either a step up transformer or a step down transformer. This means a PowerBright transformer will work for just about anybody, no matter what the origin and destination countries may be. Exceptions are Japan (100V) and a handful of countries whose standard voltage is 127V.
If you are bringing a U.S. or Canadian 110-120 volt appliance to a country where the voltage is 220-240 volts, you need a step down transformer. Step down transformers take the 220-240 volt electricity supplied in most countries, and convert the voltage down to 110-120 volts for use by the appliance. PowerBright transformers do that.
On the other hand, if you are bringing a 220-240 volt appliance from another country to the U.S. or Canada where the voltage is 110-120 volts, you need a step up transformer. Step up transformers take the 110-120 volt electricity supplied in the U.S. and Canada, and convert the voltage up to 220-240 volts for use by the appliance. The same PowerBright transformer will do that too.
PowerBright VC1000W Step Up / Step Down Voltage Transformer Features:
But do I need a voltage transformer? Or would a plug adapter be enough?
Well, that depends on what you need to plug in. If your appliance's voltage matches the local voltage at your destination, then a plug adapter will do just fine all by itself. But if your appliance is not compatible with the local voltage, that's when a voltage transformer comes in. Voltage transformers actually change the local voltage to a voltage that's suitable for your appliance.
Electrical sockets in most parts of the world outside of North America generally supply electricity at between 220 and 240 volts AC. If you're plugging in an appliance that was built for 220-240 volt electrical input, or an appliance that is compatible with multiple voltages, then an adapter is all you need.
But plug adapters do not change voltage, so the electricity coming through the adapter will still be the same 220-240 volts the socket is supplying. North American sockets supply electricity at between 110 and 120 volts, far lower than in most of the rest of the world. Consequently, North American appliances are generally built for 110-120 volts. But that doesn't mean that your specific appliance isn't already compatible with the higher voltage -- it may very well be.
So how do I know whether or not my appliance is compatible with the local voltage at my destination?
Short answer: The only way to know is to check, and there's absolutely no getting around that crucial step. Electricity is nothing to mess around with, and assuming can be bad news. If you're wrong, you could "fry" your appliance, or worse yet, start a fire.
That being said, generally speaking, most modern "digital-age" appliances (especially ones that run on batteries) are being built to be compatible with all worldwide voltages, from 100 volts in Japan to 240 volts in the United Kingdom. This usually includes things like laptops, PDAs, cell phones, digital cameras, digital camcorders, many portable video game devices, digital music players, etc. More and more personal grooming items like hair dryers curling irons, shavers (especially cordless ones) and such are being built to be compatible with multiple voltages as well, but most of them aren't.
"Conventional appliances" like kitchen items, audio/video equipment, vacuum cleaners, lamps and lights, and most bath appliances are not compatible with multiple voltages. Again, the only way to know is to check. A common misconception is that there's any such thing as a "standard" electrical input for appliances. There's not. They're all different.
Okay, so how do I find this info for my specific appliance?
The electrical input specifications will appear on a label on the appliance itself, or on its charger or AC adapter if it uses one, near where the brand name and model number appear. Look for the word "input." As a last resort, you could check the back of the manual, but 99 times out of 100, it will be on the appliance's or charger's label. The input voltage is usually abbreviated to "V" and it should look something like this:
Input: ~100-240V 50/60Hz 65W -- This means the appliance is compatible with multiple voltages. This item can be brought just about anywhere in the world, and any difference in voltage is basically irrelevant. The appliance (or charger) adjusts itself to whatever voltage it receives. The only issue is whether or not the plug can physically interface with the socket. The appropriate travel plug adapter is all that's needed.
---or--- Input: 115/230V 50/60Hz 200W -- This means that the appliance can be switched between 110-120 volts in North America, and 220-240 volts in other parts of the world. This is common of desktop computers and some hair dryers/curling irons/etc. You probably have to physically flip a switch somewhere, but as long as that switch is in the proper position and you have the appropriate plug adapter, you're fine.
---or--- Input: 120V 60Hz 2.8A -- This means that the appliance is only compatible with a single voltage, in this case, 120 volts. If the socket is 220-240V, then an adapter by itself isn't enough, because travel plug adapters do not change the voltage supplied by the socket. Plugging it in with just an adapter can "fry" it (if you're lucky, that's all that will happen) because the voltage is too high for the appliance to handle. To use this appliance safely, the voltage needs to be changed from 220-240 volts to 110-120 volts by way of a voltage converter or transformer.
Is this transformer big enough to support my appliance?
The transformer you buy must be capable of supporting the amps and/or watts that your appliance needs in order to operate. If the transformer is too small, you will blow the fuse. The model VC1000W supports 1000 watts. So as long as your appliance is 1000 watts or less, this transformer should be fine.
The watts and/or amps that your appliance requires can be found on a label on the appliance (usually on the bottom or back) where the brand name and model number appear. If the appliance uses a charger or AC adapter, the information will appear on that piece. Sometimes this info is molded into the plastic or stamped into the metal, as opposed to a label. Look for something like this: "Input: 110V 60Hz 100W " The "W" number is the watts. For this model transformer, that "W" number should be 1000 or below.
Sometimes the label will show amps instead of watts. In that case the information would look something like: "Input: 120V 60Hz 10.0A " If the label lists amps, you can figure out a rough approximation of the watts by multiplying the amps by the volts (the "V" number). Example: 120 volts x 10.0 amps = 1200 watts. In this case, the VC1000W would not be big enough to support the appliance. You would need to buy a larger transformer than this one. Fortunately, PowerBright manufactures transformers that support up to 3000 watts!
Plugging the transformer into the electrical socket:
These PowerBright transformers are wired with a standard U.S./Canadian household plug, and are designed to plug into U.S./Canadian wall sockets. The transformers also include a plug adapter for European Schuko sockets. So if you're coming to the U.S. or Canada, or going to a country like France, Spain, Italy, Germany or another country that uses the European style sockets, then everything you need is included. If you are going to Great Britain, Australia, India or another country that uses a different type of socket, you will also need one or more plug adapters that match the outlet type(s) used in your destination country. You would plug the adapter into the socket, and then plug the transformer into the adapter.
For various reasons (usually the lack of a single standard) many countries use several different socket types. Socket types can vary from city to city, region to region or even building to building. It may be advisable for you to bring other plug adapters just to be sure you're covered if your particular building is wired with a secondary/less-common type of socket. We also have travel adapter kits for most countries. Travel adapter kits include multiple adapters for different socket types you may find in a particular destination country. If you're not sure what socket types you may find, a kit can be an easy solution.
Plugging your appliance into the transformer:
Your appliance will plug into one of the two sockets on the transformer. In the picture above, the socket to the left is a standard U.S./Canadian socket. This is where you would plug in your U.S. or Canadian 110-120 volt appliance when using the transformer abroad in step down mode (220-240 volt source to 110-120 volt appliance). The socket to the right is a universal socket, which will accept almost any kind of international appliance plug. This is where you would plug in your international 220-240 volt appliance if you are using the transformer in the U.S. or Canada in step up mode (110-120 volt source to 220-240 volt appliance).
PowerBright VC1000W Step Up / Step Down Voltage Transformer Specifications: |
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Book Publisher and Distributor Listings - M
M&N Publishing: A West London-based book packager and publisher.
M.E. Sharpe: Produces books and journals in the fields of Asian Studies, Economics, European & Russian Area Studies, History, and Political Science.
Macabre Ink: A book publisher believed specializing in limited editions of horror. Appears limited to only one author.
Maclay & Associates, Publishers: A book publisher believed specializing in collectible editions of horror and suspense.
Macmillan Publishing: A book publisher. "Pearson Technology Group (formerly Macmillan Computer Publishing) will no longer maintain web sites at MCP.com." Address reported inoperative.
Madman Express: Chapbook publisher/printer. Link reported invalid.
Magic Carpet Books: Erotic Romance publisher. Sells contemporary erotic romance novels, primarily via Barnes and Noble. Flat rate fee of $1800 to the author for a 75K novel. Contact info unavailable.
Mainly Murder Press: A publisher.
Makdan Publishing: A publisher.
Malachite Quills Publishing: A publisher of science fiction and fantasy.
Maledicta Press: Insults, curses, swearwords, slurs, graffiti, slang, blasphemies, obscenities, threats, taboos, and other maledicta from around the world.
Malvern Publishing / Tony Harold: Not recommended. Also doing business as British Book Company. Address reported inoperative.
Manatee Publishing: Not recommended. An imprint of vanity publisher, Four Seasons Publishers.
Mandala Press, The: Not recommended. A vanity publisher affialiated with Sun Rising Books. Located at:
St. Joseph, MO 64506
MapleInk Publishing: "an online electronic book publisher that sells eBooks, offers free eBooks, and accepts submissions from independent authors." Contributed by Jill Anderson. Link reported inactive.
Mardi Gras: A publisher. 8/26/07: a writer reports this house is defunct.
Margaret Gee Publishing: Conflict advisory. An Australian literary agency and publisher.
MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS: A children's book publisher.
Mark V. Ziesing/Ziesing Books: Recommended. A limited edition book publisher. Link broken.
Mark Williams International: A publisher. P&E is hearing complaints about this one.
MARLvision: An up and coming small publisher.
Marquette Books: Not recommended. A small publisher. Also produces vanity books.
Mars Publishing: Strongly not recommended. A publisher. Last reported filing for bankruptcy. P&E recommends that writers who dealt with this publisher visit The Bewares Board at Absolute Write to learn about their possible options.
Marshal Truman Publishing: Very poor contract. Not recommended. A publisher.
Martin Brown Publishers: A publisher. As of 2014, contract takes a lot of rights a small publisher may not be able to exploit.
Martin Sisters Publishing: A publisher.
Mascot Books: A self-publishing publisher.
Matador: Not recommended. A self-publisher in the UK.
Mathews Books: "a new Print on Demand publishing company, started by Shirley Dicks, author of nine published book with the traditional publishing companies. We started this company in order to, 1. publish books to help other authors to make more money by giving a 40% royalty where traditional companies give ten percent. 2. Make money ourselves, but only adding a few dollars to the cost of printing the book, the rest to go to the authors themselves the way it should be. Authors will buy their own books at cost plus a couple of dollars. 3. Authors hold all rights to their books, can get out of any contract with us with written notice. 4. Our cost is only a little above the cost of printing, ISBN and bar code cost. 5. We also have publicity packages to promote each author for an extra cost, however, we do submit to a hundred book stores and also set up book signings for our authors." Editor's note: There is no publishing conflict present. The primary's agency closed just after the publishing branch opened. Added 12/5/04: appears to be links only now.
Mayapple Press: Charges fee. Not recommended. A poetry publisher. Location unknown.
Mayhaven Publishers: A vanity publisher. Address uknown.
McBooks Press: A publisher. Contact at:
Ithacha, NY 14850
McCleery and Sons Publishing: A source indicated they are being sued in North Dakota for fraud and failure to pay royalties. believed to be a vanity/subsidy publisher.
McClelland & Stewart: A Canadian publisher of literary fiction and non-fiction.
McFarland: A publisher specializing in scholarly, reference and academic books.
McGraw Hill: Professional, reference, and trade publishing.
McGraw Publishing Inc.: Defunct. A publisher. Contact at:
Houston, TX 77571
McKenna Publishing Group: Conflict of interest. Not recommended. A publisher.
Meadowside Children's Books: A publisher.
Medallion Press: Very poor contract. Strongly not recommended. "a genre fiction publisher that publishes mainstream adult fiction in a variety of genres and will do so in such a way as to raise the level of expectations of the book buying public so that they look to Medallion Press, Inc. as a leader in the publishing industry. In 2010 we will debut a non-fiction line as well."
MeeGenius!: Poor contract. A publisher that "digitizes children's stories, classic and new, and adds features such as word highlighting and audio playback for easy read-along."
Meisha-Merlin: Closed. Recommended. A book publisher of science fiction and horror.
Melange Books, LLC: A digital and print on demand house.
Mellen Press: "A non-subsidy academic publisher of books in the humanities and social sciences." Further information is noted here.
Melville House: A publisher. One report of extremely slow response time.
Me'lange Press: A self-publisher.
Memoware.com: Not recommended. A book distributor.
Mercury Publishing House: A general trade book publisher.
Mercury Retrograde Press: Not recommended. A publisher.
MG Audiobook Publishers: "offers both individual Authors and Publishing Houses the ability to market any novel in audiobook format. MG Audio is dedicated to producing high quality best-selling fiction and non-fiction recorded on audiocassette tape and/or compact disc."
Miclyn Liteary Service: a printer. Contact at:
Nixa, MO 65714-0553
Middle Atlantic Press: A publisher "dedicated to publishing the best in regional publishing. Our goal is to publish quality nonfiction books that the residents of the Mid-Atlantic region and the residents of the East Coast of the United States can enjoy for years to come."
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MONDO PUBLISHING, INC.: A children's book publisher.
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MoonlitBooks.com: An epublisher specializing in gay & lesbian genre fiction. Link broken.
Mopoke Publishing: An electronic book publisher based in Australia.
Morgan James Publishing: A vanity publisher.
Morning Rain Publishing: "A small press specializing in e-publishing short stories, novellas, and novels. Our goal is to discover great Canadian writing to share with readers all over the world. Address: P.O. Box 20047, 2211 Brant Street, Burlington, ON L7P 0A4 . Categories: Canadian, Fiction, Middle Grade, Young Adult, New Adult, Literary."
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Location: Vancouver, BC
|http://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/way ... rphy-brock
This is quite a lengthy but amazing interview. I hope you enjoy it:The Way It Was Meant to Be: Interview with Napoleon Murphy Brock
Former Frank Zappa front-man Napoleon Murphy Brock discusses his beginnings with The Mothers, the musical and vocal dynamics within the group, a legacy kept alive, and real by The GrandMothers of Invention, currently on tour in the United States.
GW: This is Dave Papuga with the Grateful Web. Tonight I have the supreme pleasure of speaking with Napoleon Murphy Brock, former front man, and saxophone and flute player for Frank Zappa. In addition to playing on Zappa albums including Apostrophe, One Size Fits All, Roxy and Elsewhere, Sheik Yerbouti and Thing-Fish, Napoleon is a Grammy winner and a general music legend. How are you doing tonight, Napoleon?
NMB: Excellent! I’m excellent!
GW: Let’s take it back to how you got started playing music. How did it all begin?
NMB: Well, it actually began when I was in church with my grandparents. They got me up to sing in church when I was five, and a bunch of women in the front row started crying; and so I started crying too, because I thought I did something wrong. Then my grandmother said, “naw, they was just feeling the spirit, son.”
And I said, “oh, I thought I did something wrong.” (laughter)
That’s how it started, and that’s when I…I kind of recognized that there was some magic there and I had actually been gifted, with something, and so I went through all of the different choirs, then I went into school and started singing in the school choirs, up into high school, then I started being in the local high school musicals, and our music teacher—a friend of his was a choreographer, and she had a dance studio and she used to come and do the choreography for our high school musicals and she also did the choreography an opera company. So, she went and told the people in the opera company…she said, “hey, you’ve got to come and see this production, this high school production. They’ve got this one kid in there who sings his ass off, but more than that—he’s a ham. He’s always smiling and happy for some reason.” And that’s because I love music; it was my world, it was freedom. It was a place that I recognized, that was part of me. The opera company came to one of our high school productions and hired me right there on the spot, came to me and said
“we want you to come work with us at the opera company,” and I said “that’s not possible because I work at night. I live with my grandparents and I work at night to take care of my part of the cost of going to high school and living.”
They said, “Well, how much are you making?” I told them and they said, “we’ll match that, just don’t tell anybody that we’re paying you.”
I said, “cool,” and so I started working for them and I worked for them until I graduated high school- which was two years in high school and two years in college that I worked for them. In total, I worked for them for four years, and that’s where I got most of my basic stage experience. Back in that day, we didn’t have those microphones that you hook on your head, and you can dance around. We had to sing without microphones and we had to project to the last row in the audience. And so I learned how to sing from my diaphragm; I learned how to sing and project my voice, and that was our training, right there. We did a lot of dancing…and basically, that was my training. I played in the high school marching band…I played saxophone and flute in the high school marching band and the high school concert band and I sang for the jazz band in high school. So that’s how I got my start.
GW: You seem like a really modest guy. The opera company offered you the position and you initially refused the offer and honored your prior commitment. I understand that was kind of the same thing that happened when you were approached by Frank Zappa in Hawaii.
NMB: Well it was, because the band that I had over in Hawaii…the contract that I had with this gentleman, it was a gentlemen’s’ agreement. We didn’t need a piece of paper, because we trusted each other.
Frank came to me and said, “hey, my name is Frank Zappa, and you’re my new lead vocalist,” and I went, like “uh…really?”
I said, “okay, well, first-of-all, I don’t know who you are, I’ve never heard of you before; and perhaps you didn’t notice, but I already have a job…and you’re a musician?”
And he said “yeah,” and I asked “what do you play?” And he said “guitar.” I said “really? Interesting.”
I said, “and you have a band, right?” He said, “yeah.” I said, “Do you record?”
He said, “yeah.”
I said “do they play your music on the radio? Because I listen to all of the stations: classical, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, blues, doo-wop, country…I listen to everything and I’ve never heard your name before.”
He said, “Well, my music is a little controversial.”
I said, “really? Oh, okay, well, that’s probably why I’ve never heard of you before, but, the bottom line…”
He said, “Listen, have you ever been to Europe?”
I said, “no.”
He said, “well, listen, I’ll come over on Monday, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know to go on tour with me in Europe.”
And I said, “really? Well, no, my answer is still ‘no’ because, bottom-line, I don’t know who you are, and why am I going to go some place with someone that I’ve never met before to do music that I’ve never heard before, that I know nothing about? Plus, I have a contract here.”
He said, “We’ll buy the contract.”
I said, “You can’t buy the contract because it’s a verbal agreement, and my word is my bond. I told the band we’re going to be here for three months—therefore, we’re going to be here for three months…I told the club owner we’re going to be here for three months--so therefore, we’re going to be here for three months.” I said, “I appreciate the compliment, but with all due respect- I don’t know who you are. I wish you a lot of luck, and thank you very much for the compliment.” Before I left, I said, “Well, by the way, who’s in your band?”
He said, “George Duke, Jean-Luc Ponty.”
I said, “whoa, stop, wait a minute. The French jazz-violinist Jean-Luc Ponty? And the jazz keyboard player who used to play with Cannonball Adderley, George Duke? That keyboard player? They’re in your band?”
He said, “yeah.”
I said, “Well, damn, you must be good. They’re the best. Why haven’t I heard of you? I have everything they’ve recorded. George Duke is my idol. We used to put make up on to look old so we could go to after-hours clubs to watch George Duke, my musician friends and me. So that’s really weird that I’ve never heard of your name before.”
He said, “Would you do it?”
I said, “No, I still won’t do it. I’m not going to break my contract or go back on my word to these guys or to the club owner, but when do you get back?”
He said, “I’ll be back in about three months.”
I said, “Here’s my card, give me a call, and I’ll come down and check you out, I’d like to hear what you sound like.”
He said, “I’ll call you when I get back, you come and listen to us. You don’t have to sing or anything. If you like the band, you’re in.”
I said, “That stuff about you teaching me everything I need to know in one day, to play with George Duke and Jean-Luc Ponty- nix on that stuff. There ain’t no way in the world you could teach me anything in one day where I’m going to go embarrass myself in front of George Duke and Jean-Luc Ponty. I know these guys- these guys are monsters!” That’s how that happened.
GW: You’re featured on material from ’74-’84. When did you go to that first rehearsal?
NMB: It was the end of September. They weren’t there (Europe) as long as they thought they were going to be. They were only there for about five weeks. I went down there in September; we started with rehearsals in September and October. Chester Thompson came in the day after I got there, and we were touring by the end of the year. In November we were on tour. Two drummers—Chester Thompson and Ralph Humphrey were playing drums in the band; and Ruth Underwood. Jean-Luc had gotten a recording contract about then, and a deal with a record company, so he quit then. Ralph Humphrey was there, Ruth Underwood was there, Tom Fowler, Bruce Fowler, George Duke, Frank, and myself. It was great. History will attest, if you get and bootlegs or recording from that period.
Frank took Chester and I up to his vault and gave us a chart to every piece of music that they did and he told me, “Listen, I don’t want you to change anything. I want you to do exactly what I saw you doing in Hawaii, as far as what you do on stage…I just want you to do it with my music.”
I said, “Well, that’s easy…it’s easy to be myself.” But then he gave us those charts and Chester and I stayed up all night going over those charts going “What the fuck is this? (laughter) Why does he put so many notes in each measure? What’s up with that? What’s he trying to do, see how many he can get in there?” But once we started to learn the music, and learn the style of music, then it made all of the sense in the world. We realized that we were on the cutting edge of making history playing music, performing music and recording music that was so far ahead of it’s time, that I’m not sure that time has caught up with it yet.
GW: Exactly. Since then, what’s come out that has been of that musical caliber with the improv and the chemistry between musicians…nothing has seemed to have been able to touch that. You’re right; history hasn’t caught up with it yet.
NMB: One of my big questions to myself was, “How does this guy know, just from watching me for a couple of hours with my band in Hawaii playing top 40 music—cover music—how does he know that I can play with George Duke and Jean-Luc Ponty and all these other conservatory musicians?” I learned in high school and in college, but I never could afford to go to a conservatory.
One of the first things that I recognized when I first went to hear them play…they played five or six songs without stopping, and I recognized right then, I said, “this is rock opera, but it’s even above rock opera because he’s including jazz, classical, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, country…he was taking every genre of music and composing music, and he’s using two/four chords as opposed to three/five/seven. He was using two/four—so that changes the scale…that changes all of the notes in the scale. I’m like, “wow, what an imagination! What a thing to do!” It’s like playing classical music because usually in classical music, that’s the only place where they use two/four chords, you know what I’m saying? He was using it in all of these other stylish ways, but—bottom-line—the choreography, and all of the other little things that he was adding- it was basically a rock opera, a Broadway musical. But how did he recognize that I came from there by watching me in Hawaii? The things that I did with Zappa on stage—I was doing, basically, those same moves, with that same enthusiasm and that same energy when I played cover music. So then I broke it down and said, “Okay, I see.” But I was just having a good time and expressing myself, and really getting into what I was doing, because if I’m not having fun, I’m not going to do it, because I don’t like to work. It should be fun, and it was fun! I had a hard time figuring out how he knew. Then the more we started working together, the more that I found out that he and I were very much alike in many ways, you know what I’m saying? One of his favorite things to say when someone made a profound statement was “Hello!” And I used to say that all of the time too. “Hello!” We had a chemistry and we developed a chemistry and he actually trusted me. He put me out there on the first show. He said, “Just go.” He started a groove, and said “just go.” And, I said, “just go and do what?” He said, “Just do what you do.” He saw me in Hawaii and he could tell that I was doing a lot of ad-libbing, but I would do it in sync with the composition, that would not take from the composition, it would only add to the composition and what the composition was trying to present. He recognized that, and this is why he allowed me to really stretch out in his compositions and ad-lib stuff like “Dummy Up” and “Pygmy Twilight” and “Room Service” and all of that stuff. Most of that was ad-lib. We did that stuff every night, but it was never the same. We were always thinking creatively about what we would do and we would play off of each other’s words. The music was ahead of its time. This is why we’re still doing it now. There are a lot of cover bands playing it, but they’re not playing it right. We’re going to make sure that the quality and the integrity of the music stays the same and that it remains there, so people could see how it’s really supposed to be done. I’m a much better singer now than I was then because I took voice lessons and I’ve practiced. I practice all of the time. When I’m not gigging, on the road or something, I go to this club in San Jose and I play four hours-- non-stop--playing sax, flute and singing. Every Friday or Saturday night, we’ve play four hours and we don’t take a break. It just keeps my chops really tight; it strengthens my voice, makes it stronger and stronger.
GW: The exchange between you and Zappa and the other guys was simply unmatched. He gave you that freedom to improvise right off the bat?
NMB: Yeah, and he knew that Georges voice and my voice would match. The guy had some genius parts about him; I later found out, that blew me away. I told him, I said, “Dude, the only thing I knew about you was that I saw your picture on a poster, sitting on a toilet in a record store, flipping the bird. If that’s your resume or your endorsement, what do you want with me? (laughter) I ain’t into that, whatever that is, I’m not into that.” But I came to find out later that he didn’t stage that; someone opened the door and took a picture of him, and that’s why he flipped the bird.
GW: That’s definitely a whole new insight. I have a Buffalo, New York, 1974 recording and it’s along the lines of the Helsinki stuff, you and George doing the “Tush, Tush, Tush” intro, and you guys are talking about some snowstorm and then you start breaking Ruth’s balls; listening to it in the headphones and having one of you guys right and one of you guys left (ear)—it’s just fucking genius.
NMB: Yeah…it was. Thank you very much. He allowed us to do that, and he recognized that that was in me—because it was in him, and he had someone to banter with, that he knew was going to always maintain the integrity of the composition, and not take it away to other places where it shouldn’t go. Because I was the leader of my own band; I did all of the arrangements in my band, because I wanted the integrity of the music and the quality of the music to be at a certain level, and he recognized that. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if you know, but I just released a CD of that night, because I was recording that night. I went back into my storage and I found the CD of the night that Frank came in.
GW: Communication Plus? That was the name of that group?
NMB: Yeah. I just released it. It’s called “This is What Frank Zappa Heard: Communication Plus: Live at the Red Noodle.” You’ll be able to hear exactly what he heard, and you will be able, from listening to this, figure out why he wrote songs like “Pygmy Twilight,” “Florentine Pogen”…why he wrote songs like this for me to sing.
GW: Those songs were written for you…
NMB: They were written for me, and you don’t hear many people trying to sing them either, because it’s gymnastics, vocal gymnastics. All of the information, he used to say to himself, “I can compose this song, and this person can do this song and bring it to life”…the information that he got for that idea is all on this CD, because this is the night that he came in there. This is a live recording of when Frank Zappa met Napoleon Murphy Brock. I took it to Germany; I recorded it on a Teac four-track reel to reel, and I had it transferred to Pro-Tools and I took it to Germany to this guy at Penglen Engineering, and what he does…he does restoration of old tapes. He takes all of the hiss out, takes out all of the noise and he makes it sound digital, but he didn’t remove the analog sound. So it still has that 70s analog sound…and stereo, full stereo. Keyboards on one side, guitar on the other side, sax in the middle. Everything is panned in stereo.
GW: Napoleon, I was wondering about the Zappanale Festival in Germany, and the Beefheart festival in France…why don’t we get festivals like that here in the states?
NMB: Well, as you know, people over here are a little bit weird. That’s why we haven’t been touring over here. This is why now is our first tour in a long time. Because the people over here are always ready…”what’s new today, what’s new tomorrow?” They always change all of the musical programs. The local governments, when they want to make cuts, the first thing that they cut are the arts. So people over here really aren’t educated, musically, like the people in Europe. The people in Europe…every child over there has to learn a musical instrument when he goes to school, whether he will become a musician or not. He’ll probably turn into an engineer or a construction worker or a mathematician or an accountant, but they all have to take music and they all have to learn an instrument because it’s a part of their culture. It’s really not an embedded part of our culture over here. Even though most of the music that is played around the world, like jazz and blues, and rhythm and blues- it was all created here. Over in Europe, they put a higher value on it, they put a higher value on all of that music; and that’s the difference. So we go over there and we sell-out, every time we play, because people come out because they know that the quality of the music is going to be at such a high level that they are not going to get ripped off and they are going to appreciate it, and it’s not going to be rap, and it’s not going to be some repetition thing, it’s going to be quality music, that, like we said before, is still ahead of it’s time. They understand the difference between quality music and noise.
GW: It’s kind of a shame- the mentality towards music over here in the states.
NMB: It is. Fortunately what’s happening now, is that all of these bands like KISS, Genesis, and us, is that we’re all starting to tour again, because the music that is coming out nowadays is finally being recognized as not having a very high level of quality to it…or creativity. It’s more repetitious. We recognize that, the promoters recognize that, and this is why they’re going back to the old-school sound.
GW: It’s about time.
NMB: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying too—it’s about time. We’re ready. We’ve got Tom Fowler—Tom Fowler was just with Ray Charles for the last 35 years. He was the bass player in Zappa’s band when I got there. This guy has all of the Zappa stuff and 35 years of Ray Charles under his belt. We have so many options when we play solos and stuff, me and the guitar player, or Don Preston, we just don’t know where to go first. Because Tom Fowler’s layin’ down all this shit, man. We’re going, like, “damn!” He’s playing all the bass parts, all the roots, but all of the relatives, too! All of the different styles and feelings that he’s playing: the technical stuff that he got from Zappa, but he’s also playing the real moody, feely stuff that he got from Ray Charles. So we’re in the best of the worlds that we could ever be in.
GW: I’m excited for May 13th at the Boulder Theater.
NMB: Oh, it’s going to be incredible, man. We’ve been practicing. We just had three days of rehearsal, eight hours a day, each day. We’re just blown away; we had to stop ourselves, because we wouldn’t do anything else. We can’t wait to get out there and blow everybody’s mind.
GW: We can’t wait to have you. I’ve seen some of the other reincarnations: Project Objekt and Dweezil with Zappa Plays Zappa over the years, but I’m really excited to see this line-up. So, with the Grandmothers, it’s you, Don Preston, Tom Fowler and Miroslav Tadic?
NMB: Miroslav Tadic. This dude plays with classical orchestras all over the world. Flamenco guitar and classical guitar.
GW: And he’s a young guy?
NMB: Yeah! We got another guy; we’ve got two guitar players because Miroslav can’t always make it because a lot of times, he’s somewhere playing with a classical orchestra in Austria, Croatia, Germany or Italy…he’s always some place playing with a classical orchestra and he does a jazz thing or flamenco thing or acoustic guitar thing, folk music--with another guy from his country…he’s from Croatia and they play these concerts too, like jazz clubs where they are just incredible. Playing Zappa stuff—you won’t believe this guy! He’s a monster, man!
GW: Nice. We expect nothing less from you guys.
NMB: Believe me, believe me. And the drummer—Chris Garcia—he goes to India and plays—and he’s just incredible, and he sings like Captain Beefheart. He can nail Captain Beefheart.
GW: So, what’s it like bringing the relatively new guys into the mix?
NMB: Both of them—Chris Garcia and Miroslav Tadic—they both teach at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. Chris Garcia, the drummer, he used to take marimba lessons from Ruth Underwood.
GW: No shit?
NMB: And he knew Miroslav…and it was just people who knew people. Ruth is the one who introduced Chris to us. He did some sessions with Don, and Don saw him playing drums, and said, “I just thought you played percussion, I didn’t know you played drums.” And he said, “hey, we need a drummer, you want to come check it out?”
He said, “yeah.”
Don asked him if he knew Zappa, and this guy knows Zappa backward and forward, backward and forward. I’m telling you, it was unbelievable.
GW: So, this tour is billed as “Roxy and Elsewhere and more.” Are we going to hear Roxy and Elsewhere in its entirety?
NMB: We’re going to play everything from Roxy except the “Dummy Up” thing, because we can’t do that without Frank and Jeff Simmons, number one. But I’m doing a version of that, and we’re doing “Pygmy Twilight.” We’re going to do every song on the album except the “Dummy Up” routine about smoking the high school diploma and all of that; and one other song we’re not going to do is “Be-Bop Tango,” we’re not doing that. We’re going to wait until we come to L.A. and Bruce Fowler sits in with us, and then we’ll do “Be-Bop Tango,” because he’s the star of “Be-Bop Tango;” trombone player. We’re going to be doing some shows where Ruth and George and Bruce join us. They’ll mostly, probably be in L.A.
GW: Dang. I’m sure, nonetheless, you guys are going to kill it here (Colorado).
NMB: Oh, it’s going to be killer, man!
GW: I am beyond delighted with anticipation on this one, man. So you were saying that Garcia does Beefheart vocals. Should we look forward to some Bongo Fury stuff?
NMB: Yeah. We’re going to do “Debra Kadabra,” we’re going to do “Willie the Pimp,” and we’re going to do all of the rest of the stuff from Roxy: “Cheepnis,” “Oh No,” “Son of Orange County,” “Trouble Everyday,” “Anything You Wanna Do”—the last song on the album that I wrote with Frank. We’re going to be doing “Village of the Sun,” “Echidna’s Arf,” “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing,” we’re going to do the whole album.
GW: Will the speed of “Village of the Sun” vary?
NMB: Same speed that it’s at on Roxy.
GW: Back in high school, I got a copy of Roxy on cassette, and that is what sold me. That version of “Village of the Sun” is absolutely amazing!
NMB: Oh yeah; we’re going to do it Roxy style.
GW: The Paul Green School of Rock Music; a music program that you’ve been involved with…
NMB: Yeah, I did a DVD with them.
GW: So this is after-school music programs for kids?
NMB: Yeah. Master classes; I did master classes. Mike Keneally and I, both of us. We did master classes with them. Basically what that was all about was trying to inspire students to get into music, and showing them the quality side of music, so they wouldn’t just be distracted by the bull-shit or the rap. We showed them the difference between real music and lip-syncing, or repetition.
GW: So you were actually working hands-on with the kids?
NMB: Absolutely. I did master classes with them.
GW: You played in Zappa Plays Zappa along with Dweezil (Zappa). What’s Dweezil like compared to Frank?
NMB: Dweezil is nothing like Frank. It’s hard for me to even believe that he is his son. Dweezil is a cover band guitar player. He’s okay, but it’s not something that I want to do again. Steve Vai, Terry Bozzio and I got together and we said, “okay, we’ll do this; we’ll do it for Frank,” because we thought we owed Frank because Frank did so much for us. We did that one tour. Dweezil is an okay guitar player, but he doesn’t understand the concept of his father’s music…and that’s too bad. If I were the son of Frank Zappa, I’d have been following him around like a roll of toilet paper. You know what I’m saying? Everything he shit, I would have picked it up, and learned about it. He never did that; he never even wanted Frank to show him how to play guitar. He wanted some guy from Guns ‘n Roses or something. He’s an okay guitar player, but he couldn’t work in this band because he doesn’t understand the concept of the music—not really.
GW: Different time period he was raised in, I guess.
NMB: When I started with Frank, he was still a baby, peeing in his pants. He’s okay, he’s got the name, he’s got Frank Zappa’s name, but he really doesn’t know the music, he really doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know the concept—that’s the sad part.
GW: It’s kind of a shame…I don’t want to get too into it…but with Gail (Zappa) not really being too happy about anyone playing Zappa stuff—
NMB: That’s sad too…the whole atmosphere around that family…it’s too bad. It’s really sad; it’s too bad.
GW: My buddy made a joke on a public forum about sending me a link to a site with Zappa bootleg recordings…he said he’d send me the link privately as he was worried about Gail taking him to court. It’s just a bummer that she doesn’t share in the celebration of the legacy of music that he left behind, that you guys are capable of, and willing to keep playing—
NMB: --I know. It’s too bad…it’s too sad. But like I said, Dweezil is an okay person, but he really doesn’t understand the concept of this music, and he thinks it should be played exactly the way it is on the record. What he doesn’t understand is that the way most of it is on the record, some of it—it wasn’t done that way on the road. We were very flexible on the road.
GW: That’s the beauty of it.
NMB: That was the beauty we created every night. Every night, we did, for example—you’ve seen the video “Dub Room Special,” the DVD, right?
GW: Yes, sir.
NMB: So you know about “Room Service?”
NMB: Okay. “Room Service,” every night, was different. Every night, it was completely different. If you listen to the “Room Service” on Helsinki and you listen to the “Room Service” on the Dub-Room Special—they’re completely different. The premise is the same, but the way we go about it is different, because we were playing a little game with each other. We were creating on-the-spot.
GW: It was the BEST! I still pull stuff off of the internet and listen to different versions of songs. It might be the same year and the same tour, but it’s just so exciting to wonder, “What’s going to happen on this version? What little idiosyncrasies are going to exist on this particular version?” Aside from the instrumentation and the knowledge you have behind your instruments—the banter is always huge, always interesting. I’m always like, “I love how he says this right here, or”—
NMB: Right, right, right.
GW: I love that shit. My wife rolls her eyes at me. She loves you guys too…but she’s like “oh, my god, how many times are you going to listen to…whatever it is…”
NMB: But it was genius, it was genius because it was so creative all of the time, and you never knew what was going to happen next—
GW: It was so spontaneous—
NMB: Right, right, right. Dweezil don’t allow for that in his band; he doesn’t like that…spontaneity, you know. They even came and told me that I was singing the wrong words…to songs that I recorded. And I was like, “huh?”
They said, “Those are the wrong words,” and I was like “Noooo…okay, what do you want me to sing? Okay, fine, let’s move on.” If you’re going to come to me and tell me, the guy who recorded this music when you were in diapers, that he’s singing the wrong words, and you don’t think that I have the respect- the self-respect and respect for the music that I helped put together, that I helped create, that was created around me, the person who I was…I mean, he hired me to be the front-man. Frank knew things that only I did, he knew things that only I knew about myself, and the fact that he had the insight and the genius to pick that out, and then to expand upon it the way he did, I went, like, “wow, okay, okay, that’ll work.”
GW: So we can expect floodgates open on this tour with the banter and the improv?
NMB: Oh…everything! It’s all there. Let me tell you something that you’ll be able to do, Dave, here’s something you’ll be able to do…and this is something that has caused people to leave the concert in tears…and I’m telling you this honestly…when you come and hear us play this music, and you feel what we’re going to be transmitting to you, you’ll be able to close your eyes and you’ll swear that Frank is there, because we never leave what he gave us, what he created, and what we were there to create with him—we are bringing it back—the quality and the integrity of the compositions—the way that they were composed, and we’re going to perform them the way they were composed, and for the reasons that they were composed…and all of the banter and all of the spontaneity and all of that stuff—from the first Mothers when Don was there, throughout the seventies when George and Tom and I were there—it’s all in our set, it’s all there in the way we play the music. The way it was meant to be.
GW: What’s going on in your own personal world today? You doing any writing—
NMB: I’m doing a lot of writing. I’ve got a classical composition on my cd Balls (that’s all original music), and there are three symphony orchestras that have played it already, and I’m still getting calls for me to send out the charts to orchestras. I perform with a lot of classical orchestras: the Lulea Symphony Orchestra, the Metropol Orchestra of Amsterdam, Holland—matter of fact, 2009, George Duke and I did a thing with the Metropol Orchestra call George Duke and Friends where we only played George Duke’s original music and my original music with a 54 piece orchestra. The world-famous Metropol Orchestra of Amsterdam, Holland. You can go on YouTube and put in “George Duke, the Netherlands, Metropol 2009” and you can see clips of it. Trust me, its there.
GW: Napoleon, I’d like to thank you for all of the music over the years and for fighting through all of the bullshit and keeping it alive and doing the music the way the music was meant to be done. Looking forward to seeing you in Boulder on May 13th, I’ll be down at the Boulder Theater with my friends.
NMB: Well, you tell them if they want the experience of a lifetime, if they like Zappa, they won’t want to miss this. I get up every morning and go to the gym; the first thing I do is I have a seventeen ingredient smoothie—that’s all fruits and nuts—and I go to the gym and I work out for three hours, five days a week. That’s what I do first, everyday, five days a week. That makes me healthy, and every time I go there, I reverse the aging process, as opposed to aging; you understand what I’m saying. So, when you come and see me on stage, if you missed the Roxy, you’ll get a chance to see it again, in all of it’s choreographed gymnastics. I do everything I did then, and more, because I know it better now. Just come and enjoy yourself.
GW: You bet your ass.
NMB: We enjoy ourselves, we have fun, and otherwise we wouldn’t be doing this. The only problem we have is going “damn, we’ve got to stop now.” The other problem we have is that we can’t play all of the songs we know in one night…it’s not possible. |
Monday Night Raw | May 7 2007 | Louisville KY
Open up, backstage, where Eric Bischoff is stood (in his office?) with a big smile on his face.
Eric Bischoff: Good evening. Tonight, I, Eric Bischoff will lead Monday Night Raw into a new era … a Vince McMahon-less era. Last Monday was the very last time you’ll see our dearly beloved Chairman on television … but please, don’t shed any tears, because tonight, to help you over this time of mourning, tonight, Eric Bischoff presents…
Camera pans out to show the roulette wheel, with Bischoff giving it a hearty spin.
Eric Bischoff: RAW … ROULETTE!!!
The camera shows the wheel spinning, as we fade to black…
Jim Ross: Freedom Hall is filled to the rafters, the anticipation has been building all week and rightly so!! Tonight, Eric Bischoff brings back the legendary Raw Roulette for only the fourth time in WWE history; with two championships at stake, and one heated rivalry set to explode before our eyes, there is a very, VERY special feeling this week on Monday Night Raw!!! I’m Jim Ross, joined as always, by The Coach.
The Coach: If this was anything other than Raw Roulette tonight, I wouldn’t be here old timer - not after last weeks shenanigans. But, unlike some of the broadcast team, I’m a real professional. And besides, what would Raw Roulette be, with The Coach??
Jim Ross: I can only imagine… but Coach, whether you’re here to work or not, John Cena WILL meet Kurt Angle, Melina WILL challenge Alexis Laree for the Womens Championship, and Christian WILL defend the World Heavyweight Championship against the Intercontinental Champion, Shelton Benjamin. All those contests will be held with different rules, different methods of victory, all of which will be decided by the spin of the roulette wheel. It promises to be one of the most exciting episodes of Raw in recent memory!!
We get a look at a specially placed Roulette wheel on the side of the stage, with Raw divas, Candice Michelle and Maryse standing either side, ready to spin.
**MY TIME IS NOW**
Jim Ross: And it is kicking off in style!!
After closing last weeks show, John Cena is kicking it off this time around. The former three time World Heavyweight Champion looks pumped as he enters, and salutes the fans, before making his way to the ring.
Jim Ross: Fifteen days ago at Backlash, John Cena sent shockwaves around the wrestling world, as he defeated Kurt Angle to consign the egomaniacal Mister McMahon to a lifetime off screen. Tonight though, Cena could well face a backlash of his own, with Kurt Angle desperate to get even.
The Coach: And Kurt Angle WILL get even, J.R, of that, there is no doubt!!
Cena reaches the ring, and chucks his cap and shirt to the fans, geared up and ready to roll.
Kurt Angle steps onto the stage looking pent up, but keeps his cool, despite showing a lot of intensity, roaring as he stops at the top of the ramp, deciding not to run like a madman.
Jim Ross: He’s been disgusted by the privileges awarded to John Cena in recent weeks; first, Cena was appointed General Manager for a night, and last week, Cena was allowed to preside over the farewell address to Mister McMahon.
The Coach: And he’s got every right to be, J.R. Cena has been rewarded for ousting the greatest boss in the world. Kurt Angle has every right to be aggrieved!!! If he wasn’t stepping up to take on that idiot in the ring, I’D DO IT!!!
Jim Ross: Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see that.
As Angle paces down the ramp, Bischoff appears on the titan tron…
Eric Bischoff: Just a second, just a second.
Boos from the fans initially, as all eyes turn to the GM.
Eric Bischoff: Before you get into that ring, Kurt … I think we’d all like to know just what type of match you’re about to compete in. Ladies??
Pop, as Bischoff fades from the screen, and attention turns to Candice and Maryse.
Maryse stands and looks pretty, as Candice spins the wheel, with some excited hush inside Freedom Hall … until the wheel stops …
… AT FIRST BLOOD!!!
There is a decent pop from the fans for the match, whilst Angle shows a smile, and Cena nods knowingly.
Jim Ross: How fitting!! Given the intense dislike running between Cena and Angle, how fitting is it, that to win the match, you need to made your opponent bleed!!
The Coach: I cant wait to see Cena bleed like a stuffed pig, baby boy!!!
Jim Ross: AND HERE WE GO!!!
Match 1 | FIRST BLOOD MATCH:
Kurt Angle vs. John Cena
Angle doesn’t wait another second, getting right into the ring, and the two men trade blows, dead centre in the ring, with Angle overly aggressive, surprisingly winning the fist fight, backing Cena into the ropes, and sends him off … BUT CENA BURSTS BACK WITH A FLYING SHOULDER RIGHT OFF THE BAT!!! Kurt stumbles up, and Cena bundles him over the top rope, quickly following out himself, as the match kicks off in frantic fashion.
The two men continue to wage war on the outside, both looking for impact blows to the head in order to draw blood, bouncing one anothers heads off the steel steps, ram each other into the steel ring posts, and after catching Cena with a Belly to Belly on the mats, Angle introduces a trashcan, but after a hat trick of shots, he fails to bust his rival open. The Olympian then wails on Cena at the guard rail, delivering successive blows to the skull, but as he backs up to charge at Cena, the Bostonian has a counter, and back body drops Angle over the railing, and into the crowd, we go to the first commercial of the evening…
We return, with both men surrounded by the fans, having spent the entire commercial break brawling through them, with Cena now the aggressor, beating Angle to the punch, and going as far as to deliver a body slam, impacting the notoriously weak neck of Angle. With Kurt at his mercy, Cena has his way, slamming the Olympians head off the upright chairs in the crowd, before ending up back at the guardrail, with Cena sending Angle over with a clothesline. Cena then looks to send Kurt into the steel steps … but at the last moment, Angle is able to reverse the whip, sending Cena instead, and over the steps, hitting them knee first.
Angle doesn’t have time to get himself together, and gets on Cena while he can, grabbing the legs of his foe, and catapults him into the ring post!!! Cena staggers from the post … but hasn’t been busted open. With Angle in the ascendancy, he gets Cena back inside, and looks to wear him down further, hammering his enemy in the corner, pounding him down, looking to draw blood, but fails to do so, which seems to anger him further. The Gold Medallist grabs Cena by the face, demanding that he bleed, and refers to Cena as a ‘son of a bitch’, before hauling him from the corner, and delivering a Belly to Belly suplex again.
Kurt exit’s the ring, looking under the apron, and gets himself another trashcan, placing it on the apron … AS CENA BASEBALL SLIDES THE CAN … INTO THE UNSUSPECTING ANGLE!!! There’s still no blood though, as Cena begins to mount a comeback, delivering an axe handle off the apron onto Angle, before picking up the steps, and LAUNCHES THEM AT KURT … BUT HE DUCKS!!! Angle avoids the steps, but doesn’t avoid a Throwback, with Cena quickly rethinking the game plan to keep Angle at his mercy.
Now, Cena gets to his feet with a wild look in his eye, pointing toward the announce table, with the fans rabidly willing him on to use it. He then strips the table down, throwing off the cover, and removing the monitors … but while he does this, Angle gets back to his feet, and he now has the steps in his possession, waiting for Cena to turn back around … and he comes at Cena as he turns … BUT CENA REACTS … AND DROP TOE HOLDS ANGLE … WHOSE HEAD BOUNCES OFF THE STEPS … BUT NO BLOOD!!!
He dodges the bullet, but Angle is on dream street now, which can only bode well for Cena … AND CENA GETS ANGLE UP … AND WITHOUT HESITATION HE SENDS THE OLYMPIAN THROUGH THE ANNOUNCE TABLE!!! It’s pandemonium in Freedom Hall, with Raw kicking off in spectacular fashion, with nothing being held back by these two rivals. Angle lays in a heap on the rubble left by the table, as Cena takes the chance to catch his own breath. After watching Angle writhe for a moment, Cena grabs a monitor, and lies in wait, taking a moment to turn and pander to the fans, pointing down at Angle, and raising the monitor.
Angle crawls along the ground, toward the timekeepers position, with Cena now closing in, waiting for Angle to pull himself to his feet. The Olympian - out of sorts - has to pull himself up, using the legs of the timekeepers, and gets to a vertical position … QUICKLY PULLING LILLIAN GARCIA IN FRONT OF HIMSELF!!! Angle uses Lillian as a shield, knowing Cena was closing in, and knowing better still that Cena would hesitate with a woman in the mix. Cena does stop, and helps get Lillian Garcia out of the way … but as he turns back around to Angle … HE GETS NAILED WITH THE RING BELL!!! Cena goes down, as does the groggy Angle again, with the referee getting a look at both men … AND SPOTS JOHN CENA IS BLEEDING!!! Instantly, he calls for the bell, ending the match!!!
Winner: Kurt Angle @ 11:25
It’s redemption for Angle, who has his arm raised whilst trying to reach his feet again, looking dazed, having looked to be out on his feet at the tail end of the contest, appears relived. But as he regains his footing, Angle looks down at Cena, who is slowly coming around … AND CONTINUES THE ATTACK!!!
Jim Ross: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS ABOUT!!! YOU WON THE DAMN MATCH, KURT!!!
Angle hunches over Cena, pounding at the bloody forehead of his adversary, then gets off, going back for the ring bell, then changes his mind, spotting a cameraman, and demanding his camera. The worker puts up a bit of a struggle, but Angle aggressively rips it from him, AND NAILS THE WORKER WITH IT FOR HIS TROUBLES!!!
Jim Ross: HAVE YOU LOST YOUR DAMN MIND, KURT!!??
Angle then turns, camera in hand, looking to attack Cena … but as he turns around … CENA TACKLES HIM DOWN!!! Cena bursts, pounding Angle, with Kurt turning him over, as the two trade blows on the floor … AS REFEREES AND AGENTS RUN DOWN THE AISLE TO PUT A STOP TO THE MADNESS!!!
The Coach: Cena just got lucky, J.R!!! His friends just came to save him!!!
Jim Ross: I think they’re being saved from each other, Coach!! This issue hasn’t been solved here - I think it just got worse!!!
As referees and agents struggle to break the two men up, a handful of security guards also arrive on the scene, with Cena and Angle being pulled apart in the end, with Cena still bloodied, and both trying to break free to get at each other.
Jim Ross: This aint over, Coach. It aint over. Not by a long shot.
Angle is restrained at ringside, still yelling toward Cena, with Cena being hauled out of view, up the aisle and behind the curtain, as we go to a commercial.
Jim Ross: Welcome back to Monday Night Raw, and if you are just joining us, you have missed an explosive start to this weeks show. We promised it would be unmissable - and by Gawd, we weren’t wrong. John Cena and Kurt Angle just beat the holy hell out of one another.
The Coach: Typical, J.R. That’s just typical. Not a single mention of the fact that Kurt Angle just made John Cena taste his own blood!!! You say you’re impartial, but you cant even bare to acknowledge that Angle won the match!!
Jim Ross: Kurt Angle won the match, Coach - but the issue is far from settled.
The Coach: Why?? Because Cena lost??
Jim Ross: No!! Because Kurt Angle couldn’t settle for just winning the match, Coach - he wanted to inflict as much pain and suffering on John Cena as he possibly could!!
Attention then turns to the ring, where William Regal is stood, looking awfully disgusted, as Scotty Too Hotty (yep, he’s still around) stands by his side.
Jim Ross: Folks, as you can see right now, William Regal has been joined in the ring by Scotty Too Hotty. The reason?? Well, during the commercial break, William Regal was on his way to the ring, set to compete against young Cody Rhodes, but the spin of the Roulette wheel threw up a Strange Bedfellows match, and as a result, Eric Bischoff has decided to pair up the prim and proper English gentleman with the outgoing and off the wall, Scotty Too Hotty.
**OUT TO KILL**
Cody Rhodes enters, to little reaction, focusing on the ring, wasting little time to motion to the fans.
Jim Ross: Cody Rhodes of course, much like William Regal, will be one of the sixteen Raw superstars entered into tomorrow nights draw for the King of the Ring tournament on Superstars. A win tonight could really help the confidence of the second generation superstar.
The Coach: And after the recent tutelage of Goldust - who for some reason has taken a shine to young Cody - this kid should be in prime condition for the gruelling King of the Ring tournament.
Jim Ross: Yeah … I’m not so sure that training regime has done him any help.
Cody waits on the aisle, looking up to find out who he partner is …
Oh dear. The lights turn gold, as the Bizarre One enters to a modest pop.
Jim Ross: Well I never.
The Coach: This is an unfair advantage. How can Cody and Goldust - given their friendship over the last few weeks - be called strange bedfellows!!??
Jim Ross: Yeah …
Shaking his head in disgust, Cody watches as Goldust strides down the aisle, joining Cody, as they get to the ring. Then, as Goldust enters, Regal decides he’s waited long enough, and jumps the bell.
Match 2 | STRANGE BEDFELLOWS MATCH:
William Regal & Scotty Too Hotty vs. Cody Rhodes & Goldust
A nothing match, simply here to calm things down after the intense opener, and to give J.R and Coach an opportunity to discuss the upcoming King of the Ring tournament, in which Regal and Rhodes will both compete. The match itself is nothing to write home about, with both Regal and Rhodes not overly happy tagging with guys that are either on a different wavelength … or a different planet. Goldust and Scotty try to add an element of fun to the match, with Scotty setting Goldust up for The Worm, going as far as to get the fans worked up with the W-O-R-M portion … but Regal orders him not to do the ridiculous move.
That distraction for Scotty costs him, as Goldust fights back, even managing to hit the Shattered Dreams kick in the corner, then tags in Cody, but as Cody gets Scotty in position for Cross Rhodes … Goldust puts him off inadvertently, shouting to him ‘REMEMBER THE TRAINING’. Rhodes looks confused, as Scotty slips out, getting a tag to Regal, and another shout from Goldust of ‘WATCH OUT’ distracts Rhodes, allowing Regal to take him down with a clothesline. The British veteran then softens up Cody with a butterfly suplex, and finishes him off with the Knee Trembler, as Goldust merely watches on in horror, yelling for Cody to ‘KICK OUT’, as the cover is made, 1...2...3!!!
Winners: William Regal & Scotty Too Hotty @ 03:18
It’s a win for Regal, rebounding after losing to Mister Kennedy. The Englishman has his arm raised, with Scotty alongside him, and looks down his nose at the jobber (who probably doesn’t remember the last time he won a match), whilst Goldust tries to help Cody up, but Cody pushes his
brother mentor away.
Jim Ross: Well, tomorrow night, both William Regal and Cody Rhodes could be paired together in the first round of the 2007 King of the Ring tournament.
The Coach: I love the King of the Ring, J.R.
Suddenly, the action turns backstage, WHERE JOHN CENA AND KURT ANGLE have managed to find each other … AND THEY ARE BRAWLING ALL OVER THE PLACE AGAIN!!!
This time, officials and road agents are beaten away as they try to intervene, with Cena and Angle determined to beat the holy hell out of one another. They crash into a table of cables, with the force of the two men breaking the table - but neither man stops - and the fight continues!!
Security enter the fray, along with Eric Bischoff now joining the scene, watching as the two men are pulled apart once more, having to be restrained - desperate to settle the score with one another.
Eric Bischoff: THAT’S ENOUGH!!!
Neither man listens, as both try to struggle free, with more referees now helping security to control them.
Eric Bischoff: Alright, that’s it. Security?? I want these men OUT of the building. NOW!!!
Bischoff shakes his head, before storming off, as Cena and Angle, despite trying to kick free, are led off in opposite directions, hurling verbal abuse at one another, most of which is based around ‘THIS AINT OVER’.
Backstage, Todd Grisham is standing by with The Brotherhood.
Todd Grisham: Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome, my guests at this time, led by Theodore Long, The Brotherhood.
The group nod, with JTG blurting out ‘CH’YEAH’.
Todd Grisham: Tonight, gentlemen, is undoubtedly the most important night in the history of your group, as, for the first time ever, the opportunity to challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship has arisen.
Theodore smiles proudly, jiving his arms in excitement, taking the mic from Todd.
Theodore Long: TODD … for years, this group of under-appreciated, under-valued, underestimated athletes have had to scratch and claw for recognition. Now, Todd, over those years, in order to reach this moment, The Brotherhood has had ta make a few changes, ya dig?? Well playa … after all of tha sacrifices we’ve made … it’s come full circle. T’night, Tha Black Diamond-
Long brings the Intercontinental Champion forward, putting his arm around Shelton Benjamin.
Theodore Long: T’night playa, Tha Black Diamon’ will take us to the place ‘the man’ said we couldn’t reach. T’night, Tha Black Diamond is goin to take us to the place we deserve to be. T’night Tha Black Diamond takes us … to the promised land!!! T’night, Tha Black Diamon’ will put The Brotherhood at the top of whiteys mountain, ya feel may??
Theodore pats the shoulder of Shelton, who nods.
Theodore Long: So Christian … lemme holler at ya playa!!! Let me give you the chance to look, look at the man who is endin your time on the top. Let me give you the chance to look, look at a man that is more gifted, with more athleticism, and more talen-ted than you could ever dream of being, ya feel??
The other members of the group pat Benjamin on the back now, with JTG chipping in with another ‘CH’YEAH’.
Theodore Long: Forget the trials and tribulations you’ve been through Christian, because t’night, it’s not Triple H, and it’s not John Cena playa … t’night it’s Shelton Benjamin, it’s Tha Black Diamon’, and t’night this man right here will show the entire world that it is not hot air … it’s not hype … instead … it’s a man, representin’ an entire band of brothers that have been held down for far too long … BUT NO LONGER WILL THEY HOLD US DOWN!!!
The group collectively nod, in agreement with the mouthpiece.
Theodore Long: And t’night the world will find out what Tha Brotherhood has known for the past twelve months … Christian?? You’re just the great white hype, playa. But Shelton Benjamin?? HE … is the great … black … hope!!!
Long puts his arm on the shoulder of the Intercontinental Champion again, looking at his prize possession with pride.
Theodore Long: No more holdin The Brotherhood down … no more. T’night, Tha Black Diamond, Shelton Benjamin … shines bright.
‘CH’YEAH’ from JTG.
Theodore Long: HOLLA HOLLA HOLLA!!!
The group ‘holler back’ at Long, with a lot of high fives and back slapping, as we fade away…
Back to ringside…
Jim Ross: Coach, I can tell you’re excited. The main event tonight sees your boy, Shelton Benjamin challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship, with the opportunity to become a dual champion - and only the second man to ever hold a World Championship whilst being the Intercontinental Champion!!! Theodore Long sounds confident … are you??
The Coach: Not only am I confident, J.R … I’m convinced!!! Shelton Benjamin is walking out of Louisville tonight with the World Heavyweight Championship finally in the possession of The Brotherhood!! It’s long overdue, baby boy.
Jim Ross: Well, still to come, we are waiting for the arrival of The Game, Triple H, for the first time since Backlash - and Coach, it’s a surprise to me that Triple H will even be here tonight, after the comments of his wife two weeks ago.
The Coach: Yeah, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley pretty much said that her husband wouldn’t be back for a long time after the sledgehammer shot he received at point blank range at Backlash … but we’re expecting him tonight.
**LIVE FOR THE MOMENT**
Matt Hardys music gets a good reaction from Freedom Hall, as he comes onto the stage for this next match.
Jim Ross: All that is to come later, but right now, Matt Hardy looks to impress, as he takes on Tyson Tomko. What match will the Roulette wheel throw up for this one??
The Coach: This is a big opportunity to shine for Matt Hardy. But it’s a big chance for Tyson Tomko to get himself back on track too. Since the evaporation of the McMahon Family Empire, Tomko has been like a lost soul on Raw. But tonight, he has requested this match, in a bid to get back to winning ways, having lost to Hardy two weeks ago.
Jim Ross: I’m looking forward to this match, Coach. Two of the stars of Monday Night Raw with big aspirations, two men, hungry for success, and Coach, there is no substitute for hunger.
The Coach: I’ll take your word for it, big guy.
Tyson Tomko makes his way out, fully focused on the ring, as Hardy awaits his opponent.
Jim Ross: Well Coach, Candice and Maryse are standing by, waiting to spin the wheel, and decide the fate of these two men.
Tomko reaches the ring, with attention turning to the stage, and Maryse spins the wheel this time … as we wait for it to slow … and then to stop …
… FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE!!
Jim Ross: OH MY!! Falls Count Anywhere!! Folks, we will be back in just a few moments for a match up, that could literally end up anywhere!!
Match 3 | FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE:
Tyson Tomko vs. Matt Hardy
Joined in progress from the break, and surprisingly, despite the stipulation, the action stays in the ring for the opening exchange, with Tomko ultra aggressive, but Hardy standing firm, fighting just as hard, although the big man scores the first near fall off a power slam. Hardy then finds himself on the back foot, with Tomko piling the pressure on, but unable to put Matt away with a big clothesline. The Problem Solver takes the action to the outside, with Matt coming back, using his stiff right hands to fight off Tomko, and knocks the big man down with a big Discus punch!!
Hardy then delivers a suplex on the steel ramp, going for a cover to make the most of the stipulation, but only gets a two. Hardy looks to keep Tomko at bay, using those big right hands again, then looks to deliver the Side Effect, but Tomko elbows free, and hip tosses Matt on the steel ramp!! He goes for a cover, 1..2...NO!!! The big man shakes his head, surprised by the kick out, but keeps on Hardy, dragging him up, and leading him to the top of the ramp, and looks to deliver the Pumphandle Slam … but Hardy slips off just in time, and runs Tomko into the steel structure at the entrance, before hitting a side suplex, getting himself another two count!!!
The two then brawl through the curtain to the backstage area, with Matt on top, but as he looks to have Tomko in trouble, the Problem Solver catches him with a kick to the gut, then hurls him through a door!!! Tomko takes a moment to get his senses together, then grabs a wooden board, looking to smash it over the head of Matt Hardy, but Matt JUST avoids it!!! The board breaks on the floor, with Tomko selling pain from his hands, then turns to come back after Matt … BUT GETS SPRAYED WITH A FIRE EXTINGUISHER!!! Matt then grabs a trashcan, chucking the contents at Tomko, putting the object over his opponents head … and sends him sprawling over a table, sliding down and crashing onto the floor again. Tomko struggles up, still with the trash can on his head, as Matt comes at him, kicks him in the gut … AND SCORES WITH THE (awkward looking) TWIST OF FATE!!! He covers, 1...2...3!!!
Winners: Matt Hardy @ 05:32
Hardy rolls off Tomko, and has his arm raised by the referee, earning a hard fought victory tonight, whilst the pain continues for Tomko…
Jim Ross: A Herculean effort from Matt Hardy tonight, Coach. A tough, gruelling contest with Tyson Tomko, that took full advantage of its Falls Count Anywhere stipulation.
The Coach: I feel for Tomko, J.R. The guy has been on a downward spiral since Backlash, when he had his closest allies ripped away from him.
Jim Ross: Allies he obtained after stabbing his supposed best friend in the back, Coach.
The Coach: That’s ancient history old timer. Forget the past.
Jim Ross: You- forget it. The fact remains, Matt Hardy continues to roll on Raw, and tomorrow night on Superstars, he will find out just what path he’ll need to follow if he is to become the 2007 King of the Ring.
Backstage, we see the greasy Italian, Santino Marella, enjoying a joke with his two meal tickets, the 2005 & 2006 Diva Search winners, Leyla M and Layla L.
Santino Marella: Jussa like I say, when I flicka my fingers, people do as I say.
The two divas smile, as the audience misses what the funny bit was, but the smiles drop, as Eric Bischoff appears behind Marella. Leyla & Layla motion to Santino to look behind himself, which he does, with Eric showing a fake smile.
Eric Bischoff: Ah … Santino Marella.
Marella puffs his chest out, looking proud that Bischoff knows his name.
Eric Bischoff: Santino, I just cant make my mind up about you. I cant tell whether you really want to be part of the Raw roster, or if you’re just looking to grab yourself an easy contract here. I mean, you first arrived here posing as a doctor. Then, after you ran that well dry … you turn up with these two.
Bischoff motions toward the two consecutive Diva Search winner.
Eric Bischoff: So, now that you’re using Leyla and Layla as your meal ticket, I get the impression that you’re happy enough to mooch off them, and just turn up here, week in, week out, without a contract.
Marella shrugs, as if to say ‘That can work’. Bischoff smiles, but shakes his head.
Eric Bischoff: I don’t think so.
Eric Bischoff: Y’see, there’s enough people running around here, and I don’t need anyone getting in the way, so here’s what’s going to happen. Tonight, you’re going to have a match. If you win?? Congratulations, you’ll be part of the Monday Night Raw roster, contract an’ all.
Marella smiles proudly, looking to his two diva compatriots, and tilting his head toward Eric.
Eric Bischoff: But, here’s the best bit. If you lose?? Then you’re gone … FOR GOOD!!!
The smile fades from Santino.
Eric Bischoff: No more turning up, and using these two to get a backstage pass … no more hassling people for contracts … you vanish.
Marella tries to get a word out, but simply stutters, whilst Layla and Leyla look concerned.
Eric Bischoff: So … with that, I guess I just need to inform you of your opponent tonight … Rey Mysterio.
Pop in the background, as a smile appears on Santinos face, fancying his chances against the minute luchador.
Eric Bischoff: I suggest you go and get yourself ready, Santino, and take this as seriously as anything you ever had. Your career depends on it.
Bischoff smiles, as the realisation that he HAS to win, dawns on Marella. Eric walks off, as we fade out, with Layla and Leyla comforting Marella, who mutters ‘Mama Mia’.
SUPERSTARS PROMO - TOMORROW NIGHT
FEATURING A NUMBER ONE CONTENDERS MATCH FOR THE WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS; THE FORMER CHAMPIONS MNM TAKE ON THE UP AND COMING DUO OF THE BRITISH LIONS.
Back into the arena, where MIKE KNOX is awaiting his opponent.
Jim Ross: It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen Mike Knox here on Raw, but now that he is flying solo, this big mammoth of a man has a chance to make an instant impact, facing a living legend tonight…
The fans rise to their feet, as Shawn Michaels enters for action!!
Jim Ross: Once again last week, Shawn Michaels was the victim of a sneak attack from the current holder of the Money in the Bank briefcase, Umaga. That’s right folks, Umaga - that three hundred and fifty pound Samoan Bulldozer, has had to resort to cheap assaults, rather than face his enemies man to man.
The Coach: Don’t try and make Umaga out to be some kind of coward, J.R. You and I both know that Umaga can take out Shawn Michaels at the click of Armando Estradas fingers.
As he proceeds down the aisle, Michaels has to take a look around, making sure he isn’t jumped from behind by Umaga.
Jim Ross: Well we don’t know, Coach. Because up until now, Umaga has simply attacked Shawn Michaels when his back has been turned!! Sounds pretty cowardly for a monster if you ask me.
The Coach: It’s all for good reason, Jimbo. Shawn Michaels has been asking for Umaga to come face him, man to man, but Armando Estrada wants to play with HBK for as long as possible. He wants to make him wait. They’re toying with Michaels right now.
HBK reaches the ring, staring across from Knox, as we await the spin of the wheel. Attention turns to the two divas at the top of the ramp, with Candice on spinning duties this time around. The wheel spins … slows down … and lands … on …
… A BLINDFOLD MATCH!!!
Jim Ross: You have GOT to be kiddin me.
HBK looks far from amused, with Knox hardly overjoyed at the thought himself.
Jim Ross: Folks, I think I can count on one hand, the amount of blindfold matches in WWE history. And there’s a reason for that-
The Coach: Yeah, they suck.
Jim Ross: Well … there is that …
Quickly, a runner comes to the ring with the hoods, passing them to the official, who quickly places the ‘blindfolds’ over the competitors heads, before ringing for the bell.
Match 4 | BLINDFOLD MATCH:
Shawn Michaels vs. Mike Knox
It’s exactly what you’d expect. Both men tentatively move forward … reaching out … and excruciatingly just pass one another in the ring. Michaels then points to various places in the ring, hoping for a reaction from the fans, and gets help, with a big ‘NO’, as he points into space, then gets a ‘YEAH’ as he points toward where Knox is … as HBK slowly moves forward … UNTIL UMAGA HOPS OVER THE BARRIER, AND SLIDES INTO THE RING … RUNNING THROUGH A DEFENCELESS SHAWN MICHAELS!!!
Winner: Via Disqualification - Shawn Michaels @ 00:57
The match is instantly thrown out, as HBK lays flat out in the ring, with Umaga standing over him … AGAIN!! Knox curiously takes off his hood, having heard the bell, and makes a quiet exit, not looking to end up on the receiving end of whatever Umaga is dishing out.
AAE now enters the ring, carrying the briefcase, as Umaga drags the blindfolded Michaels to the corner, looking to his handler for approval, before racing across the ring … RUNNING BUTT SPLASH CONNECTS!!!
Shawn Michaels is slumped in the corner, as Umaga stands tall, looking into the sea of fans, who give the Samoan Bulldozer ungodly heat for his actions. Meanwhile, Estrada makes his way toward Michaels in the corner, ripping off the hood, and grabbing HBK by the face, and cockily talks trash, knowing HBK is in no condition to teach him a lesson.
“JU WANTED THE SAMOAN BULLDOZER FACE TO FACE … JU JUST GOT THE SAMOAN BULLDOZER FACE TO FACE, PERO”
Estrada then stands upright again … BEFORE SMASHING THE BRIEFCASE IN THE FACE OF MICHAELS!!! The cowardly Cuban unleashes his own assault on Michaels, with The Showstopper in a bad way - in no condition to put up a fight against him.
The heat worsens, as the smiling Estrada grabs the arm of his Samoan Bulldozer, raising it in the air, as Mister Money in the Bank leaves Shawn Michaels laying … AGAIN!!!
The music of Umaga plays, as the dastardly Estrada leads his carnivore from the ring, whilst HBK remains slumped in the corner.
Jim Ross: Sickening. Absolutely, sickening. When will Umaga REALLY go one on one with Shawn Michaels?? What the hell is he afraid of??
The Coach: Afraid?? Please, what could Umaga possibly be afraid of?? Fear runs from Umaga, J.R. Fear is afraid of the Samoan Bulldozer. Didn’t I already explain it?? That man right there, the genius, Armando Estrada, is pulling the strings - he’s callin the shots baby boy. He don’t march to Shawn Michaels beat. When the time is right for Armando, he’ll put HBK out of his misery.
Jim Ross: I’m not buying it Coach-
The Coach: I aint selling it old timer. It’s a statement of fact.
In the ring, two trainers tend to HBK, who rises to his feet, but looks groggy, and has a far away look in his eyes, after suffering another attack at the hands of Umaga.
We then cut backstage … AND SEE TRIPLE H!!!
There is a big pop initially for The Game, but plenty of boos to override it, as the former ten times World Champion walks down the hallway, in his regular street gear, including leather jacket, and sporting dark sunglasses, as it appears Triple H is on his way to the ring …
Jim Ross: The Game is here, Coach. Fifteen days after being wheeled out of Hell in a Cell, Triple H IS HERE!!! What will he have to say … where does his future lie?? We’ll find out … NEXT!!
**TIME TO PLAY THE GAME**
Freedom Hall rises to it’s feet, as the all too familiar sound of Motorhead fills the arena, and slowly, Triple H enters, to a firm initial pop, before boos descend over the arena, as The Game walks down the aisle, showing little emotion, not even spitting any water this evening, keeping focused on the ring.
Jim Ross: Fifteen days ago, Triple H was wheeled out of the Bell Centre in Montreal, after a devastating, horrific loss inside the demonic Hell in a Cell, after being knocked out at close range by his trusty sledgehammer, courtesy of Christian. To say this appearance has taken us all by surprise, would be an understatement.
The Coach: But it shows just how tough The Game is, J.R!!
Jim Ross: Two weeks ago on Raw, his own wife, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley admitted that after the shot to the head at Backlash, the injuries he suffered, that retirement might just be the next step for Triple H.
The Coach: Does he look like he’s ready to retire, J.R??
Jim Ross: No. No, he doesn’t.
The Game stands in the ring, mic in hand, patiently waiting, looking around the arena, as some fans show their respect for the ten times champion, but most give the Cerebral Assassin the heat he deserves.
Triple H: It takes a man to admit when he was wrong… and as sure as I‘m standin here, at Backlash, I was proven wrong.
Triple H stops, peering into the audience, as the fans cheer.
Triple H: For weeks, I preached. For weeks, I’d tell anyone that’d listen. For weeks, I was convinced that Christian didn’t have what it took to succeed inside Hell in the Cell … I announced to the world … that Christian didn’t have ‘the killer instinct’.
Pop for Christian.
Triple H: I said that when it came down to do or die … when it would come down to a case of kill, or be killed … that he couldn’t finish the job. I said he didn’t have the cold, ruthless, mean streak that’s required … but he did.
Another pop for Christian. Triple H stops, and looks out to the fans again, allowing them to cheer their favourite.
Triple H: And at Backlash … I learned the hard way.
Once again, a pop from the fans, enjoying seeing Triple H admitting he was wrong. As the cheers die off, The Game slowly takes off his sunglasses … showing a fading remnant of a severely blackened eye. The fans cheer again (sick bastards) as the camera gets a close up of the eye.
Triple H: After six days in a hospital bed … you’re damn right I learned the hard way. Christian-
Another small pop for the mention of the champion.
Triple H: It tears me apart to say it … but I’m man enough to tell ya … you proved me wrong.
Triple H: And although it’ll not make you feel any better, and it wont mean a thing to ya … I want you to know … for doing what you did at Backlash … for proving me wrong …
The Game looks around for a moment, before spitting out what he wanted to say.
Triple H: You earned my respect.
Respectful pop for the veteran.
Triple H: And while it may seem strange to you people, considering I spent nearly a week in a hospital bed because of the guy … but no one has ever done that to me. No one has ever laid me up in a hospital bed for that long. Not Austin, not The Rock, not Shawn Michaels, not Mick Foley … NO ONE.
Triple H: And for that feat alone, Christian … I take my hat off to ya.
The fans pop, but Triple H remains stony faced.
Triple H: And make no mistake about it, I didn’t take him lightly. I may have written him off prior to Backlash, I may have been certain he didn’t have the mean streak to take me out … but I went into Backlash with just as much preparation as I ever have for a title match. On the night … the best man won.
Big pop. Triple H waits for the cheers to die down, waiting for silence, before delivering his next line.
Triple H: And that seems to be a growing trend.
Silence. Triple H kills the crowd dead, with an intriguing follow up line, after his endorsement of the champion.
Triple H: Over the past twelve months, I’ve lost more matches than I care to remember. To win the World Heavyweight Championship in October, I needed the help of the McMahon Family. To keep the belt … I needed the help of the McMahon Family.
Heat for The Game, but he holds his hand up, indicating he hasn’t finished, with more info to input.
Triple H: Sometimes … even they weren’t enough. I needed a crazed Mick Foley to save the title at the Survivor Series against Shawn Michaels … I needed Brock Lesnar of all people to help me see off John Cena … and once I had to go it alone at SuperBrawl?? I lost.
Triple H: And while I tried to convince myself that John Cena just got lucky in the Iron Man Match … a match he had no right to compete with me in … the fact is … the best man won.
Few more cheers, but some boos for the endorsement of Cena.
Triple H: And yeah … at WrestleMania, despite having the entire McMahon Family Empire in my corner … I still lost to the better man in Brock Lesnar.
Big pop for Lesnar.
Triple H: See a pattern??
The Game pauses again, composing himself, before continuing.
Triple H: For damn near a decade, I’ve been everything I said I was. I wasn’t called ‘The Game’ because it sounded good, or because it would sell t-shirts. They called me ‘The Game’, because I WAS THAT DAMN GOOD!!!
Mixed response. Triple H then turns, and points to J.R on commentary.
Triple H: That man, right there, Jim Ross, he gave me the moniker of ‘The Cerebral Assassin’. You wanna know why?? Because I was the smartest, because I was the best. I used my brain, and I could get the job done, anyway possible.
The Game turns from the ropes, and addresses the audience solely.
Triple H: You don’t just get called ‘The King of Kings’ without doin something to earn it. This entire decade, I’ve sat on top of the throne, I’ve headlined countless WrestleManias … and I’ve walked out of countless WrestleManias AS THE MAN!!!
Triple H: And you sure as hell don’t become a TEN TIME World Champion if you’re not the best this industry has to offer.
Small amount of heat. Triple H calms now, and softens his tone.
Triple H: But despite all that … I’ve started to become second best. For these last six months, it’s slowly dawned on me.
Triple H: And after Backlash … after SIX DAYS in a hospital bed … I’ve had a lot of time to think … maybe-
Triple H stops himself. There are a few cat calls from the fans, as The Game ponders over the mic for a moment.
Triple H: I’ve had a lot of time to think over these last two weeks. I’ve had time to talk with my wife, time to talk with my family, and time to spend with my daughter.
Deadly silent inside Freedom Hall.
Triple H: And after discussing my future … I’ve had to make the hardest decision of my career. And that decision …
The Game pauses again, putting his head down, then looking back up, with a lump in his throat.
Triple H: It’s time to take a step back.
A heavily mixed reaction from the fans, as Triple H rubs his face, showing the anguish he’s went through to make the decision.
Triple H: Right now, I’ve decided it’s in my best interest for me to step away, go home, and spend time with my infant daughter.
He stops again, head lowered, shaking his head, still struggling with the decision he’s come to make.
Triple H: Because if I cant be the best in the business, if I cant compete with the very best there is to offer- if I cant be ‘The Game’ … then I cant be here.
Triple H looks around, getting little consolation.
Triple H: Now … I don’t know whether I’ve lost a step, I don’t know if I just cant cut it anymore, or if I just need time out of the spotlight … but soon enough?? We‘ll find out whether I am still The King of Kings.
The camera closes in, as Triple H puts his intense face on.
Triple H: BECAUSE YOU CAN BET YOUR ASS THAT THE GAME IS FAR FROM OVER!!!
Triple H: The Game aint over. The Game … is simply on hold. Because let me assure you all, while I may be stepping away for now … I can guarantee I WILL be back. And you wanna know why I’m so sure?? Well, there’s one guy out there that’s gonna drive me to come back.
Triple H shakes his head, ignoring a shout from a member of the front row.
Triple H: Not Christian. That issue’s over. No. There’s one guy runnin around out there that I haven’t forgotten …
Triple H: Brock Lesnar.
Huge cheer for ‘The Iron Man’.
Triple H: LESNAR?? You may think you’ve escaped me by endin up on Smackdown … but you can bet your ass I haven’t forgotten about ya. You didn’t think I’d just forget about your hand in proceedings at Backlash, did ya?? You didn’t think I’d just forget that you had a deciding hand in banishing Vince McMahon from television, and let it slide, did ya?? And considering what went down at WrestleMania … We’ve got a lot of unfinished business, pal … and when the time is right … I’m comin for ya.
Pop for the possibility of a Triple H/Brock Lesnar rematch.
Triple H: But until that time, Brock?? You’d better grow eyes outta the back of your head.
Triple H: Like I said … The Game isn’t over. It’s simply on hold.
**TIME TO PLAY THE GAME**
Triple H stares into the camera, before slipping the shades back on, and leaving the ring.
Jim Ross: I’m not sure I can believe what we’ve just heard, Coach. I’ve never saw Triple H look like such a defeated man, devoid of confidence, stripped of that bravado we’ve witnessed for the last decade-
The Coach: What in the hell are you on?? Did you not see the fire in that mans eyes when he got on to Brock Lesnar??
Jim Ross: It wasn’t the same, Coach. Sure, there’s issues there … but I have never saw Triple H so downbeat on himself. And while he has promised to come back, and settle the score with Lesnar, I cant help but wonder … is The Game we all know, The Cerebral Assassin we’ve all come to expect … is that guy finished??
The Coach: No way, J.R. The man said it himself, The Game is far fr-
Here’s a surprise. The fans come rise up, interested to see what’s going on, as Mister Kennedy, bold as brass, strolls onto the stage, gate crashing Triple H’s walk up the aisle … and IGNORES Triple H, passing him by on the ramp, as The Game slowly turns, taking off his glasses, eyes narrowed, shocked by the complete lack of respect from Kennedy.
Jim Ross: What the??
The Coach: I LOVE IT J.R!!! Kennedy isn’t waiting for anyone to move aside!!!
Kennedy confidently steps through the ropes, and into the ring, quickly demanding a mic. On the ramp, Triple H shakes his head, before turning, and leaving through the curtain, unable to process the disrespect from Kennedy.
In the ring, Kennedy waits for his music to stop, chewing on his gum, leaning on the ropes, taking a glance up the aisle to see if Triple H has left. The music dies off, with Kennedy speaking up.
Mister Kennedy: Stop … wasting … MY AIR TIME!!!
Kennedy looks up the aisle, as if to suggest his point was made toward Triple H.
Mister Kennedy: If you cant make your point in a concise manner … if you don’t have something worth talkin’ about … then just don’t bother.
Again, Kennedy stares up the aisle.
Mister Kennedy: Seriously. Hands up if you give a rats ass that Triple H is taking time off??
Kennedy barely gives the fans a chance to respond.
Mister Kennedy: I sure as hell don’t. Fact is … if you cant handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Don’t let the door hit ya. Take that ball o’ yours, and head on home. Just don’t broadcast it, don’t look for sympathy … JUST … GO.
Mister Kennedy: And maybe, just maybe … when you go home and play housewife, wearing a little apron, whilst that wife of yours wears the trousers and brings home the bacon … you’ll come find yourself where you belong, and you wont need to waste our time by coming back again.
Mister Kennedy: It’s become plainly obvious that you don’t cut the mustard anymore. But unlike The Rock and Stone Cold … you outstayed your welcome. What you shoulda done, was get out while the goin was good. But hey … better late than never.
Kennedy smiles again, cockily chewing his gum.
Mister Kennedy: Like I said two weeks ago … it’s time to clear out the old, and bring in the new. Lets forget the past, and focus on the future, huh?? Triple H?? Good knowin ya, but I‘ve wasted enough time on ya already. Ciao.
Kennedy pauses, then decides to continue.
Mister Kennedy: But since Triple H has finally climbed off that perch of his … that means a spot has just opened up …
Mister Kennedy: I’m not eyeing it. I’m definitely not gonna ask for it. Naw, naw, naw. ERIC BISCHOFF?? I’M TAKING IT!!!
Mixed reaction, as the camera gets an extreme close up of Kennedy.
Mister Kennedy: And since after tonight there’s a spot opening up for a new Number One Contender …
He looks around for some sort of acknowledgement.
Mister Kennedy: You need not look any further than your JUGGERNAUGHT!!!
Kennedy walks to the ropes, leaning on them, and looking up the aisle, before proceeding on.
Mister Kennedy: C’mon Eric. How about it?? I don’t want a sit down meeting in your office … I don’t want a phone call … let’s discuss this … RIGHT HERE … RIGHT NOW!!!
Kennedy pushes off the ropes, looking up the aisle, outstretching his arms, waiting.
After a moment or two of waiting, the General Manager of Raw walks onto the stage, not looking particularly pleased about being called out. Eric rushes down the aisle, whilst Kennedy backs to the opposite ropes, giving the GM space to breathe as he steps into the ring. Bischoff steps inside, shaking his head in the direction of Kennedy, as the music dies down, and he calls for a mic.
Eric Bischoff: First things first. I don’t take too kindly to being called out on my show.
Mister Kennedy: And I don’t take too kindly to being overlooked on MY SHOW.
Kennedy gets the ‘Oh, really?’ look from Bischoff.
Mister Kennedy: Two weeks ago, Eric, you made it clear that it was time for a change on Monday Night Raw … you laid down the law in no uncertain terms that you had no time for prima donnas. Yet, Eric … all I see around here … is you running the coattails of Kurt Angle.
Mister Kennedy: And if ever someone was behaving like a spoiled brat … it’s our Olympic Hero. Kurt Angle has done NOTHING … ABSOLUTELY NOTHING … but stamp his feet, and cry like a whiny bitch … yet still … you’re trying to cater to all his needs.
Bischoff puts his hand up, looking to stop Kennedy, but Kennedy scoffs at the attempt to be silenced.
Mister Kennedy: Put it down, cause I havent finished.
Pop for Kennedy, whilst Bischoff raises his eyebrows again.
Mister Kennedy: Forget Kurt Angle, he’s had his time. He’s had more than enough chances over the years. You call yourself a revolutionary?? You want to do what’s best for Raw?? Why not do something different … why not give that ball … TO ME???
Kennedy walks around the ring, whilst Bischoff allows Kennedy to make his point.
Mister Kennedy: I’d hate to be a hypocrite, and start talking about the past … but I think the fact speaks for itself that in eighteen months on Raw … I’ve had, uh … how many title shots??
Kennedy overacts his thought process for a moment.
Mister Kennedy: Oh, that’s right … NONE.
Kennedy gets in Erics face, with the GM turning his face away.
Mister Kennedy: Despite being the 2006 King of the Ring, despite being a former Intercontinental Champ - all within a year of my debut - and having not been pinned to the mat since February … I’m still waiting for my shot. So, Eric … how about it??
The bleach blonde superstar outstretches his arms, waiting for something from Eric. Bischoff nods, and readies himself.
Eric Bischoff: Alright. You want to know where you stand in the pecking order on Raw?? Not too high.
Mixed response. Now, it’s Kennedy’s turn to respond with an ‘Oh, really’ look.
Eric Bischoff: Y’see, guys like you Ken?? Dime a dozen. All hot air, no end product. But that’s just my opinion.
Mister Kennedy: That’d mean so much more Eric. It really would … but since you’re the guy that didn’t see the big deal about Steve Austin and fired him … your opinion doesn’t worry me.
Bischoff fakes a clap for that one.
Eric Bischoff: Very cute. But honestly Ken?? This isn’t the road you want to take. Scoring points on the guy that has your career in his hands?? Not very smart. If I were you, I’d be very, very, careful with how you address your boss. And while my opinion doesn’t mean a lot to you, it’s still extremely important for your future. And frankly, I’m a little bored with your weekly rants, and pleas for “the ball” … so y’know what?? I’m prepared to give you the chance to put up … or shut up.
Eric smirks, whilst Kennedy leans up at the turnbuckles in the corner.
Eric Bischoff: First of all … you touched on being the 2006 King of the Ring. Now, there’s still one spot remaining on the Raw side of the draw for tomorrow night. How’d you like the sound of attempting to become the first man to ever retain the King of the Ring??
Mister Kennedy: Does it give me a shot at the World Heavyweight Title??
Bischoff shakes his head.
Mister Kennedy: Then, no. As much as that King of the Ring meant to me … it was last year. It’s in the past. Time to move on, don’t’cha think?? Eric, I want to make this crystal clear … unless you’re prepared to offer me the chance to challenge for the big gold belt … I’m not interested in anything you’re offering.
Eric Bischoff: Then you’re in luck. Next week on Raw, I’m introducing a new concept to the WWE that’s NEVER been seen before. And it’ll determine the next Number One Contender, at our next Pay Per View event on June 17, called Vengeance.
Kennedy mouths ‘I’m listening’.
Eric Bischoff: And the concept is called … The Beat the Clock Challenge.
Little bit of excitement from the unknowing fans.
Eric Bischoff: Over the course of the evening, there’ll be a series of matches, and the man that can win his match in the shortest time possible will challenge either Christian or Shelton Benjamin at Vengeance.
Another pop. Kennedy again doesn’t like the fan backing, and turns to the fans, mouthing at a few to ‘shut it’.
Eric Bischoff: And Ken … you WILL be one of those men vying for the title shot. But I want to be crystal clear here myself. This is going to be your one and ONLY opportunity to challenge for the World Heavyweight Title. Because frankly, I don’t care for your attitude … and I don’t think you’re half as good as you think you are … so make the most of the opportunity next week.
Mister Kennedy: You done??
Mister Kennedy: Good. I got what I came for, and now I’m leavin.
Kennedy chucks the mic, and gives Eric a stern look, before exiting the ring, and proceeding up the aisle, with Bischoff watching on, as we cut off after a very long segment.
Jim Ross: Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back to Monday Night Raw, and folks, I’m still tryin to catch my breath. It’s been an explosive night, and we’ve still got a long way to go. Just moments ago, we found out that The Game, Triple H will be taking a leave of absence for an unspecified amount of time-
The Coach: Which has left the door open for my pick in next weeks Beat the Clock Challenge to meet the NEXT World Champ, Shelton Benjamin, at Vengeance - that man being Mister Kennedy.
Jim Ross: Indeed, next week, we will witness the first ever ‘Beat the Clock’ challenge, which will determine who challenges the World Champion at Vengeance, and Coach, it may indeed be your boy, Shelton Benjamin, as he faces Christian tonight in a match that has yet to be decided by the Roulette wheel.
The Coach: It doesn’t matter what match it is, old timer, Shelton Benjamin is leaving this hell hole with DOUBLE GOLD BABY!!!
Jim Ross: We’re little over half way in this broadcast, but already, Kurt Angle and John Cena tore the house down at the TOP of the show in a shocking First Blood match which Kurt Angle won, but that wasn’t the end of the story-
The Coach: No, you’re right baby boy. Kurt Angle beat the living daylights outta Cena too!!!
Jim Ross: That’s a selective memory, you’ve got there Coach. The two men brawled all the way out of the arena, and you can bet your bottom dollar that that issue is far from over. And how about another heinous assault from Umaga on a blindfolded Shawn Michaels!!
The Coach: I know, I thought it was genius too!!
Jim Ross: I sure as hell did not, Coach. For a massive man mountain, for a behemoth like the undefeated Samoan Bulldozer, he’s one gutless coward!!! And he’s not the only one, as we’ll see in just a minute when Melina challenges Alexis Laree for the Womens Championship.
The Coach: How can you call Umaga a coward?? You just don’t understand the brilliance of Armando Estrada!!! And you talk about cowards?? That little secretive hussie Alexis Laree personifies the term!!
The sight of the red carpet and photographers is met by round boos, as Melina struts onto the stage, looking overly confident, ahead of her challenge for the womens title.
Jim Ross: This- this, she-devil has taken great pride and joy out of making Alexis Larees life a living hell in recent weeks. For the last month, Melina has been claiming to have sources of information from a woman named ‘Beth’, deep, dark secrets about the Womens Champion, Alexis Laree.
The Coach: And you say it’s like a bad thing. Melina is doing the world a favour, and she’s been kind enough to give Alexis the opportunity to keep it a secret.
Jim Ross: Everybody has a past Coach. Everyone has secrets-
The Coach: Not like Laree though, Jim.
Jim Ross: But how do we know?? How do we know how severe these secrets are??
The Coach: Have you seen Alexis Laree lately, J.R?? I think it’s safe to say her past is something she wants kept hidden.
Melina waits in the ring, having went through the leg-split ring entrance.
Looking subdued, Alexis Laree makes an understated entrance. No hopping in excitement, no smiles. The champion looks down to the ring, where Melina is holding up the ropes with a broad smile on her face. Laree looks around at the fans, then her belt, before putting her head down, and proceeding down the aisle, looking beaten before even making it to the ring.
Jim Ross: This isn’t right, Coach. How can this be allowed to happen??
The Coach: What do you mean?? Melina won this title shot fair and square.
Jim Ross: She’s got the title shot because she’s blackmailed the champion into submission. And she’s going to walk out of here with the title for the exact same reasons!!!
The Coach: Hey, she doesn’t have to lay down, y’know.
Jim Ross: What other choice does she have??
Laree steps onto the apron, not getting into the ring just yet, as Melina keeps the ropes opened for her, but Laree ignores the phony sportswomanship.
Attention turns to the stage again now, as the Roulette wheel is spun once more …
… and lands on …
… STRAP MATCH …
Quickly, a runner sprints down the side of the aisle, with the strap in hand, passing it to the official, as Laree looks to the heavens, before stepping inside the ring, with the cocky challenger applauding the champion. The two are then strapped together, with Melina not taking her gaze off Alexis, showing that shit eating grin - that knowing grin, that Alexis has NO choice.
Match 5 | WOMENS CHAMPIONSHIP | STRAP MATCH:
Alexis Laree vs. Melina
The bell rings, but, just like last week neither female moves. Melina shrugs, as she moves forward, with a sinister smile etched on her face, and walks into the space of the champion, and points to each corner, and motions to Laree to simply stand still. The challenger twirls around, and prances to the opposite corner, simply tapping the buckle, before tiptoeing to the next corner, making a mockery of Alexis, who looks emotionally fraught - standing still, watching Melina dance her way to the title.
Melina then reaches the third corner, but as she gets there, Alexis makes a move … but stops herself, much to the annoyance of the fans. Melina laughs, and sarcastically points to the corner, as if to offer Laree the chance to stop her. The champion merely puts her head down … all but accepting defeat, all just to keep her secrets hidden away, as Melina finally touches the third turnbuckle. Then, Melina turns to move toward the final corner … BUT SUDDENLY THE STRAP IS YANKED BACK … AND MELINA IS FLATTENED WITH A CHICK KICK!!!
Freedom Hall ERUPTS!!! Melina lays out on the mat, as Laree LOSES CONTROL completely!!! Laree kneels down, and HAMMERS Melina, finally cracking after weeks of torment, with a sickening array of right hands, most unbecoming of a woman, before getting up, and letting out a massive roar, which is greeted by cheers from the fans. The champion wraps the leather strap around the throat of Melina, choking the life out of the challenger, with referee Nick Patrick having to literally pull her off, with Laree seemingly intent on choking Melina to death!!!
Alexis finally lets go, and drags Melina up, hooking her into position, and leaps up … DELIVERING A STUNNING LAREE-D-T!!! Melina has no chance of recovery now, as Laree quickly hits each corner, and as she reaches the fourth, she looks back around at Melina, who is slowly beginning to stir, and makes sure the A-Lister watches, as she defiantly smacks the final corner, winning the match!!!
Winner: And STILL Womens Champion - Alexis Laree @ 03:27
Alexis retains the title, having been pushed over the limit by Melina!!! She takes the strap off, and begins to whip Melina like a government mule, according to J.R, with the A-Lister rolling out to safety, as Alexis roars from the ring, ‘I’VE HAD ENOUGH’. Melina, eyes wide, looks damn scared, pushing herself up the aisle on her ass, having witnessed Alexis Laree go straight over the edge tonight.
Jim Ross: GOOD FOR YOU!!! GOOD FOR YOU ALEXIS!!! By Gawd, tonight, Alexis Laree simply reached a breaking point!!! And it wasn’t a moment too soon!!
The Coach: But what does this mean for her future?? She didn’t go with what Melina wanted, J.R … I think Alexis Laree has just opened Pandora’s box.
Jim Ross: Right now, Coach, I don’t think it matters!!! Tonight, that young woman proved to Melina that blackmail gets you absolutely nowhere!!!
The Coach: But did she have to be so violent?? Very unladylike if you ask me.
Jim Ross: I’d say it was justified Coach. Melina pushed the champion too far. And yeah, there could be consequences, but the point was proven, the womens champion wont cower from any secrets in her past!!! And who knows, Coach, perhaps after this lesson, Melina might think twice about crossing Alexis Laree!!
The Coach: Don’t count on it, J.R.
Clip of Bret Hart rolling up Bam Bam Bigelow to win the King of the Ring tournament in 1993.
“I‘M THE BEST THERE IS, THE BEST THERE WAS, AND THE BEST THERE EVER WILL BE”
Narrator: It has given the platform for champions to establish themselves.
Clip of Owen Hart being crowned King of the Ring in 1994, as we hear him yell over it.
“I‘M THE KING OF HARTS!!!”
Narrator: It has immortalized greats forever.
Clip of Stone Cold Steve Austin winning the 1996 King of the Ring tournament, with the sound bite over it.
“AUSTIN THREE SIXTEEN SAYS, I JUST WHIPPED YOUR ASS”
Narrator: It ushered in the birth of a new attitude.
Clip of Triple H having his hand raised in 1997.
“THE KING OF THE RING!!!”
Narrator: Stars have been born.
Clip of Kurt Angle dropping to his knees in victory in 2000.
“IT‘S TRUE, IT‘S TRUE”
Narrator: Legends have been made.
Clip of Brock Lesnar having his hand raised in 2002, as we hear Paul Heymans voice over the top.
“THE NEXT BIG THING, BRRRRROCK LLLLLESNARRRRR”
Narrator: Careers have skyrocketed.
Clips of Mister Kennedy with the crown last year, and Edge with his trophy in 2001
Narrator: The King of the Ring tournament has provided some of the most memorable moments in sports entertainment history, and on Saturday, June 23, 2007 … the King of the Ring lends itself to another staple in the illustrious history of the WWE … Saturday Nights Main Event.
Clips of current superstars, Shelton Benjamin, MVP, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, Straight Edge, Brian Kendrick, Paul London, MNM, Carlito and Brent Albright.
Narrator: The year, the King of the Ring tournament climaxes on NBC, with quarter finals, semi finals and the grand final, on the most special edition of Saturday Nights Main Event in history!!!
Quick clips again of the prominent former winners.
Narrator: Which superstar will use the King of the Ring tournament to follow these legends, icons and immortals into the pantheon of greatness??
~ THE 2007 KING OF THE RING TOURNAMENT ~
!! LIVE ON SATURDAY NIGHTS MAIN EVENT ON NBC !!
JUNE 23 | THE PYRAMID, MEMPHIS TN
We return, backstage, where Kelly Kelly is standing by…
Kelly Kelly: Guys, moments ago, Alexis Laree successfully defended the Womens Championship against Melina, despite the promise made by Melina that she would unearth the deep, dark secrets that Alexis has kept hidden for years. Right now, I’m about to try and get a word from Melina, and see just where she goes from here.
Kelly turns, and walks a short distance to the trainers room, opening the door, and we see Nitro and Mercury standing by Melina, who is feeling her ribs, muttering ‘it really stings’.
Kelly Kelly: Melina, I’m sorry for disturbing you, but I have to ask. After-
Melina: I know exactly why you’re here, Kelly.
Melina winces, with the pain stopping her from speaking for a moment.
Melina: (Continually wincing) And while right now, I don’t feel like talking … next week on Raw … I’ll have plenty to say. And the world will know the truth about “Alexis Laree”
Melina does the air quotes, before turning, and allowing the trainers to try and soothe her welts, as Kelly turns to leave.
Kelly Kelly: There you have it. I would appear that Melina will reveal all … next week on Raw.
Back to ringside…
Jim Ross: I do not like the sound of this, Coach.
The Coach: It wasn’t like Laree - if that is her real name - wasn’t warned. She had the chance to keep those secrets locked away for good, she had the chance to-
Jim Ross: But for how long?? How long would it have remained a secret?? Sooner or later, Melina was always gonna do this. It would always lead to next week. I just hope someone steps in, and stops Melina before she goes too far.
The fans pick up their spirits once more, as Rey Mysterio bursts into view, ahead of his match with the irritating Santino Marella.
Jim Ross: Folks, in just a moment, that man, Rey Mysterio could well put the final nail in the coffin of Santino Marella, because of Marella loses this match, he can never show up on Raw again. But, if he can somehow defeat the Master of the 619, Marella will be granted a contract!! Join us, when we come back.
We return with Santino now in the ring, joined by the lovely pair of Layla and Leyla, as we wait for the spin of the Roulette wheel…
… which slows …
… and lands on …
… TABLES MATCH …
Match 6 | TABLES MATCH:
Rey Mysterio vs. Santino Marella
As soon as the bell rings, Marella charges at Rey, but Rey leaps over him, and delivers a variety of stiff kicks to the legs of the Italian, with Santino swinging his arms wildly, missing by a distance, as Rey picks up some speed, running off the ropes, and catching Marella with a head scissors. The force of the move sends Santino tumbling out of the ring, onto the floor, with his two valets quickly tending to him, but Mysterio isn’t waiting, and runs across the ring, AND LANDS WITH A SENTON ON SANTINO!!!
The fans pick up for the high risk offence, as Rey picks himself up, and goes looking for a table, dragging one from under the apron, and slides it inside the ring. As he turns around though, Marella charges at him, and forces Rey into the ringpost!!! All of a sudden, Marella seems to think he’s got the match won, and starts to celebrate, flexing his muscles, and wiping his hands as if to signify it’s over. He grabs Rey and rolls him back inside, then looks under the apron, getting another table out, but once it’s been pulled out and Santino stands up straight … REY CATCHES HIM WITH A BASEBALL SLIDE!!! Santino falls into the barrier, with Rey coming back out, and rolls his opponent inside, before setting the table on the outside up, and getting back inside himself.
Rey looks for an Irish whip, but Santino reverses, and then does the splits as Rey bounces back, getting a few laughs from the fans. Mysterio then comes back again, and is caught with a reverse elbow, which allows Marella to run off the ropes, but as he returns, Mysterio surprises him with a Monkey Flip … and Santino bounces into the ropes … PERFECT POSITION … AND THE 619 CONNECTS!!! Marella staggers around the ring after impact, as Mysterio looks to dumps him out of the ring, over the top … BUT LAYLA AND LEYLA MOVE THE TABLE … AND SAVE SANTINO!!!
Mysterio looks out at the two divas, holding his arms up, asking why (even though it’s obvious) and shakes his head in disappointment, as Santino crawls on the floor below, after impact. In the ring, Rey gets the table he slid in earlier, and sets it upright in the corner, taking his time, knowing Marella isn’t going anywhere quickly … but strangely, a sudden buzz comes over Freedom Hall … and as Mysterio turns around, we find out why … AS HE IS GORED THROUGH THE TABLE!!! IT’S RHYNO~!!!!!
Winner: Santino Marella - Earns WWE Contract @ 01:37
In the ring, Rhyno crouches down by the broken down Mysterio, as we see Layla and Leyla help Marella to his feet on the outside, with the dazed Italian still unaware he’s won the match!!
I CANNOT BELIEVE MY EYES, COACH!!! That- That’s RHYNO!!!
The Man Beast is back, baby boy!!!
He- he’s been on the sidelines for nearly six months, Coach!! But why return now?? And why did he target Rey Mysterio??
I can think of a couple dozen reasons. No one likes Mysterio, J.R.
What?? Folks, amongst the chaos here, we’ve not had a chance to mention the fact that by virtue of his win here … Santino Marella is now officially a WWE Superstar!!!
On the outside, the two Diva Search winners explain to Marella that he WON the match, and as the realisation sinks in, Santino begins to jump on the spot, delighted in his ‘victory’, and he dances up the aisle, raising his arms in victory, with Layla and Leyla following him.
Meanwhile, in the ring, Rhyno continues to stand over Mysterio, who is folded up in the rubble of the table, with the returning Man Beast pounding his chest, and posing, as the fans give him a smattering of heat.
I just don’t get it, Coach.
I do. It’s a statement!!! The Man Beast IS BACK!!!
Without a doubt, but Coach, I just don’t understand why Rhyno would come back and go straight for Rey Mysterio!!! Can we get some answers??
Do you wanna go and ask him?? Go ahead, I’d like to see it.
That wouldn’t be a good idea right now for anyone, Coach. But we need to find out what has possessed Rhyno to attack Rey Mysterio. I’d love to say it’s great to see Rhyno back, but not under these circumstances, Coach. Not like this.
To be honest, I didn’t think I’d be delighted to see him … but what’dya know, after what he just done, I’m trying to remember how I got through the last six months without him!!
Well, I’m sure there is still a lot more to come from this issue, but we have to move on here. Folks, we are just minutes away from our main event-
And The Coach cant wait, baby boy!!! The Black Diamond is about to shine through!!!
We get another shot of a rabid Rhyno, as Mysterio lays in the pieces of crumbled table in the corner, before fading to a commercial.
We return, backstage, where Christian is seen doing some last minute preparations, stretching out, as Jim Ross speaks over the footage.
Well right now, lets send it up to Candice Michelle and Maryse, who are about to spin the wheel, and reveal the fate of Christian and Shelton Benjamin ahead of the main event…
Cut to the stage, and the wheel spins …
… and spins …
… and slows …
… and grinds to a halt …
… on …
… yep, you guessed it …
… LADDER MATCH …
The fans pop in major fashion, as we get a major match for the main event, with the two men involved well versed in ladder matches.
BUSINESS HAS JUST PICKED UP COACH!!!
Understatement, baby boy. And how fitting will it be when Shelton Benjamin climbs the ladder, like he has done on Raw since joining The Brotherhood, and finally reaches the pinnacle … and becomes only the second ever man to hold a World title and the Intercontinental title at the same time!!!
You sound awfully confident, Coach. Shelton has never challenged for the World Championship before - he has got to be nervous, he has got to have all kinds of thoughts running through his head right now-
Yeah, thoughts like “How great will it be to hold two titles”, and “I‘m gonna need someone to carry these belts for me”. Don’t dare say he’s nervous. The Black Diamond has been ready for this opportunity for the longest time. This title shot is overdue.
Backstage, we cut to the locker room, where Tyson Tomko is sat, stuffing his clothes into his bag, shaking his head, having suffered yet another loss.
Don’t sweat it.
Tomko looks up, and as he spots the person speaking to him, he looks a little surprised. The camera pans out, and shows … X-PAC??
Bro, you’ve just hit a rough patch. It’s been a hard month.
The Problem Solver tuts, and looks away, continuing to sort his bag, and mutters ‘that’s an understatement’.
Hey, look. Right now, you’re the one with problems. And I’m here to solve ‘em.
Cheesy. X-Pac walks toward the big man, sitting beside him.
Listen, I’ll level with ya. I’m in the last chance saloon here. I sure as hell didn’t expect to get another go around at this place, but I’m back. And I wanna help ya out.
Hear me out, big guy. You’re just about to hit the skids. You lose many more matches?? You’re headin for the exit door. You’ve not got the McMahons to back ya anymore, and you’ve burned your bridges with Christian-
I’m NOT interested, okay??
Look, I’m just tryin to help ya out, and yeah … I’m tryin to do myself a favour too. If you think I’m tryin to talk ya into being my muscle … that’s not it. You’ve been that guy for too long. I wanna guide ya, big man. Fifty-fifty. My experience, my smarts … and your strength and power … it’s a lethal combination, bro.
Tomko looks up, and sighs. Pac shakes his head, and gets to his feet.
Just think about it.
X-Pac then walks out, as Tomko lifts his head, and watches the veteran exit, before sighing again.
Elsewhere, we now see Shelton Benjamin, carrying the Intercontinental Championship, with Theodore Long and the rest of his brethren in The Brotherhood following behind, as Long gets in the ear of his golden meal ticket, giving him some last minute words of advice.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the time is almost upon us … the main event - the ladder match, for the World Heavyweight Championship, is next!!!
Back into the arena …
**SOMEBODIES GONNA GET IT**
We return, and it is truly main event time. The Intercontinental Champion enters the arena, followed by his entourage of Theodore Long, JTG, Monty Brown and Mark Henry.
If he’s so good Coach, why does he need The Brotherhood by his side, huh??
Pfft, they’re here to join the celebration, baby boy. The Brotherhood are here to witness, first hand, the crowning achievement in their history!!!
We’ll see how long this moral support lasts. I don’t like the look of this, not one bit.
The group reach the ring, with Theodore Long looking highly excited, doing a bit of jiving, brimming with confidence, but that wont last for long, as Lillian Garcia speaks…
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have just been informed that per orders of Eric Bischoff, that The Brotherhood MUST leave the ringside area … IMMEDIATELY!!!
A huge pop descends over Freedom Hall, as Theodore Longs eyes bug out, and Shelton Benjamin throws a strop, whilst JTG, Monty Brown and Mark Henry all look furious at the ruling, surrounding the referee.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY DISGRACEFUL!!! There’s an agenda against The Brotherhood, and it makes me sick!!!
But I thought they were only here to offer moral support?? Surely it cant be that big of a blow??
Shut up J.R!! You don’t understand.
Eventually, the members of The Brotherhood leave the ring, but argue back toward the ring as they leave, shaking their heads in disgust, whilst Theodore Long offers his prize asset one more final piece of guidance, before wishing him luck, and leaving the ring, but not before giving Mike Chioda a piece of his mind. He leaves, shaking his head in fury, and looks to join up with his other men…
**JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES**
Entering the stage with a purpose, The World Heavyweight Champion shows no fear of The Brotherhood, passing by the group on the stage with a smirk, before waving as he passes an incensed Theodore Long.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are just about to take our final commercial break of the evening - our main event will come to you COMMERCIAL FREE in it’s entirety, when we come back!!
Main Event | WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP | LADDER MATCH:
Christian vs. Shelton Benjamin
The contest starts rather slowly, as the two look to build toward the excitement. In the early stages, the ladder plays very little part, as both take the option to try and incapacitate the opposition, before making a beeline for the object for victory. Despite Benjamin being able to hit his suplex into a neck breaker move, its the champion that has the better of the early exchange, but Shelton doesn’t fold easily, and remains confident in himself, despite finding himself second best early on. And, the effort pays off, as Benjamin plays possum, staying down after a dropkick, with the champion thinking he has time to climb the ropes, and perches himself onto the top turnbuckle … AS BENJAMIN LEAPS TO LIFE … AND LEAPS UP … SUPERPLEX CONNECTS!!!
With that, The Black Diamond believes it’s time to introduce the ladder, and goes to the outside, grabbing the key to victory, which brings a pop from the fans, and slides it inside the ring, picking it up, and sees Christian pulling himself up in the corner … and seemingly has an idea … picking up the ladder, and racing across the ring … LOOKING FOR A STINGER SPLASH WITH THE LADDER … BUT CHRISTIAN SPINS INTO THE ROPES … SEESAW KICK INTO THE LADDER INTO BENJAMIN!!! The fans come alive, as the use of the ladder backfires on Shelton, with the IC Champ tumbling into the ropes, dropping the ladder, as Christian follows up, delivering a clothesline that sends Benjamin out of the ring.
Now having a clear run, Christian sets the ladder up, and proceeds up, making the first move toward his title belt … but Shelton quickly gets his senses back, and gets back inside, TIPPING THE LADDER OVER!!! Christian falls from the ladder, and into the ropes - throat first - as Benjamin seizes the opportunity … AND STRIKES WITH THE FROST KICK!!! The Intercontinental Champion then sets Christian in the middle of the ring, placing the ladder upright over him … trapping the champion, as he ascends the ladder … but the plan to neutralise the champion doesn’t pay off … as Christian manages to shake the ladder from the bottom, and Benjamin loses his footing, and slips off the ladder, but doesn’t have a hard landing.
Benjamin gets right back on Christian, and the two trade blows, until Benjamin looks for a kick, only to have his boot caught by the champion … BUT BENJAMIN SURPRISES HIM WITH THE DRAGON WHIP!!! The move puts Christian down, as the challenger tries to think whether or not he should go for broke, and try to capture the belt at this moment. Seeing Christian moving already, he decides against going for the win, and sets the ladder upright in the corner, with something dastardly planned, before getting back on the champion, not allowing him to recover. After pounding Christian in the corner, the Black Diamond attempts an Irish whip to the opposite corner (where the ladder is set) … but Christian reverses … AND BENJAMIN LOOKS TO BE HEADING TOWARD THE LADDER … BUT HE LEAPS UP … LANDING ON ONE OF THE RUNGS … AND SPLASHES BACK AT CHRISTIAN!!!
A massive show of respect comes from the fans for the exceptional athleticism from Benjamin, taking Christian by surprise. Benjamin takes a moment to catch his breath, then picks up the ladder, waiting for Christian to get to his feet … and as he does … BENJAMIN CHARGES WITH THE LADDER LIKE A JOUST … AND CRACKS CHRISTIAN … SENDING CAPTAIN CHARISMA OUT OF THE RING!!! It sets the challenger with a free run to the title … but the ladder slipped from his grasp, and fell to the outside with Christian.
That sets Shelton back for a moment, as he needs to exit the ring and retrieve the ladder, quickly getting back inside, and Benjamin sets the ladder up … before climbing, albeit at a slower pace than previously … but the delay has possibly cost him … as Christian crawls back inside the ring, and climbs up the ladder behind Benjamin, who hasn’t realised that he has company. He soon does though, as Christian pounds the back of his challenger, eventually gripping him, and hooking him into position … AND DELIVERS A SCINTILLATING REVERSE DDT OFF THE LADDER!!!
A smattering of ‘HOLY SHIT’ chants are heard inside Freedom Hall, as both men stay down for the time being, selling the effect of the fall. But it’s Christian to move first, and slowly, the champion crawls to the ladder, grabbing on the bottom rung, and at a snails pace, begins to climb. He eventually reaches halfway, but spots his opponent beginning to stir, and switches the gameplan, now waiting for Benjamin to reach his feet, and as he does … CHRISTIAN FLIES OFF THE LADDER WITH A REVERSE ELBOW!!!
Not exactly a big, highlight reel type stunt, but it’s effective. Christian gets back to his feet, and now looks to finish off Benjamin, setting the ladder down, and placing Benjamin on top with a slam, before climbing the ropes … AND ATTEMPTS A FROG SPLASH … BUT BENJAMIN ROLLS OFF … AND CHRISTIAN LANDS ON THE LADDER!!! Another small ‘Holy Shit’ chant can be heard, as Shelton stirs, slowly reaching for the ropes, pulling himself up, and looks down at Christian who is still squirming after his crash landing.
Benjamin, looking groggy, sets the ladder up, but staggers around, slowing himself down, but eventually begins to try and climb, but as he does, the fighting champion makes a move too, crawling toward the ladder himself. Christian is behind, but Shelton cant shake the cobwebs, and takes too long to scale the object, as Captain Charisma catches up … and the two warriors trade blows, back and forth … as the ladder begins to shake … and eventually BOTH MEN TOPPLE OFF THE LADDER … AND TO THE OUTSIDE!!!!!
Both men stay down, as the fans pick up in voice again. After a rest period for both, they begin to stir, and reach their feet. Christian gets the better of Benjamin, and then takes a backward step, before coming at Shelton … BUT THE BLACK DIAMOND EXPLODES WITH PAYDIRT!!! Benjamin delivers his finishing manoeuvre ON THE OUTSIDE!!! Despite taking his time to get back up, Shelton is in control, with the champion OUT. The challenger crawls back inside the ring, and sets the ladder up, climbing ever so slowly, with Christian now facing a race against time to save the title, slowly recovering on the outside.
Benjamin looks to be nearing the title, but doesn’t see what’s going on behind himself, as Christian has a ladder on the outside … AND USES IT AS A JAVELIN … INTO THE BACK OF BENJAMIN!!! Christian now re enters the ring, and positions himself to power bomb Shelton off the ladder … AND ATTEMPTS TO POWERBOMB SHELTON OUT OF THE RING … BUT THE CHALLENGER COUNTERS WITH A HURRICANRANA … AND BOTH GO OVER THE TOP ROPE, AND ONTO THE FLOOR!!! Again, both are slow to recover, as the match takes it’s toll, and they both move at the same rate, reaching their feet, as Benjamin drives a knee to the gut of the champion, before looking to deliver the T-Bone Exploder … BUT CHRISTIAN LANDS ON HIS FEET … AND TURNS SHELTON OVER … GOES FOR THE UNPRETTIER … BUT THE CHALLENGER RUNS CHRISTIAN INTO THE RINGPOST!!!
Christian staggers from the blow of the post, as Benjamin scoops him up onto his shoulders, AND DELIVERS A SAMOAN DROP … ONTO THE LADDER THAT CHRISTIAN HAD INTRODUCED MOMENTS AGO!!!!! The champion lies flat out on the ladder, as Benjamin composes himself, and re enters the ring, slowly climbing the ladder. The Black Diamond is getting closer … and reaches up, but is just too far still from the belt. He takes another step, and looks to reach up again … BUT CHRISTIAN IS BACK!!! Christian grabs the leg of Benjamin, dragging him off the ladder, pounding his challenger, then runs off the ropes … BUT IS CAUGHT WITH A BELLY TO BELLY OFF HIS RETURN … INTO THE LADDER!!!
The Champion crashes and burns into the steel, as Benjamin watches. The challenger picks himself up, and shoves Christian into the corner, then THROWS THE LADDER AT HIM!!! With that, Benjamin now charges across the ring … AND DELIVERS A STINGER SPLASH TO THE LADDER … ONTO CHRISTIAN!!! The fans pop, as Christian slumps down in the corner, with Benjamin now in the ascendancy, looking favourite to win the match.
The Black Diamond decides to go for broke, and grabs the ladder, setting it up, and slowly pulls himself up, getting closer to the title belt, but with Christian reaching his feet, Benjamin wont get to the title belt in time … AS CHRISTIAN PUSHES THE LADDER OVER … BUT SHELTON LANDS ON THE ROPES, STILL ON HIS FEET … and smiles at his awesome athleticism … UNTIL CHRISTIAN SHOVES THE LADDER AT HIM … AND SHELTON FLIES OFF INTO THE BARRIER!!!!!!
Christian now sets the ladder up, and begins to climb, with Benjamin out of commission on the outside … but as he reaches the top and reaches for the championship … BENJAMIN COMES FROM NOWHERE!!! The Black Diamond leaped from the ropes, onto the ladder, and races to the top, as he and the amazed champion trade blows … WITH BENJAMIN WINNING THE EXCHANGE … SLAMS CHRISTIANS HEAD OFF THE TOP RUNG … AND KNOCKS CHRISTIAN OFF!!!
Christian lands on the ropes, with BENJAMIN REACHING UP … TOUCHING THE TITLE … BUT CHRISTIAN PUSHES THE LADDER OVER … AND BENJAMIN SEES THE TITLE SLIP AWAY … AS HE CRASHES AND BURNS INTO THE ROPES … CATCHING HIS LEG … TRAPPED!!!!! Christian JUST saves the title, and with Benjamin tied up in the ropes (ala WrestleMania X) Christian climbs the ladder … showing the tiredness, but Benjamin CANT break free from the ropes … AS CHRISTIAN REACHES UP … AND GRABS THE TITLE!!!
Winner: Christian @ 17:02
Shelton Benjamin frees himself - but it’s too late. His valiant effort is for nothing, as the champion retains the title, with Benjamin looking up, before putting his head in his hands, distraught with his ‘close, but no cigar’ performance. Christian holds the belt aloft, standing atop of the ladder, emphatically proving his standing as the man at the top of the ladder, literally!!!
He may not have won, Coach … but by Gawd, Shelton Benjamin just proved to the world that on his day, he can compete with anyone.
I’m in shock, J.R. Shelton Benjamin had the championship in his grasp … if Christian had been one second later, we’d be looking at a new World Champion … we SHOULD be looking at a new World Heavyweight Champion. But mark my words old timer, Shelton Benjamins time WILL come.
After tonight’s performance, I don’t doubt it. Shelton Benjamin, without the aide of his brethren, has undoubtedly proven his credentials. But the fact remains, Captain Charisma has retained the championship tonight - he is STILL THE MAN!!!
The show closes, with Christian still on top of the ladder, holding the title high, as we fade to black.
END OF SHOW |
The Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft with the international trio onboard, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, as well as NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba, who have spend more than 4 months has landed in Kazakhstan. Expedition 32 Commander Padalka ceremonially handed over control of the space station to Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams in the Destiny laboratory on Saturday afternoon during the traditional Change-of-Command Ceremony, NASA reported.
Police in South Africa have blocked a miner protest after a security crackdown following turbulent strikes in August in the country's platinum-rich northern region. No clashes or injuries were reported after bulletproof trucks and riot police prevented the demonstration's movement on a police station, a day after officers used rubber bullets to disperse workers in the nearby strike-hit Lonmin mine, where several people were injured. Following government orders to stop the strikes, police and the army raided residences, confiscating piles of weapons. Sunday marked a month since the deadly bloodshed at Lonmin, in which a total of 45 people were killed. Lonmin executives are due to resume talks on Monday with strikers who rejected a pay rise offer last week.
An Egyptian soldier has been killed and eight people injured as Islamic militants attacked Egypt’s security headquarters in northern Sinai on Sunday with mortar bombs and machine guns. There were also clashes with police elsewhere in the desert region, which wounded three conscripts. Ten militants were arrested by the government forces. Egyptian forces last month began their biggest security sweep in decades in Sinai after militants killed 16 border guards on August 5.
Syria has accused Turkey of allowing thousands of Muslim extremists to cross the border into the country. In a letter sent to UN Security Council and Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Syria's Foreign Ministry said Turkey let "thousands of al-Qaeda, Takfiri and Wahhabi terrorists" enter Syrian territory to "kill innocent Syrians, blow up their properties and spread chaos and destruction."
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras says Athens would benefit if the crisis-stricken country were allowed four years instead of just two to implement further austerity measures. "We are talking about an extension to 2016," he told the Washington Post. Samaras stressed that exiting the eurozone would be a “catastrophe” for Greece. Athens is yet to finalize spending cuts worth 11.5 billion euro ($15.1 billion) intended to take place over the next two years. This is required for the EU country to qualify for the next 33.5-billion euro installment of its second 130-billion euro bailout.
Hassan Skeikh Mohamud was inaugurated Sunday in Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, four days after surviving an attempt on his life. In his inauguration remarks, Mohamud pledged a democratic course for the country, but stated that security remains Somalia’s paramount issue. Mohamud won a general election the previous week, beating outgoing President Sheik Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who had been leading a transitional government for the past three years. The election results were condemned by Islamist militants, who said it was manipulated by the West. The al-Shabab group, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the failed suicide bombing whose planners had hoped would kill Mohamud.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with NBC on Sunday that by mid-2013, Tehran will have 90 percent of the enriched uranium needed for an atomic bomb. Netanyahu again urged the US to set a clear "red line" for Iran's nuclear program, “before it is too late.” President Barack Obama has refused to meet with Netanyahu later this month, citing the upcoming November elections. US authorities believe Iran needs at least another year before it can build a nuclear bomb; there are also no reports that Iran has made the decision to move towards 'breakout' capacity for such weapons.
Libyan authorities arrested some 50 people for the killing of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans during an assault on the US consulate in Benghazi last week. The head of the Libyan parliament said that several of those arrested were foreign nationals from Mali, Algeria and other countries. Others were affiliates and sympathizers. Libyan officials claimed that the attack was planned by people “who entered the country a few months ago,” and that the amateur US-made anti-Islamic film 'Innocence of Muslims' was used as a pretext for the attack.
Air traffic controllers at Libya's Tripoli International Airport staged a strike over wages Sunday, delaying flights in the capital and other cites, the airport’s director told Reuters. The strike affected the airports in both Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi, where some flights receive directions from Tripoli's air traffic controllers. A Qatar Airways flight en route to Benghazi was diverted to Alexandria, Egypt, as a result of the strike. The airport director said that negotiations with the striking workers are currently underway. The strike came after Benghazi's airspace was briefly closed for security reasons on Friday, following an attack on the US consulate earlier in the week that killed the US ambassador to the country and three other Americans.
Tehran may leave the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if it is targeted for military action, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Sunday. Jafari also made it clear that this was his personal opinion. “Iran may leave the NPT – but it would not mean a dash towards a nuclear bomb because we have a religious edict from the supreme leader,” he said. The NPT is meant to prevent the development of nuclear weapons, but permits atomic energy. Jafari also said that in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Tehran could strike targets in Israel, close the Strait of Hormuz, a major shipping lane for Gulf oil, and attack US bases in the Middle East.
The most senior female member of the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Thirith, was freed by a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, after it was determined she was not fit to stand trial. Doctors said that Thirith, 80, suffers from Alzheimer's Disease. Court spokesperson Yuko Maeda reported that Thirith was released "to her family." The former social affairs minister and sister-in-law of regime leader Pol Pot was accused of authoring some of the Khmer Rouge’s must extreme policies, which resulted in up to two million deaths during its 1970s reign. Thirith's husband, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, remains on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Canada closed its embassies in Libya and Sudan on Sunday morning, citing continued safety concerns over violent anti-US protests in the countries. The missions may resume operations on Monday if the levels of violence decrease. In many Muslim countries, Sundays are work days. In Egypt, where the weekend takes place on Friday and Saturday, the Canadian embassy has been closed since Wednesday. The country is also considering suspending operations at its embassy in Tunisia. The decision to close the missions was made hours after the US announced it was evacuating its embassy in Tunis of all nonessential personnel and family members.
An elderly man visiting Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral doused one of the church's icons in ink. The cathedral is a major place of worship for Russian Orthodox Christians, and became part of international headlines after punk band Pussy Riot's infamous performance at the church. The man, who was born in Russia but resides in Germany, told police he is mentally ill. He claimed that the act of vandalism was revenge for the three members of Pussy Riot sentenced to jail for their February 'punk prayer' in the cathedral. It was not immediately clear which icon was desecrated, or how much damage was inflicted by the ink.
Eight Turkish police officers died in a roadside bomb explosion in the country's southern province of Bingol, officials said. Nine officers were also wounded in the blast, which struck a police service bus in the Karliova district. Sources claimed that Turkey’s separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party (KKP) was responsible for the attack.
More than 1,000 workers protesting low wages and substandard conditions at a South African mine were peacefully dispersed by police. The strikers gathered outside the Marikana mine in the town of Rustenburg, but were prevented from demonstrating by a row of armored police trucks. The incident came amid a month of protests that began when police shot and killed 34 striking workers at the mine.
Fifteen people were killed, including two children, and 12 others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck a van in Pakistan's northwestern region of Jardol near the Afghan border. The vehicle was headed from a border village to the town of Munda. Roadside bombs are often used in Pakistan's tribal regions, where militants can easily cross the country's border with Afghanistan. It is unknown why a civilian vehicle was targeted in the attack.
The US State Department evacuated its embassies in Tunisia and Sudan and ordered all nonessential personnel to leave, citing security concerns over rising anti-US violence in the Muslim world. Washington warned American citizens in Tunisia to use extreme caution and avoid protesters. The State Department also deemed the terrorism threat in Sudan “critical,” and is requesting that US citizens travel in armored vehicles and ask for permission to go anywhere outside the capital of Khartoum.
Renegade Afghan police officers killed four NATO troops in an attack in the country’s South, alliance forces reported. The attack occurred early Sunday morning and was "suspected to involve members of the Afghan police." Eight alliance servicemembers died over the weekend in so-called ‘green-on-blue’ killings.
China "must strictly be on guard to prevent harm to Japanese citizens and companies", Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told Fuji TV on Sunday, as anti-Japanese protests swept the mainland for the second day. The protests erupted Saturday after the Japanese government decided to buy the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea from a private Japanese owner. China, Japan, and Taiwan have all claimed the island territories, which may contain oil reserves.
Twelve people died when a roadside bomb struck a truck carrying villagers to a market in northern Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, police officials reported. Women and children were among the dead and seven more people were injured in the incident, which took place in Pakistan's Lower Dir region. The army has stepped up its presence in the area since 2009, but the border zone remains a hotbed for insurgent attacks.
Six Harrier fighter jets were destroyed during a Taliban attack on military airfield in Afghanistan on Friday, the UK Defense Ministry reported. The insurgents wore US Army uniforms and were armed with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and suicide vests. The attack also reportedly destroyed three refueling stations and damaged the hangars housing the aircraft. Earlier reports indicated that two US Marines were killed in the attack.
Peaceful methods of restraining Iran will not work, because Tehran is “guided by a leadership with an unbelievable fanaticism,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with NBC. "You want these fanatics to have nuclear weapons?" he asked, reiterating the theory that Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear bomb. In the last few months Washington and Tel Aviv have split over whether to give economic sanctions and diplomacy time to work before attacking Iran.
More than a dozen people have been taken into custody at an Occupy Wall Street march in New York. Around 300 people took the streets of lower Manhattan to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the movement. The march came on the first of three days of planned events. The official anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement is Monday, September 17th.
Massive demonstrations against Japan over its control of disputed East China Sea islands hit more than two dozen cities in China, occasionally turning violent. Protesters burned Japanese flags and clashed with paramilitary police at the Japanese Embassy. The angry mobs threw rocks, bottles, eggs and traffic cones at the embassy. Many fear that the increased violence could backfire ahead of a Communist Party leadership succession.
Roughly 120 demonstrators have been arrested during an anti-US protest in the Belgian city of Antwerp, local police said. Violence erupted after police blocked protesters from the city’s main road. Authorities had to use “pepper spray and batons, but no one was injured,” a police spokesman told the Het Laatste Nieuws daily. Those arrested had been taken to police stations for identity checks and were later released. Earlier on Saturday, 150 protesters were detained for identity checks after they staged a protest near the US Embassy in Paris. |
Novell SecureLogin is a single sign-on application. It consists of multiple, integrated security systems that provide authentication and single sign-on to networks and applications. It provides a single entry point to the corporate network and its user resources, increasing security while enhancing compliance with corporate security policies. Novell SecureLogin also eliminates the requirement for users to remember multiple usernames and passwords and automatically enters them for users when required.
This document provides you with an introduction to the new features introduced in this version of Novell SecureLogin and also lists the issues related to administration, functioning, and other aspects of Novell SecureLogin.
For detailed information on Novell SecureLogin, visit the Novell SecureLogin product Web site..
SLLogging Manager and TLaunch need administrator privileges to run on the Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems.
Before installing SecureLogin on a Windows Vista machine, ensure that the operating system is updated with the latest security and service patches or with Microsoft redistributables (32-bit or 64-bit). Otherwise, the SecureLogin installation fails and shows the error message: NSL Event Service failed to start.
With the release of Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 7, you can use slaptool to backup and restore credentials.
With the release of Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 5, Mozilla Firefox 6.0, Mozilla Firefox 7.0 and Mozilla Firefox 8.0 are supported.
With the release of Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 4, Novell Terminal Launcher application queries and verifies the validity of an IBM Personal Communication emulator session before connecting to it.
With the release of Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 3, Mozilla Firefox 4.0 and Mozilla Firefox 5.0 are supported.
In SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 3, scripting of web page content displayed outside of the standard browser windows, that is modal and modeless dialog boxes and popups, is supported.
To enable this, set the DWORD registry key WEBSSO_DHTML to 1 under HKLM\Software\Protocom\SecureLogin.
In SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 3, when the user logs in using NESCM (Novell Enhanced Smart Card Method) in eDirectory mode and the user’s password is expired, SecureLogin detects the expired password and changes it automatically on behalf of the logged in user. For more information, see Novell Administration Guide.
SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 2 supports Internet Explorer 9.
With the release of Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 2, the Limit Concurrent Connection feature is implemented in the nwgina of Novell SecureLogin.
SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Hotfix 1 supports Citrix XenApp 6.
With the release of Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2, the LDAP Contextless Search feature has been enhanced to enable the LDAPAuth component to perform a search even when anonymous bind is disabled.
With the release of Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2, the SLManager feature has been enhanced so that you can to query user objects and perform administration operations on directory objects even when LDAP anonymous bind is disabled.
In Windows Vista and Windows 7, password recovery support is available for graphical authentication interfaces such as the Credential Provider for LDAP clients and the Novell Client. In the absence of these clients, password recovery support is provided by the default Micorsoft Credential Provider implemented by the Client Login Extension.
For more information, see the Novell Client Login Extension Guide.
SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 increases One Time Password (OTP) functionality by enabling SecureLogin to expand the SSO support to applications configured to use OTP.
Now, Novell SecureLogin automatically generates the OTP by using the previously configured information for the application and also fills in the credential field; thereby providing a seamless SSO experience.
SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 supports Flash applications.
SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 supports the \n and \t formats in the Messagebox.
SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 supports smart card authentication for Athena Middleware.
In Active Directory mode, by default SecureLogin uses the workstation logged in session to log in to SecureLogin. Users can also update the registry setting to log in to SecureLogin if they want to use different credentials.
The issue with the PressInput command executing thrice everytime it is called is now fixed.
The issue with SecureLogin crashing in either SLBroker.exe or Iexplore.exe, when accessing web pages with multiple frames is now fixed.
The issue with the LDAP login dialog not showing the name of the last user logged in to the workstation is now fixed.
The issue with Lotus Notes Single Logon service not working after installing SecureLogin is now fixed.
The issue with the user not finding the stored login credentilas when a workstation does not have a primary attachment to the server running SecretStore is now fixed.
The issue with SecureLogin in offline mode not being seamless in certain scenarios is now fixed.
The issue with Lotus Notes accepting the old password even after the password is changed is now fixed.
The issue with the schema extension considering the Protocom-SSO-ConnectionTimeToLive attribute as invalid since it has more than 32 characters is now fixed. The attribute is now named Protocom-SSO-ConnectionTTL.
The issue with TLaunch on Windows XP applying excess load on Remote Procedure Call service (RPCSS) and causing RPCSS to leak memory, crash and requiring the Windows host to reboot is now fixed.
The issue with the Matchform command failing intermittently to match certain webpages is now fixed.
The issue with SecureLogin not recognising the Embedded Oracle login forms is now fixed.
The issue with Limit Concurrent Connection not clearing the obsolete IP addresses is now fixed. The obsolete IP addresses stored in the attribute Prot:SSO Connections is cleared in the following scenarios:
Time-to-live parameter expires.
The system crashes.
SecureLogin session terminates.
The issue with SecureLogin wizard actions such asand not functioning properly on .net applications is now fixed.
The issue with the LDAP queries getting a slow response from the directory is now fixed. Changes have been made to LDAPQuery so that it does not dereference alias objects.
The issue with slproto /runstartup command not executing properly is now fixed.
The issue with SLAP tool not running on a client where SecureLogin is not running is now fixed. SLAP tool is now marked as a primary launching application so that it can run the broker if it is not already started.
The issue with SecureLogin seamless login to offline mode not working when bothis set to and is set to 1 is now fixed.
Internet Explorer crashing due tois now fixed.
SecureLogin not starting due to SLbroker application error is now fixed.
Internet Explorer crashing when web applications are opened in many tabs is now fixed.
SecureLogin user prompted twice to login to the LDAP server is now fixed.
The issue with application objects with space characters in the name not getting created on an iManager SSO plugin is now fixed.
The issue with the browser crashing when dialog boxes such asand are displayed is now fixed.
The issue with accessing theoption without having to open the tab is now fixed by creating the option on the main login screen of Novell SecureLogin.
The issue of SLbroker crashing when multiple API connections or disconnections are made to the broker is now fixed.
The issue with the site command being empty when converting the wizard script for logon notification is now fixed.
The issue with detecting theform in the IBM Maximo Web application is now fixed.
The issue with the SSO failing on relaunch for the aSNAP and Maximo pop-up windows in Internet Explorer 8 is now fixed.
The Web page Java script that limited the processing time of the onBeforeNavigate function, and prevented the user from navigating to the next page after clicking the button is now fixed.
The issue with cross thread failures that might hamper the functionality of IESSO is now fixed.
The issue of SLManager crashing when the filtered search returned more than a thousand objects is now fixed.
The issue of manually entering the base DN and filter in SLManager is now fixed. SLManager now saves up to 20 base DN and filter entries.
The issue with the Flash WindowFinder file having the wrong file extension format is now fixed.
The issue with the failure of import in the iManager SSO plug-in when the application name contained a / is now fixed.
The issue with the TLaunch not terminating when its associated emulator sessions were closed is now fixed.
When a Web page could not send information to SecureLogin by using a different method, the following error message is shown:
Unable to instantiate scriptbroker module: 80070005
To resolve this error, uninstall SecureLogin, delete its installation directory, delete the registry hive hklm/software/protocom, then reinstall SecureLogin.
This workaround resolves this error for all Web pages, including the Web page that showed this error.
If the problem persists, re-register the following SecureLogin DLL files:
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Novell\SecureLogin\iesso.dll
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Novell\SecureLogin\slbroker.dll
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Novell\SecureLogin\slcaptain.dll
If you are using smart card authentication for the Citrix login prompt, enter the smart card PIN manually, because the PIN is not cached for the Citrix server authentication.
Novell SecureLogin in the LDAP GINA mode with eDirectory does not work while setting a passphrase for a new user if the fully distinguished name (FDN) of the eDirectory user has 128 characters or more.
In Microsoft Windows 2003 configurations, users might be able to log in to their workstations by using the old password. Because the user has logged in successfully, Novell SecureLogin loads. A Windows 2003 server attribute (the password lifetime period) allows the reuse of an old password.
To disable an old password as soon as a password change occurs:
Update the domain controller registry setting with the following value: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Create the new DWORD value OldPasswordAllowedPeriod.
Set this value to 0.
For more information, see the Microsoft Web site..
If password policies already exist, ignore the incorrect error message 0 password policy, which is shown when restoring user data.
The memory used on the workstation by sldotnetsso64 increases from approximately 15 MB to 142 MB.
When you are installing the NMAS client on a Windows 2003 R2 64-bit machine, the following error message is shown:
Windows Vista or later required.
