text:
The Hope Betrayed?
By Victor Sharpe
The continuing existence of the Jewish people during the 2,000 years of the post-biblical era is surely a miracle, an enigma, and an astonishing phenomenon. For all of those long years the Jews lived in almost perpetual danger of extinction because they were stateless and at the mercy and whims from those within whichever nation they could find refuge.
Despite all oppression and misery, the People of the Book, defenseless and powerless, despised and persecuted, nevertheless survived in the fiery crucibles of Christian Europe and the Muslim Arab world. The two daughter religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, though meting out horrific slaughters upon the Jews, nevertheless could not exist were it not for Judaism or Israel. And the world, be it religious or secular, has been forever touched by Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Spinoza, Freud, Einstein, and by so many others who have sprung from this remarkable people.
Yet another miracle occurred to the remnant of the Jewish folk who survived the Holocaust. They arose like a phoenix from what the European continent had become: one giant Jewish cemetery. They fought back against a cruel world and against incredible odds until the ancient 2,000-year-old dream of rebuilding and reconstituting the ancestral, biblical homeland in Israel became a reality.
Yet with all the long and blood soaked history that the stateless Jews endured during their dispersion, there are Israeli Jews in leadership today who would give away yet more of the biblical homeland, which many of their parents and grandparents gave their lives to redeem.
Binyamin Netanyahu, who is the leader of the Likud party in Israel, has stated that, "Today, in light of our abandonment of Gaza and the Hamas takeover there, it is clear to anyone who considers himself a 'State of Israel lover,' and not just a 'Land of Israel lover,' that if we give away more territory, it will be taken over by Iran and its appendages."
Netanyahu was Israel's Prime Minister some ten years ago and at the time was responsible for giving to the Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, the city of Hebron, one of the four holy Jewish cities – the others being Tiberias, Safed and, the jewel in the Jewish crown, Jerusalem.
Netanyahu nevertheless claims that unlike his abandonment of much of the ancient Jewish city, the present leadership of Ehud Olmert, and his possible successor as Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, are obsessed with a death wish of giving even pre-1967 land to the Palestinian Authority.
Indeed they seem possessed of a psychotic need to bribe an insatiable enemy with any and all Jewish land, and for what? Peace? Never in a million years will the Arabs and the Muslim world accept peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state or any other state for that matter if it is not Muslim and Arab.
Netanyahu, for his part, responds that the real debate between him and the Left, as represented in part by Olmert and Livni, is about " ... the little Land of Israel ... We're not talking now about annexing Ramallah, but rather the fate of the Jordan Valley ... about the abandonment of areas with no Palestinian presence."
Netanyahu implies that Olmert and Livni, and so many Israelis who have lost their sense of Jewish history,"... want to give away as much of ancestral Israel as possible, and we want to retain as much as possible in areas that are saturated with both historic significance and security significance for us."
For those in Israel and the Diaspora who have forgotten the bloodstained pages of Jewish history during the long night of Israel's dispersal, it would be instructive for them to be reminded of the price a people pays for statelessness.
Those rushing to bribe and placate the relentless hatred and aggression of the Arab world by giving to them the reclaimed Jewish birthright in its ancestral homeland – including eternal Jerusalem - should read the following words from the searing passion of their ancestors.
Kalonymos ben Yehuda wrote this poem about the first Crusade which took place in 1096, and about the slaughter of the defenseless Jews in Europe.
"Yea, they slay us and they smite, vex our souls with sore affright; All the closer cleave we, Lord, to Thine everlasting Word; Not a line of all their Mass, shall our lips in homage pass; Though they curse and bind and kill, the living God is with us still; We still are Thine, though limbs are torn, better death than life foresworn; The fair and young lie down to die, in witness of Thy Unity; From dying lips the accents swell, Our G-d is One, O Israel."
Ephraim of Bonn wrote in 1190 about the second Crusade.
"In the year 1146 the Jewish communities were terror stricken. The monk, Rudolph, who shamefully persecuted Israel (the name often given for the Jews of the Diaspora, ed) arose against the people of God in order, like Haman of old, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish."
In 1793, Isaac D'Israeli wrote about the slaughter of the Jews of York, England, in 1190.
"When Richard 1 ascended the throne, the Jews brought their tributes to honor him. Many had hastened from remote parts of England and, appearing at Westminster, the Court and the mob imagined they leagued to bewitch His Majesty. A rumor spread rapidly that the Jews were to be massacred and the populace at once murdered the devoted Jews."
Sadly, news traveled north to the city of York and the townsfolk soon imitated the people of London. A cruel multitude, united with the soldiery, forced the Jewish residents to seek shelter in York Castle. The Jews held out as long as they could against the fanatical mob that by now were roused to extremes of murder and plunder. But in the end, the survivors chose to die by their own hand rather than see their loved ones slaughtered before their eyes by the mob.
Just as the Church did in its canon law, Islam instituted many prohibitions against members of other religions. Some of the Islamic restrictions resembled the anti-Jewish laws imposed throughout the Christian world. The severest punishments – usually death – were meted out to any who dared question the writings and sayings of Mohammed.
With the decline in the medieval period of the Islamic empire through the ascent of Christian Europe, the Muslim masses turned upon the hapless Jews who were increasingly forced to live as dhimmis (inferior and third class citizens) among them.
Periodic persecutions and slaughters took place against the Jews, they were forced to wear distinctive clothing, often absurd and humiliating, and live in ghettoes similar to those they endured in Christian Europe.
Though the ever present danger of Muslim fundamentalism could break out at any time (for example the 12th century Almohads) Islamic persecutions of the Jews paled against those they suffered at the hands of the Church. However, the yearning for relief from discrimination or worse, and the desire to return to Zion and the ancestral homeland, was as compelling for the Jews in Arab lands as it was for their brethren in Europe.
On August 3rd, 1492, the ancient Jewish population of Spain was driven out in the infamous Expulsion. Jews who refused to convert to Christianity were expelled, forced to leave all that their ancestors had built in Spain over centuries, and walk in a long trail of the dispossessed to the seaports. Here are a few lines from the long poem by Emma Lazarus called, The Exodus, written in 1883.
"The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory pale, well nigh swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised and bleeding feet. 'Mother, shall we soon be there?'
"The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack horses laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst with fever. Noble and abject, learned and simple, illustrious and obscure, plod side by side, all brothers now, all merged in one routed army of misfortune.
"They leave behind the grape, the olive and the fig. the vines they planted, the corn they sowed, the garden cities of Andalusia and Aragon, Estremadura and La Mancha, of Granada and Castille; the altar, the hearth, and the grave of their fathers.
"Whither shall they turn for the West has cast them out and the East refuses to receive?"
Heinrich Heine wrote this poem in 1824 about Jewish suffering in Germany.
"Break forth in lamentation, my agonizing song; That like a lava torrent, has boiled within me long; My song shall thrill each hearer, and none so deaf but hears; For the burden of my song, is the pain of a thousand years; It melts both gentle and simple, even hearts of stone are riven; Sets women and flowers weeping, they weep, the stars of heaven."
This, from Solomon Shechter, 1903.
"I remember when I came home from the religious school, bleeding and crying from the wounds inflicted upon me by the Christian boys, my father used to say: 'My child, we are in exile and we must submit to God's will.' And he made me understand that this was only a passing stage in history, as we Jews belong to Eternity, when God will comfort His people. However, my real suffering began later in life when I emigrated from Romania to so-called civilized countries and found there what I might call the higher anti-Semitism, which burns the soul though it leaves the body unhurt."
Mary Antin wrote in 1911 about the horrors inflicted upon the Jews of Russia especially at Passover.
"The Passover season, when we celebrated our deliverance from Egypt was the time our gentile neighbors chose to remind us that Russia was another Egypt. They made it a time of horror for the Jews. Somebody would start up that lie about murdering Christian children and the stupid peasants would get mad about it, fill themselves with vodka, and set out to murder the Jews. They attacked them with knives and clubs, and scythes and axes, killed them or tortured them, and burned their houses. This was a pogrom. Jews who escaped came with wounds on them and horrible stories of little babies torn limb from limb before their mother's eyes. People who saw such things never smiled again."
In Russia, the Jews endured centuries of such pogroms. Lucien Wolfe wrote the following in 1912, titled, Under the Romanoffs.
"The plaything of a heartless bureaucracy, the natural prey of all the savage elements in society, loaded with fetters in one place, and in another driven out like some wild beast, the Russian Jew finds that for him, at least, life is composed of little else than bitterness, suffering and degradation."
In 1920, Nahum Sokolow wrote about the Massacres in the Ukraine.
"For this cold murder of whole communities, not Heaven itself, nor all the mercy of the angels, could find palliation. There is no instance that shows so much as this, the ghastly descent of human character into primitive brutality and cannibalism. This is a deed, which in its horror and wicked purposelessness should have stunned the world."
But these few examples of the many frightful persecutions and slaughters that the Jews experienced in their 2,000 year old exile are but a series of fearsome dress rehearsals before the great Destruction: the German Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.
In the mid Twentieth century, perverted science and German efficiency, along with the age old evil that is Jew hatred, combined to systematically exterminate nearly all of European Jewry – reducing the world Jewish population from 18,000,000 to barely 12,000,000 in less than a decade.
Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, a new Hitler is spewing the same familiar poison against the Jews, which the world has wallowed in for all the previous centuries. Iran's Ahmadinejad is promising to murder yet another six million Jews; the Jewish population of Israel. He has declared that the Jewish state will be exterminated and is feverishly working towards that end with nuclear weapons.
But it should also be understood that Ahmadinejad, speaking in late September, 2008 at the United Nations, exposed his belief that in time the United States would bow down to Iran. The megalomania of Iran's president should lie to rest any belief that what he says is just foolish posturing and babbling. A terrible mistake was made once before about a man who uttered similar rants. That man was the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
It is against the backdrop of the threats of this new Hitler of our time, and with the historical memories of the 2,000 years of unbearable suffering that the Jews experienced as stateless refugees, driven out from one land only to be persecuted in another, that those Israelis who today plot to give away the one and only Jewish homeland should take note.
Their foolish and prideful claims to speak for the Jewish and Israeli people in matters of security are invalid. Worse still, their betrayal and ignorance of Jewish history in the Land of Israel and the Diaspora is breathtaking in its enormity.
Prime Minister Olmert, who still remains in office in a caretaker capacity, only a short while ago told his cabinet that he was willing to even give away the Jordan Valley itself to the Arabs. He and his supporters should be reminded of the great Zionist poem – The Watch on the Jordan. Here are a few selected lines from that epic written by N.H. Imber.
"Like the crash of the thunder which splitteth asunder the flame of the cloud. On our ears ever falling, a voice is heard calling from Zion aloud. Let your spirits, desires, from the land of our sires, eternally burn. From the foe to deliver, Our own holy river. To Jordan return.
"And in pride of our people we will fearlessly face the might of the world. When our trumpet is blown and our standard is flown, then set we our watch.
Our watchword, The sword, of our land, and our Lord. By Jordan then set we our watch."
Through heroic toil and immense sacrifice in blood, the sovereign and modern State of Israel was restored and Jewish patrimony once again brought alive in its ancestral land.
Is it now to be thrown away in stages by an ignorant and fraudulent leadership who would thus consign the nation to yet another inevitable dark and tragic exile? Is it to experience once again an existence as a stateless people at the mercy of strangers?
The words in Israel's national anthem, Hatikvah, the Hope, include the following:
We have not lost our Hope, of two thousand years, to be a free people in our land, Land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Let us hope that Israel's leaders, now and in the future, do not forget those words. Let us pray that they are reminded of the horrors of exile and, in so doing, never lose the hope of two thousand years to truly be a free and sovereign people in its own land: Zion and Jerusalem.
Let us also pray that they forever resist betraying Hatikvah: The Hope.
Victor Sharpe is the author of: Politicide – The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
Copyright © Victor Sharpe 2008
Posted by Harry at 8:08 AM No comments:
Mirage in the Desert.
By David Solway
