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By F. William Engdahl 17 June 2009
Calculus has two main variantsderivative and integral. The Eurasian energy pipeline geopolitics between Turkey Washington and Moscow today has elements of both. It is highly derivative in that the major actors across Central Asia from China, Russia to Turkey are very engaged in a derived power game which has less to do with any specific state and more to do with maintaining Superpower hegemony for Washington. Integral as the de facto motion of various pipeline projects now underway or in discussion across Eurasia hold the potential to integrate the economic space of Eurasia in a way that poses a fundamental challenge to Washingtons projection of Full Spectrum Dominance over the greatest land mass on earth.
Since at least the time of the Crimean War of 1853, Turkey has played a strategic role in modern Eurasian and European developments. In the 1850s Ottoman Turkey became a target of Great Power imperial ambitions as Britain and France sought to take advantage of tensions between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in order to weaken and ultimately take vital parts of that weakened empire.
The Great Powers of that time, the empires of Britain, France, Russia and Austria began plotting the dismemberment of the vast Ottoman Empire. Debt was their preferred instrument. The foreign debt situation in Ottoman Turkey had become so extreme that Sultan Abdul Hamid II was forced by his French and British creditors to put the entire finances of the realm under the control of a banker-run agency in 1881, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA), controlled by the two largest creditorsFrance and Britain. By the late 1880s a new player on the Continent who was not part of this debt control, the German Reich, engaged the Ottoman Empire economically. That strategically challenged the vital imperial design of the most powerful empire of the day, Britain.
After Britain sank into a Great Depression after 1873, Germanys industrial colossus emerged as the fastest-developing economic power on earth with the possible exception of then fledgling United States. The political and economic fate of Germany and Ottoman Turkey were linked after 1899 with the decision by German industry, Deutsche Bank to build a railway connecting Berlin to the Ottoman Empire as far away as Baghdad in then-Mesopotamia. It was a land bridge for trade between Ottoman Turkey and Germany independent of British control of the seas.
A few Eurasian geopolitical basics
German industry had begun to look overseas for sources of raw materials as well as potential markets for German goods. In 1894 German Chancellor, von Caprivi, told the Reichstag, Asia Minor is important to us as a market for German industry, a place for the investment of German capital and a source of supply, capable of considerable expansion, of such essential goods as we now buy from countries of which it may well sooner or later be in our interests to make ourselves independent. Caprivi was supported by German industry, especially the steel barons, and by the great banks such as Deutsche Bank.
That Berlin-Baghdad Railway linking the fate of Ottoman Turkey to that of Germany was a geopolitically strategic factor in the events which led Britain to the First World War in a failed bid to preserve her global hegemony. Turkey then as today was regarded by powerful Great Powers as a pivot state. The danger in being a pivot state is, of course, the question of who has their hands on it, who moves the pivot for their own geopolitical purposes.
In 1904 a British professor of geography, Sir Halford Mackinder, delivered a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society titled The Geographical Pivot of History, which was to shape a history of two world wars and subsequent wars and power relations. Mackinder, the father of geopoliticsthe relation of geography and political economy and powerdeveloped the systematic axiom of British imperial power. It was simple as it was fateful:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland:
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island:
Who rules the World-Island commands the World.
For Mackinder East Europe was Continental Europe from Germany to Poland, France and Austria. The Heartland was the vast Eurasian land power, Russia. The World-Island was Eurasia.
When the United States emerged to displace the British Empire in world affairs after 1945, she also took the lessons of Mackinder geopolitics. The leading postwar foreign policy strategists including Henry Kissinger, were schooled in Mackinders ideas. One American disciple of Mackinder, Zbigniew Brzezinski, cited Mackinders geopolitical axiom in a 1997 essay in Foreign Affairs magazine where he defined the American strategic priorities in the post-Soviet era:
Eurasia is home to most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states...The world's most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world's population; 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia's potential power overshadows even America's.
Eurasia is the world's axial super-continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy. 1
That has largely defined US foreign political and military relations with Turkey and the newly emerging former Soviet Republics of Eurasia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unfortunately for Turkey and the republics of the Eurasian region, those relations have too often been determined by IMF conditionalities and by military alliances and actions more resembling the Cold War than an era of genuine peace and respect for national sovereignty. Until now the post-Soviet East-West relations have largely been based on a negative construct.
The two geopolitical statementsthe one from Mackinder in 1919 during the Versailles talks to divide Europe after the First World War, the second by Mr Brzezinski in 1997 at the end of a bitter Cold Warhave defined the principle relations of Turkey and the rest of Eurasia to the world for more than a century.
Eurasias Opportunity today
What will define the future for the various nations of Eurasia, especially Turkey, two decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact Cold War structures?
The answer requires some clarity on basic issues. First and most essential is how Turkey and other Eurasian nations define their bilateral and regional relationships. Second, how do they define their relationship with the Atlantic alliance, the system of political, military and economic relations built after 1945 around the dominance of the United States.
What defines the situation today is a growing realization across all Eurasia from Beijing to Moscow, from Alma Ata to Ankara that the pillar of the postwar order, the United States has become an increasingly incalculable partner and force in world economic and political affairs. Some even within the US speak of a terminal decline in American influence over the coming decades, with terms such as imperial overstretch. Its essential to understand the extent and nature of the current economic and financial crisis of the Dollar System if we are to make any serious calculation of the future.
The crisis which broke in August 2007 as a crisis in the sub-prime or high-risk segment of US real estate credit was in fact a first manifestation of a process of debt destruction which is bringing the United States into a new Great Depression, one that will last at least a decade, perhaps several. In its severity it will be far worse than that of the 1930s. Today the USA is the worlds greatest debtor economy. In 1929 it was the largest creditor. Today the USA public debt is over $11 trillion, growing at the fastest rate in history. The Federal deficit this year is estimated to exceed $1.8 trillion as the Treasury pours money into a bankrupt banking system to try to rescue a collapsing Dollar System. In 1929 US Public Debt was insignificant.
Since Washington abandoned the Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard convertibility in August 1971 it has been accepted wisdom in Washington that, as Dick Cheney put it, deficits dont matter. So long as the dollar was world reserve currency and the US was the greatest military power, the world would support the dollar. That era appears to have ended. The trade surplus economies of Asia, above all China are becoming increasingly concerned that the value of their dollar investments in US debt will depreciate as the volume of debt needed continues to soar.
In recent months China has begun exploring alternative investment avenues to replace their dollar investments. Russia and Brazil, seeking to reduce their dependence on the dollar, plan to buy $20billion of SDR bonds from the IMF and diversify foreign-currency reserves. Russias central bank said it may cut investments in US Treasuries, currently estimated at $240billion , and China says it may reduce reliance on the dollar and US bonds. China today is Americas largest foreign creditor.
This is no short-term impulse to dump dollars or a pressure tactic by the countries of Eurasia. Its the beginning of a global tectonic shift away from a sole financial center to many regional or multipolar centers over the next decade. As the trillions of dollars of US taxpayer bailouts have demonstrated, try as they might, Humpty Dumpty, the Dollar System cant be put together again, as it was even three years ago. Wrong economic policies, decisions taken more than four decades ago in Washington and Wall Street, have reached their relative limits. The world is in what Joseph Schumpeter once called creative destruction. The consequences for the future of Eurasia are enormous.
With the pillar of the US-centered Dollar System slowly collapsing, the choices for Eurasia begin to define themselves. At this point they can go one of two ways: Continue the status quo and subordinate national economic decisions to support the Dollar System. That means abiding by the rules of IMF and World Bank austerity. It means abiding by the trade rules of the G7-dominated WTO, even on issues such as GMO seeds which go against national health security. It means to subordinate national security interests to NATO, an institution created in the Cold War atmosphere of the Truman Doctrine in 1948. That, despite we are at a time the original purpose for NATO, defense against a Soviet military threat or Warsaw Pact aggression has long since become a relic of past history. Those four institutions are at the heart of the 1944 Bretton Woods Dollar System, as I have described in detail in a recent book.
The main problem for fast-emerging Eurasian nations with continuing this Atlantic status quo, sometimes referred to by Washington as Globalization, is that it now means going down with the Dollar Titanic over the longer term.
Emerging Eurasian Economic Space
On the other hand there is second dynamic economic perspective, still raw and unformed, but one containing everything necessary to build a vast zone of economic prosperity, a huge new market.
The catastrophic US military experience in Iraq and also in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2001 has led to much rethinking across Eurasia.
The fact that the new Obama Administration to date, while making rhetorical gestures of a change, has done little of substance to shift US fundamental economic and military policy, suggests that the real options for maintaining the American Century are few at this point. That is clear from the fact that the key players in Obama economic policy were the same persons responsible for creating the conditions of the financial disaster in the first place. The military policies in the new Administration are represented by the same persons responsible for past military misadventures. They are representing an outmoded paradigm that is in fatal decline.
In this situation of a declining economic influence of the USA the various nations across Eurasia are clearly beginning to look to new regional arrangements which could secure export markets, in fact to build new markets.
A market in the end is a political decision. Markets, contrary to what Milton Friedman taught, do not exist free in nature. They are created. There is no abstract world market. Regional or local markets can be and are created peacefully.
In the past several years steps to build new markets have become visible across Eurasia. Notable is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). According to Russian and to Chinese economists with whom I have discussed, the SCO is seen as an evolving framework to build a new Eurasian economic space.
It is very initial, but an important framework to economically weave the nations of China, Russia and Central Asia into closer cooperation. From the perspective of geopolitics, the SCO is a natural economic convergence of mutual interests of the republics of Central Asia. SCO founding members include Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia, India, Pakistan and Iran are observers. They just concluded an annual meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia where they discussed deeper economic, security and social cooperation. The background of the present deepening dollar crisis shaped the talks. As well the governments of Brazil and India joined after with Russia and China, to discuss mutual economic interests, including energy cooperation.
The Eurasian energy calculus
The future of any economic cooperation among the states of Eurasia, including Turkey, rests on the resolution of vital energy supply issues. Here Eurasia is fortunate to straddle some of the richest energy regions on our planet, in Russia as well as the Caspian Basin state of Kazakhstan and the contiguous Middle East Gulf region.
Following the ill-conceived decision by the G7 in June 1990 to place the economic reorganization of former economies of the Warsaw Pact including Russia under the mandate of IMF conditionalities, a role for which the IMF had never been intended, Russia today is struggling to regain a stable economic base.
It has a way to go. But Russia brings to the table huge positive resource advantages in terms of its wealth of oil and gas reserves and energy technology no Western country possesses. Given the rapid industrial expansion of China since the beginning of the decade, a natural partnership is emerging linking the economies of Russia, Kazakhstan and China increasingly around energy. The role of pipeline geopolitics in the economic future of Turkey and Eurasia generally is central.
Today the future of competing gas pipelines is at the heart of the Eurasian economic calculus. Here Turkey is in a position to play a central role given its geographic and historical role as a bridge between East and West, North and SouthEurope and Eurasia.
One key link through Turkey has been the oil and gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to the port of Ceyhan via Georgia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline are cited as part of Turkey's foreign policy strategy to become an energy conduit. BTC has also been a high priority US foreign policy goal to weaken Russian influence over Caspian energy corridors. By itself BTC has limited strategic effect on the regional geopolitical balance. Were it to be coupled with a second project, the much-discussed Nabucco project, the impact would definitely be a direct challenge to Russias energy role. The EU knows this well, which is why several member states have been less than eager to invest serious sums in Nabucco.
Recent developments in discovery and development of new natural gas reserves in both Azerbaijan and most recently in Turkmenistan in South Yolotan-Osman and Yashlar gas fields, located in the eastern part of the Amudarya River basin, add significant new energy resources to the energy calculus of the emerging Eurasian economic space.
Turkey-Russia cooperation or
Turkish-Washington Cooperation?
Turkish-Russian economic ties have greatly expanded over the past decade, with trade volume reaching $32 billion in 2008, making Russia Turkey's number one partner. Gas and oil imports from Russia account for most of the trade volume.
Turkey and Russia are already connected by the twin Blue Stream natural gas pipelines across the bottom of the Black Sea. Moscow and Ankara are talking about increasing deliveries through the network, which in 2008 carried 10 bn cm of Russian gas to Turkey.
More importantly, following a March meeting in Ankara between the Turkish Energy Minister and Gazprom chief Alexei Miller, discussions are underway about a Blue Stream-2 project. It would be a new gas pipeline parallel to Blue Stream, in addition to the construction of a gas transportation system in Turkey by expanding Blue Stream to interlink with the proposed Samsun-Ceyhan line, with a spur line under the Mediterranean to Ashkelon in Israel.
Russias Prime Minister Putin has also said he was counting on the support of Israel in the construction of a new oil pipeline via Turkey and Israel. The pipeline would link to the Samsun -Ceyhan oil pipeline, to be constructed across the Red and Mediterranean seas.
For Turkey, which currently imports 90 % of its energy, the projects would provide increased energy security and, in the case of the Samsun-Ceyhan-Ashkelon pipeline, generate significant transit revenues.
Discussions are also underway on possible extending Turkey's gas lines across its Thracian territory to supply neighbouring Balkan nations Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary. In such an event, Moscow would have gained a prime goal of lessening its dependency on the Ukrainian pipeline network for transit.
Russia also won a tender for the construction of Turkey's first nuclear plant recently, though final resolution is unclear at this time. Russias market also plays a major role for Turkish overseas investments and exports. Russia is one of the main customers for Turkish construction firms and a major destination for Turkish exports. Similarly, millions of Russian tourists bring significant revenues to Turkey every year. Importantly, Turkey and Russia may start to use the Turkish lira and the Russian ruble in foreign trade, which could increase Turkish exports to Russia.
In recent months both Turkey and Russia have taken steps to deepen economic and political cooperation. Cooperation between Russia and Turkey is seen by both now as essential to regional peace and stability.
In talk of revived Great Games in Eurasia during the 1990s it seemed Turkey was becoming once more Russias geopolitical rival as in the 19th Century. Turkeys quasi-alliance with Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia led Moscow until recently to view Turkey as a formidable rival. That is changing significantly.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently commended Turkey's actions during the Russian-Georgian war of last summer, and Turkey's subsequent proposal for the establishment of a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform (CSCP). The Russian President said the Georgia crisis had shown their ability to deal with such problems on their own without the involvement of outside powers.
Russians aim is clearly to use its economic resources to counter what it sees as a growing NATO encirclement, made dramatic by the Washington decision to place missile and radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, as they see it, aimed at Moscow. To date the Obama Administration has indicated it will continue the Bush missile defense policy. Washington also just agreed to place US Patriot missiles in Poland, clearly not aimed at Germany.
If Ankara moves towards closer collaboration with Russia, Georgia's position is precarious and Azerbaijan's natural gas pipeline route to Europe, the Nabucco Pipeline, is blocked. If it cooperates with the United States and manages to reach a stable treaty with Armenia under US auspices, the Russian position in the Caucasus is weakened.
The strategy for Washington to bring Germany into closer cooperation with the US is to weaken German dependence on Russian energy flows. With the recent Obama visit to Ankara, Washington is evidently attempting to win Turkish support for its troubled Nabucco alternative gas pipeline through Turkey from Azerbaijan which would potentially lessen EU dependence on Russian gas.
Turkey is one of the only routes energy from new sources can cross to Europe from the Middle East, Central Asia or the Caucasus. If Turkey decides to cooperate with Russia, Russia retains the initiative. Since it became clear in Moscow that US strategy was to extend NATO to Russias front door via Ukraine and Georgia, Russia has moved to use its economic carrot its vast natural gas resources, to at the very least neutralize Western Europe, especially Germany, towards Russia.
A Washington Great Game?
However the question of Turkish-EU relations is linked with the issue of Turkish membership into the EU, a move vehemently opposed by France and also less openly so by Germany, and strongly backed by Washington.
Washington is clearly playing what some call a deeper game. Obamas backing for Turkeys application for EU membership comes with a heavy price. As the US is no member of the EU it was an attempt to try to curry favor with the Erdogan government. Since the April Obama visit, Ankara has begun to discuss an agreement with Armenia including diplomatic relations.
A Turkish accord with Armenia would change the balance of power in the entire region. Since the August 2008 Georgia-Russia conflict the Caucasus, a strategically vital area has been unstable. Russian troops remain in South Ossetia. Russia also has troops in Armenia meaning Russia has Georgia surrounded.
Turkey is the key link in this complex game of geopolitical balance of power between Washington and Moscow. If Turkey decides to collaborate with Russia Georgias position becomes insecure and Azerbaijans possible pipeline route to Europe is blocked. If Turkey decides to cooperate with Washington and at the same time reaches a stable agreement with Armenia under US nudging, Russias entire position in the Caucasus is weakened and an alternative route for natural gas to Europe becomes available, reducing Russian leverage with Western Europe.
This past March a memorandum was signed between the Azerbaijan state oil company SOCAR and Russia's Gazprom for major deliveries of Azerbaijan natural gas to Russia by January 2010.
Azerbaijan is the only state outside Iran that would likely supply gas to the planned EU Nabucco pipeline from Azerbaijan through Turkey to south-eastern Europe. Russia has proposed South Stream as an alternative to the Nabucco project, also in need of Azerbaijan gas, so in effect Russia weakens the chances of realization of Nabucco.
In this Eurasian pipeline and economic diplomacy, clear is that Turkey and the other nations of Eurasia are grappling with new possible economic arrangements which will have profound impact on the future of the world economy. The EU as a body is at present clearly frozen in the dynamic of the old post-1945 Bretton Woods order. Initiative is unlikely to come from Brussels for a dynamic economic growth in Turkey or Eurasia generally. Interestingly, Eurasia is becoming the growth locomotive for the EU. Many Europeans find that a hard pill to swallow. It is however the reality, and a fascinating opportunity for the nations of Eurasia as well as for the economies of the EU. Ultimately, as well, a vibrant growing Eurasian economic space would be in the best long-term interest of the United States in a multi-polar world.
1 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, A Geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs,
76:5, September/October 1997.


