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2126 SW Halsey St. Troutdale, OR, 97060
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Edgefield - Power Station Pub
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All ages welcome
5 pm 'til close50% of night's dine-in proceeds donated to the beneficiary!All ages welcome
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I grabbed the camcorder last night and went out to watch the launch of NASA's Kepler Telescope from my front yard located about 150 miles west-southwest of the Cape Canaveral. To my eyes the engine glow was quite red (atmospheric effect?). It was very clear and dark so there is nothing in the way of skyglow to put the image in perspective. I zoomed out and fiddled with the gamma a bit to try and give some.
At any rate, here it is. This was definitely one of those launches that looked ALOT better to the maked eye from my location and didn't transfer well to video.
NASA's Kepler Launch (from my front yard)
(launches on YouTube in a new window)
If you missed the NASA TV coverage, I've mirrored it here.

subset: commoncrawl


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This article first published by GR in November 2006 is of particular relevance to an understanding of the ongoing process of destabilization and political fragmentation of Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
"Hegemony is as old as Mankind…" -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor
The term "New Middle East" was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the "Greater Middle East."
This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the "New Middle East," was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a "New Middle East" was being launched from Lebanon.
This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli "military roadmap" in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.
The "New Middle East" project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of "constructive chaos." This "constructive chaos" –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives.
New Middle East Map
Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that "[w]hat we're seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the 'birth pangs'—of a 'New Middle East' and whatever we do we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one."1 Secretary Rice was immediately criticized for her statements both within Lebanon and internationally for expressing indifference to the suffering of an entire nation, which was being bombed indiscriminately by the Israeli Air Force.
The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's speech on the "New Middle East" had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon –which had been fully endorsed by Washington and London– have further compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives of the United States, Britain, and Israel. According to Professor Mark Levine the "neo-liberal globalizers and neo-conservatives, and ultimately the Bush Administration, would latch on to creative destruction as a way of describing the process by which they hoped to create their new world orders," and that "creative destruction [in] the United States was, in the words of neo-conservative philosopher and Bush adviser Michael Ledeen, 'an awesome revolutionary force' for (…) creative destruction…"2
Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division) and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions is being drawn out. (See map below)
Moreover, the Anglo-American military roadmap appears to be vying an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as "Russia's Southern Tier" or the Russian "Near Abroad."
Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners, strategists, security advisors, economists, and politicians consider Central Asia ("Russia's Southern Tier") to be the vulnerable and "soft under-belly" of the Russian Federation.3
It should be noted that in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever of an area he, Brzezinski, calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus4) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The Map of the "New Middle East"
A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the "New Middle East."
Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).
Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.
This map of the "New Middle East" seems to be based on several other maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.
The map of the "New Middle East" was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel's book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military's Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters.5
It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon's foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.
It has been written that Ralph Peters' "four previous books on strategy have been highly influential in government and military circles," but one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?
The concept of a redrawn Middle East has been presented as a "humanitarian" and "righteous" arrangement that would benefit the people(s) of the Middle East and its peripheral regions. According to Ralph Peter's:
International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa's borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region's comprehensive failure isn't Islam, but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant "cheated" population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia [Muslims], but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosphorus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East's "organic" frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected. 6
(emphasis added)
"Necessary Pain"
Besides believing that there is "cultural stagnation" in the Middle East, it must be noted that Ralph Peters admits that his propositions are "draconian" in nature, but he insists that they are necessary pains for the people of the Middle East. This view of necessary pain and suffering is in startling parallel to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's belief that the devastation of Lebanon by the Israeli military was a necessary pain or "birth pang" in order to create the "New Middle East" that Washington, London, and Tel Aviv envision.
Moreover, it is worth noting that the subject of the Armenian Genocide is being politicized and stimulated in Europe to offend Turkey.7
The overhaul, dismantlement, and reassembly of the nation-states of the Middle East have been packaged as a solution to the hostilities in the Middle East, but this is categorically misleading, false, and fictitious. The advocates of a "New Middle East" and redrawn boundaries in the region avoid and fail to candidly depict the roots of the problems and conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. What the media does not acknowledge is the fact that almost all major conflicts afflicting the Middle East are the consequence of overlapping Anglo-American-Israeli agendas.
Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq is just one of many examples of the Anglo-American strategy of "divide and conquer." Other examples are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.
