text:
'Obama's Secret Wars' Against America's Threats.
New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger details how President Obama accelerated the use of innovative weapons to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sped up a wave of cyberattacks against Iran to destroy its nuclear centrifuges.
Related Topics
June 4, 2012
Guest: David Sanger
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, David Sanger, has written a new book about how President Obama has redefined American foreign policy and the circumstances under which the U.S. will use diplomacy, coercion and force to shape the world around it. Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
His previous book, "The Inheritance," was about the foreign policy problems President Obama faced when he took office. Sanger has been the member of two teams that won the Pulitzer Prize. His new book is called "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power."
David Sanger, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Your book starts with new information that you learned about the virus that apparently the United States is behind that attacked the centrifuges in Iran's nuclear program and set back that nuclear program. What is new that you learned that we didn't know before?
DAVID SANGER: What we've known in the past was that there was a virus that was detected that people called Stuxnet. It came out in 2010, and there was a lot of debate - there's been a lot of debate - about who was behind it. One of the things I did as I started off working on this book on Obama's national security policy was sort of pull that string because when I looked at Stuxnet, I thought to myself this is not a one-off thing, this has got to be part of a far larger campaign.
And in fact the more I dug and the more people I talked to in more countries, what I discovered was that it was part of a quite vast covert effort between the United States and Israel that was codenamed in the United States Olympic Games.
It began in the Bush administration, and it began in a time that President Bush felt that he was somewhat out of options with Iran. He was out of options because he was tied down in Iraq, because his own credibility was pretty well shot on accusing any country of developing weapons of mass destruction and because he felt that negotiations were likely not to get him where he wanted to be, but he certainly didn't want to see the Israelis bomb the Iran facilities or have the United States get involved in that, too.
And one day the military came to him, General James Cartwright, who at the time was the head of strategic command, and a number of intelligence officials, and presented him with an option to use a new and never-before-discussed American weapon, the development of a cyberweapon that would be specifically aimed at the computer controllers inside the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in Iran. But getting inside the plant is very difficult because the Iranians wall it off from the rest of the world; it's not connected to the Internet.
GROSS: And because the Iranian nuclear program is not connected to the Internet, the virus had to be input into the nuclear network in Iran through a USB port. So do you have any idea how that first USB port got downloaded?
SANGER: Well, what they had to do was first get in and get an understanding of how the computers in Natanz actually connected to these centrifuges, which spin at supersonic speed and are very delicate machinery.
And so they went in first with something called a beacon, and it either went in through a spy, a cooperative Iranian engineer, or it went in through an unwitting engineer, and there are a number of different ways that they could have brought it in, and one of them, of course, is a USB, but there are some other options, as well.
And this beacon went in and basically built a blueprint of how the Iranians had designed the electronics of this plant, and then came back out and phoned home, back to the National Security Agency and the Unit 8200, which is the Israeli's equivalent of the National Security Agency. And from the data that they gathered there, the U.S. and the Israelis designed what was actually a computer worm, slightly different than a virus, that would replicate through - within the system.
But they knew they had to test it. So they went out and built, in the United States, on the grounds of the Energy Department's National Laboratories, basically a full-scale replica of the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant...
GROSS: You know, when I read that, I thought, how can they build a replica of the plant without anybody seeing it?
SANGER: Well, that's a very good question, and I asked the same thing. And what they ended up doing was they spread different parts of it across different elements of the National Laboratories so that no one even inside the laboratories would put it all together. So, you know, I believe they had the controllers in one place, they had the centrifuges in others, and, you know, they were very lucky because you may remember, Terry, that back in 2003, Moammar Gadhafi, the late Moammar Gadhafi, gave up his nuclear program.
And he turned over to the United States a number of these centrifuges that he had bought from A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer who ran a big black-market operation in this material. And so the United States had some exact copies of what the Iranians had also purchased from A.Q. Khan.
And they used these to conduct what they called destructive testing. They literally attacked their own mockup of the plant. And one day they brought back to President Bush, still in office in the Situation Room, the rubble of a destroyed centrifuge that had been attacked merely by computer commands.
So they had accomplished for the first time the kind of destruction that previously the United States or other countries could accomplish only by bombing a facility. And that's what actually convinced President Bush to send the program forward.
And in the days just before he turned over power to President Obama, just before the 2009 inauguration, he had President Obama in the White House for a private session and said there are two or three programs that you have to preserve as president that are absolutely vital. One of them was the Predator program over Pakistan. The other was Olympic Games.
Now, the Predator program is pretty widely known; it's hard to hide that. Olympic Games has been a pretty deep secret until now.
GROSS: So what has President Obama's direct role been in this computer worm?
SANGER: President Obama has been very deeply involved. Every few weeks, the designers of Olympic Games would come down into the Situation Room, and they would spread out a giant graphic map of the centrifuges in Natanz. They called this the horse blanket because it was so large. And they would explain to the president what the latest version of the worm had done or had not done, what they were aiming for, and at the ends of these sessions, he would essentially authorize them to move forward.
He wouldn't pick which centrifuges they should attack, but he would say, OK, you can move to the next step. And these attacks grew bolder and bolder and bolder until one day in 2010 when they made a big mistake.
GROSS: Yeah, and the mistake was - why don't you describe it?
SANGER: Well, the mistake was what the world came to know as Stuxnet. What happened was that a variant of the worm had been designed largely in Israel but with some U.S. help and entered into the system. And it had basically - they had turned the volume up on this one a little bit too much.
And they had not tested it fully, just the way some software companies sometimes release a program, and you discover the bug when you turn on your computer. What happened here was that the worm was living in the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant, and then one day an Iranian engineer, I think an unwitting engineer, came along and plugged his laptop computer directly into these controllers just to do the ordinary maintenance work he would do as part of his job.
And the bug, the worm, leapt aboard his laptop. He didn't know it. He left the plant, he plugged into the Internet, and the worm did not detect that its environment had changed. And so all of a sudden it thought the whole Internet, the whole world, was that same environment, and it began propagating itself. And...
GROSS: And how much damage did it cause on people's computers around the world?
SANGER: Almost none, because the way this worm was designed was to seek out these certain types of computer controllers that are at Natanz, connected to a certain array of the centrifuges. So while the worm may have gotten on to your computer, Terry, or on to my computer...
GROSS: Right, I don't own centrifuges, so I was OK.
SANGER: Right, you don't anything - if you're not running centrifuges down in the basement, it was just going to sit there and not do any damage. And that's why people were so confused when they first saw it. And frankly, at The New York Times, where I was working on this story with colleagues of mine, we got it backwards initially.
We had thought that someone, we didn't know who, had spread the worm around the world in hopes that it would then make it into the Natanz enrichment, their nuclear facility in Iran. In fact, we had it completely backwards. It had started in Natanz and it had escaped like a zoo animal.
GROSS: So when the American intelligence community discovered that the worm had gotten loose, they didn't give up. They kept perfecting the worm and succeeded in doing that. But what did they do about the worm that had gotten loose, the Stuxnet?
SANGER: One day in the summer of 2010, this is actually how "Confront and Conceal" opens, Leon Panetta, who was then the director of the CIA, now of course the defense secretary, and two other officials, the deputy director of the CIA and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went down into the White House Situation Room and saw President Obama and Vice President Biden and very - an array of other officials there.
And they explained exactly what had happened, and they knew that President Obama was going to raise the question: Should we pull the plug on this program? And in fact he did raise that question, and they presented the options to him.
The president, from all the accounts I heard, was pretty cool about it. Vice President, who as you know can be a bit more demonstrative, was significantly more demonstrative through this. But the president decided in the end that the Iranians were probably confused by what was going on, and he said you can keep going.
And in fact they delivered a second variant and then a third variant of the worm fairly quickly, and it was that last one that ended up killing off about 1,000 centrifuges, just shy of that, out of the 5,000 the Iranians had running at the time.
Now the Iranians have since recovered, but this set them back.
GROSS: How far, do you think, that it set them back?
SANGER: There was a lot of dispute on that, Terry, even within the U.S. government. And I've talked to Israelis about this, I talked to Americans about this, I've talk to people in the intelligence community, in the Pentagon. The sort of official internal estimate is that this delayed Iran's progress towards a weapons capability by 18 months to two years.
I have had some outside experts who believe that that is not true, that the Iranians, if you chart their production of enriched uranium, they recovered fairly quickly. But what we don't know and will never know is whether they would have been able to build far more centrifuges and far more sophisticated centrifuges had this not happened because as their centrifuges were literally blowing up, they ended up firing people, they ended up taking a lot more centrifuges offline than they needed to because they were trying to understand what was going wrong.