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It's that time of year when, like many people, I look back over the past twelve months, reflect on what I've made of my time, and set goals for the new year. Dreaming on trains is a great way of gaining perspective, so that's exactly what I did yesterday, with a day trip out of London planned especially for that purpose.
For me, 2012 has been... intense. Throughout the year, this blog has been a welcome constant in my life. The discipline of committing to writing two posts a week has kept me focused and grounded no matter what else has been going on in my life - both at times when I've felt blue and needed lifting, or times when I was on cloud nine and maybe needed bringing back down to earth a little :)
Favourite makes of 2012
Moreover, as well as keeping me focused, being part of the online maker movement has brought me SO MUCH JOY. The authenticity and unpredictability of blogs makes them so much more interesting to me than reading a lot of mainstream media. Looking at the beautiful things people make themselves brings me so much pleasure. I love the internet, y'all!
Favourite spam comment of 2012, man
And producing blog posts myself is soooo satisfying, bringing me just as much pleasure as making my own clothing. Tomorrow marks my three year blogiversary. I am so happy that three years ago I took a risk, clicked "publish" and began contributing to such a wonderful community.
So I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to all my readers who have supported me and spurred me on to keep up my blog. Your encouraging comments and emails really mean so much to me. And a big virtual hug to the other bloggers of the world who brighten my days with their creativity, wisdom and humour. You guys are the best :)
Most unexpected comment (which is actually quite cool)
And you make me want to make this blog better! I have some exciting (well, exciting for me at least) things up my proverbial (homemade) sleeve to share with you over the coming weeks. The first is a blog design makeover which will go live tomorrow to coincide with the new year. I hope you like it!
Wishing you all a very happy new year!