Amongst the problems in the contemporary Middle East is the lack of genuine democracy which U.S. and British foreign policy has actually been deliberately obstructing. Western-style "Democracy" has been a requirement only for those Middle Eastern states which do not conform to Washington's political demands. Invariably, it constitutes a pretext for confrontation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are examples of undemocratic states that the United States has no problems with because they are firmly alligned within the Anglo-American orbit or sphere.
Additionally, the United States has deliberately blocked or displaced genuine democratic movements in the Middle East from Iran in 1953 (where a U.S./U.K. sponsored coup was staged against the democratic government of Prime Minister Mossadegh) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the Arab Sheikdoms, and Jordan where the Anglo-American alliance supports military control, absolutists, and dictators in one form or another. The latest example of this is Palestine.
The Turkish Protest at NATO's Military College in Rome
Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters' map of the "New Middle East" has sparked angry reactions in Turkey. According to Turkish press releases on September 15, 2006 the map of the "New Middle East" was displayed in NATO's Military College in Rome, Italy. It was additionally reported that Turkish officers were immediately outraged by the presentation of a portioned and segmented Turkey.8 The map received some form of approval from the U.S. National War Academy before it was unveiled in front of NATO officers in Rome.
The Turkish Chief of Staff, General Buyukanit, contacted the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and protested the event and the exhibition of the redrawn map of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.9 Furthermore the Pentagon has gone out of its way to assure Turkey that the map does not reflect official U.S. policy and objectives in the region, but this seems to be conflicting with Anglo-American actions in the Middle East and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.
Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Eurasian Balkans" and the "New Middle East" Project?
The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives.Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful states of the "Eurasian Balkans," located on its southern tier, are "potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization]," and that, "If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable."10
It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House's own admissions; there is a belief that "creative destruction and chaos" in the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East, creating the "New Middle East," and furthering the Anglo-American roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia:
In Europe, the Word "Balkans" conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its "Balkans," but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogenous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability (…) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.
The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…) they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region's [meaning the Middle East's] ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region's domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation "Eurasian Balkans."The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia's richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant.Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable.(…)The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] , Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan.The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile. 11(emphasis added)
Redrawing the Middle East
The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the First World War. In the wake of the the First World War the borders of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic interests and interference.
The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation for the large-scale war in 1914.
Norman Dodd, a former Wall Street banker and investigator for the U.S. Congress, who examined U.S. tax-exempt foundations, confirmed in a 1982 interview that those powerful individuals who from behind the scenes controlled the finances, policies, and government of the United States had in fact also planned U.S. involvement in a war, which would contribute to entrenching their grip on power.
The following testimonial is from the transcript of Norman Dodd's interview with G. Edward Griffin;
We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. And, in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And the question is this: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity, than war. So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country [the United States], than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows [wars] in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows: we must control the State Department.
And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective. Then, time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course, the war is over.
At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914, when World War I broke out. (emphasis added)
The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor), Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.
The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests and Israel.
NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO. Syria and Iran continue to be demonized by the Western media, with a view to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed, on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation but a "civil war" characterised by domestic strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of a carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.
Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a "divide and conquer strategy" which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya specializes in Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
1 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice (Press Conference, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., July 21, 2006).
2 Mark LeVine, "The New Creative Destruction," Asia Times, August 22, 2006.
3 Andrej Kreutz, "The Geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East," Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ) (Washington, D.C.: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, January 2002).
4 The Caucasus or Caucasia can be considered as part of the Middle East or as a separate region
5 Ralph Peters, "Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look," Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006.
6 Ibid.
7 Crispian Balmer, "French MPs back Armenia genocide bill, Turkey angry, Reuters, October 12, 2006; James McConalogue, "French against Turks: Talking about Armenian Genocide," The Brussels Journal, October 10, 2006.
8 Suleyman Kurt, "Carved-up Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts U.S. Apology," Zaman (Turkey), September 29, 2006.
9 Ibid.
10 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives (New York City: Basic Books, 1997).
11 Ibid.
Related Global Research articles on the March to War in the Middle East
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, 2015


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HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. When I hear people talking about HIPAA, they are usually not talking about the original Act. They are talking about the Privacy Rule that was issued as a result of the HIPAA in the form of a Notice of Health Information Practices.
The United States Department of Health & Human Services official Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule is 25 pages long, and that is just a summary of the key elements. So as you can imagine, it covers a lot of ground. What I would like to offer you here is a summary of the basics of the Privacy Rule.