And that was part of the plan. It was, as one official said to me, to make them feel stupid.
GROSS: My guest is David Sanger. He's the author of the new book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." And David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Let's take a break here. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times and author of the new book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power."
Now, we've been talking about the worm that the United States, with Israeli help, infected the Iranian nuclear program with and destroyed lots of their centrifuges, setting back the program. We don't know exactly how much it was set back. And we know that Obama oversaw the program, it was begun during the Bush administration, but President Obama oversaw it or at least kept signing off on it during his presidency.
But you write he was afraid of starting a precedent of being the first major power to launch a cyberattack against a sovereign state. What do you know about his concerns and why he went ahead with pursuing and continuing the program in spite of his reservations?
SANGER: Well, Terry, his reservations were fairly deep because he was concerned, as anybody would be, that if you use a new weapon like this, you have a created a precedent for other countries that might want to attack the United States. And as we all know, the United States is probably more vulnerable to cyberattacks than almost any nation on Earth just because we're so dependent on them for everything from utility systems to the stock exchange to the cell phone network to the air traffic control system.
So the president was quite concerned that the program remain secret for as long as possible. Of course Stuxnet began to end that element of it. And the other thing he was concerned about was that there were would very little collateral damage. So he was constantly asking questions about whether or not this worm could spread to other systems, could turn off the power supplies for hospitals or towns and villages nearby the nuclear plant in Iran.
And so he tried to narrow the program a fair bit, but the fact remains that the U.S. has now essentially legitimized the use of cyberweapons at a time that you're not at war, and we're not at war with Iran, far from it. What struck me in the reporting is that while the United States now has a very subtle understanding of when it wants to use drones and not, there is no equivalent right now, certainly no publicly articulated equivalent, of when you use cyberweapons.
And partly that is because Olympic Games was so secret, and partly that is because the weapon is so new and developing so fast that no one has really sort of gathered together the sort of theory about how and when you would use it, when you'd use it as a deterrent, that we developed in the 1950s about nuclear weapons.
GROSS: And I keep thinking we haven't yet seen the counteroffensive of cyberattack.
SANGER: Well, to some degree you have. If you ask somebody in corporate America do you see attacks every day or every week, I think most big businesses will tell you that they do.
GROSS: But some of that's just from, like, hackers and from other countries, not necessarily like an Iranian cyber - you know, counter-cyberattack.
SANGER: It might be, you know, the Chinese trying to sweep up information in the corporate systems of Boeing or Lockheed-Martin or the Pentagon or Google. You will remember the big Google attack in 2009. But Olympic Games was different, Terry, because it was not simply a computer attacking a computer. It's not my computer attacking your computer. It was a computer worm attacking other computers to destroy infrastructure.
So in other words, just passing through the computers in Iran in order to destroy the centrifuges in a much more stealthy way than an aerial bombing attack would. And that's a very different kind of - that's a very different kind of attack.
GROSS: Right, so it's destroying nuclear infrastructure. So one would assume there might be some kind of cybercounterattack. I don't know if you have any idea if the Obama administration is thinking about that possibility and what they're doing to prepare for it.
SANGER: Well, you've seen President Obama from the first days of his presidency talk about hardening America's cyberdefenses, and there have been billions of dollars the federal government now spends trying to harden critical infrastructure. In fact, just in March, they ran a simulation up in the U.S. Senate, a classified simulation, about what would happen if a foreign hacker or foreign power attacked the electrical system in New York City and turned off all the lights in New York.
And these raise very big issues. One of them is: Would you consider that an act of war? Would you respond with a cyberattack against the country that led the attack on the U.S.? Would you even know what that country was? I mean, in the old nuclear age, you could sit in front of a big screen under the mountain in - Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, and you could see where the missiles were coming from.
If there's a cyberattack from China or Russia or Romania or Mexico, it may well run through a server in another country. And you may not - it may take months before you know where it really came from. And that makes deterring against cyberattacks very difficult.
And think about Olympic Games, because the Iranians were not certain where these attacks were coming from. In fact, for the first couple of years of the attacks, they didn't even really know they were being attacked. They only knew that their centrifuges were failing.
GROSS: Well, that was part of the plan to have the centrifuges at first fail very slowly so it would seem like we did something wrong, something was going wrong with our program, as opposed to somebody's attacking our program.
SANGER: That's right, and in fact, the method of attack changed with every variant of the worm so that not the same thing broke. And these centrifuges are very sensitive, and they frequently break just on their own. And the idea was to keep the Iranians guessing.
Now, there was something also that was quite brilliant in the way the program was written, which was that the program would record what the ordinary operations of the plant were. And then when it started its attack, it would broadcast back into the control room of the plant that the centrifuges were operating quite normally.
The Iranians were so confused by this that at some point, one point they had to send people down into the centrifuge hall and just have them radio back whether the centrifuges were spinning out of control.
GROSS: David Sanger will be back in the second half of the show. His new book is called "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." Sanger is chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with David Sanger, author of new book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." It's about how President Obama has redefined American foreign policy and the circumstances under which the U.S. will use diplomacy, coercion and force. Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
When we left off, we were talking about the cyberattack the U.S. launched against Iran's nuclear program.
What is that computer worm we've been talking about? Tell us about President Obama's use of power and his foreign policy.
SANGER: I found striking that when President Obama came to office and vowed to get the country out of its defensive crouch, he talked a lot about restoring traditional American engagement - that he, you know, would talk to our adversaries. And his supporters I think found in this a sort of moment where he was turning away from the sort of with us or against whites of the Bush years. And his critics, including some Democrats, including at one point Hillary Clinton, found naivete and softness.
And I think both sides have been surprised. I think the left has been surprised by his aggressiveness; the drone attacks, the bin Laden raid, Olympic Games. I think that many others have been surprised that his use of American power has been very direct when there has been a direct threat to the U.S., but he has insisted that other countries take the lead when our interests are somewhat remote and theirs are direct. Think Libya, even think Syria, where he has demanded that the Arab League or NATO or others take the lead. And he's been very criticized about this by, among others, Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee - or I guess now the certain Republican nominee - for ceding American leadership. And I think that is the essence of the Obama doctrine, that he acts quite strongly and quite unilaterally whether the U.S. has direct interest. But he is trying to force the rest of the world to pay for it and take the price when it's not, and throughout he is quite insistent on very in and out U.S. action. No more long occupations. No more costly wars. And this is part of the limitations of living in this age of reckoning, where we simply can't afford to do what we've always done.
GROSS: So do you think what you're describing as the Obama doctrine helps explain his different positions on Libya and Syria? In Libya, he intervened along with NATO, along with the Arab League. In Syria, he is not as of yet intervening, but people there are being massacred.
SANGER: That's right. And I think that Libya and Syria are an example of the limitations of the Obama doctrine. Because he went into Libya basically to defend the concept of - called responsibility to protect, that the U.S. and other nations have a responsibility to protect citizens against the dictators who may be out ruining their lives, keeping them poor, keeping them subjugated. But in Libya, he did so at a moment when it was relatively easy and relatively casualty-free to do that. He could get at the Libyan forces - Gadhafi's forces - through airstrikes in the desert.
When you ask people so what's the difference between Libya and Syria, it's getting much harder for the administration to make the argument that they are quite different, because clearly, the responsibility to protect would seem to extend to the nine or 10,000 Syrians who believe have already died - many more than died in Libya. And yet, in the case of Syria, there's no bloodless casualty-free way to go do this. It would require people on the ground. These attacks are taking place in crowded cities. You can't bomb without causing huge civilian casualties.
GROSS: Well, and as you point out in the book, there isn't an organized resistance that you could identify and you say we'll help support these people.
SANGER: That's right. And, you know, you're hearing a lot of people say right now, arm the rebels. Well, as if there was one group of rebels. They can't agree among themselves what their objectives are and many of them have tribal rivalries among themselves. So you could end up arming different factions in a civil war. And there a lot of people asking the question why would you want to go do that? I mean, Afghanistan is an example. When you think of what we did during the '80s of a case where we find a group of people, and then found ourselves facing our own old weapons 10 years later.
GROSS: Let's talk about President Obama's change in its policy toward Afghanistan. When he was campaigning, he made it clear he had opposed the Iraq war from the start, but he saw the war in Afghanistan is being a war of necessity. And initially, he seemed to support the idea of further nation building in Afghanistan. General Petraeus supported that. President Obama put General Stanley McChrystal in charge of that war and he was a counterinsurgency guy. But President Obama eventually turned against the counterinsurgency idea. What turned him?
