text:
The occupational hazards, poor working and living conditions, and low wages North Carolina's tobacco workers face result from deliberate policies, but they can be meliorated by unionization and the freedom for laborers to shop their skills around.
North Carolina has one of the lowest percentages of union members in the country. Yet in this non-union bastion, thousands of farmworkers, some of the country's least unionized workers, belong to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). That gives the state a greater percentage of unionized farmworkers than almost any other.
The heart of FLOC's membership here are the 6,000 workers brought to North Carolina with H2-A work visas every year to pick the cucumbers that wind up in the pickle jars sold in supermarkets by the Mt. Olive Pickle Company. Not all farmworkers, or FLOC members, are guest workers with H2-A visas, however. In fact, a report last year by Oxfam America, "A state of fear: Human rights abuses in North Carolina's tobacco industry," estimates that of the 100,000 farmworkers in the state, only 9 percent have H2-A visas. Almost all the rest have no legal immigration status.
Nevertheless, when workers fall under the union contract, FLOC represents them, regardless of whether they have visas or not. Some contract growers employ both H2-A and undocumented labor – the union doesn't ask. This is the case for every farmworker union in the country. If a union only tried to represent workers with visas, it would have no power. Only a small minority of the workforce would qualify for membership, and in a given workplace, workers would be divided against each other. The ability of a union to unite workers in action in a workplace is the basis of its strength and its ability to protect rights and win better conditions.
In North Carolina, FLOC has a total of 7,000 members, and 80 percent work in tobacco fields, for the same growers who raise the cucumbers for Mt. Olive pickles. That gives the union a base for organizing the tobacco industry, using the same corporate and boycott strategy it used to gain its original agreements here with the Mt. Olive Pickle Company.
This time, FLOC's adversaries are the world's largest cigarette manufacturers – Philip Morris, Lorillard Tobacco Company and Reynolds American. None of them actually own land or grow tobacco themselves. They contract with growers and buy what they produce, at a price these manufacturers totally control. Some growers contract for workers through the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), where the union has its contract. Other growers hire workers themselves, usually through labor contractors. The NCGA workers all have H2-A visas, while those working for labor contractors are mostly undocumented. Some growers use workers from both entities.
"Conditions for tobacco workers are worse than those for farm workers anywhere else in the country," says Baldemar Velasquez, FLOC's president. Velasquez says he's out to organize all workers, regardless of status. "Just because someone's undocumented, doesn't mean they don't have rights," he emphasizes.
As a hot August sun beats down on a field in Nash County, Manuel Cardenal moves down his row almost at a run. He pauses for a second in front of each tobacco plant, breaking off the new shoots – Cardenal calls them retoños – at the top. They have to be removed so that the growing strength of the plant will flow into the leaves below, making them broad and heavy.
Cardenal understands the way tobacco plants grow and knows what must be done to make them productive. He used to have a farm of his own in Estelí, the best-known tobacco region of Nicaragua, a country famous for cigars.
Five other workers like him race down their own rows, deftly choosing and plucking out the right parts of the right plants. To do this well, rancher Corey (they don't actually know his full name) says they have to use their bare hands. Gloves would be too encumbering, he says, and might damage the plants. In addition, they're being paid a piece rate. The workers have to work fast just to make the minimum wage. Corey says the whole field has to be finished by the end of the day.
By one in the afternoon, the temperature has reached 102 degrees. Cardenal's arms shine with sweat. Since six that morning, when they went into the field, the hands of all six workers have been covered with a sticky green tar – the residue of tobacco juice and gum from the leaves. The same thing that gives cigarettes and cigars their kick – the nicotine – is not just present in the tar, but permeates even the dust in the air. Anyone walking into the field starts to feel that heady sensation you get from smoking the first cigarette of the day.
"I feel it as soon as I start work," Cardenal says. "Then, after my body gets used to it, I can hardly feel it at all. But I know I'm absorbing it all day." The other workers say they still feel light-headed, though, even though hours have passed since they started work. When the heat reaches its peak, they sometimes feel nauseous, as well.
Another component of the sticky tar is the residue of pesticides sprayed on the plants. Growers aren't supposed to send workers into the field for 72 hours after they spray. Some do anyway, but even past that limit, chemicals remain on the plants' sticky leaves.
"I know I'm getting exposed, but I don't know what I'm exposed to," Cardenal says. "On my own farm, I'd at least know what I was using to kill insects. But here, I have no idea, and the growers never tell us."
The reason all six workers know so well the operations needed to grow tobacco is that they all come from the tobacco regions of Mexico and Central America. They've all worked in those fields at home. Ruben Barrales and Manuel Buendia come from Veracruz, where tobacco leaves even form part of the coat of arms of Alamo, Buendia's hometown. Maynor Gonzalez, his brother Ismail and Francisco Escobar all come from Santa Rita in Honduras. That town is an hour from San Pedro Sula and the port of Puerto Cortez, where Honduras manufactures and exports its cigars.
Migration to North Carolina from Honduras and Nicaragua is relatively recent, but the flow of people from Veracruz dates back to the mid 1980s. The Veracruz flow is connected to the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, and later the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Central American migration, with its origin in the exodus of refugees from its civil wars, got a big boost following the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, best known for its immigration amnesty, also modified and expanded a previous guest-worker program. It took a previous H-2 visa category, a vestige of the old bracero era, and divided it into two categories – H2-A for farm labor, and H2-B for unskilled non-agricultural workers. Once the law took effect, US growers could recruit workers in other countries and bring them to the United States on the H2-A work visas. Workers with H2-A visas can only work for the length of their employment contract – less than a year – and then must leave. They can only work for the grower or contractor who hires them. Importing contract labor to the United States on temporary work permits was halted when the notorious bracero contract labor scheme was ended in 1964. The H2-A visa program, however, reopened the door.
Soon after the law took effect in 1986, hiring agents for North Carolina growers appeared in Veracruz, offering people the chance to work in the United States on the guest-worker visas. In the tobacco regions, they found plenty of takers.
During that period, Mexico's constitution was changed to allow the sale of communally owned land, the ejidos. In a wave of free market reforms, the government dissolved Tabamex – the agency that helped small tobacco farmers market their product. Then NAFTA took effect in 1994, taking down the barriers on agricultural imports to Mexico. It became very difficult for Mexican farmers in many crops to compete against imports from the United States. Small farmers who couldn't sell tobacco or corn for a price that paid the cost of growing it began to sell off their land to survive.
While these changes caused an enormous crisis in rural areas throughout the country, Veracruz suffered more than most states because it is more dependent on agriculture. Unable to survive on their land in Veracruz, tobacco farmers began to come north as contract workers, to the fields of North Carolina.
Once their original work contracts ended, many H2-A workers simply stayed in the United States without visas and became undocumented. Over time, others came north on their own to join friends and relatives already living in North Carolina. A pool of Mexican workers began to grow, most from Veracruz. Eventually, they were joined by people arriving from Central America as well, displaced by CAFTA. That agreement took effect in 2005 and unleashed the same economic forces NAFTA set loose earlier on rural communities in Mexico.
Indigenous Farmworker study conducted by Rick Mines found that a third of the farm laborers it surveyed were paid less than the state's minimum wage.
According to the US Department of Labor, 7 percent of the nation's 1.4 million farmworkers have H2-A visas, while 53 percent have no visa at all. Of the 103 workers interviewed for the Oxfam report, almost all were undocumented. A quarter said they were paid wages less than the legal minimum. This is not unusual. In California, theA majority of those interviewed in the Oxfam survey reported the same physical symptoms Cardenal and his coworkers describe – a syndrome called green tobacco sickness – and most had no gloves or other protective equipment. Only a third said there were toilets in the fields where they worked. Every year, North Carolina's Department of Labor reports the death of several field laborers from heat exposure.
Most farm workers in North Carolina live in labor camps, which are like small company towns where workers depend on the employer for housing, transportation and food. Almost all those surveyed complained of problems like dilapidated barracks, inadequate showers and toilets, lack of heat or ventilation, and insect infestations.
Today, conditions for H2-A workers are better than those described by the undocumented, primarily because most belong to a union, the FLOC. This was not always the case, however.
In 2004, FLOC signed an agreement with the NCGA and the Mt. Olive Pickle Company. The union had mounted a long corporate campaign against Mt. Olive, because it was a non-union competitor to union pickle producers in Ohio and the Midwest. Mt. Olive's lower labor costs were subsidized by its use of the H2-A program.
Until the signing of the FLOC contract, North Carolina's H2-A workers were held in a form of low-wage bondage. Federal law requires growers to pay an "adverse effect" wage to H2-A workers, supposedly set high enough so that it doesn't undermine local wage standards. North Carolina growers, however, were well known for paying less than the legal minimum, and Legal Aid of North Carolina filed many complaints against them. Even today, most growers using the program pay the minimum wage or slightly above.
To enforce the low-wage regime, NCGA maintained a blacklist, called in its employee manual a "record of eligibility [which] contains a list of workers, who because of violations of their contract, have been suspended from the program." The "1997 NCGA Ineligible for Rehire Report" listed 1,709 names. The reason for ineligibility was most often given as abandoning a job or voluntary resignation. Legal Aid, however, charged that when workers were fired for complaining, they were given a paper to sign saying they'd quit voluntarily. Among the hundreds of names were also many whose reason for ineligibility was given as "lazy," "slow," "work hours too long," "work too hot and hard," or "slowing up other workers."
Workers were warned not to talk with legal aid attorneys and were even told to burn the pink Legal Aid know-your-rights books in a trash barrel at the association office.
The NCGA was organized in 1989 by Craig Eury and Kenneth White, who were fired that year as rural manpower representatives of the North Carolina Employment Security Commission (the state's unemployment office). The two then set up businesses in North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states for importing guest workers. In 2003, they brought in over 10,000 workers, recruited in Mexico by Manpower of America, which used local enganchadores, or recruiters.
When Mt. Olive signed with FLOC in 2004, NCGA signed as well, since it was the recruiter of the workers employed by the growers who grew the cucumbers for Mt. Olive pickles. As a result of the agreement, FLOC was then able to police the recruitment system. North Carolina is a right-to-work state, which limited the union's power over hiring, however. Today, a grower has the right to make a decision about whom he hires, but the union maintains a seniority list. If a worker isn't rehired by a particular grower at the start of the season, the union can get the NCGA to find him or her another job.
The union has a grievance system and workers can make complaints about the kind of health and safety problems they previously had to suffer in silence and fear. The Oxfam report notes that in 2010, FLOC processed more than 700 complaints.
The contract, especially the monitoring of hiring, came at a high price, however. In 2004, FLOC opened an office for that purpose in Monterrey, Mexico. Then, on April 9, 2007, Santiago Rafael Cruz, sent by the union to staff that office, was tied up, tortured and murdered. To this day, the Mexican government has been unable to bring his killers to justice. There is little doubt, however, that he was murdered because the union was threatening the enganchadores who'd been demanding that workers pay bribes to get hired.
The fact that union members hired through the NCGA are H2-A workers makes NCGA growers uncompetitive, Velasquez maintains: "They have to provide better conditions, from the adverse effect wage rate to paying Social Security and workers' compensation," he says. With Mt. Olive, all growers supplying pickles to the company have to abide by union conditions and pay the same wages. Tobacco, however, is a much larger business, in which NCGA growers with the union contract are competing with non-union growers.
Since the vast majority of the farm labor workforce in tobacco is undocumented, an agreement with the big cigarette manufacturers will have important differences from the first contract with Mt. Olive and the NCGA. One question is whether undocumented workers will be represented by the union if the industry is forced to sign a master agreement.
Another complexity is the ability of manufacturers to dictate prices to growers. After the US government abandoned its marketing regulations for tobacco, growers lost much of their leverage for negotiating those prices. "Typically, the farmer must sign the contract as written [by the manufacturer] or else lose the chance to grow tobacco during the upcoming season," the Oxfam report notes. One grower told investigators that "[in] 2010. our crop is going to bring us half a million dollars less than it did in 2009." Growers today have only one way to respond to price pressure: get workers to produce more for lower wages while spending even less on their food, housing and health. That exerts a continuing downward pressure on wages and conditions in the fields. A union contract would force growers to pay the same wages, essentially taking labor costs out of competition.
H2-A workers have become more expensive in North Carolina because of the union contract. In every other state, where H2-A workers have no union protection, their wages and conditions are often no different from those of undocumented workers. On many ranches, they're employed and housed together.
Some North Carolina growers see advantages in using H2-A workers, however, especially if competing growers must do the same. One told the Oxfam investigators, "You want to know if you are going to pour all this money into these crops, that if you do everything you are supposed to, you are going to have the labor there till the end of the year to get that crop out of the field."
"When you hire, you know, a crew leader, an undocumented worker, you are running the risk they are going to leave you before you finish, you run the risk they're going to leave when you need them the most," said the grower.
What makes the program desirable to employers, however, also makes workers vulnerable to employer pressure. The means used to make workers dependable – the employment contract, grower control of recruiting and hiring, and the ability of employers to deport workers by firing them – deprive workers of power. In 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) report, "Close to Slavery," said the program was structurally flawed because workers "are bound to the employers who 'import' them. If guest workers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation." Regulations to protect workers "exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement … is almost non-existent."
H2A wages have been especially controversial and have always been hostage to politics. At the end of the Bush administration, the methodology for calculating the adverse effect wage was changed, resulting in a $1-2 wage cut for H2A workers. In March 2010, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis reinstated the old wage and the method for determining it, requiring employers to document efforts to recruit local workers.
"Some improvement is possible with changes in the regs," argues Mary Bauer, SPLC's legal director and the "Close to Slavery" report's principal author. She suggests raising wages and policing recruitment. "But the structure of the program is the real problem. Workers need a visa that's not dependent on employment. They should come here with a visa that lets them shop their labor around, like any other worker."
The Oxfam report, however, recommends expansion of the H2-A program instead, claiming this would improve wages and conditions. Allowing growers to import more workers under this program, however, simply means that more workers will endure the abysmal conditions described in the "Close to Slavery" report. Even in North Carolina, where H2-A conditions are better, the reason for the improvement is not the visa, but the fact that workers have a union contract. Without a strong union, conditions would quickly return to what they were before 2004. Yet the Oxfam report makes no recommendation that tobacco manufacturers sign a union contract.
In the end, the choice faced by the six migrants in the Nash County field is simple. Stay home and go hungry, or come to the United States and survive. Bad conditions and lack of legal status are no deterrent. These workers are not unsophisticated about the situation they face in the United States. Nor do they lack knowledge about the perils of farm labor. They simply have very little power to change their situation other than by leaving home and migrating to North Carolina.
Cardenal asks about the agricultural pesticide DBCP. He cites it as an example of the possible dangers of working in the United States, where he comes in contact with plants and chemicals without knowing their effects. DBCP was used by Dole Corporation on banana plantations for many years in Nicaragua. The chemical was later found to have caused sterility among farm laborers. "Some people got money to settle their legal cases," he explains, "but the price they paid was very high. They never had children. How do I know that years from now, some chemical on the leaves here won't cause me a problem like that?"
A strong union would make sure he knows the potential dangers from pesticides. A higher wage, not tied to a piece rate, could allow him to work more slowly using gloves, instead of absorbing nicotine through his bare hands. And a union contract could protect him if he went to rancher Corey and demanded these things, keeping Corey from firing him, evicting him from company housing and even deporting him.
At present, whether he comes into the tobacco field as an H2-A worker or without any visa at all, he runs the risk of retaliation if he demands better conditions. Undocumented workers can always be threatened with the migra. But H2-A workers lose their visas along with their jobs if their boss fires them.
The choices in this field are very circumscribed. But envisioning a more liberating solution for the workers here is not hard. Get rid of NAFTA and CAFTA so that people can earn a decent living at home, making migration only an option, not a necessity. Give a green card – a residence visa – to tobacco workers, instead of an H2-A employment contract or no visa at all. Give workers enforceable organizing rights and require huge corporations to sign union agreements.
It's just the toxic and deadlocked politics of Washington DC that call real solutions impossible. Today, US immigration policy is largely shaped by the desire of US employers for labor. That's what limits what's possible for Cardenal and his workmates. But should it? Can't migration produce strong communities of people fully able to assert their rights in this country and healthy communities in their countries of origin? Or must it be geared primarily to supplying labor to cigarette manufacturers at a price they want to pay?


