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We Count, They Don't
By Tom Engelhardt
Counting to Three
At least Caesar was just commenting on reality when he wrote that "all Gaul is divided into three parts." Last week, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden attempted to create reality when an overwhelming majority of the U.S. Senate voted for his non-binding resolution to divide Iraq into three parts — Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish autonomous zones. Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post reported that the 75-23 Senate vote was "a significant milestone, carving out common ground in a debate that has grown increasingly polarized and focused on military strategy." Murray added, "The [tripartite] structure is spelled out in Iraq's constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution."
In Iraq, the plan was termed a "disaster" by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki; a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called the Senate resolution "a step toward the breakup of Iraq." He added, according to Juan Cole's Informed Comment website, "It is a mistake to imagine that such a plan will lead to a reduction in chaos in Iraq; rather, on the contrary, it will lead to an increase in the butchery and a deepening of the crisis of this country, and the spreading of increased chaos, even to neighboring states." In the meantime, Sunni clerics and various political parties joined in the denunciations. Only the Kurds, eager for an independent state, evidently welcomed the plan.
Cole caught the essence of this latest stratagem perfectly: First, he pointed out, the Senate "messed up Iraq by authorizing Terrible George to blow it up, now they want to further mess it up by dividing it."
But here's the most curious thing in this strange exercise in counting to three — simply that it happened in the United States. Let's imagine, for a moment, that the Iraqi Parliament had voted a non-binding resolution to grant congressional representation to Washington DC or to allow California's electoral votes to be divided up by district. Or what if the Iranian parliament had just passed a non-binding resolution to divide the United States into semi-autonomous bio-regions?
Such acts would, of course, be considered not just outrageous and insulting, but quite mad and, on our one-way planet, they are indeed little short of unimaginable. But no one I noticed in the mainstream of political Washington or the media that covers it — whether agreeing with the proposal or not — seemed to find it even faintly odd for the U.S. Senate to count to three in support of a plan that, at best, would put an American stamp of approval on the continuing ethnic cleansing of Iraq.
No matter how meaningless Biden's resolution may turn out to be as policy, it has the benefit of taking us directly to bedrock Washington belief systems — specifically, that it is America's global duty to solve the crises of other nations (even the ones that we set off). We are, after all, the nation-building nation par excellence and, despite all evidence to the contrary in Iraq, it is still impossible for official Washington to imagine us as anything but part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
You can find this same thinking no less readily available in another counting exercise under way in Washington
Counting to Five, to Ten, to Fifty
Right now, leading Democrats, as well as Republicans, are focused on counting to both five and ten, which turn out to be the same thing. In a recent debate among the Democratic candidates for the presidency, for instance, the top three (by media and polling agreement), Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards refused to commit to having all American troops out of Iraq by 2013, the end of a first term in office — five years from now, and 10 years from the March 2003 launching of the invasion.
Like much else of recent vintage, this 10-year count may have started with our surge commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who, for some time, has been telling just about anyone willing to listen that counter-insurgency operations in Iraq could take "up to a decade." ("In fact," he told Fox News in June, "typically, I think historically, counter-insurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years.") Now, it seems, his to-the-horizon-and-beyond Iraqi timetable has largely been subsumed into an inside-the-Beltway consensus that no one — not in this administration or the next, not a new president or a new Congress — will end our involvement in Iraq in the foreseeable future; that, in fact, we must stay in Iraq and that, the worse it gets, the more that becomes true — if only to protect the Iraqis (and our interests in the Middle East) from even worse.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks put it this way on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: "[The Democrats in Congress are] not going to cut off funding, and we've seen and we saw in the debate this week, there are going to be probably U.S. troops in Iraq there 10 years, regardless who's elected. So they're not going to win on this." Liberal warhawk George Packer in the New Yorker recently wrote a long article, "Planning for Defeat," laying out many of the reasons why Iraq remains a disaster area and discussing various methods of withdrawal before plunking for a policy summed up in the suggestion of an anonymous Bush administration official, "Declare defeat and stay in." Packer concluded: "Whenever this country decides that the bloody experience in Iraq requires the departure of American troops, complete disengagement will be neither desirable nor possible. We might want to be rid of Iraq, but Iraq won't let it happen."
Retired Brigadier General Kevin Ryan, representing the military punditocracy, offered the following: "I don't see us getting out of Iraq for a decade." In fact, increasingly few in official Washington do. (An exception is presidential candidate Bill Richardson, who launched a web video this week from a total withdrawal position that began: "George Bush says the surge is working. Gen. Petraeus says it will take more time. Republican presidential candidates say stay as long as it takes. No surprises there. But, you might be surprised to learn that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards would all leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq") Iraq is, of course, acknowledged to be the number-one issue in the upcoming presidential campaign; the ever growing unhappiness of Americans with our presence in that country is considered a fact of political life; and yet it's becoming ever harder to imagine just what the future Iraq debate among presidential candidates will actually be about, if everyone agrees that we have at least five years to go with no end in sight.
And let's remember that behind the five and ten counts lurks a count to 50 and beyond; the number of years, that is, that American troops have been garrisoned in South Korea since the Korean War ended in stalemate in 1953. Visitors to the White House have long reported that President Bush was intrigued with the "Korea model." As David Sanger of the New York Times' wrote recently: "Many times over the past six months, he has told visitors to the White House that he needs to get to the Korea model — a politically sustainable U.S. deployment to keep the lid on the Middle East." (Keep in mind, however, that, when the Bush administration rumbled into Baghdad on their tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in April 2003, it was the Korea model they had in mind — though they weren't calling it that at the time.)
This is the model that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also seems to have put his money on — a drawn-down American force garrisoned in giant, semi-permanent bases in a "stabilized" Iraq for eons to come. The Congressional Budget Office has already crunched numbers on what such a model would likely cost.
Behind all these counting exercises lies the belief that wherever we land and whatever we do, we are, in the end, the anointed bringers of something called "stability" and if we have to count to 50, 500, 50,000, or 500,000 and do it in the currency of corpses, sooner or later it will be so.
Counting Bodies
Everyone remembers when the Vietnam-era body count was banished from the Global War on Terror. Tommy Franks, the general who led American forces into Afghanistan (and later Iraq), bluntly stated: "We don't do body counts." And then, jumping ahead a few years, there was the President plaintively blurting out his pain to a coffee klatch of empathetic conservative journalists in October 2006: "We don't get to say that — a thousand of the enemy killed, or whatever the number was. It's happening. You just don't know it. We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team."
Well, tell that to the troops on the ground. There, it's evidently been déjà vu all over again for a while.
The recent murder trial of an American sniper from an elite sniper scout platoon operating in Iskandariya, a Sunni area in the "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad, has been filled with revelations. Among them, that the Pentagon has a program to put "bait" out like "detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition" to draw unwary insurgents into sniper scopes; this, in a land with perhaps 50% unemployment, where anything salvageable will be scavenged by civilians. ("In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," comments Eugene Fidell of the National Institute of Military Justice.) As it turns out, the snipers seem to have misunderstood the use of these "bait" items — or to have understood all too well their real use — and instead placed them on unarmed Iraqis they had already killed in order to create instant "insurgent" bodies appropriate for the body count that wasn't supposed to be.