SANGER: Well, I think several things turned him. He immediately committed more troops and then went through this very lengthy process which was ridden with leaks, but you may remember, he had all these meetings in the Situation Room with leaders of the military, with the secretary of state, the intelligence world, and they all try to come up with an answer to the question of: would an additional surge in Afghanistan work? And in the end he did send an additional 33,000 troops.
But what I discovered in the reporting was that even before he made that decision, he had huge reservations about this. General McChrystal had sent in a plan for basically a 10-year counterinsurgency plan in Afghanistan and President Obama handed it off to Peter Orszag, who at the time was the head of the Office of Management and Budget. He said, Peter, could you please price this out for us? And Orszag came back a few days later and he said you know, Mr. President, this plan would cost about a trillion dollars over 10 years. And if that's a familiar number, it's about what it would cost to insure all uninsured Americans over the same period of time. That's an astounding figure - a trillion dollars over 10 years in a country that I think President Obama came to the conclusion, well, we might not be able to effect lasting change in. And so almost as soon as he approved the surge, he was insistent that it would last only 18 months, as he had announced at West Point. And the generals believed that once they got the surge they could convince him to extend the period of time. And he turned to one of his aides one day who had said that to him and said, you know, they're not getting more time.
GROSS: In 2010, President Obama organized a committee to narrow the goals in Afghanistan and that committee called itself Afghan Good Enough. What was considered good enough in terms of our goals in Afghanistan?
SANGER: Well, the goals began to narrow, Terry, even in 2009 when the president concluded that the U.S. had been trying everything in Afghanistan; build a Jeffersonian democracy, rebuild schools, get the economy running in a modern way. And so instead of all of that, they narrowed it to three goals, two of which really had very little to do with Afghanistan. One of them was, defeat al-Qaida. Well, al-Qaida wasn't in Afghanistan at the time, it was in Pakistan.
A second was make sure that Pakistan's nuclear weapons do not get loose. And that became all the more important after a series of events that I describe in the chapter called "Bomb Scare," where they actually thought the Taliban had gotten a nuclear weapon. They thought this for a few days in 2009. So securing the weapons was a big deal, but again, those were in Pakistan.
The only Afghan criteria was make sure that Kabul does not fall to the Taliban, that there is a central government, the Karzai government is protected and secure. Well, that's a pretty narrow goal. And then comes 2010, and the Afghan Good Enough committee, which was meeting on weekends so people would not be noting these sessions, basically looked at every program the U.S. was conducting in Afghanistan and said do we need to do this? Can the Afghans do this? Can NATO do this? Can someone else do this? So they didn't get wrapped up in so many different projects that it slowed the withdrawal.
GROSS: So is that what we're following now, the Afghan Good Enough program?
SANGER: Petty much. I mean, pretty much everything...
GROSS: So if the goal is to keep the Karzai - I mean, one of the reasons the way you describe it, that President Obama wanted to withdraw Americans from Afghanistan is that he said Americans are dying to prop up a president who is corrupt, who isn't liked by his people, who, you know, we're having a hard time dealing with. You know, what's going on here? So assuming that we start pulling out of Afghanistan but our goal is still to protect the Karzai government, is that going to be considered a wholesome goal by President Obama since he's so, he seems to really be soured on the Karzai government - as many others seem to be?
SANGER: Well, he is soured on the Karzai government and Karzai himself is supposed to leave office in 2014. And what they're out protecting is not just President Karzai but having an elected, democratically elected government. Meaning...
GROSS: Non-Taliban government.
SANGER: Non-Taliban government. And this will have been a failure if after 2014, when all of what's called an enduring presence, leaves Afghanistan, which I say in the book would probably be 10 to 15,000 Americans, if the central government does end up falling, or if the Taliban simply regain control of major parts of Afghanistan. And there are many people in the administration who believe that's likely to happen, because they don't think that the Afghan military, despite all the billions we have put into training them, is up to the job of holding on to all parts of the country. And, you know this gets to the cost issue, Terry, because we've been spending eight, nine, $10 billion a year training the Afghan military, and at one point President Obama turned to some of his aides during one of these reviews and said, do you guys realize this is the most expensive item in the Pentagon's budget? We're spending more training the Afghan military than we are on the F-35, the new Joint Strike Fighter, and it's simply not a sustainable plan. And so even the size of the Afghan military is supposed to come down considerably by about a third starting in about 2017.
GROSS: Let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times and author of the new book, "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." Let's take a short break here, then we'll talk some more.
This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times and author of the new book, "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power."
There was recently an article in your paper - The New York Times - about President Obama's quote, "kill list," the list of insurgents, al-Qaida and al-Qaida-affiliate leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and other places who are targeted for killing, for drone strikes. And the article raised the question, what's - well, actually your book raises the question: what's the difference between these drone strikes against insurgents and assassination? And assassination is illegal in the United States, you can't assassinate a political leader. So what are your thoughts about President Obama and the kill list and what that tells us about him and his thinking?
SANGER: Well, if you put together the two elements of drones and cyber, what you have is a president deeply involved in picking targets and trying to bit by bit try to forestall larger American military engagement. And that's what the predator is for and that's what cyberweapons are for. But it does raise some very profound questions. And one of the questions I went off to go answer in the book is: In the minds of the administration, what is the difference between targeting an individual terrorist or a small group of terrorists from 20 or 30,000 feet with a hellfire missile fired by a drone and actually, going in and doing an assassination on the ground?
And the answers that the administration gave me showed that they had built a fairly complex legal rationale around their activities, that the drones were used either in places like Afghanistan, where they're covered by congressional legislation that followed 9/11 to go after Al Qaida and its affiliates, or in places where the United States is invited in, or in places where there is no operative government in the U.S. feels it has to defend itself. Somalia would be a good example.
The problem is that this argument, when you hold it up to the test of both time and changed circumstances, has got a fair number of holes in it. Let me give you some examples. We do our attacks in Pakistan, we were told, because the U.S. has been invited in by the Pakistani military. But the duly elected parliament in Pakistan, somewhat powerless parliament but elected nonetheless, democratically elected, recently passed several resolutions barring all Predator strikes in Pakistani territory and calling them a violation of sovereignty.
President Obama has decided to go ahead and conduct those strikes inside Pakistan anyway. We know that the legislation that the president has been operating under in defending the U.S. post-9/11 was passed in the days after 9/11. We're now 11 years out from the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and many of the people who are being targeted for these attacks, for these Predator strikes, had nothing to do with 9/11, and gradually get promoted from within.
So if the United States kills the number three leader of a Taliban faction and he is replaced with his driver, is that driver then a legitimate target as well? Is the United States considered threatened by those people? And these are very difficult questions because the Predator - the targets of the Predator strikes, they don't exactly have a chance to stand up and claim that they are not an enemy of the United States.
GROSS: Many people in the Obama administration believe that the real threat to the United States is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. It's Pakistan that has, you know, nuclear weapons, and our relationship with Pakistan's government seems to have really deteriorated in part because they were really embarrassed after the bin Laden assassination because they didn't know about it, and even after a three and a half hour attack on that compound, they didn't know about it.
And also there was an American counterattack in Afghanistan that really angered the people and the government. So relationships between the United States and Pakistan seem to be deteriorating and we're still very worried about Pakistan, the insurgents who have made a home there, the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. What do you think is the state of that relationship now?
SANGER: Terry, a good part of the book describes 2011 as this awful year of a downward spiral in the American relationship with Pakistan. It started with a CIA officer who killed two Pakistanis who were trying to rob him. The U.S. spent a lot of effort to get him out of the country and it raised a lot of questions about why the CIA was operating inside Pakistan.
Then came bin Laden, then came a series of other incidents. And meanwhile came attacks on Americans, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, that was run by basically the Pakistani Taliban and by the Haqqani group, which is essentially a group of thugs who are living within Pakistan.
And early in the book I describe a secret meeting between Tom Donilon, the National Security Advisor, and the head of the Pakistani military in which Donilon basically says you are letting your country get hijacked by this group of militants and you're not acting and either you'll have to act against them or the United States will. And it was a very, very tense meeting in Abu Dhabi.
What I discovered in the course of this work is that when we talk about AfPak, we've got it backwards. There are many in the Obama administration, if they could get away with it, who would say the problem is PakAf. It's Pakistan first. It's Pakistan that has a fast developing insurgency, that has over 100 nuclear weapons, and that's increasing the size of that arsenal very fast with small mobile weapons that many fear could be easily stolen.
