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Week without smoking starts Sunday, urging Quebecers to quit
Edmonton weather forecast: Sunday, Jan. 19
Canada's Central News Hub
Residents of Digby County delighted to get their power back — but some still wait
September 13, 2019 CanuckHalifax, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island
CTV Atlantic
Published Friday, September 13, 2019 11:20PM ADT
Last Updated Friday, September 13, 2019 11:23PM ADT
It was the moment people in Marshalltown, N.S., have been waiting for since Saturday.
"I am gonna get a shower, said Marshalltown resident Linda Saulnier. "I know it sounds awful, but shower and cook."
After nearly seven days without power, Saulnier was one of many in the Digby area on Friday who was able to turn her lights back on around the noon hour.
But the wait to get the power back on came with its own struggles and challenges.
The municipality's emergency measures coordination says seven comfort centres were opened around the area this week.
"(We) delivered food and water yesterday and today to this particular trailer park, cause they were in dire need," said Bruce Snell, the Digby Emergency Measures coordinator.
While some communities in the Digby municipality are celebrating the power's return, others are still in the dark, like the people in Bear River.
"It hasn't been very good at all, you know but it's good that we had the Bear River Fire Hall to rely on," said Eric Cox.
The fire hall is one of the comfort centres that residents have been spending a lot of time at.
There, they've been taking showers, charging their electronics, enjoying a hot cup of coffee and simply keeping each other company as they wait for the lights to go back on.
Nova Scotia Power says crews are working tirelessly to get everyone back on the grid.
"We're getting to the point of really complex situations and geography," said Nova Scotia Power president and CEO Halifax Karen Hutt. "It takes a long time just to get to a customer's home."
Meanwhile, Cox and many other community members will continue to spend more time at the Bear River Fire Hall than at home.
They're all waiting until they too can celebrate turning their lights back on.
The latest timeline on power restauration for about 3,000 people left in the dark in the municipality of Digby is sometime this weekend.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Suzette Belliveau.
Edmonton social enterprise unveils new aluminum bottled water product
Gun crime spikes as firearms become easier to get, Winnipeg police chief says
Highest snowfall observed in N.L. storm was 93 cm: Environment Canada
Global News Hour at 6 Edmonton: Sunday, Jan. 19
Ottawa Valley driver injured by flying chunk of ice


The themes for OPN version 2.2.6 are now available at Sourceforge. Be aware, the themes in our SVN repository are for future version 2.3 and are not working in 2.2.6.
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President Donald Trump promised to rigorously and radically enforce the Iran nuclear agreement, which he called "the worst deal ever negotiated." It sounds tough, but it's an approach that plays into the hands of the Iranian mullahs.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action presents the Trump administration with a bedeviling paradox: The greater the focus on enforcement, the higher the likelihood Iran will emerge with nuclear weapons.
The nuclear deal contains limited, temporary and reversible constraints that disappear over time. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog tasked with monitoring the deal, may be able to detect Iranian violations. But Iran doesn't need to cheat. In fact, it has every incentive not to do so.
Under the terms of the agreement, Iran's uranium and plutonium pathways to atomic weapons expand over time. The deal allows for Iran to ramp up the testing of advanced centrifuges in seven years and install these centrifuges in its Natanz enrichment facility in nine years. Breakout time, the amount of time needed to enrich one bomb's worth of fissile material to nuclear grade, drops from one year to months and then weeks.
In less than 15 years, the majority of restrictions on vital components of a military-nuclear program vanish. This includes bans on enrichment above 3.67% purity, the stockpiling of uranium, the use of the buried-under-a-mountain Fordow centrifuge plant, and the building of additional enrichment facilities and heavy-water reactors.
At that point, Iran will emerge with an industrial-size nuclear program with a near-zero breakout capability and much easier ways to sneak around restrictions. After the disappearance of the arms embargo three and a half years from now and the missile embargo in six and a half years, Tehran can significantly enhance its military power by acquiring advanced conventional weapons and further expanding its long-range ballistic-missile program to include intercontinental ballistic missiles. No country developing ICBMs has ever not obtained nuclear weapons.
The IAEA faces daunting tasks: It must monitor an enormous nuclear program, widely dispersed on a territory more than twice the size of Texas. It will need to secure access to military sites in order to block weaponization activities, but Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said these are out of bounds. It will have to ensure that uranium isn't diverted to clandestine enrichment sites, which could be powered by a small number of easier-to-hide advanced centrifuges.
And, with an Iranian economy possibly doubled in size by then, with hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment from Asia, Europe and Russia, few countries will join the U.S. in snapping back sanctions should Iran violate the deal. With Iran at near-zero nuclear breakout, even the most crippling sanctions aren't likely to stop a determined regime.
If rigorous enforcement looks to be a daunting task, what could the Trump administration do to get out from under this deal and perhaps into a better one?
First, Mr. Trump must address the Iranian threat the way Ronald Reagan treated the Soviet one. In the early 1980s, Reagan instructed his National Security Council to develop a comprehensive assault to undermine the Soviet Union. The Trump NSC needs a similar plan, one that uses both covert and overt economic, financial, political, diplomatic, cyber and military power to subvert and roll back the Iranian threat.
Mr. Khamenei has alluded to his regime being "on the edge of a cliff" as a result of the 2009 democratic uprisings. Mr. Trump should create the distinct impression that America will help the millions of Iranians who despise the regime to push it over that edge.
Second, the Trump administration, with an assist from Congress, needs to reinvigorate the sanctions regime aimed at Iran's support for terrorism, ballistic-missile development, human-rights abuses, war crimes, and destabilizing activities in the Middle East. These sanctions need to target, in particular, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls strategic areas of Iran's economy.
Foreign diplomats may balk, but these sanctions are fully compliant with the nuclear deal. International banks and companies will think twice about working with Iranian companies, especially if doing so might mean losing access to the U.S. market. The Trump administration should work with Congress to design a statutory architecture that freezes the Iranian nuclear program where it is today and impose new crippling sanctions if it expands in any way that drops nuclear breakout time to less than one year.
The Trump administration also needs to put Iran on notice that the U.S. will use force to counter Iranian aggression. Sanctions without the credible threat of military action will always be insufficient to change the regime's calculus.
While putting the squeeze on the regime, the administration should make it clear to the Chinese, Europeans and Russians that Washington is prepared to negotiate a follow-on agreement that addresses the fatal flaws of the original deal. Tehran, still struggling to attract foreign investment because of its continued malign activities, can benefit from such an offer if it's prepared to come back to the table and halt its subversive behavior.
Rigorously enforcing the Iran deal is a delusion. There is a better way forward than enabling the Islamic Republic to take patient pathways to nuclear weapons, ICBMs and regional dominance.
Mr. Dubowitz is chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @mdubowitz.


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Peerless wins Calcutta Football League title as East Bengal presents a 'no-show'
Peerless SC secured the maiden CFL title and became the first team outside the city's big-three to win the title after a gap of 60 years.
Amitabha Das Sharma
Kolkata 03 October, 2019 17:28 IST
Peerless SC players celebrate their 2-0 win over George Telegraph in the Calcutta Football League (CFL) on Sunday. - Special Arrangement
Peerless SC was crowned the new Calcutta Football League champion while confirming its top position in the elite tier - premier division 'A' – of the country's oldest (121-year-old) League after East Bengal stayed away from its final outing at the Kalyani Stadium on Thursday, thus giving its opponent Calcutta Customs Club a "walk-over".
The official announcement on the fate of the match will happen only on or after October 14 when the governing body of the sport in the state and the League organiser – Indian Football Association (IFA) - reopens after the festival break.
This incident paved the way for Peerless (23 points from 11 matches) to secure its maiden CFL elite tier crown and become the first team outside the city's big-three – East Bengal, Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting – to win the title after in 60 years.
Peerless, which finished second in the table to the eventual champion Mohun Bagan last year, saw its dream coming true this time as it beat both the city giants (Mohun Bagan and East Bengal) on its way to finishing on top of the final standings.
READ | Calcutta Football League title decider, as it happened
Needing to win by a margin of a minimum seven goals in its concluding match against Calcutta Customs, East Bengal did not turn up for the match while issuing an appeal to the IFA to postpone the match to a date on or after October 21.
Quess, the investor which has the controlling rights of the senior East Bengal team, issued a statement barely an hour before the match saying that its head coach (Alejandro Menendez) is on leave.
The IFA did not buy the East Bengal logic and stuck to its original decision of having the match replayed on Thursday and made all arrangements to have it on the scheduled time. The game was initially scheduled for September 29, but was abandoned owing to water-logging at East Bengal's home ground.
ALSO READ | East Bengal appeals for postponement, IFA says match is on
Calcutta Customs Club fielded its full side at the notified time while East Bengal failed to turn up at the venue. The match officials called off the after waiting for more than 30 minutes completing the modalities of the "walk-over".
This effectively means that East Bengal completed its League assignments and finished with 20 points from 11 matches. The IFA's CFL sub-committee will now discuss the report given by the referee and match commissioner on the match and decide on the next step on resumption after the festival break.
Mohun Bagan
Peerless SC
Alejandro Menendez
South Africa vs India Live Score, 1st ODI: Dhawan fifty steadies India run-chase