When it was enacted in 1996, the Privacy Rule established guidelines for the protection of individuals's health information. The guidelines are written such that they make sure that an individual's health records are protected while at the same time allowing needed information to be released in the course of providing health care and protecting the public's health and well being. In other words, not just anyone can see a person's health records. But, if you want someone such as a health provider to see your records, you can sign a release giving them access to your records.
So just what is your health information and where does it come from? Your health information is held or transmitted by health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers. These are called covered entities in the wording of the rule.
These guidelines also apply to what are called business associates of any health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers. Business associates are those entities that offer legal, actuarial, accounting, consulting, data aggregation, management, administrative, accreditation, or financial services.
So, what does a typical Privacy Notice include?
The type of information collected by your health plan.
A description of what your health record/information includes.
A summary of your health information rights.
The responsibilities of the group health plan.
Let's look at these one at a time:
Information Collected by Your Health Plan:
The group healthcare plan collects the following types of information in order to provide benefits:
Information that you provide to the plan to enroll in the plan, including personal information such as your address, telephone number, date of birth, and Social Security number.
Plan contributions and account balance information.
The fact that you are or have been enrolled in the plans.
Health-related information received from any of your physicians or other healthcare providers.
Information regarding your health status, including diagnosis and claims payment information.
Changes in plan enrollment (e.g., adding a participant or dropping a participant, adding or dropping a benefit.)
Payment of plan benefits.
Claims adjudication.
Case or medical management.
Other information about you that is necessary for us to provide you with health benefits.
Understanding Your Health Record/Information:
Each time you visit a hospital, physician, or other healthcare provider, a record of your visit is made. Typically, this record contains your symptoms, examination and test results, diagnoses, treatment, and a plan for future care or treatment.
This information, often referred to as your health or medical record, serves as a:
Basis for planning your care and treatment.
Means of communication among the many health professionals who contribute to your care.
Legal document describing the care you received.
Means by which you or a third-party payer can verify that services billed were actually provided.
Tool in educating health professionals.
Source of data for medical research.
Source of information for public health officials charged with improving the health of the nation.
Source of data for facility planning and marketing.
Tool with which the plan sponsor can assess and continually work to improve the benefits offered by the group healthcare plan. Understanding what is in your record and how your health information is used helps you to:
Ensure its accuracy.
Better understand who, what, when, where, and why others may access your health information.
Make more informed decisions when authorizing disclosure to others.
Your Health Information Rights:
Although your health record is the physical property of the plan, the healthcare practitioner, or the facility that compiled it, the information belongs to you. You have the right to:
Request a restriction on otherwise permitted uses and disclosures of your information for treatment, payment, and healthcare operations purposes and disclosures to family members for care purposes.
Obtain a paper copy of this notice of information practices upon request, even if you agreed to receive the notice electronically.
Inspect and obtain a copy of your health records by making a written request to the plan privacy officer.
Amend your health record by making a written request to the plan privacy officer that includes a reason to support the request.
Obtain an accounting of disclosures of your health information made during the previous six years by making a written request to the plan privacy officer.
Request communications of your health information by alternative means or at alternative locations.
Revoke your authorization to use or disclose health information except to the extent that action has already been taken.
Group Health Plan Responsibilities:
The group healthcare plan is required to:
Maintain the privacy of your health information.
Provide you with this notice as to the planâEUR(TM)s legal duties and privacy practices with respect to information that is collected and maintained about you.
Abide by the terms of this notice.
Notify you if the plan is unable to agree to a requested restriction.
Accommodate reasonable requests you may have to communicate health information by alternative means or at alternative locations. The plan will restrict access to personal information about you only to those individuals who need to know that information to manage the plan and its benefits. The plan will maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your personal information. Under the privacy standards, individuals with access to plan information are required to:
Safeguard and secure the confidential personal financial information and health information as required by law. The plan will only use or disclose your confidential health information without your authorization for purposes of treatment, payment, or healthcare operations. The plan will only disclose your confidential health information to the plan sponsor for plan administration purposes.
Limit the collection, disclosure, and use of participant's healthcare information to the minimum necessary to administer the plan.
Permit only trained, authorized individuals to have access to confidential information.
Other items that may be addressed include:
Communication with family. Under the plan provisions, the company may disclose to an employee's family member, guardian, or any other person you identify, health information relevant to that person's involvement in your obtaining healthcare benefits or payment related to your healthcare benefits.
Notification. The plan may use or disclose information to notify or assist in notifying a family member, personal representative, or another person responsible for your care, your location, general condition, plan benefits, or plan enrollment.