That is the much bigger threat to the United States than anything happening in Afghanistan. But our troops, of course, are in Afghanistan because they've been there for the past 10 years. And so the big question is, can President Obama recover this relationship with Pakistan? And I think it's fair to say that President Obama inherited a terrible relationship with Pakistan, something I described in my previous book, "The Inheritance," but it's now actually worse.
GROSS: And Pakistan has closed off its supply routes to American troops.
SANGER: That's right. And in fact there was a belief that a deal would be struck to reopen those supply routes at this NATO meeting in Chicago, and in fact President Zardari was invited to the meeting in Chicago and then the deal never happened. President Obama didn't even see President Zardari.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times and author of the new book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." Let's take a short break here, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times and author of the new book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power."
In your book about President Obama's foreign policy, "Confront and Conceal," you've revealed a lot of new information and it's new information about our foreign policy, about secret programs like the computer worm that attacked the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility. Are you queasy at all that anything you've revealed in this book is going to hurt our national security?
SANGER: You know, Terry, it's a subject I take very seriously, and the program that you described before, Olympic Games, the program against Iran, is something I was particularly concerned about in that case. And I went off and had some very serious conversations with members of the administration, where I described to them what I discovered.
And basically the way I ended up writing about this was that anything that was historical, anything the Iranians have already figured out about what they were being attacked with and who was attacking them, I felt perfectly free to publish and I describe in here some detail about the president's personal involvement in the program, which I suspect the Iranians didn't know but suspected.
There were a few requests, mostly about technical details, where the government asked me to keep out some specifics that could affect ongoing operations or endanger Americans who are currently operating abroad. And in almost all those cases - in fact, in all those cases - I withheld some of those details because they weren't critical to the story and they certainly could have, I imagine, if the government was correct, harmed national security.
GROSS: Just one more thing before you go. A sentence I found really interesting in your book was the sentence that described when President Bush told incoming President Obama you have to continue this secret computer worm that we're developing to infect the Iranian nuclear program. And you say that, you know, Bush said that he wasn't happy with the options he was presented with before this worm was developed and the options were either, you know, bomb the Iranian program or let them develop a nuclear weapon.
And you made it seem like the worm was the outcome of Bush saying I need another option, these options aren't good enough. And what interested me most in that was Bush taking a firm stand against the United States or Israel bombing the Iranian program. And the impression I got was that there were people in the administration pressuring him to do that but he said no.
SANGER: I think that's right. And I dealt with this some in my previous book, "The Inheritance," and I've learned more about it since. President Bush never argued in anything that I could find for an attack on Iran. I mean, he already had his hands full. He had a war going on in Iraq that by 2006, 2007 was going very badly for the United States. He had the Afghan war, which was also going badly, although people weren't admitting it as much then.
And I think he recognized that the system simply couldn't handle a third. And I think the Iranians recognized that too. So there were some in the Bush administration, including the faction around Vice President Cheney, who basically took the position: let the Israelis go do what the Israelis say they want to do, which is take this out militarily.
I think one of the most fascinating elements of Olympic Games is the fact that the U.S. and Israel were working so closely together. Partly that was because they have talents that complemented each other, but partly it was because the United States believed, both President Bush and President Obama, that the Israelis needed to be convinced that there was an alternative to a military attack and that this covert effort was that alternative.
GROSS: David Sanger, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.
SANGER: Thank you, Terry. It's always wonderful to be back on your show.
GROSS: David Sanger is the author of the new book "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." He's the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times. You can find links to his recent articles on our website, freshair.npr.org, and you can follow us on Twitter at nprfreshair and on Tumblr at nprfreshair.tumblr.com.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.


text:
Good news from MassRoids! We offer -25% Discount on all products, the discounts are already applied.
Dear Customers! We are pleased to inform you that "Zerox Pharmaceuticals" products are now available in our stock. We can assure that the products are directly from manufacturer and they are of high quality.
BUY 10 & GET 1 FREE for same product. Promo time is limited!!! Only this Week! If you are interested in it
Greetings from MassRoids! From December 13th up to 3rd of January we are launching our winter sales!!!
Dear Customers! We are pleased to inform you that "7Lab Pharma" - are now available on our Steroids Shop.
Dear Customer, We are glad to inform you that we started a new Promo - ***Kalpa Pharmaceuticals Free Gear***
Dear Friens, We are pleased to inform you that we have New Kalpa Injectable Special Offers: Testoxyl Cypionate 250,
MassRoids OFFERS - 20% Autumn Sale ON ALL PRODUCTS!!!, you'll have time to benefit of them.
- 25% for all products on the site and -10% Discount for Bulk Section and USA Domestic...
Dear Customers, we are glad to inform you that : Sciroxx product is back in stock. We are here to serve you in the
1 tablet contains:
- active substance: mesterolone 25 mg;
- auxiliary substances:
Androgen; Anabolic Steroid.
Half life: 12 Hours
Routes of administration: by mouth
Dosage forms: (Men): 25-100 mg/day; (Women): -
Acne: yes
Water retention: no
High blood pressure: no
Hepatotoxicity: low
Aromatase: no
Decreased HPTA function (own testosterone production): none
Anabolic activity: 150%
Androgenic activity: 40%
Detection time:
25 mg tablets.
100 tablets in sachets.
Store in a dry place and away from light at 15-25 ° C. Keep out of the reach and sight of children.
It is issued with prescription.
March 2020
Odin Pharma
Please log in to write review
Wondering how to use Bitcoin payment methods on MassRoids store ? Here is a guide on how to proceed easily with BTC payments.
Due to the increased use of anabolic steroids by athletes in sport and the increased risk of side effects, there are many discussions regarding the benefits of performance enhancing drugs in general.
Testosterone is a hormone that belongs to the class of hormones known as androgens. It is responsible for the well functioning of the body, and for men it is extremely important because it is largely responsible for testicular and prostate development.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
- This event has passed.
29/06/2020 - 30/06/2020
14. International Conference on Electronic Security and Digital Forensics
The International Research Conference is a federated organization dedicated to bringing together a significant number of diverse scholarly events for presentation within the conference program. Events will run over a span of time during the conference depending on the number and length of the presentations. With its high quality, it provides an exceptional value for students, academics and industry researchers.
ICESDF 2020: 14. International Conference on Electronic Security and Digital Forensics aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics. It also provides a premier interdisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns as well as practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted in the fields of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics


text:
Hostinger Germany Coupons, Promo Codes and Deals
Apply all coupons in one click
The Honey extension applies coupons at checkout and adds the best one to your cart.
Take PayPal Honey with you to 30,000+ sites
Did you know we automatically try coupons on store sites? Add our extension and let us do all the work for you.


text:
Why the Median Home Price Is Meaningless in Today's Market
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) will release its latest Existing Home Sales (EHS) report later this week. This monthly report provides information on the sales volume and price trend for previously owned homes. In the upcoming release, it'll likely say home prices are down. This may feel a bit confusing, especially if you've been following along and seeing the blogs saying that home prices have bottomed out and turned a corner.
So, why will this likely say home prices are falling when so many other price reports say they're going back up? It all depends on the methodology of each report. NAR reports on the median sales price, while some other sources use repeat sales prices. Here's how those approaches differ.
The Center for Real Estate Studies at Wichita State University explains median prices like this:
"The median sale price measures the 'middle' price of homes that sold, meaning that half of the homes sold for a higher price and half sold for less . . . For example, if more lower-priced homes have sold recently, the median sale price would decline (because the "middle" home is now a lower-priced home), even if the value of each individual home is rising."
Investopedia helps define what a repeat sales approach means:
"Repeat-sales methods calculate changes in home prices based on sales of the same property, thereby avoiding the problem of trying to account for price differences in homes with varying characteristics."
The Challenge with the Median Sales Price Today
As the quotes above say, the approaches can tell different stories. That's why median price data (like EHS) may say prices are down, even though the vast majority of the repeat sales reports show prices are appreciating again.
Bill McBride, Author of the Calculated Risk blog, sums the difference up like this:
"Median prices are distorted by the mix and repeat sales indexes like Case-Shiller and FHFA are probably better for measuring prices."
To drive this point home, here's a simple explanation of median value (see visual below). Let's say you have three coins in your pocket, and you decide to line them up according to their value from low to high. If you have one nickel and two dimes, the median value (the middle one) is 10 cents. If you have two nickels and one dime, the median value is now five cents.
In both cases, a nickel is still worth five cents and a dime is still worth 10 cents. The value of each coin didn't change.