You get this error because the NMAS client is not available for a Windows 2003 R2 64-bit machine.
Securelogin allows single sign-on for web applications in Mozilla Firefox even whenpreference is set to .
When you create a new NSLADSAuth in HKLM\Software\Protocom\SecureLogin\ and set the value of NSLADAuth as 1, then the multiple SecureLogin tray icons are displayed when you cancel the login operartion.as
Mouse over the SecureLogin system tray icons, to clear the SecureLogin system tray icons.
The DAS schema extension fails to extend correctly through iManager because of a defect in the Import Conversion Export utility of eDirectory.
Use one of the following workarounds to resolve the issue.
Using ConsoleOne: Browse to> > > . Specify the attribute information.
Using the ndssch Command Line Utility: Use the ndssch utility to extend the schema. The utility is bundled with eDirectory.Use the -h option, then specify the IP address of the NetWare workstation where you want to extend the schema.
NOTE:You can use the utility from any workstation on which eDirectory is installed.
On Windows 7 and Windows Vista, the log file for the DAS feature does not store the DAS data when UAC is enabled. Changing the DASLog.txt file path from the installation location to C:\ enables the log file to store DAS data.
You can use the SecureLogin wizard to, configure a .NET application in the LDAP mode for its login credentials, change the password option, change the password notification, and so on. The performance of the configured application depends on its size and the number of associated controls. If the size and number of controls occupy a large amount of space in the system, the application fails to load on the next login attempt. You should convert the application into an application definition, then reduce its size before logging in.
If an anonymous bind is disabled and the registry is not set in the workstation for the bind, then a concurrent connection is established with a full DN.
After thecheck box is selected and the user logs in to the workstation, the IP address entry is not removed from the iManager connections field.
The pcProx identification fails in the Novell Client on Microsoft Windows 2008 and Windows 7, on the first attempt for a new user. An error message indicating that the system cannot log in to the network appears and prompts the user to verify the credentials.
To fix the problem use the NMAS pcProx sequence during the first attempt to log in to the Novell Client. pcProx identification happens correctly in the subsequent logins.
Unlocking a Citrix session by using the NMAS pcProx sequence does not work, that is, if a remote Citrix session is locked by using the Secure Workstation QLL GUI or by using the Windows screen saver option, the unlock operation through the NMAS pcProx sequence does not function.
When an administrator logs in to a workstation on which User Access Control is enabled, the Secure Workstation Session Management Process is blocked and an error message is shown.
On Windows 7, the workaround is to manually run the process.
On Windows Vista, directly unblock the process from the taskbar. If the process is not unblocked, you cannot log in by using the NMAS secure workstation sequence and you see the error message: Error 740: Secure Workstation Session Management Process is blocked. Unblock to continue.
This error occurs only for a user with administrator privileges and not for a user with non-administrator privileges; that is, a standard user.
For detailed information, see the Microsoft Developer Network Web site..
On a Microsoft Windows Vista desktop, when the administrator uses the NMAS login with the Secure Workstation sequence without unblocking the Secure Workstation session management process (wsaccsmp), the NMAS login fails with error code 740.
The issue exists when the NMAS login is used with the Novell Client or the Novell SecureLogin-LDAP Client.
The Secure Workstation policy fails when it is set through iManager because the post-login method fails for NMAS Server version 3.1.0.
To resolve this issue, upgrade to the latest NMAS server version that SecureLogin supports .
If a user logs in without a smart card when thepreference is set to and the preference is set to , the user is not prompted for the smart card.
Instead, the user gets an incorrect message: The smartcard does not contain any certificates that match the certificate selection criteria.
Novell SecureLogin fails to launch using the smart card authentication without the User Principal Name, whenis set to .
This problem can be resolved if you use any of the following options:
preference is set to .
The smart card must be configured with a User Principle Name.
When user logs in with NESCM and SecureLoginis set to yes, then the user cannot unlock the system tray icon using the Smart Card PIN.
To resolve this issue, use the eDirectory password to unlock the system tray icon.
The ChangePasswordOnExpiry feature does not work when Securelogin is installed in SecretStore mode.
When you upgrade to 7.0 from a customized version of Novell SecureLogin (customized bitmaps, LocalHero.dll, and similar files), the new version replaces the customized file with the standard files.
To retain the customized settings, do one of the following:
Replicate the customized settings on Novell SecureLogin 7.0 MSI.
Create a backup of the customized file, then apply it after the upgrade.
If you have installed Novell SecureLogin in LDAP mode on a Microsoft Windows Vista machine, you are prompted to close the Windows Explorer, Windows installer and so on during upgrade from version 6.1 or 6.1 SP1 to 7.0 SP2.
Clickto proceed with the upgrade.
When upgrading from SecureLogin 6.0 to SecureLogin 7.0, SLMANAGER.EXE is automatically installed. There is no option available to stop the installation of SLMANAGER.EXE during the upgrade process.
To work around this issue, create a .bat file with the following lines to manually delete SLMANAGER.EXE:
@echo off del "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Novell SecureLogin\SecureLogin Manager.lnk" del "C:\Program Files\Novell\SecureLogin\slmanager.exe"
During the upgrade from Novell SecureLogin 6.1 to 7.0, if theicon preference is enabled, the users are prompted to provide the network password.
To work around the issue:
Stop Novell SecureLogin manually before starting to upgrade.
Run slproto/forceshutdown from the command line to shut down Novell SecureLogin
If you stop SecureLogin manually, you are prompted to specify the password.
If you use the slprotoc/forceshutdown command, you are not prompted to specify the password.
Start the upgrade.
Specify the correct credentials.
Web applications directly accessed through Internet Explorer on a Microsoft Windows 2000, 2003 or 2008 server might not work correctly until theoption is disabled on the server. Alternatively, you can go to > , then enable the third-party Web browser extensions.
This does not impact the clients connected to a Microsoft Windows 2000, 2003, or 2008 server.
Start Mozilla Firefox at least once before installing Novell SecureLogin. Otherwise, a message prompting you to import Internet Explorer settings is displayed during the Novell SecureLogin installation.
If this happens, clickto import the Internet Explorer settings or click to cancel the import. The Novell SecureLogin installation proceeds.
When a DHTML-enabled Web application is started, SecureLogin fails to prompt for entering the credentials. The error occurs when SecureLogin fails to run the predefined application definition to enable single sign-on for the site.
To resolve this issue close the browser session and relaunch the Web application.
Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 supports Web-enabled Oracle form applications. Therefore, Oracle JInitiator and JRE should be available in the system where Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 will be used. If they are not present on the machine where Novell SecureLogin is already running, add the missing Java components in the machine, and then run the repair option available with the SecureLogin installer. The repair option of the installer adds the new Java component to be used for Oracle form applications.
Clicking thebutton shows authentication fields in an application being defined in the Application Definition Wizard. When you define an Oracle form that is run from a browser, the identified fields might show on the Oracle form and on the browser. You can ignore this behavior.
The Java component assigns a name taken from the title field of the innermost container to an Oracle form application. If the innermost container is not assigned a title when the forms are created, the wizard cannot assign a name to the Oracle form application.
Loading Oracle components requires some time before an application definition for an Oracle form is started. Therefore, the Wizard takes some time when starting the application definition for an Oracle form.
You can use the Client Login Extension tool to specify the text to be shown when a user clicks the Did you forget your Password ? link. However, the text specified for the Novell Client is not shown when the link is clicked.
Using the Forgotten Password link to recover the password forgotten for a locked workstation does not work on Microsoft Credential Provider for Novell Client.
SecureLogin does not support any wizard for Flash applications.
SecureLogin does not recognize the Title command for NSL Flash scripts. Use the ctrl command to match the window title.
The NSL script Select command does not work for Flash applications.
If the window size is changed or the mouse control is pointed to another window, the NSL Flash script execution might not work as expected.
There is a small memory leak of about 20-40 KB every time the NSL Flash script is executed.
The full product documentation is available at the Novell SecureLogin 7.0 SP2 Documentation Web site.
Novell, Inc. makes no representations or warranties with respect to the contents or use of this documentation, and specifically disclaims any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Further, Novell, Inc. reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes to its content, at any time, without obligation to notify any person or entity of such revisions or changes.
Further, Novell, Inc. makes no representations or warranties with respect to any software, and specifically disclaims any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Further, Novell, Inc. reserves the right to make changes to any and all parts of Novell software, at any time, without any obligation to notify any person or entity of such changes.
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We plead, explain, cajole, he enlists the police and we’re going nowhere; c’est la vie en Tour de France!
It’s never a dull moment…
We were desperate for a pizza last night; but the Vietnamese restaurant in Laragne was cool.
Martin pleads his case with the local gendarme while the lad just laughs.
At breakfast there was French accordion music on the stereo, to get us in the mood for our first ‘real’ day on the race, it almost made us forget how bad the coffee was.
We picked up L’Equipe en route to the start; “Cavendish quitte le Tour” said the one headline – expected, and he’ll have more glory days to come. But another said; “Barloworld quitte le cyclisme” – terrible news.
Credentials; the nightmare continued; “we have your badges, but no car stickers!” but once we got hold of ASO’s Stephanie and Dominik, things were sorted out and we had those precious pieces of plastic and strips of vinyl for the Volvo; that’s what we thought, anyway!
“Ca va, Claudio?” Corti managed a smile and a hand shake, despite his woes, and then it was time to go.
It was raining when we left Embrun, sodden A class roads eased gently up the Alpine valleys, but all around the Alpes rear, jagged and grey.
At 14.5 k it’s the first PMU sprint, uphill, but at least the sun is out.
This is the Route des Grandes Alpes – encouraging for the sprinters!
At 32 K there’s the first hairpins and it’s not far to Italia – and the serious climbing.
The Col d’Agnel – the third highest tarmaced pass in Europe, it’s not the steepest, but it’s long, long, long.
A guy waves two damp Luxembourg flags at as – maybe it’s Andy’s day?
At 43 K, well into the climb, the skies open, just as we spot former British pro champion, Tim Harris – he drives VIP’s for Skoda these days; “with this weather it’s going to be a very hard stage, it’ll be freezing coming down of this col, then they have that climb to Prato, it could be snowing up there!”
The scenery is ever more rugged, the higher we climb, the rain comes and goes, but the sky is angry and there are patches of snow still on the mountainsides.
It’s blowing a gale now, but it’s a tail wind, that’s something, at least – and then we met Jean-Paul
It’s plan ‘B’ now, watch the race and take it from there; “plans have to be flexible, when you’re a journalist.”
Three distinctly dodgy kangaroos are on our patch; “yell for Cadel!” they implore all and sundry as they hop around, high on red wine.
It’s cold and windy as we await the race, more like the Scottish Hill Climb Championship in October than le Tour in July. Meanwhile, the cop keeps a weathered eye on us to ensure we don’t do a runner.
It’s bitterly cold as a group of four remind us that this is a bike race and there’s a stage to be fought for. Simon Gerrans (CA), Egoi Martinez (Euskaltel), Jose Luis Arrieta (AG2R) and a Garmin, whose number we miss, but turns out to be Danny Pate.
The gap is huge, ten minutes plus back to the peloton, which we can see winding up the valley floor below us, like a colourful furry caterpillar. Lampre ride tempo, Cunego must get a stage win from this race, he sacrificed the Giro for it; maybe today is the day. The further back the bunch, the more pain there is in the faces.
Robbie McEwen is off the back; “get out the f***ing way!” he yells at a motorcycle camera.
A Francaise des Jeux is last on the road, Sebastien Chavanel, his face shows desperation. He knows that if he let’s the gap get too big, he won’t make it back on the descent and there are 60 fast kilometres from the bottom to the start of the final climb.
We jump on to the tail of the race convoy as soon as the break down truck passes; if we let a gap open, then fans on bikes and cars will fill the spaces and we’ll get snarled up. We’ll have to sort out those damn credentials again at the finish today and we’ll need all the time we can get.
At the summit the wind is gale force and it’s hailing, I open the Volvo window to take a pic and it’s like someone is throwing gravel in my face.
The descent is wild, maniacs on mountain bikes infiltrate the convoy as we drop down, down, down at crazy speeds on the slick, wet tar.
On a right hand hairpin, the traffic suddenly tails back and stops in front of us, the smell of frying disc pads fills the air.
I jump out for a look – it’s a crash, a bad one.
Caisse D’Epargne rider and former Tour winner, Oscar Pereiro is the victim; he’s gone over the edge of the hairpin and landed on the road, maybe five metres below, he’s lying prone, with a medical team around him.
There’s movement in his face and hands, thank God, but it doesn’t look good.
I’m not entirely comfortable with what I’m doing, but I start to take pictures.
This is horrendous, but it’s part of le Tour and our readers have to see what a dangerous sport this really is.
The motor bike camera guys have no such ethical dilemmas, one tries to push me out of the way, another tramples on my toes. Click, click, click, click, their five thousand euro cameras rattle off hundreds of shots.
The medical team are oblivious; they have a neck collar on the rider, a vital signs monitor on his arm and a nurse carefully holds the plasma bag from which a drip leads into his tanned and badly grazed arm. There’s grace in her movements as she allows everyone to work around her, moving this way and that as bandages are applied and a pulse is taken at the wrist and neck.
They ease him on to a flexible stretcher before getting him on a rigid stretcher and sliding it in to the back of the ambulance.
Back on the road, the blue lights of the ambulance flash, a few cars ahead as we realize that having the wrong stickers on the car isn’t that big a deal.
The roads are dry now and it’s 20 degrees, it was around freezing, with the wind chill, at the top.
We’re a bit subdued in the car, we just hope Oscar will be OK, that’s the worst crash I’ve ever seen.
The second hot spot, there’s still 70 K to go, although we don’t know how far ahead the race is, we think it would be bad form to pass the ambulance.
The roads are pan flat now, we’re on the flood plain of the river Stura di Monte; it reminds me of the opening phase of Milan – San Remo, across those endless plains.
Al emails from Espana to say that Pereiro has a broken wrist and collar bone – it looked worse than that to us, but let’s hope that’s all that’s wrong.
The mountain are rearing again, just ahead, as a few cars in front, the F des J car shepherds one of their riders; he must be way, way behind the peloton. We think it’s Chavanel who was last up the Agnel, he’s certainly got spirit, but we just can’t see him beating the time cut, despite his 40 kph average.
We’re on the second last climb of the day, Colle del Morte.
After a long, flat slog across the plains it rears up abruptly, straight and steeply. We have to stop for diesel fuel, but can imagine that Chavanel will be hurting up here.
By the time we get out of the gas station, the road is open and it’s chaos.
We start the climb to Prato Nevoso as the camper vans thunder down towards us. It’s a brute with steep ramps leading from one hairpin to the next.
Far above us, Gerrans wins and Schleck takes yellow.
The guy with the Luxembourg flags got it right and the alcoholic kangaroos got the stage winner right, at least; but maybe not enough folks; “yelled for Cadel.”
We’ve re-caught the tail end of the race, and Chavanel is still battling.
You know you’re in Italy when…
It’s crazy as fans on foot, on bikes, in cars, with prams even, try to get off the hill – meanwhile the pros have the same idea.Dario Cioni remonstrates with a couple of drunken fans who nearly deck him. And here’s McEwen, they better not have a go at him, or they’ll be on the deck!
Eventually we battle through to the top and it’s time to start work.
Oscar? “Les premieres radiographies ont confirmк la presence d’une fracture complexe de l’epaule gauche,” that’s left shoulder – he’s a lucky guy!
And Chavanel? He finished 153rd at 42:59 – now that’s what you call; “a day’s work.” |
They’ll roll out the barrels for this fest — or at least the beer — inside a 30,000-square-foot, air-conditioned tent. It’s time to polka, chow down on sausage and strudel, do the Chicken Dance, sip a few Spaten and Franziskaner beers, take a spin on a carnival ride, cheer for the dogs in the dachshund parade and race, attend a German spelling bee and a yodeling competition, and more. Prost!
Sept. 21 from 6 p.m. to midnight, Sept. 22 from noon to midnight., Sept. 23 from noon to 5 p.m. at Addison Circle Park, 4970 Addison Circle Drive, Addison. Ages 4 and up: $10 on Sept. 21; $5 on Sept. 22 before 5 p.m., $10 after 5; $5 on Sept. 23. Free for kids 3 and younger. addisontexas.net.
ADULT NIGHTS: ‘STAR WARS’ AT LEGOLAND DISCOVERY CENTER
A grownups-only Legoland night out is held the last Monday of each month. This time around, take part in activities and presentations as part of the Star Wars weekend as well as a scavenger hunt, and take your own Star Wars models made with Lego bricks to be put on display throughout the night. Go dressed as a Star Wars character to receive $3 off admission.
Sept. 24 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Legoland Discovery Center, 3000 Grapevine Mills Parkway (in Grapevine Mills mall), Grapevine. $12.99 online, $15 at the door. For ages 18 and up. 469-444-3050. legolanddiscoverycenter.com.
AMBER DOES DALLAS PRESENTS ‘THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW’
This shadow-cast production is in keeping with a decades-long tradition surrounding this cult movie. If you’re not familiar with the show, here’s how it works: Performers bring the far-fetched, freaky and fetish-filled story to life, acting out the roles as the movie is shown behind them. Riffers — that is, other actors planted in the audience — rouse those in attendance, many of whom are dressed outlandishly in character, to shout and throw stuff on cue. It sure beats sitting at home on the couch and watching the movie on DVD.
Sept. 22, Oct. 12 and Oct. 26 at 11 p.m. at the Lakewood Theater, 1825 Abrams Parkway, Dallas. $11. 214-821-7469. amberdoesdallas.com.
DAY IN THE DISTRICT
FREE For one day, nine Fort Worth Cultural District venues will open their doors to the public without charge. Many of the city’s cultural and arts groups will also offer free performances, art exhibitions and family activities in and around the sites. Participants include the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Kimbell Art Museum, Log Cabin Village, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, and Botanical Research Institute of Texas.
Sept. 22 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at various Fort Worth cultural destinations, including the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St. Free. 817-738-9215. fwdayinthedistrict.org.
INTOUCH CREDIT UNION PLANO BALLOON FESTIVAL
The bright balloons are the big attraction at this long-running fest, whether they’re soaring in the sky or tethered for nighttime balloon glows. Other attractions include skydivers, children’s activities, a Sept. 22 fireworks show, concessions and shopping.
Sept. 21 from 4 to 10 p.m., Sept. 22 from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sept. 23 from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Oak Point Park, 2801 E. Spring Creek Parkway, Plano. $5 for adults, $4 for ages 65 and up, free for kids 36 inches and shorter. Parking costs $5-$10. planoballoonfest.org.
The rock stars of the foodie world will converge as the Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show, a.k.a. MetroCooking, arrives for its first local stint. Food Network darlings Paula Deen and Bobby Flay, along with a bevy of locally adored chefs including Stephan Pyles, will appear. The Dallas Morning News is the presenting sponsor of the event. MetroCooking has partnered with the James Beard Foundation to present a rotating roster of Texas talent on the Weir’s Furniture Cooking Stage. Organizers also tout the show as a great place for shopping, with a happy maze of booths with samples (yes!) and wares from more than 150 vendors. Along with Pyles, other James Beard-affiliated local chefs are scheduled to dazzle and amaze with their knives and pans.
Sept. 22 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sept. 23 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Dallas Convention Center, 650 S. Griffin St., Dallas. $24.50 general admission, $12.50 for children 4-12, free for children under 4 for either day. Parking costs extra. Tickets include entrance to demos, presentations and vendor booths on the exhibit hall floor. For a full schedule and ticket prices, visit metrocookingdallas.com. The MetroCooking Dallas office line, 214-853-8000, will be operating Sept. 21-23.
Additional tickets are required for presentations by headliners Deen (Sept. 22 at 1:30 p.m. and Sept. 23 at noon) and Flay (Sept. 22 at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.). VIP meet-and-greets and other chances to interact with Deen and Flay also available. $65-$400.
MUNGER PLACE DAYS
This weekend celebration showcases a lovely old East Dallas neighborhood, Munger Place. The two-day Home Tour offers a sneak peek at six renovated prairie-style homes, including one that’s supposedly haunted by the ghost of Robert Munger, the renowned developer. Those who attend the Sept. 21 Wine Walk will also have the chance to preview an additional home on the tour while sipping wine and Champagne and savoring small bites. This is the first year for the Sept. 23 Street Festival and Art Fair, which will feature some 50 art vendors, four live musical acts, children’s mini classes and six food trucks. Proceeds from the event will benefit the historic district and local charities.
Wine Walk: Sept. 21 from 5 to 8 p.m. at 4938 Tremont St., Dallas. $30 at the door; free for accompanying children 10 and under. No reservations required. 214-823-2843. mungerplace.com.
Home tour: Sept. 22-23 from noon to 6 p.m. at 4938 Tremont St., Dallas. $15 at the door; free for children 10 and under.
Street Festival and Arts Fair: Sept. 23 from noon to 6 p.m. at the Munger Place Historic District in the 4900 block of Tremont Street between Collett and Fitzhugh streets. Free. 214-823-2843. mungerplace.com.
ROCKWALL RUBBER DUCK REGATTA & DUCK FEST
This “ducky” event raises funds for the Boys and Girls Club of Rockwall County and Meals on Wheels of Rockwall County. It starts with the Family Walk & Waddle and 5K Duck Dash along the shores of Lake Ray Hubbard and continues with all-day entertainment, including a corporate duck beauty pageant and duck race, Ducky Dog Days with canine contests and demonstrations, vendors and family activities. The main event is the Rubber Duck Regatta, during which 5,000 yellow ducks race down the fountains while their hopeful sponsors cheer them on to win prizes.
Sept. 22 (dash at 8 a.m., fest activities from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., regatta at 3 p.m.) at the Harbor Rockwall, 2047 Summer Lee Drive, Rockwall. Free general admission; $5 sponsorship per duck. rockwallduckrace.org.
ROPES COURSE ADVENTURE DAY
Try a ropes course program and zip line at this event (the attractions are usually open only to groups). The program will include low and high rope initiatives, including the team power pole and tree climb, and a chance to soar down a 750-foot-long zip line. Participants must fit into the provided harnesses; the average minimum age to fit the harnesses is 8 to 9 years old. Wear closed-toed shoes and appropriate clothes for the weather and climbing, and take a water bottle.
Sept. 23 from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary, 1 Nature Place, McKinney. $35; no charge for nonparticipating family members. Nonparticipating children must be supervised at all times. Reservations required. 972-562-5566. heardmuseum.org.
TEAMQUEST URBAN RACE FOR HOPE
It takes brains and brawn to win this scavenger hunt, benefiting the Mary Crowley Cancer Research Center. Teams of two traveling by foot, train or bus within a 3- to 5-mile radius of downtown must conquer physical challenges and use 12 clues to find checkpoint locations with the help of a ground crew and technology. Participants should wear comfortable running shoes and matching outfits and can compete in the costume contest, too.
Sept. 22 at 8 a.m. at Dick’s Last Resort, 2211 N. Lamar St., Dallas. $75 per person ($150 per team) on the day of race. 214-502-8789. teamquestrace.com.
THE 2012 ART UPRISING IN WEST VILLAGE
FREE West Village is celebrating and raising awareness for the Dallas art community in its first-ever two-day juried arts festival. It kicks off with a pre-fest art walk and auction featuring local art donated to benefit the Emergency Artist Support League. Enjoy light bites and drinks, and bid on the art as you wander from store to store. The next day is the beginning of the festival. Hang out to shop and enjoy the local art and live music, food and drinks (including beer and wine). The third day adds family-friendly activities, such as face painting and Hula-Hooping with the Cirque du Soleil Kooza promo squad, to the mix.
Art walk Sept. 21 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.; festival Sept. 22 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sept. 23 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at West Village, 3699 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Free. 214-219-1144. westvillagedallas.com.
The science fiction and fantasy literary and filk (science fiction- and fantasy-themed music) fest features a costume contest, a speech by astronaut Stanley G. Love, vendors, a video room, an art show, gaming, children’s programming and more.
Sept. 21-23 at Crowne Plaza Hotel North Dallas, 14315 Midway Road, Addison. Events take place at various times, with most programming scheduled Sept. 21 from noon to midnight, Sept. 22 from 10 a.m. to midnight and Sept. 23 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Adults 22 and up: $45 for all three days, $20 Sept. 21, $25 Sept. 22, $20 Sept. 23. Children 6-12: $5 any day. Ages 13-21: $10 Sept. 21-22, $5 Sept. 23. fencon.org.
HOT IMPORT NIGHTS
Check out the Xtreme Drift Circuit National Drifting Competition on Sept. 21-22. During a Sept. 22 car show, expect to see hundreds of customized rides, DJs, a go-go competition, auto aftermarket exhibitors and more.
Sept. 21 from 3 to 7 p.m. (drifting only), Sept. 22 from 3 to 10 p.m. (drifting finals and car show) at Texas Motor Speedway, 3545 Lone Star Circle, Fort Worth. $10 Sept. 21, $20 Sept. 22, $25 for both. hotimportnights.com.
THE SALUTE TO ‘SUPERNATURAL’ CONVENTION
Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, the stars of the WB’s Supernatural, return to their home state for an appearance at this three-day celebration of the show (they’re scheduled to be on hand Sept. 23; check the website for the schedule). In addition to chances to see about a dozen actors from the show, there’ll be costume and trivia contests, auctions, behind-the-scenes presentations, and previews of upcoming sci-fi movies and TV shows.
Sept. 21 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sept. 22 from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sept. 23 from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. (hours are subject to change) at Westin Park Central Hotel, 12720 Merit Drive, Dallas. $30 Sept. 21-22, $50 Sept. 23. creationent.com.
THE ISLAMIC ART REVIVAL SERIES EXPERIENCE 2012
The event features hands-on art activities (henna art, calligraphy and more), opportunities to try on ethnic costumes, an Islamic art fair, art lectures, storytelling, singing, drumming, a puppet show and more. Islamic Art Revival Series, Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation and Aramco Services Company have teamed up to put on the event.
Sept. 22 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Eisemann Center, 2351 Performance Drive, Richardson. $8.50 for adults, $6 for students and seniors, $3 for children 3 to 12, free for children 2 and under. Children’s tickets include some activities and babysitting services. 972-744-4650. eisemanncenter.com.
Compiled by Ellen Ritscher Sackett, Joy Tipping and Ann Pinson |
Taxpayers across the country are subsidizing the manufacturers of assault rifles used in multiple mass killings, including the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. last month.
A Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting examination of tax records shows that five companies that make semi-automatic rifles have received more than $19 million in tax breaks, most within with the past five years.
“I feel horrified at the power of the gun industry over our political system, that it could exert such influence,” said Newtown resident Barbara Richardson, who lives between the homes of one of the 6-year-old victims and the shooter.
Saying she respects hunters who are ethical and good neighbors, she “absolutely [does] not” support taxpayer subsidies to help manufacture assault rifles: “They’re weapons of mass destruction.”
Any new jobs due to tax subsidies are “not worth it,” said Richardson, a nurse whose first patient ever was a 19-year-old accidentally shot by his 13-year-old brother with their father’s gun.
The states providing the subsidies since 2003: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Oklahoma.
Officials point out that such tax breaks are generally given to a range of businesses, not only to gun manufacturers, in the belief by state legislators and governors that they will attract industry or create or retain jobs.
One of the tax breaks that went to a Smith & Wesson plant in Maine was based on a program initiated by then-Gov. Angus King, now the senator-elect from that state.
King, in an email to the center, said, “Various tax incentive programs have been enacted over the years in Maine and virtually every other state to encourage and support job creation, particularly in the manufacturing sector. No one suggested at the time these programs were created—or since, as far as I know—that the government should decide which particular businesses within broad categories would be more or less desirable.”
Yet many economists have thrown cold water on the idea that these programs create any net new jobs.
Kim Rueben, an economist with the Tax Policy Center in Washington, said, in most cases there is no increase in the numbers of jobs; instead, she said, such programs encourage businesses to move to the state with the best subsidies.
Sen.-elect King pointed out that the Maine Smith & Wesson plant doesn’t make semi-automatic rifles (it does make semi-automatic handguns).
But Rueben, the economist, countered that any savings, such as tax reductions, “go to the bottom line” of a publically-held company such as Smith & Wesson, regardless of the origin of the subsidy.
The vast majority of the subsidies went to two of the largest and most recognized arms makers in the country’s history: Remington, which got $11.9 million from four states, and Smith & Wesson, which got more than $6.7 million from two states.
How many assault-style rifles the two manufacturers make is unknown because they do not break out statistics for assault rifles from other rifles, according to a declaration in a 2009 civil case by a research coordinator for the National Rifle Association.
However, Mark Overstreet characterized Remington’s and Smith & Wesson’s assault rifle production as “prolific.” Overstreet testified that the dozen manufacturers that did break out their numbers had made 1.6 million assault rifles between 1986 and 2007.
The other assault rifle makers that got state tax subsidies were Sturm, Ruger; Kel-TecCNC Industries; and Bushmaster, which police say was the make used in the Newtown shootings.
The types of subsidies include tax credits, grants, rebates, reimbursements for training and property tax abatements.
“I think it would be disturbing to people to know that they are essentially subsidizing the manufacture of these guns,” said Cathie Whittenburg, the Maine-based spokesperson of States United to Prevent Gun Violence, a national non-profit organization. “It’s certainly not something I want to be doing.”
Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence predicted that the public will “react very angrily to” taxpayers subsidizing assault weapons.
“Finally, after decades, we are having a serious conversation, and with this conversation is coming invaluable education about what politicians are actually doing,” said Everitt.
The Center’s findings are based on a comparison of the known makes of semi-automatic rifles with state records and the “Subsidy Tracker” data base compiled by the Washington-based organization Good Jobs First. A Good Jobs First spokesman said while its data base is the most extensive available, it is not comprehensive.
Semi-automatic rifles, often also referred to as AR-15s, were used not only by Adam Lanza at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, but also in the Christmas Eve shooting in Webster, NY by William Spengler, a 62-year-old ex-con who killed two firefighters and wounded two others. Both Lanza and Spengler also killed themselves.
Excluding the recent New York shooting, Mother Jones magazine has reported that since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass murders using firearms in the country, in 30 states. Assault weapons like the AR-15s were involved in more than half of those shootings.
Smith & Wesson, one of the two largest recipients of state tax subsidies, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the subsidies granted to the company.
Remington Arms, the other large recipient of subsidies, responded through a spokesman for its owner, the Freedom Group, by emailing a link to a publication, “Firearms and Ammunition Industry Economic Impact Report 2012.” The publication was produced by the gun industry’s trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“For your story, you may want to include the following firearms industry economic impact data,” wrote Teddy Novin, Freedom Group’s director of public affairs.
The study details the industry’s jobs numbers for 2011: 98,752 employed by gun manufacturers, with an additional 110,998 jobs in “supplier and ancillary industries.”
“In fact, in 2012 the firearms and ammunition industry was responsible for as much as $31.84 billion in total economic activity in the country,” write the study’s authors.
Maine senator: no red flag
In Maine, Smith & Wesson has received two types of tax subsidies. From 2008-2010, it received $107,120 from the Employment Tax Increment Financing (ETIF) a program the state says encourages businesses to hire new employees by refunding from 30-80 percent of the state withholding taxes paid by the business for up to ten years.
Smith & Wesson’s plant in Houlton also received $51,671 in abatements for property tax on its equipment under the Business Equipment Tax Reimbursement program, initiated by King.
The Bangor Daily News recently reported that Smith & Wesson officials say it has invested $3.3 million in the past three years in its Houlton plant and the payroll has grown to $4.2 million.
Bushmaster, maker of one of the most well-known assault rifles, was located in Windham. The plant closed in March 2011, when its owner, Freedom Group, moved the operation to New York. Freedom also owns Remington. In 2010, Bushmaster was exempted from paying $2,405 in taxes on its business equipment under BETR.
State Rep. Adam Goode, D-Bangor, co-chair of the legislature’s taxation committee, said, “There are lots of different tax breaks and credits that … lots that people may be outraged about. My goal … would be for the legislature to have a conversation about tax breaks and how we evaluate them and how effective they are.”
The Senate co-chair of the committee, Anne Haskell, D-Portland, said the state police purchased Bushmaster rifles from the company when it was based in Maine.
“The fact that we’re providing a tax break to a company that’s providing jobs and high quality firearms to our state police doesn’t raise a red flag for me,” Haskell said.
Massachusetts’ $6 million deal
In 2010, Massachusetts approved $6 million in tax breaks to Smith & Wesson, which announced it would move its Thompson/Center hunting rifle division from New Hampshire to Springfield. The move meant an expansion of the firm’s Springfield headquarters and the addition of 225 jobs there.
James Debney, president of Smith & Wesson, said the company chose the Bay State over several other states because local and state officials, including Gov. Deval Patrick, “collaborated … to make our choice clear.”
Locally, the company got a $600,000 tax break from Springfield on top of the state’s $6 million.
“It’s a big win for the city – 225 jobs and $14 million (in investments) this year alone,” John D. Judge, the city’s chief development officer, told the Springfield Republican.
New York: public good?
Remington Arms received $5.5 million in New York subsidies and grants since 2007. The company was founded in Ilion, NY in the early 1800s and its purchase by Cerberus Capital Management, which owns the Freedom Group, was announced in April 2007. Almost $4.5 million of the subsidies were targeted at luring 200 jobs to Ilion from Remington and Cerberus-affiliated manufacturing plants in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The subsidies became an issue in 2012 when Remington and another subsidized New York gun manufacturer, Kimber Manufacturing, fought against proposed state legislation that mandated microstamping for bullet casings, which gun control advocates and police said would help solve gun crimes.
The gun-control advocacy group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV), said that the gun companies’ opposition to the legislation meant they weren’t serving the public interest.
Jackie Hilly, executive director of NYAGV, said, “I do have a problem with people who are taking money from the state … and then flatly refusing to serve some sort of public good. That’s public money that’s being used, and I think there should be some kind of public good that comes out of it.”
Kentucky: 100 new jobs
Kentucky granted Smith & Wesson $6.1 million in subsidies since 1998, including, $4.5 million to subsidize the expansion of the company’s Graves County facility, where it planned to add 100 jobs.
Gov. Steve Beshear’s office did not return phone calls asking for comment on the subsidies. But at the time the grant was made, Beshear said, “The creation of 100 new jobs and a $5 million investment in the Commonwealth will have a tremendous impact and is a testament to our ongoing commitment to support our existing industries.”
Newtown: shift in thinking
A college student having coffee at Starbucks in Newtown last week said that while she doesn’t like subsidizing assault-rifle makers, she knows there are other Americans who don’t like funding programs she and her friends care about.
“I don’t understand someone’s need to own an assault weapon,” said Mary Hamula, 18, of Newtown. “If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have a huge problem with tax subsidies. I’m a big proponent of government-subsidized healthcare.”
But she felt that public opinion might shift support away from tax subsidies for assault weapons.
“I think with everything that happened in Newtown, I think the culture around guns is going to change. If something positive comes out of it, that’s all we can ask for,” she said. “It did break us. Nobody here wants that to happen to another community.”
The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting is a nonpartisan, non-profit news service based in Hallowell, Maine. Email: [email protected]. Web: pinetreewatchdog.org. John Christie and Naomi Schalit are senior reporters with the center. Nathaniel Herz is a reporter with The New York World. Theresa Sullivan Barger is a freelance writer in Connecticut. |
Wings of Desire
Perhaps that’s all there is,
wings of desire: the girl
on the swing, and what the dead are up to
And when we do these things,
it’s a gesture. It’s the trees
and sometimes sun.
“Art is beautiful but it is hard, like a religion without a purpose.”
— GUNTER BRUS
Well, that presupposes that religions actually have a purpose beyond the purposeless purpose of art, of which, personally, I’ve yet to be fully convinced.
But, taken on (ahem) faith, there’s still this other question, “hard” in what way specifically? The need to constantly create? The need to constantly push against some boundary of some sort? the constraints of echoes that surround all new art? The need to encounter the presence, the IS, but to allow desire, the reality, to rise? Perhaps all these, and more?
It's kind of a brainstorm, perhaps, but instead of trying to compose a poem, I’m wondering if it might be profitable to think about it as composing a stance, some hypothetical (possibly real and believed as well) way the world beings itself forth. In this contemplating of the stance, it’s not the object, not the thing itself, that’s the question, but the positioning of the artist in relation to all things in the presence of the object, the thing itself, that forms the poem, so that the poet is already half ready to compose the poem, as the stance and the world are already in play, just waiting for the object to arrive. Perhaps, in this conceptualizing of it, sentences and poems will come more readily, unbidden even. It's the project of being rather than of a trying to write poems.
Is there any clarity to this? I don’t know. I’ve always thought of the THING as paramount, and that the poem begins in attention, in attending, the thing. I still do think this, but perhaps, rather than thinking of the attention toward the thing, perhaps what I should be thinking more about is the preparation of the artist to receive the thing. Ok, so I was raised Catholic, what can I say.
“I don't develop; I am.”
“I produce music as an apple tree produces apples.”
— CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS
According to Picasso and Saint-Stevens, it seems the artist should not try, but be, so that the artist embodies the art. It’s always conceptual, in this way. It’s always periods, seasons, and it’s rarely what we say it is when we speak about it. It’s really about creating a metaphor for our primary relation to it. Where “it” is always indeterminate.
To the tree, the apples are not a question, they simply are. It seems a beautiful almost one-ness, so there is no question of attending, as the attending is a natural outcome of one being fully who one is, in and with, the world.
“The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.”
— EMIL NOLDE
So then it’s a call away from intention and even attention, and toward the body and the livingness of the artist. The being in the world, and the totality of the possible. But how can the artist be ready for totality when the artist is always going to be only capable of what the artist is capable of?
“The nature of the work is to prepare for a good accident.”
— SIDNEY LUMET
Because we’re really just looking to position ourselves for a happy accident. Because if what the artist produces is from the planning mind of the artist it will not rise above what the artist knows. The little the artist knows will become all there is, then, and the work will be unable to be more than the artist. Are these contradictory impulses, the “apple tree” above and the “good accident” here?
“Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
“The triumph of anything is a matter of organization.”
— KURT VONNEGUT
“Sanity is perhaps the ability to punctuate.”
— PARRY IDRIS
That seems a healthy mixture of the two impulses. One doesn’t reductively plan, one produces art like an apple tree produces apples, while hoping for the good accident, the mistake that is more than what the artist brings to the composition, and then the artist must be positioned to understand what has just happened, the artist must organize the accident back into the artist’s conception. And the form, the punctuation, brings the thinking mind, the sanity, back to the accidents, which allows for this next thing to make sense, both for the artist and the person receiving the art:
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
— THOMAS MERTON
But practically, though, what is to be taught in such an economy of apples and accidents? How does one cultivate a stance, and what is a stance anyway? This idea that keeps creeping up around art, this finding and losing at the same time (or better, losing and finding at the same time, but perhaps that's splittinf hairs) sounds nice, but what do we actually take back to the composition from it? Is this just another way of saying that we should strive for the accident (getting lost) and the unification of composition (being found)?
I suppose, together, we're called to a place, a stance, or the getting to a place or stance, where whatever one does is art, through a certain attention to collage, through chance operations, through the happy accidents of context and random selection perhaps, if not to become the art, to at least texture or influence the art.
“Which country is real, mine or the teacher's? My wish is that we might progressively lose our confidence in what we think we believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered.”
— ANTONI TAPIES
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
— EDGAR DEGAS
So we often say things like, “Art cannot be taught but it must be learned,” etc. When what we really mean is, “I’m really not sure how it all works but I sure do like sitting around talking about art all day and getting paid for it.” Maybe it’s as simple as saying that we can teach the forms of art all day, but if you’re not getting the stance, the learned / unlearned stance, the Apollonian / Dionysian stance, or the wallowing in uncertainties stance, whatever, the forms will have nothing to hold onto. It’s this half-goofy, half-religious, stance that allows for the productivity of learning to unlearn.
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
— JALAL UD-DIN RUMI
“I'm afraid that if my devils leave me, my angels will take flight as well.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
And then we have the life surrounding the stance, the artist perusing obsessions. The artist, in preparing a stance of open possibility, who is aware that any “no,” healthy as it may be to the life, is anathema to the art. How valid is this? How open should our open possibilities remain? At the very least, this seems true to me:
“Talent's like a baby. Wrap it up in wool and it goes to sleep.”
And there’s a wrapped in wool aspect to a lot of our lives. How hard should we be on talent? How many demons and angels should we wish upon ourselves and each other? Perhaps no more than each of us already has, but, rather than ignore them, as we’re taught to do, we could word them. If that might be the case, what do we have, or what can we have, to bring to the art?
“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn.”
— CHARLIE PARKER
So one is to be in constant awareness of one’s life, one must attend one’s life, but what does this mean, really? Certainly not simply the facts of one’s life. Facts are as cheap as the visible. Facts are not reality, they are just the trace reality leaves in passing. So what is it one must attend? This seems to be an integral unifying force to the stance. It is the experience of living a life that brings the apples and accidents under one umbrella. That makes them coherent.
There is, therefore, no such thing as inspiration in this way of conceiving of things. There is no pool you draw from, as pools imply depletion and recuperation, and in this conception, the only lessening would be when one stops the unifying of apples and accidents, when one feels one has answered something, when one feels these are no longer open questions. The fear is becoming one who stays at home in mind and spirit:
“There are so many dreams beyond your night, and so much sunshine beyond your grey walls. But you can't see it because you stay at home. There is so much sky above your roof. Is your door so old that it won't open, or are you staying at home because you're afraid of catching a chill.”
— FRANCOISE HARDY
On the other side of this equation then, is the conception of the fearless artist:
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
— ANAIS NIN
Is the fearless artist a cliché? And since we’re dealing with Anais Nin, is courage equated with sex? That sounds nice, doesn’t it? But the courage seems to be less about the sex itself, the tying someone down with neckties, than it does the writing about it. The courage is less about action in life than it is action on paper. Hopefully we’re all courageous in life already. It makes for a more interesting world that way, as it bangs along. And if one can imagine it, why not imagine it? But artists go further than this:
“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”
Ah, Rumi, what a punk. But why is it that this sort of advice keeps popping up? How closely do artists align the possible to do with the possible to say or depict? Or, in another way, what is the possible artistic benefit in destroying one’s reputation, of being notorious? Is this simply a call to be restless, or is this a call to truly live a dangerous personal life?
Do artists let themselves off the hook too easily with conceptualizations such as this? Is too much freedom too much freedom? Where is the control in all this?
“Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged. It is inevitable that he who by concentrated application has extended this limit for himself, should arouse the resentment of those who have accepted conventions which, since accepted by all, require no initiative of application. And this resentment generally takes the form of meaningless laughter or of criticism, if not persecution. But this apparent violation is preferable to the monstrous habits condoned by etiquette and estheticism.”
— MAN RAY
It’s about limits and outrage. I can see that. Art is never (at least that I can think of) outrageous or aggressive. It doesn’t actually reach out and punch you. It’s the person receiving it that invests it with the power to be aggressive or outrageous. So what should we, as artists, strive to do? Should we really go live in a dangerous place and do outrageous things? For me, this has more to do with the conventions of thought and expression than it does with actual behavior. Still, I suppose I’ve been mildly scandalous from time to time, as we all have been, or are. But mostly I just sit here writing. This always makes me think of Wallace Stevens, the poster child for an extreme imagined existence and the ultimate in safe, comfortable, reduced of possibility personal lives. His work though, is a constant attempt, a constant wording of his desire to live in the abstract, futile and beautiful as that is. His limits were existence itself.
But if one can’t conceive of breaking limits, then it’s possible that one’s art will be reduced by cultural norms. This much seems reasonable. Art is a field of possibility, and to limit that possibility by proper behavior, damages the possibility of art. As they’re always saying, the outrageous of one age is the norm of another. So maybe artists conflate the life of creation with the living life a bit too much, but I’d rather err on the side of bad behavior than be reduced by convention.
What do you say let’s all go do something scandalous then? Meet me by the water tower at midnight. Bring a typewriter and a bottle of vodka. Wear nothing but a smile. Forget the paper, I’m crazy about you.
“Lesson Six: Build Yourself Wings. Fly straight ahead. Walk a straight line. Visit. Leave a special sign on the door. Make a gift of words. Mark your path with books. With clothes. With food. Join two distant places. Two rocks. Two people. Bridge a river. Build a city of sand. Raise up a mound.”
— MILAN KNIZAK |
Howard Bancorp, Inc. Announces Third Quarter 2012 Growth in Loans, Deposits
and Net Income
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. -- October 30, 2012
Howard Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: HBMD), the parent company of Howard Bank, today
announced its operating results through September 30, 2012 with the following
*Successfully raised gross proceeds of $10.2 million in common stock via
offering which closed in third quarter of 2012.
*Applied for, and was accepted for shares to trade on NASDAQ Capital Market
*Total Assets grew to $368 million at September 30, 2012, representing
growth of $47 million or 15% over same period of 2011.
*Total Loans increased by nearly $28 million or 10%, to $299 million, when
comparing third quarter of 2012 to third quarter 2011.
*September 30, 2012 deposits increase to $287 million from $251 million,
representing growth of over $36 million or 15%, of which noninterest
bearing deposits grew by over $22 million or 39% for the twelve months
ending September 30, 2012.
*Net income for the nine months ended September 30, 2012 was $1.2 million,
which compared to $1.0 million for the same nine month period in 2011,
reflecting net income growth of 15%.
Through the first nine months of 2012, net income was $1.18 million, versus
net income of $1.03 million for the nine month period in 2011 representing a
15% increase in net income. For the three months ended September 30, 2011, the
company reported net income of $387 thousand compared to net income of $337
thousand for the third quarter of 2011, an increase of $50 thousand or 15%.
Through the nine months of 2012, net interest income was $10.0 million
compared to $9.3 million for 2011, an increase of nearly $700 thousand or 7%.
Noninterest income also increased to $549 thousand during the nine months of
2012 as compared to $503 thousand for the same period of 2011. Year to date
total noninterest expenses of $7.8 million represented an increase of $0.5
million or 7% compared to total noninterest expenses for the first three
quarters of 2011. Expenses during 2012 included increased compensation costs
due to the opening of our fifth branch location, and also continued investment
in our talent infrastructure to keep pace with the needs of a growing
organization. Included in 2011 noninterest expenses was approximately $393
thousand in valuation adjustments on the carrying value of certain Other Real
Estate Owned (OREO) properties, while similar costs for 2012 were reduced to
only $48 thousand.
When comparing the results for the third quarter of 2012 to the same period in
2011, net interest income of $3.4 million for 2012 also showed positive
momentum, increasing by nearly $220 thousand or 7% compared to net interest
income of $3.2 million in 2011. For the three months ended in September,
noninterest income was $217 thousand for the third quarter of 2012 versus $139
thousand for the same period of 2011. The provision for credit losses for the
third quarter of 2012 was $308 thousand compared to $558 thousand for the
third quarter of 2011, a decrease of nearly $250 thousand or 45%. Total
expenses for the third quarter of 2012 were $2.7 million, which reflected an
increase of nearly $500 thousand over the $2.2 million in expenses for the
third quarter of 2011. The primary increase in expenses related to operating
our most recent branch addition in Annapolis which opened in the second
quarter of 2012. The remainder of the increase was largely due to professional
fees relating to expansion plans and other strategic projects.
The improvement in net interest income and overall revenues for 2012 was
primarily the result of continued balance sheet growth and decreases in the
cost of funding our asset growth. At September 30, 2012, total assets were
$368 million, an increase of $47.2 million or 15% over total assets of $321
million at the same point in 2011. Total loans ended the third quarter of 2012
at $299 million, an increase of $27.6 million or 10% over 2011, and total
deposits increased by $36.5 million or 15% to end the third quarter of 2012 at
$287 million. Included in the growth in deposits was an increase in
noninterest bearing deposits of $22.3 million, which represented year over
year growth of nearly 39%.
At September 30, 2011, Howard Bancorp, Inc. had total capital of $46.3 million
representing 12.57% of period end total assets. This is an increase of $9.9
million or 27% over total capital of $36.4 million or 11.34% of total assets
at September 30, 2011. The majority of the increase in capital was the common
stock offering which closed during the quarter.
In addition to the strengthening of our capital base, our asset quality
measures continue to improve. As of September 30, 2012 the bank had
non-accrual loans totaling $2.6 million, representing less than 1% of total
loans. The total of nonaccrual loans and OREO totaled $5.5 million at
September 30, 2012, which represented 1.51% of total assets, while this same
measure at the end of the third quarter of 2011 was 2.58%.
Chairman and CEO Mary Ann Scully stated, “We are always pleased to be able to
report progress on our goals of growth- in shareholder value, in earnings, and
in customer loans and deposits. This third quarter provided us with good news
on all those fronts. Today, many in our industry must follow a holding
strategy either because of capital scarcity, unattractive markets or economic
uncertainty, Howard Bancorp has made the decision to move forward. The
successful capital raise completed in the third quarter following the opening
of our newest branch in Annapolis and the creation of our Baltimore focused
relationship team are the end results of this commitment to our marketplace
and our belief in its strong opportunities. We believe that, in turn, it
reflects, our customers’ and shareholders’ faith in us.”
This press release contains statements that are forward-looking, as that term
is defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 or the
Securities and Exchange Commission in its rules, regulations, and releases.
The Company intends that such forward-looking statements be subject to the
safe harbors created thereby. All forward-looking statements are based on
current expectations regarding important risk factors, including but not
limited to real estate values, local and national economic conditions, and the
impact of interest rates on financing. Accordingly, actual results may differ
from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, and the making of such
statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company or any
other person that results expressed therein will be achieved. The Company does
not undertake, and specifically disclaims any obligation, to publicly release
the result of any revisions that may be made to any forward-looking statements
to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements or to
reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events.
Howard Bancorp, Inc.
thousands, Nine Months Ended Three Months Ended
except per share
September 30, September 30, September 30, September 30,
2012 2011 2012 2011
Net interest $ 9,957 $ 9,318 $ 3,412 $ 3,192
Provision for 650 740 308 558
Noninterest 549 503 216 139
Noninterest 7,843 7,357 2,659 2,212
Pretax Income 2,013 1,724 661 561
Income tax 831 693 274 224
Net income 1,182 1,031 387 337
Preferred (471 ) (278 ) (157 ) (115 )
available to $ 711 $ 753 $ 230 $ 222
Per share data
Net income per $ 0.24 $ 0.29 $ 0.06 $ 0.08
Book value per
common share $ 8.36 $ 9.04 $ 8.36 $ 9.04
shares 3,012,288 2,637,829 3,748,248 2,639,780
outstanding at 4,036,628 2,640,264 4,036,628 2,640,264
Total assets $ 368,481 $ 321,350 $ 368,481 $ 321,350
Loans and leases 298,814 271,209 298,814 271,209
Allowance for (2,733 ) (4,016 ) (2,733 ) (4,016 )
interest-earning 43,635 19,291 43,635 19,291
Total deposits 287,426 250,972 287,426 250,972
Borrowings 33,619 33,181 33,619 33,181
Shareholders’ 46,322 36,432 46,322 36,432
Common Equity 33,760 23,870 33,760 23,870
Return on 0.45 % 0.46 % 0.26 %
Return on 3.98 % 4.59 % 2.09 % 4.35 %
Net interest 4.00 % 4.37 % 3.94 % 4.37 %
loans to gross 0.89 % 1.42 % 0.89 % 1.42 %
credit losses to 0.91 % 1.48 % 0.91 % 1.48 %
loans and leases
assets to total 1.51 % 2.58 % 1.51 % 2.58 %
equity (TCE) 9.16 % 7.43 % 9.16 % 7.43 %
Total risk-based 15.83 % 14.38 % 15.83 % 14.38 %
risk-based 14.95 % 13.13 % 14.95 % 13.13 %
Leverage ratio 12.79 % 11.78 % 12.79 % 11.78 %
Additional information is available at www.howardbank.com.
Howard Bancorp, Inc.
George C. Coffman, 410-750-0020
Chief Financial Officer
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Headlight technology in the ’60s is nothing compared to what’s available today. Just like other automotive components such as tires, suspension, engines, transmissions and safety equipment, headlights have come leaps and bounds since the classic Ford cars we love were sold in the ’60s.
Speaking of safety equipment, headlights are among the most critical pieces of safety gear on any car. So, upgrading them is not only cool in terms of appearance and driving enjoyment, they’re the one thing that really needs to be on the money for nighttime driving. And the lights on older cars are almost always lacking when it comes time to try avoiding an accident.
Given that, we thought it would be a good idea touch on the subject of better headlights. But there’s more to it than just installing new headlights on an early car with electrical wiring that’s not designed to handle the power that modern halogen and Xenon headlights draw. And wiring is what this how-to mainly focuses on since actually swapping a headlight isn’t really a whole lot much more work than changing a household light bulb.
At one point we were wondering what sort of path to take on this subject until we came across a custom lighting kit that fits vintage Mustangs and other Ford cars such as a Falcon. Offered by Reenmachine, the package consists of a pair of Hella high-performance halogen H4 headlights and a modern high-output, relay-driven wiring harness.
The key to the whole system is the harness that essentially bypasses the car’s existing headlight wiring and employs the new wiring for a safe and effective upgrade of the whole arrangement. It’s a setup that looked really good and we’ve covered the installation here on a ’66 Mustang.
These days, seriously bright headlights are available for any car. The trouble with classic Fords is that the wiring in these older cars isn’t really designed to handle these high-wattage lights. Another problem is when using these high-output lights, the circuit breaker in the headlight switch will not handle the current. The cure for this problem is installing two relays, which are included in the wiring harness that comes with the Reenmachine package. The flat-faced Hella lights also look good as installed here in a ’66 Mustang.
The Reenmachine custom lighting system is pretty much a “plug-and-play” setup that can be installed in about an hour. It fits all Fords with two headlights. The included wiring harness is simply plugged into the car’s existing headlight harness via one of the old headlight plugs. From there, the harness is routed, connected to power and ground and the headlights are installed. Various “legs” of the harness are extra long to accommodate various mounting locations and routing. If there’s excessive leftover harness length, slack can be cut out and the wires can be securely respliced together (being careful to match the colors) or it can just be coiled up, zip-tied together and tucked out of sight. There’s plenty of room in the cavity behind the headlight buckets to hide the wires. Reenmachine also pre-installs the H4 halogen bulbs in the Hella headlight housings prior to shipping the systems out.
The lights themselves install just like changing a regular headlight. Begin by disconnecting the negative battery cable, then on ’65-’66 Mustangs, remove the headlight door. It’s held in place with four screws. Remove them and the door comes off to access the headlight retainer.
Loosen the three screws holding the formed sheetmetal headlight retainer. This should allow you to rotate the retainer (its holes are elongated) and remove it from the car. If you have the trouble, remove the screws altogether.
The old sealed-beam headlight should come right out and hang from the wiring. Unplug the old light from the wiring as shown and repeat for the other side. At this point, you should have both headlights removed with the ends of the old headlight harness hanging out of the holes in the headlight buckets.
Uncoil the new harness onto the floor and look it over. You’ll note it includes the two relays previously mentioned as well as a fuse, all of which are shown here. This is the main element of the harness. The rest of it is really just a male plug to connect it to the old harness in the car and two female plugs that connect to the new headlights.
Find a good mounting place for the relays and fuse. It’s unlikely you’ll need to access them later, but a suitable place for easy access is still a good idea. On this ’66 Mustang, we mounted the relays and fuse right outside from under the battery. Use the supplied self tapping screws to secure them in place as shown.
The completed installation of the relays and fuse in our subject car looks like this. Note the battery in the upper right corner of this photo.
The opening in this ’66 Mustang right above the battery was the perfect place to commence routing of the wiring harness. All three legs of the harness passed through here on the way to their required places. The two female plugs connect to each new bulb and the male plug connects to either one of the old headlight plugs. Run the harness so that each female plug comes through the hole in the back of each headlight bucket (where the old plugs came through) and so that the male plug is also in the vicinity of one of the old headlight plugs. For the cleanest routing of the harness, you’ll likely want to use the passenger-side old headlight plug nearby where the relays and fuse will also be. This is the one male plug already passed through to get to the old plug that came off the passenger-side headlight.
Once passed through, connect the one male plug to the old female headlight plug (in this case on the passenger side of the car). This is the secret to making this system work and negates having to do any rewiring in the car. When the new harness is plugged like this into the old one, it relegates the old harness to only having to deal with low currents passing through the old wiring and headlight switch. The current now going through the old wiring is only controlling the relays which, along with the new wiring, now handle the high current of the high-powered headlights. The unused old headlight plug is then tucked away back behind the headlight bucket.
The passenger-side female headlight plug is passed through the same hole in the inner fender above the battery…
…then pulled through to the headlight bucket and attached to one of the new Hella lights.
Once plugged in, the Hella light is reinstalled just like any regular headlight. Simply reverse the removal of the old light shown in steps 1-3.
With passenger-side light, relays and preliminary harness routing completed, we next moved on to the driver-side. This includes routing the driver-side connector underneath the radiator. We were able to get this leg of the harness inside the core support, run it underneath the radiator and then have it come out of this opening right next to the driver-side of the radiator.
Just like on the passenger-side, there’s an opening on the driver-side inner fender to run the female connector through the opening and to the headlight bucket.
Once threaded through, the female connector is plugged into the other new Hella light which has already been done here. Once the light is plugged in, thread the excess harness back behind the headlight bucket and into the fender as is being done here. The headlight is then installed and secured into place with same hardware as was used with the old lights and the headlight door is reinstalled.
Once the headlight is plugged in and installed and the excess wire is tucked into the fender, we went back and secured the underhood section of the harness with zip ties. Although the old headlight harness is no longer being used, it still serves a valuable purpose as a place to securely attach the new harness, as is being done here. Doing it this way really made for a clean routing job under the hood.
Here’s the new wiring harness zip-tied into place to the old headlight harness. This is the section of harness running from down near the driver-side of the radiator to the opening in the inner fenderwell.
With the headlights and harness installed, all that’s left is to connect the power (red) and ground (black) wires. Here an eyelet is attached to the red power wire. Attach another eyelet to the ground wire.
Connect the black wire to the negative battery terminal or other good ground. Be sure your ground connection is solid as electrical problems are often due to poor grounding.
Complete the installation by connecting the power wire to the positive battery terminal or the hot side of the starter solenoid as is being done here. Loosen and remove the nut on the solenoid, slip the eyelet onto the stud and reinstall the nut. Check over the whole wiring installation to make sure no wires are pinched, running over sharp edges or otherwise at risk for damage.
Four-Headlight Fords Too
The Reenmachine two-headlight package fits all years of vintage Mustangs (except for ’69s) and Falcons. For Mustangs, 1969 was the only year (vintage or late-model) that uses four smaller 5 ¾-inch lights instead of two 7-inch ones. Never fear, though, because if you have a ’69 Mustang or also some other four-headlight Ford car like a Galaxie, Fairlane or Torino, then you’re in luck. Reenmachine’s four-light system – that will also fit almost any classic car with four headlights – uses four Delta headlights (www.deltalights.com); a pair of low/high beams and a pair of highs. The included wiring harness installs very similarly to installing the harness in a two-light system. There are differences, though, such as that three old headlight plugs are retired rather than just one, but otherwise the wiring is basically the same. The Delta lights are also fantastic as hitting the high beams is like having full daylight right in front the car. This four-light system is also available from Reenmachine. |
Bent Larsen, a Danish-born chess grandmaster who was a perennial challenger for the world championship during the 1960s and ’70s, died on Sept. 9 in Buenos Aires, where he had lived for many years. He was 75.
Larsen, who was born in Tilsted, near Thisted in Denmark, represented Denmark twice in the World Junior Championship, in 1951 at Birmingham (placing fifth), and 1953 at Copenhagen (placing eighth). He never graduated in Civil Engineering, but decided to become a chess professional. He became an International Master at the age of 19 in 1954, from his bronze-medal performance on board one at the Amsterdam Olympiad. He won his first of six Danish Championships in 1954, and repeated in 1955, 1956, 1959, 1963, and 1964.
Larsen defeated Friðrik Ólafsson in an exhibition match at Oslo 1955 by 4½–3½. He won at Copenhagen 1956 with 8/9.
Larsen became an International Grandmaster in 1956 with his gold-medal performance on board one at the Moscow Olympiad. He tied for 1st–2nd places at Hastings 1956–57 on 6½/9 with Svetozar Gligorić. At Dallas 1957, he scored 7½/14 for a shared 3rd–4th place; the winners were Gligorić and Samuel Reshevsky.
At the 1957 Wageningen Zonal, he tied for 3rd–4th places, along with Jan Hein Donner, with 12½/17; there were only three qualifying berths, so the two players had to dispute a playoff match. Larsen won by 3–1 over Donner at The Hague 1958 to qualify for his first Interzonal, at Portorož 1958. Larsen could score only 8½/20 for 16th place, and was not close to qualifying. But he scored his first major individual international success by winning Mar del Plata 1958 with 12/15, ahead of William Lombardy, Erich Eliskases, Oscar Panno, and Herman Pilnik.
Larsen went into a slump beginning with the 1958 Interzonal. He tied 5th–6th in a powerful field at Zurich 1959 with 9½/15, behind winner Mikhail Tal, Gligorić, Paul Keres, and Bobby Fischer. But Larsen placed only 4th in a middle-range field at the 1960 Berg en Dal Zonal 1960 with 5½/9, and did not advance to the Interzonal. He recovered by sharing 1st–2nd places at Beverwijk 1961 on 7½/9 with Borislav Ivkov. At Zurich 1961, he tied for 6th–7th places with 6/11, as Keres won ahead of Tigran Petrosian. At Moscow 1962, he shared 7th–11th places with 7½/15 (Yuri Averbakh won).
Around this time Larsen diversified his style, switching over to risky and unusual openings in some of his games, to try to throw his opponents off balance; this led to the recovery of his form and further development of his chess. He finished 2nd at the 1963 Halle Zonal with 13/19, behind winner Lajos Portisch, to advance to the Interzonal the next year. At Belgrade 1964, he shared 5th–6th places with 10/17 (Boris Spassky won). He tied for 5th–7th places at Beverwijk 1964 on 9½/15; Keres and Nei won. Larsen’s unusual openings were on full display at the 1964 Amsterdam Interzonal, where he shared the 1st–4th places on 17/23 with Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, and Vasily Smyslov, advancing as a Candidate.
In the 1965 Candidates’ matches, he first defeated Borislav Ivkov at Bled by 5½–2½, but lost in the semi-final, also at Bled by 4½–5½ to former world champion Mikhail Tal. He won a playoff match for alternates, an eventual third-place Candidates’ position, against Efim Geller by 5–4 at Copenhagen 1966. In 1967 he won the Sousse Interzonal after Fischer withdrew, then won his first-round match against Lajos Portisch by 5½–4½ at Porec 1968. In Malmö, however, he lost the semi-final by 2½–5½ to Boris Spassky, who went on to win the title.
In 1970 he shared 2nd in the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal, on 15/23, behind Bobby Fischer. He reached his top rank in the Elo rating system at the start of 1971, equal third in the world (with Korchnoi, behind Fischer and Spassky) with a rating of 2660. He then defeated Wolfgang Uhlmann by 5½–3½ at Las Palmas 1971. But then he lost the semi-final 0–6 at Denver to Fischer, who also went on to win the title.
Larsen later claimed in a Kasparov.com interview (1998) that his one-sided loss to Fischer was due in part to his condition during the match: “The organizers chose the wrong time for this match. I was languid with the heat and Fischer was better prepared for such exceptional circumstances… I saw chess pieces through a mist and, thus, my level of playing was not good.”
In 1973 he failed to advance from the Leningrad Interzonal; he tied for 5th–6th places with 10/17, with Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi winning. In 1976 he won the Biel Interzonal, but lost his 1977 Candidates’ match, a rematch of their 1968 encounter, to Lajos Portisch by 3½–6½ at Rotterdam. In the Riga Interzonal of 1979, Larsen scored 10/17 for 7th place, and did not advance.
Larsen was known as a deep thinking and highly imaginative player, more willing to try unorthodox ideas and to take risks than most of his peers. This aspect of his play could even manifest itself in his choice of openings. “He is a firm believer in the value of surprise. Consequently, he often resorts to dubious variations in various openings. He also likes to complicate positions even though it may involve considerable risk. He has a great deal of confidence in his game and fears no one. His unique style has proven extremely effective against relatively weak opponents but has not been too successful against top-notchers.”
He was one of the very few modern Grandmasters to have employed Bird’s Opening (1.f4) with any regularity, and had a long-term association with the move 1.b3, a system commonly known as Larsen’s Opening or the Nimzo-Larsen Attack in his (and Aron Nimzowitsch’s) honor. He played the Dutch Defence with success at a time when the opening was rarely seen at the top level. He revived the almost dormant Bishop’s Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Bc4) with success in 1964 and explored new ways for Black to seek activity in the Philidor Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6). He was also the first top player to successfully use the Grand Prix Attack against the Sicilian Defence (1.e4 c5 2.f4), spurring a sudden and sustained gain in its popularity. In the mid-1960s, he showed surprising faith in Alekhine’s Defence (1.e4 Nf6) and even employed it on important occasions. He played the rare Scandinavian Defence 1.e4 d5 to defeat World Champion Anatoly Karpov in 1979, sparking renewed interest in that variation. A favorite line in the Caro-Kann Defence (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ gxf6) is co-named for him and David Bronstein; the idea is to accept a weakness to the Black pawn structure in exchange for an unbalancing of the position and retaining the bishop pair.
The Grünfeld Defence (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5) was another opening that became a frequent choice of Larsen with the Black pieces and similarly, he placed considerable reliance on Grunfeld-Indian systems as White. This led him to co-author a groundbreaking 1979 book (with Steffen Zeuthen) on this opening and similar structures (ZOOM 001—Zero Hour for Operative Opening Models). His book of 50 Selected Games (1968) is renowned for its pithy annotations which delve into chess psychology and the effective use of rare openings.
Larsen is respected as an excellent writer who reaches out to his readers; he was one of seven top Grandmasters who wrote fine chapters for the 1974 book How to Open a Chess Game. He edited the tournament book for San Antonio 1972.
###pgn###[Event "Portoroz Interzonal"]
[Event "Santa Monica Rd: 6"] [Site "Santa Monica Rd: 6"] [Date "1966.??.??"] [EventDate "?"] [Round "?"] [Result "0-1"] [White "Robert James Fischer"] [Black "Bent Larsen"] [ECO "C82"] [WhiteElo "?"] [BlackElo "?"] [PlyCount "60"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Nxe4 6. d4 b5 7. Bb3 d5 8. dxe5 Be6 9. c3 Bc5 10. Nbd2 O-O 11. Bc2 Bf5 12. Nb3 Bg4 13. Nxc5 Nxc5 14. Re1 Re8 15. Be3 Ne6 16. Qd3 g6 17. Bh6 Ne7 18. Nd4 Bf5 19. Nxf5 Nxf5 20. Bd2 Qh4 21. Qf1 Nc5 22. g3 Qc4 23. Qg2 Nd3 24. Bxd3 Qxd3 25. Bg5 c6 26. g4 Ng7 27. Re3 Qd2 28. b3 b4 29. Qh3 bxc3 30. Qh6 Ne6 0-1
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Here are some tips how you can encounter the other classes you will face while playing Battlefield Heroes. If you don't want to read everything, you can find a little summary under the single topics.
Use the SMG
against short/medium range targets (When available with Burning Bullets), the pistol
against enemies far away, TNT
against tanks. Never ever use your TNT against infantry. Always try to get from behind or from the side, Sixth sense
can help you. Use your camera to look around corners. Try not to walk great distances without any cover nearby. When under fire, locate your enemy and evade by moving left and right. Only move backwards when you want to flee (or want to keep the distance to a Gunner/Knifer, of course). Moving backwards wont help you evading your enemy's bullets.
When you're low on health, draw back and use bandages + CM to get full health again.
- SMG -> short/medium distances, pistol -> far distances, TNT -> tanks
- Use Sixth Sense for an overview over the battlefield, attack your enemies from behind
- Watch out for Snipers, try to always have some cover around you
- When under fire, evade by moving left and right
As long as Gunner do not have Leg It
activated, they aren't difficult to handle. Activate Burning Bullets and simply shoot him up. When he is still „far“ away, use your pistol to damage him before the real fight begins. This is more effective than shooting with your SMG. If he gets too close, use Blasting Strike
to get him away. Try avoiding kegs
, as they slow you down and deal nice damage. Also try not to be thrown in the air by bazooka shots, it makes you an easy target as you can't move while flying.
When a Gunner has Leg It, it's quite hard to aim. Again: Try to keep your distance, though it's really hard. High level Blasting Strike
can save your life. When he's close with his shotgun, jumping can save a lot of hitpoints. Don't throw grenades on a Gunner with Leg It. He can easily evade them.
- Keep your distance to the Gunner, e.g. with Blasting Strike
- Avoid kegs and bazooka rockets
- Use your pistol as long as he is still far away
I think you just have to be better than your opponent. Both of you can have the same equipment. However, you can do some thing which will increase the chance you'll win the fight: Surprise your enemy
by coming from behind/the side can give you the upper hand as well as jumping while in very close ranges. If you don't know whether he has Blasting Strike
or not, watch out for obstacles behind you
. It can deal ugly amounts of damage if you get thrown at the wall right behind you (I already lost ~60 damage from one BS). Additionally, try to evade the Grenade Spam
of your opponent (or normal grenades he might throw. I don't recommend to do this unless you are really
good with them, as you have to hit your opponent directly
- Come from behind, use Sixth Sense
- Avoid being crushed by Blasting Strike
- Don't use Grenade Spam or normal grenades as they are easy to evade
There will be two "types" of Commandos you will encounter: Melee Commandos
(Pistol or Knife) and Sniper
(or even worse: camper ^^). Pistol commandos are easy to kill, most use the short, fast range pistol, and hardly ever I've been killed by such a Commando. Just shoot him up.
are a way more dangerous. If you fight against a skilled knifing Commando, you may have a problem. If you have Blasting Strike
, then blast him away. If don't have BS yet, just try to shoot him up. In any case, use Burning Bullets
. Some Shots with BB + BS should kill a Commando if you throw him against an obstacle. If you get knifed, never ever just move straight backwards! Move left and right, try to evade the stabs
. As a Commando is much faster than you, he can easily kill you when you just move in one direction. Additionally, the knife has a rate of fire, too. Most Commandos just hold their left mouse button down, so try to adjust your movement
to his stabs.
Playing with sound
can tell you a Commando is sneaking up behind you when you hear the Elixir sound.
are a greater problem. When you see a sniping Commando, grab your pistol
, aim and shoot him. Most Commandos are dead before they realize they are being shot.
If you're the one being shot, first use Combat Medicine
. Most bullets deal more than 40 damage, so there is no need to wait with CM. Now, there are two possibilities: 1. You have cover, so hide. 2. There is no cover you can reach before getting shot. So try to locate the Commando (can be tricky especially when the Commando is very far away). You can use your SMG
with Burning Bullets
to try to ignite him. Or you take your pistol
and try to shoot him with it. If I see the Commando is not too far away, I first ignite him and then try to shoot him with the pistol. It depends on the distance which weapon is more effective.
Of course always try to evade
the sniper bullets. Don't move straight on, run in irregular circles for example. I don't know how to describe it exactly, I think you know what I mean
Playing with sound can save your life. If you hear the Piercing shot sound
, jump, duck or at least try somehow to dodge the bullet.
- Use Blasting Strike against melee Commandos
- Try to evade the stabs of Knifer by strafing and jumping
- Use the pistol against sniping Commandos who are not shooting at you
- If you get shot, heal and hide
- "Reveal" Commandos' invisibility with Burning Bullets
This is the greatest problem as a Soldier. You are slow, you don't have a speed buff to get close to the tank (which is necessary to get your TNT on the tank) and you can't damage it from far away. The only ability which can help you is (beside CM, of course) Blasting Strike. You can use it turn the tank upside down (Best solution, but you have to throw him against an obstacle or he will unlikely flip over) or at least throw him away, giving you time to either flee or put a TNT on it.
Also remember you can use BS to prevent a tank smash.
Though many people throw their Grenade Spam on tanks, it nearly doesn't deal any damage unless you get most of your grenades right under the tank. But most tank driver will just evade them. I would not waste time on trying to kill a tank with GS.
When close to a tank, try to get your TNT at the end or the front. Stay at his side, neither he can shoot you nor he can run over you. When you know your TNT will finish the tank, try to shoot it with your SMG. Most drivers will leave their tank when they're low on health and hear a TNT is going to explode. Shooting the TNT can surprise your opponent.
When you have a tank yourself, aim for the sides of the enemy tank.
You always quit a vehicle on the left side when you were driving. So if a Commando leaves his tank, you know where to look for him. Don't forget Burning Bullets to be able to track him once you hit him.
- Use Blasting Strike to prevent tank smashes, flip the tank over or to buy some time
- Aim for the sides of the tank
- He can't hurt you when you're right next to him
- Shoot your TNT
- Don't use Grenade Spam, it's useless
Well, your greatest worth in a team are your two shareable skills: Combat Medicine
and Sixth Sense
(Yes, 6th Sense is shareable
). When your group faces one or multiple enemies, wait a bit until you think one or more people in the group could use a CM. Try to alternate with the other soldiers: There's no need for your CM if a Soldier just activated his. Also, stay in the middle of the group to make sure everyone is affected by CM.
When you're walking in a group, 6th Sense is handy, because your mates can better throw their kegs/grenades/Grenade Spams.
And please, if someone in front of you does the „I need a medic“-Emote and maybe even looks (or shoots) at you, activate your CM. You will easily survive the 12 seconds you're left without it.
When playing with friends (and all of you have a headset + microphone), use a voice program like Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Skype, Shockvoice or even ICQ or X-Fire.
It helps you to stay together or to coordinate which abilities everyone takes with him (2 Gunner can support a whole team with permanent Leg It when they both have level 3 Leg It, for example). It also saves time because you don't have to use the (crappy) ingame chat. And it's simply more fun when you have someone to talk to
- Share Sixth Sense and Combat Medicine
- Alternate with your teammates
- Use voice programs while playing with (a) friend(s) |
7500 Rialto Boulevard
Austin, TX 78735 – Source
105 S. Canyonwood Drive
Dripping Springs, TX 78620 – Source
BBB Listed Address
6060 North Central Expressway
Dallas, TX 75206 – Source. Interestingly this appears to actually be the address for The Sartin Law Firm. Not sure of relationship to Heritage Debt Relief.
Domain registered on December 27, 2007. unable to verify domain ownership.
Debt settlement company.
Robert Martinez –
Company was registered in Texas on December 27, 2007. – Source
1-800-406-6624 (Toll Free)
Client Relations Department:
800-406-3521 (Toll Free)
As with much debt settlement marketing information, in my opinion, I find that the message about options is slanted towards debt settlement, including on this site. This impression began with the fact that when talking about debt settlement the debt settlement options page talks about the benefits of debt settlement while all the other options of bankruptcy, debt consolidation, credit counseling, or doing nothing are all presented with drawback headers.
Now I get that the purpose appears to be to sell debt settlement but the information is slanted to do that, not provide visitors with a fair and balanced information in which to make an informed decision.
See pictures below of the headers and notice expressions of people in headers.
I found the information presented on the options pages to create some issues for me. I don’t have time to review every page so let’s look at just the debt settlement and bankruptcy option pages.
On the debt settlement options page:
- “Debt settlement, also known as debt negotiation, is the most cost-effective option to pay off your debts and relieve you of having to file bankruptcy.” – Source
- “Debt settlement is a proactive approach for debtors experiencing the stress of too much debt.” – Source
- “Through negotiation, our program will reduce your debt to a fraction of what you currently owe. So, you end up paying only a percentage of the debt.” – Source
- “Our program is custom-built for each client’s personal and financial situation, and level of debt, in order to make the process as quick and affordable for you.” – Source
It is my opinion that debt settlement is not the most cost-effective when many companies charge 15% of the debt enrolled in a program as a fee for services. This, on top of the late fees, penalties, and possibly legal charges when the customer is sued by their creditors, leaves debt settlement three, four or five times more expensive than bankruptcy which gives the consumer superior legal protection, stops collection calls and ends all lawsuits.
I struggle to see how debt settlement can be labeled a pro-active approach when by its very nature it is an approach when the consumer intentionally stops paying their bills and becomes delinquent on their debts which begins collection activity and can lead to being sued. Many say the process of intensive collections and being sued is extremely stressful. In fact collection pressure is the leading trigger for bankruptcy.
It appears they claim that through their negotiation their program will reduce your debt to a fraction of what you owe but what is not presented is that typically the number of people that actually settle debts across debt settlement programs is very low. Their statement might make the average reader think that all their debt included will be reduce to a low amount but I simply believe that not to be true for all their clients. And the 75% debt reduction figure is presented on the site in numerous place so it looks fairly dangerous that an uneducated reader might believe that all of their debt would be negotiated to achieve this result.
Typically debt settlement programs are designed for the consumer to pay what they can afford each month into an escrow account from which debt settlement fees are typically extracted first and then over time a balance will accrue to use for settling the debt. So unless their statement about being quick and affordable means that they will collect their fees on the back end as a percentage of savings so debts can be settled right away, I don’t see how that statement is helpful.
On the bankruptcy options page:
- “Bankruptcy can be invasive, expensive and stay on your credit report for up to 10 years.” – Source
- “Sometimes bankruptcy is the best option for debtors, but it is generally considered a last resort.” – Source
- “Debtors can leave bankruptcy court with heavy financial obligations due to court and attorney fees” – Source
- “Assets such as homes and business may sometimes be taken for payment.” – Source
- “You have to explain yourself to a judge and to some creditors, which can be invasive and embarrassing.” – Source
- “Bankruptcy remains on your credit report for up to 10 years. And, it may be very difficult to get a loan – even after the bankruptcy is over.” – Source
- “A recent bankruptcy law revision makes it more difficult to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy. As a result, many bankruptcy filers file Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which is essentially a repayment plan like you would find with a consumer credit counseling program.” – Source
Bankruptcy costs far less than the fees charged by most debt settlement companies. The statement they make does not put the fees into any sort of context so let me. In a typical debt settlement program the company will charge 15% of enrolled debt plus you will pay a monthly fee over the life of the program. Let’s say it takes four years and the monthly fee is $40 and the enrolled debt is $50,000. The total fee paid would be $9,420. Bankruptcy costs between $1,250 to about $2,500. That’s 13% to 27% of the cost of debt settlement. Rather than “expensive” it is actually cheaper than debt settlement.
A Chapter 13 bankruptcy will remain on the credit report for up to seven years, the same as the bad debt as the result of a debt settlement program. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy will remain on your credit report for up to ten years but I have seen examples where a Chapter 7 bankruptcy had been removed after seven years as well. I’m not sure how it could be stated that a bankruptcy is “invasive.” In a bankruptcy filing you list your financial condition, assets, income, and liabilities. Nobody is asking you about your sex life.
Saying that bankruptcy is a last resort is not a supported statement I think they can make. The number of people that file bankruptcy each year far, far exceeds the number of people that successfully settle their debt through a debt settlement program. In fact, is a consumer want to stop all collection activity cold, stop wage garnishment or block lawsuits to collect debt, and wanted a fresh start quickly in a matter of months instead of years, then bankruptcy is not the last resort, it’s the first.
I can’t even begin to understand the statement about leaving court with “heavy financial obligations” due to fees. The court fee for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy is $299. – Source. And the attorney fees are much less than typical debt settlement fees.
I asked a bankruptcy attorney to give me feedback on the statement “Assets such as homes and business may sometimes be taken for payment.” He confirmed that in his experience, less than 1% of Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases were asset cases where the trustee liquidates and administers the asset. The vast majority (90%+) of assets liquidated and administered are tax refunds. So let’s put that into context. Chapter 7, or possible asset liquidation cases account for 70% of all non-business bankruptcy filings. Out of that number only about 1% of those are asset liquidation cases and 90% of those are tax refunds and not homes or businesses. – Source
The statement made that the person has to explain themselves to a judge and creditors is not accurate in my opinion. When the debtor goes to court they see the bankruptcy trustee who may ask them to confirm their bankruptcy filing and may ask them some questions. Creditors rarely appear. Again, any questions asked are going to be about the facts presented on the bankruptcy filing, not about your sex life.
I already addressed the credit report statement. The issue about being very difficult to get a loan after bankruptcy is not true in my experience. People find that immediately after their bankruptcy discharge they will begin to get offers for credit. If someone makes an effort to rebuild their credit they can be approved for loans for homes and cars in a relatively short period of time.
The recent changes in the bankruptcy laws they speak about went into effect in 2005. Hardly seems recent. And as I pointed out most bankruptcy filings, 70%, are not Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings. They also say that a Chapter 13 “is essentially a repayment plan like you would find with a consumer credit counseling program.” That statement is not true. A Chapter 13 repayment is based upon the disposable income available after factoring in approved expenses. This monthly payment may result in say 10% of debt being repaid at 0% interest while a credit counseling program will repay 100% of the debt at an interest rate determined by the creditor. The two repayment approaches are nothing alike except that a payment will be made monthly.
The attorney I asked to look at the statements made on the page said, “To me the information on Heritage Debt Relief’s web site seems intended to scare consumers aware from filing bankruptcy through misinformation.”
The FAQ Page
I’m not going to launch into another extensive review of a page, at some point I have to stop, but what I did find shockingly missing was information about the tax implications of settling a debt and information about the possibility of being sued by a creditor while in debt settlement. – Source
One More Thing
The site certainly gives the impression that debt can be reduced up to 75%. See the header below that appears in home page flash movie.
But in their own example of settled accounts, below, the average settlement was for 67% and not the 75% they appear to promote. – Source
This video accompanies the written review I wrote at GetOutOfDebt.org/17657 about the Heritage Debt Settlement Web Site.
Heritage Debt Relief Debt Settlement – Lower Resolution Version
Heritage Debt Relief Debt Settlement – Part 1
Heritage Debt Relief Debt Settlement – Part 2
BBB Reviews & Ratings
BBB review at the time I did this review.
One BBB complaint.
Picture of Web Site
Is This Your Company?
If this is a review is about your company and you would like to respond to the information I’ve presented here to possibly put it into a broader context or make a correction, please feel free to post your response in the comments section below. I invite you to read my Debt Relief Company and Site Review Policy first. |
It’s time to put a wrap on an interesting Week 12 that will be remembered for its blowouts, a wild overtime thriller and a signature victory by Michigan State that clinched at least a share of the Legends Division crown for the Spartans. With that said, here’s a wrap on Week 12 in the Big Ten.
Biggest surprise: Michigan State pulling away from Nebraska and winning fairly easily. The final was 41-28. But, the Huskers added what essentially was a meaningless touchdown in the waning seconds to tighten the margin. Yes, this game was close for most of the contest, but Michigan State asserted its control with a strong ground game. It also helped that Nebraska had five turnovers. MSU now has at least a share of the Legends Division title.
Biggest disappointment: Nebraska. The Huskers had a great chance to make it three wins in a row and set up a glorious finish to 2013 but fell at home to Michigan State, 41-28. If not for five turnovers and not having injured Taylor Martinez, the Cornhuskers may have been able to secure a victory. Aside from the turnovers, the offense did its part, gaining more yards (392) than any team has on the Spartans’ vaunted defense in 2013. Still, it wasn’t enough.
Best play: Loved the pick six by Ohio State’s Bradley Roby. In the first quarter at Illinois, he leaped, snagged the ball and raced 63 yards for a touchdown. Beautiful.
Play this again: Michigan 27, Northwestern 19, 3 OTs. The game featured only field goals in regulation, going to overtime at 9-9. The Wolverines forced extra time by kicking a 44-yard field goal as time expired. It was a wild finish, as Northwestern’s losing skid is now six games. Michigan gained a bit of relief after suffering losses at Michigan State and to Nebraska.
Never play this again: Wisconsin 51, Indiana 3. This series has been ultra-lopsided in recent years. The Badgers have won the last nine meetings. The fewest points they have scored is 33 and 31. Wisconsin has scored over 50 in six of the last nine meetings. The last four have been especially brutal, as Wisconsin has outscored Indiana, 255-44. That comes out to an average of 63.8 points in those four wins.
WEEK 12 GRADES
Michigan State: A-
Ohio State: A-
Penn State: A
– Braxton Miller. He continues his torrid pace. At Illinois, the Ohio State quarterback completed 13-of-29 passes for 150 yards and two touchdowns and ran 16 times for 184 yards and a score, averaging 11.5 yards per tote.
– Carlos Hyde. The big fella didn’t get the start. But, it didn’t matter. The Buckeye back battered Illinois for 246 yards rushing, averaging 10.3 yards per carry with four touchdowns.
– Zach Zwinak. The brutish Penn State back rumbled for 149 yards and three touchdowns. Purdue didn’t want to tackle him.
– Danny Etling. The true freshman signal-caller continues to make strides. He hit 21-of-33 passes for 223 yards with a touchdown and interception for Purdue in one of his better efforts this season. The 21 points were the most the Boilers have scored all season in Big Ten play.
– Brendan Gibbons. The Michigan kicker raced onto the field in the dying seconds to kick a 44-yard field goal to force overtime vs. Northwestern.
– Wisconsin ground game. It pounded Indiana for 554 yards rushing. The Badgers had 323 yards rushing at halftime and almost broke the school single-game mark they set last year vs. Indiana when they rushed for 564.
[ MORE: See what Dienhart learned in Week 12 ]
– Buckeye win streak: It’s now 22 in a row with games left vs. Indiana and at Michigan.
– Penn State offense. It had its way with Purdue, notching 501 yards with 289 coming on the ground. The Nittany Lions also converted 10-of-12 third downs, as Penn State is assured of at least a .500 record.
– Allen Robinson. He broke his own Penn State single-season record for receptions, finishing with eight catches for 98 yards. Robinson also holds the school record for single-season receiving yards.
– Michigan State’s title hopes. The win clinched at least a share of the Legends Crown for the Spartans.
– James White and Melvin Gordon. The dynamic duo was at it again. White ran for a career-high 205 yards, including a school-record 93-yard TD jaunt, and Gordon rushed for 146 vs. Indiana. Oh, and true freshman Corey Clement went for 108 yards rushing.
– Jeremy Gallon. The Michigan wideout had 10 catches for 115 yards vs. NU.
– Ohio State offense. The unit notched 591 yards and 60 points at Illinois. The Buckeyes ran 42 times for 441 yards, averaging 10.5 yards per carry, as OSU built a 35-7 second quarter lead and cruised.
– Nathan Scheelhaase. The Illinois quarterback kept firing, hitting 33-of-50 passes for 288 yards with two touchdowns and two picks. He rallied the Illini to 35-21 in the third quarter, but OSU pulled away as Scheelhaase was sacked five times.
– Ameer Abdullah. The Nebraska back keeps on keeping on, running 22 times for 123 yards. It was his ninth 100-yard game in 2013 and gives him a Big Ten-high 1,336 yards for the season.
– Michigan ground game. After notching minus-69 yards rushing in the previous two games, the Wolverines ran 44 times for 139 yards (3.2 ypc). Hey, it’s a start.
– Wisconsin defense. It did a number on the Indiana quarterbacks. Nate Sudfeld hit just 9-of-22 passes for 99 yards with a pick; Tre Roberson completed only 3-of-8 for 23 yards.
– Steve Hull. The Illinois wideout grabbed eight passes for 105 yards and a score. He had nine catches for 224 yards and two scores the week before.
– OSU in the first quarter. No team starts faster, as OSU’s 192 first-quarter points lead all of college football.
– Jeremy Langford. The Michigan State back has rushed for 100 yards in six games in a row, running for 721 yards in that span. He had a career-high 151 today with three touchdowns.
– Nebraska offense. Yes, it had 392 yards—the most Michigan State has allowed all season. But there also were four turnovers. (A fifth came on a muffed punt.)
– Indiana offense. This prolific attack was muted by Wisconsin, notching just three points. IU entered the game No. 2 in the Big Ten in total offense, averaging 527 yards. But the Hoosiers had just 224 vs. the Badgers. And IU was held scoreless in just three quarters all season; it matched that today.
– Purdue ground game. It continues to struggle mightily, running 20 times for 38 yards (1.9 ypc). Purdue had one yard rushing at halftime. The attack was sloppy overall, committing three turnovers (two fumbles and a pick).
– Indiana defense. It yielded seven runs of 30 or more yards vs. Wisconsin.
– Northwestern offense. Just one touchdown in four quarters and three OT sessions? And only 322 yards? Not gonna cut it.
– Tommy Armstrong, Jr. The Nebraska redshirt freshman showed his youth, hitting just 9-of-21 passes for 143 yards with two TDs and a pick.
– Northwestern. That’s six losses in a row for NU after a 4-0 start. One more defeat, and the Wildcats can forget about playing in a bowl. During the rough patch, Northwestern has lost twice in overtime (Iowa and Michigan), on a Hail Mary (Nebraska) and by three points (Minnesota).
– Illinois in Big Ten play. The Fighting Illini now have lost 20 conference games in a row. That’s the second-longest skein in league history.
– Indiana bowl hopes. They hang in the balance, as the Hoosiers now must win at Ohio State and vs. Purdue to get to six wins.
SNEAK PEEK AHEAD
It’s a rare full week of action with all 12 teams playing. But, honestly, there aren’t any big-time games. Wisconsin’s game at Minnesota in the battle for Paul Bunyan’s Axe is the most interesting. The Badgers have won five in a row; the Gophers have won four in a row and still harbor Legends Division title hopes. Michigan State will try to stay perfect in Big Ten play at Northwestern in a potential trapdoor game. Ohio State should get win No. 23 in a row when Indiana visits. Illinois is at Purdue, as both teams are desperate for a victory. Illinois has lost six in a row; Purdue has lost eight in a row.
|About Tom Dienhart||BTN.com senior writer Tom Dienhart is a veteran sports journalist who covers Big Ten football and men’s basketball for BTN.com and BTN TV. Find him on Twitter and Facebook, read all of his work at btn.com/tomdienhart, and subscribe to his posts via RSS. Also, send questions to his weekly mailbag using the form below and read all of his previous answers in his reader mailbag section.|
And if you want to leave a comment on this post, use the box below. All comments need to be approved by a moderator. |
Fox Defends Wealthy From Tax Increases With Misleading "8.5 Days" Talking Point
As part of its ongoing effort to fight tax increases on the wealthy, Fox News figures have suggested that ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't affect the deficit because that money would only run the government for eight and a half days. But economists agree that ending these tax cuts would raise a significant amount of revenue and that more tax revenue must be part of balanced approach to reducing the deficit.
Fox Spin: Expiration Of Bush Tax Cuts Won't Fix Deficit Because It Would Only "Run The Government For 8.5 Days"
Sean Hannity: "Letting The Bush Tax Cuts Expire" Is "Not The Answer To Tackling This Deficit." On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity called "letting the Bush tax cuts expire" a "liberal myth" and claimed it is "not the answer to tackling the 2012 deficit" because it would only fund the government "for a whopping eight and a half days":
HANNITY: Now, liberal myths, such as letting the Bush tax cuts expire, are not the answer to tackling this deficit. In fact, during the 2012 fiscal year, the federal government cost $9.7 billion to run each and every day. But the additional revenue from the Bush tax cuts expire -- well, that only amounts to $82 billion dollars a year. That means the government would be funded for a whopping eight and a half days - if, in fact, the President wins this fight. [Fox News, Hannity, 11/26/12]
Eric Bolling: "If You Go Ahead And Let The Bush Tax Cuts Expire, You Raise $83 Billion. That's About Eight Days' Worth Of Government." Co-host of Fox's The Five Eric Bolling claimed, "If you go ahead and let the Bush tax cuts expire, you raise $83 billion. That's about eight days' worth of government, eight or nine days' worth of government." [Fox News, The Five, 11/26/12 ]
Fox's Mike Emanuel: "Allowing Bush Tax Cuts To Expire ... Would Run The Government For 8.5 Days." Fox News correspondent Mike Emanuel claimed during a report on Fox News' Special Report that "allowing the Bush tax cuts on upper-income Americans to expire, which President Obama argued for during the campaign, would generate an average of $82.4 billion per year, and would run the government for 8.5 days." [Fox News, Special Report, 11/26/12 ]
Lou Dobbs: "Allowing The Bush Tax Cuts To Expire On Upper Income Americans Would ... Run The Government For Eight And A Half Days." Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said "a Congressional Budget Office's analysis shows that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on upper-income Americans would generate approximately $82 billion a year, or enough to run the government for eight and a half days. Eight and a half days." [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs Tonight, 11/26/12 ]
But Experts Say Ending Bush Tax Cuts Will Help Lower The Deficit ...
NY Times: President Obama's Proposal To Allow The Bush Tax Cuts To Expire For Wealthier Americans Would Raise $850 Billion Dollars In A Decade. The New York Times reported that "economists estimate that letting the cuts expire for people above that threshold would generate $850 billion over 10 years":
President Obama, drawing a contrast with what he called Republican trickle-down economics, called on Monday for temporarily extending the Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 while letting the taxes of the wealthiest go up.
A one-year extension for people making under $250,000 would cost the government $150 billion in revenue, the administration estimates, an amount that would be added to the deficit. In a point of comparison, economists estimate that letting the cuts expire for people above that threshold would generate $850 billion over 10 years. [The New York Times, 7/9/12 ]
Robert Reich: "The Only Way America Can Reduce The Long-Term Budget Deficit ... Is By Raising Taxes On The Super Rich." In a Huffington Post blog post titled "Why We Must Raise Taxes On The Rich," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich argued that "[t]he only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit ... is by raising taxes on the super rich":
Here's the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich. Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big agriculture, and big Pharma -- even if we cut back on our bloated defense budget -- it wouldn't be nearly enough. [The Huffington Post, 4/4/11 ]
CBO: Extending The Bush Tax Cuts Would Increase Deficits By $2.6 Trillion Over 10 Years. In January 2010, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 would increase deficits by $2.6 trillion between 2011-2020. [Congressional Budget Office, January 2010 ]
... And Economists Agree Revenue Must Be Part Of A Balanced Solution To Lowering The Deficit ...
Former Bush Economic Adviser Believes "Both Tax Increases And Spending Cuts Are Required" To Lower Deficit. From The Hill:
America has both a spending problem and a revenue problem -- too much of the former and too little of the latter. Every serious student of the federal budget, right, left and center, agrees that any realistic solution requires a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases.
Democrats and Republicans on the Simpson-Bowles Commission knew that both revenue increases and spending cuts were necessary to deal effectively with our deficit problem.
N. Gregory Mankiw, the chairman of George Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, knows both tax increases and spending cuts are required. Indeed, Mankiw argues, "The distinction between spending and taxation is often murky and sometimes meaningless." [The Hill, 6/28/11 ]
Former Reagan OMB Official: "I Think The Biggest Problem Is Revenues." In an interview with Talking Points Memo, David Stockman, a former Office of Management and Budget director under President Reagan, responded to Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budget plan and stated: "I think the biggest problem is revenues. It is simply unrealistic to say that raising revenue isn't part of the solution. It's a measure of how far off the deep end Republicans have gone with this religious catechism about taxes." [Talking Points Memo, 4/11/11 ]
Krugman: "Government Spending Has Continued To Rise More Or Less On Its Pre-Crisis Trend" While "Revenue Has Plunged." In an October 17, 2010, post on his New York Times blog, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote:
For all those commenters saying that we must have had a surge in government spending -- I mean, look at the deficit! -- a simple picture:
Government spending has continued to rise more or less on its pre-crisis trend. Revenue has plunged, because the economy is deeply depressed. [NYTimes.com, 10/17/10 ]
Krugman: Since 2007, "Revenue Plunged, Leading To Big Deficits." In an October 18, 2010, post on his New York Times blog, Krugman wrote:
During the pre-crisis period, spending grew slightly faster than GDP -- that's Medicare plus the Bush wars -- while revenue grew more slowly, presumably reflecting tax cuts.
What happened after the crisis? Spending continued to grow at roughly the same rate -- a bulge in safety net programs, offset by budget-slashing at the state and local level. GDP stalled -- which is why the ratio of spending to GDP rose. And revenue plunged, leading to big deficits.
But I'm sure that the usual suspects will find ways to keep believing that it's all about runaway spending.
Krugman also included this chart:
[NYTimes.com, 10/18/10 ]
For more experts who say that increasing government revenue must be part of a deficit solution, click here .
... Which Is The Solution Obama Has Called For
Obama's Deficit Reduction Plan "Would Cut $2.50 In Spending Allowances For Every $1 Of Increased Tax Revenue." A September 9 CBS article reported that Obama's plan for reducing the deficit "would cut $2.50 in spending allowances for every $1 of increased tax revenue - the same deal House Republicans turned down during last year's near-government shutdown episode." The article continued:
"You can't reduce the deficit unless you take a balanced approach that says, 'We've gotta make government leaner and more efficient,'" the president said. "But we've also got to ask people - like me or Gov. Romney, who have done better than anybody else over the course of the last decade, and whose taxes are just about lower than they've been in the last 50 years - to do a little bit more. [CBSNews.com, 9/9/12 ]
Obama: "We've Got To Reduce Our Deficit, But We've Got To Do It In A Balanced Way" During the October 17 presidential debate, Obama said that he wanted to lower the deficit by both taxing the wealthiest Americans and cutting spending:
OBAMA: We've got to reduce our deficit, but we've got to do it in a balanced way -- asking the wealthy to pay a little bit more along with cuts so that we can invest in education like yours. And let's take the money that we've been spending on war over the last decade to rebuild America -- roads, bridges, schools. We do those things, not only is your future going to be bright, but America's future is going to be bright as well. [WhiteHouse.gov, 10/17/12 ]
Obama: "I Am Going To Reduce The Deficit In A Balanced Way." During a July 13 campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia, Obama advocated balanced deficit reduction:
OBAMA: I do believe we can cut -- we've already made a trillion dollars' worth of cuts. We can make some more cuts in programs that don't work, and make government work more efficiently. (Applause.) Not every government program works the way it's supposed to. And frankly, government can't solve every problem. If somebody doesn't want to be helped, government can't always help them. Parents -- we can put more money into schools, but if your kids don't want to learn it's hard to teach them. (Applause.)
But you know what, I'm not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don't need them. So I'm going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way. We've already made a trillion dollars' worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more. (Applause.) And, by the way, we've tried that before -- a guy named Bill Clinton did it. We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine. We created a lot of millionaires. [WhiteHouse.gov, 7/13/12 ] |
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Leatherneck Simulations Mini-Update - SEPTEMBER 2015
We've been very quiet over the past few months, which has simply been a result of working hard over the summer months and focusing on making strong progress on our upcoming product line.
This update will be fairly small as it will mainly focus on the improvements and changes coming to the MiG-21, and auxiliary components of that product.
We are almost ready to reveal the aircraft we've been working so hard on over the summer, especially as we begin to hit milestones that were set for the end of summer/beginning of fall period.
Before we move into our first subtopic, I'd like to take the time to welcome Stirling Rank to the Leatherneck roster.
Hailing from the land down under, he has skillfully avoided Scorpions, Exploding Cacti, Sharks, Crocodiles, Snakes, Arachnids, Jellyfish and other Australians to go on and become a brilliant young character and hard surface artist.
We also look forward to expanding the team by another two members towards the tail end of the year.
With DCS 1.5 (and 2.0) just around the corner; we have focused on rolling in all of our improvements of the MiG-21 module into this particular version. F-14A&B
This will likely be the first version we do not consider to be a “Beta” – but development of the product does not end here.
It is also possible that we will retroactively implement features present in our new aircraft.
Here is a general overview of what is changed and fixed in the MiG-21 for the next patch. Some fixes are not listed.
It is possible that some fixes are not listed at all, or listed only partially.
- Implemented RU Game Localization
- Replaced multiple existing inputs with toggle inputs.
- Added 9 New Keyboard Inputs: ASP Target Size, KPP Pitch Set, RSBN/PRGM Channel Select, Radio On/Off, Radio Volume & Chl Selection
- Fixed various instances of the Radio not working.
- Fixed the Radar operating without electrical power
- Increased missile smoke visibility
- Fixed the “SPRD Appears on F6 View after use” bug
- Introduced special option for ASP pipper gameplay features.
- Improved drag chute physics, including chute use in stall/spin recovery (Animation is however still limited)
- Corrected Rudder Authority (“Rudder overpowering ailerons”)
- Added UUA Sensor animation
- Improved Over-G weapon jettison (Dynamic Weight Calculation, per-pylon/weapon limit)
- Improved regulated Afterburner throttle control
- Partially fixed visible weapons remaining on destroyed/missing wings
- Fixed A-A missile lock tone bug
- Corrected wing thickness & angle
- Various corrections on all weapon pylons
- Rebuilt frontal canopy for smooth fuselage transition
- Re-Drew rivet and panel lines on rear fuselage
- Added red floodlights in cockpit
- Dozens of minor 3D/2D issues.
- Fixed various Cockpit graphics issues.
- Corrected various ASP calculation issues (Incorrect lead, “CCIP”)
- Added 8-10 new default liveries.
- New specular maps
- Sculpted rear fuselage into a new normal map
- Added new SPRD Rocket booster model and texture
- Corrected placement of SPRD Rocket booster on aircraft
- Further optimized external model and textures
- Revised gear door textures
- Corrected AoA vane animation
- Temporarily removed 'Canopy Icing' checkbox pending visual implementation
It is also very likely that some fixes may be in progress and not listed here to avoid disappointment, but may be included in the release.
Backer Rewards is an item we've been silent on for a while simply because we're struggling with the logistics involved, and also the amount of work to design, order and ship any items.
That said, we're ready with our Boxed copies, and hopefully will be completely ready with the replacement rewards very soon.
I promise to make this a priority in the upcoming few weeks, so expect to hear from us if you're eligible for one of these rewards.
We are making strong progress on the F-14, even though our other upcoming products are prioritized in terms of manpower. Terrain & Theatre Development
Much work has recently been done to reverse engineer required parts of aircraft flight performance, so as to ensure the PFM is accurate.
Most of the work being done on the Tomcat is still (just like in the last update) the deep systems and their modeling.
We are done with the Electrical, Engine and AICS components, and have moved on to Advanced Flight controls, Navigation and Instrumentation.
Interestingly, many of the F-14s' systems are possibly simpler than one of our unannounced aircraft, but there is simply more – and that takes time.
Art development is progressing as well, with all exterior and interior components being animated and various model flaws have been corrected.
We're currently working on rigging and animating the pilot, texturing, rebuilding the internal gearbays as well as a large amount of UVW Mapping.
I know it's a fairly boring F-14 update; but that is generally how development goes.
Long stretches of deep technical programming work, while the graphical component is not much more than the pretty layer on the very top of the stack.
It is not long until the majority of our now large development team turn our entire attention to the F-14, and in that period of time we will likely see
unprecedented (for us) speed of development.
On a more visual and fun note; our dedicated F-14 site went up recently, you can find it at: http://www.leatherneck-sim.com/f14/
We've recently began ramping up the amount of time we spend on developing our new theatres and terrains for DCS World. Currently we have three separate theaters in development, one of which we have previously announced and will be released together with the F-14. The other two are slated for release either with, or directly after the release of our other two aircraft. All three are very unique and don't really have a lot in common. This is both a blessing and a curse, as it makes it easier to create more theaters in these particular environments later on, but also dramatically increases current workload.Future
Our goal with theaters is to not only build a great environment to immerse the player in the game world, but to also try and provide an appropriate framework for the aircraft we create.
To achieve this framework, we have to spend a lot of time creating AI Aircraft, Ground and Naval units, all of which represent a huge investment of time and effort.
Thus, we hope to avoid aircraft that are 'misplaced' in the wrong theater and environment. Naturally, the main campaign for each module will take place in their respective theater.
Current Art team focus on the front of Theatre development is the creation of everything from terrain textures (many based on Photogrammetry), environmental models, props & buildings, airfield objects, and 'unique' terrain features (Some terrain features require extra detail, an unrelated example would be Mt. Rushmore).
We're also creating custom models and artwork for e.g. trenchlines, defensive installations and unique coastlines.
The construction of the overall terrain components such as the coastline, roads, towns, airfields, fields, forests and more takes an incredible amount of time.
I'm sure you can imagine how time consuming it can be to mark out each and every field in an e.g. 250x250 km area.
Then add in all the forests and towns, and you certainly have your work cut out for you.
Thankfully, resources exist to more easily automate some terrain features, such as roads.
One of the most time intensive tasks is the creation of airports and airbases.
These can be very complex, with many unique buildings and large amounts of interconnected taxiways and runways.
Proper integration of AI pathing and other components such as beacons and radio frequencies, together with the documentation for these (charts and other reference) significantly add to the workload.
Theatre development has been a learning process for us. We've already grown proficient with working with terrain in DCS world and we look forward to applying our new knowledge to continuously expand the world of DCS, whether it is to complement our own aircraft modules or those in development by other DCS developers.
Most of the team's focus has currently been on our two upcoming aircraft that are not the F-14.
We hope to announce one of these, which is part of a larger project during the month of September, and the other in October.
We fully understand that it is frustrating to sit around and wait for an announcement of modules that are already so far into development; but I believe that you will all be very happy and very satisfied with the reveals coming up.
We have been extremely busy for a good reason, so prepare to have your jaws collectively drop. (Hopefully, anyways )
As mentioned in a previous update, both of these aircraft (just like the F-14) have required us to develop new in-house technologies and components.
We have also continued our work over the past few months to mature our in-house tools for easier analysis and creation of FM and system components.
Most of these new technologies do however refer to in-game cockpit systems and avionics. Some have simply been time consuming, while others have been difficult in design, replication and implementation.
They include, but are not limited to for example;
We're also investing a lot of time into auxiliary components that require a lot of care and attention to detail.
- Ground Mapping and Targeting Radar
- Complex missiles with Advanced Targeting Parameters
- Custom shaders for enhanced visual fidelity (e.g. CRT Screen representation)
- Unique visual features (In-pilot customization, etc.)
- New audio cues and enhanced fidelity
- Far more complex avionic and computer systems than in the MiG-21
- New and unique PFM features and aerodynamic configurations
- New or unique methods of propulsion or force distribution
These include Audio, UI Artwork, Documentation, Mission & Campaign building, Training packages, music and Web/PR.
Usually these are done in the final stages of development; where the aircraft approaches a feature complete status.
The manual for one of our upcoming aircraft currently weighs in at around 350-400 pages; making it one of the thickest DCS manuals to date.
Lots of fun, detailed reading for you all – but also nicely illustrates the complexity of our roadmap.
That more or less concludes this mini-update.
As we announce our new and upcoming products, you'll be bombarded with screenshots, videos, written previews, livestreams, and much more. Stay tuned!
We very much look forward to you all enjoying another Leatherneck product soon (tm)!
Last edited by Cobra847; 09-02-2015 at 12:25 AM. |
Zihuatanejo's best place is still Taurus. The last year several places closed and some new opened, just to close a couple of months later. During high season (xX-mas, new years and Easter) places are packed - with customers and girls. Anyway, there are two places that stand out: Taurus and D'Kché (pronounced "decachay"). Taurus is situated downtown in Zihua, close to the road to Ixtapa. You pay a 50 pesos ($5) cover charge and pay around 20 pesos ($2) per beer. Girls range from 5's to 9's. On a packed night, as many as 15-20 girls might be working. A slow night, maybe just 4 or 5. A lapdance sets you back around 120-150 pesos and is more frustrating than anything else. The girls drag you to a dark corner of the place, take their clothes off and move themselves on you while you touch them. The place is pretty filthy and you don't want to have Montezuma's Revenge in their toilets! :-)
D'Kché is situated on the road to the airport, in a residential area. All cab drivers know about this place. You can get away with not paying any cover charge by gettint the guard outside cigarettes, etc. Regulars never pay the cover charge. This place is much nicer than Taurus, although a bit smaller. Two dance stages, where the girls dance/strip. A row of tables by the dance floor, and a mezzanine overlooking the dance floor. Although - in my opinion - better than Taurus, D'Kché is quite uneven. Some nights it might be completely closed, some nights it only has 2 or 3 girls working and some nights it has 10 girls working. It rarely ever gets crowded, so if you're lucky enough to go there a night when many girls are working, you're in for a treat. Drinks cost around as much as other places and girls range from 4's to 10's. Sometimes they bring over girls from Acapulco, normally really hot babes, but it's hard to know when they do that, so it's almost like playing the lottery. This place is much cleaner than Taurus and they also have small bedrooms where you can, for around $100-$150, go with a girl. On the patio of the house, they have a jukebox and if you're lucky, you'll be invited to the patio when the place closes down - with all the working girls. Dancing, drinking and XXX until the sun rises. One of the problems with D'Kché is that no or few waiters/girls speak English, but let your charm talk. :-)
There are some other places, for instance Tejano Bar, Dollar Bar, etc. These places cater mainly to locals, thus the girls there are less attractive (cheaper) and these places tend to be closed down by police every now and then.
If you're going to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo and want some updated information about the scene, mail me at firstname.lastname@example.org. I don't promote any escort services or do introductions, just a happy amateur wanting you guys to enjoy your stay in my country.
Date: None Subject: Life in Ixtapa / Zihuatanejo
Just returned from a great week in Ixtapa - Zihuatenajo. Just wanted contribute some scouting reports in case anyone cruises to the area.
All of the action is in Zihuatenajo. Ixtapa is a master planned resort community. However, there is a lot of discos and restaurants where you can pick up girls on vacation. But, sticking to the theme of this usenet group here is what I found.
First, there are a lot of hotels in the Zihuatenajo area that range from $10 a night to over $300. Of course, you *will* have trouble getting a woman into some of the high end hotels. I was staying at the Westin Ixtapa during the first part of the week, and while I did bring a girl there one night they did mention something to me about bringing unregistered guests to the hotel at night.
Most of the bars in Zihuatenajo are located in close proximity to each other, so if you don't like one you can walk to the next. Like TJ, spanish is not necessary, however, the all of the girls speak no or *very* little spanish.
I arrived there are 9:00pm, was checked into my hotel by 9:30, caught a taxi (normally $20 pesos) and was in town by 10:00. Taxi drivers are my fountain of information when I go to someplace new in Mexico. He gave me the scoop and I paid him $100 pesos to give me a tour of the all the establishments in Zihuatenajo (about 5km to the Westin Ixtapa). So, the first night was an exploratory mission with a little adventure. Here is the run down:
First, there is Taurus. This place has the best looking women of all the bars. They have a continuous strip show and the girls are not afraid of taking off their clothes. They even have a little changing area that is elevated near the door for everyone to see. While there were 10-15 women working there at any one time, there were not as many guys there.
Next door, there is a place called Capricornio. This is more like a local drinking place that has some working women. If you speak spanish and you don't mind a women that have some ugly in them, go there. I can't really tell you that much more abou this place other than the first night that I was there the local authorities shut that place down for have some underaged (<18) women working there. There were open an hour later after paying a 6,000 peso fine.
Next to this establishment is another place called, El Tejano. This is a nice little bar with good lighting to see the women. Again, there were only 10-15 women working on any given night. If you don't speak any spanish the doorman, Tony, speaks excellent english having lived in the US for a couple of years. Really cool guy and he can help you out.
There is another place on the way outside of town (1km from Taurus) called, El Rodeo. This is a pretty good place also, very similar to El Tejano and the women are pretty good looking.
There are other bars that I not mentioning, nor do they deserve mention. However, there is one other form of finding a woman, but I will talk about that later.
Again, each of these places only has about 10-15 girls working at anyone time. If the bar is still open you have to pay the house a "salida" to take the women from the bar and each girl has their own negotiable price. Usually this depends on how late and how good looking the girl is.
First night: After cruising to all of the places that I mentioned I went back to the Taurus. As soon as I walked in there was a Krystal. 5'3" with black hair that was slicked and pulled back. She had a very fair complexion with firm small tits. She was wearing a very classy short dress that could be worn in any of the discos in Ixtapa. Seeing that the time was already approaching 2:00am I decided to just grab something for the night. I paid the $N 150 "salida" (she carried a little higher exit fee from the normal $N 100) and we grabbed a taxi back to Ixtapa. Built on the hill in a bay the Westin Ixtapa has some pretty tight security. I told the guard she was my girlfriend and slipped him $N 50.
We went to my room and she immediately started kissing me and rubbing my hard on. She took off her dress and walked to my balcony in her high heels and g-string. *MOST MEMORABLE* The room I happened to be staying in had its own pool, which after taking her remaining items, climed in. By this time I was already stripped down and started for the pool. Sitting on the edge she proceeded to give an *excellent* bj. I had to slow her down a couple of times to keep from exploding. After a while she moved to the edge of the pool and spread her legs. Her pussy was nice and trimmed and she had such a beautiful looking pussy that I could not resist temptation. I ate her for about 20 minutes after which I could feels her legs spasming from her orgasm. We rested in the pool for a little bit and them went into the room. After sucking on my tool for a little while longer she slapped on Mr. Trojan (which I brought) and proceeded to pump from the female superior position. Switched to several positions, but I had to burning desire to cum from behind. After turning her around I got a couple of minutes in before I could not hold it any longer. She knew I was going to cum and she ripped off the condom and sucked me off until I came in her mouth. She drained every ounce of energy from me and I collapsed on the bed. We had sex a couple more times that night and ended up naked on the hammock on the balcony watching night turn to day. I bought her a bathing suit from the shop in the hotel and we spent the rest of the day under the cabanas on the beach. Total cost for her services was $800 pesos (about $108 US). Seeing that she was such a good looking girl and that I spent so much time with her it was very cheap. She wanted to come over the next night, but I told her that I had to meet up with some friends (but I really wanted to check out other action).
It was funny but I met a couple on the beach the next night from the states. They were in the hotel room above me. The hotel is constructed on a hill and the side facing the ocean looks like a pyramid, so you can see a portion of the balconies below you. Most people will sleep with their sliding door open and listen to the ocean at night. He said that his wife woke him up when they heard us and they went to investigate and could see us going at it. He thanked us for putting them in the *mood*. I actually along with some other people that I meet had some enjoyable time with these people.
Second night: I could not head back to Taurus because I did not want to run into Krystal. So I instead when to El Tejano. Tony recognized me from the other night and asked me if I was american. I told him I was and he started rattling of in english. Tony gave me a tour of the inside and made all the women come by and introduce themselves. I finally settled on Patti. She was 5'8", 115, beautiful tan skin, wavey long brown hair, small frame, medium bulbous tits, and a killer ass. Paid her "salida" $100 pesos and headed back to Ixtapa. We settled on a price of $500 pesos ($65 US) until the morning. After we took a shower, we climed into bed. Patti said that she did not like giving head, but her technique said otherwise. I told her to bring it down a couple of notches to enjoy it for a longer period of time. Sex was ok, but nothing to write home about. All in all a very enjoyable evening. I sent her home before breakfeast.
Third night: Krystal gave me her phone number from the previous night and I called her up. I told her to come down to the hotel to kick it on the beach and to bring some clothes for the evening. When she arrived around 10:00am we, and the couple above us (they thought she was my wife) went back to Zihua and took a boat ride to Los Gatos beach that is really only accessible by boat. We spent a great afternoon there and found out about a restaurant in a hotel called Puerto Mio that was in Zihua. After returning to Ixtapa, showering, changing, we all met up again (this time with 2 other couples) and headed back to Zihua. Now I know this is not the travel and lesuire group, but if you ever have a chance to stay at Puerto Mio, by all means do so. I've stayed at many nice hotels throughout Mexico and the food and view at the restaurant, to the view of the rooms (I changed after the third night, so did the couple above me at the Westin) there is nothing better. AWESOME!!! Although it was a little pricier (jr suite $160/$200 on/off season; sr suite $280/$350). Bedroom and bathroom views are amazing.
Sex that night was great again. Multiple positions, multiple orgasms..yada, yada, yada. Fourth and Fifth night: I hung out with some girls from the states that I met at beach.
Sixth and seventh night: Back with Krystal. Yeah, I know...there are other women. But, Krystal is a gem. Very classy, professional business look to her outside work, and very energetic in bed.
Eighth (last night): As I mentioned, there are other ways of finding women. However, usually this takes some luck and more times than not spanish is required. Jose-Luis, my taxi driver of the first night, told me about a couple of places (homes) that run brothels. There are no women working the street, except for the he-shes that are out there. There is no drinking or dancing at these places and you need to know of someone to get you there and admitted.
Jose took me to one place. It was a nice looking house with a driveway that led to a courtyard. The owners name was Armando. Big, friendly guy who smokes cigars, as I do. I gave him a Monte #2 (cuban) that I bought that night dinner and he immediately promised me the best of the house. Unfortunately, it was early and she was not there yet. I told him I was going to go grab a bite (lied) and would be back later. Jose and I took off to another location that was very similar. There were about 5 girls there and none of them were as appealing as what Armando had described he had. So, Jose and I went to a club called Rocka Rock. It was pretty full with a lot of local people. A lot of women and for a fee you could dance, buy them drinks (they earned commission), and take them home should you like. I decided to hold off and just had a couple of beers.
Jose then drove me back to Armandos. Again, he greeted us as we got out of the car and called out for Sylvia. Sylvia said she was 19, although her face looked younger. She had short straight brown hair, like Krystal, it was pulled back into a small pony tail. Very fair skinned, hazel eyes, 5'2", Bcup, nice young firm body. She dressed in a nice summer dress with heals. I decided that we would go back into Ixtapa and hit Senor Frogs for some pre-sex fun. We were having fun dancing when someone tapped my on the shoulder. It was the couple that I met at the Westin and later changed to Puerto Mio. They were a little surprised in that they thought Krystal was my wife. I came clean, well almost, and told them that these were just some girls that I met here. After a few hours of dancing we headed back to the hotel...I had checked into another hotel just to avoid potential problems with Krystal.
Sylvia was just as Armando described. A girl that was not hardened by the work of the clubs. She was fun, affectionate, and appreciative of a guy treating her like a woman. Armando's fee was $150 pesos and she asked for $500 pesos. I gave her another $500 pesos for the entire night of dancing and pleasure. She was gave bareback blow jobs and was a work horse in bed. We were done when I waived the white flag.
Summary: Compared to TJ the selection is quite limited. However, Ixtapa/Zihuatenajo is gorgeous and very safe when compared to TJ. The women are warmer and do not have that cold professional feeling of many women in TJ. As a vacation spot, I would rate this as one of the top vaction spots in Mexico.
I'll be heading down to Guadalajara/Zamora/Uruapan/Morelia on the 21st of this month. I've been there before and know the locations for tang. I'll give an updated report when I get back.
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CAIRO – Egyptians delivered an angry backlash against President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood on Friday, marking the second anniversary of the start of the country’s revolution with tens of thousands filling major squares and streets around the country to call for a new regime change.
Two years to the day that protesters first rose up against now-toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is entrenched in the new phase of its upheaval – the struggle between ruling Islamists and their opponents, played out on the backdrop of a worsening economy.
Rallies turned to clashes near Tahrir Square and outside the presidential palace in Cairo and in multiple cities around the country, with police firing tear gas and protesters throwing stones. At least four people, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in the day’s worst clashes, in the city of Suez, where protesters set ablaze a building that once housed the city’s local government.
More than 370 were injured nationwide, the Health Ministry said, including five in Suez with gunshot wounds, raising the possibility of a higher death toll, the state news agency said.
Friday’s rallies appeared to have brought out at least 500,000 opposition supporters, a small proportion of Egypt’s 85 million people, but large enough to suggest that opposition to Morsi and his Islamist allies is strong in a country fatigued by two years of political turmoil, surging crime and a free falling economy that is fueling popular anger. Protests – and clashes – took place in at least 12 of Egypt’s 27 provinces, including several that are Islamist strongholds.
“After what happened to me, I will never leave until Morsi leaves,” said protester Sara Mohammed after she was treated for tear gas inhalation during clashes outside the president’s palace in Cairo’s Heliopolis district. “What can possibly happen to us? Will we die? That’s fine, because then I will be with God as a martyr. Many have died before us and even if we don’t see change, future generations will.”
The immediate goal of the opposition was to have a show of strength to push Morsi to amend the country’s new constitution, which was pushed through by his Islamist allies and rushed through a national referendum last month.
But more broadly, protesters are trying to show the extent of public anger against the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization Morsi hails from, which they say is acting unilaterally and taking over the state rather than setting up a broad-based democracy.
Morsi is Egypt’s first freely elected and civilian president, a significant feat given that all his four predecessors were of military background. But his six months in office have been marred by some of the worst crises since Mubarak’s ouster and divisions that have left the nation scarred and in disarray. A giant wave of demonstrations erupted in November and December following a series of presidential decrees, since rescinded, that gave Morsi near absolute powers, placing him above any oversight, including by the judiciary.
The Brotherhood and its Islamist allies, including the ultraconservative Salafis, have justified their hold by pointing to their string of election victories the past year – though the opposition says they have gone far beyond what in many ways is a narrow mandate – Morsi won the presidency with less than 52 percent of the vote. Brotherhood officials have increasingly depicted the opposition as undemocratic, trying to use the streets to overturn an elected leadership.
Thursday night, Morsi gave a televised speech that showed the extent of the estrangement between the two sides. He denounced what he called a “counter-revolution” that is “being led by remnants of ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s regime to obstruct everything in the country.”
Unlike in 2012, when both sides made a show of marking Jan. 25 – though, granted, not together – the Brotherhood stayed off the streets for Friday’s anniversary. The group said it was honoring the occasion with acts of public service, like treating the sick and planting trees.
On the horizon are key elections to choose a new lower house of parliament. The opposition is hoping it can leverage public anger into a substantial bloc in the legislature, but it is still trying to weld together an effective campaign coalition in the face of Islamists’ strength at the ballot box. Last winter, the Brotherhood and Salafis won around 75 percent of the lower house’s seats, though the body was later disbanded by court order.
Pending the election of a new lower house, Morsi gave legislative powers to parliament’s Islamist-dominated upper house, a normally toothless chamber that only about seven percent of Egypt’s 50 million eligible voters bothered to elect in balloting last year.
The violence Friday pointed to the increasing tempers among some in the opposition, particularly younger men who have been the most restive. Clashes erupted outside the presidential palace when youths tried to push through a police barricade outside the gates. In other cities, protesters tried to break into offices of the Brotherhood’s political party or government and security buildings.
Beyond the violence, the protests re-created the tone of the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, including the same chants, this time directed against Morsi – “Erhal! Erhal!”, Arabic for “leave, leave” and “the people want to topple the regime.”
Some of the protesters are planning sit-in strikes in major squares and streets, insisting that they will not go home before Morsi leaves office.
Standing near Tahrir Square, retiree Ahmed Afifi declared that he joined Friday’s protests because he was struggling to feed his five children on less than $200 a month.
“I am retired and took another job just to make ends meet,” he said, his eyes tearing. “I am close to begging. Under Mubarak life was hard but at least we had security … The first people hit by high prices are the poor people right here.”
Tens of thousands massed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where the 2011 uprising began, and outside Morsi’s palace. Banners outside the palace proclaimed, “No to the corrupt Muslim Brotherhood government” and “Two years since the revolution, where is social justice?” Others demonstrated outside the state TV and radio building overlooking the Nile.
In two towns in the Nile Delta, Menouf and Shibeen el-Koum, protesters blocked railway lines, disrupting train services to and from Cairo. In Ismailia on the Suez Canal, protesters stormed the building housing the provincial government, looting some of its contents. There were also clashes outside Morsi’s home in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiyah.
The demands of Friday’s protesters vary. Some on the extremist fringe of Egypt’s loosely knit opposition want Morsi to step down and the constitution adopted last month rescinded. Others are calling for the document to be amended and early presidential elections held.
“There must be a constitution for all Egyptians. A constitution that every one of us sees himself in it,” opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said in a televised message posted on his party’s website.
Egypt’s bestselling novelist and democracy campaigner Alaa al-Aswany marched with ElBaradei on Friday to Tahrir. “It is impossible to impose a constitution on Egyptians, a constitution which was sponsored by the Supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the revolution today will bring this constitution down,” he said.
Protester Ehab Menyawi said he felt no personal animosity against the Brotherhood but opposed its approach toward Morsi as Egypt’s first freely elected leader.
“The Brotherhood thinks that reform was achieved when their man came to power and that in itself is a guarantee for the end of corruption,” he said as he marched from the upscale Cairo district of Mohandiseen to Tahrir with some 20,000 others.
Morsi has kept government policy-making and the choice of appointments almost entirely within the Brotherhood. Members and supporters of the group are being installed bit by bit throughout the state infrastructure – from governor posts, to chiefs of state TV and newspapers, down to preachers in state-run mosques.
Many were also angered by the constitution and the manner of its adoption. Islamists finalized the draft in a rushed, all-night meeting, throwing in amendments to fit their needs, then pushed it through a swift referendum in which only a third of voters participated. The result is a document that could bring a much stricter implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, than modern Egypt has ever seen.
Looming over the struggle between the opposition against the Islamists is an economy that has been in tatters since Mubarak’s ouster. The vital tourism sector has slumped, investment shriveled, foreign currency reserves have tumbled, prices are on the rise and the local currency has been sliding.
More pain is likely in the coming months if the government implements unpopular new austerity measures to secure a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
“Egypt is in a bad place, It’s been wholly consumed with issues of power, and governance has been left by the wayside. None of this had to be,” said Michael W. Hanna, a senior fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation. |
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dear Dr. Jones:
You and I have been interacting, albeit at a distance, since I first asked you for your data some five years ago. I asked for your data in part because I was astounded by your answer to Warwick Hughes when he asked for the same data. You replied to Warwick at that time, “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
I couldn’t fathom that a leading climate scientist could actually believe that. Finding something wrong with other scientists’ data and ideas is an integral part of how science progresses. This requires transparency and access to the data. I also couldn’t believe that other climate scientists would let you get away with saying that, without some other scientist pointing out the anti-scientific nature of your denial.
Foolish me … d’ya think I might have been more than a bit naive back then about climate “science” realpolitik?
In any case, I was also interested in the data for my own research, and I was curious whether you had been misquoted or taken out of context, so I wrote to you and asked for the data. I got no answer. (I found out later you had not been misquoted in any way. But I digress, back to the events.)
So I made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the data. Your University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) FOI point man, Mr. David Palmer, responded that all the data was available somewhere on the web … but David didn’t say where, just waved his hands and uttered the mystical incantation “GHCN”, meaning the data was held by the Global Historical Climate Network.
My response to that was as follows:
Dear Mr. Palmer:
Thank you for your reply. However, I fear that it is totally unresponsive. I had asked for a list of the sites actually used. While it may (or may not) be true that “it appears that the raw station data can be obtained from [GHCN]”, this is meaningless without an actual list of the sites that Dr. Jones and his team used.
The debate about changes in the climate is quite important. Dr. Jones’ work is one of the most frequently cited statistics in the field. Dr. Jones has refused to provide a list of the sites used for his work, and as such, it cannot be replicated. Replication is central to science. I find Dr. Jones attitude quite difficult to understand, and I find your refusal to provide the data requested quite baffling.
You are making the rather curious claim that because the data “appears“ to be out on the web somewhere, there is no need for Dr. Jones to reveal which stations were actually used. The claim is even more baffling since you say that the original data used by CRU is available at the GHCN web site, and then follow that with the statement that some of the GHCN data originally came from CRU. Which is the case? Did CRU get the data from GHCN, or did GHCN get the data from CRU?
Rather than immediately appealing this ruling (with the consequent negative publicity that would inevitably accrue to CRU from such an action), I am again requesting that you provide:
1) A list of the actual sites used by Dr. Jones in the preparation of the HadCRUT3 dataset, and
2) A clear indication of where the data for each site is available.
This is quite important, as there are significant differences between the versions of each site’s data at e.g. GHCN and NCAR.
I find it somewhat disquieting that an FOI request is necessary to force a scientist to reveal the data used in his publicly funded research … is this truly the standard that the CRU is promulgating?
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Note that I was trying not to make waves. I didn’t want to appeal the ruling. I didn’t want to make any trouble for CRU or for anyone. I just wanted to get the data. A garden variety polite scientific request. (And by the way, this type of polite request, Dr. Jones, is what you have repeatedly denounced as ‘harassment’ … but again I digress from the story.)
After discussing my statements with you, Mr. Palmer wrote back and identified a couple of websites (GHCN and NCAR) where the data you used might possibly be found … but again there was no information about where each station’s data was actually located. I wrote back and said in part:
… While it is good to know that the data is available at those two web sites, that information is useless without a list of stations used by Jones et al. to prepare the HadCRUT3 dataset. As I said in my request, I am asking for:
1) A list of the actual sites used by Dr. Jones in the preparation of the HadCRUT3 dataset, and
2) A clear indication of where the data for each site is available. This is quite important, as there are significant differences between the versions of each site’s data at e.g. GHCN and NCAR.”
Without knowing the name and WMO number of each site and the location of the source data (NCAR, GHCN, or National Met Service), it is not possible to access the information. Thus, Exemption 21 does not apply – I still cannot access the data.
I don’t understand why this is so hard. All I am asking for is a simple list of the sites and where each site’s data is located. Pointing at two huge piles of data and saying, in effect, “The data is in there somewhere” does not help at all.
To clarify what I am requesting, I am only asking for a list of the stations used in HadCRUT3, a list that would look like this:WMO# Name Source 58457 HangZhou NCAR 58659 WenZhou NCAR 59316 ShanTou GHCN 57516 ChongQing NMS
etc. for all of the stations used to prepare the HadCRUT3 temperature data. That is the information requested, and it is not available “on non-UEA websites”, or anywhere else that I have been able to find.
I appreciate all of your assistance in this matter, and I trust we can get it resolved satisfactorily.
Again, a simple, polite, scientific request. You said the data was on the web. I simply wanted to know where I could find it. I made it clear that a trivially simple three-column response would suffice. Your new excuse was that some of the data was under distribution restrictions from the originating National Weather Service. I said OK, not a problem. Send me the data that’s not under restrictions.
Internally, the emails (#3298) show that at this time Dave Palmer was discussing these questions with you, saying:
As expected, Mr. Eschenbach is not satisfied with our most recent letter. I guess the essential question is whether we have the list of actual sites used for HadCRUT3 [global temperature reconstruction], and if not, who does….
And indeed, that is a very important question, Dr. Jones. Did the CRU have a list of the actual sites used for HadCRUT3?
Incredibly, the only conclusion can be that the answer was “No”, because subsequently Mr. Palmer wrote back to me and said that UEA was not able to identify the locations on the web where the information was available.
I was totally befuddled at that point, because at the time I was unaware that you didn’t know where the data was located. So I wrote back and said:
Dear Mr. Palmer:
It appears we have gone full circle here, and ended up back where we started. I had originally asked for the raw station data used to produce the HadCRUT3 dataset to be posted up on the UEA website, or made available in some other form. You refused, saying that the information was available elsewhere on non-UEA websites, which is a valid reason for FOI refusals.
“I can report that the information requested is available on non-UEA websites as detailed below.”
Your most recent letter, however, says that you are unable to identify the locations of the requested information. Thus, the original reason for refusing to provide station data for HadCRUT3 was invalid.
Therefore, since the information requested is not available on non-UEA websites, I wish to re-instate my original request, that the information itself be made available on your website or in some other form.
I understand that a small amount of this data (about 2%, according to your letter) is not available due to privacy requests from the countries involved. In that case, a listing of which stations this applies to will suffice.
The HadCRUT3 dataset is one of the fundamental datasets in the current climate discussion. As such, it is vitally important that it can be peer-reviewed and examined to verify its accuracy. The only way this can be done is for the data to be made available to other researchers in the field.
Once again, thank you for your assistance in all of this. It is truly not a difficult request, and is fully in line with both standard scientific practice and your ” CODE OF PRACTICE FOR RESPONDING TO REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000″.
I am sure that we can bring this to a satisfactory resolution without involving appeals or unfavorable publicity.
My best regards to you,
Unfortunately, that letter was of no use either. The recently released Climategate email #1184 shows why, with Mr. David Palmer, as befuddled as I was, discussing my request with you and saying (emphasis mine):
My head is beginning to spin here but I read this as meaning that he wants the raw station data; we don’t know which data belongs to which station, correct? Our letter stated:
“We can, however, send a list of all stations used, but without sources. This would include locations, names and lengths of record, although the latter are no guide as to the completeness of the series.”
Can we put this on the web? Perhaps I am being really thick here but I’m not sure if putting this on the web will actually satisfy Mr. Eschenbach – we’ve said we don’t have data sources, he says the external websites don’t have them, so who does? Are we back to the NMS’s? I am happy to give this one more go, stating exactly what we are putting on the web and seeing if that suffices.
Should Mr. Eschenbach still insist that we actually possess the information in the form he requests, I can then only give the file to Kitty Inglis for review and then we move on formally….
Dave asked, who does have the data? The answer, sadly, turned out to be … nobody. Taken in conjunction with Dave’s earlier email, this makes the problem clear. You didn’t know which data belonged to which stations. And as a result, at the end of the day you put just a list of stations on the web, without any data or references at all to where the data could be found … because you couldn’t find it.
At that point, not knowing any of this backstory revealed by the Climategate emails, I figured I’d never get any more from you than the list of stations, and I gave up the fight. In retrospect, I should have fought all the way to the top with it.
Here’s my problem with all of this, Dr. Jones. You tried out a variety of claimed reasons for not responding to a request for your data. None of them were even remotely true. They were all intended to hide the fact that you didn’t know where the data was. Dave clearly spelled out the problem: “we don’t know which data belongs to which stations, right?”
You claimed that the data was out there on the web somewhere. You claimed you couldn’t send any of it because of restrictions on a few datasets. You claimed it came from GHCN, then you said from NCAR, but you couldn’t say exactly where.
You gave lots and lots of explanations to me, everything except the truth—that your records were in such disarray that you could not fulfill my request. It is clear now from the Climategate emails that some records were there, some were missing, the lists were not up to date, there was orphan data, some stations had multiple sets of data, some data was only identified by folder not by filename, you didn’t know which data might have been covered by confidentiality agreements, and the provenance of some datasets could not be established. The unfortunate reality was that you simply couldn’t do what I asked.
Rather than just saying that, however, you came up with a host of totally bogus reasons why you could not give me the data. Those were lies, Phil. You and David Palmer flat-out lied to my face about why you couldn’t send me the data.
Now, I’ve come to accept that you lied to me. Here’s what I think. I think you are a scientist, and a reasonably good one, who was hard squeezed by two things—the Peter Principle, and Noble Cause Corruption. When you began your scientific career, your sloppy record keeping didn’t matter much. And you didn’t want to be the record keeper in any case, you wanted to do the science instead, but you kept getting promoted and you ended up curating a big messy dataset. Then things changed, and now, climate decisions involving billions of dollars are being made based in part on your data. Disarray in your files didn’t make a lot of difference when your work was of interest only to specialists. But now it matters greatly, money and people’s lives are at stake, and unfortunately you were a better scientist than you were a data manager.
So when my FOI request came along, you were caught. You were legally required to produce data you couldn’t locate. Rather than tell the truth and say “I can’t find it”, you chose to lie. Hey, it was only a small lie, and it was for the Noble Cause of saving the world from Thermageddon. So you had David tell me the data was available on the web. You knew that was a lie. David, apparently, didn’t realize it was a lie, at least at first. You hoped your Noble Lie would satisfy me, that I would get discouraged, and you could move on.
But I asked again, and when I called you on that first answer, you thought up another Noble Lie. And when that one didn’t work, you invented another Noble Lie.
OK, so you are a serial liar. Like I said, I’ve made my peace with that. It used to rankle me, but not any more. I just accepted that you can’t be trusted and I moved on. I do have compassion for you, Dr. Jones. None of you guys set out to do the ugly things you ended up doing. You all got caught by Noble Cause Corruption, by the vision of being smarter than everyone else and of being the only people standing between us and global destruction. It’s heady, treacherous stuff.