Business associates. There are some services provided to the plan through business associates. Examples include accountants, attorneys, actuaries, medical consultants, and financial consultants, as well as those who provide managed care, quality assurance, claims processing, claims auditing, claims monitoring, rehabilitation, and copy services. When these services are contracted, it may be necessary to disclose your health information to our business associates in order for them to perform the job we have asked them to do. To protect employee's health information, however, the company will require the business associate to appropriately safeguard this information.
Benefit coordination. The plan may disclose health information to the extent authorized by and to the extent necessary to comply with plan benefit coordination.
Workers compensation. The plan may disclose health information to the extent authorized by and to the extent necessary to comply with laws relating to workers compensation or other similar programs established by law.
Law enforcement. The plan may disclose health information for law enforcement purposes as required by law or in response to a valid subpoena.
Sale of business. If the plan sponsor's business is being sold, then medical information may be disclosed. The plan reserves the right to change its practices and to make the new provisions effective for all protected health information it maintains. Should the company's information practices change, it will mail a revised notice to the address supplied by each employee.
The plan will not use or disclose employee's health information without their authorization, except as described in this notice.
In Summary:
As an employee, you should be aware of your rights and feel confident that your employer is abiding by the guidelines of the Privacy Rule.
As an employer offering group insurance health care benefits, you should make your employees aware of their rights and should give them an avenue to obtain more information or to report a problem.
When you get your health insurance coverage through a broker that specializes in employee benefits, they should provide you with all of the necessary information and Privacy Notice to make sure you comply with the HIPAA guidelines.
Corinne Mitchell has worked in the insurance industry for 10+ years and currently works with the Group Insurance Benefits Specialists at [http://www.nicoins.com]


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Today's goal, break 80 at Black Mesa
The more I play Black Mesa the more I love it. This is a special golf course. I become more confident in my shots and where I want them to land or roll the more I play the course. I played probably the most solid nine holes of the year on the front today. I got up and down on #1 from a deep green side bunker. On #2, a short par-4, I used the contours to the right of the green to bounce my 100 yard approach shot to about three feet. But my putt didn't drop as the speed was not as quick as I expected. That would be about the last bad putt I'd make for the whole day.
On with the story…
When I got to the mega cool #4 hole I was still even par. #4 is the famous "dome" hole, where a cool sand dome guards the green left. I didn't trust my yardage. It dictated a six iron. I hit five. Good choice. It ended up about eight feet below the pin. I drained the putt to reach -1. I played solid golf the rest of the front nine. My new and improving short game and some great putting helped me turn to the back nine at even par. I shot even on the front at Black Mesa. That is good. Could I hold it together for the difficult back nine?
I have shaky confidence in some holes which have kicked my butt every time I've played them, like the par-5 13th. Today I was cruising along playing well and 13 humbled me once again. I knew I couldn't miss the green right or I'd have an impossible up and down from a very deep bunker. I missed right, 7. Ouch. I'm realizing how demanding this course is. You really can't miss a single shot in the wrong place your you'll have to make some incredible shots to save par. Usually errant shots will result in an "other" score. My two severely errant swings did result in double bogeys on the back.
Yesterday I melted down on the 15th, a beauty of a par three. I clanked my tee shot into the water and scored a double. I was wanting redemption today. With my good pal Eddie Peck, principal guy here at Black Mesa watching, I pulled a six iron left. The shot bounced off the contours left of the green and ran down to about five feet. I laughed and looked at Eddie and said, "I meant to do that." Eddie laughed.
Eddie took off to watch the other groups so he didn't see the putt, which I drained. The first thing he asked me upon the conclusion of my round was if I made that putt. I proudly told him that yes I'd drained the putt, and that despite having my golf ship taking on heavy water on the back nine, I paddled home with a 78. To me a 78 on this course is like shooting a 73 somewhere else.
Puye Cliff Dwellings
Following the round we visited the Puye cliff Pueblo Indian ruins, about 30 minutes from Black Mesa Golf Club. The Pueblo Indians had built an incredible set of dwellings on top of, and on the SIDE of, a cliff. I'll post more about this fascinating part of the trip later, but here's an image of our tour guide (right) telling us about the dwellings for now.
I'm too tired to continue writing, though I'd love to share the rest of this great day…
I'm now on the flight to New Mexico blogging from my iPhone.
I should be teeing off at Black Mesa around lunch time.
UPDATE 10:48am: Just landed in Albuquerque. It will be a bit of a long drive from here but I'm getting excited to be back at BM soon!


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How can a Christian determine which doctrines are essential and which are not?