That's why using the median home price as a gauge of what's happening with home values isn't worthwhile right now. Most buyers look at home prices as a starting point to determine if they match their budgets. But, most people buy homes based on the monthly mortgage payment they can afford, not just the price of the house. When mortgage rates are higher, you may have to buy a less expensive home to keep your monthly housing expense affordable. A greater number of 'less-expensive' houses are selling right now for this exact reason, and that's causing the median price to decline. But that doesn't mean any single house lost value.
When you see the stories in the media that prices are falling later this week, remember the coins. Just because the median price changes, it doesn't mean home prices are falling. What it means is the mix of homes being sold is being impacted by affordability and current mortgage rates.
Bottom Line
For a more in-depth understanding of home price trends and reports, reach out to a local real estate professional.
#mortgagerosemarybeach, #rosemarybeachmortgage, #rosemarybeachmortgagerates


text:
How We Made An Opera In Just Five Days
By COC StaffPosted in Summer Opera Camps
Guest Writers: Participants of the COC's Summer Opera Camps Junior Company
156 lines of dialogue.
30 costumes.
24 cast members.
Five original songs.
And one world premiere – all in just five days.
If you told a production team that they had just five days to compose, design, build and rehearse a world premiere opera – complete with costumes and sets – they'd run for the hills. But for the 24 participants, ages 8 – 10, in the COC's Summer Opera Camps Junior Company, it's just another week at camp.
Under the guidance of Drama Specialist Catherine Hume, Designer Sonja Rainey, Music Director/Composer Chris Thornborrow, and a team of dedicated staff and volunteers, the campers build an opera from scratch. Some have never even seen an opera before, or performed in public.
On the Mend tells the story of the Humpty Dumpty Egg Carton Crew, who love nothing better than hanging out on the wall with their friends, the Birds. But one day, the crew gets carried away and suffers a Great Fall. The Royal Medical Response Team does what they can to repair the damage, but there are some things — like a lingering and crippling fear of heights — for which there is no quick fix. Is there anything that can help the crew to overcome the lasting effects of their terrible mishap?
Now, in the campers' own words, read about their whirlwind creative journey.
Register for our 2020 Summer Opera Camps here.
DAY 1 - Getting to know opera and new friends
Today the campers start building the foundations of their opera, from learning the story to choosing their roles. But first – what the heck does opera even sound like?
Deirdre, age 9: When I think of opera, I think of ladies singing really high in a pink, floofy dress. If I could describe it in one word, it would be LOUD.
Kalil, age 10: This will be my first time seeing an opera or being in one. When I think of opera, I imagine an orchestra, music set to a play, with an audience, and Surtitles – my mom told me about those.
Rory, age 9: I know that people sing for a very long time and sometimes they have big fancy dresses.
Isabella, age 10: Opera is fun! My school comes to see the children's operas at the COC. I want to be an actor and at school we do a talent show, where I sing and dance. I'm also on the skip squad.
Cynthia, age 10: When I think "opera," I think "classical."
Dennis, age 9: This is my second year of camp and it's very fun. I'm most excited for the performance and acting, especially the comedy and funny parts. I've seen operas before – my brother was in The Biggest Pumpkin Ever at camp and I saw one at the COC that had a pool and puppets. It was insane!
Edie, age 8: When I listen to opera, I hear a lot of "A" sounds – it sounds like people are just saying "ahhhhh." And most of it's not in English. I like operas in Italian but sometimes I get tired of reading the translations. I've seen one opera – I don't remember the name but it was here. Some people tricked their girlfriends into thinking they were someone else and then the girls fell in love with them. There were big butterflies on the stage. Our opera is different because it's in English. It's easier to sing in English but if it was in Italian, it would be pretty interesting.
Kalil: I came to camp because my friend Raffi is here and our moms are friends. I also like acting and participate in my synagogue's Purim play, where we choose a theme and tell the Purim story. One year it was Dr. Seuss, last year Grease, and this year we did Hamilton! I think opera is different from musicals because you sing everything but we talk in our opera.
Anna, age 8: Well, I had a bunch of options to choose from for camps – there was an art camp, another art camp, and I forget the rest. I was really shy at this point because I thought it would be all solos – so I was like "no way" but then my parents just signed me up! I was like "What?! You did?!" But I ended up being very happy and have lots of friends, like Samantha. I didn't have any friends yet and we were in a skit together and I just decided I want HER to be my friend.
Samantha, age 10: And then I started talking to her and we started flying like birds.
Anna: And now we're friends.
Deirdre: This is my first time at opera camp. I do a lot of sports, like soccer, swimming and softball. I'm HORRIBLE at art with a capital H. But me and my sister are very good singers for some reason – it's not in our genes, although my mom is a very good public speaker – and I can sing super high.
Once the campers break the ice and get to know each other, they start diving right into preparing their opera.
Chris Thornborrow, Music Director: I'm really excited to tell this story; it's a really dramatic story for all ages. We feel that this is the "Pixar Opera" of Opera Camp – it's got things for adults, things for kids, and a really good message.
Isabella: Our opera is based on a book. We read the story this morning, After the Fall [by Dan Sanat]. It's about Humpty Dumpty who is afraid of heights after falling off the wall and is scared to go back to doing the things he used to do. I like the ones based on books – next year we should do a Harry Potter opera!
Cynthia: After we learned the story, we got to choose our roles. There was a chart and there we wrote down the character names – like Humpty Dumpty and the Couch Potatoes. And then we could pick which one we liked best.
Isabella: I'm not nervous about getting my first choice. I think I'll get the part I want – I want to be a Couch Potato or a Bird or a Doctor.
Deirdre: I want to be an Egg or a Couch Potato. The Couch Potatoes are LAZY and I LOVE trash talking. I like pretending to be mean but not actually in real life so that would be a fun character to play. I did Shakespeare classes and we played a game where we read Shakespeare trash talk – "you foul smelling, wart looking lout!" is my favourite! I'm excited to get my role and start practicing.
DAY 2 – Getting into character
The day starts with music rehearsals led by Music Director Chris Thornborrow where they learn about vocal health, projection, and singing the intentions of their characters. The campers also need to learn five new songs before Friday, and will even compose one of their own.
Kalil: We sang four or five songs today. The first one we sing, "On the Mend," is my favourite and the "Flying" song. It's hard to learn the music so quickly. It's kind of fast and we're singing so many new songs at one time and I can't read music for singing, only piano.
Cynthia: I do a lot of singing – I'm in the Toronto Children's Chorus – and I've seen an opera before on TV. I don't think it will be hard to learn all the songs.
Denis: This year is different from last year because we're singing opera at a higher level and we got to compose a new song. As a group we added different pieces and words – "Does this work? Does that work? Maybe it didn't." Then we put it all together and Chris added the piano. I'm proud of the whole thing.
Chris: The song is called "Step By Step" and it's towards the end of the piece. It's the first time we wrote a song in two-part harmony and they did it in less than an hour. I'm really proud of them for the song they wrote.
Today also marks the first major day of blocking. The campers received their parts and really start digging into their characters – and they have lots of ideas.
Catherine Hume, Drama Specialist: This is what happens when there are a lot of creative brains in the same space – there are a lot of ideas and that's great.
Isabella: Catherine handed us the scripts with the name of our character on it. I got Couch Potato.
Cynthia: I have five lines and I've memorized half of them already.
Deirdre: Falling off the wall is the best part. In our blocking rehearsal, we get these outlines in white tape so we know where to end up – it's like in the olden days when they'd tape around a dead body at a crime scene.
Anna: We lean forward off the wall and then start twirling around and then we just fall into our egg shapes. I was worried I was going to be bad at it and I'd get a small part, but then I did a little skit and I got the Egg, my first choice.
DAY 3 – Setting the stage
Time to get messy! Under the guidance of Designer Sonja Rainey, the campers break out the paint brushes to create three giant backdrops to serve as their set and countless individual props and details, including a wall of creatively named cereal boxes.
Samantha: If I could give a piece of advice to someone thinking about doing Opera Camp, it would be to bring an extra shirt because it gets very messy.
Edie: Biggest challenge? I think the sets. If they're going to be good, it will take a lot of work.
Isabella: I liked making the brick wall because it looks like real bricks. You take your sponge, you dip it in the water, squeeze out all the water, and then you dip it in the paint and place it on the (canvas) wall. I think the audience is going to think it looks a lot like real bricks.