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Massey Cancer Center have discovered a new signaling pathway in sterile inflammation that could impact the treatment of diseases such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.
Their findings offer insight into the role that activation of interferon-regulatory factor 1 (IRF1), a protein that functions as a transcriptional activator of a variety of target genes, plays in the production of chemokines and the recruitment of mononuclear cells to sites of sterile inflammation.
Although it has been shown that interleukin 1 (IL-1) induces the expression of IRF1, the biological importance of this was uncertain. In this study, recently published in the journal Nature Immunology, investigators Tomasz Kordula, Ph.D., and Sarah Spiegel, Ph.D., members of the Cancer Cell Signaling research program at Massey and professors in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the VCU School Medicine, found a new signaling pathway that links IL-1 to IRF1 in sterile inflammation.
IL-1, a key regulator of sterile inflammation, governs immune and inflammatory responses and has an important role in autoinflammatory diseases. IL-1 signaling triggers a process called polyubiquitination. Polyubiquitination is important to a variety of cellular functions. While one form of polyubiquitination has been called the "kiss of death" because it targets proteins for degradation, another form known as K63-linked polyubiquitination is important to cell signaling.
"For the first time, we found that K63-linked polyubiquitination is a mechanism of IRF1 activation," says Kordula. "Once activated, IRF1 induces potent chemokines that recruit immune cells to sites of sterile inflammation and promote healing."
Kordula and Spiegel, Mann T. and Sara D. Lowry Professor of Oncology and co-leader of the Cancer Cell Signaling research program at Massey and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the VCU School of Medicine, previously discovered a link between chronic inflammation and cancer.
"As IRF1 affects the development of autoinflammatory diseases, targeting this previously unrecognized IL-1-induced cascade may be clinically important in the future," says Kordula. "Our next steps are to develop cell-specific, conditional IRF1 animal models in order to determine the cell type(s) responsible for the production of IRF1-mediated chemokines in the brain."
Kordula and Spiegel collaborated on this research with Kazuaki Takabe, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S., member of the Cancer Cell Signaling research program at Massey and associate professor in the Department of Surgery at the VCU School of Medicine; Kuzhuvelil B. Harikumar, Ph.D., Jessie W. Yester, Ph.D., Michael J. Surace, Ph.D., Clement Oyeniran, Ph.D., Megan M. Price, Ph.D., Wei-Ching Huang, Ph.D., Nitai C. Hait, Ph.D., Jeremy C. Allegood, Ph.D., Reetika Bhardwaj and Sheldon Milstien, Ph.D., from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the VCU School of Medicine; Akimitsu Yamada, Ph.D., from the Department of Surgery at the VCU School of Medicine; Xiangqian Kong, Ph.D., and Cheng Luo, Ph.D., from the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Helen M. Lazear, Ph.D., and Michael S. Diamond, M.D., Ph.D., from Washington University School of Medicine.
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants 1R01AI093718, 5R37GM043880, 1U19AI077435, and R01CA160688; grant 5P30NS047463 supporting the VCU Microscopy Facility; VCU Massey Cancer Center's National Cancer Institute Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA 016059; and grant 91029704 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
News directors: Broadcast access to VCU Massey Cancer Center experts is available through VideoLink ReadyCam. ReadyCam transmits video and audio via fiber optics through a system that is routed to your newsroom. To schedule a live or taped interview, contact Alaina Schneider at (804) 628-4578.
Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 222 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-six of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU's 13 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation's leading academic medical centers.


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Merrick è un census-designated place (CDP) degli Stati Uniti d'America, situato nello stato di New York, nella contea di Nassau.

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Census-designated place dello stato di New York