To begin with, the strongest words of condemnation in all the New Testament are aimed at false teachers who corrupt the Gospel. Therefore the Gospel message itself must be acknowledged as a primary point of fundamental doctrine.
But what message will determine the content of our gospel testimony? Let's turn to Scripture itself and attempt to lay out some biblical principles for determining which articles of faith are truly essential to authentic Christianity.
I. All Fundamental Articles of Faith Must Be Drawn from the Scriptures
First, if a doctrine is truly fundamental, it must have its origin in Scripture, not tradition, papal decrees, or some other source of authority. Paul reminded Timothy that the Scriptures are "able to make thee wise unto salvation" (2 Timothy 3:15, KJV). In other words, if a doctrine is essential for salvation, we can learn it from the Bible. The written Word of God therefore must contain all doctrine that is truly fundamental. It is able to make us "adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:17). If there were necessary doctrines not revealed in Scripture, those promises would ring empty.
The psalmist wrote, "The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul" (Psalm 19:7). That means Scripture is sufficient. Apart from the truths revealed to us in Scripture, there is no essential spiritual truth, no fundamental doctrine, nothing essential to soul-restoration. We do not need to look beyond the written Word of God for any essential doctrines. There is nothing necessary beyond what is recorded in God's Word.
This, of course, is the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura -- Scripture alone. According to the Bible itself, no supposed spiritual authority outside "the sacred writings" of Scripture can give us wisdom that leads to salvation. No papal decrees, no oral tradition, no latter-day prophecy can contain truth apart from Scripture that is genuinely fundamental.
II. The Fundamentals Are Clear in Scripture
Second, if an article of faith is to be regarded as fundamental, it must be clearly set forth in Scripture. No "secret knowledge" or hidden truth-formula could ever qualify as a fundamental article of faith. No cryptic key is necessary to unlock the teaching of the Bible.
The truth of God is not aimed at learned intellectuals; it is simple enough for a child. "Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes" (Matthew 11:25, KJV). The Word of God is not a puzzle. It does not speak in riddles. It is not cryptic or mysterious. It is plain and obvious to those who have spiritual ears to hear. "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple" (Psalm 19:7).
The point is not that every fundamental article of faith must be supported with an explicit proof text. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, is certainly essential to true Christianity-and it is very clear in Scripture-but you will find no comprehensive statement of the Trinity from any single passage of Scripture.
This does not mean that a doctrine must be non-controversial in order to be considered a fundamental article. Some would argue that the only test of whether something is essential to true Christianity is whether it is affirmed by all the major Christian traditions. By that rule, hardly anything of any substance would remain to distinguish the Christian Gospel from the "salvation" offered by pagan morality or Islamic theology. "There is much truth in the remark of Clement of Alexandria; 'No Scripture, I apprehend, is so favourably treated, as to be contradicted by no one.'" (Herman Witsius, Sacred Dissertations on the Apostles' Creed [Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1993 reprint], 1:21)


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She's A Good Girl
She's A Good Girl
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Steph asked me to write a post with Fall looks for a trip she was making to crisp, cool Colorado. Awesome. Exceppppppt for the fact that she's already arrived in Colorado, and well, whoops. Sorry Steph. Better late than never!