Cynthia: There were too many people crowded by the brick wall so I wanted to do something by myself. I'm painting a window in the Couch Potatoes' living room. I'm going to do a plane and probably a gloomy sky because the Egg Crew is really gloomy that day. It's really nice to have the freedom to do whatever interests me. We don't have art class that much at school so it's a chance to be creative. You can do whatever you want here and no one is judging you.
Isabella: We're also making the grocery store, where the Eggs are going shopping to buy cereal but they're afraid of heights so they can't get to the top cereal, they can only get to the bottom cereal, which is all the gross ones.
Amara, age 8: I made some fish and lentil cheerios. Ewwww.
Samantha: My cereal box had RAISINS in it.
Raffi, age 9: I like mixing paint, it's so satisfying. You just swish it around and it just explodes! I like acting in the actual opera, but then probably designing next.
Cynthia: I think the audience is going to be really surprised that the set is all by 9 and 10 year olds.
DAY 4 –Great eggs-pectations
One day 'til show time and there's still lots of work to do – like running through the opera for the first time and making their costumes.
Isabella: We finished the whole opera but we still need to practice A LOT.
Anna: We remember our cues but then sometimes we forget and you say "Liiiine!" and (the instructors) tell it to you. All the instructors are really nice and they'll try to help you out with whatever you need. They're really enthusiastic and they make us feel better about what we're doing. And on the day of the show they're going to be in the front row in case we forget our lines.
Isabella: I felt accomplished but it's not quite ready for an audience – we've got to memorize our lines and our cues and where we're going. The hardest part is probably costumes because I'm not very artistic but I feel like I've improved in my art by working with other people.
Cynthia: I'm a Bird and was most excited about what my costume was going to look like. It's unusual and awesome. I'm called a "Pird" because "Purple" plus "Bird" equals "Pird!" I'm the only one who picked purple because it's unusual. I have a lot of favourite colours and purple is in first place with pink.
Anna: The Egg costume is very thick and there's newspaper on the inside and blue on the outside and it looks like a cut in half oval. We also have legs that we move around on the wall so it's like they're dancing.
DAY 5 – Flying high
It's the big day. After their dress rehearsal, the campers shake off their pre-show jitters and get ready to take the stage…
Catherine: It has been an amazing week and it kind of happens that every show we do becomes my favourite and this one just might be my new favourite…
Samantha: The dress rehearsal was quite fun. There were a couple of costume malfunctions but I think we can sort those out. Some of the Egg costumes' straps have fallen off but I think they've been fixed now.
Anna: I don't know what happened to my egg. I think it was too small so the strap ripped in the middle of the dress rehearsal. I am kind of nervous of it falling off in the show but if it happens, I'm just supposed to hold it on. But I'm excited because I really like the falling part and one of my best friends might be coming.
Cynthia: It's exciting to perform in my costume because in costume, it feels like you have wings — but when you're out of costume you feel like yourself again.
Kalil: I feel like we're not as prepared as we should be but I think the audience hasn't heard anything better so they're going to think it's wonderful.
Dennis: I feel excited. Even if there's a little mistake, nobody's going to really notice. And I think the show's going to be great!
Amara: I don't get nervous, I just get jumpy and excited. I get boosts of energy that might help.
Deirdre: I don't even think about my nerves.
Samantha: We learned opera singers say "toi toi toi" before a performance which means "spit spit spit."
Rory: Saying "good luck" is "bad luck" in a performance. If you said "good luck," it would be pretty bad luck.
Anna: I wouldn't get mad if someone said that but usually you can say "break a leg."
Amara: But I don't want to break a leg!
The Opera Garden fills with a crowd of excited families and friends as the campers focus themselves and make any last-minute tweaks to the costumes. Then it's time to take to the stage for the world premiere of On the Mend. Watch some clips from the performance!
The whole week has been building up to this moment, when many made their stage debuts. So how did it feel?Dennis: The final performance was great! I loved the acting and the parents laughing and all the clapping at the end. I'll definitely come back for a third year.
Isabella: Almost everything went to plan, except for some small things but I don't think anyone noticed.
Anna: It was really fun. My egg straps stayed on and I'm glad my friend could come – that added some extra pressure. But I liked my performance even though I thought it was going to be really scary.
Kalil: It was great. I loved the singing, I loved how we were so well-prepped.
Cynthia: I was really nervous and it was really exciting to perform with people who had the same likes as me, like singing, arts and drama.
The show may be over but the experience will stay with them forever. And perhaps there will be a little more opera in their future…
Samantha: I was nervous at the beginning of the week because opera is kind of like this really full out thing but then I got more used to it. I thought it was going to be really hard and tough. But in the end I found it quite good and fun. The best part was performing with friends.
Anna: I've made great friends even though we're only here for a week. At the start of camp, I didn't think of opera like singing, I thought it was just people making sounds with their mouth. But I really like it now. I like doing it with friends and I like that you get to act at the same time as singing. I don't think I'll be an opera singer when I grow up but maybe just a singer.
Dennis: I loved performing in an opera because it's more fun than just being in a play. You get to mix the singing and acting.
Deirdre: If I could give advice to kids coming next year, I'd say: DON'T SWEAT. Don't be so scared, don't be so nervous.
Kalil: I'd come back to summer opera camps, for sure. It's a mix of two things that I like – theatre and singing. And when you put them together, you get a musical! Or an opera! I just love that feeling of being on stage.
Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Register for our 2020 Summer Opera Camps here.
Summer Opera Camps Staff
Catherine Hume, Drama Specialist; Sonja Rainey, Designer; Chris Thornborrow, Music Director; Ysabelle Ferrer, Opera Camps Administration Assistant; Nishina Loft, Opera Camps Design Assistant; Christine Sutcliffe, Opera Camps Volunteer Assistant
Summer Opera Camps Volunteers
Yalda Homayoun, Mika Wee, Maggie Liu
COC Staff
Sarah Forestieri, Children, Youth & Family Programs Manager, Maureen Callaghan, School Programs Manager; Katherine Semcesen, Associate Director, Education and Outreach
Photo credits: Participants of the 2019 COC Summer Opera Camps Junior Company, photos: COC Staff


text:
Allison 29509886 12 Volt 6 Relay For sale
. Colaw RV Parts is located on 80 acres in Southwest Missouri near Carthage. Exit 22 off of I-44 near Historic Route 66. We are the largest RV salvage facility in the United States. We have thousands of used RV parts, motors, transmissions, motorhome front and rear axles, generators, hydraulic jacks, RV appliances, RV Chassis parts and RV body parts available. We bring late model salvage RVs in daily. Our website is colawrvsalvage.com. Our toll-free number is 877-548-2125. Our hours are 8-5 Monday-Friday and 9-3 on Saturday. Please let us know how we can help you. Check us out on Google Earth @ 10389 Cimarron Road, Carthage, Missouri.
Call Colaw RV Parts Aat 877-548-2125


text:
This engagement setting is set with two baguettes and six princess cut diamonds totaling 0.80cttw and is available in white gold, yellow gold or platinum.
*A non - refundable prong / fitting fee will be applied to the price of a setting that is purchased without a center diamond. The amount of the fee is dependant upon the measurements and carat weight of the center stone, as well as the metal type of the ring.This fee is waived when a setting is purchased with a center diamond from Adiamor.
Estimated Ship Date: Tuesday, August 6
Shipping Method: FedEx Priority Overnight
Comes Packaged In: Lacquered wooden box
30-Day Return Policy: Adiamor believes in complete customer satisfaction. We gladly refund, replace or exchange any unworn item received back in our facility within 30 days.
With so many diamond options on the market today, it can sometimes be difficult to juggle selecting
the perfect engagement ring with the perfect lab grown diamond.
Let us simplify the process by allowing one our of diamond experts select an excellent cut, colorless and eye clean diamond for your engagement ring for you while you rest easy with your purchase.
The item has been added to your wishlist.
To save your wishlist between devices, click below:


text:
Putting A Price Tag On Your Health
We hear over and over again how important it is to maintain a healthy lifestyle. But being healthy for its own sake isn't easy — especially when you're facing down temptation or battling procrastination. For some, the monetary benefits of a healthy lifestyle may offer helpful incentive.
Being healthy not only makes you feel good, it may also help you financially. For example, one study found a steep increase in annual medical expenditures for individuals whose Body Mass Index was above 30.¹
If you're wondering how your health habits might be affecting your bottom line, consider the following:
- Regular preventative care can help reduce potential healthcare costs. Even minor sicknesses can lead to missed work, missed opportunities, and potentially lost wages. Serious illnesses often involve major costs like hospital stays, medical equipment, and doctor's fees.