I have been a victim of that same self-delusion myself. I understand the sweet seduction that arises from the conviction that your mission is of vital, crucial importance to the whole planet. However, I quit that kind of nonsense around the time the sixties wound down … but again I digress. I have compassion for your position, and I was, although not satisfied, at least at ease with the outcome.
So if I made my peace with you, why am I writing this letter now?
I’m writing because in response to the new Climategate 2.0 email release, over at the UEA website, you have a new post in which you are up to your old tricks, trying to peanut-butter up the cracks in your stories. Inter alia, you are attempting to explain the following two quotes. First, the new release of emails revealed that you had written:
Email 2440: “I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process”
Your explanation of your statement is this:
At the end of the IPCC process, chapters, formal comments and responses are all published and that is the appropriate place for this information. It is important that scientists should be allowed free and frank discussion during the writing process. I might also point out that I decided not to take part in AR5 because of the time commitment it requires.
That sounds perfectly logical … if we were dealing with honest men. But if the Climategate emails have shown anything, they have shown that we are not dealing with honest men. Far too many of the leading AGW supporting climate scientists have been shown by their own words to be serial liars like yourself.
But in any case, only scientists with something to hide need privacy to have a “free and frank discussion” about science. Honest scientists have no reason to hide their views. Honest scientists discuss these scientific issues on the web in the full light of day. Why on earth would someone need privacy to discuss the intricacies of the climate models? Do you really have to go into a closet with your best friend to speak your true mind about atmospheric physics? Is it true that you guys actually need some kind of ‘private space’ to expose your secret inner ideas about the factors affecting the formation of clouds? From my perspective, these kinds of private discussions are not only not what is needed. This two-faced nature of you guys’ statements on the science are a large part of the problem itself.
This is quite visible in the Climategate emails. In your communications, you and many of the scientists are putting out your true views of other scientists and their work. You are expressing all kinds of honest doubts. You are discussing uncertainties in your and other scientists understandings. You are all letting your friends know which papers you think are good and which you think are junk, and that’s valuable information in the climate science discussions.
But you never say any of this in public. Not one word. For example, in public it’s all about how great Michael Mann’s science is, not a word of criticism, while in private some of you guys justifiably tear both him and his work to shreds.
I find this double-speak deceptive and underhanded. It has nothing to do with “free and frank discussion” as you claim. I think that if AGW supporting scientists actually broke down and told the truth to the public, you would fare much better. I think that if you disavowed your beloved Saint Stephen (Schneider) and his advice, and you expressed all of your doubts and revealed all of your uncertainties about the climate and told the plain unvarnished truth about your opinion of other scientists’ work, we’d be infinitely better off. Nobody likes two-faced people. You would be miles ahead if you said the same things in public you say in private, and so would the field of climate science.
For example, the emails clearly show that you privately knew it wasn’t true when you told me that the data for which I had filed an FOI was available on the web. You knew the reason you couldn’t release the data was, as Dave Palmer belatedly found out, that “we don’t know which data belongs to which station, correct?”
You could have told me the truth. But no, you decided to lie to me. And as with Nixon and Watergate, and with Clinton’s impeachment, it’s the cover-up that always brings the real trouble, not the original misdeed. If you had said something like ‘my office is in a mess, I can’t find some of the data, here’s almost all of it, let me get back to you when I can track down the rest’, you could have then put your house in order and sent me the data. And you would have been telling the truth.
Instead, you lied to cover it up. And when it was shown to be untrue, you lied again. And again. Here’s my point—the only reason I know that you lied, the only way you were caught in your lies, was the release of your emails.
And now, you come forth to advocate that everyone destroy their emails once the upcoming IPCC AR5 crime against science has finally been committed? Can’t say I’m impressed by that advice, it seems more than a touch self-serving.
Here’s the thing, Dr. Jones. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust your friends. And I don’t trust your “free and frank discussions” out of sight of the public. This final distrust, of your secret discussions, arises from the same logic the cops use. They don’t give a couple of criminals any private time together for free and frank discussions about how to present believable lies to the police about their crime.
Call me crazy, but for the selfsame reason I don’t want to make it easy for you to hold that kind of free and frank discussions about how to present believable lies to the public about the climate. I don’t want you covertly discussing how to hide the decline. And in the current case, your own words have betrayed you again. You say to the person you are addressing that there is some need to “cover yourself and all those working in AR5”.
So what is it you think they’ll need to cover up this time, Dr. Jones? What is it you assume they will be saying that you don’t want the polloi to know about?
If you truly have something to say about the science, hey, don’t be shy, Doc. Just blurt it out. And if you are unwilling to say something about the science or the scientists in public, DON’T SAY IT IN PRIVATE. That is cowardly backstabbing. Your assumption that the AR5 participants will have something to “cover up”, and your suggestion that they should obliterate and destroy the evidence of their true opinions about the science, are totally congruent with the fact that you were found out by way of your own emails. So of course you don’t want emails around. They proved you were lying, when nothing else could have. In scientific terms, I believe your current reaction to emails is called the “vampire/garlic syndrome”.
When you and your friends get together off the record in your frank discussions, Dr. Jones, you cook up ugly things. The Climategate emails convict you all of this, in your own words. As a result, I do not want to make it easy for you all to compare notes with each other on how to lie to me, on how to subvert the IPCC rules to slip in the next “Jesus Paper“, or on how to further deceive the public. I thank the fates that your emails were released. Without those, we wouldn’t have known you were deceiving us, or why. And I think that destroying the emails related to the IPCC AR5 is just a way to hide further malfeasance.
Your perennial but ultimately quixotic quest to leave no potential evidence un-destroyed comes up again and again in the emails. You try vainly to explain this over at the UEA website, where you refer to an email wherein you say:
Email 1897: “Do I understand it correctly – if he doesn’t pay the £10 we don’t have to respond? With the earlier FOI requests re David Holland, I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent.”
Your explanation of this is as follows:
This relates to a request from Steve McIntyre made under the Data Protection Act for any personal data held about him. Following a previous experience with FoI, I had adopted a more judicious approach to retention of emails that I no longer needed. I had deleted old exchanges with sceptics I had prior to 2005. I was saying that I probably no longer had any emails relating to Mr McIntyre, a prominent sceptic.
The emails referred to were unrelated to any prior request from Mr Holland. Let me say again that I have never knowingly deleted any material subject to a current FoI request and this email should not be read in that way.
You must be kidding. When the emails are read in order, it is obvious that you destroyed a host of relevant emails once people gave you a nudge and a wink. You were surprisingly blatant in your emails regarding the fact that you were destroying important documents under the guise of “housekeeping”. You really should read your own words again, they make it quite clear that you deleted emails under false pretences.
But that’s not the worst of it. The egregious part was contained in the email you somehow neglected to mention in your recent UEA attempt at self-exoneration. That was the email wherein you counseled deleting evidentiary emails directly covered by David Holland’s FOI request:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise… Can you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise.
You not only destroyed emails subject to an FOI request that contained the evidence of your misdeeds. You warned all of your friends to do likewise. Gene Wahl admitted that he destroyed emails at Michael Mann’s behest.
And now you want us to believe that you never destroyed emails under FOI request? That claim doesn’t even pass the laugh test. The Information Commissioner said of your emails and actions that it was not possible to imagine “more cogent” prima facie evidence of contravention of the FOI Act. Unfortunately, as the Commissioner pointed out, the statute of limitations had run out on any crime by that time, so you were off the hook. But the evidence is still there, and the public’s statute of limitations on lying scientists hasn’t run out.
So don’t try to make me believe that you’ve never, ever, oh my no, haven’t ever destroyed emails subject to FOI. Your own words show that’s a joke. And don’t bother telling me that the “investigation” declared that you were whitewashed as pure as driven snow. I know that, I watched them apply the necessary coats of paint, it was quite an impressive process. The facts remain. You erased emails containing evidence of your malfeasance and you advised your confederates to do the same. You lied about it then. You subsequently lied about it to your friends on the in-house whitewash “investigation” committee. And you are lying to us about it now.
And that is the answer to the question why I am writing to you at this time. It’s disquieting enough that neither you, nor any of the other un-indicted co-conspirators, has ever offered up even the slightest word of apology for the flagrant misdeeds and scientific malfeasance revealed by your own words. You guys did huge damage to climate science and to science in general, and none of you have ever breathed even a whisper of an apology. But that’s not the reason I’m writing, because as I said, I’ve made my peace with that. At the end of the day, I realized that you were men without a scrap of honor, so it was quite foolish of me to expect you to apologize.
But for you to stand up and start in again proclaiming your innocence? No way that’s gonna wash. I’m writing because I will not endure your new duplicity in silence. Stop this foolish, futile attempt to rehabilitate your reputation. Your reputation is so shredded and utterly lost at this point that, crazily, I find that my heart goes out to your predicament, calling on you to stop with the mendacity and prevarication, give up on the justifications, and return to your science. Your continued lies only make it worse. Only an apology could possibly begin to rehabilitate your reputation, and you seem totally unwilling to do that.
So in lieu of acknowledging what you’ve done wrong, please just go and work on your science in peace, Dr. Jones, and leave the denials of wrongdoing to those who haven’t done wrong. You have done what you have done, and thanks to the release of the emails your works both good and bad are explained quite eloquently in your own words. My strong suggestion is that if you are unwilling to apologize, that for your own peace of mind you turn the page and leave yesterday behind, stop rehashing your past actions, and move forward to see what remains for you to learn about the climate. I’m sure there must be some small part of climate science left that is not already “settled”, something that you could profitably investigate.
In closing, I am certain that if you wish to respond publicly to this open letter, Anthony would be more than happy to post your reply exactly as written. If you think I am mistaken in any part of what I have said, please let me know, and if you are right I will certainly retract any misstatement and correct the record. Until such time, however, what I wrote above is the truth to the best of my knowledge. |
Note: Prior the the game, the press box at Tiger Stadium was dedicated in honor of former LSU Sports Information Director Paul Manasseh.
By Chris Macaluso
Special to LSUsports.net
BATON ROUGE -- LSU entered Saturday’s game in Tiger Stadium with the best total defense in all of college football. Alabama had the nation’s 15th-best defense before the game.
So, when the two teams dealt each other blow after offensive blow in the first half and scored a combined 35 points in the first half, it left more than a couple of the 92,588 of the shivering fans wondering when the two teams they expected to see play would show up.
The Tiger defense finally stiffened in the second half and pressured Alabama just enough to hold the Crimson Tide scoreless for the last 30 minutes of the contest to hold on for a 28-14 win that ran LSU’s overall record to 8-2 and its conference record to 4-2. Alabama fell to 6-5 overall, 2-5 in the SEC after losing last week to Mississippi State. Ahead for Bama is a shot at redemption against beyond bitter rival Auburn. LSU has a chance to improve its post-season stock and hold onto slim SEC Championship game hopes when it hosts Ole Miss.
The LSU defense had held opponents to a slight 215 yards per game entering the contest, but Alabama paid that fact no mind, gouging the Tigers for 369 total yards, the bulk of that thanks to the arm of John Parker Wilson who finished with 22 completions on 33 attempts for 291 yards, two touchdowns and a costly interception that cost the Tide a scoring chance in the third quarter. Wilson also fumbled inside the LSU 10-yard line in the waning moments of the first half when a touchdown would have tied the game at 21.
But, all of Alabama’s offensive urgency didn’t make up for LSU’s offensive precision. Quarterback JaMarcus Russell was spectacular and efficient in completing 18-of-21 passes for 207 yards and three touchdowns. The Tigers ran the ball well also, compiling 211 rushing yards. Keiland Williams was responsible for 79 yards on just nine carries. Jacob Hester added 64 yards also on nine carries, while Russell contributed 36 as well.
Tiger receiver Early Doucet followed his excellent performance last weekend at Tennessee with another team leading effort, hauling in seven catches for 101 yards and a touchdown. Alabams’s D.J. Hall led all receivers with 143 yards on eight catches.
“When things are going back and forth like that you have to trust that your defense is going to do the job, which they did,” Russell said. “I am proud of how the team performed tonight.”
In all, LSU amassed 418 yards against an Alabama defense that was giving up slightly more than 277 a game. The lone touchdown of the second half came halfway through the third quarter when Russell and Hester teamed up on a 17-yard screen pass. But, the Alabama offense kept fighting back and the Tide’s hopes of a comeback didn’t really deflate until Russell connected on a 15-yard pass to Dwayne Bowe on third down with 6:00 to play in the game.
LSU received the opening kick for the first time this season and quickly turned the possession into points. The Tigers expertly and flawlessly eased down the field in five plays capped by a 38-yard touchdown run by Williams who burst through the right side of the Alabama defense then outran the defensive backs to the corner of the north endzone. The quick jaunt gave the Tigers a 7-0 lead after a 73-yard drive that consumed just 1:26.
The Crimson Tide responded by moving the ball to the LSU 32-yard line in eight plays. LSU’s defense stiffened and allowed the Tide to surge no farther forcing place kicker Jamie Christensen to the field for a 49-yard field goal attempt with a stiff breeze at his back. But, the breeze only helped push the ball wide left and the scoring threat was quelled.
LSU needed just five plays to insert the dagger deeper. Russell dropped back, took three steps up to avoid the Bama rush then found Doucet on a screen pass wide open in the right flat. Doucet raced up the east sideline, broke a tackle at the 5-yard line then skipped into the endzone to give the Tigers a two touchdown advantage with 7:33 remaining in the first quarter.
This time, the Alabama response was much more fruitful as the Tide seamlessly attacked the Tiger defense on the ground and in the air. Wilson aided the drive early with a 13-yard scramble from the LSU 30. Wilson then finished the drive on its eighth play with a 29-yard touchdown pass to Kenneth Darby who snuck out of the back field and found single coverage along the sideline. The 75-yard march ate 3:45 off the clock and cut the Tiger lead to 14-7 with 3:37 to play in the first quarter.
But, Bama’s glee evaporated shortly thereafter as Russell again piloted the Tiger offense straight down the field with little difficulty. LSU decided to take its time on the drive, making it last 10 plays and 4:55 in opposition to the first two drives that both lasted less than 2:00. Tailback Alley Broussard bruised Bama defenders on a 16-yard run on the drive’s ninth play giving Russell a chance to find Bowe in the south endzone just across the goal line and just out of reach of the Alabama defender. The point after gave LSU a 21-7 advantage with 13:33 to play in the half.
Wilson and his teammates took no time to sulk as they moved right back down the field against the suddenly porous Tiger defense that came in leading college football in total defense. Wilson extended the Alabama push on a 3rd-and-9 at his 21-yard line with a 41-yard strike to Hall. Five plays later, Wilson tossed a six-yard strike to Nikita Stover to cut the LSU lead to 21-14 with 9:04 remaining in the half.
Alabama caught the Tigers unaware on the ensuing kickoff with a dribbling onsides effort that was recovered by the Tide at the 50-yard line. But, LSU’s defense thwarted Bama’s attempt to dissolve the lead by forcing the Tide to punt after picking up a first down but, thanks to penalties and pressure a total of just two yards.
The Crimson Tide appeared ready to tie the score in the waning seconds of the first half after driving inside the Tiger 10-yard line with little more than 30 seconds to play after taking control of the ball at their 36 with 1:21 remaining and moving the ball well into scoring distance in six plays. But, Tiger cornerback Daniel Francis blitzed and knocked the ball from Wilson’s hand. Defensive end Chase Pittman corralled the bounding ball at the LSU 18, preserving the 21-14 lead.
“That was a team victory,” said LSU Coach Les Miles. “I think in the first half the offense was spectacular going down the field and moving the football against a very quality defensive front from Alabama.”
LSU cracked the scoring column first in the second half thanks to Russell’s arm and legs. After losing 17 yards on a sack during a flee flicker attempt and facing a 3-19 at his 33-yard line, Russell scrambled out of the pocket for 25 yards, giving LSU a first down at the Alabama 32. Three plays later, Russell kept the ball on an off-tackle run for a first down at the Bama 17, setting up his chance to lob the ball to Hester at the 14-yard line. Hester dashed left and right and hurdled a defender at the two yard line before leaping into the endzone with 7:14 remaining in the third quarter. The nine-play, 78-yard drive extended the LSU lead back to two touchdowns and eased the crowd’s trepidation.
Wilson and the Tide bounced right back as the Bama quarterback connected on passes of 23 and 35 yards during a seven-play drive that gave Alabama an excellent chance to cut into the LSU lead. Alabama was facing a 3rd-and-10 at the LSU 24 when Wilson arm was hit by blitzing safety LaRon Landry causing the ball to flutter right to Tiger cornerback Chevis Jackson at the 12-yard line, ending the Bama drive.
Alabama gave themselves a good scoring chance again at the beginning of the fourth quarter after an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on LSU during a punt gave the Tide a first down at the LSU 45. Eight plays later, Wilson faced a 3rd-and-9 at the LSU 19 and was sacked for a four-yard loss by Ricky Jean-Francois giving Christensen a chance at a 40-yard field goal. But, much like he had done in the first half, Christensen pushed the attempt left, preserving LSU’s 14-point cushion.
LSU vs. Alabama
Nov. 11, 2006 – Tiger Stadium (Baton Rouge, La.)
1. LSU’s game captains were 2 JaMarcus Russell, 30 LaRon Landry, 41 Chris Jackson and 52 Ryan Willis.
2. Alabama won the toss and deferred to the second half. LSU received the opening kickoff.
a. LSU failed to win the toss for the first time this season. The Tigers had won the toss in the nine previous games this season. 3. WRs Josh McManus and Brandon LaFell both made their first career starts tonight. LSU started the game in a 4-wide formation.
4. With the touchdown run by Keiland Williams, LSU has now scored on its first possession of each of the seven home games this season.
5. Tigers extending their consecutive starts streak today were: FS LaRon Landry (45), CB Chevis Jackson (23), DE Chase Pittman (16).
6. Tonight’s attendance of 92,588 is the second largest in Tiger Stadium history. The record is 92,664 set on Oct. 22, 2005 against Auburn.
7. LSU has recorded at least one sack in 16 straight games after a second quarter sack by Marlon Favorite in tonight’s game. The last time LSU’s defense did not record a sack was against North Texas last season.
8. LSU has outscored its opponents 115-14 in the first quarter this season, including the 14-7 score tonight. Florida and now Alabama are the only teams to dent the scoreboard in the first quarter against LSU.
9. LSU has outscored its opponents 108-7 in the first quarter of home games this season, including the 14-7 score tonight.
10. LSU has outscored its opponents 181-23 in the first half at home this season, including the 21-14 score tonight.
11. The Tigers have outscored their opponents in home games this season by a margin of 302-50.
12. Defensively, the Tigers have allowed only four touchdowns in 24 quarters in Tiger Stadium this season.
13. LSU has won four straight games over Alabama for the first time in program history.
14. The Tigers stretched their winning streak to 27 straight games over unranked opponents.
15. LSU has now won 13 straight games played in the month of November. The last time the Tigers lost in November was a 21-20 last-second defeat to Arkansas in 2002.
16. WR Dwayne Bowe pulled in a 20-yard reception in the first quarter to extend his consecutive games with a reception streak to 22 straight games.
a. Bowe scored his ninth receiving touchdown of the season and his 23rd of his career on the 19-yard reception from Russell with 13:33 left in the second quarter.
b. Bowe moved into a tie for sixth-place on LSU’s single season receiving touchdown list with nine.
17. RB Keiland Williams scored the second rushing touchdown of his career on a career-long 38-yard run with 13:34 left in the first quarter.
a. Williams collected a career-high 79 yards rushing on nine carries.
18. With four PATs today, PK Colt David has extended his consecutive successful PAT streak to 75 straight. The streak puts him into second place in school history in consecutive extra points made
19. With a tackle in the first quarter, FS LaRon Landry extended his tackles in consecutive games streak. The senior has now made a tackle in 49 straight games.
a. Landry recorded a pass break up in the second quarter to move into second-place on LSU’s career pass break up list with 35. He now only trails Corey Webster’s record of 49.
20. WR Early Doucet pulled in the sixth receiving touchdown of the season and the 13th of his career on a 30-yard pass from JaMarcus Russell with 7:33 left in the first quarter.
a. Doucet recorded the first 100-yard receiving game of his career with his 101 yards tonight. His previous career-high was 94 against Vanderbilt in 2005.
b. Doucet’s 101 yards marked the fourth 100-yard receiving game by an LSU receiver this season. Dwayne Bowe (twice) and Craig Davis also produced 100-yard receiving games this season.
21. QB JaMarcus Russell tossed his 19th, 20th and 21st touchdowns of the season and the 43rd, 44th and 45th of his career on a 30-yard strike to Early Doucet with 7:33 left in the first quarter, a 19-yard pass to Dwayne Bowe with 13:33 left in the second quarter and a 17-yard strike to Jacob Hester with 7:14 left in the third quarter.
a. The three touchdowns tonight moved Russell into third-place on LSU’s single season TD passes list, passing Tommy Hodson.
b. Tonight marks the fourth time this season (and his career) Russell has tossed three touchdown passes in a game.
c. Russell moved into sole possession of fifth place for most career wins by a signal caller in school history with his 22nd career win tonight.
22. The duo of JaMarcus Russell and Dwayne Bowe have now connected on 20 TD passes and sit in second-place on LSU’s career list for pass-catch TD combos. The pair trail record holders Tommy Hodson-Wendell Davis (21).
23. DE Chase Pittman collected the first fumble recovery of his career late in the second quarter.
24. RB Jacob Hester scored his third receiving touchdown and his ninth overall of the season on a 17-yard pass from JaMarcus Russell with 7:14 left in the third quarter. The receiving TD was the sixth of Hester’s career.
25. CB Chevis Jackson pulled in the second interception of the season and third of his career late in the third quarter.
ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE FOOTBALL NOTES
PREGAME NOTES: The Alabama captains for the LSU game were center Antoine Caldwell (Montgomery), defensive back Ramzee Robinson (Huntsville) and fullback Le’Ron McClain (Northport) ... Alabama won the toss and deferred to the second half ... LSU received and defended the east goal ... The actual kickoff time was 6:47 p.m. (ET) ... Attendance was 92,588, the second largest crowd in Tiger Stadium history.
GAME PARTICIPATION: Alabama dressed 70 players for its game with LSU with 54 playing at least one snap in the first half. On defense, Bobby Greenwood (Prattville) and Eric Gray (Trinity) earned their first starts of the season. Marcus Carter (Fort Payne) also drew a start for the first time since the Ole Miss game on Oct. 14 as Rashad Johnson (Sulligent) started the previous three games. It was his eighth start of the season. Keith Brown (Ft. Walton Beach, Fla.) returned to the starting lineup after a three-game absence since he was injured against Ole Miss. Marlon Davis (Columbus, Ga.) made his second start of the season and third time in his career. He also started against Florida International two weeks ago. Antoine Caldwell (Montgomery), Chris Capps (Jonesboro, Ga.) Kenneth Darby (Huntsville) and Wallace Gilberry (Bay Minette) each extended their Alabama longest start streaks to 23 straight games. Chris Harris (Tuscaloosa) has played in more games (41) than any other Alabama player without a career start.
LSU SERIES: Alabama and LSU met for the 70th time on Saturday with Alabama holding a 43-22-5 lead in the series after the Tigers earned a 28-14 victory.
* Mike Shula, now in his fourth season as the head coach at Alabama, has a 26-22 career record. He is 13-18 in SEC games.
* John Parker Wilson (Hoover) became the seventh quarterback in Alabama history to pass for over 2,000 yards in a season. He moved passed Mike Shula, Freddie Kitchens and Scott Hunter in to fourth on the single season list with 2,287 yards. He is 16 yards shy of Brodie Croyle for third on the charts.
* Wilson finished the game with career highs of 22 completions (35 att.) and 291 yards. He threw two touchdowns and one interception. He completed passes to eight different receivers in the game.
* Wilson also moved into fourth on the single season list with 313 pass attempts, fourth with 180 completions and tied for third with 14 touchdown passes. He already holds the single season record with seven straight 200 yard passing games to begin the season.
* The 200-yard game for Wilson was his eighth 200-yard passing game of the season. The mark is tied for the most in a single season by an Alabama quarterback. Gary Hollingsworth also tallied eight 200-yard games in 1989. Wilson set a school record with seven-straight 200-yard passing games to start the season. The eight games with over 200 yards puts Wilson in fifth on the career charts. Brodie Croyle and Andrew Zow are tied for the record with 14 200-yard games.
* Two Alabama wide receivers rank among the top-10 all-time in receptions and receiving yards in school history. DJ Hall (Ft. Walton Beach, Fla.) is third with 121 receptions and second with 1,861 yards. Keith Brown is eighth with 1,481 yards and 10th with 91 receptions.
* Hall finished the game with eight catches for 142 yards. He extended his school records to seven 100-yard receiving games in a season and 10 in his career.
* Will Oakley (Ponte Vedre Beach, Fla.) set career highs with four catches for 51 yards. His previous best was 33 yards earlier this season against Ole Miss.
* Kenneth Darby (Huntsville) recorded his second career touchdown reception in the first quarter on a 29-yard pass from Wilson. It was his longest career reception. His previous long was 17 yards against Florida in 2005. The 29 yards also matched his career high for total receiving yards in a single game.
* Nikita Stover (Hartselle) caught a six-yard pass in the second quarter for his first career touchdown. The touchdown came on his sixth career catch.
* Following Stover’s touchdown reception, Alabama’s Jeffrey Dukes recovered an onside kick, the first for the Crimson Tide since Oct. 18, 2003, when Thurman Ward recovered an onside kick in the fourth quarter against Ole Miss.
* Matt Collins (Clay) recorded his first career sack in the third quarter when he brought down JaMarcus Russell for a 17-yard loss.
* Wilson’s fumble on the last play of the first half was the first fumble Alabama has lost since the Arkansas game, spanning 363 offensive snaps.
* Keiland Williams’ 38-yard touchdown run on the Tiger’s opening drive was the longest touchdown run of the season allowed by Alabama. It was the second longest run allowed after a 45-yard scamper by Florida’s Chris Leak on Sept. 30.
* The touchdown run was only the second time in 11 games this season that the Crimson Tide allowed a touchdown on its opponents opening drive. Mississippi State scored on a 25-yard touchdown pass last weekend. It was the third time an opponent scored on its opening drive. Hawai’i posted a field goal in the season opener on Sept. 2.
* The Tigers scored touchdowns on each of their first three possessions in the game. The three drives totaled 20 plays for 221 yards, an average of 11 yards per play. LSU scored 14 points in the first quarter while Alabama had only allowed 23 points in the opening stanza in the first 10 games.
* LSU had two plays of 30 or more yards against the Crimson Tide. Alabama had only allowed 11 offensive plays of over 30 yards in its first 10 games. Hawai’i, Duke and Mississippi State each had two plays of over 30 yards against the Crimson Tide.
NEXT GAME: Alabama will play conclude its regular season next Saturday, November 11 at 2:34 p.m. in Bryant-Denny Stadium when they host in-state rival Auburn ... The game will be televised by CBS, marking the eighth television appearance this season for the Crimson Tide and fifth time on CBS.
LSU HEAD COACH LES MILES
"That was a team victory. I think in the first half the offense was spectacular going down the field and moving the football against a very quality defensive front from Alabama. The defense played well but kept extending drives based on penalties and missed opportunities. The second half we come and the defense plays well and the offense maintains drive. We can run the clock out. We ran the football a little better and I felt good about that. I felt like our special teams came on some tough situations and made some nice punts and fielded some nice punts. If we continue to play like that we will get a chance to do the things we want to do. Now, one at a time, Ole Miss,"
On LB Darry Beckwith and SS Jessie Daniels being out with injuries...
"Beckwith appears to have a little sprain. I don't know the length of time, but we were certainly sorry to see him leave the game. Jessie Daniels will probably be back next week. With guys out you make adjustments. Jacob Cutrera goes in at mike linebacker and we put Perry Riley in some at the sam, so we had some young linebackers stepping in there and playing a lot of football for us. There is no loss of productivity in the change of safeties. We bring in (Craig) Steltz and he is quality. We will be fine there. We look forward to Jessie (Daniels) getting back, but (Craig) Steltz as the starter doesn't bother us."
On the secondary's play...
"I think there may have been a couple of good calls in pass interference, but you have to play aggressive there. You can't just sit back there on your heels and give cushion and let a guy catch a ball in front of you. You have to challenge him and we did that. I don't know that we got every call there, but we certainly improved our productivity going into the second half. And give Alabama credit; they had a tough loss to a Mississippi State team that has a really gotten better and is going to play big in the back end of their schedule. They came in here and they gave us everything they had, every fake, every deep ball, every third and one, changed some play calling, got aggressive and knew that they needed to do that to stay in this game. They have good players. That is a quality football team, and we did what we needed to do tonight. I am proud of this football team. This team is gaining speed. This team is going to be tough to reckon with."
LSU OFFENSIVE PLAYER QUOTES
WR DWAYNE BOWE
On tonight’s game...
“It was a great night and everybody just came out ready to play. It was a great atmosphere and we were able to stay focused after our big road win at Tennessee. We proved that we weren’t satisfied with the Tennessee win and we still want more.”
On how the offense did tonight...
“I would give us a B- because we still have some mistakes we have to work on. We have to make sure we play hard for all 60 minutes.”
RB JACOB HESTER
On tonight’s game...
“Tonight was a littler different because they kept coming after us. We are use to handling business early at home. Even though they scored 14 points on us, our defense did a great job shutting them down in the end. At the beginning it seemed like we were going score for score with them.”
On QB JaMarcus Russell...
“To me, he is one of the top 3 quarterbacks in the nation - if not the best. Every game he is getting better and better. He is a great leader for this offense because when he is working hard it makes to rest of us want to work hard. We know that he is capable of doing whatever he puts his mind to, which is why we put all our faith in him.”
QB JAMARCUS RUSSELL
On tonight’s game...
“When things are going back and forth like that you have to trust that your defense is going to do their job, which they did. I am proud of how the team performed tonight.”
On how he has been running more the past two games...
“I am always trying to catch them off guard because they never expect me to run. When I see a hole and there is nothing open down field I just want to make any play I can to help this team win.”
Defensive Player Quotes
On the game as a whole...
“Alabama came out and they played a nice game. We gave up a couple touchdowns and made some adjustments at half time. We came out and played some shutout football at the end.”
On the defense...
“I like the way we are right now. We play together as a group. No one is selfish. We don’t care who makes the plays as long as they get done.”
On his interception...
“Coach told me to get my head in the game, so that’s what I did. I went out there and made the play.”
On the win tonight...
“We knew it was going to be rough and it was. We fought hard in all four quarters. They got the ball moving on us, and most people can’t do that. We came in at half time after the coaches told us what we needed to correct and we played our game.”
On the team...
“I think we are already heading in the right direction we just have to keep moving that way. We have a lot of talent and the best coaches. When you put that all together we are a force to be reckoned with.”
On the future Ole Miss game...
“We will enjoy this one tonight and tomorrow. We will come on Monday and start preparing then. I’m sure Coach Pelini has a good scheme in mind.”
On the game as a whole...
“We came out and gave up a few big plays and a couple touchdowns especially in the first half. Then we came back with a couple of adjustments and shut them out at the end of the game.”
On the momentum of the game...
“Anytime you give up a big play your back is against the wall, but then it’s our turn to make the plays. The guys did a great job tonight and Coach Pelini put us in great positions, even though we gave up a couple pass interferences the guys didn’t give up and we kept fighting.”
On Alabama’s team...
“You know every time Alabama comes in Tiger Stadium it is going to be a great game. They lost a couple tight games this year, but we knew they were coming to play.”
ALABAMA HEAD COACH MIKE SHULA QUOTES
On how his team kept fighting...
"I thought our kids probably had as good a look in their eye before the game as they ever had. Unfortunately they went down and scored. We come back and just get stopped. We tried to kick a long field goal because it was with the big wind behind us trying to get points on the board. They go down and score again and kept moving. I thought our offense did a nice job mixing things up, communicating well. We got some points on the board in the first half, and we had an opportunity there right before the first half. They made a play. They blitzed us, yet we were real close. We worked hard on the blitz and prepared hard on it. Our quarterback (John Parker Wilson) did a lot of good things tonight, and he will continue to improve with his experience in situations like that. And we'll be better because of it, and he'll be better because of it."
On if the misdirection plays bought Wilson more time...
"Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn't. When you do some misdirection things, we probably didn't do as much as you thought or much different than other games. He made a bunch of plays on his own, moving around. We got some guys open down the field. Our offensive line did a good job protecting on early downs, but we just didn't score enough touchdowns."
Alabama Offensive Quotes
QB John Parker Wilson
On how they changed plays to get back in the game ...
“Nothing new, we really didn’t change a whole lot. We had no new protection and no new schemes. I think the guys blocked a lot better. They came out with fire in their eyes and I didn’t get hit too many times.”
On what happened on the fumble...
“I was just trying to step up and make a play and I was holding the ball a little too long and the guy just knocked it out of my hands. LSU then recovered the ball. That’s just one of those things; you just have to hold the ball a lot higher.”
On how LSU scored so quickly ...
It’s tough, we fall so hard. We have stuck together all week and we came out here and played as a team and played together. It’s hard to lose a game like this. The guys came out and played hard. Now it’s time for us to get ready for next week.”
On the new play used tonight...
“We said we were going to use this play for awhile. We saw tonight that we might have the chance to make it happen. Hall made a great catch, it was a tough play and he made it happen.”
On DJ Hall ...
“I really can’t say enough about him. He gets open and plays hard. He always shows up at practice. He’s a huge leader of our offense. He always goes out and plays the game. He always goes out and gives it 110 percent. No matter what happens I have complete trust and faith that he is always going to be there and get open for me to pass to him. ”
WR DJ Hall
On the injury during the game...
“I fell on my shoulder and re-injured the past week.”
On recovering from this loss...
“It’s hard to say because we played harder than we have ever played. I guess with a real team like LSU , you can’t drop the ball because they will pick it up immediately. I think we did a great job executing and calling great plays. We just didn’t finish like we should have.”
ALABAMA DEFENSIVE PLAYER QUOTES
LB Juwan Simpson
On the game...
We came in expecting to play a lot better than we did. They came out hot, made some great plays, scored a couple of touchdowns. We just wanted to stay in there and our offense came out playing good and we just wanted to stay in the game and give our offense a chance to come back and win.
On LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell...
His receivers did a great job of finding a way to get open. He is not the type of quarterback that you would expect to run, but he’s done a great job this year of getting open and finding a way to scramble. He did that a couple times today on third down and that killed our momentum. They came out and got on us early but we just wanted to stay in there and fight hard and give our offense a chance.
DE Wallace Gilberry
On the loss...
Win or lose we will still go home with smiles on our faces, but unfortunately we came away with a loss. That’s one of those things you just have to swallow.
On LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell...
He’s incredible. He’s definitely the best quarterback I’ve faced and this team has faced all year. He makes perfect throws, he’s big, he’s very elusive. On film he looks slow, but he’s very deceiving. He gets those long strides and he’s moving. My hat goes off to him and his team. He led them in the right direction tonight. |
Citizens Bank Mobile Deposit™ Service Agreement
In this Agreement, the words "you" and "your" refer to each account owner or anyone else including each person, or, if applicable, entity with authority to deposit, withdraw, or exercise control over a deposit account. The words “you” and “your” also include any user you authorize to use the Service on your behalf. The words “Bank,” "we," "us," and "our" refer to Citizens Bank (either Citizens Bank, N.A. or its affiliate, Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania).
1. Services. The Service is designed to allow you to make mobile deposits (each such deposit a "Mobile Deposit" and collectively "Mobile Deposits") to your checking, savings or money market accounts from home, office, or other remote locations by using a mobile device with the Bank's downloadable mobile application "Software" to capture images of paper checks and transmitting the images and associated deposit information to the Bank or the Bank's designated processor ("Processor"). You acknowledge and agree that a Mobile Deposit made by you using this Service is not an "Electronic Fund Transfer" as that term is defined in Regulation E promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The terms "Bank" and "Processor" are used interchangeably when used in relation to any services performed by a Processor on behalf of the Bank including, but not limited to, the receipt and processing of images and check data and any notices related thereto. The mobile device must capture an image of the front and back of each check (as herein defined) to be deposited (each an "Image" and, if more than one, "Images") in accordance with the Mobile Deposit Procedures outlined in the Agreement and provided to you in the Service documentation (the "Procedures") which are available here. After capture of the front and back Images and all other required data and information from the paper check, you will transmit, via the Internet, the Mobile Deposit containing the Images and all other required data and information from or pertaining to the check to the Bank or Processor using the Software. Subject to compliance with the terms, provisions and conditions of this Agreement, the Bank will process the Mobile Deposit on the day of receipt of the Mobile Deposit and enter the Images of the check into the collection process, in accordance with the Account Agreements pertaining to the account(s) into which the Mobile Deposit is to be made and this Agreement.
2. Acceptance of these Terms. Indicating your acceptance of the terms of this Agreement within the Mobile Application or your use of this Service constitutes your acceptance of this Agreement. This Agreement may be amended from time to time and we will provide notice of such changes to you as may be required by applicable law. We will notify you of any material change via e-mail, by providing a link to the revised Agreement on our website or by an online or mobile secure message. You will be prompted to accept or reject any material change to this Agreement the next time you use the Service after the Bank has made the change. We may terminate your right to use the Service if you reject such change. Your acceptance of the revised Agreement or the continued use of the Service will constitute your consent to be bound by the revised Agreement. Further, the Bank reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to modify, add, or remove any part of the Service. Your continued use of the Service will constitute your acceptance of any such changes to the Service. No changes requested by you shall be effective unless received and agreed to in writing by the Bank.
3. Hardware and Software. In order to use this Service, you must obtain and maintain, at your sole cost and expense, a compatible mobile device and/or other hardware and software that meets all technical requirements, as specified by the Bank from time to time, for the proper delivery of the Service and that fulfills your obligation to obtain and maintain secure access to the Internet. Refer to our compatibility requirements for current hardware and software specifications. The Bank is not responsible for any third party software you may need to use this Service. Any such software is accepted by you "as is" and is subject to the terms and conditions of the software agreement you entered into directly with the third party software provider at time of download and installation. You understand and agree that you may also incur, and shall pay, any and all expenses related to the use of the Service, including, but not limited to, telephone, mobile data, or Internet service charges. You understand and agree that you are solely responsible for the operation, maintenance and updating of all equipment, software and services used in connection with the Service and the cost thereof, and you hereby agree that you will perform, or cause to be performed, all vendor recommended maintenance, repairs, upgrades and replacements. The Bank is not responsible for, and you hereby release the Bank from, any and all claims or damages resulting from, or related to, any virus or malware or related problems that may be associated with your using electronic mail or the Internet. The Bank is not responsible for, and you hereby release the Bank from, any and all claims or damages resulting from, or related to, defects in or malfunctions of your hardware or software, or failures of or interruptions in any electrical, telephone, mobile data, or Internet services. The Bank hereby advises you, and you hereby agree to scan your mobile device, hardware and software on a regular basis using a reliable virus detection product in order to detect and remove viruses or harmful malware.
4. Fees. We may, upon notice to you, to the extent required by applicable law, charge a fee for use of the Service. You are responsible for paying the fee for the use of this Service. Any fee that is charged will be disclosed prior to your Mobile Deposit. The Bank may change the fee for use of this Service from time to time pursuant to Section 2 of this Agreement. You authorize the Bank to deduct any such fee from any of your Bank accounts, even if such deduction causes an overdraft in the account. Should you fail or refuse to pay any charges under this Agreement, you agree to pay all collection costs (including reasonable attorney's fees) that may be incurred by the Bank.
In addition to the Service fees, you agree to pay all taxes, tariffs and assessments levied or imposed by any government agency in connection with the Service, this Agreement, and/or the software or equipment made available to you (excluding any income tax payable by the Bank). You are also responsible for the costs of any communication lines and any data processing charges payable to third parties.
5. Eligible Items and Security Interest. You agree to scan and deposit only checks as the term check is defined in Federal Reserve Regulation CC ("Reg. CC"). You agree that the Image of the check that is transmitted to the Bank shall be deemed an "item" within the meaning of Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code (1990 Official Text).
You agree that you will not use this Service to scan and deposit any of the following checks ("Prohibited Check"), which shall be considered prohibited notwithstanding that such checks may constitute "checks" under Reg. CC:
- Checks payable to any person or entity other than the owner(s) of the account into which the check is being deposited.
- Checks containing an alteration to any of the fields on the front of the check, or which you know or suspect, or should know or suspect, are fraudulent or otherwise not authorized by the owner of the account on which the check is drawn
- Checks payable to two or more persons jointly, not alternatively, unless deposited into an account jointly owned by all payees.
- Checks previously converted to a substitute check, as defined in the Account Agreements, are "image replacement documents" that purport to be substitute checks.
- Checks drawn on a financial institution located outside the United States.
- Checks that are remotely created checks, as defined in the Account Agreement.
- Checks not payable in United States currency.
- Checks dated more than six (6) months prior to the date of deposit.
- Checks prohibited by the Bank's current procedures related to this Service or which are otherwise not acceptable under the Account Agreement governing your Bank account.
- Checks payable on sight or payable through Drafts.
- Checks with any endorsement on the back other than that specified in this Agreement.
- Checks that have previously been negotiated, submitted through this Service, or through a remote deposit capture service offered at any other financial institution.
- Checks that are drawn or otherwise issued by the U. S. Treasury Department.
- Money Orders or Postal Money Orders.
- Travelers Checks.
You agree that we may, in our sole discretion, amend the list of Prohibited Checks from time to time. If you deposit a Prohibited Check, you agree to indemnify and reimburse the Bank for, and hold the Bank harmless from and against, any and all losses, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) the Bank may incur associated with any warranty, indemnity or other claim related thereto.
You grant us a security interest in all of your accounts or other deposits (whether general or special) at the Bank, and in all funds in such accounts or other deposits, to secure your obligations to the Bank under this Agreement to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. This security interest will survive termination of this Agreement.
6. Endorsements and Procedures. You agree to restrictively endorse any check transmitted through the Service with your name and the legend "FOR CITIZENS BANK DEPOSIT ONLY" or as otherwise instructed by us. You shall scan the front and back of each check to be deposited and thereby capture the image of the front and back of each check and any other required data from each check and transmit the Images to be deposited and all other required data and information from or pertaining to such checks to us or our Processor in accordance with the Procedures. We reserve the right to amend the Procedures, with or without prior notice to you. You agree to comply at all times with the Bank's "Safety and Security Procedures" published on the Banks' website and to safeguard the confidentiality and security of the Security Procedures and all other proprietary property or information the Bank provides to you in connection with the Service and to notify us immediately if you have any reason to believe the security or confidentiality required by this provision has been or may be breached. You acknowledge, understand and agree the Security Procedures are not designed for the detection of errors. The Bank is not, and will not be, obligated to detect errors by you or others, even if the Bank takes certain actions from time to time to do so. To ensure accuracy, you shall key the amount of each check prior to transmitting the Mobile Deposit in accordance with the Procedures. You may send multiple Mobile Deposits to us or Processor on the same day, not to exceed the deposit limits discussed in Section 13 of this Agreement.
7. Image Quality. The Images of checks transmitted to the Bank using this Service must be legible, as determined in our sole discretion. Without limiting the foregoing, each Image of each check must be of such quality that the following information can be clearly read and understood by sight review of such Image:
- The amount of the check;
- The payee of the check;
- The signature of the person who wrote the check;
- The date of the check;
- The check number;
- The information identifying the drawer and the paying bank that is preprinted on the check, including the MICR line;
- All other information placed on the check prior to the time an Image of the check is captured, such as any required identification written on the front of the Check and any endorsements applied to the back of the check.
Each Image shall also comply with any other requirements established from time to time by the Bank, and shall meet all standards for image quality established by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, or any other regulatory agency, clearinghouse or association.
8. Receipt of Mobile Deposit and Notification. You agree that you shall be solely liable for, and the Bank shall not have any liability whatsoever to you for, any Mobile Deposit or the Images or other information contained therein that are not received by the Bank. You also agree to be liable for Mobile Deposits or the Images or other information contained therein that are intercepted or altered by an unauthorized third party or dropped during transmission. You agree that the Bank has no obligation to accept a Mobile Deposit and, therefore, we reserve the right to reject any Mobile Deposit or the Images or other information contained therein transmitted through this Service, at our discretion, without liability to you. Unless required by applicable law, the Bank has no obligation to notify you of the rejection of a Mobile Deposit or the Images or other information contained therein and shall have no liability to you for failing to do so. A Mobile Deposit is considered received by the Bank when a complete copy of the Mobile Deposit has been written on a Bank electronic storage device in conformity with the Bank's technical and operational requirements. To meet the cut-off time referenced in Section 9, the Mobile Deposit must be received by the Bank prior to the cut-off time and successfully pass the edits for conformity with the technical requirements. For purposes of determining when a Mobile Deposit has been delivered and received, the Bank's records shall be determinative. If customer elected to receive a receipt, upon receipt of a Mobile Deposit, we will send a confirmation that we have received the Mobile Deposit. Your receipt of such confirmation does not mean the transmission was error free, complete or will be considered a Mobile Deposit and credited to your account.
Upon receipt of a Mobile Deposit submitted by you, the Bank may examine such Mobile Deposit and the Images and other information contained therein to ensure that you have complied with this Agreement and followed the Procedures. If the Bank determines that you have not complied with this Agreement or followed the Procedures or if errors exist in the Images or other information contained in the Mobile Deposit, the Bank, in its sole discretion, may either reject the Mobile Deposit or elect to correct the error, and accept and process the corrected Mobile Deposit (a "Corrected Mobile Deposit"). As a form of correction, the Bank may credit your account for the full amount of the deposit and make any necessary adjustments to the account to correct the error. The Bank may, at its option, also perform a risk management analysis of one or more Mobile Deposits submitted by you to detect potentially fraudulent checks, and, in its sole discretion, the Bank may reject any such Mobile Deposit, the Images or other information contained therein. If after examination of a Mobile Deposit, the Images and other information contained therein, the Bank determines that you have complied with this Agreement, processed and transmitted the Mobile Deposit in accordance herewith and with the Procedures, the Bank shall accept the Mobile Deposit for deposit to your Account. Notwithstanding the fact that Bank has accepted a Mobile Deposit for processing, any credit made to your Account shall be provisional until the final settlement of the deposited item, and you shall remain liable to the Bank for any errors, inaccuracies, breach of warranties and any other loss sustained by, or claim made against, the Bank.
9. Availability of Funds. Funds from your Mobile Deposit that are received and accepted by the Bank will be made available to you at the time and on the basis described below.
When You Can Withdraw Funds You Have Deposited
At the close of the same business day
Available to pay checks and purchases that post to your account that night.
- Citizens Bank check (written by Citizens Bank customer) and Federal Government Checks deposited up to 10:00pm Eastern Time.
The next business day
Available for next business day withdrawals, and to pay checks and purchases that post to your account the next night.
- Citizens Bank check (written by Citizens Bank customer) and Federal Government Checks deposited after 10:00pm Eastern Time.
- Non-Citizens Bank check (written by a customer of another bank) up to 10:00pm Eastern Time.
The second business day
Available for second business day withdrawals, and to pay checks and purchases that post to your account on the second night.
- Non-Citizens Bank check (written by a customer of another bank) after 10:00pm Eastern Time.
For additional information on our Funds Availability policies, including the definition of a Business Day, please refer to your Account Agreements. The Service is subject to transaction limitations and the Bank reserves the right to change our Funds Availability policy, in our sole discretion, subject to applicable law.
10. Laws, Rules, and Regulations. You agree to comply with all existing and future operating procedures used by the Bank for processing of transactions. You further agree to comply with, and be bound by, all applicable state or federal laws, rules, regulations, orders, guidelines, operating circulars and pronouncements, affecting checks and drafts, including, but not limited to, all rules and procedural guidelines established by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the Electronic Check Clearing House Organization ("ECCHO") and any other clearinghouse or other organization in which Bank is a member or to which rules Bank has agreed to be bound. These procedures, rules, and regulations (collectively the "Rules") and laws are incorporated herein by reference. In the event of conflict between the terms of this Agreement and the Rules, the Rules will control.
11. Presentment. The manner in which the Images are cleared, presented for payment, and collected shall be in the Bank's sole discretion subject to applicable law and the Account Agreement. The Bank, in its sole discretion, shall select the clearing agents used to collect and present the Images, and the Bank's selection of the clearing agents shall be considered to have been designated by you.
12. Maintenance and Disposal of Transmitted Checks. You shall mark, stamp, or write on the original check "Electronically Presented" after scanning the check in accordance with Section 6 of this Agreement. You agree to securely store the original check for a period of fifteen (15) calendar days from the date of the Image transmission (such period the "Retention Period"). During the Retention Period, you shall take appropriate security measures to ensure that: (a) only authorized persons shall have access to original checks, (b) the information contained on such checks shall not be disclosed, (c) such checks will not be duplicated or scanned more than one time and (d) such checks will not be deposited or negotiated in any form. During the Retention Period, you agree to promptly (but in all events within 5 business days) provide the original check to the Bank upon request. The risk of loss due to the unavailability of the original or copy of a check for any reason, during the Retention Period, shall be exclusively on you.
Upon expiration of the Retention Period, you shall securely and irretrievably destroy the original checks you transmitted using commercially reasonable methods of destruction. You are obligated to ensure that the original checks are not accessed by unauthorized persons during the storage, destruction and disposal process and, once destroyed, the original checks will be unprocessable and all sensitive personal and financial information undecipherable. You hereby indemnify the Bank for, and hold the Bank harmless from and against, any and all claims, demands, actions, causes of action, losses and damages, of whatever nature or kind, and regardless of the theory upon which the same is (are) based, caused directly or indirectly by, arising out of, related to, in connection with or resulting wholly or partially from, the retention and destruction of original checks by you.
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I'm working my way through 1000 pcs of Lake City 5.56 brass that I bought last year. The headstamp shows 2011 as the year. I'm coming across a disappointing amount of pieces with split mouths. Anyone else having this problem? Do they have 2nds on these or am I just unlucky?!
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March 11, 2012, 09:42 AM
If you bought them from an established source like Scharach's or another online retailer I would contact them and see if they will do anything for you, like replace them. It's not normal, and in the 4000 pieces of 100% processed I have from around 2000-2005 time frame I have to seen a single split neck.
March 11, 2012, 09:46 AM
Most suppliers of once fired brass includes extras to cover bad brass that may have slipped through. May want to call the supplier as suggested.
March 11, 2012, 10:10 AM
Are these new or once-fired? There is a lot of new LC 2011 on the market right now, and it should not have this problem.
March 11, 2012, 10:12 AM
I have found LC brass (along with most others) to have some cases with huge differences in neck thicknesses from one side to the other. Sometimes the thin side is quite thin. Since I neck turn and cull any cases that don't measure up, I expect to loose some.
All is not lost with cases with split necks or bad kinks. I use a tubing cutter and size them to 7.62x25 and load them on the mild side because of the case thickness.
Still I would be upset about buying brass with split necks.
March 11, 2012, 10:26 AM
I see a fair amount that isn't split but has what looks like a small notch in the neck. I've gotten it from my own factory XM193 after its first firing.
It's tiny and usually gone with a 1.750 trim length. If not, I trash it. I'll see if there's an example handy.
March 11, 2012, 10:54 AM
unlucky. Lube the inside of the necks.
March 11, 2012, 11:19 AM
This is new uncrimped brass that I got from midway. The splits go halfway down the neck on most cases so trimming it out isn't really an option.
March 11, 2012, 11:56 AM
Call Midway and they should replace them and get with their distrib, and correct the lot of that brass being sold.... do it Monday.
March 11, 2012, 12:24 PM
This is new uncrimped brass that I got from midway. Does it look annealed?
March 11, 2012, 12:27 PM
Ordered 1K of new LC 11 from Midway in January, received 1002 cases in the lot, not a single cracked/split neck, less than a dozen case mouths visually out of round - they were pretty well-packed for shipment. I've reamed/deburred all the pockets and flash holes and was pleasantly surprised at the quality.
I'd have to guess at "just unlucky" but they should make it good.
March 11, 2012, 01:21 PM
Yes it is annealed.
March 12, 2012, 07:12 PM
Well... Following up on this...
I shot around 120 rounds of this brass today. More splits occured after being shot. I culled out at least another 20 cases that had severe splits that were discovered by just a quick once over! I've bought factory loaded rounds that used lc brass and have never had a problem! All of these are reloads (obviously) using a near minimum load of h335 with 62 grain fmj so I don't think pressure should be a problem. I see some of the other pcs of brass have light (bright) lines on the neck. Do you guys think I should avoid shooting these? I'm shooting them out of a ~$1000 sabre defence AR that I'd rather not damage. I'm going to email Midway tonight to see what they'll do...
March 12, 2012, 09:37 PM
Clean you FL die & expander. Look for build up of brass or rough expander. Use a copper removing solvent. I had some PMC brass, did the same thing, split necks. All scrap on the 3th firing. Brass was from factory new ammo. Still dont know why it split. Other brands, same dies, no problems.
March 12, 2012, 09:38 PM
Anything over maybe 10 bad necks in an order of 1000 would tick me off. Further, they certainly shouldn't be splitting on first use with any sensible load.
I'd definitely talk with Midway ... perhaps you're not alone in having received part of a bad batch. They should make it good - be sure they pick up the return shipping or give you a store credit for roughly what it's costs. They sent me a "close but no cigar" bullet order once and when I called, offered to replace it BUT, expected me to ship the bad ones back. I asked for a supervisor and 2 seconds later, all was OK.
March 12, 2012, 11:00 PM
New LC brass--I've gone through about 3000 I bought from Natchez without any split necks and only a very few dented/bent cases. I'd say you were sold a lot of culls that made it past QC @ LC. They SURELY should not be split new off the line, and I'd be surprised if I didn't get at least 5 loadings from LC brass that I bought new.
I am assuming that you have not re-sized any rounds, just received them this way. Plus after shooting a few that you loaded you discovered more splits after firing and before sizing. That would rule out the expander ball, dirty dies etc. You have faulty brass and the supplier needs to make it good.
March 12, 2012, 11:51 PM
You're right mtrmn. I usually dont size new brass. I check dimensions and if all measures up it gets loaded. That's how I've always done it if it is new. I'm a fairly new reloader and this has been pretty discouraging! Not enough to give up though. I'm pretty much hooked.
March 12, 2012, 11:56 PM
From lc's disclaimer on midway :
This is true 5.56x45mm mil-spec, new, unfired, heavy duty brass with that is recent production with a Lake City headstamp. It is the same brass supplied to our fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and offers outstanding performance in AR-15 type rifles. We made a special buy on a limited supply and it will not last long. Cases should be sized, chamfered and deburred before loading. With this brass, there is no primer crimp to remove.
This is pretty common on brass , in the disclaimer department.
Your neck spiltting is unusual....but if they are just used " out of the box" you may be having a ton of other issues that could cause this.
March 13, 2012, 01:17 AM
There's a LOT of 2011 5.56 ammo and brass for sale right now. It's been discussed many times about the source of this ammo and brass with some people feeling like it might be rejected or second ammo that Federal is selling.
After hearing about the split necks on the brass, I tend to believe this theory. :scrutiny:
March 13, 2012, 01:24 AM
How would failing to FL size/chamfer/deburr cause or contribute to split necks?
For the record, I just neck size and trim/chamfer/deburr, no FL sizing. The only reason I trim is to take them down to 1.740 as I use an X-die for resizing and basically never have to trim again in the life of the case.
Personally I think it's just a bad batch ... too many guys have had good success with the LC 11 from Natchez and Midway in the last 6 months for these issues to be common.
March 13, 2012, 06:20 AM
Well, crunching incorrectly sized brass into your chamber could lead to some weak points and pressure spots.... so i've heard around the way.
I'm not saying thats the definitive cause.
However, if you can't/dont rule out the easy stuff first, you're just making assumptions with the rest.
I know no one likes to follow instructions....or even read them most of the time... but when the manufacturer is telling you what you are receiving isn't ready to fire without " some assembly required" mayhaps that should be advice you listen to.
I'm fairly certain ( even though it may not effect the outcome) that LC and or Midway would ask if you had done so ( followed the instructions) as part of the return/exchange process...if nothing else than for their own reference.
At the very least, it wouldn't hurt to try....
March 13, 2012, 07:12 AM
Re "crunching cases" - while the OP said he did not prep the brass, I presume he did check it before loading it up. On mine, I checked a random 100 while doing the primer pockets (I'm quasi-anal about rifle brass) and they were all at SAAMI min or .001 over min and that's been my previous experience with new LC brass as well.
If they weren't checked in any way, then I agree it's time to do that before calling Midway.
March 14, 2012, 03:43 AM
I suppose its back to Fuse then....
He stated he checked the dimensions, so I guess we'll go with that.
A bright ring encircling the case neck is to me not something that would indicate an imminent vertical failure, but a separation of the neck at that ring.
This could be caused by poor headspace on the shoulder, which is a sizing or bolt, or chamber issue.
It could also be a pressure issue, but given its repetitive uniformity and the charge used, I doubt that. Something mechanically is happening here. I know that its easy to just blame the brass....but I'd hate to rule everything else out, return the brass, and have him find some other issue.
This is where I was headed with the "ton of other issues" portion of my original comment.
So we do have a host of potential problems....faulty brass being amongst them, but this could also be indicative of other issues as well. I'd say lets address the easy ones first.... but we'd need a little more information.
So, OP :
Have you used any other brass other than this lot in this rifle ? If so, what were the cases like ?
What were the conditions of factory loaded brass ejected from the rifle if any ?
Whats the spec of the pills you are using ?
March 14, 2012, 01:56 PM
I understand bright rings can be a sign of a risk of case seperation, but these are not rings. Instead they are in similar areas on the neck as the currently split cases. Onto blarbys questions...
As far as other brass: Yes I've used a good bit of factory federal american eagle in the black box. Also have ran quite a few federal branded loads using penetrators.
Also, I run a little steel through my ars. Mostly monarch and tula, little bit of wolf. Never had any problems, I've reloaded brass from all kinds of factory ammo I've shot with no problems so far (win, rem etc.) I'd say the round count of this particular rifle is around 1,100 to 1,200 with say roughly 300 being steel cased. Mostly new factory loaded brass ammo and maybe 3-400 of my own handloads make up the rest of this equation. Never a problem with stress marks or cracks on the brass. Steel, I couldn't tell you. I don't pick it up.
This particular lot of reloads were using speer 62g fmjs.
March 14, 2012, 02:42 PM
To erase whatever lingering doubts there may be, FL size 50 of the new cases and shoot the same load in them. At the current failure rate, you should get 8 or so splits. That would seem to me to be sufficient evidence to have a chat with Midway.
March 14, 2012, 02:45 PM
I concur, Canuck.
Size away, OP
And I apologize, Fuse- I misunderstood your description of the line. When I re-read it, I can visualize it now.
Some pics of that "line" would be really helpful !
Usually a sizing will take out most light imperfections in a neck....but if what you are indicating is something that looks like a repetitive failure in the brass....and seems to line up with the split brass..... I think you might be right then that there is something wrong with it :)
Do let us know how the sizing of 50 goes though. I'd even go so far to size 25 that didn't have the imperfection, and 25 that did... if you feel comfortable, fire and see what the results are.
I'm thinking that if its a flaw in the draw or factory size process, an expander die might split'em on the bench...this has happened to me with some bad FC brass. We'll have to wait and see. If sizing the neck lined brass is suddenly much easier than the non-lined brass on the downstroke of the press...there's your answer.
I agree Canuck. I'm still waiting on an initial response from them... But this wkend I may do a small batch as you mentioned and see what the outcome is.
March 14, 2012, 03:08 PM
Similar, otto. But my splits have all started at the mouth and went down the neck. This is straight out of the bag, not the once fired stuff. Although the once fired did about the same thing... I'll snap a pic later.
March 14, 2012, 10:32 PM
Well, I couldn't get my good camera to cooperate because of a dead battery but here's a cell pic...
These are just a few of the splits... two cases on the left are straight out of the bag, two on the right except the very far right are once fired cases that split. The very far right case is a kinda scary shoulder botch (looks worse than in the pic, almost like it split and someone tried to weld it back) and just plain odd neck flare and inconsistency...
Blarby I couldn't get a decent pic of the lines. They just wouldn't show up.
This seems to be a common problem with some of the new production LC.
Go to Midway and read the reviews, there are other folks with the same complaints (you'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the list to read them).
I have a couple of thousand new LC 2011 and I randomly checked 200 of them...no split necks but several were deformed.
Another thing is that Midway and Natchez have recently sold LC brass which is actually headstamped FC 10. This has irritated more than a few people but the brass comes from the same plant.
March 15, 2012, 10:05 AM
Good enough Fuse, any digi photo can be cleaned up or otherwise manipulated for clarity.
If the ones on the left are unfired, and the ones on the right are- call midway !
Not a lot of call for anything else.
You can see if you magnify them ( well, IRL- you prolly dont have to ! ) that the lines from the sizing process on the brass spearhead your splits ( I'm fairly certain the "brighter" lines that you have been seeing are a more advanced form of these lines, now that I see the brass). The brass inside the splits has that "non-shiny" color, which is indicative of heat being applied to the exposed metal....
Those are sizing splits that are annealed over.... You couldn't have created that unless you annealed them yourself.
Thanks for all your help- both you and Canuck- Back to the factory they go !
I'd make sure and go over any brass purchases in the future with a fine-toothed comb :)
March 15, 2012, 10:52 AM
Well, this brings up a question - how does brand new Lake City brass get to the retail market? I think Lake City has only one customer - the US government, and I doubt they are willing to supply Midway and other retailers.
So are the occasional lots of unfired LC brass simply a result of LC scrapping defective brass, which is later resold to us through unofficial channels such a scrap metal recycler?
March 15, 2012, 11:01 AM
There has been speculation that Midway is/was selling "seconds" . But if a neck is split...the case is useless.
There are also many complaints that people aren't getting the full quantities that they purchased...like 962 instead of a thousand.
Hard to imagine that there would be such a lack of quality control at the Lake City plant.
March 15, 2012, 11:05 AM
Otto - it could be that there is GREAT quality control at Lake City, but the brass they reject is then sold on the retail market instead of being scrapped.
March 15, 2012, 11:09 AM
Midway has sold seconds in the past..... both brass and bullets.
They note that these are a "special buy" ( at least the current ones) which lends a little more credence to that theory.
Overall midway is a good vendor....in this case apparently selling a class "b" product at best.... It comes down to how they make up for it.
March 15, 2012, 11:49 AM
I don't hold a grudge against Midway at all. I've been a customer for years and will continue to be. Still haven't heard back from them though... I'll probably be giving them a call sometime this weekend.
Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk
March 15, 2012, 04:47 PM
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" ... or somesuch quote. I think LC just has surplus and/or surplus production capacity now that Iraq is over with ... what they don't have is very consistent QC.
I've bought several products from Midway that were titled 2nds or blemished - generally received better merchandise than I expected. I've never received any regular product that I had reason to think was a return, a 2nd or anything similar.
However, all that said, I'll be inspecting my last purchased lot over again ... with the reading glasses on this time.
March 15, 2012, 04:59 PM
from my exp. a call to Midway will solve the problem....
They'll ship you new product immediately and usually don't want the defective stuff back......
March 15, 2012, 05:46 PM
I agree canuck. I've purchased blem bullets of different calibers and saw nothing visibly wrong with either of them. I got an email back today. They want me to do a return. Not worth it IMO...
March 15, 2012, 05:51 PM
Tell them to send you 200 cases as a replacement or a credit for $22 ... that should even you out OK. The credit option is in case they're out or don't want to break a 1000 count bag. You may have to escalate one level while on the phone to get "non-standard" treatment. Their screw-up, they can debate that with LC ... you shouldn't have to pay to ship their error back!
ETA: Call them and insist on staying on the line until you're satisfied ... too easy to fob someone off via e-mail ... they guy that types, "Send them back" is not likely the customer support person who has to deal with irate customers.
FWIW, a couple of years ago I had a long discussion with a couple of shooters who work at Nosler or at their 2nds distributor ... according to them, the blems they sell are strictly cosmetic ... he told me what to look for and for the life of me, I couldn't find it. Anything worse than cosmetic, they cull.
Some blem Hornadys I got from Midway on the other hand were genuine blems ... some had an enclosed base, some not (XTPs maybe??). Dunno, I rarely shoot Hornady jacketed pistol.
Given the value of brass, I'd expect LC to recycle errors.
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we have it here too-it can be considered a taxable benefit,by getting the 15 bucks a month it eliminates it in the eyes of the IRS or CRA
Originally Posted by jrmech
Last edited by cold in alberta; 07-16-2012 at 07:37 PM.
yes, we can convince ourselves to accept anything and everything, Goebbels did wonders for the Nazi's..it didn't make it right though.
Originally Posted by John Markl
I want to give my 2 cents about Deem as I worked there for almost a year. They let the dispatchers run the business. They will run you into the ground and you will hate life. They put unqualified techs on service calls and have the best guy go play clean up. This cycle only lasts so long, if your any good you will work until it's completely unsafe and they will demand for more. They will send you FAR away and keep you out late. This is coming from a former Refrigeration Service Supervisor and mainly speaking of the refrigeration calls. They can not even handle a simple Papa Johns PM or CVS call without somebody totally screwing it all up. You will get great pay, a new van and some nice shirts. You will get terrible insurance and a bad attitude. You will have to call off to get some rest. The word is out on the street and they can't find any good techs anymore. They used to have some of the best but they have moved on. I started to get the opinion they like having call backs as most of the time they still get paid twice. I say this because the worst guys never got in ANY trouble for doing poor work. The dispatchers also talk trash with all the techs so they spread stuff around and get people mad at each other. The contract / installers slap stuff in and run. As if service didn't have enough on their plate you run call backs on the contract side constantly. Good pay / NO life.
It's a Leak!
we are ... Keeps all their property safe because when at the shop they have thefts ...
Originally Posted by John Markl
And if we start at the shop our time starts at the shop,as it is now my time starts when I arrive at the job or after one hour of drive time ...
I live 3 minutes from our shop . I would love to park my van there . I wouldn't have to look at it when I'm home . I would get an easy 300 more hours of pay each year.
I could walk or ride A bike to work
I could go on ....
Not being an ass... In our case it's cheaper for our customers ,allows jobs to be bid lower, and spreads our property out so the meth heads can't raid them all at once
Last edited by mikeacman; 11-06-2012 at 10:22 PM.
Not disagreeing with your post, but you just described most if not all mechanical contractors Kind of the nature of the beast, feast or famine.
Originally Posted by wrightbrigade
I can assure most of you that Pat could probably kick any one of your a$$es, just sayin. lol. Pretty big fella to be lipping off to. lol.
Actually he can muster with the finest mechanics around. Pat usually is the only guy who I can count on to come help when I need the muscle, technical or anything else at 2 am. He's a good decent dude.
As for the truck benefit as income, I don't like it, but it seems thats the way the IRS wants it.
As for Deem and any other mechanical contractor, talent is extremely hard to come by. And when less talent is on staff, it makes it hard for the rest of the talented guys. Supermarkets especially. The solution is to train, teach, train, teach, train, teach. And find good men who have ethics and willingness and motivation to get better. The character of real men is the missing link.
I was just with a young guy yesterday, who was really moaning about all the peripheral troubles and I could not help but think of back when I was in his shoes. Things were different. The trade has changed, it's kinda depressing.
I've worked for companies big and small but DEEM is the most adversarial toward the front-line technician of any that I have ever worked for in decades in the service business. Turnover, at least in the geographical division with which I was affiliated with, was and is extremely high- even in this tough economy. In six months, we lost ten excellent rack technicians, two supervisors and a salesman. They do not treat their technicians fairly. One of my co-workers was the victim of what I have never seen in the service field. A meeting was held. A new rule was established (they were always changing policy and procedure but rarely communicating it to the techs). My buddy was called into the office and suspended for three days for allegedly misdiagnosing a unit. And the kicker was that during the meeting the manager from Indianapolis stated that the rule was just being put into effect and the penalties were to proceed from a verbal warning up to termination. They skipped all that and immediately suspended a good technician who may or may not have made a mistake. This kind of hints at the type of malice that DEEM engages in regards to their front-line employees. When I first started at DEEM, we spent an inordinate time waiting for the next call in parking lots- 1 hour or more was not uncommon. I spoke to a manager in Indianapolis who put the blame squarely on the technician- "The techs aren't trying hard enough to get ahold of Dispatch. And I am not going to pay you guys for sitting in parking lots!" I can cite so many examples, but I will share one last one- We were scheduled at a facility to replace some unit heaters. I showed up first, looked around and could not find a platform lift which I assumed was scheduled for the job. I called the office, was redirected from person to person to person until I finally got ahold of a man who sold the job. His response: "A platform lift wasn't included in the quote! Can't you guys do it from ladders?" No way- some of the heaters were located over a conveyor belt and couldn't be reached anyway without an extending platform. And how were we to get the old ones down and the new ones up? We did as much as we could as we continued to play phone tag for 3/4's of the day and having the local supervisor, who promised to get us a lift never call us back or respond to our calls until the end of the day when he called to cuss us out because we were going to exceed the quote. It was our fault! An hour later, in a more subdued tone, he called back and admitted that the lift was included in the quote but someone in Indy had dropped the ball. With DEEM, it is always the technician's fault until overwhelming evidence vindicates. Don't get me wrong- there are many good people in the Indianapolis headquarters but they, unfortunately are not the ones that engage the technicians on a regular basis. The things that I saw at Deem, I have never seen anywhere in twenty-plus years in the service industry. Bad craziness. Still- a job is a job and these days beggars can't be choosers.
time to unionize the rats SOB, call your local union, talk to the organizer, its easier than you think.
Even Serviceman classification wages trump what most non-Union Com. Ref. Techs make. It's time for change, indeed.
Ask the Hostess employees how that worked out for them.
Originally Posted by valdelocc
Technical incompetence is NOT a sales tool....
You mean about the CEO's salary being tripled even after their 1st bankruptcy & then blaming their failure on union bakers & truckers? You must also be a strong Walmart supporter.
Will you close your shop if your employees organize?
Funny how union people like to point their fingers at Wal-Mart as some sort of lighting rod for "what's wrong with America"......Yet, millions of Americans "voice their support" with their purses and wallets on a daily basis.
Originally Posted by MechanicallyInclined
Technical incompetence is NOT a sales tool....
The company I started with was non-union. They stated that there was no union needed as they treated everyone well and paid decent wages. 7 years later I left that company and all the remaining mechanics went union as we were no longer being treated properly, getting ripped off and the service manager was an alcoholic fool backed by the company due to his extensive refrigeration knowledge. It had become so bad that communication between mechanics and the service manager required a mediator. No face to face conversations if you could believe it.
IF a company tows the line no union is needed. The problem is that very few companies can stay decent without morals in place. They start getting greedy, tyrannical and think that they are doing the employees a favor by giving them a job. They think they can always get other employees.
In that case it is past due for a union as the employees have built a life around that employer and location and through circumstances are almost forced to put up with the abuse.
Human nature will soil employers, employees and unions if watchdogs are not in place. There is no right or wrong side. It comes down to the people involved.
To quote a former coworker that was unhappy with that company:
"Hey, I was looking for a job when I found this one!" |
VATICAN CITY — Cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel today to elect the next pope amid more upheaval and uncertainty than the Catholic Church has seen in decades: There’s no front-runner, no indication how long voting will last and no sense that a single man has what it takes to fix the church’s many problems.
On the eve of the vote, cardinals offered wildly different assessments of what they’re looking for in a pope and how close they are to a decision. It was evidence that Benedict XVI’s surprise resignation has continued to destabilize the church leadership and that his final appeal for unity may go unheeded, at least in the early rounds of voting.
Still, the buzz in the papal stakes swirled around Cardinal Angelo Scola, an Italian seen as favored by cardinals hoping to shake up the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, and Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer, a favorite of Vatican-based insiders intent on preserving the status quo.
Cardinals held their final closed-door debate Monday over whether the church needs more of a manager to clean up the Vatican’s bureaucratic mess or a pastor to inspire the 1.2 billion faithful in times of crisis. The fact that not everyone got a chance to speak was a clear indication that there’s still unfinished business going into the first round of voting.
“This is a great historical moment but we have got to do it properly, and I think that’s why there isn’t a real rush to get into things,” Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier from South Africa said as he left the session Monday.
None of that has prevented a storm of chatter over who’s ahead in the race.
Scola is affable and Italian, but not from the Italian-centric Vatican bureaucracy called the Curia. That gives him clout with those seeking to reform the nerve center of the Catholic Church that has been discredited by revelations of leaks and complaints from cardinals in the field that Rome is inefficient and unresponsive to their needs.
Scherer seems to be favored by Latin Americans and the Curia. The Brazilian has a solid handle on the Vatican’s finances, sitting on the governing commission of the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works, as well as the Holy See’s main budget committee.
As a non-Italian, the archbishop of Sao Paolo would be expected to name an Italian as secretary of state — the Vatican No. 2 who runs day-to-day affairs at the Holy See — another plus for Vatican-based cardinals who would want one of their own running the shop.
The pastoral camp seems to be focusing on two Americans, New York archbishop Timothy Dolan and Boston archbishop O’Malley. Neither has Vatican experience. Dolan has admitted his Italian isn’t strong — seen as a handicap for a job in which the lingua franca of day-to-day work is Italian.
Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet is well-known and well-respected by many cardinals, stemming from his job at the important Vatican office that vets bishop appointments; less well known is that Ouellet has a lovely voice and is known to belt out French folk songs on occasion.
If the leading names fail to reach the 77 votes required for victory in the first few rounds of balloting, any number of surprise names could come to the fore as alternatives.
Those include Cardinal Luis Tagle, archbishop of Manila. He is young — at age 55 the second-youngest cardinal voting — and was only named a cardinal last November. While his management skills haven’t been tested in Rome, Tagle — with a Chinese-born mother — is seen as the face of the church in Asia, where Catholicism is growing.
Whoever he is, the next pope will face a church in crisis: Benedict XVI spent his eight-year pontificate trying to revive Catholicism amid the secular trends that have made it almost irrelevant in places like Europe, once a stronghold of Christianity. Clerical sex abuse scandals have soured many faithful on their church, and competition from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa has drawn souls away.
Closer to home, the next pope has a major challenge awaiting him inside the Vatican walls, after the leaks of papal documents in 2012 exposed ugly turf battles, allegations of corruption and even a plot purportedly orchestrated by Benedict’s aides to out a prominent Italian Catholic editor as gay.
Cardinals on Monday heard a briefing from the Vatican No. 2 about another stain on the Vatican’s reputation, the Vatican bank. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who heads the commission of cardinals overseeing the scandal-marred Institute for Religious Works, outlined the bank’s activities and the Holy See’s efforts to clean up its reputation in international financial circles.
Massimo Franco, noted columnist for leading daily Corriere della Sera, said the significance of the revelations about the bank and the Holy See’s internal governance cannot be underestimated in this conclave, having determined both Benedict’s decision to resign and the major task ahead for his successor.
Franco, whose new book “The Crisis of the Vatican Empire” describes the Vatican’s utter dysfunction, said cardinals are still traumatized by Benedict’s resignation, leading to the uncertainty heading into the conclave.
“It’s quite unpredictable. There isn’t a majority neither established nor in the making,” he said.
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz of Chile concurred, saying that while Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had tremendous front-runner status going into the 2005 conclave that elected him pope after just four ballots, the same cannot be said for any of the candidates of 2013.
“This time around, there are many different candidates, so it’s normal that it’s going to take longer than the last time,” he told The Associated Press. “There are no groups, no compromises, no alliances, just each one with his conscience voting for the person he thinks is best, which is why I don’t think it will be over quickly.”
Dolan, a possible papal contender, seemed to think otherwise and was bounding with optimism by the end of the pre-conclave meetings and the drama about to unfold.
“I’m kind of happy they’re over because we came here to elect a pope and we’ll start it tomorrow with the holy sacrifice of the Mass, then into the conclave and look for the white smoke!” Dolan enthused on his radio show on SiriusXM’s “The Catholic Channel.”
Errazuriz said the key isn’t so much where the next pope comes from, but what he would bring to the papacy.
Cardinals, he told AP, are looking for a pope “who is close to God, has love for people, the poorest, the ability to preach the Gospel to the world and understand the young and bring them closer to God. These are the categories that count.”
He argued that Latin America, counting 40 percent of the world’s Catholics, is underrepresented in the college of cardinals. “It doesn’t have 40 percent of the cardinals,” he said.
Today begins with the cardinals checking into the Vatican’s Domus Sanctae Martae, a modern, industrial-feel hotel on the edge of the Vatican gardens. While the rooms are impersonal, they’re a step up from the cramped conditions cardinals faced before the hotel was first put to use in 2005; in conclaves past, lines in the Apostolic Palace used to form for using bathrooms.
This morning, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, leads the celebration of the “Pro eligendo Pontificie” Mass — the Mass for the election of a pope — inside St. Peter’s Basilica, joined by the 115 cardinals who will vote.
They break for lunch at the hotel, and return for the 4:30 p.m. procession into the Sistine Chapel, chanting the Litany of Saints, the hypnotic Gregorian chant imploring the intercession of the saints to help guide the voting. After another chant imploring the Holy Spirit to intervene, the cardinals take their oath of secrecy and listen to a meditation by elderly Maltese Cardinal Prosper Grech.
While the cardinals are widely expected to cast the first ballot this afternoon, technically they don’t have to. In conclaves past, the cardinals have always voted on the first day.
The first puffs of smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney should emerge sometime around 8 p.m. Black smoke from the burned ballot papers means no pope, the likely outcome after Round 1. White smoke means the 266th pope has been chosen.
Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, also a leading papal contender, said he was going into the conclave still rattled by the fact that his mentor, Benedict, had resigned.
“It made me cry. He was my teacher. We worked together for over 40 years,” Schoenborn said during a Mass late Sunday. Nevertheless, Schoenborn said the cardinals had banded together to face the future.
“It makes us brothers not contenders,” he said. “Such a surprising act has already begun a true renewal.” |
Skip to comments.Polygamy Will be Next (And Much More)
Posted on 03/22/2013 7:55:04 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There is nothing in our current legal system or national moral climate that will stop polygamy from becoming the next liberal cause:
Redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would jettison the rationale and logic behind prohibitions on polygamous marriages, according to several friend-of-the court briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the traditional definition of marriage.
Ultimately, there is no principled basis for recognizing a legality of same-sex marriage without simultaneously providing a basis for the legality of consensual polygamy or certain adult incestuous relationships, reads one of the briefs, filed by the Christian legal group Liberty Counsel. In fact, every argument for same-sex marriage is an argument for them as well.
The Netherlands is a microcosm of how the homosexual community hoodwinked this once-Christian nation into accepting a perversion. A former Dutch Member of Parliament has admitted that polygamous marriage is the next logical step following the introduction of same-sex marriages in the Netherlands.
Serial polygamy is already accepted in America. People get married and divorced numerous times with little regard for marriage as a covenant bond. Hollywood types change wives like some people change shoes. Others dont get married but live together, have children out of wedlock, and few people bat an eye........
(Excerpt) Read more at politicaloutcast.com ...
Followed by incestuous marriage.
From a strictly Darwinian natural law of procreation, polygamy makes more sense then sticking a penis in some guys anus.
Heck, why not let people marry their favourite cartoon character or their car?
Next my neighbor will want to marry his collie. There’s no end to the perversion once you start down the slippery slope of sinful fornication’s.
Good article. Definitely worth the read.
Heck, why not let people marry their favourite cartoon character or their car?
The divorce rate would probably subside.
I want to marry my gun but I`m always out of bullets.
No. It’s already been announced in their movement’s name. Bisexual/Transgender. They will push for non-discrimination laws against Transexuals and transvestites. This will probably end up with all restrooms becoming coed.
“There is nothing in our current legal system or national moral climate that will stop polygamy....”
They will legally establish polygamy in order to kiss up to the muslims.
Next step is enforced male and female circumcision.
That’s why it is an ancient practice, whereas homosexual “marriage” is unknown until recently.
I doubt that liberals will empower Mormons.
The neighbor marries his sheepdog,the dog then marries the sheep.The family reunion will be a zoo.
There doesn’t have to be any physical contact. I know older siblings who live together and would like to take advantage of the federal marital deduction exemption.
I’d propose to Wile E. But he says they won’t let him have Obamacare, they claim he lives a “too-dangerous lifestyle” ?? What the hell gives? What is it with these dambed politicians that give with one hand and take away with the other? Who do they think they are, anyway?
and her 500
deductions lovely children
I honestly don’t see how the fight against normalizing homosexuality is going to survive. Even among people of my generation who didn’t vote for Obama, the idea has become too socially unacceptable and I don’t even bring it up because I’m tired of being accused of Fascism.
After years of Glee and pop culture showing gays as healthy, all-knowing, fashionable people instead of confused men with psychiatric issues to be resolved, it takes only a few minutes to hear, “Well the Nazis hated gays too!”
Hedonism is the spirit of the age.
Polygamy is hardly an ancient practice. It goes on now.
Serial monogamous relationships happen in Hollywood and the local dive bar all the time. 48% of births are out of wedlock.
I’m indirectly making your point.
The liberal push for polygamy will come out of concern for a different favored "victim" group: Muslims.
It’s no longer possible to be a pervert anymore; because any filthy activity you can think up will put you in a protected class.
not only are we not marrying anymore, we're not having children....men's sperm counts are down as is their testosterone levels....and what's left of that is used up on internet porn....
eventually, they'll have to restrict the marriage thing because in tax situations, you can't have so many partners dividing up the booty....perhaps marriage will be disolved and civil unions rule the day....
then marriage can be for the religious...
You are an informed independent thinker.
Social engineering only works on your lazy friends who don’t read.
It does work though.
The Bible has polygamy in it, as do many ancient writings. How many wives did King Solomon have?
King Ramses in ancient Egypt had thousands of children.
He needed a staff just to keep track of the names and birthdays.
Polygamy is already going on. In a demented, sad and unsustainable way.
Just because it’s not “legal” doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Antonio Cromartie has nine children with eight women in six states.
That’s one more kid than the eight he haltingly listed last month when asked to name his children on HBO’s reality show “Hard Knocks.”
Maybe the oversight is because his pressures as a pro football player pale against the soap opera of his life off the field. He juggles daddy duties for a 6-month-old girl with his wife, model Terricka Cason, plus eight kids up to age 5 from women he knocked up.
At only 26, Cromartie’s conquests range from a then-17-year-old girl in his hometown Tallahassee to a lawyer and beauty queen.
The 6-foot-2, 210-pound former San Diego Charger has left a nationwide trail of paternity suits, visitation agreements and child-support orders totaling tens of thousands of dollars a month. Last March, the Jets fronted him $500,000 of his salary to pay at least $25,000 in arrears and other custody-related costs. He’s in the final year of a five-year, $12.5 million contract.
“All that glitters really isn’t gold,” ex-fiancée Rhonda Patterson, a corporate lawyer and former Miss Black North Carolina, said of the charismatic Cromartie, who fathered her 2-year-old daughter, London.
This guy is a train wreck. Good luck to the baby mamas trying to collect $7,000/mo child support when he is injured and his career is over.
You may be speaking to one of his descendants.:-)
I know. My point is that the liberal push for “legal” (government approved) polygamy will be from the Muslims.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to hijack your post.
But polygamy makes more sense in the natural order of human nature than gay marriage.
No.....pederasty is next——it has always about lowering the age of consent to 12 like in European countries===that age that male homosexuals focus on——since the beginning of that warped, immature idolator lifestyle (fixation on the latency period).....and the habituation continues since the sexist days of Sodom.
You may be right. France is our guinea pig in the experiment. It probably won’t end well.
But the Muslim guys have to marry multiple women. They don’t know what their wives look like until they take their burqa off. No wonder why they are angry and want to blow stuff up.
Allah, why you curse me with another ugly fat one who won’t stop talking?
Then “Open Marriage”. The other term for “open marriage” is “single”.
I wanted to mention Christie is on the run over a dem measure to outlaw parents giving their kids therapy to be straight. He is being called an extremist just for being undecided.
So now he’s said he opposes the therapy he’s just slightly worried about the pesky First Amendment and parental rights.
He is a craven disaster.
A professor at Auburn University was giving a lecture on Paranormal Studies.
To get a feel for his audience, he asks, How many people here believe in ghosts?
About 90 students raise their hands.
Well, thats a good start. Out of those who believe in ghosts, do any of you think you have seen a ghost?
About 40 students raise their hands.
Thats really good. Im really glad you take this seriously. Has anyone here ever talked to a ghost?
About 15 students raise their hand.
Has anyone here ever touched a ghost?
Three students raise their hands.
Thats fantastic. Now let me ask you one question further...Have any of you ever made love to a ghost?
Way in the back, Ahmed raises his hand.
The professor takes off his glasses and says Son, all the years Ive been giving this lecture, no one has ever claimed to have made love to a ghost. Youve got to come up here and tell us about your experience.
The Middle Eastern muslim student replied with a nod and a grin, and began to make his way up to the podium.
When he reached the front of the room, the professor asks, So, Ahmed, tell us what its like to have sex with a ghost?
Ahmed replied, Damn, from way back there I thought you said goats.
Lois Griffin! Wow! What an actor!
in early times, times of the Old Testament, I'm sure that rich men took many wives...
but Jesus changed that all by HIS coming....that is what HIS coming was all about...changing from the stone age hedonistic ways....
Some go to family reunions to pick up chicks. Now there’ll be people going to zoos.
Have you noticed how the homosexual marriage wave is much like the abortion wave of the ‘70’s? MANY Democrats, including Al Gore, Jesse Jackson began as pro-life, but within a decade, nearly the whole party was pro-abortion and those few remaining pro-lifers were ostracized.
just more unraveling of society.....it is what the libtards truly want
Recently? That part is not true. The early Roman Empire had religious ceremonies for same sex partners. Civil unions date back to China and the Zhou dynasty. I am not advocating at all just pointing out some facts.
It won’t stop there .The sickos are already getting beyond disgusting.
Yale hosts workshop teaching sensitivity to bestiality
Why not let the Mormon Cultists be legally married? That way the extra wives have some legal standing and the kids some link to the father. They will do it anyway—this way it can be controlled. Moslems too—the Koran gives em-—4 wives. but divorce is simple. Anwar Sadat the former president of Egypt, had two.
Yes, with the lowering of the age of consent to perhaps 12 .
Followed by man-boy term marriages where men are legally allowed to copulate with young boys under the age of twelve. Once the child reaches thirteen, the marriage term is ended allowing the older man to “marry” another prepubescent boy.
On the animal front, dogs and cats will be allowed to live together.
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In the interest of trying to advance the discussion back on the topic of Amir, his place on the Raps and how to solidify the bigs while keeping him...I was wondering if people wanted to throw out suggestions for who they would like to see play in that main 3 big rotation? I know some still want a big trade for a guy like Boozer or Gasol. I'm somewhat ok with Gasol for just a year, and less ok with Boozer for 2. I would prefer another role player, a complimentary piece. So I'll start with a few guys I've seen in rumors (not necessarily just Raptors related) or could be free agents this summer, and ranked loosely (mostly just sure about my first and last option) for who I think fits.
1- Ersan Ilyasova (least likely but I think the best option out there. Would probably depend a bit too much on a) the Bucks expecting a worse season next year, and b) the Raps taking Gooden back.). Adds a high quality shooter at one of the team's holes. This is not about replacing Bargs, it's about actual versatility and best fit with JV/Amir. He's a very good rebounder and defender. Has been playing really well for Milwaukee, so I don't know why they would change their mind about him now, unless as a small market, if they don't expect to have a good shot at the playoffs next season, they decide to shed some salary and tank.
2- Carl Landry...who knows..in a trade? if he opts out? He could be an option either way. Adds similar things to Boozer offensively in that he scores at the rim off post moves, and has a solid mid-range jumper. A good rebounder who generally plays with a high motor, but not the most gifted defender, partly due to his lack of length.
3 - Andray Blatche...A season ago I wouldn't have touched this guy with a 10 foot pole, but being in a demanding situation with the Nets, under at tough coach in Johnson (before he was fired), seemed really good for him. Has the tools to play both F and C, so fits well next to JV and Amir. Nice mix of offensive skills, good rebounder, but with him it has always been about attitude/effort and consistency. Hard to judge the market for him given his past. BKL has a massive payroll, and he's unrestricted. Might be worth a gamble, and might be the most worthwhile option aside from Ersan from a talent perspective.
4 - Big Baby Davis...Saw a rumor that he was probably going to be shopped by Orlando as they will fully commit to a rebuild. Brings size, rebounding and decent scoring at the PF spot, be it starting, or preferably off the bench. I'm not his biggest fan, but he would seem to be a good fit next to both JV and Amir. He actually has deep playoff experience as well, though I have no clue what to make of his character.
5 - JJ Hickson...probably the most limited player in skill set, but an athletic beast. Questionable instincts and ball IQ, but can play with a high motor and do a lot of damage hustling on both ends as a space filler and rebounder. Like Blatche, I think very hard to judge his market given the mix of his skill-set not really having expanded and current production being bonkers. Will teams shop for him like a starter or bench player? I think he's a bench player, but we'll see what happens.
These are some less big names, that might be available in Bargs deals, or more importantly, might be options if the Raptors can find a way to have the full MLE to shop with by shedding some dollars before free agency opens up. I think they all could fit well next to JV and Amir, and that's how I tried to rank them, but of course, that's just my opinion/preference. They would all actually be very good bench players, would allow Amir to start next to JV, and many of them add scoring dimensions that could help this team. Thoughts? Other names?
Last edited by white men can't jump; Mon Mar 18th, 2013 at 07:29 PM.
Thank you Pooka. That is why I prefaced my example with "it's an extreme example". My hope was that people would understand that I wasn't necessarily putting Amir in the same category as those potential hall-of-famers. My point was that despite having limitations, players can be very valuable starters. My examples of Rodman and Mutombo were to illustrate the point of great starters who had huge deficiencies in other areas.
That was used as a segway to show that Amir has fewer deficiencies than most people give him credit for. He has a better all-around game than many successful starters throughout the history of the NBA. To say that he isn't starter material without considering the pieces around him would be to neglect the history of the game.
I'm glad that at least Pooka was able to inference the main idea of my post. It's like someone making a point/theme about the Brooklyn Nets, but they mistakenly called them New Jersey Nets--and White Men comes along and completely discredits and overlooks the main idea because of the mistaken city name.
The problem with finding an equivalent to Amir is that he doesn't have that one feature of his game that sets him apart. Some people in this thread say effort, but I (bracing for the hate!) don't really see it...I mean, sure, he doesn't take plays off, but when I think of effort players, I think JYD, Rodman, Garnett, Faried, Matt Barnes, Avery Bradley - guys who you know are on the floor at all times, because they're always mixing it up and always making something happen. I've always found Amir's actual impact on the game to be kind of meh. Average. And replaceable.
Remember that we've all been watching Bargnani for seven years. This might be why Amir's effort seems much more exceptional than it is.
I don't think it has anything to do with watching Bargs. Right now I would put Amir in a category with guys like Gibson, Collison, Ilyasova, Haslem, etc. Those guys have pretty high levels of effort. Amir does not try less than those guys.
2nd bold: To me, though, those guys you just mentioned display average to somewhat-above-average effort. Their effort does not jump out at me. It's almost as if we'll take offensively challenged big guys (Ilyasova excluded) and give them the label of "effort players" just because we need for them to have a defining feature to their game.
Now, Joakim Noah: that's an effort player. And thankfully for us, Jonas is looking like an effort player. I'd even say that about Quincy Acy before I'd say it about Amir.
But I don't wanna be hating about Amir in his own thread. Seems like a good dude, useful rotation player, good contract.
AS for the whole effort thing, sorry, I should've also added that despite the fact that I think Amir brings good effort, I also wouldn't call him an effort guy. I'd call him a glue or utility player. Such guys usually have a high level of awareness and effort, but the defining feature is usually their ability to fill empty spaces on the floor and stat sheet. To duck in at the right times, to roll hard, to keep the ball moving, to be a competent last option on O (to knock down a J or a baby hook, for example), to talk a lot on D, to always try and make your rotation on D....Basically a player who always tries to make the smart/easy play for the team. Amir is such a guy...Fields could be one (especially if he fixes his shot)...I would say that Gibson, Collison, and Ilyasova are such guys as well. So while they may not be "effort" players in terms of level of effort being at that elite pinnacle, the consistency of effort is there, and they couldn't be good utility/glue bigs without it.
Amir doenst have much talent but you take a guy a guy in his position with a high motor over a guy that is just talented.
@White Men Cant Jump
Carl Landry seems the most likely with the possibility of Dalembert Ilyasova will likely be very valuable to the bucks to hold onto as Jennings and Monta said they are not coming back and hate it there openly the team will probably be rebuilding. looking to either keep Ilyasova or sell him high.
Last edited by Rapstor4Life; Tue Mar 19th, 2013 at 11:16 AM.
-Elton Brand: short, but big/strong enough to guard most Cs and has been a good defender his whole career. Still has a bit of an offensive game, but nothing to depend on. Could be a key vet like when TO first got Willis and Oak (Brand's game does even has some elements of each of theirs').
-Zaza Pachulia: Just an experienced body to back up JV, and a guy who could throw some elbows for us.
-Chris Kaman: possibility especially if things fizzle out on the PF search? Really slow, but sound offensively. Don't really want him, but I can see situations where he ends up on Toronto. Such a liability defensively...like Bargnani, but 10 times worse.
-Ronny Turiaf: if they want to add a physical presence, this is the guy. If they get another athletic/stretch guy at PF, he would be a really good option at backup C, I think. A bruiser with decent intensity. Doesn't bring a lot more talent to the team, but people would really learn to fear the paint if every time they went in they took a hit from either him, JV or Gray.
-Drew Gooden: maybe not the best option, and really more of a F/C, but to match my other post, in the unlikely event they snag Ilyasova, this guy would almost certainly be part of the cost. I always felt kind of "meh" about his game, but at least he produced until this season...I don't know wtf happened to him though, or if it's just from falling off the depth chart with the Bucks' young bigs and trying to unload Dalembert.
fallback options: Nazr Mohammed, Ryan Hollins...I dno't know, lots of big bodies out there. Mozgov...
*Oh yeah, I bolded Jennings and Ellis because there have been so many random reports out there that I find it hard to judge what the outcome will be. I think it's fair to say at least one is gone, maybe both, and if one stays, it's hard to know which one.
Last edited by white men can't jump; Tue Mar 19th, 2013 at 03:21 PM.
hmmm, RaptorReuban had a post directed at me here. I responded, and both have disappeared. What`s up with that
Amir is the man...'nuff said!!
Amir Johnson is the best player on the Raptors. Our off rtg to def rtg differential is +4.2 with him on. It's -9 without him. Considering the fact that he plays a lot of minutes, that stat is ridiculous.
Stop trying to replace Johnson with another PF because he doesn't put up gaudy numbers. Start trying to replace everyone else and build around the one guy who is actually a winner.
"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
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Number of Cruises: 2
Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Carnival Elation
Sailing Date: June 19th, 2005
Itinerary: Western Caribbean
Carnival Cruise Line
Elation Cruise Review
This was our second cruise, and second with Carnival. The first was on the Celebration, also out of Galveston. A 5 nighter. I must say that we enjoyed this cruise much more. This is my first real attempt at a cruise review. I wouldn't hold your breath reading it, I will not be responsible for the head injury you receive after passing out and falling on the floor.
We had a target of getting out of Austin for Houston by noon on Friday. Started packing at 1:30. We spent most of the day making last minute preparations for the flooring install while we were gone. Finally left town about 5:30, actually had clear sailing on I-10 through Houston and arrived at the in-laws about 8:50 after stopping for dinner in Bastrop.
Saturday was spent lounging around the house and making a trip to Academy to find a hard shell water proof glasses case, since mine was sitting in a drawer at home. That evening we celebrated Father's Day with Carol's folks, with a little something for birthday's and anniversary.
Left the house about noon, made it to the parking lot (Easy Cruise, $55 for the week) about 1:00. And waited 20 minutes in the Texas noon day sun for a van. I don't think it was worth the money saved. Maybe next time we'll try Dolphin, although they didn't seem to have anymore covered spaces.
We were at security by 1:30 and whizzed through that line. Ran into a very long line at check in, but it moved quite quickly. There was a lady walking through the line, making sure that our Sail & Sign authorizations were fill out correctly. Finally reached the head of the line, with 22 check in stations it didn't take long. The gentleman that took our information asked our name, looked it up on the computer and didn't even ask for the Funpass form. He just said "I need to see your passports" and then asked for a credit card. He handed us our gold Sail & Signs, we signed them and were off to the ship, all before 2:00. Our room was ready, so we dropped off out things and headed out to explore the ship. The flowers I had ordered were there and looked quite nice.
The Rhapsody was in port, too, it was interesting getting a look at her. She had been in port when we were in Cozumel last year, but was at Puerto Maya. We took some pictures of her from the fan tail, then went in for a little something to eat at Tiffany's. Good food, which portended well for the trip.
Our room was made up with two twins pushed together. We flagged down a steward in the hall and asked who our steward was. He said he was it and I asked that the beds be made up as a king. He said he'd do it while we were at dinner, which he did. More on the steward in a moment.
Dinner was very good. I won't go into everything we had, but the starters, salads and main courses were consistently good to excellent through out the week. I already knew some of our table mates, as it was a group another agent had set up that I booked into. They were celebrating her in-laws 40th, so we kind of skipped my birthday. Our waiter Otto (Hungary) and assistant John (Taiwan) introduced themselves and Otto said that if there was anything they could do, just speak up. They definitely made dinner a very pleasant experience.
We returned to our stateroom to find our bed made up and turned down. We had spent about three hours in our stateroom unpacking before dinner (and just relaxing) and had never met our steward. I didn't expect to see him at 9:30, so we just assumed we'd see him in the morning. We crawled into bed only to discover that our bed was made up with several sets of overlapping twin sheets, with double coverage in some areas and no coverage in others. Not a good end to the day.
Monday morning (Carol's birthday) we had a wake up call. After I did the shower & shave thing, we were off to breakfast in the restaurant. After breakfast it was back to the room for a little lounging. Room was made up, but no steward (you can see where this is going). We got up, walked around the deck for a while before heading down to the Mikado theater for a welcome aboard show. Our CD Jorge Solano was very funny and kept things going. We had the traditional spoon race with some pretty hilarious moments. One of the women was asked who she was traveling with and she replied "my wife and two kids", followed immediately by "no, I mean my husband"! "I thought we were having a Dr. Phil moment" said Jorge and someone in the audience yelled "Jerry! Jerry!". The race was fun, with comments along the lines of "guys, more slack, I don't want to see the color of her panties". The comedian was great, just wish I remember his name. Then it was off to lunch. After lunch we spent some more time on deck, playing a little cribbage and one of us doing some people watching, or at least certain parts of certain people. We both had manicures done ($40 each plus tip) and Carol headed back to the room for a nap. Did I mention she works 10-12 hours a day, sometimes 6 days a week? I went off to the Cole Porter lounge for a quick drink. While I was gone, we had a little delivery. A gift basket with two champaign flutes, a picture frame and a bottle of Korbel were delivered to the room, courtesy of a good friend of outs. I got back to the room in time to dress for dinner (late seating) and we headed back for another pleasant dinner. Since it was formal night, we did lots of pictures. I gave Carol a card at the restaurant, and had another hidden under her pillow. Bed turned down and towel animal in place along with mints. But the sheets were once again an arrangement of twins that didn't really work and caused some entanglement.
Tuesday was Progresso. We slept in, had breakfast at Tiffany's (that would make a great movie title) and headed into town. The jetty is almost five miles long and took about 10 minutes by bus. Once into town, we walked a few blocks to the beach. After searching for about 10 minutes for a palapa, we went to a restaurant and I ordered a Carona while Carol had lemonade. We chatted with another group there, had some lunch and mas cervasa, then headed back to the ship for our massages. We had a couples massage scheduled for 3:00. It was great, well worth the money ($242, discounted as it was a port day). While we were there, the ship headed out.
Tuesday was our 25th anniversary and I had a cake ordered. We took along the champaign, which Otto substituted for one already chilled. We had flutes set out for all the adults at the table and split the bottle over dinner. GiGi (celebrated there 40th on Sunday) had iced tea but no sugar. So I jokingly suggested a little champaign. Which she tried and loved. And got a little sloshed. Our cake, chocolate was delivered, along with their cake (coconut cream), which was supposed to have been delivered on Sunday, but Carnival had lost the order. There was singing and laughter. It seems that there were two or three birthdays or anniversaries every night. Both cakes were delicious. Our room was turned down, again, but, surprise, twin sheets.
Wednesday was Cozumel. Carol was going to do a little unsupervised shopping while I went diving. I had had mixed results with Sand Dollar on our last cruise, but they were much better this time. Instead of a 45 minute boat ride to their shop, we took taxis. I had all my gear, so it was a bit of a drag for me. Our first dive was Santa Rosa wall, which was supposed to be 80 for 30 but my computer said it was more like 90 for 35. Second dive was Yocab, 60 for 35. Hard floor at 65 kept that limit, but I went 45 before being ordered up by the DM. Then it was another trip back to the shop and another taxi ride back to Punta Langosta. Carol was already back in the room, having spent only a little money on some candle holders (onyx) and some 2.5% hydrocortisone. We had lunch at Tiffany's and then played some more cribbage in the room. We went back on deck for the sailing. Dinner was again very good, although we did have a little drama. Carol had the filet. Suddenly I heard her gagging and trying to cough. I gave her a slap on the back, then got up and went behind her. I put my arms around her and gave a pump. Nothing. Another squeeze and out came a big chunk of meat. By this time, Otto, John and two other waiters were there. Carol was gasping, but otherwise okay. In a flash, Otto picked up the plate with the chunk of meat on it. He asked if there was anything they needed to do for her. She said she was okay. He then asked if there was anything else he could get her and she said no. John made sure her water glass was full (as if he didn't do that every night). She had a sherbet for dessert, which she ate fully. People were calling me a hero, I was calling myself a lucky husband. We went back to our room and were amazed to discover king sheets on the bed. But we still didn't know who our mystery steward was.
Thursday was another early day. We had booked a cave tubing trip through shoretrips.com. We were supposedly to wait until all of the ship's excursions had tendered in, but ran into our friends who had stickers saying they were on the ship's trip. So we went to the Mikado, told them we were on the cave tubing excursion and got stickers for the earlier tender. Okay, so we cheated. But we never said we were on the ship's trip, just "a" cave tubing trip. The excursion was great, there were only 14 of us, we got a quick tour of Belize City along with a history of the city and Belize. Then it was off into the country. We were in a brand new 15 passenger Toyota van, delivered the day before. When we took off down the dirt road, I laughed and said "new shocks, new paint" and the driver said "not for long". Surprisingly, it rained in the rain forest. We hiked about 45 minutes to the put in point, with a nature and history narrative along the way. The path was muddy, slippery and tricky to navigate with an inner tube on one's shoulder. To get in the water, our guide (Marcel) hopped in first, then took the tube. You hold onto a rope, lean back and drop into the tube, then float along. He had us set up in a long train as we floated into the first cave. Being a claustrophobe, I had no idea how I'd feel, but only had minor twinges and no real panic. We had headlamps, but they were off for parts of the trip through the caves. There were some rapids and shallow spots, for which we learned the phrase "wiggle wiggle wiggle". Also "up butt". Which didn't prevent some of us (not I) from dragging bottom. The float trip took about an hour and a half. Then it was a ten minute walk back to the base, where we had an excellent lunch. I snoozed on the trip back to the pier. Once there, we did some shopping at a little market on Fort Street, where we found some very nice wood carvings and an attractive belt for Carol. We caught a late tender back to the ship and watched the last minute tenders coming in, wondering who figured that 5:15 really meant 5:20. It turned out that several of our group WERE on the very last tender!! Once everyone was onboard, we left very quickly. We napped for a while, took another tour around and watched some of the festivities. We had been invited to a past guests reception, complete with free booze and hors 'dervors. Then it was off to another marvelous dinner. And a bed made with king sheets!
Friday was a late day, with breakfast at Tiffany's. We had a little snack there later and were amused to hear a page for someone. Then a second. The story on the whole thing is posted below. Dinner was kind of subdued, although the waiter's parade and singing went on as scheduled. It was the second formal night, so more pictures. Much conjecture and speculation as to what actually happened.
Saturday was an early day, as Carol had a spa taster treatment at 8. After she got back we went to breakfast, then took another stroll around the deck. The forward observation deck was incredibly breezy. After lunch we went back to the stateroom when we heard the announcement about the engine (did he really mean the pod?) We made two stops for repairs. Once again we went to the gym for a workout (went almost every day) along with a soak in the whirlpool. I got back to the room in time for a shower and then headed out to the spa for a facial. Very nice, probably worth what I actually paid for it. Got the heavy sell on product, but didn't buy anything. Afterwards I went to the Lido deck and tried to enter the hairiest chest contest, but was #11 of 10. Sigh, and I was clearly better than the winner. Dinner that night included château briand. Since we had had that on our honeymoon at the Don Cesar in St. Petersburg, we just had to have it. We made another circuit of the deck, taking pictures and memories.
Sunday was early up early and off to Tiffany's again. We choose the express self debark. With everything that went on, we were only about an hour late getting to the dock. We were off the ship and through Customs by 9:20 and at our car by about 9:35. We got to Carol's parent's house about 10:30 and the pups were happy to see us. We repacked the car with all of the stuff and headed out shortly after noon. Nothing else of interest happened, and when we got home we were very please with the new flooring. Now all we have to door is put felt on everything and seal the grout.
I'm sure I've forgotten numerous things. Like how I burned 98 of my 100 minutes of internet time. Or all the pictures we bought.
Now the grim story. We heard a page at about 11 for Mrs Vonnie Ailes to report to the purser. I made a comment about burning through her cash deposit. Then another page about 15 minutes later. We went back to our room, heard another page in the hall. At about 11:45 there was a page in the room, which caused a little concern. Carol said "this can not be good". Another page. Then at noon the Captain came on. "Ladies and gentlemen, we appear to have lost a passenger. We are turning around and returning to the point at which she was last seen at 7 am this morning." All during the day her picture was seen on every TV screen on the ship. They had it on two channels in the staterooms and it was shown during breaks in the programs in all the bars. We did several figure eights along the way and were escorted by two Mexican Guardia Civil ships and later a Mexican warship and the Coasties. We reached our destination around 5 and orbited for about an hour. Finally we headed back. During the entire trip down, I think that every pair of binoculars on the ship were in use. We reached our turn around point around 10:30 pm. The ship was really moving. I think we were doing close to maximum. The bow was up and we were riding stern down.
On Monday we read that the FBI had ruled out accident and foul play, but didn't really say the actual cause. It turns out that she was an epileptic and was suffering from depression. She had apparently taken her medication and then said she was going out to find a place on deck to snooze. That was the last anyone saw of her. A very sad time for her family, who have our sincerest condolences. |
|Goddess of Snakes and Poison|
|Bengali / Hajong||মনসা / কাণি দেউও (Kānī Dīyāʊ)|
Manasā, also Mansa Devi, is a Hindu folk goddess of snakes, worshipped mainly in Bengal and other parts of North and northeastern India, chiefly for the prevention and cure of snakebite and also for fertility and prosperity. Manasa is the sister of Vasuki, king of Nāgas (snakes) and wife of sage Jagatkāru (Jaratkāru). She is also known as Vishahara (the destroyer of poison), Nityā (eternal) and Padmavati.
Her myths emphasize her bad temper and unhappiness, due to rejection by her father Shiva and her husband, and the hatred of her stepmother, Chandi (Shiva's wife, identified with Parvati in this context). In some scriptures, sage Kashyapa is considered to be her father, rather than Shiva. Manasa is depicted as kind to her devotees, but harsh to people who refused to worship her. Denied full godhead by her mixed parentage, Manasa’s aim was to fully establish her authority as a goddess and to acquire steadfast human devotees.
Manasa first appears in the Hindu text Atharva Veda as a snake goddess. In the Puranas, she was recognized as a daughter of sage Kashyapa and Kadru, the mother of all Nāgas. By the 14th century, Manasa was identified as the goddess of fertility and marriage rites and was assimilated into the Shaiva pantheon as a relative of Shiva. Myths glorified her by describing that she saved Shiva after he drank poison, and venerated her as the "remover of poison". Her popularity grew and spread to Southern India, and her cult began to rival Shaivism itself. As a consequence, stories attributing Manasa's birth to Shiva emerged and ultimately Shaivism adopted this indigenous goddess into the Brahmanical tradition of mainstream Hinduism.
Manasa is depicted as a woman covered with snakes, sitting on a lotus or standing upon a snake. She is sheltered by the canopy of the hoods of seven cobras. Sometimes, she is depicted with a child on her lap. The child is assumed to be her son, Astika. She is often called "the one-eyed goddess" and among the Hajong tribe of northeastern India she is called Kānī Dīyāʊ (Blind Goddess), as one of her eyes was burnt by her stepmother Chandi.
The Mahabharata tells the story of Manasa's marriage. Sage Jagatkāru practiced severe austerities and had decided to abstain from marriage. Once he came across a group of men hanging from a tree upside down. These men were his ancestors, who were doomed to misery as their children had not performed their last rites. So they advised Jagatkāru to marry and have a son who could free them of those miseries by performing the ceremonies. Vasuki offered his sister Manasa's hand to Jagatkāru. Manasa mothered a son, Astīka, who freed his ancestors. Astika also helped in saving the Nāga race from destruction when King Janamejaya decided to exterminate them by sacrificing them in his Yajna, fire offering.
Puranas are the first scriptures to speak about her birth. They declare that sage Kashyapa is her father, not Shiva as described in the Mangalkavyas. Once, when serpents and reptiles had created chaos on the earth, sage Kashyapa created goddess Manasa from his mind (mana). The creator god Brahma made her the presiding deity of snakes and reptiles. Manasa gained control over the earth, by the power of mantras she chanted. Manasa then propitiated the god, Shiva, who told her to please Krishna. Upon being pleased, Krishna granted her divine Siddhi powers and ritually worshipped her, making her an established goddess.
Kashyapa married Manasa to sage Jaratkaru, who agreed to marry her on the condition that he would leave her if she disobeyed him. Once, when Jaratkaru was awakened by Manasa, he became upset with her because she awakened him too late for worship, and so he deserted her. On the request of the great Hindu gods, Jaratkaru returned to Manasa and she gave birth to Astika, their son.
The Mangalkavyas were devotional paeans to local deities such as Manasa, composed in Bengal between the 13th and the 18th centuries. The Manasa Mangalkavya by Bijay Gupta and Manasa Vijaya (1495) by Bipradas Pipilai trace the origin and myths of the goddess.
According to Manasa Vijaya, Manasa was born when a statue of girl that had been sculpted by Vasuki's mother was touched by Shiva's semen. Vasuki accepted Manasa as his sister, and granted her charge of the poison that was produced when King Prithu milked the Earth as a cow. When Shiva saw Manasa, he was sexually attracted to her, but she proved to him that he was her father. Shiva took Manasa to his home where his wife, Chandi, suspected Manasa of being Shiva's concubine or co-wife, and insulted Manasa and burnt one of her eyes, leaving Manasa half-blind. Later, when Shiva was dying of poison, Manasa cured him. On one occasion, when Chandi kicked her, Manasa rendered her senseless with a glance of her poison eye. Finally, tired of quarrels between Manasa and Chandi, Shiva deserted Manasa under a tree, but created a companion for her from his tears of remorse, called Neto or Netā.
Later, the sage Jaratkaru married Manasa, but Chandi ruined Manasa's wedding night. Chandi advised Manasa to wear snake ornaments and then threw a frog in the bridal chamber which caused the snakes to run around the chamber. As a consequence, the terrified Jaratkaru ran away from the house. After few days, he returned and Astika, their son, was born.
Accompanied by her adviser, Neto, Manasa descended to earth to obtain human devotees. She was initially mocked by the people but then Manasa forced them to worship her by raining calamity on those who denied her power. She managed to convert people from different walks of life, including the Muslim ruler Hasan, but failed to convert Chand Sadagar . Manasa wanted to become a goddess like Lakshmi or Saraswati. In order to get there she had to achieve the worship Chand Sadagar who was extremely adamant and took oath not to worship Manasa . Thus to gain his fear and insecurity Manasa one by one killed his six sons . At last Manasa conspired against two dancers of Indras Court who loved each other, Anirudha and Usha . Anirudh had to take birth as Lakhinder, Chand and Sanaka's seventh son . Usha took birth as behula and married him . Manasa killed him but Behula floated on water for nine months with the dead body of her husband and finally brought back the lives of the seven sons and the lost prosperity of Chand . At last, he yielded by offering a flower to the goddess with his left hand without even looking at her. This gesture made Manasa so happy that she resurrected all of Chand's sons and restored his fame and fortunes. The Mangal kavyas say that after this, the worship of Manasa was popular forever more.
Manasa Mangalkavya attributes Manasa's difficulty in attracting devotees to an unjust curse she gave to Chand in his previous life. Chand then retaliated with a counter-curse that worshipping her would not be popular on earth unless he worshipped her also.
In many renditions of the myth, Manasa is depicted as being quite dependent on Neta (traditionally imagined as a washerwoman) for ideas and moral support. In fact, of the two, Manasa is often the stupider one - a curious instance of anthropomorphism.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita say, "[The] legend of [Chand Sadagar and] Manasā Devī, [...] who must be as old as the Mykenean stratum in Asiatic society, reflects the conflict between the religion of Shiva and that of female local deities in Bengal. Afterwards Manasā or Padmā was recognized as a form of Shakti, [...] and her worship accepted by Shaivas. She is a phase of the mother-divinity who for so many worshippers is nearer and dearer than the far-off and impersonal Shiva...".
Generally, Manasa is worshipped without an image. A branch of a tree, an earthen pot or an earthen snake image is worshipped as the goddess, though images of Manasa are worshipped too. She is worshipped for protection from and cure of snake bites and infectious diseases like smallpox and chicken pox.
The cult of Manasa is most widespread in Bengal, where she is ritually worshipped in temples. The goddess is widely worshipped in the rainy season, when the snakes are most active. Manasa is also a very important fertility deity, especially among the lower castes, and her blessings are invoked during marriage or for childlessness. She is usually worshipped and mentioned along with Neto, who is called Neta, Netidhopani, Netalasundori, etc. in various parts of Bengal.
In North Bengal, among the Rajbanshis, Manasa (called Bishohora, Bishohori or Padmavati) is one of the most important goddesses, and her thaan (shrine) may be found in the courtyard of almost every agrarian household. Among the lower-caste Hindus of East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh)too, she is worshipped with great pomp.
Manasa is an especially important deity in Bengal for the mercantile castes. This is because Chando of the Manasamangal was the first to initiate her worship, and Behula, the heroine of the Manasamangal was a daughter of the Saha clan (a powerful trading community).
Manasa is also worshipped extensively in Assam, and a kind of Oja-Pali (musical folk theatre) is dedicated entirely to her myth.
Manasa is ceremonially worshipped on Nag Panchami - a festival of snake worship in the Hindu month of Shravan (July–August). Bengali women observe a fast (vrata) on this day and offer milk at snake holes.
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- Wilkins p.395
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- Radice, William (2001). Myths and Legends of India. Viking Penguin Books Ltd. pp. 130–8. ISBN 978-0-670-04937-0.
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- Chaplin, Dorothea (2007). Mythlogical Bonds Between East and West. READ BOOKS. p. 28. ISBN 9781406739862.
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- McDaniel, June (2002). Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives: An Introduction to Women's Brata Rituals in Bengali Folk Religion. SUNY Press. p. 144. ISBN 0-7914-5565-3. |
Eggs: Incredible or Inedible?July 28, 2017
No Place Like HomeAugust 2, 2017
Can microwaves make recipes even better, both for taste and nutrients, you are about to find out. Over the years, I have seen so much conversation about the harmful effects of radiation – and how your appliances might be at fault. Is your microwave as dangerous as it has been made out to be? Let’s get into the science of it all, and whether or not you have anything to worry about.
What is radiation?
So many people are worried about the effects of radiation, but what is it exactly? Radiation is a particle that moves in a wave-like pattern. That particle moving is known as a quanta, which is a tiny unit, and the wave which it follows can be low-amplitude or high-amplitude. Amplitude is the energy of the wave itself.
There is also the question of the wavelength, which is how long and far the quanta travels from peak to peak. The wavelength will determine how the amplitude will interact with things around it. There are two main categories of radiation, which can be found of what is known as the electromagnetic spectrum:
- Ionizing Radiation
- Non-ionizing Radiation
Basically, this is the kind of radiation that can create ions. An ion is a chemical change, so let’s think about it like this: imagine an atom, with a little cloud of electrons surround it. A short wavelength has the opportunity to come in, and can ping one of the electrons out of this cloud – this effectively changes the chemical makeup of the atom.
What does this matter? Well, it’s a big deal for our DNA. Ionizing effects can:
- Cause cells to mutate
- Cause cancer to form
Bottom Line: When radiation has an ionizing effect on atoms, it can cause big problems for us and our health. There is no doubt about that.
When a wavelength approaching our little atom, with its cloud of electrons, is longer, it is unable to penetrate and change the atom – this is known as non-ionizing radiation. While you might be able to change the physical appearance of them, like in a scrambled egg, you cannot “unscramble” them. The molecules have changed physically, but they have not changed chemically.
Bottom Line: Before and after cooking, all of the chemicals remain the same – without any change whatsoever. This is the key difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
Radiation Types: Non-Ionizing
Some of the weakest types of non-ionizing radiation that we might be able to find are:
- The earth – the earth puts out its own super long electromagnetic fields.
- Power lines – another example of long waves.
- Radio waves – long wavelengths allow them to go across mountains and all over.
- TV and cell waves – the same ideas as radio.
As we get shorter and shorter with our wavelengths, we can also see non-ionizing radiation in:
- Microwaves – the kinds used in cooking.
- Microwaves – the kinds used in satellites.
There is also an even shorter form for wavelengths, which is what we know as infrared heat. The prime examples of this form of heat are:
- Body-to-body contact
Bottom Line: These are all versions of radiation in our lives. Whether you are cooking something on the stove, or simply sleeping next to someone, you are benefitting from radiation!
Radiation Types: Ionizing
When we get shorter and shorter wavelengths, we start getting into a range of visible light. Visible light is still non-ionizing radiation, but once we get to the point of the light being ultraviolet we are now dealing with ionizing radiation.
Key Insight: Ionizing radiation starts with ultraviolet light. Anything before that is non-ionizing and does not cause a chemical change.
Other examples of ionizing radiation we might find are:
- UV Light – which can cause sunburns, and potentially skin cancer
- Gamma rays
- Cosmic rays
These wavelengths are so short, and so intense, that they induce chemical changes. They can ionize food, and they can alter the chemistry of things. It is more about altering the chemistry of living things, which is how these ionizing radiations can form mutations and ultimately cause cancer.
Bottom Line: The mutations that we can see from ionizing radiation are not the type that can grant us superpowers like in fictional comics. They are very real, and they are very dangerous to our health.
The Trouble with Microwaves: Confusion
Do microwaves “nuke” food?
The term “nuking food” is something that we come across a lot, especially when we talk about microwaves and how they prepare food. The term “nuke” implies nuclear energy, and nuclear energy relies on gamma rays (which are ionizing), in order to heat things. That is dangerous, but it is far away from what microwaves do to our food.
Bottom Line: Microwaves use radiation, but they use it in a milder format than your average stovetop. They do not emit radiation, either. They also only change food proteins in the same way that any form of cooking might.
Do microwaves destroy nutrients?
When we witness this sort of chemical change, we might assume that the food is being compromised in some way, shape, or form – is this the case, though? Compared to heating on a stove top, microwaved foods have been shown (1) to have higher levels of:
- B6 Folate
- Vitamin C
Microwaves and Minerals
Minerals do not change when you are cooking, and that’s because they are chemical elements. You cannot possibly change them without taking something away. After all, we have covered with non-ionizing radiation, you know that this sort of chemical change just is not possible when it comes to the minerals in our food – it would take ionizing radiation to have that sort of effect.
What does affect nutrient loss?
Nutrient loss can occur in one of two ways:
- Cooking time – how long you cook for can cause nutrient loss over time (2).
- The use of water – if you use more water when you are cooking, and you do not use that water, it will take away nutrients from what you are cooking. My favorite trick is to save boiled water and to use it in smoothies later, as it will help preserve the nutrients you might have otherwise lost.
There was a very interesting study done with broccoli, which used a whole bunch of different cooking methods to assess the nutritional value of each (3). These results were very interesting to see, and speak very well for the use of the microwave in preserving things like:
- Vitamin C
When you are looking at these fascinating charts, here were the cooking methods:
Bottom Line: Based on the broccoli study, the microwave option preserved more nutrients than it lost. So, it would seem that your microwave is more help than you might have thought – with radiation that poses no risk to your health.
Favourite Recipe: Magic Kale Chips
This is one of my favorite recipes. I love it as a quick snack, and it can be the perfect thing to bring along for a hike, or just for a simple night in. First, you will need:
- A glass plate
- Kale (as much as you like, as long as the stems are cut and it is totally dry)
- Avocado oil (in a spray form)
- Powdered sea salt
- Lay the kale, in one layer, on the glass plate.
- Finely mist it with the avocado oil.
- Sprinkle the powdered sea salt on top.
- Microwave it for two minutes.
- Take it out, flip it over, and microwave; two more minutes.
Depending on how much kale you want, you might need to consider more than just one plate – three or four (roughly two heads of kale) typically does the trick when we are having friends over.
The Big Picture: Microwaves
Microwaves are a really safe way to cook food, and they are not the type of radiation that you should be concerned about – they are also great for making this recipe for crispy kale chips! Best of all, cooking in your microwave may raise nutrients.
People who are concerned about microwaves do have a very real concern with ionizing radiation, but you need to know that this kind of radiation cannot be found in your microwave at home – it’s in UV, gamma, and cosmic rays.
Change What You Know, Change Your Life
Now that you have learned a little bit more about microwaves, and how they are perfectly safe in your home, how about you focus on other aspects of your health? The Thyroid Quiz (4) is a great place to start. Get to know more about your body, and start making the right choices for your health today. After that, enjoy some freshly microwaved kale chips and celebrate learning more about your body.
Dr. Alan Glen Christianson (Dr. C) is a Naturopathic Endocrinologist and the author of The NY Times bestselling Adrenal Reset Diet.
Dr. C’s gift for figuring out what really works has helped hundreds of thousands of people reverse thyroid disease, lose weight, cure diabetes, and regain energy. Learn more about the surprising story that started his quest. |
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Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship
Strengthening trust in transatlantic relations: the importance of privacy
Washington D.C., 9 July 2010
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to be here today and speak at the opening of the workshop "Bridging the Gap: Transatlantic Homeland Security and Privacy."
I feel particularly privileged to address the Atlantic Council – a renowned think tank stimulating dialogue and promoting consensus on major issues facing the Atlantic Alliance and transatlantic relations. Promoting constructive solutions to transatlantic issues has been a constant goal since the early days of my political career as member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. As member of the European Parliament (for ten years) and as European Commissioner since 1999, I have continued to reinforce the transatlantic common market with concrete actions.
Today I am in Washington for the first time as Vice-President of the European Commission and as EU Justice Commissioner to seek ways to set the foundations for a robust transatlantic partnership in the field of justice.
The European Union and the United States enjoy the most successful and integrated partnership in the world. It is robust and successful because it is built upon values such as the rule of law, democracy, freedom, solidarity, economic freedom and stability. And as it is a relationship based on the same values it is destined to be successful and win-win.
Ours is also a multi-layered relationship built upon a solid transatlantic market which, despite the current crisis, remains by far the biggest economic area in the world. It generates close to 4 trillion euros in total commercial sales a year and employs up to 14 million workers on both sides of the Atlantic.
This level of economic integration, along with our convergence of values, constitutes a strong foundation on which to build our partnership further.
A partnership which will be even stronger thanks to the recent constitutional changes in the European Union. The new Lisbon Treaty reinforces the Union’s ability to speak with one voice in a stable institutional setting. We now have a permanent President of the European Council – speaking for 27 Heads of State or Government – a High Representative for external affairs, and following this morning's vote in the European Parliament we will set up a common European diplomatic service in the coming months. We also have a reinforced President of the European Commission representing the common interest of a whole continent. And we have a more assertive European Parliament (with powers comparable to those of the U.S. Congress) that completes the new institutional setting, empowering the European Union authority to conduct business in many different areas from economic governance to building a common area of justice, freedom and security.
The new Treaty has also reinforced values and rights in the European Union by giving concrete meaning to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This "Bill of Rights" applies to all individuals. This, by the way, also includes US citizens in Europe. In the EU, fundamental rights are guaranteed for every individual, regardless of nationality or place of residence. The new Charter represents the most modern codification of fundamental rights in the world. It is the compass guiding all EU policies and actions.
Tomorrow morning, I will deposit a copy of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the National Archives. This symbolic gesture in the "Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom" will show to the American people that 500 million Europeans share a common history built on common values.
With the EU now equipped with stronger institutions, new authorities and a whole new fundamental rights sphere of law, policy makers across the Atlantic can now take a quantum leap and work towards a stronger transatlantic partnership.
Let me take today’s topic as a concrete example. The current debate on the issues of data protection and privacy is a real opportunity for policy makers in Europe and in the U.S. to reach an overarching agreement on data protection in order to bridge the existing differences on the application of privacy rights. And the two continents will show the world how they can join in the interests of their citizens while reinforcing security and rights.
This morning’s overwhelmingly positive vote in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on the TFTP (Terrorist Financing Tracking Programme) marks a new era of trust between the U.S. and Europe. But the elected representatives of 500 million Europeans also made it clear that the real work has yet to begin. With its vote the European Parliament has given the US an advance in trust, by setting a clear time limit for working on a general agreement on transatlantic data protection. This should be done at the same time as the work on the PNR (Passenger Name Record) agreement continues. The PNR agreement is only applied provisionally; it is still subject to a vote by the European Parliament. These uncertainties need to be resolved; these differences need to be bridged.
It is my determination to end this piecemeal approach. That is why, within my first few months in office in Brussels, I worked on a mandate to start negotiations with the US on an umbrella data protection agreement. The aim is clear: to provide legal certainty to data transfers by ensuring that all these transfers are subject to high standards of data protection on both sides of the Atlantic. EU Member States are currently discussing the fine print of the Commission's proposal before negotiations can officially start. This will be done swiftly and I am confident that the green light will be given in the coming months.
I am therefore here in Washington for exploratory talks with the US Administration (including my counterparts in the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security as well as the White House). I am joined by Ms. Françoise Le Bail who is the Director General of the newly created EU Justice Department and who will be the EU team's chief negotiator. She has my full confidence to lead these negotiations successfully.
Past negotiations on the transfer of passenger data (PNR) or the more recent talks on the transfer of financial transaction data for the purposes of the TFTP have shown how difficult it is to find mutually acceptable standards and practice for the protection of personal data.
For years experts have been discussing the usefulness of having an international agreement between the European Union and the U.S. based on high standards for the protection of personal data to prevent and prosecute crime. There were many talks but little political will. This has to change.
The EU and the U.S. are both committed to the protection of personal data and privacy, even if our systems for doing so are not identical. Removing protection gaps and discrepancies between the two legal systems and thereby improving legal certainty and reaching a high level of protection for any individual are the goals for this new agreement.
It should become the reference agreement for personal data protection standards that apply whenever personal data needs to be transferred across the Atlantic for the purposes of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. In addition to providing legal certainty and a high level of protection, such an agreement would also save time and energy in any future negotiation of data transfer agreements because these talks would be based on the umbrella agreement.
You might ask yourself why we need to replace bilateral cooperation with EU Member States with a European-wide agreement. It is simply because of the joint obligations under the new Lisbon Treaty, the Charter of Fundamental Rights (which contains a specific article – article 8 – the right to personal data protection), and the constitutional rules of EU Member States.
Privacy and personal data protection are not only about the protection of individuals against interference from the state. Beyond the "right to be left alone", well-known in the US, these fundamental rights are intrinsically linked with the core of human dignity and self-determination, notably the right of every individual to decide on the disclosure and use of his or her personal data. The experience of dictatorship and oppression during the 20th century in many European countries may explain why this issue is so important to us.
You may also ask – what's in it for the US? What benefits will the future data protection agreement yield for Americans? My aim is to reach a win-win situation for both the EU and the U.S. I want to negotiate a data protection agreement that contains all the necessary high level data protection standards, with obligations for data controllers and rights for data subjects, as well as mechanisms to ensure the application of those standards. This should become a complete self-contained set of rules. The U.S. would feel the benefits immediately since high data protection standards would guarantee legal certainty and facilitate data transfers to and from the U.S. much more easily than is currently possible.
I know that the negotiations will not be easy; most of all when we touch upon key issues that are at the core of our respective legal systems. We may well have to involve our legislators to get the deal done.
It will be challenging, but necessary if we want to eliminate a thorny obstacle in transatlantic relations.
Pressure from our citizens to ensure the protection of their fundamental rights to privacy and personal data (in particular in the context of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters) is steadily growing and the obligations of the EU Treaty and of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights are there to remind us that the citizens have a point.
With the strong approval of the TFTP in the European Parliament in Strasbourg this morning the elected representatives of the EU citizens gave the U.S. an advance in trust. We have to turn this trust into reality. The US has a strong tradition of fighting for civil liberties. We share the goal of protecting citizens’ right to privacy. Now we have to join the American Bill of Rights with the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Europe and the U.S. have to seize the opportunity of a solid agreement on data protection to bring new dynamism to the transatlantic partnership and agree on a ‘gold’ standard that would set the tone for the rest of the world. I look forward to begin working along these lines with my American friends and counterparts. |
|Year : 2003 | Volume
| Issue : 4 | Page : 265--270
The genus Malassezia and human disease
Inamadar AC, Palit A
Department of Dermatology, Venereology & Leprology, BLDEA’s SBMP Medical College, Hospital & Research Centre, Bijapur
Department of Dermatology, Venereology & Leprology, Ashram Road, Bijapur – 586103
Sabouraud’s Pityrosporum is now recognized as Malassezia. With taxonomic revision of the genus, newer species have been included. The role of this member of the normal human skin flora in different cutaneous and systemic disorders is becoming clearer. The immunological responses it induces in the human body are conflicting and their relevance to clinical features is yet to be explored.
|How to cite this article:|
Inamadar A C, Palit A. The genus Malassezia and human disease
. Indian J Dermatol Venereol Leprol 2003;69:265-70
The genus Malassezia comprises a group of superficial dimorphic fungi occurring as normal skin flora on the human body. However, they can also cause infection or are associated with certain skin diseases. Rarely, they can become invasive, to cause opportunistic systemic infection in the presence of certain predisposing factors. During the past two decades, this group of fungi has gained increasing importance. The nomenclature has been changed, newer species have been identified and associations of the organism with different disease entities have been described.
In 1846, Eichstedt described the disease pityriasis versicolor, though he was unable to isolate the organism. Robin (1853) isolated fungal elements from these lesions and named the organism as Microsporum furfur, as he thought it was identical to the dermatophyte Microsporum auduoinii. Hence, the disease was renamed as tinea versicolor. Malassez (1874) isolated yeast cells from human dandruff scales; subsequently, spherical and oval forms of these yeasts were recognized. In 1889, Baillon included this group of yeasts under the genus Malassezia. Sabouraud (1904) considered this organism as a cause of dandruff and gave it a new name, Pityrosporum malassez. In the following years, there was controversy regarding the generic name of the fungus, Pityrosporum or Malassezia. Sternberg and Keddie (1969) detected the same antigenic components in Pityrosporum orbiculare and Malassezia furfur by the fluorescent antibody technique. In 1984 (Yarrow and Ahearn), Malassezia gained priority over Pityrosporum and was accepted as the generic name for the fungus.
There were three identifiable species in the genus Malassezia, namely, M. furfur, M. pachydermatis and M. sympodialis. In 1996, following taxonomic revision of the genus, four new species, M. globosa, M. obtusa, M. restricta and M. slooffiae were included. Earlier, the first three were considered as different serovars (A, B, and C) of M. furfur.
Earlier workers were unaware of the metabolic properties of Malassezia. Hence, the organism could not be grown in vitro until Benham (1939) detected its lipophilic nature. Malassezia metabolizes long chain fatty acids like oleic acid and except M. pachydermatis, the other six species are obligatory lipophilic. A few species like M. furfur also produce long chain dicarboxylic acids (like azelaic acid), which inhibit pigment production in vivo and thus cause hypopigmentation.,
The organism can be grown in Sabouraud's dextrose agar (SDA) or malt agar to which chloramphenicol and cycloheximide have been added. A sterile olive oil overlay is added to meet their lipid requirement. Media with whole-fat cow's milk works better than the above. Modified Dixon agar is also ideal for the growth of Malassezia.,
The fungus is dimorphic, occurring as a saprophytic yeast form and a parasitic mycelial form. Yeast is the prime form isolated in vitro from the culture media. As detected by earlier authors, yeast cells are morphologically variable, occurring in spherical (globose), ovoid or cylindrical forms. There is one way conversion of the yeasts, from spherical to oval and cylindrical forms, so that in older cultures, predominantly oval or cylindrical forms are found. In vivo the yeasts multiply by monopolar budding with a collarette or scar at the base of the daughter bud, visible by electron microscopy. The normal human skin flora consists predominantly of the yeast phase, the spherical form occurring on the trunk and the oval form on the scalp. The mycelial form comprises short, septate hyphae, arranged at an angle or end to end with occasional branching. Pathological specimens consist predominantly of hyphae with clusters of spherical yeasts (spaghetti and meatball appearance).
The clinical lesions have a yellow fluorescence on Wood's lamp examination. For direct demonstration of the organism, the specimen is collected from the clinical lesions by scraping or tape stripping and a KOH mount is prepared. Addition of an equal volume of Parker blue-black Quink permanent fountain pen ink to KOH (Parker's stain) enhances the visibility, as the bright blue stain is taken up by the organism. From follicular lesions, a sample is collected either by scraping or by a punch biopsy. In the latter case, it is stained with Gomori's methenamine silver stain that stains the fungus black.
As the organism is part of the normal skin flora, a culture from the lesions is not helpful for diagnostic purposes. For demonstration of the organism from the culture, lactophenol cotton blue stain is used.
The fungus abounds in the skin of subjects from tropical and subtropical climates. Individual species have specific host preferences. M. pachydermatis was first isolated from the rhinoceros. It is mainly found in domestic animals, like dogs, causing otitis externa, but occasionally can infect humans. M. sympodialis is the most frequent species occurring in humans as normal flora or sometimes in association with disease.
M. furfur, M. globosa and M. restricta also affect humans. M. furfur is seldom found as normal flora or in disease states. M. globosa and M. restricta are mainly pathogenic, associated with pityriasis versicolor and pityriasis capitis or seborrheic dermatitis respectively. M. slooffiae can be demonstrated as normal flora on the trunk. This species is also pathogenic in pigs.
In humans, the peak age for normal carriage or disease by Malassezia is the early 20s, when sebaceous gland activity is maximum. Its distribution as normal flora is related to sebaceous gland density, and thus the scalp, face, central chest and back bear the highest number of fungi., Other sites, like the hair follicles and the external ear, are also sites of colonization. The hair shaft, nail and mucosae are not affected. In an epidemiological study, 97% of the normal adult population showed scalp carriage and 92% showed trunk carriage for Malassezia. Colonization or disease by Malassezia is rare at the extremes of ages., However, in different studies, hospitalized infants have shown a positive skin culture for M. furfur, the incidence varying from 37% to 84%., Many healthy infants develop a cutaneous flora comprising Malassezia species within the first 6 months of life.