As Private David C. Petta, told the court, according to the Washington Post, "he believed the classified items were for dropping on people the unit had killed, 'to enforce if we killed somebody that we knew was a bad guy but we didn't have the evidence to show for it.'" (The weaponizing of the dead was, by the way, a commonplace of the Vietnam War as well.) According to court testimony, the specialists from this sniper squad, "described how their teams were pushed beyond limits by battalion commanders eager to raise their kill ratio against a ruthless enemy…. During a separate hearing here in July, Sgt. Anthony G. Murphy said he and other First Battalion snipers felt 'an underlying tone' of disappointment from field commanders seeking higher enemy body counts. 'It just kind of felt like, "What are you guys doing wrong out there?"'")
And little wonder, given what was at stake. This was, of course, standard operating procedure in Vietnam too — and for the same reasons. Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell, for instance, had his own codified kill ratios of "allied to enemy dead" for his units in Vietnam. These ranged from 1:50, which qualified as "highly skilled U.S. unit" to 1:10, "historical U.S. average." And woe be to those who were just average. Units will be "pushed beyond limits" any time "victory" or "success" or "progress" becomes nothing but a body-counting game, as is happening again.
Once progress in a frustrating counter-guerrilla war is pegged to those endlessly toted up corpses, the counting process itself naturally becomes a crucial measure of success (in lieu of actual success), unit by unit — which means it also becomes a key measure of performance, and performance is, of course, the measure of military advancement. So, the pressure to be that "highly skilled unit" translates into pressure for more bodies to report as signs of success. Sooner or later, if you just report actual enemy killed, your stats sheet begins to look lousy — especially if others are inflating their figures, as they will do. And then the pressure only builds.
Every bit of this should ring a grim bell or two; but, as New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh commented recently in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, from Vietnam to today there's been "no learning curve." "You'd think," he said, "that in this country with so many smart people, that we can't possibly do the same dumb thing again…. [but] everything is tabula rasa."
Counting Squads
Prepare not to be surprised: In Iraq, the military counted bodies from the beginning — counted, in fact, everything. They just weren't releasing the figures back in the days when the Bush administration was less desperate about Iraq and far more desperate not to appear to be back in the Vietnam era of endless stats and no victory. But the "metrics" (as they are called) were always something of an open secret. In March 2005, for instance, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told an NPR reporter:
"We have a room here [in the Pentagon], the Iraq Room where we track a whole series of metrics. Some of them are inputs and some of them are outputs, results, and obviously the inputs are easier to do and less important, and the outputs are vastly more important and more difficult to do.
"We track, for example, the numbers of attacks by area. We track the types of attacks by area. [W]e track a number of reports of intimidation, attempts at intimidation or assassination of government officials, for example. We track the extent to which people are supplying intelligence to our people so that they can go in and actually track down and capture or kill insurgents. We try to desegregate the people we've captured and look at what they are. Are they foreign fighters, Jihadist types? Are they criminals who were paid money to go do something like that? Are they former regime elements, Ba'athists? And we try to keep track of what those numbers are in terms of detainees and people that are processed in that way…. We probably look at 50, 60, 70 different types of metrics, and come away with them with an impression."
And as it happens, though he didn't mention it that day, the military were also assiduously counting corpses. We know that because last week they released figures to USA Today on how many insurgents U.S. forces have supposedly killed since the invasion of Iraq ended: 18,832 since June 2003; 4,882 "militants" so far in 2007 alone. That represents a leap of 25% in corpse-counting from the previous year. These previously derided body counts, according to American officials quoted in Stars and Stripes, now give the necessary "scale" and "context" to the fight in Iraq.
As the USA Today report points out, last year Centcom Commander John Abizaid had suggested that the forces of the Sunni insurgency numbered in the 10,000-20,000 range. If the released figures are accurate, nearly 25%-50% of that number must have been killed this year. (Who knows how many were wounded.) Add in suspected Sunni insurgents and terrorists incarcerated in American prisons in Iraq only in the "surge" months of 2007 — another 8,000 or so — and it suddenly looks as if something close to the full insurgency has essentially been turned into a ghost resistance between January and September of this year.
(Again, Vietnam had its equivalents. After the nationwide Tet Offensive in February 1968, for instance, the U.S. military requested more troops from the Johnson administration. They also claimed that the Vietnamese had lost 45,000 dead. As historian Marilyn Young wrote in her book, The Vietnam Wars, "UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg wanted to know what was enemy troop strength at the start of Tet. The answer: between 160,000 and 175,000. And the ratio of killed to wounded? Estimated at three and a half to one, answered the officer. 'Well, if that's true,' Goldberg calculated quickly, 'then they have no effective forces left in the field.' This certainly made additional American forces seem redundant.")
By now, it seems as if everyone on the American side is suddenly counting in public. In August, the President, for the first time, felt free to become the leader of a "body-count team" and proudly announced, in a televised speech to the American people, just how many insurgents U.S. forces were supposedly killing in each surge month (though the figures don't gibe with the ones released by the military last week): "Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year." General Petraeus, of course, arrived in Washington to deliver his "progress report" to Congress with his own Vietnam-style multicolored charts and graphs to display; and the military, having sworn not to do body counts, is now releasing figures daily — often large ones — on kills in Afghanistan and Iraq that regularly make the headlines. And every day, it seems, new Pentagon databases and squads of number-crunchers are revealed. By now, it's a genuine carnage party.
Last week, Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post reported in far greater depth than we've seen before on the metrics squads run out of the Pentagon and the U.S. command in Baghdad. In the process, she found some interesting discrepancies between the findings of the Pentagon's data analysts and those working for Petraeus — "Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq" — and this became the subject of much on-line analysis at sites like ThinkProgress.org and TalkingPointsMemo.com. But perhaps more interesting than these discrepancies was the size of the overall military counting operation.
DeYoung, for instance, interviewed Chief Warrant Officer 3 Dan Macomber, the "senior all-source intelligence analyst" in charge of a six-person team whose only task is "to compile [data] and track trends and analysis for General Petraeus" personally. And that team, in turn, is but a small part of a larger crew "far from the battlefield" that, DeYoung reports, includes "platoons of soldiers in Iraq and at the Pentagon assigned to crunch numbers — sectarian killings, roadside bombs, Iraqi forces trained, weapons caches discovered and others — in a constant effort to gauge how the war is going."
Think of that for a moment. "Platoons" of military counters trying to count their way so high on a pile of Iraqi corpses and captured weapons that, someday, "progress" and even perhaps a glimmer of "success" might appear at the end of that dark, dark tunnel. That would be when, assumedly, the "stability" we represent would finally make its appearance. What Iraq would be by then is another matter entirely.
Counting to a Million and Beyond
Why would such "platoons" of counters be needed? One answer might be that the counting runs high indeed. On Monday, there was a revealing inside-the-fold piece in the New York Times on this subject. It was, on the surface, a modest good-news piece from a distinctly bad-news land. While the central government in Baghdad is now almost paralyzed, wrote James Glanz, its corrupt ministries unable to spend even small percentages of the oil moneys allotted to them for various reconstruction activities, local spending in some provinces may be significantly more effective (or, if you read the piece to the end, it may not). Here was the key passage:
"The capital budget for the entire country, including the provinces, was $6 billion in 2006 and $10 billion in 2007. But some national ministries spent as little as 15 percent of their share last year, citing problems such as a shortage of employees trained to write contracts, the flight of scientific and engineering expertise from the country and the danger from militias and the insurgency."