- Individuals can lower dental costs by receiving regular checkups and performing basic preventative care.²
- When poor health persists over time, lost earnings may make it harder to save for retirement.
- Some habits that lead to poor health can be expensive in themselves. Smoking is the classic example. A person who smokes a pack a day can spend more than $2,000 or more a year on cigarettes alone.3 Smokers also pay higher premiums for health care and life insurance, and their houses, cars, and other possessions tend to devalue at a quicker rate because of damage from the smoking.
- Obesity is another expensive condition that affects many Americans. In fact, obese adults spend 42% more on direct healthcare costs than do adults with a healthy weight.4
By focusing on your health, eliminating harmful habits, and employing preventative care, you may be able to improve your self-confidence and quality of life. You may also be able to reduce expenses, enjoy more of your money, and boost your overall financial health.
- 1. StateOfObesity.org, 2017
- 2. American Dental Association, 2016
- 3. Time.com, April 20, 2017
- 4. StateOfObesity.org, 2017
The content is developed from sources believed to be providing accurate information. The information in this material is not intended as tax or legal advice. It may not be used for the purpose of avoiding any federal tax penalties. Please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation. This material was developed and produced by FMG Suite to provide information on a topic that may be of interest. FMG Suite is not affiliated with the named broker-dealer, state- or SEC-registered investment advisory firm. The opinions expressed and material provided are for general information, and should not be considered a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Copyright 2019 FMG Suite.


text:
Hope K
If you like this desktop wallpaper on the theme Hope K, click on the "Install" button! The installation of the background takes a couple of seconds.
And now your screen is transformed, pleasing to the eye and uplifting.
Since the wallpaper on the theme Hope K is presented in all common formats, you do not need to edit anything – just enjoy the result!


text:
Hello I am a professional, caring and with great pleasure. With a delicious and big Toy for you. Massage and full kamasutra I am available for more information call me
24h available (( CASTLE OF BATTLE CREEK)) ... discreet and private apartment... my name is DASHA, a young trans of 23 years old, 1m65 57kg, ( VERY SEXY and FEMININE ), with a pretty face of angel, a beautiful body, charming, ACTIVE and PASSIVE. (Trans hyper sexy) for you man, beginners, bi, and straight curious. I'm moving : 400* no longer negotiable For more information call me soon.
I AM MAGNIFICENT TRAN AVAILABLE TO YOUR AVAILABILITY . BEAUTIFUL AND SEDUCTIVE IN GREAT SHAPE. I AM FAMOUS PORNOSTAR I PROPOSE YOU AN EXPERIENCE FOR A VERY GOOD MASSAGE TIME. QUALITY SERVICE FOR VIP MEN !*yk,!l;a DISCREET APARTMENT WITH ALL AMENITIES FOR RELAXING MASSAGES / PLEASE CONTACT ME ONLY BY PHONE IN DEMASK NUMBER. ALL DAYS OF 24 hours / appointment 30 MIN BEFORE QUALITY SERVICE FOR MEN VIP 100% REAL PHOTO NO SURPRISES
*** Hi clock ***..... My name is VIOLETTA, beautiful transexual, beautiful beauty of woman, young, feminine, super dominant . Open to all, my photos are 100% true! With me there won't be any bad surprises and I am waiting for you by appointment, for a sublime moment of total relaxation, to give you a soft and relaxing massage, and forget the stress of everyday life... I am a trans fetishist, hyper dominant, come and change a little bit of your habits with me. I am here exclusively and only for you. Call me quickly for more information and come see me with or without an appointment, I am sure you won't regret it. I can also feminize you on request, or prepare a scenario according to your wishes . Come quickly! Private apartment......Payment only in cash, I do not accept checks or credit cards or pre-paid top-up. Appointments are made for the same day.
Hello, I am a beautiful trans colombian, I offer you love, blowjob, 69, anal, domination, kissing, fetishism, whatever you want, call me to make an appointment.
KAUANY BACK TO THE U.S. WITH THE WARMTH OF BRAZIL !!!! My name is kauany, I'm an independent and I offer a pleasant moment of massage. I will know how to welcome you and make you live a pleasant moment... My services are of high quality and elegance ... Discretion assured. Intense gaze and a mischievous smile... Your satisfaction is very important to me, I do everything I can to leave you happy and come back. Always smiling and in a good mood image 100% REAL.... I'm waiting for you with a beautiful lingerie or otherwise dressed like my photos. I do not answer to numbers hidden SMS .... I will be fine with lingerie ... Kisses and see you soon.
Hello I am yandra a transsexual of latin origin I come from latin america I am here to offer heritic massage I am sex active and pasive I practice dominatris massage felaction anal embrase you seen the most informacion call me mrc
the most beautiful Trans of the United States. brunette with a body to make you dream of very pretty face breasts and buttock yellows all how a real slut. I'm a very beautiful and sexy transgirl passing through Battle Creek! My photos are recent and 100% real You want to spend an unforgettable moment to explode with pleasure. I am active and passive, that is to say I am without taboos !!! To bring us together to pleasure, I have a nice gift of 20x4 cm that you can lick, suck ... I'm really hard.... We will be able to share unforgettable foreplay !!! I'm available!!! Every day and 24 hours!!! I'm also soft and cuddly, if you're a beginner, I'll teach you how to get the most out of my big toy without any pain!!!! I receive in a clean and intimate place - Hygiene assured. See you soon.
✅ I'm Jheni , - young / Brazilian transsexual (25 years old) first time here ⭐⭐⭐ 100% real photos, Photos are not retouched with Photoshop. Complete MASSAGES, relaxation and relaxation. A Shower, odourless shower gel and clean towels are at your disposal.⭐⭐ Please do not contact me with PV or S.M.S. numbers. to be pleasant thank you to call me 30 min before coming to see me. a very fast kiss.
Sensual mulatta top model is waiting for you to give you the best whim of the day. Honey, take advantage of my exciting curves, my juicy breasts, my upside-down ass and my beautiful hard cock to give you the pleasure you desire. I am a beauty that will drive you crazy. Together we will make your fantasies come true. I wait for you 24 hours in my private and discreet apartment. Call me
CC la belle black sophia offers you a good moment of relaxation with respect and complicity in a warm atmosphere on Poussan.for more information please contact me .kiss
hello I am kiara trans latina colombian super sexy body narurel versátil well mounted 19 cm fotos reels
Hello I'm Vitoria Trans dominatrix 24/24 « « « « « « « « « HELLO TO ALL I am Vitoria 24h Dominatrix 24 years old, Brazilian, very pretty and sexy, passing through your city ... for men of good taste. I am very active Dominatrix, very well mounted and very hard, hard, soft domination. Blowjob, caresses, massages, moments of pleasure and heat. Several types of clothing poppers for femdoms, various toys. More information do not hesitate to call me. - Private apartment very discreet and easy to park. - Schedules: Available 24/24 -Appointment 30 min before. -Photo 100% Real. NOT surprise - Speaks American. I don't answer hidden number Nor to the SMS that if you call me
Trans beautiful exotic plant has skin and scented, with measurements of dreams ... beginners will find their happiness their great satisfaction..... Apartment clean, discreet and easy access, social time and strict hygiene.... appointment at least 30 minutes in front, only by Mobile Phone and Whastapp .
⭐Bonjours welcome to my profil⭐ charming transsexual very sweet affectionate and full of energy for men of good taste i invite you to spend pleasant and complimentary moments in my private apartment. clean and discreet. if you want to find good company come and meet me i offer a good moment of relaxation massage and total relaxation. i would give you a lot of pleasure with my beautiful body i receive with pleasure ... The good mood is essential to the success of our appointment. (shower and towels will be at your disposal) Beginners are welcome. I am very sweet and welcoming but I also offer you a service of...DOMINATION or FEMDOM Ps.I don't answer msg, whasapp or hidden calls thank you and see you soon.