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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The Internationalist Disposition and US Grand Strategy
January 23, 2019 January 23, 2019 / Guest Authors	/ 4 Comments
A guest post from Stephen Pampinella, continuing our occasional series on left/progressive foreign policy in the 21st century. Stephenis Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz. His research interests include US state building interventions, hierarchy in international relations, race and postcolonialism, US grand strategy, and national security narratives. He is on leave from SUNY New Paltz during Spring 2019 and is conducting research on the practice of diplomacy in the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry in Quito, Ecuador.
Alex Colás' "The Internationalist Disposition" provides an excellent framework for evaluating foreign policy debates in the Democratic Party. The failures of the War on Terror combined with the emergence of economic and environmental threats have led many to engage in a far-reaching reappraisal of US foreign relations based on left critiques. This new approach toward foreign affairs is called progressive internationalism. It attempts to resolve the tension between adopting greater military restraint and remaining engaged in global governance.
But in recent weeks, establishment voices have sought to reassert their control over foreign policy debates by arguing for the necessity of US hegemony and classic liberal internationalist forms of cooperation. Colás' methodological internationalism illustrates why traditional US foreign policy approaches will fail to provide actual security for ordinary Americans. It also suggests (somewhat counterintuitively) what kinds of grand strategies could do so. A great power concert strategy, in which the United States pursues a balance of power among its rivals while committing to more democratic forms of international cooperation, can best resolve the non-state threats to US democracy generated by its own liberal order.
The End of The Hague Yugoslavia
December 19, 2017 December 21, 2017 / Srdjan	/ 1 Comment
The Hague campus of Leiden University today hosted the "Final Reflections" symposium of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Everyone from the institution showed up: current and past presidents, current and past judges as well as ad hoc judges, current and past prosecutors, media officers and archivists, plus a bunch of guests—gender advisors, professors, judges from other courts, and so on. Even the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) spoke at the last panel. This was not a mere stock-taking exercise "between a variety of stakeholders," says the agenda. Rather, it was an opportunity for said stakeholders to reflect on the ICTY's legacy, ideally via a set of "short but emphatic statement[s] on the importance of international criminal courts and tribunals – particularly in today's political climate."
A Border In Every Street
June 29, 2017 July 5, 2017 / Guest Authors	/ 2 Comments
This is a guest post by Sarah Keenan, who is a Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck, University of London. Keenan is the author of Subversive Property: Law and the Production of Spaces of Belonging, as well as numerous articles in the fields of property law, critical race theory, gender and sexuality, migration, and the politics of Indigenous Australia.
Two summers ago, the British government announced that it would pass laws requiring landlords to evict tenants who do not hold valid visas. As part of her efforts to convince poor African migrants that 'our streets are not paved with gold', then Home Secretary Theresa May planned to make it a criminal offence for landlords to rent to irregular migrants. This plan, which has since been implemented by the Immigration Act 2016,[1] was part of May's professed intention of intensifying the 'hostile environment' for irregular migrants that her government had begun creating with the Immigration Act 2014. As the Church of England put it, the so-called 'right to rent' requirement creates a border in every street.
How do we understand such borders, which are at once invisible and real, intermittent and permanent; borders that operate by attaching to individual subjects wherever they go rather than bounding off a defined physical area; borders that are internal to the nation that has already been entered. In particular, how do we understand internal borders in Britain, a political entity that as Kojo Koram has argued, 'has never really existed as a nation, it has only really functioned as an empire'; an empire which once sought to extend its borders to encompass as much of the world as possible? As the empire crumbled, patterns of migration shifted from white British subjects moving out to colonise the world, to brown and black British subjects moving from resource-depleted home countries to the island motherland, seeking work and a better life. The British state responded to this arrival of non-white subjects with increasingly restrictive immigration laws which have the maintenance of white supremacy at their core. Immigration law has then combined with other areas of law to increasingly and literally restrict the physical space in which non-white subjects are able to safely exist on this island. Examining the hostile environment produced by the internal borders of the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts helps us to make sense of the means through which law produces racist landscapes in which material spatial boundaries exist for particular subjects and not others. Beginning with a brief discussion of how legal geography, critical race theory and critical disability studies assist in understanding the relationship between law, space and the human subject, I put forward the concept of 'taking space with you' as a way to understand the racist British landscape in which we live today.
White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean
June 7, 2017 June 6, 2017 / Guest Authors	/ 8 Comments
A guest post from Ida Danewid. Ida is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work focuses on decolonial theory, global ethics, and the politics of solidarity. She is the editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies vol. 45, and the forthcoming special issue "Racialized Realities in World Politics". This post is based on her article White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History which won the 2017 Edward Said Award.
On the evening of the 3rd of October 2013, an overcrowded fishing boat carrying more than 500 migrants sank off the coast of the Italian island Lampedusa. Amongst the 368 found dead was an Eritrean woman who had given birth as she drowned. The divers found her a hundred and fifty feet down in the ocean together with her newborn baby, still attached by the umbilical cord. Her name was Yohanna, the Eritrean word for "congratulations".
Over the last few years the Mediterranean migrant crisis has provoked numerous responses and activism; ranging from Ai Wei Wei's life vest installation to Pope Francis's "day of tears", from radical activist campaigns such as "The Dead Are Coming" to Jason deCaire Taylor's undersea sculpture museum, from the silent minute in the European parliament to #AlanKurdi. Seeking to counteract the rise of populist, far right, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and racist political parties, a variety of scholars, activists, artists, and politicians have called for empathy and solidarity with the fate of shipwrecked migrants. By recognising and publicly mourning the lives that have been lost, they seek to "humanise" those who, like Yohanna and her baby, are swallowed by the turquoise-blue waters of "Our Sea".
Graffiti welcoming refugees in Dublin
In international theory, these expressions of solidarity have been paralleled by a growing interest in the question of who and what counts as human. A longstanding area of concern for post- and decolonial thought, poststructuralist and feminist theorists have increasingly begun to interrogate the normative frames that cast some lives as waste, bogus, and non-human. Responding to an era shaped by the global war on terror and securitizing discourses that figure the nation-state as a body under threat, thinkers such as Judith Butler and Stephen White have argued for a new humanism, based not on the rationalist sovereign subject central to liberal political theory, but on notions of loss, grief, relationality, and bodily vulnerability. Calling for a "reconceptualization of the Left" based on precariousness as "a shared condition of human life", Butler argues that mourning and vulnerability can serve as the new basis of political community, enabling a "we" to be formed across cultures of difference. Applied to the context of the European migrant crisis, this is an ethic of hospitality that seeks to disrupt nationalist protocols of kinship and that points towards new forms of solidarity beyond borders. As the contributors to a recent special issue on "Borders and the Politics of Mourning" make clear, grief for unknown others—for migrants—offers a radical challenge to the xenophobia and white nationalism that underwrite the necropolitical logic of the European border regime.
My research interrogates what such critical humanist interventions produce and make possible—and crucially, what they foreclose and hide from view. Building on what some activists, artists, and academics have begun to call "the Black Mediterranean", I argue that these responses are indicative of a general problematique, endemic to both leftwing activism and academic debate, which reproduces rather than challenges the foundational assumptions of the far right. By privileging a focus on the ontological—as opposed to historical—links that bind together humankind, these ethical perspectives contribute to an ideological formation that disconnects histories that are intimately connected, and that removes from view the many afterlives of historical and ongoing colonialism. Continue reading →
Citizens Of Nowhere
November 28, 2016 / Rahul Rao	/ 2 Comments
In her speech to the 2016 Conservative Party conference, Theresa May threw down a gauntlet:
…if you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what the very word 'citizenship' means.
For anyone wondering who or what met the cut, May was helpfully expansive, populating this rather arcane placeholder with the figures of the boss who earns a fortune but doesn't look after his staff, the international company that eludes the snares of tax law, the 'household name' that refuses cooperation with anti-terrorist authorities, and the director who takes out massive dividends while knowing that the company pension is about to go bust. Basically, fat cats with the odd public intellectual thrown in. May contrasted the spectre of the rootless cosmopolitan with the 'spirit of citizenship', which, in her view, entailed 'respect [for] the bonds and obligations that make our society work', 'commitment to the men and women who live around you', 'recognizing the social contract that says you train up local young people before you take on cheap labour from overseas.' And perhaps astonishingly, for a Conservative Prime Minister, May promised to deploy the full wherewithal of the state to revitalize that elusive social contract by protecting workers' rights and cracking down on tax evasion to build 'an economy that works for everyone'. Picture the Brexit debate as a 2X2 matrix with ideological positions mapped along an x-axis, and Remain/Leave options mapped along a y-axis to yield four possibilities: Right Leave (Brexit), Left Leave (Lexit), Right Remain (things are great) and Left Remain (things are grim, but the alternative is worse). Having been a quiet Right Remainer in the run-up to the referendum, May has now become the Brexit Prime Minister while posing, in parts of this speech, as a Lexiter (Lexiteer?).
Queer International Relations (IV): Queer As Method
November 24, 2016 / Guest Authors	/ 3 Comments
The fourth post in our symposium on Cynthia Weber's Queer International Relations: Sovereignty, Sexuality and the Will to Knowledge is from Cyril Ghosh. You can read Cynthia's introductory post and responses to it here.
Cyril Ghosh is Assistant Professor of Government & Politics at Wagner College and Part-Time Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Julien J. Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School. He is the author of The Politics of the American Dream: Democratic Inclusion in Contemporary American Political Culture (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013). He is currently working on a book manuscript (with Elizabeth F. Cohen): Key Concepts: Citizenship (under contract with Polity Press, UK).
Cynthia Weber has written a very compelling contribution to the study of queer international relations. In this symposium entry, I intend to identify what – to my mind – are the three biggest achievements of the book. Here, I want to specifically offer some reflections on two figures discussed by Weber: one is the neoliberal, docile, gay, homonationalist patriot – in other words, the 'good gay'. The second is the figure of Tom Neuwirth/Conchita Wurst, whom Weber sees as a destabilizing persona that lends itself beautifully to reading sexuality and/or the queer into international relations. I will conclude the post with a few remarks on some of the questions the book raises and invites further discussions about.
But I begin with the achievements: first, the book clarifies queer IR as a method in a way that is both urgent and welcome. In doing so, it secures a solid foundation for both future and contemporary scholarship on queer IR. The specific discussions of tropes from Foucault, Sedgwick, Haraway, Butler, Barthes, and others is fascinating to me – especially as a combination of lenses that can be used to refract and pluralize analyses of contemporary IR.
For some time now, we have had a feminist IR movement within the field of IR. But, at the present time, only a handful of scholars examine tropes of sexuality. As Weber correctly identifies, this is because IR scholars and Queer Studies scholars rarely converse with each other. And, in doing so, they leave unexplored much fertile ground of inquiry.
Discourses surrounding despised sexualities of various kinds present themselves in international affairs. In fact, they are ubiquitous. Thus, as Jasbir Puar, Lily Ling, Anna Agathangelou, and others have shown, 'political' rivals are routinely presented/depicted using imagery and language predicated on despised sexualities. These depictions can range from the figure of a highly sexualized violent rapist to emasculation (and defeat?) through anal penetration. Analyses of these tropes obviously transcend the field of IR (I am thinking here of Edward Said or Jack Shaheen), but they remain particularly relevant for it.
So, in offering a systematic and yet not reified methodological approach to queer IR, Weber has done, I think, a great service to this nascent subfield. Hers is not the final word on the subject, as she would herself acknowledge. However, the book represents a bold step forward in this line of inquiry.
So much to say, so much to say… A Reply
September 22, 2016 August 2, 2017 / Joe	/ 1 Comment
I want to begin by thanking Karen, Anthony, Kirsten and Elke for their comments on the book–and a special thanks to Elke for organising. It is a rare treat to have so much attention paid to one's work, especially by such thoughtful and insightful colleagues. My profound thanks to you all. I also need to offer some explanations for my much delayed post – first I was starting a new job and time ran out, then I was ill, and then my iCloud account somehow ate my draft. So, I've had to start from scratch, which has forced me to be direct and straightforward to save time. Any curtness of tone is a reflection of circumstances rather than my appreciation of my critics.
I learned a great deal from all the posts—about the gaps, limitations and possibilities of my book. Therefore, in my response I want to reflect upon what I have learned through this forum. What I have to say here is only a brief continuation of the collective intellectual journey taken through this forum. You have all given me much to think about it the future. Continue reading →
Upsetting the Theory: Rights for Housing and Queers
September 12, 2016 August 2, 2017 / Anthony J. Langlois	/ 6 Comments
The second post on our forum on Joe Hoover's Reconstructing Human Rights, from DoT's Anthony Langlois. You can read Joe's opening post here and Karen Zivi's commentary here.
As I was reading Joseph Hoover's fabulous new book, a critical debate was going on at the peak human rights institution of the global political system. The Human Rights Council, an institution to which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon suggests "all victims of human rights abuse should be able to look…as a forum and springboard for action", was debating a resolution to establish a UN Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. On June 30, 2016, after extensive debate, in which much opposition was expressed, the Human Rights Council voted in favour of this UN Special Procedure, establishing the office of the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI).
It is a harsh reality that in many countries around the world, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans* and others of queer and diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (LGBTQ) are not able to look to human rights institutions for support and protection, or, those institutions find themselves constrained and unable to offer such support and protection openly, or at all. The creation of the SOGI expert by the UN is in part a recognition of this, and it is seen by many as a critical further step in the UN's recent activism on this routinely neglected area of human rights concern.
But as well as allegedly being "progress" in the human rights agenda of freedom and emancipation, it should cause us to pause and think. What does it mean that Human Rights have only come lately to queer communities, if at all?
Hoover does not directly consider this question. But the debate about gay rights, human rights for queers more broadly, and their place in IR, plays a role like that which Hoover shows the right to housing to play. Hoover uses the right to housing to destabilise, challenge, pluralize, democratize and reconfigure our received ideas of human rights. I would suggest that this is also precisely what happens, or, at least, what can happen, when human rights meets sexual orientation and gender identity expression, as well. Continue reading →
Human Rights: A Love Story?
September 11, 2016 August 2, 2017 / Guest Authors	/ 5 Comments
This is the first comment, following Joe's opening post, penned by Karen Zivi. Karen is Associate Professor of Political Science at Grand Valley State University where she teaches courses on rights, democracy, and gender and politics. She is the author of Making Rights Claims: A Practice of Democratic Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2012) and her work on topics such as LGBT rights, citizenship, and motherhood has appeared in the Journal of Human Rights, American Journal of Political Science, Politics & Gender, and Feminist Studies.
As I write this post, I am preparing for the first day of my 'Introduction to Human Rights' class. I'll begin by asking my students to identify a human rights issue of interest to them. I won't be surprised if they mention the Syrian refugee crisis or police brutality in the United States, religious liberty or reproductive justice, Wikileaks and freedom of the press or Flint and access to clean water (I teach in Michigan after all). I'll ask them what should be done to address these issues and I won't be surprised if they advocate for providing humanitarian aid or making new laws that limit or enhance state power. And when I ask them why we should respond one way or another, I won't be surprised if they make reference to ideas about a common humanity, the meaning of justice, or doing the right thing.
Not wanting to crush their spirit on the first day, I'll tell them they are in good company in the way they are thinking about human rights. But over the course of the semester, I'll tell and show them that political solutions and philosophical justifications disappoint again and again for reasons that go beyond the sheer callousness, greed, or stupidity of human beings. Even when victories are won, as Joe Hoover's new book makes so astonishingly clear, collateral damage is often unavoidable. My students thus have the difficult task of confronting the reality of human rights' limitations. I have the task keeping their promise alive, balancing rights realism with rights optimism in ways that motivate my students to engage in making change and yet staves off the kinds of skepticism, despair, and apathy that do nobody any good. I still believe in the power and promise of human rights. And, fortunately, so too does Joe Hoover.
Reconstructing Human Rights
September 10, 2016 August 2, 2017 / Joe	/ 7 Comments
The first in a forum on Joe's recently released Reconstructing Human Rights: A Pragmatist and Pluralist Inquiry in Global Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2016). A number of commentaries will follow in the coming days.
Earlier this year I visited Sylvia's Corner, the home of the Focus E15 campaign, to give a talk about the human right to housing. As I shared my research, based on work I had done with housing campaigns in Chicago and Washington DC, I was struck by how this specific moment illustrated what I most hope Reconstructing Human Rights might accomplish—namely, helping to reconstruct human rights as a more democratic idea, and practice.
In London, Focus E15 has been fighting for the human rights of those struggling to secure a decent home for themselves and their families, often struggling against the very public agencies who should be assisting them. Their work not only draws on an ethical and political language of human rights, but it also remakes that language, renders it suitable to their needs and responsive to their experiences. I have witnessed this same process with other campaigns, such as the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, and with community organising groups like ONE DC in Washington DC. It was revealing to act, even briefly, as a conduit through which the experiences of these distant groups could be relayed. Human rights are constantly being remade, repurposed—reconstructed—to serve the ends of those suffering from injustice. It is this reality that motivates my book, which is at its core an attempt to understand how human rights can be both an instrument of the privileged and powerful, and also a weapon for the oppressed and disempowered. I wrote this book because I wanted to know, what should we make of human rights?