Think about that: "a shortage of employees trained to write contracts"; "the flight of scientific and engineering expertise from the country" There's something worth counting, but you might be doing it for a long, long time. Significant parts of what was once a large Iraqi professional class have, since the occupation, become "bus people." They have fled the country in unknown numbers — though a recent Oxfam report indicates that, in Baghdad, some hospitals and universities have lost up to 80% of their staffs. These are part of a larger exodus of staggering dimensions. It is now estimated — nobody knows the real numbers — that there are at least 2.5 million Iraqis who have fled abroad since the Bush administration's invasion ended. Up to 2.2 million more Iraqis have been dislodged from their homes, largely by sectarian violence, and turned into internal refugees.
And then, of course, there were the Iraqis who couldn't flee — those corpses everyone is now so hot to count, so eager to measure progress upon. As in June 2006 with the door-to-door study that became the Lancet report, which suggested that 600,000 Iraqis might have died violently since the invasion of 2003, we have another survey of the dead. Again, it offers startling figures; and, once again, those figures, though produced by a reputable British survey outfit, ORB or Opinion Research Business, which has been polling in Iraq since 2005, were largely ignored in the mainstream media. As Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. wrote in a moving essay at his libertarian website, LewRockwell.com:
"How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room debates about the US occupation of Iraq, whether 'we' are bringing them freedom and whether their freedom is really worth the sacrifice of so many of our men and women. We talk about whether war aims have really been achieved, how to exit gracefully, or whether we need a hyper-surge to finish this whole business once and for all…. But when 'we' cause the calamity, suddenly there is silence."
A sample of 1,499 Iraqis 18 years old and up were asked: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (i.e. as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof." Nearly one of every two Baghdad households claimed to have lost a family member and the firm estimated that, overall, approximately 1.2 million Iraqis may have died violently since the invasion, which, if true, would put even the Rwandan genocide in the shade. Other estimates of Iraqi deaths are lower, but still staggering.
And that's just the dead. Not the wounded. Not the mentally damaged or the shell-shocked or the deranged. Not those thousands in northern Iraq who are now coming down with cholera, thanks to worsening sanitary conditions and the unavailability of potable water. There — in a country which may have lost 1.2 million people to violence in four-plus years — is where our leading presidential candidates, many pundits (liberal as well as conservative), and significant numbers of Congressional representatives agree we must remain in some form beyond at least 2013, for reasons of "stability," lest a "genocide" occur.
If the polls are to be believed, here in this country only the American people disagree, and they obviously don't count for much.
So while we hunker into Iraq, the numbers-crunchers will undoubtedly redouble their efforts for the next "progress report," upcoming in March 2008, from General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. They are undoubtedly already preparing their bar charts and multi-colored graphs. Out in the field, the pressure on the troops to provide the stats that will make those graphs reflect "progress," that will allow units to achieve "success" and commanders to advance, will only increase.
The lesson of these last metrics-filled surge months is already clear enough: We count, they don't.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt


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This year, on Earth Day, April 22, take time out to think about how you could positively affect the environment. Here are my suggestions on how that you can make an impact (in no particular order):
Show Mother Earth Some Love This Earth Day
This year, on Earth Day, April 22, take time out to think about how you could positively affect the environment. Here are my suggestions on how that you can make an impact (in no particular order):
1. Save Water—Shower with a Friend
Here's a fun way to save water – shower with your partner! Not only is this good for the environment, but it will also lead to some good times.
2. Say Goodnight to your Computer
Turn off your computer at night instead of leaving it in sleep mode. This saves 40 watt-hours a day. If you hate waiting for your computer to boot up in the a.m., set it up to start automatically or turn it on and go make your breakfast. It will be ready and waiting for you.
3. Light Bright
Replace regular light bulbs with a compact fluorescent bulb. This not only saves energy, it also saves you money.
4. Be a Once-A-Week Vegetarian
We know you like meat, but it's good to go without one day a week – not only for the Earth, it's good for YOU! According to the Environmental Defense Fund, "If every American had one meat-free meal per week, it would be the same as taking more than 5 million cars off our roads. Having one meat-free day per week would be the same as taking 8 million cars off American roads." Factory farming is a leading cause of global warming because it increases the levels of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Those who eat meat contribute to the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Bring Your Own Bag! Plastic bags are not biodegradable, and are making their way into the oceans and even affecting the food chain. It's better, and more fashionable, to bring your own reusable fabric bag.
6. Ready to Recycle
We're not just talking cans, bottles and paper. You can recycle old cell phones, wire hangers, and more. You can also recycle by giving things away instead of tossing them. And P.S., we know that some of you still don't recycle. What are you waiting for?
7. Get moving
The less you use your car the better. Hop on your bike or walk next time you are going out. Not only is it better for the environment, it's also better for you to burn those calories! If it's too hot out, consider taking the bus.
8. Bills, Bills, Bills
Stop clogging up the mailbox at your house and start paying your bills online. Not only will this keep you from killing trees (you tree killer!), but it saves carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.
You can start out slow and just follow a few of my tips, but the more you do, the better it will be for our environment and our future!

subset: commoncrawl


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Movie Review: "Thanks for Sharing"
Sex addiction is a tricky topic – some believe that it's a genuine disease that deserves to be treated on the same level as drugs and alcohol, while others think it's a convenient excuse for a certain type of behavior – which is probably why so few movies have been made on the subject. But whereas 2011's "Shame" took a darker look at the effects of sex addiction, writer/director Stuart Blumberg's "Thanks for Sharing" is more interested in the recovery phase. As a result, it's bound to garner much less attention than the NC-17 rated Steve McQueen drama, and rightfully so, because this is pretty standard indie fare that's only elevated by its ensemble cast.
The film follows the intersecting lives of three men in various stages of recovery. Eco-friendly businessman Adam (Mark Ruffalo) has been sober for five years, and when he finally jumps back into the dating pool at the behest of his sponsor Mike (Tim Robbins), he meets the beautiful Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow), who has obvious concerns about his "addiction." Mike, meanwhile, is a 12-step guru who trusts so much in the program that he doesn't believe his drug addict son Danny (Patrick Fugit) – who suddenly returns home one night after a years-long absence – could possibly get clean on his own. And lastly, there's Neil (Josh Gad), a schlubby doctor who's been court ordered to attend sex addiction meetings and assigned Adam as his sponsor. Neil is in denial about the whole thing, but when he gets fired from his job for secretly filming up his boss' skirt, he decides to take the program more seriously with the help of a fellow sex addict named Dede (Alecia Moore, aka Pink).
As you might expect from a movie called "Thanks for Sharing" (and written by the same guy behind the dialogue-heavy "The Kids Are All Right"), this is a very talky film that relies even more than usual on its actors to drive the story. Luckily, Blumberg's directorial debut is buoyed by solid performances from top to bottom. Ruffalo is one of the most reliable actors working today, and though he doesn't disappoint here, his story is the least interesting of the bunch, partly due to Paltrow's underdeveloped character. Robbins and Fugit turn in some good work as the emotionally distant father-son pair, but the Neil/Dede subplot is the most enjoyable because we get to witness their recovery from the ground floor. Unfortunately, despite some good chemistry between Gad and Moore (in her most high-profile movie role to date), it doesn't get nearly as much screen time as the other two stories.