A variety of disease states are linked to infection or colonization by Malassezia [Table-1]. The occurrence of clinical disease by Malassezia depends on the factors permitting conversion of the saprophytic yeast phase of the organism to the mycelial phase. High sebum levels at puberty, excessive sweating, warmer season (May to September), application of oil, malnutrition, administration of systemic steroids or the presence of Cushing's disease, pregnant state or therapy with oral contraceptives, antibiotics or immunosuppressives are some factors that facilitate massive growth of the fungus.,
It is not clearly known whether the disease is initiated by alteration of the usual relationship between the human host and the resident yeast flora that facilitates mycelial conversion or by transmission from a source patient. Some species constituting normal flora may have a greater pathogenic potential and may be converted to the mycelial phase readily. The occurrence of diseases like pityriasis versicolor in several members of a family suggests a genetic susceptibility to the infection.,
A variable quantity of Malassezia specific IgG antibodies are found in normal adults. In disease states inflammatory and regulatory cytokines of both the Th1 and Th2 types are generated. The current view about the pathogenicity of Malassezia is that the organism may produce a lipid soluble, low molecular weight
(< 1-2 kDa) substance under certain growth conditions, which acts as a chemotactic agent for leukocytes and thus induces inflammation. In a study by Faergemann et al, there was an increase in NK1+ and CD16+ cells along with complement activation in patients with seborrheic dermatitis and Malassezia folliculitis, indicating an irritant, non-immunogenic stimulation of the immune system. The cause of this irritant response is likely to be products released by Malassezia.
Pityriasis versicolor (PV) is the only skin infection where Malassezia plays a definite causative role. It is a chronic, superficial non-inflammatory infection of the skin occurring principally on the trunk and proximal extremities of young adults. The mycelial phase of the fungus is predominant in the lesions. M. globosa is the main species isolated from the lesions. In one study, M. globosa was the only isolated species in 60% of cases of PV, and in an additional 37%, in combination with M. sympodialis and M. restricta. In other studies M. globosa has been isolated in more than 90% cases., Dutta et al have also reported M. globosa as the main species isolated from patients with PV in North India. More than one species of Malassezia can be isolated from a clinical specimen.,,
The chronic relapsing course of the disease and increased incidence of PV in steroid treated and immunosuppressed patients are suggestive of failure on the patients' part to mount a protective CMI response against the fungus. A recent study found that patients with PV may not actually have a deficient CMI to the mycelial antigen of Malassezia. However, during active disease, they fail to generate a CMI response that would provide protection.
It is a subclinical, inflammatory scalp disorder, episodic, recurrent or constant, that results in disruption of cohesion between corneocytes, visible as scales. The disorder is most prevalent and severe among adolescents and young adults, and rare among children and the elderly. Environmental factors like winter season, UV irradiation, airborne irritants and hair cosmetics are known to aggravate the condition.
Malassez (1874) had isolated the yeast forms of the species from dandruff scales. It has been hypothesized that a critical quantity of the yeasts are required for the clinical manifestation of dandruff and when it exceeds this, features of seborrheic dermatitis are seen. The oval yeast form of M. restricta has been isolated from dandruff scales. Toxin production and lipase activities of the yeast inducing a pro-inflammatory state and stimulating host immune response may be operative in the pathogenesis. Environmental factors have some additive effect on the pathogenicity of the fungus.
There is a definite response to topical antifungals when Malassezia is associated with dandruff.
Seborrheic dermatitis (SD) is a chronic dermatitis with greasy scales in seborrheic areas in children and adults. The total count of the fungus has been found to be raised in lesions of SD.
M. sympodialis and M. restricta are the Malassezia species found commonly in SD lesions. In animal experiments, inoculated killed yeasts can produce histopathological features of SD. However, the levels of Malassezia specific antibodies are consistently raised in patients with SD.
The results of studies determining the immunological response of SD patients to Malassezia are variable. Some authors have found slightly greater mean Malassezia specific IgG levels in patients with SD than in healthy controls. Others were unable to detect any such difference in the levels of total humoral antibody or immunoglobulin subclasses. There is also an alteration of cytokine production and their respective levels in patients with SD. Lymphocyte stimulation studies with yeast antigen have shown that lymphocytes from patients with SD produce more of IL-10 than IL-2 and IFN-g, indicating a Th2 type of immune response in vivo. Current studies indicate that the immune response to yeast antigens in SD patients remains unaltered. The toxins or inflammatory mediators produced by Malassezia act as strong leukocyte activators and chemotactic agents, cause degranulation and thus induce inflammation. The fluctuations in the disease severity are explained by the variation in the number of yeast cells and thus the amount of mediators produced under certain conditions of growth.
In most cases, this condition is associated with SD. It is not known whether the fungus plays any causative role or whether there is merely a proliferation of Malassezia in the enlarged follicle. Overgrowth of the yeast causes blockage of follicular ostia. It is possible that hydrolysis of triglycerides, fatty acid synthesis and activation of the alternate complement pathway by the fungus induce inflammation, resulting in folliculitis. Histopathologically, there is a perifollicular mononuclear cell infiltrate around the infundibulum. An increased number of T helper cells and Langerhans cells have been found in skin lesions. Malassezia yeasts are seen, but mycelial forms are usually absent. Serum IgG antibodies against Malassezia have been found in higher titres than in healthy controls. The condition responds to 2% ketoconazole, but relapses are frequent. Hence, once weekly prophylactic treatment with such agents is recommended.
Previously considered as neonatal acne, it is a newly described benign clinical entity occurring in neonates. There is a non-follicular pustular eruption involving the face, neck and scalp. Its incidence is 3% of hospitalized neonates. The diagnostic criteria for differentiating this condition from others like milia, sebaceous gland hyperplasia and neonatal acne are: age of onset less than 1 month, cephalic location, smear positive for Malassezia, elimination of other causes of neonatal pustulosis, and response to topical ketoconazole.
M. furfur is the most commonly isolated species. M. sympodialis can occur in the severe form. Neonatal sebum production due to maternal hormonal influences facilitates the growth of yeasts, which might have been seeded from the mother or from healthcare workers.
It is a genetic defect of keratinization where there is an abnormal response to colonization by Malassezia and/or follicular bacteria. The condition is commonly seen around puberty as asymptomatic, flat, dry papules varying in size from 1-5 mm on the mid-back, chest, sides of the neck and shoulders. The response to topical or systemic antifungals is variable.
Systemic infection by Malassezia is becoming an increasingly recognized entity among seriously ill, low-birth-weight, hospitalized neonates or adults receiving infusion of intravenous lipid preparations as part of parenteral alimentation., M. furfur is the commonest species isolated; M. pachydermatis has also been reported. The source of the fungus in such cases is usually the patient's own skin flora or the hands of healthcare workers. The long chain fatty acids in intralipid solutions facilitate the growth of the organism along the lumen of the indwelling catheter, and depending on the host immune status there is systemic spread. Examination of the removed catheter in such cases reveals adherent fungi, maximally along the distal lumen, often visible as white clumps.
In the presence of fungimia, embolization occurs, the lungs being involved frequently. Yeasts can be demonstrated in the walls of small pulmonary arteries or in areas of an infarct. Thrombocytopenia and leukocytosis with increased band forms are seen in children. A blood culture is only infrequently positive. Clinical symptoms and signs may be subtle or the patient may be asymptomatic. Morbidity associated with Malassezia fungimia is difficult to assess as the condition is underdiagnosed and patients usually suffer from other major illnesses.
The growth of Malassezia is known to be enhanced in immunocompromised conditions. The skin flora remains quantitatively normal in HIV infected patients. In a recent study from India, the authors found the overall incidence of Malassezia infection among HIV infected patients to be 13.5%; the incidence of PV, Malassezia folliculitis and SD was 40%, 16% and 56% respectively. Among these, 9 patients had a clinical diagnosis of AIDS. A higher incidence and severity of SD has been reported in AIDS patients (30-55% vs
1-3% in the normal population). The incidence of SD in these patients can be correlated with CD4+ T cell counts; with > 200 cells it is 15% and with < 200 cells, it becomes 58%. Thus, it appears that immunosuppression in HIV infection enhances Malassezia growth. In the series of HIV infected patients reported by Kaviarasan et al, extensive PV and SD with an aggressive course were observed in advanced stages of immunosuppression, and the authors have proposed that the presence of such features can be used as a clinical marker of AIDS in resource poor countries.
It has been proposed that aggravation of SD in HIV infected patients is not directly related to Malassezia growth. In disease states, the level of toxic products of Malassezia rises, increasing the prevalence and severity of SD. Moreover, the HIV infected state increases level of interferons and tumor necrosis
factor-a, which are known to alter the lipid metabolism, increasing serum triglyceride and cholesterol levels. This increases the patient's sensitivity to inflammatory mediators released by Malassezia.
Though the genus Malassezia has been associated with many cutaneous and systemic disorders, its exact role in the causation of most of these conditions is yet to be elucidated. Several studies have been conducted on the immunopathogenesis of the disorders associated with these fungi but the results of many of these are contradictory. Further research on the pathogenesis of Malassezia related illnesses should overcome this problem.
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|22.||Midgley G, Hay RJ. Serological responses to Pityrosporum (Malassezia) in seborrhoeic dermatitis demonstrated by ELISA and Western blotting. Bull Soc Fr Med Mycol 1988;17:267-76. |
|23.||Ashbee HR, Ingham E, Holland KT, Cunliffe WJ. The carriage of Malassezia furfur serovars A, B, C in patients with pityriasis versicolor, seborrhoeic dermatitis and controls. Br J Dermatol 1993;129:533-40. |
|24.||Neuber K, Kroger S, Gruseck E, et al. Effects of Pityrosporum ovale on proliferation, immunoglobulin (IgA, G, M) synthesis, and cytokine (IL-2, IL-10, IFN-g) production of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with seborrhoeic dermatitis. Arch Dermatol Res 1996;288:532-6. |
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|30.||Smith KJ, Skelton HG, Yeager J, et al. Cutaneous findings in HIV-1 positive patients: a 42-month prospective study. Military Medical Consortium for the advancement of retroviral research (MMCARR). J Am Acad Dermatol 1994;31:746-54. |
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Is it Friday yet? It seems like the shorter the week the more the days drag. This morning has been nothing but a headache and I went to Home Goods in hopes of finding a few things I was looking for. All I wanted was a new tablecloth or placemats, a cupcake carrier and some sort throw pillows for our bed. I found nada! My kitchen is pink and so I figured it would be easy to find something that matched. Not the case. All of the pink tablecloths and placemats were ugly and old ladyish. There were really cute polka dot ones that came in every color but pink. Our bedroom is pink and brown (I know I'm really lucky to have found a man who doesn't mind all the pink). The throw pillows suprised me too because they were lacking any thing with even a hint of pink. The cupcake carrier I wasn't as suprised about but I was hopeful. Oh well I guess I'll have to look online and see if I can find something.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The busyness continued as we headed for a car show in Santa Maria on Friday. Hubby has been going to this car show for years but it has always been held in Paso Robles. Apparently some drama went down with the city council so they moved it to Santa Maria this year. We weren't sure how good it would be but were hopeful it would still be as fun.
Posted by Laura at 10:20 AM
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Wow ever since last Friday it has been a whirlwind of activities. Thankfully all fun but exhausting none the less.
Posted by Laura at 1:18 PM
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Ever since Saturday my eating has been less than stellar. For some reason this month, the PMS monster had me in a tighter grip than usual. I've been snacking like crazy on not so healthy things. Plus, I skipped the gym on Monday night to go shopping. I know it's only one day but paired with bad eating habits I can quickly derail. Yesterday I thought I deserved a day to blow it big time and was excited to eat something really greasy. I convinced myself that I also didn't need to go to the gym that night. I went out at lunch and picked up some Chinese food and was so excited to get back and eat it. After I took the first bite I realized it wasn't as good as I had built it up to be in my head. I kept eating though, reminding myself I "deserve" this. Afterwards, I felt awful. Not only did my stomach hurt, I felt like a slug. All I wanted to do was lay down and take a nap. Even though I had already decided I deserved a night off from the gym, now I couldn't even imagine working out in this state.
Of course as it always happens when I gorge myself on junk, I beat myself up and labeled myself a failure. As I was driving home, I was shaming myself with the usual things I say when I've blown it in the past. "You might as well just give up." "I knew you couldn't keep this up, you might as well accept your fate as a fatty." Then I had a moment and one of those cheesy motivational Weight Watcher lines popped into my head. "If you keep doing what you did, you'll keep getting what you got." This made me think of two things. If I keep convincing myself I'm a failure at staying thin long term, I'll continue a lifestyle of yo-yo weight loss. I don't want that and this is the closest I've been to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I want to keep it that way rather than this become just another period in my life where I've lost weight. It's been 8 months since I got serious about getting in shape and it would really suck to have to start that count over. It also made me think, since it has been 8 months, obviously I've been doing something right. I can go back to my normal routine and I'll be fine. I may gain a few pounds but after a few days back in the swing of things it will come back off. So I realized it comes down to a decision. Let this be the mistake that derails all my hardwork or let it be a lesson and an opportunity to grow.
I chose the latter and decided that even though I felt like crap and had told myself I deserved a day off from the gym, I needed to go. I knew it would get me back on track and plus I really enjoy working out. Especially since I would have missed my step class. So as soon as I got home, I changed into my workout clothes. I can't stand the thought of taking off workout clothes without having actually worked out so I knew that once they were on I'd make it to the gym. I got to the gym and it felt good to be there. Even though I had only missed one workout I felt out of whack. Class was good but I could definitely feel my Chinese food bouncing around. Half way through I actually threw up in mouth. Sorry that is so disgusting but it really reminded me of another reason to not eat like crap. Besides keeping my weight in check, staying within my points makes me feel so much stronger and energetic. I was able to make it through but with a lot less vigor than usual.
Last night I knew I needed to equip myself. As much as I was motivated, it's still easy to let those negative thoughts come back. Especially when my stomach is empty. So I packed my lunch and made some diet coke chocolate cupcakes so I could satisfy Aunt Flo. This morning I had my usual breakfast of a slimfast and a fiber one bar. I can definitely say I'm back on track. I just keep reminding myself that today is a new day and I can't fix what I did, I can only learn from it and move forward.
Posted by Laura at 9:36 AM
Labels: Weight Woes
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
I went to the gym tonight and asked about the guy who had a heart attack. Thank God Almighty, he is going to be fine!
Posted by Laura at 10:29 PM
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
I find it so annoying when people over use apostrophes. It's like nails on a chalkboard.
The apostrophe has three uses:
1) show possession
3) to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters.
(Thank you OWL)
They are not used just for fun or to look pretty. If your looking for something to abuse, try prescription drugs. Don't abuse punctuation.
If you enjoy punctuation as much as I do, try this.
Posted by Laura at 3:57 PM
Monday, May 12, 2008
It started as a normal trip to the gym. I was in the last stretch of my workout on the bike and rocking out to a little JT. All of the sudden I hear a loud thud. This has happened once before when I've been at the gym. A lady who thought she was ready to run at a steep incline fell off a treadmill. She had a few scrapes and was cursing out the gym for their unsafe equipment. I assumed this was the same sort of thing as I was turning around but then I heard people start yelling. "Call 911!" "Is anyone a doctor?" I could see a pair of legs between two elliptical machines. My heart dropped. Thank the Lord above that there happened to be a doctor there working out. He was able to do CPR until the paramedics arrived. They were there within a few minutes and continued CPR as they loaded him up in the ambulance. My heart was aching for this poor man. No one should have to die at the gym, that's like dying at work or the DMV. The only comforting thought I have is that since he was older (he appeared to be in his 70s) he was more likely to be there because he enjoyed it. I can't really picture an older person begrudgingly working out. As they were performing CPR, I just kept praying for him and his family.
Besides being so sad about the situation, I am really pissed off at the way some people reacted. From the moment I realized something was wrong I stopped my workout. I am a firm believer of not gawking or crowding. If you can't help then stay back. Yet, I find it unbelievable that some people continued their workout! Not like they didn't hear because their music was too loud, but they turned around saw what was going on and then went back to what they were doing. I just feel like that's so disrespectful. To me it says, "Oh that sucks that you might be dying but I've really gotta stay at my target heart rate."
What was even more insane was that a few of these people who continued their workout knew the guy. There are a handful of older men who work out at my gym. I overheard this conversation between two of them:
Guy A: Hey is he ok?
Guy B: I don't know, they are still performing CPR.
Guy A: Wow really? Is it anybody we know?
Guy B: Yeah it's Joe.
Guy A: Joe? You don't say.
Guy A then goes back to reading his book and walking on the treadmill.
At that point I lost it. It doesn't matter if he is only an acquaintance. You could at least pause your workout until they take him out of the building. I don't know if he heard me but I made sure to say loudly enough what a piece of crap I thought he was. I didn't even know the man and I was so upset, how can you not even flinch when someone you know is laying on the floor unconscious.
Thankfully there were people who people who jumped in to help out. There was the doctor who performed CPR and people who helped move equipment and clear a path for the stretcher. There was also a handful of people who stopped what they were doing while this was going on.
After they took him away, I left the gym. I couldn't just go back to my workout like nothing had happened. I got in my car and cried. I cried for this man and his family and I cried for the disregard some people have for human life. I am so sad, I just pray that they were able to save him. I tried looking on the internet, hoping maybe the OC register had a story about it so I could find out if he is ok but I couldn't find anything. I'm going to the gym tonight so hopefully they will know.
Posted by Laura at 9:48 AM
Saturday, May 10, 2008
My doggies refuse to let me sleep in on the weekends. I guess this is just a small taste of what it's like to have a kid. Bring on the birth control! They try their best to get me up around 7 but usually if I let them hop in bed with me, they'll wait it out until 8 or 830. Of course, they never go to John's side of the bed and make noise. As much as it drives me nuts, I do enjoy getting some time by myself. I get to catch up on my DVR and play on the computer.
Today is going to be a wonderful day. John just told me he's going to a car show today, woo hoo! As much as I love him, it's always nice to have a day to myself. He's not the type to sit around on the weekends, or ever really for that matter, whereas I'm fine spending a Saturday on the couch. If he doesn't have plans, he's always thinking of somewhere for us to go or something to do.
I'm meeting Christa to workout at 10 and after that the day is mine!
Posted by Laura at 9:14 AM
Monday, May 5, 2008
I really feel like laying down and throwing a tantrum like an infant. Some days I'm so tired of this weight loss game. I don't know if I'll ever figure it out.
I've decided, as much as it angers me, that my body is deadset on my current weight. About 2 months ago, I hit a plateau so I decided I would just try and maintain until after my birthday. Then after that I would try to lose those last 10 pounds. In Weight Watchers when you want to maintain your weight, you add in 2 extra points to your day and then see if you gain weight. If you gain more than 2 pounds, you cut those points out. If you don't gain or you still lose you add in 2 more. You continue this until you find the most points you can eat without gaining. This is such a scary thing because my problems are so mental. Even a minimal gain can send me into a craze. I think, "Screw it, I can't do this I'm destined to be fat." and run for my pantry. I know I have to change my way of thinking but I'm so hard on myself so any type of gain to me is a failure.
So I just kept telling myself I needed to give this a try and if I gained a few pounds I would just go back to losing mode. When I'm in losing mode I get 20 points a day so I added in 2 and nothing happened so I added in 2 more. I went up about a pound but it comes and goes so I decided to stop there. So I stayed at 24 points a day and it felt good to be able to eat a little bit more and not gain. Now that my birthday is over I was ready to lose again. So last week, I cut back to 20 points a day. I was excited to get on the scale on Saturday praying for a loss. Guess how much I lost?
So, so disappointing. I mean I couldn't even get a half a pound? I'm sure you're listing off all the reasons but I promise you, AF is nowhere near, I haven't had anymore sodium than normal and I was weighing at the same time and scale. I can't even put into words the frustration I feel with this. Maybe this is just the smallest my body can be. If so, that blows big time. I don't think I'm being unrealistic. Ten more pounds wouldn't put me in a class with Mary-Kate (or Ashley whichever one had the ED) or anything, I'd be 130.
I wonder if I'm too fixated on the number. If I could lose those last 10, I would be at 50 total since I began WW way back in the day. I have just always had 130 in my mind and feel like a failure if I accept that I won't meet my original goal. I have friends who are this weight or comparable in comparison to their height who I consider thin. I don't think I am thin and maybe I think if I can be like them, I'll be thin too. I know that everyone is different and I've got to work with the body God gave me. I try and tell myself this over and over but still part of me isn't satisfied. I just wish he'd give me the chance to test out 130 and see what it's like. Who knows, it may be too small for me. I mean if I lose anymore in my butt, I'm going to need to carry a doughnut with me to sit on. But my hope is that at least some of it would come out of my belly.
Some tell me not to lose any more, that I'd be too thin. I think that is a joke but even if it was true I just want to find it out for myself instead of have to put so much effort into convincing myself that this is a good weight for me.
Posted by Laura at 11:26 AM
Labels: Weight Woes |
Tokyo Correspondent Mark Simkin and his Japanese cameraman, Jun Matsuzono, bring us an incredible story of endurance and inner strength. If you thought the Olympics represented the pinnacle of physical achievement, think again.
The worlds greatest athletes may well live at the top of a sacred mountain just outside the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto. Over a seven year training period, these Buddhist monks from the Tendai sect figuratively circle the globe on foot. During one incredible 100-day stretch, they cover 84 kms daily - twice the length of an Olympic marathon.
The prize they seek is not a gold medal, nor fame and material fortune. Rather, their quest is for personal enlightenment.
Mark and Jun follow the progress of one monk as he completes his seven-year training period.
Genshin Fujinami sleeps for just two hours a night, and walks or runs through the forest for seventeen. And he does it every single day for more than three months. Forget high tech supplements and performance drugs. He lives off a rice ball and a bowl of noodles. And he runs in rope sandals going through up to five pairs a day.
Fujinami is one of only 46 monks to have completed the gruelling test, known as the Kaihygyo, in the last four centuries. The monks from Mt Hiei have been conducting the Kaihygyo for more than a thousand years. The point is not the running itself its a pilgrimage around the sacred mountain, worshipping Buddha through nature and gaining intense personal awareness.
Tradition decrees that monks who begin the Kaihygyo but fail to complete it must kill themselves. And for this reason, Fujinami a dissatisfied former corporate foot soldier looking for meaning in his life carries a rope and knife under his white robes.
You must think positively, he tells Mark. I believe I can continue until the end I cannot allow myself to think what if?
As a final endurance test, Fujinami must complete the Doiri going for nine days without food, drink or sleep. Another monk who has completed the Doiri tells Mark: It is not about controlling worldly desires, but denying them. This is why some marathon monks are able to hear the sound of ash falling from an incense stick, or smell food being prepared at the foot of the mountain. It is as if they are visiting the world of the dead.
And at journeys end, in the shade of Kyotos cherry blossom trees, what has Fujinami learned? I feel that I have accomplished a job, that is all, he says. The training has taught me that everyone and everything are equal. A human being is not special. There are no special things.
Filmed over a period of almost a year, under difficult conditions, Japans Marathon Monks is an insight into an aspect of Japanese culture that youre unlikely to see outside of Japan.
SIMKIN: On the outskirts of Japans ancient capital, Kyoto, stands a sacred mountain. It is here, on Mount Hiei that the marathon monks live, pray and defy death.
SIMKIN: The monks pursue enlightenment. What they put themselves through are so utterly extraordinary, it must rate as one of the most incredible and dangerous feats of endurance. These men may be the worlds greatest athletes.
Fujinami prepares for pilgrimage
SIMKIN: It is 1.00 am and Genshin Fujinami is preparing for what lies ahead.White is the Buddhist colour of death. He wears it as a reminder his journey will take him to the limits of life itself and quite possibly, beyond.
Fujinami walking at night
SIMKIN: Fujinamis pilgrimage is more than 80 kilometres long. The monk will follow the route every day for the next three and a half months. Hell sleep for just two hours a night, then walk for seventeen hours only stopping to utter a few secret incantations.
An Olympic marathon is 42 kilometres. On each of the next 100 days, Fujinami will cover twice that distance. Unlike a professional athlete though, the forty-four year old must traverse treacherous mountain trails, often in complete darkness. There are no high-tech supplements to keep him going, just a daily rice ball and a bowl of noodles.
FUJINAMI: The tough thing is to continue the training for one hundred days. If I was training for a marathon Id be able to rest at certain times. Without rest, an athlete cannot advance to the next step.
Fujinami walking at night
SIMKIN: The monk is approaching the conclusion of the Kaihogyo, seven years of tests and trials. By the end of it, if he survives, he will become a living saint.
Fujinami writes of a need to worship from the bottom of his heart. He once worked as a salaryman, an office worker, but couldnt find fulfilment. Eleven years ago he came to Mt Hiei, cutting his hair and all ties with his family, so he could join the marathon monks.
FUJINAMI: When I was a salaryman, my life was passive. I was told to do this and that -- and that was all. Since I was a child, Ive dreamt about doing something where I can think by myself --and there are many things in the monks world where I have to think for myself.
Monks with prayer books
SIMKIN: The marathons monks are Buddhists from the Tendai sect. Their rules are strict, their lifestyle austere. The order has been conducting the Kaihogyo for more than one thousand years.
FUJINAMI: The purpose of the marathon is not to walk, per se.
We visit places of worship -- and we go there on foot. Then we go to another object of worship -- it is like a pilgrimage.
Steven practising akido
SIMKIN: This man knows more about the marathon monks than any outsider. John Stevens is an expert in the art of aikido and an authority in the more gentle art of Buddhism. The professor studied at Mt Hiei and wrote a book about its special inhabitants.
Stevens. Super:Prof. John Stevens
Author, The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei
JOHN STEVENS: I think even in, you know Australia the Aborigines have the same sort of practice, that they will wander and they can feel where, I have to go to this place, the dreamtime?
SIMKIN: Thats right, walkabout.
JOHN STEVENS: Walkabout and this is the Japanese walkabout, the marathon monks.
SIMKIN: In all, Fujinami must spend 1000 days on the road in all seasons, in all conditions. The Kaihogyo allows Fujinami to commune with Mother Nature and discover his own inner nature. He is one of the slower marathon monks, but appearances can be deceiving.
JOHN STEVENS: They walk it seems but if youre next to them, they are really moving fast. Ive known theres been marathon runners who try to train with them, they cant last than more than a week.
They blow out, then they poop out. They just have no energy left. They cant, they cant follow the course. They can keep up with them, the pace, but they cant do it you know continuously. A week is the maximum.
SIMKIN: The road to enlightenment is strewn with jagged rocks, poisonous snakes and uneven ground. And yet it is traversed with hand-made straw sandals that offer little protection.
Monks lace sandals on Fujinami
Fujinami goes through at least two, sometimes five pairs a day. His feet are left blistered, bruised and broken but he cannot stop. Under his robes Fujinami carried a rope and knife. If he fails to complete his mountain march, no matter what the reason, he must immediately hang or disembowel himself.
JOHN STEVENS: This is serious. There have been people who have died in practice. Along the roadside there you will see, This monk died during training.
FUJINAMI: You must think positively. Thinking positively, I believe I can continue until the end. I cannot allow myself to think What if?.
Monks at Doiri ceremony
SIMKIN: In year five, the running is interrupted by something even more dangerous and demanding the Doiri.
It is so secret, so sacred, that television cameras are not allowed but this amateur footage provides a remarkable insight into Fujinamis ordeal. He must go nine days without any food, drink or sleep. Inside the temple, the monk sits and prays.
Stevens. Super:Prof. John Stevens
Author, The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei
JOHN STEVENS: Theres two monks always on each side of them guarding them so they dont fall over, they dont sleep. Theyre very strict about not taking the food or water, but the hardest thing seems though to keep your neck straight. Most of them say that. You know keeping erect, see the desire for food and water goes away but staying awake the whole time?
Fujinami at Doiri ceremony
SIMKIN: Fujinami is only allowed to get up once every twenty-four hours when he fetches sacrificial water. On day one, the 200 metre trip to the well took a few minutes. Here, on day nine, the walk takes an agonising hour.
That he can walk at all is a miracle. According to medical theory, Fujinami should be dead. But the monk survives and emerges from his nine day fast, weak but triumphant.
FUJINAMI: It became difficult to breathe the air. It was very hard -- as if my internal organs were malfunctioning.
Mentally, I lost the capacity to think. I had expected to be able to meditate and concentrate, but I lost the ability to think of anything.
Gyosho Uehara at temple
SIMKIN: Different monks deal with the Doiri in different ways. This is the last man to complete the challenge ten years ago. Gyosho Uehara is now a senior monk on Mt Hiei. He says that as the men come face to face with death, some develop a remarkable awareness of life, special powers of perception.
GYOSHO UEHARA: The Doiri is not about controlling worldly desires, but denying them.
This is why some marathon monks are able to hear the sound of ash falling from an incense stick -- or smell food being prepared at the foot of the mountain. It is as if they are visiting the world of the dead.
Monks on pilgrimage
SIMKIN: In the final year of the Kaihogyo, as the Cherry Blossoms begin to bloom, the running monk exchanges the solitude of the mountain for the bustle of urban Kyoto. The new route takes him past geisha houses and love hotels, to the old part of town.
Fujinami at temple
Fujinami visits the citys ancient temples and shrines, stopping briefly at each. During this part of the challenge, some of the devoted walk with him. This mans been helping the marathon monks for half a century.
PARISHIONER: I serve them because I believe they are living gods of fire. In the old days, it was an unsafe society and the parishioners wore swords. Their main duty was to guard the monk from ruffians. Now, our main duty is to control the traffic.
Parishioner walks with Fujinami
SIMKIN: There are other duties too. Providing food, money and a more physical kind of support, one of them pushes Fujinami along. Believers who cannot walk line the streets, begging for a blessing.
Fujinami blesses parishioners
FUJINAMI; The Kaihogyo is not about the individual. It is something that is handed over -- passed down from generation to generation,
through oral tradition. Everything including the clothes is the same as it always was. The individual is not significant.
Monks walk over bridge
SIMKIN: Once a year, the marathon monks and their attendants venture deep into the mountains for a special retreat. Its very different to the restrained, aesthetic world the men usually inhabit. The founder of the sect discovered God by jumping into a waterfall. His followers imitate the leap of faith. This is a select gathering. The Kaihogyo is so gruelling only 46 men have completed it in the last four centuries.
Yusai Sakai signing books
Of those who did and are still alive, Yusai Sakai is the undisputed champion, a national treasure and media superstar. These days he spends much of his time signing the many books that have been written about him.
SIMKIN: During World War II, Sakai worked for Unit 731, the biological warfare unit that killed vast numbers of Chinese. When the war was lost, Sakais family started a noodle shop. It burnt down. He married a cousin, she committed suicide. Depressed and aimless, Sakai joined the marathon monks and began to run. He raced through one seven year challenge then, though aged in his fifties, began a second.
YUSAI SAKAI: Because I was lazy and had a good-for-nothing life, there was nothing else for me to do. Furthermore, when I was a child at school, I flunked my exams again and again. I completed the pilgrimage once but because Id needed to do everything else in my life twice, I thought Id better walk twice if I really wanted to achieve something.
SIMKIN: Looking at him now, its hard to believe how close this living God came to death. Sakai was attacked by a wild boar. His foot infected, the pain excruciating, the monk remembered that failure to complete the course requires suicide. He ensured that he would die if he passed out.
YUSAI SAKAI: After I lanced the wound, I propped the knife under my stomach like this. But fate intervened, did it not? I do not know how or why, but I survived.
Sakai on pilgrimage with Fujinami
SIMKIN: At age 61, Sakai completed his 2000th day on the road. Soon after, he was back on the track, revealing the mountains secrets to a new monk. The novices name was Genshin Fujinami, the man now undertaking a Kaihogyo of his own. Sakai is his master, responsible for guiding him through the seven year challenge.
YUSAI SAKAI: The message I wish to convey is please live each day as if it is your entire life. If you start something today, finish it today --tomorrow is another world. Live life positively.
Fujinami on pilgrimage
SIMKIN: Its a message his disciple has taken to heart. Today, 1000 days and more than 46,000 kilometres after he began, the end is in sight. Fujinami has travelled far enough to have circled the globe. Its an historic occasion. The journalists and disciples have come from across the country to witness it. The believers receive a final blessing and then, almost anti-climatically, it is all over.
FUJINAMI: I feel that I have accomplished a job. That is all. I do now know whether I should call it enlightenment or not, but the training has taught me that everyone and everything are equal. A human being is not special. There are no special things.
Kyoto Imperial Palace
SIMKIN: The celebrations are held in Kyoto at the ancient Imperial Palace. Eight hundred people, including Fujinamis master, Sakai, and the head monk, Uehara have come to pay their respects. Fujinami is now a national celebrity, an inspiration to Japanese workers.
JOHN STEVENS: The inspiration that if you train, no matter what it is, you can accomplish this and
the whole idea is to bring out your inner nature, your Buddha nature. Its realising your potential.
Celebration at Kyoto Imperial Palace
SIMKIN: Fujinami is a powerful symbol, embodying the determination and discipline that turned a war-ravaged nation into an industrial superpower.
PARISHIONER: The marathon monks, who risk their lives by undergoing their training, sweep away our feelings of laziness. When I think about them, I am inspired.
SIMKIN: But fewer and fewer people are inspired enough to join or support the marathon monks. Fujinami believes young, modern Japanese have little interest in religion, sacrifice and tradition.
FUJINAMI: Japanese culture is gradually dying.
I deeply regret the way Japanese people are embracing anything new and are not making much of the old things.
Monk rings bell
SIMKIN: And so, amid the celebrations, there are hints of uncertainty. The monks have a wonderful history, but they wonder and worry about their place in Japans future. Who will be next to walk in Fujinamis shoes, to follow in his footsteps.
Reporter: Mark Simkin
Camera/sound: Jun Matsuzono
Editor: Garth Thomas
Research: Yayoi Eguchi |
Why the UAE healthcare sector is ripe for mergers and acquisitions
September, 05th 2016
The UAE is now approaching 100 public and private hospitals, and well over 2,000 healthcare centres and clinics. And these numbers are growing exponentially due to the confidence created through historic population growth, government estimates showing the population continuing to rise, and the gradual rollout of mandatory health insurance driving new revenues into the system.
This apparently solid, and perceived to be ‘sustainable’ business model, has created a landscape whereby mergers and acquisitions have become commonplace, with a real shift of gear having started about two years ago. A report by consultancy firm EY, which analysed activity in 2014, revealed that the UAE had the most inbound mergers and acquisitions in the whole Middle East and North Africa region.
This corporate alchemy is seen as an effective strategy to give firms stronger pedigree and to drive efficiencies. Let’s now take a closer look at where this is all heading.
A need to look beneath the surface Let’s start off by saying the picture is not entirely a positive one for the industry. With around six million insured lives, low premiums, and over 50 insurance companies, the funders of the system are in fact under some real pressure. It is not unusual, for example, to see claim funds for corporate clients running at above 120 per cent, and when you add broker commissions and operating costs and see combined ratios grow to around 150 per cent, this is clearly not sustainable.
With thousands of small independent clinics, typically running at 35-50 per cent occupancy, the UAE healthcare industry has an inefficient delivery model and is in need of consolidation. Where insurance companies can have smaller, more efficient networks of clinics and hospitals to send their patients to, they can rightly ask for bigger discounts and reduce their losses. So it is fair to say that the UAE needs consolidation of clinics, hospitals and insurance companies as quickly as possible.
Combining strengths – two is better than one In the UAE, we know that the expatriate population vastly outnumbers the native Emirati population. This continued growth of a highly cosmopolitan workforce creates its own challenges. With over 60 per cent of the population being low-income against 25 per cent mid-income and 10-15 per cent high-income, you are seeking to build very different healthcare services according to a patient’s country of origin, levels of expectation and ability to pay.
Today we have an oversupplied mid and high market, and an undersupplied low-income infrastructure. The outpatient and inpatient markets in the country are projected to grow overall at an annual rate of 12.7 per cent to reach a value of Dhs71.56bn by the year 2020, according to a forecast by the investment bank Alpen Capital. This will however be heavily weighted to the lower income mass market.
The concerted efforts to build new medical facilities show no sign of slowing, and in some cases the supply is being built in areas that are sufficiently covered.
The reasons? A belief that healthcare property will be a good long-term asset in a region that likes the comfort of investments in bricks and mortar. At a high level, the fundamentals of a growing, aging society, and the increase in chronic diseases (in part driven through obesity and consanguinity), is compelling. However, a deeper understanding of the market dynamic is needed.
If Dubai is looked at in isolation, by 2021 there will be nearly 1.4 million private beds available on an annual basis. With most of these hospitals targeting the mid and upper sector, there will be extreme pressure to share a market demand of around 600,000 beds spread across all demographics and the public sector hospitals who will also be fighting for market share.
We have seen impressive developments like Dubai Healthcare City, as well as Abu Dhabi’s Cleveland Clinic. Additional factors like mandatory healthcare insurance for firms and strong governmental support are attracting new operators like King’s College London, Northwestern Memorial (Chicago), Parkway (Singapore) and many more high quality respected groups, putting further pressure on the incumbent operators.
It is true that competitive consumption-led industries – such as healthcare – will inevitably witness an uptake in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in markets that are strong or, conversely, under financial pressure. Size, expertise, efficiency and resources should all be elevated by the process. The focus is on creating economies of scale, better purchasing power and, in the healthcare sector specifically, building a stronger leverage with insurers.
A good private hospital that is run well, for example, can achieve a 20 per cent net profit margin fairly quickly – maybe after three or four years of launching. However, it is never a simple cakewalk. There are many challenges along the way, including the recruitment and retention of top talent and getting the standard operating policies and procedures right, the culture and teamwork focused on excellent patient care, and making the right call on technology.
However, it is creating the brand reputation as a centre for excellence for a specific or a number of clinical disciplines that is the biggest challenge. That is where the strength and critical mass of collaboration as part of a large group can have real benefits.
Healthcare works well with an integrated network and where a group has strong primary care clinics in residential communities and they are connected to general or specialty secondary care hubs. This is where the patient flow can be generated and brand loyalty built.
In saying that, M&As are no panacea. Cracks can appear after the deal is done. As PA Consulting Group warns: Although consolidation in the healthcare market can generate big returns, large companies do need to be careful not to lose key staff or customers during the process.
This is specifically true of healthcare M&A’s.
In the 1980s many health maintenance organisations (HMOs) in America thought that by buying family clinics they could control costs and offer a differentiated service. Thousands of clinics were bought and within two years nearly all of them had been sold back to the original entrepreneurial doctors (at about 10 cents on the dollar). Insurance companies realised that managing healthcare businesses is difficult, and managing doctors is, well, an “an art” of sorts.
As with M&As in any industry, there can be problems with the blending of the different organisational structures as well as incompatible technology systems. Hospital group control over smaller practices can also go against the grain for some who may be subjected to unpalatable change management.
Whatever the problems associated with M&As, though, the financial advantages most definitely outweigh the negatives, and if done right – by creating real strength and depth – services for patients should also improve.
Creating critical mass, the might of the merger Looking at the logistics, we can see there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and indeed there are several different types of mergers. For example – there is the horizontal merger, a conglomeration, the vertical merger, the product extension merger and the market extension merger.
My definition of these would broadly be:
• Horizontal: Two companies competing in the same market with the same service – Abraaj Capital consolidation of pathology laboratories across the MENA region • Conglomeration: Two companies with unrelated products or markets join up – Anglo Arabian Healthcare’s partnership with Healthbay (lower demographic operator joins with premium demographic operator to offer a one-stop-shop to corporate employers)
• Vertical: Supplier or customer joins with company (no deal of this nature uncovered in the last few years)
• Product extension merger: Different products but the same market – NMC and Dr. Michael Fakih IVF merger (leading UAE healthcare group enters the new speciality of IVF fertility with a strategic acquisition)
• Market extension merger: Same product but different markets – Al Noor Abu Dhabi and Mediclinic Dubai merger to create UAE market leader position
The different reasons to spark and form alliances can be based on many factors, such as competitive market pressures, new healthcare reform, the high cost of doing business, creating better economies of scale or simply for diversification into other services or markets. Each merger or acquisition will have a grand strategy behind it. But, in general, it is the conditions of the marketplace that drive action.
Progressive companies see the process as a way of establishing a much larger presence while strengthening their position or substantially increasing their customer base. Case in point: In February we saw the combination of the UAE’s Al Noor Hospital Group and South African Mediclinic International Ltd. to form Mediclinic International PLC.
This created the third-largest international healthcare group outside of the United States, with 35,000 employees spread across South Africa, the UAE and Switzerland. The organisation is now an industry titan. Indeed, it is possible to imagine a future where the smaller healthcare providers just cannot compete with these new mega companies in much the same way that high-street independent grocers fail when they are up against the heavyweight supermarket chains. It is the same principle. Customers will vote with their feet and opt for the one-stop-shop with a complete range of treatments, and usually at a lower price point as well.
The pros and cons: it is not all ‘motherhood and apple pie’ for consumers But are mergers really good news for patients? Perhaps this is the biggest question mark around M&As. The process should, in theory, be a good thing. Private hospitals can suddenly link to clinical groups and healthcare systems which, of course, is a positive for the consumer in terms of choice and the quality available.
Larger organisations can without doubt implement more efficient processes, offer a wider array of interlinked services, and take advantage of the latest technology available. And we would also assume the larger organisations would act as a magnet for the best talent, whether it is physicians, technicians, executives or any good healthcare professional in the world looking for security and a decent living.
But before we get carried away with the leverage enjoyed by critical mass, it would be wise to look at the numbers and how they can warp markets with monopoly behaviour. If we take two major mergers from last year, which together involved four of the largest healthcare providers in the US, between them they had almost 80 per cent of the health insurance market in America. This sparked the attention of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. Mergers of this magnitude can crush all competition, leading to more expensive insurance premiums and reduced benefits for patients.
Show me the management So let us address the idea that a merger squeezes out a competitor or two. This can have two results: 1) due to the lack of competition the consumer will have to pay higher prices; or 2) savings can actually be passed onto the consumer as the user base expands.
If there are more resources available, this can certainly be a plus for the consumer. But what if the new management team decides to scrap unprofitable but vital services? It really does depend on the way the merger is handled and how the balance of benefits trickle down either exclusively to the company or including the customer in the windfall as well. For M&As can be unruly, cumbersome beasts, without a solid sense of direction at the new – and much larger – company.
Finding a suitable match We can safely say at this juncture that mergers are not just about better profit margins. They are a survival tactic more than anything else – not in terms of creating an organisation that is too big to fail, but in terms of finding savings, elevating the brand and crafting a healthy balance sheet.
History shows us some great examples of how to conduct mergers successfully. Think beyond healthcare for a moment and the textbook amalgamation of Disney and Pixar. Would Disney still be around today without the help of Pixar? Or consider Exxon and Mobil, now a tower of strength in the oil market.
On the other side of the coin, mergers can and do fail. With AOL and Warner, two company cultures were unable to mix well, and when the business climate changed for the worse, billions were lost. They eventually went their separate ways in 2009. A cautionary tale indeed.
The bottom line is that for M&As to work, the two sides need to be well matched. Not only must they be compatible, but there needs to be a good change management process in place where everyone involved in each company knows the direction of travel and what the new goals and work culture will comprise. Without this full buy-in, the process of morphing two organisations into one new firm can be extremely painful.
Healthcare companies with an existing stake in the UAE, or those looking for one, will no doubt continue to eye up new candidates. Subsequently, the train will keep on going. There will be many more deals in the coming years as the UAE grows in stature and population – and of course because the healthcare industry continues to be under price and regulatory pressure and scale is such an important factor in this industry. |
Michael Jordan wore his college team's shorts underneath his Bulls uniform because he believed it brought him good luck. If six NBA championships can be considered proof, his superstition worked. It sounds silly (well, it is silly), but it's not all magic. Absurd as superstitions may seem, psychologists have an explanation for why it's not so far-fetched to believe a lucky charm can make you perform better.
Superstitions can range from small behavioral choices (like always putting on your right shoe first) to more extreme decisions (say you avoid the number 13 at all costs). The most curious thing about these superstitions is that they actually work and can alter your behavior, boost your performance, and help you achieve your goals.
To get a grasp on why we believe in superstitions—and how superstition and placebos manage to have measurable positive effects—I talked with Dr. Stuart Vyse, Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College, and author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, and Matthew Hutson, science writer and author of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane.
Let's start by taking a look at why we believe in superstitions to begin with before we move onto the reasons why you should sometimes embrace them (and be wary of getting too attached to them).
Why Superstitions and Placebos Change Your Behavior
We should get a working definition of superstition here, because on its own, it's a broad term that encompasses a whole slew of magical thinking. Both Dr. Vyse and Matthew Hudson provided similar definitions, so we'll cobble them together into one:
A superstition is a belief or behavior that's inconsistent with conventional science and attributes functional mental properties into non-mental phenomenon. Essentially, a superstition is a belief that the universe is always watching you and changes depending on your actions or what you're holding. Sounds ridiculous, right? So let's look at why we believe them.
Why We Believe in Superstitions
At their core, superstitions are self-fulfilling prophesies. You plant an idea in your head, allow yourself to believe in magic, and then believe doing something in a particular way or wearing a trinket will help you perform better. This seems insane, but it's a common phenomenon. We have different theories as to why we believe in superstitions, even though most people know they're entirely made-up. Dr. Vyse explains:
There are a couple primary reasons. One is that people teach them to us when we're young. They're part of the lore of any culture. The basic process of socialization is a major part of it.
Also, we live in a world where there are always going to be important things in our lives that we can't completely control and their outcome is uncertain. Superstitions tend to emerge in those contexts. You do everything you possibly can to ensure that things will work out. Superstitions are employed as one more thing to help you bring [a desired outcome] about. They're maintained in part by a phenomenon psychologists call the "illusion of control." In certain circumstances if you perform some action that can't possibly affect the outcome in any real sense, you have the feeling that you have control and that feels good—better than just sitting and waiting.
Another theory is based on the idea of the "illusion of control," but as Hudson points out, it's about making sense of the world:
One common theme is pattern-recognition. People are very good at seeing patterns in the world. It's how we learn. It's how we get by. We're so good that we see patterns even when they're not there. Coincidences pop out at us all the time, and we immediately try to find an explanation for these patterns. Oftentimes we rely on these mystical forces that try to explain the things we see. Maybe you made this thing happen or the universe made this thing happen as a sign to you to improve your life.
As far as the origin of these beliefs, one thought is that we evolved to believe in superstitions based on these pattern recognitions. In an article in New Scientist evolutionary biologist Kevin Foster suggests we learned superstitions based on the need to survive:
In general, an animal must balance the cost of being right with the cost of being wrong. Throw in the chances that a real lion, and not wind, makes [a] rustling sound, and you can predict superstitious beliefs.
Essentially, you have superstitions because you want to believe that you can change your fate, that a little magic in your routine can change the outcome of an event, and because you need a little confidence boost. It's not a bad thing to believe in superstitions and as we'll see in later sections, believing in them can actually boost your performance. Photo by Mykl Roventine.
How Placebos Can Boost Mind and Body Performance
It's worth talking briefly about placebos here because superstitions can almost be thought of as placebos. This is especially the case when an object is imbued with properties to heal or give you luck. When you take a placebo your brain can respond by releasing dopamine. On top of other things, dopamine triggers the reward center of the brain and in turn can change a mood. Having a reaction to a placebo is commonly referred to as the placebo effect, something everyone's heard of.
Like superstitions, the placebo effect can generate a subjective outcome. If you believe in an outcome then when it happens you'll connect that to what you did before (wore a good luck charm or took a fake-pill). In some ways the difference between a placebo and a superstition is tiny. Take, for instance, people's insistence that Vitamin C and Echinacea prevent colds, despite no scientific evidence existing for either. Dr. Howard Brody explains this to Psychology Today:
We know that among the variables in human function that appears readily able to respond to the placebo effect is IgA-the immunoglobulin that is present in mouth and nose mucus that provides the first line of defense against germs like cold viruses. So we might postulate (but cannot prove) that these "placebos" stimulate IgA production, and thereby actually do help reduce the number of colds people suffer, without any "direct" chemical effect taking place— i.e. the placebo effect at work. So in this instance we have a clear mechanism by which placebos could work for prevention.
Additionally, as the author at Psychology Today, Steven Kotier points out in his own story, the differences between a placebo and a superstition are hard to define sometimes:
When I was fifteen years old, I split my patella in a skiing accident. There's nothing to do for a split patella other than wait. And don a knee sleeve. I wore mine clear into my thirties. Whenever I went skiing, the sleeve went with me. Nevermind that the patella was all healed up by the time I got out of college; I found that on the days I went naked, the knee consistently throbbed.
The point is that when you believe doing something to make a difference in an outcome—like taking a fake pill, alternative medicines, wearing a knee sleeve, or knocking on wood—it can increase the chances of a positive outcome. You can actually trigger certain responses in the brain and body that help you meet a certain goal. Photo by Anders Sandberg.
When Rituals Turn Into Superstitions
So we have a good understanding of why we believe in superstitions and in turn, how placebos work in a similar fashion. What about those of us who didn't grow up with complex superstitions, but still feel like we have them? For instance, I have to walk to the end of a block, pause for two minutes, then return to an entryway before I have to give a presentation or speak publicly. That sounds like a ritual, but when do these rituals become superstitions? I asked both experts what they thought and they both agreed: it's when you imbue a ritual with magical power. Dr. Vyse explains:
There is a clear psychological value to establishing a routine—coaches often tell players that if they don't have a pre-game ritual they should try to establish one simply because it focuses your mind in a mantra-like way to keep the anxiety away. That's quite rational. It becomes a superstition when it moves over to magical thinking. So when you think you have to step on the line three times before you go out onto the field or that sort of thing. It has gone beyond the ritual aspect of it and has moved on to some incantation—a magical feature.
The difference between a ritual and a superstition is in the expected outcome. If you believe that performing your morning ritual or your pre-game routine can alter the outcome then it's a superstition. If you just do it to calm yourself before taking a plunge into an important event, the ritual continues as a ritual. The interesting thing, as Dr. Vyse noted, is that while routines have a psychological benefit, so do superstitions.
Stop Being So Rational and Embrace Your Superstitions
We have a good idea as to why we believe in superstitions and it's partially to help up make sense and feel significant in a massive, confusing world. Can believing in a superstition—whether it's routines or lucky charms—really help us perform better? It turns out, yes. Hudson explains:
Superstitious rituals can give us a sense of control when we're feeling anxious or when we don't have a lot of control over a situation. This illusory feeling of control can enhance real control and boost performance in some situations.
For instance, a study (published in in the journal of Psychological Science) gave golf balls to all of its subjects. Half of them were told the golf ball was lucky. These subjects made 35 percent more successful putts. Feeling lucky gave them a better sense of self-efficacy (a belief in your own competence), which then enhanced their performance with the golf playing. The same researcher did several other experiments where she crossed fingers for them or the subjects had lucky charms on them. Their superstition helped them perform better on certain cognitive tasks, memory games, and physical tasks.
The benefits likely come from both the placebo effect and the illusion of control. When you wear a lucky pair of shorts or perform a ritualistic dance before you give a speech, you trigger different parts in your brain that make you more receptive to the changes in the world around you. Wearing those lucky shorts, for instance, gives you a confidence boost. It also makes you visualize a positive outcome. When you prime your brain with that you're more receptive to opportunities and you project positivity in a way that people respond to it. Imbuing objects and routines with a the magical power of a superstition is essentially a way to prime yourself to act a certain way. It's not magic, but it's pretty close. Photo by London Looks.
The Dangers of Superstition (and What You Can Do to Keep Your Relationship Positive)
It's not all positive. Believing deeply in the power of superstitions can have negative effects and believing in unlucky superstitions, like Friday the 13th, black cats, or the ill effects of walking under a ladder have no positive effects whatsoever. In fact, believing in bad luck can have a negative effect because it increases your anxiety for no good reason. Dr Vyse explains:
I don't see any benefit to teaching people the unlucky superstitions—the number 13, black cats, and so forth—these are superstitions that merely increase anxiety and force you into situations where if it comes along you have to think about whether or not you want to deal with it.
Any good superstition can have a downside if you become dependent on it. If on some occasion you forget to do your superstition you feel horrible. There's a delicate balance to keeping it positive.
Overdoing your positive beliefs can also have major, life-altering repercussions. Hudson explains:
It's possible to be overconfident. Stock traders might have too much confidence so they start making wild trades when they have no control over what they're doing. Or people invest a lot of money in lotteries thinking they can influence these things with rituals and luck. It's good to boost your perception of control beyond reality a little bit, but everything needs to be within reason. If you invest too much faith in these things then they can increase anxiety, like, "nothing will go right if you don't wear a certain tie." Then you lose the tie and you think, "Oh my god my life is ruined now."
Like most things in life, the key here is moderation. The fact that stock trading goes down on Friday the 13th, as does travel, financial deals, and even movie releases isn't healthy. Dr. Vyse has never had a patient call and complain about superstitions taking over their life, but he also stresses that they're best used in tandem with real preparation. For example, a lucky charm on a test is helpful provided you also studied for the test. Photo by Karin Dalziel.
The real takeaway here is that despite the fact that most people won't admit it, many of us are superstitious to some degree. Believing in these superstitions isn't a bad thing as long as you use them as a part of larger plan and integrate them into your life in a healthy way. Best of all, believing in superstitions can provide that subtle, but useful boost to your performance on all sorts of tasks.
How about you? Besides well known superstitions like knocking on wood or crossing your fingers, do you have any superstitious rituals or carry any lucky charms? And what do they "do" for you? |
NHLPA has valid realignment concerns
By Stu Hackel
There is much hand wringing and concern about the NHLPA's non-consent to the NHL's much-publicized, highly touted and radical realignment. A widely held belief is that the union's refusal to agree to the plan was all about the upcoming negotiations on collective bargaining agreement. The current CBA expires in early September and, yes, there are reasons to believe a new one won't be reached easily. Some observers believe the 2012-13 season won't start on time.
But, to my mind, the NHLPA's refusal was less about the upcoming negotiations per se and more about living under the current CBA, which gives the players various rights concerning the conditions of their employment. For longer in its history than not, the NHLPA didn't do much with these rights and rubber-stamped the NHL's proposals or didn't even bother to question them. But by insisting on raising realignment issues that troubled the union, the NHLPA has indicated it's not going to function that way any longer.
For that, you can thank or blame (depending on your orientation) Donald Fehr. The NHLPA's executive director has more experience with issues like working conditions than anyone on either side of the labor-management divide, having begun his association with baseball's players union almost four decades ago. He also has a better handle on how to rally and communicate with the troops -- no easy task -- than any of his predecessors. That's why the NHL players, who had been in chaos since the lockout ended, wanted him to lead them. Because of that chaos, they're likely to play closer attention than they did before.
Some fans are riding along Blame Avenue when it comes to the PA. A readers poll in The Globe and Mail showed that 82 percent of those who responded (around 1,700) as of early Monday afternoon, did not support the players association's stance. The paper's James Mirtle wrote that it was "evidence of just how strong fan support had been for the proposal."
The CBA negotiations, which are scheduled to start around the time of the All-Star Game on January 29, won't likely be smooth in any event and the PA's refusal to play along with Gary Bettman on his realignment plan won't make the commissioner any friendlier to the union's positions. In fact, the league's swift reaction to the PA's lack of consent was to not continue talking, which the PA said it was willing to do, but to pull the plan off the table and play next season under the current alignment, a "my way or the highway" approach that doesn't bode well for the future. Here's the NHL's statement on its position.
"They always said it's a partnership, a two-way street," Jason LaBarbera, the Coyotes' player representative, told Jim Gintonio of The Arizona Republic. "You always have to be open for discussions for everything, and in this instance it was a one-sided kind of deal, and the league felt like they could just go and do what they wanted."
But most of the players who spoke over the weekend on the PA's stance weren't linking the CBA negotiations with realignment. They all said, as did Fehr in his statement, that the union's stance had more to do with the league's reluctance to provide them with the more definitive information they had requested to help them get a more concrete understanding of how realignment would impact them.
There was also a conciliatory tone in the players' collective sentiment, that the plan was generally good and they wanted to move forward with it after working on what they found problematic -- namely the possibility of increased travel and the perception that teams in the two eight-team western conferences would have more difficult paths to the playoffs than the pair of seven-team eastern conferences.
NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said in the league's statment "We have now spent the better part of four weeks attempting to satisfy the NHLPA’s purported concerns with the Plan with no success." No doubt that's true, but whatever the league tried didn't gain much traction with the players.
Asked, however, if the rejection of realignment was a sign of trouble ahead in the CBA talks, Maple Leafs player rep David Steckel told The Toronto Star's Bob Mitchell, “Not at all. Any time you’re going to realign, you don’t want to just jump into it....We asked for more information so we can make an informed decision on what we’re getting ourselves into, and for whatever reason (the NHL) couldn’t provide those details to us.”
Matt Cullen of the Minnesota Wild echoed Steckel, telling Ben Goessling of The St. Paul Pioneer Press that the PA's point of view was not a precursor to nasty negotiations. "I think there's that impression, but I don't feel like that's actually the case," Cullen said. "There's going to be realignment. I think it's just a matter of trying to do it right instead of rushing through it. There's a lot of information we don't have, and the league is still learning it, too. To be honest, I don't think it's a big scrap. It just a matter of needing more time.
"The travel, from the limited stuff we got, could be potentially worse for some western teams, including Winnipeg," Cullen added. "Without knowing, and it's late in the game, it's obviously hard to come up with a full schedule on a month's notice. Without knowing what that looked like, it's hard to consent or not consent when the potential is there for worse travel."
Alex Auld, the Senators' player rep, said much the same thing, telling Allen Panzeri of The Ottawa Citizen, “I think we just wanted more discussion, more dialogue, maybe some sample schedules for a few teams, or a league-wide schedule, and they weren’t willing to come up with that." Auld said the plan was acceptable to the Senators players, but players on too many other clubs had concerns that were not met and satisfied.
"You can look at it from just your team’s perspective," Auld said, "but you have to look at the entire membership, because you never know when you could be on one of those teams, and the job of the union is to respect everyone.”
Daly said in the league's statement, "The NHLPA has unreasonably refused to approve a Plan that an overwhelming majority of our Clubs voted to support, and that has received such widespread support from our fans and other members of the hockey community, including Players." But Panthers rep Mike Weaver told Dieter Kurtenbach of The South Florida Sun Sentinel that the NHLPA's posture was more a result of poor communication between the league and the players than a disapproval of the plan, an observation that might be the most telling.
"We're not being unreasonable at all," Weaver said. "We asked for information for the new conferences and we received nothing back. If we had more information, we'd be able to make an educated decision … and if they don't provide us with the information, then we can't give the OK."
The Predators Ryan Suter empathized with players on teams who would have had to travel more often. “Those guys from the west just wanted to see how much more they’d have to travel so if there had been a mock schedule or something for them to go by it might have been different,” Suter told The Tennessean. “Guys have families and right now travel is tough as it is. If they make it even harder that would have been a disadvantage to certain teams.”
"The reports this morning are that we blocked it, that's incorrect," Jets player rep Ron Hainsey told Tim Campbell of The Winnipeg Free Press on Saturday. "We didn't block it. We asked to continue to meet. That's not blocking. There's some stuff...the players liked the idea of home-and-homes every year. But within a reasonable situation as far as the travel and the overnights, stuff like that.
"We didn't block it. We asked for some clarifications, some sample schedules, stuff like that."
Dallas player rep Adam Burish told Gerry Fraley of The Dallas Morning News that the players on his team liked the realignment plan because it would have meant better travel for them. The Stars are one of only two teams (the Wild is the other) that does not play in the same time zone with the rest of its division foes. "For the Stars, it would have been great. Would it have been as good for Philadelphia or St. Louis? Probably not as much as us," Burish said, adding that the the NHLPA Executive Board, "had to look at it as a whole."
Detroit rep Niklas Kronwall said that the players “overwhelmingly” disagreed with two parts of the plan during a conference call on Jan. 1, telling Mirtle of The Globe and Mail, “The unfairness of the playoffs, with some divisions being eight teams compared to some divisions being seven teams, it’s tough to get away from. Every player in the league feels like it should be an even playing field before the season starts.”
But Kronwall's Red Wings boss, GM Ken Holland, was mystified at the position taken by the players. "First off, you've got a 30-team league, and if you divide it by four, you've got to have two sevens and two eights," Holland told Gregg Krupa of The Detroit News. "That's just the math.
"I would say that (the proposal is) not so much an east-west league as a four-conference league," Holland said of the proposed realignment. "Your focus was on the conference. Certainly, we were aware that we were in an eight-team conference as opposed to some teams being in a seven-team conference, but what's the difference between the seventh and the eighth? You've got to be in the top four. If you're not in the top four, it doesn't matter if you're eighth or sixth, you're out. I'm sort of missing something, I guess."
LaBarbera countered, "I personally wasn't a big fan of the way it was set up as it was. I like the eight-team playoff the way it (is)."
TSN's Bob McKenzie, speaking Monday on Montreal's Morning Show over TSN Radio 990, reported that the league did ask the NHLPA for input before the realignment plan was finalized, but didn't receive anything tangible. McKenzie added that he didn't believe the questions being asked by the NHLPA were unreasonable.
In the league statement on Friday, Daly characterized the PA's refusal as "in violation of the League’s rights. We intend to evaluate all of our available legal options and to pursue adequate remedies, as appropriate."
McKenzie said the reason the league went forward with the plan was because the current setup was unfair to five teams -- Dallas, Minnesota, Colorado, Detroit and Winnipeg -- and that while other teams might be disadvantaged by the proposed realignment, the NHL sold it to the owners as a whole based on the greater good of the entire league. He added that the league anticipated that this step in the process might not go swimmingly. In fact, when the realignment was initially announced, the league claimed that it did not require the players association's approval to implement it. The PA, which insisted that it did have the right to give its consent, also insisted on exercising that right. And so, here we are.
Former NHLPA head Paul Kelly, now Executive Director of College Hockey Inc., told Winnipeg's TSN Radio 1290 that he was "a little surprised" by the PA's position and hoped "it's a temporary thing."
Kelly added that he hoped another lockout was not in the cards. "I think there are some big issues but their issues that are resolvable. I don't think that people should look at this issue as being kind of a precursor to a lockout or work stoppage. I think there are smart people at the table. There is going to be some pushing back and forth. There are going to be some harsh words, but I think, my own view, that it will get solved and solved before the end of September."COMMENTING GUIDELINES: We encourage engaging, diverse and meaningful commentary and hope you will join the discussion. We also encourage, but do not require, that you use your real name. Please keep comments on-topic and relevant to the original post. To foster healthy discussion, we will review all comments BEFORE they are posted. We expect a basic level of civility toward each other and the subjects of this blog . Disagreements are fine, but mutual respect is a must. Comments will not be approved if they contain profanity (including the use of punctuation marks instead of letters); any abusive language or personal attacks including insults, threats, harassment, libel and slander; hateful, racist, sexist, religious or ethnically offensive language; or efforts to promote commercial products or solicitations of any kind, including links that drive traffic to your own website. Flagrant or repeat offenders run the risk of being banned from commenting. |
Question 28: Role of Women in the government of Imam al-Mahdi
Question: What role will women play in the government of Imam al-Mahdi (ع)?
Islam incited a revolutionary change in the status of women within the family and in society, in a historically unprecedented manner. In the pre-Islamic period, women throughout the world were viewed solely as a means of satisfying the sexual needs of men and as spineless labourers whose job was to bear children and breastfeed them. They had virtually no human rights to speak of. In the Arabian Peninsula, women were passed hand to hand as inheritance. In exceptional cases, newborn girls were buried alive beneath the sand.
Islam however, views women as the counterpart of men in terms of their humanity. It places the responsibility of the bridal gift (al-mahr) and the provision of her basic necessities on the shoulders of the man. It views the woman as man’s partner in life to such an extent that not only is she no longer inherited by men, but rather she herself inherits from men! Like a man, it is possible for her to participate in society in the areas of religion, culture, governance and economics, on condition that she preserves her humanity and chastity.
The quintessential examples from early Islamic history of women who played pivotal roles in the family and society are Khadijah (ع) and Fatimah al-Zahra` (ع), the wife and daughter of Muhammad (ص), and Zaynab b. ‘Ali (ع), the daughter of Imam ‘Ali b. Abi Talib (ع).
The reappearance of Imam al-Mahdi (ع), like the original appearance of Islam itself, will instigate revolutionary changes in the world. In particular, his movement will challenge the modern “Age of Ignorance” that has witnessed a revival in the pre-Islamic values associated with women.
As for the particular governmental roles that will be offered to qualified women at that time, little can be said with certainty because our knowledge of the particularities of that time is limited to the Qur`an and sunnah, and little has reached us concerning this issue.
The woman of today has witnessed a regression to a modern “Age of Ignorance.” By way of deceiving platitudes such as “the equality of men and women,” “freedom,” “women’s suffrage,” and “human rights,” the political and economic leaders of the world have turned women into cheap labourers and playthings in the hands of men, thereby stripping them of their very humanity. A woman’s chastity, no matter what position she holds, is vulnerable to such exploitation.
In the wake of this regression, the nuclear family, which is the very backbone of society, is crumbling. It is for these reasons that the world is once again in dire need of a movement like the revolution of the Prophet Muhammad (ص) to restore humanity to all people—but especially women, and to show mankind the way to true perfection.
The Shi’a—from the time of the Prophet himself—have taken the promised appearance of the Mahdi (ع) to heart, and have been in a constant state of anticipation. His shall be a revolution to overturn the world. In particular, the regression in the status of women will be reversed.
In the pre-Islamic “Age of Ignorance,” women were not considered human. It followed that they were offered no rights, and in some cases, their very existence was considered such a source of embarrassment, that newborn girls were buried alive. The Prophet Muhammad (ص) injected new life into that society. He granted women rights and responsibilities that corresponded to the rights and responsibilities of men. The same women, who before the rise of Islam, were property in the hands of man to be gifted at his will and to be bequeathed to his sons, were themselves granted the right to hold property and to inherit property from men.
Islam raised the station of women to such an extent that the Prophet Muhammad (ص) accepted their pledges of allegiance. They were allowed to accompany the Muslim armies to the battlefield as teachers and nurses and moral support for the troops. The Muslim woman could be a teacher and defender of the law, and by fulfilling these roles could rise above the station of the angels. From one perspective the importance of her role exceeds man’s role, for she “creates” other human beings and rears them. In the words of Ayatullah Khumayni, “It is because of the upbringing of the mother that a man ascends to his perfection.”
However, with the passing of time, the status of women in both non-Islamic and Islamic societies has once again sunk to pre-Islamic levels.
Imam al-Mahdi’s (ع) revolution will overturn the world order and unify the entire world under the banner of true Islam. The status of women will be no exception from this new order, for women will be returned to their rightful station.
Our knowledge of what is to occur in the age following this revolution is limited to what we can glean from the ahadith concerning what is known as “Mahdawiyyah” (the study of the Mahdi) and historical documentation of the formative years of Islam. In some ways the Islamic Revolution in Iran and its aftershocks throughout the world as well as the pivotal role played by women during and after that revolution, may serve as weak indicators of what the role of women might be during the rule of the Mahdi (ع).
The following ahadith concern the role of women after the Mahdi’s (ع) revolution: Ja’far al-Ju’afi narrates from Imam Muhammad b. ‘Ali al-Baqir (ع): “The Mahdi will rise up … along with 313 men and fifty women without any previous arrangement among themselves, like separate clouds clustering in the sky, one after another. This is the meaning of the verse where Allah says, ‘Wherever you may be, Allah will gather you together. Allah is capable of all things.’1 They will pledge their allegiance to the Mahdi between the Black Stone (of the Ka’bah) and the Station of Ibrahim, and the Mahdi will rise up with them from Mecca.”2
‘Abd Allah bin Bukayr narrates from Humran bin A’yan who narrates from Imam Muhammad b. ‘Ali al-Baqir (ع): “In the Age of the Mahdi, knowledge will be so pervasive that even a woman in her house will judge according to the Book of Allah and the sunnah of the Prophet.”3
The vast majority of narrations concerning the Mahdi mention theological arguments to establish his Imamate, teleological phenomena that will occur before his appearance, and the new order that will take form during his rule.
With respect to many of the details and the division of labour between men and women, the narrations are silent.
Ayatullah Khumayni said, “Islam wants men and women to attain perfection. Islam saved women from the Age of Ignorance. Islam has not served men as much as it has served women. You do not realize what woman was and what she has become.” He also said, “Not only does Shi’ism not sideline women in societal matters, it places them in their rightful position as human beings. We approve of the technological advancements of the West. However, we reject the corruption of the West.” In another statement he says, “Women hold a pivotal role in societal structure. Islam has lifted women to the extent that they can break free from being a mere commodity and assume their position as human beings. Accordingly, they can assume responsibilities within an Islamic government.”
- 1. Surat al-Baqarah (2), Verse 148:
أَيْنَ مَا تَكُونُوا يَأْتِ بِكُمُ اللٌّهُ جَمِيعًا إِنَّ اللٌّهَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ
- 2. Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 52, pg. 223:
َ يَجِيءُ وَ اللَّهِ ثَلاَثُ مِائَةٍ وَ بِضْعَةَ عَشَرَ رَجُلًا فِيهِمْ خَمْسُونَ امْرَأَةً يَجْتَمِعُونَ بِمَكَّةَ عَلَى غَيْرِ مِيعَادٍ قَزَعاً كَقَزَعِ الْخَرِيفِ يَتْبَعُ بَعْضُهُمْ بَعْضاً وَ هِيَ الْآيَةُ الَّتِي قَالَ اللَّهُ أَيْنَ ما تَكُونُوا يَأْتِ بِكُمُ اللَّهُ جَمِيعاً إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ فَيَقُولُ رَجُلٌ مِنْ آلِ مُحَمَّدٍ ص وَ هِيَ الْقَرْيَةُ الظَّالِمَةُ أَهْلُهَا ثُمَّ يَخْرُجُ مِنْ مَكَّةَ هُوَ وَ مَنْ مَعَهُ الثَّلاَثُمِائَةٍ وَ بِضْعَةَ عَشَرَ يُبَايِعُونَهُ بَيْنَ الرُّكْنِ وَ الْمَقَام
- 3. Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 52 pg. 352:
كَأَنَّنِي بِدِينِكُمْ هَذَا لاَ يَزَالُ مُوَلِّياً يَفْحَصُ بِدَمِهِ ثُمَّ لاَ يَرُدُّهُ عَلَيْكُمْ إِلاَّ رَجُلٌ مِنَّا أَهْلَ الْبَيْتِ فَيُعْطِيكُمْ فِي السَّنَةِ عَطَاءَيْنِ وَ يَرْزُقُكُمْ فِي الشَّهْرِ رِزْقَيْنِ وَ تُؤْتَوْنَ الْحِكْمَةَ فِي زَمَانِهِ حَتَّى إِنَّ الْمَرْأَةَ لَتَقْضِي فِي بَيْتِهَا بِكِتَابِ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى وَ سُنَّةِ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ ص |
SAN FRANCISCO — A roly-poly Kung Fu Panda outslugged the Triple Crown winner. An October outcast outpitched the Cy Young ace.
With Pablo Sandoval and Barry Zito taking star turns, this World Series is off to a rollicking start.
Sandoval hit three home runs and joined Reggie Jackson, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols as the only boppers to do it in the Series, and the San Francisco Giants jolted Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers 8-3 on Wednesday night in Game 1.
“Man, I still can’t believe it,” Sandoval said.
A boisterous AT&T Park crowd — a sea of black and orange outfits — roared as Sandoval connected in his first three at-bats. Popular in the Bay Area for his outgoing personality and unusual physique, he went 4 for 4 and drove in four runs. A Giant panda for sure.
From the first pitch to last, it was basically a perfect game by the Giants. Coming off a Game 7 win over St. Louis on Monday night, they looked totally fresh.
“We played our last game only two days ago,” Sandoval said. “We’re still hot. We just came here and played our game.”
Verlander, the reigning Cy Young winner so dominant in this postseason, looked uncomfortable from the outset and constantly pawed at the mound.
As fans filed out singing along with Tony Bennett’s standard “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” the final score raised a nagging question for manager Jim Leyland and his favored Tigers: Did too much rest after a playoff sweep of the Yankees mean too much rust?
“I just didn’t execute tonight,” Verlander said. “It was kind of a battle from the get-go. They took advantage of that and swung the bat pretty well, especially Pablo and (Marco) Scutaro. A couple of good bounces their way, bad for us.”
Game 2 is Thursday night, with Doug Fister starting for the Tigers against Madison Bumgarner.
Left off the 2010 World Series roster by the champion Giants, Zito shut out the Tigers until Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera’s RBI single in the sixth. The Giants won for the 14th straight time with Zito starting.
“Just the opportunity alone was mind-blowing. Me and my wife were dancing around when I heard,” Zito said of getting the Game 1 start. “And then the boys came out swinging and played great defense.”
Sandoval did his damage with his bat. He donated the wood he used for the first two homers to the Hall of Fame — no need for it anymore, he broke it on the backswing of his second shot.
It was certainly a moment of retribution of Sandoval. He was benched during the 2010 World Series, his production and confidence down, his weight up. In the stands on this night, fans wearing furry panda hats celebrated with him.
“You have to keep working. I’ve never lost faith to be here,” he said.
Get this: It was the first three-homer game at the stadium originally known as Pac Bell Park since the very first one, when Kevin Elster did it for the Dodgers in 2000. Nope, not even home run king Barry Bonds had done this.
Tagged by Sandoval for a solo shot in the first inning, Verlander could only mouth ‘Wow!’ when the Giants star launched a two-run drive in the third that set off another blast of fog horns. Sandoval reprised his power show from this year’s All-Star game, when his bases-loaded triple highlighted a five-run first inning against Verlander.
Quite a blast from a team that finished last in the majors in homers.
“We’re not known for our power,” manager Bruce Bochy noted.
And if there was any doubt that Verlander was shaky, the clearest sign came in the fourth. That’s when Zito, a career .099 hitter, sliced an RBI single with two outs off the current AL MVP for a 5-0 lead.
The festive crowd stood and applauded when it was announced that Verlander was being pulled for a pinch hitter in the fifth. Sandoval gave his followers another reason to get up moments later when he hit a solo homer off reliever Al Alburquerque in the fifth, answering the cheers by waving his batting helmet in a curtain call.
The Tigers seemed out of sorts in their first game following a five-day layoff. That was an issue in 2006, too, when Verlander and his teammates had nearly a week off before getting wiped out by the Cardinals.
“I’m one that’s been around long enough to know that a lot of things happen in this game. This was a big-hyped game with Justin, probably a lot of pressure on him,” Leyland said.
“But I don’t think it had anything to do with the pressure. His fastball command was not good. He got out of sync. He got on fast forward. He just did not pitch well tonight. It’s that simple,” he said.
Pujols homered three times last year, Jackson accomplished the feat in 1977 and Ruth did it in 1926 and again in 1928.
For good measure, Sandoval lined a single his last time up.
“We were hoping for a water shot but he got a lousy single. Kind of killed the whole deal for us,” Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt kidded.
Sandoval is one of a record nine Venezuelans on the Series rosters, and his power performance attracted attention way beyond the ballpark.
“There goes the third! Pablo makes history,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tweeted in Spanish.
Scutaro, the NL championship series MVP, twice hit RBI singles after doubles by Angel Pagan. NL batting champion Buster Posey contributed two hits, left fielder Gregor Blanco made diving catches to rob Cabrera and Prince Fielder, and Tim Lincecum came out of the bullpen to prevent further damage.
The Giants kept getting good bounces, with Pagan hitting a double that hopped off the third-base bag. ALCS MVP Delmon Young, meanwhile, failed to run after a tapper in front of the plate that the Giants turned into a double play.
Pitching in San Francisco for the first time since 2008, Verlander scuffed at the rubber while warming up for the first inning, pulled off his glove after badly overthrowing a curve and kept taking deep breaths. He hardly resembled the guy who was 3-0 with an 0.74 ERA in three playoff starts this year.
Ever since two poor outings in the 2006 Series against St. Louis — punctuated by two throwing errors — Verlander has worked hard to harness his emotions and 100 mph heat in the early going.
Verlander was trying to settle in when Sandoval tagged him, pouncing on an 0-2 fastball and lining it into the front row over the center-field wall.
Verlander got into trouble again the third, and pitching coach Jeff Jones strolled to the mound when the count went to 2-0 on Sandoval. Verlander stared at Jones and shook his head. On the next pitch, Verlander could do little but watch the ball sail into the front row in left.
To some, this looked somewhat similar to the 2010 Series opener. That day, the Giants beat up the supposedly unhittable Cliff Lee on their way to a five-game romp over Texas.
“Well, you know, it’s hard to figure this game sometimes. You hear the old adage — ‘That’s baseball.’ These guys are human, and sometimes they’re not quite on top of their game,” Bochy said.
This is how bad it got for the Tigers: Former closer Jose Valverde made his first appearance in 11 days. Leyland still isn’t sure what he’ll get from the struggling reliever.
Lincecum, meanwhile, retired seven straight batters and struck out five of them. The two-time Cy Young winner has embraced his new role in the bullpen.
Jhonny Peralta hit a two-run homer for the Tigers in the ninth off mop-up reliever George Kontos.
NOTES: Tampa Bay’s Desmond Jennings was the only other player this year to homer twice in a game off Verlander. … Willie Mays and fellow Giants Hall of Famers Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and Gaylord Perry took part in the first-ball ceremony. … Tigers great Al Kaline, now a team executive, watched Detroit take batting practice from behind the cage. … The Game 1 winner has won eight of the last nine championships. … Cabrera and Posey marked the first set of batting champs to face each other in the World Series since 1954 when it was Mays of the New York Giants and Bobby Avila of Cleveland. When Cabrera walked on a close full-count pitch, he playfully patted the Giants’ All-Star catcher on his way to first base. … Tigers bullpen catcher Jeff Kunkel wandered the stands well before the teams took the field for warmups, snapping pictures of the stadium and field with his cell phone. … The Giants franchise played its 106th Series game — they have won 50 — trailing only the Yankees (225) and Cardinals (112). The Dodgers are fourth with 105. |
Hello Meditation Friends!
Greetings from rainy old Berlin! A while since I’ve written: it’s been an intense few months of learning. I’ve waited so as to share my reflections in this combined June/July issue.
In April I mentioned that I undertook Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher Training in Australia. A couple of weeks ago I also completed an 8-week MBSR course (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) in Berlin. This has instigated another shift in my personal practice and professional development.
So nice I took it twice!
It’s true! I did two MBSR courses simultaneously: one as a “student-student”, the other in the role of “student/teaching assistant”.
While I’ve been an ‘unofficial’ student of MBSR founder Jon Kabat-Zinn‘s for quite some time (devouring his books and online resources), this was my first ‘official’ experience as a student of the 8-week MBSR curriculum he developed in the 70s at the U-Mass Medical School. I was taught by my friend and teaching colleague Signe Glahn in her first time out as a qualified MBSR teacher. (Congrats Signe!)
More an 8-week meditation intensive, it’s said that the course is very much like “bringing the retreat experience into your everyday life”. I agree! The benefits show up swiftly and in the most interesting of ways, especially when it comes to ‘being present’ with our bodies…
Suffice to say I learned much about my own meditation practice (wrestling with the old chestnut of ‘resistance’, diving deeper into ‘stillness’) and my own teaching practice (I’m a better teacher for it). The MBSR curriculum has given me yet another perspective on meditation and its tangible, experiential benefits, the ‘take home’ message of course again being, just – keep – practicing!
So it’s July, and I find myself on a few days break near a beautiful beach to celebrate my birthday (how lucky am I?!) One morning I wake up without a voice. Nary a warning. Nada. Not able to utter a sound save for a tiny whisper. Some might say “yay, silent retreat!” But not so great if you’re in the radio and teaching games as I am.
Alarm bells ring: “aphonia”. This has happened to me before but never right before ‘a big gig’ such as, for example, teaching a four-hour workshop at The School of Life that’s been scheduled for ages! That people are paying to attend. Next Saturday. Yep.
What will I do if my voice doesn’t come back? Here comes my old mate, ANXIETY…
As it turns out my voice, while it did partially return close to the date, was nowhere near up to the job. In terrible shape, weak, constant coughing degrading it even further. One foot forward, two steps back. Speaking limited to short bursts NOT four hours of continual talking. It wouldn’t go the distance.
Had. To. Cancel.
“Life gives us exactly what we need to practice” our teachers tell us. Right-o then. Let’s sit with ‘what is’ this week… Not. Much. Fun.
First I sit with Anxiety: the doubt of not knowing whether or not I’d be better in time. Of having no control over the situation. Of seeing my perfectionist tendencies creep into the inner dialogue. Me to me: “But you have to do this!” “You’ll let people down.” “You’ve failed”. Making a friend of anxiety…
What does anxiety feel like?
Then, Impatience. “Hurry up and get better!” Hurry up and give me the outcome I want!” “Now!”
What does impatience feel like?
Once the decision had been made to cancel, I sit with Disappointment: “Oh no, it’s not going ahead!” “You won’t be able to work after all that planning, promo and diligence!” “You’ve looked forward to this for so long.” Surrendering to ill health. Making an appointment with disappointment…
What does disappointment feel like?
Finally, Self-Compassion, the antidote to beating myself up, much-needed after days of doing so, the thing we do when plans go awry. The only way to survive crushing our own spirits from within. “Yes, it’s happening, you are actually ill.” “This happens every day to people just like you.” You’re not a machine, you are flesh and blood.”
Kinder now: “Good on you for looking after yourself.” “Your voice would have been shredded afterwards even if you’d pushed through, which could set your recovery back even further.”
Then, rest, sweet rest. Sleep. So needed.
Self Compassion defeats Harsh Inner Critic.
Not such a big deal perhaps? Maybe. But for me – a “high achiever”, a worker, self-starter, “the good girl”, “brave girl” with soldiering on hard-wired into her DNA – it was. Sound familiar?
And thanks to this mindfulness ‘toolbox’ I am now in possession of – sitting with what is + self-kindness – the experience transformed from difficult to rewarding – one of self-learning and ‘watching’: the ups, the downs, the reality. Observing what went on in in my mind when things didn’t go my way. Feeling the instinct to beat myself up ebb and flow. Then finally ebb.
There it is again: the recurring realisation that for the most part life happens to us. We can’t control it. (Why do we even think we can?!) But we can find a way to hold the hurdles and obstacles more lightly and kindly. Which is, in the end, what I did. Just sitting with life as it unfolded, for better, worse or otherwise.
This is life. This is living. This is what meditation teaches us. This is what meditation teaches me.
So, how was your week?!
BERLIN | The School of Life
Earlybird tickets are now on sale. And anyone holding tickets for the cancelled workshop on July 22 is able to transfer to this date! Full details and tickets are at this link. Or email: berlin@theschoolof life.com
You might remember in January Signe and I ran a Day Retreat. Due to high interest we’ve decided to run it again. It will be from 10-16hr, Saturday 23 September at the same beautiful venue in Kreuzberg. Presented in English, this is a day of gentle reflection and guided meditation practices (both seated and moving). And importantly, an opportunity to get in touch with the need for inner stillness and reflection that we all carry but rarely make time for.
Tickets are 55€ per person (lunch included). Registrations are by email. Full details are at this link, with terms and conditions here. Suit beginners and experienced. Places are limited – don’t miss out!
BERLIN & AUSTRALIA | Workshops
No sooner did I cancel my workshop (see earlier), fortune smiled upon me! A small business got in touch to inquire about the possibility of a workshop “custom-made” for their needs. (In this case, finding the mental spaciousness needed to access creativity and ‘flow’, time management, maintaining productivity and motivation, team building and managing the relentless demands of ‘busy’.)
Designing a mindfulness workshop or event just for YOU is one of my favorite things to do! If you’d like to explore this possibility – be it for your team, employees, company, organisation or for yourself and/or friends – get in touch! Priced to suit your budget, each package includes an initial meeting to discuss your specific needs in detail. Regular guided meditation drop-in meetings and sangha groups are also options worth exploring for your organisation or friend group.
Interested? Email me here.
Since last writing I’ve hatched another two episodes of Auspicious Plastic.
Perhaps you’re thinking a podcast about ‘material stuff’ is about as far away as you can get from from mindfulness? These two episodes might surprise: in EP5 sustainability officer Amy talks about her ‘love-hate’ relationship with plastic (yet how she cherishes vintage Tupperware). And EP6 sees culture journalist Sarah discuss why it’s so important to not love things but people. I hope you’ll listen and enjoy.
Subscribe on iTunes and discover the latest episodes by liking the Auspicious Plastic Facebook page. Plus, the stories from Three Wicked Women – the podcast series I co-hosted and produced last year – are now individually online. More here.
For my birthday Signe kindly gave me a beautiful book, Heal Thyself: Lessons in Mindfulness in Medicine by Saki Santorelli. Written for other health professionals from the wealth of his experience as a veteran (and pioneering) MBSR teacher, it’s a beautiful read for anyone who practices mindfulness: personal, poetic, profound and practical.
And while researching my own workshop about the benefits of bringing mindfulness to work, I came across this excellent interview about compassion in the workplace. It’s with Monica C. Worline, co-author of the book Awakening Compassion At Work, soon to make my reading list!
Over the next couple of months I’ll be pretty busy packing down my life in Berlin, saying goodbyes and returning home to Australia. So there might not be another e-news for a wee while. Speak to you again once the dust settles, I’ve landed on solid ground, and when there’s fresh news to tell…
Until then, be kind to yourself! |
I've been lazy too long! Hubby, who, by the way, has not been released from the doctor, got my weed eater started...with a full tank of gas. He is not supposed to be lifting more than five pounds, well, I think a gas jug, a weed eater and a splitting maul all weigh more than five pounds. Far be it from me to offer advice to Mr Bull-Headed-I'm-Gonna-Do-It man!
The bush hog, which he was beating on when he had his heart attack, has not been repaired. SOOOOO, Mr Fix-It drained the diesel from the old Deutz to remove the water from the tank(all more than five pounds, I'm sure) and hooked up the sickle and used that to bush hog the tall grass in the valley. He came in and said, I messed up, I hit a root. No kidding! This is a hay mower, not a bush hog!!!
Anyway, back to my weed eating. As you know, we have received vast amounts of rain and rain makes things grow. My little distractions, such as hubby's emergency appendectomy and heart attack three weeks after, have gotten me behind on a few things.
Full tank of gas, running weed eater and I am cutting that tall stuff. A few flowers and berry plants jumped out in front of me but no problem we have plenty. I am eliminating possible snake hidey holes. The lawn has been mowed...by hubby, Doc said he could drive! The weed eating has been sorely deglected.
I hit a styrofoam cooler...you can imagine what that looks like now. I hit all kinds of things that have been hidden but the nice thing is that string just keeps feeding out. I even found a spool of fishing line, not even going there...Hubby did not know how that got there, dogs musta done it! Yep, got right into the tackle box and left the fishing line out for my weed eater to wind off the spool.
WE have a huge place to weed eat, around the house, the smoke house, the old house, the fence, the water garden, the shop...and this is just close to the house, it goes further. There's around the mail box, the swing set, and Marcy's yard.
I kept switching arms, my muscles are twitching, I am as parched as a desert but I keep going. I am as bullheaded as hubby. Didn't get half of it done!!! Ran out of gas and gas lasts a long time in the weedeater.
I thought, okay, enough for today(yesterday) and then discovered my arms were numb, my hand shook when I tried to drink something and I swear my entire body was vibrating.
Is any one else having trouble making comments? I sign in and resign in, write a comment, and sign in is requested again!!!! I have had trouble with downloading pictures.
I hope y'all don't think I am high-hattin' you because I can't comment!
I have viewed excellent photography, read how awful the weather is, walked the streets of Jerusalem and the isles of a grocery store. I have seen dogs in training, hens alayin', and cats a playin'. I have viewed wonderful gardens, farms, livestock and setting hens. I have read of good fortune and tea parties...but I could not comment. I am so aggravated I could spit!!!
I don't know about you but where I come from, being fed up and mad enough to spit is pretty mad...almost as mad as a wet hen.
Am I alone? Do I need to abandon Blogger and try WordPress?
A customer brought me new potatoes today. He said the rain had exposed his potatoes and they had to be picked. I gladly took some off his hands.
I sliced them thin with skins on. Browned and cooked them in a little olive oil and chives, adding Cavendar's seasoning, I cooked them tender then cooked them fast to brown and dashed some soy sauce on them.
The new way was a success with the men, hubby and Andrew. They wanted more!
Hubby begins to fix a new batch and asked how I made them, I told him, well actually I seasoned them and let him pretend to cook them. Andrew came through, hubby grabbed the spatcula, sprinkled some soy sauce and pretended he had done it all.
THEN, he put Andrew on the spot by asking, whose potatoes were better, mine or Nana's. Andrew chose Papa's, you know the men have to stick together. Hubby confessed. Andrew was surprised and a little embarrassed that he had chosen Papa's.
I had a surprise when I awakened. A bouquet of wild flowers lay on my table by my favorite chair. Hubby had been out for his healthy walk and thought about me. Something about almost dieing makes you think of what's important, I guess. I placed them in one of my favorites cups in the kitchen window. We had daisies in our wedding bouquet, don't know if he remembered but it was nice to get a daisy and honeysuckles as a surprise.
None of my posts would be complete without a peek at Ki. I think she is as big as she's gonna get now at seven months old. She is hoping against hope, I will drop something from my plate.
I walked the creek today to refill my contentment level and be close to The Maker. The waters have not completely cleared. We have deep holes where we had none...good for summer play and sand bars appeared in other places. The power of water is amazing, it can reshape your world.
Hubby had worked on the road...Doc said he could drive Friday so he has been wearing out the tractor and the mule. I don't think Doc meant, bounce around on rough equipment four days after heart surgery. Marcy and I went along on this ride to collect flat rocks for use in the yard.
Marcy, who is always outside by daylight, had picked a few wild strawberries before we picked rocks. All in all, a pretty good morning...as the rain clouds move in again!
Sue has kindly answered my challenge by asking a question. Do you really think I meant that? Of course, it is a difficult question to answer...and has three parts. Why not something easy, like...oh, what is your favorite color? Thank you, Sue!
And the question is: What kind of life had you imagined for yourself before you ended up on your very cool farm?
I am too old to remember the answer to that! It seems that all the good things have been my dreams and the bad, my nightmares. I have always loved to write and imagined one day that would play a part in my life. I do remember telling my mother, I was going to marry a man that would let me have as many dogs as I wanted and I have always wanted horses. So I guess I am living my dream...sorta.
For years, my hubby wanted a farm. I said, no, we cannot keep up with three acres, we can not do a farm. Circumstances brought us here and we cannot keep up, just like I told him, but the pluses of being here far outweigh the minuses
Years ago, before reality bit me, I had dreams of being a veterinarian, an archaeologist, a computer genius, and a writer. In a way, those dreams have come true. I am always doctoring some animal, digging up stuff on the farm, playing on the computer and writing.
And would you trade it now?
I don't think I would trade it as much as improve it. More cash and more workers would make life simpler but that would be true in any one's life.
Has the daily lotion made a difference? Are your heels as soft as flowery petals in the spring?
The lotion, I think, is a mental problem. My feet were extremely hot during labor, the lotion solved that problem and cooled them. My feet are still hot, not in the soft flowery petal way but temperature wise. The lotion still does the job along with keeping my feet out from under the covers.
Thanks for the question...that was fun. Stop by and visit Sue and just for me, ask her a hard question!
both think I'm special! I was awarded by both ladies and am deeply honored. Linda and Tamara are both very unique talented ladies that I am very proud to have met through the wondrous world of blogdom. The blogs linked to above are interesting, funny, informative and never, ever boring, so drop by and tell them Gail sent you.
I am supposed to tell three things about myself...if I remember correctly, and then pass the award to more well-deserving bloggers. Not to sound conceited, but all blogs I read are well deserving of this award so pick it up and run with it and my blessing.
Three things, mmmm, what have I not told about my strange and varied life? This is the difficult part...three things you don't know about me...I have told all my deep dark secrets, you have seen me in underwear, you have listened to me complain...there is not much left to reveal.
One...I use to dream of being a published author. I guess, in a way, I am...I blog.
Two...I put lotion on my feet, at night, every night, before I go to bed. This strange habit began when I was in labor with my first child and has continued non-stop for thirty-eight years. That's a lot of lotion.
Three...I have absolutely no patience with liars or with being called a liar. That pretty much rules out any relationships with politicians. I guess that is because of my raising. Dad would never tolerate a lie, said there was never a reason to lie...and also taught me, a person's word is his bond.
...and I am adding a fourth. I enjoy a variety of people. I am very open minded to other life styles and belief systems. I love to laugh and make people laugh. I do lean toward dark humor...if you haven't noticed that already.
Oh, and if you have any questions, no matter how strange you may think they are, ASK THEM! I think this would a great way to know each other better. When I answer your questions, I will link back to your blog and the world will become even smaller as we meet new friends.
My nephew, the builder of the big red barn...has a birthday. Not a spring chick anymore, Toni was born in '69. He is the one who takes me on wild adventures, makes me gamble, and reminds me that all things are possible. Toni makes me laugh. He shows me life through different eyes and has a big heart.
Thank you, Toni, for being you...and helping me take off my lion costume! Happy Birthday...love you bunches. As beautiful as Alaska is, I want you home!!
Hubby has his wings clipped...can't drive, can't lift and he's mad because he was gonna build some fence. He had it all pushed and ready to start setting posts as soon as he fixed the bushhog. Sorry, honey!
While I was retrieving the hubby, Andrew was going to the doctor with his mom, now I have two sick ones. Life around here is a thrill a minute!!!
I head back to work tomorrow and who's knows what will happen when I am gone this time! Got some calves due, was going to take some cattle to market, was gonna mow the yard, was gonna clean house! I guess I have a basket full of "wasgonnas" but they can wait.
The hospital bills are rolling in from his last surgery and now my chest is hurting...just stress! I will survive, we all will and that is the blessing in this whole kit 'n kaboodle mess!
Found out at five that Andrew had a sports/awards dinner at seven! Papa usually does these things but it fell to me this time.
Strutting his stuff, we proceeded to the awards dinner. There were basketball, baseball, football, track, and golf teams, all were honored.
Counting their ribbons, the track team was pleased. Coach is looking forward to an even better season next year.
Andrew with Coach McWilliams, the man who taught Andrew to love math and also encouraged him to branch out in sports. Track and football are Andrew's main attractions but he wants to play basketball, too.
We are a small school but because of the rating, we must travel far to play with the same rating of schools. We have faced many formidable foes on the athletic fields but have done it with style and grace.
It was a bitter-sweet event, saying goodbye to the seniors, and in the same instant, looking forward to another year of sports.
Driving himself to the doctor this afternoon, hubby was transported by ambulance AGAIN to the hospital! This time, they discovered he had a heart and installed some new plumbing. He's fine, the surgery only took fifty-nine minutes beginning to end. With his new pipe and a temporary pacemaker, he is already picking on the nurses. He will be on double clot cleaner overnight and we will see what happens tomorrow. Hubby wants to come home. If wishes were horses, we would all ride!
I was hoping the little hot pepper, Ki-Anne, would not find her voice...no such luck. Maybe, I thought, if she stole enough cat food, she would purr and never learn to bark.
The cat food is not working!
She joins TP in search of the elusive mystery creature.
The monster terripin should be here somewhere!
There it is and Ki-Anne shouts to the heavens, I have found my prize. For a dog who bravely nips at cattle and horses without a sound, she is awfully loud with these small creatures. She will run in to sniff and jump back as if it's a snake. I tell her, No! and distract her.
One evening Ki had something treed right outside the door. I tried to shush her but had to go out to see what terrible monster she had this time...a toad frog!!! To listen to her, you would think it was a mountain lion. Despite her small body and even smaller tail, this girl has a big voice. I had hoped against hope, that she would never discover her voice since she had been a less than vocal dog up to this point. Too late now!! Again, I distracted her and placed the toad under the fig bush away from her. Not to be put out from that loss, she immediately began to search for another monster.
This little lady is smart and shows promise of almost having a Border Collie level of intelligence...almost. She no longer charges at the cats, they have trained her. Now, when she speeds by, they do not satisfy her with running but stoically stand their ground. The roosters are learning not to scatter and she prances through them trying to show her power. They, too, have begun to ignore her. The cattle and horses have accepted her as just another irritation, like a cow fly. They no longer participate in her puppy games.
Ki leads, sits, shakes hands, knows "NO!", does not jump up and greets me each day after work at my car. We walk together to the porch and she curls up in her bed as I go in the door. Ki is a farm dog in training but is very good at cuddling!
Next training project will be the command, "Hush!" |
By Rick Becker 31 May 2018
Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry is a risky business. Students are “taught” how to heal, and are encouraged to “take risks” which really means to ignore the boundaries clearly laid out in scripture. BSSM is simply a school of ‘simony’ that is producing thousands of severely deluded ‘revivalists’ who believe that they are a part of a mighty end time army that will usher in the kingdom of God. Two of our previous posts exposed their false teachings and methodology:
The fruits of Bethel church – ashamed of the gospel, flirting with the occult.
Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry – Normalizing Mysticism.
In this post we continue to expose the delusion in operation at the BSSM.
In 2016, BSSM asked research group Eido “to conduct a wide scale research report: “objectively discovering and celebrating the corporate testimony of these graduates; as well as providing the information Bethel needs to grow in excellence as they pursue global revival.” The Eido report was compiled by two statisticians who are former students of the BSSM. The report is largely complimentary, and claims that as a result of the graduates ministry 50 000 people were healed in 2017 as well as “several dead raisings.” No medical records were mentioned or made available. The report does however include some negative observations from graduates. One of the questions they asked past students was: “What could BSSM have done better to prepare you for life after graduation?”
Two of the answers are telling:
1. “there could be more talks from people who work in the secular world
and can describe what it is like to be a revivalist without using any jargon. I [have] never said ‘bam, take it’ since graduating”
The question is why is there the need to say “bam, take it” in the first place? What does “bam” actually do, and how does one “take” whatever “bam” produces? Did Jesus or the apostles resort to a “bam, take it” ministry? The “bam” probably comes from a false prophet who is endorsed by Bill Johnson – Todd Bentley.
Outside of the Bethel bubble is a real world that needs the gospel, not the tricks and trades of the Bethel machinery.
2. “I think I felt like I was told YOU’RE AN AWESOME AMAZING WORLD CHANGER LEADER and then I got thrown into the real World like a fish out of water. Ministry life and real world life are very different. And I was very disillusioned. I knew I was AMAZING but that didn’t translate into society as a whole.”
Surely the point of any type of christian instruction is to reveal the greatness of God, not self? Bethelites are under a spiritual delusion. Outside of their environment are people who are not bamboozled by gold dust, feathers and fog. Stretching legs may fool some people, but the average person, even if unsaved, still has common sense.
Students at the BSSM receive lots of encouragement, but is it biblical, or simply an ego building exercise? More comments from graduates of the BSSM in the Eidos survey: “I was told by a good amount of people during school that I was meant to do great things, but now that I don’t have those voices always reminding me”, said one
struggling graduate. “Not being believed in or seen the way that I was at Bethel. There I felt so big, here I feel so insignificant and unseen” added another.”
This BSSM School Planting article, “Developing a Risk-Taking Culture” reveals Bethel’s disdain for scripture, and their desire to experiment in signs and wonders.
BSSM: “Developing a supernatural lifestyle requires risk….Set the tone for your school’s culture by communicating that it is okay for your students to fail when they are trying new things.”
I thought BSSM was a school of “supernatural” ministry? On the day of Pentecost, the disciples “began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Acts 2:3. There was no trial and error, no risk taking involved. They were not trying something new – God gave a new gift. The miracle was that they spoke in languages that they had not learned: “And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” Acts 2:6-8
BSSM: “While teaching on words of knowledge, ask students to get a word of knowledge (e.g. his/her favorite toy growing up, last four digits of his/her phone number, parent’s name, etc.) for the student sitting to their right. Ask students who got the word of knowledge correct to raise their hands. Celebrate their breakthrough! Ask the students who got the word of knowledge wrong to raise their hands. Tell these students to look around the room and notice they are not the only ones who got it wrong. Celebrate their effort and remind them it’s ok they didn’t get it right the first time. Encourage them to keep trying as it will help them develop discernment.”
How is guessing the favorite toy of the person next to you glorify and point to God? How does it edify the body of Christ? A necromancer or psychic could name the favorite toy. Where is the miraculous if we can simply thumb suck names and numbers until we get close? We covered the topic of supernatural knowledge in this article: The new breed of crafty evangelists.
BSSM: “While teaching students on how to heal the sick, share your personal journey with them on how you grew in understanding healing, the breakthroughs you saw, the disappointments you experienced”
Gifts are taught? It should be so obvious to anyone who has has a bible that gifts cannot be taught, and that not everyone has the same gift. “All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.”
1 Corinthians 12:11.
You don’t have to be a cessationist to know that Bethel blatantly ignores scripture! If healing can be taught, why have Bill and Beni Johnson required surgery, and why are they still wearing glasses? Why are the hospitals in Redding still in business?
Sometimes “taking risks” involves baiting people. This is from the BSSM School Planting facebook page:
“ACTIVATION // White Board: This is from our friends @ilssm_uk ! Take a whiteboard and have your students write down words of knowledge. Take the whiteboard out on the street and watch as people find themselves on the whiteboard and are touched by the Lord!”
Imagine the apostle Paul and a few youth from the church in Corinth walking through the marketplace holding a parchment with “words of knowledge” written down as a means to give the Corinthians an encounter with God. I could set up a whiteboard outside my local coffee shop with words that most could identify with – broken relationships, financial difficulties, loneliness, lower back pain, does the name John mean anything to you? etc. What is miraculous about that? If someone from the BSSM received a “hit” on one of their words from a passerby, will the passerby hear the message of the gospel, or Bethel’s version of the gospel?
In this article, leaders are given advice on leading a “soaking session.”
BSSM: “Encountering the intimate presence of God is the gateway to the supernatural! When we soak in His presence, we are radically transformed into His likeness. We learn to hear His voice, we learn to see Him, and we are anointed to walk in miracles, signs, and wonders.”
This is far from biblical. There are no portals or gateways or formulas to experience the supernatural. The reason BSSM have wandered off into mysticism and other errors is precisely because they refuse to hear and obey His voice: scripture. What they mean by “we learn to see him” only they will know. The formula BSSM offer is simple: soak, listen, see, receive an anointing and become a miracle maker. Try and find that in scripture.
BSSM: “For some, soaking opens up the door to visions, angelic visitations, or out of body experiences. Others have physical manifestations of electricity, heat, weeping, and more. Whether or not we dramatically experience the spirit realm or physical manifestations, we get to receive the greatest gift: His presence. When we stop and spend time with Him, we receive a deposit of His Spirit in our innermost being, renewing and strengthening us to fulfill our destinies.”
In other words, a faith that can be felt takes precedence over a faith that is factual. This form of contemplative spirituality leads to all forms of deception, especially since Bill Johnson encourages Bethelites to ‘go off the map.’ The Bethel version of destiny, is an awesome world changer who takes dominion, performs miracles, and prospers. I would encourage you to read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and compare the desires and lives of many who paid the ultimate price, to the current new breed of New Apostolic Reformation revivalists who have confused the gospel with a mixture of the American dream and dominion theology.
BSSM: “Today, we want to encourage you with tips on how to lead your students to soak in God’s presence! The fruit of intimacy with Him is a lifestyle full of the supernatural. By creating space for them to encounter greater measures of His Spirit, they will be transformed into revivalists that reveal the King and His kingdom.”
Where does scripture teach the fruit of intimacy with Him is a lifestyle full of the supernatural ?
This article entitled “3 Reasons Why Declarations Shift Atmospheres” is simply word of faith heresy:
BSSM: “Steve Backlund once said, “Nothing happens in the kingdom unless a declaration is made.”
Steve Buckland has confused himself with God. Where is this notion clearly taught in scripture, how did the disciples or early church apply it? By his logic, the disciples declared their own tribulations and martyrdom. Our declarations are not causitive! God is the only one who makes declarations. We bring our supplications to God:
“The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Philippians 4:6
BSSM: “Declarations are powerful because God has placed authority in our words. As His children, we can use this authority to either edify or destroy. In fact, Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (NASB).
Proverbs 18:21 does not mean that our words have inherent creative powers. It means our words have effects. Consider verse 6 : “A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating.”
BSSM: “When we embrace and release life-giving truth through our words, we can shift atmospheres and establish cultures that reflect the kingdom.”
Says no biblical text! “Shifting atmospheres” is New Apostolic Reformation terminology; it’s certainly not a concept taught in scripture. One would imagine that the apostles would have been only too eager to practice this if it were true; instead they were chased out of cities, persecuted, imprisoned, and martyred. Shifting atmospheres and establishing cultures were foreign to the early church. The “atmosphere shifting” specialist at Bethel is Dawna De Silva. Dawna “is the founder and co-leader with Teresa Liebscher of the International Bethel Sozo Ministry. She and her husband, Stephen De Silva, have ministered from Bethel for the past twenty years as well as preaching, speaking, and authoring books. Dawna’s manual on Shifting Atmospheres has become a sought after tool for daily empowerment.”
For $49 you can take her 8 week E-course, and learn how to shift atmospheres by taking “dominion over the supernatural environment for the Kingdom of God!”
Dawna is clearly on the masters level, because she is able to take dominion of her neighbourhood. If a house in her neighbourhood needs paint, Dawna will declare that the house gets painted. If the house owner cannot afford paint, Dawna will declare that money will come to the owner so that he is compelled to paint his house. Dawna will declare that a person waters their neglected garden. Dawna can do this because there is “power in our words.”
You can watch Dawna relate these bizarre examples of declaring and shifting atmospheres in this video
While Dawna cleans up her neighbourhood and shifts atmospheres through her declarations, faithful servants of God preach Christ crucified to the lost.
This is the fruit of Bethel’s teachings – sheer lunacy, and youngsters are actually paying to be taught this heresy.
BSSM: “To be transformed by the renewing of our minds (as Paul writes about in Romans 12), we must intentionally align our thoughts with truth. We can change the way we think by first changing the way we talk! In other words, we can tap into the power of declarations.”
The mouth cannot change the heart – it reflects what is in the heart: “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” Matthew 12:34. In other words, BSSM teach that power lies not in submitting our will to God, but in declarations. What are some of these declarations? We need look no further than Bethel’s “Offering Readings” described as “declarations that we make during the offering time of our weekend services.” Excerpts from their declarations:
We are believing the Lord for:
Benefits, Sales and commissions, Favorable settlements, Estates and inheritances Interests and income, Rebates and returns, Checks in the mail, Gifts and surprises
Finding money, Heaven opened, Earth invaded, And miracles created, Angelic visitations, Impartations, And divine manifestations, Anointings, giftings and calls
Positions and promotions, Capital to build small businesses that provide services, arts, and culture attracting both young and old. Repentance from poverty, small thinking, and envy. Courage to recognize opportunities and make wealth.
I am powerful, And what I believe changes the world
So today I declare God is in a good mood He loves me all the time.”
BSSM: “.. What we speak is actually a meditation upon truth. As Joshua said, when we meditate upon the Word, we are led into prosperity and success (Joshua 1:8). Let’s declare: God’s grace empowers me to do the impossible, as I meditate upon truth I will be led into prosperity and success”
Actually God was speaking to Joshua, and Israel’s success and prosperity were dependent on obedience. The covenant that we are under does not guarantee the kind of success or prosperity that Bethel & co envision. Conquering the nations or the seven spheres of society is not a biblical mandate, and neither is health and wealth guaranteed under the new covenant.
BSSM: “Before Gideon tasted the fruit of victory, God called him a valiant warrior! Gideon’s initial response, however, was that of unbelief. As Steve Backlund says, “The future of a nation was trapped in the arguments of Gideon’s mind.” Before Gideon could step into his destiny, he had to believe in his true identity. This eventually led to the mighty deliverance of the Israelites from what seemed to be an impossible situation. Let’s declare: I am a powerful world changer! The Lord is with me, if He is for me, what can be against me?”
Steve’s got it wrong again. His word of faith agenda has blinded him to the truth. Note that it’s all up to us. God needs our declarations to act, and now apparently God needed Gideon to believe in his own identity. I wonder if Steve Backlund has done a study on Jonah? Was the future of Ninevah trapped in Jonah’s mind? Were God’s purposes thwarted when Jonah fled from his presence in willful disobedience?
Declaring that you are a world changer has as much power as a person declaring that they are able to fly. One wonders why the 8000 graduates of the Bethel BSSM have not managed to change Redding, let alone the world.
From the BSSM School Planting facebook page:
“ACTIVATION // Spin the Wheel: Create a spinning “prize” wheel with different activations on each slot: preaching, prophesying, singing, dancing, words of knowledge, etc. Have each student spin the wheel to discover the activation they have to do.”
There is no doubt that God loves his children and places gifts within us to edify the body. However, to approach what is holy in this frivolous manner is shameful. Encouraging students to take a risk by prophesying or giving a word of knowledge at the spin of a wheel is a work of the flesh, and a gateway to the occult. How does this exercise translate in the secular environment? Well apparently the gospel comes second in evangelistic endeavours, what’s more important to these revivalists is to receive words of knowledge that reveal a strangers “unique identity”
BSSM School Planting Facebook page:
Identifying someone’s unique identity is not the gospel and will not save them. The good news is that God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to redeem a people and deliver them from, slavery, sin, and eternal damnation. This is the message the lost must hear: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:22-24
Stretching legs, healing aches and pains, gold dust, words of knowledge and all the other tools of the BSSM are not the power of God that leads to salvation. The power of God unto salvation is found in the very thing BSSM students are not taught – the gospel:
“ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Romans 1:16
There is no discernment at Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. That does not mean discernment is not taught. Mike Maeshiro “is a speaker, author and coach whose vision is to increase the spiritual intelligence of the planet. He teaches our Discerning Spirits class here at Bethel and has amazing insights to unlock each person’s potential!“
Lets hear from Mike:
“When we discover that we’re spirits and start respecting and honoring the world we actually live in and how it actually works, abundance, success, reward, fulfillment, these things start becoming our experience.”
Should we not repent of our sins, respect and honor and obey God?
A description of Mike from his webpage:
“Mike is highly intuitive. He can sense truth or the absence of it when people express themselves. He can also sense the presence of something that doesn’t belong. Energy vibrates off of the frequency of our voices, Mike can distinguish the nature of that energy. Through years of practice, he has paired his spiritual sensitivity with emotional intelligence helping the average person discover the inner rumblings and understand why their lives have played out the way they have. He has trained up his team to coach according to spiritual vibrations and patterns.”
Does this sound biblical or new age? It’s not surprising that Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotton allow such blatant heresy to be taught since they both contributed to book that can only be described as an abomination – The Physics of Heaven.
Reviews on this new age book masquerading as Christianity:
Now for the New Apostolic Reformation agenda raising it’s head:
“Mike’s life mission is to raise the spiritual intelligence of the planet. It is a travesty to watch God’s children suffer lack and oppression because they simply don’t understand the world they live in. Mike seeks to remedy this issue and believes the day is coming where all spheres of society will operate differently because of the knowledge of the truth. From government policy to medical practice, Mike dreams of the day when the people intimately know the Spirit of Truth. They will be free because they love Him.”
That’s not going to happen Mike, the scriptures are clear regarding that state of the world and the visible church prior to the second coming – wickedness and apostasy.
There can be no doubt that we are in the midst of a great delusion in the visible church. Bethel church and the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry play a part in this great delusion.
“ The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
2 Thessalonians 2: 9-12
What should our response be – pray for and warn those you know who are caught up in this deception.
This article explores the grip of the cult-like New Apostolic Reformation. |
Published: Thursday, 15th October 2015
Local plan reform panel calls for submissions. Call to use land value uplift for ‘public good’. Power project proposals. Neighbourhood plans progress. Hull gears up as culture city. And more stories..
Local plan reform panel calls for submissions
The panel set up by the Government to propose ways of streamlining the local plan regime has issued a call for evidence. It has insisted that panel members have “no preconceived ideas about the extent or nature of any changes to the plan making system that it might recommend.”
However the panel has spelled out the topics it particularly wants submissions about. These include tie content of plans, the plan period, their spatial detail and their relationship with the National Planning Policy Framework.
Also of particular interest to the panel is the nitty gritty of plan preparation and whether the regulations and statutory requirements remain fit for purpose.
Not surprisingly given the problems already experienced, the panel wants to test the water over the tests of soundness, the terms and implications of the duty to co-operate.
In addition the panel is seeking views on strategic requirements and the methods for calculating objectively assessed need.
Submissions should be addressed to LocalPlans@communities.gsi.gov.uk and should be received no later than close on Friday 23 October.
Call to use land value uplift for ‘public good’
Both the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Town and Country Planning Association are among a coalition of groups who are signatories to a letter in the Guardian this week calling on the Government to ensure some of the increase in land values after planning permission is ploughed back into the so-called ‘public good’.
The letter argues that public spending shouldn’t be the only source of funding for the social, environmental and physical infrastructure needed alongside new homes.
“It is time to look for additional funding from the windfall in value which goes directly to private landowners when public investment in infrastructure is made, or planning permission is granted on a piece of land.
“There needs to be a fairer way of sharing this land value uplift between landowners and the community, to fund the housing and infrastructure the country needs.
“As a coalition we are asking for the UK government to put in place a mechanism whereby a proportion of this increase in land value is used to fund public goods. It’s time to tap into this source of additional public funding”, says the letter.
“It’s time for a fair deal on land.”
- Developer Greenland Group has submitted plans to east London’s Tower Hamlets Council for a 67-storey tower that would provide 869 new homes on West India Quay at Canary Wharf. If built the scheme would be Western Europe’s tallest residential building at 241 metres.
- Proposals for a 110-metre high rocket-shaped skyscraper near the capital’s South Bank inspired by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin has failed to lift off after Southwark Council decided the scheme was too “alien” for the borough.
- West London’s Hounslow Council has amended its process for major and minor planning applications to require applicants to submit a viability assessment which will be made publicly available online. The requirement will apply to full and outline planning applications and to applications for the approval of reserved matters, but not to applications for change of use.
- London’s deputy mayor for planning Sir Edward Lister has said that the mayor will not intervene over Queens Park Rangers FC’s plans for a new training facility earmarked for land designated as Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) in west London.
Local plan moves
- Central Bedfordshire Council has announced it is withdrawing its draft local plan. This was already on ice pending legal proceedings following the decision of the planning inspector examining the strategy that the council had failed the duty to cooperate test. The council is now preparing a new housing strategy in line with latest population projections. It has ditched legal action. It now anticipates having a new plan drawn up in time for consultation in September and October 2016 with formal publication of the plan by April/May 2017, to meet the Government’s new deadline.
- A new six-week consultation has begun on the latest (and hopefully final) proposed changes to the South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP). The SWDP is being jointly prepared by Malvern Hills District Council, Worcester City Council and Wychavon District Council. Some sites originally proposed for the plan are being removed while housing numbers on other sites are being adjusted.
- Meanwhile Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council (NBBC), one of six local authorities within the Coventry and Warwickshire Housing Market Area (HMA), has declined to sign a memorandum of understanding under which it had been allocated an additional 73 homes per year to help address neighbouring Coventry City Council’s shortfall. NBBC said it was still working on its own strategic housing land availability assessment and would not commit to cover Coventry’s shortfall until its consultation process was complete.
- The planning inspector examining Horsham District Council’s draft local plan has endorsed the West Sussex planning authority’s strategy now the local authority has accepted a higher level of housing provision than it originally proposed. This will see 800 new homes provided over the 20-year plan period. Although the proposal by developer Mayfield for a new ‘market town’ between Henfield and Sayers Common has been rejected the inspector argued it would be premature to rule out in principle any potential for a new settlement to meet future needs. The plan is due to be formally approved in a month’s time.
Power project proposals
- The Scottish Government has announced a moratorium on Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) development while Professor Campbell Gemmell, former chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, undertakes an examination of the issues and evidence surrounding the activity. Cluff Natural Resources has proposed a scheme under the Firth of Forth at Kincardine.
- Members of Ryyedale District Council in North Yorkshire have voted for a five-year moratorium on fracking schemes.
Neighbourhood plans progress
- Three more neighbourhood plans have been voted through in local referendums. This means the number of neighbourhood-level development plans has now passed the 100 mark. Voters backed a neighbourhood plan for Balsall Heath, Birmingham, with 89 per cent of votes in favour on a 22.3 per cent turnout. The neighbourhood plan is the first in England’s second biggest city to make the grade.
- In Woking, Surrey, a neighbourhood plan for Hook Heath received a 94 per cent ‘yes’ vote on a 39 per cent turnout. Woking Borough Council said that the neighbourhood plan will be formally adopted at a council meeting on 22 October.
- Meanwhile, residents of Coton Park in Rugby voted by 93.3 per cent in favour of the Coton Forward Neighbourhood Plan on a 25.3 per cent turnout.
Hull gears up as culture city
A number of development projects planned for Hull’s year as UK City of Culture in 2017 have been approved by the city council. The schemes include a pedestrian and cycle bridge across the A63 and extensions to the city’s art gallery and theatre.
The bridge will cost £11.5m and will link the city centre with Hull’s waterfront, which is being redeveloped. The Ferens Art Gallery will get a £4.5m facelift ahead of it hosting the Turner Prize in 2017.
Welsh language requirements
The Welsh Language Commissioner is issuing notices to local councils, the Welsh Government and national parks on the standards they will need to meet in respect of ensuring that those who wish to use the Welsh language are catered for.
This covers all plans, communications with planning departments, planning applications, websites and material for planning consultations and public exhibitions of planning proposals etc.
Derbyshire EZ moves
D2N2, the Local Enterprise Partnership for Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, has announced it is bidding for enterprise zone status for the 31-hectare derelict former Coalite works site at Shuttlewood in Derbyshire. The site is heavily polluted.
Bolsover District Council has granted outline permission to Bolsover Land Ltd to remediate the brownfield site and develop it for industrial, warehousing and associated activities.
Role mooted for water firms over flood prevention schemes
Water regulator Ofwat Chief Executive Cathryn Ross has opened the door to water companies taking on responsibility for co-coordinating and implementing flood defences.
Speaking to trade magazine Utility Week, Ross said water companies were “in the frame” for taking over from the Environment Agency on delivering flood defence schemes.
She said: “I’m really conscious that having created a regulatory regime focused on outcomes, that does put water companies in the frame for thinking about things that deliver outcomes that lie beyond the boundaries of the traditional water company. I think flood defence and flooding issues are one element of that.
“I can envisage a situation in which water companies could perform useful functions around flood protection and flood defences.”
Bristol community conversion plans for empty offices
A campaign group has started work on converting disused office space in Bristol into affordable housing. Abolish Empty Office Blocks (AEOB) raised nearly £300,000 through a Community Share Offer to buy the former business in Battens Lane in St George. The redundant workspace is due to be refitted and extended to create six flats, housing up to 10 people.
New goal for Reading FC
Reading Football Club has unveiled proposals for a mixed-use residential-led development of up to 600 new homes on land next to its existing Madejski stadium.
The scheme would also involve a convention centre, an ice-rink, restaurants and a public park, the championship club revealed.
The £30m redevelopment of the Gates shopping centre in Durham city centre has been given the go-ahead by the county council. The proposals include a cinema, 23 refurbished shops, a new riverside promenade featuring 3,252 square metres of restaurant floor space and accommodation for 253 students. The university had opposed the proposals after arguing the city faced a glut of student bed spaces.
Green light for Gloucestershire quarry makeover
South Gloucestershire Council has approved plans to convert a working limestone quarry into a nature reserve. Members also voted to approve outline plans for a warden’s lodge, greenhouse, poly-tunnel barns, workshops and offices at Wick Quarry. The project will be vetted by Communities Secretary Greg Clark as the quarry is in a green belt location.
Peak District conservation project
A Derbyshire project, MoorLIFE 2020, has received funding to protect moorlands in the Peak District and South Pennines. The project plans to conserve 9,500 hectares of active blanket bog with the aim of providing breeding habitats for wildlife, improving water quality and increasing carbon retention to help combat climate change.
Some £9m of the funds were provided by the EU’s LIFE fund, with three water companies also contributing to the scheme’s £12m total.
- Lambeth Council in south London has secured a £382,000 confiscation order against a landlord who converted a property into flats without planning permission following a hearing at Croydon Crown Court.
- A second legal challenge to plans for two wind turbines at a Borders beauty spot has been rejected.
- A man campaigning against Yorkshire Water’s proposals to cover an historic Victorian waterway with concrete is taking his fight to the High Court. Poet Simon Armitage is backing the campaign.
Bend it like Geller bloomer
A bent spoon sculpture erected by TV illusionist Uri Geller in Sonning, the Berkshire village where he lived for 35 years, needs planning permission the local planning authority Wokingham Borough Council has insisted. Geller has been told he can apply for retrospective planning permission.
US urban experiment with no people…
In the arid plains of the southern New Mexico desert, between the site of the first atomic bomb test and the U.S.-Mexico border, a new city is rising from the sand.
Planned for a theoretical population of 35,000, the city will have a modern business district and rows of terraced housing in the suburbs. It will be supplied with streets, parks, malls and a church.
The CITE (Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation) project is a full-scale model of an ordinary American town. It will be used as a petri dish to develop new technologies that could shape the future of the urban environment.
The $1bn scheme, led by telecommunications and tech firm Pegasus Global Holdings, will see 15 square miles dedicated to ambitious experiments in fields such as transport, construction, communication and security. However there will be no-one living in the new “settlement”.
RTPI vice-president voted-in
The Royal Town Planning Institute has elected Stephen Wilkinson as its new Vice-President. Wilkinson, Head of Planning & Strategic Partnerships at the Lee Valley Regional Park will become President of the Institute in 2017. |
Just follow the people carrying guitars and you’ll end up in Nashville, Tennessee. There’s a lot more to listen to in this southern U.S. town than old country songs. We pay a visit to Music City
The parking lot is large and sparsely lit, but still about a hundred people have gathered here, in front of a row of unremarkable store fronts, waiting to get in. The atmosphere is charged. Everyone knows there’s a fantastic evening ahead because right here, between the hairdresser, the laundromat and the children’s clothing store, the legendary Bluebird Cafe will soon reverberate to the authentic Nashville sound. A small club with 1980s bistro charm, the Bluebird is famous as a venue for songwriters; many write songs that make others famous and some have even composed for Jerry Lee Lewis and Fleetwood Mac or jammed with the likes of Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin.
Almost everyone here in Nashville, Tennessee, is involved with music in one way or another. The city is small ( pop. roughly 660 000), but the music scene is huge, with more than twice as many jobs per capita in the industry here than in Los Angeles or New York. Between 1970 and 2006, Nashville was the only U.S. city where the music business kept expanding and attracting stars: Jack White, Kings of Leon, The Black Keys, Justin Timberlake and Sheryl Crow have all made Nashville their home. Add to that the hundreds of musicians only insiders know, the ones who provide live music at breakfast time in many bars and cafés. They drive for Uber to make ends meet and stand in line, guitar in hand, for open-mic and songwriter events in the hopes of getting their big break. They are the reason Nashville is known as the “Songwriting Capital of the World.”
The atmosphere at the Bluebird is intimate, like a jam session. Every newcomer dreams of playing a set here, but the standard is high. The manager, Erika Wollam Nichols, allows each candidate just one minute. Is she too tough? Wollam Nichols, with bangs and the imperturbability of the seasoned roadie, shakes her head. “That’s the average time people listen to a song on the radio before deciding to keep listening or switch to another station.” Taylor Swift and Keith Urban were both discovered here. Tonight, though, the performers are not young hopefuls but old hands. A guitarist in a hat takes the dimly lit stage. You don’t have to be from Nashville to recognize him: Colin Linden, a band member in the TV series “Nashville” and also a musical consultant to the show. Now in its sixth season, the internationally successful series regularly features the Bluebird Cafe. “So, do y’all feel like you’re in an episode of ‘Nashville’?” Linden asks the audience. “That woman over there invented us all.” The platinum-blond scriptwriter Callie Khouri, seated at a neighboring table, nods at the crowd. In 1992, Khouri won an Academy Award for her screenplay for Thelma & Louise and she’s the creative force behind “Nashville.” Since the show started, as many as 300 people have waited outside some nights, hoping to snag one of the Bluebird’s 100 seats. And thanks in large part to the series’ success, the city has become something of a tourist magnet, too.
“Nashville” is a show about country music, and it’s country music that has made the city famous. Downtown, you’ll find the Country Music Hall of Fame with a museum attached. As you walk down Lower Broadway, you will always hear country music issuing from the honky-tonks, which are often crowded by midday. But Nashville’s music is more complex: It’s a mix of punk rock, Americana, indie, pop and blues that has its own scene – off Honky Tonk Highway – in Melrose, 12 South and trendy East Nashville across the Cumberland River.
It’s not yet noon in East Nashville’s hippy-esque Graze bistro. The door opens and redhead Tanya Montana Coe walks in sporting cowboy boots and a blouse that glitters differently with every movement. Born and raised in Nashville, the singer with the smooth, husky voice is one of those people who attracts attention even when they’re going for brunch. Her father, musician David Allan Coe, wrote “Tanya Montana” for his daughter when she was a teenager. Later, she didn’t want to have anything to do with the music business. “Show business loses its appeal when you spend most of your childhood somewhere backstage,” she explains, sipping a smoothie.
She didn’t start learning to play the guitar until she was in her twenties. She was working as an accountant then, but the office job was too constricting. “My friends were all doing something creative, and that was infectious.” She and a friend opened Goodbuy Girls, a vintage boutique selling stylish cowgirl boots and Western clothing. Once a week, they invited different musicians to play during their shop-and-sip happy hour. One night, one of them said: “Tanya, why don’t you play something.” The response surprised her completely: “The applause blew me away,” she recalls. When the husband of a friend offered to produce her debut album, she agreed and then spent three years honing her sound to make it as different from her father’s as possible. “I wanted it to be my own style, not what people expected.” Coe’s first album, Silver Bullet, came out in 2015, a true product born of talent and friendship. It sounds best right here in Nashville. Even as a child, she disliked touring on a grand scale. Coe, who recently released the single “Electric Blue,” still feels most at home in Nashville clubs.
I spent most of my childhood somewhere backstage
The city has just the right infrastructure for a newcomer like Coe: legendary studios, the historic letterpress printer Hatch Show Print and United Record Pressing, the largest operation of its kind in North America. There are countless outstanding musicians waiting to be booked for a studio recording here. Chances are that the guy making sandwiches at the café is a better drummer than the one who was just on the radio. Nashville’s location within the U.S. helps, too. They say that if you go on tour from Nashville, you’ll reach nearly half of the U.S. population within just one day. Some artists do so well, their success spills over onto everyone else. Jack White, founder of the White Stripes rock duo, influenced much more than the city’s indie scene when he established the physical headquarters of his label, Third Man Records (along with a performance venue and a record store) in Nashville. In addition to producing country legend Loretta Lynn and Nashville discovery Margo Price, his label releases blues, jazz, gospel and folk. Every set played in his The Blue Room club is pressed straight onto vinyl.
“When Father John Misty played there, they recorded the gig and gave guests a freshly pressed record to take home,” Heather Lose enthuses over a beer at the Vinyl Tap record store and bar. Lose – red curly hair and a hearty laugh – cofounded WXNA, a radio station run by enthusiasts that’s open to all genres. Musicians love it and it’s considered the city’s best station. An art director and photographer, Lose is also a typical Nashvillian. As the daughter of a bass player (and married to one, too), she’s crazy about music and works in the business. Before college, she spent some time with a record label in Los Angeles. What brought her back? “In a city like LA, the buildings are so much taller than you, you automatically feel small.” In Nashville, everyone finds their own creative niche and artists tend to work together rather than competing.
On Saturday night, the house band at Santa’s Pub demonstrates the art of jamming. Santa is a tall man with a white beard and a trailer with Christmassy graffiti. The week-night karaoke events he holds there are wildly popular, perhaps because a can of beer costs just two dollars there, but also because he and his wife, Angelina, treat everyone like a favorite grandchild come for the weekend. Inside it’s like a scene from Urban Cowboy, the air thick with cigarette smoke and so full you can’t even get to the bar. There’s no dance floor, but the bearded gents in plaid shirts whirl their cowboy-hatted ladies around the tables in a spirited two-step without upsetting a single beer. The eight musicians just fit on the tiny stage. The double bass played by Carter Brallier, the band’s founder, nearly scrapes the low ceiling. The Ice Cold Pickers, Nashville’s best and youngest, talented and charming, play here every Sunday night. Admission is free but tips are welcome.
They get together at Santa’s to pay tribute to their musical heroes. After playing the first song themselves, they invite people from the audience onto the stage – singers, songwriters, guitarists, passers-
by. We tear up. Is it the smoke or the soft voice of Ben Haggard, son of the legendary Merle? It hardly matters. In the end, it’s the music that matters, the sound that endures from generation to generation and the lyrics that hang in the air after all the beer cans have been collected and the floors have been swept. Songs that were written right here in Nashville.
The 21c has rooms designed by artists and changing exhibitions.
The Idea Hatchery is a small retail development for local designers.
Designer Manuel has created outfits for stars from Elvis to Johnny Cash.
hits the spot
The 5 Spot club has it all: live music, good drinks and nachos.
Lufthansa flies up to twice daily from Frankfurt (FRA) and once daily from Munich to Chicago (ORD); United Airlines flies from there to Nashville (BNA). Use the app to calculate your miles. Download here: miles-and-more.com/app |
One day at the Tamale office meeting:
Boss: “Okay, so who wants to join the monkey feeding committee?”
Abu, whispering to me and Salifu: “I want to join the hongin committee.”
Me: “The what?”
Salifu: “You know, hongin. Hongin out.”
He writes: “hanging”
Me: “Oh! Americans say hAAAAAAngeen.”
Salifu and Abu vainly try to suppress their snickers, and the boss glares at us.
Ghana’s official language is English, and most people here speak it well. As in other English-speaking countries, however, the English spoken in Ghana doesn’t sound the same as what you hear in America. Newly-arrived Americans often struggle to understand, and be understood by, Ghanaians. To aid understanding, ex-pats often adjust the way they speak, trying to adopt Ghanaian vocabulary and accent.
Are ex-pat attempts to speak “Ghanaian English” offensive? It can be nearly impossible to get around without it. As one of my ex-pat friends said, “You do what you have to do to be understood.” On the other hand, trying to emulate another accent almost always has awkward results. I cringe at the thought of trying to copy a British, Australian, or Southern accent, and would be truly annoyed if someone insisted in speaking to me Sarah Palin-style. Trying to change your accent can imply that the person you are speaking to is not sophisticated enough to understand other English accents. Several of my friends have been criticized for using Ghanaian accents in the workplace, on the grounds that it is condescending.
I’ve had experiences in both directions. I’ve discovered that I will never be able to access money unless I direct taxis to the “bonk”, rather than the “baaaank”. But I’ve also been mortified when making a call to a Ghanaian, introducing myself with a slight Ghanaian accent, only to have the person respond in perfect BBC British English.
I conducted an informal survey of the Ghanaians I work with, to see what they thought about ex-pats adopting Ghanaian accents and words. Here’s a sample of the responses:
“You should try to make your words more clear for us.“
“It’s exciting and not offensive.”
“Sometimes, when you try to pronounce it like we do, it sounds mocking.”
“People expect you to try to change your accent. It’s helpful. “
“For those who are well-educated, they may feel like you are talking down to them.”
“When expats try to speak pidgin, it’s funny.”
“You should start normal, then if they don’t understand, then you can say it with the accent.”
“When you go out in the community, it marks you as someone who has been here a while.”
“When she speaks [without the accent], the guy is always turning to me and asking, ‘what did she say?’”
“You don’t use ‘aba!’ right.”
The Ghanaians I spoke to, all in our Northern office, had a range of education levels and experience abroad. They generally agreed that it’s not offensive when ex-pats try to speak in a Ghanaian accent. However, a couple of them noted that when a person does it in a mocking way, or uses a very severe accent with a highly educated person, it can be offensive.
All of them thought that it was fine for ex-pats to adopt Ghanaian vocabulary, such as “small small”, “somehow”, or “this thing”. In fact, most said they don’t notice it as being different from our normal vocabulary. Learning local languages or even pidgin was universally lauded, although I was advised not to use pidgin in partner meetings.
My conclusion, based on these responses and my own experiences, is that the idea that trying to copy a Ghanaian accent is offensive is overblown, at least here in the North. An honest effort to adapt your speech to make yourself better understood is often helpful, and at worst, will make you sound a little strange. One caveat might be using a particularly dramatic accent in a work setting, as some may see the implication that they can’t understand an American accent as an implication that they are not educated.
Some tips for Americans speaking to Ghanaians in work settings:
1. Start by telling the people you are talking to that they should let you know if you are speaking too quickly, or if there is anything they don’t understand.
2. Speak slowly.
3. Enunciate your words.
4. Don’t try to copy exactly how Ghanaians say every word, just those necessary in order for them to understand. For example, you don’t need to say “wah-tah” to ask for water. Go ahead and say “waa-terrr “, in all it's nasal glory.
5. Pay attention to how you talk to people. It’s easy to get in the habit of talking one way to taxi drivers, and carry that into other conversations, where it is less appropriate. Talking in a Ghanaian accent won’t actually help that Australian guy understand you any better.
Just so you all know, we expats were being ironic about racism before “hipster racism” was even a thing.
If you sit down for beers with a group of expats living in Ghana, race and culture will come up sooner or later. We ironically call ourselves Salimingas. We ironically call each other out for chewing our fufu. And we ironically sing and dance to the “African Man” song, professing our need for “ a strong, black man to handle my love…”
Most white people in America have the luxury of not thinking about race if they don’t want to. And let’s be honest—most don’t want to. (If you are white, test yourself: when was the last time you thought of yourself as white? Do you feel uncomfortable calling yourself white?) White people in Ghana don’t have that luxury. The way people see you and treat you reminds you that you are the “other”. In Ghana, this isn’t at all subtle. I’m pretty comfortable saying I’m white in part because small children tell me I am every day.
Race is a much more present topic for white Americans in Ghana not only because we suddenly find ourselves the minority, but also because skin color and race are often talked about in frank and open ways that would be startling in the states. The other day I was at the bank with a surveyor, and he told our place in the queue of Ghanaians was “just behind that colored guy.” My first impression was to think he meant the one guy wearing bright orange robes, but the ostentatiously dressed man was nowhere near where he pointed. My next thoughts were a) wow, “colored” is an antiquated term, and b) …um aren’t all those guys colored?, which I immediately felt racist for thinking. My surveyor clarified that, like the term “fair”, “colored” referred to people with slightly lighter skin. (Side note—as in the states, skin tone among Ghanaians is not completely neutral. Use of skin lightening crèmes is extremely widespread among Ghanaian women.)
Being able to talk and joke about being white in Ghana is an important mechanism for coping with it. When small children climb out of the sewer and reach out and touch you, you can get annoyed that your skin color makes you a petting zoo object for kids that just climbed out of a sewer, or you can laugh and ask them if white skin feels any different than black skin. When people yell “white man” at you, you can quietly seethe, or yell “black man!” back. When a taxi driver quotes you a price three times the market rate, you can get angry, or you can pull out your most dramatic Dagbani accent and yell “oh, aba!!” (why, or wtf!?) When that driver later tells you he wants to marry “a white”, you can get annoyed or tell him your other husbands wouldn’t like you to marry again.