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Showing 51 results for 2019-06-26
Photo of drowned migrants shows desperation facing many at US border
A photo showing a father and his daughter drowned in the Rio Grande has highlighted the dangers facing migrants trying to cross into the US.
Good Morning Europe
Palestinians remain unconvinced at day two of Kushner's controversial Middle East workshop
Tony Blair will address the workshop today
Watch: Zoo animals share techniques to keep cool in heatwave
To keep cool, some animals have taken matters into their own hands (or trunks). At these zoos in Austria and Germany, worm ice lollies are on the menu too.
The Brief: Czech Republic exposed in anti-corruption report
"No wonder the people are not happy." On Sunday, the Czech Republic had anti-government protests of 250,000 people. Then, a report was released about corruption in EU countries. The Czech Republic did not perform well.
Watch: Endangered rhinos take trip of a lifetime from Europe to Africa
Five critically endangered eastern black rhinos travelled from a Czech safari park to begin new lives in Rwanda's Akagera National Park.
Theresa May faces heat over Saudi arms sales at PMQs
Jeremy Corbyn challenged the prime minister about the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in the war in Yemen.
Prada unveils revolutionary bag collection made from ocean plastic
The iconic brand has released a new line featuring recycled waste.
Jackson fans hit back at documentary in Hollywood protests
Michael Jackson fans descended on Hollywood not only to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his death but also to proclaim his innocence after the HBO documentary 'Leaving Neverland' earlier this year accused the global superstar of child abuse.
Opioids responsible for most drug-related deaths in Europe, says UN
In the UK, which accounts for one-third of all overdose deaths in Europe, 46% (1,164) of the fatalities from drug use recorded in England and Wales in 2017 involved heroin and morphine.
Temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius this week in Europe
Europe is bracing itself as parts of the continent are expected to see temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius this week. Meteorologists say this June heatwave will possibly break previous national all-time records in France before Friday.
How much does your nation spend on defence?
European countries have been repeatedly admonished by US President Donald Trump since his election for not spending at least 2% of their GDP on defence expenditures.
How candidates are preparing for the first debate: pushups, videos, brevity
"That's hard!" Elizabeth Warren says about "learning to talk in one-minute segments," while Cory Booker does bicep curls — in a shirt and tie.
In conversation with Kilian Jornet
2018 National Geographic's Adventurer of the Year on his adventures, training and why being in the mountains is so important.
French restaurant wins 'world's best restaurant' award for first time
The restaurant, Mirazur, on the French Riviera won the competition, which saw other European restaurants dominate the top 10 list.
Denmark forms leftist government with youngest prime minister
While the new left-leaning government is unlikely to fundamentally change Denmark's economic policy, Frederiksen, 41, has promised to increase welfare spending after years of austerity.
Facebook to hand over data on hate speech suspects to French courts
In a world first, the social media giant has agreed to give names of French users who are suspected of using hate speech on its site to courts.
House passes border funding bill to address humanitarian crisis
Passage of the measure came after House Democratic leaders sought to appease members of their caucus only hours earlier with change to the legislation.
Robert Mueller to testify publicly before House committees on July 17
The announcement came after the chairmen of the two panels issued a subpoena compelling Mueller's testimony.
Eric Logan shooting stirs anger over racial injustice in Pete Buttigieg's South Bend
Many residents aren't blaming Mayor Pete for the fatal police shooting of a black man, but say something needs to be done about long-standing inequality.
Justice Department lawyer defends herself after viral video on child migrant treatment
Exclusive: In a private Facebook post, Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian says a false impression has been created about her testimony.
Trump's chief of protocol pulled off the job ahead of G-20
Sean Lawler has been pulled off the job amid an investigation into allegations of discrimination and harassment, U.S. officials said.


Rulers now update in real time with zoom in Photoshop. This slows down the zoom update time considerably, as it gets all jumpy. Removing rulers makes the zoom act just fine.
PS 2018 (19.0.01) and windows 10 issue.
Zoom is slow no matter what. The percent zoom doesn't update until after zoom finish whereas it used to be coincident with finish.
It seems that the algorithms still run same speed but the ramp up and ramp down to run something is very sluggish.


On Monday evening, Dinesh D'Souza '83 spoke at an event sponsored by the Dartmouth Republicans and the Young America Foundation. Over 200 people attended the event, and dozens of students and community members protested the speech through song, chants and signs. The event, part of Young America Foundation's 10-campus "Dinesh D'Souza tour: Fake History Debunked," took place in Filene Auditorium.
Since graduating from the College, D'Souza has published books and produced movies surrounding American conservatism and is considered an influential conservative thinker. In 2014, he pled guilty to violating campaign finance laws in a Senate election between his friend from college, Wendy Long '82, and Kirsten Gillibrand '88. President Donald Trump pardoned D'Souza in 2018.
At the event on Monday, College Republicans president Josh Kauderer '19 introduced D'Souza by welcoming him back to Hanover on behalf of the group. Kauderer said he was "grateful" that D'Souza was willing to speak at Dartmouth despite the "hostile environment" toward prominent conservative alumni. He also emphasized the College Republicans' belief in a freedom to express one's opinion.
Department of Safety and Security director Keysi Montás was present at the event along with three other Safety and Security officers stationed around Filene Auditorium "making sure the crowd was moving" and that everyone remained safe.
After a short introduction video, D'Souza took the stage and spoke about issues he believes to be most important in contemporary American politics, centering on the idea of "walls" — including Trump's proposed wall along the country's southern border — as well as walls in a more figurative sense of the word, including identity and who is included inside or outside the wall.
He discussed what he called "a broken immigration system." D'Souza said that his route to the U.S. cost much more than those crossing through the southern border.
"Quite frankly, we don't have a Rio Grande that we can come thrashing across or a ditch that we can tunnel under to get to America," D'Souza said.
He claimed that Trump does not "hate immigrants" but instead "hates illegals." He said that those crossing illegally into the country are taking advantage of other immigrants seeking a legal path to the U.S.
D'Souza also spoke about American exceptionalism, claiming that not all cultures are equal. He added that coming to the U.S. provided him with not only material prosperity, but also a chance to escape his destiny.
The question and answer section focused on free speech and the significance of having D'Souza on campus.
One audience member's question criticized D'Souza's approach of addressing many topics briefly rather than going into depth in any one topic. D'Souza responded by saying that he hopes his lecture serves as an introduction to his ideas and that interested students can read his books or watch his YouTube videos for more in-depth discussion.
Members of the College Republicans executive board Daniel Bring '21 and Charles Schneider '22 noted that from the perspective of the College Republicans, D'Souza's speech was not meant to be polarizing or controversial.
Bring and Schneider said that the College Republicans anticipated the protest and that they thought it would be impossible to find a speaker who would not draw opposition.
Kauderer said in his introduction to D'Souza's speech that the College Republicans recognized the right to protest, but that any person making it impossible for D'Souza to speak would face disciplinary consequences.
A group of 12 protesters gathered in the hallway signing protest anthems and carrying signs with messages like "Warning: fascist on campus," "Fags against fascists" and "No platform 4 hate." At various intervals, a few protesters entered the hall where D'Souza spoke and carried the signs through the crowd.
Some students made distracting noises during the speech, such as loudly tearing plastic wrapping off of water bottles. A pair of students draped in gay pride attire walked to the front of the room and passionately kissed while D'Souza spoke.
Ellie Gonzalez '19 used protest to convey dissatisfaction in the College Republicans for bringing a speaker who has "acted with malicious intent towards queer people," expressing determination to express frustration in a public, attention-drawing way.
"Our right to exist is not up for debate, and until they get on board with that, I'm going to show up to every event in my gayest outfit and protest any way I damn well please," Gonzalez said.
During a later interruption by the protesters, D'Souza paused his remarks and joked with the audience.
D'Souza strayed from his speech a second time to address the protesters, saying they were "not willing to do the intellectual work" and "too lazy" to properly debate him.
Catherine Rocchi '19 came to the event as a silent protester and expressed exasperation in the fact that the College Republicans chose a conservative figure who was as controversial as D'Souza.
In contrast to promoting free speech like the College Republicans aimed to do, Rocchi felt that D'Souza's event did little to promote a debate and instead incited feelings of anger and frustration.
College Republicans member Brian Drisdelle '21 said he was frustrated by the "lazy" and "childish" nature of the protests.
Students used more dramatic attention-drawing methods of protest to emphasize that D'Souza could "really make some people on campus feel unsafe," according to Rocchi.
"Some people probably wanted to make the College Republicans feel as though as they shouldn't bring such extreme, incendiary speakers to campus anymore, since this is becoming a pattern since [David Horowitz spoke on campus] back in the fall," she said.
Montás expressed satisfaction at how the talk turned out.
"Everybody said their piece and everybody I think had a dialogue, as contentious as it could be," Montás said.
Correction appended (Feb. 13, 2019): This article has been updated to correct a misspelling of Drisdelle's name.