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TAGLIOLINI WITH PESTO AND BROAD BEANS. Umbrians love broad beans, fave. As soon as it's spring, crates of the long green pods start to appear in markets and shops. Those who are lucky enough to have a vegetable garden will pick the young and tender ones and give bagfuls to their neighbors as a gift. The fave are eaten fresh, just out of the pod, often accompanied by a slice of young pecorino cheese.
Spring basil is tender and flavorful enough to make a pesto, either "alla genovese" with pine nuts (pignoli) or with almonds and ricotta like I do here. Summer basil would of course be much better for the pesto but then the fave are finished!
- 200 gr (7 ounces) dry egg tagliolini (very narrow fettuccine)
- 200 gr (1 cup) broad beans (yields 6 tablespoon shelled broad beans)
- 1 garlic clove very finely minced
- grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese
- 2 tablespoon ricotta (optional)
For pesto:
- 1 bunch of fresh basil leaves, about 4 tablespoon
- 2 tablespoon chopped almonds or pine nuts
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 tablespoon EVO oil
If you buy fresh fava beans on the pod, you will need about 1/2 kg (1 lb) per person. Blanch broad beans in boiling hot water for 5 min or until some of the skins start to split. Drain and refresh under cold water. Remove shells. This will take some time but brings the dish from ordinary to quite amazing. Reserve.
To make the pesto I just blitz all ingredients in a bowl using an immersion blender. If you are a purist however, please make it with mortar and pestle. Make sure to make the pesto at the last possible moment before using it in the sauce. This way the pesto does not oxidize and as a consequence all flavor is retained. While making the pesto, cook the tagliolini in plenty salted boiling water according to package instructions.
In a pan large enough to hold all the pasta, saute 1 clove garlic in olive oil until fragrant, about 30 sec. Add broad beans and cook briefly to infuse them in the garlic oil. Take off the heat and add 2 tablespoon pesto and two tablespoon ricotta (if using).
Drain the pasta reserving 1/3 cup pasta water. Transfer the pasta in the pan that holds the sauce on high heat. Add some pasta water and quickly stir so that the sauce is partly absorbed by the pasta. Serve immediately with grated Parmesan or pecorino cheese.
Serves 2