Is this bad? In the states, “hipster racism”—making stereotypical statements about race with the implication that it’s okay because you aren’t actually racist—has been roundly condemned in the blogosphere. The logical fallacy here is one that might be ascribed to hispterism in general: you may be drinking PBR ironically, but you are still drinking PBR. You may be saying racist things ironically, but you are still saying racist things. Either way, you are contributing to the proliferation of the object of your irony. PBR won’t go off the market just because you were being ironic when you drank it, and stereotypes won’t go away just because you are being ironic when you voice them. Hipster racism naively—and wrongly—assumes that racial stereotypes no longer have the power to harm.
This doesn’t mean that all racially- or culturally-based humor need be taboo. Such humor can be effective at addressing problems that otherwise might be difficult to talk about. And let’s be honest—when the Ghanaian dancers at AllianceFrancais dress up in white face and chase women with comically inflated butts, it’s actually kind of funny.
In determining what humor is harmful, here are some things I think should be considered:
1. Whether the humor perpetuates the stereotype or challenges it. Humor can be a powerful tool for bringing up stereotypes and revealing their absurdity. Teasing a child about touching you, or calling someone “black man”, can humanize you and make the person think about what he or she just said or did.
2. The connotations of the stereotype. Somehow I doubt white people in Ghana will suffer much if they have a reputation for chewing their fufu. Stereotypes about groups being lazy, or uneducated, or mean, etc., have a lot more potential to harm.
3. Whether the group targeted disadvantaged. The truth that a lot of white Americans may not realize, or may be uncomfortable with, is that power matters. Racial stereotypes have a lot more power to damage when they come from a privileged majority than an underprivileged minority. That is not to say that minorities get a free pass—I have been personally hurt by racism directed at me by members of a minority race in America—but the stereotypes held by these groups have never prevented me from getting a good education or good job, or having access to goods and services. The power of negative stereotypes rings hollow for groups that have the advantage of power and privilege. Members of privileged majorities have a greater responsibility not to be nonchalant about the impact of the stereotypes they throw around.
4. Whether the group targeted is you. Laughing at yourself is generally braver, more therapeutic, and less likely to cause harm than laughing at others. Targeting your own demographic isn’t a blanket pass, though. You should be aware that your comments reflect on others of your group. I was once horribly disgusted by some comments a black American made to me about his race. I later wish I had asked him if he would be comfortable with someone referring to his mother, or sister that way. That’s a good rule: if you wouldn’t find the joke harmless and funny if directed at someone you care about, it’s not funny if directed at yourself. Next, you should be aware of what a statement about your own group might imply about other groups. For example, if I say that if Americans who had to wait two hours in line at GCB would riot, I am also making a statement about Ghanaian’s willingness to do the same.
In general, I think that race and racism should be talked about a lot more everywhere. But an important corollary is that when it comes to those issues, people need to listen and think a lot more too. I’ve heard Ghanaians insist with absolute certainty that white people aren’t charged higher prices in Ghana. Similarly, I bet there are a lot of people who aren’t aware of the extent to which racism affects minorities in America on a daily basis. For instance, there are still plenty of businesses where black patrons aren’t welcome.
I once posited that it is harder to be black in America than white in Ghana. A friend of mine (also white) thought the opposite. The point is, racism is hard on everyone. Humor related to racism should be a tool to ease that burden, not increase it.
I have worked in economic policy and research in Washington, D.C. and Ghana. My husband and I recently moved to Guyana, where I am working for the Ministry of Finance. I like riding motorcycle, outdoor sports, foreign currencies, capybaras, and having opinions. |
Editors note (August 8, 2018): After confirming that Maude Gorman had cheated in several trail races, she has been removed from the team.
The following seventeen American athletes will be competing at the 2018 Skyrunning World Championships which will be held from 13-15 September in Kinlochleven in the Scottish Highlands. Races in three skyrunning disciplines will take place: VERTICAL, SKY and ULTRA with twenty-seven medals at stake. (Above photo by Mike Scott)
The races are open to both individuals and country teams. Individual world championship titles and medals will be awarded in each discipline as well as a combined title based on the best results of the Vertical and Sky races. For more information about the 2018 Skyrunning World Championships visit: http://www.skyrunning.com/2018-skyrunning-world-championships/
30 athletes applied to run on the US Skyrunning Team. The 17 selected athletes were chosen based on outstanding mountain/trail running results both inside and outside of the United States. Track and cross country results were also taken into consideration. Additionally athletes were asked to show some evidence of stewardship of our sport and provide some insight about their individual character. To learn more about the selection process and US Skyrunning visit http://www.vtxcski.org.
The selected athletes are paying their own way to the championships in Scotland. Team Leaders are covering uniform costs and are currently fundraising for the 2018/19 season. To make a contribution to the US Skyrunning Team visit their GoFundMe page.
Samantha Doner (California) – “I absolutely love exploring/ trail running in my home town of Mammoth Lakes California . I have competed in many trail races around the United States and am beyond excited to expand my knowledge, skills and potential future in this sport that I love so very much !!!” Sarah finished 2nd at the 2018 Silver State half marathon (Reno, NV), 2nd at the 2017 Mount Baldy run to the top- (Mount Baldy, CA) and 6th place at the 2017 USATF Half Marathon Trail Championships / Birkie Trail Race (Hayward, WI).
Jackie Dubnicka (Wisconsin) – “I am very excited to be representing USA at the World Skyrunning Championships in Scotland. I hope to be an inspiration for young runners as they begin to dabble in extremely challenging and technical races themselves.” Jackie finished 2nd at the 2018 USATF 100 KM Road Championships (Madison, WI), 1st at the 2018 Frozen Otter 64 Mile Ultra Trek (Fond du Lac, WI) and 1st at the 2017 Dances with Dirt Devil’s Lake Extreme Marathon (Baraboo, WI).
Heather Edic (Alaska) – “The Ben Nevis Ultra in Scotland will be my first international running race and I feel very fortunate to be part of the first ever US Skyrunning Team. I am excited to explore a new country and new trails, gain new adventure partners, as well as inspire more Americans to try out Skyrunning!” Healther finished 1st at the 2017 McCall Trail Running Classic (McCall, ID), 2nd at the 2017 Continental Divide Trail Run (Steamboat Springs, CO) and 2nd at the 2016 Old Gabe 25K (Bozeman, MT).
Lauren Fritz (Alaska) – “I have raced all over the world for cross country skiing, but Ben Nevis Ultra in Scotland will be my first foray into international trail running, and hopefully not my last. I’m beyond excited to see the terrain and the country and mix it up with some of the best mountain runners in the world and just explore a new part of the world through Skyrunning adventures.” Lauren finished 1st at the 2017 Girdwood Trail Marathon (Girdwood, AK), 1st at the 2016 Resurrection Pass 50-Miler (Cooper Landing/Hope, AK) and 2nd at the 2012 Mt. Marathon Race (Seward, AK).
Hillary Gerardi (Vermont) – “It will be a privilege to be able to be a part of the US Team at the Skyrunning World Championships this year. Living abroad, and racing in the Skyrunning circuit, I so frequently represent the US informally, but have not yet had the opportunity to really be a part of a US team. It is an honor to be participate alongside the country’s best skyrunners and to help Skyrunning to become more well known in the United States.” Hillary finished 4th at the 2018 Ultra Skymarathon (Madeira, Portugal), 2nd at the 2017 Mont Blanc Vertical Kilometer (Chamonix, France) and 2nd at the 2017 Dolomites Skyrace (Italy).
Kristi Knecht (Arizona) – “It is always an honor to represent team USA. I love the US Skyrunning Series and I cannot wait to experience the Skyrunning experience at an international level. Competing as a representative of our country and as a teammate to some of USA’s best mountain runners in one of the most rugged, challenging, and beautiful races in the world will be incredible!” Kristi finished 20th at the 2017 World Long Distance Mountain Running Championships (Premana, Italy) helping the U.S. to a team silver medal, she won the 2017 US Skyrunning 50 km Ultra Championships (Flagstaff, AZ) and finished 3rd at the 2016 US Skyrunning Ultra Championships / Audi Power of Four 50 km (Aspen, CO).
Daniella Moreno (California) – “I am very excited to be competing in Scottland. I have had my eye on the Skyrunning circuit for a few years now and I am excited to see what I can do on the world stage. Doing both the VK and Skyrace will be a great experience, and I can’t wait!” Dani finished 9th at the 2018 USATF Mountain Running Championships (Lincoln, NH), 1st at the 2017 XTERRA World Trail Championships 21k (Kualoa Ranch, HI), 2nd at the 2017 USATF Trail Half Marathon Championships (Hayward, WA) and 1st at the 2017 North Face Endurance Challenge Trail Half Marathon (San Fransisco, CA).
Denali Strabel (Alaska) – “Being new to Skyrunning racing, it is such a privilege to be able to compete against the best in the world at the Skyrunning World Champions in Scotland. I hope to gain experience that will help me understand more about this wonderful sport of skyrunning and possibly inspire more Americans to try it out!” Denali finished 3rd at the 2018 Kal Knoya Ridge Run 13k (Anchorage, AK), 4th at the 2017 Flagstaff Skyrace 39k (Flagstaff, AZ) and has had multiple top 5 finishes at the Mt. Marathon Race in Seward, Alaska.
Michael Barlow (Colorado) – “I’d fantasized when in high school about racing at the international level for the US in track/XC, but the elite level and talent required became more apparent as I grew older. It wasn’t until recently that I found opportunities in Ski Mountaineering and mountain/trail racing where that possibility has reappeared. I haven’t raced with a team since I was in high school, and the added responsibility of both representing my country with a team of other guys will offer a new inspiration and motivation in my pursuit of the sport.” Michael finished 6th at the 2015 Tromsø Hamperokken Skyrace (Norway), 4th place at the 2016 Run The Rut 25k (Montana) and 1st place at the 2016 Whiteface Skyrace (New York).
Tayte Pollmann (Utah) – “I’m honored to race with the first ever complete US Skyrunning Team at the World Skyrunning Championships in Scotland. I hope to share my enthusiasm for the crazy climbs with my teammates and come away with an inspiring performance for Team USA!” Tayte was a member of the US junior team at the 2015 World Mountain Running Championships (Wales), finished 3rd at the 2017 World Long Distance Mountain Running Championships (Premana, Italy), won the 2017 Broken Arrow Skyrace 52 km (Squaw Valley, CA) and finished 3rd at the 2016 Speedgoat 50 km (Snowbird, UT).
Noah Brautigam (Vermont) – “Skyrunning embodies everything I love in sport – technical and exciting terrain, intense competition, and a community of mountain lovers. Getting the opportunity to represent my country, compete against the best in the world, and explore a new landscape at the Skyrunning World Championships is a dream come true.” Noah finished 2nd at the 2018 Squaw Peak 50 Mile (Provo, UT), 1st place at the 2017 Silver State 50 km (Reno, NV) and 3rd at the 2016 Power of Four 50 km (Aspen, CO).
Jimmy Elam (Utah) – “I’m ecstatic to be part of the US Skyrunning team in Scotland! It’s been eight years since I could say that I was part of a team at Chico State University, and I can’t wait to work together with my new teammates at the Skyrunning World Championships.” Jimmy finished 1st at the 2018 Broken Arrow Skyrace (Squaw Valley CA), 1st at the 2018 Quad Rock 50 mile (Fort Collins CO) and 6th at the 2017 Speedgoat 50 km (Salt Lake City, UT).
Matt Lipsey (Pennsylvania) – “To represent the stars and bars means the world to me. What an experience it will be to compete, grow, and be enriched by one another as a team, as competitors, but most importantly as fiery souls through that experience. I’m be ecstatic to say the least. My favorite part about running are the places it has taken me and the people it has shown me – this is the cherry on top.” Matt won the 2017 Whiteface Vertical Kilometer (Wilmington, NY), won the 2017 The Boulder Beast (Lock Haven, PA) and won the 2018 7 Sisters Trail Race (Amherst, MA).
Ben Robinson (Pennsylvania) – “Competing at the Skyrunning World Championships in Scotland to me is a dream come true to represent the USA! This experience will allow me to put all my hard work to play at a large stage and allow the US to be well represented at the World Championships.” Ben won the 2017 Ultra Race of Champions 50k and holds the course record (Skylark, VA), won the 2017 Jupiter Peak Steeplechase 17 mile (Park City, UT) and won the 2017 Bellingham Trail Marathon (Bellingham, WA).
Benjamin Stout (Idaho) – “It is truly an honor to have the opportunity to do what I love most while representing my country and getting a taste of international competition at the Skyrunning World Championships in Kinlochleven. I’m beyond excited at the prospect of romping through a landscape as compelling as the Scottish Highlands this September!” Ben finished 2nd at the 2018 Moab Red Hot 55 km (Moab, UT), finished 6th at the 2017 Run The Rut 50 km (Big Sky, MT) and 5th at the 2017 Broken Arrow Skyrace 52 km (Squaw Valley, CA).
Chris Grauch (Colorado) – “I am elated and honored to represent and compete as part of the US Skyrunning Team at the Skyrunning World Championships. I hope to help the US team to a podium finish and have a great time running in the Scottish Highlands!” Chris finished 3rd in his age group at the 2017 Masters World Mountain Running Championship (Pruske, Slovakia), won the masters division of the 2018 USATF Mountain Running Championships (Lincoln, NH), finished 7th at the 2016 USATF 30 km Trail Championship (Colorado Springs, CO) and was 3rd at the 2014 Flagstaff Skyrace 39 km (Flagstaff, AZ).
Ryan Kerrigan – Team Staff Member (Vermont) – “It is a privilege and an honor to lead the inaugural US Skyrunning Team to the Skyrunning World Championships in Kinlochleven, Scotland. These athletes comprise a unique canvas of US mountain runners. Many of their strengths are rarely highlighted in shorter/less technical US mountain races. I feel we have a lot of growth in front of us as a team but will leave a big footprint on our first attempt. I am a native Vermonter and Scotland is a bit like Vermont on steroids. The landscape, weather and competition will be awe inspiring and humbling. We’re leaning into it!”
Hanni Guinn – Team Staff Member (Vermont) – “I am honored to have the opportunity to support the US Skyrunning Team at the Skyrunning World Championship in Kinlochleven, Scotland. As a Rolfer, I am impressed by the agility, strength and performances these runners have achieved. I look forward to aiding in their success and witnessing Skyrunning at it’s greatest in the vast expanse of the Scottish Highlands.” |
Chapter 529 - Reconnaissance
Shi Xueman was patrolling the camp when she saw Jiang Wei and Sang Zhijun. She nodded and asked, "Did you arrange for the reconnaissance?"
Jiang Wei said, "Arrangements have been made for Zu Yan to lead and Fatty has set off as well.
Having been sharpened by the battle, which had greatly influenced him, he appeared more steady and restrained. Not only him, even Sang Zhijun and Fatty seemed like different people individually.
Jiang Wei’s work could always be trusted since he rarely made mistakes.
Shi Xueman was surprised, "Even Fatty is going? He is not suitable to be a scout."
Sang Zhijun heard and smiled, "Aren’t they both fire elementalists? Both of them used to soak in the fire reservoirs together, and with Fatty so thick-skinned, how can Zu Yan be his opponent? Just a short time was needed for them to become good brothers."
Jiang Wei said hurriedly, "Besides being a little bit thick-skinned, Fatty is actually not too bad."
Sang Zhijun covered her mouth and laughed, "Are you praising him?"
Jiang Wei reacted and laughed heartily.
Shi Xueman noticed the fluctuation of elemental energy throughout Jiang Wei’s whole body and her eyes lit up, "Jiang Wei, are you going to have a breakthrough?"
Sang Zhijun was stunned to hear this. She turned her face toward Jiang Wei and gushed, "Breakthrough? Why did you not mention it?"
Sang Zhijun was prepared for action. "It seems like I have to put in more effort and not be left behind."
Shi Xueman looked at the two of them and could not help smiling. Jiang Wei and Sang Zhijun got close to each other recently and gelled really well. Although Jiang Wei did not come from an aristocratic background, he was destined for a bright future as he was steady and calm. The Sang family used to be mediocre, but their situation was not much better now.
Sang Zhijun played a critical role in her family and had sufficient authority to speak.
Jiang Wei thought of something and said, "Zu Yan has recently improved tremendously."
With the achievements of Master Zu Yan, everyone should have addressed him as Master in accordance with the usual practice. However, addressing him as "Master" still made people feel awkward. It also made Zu Yan uncomfortable, so he requested that everyone address him by his name.
Shi Xueman sighed with emotion. "He is probably inspired by Senior Le Buleng."
Jiang Wei and Sang Zhijun nodded one after another as they agreed with Shi Xueman.
Sang Zhijun was full of worries. "I wonder if Senior Le Buleng has reached the Jadeite Forest? I admire the courage of Senior Le Buleng, but to challenge Dai Gang at this time, the odds are slim."
Jiang Wei had a different view. "When will we ever have a high chance to defeat Dai Gang? I, however, feel that the timing is just right. Thus, do not worry about the future of Zu Yan as he is a carefree spirit. After witnessing the actions of Grandmaster An Muda, the battle spirit in Senior Le Buleng was also aroused. Moreover, after seeing the actions of Skyheart City, anger filled his heart. From the moral point of view, it was the limit for Senior Le Buleng."
Talking about Skyheart City made Sang Zhijun angry and she grunted, "Unfortunately, I was not present at that time. It is with great regret that I did not get to see Senior Le Buleng in a rage. Skyheart City really makes people angry!"
Jiang Wei saw that Sang Zhijun was angry and hurriedly comforted her, "There’s nothing to be angry about. At least they gave us a God-subduing Peak. A God-subduing Peak is something I have never even dreamed of."
Sang Zhijun grinned from ear to ear and was full of optimism. "Oh yes, with the God-subduing Peak, we do not need to take other’s feelings into consideration. Plus, a lot of Xueman’s ideas can also be achieved."
Shi Xueman had the utmost expectation for the God-subduing Peak. She used to be stationed at a God-subduing Peak, had experienced its power, and had thought about it before. What would be the result if she possessed a God-subduing Peak and erected the Hellfire Pagoda Cannon on top of the peak.
The recent battles had made her profoundly aware of the changes in her surroundings.
Former combat divisions only had to confront dire beasts, but now they had to face the blood elementalists who were under the reformed combat divisions. The enemy had undergone tremendous changes and many strategies had became less suitable.
This was destined to be a rapidly changing era.
She remembered some of the points that Ai Hui had elaborated on in his letter and had to admit that Ai Hui’s keen instinct for battle was extraordinary. He obviously lacked rich experience in warfare, but this did not seem to prevent Ai Hui from understanding the battle.
Maybe it was a gift.
This thought flashed across Shi Xueman’s mind, and she immediately laughed at the fact that it took until now to discover Ai Hui’s gift. Wasn’t the talent of Ai Hui obvious since the first battle?
She repeatedly warned, "Continue to be alert."
Jiang Wei and Sang Zhijun obeyed the order with a salute. No matter how close their relationship was in private, everyone was serious when it came to business.
Shi Xueman accelerated her pace and a thought flickered in her mind.
She wanted to capture this feeling.
Fatty scanned the mountain below and muttered from time to time, "This barren land, not even a shadow to be seen. Nothing, there is nothing at all. We have flown for a long time, and it is very tiring. Little Yanyan, let’s go down to rest."
Zu Yan was speechless, "I am taking you to fly. What is so tiring?"
Fatty nonchalantly said, "My eyes are tired. Why don’t you try it?"
Zu Yan rolled his eyes, but had to admit that Fatty had the right to say so. Fatty was definitely not a good scout, either in terms of size or speed. Zu Yan was willing to take the trouble of bringing Fatty along despite his habit of constant grumbling for an important reason.
Fatty’s eyes were as sharp as an eagle’s and even the pheasants who hid in the impenetrable grass could be seen.
Basically, if Fatty said it was safe after a glance at the place, that meant it was truly safe.
Zu Yan was much more powerful than Fatty, but when it came to eyesight, they were not comparable. Fatty could aim the Hellfire Pagoda Cannon so well and so accurately, something that definitely could not be done with bad eyesight.
However, Zu Yan deeply hated some of Fatty’s bad habits.
A little bit of work, yet he was already complaining of tiredness. Nonsensical talk from his mouth kept pouring out and could not be blocked. Zu Yan was almost driven crazy by Fatty’s nonsense when they were both in the same fire reservoir and had nowhere else to escape to at the beginning. Zu Yan was powerful and therefore able to endure the high-level fire reservoir. Fatty was obviously not strong, yet he was still able to stay put inside.
It should be due to his skin being thick…
Zu Yan was descending and getting ready to land. He picked out a spot with a very good view of the terrain. It was located on a mountain ridge and the line of sight was very far.
As Fatty was preparing to rest, his eyes suddenly blinked and his body stiffened.
Zu Yan, who was carrying Fatty, noticed it and instantly asked, "Did something happen?"
Fatty did not speak, but squinted his eyes and slowly scanned around. After a while, he turned his body and lowered his voice, "There are blood elementalists!"
Zu Yan trembled with fear. "Where are they?"
He had not discovered anything earlier.
Fatty stretched, yawned, and whispered, "Behind the rock, about six or seven miles away from us."
Zu Yan looked Fatty’s deceitful expression and suspected he was cooking up a scheme. He asked immediately, "What is your plan?"
"You go get some prey, but do not go too far."
Fatty kept on turning around and his eyes continuously scanned all about, exactly like a veteran scout.
Zu Yan felt suspicious, "Are you hungry? Misleading me by asking me to hunt for you."
Fatty felt indignant. "Where is the basic trust between brothers? What else, what do you mean by misleading you? Isn’t it expected for you to hunt for your brother? When you were in the fire reservoir, I was afraid you would be bored and specially kept you company."
Zu Yan decided to shut up since he had never won an argument with Fatty.
After talking, Fatty swaggered toward the low-lying ground, seemingly looking for a sheltered place to rest.
Zu Chun flew the fastest. He set out last, yet flew the farthest. His Ability of God was [Heavenly Roc Wings] which were very commonly used. The pitch-black wings grew from his back with sections of black and red feathers folded layer by layer. The pattern formed by the black and red was extremely exquisite, graceful, and elegant.
The Heavenly Roc was an ancient divine beast which was fierce and tough, roaming all over the highest of the heavens.
The blood in his body, which contained Heavenly Roc ancestral mark, should have originated from the blood golden eage. However, after millions of years, the content of the Heavenly Roc ancestral mark in the blood golden eagle had become very diluted. Still, the power of this small portion of diluted blood was already sufficient to make a qualitative change in the strength of Zu Chun power.
Zu Chun had already discovered the presence of the two of them earlier.
He did not rush over, but quietly landed. Then, he found a place to hide and waited for the two elementalist scouts to enter into his attack range.
A confrontation between scouts was unusually brutal and cruel.
Every scout wanted to capture the opposite party since a live captive was worth far more than a corpse. A captive scout would have a miserable end as they would be tortured and treated cruelly. Even suicide was an extravagant hope.
The scouts needed not only strong personal strength, but also steel-like willpower. Otherwise, once they were captured, they would not be able to withstand the torture and would divulge information.
He never expected the two elementalist scouts to stop moving forward, but they stopped to take a rest instead.
Am I discovered?
Zu Chun felt this was impossible since he was quite a distance away from them and had not exposed himself.
Afterward, he saw that one of the scouts unexpectedly went to hunt. He felt relieved and thought that he had not been discovered, but had encountered two substandard scouts.
It was extremely dangerous to scout for information. The scouts of any combat division were the best of the elites. However, the amateurish performance of these two made Zu Chun shake his head.
He was even more speechless after seeing Fatty’s figure. Which combat division would choose a fat man with such a bloated body to serve as a scout?
Am I getting confused?
Am I encountering another combat division? The Spear of Heavy Cloud, Infantry Division, and Sky Edge Division could not be so novice. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the victory of Shi Xueman during the previous battle had stimulated the rest of the combat divisions and they also wanted to earn some merits against the God Nation?
Zu Chun sneered.
He quietly walked toward the other party.
The other party was negligent and had their backs facing him. In addition, the two seemed to still be in dispute.
Zu Chun’s eyes flashed with murderous intent. |
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First, open the Microsoft Internet Explorer, press ) button. Next, click “Internet Options” as displayed below.
In the “Internet Options” screen select the Advanced tab. Next, press Reset button. The Internet Explorer will open the Reset Internet Explorer settings dialog box. Select the “Delete personal settings” check box and click Reset button.
You will now need to reboot your machine for the changes to take effect. It will delete adware that responsible for the appearance of Premier Software Updater advertisements, disable malicious and ad-supported web-browser’s extensions and restore the Internet Explorer’s settings such as home page, newtab and search provider to default state.
Remove Premier Software Updater popups from Chrome
Reset Chrome settings is a simple way to delete the adware, harmful and adware extensions, as well as to recover the browser’s new tab page, search provider and home page that have been replaced by ad supported software responsible for redirecting your browser to Premier Software Updater web site.
- First, launch the Google Chrome and press the Menu icon (icon in the form of three dots).
- It will open the Chrome main menu. Select More Tools, then click Extensions.
- You will see the list of installed add-ons. If the list has the addon labeled with “Installed by enterprise policy” or “Installed by your administrator”, then complete the following instructions: Remove Chrome extensions installed by enterprise policy.
- Now open the Google Chrome menu once again, press the “Settings” menu.
- Next, click “Advanced” link, which located at the bottom of the Settings page.
- On the bottom of the “Advanced settings” page, click the “Reset settings to their original defaults” button.
- The Chrome will open the reset settings dialog box as shown on the image above.
- Confirm the web browser’s reset by clicking on the “Reset” button.
- To learn more, read the article How to reset Chrome settings to default.
Remove Premier Software Updater from Mozilla Firefox by resetting internet browser settings
Resetting your Mozilla Firefox is first troubleshooting step for any issues with your web browser program, including the redirect to Premier Software Updater page.
Click the Menu button (looks like three horizontal lines), and click the blue Help icon located at the bottom of the drop down menu as shown in the figure below.
A small menu will appear, click the “Troubleshooting Information”. On this page, press “Refresh Firefox” button as shown in the following example.
Follow the onscreen procedure to restore your Firefox web-browser settings to its original state.
Remove unwanted Scheduled Tasks
Once installed, the ad-supported software can add a task in to the Windows Task Scheduler Library. Due to this, every time when you launch your system, it will display Premier Software Updater intrusive site. So, you need to check the Task Scheduler Library and delete all harmful tasks that have been created by malicious applications.
Press Windows and R keys on the keyboard simultaneously. This shows a prompt that called Run. In the text field, type “taskschd.msc” (without the quotes) and click OK. Task Scheduler window opens. In the left-hand side, click “Task Scheduler Library”, as on the image below.
In the middle part you will see a list of installed tasks. Please select the first task, its properties will be open just below automatically. Next, click the Actions tab. Pay attention to that it launches on your PC. Found something like “explorer.exe http://site.address” or “chrome.exe http://site.address”, then remove this harmful task. If you are not sure that executes the task, check it through a search engine. If it’s a component of the ‘ad-supported’ application, then this task also should be removed.
Having defined the task that you want to remove, then click on it with the right mouse button and choose Delete as shown in the following example.
Repeat this step, if you have found a few tasks that have been created by malicious programs. Once is complete, close the Task Scheduler window.
Disinfect the browser’s shortcuts to get rid of Premier Software Updater redirect
Important to know, most anti-malware programs which are able to remove ‘ad supported’ software responsible for redirects to Premier Software Updater, but unable to search for and recover modified shortcut files. So, you need to fix the desktop shortcuts for your Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, MS Edge and Google Chrome browsers manually.
Open the properties of the web browser shortcut file. Right click on the shortcut of affected browser and choose the “Properties” option and it will open the properties of the shortcut file. Next, select the “Shortcut” tab and have a look at the Target field as on the image below.
Normally, if the last word in the Target field is chrome.exe, iexplore.exe, firefox.exe. Be sure to pay attention to the extension, should be “exe”! All shortcut files which have been changed by ad-supported software which cause unwanted Premier Software Updater pop-up advertisements to appear, usually point to .bat, .cmd or .url files instead of .exe as shown in the figure below
Another variant, an address has been added at the end of the line. In this case the Target field looks such as …Application\chrome.exe” http://site.address as shown on the screen below.
In order to fix the hijacked shortcut file, you need to insert right path to the Target field or remove an address (if it has been added at the end). You can use the following information to fix your shortcut files that have been modified by adware responsible for redirecting your web-browser to Premier Software Updater web site.
|Google Chrome||C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe|
|Firefox||C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe|
|Microsoft Internet Explorer||C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe|
|C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe|
|Opera||C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\launcher.exe|
Once is finished, click OK to save changes. Repeat the step for all internet browsers which are rerouted to the Premier Software Updater undesired page.
Scan your machine and delete Premier Software Updater pop up ads with free utilities
If you are an unskilled computer user, then all your attempts to remove Premier Software Updater popup ads by following the manual steps above might result in failure. To find and remove all of the adware related files and registry entries that keep this adware on your machine, run free anti-malware software like Zemana, MalwareBytes AntiMalware and HitmanPro from our list below.
Scan and free your internet browser of Premier Software Updater pop up advertisements with Zemana Anti-malware
Zemana Anti-malware is a utility which can delete adware, potentially unwanted applications, hijackers and other malicious software from your personal computer easily and for free. Zemana Anti-malware is compatible with most antivirus software. It works under Windows (10 – XP, 32 and 64 bit) and uses minimum of PC system resources.
Now you can set up and use Zemana to get rid of Premier Software Updater pop up advertisements from your web-browser by following the steps below:
Please go to the link below to download Zemana Free setup package called Zemana.AntiMalware.Setup on your computer. Save it on your Windows desktop or in any other place.
Author: Zemana Ltd
Category: Security tools
Update: March 3, 2018
Run the setup file after it has been downloaded successfully and then follow the prompts to setup this utility on your machine.
During installation you can change some settings, but we recommend you do not make any changes to default settings.
When setup is done, this malicious software removal utility will automatically start and update itself. You will see its main window as displayed below.
Now press the “Scan” button to perform a system scan for the adware that made to redirect your browser to various ad pages like Premier Software Updater. A scan can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the count of files on your machine and the speed of your PC.
After the scan is finished, you’ll be shown the list of all found threats on your computer. When you’re ready, click “Next” button.
The Zemana will remove adware related to Premier Software Updater popup advertisements and add threats to the Quarantine. When that process is finished, you can be prompted to reboot your computer to make the change take effect.
Scan your machine and remove Premier Software Updater redirect with Hitman Pro
HitmanPro is a free tool that can identify ‘ad supported’ software that causes internet browsers to show intrusive Premier Software Updater popups. It is not always easy to locate all the unwanted apps that your computer might have picked up on the Internet. Hitman Pro will find the ‘ad supported’ software, browser hijacker infections and other malware you need to erase.
- Please go to the link below to download HitmanPro. Save it on your MS Windows desktop.
Category: Security tools
Update: December 8, 2017
- After the download is complete, double click the HitmanPro icon. Once this utility is launched, click “Next” button . Hitman Pro program will scan through the whole PC for the adware that responsible for web browser reroute to the unwanted Premier Software Updater web-page. This process can take quite a while, so please be patient. When a threat is detected, the count of the security threats will change accordingly. Wait until the the scanning is finished.
- When the scan get finished, you’ll be shown the list of all detected items on your personal computer. Make sure all items have ‘checkmark’ and click “Next” button. Now press the “Activate free license” button to begin the free 30 days trial to delete all malware found.
Automatically remove Premier Software Updater pop-ups with Malwarebytes
You can remove Premier Software Updater popup advertisements automatically with a help of Malwarebytes Free. We recommend this free malware removal utility because it can easily get rid of browser hijacker infections, adware, potentially unwanted apps and toolbars with all their components such as files, folders and registry entries.
Download MalwareBytes Anti-Malware by clicking on the link below. Save it on your Microsoft Windows desktop.
Category: Security tools
Update: March 20, 2018
After the downloading process is done, close all applications and windows on your system. Double-click the install file called mb3-setup. If the “User Account Control” dialog box pops up as shown on the image below, click the “Yes” button.
It will open the “Setup wizard” which will help you install MalwareBytes AntiMalware (MBAM) on your PC. Follow the prompts and do not make any changes to default settings.
Once install is finished successfully, click Finish button. MalwareBytes Free will automatically start and you can see its main screen as displayed in the following example.
Now click the “Scan Now” button to perform a system scan for the adware that cause undesired Premier Software Updater advertisements to appear. A scan can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the number of files on your system and the speed of your machine. When a malicious software, adware or potentially unwanted programs are found, the count of the security threats will change accordingly. Wait until the the scanning is done.
Once the system scan is done, MalwareBytes will show you the results. Make sure all items have ‘checkmark’ and click “Quarantine Selected” button. The MalwareBytes Free will start to remove adware that causes multiple undesired pop up ads. After finished, you may be prompted to reboot the machine.
We advise you look at the following video, which completely explains the procedure of using the MalwareBytes to get rid of ad-supported software, browser hijacker infection and other malicious software.
Run AdBlocker to stop Premier Software Updater and stay safe online
Enabling an ad-blocker application such as AdGuard is an effective way to alleviate the risks. Additionally, ad-blocking applications will also protect you from malicious advertisements and web-pages, and, of course, stop redirection chain to Premier Software Updater and similar sites.
Visit the following page to download the latest version of AdGuard for MS Windows. Save it on your Microsoft Windows desktop.
Author: © Adguard
Category: Security tools
Update: July 17, 2017
After downloading is finished, double-click the downloaded file to launch it. The “Setup Wizard” window will show up on the computer screen like below.
Follow the prompts. AdGuard will then be installed and an icon will be placed on your desktop. A window will show up asking you to confirm that you want to see a quick instructions as shown on the screen below.
Click “Skip” button to close the window and use the default settings, or click “Get Started” to see an quick guide that will allow you get to know AdGuard better.
Each time, when you start your PC system, AdGuard will run automatically and block advertisements, web pages like Premier Software Updater, as well as other harmful or misleading web-pages. For an overview of all the features of the program, or to change its settings you can simply double-click on the AdGuard icon, which can be found on your desktop.
Where the Premier Software Updater pop-up ads comes from
These days certain free programs makers bundle additional apps which could be potentially unwanted software such as this adware, with a view to making some money. These are not freeware as install an unwanted programs on to your Windows computer. So whenever you install a new free program that downloaded from the Net, be very careful during install. Carefully read the EULA (a text with I ACCEPT/I DECLINE button), select custom or manual installation mode, disable all bundled apps.
To sum up
Now your personal computer should be free of the adware that reroutes your internet browser to intrusive Premier Software Updater web page. We suggest that you keep Zemana (to periodically scan your system for new ad-supported softwares and other malware) and AdGuard (to help you block undesired pop-ups and malicious pages). Moreover, to prevent any ‘ad supported’ software, please stay clear of unknown and third party apps, make sure that your antivirus application, turn on the option to detect PUPs.
If you need more help with Premier Software Updater pop-ups related issues, go to our Spyware/Malware removal forum. |
One of the criticisms of Saving Country Music in its coverage of Midland has been that we shouldn’t be focusing on a band’s backstory, and instead should put our focus on the music. But that has been the fatal flaw of Midland itself. They’re the ones avoiding talk of the music in the press and elsewhere, and instead are focusing on their backstory, and foisting their image to the forefront. And the reason is because Midland didn’t write their own songs, and had little say in the music itself, which makes them uniquely unqualified to speak about it.
When most bands or artists are interviewed, they talk about the inspiration behind certain songs—the cathartic moments they had penning intimate details of personal moments they share with the public through rhyme and verse. But Midland can’t do that because the music is not theirs. That’s why the backstory has become the focal point in interviews and features for the band as opposed to the music itself.
And the more Midland and the band’s surrogates talk, the bigger the hole they dig for themselves. This is exactly what happened in yet another puff piece on the band in Tuesday’s online edition of the Los Angeles Times, which is such a cornucopia bursting with incredible morsels of ridiculous notions and succulent quotations that expose the true nature of this outfit, it’s almost like a gift basket from the country music gods of truth.
Most notable is a quote from Shane McAnally—Music Row’s current songwriter and producer extraordinaire, who among other dubious distinctions, is the puppetmaster behind Sam Hunt and Old Dominion. Along with co-penning seven of the song on the new Midland album On The Rocks, he also helped produce the effort. And his quote not only exposes just how manufactured Midland is, it’s so incredibly honest and illustrative, it really helps to expose the entirety of the Music Row machine.
“I feel like we manifested [Midland], because this is our playground, writing songs for a 1982 George Strait,” says McAnally. “When these guys walked in and were a vehicle for those kinds of songs, and also quite capable of writing them as well, it was like [the movie] ‘Weird Science,’ like, it wasn’t our design, but it’s almost like we put into a machine what we wanted, and out came Midland.”
You “manifested” Midland? You “put into a machine” what you wanted, “and out came Midland?” They “were a vehicle” and your “playground”? Good Christ this is a quote that will keep on giving for years to come when talk turns to how artists and bands are groomed and coached on Music Row until they’re nothing more than constructs of commercial opportunism.
How many times have you seen the way songs, albums, and artists are constructed in mainstream country referred to as being like products off a conveyor belt? And here is Shane McAnally—inarguably the hottest producer and songwriter in all of country music (and really all of music at the moment)—pretty much admitting to what we’ve been saying for years about the mainstream, and what we’ve been saying about Midland for the past few months is: they’re just a vessel for preformulated musical products as opposed to an original act born of inspired works.
Look, when it comes to most mainstream acts these days, whatever name you may see on the front of an album or beside the title of a single, they’re nothing more than a “vehicle” (as McAnally says) for producers and songwriters like Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, who also has a hand in a majority of the songs on Midland’s debut album. Mainstream music is no longer about the artist. It’s all about the producer, and this is also true in pop, R&B, and hip-hop. Shane McAnally is the Max Martin of country music.
A lot of folks have wondered why a fan favorite song of Midland’s called “Fourteen Gears” did not make the new record. In fact at one point it was announced as Midland’s second single after “Drinkin’ Problem,” and even had a video released for it that has garnered nearly 2 million views. So where did it go? The answer is that “Fourteen Gears” was most likely pulled last minute after the commercial success of “Drinkin’ Problem” because it was not part of the Music Row/Shane McAnally/Josh Osborne songwriting/producing machine, and those principals couldn’t profiteer from “Fourteen Gears” like they can the current single, “Make A Little,” which was written by Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne.
“Fourteen Gears” was written by Midland lead guitar player Jess Carson, with some help from Cameron Duddy and Mark Wystrach, and no involvement from the professionals. One of the biggest scourges on Music Row at the moment is the insistence of labels to only release singles when they have tried and true songwriting professionals in the credits like Shane McAnally. This keeps money flowing back into the machine through publishing houses, and keeps radio program directors on board since they see a name like McAnally and know a song has been optimized for radio play. This is the fundamental reason for the sameness currently plaguing country radio. There’s only one song out of the 13 on Midland’s new album On The Rocks that wasn’t touched by a top flight songwriting professional, and that’s “Check Cashing Country” written by Jess Carson.
And just as the music is manufactured, so is the backstory, with just enough truth interwoven in there to make the embellishments passably believable. Just as it takes an incredible 15 months to take a song from page to single on Music Row—making the mainstream country industry incredibly sluggish to adapt and maneuver to current trends—so goes how they market that song and artist to the public. The willing accomplices in the mainstream press are all handed the same bullet points, which in Midland’s case are:
- They’re a bar band
- They formed at a wedding for Cameron Duddy (that was covered in People)
- They paid dues in Austin (at Poodie’s–four shows)
- They were dirt poor before they were discovered
- They’re the real deal, not like the rest of Nashville
Why do you think we’ve now seen a dozen or more feature-length stories on Midland focusing on their four-show residency at Poodie’s outside of Austin, and talking about how tough Midland had it early in their career? It’s because that’s what the media is being told to convey in talking points, and they rebroadcast these talking points dutifully without ever questioning what they’re being told. You know why despite the countless puff pieces on Midland, we haven’t seen any such copy emerge from the Austin media market? It’s because the journalists in Austin know that four shows at Poodie’s is no big deal, they know Midland never paid their dues in Austin, and know just how much money you need to have to settle in Dripping Springs, TX as opposed to the more affordable portions of the Austin area.
And when all of this ridiculous Midland backstory began to be questioned by Saving Country Music and others, Midland was powerless to bail on it because they had no other plan. The one-sheets of talking points were already printed out. The puff pieces in Rolling Stone, Taste of Country, and the Los Angeles Times were already in the pipeline. It was like trying to turn a battleship around. And so they just kept talking the same bullshit, and still are today.
In the Los Angeles Times article, it states:
All three members of Midland had played in bands for most of their adult lives but also made ends meet in other ways. Wystrach, an Arizona native, picked up modeling and acting gigs, including a stint on the soap “Passions.” Duddy was making a living as a music video director, including an award-winning clip he co-directed with Bruno Mars for “24K Magic.”
The article’s author makes it sound like getting an acting job on a major broadcast soap opera, or producing videos for one of the biggest pop stars in the world and winning VMA Awards is tantamount to working at Subway. Many actors and video producers work their entire lives to never get the opportunities Mark Wystrach and Cameron Duddy received even before Midland was formed and foisted to the front of the line. That doesn’t mean they can’t make country music. Everybody has a right to make country music. But it’s how it is couched that makes it come across as so insincere and detached from the realities that individuals even in the upper middle class experience that you can’t help but to call bullshit.
The Los Angeles Times article even starts once again with the wedding story of how the band formed when if Midland had any good sense, they would avoid this issue, lest it’s brought up yet again that Cameron Duddy’s wedding, due to him being part of the Hollywood power elite, was covered in People Magazine. Again, any good country band with any good sense would have stricken that from the talking points months ago, and focused on something else.
And this Los Angeles Times article just keeps on giving. It explains again, mere paragraphs away from where the band grumbles about how hard they struggled, that Scott Borchetta and Bruno Mars were both hot on signing Midland, and were only kept out of a bidding war because Scott Borchetta “locked the door” with the band, and wouldn’t let them out. That’s because he saw that he could mold them into being his traditional country superstars that would get “purists” to shut the hell up, while also re-integrating all those disenfranchised traditional country fans back into the Music Row fold to maximize profits.
Scott Borchetta is even quoted in the article saying, “I always laugh when people go, ‘Oh man, the guy who tried to kill country music, actually signed a country band.’ It’s the funniest thing.” And with this quote, Scott Borchetta once again proves why he deserves the moniker of the Country Music Antichrist, with all due respect to Shane McAnally, who now is a very close 2nd. They’re both cackling all the way to the bank, as the ranks of traditional country fans lap up Midland as the real deal.
We started this entire Midland process about a year ago just a little a bit suspicious of this band. This was elevated to serious concern when they started pushing this hardship backstory hard and heavy into the run up to the release of their first single “Drinkin’ Problem.” And now with their most recent press, especially this story in the Los Angeles Times, they haven’t just exposed themselves, they’ve exposed the entire facade and fallacy of mainstream country by refusing to abandon their ridiculous sob story talking points, even when it started to earn them more criticism than favor.
And frankly, there are so many other tentacles to this story, like exactly why Cameron Duddy could barely afford to pay his mortgage during Midland’s nascent period, or Mark Wystrach’s supermodel girlfriend, that veers too much into speculation, and frankly, shit talking than I’m comfortable with. But if anything, there’s a good chance we haven’t spent enough time prying into exposing this sob story that Midland claims they emerged from instead of vice versa.
And I kind of feel sorry for lead guitar player Jess Carson, who actually seems like a guy who did pay some dues, and is getting unfairly swept up in all these concerns of Midland’s authenticity.
And in the Los Angeles Times piece, Midland does try to play humble.
“I’m not going to sit here and say, ‘Oh, poor us. We had it so tough,’ especially with everything in perspective that is happening these days,” Mark Wystrach says after the hounds of the past few days have made it essential to respond, and after he’s done that very thing in this interview and others. Yet then he goes on to say,
“But absolutely it’s been a struggle. We all went all in, we could have done something else and could have been more secure and more stable … Through the years, you build a camaraderie and a common respect for every musician that’s out there trying to make it. But the light at the end of the tunnel is the thing that pushes every musician — that dream of someday making it and getting to share your music with the world. That doesn’t happen to pretty much anybody and that’s not lost on us.”
But that’s everyone. We all struggle in our 20’s. We all spend periods in our lives living hand to mouth, and some more than others because our eyes are bigger than our pocketbooks, or due to perception because we’re born into privilege, not because of any true personal hardship. To Midland, playing four shows at Poodie’s to small crowds probably was a hardship, life-altering experience after the glitz of Hollywood and MTV’s Video Music Awards.
Midland could have been sold to the public as anything. They could have avoided talking about their past, like most mainstream artists do, and instead focused on the music. Who gives a shit what their past is, let’s hear the music. Anyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, geographic origination, class, religious background, or social status has the right to make country music. Let me repeat that, just because it continues to be glossed over with this issue. Anyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, geographic origination, class, religious background, or social status has the right to make country music.
Saving Country Music just in 2017 has championed the music of a neotraditionalist from New York City, a former advertising suit from sunny Los Angeles, Nudie-suited singers and pickers from Sweden, and even an anti Taylor Swift country music outfit from Iran. Respectfully, this is not just an argument about authenticity, it is an argument about truth, and the co-opting of a trend back to the roots of country music by Music Row’s most notorious and colossal money changers. It’s also not an argument about what is real country or not. Midland’s music is real country.
This feels very much like the arguments in 2014 surrounding Eric Church and his whole “Outsiders” movement, where it appeared he was fundamentally looking to use the image and the style of cool underground bands to incorporate into his marketing, and caused incredibly contentious arguments about the nature of authenticity, and the role of the industry in co-opting it for their own purposes. But many have forgotten about those fights, because eventually Eric Church brought it back to the music with his album Mr. Misunderstood, and is now one of the most lauded personalities in the mainstream by independent and traditional fans.
Midland’s narrative is just beginning, and it is a misstep in the marketing that has made them overshoot what should have been a moment of unity in getting behind the re-emergence of the roots of country in the mainstream. But the future is yet to be written. Nowhere will you see Saving Country Music accuse Midland of not having talent, or being incapable of making good country music. In fact, we don’t even know if we’ve seen the real Midland yet. It could be hiding under the layers of bullshit, buried just like “Fourteen Gears.” It could be struggling to get out, frustrated to have to be filtered through professional songwriters, media coaches, and image consultants.
Yet it was Midland’s insistence on continuing to push their sob story over and over, even as it was being eroded and exposed in the public, that has put them in a position of polarization. And now they have not only exposed themselves, they’ve helped expose the entire farce that is the mainstream country music machine that didn’t just build Midland up, but keeps scores of artists and bands that Midland was patterned after by Shane McAnally and others, struggling in obscurity.
And that is why there is continued animosity. |
Jackie Martling has been a stand-up comedian for over 30 years. He’s best known for being a full time member of the Howard Stern Show from 1986 – 2001 where he regularly wrote bits for the show and fed Howard lines. In 2001, Jackie left the show over a contract dispute which is still an occasional topic of conversation on the show. His move to walk away from the Stern show, a dream job fpr any working comedian, has always been somewhat of a mystery. He was making great money to be on the greatest radio show of all time, yet he still felt the need to leave.
The “Joke Man” provides us with a great deal of insight as to why he left the show. He also comments on Howard and Robin’s recent outrage over Jackie booking fellow comedian Pat Cooper on Jackie’s own show, Jackie’s Joke Hunt on Howard 101 (Sirius XM radio), one of Stern’s channels. They took issue with Jackie booking the past Stern show guest because he made disparaging remarks about the Stern show and reportedly damaged Stern show property.
I talked to Jackie to see what is was like being on the show, to better understand why he left, and to see if there are any lingering effects from his decision. As a long time Stern show fan, I can assure you that whether you’re a Jackie, Artie, or even a Benjy person, you may cackle a little bit in your heart after reading this.
How did you first get on the Howard Stern Show?
By 1982 I had three comedy albums out and I sent them to Howard Stern because somebody suggested I do that. He had just gotten fired from Washington DC. It was August of 1982 and I was working at Garvins in Washington DC and the owner said, “Wow, this guy just got fired from here, and he’s going to WNBC in New York, you should hook up with him.” So he told me his name and I sent my albums blindly to Howard Stern, care of WNBC, just like I had sent jokes to Rodney Dangerfield in 1978 blind and hooked up with him. And a couple months later Howard called me up and said, “Hey, we think you’re really funny, why don’t you come in and hang out on the air.” I went in and hung out on the air and it was funny, I walked in and it was Fred, Robin, and Howard, the same gang that was there the last day I was there. At the end of the day, they said, “Wow, you’re really fun, come back next week.” So I was there one day a week for three years, and then we went to mornings, then we went to fucking Pluto.
What was your role on the show?
Well, the three years I was working one day a week, I just was slowly but surely handing him stuff. We played “Stump the Joke Man,” or it was called “Stump the Comedian,” and people would call in. We didn’t get enough good calls from listeners, so I started giving jokes to Fred and he would call in as a Jewish grandmother and that was always hysterical. But slowly but surely, I was giving stuff to Howard and it was funny. He used to do this helicopter reporter, this black helicopter reporter called “Mama Luca Bubudai and one time I came in and had some ideas for Mama Luca and he looked at me like, “I don’t need your help.” He didn’t say that, but he kind of looked at me funny. Then a couple days later I was listening to the show and I heard my jokes that I had given him and then next time I went in there I handed him some more and kind of smiled and he kind of smiled.
And slowly but surely I was passing him little ideas and when we went to mornings, he called me up. I was on the road and he said, “We’re going to mornings, I want you to come in two days a week and do your thing with the notes. At one point, I just stopped doing scraps of paper and I picked up a stack of 8X10 paper and got some sharpies and sat there and was actually writing the ideas and handing them to him. So when we went to mornings, he wanted me to do my thing with the notes two days a week, and within a month, or maybe two months, I was there five days a week because he was funnier when I was there.
The way I look at it, he’s driving the car and I’m reading the road map. You know, I got the time to sit there and think of crazy, funny things because he’s carrying the ball. Two minds are better than one, plus once I was passing notes, it freed up a conduit so if Fred had an idea he could hand it to me and I could hand it to Howard. So now he had three guys going. Imagine Howard, Robin, and me are sitting there talking, you know I’m a funny guy, if I have something funny to add to the conversation, instead of saying it, I would write it down and give it to him. Once in a while I would say it myself, but he could work it in so seamlessly that nobody had any idea for a long, long time. We didn’t talk about it, but we didn’t not talk about it. It was a very grey area. And then when people found out the extent of it, they were very, very surprised. Because people would say, “God, I can’t believe the crap Howard says to you.” I would say, “Yeah, but half of it I wrote.”
People just couldn’t wrap their fucking brains around it. But he’s very, very funny and so is Fred, so I’d come home and Nancy, my wife would say, “Oh that was so funny when you said the cat jumped over the barnyard, that was the best thing you wrote today.” And I’d go, “Well I didn’t write that, Howard said that on his own. I mean that didn’t happen all the time. And they’d go “Oh, but you laughed at that.” I laughed as hard if something was funny. Of course I thought a lot of what I wrote was funny, but I thought a lot of what Fred wrote and Howard wrote was funny, too. I didn’t judge by who wrote it. I judged by what kind of laugh it deserved. I was very fair about it. But was I roaring at my own stuff? Yes, because a lot of it was funny. But if it hadn’t been funny, I wouldn’t have been sitting there getting paid to do it. The reason it was a muddy area is because I had a real good laugh and they really liked to fuck with me, so that almost warranted me being there. Meanwhile, my main thing was making him funny. People didn’t know that.
How much of the goofing on Gary (Baba Booey) did you contribute to?
You know, it was kind of everybody. It was unfair and it was weird. I remember, I used to sit there and he’d come in and he’d talk to Howard and he’d lean over and talk into my microphone and I remember there was one specific time very early on when I said, “Did anybody notice Gary’s breath is kind of wild?” We just really got going. There were a lot of times when Gary would come in and try to get Howard’s attention and try to talk to him and then I would just start the ball rolling.
I wouldn’t even do that much. It’s almost like I would remind Howard, “You know, we really should be fucking with Gary.” He’d come in and talk all serious and leave and I’d say to Howard, “God, look at that ass.” Then we’d be off and running for like 45 minutes. It was just fun, you know. I instigated a lot of that crap, all in fun. I love the guy. I would give Robin a hard time, Fred a hard time, Gary a hard time, but they would all gang up on me and a lot of people say they really miss that from the show— that it was really a fun part of the show.
I couldn’t understand how you could leave the show, but after hearing you on the “History of Howard Stern” specials, it seems like you just couldn’t get up that early anymore.
It was a perfect storm of a lot of things. I am also a hypocrite because you know it’s like “I’ll never work in Russia…” And then if they offer you enough money, “Okay then, I’m going to Russia.” You know, so I didn’t just walk away. I set the bar to where I’ll suffer with this if I can make more money and then I’m a total hypocrite because a couple months later I said, “Hey, I’ll take the offer. If it’s still available…” Which it wasn’t. But I was a multi-millionaire and I was exhausted. I mean, you can’t buy sleep. I couldn’t get it together to take a nap and I would be so exhausted…
Then the weekends would come and I’ve been working as a comic forever and they’re waggling money that’s stupid in front of me, so I couldn’t say no. So I go to work the weekend and get drunk and come back and start all over again and I was so exhausted. Plus I knew I had to get divorced, plus I was drinking too much… There was like a whole perfect storm. Every time I talk about this people go, “Now Jackie’s got more reasons…” There was a lot of things going on. Plus they put a guy next to me who’s sitting there writing, kind of like to say, “Fuck you.” It was very weird. Nothing against him (Benjy Bronk) and it’s Howard’s show, I got no right to say anything, but imagine if Robin was sitting there and they put somebody next to her going, “Hey how bout this story?”
We had a perfectly honed machine, and it didn’t need any tuning up, it didn’t need more jokes, it didn’t need more anything. I think they kind of put him there to say, “If you ever leave we got this covered.” And I just thought that was kind of rude. But I don’t know if there was even that much thought put into it. I’m just trying to reflect and come up with… It was just a whole amalgam of shit. I didn’t ask for more billing or anything. I just said, “Negotiate.” They wouldn’t even negotiate, you know. They negotiated for like one time then they didn’t call us back for two months. It was just too unfair. But for the most part, I was so tired and I couldn’t go to bed, and nobody could believe that: “How do you walk away…” They say, “Hey Jackie walked away from a million dollars.” I was not making a million dollars. The offer I walked away from was a little bit more than half of that. Which is still a boatload of money, but I was so tired.
I’ll tell you what’s really crazy, is now I’m 63 and all I want to do is take a nap. If you told me, “Listen, we’re going to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars but the caveat is you have to take a nap everyday,” I would suck your cock. “Holy shit, you’re going to pay me all this money but I have to take a nap, are you kidding!?” Back 10 years ago, before I quit drinking, I’d come home and there was always so much to do it seemed. The rest of the people say, “How sorry are you?” “You loser.” I’m not sorry. I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in, I got a beautiful young girlfriend, I live on the water, I do my stand-up shows, I do my radio show, I have no money, but I don’t care. Nobody believes that. Life is too short. Life was too short to be that exhausted. You can only look at your bank account so many times and say, “Oh, I got a lot of money.” Who cares? I’m fucking exhausted. You can only eat one steak and drink five beers then you’re done for the next day.
The truth is there was no animosity. They’ve created this whole thing, all this animosity… Like Tim Sabean asked me why I didn’t have a show on Sirius and I said, “Nobody’s asked me.” We went to lunch and I wound up with a show on Howard’s channel. Now he tells everybody that I crawled to him on my hands and knees to get a show. They never called me back after I said I’d take the offer. When I left the show, we said, “Jackie’s not coming in on Monday because there’s been no movement for two months.” And when I wasn’t there on Monday it was like, “Where’s Jackie? He left us high and dry.” And they did this whole theater thing like I had fucked them over. There was no animosity and no ill feeling at all. It was a guy trying to get paid more. It’s America, you tell your boss you want more money, that’s not a crime. Even if you don’t deserve it, you’re allowed to ask for it.
You were just hoping they’d negotiate with you?
Yeah, a little back and forth… It was like, “Take it or leave it, we don’t really need you.” Then it was like I was trying to fuck up the show, and the point is if me leaving was going to affect the show adversely, then wouldn’t it have been worthwhile to pay me the money? You can’t have it both ways. If I’m important enough where it’s going to make that big a difference… I wasn’t asking for that much. Just pay me, you know.
What did you think of Artie Lange on the show?
I never listened to the show. I know people told me that he fell asleep, came in late and stuff like that, I know in 15 years I was probably late twice. Whatever his deal was it was fine. I know everybody loved him on the show and he was fucking great. I’m sure he tested the water and whatever he could get away with… who knows? I can’t imagine me falling asleep when I was in there, but everybody has a different role. Maybe that’s the way he fit in, you know. I mean I knew him, and I know him, and I like him. My first radio show he called in, he’s my pal. He’s not my bosom buddy.
Another thing they say is, “Once Jackie said he’d come back we couldn’t rearrange the whole show again.” Two months after I left I said I would come back and they never called me back. Artie didn’t sit in that chair till nine months later, or seven, whatever it was, it wasn’t until after 9/11 that he came in. The chair hadn’t been filled at all, they had tried all kinds of different people, every five minutes, “Oh, they got somebody else in your chair.” It’s not MY chair, you know what I’m talking about. I never mean to come across in anyway pompous, but I was part of the show, you know. But it wasn’t like, “Hey watch this, I’m going to leave and it’ll fuck it up.” That wasn’t my intention. My intention was, hey this show is making tons and tons and tons of money, I think I should get some of it.
You said you didn’t listen to the show when Artie was on, why not?
I just never listened to it. At first, I wasn’t up. But now it’s on all the time on Sirius. There’s no upside. If I listen to it and it’s not good, I’m going to wish I was there, and if it’s great I’m going to wish I was there. It’s not a proactive thing. It’s not like, “Fuck this, I’m not going to listen to it.” I just don’t. I was never a radio guy that listened to radio. I’d listen to a little bit of 1010 and I’d listen to Sinatra, I listen to my radio show. And so many people are like, “Oh you’re full of shit.” Why would I not say it if I listen to the show? They’re always trying to find something totally negative about whatever I do and it gets pretty old. If I say “Black,” they say “White,” if I say “White,” they say “Black.” “Jackie can’t do anything right,” “Jackie’s a loser,” “ Jackie’s fat,” “Jackie’s angry.” What can I do? The truth is I never minded that shit at all, when I asked for more money. It wasn’t like you guys better pay me more money because you’re mean to me on the show,” it was like, “Hey I’m part of a fantastic show. We’re a baseball team, we’re winning the World Series every year, cut me in.” That’s all.
Artie is said to be returning to radio on a Fox Sports radio show with Nick Di Paolo in September, what are your thoughts?
I know Artie’s funny and Di Paolo is really funny. I think they’re two of the funniest guys in the world. So it can only be great.
A lot of Stern show fans have been complaining that the show is on vacation too much now. What do you think about that?
I do know back when I was on the show, I remember I was always screaming to Howard (impersonating his own voice) “Come on let’s have four days!” And he’d always say, “Mel won’t let me do it.” Because I always said, “God this would be the greatest job…” Not that it’s not the greatest job in the world now, but if it had been four days a week, and you got that extra day to regenerate, that would have been like I died and went to heaven. I would have loved that. The worst thing about not being on the show is I miss sitting there and laughing. We’d laugh for five hours, five days a week. And you just don’t have that in a normal life.
It just doesn’t exist. Of course the idea of writing something and then two seconds later rather, millions of people are laughing at it, that’s like a comedian’s dream. But sitting there and laughing and just having such a great time… They used to goof on me, because everyday we would get done and I’d go, “That was a great show,” and everybody would go (in a Jackie impersonation) “Yeah, that was a great show.” But I always meant it. I wouldn’t just say it. I’d say it if it was a great show, and it usually was.
Do you have a relationship with Howard now?
We haven’t spoken on the phone or gone out to dinner in over a year. I’ve asked him a few times… I finally stopped asking. I saw him at the Christmas party and said, “Yeah we’ll get together.” I don’t want to harass him, if he doesn’t want to go to dinner with me, you know. The thing is we have fun when we’re together. We’re compadres; we go back. Even if he goes on the air and says, “Oh I had to go to dinner with Jackie, it was the most horrible time of my life.” That’s bullshit. He always enjoys me and I always make him laugh. I made him laugh everyday I was there. It sounds like I’m being pompous but I’m not. If you’re a comedian or if you’re a funny person, some people you have their funny bone— and I had his funny bone. There’s some people I’ll never make laugh and there’s some people I can always make laugh because I know where to go.
You and Robin would butt heads on the show. Did you two have trouble getting along?
I always figure there’s a problem in my personality if I’m having trouble getting along with somebody. People say, “Oh you and Robin hate each other.” She was like my sister. We were pals. They sent me a clip of her last week when I was going to have Pat Cooper on my show, where it sounded like she wanted to murder me. But I have no animosity towards her at all. I love her. I don’t know whether she’s doing shtick or… I think she’s angry because she thought I was trying to wreck our livelihood by leaving the show.
And I wasn’t at all. And not only that, if me leaving was going to wreck our livelihood… Why the fuck… You can’t have it both ways. Either “He’s gone, who gives a shit,” or “We need him, give him a few dollars.” And the truth is I was making a lot of money and I just asked for more. But I’m allowed to. You’re allowed to, that’s not saying, “Fuck you” to the fans, that’s not saying “Fuck you” to Howard, that’s not saying “Fuck you” to K-Rock, that’s saying “I’m worth a little more, can you pay me a little more?”
What was the show like off the air?
We were all pals. It was like any work place. It was relaxed and fine and fun. Sometimes more fun than others. Nothing changed, I mean on the air was not a lot different than off the air. To this day, when they say, “Fred and Robin, they’re being so mean to you,” in my mind I’m like, “They’re creating that for the show,” I hope. I know in my heart I know they’re fucking around, but you hear enough of it from people saying, “Oh no it doesn’t sound like they’re fooling around.” I mean I was there for a long time and I know it’s shtick for the air, but then I even heard how venomous they were towards me and I don’t know whether they’re trying to get a rise out of me or what. It just drives everybody crazy, the fact that you keep saying “I love em, whatever they want to do.”
I love the fact that I got a show on Howard 101 and what can I do? I’d love more time for my show, sure. I told Howard I’d be glad to come back on the show if he wanted me, and they have no interest in that, but there’s no animosity. People say, “Jackie, what are you doing? Why don’t you go back on the show?” It’s not my call. I had fun when I was there, I always had fun when I was there. I know I’m going to be taking to task for this, for what I’m doing right here, and I don’t think I’ve said a negative thing. But it’s not like I’m being careful not to say anything negative, I just don’t have that in my soul. I know that sounds crazy. It’s a very strange situation.
You know, I haven’t even been on the show in like… I don’t know if it’s been a year, I don’t know how long, it’s been a long time. Because I know I wanted to go on to promote my new comedy album Snart, and I think that’s been out for a year. And they didn’t want me on because I had just been on, but I’m promoting a CD. But they say, “Well you’re not that good a guest,” “You’re not that famous.” I don’t know what the reason is, but I always thought the listeners enjoyed it when I came on, that it was interesting to people. I haven’t asked to come on in a long time and they haven’t asked me, so who knows why?
It’s hard for them to be mean to me when I’m sitting there laughing and smiling and telling them I love them. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to hate me so much. I don’t think. I was saying something to somebody the other day, I said “You know, I don’t know what it is between me and Howard and Robin and Gary and Fred, I don’t know whether it’s hate, or love, or animosity, or whatever it is I don’t know what it is, but there’s something if it’s 10 years later and there’s still this much of an issue.” You break up with a girlfriend, you’re not still as crazed or infuriated or as in love or as hurt or as angry… The whole thing has not lost any steam at all, or am I crazy?
What was your relationship with Fred like?
People just say that he’s rough to me on the air. But I saw him at the Christmas party and he loves me. And he’s a guy who’s just really funny and really fun. And me and him were very close. We created a lot of stuff together. I think they’re all angry at me for leaving but I didn’t leave them high and dry, I did it as professionally as anybody could. I’ve never heard tape of Fred on the air being mean to me or anything. But the thing they sent me of Robin and Howard, they just went off on me like I was booking Pat Cooper on my show just to cause trouble, which was the furthest thing from the truth.
You can check out Jackie on Monday, Aug. 22 Jackie at The Surflight Theatre in Beach Haven, NJ at 8 PM. You can listen to Jackie’s Joke Hunt on Sirius XM’s Howard 101 Tuesday’s at 7 pm. Call Jackie’s Dial-a-joke 516-922-9463 to hear some jokes from the Jokeman. Check out his website Jokeland.com. Aldo, Jackie invites you to e-mail him to say hello or even argue about anything he said in this interview: email@example.com. |
The affiliate marketing industry is only continuing to grow. It is huge. As more and more people move their spending online, as more and more people become aware of affiliate marketing, people naturally are looking for affiliate marketing training programs/software/help.
There are a lot of very legitimate companies, brands and people within the affiliate marketing space. Unfortunately there are also a lot of affiliate marketing scams out there as well. This is the natural process
(1) Upsell Funnels.
Affiliate Marketers reason with themselves saying that it is “normal” and “industry status quo” to offer upsells to people within their programs. They compare it to the like of McDonalds asking, “do you want fries with that”.
The problem is though that you are getting part of the puzzle, not the entire thing and in order to build the entire puzzle you need to keep spending more and more money. An upsell to get another program that you “need”, an upsell to get websites/hosting, an upsell to get a tool, and upsell to get support.
Shouldn’t all of this stuff be included in the actual product itself? I believe so. Instead of creating one quality product that includes everything, you have folks selling 4-5 lower quality products/services that makes up something decent (if you are prepared to buy everything).
It is one of the most common affiliate marketing scams and one that is taking place literally everywhere. If you pay for a product and the first thing they want you to do is pay for another product, run for the hills.
(2) Companies Selling Your Information to Solicitors.
Some of the biggest name gurus have been caught doing this and it is still going on. You purchase a product through one company/person, perhaps this could be a low ticket purchase.
The next thing they do is hand over your details to an agency that will solicit mentorship type programs to you(usually several $1,000) and pressure you into buying into them. They take the approach that they are “involved” with the company you made the initial purchase from the legitimize the offer.
The owner of the initial product gets a cut. So does the company that has been given your information and sold you on the mentoring (usually a 50/50 split).
Be careful about this happening and if you ever receive a call from a company trying to sell you mentoring or any type of related service, do yourself a huge favor and hang up!
(3) Affiliate Programs That Don’t Pay.
Yes, believe it or not there are still companies out there that will offer you an affiliate program, allow you to make sales and then when it comes time to paying you, they make it next to impossible.
I personally have only had this happen a few times in my 14 years online, but it is something that you should be aware of can happen. In fact I was owed $11,500 for two years before a company finally ponied up and paid the outstanding commissions (was a voIP Internet phone company).
Also, on occasion the reason the company will not be able to pay their commissions is because they end up going out of business. Make sure that you know the track record of the company before you get too involved with them.
(4) Products With No Product.
There are many programs out there these days that are claiming to be affiliate marketing opportunities when in actuality their product is based on promoting the very same product, without any actual tangible services involved.
These are very “pyramid like” and they are becoming more common places as the MLM world tries to head into the affiliate marketing space and try to create “legitimate” services. Unfortunately these are built to make the founders and the early adopters rich and rely on other people “losing” money in order to work.
If you join a product for the sole purpose of promoting that product and you are getting the people that you promote that product to, to do the exact same thing…then you are part of a program that is operating in the shape of triangle.
If you are involved in a program that relies on you buying into the program, upgrading to more expensive tiers, and then promoting the same program to others, run for the hills.
(5) High Ticket Programs
Paying a lot for something doesn’t make it a scam. Paying too much for something and taking advantage of people’s “hope” and financial vulnerabilities is. There are many companies out there that claim the only way to build an ultra successful business online is through selling LESS product at a much HIGHER price.
The logic is that it is easier to get 10 people to buy something at $1,000 than it is to sell 1,000 items at $10. The logic also is that if you have fewer customers, these companies have fewer people to “muffle” from their complaints.
At the end of the day you are not getting any more value by spending $2,000-3,000 on a program that you are $20-30 typically, other than the perceived value might be higher for you because you paid WAY TO MUCH.
Some of the most common high ticket programs these days are:
- High Ticket Mentoring
- High Ticket Courses
- High Ticket Masterminds
- High Ticket Conferences
Never be lead to believe that because you are paying lots for something, it is going to be of higher value in the affiliate marketing industry. Quite the contrary. You are likely being scammed if you are paying several thousands for information in this industry.
(6) Get My Book Free, Just Pay the Shipping.
You have likely seen these offers out there. You buy a book that a company/author has published. They claim
These sorts of offers have been in the affiliate/internet marketing space for many years. You need to think to yourself though, what reason would lead someone to write a book, spend the money/time publishing it, only to give it away for free?
First, they want to be able to tout the “sales” of their book. Although these are ‘artificially’ generated sales in a sense, these companies want to be able to use their “top seller” status for their book even though they gave it away for free.
Second, there is no money in them giving away their book. They will set up shipping at a price point that covers the cost of publishing their books. They are going to use your mailing information and your contact details to present you with other offers. Often times these are in the $1,000’s. Often times there are instant upsells and OTO (one time offers) as well.
Lastly, these books are often times overtly promotional for the companies respective brand, products and services that they offer.
Be careful and if you ever see an offer like this in the affiliate marketing or internet marketing industry, question the motives. They are usually to turn YOU into a profit engine for their company by selling much more expensive stuff for you.
Thankfully, There is Hope For Affiliate Marketing.
In is not all bad, in fact it is mostly “good” in the affiliate marketing industry.
Where there is money to be made, there are people that are trying to take advantage of others though. That is the unfortunate part of the business world. However, not all companies operate their business in this way and there are a lot of “shining stars” within the affiliate marketing world and people that truly care, that push the industry in a positive direction, and then continue to work to evolve and truly help folks within this space.
There are A LOT of legitimate affiliate programs. Do your due diligence, research a program before you join and if the product is legitimate and they have a good track record, chances are the affiliate program is legit.
There are a lot of legitimate affiliate networks. To name a few, cj.com, shareasale.com, amazon associates, and the ebay affiliate network. There are literally 100’s of affiliate networks out there, many of which are high quality and you usually do not have to worry about
There are a A LOT of legitimate affiliate marketing training programs. I have personally been helping people for close to 11 years in this space. If you ever need a hand, I can coach you personally within the Wealthy Affiliate community (where you have everything you need to create, grow and manage your business online). No upsells. No high ticket. Just straight up training, tools, websites, hosting, support and networking
You can check out the other quality programs that I recommend in the industry under “The Good” section in my top menu.
There are a lot of legitimate affiliate marketing tools. These range from stats tools like Google Analytics (which is completely free), to keyword research platforms like Jaaxy.com, Moz.com and SEMrush.com.
And there are a lot of people that care your affiliate marketing business. There are lots of good guys in the industry. A good way to determine this is if you actually get a response from the founders of the company and they are not constantly blasting you with “one way messages” (with little to no response to the feedback).
So although there are a lot of scams in the affiliate marketing industry, there are a lot of programs that will truly help you and your business. The opportunity within the affiliate marketing space only continues to grow with each day that passes. You can literally promote MILLIONS of different products as an affiliate and carve out your business within any niche that you want.
There is hope.
Before I leave you today, I want to open the communication with you here. If you have any affiliate marketing experiences that have left you feeling as though you have just been “scammed”, please leave them below. Let’s start a discussion and keep the affiliate marketing industry a safe place for all of us to co-exist! |
Chapter 140 - Weighing One's Decision
Decisions, decisions! Qi Zhen emperor has to weigh his decision. If Qin Shiyu was the first person to push him into a dilemma, Ji Yunshu could be considered the second person. Presenting such a condition and wanting to negotiate with him about unsealing the coffins for the Imperial Duke case in front of so many people were undoubtedly a resounding slap to his face. ‘How impudent!’ However, he was the one who trapped himself in this situation. If he didn’t agree with Ji Yunshu, wouldn’t his supremacy as the emperor be shaken? He pushed the missing girls case to Ji Yunshu but wouldn’t allow her to unseal the coffins to investigate the Imperial Duke case. Wouldn’t that seem as if he was blatantly establishing a double standard?! “You want us to agree to open the victims’ coffins for the Imperial Duke case?” confirmed Qi Zhen emperor.“Yes, your Majesty.”Qi Zhen emperor’s complexion darkened. He lightly pat his thighs with both of his hands before solemnly stating, “It appeared that Qin Shiyu is the start of everything.”Ji Yunshu didn’t confront the emperor’s supreme authority head-on. Her tone was subdued as she spoke, “If your Majesty feels that this humble one’s condition is inappropriate, you can consider that I did not speak of it.”..........
‘How amusing!’ The emperor wasn’t an idiot. He understood the reason why Ji Yunshu so readily retreated. He chuckled while saying, “Fine, we agree with your condition. If you can solve the missing girls case, we will send a decree allowing you to excavate and open those coffins. However, for the five coffins of the Imperial Duke’s family, since they were already placed inside the imperial tomb, we will not allow you to move them. If you want to unseal their coffins, you will need to go into the tomb on Lin mountain.”“Many thanks your Majesty.” Ji Yunshu bowed to the emperor.Qi Zhen emperor promptly waved his hand. “Alright, today is Concubine Xiao’s birthday. Let’s not discuss this matter anymore.”Ji Yunshu got up and returned to her place. Meanwhile, the dancers returned to the stage, and the hall was full of festivity again. From the beginning, Ji Yunshu remained extremely quiet and aloof.
Jing Rong slightly leaned toward her and whispered, “You’re really not afraid that the emperor will order your death?”Ji Yunshu didn’t shy away from speaking the truth, “I’m afraid!”“Then why did you…”“If I didn’t take this gamble, how would I know he will agree or not? Besides, if the emperor really wanted to behead me, he would be known as a despotic ruler, an infamy he didn’t want to bear.”Jing Rong frowned. “These two words shouldn’t be spoken randomly.”“What two words?”“Despotic ruler.”“Pfft!” Ji Yunshu lowered her laugh. Her mouth was arched, and she couldn’t reply. Jing Rong’s face pulled away. This woman always pulled him into unexpected situations. He hummed in a low voice before sitting straight like before.Further away, Jing Yi was inwardly sighing and shaking his head. ‘Ji Yunshu?’ “This person is indeed interesting!”
At this moment, Jing Xuan came in and silently went to sit next to Ji Yunshu. Her exquisite face moved in front of Ji Yunshu. She pulled on Ji Yunshu’s sleeve to get the latter’s attention while showing an expression full of curiosity and adoration. Jing Xuan asked, “Hey, who are you?”Ji Yunshu squinted her eyes as she looked at Jing Xuan. ‘This girl, what does she want?’ “Princess should sit a bit further away from me Afterall, men and women have to keep their distance.”“How do you know that I am a princess?”
Ji Yunshu would be an idiot if she didn’t realize the other was a princess. Ji Yunshu pursed her lips but didn’t reply to the question. However, Jing Xuan was someone who loved to pester people. She didn’t stop pulling on Ji Yunshu’s sleeves, sticking to her like gum.
Jing Xuan continued to talk, “I was outside earlier, but I heard what you said. You really can discover the truth behind the Lin Capital case? Fourteen years ago, when I was still small, I heard that numerous people tried to break that case but to no avail. Do you believe that you have the ability to solve it? Also, I heard that several palace maids spoke about the missing girls case. Supposedly, the investigation has been going on for a while now, but they still have no clues. I hope you’re not overestimating your ability, right? Be careful or my imperial father will chop off your head.”“...”“Hey, this Princess is speaking to you.”“This humble one is listening,” Ji Yunshu replied indifferently.Jing Xuan bit her red lips while supporting her cheek with her hands. She carefully observed Ji Yunshu. Suddenly, she couldn’t help but reach for Ji Yunshu’s mask. Her hand had yet to touch the mask when it was seized by Jing Rong. Timely grabbing his sister’s wrist, Jing Rong coldly glanced at her. “Go back to your seat.”“Imperial Brother.”“Hurry!”Her whole appearance exuded anger. Then, she attentively looked at Ji Yunshu again before she unwillingly returned to her seat. However, her gaze which was filled with curiosity never left Ji Yunshu.
After the dancing and singing performance had ended, everyone ceremoniously presented their presents. Prince Yi’s gift was the most expensive one with an Eight Immortals tree which took five years to sprout and five years to grow. It is said that he had spent six months to search for those trees. Of course, this gift had made her ladyship, Concubine Xiao, very happy. The emperor also bestowed upon her many gold and silver. Thus, Concubine Xiao’s birthday banquet could be said to have ended satisfactorily.
After returning to the Rong estate, Jing Rong grabbed Ji Yunshu’s hand. He opened his mouth and wanted to ask something, but after mulling it over for a bit, he only said, “Never mind.” He let her go before declaring, “You have resolved a difficult problem for me. I owe you this one.”“Since I helped you solve a difficult problem concerning the Lin Capital case, can you also help me resolve my problem?”“Your words always leave me speechless,” lightly sighed Jing Rong. “Tomorrow, the capital governor will meet us to give the report on the missing girls case, so you should rest properly tonight.” “Hmm.”“Rest assured that I will help you with this case.”“Hmm.”Jing Rong stared at her, but immediately afterward, he left without looking back. Ji Yunshu went back inside her courtyard and saw that Wei Yi was already asleep. She washed her face and went to bed.The next day, the complete information on the missing girls case was personally delivered to the Rong estate by the capital governor. Since the case had no lead for the past two months, the capital governor was more than happy to throw that hot potato to someone else. A big pile of documents related to the case was placed on Ji Yunshu’s table while the capital governor clasped his hands, politely greeting Ji Yunshu. “I heard that Teacher Ji is an outstanding talent which earned you Prince Rong’s admiration. You certainly are outstanding. What you said yesterday during the banquet had also earned my admiration!”“Capital governor, your words are too heavy. This humble one is only an ordinary person. This big praise, I cannot bear it.”“Of course, you can bear it. Teacher Ji is recognized by Prince Rong, and you even got the conditional approval of the emperor to unseal the coffins for the Imperial Duke case. These prove that you are a model for the younger generation. This Official rarely admires anyone, but Teacher Ji deserves my respect.”
“I don’t dare.” She really doesn’t know how to refute this man, so she politely smiled and quickly changed the topic. “What’s the progress of the missing girls case?”
The capital governor awkwardly smiled before shaking his head.
Ji Yunshu didn’t ask any further. ‘Forget it.’
The capital governor was busy with many matters; thus, he didn’t stay long as he hurriedly departed.
After he left, Ji Yunshu flipped through some of the documents. Everything was meticulously compiled. She could see from which family the missing girls came from, their ages, and their complete profiles. The information was very thorough. She closed the document and threw it aside. “Everything is well written!” The words she spoke were full of sarcasm.The fact remained that they couldn’t do the job. Since they couldn’t handle the field, everything was compiled on paper which caused people to get headaches when reading it. If this was the modern times and she encountered such a government official, it could be predicted that everyone in the whole country would want to rebel against him.Suddenly, she recalled Magistrate Liu. ‘At least, that man has the common people in mind.’
At this instant, Wei Yi came in with a plucked plum blossom in his hand. “Shu’er.” He called her.Ji Yunshu who was sitting in front of her desk lifted her eyes and looked at him. “What is it?”“Didn’t you promise me that you will bring me to eat meat? The meat here is not tasty. Can you bring me out to eat meat?”“Right now?”“Uh-huh!” He heavily nodded.
She looked outside. There was no rain, and the weather was relatively good. Since she did promise Wei Yi to bring him to eat meat when they reached the capital, she cannot go against her words. “Sure.”
Grenn's Rants Corner
I put the teaser for the next chapter just to prepare everyone mentally. =D
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- Research article
- Open Access
- Open Peer Review
Emergence and evolution of internationally disseminated cephalosporin-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae clones from 1995 to 2005 in Japan
BMC Infectious Diseasesvolume 15, Article number: 378 (2015)
Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains with resistance to extended-spectrum cephalosporins (ESCs), last options for first-line monotherapy of gonorrhoea, likely emerged and initially disseminated in Japan, followed by international transmission. In recent years, multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) ST1901 and N. gonorrhoeae multiantigen sequence typing (NG-MAST) ST1407 isolates with the mosaic penicillin-binding protein (PBP) 2 XXXIV have accounted for most ESC resistance globally. Our aim was to elucidate the initial emergence and transmission of ESC-resistant strains by detailed examination of N. gonorrhoeae isolates from 1995 to 2005 in Kanagawa, Japan.
N. gonorrhoeae isolates were examined phenotypically (n = 690) and genetically (n = 372) by agar dilution method (cefixime, ceftriaxone and ciprofloxacin), penA gene sequencing, MLST and NG-MAST.
Already in 1995, one cefixime-resistant (CFM-R) isolate was found, which is the first CFM-R isolate described globally. After 1996, the prevalence of CFM-R and CFM-decreased susceptibility (CFM-DS) isolates significantly increased, with the peak resistance level in 2002 (57.1 % CFM-R). In 1997–2002, the CFM-R MLST ST7363 strain type with the mosaic PBP 2 X was predominant among CFM-R/DS isolates. The first CFM-R/DS MLST ST1901 clone(s), which became the predominant CFM-R/DS strain type(s) already in 2003–2005, possessed the mosaic PBP 2 X, which was possibly originally transferred from the MLST ST7363 strains, and subsequently acquired the mosaic PBP 2 XXXIV. The first MLST ST1901 and NG-MAST ST1407 isolate was identified in Kanagawa already in 2003.
The two main internationally spread cefixime-resistant gonococcal clones, MLST ST7363 and ST1901 (NG-MAST ST1407 most frequent internationally) that also have shown their capacity to develop high-level ceftriaxone resistance (superbugs H041 and F89), likely emerged, evolved and started to disseminate in the metropolitan area, including Kanagawa, in Japan, which was followed by global transmission.
Gonorrhoea, aetiological agent Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is a major public health concern worldwide, and in 2008 the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated 106 million new cases among adults globally . Since the introduction of antimicrobials for treatment of gonorrhoea in the mid-1930s, N. gonorrhoeae has developed resistance to all previously used first-line antimicrobials for empirical treatment of gonorrhoea. In many countries, the extended-spectrum cephalosporins (ESCs) are the only remaining options for empirical antimicrobial monotherapy [2–7]. Disquietingly, treatment failures with cefixime (CFM) have been reported in several countries [3, 8, 9], and rare cases of treatment failures with the more potent ceftriaxone (CRO) have been verified in a few countries [3, 7, 10–12]. Most of these ESC treatment failures have been caused by multidrug resistant (MDR) N. gonorrhoeae strains belonging to the multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) sequence types (ST) ST7363 and ST1901 [3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13]. Among the ESC-resistant MLST ST1901 gonococcal strains, isolates assigned to the N. gonorrhoeae multiantigen sequence typing (NG-MAST) ST1407 have been the most frequent [3, 4, 8, 9, 12]. Furthermore, MLST ST7363 (NG-MAST ST4220) and MLST ST1901 (NG-MAST ST1407) strains have also shown their capacity to develop high-level in vitro resistance to CRO. These types of strains, which has been referred to as “superbugs”, were isolated in Japan (“H041”), France (“F89”) and Spain (“F89”) from 2009 to 2011 [7, 14, 15], which might represent the initial phase of dissemination of gonococcal strains with high-level CRO resistance. The main ESC-resistance mechanism in these high-level CRO-resistant gonococcal isolates was novel mosaic penA gene alleles, encoding the ESC-target penicillin-binding protein 2 (PBP 2) [3, 7, 14, 15]. ESC-resistant MLST ST7363 and ST1901 N. gonorrhoeae strains have been frequently associated with the mosaic PBP 2 X and XXXIV, respectively [3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13].
Over the past two decades, gonococcal strains with decreased susceptibility and resistance to ESCs have been suspected to have emerged in Japan and subsequently spread internationally [2–4]. For example, from 1995 to 2000, in Fukuoka, Japan, the MIC peak of CFM and CRO in gonococcal isolates increased from 0.008 mg/L to 0.25 mg/L and from 0.015 mg/L to 0.064 mg/L, respectively . Furthermore, from 1999 to 2002 in six hospitals in central Japan, the proportion of gonococcal isolates with decreased susceptibility or resistance to CFM (MIC ≥ 0.5 mg/L) and CRO (MIC ≥ 0.5 mg/L) increased from 0 % to 30.2 % and from 0 % to 0.9 %, respectively . The first treatment failures with CFM were also described in Japan, i.e. in the late 1990s and early 2000s [18, 19]. Accordingly, already in the late 1990s ESC-resistant N. gonorrhoeae strains emerged and were disseminated in Japan. However, the genetic relatedness between the ESC-resistant N. gonorrhoeae strains spreading in Japan 1–2 decades ago and the ESC-resistant gonococcal strains currently spreading internationally has not been investigated appropriately. It is crucial to understand the emergence and spread of ESC- and MDR-resistant gonococcal strains globally in order to develop and implement evidence-based strategies for prevention and control of gonorrhoea.
The aim of this study was to examine 690 (372 genetically) N. gonorrhoeae isolates cultured from 1995 to 2005 in Japan (the initial phase of emergence and dissemination of ESC-resistant strains) using antimicrobial susceptibility testing, penA gene sequencing, MLST and NG-MAST.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates
In total, 690 N. gonorrhoeae isolates, cultured at the Kanagawa Prefectural Institute of Public Health, Japan from 1995 to 2005, were included. N. gonorrhoeae isolates were cultured, species identified and stored as described previously [20, 21]. All examined gonococcal isolates were cultured and preserved as part of the routine diagnostics (standard care) and no patient identification information was available in the present study. Accordingly, ethical approval was not required for this study.
Antimicrobial susceptibility testing
The MICs (mg/L) of CFM, CRO and ciprofloxacin were determined for all isolates immediately after initial isolation by the agar dilution method, according to the instructions from the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) . However, the MIC values for all the isolates with resistance (R) or decreased susceptibility (DS) to CFM (CFM-R/DS) were also verified in the present study by repeated testing using the identical agar dilution method. The resistance breakpoints stated by the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST; www.eucast.org) were applied. However, additionally CFM-DS and CRO-DS was defined as MIC = 0.125 mg/L, because treatment failures with both CFM and CRO have been caused by gonococcal isolates with this MIC [3, 8, 10–12]. The N. gonorrhoeae international reference strains WHO A, B and E were used for quality control.
The bacterial isolates were suspended in TE buffer (10 mM Tris, 1 mM EDTA, pH 8.0) and boiled for 10 min. After centrifugation to remove cell debris, the supernatant was promptly used as DNA template for the PCRs.
penA gene sequencing
The penA gene was PCR amplified and sequenced using the previously described primers penA_F and penA_R . Briefly, the PCR mixtures were incubated for 2 min at 96 °C, followed by 30 cycles of 10 s at 96 °C, 10 s at 65 °C and 2 min at 72 °C. The PCR products were subsequently purified with the ExoSAP IT kit (GE Healthcare Limited, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom). Both DNA strands of the PCR products were sequenced with an ABI BigDye Terminator cycle sequencing kit (version 3.1) on an ABI 3130 xl sequencer, in accordance with the instructions from the manufacturer (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). The penA gene that encodes the PBP 2 X sequence variant has a mosaic-like structure that includes regions relatively similar to the corresponding regions of the penA genes of N. perflava, N. sicca and N. cinerea . Subsequently, many different mosaic PBP 2 sequences have been described, which have up to 60 to 70 amino acid changes compared to a wild type PBP 2 sequence . In the present study, all these sequences are named as mosaic PBP 2 sequence variants and wild type PBP 2 (e.g., GenBank accession no. M32091) and highly similar sequences are defined as non-mosaic PBP 2 sequences.
The nucleotide sequences of penA determined in the present study have been deposited in the DDBJ sequence library and assigned the accession numbers LC055782 and LC055783.
Molecular epidemiological characterisation
Molecular epidemiological characterisation by means of MLST (based on partial alleles of seven loci, abcZ, adk, aroE, fumC, gdh, pdhC and pgm) and NG-MAST (based on partial alleles of porB and tbpB) was performed as described elsewhere . New alleles (and STs) identified in this study were named and deposited in the MLST and NG-MAST database, respectively (Tables 1 and 2). The diversity index for the MLST and NG-MAST was calculated as described earlier . UPGMA trees based on partial porB gene sequences (490 bp), i.e. obtained in the NG-MAST, were generated using the MEGA 4 software.
The distribution of MLST ST7363 in CFM-S and CFM-R/DS strains was analysed by Fisher’s exact test.
Emergence of cephalosporin resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Japan
Already in 1995, among 34 N. gonorrhoeae isolates one CFM-R isolate (MIC = 0.25 mg/L), which is the first CFM-R isolate ever described, and one CFM-DS isolate (MIC = 0.125 mg/L), were identified. No CFM-R/DS isolates were found in 1996. However, from 1997 (one CFM-R isolate with MIC = 0.25 mg/L) and onwards, the prevalence of CFM-R and CFM-DS isolates significantly increased, with the peak resistance level in 2002, where 57.1 % of the examined isolates were CFM-R. The first isolate with CRO-DS was identified in 2000. CRO-DS isolates were subsequently found annually in 2001–2005, with a peak prevalence of 29.1 % in 2003 (Table 3).
penA (encoding PBP 2) sequences of CFM-R/DS Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates in Japan
The CFM-R isolate from 1995 was not possible to recover. However, the CFM-DS isolate from 1995 contained the non-mosaic PBP 2 XIII [7, 25], whereas the CFM-R isolate from 1997 possessed the mosaic PBP 2 X [3, 7, 13]. These two isolates from 1995 to 1997 were considered the original CFM-R/DS isolates in the present study.
Among the CFM-R and CFM-DS isolates from 1998 to 2005 (n = 166), 149 (90 %) isolates were possible to analyse genetically; of these 149, 12 PBP 2 amino acid sequence variants were found. Nine were mosaic PBP 2 and three were non-mosaic PBP 2 sequence variants (VII, XI, XIII). The most prevalent sequence type was the mosaic PBP 2 X (86.6 %, 129/149). The additionally identified mosaic PBP 2 sequence variants were variants of X, i.e. with single amino acid substitutions (XXIV, XXX, XXXI), XXVI, XXXIV, and three XXXIV variants with single amino acid substitutions (Fig. 1). Most noteworthy, the first CFM-DS isolates with the mosaic PBP 2 XXXIV (n = 2) were identified already in 2001. All the non-mosaic PBP 2 sequence variants contained the A501V alteration and additionally alterations in G542 or P551 (Fig. 1, Table 4).
MLST analysis of CFM-R/DS Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates in Japan
In total, 370 isolates from 1998 to 2005 (only CFM-R/DS isolates from 2003 to 2005) were analysed using MLST; all CFM-R/DS isolates are summarised in Table 4. As shown in Fig. 2, among all isolates 52 MLST types were revealed (diversity index = 0.825). Despite that the CFM-R/DS isolates belonged to 17 MLST STs, the diversity index of the CFM-R/DS isolates (DI = 0.539) was substantially lower than that of CFM-S isolates (DI = 0.901).
During 1998–2002, MLST ST7363 was the most prevalent ST in both CFM-S (40/221, 19.9 %) and CFM-R/DS strains (53/73, 72.6 %), but the proportion was significantly higher in the CFM-R/DS isolates (P < 0.01). During 2003–2005, 61.3 % (46/76) of the CFM-R/DS isolates were assigned as MLST ST7363. During 1998–2005, all except six CFM-R/DS ST7363 isolates possessed the mosaic PBP 2 X. The remaining six isolates contained the mosaic PBP 2 XXXIV (n = 3), XXX (X-A501V; n = 2) and XXXIV-A486V (n = 1), indicating an evolution of PBP 2 X or that the new PBP 2 mosaic structures developed during the dissemination of the CFM-R/DS ST7363 strains. However, 50 of the CFM-R/DS isolates were assigned as other MLST STs (n = 16) than ST7363. Six of these 16 MLST STs (ST1596, ST1600, ST7356, ST7827, ST10634 and ST11052) identified in 19 isolates were single locus variants of ST7363. All these 19 isolates had the mosaic PBP 2 X. Another putative MLST ST cluster that included CFM-R/DS isolates consisted of ST1579 (n = 1), ST1901 (n = 14), ST8153 (n = 1) and ST10631 (n = 1), which differed from ST7363 at 2, 3, 4 and 4 loci, respectively, suggesting that ST1901 and its single locus variants ST1579, ST8153 and ST10631 belong to a genetically different group from ST7363. Nevertheless, 12 (71 %) of these 17 isolates also possessed the mosaic PBP 2 X. Particularly noteworthy is that the proportion of MLST ST1901 isolates among the CFM-R/DS isolates significantly increased from 2.6 % (2/78) in 1998–2002 to 15.8 % (12/76) in 2003–2005. Furthermore, during 2003–2005, all three isolates possessing XXXIV or XXXIV-related PBP 2 sequences were assigned to MLST ST1901 (Table 4). One of these isolates (from 2003) was also assigned as NG-MAST ST1407 (porB908 and tbp110). This is the first isolate described worldwide of this MDR clone that has subsequently accounted for most of the reported ESC resistance globally [3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 24, 26].
NG-MAST analysis of CFM-R/DS Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates in Japan
As described above, isolates assigned as MLST ST7363 and containing the mosaic PBP 2 X were predominant among the CFM-R/DS isolates from 1998 to 2005. To further investigate the clonality of all the CFM-R/DS strains from 1995 to 2005 NG-MAST analysis was applied for the same 372 isolates (only CFM-R/DS isolates from 2003 to 2005). NG-MAST analysis revealed 194 STs and a high DI (0.988). Eighty-seven STs were identified among the CFM-R/DS isolates (DI: 0.976), showing that the CFM-R/DS strains have further evolved.
The CFM-DS isolate from 1995 was assigned as the NG-MAST ST4045 (porB2445 and tbpB29), which was not subsequently identified during 1997–2005. The CFM-R isolate from 1997 belonged to the NG-MAST ST4127 (porB2520 and tbpB10), which two CFM-R isolates were also assigned to in 1998. However, ST4127 isolates, even isolates with porB2520, were not found after 1998.
To describe to a great extent the evolution of the isolates examined in the present study the porB gene sequences in isolates from 1998 to 2005 (only CFM-R/DS isolates from 2003 to 2005; n = 370) were compared (Fig. 3). For comparison, the six major porB alleles from isolates cultured in Kyoto and Osaka from 2010 to 2012 (porB4, porB206, porB908, porB1059, porB1785 and porB2569) and porB254 and porB628, which were reported in CFM-R isolates in Sweden and the USA in 2002 and 2003 , respectively, were also included in the analysis (Fig. 3). Of these eight porB alleles, four of the porB alleles from the Kyoto and Osaka collection (porB4, porB206, porB908, porB1059) were also found in the present study. Seven clusters were generated by the porB sequences: clusters (CL) A-1, A-2, A-3, B-1, B-2, C and D (Fig. 3; Table 5). The CL A-1 cluster was the largest cluster, containing 56 porB alleles from 132 isolates. The CL A-1 cluster included porB2520, which was from the first putative CFM-R isolates found in 1997 and 1998. Sixty-six (66.7 %) of the 99 MLST ST7363 CFM-R/DS isolates from 1998 to 2005 had one of the CL A-1 porB sequences and 64 (64.6 %) had the mosaic PBP 2 X. Furthermore, 64.5 % (49/76) of all the CFM-R/DS isolates from 2003 to 2005 belonged to the CL A-1 cluster. As mentioned above, the CFM-R/DS isolates with porB2520 from 1997 to 1998 did not appear to be widely disseminated. Instead, isolates with other porB sequences, such as porB1059, porB917 and porB206 in the CL A-1 cluster, appeared to become dominant (Fig. 3).
The CL B-2 cluster contained 21 porB gene sequences. porB2465, found in three CFM-R isolates in 1998, belonged to this porB sequence cluster. In 1998–2002, 18 (34.0 %) of the 53 CFM-R/DS MLST ST7363 isolates had porB gene sequences in the CL B-2 cluster. However, in 2003–2005 only two (4.3 %) of the 46 CFM-R/DS MLST ST7363 isolates belonged to the CL B-2 porB sequence cluster. In contrast to the CFM-R/DS MLST ST7363 isolates, porB sequences from non-ST7363 CFM-R/DS isolates with the mosaic PBP 2 X were found in all seven porB sequence clusters (Fig. 3).
Among the CFM-R/DS isolates with PBP 2 non-X sequence variants, isolates with the non-mosaic PBP 2 VII, XI and XIII possessed porB2468 in CL A-1, porB822 in CL E and porB6704 in CL A-2, respectively. Four isolates with mosaic PBP 2 X-like sequence variants (XXIV (n = 1), XXX (n = 2) and XXXI (n = 1)) had three porB alleles: porB908 (CL B-1), porB709 (CL A-1) and porB2467 (CL A-2), respectively. All seven CFM-R/DS isolates with the mosaic PBP 2 XXXIV, which is now the most prevalent mosaic PBP 2 sequence variant in CFM-R/DS isolates globally [3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 24, 26], or XXXIV-like sequence variants possessed porB alleles in the CL B-1, i.e. porB908 (n = 5), porB2516 (n = 1) and porB2513 (n = 1). Among five CFM R/DS isolates possessing PBP 2 XXXIV or its relative with porB908, four belonged to MLST ST7363. However, most noteworthy is that the remaining isolate was assigned as MLST ST1901 and NG-MAST ST1407 (porB908 and tbpB110) and contained the PBP 2 XXXIV with an additional P551Q mutation. The por908 was, in general, the major porB of CFM-R/DS isolates belonging to the MLST ST1901. The MDR N. gonorrhoeae clone MLST ST1901, NG-MAST ST1407 with a PBP 2 mosaic XXXIV has accounted for most of the ESC resistance globally during the recent decade [3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 24, 26] and this clone has also shown its capacity to develop high-level ceftriaxone resistance, i.e., develop into a superbug such as F89 [14, 15].
Gonorrhoea and the high level of antimicrobial resistance in N. gonorrhoeae represent major public health concerns globally [1–6]. Treatment failures with the ESCs, the last remaining options for first-line empirical monotherapy of gonorrhoea, have been reported in several countries [3, 4, 7–12]. Most of these ESC treatment failures have been caused by MDR N. gonorrhoeae strains belonging to the MLST ST7363 and ST1901 [3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13]. Among the ESC-resistant MLST ST1901 gonococcal strains, isolates assigned as the NG-MAST ST1407 have been the most frequent worldwide [3, 4, 8, 9, 12], and this clone has also shown its capacity to develop high-level ceftriaxone resistance, i.e., develop into a superbug such as F89 [14, 15].
In the present study the initial emergence and dissemination of these internationally transmitted ESC-resistant gonococcal clones in Japan from 1995 to 2005 were investigated. We showed that the first CFM-R isolate was cultured as early as 1995 in the Kanagawa area, Japan, which is four years earlier than previously recorded. This CFM-R isolate (MIC = 0.25 mg/L) possessed a non-mosaic PBP 2 XIII sequence variant [7, 25], with the amino acid alterations A501V and P551S that increase the ESC MICs [3, 4, 24, 28, 29]. This first CFM-R strain did not appear to spread widely; however, two years later (in 1997) one CFM-R MLST ST7363 isolate with the mosaic PBP 2 X [3, 7, 13] was found. During 1998–2002, this was the predominant CFM-R/DS strain type in the Kanagawa area, which is a neighbouring area of Tokyo. In contrast, in 1998–2002 MLST ST1901 isolates accounted for 11 % (32/294) of the isolates, but only two were CFM-R. Furthermore, no isolate was typed as NG-MAST ST1407 and the two CFM-R MLST ST1901 isolates possessed the mosaic PBP 2 X, and not the nowadays frequent mosaic PBP 2 XXXIV [3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 24, 26]. This observation indicates that the CFM-R/DS MLST ST1901 clone(s) were originally possessing the mosaic PBP 2 X, which possibly was originally transferred from the MLST ST7363 strains spreading widely, and subsequently, acquired the mosaic PBP 2 XXXIV that presently is the most frequent PBP 2 sequence variant in ESC-R/DS MLST ST1901 and NG-MAST ST1407 isolates [3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 24, 26]. In the present study it was also shown that the first MLST ST1901 and NG-MAST ST1407 isolate was cultured already in 2003. This is substantially earlier than the previously first described NG-MAST ST1407 strain, which possessed the mosaic PBP 2 XXXIV, identified in the USA in 2008 . Since then, this strain type has been found to account for most of the ESC-R/DS isolates globally [3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 24, 26] and this clone has also shown its capacity to develop high-level ceftriaxone resistance, i.e., develop into a superbug such as F89 [14, 15]. All 11 CFM-R/DS isolates from 1997 to 1999 were assigned to MLST ST7363 (mosaic PBP 2 X), but the NG-MAST analysis revealed two major types of CFM-R/DS isolates, i.e. due to the diversification of the porB gene (porB2520 in CL A-1 and porB2465 in CL B-2). These two clones were considered to have emerged and started to disseminate in the Metropolitan area, including Kanagawa. Introduction from some other area(s) was highly unlikely because there is no recorded isolation of CFM-R gonococcal strains before 1999 in any other place. The reasons for the initial emergence of ESC-resistance in Kanagawa and in general gonococcal antimicrobial resistance in Japan have still not been completely resolved, however, they have been hypothesized elsewhere .
In general, during 1998–2002, the MLST ST7363 (31.6 %), ST7359 (13.9 %) and ST1901 (10.9 %) were the three most prevalent STs. During 2003–2005, the proportion of MLST ST1901 strains significantly increased, particularly among the CFM-R/DS isolates (from 2.6 % to 15.8 % of isolates). According to a recent study from 2012–2012 , these three MLST STs have remained the most prevalent MLST STs in the Kyoto/Osaka area; however, ST1901 has taken over as the significantly most prevalent ST (ST1901: 40.9 %, ST7359: 19.2 % and ST7363: 17.1 %). In the present study all 41 ST7359 isolates possessed NG-MAST tbpB241 and 90.2 % contained a porB sequence in CL C-1, including porB2569, which was also the major allele among the MLST ST7359 Kyoto/Osaka strains in 2010–2012 . Accordingly, MLST ST7359 strains have also been frequently isolated in many years. However, these strains have been highly susceptible to CFM and initially to also ciprofloxacin. In contrast, a major proportion of the MLST ST7363 and ST1901 strains have also been resistant to ciprofloxacin for decades. It is not evident whether CFM-R/DS acquired the ciprofloxacin-R phenotype, or vice versa, but these types of MDR strains had significant advantages, and accordingly, could rapidly and efficiently be disseminated, first locally in Japan and then globally.
The two main internationally spread cefixime-resistant gonococcal clones, MLST ST7363 and ST1901 (NG-MAST ST1407 most frequent internationally) that also have shown their capacity to develop high-level ceftriaxone resistance (superbugs H041 and F89 [7, 14, 15]), likely emerged, started to disseminate and evolved in the metropolitan area, including Kanagawa, in Japan, which was followed by global transmission. A grave concern is that we might face a similar scenario in the future, i.e. that strains with resistance to both ceftriaxone and azithromycin, which are today used widely internationally in dual antimicrobial treatment regimens [31, 32], start to spread. It is crucial to understand the emergence and spread of ESC- and MDR-resistant gonococcal strains globally to develop and implement evidence-based strategies for prevention and control of gonorrhoea.
World Health Organization (WHO). Global incidence and prevalence of selected curable sexually transmitted infections - 2008. Geneva, Switzerland; 2012. Available at: http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/rtis/2008_STI_estimates.pdf (Accessed: May 30, 2015).
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Ohnishi M, Golparian D, Shimuta K, Saika T, Hoshina S, Iwasaku K, et al. Is Neisseria gonorrhoeae initiating a future era of untreatable gonorrhea? Detailed characterization of the first strain with high-level resistance to ceftriaxone. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2011;55:3538–45.
Allen VG, Mitterni L, Seah C, Rebbapragada A, Martin IE, Lee C, et al. Neisseria gonorrhoeae treatment failure and susceptibility to cefixime in Toronto, Canada. JAMA. 2013;309:163–70.
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Read PJ, Limnios EA, McNulty A, Whiley D, Lahra MM. One confirmed and one suspected case of pharyngeal gonorrhoea treatment failure following 500 mg ceftriaxone in Sydney. Australia Sex Health. 2013;10:460–2.
Chen YM, Stevens K, Tideman R, Zaia A, Tomita T, Fairley CK, et al. Failure of ceftriaxone 500 mg to eradicate pharyngeal gonorrhoea. Australia J Antimicrob Chemother. 2013;68:1445–7.
Golparian D, Ohlsson A, Janson H, Lidbrink P, Richtner T, Ekelund O, et al. Four treatment failures of pharyngeal gonorrhoea with ceftriaxone (500 mg) or cefotaxime (500 mg), Sweden, 2013 and 2014. Euro Surveill. 2014;19(30):20862.
Ohnishi M, Watanabe Y, Ono E, Takahashi C, Oya H, Kuroki T, et al. Spread of a chromosomal cefixime-resistant penA gene among different Neisseria gonorrhoeae lineages. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2010;54:1060–7.
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Cámara J, Serra J, Ayats J, Bastida T, Carnicer-Pont D, Andreu A, et al. Molecular characterization of two high-level ceftriaxone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates detected in Catalonia, Spain. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2012;67:1858–60.
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Ito M, Yasuda M, Yokoi S, Ito S, Takahashi Y, Ishihara S, et al. Remarkable increase in central Japan in 2001–2002 of Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates with decreased susceptibility to penicillin, tetracycline, oral cephalosporins, and fluoroquinolones. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2004;48:3185–7.
Deguchi T, Yasuda M, Yokoi S, Ishida K, Ito M, Ishihara S, et al. Treatment of uncomplicated gonococcal urethritis by double-dosing of 200 mg cefixime at a 6-h interval. J Infect Chemother. 2003;9:35–9.
Yokoi S, Deguchi T, Ozawa T, Yasuda M, Ito S, Kubota Y, et al. Threat to cefixime treatment of gonorrhea. Emerg Infect Dis. 2007;13:1275–7.
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Yamai S, Obara Y, Nikkawa T, Shimoda Y, Miyamoto Y. Preservation of Neisseria gonorrhoeae by the gelatin-disc method. Br J Vener Dis. 1979;55:90–3.
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Ameyama S, Onodera S, Takahata M, Minami S, Maki N, Endo K, et al. Mosaic-like structure of penicillin-binding protein 2 gene (penA) in clinical isolates of Neisseria gonorrhoeae with reduced susceptibility to cefixime. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2002;46:3744–9.
Shimuta K, Unemo M, Nakayama S, Morita-Ishihara T, Dorin M, Kawahata T. Antimicrobial resistance and molecular typing of Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates in Kyoto and Osaka, Japan in 2010–2012 – intensified surveillance after identification of the first high-level ceftriaxone resistant strain H041. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2013;57:5225–32.
Whiley DM, Limnios EA, Ray S, Sloots TP, Tapsall JW. Diversity of penA alterations and subtypes in Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains from Sydney, Australia, that are less susceptible to ceftriaxone. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007;51:3111–6.
Chisholm SA, Unemo M, Quaye N, Johansson E, Cole MJ, Ison CA, et al. Molecular epidemiological typing within the European Gonococcal Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Programme reveals predominance of a multidrug-resistant clone. Euro Surveill. 2013;18:ii = 20358.
Lindberg R, Fredlund H, Nicholas R, Unemo M. Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates with reduced susceptibility to cefixime and ceftriaxone: Association with genetic polymorphisms in penA, mtrR, porB1b, and ponA. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007;51:2117–22.
Whiley DM, Goire N, Lambert SB, Ray S, Limnios EA, Nissen MD, et al. Reduced susceptibility to ceftriaxone in Neisseria gonorrhoeae is associated with mutations G542S, P551S and P551L in the gonococcal penicillin-binding protein 2. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2010;65:1615–8.
Tomberg J, Unemo M, Davies C, Nicholas RA. Molecular and structural analysis of mosaic variants of penicillin-binding protein 2 conferring decreased susceptibility to expanded-spectrum cephalosporins in Neisseria gonorrhoeae: role of epistatic mutations. Biochemistry. 2010;49:8062–70.
Pandori M, Barry PM, Wu A, Ren A, Whittington WL, Liska S, et al. Mosaic penicillin-binding protein 2 in Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates collected in 2008 in San Francisco. California Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2009;53:4032–4.
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Update to CDC’s Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines, 2010: Oral cephalosporins no longer a recommended treatment for gonococcal infections. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2012;61:590–4.
Powell AJ, Tomberg J, Deacon AM, Nicholas RA, Davies C. Crystal structures of penicillin-binding protein 2 from penicillin-susceptible and -resistant strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae reveal an unexpectedly subtle mechanism for antibiotic resistance. J Biol Chem. 2009;284:1202–12.
We are very grateful to Tomoko Shimamura, Kazuma Suzuki, Tasuku Suzuki, Maya Sugii, Ryota Kumagai and Yuki Yamamura for their technical assistance. The present work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan (H24-Shinko-Ippan-004) and Research Program on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases from Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, AMED (15fk0108014h0001).
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
YW, MU and MO designed and initiated the study. KS, YW, SIN, TIM and TK collected isolates and/or performed all the laboratory analyses. KS, MU and MO analysed and interpreted all the data, and wrote a first draft of the paper. All authors read, commented on and approved the final manuscript. |
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The cost of Brake Pads and Discs will likely differ greatly depending on which Ford model you have. Combining the varying cost of parts and the difference in labour hours needed to complete the job, different Ford models will cost different amounts for Brake Pads and Discs. Take a look below at the average quote for Brake Pads and Discs on WhoCanFixMyCar.com for some of the top Ford models.
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This table uses data from quotes provided on WhoCanFixMyCar.com between 27/05/2019 and 25/08/2019.
A brake, or brake pad is a system that safely enables a car to stop. Brakes get rid of the kinetic energy that helps the car move, which is done by using force of friction to convert this motion of energy into heat. Your car's braking system is made up of the following components: Brake discs, which spin with your car's wheels, Brake Pads, which push on the discs to slow the car, Brake Calipers which hold, and push, the pads, Brake Lines (or 'Hoses') which carry Brake Fluid, and your Brake Master Cylinder and Servo, which work to amplify the effort you use when pushing the brake pedal. Wear or failure of any one of these components will cause braking problems, requiring repair.
Modern cars have brakes on all four wheels which are operated by a hydraulic system and are made up of several components all of which are subject to stress which could result in breakage.
The front brakes in a car are typically the ones which play the greater part in bringing a car to stop as the weight of the car is thrown forward every time the vehicle comes to a stop.
There are different systems used for braking from one car to the next which suits the needs of the vehicle size and function.
The common hydraulic system uses fluid to apply pressure to pistons in the car close to its wheels to bring the car to a halt.
Some cars also have power brake assistance which helps to reduce the amount of effort required to apply stopping power.
If you need to have your brakes repaired there are several issues that could have caused the problem and several things that could be affected.
If you suspect you need your brakes repaired but your car is still drivable, there are some symptoms which could give you clues as to what the problem is.
The brakes are often the noisiest part of a car if there is an issue which means you should be able to hear a problem which cannot be said of many other broken car parts. Therefore, noticing the need for a car brake repair should be obvious. But you can check faulty brake symptoms here.
Brake pads are a critical component of a car and a vehicle cannot come to a halt without them functioning properly. Brake pads are fitted to the brake calipers which push the pads into the brake discs which are fitted to a car wheel. When a car is moving, the pads grip the discs to slow down the wheel and thus slow the car down.
A high amount of heat energy is created from the resulting friction as explained above and over time, this will wear brake pads down.
Brake pad replacement is a common job, the work to remove a worn-down-set is not complex so if you require a brake pad replacement, the repair will not be a lengthy one.
If you would like to understand how to tell when your brakes need servicing read our dedicated guide.
Brake discs are fitted to the car wheel itself and they are gripped by the brake pads.
Brake discs replacement is more expensive; the parts are more expensive than pads. Often pads are placed at the same time the discs are replaced.
If a mechanic advises you to replace your brake discs, they will likely suggest replacing the pads at the same time due to a the low cost of the part and the little extra labour time needed.
The cost of brake pad replacement may vary depending on the car make and model. This is because there are different sizes of brake pads and the cost increases as they get bigger. For example, a Land Rover will require a bigger set of brake pads as opposed to a Fiat Punto.
We have written a brake price comparison guide if you want to learn more.
If you want a good brake pad deal, you can compare quotes from garages near you by entering you details at the top of the page.
If you specifically require brake disc replacement, the work will take a similar amount of time to a brake pad replacement.
However, as highlighted above, the cost will be more expensive that pads due to the parts pricing.
Brake pads are changed by removing the wheel and unscrewing the bolts which hold the part in place. The part is then simply taken off the brake caliper and a new brake pad is fitted. The same process will be applied for each of the pads that need to be replaced.
There are many other common issues which can arise with the braking system which are not connected to brake pads and discs issues. The brake lines are susceptible to leakage as brake fluid can leak from the system if rust is untreated. The master cylinder is also a part of the braking system which can become faulty. If you would like to understand more we have a dedicated page for brake repairs.
If you want to know how brakes work, we have created a dedicated guide.
There are several obvious signs that your brake pads and discs are not operating properly. If your car is taking much longer to come to a stop, it will be clear that there is a problem with your brakes.
Other signs of faulty brake pads and discs are;
If you would like to learn more about the signs of brake problems we have written a dedicated guide.
To find the best Brake Pads and Discs Replacement service available in your region;
You can then compare the quotes and read reviews from previous customers to find the best brake pads and discs deal in your area, before booking online. |
The New York based independent writer, director, producer and comic book author has a strong interest in humanitarian and environmental matters.Therefore he has always directed films and comic projects against injustice. In this 50-minute documentary, he gives voice to the minor comunity of female aerobatic pilots.
How did you embark on the adventure of producing a documentary film about female Aerobatic pilots?
I've always been attracted by the adventurous spirit of the pioneers in aviation. One of my first books I read about aviation when I was a young boy was“ Wind, Sand and Stars” from the French pilot/author Antoine de Saint- Exupéry. Pioneers like the Wright Brothers, Mermoz, Bleriot, Amelia Earhart, the Lindbergs, Blanche Stuart Scott, Bessie Colman , Raymonde De Laroche, Harriet Quimby...the different paths of these pioneers have always fascinated me. These are fantastic human adventures!
Now, why a documentary about Aerobatics and especially about Women in Aerobatics? It is quite simple. I am writing, producing and directing a series about Women in Sports and during my research I quickly realized there was no one hour long documentary about Aerobatics. Also, I also noticed this sport was not very well publicized in the mainstream media- unlike the Red Bull Air Race for example or other races. So i thought what a great idea! I like to embark in projects with subjects that are not well publicized in the mainstream media and which take audiences to places they normally would never go in their daily life. So, in 2012, I said to a friend of mine, a producer, let’s make an official documentary about Aerobatics and the exceptional experience of these female pilots! I was so inspired by the life of these women pilots after talking to them that I felt compelled to tell a bit of their stories in Skydancers. Visually speaking, it was also the perfect film as a pilot to start a TV series. Aerobatics is actually beyond visual; it's about the emotions you get when you’re up there- above ground, ‘painting the sky’ with your iron wings.
What connection do you have with the Aerobatic Community?
Prior to this film? Absolutely none! Thanks to Mike Heuer (President of Honor, FAI Aerobatics) and the people at the FAI. They were very receptive and welcomed the idea of having a filmmaker making an independent documentary about women in aerobatics during the World Aerobatics Championships (WAC). Mike helped me to get in contact with all the major people and pilots in the aerobatic community. I did not expect such a tremendous support not only from Mike Heuer but also from all the pilots, their teammates and also from the French Federation of Aeronautics (FFA). Lorrie Penner and Chelsea Stein Engberg from the World Aerobatics Championship (WAC) were also very supportive.
Do you think Aerobatics should have a higher media support?
Absolutely! I believe major sponsors are starting to realize the potential of this sport. It is becoming more popular. Just look at all the videos you can see online. I know big corporations specialized in sponsoring the aviation community are now working with communication experts to find a new format to make these competitions more attractive and fun for a wider audience. The aerobatic competitions are not just amazing air show performances but also very technical and physically challenging.
|XA41 from Kathel Boulanger|
How did you start preparing the film?
I read and watch everything I could put my hands on about Aerobatics and about the pilots. Then, I contacted the FAI in Switzerland and met with Mike Heuer who helped me a lot. I also had contacted the FAA (French Association of Aerobatics) prior to the competition. Jerome Houdier et Loic Logeais were also very helpful in helping me to organize some of the interviews and with the technical aspects of Aerobatics. And then all the pilots, Aude, Kathel, Melissa, Debby, Dagmar and Heinke filled me in with a lot of technical information as well. When you meet them, you quickly understand they are passionate about aerobatics and love to share their knowledge with others. They gave us a lot of information during our interviews. Then, I asked also a friend of mine, PITOF -- a famous French movie director (Catwoman) -- who is also a casual aerobatic pilot, to provide me with technical information about Aerobatics. We interviewed him in Skydancers.
What guidelines did you follow?
I actually did not really have any definitive preset guidelines. I like to go with the flow, depending of what I am “fed with”, I’ll then decide how to approach my scene. In a documentary, if you want to keep the moments truthful and feel spontaneous, you can’t stage your subjects. They are not actors! You have to let them move around the way they are just used to. Also, you have to be very aware of your surrounding and somehow foresee what you subject might want to do or say next. Basically, you have to be able to adapt all the time, change position quickly and visualize a shot on a spot. If you have too much preparation, too many planned shots then it is harder to adapt and you might miss a moment you didn’t plan- I think. That’s why I like the run and gun style of shooting for a documentary. For us, often the best takes were the ones we did not planned in advance.
|Frederic talking with one of the pilots during the making-off|
Did you have any remarkable help to produce Skydancers?
YES! Like I said earlier, the people from the FAI Aerobatics Commission (CIVA), FFA (Fédération Francaise of Aéronautique), WAC (World Aerobatics Championship) and of course, all the pilots, their team and the locals in Sherman, Texas have been tremendously supportive and helpful.
What was the best part of the filming?
That’s a tough question for me to answer because there are so many steps I like in making a film. But from the moment I started to work on this project, I knew I had few main goals I knew I had to keep in mind. One was to introduce the fascinating world of aerobatics in a different way that you would normally see in a typical sport documentary and also to provide some historical and technical facts while narrating personal human stories.
That’s why my editor and myself kept the narrative structure of SKYDANCERS kind of atypical for a sport documentary. We have incorporated some aspects of the last World Aerobatics Championship, information about what is Aerobatics and its historical background, personal stories, 3D animation, graphic design, personal experience and archives footage all interwoven in a way that keeps the main structure progressing toward a climax. As far as the filming aspect itself, I really enjoyed filming all day long outside in a wide open space. There were some unexpected challenges though: We did not expect a storm to stop the competition, on and off, for almost 5 days. That was half of our shooting days gone. We could not shoot anything. But when we were able to film, we captured some beautiful shots of the sky, light at dusk, air plane maneuvers in the sky, pilots rehearsing, etc...But I have to say, the editing process is probably the most rewarding filmmaking aspect for me. That’s when you ‘write’ a film in pictures and sounds. In a documentary, there’s no script per sé, everything is ‘written’ during the editing phase.
What did actors enjoy most? How did you choose the actors for the documentary film?
For the pilots and their team, I have been told by some of them they’d had bad experience with filmmakers before. The main reason was because these filmmakers did not understand these pilots are true athletes competing for a world title during a world competition. Like any athlete, they have to have their space for concentration, to keep rehearsing figures, etc...Most of these past filmmakers were “in their face” all the time, asking them to do stuff in front of the camera for their film. But when you are fighting for a world title, you don’t want some guys with a camera in your face or to tell you constantly “could you sit here for a moment so I can film?’ ‘can you do this or that?’, etc... When I started this documentary, I told everyone from the beginning I was going to be very discreet with the camera. They won’t even feel I’ll be around most of the time. I stayed at a ‘safe’ distance. My cameraman and myself basically improvised all time the shots and worked the shots off of what the pilots were doing...
Do you believe this film will help women get a better consideration on the field of extreme sports?
I think it will. As a matter of fact, when I pitched the project to my producing partners and some people in the aviation industry, they were all enthusiastic and responded positively. They all recognized it was about time someone was promoting women athletes in the world of extreme sports via a documentary series. These extraordinary competitive pilots and inspiring women are showing us they are groundbreaking pioneers and they’re fighting hard to make their way in a man's world. Their achievements can promote gender equality and empower other women and young girls to follow their dreams.
Have you learnt anything noteworthy about this sport? You have always pointed out injustice in your comics and films.
Well, I can see you’ve done your homework. (laughs) It’s true my projects usually tend to evolve around personal stories linked to social injustice. It is true the world of extreme sports is still a male dominated world, but a new generation of unconventional female athletes-especially in aviation- have shown us what it takes to break the gender stereotypes and discrimination to become the next champion and this is very inspiring and empowering- regardless if you are a woman or a man. You’re a champion first! Now, women in Aerobatics can have even a better advantage compared to some other extreme sports because maneuvering an airplane doesn’t require much of a physical strength which consequently put the men and women at the same level somehow. Aerobatics is very much accessible to all women.
Do you believe this film tries to reveal unfairness related to minor sports or related to the role of women in our society?
By minor sports, do you mean ‘less mainstream sports’? I think in any sport, women are still definitely facing challenges. They are still viewed by some men as ‘weaker’ athletes but that is progressively changing and in all aspect of our society. Look at the number of women in politics nowadays or entrepreneurs, C.E.Os, scientists, philosophers or activists...women are not afraid anymore to express their opinions and to pursue their dreams. All their achievements have shown us all, it is possible to free ourselves from our preconceived limitations imposed upon us (whatever they are), to achieve our dreams, to live fulfilling and creative lives, as long you’re willing to work at it! I like a quote from Amelia Earhart “Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.”
Note: The move is currently in post-production and it will be realease this 2014.
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In 2015, familiar threats to human rights and human rights philanthropy continued. As conflicts persisted in countries like Syria, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, the number of refugees fleeing violence and hunger soared. Extremist groups perpetrated mass violence from Nigeria and Egypt, to Kenya and France, including the targeted killing of staff from the French magazine Charlie Hedbo. Threats to closing civic space intensified as more countries adopted laws targeting and restricting organizations that work to hold governments accountable, including the funders that back them, often under the pretext of counterterrorism.
Despite these many concerns, we saw inspiring advances for human rights around the world across a range of issues. Women in Saudi Arabia voted and stood for election for the very first time, and the governments of the Gambia and Nigeria outlawed female genital mutilation. The Supreme Court in the United States legalized same sex marriage, while the Irish people did so through a historic popular vote. Cuba and the U.S. restored diplomatic ties after more than five decades, and Iran signed a deal to curb its nuclear program. At the end of the year, nearly 200 countries reached the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change to mitigate global warming.
Against this backdrop, in 2015 foundations allocated a total of $2.4 billion in support of human rights.
The Advancing Human Rights initiative documents the landscape of foundation funding for human rights and track changes in its scale and priorities. This annual report uses grants data to map philanthropic support for specific human rights issues, funding strategies, and populations and regions served in 2016. In this year, 785 funders made over 23,000 grants totalling $2.8 billion for human rights.
Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights;
In Illinois, nearly 5 million adults, 50% of the population, are estimated to have an arrest or conviction record. Housing is foundational for employment success, family stability, and overall well-being. Unfortunately, criminal history checks are a typical part of the housing application processes, and many people with records are declined housing opportunities they would otherwise be a good fit for, but for the criminal record.
Our goal for Win-Win was to develop user-friendly guidance about the use of criminal records in screening and housing applicants, and to provide recommendations that housing providers can adopt and adapt, in whole or in part, to increase housing opportunities for people with criminal records.
National Congress of American Indians;
The guide "Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction" developed by the National Congress of American Indians seeks to provide a basic overview of the history and underlying principles of tribal governance. The guide also provides introductory information about tribal governments and American Indian and Alaska Native people today. The purpose of the guide is to ensure that policy decision makers at the local, state, and federal level understand their relationship to tribal governments as part of the American family of governments. Additionally, this guide provides the information necessary for members of the public at large to understand and engage effectively with contemporary Indian Nations.
Rockefeller Archive Center;
The ascendance of a norm of non-violent protest or "civil resistance" against a government or occupying force may, at first, seem self-evident. As modern states have come to attain overwhelming military and policing powers over their populations, the idea of using violent means to oppose a regime seems ineffective, at best, and dangerous, at worst. Yet, the near total embrace of and insistence on non-violence should not be considered a foregone conclusion. They must be examined historically so as to understand how people across time and space have supported what was fundamentally a radical ideology of resistance to inequality, colonialism, and political repression.
This project centers on the question of how non-violence became a norm for resistance and struggle. It focuses on the potential entanglement of two processes of transformation: the Black American freedom struggle and the regime changes in East Central Europe in 1989, that are inexorably linked to non-violence or peaceful transition. It considers how the "other" transatlantic relationship, between Black Americans and eastern Europeans during the Cold War, shaped opposition politics in East Central Europe. This project places a special emphasis on the intellectual roots, social organization, and tactical methods of non-violent political opposition and peace movements in Hungary from approximately 1947 to 1990. It will also pay special attention to how the socialist ideal of revolutionary action changed over time, as the needs of socialists states changed. These changes then required a reformulation of what type of behavior fit into the framework of communist and anti-communist revolutionary activity, but also a reformulation of masculinized heroism that butted heads with older tropes of the muscular industrial worker and the defiant freedom fighter.
Carnegie UK Trust;
Switched On brings together recent research and evidence about key issues related to digital inclusion, with a particular focus on children and young people. Digital access is complex picture with multiple factors driving, compounding and impacting those who are included or excluded.
The report explores a number of features of the digital inclusion debate including analysing the components that comprise appropriate digital access, examines the impacts around a lack of access, maps exclusion factors in the UK and outlines the current policy and practice landscape, including successful interventions.
This is the first comprehensive study regarding the state of automated decision-making in Europe. Experts have looked at the situation at the EU level but also in 12 Member States: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK. They assessed not only the political discussions and initiatives in these countries but also present a section "ADM in Action" for all states, listing examples of automated decision-making already in use.
Dangerous Speech Project;
No one has ever been born hating or fearing other people. That has to be taught – and those harmful lessons seem to be similar, though they're given in highly disparate cultures, languages, and places. Leaders have used particular kinds of rhetoric to turn groups of people violently against one another throughout human history, by demonizing and denigrating others. Vocabulary varies but the same themes recur: members of other groups are depicted as threats so serious that violence against them comes to seem acceptable or even necessary. Such language (or images or any other form of communication) is what we have termed "Dangerous Speech."
Naming and studying Dangerous Speech can be useful for violence prevention, in several ways. First, a rise in the abundance or severity of Dangerous Speech can serve as an early warning indicator for violence between groups. Second, violence might be prevented or at least diminished by limiting Dangerous Speech or its harmful effects on people. We do not believe this can or should be achieved through censorship. Instead, it's possible to educate people so they become less susceptible to (less likely to believe) Dangerous Speech. The ideas described here have been used around the world, both to monitor and to counter Dangerous Speech.
This guide, a revised version of an earlier text (Benesch, 2013) defines Dangerous Speech, explains how to determine which messages are indeed dangerous, and illustrates why the concept is useful for preventing violence. We also discuss how digital and social media allow Dangerous Speech to spread and threaten peace, and describe some promising methods for reducing Dangerous Speech – or its harmful effects on people.
Camps are places of refuge for people fleeing conflict and disaster, but they can be dangerous, especially for women and girls. In their first months, many camps rely on communal sanitation facilities – a quick and cost-effective way of meeting immediate needs and minimizing public health risks until a better solution can be developed.
In 2016, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) set up a research challenge asking: Does lighting in or around sanitation facilities reduce the risk of gender-based violence (GBV)? During 2017 and 2018, Oxfam and researchers from the Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) at Loughborough University carried out research to try to answer this question. This report presents the main findings from this research.
FRIDA The Young Feminist Fund;
11 case studies that highlight the outstanding work girls have been doing around the world. Rather than being selected by the report's funders and researchers, these case studies were selected and prepared by the Girl Advisors involved in the Girls to the Front research study.
Open Society Foundations;
In this report, whistleblowers from eight European countries describe what they experienced after they took a stand. Additionally, civil society experts weigh in on how the EU can craft policies to better protect whistleblowers. The question of how to define whistleblowing—does it apply to sexual harassment, can NGOs be considered whistleblowers, and so on—is also explored.
The report ultimately recommends an EU-wide directive on whistleblowing, which it argues would give whistleblowers the protection they need to step forward. The report also argues that a multi-level, multi-stakeholder approach would emphasize the value of whistleblowers and the crucial role they play in a healthy open society.
Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice;
Alabama established a sentencing commission in 2000, and has utilized advisory sentencing standards in felonycases since 2006. In 2013, the Alabama Sentencing Standards grew to include presumptive standards for non-violent offenses. Alabama has a "truth in sentencing" statute that does not take effect until 2020 and will require the court to pronounce a minimum term and an extended term (120% of the minimum term) and mandates post-release supervision. Currently, however, offenders are sentenced to a definite term of imprisonment and may be released on parole, if eligible. |
Mondo Reveals GREMLINS Tribute Poster
Jessica Seamans created a beautiful tribute poster for Joe Dante‘s Gremlins (1984) film. This one of the classic scenes from Gremlins where they are in the movie theaters watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. This time, of the year, is the best time to release something like this because Gremlins is a part of so many fans’ Christmas movie list. You can follow Mondo on Twitter.
THE RING's Sadako vs. THE GRUDGE's Kayako - Sadako vs. Kayako [Video]
Ringu aka The Ring and Ju-On aka The Grudge are some of the best recent Japanese horror movies, and it is awesome that Sadako vs. Kayako has just been announced. The film is already in production with Koji Shiraishi directing and Mizuki Yamamoto. Even more amazing is the quick turn around with the film set to release in movie theaters in June 2016. This movie initially started off as an April Fools prank with producers noticing how interested fans were; they decided to make it a real thing. The Sadako vs. Kayako teaser trailer is available below. Rings (2016) releases in movie theaters this upcoming April 1, 2016.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 2 Hi-Res Stills
Dave Green‘s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (2016) looks spectacular and is releasing in movie theaters on June 3, 2016, via Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, and Platinum Dunes Productions. The trailer recently released and here are three hi-res images to further peak interests. The first image has Stephen Amell as Casey Jones and Megan Fox as April O’Neil. The second image features Bebop and Rocksteady. The final image features the Turtles (Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 stars Alan Ritchson, Megan Fox, and Stephen Amell.
DC Comic Batman Fan Film - RED HOOD: THE FALLEN
In this new Batman fan film, we get to see Red Hood (Jason Todd). In this short film, Batman is seemingly dead, and Red Hood returns to clean up Gotham and takes on the Joker. Red Hood cleans up crime and is also not afraid to kill in the process. This Red Hood film has some great fight scenes and the production value really shines. Thanks to Toby Bajrovic for releasing this Red Hood: The Fallen - DC Comic Batman Fan Film.
Fox's WAYWARD PINES Season 2 Confirmed!?
Fox‘s Wayward Pines Season 2 has been confirmed for 10-episodes. I was under the impression that “they” said that in no way were they going to make a season 2, guess that changed quick when Fox discovered they actually made something good so now they are going to milk it. I hope they make something good with season 2 because I really enjoyed Fox’s Wayward Pines Season 1. M. Night Shyamalan’s Wayward Pines Season 2 will premiere Summer 2016.
List of Horror Short Films Appearing at the Sundance Film Festival 2016
The Sundance Film Festival 2016 is fast approaching us, and if you were wondering what horror shorts are appearing at the festival, here they are. The festival will start this January 2016 in Park City, Utah with ten days of fun. One of the horror short films will feature music by John Carpenter with the master of horror icon also making a cameo. Read below for the full details on each horror short.
Natalie Dormer's THE FOREST Motion Poster Revealed
HBO‘s Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer takes the lead in Jason Zada‘s The Forest (2015), the supernatural film about the legendary real-life suicide forest named the Aokigahara Forest. Gramercy Pictures released a new motion poster that sent chills running down my spine; I have to see this movie when it releases on January 8, 2016. The upcoming horror movie The Forest stars Natalie Dormer, Taylor Kinney, and Yukiyoshi Ozawa.
Steven Spielberg's THE BFG Teaser Trailer [Video]
Steven Spielberg returns to direct The BFG (2016) and here is the first teaser trailer via Disney. The trailer has a great kid awe-inspiring feel to it. The new film is based on the classic novel written by Roald Dahl. The BFG releases in movie theaters on July 1, 2016. Rebecca Hall, Mark Rylance, and Bill Hader star in The BFG. Tell us what you think of this teaser trailer in the comments below because I am loving it.
DC COMICs THE FLASH vs MARVELs QUICKSILVER Fan Film [Video]
DC Comic‘s The Flash and Marvel‘s Quicksilver are both the fastest men in their worlds, but this awesome fan film has them fight one another, who will win? The outcome is violent but in a PG way. Thanks to ismahawk for another great fan film video. Don’t forget to like and share the video.
THE WALKING DEAD'S NORMAN REEDUS Attacked by Female Fan
Updated: Norman Reedus response. Recently, a female fan was kicked out of The Walking Dead Convention, Walker Stalker Con 2015, for biting Norman Reedus. Reedus plays as Daryl Dixon on AMC’s The Walking Dead TV show and was the victim of one of his biggest fans, really? The female was posing with Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker when she had the uncontrollable impulse to bite Reedus, and the rest is news headlines. Reedus shouted “What the f*ck was that?” before security kicked her out and banned her from all future Walker Stalker Con events. Who does this kind of stuff? I bet Reedus wishes he had that crossbow.
HOWL Blu-ray / DVD Release Date Details
Paul Hyett‘s Howl (2015) has some terrific news; the Blu-ray / DVD release date will be on January 1, 2016. However, we have no news announced on the Blu-ray special features sadly. The UK werewolf horror movie does have another movie art included below. The is an awesome look at the mutated beasts that are in the werewolf film. Ed Speleers, Holly Weston, and Shauna Macdonald star in Howl.
ASH VS EVIL DEAD Episode 1.07 BIG LIFE QUESTIONS - Preview and Clip [Video]
Bruce Campbell and Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead Season 1 has been rocking away and is nearing the season finale episode soon. Today we have the preview video and clip for Ash vs Evil Dead episode 1.07 “Big Life Questions.” What kind of guy is Pablo Simon Bolivar (Ray Santiago)? Is he an axe guy or somebody who uses a crossbow? This is teased in the clip in a very humorous way. Kelly Maxwell (Dana DeLorenzo) looks like she genuinely wants to burst out laughing. Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) and Amanda Fisher (Jill Marie Jones) have their Deadite issues teased in the preview video and it looks awesome.
CRIMSON PEAK Blu-ray / DVD Release Date Details
Guillermo del Toro‘s latest film Crimson Peak (2015) will release on Blu-ray / DVD, VOD this upcoming February 9, 2016. The Digital HD release for Crimson Peak is January 26, 2016, as announced by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and Legendary Pictures. Interesting special features include feature commentary from Guillermo Del Toro, interviews, featurettes, and deleted scenes. Full details on special features are detailed below. Cast in Crimson Peak is Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Hiddleston.
GOOSEBUMPS Blu-Ray / DVD Release Date Details
R.L. Stine‘s Goosebumps books came to the big screen and is now releasing on Blu-ray and DVD. Rob Letterman‘s Goosebumps (2015) did pretty well at the box office and the Blu-ray / DVD release date is set for January 26, 2016, via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The Digital release date is January 12, 2016. Blu-ray special features that interest me are the alternate opening and ending, deleted scenes, and the various featurettes all detailed below. The cast of Goosebumps includes Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, and Odeya Rush.