subset: commoncrawl


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Site Last Updated 12/13/2019 Old School Mastiffs began in 1974 when we purchased our first Mastiff, Ch. Hannibal of Makar. Since then, we have produced many champions, two Mastiff Club of America (M.C.O.A.) National Specialty Best of Breed winners, one M.C.O.A. National Specialty Best of Opposites winner, one M.C.O.A. National Specialty Best of Winners winner, and multiple M.C.O.A. National Specialty Award of Merit winners. We have also produced group placing Mastiffs and a Best in Show Mastiff. We are Mastiff Breeders located in central Virginia (near Richmond) and we attend dog shows in the surrounding area (VA, MD, NC). We are members of the Mastiff Club of America and the Chesapeake Mastiff Club. We are constantly striving to produce the best Mastiffs we can and we are especially interested in combining true Mastiff type with soundness. We firmly believe in the importance of pedigrees in a breeding program and this site is organized so that you can view dogs that appear several generations back in our pedigrees, as well as the dogs we have right now, and any current or planned litters. We breed infrequently, and only when we need to produce something to keep to continue our bloodline. Please check our Puppies page for information on available dogs and puppies, and on our planned breedings. Because we breed infrequently, we maintain a long waiting list for homes. We strongly prefer to place all puppies as companions on AKC Limited Registration. The navigation bar below will take you where you need to go. |
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We can't find any available listings around here within your search filters. Try searching a different place or expanding your filters.
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Get priority alerts for newly available properties via email to ease your house search experience.
Discover which neighbourhoods in Nigeria are the best places to live.