The Small Dictionary of Middle East Stereotypes posted online by the Metula News Agency is not far south of the truth when it defines "Palestine" as "A small piece of paper stuck on Arab maps and atlases to hide Israel." The Palestinian fiction has even been admitted by the Palestinians themselves. In a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Zahir Muhse'in of the PLO Executive Committee confirmed that the "Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity…Only for tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."
Hollywood, too, has contributed to the fiction. Director Paul Haggis' anti-war film, In the Valley of Elah, locates the contest of David and Goliath in Palestine, when no such entity existed. Haggis may have been ignorant of his biblical history, but his well-known leftish inclinations suggest a specific design at work. It is highly appropriate that In the Valley of Elah was filmed in Hollywood, an illusion factory that is about as "real" as Palestine. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the concept of "Palestine," the simulacrum of the "Palestinian," is, when all is said and done, not much more than a Tinseltown movie, an empty fabrication—the historical grounding is absent and the sense of a cohesive national identity has been artificially generated by a political cabal working in tandem with the international media. The fact of the matter is, to adapt a current catch phrase, that the Palestinians are all keffiyeh and no sheep.
The same applies to the Palestinian Authority itself, a crypro-political construct invented by the West with Arab backing that has necessarily proven incapable of governing, controlling its bellicose factions and creating the conditions for peace and normal civil life. The irony of the situation is especially mordant: the chief obstacle to peace is the very institution that was formed to facilitate its accomplishment. A synthetic contrivance improvised in Oslo, it has in the current circumstances no alternative but failure. In point of fact, Jordan is the only visible nation state of the Arabs of Greater Palestine, problematic as it may be. Let us remember once again that when Britain defied the terms of the League of Nations in 1923 and created the protectorate of TransJordan from the territory earmarked for Israel, it artificially established a de facto Palestinian state which the West Bank was never intended to be a part of. And when the United Nations proposed its 1947 partition plan, further dividing up the Israeli allodium, it was rejected by the Arabs who responded by launching a massive attack against the fledgling Jewish state. Implausible as this may sound in the present circumstances, another Palestinian state in one shape or another may come to exist one day, but I suspect it would prove to be little more than the result of a process of political taxidermy.
Certainly, there is no usable template in the rest of the Muslim Middle East to serve as a pattern for emergent statehood—even Turkey, the presumed beacon state, remains unstable. The Palestinian mirage suffers from an even more debilitating version of the Arab debacle which, as the Lebanese-American scholar Fouad Ajami points out in The Dream Palace of the Arabs, derives from the connate failure of Arab society in absorbing democratic values and incorporating the principles of the modern nation state. The problem, I would suggest, is that in the Arab mindset, there is no tertium quid or intermediate structure between the tribe, which commands the practical loyalty of the individual, and the ummah, which invokes a mystical allegiance to the far-flung Islamic collective. The nation state is neither one nor the other, too dispersed and abstract an arrangement to create a sense of intimate union, and yet insufficiently numinous and "spiritual" to bind the individual to the transcendent body of the people. Until this changes—which is highly doubtful—the Arab "state" will remain a synthetic contrivance to be exploited in the interests of the ruling tribe or family and is thus condemned to be perennially mercurial.
Indeed, what Albert Camus said of Algeria in his 1958 Actuelles III, that it was only a "virtual nation," is mutatis mutandis true of "Palestine"—as it is, for that matter, of Iraq. The latter is not a real nation but three tribal regions, or Ottoman vilayets, cobbled together in the aftermath of the First World War and now, predictably, sinking into a quicksand bog of internal strife and indiscriminate slaughter. At best, it will be a magpie nation, assembled from disparate materials, always threatening to come asunder, and held together by American strength of will and concrete support. It may manage to survive, as has Algeria, but, politically, it will remain an active volcano. Camus' skepticism of "Arab demands" and raw emotionalism applies equally to "Palestine," which is not a genuine nation but an internally riven enclave of competing jihadist cliques that will likely prove incapable of unified and constructive self-government. It does not take much in the way of aculeate insight to arrive at this conclusion; it is a bit like predicting the past. In the circumstances, it would be foolhardy to dismiss the Shakespearian adage from Henry VI, Part 3, "that Beggars mounted, run their Horse to death."
David Solway is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to magazines as varied as the Atlantic, the Sewanee Review, Books in Canada, and the Partisan Review. His most recent book is The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity.
IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 2008 ISRAEL HAS ACCOMPLISHED THE FOLLOWING:
1. Scientists in Israel , found that the brackish water, drilled from underground desert aquifers, hundreds of feet deep, could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants, and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proves an ideal environment.
2. Israel i-developed designer-eyeglasses, promise mobile phone and iPod users, a personalized, high-tech video display. Available to US consumers next year, Lumus-Optical's lightweight and fashionable video eyeglasses, feature a large transparent screen, floating in front of the viewer's face that projects their choice of movie, TV show, or video Game.
3. When Stephen Hawkins visited Israel recently, he shared his wisdom with scientists, students, and even the Prime Minister. But the world's most renown victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, also learned something, due to the Israel i Association for ALS' advanced work in both embryonic and adult stem cell research, as well as its proven track record with neurodegenerative diseases. The Israel i research community is well on its way, to finding a treatment for this fatal disease, which affects 30,000 Americans.
4. Israel i start-up, Veterix, has developed an innovative new electronic capsule that sits in the stomach of a cow, sheep, or goat, sending out real-time information on the health of the herd, to the farmer via Email or cell phone. The e-capsule, which also sends out alerts if animals are distressed, injured, or lost, is now being tested on a herd of cows, in the hopes that the device will lead to tastier and healthier meat and milk supplies.
5. The millions of Skype users worldwide will soon have access to the newly developed KishKish lie-detector. This free internet service, based on voice stress analysis (a technique, commonly used in criminal investigations), will be able to measure just how truthful that person on the other end of the line, really is.
6. Beating cardiac tissue has been created in a lab from human embryonic stem cells by researchers at the Rappaport Medical Faculty and the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology's biomedical Engineering faculty. The work of Dr. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Lior Gepstein, has also led to the creation of tiny blood vessels within the tissue, making possible its implantation in a human heart.
7. Israel 's Magal Security Systems, is a worldwide leader in computerized security systems, with products used in more than 70 countries around the world, protecting anything from national borders, to nuclear facilities, refineries, and airports. The company's latest Product, DreamBox, a state-of-the-art security system that includes Intelligent video, audio and sensor management, is now being used by a major water authority on the US east coast to safeguard the utility's sites.
8. It is common knowledge that dogs have better night vision than humans and a vastly superior sense of smell and hearing. Israel 's Bio-Sense Technologies, recently delved further, and electronically analyzed 350 different barks. Finding that dogs of all breeds and sizes, bark the same alarm when they sense a threat, the firm has designed the dog bark-reader, a sensor that can pick up a dog's alarm bark, and alert the human operators. This is just one of a batch of innovative security systems to emerge from Israel, which Forbes calls 'the go-to country for anti-terrorism technologies.'
9. Israeli company, BioControl Medical, sold its first electrical stimulator to treat urinary incontinence to a US company for $50 Million. Now, it is working on CardioFit, which uses electrical nerve stimulation to treat congestive heart failure. With nearly five million Americans presently affected by heart failure, and more than 400,000 new cases diagnosed yearly, the CardioFit is already generating a great deal of excitement as the first device with the potential to halt this deadly disease.
10. One year after Norway's Socialist Left Party launched its boycott Israel campaign, the importing of Israel i goods has increased by 15%, the strongest increase in many years, Statistics Norway reports.
In contrast to the efforts of tiny Israel to make contributions to the world so as to better mankind, one has to ask what have those who have strived to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth done
Posted by Harry at 11:41 AM No comments:
Iran's Economy Runs Out Of Steam
by Michael Rubin
As markets floundered amid the credit crunch, Iran's leadership celebrated the West's economic crisis. On Oct. 11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, "The claim that the free market manages all things is a huge lie and benefits only thieves and criminals." Two days later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei decreed that the West's financial crisis was a sign of "the ineffectiveness of liberal democracy-based policies."
The Iranian leadership may rue their words. Ahmadinejad has run Iran's economy into the ground. On Oct. 11, just a day after Ahmadinejad declared prices in decline, the Central Bank reported inflation above 30%. Such figures are still likely low. Both Shahab News and Aftab-e Yazd have noted the tendency of Iranian officials to pull numbers from thin air.
Parliamentarians and journalists might complain but, as the Islamic Republic reverts to a Soviet-style command economy, regime intolerance toward technocratic expertise grows. Hojjat al-Eslam Ha'eri Shirazi, the Supreme Leader's personal representative in the city of Shiraz, explained, "The banking system wants to demand interest rates in exchange for loans to the people. We will not let them do so. And should a couple of banks go bankrupt as a result, so what? What is worse anyway, closure of factories or banks?"
Non-oil sector production is stagnant. Factories may remain open but many do not pay workers. On Oct. 2, for example, tire factory workers staged a protest in front of the Ministry of Labor seeking six months' unpaid wages. In recent weeks, wild cat strikes have occurred in Tehran, Isfahan, Qazvin and Sanandaj. Purchasing power has plummeted.
To mitigate such trends, the government has imposed price controls. On June 11, the daily Resalat reported that the paramilitary Basij, a subdivision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, would enforce low prices. Over subsequent days, the Iranian press featured photos of Basij beating merchants whose prices were too high.
The combination of high liquidity, sparked by Ahmadinejad's arbitrary decree lowering interest rates to single digits, no-interest banking and inflation has led wealthy Iranians to pour money into real estate. Housing costs have skyrocketed; Tehran real estate prices rival New York's. The average Iranian family now pays 60% of its income for rent, while the Ministry of Housing estimates 1.5 million Iranians are homeless.
To fight economic malaise, Ahmadinejad has raided Iran's foreign reserves. In the past two months alone, Iranian papers have reported more than $15 billion in withdrawals from the reserves to import refined gas and several additional billion dollars to subsidize industrial schemes. Ahmadinejad's reinstatement of subsidies has meant Iran once again must import 40% of its refined petroleum needs.
He will need to continue spending. Last winter, Iran ran out of gas. Food prices more than doubled and the Revolutionary Guards had to deploy on the streets of towns and cities to keep order. On Oct. 1, the Parliament's Energy Commission predicted another "severe gas shortage" again within months.
As oil prices plummet, Iranian pessimism grows. In 2006, Tehran planned its budget assuming an oil price of $60/barrel. High oil prices masked Ahmadinejad's incompetence. While Iran's budgetary process has grown more opaque, it appears that Ahmadinejad constructed his budget with the assumption of oil price stability. Now that oil has plummeted, the Islamic Republic is in trouble.
On Oct. 7, Asr-e Iran asked, "How much did we save from the period when oil price was up to $130 per barrel? Did we build up a foreign exchange reserve? The authorities don't provide us with a clear and official answer about the foreign currency reserve ... and there is some fear that the entire reserve has gone to imports of junk." The paper's fear is justified.
While Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait now boast Sovereign Wealth Funds worth hundreds of billions of dollars, on Sept. 15 an unreleased Central Bank report leaked by an Iranian parliamentarian estimated the Islamic Republic's own future fund to be only $7 billion.
Iran's strategic challenge and nuclear ambitions will be the most immediate foreign policy challenge facing the new administration. The National Iranian American Council, Tehran's de facto lobby in Washington, urges a relaxation of sanctions. So too does the Council on Foreign Relations. Condoleezza Rice offers a defiant Tehran financial incentives.
Such strategies are wrong. Throwing an economic lifeline to a terror-sponsoring regime dedicated to the acquisition of nuclear weapons capability would be nothing short of diplomatic malpractice on a Carter-esque scale. Not only has the Islamic Republic squandered billions on nuclear weapons, destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, and sponsoring terrorism, but it has also pitched itself to countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Sudan and Senegal as a pillar of an ideology that will defeat liberal Western democracy. Nothing would be a more powerful signal to those applauding Ahmadinejad's rhetoric than watching the Islamic Republic collapse under the weight of its own follies.
Michael Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 2008 ISRAEL HAS ACCOMPL...