subset: commoncrawl


text:
You're not getting paid as well as you should. I know this not only because you're bothering to read this, but also because most techies are crap at extracting cash from their employers. It shouldn't shock you too much to learn that I, as a City headhunter and former contractor, focus quite hard on money – so here's a few ideas that will help you even in tough times.
Continuous Visible Productivity
The first thing you get wrong is spending too much time on things no one sees. No one really cares if you've made the backup process run 50 per cent faster unless it's stopping work, so don't waste your time on this until some politically powerful person or business unit asks. That's a tactic: the full methodology you should adopt for all your work is Continuous Visible Productivity (CVP).
Plan your work in terms of things other people can see; forget agile dependency modelling, GANTT, etcetera and prioritise with respect to how many useful people see the result.
The joy of CVP is that its cynicism is so pure you can openly share it with your boss – he is under constant attack for the cost of IT which to "the business" seems so rarely to actually produce anything. A staffer who makes him look good is far more valuable than one who knows more C++ syntax, so his fear of you leaving goes up without you doing anything. The highest paid contractor I ever met composed Reuters pages for directors of the bank. That's drag-and-drop level work and she was a proper techie – so it was far beneath her – but every time she wanted to quit they'd throw money at her, such was the power of her visible productivity. You might not have that option, but making sure your system can easily and quickly support new pages makes you look good, especially if it's not a documented feature …
Why you are paid
Your pay is an equilibrium between their fear of you leaving and greedily keeping the cash they could pay you. Do not kid yourself that your pay is a reward for work you have done, employers have less memory than a goldfish and your only lever is what you're going to do. Any pitch for money must contain a mix of opportunities for your boss to look good flavoured with just enough fear that you might be leaving. The past is evidence for a pay rise, not a cause.
One of the best paid IT guys I know says that he doesn't sell "solutions", he sells pay rises; your boss must see it in his interest to fight the battles. Be aware that it's just pub talk to leave a recruiters card "accidentally" on your desk, if they think you're definitely going anyway they won't bother to try and keep you and optional items like bonuses and training won't be wasted on a lost boy. The last thing your boss wants is to fight for your pay rise and let his bosses see you quit anyway.
Note that the title is "get more money", not "earn more". I can't make you better at your job, my aim is to get you better rewarded for it. You are worth what you can get, not a penny more or less. In negotiations it is useful to use the word "fair" so that the other side doesn't feel too blackmailed, but never kid yourself that it means anything.
Screwing up to get more money
One serious programmer explained to me that "if the system goes down for 30 minutes, you're incompetent. Bring it back after five hours and you're a hero". They key here is that you're making a difference when it hits the fan, that's not someone they want to lose.
Sounding enthusiastic
Your boss has no idea if you're good at your job. Even in the unlikely event he knows much about database replication or wrongly aliased pointers, he doesn't have the time to properly measure your performance – and the structure of many IT groups means that the greater their decision-making power, the less the individual understands computers. They use proxies for competence and productivity, working on the principle that a cheerful techie is delivering the goods. They also like cheerful people because it means the team is functional, which is part of…
Business correctness
The richer brother of political correctness, every firm has a bunch of things that one has to pay lip service to. As a techie you are crap at even noticing these and when you do, they form the butt of your acid humour.
You need to say: "We're a tier one supplier to the NHS," even when you know it's a delusion believed by no one outside marketing. You don't have to believe it. There's a whole pile of bullshit words you need to use more, such as "business", "delivery", "savings" and "revenue" – but most important is "team".
EDS did a video – "Herding cats" – which beautifully captures how your bosses see IT people…
At many firms they genuinely believe that one day they will have to deal with an outbreak of physical violence in the IT department – and quite a few already have (the time I was punched at IBM's labs was my own fault).


text:
Fascism and Anti-Fascism Between the Wars
Matthew Worley
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN: 9780230206977; 288pp.; Price: £55.00
edited by: Nigel Copsey, Andrzej Olechnowicz
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN: 9780230006485; 256pp.; Price: £55.00
Date accessed: 27 February, 2024
Two decades ago, it was possible for historians of fascism in Britain to remark that the literature of their subject was unnecessarily limited. Up to that point, writers had accepted two self-imposed restrictions which were no longer capable of justification. First, historians had kept their research to the inter-war period, neglecting almost entirely such post-war organisations as the National Front (NF) and the British National Party (BNP). Second, the careful studies of the ideas, organisation and activities of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) had been almost entirely unmatched by any comparable interest in those who had campaigned against the BUF. The lack of attention paid to anti-fascists was especially striking. It was certainly arguable that anti-fascists had been instrumental in Mosley's defeat, and (whether that was accepted or not) it was clear that they had been as well organised, as politically diverse, and more numerous than, Mosley's followers.
In the intervening 20 years, that picture has changed. We now have a few valuable monographs studying the attempted fascist revivals of 1945–51 and 1974–9 (although nothing of detail yet on the also important period of 1958–62). There are also political and sociological studies of the BNP in the last ten years. Of the historical works, the most impressive is Graham Macklin's Very Deeply Dyed in Black, which focuses on Mosley and his followers. Macklin's book is complemented by David Baker's Ideology of Obsession, looking at A. K. Chesterton, a more direct influence than Mosley on Britain's present-day far right.(1)
There have also been at least three major works focussing on anti-fascism: Nigel Copsey's syncretic history of anti-fascism in Britain between c1920 and c1990, my own studies of anti-fascism in 1945-51 and 1974-9, and now an important new collection edited by Copsey and Olechnowicz, to which I will return.(2)
Before focussing on Varieties of Anti-Fascism, I want to say something about Matthew Worley's history of the New Party, the interim organisation established by Mosley after leaving Labour and before founding the BUF. Worley's work takes the story of British fascism earlier than was previously considered possible.
The difficulties might be listed at the outset. This is for general readers the best known period of British fascist history, having been at the heart of Channel Four's 1998 mini-series Mosley. It is also the part of the story which is most likely to find its ways into textbook histories of Britain. It has, as major and minor players, a number of vivid albeit over-familiar characters, including John Strachey, Harold Nicholson, Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw. The New Party left almost no documents, making the task especially difficult for the careful historian determined to say something new, while Mosley's own papers were only recently deposited after systematic weeding had removed anything shedding light on this period. Finally, any writer has to avoid the subterfuges played by Mosley's two memoirs, his autobiography, and the account published by an amanuensis in 1975.
Worley solves the over-familiarity of his subject by taking a collective biographical approach, placing the New Party not merely at a point in Mosley's life, but also in the context of the development of his chief lieutenants. These range from the well-known (Strachey) to the obscure (Arthur Reade, previously best-known as a figure of some exotic importance in the micro-history of the left). Worley eschews a narrative for a thematic approach, focussing on the ideology, the organisation, and the strategies for alliances adopted at different times by the New Party.
There are three original points in particular worth taking from Worley's book. First, that the New Party repeatedly employed in its political language a distinctively 'masculine' rhetoric, in which opponents were dismissed repeatedly as old ladies, crones, or hag-ridden. This misogyny was neither accidental nor occasional, but a key part of the way in which the party attempted to set itself apart from its rivals. The observation reminds us that British fascism was not merely an exaggeratedly racist party but the organised expression of a consistently inegalitarian approach to life. (I would also say in passing that contemporary electoral fascism, a party of retired policemen and working security guards, deserves a similarly gendered analysis).
Second, Worley brings out in new detail the key part played in the persuasion of Mosley towards fascism by a small number of young, male 'hearties', privileged and sporting, without any previous political baggage, and trained in anti-socialism by the certainties of wealth and class. The BUF, it has previously been observed, was the organised successor not so much of the New Party but specifically of its youth wing. Worley names and sets out the history of the youths involved.
Third, Worley shows the part played in the New Party as by individuals who went on to play proud roles on the British left, not just Strachey, but also John Cornford and Esmond Romilly, both of whom went on to volunteer for the Republic during the Civil War in Spain. They were serious converts into and subsequently away from what might be termed 'Oswald Mosley thought'. I doubt that the part played by guilt in their subsequent biographies has been properly explored.
Before turning to Copsey and Olechnowicz's book, various declarations of interest have to be made: first, the network of British historians of fascism is not wide. I have been published myself by Copsey and Olechnowicz's publisher Palgrave, including in a 2005 collection of essays (3) which I jointly-edited with Copsey, himself. Yet I feel that I am entitled to write critically about their latest work, not least because the editors of the collection use my own studies of anti-fascism in places as a negative reference point, to set out clearly how their work is distinguished from previous accounts.
The purpose of Varieties of Anti-Fascism is set out with admirable clarity by its title; 'varieties' because, it is said, previous writers have tended to reduce anti-fascism to a narrative of street confrontations with fascists. But, the editors argue, anti-fascism as a concept must be broad enough to take in practices such as the opposition of Liberals and Conservatives (alongside Labourites and Communists), cultural anti-fascism, and above all the whole story of Winston Churchill's wartime government which in practice marginalised British fascism utterly by employing the cultural and repressive organs of the state, rather than through street protests.
Some of this contrast of approach, between Copsey and Olechnowicz on the one hand, and previous authors on the other, is illustrated by their critique of the metaphors historians have used. The contributors are critical of my own definitional emphasis on anti-fascism as 'activity', and are not quite satisfied even by Copsey own previous distinction between 'active' and 'passive' anti-fascisms. (I personally would accept Copsey's distinction as helpful, perhaps combining it with a further distinction between institutional and popular anti-fascist strategies) They settle on a practical consensus that anti-fascism has been various and diverse.
One of the advantages of the editors' inclusive approach is that it enables them to publish as studies in the history of anti-fascism accounts of institutions and organisations that have not previously been analysed in this way. For example, Janet Dack's chapter on the attitude of the national press towards Mosley argues that the bulk of the newspapers were for the majority of the 1930s hostile to the BUF, and that this antagonism was a major factor limiting the fascists' support.
Still more ambitious, although not entirely successful, is Tom Lawson's account of Christian opposition to fascism in the inter-war years. Watson argues that Church anti-fascism would have been unlikely to take a militant form and is therefore closed to historians who are interested only in street demonstrations. The difficulty with Lawson's chapter, frustratingly, is its narrow evidential base, which is essentially the counterpart in the national Christian press of Dack's study. It neglects Mosley's own attempts to reinvent himself, especially in the Roman Catholic newspapers, either (in 1936–8) as Franco's British counterpart, or in (1939) as the country's sole true pacifist. More importantly, I can't help but feel that a still more interesting approach to the same issue would have been to take a committed anti-fascist church (for example, Conrad Noel's at Thaxted) and to have asked how an anti-fascist message was adopted into distinctively Christian forms (sermons, prayers, the iconography of banners, etc). I have no doubt that this was done. Nor do I doubt that it was real and effective anti-fascism, even without a street demonstration in sight.
The limits of Copsey and Olechnowicz's collection are best illustrated by its 'outrider' chapter (my term, not theirs), by Julia Stapleton on the Catholic novelist G. K. Chesterton and the patriotic historian Arthur Bryant. Stapleton gave herself or was given the title 'the limits of pro-fascism and anti-fascism', but if her purpose was to show that the difference between the two terms was mere shades of grey, her examples are badly chosen. Both figures wrote copiously about fascism, and in both cases the majority of their copy was positive. At the cost of simplification, we may say that Chesterton took the view that Mussolini was on balance an unlikeable ruler of Italy, but that he should be defended from his opponents, who (being Bolsheviks) were worse. Mosley also was undesirable, for the reason that he was insufficiently anti-Semitic. As for Bryant, he was not merely a popular journalist but also a leader of Kinship in Husbandry, a modest player in what Stapleton rightly terms the wartime 'fascist fringe'. In a historical context other than the crisis of the 1930s and 1940s, Bryant might well have found more quickly his ultimate intellectual resting place, which was a nostalgic hostility to both capitalism and communism. Such politics is of course distinct from fascism's reactionary ultra-modernism. In her final sentence, Stapleton defines the anti-fascism of these two figures as having expressed itself in 'doubts' about fascism. It is not mere pedantry to say that if anti-fascism is to mean anything it must surely mean more than an occasional doubt (generally expressed in private) about the historical brilliance of Mosley, Mussolini and Hitler, by writers who spent far more time justifying fascism before the public than they did opposing it.
That said, any reader will find much in this collection to enjoy, from Philip Williamson's spirited (if implausible) defence of the Conservative Party's record as inter-war Britain's most successful and sustained anti-fascist force; to Gottlieb's careful dissection of the differing parts played by different feminist campaigns (the most militant, she shows, were often the most coherently pacifist and the most sustainedly hostile to Versailles, and were not the best equipped to deal with the rise of Hitler) and Olechnowicz's attempt to show that there were in Britain in Laski and A. D. Lindsay anti-fascist theorists of an equal calibre to such Continental names as Gramsci, Thalheimer and Trotsky (in truth, Laski and Lindsay were theorists of a minor rank; but it is still for the good that they have been noticed).
Both books have pushed back the historical boundary. Yet I suspect that it is Varieties of Anti-Fascism rather than Oswald Mosley and the New Party which will be read most in future years. For having been eclipsed in the 1960s and 1970s by other British fascists, including G. K. Chesterton's nephew A. K. (the first Chairman of the National Front) Oswald Mosley's tradition began to wither and die. The British fascists of the present, and therefore of the future, have different heroes, plebeian rather than aristocratic. They owe little to Mosley's world. Non-Mosley fascism is a force in present day British politics, as (inevitably) is opposition to such fascism. While I do criticise some of the positions taken by the authors of Varieties of Anti-Fascism, I do not criticise for a second the purpose of their book, which is to open up to scrutiny historical anti-fascism in all its various forms.
There will be more histories of anti-fascism in future. For the historians who write them, Varieties of Anti-Fascism will be an important reference point.
- Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism After 1945 (London, 2007); David Baker, Ideology of Obsession: A. K. Chesterton and British Fascism (London, 1996).Back to (1)
- Nigel Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain (London, 2000); David Renton, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Britain in the 1940s (London, 2000).Back to (2)
- British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State, ed. Nigel Copsey and David Renton (Basingstoke, 2005).Back to (3)