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Welcome to JustSeniorSinglesUK.co.uk
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Having spent the past few days in London with a colleague trying to figure out the future of "digital learning", I couldn't stop thinking about what an LMS (such as Moodle) would look like if it adopted a truly simplistic design and setup. A design that "encourages", nay… damn right forces you to love it.
Imagine if the image above was your dashboard. And your courses were nothing more than "covers", like movie covers on Netflix or Amazon. And the course you last viewed was bigger than the other tiles and highlighted, and when you clicked on it, it resumed where you left off.
When you click on the course, you get one single, simple page. The course may be just a single activity, whether an H5P Project, a SCORM package or a video. It doesn't matter.
"But one single activity isn't enough, I hear you say".
Well, why not make lots of single activities? Like a library, whereby each course is in fact just a placeholder for an amazing resource. So we stop building long topic driven courses that look they are trapped in 2009 and actually build courses that offer personalisation where the user can chose what they want to learn. Like we chose what we want to watch.
Users could simply "add courses" to their library (think self enrolment), they can keep the course (if they like) or un-enrol when they are done.
"But we need to tell learners what to learn, I hear you scream!"
Netflix don't explicitly tell me what I should watch, but they certainly sway my hand. It's all in the presentation, and tagging. Something which Moodle can do really well.
No messy course formats, no ugly Moodle hacks, no specialists blocks, just a clever Moodle Theme and a change of culture (a revolution, if you will). We could turn off all the bloat, hide all the settings and have a front-end more akin with the tech we use daily.
I can hear screams of Moodle admins and teachers crying that "this wouldn't work in our organisation", but in the same vain, I can hear cheers from learners who don't give a damn about the backend, the gradebook, the pedagogical workflow of the course, or how clever an API is. They want to log in and learn. That's it!
Sometimes, less is more.
I believe this type of approach (although admittedly not suitable for all organisations) would perfectly suit the casual learner. Those who are time precious, who need to dip in and out of content..and who knows.. if done right…may "binge watch" your course resources like a box set of Game of Thrones. You never know.
I haven't built this yet, as I've been insanely busy, but the more I think about it, the more I can't stop thinking about it. It could be crazy enough to work.


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The Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, held a series of ministerial meetings at the Grand Serail. In this context, the PM met with Economy and Trade Minister, Amin Salam, to discuss the country's food crisis. This was in light of the citizens' mounting fear of a possible shortage of wheat for bread, in Lebanon, a staple necessity.
Salam told Mikati that Lebanon only has enough wheat to last for a month or a month and a half at most. Moreover, he confirmed that the Council of Ministers also authorized the Directorate of Grains and Sugar Beets to purchase 50,000 tons of wheat from abroad. This was in order to secure a reserve for another month. In spite of Salam's hope that citizens would not panic, the situation is depressing. Meanwhile price manipulation by merchants and stakeholders is rampant.
With the slumping dollar stimulating demand for energy, metals, and crops as inflation hedges, commodities surged last week, capping the biggest monthly rally in 34 years. This included the price of crude oil and wheat crop, among others, which the Lebanese government so desperately needs. Furthermore, due to Lebanon's highly strained relations with the Gulf countries, aid and donations have been hard to come by.