Funko's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES Pop! Vinyls Revealed
Burr Steers’ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) releases in movie theaters on February 5, 2016, but the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Pop! vinyl figures will become available in January 2016. Below are six Funko Pop! vinyl figures images for you to watch. How many of you will be buying these zombie collectible figures?
THE LAST WITCH HUNTER Blu-ray / DVD Release Details
Vin Diesel, Elijah Wood, Rose Leslie, and Michael Caine‘s journey in Breck Eisner‘s supernatural adventure The Last Witch Hunter (2015) will be releasing on Blu-ray/DVD this upcoming February 2, 2016, via Summit Entertainment. The Digital HD release will come much sooner on January 12, 2016. Not a bad timing for many of you who may have missed the theatrical release.
Scream Factory's THE GUARDIAN Blu-ray Release Date Details and Extras
Scream Factory recently announced the Blu-ray extras for William Friedkin‘s The Guardian (1990). The Blu-ray is set to release on January 19, 2016. The Blu-ray will include many special features; including various interviews with actors, director and co-writer. Full details are below with specifics. Starring in The Guardian is Jenny Seagrove, Dwier Brown, and Carey Lowell.
THE WOLF MAN REMAKE Release Date News Update
Universal Pictures is revamping all of their classic horror monsters, and it has just been announced that The Wolf Man (2018) release date will be set for March 30, 2018. Aaron Guzikowski has been brought onboard for the new wolf man film. In case, you were wondering about Universal’s movie monster world, Dracula, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Wolf Man will all share one universe like Marvel movies have done successfully. Dracula Untold (2014) was the starting movie for this shared monster world. Tom Cruise is attached to star in the new Mummy film. So far, Universal Pictures sounds like they may not have planned their monster universe too well but I could be wrong. Share your thoughts below, we would love to hear what you think.
THE SHAMAN Short Film - One of the Best Sci-Fi Short Films of 2015 [Video]
Marco Kalantari directed The Shaman short film, and it is one of the best sci-fi short films of 2015. The video is a little over 16 minutes long, and the poster shows some impressive scale for the production of your usual short film. This short film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2015 and was referred to as “mind-bending.” The scenes are spectacular and on par with big budget movies. Tell us what you think of The Shaman short film in the comments below.
New Russian Horror Film DIGGERS Trailer [Video]
Director Tikhon Kornev released a new trailer for his new Russian horror film, Diggers (2016), set underneath Moscow. This video is not subtitled or dubbed in English, but you get the main idea of subterranean humanoid figures hunting down a few people trapped in the underground compound. Diggers releases in Russia this upcoming February 4, 2016. Roman Evdokimov, Anna Vasilyeva, Alena Savastova, Vladimir Kuznetsov, Andrey Levin, Maria Schekaturova, Eugene Koryakovsky, Dean Fan, Cyril Kobzarev, and Valeria Shkirando star in Diggers. |
Nutshell: Brilliant. Perhaps the most inspired and humanly scaled comedy in the history of Trek.
"In the Cards" is an enjoyable gem that earns full marks for inspiration and originality. But it all comes together because it works on human terms rather than conjured ones. It's a comedy with a heart and a lot of laughs, with the added bonus of having a reasonable amount of relevance. One probably wouldn't expect a DS9 comedy that centers around a 1951 Willie Mays rookie baseball card would be a likely candidate for a four-star rating. But this episode was, quite simply, so thoroughly enjoyable that I'm giving it just that—I really believe the show deserves it.
The remarkable thing about "In the Cards" is that, in a way, it's unprecedented. This is a DS9 comedy that, for a change, doesn't rely on the often-touted "high concept." It doesn't require a bizarre holodeck situation like "Our Man Bashir" did; it isn't inspired by old-movie parody or implemented with time travel peculiarities the way "Little Green Men" was; it doesn't go the specialized nostalgic route the way "Trials and Tribble-ations" did. I don't mean to take away from the aforementioned episodes—not at all. I enjoyed the Bond parody of "Our Man Bashir." I liked much of the alien invasion jokes in "Little Green Men" (even though I didn't think the whole episode itself was all it could've been). And "Trials and Tribble-ations" was great fun, with lots of infectious nostalgia, as well as some unprecedented creativeness of its own.
Still, for me, "In the Cards" is what I suspect "Trials and Tribble-ations" was for many other people: a wonderful hour of whimsical entertainment, and also something that's special and memorable. But, at the same time, "Cards" plays by the standard rules—it's funny and very well written, AND it manages to work its comedy around DS9's established lore and the current plot threads. In an episode that, for many, will likely be long forgotten when "Tribble-ations" lives on among the most vivid of immortal Trekkian memories, I think such qualities deserve serious respect.
The premise is simple, and it's not surprising why the show manages to do so well; the best comedy often emerges from the most simple of circumstances, because simplicity allows realistic characterizations to bring the humor to the surface.
As the story begins, everyone on the station is depressed, wallowing in a sense of impending doom. The moment of Dominion crisis has become very, very near. Even Ben Sisko, a leader who usually raises the spirits of his crew around him, cannot force a smile. Jake observes this problem and, looking to Nog for possible ideas, desperately hopes to find some way of making his father feel better. (Like many others, this installment highlights that it's very hard to go wrong when exploring the relationship between Jake and his father.)
It's about here that the 1951 Willie Mays baseball card enters the plot. Quark is moderating an auction of rare antiques, and one of the items on the bidding list is this baseball card, which would be the perfect gift Jake could surprise his father with.
Like I said, a simple premise. Most of the rest of the episode follows Jake and Nog around the station in their mini-adventures to get this card. Jake cons Nog into putting up the latinum for the auction bid in a hilarious scene where the young Sisko manipulates the Ferengi cadet with a guilt trip. "I can't believe," Jake says with canned melodrama and back turned, "you'd rather keep your filthy money than use it to give my father—the one who helped get you into Starfleet academy—endless moments of happiness." Nog reluctantly agrees. How couldn't he?
Well, naturally, things are not that simple. The two friends go to the auction but don't have enough latinum to keep up with the escalating bid, and they're outbid by a mysterious man named Doctor Geiger (Brian Markinson, who played the late Lt. Durst and also B'Elanna's Vidiian captor in Voyager's "Faces"). So it's time, as they say, for plan B: They go to Geiger and try to buy the card off him.
It's here where "In the Cards" really starts to take off, featuring a series of parodies and witty plot twists that feature low-key humor in unexpected circumstances. One of the story's inspired ideas is that Geiger turns out to be a paranoid, somewhat delusional scientist. He initially refuses to talk to Jake or Nog, because he thinks they were sent by the "Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy," an organization that earns a grin just for its name. Even Odo hasn't heard of this one. ("The who?" he muses, genuinely confused.)
Geiger's quarters are filled with bizarre equipment he's using in weird bio-experiments. His goal: to discover a way to live forever. The dialog that describes his plan is hilarious in its absurdity. His theory on death boils down to the fact that one's cells become "bored" with the cycle of dividing over and over again. If a person could keep them constantly "entertained," they would therefore live forever. I especially liked his "cellular regeneration and entertainment chamber." Jake's and Nog's blank reactions to Geiger's theories are quite funny, as is their discussion-in-huddle afterward. (Nog: "His theory seems a little odd." Jake: "He had me going there for a minute, but a cellular entertainment machine?")
It's no matter that Geiger is crazy, Jake reasons. He does, after all, have a baseball card. So Jake and Nog agree to Geiger's terms. In exchange for gathering a long list of items for his research, he will give them the card.
This leads the two on a scavenger hunt of sorts, in which they meet with virtually every member of the senior staff, each of which may be able to supply them with materials they need. Naturally, they can't reveal the reasons they need these materials; Jake can't risk having the surprise blown for his father. Instead, Jake and Nog agree to do odd jobs for everybody in exchange for the materials they need. These scenes are entertaining because they're nicely done; the various crew interactions are simple and effective and remain true to the characters.
A large part of why all this works I attribute to the wonderful acting of Cirroc Lofton, who unveils his best turn yet as Jake Sisko. Lofton has a winner of a smile, and his performance in this comic plot is a very big reason of why it's so funny and endearing. There are a number of priceless facial expressions from Lofton that provide the premise with just what it needs to be both convincing and amusing.
Aron Eisenberg as Nog, while admittedly not on the level of Lofton, also deserves commendation. Both he and the writers have gotten a better hold of Nog's characterization, which makes him much more likable and dimensional than what we've seen in the past. One of the joys of the episode is how Nog so unwittingly gets pulled into the mayhem caused by Jake's obsession with this baseball card. For once, Nog is the character who must endure the will of his counterpart's less-than-crystal-clear judgment—which is milked for numerous comic opportunities as the cadet constantly frets about how going after this card may ultimately destroy his Starfleet Academy record.
Similarly, watching Jake get himself and Nog into hot water trying to secretly obtain the card is good for some laughs. At one point, Nog accuses Jake of being crazy. Jake's response: "I'm not crazy. I'm just a little obsessed." (One interesting parallel that pops up here is how "The Visitor" told a tragic story of Jake's obsession. "In the Cards," remarkably, also shows the sort of obsession Jake is capable of where his father is concerned, but the tone of the story, of course, is just the opposite.) Overall, this episode sports the best Jake/Nog story the series has yet come up with.
There's a B-story in "In the Cards," and it's surprising how well the two plots work together. The subplot revolves around Kai Winn's visit to the station, who is supposed to meet with Dominion negotiator Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs) to determine the fate of Bajor's involvement in Dominion affairs. Everyone knows that a Dominion/Federation war is imminent, but since Bajor is not yet part of the Federation, Winn has the opportunity to sign a non-aggression pact with Weyoun. But that may not be wise, to which both Winn and Sisko agree—Bajor risks being either destroyed along with Starfleet if they side with the Federation, but they risk suffering the fate of the conquered Cardassia if they sign a peace agreement. Sisko's appropriate advice: Stall for time. This is good stuff, executed on par with the main plot. As a preamble to next week's eruption of violence in "Call to Arms," this is a very, very sensible storyline (and I appreciated the allusions to "Rapture"). I'm certainly glad the writers haven't forgotten Bajor's role within the conflict between the Dominion and the Federation.
The way these pressures of imminent war and threat to Bajor affect Sisko makes the whole baseball card thing that much more relevant. I'm very pleased at how much depth this little comedy takes on.
Still, this episode knows better than to wallow in its own weighty issues. The comic set-pieces and subtle touches make it a winner. I enjoyed virtually all the clever ideas in here. From the goofy but nicely-placed line, "Lions, Geigers, and bears (oh my)"; to Jake accusing Winn of kidnapping Geiger once he vanishes without a trace; to Jake making up a story to his father about being drunk, just to keep a flabbergasted Nog from blowing the cover; to the deliciously-played meeting with Odo—it's all great stuff.
And the ending goes down as a classic in my book, probably one of the most creative, funniest scenes ever in Star Trek. Geiger's disappearance leaves Jake and Nog puzzled, but all questions are answered when Weyoun beams the two onto his ship and demands an explanation for their "conducting secret meetings with the crew," and associating with a man conducting experiments, ironically enough, right beneath Weyoun's own quarters.
When Weyoun doesn't believe the truth, Jake concocts a convoluted lie (much to Nog's dismay) that is brilliantly scripted, centering around, in all its unfathomability, the notion that Willie Mays is a time traveler who must be stopped at all costs. It's been quite a while since I've heard the line, "The fate of the entire galaxy may depend upon ". Coming from Lofton, it's almost convincing as the truth—and it's definitely convincing as a self-parody of Trekkian time travel. Quite clever.
What also works wonders is the extremely affecting closing captain's log montage, which gives the episode its emotional resonance. In essence, the "renewing spirits" in this episode are Jake and Nog themselves, who do the trivial tasks that give the senior staff the relaxing time they need to ease the burdens on their minds. Very cute.
This episode is a breath of fresh air. It successfully sticks with its premise from beginning to end without resorting to pointless action scenes or unwarranted plot nuisances. It's gleeful fun, yet not irrelevant. DS9's storylines can often be dark—which is not a complaint—but the great thing about "In the Cards" is that it proves that even in the heart of darkness there's plenty of room for a smile. If this episode isn't an embodiment of Star Trek attitudes, then I don't know what is. |
1-2-3 Come Do A "Dog Gone Great" Writing Craftivity With Me
No matter what grade I taught, all I had to do to grab my students’ attention and get them excited about writing, was to add a bit of craftiness to an interesting and fun writing prompt.
With that in mind, I designed this (flip the flap) “Dog Gone Great!” activity, which is another one of my “double duty” writing prompts.
I call them double duty because they have patterns that serve a dual purpose.
You can use them for either the beginning of the year, for a super-fun back to school activity, or plug them in at the end of the year, for pre-summer writing.
There are 5 different dog designs to choose from, as well as 3 writing prompts:
“I had a dog gone great summer!”
“I had a dog gone great school year!” and...
"________________________ is dog gone great!” where students fill in the blank with something they think is awesome: a sport, activity, subject, book, person, vacation, etc.
There are also 3 writing page options as well: 2 with different sized lines, plus a blank pattern.
Pick which is most appropriate for your students, or give them a choice.
There’s plenty of room to write, as the patterns take up almost a full page.
I’ve included black & white patterns for students, as well as 5 colorful patterns, so that you can quickly and easily make an example to share.
When everyone is done, have students pick a partner and take turns sharing, or make some time for children to share with the entire class.
Completed projects make an adorable bulletin board.
I’ve included 2, “Dog Gone Great Writing!” posters to add some extra pizzazz to your display.
Print, laminate and trim. Students place the colored shape tile on to the matching shape on the leaf, spider, bat, owl, or turkey card.
I've included a blank template for each theme, so you can program with more shapes or whatever. I hope you find it useful.
Well that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.
Since the heat index is 110 I'm going to continue to craft away in my blessedly cool office today.
Wishing you a stress-free & happy-go-lucky day.
"It's summer! If you're not barefoot, you're overdressed." -Unknown
1-2-3 Come Do Some Writing Prompt Crafts With Me
Whether you're looking for a little something to save your sanity, and fill up a bit of time during the last week or school, or you need a writing prompt for back to school, you'll “TOE-tally” love the versatility of my 2 newest packets.
I call these “double duty” writing prompt crafts because I’ve included patterns for the end of the year, as well as ones for back to school.
First up is the super-cute "TOE-tally" writing prompt packet, which includes 3 different writing prompt crafts. Plus each of those has several options too!
All of the writing prompts use the “TOE-tally” play-on-words.
The graphics vary, but all feature cute little toes somewhere in the picture.
For the 1st option, the “shorts” of the child flip up to reveal the writing prompt.
There are 4 black & white boy options for students to choose from, as well as 4 girl patterns.
Since completed projects make an adorable bulletin board, I've included a set of matching posters for your display.
All of the craftivities have a colorful option as well, so that teachers can quickly & easily make an example to share.
To give you some ideas, I’ve also included my completed writing prompt samples.
The 2nd option is a card. The sweet graphics feature 10 toes peeking out of a pair of flip flops.
Attach to an end or beginning of the year treat for your students.
I buy the bags of mini candy bars or Skittles at The Dollar Store.
They usually have 10-12 in a bag, so it's an inexpensive little surprise, that's so appreciated by my kiddos.
I have matching bulletin board posters for this craft as well.
Finally, the 3rd option sports a child chilling out under a beach umbrella, which flips up to reveal the prompt.
The other writing prompt craftivity packet is entitled, "Steppin' Into ..." These craftivities also serve double duty.
End of the Year Option:
Students trace and cut out one of their feet & then glue it to the base of their flip flop.
To add extra pizzazz and 3D pop, the “straps” for the top of the flip flop, are strips of paper that stick up.
Adding a heart with a school photo creates even more interest, making this a sweet keepsake as well.
They might also like to add glitter for “nail polish” & a flat-backed “rhinestone” for a toe ring.
Students glue their completed foot to one of the corners of their “Steppin’ Into Summer…” writing prompt paper.
There are 4 black & white options for students to choose from; as well as 2 colorful ones, so that teachers can quickly & easily make an example to share.
Completed projects make a terrific bulletin board.
I’ve also included a poster for the center of your summer display, plus a different one for your back to school bulletin board.
Back To School Option:
Summer flies and school has a way of “sneaking” up on you, so this “flip up” sneaker craft, features a pair of tennis shoes.
The black & white “cover” pattern, can be colored with markers or crayons, or you can expedite things & run the template off on a variety of colors of construction paper.
At the top of the sneakers is a glue tab, which is glued to the top of the matching blank base. This “hinge” is flipped up to reveal the completed writing prompt underneath the cover.
There are two prompt options:
Option 1. “Here’s how I feel about stepping into a new school year!”
I’ve also included patterns for “Here’s how I feel about stepping into 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th grade…” with a blank option, so you can write in a different grade.
Option 2. “As you step into a new school year, here’s some advice:” For this end of the year writing prompt, your students write some advice, to your new students coming in the fall.
Tuck these away, then on the first day of school, lay them on your students’ desk, or attach to a locker door in the hallway.
If you’re a Pete the Cat fan, this “sneaker craft” is a fun activity that you can transition to, after reading one of Pete’s shoe stories.
A child's blue hand print topped with sneakers makes this a cute keepsake.
Well that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.
I think we've skipped spring here in Michigan, as we seem to have jumped from winter (which lasted into April), right into summer, with record-breaking 90 degree temps for May!
Have to dash and water my flowers before it gets too hot.
Wishing you lots of "fun in the sun" as well.
"When the weather is hot, keep a cool mind. When the weather is cold, keep a warm heart.." - Ajahn Brahm
1-2-3 Come Make a SPLASH With Me!
It's a fun icebreaker & interesting way to get to know your students too.
Simply choose the appropriate writing prompt “cover” for the flip-up booklet:
* “Diving Into Summer and Looking Forward to…”
* “Diving Into a New School Year and Looking Forward to…”
Use the “Diving Into ____________ and Looking Forward to…” option, so that students can fill in their new grade, or something else that they are looking forward to. (Diving into sports & looking forward to playing soccer & baseball.)
As you can see by the photo on your right, the writing prompt is the "title" on the "cover" of a mini booklet that flips up to reveal what students have written.
The writing prompts are also easily diversified for various ability levels & grades; as you can keep things simple for younger students, who can write one or two sentences, or a list; while having preschool children dictate a few one-word answers.
Older students will be expected to write one or two pages of more in-depth explanations.
There’s a blank page pattern for this.
There’s also several “brainstorming” worksheets for the various prompts, which can be used for prewriting.
As with all of my products, I’ve included completed samples to give you some ideas, as well as enable you to quickly & easily zip off an example to share with your students.
Adding a sprinkle of glitter and a school photo, along with a few 3D options, gives extra pizzazz to the project.
Completed projects make a terrific bulletin board, or wall display in the hall.
Because students trace & trim their own foot, each project looks a bit different.
I’ve included several "Big Splash!" posters you can use for that as well.
For additional writing options, there’s also an “I’m Ready to Make a Big Splash!” writing prompt cover, which works for both summer & back to school, allowing you a chance to touch on idioms if you want.
To help you grab that extra teachable moment, I’ve included some background information, samples & links about idioms, as well as a definition poster.
Introducing this terminology is not just for “big kids”, as my 1st graders easily understood the concept & excitedly shared all sorts of examples!
Since the end of the year is fast-approaching for many of us, you may be thinking about an end-of-the year slideshow, or perhaps you're getting ready for preschool or <strong>kindergarten graduation</strong>.
I hope you find it a helpful stress-buster, and one less thing you have to look for.
Well that's it for today. I marathon-shopped for flowers and plants all day yesterday, so I'm super-excited to play in the mud this afternoon.
Wishing you a sunshine & love-filled day.
"A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfull good intentions. They thrive because someone expended loving effort on them." -Unknown
1-2-3 Come Do An End-Of-The-Year Writing Prompt Craftivity With Me
I’m always looking for some quick, easy and fun things to plug in at at the end of the year, that I know my students will really enjoy, help practice the standards we’ve learned, and involve minimal prep for me.
With these things in mind, I designed the “When School Is Out I’m Going To…” writing prompt craftivity.
Just “print & go!”
The schoolhouse is actually a flip-the-flap “door”, which opens to reveal another picture underneath.
There are 6 picture options, which come in black & white, as well as color; so that teachers can quickly & easily make an example to share.
There’s also a blank pattern, if your students opt to draw their own illustration.
To make things extra special, kiddos write their school’s name on the roof, and glue their school photograph inside one of the windows.
Besides the end-of-the-year, this writing prompt craftivity would also work for any other holiday or vacation breaks as well.
Completed projects make a really cute bulletin board too.
Another super-fun, end-of-the-year writing prompt is "Taco 'Bout..."
I love putzing with a play-on-words, to create cute writing prompts that I think students will enjoy.
“Taco ‘bout” is one of them, which will add a few Spanish words to your students’ vocabularies, as they have fun making a paper “taco”.
For that finishing-fun touch, run some green paper through a shredder to make the “lettuce”.
I’ve included writing prompts for back to school, as well as the end of the year, some of which can also be used whenever you want.
The packet includes:
* 4 black and white writing prompt bookmarks
* 2 full-color bookmarks from the teacher
* 3 “Taco ‘bout fun!” writing prompt worksheets
* 5 different writing prompt taco templates, including one where students work in a group and write a compliment strip (taco filling) for everyone in their group. These make great “bucket filler” activities that help build community and self-esteem.
* 8x10 letter templates to spell out “Taco Talk” for your snazzy bulletin board display
* An 8x10 Taco Talk poster
* An 8x10 poster that says “Ola” to welcome your students with a friendly hello in Spanish
Since Mother's Day is justs around the corner, today's featured FREEBIE is a special card: "A Keepsake Bouquet For Mom"
"These flowers are my fingerprints, that I know is true. It's a Mother's Day bouquet especially for you."
Well that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.
The spring showers have passed, and my "garden of weedin'" is in some serious need of attention. Wishing you a sunshine-happy day.
"Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds." -Unknown
1-2-3 Come Do Some End Of The Year Activities With Me
As the year winds down and I had all of my assessments done, I was always looking for some fun things my students would enjoy doing, for those last few weeks of school.
With that in mind, I designed some cute writing prompts with a little bit of craftiness, to grab their attention and get them excited to write.
I'm featuring 3 on the blog today, along with a sweet treat for today's featured FREEBIE.
First up is a cow-themed craftivity, great for anyone, but especially perfect if you had a farm or animal theme for your classroom.
"Moo-vin' On Up To A New Grade!" has several options. Students can simply color the cow, (there are 3 options) cut it out and glue it to the top of their writing prompt, or you can run off the cow parts on construction paper.
Children trim, glue their cow together, add some pizzazz with crayons, then glue it to the top of their writing prompt.
(There are 2, plus a blank template to program with whatever).
Preschoolers can dictate their answers to a volunteer, or send the paper home for parents to help complete the writing prompt portion, then do the cow craftivity in class.
Completed projects make an adorable bulletin board.
I’ve included 2 posters for your display, as well as a cow bell pattern.
For that finishing touch, have students sign their name & glue a school picture on the bell.
There are color as well as black and white bookmarks for you to give your students as well, with patterns for preschool-3rd grade, plus a blank template to fill in a different grade.
Next up is a self-esteem "Compliment Cat!" "Filling buckets" or being a "bucket filler" seems to have really caught on in a lot of schools.
We have this program in ours. The idea is to encourage positive behavior. Children catch on fast and see how easy and rewarding it is to express sincere kindness, appreciation, and caring about others on a daily basis.
With that in mind, I wanted to think up a quick and easy end-of-the-year "bucket filler" so to speak, that would help promote a child's self-esteem.
Thus, the Classmate Compliment Cat Craftivity was born. I chose a cat not only because of the alliteration, but because my kiddos absolutely love Pete the Cat, so it was no surprise to me when many of them colored their kitty various shades of blue.
Students accordion fold the template following the lines, which provides wonderful fine motor practice, then they color and glue their cat to the top of their folded paper.
Decide on a direction, and have children pass their "compliment cat" to another child to write something nice about them on one of the accordion-folded sections.
They continue passing 'til everyone has signed all of their classmates’ cats, and end up with their own.
So students get a special compliment from their teacher, make sure you are part of the signing, or write a personal note to each child on the colorful, (4-on-a-page) note. Add the finishing touch by having students glue a piece of colorful border to the top.
The cats make a wonderful bulletin board, or look cute hung as a border along a hallway wall. I’ve included two posters for your display.
The packet also includes 5 colorful bookmarks that you can pass out to everyone after they have completed their projects.
I’ve also included a different, black and white bookmark option, if you want this year’s students to color it and then write a note to next year’s kiddos wishing them a “purr-featly wonderful year”.
Finally, when I think of summer, I think of picnics, and anticipate a wonderful vacation. Thus, the ANTicipation writing prompt craftivity came about.
Anticipation is very versatile, as I’ve included a variety of writing prompts suitable for the beginning and end of the year, as well as a summer prompt entitled “The Perfect Picnic” which can be a short story, or simply a list of things that a child would want to have, take, eat, and do on a picnic.
There are also blank patterns for you to program with something else, as well as a completed sample so you can quickly and easily make an example to share.
Completed projects make an awesome and interesting bulletin board or border along a hallway wall. I’ve included 3 posters for your display.
Children cut out their ant head, add details with crayons and then glue it to the other 2 body segments. I purposely made this ant with 3 parts because I wanted to reinforce science information about insects.
Because of limited time, it’s often difficult to plug in some science, so I try to incorporate it with our reading and writing.
I’ve included “Parts of an ant” posters (realistic & cutesy) plus worksheets, as well as a writing prompt and posters for “Ants can: have: are” if you want to do that too.
Share the poster, write the vocabulary on the board, then have students label these parts on their ant with a white crayon.
Adding pipe cleaner legs and antennae will also give you the opportunity to explain more science vocabulary, at the same time giving the craftivity a 3D look.
I also read the informational, non-fiction book, Ants Ants And More Ants, which we discuss afterwards.
This book is a level G, 1st grade reader, if you want your students to read it themselves & get in that non-fiction genre requirement.
To test their comprehension, I write some of the facts on the board as they share them, then they fill out their “Ants Can: Have: Are:" worksheet.
Today's featured FREEBIE serves a dual purpose, as you can use if for the beginning or end of the year.
To turn it into an inexpensive treat, stick on a pencil, pen, marker, glow stick (bracelet), pixie stick, (filled with powdered candy), or an individually wrapped piece of licorice as the mast, to add that little something extra.
There are two sail patterns. One is for the end of the year:“Have fun sailing into summer. I hope it’s fantastic!”
The 2nd one is for back to school: “Have fun sailing into a new school year. I hope it’s fantastic!”
Well that's it for today. I hope you found something useful to make those last few weeks of school fly by.
Everything is finally greening up here in Michigan! Woo hoo; the sunshine is calling me. Wishing you a fun-filled day.
"In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson." -Tom Bodett
1-2-3 Come Do Some Dual Purpose Activities With Me
After I've designed a writing prompt craftivity, I take a look and see if it can serve double duty. Can I tweak the prompt so that it not only works for a back-to-school activity, but something teachers could plug in at the end of the year as well?
Such is the case with the 4 craftivities I'm featuring in this blog article. The featured FREEBIE today, also serves a dual purpose too.
First up, is a super-cute "play on words" bicycle craftivity. "I had a 'wheel' great year/summer"
I chose a bike theme because no matter what grade I taught, riding a bicycle was something most of my students really enjoyed doing.
Use the bicycle template for a cute end of the year writing prompt, where students choose two wheel options and complete the prompts inside the spokes.
You can also use it as a super-fun icebreaker for back-to-school, as an interesting way to get to know your new students.
Completed projects make a wonderful bulletin board.
I’ve included 2 posters to use for the center of your display.
There’s also an additional writing prompt worksheet where students describe their bike, or an experience riding their bike, or some other bike-themed idea you come up with.
Next up is the double duty "I Had A Blast in ___________ grade." or "I Had A Blast This Summer!" firecracker writing prompt craftivity.
Completed projects make a terrific bulletin board and nice keepsake. You could also keep this bulletin board up for back to school.
Besides the above prompts, I also thought it would be fun for this year's students to make a TP tube firecracker and tuck a note inside: "You're going to have a blast in ______________ grade because..."
Or... skip the note and have children jot a greeting on the bookmark writing prompt. What a nice surprise for your kiddos to find on/in their desk on the first day of school. I’ve also included bookmarks for you to give your current students, wishing them a blast of a summer.
Likewise, new kiddos can complete the "I had a blast this summer!" for a back to school writing prompt. I’ve included posters for the center of that display as well.
Another versatile writing prompt, is a super-cool looking T-shirt craftivity. I think the key to the “way cool” result, is that I used tie dye, plaid and watercolor splattered copy paper, which came in a ream of 50 sheets per pattern.
I ran the T-shirt template off on this paper, as well as the cover pattern; so when the booklet is stapled to the front of the T-shirt the cover matches and blends in. “Awesome!” is what my students tell me.
This "craftivity" is very versatile, as it includes templates for an end-of-the year memory book, with covers for preschool through 6th grade, plus a blank template.
If you already have a memory book, have students write why they think this grade was terrific, or have this year’s students write a note to next year’s class: “You’re going to have a T-‘rrific Year” because…
You can also use this as a self-esteem building (fill a bucket) activity. Use the “______ is “T"-'rrific!" template and have each classmate write a compliment in everyone's booklet.
The prompt also works for Father's Day. Simply fill the blank in with: “My Dad is “T-‘rrific” or... for back-to-school have students write about why their summer was terrific.
For a “fun-tastic” display, hang completed projects on a rope suspended against a wall and use real clothespins to clip them on.
Finally, another double-duty writing prompt craftivity that's a bit on the wacky side, also features a T-shirt plus a pair of shorts.
You can use the patterns separately, or combine them to make a dorky dude & dudette by adding funky sunglasses, and gluing on a student's traced hands and feet.
Besides using this for a beginning or end of the year activity, it's also perfect for "Wacky Wednesday" fun, as part of a week-long Dr. Seuss celebration.
Explain to your students that the term “In short” means to explain briefly or summarize, which is one of 5 options for the writing prompts on the pair of shorts.
Likewise, the T-shirts also have a variety of options as well. Pick and choose what's best suited for your kiddos. As with the above T-shirts, these also look cute hung with clothespins from a clothesline.
As promised, the featured FREEBIE today is also versatile. I did countless hours of work looking for songs appropriate for an end of the year slide show, as well as a preschool or kindergarten graduation.
As long as I had done the research, I decided to make an alphabetical list, in hopes that it would save somebody else a ton of time. Click on the link for the 150 Songs For The End Of The Year..
Well that's it for today. I hope you found something useful.
Whether your're reading this at the end of the year (woo hoo) and looking forward to a much-deserved summer hiatus, or checking things out in the fall, excited for a brand new year, I hope you have an absolute blast!
"So often you find that the students you are trying to inspire, end up inspiring you." -Sean Junkins
1-2-3 Come Do Some Versatile Writing Prompt Craftivities With Me
Sometimes when I'm designing something for a particular thing, it turns out that I can also use it for something else; as once a crafty little pattern is made, it's easy to tweak the writing prompt portion, so that it fits for other times of the year.
Such is the case for several of the Mother's Day craftivities I just finished; so I included patterns appropriate for the end of the year, as well as back to school.
Today, I'm featuring 3 of them, along with today's featured FREEBIE.
First up is the "berry" versatile strawberry packet. I’ve included a back-to-school pattern that says: “I had a ‘berry’ special summer because…” as well as an end of the year template: “This school year was ‘berry’ special because…”
Run the summer strawberry off on hot pink with lime green leaves; then see wonderful improvement in your students’ writing, when they complete the other prompt, at the end of the year.
I’ve also included another pattern to make a “Thank you ‘berry’ much!” card, which you can give to volunteers who’ve helped your class, the secretary or whoever gave you a helping hand throughout the year.
Flip the card up to reveal a picture of your class holding a thank you sign or letter cards spelling the words out, then have everyone sign it.
Another pattern is for a Mother’s Day card: “My (mom, mommy, mama, mum, grandma) is ‘berry’ special because…” Have students make hand print “leaves” for that keepsake touch.
Finally, the "fruity treat" is a little gift you can give your students at the beginning or end of the year:
"I hope your summer is 'berry' special just like you." or . . . "I'm wishing you a 'berry' special year.
Attach the strawberry tag to a berry-flavored juice box or package of Skittles.
Next up is the "....And That's Something To Tweet About!" writing prompt bird craftivity. Just like the strawberry, you can use it for back-to-school, (“I had a great summer!), or at the end of the year (“I had a great year in school) and that's something to tweet about!"
I’ve also included a variety of writing prompt options suitable for Mother’s Day as well. “My (mom, mum. mommy, mama, grandma) is special and that’s something to tweet about!”
There are blank wing and “hang tag” patterns as well, so that you can write in something else. These pieces, along with the accordion-folded legs, add special 3D pizzazz.
Older students explain why, by writing on the back of the bird. Completed projects really turn out adorable and look sweet suspended from the ceiling.
Finally, "Great Times!" also includes a variety of writing prompt options. I’ve included 3 patterns for a Mother’s Day card, as well as templates for the end of the year: ”Time sure flies! I had a _____________ year in _____________!”
Plus there’s a “Fun in the Sun Summer Time“ pattern, where students can write about the fun times they are looking forward to doing during vacation, or use for back-to-school and have students write about a few of their favorite times that they enjoyed.
Besides the 3 “draw yourself” clock patterns for Mother’s Day, there are also 6 templates featuring 3 boys & 3 girls. Students simply color and cut.
Older kiddos “hinge” the writing prompt to the back with a piece of Scotch tape.
There are black & white patterns for students, plus full color templates of the children holding the clocks, so that you can quickly and easily make samples to share.
Today's featured FREEBIE is also versatile, as you can use it in February for Valentine's Day, as well as for grandparents, Mom or Dad on their special days.
I found this ABC "I Love You!" idea in various print forms on a variety of sites, so I'm not sure where the original idea came from.
However, instead of making an 8x10 print to frame, I thought it would be perfect to design some cards, bookmarks and magnets, which children could make in school for various holidays.
As for me, I tucked one in my husband's briefcase. Well that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.
If you get a minute, zip on over to the site-wide "Teacher Appreciation" sale going on over at TpT.
My shop is participating. Enter the Promo Code: CELEBRATE for an additional 10% off at checkout.
"If you can read this, thank a teacher!"
1-2-3 Come Do Some Frog-Themed Craftivities With Me
Woo hoo for some of you lucky duckies who are now basking in the sunshine, enjoying the start of your vacation. For those of you who are still in school for a few more days, or even weeks, boy have I got a super-fun, frog-themed packet for you!
The versatility continues because it includes templates for Pre K4 through 3rd grade, so you can make things specific to your grade level!
Getting students to WANT to write and really enjoy it, is one of my hot buttons. With that in mind, I stuffed the packet with lots of creative writing prompt choices with an adorable frog theme that encompasses "leaping" into summer, a new grade, and a new year in school.
There are 18 writing prompt craftivities in all, with lots of options for both the end of the year, as well as for back-to-school. I enjoy drawing frogs; and had a fun time creating some real cuties. "Ferdinand" is a fat and sassy frog that's a "peek-over".
Run him off on lime green construction paper. Students trim and add colorful details with crayons, then glue him to the top of their "I'm leaping" writing prompt for the end of the year, or choose another topic and use the blank frog pattern, for back-to-school. I've included a "Look Who's Leaping" poster to use in the center of your bulletin board when you display your students' finished projects.
"Fred" is another fun-frog craft. Here the writing prompt is written on his "tongue". You can display Fred with a "flat tongue" or include some great fine-motor practice, and have students curl it, by rolling the paper strip on a crayon.
For that finishing touch, I've included some "flies". There's a "This stuff stuck. Look what I learned!" end-of-the-year pattern, as well as one that says: "I had a delicious summer.This is what I did..." for back-to-school.
Jose' can be done as a whole-group, class-made book, where everyone contributes a "belly page" or as an independent writing prompt, where each child makes their own booklet. The "Before We Go We'd Like You To Know" booklet gives advice to next year's kiddos.
The "Frogtastic Memories" can be turned into a quick, easy and fun end-of-the-year Memory Book, by simply having students write pages about the favorite things that they did in school or during the summer.
There are 5 to choose from, plus a blank one to program with whatever, and a sample for you to share to help explain to your students what you want them to do.
As with "Fred" this too can be done independently, or as a whole-group, class-made booklet. The back-to-school "I'm 'hoppy' to be me" writing prompt is a personal favorite.
I've also included a "We're flipping over leaping into a new grade!" poster that you can use for the center of your bulletin board display.
There's a poster for pre k4 through 3rd grade, plus a blank one to fill in with whatever.
If you've followed me, you know that I like to incorporate things with a play-on-words. It's a fun way to expand horizons and build vocabulary.
Students write about their "ribbiting" summer or "ribbiting" things that they enjoyed during the school year, inside "Rodney's" circular-frog belly.
There's a sampling of some of them in the photo. The "So long school, hello summer" or "So long summer, hello school" worksheets, where the froggy is opening a 3D school door to reveal the writing prompt are especially cute.
There's a similar writing prompt with a different frog, that may be more appealing for older students.
One bulletin board display that's especially adorable, is the frog on a lily pad. I made the water lily flower out of a coffee filter. In the top photo I simply scrunched the filter.
In the bottom picture I folded it into 1/8ths, then folded it one more time, snipping the end to create scallops. When you open it, it looks just like a large flat water lily.
I edged it with a pink watercolor marker, then spritzed it with water so it smudged into the paper. Easy-peasy with awesome results.
You have a nice teachable moment to discuss fractions, while children are following your step-by-step directions and folding their filter. The final writing prompt craftivity features "Fritz". This frog sits on a pail of sand.
I cut an oval out of sandpaper and glued it to the bucket, so that it looks filled! Children write things they'd like to do over the summer. The back-to-school writing prompt option tells what they've done during the summer and what they'd like to do in school.
I realize this "bucket list" idea is all over Pinterest, but I've been doing it way before TpT or Pinterest came into being. Click on the link for my original "Summer Bucket List" FREEBIE. It's in a FREE summer writing prompt packet with 6 other fun "craftivities".
Besides writing prompts, there are lots of end-of-the-year AND back-to-school themed "goodies" stuffed into the packet, with templates for Pre K4 through 3rd grade.
One group features another play-on-words using "toad-ally" for totally, which fits in perfect with my frog/toad theme.
I had fun designing a few writing prompts, as well as goodies using this fun word. There are color, as well as black & white covers for the mini-flip booklets and notes, as well as 2 posters and some labels.
"Brag Bracelets" are another "goodie". They are super-fun to make and wear. I designed one that says: "I'm Leaping!" and another with "Welcome!" on it.
Simply run off the pattern and trim using a paper cutter. Slit a toilet paper roll up the side and cut it into sections, the width of the pattern. Children glue to their "slap bracelet" folding the edges under. It's the perfect size for little ones, and the bent shape keeps it on their arm! When other kiddos ask them about their bracelet, they can "brag" that they made it and are "leaping" into a new grade. Nice little self-esteem builder!
If you're looking for a quick, easy and inexpensive little end-of-the-year, or back-to-school treat to give your students, take a look at my "tiny tags".
These are sweet little notes from the teacher, that you can attach to a "Flavor Ice" Popsicle (They sell them 50 to a pack for only $2.95!).
Putting them on a Fruit Roll Up (sticky frog tongue!) or attaching to a Snack Baggie is also fun. The Dollar Store sells a package of 12 gummi rainbow frogs that would also work.
I've also created a cute, keepsake-photo magnet. Laminate them for durability. The Dollar Store also sells magnet strip. (I'm a frequent shopper there; can ya tell?)
I've also included a variety of bookmarks suitable for the beginning, as well as the end of they year. They come in color, as well as black and white.
One is a writing prompt that students complete (nice bucket-filler activity), while another they color for one of your in-coming students.
My personal favorite is the keepsake photo bookmark, but the foreign language (Hello-Goodbye) ones are also really cute.
Another "goodie" in the packet are the "color-me" certificates for pre K4 through 3rd grade, (there are 4 styles to choose from, or give your kiddos a choice), plus there are 2 word-art frog-shaped posters that I created using Tagxedo.com. I've included my silhouettes, so that your kiddos can also make their own.
Well that about covers this frog-themed packet, which is a whopping 201 pages (!) and on sale now for just $6.95 (regularly $8.95). It took me a zillion hours to finish, but I think it was well worth the time. Click on the link to pop on over to my TpT shop and let the fun begin.
As always, I try to include a few FREEBIES from the packet as well. You can get the frog-word art posters, the word-art certificates (for pre-K4 through 3rd grade) stars and labels, plus the brag bracelets by clicking on the link: frog-themed end-of-the year mini packet.
To grab the FREE frog back-to-school banners, click on this link. The end pennants come in color as well as black line, and have templates for Pre K4 through 3rd grade. The frog-face pennants spell out "Welcome" and are in black and white, so that your kiddos can color them, taking ownership of helping to decorate their new home-away-from-home classroom.
This year's kiddos can make the banner to welcome your new students in the fall, or the new kids on the block can do it. Either way, it's kid-made and will look awww-dorable. Well that's it! Whew! That's a lot of frog stuff!
I apologize for such a long post. Thanks for hanging in there if you've read to the end. I'm just so excited to share my latest "mess-terpiece". You should see my office; it's a pile of craft supplies and samples...everywhere!
Thanks for visiting today. It's clean up time. Maybe I'll hum the "clean-up song" that my Y5's used to love singing. On second thought, the sun is shining and a warm breeze is beckoning to me to come play. I think I will. Wishing you a delightful day, crammed with creativity.
"For life to get easier, you have to get better." -Billy Cox
1-2-3 Come Do Some Super-Fun End-of-the-Year Stuff With Me
My students LOVE Laura Numeroff’s books: “If You Take A Mouse To School” and “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.” With those stories in mind, I designed the “Nice Mice Advice” packet.
It will help you check off some “To Do” activities for next year, with the help of this year’s kiddos!
The packet is loaded with fun end-of the-year activities that will keep your students happily engaged, while helping you make some special things for the fall.
There are 4 class-made “Advice” booklets for you to choose from.
Pick one and have your students write advice to the in-coming children. Collect & collate.
This year’s kiddos can share their page when you read the book aloud, then tuck it away to share with your new class in the fall.
My personal favorite is the circle-shaped Cookie Book.
It's a perfect go-along with the "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie" story, and includes advice from the teacher, principal and each student. For that finishing touch, add a school photo. I've included a sample page to help explain things to your kiddos.
If you'd like each of your students to make a mini-advice booklet for your new students, then you'll like the small, advice- flip booklet, with 2 different cover options in black & white, plus color, with 4 inside writing-promt pages.
The other two class book options feature the creative clip art of Scrappin Doodles and D. J. Inkers.
As you can see there are plenty of options. You can choose, or show the samples and have your students vote on which one they'd like to do.
Since a lot of advice has to do with following the rules, this is an interesting and fun way to present them.
Check another thing off your list. I've included a set of 25 "Advice Rules!" pocket chart cards that you can use as well, plus a blank set for you to program with whatever.
I've also included an advice definition poster incase your students are not familiar with this word, along with a sweet "If you give a kid some advice, they should take it." poster to start things off.
Do you give your students a little treat on the first day? Cross that off your list too because I’ve included several “treats” they can make as well.
There is an assortment of bookmarks and a lollipop-nosed mouse: (“A sweet treat for someone they’d like to meet.”)
The bookmarks come in black and white, as well as full color.
There are several for this year's kiddos, as well as one for them to color and give to the in-coming cuties, along with a sweet "peek over" mouse bookmark that you can make and use as a pointer when you read Numeroff's stories.
The mouse, writing-prompt craftivity makes an adorable back-to-school bulletin board. so check that off your list as well.
Simply run off the super-simple mouse pattern on a variety of colors of construction paper.
Students trim, fold the "head" section over and write some "nice mice advice" under the "flap". For that finishing touch, add some ears, wiggle eyes, a pom pom nose, and a yarn "tail".
The packet also includes:
Finally, there's a "welcome card" that everyone signs. What fun ways to help your in-coming students feel special and chase away those first day jitters.
This 58-page packet is on sale in my TpT store for just $3.95. Click on the link to pop on over to my shop. I still can't believe that I have a little store. Hopefully I'll make enough to help pay for all of the clip art and fonts that I buy! That would definitely make my husband happy.
And now for the FREEBIES from this packet. I've included the "Mice Advice" writing prompt mouse craft, several bookmarks, and a poster. Click on the link to grab them.
Well that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by. It's going to be in the 80's this afternoon, so it's time to take my grandbabies swimming.
Wishing you a delightful day filled with everything you enjoy the most.
"Sometimes you never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory." -Unknown
1-2-3 Come Stuff a Backpack With Me
Things really seem to fly after Memorial Day, as teachers everywhere are counting down the days to summer. However, some of us have those dreaded snow days to make up, and our districts don’t get out ’til the middle of June!
The packet is very versatile, as it can be used in a variety of ways for the beginning or end of the year, with activities geared towards the very young, as well as older elementary students too.
It’s loaded with plenty of options to choose from: writing prompts that act like a memory book; writing prompts that offer advice for next year’s students, or writing-prompt "clues" that are played as a game. Completed projects make sweet bulletin boards or hallway decorations too.
The Backpack Packet Includes:
An “Our Year Was Packed With Learning & Stuffed With Fun!” class-made book. This writing prompt comes in a full-page size, as well as two-on-a-page, with full-color cover pages for both.
It's a fun writing prompt for the end of the year. Collate and keep to share with your new students in the fall. I've included a completed sample.
The supply-filled backpack option says: ”There’s a whole lot of learning & fun packed into _________________.”
Children fill in their grade level and color the picture. The front flap flips up or over, to reveal the writing prompt. This younger-elementary choice, can be used like a memory book, where children write about their favorite activities, or they could also make this for your new students as well.
Another backpack writing prompt option is the "School was cool, this I know. I’m all packed up and ready to go. Summer’s here. Hi ho! Hi ho!”
It's a good choice for older students. There are 4 flaps to flip and write under, with a summer option, and a memory-book option: ”School is cool and packed with fun! Here’s a peek of what I’ve done” plus a next year student option. I've also included a blank flap template to fill in with whatever.
My personal favorite is the super-cute ”Kindergarten was packed with learning and stuffed with fun” writing prompt “craftivity”. It includes 7, front-panel options for kindergarten through 3rd grade, with a blank one to fill in with a different grade, plus one for summer.
Students add a cap, accordion-folded “legs” and shoes (there are 3-styles to choose from), so that this looks like the back of a child carrying a backpack. The flap flips up to reveal their writing prompt.
I designed this thinking of how adorable my young fives looked on their first day of school. They had brand new backpacks that were so large they made them look like little turtles. One nudge and I'm sure they'd tip over. This memory always made me smile.
”Backpack. Pack on your back. Help us guess what’s in your sack.” is a backpack guessing game that includes this chant on a poster, with another backpack "craftivity" option.
Students draw a picture under the bottom flap and write 3 clues under the top one, describing their hidden picture. They read one clue at a time, pausing for students to guess what they have in their sack for summer or for school.
Finally, there's a mini flip booklet ”There’s a lot of fun and learning packed into __________(grade).” Students write what they learned, enjoyed and a few of their favorite things on 6-page options. I've included covers in color, plus black & white.
These make a quick, easy & fun memory book, or have students contribute a page to make a class book to share with your new class in the fall.
As always, I've also included directions, tips, tricks, photographs and completed samples for each project.
This "Mini Memories" part of the packet is my featured FREEBIE for you! Click on the link to grab it.
If you'd like to see the entire Backpack Packet, click on the link to pop on over to my TpT store. This 48-page unit is on sale for just $3.95. I hope you enjoy it!
That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by. Michigan has finally greened up and exploded with flowers. LOVE springtime when it eventually shows up!
Time to go outside and put the finishing touches on my flower garden.
Wishing you a wonderful end-of-the-year. I hope its packed with fun and stuffed with lots of special memories.
"You can't learn from your mistakes, if you keep denying them." -Unknown |
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The Story of How a Local REIA Became the Go-To Place for Serious Investors Countrywide
as told by Scott FladHammer
The Fort Wayne Indiana REIA™ roots can be traced back to 1995 when six Fort Wayne landlords met in private for coffee.
During an interview with PBS Fort Wayne REIA co-founder Scott FladHammer shared the humorous, humble beginnings of how the REIA got its start and the modern day community and educational powerhouse it has become in 2019.
“The coffee table was invite only with a right of refusal. We discriminated on the things that really matter: attitude, knowledge, act taking. The class of folks that have those qualities are rare so we didn’t need more chairs for the table anytime soon.
The nomination process was as informal as it was drawn out; a bit like the ‘hire slow, fire fast’ theory: a name was mentioned and we would jot it down to do a search later at our computer because there no smart phones back then.
A Cold Bath Of Logic
Although we were initially hesitant to grow our numbers, we found that as more colleagues joined our table we developed more contacts, advantages and resources. One benefit was particularly empowering was when the Fort Wayne City officials tried passing one of those ‘brain fart laws’; you know the kind: where someone utterly outside the industry of real estate feels some ‘wrong’ must be ‘righted’ so the anointed person slides a proposal that does a little bit of good to a small selection of people at a huge cost and disservice to the majority.
Now armed with the ability to organize, our small group we marched down to voice our ‘cold bath of logic’ in order to set the record straight. And it worked great!
Obviously other landlords felt the same way because our small table grew to fill the whole room at the restaurant. This wasn’t a word of mouth movement because we didn’t encourage anyone to invite others. Again, we didn’t want a large group because we all had real estate businesses to manage.
Fort Wayne Investor Club Growth Spurt
Responding to market shifts and member’s interest in learning additional areas of real estate we asked if anyone knew about ‘quick-turns’ (now called flipping). Sure enough one guy had been doing it for a while and said he’d be glad to teach a few classes on it to the group. That worked out well because it attracted other investors; which brought more contacts, advantages and resources to our table.
Our close-knit group double in size in 2000 to a whopping eight. In 2001, we finally decided to give our private network a name. Mostly because it was such an understatement to say, “I’m going for coffee…” when in fact we were meeting to grow our businesses to the next level, provide a solid foundation and security for our families, learn new techniques, law changes, … to flip deals, exchange notes on tenants and contractors, find money sources… and the list goes on.
So, as we were leaving the meeting one morning I asked if anyone had a name for our motley group. One of the landlords present also had a side business; either a car lot or a bar- can’t remember which. Anyway, his place was called Summit City something and he hollered out Summit City Investors. Nobody said ‘no’ and the waitress said it had a nice ring to it. So we shrugged and christened the new name with a round of coffee.
Wheeling and Dealing Our Way into WWW
Partly because of a phone tag problem (I didn’t, and still don’t, carry a cell phone) and partly because one of the landlords wanted to flex her technical internet prowess, we decided to throw up a webpage. So I bought the domain name SummitCityInvestors.com. This was the clubs first ever expense. I agreed to pay for it if I got free coffee at every meeting for the rest of the year.
As we warmed up our cars that cold December mourning after the meeting I was razzed about my generous negotiating skills about footing the bill for the domain name. “Ya know, we only have one more meeting this year to full-fill your ‘free-coffee-all-year’ offer. You better come really thirsty”
At the January meeting I announced to all that I was buying the domain that night. So officially the free-coffee all-year’ arrangement starts now; no sugar, skim milk please.
Dragged Into The Web
Finally the site was up in 2006 and featured a calendar of the upcoming meetings, a meeting topic if we had one and the address of each meeting location. We still had no real long-term agenda; no long-term purpose or reaching goals. It took 2 out-of-town investors (who had some rental property in Fort Wayne) to talk us into being a bit more formal with the whole thing. After one meeting one of the out-of-town landlords, said, ‘You guys need a board of directors for the group’.
I said, ‘Really, why?’ “Well that’s just what you do”, he assured me. So we voted up a board right there on the spot. I got the title of president because it was agreed I had the most free time on my hands to juggle the paperwork for this newly minted board. People seem to think I don’t work much since I don’t own a cell phone or take incoming calls at the office, or play with social media.
Either way, nothing really changed; we all still pitched in to make the meetings great. As usual we continued to scribble notes about the real estate topics we would like to learn about. Two of the guys were retiring next year and moving to a sunshine state so how about getting some advice on IRA investing and REIT’s.
THERE’S ALWAYS SOMETHING GOING ON
I forget who to attribute this quote to but I’m sure it was a military man of some sort, like a general. It goes, “When half the world is sleeping and the other half is up to no good.” Anyway, that’s just how most Landlords feel about government these days. So when the City was beating up landlords on taxes and lead-based programs “to protect the children”…
(funny how their proposed program only covered children in rental property and not those children owner-occupied houses)
So let’s bring in some City officials in to throw tomatoes at our two cents out. A few of saw the writing on the wall: banks were giving money to people who couldn’t get a cell phone. We better get some equity out now because when things correct, and they always do, money is going to be scarce. The bad thing happened and we in the Fort Wayne Real Estate Investors Group weren’t shocked. The investors groups were the first people in the public to see it coming.
I remember going to the Central Indiana Real Estate Association and hearing Mike talk about it also- a year before it all hit the fan. I can count on one hand the investors who took action a year before the meltdown to get into position for the perfect storm we will probably never see again in my lifetime. That is just one more reason to stay plugged in to your local REI Club. Those investors who did not catch on caught fire.
Too Big for Our Britches
Meanwhile, the group was growing outside of the Fort Wayne limits. We soon had REIA members in Churubusco, South Bend, Columbia City, Roanoke, Gary, Elkhart, Mishawaka, Valparaiso, Goshen, Huntington, Warsaw, Auburn and Bluffton. So we listed everyone in a member directory so we had one place we could quickly connect with someone. Now the Summit City Investors title was becoming a bit confining and did not representative the group’s true identity. It started gaining attention and members from all over Northern Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.
So around 2007, we expanded the name to the Indiana’s Real Estate Investor Association® affectionately referred to as Indiana REIA™ (you know who coughed up the bill for that domain name too).
Now, Indiana REIA™ is the longest running real estate investors association in Fort Wayne and the fastest growing R.E.I. Association in Indiana. Members come from a wide range of backgrounds but with a common interest in real estate investing. Our Associations’ success has been written about and talked about by experts, Fort Wayne city officials and real estate celebrities because of the great education the group provides the membership.
In the end our investor club depends upon the member’s dedication, knowledge and volunteering just like it did when it started in 1995.
Who We Are Today
Our REIA community demographics consist of like-minded real estate investors, entrepreneurs and professionals, coming together to discuss and share deals, investing techniques, contacts, methods, financing, strategies, education, motivation, training, mentoring and success.
Our trainings are 100% investor developed. And we are 100% investor owned and operated. That allows us to avoid relying on outside sales people or the Fortune Builder-type up-selling conferences.
Instead, we create a safe environment for investors, house flippers, rehabbers and Landlords to learn and grow. Our Vision and Code of Conduct encourages and promotes member participation and contribution whereby a collective collaboration of knowledge, experience and ideas are created and shared in a highly energetic, engaging and interactive atmosphere of today’s like-minded real estate entrepreneurs. In fact, we alumni even recorded welcome videos
Fort Wayne Real Estate Investors Organizational Structure
To keep it simple we formed an LLC to pay the bills. Fort Wayne Indiana REIA™ is directed by a volunteer Board of Directors made up of members elected by the members. The main purpose of the Board of Directors is to direct the Association towards our highest goals.
The REIA is a fantastic opportunity, like no other, for you to get plugged in to a demographic of investors, Landlords, wholesalers, private lenders…. you name it! The faster you get plugged in to your local REIA the faster your learning curve will go from ‘thinking about it’ it to doing it. Get involved to grow financially and educationally. I look forward to connecting with you!”
– Scott FladHammer, Indiana REIA™ president
Not a Member?
We would love for you to consider joining the family.
See if membership right for you here and see everything you get here
“Ninety percent of all millionaires become rich by owning real estate.” |
Words: Tom Bell, Matt Hogarth, Dave Tate, Christopher Carr, Debra Williams, Christopher Hughes, Jonny Winship, Stuart Miles O’Hara, Evan Moynihan, Cath Bore, Sue Bennett.
Main Image: John Carpenter by Keith Ainsworth
We aren’t half spoilt when it comes to live music round here, especially if you like your gigs epic in scale and cathartic for the soul. As we reached the year’s curtain call, LIVERPOOL MUSIC WEEK strode up to the plate for its 12th edition to bring us a heady week-and-a-bit of shows to sate all but the pickiest of tastes. Our look back at all that LMW 2016 had to offer starts off in the opulent setting of The Dome at Grand Central Hall, and finishes up in the up-and-coming north docks area for a locally sourced and rollicking Closing Party.
GoGo Penguin by Glyn Akroyd
Look, performance and presentation are as worth championing as anything, but, jeez, there’s a lot of that about on Liverpool Music Week’s opening night. Hell forbid that everyone noodles away earnestly, but save us, too, from constant demands to like something (which is often nothing) right now. Give us a slow burn, a proper feed occasionally and no snacking, and less of the graphic, more concealment – and not as a ruse. Give us WARPAINT.
This is patiently, effortlessly pressed home in the also pleasingly out-of-time Dome at Grand Central Hall on Renshaw Street, in which the quartet are tonight sealed. Nothing outside of them seems to be allowed into their world – OK, except ALL WE ARE, who seem on a good frequency at the mo and are so assured in their mechanising of thumping drums and voices combined into chords that they make complete sense as support.
Swaddled by an opening Bees, you’re now vibrating to Warpaint rather than overhearing – maybe why their records take often circuitous routes to your affections. You’re sucked into the warren of corridors of Keep It Healthy, vortices of guitar tunnelling down from the clearing of the mid-song breakdown. They don’t just say they’ve “got you in the undertow”, you feel it; you are there.
Such aural chicanery restates the initial point across the EQs. Firstly, because the rhythm section of Jenny Lee Lindberg and Stella Mozgawa is the best around. Second, the harmonising of Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman is the toppermost. Number three, the latter pair’s spiral-stair riffs, and, four, the patience for that slow burn.
And now for something completely different. With a body of work spanning multiple genres and decades, JOHN CARPENTER has long established himself as a unique, if somewhat cult, voice within the annals of cinema history. Despite having been bestowed with the title of Master Of Horror for his collection of classic films such as Halloween and The Thing, Carpenter has, throughout his career, been able to turn his hand to the action, thriller and adventure genres with equally effective results. Alongside his accolades as a director, Carpenter has also garnered plaudits as the composer to the soundtracks for most of his films. His instantly recognisable brand of crystalline, synth-driven soundscapes has become inseparable from the aesthetic of his movies, and with the release of his first album of original music (2015’s Lost Themes), Carpenter has shown himself an equally capable composer outside of his soundtrack work.
Now performing his compositions live for the first time in his 40-plus-year career, tonight’s show stands out in that the venue for the performance could not be any more perfect. The supposedly haunted Liverpool Olympia, in all of its decaying splendour, looks like it has been plucked straight from a Carpenter movie and the crowd inside are already in good spirits. From the opening chunky guitar riff of the Escape From New York theme they are positively ecstatic, each new theme greeted with a whoop from the audience as they see their favourite characters projected onto the screen behind the band. A condensed version of each film is played out and serves to remind us to just how many classic cinema moments Carpenter has been responsible for. Being able to relive the experience of watching Halloween for the first time from behind the sofa in the presence of the man responsible for so many sleepless nights is a magical experience that borders on the cathartic.
Joined by his own son on second keyboards, Carpenter’s band perform amped-up version of each film’s soundtrack with an energy that translates them into the live realm perfectly. Drawing from the same palette of glassy arpeggios and foreboding synths, Carpenter showcases his ability to tell a story or paint a surreal world just as vivid as those his movies inhabit through his soundscapes alone. As an artist, Carpenter hasn’t always had the praise he’s deserved. Thankfully, tonight, his fanbase are able to provide him with more than enough.
Fast forward a couple of nights and fans of all ages are gathered at Arts Club in hope of catching a glimpse of the enigmatic, Neil Young-lovin’, Fender-playin’ tinnitus merchants DINOSAUR JR. Album after album, tour after tour, J Mascis and co. have barely let up since their 1985 debut, an ever-speeding juggernaut who continue to crush short-lived acts with their gargantuan sound.
Dinosaur Jr. by Mike Sheerin
But first it’s time to support our local freak scene and who better to front it than SHEER ATTACK, a band who truly deserve their name. Lead singer Russ is the perfect combo of Rollins and Ozzy, a truly electric performer who seems to ricochet off every wall he can, his frenetic pinballing soundtracked by his band’s brutal metal/hardcore crossover. Evidence, if you needed it, that you should always get down for the support act.
The roaring trade the venue is doing in ear-plug sales kind of points to the direction this is going in, but before Dinosaur Jr.’s instruments are even plugged in our ears are tested by the deafening roars and wolf whistles that greet the Massachusetts trio as they come on stage. Not ones for unnecessary conversation, the group bowl headfirst into the assault, the sound penetrating our brains with a solid spear of white noise. The decibel meter flashes into the triple digits.
Never one known for the strength of his voice, Mascis mutters song after song from his fixed position on the stage. At times, the only movement you can see from him is in one of his arms and the fingers on the other hand. But, we’re not here for Freddie Mercury levels of stage strutting – it’s the incendiary guitarwork we want, and Mascis doesn’t disappoint as he effortlessly unleashes sounds with a flick of a string and the tap of a pedal. It’s easy to see why they’re viewed in some circles as iconic, yet… the ear-bleeding noise and lack of interaction does get a bit tiresome. Maybe the odd bit of chat wouldn’t go amiss?
The following night we’re present to witness that the strong yet delicate approach of Louisa Roach is still centre stage of SHE DREW THE GUN, the addition of a full band having not overwhelmed but enhanced it. Tonight, 11 months and a Glastonbury performance, a Billy Bragg recommendation, a trip to South Korea and a UK tour later, they reach an even higher level – a heavier, grungier sound developed through extensive guitar riffs and reverb on tracks such as their spooky new Hallowe’en waltz with its metal-heavy ending, Louisa soloing, head down and nodding.
However, before we reach the grunge, the eclectic trio of MAMATUNG provide an unexpected delight. The three young women play a variety of instruments, including the autoharp and melodica, and harmonise beautifully. They’re folky with a world-music edge; earthy, pagan beats over ethereal, sometimes other-worldly, vocals. There’s a Wicker Man-like intensity and build-up of apprehension in the pagan drumming – well in keeping with the night before Hallowe’en.
SDTG’s superb set includes the intensely moving Since You Were Not Mine and If You Could See, and a groovy Sugababes/Jefferson Airplane mashup of Overload. The “angry songs about the way things are” are also in evidence – Louisa’s sweet voice, like honey flowing over the razor’s edge of her sharp lyrics, combining to deliver a knockout, sneering, sarcastic punch to all those who are part of the problem rather than the solution – with Poem and Pit Pony. She ‘raps’ between songs – a “microphone sniper” calling-out the world’s ills and those who perpetuate them, bringing huge cheers and applause from the enthusiastic, packed room.
Anticipation is high a few days later in Arts Club for yet more plentiful musical festivities, showing that the stamina of the crowd is far from flagging. Tonight’s one and only support act is a band that are a stylistic far cry from the musical direction of headliners GOGO PENGUIN, yet somehow they complement the bill perfectly. DELIAH are, in short, phenomenal. They deliver a minimal but well-composed set full of weighty, tight drum breaks, tasty guitar lines and bass counter-melodies. They can legitimately do neo-soul: no gimmicks, no clichéd disco-esque cheapness, just raw, gritty beats and melodies with powerful, lush vocals drizzled on top.
Before long, GoGo Penguin’s trio of contemporary jazzmasters are striding through a rich set of frenetic, breakneck beats and complex melodies – and the audience are transfixed. Not only is this incredible music to listen to but the playing is at the level of the virtuoso. Drummer Rob Turner offers a mesmerising display of both blistering technique and beautiful layers of texture, while bassist Nick Blacka and pianist Chris Illingworth put forward both a wealth of expressive outbursts and refined, tight melodies.
Plenty of diverse cuts from the Penguins’ three albums are peppered throughout the set, such as newer tracks All Res and Unspeakable World as well as older tracks One Percent, Garden Dog Barbeque and Fanfares. The trio give everything they have and seem to disappear into their instruments when they play. Every pair of eyes in the room is focused intently on the emotional, visual and audible trip.
There are few venues in Liverpool as suited to host the last of LMW’s showcase events as Leaf’s upstairs space. Despite the high ceiling there’s a real intimacy about the place, with candles, sombre blue lighting and draped velvet curtains behind the stage making it feel like we’ve been invited to something special.
John Carpenter by Keith Ainsworth
Liverpool’s own TOM LOW provides support, and his three-piece band open with the charmingly innocent Telephone. Quirky guitar hooks and three-way harmonies perfectly set the theme for his dreamy yet uplifting performance.
CAT’S EYES themselves enter to the nostalgically sad Twin Peaks theme – first, the three backing singers meander through the crowd to take their positions on the stage, then guitarist, bassist and tonight’s stand-in drummer Dave, Faris Badwan and, finally, Rachel Zeffira. Upon reaching her mic, Zeffira wastes no time in unleashing the devastating soprano voice she has become known for, the crowd instantly falling under her spell. We’ve been excited to see how their ornate chamber-pop studio sound translates to a live setting for a while now, and answers come in the form of brilliantly captive performances of Face In The Crowd, Drag, and Standoff. Badwan’s vocals often croon throughout them in the style of Nick Cave, the lyrical maturity that has come since his early Horrors days now abundant.
Cat’s Eyes can brilliantly alternate between mournful ballads of lost love and some up-tempo nightmare-pop, with the resultant sound being something that haunts the space between Arcade Fire and Ladytron. Zeffira’s voice is similar to that of Helen Marnie, inspired as they both are by sixties yé-yé and the French chanson. A well-placed cover of The Beatles’ spooky Because only furthers the feeling that we’ve been privy to something original, unpredictable, unforgettable.
Amber Arcades by Chloé Santoriello
DIY BREAKING OUT SHOWS
Away from the bright lights of the established headliners, LMW 2016 provided us with a run of shows in Arts Club’s Loft featuring a clutch of acts who we can be sure will be bill-topping names in the future. Jonny Winship, Evan Moynihan, Cath Bore and Matt Hogarth were our scouts for the series of more intimate gigs – here’s who impressed them…
A sporadic stream of Harley Quinns, shoddy sugar skulls and half-arsed zombies are chugging their way down Seel Street as we arrive at the venue on the Breaking Out series’ opening Halloween weekend. Inside, BATHYMETRY are already mid-flow within their own stream of scuzzy, mix-and-match grunge rock. Their sound twists and flows over the audience, and is well received by this early-bird crowd.
Playing for the first time as a live band, the new, reimagined project from AGP follow. Bar the odd hitch and mistiming, they produce an intricate sonic wall of punchy shoegaze rock. The powerful and delicate FERAL LOVE are next to add their own dynamic to the support for tonight. Drawing the biggest crowd of the night, they enthral and enchant with thick electronic tones and Adéle Emmas’ soaring and commanding vocals. They deliver an impressive set, and leave as if it was their own headline show.
By the time the Heavenly headliners AMBER ARCADES take to the stage, the room has thinned a little and the noise levels from the bar area behind us are heightened. Nevertheless, the band effortlessly sail through their set; fuzzy organs, gentle jangly guitars and Annelotte de Graaf’s soft, deft croon float over the crowd. Come With Me and Fading Lines act as the most rousing parts of the their set. Harmonies are carried and delivered with a heavenly grace; the essence and style of their brilliant EP Fading Lines is reciprocated, but something is missing. They fail to snare the attention of the room, as people chatter, shuffle awkwardly or politely look on. Their sedating, dreamy pop is lost on this crowd.
When LET’S EAT GRANDMA take the stage in Arts Club’s Loft, I can’t help but wonder how often the duo get mistaken for sisters. Dressed in matching outfits and with the same long wavy locks, Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingsworth look strikingly similar. They seem like best friends and the beginning of their set doesn’t do anything to dispel that notion. They clap out a ‘Patty Cake’-style rhythm over the drone of a synth before drifting into Deep Six Textbook.
Many of the songs on Let’s Eat Grandma’s debut album I, Gemini are built on the foundation of a keyboard or synth loop. From there, they layer guitar, mandolin, xylophone, saxophone, recorders, and drums to create a haunting atmosphere. Their performance is eccentric and unconventional. They aren’t virtuosos, but that’s not the point. Their primitive approach to a lot of these instruments is what defines their sound and that’s not a bad thing; think Meg White or Patrick Carney.
One thing they have mastered is the way they weave their vocals together. Often, they overlap two distinct lyrics or echo one another before coming together to emphasise a certain line. The result is powerful.
These young women are willing to venture wherever the music takes them, and they play what comes naturally and sing about what they know. It’s psychedelic pop mixed with folklore, fairytales and teen angst – and it’s uniquely their own.
The Breaking Out strand of Liverpool Music Week works particularly well for the high-quality local talent who get to open for the bigger, touring acts, and one band who could be in the latter category soon enough are TRUDY & THE ROMANCE. The eager puppies bound onto the stage to kick of the third night of the DIY series, and it would be the obvious thing to describe them as odd, but they are exactly that and it’s no bad thing. Pulling in from 1950s doo-wop and rockabilly classics, with the ghost of Gene Vincent and big wonderful smiles, they’re a curious joy. Tonight we get the now familiar Baby I’m Blue and All My Love, as well as new song Doghouse.
Headliners THE BIG MOON are a delight tonight. They play a new song, bass player Celia Archer acknowledging with humour that they could cock it up big time “and none of you lot would notice”. That, as well as recent releases Silent Movie Susie and Cupid, plus debut single Sucker, stand up well alongside a live favourite, a lingering interpretation of Madonna’s Beautiful Stranger.
Archer bigs up singer Juliette Jackson throughout the show for trooping through this, the first night of the tour, with a cold. “I’m going to do a dance for you now,” Jackson announces halfway through, and proceeds to do a wobbly Walks Like An Egyptian shuffle. This is appropriate, because there is something The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs about Jackson, the girl next door way out of everyone’s reach.
For DIY’s final Breaking Out gig of Liverpool Music Week 2016, we’re looking for a grand hurrah of a send-off, so who better to kick off proceedings than Arts Club’s arch rivals QUEEN ZEE & THE SASSTONES? Their previous sets here have resulted in time spent in A&E, and their return to the stage proves no less compromising. The set that follows proves anarchic as ever, with a face full of feedback, room-shattering drums and the acid tongue of Queen Zee – in bra and skirt – providing an electric set. No piece of equipment is safe as cymbals cascade and mics are slammed. Their appearance may be brief, but it sets the bar high for tonight.
Volumes raised, it’s up to INDIGO MOON to take the challenge of following on from Queen Zee. Their decadent rock is lavish and rich in tone but it’s lead singer Ashley Colley who really steals the show. A storm of swirling hair and bellowing vocals, she holds the audience in the palm of her hand as she relinquishes control to her primeval instincts.
It’s with a pang of sadness that we notice the room empty a little for headlining Brightonians ABBATOIR BLUES, whose rough ‘n’ ready rock has caught the ear this year. As if to prove themselves to the people who have stayed, the quartet unfurl a barrage of harsh, shoegazey guitars that prove perfect backing for the guttural incoherent slurs of vocalist George Boorman. With audience interaction kept to a minimum and the set short and sharp, this is a treat for those of us lucky enough to have witnessed it.
Invisible Wind Factory, North Shore Troubadour and Meraki
It’s the last night of a run which has championed everything from pop to jazz to soundtrack pioneers and the end is very near. Forever looking forward to Liverpool’s future, Music Week have decided this year to look to the newest area of cultural innovation for the setting of the fabled LMW Closing Party, the north docklands.
With such a choice of local talent on offer across the venues, we take up shelter first of all in Bido Lito!’s own Spiritual Bunker based at brand-new venue Meraki, with the brilliant SHIPBUILDERS opening proceedings. They’re better than ever tonight too, showing that they’ve managed to progress from the familiar indie format into something more interesting and much more diverse. Combining classic Scouse melody with some Spaghetti Western cinema stylings, they help us forget the weather outside with a show that makes us feel all warm inside.
Not wanting to miss anything, we rush over to quaint venue North Shore Troubadour to catch a glimpse of the enigmatic and suave DANYE. Their slick hair matches their effortless playing as a complement to the minimalist psychedelic pop that they play. There’s no need to venture outside for our next act either, as the wonderful AZUSENA is just getting started in North Shore Troubadour’s main room. The Wirral-via-New York singer is perhaps one of the most exciting Merseyside artists around, so with live appearances few and far between, we think it best to catch her before she’s carted off to much larger stages. There’s something quite captivating about the whole thing: merely a guitar, a keyboard and one tremendous voice, they manage to hypnotise the audience with their beautifully sparse and barren torch songs. No gimmicks or strategy are needed, just well-written songs and the expanse for Azusena’s creamy voice to unfold.
Back in Meraki, Norwegian trio I SEE RIVERS bring a glacial feel to the stark room, which manages to stay heaving all night. Delicious harmonies and winsome tones cut through to the bone, bringing an air of The Staves, or even Sea Of Bees, to the party. SANKOFA succeed in bringing some beauty out of Meraki’s dark and damp corners later on too, all bluesy incantations and sleazy garage style, and it’s one in-one out for BONNACONS OF DOOM’s groundshaking set in the venue an hour or so later.
Some of the promising acts split between the various venues tonight would do well to take a closer look at this rise of one of the city’s greatest success stories. CLINIC are a beacon of everything that’s great about Liverpool: creatively pioneering, talented but most importantly, downright fucking strange. Despite the band having been around for almost two decades, not only have they managed to keep moving forward but, due to their iconic surgical suits, they’ve also failed to age. They get straight to business tonight with medical efficiency, providing the audience with quite the show, See Saw in particular sounding timeless and well-rounded in IWF’s cavernous main room.
The Closing Party is an amazing feat, one that is a fitting end to Liverpool Music Week’s storming run, but it isn’t half a marathon. Tonight alone offers up enough amazing musicians from a variety of genres to power most festival bills. But even this isn’t enough for us gig-hungry rhythm slaves; we just can’t let final act of the night STRANGE COLLECTIVE slope off without tearing through their infectious party psych hit Super Touchy.
When can we do it all over again? |
The first book in this series - Gods no More Book One - is available for free from most ebook retailers who stock my work. You can also read it here. Click the button below.Read More
You can read this free sci-fi short story here on my website.
You can read Diamond and Chase Book Four for free. A new chapter is added monthly.
Yes, she's a goddess. And, oh yes, he is most certainly a god. You can tell from the fact he marches around in glinting armor, picking fights with titans and picking up divine broads. But she didn't sign up for this. Sea monsters, kidnappings, evil plots, and the end of the world? Are you kidding? She spends most nights reading the weather report and icing cupcakes.
It's all his fault.
She has dreamed of one man her whole life – now it’s time to meet him.
Anna is normal save for one fact. Every night, she dreams of the gods. The nightmare is always the same. She is thrown from Olympus for stealing her husband’s thunderbolt. He banishes her into the human realm to live out a tortured existence. She’s about to find out her dreams are real. When she meets the richest man in the city, she’s thrown head-first into the modern world of the gods. It’s a realm of retribution, violence, power, and lies. And at its heart lies the one man who broke her heart – Zeus. It’s time for Anna to seek her revenge.
Oatmeal is a bounty hunter; his favorite past times include getting into bar fights and finishing them. But when he's tasked to pick up a clumsy, annoying, awkward Earth-girl, hehas to give up his bar fights and concentrate on saving the galaxy.
She must save the world. He must help her.
Yin is the Savior of the ages. A young woman chosen to protect the world on its final day. A fighter, a sorcerer, a loner. She lives in the mountains, away from the prying eyes of the Kingdom and under the watchful protection of her guardian, Castor.
Captain Yang has never met a woman like her. Impetuous, powerful, and determined, she’s too much to handle. But the army need her. Especially with war on the horizon. She has a secret though, one he’s determined to reveal. Yet time is against him, and he must fight to find out the truth before it’s too late.
There is a gate to another world. The government has known about it for years. Beyond, lies a land like no other.
Sergeant Mark Sheppard is a member of the Earth Taskforce sent to explore Xandia. A soldier at heart, most of the time he has to play diplomat to the beautiful Lady Tallet. But Xandia has its secrets. So does Grace Brown. She’s just an ordinary human, but her whole life she’s been obsessed by Xandia. Her dreams of its lush plains and mountainous lands eat her up from the inside out.
Those dreams are about to turn into a living nightmare as an accident on Earth pulls her through to the Otherside. Sergeant Mark Sheppard will have do everything he can to take her home. But it won’t be enough. For when Xandia beckons, all fall.
A witch in a world of magic, mayhem, and love.
Ebony Bell is living just exactly the life she wants. She has her very own magical bookstore, a wardrobe full of fabulously glitzy clothes, and a sweet bowl just brimming with lollies. But when a 6ft-tall annoyance by the name of Detective Nathan Wall walks through her shop door, her sweet life turns to ruin. As witch consultant for the local police department, Ebony has to work infuriatingly close with the man. And if that wasn't the worst thing that could happen, she slowly finds out that an ancient, thoroughly powerful entity might just be out to curse her. Very soon she finds herself ditching the ruby-red heels, dashing across rooftops, breaking and entering, and stuffing whole bookstores into bags. Oh, and possibly kissing annoying detectives.
The greatest enemy the galaxy has ever known is here. The war will begin….
Diana had a troubled past. The kind where her family were brutally murdered right in front of her eyes. It’s changed the course of her future – but it will change more. An ancient race left a gift inside her mind, and it is time for it to rise.
Her secret identity must be shielded, and there’s only one man who can do that. Lieutenant Park. He’s meant to be adaptable – but he’ll have to be more if he has any hope of controlling the socially awkward Vira. Worse, when he finds himself at the foot of a growing conspiracy that could swallow the Coalition whole, he’ll find he’ll have to trust her. But will she ever trust him?
Amanda is just an ordinary girl, but when she wakes up one night to find everything from common criminals to highly-trained mercenaries traipsing around her house looking for the 'goods', her life takes a turn towards the adventurous and far too dangerous.
Sebastian is a lawyer who just happens to have an unusual hobby: he's an esteemed and accomplished treasure hunter. But when he meets Amanda, that all changes. On the run for their lives with every criminal unit he has ever heard of on their tails, Sebastian has to somehow keep Amanda safe while getting his hands on the Stargazer Globes, the greatest treasure map in the world. Only problem is Amanda screams too much. But then again, Sebastian has a problem too, he lies.
Abby is a witch; she has a broom and a cat named Charlie. But around these parts witches aren’t popular. So when Abby finds herself at the mercy of an ancient spell with no one to rely on but a distant man, she must count on more than her magic to survive.
This bundle consists of these full series: Gladys the Guard, Agent of Light, Superheroes Don't Wear Heels, and The Witch and the Commander.
Some are born into responsibility. Some seek it out. And some turn from it.
Ava is a priestess of Avixa, a powerful being with a powerful destiny to keep her people on the true and righteous path. Yet it is a destiny she does not want. To flee it, she joins the Coalition Academy. But her past cannot so easily be left behind. When she joins the newest ship in the fleet, a series of unfortunate accidents befall her. Soon she finds herself thrust into a secret war. One that will span the entire Milky Way. Yet she is not alone. The unpredictable Hunter McClane is by her side. Together they must find out what’s at stake before it’s too late.
Imagine you have to marry a modern-day king, or you’ll die.That’s me – the Last Queen. As my life falls apart, I’m forced into a world of dark magic, death, power, and arrogant kings who will do anything to acquire me.
When Lilly White finds a strange box, it changes her life. It ignites the ice that has always lain dormant in her heart. Oh, and it brings her to the attention of him. And who is he? The god of revenge. He drags her into his world. A world of magic, of crime, of retribution. She’ll never escape him. And soon she’ll realize she doesn’t want to.
Vivian Bond has a secret that could bring down the Milky Way. Special Commander Jake Trace doesn't care – he hates her.
When Jake meets the irritating Vivian at a gallery, and she steals a painting he’s been tasked to secure for his superiors, he locks onto her like a hunter to prey. It’s the only thing that saves her life. For Vivian Bond has enemies. Everywhere. She has a twisted destiny she’s run from her whole life. Now it will catch up.
Henrietta is painfully boring. She is uncoordinated, unsuccessful, and entirely unlucky in love. That all changes when a strange man walks into her life talking of witches, magic, and warriors. Soon she finds her life turned upside down, and any semblance of normality banished for good.
She’s been on the run for two years now. Two years of pain and anguish. He’s a lieutenant commander, the son of one of the Alliance’s most decorated admirals. He’s never questioned his loyalty for the Alliance. Until now. A series of calamitous events throw them together on a quest that will lead right into the heart of the galaxy’s darkest secrets.
When she meets the arrogant but terribly handsome Captain Carmichael, everything changes. In the blink of an eye, the life she knows is burnt away. She’s thrown into a perilous journey across the country. With a man she barely knows, she must forge a path to Washington. Only there will her true abilities be revealed. In their path lies the horrors of the modern world - beastly animals gorged on magic, frightful apparitions that walk the night, and dead that stumble from their graves.
Richard has a secret – the same secret that flows through Lydia’s blood and that darkens the city streets of Fairchurch. Magic. He comes from a long line of practitioners, and he’s been charged since the day he was born with protecting the innocent. That duty comes at a cost – not to him. To Lydia. From the day she is inherited and thrust into this dark world of magic and power, he will use her, for he has no choice. But Lydia will fight. It’s in her bones, pulsing in her heart, rattling in her soul – the need to battle. And though at first she directs that force at Richard, soon enough she will be drawn too far into this world, and importantly, far too close to him.
Mini is a diner waitress in a space bar. She has a flouncy skirt, a holopin, and a pretty little apron. She also, apparently, has a mysterious alien past; a past that comes knocking on her door in the form of a tiny red creature called Od. According to Od, Mini is all that stands between the galaxy and an invasion by terrible, soul-sucking creatures from the in-between dimensions. As Mini's galactic experience to-date revolves around serving drinks and picking up after customers, she finds that very unlikely.
The battle for the galaxy starts now.
Lara Forest is a simple cadet in the Galactic Coalition Academy – or so she thinks. When she decides to quit, circumstances force her to reconsider. A hand from her future reaches through the past, and it a brings a war. Soon Lara is thrust head-first into a battle for the Milky Way, not just in this time, but forever. She’s not alone. The meddlesome golden-boy Cadet Nok is with her. She might not appreciate his help now – one day, she will. But that depends on one thing – time. From now on, everything and everyone will depend on it.
Her world is dying, and only she can help.
Ami is a soldier, nothing more than cannon fodder in a war that’s threatening to tear her world apart. When creatures from a cross-dimensional rift spill over her world, society as she knows it shatters. All must fight to live. But when a creature with near limitless power chooses her to save her world, Ami is swept into a fight for everything and everyone.
Intergalactic battles, the most powerful assassin in the empire, a twisted royal family, and a man who is way out of his depth.
Commander Williams is going somewhere. In the Imperial Forces, it’s almost impossible to climb the ranks without noble birth, but Williams is the kind of soldier who can. Like a dog after a bone, once Williams locks onto a target, he does not let go. Which is a problem, because his next target will drag him into an intergalactic war, steal his heart, and change his life forever.
She’s a loner. Always has been. She’s fought to survive, tooth and nail. He’s a prince of the Arterian Royal Family – the greatest power in the galaxy. They shouldn’t meet. Their paths should never intersect. But they do.
Andalusia is no ordinary pirate – she’s a runaway princess.
She ran to save her people from her betrothed. He intends to use her to start a galactic war, unless she can stay out of his clutches.
When she runs into one of her old guards, she's pulled back into the life she disavowed. She can no longer afford to run. It is time to rise up and do what she should have done from the start - go to war.
Such is life for Cadet Nida Harper. She's universally known as the worst recruit in the Academy. It's not for want of trying; she's just cursed with universal bad luck. Every accident that could happen, does happen. So it's no surprise when she winds up unconscious on a field mission. It is a surprise when the dreams start. Visions of stars falling from the heavens and civilizations crumbling to dust. The only silver lining comes in golden boy Lucas Stone. The hero of the Academy, he takes an interest in her. But he'll have to act fast to stop what will happen next....
In one moment, Nadine’s destiny changes. She’s snatched from her life and thrown into the police to work for the twisted but handsome Tom Walker. He has a plan for her, and it will start with solving a murder. As Nadine is pushed into a tangled mess of intrigue and danger at Tom’s side, she learns one thing. He wants her for something – revenge. And she doesn't mind. For now. The further she falls into this game – and his arms – the more she’ll struggle to escape.
She's a hard-boiled private eye in Soullake City, and she specializes in finding lost souls. The city sits on top of a gate to Heaven and Hell, and it's up to her to ensure neither the light nor dark spill through. She's got a problem, though. She made a deal with the Devil to access her immortal soul, and it now sits around her neck as a clockwork amulet. But in unlocking her soul, she unlocked her destiny, and both must now vie for control of the Harbinger.
When my mad grandmother's behavior brings a mysterious detective knocking at my door, I find it impossible to get rid of him. When the evil of forces of the universe start climbing up my walls and crawling through my windows, I can't get rid of them either. Soon I'm embattled, and with nowhere to run and no one to rely on, I find out exactly what it takes to be a witch in the modern age.
In a world of broken myths and lies, Veronique thinks she’s a fighter. She’s wrong. She’s a sacrifice for an ancient vampire who shall rise once more.
Veronique is a magical Lemurian warrior. Every night, she prowls the city streets dispatching ghoulish nightmares called husks. She’s been alone for years. Until now. When a human army captain is thrown into her world, she vows to keep him safe. Together, they’re thrust into a realm of ancient lies, violence, and vampires who hide in plain sight and myth. Veronique has one chance – learn the truth or sacrifice her blood to lies.
Monique is a broken witch on the run. Three years ago, she escaped being sacrificed at Vendex Academy for Magic. She’s been running since. Until now. Chance draws her back into the magical world, and one man won't let her leave. Monique is thrust into a world of violent intrigue, of old money and power, and of poisoned destinies.
Ariel De Winter wakes up 400 years in the future to an incredibly handsome space marine and a war that's about the engulf the entire galaxy. She doesn't belong in this time. She belongs in a world of call centers, cats, and lonely nights spent in front of the TV watching dull documentaries. Then the world ends. Hundreds of years later, she wakes up to a view of shiny boots, one very handsome man, and a future that doesn't want her.
Madeleine Macy is a magical enforcement officer. She doesn’t have power, but boy does she have a razor sharp wit. Then she meets her match in Valstein, a powerful vampire of noble descent who's about to become a massive pain in her butt. When one of the most respected vampire lords in Knight City is brutally murdered, Madeleine is thrown together with Valstein to solve the case before it's too late. You see, if it's too late, Madeline dies. And Valstein really can't have that - not until he finds out who she is and - more to the point - who's been hiding her from him.
As his life crashes down around him, Jackson is faced with a horrible choice: blind loyalty to the country he loves of informed betrayal for a woman he hardly knows. He chooses her.
Nick Hancock’s waiting for a plane when someone tries to kill him. He wakes up in a puddle of his own blood to a new world. A dying one. An alien race has invaded Earth, and humanity can’t stop them. But there are others. Aliens from far and wide who’ve settled on Earth or crashed here. There is one among them with the power to save everyone, Hena. An alien of incalculable power, she now holds the world in her hands. She must rise, or all will fall.
She must feed off sinners to survive. But to feed is to sin, and to sin is to be punished.
Misa Fairchild is a detective in the screwed up city of Saint Helios. She has a secret she’s kept since the day she was born. A secret that haunts her every step and breath. She's an angel who eats others. She must consume sin to live, but when she comes to the attention of the government, everything changes
She works in a local haberdashery store stacking pastel-colored yarns and sticking labels on jam jars. She does not have a boyfriend, does not own a car, and to top it all off, she still lives with her mad grandma. The only possibly interesting thing about her, is also the saddest: Gladys is unusually good at arcade games. But when strange, yowling, terribly violent things begin happening in town, Gladys soon finds out she may be the only haberdashery store attendant who can stop them, and that luckily for everyone else her skills with plastic guns extends to the real variety.
Hiding is Alice’s only option. It always has been.Then he comes along. Commander John Doe, the head of a new mission into one of the most dangerous areas of space. A chance encounter thrusts them together on the barren wasteland of Orion Minor. Then the chase begins.Alice cannot allow herself to slip into the hands of the Union, but John Doe will stop at nothing to find out who she is.In Episode One of Ghost of Mind, the hunt begins.
Sarah's been plagued with strange dreams her whole life. Except there's one problem - they aren't dreams. Everyone thinks she's mad - and none more so than the strapping Lieutenant Karax. He's convinced she should be kicked out of the Academy. There's one problem: Sarah isn't mad. In fact, she holds the key to one of the most powerful technologies in the Milky Way. If Karax can't find out what's going on, Earth will fall. And if he can't find a way to save Sarah, he'll lose everything.
She’s got powers, and she has to use them to find her future husband before it’s too late.
This isn’t fair. Beth has just found out she’s a witch, and in this world, witches are regulated. When her powers are tested, she's pushed into a new job working for a rakish bounty hunter who's charm only just makes up for his arrogance. But if Beth thinks finding bounties for Josh McIntosh is the worst punishment imaginable, she hasn't met Maximus C. Knights yet. He's the most powerful kingpin in town, and he needs her to find something. Specifically? Her future husband. You see, there’s a prophecy that says one day a witch just like Beth will come along, and with a little help, she’ll save the world.
He hunts treasure, and she’s his greatest find.
Zel is a Level VIII Finder who travels the multiverse searching for objects of worth for his masters. When he travels to Earth to acquire an ancient treasure, he runs into Helen. She has a treacherous secret that could unravel the very fabric of reality and tear the multiverse apart. But she's still a find, and Finders never let their prizes go.
She's trapped. She was born with a power others covert. Once she's delivered to the capital, her captors will use that power to decimate all....
Arriving in the sleepy village of Huddlestone, Audrey thinks she’s got a boring two months of cataloguing ahead of her. And then she meets James Chase. James is an actuary who calculates risks by day and takes them by night. He doesn’t have time to waste on the smart-mouthed woman who’s moved into his old nanny’s house. Until, that is, Audrey finds a set of postcards – clues to a stolen treasure. Clues that could get them both killed.
Enter the world of James Chase and Audrey Diamond, an unlikely duo thrust into a series of adventures that will take them around the world and right into each other’s arms.
By day, Serena's a police recruit. She hunts witches alongside her strapping Sergeant, Jake Parata. By night? Serena Sanders is a witch. When her mother died, she gave her a gift - a split personality. Her other side - the dark side – only comes out when pushed.
When a witch kingpin moves into town looking for Serena, her history rises up to meet her.
Special Commander Joshua Cook has a secret, Mimi’s sure of it. He’s the Coalition’s latest golden boy, but she knows he has a past that’s far from sparkling. Ready to find out what his secret is, she isn’t ready for the man himself. Josh is the rudest, meanest, crudest Coalition officer she’s come across. She’s about to give up when the unthinkable occurs – they get stuck on a desert planet far from help.
When Maggie Brown comes to the attention of Luc, the Seventh Son of Satan, she makes a pact to save her life. He must do everything he can to keep her safe. It will come at a cost. For both of them. Luc is used to getting what he wants, when he wants it. But with Maggie, all that will change. They’ll be thrust into a world of dark revenge, of broken souls, of twisted desire.
Annie is not normal. She has an ability – one that could condemn the very universe. People will kill to get to her. There is one man who can keep her safe. But to get to him, she must battle her way through assassins, armies, and friends. The stakes could not be higher, for they are everything.
For 450 years she was enslaved to one of the masters of the Kore sects. She was forced to fight in endless battles. War, destruction, desolation – all wrought by her.
But then she escapes. Seeking revenge on her master, she turns to the only group powerful enough to help her – the Coalition. She joins the Academy. It should be easy. It isn’t. She rapidly finds out that despite her raw power, she needs more to become an effective recruit. But now is not the time for failure. There is a spy on Academy grounds – a spy who is tearing the Coalition’s intelligence to shreds. She finds herself drawn into the hunt. A hunt she will not lose. For she is Axira, the most powerful spacer in the Milky Way.
Leana’x is a member of the Artaxan Royal Family. She's hardly a princess, though. She's 100th in line for the throne. It would take the complete destruction of the Artaxan Family for her to ever see the Royal Palace, let alone take up the vaunted role of Prime Queen. Leana’x wouldn't want the role, anyway. The Prime must bodily process the constant, immense information stream of her people. Ensign Leana’x is happy tinkering in the engineering bay and taking orders.
When the Artaxan Protectorate is attacked, Leana’x is thrown together with a man who hates her in a fight for survival that will span the galaxy and change everything.
She’s easily the unluckiest witch in the country. But all that’s meant to change, for today she starts a new job. She’s expecting something behind a desk – she doesn’t get it. As soon as Anna sets foot in town, the trouble starts. There’s a dark wizard haunting the streets, and he’s after witches. When she becomes his target, she’s pulled into a desperate race against time. With a full cast of leather-clad barmaids, dashing bounty hunters, and debonair wizards, Anna’s Hope is a rollicking urban fantasy, packed with humor, adventure, and mystery.
Lizzie Luck is magical. Apparently. The DNA test came back proving she's from the otherworld. She's unemployed, has 24 dollars in her account, and is so out of luck it's killing her.
Things couldn't get worse, right? Wrong. When she winds up in the police station and comes to the attention of the city's richest, most charming and most powerful vampire, her fortunes take a turn for the worse. Soon she finds herself under contract to him. She has to agree to his terms, and in return, he'll find out who she is. From magical murders to dangerously attractive vampires, Lizzie is thrust headfirst into a world of intrigue, mystery, and fantasy.
Agent Mira works for a shadowy agency. She forms part of the line of defense between good and bad - between Heaven itself and the fiery depths of Hell. However, the section of the defensive line she inhabits is minuscule and insignificant. That is until everything changes. A series of strange coincidences see Mira pitted against creatures far beyond her skill.When her misadventures push her into the arms of the Agency's finest officer, everything gets better. Sorry, no - it gets worse. See, Hell itself has a plan for Mira, and it won't stop until she fulfills it.
In the Zenith Kingdom, kings are not born - they are remembered.
Their memories are held in the dreams of their brides-to-be. Find one of these brides, and she can bestow upon a man the powers of a ruler past. There was a time when the Zenith Royal family had to search the galaxy for brides - now all are kept in the palace. They think they have every bride under control; they don't. One has eluded them, and within her dreams rests the most powerful king there ever was.
What would happen if one of the most highly-trained and vicious assassins in the galaxy attacked you one warm summer's night? What would happen if you were thrust into an adventure with the galaxy's greatest heroic heart-throb? What would happen if a mysterious and ancient race appeared with one desire – to kill you? What would you do? Jane grew up knowing one thing: she's nothing but normal. But then one little run-in with an assassin robot threatens to destroy everything she thought she knew about herself. Soon she finds herself with none other than Lucas Stone, the galaxy's number one pin up and hero. And together the two of them have to find out exactly who Jane is and what's after her before the galaxy is plunged into war.
Then she encounters a problem. She's just inherited her grandmother's house. That's not so bad, right? Wrong. Because the house comes with a book, and the book comes with a curse. Suddenly Chi finds herself thrust into the gritty world of a seer. Yeah, because magic exists, and it ain't pretty. Oh, and there's another problem. One with broad shoulders, a deep Scottish accent, and a killer smile. Turns out he's her magical bodyguard, and he's here to stay. Chi is pushed into a realm of violent magic, petty lies, and a curse that will haunt her until the day she dies. |
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins votes from ISS: 'If we can do it from space…' – CNET
This story is part of , CNET’s coverage of the run-up to voting in November.
However you go about casting your vote, you have to admire this NASA astronaut who managed to cast her vote from space. Kate Rubins, who’s currently on duty aboard the International Space Station, posted a photo of herself in front of a padded booth marked “ISS Voting Booth,” with the text “From the International Space Station: I voted today.”
NASA notes this isn’t Rubins’ first time voting from space. She did so in 2016, when she was also on the ISS.
“I think it’s really important for everybody to vote,” Rubins said in a video uploaded by NASA. “And if we can do it from space, then I believe folks can do it from the ground, too.” Rubins’ six-month ISS mission began Oct. 14, which was also her 42nd birthday.
Most astronauts choose to vote as Texas residents because they move to Houston for training, NASA said, though, that those who wish to vote as residents of their home state can make special arrangements.
Ballots from the county where the astronaut is registered are tested on a space station training computer, then the real ballot is generated and uplinked to the ISS with crew-member-specific credentials to keep it secure. The completed ballot is electronically delivered back to Earth to be officially recorded.
“Voting in space has been possible since 1997 when a bill passed to legally allow voting from space in Texas,” NASA said in a statement. “Since then, several NASA astronauts have exercised this civic duty from orbit. As NASA works toward sending astronauts to the Moon in 2024 and eventually on to Mars, the agency plans to continue to ensure astronauts who want to vote in space are able to, no matter where in the solar system they may be.”
NASA had expected the US astronauts on the SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the ISS to join Rubins in voting from space, but their mission has been delayed until early- to mid-November, so they can now vote from Earth.
– AI and photonics to decipher the “twinkling” of the stars… – AlKhaleej Today
23 October 2020
The invention of Australian scientists paves the way for a “renaissance in exoplanet observation”.
Australian scientists have developed a new type of sensor to measure and correct the distortion of starlight caused by viewing the Earth’s atmosphere. This should make it easier to examine the possibility of life on distant planets.
With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, optical scientists at the University of Sydney have developed a sensor that can neutralize the “twinkle” of a star caused by thermal fluctuations in the Earth’s atmosphere. This will facilitate the discovery and study of planets in distant solar systems with optical telescopes on Earth.
“The main method of identifying planets orbiting distant stars is to measure regular breaks in starlight caused by planets blocking parts of their sun,” said lead author Dr. Barnaby Norris.
“It’s very difficult from the ground, so we had to develop a new way of looking at the stars. We also wanted to find a way to observe these planets directly from Earth, ”he said.
The team’s invention is now being used in one of the largest optical telescopes in the world, the 8.2-meter Subaru telescope in Hawaii operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
“It is really difficult to separate the ‘sparkle’ of a star from the light ingress that planets cause when observed from Earth,” said Dr. Norris. “Most observations of exoplanets come from orbiting telescopes like NASA’s Kepler. With our invention we hope to initiate a renaissance of exoplanet observation from the ground. ”
With the help of the new “photonic wavefront sensor”, astronomers can image exoplanets directly around distant stars from Earth.
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered in the past two decades, but only a small handful have been imaged directly from Earth. This severely limits scientific research into these exoplanets.
Creating an image of the planet provides far more information than indirect detection methods such as measuring starlight incursions. Earth-like planets could appear billions of times weaker than their host star. Observing the planet apart from its star is like looking at a 10 cent coin in Sydney as seen from Melbourne.
To solve this problem, the Faculty of Physics’ scientific team developed a “photonic wavefront sensor” that can measure the exact distortion caused by the atmosphere in new ways and correct it thousands of times by the telescope’s adaptive optics systems one second.
“This new sensor combines advanced photonic devices with deep learning and neural network techniques to create an unprecedented type of wavefront sensor for large telescopes,” said Dr. Norris.
“In contrast to conventional wavefront sensors, it can be placed in the same place in the optical instrument where the image is generated. This means that it is sensitive to distortion that is invisible to other wavefront sensors currently used in large observatories, ”he said.
Professor Olivier Guyon of the Subaru Telescope and the University of Arizona is one of the world’s leading experts in adaptive optics. He said: “This is undoubtedly a very innovative approach that is very different from any existing method. It could potentially address several major limitations in current technology.
“We are currently working with the University of Sydney team to test this concept on Subaru in collaboration with SCExAO, one of the most advanced adaptive optics systems in the world.”
Application beyond astronomy
Scientists achieved this remarkable result by building on a novel method to measure (and correct) the wavefront of light that passes through atmospheric turbulence directly in the focal plane of an imaging instrument. This is done using an advanced light converter known as a photonic lantern, which is linked to a neural network inference process.
“This is a radically different approach to existing methods and solves some major limitations in current approaches,” said co-author Jin (Fiona) Wei, a PhD student at the Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Laboratory.
The director of the Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Laboratory at the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, Associate Professor Sergio Leon-Saval, said, “While we came to this problem to solve a problem in astronomy, the technique proposed is extremely relevant for a wide range of fields.
“It could be used in optical communications, remote sensing, in vivo imaging, and any other area where accurate wavefronts are received or sent through a turbulent or cloudy medium such as water, blood, or air.”
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US astronaut votes early from space station – Space.com
From the International Space Station: I voted today— Kate Rubins pic.twitter.com/DRdjwSzXwyOctober 22, 2020
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins shared her voting selfie from orbit after stating before her launch earlier this month that she would cast her ballot from the International Space Station.
Since 1997, as a concession to the fact that most NASA astronauts live near the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas has had an extreme absentee ballot procedure in place for anyone who finds themselves off Earth on Election Day. It’s requested like any other absentee ballot, but with the address “low Earth orbit”; NASA delivers the digital ballot first to the astronaut, then to the state’s election authorities.
Rubins arrived in orbit for her second spaceflight on Oct. 14 and will remain on the space station for about six and a half months. She is the only American in space and will remain so on Election Day (Nov. 3).
The three NASA astronauts scheduled to fly on the Crew-1 mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule had planned to vote from space as well, but delays to their planned Oct. 31 launch mean that they (and a Japanese crewmate) will remain on Earth until mid-November..
In addition to absentee ballots, Texas also permits early voting; the period runs from Oct. 13 to Oct. 30 this year.
Email Meghan Bartels at firstname.lastname@example.org or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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CHRISTIANS HAVE A RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE?
by Brother Gregory
January 2, 2010
While the State of Montana has recently made an attempt to protect individual rights by enacting state provisions, few understand that individual rights require individual responsibility. Gun rights advocates wait to see what the Federal reaction will be. The difficulty the Federal government faces will remain, as always, how will they maintain the delusion that US citizens still enjoy natural God given rights as free people, while continuing to regulate such rights as the privilege they have become?
“Brian Schweitzer [governor of Montana] has signed into law a bill that aims to exempt Montana-made guns from federal regulation.”
To call on one government to protect your rights from another is simply to shift the authority and power over that right from one agent to another. Truly free societies are based on voluntary networks of liberty minded people who care about their neighbor's rights as much as they care about their own. Freedom only belongs to a peculiar people that are willing to equally protect their rights and their neighbors while allowing their neighbor the right of choosing to do the same.
Let us face the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The truth is that most people covet their neighbor's goods through the power of the governments they elect. Most people do not care about your rights as much as they care about their own welfare and comfort. They have long abandoned the precepts of Abraham, Moses, or Jesus Christ, to say nothing of the early American Republic.
Only virtuous people with diligent enthusiasm may consistently secure liberty. Institution of power created by man's own hand will claim to protect individual rights but like the gods of old they will soon turn those original rights into regulated privileges. If institutions of power protect and secure your rights then those rights will become privileges.
“Protection draws to it subjection; subjection protection”
The Natural God given Right to defend yourself and your community requires that the individual and their community recognize their God given Responsibility to equally protect themselves and their community from “any” threat that might jeopardize the life, liberty or the well-being of all.
Americans struggled for centuries to earn the status of freemen or freeholders securing the right to declare unwarranted usurpations in 1776. Few Americans today realize that when you elect men who call themselves benefactors, but exercise authority one over the other, providing security at your neighbors' expense, you are rejecting Christ, God and your natural rights.
The government that is empowered by you to take from your neighbor for your personal welfare and benefit, using your own standard, has the right to take from you for their benefit. As you judge, so shall you be judged. The contract makes the law. If you want to be free you must first free your neighbor from the tyranny in your own heart.
The truth is Americans are snared in a trap of their own making. No past laurels of dead heroes or patriotic flag waving, nor rationalized hope or imaginary rendition of the truth will alter that fact. Citizens of the United States are no longer free. They have sold themselves slaves to their own sloth and wantonness.
Although you may began to finally realize now that “self defense” is not about guns or self, the recent decision in the Nordyke v. King case is a good place to seek to understand your loss of liberty, if you have the stomach for it.
The Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb claimed “The Heller ruling in 2008 was the first critical step toward full restoration of the individual citizen’s right to keep and bear arms to its rightful position as a cornerstone of the Bill of Rights. This victory in the Ninth Circuit not only reinforces the Heller ruling, it expands upon it.”
Neither the Heller ruling nor the Nordyke opinion do anything to restore individual rights once enjoyed by early American freemen. The Nordyke opinion clearly states that, “The Bill of Rights directly applies only to the federal government.”
It is important to understand that the phrase “We the People” in the Constitution of the United States originally referenced those men whose names appear at the bottom of the page. The States did eventually acquiesce to the provisions of that constitution, but it was never put to the vote of the American people nor were the people, who were opposed to the constitution, a party to it. The people as citizens of the States were far closer to a pure republics than the United States ever was.
The Constitution only granted privileges to a body politic called the United States by the states' permission. The United States had no way of expanding its power beyond that of the States original power unless the people failed to “retain” rights and consented by word or deed to grant more power to that Federal government.
Americans have failed to retain those rights by failing to recognize the consequences of applications for and acceptance of benefits, along with pervasive participation in social schemes dependent upon mutual surety and debt as seen in Pharaoh's Egypt, Nimrod's Babylon, Caesar's Rome, or Herod's Judea.
The relationship between the Federal Government and its Citizens is completely upside down from the original intent. But that was their choice. When the leaders are lawmakers liberty is titular. The “government” makes laws, compels contributions, regulates, and licenses almost every aspect and choice of their lives. As regulated “persons” they have few to blame for this subjection more than themselves, although blaming others for their dilemma has become a national pastime.
v. King the Circuit Judge O’Scannlain's opinion
verifies that the Constitution only bars Congress and the National
government from infringing on the right to bear arms. But they also
recognize that the second Amendment is incorporated against the States
by the power of the 14th Amendment.
The far ranging consequences of a former citizen of a State republic becoming incorporated to the Federal government places the federal citizen in subjection to a justified reasonable regulation. Rights, once granted by God, are now incorporated privilege granted to Federal citizens who become merely “residents” of their respective states.
Circuit Judge Gould's concurring opinion, goes on to clarify that the important governmental interests in this corporate federal citizen allows the government to regulate activities concerning rifles and handguns:
If early free Americans were bound by a corporate Federal Citizenship, subject to the administration of government, described in the 14 Amendment and other subsequent acts they would have no right to halt the actions or claim unwarranted usurpation if officer came to confiscate their guns on April 19, 1775 at either Concord or Lexington.
If every aspect of our care as individuals or communities falls within the province of the State or Federal governments then no activity is immune from regulation. In the original American Republics, citizenship of the individual freeman depended upon his private ownership of land as an estate, but “in the United States ‘it is a political obligation’ depending not on ownership of land, but on the enjoyment of the protection of government; and it ‘binds the citizen to the observance of all laws’ of his sovereign.” If they are sovereign, then you are not. Stop pretending to be what you have failed to be by acquiescence or sloth.
Modern Americans are accustomed to forcing their neighbor to guarantee their personal and community social welfare at the point of a government owned gun. This ungodly approach to secure their society has brought the people back into subjection again and again.
While there is hope, you cannot undo a century of sloth and avarice, covetousness and greed with the waive of the States pen or your own. Early Americans took responsibility for themselves and their community, for every aspect of their social welfare, through voluntary network of charity and sacrifice. Unless individuals come together with a true love of liberty and the rights of others there will be no freedom in this land or any other.
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If you will not take back the responsibility to govern yourselves, to care and protect one another, to live by faith with hope through charity under the perfect law of liberty which is love, and the duty of every Christian and God loving man, then you are probably to irresponsible to own a gun without being regulated by one government or another.
Mont. (AP) - Gov. Associated Press - April 15, 2009 5:24 PM ET
2. Read the book The Covenants of the gods.
3. Protectio trahit subjectionem, subjectio protectionem. Coke, Littl. 65.
4. “Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.” Psalms 69:22 “And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them:” Romans 11:9 Ex20:17, 23:32, 34:12...; Pr1:10, 6..., 11:15..., 17:18..., 23:1...; Ro13:9, Mr7:22, Mt5:34, Ja5:12, Hebrews 7:22
5. The ruling can be found here.
6. Barron v. Mayor of Balt., 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243, 247-51(1833).
7. Covenants Part III, 3. Is the Constitution constitutional?
8. Covenants Part I The Party of the first part.
9. Chapter 7. Republic vs Democracy, Chapter 8. Democracy vs Demagogue, of the book The Covenants of the gods
10. Republic vs Democracy.
11. II “Although the Supreme Court has incorporated many clauses of the Bill of Rights into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has never explicitly overruled Barron.” Nordyke III, 319 F.3d at 1193 n.3 (Gould, J., specially concurring).Therefore, the Second Amendment does not directly apply to the states. See United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553 (1875) (citing Barron as a basis for the conclusion that “[t]he second amendment . . . means no more than that [the right to keep and bear arms] shall not be infringed by Congress”); see also Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886) (concluding that the Second Amendment “is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the National government, and not upon that of the State”).
12. “V. For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the County on the Nordykes’ First Amendment and equal protection claims and, although we conclude that the Second Amendment is indeed incorporated against the states, we AFFIRM the district court’s refusal to grant the Nordykes leave to amend their complaint to add a Second Amendment claim in this case.”
13, “Also, important governmental interests will justify reasonable regulation of rifles and handguns, and the problem for our courts will be to define, in the context of particular regulation by the states and municipalities, what is reasonable and permissible and what is unreasonable and offensive to the Second Amendment.”
14, Chapter 3. of the book The Covenants of the gods, Citizenship vs. Citizenship.
15, Law vs Legal
16, Wallace v. Harmstad, 44 Pa. 492; etc. Black’s 3rd Ed. p. 95.
17, The Living Network
� 2010 Brother Gregory Williams - All Rights Reserved
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Brother Gregory was born in America in 1948. His father was a practicing attorney and his mother the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. He Married in 1973, and is the Father of 6 children with a growing number of grandchildren. He grew up in southeast Texas, attending private schools, entering the seminary at 13, where he studied Latin, Greek, and theology. In the course of these studies he began to become aware of secrets hidden for centuries within ancient libraries that began to reveal a more fundamental purpose in the gospel of Christ. His quest to understand the “whole truth” has led him down a labyrinth of law and language, history and prophecy, fable and fallacy, in a unique portrait of bondage and betrayal, liberty and freedom, and the solution and salvation.
He is the author of several books, include The Covenants of the gods, Thy Kingdom Comes, and The Free Church Report, dozens of pamphlets, audio, and video recordings. He has appeared on radio and television “preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God” which is at hand, within your reach. His common theme is how are men brought into bondage and how are they made free souls under God. His hope and prayer is to bring man's relationship with the God of creation and his relationship with the gods of the “world” into a new perspective and light. Knowing the truth shall set you free, if we will do the will of our Father in heaven.
He now lives near Summer Lake, Oregon where he continues to care for his family, tending sheep of the Church and overseeing the edification of the Church established by Christ in the hearts and minds of congregations of the people, for the people, by the people who will seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. |
It has been called “The Main Street Of The Delta” – and it’s not hard to see why. Highway 61 runs for 1,400 miles (2,300km) between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Wyoming, Minnesota. For our purposes, we will concentrate on the section from “The Cradle Of Jazz” to Memphis, often dubbed “The Highway Of The Blues”, the area that is broadly defined as the Mississippi Delta.
The Delta begins at Vicksburg, 300 miles from the mouth of the river, extending for 250 miles northwards to Memphis. The vast almond-shaped alluvial plain was formed from thousands of years of flooding by the mighty Mississippi in the west and the smaller Yazoo River in the east. This vast lush plain, “flat as a griddle”, is cotton country.
Until 1820, the Delta was an undeveloped area of hardwood forest. Around 1835, settlers began to clear the Delta so that cotton could be grown. After the Civil War, the land was completely cleared and plantations were developed across the length and breadth of the Delta. The Delta became the catalyst, an unrelenting environment from which the only outcome could have been the blues.
On 27 November 1936, in San Antonio, Texas, Robert Johnson recorded his ‘Crossroad Blues’, which was the genesis of his legend and the ongoing fascination with Highway 61. It’s the legend of Johnson selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads, probably on Highway 61, and has preoccupied almost everyone in blues and rock’n’roll for the last 80 years.
The legend causes current residents of the Delta to roll their eyes when asked by eager blues tourists to tell them where they can find the crossroads. Others, of course, do not bother asking. They just go to the junction of Highway 61 and Highway 49 and have their photograph taken. What they do not realise is the current crossroads of the two highways is at least half a mile from the one that would have existed in Johnson’s lifetime. In any event, there were no actual crossroads, Johnson was singing of a mythical place.
Bob Dylan’s 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited fuelled the interstate’s legend still further, and in the intervening years between Johnson’s classic recording and Dylan’s revisiting, blues songs by Mississippi Fred McDowell (‘61 Highway’), and Roosevelt Sykes, Jack Kelly & His South Memphis Jug Band and Will Batts (‘Highway 61 Blues’) have added to the mythology.
The blues introduced itself to the world from Memphis. Moving up Mississippi’s Highway 61, it found a home on Beale Street, the legendary musical haven and centre of African-American culture in Memphis and the surrounding region.
In the 20s, labels including Columbia, OKeh, Victor and Bluebird headed to Memphis and had their scouts put out the word that if you had some good songs to perform then you should present yourself during a specific time. Among those that answered the call were The Memphis Jug Band, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Frank Stokes, Ishman Bracey, Tommy Johnson and Sleepy John Estes. Later, in 1941, Alan Lomax went to Stovall’s Plantation, near Clarksdale, to record Muddy Waters for the very first time.
Those that were born within spitting distance of Highway 61 really does read like a who’s who of the blues.
In and around Jackson: Bo Carter, Elmore James, Ishman Bracey, Tommy Johnson and Charley Patton.
Vicksburg: Willie Dixon
Forest: Arthur Crudup
Yazoo City: Tommy McClennan
Belzoni: Otis Spann
Leland: Jimmy Read
Indianola: BB King and Albert King
Scott: Big Bill Broonzy
Teoc: Mississippi John Hurt
Ruleville: Jimmy Rogers
Glendora: Sonny Boy Williamson
Vance: Sunnyland Slim
Clarksdale: John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, Little Junior Parker, Willie Brown
Stovall: Eddie Boyd
Riverton: Son House
Tunica: James Cotton
Hernando: Robert Wilkins
Horn Lake: Big Walter Horton
Many of these blues legends started out by performing at picnics, house-rent parties and Saturday-night fish fries throughout the Delta. But to find any kind of fame they had to leave the Delta, catching the train to Memphis before heading on to Chicago, Detroit or one of the other big cities in the north.
Their songs often tell of life in this harshest of landscapes. They knew about the blues because they lived them. The songs of the pre-war bluesmen have a stark reality that at times got softened after they left the Delta, but, as the old saying goes, “You can take the man out of the Delta, but you’ll never take the Delta from the man.”
As John Grisham wrote in his foreword to Visualizing The Blues: “suffering gave rise to creativity”. Those men (and a few women) who grew up in the Delta and began playing the blues did so not to make money but to escape. If you get the chance, visit the Delta and drive Highway 61. You will not be disappointed. The music will instantly mean so much more, and the visual stimuli will live with you forever.
The Rolling Stones have paid tribute to their favourite blues heroes with the handpicked compilation, Confessin’ The Blues. The collection is out on 9 November and can be bought here.
Planning a road trip? Here are 13 unmissable spots in and around Highway 61.
Rhythm Night Club
5 St Catherine Street, Natchez, Mississippi
No longer an actual nightclub, this small memorial building commemorates the Natchez fire of 23 April 1940, during which over 200 people died. Blues fans the world over will know of the tragedy, as recounted in Howlin’ Wolf’s famous 1956 recording, ‘The Natchez Burning’.
Catfish Row Museum
913 Washington Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi
Taking in the history of the city founded on the Mississippi River, Catfish Row Museum introduces visitors to not only the music that grew from the area, but its rich heritage in food, religion and the visual arts.
Highway 61 Blues Museum
307 North Broad Street, Leland, Mississippi
A small but welcoming site, Highway 61 Blues Museum has taken residency in the Old Montgomery Hotel, and is part of a wider community effort to remember the Delta blues, including a series of local murals commissioned by the Leland Blues Project.
Charley Patton’s grave
Holly Ridge Cemetery, Holly Ridge Road, Mississippi
Fittingly remembered as “The Voice Of The Delta” on his gravestone, Patton’s marker requires a small detour away from the main attractions along Highway 61, but is well worth a visit to pay respect to the man who started it all.
BB King Museum
400 Second Street, Indianola, Mississippi
With live events and exhibits tracing the legendary bluesman’s rise the museum is a must-visit tribute to the man born Riley B King.
Robert Johnson gravestones
Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Money Road, Greenwood, Mississippi
Three separate markers in three separate Greenwood cemeteries purport to mark the final resting place of the world’s first blues legend: Sony erected an obelisk-shaped one at Mount Zion in 1991, while ZZ Top paid for another, situated on the grounds of Payne Chapel. Tantalisingly, the one at Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church came with provenance from a Rosie Eksridge, who, aged 85 in 2000, claimed that her husband, Tom “Peter Rabbit” Eskridge, buried Johnson’s body at the back of the cemetery, in August 1938.
229 MS-8, Cleveland, Mississippi
A 25,600-acre cotton plantation and sawmill, Dockery Farms was situated on the Sunflower River, on Highway 8, between Cleveland and Ruleville. Recently named a Mississippi Landmark, the site is generally considered the birthplace of the blues; sharecroppers working for Will Dockery would live together in boarding houses, where they would play the music that took shape as the blues. The “Founder Of The Delta Blues”, Charley Patton was one of the earliest settlers at Dockery, through Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf and Pops Staples also passed through, soaking up influences and forming their own styles. The site is now owned by the Dockery Farms Foundation and is open to visitors, with private tours available if booked in advance.
GRAMMY Museum Mississippi
800 West Sunflower Road, Cleveland, Mississippi
Though the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi casts a wide net, celebrating not only all the music to come out of the state, but also staging exhibitions that have offered insight to The Beatles, the history of the electric guitar, and Texas bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan, there is, of course, a deep look at the blues – and its influence on jazz, rock’n’roll and hip-hop.
599 North State Street, Clarksdale, Mississippi
Though the original, mythical crossroads that inspired Robert Johnson’s song and kick-started a legend has long been lost to history, the marker at the crossroads between Highway 61 and Highway 49 offers an essential photo opportunity.
Delta Blues Museum
1 Blues Alley, Clarksdale, Missisippi
Founded in 1979, the Delta Blues Museum is now situated in the Clarksdale freight depot, which dates back to 1918. With a collection of original 78s, themed movie nights and an engaging timetable of exhibits, the museum is an essential stop in “the land where blues began”.
615 Sunflower Avenue, Clarksdale, Mississippi
Since 1944, the Riverside has been a regular stop for travelling musicians, among them the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson II and Ike Turner. Before that it was the GT Thomas Hospital, infamous for being the place where “empress of the blues” Bessie Smith died, on 26 September 1937, after suffering injuries from a car crash.
4146 Oakhurst Stovall Road, Clarksdale, Mississippi
Located just outside Clarksdale, Stovall Farms is where Muddy Waters lived for much of his early life – and, most importantly, where he was recorded by Alan Lomax between 1941 and 1942. The actual building in which he lived is now preserved in the Delta Blues Museum.
BB King’s Blues Club
143 Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee
One of several BB Kings Blues Clubs across the US, the Beale Street venue was the first, opened in 1991, in the heart of the live music district in Memphis. |
These days everyone is hypnotized by light color extractions even though color alone does not determine quality. Important quality considerations are actually clarity, cleanliness, aroma, terpene content, and potency. It’s very possible to have a high quality concentrate that’s dark in color, or a low quality concentrate that’s light in color, so the deliberation shouldn’t be over what color the concentrate is, but why it’s that color. This post is to help those that have concentrates, or may be making concentrates, that are dark for the wrong reasons and provide a reliable process to improve the product quality.
Everyone has had a wash or end product that came out darker, more green, or containing more undesirables than they hoped or intended. Questions on how to deal with dark concentrates and extractions come up every day. The easy answer is to take more care early in the extraction process so the undesirables are avoided altogether, but sometimes it’s too late to avoid and you just want to clean it up and carbon is the easiest answer. It’s important to understand that when an extract is polished it loses desirable components along with the undesirable, inadvertently removing cannabinoids and terpenes. Here lies the conundrum, do you accept the extraction as is, or do you polish it and sacrifice some of the desirables? To help crafters make that decision this post will explain a simple way to perform the polishing, using activated carbon powder for scrubbing to lighten the color and diatomaceous earth for very fine filtering, provide a side by side comparison of polished and unpolished results from the same extraction, and look at what was lost in the process.
MATERIALS AND WASH
I used decent quality trim and 190-proof food grade ethanol to make the wash. Both the trim and ethanol had been in the freezer for a number of days and were between -2°F to -10°F. To get the green wash I needed I did a 1-hour freezer wash to get some green pickup without going to a full FECO.
The 1-hour wash initial filtering went through fine mesh coffee filters for plant matter separation, then through the Buchner funnel using 3-micron filter paper. The wash came out with the perfect amount of green and just over 1L in volume.
SEPARATING TWO SAMPLES FOR COMPARISON
I separated two 300 ml samples from the 1L of filtered wash. One sample would be processed as is and the other would go through the polishing process. I will refer to the sample that will be processed as is as the ‘control sample’ and the other as the ‘polish sample’. The sample size of 300ml was used to match the capacity of the Source Turbo used to make the oil and recover the ethanol.
THE CARBON SCRUB
The carbon is essentially charcoal and functions in the same way as a charcoal filter commonly used to purify water. Carbon powder is really good at removing contaminates from liquids, but unfortunately it does this in a very indiscriminate manner and is difficult to filter out of the wash due to the very fine particle size.
The carbon scrubbing process itself is nearly as easy as mixing the wash and carbon together and shaking. The process is most effective if the wash is warmed to about 80F before adding the carbon. The recommended amount of carbon to use is about 5% of the estimated volume of oil that is contained in the wash. For 300ml wash, I estimated about 3g of oil so the recommended amount of carbon to be used was 0.15g. I made and error here and added quite a bit more, about 1.5g, but I proceeded and pretended not to notice. I originally planned to use a stir plate for agitation, but a friend with much experience advised that shaking provides much better results, so I put the wash and carbon in a small jar and gave it a good shake instead. That’s all there was to it and the carbon scrubbing was complete, but the resulting wash was utterly black with carbon and required very fine filtering.
DIATOMACEOUS EARTH (DE) FILTER
Wikipedia defines diatomaceous earth: “Diatomaceous earth ( /ˌdaɪ.ətəˌmeɪʃəs ˈɜːrθ/) – also known as D.E., diatomite, or kieselgur/kieselguhr – is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that is easily crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder.”
The DE is a very fine powder, almost like flour, and when mixed with ethanol and properly filtered with a vacuum assisted Buchner funnel will form a filtering cake that makes for very fine filter media. I layered a Buchner funnel with a 3 micron filter paper, then a coffee filter on top of it to help hold the DE in place and form the filter cake.
To make the DE filter cake I first stirred together the DE and ethanol to make a slurry, that resembled a mud puddle. When the slurry is poured into the Buchner funnel, with the vacuum assist running, the ethanol sucked through into the beaker and the DE was left behind in a solid cake form.
The more you pour in the thicker the cake will form. I don’t know, and can’t find information on, what thickness of the filter cake is ideal, so I made it about a 1/4-1/2 inch thick. I let the cake settle into a solid form then began adding the carbon wash for filtering before the DE cake dried out.
Even with the vacuum assist from a large pump the progress was quite slow, it took about 5-minutes to filter 300ml. I think this would have worked better if I had used one of the larger Buchner funnels. The slow progress was no real problem, but the 1L size would have provided more filter surface area and better flow. That was a good lesson learned here and a point to keep in mind. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Source Turbo vacuum port can be useful for normal vacuum assisted filtering, but for this kind of heavier work it’s probably not be sufficient.
The polish sample worked its way through the filtering layers and emerged in the beaker cleaned up and glorious. When the control sample and polish sample are set side by side the improvement in color is obvious.
PROCESSING THE SAMPLES INTO OIL
The processing plan was simple. First, use the Source Turbo (extractcraft.com) to separate the oil and reclaim the ethanol, then pop the oil samples into the vac oven to finish. I experienced a small spillage mishap of the polish sample so I evened the samples to 250ml each for processing. Each sample ran separately in its own Source Turbo for about 2 hours, then in the vac oven overnight at 92F.
The difference in the resulting oils was literally night and day, light versus dark. Both oils were very clear and clean, the darker oil was obviously carried over the green tinge from the wash, while the blond oil was defiantly pleasing to the eye.
Out of the vac oven the completely purged end products finished as expected with the lighter sample as blond as could be and the darker turning out much better than expected.
I knew polishing would improve the concentrate color but I didn’t really know what to expect with regard to the how much scrubbing would effect the yield or quality of the final product. For me, determining exactly how much oil was lost in the process was the most interesting part of the whole exercise. The control sample was obviously going to be heavier than the polished sample, but by how much? The control sample was 2.75g compared to the polished sample coming in at 2.26g. The scrubbing and filtering reduced the yield of the final product by 0.49g or 17.8%.
All of the colored, undesirable material was removed from the polish sample along with a small amount of terpene character. The darker extract ended up being both, more rich with terpenes and robust, but the green from the wash was identifiable by a faint plant taste. The terpene profile was a little weaker, not by an enormous amount but by enough to note the difference, but the psychotropic effects were notably more potent than the unpolished extract.
That was a lot of fun! I’ve been wanting to do this project for a while to figure out if carbon scrubbing and the necessary advanced filtering is worth hassle and yield sacrifice. It is obvious by the results that it works very well to lighten the color and increase potency. So, when are those benefits of better color and increased potency worth sacrificing the 17.8% in yield?
Let’s start with when I would not consider polishing useful or necessary. For edibles, tinctures, or topicals it would not be useful, and I would instead opt for the benefit of maximizing yield over color, taste, and potency. The color and taste will be diluted by whatever carrier is employed and the potency is easily adjusted by the ratio of oil used. I would also not consider polishing for a smokable if it were a singular concern over color when all other considerations of clarity, cleanliness, aroma, terpene content, and potency are all acceptable. We know from by blog post ‘Color and Cannabis Concentrate Quality’ that dark concentrates can be as good or better as lighter concentrates.
I will only recommend polishing if my wash inadvertently picked up green when I didn’t want it to, or I have an already made concentrate that has an unpleasant flavor. What I would highly recommend is avoiding the problem from the beginning and use extra caution in careful wash execution, like in my blog post ‘Cannabis Oil QWET Extraction Battle of the Wash: Dry Ice vs. Freezer’.
I hope this post provided some useful insight and enjoyment. If you appreciate my work please share and spread the word! Stay lifted and blessed. |
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Spring has sprung which means allergy season is here too. Pollen from blooming flowers and trees triggers sneezes, watery eyes, and sometimes shortness of breath for many people.
For others, allergy season is a year-round event because irritants such as mold, dust, and pet dander don’t stick to a calendar. Neither does air pollution from auto and industrial emissions which taint our indoor air, making it more difficult to breathe.
And with the novel coronavirus keeping people home more, indoor air quality matters more than ever.
An air purifier could improve the air quality in your home or office by filtering allergens, bacteria, and other microbes from the air.
Air Purifier Shopping Tips
If you’d like an air purifier for your home or office, Dr. Jacqueline Jones, author of Medical Parenting: How to Navigate Health, Wellness, & the Medical System for Your Child, has a few shopping tips:
- Look for “a brand that has a HEPA filter which filters 99.97 percent of particles of a certain size,” Jones says.
- She also suggests a charcoal filter that will “absorb odor-causing particles from the air.” Some brands use the term carbon filter instead of a charcoal filter.
- “Choose an air purifier that alerts you to when it’s time to change your filters,” Jones says.
- Appliances with Energy Star ratings help lower your electricity bill. Air purifiers are meant to run hour after hour, so look for this label before deciding on the model you want.
- Also, look for the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) certification. It’s “an extra seal of approval,” Jones says.
The 12 Best Air Purifiers of 2020
Here are 12 of the best air purifiers to help control your allergies:
- Germ Guardian Air Purifier for Home
- AIRDOCTOR 4-in-1 Air Purifier UltraHEPA
- IQAir HealthPro Plus Air Purifier Medical Grade Air HyperHEPA Filter
- BlueAir Blue Pure 411 Particle and Carbon Filter
- Austin Air
- Honeywell HPA300
- Alen BreatheSmart 75i
- Rabbit Air Minus A2
- Coway Airmega 400
- Coway Mighty
- Winix FresHome WACP450
Doctor Recommended: Best Air Purifiers
With carbon filtering, ease of use, and efficiency in mind, we’ve chosen some air purifiers for your consideration. Our first choices come highly recommended by doctors who treat allergies.
Dr. Christian Gonzalez is an integrative cancer oncologist and naturopathic doctor and non-toxic living expert.
“In Los Angeles, the air is crap,” he says, “so you need an air filter.”
“For the most part, almost all air filters are HEPA (High-Efficiency Particle Absorber),” which “are said to remove 99.95 to 99.97 percent of all microbes.
“Most of these air filters have a UV light, and when you activate that it usually kills these particles,” he says.
Dr. Gonzalez says if you’re on a tight budget or you just want to take care of a small room, try the Germ Guardian Air Purifier which retails for less than $100.
“They don’t cover a huge space, but they’ll be really good for say, under 200 square feet. The Germ Guardian uses HEPA and UV, and they kill a lot.”
If you have a large space to purify or if your allergies cause you real problems, Gonzalez recommends pulling out one of the big guns, either the AIRDOCTOR or IQAir.
“A lot of physicians get behind the AIRDOCTOR in particular, but IQAir is another good one,” he says. “They’re very similar.”
“The difference between the Germ Guardian and these is that there’s different sizes to these particles. For instance, if you take pollen versus mold, mold tends to be bigger whereas viruses tend to be smaller.
“So, for the AIRDOCTOR and IQAir, they kill and destroy particles at .003 microns, as compared to the germ Guardian that destroys particles at 0.3 microns.”
That may seem like a small difference. But Gonzalez says “this is important because viruses and other particles are smaller.
“The AIRPOCTOR and IQAir also have a formaldehyde and VOC (volatile organic compounds) filter which is really cool because formaldehyde is one of the number one VOCs that we’re being exposed to,” he says.
“Another cool aspect of this, especially with the AIRDOCTOR, is that it has an alert that will sound when it’s exposed to higher than normal amounts of VOCs, and then it’ll up its purification process to clean up the air.”
The AIRDOCTOR also qualifies as an Energy Star appliance.
She treats allergies regularly, and she recommends the BlueAir line of HEPA filters.
“I always recommend a HEPA filter,” she says, “and I like BlueAir because it’s a compromise between top of the line and less effective.”
We’d like to add that BlueAir Blue Pure 411 (and its more advanced sister product, the BlueAir Blue Pure 211) come in several different colors so your purifier can match your home decor.
Other Nominations for Best Air Purifiers
The physicians we interviewed didn’t recommend the following purifiers by name, but these models may still be on your shopping list so we took a look at them.
All of these models meet HEPA guidelines for micron size and filtering 99.97 percent of particles.
Austin Air: A Medically Rated Original
Hospital operating rooms across the country use Austin Air’s professional-grade air purifiers. Austin has several at-home models, including the company’s “Junior” series designed for small spaces and several large room air purifiers.
Austin’s systems combine true HEPA filtration with carbon activation filtering. The price tag tends to be on the higher end — often $600.
Honeywell HPA300: Good for Small Spaces
You could clean about 450 square feet with this carbon filter-enabled model that retails for about $250. This Honeywell model is less than 2-feet tall and weighs 21 pounds — ideal for purifying a problem room.
Alen Breathesmart 75i: Good for an Entire Apartment
This large room model can filter up to 1,300 square feet — an entire apartment. This one checks all the boxes plus some.
It features a sleep mode with low lighting — and it shows air quality with a built-in indicator. The Breathesmart 75i retails for about $600 and comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Rabbit Air Minus A2: Perfect for a Living Room
It’s low profile, it’s super quiet, and it can clear the air in up to 800 square feet of space. The Rabbit Air Minus A2 makes a great choice for a living room.
Since it resembles a flat-screen TV you could mount this model on the wall to save floor space. The Rabbit Air retails for about $600. Its 6-stages of air purification include one you can customize to eliminate odors, fight germs, or filter out pet dander.
Levoit: Good for a Small Room on a Small Budget
You could put this model on a tabletop in the corner of a small room. Retailing at $100, the Levoit Air Purifier H13 could fit your smaller budget, too.
The H13 works in up to 215 square feet so it’s ideal for a small bedroom if you need air purification while you sleep. Levoit also makes a pet-specific purifier, the P350, and a system designed to eliminate more odors, the Levoit LV-H132.
Coway Airmega 400: A Workhorse for a House
The Airmega 400 can handle the workload of an entire house. It’s rated for about 1,500 square feet. The 400’s permanent pre-filter eliminates larger particles so the replaceable filter stays cleaner throughout the year. You can remove and wash the pre-filter as needed.
This model retails around $650, but it’s a big step up from the Airmega 300 which cost about $500.
Coway Mighty: A Great Portable Option
The Coway AP-1512HH Mighty is lightweight at 13 pounds, but it packs a big punch in a 350-square-foot or smaller room.
This model, which retails at $250, covers all the important bases. It has multi-fan speeds, an air quality indicator, a pre-filter, an ionizer, an auto-off timer and an eco mode.
Winix FresHome WACP450: Good Mid-Range Model
The Winix FresHome weighs less than 19 pounds and can sit on a tabletop. It is simple to operate and works best when purifying a medium to large room — no more than 600 square feet.
The WACP450 model comes with a remote control and a light-up indicator when you need to change the filter.
Other Models We Considered
We were captivated by the low noise Dyson TP04 and the easy-to-operate Molekule Air but would like to see more improvement in these models before recommending them.
HEPA Filter vs. True HEPA Filter vs. HEPA-Type Filter
Drs. Jones, Gonzalez, and Deville all recommended HEPA filtration to improve air quality in your home or office. But manufacturers use a wider variety of terms, including True HEPA and HEPA-type — along with UV filtration, ionization, and carbon activation filtration.
Should you make a distinction between these terms as you shop?
HEPA stands High-Efficiency Particulate Air. To meet the HEPA standard in the U.S., filters must remove 99.97 percent of air particles which are 0.3 microns. Based on this standard, a filter must catch at least 9,997 out of every 10,000 particles measuring 0.3 microns or larger to qualify as a HEPA filter. For reference, 1 micron is way too small to see. You could possibly see a particle 10 microns in diameter floating in the air.
True HEPA Filter
Companies use the phrase True HEPA to specify their product meets the HEPA requirement and doesn’t simply emulate it.
Many less expensive air filters use the phrase HEPA-type filter but these products don’t have to meet the same standard. A filter’s efficiency could come close to 99.97 percent without always reaching that standard, but it may not always achieve that level. HEPA-Type means you don’t really know.
An ionizer charges particles as they pass through the device so they’ll be attracted to, and captured on, an oppositely charged panel. An ionizer can trap particles smaller than the HEPA-required 0.3 microns. However, without a standard to meet, a consumer can’t know for sure how many particles escape ionization. Ionizers work best within a system that also includes true HEPA filtration.