Superheavy Samurai Blowtorch - Yu-Gi-Oh!
Text: When an opponent's monster declares an attack while you have no Spell/Trap Cards in your Graveyard: You can send this card from your hand to the Graveyard, then target 1 "Superheavy Samurai" monster you control; change the attack target to it and perform damage calculation. Once per turn, when an opponent's monster declares an attack: You can change the attack target to this card and perform damage calculation. Cannot be destroyed by battle.


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The Hugs for Brady Foundation – A 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation. All donations are 100% tax deductible.
Every year, over 13,500 children are diagnosed with cancer in the US.
Our ultimate goal is to eradicate pediatric cancer. We will not rest until childhood cancers of all types are a forgotten nightmare. The Hugs for Brady Foundation is a non-profit organization (Tax ID: 27-3921673) your donations are 100% tax deductible. No donation amount is too small and no donation amount is ever too large.
With this growth, we have been able to accomplish more, and have a larger impact upon our community. We welcome new volunteers with open arms. Visit our Volunteer Opportunities Page to find out how you can become a cherished part of the Hugs for Brady Foundation.


In this paper we present an intelligent power controller for a vehicle power system that employs multiple power sources. In particular we focus on a vehicle power system architecture that is used in vehicles such as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. These vehicles are designed to survive IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) attacks and ambushes. The power system has the following major components: a "clean" bus, a "dirty" bus, an engine, a hydraulic system and a switch between the clean and the dirty bus. We developed algorithms for intelligent energy management for this type of vehicle power system including DP (Dynamic Programming) optimization, DP online control and a machine learning technique that combines neural networks with DP to train an intelligent power controller. We present experiments conducted through modeling and simulation using a generic commercial software tool and a lab hardware setup.


Try Bee By The Sea's sea buckthorn and honey body butter for very dehydrated skin on arms, legs and feet - or as an aftershave moisturizer on legs. A luxuriously rich, concentrated blend of shea butter, coconut oil, honey and Sea Buckthorn oil to nourish and soften even the driest skin.
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Bee By The Sea Natural Products was founded in 2008 by Andrew Wingrove in Ontario, Canada.


Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz - KATU image.
PORTLAND, Ore. – After working for more than a decade on the Portland City Council, Commissioner Amanda Fritz said she will not be seeking reelection in 2020.
In a statement posted on her website last week, Commissioner Fritz announced she would not be seeking a fourth term.
Fritz joined KATU's Angelica Thornton on Your Voice, Your Vote to talk about her many accomplishments, while laying out her plans for her remaining time in office.
Also in Sunday's show, KATU Meteorologist Dave Salesky talks about the impacts of the recent flooding in Western Oregon.
We also take a look at the push to bring a Major League Baseball team to Portland, after the group reached a major milestone this week.


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Tubi: Your Go-To Free Streaming Service for Euro & International TV
Like free, Tubi is one of the best four-letter words in the English language, at least for stateside fans of Euro and international TV shows.
Linda Jew September 24, 2018 September 24, 2018 adaptation, crime drama, Danish, drama, Finnish, French, period drama, police procedural, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Swiss Read more
The Bridge: Fourth & Final Season of Iconic Nordic Noir Series Premieres in the US
Unless a soothsayer tells you "Beware the Ides of March," it's likely you're not in any danger, but you might want to stay home anyway for the premiere of the final season of The Bridge.
Linda Jew March 12, 2018 October 19, 2019 crime drama, Danish, exclusive, multilingual, mystery, Nordic noir, premiere, Scandinavian, Swedish Read more
Euro TV Premieres in March 2018: The Bridge, The River, Spring Tide, Tabula Rasa & More
March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Or not. What is certain is that some of the most highly-anticipated Euro TV shows premiere on telly this month.
Linda Jew February 28, 2018 July 1, 2018 adaptation, Belgian, comedy, crime drama, Danish, drama, Euro TV premieres, Flemish, French, German, Italian, made-for-TV-movie/telefilm, mystery, Nordic noir, Norwegian, premiere, Swedish, thriller Read more
2015 Euro TV Year in Review: Favorite New Shows & Seasons in the UK & US
Last year was a banner one for Euro TV programs in the UK and US, with the return of several international hits and the premieres of many brand new shows that rocked.
Linda Jew January 2, 2016 July 1, 2018 Belgian, comedy, crime drama, Danish, drama, Dutch, French, German, historical drama, mystery, Nordic noir, Norwegian, period drama, Romanian, Swedish, thriller Read more
The Bridge: What Hans Rosenfeldt and Christian Wikander Say About Season 4
Now that Season 3 of The Bridge has completed its run in the Nordic countries, curious minds want to know, "Will there be a fourth season?"
Linda Jew December 7, 2015 July 1, 2018 crime drama, Euro TV news Read more
Sofia Helin, The Bridge, Deutschland 83 Win at C21 Drama Awards
The 2015 C21 Drama Awards Show was held last night at BFI in London, and the big foreign-language Euro TV winners were The Bridge and Deutschland 83.
Linda Jew December 3, 2015 July 1, 2018 award Read more
The Bridge/Bron/Broen III: Sofia Helin Is Back as Saga Norén in Hit Crime Drama
The wait is just about over. Just shy of a two-year absence from our screens, the third series of The Bridge is finally making its premiere in the UK this weekend.
Linda Jew November 20, 2015 July 1, 2018 crime drama, Danish, premiere, Swedish Read more
Record-Setting Viewership for Nordic Dramas The Bridge and Occupied
Who says appointment viewing on linear TV is dead? Perhaps it is for some programs, but Scandinavians tuned in in record numbers for the openers of The Bridge and Occupied.
Linda Jew October 22, 2015 July 1, 2018 drama, Euro TV news, Nordic, Scandinavian Read more
The Bridge III Features Bob Dylan
The international hit Nordic noir crime drama, The Bridge, is set to premiere this weekend, and fans of the show have more than murder to look forward to: Bob Dylan.
Linda Jew September 25, 2015 July 1, 2018 crime drama, Danish, Euro TV news, music, Nordic noir, Swedish Read more
BBC Four: New Arne Dahl, Beck, The Bridge from Sweden, Plus Slow TV from Lapland
BBC Four is bringing some of the most highly-anticipated new Euro TV series to the UK. (No worries, US viewers; chances are better than good that you'll get these shows, too.)
Linda Jew August 28, 2015 July 1, 2018 adaptation, crime drama, Danish, mystery, Nordic, Nordic noir, Norwegian, Scandinavian, Swedish Read more


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Eastern HS2 will redress years of decline, Boris Johnson told
Graeme Paton, Transport Correspondent
Monday October 05 2020, 12.01am, The Times
A letter to the prime minister urged him to deliver the line via the East Midlands
ANDREW FOX/GETTY IMAGES
Boris Johnson is under mounting pressure to commit the government to the eastern leg of HS2 amid warnings that the route is needed to address "decades of chronic underinvestment" in the railways.
More than 50 MPs, peers, council leaders and business bosses have signed a letter to the prime minister urging him to sign off on the full delivery of the line between Birmingham and Leeds via the East Midlands.
They say that certainty is needed to rebalance massive economic and social "disparity" between the east and west of the country, with public investment weighted towards towns and cities along the western spine of England.
The letter, whose signatories include Lord McLoughlin, the former Conservative transport secretary, and Baroness Morgan of Cotes, the former


Lower prices seen for corn, soybeans and wheat in 2016.
U.S. farmers are forecast to plant about 2 million more acres of corn in 2016 to 90 million, while soybean acres may be slightly lower at 82.5 million, USDA economist Robert Johansson said during the opening session of annual USDA Agriculture Outlook Forum on Thursday.
Total wheat acres are forecast at 51 million, down 3.6 million from 2015, with declines in both winter and spring wheat as low prices pressure production.
The increase in corn acres was forecast because lower fuel and fertilizer prices make it a more attractive option to other crops.
Ample supplies of all crops should keep pressure on prices.
"Further (crop) price reductions are expected for the 2016/2017 marketing year," he said.
The average corn price was put at $3.45 from 2015's $3.60, soybeans to $8.50 from $8.80 and wheat at $4.20 from $5.00.
"Lower commodity prices are expected to idle some land, which had been brought into production as commodity prices rose through 2012," he said.


The UK government will announce plans today to permit driver-less cars on public roads as early as January 2015. So far, worries about legal and insurance issues have restricted autonomous vehicles to private roads.
Now, however, as part of its plan to signal that Britain can be a leader in such technology, the government wants to update the law to ensure that driver-less cars can take to the streets.
The move will require a change in the Highway Code and brings the UK in line with countries such as Japan, Germany and Singapore.
In the US, driver-less cars have been tested on public roads for months, with Google's fleet of autonomous vehicles racking up more than 300,000 miles in California alone.
All of the major automotive manufacturers, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, General Motors, Ford and Toyota are also working towards their own production models.
Still uncertain about adopting cloud services? A new study from the Cloud Industry Forum has found that cloud services have given more than 1 in 2 companies competitive advantage.
Some 55% of organisations say cloud has delivered competitive advantage, while another quarter believes such advantage is imminent.
Who was surveyed? Researchers at the CIF talked to 250 senior IT and business decision-makers about cloud adoption.
Fast adoption Some 47% of those surveyed said the ability to access latest technologies faster was the main benefit of cloud. For example, big data is revolutionising how the world does business. It is helping you learn more about what your clients like and what they don't like.
Mice first broke onto the public stage with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984, and since then they have helped to completely redefine the way we use computers. Every day of your computing life, you reach out for your mouse whenever you want to move your cursor or activate something. Your mouse senses your motion and your clicks and sends them to the computer so it can respond appropriately. We'll take the cover off of this important part of the human-machine interface and see exactly what makes it tick.
An application normally needs permission and should alert user that it needs permission to make phone call, when it is being installed. Researchers at Security firm CureSec has discovered a security flaw in the Android system that allows malicious applications to initiate unauthorized phone calls.
By exploiting this vulnerability, malicious apps can make phone calls to premium-rated numbers and terminate any outgoing calls. It is also capable of sending Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) codes that can be used for enabling call forwarding, blocking your sim cards and so on.
The security bug appears to be introduced in Android Jelly bean 4.1.1 and it exits in all latest versions through Android Kitkat 4.4.2.
Berkeley, CA -- A team of researchers led by Xiang Zhang, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering, has found a way to dramatically increase the sensitivity of a light-based plasmon sensor to detect incredibly minute concentrations of explosives. They noted that it could potentially be used to sniff out a hard-to-detect explosive popular among terrorists.
Their findings are to be published Sunday, July 20, in the advanced online publication of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
They put the sensor to the test with various explosives - 2,4-dinitrotoluene (DNT), ammonium nitrate and nitrobenzene - and found that the device successfully detected the airborne chemicals at concentrations of 0.67 parts per billion, 0.4 parts per billion and 7.2 parts per million, respectively. One part per billion would be akin to a blade of grass on a football field.
The researchers noted that this is much more sensitive than the published results to date for other optical sensors.