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The failure of international climate negotiations means that if all countries acted on ALL their commitments, the world would still warm by more than 3 degrees, according to Climate Tracker.
So what would a world 3 degrees warmer llok and feel like? Scientists draw on a number of disciplines and methods to answer the question, including paleo-climatology (study of past climate history), complex mathematical models of the world's climate system tested and refined against past climate data, observation of current events and specific research testing hypotheses. Mark Lynas surveyed much of this research for his book "Six degrees: our place on a hotter planet" (Harper Collins, 2007). Drawing from his work and other sources, the following is an overview of some of the scientific projections as the world warms. These are not all certain events, but they are what scientific research thinks is likely. A full set of references on pp. 301-327 of "Six Degrees".
Three degrees of warming
Three degrees may be the "tipping point" where global warming could run out of control, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar. America's most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen says warming has brought us to the "precipice of a great "tipping point". If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to "a different planet", an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet" ["Wild" magazine, April 2007].In the Pliocene, three million years, temperatures were 3 degrees higher than our pre-industrial levels, so it gives us an insight into the three-degree world. The northern hemisphere was free of glaciers and icesheets, beech trees grew in the Transantarctic mountains, sea levels were 25 metres higher [Climate Dynamics, 26, 249-365], and atmospherc carbon dioxide levels were 360-400 ppm, very similar to today. There are also strong indications that during the Pliocene, permanent El Nino conditions prevailed. Hansen says that rapid warming today is already heating up the western Pacific Ocean, a basis for a coming period of 'super El Ninos' [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 103, 39, 14288-93].
Between two and three degrees the Amazon rainforest, whose plants produce 10 per cent of the world's photosynthesis and have no evolved resistance to fire, may turn to savannah, as drought and mega-fires first destroy the rainforest, turning trees back into carbon dioxide as they burn or rot and decompose [Theor. App. Climatology, 78, 137-56]. The carbon released by the forests destruction will be joined by still more from the world's soils (see below), together boosting global temperatures by a further 1.5ºC [Nature, 408, 184-7]. It is suggested than in human terms the effect on the planet will be like cutting off oxygen during an asthma attack. A March 2007 conference at Oxford talked about 'corridors of probability' with models predicting the risk of the Amazon passing a "tipping point" at between 10 to 40 per cent over the next few decades. The UK's Hadley Centre climate change model, best known for warning of catastrophic losses of Amazon forest, predicts that, under current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of such a drought would rise from 5% now (one every 20 years) to 50% by 2030, and to 90% by 2100.
The collapse of the Amazon is part of the reversal of the carbon cycle projected to happen around 3 degrees, a view confirmed by a range of researchers using carbon coupled climate models. Vast amounts of dead vegetation stored in the soil – more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere – will be broken down by bacteria as soil warms. The generally accepted estimate is that the soil carbon reservoir contains some 1600 gigatonnes, more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere. The conversion will begin of the terestrial carbon sink to a carbon source due to temperature-enhanced soil and plant respiration overcoming CO2-enhanced photosynthesis, resulting in widespread desertification and enhanced feedback [Physics Today, www.aip.org/pt/vol-55/iss-8/p30.html].
And it's already happening. A recent study found that the calculated increase in carbon lost by UK soil each year since 1978 is more than the entire reduction in emissions the UK has achieved between 1990 and 2002 as part of its commitment to Kyoto. As well, some recent studies suggest that the earth's carbon sinks are smaller than expected and climate by century's end could be on average up to 1.5 degrees hotter than current "business as usual" projections suggest [http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0503/p01s02-wogi.html]. New research published in "Science" in May 2007 suggests that the earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback" (Michael McCarthy, The Independent, 18 May 2007).
Three degrees would likely see increasing areas of the planet being rendered essentially uninhabitable by drought and heat. Rainfall in Mexico and central America is projected to fall 50 per central. Southern Africa would be exposed to perennial drought, a huge expanse centred on Botswana could see a remobilisation of old sand dunes [Nature, 435, 1218-21], much as is projected to happen earlier in the US west. The Rockies would be snowless and the Colorado river will fail half the time. Drought intensity in Australia could triple, according to the CSIRO, which also predicts days in NSW above 35 degrees will increase 2 to 7 times.
With extreme weather continuing to bite – hurricanes may increase in power by half a category above today's top-level Category Five – world food supplies will be critically endangered. This could mean hundreds of millions – or even billions – of refugees moving out from areas of famine and drought in the sub-tropics towards the mid-latitudes. As the Himalayan ice sheet relentlessly melts with rising temperatures, the long-term water flows into Asia's great rivers and breadbasket valleys -- the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, the Mekong, Yangtse and Yellow rivers -- will fall dramatically. If global temperatures rise by three degrees, and that's becoming the un-official target for western governments, water flow in the Indus is predicted to drop by 90 per cent by 2100. The lives of two billion people are at stake.
As the Arctic continue to warm, melting permafrost in the boreal forests and further north in the Arctic tundra is now starting to melt, triggering the release of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more powerful than CO2, from thick layers of thawing peat. The West Siberian bog is estimated to contain 70 billion tonnes of CO2. Prof. Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Russia's Tomsk State University, says: "There's a critical barrier... Once global warming pushes the melting process past that line, it begins to perpetuate itself." The West Antarctic ice sheet would likely to irreversibly melting
Two degrees of warming
With two degrees of warming, the summer monsoons in northern China will likely fail, and agricultural production will fall in India's north as forest die back and national production falls. Flooding in Bangladesh will worsen as its monsoons strengthen [Climate Dynamics, 22, 183-204] and sea levels rise. But in the Andes, glacial loss will reach 40-60% by 2050 [Journal of Hydrology, 282, 1, 130-44], reducing summer run-off and subsequent water shortages will be devastating for nations such as Peru. At two degrees, snowpack decline in California will be one-third to three-quarters [Proc. Nat. Academy Sciences, 101, 34, 12422-7] and in the Northern Rockies from 20-70% [Climatic Change, 62, 75-113] , devastating agriculture as the water run-off declines. Changing climate will have a severe impact on world food supplies. While the Great Plains turn to dust, winter wheat will be able to to grow in central-north USA, but soybean and sorghum production in the south-east USA will halve. In central and south America maize losses are projected for all nations but two [Global Env. Change, 13, 51-9]. In 29 African countries, including Mali, Botswana and Congo, crop failure and hunger are likely to increase.With two degrees of warming, seas will be on their way to rising 5 to 7 metres; the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet will be underway [Climatic Change, 64, 61-75]. Greenland's critical melt threshold is regional temperature rise of 2.7 degrees [Nature, 428, 616], but with its temperatures at least 2.2 times the global average [Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L14705], that point will have been triggered at just over a one degree global rise. Rising Arctic temperatures flowing from floating ice loss are already at the threshold beyond which glaciologists think the Greenland ice sheet may be doomed; this accelerated melting is caused by meltwater penetrating crevasses and lubricating the glaciers' flow. The ice is in effect sliding into the ocean on rivers of water, an effect not included in models of the effect of global warming on the Arctic (New Scientist 25 February 2006]. Greenland's ice loss rate increased 250% between 2002-04 and 2004-06 [Nature, 443, 330-1], suggesting it may already be too late with a global warming of 0.8 degrees to 2006. The polar bear would be all but extinct; walruses not far behind. The tundra would be almost gone, replaced by forests as the permaforst boundary retreats hundreds of kilometres north. With a five-metre sea level rise, Miami would disappear, as would most of Manhattan. Central London would be flooded, and Bangkok, Bombay and Shanghai would lose most of their area.
With two degrees of warming, Europe likely will be hit every second year by heatwaves like the one in 2003 which killed 22-35,000 people, caused $12b of crop losses, reduced glacier mass by 10%, and resulted in a 30% drop in plant growth dropped, adding half a billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere [Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L22709]. April 2007 was UK's warmest April since records began in 1659 [The Guardian, 2 May 2007]. Concurrently Italy's government was facing power cuts following the mildest winter since records began, with rivers and lakes in the worst-affected north of the country have never been drier. It is being taken as the latest sign that Italy could find itself on the frontline of the global warming war [BBC News, 26 April 2007]. The Mediteranean will be subject to drought as rainfall drops 20%, and wildfires.
As more carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater to form carbonic acid, the acidity of the ocean increases. With two degrees of warming, increasing uptake of CO2 by large areas of the southern oceans and parts of the Pacific will have increased their acidity by 2050 such that the seas become toxic to organisms with calcium carbonate shells, for the simple reason that the acidic seawater will dissolve them. Many species of plankton – the basis of the marine food chain and essential for the sustenance of higher creatures, from mackerel to baleen whales – will be wiped out. Pteropods, as important as krill in some areas of the oceans, will lose their soft shells and die en masse, as will urchins and coral [Nature, 437, 681-6]. CO2 emissions, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life (NASA 20 February 2006) similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared: CO2 levels are going up extremely rapidly, overwhelming our marine systems (Washington Post, July 5, 2006)
One degree of warming
With one degree of warming, the Amazon will likely be affected by regular drought: in 2005 such an event meant some tributaries ran dry [Reuters, 11 Oct 2005] and in 1989 forest fires in a drying Amazon poured 0.4 billion tonnes of carbon into the air, more than five per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions for the year. The Amazon is near critical threshold [Phil Trans Royal Soc London B, 359, 539-47].With one degree of warming, California and the Great Plains states of Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, northern Texas and Oklamhoma will be subject to mega-droughts and desertification, a new and permanent "dust bowl". During the 1000-1300 AD "Medieval Warm Period" devastating epic droughts [Nature, 384, 552-4] hit the Great Plains, whole native American populations collapsed; in the Holocene maximum 6000 years ago, when temperatures were similar to today, heatwaves seared the western half on continent with 40 per cent less rain than today, sustained over decades [Climatic Change, 63, 49-90].
With one degree of warming, the north Queensland rainforest, very sensitive to temperature rises, will be an "environmental catastrophe" waiting to happen [Proc Royal Soc London B, 270, 1887-92]. Just one degree is likely to reduce Queensland highland rainforest by half [Austral Ecology, 26, 590-603]. The Barrier Reef is already subject to regular bleaching; in 2002, 60-95 per cent of reefs surveyed were bleached, and the reef is now doomed [Age, 30 January 2007]. Bleaching will become more severe and coral reefs will be close to extinction at 2 degrees [Jones & Preston, Climate change impacts, risk and the benefits of mitigation, CSIRO 2006].
With one degree of warming, world cyclones will likely be more severe; small islands states will be abandoned as seas rise (it's already happening). Ice sheets around the world be suffering severe losses: landslides in the European Alps are already serious as permafrost melts and retreats upwards; the Kilamanjoro ice sheet which has been intact for at least 11,000 years is on the way to disappearing. 80 per cent has been lost in the last 100 years [Science, 298. 589-93] and the rest will be gone by 2015-2020, bringing forest loss to the surrounding area.
With less than one degree of warming, Arctic ground frozen by permafrost for 3000 years is melting [Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L02503], and the floating ice that covers the north pole is disappearing fast, likely to be gone within three decades; it has passed a crucial tipping point of irreversible climate change [Science, 310, 627-8]. Winter sea ice in the Arctic has failed to reform fully for the third year in a row, and the Arctic's ice cover is retreating more rapidly than estimated by any of the 18 computer models used by the 2007 IPCC assessments; the shrinking of summertime ice is about 30 years ahead of the climate model projections [Geophysical Research Letters online edition 1 May 2007]. The Arctic may be free of all summer ice as early as 2030, a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region [BBC News, 12 Dec 2006]. With no ice, the Arctic region will rapidly begin heating, by as much as 12 degrees, putting further pressure on the Greenland icecap [Age, 28 October 2006]. Greenland's irreversible melting will result in a sea rise of five to seven metres, in as little as a hundred years [Environ. Res. Lett., 2, 024002,]. 125,000 years ago during the Eemian period, seas were 5-6 metres higher than today, at temperatures 1-2 higher than pre-industrial levels [Science, 311, 1747-50].
British researchers calculated that an increase of just one degree of warming would eliminate fresh water from a third of the world's land surface by 2100. The 2006 Conference of the International Association of Hydrogeologists concluded that rising sea levels will also lead to the inundation by salt water of the aquifers used by cities such as Shanghai, Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Kolkata, Mumbai, Karachi, Lagos, Buenos Aires and Lima. Within the next few decades rising sea levels will pollute underground water reserves with salt. Long before the rising tides flood coastal cities, salt water will invade the porous rocks that hold fresh water. The problem will be compounded by sinking water tables due to low rainfall and rising water usage by the world's growing and increasingly urbanised population [New Scientist 16 April 2006].
Four + degrees of warming
Four degrees• Hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon locked up in Arctic permafrost – particularly in Siberia – enter the melt zone, releasing globally warming methane and carbon dioxide in immense quantities.
• The West Antarctic ice sheet may lift loose from its bedrock and collapse as warming ocean waters nibble away at its base, much of which is anchored below current sea levels.
• In Europe, new deserts will be spreading in Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey: the Sahara will have effectively leapt the Straits of Gibraltar. In Switzerland, summer temperatures may hit 48C, more reminiscent of Baghdad than Basel. The Alps will be so denuded of snow and ice that they resemble the rocky moonscapes of today's High Atlas – glaciers will only persist on the highest peaks such as Mont Blanc. The sort of climate experienced today in Marrakech will be experienced in southern England, with summer temperatures in the home counties reaching a searing 45C. Europe's population may be forced into a "great trek" north.
Five degrees
• Five degrees of warming occured during the Eocene, 55 million years ago: breadfruit trees grew on the coast of Greenland, while the Arctic Ocean saw water temperatures of 20C within 200km of the North Pole itself. There was no ice at either pole; forests were probably growing in central Antarctica.
• The Eocene greenhouse event was likely caused by methane hydrates (an ice-like combination of methane and water) bursting into the atmosphere from the seabed in an immense "ocean burp", sparking a surge in global temperatures. Today vast amounts of these same methane hydrates still sit on subsea continental shelves.
• The early Eocene greenhouse took at least 10,000 years to come about. Today we could accomplish the same feat in less than a century.
Six degrees
• At the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago, up to 95% of species were extinct as a result of a super-greenhouse event, resulting in a temperatures rise by six degrees, perhaps because of an even bigger methane belch than happened 200 million years later in the Eocene.
• One scientific paper investigating "kill mechanisms" during the end-Permian suggests that methane hydrate explosions "could destroy terrestrial life almost entirely". Acting much like today's fuel-air explosives (or "vacuum bombs"), major oceanic methane eruptions could release energy equivalent to 10,000 times the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons.