text:
Q: How to change the navigationOption (title) of a DrawerNavigator dynamically? I have used a library called react-native-localization to translate my app. Everything except titles of the Drawer Navigator and Bottom Tab Navigator will be translated.
Different methods have been tried. But when I was searching for a solution, I came across this saying that navigationOption doesn't re-render the changes and you should return the title value to fix it. Below are some snippets of my code.
  changeLangFa() {
        const lan = 'fa';
        saveSettings(lan);
        RNRestart.Restart();
    }

    changeLangEn() {
        const lan = 'en';
        saveSettings(lan);
        RNRestart.Restart();
    }

.....
 async componentWillMount() {
        const lan = await loadSettings();
        strings.setLanguage(lan);
    }

.....
const AppDrawerNavigator = createDrawerNavigator({
    AppTabNavigator: {
        screen: AppTabNavigator,
        navigationOptions: ({
            title: strings.settingsPage.settingsTitle,
            drawerIcon: () => (
                <Icon name="cogs" size={22} />
            )
        })
    },
    AboutUs: {
        screen: AboutUs,
        navigationOptions: ({
            title: strings.aboutUsPage.aboutUstitle,
            drawerIcon: () => (
                <Icon name="info-circle" size={23} />
            )
        })
    },

First two functions are for saving the desired language and changing it and these to are bind to some buttons. Second part of the code is where the language configuration gets loaded in App.js file. And the last ones are my navigator configurations (Some of it). So am I doing anything wrong? if yes please correct me, if no, would it fix to change navigationOption somehow that will dynamically re-render the changes? if yes, please point out how to do it.

A: Set up in index.js and use accordingly.
index.js

let strings = new LocalizedStrings({
 en:{
   title:"How do you want your egg today?",
   boiledEgg:"Boiled egg",
   softBoiledEgg:"Soft-boiled egg",
   choice:"How to choose the egg"
 },
 fa: {
   title:"Come vuoi il tuo uovo oggi?",
   boiledEgg:"Uovo sodo",
   softBoiledEgg:"Uovo alla coque",
   choice:"Come scegliere l'uovo"
 }
});

...
componentDidmount() {
 strings.setLanguage('fa'); // When the local value of the user's mobile phone is 'fa'
}

AboutUs.js
  static navigationOptions = {
    title:{strings.title},
  };

  /* render function, etc */
}

A: With the help of the answer from hong develop and modifying it, I was able to fix the problem and make a dynamic navigationOptions. The correct code snippet is as below:
AboutUs.js
static navigationOptions = () => ({
      title: strings.aboutUsPage.aboutUstitle
    })

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Yeah, that's right. I'm declaring that Sciency Words is itself a Sciency Word. It is a science-related term, after all!
Seeing as we're about to embark on a full twenty-six episodes of Sciency Words for this year's A to Z Challenge, I figured this is a good time to talk about why this series exists and why I think it matters. You see, I'm a science fiction writer, and I started writing this blog as a way of teaching myself about science. And the #1 problem I had right from the start was learning the vocabulary.
So why do scientists insist on using such big, confusing words? Why can't they use plain English so that everybody can understand what they're saying? It is not because scientists want to make themselves sound smart or to make other people feel stupid (at least that's not always the case). The problem with plain English (or plain whatever language you prefer) is that it can be a little ambiguous.
Couldn't you just say random instead of stochastic? Couldn't you say wobble instead of libration? Couldn't you say forward and backward instead of prograde and retrograde? Well, no, in some contexts those words really aren't synonymous. Those Sciency Words mean something a little more precise than their plain language "equivalents," and that linguistic precision is really important if you're trying to explain complex scientific concepts.
Posted by J.S. Pailly on March 29, 2019 in Behind the Science, Sciency Words.
I'm reminded of an interview I once saw or read of a lawyer, with the reporter bemoaning all the jargon filled language in long contracts. The lawyer's response was that without all that jargon, the contracts would have to be much longer and even more difficult to read in order to provide the necessary clarity to the agreement. I think the same is true for scientific papers, or for publications in any field of expertise. In computers, saying DRAM or EPROM instead of just "memory" may be jargon, but those terms are each more precise than "memory" and mean different things.
That said, I think one thing fiction writers have to be careful about is how much of that jargon we let bleed through into our work. I know just in terms of blogging, I often have to gauge how specialized my language should be. Often my approach is to use the specialized word, but quickly repeat the phrase using general language, but just as often I avoid the specialized word entirely. In a fictional story, this seems even more critical. You can write fiction that only scientists can understand, but if you do, you should be aware that you're audience will be smaller.
Sciency Words gives me a way to use a bit more jargon on this blog than I might otherwise allow. A lot of times, if I feel like I need to use a jargon-y word, I can just link back to the Sciency Words post about it.
Even so, I agree that you don't want to overdo it. Not for a blog post, and not in fiction either—especially not if the jargon is actually important to the plot.
Not doing A-Z myself this year, but you're on the list for regular visiting James – looking forward to it.
Aww, thanks! Sorry to hear you're not doing A to Z this year, but I had to skip it last year, so I get it. It's a ton of work, and sometimes it's just not doable.
I've been out of touch lately, so I forgot all about the A-Z challenge. I've always wanted to do one on alchemy terms, but I don't know if I have the time right now. Maybe I'll peruse my alchemical texts this weekend, and if I see enough words that start with different letters, maybe I'll go for it.
That sounds like a fun theme! I know you have a lot on your plate right now, so I don't want to pressure you. But if you do jump into the challenge, I'd love to read those posts!