Regardless of your opinions on sex addiction, "Thanks for Sharing" works well as a general introduction to any sort of addiction recovery, particularly with its general theme of serving others in order to serve yourself. Of course, that's also its biggest problem, as the film seems more concerned with drilling the program's philosophy into the audience's heads than developing its characters, sometimes more closely resembling a self-help video than a piece of entertainment. Still, it deserves credit for its stark honesty, refusing to pull any punches or let its characters off the hook too easily, and that goes a long way in not only creating a more realistic story, but one that's more enjoyable than its subject matter might suggest.
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Tags: Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Gad, Mark Ruffalo, Thanks for Sharing, Thanks for Sharing review, Tim Robbins


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You can use the colors of fruits and vegetables to help guide your dietary levels of antioxidants, which is extremely important component for your diet.
Antioxidants are substances that help to cut down on oxidation — a process that occurs normally in the body but can run rampant and damage your body's cells (especially in the presence of toxins). Antioxidants help keep oxidation under control, and an overwhelming amount of research shows that including plenty of antioxidants in your diet will make you healthier across the board.
Here's a look at the rainbow of fruit and vegetable options and the antioxidants that you can find in each color.
Red fruit and vegetables
Plenty of red fruits and vegetables are available, and many can provide you with wonderfully healthy antioxidants. Take red kidney beans, for example. They're loaded with antioxidants! Red kidney beans have antioxidant levels that are as high as or higher than many berries that are commonly regarded as antioxidant powerhouses. Red berries and other red fruits; raspberries, cherries, red apples, and strawberries are excellent sources of antioxidants, too.
Red tomatoes have a specific kind of antioxidant that is particularly important for men. You can find abundant amounts of lycopene in tomatoes, and lycopene has been shown to contribute to the health of the prostate gland.
That doesn't mean that women should discount the health benefits of eating tomatoes, of course — just that men should keep it in mind when deciding whether or not to put a slice of tomato on their sandwiches or add another spoonful of sauce to their pasta.
Here's one other specific antioxidant that you can find in red fruits: resveratrol. Resveratrol has been shown to decrease the growth of cancer cells, help nerve cells stay healthy in diabetics, and also decrease heart disease by helping to maintain blood vessels. You can find resveratrol in red grape skins and also in red wine.
Blue and purple vegetables and fruit
Fresh vegetables and fruits that are blue or purple may not be as common as those in shades of green or red, but a few blue and purple foods can provide you with some terrific antioxidant benefits.
Start with plums and their dried counterparts, prunes. Both make great snacks, and they're packed with antioxidants. You can also go for blackberries; they're a little tough to find out of season, but when they're available try to mix them into your diet for an antioxidant boost.
The king of the antioxidant-rich blue foods is the blueberry. You often hear blueberries referred to as one of the "superfoods," and that's not just clever marketing. Blueberries are chock-full of beneficial antioxidants, and they also contain many of the vitamins you need to stay healthy. Load up on blueberries when you can, and keep in mind that the darker the blueberry, the more healthy materials you can find inside.
On the vegetable side of things, try eggplant for a blue or purple food that can provide you with an antioxidant kick.
Orange produce for antioxidant power
Orange (and yellow) members of the fruit and vegetable groups are famous for containing beta-carotene, an antioxidant that is thought to help protect against eye disease and some forms of cancer. If you're looking to give your beta-carotene levels a boost, try orange foods like carrots, pumpkin, and winter squash. Orange and yellow fruits that contain ample antioxidants include nectarines, oranges, lemons, peaches, and grapefruit.
Green vegetables are good for you
Green vegetables make up a big part of the produce section, and they should also make up a substantial part of your diet. From peas to turnip greens to Brussels sprouts and even sea vegetables like kelp, green vegetables help you give your body all sorts of healthy substances, antioxidants included.
Broccoli packs an extremely healthy punch. Broccoli contains lots of sulforaphane, an antioxidant that has been receiving a lot of attention from researchers lately because it helps the body get rid of toxins, supports the immune system, and can even slow down tumors.


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The Paleocene, before the PETM, was warmer than now, it's been hard to pin down by how much. Robert Rhode has produced this useful graphic, which suggests temperatures were of the order of 4 degC higher than preindustrial, however the PETM itself seems to have involved a temperature increase of about 6degC, the temperature rise in that graphic is much less. The PETM was a minor extinction event, there were no large losses of species on land, and the ocean extinction was restricted to bottom dwellers in the deeps of the oceans in certain regions, probably due to anoxia, which was likely due to changes in ocean overturning circulation. However with regards land species, during the PETM, mammals radiated profusely which indicates environmental stress, changes in the environment driving evolution to suit new niches and niches made available by the decline or movement of other species.
At the time of the PETM the Arctic was temperate, with temperatures not falling below zero, even during the winter. This presents the equable climates problem, in that models are not able to reproduce conditions; they produce tropics that are too hot, or poles that are too cold. Abbot & Tzipperman propose a cloud radiative feedback, with carbon dioxide levels and ocean/atmospheric heat flux keeping a blanket of cloud over the Arctic throughout the winter. The cloud backradiates infra-red radiation to the surface, keeping the region warm. In their 2007 paper they find that atmospheric heat transport of 140W/m^2 plus doubled CO2 could keep the Arctic ice free during the winter, for comparison, current atmospheric heat transport is of the order of 100W/m^2 at 80degN. Given what appears to be the unfolding of a rapid transition of the Arctic to a seasonally sea ice free state, finding of possible bifurcations (tipping points) in the transition to a perennially sea ice free state (Eisenman 2011), and the increasing evidence that methane hydrates in the Arctic are thawing, plus the near certainty that they will more actively do so in the decades to come: The prospect of substantial emissions of methane from the Arctic is a very real prospect. So the question posed is can we avoid a re-run of the PETM?
The following graphic is taken from this article. It's worth noting that it states 25 petagrams are being emitted each year, that's 25 gigatons (Gt the unit I'll use in this post). However from the CDIAC data used in the following paragraph, actual emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 8.75 Gt carbon, or 32.1 Gt CO2. This shows visually what Skeptical Science have noted, based on Cui et al, 2011, that current emissions dwarf the PETM's rate of emission, ref.
Fig 2. Comparison of current emissions and PETM emissions.
Using data from CDIAC: Total human emissions from fossil fuels are 346.8Gt carbon up to 2008, of this about 50% is from coal, 35% from oil. Gas totals 12%, but by 2008 was contributing 18%. Peak Oil is about now, but we may face a long plateau due to non-conventional fossil oil production because of the high price making previously uneconomic sources feasible. So we're about half the way through Oil. Gas is decades off peaking, we can conservatively double that. Coal again can be at least doubled. So the bare minimum, using the most pessimistic assumptions about fossil fuel availability, that we can emit from fossil fuels is about 693.6Gt, given the uncertainties I'll round that to 700Gt. If we take preindustrial to be 260ppm, then a doubling is 520ppm, coincidentally our bare minimum emissions should be able to double CO2 levels because the current ~390ppm is halfway to 520ppm from 260ppm. Assuming a 3degC climate sensitivity if we burn this minimum amount of fossil fuels we'll commit ourselves to well over 2 degrees warming from pre-industrial, the equilibrium warming takes centuries to manifest itself. However that still saves us from a re-run of the PETM, right? Because even if we double our minimum 700Gt fossil fuels to give a total of 1400Gt, that still only takes us under one third of the way to equivalent PETM emissions.