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The number of people with diabetes is skyrocketing. It's estimated that by 2020, close to one in three Canadians will be living with either prediabetes or diabetes.
These patients are seen frequently in pharmacy practice, so all pharmacists must be comfortable discussing and managing common issues.
Self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) is an important tool for ensuring optimal glycemic control and reducing the risk of complications, and is a valuable educational tool that can help patients self-manage their diabetes. These benefits will only be realized when the patient is using this tool correctly and appropriately.
How can pharmacists maximize the benefit of SMBG in their patients?
2. Recommend a testing frequency and when to adjust it. Far too often you will open a patient's log book and see a single test every morning before breakfast. Many of these patients do not use these test results to change any aspect of their diabetes management. We should be providing patients with a testing frequency based on the current Canadian Diabetes Association guidelines.
Remember, it's important to adjust this frequency based on the needs of the patient. If the patient is not reaching glycemic targets, is experiencing episodes of hypoglycemia, illness, stress, is starting a new medication, or is newly diagnosed, we should increase the SMBG testing frequency. If they are reaching glycemic targets, consider decreasing testing frequency. SMBG, like everything else in diabetes, should not be static and should be adjusted to meet the needs of your patients.
3. Know your guideline recommended testing frequency. Some patients are not testing as often as recommended by guidelines. Any patients using insulin therapy should be testing AT LEAST as often as they administer insulin. For example, a patient taking two injections of insulin per day should test at least twice daily.
4. Look for patterns. You don't have to be a certified diabetes educator to notice patterns with SMBG testing. Many patients apply too much emphasis on one or two readings that are high and outside of the target range. By helping to identify specific patterns, we can educate patients on how to self-manage these readings, adapt or change their therapy and discuss how these patterns impact overall glycemic control.
5. Remember, A1C and SMBG complement each other. Some patients may question the need for doing both A1C and SMBG testing. A high A1C reading tells us we have to make a change; using this with SMBG data tells us the best change (lifestyle/medication or both) to make. Also, there are conditions like anemia, chronic renal or hepatic disease that can affect a patient's A1C value.
6. Ensure proper diabetes management for both your patient and the pharmacy. Patients with diabetes are important clients for most community pharmacies. They are usually on multiple medications and purchase supplies from their local pharmacy. By helping your patients manage their diabetes with tools such as SMBG, you are showcasing your role in helping your patients self-manage their condition. By working collaboratively with these patients, you can ensure their loyalty to the pharmacy but most importantly improve their health and reduce their risk of diabetic complications.


York-Simcoe has traditionally been a Conservative stronghold, but that does not scare Shaun Tanaka.
"It actually makes me quite hopeful," said the Liberal candidate in the upcoming York-Simcoe federal byelection.
This is the second time Tanaka, a former geography professor at Queen's University and the University of Toronto, will run for the Liberal seat in the riding, which includes Bradford West Gwillimbury.
Since losing to former Progressive Conservative MP Peter Van Loan in the 2015 election, "I learned you have to continue to work hard," knocking on doors and meeting with as many York-Simcoe residents as possible, she said.
She is quick to point to changes the Liberal government has already done to assist people at all ages, including a commitment to strengthen the Canada Pension Plan, and moving the age from 67 back to 65 when people can access Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement.
"That's a real change the Liberals have brought to the people of York-Simcoe," she said.
As well, Tanaka pointed to the Canada Child Benefit, which she said families access for 20,000 kids in York-Simcoe.
It equals to more than $6,000 a year for families, which can go toward food, art lessons, hockey practice, or other needs, she said.
If elected as the representative of York-Simcoe, Tanaka said she wants to work alongside the federal government and bring back "necessary resources" needed in the riding's communities.
Tanaka grew up in Mount Albert, and she currently lives in Sharon with her husband and eight year old twin boys.
She said she wants to make sure her kids can enjoy the same natural features of the community she enjoyed as a child, and so environmental issues are important to her.
"Municipalities made it very clear, particularly in York-Simcoe … that they didn't want (the Open for Business section of Bill 66) to proceed. When someone's trying to sidestep reviews, we hold them accountable," she said.
However, she said there has been some misinformation about the cancellation of the Lake Simcoe Clean-up Fund.
"When the Conservatives say the Liberals cancelled the Lake Simcoe Clean-up Fund … it was slated to expire well before the Liberal government took office," she said.
The Liberals, she added, have created Great Lakes Protection Areas and have a plan to protect the environment and grow the economy.
"As a geography professor, I'm happy this type of funding is based (on evidence-based research). Remember, the Conservatives muzzled scientists and cut research funding," she said.
Tanaka said she got involved in politics after realizing she wanted to help shape the world she will one day leave her children.
She is a past volunteer with the Sharon Temple Museum Society, the East Gwillimbury Public Library, the National Association of Japanese Canadians, and the Maytree Foundation, the latter which is a charity committed to reducing poverty and inequality in Canada.
For more information about Shaun Tanaka, visit her website.