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Customer Service/Operations Coordinator
Here at TJX Canada, we strive our hardest to make sure that, every day, our customers are able to find the latest and greatest designer brand names for less than they'd pay elsewhere. When they walk in the doors of our stores, whether it's a Winners, HomeSense, or Marshalls, savvy shoppers know they'll experience the "Thrill of the Find," which, if you're curious, feels like a slight breeze blowing over the surface of your skin-not a bad feeling, if we do say so ourselves.
But you're not here to feel the breeze. You're here to see if working with TJX Canada is right for you. To help with your decision, we'd like to introduce you to someone who once faced the same choice you have to make.
Meet Daniel.
Daniel is one of our Customer Service/Operations Coordinators, which means he's responsible for assigning priorities and providing direction for customer service, as well as for ensuring that operations, clerical, and office activities are all well managed. His position requires customer-service and problem-solving skills, which Daniel has in spades.
He also has an uncanny talent for playing bridge. He says it's because his late grandmother whispers tips in his ear, but we like to think he's joking.
Still, this is Daniel. He is one of us.
But know this. If you do decide to apply for this position, and we agree that this is the right job for you, you'll be supported by a plethora of internal programs whose only focus is the continued progress of your career. At TJX Canada, we do everything we can to help you achieve your full potential. But we can't do it all ourselves. You'll need to bring the ambition, the motivation, and the drive.
So what do you think? Like Daniel, are you one of us?
Now, if you were to come on board as one of our Customer Service/Operations Coordinators, we'd ask you to do the following:
- Understand and be knowledgeable of BEST operational standards, and monitor service area performance against these standards
- Provide weekly updates on objectives and identify any issues or opportunities pertaining to customer service, service area compliance, and markdowns
- Review weekly MAP and CommPak, and support communication of change to service areas, updating appropriate communications boards
- Help incorporate sales information to drive sales for your given area of responsibility, which includes all frontline features, fixtures, and jewelry
- Assign and direct the work of your fellow Associates
- Ensure that operation, clerical, and office activities are well managed
- Maintain and present information on communications boards
- Support the delivery of exceptional customer service
- Hold the authority to approve returns, customer-requested markdowns, Associate bag checks, merchandise holds, etc.
- Train and develop all Associates in cash office and markdown procedures and policies
- Conduct new hire orientations
- Maintain a store cross-training chart
Sounds rather challenging and exciting, right? Let's hope so, because if it sounds easy or boring, there's a good chance this job isn't for you. But if it does sound right for you, here's why we know you'll be able to handle those challenges:
- You've done enough mental heavy lifting to earn your high school diploma
- You have two years of relevant experience, which you can use to build a stable and bright future here at WMI
- You have strong technical knowledge of all store systems
- You have strong problem-solving and customer-service skills that will help you respond to customer complaints and inquiries, identify stated and unstated customer needs, and respond to inquiries from Associates
- Your communication skills include verbal, written, active-listening skills
We know some of that might sound a little daunting, but if we're going to meet and exceed our promises to our customers, we have to be committed to hiring the best person for the job.