Well before we look at the issue of methane emissions it's as well to look more closely at the 5000Gt target for total emissions during the PETM. The source of the 5000Gt seems to be a 2006 paper from Higgins & Schrag. They examine the PETM using data available at the time, they discount methane hydrates as a major player and focus instead on thermogenic methane and CO2 emissions from vulcanism due to the seperation of Greenland from Europe. These sources have a lower d13C isotopic signature, the d13C signature is a measure of the ratio of carbon 12 and carbon 13 isotopes relative to a standard. The lower the d13C signature the more depleted in 13C, as a heavier isotope 13C is energetically less favoured in chemical processes, hence it is depleted in certain biological processes. Because the carbon released during the metamorphosis of rocks surrounding the volcanic activity would have been less 13C depleted than an equivalent methane source, more of it would be needed to explain the excursion in d13C observed during the PETM, hence the 5000Gt. Whereas Higgins & Schrag note that Dickens had previously found that only 1000 to 2000Gt of methane would be needed to reproduce the PETM d13C excursion.
Fig 1. The PETM d13C excursion, from figure 1 of Higgins & Schrag 2006.
So why do Higgins & Schrag find that oceanic clathrate methane was probably not a serious player in the PETM?
The first issue has been subsequently addressed in later work: Archer & Buffet previously estimated low clathrate inventories in the Eocene, due to the warmth of the oceans. However last year Gu et al published a study in which they found that because of the warmth of the oceans, biological activity, from carbon deposition on the ocean floor to methanogenic bacteria, was enhanced. So whereas now methanogenesis is found in cold deeps, during the Palaeocene it was theoretically capable of sustaining large deposits of clathrates, possibly larger than today, in warmer seas.
The second issue is large changes in the Calcite Compensation Depth (CCD). The CCD is the depth below which the disolution of calcite exceeds the deposition of calcite through the ocean column, this leads to a deficit of calcite at depth. During the PETM in the South Atlantic the CCD rose by 2000m in less than 10k years. Higgins & Schrag take this as indicative of a massive influx of CO2, due to an equally massive release of CO2. However a different interpretation may be offered by Sexton et al in their 2011 paper.
Sexton et al examine warming events, hyperthemals, during the Eocene. The PETM was a hyperthermal but was substantially different from the Eocene hyperthermals that they examined; the recovery from the PETM took over 100k years, whereas the other Eocene hyperthemals were up to around 40k years in duration. This suggests that whereas the PETM involved an external source of carbon, such as methane hydrates, these shorter events did not involve such a source. Sexton et al propose that the hyperthermals involved movement of carbon between the atmosphere/land/ocean reservoirs, hence whereas an external perturbation would need to be removed by geological timescale processes such as weathering, the carbon in the hyperthermals could move back from atmosphere to ocean/land, a much quicker process. Crucially this process resulted in substantial changes in the CCD, with dissolution intensity being found to be greatest in the South Atlantic. Sexton et al propose that changes in meridional overturning were probably responsible.
So it seems that the main objections of Higgins and Schraggs that lead to them placing methane clathrates aside to examine the greater implied emissions of volcanic activity have since been re-examined. Unfortunately that puts methane clathrates back 'on the table'. Furthermore it reduces the total carbon burden required to re-run the PETM, emissions may have been of the order of 2000Gt, rather than 5000Gt. So the low-end estimate of 700Gt becomes a more feasible initiator for a total 2000Gt emission. It's worth noting that the fossil fuel emissions don't take into account natural processes coming into play and emitting CO2 or methane into the atmosphere, or changing the amount sequestered in the deep ocean.
Archer 2006 finds that for ocean sediment methane at present:
The data seem strong enough to say that the Kvenvolden/MacDonald "consensus" value of 10,000 Gton is probably too high. The very high 78,000 Gton estimate from Klauda and Sandler is inexplicable. A potential range of hydrate inventories must span about 500-3000 Gton C, with the inclusion of bubble methane adding perhaps a similar amount.But this is just ocean methane hydrates. Lawrence et al find that during Rapid Ice Loss Events warming extends over the areas covered by land permafrost. Weather variability means that the Siberian pattern in NCEP/NCAR hasn't manifested itself as shown below, but the Canadian pattern is strong.
Fig 2. Figure 1c of Lawrence et al 2008, showing October/November/December warming in models during and outside of Rapid Ice Loss Events.
I think we are seeing the start of a process that, in terms of human timescales, will continue indefinitely. The millennia to come will see vast stores of frozen carbon in the Arctic melting and being release as carbon dioxide and methane.
But will what we face be as bad as the PETM? We're starting from lower baseline temperatures, and we probably haven't enough fossil fuels to get atmospheric CO2 up to near 2000ppm, so on the face of it, it seems it won't be as bad. The oceans are certainly colder, for example in the tropics at Demerara ridge temperatures were around 13degC at 3000m depth, equivalent temperatures are today around 5degC. However contrary to this, I think a re-run of the PETM in terms of species loss, and equivalent human impacts is the best scenario we can hope for. The reality will probably be much worse.
In opening this post I mentioned that the PETM was a minor extinction event, around 40% of benthic (deep ocean floor) foraminifera were lost. It's worth comparing that with the current situation, since the 1950s about 40% of phytoplankton have been lost from the non-coastal regions of almost all the oceans (Boyce et al, 2010), as all readers of this blog will know, phytoplankton are a major base of the ocean food chain. Then we have the effect of overfishing.
Then on land we're already seeing Hansen's Climate Dice come into play, I've blogged on it here, some 10% of the globe are now covered by 3 standard deviation warming events. We're seeing mid latitude effects from Arctic amplification that may be involved in floods, persistent weather patterns, and extreme winters. Tamino has done an excellent job of cataloguing weather disaster increases, wildfires, heatwaves, that's not to mention other bloggers and scientists doing sterling work cataloguing what's going on. These changes are happening after only around 0.8degC of AGW, with the last decade seeing surface warming abate due to the effects of the El Nino, sulphate pollution, and low solar output, e.g. Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 & Kaufman et al 2011. What will happen by the middle of this century? How much acceleration of warming, and further global weirding will the coming decades bring?
As the first graphic of this post shows, the pace of change we are forcing is far greater than in the PETM. With the impacts above intensifying, human agriculture covering 40% of land, and increasingly impinging on what wilderness that is still out there, we will probably see a greater mass extinction then during the PETM. We're giving natural systems neither the space nor time to adapt. Furthermore the super-interglacial warming we are prompting is driving the planet from a glacial/interglacial ecosystem, evolved over the last several million years, to a much warmer state, whereas the PETM was a warm event from an already warm baseline.
I still remain unconvinced by the claims of some that within decades we'll see a catastrophic methane blow out, it's un-necessary to reiterate my reasoning which is provided here, and here. The issue is not the amount of free gaseous methane that is available for a Hollywood disaster movie style blow out, but the amount of fossil clathrates stored during the Quarternary, this has the potential as it melts in the super-interglacial warmth of the anthropocene to massively amplify our emissions. And as Sexton et al find, if we warm the oceans enough they may add to the effective emissions as the overturning circulation reduces, causing abyssal anoxia and reducing sequestration of carbon into the abyssal deeps. But the PETM shows that this is a slow process when measured in terms of a human lifetime. Both the clathrate containing sediments and the oceans have large thermal mass and take a long time to respond to warming.