The shooting-jacket should be designed after a dovecot or a chest of drawers; and the great art in rendering this garment perfect, is to make the coat entirely of pockets, that part which covers the shoulders being only excepted, from the difficulty of carrying even a cigar-case in that peculiar situation.
The surtout (not regulation) admits of very little design. It can only be varied by the length of the skirts, which may be either as long as a fireman's, or as short as Duvernay's petticoats. This coat is, in fact, a cross between the dress and the driving, and may, perhaps, be described as a Benjamin junior.
Of the Benjamin senior, there are several kinds—the Taglioni, the Pea, the Monkey, the Box, et sui generis.
The box-coat has, of late years, been denuded of its layers of capes, and is now cut for the sole purpose, apparently, of supporting perpendicular rows of wooden platters or mother-of-pearl counters, each of which would be nearly large enough for the top of a lady's work-table. Mackintosh-coats have, in some measure, superseded the box-coat; but, like carters' smock-frocks, they are all the creations of speculative minds, having the great advantage of keeping out the water, whilst they assist you in becoming saturated with perspiration. We strongly suspect their acquaintance with India-rubber; they seem to us to be a preparation of English rheumatism, having rather more of the catarrh than caoutchouc in their composition. Everybody knows the affinity of India-rubber to black-lead; but when made into a Mackintosh, you may substitute the lum for the plumbago.
The ornaments and pathology will next command our attention.
This morning, at an early hour, we were thrown into the greatest consternation by a column of boys, who poured in upon us from the northern entrance, and, taking up their-station near the pump, we expected the worst.


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text:
Good Characters, Male Characters, Superman vs. The Elite Characters,
Jerry Siegel/Creator
Joe Shuster/Creator
Joe Kelly/Creator
Kryptonian Physiology
Energy Absorption
Thermal-Blast
Natural energy blasts
Enhanced Hearing
Enhanced Vision
Superhuman Stamina
Superhuman Strength
Superhuman Speed
Superhuman Agility
Superhuman Reflexes
Super-Breath
Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced)
Genius Level Intellect
Indomitable Will
Vulnerability to Kryptonite
Vulnerability to Magic
Superman Family members
Daily Planet staff members
2012 Character Debuts
Kal-El (Superman vs. The Elite)
Kal-El
Current Alias
Adventurer · Reporter
Superman vs. The Elite
Jerry Siegel · Joe Shuster · Joe Kelly
Superman, birth name Kal-El and adopted name Clark Kent, is Earth's premiere superhero and the stalwart protector of Metropolis. The exact details of his early superhero career are unknown, but it safe to assume that it is the same as his New Earth counterpart.
Clark and Lois Lane are watching a non-profit Superman animated short in an store until the Atomic Skull attacks Metropolis, killing people to draw out Superman. Although the Atomic Skull had increased in power, Superman defeats him by throwing him into a lake. After this, Superman goes to a meeting in the United Stations, where Professor Efrain Baxter asks him about his no-killing policy. Superman gives a speech at the United Nations about the greater good that is found within everyone. During this the leaders of Bialyia and Pokolistan begin to fight due to their peace treaty being broken, Superman leaves the United Nations to stop their armed forces from destroying each other.
As Superman arrives in Bialya, the Pokolistani forces release a bioweapon on the Bialyan military which destroys most of their ground forces. As Superman gets the soldiers to safety from the bioweapon, a mysterious group of metahumans arrive just in time to help Superman destroy it. Superman returns to Metropolis to report the news and also gain more information on the Elite. Superman and Lois fly to England to find out if they, and the world, can trust these new heroes. While Lois goes to investigate on her own, Superman comes across Manchester Black, who had earlier helped him at Bialya. Black takes Superman to meet his friends Coldcast, The Hat and Menagerie and telepathically reveals his origins: he gained his powers near puberty and used it for the first time to save his sister Vera from being hit by a train.
Through telepathy, Black gets a painful headache of multiple people screaming. Black's group and Superman arrive on the scene to save the civilians on a subway train which was trapped underwater due to a terrorist attack. After Superman and Black save the passengers, Black interrogates the terrorists that bombed the train nearly killing them. Superman begins to be concerned about the motives of his new-found friends.
Back in Metropolis, Clark and Lois talk about the information they had found on the new superhumans and Manchester Black's history. Lois tells Clark that there is no birth record or death certificate of Manchester's sister Vera. This makes Clark further question the group's origin and what they are really trying to accomplish. When Manchester broadcasts a message for all the world to hear, he ends up telling them they are the Elite and they will take care of all the bad guys in the world by killing them.
After the broadcast, Superman returns to the Fortress of Solitude to search for reliable information on the Elite. Having failed in finding information, Superman travels to Bialya. While there Superman is hit by an EMP which weakens him. Closing Pokolistani forces are about to attack him when the Elite attacks. Powerless to stop the chaos that the Elite inflict on the Pokolistani military, Superman ends up passing out. He eventually awakens at the Elite's base of operations; a sentient macroorganism called Bunny, and is teleported back to Earth after he fails to convince the Elite that they don't have to kill to be heroes.
Later, Clark visits his parents at Smallville and talks with Jonathan about people being swayed by the Elite's methods. Although Clark begins having doubts over his ability to inspire people, Jonathan tells him people are only considering the Elite's philosophy because they are scared but once they calm down and think more clearly, they'll see Clark's way of doing things with more enthusiasm.
In Metropolis, Atomic Skull breaks out of prison and looks for revenge on Superman. The Elite arrives but have little success against the overpowered Atomic Skull. When Superman arrives, he coordinates an attack with the Elite to get all the extra power away from Atomic Skull. After Atomic Skull's power is drained by Coldcast, he is executed by Manchester Black under the vote of Terrence, whose father, Professor Baxter, had been killed by the Atomic Skull earlier.
After protecting Pokolistan from Bialya's jets, Superman is visited by the Elite who tell him that they have killed both the Pokolistanian and Bialyan leaders and that peace can reign supreme in that area once again. Angered by Manchester's uncontrollable urge to kill the villains, Superman punches him in the face and the Elite take it as a statement of war against the world's "favorite heroes." They tell Superman that they will kill him for this outrage.
The next day, Superman stands in the middle of Metropolis telling the Elite that he is ready to fight. Asking them to do it somewhere safe, they teleport to the Moon where they begin their fight, with the people of Metropolis watching via Bonnie. Both sides are evenly matched until Black telekinetically induces a seizure in Superman. Coldcast then unleashes a massive blast of electromagnetic energy on Superman, and to those watching the battle on Earth; it appears that Superman has been obliterated. However, moments later, the Elite start hearing Superman's voice all around them, alive and well. Superman then begins to take out the Elite one by one; first he injects Menagerie with a poison that causes her sym-beasts to abandon her and apparently kills her. The Hat attempts to exploit Superman's known weakness to magic but is suffocated by a super-speed generated whirlwind and sucked into the funnel.
Against Coldcast's wishes, Manchester teleports them to Metropolis to use the innocent civilians as cover. Black gives the order to combine powers to destroy Metropolis when Superman appears. After Superman knocks Coldcast into orbit, he confronts Black. Manchester attacks Superman with everything he has but fails to harm the Man of Steel. Through heat vision, Superman lobotomizes Manchester, stripping him of his powers. Believing his death to be seconds away, Manchester tells Superman that the world knows he is no better than they are and will never again trust him. Superman reveals that he did not kill any of the Elite, but had his Superman Robots protect all of the citizens and create the false illusion that he had killed them. They were really transported to the Fortress of Solitude to be stripped of their powers, and then sent to a prison. In addition, Bunny was offered a way to return home. In the end, the people of Earth see that Superman's way is best for all of mankind. After that, he flies off with Lois and they kiss.
Kryptonian Physiology: Under the effects of a "yellow" sun, Superman possesses the same potential powers as an average Kryptonian. These include:
Solar Energy Absorption: Under optimal conditions, this is the main source of Superman's super powers as they are contingent upon exposure to solar radiation from a yellow sun star system. His biological make up includes a number of organs which lack analogues in humans and whose functions are unknown. It is believed that between one or more of these and his bio-cellular matrix, "yellow" solar energy is stored for later use. This allows for the use of these powers to fade when yellow solar radiation is not available instead of immediate failure.
Heat Vision: Superman can, as a conscious act, fire beams of intense heat at a target by looking at it. He can vary the heat and area affected.
Super-Hearing: Superman's hearing is sensitive enough to hear any sound at any volume or pitch. With skill and concentration, he can block out ambient sounds to focus on a specific source or frequency.
Enhanced Vision: Superman's vision processes the entire electromagnetic spectrum as well as allowing vast control over selective perception and focus.
This umbrella ability includes the following:
Electromagnetic Spectrum Vision: Superman can see well into most of the electromagnetic spectrum. He can see and identify radio and television signals as well as all other broadcast or transmitted frequencies. Using this ability, he can avoid detection by radar or satellite monitoring methods. This also allows him to see the aura generated by living thing.
Telescopic Vision: This is the ability to see something at a great distance, without violating the laws of physics. Though limited, the exact extent of the ability is undetermined. In function, it is similar to the zoom lens on a camera.
X-Ray Vision: This is the ability to see through any volume of matter except lead. Supermans can see things behind a solid, opaque object as if it were not there. He can focus this ability to "peel back" layers of an object, allowing hidden image or inner workings to be observed. The exact type of energy perceived—such as x-rays, cosmic rays, or some other energy invisible to normal humans—is unclear. This ability perceives an ambient energy source though, it does not involve the eye projecting a concentrated, possibly toxic, beam to be reflected back from objects.
Microscopic Vision: This is the ability to see extremely small objects and images down to the atomic level.
Infrared Vision: Superman can see with better acuity in darkness, and to a degree in total darkness.
Flight: Superman is able to manipulate graviton particles to defy the forces of gravity and achieve flight. This ranges from hovering to moving in any posture, in any direction.
Invulnerability: Due to the interaction of his dense molecular structure and supercharged bio-electric aura, Superman is nigh-invulnerable to extreme energy forces. In addition, his extends this protection against toxins and diseases.
Superhuman Stamina: Superman is able to maintain continuous strenuous physical action for an indefinite period of time. This based on his body converting yellow solar radiation directly to energy, but is limited by physiological and psychological needs to eat, drink, and sleep.
Superhuman Strength: Superman's strength is augmented by yellow solar radiation interacting with the greater than human density, resilience and biological efficiency of his musculature. His strength is more an act of conscious will on energy fields than actual physical strength. It is this act of conscious will that enables him to perform physical feats that are beyond the mere application force, such as moving a mountain top without said rock crumbling under its own mass.
Superhuman Speed: Superman is able to move at incredible speed by sheer force of will. This extends to his perceptions and allows for feats such as catching bullets in mid flight as well as covering vast distances in little or no time.
This also confers:
Super-Breath: Superman is able to create hurricane force winds by exhaling air from his lungs. He can chill the air as it leaves his lungs to freeze targets. He can also reverse the process to pull large volumes of air or vapor into his lungs.
Expert Combatant: In combat situations, Superman makes use of an improvised fighting style that relies on overwhelming force and speed.
Genius Level Intellect: Superman possesses incredible intelligence and computational abilities.
Indomitable Will: Superman has shown to have a powerful spirit, free of corruption and temptation. Having been raised by a kindly Kansas farmer and his wife, he was taught to protect life and help others. He is very optimistic and never gives up, even when things look bad.
Journalism: Clark is one of the reporters on the Daily Planet, rivaled only by his significant other Lois Lane.
Kryptonian Physiology: Under the effects of a "yellow" sun, Superman possesses the same potential weaknesses as an average Kryptonian. These include:
This version of the character is exclusive to the continuity of the film Superman vs. The Elite and is an adaptation of Clark Kent/Superman. The original character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and first appeared in Action Comics #1.
Superman was voiced by George Newbern.
1 Appearances of Kal-El (Superman vs. The Elite)
15 Images featuring Kal-El (Superman vs. The Elite)
Quotations by or about Kal-El (Superman vs. The Elite)
Character Gallery: Kal-El (Superman vs. The Elite)
Superman at dccomics.com
Superman at Wikipedia.org
Superman Family member
This character is or was an incarnation of or an ally of Superman, and a member of the Superman Family. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "Superman Family members" category.
Daily Planet Staff member
This character is or was an employee of the Daily Planet, a daily newspaper based in Metropolis. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "Daily Planet Staff members" category.
Retrieved from "https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Kal-El_(Superman_vs._The_Elite)?oldid=2290771"
Good Characters
Superman vs. The Elite Characters