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Hello again!
On Friday, June 8, I celebrated the baccalaureate Mass with the eighth-graders at St. Columbkille Partnership School in Brighton.
Of course there is a great Irish tradition in that parish, but today it serves a very diverse community.
"Columbkille" actually means "the dove of the Church" in Irish. We celebrated Mass on the eve of his feast day. On the main altar, St. Columbkille is to the right of the Calvary scene, and St. Patrick is to the left.
This is also a church where, for many years, there has been a Hispanic community, so they have an image of Our Lady of Charity. There is also statue of St. Donato representing the Italian community.
The graduating class itself was a very diverse group, representing the many different immigrant groups that are coming to our Church in Boston and that are now part of our parishes and Catholic schools. We celebrate this diversity.
The school has received a great deal of help from Boston College and is flourishing. I understand they are expecting to enroll 350 students in the fall. This is a very good example of the many ways our local Catholic colleges have been very generous in lending their resources to strengthening our Catholic schools.
The growth at St. Columbkille is also a great sign of hope for the future of Catholic education in the archdiocese. Last year, we increased our overall enrollment by 2%, which was a very important watershed for us. It was very encouraging to see that, after so many years of declining numbers, our Catholic schools are beginning to grow again. St. Columbkille's is an exellent example of a school that has rebounded and we are very grateful to Msgr. Bill Fay, the Board of Trustees, and all those from Boston College who have been a part of it.
– – –
That evening, I met with the general superiors of the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master, who were visiting from Rome. I was with them for evening prayer and dinner.
The visit gave us an opportunity to thank them on behalf of the archdiocese for the wonderful work of the Sisters: their presence on West Street, at Regina Cleri and at the Pastoral Center. We also thanked them for all of their support, particularly the support of our priests, which I know is much appreciated.
– – –
Saturday morning, I celebrated Mass with Sister Olga Yaqob and the community of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth in Brookline.
It was a chance for them to tell me about what is happening in the community, their activities and outreach, as well as the courses the sisters are taking as part of their formation.
It was very good to be together with them. I was also encouraged to see there was a young woman there from New York who came to learn more about this community.
– – –
On Saturday night, we celebrated the Eucharist anticipating the Feast of Corpus Christi at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in East Boston.
At the Mass, three seminarians were promoted to ministries: Benito Moreno and Eric Velasquez were instituted as lectors and Wellington Oliveira was instituted as acolyte.
Benito is from the Dominican Republic, Eric is from Costa Rica and Wellington is from Brazil.
It was a beautiful and uplifting celebration.
– – –
It has been 10 years since the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People was issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. So, on Sunday, the Feast of Corpus Christi, we had a at Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton Mass to mark the anniversary and thank all the volunteers in our parishes and others who have been involved in our child protection programs.
It was fitting that the celebration was held on the feast of Corpus Christi, because when I was installed as Archbishop of Boston, I described the sexual abuse crisis as "wounds on the body of Christ."
Over the last 10 years, literally thousands of people have helped in our child protection efforts of education and screening. Over 300,000 children have received safe environment training in our parish religious education programs or in Catholic schools. Over 175,000 adults — including clergy, religious, volunteers and archdiocesan staff at parishes in Central Ministries — have received child safety and protection training with a focus on preventing abuse. This includes more than 150,000 catechists and volunteers who have incorporated the training into their direct work with children.
The archdiocese conducts more than 50,000 criminal background checks each year for any personnel who might be working with children in the archdiocese. Meanwhile, the archdiocese's office for Pastoral Support and Outreach has been consistently reaching out to the survivors of sexual abuse and their families and overseeing the counseling services that are provided to them.
We are very grateful for the generous response of the people of the archdiocese, who have invested so much of their time and resources to this task of making our churches, schools and agencies as safe as possible for children. We cannot undo the great harm that was done historically, but we can do everything possible to prevent a repeat of the errors of the past.
In my homily, I mentioned that in that Sunday's New York Times there was an article on the Horace Mann School in New York City, which had experienced instances of abuse. In the article, they mentioned that the number of sexual abuse cases reported in the public schools in New York this year is up 33% over last year. Also, a month ago, The Boston Globe quoted a detective in the Boston Police Department as saying that his office received 1,200 allegations of abuse last year.
So, although sexual abuse in many venues seems to be on the rise, in the Church it is not. This is in great part due to the dedication, sacrifice and the efforts of thousands of Catholics from the archdiocese who have stepped up to assist us in this enterprise. I was very pleased to offer this Mass in thanksgiving for them and for all of those who have been affected by the sexual abuse crisis.
– – –
Much of the rest of my week was spent attending the gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was held in Atlanta.
on Wednesday we gathered for Mass at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Basilica.
It is a very beautiful and historic church.
In our meetings and discussions there was a great emphasis on the issue of religious freedom.
With Bishops Coleman and Coyne
Archbishop William Lori, who is chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, gave a presentation and there were also talks by Catholic University President John Garvey and Professor Tom Farr, the director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University.
President Garvey spoke about the legal situation in our country, and then it was thought helpful to look at the issue of religious freedom worldwide. Historically, the United States has taken a stand in favor of religious freedom in the world, but according to Professor Farr, recent administrations have not been aggressive in promoting it.
With Bishop Kennedy, President Garvey, Bishop Uglietto and Bishop Dooher
For us, as Catholics, this is an issue of great concern. According to the Pontifical Mission Societies, 26 Church workers were murdered throughout the world in 2011, and more than 1,000 have given their lives over the last 30 years. We also know that, in many countries, Christians are being driven out en masse. A good example of this is Iraq, where before the war there were 1.5 million Christians and now over half have been driven out of their own country. Bishop Shlemon Warduni, a Chaldean auxiliary bishop of Baghdad, gave a very moving talk, urging the peoples of the world to speak out on behalf of Christians in countries such as his.
Of course, this just serves to underscore the importance of the upcoming Fortnight for Freedom, during which dioceses throughout the country will dedicate two weeks, from June 21 to July 4, to educational efforts and invitations to reflect on religious freedom in our country.
Realizing this is an election year, the Bishops Conference is asking that every effort be made to prevent this from becoming a partisan or political exercise. However, the topic has, in many ways, been thrust upon us by the Department of Health and Human Services' issuance of a mandate that will require Catholic employers to provide health plan coverage for morally objectionable procedures and drugs. The mandate, of course, could be resolved in a variety of ways, including pending court cases or even by the administration itself. But beyond the immediate issue — which of course is very urgent for us because the sets a terrible precedent that continues to diminish religious freedom — it is very important for the Catholic community to reflect on how conscience rights and religious exemptions are being eroded in so many areas.
We must remember that our country was founded, in great part, on the principle of religious freedom and was a haven for people fleeing religious persecution in Europe. This freedom was so fundamental that we enshrined it in our Constitution, not as a right given to us by the government, but as the right of every human being and something our country was committed to defending. At this time, we need to hold this up, reflect upon it and call our people to a greater awareness of how precious our religious freedom is. When we see how, in other parts of the world, people's religious freedom is trampled in such a terrible way, it should make us very proud of our own heritage but also make us ever more vigilant in protecting this tradition.
Until next week,
Cardinal Seán


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25 May, 2012
1 The central issue of immigration control has been largely misunderstood in recent public discussion. It is neither EU immigration nor British emigration as they largely cancel each other out (although neither, of course, is subject to government control). Nor is it the fact that emigration has not kept pace with immigration. The central issue is that, over the past ten years, non EU migrants have been arriving at the rate of some 300,000 a year but have only been leaving at the rate of about 100,000 a year. Some will have stayed on legally, others illegally. The focus of policy should now, therefore, be to encourage migrants to return home unless they are both legally present in the UK and of real and continuing benefit.
2 The first phase of immigration reform, a round of measures mainly addressed to inflows on the work, student and family routes, will shortly be in place. The next round of measures should therefore be addressed to outflows.
The causes of net migration
3 The reason for the high net migration in recent years is the failure of non EU migrants to return home. Over the past ten years, the average non EU inflow has been nearly 300,000 per year but, on average, only 100,000 per year have actually left. This is illustrated in the graph below;
4 This net inflow of about 200,000 a year is clearly a result of non EU migrants staying on legally, by extending their leave to remain, or illegally. Current immigration data is too incomplete to get an accurate picture of who the net migrants are, by what routes they arrived, and where they come from. This needs urgent attention if policy is to be properly focused.
5 Although more difficult to control than inflows, non-EU outflows can certainly be managed by the government. If the outflow could be increased, by say 50,000 to 60,000 a year, the prospects of reaching the government's net migration target would be very greatly increased. Such an increase does not require an increase in removals of the same order since an effective removals policy would have a considerable deterrent effect.
Further Leave to Remain
6 Grants of Further Leave to Remain (FLR) have been running at the extraordinary rate of more than 300,000 a year as shown in the graph below.
7 This total breaks down (in round numbers) to about 100,000 work related, 120,000 study, 20,000 family and 15,000 other persons granted Further Leave to Remain. Dependants add another 65,000 to 85,000 a year.
8 This scale of grants needs to be reduced. Family extensions cannot, and probably should not, be reduced but student and work extensions can be considerably tightened. The government have made a start on this. Students now have to show progression in their studies and, at graduate level, they are now restricted to a maximum of five years and three years below that level. For work permit holders (Tier 2 (General] a salary threshold of £35,000 will now be required to apply for settlement otherwise the maximum stay will be six years. Also the minimum skill level will be raised to the equivalent of bachelor degree level from June 2012. However, these measures will not take full effect for several years.
9 Migrants whose leave to remain is about to expire are now being contacted by UKBA and reminded to return home. Where a college is detected as bogus or where colleges have informed the UKBA about students who have failed to enrol on or continue to attend their courses, UKBA needs to act quickly to curtail their leave to remain. However, for these measures to be effective, they need to be backed up with strong enforcement action.
10 The number of overstayers actually removed in recent years has been very small indeed. The published total has for years been inflated by the inclusion of roughly 18,000 non asylum cases refused entry at port. It has also been inflated by the inclusion of those who depart entirely voluntary (15,000 in 2010). The number of "enforced removals and notified voluntary departures" is a better reflection of the overstayers actually removed by the authorities. In 2010 the total was 14,000, of whom some 5,000 were foreign national prisoners. This means that the number of overstayers removed was of the order of 9,000 in that year. Previous years have been slightly less. (Asylum removals are additional to these numbers - about 11,000 a year).
11 It will be apparent that the removal rate of overstayers is extremely low. It is only about one fifth of those who are refused an extension, to say nothing of those students and visitors who just decide to stay on (1.5 million visitor visas were issued in 2010). It will not be feasible to remove all those who overstay but more targeted and effective action against those detected could have a considerable deterrent effect.
Policy measures required
12 We recommend that six measures should be put in place:
(i) Increase enforcement on employers of illegal workers
At present, only a proportion of fines are being collected and very few criminal prosecutions have been successful[1]. The number of fines issued and collected in full needs to be increased. In 2010 (the latest year available) only 14 employers were prosecuted of whom 9 were convicted[2].
(ii) Enforce planning regulations
Local Authorities should be pressed to enforce planning regulations so as to eliminate "sheds with beds" which have sprung up in a number of neighbourhoods.
(iii) Re- examine Further leave to remain
In addition to the changes already made, procedures need to be tightened to ensure that extensions are only granted where there is a good case for doing so.
(iv) Limit visitor visas to three months
The present six months granted to all visitors is almost an invitation to overstay.
(v) Redefine "family visitors" and remove rights of appeal.
The present definition could apply to up to 120 relatives and even
applies when visiting a family is not the chief purpose of a visit. Reform is overdue.
(vi) Increase the detention estate
The limited number of spaces to hold detected illegal migrants while efforts are made to deport them is already a constraining factor and will become more so. It takes some years to achieve an increase in the estate so a start should be made now with the necessary funds being made available
13 Focused and effective action on reducing visa extensions and the removal of overstayers is now essential if the government's target is to be achieved.


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Like all businesses, yours depends on a variety of software solutions for sales, IT infrastructure, corporate communications, finance, etc., to power your business. Often, these solutions and their companies weren't built to scale, were underfunded, or simply mismanaged and ground to a halt, filed bankruptcy or just closed their doors. This results in many companies, much like yours, holding...
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Lawyers for the NCAA and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett are being summoned to a federal courtroom in Harrisburg next month to argue about a motion seeking to dismiss Corbett's anti-trust lawsuit against college sports' governing body.
U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane on Tuesday scheduled oral argument for May 1, nearly four months after the Republican governor filed a lawsuit over the NCAA's penalties against Penn State.
The NCAA argues its consent decree with Penn State, generated by the school's handling of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal, doesn't violate federal anti-trust law and actually improves competition in college sports.
Penn State isn't a party to the lawsuit, which accuses the NCAA of exploiting the Sandusky case to increase the power of the organization's president and help some universities gain a competitive advantage.