The current events in the Arctic region presage the awakening of a slow, cumbrous, but inexorable beast that will be with us for longer than human history, gradually adding to the damage we have done, warming the climate well beyond 3 degrees. The idea of stopping at 350ppm, or 2 degrees, of staying in safe levels of AGW will be totally out of our hands within a matter of decades. Indeed in view of what is practically achievable, given the time needed to shift from fossil fuels, time to develop and roll out alternatives, the problem that as the rich move off fossil fuels the price will drop, and the poor will take up the slack in consumption: It is already too late in terms of the "art of the possible". The notion of reducing to 350ppm, or limiting to 2 degrees is as dead as the broader aim of avoiding dangerous climate change.
How much further we drive the process depends on how much of the available fossil fuels we burn. But we are already at the stage where, barring a miracle, we are committed to dangerous climate change. As I fully expect us to burn all the fossil fuels economically and technically available, I expect that the best outcome is a re-run of the PETM.
The good news? We haven't anywhere near enough fossil fuels to re run the End Permian extinction event. That we cannot do so due to circumstance rather than due to intelligent choice is not something humanity can feel justly proud of.
Abbot & Tziperman, 2007, "Sea ice, high-latitude convection, and equable climates." PDF
Archer, 2006, "Destabilisation of Methane Hydrates: A Risk Assessment." PDF
Boyce et al, 2010, "Global phytoplankton decline over the past century." PDF
Cui et al, 2011, "Slow release of fossil carbon during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum" PDF
Eisenman, 2012, "Factors controlling the bifurcation structure of sea ice retreat" PDF.
Foster & Rahmstorf, 2011, "Global temperature evolution 1979–2010" PDF
Gu et al, 2011, "Abundant Early Palaeogene marine gas hydrates despite warm deep-ocean temperatures." PDF
Higgins & Schrag, 2006, "Beyond methane: Towards a theory for the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum" PDF
Kaufman et al, 2011, "Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008" PDF
Lawrence et al, 2008, "Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss." PDF
Sexton et al, 2011, "Eocene global warming events driven by ventilation of oceanic dissolved organic carbon." PDF


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On May 26, four days after the major terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, British intelligence officials stated that they had identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the UK, all of them considered potential terrorist attackers. According to The Times,
About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a "residual risk".
The two terrorists who have struck in Britain this year — Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer — were in the pool of "former subjects of interest" and no longer subject to any surveillance.
A police officer stands guard near the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017, following a suicide bombing by an Islamic terrorist who murdered 22 concert-goers. (Photo by Dave Thompson/Getty Images) |
The report adds that the two men who beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby in London, in 2013, had been known to the security services, just as Abedi and Masood were, but had been dropped to low priority.
David Anderson, QC, the former reviewer of anti-terrorism laws, noted concerns in his 2015 report about the "speed with which things can change" around suspects and "the difficulties in knowing how best to prioritise limited surveillance resources". Senior police have also spoken of the difficulty in identifying the triggers that might "reactivate" extremist behaviour.
Others had expressed similar concerns about how the jihadi ideology, based in radical religious belief, is so intensely ingrained that it never leaves individuals and may easily reactivate a desire to commit atrocities.
Ben Wallace, Minister of State for Security at the Home Office, told The Times that the existence of a database of thousands of potential attackers clearly indicates just how serious the threat has become: "This reveals the scale of the challenge from terrorism in the 21st century," he said. "Never has it been more important to invest in intelligence-led policing."
One problem is that the police and MI5 lack enough resources to investigate any more than 3,000 suspects at a time, leaving the other 20,00 free to pass without surveillance and under the radar. According to a report issued this year by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), and detailed in The Guardian, budget cuts to the police forces in England and Wales have left law enforcement inadequately prepared:
In a stark message about the current state of policing, Zoë Billingham, Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, said the "disturbing" practices did not apply to the majority of forces but the watchdog could see the problems spreading if action was not taken.
"We're leading to a very serious conclusion regarding the potentially perilous state of policing," she said. "It's a red flag that we're raising at this stage. A large red flag."
Ironically, this austerity-produced situation stands in stark contradiction to comments by one of the country's leading security experts:
Anthony Glees, head of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: "To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can't go on as if this wasn't happening."
In April, as Islamic State was facing defeat in Mosul and Raqqa, a small national study found that many young British Muslims believed that jihadists returning from Syria to the UK should be given a "second chance" and should "reintegrate" within society. This is estimated to be around 800 or 850 individuals. One person interviewed argued that:
When people feel isolated and angry because they are not being treated with respect and if they go out and fight in Syria and when they come back there is no help, then I promise you, you will see more terrorism because these young people will think why should I do anything when my own Government don't care about me.
That appears to be a threat that ignores completely what sorts of crimes returnees may have committed abroad. As such individuals do return, they may well add significantly to the list of potential terrorists living in a country they had already found occasion to hate. In 2016, "the Government admitted [that] just 14 of nearly 400 returnee fighters have been jailed, raising fears the rest are living off the radar and may be vulnerable to radicalisation."
Adam Deen of London's anti-radical Quilliam Foundation stated that:
What is important here is that the more Isis are under siege and the more territory they're losing, the more they're going to channel their efforts and energies into terrorism," he said in an interview with The Independent.
Those individuals that have managed to get back into the country will be activated or will be conspiring to commit some kind of terrorist act. That's a major concern.
Britain is not alone in facing such potential threats, but it may have the largest population of potential terrorists. There is confusion in Germany, for example, as to how many such individuals there are. According to a report from the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), the number of suspects is on the rise, but they list only 657 people as capable of carrying out an attack, alongside another 388 "relevant persons" who might lend assistance to perpetrators. Separate information, however, from the country's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), stated that the number of radical Salafists in Germany had risen from 8,350 in 2015 to 10,100 in 2016 (with 680 classified as "dangerous"), and that hundreds of jihadis entered among the more than one million migrants welcomed into the country during the two previous years. Overall, however, the same agency estimates that 24,400 Islamists are active in Germany, a figures similar to that of the UK.
Things are little better in France, which, according to Gatestone author Yves Mamou, has a large but never-quantified Muslim population of at least six million. In April 2017, the French Senate published its "Prevention of Radicalism and Regional Authorities" report, showing that since the beginning of March, 17,393 people had been listed as terror suspects. As in Britain, French authorities said that not all suspects are being constantly monitored; smaller numbers are investigated at regular intervals.
In May, the general secretariat of the international police organization, Interpol, published a list of Islamic State fighters who were thought to have already returned to Europe and may be planning suicide attacks in different countries:
Interpol has circulated a list of 173 Islamic State fighters it believes could have been trained to mount suicide attacks in Europe in revenge for the group's military defeats in the Middle East.
The global crime fighting agency's list was drawn up by US intelligence from information captured during the assault on Isis territories in Syria and Iraq
European counter-terror networks are concerned that as the Isis "caliphate" collapses, there is an increasing risk of determined suicide bombers seeking to come to Europe, probably operating alone.
The situation in the UK is, in some ways, the most alarming, not only because of cuts to the police budget. Cuts have also been made to the security and intelligence services, even more sharply since the June general election. Prior to that, on June 4, Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a speech the day after the London Bridge attack. Her speech included strong promises to tackle terrorism by introducing fresh measures to strengthen existing legislation.
While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.
Since the emergence of the threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, our country has made significant progress in disrupting plots and protecting the public. But it is time to say "Enough is enough".
She even named the ideological basis for the attacks:
while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism.