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Web;
using NLog;

namespace FLS.Server.Service
{
    internal static class ResourceService
    {
        private static Logger _logger = LogManager.GetCurrentClassLogger();

        private static Logger Logger
        {
            get { return _logger; }
            set { _logger = value; }
        }

        private static Dictionary<string, string> EmailTemplates = new Dictionary<string, string>();

        internal static string GetEmailTemplateFullFilename(string templateFile)
        {
            if (EmailTemplates.ContainsKey(templateFile))
            {
                return EmailTemplates[templateFile];
            }

            string templateFullFilename = string.Empty;
            var subDirectory = @"Email\Templates";
            string appPath = string.Empty;

            try
            {
                appPath = System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.ApplicationPhysicalPath;

                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(appPath) == false)
                {
                    templateFullFilename = Path.Combine(appPath, subDirectory,
                                                        templateFile);

                    if (File.Exists(templateFullFilename))
                    {
                        EmailTemplates.Add(templateFile, templateFullFilename);
                        return templateFullFilename;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.ApplicationPhysicalPath", templateFullFilename));
                    }
                }

                appPath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;

                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(appPath) == false)
                {
                    templateFullFilename = Path.Combine(appPath, subDirectory,
                                                        templateFile);

                    if (File.Exists(templateFullFilename))
                    {
                        EmailTemplates.Add(templateFile, templateFullFilename);
                        return templateFullFilename;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory", templateFullFilename));
                    }
                }

                if (HttpContext.Current != null)
                {
                    templateFullFilename = Path.Combine(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/bin"), subDirectory,
                                            templateFile);

                    if (File.Exists(templateFullFilename))
                    {
                        EmailTemplates.Add(templateFile, templateFullFilename);
                        return templateFullFilename;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(~/bin)", templateFullFilename));
                    }

                    templateFullFilename = Path.Combine(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/"), subDirectory,
                                            templateFile);

                    if (File.Exists(templateFullFilename))
                    {
                        EmailTemplates.Add(templateFile, templateFullFilename);
                        return templateFullFilename;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(~/)", templateFullFilename));
                    }

                    templateFullFilename = Path.Combine(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/"), templateFile);

                    if (File.Exists(templateFullFilename))
                    {
                        EmailTemplates.Add(templateFile, templateFullFilename);
                        return templateFullFilename;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(~/)", templateFullFilename));
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    Logger.Warn("HttpContext.Current is null");
                }

                var bin = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);

                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bin) == false)
                {
                    templateFullFilename = Path.Combine(bin, subDirectory, templateFile);

                    if (File.Exists(templateFullFilename))
                    {
                        EmailTemplates.Add(templateFile, templateFullFilename);
                        return templateFullFilename;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location) and subdirectory", templateFullFilename));
                    }

                    templateFullFilename = Path.Combine(bin, templateFile);

                    if (File.Exists(templateFullFilename))
                    {
                        EmailTemplates.Add(templateFile, templateFullFilename);
                        return templateFullFilename;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)", templateFullFilename));
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    Logger.Warn(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with method: Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location) (is null)", templateFullFilename));
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Logger.Error(ex, $"Error while trying to find path to email template: {ex.Message}");
            }

            Logger.Error(string.Format("Email-Template-File {0} not found with any method!!!", templateFullFilename));

            return templateFullFilename;
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


There are no comments for Michael Kiwanuka, Photographed By Anna Webber At Heartbreaker Ba. Click here to post the first comment.
Michael Kiwanuka, photographed by Anna Webber at Heartbreaker Banquet, Austin, Texas on March 14th, 2013.