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Featuring The Bachelorette and the series debut of Mistresses, ABC was the 2nd-most-watched net on Monday to NBC with The Voice and the Revolution finale.
Opposite The Voice from 8-10pm, ABC's The Bachelorette finished as the #2 series in its 2-hour time period with viewers and young adults.
During the 10 o'clock hour opposite big competition from the deciding Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, ABC's Mistresses opened as the #2 series to The Voice-led Revolution finale in Adults 18-49, while beating the NBC drama season closer by 17% with Women 18-34. The new ABC drama improved its hour from the year-ago night by double-digit percentages in Adults 18-49 (+33%) and Adults 25-54 (+23%). Mistresses was up over ABC's summer debut of The Glass House in the hour last year by 10% in Total Viewers (6/18/12). (Source)
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Turnpike Troubadours
Times are tough for just about everyone these days, especially for those who live in what is often referred to as the "flyover states," in the heart of the country. People have become tougher, their skins have grown thicker and they have become much harder to win over. That especially holds true when it comes to the music that rolls into the bars, music halls and honky tonks of their towns. The overwhelming success that Turnpike Troubadours have had on the so-called Red Dirt circuit of those states says a lot about the quintet's authenticity and fire, particularly because their music is not exactly what that scene in known for producing.
"When we first started playing, people couldn't have cared less that we were there," recalls Troubadours' frontman Evan Felker. "They were there to drink beer and raise hell and they didn't really care what music was playing while they did it. But as we went on and as we got better, they started to listen. I mean, they were still drinkin' plenty of beer, but before too long, they were actually coming to hear us and asking us to play our songs, and not just covers of traditional favorites and all the other stuff we'd been doing."
Not only did the crowds get more attentive, they kept getting bigger. As time went on, and the Troubadours broadened their touring circle, they moved on from tiny clubs in the more obscure corners of the Sooner state and started hitting – and selling out – prestigious venues like Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, the Firehouse Saloon in Houston and Antone's in Austin.
Over the course of the past five years, Felker, bassist RC Edwards, fiddle player Kyle Nix, guitarist Ryan Engleman and drummer Gabe Pearson, have honed the rowdy, quick-witted sound that's brought folks of all stripes together in front of those stages. And on Goodbye Normal Street, the Troubadours' third full-length album, the band takes that blend of nice and easy and nice and rough and distills it into a 43-minute ride that takes in the scenery of America's Heartland and the inner workings of a group of 20-somethings on a quest for something better.
"This time around, we tried to balance things out," says bassist Edwards, who shelved a steady gig as a pharmacist in late 2011 to concentrate on the band. "We wanted to combine the idea of getting something perfect, the way you can only do in a proper studio, with the energy of playing in front of a thousand people jumping around and screaming."
They attack that goal with gusto on Goodbye Normal Street, putting the pedal to the metal on "Before the Devil Knows We're Dead" (a breakneck romp about regular folks who lived hard and died in a blaze of glory) and dialing back to a sensual closing-time waltz on "Call a Spade a Spade" (a cheater's lament on which Felker duets with Jamie Wilson of the Trishas).
Felker, who writes the majority of the lyrics – with an assist from Edwards, who penned the semi-autobiographical "Morgan Street," about the band's hardscrabble early days – has a knack for capturing slices of life in vivid detail. He can hit hard emotionally with a song like "Blue Star" (a bittersweet tale of a veteran returning from war) or tweak the listener with something like "Gin, Smoke and Lies" (on which he contrasts his own romantic plight with that of a rooster who manages to satisfy 20 partners, and not just one).
"All the songs are about people we know," he says. "And yeah, some of them are probably about me to some degree – the guy who ticks off the wrong girl from Arkansas, and the guy who doesn't always like what he sees himself becoming. Mostly though, I think they're just honest."
The band – which took its name from the Indian Nation Turnpike that connected so many of the smaller towns where they cut their teeth – gradually evolved from offering acoustic explorations of tunes by Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker to kicking out three or four sets a night of full-throttle roadhouse country – tinged with the punk rock attitude that was in the air during the members' teen years.
"We all pretty much grew up with hardcore country music around us," says Felker. "I mean, sure, there was rock stuff in there, but the real old-school stuff, plus exposure to folks like Jason Boland and Cross Canadian Ragweed, really affected what we were playing. We're really a product of both our influences and our environment. It wasn't something that we sat in a room and dreamed up in one day."
That's clear. The raw-boned energy of their 2007 debut, Bossier City, cut on a shoestring budget and aimed squarely at getting boots on the dance floor earned raves from many corners, including No Depression, which dubbed it "a testament to the small towns in which they were raised … with stories of longing, humor, tragedy and general life in rural America." The quintet broadened its horizons on its sophomore outing, Diamonds and Gasoline, which spawned the Americana favorite "Every Girl" and brought them to the attention of folks throughout the country, and overseas.
And with Goodbye Normal Street – the name a reference to another longtime band residence as well as a state of mind that they left behind long ago – they set their sights on conquering even more expansive territories. With songs like the blue-collar anthem "Southeastern Son" and the universally understandable breakup plaint "Wrecked," they look pretty likely to conquer them.
"This music, at its best, can put into words what we have been thinking for our entire lives," says Felker, "and even at its worst, it gets people drinking beer and makes people happy. Either of those is fine with me."


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It's a main feature of Navigator to me that it uses offline mapdata. It makes no sense to me, to have to use the Internet to find the location of an address. All of the required data is available offline. Are there plans to change that feature to do it offline?
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


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2013 Model S Price Increase
We originally unveiled the Model S in March 2009 with a base price of $57,400 ($49,900 after federal tax credits). Today, Model S is the most award-winning car of the year and the base price remains at $57,400, the same price set over three and a half years ago. During this same period of time most automotive companies have had at least three price increases and general inflation (CPI) has gone up 8.75 percent. A straight 8.75 percent CPI increase would now yield a base price for Model S of $62,400, an increase of $5,000. We are increasing prices only half that amount, giving Model S a new base price of $59,900 before federal tax credits.
Increasing prices on an annual basis is standard practice in the automobile industry and almost every industry for that matter. The price increase we are announcing today will be for new reservations starting January 1, 2013. These reservations will begin deliveries several months later, which means the new prices will actually go into effect over four years after we originally set base pricing for Model S. We believe it is a positive reflection on our design process and disciplined, long-term planning that enables us to increase prices for the first time in four years at only half the rate of inflation.
This is our first price increase since the announcement of Model S and it is very important that we implement this in a way that recognizes those who already have a Model S reservation. This price increase will not apply to anyone who has or makes a reservation by end of day on December 31, 2012…as long as they finalize their order within a reasonable, predefined timeframe after being invited to configure their Model S.
If you don't finalize your reservation within the timeframe, it will remain intact. However, when you configure your car and finalize your order at a future date it will be under the new pricing and options schedule. There will be no other changes to your reservation.
Our approach has always been to keep things as straightforward as possible. With that in mind we are simply adding $2,500 to the base price of each Model S variant.
Below is a chart showing the changes:
After the price change, all vehicles will include 12-way adjustable, heated front seats as standard equipment at no charge.
Going forward the Performance Package will include 19" wheels and tires as standard equipment. 21" wheels and tires will be a $3,500 option.
The new 2013 Red multi-coat exterior paint will now be available to order. It is priced the same as Pearl White multi-coat -- $1,500. Production of the new 2013 Red multi-coat will begin in March of 2013.
Model S comes standard with a Four Year, 50,000 mile New Vehicle Warranty. An additional Four Year, 50,000 mile Extended Warranty will now be available for $2,500. Please note, this is a "Four Year" Extended Warranty, not two or three years like most Extended Warranties. You will be able to purchase this option through your MyTesla page in the near future.
Several months ago we announced a Four Year, up to 50,000 Mile Prepaid Maintenance program for $1,900, or $2,400 with unlimited Tesla Ranger visits. You will now be able to purchase an additional Four Years and 50,000 miles of Prepaid Maintenance for an additional $1,900, or $2,400 with unlimited Tesla Ranger visits. With this additional program you can now cover everything on your Model S, except tires, for eight years and up to 100,000 miles for $3,800, or $4,800 with unlimited Tesla Ranger visits.
We have received many requests for a Battery Replacement Option. We are happy to now offer this option for all three battery variants. This option will provide you a new battery anytime after the end of the eighth year at a fixed price. Prices are as follows: $8,000 for the 40 kWh battery, $10,000 for the 60 kWh battery, and $12,000 for the 85 kWh battery. You will be able to purchase this additional option through your MyTesla page in the near future.
In Canada, the base price for Model S will go up $2,600CAD, and all implementation steps will be followed as in the U.S.
We plan to announce European pricing very soon, which will include this recent price increase. We have many reservation holders around the world who have faithfully supported us throughout the years and we want to make sure they are recognized for their support. Therefore, we will automatically deduct €1,700 (or the local equivalent in other countries) from the base price for everyone who has or makes a reservation by end of day on December 31, 2012…as long as they finalize their order within a reasonable, predefined timeframe after being invited to configure their Model S.
Our customers are among our most important assets and we will always strive to deliver to them the most innovative cars in the world while minimizing price increases as we have done today.
Thank you,
George Blankenship
Interested in keeping up with Tesla Motors?
For more information on Tesla Motors and its products, please visit: teslamotors.com
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For the latest information from Tesla Motors, including press releases and the Tesla blog, please visit: www.teslamotors.com/about/press