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Tagged with Bulgarian Prisoners' Rehabilitation Association
Proudly Marching For Babies
Last year, Bernie Finn MP's annual 'March for the Babies' employed members of the neo-Nazi groupuscule The Lads Society to provide security for the event; this year, the Lads were replaced by members of the Proud Boys, a number of whom also joined ex-Senator Fraser Anning's parade in St Kilda in January.
Far right figures feature at abortion rally
Tom Minear
Far-right extremists have joined Liberal MP Bernie Finn at his annual pro-life march to push changes to Victoria's abortion laws.
Mr Finn, the president of March for the Babies, led the rally through the city last Saturday, which was also reportedly attended by Liberal colleague Neil Angus.
Members of the male-only far-right "Proud Boys" were seen at the rally, with a post on the group's website describing a confrontation after the march with a counter-protester at a CBD bar.
Mr Finn told the crowd that Victoria "still has the worst, most extreme abortion law in Australia and one of the worst in the world".
He also gave an interview at the rally to Dia Beltran, who runs a far-right YouTube channel which has featured notorious extremists Neil Erikson and Blair Cottrell, and who reportedly attended a Liberal fundraiser recently.
Health Minister Jenny Mikakos called on the Liberal Party to condemn extremists "instead of walking in lock-step" with them.
"This is just more of the same from the leaderless Victorian Liberal Party and shows once again they are being infiltrated by elements of the far-right," she said.
Mr Finn said he knew "precisely nothing about the Proud Boys", and that Ms Beltran had introduced herself on Saturday as a blogger and had asked for the interview.
He said it was a "sensational" day with a crowd of more than 4000 people.
Asked if any far-right extremists had attended, he told the Herald Sun: "I don't know anybody who fits that description to tell you the truth."
Other attendees reportedly included far-right activist Avi Yemini and Kathy Clubb, a mother of 13 children who launched a failed challenge to laws that ban protesters harassing patients outside abortion clinics.
The crowd also heard from New South Wales Liberal MP Nathaniel Smith, who recently said he was "disgusted" at changes to abortion laws in his home state.
Reason Party leader Fiona Patten, who attended a rival pro-choice rally on Saturday, also questioned Mr Finn's "disturbing embrace of the far-right and their ideas".
But Mr Finn said: "I'm not aware of any undesirable elements turning up at all, apart from Fiona Patten."
Above : Proud Boys Australia lvl boss Nicholas Stone with recently-retired AltRight propagandist Lauren Southern during her tour last year. Like Bernie Finn, the organiser of Southern & Molyneux's tour, Christian fun-da-mentalist Dave Pellowe, also hired The Lads Society to provide security for the tour (George Christensen MP was a very special guest of Pellowe's).
• The Proud Boy Australia website is registered to and maintained by NSW resident Nicholas Stone, who works in the security industry;
• In addition to interviewing Finn, Erikson, Cottrell and various other luminaries, AltLite YouTube personality Claudia Benitez ('Dia Beltran') recently attended Hawthorn Uniting Church in order to disrupt a church meeting. Erikson, one of her comrades on that occasion, has subsequently been charged with Disturbing religious worship; he returns to court on November 4;
• Avi Yemini was convicted in July of unlawfully assaulting his former partner, using a carriage service to harass on three occasions and breaching a personal safety order; he returns to court to face other charges on November 6 and 28;
• In the last few months Finn's other mates in The Lads Society have decided to be open about their embrace of neo-Nazism, by way of declaring themselves a national socialist project and expressing particular appreciation for Nazi ideology on women;
• Samantha Kutner keeps track of Proud Boys activity in North America by way of various writings on the subject and this map.
Phillip Galea
Above : Neil Erikson interviews Phil Galea.
100% Dinky-Di True-Blue Aussie Patriot Phillip Galea is currently on trial in Melbourne for alleged terrorisms, viz plotting terrorist attacks on Trades Hall in Carlton, The Melbourne Anarchist Club in Northcote and the Resistance Centre in the city. Inter alia, it was revealed last week that Galea allegedly told others he wanted to cut the throats of people in the CBD and create a "line of dead lefties".
Freedom to Jock Palfreeman
Cafe Gummo is hosting a benefit gig for Jock Palfreeman on Thursday, November 7, featuring the fabulous talents of HORNY ELKS ('Local ska punks of Russian descent, horns meet jarring riffs; break out the vodka and get ready to party'), WHEN OUR TURN COMES ('The radical left rockers return to the Gummo stage to deliver another round of hiphop infused punk'), MISHA DOUMNOV ('After many years living overseas, Misha plays his first return gig of improvised noise /// a storm of eastern darkness') & more TBA.
• $10 Waged /// $5 Unwaged /// Free for First Nations Mob, Asylum Seekers & Refugees;
• Door charge & cut of bar takings will go directly to Jock to help him pay legal fees & living expenses pending his safe return;
• Additional solidarity donations welcome /// BPRA merch available on the night (cash only).
This event will take place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We wish to pay our respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
See also : 'Everybody hates us': on Sofia's streets, Roma face racism every day, Vivek Chaudhary, The Guardian, October 20, 2019.
Bonus! Milo
Nazi-sympathising pedophile apologist and #PellDefender Milo Yiannopoulos — a Proud Boys favourite — has lost his Dangerous website (possibly SOLD! to an obscure Left-wing gay blog, who knows …).
October 21, 2019 Leave a reply
Solidarity with Jock Palfreeman : Solidemo, Melbourne, OCT 19, 2019
The Strange Case of Jock Palfreeman keeps evolving. As I write, Jock has been released from Busmantsi Detention Centre in Sofia, but is unable to leave Bulgaria until such time as the Prosecutor-General says so. I'll probably write more on the case later, but in the meantime:
1) There's a solidemo on Saturday, October 19 at midday at the State Library of Victoria. For more infos, please see the Facebook event page.
2) Jock needs money: 'Please donate to support Jock Palfreeman's expenses in prison and defending himself against the attacks of the Head Prosecutor of Bulgaria. There is no minimum donation required. Money raised will cover a variety of ongoing expenses of Jock's day to day life and legal situation.'
3) A petition to Bring Jock Home remains in circulation and has obtained almost 7,000 signatures.
4) ABC's Australian Story is featuring Jock on Monday, October 21: 'When Jock was released on parole recently having served 12 years in jail, he and his father, Simon Palfreeman, could have been forgiven for thinking their nightmare was over. But a new crisis unfolded when Jock was caught up in a bitter stoush when politicians argued against his parole. He remains in limbo. Airs Monday October 21, 8pm (AEDT), on ABCTV and iview.'
5) A benefit gig is being organised for a coupla weeks from now …
Free Jock Palfreeman (October 2019 Edition)
Update (October 16, 2019) : Jock Palfreeman released from Bulgarian detention centre after being granted parole, ABC. Jock needs financial support for ongoing legal costs and living expenses while he awaits the court's decision. You can donate to him here.
Update (October 7, 2019) : The court met but has reserved its decision for some point in the future — probably several months. Jock, meanwhile, is forced to reside in detention. See : Jock Palfreeman's fate unclear after Bulgarian court adjourns Australian's parole hearing, Bridget Brennan, ABC | Jock Palfreeman remains in limbo as Bulgarian court adjourns his case, Josh Dye, The Age | Jock Palfreeman remains behind bars as Bulgarian court adjourns hearing, Ben Doherty, The Guardian | Jock Palfreeman could face further two months behind Bulgarian bars after case adjourned, SBS (AAP).
Update (October 2, 2019) : Originally scheduled to meet on October 23, Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation is instead convening on October 7 to address the application from Bulgaria's Prosecutor-General to overturn Jock's parole.
Oh hai.
• As you may be aware, Jock Palfreeman is currently languishing in a migrant detention centre in Sofia, despite having won his parole a few weeks ago.
• I've written an article about Jock's situation for Overland, which you can read here.
• Last week, Cam & I interviewed Caro Staples about Jock's case, which you can listen to here.
• Ash Dupre started this petition to Scott Morrison (Prime Minister of Australia) to Bring Jock Home, which you can sign here.
• Antifa International has published a call-to-action:
IT'S TIME FOR US TO TAKE ACTION TO DEFEND JOCK!
1) Write to the Bulgarian ambassador in your country to demand that Sotir Tsatsarov revoke his appeal of Jock's parole and that Bulgaria immediately release Jock. Find a list of Bulgarian embassies here.
2) Contact the Bulgarian Prosecutor's office to demand that Tsatsarov revoke his appeal of Jock's parole and that Bulgaria immediately release Jock. Contact information here.
3) Contact Australian foreign minister Marise Payne and demand that Australia take the strongest action possible to convince the Bulgarian government to revise the appeal of Jock's parole and release Jock to Australia immediately. Contact information here.
4) Contact Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and demand that Australia take the strongest action possible to convince the Bulgarian government to revise the appeal of Jock's parole and release Jock to Australia immediately. Contact information here.
5) Share this information widely – an immediate, large, and vocal response from Jock's supporters around the world may be the difference between Jock's freedom and nine more years in a Bulgarian prison!
• A solidemo has been organised for Thursday, October 10 in Sydney:
WHEN : 5.30PM
WHERE : Sydney Town Hall (483 George Street, Sydney)
WHY : Bring Jock Home
MORE INFOS : Facebook
#FreeJock
October 1, 2019 4 Replies
Letter from accused 'terrorist' John Zakhariev, currently on trial in Sofia, Bulgaria
UPDATE (June 6, 2017) : As expected, Zakhariev has been found guilty of 'training with a Kalashnikov with the intention of carrying out a terror attack' and sentenced to four years in jail (Australian-Bulgarian John Zakhariev sentenced for terrorism, Nick Miller, The Age, June 6, 2017).
John Zakhariev (above) is a 21yo dual Australian-Bulgarian citizen currently on trial in Sofia, Bulgaria. Arrested in September 2016, John is accused of undertaking weapons training in Bulgaria in order to join Daesh in Syria. He denies all charges.
I was recently forwarded the following letter from John which I reproduce below:
Since the 20th of September 2016 I have been stripped of my liberty and locked up in the heart of darkness otherwise known as Sofia Central Prison. The reason being that the Bulgarian authorities allege that I came to this country in order to train with firearms in order to fight with Islamic State or Daesh. To date, after nearly seven months, neither me nor my lawyer have seen or been presented with any evidence by the prosecution to back up these absurd allegations. One would expect that there would be a huge burden of proof on the part of the prosecution to back up her claims, which she herself has proudly boasted in court is 'irrefutable'. Yet to date all that the court has been presented with in terms of evidence are as follows:
Firstly, workers from the legal shooting range I attended in Sofia (four times over a four week period), who all testified that my behaviour was perfectly normal and that they never had any issues with me as a client. Furthermore they all testified that I stopped attending the shooting range in early August 2016. This is in complete contrast to the claims of the prosecutor that I continued to attend until the 19th of September. Other witnesses to testify include a police provocateur who was sent to befriend me at the Banya Bashi Mosque in Sofia, Muhammad Dabbousi. In his witness statement he claimed that I said to him that I love Daesh and that me and him have to go and fight alongside them and yet in court he claimed that I was merely talking about them in a neutral manner. He made no mention of the alleged attempted recruitment or anything about me saying that I love them. He even expressed shock when the judge presented him with his original witness statement, leading me to believe that the police wrote his statement for him and asked him to sign it without even looking at it: an all-too-common practice here in Bulgaria with its law enforcement. At this point I wish to note that all the witnesses from the shooting range testified that I was always accompanied by a man to the shooting range. I never went alone. I knew this man as Peter Petrov, who I strongly suspect was a police agent.
Secondly, the prosecution presented to the court statuses which people on my Facebook friends list wrote about the ongoing war in Syria which was pro-opposition in nature. I will now make a point here which is that I never commented, shared or even liked these statuses, nor have I ever corresponded with the individuals who wrote them. The prosecution has further sought to use religious books on my computer as evidence of my support for Daesh even though a court-appointed expert himself testified that the books, though conservative in nature, do not in any way promote violence and cannot be linked to the ideology of ISIS. In my view this further shows the sheer Islamophobia of the case against me where anything even remotely connected to Islam is labelled extremist or jihadist. Yet even more disturbing for me is the court's unwillingness to allow my defence to present any evidence in my favour. On the 21st of December I told the court that I had already left Islam months before my arrest. I further told the court evidence which could be found to support my claims including a 12 page email I sent to Canadian ex-Muslim Abdullah Sameer titled 'Notes on Islam' where I point out several flaws in the Islamic faith and also its claims of being a perfect faith valid for all times and places. I also told the court about some anti-radical Islamic literature which could be found on my computer and which were all downloaded in the same period beginning in early August 'til my arrest on September 20th. I also informed the court about emails I wrote to the Canadian Tourism College and International Guide Academy in Denver, Colorado enquiring about courses available in 2017, which clearly show my intention to continue my studies and not to join ISIS. And finally I told the judge that my Facebook correspondence would prove that I am indeed anti-ISIS since I spent a lot of time on it refuting the ideology of ISIS to its supporters. I even told the judge that I was also in touch with ex-Muslims weeks before my arrest discussing the possibility of setting up a Council of ex-Muslims in Australia similar to the one in the UK. The judge ordered that all this evidence be gathered, which raised my hopes of receiving a fair trial. Yet on May 16th 2017 when after many delays all this evidence had been gathered and presented to the court, the judge suddenly did a 360 and refused to even look at the evidence and calling the request of my lawyer to examine the Facebook correspondence, emails and for an examination of the books 'groundless' and 'unnecessary' since there was already enough evidence gathered by the prosecution seemingly ignoring the fact that they only ever sought evidence which would support their case.
This decision by the court confirms my fears since day one of my arrest that I would be subjected to a show trial and denied a fair hearing. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will be found guilty even though I will always maintain my innocence and insist that I was the victim of a poorly-attempted entrapment operation, whose pathetic nature would be almost laughable if its consequences weren't so serious.
SEE : BULGARIAN PRISONERS' ASSOCIATION
See also : Accused Australian John Zakhariev criticised jihadist doctrine before arrest, Nick Miller, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2017 | Australian-Bulgarian dual citizen John Zakhariev pleads innocence over terrorism charges, ABC/AP, May 17, 2017 | Australian John Zakhariev grim about outlook for his Bulgarian terror trial, Nick Miller, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2017 | Australian John Zakhariev remains in custody as media barred from court in Bulgaria, Teodor Spasov, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 9, 2017 | Court delays John Zakhariev's terror case after problems with tape recording, Lisa Millar, ABC, March 18, 2017 | Australian Government sent Bulgaria letter saying John Zakhariev was 'interested' in terrorism, lawyer says, Danuta Kozaki, ABC, March 14, 2017 | Aust told Bulgaria about NSW man: lawyer, AAP, March 14, 2017 | Sydney man John Zakhariev, 21, arrested in Bulgaria on terrorism charges, Rachel Olding, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 13, 2017 | Australian John Zakhariev held on terror charges in Bulgaria, Sam Buckingham-Jones, The Australian, March 13, 2017 | Former Sydney private schoolboy arrested on terror charges, Yahoo7 News, March 13, 2017 | John Zakhariev: Sydney private school boy to jailed terror suspect, news.com.au, March 13, 2017.
May 22, 2017 3 Replies
Continued Assaults on Asylum Seekers in Sofia Central Prison
[Below is an account by Jock Palfreeman of recent assaults by Sofia prison guards on imprisoned asylum seekers and others. On July 25 NYC ABC is holding a meeting to discuss Jock's case; on July 27 MAC is holding a benefit gig to raise funds for the Bulgarian Prisoners' Rehabilitation Association (of which Jock is Chairman).]
On the 6/7/14 at 8.30am the guard Peter Petrov performed the morning roll call, he entered Cell 11 and started shouting in Bulgarian, a language no one present understood. As the roll call finished for that cell he then started to assault a mentally ill man from behind as he was not moving fast enough. The mentally ill man is about 45kgs, about 55 years old and a citizen of Comoros. He then retaliated and slapped the guard back after the guard Peter Petrov hit him and kicked him again, the guard came at the Comoros Islander again and the African took a chair to keep the guard away from him. Three other guards came and only saw the Comoros islander with the chair and so they beat him too. Peter Petrov then ran out of the cell, locked all the cell doors and called for "assistance". Forty guards came from two work shifts, from the Saturday evening shift and the incoming Sunday day shift (as now shifts are 12 hours). The forty guards summarily beat everyone in the cell – the man from Comoros, four Afghanis, one Pakistani, one Dutch man and an Algerian. They were not resisting in any way and most of the wounds inflicted by the guards are on their backs as they tried to cover their faces on the ground. All of these victims are incarcerated for illegal border crossing: they are all asylum seekers.
The man from Comoros was most badly beaten, with a cut face, bleeding eye, bleeding nose, cut lips and swollen and cuts and swelling to his head. All over his body was covered in welts from the batons. The Pakistani too had welts and pink bruises as did the others in perfect shapes of batons; the Pakistani received a cut head and several of the Afghanis, apart from the welts on their backs and forearms, had black and bleeding eyes. The seven men were beaten with batons, boots; they were stomped, hit and hit into walls and the ground.
The beating continued for about 20-30 minutes. The guards then indiscriminately started to break furniture used by prisoners for playing cards in the corridor.
After the bulk of the guards left, the guards called the prisoners Hisham Karmo and Budimir Kjovic, a Syrian national and a Serbian national. Together with the guards they wrote witness statements or "explanations" for the victims and intimidated the victims to sign the statements. The victims were told if they complained they would get extra prison sentences and that the guards would beat them again.
In these "witness statements" written by Hisham and Budimir, it states that the Comoros man attacked the guard unprovoked and the guard had to defend himself. A deal was struck between Hisham and Budimir and the guard Peter Petrov and the rest of the guards that this would be the official version that Hisham and Budimir would testify to but also help maintain through intimidation of victims.
Only the man from Comoros was allowed to see a doctor. As the official version of events did not include the other seven victims as having been assaulted they were not permitted to see a doctor for the entirety of Sunday. At 8.30pm the guards changed shifts and again the new guards would not allow the other 6 victims to see the duty doctor. On the same day as the assault the victims came to me (Jock Palfreeman) as the chairman of the Bulgarian Prisoners' Association and as a known human rights activist and asked me for help. I immediately called the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee to inform their chairman Krassimir Kanev of the assault and he supplied valuable legal advice as to how to proceed.
With prisoners acting as translators the victims wrote real statements testifying the details of the assault free of intimidation by the prison's auxiliary bullies. We brought many prisoners together and discussed how to proceed. Many prisoners supported the victims and we promised to support the victims if any prisoner working for the prison administration tried to intimidate them or use physical violence to silence them.
On 7/7/14 (the next day) members of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee came to meet with the victims. They took their statements and conveyed an official complaint to the prosecutor's office. The members of the Helsinki Committee then personally escorted the victims to the prison infirmary and supervised as medical injury reports were written, although copies of said medical reports were not made or given to the victims or their representatives.
The evening of the 7/7/14 the guard Peter Petrov was returned to work in 10th and continued his attempt to intimidate me, Jock Palfreeman, as he had been informed of my complaint against him the previous Wednesday (on 2/7/14), after he assaulted me by kicking me with his boots, hitting me with a large metal key, pushing and pulling me in an attempt to provoke physical confrontation. However I did not react as the man from Comoros did; had I, I would have suffered the same fate as the other victims. I realised that this guard is highly violent and dangerous.
Whether it was his character or he was a racist or he was drunk or on drugs no one could say but I realised after he assaulted me on two separate occasions that the assaults would continue and only get worse. So on the 3/7/14 I sent a complaint to the Director of the prison Peter Krester and a request to have this violent and dangerous guard moved from our block.
No measures were taken and the guard Peter Petrov four days later subsequently attacked the man from Comoros and instigated the mass assault on the other seven victims.
I, Jock Palfreeman, have now again become a target of Peter Petrov, the guard and as of the date of writing this, 9/7/14, the prison authorities have failed to take any measures to prevent the guards from assaulting prisoners or to protect me or the other 8 victims.
The assault on the 8 men was extremely vicious and so I started the explanations from that point as opposed to the first assaults upon myself.
On the 10/7/14 (Thursday), the guard Peter Petrov was moved to a different part of the prison.
On the 14/7/14 representatives from the Ombudsman's office entered the prison to conduct an investigation into the mass assault, they met with the victims and witnesses and briefly with myself.
On the 16/7/14 the vice-minister of justice, responsible specifically for the running of prisons, met with the victims of the mass assault (although there are concerns about the vice-minister's personal connections with Budimir Kjovic, who was also called to the meeting as a friend of the vice-minister of justice).
On the 17/7/14 the state prosecutor met with the victims to collect their statements from them personally.
The continued pressure and intimidation from the prisoners Budimir Kjovic and Hisham Karmo upon the victims to give false testimonies is a continuing concern, not to mention their attempt to also intimidate me into not showing solidarity to the victims. It's just another example of mafia criminals working with the state apparatus of oppression. The prison allows these bullies to continue their drug businesses within the prison, the prison staff take a cut and in exchange it is in their interest to protect the prison administration and guards as they provide the protection for their business.
Earlier this year a director Yosofifov, director of work and pay of Sofia Central Prison, was arrested along with the friend of Budimir Kjovic for trafficking contraband into the prison. Earlier this month the director Yosofifov was formally fired for violating the ethics code.
There can never be any compromise with violators of human rights and mafia!
When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty!
~ Jock Palfreeman
Chairman, Bulgarian Prisoners' Rehabilitation Association
July 21, 2014 Leave a reply