Last Monday, June 1, Michael "Mick" Parsons was called into a meeting. At the time an adjunct professor at Jefferson Community and Technical College and a leading activist for expanding adjuncts' rights on campus, Parsons believed he was being invited to discuss budgetary issues with top JCTC officials, including Dean of Academic Affairs Randall Davis, Human Resources Director Toni Whalen, and Provost Diane Calhoun-French. It was an hour before his next class.
The budget wasn't on the agenda, however. Instead, Parsons lost his job, and not only from JCTC. He says he was also banned from working at any school within the statewide Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS). "Which is unheard of," he says.
Parsons says the administrators told him he was being fired because he had posted about a student on his Facebook page, in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. FERPA rules generally address and prohibit the improper disclosure of personally identifiable information about students derived from education records.
But Parsons contends he was terminated for his high-profile efforts as an activist, working to improve conditions for adjunct professors.
In an interview with IL, Parsons added: "It's a national trend … adjunct activists are rooted out of systems in states that are right-to-work states, or employment at-will states." Kentucky is the latter.
The decision to remove Parsons came from the KCTCS human resources office, according to Lisa Brosky, vice president of advancement at JCTC. The school is a part of the KCTCS system.
Kristi Middleton, a spokeswoman for KCTCS, says Parsons was an at-will employee with KCTCS, working under a one-semester, fixed-term contract. "Following his current contract, his position was not renewed for another term," she wrote via email. She declined to elaborate and would not confirm Parsons was banned from the KCTCS system.
Brosky also would not comment directly on the nature of Parsons' termination, although she confirmed his contract was not renewed.
Instead, Parsons says he was fired because he has advocated for better employment conditions for adjunct professors at JCTC and other colleges and universities. And his sudden dismissal is a case-in-point of the very issue he's advocated for: greater employment protections for adjunct professors, on whom schools are increasingly relying as budgets tighten.
Parsons is an organizer in a nascent group called the Kentucky College Faculty Association, dedicated to promoting activism among Kentucky's adjunct and part-time college instructors. He was a central organizer of the Feb. 25 "teach-ins" held at JCTC and the University of Louisville, where activists sought to raise awareness of the conditions under which adjunct professors work. The teach-ins were part of a national effort called "National Adjunct Walkout Day." The local versions were high-profile enough to garner coverage in the The Atlantic, as well as a cover story in LEO Weekly, where Parsons was prominently featured.
Nationally, almost 59 percent of college instructional faculty are either graduate teaching assistants (12.2 percent) or part-time instructional staff (46.7 percent), according to the American Association of University Professors.
Most adjunct instructors have few of the rights of full-time faculty, such as health and retirement benefits or opportunity for tenure, and their pay is a fraction of what full-time professors earn. Parsons' annual salary, for example, totaled close to $14,000 per year, he says; he earned $1,685 per class.
According to U of L spokesman Mark Hebert, 31 percent of the university's student credit hours were taught by part-time faculty as of 2012. Brosky, of JCTC, says that school's part-time faculty rate is 46 percent.
Parsons had taught English and English as a Second Language at JCTC since 2013. He was a co-chair of JCTC's adjunct task force, through which he pushed for adjunct professors to get full voting rights and be defined as faculty.
"At the system level, we have no power and no representation in the Faculty Senate," he says.
As if to illustrate the point, Parsons' contract had to be renewed every semester, but neither he nor any other adjuncts there undergo regular reviews.
IL has filed a request under the Kentucky Open Records Act to attempt to obtain further information about his termination.
Brosky denies that Parsons was fired for his activism. However, it's clear his advocacy — and that of other adjuncts — was effecting change. Brosky says recommendations from the adjunct task force are expected soon, including opportunities for professional development, more pay, and further employment. The hope is some of these proposals will be funded by the fall semester, she says.
Recently, an online petition was started to get Parsons reinstated within the KCTCS system. Parsons also filed a request with KCTCS under the Kentucky Open Records Act to try to obtain documents related to his termination. He is also considering legal options, he says, though he has not yet retained an attorney.
David Serchuk is a staff writer at Insider Louisville. He is a former editor at Forbes.com, and an ex-reporter at Forbes magazine. He's written for NPR, CNBC.com, New York, Pittsburgh, Louisville and other publications named for places. He enjoys writing about business, music and other things as well.


Courtesan Creative is NOT accepting new projects until further notice. The schedule is simply too packed to take on new clients. Thank you to everyone who expressed interest. For existing clients, it's business as usual. Love you! Mwah!


bovag-occasions.nl is a website that ranks 592,692 in Alexa. bovag-occasions.nl is ranked 1,466,251 on statisy and has 196 backlinks according to Alexa. The Site was launched at Dec 09 1999 and its old. The hostname or fully qualified domain name (FQDN) bovag-occasions.nl is identical to the domain name bovag-occasions.nl. The domain is registered under the domain suffix nl and is named bovag-occasions. The bovag-occasions.nl Server is hosted by Interoute Communications Ltd and is located in United Kingdom (London). bovag-occasions.nl is not listed in the dmoz open directory project. After analyzing bovag-occasions.nl's demographics we have determined that bovag-occasions.nl average users are 35-44 years old, with College. We also have determined that bovag-occasions.nl's average user earns $30K - $60K a year and is most likely Male. Oh wait it seems like we know a little bit more about bovag-occasions.nl's average user, they have Children and browse from Work and are Other.


text:
[WATCH] Muscat: 'Legalisation of recreational marijuana would not be a free-for-all'
'I look forward to a national debate on the legalisation of recreational marijuana. But let us not be under any illusion that this is going to be a free-for-all'
6 May 2017, 11:06am
by Paul Cocks
Labour leader Joseph Muscat addresses press conference in Marsa (Photo: Chris Mangion/MediaToday)
Muscat personally in favour of legalising recreational marijuana
Though personally in favour on the legalisation of recreational marijuana, prime minister Joseph Muscat said today he did not believe the issue should be decided by politicians or bureaucrats, but through a national debate to determine the will of the people.
Muscat, who was addressing a press conference in Marsa, welcomed the words of Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil who said yesterday he was open to a frank discussion on the matter.
"I look forward to a national debate on the legalisation of recreational marijuana," he said. "But let us not be under any illusion that this is going to be a free-for-all."
On the offshore accounts held by his chief of staff, Muscat said that it had been established that most of those accounts and companies had been opened before the last election and while Keith Schembri was still a businessman.
"I have made it amply clear that he was wrong in the case of his Panama accounts, but with regards to the others, I dont think one can say anything."
On the legalisation of prostitution, Muscat said he was increasingly worried on international reports labelling Malta as a centre for sex slave trade and as a country where women were brought over to be forced into the sex trade.
The prime minister also denied he had lied about there not being any Swift transfer records linking him or his wife to the secret Panama company Egrant and said he had not seen any reports showing the contrarybwas true.
Earlier, Muscat said that a new Labour government was committed to continue strengthening pensions across the board, and will also be encouraging and incentivising investment in private pensions schemes.
"In this case, the possible contribution will be raised to €2,000, with a possible maximum €300 on tax credits," he said.
Muscat said the Labour Party was willing and able to provide details of all its proposals and not wait for 100 days after the election, as the Nationalist Party was doing.
Muscat said the government had already taken unprecedented strides in increasing pensions across the board, with the lowest single contributory pension boosted by €11.
"We had also given widows and widowers the right to keep the full couple's pensions if they had paid enough national insurance," he said.
Paul Cocks joined MaltaToday after having spent years working in newspapers with The Times...
More from Paul Cocks Paul on Twitter Paul on Facebook


In 2013 the states parties to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine (APM) Convention and the 1981 Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Convention continued their work to limit the impact of certain weapons on civilians.1 The greatest achievements of these instruments have been to mitigate new use and to clear land of explosive remnants of war (ERW), leading to a substantial reduction in civilian casualties. Notably, the United Kingdom—formerly a major producer of cluster munitions—declared the complete destruction of its cluster munition stockpile in 2013. The greatest challenges relating to these weapons are violations of the emerging international norms by states that are not parties to the conventions and by non-state actors.
Anthony, Ian, Lina Grip, and Chris Holland. "9. Conventional arms control and military confidence building." SIPRI Yearbook. SIPRI. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. Web. 20 Apr. 2019. <http://www.sipriyearbook.org/view/9780198712596/sipri-9780198712596-chapter-10-div1-2.xml>.


By the time Ed Milliband arrived at Norton Rose's More London offices last night for a fundraiser in aid of Norwood, the Jewish social care charity, he'd dusted himself down from another bruising PMQs scrap on health reforms.
Fresh from the latest sniper attack from the Dear Brother - (who pops up to publish articles when Ed's getting a battering in the media) - the Labour leader was hoping to capitalise on his success forcing a reportedly 'depressed' Stephen Hester to hand back his wife's shoe fund.
But just as the bonuses bluster is a distraction from the more pertinent issues around lending and social inequality, similarly, many other areas of policy fail to consider the importance of housing. No politician has bothered to ask what effect living in squalid, cramped conditions has on illiterate school kids who've got nowhere to study, who don't get jobs, claim benefits and suffer health issues as a result.
No one's really looked at the young people from broken homes who turn to crime and end up in prison at the taxpayers' expense, while victims pick up their own pieces.
And few have considered how much money we spend on hip replacements for elderly people living alone and uncared for. And many more pensioners get so lonely they end up supporting splinter groups like the National Trust. Heaven forbid!
I jest of course on that last point. The serious issue though is that it's astonishing how few politicians seem to grasp the broader economic case for investment in quality housing and how much it could relieve spending on the indirect fallout of failing to do so.
Five years on from the monumental failure that was Gordon Brown's plan to build three million homes, we still have no credible housing solutions from Labour.
Whatever your political inclination, at least housing minister Grant Shapps has been showing signs of life. Problems occur when novelty nonsense like the house swap plan for social tenants get in the way of driving new development, but he knows his stuff.
Praise however, should also rightly be bestowed for progress in the sell-off of public land. Finally Britain seems to be catching up with the rest of the world, and while the government's planning reforms seem to be wriggling around in the long grass, the very real progress being made by the HCA is a worthy feather for Shapps to be wearing in his cap.
It's more than could be said for shadow housing minister Jack Dromey, the 63-year-old trade-unionist revealed as taking a £60,000-a-year payment from Unite. Despite it being a clear breach of parliamentary code, he got away with it. Presumably because he's married to Harriet Harman.
My conversation with Ed Miliband however, was quite revealing.
That old Labour chestnut of land-banking.
Of course it's unrealistic to expect every politician to have a comprehensive grasp of every area of policy, but on an issue as important as housing, many will be exasperated by Miliband's lack of engagement, particularly when you consider how closely he worked with Gordon Brown on this, a benchmark Labour policy. Given that, could it raise further concerns about his ability to lead on any other issue?