UV Light Filter
UV light can kill tiny bacteria but it won’t destroy pet dander or all mold spores. This feature can enhance your system, but it should always accompany HEPA in your filtration system to achieve the best air quality.
Activated carbon filters can also work to enhance a True HEPA air purifier. Some models use carbon in a pre-filter to keep your HEPA filter cleaner longer. The carbon absorbs gases in the air so it’s good at cleaning up air pollution and smoke odors.
Do You Really Need Annual Filter Replacements?
Replacement filters can be a hassle to buy and change. If you forget to replace yours, will it affect the performance of your purifier?
Yes. Like any physical product, an air purifier’s filter will eventually wear thin. Follow your manufacturer’s guidelines which usually call for annual filter replacements.
Check out your pre-filter’s cleaning schedule, too. Some models have permanent pre-filters which you should remove and clean every few months.
But if you tend to forget, find a way to connect your annual filter change to another routine household chore such as changing smoke detector batteries or opening or closing your home’s foundation vents.
The nicest purifiers include light-up indicators that tell you when to change the filter.
Nice Features In an Air Purification System
- Multiple Fan Speeds: Systems with more than three fan speeds offer more options. Often the highest speeds clear the air more quickly but also make more noise.
- Air Quality Indicator: A lot of homeowners question the accuracy of a filtration system’s light-up indicators — both for air quality and for changing the filter. But this still can be a nice feature.
- Higher CADR Rating: You hear a lot about HEPA, but what about your system’s CADR rating? CADR stands for clean air delivery rate. It measures how quickly your air purifier can clean a specific space. A system with a CADR rating of 300 cfm works faster than a system rated at 200 cfm in a same-sized space (cfm stands for cubic feet per minute). Even if you don’t need to clear the air quickly, a higher CADR rating can indicate the strength of your system — sort of like having horsepower in a car whether or not you use it.
- Eco Mode: If you plan to run your system around the clock, be sure to consider Energy Star ratings and eco mode features as you shop. Many purifiers can drop into a lower-energy mode when the air is cleaner even if you haven’t changed the settings.
- WiFi Connections: It’s not a make-or-break feature but a WiFi-connected air purifier feels pretty smart. You could turn the system on with your smart home app a few hours before returning home. You could also connect your purification system to Alexa or Google Home.
What’s Your Top Pick for Best Air Purifier?
Air cleaning is a big job — too big to depend on someone else’s recommendations for your home. We’ve tried to give you some quality choices, but your top pick for best air purifier will depend on your home’s unique challenges — and on your medical needs.
True HEPA filtration is a must, especially if you struggle with year-round allergies. Your other challenges may include:
- Germs: A system with UV light filtration can enhance your air quality. Some shoppers are asking whether this kind of technology can kill the novel coronavirus which causes Covid-19. There’s no data on this yet.
- Air Pollution: A system with an activated carbon filter along with true HEPA could step up your ability to filter out smoke and other pollutants.
- Pet Dander and Dust: True HEPA qualification exists specifically to remove these heavy particles from the air. For best results pay attention to your system’s recommendations for square footage. And get a system with a higher CADR rating if you have multiple pets.
Other Ways to Clean Air of Allergens
Buying an air purifier could alleviate some suffering, especially if you’re home a lot. You can also find other ways to clear the air.
We checked in with a physician to get tips on keeping the air cleaner before it goes through your air purification system.
Whatever you’re allergic to, mitigating your exposure to allergens will make your home more breathable, said Dr. J. Allen Meadows, M.D., the president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
He offered these suggestions:
Dust Mite Allergy
Meadows calls dust mites one “of the most common indoor allergens and a year-round annoyance.” And cleaning the house can make your allergies worse.
“Often, you’ll notice your symptoms immediately after vacuuming, sweeping or dusting,” Meadows says. “Molds, pollen, pet hair, fur or feathers can also contribute to a dust allergy.”
But it’s not hopeless — and there are several ways to start purifying the air.
“You can lessen or avoid your symptoms by removing items that cause dust allergies. Choose wood floors instead of carpet, clean your house with a vacuum that has a HEPA filter, use mite-proof cases on your mattresses and pillows and wash your linens regularly in hot water,” Meadows says.
“Consider installing a high-efficiency disposable filter in your HVAC system. The filter should have a MERV (minimum efficiency reporting value) rating of 11 to 13 — the higher the MERV rating the better.”
It’s tough fighting what you can’t see. Mold thrives in moist places like bathrooms and kitchens, Meadows says, “and unfortunately, many molds aren’t visible to the naked eye. As the spores become airborne, they can cause allergic reactions and worsen asthma symptoms.”
So what to do? Meadows suggests that you wear a mask when doing yard work, “and once inside, take a shower and rinse your nose with a saline solution to remove mold spores.”
He also recommends that “in the kitchen, clean up any spills or leaks quickly to prevent mold from growing. Use a dehumidifier to reduce moisture in areas like bathrooms and basements. Clean your garbage cans and fridge drawers. For serious mold problems, call a professional.”
Man’s best friend doesn’t mean to make your eyes water. Neither do the lazy house cats of the world (we think). But they can’t help what their micron-sized dander does to some noses.
“It’s a heartbreaking situation for pet lovers if they have allergy symptoms after being with their pets,” Meadows says. “Allergy symptoms can be constant because exposure can occur anywhere — in pet-friendly workplaces, restaurants, and stores, at school, in daycare, anywhere a pet owner has been.”
“Avoidance is the best way to manage a pet allergy, but you don’t have to part with your furry family members. Keep your pet out of your bedroom, wash your hands with soap and water after petting or playing with your pet, vacuum with a HEPA vacuum, and bathe your pet once a week.”
Combining prevention with the right air purification system could equal a better quality of life in your home. |
Monday, July 09, 2012
Why packages seem to “disappear” into the Richmond, California sort facility
by Larry Geller
It took a while, but I think I got the answer today on what happens to packages sent to Hawaii that are routed through the Richmond, CA sort facility.
I wrote about packages disappearing into the black hole of this facility in three articles:
- This stuff may be organic, but it’s no longer green (3/27/2011)
- The Richmond, CA, USPS sort facility still out of sorts (12/20/2011)
- Indefinite detention: the post office Richmond California Sort Facility (12/23/2011)
- The Richmond, CA, USPS sort facility still out of sorts (12/20/2011)
Together, they have receive more comments than anything else I’ve posted. It seems many people have been frustrated by losing packages that go through the Richmond Sort Facility.
Typically, it seems that packages are tracked going in. And they stay there ‘way past the expected delivery date. Calls to various post offices to find out what happened to the packages don’t yield any information. And time passes. Senders are frustrated because the expected delivery date has long passed.
Here’s what I found out today from a postal employee who shall remain nameless.
Yes, packages are scanned as they enter the sort facility. But they aren’t scanned when they leave. Inside the sort facility they are sorted, of course, and packages destined for Hawaii (or Guam, etc.) are loaded into containers.
Clearly, containers can’t be sent out with only a couple of packages bouncing around on the bottom. So the container stays until it gets filled. Then it is loaded on a boat.
There is no outgoing scan because the package is inside a container when it finally exits the facility. Now, in this computer age you’d think they could scan it going into the container and have the computer remember to post the scan when the container finally moves out, but no, they don’t do that. It just doesn’t get scanned.
The package is next scanned after it reaches the next sort facility (in Hawaii, etc.). I suspect that scan could occur on the same day it moves out for delivery, they are pretty efficient here.
I thanked the employee for the explanation (simple, isn’t it?) and remarked that the Richmond Sort Facility has seemed like a black hole to many people. She said “it is a black hole.”
So you see why I’m not mentioning her name.
Bottom line, it seems that “expected delivery dates” for packages headed into a container at Richmond are pure fiction. They could do better.
Thank you for the explanation. The method used is terrible, and I cannot wait until the whole of this sh*44y enterprise is shut down. I once had a very pro-USPS stance, but over the past 15 years, every ounce of favor has been eroded from my heart.
I would love to see FedEx or UPS take on the traditional mail role. I'm sure they would increase the rates for commercial mail(junk mail flyers, adverts, etc) and even increase the cost for shipping a single "postcard" or simple letter to upwards of $1. Even so, the amount of junk mail shipped would be greatly reduced, and with that, the delivery load would be cut drastically. This would allow for either company to take on the job with far less worry.
Privatize postal handling, then price crapmail out of the system. If the gov't can sin tax tobacco, why not similar for junk mail? If there is a good reason as to not promote this, I am very open to suggestions.
Thanks for the information. . . I am one of those "Hawaiianites" who use Ebay a lot and had become aware of the black hole in the Richmond USPS Sort Facility awhile ago. . . the packages that are superdelayed and apparently just sitting at Richmond for weeks, if not months, are usually books, although on one occasion is was some valuable materials. There is a book sitting there now while it's co-ordered companion made it through somehow, it probably didn't go through Richmond. Aloha. . .
There are so many other cities that ship out of California into Hawaii and they never have this problem, I think Richmond is the reason why so many sellers on ebay refuse to sell to people in Hawaii. Ugh, bastards.
Never had this issue when I have something shipped PRIORITY MAIL! If you live in HI, GU, AL, Priority mail is sent on a plane, not a boat. I have even had some priority mail packages reach me (GU) within 3 days of shipping, usually 5-7. Parcel post is surface mail, and will almost always take 6-8 weeks.
i have something coming from great britain and it's been tracked to new york, new hampshire then to richmond ca and it's been there for 5 days. not sure what the deal is but normally it comes from the new york facility straight to me.
The reason your package is stuck in the Richmond hub is because employees there are going through the contents. 11/8/2012 I received what I thought was the box of books I ordered from Hilo, Hawaii. It was filled with golf balls. The mailing label had been cut off the original box and stuck on the box of golf balls. The tracking # led to Richmond. Inside the box was wadded shrink wrap, obviously taken from a larger item from another box. Also inside, a sheet of paper from a New Jersey company taped to the shrink wrap. Also inside, a note from the golf ball vender, who said one of his customers had called earlier to report that he'd gotten a box of books, instead of the golf balls he'd ordered. The vender gave me the contact info, and we're supposed to do an exchange this week. ABSOLUTELY no help from USPS. They have more than enough complaints about this station to mount an investigation.
I'm having that same problem with that facility. I had placed an order on bestbuy and it was shipped out on October 18, 2012 and haven't received my package. Have made orders from bestbuy and others never had a problem with shipping. And never had it shipped though Richmond, CA. Called bestbuy and said that they apologize for the wait and said that the hurricane had lots to do with the shipping. IDK..something sounds fishy. I'm already thinking of canceling my order.
I am waiting on a large, oversized package shipped from another part of CA to Hawaii via Parcel Post (slow boat). It too, went through Richmond, CA and has been stuck there since Oct 31. The order is business/shipping supplies for my business and this happens to be my busiest season, so I am very concerned. I have had the same vendor shipped to me many times from CA for the last couple of years, and Parcel post has always been about 1-1/2 to 3 weeks from the sender's address to my place here. They always went through Richmond and/or Bell Gardens facilities. On a few occasions, the large package arrived in 3-4 days, much to my surprise... my guess is it must have been loaded onto a plane, perhaps by mistake and so it arrived so quickly, OR there was room in the outgoing aircraft, so they just had my package sent by airmail. Whatever the reason, I had always been happy with the USPS, especially since I run a online retail & shipping business and have to use the USPS to ship my orders everyday, for the past 11 years... until now. One of my latest orders has been stuck at Richmond for over 2 weeks and when I called the USPS yesterday, my own PO just told me there was nothing much they could do. The supervisor also said the same thing that Larry mentioned above. The employees there either have to wait for enough packages to fill up the container or they need to wait until the next ship-out date to send out all the packages bound for Hawaii. I really need the business supplies and just placed ANOTHER order with my vendor last week. Right now, the second order is ALSO sitting at the Richmond sort facility and there is no scan of it leaving. There are probably two large packages of mine sitting in that container right now, waiting for the boat to set sail! I am frustrated and may call the Richmond PO soon.
If the explanation is correct--that is, parcel post gets loaded onto a container without a scan and just sits there until the container is full and gets loaded on a ship--then no one can locate a package or do anything about it. Consider the container to be a temporary black hole. No one knows where something might be inside.
At least, they could scan it so shippers know the situation.
I received something quickly once or twice as well. But it seems that if a package is sent via parcel post to Hawaii, Guam, etc., it's a significant risk that it could be delayed considerably.
There seems to be another issue with the "estimated delivery date." I have a package that's at an Illinois sort facility way past its estimated delivery date. I just checked and it's now at Honolulu Airport, but it sure stayed in Illinois a long time. I don't know how it was sent, but I can guess. The expected delivery date was November 7 and perhaps I'll get it today or tomorrow. So that "expected" date may not be worth much, in practice.
An update for those interested. I posted yesterday about a large oversized package coming from CA. I finally received my package yesterday. It took 3 weeks and 1 day to receive. Though there's no scan of the package leaving Richmond, it did leave that sort facility and the package arriving in good shape. So the package seemed to have sat in Richmond for 2 weeks when in actuality, it was there for only about a week and then set sail for Hawaii afterwards which took another week or so.
Thank you for posting a followup.
Incidentally, I have a first-class package that's gone from the east coast to Illinois and back to the east coast. Nothing to do with the Richmond Sort Facility. When it finally gets delivered I may post the saga here because I think it may shed light on problems more extensive within the USPS than just this one facility.
I too am waiting for three items from three different vendors purchased through Ebay. The items arrived at the Richmond, CA facility between 5 and 10 days ago. I thought hurricane Sandy slowed down the mail but this sort facility REALLY slowed down the mail.
Yes, if you choose to have the postal service ship your mail to you by boat it may take a long time because it won't ship until the container is full. I thought most Hawaii residents knew this fact of life. I recall being told this over the counter by a Post Office clerk long ago.
THanks for posting this, at least now I have an idea what happened to 3 packages I ordered through Best Buy the week of Black Friday. They were shipped the same week, estimated delivery date was the 1st of December, so it's almost three weeks ago since that day. Just great, hopefully it comes before xmas or some people are going to get delayed presents :/
I wish I had known this before hand! I ordered from ebay 'Santa' presents for my daughter...now I'm trying to think up a way to explain why Santa may be late. Talked to USPS a week and a half ago and that person said that 2-8 day parcel post even though I said I was in Hawaii...spoke with someone different on Saturday and they said it's highly unlikely I'd be seeing them before Xmas. This is not fun at all!! =(
Let's just hope that all us in Hawaii that mistakingly used parcel post for Xmas shipping have helped each other out by getting that boat loaded up today and shipped out... maybe we can get our Xmas gifts delivered by Xmas Eve!!!
I am losing hope. Mailed 2 packages on Nov 26 parcel post (obviously will NEVER do again) that were swiped Nov 30 to Richmond (and I am in So, California!) and nothing has arrived to Maui yet. I have called the 800 USPS # and they say they will 'check into it' and see 'if they can get them moving' !! when i mentioned boats she said they don't go by boat. wow, the system is very broken. have had good results always with priority, including packages sent last week that have arrived. she said someone would call me withen 24 hours with info.....i will update
Uh, oh, now I'm more than a bit worried (and I'm not in Hawaii). Although my Christmas package to my son in Texas (from Nevada)is just a couple days late, I have concerns. I mailed it Parcel Post (all I could afford) in Sparks, Nevada, on the 13th. Estimated delivery on the 19th. Tracking information says it left the Richmond, California, sorting facility on the 18th. So far, nothing, and there's only one mail day left (Dec. 24) before Christmas. Where on Earth does a package go after it leaves Richmond? What facility has it gone to? It's too big to be lost and hopefully not stolen by a postal employee! I failed to insure it, but at least I paid for signature confirmation. That's good, right??? Hopefully, that would mean it can't be delivered to his front porch without him there to sign for it...right? So maybe there is still hope that he'll eventually receive it.
package sent parcel post from NY to hawaii on Dec. 5th....went through richmond and still has not been scanned into Hawaii and received :-/
package sent parcel post from NY to Hawaii on Dec 12th, Arrived at Richmond on Dec 17th and it has not been seen in Hawaii since... So frustrating.
also have a package being shipped to maui from richmond, ca sort facility and its very irratating that It takes usps so long to ship out everyones items. When I checked the tracking info it said depart usps sort facility december 30, 2012. Its been about 8 days and havent seen any updates. I figure that maybe either the boat is on its way here, or the boat is still being loaded up with packages. I thought the holidays would bring around alot of packages to be shipped here to hawaii, but i thought wrong. Hope usps can step up there game and expedite there shipping.
Package sent from Japan to Los Angeles CA.
Stuck in SF Customs for 4 days.
Now stuck at Richmond, CA indefinitely.
And the solution to the problem? Raise Income TAx and Raise Sales TAx so these goons can get more pensions and benefits.
I hope they send their next shipment out soon, I ordered a school book on Dec 26th to my home in Hawaii. It's been in Richmond since the 30th. It's Jan 10 now. I don't know if I should cancel my order, if that's even possible.
Ordered package from eBay which was shipped Dec 28. It's January 15 today and still no package, but it did go through Richmond, California post office according to the tracking. After reading all the posts here, I'm starting to get a little angry. I didn't realize the sorting facility was in such a bad area. So I'm sure there's lots of packages getting stolen. Man, this bites. From now on, whenever possible, I'm only going to order via UPS/Fedex.
I ordered textbooks on December 22, 2012. It is now January 17, 2013, and I am still textbook-less. I've been managing my textbook situation with taking pictures of the pages on my phone, but I seriously need my books to grow legs and walk of out the Richmond facility.
I sent a Christmas package out on Dec 5 to Hawaii and it still hasn't gotten there! Last known stop was Richmond, Ca. I have UPS and USPS checking statis from South Bend, IN and Kapaa, HI but still no results oither than it has left Richmond. They deefinitely need to close that facility. I also feel soooooo sorry for the military families who have to use this facility to ship items to loved ones serving oversees. This is disgraceful.
My 3 packages arrived at Richmond, CA on January 10. It is now February 13. I believe someone has stolen my boxes. What recourse do I have?
Debbie Carlson, Okinawa, Japan
I would like to update and add a small correction to the story.
I think they do scan when packages leave the richmond facility.
I used https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction.action
the tracking tool and was happy to learn my package only sat 1 day in richmond
sorting and was scanned out. what i didn't know was that it was to go by boat
from there. i wish they would have upgraded the shipping to priority because I called the local post office and they said it took 6 weeks from after leaving Richmond! when I thought it would be a few days and I would have it. total let down for me.
@Anonymous from April 2: Can you tell me where you package was going that they said another 6 weeks and if it was ever received? 2 of my packages left 3/18 and made it to destination 4/1. The third package left 3/19 and is still not there. I am pulling my hair out over this fiasco. There has been no tracking since then, so I have a feeling it is on a very slow boat or missed a full container and was therefore pull in another container that had to wait a loooooong time to ship out. Will never ship anything to Japan again that large and will pay for priority next time. I just wish someone out of the dozen or so people who I have spoken to and emailed with would have explained how Richmond works. I am very thankful for this blog for explaining it to me. It actually makes me feel better to know the process.
A package was mailed from San Marcos, Texas, on 4/5/13 and was supposed to be delivered to San Francisco yesterday. I have been anxiously awaiting this as it was to be a surprise to my son. Now I read all this jargon about the crappy delivery from Richmond, California. My package said it had been sorted through the Richmond, California, sorting facility and it all stops there. This is ridiculous!! I paid $30.21 just to have this happen? The automated system is enough to make you VOMIT. Whatever happened to REAL PEOPLE helping you. Dammit.
Anon from April 12- you are lucky- I have been waiting since 3/9. My carton left Richmond 3/19 and is now in the black hole known as 'on its way to Japan' - USPS won't help, Military Post won't help. I am giving up hope that this carton will ever arrive. So, now I will owe my sister 180 dollars worth of cookies and shipping. Never again.
I really wish we could get updates on all the above shipments...especially the ones going to Hawaii and Japan. I hope prior posters revisit with updates on your shipments from Richmond Sort Facility.
Another Oahu resident waiting for an eBay item that is lost in the Richmond black hole. I purchased it on 3/28 and the estimated delivery date was 4/1-4/9. Is there any way to make sure packages destined for Hawaii do not get sorted through Richmond??
Attaching tracking data for an Ebay package to Hawaii:
Arrival at Post Office
2013-04-17, 05:23:00, HONOLULU, HI 96817
Processed through USPS Sort Facility
2013-04-07, 19:47:00, RICHMOND, CA 94804
10 days from Richmond-Honolulu for this one.
I have been told that I need to wait until 5/3 to determine package (the one that left Richmond on 3/19) is 'lost' on its way to Japan. They are telling me 5 weeks is the standard. Crazy.
FYI- took a month, but I finally have movement on my carton again:
Processed through USPS Sort Facility
April 22, 2013, 2:38 pm
FPO, AP 96347
USPS Tracking / Delivery Confirmation
Last track before this was 3/19 - so it really can take a month to go overseas.
I have the same thing but with the West Sacramento sorting facility. Tracking shows that a package coming to me processed and left that facility on three different days at different times. It's been five days now since the last update and nothing. I'm in Southern California, it shouldn't take this long. Nobody at USPS is helpful. They lie and are rude. I hate USPS.
11 days from arrival in Richmond to Honolulu delivery (eBay purchase)
Out for Delivery
May-14-13, 08:06 AM, HONOLULU, HI 96817
Arrival at Post Office
May-14-13, 06:07 AM, HONOLULU, HI 96817
Processed through USPS Sort Facility
May-03-13, 06:27 AM, RICHMOND, CA 94804
Waiting on a package to come through Richmond as well, I'm in Guam. It was mailed April 26th from Texas, and the last update was April 30th, Richmond, CA. Contacted USPS, and they said 6-8 weeks. I'm seeing things that shipped after my package arriving already in places like Hawaii. My guess is it just takes longer to fill up a container for Guam? The box is full of bottles, and this baby is due July 5th. Hopefully they get here before then!
It sounds like it's going to be close. Hope the bottles arrive in time, and congratulations on July baby!
Anyone think I should be worried? Package departed 05/08 from Richmond, Ca going to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii....
I am also having a problem. I shipoed a large package parcel post April 30th and it is stuck in Richmond. Calling ups for help is like trying to win the lottery.
"Anyone think I should be worried? Package departed 05/08 from Richmond, Ca going to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii...."
Probably no reason to be alarmed. I've had packages, recently, delivered 2-3 weeks after the estimated delivery date. That doesn't make it right, but your mail is probably on its way.
10 days from arrival in Richmond to Honolulu delivery (eBay purchase sent media mail)
2013-06-04, 10:56:00, HONOLULU, HI 96817
Processed through USPS Sort Facility
2013-05-25, 16:13:00, RICHMOND, CA 94804
Your blog stands alone in identifying postal challenges affecting many of us here in the Pacific. You have allowed us to vent our frustrations and try to make some sense of it all. Many Mahalos!!!
I sent a package to my friend in Argentina MAY 16, 2013 and she still waiting for. Priority mail say 7 to 10 days, The package left Los Angeles post office on the 17, but we don't have any notice of the arrived.
This is different. Your package may be in Argentina, in customs, for example. Since it is overseas, the USPS doesn't scan its arrival, of course. I don't know what they do down there...
ordered an item from woodwinds & brasswinds on-line site that was shipped on 5/25. projected delivery date was 6/3 on the ups link that was on my shipping confirmation email. when that date passed, my son decided to enter the package id number on the usps tracking site. the site showed a projected date of 6/13. hopefully, we get our package this week.
I am still waiting on a package to get to my APO box in Korea. It "left" Richmond on June 5, 2013. I talked to USPS customer service, got an e-mail back saying they couldn't help me. How ironic. I am glad I found this site, I am wondering are packages sent by boat to APO in Korea from this facility. That's crazy we ordered some shoes that were processed at another facility in California, and they got here in a week with no problems.
Big Island shopper here with a 3 lb package in the dark hole. Its been there since June 18th, and the estimated delivery date was to be July 1. Seeing this site was a slight boost to my spirits as it can somewhat tell others what the containers look like. Then again maybe I am over thinking this...
Thanks for posting this blog.
Ebay package from IL departed 27 Jun. Expected delivery to Oahu on 10 July. Routed thru Bell Gardens, CA on 1 July arriving 3 July in Richmond, CA. Reports Depart USPS Sort Facility July 4, 2013 Expected Delivery By: July 10, 2013/
It is now July 12. Contacted USPS Customer Service and asked if the package was being shipped by container ship as that might be the reason for the delay. Rep was not sure if USPS shipped mail by boat. Huh???
I have a reference number to follow up. Supposedly this will go to a research team. However, from the experiences listed here, I expect I will get the package eventually. I am glad it isn't parishable. USPS can do a better job of trying to explain this upfront and changing their tracking to reflect this shipping.
Ref post on July 12, 2013:
My local post office in Ewa Beach called within 12 hrs of my my customer call to USPS 800 number. They stated the shipper used "Parcel Select" as the method of shipment which typically takes 3 weeks. I should expect the package that was posted as departing Richmond, CA on 4 July by next week (week of 15 July) after being shipped from Illinois on 27 Jun.
Here is Stamps.com explanation on Parcel Select
"What is Parcel Select?
Parcel Select is designed for large and medium sized shippers looking for an economical ground delivery service. The mail class offers the lowest cost option from the USPS for ground delivery. Price is determined by distance, weight and dimensions of the mail piece."
As you might guess, Best pricing equates to slowest delivery. Reminds me of the old SAM delivery for military mail. We could always expect our care packages to be stale cookie crumbs by the time we got them overseas weeks or months later.
Thank you for that explanation.
If future enquirers ask USPS about their packages, please post here if the shipment was also "Parcel Select."
We are all learning.
Ref 12 July 2013 Ewa Beach - Parcel Select:
Package arrived today 13 July with USPS PARCEL SELECT label. USPS tracking was not typical for this area. Typically packages route thru Honolulu sorting facility first before going to Ewa Beach. This tracking showed arrival,sorting and departure all on 13 July direct from Ewa Beach with no tracking thru Honolulu. Makes me wonder if the package wasn't just sitting in Honolulu PO or at the local Ewa PO for a few days. The package is quite a bit beat up, but the contents were used heavy metal auto parts so no damage to them. I'm just glad to finally have the items.
Glad I found this. I purchased a camera through eBay that was shipped on 7/5 and the expected delivery window was July 7-11. I figured he sent USPS Priority. Date passed, no package and I was a little worried. Double checked on USPS.com and see a expected delivery date of 7/18! Departed Scan at Richmond on July 8. I am really disappointed that he went the cheap way which he probably could've spent no more than a few dollars more and send it Priority mail. I've had vintage cameras sent USPS Priority Mail (paying similar amount on shipping) and on my doorstep in 4 days. This thread has given me a bit of hope on receiving my item by the projected date.
Well I guess it's good to know that it isn't just me. Made a purchase on Ebay, package shipped July 8, estimated delivery on July 12. But it went through Richmond CA and subsequently disappeared. And the thing is I don't even live in Hawaii or elsewhere in the Pacific like a lot of people here. Richmond is just a 20 minute drive away! Tracking says "Departed USPS Sort Facility" in Richmond on July 10. That's over a week ago! Someone could have CRAWLED here and back to deliver that package by now!
That is curious indeed. Since you live near there, maybe one day you cold knock on their door and get the inside scoop on all this.
But let me put out a theory, even though it is unlikely, based on personal experience.
A package was sent to me (in Hawaii) from the Mainland. It ended up wandering around, including (if I remember correctly) being sent to points East instead of West after Richmond.
It took forever to arrive. When it did, I noted that the zip code was incorrect. It had 06817 instead of 96817, which was the apparent cause of the erroneous re-routing (still, you'd think they could do better, but I guess they first go by the zip code indicated). Since the "zero" zip codes are on the East Coast, that's where the package first headed. It didn't even start for Hawaii until someone, somewhere, affixed a sticker with the correct zip code.
If you find that something similar has happened to your package, please post another comment here.
And thanks for writing about your eBay package.
Ok so I live in Honolulu, HI and my package showed departed Rchmond, CA on July 9. Expected date of delivery was July 19. On that day my package still had not been delivered so I e-mailed usps and got a call from my local post office that day. They advised me that my package was not going to arrive anytime soon and would take another 2-3 wks and next time I place an order to choose expedited shipping as there is no ground shipping to HI. Ground shipping means it will be shipped by boat, not air. As far as I know it usually takes a week to 2 wks for anything to ship to HI coming from CA. Knowing that I hoped my package would at least come in within the next week and it did. I just received it today July 22. So for those wondering it should be around two weeks for mail to get here to HI from the date departed from Richmond depending on what day the boat left. This is the first time I've ever waitedthis long for a package, but I'm just happy it wasn't lost along the way. Hope this helps.
I live in Guam and I just made a purchase on eBay on July 9th.
The item was shipped out of Chatsworth CA, eventually making it' way to Richmond CA on July 11th.
The USPS tracking confirmed that i left on the 12th and that the expected date delivery would be on the 22nd. Well, its the 25th right now so I'm assuming that the expected date is off and that my package will actually be here in Guam by next week.
I've experienced having packages come in as much as a month, so I'm not surprise that my stuff didn't came in on the 22nd....
Yes, I think the sheer volume of comments here confirm what I think you're suggesting, which is that the projected delivery date on these packages is pure fiction.
I'm a little frustrated, and i'm glad to know i'm not the only one going through this. I'm from Central Europe, shipping a package to my boyfriend in Hawaii. One package that i sent a month ago from Central Europe (first class, airmail, uninsured) took only 11 days to deliver. My tracking info was: arrived to NY sorting facility, and then 5 days later it was deliver to him in Kauai, HI. No stops on my tracking in between.
Second package was a little heavier, but insured, and also sent as first class package. It has been 4 days since the status: "Depart USPS Sort Facility in Richmond, CA" hasn't changed. Never before have i seen this, and i don't understand while the fist package was delivered by air, while this one is most likely to be shipped by cargo boat.
Good thing i paid extra for insurance, but how long should i wait until i contact officials at post office? I don't live in States, so i don't want to be doing any back and forth phone calls with them.
It's my boyfriend's birthday in 9 days so i sincerely hope it arrives on time :/
The only thing I can think of is to ask your boyfriend to check with his local post office, giving him the tracking information. Of course, then the birthday present wouldn't be a surprise.
The chances are that it will arrive at his door today, just because you posted this comment. At least that's what happens to me. It's as though inanimate objects are psychic and torment me.
Thank god i found this article! I was getting frustrated as to why my package was taking so long to reach me here in Honolulu. I ordered my shoes on the 5th of august and it arrived in Richmond and was processed at the sort facility on 8/14. Its expected to arrive on Monday 8/26 but i hope it gets here before that because that's when school starts for me. Im just relieved at the fact that im not the only one having this problem but still angry and frustrated at how long its taking and how much of a hassle this facility has been to customers.
This is an update on the message that i posted on August 8, 2013 concerning the lost tracking of a package sent for my boyfriend.
Package arrived to his local post office after his birthday, on August 19th, 2013. Therefore package mailed from Central Europe to Kauai, HI took almost 3 weeks to be delivered. It was about 7 lbs and i paid over 50 USD for the postage, being insured and first class airmail.
My boyfriend wasn't able to pick up the package as he was traveling, therefore his roommate did so 10 days later. No signature required. Boyfriend arrived September 8th. Package seemed ok, considering the distance and time it had traveled. He starts opening the contents, and finds missing: 3 chocolate bars, cologne (only a box is there), packet of smokes (i know i shouldnt have sent that in a first place, my fault), chewing gums and candy as well as first aid kit i made and put together myself.
Considering there was a silver coin, silver plated belt buckle, another perfume and other 'cool' stuff, i'm wondering why these particular items were missing.
All of these were small 15+ birthday gifts, therefore each and every item was wrapped separately, numbered and placed in package. He wouldn't even be suspicious, since package might get opened along the way, crossing the customs for general review. But why would someone take cologne and leave a box from it behind. And chewing gums, seriously?
Even though my package was insured, i'm afraid this comment is all i can do about it. He hasnt taken a picture of package before opening nor had he taken a picture of the content inside. So there is no chance for me to file a claim successfully.
I'm just warning you people out there, if your package seems to be tempered with, document it along the way and complain if you need to.
I have no proof of whether it was opened at customs and items got stolen from it at that time, or during the 10 day period while sitting in PO BOX of his local post office or his until-now-trustworthy roommate 'took a peak' before he had a chance.
Thank you for your detailed report, and I'll have to say it is a bit shocking to hear that a package can be tampered with in this day and age.
I wonder about customs. Many years ago I hand carried a package from Japan to the US as part of a business trip. The package was one of the first "laptop" computers, that is, a computer that folded against a keyboard. It was a present from a Japanese company executive to an American company executive. Customs said I needed some kind of paperwork because it was a commercial gift (they were correct), and that I'd have to leave it with them and come back with the paperwork. We did the paperwork and sent someone over with it, but suddenly, customs could not locate the package.
It turned out that there was no recourse. They were not responsible for items confiscated and kept by them.
So some customs official got himself a fantastic Japanese laptop, the first in his neighborhood to have one!
I don't know if it's still true that Customs has no responsibility. If so, that could explain where the missing parts of your shipment went. Just sayin'.
I am another Hawaiian-ite who has had to deal with this. My last shipment had a projected arrival date of Sept. 6. After many emails with a great ebay seller, and waiting a long time, the package finally arrived a full 22 days after the expected arrival date. I made the assumption it was being shipped by boat which really doesn't make sense. I have things shipped to me often from Portland and Seattle which make it to me in 4-5 business days.
At any rate, thanks for this post and confirmation of my suspected thoughts on the shipping method. I'm now waiting for another package, expected delivery date of yesterday, which has fallen into this black hole.
Heartbroken, when I helped my Dad move a few weeks ago I boxed up a few items of my Mom's that really had sentimental value to me and reminded me of my mom( she passed away Feb.25, 2013). My Dad mailed the box to me from Asheville, NC 2 weeks ago today. He sent it first class with insurance. Online is shows it made it to Richmond,CA and says it was supposed to be delivered on 10/10/13. No one at my post office or the Asheville post office knows anything and now that I have read all your comments I am so sad since I will probably never see my Mom's things again. And no amount of insurance money could replace these momentos. I will never use USPS again because obviously they have known about this problem for a long time and have done nothing about it. Why they haven't had undercover investigations blows my mind. I know people are upset about not receiving items they bought for presents, etc. but imagine for a minute if you lost memories of a loved one that passed. These items might as well been lost in a fire or flood. I know my memories of my mom are in my heart and mind but now they can't be handed down to my daughters or even their kids when they have them. I am done with USPS! They have absolutely no accountability and act like they don't even care.
I posted original certificates of my education qualification in certified first class mail to International educational research service for forien credential evaluation(IERF) on the 5th of November 2013. The mail was suppose to diliver with in 5 day. it went to the mail sorting facility in Los Angeles 90025 on the 6th of November. There affter there is no dilivery information being scanned. Each time I call USPS has tracked my phone number and giving me the same old information again and Again. With the greatest difficulties if get one of the operators find my mail. Sad to say they are rude and careless. They don't give a damn a about what we worry about. Two operators just hung up the phone. The sadest part in USPS is the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing so these people have no clue what happens to a mail when it reaches the sorting facility. One operator told me to wait till it reaches the destination. I asked her how many months and how many years should I wait? I was so upset. I am unable to get a job with my original qualifications and for them just a nother mail that went missing. I do believe that the sorting facility is a "black hole" . I posted this from Torrence and the package is going to Culvercity. It is just next door and it doesn't need hundred days to diliver. I am so disapointed about USPS. I opened a case with them and they told me some body will call me with in 24 hours. Sad to say no one called me. After 3 day I made calls to all the possible places and still there is no respond. That is how they care about their cutomers also you can imagine how irresponsible they are. If this happened with UPS they will tell exactly where is the package and the time it will be dilivered. Money can't replace my credentials. That is 12 years of my hard work. I can't even get a job with out them. I am so stressed out with this and feeling really sad. If any body know any way I can find them let me know. These credentials are from different countries of the world. I WILL TELL ANY BODY "DON'T TRUST USPS FOR THE THINGS WITH A VALUE". Cerified mail and tracking are all BULLSHIT.
id like to think they are working to fix the problem and show some integrity...... but the package im waiting for reached richmond two weeks ago and departed a couple days later but have yet to reach or at least be processed at the next location....i will see if i can get any help at the post office tomorrow.
@Sean DaIceMan -- As you probably guessed, from the comments posted here, your package is probably en route on a boat someplace.
If you get a response from the PO, please post it here. Thanks
Two of my packages has been Stuck at Richmond PO since Nov. 12, 2013!! Sadly, they are all for xmas gifts!! Im located in GU and idk how long it will take to get here :( but it sure is taking forever. Its already Dec. 3 here. I just dont understand why it has to be shipped by boat instead of plane. This is the first this ever happened to me!
I have a package that was processed in Richmond, California on December 1st. It was supposed to be here on the 3rd and now I'm starting to get worried. I hope my package doesn't get stuck there forever. After seeing many horror stories about the terrible shipping from there, I just hope that it gets here (HI) in time for Christmas. Also, it's a gift for my boyfriend which makes it even worst. I've never had this kind of experience with shipping and I'm just hoping that it was slightly delayed.
O.K. so add me to the list of people sending packages to Hawaii that have gotten lost in the black hole that is the Richmond sort facility. I mailed a package from Oregon that was scanned at my local post office on November 27, scanned the next day in Federal Way, Washington, and then scanned on November 30 in Richmond. That was the last scan and it is now December 13.
Interestingly, the USPS website says “Processed through USPS Sort Facility” but then if I click on the information icon it adds “Your item was processed through and left our RICHMOND, CA 94804 facility on November 30, 2013 at 9:20 am.” By “left the facility” what I imagine this means is that it was scanned as it was placed into a shipping container where it lingered (or continues to linger) waiting for the container to be filled and shipped to Hawaii. At least that is what I am hoping since it is better than having the package stolen which would appear to be not uncommon in Richmond.
I guess on the optimistic side, since this is the Christmas season perhaps containers headed to Hawaii fill up more quickly than other times of the year and therefore get to Hawaii sooner. The package is a gift for a relative whom I am visiting between Christmas and New Year’s. I am hoping the package arrives in time for me to watch him open it.
Ugh! This is all so frustrating! I have a package that is listed as DEPARTED from the Richmond facility on 12/9, with an estimated delivery of 12/10. I'm in San Francisco -- it's a 30 minute drive. Where did it go? Actually...I don't want to know. I've contacted the Etsy sellers, and they are looking into it from their end. I've contacted USPS, and I can't submit a lost package report until it's "officially late" on the 17th. I thought I had paid for priority shipping, but apparently not. When I talked to the USPS rep, I asked a lot of questions about how to submit the report and the odds of the package showing up, and then mentioned that I was having issues with the Richmond facility... *crickets chirping* Sigh -- of course these are Christmas gifts, and it's not the end of the world if they're late, but...where the hell are they?
Your situation looks quite different from the others -- your package should not be loaded onto a boat.
My guess is that there is indeed a glitch someplace, but that if your package is properly packed (that is, not falling apart or damaged), and if it's properly addressed, you'll probably get it pretty soon. Maybe even tomorrow. That's the way the universe works. As soon as you post on this blog, the package shows up. See what happens.
Larry, from your lips to the shipping gods ears. I've a package that hasn't updated since leaving the Richmond Ca sorting facility on Dec 11th for a San Francisco address. I pray it shows up soon.
Date & Time Status of Item Location December 9, 2013
Depart USPS Sort Facility
RICHMOND, CA 94804 December 7, 2013 , 9:32 am
Processed through USPS Sort Facility
RICHMOND, CA 94804
December 4, 2013
Depart USPS Sort Facility
JACKSONVILLE, FL 32099
December 3, 2013 , 6:38 am
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility
JACKSONVILLE, FL 32099
December 3, 2013 , 5:23 am
Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility
POMPANO BEACH, FL 33069
December 1, 2013
Electronic Shipping Info Received
Another lost package Florida Dec 3rd 2013 Now Dec 24th 2013 and its in Black Hole no information, already put in claim for USPS how long before I refund Ebayer theyre money??
10 days from arrival in Richmond to Honolulu delivery (Amazon.com purchase)
December 26, 2013 , 8:08 am Out for Delivery HONOLULU, HI 96817
December 16, 2013 , 12:41 pm Processed through USPS Sort Facility RICHMOND, CA 94804
Thank you for posting the delivery result. Ten days in Christmas season sounds not bad -- in fact, I wonder if the containers fill up more quickly...
Just how long does one have to wait. It is a small wonder why this service is called SNAIL MAIL. I ordered my items back on Dec 17th, it was supposedly sent out on the day after. Traveled across the country during the terrible during the winter on December 21 and landed in the Richmond facility on 12-27-13. Now more than 10 days later, it STILL has not arrived . No one has explained to me if it is lost or still needing delivery.
My package to Honolulu left Colorado on 12/23, routed to Richmond CA via Memphis TN on 12/30. It's 1/10 today and no package. USPS Consumer Affairs Office person told me this: Usually a small package shouldn't go to Richmond (as with my previous shipments), but because of the holiday backlog it could've been misrouted. And sometimes people at Richmond sees such packages they will put them on air shipment because...most package that are routed to Richmond are larger items or items meant to be sent via "boat", which takes 3-4 weeks to Honolulu.
Apparently my package was incorrectly routed, and possibly mis-sorted among larger items. And there's no way they can trace where it is now as no packages are scanned until they get to the next processing point. They couldn't tell if it actually got on the boat, which boat, and when the boat arrives...but were sure that not on the air because it's been so many days already.
So much for 3 days delivery...the rep was nice and helpful though. Filing MRC just in case and see if vendor can reship it, with the original shipment to be refused later. If it is an option, stick to UPS/FedEx for better accountability and traceability.
Not sure where you are located, but the chances are you will receive your package, it's not lost. The issue here is more "when" than anything else.
I am not alone...I shipped a box Dec 23 2013 from MI to HI, Post office indicated a delivery of January 8, 2014. You guessed it, stuck in Richmond. Had no idea would have shipped Priority, but more than twice the price and supposedly only 2 days quicker with Christmas and New Years! Buyer in HI is not a happy camper!
Another lost packagage from Tokyo, Japan to Las Vegas, NV via the Richmond Sorting Facility. It used to take only 7-10 days for a package to be delivered from Tokyo to Las Vegas. But it has been 6 weeks now. It was held at San Francisco for 3 weeks and "Your item was processed through and left our RICHMOND, CA 94804 facility on December 27, 2013 at 7:04 am. The item is currently in transit to the destination. No further information is available for this item." It is January 13, 2014 and no update since. My package is considered as Express Priority in the U.S. I called the local post office, the local consumer affairs, and 1-800 number at USPS. The employees at the first two were super rude and no help!! I will probably ask the shipper to use FedEx or another company to send me any package.
I live in USPS zip code 96942 (635 miles south of Guam) I ordered my son a ukulele from Musician's Friend. I tracked the package to the Richmond facility, then waited. A couple of months later, we finally got a box from Musician's friend, obviously opened and re-taped together. Inside were a pair of used hedge trimmers, a girl's belt, a large bath towel with embroirded initials, and in the very bottom, stuck to the flap, a packing slip from Musician's friend saying enclosed was my ukulele.
There are a few reports posted on this blog similar to yours. It's really hard to imagine what happened to the package. For example, was the original package adequately packed for the long journey? Many vendors pack like Amazon.com does, but that kind of thin cardboard with little protection inside or out may not make it through the system. For parcel post, a package has to be very well armored.
Who knows how or why the miscellaneous stuff was chosen to send to you. That sounds like mismanagement someplace. But still, if the original package were adequate, it likely would not have broken open and presented the opportunity for a postal worker to stuff it with whatever else was on the floor nearby.
Crap! I just had my package scanned at Richmond, CA. It was sent from Los Angeles area bound for Oahu, HI with an expected delivery date of 1/24/14 -- yesterday. I thought it was strange doing to HI via Northern CA so I did an internet search which brought me here. Now I am officially worried. No more USPS for me! ugh.
Yep, I'm in the same boat. Don't ship via USPS, use UPS, FEDEX, etc. The tracking info said it left Richmond CA more than a week ago which was more than a week after it was supposed to be delivered. So now it's three weeks late, and people are waiting on what's in the package. I should have insured it for more.
I ordered a laptop from boston and it was shipped on jan.21 at aliston,MA and on the same day was processed in Nashua,NH. Then it stopped there. Could it have gone to richmond sort facility?
Who knows where it is. Usually, there would be a scan when it arrives at Richmond (or elsewhere). You might contact your local post office about what you can do to get more information. Also, verify, if you can, that the zip code on your package was correct. I found that when a zip code was wrong (mine had 068xx instead of 968xx) it got stuck someplace on the East Coast, probably in a pile while they figured out what to do with it. I did receive the package, but it took some time. See what you can find out.
I have a package bound for Korea. It shipped from the company, (I ordered online) on 7 February via UPS or FedEx... got to the Richmond facility on the 13th of February, left on the 15th to San Francisco facility. It left the san Francisco facility on 16 February... today is 23 February and my package has still not made it to Korea... I'm beyond frustrated...packages I've sent to Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan have made it there in as little as 9 days... this was supposed to be a Valentine's gift for my child's father... ;(
My wife sent me a Christmas package from Orlando that has also had the misfortune of the Richmond facility. It was originally scheduled for arrival on 12/30. It is now 2 months late. In that time, it has traveled back and forth across the country 5 times between the Richmond and Jacksonville sort facilities. Of course repeated calls/visits with the Post Office get the 'nothing we can do' response. The last one actually asked me to please not go to the TV/News with my story. She had me write a letter to the two sort facility managers describing my package (how do you uniquely describe a medium sized package you have never seen?) so that they could possibly look for it and intercept it. I went ahead and did that knowing it wouldn't help (and since she mailed it to them, they probably never got it anyway).
The package didn't contain anything worth a lot of $$, however, it did contain a framed picture of my children that I have always kept with me at work. Beyond frustrated at this point. I would like to think if there was something important, or dangerous in this day and age, in a package that they would have some way of finding it.
do all standard post go through Richmond, CA for Hawaii destination? I have 2 packages coming and its been 3 weeks and still nothing. its coming from Washington state.
My understanding is that parcel post would go through the Richmond Sort Facility and then into a container and onto a boat. I don't know if other mail necessarily goes through there, I would think some might, most would not. But your local post office can give you an idea, most likely, about when to expect the packages and where they have gone.
So thats why my package is not here. OMG I ordered something of 2/12/14 expected delivery date 3-4-14 and its still in CA. They better get the $h!t together cause someone going to have to pay for my things i need being late
Mine is a domestic delivery from Phoenix to Point Arena, CA. Mailed on 3-8-2014, Processed through Sort Facility (Richmond, of course) on 3/9/2014 at 8:38 pm. This proves the package could get to Richmond in 29 hours from the time I was at the Phoenix counter. The distance of 122 miles from Richmond to Point Arena would not seem to warrant a "container" so comments from others on overseas problems are not an answer. Expected delivery is said to be 3/11/2014. I laugh/cry every time I read this..
I guess I am a short-timer on this list of issues with Richmond. I am currently awaiting the infamous call back but ... "It's Friday with the weekend coming. Expect a call Tuesday or Wednesday" is the response I got when filing a claim.
WELL ALOHA I HAVE BEEN WAITING SINCE FEB 28TH FOR A PACKAGE FROM CALIFORNIA TO MAUI AND ITS STILL STUCK THERE IN RICHMOND CALIFORNIA THE EXPECTED DELIVERY WAS 03/13/2014 I WENT TO THE POST OFFICE AND ALL THE WOMAN SAID WAS OH YOU GONNA HAVE TO WAIT 4 TO 6 WEEKS OR LONGER, I AM VERY UPSET BUT I GIVE THANKS BECAUSE ITS NOT A PERSON OR LIFE SAVING INSTRUMENT THAT I AM WAITING FOR JUST GETS ME SO UPSET FOR SO MANY MISTAKES THAT WE PAY FOR THESE DAYS!
Hi everyone, thank you so much for those useful information posted above. I seem to be in the same situation as many people here and I am having a quick question. I shipped a package to Rota, Mariana Island back in 2/18 and the package was supposed to be delivered on 3/14 but never arrived. The most up to date info I get from the tracking number was "departed Richmond, CA on 2/25" (my guess is by boat since it was parcel), so estimately how long does it usually take for the package to be delivered now that it is on a boat? Thanks for your help :(
Yours is the first comment on a package sent to Mariana Island, so there's nothing to go by. I wonder also if the boat goes directly there or makes some stops along the way...?
If you can get feedback from the recipient, please come back and post, to assist others in the future. For example, the date it was delivered, and if they can get any info on their end (perhaps from the delivering carrier or post office) of the path it took to Rota.
Just adding a bit of information to this pot of swill called Richmond. Just because you are told it's been shipped UPS or FedEx, does not mean they'll ship it all the way to HI. The sellers (no necessarily Amazon) select an option that allows UPS or FedEx to dump the packages at the coast ... you guessed it, at Richmond. I had a small package sent from California and it took over three weeks to get it here on Oahu. Tracking stopped at Richmond of course. Here it is 2014 and by looking at the latest posts, I can see that nothing has changed. USPS wonder why they have a bad reputation, just look at Richmond.
I kind of heard that it gets held up in Richmond, CA until the container gets filled and it takes 30 -45 days to reach Hawaii. On the other side, if we ship USPS Parcel Post from Hawaii to the US Mainland, I noticed things get delivered within 2 weeks at the most.
Very frustrated and upset, but VERY thankful for this excellent blog!!! I discovered it while googling for "richmond CA USPS delay".. go figure.
I'm upset because I ordered a small item (a nintendo 3DS game card, weighs a couple ounces at most) on eBay, and the seller confirmed it would be sent USPS First Class (NOT parcel select or media mail, both of which have taken up to SEVEN weeks to arrive at my pearl city home) which was important to me, as this is for a specific time and place, and the item will have no meaning or value if it arrives late. Unfortunately no seller was selling it at a decent price and shipping via priority mail, or I'd have gone that way.
Anyway, the purchase was made on 5/24/2014 (a saturday, so I only count tuesday since monday was memorial day). Tracking shows it was scanned into the actual physical mail stream tuesday morning the 27th (i say physical stream because often times USPS tracking has a "electronic shipping info received" line, which just indicates the date/time the seller purchased postage online). it was scanned as "processed through usps sorting facility" at Richmond CA on June 2. it had been routed from savannah GA to Jacksonville FL, then Memphis TN, and then to CA.
delivery estimate was originally June 2nd, which makes sense, as real FIRST CLASS MAIL takes about a week to arrive from that area.. well, it only arrived in Richmond CA on that date, and now it's June 6th, and no package, so it did NOT go by air.
this leads me to believe that the seller did not, in fact, use usps first class mail. One thing that annoys me is ignorance about mailing to hawaii (on the part of sellers) and i've taken it upon myself to politely educate many sellers with No AK/HI policies. If this package arrives and indeed has FIRST CLASS postage, then i need to rethink my reeducation campaign, because obviously USPS Richmond has some issues, and is likely part of the reason sellers don't want to ship to HI. If it's got media mail postage on it (which i suspect), then this seller represents the other class of sellers that annoy me, and that is sellers who aren't honest about shipping methods (the first group were those who arbitrarily block AK/HI shipping). In all likelihood, the seller was told, erroneously, that media mail takes 8 days max (by a clerk who has no idea that it goes by ship to hawaii), and thought i would never know the difference.
anyway, sorry for the rant, but i'm really frustrated by this stuff.
By the way, i don't know if this next fact was covered here in the comments, as i read every comment up to around sept/oct 2013 (maybe skipped some) but jumped right to the end after that to post this comment, so here it is.. bear with me if you've read it somewehre on this page already: USPS First Class is limited to items 13oz and lighter, and is supposed to go by AIR to hawaii.
Anything over that weight is either Parcel Select, Media Mail, or Priority 2 or 3 day (formerly express and priority mail).
Thank you for your excellent discussion. I hope the gods of postal mail are paying attention and that you'll receive your package tomorrow.
Yes, I've received eBay purchases via media mail. It took, if I remember correctly, over a month to arrive. In my case, it wasn't important, I didn't need the item right away. The seller packed it well, and it arrived ok and was a great saving over purchasing the same thing locally at Hawaii's outrageous prices.
Please come back and comment again when your package arrives, about how it was sent, and if it was properly addressed.
I ordered a Desktop and Monitor from bestbuy on may 22. It is now June 8 and im leaving for vacation on the 12th so im hoping it will arrive before then...
Friend of mine sent me a laptop but, unfortunately for me, decided to go with Parcel Select instead of Priority. It was shipped out from ID on May 30, and has been listed as "Processed and left Richmond, CA" on June 2. Called USPS to see what the holdup was and got nothing. It is June 12 (11 for the US.)
BTW, I'm on Guam. I've already given up hope on getting this laptop in one piece.
I sent a package to Bangkok and it has disappeared once it has been processed at Richmond, I was hoping it would get to Bangkok in two weeks but it has been more than two weeks, I read where some ones packages took a month so I guess there is hope for my package. This is about as bad as sending something to Nigeria. I guess I will have to mail things to Bangkok early to hope it will arrive on time.
Hi, I bought a package from Columbus Ohio and was shipped standard mail via Ebay to Hawaii. It says processed thru Richmond California sort facility yesterday on July 15th 2014 at 2:14 pm. It is now 5:05 pm July 16th and the package hasn't tracked since the 15th. Reading about these problems I'm starting to get worried. When will I get my package?? Helpp!!;
I live in Honolulu HI. I sent an unopened package back to an eBay seller on April 21, 2014. The last tracking date is May 17, 2014 at Richmond Ca Sort Facility. Today’s date is July 21, 2014. THREE MONTHS IN TRANSIT AND USPS CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR MY $265.00 LOST PACKAGE!!!
I'll add my seemingly common Ebay experience with Postal Select to Hawaii through Richmond....
Learned something new and will NEVER make the same mistake.
Accepted in Tucson AZ 85748 on 7/2/14
Processed through Richmond on 7/8/14
Today is 7/21/14. So, it's been 19 days and no package!
I guess it's still "early". I'll never use that seller again. $15.00 fee for what looks like a $7.00 USPS charge.
Priority Post is the way to go to Hawaii.
Hi im from honolulu hawaii and i ordered a item from missouri on july 11, sorted and left richmond sorting facility on july 16. Estimated delivery said to be july 28-august 4. And to be honest i dont think it even left richmond yet. No updates of where the package is. Why would anyone ship via boat from mainland to hawaii. Ill update as soon as i get one....
Hahaha awesome my stuff left June 28th headed to Japan, arrived July 4 at this place and still hasnt arrived
Hi, I'm from Maui, Hawaii and I have a package that apparently departed the USPS facility in Richmond, CA on July 17. Expected delivery day was July 28. It is already August 7 and I still haven't received it nor has the tracking been updated. I will comment again if my package ever arrives. :(
I shipped from bay area to Kauai on Aug 1st, arrived Richmond Aug 2...estimated delivery of Aug 12... called today by 800 # and they filed an investigation...my local post office (where I sent from) called an hour later to say that it left Richmond on a barg aug 5th and that it would take 4 weeks to get to Hawaii... so early September... they should probably avoid people getting stressed out by putting the right estimated dates, but I was happy with the quick follow up, we will see when it arrives...
Thanks for your report. Yes, that's a big part of this ongoing problem -- failure to give an honest estimate of the delivery date in the first place.
Worried about my package making it to Honolulu! I mailed two packages (same sized boxes) on August 12 at the same time. One package was scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, August 27, but was delivered on Monday, August 25. However, the package with sentimental items seems to be "lost" in the shuffle in Richmond, Ca. It was scanned in to California on August 17 and supposed to be delivered August 26. I have contacted USPS and someone told me it is going parcel select. I cannot understand why one package made it in 13 days and another is going to take 6 weeks! By the way, this "missing" package weighs less than the delivered package! USPS is inconsistent and from now on I will pay the extra money for a different shipper!
Add me into the mix for having a package stuck in a sort facility. My student visa is in purgatory in Bethesda, MD. My guess is it was a mis-key on the zip code since MD's begins 207, and my area starts 270. USPS is saying there's nothing they can do at this point. It was a 2-day Priority package that is now on its 6th day. My flight is out on Wed, and if it isn't here on Wed... my life is over.
It sounds as though you really are on a spot. Can you get someone to issue you a duplicate, or something else you can use?
One of my packages was similarly miss-addressed, and it took a long time to arrive. Can you find out where the 207xx post office is and try to reach them?
Good luck, but if you can find an alternate plan that might be good to do.
I shipped an ebay purchase to a seller on the Big Island in Hawaii on August 22 and it arrived on August 28th at the Richmond facility. Estimated delivery date on my receipt was Sept 6th. September 6th has come and gone and just found from the buyer that he hasn't gotten the package yet. I called the Atlanta consumer affairs office today and was basically told there was nothing they could do, they couldn't tell me when a boat left and it was basically my fault for sending it standard post. I told him that I was not told that it could take so long to get to its destination, that I would have never sent it if I had been and that they should consider removing the delivery date entirely. I think he was recording me because the frustration level had hit a high at that point and I was not being my best self. If only I had taken less care and packaged up the product more cheaply I could have afforded to send it priority mail. Future note taken - or better yet, use UPS or FedEx to Hawaii. I also requested the number for consumer affairs at the Richmond facility and spoke to a much more knowledgeable woman about the shipping process itself, who still at the end of the day said there was no help she could provide. She said that the package would have been loaded on the boat the day after it arrived and was in transit to Honolulu. There would be no check out from Richmond, which is just what your article says. She said it could take 4-6 weeks total time to get to Honolulu. Then I'm stuck back in a facility for shipping to the next island and trucking from the facility to the city. 8 weeks total time she estimated. I asked why my receipt was listed only as 15 days from when I shipped and she didn't answer. Call me crazy, but don't cruise ships get there in about 5 days? So, we are in the waiting game until it arrives in Honolulu. I just feel bad for the kid waiting on a baseball bat to use for this fall baseball season that he will get when the season is over.
Thank you for your detailed comment. By adding your concern for the kid who won't get his baseball bat in time, you've illustrated very well the effect of giving a totally false and unrealistic delivery estimate can have. That needs to be fixed. If you knew when your shipment would really be delivered, you would have chosen another method.
Ordered two books off Amazon. One "departed" from Richmond CA on Sept 20th while the other left on Sept 24th...Hopefully I receive them by Halloween :( ...Will update if anything happens
It's so sad to hear all this. Read all of the posts and my heart goes out to each individual out there that's going through this b.s. I'm from San Jose and shipped out some sentimental things to my family in Tennessee through UPS near Livermore, Ca on October 14th,2014 looked at my status and said it was supposed to arrive on Friday the 17th. Nothing happening yet. Called the customer service and was advised that the employees had to be evacuated due to some sort of hazardous leak in the facility. Never thought anything of it, but after reading the details it also said it was due to weather which was pretty odd. So now here I am with the rest of the victims who is hoping to get any kind of info on it.Sad to say, but I'll never ever deal with UPS ever again.
Aloha , Maui here made the mistake of not specifying priority mail what a dumb mistake.took 5 days to get to the black hole from Penn. You would think USPS would say oh this is Hawaii and throw it on a plane.well it arrived at the Black Hole on Nov 5 estimated time is on Nov 14th.
I think they should eliminate Parcel post option for all Hawaii bound packages.has anyone had any luck with this process? my package is insured but I dont want the insurance money I want my package. I learned my lesson. when I was a ebay seller I never shipped anything parcel post.priority only some customers that didn't buy from me complained.but the ones that did gave me the best ratings because they didn't confuse USPS service with my service. Parcel post should be called banana boat barge service. I feel like I just went back in time.
Maui again its11-18-2014 nothing no movement says package left Richmond on Nov 5th how long does it take a boat from Richmond to Hawaii. 4 days past estimated delivery date
Hi, Maui. Thanks for checking back.
Only 4 days... if your package follows the pattern of others reported here, it could be much longer. Please let us know what happens.
I'm having a package sent to Japan, all I know is that it arrived in Richmond on the 1st of December and that was 18 days ago. Sent a different package to Japan last week, it went through the Chicago facility and made it to Japan in 9 days.
I am waiting for a package from Germany to Hawaii. It was sent on November 21, 2014 and entered the US on November 26. Since then it has been sitting in Richmond, Ca. My husband is deployed to Afghanistan and this is a Christmas Package for my children from their grandparents. This is really frustrating and sad. USPS can't help. Even though they promised that all packages make it to their destination if shipped by December 2nd. What to do?
Well, no good ideas. If the package is in a container someplace, nothing will speed it along. Maybe you could put small boxes under the tree, each with an IOU with a postage stamp on it (to put blame where it belongs, and because it is kind of a promise that if not Santa, at least the postman will bring the gifts soon). Just thinking out loud, not a great idea I suppose.
You folks in Hawaii should be grateful you're not living in Okinawa. We sent our grandaughter her Christmas presents two months ago. They hit the Richmond California facility within three days from the East coast, and stayed there for two weeks. I placed a call to USPS and immediately the status changed to en route but I'd imagine the move took place in the computer alone. Somewhere in the warehouse there are our grandaughter's Chrismas presents. She was a very disappointed child on Christmas without the presents that were intended for her. Maybe she'll get them in time for next Christmas.
My mom is still waiting for her Christmas gifts that should have been there by the 26th. All 3 of my other boxes made it a few days late but they still got them. I sent all of them on Dec 13th from Texas. I will not be using USPS anymore.
Since moving to Hawaii in summer 2013, I've lost packages both coming in and going out. I've been mailing stuff since the 70's, plus ordering a lot from catalogs and then the internet (and I've lived all over the US). Over my whole life up until now, I've lost maybe 3 packages. Since moving here I've lost at least 5, possibly 6. When we moved here, we mailed a lot of our stuff (96 boxes) from Georgia. 3 of the boxes never arrived. We'd used stamps.com labels, and apparently those do sometimes fall off, even though we taped them on. One of the labels got mailed to us, ripped up, with a note explaining that the box was lost. The other two boxes were scanned in here in Honolulu (we had tracking numbers). So they got here and then disappeared somehow. I don't know what was in them, aside from a few obvious missing items, because we only had a few weeks to pack a whole household full of stuff, and a lot of it went into storage. I didn't have time to write down what was in every box, and it never occurred to me to write down the address on the outside, since we had labels. The postal workers here were utterly unhelpful, too. Then two packages I'd mailed to Canada this past year also never got to their destination. And now my Christmas gift to my sister-in-law, that was mailed in early December, hasn't arrived. I was told it might get there after Christmas, but it's 2 weeks past Xmas now, so I'm worried. It was a big box and didn't go Priority because it would have cost me an extra $60. However, I did write both of our addresses all over it, so it should have either gone to her or come back here. Unless, as I suspect, someone along the way is stealing packages. Since it's happening to both outgoing and incoming boxes, it's probably someone here in Hawaii doing it. So very sad.
Thanks for info, my son just recently got stationed in Japan. I sent him a package of christmas gifts on December 17, last report is on the 23rd that it reach richmond. its now jan 11 and still no news of the package. sounds like if i'm lucky he will receive it by next christmas SMH!!!!
Added me to the list, I mailed a package to my son, who is station in Japan on December 12, arrived at Richmond, as of today no movement. I hope he receive package.
Aloha - I so agree - Richmond sorting USPS in California is the worst. I have had do many parcels lost in that black-hole. Right now 9 days and counting.
We sent a ups package to an apo in Korea on Dec 26 2014. Today is Feb 10 2015 and he still hasn't gotten it. The expected delivery date was Jan 5, 2015. Ups says they can't help. What happend with your package? I'm so angry. It was $100 worth of stuff
On March 2, a friend mailed a package to me via USPS from San Diego and was told it would take 4 days to deliver it to Hawaii. The tracking says it left Richmond, CA on March 4 at 11:42am and the expected delivery date was March 16. Checked again this morning and it is still in transit, hopefully it gets here before the 23rd becaue I'm going back to the mainland. Probably time for the USPS to retire...along with the majority of government run businesses.
Just a kid from Maui who ordered a couple skateboards off EBay.
Ordered on March 5
Arrived in Richmond on March 7
Eta was supposed to be March 19
Do any of you know how much longer my package may be?
I know this is mainly about Richmond but my issue was with the City of Industry, CA location. I'm guessing they sorted my package bound for Texas incorrectly and it ended up in Hawaii 3 days after it was mailed. After spending a day in Hawaii it was supposedly sent on its way back to the mainland 3 days ago (whether its headed to Texas yet who knows) and USPS refuses to help. They never answer the phone on the 800 number. I finally submitted an email and someone from my local PO called me and said it must be on the cargo ship headed back to California. I asked if it would then at least be sent Priority 2 day from California once it arrives and she said it would probably be sent via truck.
Its almost a laughable joke at this point. I realize I haven't waited weeks just yet like some people on here but its still pretty frustrating when you pay for priority service and you can't get it. You would think once they figured out they made a mistake, they would try to prioritize getting it fixed but that doesn't seem to be the case.
This happened to me once -- a package sent to me ended up wandering around the east coast even though I am in Hawaii. When I finally (eventually) got it, it turned out that the zip code was incorrect. It went to where that zip code was, where someone at that PO had to fix it and dump it in the outgoing box to complete its journey.
Nashua NH postal tracking CLAIMS my registered letter, bound for Alabama, left there on the 8th, today is the 17th...
I bought a set of cylinder heads off of ebay. They were shipped from the east coast, and arrived in the Richmond USPS facility Feb. 17, 2015, @ 10:46 AM. Left Richmond facility Feb. 17, 2015, @ 10:53 AM as of todays date 4/21/15 those heads went into the black hole, no one knows where they went, I still don't have my parcel. I can't imagine them putting it on a ship that slow. If you don't want me thinking some thief working for the USPS in Richmond Ca. stole them, don't give me that impression. They've been MIA for too long to think otherwise. No help from the USPS on this matter, no wonder why the ebay sellers won't ship to Hi. A person running a business can't have that happen too many times, next thing you know, you're out of business.
This probably doesn't involve Richmond - but it's another strange Post Office story. I ordered electronic parts from China via eBay, which I do often with no delivery problems to my home in Boston. This order placed on 4/13 was shipped from China on 4/14 and when I checked tracking on the PO web site, it arrived in Chicago on 4/17, oddly showing no West Coast location in between. It left Chicago 15 minutes later - and was sent for some weird reason to London, in the UK, where it arrived late on 4/17. But it gets worse - from London, it went to the APO (Army / Air Force PO) system, arriving somewhere on 4/21, with no new tracking info. Calling the 800 number was useless - they told me the LKxxx tracking number assigned by China Post can't be tracked once it gets into the APO system. I contacted the seller, so if it doesn't arrive, they will send again. Only posted to show yet another Post Office error. Package from China gets as far as Chicago - where the PO promptly sends it back out of the country.
This very much sounds like a PO error, but not necessarily. It could be a badly addressed package, perhaps. I had one where my zip code was written as 06817 instead of 96817. So it traveled around the country and to the east coast instead of to Hawaii, where someone at the 06817 post office finally re-addressed it, then it began a long trek back west.
So again, yes, it could be a PO error, or a person in China, who may not even understand what to do, was assigned to mail that package to you, and blew it.
Without actually having the package in hand, it's hard to tell what happened. If you ever do receive it, please come back here and post a follow-up.
And good luck with the next shipment, hope you get it.
I think that Richmond has changed its procedure to scan the departure of parcels once it is placed in a container, regardless of when the container will actually be filled and leaving the facility. Tracking on my package shows:
April 10, 2015 , 11:27 am Departed USPS Facility RICHMOND, CA 94804
April 10, 2015 , 11:01 am Arrived at USPS Facility RICHMOND, CA 94804
However, it is now April 30th and the package has not yet been scanned arriving in Honolulu. I have been ordering online for years and years and years and have only had packages taking this long in the past six months, when they have gotten routed through Richmond.
Also, I think retailers are now using "UPS Innovations" to save on cost. This ultimately means that the package gets transported through the continental US by UPS and then if it is coming to Hawaii, it is transferred to USPS for Parcel Post and gets routed through Richmond.
My son's Christmas gifts from Target were ordered at the end of November and took a month to get here because of this new method of shipping to Hawaii. Favors will now not be here for my son's third birthday party tomorrow, and I ordered them on April 8th not realizing this would happen again!
So now you either have to order way in advance of when you will need things or pay costs for expedited shipping to Hawaii, oftentimes quoted by online retailers at more than two to four times as much as items you are buying.
I am a very sad Mommy.
I'm not sure how UPS Innovations works, or if it works the same way each time. I used Shiprack to track a couple of packages on my phone that used UPS Innovations. In each case it said that the package was turned over to USPS in Honolulu, which means it bypassed Richmond and the whole, slow, shipping container trip. Those shipments were all from Amazon, though, which seems to almost always figure the delivery date correctly within a couple of days.
So yeah, in Hawaii it's best to order early, or find a vendor who is willing to ship express mail without a crazy surcharge.
ordered some stuff from japan that shipped out on march 17 that still hasn't arrived. i used a method that didn't come with tracking but i know it's not one that's supposed to take 8 weeks and i suspect my package is stuck here after seeing that other people with packages from japan have seen their trackable packages disappear here. it's pretty upsetting. i'm getting refunded but i bought rare, discontinued collectables i might not ever see go on sale again so it's not like i can wait for a new shipment or anything.
update: apparently my package was held at customs all this time, rejected, and sent back to the seller. dunno why customs would inspect or reject plushies and a cd but it's getting resent with ems shipping which goes from tokyo straight to chicago for me so it should be safe from from the black holes in cali
Thank you so much for posting a followup, and I hope the re-shipping works better. The package could still end up in Customs.
I'm guessing that there was something odd about the original declaration. Not related to your shipment, but as an example, I have received things shipped from China marked Commercial Sample and valued at $1. That's for something I ordered, and the price, while not huge, was more than $1 though still probably too cheap for customs to care about had they inspected it.
Again, just a guess. And again, thanks for posting the followup.
I'm far from being in the same boat (no pun intended), but this page came up while I was looking for an answer to the craziness below...
May-21-15, 16:07 PM, Tokyo
May-20-15, 13:20 PM, Chicago
May-20-15, 06:30 AM, Chicago
Processed Through Sort Facility
May-19-15, 21:28 PM, ISC CHICAGO IL (USPS)
Arrived at Sort Facility
May-19-15, 21:24 PM, ISC CHICAGO IL (USPS)
Inbound Out of Customs
May-18-15, 00:56 AM
Processed Through Sort Facility
May-16-15, 11:17 AM, ISC CHICAGO IL (USPS)
Processed Through Sort Facility
May-16-15, 01:55 AM, TOKYO INT CONTAINER 1
Processed Through Sort Facility
May-15-15, 19:12 PM, TOKYO INT CONTAINER 1
Origin Post is Preparing Shipment
Inbound Into Customs
May-15-15, 14:08 PM
Here are my questions...
How did it get from Tokyo JP to Chicago which is 2 hours away from me by car in 1 day but can't seem to make it here from there in 5 days?
Why in the **** is it back in Tokyo?
What in the world is a 16:07 PM?
No response necessary, just wanted to vent.
Expected Delivery Day: Monday, June 29, 2015
Product & Tracking Information
Postal Product:Parcel Select
DATE & TIME
STATUS OF ITEM
June 18, 2015 , 6:32 am
Departed USPS Origin Facility
RICHMOND, CA 94804
Your item departed our USPS origin facility in RICHMOND, CA 94804 on June 18, 2015 at 6:32 am. The item is currently in transit to the destination.
June 17, 2015 , 7:07 pm
Arrived at USPS Origin Facility
RICHMOND, CA 94804
June 17, 2015 , 5:52 pm
Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility
RICHMOND, CA 94850
June 17, 2015
Pre-Shipment Info Sent to USPS
I ordered something from Utah on the 13th, it shipped UPS all the way up until Richmond a couple days ago. I expected to receive it tomorrow because I was under the impression UPS would bring to Honolulu and the package would be given to USPS to then deliver to my door. I regret that doing decision so much now! My estimated arrival is Monday June 29th, I never checked the date and only assumed Monday. When I realized it said a week from Monday I decided to do a search and find this. So frustrating! Especially because this package is products for customers who are already getting frustrated because usually things take 4 days. I'll update when it eventually arrives, hopefully nothing is missing!!
Just another comment about the USPS service to Hawaii via Richmond, CA. USPS Parcel Post was the only economical method to ship the items. The lowest priced FedEx or UPS or USPS Priority methods were between $50 to $100 for a 3 pound but slightly oversized package. So I had to go parcel post and one of the packages "sat" there in Richmond. What I had ordered came in 2 packages. One package took 13 days from SoCal. The vendor that I purchase the from contacted the USPS and filed a complaint about the second package just sitting there. Looking back at the USPS delivery record, it seems the USPS executed "Plan B" on the delivery of the package since it magically appeared at my doorstep just a couple of days after their discussion. I know it takes at least 6 days for the boat to travel from the Bay Area to Honolulu.
Item #1 - 13 days
via Norwalk - Bell Gardens - Richmond - Honolulu - Lahaina according to the USPS tracking info
11 days from the arrival at Richmond to my door
Item #2 - 30 days (with intervention)
via Norwalk - Bell Gardens - Richmond - Lahaina (no Honolulu?) according to the USPS tracking info
27 days from the arrival at Richmond to my door and bypassed Honolulu
But it took only 2 days from Richmond to my door after the telephone call to USPS. Maybe it was flown direct to Maui since it was lightweight. From "slow boat to Hawaii" to "flying the friendly skies"... LOL
I guess the best scenario is for the package to "arrive" at Richmond when the container is 90% filled. Then maybe it'll only "sit" for a day or two. Be my luck that the container was shut just as my package got to Richmond. Then it'll be first in - last out, back of the box, wedged in by pallets of compost. Such is life when you don't live in the lower 48.
My package arrived at Richmond on the same day but at 10:13 am earlier than yours but did not get a departure scan until 9:32 AM on the 18th. YOurs got there after mine but scanned out like 3 hours earlier.
supposed Honolulu delivery on the 29th of June like yours but as i check the tracking it hasn't changed since the 18th of June!
let me know if you get yours or if you have any helpful info for me.
Ordered on ebay on June10th from Chattanooga, Ten. they sent it standard shipping! Sheesh! this gift for my daughter is already 2 weeks overdue!!!!!!!!
Come on RICHMOND! Move those packages. They are USPS' largest revenue. You are disappointing the customers. Without customers, there are no JOBS!
I lived in Hawaii for 3 years and now live in Korea. I get a lot of packages from amazon and ebay and whenever I see that the package is in Richmond a sense of dread washes over me. I know I'm not going to see the package for another 4 weeks. I'm still waiting on ebay packages from 4 weeks ago and have since received other USPS mail that I ordered a week ago! A week! to Korea via USPS. Richmond, please let my packages go.
I have also had delays with packages bouncing aimlessly it appears forget about japan or hong kong orders I will only order from over seas if I do not have a time crunch to meet takes between 3 to 8 weeks and if you need it ,, then it will take 8 weeks to arrive!
my issue is with ordering off ebay and it says item location new york and then they ship it from the west coast I hate this and i always hear the same thing we have warehouses through out the US and it happens the item was located there we apologize.. still cant win with this but the postal service is breaking down.
A few years back I ordered an item of HSN which I have limited involvement with after this and I don't like paying half again what I would if I paid in full somewhere else. Well I ordered a watch for a dear friend and well it was for Christmas and it never arrived .. lost? Very upsetting. more recently i have ordered items again they are coming from across the states but they come into this state and are bounced around from one office location to another all within hours of my residence and it takes an additional 3 days to arrive at my location. WOW if this is technology i would hate to see what would happen if we rely on people who have no clue how to read or write since that is the majority of what we deal with these days since they made this new law no child left behind.. I am currently awaiting a parcel that was sent in from Minnesota to PA but it got to York PA and was sent to Charleston WV?? then the next day sent back to York pa and now the last stop before it is sent out for delivery.. I saw the notices coming into my text updates and immediately got on the internet to ask them why they would be sending it out to WV when that is hours south of my destination and why York PA to begin with as MN is north of us and WV is way south as well as York PA i would have thought it should have gone north to Scranton PA and then to Lehighton,, but I said who am I, I obviously do not understand the system they use. Then today I go on and it says my parcel is being delayed? what the H.. but now it is in the location that it should be sent to my local branch and delivered tomorrow.. I honestly could have had it Friday or at least by yesterday.. but anyway who cares how many days we pay for something we cant use... why would that matter.. to anyone but us..
I mailed a package to my Mom on the 3rd of Dec. from Torrance CA to Oregon Priority Mail and the estimated date of delivery was Dec 7. She did not receive it so I checked the tracking records and it went to Honolulu Hawaii and was there on the 7th. It left Honolulu that night but there is no sign of the package being anywhere right now. so frustrating.
Yikes. Oregon is like, right next door, right?
When the package finally arrives, check to see if the zip code is correct. A wrong zip code will get packages to strange places, and when they get there, they have to cross it off and fix it and re-send. But who knows. Please come back and post the outcome, anyway.
sooooo i bought a wig from china. it was put in their sorting on 12/8/15, EBAY eta 12/22/15. so unless this package is just gonna pick itself up and fly to San Diego in 4 days during xmas season, i should probably start worrying. it was labeled as "First-Class Package International Service"
I have been waiting on a package coming from my son in Korea...of course they mailed it out on February 24th 2016...it is now April 4th 2016...I got the tracking number from them...because they thought I received it...It says it went to one place in CA then to Richmond CA...On March 9th 2016...And that is the last place on the tracking number..It has been almost 4 weeks and no package yet....So sad...I am getting worried....COME ON RICHMOND CA USPS
This also applies to things going through FEDERAL WAY, WASHINGTON.
-An Alaskan who's packages are always late
Last scan upon arriving at Richmond Sorting Facility was on June 4. It is now the 28th and still no movement! Totally understand how they'd have to wait for the container to fill & also how there isn't an outgoing scan upon departure. But I'm starting to worry it being almost a month now. Ordered a repair book for my father in law (Father's Day present), at this point it might make it for NEXT Father's Day! Ok, sorry had to vent somewhere and figured this was an appropriate place to do so.
Posting on this blog sometimes produces magical results. Please let us know if your package is delivered before Father's Day.
Why is it I've had other items shipped to me ahead of time going through other California post Office's BUT items never received through Richmond post offices for over a month? Container, I have a hard time believing this one why does only Richmond post office ships by container???
My understanding is that the container is there, that's where they fill it. Well, containers (plural), there must be a bunch of them.
My coffee beans order shipped priority mail from Pennsylvania to Hawaii was missing on the USPS tracking but reappeared today in Guam. It has been rerouted but how in the world it went to Guam instead of Honolulu is a mystery to me. Hopefully it will arrive eventually although several days late.
I have a guess. Please post a comment again if this is correct.
Guam's zip codes are 969xx. Hawaii is 968xx. Check, when you finally get your package, to see if it was improperly addressed -- that is, with a Guam zip code. If the sender has a website that would list the shipping address, you could also check that.
My sister in law mailed her daughter's WEDDING DRESS from AZ to Maui on 9/21- it was received in the Richmond facility on 9/23 and has not shown any movement since then. She paid almost $70 to mail it- she had previously mailed something that got there in 7 days so felt assured this would be fine- My niece is getting married on 10/14 and is in tears that the dress has yet to be delivered- they are now scrambling to buy material and have a dress made but her DREAM dress is lost somewhere in the black hole. Absolutely outrageous- the incompetence and apathy of the Postal Service.
UPDATE_ MY NIECES'S DRESS ARRIVED IN HAWAII YESTERDAY! SO YAY! AND SORRY POST OFFICE FOR THE DISS BUT IT WAS A CLOSE CALL/ WHEW!
I've ordered via Amazon last September two products from different sellers to be sent to Micronesia and both went thru Richmond CA and are lost and undelivered, tracking shows it's still in Ricmond, good thing Amazon refunded me. Now, 2 products ordered this October at Amazon are stuck again in Richmond CA. Just waiting for the due dates of delivery and I'll request a refund again from Amazon. The management at Richmond are all incompetent!
October 4th left East coast to West coast APO address. Arrived in Richmond by UPS on October 9th. Hopefully it's loaded and enroute, but reading all these posts, I'm getting worried. My APO Zip is South Korea. Am I not being reasonable and jumping the gun? I've never waited this long for anything through my APO, always arrives within 2 weeks. In 7 years using my APO here, this is the first time my package went to Richmond.
I don't get how and why packages still end up in this facility! Of all places in the U.S. (heck, even anywhere California) they choose to mess with the Pacific Islands and screw up our packages. I understand they want to fill their containers but they need to understand people are waiting for things important!! Do they not care about customer service? I had my package shipped out 10/17 and my last update was on 10/22 and it's now 11/5! How can it be 2 weeks with no update or anything! I pray my package arrives any time soon, it already missed an important date when I was supposed to receive it! If they can't make ends meet with a certain amount of packages to ship out to Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, ect. then they should close that option down and let other capable facilities do what they can't do.
Richmond is truly a black hole. There has to be a better system. I have had packages come 2-3 months after ordering on Amazon. Others never came at all. Amazon always tries to make things right, but it is difficult. Why are packages sitting in containers when they are shipped Priority Mail? I have two in that situation right now. Perhaps smaller containers, or leasing or sharing parts of containers with other shipments. A smaller secured container container could be put inside larger ones going to the same destination. Please USPS, check with "Triple B Forwarders" about this. They provide excellent service.
If a package is sent Priority Mail, it shouldn't be put into a container. But I am wondering where you are located?
Someone Seriously needs to email this page to the Postal inspectors in California, as well as the management staff of that facility, state reps, and the US postal inspection service. It really is an injustice to have taxpayers fund a business that blatantly tampers with packages, and falsely advertises their shipping dates. With all of these complaints going back for just so many YEARS now, the fact that an investigation hasn't been done on that facility is just crooked and suspicious. This injustice needs to be accounted for, as this facility has employees and management violating federal law (18 U.S. Code § 1703). Writing a letter linking to this page and other sources to state representatives in California needs to be done as well. If enough people do it along with their own proof of their own experience, hopefully we can get this place raided by USPIS.
I have the same issue ongoing at the moment and the package is not even going oversees. Sent from TX to AZ paid $48.00 for two day priority with signature confirmation. Somehow the package ended up at this God forsaken place! Shipped Dec 3, 2016 and still no results other than "in transit" 12/13/16. Numerous calls and hold times exceeding 40-60 mins, rude people and others that cannot help. How is this even legal? Lying and upselling costumers with false times/delivery dates this should be illegal and this facility needs to have some investigation to be held accountable. SHAME on you USPS!
Mailed pkg on 12/5 from NJ to daughter in Greece.My pkgs always go to JFK in NY and then overseas. This one went to New Mexico and has been sorted thru ISC in Los Angeles on 12/8.No further updates. Sister pkg mailed same day,same time,same po has arrived 2 weeks ago. Totally frustated,
Richmond??? I've had two bad "adventures" with them. My address is an FPO AP (military) address. A couple of years ago a package disappeared in Richmond for two months before finally arriving. Recently, again, two packages were sent by a UPS facility in Philadelphia at the same time. One arrived in reasonable order on 27 December 2016. The other has disappeared somewhere in Richmond. Tracking indicates it has been there since 11 December. I expect it will arrive someday in the future; but when? Funny that two boxes sent at the same time somehow get separated.
I cringe whenever I see tracking info routed via Richmond CA USPS Distribution Center to my home in HI. Too many times my incoming packages have either been delayed or lost whenever routed via that site since becoming an eBay member since 2008. That explanation about waiting for a container to be full before shipping out parcel post mail is utterly ridiculous!! So wonder USPS is in dire straights these days!
Recently, I just returned a book that took almost two months to arrive, where the vendor refunded me about a month after it was mailed to me from Illinois. Before that, an oversized package took two months to arrive from Florida. I'm now waiting for four separate packages routed via Richmond that were ordered about two weeks ago.
Something is definitely wrong over there and they should monitor the operations and sorting processes via more cameras or supervision to alleviate those alleged instances of workers doing nefarious things with our mail.
Whether those stories are true or not, I'll never order USPS parcel post hereafter!!
@electricflyer: you said "I'll never order USPS parcel post hereafter!!" I think that's the logical conclusion, reading all the various comments above. Parcel Post runs the risk of great delays to Hawaii.
Very interesting. Richmond CA seems to be the destination of choice more frequently for eBay customers. eBay's global shipping program is the cause of it. Because this method of shipping is very cheap for international commerce, it select THE cheapest possible mailing method available. And that's USPS' surface shipping. A way of avoiding Richmond CA on eBay is to simply tell the seller not to use eBay's program, and instead cough up the extra money and have the seller ship EMS or similar.
I'm so glad to have finally found an explanation at least for why my packages take forever coming through Richmond. I live in Guam, and I am currently waiting on a package containing a fairly expensive item. The Amazon vendor wouldn't ship it here (big surprise), so I shipped it to family in the States. They mailed it on May 12th. It's been almost a month, and all the tracking info tells me is that it is "in transit" from Richmond. At least now I know that could mean it's still sitting in CA in a half-full container. The inefficiency of this system is utterly frustrating. The waiting continues...
Thank you very much! I have been really worried that my package hasn't arrived yet and it's way past due date. Now I understand the situation my package is in and will continue (hopefully) to wait until my package arrives. Just hope it doesn't take too long...
Finally USPS has taken some measures! They renamed the Richmond facility to "San Francisco NDC". That's about it, my package that was scanned there is still "in Transit" for over two weeks now. |
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Technology ("science of craft", from Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"; and -λογία, -logia) is the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, or it can be embedded in machines to allow for operation without detailed knowledge of their workings. Systems (e.g. machines) applying technology by taking an input, changing it according to the system's use, and then producing an outcome are referred to as technology systems or technological systems.
The simplest form of technology is the development and use of basic tools. The prehistoric discovery of how to control fire and the later Neolithic Revolution increased the available sources of food, and the invention of the wheel helped humans to travel in and control their environment. Developments in historic times, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale.
Technology has many effects. It has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products known as pollution and deplete natural resources to the detriment of Earth's environment. Innovations have always influenced the values of a society and raised new questions in the ethics of technology. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, and the challenges of bioethics.
Philosophical debates have arisen over the use of technology, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar reactionary movements criticize the pervasiveness of technology, arguing that it harms the environment and alienates people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition.
The use of the term "technology" has changed significantly over the last 200 years. Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, and it was used either to refer to the description or study of the useful arts or to allude to technical education, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (chartered in 1861).
The term "technology" rose to prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial Revolution. The term's meanings changed in the early 20th century when American social scientists, beginning with Thorstein Veblen, translated ideas from the German concept of Technik into "technology." In German and other European languages, a distinction exists between technik and technologie that is absent in English, which usually translates both terms as "technology." By the 1930s, "technology" referred not only to the study of the industrial arts but to the industrial arts themselves.
In 1937, the American sociologist Read Bain wrote that "technology includes all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them." Bain's definition remains common among scholars today, especially social scientists. Scientists and engineers usually prefer to define technology as applied science, rather than as the things that people make and use. More recently, scholars have borrowed from European philosophers of "technique" to extend the meaning of technology to various forms of instrumental reason, as in Foucault's work on technologies of the self (techniques de soi).
Dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. The Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary offers a definition of the term: "the use of science in industry, engineering, etc., to invent useful things or to solve problems" and "a machine, piece of equipment, method, etc., that is created by technology." Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 "Real World of Technology" lecture, gave another definition of the concept; it is "practice, the way we do things around here." The term is often used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics, rather than technology as a whole. Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time, 1, defines technology in two ways: as "the pursuit of life by means other than life," and as "organized inorganic matter."
Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material; virtual technology, such as computer software and business methods, fall under this definition of technology. W. Brian Arthur defines technology in a similarly broad way as "a means to fulfill a human purpose."
The word "technology" can also be used to refer to a collection of techniques. In this context, it is the current state of humanity's knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants; it includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. When combined with another term, such as "medical technology" or "space technology," it refers to the state of the respective field's knowledge and tools. "State-of-the-art technology" refers to the high technology available to humanity in any field.
Technology can be viewed as an activity that forms or changes culture. Additionally, technology is the application of math, science, and the arts for the benefit of life as it is known. A modern example is the rise of communication technology, which has lessened barriers to human interaction and as a result has helped spawn new subcultures; the rise of cyberculture has at its basis the development of the Internet and the computer. Not all technology enhances culture in a creative way; technology can also help facilitate political oppression and war via tools such as guns. As a cultural activity, technology predates both science and engineering, each of which formalize some aspects of technological endeavor.
The distinction between science, engineering, and technology is not always clear. Science is systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. Technologies are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as utility, usability, and safety.
Engineering is the goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering, although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.
The exact relations between science and technology, in particular, have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In the immediate wake of World War II, for example, it was widely considered in the United States that technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this philosophy could be found explicitly in Vannevar Bush's treatise on postwar science policy, Science – The Endless Frontier: "New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature ... This essential new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research." In the late-1960s, however, this view came under direct attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains contentious, though most analysts resist the model that technology is a result of scientific research.
The use of tools by early humans was partly a process of discovery and of evolution. Early humans evolved from a species of foraging hominids which were already bipedal, with a brain mass approximately one third of modern humans. Tool use remained relatively unchanged for most of early human history. Approximately 50,000 years ago, the use of tools and complex set of behaviors emerged, believed by many archaeologists to be connected to the emergence of fully modern language.
Hominids started using primitive stone tools millions of years ago. The earliest stone tools were little more than a fractured rock, but approximately 75,000 years ago, pressure flaking provided a way to make much finer work.
The discovery and use of fire, a simple energy source with many profound uses, was a turning point in the technological evolution of humankind. The exact date of its discovery is not known; evidence of burnt animal bones at the Cradle of Humankind suggests that the domestication of fire occurred before 1 Ma; scholarly consensus indicates that Homo erectus had controlled fire by between 500 and 400 ka. Fire, fueled with wood and charcoal, allowed early humans to cook their food to increase its digestibility, improving its nutrient value and broadening the number of foods that could be eaten.
Other technological advances made during the Paleolithic era were clothing and shelter; the adoption of both technologies cannot be dated exactly, but they were a key to humanity's progress. As the Paleolithic era progressed, dwellings became more sophisticated and more elaborate; as early as 380 ka, humans were constructing temporary wood huts. Clothing, adapted from the fur and hides of hunted animals, helped humanity expand into colder regions; humans began to migrate out of Africa by 200 ka and into other continents such as Eurasia.
Human's technological ascent began in earnest in what is known as the Neolithic Period ("New Stone Age"). The invention of polished stone axes was a major advance that allowed forest clearance on a large scale to create farms. This use of polished stone axes increased greatly in the Neolithic, but were originally used in the preceding Mesolithic in some areas such as Ireland. Agriculture fed larger populations, and the transition to sedentism allowed simultaneously raising more children, as infants no longer needed to be carried, as nomadic ones must. Additionally, children could contribute labor to the raising of crops more readily than they could to the hunter-gatherer economy.
With this increase in population and availability of labor came an increase in labor specialization. What triggered the progression from early Neolithic villages to the first cities, such as Uruk, and the first civilizations, such as Sumer, is not specifically known; however, the emergence of increasingly hierarchical social structures and specialized labor, of trade and war amongst adjacent cultures, and the need for collective action to overcome environmental challenges such as irrigation, are all thought to have played a role.
Continuing improvements led to the furnace and bellows and provided, for the first time, the ability to smelt and forge gold, copper, silver, and lead – native metals found in relatively pure form in nature. The advantages of copper tools over stone, bone, and wooden tools were quickly apparent to early humans, and native copper was probably used from near the beginning of Neolithic times (about 10 ka). Native copper does not naturally occur in large amounts, but copper ores are quite common and some of them produce metal easily when burned in wood or charcoal fires. Eventually, the working of metals led to the discovery of alloys such as bronze and brass (about 4000 BCE). The first uses of iron alloys such as steel dates to around 1800 BCE.
Meanwhile, humans were learning to harness other forms of energy. The earliest known use of wind power is the sailing ship; the earliest record of a ship under sail is that of a Nile boat dating to the 8th-millennium BCE. From prehistoric times, Egyptians probably used the power of the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate their lands, gradually learning to regulate much of it through purposely built irrigation channels and "catch" basins. The ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia used a complex system of canals and levees to divert water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for irrigation.
According to archaeologists, the wheel was invented around 4000 BCE probably independently and nearly simultaneously in Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq), the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. Estimates on when this may have occurred range from 5500 to 3000 BCE with most experts putting it closer to 4000 BCE. The oldest artifacts with drawings depicting wheeled carts date from about 3500 BCE; however, the wheel may have been in use for millennia before these drawings were made. More recently, the oldest-known wooden wheel in the world was found in the Ljubljana marshes of Slovenia.
The invention of the wheel revolutionized trade and war. It did not take long to discover that wheeled wagons could be used to carry heavy loads. The ancient Sumerians used the potter's wheel and may have invented it. A stone pottery wheel found in the city-state of Ur dates to around 3429 BCE, and even older fragments of wheel-thrown pottery have been found in the same area. Fast (rotary) potters' wheels enabled early mass production of pottery, but it was the use of the wheel as a transformer of energy (through water wheels, windmills, and even treadmills) that revolutionized the application of nonhuman power sources. The first two-wheeled carts were derived from travois and were first used in Mesopotamia and Iran in around 3000 BCE.
The oldest known constructed roadways are the stone-paved streets of the city-state of Ur, dating to circa 4000 BCE and timber roads leading through the swamps of Glastonbury, England, dating to around the same time period. The first long-distance road, which came into use around 3500 BCE, spanned 1,500 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, but was not paved and was only partially maintained. In around 2000 BCE, the Minoans on the Greek island of Crete built a fifty-kilometer (thirty-mile) road leading from the palace of Gortyn on the south side of the island, through the mountains, to the palace of Knossos on the north side of the island. Unlike the earlier road, the Minoan road was completely paved.
Ancient Minoan private homes had running water. A bathtub virtually identical to modern ones was unearthed at the Palace of Knossos. Several Minoan private homes also had toilets, which could be flushed by pouring water down the drain. The ancient Romans had many public flush toilets, which emptied into an extensive sewage system. The primary sewer in Rome was the Cloaca Maxima; construction began on it in the sixth century BCE and it is still in use today.
The ancient Romans also had a complex system of aqueducts, which were used to transport water across long distances. The first Roman aqueduct was built in 312 BCE. The eleventh and final ancient Roman aqueduct was built in 226 CE. Put together, the Roman aqueducts extended over 450 kilometers, but less than seventy kilometers of this was above ground and supported by arches.
Innovations continued through the Middle Ages with innovations such as silk, the horse collar and horseshoes in the first few hundred years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Medieval technology saw the use of simple machines (such as the lever, the screw, and the pulley) being combined to form more complicated tools, such as the wheelbarrow, windmills and clocks. The Renaissance brought forth many of these innovations, including the printing press (which facilitated the greater communication of knowledge), and technology became increasingly associated with science, beginning a cycle of mutual advancement. The advancements in technology in this era allowed a more steady supply of food, followed by the wider availability of consumer goods.
Starting in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution was a period of great technological discovery, particularly in the areas of agriculture, manufacturing, mining, metallurgy, and transport, driven by the discovery of steam power. Technology took another step in a second industrial revolution with the harnessing of electricity to create such innovations as the electric motor, light bulb, and countless others. Scientific advancement and the discovery of new concepts later allowed for powered flight and advancements in medicine, chemistry, physics, and engineering. The rise in technology has led to skyscrapers and broad urban areas whose inhabitants rely on motors to transport them and their food supply. Communication was also greatly improved with the invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio and television. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a revolution in transportation with the invention of the airplane and automobile.
The 20th century brought a host of innovations. In physics, the discovery of nuclear fission has led to both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Computers were also invented and later miniaturized using transistors and integrated circuits. Information technology subsequently led to the creation of the Internet, which ushered in the current Information Age. Humans have also been able to explore space with satellites (later used for telecommunication) and in manned missions going all the way to the moon. In medicine, this era brought innovations such as open-heart surgery and later stem cell therapy along with new medications and treatments.
Complex manufacturing and construction techniques and organizations are needed to make and maintain these new technologies, and entire industries have arisen to support and develop succeeding generations of increasingly more complex tools. Modern technology increasingly relies on training and education – their designers, builders, maintainers, and users often require sophisticated general and specific training. Moreover, these technologies have become so complex that entire fields have been created to support them, including engineering, medicine, and computer science, and other fields have been made more complex, such as construction, transportation, and architecture.
Generally, technicism is the belief in the utility of technology for improving human societies. Taken to an extreme, technicism "reflects a fundamental attitude which seeks to control reality, to resolve all problems with the use of scientific–technological methods and tools." In other words, human beings will someday be able to master all problems and possibly even control the future using technology. Some, such as Stephen V. Monsma, connect these ideas to the abdication of religion as a higher moral authority.
Optimistic assumptions are made by proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and singularitarianism, which view technological development as generally having beneficial effects for the society and the human condition. In these ideologies, technological development is morally good.
Transhumanists generally believe that the point of technology is to overcome barriers, and that what we commonly refer to as the human condition is just another barrier to be surpassed.
Singularitarians believe in some sort of "accelerating change"; that the rate of technological progress accelerates as we obtain more technology, and that this will culminate in a "Singularity" after artificial general intelligence is invented in which progress is nearly infinite; hence the term. Estimates for the date of this Singularity vary, but prominent futurist Ray Kurzweil estimates the Singularity will occur in 2045.
Kurzweil is also known for his history of the universe in six epochs: (1) the physical/chemical epoch, (2) the life epoch, (3) the human/brain epoch, (4) the technology epoch, (5) the artificial intelligence epoch, and (6) the universal colonization epoch. Going from one epoch to the next is a Singularity in its own right, and a period of speeding up precedes it. Each epoch takes a shorter time, which means the whole history of the universe is one giant Singularity event.
Some critics see these ideologies as examples of scientism and techno-utopianism and fear the notion of human enhancement and technological singularity which they support. Some have described Karl Marx as a techno-optimist.
On the somewhat skeptical side are certain philosophers like Herbert Marcuse and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are inherently flawed. They suggest that the inevitable result of such a society is to become evermore technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health.
Many, such as the Luddites and prominent philosopher Martin Heidegger, hold serious, although not entirely, deterministic reservations about technology (see "The Question Concerning Technology"). According to Heidegger scholars Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Heidegger does not oppose technology. He hopes to reveal the essence of technology in a way that 'in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against it.' Indeed, he promises that 'when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim.' What this entails is a more complex relationship to technology than either techno-optimists or techno-pessimists tend to allow."
Some of the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what are now considered to be dystopian literary classics such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Goethe's Faust, Faust selling his soul to the devil in return for power over the physical world is also often interpreted as a metaphor for the adoption of industrial technology. More recently, modern works of science fiction such as those by Philip K. Dick and William Gibson and films such as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell project highly ambivalent or cautionary attitudes toward technology's impact on human society and identity.
The late cultural critic Neil Postman distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies and from what he called "technopolies," societies that are dominated by the ideology of technological and scientific progress to the exclusion or harm of other cultural practices, values, and world-views.
Darin Barney has written about technology's impact on practices of citizenship and democratic culture, suggesting that technology can be construed as (1) an object of political debate, (2) a means or medium of discussion, and (3) a setting for democratic deliberation and citizenship. As a setting for democratic culture, Barney suggests that technology tends to make ethical questions, including the question of what a good life consists in, nearly impossible because they already give an answer to the question: a good life is one that includes the use of more and more technology.
Nikolas Kompridis has also written about the dangers of new technology, such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and robotics. He warns that these technologies introduce unprecedented new challenges to human beings, including the possibility of the permanent alteration of our biological nature. These concerns are shared by other philosophers, scientists and public intellectuals who have written about similar issues (e.g. Francis Fukuyama, Jürgen Habermas, William Joy, and Michael Sandel).
Another prominent critic of technology is Hubert Dreyfus, who has published books such as On the Internet and What Computers Still Can't Do.
A more infamous anti-technological treatise is Industrial Society and Its Future, written by the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and printed in several major newspapers (and later books) as part of an effort to end his bombing campaign of the techno-industrial infrastructure. There are also subcultures that disapprove of some or most technology, such as self-identified off-gridders.
The notion of appropriate technology was developed in the 20th century by thinkers such as E.F. Schumacher and Jacques Ellul to describe situations where it was not desirable to use very new technologies or those that required access to some centralized infrastructure or parts or skills imported from elsewhere. The ecovillage movement emerged in part due to this concern.
This section mainly focuses on American concerns even if it can reasonably be generalized to other Western countries.
The inadequate quantity and quality of American jobs is one of the most fundamental economic challenges we face. [...] What's the linkage between technology and this fundamental problem?— Bernstein, Jared, "It’s Not a Skills Gap That’s Holding Wages Down: It’s the Weak Economy, Among Other Things," in The American Prospect, October 2014
In his article, Jared Bernstein, a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, questions the widespread idea that automation, and more broadly, technological advances, have mainly contributed to this growing labor market problem. His thesis appears to be a third way between optimism and skepticism. Essentially, he stands for a neutral approach of the linkage between technology and American issues concerning unemployment and declining wages.
He uses two main arguments to defend his point. First, because of recent technological advances, an increasing number of workers are losing their jobs. Yet, scientific evidence fails to clearly demonstrate that technology has displaced so many workers that it has created more problems than it has solved. Indeed, automation threatens repetitive jobs but higher-end jobs are still necessary because they complement technology and manual jobs that "requires flexibility judgment and common sense" remain hard to replace with machines. Second, studies have not shown clear links between recent technology advances and the wage trends of the last decades.
Therefore, according to Bernstein, instead of focusing on technology and its hypothetical influences on current American increasing unemployment and declining wages, one needs to worry more about "bad policy that fails to offset the imbalances in demand, trade, income, and opportunity."
For people who use both the Internet and mobile devices in excessive quantities it is likely for them to experience fatigue and over exhaustion as a result of disruptions in their sleeping patterns. Continuous studies have shown that increased BMI and weight gain are associated with people who spend long hours online and not exercising frequently. Heavy Internet use is also displayed in the school lower grades of those who use it in excessive amounts. It has also been noted that the use of mobile phones whilst driving has increased the occurrence of road accidents — particularly amongst teen drivers. Statistically, teens reportedly have fourfold the number of road traffic incidents as those who are 20 years or older, and a very high percentage of adolescents write (81%) and read (92%) texts while driving. In this context, mass media and technology have a negative impact on people, on both their mental and physical health.
Thomas P. Hughes stated that because technology has been considered as a key way to solve problems, we need to be aware of its complex and varied characters to use it more efficiently. What is the difference between a wheel or a compass and cooking machines such as an oven or a gas stove? Can we consider all of them, only a part of them, or none of them as technologies?
Technology is often considered too narrowly; according to Hughes, "Technology is a creative process involving human ingenuity". This definition's emphasis on creativity avoids unbounded definitions that may mistakenly include cooking "technologies," but it also highlights the prominent role of humans and therefore their responsibilities for the use of complex technological systems.
Yet, because technology is everywhere and has dramatically changed landscapes and societies, Hughes argues that engineers, scientists, and managers have often believed that they can use technology to shape the world as they want. They have often supposed that technology is easily controllable and this assumption has to be thoroughly questioned. For instance, Evgeny Morozov particularly challenges two concepts: "Internet-centrism" and "solutionism." Internet-centrism refers to the idea that our society is convinced that the Internet is one of the most stable and coherent forces. Solutionism is the ideology that every social issue can be solved thanks to technology and especially thanks to the internet. In fact, technology intrinsically contains uncertainties and limitations. According to Alexis Madrigal's review of Morozov's theory, to ignore it will lead to "unexpected consequences that could eventually cause more damage than the problems they seek to address." Benjamin R. Cohen and Gwen Ottinger also discussed the multivalent effects of technology.
Therefore, recognition of the limitations of technology, and more broadly, scientific knowledge, is needed – especially in cases dealing with environmental justice and health issues. Ottinger continues this reasoning and argues that the ongoing recognition of the limitations of scientific knowledge goes hand in hand with scientists and engineers’ new comprehension of their role. Such an approach of technology and science "[require] technical professionals to conceive of their roles in the process differently. [They have to consider themselves as] collaborators in research and problem solving rather than simply providers of information and technical solutions."
The use of basic technology is also a feature of other animal species apart from humans. These include primates such as chimpanzees, some dolphin communities, and crows. Considering a more generic perspective of technology as ethology of active environmental conditioning and control, we can also refer to animal examples such as beavers and their dams, or bees and their honeycombs.
The ability to make and use tools was once considered a defining characteristic of the genus Homo. However, the discovery of tool construction among chimpanzees and related primates has discarded the notion of the use of technology as unique to humans. For example, researchers have observed wild chimpanzees using tools for foraging: some of the tools used include leaf sponges, termite fishing probes, pestles and levers. West African chimpanzees also use stone hammers and anvils for cracking nuts, as do capuchin monkeys of Boa Vista, Brazil.
In 2005, futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that the future of technology would mainly consist of an overlapping "GNR Revolution" of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics, with robotics being the most important of the three. |
Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda
- Born in Denmark, Morten Storm was a radical Islamist who lost his faith and turned informant for western intelligence organisations – CIA, M15, M16 and PET
- Storm says he helped the agencies eliminate key al-Qaeda and al-Shaabab members
- The autobiography highlights the reasons young people are attracted to the jihadi movement and the challenge of identifying ‘lone wolf’ attackers
- He decided to blow the whistle after relationships with his intelligence handlers broke down
- He knew the alleged mastermind of the Westgate Mall attack in Kenya. He says he might have known of and helped thwart the plan had he still been working with western intelligence in 2013
Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda
Published by Penguin Books
On April 22, 2015 a huge crowd of Ethiopians marched in Addis Ababa to condemn the murder of some Ethiopian Christians by Islamic State (IS) militants in Libya. The horrifying killings, recorded on video by the IS, sparked global condemnation. This happened as Kenya was still burying 148 people - many of them students at Garissa University College who were murdered by Al Shaabab. In West Africa Boko Haram, which is seeking to create an Islamic state in Nigeria, has so far killed and displaced thousands since 2009.
The rate at which terrorism is gaining ground in sub-Saharan Africa since the Lord’s Resistance Army was formed in Uganda in 1996, is worrying. Also worrying is the increasing number of young Muslims that are getting radicalised and joining violent causes in and out of jihadi hotspots.
There are many documented thoughts on why and how radicalisation happens. Some experts paint a story of disenfranchised (politically, economically and socially) young men and women believers with no hope of achieving their potential, and therefore feel they have little stake in society. There are even studies on the other fast-growing breed of jihadi – the well-educated and wealthy Muslim. Take one of the terrorists in the Garissa attack. He was a self-employed law graduate.
Whatever the ‘why’ and ‘how’, a common denominator is the complex nature of the answers – something that resonates in Morten Storm’s account of his rise and fall as a Muslim, jihadi and spy for western intelligence agencies.
Storm’s autobiography is an insight into what attracts young Muslims to the global jihadi movement. The book also highlights the difficult task (for intelligence agents) of identifying a ‘lone wolf’, described as a radical individual who acts solo.
CNN terrorism analysts, Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister, helped Storm write the book. In a recent interview with uSpiked, Lister spoke about the arduous challenge of detecting small-scale lone wolf attackers: “Intelligence relies on monitoring communications, meetings and associations. If there are none, and there is no suspicious behavior online or in social media, these people can emerge from nowhere. Whether they present a danger depends on their skills as bomb-makers (such as the Boston bombers) or as gunmen (such as the Kouachi brothers in Paris).”
Storm’s incredible story starts in Korsor, a working-class coastal Town in Denmark. He was born in 1976 and had quite a troubled childhood – his alcoholic dad left when he was four and the new step-father beat him and his mom. The parents of many of his playmates were immigrants from Yugoslavia, Turkey and the Arab world. He says he identified with the society’s underdog from a very young age.
“The few photographs I have from those days show a face full of uncertainty…But I also had a manic energy – energy that seemed to invite trouble,” narrates Storm. And so it wasn’t surprising that he would go on to seek acceptance and a sense of belonging in the wrong circles, or that he celebrated turning thirteen by attempting his first armed robbery. The downward spiral featured convictions for bar fights, violence and cigarette smuggling. He joined the Bandidos, a notorious biker gang famous for thuggery. “I worried that the lifestyle was making me an addict…There was no space left for relationships, for peace of mind.” The seeds of self-doubt were planted, and Storm started questioning the purpose of his life.
The turning point for Storm was in 1997 aged 21, when at the local library he read about prophet Mohammed whose ‘dignity’ and ‘simplicity’ seemed impressive. He converted to Islam, but continued with his gangster ways. “It was – of all people – the Korsor police who inadvertently pushed me towards a much stricter adherence to my new religion,” he says of his radicalisation. A stint in jail after he was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rob a bank had exposed him to radical Muslim inmates.
Storm fled to London after his release from jail and spent time with radical Islamists at Regent’s Park Mosque. He would later travel to Yemen to study Islam at the Salafi seminary, marry and name his first son Osama after Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Wikileaks Guantanamo files explain why Storm easily found like-minded friends involved in militant activisim in London in 1998. By the late 1990s, Regent’s Park and Finsbury Park mosques anchored extremism where young Muslim men were radicalised before being sent to al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
According to the leaked files, over 35 Guantanamo detainees passed through Finsbury and Regent’s, and also other extremism centres in the UK. Specifically mentioned are leaders of al-Qaeda cells Abu Hamza (former radical imam at Finsbury) and Abu Qatada al-Filistini, a fanatical cleric. Together they indoctrinated many gullible young men, many of them immigrants.
In the book, Storm describes plenty of his new friends as angry young men looking to inflict revenge on the West for its persecution of Muslims. “A few clearly had emotional or psychological issues, displaying wild mood swings or budding paranoia, but most were driven by an unshakeable belief that they had found the true way to obey Allah and that obedience called for waging jihad.”
The militant activism described in the book comes out as shoddy, but still a real threat due to the connectedness of the radicals at the global level. For instance, in Storm’s network of close contacts was Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-US-born Islamic militant who was eventually killed in 2011 in a US drone strike; Zacarias Moussaoui who was convicted for the 9/11 attacks, and Ibrahim Ikrimah – a Kenyan Al Shabaab operative and suspected mastermind of the Westgate attack in 2013.
Storm (accompanied by his young son) first met al-Awlaki at the cleric’s house in Yemen when he returned there in early 2006. He was impressed with al-Awlaki and attended his talks and debates on Islam given to a mainly foreign audience. “It was refreshing to be away from the endless circular chatter of faux-jihadis in England…” he says.
Around this time the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) had become a powerful political and military outfit in Somalia. By June 2006, UIC had taken the capital city Mogadishu from the transitional government, the first of their many triumphs. According to Storm, plenty of would-be-jihadists - in the West and from Arab countries – were excited by the events unfolding in Somalia. “For militant Islamists like me, Somalia was a rare victory to be celebrated, where authentic Islamic principles had brought stability.”
Getting to the frontline in Somalia was a given for Storm. His determination grew when Ethiopia – with the encouragement of the US – sent in troops in July 2006 to prop up the troubled transitional government. His mission found a godfather in the form of Abdelghani, a Somali friend from Denmark who had already travelled to fight alongside the Islamic Courts Militia.
Just before Storm could travel to Somalia from London, Abdelghani called to say it was too dangerous and that he should abort. The Ethiopian army had taken over the airport and was arresting ‘holy warriors’. Storm says he felt angry at the refusal and Abdelghani’s defeatism. He couldn’t understand why Allah wouldn’t let him go and why he let the mujahideen lose. “Dejection soon became anger, and anger began to ask some hard questions,” he writes.
Still enraged by the rejection, doubts crowded his mind about the extremist version of Islam that he practiced, and in particular the concept of predestination and free will. He also began to reconsider some of the justifications made for murder and maiming of civilians in the name of Allah. “I thought of the twin towers, the Bali bombings, Madrid in 2004, London in 2005 … If they were part of Allah's preordained plan, I now wanted no part of it. My loss of faith was as frightening as it was sudden”.
Soon after his epiphany, Storm secretly renounced Islam and offered his services to Danish intelligence service, PET; the CIA and Britain’s M15 and M16.
Had Storm not been a turncoat, this book would probably not exist. He decided to blow the whistle via a Danish newspaper because he felt betrayed by his intelligence handlers, particularly the CIA who refused to admit he helped them get al-Awlaki. Storm secretly recorded a conversation about this issue with a CIA agent during a meeting at a Danish hotel.
The book describes in detail his role in a series of anti-terror operations that aimed to kill key Al-Qaeda figures, as well as the meetings, trainings and discussions he had with various handlers in lavish destinations.
One such operation is the 2010 Navy SEALs’ helicopter attack in Somalia that killed Saleh Ali Nabhan, a senior Al-Qaeda operative who was suspected to have been one planners of the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi. In 2009, Storm travelled to Kenya to deliver electronic equipment that the agents had fitted with tracking devices to an Al Shabaab contact. That equipment was for al Nabhan, he was later informed by his contact.
Had he still been working for western intelligence in 2013 (his relationship with PET and the CIA ended in 2012), it is possible he would have known about the plans to attack Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The person he had met to receive the equipment on behalf of al Nabhan was Ikrimah - the mastermind of the Westgate attack – with whom he kept in contact via email.
In one email, Ikrimah writes of longing to take ‘revenge’ against the Kenyan government for deploying forces in Somalia, and his possible link to Samantha Lewthwaite: “You need to be extra carefull they don’t get a single trace of anything coz they are now tracing a sister who was a window (sic) of one of the London 7/7 bomber and they are accusing her of financing and organizing terrorism.”
In their communications between 2008 and 2012 Ikrimah indicated his plans to send Western al-Shabaab recruits to attack their homelands. He intended to connect with the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wuhayshi. Together they would plot to attack western targets. al-Shaabab now has deep links to the US.
“To some degree western intelligence created Ikrimah,” writes Storm. “The CIA, M16 and PET helped him rise through the ranks in al-Shaabab because the supplies and contacts (e.g. Anwar al Awlaki) I provided him impressed his superiors.”
Helping Ikrimah was the price paid for a greater gain – killing Saleh Ali Nabhan, one of the most dangerous al-Qaeda operatives in East Africa, and learning how al-Shabaab operates.
After the Westgate attack, Storm wondered if Ikrimah might have been captured or killed had he maintained contact with him. “I might have had a better sense of his place in al-Shabaab, his plans and even some of the recruits he was training. It would have been possible to deliver a tracking device to him hidden in equipment – as arranged for Nabhan.”
The most detailed operation (and the major reason he fell out with all the intelligence agencies) described in the book involved al-Awlaki. The CIA had promised Storm US$5m to help kill the cleric. Storm believes he led the CIA to al-Awlaki’s location in Yemen and when they finally got him they refused to keep their end of the bargain, and then allegedly tried to have him killed.
Then he decided to go public. He lives in an undisclosed location in the UK. “Occasionally I see a newspaper headline about one of my former ‘brothers’ who has finally crossed that Rubicon from talk of terror, and the millions of pounds and dollars being spent to stop them.”
uSpiked interviewed the co-author of Agent Storm, CNN’s Tim Lister, on what he thinks is the greatest threat of terrorism today and how exposés like Morten Storm’s impact terror groups and anti-terrorism agencies. Click here to read the interview. |
The Trump presidency, with its dismissal of friends, deference to enemies and disdain for leadership, is leaving a void at the center of that place we have long called the Western world.
Yes, I know, even talking about “the West” seems so retro-imperialist, a kind of top-hat history. But in the face of a powerful authoritarian China, a paranoid Russia and an undeterrable Islamic State, defending the values of freedom and equality may be the cause of our time. These are universal aspirations that have found high expression in the Western political tradition — if not always in its practice — and now they’re in trouble.
It is the turmoil of the West, not of the West Wing, that should preoccupy us most. President Trump will leave office, one way or another. Any succession plans for the West will be far more chaotic and far less welcome.
This upheaval is captured in two books by British journalists hailing from publications known for promoting free peoples and free markets. In “The Fate of the West,” by former Economist editor Bill Emmott, and “The Retreat of Western Liberalism,” by Financial Times columnist Edward Luce, the challenges to the West are outlined in detail — and they mainly come from within. Slowing economic growth, rising inequality, division among longtime allies and growing mistrust of elites are eroding the legitimacy and power of the West, giving way to crude, inward-looking nationalisms. And it’s happening just as transnational cooperation is most needed.
The West is a concept, not a location: the United States, Germany and Japan, for instance, can all be Western in crucial ways — cultures, currencies and cardinal points be damned. The West, as Emmott writes, is “the world’s most successful political idea,” one combining openness to new opportunities and a constant striving for equal voice, rights and treatment. The two may conflict at times, but both are essential. “Without openness, the West cannot thrive; but without equality, the West cannot last,” Emmott writes.
After World War II, the West succeeded in tempering Europe’s self-destructive impulses, and after the Cold War, it seemed that the Western ideal of liberal democracy and open markets had defeated all comers. It was Fukuyama’s end of history and Krauthammer’s unipolar moment and all that good stuff. Yet it was “remarkably arrogant to believe the rest of the world would passively adopt our script,” Luce reflects. “Belief in an authoritarian version of national destiny is staging a powerful comeback.”
For Emmott, the financial crisis beginning in 2008 finally revealed the internal rot, not just because of the economic pain that followed but because of the “sense of betrayal and systemic failure that it has engendered.” The problem of the West, he contends, is not that some are rich and some are poor, but that those left behind don’t trust in the fundamental justice of their society. The West “does not depend upon incomes or wealth being equal or even close to it,” Emmott writes. “It does depend on people mostly considering their societies to be fair.”
Such societies have grown increasingly unfair, he maintains, thanks to democracy’s tendency toward “self-entrapment” — the abuse of the political process to capture benefits and preferences for powerful industries, especially in the financial sector. Emmott credits the Occupy movement with identifying this culprit, even if it couldn’t do much to stop it.
For Luce, the combination of rising income inequality, vanishing economic mobility and distant technocracy has led to our moment’s populist resurgence. “The election of Trump, and Britain’s exit from Europe, is a reassertion of the popular will,” he writes. And both authors regard the ascent of Trump, in particular, in near-apocalyptic terms. “Western liberal democracy . . . is facing its gravest challenge since the Second World War,” Luce argues. “America’s best liberal traditions are under assault from its own president.” Emmott concurs that Trump’s proposals — pushing protectionism, weakening alliances, tightening immigration — threaten Western values.
A longer view, one less clouded by a gauzy Atlanticism, would emphasize how the deepest of America’s inequities, often along racial and cultural lines, long predate the challenges of the post-Cold War world. Yet today’s disruptions matter because, even if America is not synonymous with the West, “the West would be severely diminished, even finished, without the US,” Emmott writes. The Trump administration’s “America first” agenda, as interpreted by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House advisers H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, means that linkages between America’s policies and its values will be incidental, and that rather than seeking cooperation with allied nations, Washington now sees the world as a horde of zero-sum competitors out for themselves. It is the sort of narrow realism that will undercut efforts on counterterrorism, trade and, as we’ve already seen, climate change.
Is there no other power to sustain the West but Washington? The authors look skeptically at Europe’s regional and national leadership. Emmott notes that the internal processes of the European Union “feel alien and even incomprehensible” to many on the continent, while Luce isn’t convinced that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is up to becoming honcho of the free world should she win reelection this year. “The spirit of Western internationalism is resting on her shoulders,” he writes. “It is asking a lot of a fourth-term German leader to carry such a torch,” he writes.
U.S. influence matters not because Washington has always upheld the values it professes, but because just professing them matters, too. “Even where it is proved hypocritical, such as in the ‘war on terror’ and during much of the Cold War, the idea of America proved greater than its faults,” Luce writes. “The link between an America that upheld its system at home and promoted it abroad was never broken, though often tarnished. Trump is inverting that link. The more scorn he pours on democratic traditions at home, the more he endangers them abroad.”
If the West is an idea, well, America is, too. And it’s worth preserving.
These would not be big-think books without a litany of policy recommendations — even if the recommendations here tend toward the small-bore or predictable, and thus, the disappointing. Emmott, who sees lobbying groups and special interests as agents of entrenched power and inequality, wants the United States to do away with excessive professional licensing requirements, strengthen antitrust enforcement, rein in large banks, boost infrastructure spending and deploy inheritance taxes to counteract intergenerational concentrations of wealth. Luce calls for a “new social compact” (alas, even elegant British writers succumb to policy cliches) featuring universal health care, simpler tax codes, carbon taxes, less money in politics and more job retraining for the middle class.
Such proposals, aimed at redressing the domestic challenges the authors outline, seem like necessary but ultimately technical fixes to what is a more systemic problem. After all, Luce and Emmott do not envision a benign post-American world where rising powers create economic opportunities for all; theirs is a more Spenglerian view of civilizational decline. The irony of Trump’s early mismanagement is that it confirms that, for all the complaints of the post-Cold War era — America the hyperpower, the drone warrior, the red-line-ignorer — the thirst for U.S. leadership remains strong. When Merkel declared that Europe must now take its fate into its own hands, there was apprehension, not triumphalism, in the statement. America long ago decided it would not be the world’s policeman, but becoming its disaffected loner is no solution, either.
“Trump has made it clear the post-war US-led global order is history. But what will replace it?” Luce asks. He has little faith in the Chinese leadership, and he argues that Vladimir Putin’s Russia simply wants to foster division among potential rivals. Absent the United States, we are left with an odd circumstance: The nations that share Western values are not strong enough to lead, while the ones that might be strong enough do not share Western values. “Some fear that China is the coming power,” Luce writes. “But chaos, not China, is likelier to take America’s place.”
Could new leadership in the United States begin to repair the increasing frailty of the West, especially if Trump’s politics of resentment fails to deliver? “It is comforting to assume, as many do, that the US system will simply revert to pre-Trump mode,” Luce cautions. “The chances are at least as great that Trump will be able to pin the blame on elites, foreigners, Islam, minorities, unelected judges and other handy saboteurs. That is how populists operate.”
The damage Trump is inflicting on the norms of American democracy, on basic notions regarding truth, trust and discourse, is severe — and it’s not like things were heavenly before he took that down escalator into the netherworld of the 2016 campaign. So there’s more to worry about than China, Russia or North Korea, those “barbarians . . . at the West’s gates,” as Emmott calls them, with a doff of the pith helmet. The American president’s impact on the Western psyche will endure in some form no matter who comes next — and remember that what follows in Washington may not improve things. “Imagine how things would look with a competent and sophisticated white nationalist in the White House,” Luce writes in his final paragraph, just to make matters as depressing as possible.
Dean Acheson’s Pulitzer-winning memoir, “Present at the Creation,” chronicles the origins of those institutions and alliances that would guide the post-World War II order. These authors suggest that Acheson’s beginning is reaching an end. Luce believes that we are “present at the re-creation,” with Moscow and Beijing aiming to “rupture the West’s claim to universalism.” Emmott, more blunt, worries that we are “present at the destruction.”
Destruction feels too definitive, re-creation too vague. It’s more of a repudiation. After all, I’m not worried that Fukuyama was wrong that Western liberal democracy has become the ultimate ideal for human government. I’m worried that he was right but that nobody cares. |
Several parties are promoting policies that aim to develop New Zealand’s regenerative agriculture and organics sectors. Michael Andrew asks the experts what it could mean for the environment, the economy and New Zealand’s participation in a burgeoning global market.
Under the tangled canopy of green schools, fiscal holes, party leaks and other pre-election controversies, it can often be hard to notice the new shoots of fresh policy rising up for a patch of sunlight. Sometimes they’re radical, espoused by a single party and quietly promising a fundamental yet desperately-needed change in some niche part of society.
What’s unique about the range of organics and regenerative farming policies is that, although they could offer radical transformation of New Zealand’s agriculture industry, you’ll find them mentioned in no less than six parties’ pre-election statements.
The Greens, TOP, National, Labour, the Māori Party and NZ First all have at least one policy that proposes development in the area, ranging from National’s promise to re-introduce the Organics Products Bill, to New Zealand First’s pledge to support research into regenerative farming to the Green’s huge $300m fund to shift farmers to regenerative practices and place a levy on chemical fertilisers.
The political will is there, and the policies look good on paper. But what exactly is the goal? First it’s necessary to clarify what regenerative and organic farming actually mean. Both are from the same school of thought, and are often conflated. Yet although they overlap, they’re different concepts, each with their own unique opportunities and proponents.
Organic products, the type you see on some supermarket shelves, are goods that have been produced without the use of chemicals, preservatives, synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or hormones, genetically modified seeds or other additives. Across the world the products are certified to specific standards, guaranteeing consumers that they’re buying and eating a genuine organic product.
Regenerative agriculture on the other hand is a broad philosophy of sustainable farming that integrates organic production along with soil health, animal welfare, carbon sequestration, fair labour, and social outcomes using a range of proven and experimental techniques.
Both are rapidly growing movements in New Zealand and abroad. Climate change, environmental awareness, animal welfare and increasingly educated and health-conscious consumers have meant both sectors are gradually attracting more adherents and transforming into profitable industries. And while New Zealand, with its clean brand and vast agricultural resources, is seemingly poised to capitalise on both, it has long been lagging behind much of the world.
Gary Hirschberg is the co-founder of American company Stonyfield Organics and the founder of New Zealand’s organic entrepreneurship institute, which he’s establishing in Motueka near Nelson.
When he first began growing organic food in the early 80s, the US market was worth only US$2m. Today it is a colossus worth US$52b with almost 140 million regular consumers. And it’s not just the US. The global organic market was estimated to be worth $165b in 2018 and forecasted to grow to over $670b by 2027.
The growth is stable, too. While other industries have seen their trade crippled by Covid-19, Hirschberg says the pandemic has only exacerbated the demand for organics, particularly in the US where he currently lives.
“The US government has not been reliable; it’s held in very low esteem when it comes to this crisis,” he says. “So people have been turning to non-conventional sources of support to keep their families safe. A much larger circle of people has recognised that the first step in protecting your family and keeping them healthy, is avoiding things that depress your immune system, i.e. chemicals.”
In recent years abundant scientific research has emerged showing the health benefits of eating organic and avoiding the harmful pesticides and carcinogenic chemicals that are typically applied in non-organic production. According to market research, increasingly health-conscious consumers are subscribing to the science and paying a premium for organic food in order to keep themselves well, thus creating a thriving market.
Yet while preventative health is growing in the US where the risk of contracting Covid-19 is relatively high, the growth in the New Zealand market is just as impressive.
According to the 2018 New Zealand Organic Sector Report, the domestic market was worth $600m, up 30% from 2015, with exports growing to $355m. Yet with only 88,871ha of organic farmland out of a total of 12.1m, Hirschberg says New Zealand has a long way to go before it reaches its potential as a world leader.
“I see huge, huge potential and an almost unlimited demand for New Zealand products. Which is exactly why I built the school there. I think New Zealand could actually be the model for the world.”
Hirshberg says the main obstacle facing the domestic organic market is the lack of a single legislated certification or seal, such as found on products in the US and in other countries. While New Zealand has three main certifying agencies: BioGrow NZ, Organic Farm NZ, and AsureQuality, whose seals consumers tend to recognise on products, the differing standards and inconsistency can create wariness among buyers both here and abroad, potentially hindering trade.
The other barrier is the lack of organic brand awareness in New Zealand relative to the US. While New Zealand consumers generally recognise large players like Ceres Organics and Lewis Road Creamery, most other organic companies or producers are smaller and far more obscure. Many New Zealand supermarkets still do not stock any organic produce on their shelves.
That’s why there’s an Organic Products Bill now going through parliament. Currently at the Select Committee, the bill would seek to increase consumer confidence and certainty for businesses and facilitate international trade of New Zealand products.
Although it has been well-received and gained cross-party support, both the Green Party and National are proposing to either amend or improve the bill before it gets passed into law, with National saying it fails to ensure New Zealand’s products will be recognised internationally and the Greens saying it needs a better definition of the word “organic”.
In any case, Chris Morrison, chair of Organics Aotearoa New Zealand, says the country’s organic sector is united in support of the bill.
“It gives regulation to the term organic and it gives consumers protection that when they buy an organic product it actually meets a minimum standard. And not only that, when we have organic regulation we also have greater access to export markets for organic products, which is really good because there’s high demand for that.”
Hirshberg agrees the bill is the first step to grow the sector, allowing New Zealand producers to expand and encourage more farmers to convert and earn a premium for their products while saving on inputs like synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.
“Right there, there’s a big outflow of dollars that are not necessary, because my 2000 farmers have proven you don’t need any of that stuff… It’s not about demonising people who aren’t organic, but it’s about giving a leg up for those who are by having a defined standard that has the government seal behind it.”
While a tangible solution for the organic sector may be within reach, progressing and standardising regenerative agriculture is a much harder ask.
Although it’s an equally burgeoning movement with more farmers gradually adopting methods that reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact, its broad scope and varying definitions means it has a long way to go before it’s recognised by any national standard.
For some, the complexity is epitomised by the term “regenerative”, which has become a vague buzz word popular with politicians and marketeers, similar to what “sustainable” was a few years ago.
However, for the growers and farmers that practise elements of it, the results are exceptional. Earlier this year, environmental research charity Pure Advantage produced a comprehensive series called Our Regenerative Future, which featured analyses and stories from prominent farmers and growers who for years had deluged their pastures with synthetic fertilisers, only to transition to regen ag and see their stock, land and margins restore to a level of health never through possible.
Yet while the enthusiasm and anecdotal results may be growing, without New Zealand-based research or economic analysis to support the claims, the movement can only spread so fast.
For Mike Taitoko of Toha – a start-up that facilitates regenerative investment – this lack of mainstream science is the number one issue he hopes the next government will address in order to nurture the sector.
“I think the government’s got a huge role to play,” he says. “The top priority right now is getting the science done to be able to support a range of definitions. If you ask anyone what conventional agriculture is, you’re going to get 10 different answers. Regenerative agriculture is pretty much the same.
“People ask me what my definition is, and I kind of have one around the idea of creating a more holistic set of farm management practices in order to really build up the natural biological function of the soils to create health throughout the food system, from below the ground to above the ground, to the animals and the food we eat and beyond.”
Taitoko says there’s plenty of international science that supports the viability and success of regenerative agriculture, yet there has been comparatively little carried out in a New Zealand context, as the narrative is controlled by conventional farming and the chemical industries that dominate it. Not only does this make it difficult to influence policy or legislation, but it’s also harder to convince farmers of the legitimacy of regenerative agriculture.
“What you get to see is that with our education system, our universities, our banking and lending systems, our infrastructure tools, our inputs and chemicals; everything is geared around intensive farming and conventional high input processing systems.
“It’s really easy for scientists who work in the conventional agriculture industry to say that regenerative agriculture is pseudoscience or there’s no proof that it’s viable in New Zealand. Well, just because the science doesn’t exist yet doesn’t mean it’s not valid or viable.”
Cerasela Stancu, sustainability director for Envirostrat, agrees that government led-research is essential in order to plug knowledge gaps and grow regenerative agriculture beyond mere aspiration. However, she says this needs to be done by looking at the entire industry holistically, rather than focusing on one particular element that a certain segment of the movement is advocating for – such as carbon-neutral goals.
“We don’t have an agreement of what is regenerative. On the contrary, we have different groups that are pushing regenerative agriculture, looking at certain dimensions depending on their interest.
“Personally I think some people see it as a solution to carbon alone. While for me, and many others, we look at regenerative agriculture as much more holistic. It’s not just about how we treat soils and the environment. It’s also about animal welfare. And just as important, it’s about the social dimension.”
Because the concept is so broad, Stancu says tje Ministry for Primary Industries has already started looking at regenerative agriculture to understand just how much it doesn’t know. This, she says, will allow policymakers to understand which areas they need to develop in order to begin to create a comprehensive framework, rather than forcing farmers to make a shift prematurely.
“I presume it’s [gathering] biophysical science and biophysical data, and eventually linking that also with productivity and profitability data, because we should look at regenerative from all perspectives, including economics and financials.”
Clarifying the financial side of regenerative and carrying out cost-benefit analyses for farmers and growers is one of the most critical parts of the transition. In a system where farmers are already experiencing enormous financial strain and surviving on extremely tight margins, many simply can’t afford embarking on something that might temporally impacts their yields and profit, even if it improves over time.
That’s exactly what Mike Taitoko is trying to address through Toha.
“We’re working pretty hard now through Calm the Farm, which was our first campaign,” he says. “How do we support farmers with the transition finance and advisors and education they need to make the shift as safety as they can?”
He says if farmers attempt to transition to a lighter farming model, they get penalised with higher interest rates by their banks because of the perceived risk of reducing inputs and de-stocking. So Taitoko’s instead pairing farmers directly with independent investors and ensuring that the business’s balance sheet is strong throughout the transition. He then presents the data to the bank to guarantee the debt risk is actually being reduced.
“So we expect the banks to reduce their interest rates as a consequence of farmers making the shift [to regenerative] rather than increasing them.”
The fragile financial position of farmers is also why Taitoko is dubious of any policy that places additional financial pressure on the system, even if the aim is to ultimately achieve cleaner pastures and waterways.
Along with The Green Party’s $300m fund to transition farmers into regenerative and finance the all-important research and development, it’s also proposing a levy on the sale of nitrogen and phosphorous fertiliser. While the policy has been well-received by some, others have criticised it as a tax that will simply penalise already overworked farmers.
Taitoko agrees that even if reducing chemical inputs is essential to protect the environment, without a viable and science-backed alternative, the levy will do little to benefit farmers, or the land, which he says are both “on life support”.
“How did we get this far down the track where we’ve built so much stress and pressure into our farming model? The farmers are the ones who are working the hardest, who’ve got the most capital and risk at stake. They’re the ones who are having sleepless nights and are the ones left with the least in their pockets at the end of the day.
“So if you’re going to punish farmers for using certain inputs, then you better have a really good programme in place to support them and to wean them off those inputs and build stronger businesses – and as a consequence, their own mental health and wellbeing as well.”
While regenerative agriculture does seem like a scattered sector a long way from being unified, Taitako says there has been some very compelling progress, particularly among Māori landowners.
“We’ve got buyers in the US and UK saying that if New Zealand can provide regenerative organic meat into the market they’ll take everything they can get. And they said if it has some type of indigenous brand or relationship to indigenous values, the value of it goes up even higher.
“Some of the largest Māori brands and landowners are right now making governance decisions and operational decisions to transition to regenerative agriculture. And when you look at the size of the footprint of these organisations, it’s a significant transition.”
Of Maniapoto descent, Taitako specialises in the Māori sector and says its farmers tend to embrace regenerative methods very willingly as they’re often consistent with the principles of kaitiakitanga.
“We talk to Pākehā farmers and there’s a huge amount who are very keen and passionate about regenerative and making the move. But when we talk to Māori landowners, there’s something much more natural to them within their value systems. They believe that it’s as much a cultural imperative from a kaitiakitanga perspective as it is a business imperative.
It makes sense, then, why the Māori Party announced its own policy pledging $300m to fund Māori farmers into regenerative agriculture. The natural alacrity and instinct is there, so too are the huge commercial opportunities.
Of course, just how big and valuable this sector can grow depends largely on whether New Zealand can eventually provide certification for its regenerative produce. And while this requires the science and research to set the foundation, there are some accessible standards on which the burgeoning movement could model itself.
The benchmark and most popular definition comes from the man who coined the term “regenerative agriculture”: Robert Rodale, of the Rodale Institute in the US. Consisting of seven principals, it stipulates that organics and regenerative go hand-in-hand in order to achieve the gold standard launched a few years ago; Regenerative Organic Certification.