This was progress. Three days after that, May presented proposals for fresh legislation to clamp down hard on Islamic extremism. They included amendments to Britain's 1998 Human Rights Act, which protects potential terrorists; tougher Terrorism Prevention Investigation Measures based on a 2011 Act, but in 2016 only used for six individuals; more deportations of suspects, and longer prison sentences, even though much radicalization takes place in prisons.
That was one day before the June 8 general election. May, overly confident that she would win handily and increase her majority in parliament, led a disastrous campaign that left her with a much reduced majority, forcing her to make an alliance with Northern Ireland's controversial Democratic Unionist Party. Tim Worstall, writing for Forbes magazine, wrote:
"It would be both reasonable and fair to say that Theresa May has just run the worst British election campaign of modern times... Theresa May has in fact achieved something that no one in modern times has managed, to start a general election campaign 20 percentage points up and then arrive without even a parliamentary majority for her party. There simply isn't anything to compare with this in the annals".
To make matters worse, the Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, came close to winning the election and performed considerately better than anyone might have thought a month earlier. Corbyn and his increasingly far-left party had been considered unelectable. Now, they were a force to contend with in the House of Commons.
Corbyn is the last person to be entrusted with Britain's security. Addressing a Stop The War Coalition conference in 2011, he told the crowd: "I've been involved in opposing anti-terror legislation ever since I first went into Parliament in 1983". He has also opposed the UK's involvement in all foreign wars: Sir Gerald Howarth, the former Tory defence minister, said: "Jeremy Corbyn has opposed every British military intervention and represents complete capitulation and weakness". He refused for many years to condemn IRA terrorism, preferring to condemn the British army posted there. He called terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah his "friends"; refused to denounce them as late as 2016, and only said he regretted his support for them after heavy pressure was put on him.
Since the election, Labour has made it clear that it opposes any changes in current human rights legislation, and claims that terrorism can be tackled through the laws presently in force. Given the strains the British government is now under, especially with weak negotiations for Brexit and May's increasing unpopularity even within her party, the strong opposition within parliament is certain to weaken further attempts to block radicalism and terrorism, particularly where action against both involves (as it inevitably will) Muslims from various ethnic minority groups.
There has already been vehement opposition to the government's core anti-radicalization program, Prevent, with schoolteachers, students, and others claiming it snoops on Muslim communities. Within the Labour party, Corbyn's radical followers in the Momentum Movement are already planning to force the deselection of members of parliament who oppose Corbyn, unless the such MPs "get on board" by wholeheartedly supporting the leader and his far-left policies. As this takes place, the hard left will strengthen its grip on parliament and make it even more difficult for strong new legislation to be passed.
Theresa May herself is also not entirely to be trusted in this area. Despite her calls for no tolerance for extremism, she has recently been widely criticized for blocking publication of a major report into foreign funding of extremist Muslim groups. Following an enquiry commissioned by May's predecessor David Cameron, the report was due for publication in 2016, but is unlikely now to be revealed for public scrutiny because it is deemed too "sensitive". The sensitivity derives from Saudi Arabia being exposed as a major financier of Islamic extremism worldwide, yet May and the UK government depend heavily on selling arms and other things to the Wahhabi kingdom.
According to the London-based Henry Jackson Society, in its short report on foreign funding of extremism,
The foreign funding for Islamist extremism in Britain primarily comes from governments and government linked foundations based in the Gulf, as well as Iran. Foremost among these has been Saudi Arabia, which since the 1960s has sponsored a multimillion dollar effort to export Wahhabi Islam across the Islamic world, including to Muslim communities in the West.
In the UK this funding has primarily taken the form of endowments to mosques and Islamic educational institutions, which have in turn played host to extremist preachers and the distribution of extremist literature. Influence has also been exerted through the training of British Muslim religious leaders in Saudi Arabia, as well as the use of Saudi textbooks in a number of the UK's independent Islamic schools.
A number of Britain's most serious Islamist hate preachers sit within the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology and are linked to extremism sponsored from overseas, either by having studied in Saudi Arabia as part of scholarship programmes, or by having been provided with extreme literature and material within the UK itself.
If the British government itself prefers to cover up such ties, opting to rescue its trade balance at the cost of endangering the lives of its own citizens, our concern for the future security of the country deepens immeasurably. The UK, like much of Western Europe and Scandinavia, stands at a crossroads. For years now, radical preachers, terrorist recruiters, and fundamentalists who openly hate this country, its democratic values, and its tolerance for all faiths, have walked British streets, campaigned on university campuses, and converted and radicalized young men and women. Sometimes they have been watched, but almost none has been deported, almost none has been imprisoned, and almost none has been singled out, due to the pretense that "Islam is a religion of peace". In Islam, the whole world is divided into two parts" the Dar al-Islam [Abode of Islam] and the Dar al-Harb [Abode of War]. What seems not to be understood about "the religion of peace" is that "peace" comes only after the entire world has been converted to Islam so that a "Dar al-Harb", the "Abode of War," will no longer even exist.
Theresa May's promise of tightened legislation to protect the British public was the right response to three major recent terror attacks. Yet fall-out from the election and May's own wish to protect Saudi Arabia from scrutiny are likely to guarantee that the serious measures we so much need may never be implemented. When there are further attacks and more people die, who will step forward to give us the protection we need? Or by then will it be too late?
Dr. Denis MacEoin taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at a British university and now specializes in Islamic radicalism, and the Middle East. He has just completed a major book on concerns about Islam in the UK. He also serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at New York's Gatestone Institute.


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Ancor Red 8 AWG Battery Cable - Sold by the Foot
Tech Specs.
Black 8 AWG Battery Cable - 100'
- ANCOR Marine Grade™ wire is manufactured from tinned copper stranding for maximum protection against corrosion and electrolysis. Ultra flexible (Type 3) stranding resists fatigue due to vibration and flexing.
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Jali is a creative indoor product and can be made in variety of wood & boards. Jali's can be used in variety of ways as interiors solutions. It can be used as room dividers, partition in any types of open spaces, false ceiling, wall decor and as fixed or sliding doors. Along with wood (Mahogany, Burma teak, Shegun) Jali designs are made of mostly in various types of boards like – MDF, Veneer board, ply board, PVC sheet, Aluminum composite panel (ACP) etc.
These are guaranteed good clean files, no extra cut or too many nodes.
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Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jeff Beck Guest on New Buddy Guy LP
Buddy Guy has had a huge influence on generations of rockers hailing from either side of the Atlantic, and on the blues legend's upcoming LP, a few of his most famous disciples will have an opportunity to return the favor.
Guy is prepping the release of a new studio collection titled The Blues Is Alive and Well, which serves as a follow-up to his 2015 release, Born to Play Guitar. During the Alive and Well sessions, Guy enlisted the aid of several special guests, including Jeff Beck and longtime Rolling Stones bandmates Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Jagger contributed vocals to the track "You Did the Crime," while Richards and Beck teamed up for their appearances, lending additional guitar to a song titled "Cognac." Fans will have a chance to hear those — along with the rest of The Blues Is Alive and Well — when the album arrives in stores on June 15.
Check out the complete track listing for the LP below — and look for Buddy Guy on the next episode of David Letterman's Netflix talk show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, when it premieres on the streaming service on May 4.