Audrey Annah Williams, Nov. 6, 1954 – July 12, 2015, Resident of Greenfield lost her battle.
Audrey was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She was married to her wonderful husband, Melvin Lee Williams for 43 years. She has four children, Melvin Jr., Ganya, Tye and Alanya. She has three grandkids and two on the way.
She was a local Gospel radio announcer along with her husband Melvin and was known and heard throughout the world. She started out at KNRY Radio Station, located on Cannery Row in Monterey. Her call name was "God's Radio Angel". Her husband is well known as "Deacon Melvin Williams".
They broadcast the Saturday Morning Gospel Hour, 5-7 am [PST], Holy Hip Hop on the Block, 10 am to Noon [PST] on Saturday, and the Sunday Morning Gospel Train, 5-9 am [PST].
Visitation services will be held at Bayside Community Mortuary Chapel, 1610 Noche Buena Street, Seaside on Friday, July 24, 2015 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Church services will be held on Saturday, July 25, 2015 at the Christian Memorial Church of God and Christ at Fort Ord at 11:00 a.m.


text:
Q: How to load values faster from my database public static IEnumerable<Student> GetStudents()
{
    List<Student> students = (List<Student>)HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get("GetAllStudentWithImg");

    if (students!= null)
    {
        return students ;
    }

    students = new List<Student>();

    using (PrincipalContext context = GetPrincipalContext())
    {
        using (UserPrincipal uprinc = new UserPrincipal(context))
        {
            using (PrincipalSearcher psearcher = new PrincipalSearcher(uprinc))
            {
                students = psearcher.FindAll()
                                    .Select(x => new Student((DirectoryEntry)x.GetUnderlyingObject()))
                                    .ToList();
            }
        }
    }

    HttpContext.Current.Cache.Add("GetAllStudentWithImg", students, null,
                                  DateTime.UtcNow.AddMinutes(60),
                                  System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoSlidingExpiration,
                                  System.Web.Caching.CacheItemPriority.Normal, null);

    return students;
}

I created this function to get values from my database and it work but it load slowly, the pictures are not that many or big, so its not the content, I wonder if someone want to help me with improving my code?

A: I do not see all your code, the code where you query to the database is not displayed, but I think the problem is here:
psearcher.FindAll().Select( ....

FindAll() returns all records in the database table, after this you select what you need in your collection.
The better performance solution is: to query to the database only what you need.
then do not FIND ALL data, but find only what you need

A: Check this, comparision between findall and where: C# FindAll VS Where Speed.
Beside that, why don't you use inheritance between these PrincipalContext,UserPrincipal and PrincipalSearcher?

A: FindAll() is not a Linq method. It's List(Of T) method and as such, it does not have Deffered execution as opposed to Where() which is Linq and supports deferred execution.


text:
What is Lespedeza?
Lespedeza is a legume that is sometimes used as part of a farmer's crop rotation strategy.
Lespedeza is an ideal feed plant for cattle.
Crop rotation helps minimize the impact of pests on the various crops.
Written By: Emma G.
Edited By: C. Wilborn
Lespedeza is a kind of legume plant, belonging to the pea family. It grows in the United States, Asia and Australia. The name Lespedeza denotes a genus containing about 30 species for flowering plants. A botanist who discovered it growing in the United States named it after a Spanish Governor of Florida who had helped him in his research. Farmers often grow it for animal feed or use it to rest the soil between small grain crops.
The plant is also called Japanese clover. Botanists believe it was transported from Japan to the United States sometime in the early 1800s. Lespedeza can grow in warm temperate to subtropical climates.
If cut off at the top, Lespedeza will stop growing up and spread out instead. When left to grow naturally, it is usually bush-like or stalky. The leaves are generally heart shaped. Flowers range in color from purple to light pink.
Seeds germinate in early spring, but seedlings grow slowly until June. The more hours of sunlight in a day, the better the plants will grow. They are drought resistant, especially in seedling form. Frost will kill these plants, however, so they should not be planted until after the last frost of the spring.
Since it reseeds itself and is able to spread along the ground, Lespedeza is sometimes considered an invasive weed. Despite this, it is sometimes grown as an ornamental plant. More commonly, the plant is grown by farmers for feed or to reinvigorate the soil during crop rotation.
Crop rotation is a system of planting that prevents soil from being stripped of its nutrients due to multiple plantings. Before crop rotation became standard practice, fields would become unusable over the years as the crops pulled nutrients from the soil faster than they could be naturally replenished. Legume plants are often used in crop rotation because they take nitrogen from the air and deposit it in the soil. Like most legumes, Lespedeza does not grow well in nitrogen-rich soil.
In addition to crop rotation, farmers also grow Lespedeza for pasture or to be cut as hay. Overall, the plant will provide less hay than alfalfa or clover, but it does have its advantages. First, it is less expensive to produce. Second, it provides quality pasture during the height of summer, when other pasture crops do not thrive.
Lespedeza is an ideal feed plant for sheep and cattle. It is good for dairy cattle but should be used with caution. Evidence suggests that eating the plant after it has bloomed causes decreased milk production in lactating cows.
What is Clianthus?
What are Petits Pois?
What Are Field Peas?
What is Abrin?
What are Pea Shoots?
What is Gorse?


OTP is a technological mechanism through which a single-use password is generated and sent to the registered mobile number for the user to access the website.
It is also known as two-factor authentication. Products like internet banking portals often use the OTP mechanism to ensure the authenticity of the user and prevent identity thefts.
Etisalcom managed its SMS network to provide high priority to deliver the OTP messages with in the shorts time as all OTP got a short validity time.


text:
Q: How to reuse the same volume in Docker when restarting a container? I have a Dockerfile that states at the end a Volume like so
VOLUME /data

Now when I build and run this container I indeed get a new volume created and mounted at /data.
That's very good but I would like to be able to stop this container and then run it again and make sure the very same volume with its data is mounted back.
How can I achieve that?
Ideally the same command would create the volume if it does not exist already, and reuse it if it already exists.

A: If you want to persist your data beyond the lifetime of your container, you need to create the volume outside of the container.  One option is to create a "data volume container", as described in the documentation:
docker create -v /data --name my-data busybox /bin/true

This creates a container (named my-data).  It's based on the busybox image, but because we're using create rather than run we don't actually start anything.  This container only exists to provide a volume to other containers.
We can then access that volume using the --volumes-from option to docker run when we start another container:
docker run --volumes-from my-data ...

Now you have a volume that will still exists after the container exists, and will persist as long as your my-data container is not deleted.
Alternately, you can simply mount a host directory on /data in your container, as in:
docker run -v /path/on/host:/data ...

This options is also described in the docs I linked to above.

A: The larsks answer was the way to follow (or at least the workaround) before the advent of named volumes.
Now just use named volumes that is much more simple and standard.

That's very good but I would like to be able to stop this container
  and then run it again and make sure the very same volume with its data
  is mounted back.

If you stop a running container (with docker stop id) and that then you start it (with docker start id), the volume associated to the container will be still around without the need to use a named volume or any trick because it still uses the same container.
The problem of volume that doesn't persist occurs between distinct runs (docker run fooImageName) for a same image.
Anonymous and named volumes
Specifying a volume has two forms : anonymous and named.
If we don't specify a name for that, the volume on the host cannot be reused in next container running because that is anonymous (but by using two distinct containers : one for the application and another for the data with the anonymous volume as in the larsks answer).
So as the volume is anonymous, Docker creates a new volume on the host for every container run for a same image.
To use a named volume, when we run the container we just need to prefix a name (whatever we want, that it is a logical name) to the file/directory mounted in the container.
For example with a volume declared in dockerfile :
VOLUME /data

we could start the container as :
docker run -v my-volume:/data myImage

At the first run, the volume is created.
And then for any next run, we need just to specify still the named volume my-volume to reuse that volume.
Here is the interesting part of the documentation (emphasis is mine) :

Choose the -v or --mount flag
...

*

*-v or --volume: Consists of three fields, separated by colon characters (:). The fields must be in the correct order, and the
  meaning of each field is not immediately obvious.

*

*In the case of named volumes, the first field is the name of the volume, and is unique on a given host machine. For anonymous volumes,
  the first field is omitted.

*The second field is the path where the file or directory are mounted in the container.

*The third field is optional, and is a comma-separated list of options, such as ro.

As alternative if for some reasons you need to create the volume without starting the container you can use the docker volume command.
You can read in the volumes documentation :

Create and manage volumes
Unlike a bind mount, you can create and manage volumes outside the
  scope of any container.
Create a volume:
$ docker volume create my-vol