So here's a whole bunch of stuff I've been eyeing for Fall. Which, btw, has FINALLY arrived in So Cal. I'm so pumped yo. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I get so many fashion ideas from girls out there blogging new Fall looks daily, many of them looks on the cheap – which I SO appreciate (that would be you, Miss Mary Powers and Andee Layne). So Imma return the favor for all of you! None of these are gonna break the bank terribly. Here we go:
First, MOTO JACKETS. I recently went to a party in a house in the Hills where every girl looked like they'd stepped off a trendy little fashion blog, and I kid you not, all were wearing black moto jackets with second hand designer bags. Wear with cute jeans or a maxi dress and voi-frickin'-la:
(From top left: Vegan Moto Jacket, $128 | Faux Leather Moto Jacket, $98 | Easy Rider Moto Jacket, $98 | Faux Leather Jacket, $98)
BOMBER JACKETS – Perfect for the newly cool weather around the country, before the biting winter cold arrives and slaps ya in the face:
(From top left: Patterned Bomber Jacket, $49.99 | Print Bomber Jacket, $49 | Contemporary Floral Bomber, $24.90 | Camo Print Bomber Jacket, $149)
A great MAXI DRESS to wear with either a moto jacket or a long nubby cardigan (see below) and knee high boots:
(From top left: Bettina Wrap Dress, $62 | Autumn Bardot Maxi, $68 | High Roads Dress, $54 | Ebba Dress, $40)
(From top left: Ellis Sweater, $88 | Brave Soul Tassel Front, $36 | Open Front Fringe Cardigan, $27.90 | Brave Soul Tassel Front in white, $36)
(From top left: Off shoulder sweater, $52 | Ananda Cardigan, $52 | High Neck Sweater, $22.90 | Smoke on the Water Cardigan, $99
(From top left: White Grid Drop Turtleneck Sweater, $35.99 | Open-Front Marled Cardigan, $37.90 | Kimchi Blue Grizzly Open Cardigan $129 | Black Lantern Sleeved Sweater, $25.99)
PANTS – PS, Steph just bought the two Piper Jeggings below and they look freaking hawt on her:
(From top left: Shaping Skinny Jeans $49.99 | Piper Jegging in Olive $38 | SPANX Faux Leather Leggings $98 | Piper Jegging in Black $38
LOAFERS are a thing again this season and I'm personally a fan. They're polished, classic, and professional (if that's your steez), and if you get the right ones, they're pretty comfy:
(From top left: Chandy Loafer in Caramel Suede, $119.95 | Sueded Loafer, $24.95 | Chandy Loafer in Gold, $119.95 | Suedette Slip-On Loafer $33)
And boots? Ahhhh, well that's gonna be a whole separate post – there are just so many good ones.
Let me know if there's anything else you want me to find – I'm loving scouring the blogs/internet for you ladies!


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elcome to
Magazine. On the pages of this online magazine we will bring you
ideas to build your life on
. It was English essayist Samuel Johnson who suggested that most people do not need to be taught, they need only to be reminded. There is very little in the understanding of human behavior that
new. More than anything else we hope these pages will stir you to action.
The Persistence of Vision
It is not a question of intelligence, but rather one of our perception of the world around us. We see and hear things in a variable way, and certainly differently from one another, because only the hardware is common to all of us. We can even become blind or deaf when confronted with some situations that will be glaringly or blaringly evident to others. It is therefore hardly surprising that, from time to time, we do get stuck. Stuck in the same old thinking.
Wisdom: The Interval Between the Notes
Opinions come naturally to us. Wisdom does not. Opinions are common. Wisdom is not. Given such clear-cut differences, it seems ironic that opinions should so often be mistaken for wisdom. Time and information have become our enemies. Without the time to think about the onslaught of information that is paraded before us each day, we have become, by and large, what social psychologists call cognitive misers, preferring emotional reactions and one-dimensional opinions to considered examination. While these often necessary mental shortcuts can help us to reduce our complex world into something more manageable, they can create enormous errors in thought and behavior. These errors can have monumental consequences not only in our own lives but in the collective lives of organizations, communities and nations.
Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
Sir Winston Churchill
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
Georg Christoph Lichenberg
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There are a time for some our reader needed to print our content. So Implementing a Print Stylesheet on WordPress Theme is the best idea. We will show you how to do it. So you blog reader will be happy with your content and of course your blogs.
You need to open your header.php
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already opened. Find this line
< link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="<?php bloginfo( 'stylesheet_url' ); ?>" />
And modified that code by added print
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Quite often, when I'm making lists of places I want to include in guides to Copenhagen for different types of medias, I go out of my way to mention only the very best. The best coffee, the most beautiful and trendy café, the restaurant serving the tastiest Nordic dishes. I try to imagine where I would be happy to go if I were a tourist visiting Copenhagen for the first time. In this quest to guide people to the very best this city has to offer (as seen from a somewhat shallow point of view, some would probably argue!) I forget about a lot of places. The cosy neighborhood café serving a good and affordable breakfast, the best place for kebab on Nørrebro that often acts as a lifesaver a Sunday afternoons and the places I normally go for a coffee with my girlfriends.
So, I thought I would share Café Auto with you since it is one of my favorite places on Nørrebro, just a few minutes from where I live. This means that I frequent this café quite a lot and just within the last two weeks, I've had a great dinner here in the company of two girlfriends, a couple of hours of cosy work time with another girlfriend and yesterday, a great brunch with Esben. Café Auto doesn't have marble tabletops or a crazy overpriced slice of bread with avocado. On the contrary, prices here are extremely reasonable, and the dishes are tasty and down to earth. A great burger, delicious french toast, steak tartare, chili con carne and goat cheese salad. Simple and good. The staff is friendly, the vibe is relaxed and you are welcome to stay for as long as you wish. I would recommend this place for both a fulfilling brunch and a low-key but tasty dinner and since you're in the area, don't forget to take a walk in the nearby Assistens Cemetery which will take you to Jægersborggade with a lot of nice places.