Very sensitive, I love passionate relationships and mergers. A pure body of femininity, sexy curves, naughty and passionate eyes, pleasantly soft and silky hair, experienced hands. Very good education, I am a follower of love, humor, courtesy and voluptuousness. My services, relaxing massages, erotic prostate, natural blowjob, strip-tease, fetish, , erotic games, with shared pleasure, 69, body-body, , body ejaculation, tongue kisses, clothing production, deep blowjob, lingerie, strip-tease and more unlimited pleasure ... high quality service in a pleasant atmosphere in the greatest discretion so you spend the best time possible in the soft hands of an expert in pleasure. and sensuality
I can be Active or passive! It depends on you! I have a very cute penis of 17 cm and big breasts. If you want to have a great time, call me or send me an *S! Kisses Camelia
✅ I accept payment by credit card and cash. ✅ Air-conditioned apartment and good location not far from the train station ✅ 1st time in Battle Creek for a few days only Hi, my name is Lorrane I'm a beautiful young Brazilian transgender and I offer you a good time with me. Beauty, youth, sensuality and discretion for you moments of relaxation and pleasure. I am waiting for you with a very big surprise! I'm 100% real, I'm active and I'm very passive too (I love to suck and get fucked), appointments are always made 30 minutes in advance. Attention all the customers that mark RDV and not to come are directly Blacklister, Thank you for respecting my work and my time is very precious as yours. The mask numbers are ignored immediately. My rates are not negotiable 100$ 30 minutes 200$ 1h My work schedule is from 10am until midnight.
kelly beautiful tranny in Battle Creek for a nice meeting without prizer d tete call me I'm available thank you
bjr my name is samantha beautiful trans latina in Battle Creek fuspo 24x24h for you call me to spend a nice time agradable kisses
***DISPO EVERY DAY IN Battle Creek*** sylvie,transvestite(not trans) wall 48a,178 85 85b natural completely passive, submissive and enduring, I receive only active men. greedy mouth, deep throat bouncy rump, enduring wild man in bed welcome sm games possible under certain conditions swift, whip and belt at your disposal as well as various dildos and plugs. I can also be dominant but without sexual relations. kisses to all and see you soon.....sylvie
Hello Jesuir Antonella beautiful Trans photos.100% realle I am a sweet and refined expert, and I have a beautiful personality. I offer you a very good moment of intense massages. WITH CASAL I receive distinct men in a pleasant environment, with great discretion. I receive you by appointment 20 minutes in advance and of course in very sexy and refined lingerie. I will be your ideal companion for an unforgettable massage. All my photos are real, so you won't have any unpleasant surprises. So do not hesitate to call me ... without mask without
Hello!!! My name is Jessy Clair, I'm a transsexual quite naughty I must say... To introduce myself a bit, I'm 27 years old, they say I'm full of life, a mischievous brown, and not without charm. My origins come from the other side of the world, but I have kept my nature sunny, and it is with this energy that I would be delighted to meet you, to share with you an unusual experience, enriching, and let's say it, out of the ordinary. I am open-minded and particularly attentive to your expectations, so to tell you more, our meeting will be HARD or SOFT, as you wish... I can be dominating for thrill seekers, but not only that, because I can also be gentle for beginners, who would like to live a whole new experience in their lives, you are welcome... Practical: GFE, blowjob, deep throat, anal (active or passive), erotic games, domination games, body ejaculation, mouth ejaculation, analungus, *... The most: Height: 1,83 meter Sex: 22 cm I also wanted to tell you gentlemen, that I attach great importance to my personal hygiene, I would expect the same from you, and also, that you behave like a Gentleman, with respect for all. Waiting to meet you ;-) Kisses
Hi boys, I'm Mélissa brunette, pretty trans, feminine, a beautiful body with beautiful legs, a very soft skin and a functional limb :-) Well active+++ and can also be passive. AMERICAN SO NO COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS. I propose a good moment of relaxation and torrid at the same time in a relaxing atmosphere. I propose a good sensual massage as well as many other things. Quite open-minded so don't hesitate to tell me all your fantasies and we could talk about it. Kisses
Transvestite exotic dancer. Very hot and VICIOUS. Active and PASSIVE. I have a very hard cock and full of cum like the picture. My service consists of : Blowjob penetration kisses cuddly caresses. DOMINATION : tie spit hit insult whip,pee,cum. I have dildos. I receive at the apartment SUBWAY GUY CARPETS. Battle Creek 17th.


text:
*All Sunday Calls/Texts/Emails will be returned on Monday*
Raising The Standard Through Love, Confirmation, DNA, & Healthy Breeding Practices
Mini Bernedoodle Puppies For Sale To
Seven Hills
Mountain Dog Companion Mini Bernedoodles can be delivered to you with personalized care and attention.
*We also welcome visits to our home.
Transportation Map
The Best Mini Bernedoodle Breeder In
Seven Hills
If you're looking for the best Mini Bernedoodle puppies available then Mountain Dog Companion has what you're looking for. All of our amazing bernedoodles come from Genetic and OFA tested parents.
We specialize in breeding Mini Bernedoodle puppies and focus on quality and health as our number one priority. We work closely with small family breeders that meet our strict genetic testing and breeding criteria.
The Mini Bernedoodle is very gentle with older people, as well as toddlers and children. These dogs will adjust very easily to living in an apartment, although you need to take them out on regular walks and make sure they receive adequate exercise. Mini Bernedoodles range in size from 25 – 45 pounds.
If you go to our nursery page and don't see any available puppies or one that pulls on your heart, call us or drop us an email and ask when we might be having another litter.


text:
Jaidie Trench Coat - Black
Previous NextProduct Details
Throw on the hot new Jaidie Trench Coat! The perfect look for a chic night out
- Collared Neckline
- Includes Tie w/ Belt Loops
- Functional Pockets
- Non Stretch
- Lined
- True to Size
- 70% Cationic Polyester / 25% Viscose / 5% Spandex
Care Instructions: Cold hand wash only.
Wearing a Size 8
Height: 154cm
Bust: 35
Waist: 28
Hips: 40
Wearing Smallest Size Available
Height: 170cm / 5'7in
Bust: 81cm / 32in
Waist: 61cm / 24in
Hips: 89cm / 35in
Shipping & Returns
We can ship to virtually any address in the world.
Once you place an order, it will be dispatched ASAP.
All orders placed before 2pm Mon-Fri AEST will be dispatched the same day.
All orders placed outside of these times will be dispatched the next business day.
Depending on the shipping option you choose, all delivery date estimates can be found on our Shipping page.
Most Express options are next business day or 2-3 business days depending on your location.
Most Standard options are 3-5 business days for Australia and International.
Returns Policy
We want you to absolutely adore what you have ordered, if not we'e made our returns process as easy as possible.
You may return most new, unworn, unwashed items within 30 days of delivery. All returns for change of mind will be issued as a credit note valid for 6 months.
Final clearance sale items (which are marked down to $40 and under) are not eligible for a return due to change of mind. This includes items sold during promotions using discount codes or reductions in cart. If returned to online a $7 processing fee will be charged per clearance item.
Earrings are also not eligible for change of mind returns due to hygiene reasons.
If you need to return an item or would like more information on our Returns Policy, simply follow the steps relevant for your country on our Returns & Exchanges page.


text:
Build Your Dream
Get Start With Our Weight Loss and
Weight Gain Program
New Patient Registration
You may be looking for the Online Weight Management Dietician Nutritionist in Noida to help you with your weight loss or weight gain program, and you have come to the right place. It is with great pleasure that we introduce you to Dr. Namita Nadar, a certified Nutritionist with the expertise in weight loss. The majority of our clients approach us for a diet plan that is appropriate for their weight loss goal and thank us for helping them reach it.
We at Dr. Namita Nadar Diet Clinic Noida and Delhi NCR, along with the best dietician in Noida, make sure that you lose weight in a healthy manner with the help of inspiring diet plans, activity plans, and district plans. Generally speaking, a healthy diet consists of a wide range of food items and is well balanced in terms of essential ingredients such as proteins, carbohydrates, and fats as well as vitamins and minerals, Those of you who have constantly tried to lose weight and have tried different types of exercises and diet plans but have not succeeded, the Dr. Namita Nadar Diet Clinic could play a crucial role for you, because they can offer you the help that you need. You would do well to consult with a professional Online Weight Management Dietician Nutritionist in Noida to help make your journey easier at that time.


text:
Size: 4" x 6" (102mm x 152mm) Sheet
Row House Stamp Set work with:
Row House Die Set PPRS D063 die set.
PLEASE NOTE: The die set is not included with this clear stamp set. To purchase, please click on the link above for the associated die set.
This is a set of clear stamps that can be used with an acrylic block to stamp on a multitude of different media (paper, chip board, cloth, ribbon, etc.).
For those who are new to stamping, use of these unmounted clear stamps is very simple. Simply apply the back of the clear stamp to the acrylic block. You can then apply the stamp to the ink media of your choice and press the image on to your desired medium.
The benefits of clear stamping are that you can gather a rather large collection of images that do not take up nearly as much space as with permanent mounted stamps on wood. You also have better control over the placement of your image as you can see exactly where it will be placed.