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NEW DELHI (AFP) - An Indian bus driver who was found dead Monday while on trial over a fatal gang-rape could not have killed himself and his death should be treated as a murder, his parents and lawyer said.
"My son has not committed suicide," said Mange Lal Singh after his son Ram Singh was found dead in his cell at Tihar jail on the outskirts of Delhi.
"I had met him six days back at the court. He had told me that his life is in danger and he also said that he had been sodomised by his fellow inmates," the father said.
Prison authorities say that Ram Singh was found hanging after rigging up a noose made out of his clothes and then attaching it to a grille.
But Mange Lal Singh said that his son would have been incapable of doing any such thing as a result of a hand injuries he sustained in a road accident several years back.
"He couldn't have committed suicide with just one hand," said the father who was speaking in a Delhi slum called Ravi Dass Colony where his son had lived.
Kalyani Devi, Ram Singh's mother, said that her son had shown her evidence that he had been tortured since his arrest over the fatal Dec 16 attack on a bus in the capital New Delhi, including "slash marks" on his body.
"He made a mistake - he admitted that to us - but even God forgives one mistake," she said.
"He was not even given a chance to repent." Ram Singh's lawyer V. K Anand said his client's death should be treated as murder.
"My client did not commit suicide. I was in touch with him on a daily basis," he said.
"If he had committed suicide then he would have left a suicide note. I demand an independent probe. There is no CCTV footage to prove he committed suicide. He was tortured so many times in the last two months."
Officers in Tihar jail said they would not comment on the family's claims and would wait for the results of an official inquiry which has been launched.


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Once again we visit Tsukki's desk!
/:::::::: ( ○)三(○)\ "The robots are increasing in number!"
\::::::::: |r┬-| /
ノ:::::::::::: `ー'´ \
Plus Heavy Bramble is looking a little depressed today…!
I wonder what's wrong?!
Anywho, today we'll be playing with this figure!
actsta Fate Testarossa!
Following on from the first actsta which was Nanoha Takamachi from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The MOVIE 1st comes an actsta of Fate Testarossa!
She is due to come out this month!
The exact date isn't set in stone yet, but it'll be on the Good Smile website it's been decided.
This is how the packaging looks!
Fate-chan in the middle surrounded by a number of interesting looking device parts, as well as a total of three expressions – loads to have fun with!
This is how the reverse side of the packaging looks!
Ooh! Even more device parts! Plus a magic circle for her stand and parts to create her 'Round Shield' spell. The little transparent piece on the bottom left is a transparent rod for positioning the 'Round Shield.' The transparent 'L' piece in the bottom right is put on the arm of the main stand.
This is how she looks from the back!
actsta is made to be a posable figure with the same quality of a scale figure – it looks like they are right on the mark! The cape even has some posable parts in it for more dynamic poses – the posable parts make use of a soft plastic so you can pose it in a load of different ways.
Then we move on to her device…
First up is 'Scythe Form'!
A beautiful rendition making use of clear plastic for the blade! The edge of the blade is really sharp as well – fans will be impressed with this one!
Next up is 'Axe Form'!
This is the standard form of Fate's intelligent device 'Bardiche' – it's also of course included!
Plus the 'Round Shield' made entirely from clear plastic!
You can place the shield all around the stand, as well as rotate it to any angle you like, allowing you to place it in exactly the position you want.
And finally, 'Grave Form'!
This was the new form that only featured in the movie of Nanoha.
I made use of some Nendo Petite stands and placed the Round Shield on them to let her stand in it! It's so nice to have a posable figure with so many options… and still have it look so incredible.
The cape can be removed!
If you remove the cape and use her 'closed eyes' face, it really gives off a relaxing feeling… you can pick the expression that suits your Fate best when doing with actsta posing!
actsta Fate Testarossa!
/ \
/ ─ ─\
/ (●) (●) \
| (__人__) | ________
\ |r┬-| ,/ | | |
ノ `ー'´ \ | | |
/´ | | |
| l | | |
ヽ -一ー_~、⌒)^),-、 | |________|
ヽ ____,ノγ⌒ヽ)ニニ- ̄ | | |
She will be released this month!
Watch the official GSC site for a more exact date soon!
For preorder and sales information, please take a look at our partner shops.
Anyways, that's all for today!
I hope to see you all again tomorrow! (・∀・)ノ゛
(C)NANOHA The MOVIE 1st PROJECT


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American Atheists Releases 'Myth' Billboards Targeting Jews and Muslims
American Atheists, one of the largest atheist organizations in the nation, has unveiled two new billboards in New York and New Jersey which target Muslims and Jews, asking them to reconsider their religion.
The organization is better known for engaging with Christians, and has put up several billboards in the past, usually around Christian holidays, urging believers to reject the "myths" that they follow. Last November, the organization paid for a billboard immediately before the New Jersey entrance to the Lincoln tunnel, where roughly 120,000 cars drive by every day, that showed the three wise men heading to Bethlehem, reading "You KNOW it's a Myth. This Season, Celebrate Reason."
Similar billboards were put up at the same location in December, just before Christmas, composed of pictures of Jesus, Santa Claus, the Greek god Poseidon, and Satan, or a devil-like figure, dressed in a business suit.
Written atop the billboard was: "37 Million Americans know MYTHS when they see them." It continued to ask "What myths do you see?" in between the pictures, suggesting that Jesus and the other figures belong in the same category.
The same "myth" idea is being used for the new billboards that target Jews and Muslims, albeit they are of a simpler design. The separate ads carry the same message – "You know it's a myth…and you have a choice," with one translated into Arabic below the English message, while the other one is in Hebrew.
The Arabic billboard will go up on Monday, March 5 in the heavily Muslim-populated area of Peterson, N.J., CNN reported, while the Hebrew one will be put up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The idea behind the billboards, according to Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, is to encourage atheists in the Muslim and Jewish areas to come out of the closet and not feel so isolated about their lack of faith.
"Those communities are designed to keep atheists in the ranks," Silverman explained. "If there are atheists in those communities, we are reaching out to them. We are letting them know that we see them, we acknowledge them and they don't have to live that way if they don't want to."
The ads will also raise awareness for American Atheists' big upcoming convention next month, called the Reason Rally, which will take place in Washington, D.C.
While it is difficult to determine the exact number of believers or non-believers in a large population, such as the USA, The Pew Center's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, based on 35,556 cases, found that 16.1 percent of the American population identify themselves as unaffiliated to any religion – although only 1.6 percent specifically stated they were atheists.
Mohamed Elfilali, executive director of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, said that he respects others' rights to share their opinion, even if he does not agree with it. He expressed his disappointment, however, that groups such as American Atheists seem to be focused more toward dividing society rather than bringing it together.
"Sadly, there is a need to polarize society as opposed to build bridges," he said. "That is the century that we live in. It is very polarized, very politicized."


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Oeiras, Portugal – Last year's final combatants -- reigning champion Kaia Kanepi and Carla Suarez Navarro -- were among Wednesday's second-round winners at the $235,000 Portugal Open tennis event.
Kanepi upset fifth-seeded Romanian Sorana Cirstea 6-1, 6-2, while a fourth- seeded Suarez Navarro handled Belgian Yanina Wickmayer 6-4, 6-3 at this clay- court French Open tune-up. Wickmayer captured this event in Estoril back in 2009.
Kanepi, who recently returned to action after being sidelined since last year due to a heel injury, beat Suarez Navarro in last year's final in Estoril.
The Estonian Kanepi's quarterfinal opponent on Thursday will be Japan's Ayumi Morita, while the Spanish Suarez Navarro will meet Portuguese lucky loser Monica Puig.
In other second-round action involving seeds, No. 3 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia topped Spanish qualifier Estrella Cabeza Candela 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) and No. 7 Elena Vesnina, also from Russia, straight-setted Romanian Monica Niculescu 6-4, 6-4.
Also on Day 3, Puig upended last week's Marrakech and former French Open champion Francesca Schiavone 6-3, 6-2; former top-five Russian star and two- time major champion Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated Kazakhstani qualifier Galina Voskoboeva 6-4, 6-4; Swiss Romina Oprandi charged past Chinese Peng Shuai 6-1, 6-3; and the aforementioned Morita mauled Pole Urszula Radwanska 6-2, 6-3.
The other quarterfinals will pit Pavlyuchenkova against her compatriot Vesnina and the former French Open titlist and wild card Kuznetsova versus Oprandi.
This week's Portugal Open champion will pocket $42,000.