Ps. I apologize for the somewhat grainy photos. The light isn't great in there and my beloved iPhone doesn't suffice.


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This story first appeard on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The first Heartland Institute conference on climate change in 2008 had all the trappings of a major scientific conclave—minus large numbers of real scientists. Hundreds of climate change contrarians, with a few academics among them, descended into the banquet rooms of a lavish Times Square hotel for what was purported to be a reasoned debate about climate change.
But as the latest Heartland climate conference opens in a Chicago hotel on Monday, the think tank's claims to reasoned debate lie in shreds and its financial future remains uncertain.
Heartland's claims to "stay above the fray" of the climate wars was exploded by a billboard campaign earlier this month comparing climate change believers to the Unabomer Ted Kaczynski, and a document sting last February that revealed a plan to spread doubt among kindergarteners on the existence of climate change.
Along with the damage to its reputation, Heartland's financial future is also threatened by an exodus of corporate donors as well as key members of staff.
In a fiery blog post on the Heartland website, the organization's president, Joseph Bast, admitted Heartland's defectors were "abandoning us in this moment of need".
Over the last few weeks, Heartland has lost at least $825,000 in expected funds for 2012, or more than 35 percent of the funds its planned to raise from corporate donors, according to the campaign group Forecast the Facts, which is pushing companies to boycott the organization.
The organization has been forced to make up those funds by taking its first publicly acknowledged donations from the coal industry. The main Illinois coal lobby is a last-minute sponsor of this week's conference, undermining Heartland's claims to operate independently of fossil fuel interests.
Its entire Washington, DC, office, barring one staffer, decamped, taking Heartland's biggest project, involving the insurance industry, with them.
Board directors quit, conference speakers canceled at short notice, and longtime associates demanded Heartland remove their names from its website. The list of conference sponsors shrank by nearly half from 2010, and many of those listed sponsors are just websites operating on the right-wing fringe.
"It's hemorrhaging," said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, who has spent years tracking climate-denying outfits. "Heartland's true colors finally came through, and now people are jumping ship in quick order."
It does not look like Heartland is about to adopt a corrective course of action.
In his post, Bast defended the ads, writing: "Our billboard was factual: the Unabomber was motivated by concern over man-made global warming to do the terrible crimes he committed." He went on to describe climate scientist Michael Mann and activist Bill McKibben as "madmen."
The public unraveling of Heartland began last February when the scientist Peter Gleick lied to obtain highly sensitive materials, including a list of donors.
The publicity around the donors' list made it difficult for companies with public commitment to sustainability, such as the General Motors Foundation, to continue funding Heartland. The GM Foundation soon announced it was ending its support of $15,000 a year.
But what had been a gradual collapse quickened when Heartland advertised its climate conference with a billboard on a Chicago expressway comparing believers in climate science to the Unabomber.
The slow trickle of departing corporate donors turned into a gusher.
Even Heartland insiders, such as Eli Lehrer, who headed the organization's Washington group, found the billboard too extreme. Lehrer, who headed the biggest project within Heartland, on insurance, immediately announced his departure along with six other staff.
"The ad was ill advised," he said. "I'm a free-market conservative with a long right-wing résumé and most, if not all, of my team fits the same description and all of us found it very problematic. Staying with Heartland was simply not workable in the wake of this billboard."
Heartland took down the billboard within 24 hours, but by then the ad had gone viral.
Lehrer, who maintains the split was amicable, said the billboard had undermined Heartland's claims to be a serious conservative think tank.
"It didn't reflect the seriousness which I want to bring to public policy," Lehrer said in the telephone interview. "As somebody who deals mostly with insurance I believe all risk have to be taken seriously and there certainly are some important climate and global warming related risks that must be taken account of in the insurance market. Trivializing them is not consistent with free-market thought. Suggesting they are only thought about by people who are crazy is not good for the free market."
Other Heartland allies came to a similar conclusion. In a letter to Heartland announcing he was backing out from the conference, Ross McKitrick, a Canadian economist, wrote: "You can not simultaneously say that you want to promote a debate while equating the other side to terrorists and mass murderers."
A number of other experts meanwhile began cutting their ties with Heartland, according to a tally kept by a Canadian blogger BigCityLiberal.
Meanwhile, there was growing anger that Bast failed to consult with colleagues before ordering up the Kaczynski attack ads.