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Munten, Verenigde Staten, Quarter
6.12 gr.
United States of America
- Geographical location: North America
- Current political regime: Constitutional republic with presidential and federal regime
- Current capital: Washington, D.C.
Brief history
From the exploration of the territory by various European countries from the 16th century to the 13 colonies behind the founding of the country at the end of the 18th century, there were Spanish expeditions to the South, encounters and negotiations with the local Native Americans – sometimes peaceful, sometimes far less so – French settlements in New France on the Northeast coast and beside the Mississippi, Dutch and English in the East, Russians in the West…a disparate patchwork which would prefigure the future materializing little by little. Ultimately, it was the British who would carve out the lion's share for themselves first of all and drive the Dutch and French out of the East and North of the territory.
The Thirteen Colonies extending all along the East Coast, from Massachusetts to Georgia, quickly shook off the yoke of the British administrative supervision and proclaimed their independence in 1776. The American Revolutionary War, led with France as an ally (did anyone say revenge?), was finally won in 1783. The separation from Canada, which remained loyal to the Crown, was enacted, and the brand new country drew up a constitution.
Next, an unprecedented period of territorial expansion westward began. In 1803, Louisiana was purchased from the French. Further territories were also ceded by Spain, for example Florida. In 1848, the Mexican-American War permitted them to annex the Southwestern United States. This expansion was largely to the detriment of the indigenous tribes, despoiled of their lands and sometimes simply massacred by the army as in the case of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890.
In the mid-19th century, there were three sets of territories in the United States: the Northeast with its urban tendencies and on the road to industrialization; the South with its plantations and system based on slavery; and the still wild West. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an opponent to slavery, was elected president and seven Southern states, a little later eleven, decided to secede from the Union. The resulting American Civil War lasted from 1861 until 1865. It concluded with the abolition of slavery and victory for the Union.
In 1912, the admission of Arizona and New Mexico to the Union brought the intraterritorial expansion to an end. The United States were complete. In the 20th century, following a frantic race to industrialization and an exponential dynamic thanks to immigration, the U.S. established its status as a world power by joining the Triple Entente in 1917.
Then came the roaring twenties and prohibition, followed by the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal, World War II, and, in the 1950s, global influence, consumer society, and the advent of the middle classes. Not to forget the Cold War and the Iron Curtain. The 50s (finally) saw an end to segregation. But it would not be without problems. In the 1960s, the Baptist minister Martin Luther King fought for equal rights, before being assassinated in 1968.
The first Catholic president would never have expected it – John Fitzgerald Kennedy lost his life, assassinated in Dallas in 1963. He was succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson, who spearheaded a campaign on the war on poverty. However, it was another war that reared its ugly head: the Vietnam War. Not long after, the Watergate scandal besmirched the reputation of both the White House and President Nixon. Closer to the present day came another war, the War in Afghanistan, following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Then Iraq.
In 2008, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States of America.
In the 17th century, the monetary system in the Thirteen Colonies was quite unstable. Too poor for an exclusive monetary system, the reference therefore remained for the most part, under the influence of Great Britain, the pound sterling, the shilling, and the penny, even though there were multiple currencies in circulation.
During the American Revolutionary War, bills of credit, (paper money in dollars which could not be converted to silver) were issued. In 1779, Congress introduced the Continental dollar. At the time, the word dollar referred to a Spanish peso or piece of eight coin. It is therefore possible that the dollar symbol derives from there and represents a graphic distortion of the number 8.
From 1787, only Congress retained the right to mint coins and define their value. Federal banks had the right to issue paper money on the condition that it be convertible to metal currency upon request.
The Coinage Act, passed in 1792, brought with it clarity. The unit of currency was officially the dollar ($), based on a bimetallic (gold and silver) system and a decimal system for its subdivision into cents. One dollar at that time was worth 371.25 grains of silver and 24.75 grains of pure gold. The coins were minted by the Mint of Philadelphia (The Mint).
The quotation on gold and silver fluctuated over time. The first "greenback" was issued in 1861. Some banknotes issued by the federal banks proved to be inconvertible, while others, such as the silver certificates, could still be converted into silver. Over the course of time, this confusion regarding the convertibility of the banknotes would give rise to a number of banking panics. 1913 saw the creation of the Federal Reserve System (Fed), the central bank charged with regulating the circulation of currency on the basis of a gold standard.
The dollar remains the currency of the United States up to the present day. There are 1 dollar, half dollar (50 cents), quarter (25 cents), dime (10 cents), nickel (5 cents) and cent (1 cent) coins available. In addition, there are $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills in circulation.
Great inventions
Among other things, the U.S. Americans invented the lightning rod (Benjamin Franklin, 1752), bourbon (Eliza Craig, 1789), the revolver (Samuel Colt, 1835), the telegram (Samuel Morse, 1844), the telephone (Graham Bell, 1874), the phonograph (Edison, 1878), the zipper (Judson, 1891), and even Tupperware (Earl Tupper, 1945).
Painting: "View of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C." by A. Meyer (1860)