We would use it exactly like previously :
docker run -v my-volume:/data myImage


text:
Oregon receiver Devon Allen to run in Olympic 110 hurdles
By JENNA FRYER
Home » Brazil » Oregon receiver Devon Allen to run in Olympic 110 hurdles
FILE - In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Devon Allen celebrates his win in the finals of the men's 110-meter hurdles at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials in Eugene Oregon. Allen, also a player for the Oregon Ducks football team, will make his Olympic debut on Monday, Aug. 15, 2016 at the opening heats of the 110-meter hurdles in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2014 file photo, Oregon's Devon Allen runs into the end zone for a score against Michigan State during the first half of their college football game in Eugene, Oregon. Allen will make his Olympic debut on Monday, Aug. 15, 2016 at the opening heats of the 110-meter hurdles in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AP Photo/Chris Pietsch, File)
By: JENNA FRYER (AP)
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Almost 7,000 miles away from the Olympic Stadium, the Oregon Ducks have started football practice with an eye on the season-opening game.
On Monday night, the Ducks will break for a "team meeting" to turn their attention to Rio de Janeiro and watch wide receiver Devon Allen make his Olympic debut. Allen will run in the opening heats of the 110-meter hurdles, a berth he earned by winning the Olympic Trials in front of his college community at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, last month.
So confident Allen was going to be Rio-bound, he celebrated by leaping into the crowd and posing for selfies — a move he planned the night before the trials.
"I asked some friends what should I do for my celebration? They were like, 'You should jump into the stands where we are sitting,'" Allen said. "They were sitting where my parents were sitting, so I scoped it out the day before to see how big the gap was. It was like a three-inch gap, so I knew I could make it. I would have jumped into the stands if I made third, but I was going in expecting to win."
Allen is confident he'll deliver again in Rio.
"I'm really just going out there to win a gold medal," Allen said. "My goal is to win every heat."
His confidence soaring, Allen has got the next few weeks mapped out: Win a gold medal in Rio, return to Eugene on Aug. 23, regroup and then rejoin the Ducks. Maybe even in time for the Sept. 21 season-opener.
He's not positive that's doable because he's been so focused on track, he'll need time to transition back into football once he returns to Oregon.
"If I miss the first game, it's not the end of the world," Allen said. "A week of football practice may not be enough. I want to really feel into it before I return."
That this two-sport ride is even happening at all is quite the comeback tale. Allen had a breakout freshman season for Oregon in 2014 with 41 catches and seven touchdowns, only to tear his anterior cruciate ligament in the Rose Bowl.
The recovery time was lengthy, but Allen's ticket to Rio made it complete.
This is the time of his life, and the three-time NCAA champion in hurdles has the resume to show how far he's come: Allen is the first collegian to win the 110-meter hurdles at the Olympic Trials since Renaldo Nehemiah of Maryland in 1980, the first to win both NCAA and trials titles in the same year since Lee Calhoun of N.C. Central in 1956, and his .18 margin of victory was the largest ever at the trials.
Next up? A gold medal, of course, and this 21-year-old Phoenix native believes in himself and the goals he sets.
He learned early at Oregon how to juggle two sports, academics and "my social life as a kid," and came back from an injury that could have forced others to scale back to one discipline.
But Allen has eyes on competing in both sports as long as possible. He runs the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds right now, and talks about getting it down to 4.2 for the NFL scouting combine.
With a gold medal around his neck, he believes he can talk any potential NFL teams into also allowing him to continue his track career. Allen could also go pro in track after the Rio Olympics.
"As long as I don't sign a shoe endorsement, because the endorsement covers my likeness as an athlete and the NCAA owns my likeness as an athlete for my time in college," he said. "I can compete in all the meets I want to professionally and win prize money and still play football.
"I just don't know if I'd compete wearing an Oregon uniform or a T-shirt."
He knows an argument can be made to transition into football only after the Olympics, but Allen doesn't see a need.
"American football is definitely more lucrative for great athletes," he said. "There's a lot of football players I've been around who would be great track athletes, but they choose a different path. If I was born in Europe, I'd probably be a soccer player because that's the popular sport there.
"A lot of U.S. athletes who are explosive and fast end up playing football because that's the most popular sport and it's a sport where people can see their future, make some money in and live. Right now, I'm considering doing both."
This story has been corrected to show that Allen runs the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds, not the 400.


"Kauai Rainbow Plumerias" is an original watercolor painting measuring approximately 9"x10" and comes with a signed "Certificate of Authenticity."
The item will ship via USPS First Class in the United States and includes insurance and tracking. It will be packaged in a clear plastic sleeve with a backing board.
Melia is the Hawaiian word for plumeria – the fragrant, beautiful blossom used to make colorful leis. On Kauai, we give leis for birthdays, for graduations, to welcome a loved one, to honor someone, and the list goes on... It is a beautiful tradition. On your next trip to Hawaii, give someone (or treat yourself to) a sweet smelling plumeria lei.
Auction ends on March 4, 2013. To place a bid go to http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kauai-Rainbow-Plumerias-Original-Watercolor-Painting-by-Marionette-from-Kauai-/160981568479?


Will the UN help in Afghanistan?
The US and British bombing of Afghanistan has unleashed a bitter scramble for power between rival military commanders, mostly based on different ethnic groups. Each of them has support from the competing states which border Afghanistan. This will create turmoil. Some people see the United Nations (UN) as being an independent force that can help bring peace to Afghanistan. But any UN intervention will be Western destruction in another guise.
Deepening civil war was the outcome of the US-led intervention in Somalia, in east Africa, in the early 1990s. That took place under the banner of the UN and involved US, Belgian, Canadian and Pakistani forces.
Ordinary people welcomed their arrival. So did rival warlords, who had been built up by the US and Russia during the Cold War. Yet within months UN forces alienated all sections of the population. Their only answer to the grinding poverty and the complex political divisions was a combination of repression and siding with one armed group against another. So General Aidid went from being the West's best hope for producing a stable government to being public enemy number one.
Somalis were treated as a brutal horde who responded only to force. UN troops opened fire on a mass demonstration of Somali civilians, killing over 500 people. The UN left in 1994 with the country still in ruins and the warlords strengthened.
Pro-war commentators will not mention Somalia. They do claim Kosovo shows that a combination of US military action and UN political intervention can bring democracy to Afghanistan. But the NATO war in the Balkans two years ago led first to intensified Serbian attacks on Kosovan Albanians and then, after the 'victory', to the ethnic cleansing of over 200,000 Serbs and Roma Gypsies from Kosovo. The UN administration brought in by the West to run Kosovo has brought the exact opposite of democracy.
The administration runs Kosovo in the manner of a colony. All decisions are taken by Western-appointed bureaucrats. The UN administration has been in the hands of a German, a Frenchman and now a Dutchman. He is in charge of the judiciary, police force and public services. UN officials and troops live it up while Kosovo remains the poorest part of Europe.
The Dutch administrator blatantly interfered in last Saturday's general election by attending an election rally for the party favoured by the West, a trick learnt from colonial governors during the British Empire. And just like under the empire, the elections are to bodies which have no power.
Meanwhile gangsters run much of the economy (in collusion with the UN authorities) and Kosovo has become a centre for prostitution and heroin shipments into Europe. The intervention in Afghanistan is already more disastrous than in Kosovo. UN rule will be even more brutal.
Afghanistan is more divided between warlords who fought each other in the early 1990s, killing over 50,000 people. They have support among different sections of the population through shared opposition to other ethnic groups and military forces. Any central authority in the capital, Kabul, will find itself either having to repress those bases of support or cutting deals with the warlords and, crucially, the states which back them.
Every government in Kabul over the last quarter of a century has done that. The Russians invaded in 1979 to set up a stable pro-Russian government. It took the cities, but fought (and lost) an eight year war against guerrillas who held the countryside.
Its attempts to make alliances with different leaders merely contributed to further chaos after it fell in 1992. The divisions in Afghanistan are greater today. The talk of 'nation building' and a UN-brokered government conjure up all the images of 19th century European colonialism.
Now the big capitalist powers declare countries such as Afghanistan, which have been torn apart by the outside interference and the world market, 'failed states'. Their solution is devastating US military action, followed by putting whole peoples under the jurisdiction of the UN. It in turn operates completely undemocratically to try to produce a pro-capitalist, pro-Western regime and to meet the conflicting interests of the minor powers in the region.
Economic aid is at best pitiful and channelled into the hands of favoured corrupt leaders. That has happened in Kosovo. The handful of multinationals that are interested in the area have tried to grab its paltry resources. The UN is not a counter to US power-it is the civil service of the new imperialism.


text:
Luthra among city's '17 HOF class
Luthra
WEIRTON — A local medical professional and long-time community volunteer is among the four city residents set to become members of the Weirton Hall of Fame during this year's induction dinner, scheduled for Aug. 20.
Dr. Juginder K. Luthra has been selected for inclusion in the 2017 class of the hall of fame. He will be inducted under the category of music and fine arts.
Born in India, he obtained his medical degree in 1966 and decided to specialize in ophthalmology, receiving his master's degree in India and his D.O. in London.
Moving to Weirton in 1975, Luthra operated his private practice from 1976 to 2010.
Along with Dennis Jones, Victor Greco and many others, Luthra was among those who pushed for the creation of the Weirton Area Museum and Cultural Center, working to preserve the history of the Weirton community for future generations.
As part of his work with the museum, Luthra has spent several years chairing the committee which organizes the annual Festival of Nations.
He is a long-time member of the Rotary Club of Weirton Heights and was active in the formation of the Starvaggi Memorial Park Civic Association, helping to provide upkeep to the community park.
He recently starred in a short film, "Sunflower," which focuses on aging and memory.
In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, reading, writing prose and poetry, traveling, acting, singing and giving back to the community.
He and his wife, Dolly, have three daughters and six grandchildren.
Other members of this year's class are Markos "Mike" Apesos, in the category of public service; Norman D. Ferrari Jr., in the category of public service; and Marvin Herbert Levendorf, in the category of philanthropy.
The Hall of Fame dinner will be held at 2 p.m., Aug. 20 at the Holiday Inn of Weirton.
Tickets for the induction dinner are on sale now, at a cost of $30 each, and may be obtained at the Weirton Municipal Building, 200 Municipal Plaza, Weirton.
Tickets will not be sold at the door.
This will be the ninth induction class for the Weirton Hall of Fame.
Honorees are selected through nominations of those with outstanding accomplishments who have distinguished themselves, for the benefit of the community, in one of six categories: philanthropy; public service; music and fine arts; business, industry and professions; education and religion; and sports and athletics.
To qualify, a nominee must be either a current or former resident of Weirton, having lived in the city for a minimum of five years since 1947.
Judge orders release of opioid data
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Some are allowed to seek asylum
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Retired Supreme Court justice Stevens dies at 99
Senators skeptical of Facebook currency
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Funding provided for Belmont County cracker plant site preparation
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Need to buy a gift? birthday present? or Valentines gift? Stop by the Enchanted Caravan Store for Waldorf inspired toys, gifts, stationary, craft supplies and so much more.
The Enchanted Caravan is also offering 50% to 60% OFF picture books, chapter books, parenting books, crafting books and more! Stop in this afternoon to browse our collection in the community space. Sales will continue until the end of January.