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Slot-canyon adventure
The Salt Lake TribuneWhile many of Utah's grand outdoor adventures require investing in pricey equipment, canyoneering could easily start with a trip to Deseret Industries or another local thrift shop.
Simply put, canyoneers shred whatever they are wearing.
"I hope you wore your best underwear today because there is a chance we might be seeing it," Rick Green, owner and guide at Excursions of Escalante told the group preparing for their first slot-canyon adventure on Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
As it turned out the only underwear exposed that day was mine as sliding on the sandstone proved too much for my old shorts.
Sandstone does, after all, start with the same word as sandpaper.
While canyoneering — also known as canyoning, gorging and slotting — has been done around the world as a matter of daily life for centuries, the activity has seen a major boom in recent years. Naturally, Utah has become a popular canyoneering destination.
Photo by Francisco Kjolseth
From the famous Subway and Narrows routes in Zion National Park to the countless side canyons running into Lake Powell, Utah is zig-zagged with slot canyons galore.
One caution that experienced canyoneers emphasize: Never enter a slot canyon when heavy rain is expected. Check the weather and keep an eye out, when you can see the sky from the depths of the canyon, for developing weather.
Carl and Kristin Wold traveled from Portland, Ore., for a chance to experience a new way to enjoy the outdoors.
"This is something completely different than anything I have tried before," Kristin Wold said while deep in a slot canyon on the national monument. "And this was one of the premier places to try it."
Canyoneers describe the often tight confines they are attempting to navigate as a more intimate experience than the typical wide-open spaces of desert landscapes.
Kristin Wold agrees.
"It is all over you literally," she said, having given up much earlier on trying to wipe off the dirt and dust from her clothing. "This is just a whole new landscape and a whole new perspective on the desert that I've never had before. The beauty is just in stark contrast to most desert landscapes. Seeing it vertically, as it were. There is a surprise around every corner. Not being able to see very far in front of you is very exciting."
Canyoneering is different from simply hiking a slot canyon because it typically requires gear — ropes, harnesses, helmets and sometimes wet suits when water obstacles line the route.
"The rigging is relatively simple, but it is very important that it be done correctly," said Green, who also serves as a volunteer on search-and-rescue missions in the Escalante area. "Once you get that dialed in, it opens up so much country. There is so much to see in Utah that is unbelievable."
The biggest issue most newbies encounter is learning how to rappel. Many people don't like having to rely on themselves so much in a new experience. Green and fellow guide, Jim Clery, took plenty of time to make their clients comfortable with the initial 40-foot descent into the canyon that began our adventure. They also pointed out that they had some rope control — on belay, they could stop or slow someone's descent — in case anything went wrong.
"Being on the edge of the cliff was fairly terrifying," Kristin Wold said. "I was not sure I had made a wise decision. When I trusted Rick and Jim I realized I was perfectly safe. Halfway down I was surprised how stable I felt; I didn't feel like if I made a false step that it would kill me."
The rappelling, as Green pointed out, is just a means to allow people to reach places they otherwise could not go.
"Lots of folks show up and see the ropes and start thinking rappelling is the big thing, but it really is just a means to move us along in the canyon," he said. "Really, when the fun starts is when you are sliding on your butt or you have your back on one wall and your feet on the other."
Green taught us a vast collection of body manipulations — which reminded some of us of the game Twister — he uses to get through canyons.
us because they see the ropes and at the end of the day they are just like rock stars," he said. "I get to be with them all the way."
Photo by Francisco Kjolseth
Bridging, wedging, starring and sliding, to name a few. My favorite was smearing, which is basically rubbing any part of your body available against the wall to help keep your weight distributed in a manner to make it easier to move safely in the right direction.
Friction is the real means of getting down the slot canyon; and destroying clothing.
Many of the smaller drops can be safely navigated with a little help from your friends. During our daylong excursion I served not only as a human step for the others, but also an anchor when no safe natural anchor existed. This extremely important person is also known as "meat," which seems to be a nickname I shall never live down.
During a lunch break I asked John Lamping of Los Altos, Calif., what he thought about canyoneering.
"The walls are closing in. I didn't realize how deep it was going to be," said Lamping, who insisted he was not claustrophobic, at least not to that point.
Judging by the number of pictures he was taking, Lamping was impressed by his time in the desert chasm.
It is something Green sees frequently and something he cherishes deeply.
"I'm one of the luckiest people I know. I get to watch them in the morning when they are nervo


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The fellas of Jersey Shore get unguidofied in the latest issue of GQ.
Since the Jersey Shore guys take a lot of pride in their GTL rituals aka Gym Tan Laundry, the folks at GQ decided to address the gym "situation" by providing them with some simplified sportswear.
Above is a after shot following the makeover for Paul "DJ Pauly D" DelVecchio, Mike "the Situation" Sorrentino, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, and Vinny Guadagnino. The guys also did a Q & A with GQ, excerpts below –
GQ: What about using personal trainers? Yes or no?
Vinny: I used to be a trainer, and 90 percent of the people who use trainers are women and old people. But it can be good—I used to train other trainers sometimes.
DJ Pauly D: Sometimes I look at the trainers at the gym, and I look better than them. I'm not gonna take advice from somebody who doesn't look better than me, bro. Mike, I don't really have a six-pack. Should I be crying in my beer about it?
The Situation: Nah. Be confident in what you got.
GQ: What's the best body-related compliment you've gotten from a girl?
Vinny: I'm not that big next to these guys, but—
Ronnie: It's more about the mind-body connection with Vinny.
The Situation: It's more about the pushin'.
The before shot and more makeover photos of the guys below!


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Thursday, July 28, 2011
Caillianne- Smurfette + Summer
Dress- CALLA Spring 2011 Collection dress gifted from CALLA
Jean Shirt- Forever 21 jean shirt from Forever 21 store in Toronto
Bag- Prada faux fur bag from Prada store in Toronto
Bracelet- Silver bangle from Marie Eiffel store in Hamptons, NY
Sunglasses- Vintage sunnies from Showdown Vintage in Toronto
Hat- Vintage straw hat (no label) from Long Beach Flea Market in LA
Shoes- Glitter boots by Giuseppe Zanotti from Holt Renfrew in Toronto
The Look: Smurfette + Summer
Fun Fact: This is one of my fav' summer dresses of all time because it's sooo light and dreamy and made by our amazing friend, Calla. And I am just nuts over my new psychedelic faux fur blue smurf Prada bag! I cannot wait to see the new Smurf movie coming out in August! Pin It Now!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Chloe- Safari + Denim
Dress- Etoile Isabel Marant dress from Creatures of Comfort in LA
Jean Vest- Vintage Levi's vest from Salvation Army in LA
Pins on Jean Vest- Vintage dinosaur pins from Chelsea Flea Market in NYC
Scarf on Bag- Juicy Couture scarf gifted from Juicy Couture
Belt- Etro belt from Etro store in NYC
Ring- Vintage turquoise ring from Brimfield Antique Show in MA
Earrings- Vintage earrings from Hampton's Flea Market in NY
Bag- Alexander Wang bag from Opening Ceremony in LA
Bracelets- Silver bracelets from The Bead Goes On store in Toronto
Necklace- Vintage African necklace from Brimfield Antique Show in MA
Shoes- Denim YSL heels from YSL store in NYC
The Look: Safari + Denim
Fun Fact: This super cool graffiti wall is across the street from one of my favourite restaurants in LA, called Cleo! It's a Mediterranean place and the Brussels sprouts dish is outta this world!!!
PS. My sisters will never touch this dish but I LOVE it! Pin It Now!
Friday, July 22, 2011
Rosebowl Flea Market
In LA, we were soo excited to find out that the Rosebowl flea market fell on the weekend that we were there!! But the only time we could go there was 5:30am in the morning! Because it was our last day in L.A and we had soo many things planned already! We are totally not morning people, but for a flea market it's our mission to be morning people! Hahaha! The Rosebowl is soooo amazing because the clothing is always so killer and they always have the best denim! We scored lots of ripped denim shorts, jeans, coveralls, and the 1960's doll head kleenex box pictured below! She is evil and sweet! Hahaha!
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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Disneyland Birthday!!!
We went to Disneyland in California to celebrate our Birthday!!! And it's definitely our "happiest place on earth!" We had soooo much fun in Chip and Dale's tree house, going through the Haunted Mansion, watching the Marching Band play in front of the Magic Castle and seeing the incredible animal topiary at It's a Small World! We ended the day with super cracked out and delicious Magnolia cupcakes... it was the BEST DAY EVER!!!
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Masa breakfast pagi tadi, we saw a cat, mixed breed, colour hitam, sebijik our lost cat (kena culik in 2008), Chuppy. Bila Iman tengok that cat, she cried coz she thought it was Chuppy. I took one look at that cat, I already know that it's not Chuppy coz Chuppy hidung penyek. Balik rumah my mom, the kids told my sister *the original owner of Chuppy), Mas, that they say Chuppy. Mas yang still dalam pantang, sanggup drive kete cari kucing tu.
Aku pulak kat rumah menunggu dia org, pelik, keluar cari kucing sampai almost 1 hour. Rupa2nya, Mas bawak the cat to vet, untuk treat the fungus and grooming. Grr... officially rumah aku, dah ada kucing. Malas betul nak pelihara kucing. With our constant travelling, it's hard to keep a pet especially kucing. Tak tau la mcm mana nak handle nanti. Currently the cat is at a vet in Melawati. Sunday ni baru boleh ambik sebab nak grooming, neuter and treat for fungus.
Iman with the original Chuppy. The new cat is named Chuppy too.


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(visited by Leon Wende)
05-Aug-2006 -- My wife and I were planning an outback trip along the Ann Beadell Highway and I noticed that by detouring only 50km or so south from the abandoned townsite of Emu (in the Woomera Prohbited Area) along the track to Maralinga and then taking a short spur track (which leads to the salt lake situated 6km west of Observatory Hill), we could drive to within a few kilometres of this confluence point.
Accordingly I requested (and was granted) special permits to traverse the Emu-Maralinga track to this point and visit this isolated area, in addition to the usual permits required to travel the Ann Beadell Highway.
We camped overnight in the bush, planning to set out for the point first thing in the morning.
Before leaving the car on foot, we drove slowly along the track until my GPS receiver indicated a minimal distance to the confluence point.
Reaching the point itself required a 5km round-trip walk through light mulga scrub and low soft dunes, accompanied enthusiastically by Kieran (our chocolate labrador).
Due to the area's remoteness, being on my own and not knowing what lay ahead, I carried a first-aid pack in addition to water and food, and kept in touch every 15 minutes via UHF radio with Sarah-Jane who waited in the car. We also carried an HF radio in case of a serious emergency.