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Access, collaborate, and monitor all areas of your financial situation in our safe and secure portal.
Access, collaborate, and monitor all areas of your financial situation in our safe and secure portal.
This information is not an offer to sell insurance. Insurance coverage cannot be bound or changed via submission of this online form/application, e-mail, voice mail, text or facsimile. No binder, insurance policy, change, addition, and/or deletion to insurance coverage goes into effect unless and until confirmed directly with a licensed agent. Note any proposal of insurance we may present to you will be based upon the values developed and exposures to loss disclosed to us on this online form/application and/or in communications with us. All coverages are subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions of the actual policy issued. Not all policies or coverages are available in every state.
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Bets Against Bitcoin's Price Hit a 6-Week High
The pessimistic sentiment around bitcoin prices saw the number of shorts hit a six-week high on Thursday.
The pessimistic sentiment around bitcoin prices saw the number of shorts hit a six-week high on Thursday.
At press time, BTC/USD short positions on the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex jumped to 37,891 – the highest level since Oct. 15 – and were last seen at 36,996. Notably, shorts have risen by 95 percent in the last three weeks, accompanying BTC's recent drop to 14-month lows near $3,500.
More importantly, the short positions remained elevated above 35,000 during BTC's oversold bounce from $3,500 to $4,400 and climbed to fresh multi-week highs on Thursday. Further, the long-short ratio of 0.73 is biased toward the bears.
BTC/USD shorts on Bitfinex
The data indicates that, despite being so deep into the bear market, sellers appear to be showing no signs of exhaustion. As a result, the cryptocurrency may revisit the recent low of $3,474 as hinted in the technical charts.
The bearish sentiment, however, could soon reach extremes as the short positions are down just 7 percent from the record high of 40,289 that was reached on on Sept. 19. Moreover, the extreme bearish positioning is widely considered a sign that the sell-off is overdone and often presages a trend reversal.
Therefore, the prospects of sudden bullish reversal, similar to the one seen on April 12, would improve substantially once the short positions reach record highs.
Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency assets at the time of writing.
Market app image via Shutterstock; Price charts by Trading View


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For Daniel Punday, Bernard Siegert's historical materialism - a difficult synthesis of historical, literary, and institutional analysis - falls somewhere between Derrida and Foucault. But see also the review in ebr by historian Richard John, who considers Siegert in the line of Walter Ong, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Harold Innis.
Author Lucy Corin opposes the emotionalism of genre fiction to the deeply emotional formalism in the fiction of Harold Jaffe, Patricia Eakins, and Janet Kauffman.


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Aug 27.23 Are there queer animals? Clownfish that change sex, and other species that demonstrate queer behavior read more
They need your help,
find out how
We are one with the Animal Kingdom and this network has been created to aid Animal Welfare and Advocate Organizations world-wide in their goal to assure all are animals treated with love, honour, respect, dignity, kindness and compassion. We are offering individual organizations the free online tools they need to raise funds and awareness for their individual goals while providing a forum to share knowledge, expertise and resources to work together to end animal cruelty and neglect through education and other peaceful methodologies.
We are providing free transportation tracking tools to aid in pulling animals out of disaster areas or kill shelters and safely transporting them by ground or air to safe rescue shelters to be rehabilitated, healed, to find forever homes or returned to their environment if possible. This Rescue Network is a Gaine Foundation project and is 100% fully funded by the C.N. Wylie Group of Companies.
All funds raised by the organizations goes directly to them. 100% of funds raised by the Global Animal Rescue Network will go towards providing the fuel and other necessities for volunteers to drive, fly or boat animals to the safety of non-kill rescue shelters and sanctuaries during emergencies and disasters.
Aug 27.23 Are there queer animals? Clownfish that change sex, and other species that demonstrate queer behavior read more
Jun 17.23 Can the outdoors help our health? WWF's Elisabeth George reflects on nature and well-being read more
Robinson Cat, 9 years
Here are some success stories from a no-kill animal shelter: Wayside Waifs


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Seán Lynch has been a republican activist since the early 1970's. The oldest of a family of 12, he lives with his partner Carol and has one son, Ciaran. Seán was released from Long Kesh prison after 13 years, under the Good Friday Agreement. During this period, he was O/C of the republican prisoners.
Seán, a fluent Irish speaker, was one of the people who established Bunscoil An Traonaigh in Lios na Sceithe. He was Sinn Féin organiser in the Fermanagh South Tyrone constituency from 2000 – 2011.
In 2011 Seán was elected to the Assembly and since then he has worked for all of the people of Fermanagh South Tyrone. He has been a member of the Regional Development and Justice Committees as well as being on the had-hoc committee on Mental Health Capacity Bill.


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We're heading out for our tenth or eleventh winter tour down the east coast and back. We'll be seeing many of our old friends in familiar venues but also several new places. We're excited to be playing for the Princeton Folk Music Society and for the Williamsburg Library later this week and for the Salisbury (NC) Library next week.
For our complete schedule with contact info and even maps check our schedule at http://castlebay.net/gig/
I'll post some photos and news as we travel.