Four board members told the Guardian they had not been consulted in advance about the ad. "I did not have prior approval of the billboard and was in favor of discontinuing the billboard when I was made aware of it," Jeff Judson, a Texas lobbyist and board member, wrote in an email.
Could the turmoil and discontent at Heartland eventually prove its undoing? Campaigners would certainly hope so. "We are watching the consequences of an organization that acts quite randomly and that is actually an extremist organization in the end," Davies said. "They are not built to be at the hump of the climate denial movement."
But while more mainstream corporate entities are deserting Heartland, others are stepping into the breach, including the coal lobby and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation.
Both the Illinois Coal Association and Heritage stepped in to fund this week's conference, after other corporate donors began backing out in protest at the offensive Kaczynski ad.
Meanwhile, a Greenpeace analysis of the other smaller conference sponsors suggests they have collectively received $5 million in funds from Exxon and other oil companies.
The Coal Association and Heritage were not listed on the original conference sponsor list, but they appeared to come in about a week or so after the appearance of the offending Kaczynski ad.
Phil Gonet, the chief lobbyist for the 20 coal companies in the association, said he had no qualms about stepping in to fund the Heartland conference.
"We support the work they are doing and so we thought we would finally make a contribution to the organization," he said, calling criticism of the ad "moot", "pointless," and "absurd".
Gonet went on: "I made a contribution mainly in support of a conference that is designed to make balanced information available to the public on the issue of global warming…In general, the message of the Heartland Institute is something the Illinois Coal Association supports."


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My mom called on Saturday to tell me she'd found a digital picture frame I gave her 10 years ago. You know, the kind that displays a slide show of pictures, dissolving from one to the next. She told me she both laughed and cried.
She laughed at the pictures of my girls as toddlers – they were quite expressive back then. She cried because some of the pictures were of my dad with the girls. He was so tickled by them, even though his memory was already starting to fade. I know he'd enjoy them immensely today if he were alive and coherent.
Today would have been my dad's 83rd birthday. I thought about that while looking at my favorite picture of him, the one I keep in my office at home. He's 57 years old in the picture, and the traits that most defined his personality – the intelligence and the wit – are obvious in the eyes.
I'll give you just one example of his sense of humor: many years ago, during a conversation about burial vs. cremation, Dad said, "When I die, dump my ashes in the water hazard on the 17th hole at Lincoln Greens. I'd like to spend eternity with my golf balls."
Dang, what I wouldn't give for one more conversation with the man.
When his birthday comes around each year, I take it as a reminder of This Is Why We Do What We Do. When I was born, Dad was only 24. He began fading noticeably around age 70, when I was 46. It was painful to witness, but I was approaching middle age or already in middle age, depending on how you define it.
By contrast, I turned 45 the week after my daughter Sara was born. I was 46 when Alana came along 18 months later. If I fade at age 70, they'll only be in their twenties. I like to think they're going to want my fatherly advice for many more years beyond that. And even if they don't, it's like I said in Fat Head: I want to dance at their weddings. I want to play with my grandkids.
Chareva's dad turned 75 on Saturday – in a hospital. He was hobbled by a stroke more than a year ago, and a few weeks ago, he fell and broke his hip while attempting to limp to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Fixing the hip required surgery. He ended up with blood clots in his legs, so he needed another surgery to implant a mesh designed to keep the clots from reaching his brain. Not exactly a happy birthday for him.
My dad smoked until he was 58, he drank too much, he didn't exercise, and he paid little attention to his diet. Chareva's dad did exercise and was a lean-mean-dancin-machine well into his sixties, but he kept eating his bagels and chocolate candies even after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I think it's a fair bet the ever-worsening diabetes led to the stroke.
I'm not criticizing them; I'm just pointing out that the lifestyle decisions we make have consequences.
We've both seen our dads lose their quality of life by age 74. I'll be that age in 15 years, and when I think about what our dads went through, I say to myself, No way in hell. In my nineties, maybe, but not in my seventies.
This Is Why We Do What We Do. It's nice when people express genuine surprise that I'm pushing 60 (as happened at the office last week), it's great to be able to do physical farm work on Sunday morning and still hit the gym for a workout on Sunday afternoon (as happened yesterday), and it's satisfying to wear smaller pants now than I did 20 years ago.
But that's not really what this is all about. It's about feeling confident that if I avoid stepping in front of the proverbial bus, I'll be dancing at my daughters' weddings … and perhaps watching their daughters graduate from high school.
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