This model works for Chris Morrison of Organics Aotearoa NZ, who says organic certification is the logical first step for farmers looking to move away from conventional, input-intensive farming.
“We’re very supportive of Rodale. That’s where we see the future – organics being a minimum standard. And then above that is regenerative organics. So you’ve got to start somewhere and regenerative is a pathway towards certified organics and then potentially the gold standard of regenerative organic.
“We’re supportive of any party that supports that pathway and we believe it is really good for the economy and also for the environment.”
Cerasela Stancu agrees that the Rodale Institute has set an accessible benchmark and that the first step to meet it should be organic certification, potentially made more consistent when the Organics Products Bill is passed into law.
However, she warns that there are still many grey areas, and any political party that is promising more investment in regenerative agriculture needs to conduct thorough analysis and spend the money carefully.
“You know, there is a lot of focus and we see a lot of initiatives around regenerative agriculture. But to get from having that positive energy and interest through to building the systems so we can capture the benefits at farmer level as well as the market and consumer level, we still have quite a bit of way to go.”
No matter which party is pushing for it, one thing is clear: with a world facing the twin foes of climate change and economic recession, any new agricultural system must be developed holistically and prudently, guaranteeing the wellbeing of the land, but also the animals and humans that tread on it.
The Spinoff Weekly compiles the best stories of the week – an essential guide to modern life in New Zealand, emailed out on Monday evenings. |
The Future of Evolution
I was asked to talk about the Future of Evolution. This is an enormous subject and would take a historian to do it justice. I am not a historian. I am a scientist with a smattering of knowledge about history. I prefer to talk about things I know. I shall be telling stories rather than digging deep into the sources of historical truth. I shall talk about astronomy and biology, which are easier to understand than physics. I shall use the recent history of astronomy and biology to illustrate some evolutionary themes, which may or may not be valid when extended to the future.
My approach to evolution is based on analogies between biology, astronomy and history. I begin with biology. The chief agents of biological evolution are speciation and symbiosis. In the world of biology these words have a familiar meaning. Life has evolved by a process of successive refinement and subdivision of form and function, that is to say by speciation, punctuated by a process of bringing together alien and genetically distant species into a single organism, that is to say by symbiosis. As a result of the work of Lynn Margulis and other pioneers, the formerly heretical view, that symbiosis has been the mechanism for major steps in the evolution of life, has now become orthodox. When we view the evolution of life with an ecological rather than an anatomical perspective, the importance of symbiosis relative to speciation becomes even greater.
As a physical scientist, I am struck by the fact that the borrowing of concepts from biology into astronomy is valid on two levels. One can see in the sky many analogies between astronomical and biological processes, as I shall shortly demonstrate. And one can see similar analogies between intellectual and biological processes, in the evolution and taxonomy of scientific disciplines. The evolution of the universe and the evolution of science can be described in the same language as the evolution of life.
2. Speciation and Symbiosis in the Sky
In the context of astronomy, speciation occurs by the process of symmetry-breaking. In the earliest stages of its history, the universe was hot and dense and rapidly expanding. Matter and radiation were then totally disordered and uniformly mixed. One of the greatest of all symmetry-breakings was the separation of the universe into two phases, one phase containing most of the matter and destined to condense later into galaxies and stars, the other phase containing most of the radiation and destined to become the intergalactic void. As a result of this transition, the universe lost its original spatial symmetry. Before the transition, it had the symmetry of uniform space. After the transition, it became a collection of lumps with no large-scale symmetry. The same process of symmetry-breaking was then repeated successively on smaller and smaller scales. A single lump of the first generation was a huge mass of gas, locally uniform and locally symmetrical. The local uniformity of the gas was then broken when it condensed into the second-generation lumps which we call galaxies. The gas in a local region of a galaxy cooled further until it condensed into the third-generation lumps which we call giant molecular clouds. Finally, the gas and dust in a local region of a molecular cloud condensed into the fourth-generation lumps which we call stars and planets. The universe in this way became a hierarchical assortment of lumps of various shapes and sizes.
The diversification of new forms of life on the earth is in many respects similar to the diversification of new celestial species, galaxies and dust-clouds and stars and planets, in the universe as it was before life appeared. The evolution of life fits logically into the evolution of the universe. Both in the non-living universe and on the living earth, evolution alternates between long periods of metastability and short periods of rapid change. During the periods of rapid change, old structures become unstable and divide into new structures. During the periods of metastability, the new structures are consolidated and fine-tuned while the environment to which they are adapted seems eternal. Then the environment crosses some threshold that plunges the existing structures into a new instability, and the cycle of speciation starts again.
Speciation is one of the two driving forces of evolution. The other is symbiosis. Symbiosis is the reattachment of two structures, after they have been detached from each other and have evolved along separate paths for a long time, so as to form a combined structure with behavior not seen in the separate components. Symbiosis played a fundamental role in the evolution of eucaryotic cells from procaryotes. The mitochondria and chloroplasts that are essential components of modern cells were once independent free-living creatures. They first invaded the ancestral eucaryotic cell from the outside and then became adapted to living inside. The symbiotic cell acquired a complexity of structure and function that neither component could have evolved separately. In this way symbiosis allows evolution to proceed in giant steps. A symbiotic creature can jump from simple to complicated structures much more rapidly than a creature evolving by the normal processes of mutation and speciation.
Symbiosis is as prevalent in the sky as it is in biology. Astronomers are accustomed to talking about symbiotic stars. The basic reason why symbiosis is important in astronomy is the double mode of action of gravitational forces. When gravity acts upon a uniform distribution of matter occupying a large volume of space, the first effect of gravity is to concentrate the matter into lumps separated by voids. The separated lumps differentiate and evolve separately. They become distinct species. But then, after a period of separate existence, gravity acts in a second way to bring lumps together and bind them into pairs. The binding into pairs is a sporadic process depending on chance encounters. It usually takes a long time for two lumps to be bound into a pair. But the universe has plenty of time. After a few billion years, a large fraction of objects of all sizes become bound in symbiotic systems, either in pairs or in clusters. Once they are bound together by gravity, dissipative processes bring them closer together. As they come closer together, they interact with one another more strongly and the effects of symbiosis become more striking.
From our human point of view, the most important example of astronomical symbiosis is the symbiosis of the earth and the sun. The whole system of sun and planets and satellites is a typical example of astronomical symbiosis. At the beginning, when the Solar System was formed, the sun and the earth were born with different chemical compositions and physical properties. The sun was made mainly of hydrogen and helium, the earth was made of heavier elements. The sun was physically simple, a sphere of gas heated by the burning of hydrogen and shining steadily for billions of years. The earth was physically complicated, partly liquid and partly solid, its surface frequently transformed by plate tectonics and other dynamic processes. The symbiosis of these two contrasting worlds made life possible. The earth provided chemical and environmental diversity for life to explore. The sun provided physical stability, a steady input of energy on which life could rely. The combination of the earth’s variability with the sun’s constancy provided the conditions in which life could evolve and prosper.
3. Tools and Concepts
The evolution of science is in many ways similar to the evolution of life and the evolution of the universe. The major events in the history of science are called scientific revolutions. There are two kinds of scientific revolutions, those driven by new concepts and those driven by new tools. These are analogous to biological revolutions driven by speciation and by symbiosis, or to astronomical revolutions driven by symmetry-breaking and by gravitational binding. When a field of science is overturned by a new concept, the revolution starts from the inside, from an internal inconsistency or contradiction within the science, and results in a rapid transition to a new way of thinking. When a field of science is overturned by new tools, the revolution starts from the outside, from tools imported from another discipline, and results in a symbiosis of the two disciplines. In both types of revolution, the final outcome is usually a new subdiscipline of science and a new species of scientist, specialized in the new ideas or in the new tools as the case may be.
Thomas Kuhn in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, talked almost exclusively about concepts and hardly at all about tools. His idea of a scientific revolution is based on a single example, the revolution in theoretical physics that occurred in the 1920s with the advent of quantum mechanics. This was a prime example of a concept-driven revolution. Kuhn’s book was so brilliantly written that it became an instant classic. It misled a whole generation of students and historians of science into believing that all scientific revolutions are concept-driven. The concept-driven revolutions are the ones that attract the most attention and have the greatest impact on the public awareness of science, but in fact they are comparatively rare. In the last five hundred years we have had five major concept-driven revolutions, associated with the names of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and Freud, besides the quantum- mechanical revolution that Kuhn took as his model. During the same period there have been about twenty tool-driven revolutions, not so impressive to the general public but of equal importance to the progress of science. I will not attempt to make a complete list of tool-driven revolutions. Two prime examples are the Galilean revolution resulting from the use of the telescope in astronomy, and the Crick-Watson revolution resulting from the use of X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of big molecules in biology. Galileo brought into astronomy tools borrowed from the emerging technology of eye-glasses. Crick and Watson brought into biology tools borrowed from physics. The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained. In astronomy there has been a preponderance of tool-driven revolutions. We have been more successful in discovering new things than in explaining old ones.
4. The Domestication of Biotechnology
Up to this point, I have been talking about evolution that has happened in the past. From this point on I will talk about evolution that may happen in the future. I will be telling stories about the future. I have three stories to tell. One of them is about a prediction that turned out to be wrong. The other two are about predictions that might be right and might be wrong. The moral of the stories is, life is a game of chance, and science is like life. Most of the time, science cannot tell what is going to happen.
My first story is about the domestication of biotechnology. Fifty years ago in Princeton, I watched the mathematician John von Neumann designing and building the first electronic computer that operated with instructions coded into the machine. Von Neumann did not invent the electronic computer. The computer called ENIAC had been running at the University of Pennsylvania five years earlier. What von Neumann invented was software, the coded instructions that gave the computer agility and flexibility. It was the combination of electronic hardware with punch-card software that allowed a single machine to predict weather, to simulate the evolution of populations of living creatures, and to test the feasibility of hydrogen bombs. Von Neumann understood that his invention would change the world. He understood that the descendants of his machine would dominate the operations of science and business and government. But he imagined computers always remaining large and expensive. He imagined them as centralized facilities serving large research laboratories or large industries. He failed to foresee computers growing small enough and cheap enough to be used by housewives for doing income-tax returns or by kids for doing homework. He failed to foresee the final domestication of computers as toys for three-year-olds. He totally failed to foresee the emergence of computer-games as a dominant feature of twenty-first-century life. Because of computer-games, our grandchildren are now growing up with an indelible addiction to computers. For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, till death do us part, humans and computers are now joined together more durably than husbands and wives.
What has this story of von Neumann’s computer and the evolution of computer-games to do with biotechnology? Simply this, that there is a close analogy between von Neumann’s vision of computers as large centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides into food-crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because von Neumann liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large corporations.
I see a bright future for the biotech industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized. The first step in this direction was already taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and brilliant colors appeared in pet-stores. For biotechnology to become domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly. I recently spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest flower show in the world, where flower-breeders from all over the world show off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile Show in San Diego, an equally impressive show displaying the work of another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses, San Diego excels in lizards and snakes. The main problem for a grandparent visiting the reptile show with a grandchild is to get the grandchild out of the building without actually buying a snake. Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also kits for lovers of pigeons and parrots and lizards and snakes, to breed new varieties of pets. Breeders of dogs and cats will have their kits too.
Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations prefer. New lineages will proliferate to replace thosethat monoculture farming and industrial development havedestroyed. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art-form as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora.
The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age, but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others.
If domestication of biotechnology is the wave of the future, five important questions need to be answered. First, can it be stopped? Second, ought it to be stopped? Third, if stopping it is either impossible or undesirable, what are the appropriate limits that our society must impose on it? Fourth, how should the limits be decided? Fifth, how should the limits be enforced, nationally and internationally? In considering each of these questions, it would be helpful to keep in mind the analogy between computer technology and biotechnology. The majority of people using domesticated biotechnology to cause trouble will probably be small fry, like the young computer hackers who spread computer viruses around on the internet. Young people possessing bio-hacker skills may also be helpful in tracing and reporting any larger-scale illegitimate activities to national or international authorities. In the long run, as biotechnology spreads over the world, our best chance of avoiding large-scale bioterrorism will be to share the benefits of biotechnology as widely and as openly as possible.
5. The Darwinian Interlude
My second story was suggested by Carl Woese, the world’s greatest expert in the field of microbial taxonomy. He explored the ancestry of microbes by tracing the similarities and differences between their genomes. He discovered the large-scale structure of the tree of life, with all living creatures descended from three primordial branches. He recently published a provocative and illuminating article with the title, “A New Biology for a New Century.” It appeared in the June 2004 issue of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. His main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, and the need for a new synthetic biology based on communities and eco-systems rather than on genes and molecules. He does not mention Teilhard de Chardin, but he is clearly echoing Teilhard’s ideas. Aside from his main theme, he raises another profoundly important question: When did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin understood it, based on the competition for survival of non-interbreeding species. He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution did not go back to the beginning of life. The comparison of genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures shows evidence of massive transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, the process that he calls Horizontal Gene Transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent, the further back you go in time.
Whatever Carl Woese writes, even in a speculative vein, needs to be taken seriously. In his “New Biology” article, he is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. Evolution could be rapid, as new chemical devices could be evolved simultaneously by cells of different kinds working in parallel and then reassembled in a single cell by horizontal gene transfer. But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species, reserving its intellectual property for its own private use. With its superior efficiency it continued to prosper and to evolve separately, while the rest of the community continued its communal life. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became another species. And so it went on, until nothing was left of the community and all life was divided into species. The Darwinian interlude had begun.
The Darwinian interlude has lasted for two or three billion years. It probably slowed down the pace of evolution considerably. The basic biochemical machinery of life had evolved rapidly duringthe few hundreds of millions of years of the pre-Darwinian era, and changed very little in the next two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species once established evolve very little. Darwinian evolution requires established species to die and become extinct so that new species can replace them. Three innovations helped to speed up the pace of evolution in the later stages ofthe Darwinian interlude. The first was sex, which is a form of horizontal gene transfer restricted to operating within species. The second innovation was multicellular organization, which opened up a whole new world of form and function. The third was brains, which opened another new world of coordinated sensation and action, culminating in the evolution of eyes and hands. Allthrough the Darwinian interlude, occasional mass extinctions due to volcanic outbursts or asteroid impacts helped to open opportunities for new evolutionary ventures.
Now, after three billion years, the Darwinian interlude is over. It was an interlude between two periods of horizontal gene transfer. The epoch of Darwinian evolution based on competition between species ended about ten thousand years ago when a single species, Homo Sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the main driving force of change. Here Carl Woese is again echoing Teilhard. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence which we call globalization. And now, in the last thirty years, Homo Sapiens has revived the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the evolution of life will again be communal. If you like, you can call that the evolution of a noosphere. That is the end of my second story.
6. Bad Advice to a Young Scientist
My last story is about a prediction that I made almost sixty years ago, when I was young and arrogant. It is an extreme example of wrongness, perhaps a world record in the category of wrong predictions. The story is about Francis Crick, the great biologist who died a few months ago after a long and brilliant career. He discovered, with Jim Watson, the double helix. They discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, and thereby gave birth to the new science of molecular genetics. Eight years before that, in 1945, before World War II came to an end, I met Francis Crick for the first time. He was in Fanum House, a dismal office building in London where the Royal Navy kept a staff of scientists. Crick had been working for the Royal Navy for a long time and was depressed and discouraged. He said he had missed his chance of ever amounting to anything as a scientist. Before World War II, he had started a promising career as a physicist. But then the war hit him at the worst time, putting a stop to his work in physics and keeping him away from science for six years. The six best years of his life, squandered on naval intelligence, lost and gone forever. Crick was good at naval intelligence, and did important work for the navy. But military intelligence bears the same relation to intelligence as military music bears to music. After six years doing this kind of intelligence, it was far too late for Crick to start all over again as a student and relearn all the stuff he had forgotten. No wonder he was depressed. I came away from Fanum House thinking, “How sad. Such a bright chap. If it hadn’t been for the war, he would probably have been quite a good scientist.”
A year later, I met Crick again. The war was over and he was much more cheerful. He said he was thinking of giving up physics and making a completely fresh start as a biologist. He said the most exciting science for the next twenty years would be in biology and not in physics. I was then twenty-two years old and very sure of myself. I said, “No, you’re wrong. In the long run biology will be more exciting, but not yet. The next twenty years will still belong to physics. If you switch to biology now, you will be too old to do the exciting stuff when biology finally takes off’.” Fortunately, he didn’t listen to me. He went to Cambridge and began thinking about DNA. It took him only seven years to prove me wrong. The moral of this story is clear. Even a smart twenty-two-year-old is not a reliable guide to the future of science. And the twenty-two-year-old has become even less reliable now that he is eighty-one. |
The high arch over the entrance to the Vancouver train station divides the sign running along the roof in two. To the left the letters spell out Pacific, to the right, Central. Although it works out to the same number of letters on either side, the run of slender lines in the ifi in Pacific makes true balance impossible. Whoever built the sign spaced out the letters on the Pacific side to the same width as the more compact Central. This does not so much compensate for the sign’s inherent asymmetry as it does abstract it back into an evasive dissonance.
You take a photo of me in front of the station. A bulging backpack on my back, I’m leaning slightly to one side with the weight of the second bag I’m allowed as carry-on free of charge. Although I don’t like having my picture taken, I can’t think of a reason to refuse that won’t seem irrational and selfish. I smile at you through the screen of your telephone turned horizontally in camera mode, waiting for the moment that will recover this dead time. The moment when I will say, “I went through a real dark period, but that’s all behind me now.” And these words will be a spell that will make it impossible for me to ever let you down because I’ve waited to say them until I’m certain that they are true. I’ll be getting better just like when I was eight or nine and my fever broke late on Christmas Eve, and I spent Christmas day resting in bed feeling myself gradually drawing closer to the sounds of celebration that filled the house. Until then, I try to tread so lightly on the world that I leave no trace of my passage. That way, when the time comes, I’ll be able to cut out the last year and a half of my life and reattach the two loose ends, leaving only a smooth upward curve. The parking lot is so quiet that I hear the click of your phone when it takes the picture. I turn towards the station and wait for you to catch up with me.
The line of passengers waiting to board the train folds back on itself in boustrophedon between dark red ripstop nylon ribbons, recedes from in front of a grey Formica desk in the middle of the otherwise wood-and-marble interior that stretches out to either side. Ours, mine, is the only gate in use. There are few enough people here that, were they scattered across the entire length of the waiting area, their sparseness might have imparted a sort of tragic but noble solitude on the unevenly restored early twentieth-century station. But the compact efficiency of the arrangement gives everything an air of the absurd. I try to fix the image of your face in my mind. Not because I’m worried that this is the last time I’ll see it, but out of fear that if I’m unable to preserve a moment like this, unable to take it with me into the future as a memory distinct from all others, then our time together will cease to be a part of me as soon as I no longer have your physical presence to fall back on.
And yet, all I can think is how much I wish you’d leave. If you stay until the very end, until the conductor makes the announcement over the loudspeaker—even though she could easily reach the whole group almost without raising her voice—that all passengers are now welcome to board the train, if you stay until then our parting will be sudden and out of our control. There will be scarcely time to say goodbye before the vacuum left by the line emptying in front of us becomes too strong to resist. If you go now our parting could be thoughtful and deliberate. We alone will dictate its terms. I’ll have the time to tell you everything I wanted to. We’ll fill all the cracks that never stop opening between us and the train’s scheduled departure with the pine-pitch silence that follows a proper goodbye. I’ll stand still for one last moment to watch you leave like the echo of my own imminent exit.
But you don’t. And I don’t have the heart to ask you to. So we stand there. Each of us talks excitedly about a future that begins immediately after I get on the train that will take me across the continent to Montreal. We take turns in our speculation, drawing as close as we dare to the moment of separation without touching it. I don’t remember the specifics of anything you say, but by then we’ve already had plenty of practice with the exercise. You wish me luck, ask questions about the route, tell me to take pictures, remind me about your friend-of-a-friend who lives somewhere in the city as an excuse to acknowledge at least the idea of loneliness. It’s been some time since our words have been used to exchange any new information. We’ve long since emptied them of all meaning in order to better load them down with the mute ballast of years of shared experiences. Although the ploy has allowed us to provide one another with a measure of solidity in day-to-day life, it has left us wholly unprepared to mark the ends of things. Words come to us already packed full. Our speech is heavy and unwieldy in our mouths, and soon we are too exhausted say anything more. All we can do is let the time pass, taking deep breaths, each the final one that will have to last until the end.
We hug and I start towards the open gate, look back and smile a couple of times. There must be something I could say, but any words to match the occasion would have to be created brand new, completely unlike these everyday gestures. Then I turn a corner and it’s over in an instant. I try to hold the change in my memory and at the same time forget that there will be nothing to take with me, that the point of the leaving is the absence. I try to feel its impact, hoping that its meaning will be visible in its effects, but there is only the cool night of the train yard.
The train starts moving. Soon the nighttime city’s regular light fragments into more uneven patterns. I keep watch out the window, determined to take in every millimetre of the route. In the glass, my reflection flies silently over a low tangle of dusty brambles that never leave the tracks’ side. From time to time the dim monotony is broken up by a side road draped perpendicular across our path. But from where I’m sitting, I’m always late to the intersection—the guardrail is already lowered, amber lights flashing in warning for cars that aren’t there against an oncoming locomotive that has already passed.
I can’t look away. There’s something out there, and if I keep watching long enough, the repetitions will chip away at my expectations until I’m ready to receive it. I’m afraid that, if I don’t keep watching, the empty distance in front of me will collapse into a series of senseless intermediate arrivals until I blindly reach the end of the line only to find myself still in pieces.
I don’t remember when the scattered lights finally give in to the thickening darkness. The train must still be climbing through the lower Fraser River Valley when I fall asleep. For now my old thoughts can’t reach me without violating the laws of physics. From here to Montreal, as long as I maintain the pace, I have myself caught.
The late-fall mountains rise in horizontal bands of colour stacked one on top of the other—clumps of dark green pines, yellow grass dried out and gone to seed, pools of clear water collected in a granite basin reflecting striations of white clouds ploughed into the blue sky. A landscape held together by its own collective weight. Over the loudspeaker the conductor announces Mount Robson on the left side of the train and with it the continental divide.
Just like that I’m over the pass. Just like that I’m brought to tears here where they no longer have any chance of reaching you. But the crossing stirs the hope that there is a way to keep the two sides, the damp windward slope and the dry rain shadow, together in the same thought. I want to tear up the line of rammed earth that has brought me this far, dive naked into the reservoir gathered between the drowned forest and the hemmed-in sky. There, I would hold this moment of breach tight until, in the anaerobic closeness, my suffocated skin is cured to leather the colour of oil.
The mountain fades from view. Gravity begins to pull the train down towards the prairie. There is no beauty capable of exhausting the paths that lead back to you who are slipping away in the glissando of the train’s steel wheels, faster and faster—my mind passes across the memory like a novice artist passing their pencil across the page again and again in an approximation of the form that they know is somewhere there in the accumulation of lines, but that their imagination can’t call up until they recognize it staring back at them from the paper—until the speed alone is enough to create a sense of clean contiguity.
I sit down with my cheeseburger and fries at a concrete picnic table just outside the Jasper train station. The sky is clear in the October afternoon. The sun’s warmth pierces through the wind that intermittently threatens to blow away my stack of paper napkins. They’ve cut our hour-long stop-over in half in order to make up some of the time we’ve lost against our scheduled arrival in Edmonton. Most of the passengers are still out taking advantage of the chance to stretch their legs, leaving the station mostly empty.
A kid in torn black jeans and a baggy flannel shirt sits down across from me. He’s taking the train as far as Saskatoon. Then he’ll hitch a ride down to Regina where he’s got a place to stay with a friend. He’s vague about what he’ll do there, how long he’ll stay, and who he’s staying with. Not evasive. Just has a way of speaking as though the reasoning behind what he says is so self-evident that it doesn’t even occur to him I might not share the context needed to see the connections. I’m both relieved and a little worried that neither of us have much of a plan for our destination other than the getting there. He tells me a story the specifics of which are no clearer to me than his reasons for going to Regina, but it seems that he’s crisscrossed the West a few times already by bus, hitching, or tagging along with friends, and I get the impression that doing this leg by train is something of a present he’s giving himself for graduating high school and never having to see his dad again.
He reminds me of you. When we used to paint each other’s nails black and believed that there were no secrets between us. It was only at the end that I pieced together what you’d avoided saying. Even then I didn’t ask why you’d hidden it. Too much time had passed for me to still think that it was the kind of thing you could come out and say. In any case, I could see that you’d been piecing together the gaps in my secrets too, and recrimination would only lend a bitter taste to our already mutually assured destruction.
A man who looks to be somewhere in his early fifties joins us at the table. He’s getting off in Saskatoon too; offers to give the kid a ride down to Moose Jaw where he runs a taxi company. Says he likes it out there; didn’t care for the city life in Saskatoon so he settled down somewhere a little quieter. He smiles when I say I’m headed to Montreal. “Different strokes for different folks.” We’re both amused at the banality of the wisdom we’ve uncovered.
I wake up at around five or six in the morning to the vibrations of the train’s movement. The mist covering the ground that flows by out the window has just enough mass to sink down into the hollows. It smooths the pock-marked earth into a level surface that fades evenly into the sky. In the fields on either side of the tracks, flocks of snow geese search for leftover grain among rotting cereal stalks just insubstantial enough to not collapse under their own weight.
I push back the metaphors that spring to mind. I can feel the emptiness begin to wrap itself around me in an impermeable layer of similarity. When I can’t keep a hold on the world as it presents itself, the emptiness goes about creating a new one to insulate me from the singular immediacy of things. It extracts the sensual qualities from my surroundings and stretches them out across the real and imagined alike, weaving a safety net of facile commonality. The geese soft and downy like the fog. The wheat stalks’ paper-thin walls fragile like the present moment. The fog blurring the horizon line in the same way my memories of you blur into me. But it keeps on compulsively adding more material. Every morning presses down with the weight of every other identical morning. Every night keeps me awake staring into the depths of every other identical night. The open spaces in the weave get smaller and smaller, disappear altogether, and before I know it, I’m in a cocoon, the solid edges of my body liquefying in preparation for a metamorphosis that evolution hasn’t prepared me to complete.
I resolve to watch the snow geese as they are, to take note of what they look like then and there, rising out of the dew-damp fields once the noise of the oncoming train rises above the threshold that signals danger.
With my cheek resting against the window I listen to the hum of the train’s progress vibrate across my skull. The sky is mottled with pastel blues and pinks above a morning that offers the possibility of an encounter with the day so sincere that finally I’ll want nothing else than to watch the sun rise. But the sun only gets higher, the fog evaporates, and all the while the train keeps moving forward, splitting a line through fields of broken stalks, muck, and goose shit.
On a cross-country train, the question “How far are you going?” quickly becomes the icebreaker of first resort. A woman from Newfoundland with the same name as my mother—about the same age too—has me beat in total distance left to travel. We’re both staying on until the end of the line in Toronto where we’ll change trains and continue east. But when I get off in Montreal, she’ll continue on to the next end of the line in Halifax, after which some combination of buses and a ferry from Sydney will take her the rest of the way home.
She’s more than willing to talk, and I’m more than willing to listen. She has the uncanny ability to never ask me for more information than I’m comfortable sharing, never hesitates to pick up the silences before they can draw out too long and fill them with her stories. She tells me that she was a nurse before she retired last year. She tells me that she’s on her way home from the first vacation she’s taken since her husband died, and that this is her first time travelling alone since she was in university. She tells me about her daughter who helps with the cabins on her property that she rents to tourists. She tells me about her son who doesn’t help with much of anything, but he’s had his problems with alcohol, so she doesn’t begrudge him his selfishness seeing as he doesn’t have much of himself left to give.
As she continues to talk, I understand that she isn’t taking the train just for the scenery. Beneath her good-natured sincerity and carefully dosed honesty, I recognize an anxiety that had already ruled out the possibility of air travel. I don’t know how much of this I picked up on at the time and how much I only see now in light of later conversations. Because I can no longer keep straight what she told me when, she comes to me fully formed. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember what it was like to arrive at this understanding. The person she is in my mind doesn’t untangle along the straight line of the train’s itinerary in the way that memories of the landscape do. I’m forced to admit that there’s a process of accumulation that no memory can hold. I remember her again and again, each time deformed by the weight of anachronistic knowledge, her initial incoherence lost forever.
The tracks are choked with freight trains. The mainline is empty next to the sidetrack where we’ve been waiting for well over half an hour. No one has made any announcements, but the stops are frequent enough by now that we all know what’s coming.
Black cistern cars full of tar-sands oil moving south. Husks of inert machinery chained to open beds. Old CWB hopper cars with their dark-red paint bleached in the sunlight until it meets the rust halfway in one ambiguously solid colour. From where I sit, the windows on one side of the car are bathed in a dry yellow light that pours in unimpeded over silent fields, on the other the windows are all darkness and motion. I feel uneasy in the sudden asymmetry. The freight train passes so close it looks like it’s going to crash into us. The boxcars’ dull orange sheet metal strains to jump as ominously half-heartedly as I did watching my last sunset over the Pacific from behind the guardrail on the Lions Gate Bridge. But the cars obey a strict maximum width. They can only keep going straight down the parallel tracks.
When the last of the freight train finally passes, the car feels like a capsized boat righting itself. Once again the prairie falls away on both sides into two balanced halves of infinity. Our train shudders forward. It’s become apparent that we’ll never make up the time we lost between Vancouver and Edmonton. Although we now stop only just long enough to let people on and off the train, at each town the gap between reality and our scheduled arrival continues to widen. We haven’t been able to really get out and walk around since Jasper. The smokers are starting to get antsy.
The girl in the row in front of me is on her way back to the apartment in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce she sublet out for the summer, her two roommates, and the brother I will catch a glimpse of a few days later when we arrive in Montreal. We pass the time seated at oblique angles to the long window that spans both our rows, lobbing bits of conversation around the intervening seat backs towards the other’s reflection, our words skipping like flat round stones off the glass.
She’s taken a year off from university and isn’t sure if she wants to go back. For the first time, rather than have someone tell me, I get to tell someone that you’re still generally as lost after you graduate as you are before. I’m just as unsure whether the advice is hopeful or defeatist when I give it as when I’m on the receiving end. I give her a look that’s supposed to preserve the uncertainty, but I never was very good at mystery. She doesn’t linger on my aphorism. Soon she moves on to telling me about the farm where she was working over the summer, or maybe asks me what the farthest place I’ve ever travelled is. As much as I enjoy the opportunity to do jaded and world weary, I’m relieved that she isn’t particularly interested in playing the petite Jehanne to my Cendrars. We are, in any case, still quite far from NDG.
The train pulls into Winnipeg at around three thirty in the morning. This is the one stop that can’t be abbreviated like the others. It marks the route’s midpoint, logistically if not geographically. The engine’s diesel tanks are refilled, the diner cars are restocked, and a new crew replaces the one that’s been with us since Vancouver. The platform hisses with discharging air brakes and rumbles with wheels loaded too heavily for their bearings rolling over worn asphalt. The lighting is arranged for the benefit of the machinery that services the train rather than the huddle of somnambulant passengers who alternate light and dark on their way towards the station doors.
Inside everything is calm and quiet. Although the interior is all stone and tile, my footsteps make no echo. The sounds are just as muted as the lights. To pass the time I wander around looking for a wifi signal, but to no avail—it’s been turned off for the night. As I walk, I feel a diffuse unease that, like the train, I’m somehow offset from where I should be at this particular moment in time. Everything is close at hand but obscured by eddies, stirred up by our sudden irruption into the empty station, that will only dissipate after we’ve left. Without any deadlines waiting for me at the other end, however, the unease isn’t unpleasant. It’s more like a curious object found abandoned on the floor—a broken keychain or a half-filled punch card for a free eleventh cup of coffee with the purchase of ten.
I stand in the central rotunda, staring straight up into the blue high-domed ceiling. In the dim after-hours lighting, it feels like I’m floating face-down on the surface of the ocean, staring into the depths. I’m weightless here in my immobility. I stretch myself upwards, fingertips extended towards your cheek flushed red from the cold, three white streaks left to shimmer for an instant underneath the fine lines of your skin before disappearing into the rush of returning blood. We would run so fast, deeply inhaling the scent of the night, hoping to make ourselves stumble and fall before we exhausted ourselves entirely, hoping to find each other still waiting there beyond the exhaustion.
I wake up into the first winter snow somewhere north of Thunder Bay. Must have crossed into Ontario during the night; slept through the transition from the deep-sod prairie to the Canadian Shield scrubbed clean down to the granite bedrock during the last ice age and haphazardly filling back in ever since.
The cotton-ball morning thins out as it advances, leaving its fibrous knots caught on the cattails, reeds, and waterlilies that poke out of the bogs that line the tracks. Whatever can’t lift itself out of the dampness rots right back into it. Tree trunks crumble into white powder, thickening the water like corn starch, asphyxiating even the fish. If I stared at it long enough, I might catch a glimpse of real nothingness, timid and fleeting, just beyond its tannin-brown surface. But the train moves too fast. Close to my window, water and rock replace each other too quickly for my eyes to see too far. More stable are the birches further back that follow us in a streak of watercolour dashed across the landscape, its variations in colour, texture, and intensity only hinting at the rough surface of another earth just underneath.
The night is in a race with Toronto. The train’s shadow stretches farther and farther off to the left, its silhouette becoming wide and ungainly as we close in on the city. The air brakes creak in our oblique descent. With no more stops and no possibility to get off before the end, there’s nothing left to do but discuss the reality of just how late we will arrive. The private anxiousness that’s been building up since Sudbury is transformed into a social event. Rumours pass through the train like an electric current. Before long even the most reserved of us can’t resist offering their own predictions. The last train for Montreal leaves at six p.m. If we don’t hit any more delays, there should be just enough time for us to run from one platform to the next. No one asks how long it will take to transfer our checked luggage or if the young couple from Saskatoon would be able to make it with their baby and stroller.
One of the train attendants leans against the wall of the vestibule at the end of the car. If we miss the last train, they may put us up in a hotel, she says, but we might still make it too. We just have to get lucky and not run into any other trains on our track. Here it’s the city’s public transportation, rather than the freight companies, that owns the railroad right of way.
It begins to rain. The blackberry bushes entangling a chain-link fence, the concrete barriers along the elevated highway, the viscous rush-hour traffic, all turn a shade darker as their dust coating is washed away in the shower.
We pull over to let a commuter train go by.
The rain intensifies. By the time I step off the train in Toronto it has turned into a downpour. The station is under renovation, and water seeps through the temporary roof that covers the platforms, turning the continuous torrent into a regular pat-pat rhythm. The train yard is covered in the rough texture of painted plywood panels that have begun to disintegrate from the wear of water and shoes. The air smells of damp, a mix of hidden rot and a train-full of bags, coats, and bodies exposed to water for the first time in days.
Once inside, Jehanne from NDG and I wander the station looking for the information desk where we’ve been told someone will know what to do with us. But the construction interrupts the sight lines across the larger rooms. It’s hard to tell which are the side corridors and which are the main ones—they’ve all been reduced to more or less equal widths by the same grey plywood panels. It’s disorienting, after passively following a single line for so long, to be deposited in this soggy warren. Finally, the floor starts to rise. Just ahead a high arch comes into view and beyond it the station’s main hall. There’s no more plywood. The walls shine with smooth blue ceramic tiles. About halfway up the right side of the arch is a sign that, in black sans-serif lettering on translucent yellow plastic, reads INFORMATION.
There’s already a crowd at the desk by the time we get there. I recognize a couple of faces, but I’m surprised by how many people there are making the connection to Montreal who I’ve never seen before. It’s clear that the woman at the desk wasn’t told we were coming. She’s stalling until her manager arrives, while at the same time trying to appear to have everything under control so that the more anxious and impatient among us don’t start to truly flip their shit. She exchanges a brief look of sympathy with a woman sitting on a suitcase next to a man who has started swearing at no one in particular in slavic-accented French.
They’re not going to put us up in a hotel. I’m disappointed. I was looking forward to delaying things one more night and arriving clean with a new morning. One more chance to pause and collect myself, each extra hour or minute promising to be exactly the time I need to prepare to occupy the uncertain space waiting for me at the other end of the delay. Instead they’ve hired a van service to take us the rest of the way. The drive should take about five hours, they say, putting our arrival somewhere in the indistinct bottom of the night towards two in the morning.
Leaving Toronto is a blur of lights. No matter the city, leaving by car is always the same sequence of spiralling turns that aren’t meant to bring you any closer to your destination so much as move to larger and larger roads until the final onramp onto a highway with enough mass to break free of the city’s anastomotic surface streets.
The rest of Ontario is a wide separated highway punctuated by neon lights and colourful plastic signs for gas stations and fast-food restaurants. From time to time we pass a sign that gives the distance to upcoming exits, and from the seat next to mine Jehanne from NDG asks, “How far are we from Montreal?” I read out the number, but it’s meaningless to me beyond the fact that each one is smaller than the last.
When we get to Montreal the van leaves the highway in a mirror image of its labyrinthine path out of Toronto—a ritual to untie the knot that has held us together for the duration of the journey. We then continue to turn around construction barricades and one-way streets going the opposite way we need to go. The driver is relying on a GPS navigation system that has clearly not been updated with the latest street closures. We pass glass-and-concrete skyscrapers, nineteenth-century domes, modernist public sculptures, and a century or so’s worth of variations on the row house. Our erratic route sows the city with buried memories that I’ll unearth in the following weeks and months when I pass these hidden caches again during my search for a job and a permanent place to live. They will take me by surprise when suddenly I recognize the façade of a building in an unfamiliar neighbourhood far from the highway. Discovering these orphaned reference points will give the city the feel of an old memory retreating into its last strongholds against the advance of forgetfulness rather than that of a new memory growing out around me. It will be disconcerting, as though I’m remembering that I am something I could never have been.
We’re dropped off in a nondescript parking garage where a representative from the train company is waiting to meet us. The space is tinted orange from the dirty plastic that covers the lights. The scene is fixed in a static blur. All motion has stopped. My last movements to pull my bags from the back of the van are only the final unfolding of a gesture made days ago. We gather around the train company representative who gives us each a taxi voucher and directs us to one of the drivers standing by. While I’m not looking, Jehanne from NDG slips away to meet her ride without saying goodbye.
I follow the chemin Olmsted in its gentle climb through Mount Royal Park. I’ve been on my feet all morning looking at apartments. As the path curves along the hill’s undulating relief, I realize that I have nowhere near the energy left to complete the loop. The sudden exhaustion arouses an instinct to retreat into the familiarity of home, but the word only hangs there flapping in the wind with no object at the end of its reach. All that’s left is the soreness in my muscles, my feet’s flexing arches, and the creaking joints down the left side of my body that never got all their range of motion back after a bicycle accident. At some point just ahead, I’ll have to turn around and go back the way I came.
Standing still in a moment of indecision, I see the train for the first time as a recollection of the past. Then—and each time after—when I retrace the route, the memories add up to just a little more than expected, spilling over the edges provisionally laid at either end. Each time there’s a new surplus of understanding that reaches out in the tantalizing suggestion of a path towards a final coherence. Each time there’s a flickering trace of that first moment of afterwards—the smell of the fallen leaves that haven’t yet had time to decompose, the sound of the wind rustling through the dusty canopy slowly collapsing in pine needles and whirligig maple seeds across the crushed gravel path that leaves white chalk marks around my boots’ black heels. I can see myself in stereoscope stepping forward—onto the train and through the park. Each step is a turning point, no thicker than the ash trees’ borer beetle–eaten leaves, fragile and just about to fall, waiting for the last fissure between branch and stem. Pulled tight. At ease. Nothing left to outpace. Quivering with the pain of anticipation for the right moment to break.
This space that we opened up—me on my end, you on yours—heals much faster for you who are content to run your fingertips lightly over the rough fibres knitting together across the gap. As for me, I can’t help but pick at the wound. I take too much comfort in the stinging pain around its reddened edges. Even when I close my eyes, I can feel the outline. I forget whether the emptiness it contains is supposed to represent you or me. It never was particularly effective as a symbol. But through it I can reach back and hold you tighter than I ever would have dared, tighter than your body could stand, well beyond any force my muscles could exert. As long as I keep at it the healing is never cumulative, the wound never closes, one corner always open to the wind.
Gregory Sides lives in Montreal, where he works as a freelance writer and editor. This is his first published story. |
tickets taken & purses checked; here we go. the stadium is packed with bloodied players, band nerds, wild mascots, and furious fans. and if you look beyond the lights, the towering goalposts, to the darkness looking back: tombstones, final girls, ghosts, and giants. even a dinosaur or two. there’s more to this game than a helmet and ball, more players than those out on the field, more than just heartache in this world. there’s humor and pride as well, closeness and desire, deep nostalgia and endless forward motion.
Super delighted to be featured by the ever-wonderful Mugshot Writers!
The good news keeps coming! I’m so excited that my HAD story “Naked At Last” has just been nominated for the Best Microfiction anthology!
Oh man! I’m super honored and excited to announce that my spooky mermaid story, “Hold Your Breath,” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Uncharted Magazine!
Holy smokes, I’m in love with this cover for AND IF THAT MOCKINGBIRD DON’T SING! I’m so excited to have a story included in this anthology and can’t wait to read everyone else’s work. If you’re interested too, you can preorder your own copy right here.
Title drop! I absolutely love this cover hint from Alternating Current for their anthology: AND IF THAT MOCKINGBIRD DON’T SING: PARENTING STORIES GONE SPECULATIVE. I’m so honored to have a story included in this anthology and can’t wait for preorders to become available!
Can’t wait to see my story “Each Droplet of Blood” published with Alternating Current‘s anthology PARENTING STORIES GONE SPECULATIVE (edited by the wonderful Hannah Grieco!). My person and I are childless by choice, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been in childcare roles before. It was such a pleasure and a challenge to write a story inspired by my experiences caring for my young niece.
I’m so excited and honored to have a story on the shortlist for Fractured Lit’s Ghost, Fable, & Fairy Tale Prize! Can’t wait to read the stories behind these stellar titles!
Man, it’s been a strange spring this year. The ice crackling apart here in Ithaca, cicadas screaming into the world, vaccination relief at last, and now this: my and my person’s first (and hopefully forever) house that’s taking us back to beautiful Baltimore.
My favorite part of the new house is, of course, the new writing desk. (Can’t wait till it arrives!) Here’s to more stories in the world and the spaces that serve as their threshold!
It’s such an honor to have my short story “The Angel Finger” shortlisted for the 2020 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize, judged by the fabulous Alexander Chee! Look for it up with CRAFT this October!
First Place—Jinwoo Chong: “Ariel”
Second Place—Rachel Pollon: “Yo Te Veo”
Third Place—Elie Piha: “Mule”
Jane Baskin: “Caprice”
Andrea Eberly: “The Portrait of Venus”
Temim Fruchter: “Viduy”
Puloma Ghosh: “Natalya”
Alejandro Heredia: “_____”
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson: “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse”
Michelle Lee: “jump!”
K.C. Mead-Brewer: “The Angel Finger”
Deborah Schupack: “Bird’s Eye View” (withdrawn)
Flavia Stefani: “The Division of Bad News”
Meg Todd: “My Father’s Wife”
Tian Yi: “Body Language”
I’m bonkers excited that my short story “The Hidden People” was selected by Andrew Sean Greer for CutBank Magazine’s 2020 Montana Prize in Fiction!
I’m so honored to be a finalist for the Best of the Net 2019 anthology! Check out my shortlisted story “The Hunted” with The Cincinnati Review. And get a look at all the fabulous contributors and other finalists here:
I keep pinching myself, but it appears to be true: my story “The Daddy Thing” is one of Electric Literature’s most-read stories of the entire decade! I can’t believe I have a story on the same list as giants like Kelly Link, Angela Carter, Ted Chiang, Jesmyn Ward, Viet Thanh Ngyuen, Amy Hempel, and Karen Russell.
I’ll keep pinching myself — maybe eventually one of them will take. Until then, check out the full list here:
Check out this truly gorgeous end-of-year list that includes my story “The Daddy Thing”! (from the marvelous Eugenia Triantafyllou!!)
The marvelous Mr. Bear recently performed my short story “Horse Girl” (Joyland Magazine) for her radio show Violet Hour Saloon/The Secret Lives of Stuffed Animals. Click here to give it a listen.
I’m so thrilled and honored to have my tiny story “The Sweethearts” nominated by Pidgeonholes for the 2020 Best Microfiction anthology!
Exciting news! I’ve got a tiny horror story coming out in X-R-A-Y‘s upcoming Bone Yard issue with this absolute dream of a line-up. Check it out this October 25th!
I’ll be participating in this year’s THE POEMING: The Peril of Pike!
Every year in October, to celebrate the spooky season and found poetry, a giant squad of writers uses one genre novelist’s oeuvre to write found poems! Each poet works with one title from the author and posts their found poems to the group tumblr during October—one a day from each participant. This October we’ll be using novels by Christopher Pike to write weird new poems.
I was assigned the final book in Pike’s Remember Me trilogy: The Last Story. I must confess, I’ve never really written poetry before — I’ve always been a prose writer, even as a kid — and I’ve never read anything by Pike before, either. An October of firsts!
If you’d like to join in on THE POEMING and/or just read what weirdness comes of all this, check out these Tumblrs:
My poeming page: https://kcmeadbrewer.tumblr.com/
It’s my great pleasure and honor to announce that my story “The Hunted” has been nominated by Cincinnati Review for 2019’s Best of the Net anthology!
Best Small Fictions 2019 is officially available for preorder! It’s such an honor to have work included in this fabulous anthology alongside authors like Carmen Maria Machado, Christopher Gonzalez, Kristen Arnett, Chaya Bhuvaneswar, and Christine Schutt.
It’s official! I’m now reading fiction submissions for the marvelous Cotton Xenomorph!
Send me your weirdos & your darlings. I’ll be reading them with a cup of tea.
I miss Barrelhouse Magazine’s #WriterCamp already! Such a tremendous honor getting to write and hang with these incredible authors and editors.
Super excited to finally have my copy of Paper Darts Vol. 8, featuring my story “Things Overheard through a Wall” alongside so many fantastic stories and beautiful works of art.
I’m honored to announce that my story “The Joke” with matchbook has been selected for inclusion in 2019’s Best Small Fictions anthology. My story will be featured alongside the work of authors like Carmen Maria Machado, Amelia Gray, Kristen Arnett, Chaya Bhuvaneswar, and many others.
And check out this gorgeous cover!
I am thrilled to announce that I’ve now officially joined 7×7‘s editorial team! This ekphrastic collaboration magazine has lots of exciting changes going on this year and I’m honored to be part of the transition.
Check out some of the magazine’s terrific stories right here. (I had the pleasure of playing 7×7’s collaborative game with artist Jenna Bao in the fall of 2017. Check out our story “The Devil and the Doorknob” right here.)
So excited & honored to be part of the latest issue of The McNeese Review! My short story “The Three Snake-Leaves” was one of the first I wrote while at Clarion and it’s such a thrill seeing it featured beside the work of powerhouses like poet Maggie Smith and fellow Clarion grad David Armstrong. Get an eyeful of this fabulous cover art:
Clarion 2018 graduates Daniela Tomova and Ashlee Lhamon performed fresh short fiction at the first-ever night of the Terran Lemons Reading Series (hosted by fellow Clarion grad Eliza Ruslander) at the Topos Bookstore Cafe in NYC. (photo courtesy of the marvelous Daniela and her Martin)
The marvelous Mr. Bear recently performed my short story “The Daddy-Thing” (Electric Literature) for her radio show Violet Hour Saloon/The Secret Lives of Stuffed Animals. Click here to give it a listen.
I’m so thrilled to announce that my story, “It’s Shaped Like a Grin, They Say” (CHEAP POP), has been selected for inclusion in the Best Micro Fiction 2019 anthology! Also, my story “The Hunted” has been nominated by The Cincinnati Review for 2019’s Best Small Fictions!
I am honored to announce that several of my stories have been nominated for awards this season:
- CHEAP POP nominated my flash story “It’s Shaped Like a Grin, They Say” for inclusion in the Best Micro Fictions anthology.
- matchbook nominated my flash story “The Joke” for both the Pushcart Prize and inclusion in the Best Small Fictions anthology.
- Modern Language Studies nominated my short story “To Unweave a Rainbow” for the Pushcart Prize.
Oh yeah, and I’m also turning 30 this upcoming Monday! Time for cake!
I’m so excited to announce that my flash story, “It’s Shaped Like a Grin, They Say,” has been nominated by CHEAP POP for Best Micro Fictions!
Check out the story here.
Don’t forget to check out the latest issue of Modern Language Studies, featuring my short story “To Unweave a Rainbow.” They haven’t updated their website yet, but the latest issue MAPS is now available. Also be on the lookout for the latest in their podcast series, The Sidebar, wherein Fiction Editor Patrick Henry interviews me about my writing process, magical realism, and flash fiction. As a bonus, I also perform a brief excerpt of my story.
For those who missed it, Writers & Words hosts a new reading of at least four authors on the second Tuesday of every month. It’s a terrific opportunity to hear local voices and meet other readers and writers. |
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QuickBooks File Doctor is basically a simple file repairing tool that is used to file repair, damaged company file and fix all QuickBooks Error.QuickBooks Error Code 6129 | QuickBooks Error 15222 | QuickBooks Connection Diagnostic Tool | QuickBooks Install Diagnostic Tool
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Have you experienced QuickBooks Error 6129 while accessing the company file? No worries as you can get all the relevant fixes in this post.QuickBooks Error 15241 | QuickBooks Error 179 | QuickBooks Error 108
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QuickBooks Error Code 9000 appears while attempting to send payroll data. To troubleshoot the same, go through this article to get instant fixes.
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QuickBooks Error 12007 mainly occurs as a result of general Internet connection failure. Error 12007 QuickBooks typically occurs when some computer security settings blocking to download QuickBooks or Payroll updates.
QuickBooks For MAC support will be available only till May 31, 2019 Intuit has announced it. Here is the alternative for QuickBooks for MAC.
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QuickBooks Update Error 15241 is a commonly encountered error, which is seen while you open the QuickBooks payroll function.
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When the QuickBooks Error 12152 shows up, the first thing to do is ensuring that your internet connection is on. If it is, you should quickly connect to an expert on QB Enterprise Support to get assistance.
QuickBooks Error Code 15102: Failed to reset update. This error mostly occurred when a user download payroll update or try to update QuickBooks Desktop software.
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QuickBooks Error Code 6000 304 happens when a user tries to open a QB company file but fails to access it and an error message pops up.
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QuickBooks Error C=1304 can be caused by an issue with the CD or the CD drive. It may also be caused by a damaged.Net component. Learn how to fix.
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QuickBooks update error 1328 is also known as FDI server error that can be appeared while updating, installing, uninstalling, or repairing the software. Additionally, the error 1328 will show up on your screen in various ways, yet the company file reference of the same issue resembles C: \ config.msi \.
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QuickBooks Connection Diagnostic Tool helps you to fix network issues, technical errors, etc. To get the complete details, read the whole post
QuickBooks error code 6000, 83 comes under the -6000 series errors. This error can often cause severe damage to the company file and the system as well. The error appears with an error message stating: “An error occurred when QuickBooks tries to access the company file.
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QuickBooks sometimes Not Able to Export to Excel from QuickBooks Desktop. This may be caused because your software might not be able to recognize Excel that is installed in your desktop
QuickBooks Connection Diagnostic Tool is a useful tool that helps QuickBooks desktop users to fix an assortment of issues related to multiple network and company file corruptions. This robust tool finds and fixes connection errors between QuickBooks, company files and the database manager.Intuit launched a tool named QuickBooks file doctor tool, keeping in mind the errors that users generally face while working on the QuickBooks accounting software. This tool has been integrated in QuickBooks 2016 and later versions by Intuit.
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If your Cash App Payment Failed then it is the highest possibility that you must have entered incorrect details such as PIN, name, etc. Cash apps easily allow its users to send and receive money through the secure network but when there are some technical errors and unusual transactions occur then the Cash app automatically fails your payment. Click on the link below to resolve this issue with the easiest steps.
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Can I Sutton Bank For Cash App? The Cash app does not allow users to link sutton with the Cash app. In order to use Cash app, users are required to link their bank details in the account for start doing money transferring and money sending services. If you want more information for sutton bank then make sure you click on the link mentioned here. Users can use the Cash app by just entering bank details in the app.
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QuickBooks Error 15106 can appear when you are attempting to download the payroll subscription. Go through this blog to resolve the error code 15106.
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Can You Dispute A Cash App Transaction If Made A Payment Mistakenly To Someone?Sometimes, due to a wide variety of technical reasons, you might pay to the merchant wrongly from your Cash App card. In such a case, you have to file a dispute if you are looking to get the complete refund of your money. For more details, you need to understand Can You Dispute A Cash App Transaction or not.
QuickBooks Error Code 6073. Due to this error the QB users usually not able to open the company file. And get an error message on their display. The image as shown below is similar which appears on your desktop. Also Read: QuickBooks Update Error 1328 | QuickBooks Error Code H303 | QuickBooks Error H101.
Now that you know, why this QuickBooks error code 6094, 0 is encountered, you need to fix the error. Make sure to perform the required steps we have listed below, in order to get rid of the error.Now that you know, why this QuickBooks error code 6094, 0 is encountered, you need to fix the error. Make sure to perform the required steps we have listed below, in order to get rid of the error. Also Read: QuickBooks Payroll Error 15107 | QuickBooks Error Code 15241 | QuickBooks Error Code 12029.
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QB files get corrupted by this kind of QuickBooks Error Code 1328 occurs in such situation while using QuickBooks. The other reason behind this error is network error that fails your downloading process as incomplete and the installation process is gets incomplete or not done in a well manner.QuickBooks Error Code H303 | QuickBooks Error H101 | QuickBooks Error 6073, -99001.
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You need to Just activate Cash App Card: What are the benefits?However, to activate the application's cash card, you must activate it consequently in the same way that you activated a bank debit card when you first received it. The Cash Card App offers discounts for transactions made with your card in a selected category of activate cash app card your choice, such as a 10% refund at Chick-fil-A or Whole Foods or at all cafes. To find out more, you need to visit our website. https://www.cash-app-helps.net/blog/how-to-activate-cash-app-card/
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• From the Activity section of your Cash App account, you have to tap on the payment.• Furthermore, you have to tap the three dots and then tap on the ‘Refund’ option.• Finally, you should hit the ‘OK’ option and you will be able to apply for a Cash App Refund.• https://www.contact-mail-support.com/blog/get-a-refund-on-cash-app/
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After imposing tariffs, he denied entering into a trade war, saying the "trade war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S." He said that the U.S. has a trade deficit of $500 billion a year, with intellectual property (IP) theft costing an additional $300 billion. An August 2019 article in NPR said that while some in the PRC leadership argued for a quick resolution to the trade war in order to save China's economy, others said that the country should push back against the United States and avoid an agreement at all costs. , A 2019 statement by the National Association of Manufacturers stated their opposition to the trade war, calling for a new structure for the U.S.âChina commercial relationship that would eliminate China's unfair trade practices and level the playing field for manufacturers in the United States. How will it help Americans? ", "Donald Trump's top 10 campaign promises", "How 'The Donald' could incite a trade war", "How much has the US lost from China's IP theft? Governments around the world have taken steps to address some of the damage caused by the economic conflict. Exports: $120.3 billion; imports: $539.5 billion; US goods trade deficit: $419.2 billion, –TRADE IN SERVICES with China (exports and imports) totalled an estimated $77.3 billion in 2018. "We will make great progress together!" Differ Over Agricultural Purchases Trump Boasted About", "Trump Goads China and Plays Down Chances of a Trade Deal Before 2020", "Trump sees slowing Chinese growth pressuring Beijing on trade", "Japan's holdings of US Treasuries near two-year peak", "Trump Slaps 10% Tariff on Remaining $300 Billion in Goods Coming from China", "China media says U.S. 'destroying international order', after currency-manipulator branding", "Trump administration labels China a currency manipulator", "Trump pressured Mnuchin to label China 'currency manipulator,' a move he had previously resisted", "China tells companies to stop buying US agricultural goods", "U.S. farmers suffer 'body blow' as China slams door on farm purchases", "China's economy worsens in July, industrial growth at 17-year low as trade war escalates", "Trump's Trade War with China is about to Hit Home", "Analysis | Trump delays tariffs to help consumers after saying tariffs would not hurt consumers", "China retaliates with tariffs on $75 billion of US goods", "Trump Asserts He Can Force U.S. Companies to Leave China", "Trump will raise tariff rates on Chinese goods in response to trade war retaliation", "Trump on trade war: China wants to negotiate and we will be 'getting back to the table, "Aides Admit Trump Was Faking Those "Phone Calls" With China", "A rattled Trump scrambles for victories ahead of election", "Business groups urge Trump to delay tariff increases", "Trump faults companies over management as tariffs set to take effect", "China starts to impose additional tariffs on some US goods", "Steep new US, China tariffs go into effect, as companies warn of higher consumer prices", "U.S.-China Trade Talks to Resume, but New Tariffs Could Complicate Them", "USTR confirms ministerial level China trade talks in 'coming weeks, "U.S. Department of Commerce Issues Preliminary Antidumping Duty Determinations on Fabricated Structural Steel from Canada, China, and Mexico", "China exempts 16 American products from additional tariffs â here's the full list", "Trump delays tariff hikes by two weeks in 'good will' gesture to China", "Trump Advisers Consider Interim China Deal to Delay Tariffs", "Trump team rushes to find escape hatch for China tariffs", "WSJ News Exclusive | China Seeks to Narrow Trade Talks With U.S. in Bid to Break Deadlock", "Hardwood industry pleads for relief from Trump trade war", U.S. expands blacklist to include China's top AI startups ahead of trade talks, "U.S., China Reach Tentative 'Phase One' Trade Pact", "Trump Reaches 'Phase 1' Deal With China and Delays Planned Tariffs", https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-14/china-wants-more-talks-before-signing-trump-s-phase-one-deal, "å¤äº¤é¨ï¼ä¸ç¾å¨è¾¾æç»è´¸åè®®é®é¢ä¸æ¯ä¸è´ç", "China's GDP growth grinds to near 30-year low as tariffs hit production", China confirms 'phase one' trade deal with US, "U.S. and China agree to partial trade deal, but few details are released", "Despite the US-China trade agreement, key details are unclear", "Trump Says He Will Sign Phase-One Trade Deal With China on Jan. 15", "U.S. factory sector in deepest slump in more than 10 years", "US and China sign Phase One trade deal, but experts are sceptical - business live", "U.S. and China Sign Phase One of Trade Deal", https://www.iatp.org/blog/202003/covid-19-and-us-china-trade-and-investment, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-phase-1/china-likely-considering-disaster-clause-in-phase-1-deal-with-u-s-global-times-idUSKBN2000HL', https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-trump-china-trade-war/, "U.S.-China Deal Could Upend the Way Nations Settle Disputes", "In U.S.-China Phase 1 trade deal, enforcement may end in 'We quit, "The U.S. trade war slowed China's 2019 economic growth to its weakest pace in nearly 30 years", "China's economic growth hits 30-year low", "U.S. trade deficit narrows in 2019 for first time in six years", "The US lifts tariffs on Chinese face masks and other medical supplies amid coronavirus outbreak | Markets Insider", "U.S. excludes Chinese face masks, medical gear from tariffs as coronavirus spreads", "As US-China trade war turns two, superpower relations hit 'alarming' point", "China a Bright Spot for U.S. in Gloomy Global Trade Picture", "WTO finds Washington broke trade rules by imposing tariffs on China", "US tightens trade restrictions on Chinese chipmaker SMIC", "China Loosens Foreign Auto Rules, in Potential Peace Offering to Trump", "Stop Calling China's Xi Jinping 'President,' U.S. Panel Says", "Facing trade war with U.S., China's Xi renews vow to open markets, import more", "Trade War With China Heats Up, But Tariff Effects Are Already Rippling Across U.S.", "A look at the impact of the US-China trade war on consumers", "U.S. details up to $14 billion in new aid for farmers", "Farmers' Frustration With Trump Grows as U.S. The United States has signed a partial trade agreement with China. The US and China have been slugging it out since Trump slapped heavy tariffs on imported steel and aluminium items from China in March last year, and China responded by imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of dollars worth of American imports. Several Asian governments have instituted stimulus measures to address damage from the trade war, though economists said this may not be effective. He argues, "It is also a reflection of the rise of populism, isolationism, nationalism and protectionism almost everywhere in the world, including in the US. , In a November 2018 testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Jennifer Hillman, a professor of practice at Georgetown University Law School, said that United States "ought to be bringing a big and bold case, based on a coalition of countries working together to take on China. , Economists at financial firm Morgan Stanley expressed uncertainty about how the trade war would end, but warned in June 2019 that it could lead to a recession. , In August 2019, Roger Johnson of the National Farmers Union â representing about 200,000 family farmers, ranchers and fishers â stated that the trade war was creating problems for American farmers, specifically highlighting the fall in soybean exports from the U.S. to China. As a result, officials in the Trump administration were, by early 2018, taking steps to prevent Chinese state-controlled companies from buying American technology companies and were trying to stop American companies from handing over their key technologies to China as a cost of entering their market. ", According to articles in Politifact, most mainstream economists said that "consumers are the primary victims of tariffs" and most economists said that they carry "more risks than benefits". That's 18% less than 2018's $418.9 billion deficit. Escalates China Fight", "Bulk of Trump's U.S. farm aid goes to biggest and wealthiest...", "Trump administration unveils details of $16 billion aid package for farmers hurt by trade war, bad weather", "Farm-Equipment Sales Plunge Most Since 2016 in Trade-War Fallout", "US-China trade war is hurting farmers, but they're sticking with Trump", "U.S. Watchdog to Investigate Trump's Farm Bailout Program", "NRF Warns USTR Tariffs Would Cost Americans Billionsï¼Releases New Study on Consumer Impact", "Furniture Retailers Start to Feel Tariff Pain More Acutely", "Latest Trump tariffs could hit consumers with higher prices", "Global markets take fright as Trump ramps up US-China trade war", "World Economic Outlook, April 2019 Growth Slowdown, Precarious Recovery", "China is blunting the blows of Trump's trade war and just grabbed an even bigger share of global exports", "This chart from Goldman Sachs shows tariffs are raising prices for consumers and it could get worse", "Tariffs on China don't hurt Americans? , On August 14, 2019, the Dow dropped 800 points, partly caused by increasing trade tensions between the U.S. and China. The growth of trade accelerated after China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, with the US and China becoming one another's most important trading partners. "'I Am a Tariff Man': The Power of Populist Foreign Policy Rhetoric under President Trump. All such attempted legisl… The Wall Street Journal, citing Trade Data Monitor to show that China is the leading source of many key medical supplies, raised concerns that US tariffs on imports from China threaten imports of medical supplies into the United States. September 1: New USA and Chinese tariffs previously announced went into effect at 12:01 pm EST. This is against international rules that we have all agreed upon in the WTO. In China, the trade war contributed to a slowdown in the rate of economic and industrial output growth, which had already been on a decline. "Economic and Trade Agreement Between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China," Page 2. , In an April 2018 article in Forbes, Harry G. Broadman, a former U.S. trade negotiator, said that while he agreed with the Trump administration's basic position that the Chinese did not abide by fair, transparent and market-based rules for global trade, he disagreed with its means of unilaterally employing tariffs and said that the administration should instead pursue a coalition-based approach. August 23: Trump tweeted that he "hereby ordered" American companies to "immediately start looking for an alternative to China". ", The Chinese government argues that the US government's real goal is to stifle China's growth, and that the trade war has had a negative effect on the world. On December 26, the Dow Jones recorded a rise of 1000 points after, according to Reuters, the publication of a report that documented strong holiday sales, although the major indexes were still down more than 10% through the month of December 2018 amid the trade war. Over half are abroad, Nothing alarming in Rajinikanth's reports, says hospital, Salman Khan turns 55: Rare photos of Dabangg Khan, Year-ender 2020: Viral social media challenges that helped netizens beat lockdown blues, Man uses excavator to 'fly' aircraft, video leaves netizens enthralled, LIVE | India vs Australia, 2nd Test Day 2, David Warner no certainty to return for third India Test: Justin Langer, Sense of permanence is the cause of the beginning of a downfall, Neha Dhupia shows how to amp up your simple hairdo, Year in review 2020: Flagship smartphones. “Negotiations have not broken down,” Vice Premier Liu He, China’s chief negotiator in the talks, said Saturday. Pants on Fire", "US consumer sentiment falls to 89.8 in August for biggest monthly drop since 2012", "Tariff Uncertainty Weighs on Small Businesses", "Manufacturing sector contracts for the first time in nearly a decade", "Trump Says China Will Suffer as Data Shows Trade War Hurting U.S.", "U.S. Manufacturing Slowed in August in Latest Sign of Economic Weakness", "Trump's trade war has killed 300,000 jobs", "Manufacturers Cut Spending as Trade War Dents Confidence", "UN Sees U.S.-China Trade War Hurting Both Nations' Economies", "US manufacturers hit harder than China's in trade war", "After a tough 2019, China's factories face more headwinds next year", "Trump Administration Denying More Tariff-Exemption Requests", "China Trade War Didn't Boost U.S. Manufacturing Might", "Stocks move lower as trade war anxiety lingers", "Asian markets rally after China's trade comments soothe nerves", "Dow up more than 1,000 points in biggest one-day gain ever", "Dow closes down 800 points as U.S.-China trade, flattening yield curve spook investors", "Dow notches record point surge in dramatic rebound", "Dow tumbles 800 points after bond market flashes a recession warning", "Markets Right Now: Markets Shudder as Trade Tensions Flare", "Trump says U.S. companies 'hereby ordered' to start leaving China, both nations boost tariffs; Dow down more than 600 points; president calls Fed chair 'enemy, "Global stocks end 2019 near record highs, dollar slides", "The stock market boomed in 2019. , In April 2018, China announced that it would eliminate laws that required global automakers and shipbuilders to work through state-owned partners. In a report earlier this year, the IMF noted that the US-China trade tension was one factor that contributed to a “significantly weakened global expansion” late last year, as it cut its global growth forecast for 2019. August 28: Americans for Free Trade, an umbrella group for 161 trade associations across numerous industries. President of China and General Secretary Xi Jinping reiterated those pledges, affirming a desire to increase imports, lower foreign-ownership limits on manufacturing and expand protection to intellectual property, all central issues in Trump's complaints about their trade imbalance. Though the trade war led to higher employment in certain industries, tariffs led to a net loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. ", "Trump's new attack on the Chinese economy, explained", "China's Intellectual Property Theft Must Stop", "How much has the US lost from China's intellectual property theft? , Minxin Pei, a scholar of Chinese politics at California's Claremont McKenna College, argued that Mr. Xi's ambition for China's revival as a worldpower had been revealed as hollow through the continuing trade dispute. In 1991, China only accounted for 1% of total imports to the United States. ", "Trump plays down US-China trade war concerns: 'When you're $500bn down you can't lose, "Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross: China tariffs amount to only 0.3% of US GDP", "Trump's trade war with China will be worth the fight", "President Donald J. Trump is Confronting China's Unfair Trade Policies", "The United States is finally confronting China's economic aggression", "What Is Intellectual Property, and Does China Steal It? , Investor uncertainty due to the trade war has caused turbulence in the stock market. China's imports from the United States have failed to catch up to pre-trade war levels, running 16 percent lower than at the same point in 2017. , James Andrew Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that what the United States needed from China was a commitment to observes the rules and norms of international trade and to extend reciprocal treatment to U.S. companies in China. May 12: The Chinese government announced exemptions for tariffs on 79 additional US goods. Farm bankruptcies have increased, and agricultural equipment manufacturer Deere & Company cut its profit forecast twice between January and August 2019. US exports to China directly and indirectly … The US and China voiced their commitment late Monday to carrying out their phase one trade deal, as tensions between the two global superpowers continue to escalate. The White House stated that both parties will "immediately begin negotiations on structural changes with respect to forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers, cyber intrusions and cyber theft.". Accessed Oct. 19, 2020. The analysis also found that average American tariffs on Chinese goods increased from 3.1% in 2017 to 24.3% by August 2019. The coalition includes the National Retail Federation, the Consumer Technology Association, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, the Toy Association and American Petroleum Institute, among others. Scott Paul, president of the associated Alliance for American Manufacturing, has also supported tariffs, and opposed proposals to reverse them in light of the coronavirus pandemic. , The Chilean vice minister for trade, Rodrigo Yanez, told CNBC that "It's very important for Chile that a trade deal between the U.S. and China is signed soon". , Since the 1980s, President Trump has frequently advocated tariffs to reduce the U.S. trade deficit and promote domestic manufacturing, saying the country was being "ripped off" by its trading partners, and imposing tariffs was a major plank of his presidential campaign. They're cheating, they're subsidizing their product. These tariffs applied to an even broader range of traded goods — estimated at about $300 billion. , In the wake of the 2020 Galwan Valley skirmish, Indian commentators made references to the US-China trade war as part of their overall analysis of the effect that the skirmish would have on the future relations between India and China. , The trade war has indirectly caused some companies to go bankrupt. Warner said pig producers will likely feel the effect of the new tariff, though it's not yet clear exactly how. agriculture. Table reflects only those months for which there was trade. , A November 2019 article in the Financial Times said that since August 2019 the trade war hit US manufacturers harder than China's. The Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the U.S.âChina trade deficit, and that the Chinese government requires transfer of American technology to China. The European commissioner for trade Cecilia Malmström said "We cannot let any country force our companies to surrender this hard-earned knowledge at its border. 1. For all the latest Explained News, download Indian Express App. Other Democratic senators who supported Trump's actions include Bob Menendez, Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden Bipartisan support from the House of Representatives for Trump's actions came from Nancy Pelosi.
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Share this with Twitter Commercial Yes Paid memberships are where things get interesting Shop There’s also no smartphone app, and in 2018, that’s a red flag. It just shows that the website is a little outdated — or maybe I’m just biased and AdultFriendFinder is simply aimed toward a crowd that’s not obsessed with social media. Not that you’d want the person standing behind you in line or on the train to look over your shoulder and see this site, but still. You can open the site on your phone’s browser if you really need to, but overall it’s pretty inconvenient.
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In honor of 40 years of Sesame Street, today’s Dispatch is brought to you by the letters L, W, O, and P (stands for life with out parole). And by the numbers 13, 17, and 2,574. And 73. And 9. And also 2. And by many, many other numbers that make you wonder how a roomful of people who went to law school presumably to avoid doing math could possibly spend two hours in a protracted exercise of freewheeling public accounting.
For the first hour, the court will do the math on Terrance Jamar Graham, who was 17 when he was sentenced to life without parole for violating the terms of his probation for an earlier armed robbery conviction. The second hour is spent on Joe Sullivan, 13 when he was sentenced to LWOP for allegedly raping a 72-year-old woman.
The estimated number of juveniles serving life without parole in the United States is 2,574. The number of prisoners given life without parole for nonhomicide offenses is 111—77 of them are in Florida. Nine is the number of people serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed at age 13. And two is the number of 13-year-olds serving the sentence for nonhomicide offenses. Oh, and one is the number of countries that allows life without parole for teenagers.
This matters because, for the purposes of determining whether a punishment is cruel or unusual under the Eighth Amendment, it becomes very important to squabble over constitutional long division. Or as the Count might say, “Ah, ah, ah …”
Everything that happens today pivots on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in a 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, in which the court barred the death penalty for juveniles because teens are less able to control their impulses and resist peer pressure and thus are less culpable for their misdeeds. The question is whether, as Chief Justice John Roberts keeps insisting, Roper stands for the proposition that “death is different” or—as advocates for the teen offenders keep urging—for the idea that “adolescents are different.”
Now, as Cookie Monster well knows, asking questions is a very good way to find out about things. (Someone should tell Justice Clarence Thomas.) So the real question for the court today is how to find LWOP for teens to be a bad idea without inviting a wholesale review of all sentencing law.
Bryan S. Gowdy, representing Graham, immediately gets into a math fight with the chief justice, who insists that if 38 states allow the LWOP sentence, it can’t be all that unusual. Gowdy counts differently, saying that “if 31 States that have allowed it and never imposed it, that’s evidence that it’s very unusual.”
Justice Antonin Scalia looks perturbed: “So when a sentence is imposed rarely, it becomes unconstitutional?”
This is when we learn the Song of the Day on Sesame Street, and today it’s “Where Do You Draw the Line on Childhood?” Sing along if you know it.
Sings Scalia, “Where do you draw the line? At 21?”
Responds Gowdy: “We draw the line at 18.”
Justice Samuel Alito chimes in, asking whether that line at 18 can be drawn for “someone who is a month short of his 18th birthday who commits the most horrible series of nonhomicide offenses?”
Roberts asks if a sentence of 50 years would be constitutional. Scalia wonders whether you can sentence a juvenile to serve until the year before his life expectancy? How about two years before his life expectancy? Gowdy replies that “only life without parole makes the unequivocal assessment that the adolescent cannot be returned to civil society.”
Here is where the chief justice makes his pitch for eschewing any categorical rules and, instead, for “incorporating consideration of the juvenile’s status into the proportionality review.” If the courts could just assess whether punishments are out of proportion to the crime, there would be no need for drawing a categorical line at some arbitrary age. And proportionality review is already built into Eighth Amendment challenges. This will be Roberts’ compromise proposal today: Let the courts consider the age of the juvenile on a “case by case basis.” Which kind of assumes judges don’t already do that, but any co-operation is better than none.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asks whether educational and vocational training are available to the LWOP kids. No. Ginsburg asks about the terms of their incarceration. Replies Gowdy: “They are going to stay in their cell and die there.”
Alito, visibly dismayed, points out that “some of the actual cases in which this sentence has been imposed in Florida involve situations that are so horrible that I couldn’t have imagined them if I hadn’t actually seen them.” He describes them in detail. They are horrible. Gowdy replies that case-by-case evaluation at sentencing just doesn’t work “because you can only make the determination” about an adolescent’s possibility of being rehabilitated “later in life.” That’s why you need parole.
Scalia points out that Gowdy assumes the only purpose of punishment is deterrence, “so once that’s no longer a problem, we should let this person out. But one of the purposes is retribution—punishment for just perfectly horrible actions.”
Says Gowdy: “Thirty years would have been a lot of retribution for Terrance Graham.”
Ginsburg asks whether under the Roberts system “you’d have to create a new procedure that does not exist in Florida for proportionality review.”
Scott Makar is Florida’s solicitor general, and he will argue both cases. Unfortunately he’s something of a mumbler, which forces the court’s senior membership to serially bark at him to speak louder and slower and another justice to teach him how to crank up the lectern. Roberts beats on him awhile for proposing a categorical rule as rigid as his opponents—that LWOP is always constitutional. Then Justice John Paul Stevens asks whether Florida has a “minimum age when a juvenile can be transferred to adult procedures.”
Ginsburg notes that the judge in the Graham case far exceeded even the punishment recommended by the prosecutor. “This judge, I think, surprised everyone in the courtroom.”
Now it’s Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s turn to sing a round of “Where Do You Draw the Line on Adulthood.” She asks Makar whether it “categorically violates the Eighth Amendment for a 10-year-old to be sentenced to life without parole?” Then she starts the chorus: “If 10 is too early, why isn’t 14, 16, or 18?”
She also takes him to task for exaggerating the violence of Graham’s crimes: “You are not seriously suggesting that the crimes at issue here are comparable to a rape or a permanent infliction of serious disability that Justice Alito spoke of?” (He is.)
Asks Ginsburg: “Do we know why Graham’s co-perpetrators’ sentences were dramatically lower” than his? (Because they helped the prosecution.)
Scalia makes another pitch for doing away with categorical rules, but Ginsburg insists that line drawing is not a sin: “Florida does recognize the difference between an adult and a minor. And you have to make that line. Teenagers can’t drink, can’t drive, can’t marry.”
To the extent you’ve tuned in today to play Read the Tea Leaves With Kennedy, here’s a clue. He says, “My initial instinct is that the difference in life with parole and life without parole is just not a factor in deterrence. … What is the state’s interest in keeping the defendant in custody for the rest of his life if he has been rehabilitated and is no longer a real danger?”
Muses Scalia: “I guess there is also no empiricism on whether the committed juvenile feels a lot better knowing that he will get out when he is 75 years old than he would feel knowing that he was there for life.”
Makar says that speaking of empiricism, he has his doubts about the other side. He points out that his opponents “are asking that a constitutional rule be established on studies that have just been generated literally over this summer and have not been subject to meaningful review.”
Before he can begin his rebuttal, Gowdy stumbles into Round Two of Read the Tea Leaves With Kennedy, who muses: “Why does a juvenile have a constitutional right to hope, but an adult does not?”
The Sullivan case proceeds more or less along the same lines as Graham except that what should be the easier case—of the 13-year-old—may be procedurally barred from the high court’s review. But Sullivan’s lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, gives an impassioned performance. He insists that “to state to a child of 13 that you will die in prison is cruel,” and that “if you accept that Florida has adopted life without parole for a child of 13, you also have to accept that they have adopted it for a child of 6 or 5.”
Stevenson is a master of the numbers today. When Justice Stephen Breyer asks him how many nonhomicide convicts under 18 get LWOP, Stevenson says, “One-hundred and eleven.” When Breyer asks how many of the 111 are in Florida, Stevenson says “Seventy seven.” When Breyer asks how many states the others are in, Stevenson says, “Six.”
Breyer will get testy when Makar gets these same numbers wrong in his view. (Makar seems to be counting homicide offenses as nonhomicide offenses.) Breyer then argues that, when dealing with young people, there are some human beings who could make a moral argument against “taking a person’s entire life away.”
Since it appears that several justices believe the Sullivan challenge is procedurally barred, they begin to comfort themselves and Sullivan’s lawyer that the 13-year-old can nevertheless still win by losing if he then brings a new challenge after they decide Graham. Which certainly sounds like there are at least five votes to do something nice for Graham and all the future Grahams of America. Whether that something nice will involve ending life without parole for juveniles or just asking judges to take age into account in ensuring that juvenile sentences are proportional is unclear. At the end of two hours, I think I can count three votes for a case-by-case proportionality review, three votes for a categorical rule, one vote for something I can’t yet identify, one vote I can’t quite discern, and one vote for not asking questions. Does all that add up to five votes for anything? Ah, ah, ah …. You do the math. |
CONTACT@KRISPIERCE.COM BIOGRAPHY INSTAGRAM
Please Scream Inside Your Heart (Demo), 2020
Realtime 3D, custom software, live updating news feeds on vertical display
Interlude (Excerpt), 2019
2 Channel Networked HD Video . 9 Minutes 23 Seconds
User Flair, 2022
Acrylic + enamel on panel, ISBN 1-4391-6734-6, HD loop on commercial display . 19 Min 35 Sec
Boiling a Ship in the Sea (Excerpt), 2017
HD Video . 4 Minutes + Audio Mixtape . 40 minutes
Very Good Work, 2022
Acrylic + Enamel on Canvas . 60 X 60 inches
Almost Baroque (Installation Stills), 2020
6 Channel Networked 4K+ Video, 60fps . 9 Minute 45 Second Loop
Beverly Park 12:01AM 1566870 Polygons, 2019
Computer-Generated Models and Rendering, Archival Pigment Print on Mirror . 48 X 48 inches
Free Food (Excerpt), 2018
Stacked 2 Channel HD Video . 4 minutes 40 seconds
Love Buzz (3UP Installation View), 2019
Computer-Generated Models, H.265 60fps, HD Displays, Media Players . 3 minute 30 second loop
Celebration (Excerpt), 2018
HD Video . 5 minutes
Vatican City 8:30AM 554781 Polygons, 2017
Computer-Generated Models and Rendering, Archival Pigment Print on Dibond . 18 X 24 inches
The Savanah Dance (Excerpt), 2016
HD Video. 5 minutes 25 seconds
Nightclubbing (DEMO), 2017
Real-time 3D, Virtual Reality, Custom Built Bed, Pajamas
HD Video. 5 minute 8seconds
Post Communique, HOMECOMING! Committee
Installation View, Dallas Museum of Art . 2013
Moon Ribbon, 2015
Collaboration w/ Audio X Pierre Krause + Gregory Ruppe
Presented on the Exterior of the Omni Hotel and KXT 91.7 HD Video
Lost Pines (Installation, excerpt), 2016
2 Identical Radios from Mexico and U.S., Radio Transmitter, Music Playlist
Comprising two identical boom boxes, one found in Mexico City the other in Texas, Lost Pines writes a narrative between two friends separated by borders, distance and language through an exchange of songs each responding in sequence to their geographical, historical and cultural identities. This musical narrative is transmitted across a shared radio spectrum as a call and repeat between the two stereos.
Missed Calls (Installation View), 2013
Dot Matrix Printer, Cell Phones, Custom Software . Dimensions Variable
In Response to Missed Calls Dr. Dennis L. Sepper
Professor, Dept. of Philosophy
Professor and Chair, Dept. of Human Sciences in the Contemporary World
University of Dallas
There was not much to see at first as I walked into the exhibit
Missed Calls (January 12 to February 2 at the Reading Room, located across the road from the main gate to Fair Park). The space was starkly white, trimmed in black; on the wall opposite the entrance were three cell phones, arrayed in a line a bit more than five feet above the floor; on the right were three framed computer printouts, each displaying ; in the center of the space was an Epson dot-matrix printer on a pedestal, with fanfold paper spilling over onto the floor. Tech, but certainly not high-tech.
As it turned out, this was only the hub of the exhibit. The
spokes were the electromagnetic signals that communicated with the three cell phones, and they extended out to different locations in the Dallas area where the three phone numbers were posted. My wife in fact noticed one of the postings the previous weekend in the parking lot of Half Price Books on Northwest Highway near Central a bumper sticker attached to a light pole, with the legend
Public Confessional along with one of the phone numbers, in black lettering. A person calling the number would ring one of the three cell phones in the gallery and hear an invitation to leave a message. The message was then transcribed to text by Google Voice and printed out by the Epson in the gallery. The messages will be compiled and bound into a book as an archive of the experiment.
Experiment is exactly the right word, but in what? Kris Pierce, who created the exhibit, remarks that it is part of an investigation of technology and information and its influence on human behavior and quotidian activities. I teach in a program in the human sciences at an area university, and it occurred to me that if a student had proposed this it would have needed approval from the university's Institutional Review Board, to assure that no human beings or their privacy were harmed in the making of the exhibit. That says more about federal regulations than about the work, and since I assume that Mr. Pierce did not have NSF or NIH funding there isn't a problem!
That may sound like my purely individual response, but I think it actually calls attention to the intended framing of the exhibit: the intersection of various human and technical planes of meaning, making, and play. The activity at the hub is the phone's ringing and flashing, a wait, and then the stirring and rattle of the Epson as the printed text emerges and the wide ribbon of paper descends to the ground. Reading the text (on the last day of the exhibit) wasn't easy. The current output, to which I added two calls, was only partially legible because of printer ribbon fatigue, and I had to kneel to look at older and more readable messages: a mix ranging from the nearly sublimely poetic, through the mundane, to the confusing and even the unintelligible. Some people left recipes read from cookbooks; others performed a short act of existential drama or recited lines of poetry; and there were remarks for which I'm sure you just had to be there. Google Voice handled recipes well enough that you might have a chance at whipping up something edible, though
olive oil came out variously as
Ali bro and
all is well, and mesclun greens became
mess coming greens. With the dramatic moments, uttered passionately into the phone (I had a chance to hear some of the voice messages), you wouldn't want to entrust your life's affairs to transcription. The message that Google Voice rendered
Your mother told me you were no put some of the going to let me time and I in July and I just don't know what I'm gonna do you know how much your honor. Hmm I heard as
your mother told me you were a no good son of a gun. You left me pregnant, high and dry, and I just don't know what I'm going to do. You're a rat, YOU'RE A RAT! Not much honor there.
I'm so lonely. Please leave me a message was turned into
I'm sorry I'm running late, please leave me a message. Bye. There was something even more evocative in the printed
the fear of every day, the middle of a clear, my mind can comprehend, than in the spoken
the fear of every day, from the devil that put me here, my mind can't comprehend.
Karen Weiner, who runs the gallery, suggested that there might be some connection to computational linguistics. This strikes me as exactly right, though less as an application or reflection of computational linguistics, or even a critique, than as evidence of what it produces
in the wild. Computational linguistics, to put it as simply as possible, tries to understand the production of human language as a form of computation and then develops algorithms and routines to generate speech or writing in response to input (which can, of course, mean the input of a human being
conversing with a device). Apple's Siri is just one example, and probably everyone has read stories of her comic, absurd, and witty reactions. She is imperfect but improving, since she has ever more sophisticated power of Apple's servers on her side (Siri thus does not work when the phone is not connected by 3- or 4-G or wi-fi). But those anecdotes conceal as much as they reveal, because they are confined to what the speaker wanted and said and what Siri replied. When all is said and done, Apple and the iPhone user want accuracy and efficiency: technical on the one hand, practical on the other. Using an app is a nicely limited task, with clear criteria of success and failure.
Missed Calls has wider scope. It makes us think of who is at the other end of the call and their situation. It makes us wonder about what difference it would make if the bumper sticker suggested not a public confession but (say) participation in an experiment or an invitation to a good time. We expect communications to be ever more instantaneous, but the exhibit actually produces a series of delays, neatly separating for us the various phases of technical transmission and processing. If Google Voice is nearly flawless in producing voice messages from emails, it is obviously still woefully lacking in the other direction. Yet the
errors and glitches in transmission and transcription, when printed, compel us to make sense of the constantly evocative power of ordinary human language. We even struggle to decipher from the faded dot-matrix letter images something that satisfies our desire for meaning and euphony.
Whether the archived messages amount to a work of art may be doubtful. I think of it as more like
work product that, say, artists make as they paint: sketches, daubs of paint adjoined or overlaid to note harmonies and disharmonies of color, photos of the different stages of the composition, and the like. The exhibit itself, taken as a whole, is the thing. The ordinary technology a decade or so out-of-date that is visible stands for the even more ordinary and low-tech human being; the hidden high-technology in the background, the cell transmissions and the cloud computing, show themselves in a decidedly more mundane, fragmentary, and even fragile output. A software developer might look at it all and see an opportunity for improving speed, accuracy, and polish. An artist is more likely to let the process show itself, to make evident the seams where technicians try to seamlessly join machine to machine and technique to technique, with human beings left to fend for themselves.
Missed Calls helps us see the seams and how we are fending.
The Red Telephone (Installation View), 2012
Payphones, custom software, website . Dimensions variable
On The Red Telephone
Terri Thornton // Curator, where is the power
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, 2012
red telephone is the famous hotline that linked the White House via the National Military Command Center with the Kremlin during the Cold War. As a description it might also bring to mind the historical and beloved British phone box. And finally, The Red Telephone is the title of the
summer of love, 1967 pop song by the rock band Love. None of which is lost on artist Kris Pierce, and related or unrelated, it all offers an interesting lens through which to consider his 2012 piece by the same title.
For where is the power, Pierce connects people alienated from one another due to geographical segregation within Fort Worth by placing three red (non)pay phones in key locations throughout the city in his piece titled The Red Telephone. Modified with a wireless transmitter, the phones become public confessionals that, streamed to a web-based station, disclose dialogue, bridging distance and difference while giving power to voice. The Red Telephone, 2012 is a performative work offering individuals the opportunity to confront insecurities, speak their mind and connect to strangers who listen to their recordings as well as those who participate from disparate locations. Participation with The Red Telephone is abstract and the connections hypothetical but the live and archived recordings are revelatory as they reflect the various communities while highlighting differences and some similarities.
The children's voices on Pierce's red telephone at Unity Park Mission on August 29 are playful and combative as some children identify themselves, some play pretend and others argue and swear while participants at the location outside Fort Worth Contemporary Arts on the night of the exhibition opening are cautious, self conscious, playful, performative and confessional.
They Don't Think it be Like it is, But it Do., 2014
++++ FUTURE ++++
Granite Countertops and Stainless Steel Appliances, 2013
HD Video . 3min 36seconds
All copyright Kris Pierce 2010-2022. |
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- Status redirects here. For the move category, see status move.
|This article is incomplete.|
Please feel free to edit this article to add missing information and complete it.
Reason: Missing some volatile status conditions
|The contents of this article have been suggested to be split into Status condition and .|
Please discuss it on .
Status conditions (Japanese: 状態異常 abnormal condition), also referred to as status problems or status ailments, affect a Pokémon's ability to battle. There are three kinds of status. The first are non-volatile, the second are volatile, and the third lasts while a Pokémon is in battle. The Pokérus is a similar but unrelated concept.
In the core series and side series
|This section is incomplete.|
Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it.
Reason: What game mechanics, such as Facade and Heal Bell, are affected by all non-volatile statuses?
A non-volatile status condition is a status condition that remains after being switched out. It's displayed in the party screen, and the Pokémon's summary. They can be cured by healing at a Pokémon Center, specific curative items, or other ways. If a Pokémon is affected by a non-volatile status condition, an icon will display the type of status condition (replacing the Pokémon's level in Generations I and II).
A Pokémon cannot gain non-volatile status conditions when it is affected by Safeguard, Leaf Guard, Flower Veil, Shields Down, or Comatose. A Pokémon will cure its status condition when affected by Refresh, Heal Bell, Aromatherapy, Psycho Shift, Jungle Healing, G-Max Sweetness, Natural Cure, Shed Skin, Hydration, or Lum Berry.
In all games except Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a Pokémon cannot gain a non-volatile status condition if it's already afflicted by another one, and a non-volatile status condition does not wear off automatically when the battle ends. If a Pokémon under a status condition (such as a poisoned Cascoon) evolves, the condition will be kept, even if the Pokémon gains a new type or Ability that would normally prevent it.
In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, all non-volatile status conditions have a set turn count and wear off after battle. If a Pokémon already has a non-volatile status condition, inflicting it with another one can override it.
- Main article: Burn (status condition)
The burn condition (BRN) inflicts damage every turn and halves damage dealt by a Pokémon's physical moves (except Pokémon with the Guts Ability). In Generation I and Generation VII, burn inflicts damage equal to 1/16 of its maximum HP every turn; from Generation II to VI, burn inflicts damage equal to 1/8 of its maximum HP every turn. Burn damage is halved if the Pokémon has the Ability Heatproof. In Generation V, Pokémon glow red while afflicted with burn.
Most moves which cause burn are Fire-type. In Generations I and II, Fire-type Pokémon cannot be burned by Fire-type moves (but they can be burned by Tri Attack in Generation II). From Generation III onward, Fire-type Pokémon and Pokémon with the Water Veil or Water Bubble Ability cannot normally be burned.
In Generations I and II, burn damage is applied after the Pokémon takes its turn, but is skipped if the opponent faints during that turn. From Generation III onward, burn damage is applied after all Pokémon on the field have taken their turns (and there is no skipping).
- Main article: Freeze (status condition)
The freeze condition (FRZ) causes a Pokémon to be unable to use moves. A frozen Pokémon can still use the moves Fusion Flare, Flame Wheel, Sacred Fire, Flare Blitz, Scald, and Steam Eruption while frozen; these moves will thaw the user and be executed normally. In Generation V, Pokémon glow blue and stop moving while afflicted with freeze.
If a frozen Pokémon is hit by a damaging Fire-type move, Scald (Generation VI onward) or Steam Eruption, it will be thawed. From Generation II onward, the frozen Pokémon has a 20% chance to be thawed each turn, possibly even thawing right after being frozen; however, in Generation I, a frozen Pokémon never thaws without external aid. Pokémon cannot be frozen in harsh sunlight.
All moves which cause freezing are Ice-type, except Tri Attack (Generation II onward), Secret Power (when used in snow or ice; Generation IV onward) and Freezing Glare. In Generations I and II, Ice-type Pokémon cannot be frozen by Ice-type moves (but they can be frozen by Tri Attack in Generation II). From Generation III onward, Ice-type Pokémon and Pokémon with the Magma Armor Ability cannot normally be frozen.
- Main article: Paralysis (status condition)
The paralysis condition (PAR) reduces the Pokémon's Speed stat and causes it to have a 25% chance of being unable to use a move ("fully paralyzed") when trying to use one. From Generation I to VI, its Speed is reduced to 25% of its normal value; in Generation VII, its Speed is reduced to 50% of its normal value. Pokémon with the Quick Feet Ability instead have their Speed increased by 50% while paralyzed. In Generation V, Pokémon glow yellow while afflicted with paralysis and their animation will be slowed significantly.
Many moves that cause paralysis are Electric-type moves. In Generation I, Pokémon cannot be paralyzed by damaging moves of the same type as themselves. From Generation VI onward, Electric-type Pokémon cannot be paralyzed. Pokémon with the Limber Ability cannot normally be paralyzed.
- Main article: Poison (status condition)
The poison condition (PSN) inflicts damage every turn. In Generation I, poison inflicts damage equal to 1/16 of its maximum HP every turn; from Generation II onward, it inflicts damage equal to 1/8 of its maximum HP. A Pokémon with the Poison Heal Ability will restore an equivalent amount of HP instead of taking damage. In Generation V, Pokémon glow purple while afflicted with poison.
All moves which cause poison are Poison-type, except Twineedle, Secret Power (when used in tall grass; Generation III only), Psycho Shift (while poisoned), and Fling (if Poison Barb or Toxic Orb is held). Poison-type Pokémon cannot be normally poisoned. In Generation II, Steel-type Pokémon cannot be poisoned by Poison-type moves (but they can be poisoned by Twineedle); from Generation III onward, Steel-type Pokémon and Pokémon with the Immunity Ability cannot normally be poisoned. Poison- and Steel-type Pokémon can be poisoned by a Pokémon with the Corrosion Ability.
In Generations I and II, poison damage is applied after the Pokémon takes its turn, but is skipped if the opponent faints during that turn. From Generation III onward, poison damage is applied after all Pokémon on the field have taken their turns (and there is no skipping).
From Generation I to IV, a poisoned Pokémon loses 1 HP for every four steps taken outside of battle. In Generation IV, a Pokémon whose HP is reduced to 1 via poison outside of battle will have the poison status removed; in Generations I to III, its HP will be reduced to 0 (causing it to faint).
The bad poison condition inflicts damage every turn, with the amount of damage increasing each turn. It initially inflicts damage equal to 1/16 of the Pokémon's maximum HP, with the damage inflicted increasing by 1/16 each turn (2/16 on the second turn, 3/16 on the third turn, etc.). In Generation V, Pokémon glow purple while afflicted with bad poison.
In Generations I and II, if a badly poisoned Pokémon is switched out, the condition reverts to regular poison. From Generation III onward, the poison remains bad poison while switched out, but the damage counter will be reset when switched back in (i.e. it always will take 1/16 of its maximum HP as damage after switching in). In Generations I, II, and from Generation V onwards, after a battle is over, the badly poisoned status will become a regular poison.
- Main article: Sleep (status condition)
Sleep lasts for a randomly chosen duration of 1 to 7 turns in the handheld Generation I games, 1 to 3 turns in Pokémon Stadium, 1 to 5 turns in Generations II to IV (except the Japanese versions of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl), and 1 to 3 turns in Generation V onwards,. In the Japanese versions of Diamond and Pearl, the minimum and maximum sleep count is 1 turn higher, lasting 2 to 6 turns. If a Pokémon puts itself to sleep using Rest, it will sleep for exactly 2 turns.
In Generation I, a Pokémon that wakes up is not able to attack during that same turn; from Generation II onward, a Pokémon can wake up and use a move during the same turn. In Generation V only, a Pokémon's sleep counter is reset to its original amount when switched out; this also applies for self-induced sleep.
Frostbite is a status condition exclusively in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, replacing the freeze condition. Similar to a burn, frostbite inflicts damage equal to 1/16 of the target's maximum HP every turn, and it reduces damage dealt by its special moves during this time. When it is snowing, moves that may inflict frostbite are more likely to do so.
Drowsy is a status condition exclusively in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, replacing the sleep condition. It works similarly to paralysis, and may cause the afflicted Pokémon to be unable to move. Drowsy Pokémon also take increased damage from direct attacks. When it is snowing, drowsy Pokémon are more likely to fail to act.
A volatile status is a status condition that is inflicted by a move or Ability from another Pokémon and will wear off when a Pokémon is switched out of battle or when a battle is over. Many volatile status conditions will also wear off after a number of turns have passed. A Pokémon can be affected by multiple volatile status conditions at a time. A volatile status condition is not indicated by an icon.
When a Pokémon is hit by a binding move (Bind, Clamp, Fire Spin, G-Max Centiferno, G-Max Sandblast, Infestation, Magma Storm, Sand Tomb, Snap Trap, Thunder Cage, Whirlpool, or Wrap), it becomes bound. While it is bound, a Pokémon takes damage at the end of each turn and cannot switch out or flee. Prior to Generation V, this lasts 2-5 turns (5 turns if the user of the binding move held a Grip Claw); from Generation V onward, this lasts 4-5 turns (7 turns if the user of the binding move held a Grip Claw). A Pokémon can only be bound by one binding move at a time.
From Generations II to V, the bound status deals damage equal to 1/16 of the afflicted Pokémon's maximum HP at the end of each turn. If the Pokémon that used the binding move held a Binding Band, the damage was instead equal to 1/8 of the afflicted Pokémon's maximum HP.
From Generation VI onward, the bound status deals damage equal to 1/8 of the afflicted Pokémon's maximum HP at the end of each turn. If the Pokémon that used the binding move held a Binding Band, the damage is instead equal to 1/6 of the afflicted Pokémon's maximum HP. Furthermore, Ghost-type Pokémon can now switch out or flee even if they are trapped by a binding move.
In Generation I, binding moves inflict damage for 2-5 turns. There is a 37.5% chance that the move will last 2 turns, a 37.5% chance that it will last 3 turns, a 12.5% chance that it will last 4 turns, and a 12.5% chance that it will last 5 turns. Although only the first attack can be a critical hit, every attack from the binding will do the same amount of damage. While a Pokémon is bound, it cannot use moves, including on the turn it is hit if it would move second.
Damage done by a binding move's continuing duration is done after recurrent damage. If the user of the binding move switches out before the target is released, the target will be unable to attack during that turn. If the target switches out before the turn duration ends, the binding move will automatically be used against the incoming Pokémon, deducting an additional PP from the move. If at such a time the binding move has 0 PP, it will still be used against the incoming Pokémon; in this case, due to a glitch, the move's PP will roll over to 63 and full PP Ups will be applied to it.
Even if the binding move misses, the target will not need to recharge for Hyper Beam. Additionally, if the user of the binding move attacks before the user of Hyper Beam during a recharge turn and the use of the binding move misses, the user of Hyper Beam will automatically use Hyper Beam during that turn. If at such a time Hyper Beam has 0 PP, it will still be used; in this case, due to the same glitch, the move's PP will roll over to 63 and full PP Ups will be applied to it.
In-game, the target will get to select a move during each turn of the binding move's duration, and will attack the incoming Pokémon with the selected move if the player switches before the duration is over.
In Pokémon Stadium, it is possible to select a move during each turn of the binding move's duration. If the target switches out before the duration ends, the incoming Pokémon will not automatically be attacked. A binding move will negate the recharge turn of Hyper Beam only if successful.
The target is now able to attack during a binding move's duration, and can act normally. Instead, the afflicted Pokémon takes damage equal to 1/16 of its maximum HP for 2-5 turns, in addition to the damage dealt when it is used. A bound Pokémon is also trapped, preventing it from switching and escape. A bound Pokémon can still flee (but not switch out) if it has the Ability Run Away or is holding a Smoke Ball. A bound Pokémon can still switch out (but not flee) if it is holding a Shed Shell.
If the user of the binding move is holding a Grip Claw, the duration will always be 5 turns.
If the user of the binding move switches out or is knocked out, all targets bound by that Pokémon's moves will be freed. If a bound Pokémon uses Rapid Spin, it will be freed.
All binding moves now last 4-5 turns unless a Grip Claw is held, which causes the moves to last 7 turns.
If the user of the binding move held a Binding Band, the bound Pokémon takes 1/8 of its maximum HP as damage each turn (instead of 1/16).
A bound Pokémon now takes damage equal to 1/8 of its maximum HP each turn, instead of 1/16; if the user of the binding move held a Binding Band, the bound Pokémon takes damage equal to 1/6 of its maximum HP instead.
Ghost-type Pokémon can no longer be trapped, meaning that they can switch out and flee regardless of being bound. They are still afflicted by all other effects of being bound as normal, however.
A Pokémon can be bound when struck by any of the following moves.
A Pokémon that can't escape can still switch out if it is holding a Shed Shell; uses U-turn, Volt Switch, or Baton Pass; or is hit by Whirlwind, Roar, Dragon Tail, or Circle Throw. Prior to Generation V, if a Pokémon that can't escape or the Pokémon that trapped it uses Baton Pass, the Pokémon (or its replacement) still can't escape; from Generation V onward, the effect can be passed only by the Pokémon that can't escape.
Starting in Generation VI, Ghost-type Pokémon can switch out and flee regardless of the can't escape status.
A Pokémon can be trapped when struck by any of the following moves.
- Main article: Confusion (status condition)
The confused condition causes a Pokémon to sometimes hurt itself in its confusion instead of executing a selected move. From Generation I to VI, the chance to hurt itself is 50%; from Generation VII onwards, it is 33%. The damage is done as if the Pokémon attacked itself with a 40-power typeless physical attack (without the possibility of a critical hit).
Confusion wears off after 2-5 attacking turns. This means that turns recharging, such as after using Hyper Beam, and turns unable to attack, such as from paralysis, will not lower the remaining number of turns of confusion. However, a sleeping Pokémon may hurt itself in confusion if using a move such as Snore or Sleep Talk. Multi-turn attacks such as Fly and Dive require confusion to be checked both turns, further reducing the chance of a successful attack.
Pokémon with the Own Tempo Ability are immune to being confused. Confusion can be cured with Persim Berries, Touga Berries, the Yellow Flute, and, from Generation II onwards, items that cure all status conditions such as Full Heals and Lum Berries; it is the only volatile status condition to be able to be cured by items that heal all status conditions.
Confusion is transferred by Baton Pass.
If a Ghost-type Pokémon uses Curse, its target will be afflicted by the cursed condition. A cursed Pokémon takes damage equal to ¼ of its maximum HP every turn. The cursed condition remains as long as the afflicted Pokémon is on the field. If a cursed Pokémon uses Baton Pass, the cursed condition is passed to its replacement.
In Generation II, if a cursed Pokémon knocks out its opponent, it will not take damage from curse that turn.
Yawn and G-Max Snooze makes the target drowsy. At the end of the next turn, the drowsy Pokémon will fall asleep, unless it is already afflicted by a non-volatile status condition. If a drowsy Pokémon switches out, it loses its drowsiness. Drowsiness cannot be passed by Baton Pass.
A Pokémon under the effect of Embargo is unable to use its held item and its Trainer cannot use items on it (including Wonder Launcher items) for five turns. A Pokémon under the effect of Embargo cannot use Fling.
Encore forces the Pokémon to repeat its last attack for 2-5 turns in Generation II, 4-8 turns in Generations III and IV, and 3 turns in Generation V and VI. In Generation V, if the Pokémon has Magic Coat active, the move will fail.
- Main article: Flinch
The flinch status is a one-turn status that prevents a Pokémon from attacking. A Pokémon can only flinch if it is hit by another Pokémon's move before using its move. A Pokémon who is holding a King's Rock or Razor Fang has a 10% (~12% in Generation II) chance of causing a target to flinch when using certain moves; in Generation II, III, and IV, any of several moves on a list exclusive to the items (the list differs between generations); from Generation V onward, any move that deals damage and does not already have a chance to flinch. Most moves that cause flinching are physical moves. In Generation II only, sleeping Pokémon cannot flinch when hit by moves that cause flinching (but can flinch via King's Rock), and are thus able to successfully execute Sleep Talk or Snore regardless.
A Pokémon affected by Heal Block is prevented from healing for five turns. It cannot use Moonlight, Morning Sun, Roost, Recover, Heal Order, Rest, Soft-Boiled, Wish, Milk Drink, Slack Off, Synthesis, or Heal Pulse while it is under effect. It is unaffected by the healing effects of Wish, Ingrain, Aqua Ring, Leech Seed, and Heal Pulse.
In Generation IV and V, a Pokémon affected by Heal Block can use HP-draining moves and still inflict damage, but will not restore HP. In Generation VI, a Pokémon affected by Heal Block cannot use HP-draining moves, except Leech Seed.
Pokémon with the Ability Volt Absorb or Water Absorb will take damage, as opposed to healing, from Electric- or Water-type attacks respectively while Heal Block is in effect. A poisoned Pokémon with Poison Heal is neither healed nor damaged.
From Generation V onward, Leftovers and Shell Bell cannot heal Pokémon affected by Heal Block. In Generation VI, Black Sludge cannot heal Pokémon affected by Heal Block. Items such as Potions can still be used to heal the Pokémon.
The opponent's evasion modification will not affect the accuracy of a Pokémon that uses Foresight, Odor Sleuth, or Miracle Eye. In addition, a Normal- or Fighting-type move used by a Pokémon that has used Foresight or Odor Sleuth will affect Ghost-type Pokémon, and Psychic-type moves used by a Pokémon that has used Miracle Eye will affect Dark-type Pokémon.
A Pokémon can be identified when struck by any of the following moves.
A Pokémon that is infatuated cannot use moves 50% of the time, even against Pokémon other than the one it is infatuated with. It is caused when Attract is used on an opponent of the opposite gender, may be caused when a Pokémon makes contact with a Pokémon of the opposite gender that has Cute Charm as its Ability, and is caused to a Pokémon that infatuates a Pokémon holding a Destiny Knot.
Pokémon with the Oblivious Ability are immune to infatuation. Infatuation cannot be passed with Baton Pass. Infatuation will end as soon as either the affected Pokémon or the Pokémon it is infatuated with is removed from the battle. It can also be ended by consuming a Mental Herb or an Eggant Berry, or by playing a Red Flute.
If the Pokémon is both paralyzed and infatuated, its infatuation check works after the paralysis check.
A Pokémon can be infatuated when struck by any of the following moves.
The Leech Seed status can be caused by Leech Seed or Sappy Seed. Each turn, a Pokémon afflicted with Leech Seed loses 1/8 (1/16 in Generation I) of its maximum hit points. The Pokémon that used Leech Seed is healed by the same amount, unless the seeded Pokémon has Liquid Ooze, in which case the user will be hurt instead. Grass-type Pokémon cannot be afflicted with Leech Seed.
If a Pokémon afflicted with Leech Seed uses Baton Pass, Leech Seed is transferred to its replacement, even if it is Grass-type. If the Pokémon that used Leech Seed switches out or faints, any Pokémon in the same position as the original user gains the drained HP instead.
In Generations I and II, the effect of Leech Seed is applied after the afflicted Pokémon takes its turn. From Generation III onward, it is applied after all Pokémon on the field have taken their turns.
A Pokémon can be seeded when using any of the following moves.
Nightmare only affects a sleeping Pokémon. The sleeping Pokémon loses ¼ of its maximum hit points every turn. If the sleeping Pokémon awakens, then the nightmare will no longer be in effect. If Baton Pass switches in a Pokémon that is not asleep (via Sleep Talk), then the nightmare will no longer be in effect.
After three turns, all Pokémon who heard the Perish Song will faint, excluding Pokémon with the Soundproof Ability. Any Pokémon who heard it can avoid the effect of fainting if it is switched out before the three-turn count finishes. Baton Pass transfers the Perish Song countdown. The effect will also take place when Perish Body is activated.
A taunted Pokémon cannot use any status moves for 3 turns (2-4 turns prior to Generation V), including status moves that will always turn into damaging moves like Nature Power. The Taunt status can only be inflicted by the move Taunt.
From Generation V onward, the Mental Herb cures the Pokémon of Taunt. From Generation VI onward, Pokémon with Oblivious are immune to the Taunt condition; if a Pokémon with Oblivious is afflicted by Taunt (such as if it is taunted by a Pokémon with an Ability like Mold Breaker), it will be cured immediately. Pokémon with Aroma Veil and their allies are immune to Taunt.
A taunted Pokémon can still use a status Z-Move.
A Pokémon telekinetically levitated by Telekinesis is immune to Ground-type moves, Spikes, Toxic Spikes, and Arena Trap for three turns. In addition, all other moves, except one-hit knockout moves, hit the target regardless of accuracy and evasion; however, it does not allow moves to hit semi-invulnerable Pokémon.
The effect of Telekinesis is canceled when Gravity is used, the levitated Pokémon uses Ingrain, or the levitated Pokémon obtains an Iron Ball; Telekinesis cannot lift targets if Gravity is in effect, and will fail if used on a target that is rooted or holding an Iron Ball.
A Pokémon can be tormented when struck by any of the following moves.
User changes target's type.
Splinters is a status condition exclusive to Pokémon Legends: Arceus. A Pokémon afflicted with splinters take damage equivalent to a 25-power move from the user, factoring in type effectiveness, but not the random damage factor. Splinters damage the target at the end of its turn, and they last three turns for regular moves, two turns for agile-style moves, and four turns for strong-style moves.
Volatile battle status
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A volatile battle status is usually self-inflicted and will wear off when a Pokémon is taken out of battle or a battle is over. Many of these will also wear off after a number of turns pass. Since they aren't shown in battle as a status condition (having an icon) a Pokémon can be affected with multiple volatile battle statuses, volatile conditions and a non-volatile condition at the same time.
When a Pokémon uses Endure, it braces itself so that whenever it takes damage that turn, it will always survive with at least 1 HP. The Focus Sash, Focus Band, and Ability Sturdy all have similar effects.
Pokémon that are readying Sky Attack become cloaked in light.
Pokémon that are readying Solar Beam or Solar Blade take in sunlight.
Pokémon that are readying Razor Wind whip up a whirlwind.
A Pokémon can be charging when using any of the following moves.
Center of attention
- Main article: Center of attention
If a Pokémon is the center of attention, its opponents are forced to target the center of attention rather than their intended target for the rest of the turn, if it is a valid target for those moves (even if the move originally targeted an ally, unless it is a move that cannot target an opponent such as Acupressure or Helping Hand). If a move cannot target the center of attention, it will be used on its intended target. Even if a Pokémon becomes the center of attention, its allies will not be forced to target it.
In Triple Battles, the center of attention will draw the attacks of all opponents in the field, but it can only draw attacks from non-adjacent opponents if they use a move which is able to strike non-adjacent targets.
The center of attention draws Electric- and Water-type moves even if a Pokémon with Lightning Rod or Storm Drain is on the field. If another Pokémon on the same team is already the center of attention, the first user takes priority; if the first user is outside of range or stops being the center of attention, the attack will be drawn to the next center of attention.
From Generation VI onward, Grass-type Pokémon, Pokémon with Overcoat, and Pokémon holding Safety Goggles will not have their moves drawn to a Pokémon that becomes the center of attention due to Rage Powder.
When a Pokémon plants its roots by using Ingrain, it restores 1/16th of its maximum HP every turn but cannot switch out or flee, even if hit by a move that would force this such as Roar and Dragon Tail. If a Flying-type Pokémon or a Pokémon with Levitate is rooted to the ground, it is susceptible to Ground-type moves, Spikes and Toxic Spikes. The Pokémon cannot be affected by Magnet Rise and Telekinesis and they are removed if active upon rooting. This effect can be transferred by Baton Pass.
A Pokémon shrouded with Magic Coat will reflect most status moves used against it or its side of the field back at the user during the turn it used the move. The Ability Magic Bounce reflects the same moves.
A Pokémon levitating on magnetism via Magnet Rise is immune to Ground-type attacks for five turns. Like Flying-type Pokémon and Pokémon with Levitate, the user is immune to the damage of Spikes and Toxic Spikes, and is unaffected by Arena Trap. Magnet Rise is completely negated by Gravity, Ingrain, and holding an Iron Ball.
This effect can be transferred by Baton Pass.
- Main article: Mimic (move)
If a Pokémon uses Mimic, this move will be temporarily replaced by another move copied from the target. In Generation I, the copied move is selected from a list of the opposing Pokémon's moves. From Generation II onwards, Mimic copies the target's last used move.
From Generation II onward, Pokémon that have used Minimize will take double damage from Stomp. From Generation V onward, Pokémon that have used Minimize will also receive double damage from Steamroller. In Generation VI, Pokémon that have used Minimize will take double damage from Body Slam, Dragon Rush, Flying Press, and Phantom Force; also in Generation VI, all of these moves will always hit a target that has used Minimize.
A Pokémon that uses Protect, Detect, Spiky Shield, or Baneful Bunker will be unaffected by both damaging moves and status moves during that turn. A Pokémon that uses King's Shield will be unaffected by damaging moves for the rest of that turn.
If the protected Pokémon is hit by Feint, Shadow Force, Hyperspace Fury, Hyperspace Hole, or Phantom Force—which can all hit regardless of protection—the Pokémon's protection is removed for the rest of the turn.
A Pokémon can be protected when using any of the following moves.
A Pokémon that successfully uses Hyper Beam, Frenzy Plant, Blast Burn, Hydro Cannon, Giga Impact, Rock Wrecker, or Roar of Time must recharge during the next turn. While recharging, the Pokémon cannot perform an action.
A Pokémon will recharge when using any of the following moves.
- Main article: Semi-invulnerable turn
Several two-turn moves have a turn where a Pokémon becomes semi-invulnerable, and most moves will miss regardless of accuracy, even moves that never miss. If a Pokémon has been taken aim at, the aimed Pokémon can still hit Pokémon during their semi-invulnerable turn. A Pokémon with No Guard can hit the Pokémon during their semi-invulnerable state, and a Pokémon with No Guard in the semi-invulnerable state can be hit by any Pokémon. With the exception of Sky Drop, the semi-invulnerable turn can be skipped with a Power Herb. Magic Bounce and Dancer have no effect when their user is semi-invulnerable.
In Generation I, semi-invulnerable Pokémon avoid all moves except Swift, Transform, and Bide, and can exploit the Invulnerability glitch. In Pokémon Stadium, they can avoid Bide, and the invulnerability glitch was fixed.
Pokémon that have used Fly, Bounce, or Sky Drop (both the user and target) fly up high. Pokémon that have flown up high are vulnerable to Gust, Smack Down, Sky Uppercut, Thunder, Twister, and Hurricane. If the move Gravity is used, Fly, Bounce, and Sky Drop cannot be used, and any Pokémon in the air return to the ground with their move cancelled; due to a glitch in the Generation V games, if Gravity is used while Sky Drop is in effect, only the user will be returned to the ground—the target will be permanently stuck airborne.
The Pokémon that uses Substitute uses up to ¼ of its total HP (rounded down) to make a substitute which will absorb hits until it "breaks" (damage the substitute has taken is equal to or greater than the HP used to make it).
Substitutes also prevent the opponent from lowering the user's stat stages. From Generation II onward, substitutes block the opponent from inflicting all status conditions. In Generation I, a substitute will only block certain status conditions under certain circumstances, and attacks like Thunder Wave and Spore will completely circumvent the substitute.
Substitutes can be transferred by Baton Pass.
When a Pokémon uses Mind Reader or Lock-On to take aim at a target, the user's next damage-dealing move will hit that target without fail, even if the opponent uses a move that offers a turn of semi-invulnerability, such as Fly. This effect can be Baton Passed.
A Pokémon will be taking aim when using any of the following moves.
Rage deals damage and it will not be possible for the player to do anything other than let the user continue to use Rage, and it will not stop using Rage until it faints or the battle ends. Every time the user is damaged by an attack or is targeted by Disable, its rage will build, causing its Attack stat to increase by one stage.
A Pokémon will be thrashing when using any of the following moves.
- Main article: Transform
In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Pokémon can become fixated on using a move. While fixated, that move deals increased damage, but also causes the user to receive increased damage from direct attacks. Fixation ends when the Pokémon uses a different move.
Primed is a status condition exclusive to Pokémon Legends: Arceus that causes the user's attack moves to deal 50% more damage.
In the spin-off games
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series
- Main article: Status condition (Mystery Dungeon)
The Flinch status is known as the Cringe in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team, Blue Rescue Team, Explorers of Time, Explorers of Darkness and Explorers of Sky, and Gates to Infinity. It is renamed as the flinch status condition in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon.
In Pokémon Conquest, all status conditions disappear after battle.
In this game, confusion is a non-volatile status. A confused Pokémon may randomly move and attack other Pokémon, including allies. If a Pokémon moves in its confusion, the Warrior is prevented from using an item or activating a Warrior Skill that turn. Confusion may wear off in the first turn.
In this game, a Pokémon that has flinched is unable to perform any actions (i.e. move around, use moves), along with its partner Warrior (i.e. use Warrior Skills, use items, link). Since battles in this game are turn-based, flinching does not require a first strike via an advantage in Speed or priority, unlike in the main series. The turn-based gameplay and the duration of flinching also makes consecutive flinching impairment impossible, unlike in the main series.
In the anime
In the anime, the depiction and symptoms of confusion has varied over the course of the show's long run:
- In the original series of the anime, Pokémon showed no physical difference when confused. They would often get dizzy and miss their attacks as opposed to attacking themselves.
- In Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire, Pokémon would get purple circles around their eyes as a sign of confusion and begin hurting themselves, or attacking their partner if in a Double Battle.
- In Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl, Pokémon's eyes become swirls and a circle of Torchic run around the confused Pokémon's head, with the confusion causing its attacks to miss.
- In Pokémon the Series: Black & White, a Pokémon's eyes become stars and multiple stars spin around their head when they are confused.
- In Pokémon the Series: XY, the Pokémon's eyes become sunken or glassy, and it will begin thrashing around, attacking itself or its allies in Double Battles.
- In Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, yellow birds circle arounds the Pokémon's head.
Unlike in the games, Leech Seed does not appear to restore the health of the Pokémon that used the attack in the anime. It instead appear to trap and/or immobilize the affected target.
- All non-volatile status conditions were introduced in Generation I.
In other languages
|This game mechanic article is part of Project Games, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon games.| |
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Used 2021 Harley-Davidson Vivid Black Street Glide FLHX For Sale! MILWAUKEE-EIGHT(R) 107 ENGINE A powerful, smooth-running engine with crisp throttle response and a pure, soul-satisfying rumble.REFLEX? LINKED BREMBO(R) BRAKES WITH STANDARD ABS Designed to help prevent the wheels from locking under braking to assist the rider in maintaining control when braking in a straight-line. ABS operates independently on front and rear brakes to keep the wheels rolling and help prevent uncontrolled wheel lock in urgent situationsPut your phone down, grab your keys, and bring a friend, because when you show up and test ride this Harley-Davidson you're going to take it home! Somebody is gonna need to bring your car back.
All advertised prices exclude any government fees and taxes, any finance charges, any dealer document processing charge, any electronic filing charge, and any emission testing charge. Advertised prices are valid for a limited time on specified pre-owned units, while they last. Limited-time pre-owned promotional motorcycle pricing may not be combined with any other promotion, offer or discount.
Advertised payments based on stock models in black with 30% down, 84-month term, 6.99% APR with approved credit. Sportster models based on 72-month term. Does not include freight, set-up, tax, title or license. Payments do not apply to specifically priced bikes.
While every reasonable effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this information, we are not responsible for any errors or omissions contained on these pages. Please verify any information in question with dealer. |
Since today is the last day of 2011, I figured I’d write up a post about what iPhone and iPad applications I enjoyed using over the past year. These apps don’t necessarily have to be the “best” or most useful iPhone or iPad applications of the past year, but rather, they are applications that I may have used or heard of and thought they were nice, enjoyable, or useful applications.
Also, just a note that this list is not in any particular order, so the first app listed isn’t necessarily better than the last one listed.
1. TweetBot (iPhone)
TweetBot, by TapBots, is a Twitter client, which allows users to access their Twitter feeds, read and post Tweets, view people’s profiles on the service, as well as other things. TweetBot also features a great looking user interface, which includes sounds and animation and makes viewing and writing tweets fun. Also included in the application is multi-touch gesture support, so users can view, create, and read tweets in a more interesting and interactive way.
In addition, TweetBot supports the ability for users to have multiple timelines within the application, so that, if they have more than one Twitter account, users can view them both within the same application. Users can simply tap on the “Timeline” button, which looks like two figures of people, and is located in the top left of the app, to view their timelines and select which one they would like to use. Also from this menu, users can choose to go to the “Accounts and Settings” page of the app.
2. Saver (iPhone)
Saver, by Alex Solonsky, is an app that allows users to track and view their expenses and features things, such as graphs and lists, where users can see how much money they’ve spent and where it’s going. When a user wants to add an expense to Saver, all they need to do is click on the “+” icon, located at the bottom of the app, which then brings up a screen where users can enter in an amount of money, as well as select, or “tag”, what this money was spent on.
There are a variety of categories that users can pick from, in order to tag their expenses, including “General”, “Kids”, “House”, “Amusement”, “Wardrobe”, “Groceries”, “Auto”, “Food”, “Payments”, “Vacation”, and more! Additionally, each category also has sub-categories, which users can use to further narrow down what they spent their money on. For example, some of the subcategories in the “Food” tag, include “Cafe”, “Fastfood”, “Bar”, and “Restaurant”.
Once a user has added their expenses, they can view them in a pie-chart, which is color coded according to the category of expense. Users can then tap on that part of the chart, which will bring up a list of the user’s expenses. Also, users can select to view their expenses by either the week, month, or year, which is useful if you want to track your expenses only for a certain amount of time.
3. Instagram (iPhone)
Instagram, by Burbn, Inc. is on the list for the second year in a row, as it’s a great application which allows users to share photos, not only on the Instagram app itself, but also on Facebook and Twitter.
Also, Instagram allows users to “edit” their photos by applying filters, which change the overall look and feel of the photo. Users can also select whether or not they want a “frame” around the photo, as well as some other features. \
Once a user has selected a filter for their photo (though, users are free to post a picture without having a filter or any editing at all), they can add and edit a caption for their photo, select whether or not they’d like to share it on Facebook or Twitter, as well as configure some other options for the photo. After that, all one needs to is post the photo and it’s available for everyone who’s following you to see! (However, you can choose not to announce a photo on Facebook or Twitter, if you’d rather not.)
One of the great features of Instagram is that it’s a social app, where users can follow other users and see what pictures they’ve been posting. Additionally, users can “like” or comment on others’ photos, which adds to the social aspect of this application.
4. Oink (iPhone)
Oink, by Milk, Inc., is a social “rating” application that just came out in 2011, and allows users to rate the things in the world around them, rather than just rating the places they have been to. For example, rather than rating a particular restaurant as having good food or being a great place to eat, Oink allows users to rate specific things at the restaurant, such as a specific dish or place to sit, or even the lighting!
Other users can then see what one has posted to Oink and what their thoughts were on the particular thing they rated, and can also add their own ratings and comments to the post. Users are also able to “Like”, “Love”, “Dislike”, etc. the variety of things that are rated, and additionally, users can choose to add something to their “To-Do” list, if they are interested in trying what they saw someone else post about.
Users can also choose to share their ratings and posting on both Facebook and Twitter, should they want to share their experiences with their friends who many not be using Oink or may not have an iPhone.
5. Tiny Tower (iPhone and iPad)
Tiny Tower, by Nimblebit, LLC., is a fun game, where users are in charge of building and running a tower filled with a variety of residences and businesses, as well as managing the citizens who happen to move into the tower and live in the residences.
Gameplay consists of ensuring that the various business and stores in the tower are stocked with the items or services that they carry or sell, as well as helping to move the tower’s guests or residents, called Bitizens, to the various businesses by use of an elevator, which the user can move up or down, to get the person to the correct floor, which is specified by the Bitizen in the elevator.
When a user accrues a certain amount of money, they are able to purchase more floors for their tower, building it higher, and adding to the number of residences or businesses that are available for Bitizens to use. However, after a new floor is added to the tower, the next floor’s price will increase, so a user has to save up more money to build it.
Additionally, stocking and restocking the businesses in a tower requires that a user use their coins to do so. Though, users can opt to purchase (with actual money) TowerBucks, which can be spent on much of the same things that regular coins can be, but, similar to FarmVille or CityVille, allow things to be completed or done faster than if a user were to strictly use coins.
TinyTower is a fun game with a 8-bit style user interface and doesn’t require that users play it for hours at a time. Because of the nature of TinyTower, with running businesses and such, users can choose to restock a product, etc., and come back later when it has run out, without having to sit around and watch the game run to do so.
6. Zombieville USA 2 (iPhone and iPad)
Zombieville USA 2, by Mika Mobile, Inc., is a fun game, where the user’s main task is to infiltrate a zombie infested city or town, and take out the zombies. In order to do this, the user is given a choice of a variety of weapons, including clubs, knives, guns, and grenades, though some weapons are only available after the user earns enough money in the game to purchase them.
Additionally, users are only allowed to carry three weapons at a time when they are fending off the zombies, which is a good thing, as occasionally, one or two of the weapons being carried can run out of ammo, causing the user to have to switch to their third weapon, whether it be another gun, a grenade, or a baseball bat (which doesn’t require ammo and doesn’t “run out”, like the other weapons do.)
The gameplay is pretty simple, with users using a “joystick” style control and three buttons, each in control of switching to and firing or using one of the three weapons that is being carried by the user’s character. Also, thoughout the level, users can find and shoot or hit boxes and other things (including mailboxes, signs, etc.), which may house money or extra ammunition, which can then be used to help the user purchase new weapons or to reload their current weapons.
Once the user has reached the end of the level, a helicopter comes down, thereby rescuing the user once they jump onto the ladder that is hanging from it. Then, a user will be notified of how much money they have made during the level, how many zombies they managed to kill, what their accuracy was, as well as some other information.
7. Powers of Minus Ten (iPhone and iPad)
Powers of Minus Ten, by Green-Eye Visualization, is an application that enables users to zoom into the human hand, in order to learn about biology and to see what goes on in the human body at the cellular and molecular level. Also, according to the app’s description on the iTunes App Store, the 3D content in the app is scientifically accurate, so users are able to get a real feel for what goes on in the human body.
Additionally, Powers of Minus Ten also features a “game” aspect, where users earn points and such for finding and identifying certain structures within the human body, including proteins, organelles, and more! There are also games that users can play, such as a matching game, in order to help them learn about processes, like Mitosis.
One great aspect of Powers of Minus Ten is that the graphics are great and can help students, or anyone interested in the human body or biology, view what perhaps microscopic structures and cells look like within the human body in an interactive way.
When viewing a particular section (or magnification level) of the hand, users are able to pan around and view where things are positionally, as well as what else may be going on or is located in that particular area.
Overall, Powers of Minus Ten is a great application, with some fun games included, which can help users view the human body in a way that perhaps they haven’t seen before, especially when it comes to the microscopic level.
8. Where’s My Water (iPhone and iPad)
Where’s My Water, by Disney, is a great puzzle game, where the object of the game is channel water from one area of the screen, to another, where an alligator named Swampy is waiting for the water to take a bath.
Where’s My Water starts off pretty simply, with users having to dig a path for the water to reach Swampy, but as the gameplay progresses, getting the water to Swampy’s bathtub begins to get more and more challenging, as different challenges are added.
For example, once the user reaches a certain level, switches are added to the puzzle, causing the user to have to channel water to a switch, in order to operate it and get water to Swampy’s bathtub. In some levels, there may even be more than one switch that has to be activated, in order to beat the level. However, some levels include a water spout, which allows users to turn on and add more water as they need it, so they don’t have to worry about wasting the water they may have started the puzzle with.
Where’s My Water is a fun puzzle application, which I personally liken to another iPhone application, Enigmo, involving getting water from one area to another, using a variety of different tools. If you’re interested in puzzles or challenges, perhaps you should check out Where’s My Water, by Disney. Additionally, this application is good for children, as well, as it features colorful graphics, and the fun of trying to get the water to Swampy so he can take this bath!
Which apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad did you enjoy using throughout 2011?
Thank you for reading this blog post, as well as the TechnicalCafe blog throughout the year! I hope everyone had a great 2011 and that everyone has a happy, healthy, fun, and safe 2012! |
LCD Soundsystem is over, but James Murphy lives on. That’s main takeaway of “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” the energetic portrait of the group’s big finish last year and a popular entry in Sundance’s midnight selection this year. More than just a concert movie, “Shut Up and Play the Hits” explores the 41-year-old Murphy’s decision to walk away from being the frontman for a vastly successful dance rock band at the height of its popularity.
Directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern combine footage of the spectacular final show, which took place at Madison Square Garden last April in front of thousands of rabid fans (including this writer), with footage shot the day after that captures Murphy’s quiet, pensive experience the next day. Those into the band will obviously delight in the final show’s lavish production values, but others may find Murphy’s solemn morning-after experience far more interesting for the way it captures his attempt to grapple with the aging process as a constant work in progress. (In an interview with music journalist Chuck Klosterman that runs throughout the movie, Murphy says he wants the band to “leave a stain.”)
The singer-songwriter, also a producer of the film and an actor in the Sundance premiere “The Comedy,” sat down with Indiewire to elaborate on his decision to participate in the movie and what he might do next. The film’s directors also weighed in.
Thousands of people attended the final show at MSG. They will be looking to find themselves in this footage. I know I did.
JAMES MURPHY: Well, you know, when it comes to Blu-ray, they can analyze it.
Who’s the teary-eyed guy you keep finding in the crowd?
DYLAN SOUTHERN: Someone on YouTube said they went to high school with him.
The movie really taps into the spectacle of the MSG show, but you also played four additional finale concerts earlier that week at Terminal 5. James, how did that relatively smaller space compare to the last show?
JM: It’s weird to think of Terminal 5 as a small space. It’s bigger than any venue where I saw a show before being in LCD Soundsystem.
Then MSG must have really blown your mind.
JM: Well, no, we’ve gone on to play festivals and things like that. But as a kid, the biggest show I saw was at Webster Hall.
It’s a strange meta experience to watch the concert through the lens of multiple cameras after viewing it from a fixed position. What was it like for you to relive it as a member of the audience?
JM: For starters, there was never a process of cutting down the show. There’s a show that exists; that’ll be released at some point. It was more like finding what songs worked to tell the story at the right times. They weren’t necessarily the hits; they were just the right songs to move through the narrative. I’ve been involved in that from the beginning, because I did all the sound mixing. It’s been a fun collaboration.
WILL LOVELACE: On paper, we had a list of which songs we’d like to use to tell a story.
JM: The last one we cut was “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.”
WL: It didn’t quite fit.
In the movie, you tell Chuck Klosterman during an interview that you get sick of questions about whether or not Daft Punk actually played at your house.
JM: That’s not one of your questions, right?
Hardly. But I wonder if you get sick of playing the same songs in the way you get sick of the same questions.
JM: Well, the questions are stupid; the songs aren’t. Because that’s a dumb question, right? You would never ask that question. But there are songs that I get sick of.
Does it feel like a new experience to watch yourself onstage?
JM: Oh my god, yeah. Don’t forget: I don’t see myself ever on stage, by the definition of eyeballs. I have no idea. And I have my eyes closed for most of the show anyway, which is just how I deal with stage fright. So it’s a very wild and crazy experience to watch it. Luckily, because we’ve been a band long enough that there have been enough musical festivals in Europe where they send you the DVD and you watch the live mix, which sounds terrible, and you have to approve it before it airs on Belgian television or whatever. So I’ve seen myself a bit. It was actually really nice to be able to see it and when I’m really uncomfortable about it, I can say something, like “not this [footage].” We had a long conversation beforehand. It wasn’t about getting rid of the bad shots of us. It was more like getting rid of the embarrassing rock star shots that looked too planned.
WL: The whole show was approached with pre-discussed details. We weren’t into the way people shoot shows. We weren’t talking about A camera, B camera, C camera…
Did you plan anything during the show knowing that it would wind up in the documentary?
JM: No, no. The really exciting part was that just putting the show on was so daunting that even though we talked so much before the show, when it came time for showtime, it took so much energy for us to do the four Terminal 5 shows and then put on this shitty high school rock opera, that I wouldn’t even have had the brainpower to adjust to thinking about cameras. We just had the rule that the cameras couldn’t be between two band members. That was all that really mattered.
DL: These weren’t rock camera operators. These were DPs who don’t shoot shows all the time, so it was really their experience of the show. Other directors might have backroom monitors and give commands.
JM: “Get on the piano!”
DL: I was operating a camera myself. It was kind of exciting to do it in that way. If we could’ve afforded it, we would’ve shot with 13 cameras for four hours on film.
WL: The people who we got were smart enough to find characters worth shooting.
DL: So that it could be as true to the show as possible. It’s occasionally kind of dirty.
There’s a whole other dimension to the movie that comes from the day after footage. Some of it is pretty candid stuff, like James crying as he stands in a room with his old equipment. You’re usually not that forthcoming onstage. What made you comfortable enough to show that side on camera?
JM: When I do a good music interview with someone like Chuck, I’m as open as possible. Sometimes people think I’m kidding, but in fact I’m trying to be as open as possible. When I’m joking, people think I’m serious. But it’s in the movie that I want to communicate. If these guys had just come and said, “We want to be in the room,” it would’ve been a different story. But this film had gone through so many different plans and ideas so that by the time it came down to March or April, I was already so invested in it that I didn’t feel like there were these people who were going to intrude on my life. I felt like we were making a thing. I had my role to do in that thing and they had their role. I didn’t feel like something terrible would happen and it would appear on the internet. I knew that we were making a narrative.
WL: For us, we were always telling a story. It’s a narrative film. There’s an aspect to it that’s a concert film, but those songs serve the story.
JM: I like my battle analogy.
WL: Yeah, that one’s good.
JM: In a war film, there are battle scenes and then there’s the story. If this is a war movie, the songs are the battle scenes. But it’s not a documentary in the sense that it’s not the history of the band. There’s no going back in time. For us, it’s a movie, and it almost doesn’t matter that it’s a real band. We wanted it just to be about this moment in time. The narrative structure did that. It would be weird to have no performance and weird to have talking heads as well.
When do you expect to release the full concert footage?
JM: We’re talking about it. We want to do something that’s exciting and experiential.
You were listed as the guest for a party at Sundance, which led some people to speculate that LCD Soundsystem might actually play a reunion show. That will never, ever happen, right?
JM: Yeah. I mean, I’m going to play records at that party. I’m a middle-aged guy with records. It’s something I constantly do. It’s my job.
You’re showing a lot of creative range these days: You were singing, you DJ, you’re a film producer and have written movie soundtracks. You collaborate with performance artists like Reggie Watts. You have a role in a narrative feature playing at Sundance called “The Comedy.” Would you consider yourself a mixed-media artist rather than just a musician?
JM: The way the film was approached was a lot in the same way. Rather than saying, “Let’s make a documentary or a concert film,” it was like, “What’s the best thing for me right now?” I’ll do something that sounds interesting to me, so if somebody wants me to write a column for a magazine, I would do it if it seems interesting. Or a radio show. So talking about the movie, people asking if it’s a concert film or a documentary, I’m like, “It’s kind of neither. It’s a story-driven movie about deciding not to do something anymore.”
So that’s why you didn’t include anything about the ticketing issue with the MSG show that led you to book the additional performances at Terminal 5.
JM: That would be full-on documentary.
WL: There was some mention of it that got cut, wasn’t there?
There is one brief moment where you look at the MSG sales and say, “Everybody’s going to be there.”
JM: That was a joke.
Do you think you managed to satisfy your fans by adding those shows?
JM: I did the right thing for myself. Other people might feel robbed that we stopped playing, or feel like we’re assholes for playing MSG. But I did the best thing I could. If I was a kid, I feel like I would’ve been like, “That was cool.”
What kind of release do you want the movie to have?
DL: We want people to see it in theaters.
JM: The detail in those crowd shots is just so good to see, because we watched it in an editing suite before, so we couldn’t see the details on the small screen.
WL: It really is a communal experience and we’d like as many people to see that way as possible. |