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This documentation describes how to use Novell Storage Services File System (NSS) to manage software RAIDs, pools, and volumes on a Novell Open Enterprise Server—Linux server.
For information about using NSS on NetWare 6.5 SP8, see the NW 6.5 SP8: NSS File System Administration Guide.
Section 3.0, Installing and Configuring Novell Storage Services
Section 8.0, Cluster-Enabling Shared NSS Devices and Pools with Novell Cluster Services
Section 11.0, Migrating NSS Devices from NetWare 6.5 SP8 to OES 2 Linux
Section 16.0, Verifying and Rebuilding NSS Pools and Volumes
Section 20.0, Securing Access to NSS Volumes, Directories, and Files
Section 22.0, Managing Space Quotas for Volumes, Directories, and Users
Section 23.0, Salvaging and Purging Deleted Volumes, Directories, and Files
Section 26.0, Managing Backup and Restore for Data and Trustee Information
Section 28.0, Monitoring the Status of the NSS File System and Services
Section D.0, Using NSS on Devices Managed by Non-EVMS Volume Managers
Section F.0, Comparison of NSS on Linux and NCP Volumes on Linux POSIX File Systems
This guide is intended for network administrators. Section 30.0, Security Considerations is intended for security administrators or anyone who is using NSS storage objects and is responsible for the security of the system.
We want to hear your comments and suggestions about this manual and the other documentation included with this product. Please use the User Comment feature at the bottom of each page of the online documentation, or go to www.novell.com/documentation/feedback.html and enter your comments there.
For the most recent version of the OES 2 SP3: Novell Storage Services File System Administration Guide for Linux, see the latest Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 documentation.
For information about planning and implementing storage solutions in Novell Open Enterprise Server 2, see the following:
The Storage and File Systems
section in the OES 2 SP3: Planning and Implementation Guide describes considerations for choosing a storage solution and system-wide caveats for implementing the different storage solutions.
OES 2 SP3: Storage and File Services Overview describes typical requirements for system storage, and identifies the various storage products and services in Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 that address those requirements.
File System Primer describes the variety of file systems available on Linux and which ones are the best to use for which workloads and data.
For more information about services referenced in this guide, see the following:
The OES 2 SP3: Novell Distributed File Services Administration Guide for Linux describes how to configure and manage DFS services for NSS volumes on NetWare or Linux.
The OES 2 SP3: Dynamic Storage Technology Administration Guide describes how to configure NSS volumes as shadow volumes by using Dynamic Storage Technology.
Novell Archive and Version Services provides interval-based archiving for user data. See the OES 2 SP3: Novell Archive and Version Services 2.1 Administration Guide for Linux.
The OES 2 SP3: File Systems Management Guide describes the Novell trustee model and how to configure file system trustees, trustee rights, and attributes for NSS volumes on Linux and NetWare, NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) volumes on Linux, and NetWare Traditional volumes on NetWare.
The OES 2 SP3: NCP Server for Linux Administration Guide describes how to manage NCP connections for NSS volumes on Linux.
The OES 2 SP3: Novell Linux User Management Administration Guide describes how to Linux-enable users for an OES 2 Linux server.
The NDK: Virtual File Services describes the software APIs for creating software applications and scripts to manage NSS volumes and services on Linux and NetWare.
The NDK: Novell Storage Architecture Component (Media Manager and NWPA) describes software APIs for creating storage-related applications.
The SLES 10 SP3: Storage Administration Guide describes storage services such as the EVMS volume manager, UUIDs, Linux multipath I/O for devices; and Linux software RAIDs 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10.
Enterprise Volume Management System for Linux documentation:


text: The Bible speaks of Our Blessed Hope, which is commonly referred to as the Rapture. This two-hour video was produced to answer some questions concerning a discussion seen on TV by a good friend of Baruch. Although many parts of scripture are studied to arrive at a clear conclusion, the Greek text is used to show the meaning of the primary text of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-8.


text:
As being a hard core developer I had a look into the THM files. I STFW but could not find any resources explaining the file format. So I explored it a bit myself. Here is what I found together with some Ruby code.
Sony Ericsson Theme File (.THM) Format
The file contains several files concatenated together with some kind of header before the data.
- At
a null-terminated string with the name of the original file. Remaining bytes are all null. This is read withname = data[ofs..ofs+0x63].strip
. - At
several null-or-blank-terminated strings containing octal numbers. The number fields may contain blanks which are treated as separators as well. Parse them withnumbers = data[ofs+0x64..ofs+0x100]. scan(/[0-7]+/). collect { |n| n.to_i(8) }
- The only important number is the fourth (
body_len = numbers[3]
), which is the length of the data body in bytes. If this number is not positive then the file is corrupt. - At
there is most of the time the stringustar
and at0x0129
, but we do not need them. - At
starts the data:body = data[ofs+0x200...ofs+0x200+body_len]
. - After
the space is filled with nulls until the next address continuing a zero low-byte. We just skip them untildata[ofs] != 0
. - Repeat these steps until EOF.
. This is an XML configuration file and looks something like<Sony_Ericsson_theme version="4.5"> <Background Color="0xb5f8fd"/> <Background_image Source="desktop.png"/> <Desktop Color="0xb5f8fd"/>Sometimes it's not called in this way, but any XML file will do. The
looks like a regular HTML Colour Code. The Source
is a reference to an image stored inside the theme file. The important image types areStandby_image
- main image.Desktop_image
- background in the menu.Popup_image
- background of popup.- There are a lot more, but often these three images are reused in smaller themes.
File.open(filename,'wb') {|io| io.write body}
). Then browsing these preview images with some image utility and deleting unwanted ones is a piece of cake. The whole Ruby program is here. Have fun!


text:
D&D 5th Edition: Critical Role - Call of the Netherdeep
Can You Change Fate?
An epic Critical Role campaign for the world's greatest roleplaying game.
The greed of mortals has awakened a powerful entity long thought destroyed. For eons, this mighty champion of the gods has been imprisoned in the darkest depths of Exandria. His name has been forgotten, as have his heroic deeds. Languishing in despair, he calls out for new heroes to save him.
Inspired by the campaigns of the hit series Critical Role, this adventure begins in the Wastes of Xhorhas and leads to the glimmering oasis-city of Ank'Harel on the continent of Marquet, and from there into a sunken realm of gloom, corruption, and sorrow known as the Netherdeep. Above it all, the red moon of Ruidus watches, twisting the fates of those who have the power to shape the course of history.
Call of the Netherdeep contains seven chapters of thrilling adventure, new creatures and magic items, and a poster map of Ank'Harel.
• First major adventure module within Critical Role's world of Exandria, taking players from levels 3-12.
• Multi-continental story that spans the scarred Wastes of Xhorhas, introduces the continent of Marquet, and eventually plunges players into the Netherdeep - a terrifying cross between the Far Realm and the deep ocean.
• Bursting with lore and all new art depicting Exandria.
• Includes new magic items and creatures and introduces new rival NPCs.


text:
'Star Wars Episode VII' is being tipped for a December 2015 release date.
The new chapter of the intergalactic adventure will reportedly break with the franchise's May release tradition to debut just before Christmas, according to a new report by Badass Digest.
The website cites "multiple sources" claiming that Disney and Lucasfilm are eyeing up a release date around the 11th or the 13th of the month.
The move would give director J.J. Abrams much-needed extra time to complete the necessary filming and visual effects for the big-budget film, since production is only to begin in 2014.
It has also been claimed that the sci-fi sequel could be moved to a 2016 release date over concerns the 'LOST' helmer won't be able to finish in time.
Abrams is currently working on the script with the help of writers Michael Arndt, Lawrence Kasdan, Simon Kinberg and producer Kathleen Kennedy.
Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill are all expected to reprise their roles from the original trilogy, with Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid also rumoured to return.
Meanwhile, Abrams and his Bad Robot production company have released a mysterious teaser for a new project entitled 'Stranger'.
The video shows a ragged man emerging onto the beach from the ocean as a voiceover talking about endings and beginnings, before showing a man with his mouth stitched shut.
Fans are in disagreement over what the clip could signify, but a new TV series seems a likely option.
Tagged in Harrison Ford J.J. Abrams Simon Kinberg