Physicians and Medical Groups specializing in house calls have become available to geriatric patients. This increase in your Medicare benefits was a result of four years of volunteer effort led by the American Academy of Home Care Medicine.
If you are unable to visit your own physician, house call physicians who come to your home provide consultations to your doctor or serve as your private doctor. Because of changes in medical technology, a physician can come to your home with portable medical equipment and provide high-quality medical care.
High-quality medical care is a result of good physicians who are well-supervised. This article will teach you how to evaluate physicians who specialize in house calls so that you will be able to get the best physician possible to come to your home.
· Is the physician who owns your medical group present every day at the local facility?
· Do you have a medical director and, if so, is the medical director present every day?
If the physician answers "no" to any of these questions, you should consider calling your local Area Agency on Aging before letting the physician into your home.
· Thoughtful and conscientious care of geriatric patients. Proper patient care requires thorough evaluation of the patient and diligent coordination of services with the home health agency.
· The primary motive is quality patient care. Legitimate medical groups have a reputation for making decisions based on the best interests of the patient. Call your local home health agency or speak with a home care nurse and ask: What is this physician's reputation for the quality of care?
· Physician-owner presence. The physician registered as owning the medical group is present every day or has hired a medical director to be present every day.
Community standards for house calls are rising because increasing numbers of high-quality physicians are offering house calls. The AAHCM has published home care ethical guidelines and has helped develop standards for credentialing physician home care medical practices.
Medicare has increased your benefits, enabling the practice of high-quality medicine in your home. If you are unable to visit your personal physician, he/she can consult a home care specialist to make a house call. Be sure that your personal physician or your home health nurse has approved the physician visiting your home.