Buddy Guy, 'The Blues Is Still Alive' Track Listing
"A Few Good Years"
"Guilty As Charged"
"Cognac" (featuring Jeff Beck & Keith Richards)
"The Blues Is Alive and Well"
"Bad Day"
"Blue No More" (featuring James Bay)
"Whiskey for Sale"
"You Did the Crime" (featuring Mick Jagger)
"Old Fashioned"
"When My Day Comes"
"Nine Below Zero"
"Ooh Daddy"
"Somebody Up There"
"End of the Line"


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If your heels and ankles are not in their proper positions, they cannot properly distribute weight and this may lead to a less stable walking motion.
When your ankles and heels are out of alignment, your muscles, ligaments, and tendons often have to step in to ensure proper alignment and balance.
When these muscles become fatigued, they may not be able to handle the task properly and you become more likely to fall or become injured.
Increased Energy Efficiency
As you walk and move, your kinetic energy moves from your feet up through your body.
This energy can be seen when walking in sand. Sand kicks up behind you with each step. It is moved by the energy created when you move your foot.
Fatigued muscles don't pass as much of that energy onto the next structure. That is why walking in sand is tiring; energy is being lost and your muscles become fatigued.
An aligned kinetic chain allows the highest quantity of energy to be transferred up through your body, giving you more power and helping you feel less tired.
Better Pressure Distribution
The body is designed to distribute pressure so that your muscles can primarily be concerned with movement.
When the skeletal system becomes misaligned, especially at the joint between the heel and ankle, pressure is no longer distributed across the structures that are most able to deal with it.
Instead, other structures, such as the ligaments in the knees, hips, and ankles, must take on the job and that can lead them to become fatigued, sore, or injured.
Protalus insoles correct the misalignment so you can avoid fatique and injury.
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Support - Signature Protalus ® Footbed
1 Year Product Guarantee
Effective for purchases made after 7/1/2023: If your insoles fail due to imperfections in the materials that go into the insoles or failure of those materials to perform due to compression or lack of fidelity to the original shape prior to 1 year from your purchase date, Protalus will replace the insoles for free. In the event that your insoles are no longer available due to a discontinuance of that model, Protalus will replace the insoles with a similar pair of equal value. Please note that all claims require proof of purchase and the original insoles to be shipped back to Protalus in Tualatin, Oregon and all claims must be approved by the Protalus customer service team prior to honoring this guarantee. email@example.com. Limit one replacement per original purchase.
"I love them. Before discovering these Protalus inserts I'd experience severe knee pain. With wearing Protalus inserts in every pair of shoes I own I no longer have any knee pain. I don't wear shoes without them." -Donald E.L.


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Per Diem-RN Cornerstone Hospice House (days or night)
It's inspiring to work with a company where people truly BELIEVE in what they're doing!
When you become part of the Chapters Health Team, you'll realize it's more than a job. It's a mission. We're committed to providing outstanding patient care and a high level of customer service in our communities every day. Our employees make all the difference in our success!
Role:The RN, Hospice House is responsible for assessing and identifying patient/family needs, utilizing the nursing process, coordinating the Plan of Care with the Interdisciplinary Group (IDG), and providing palliative and supportive care to the patient/family unit.
• Current license as RN in the state where the employee will be working
• Active BLS for healthcare professionals from the American Heart Association or Red Cross. Employees hired prior to 12/31/2022 must obtain certificate prior to 10/1/2023. For LPN in a Hospice House, the deadline is 3/31/2023.
• Minimum one (1) year of in-patient nursing or hospice experience for external candidates; for internal applicants, minimum of 6-months of LPN experience with hospice/home health within an affiliate
• Previous experience working with an EMR/EHR (Electronic Medical/Health Record) system
• Mobile Driver - Valid driver's license and automobile insurance per Company policy
• Reliable transportation to meet visit schedule
• Ability to use equipment with visual and auditory mechanisms
• Ability to effectively communicate in English (verbal and written)
• Flexible schedule to meet the needs of Hospice House patients
• Ability to manage the emotional stress of working with and caring for terminally ill patients and their families
• Ability to physically access patient rooms, other areas of the Hospice House/Hospital/ALF, etc., and any home (i.e., navigate stairs and narrow spaces, tolerate heat and lack of air conditioning) within any part of the service area
• Ability to perform the essential functions and physical requirements (including, but not limited to: lifting patients and/or equipment, bending, pushing/pulling, kneeling) of the job with or without reasonable accommodation
Some locations may require:
- Completes clinical admissions for all Company services including, but not limited to:
- Explains services to potential patients/families and addresses questions regarding patient fears, physical limitations, while putting the patient/family at ease; presents services in an empathetic and compassionate manner
- Identifies admission objections, concerns or other entry barriers and provides responses
- Educates patient/family on admission requirements and addresses immediate needs
- Completes informed consents and initial assessment according to regulations and Company policy
- Provides information to Physicians and initiates Plan of Care to address patient's immediate needs
- Initiates skilled nursing interventions to prevent complications, alleviate symptoms and maximize physical and emotional comfort
- Obtains Physician orders
- Completes documentation per Company policy
- Acts as the Company representative at assigned facilities while facilitating referrals to all service lines; works closely with referring hospitals, physicians, facilities, patients, families, and the general public.
- Communicates frequently with Admissions to ensure timely follow-up. When assignment is complete, informs Admissions and prepares for next assignment.
- Provides all necessary clinical communication timely using SBAR.
- Discusses any potential needs with after-hours staff.
- Obtains consents for services and arranges safe discharge in an efficient manner for referred and eligible patients while meeting productivity expectations.
- Obtains medical record information for the referral.
- Develops strong relationships with case managers, physicians, etc. at facilities.
- Works with Professional Relations Representatives (PRRs) to provide education on all available services.
- Provides care for any GIP patients in a hospital including daily visits, professional management, documentation and efficient discharge.
• Satisfactorily complete competency requirements for this position.
Responsibilities of all employees:
• Represent the Company professionally at all times through care delivered and/or services provided to all clients.
• Comply with all State, federal and local government regulations, maintaining a strong position against fraud and abuse.
• Comply with Company policies, procedures and standard practices.
• Observe the Company's health, safety and security practices.
• Maintain the confidentiality of patients, families, colleagues and other sensitive situations within the Company.
• Use resources in a fiscally responsible manner.
• Promote the Company through participation in community and professional organizations.
• Participate proactively in improving performance at the organizational, departmental and individual levels.
• Improve own professional knowledge and skill level.
• Advance electronic media skills.
• Support Company research and educational activities.
• Share expertise with co-workers both formally and informally.
• Participate in Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement activities as appropriate for the position.
Job Responsibilities:
• Provides and manages direct care to patients and families as part of Interdisciplinary Group (IDG), incorporating psychosocial, spiritual, cultural, physical and biological components, and appropriate nursing intervention and follow-up.
• Coordinates the Plan of Care, ensuring that an individualized Plan of Care is developed that accurately reflects the patient's evolving needs.
• Educates patient, family, caregivers and other health professionals about disease process and decline, palliative interventions, care giving, dying process and safety practices.
• Reports changes in the patient's condition to appropriate members of the IDG or other health professionals.
• Participates with the IDG to evaluate hospice referrals/admissions for level of care appropriateness.
• Attends patient deaths; prepares body for transport; oversees disposal of medications.
• Provides appropriate bereavement interventions to the family and caregiver in conjunction with psychosocial staff.
• Presents concise and pertinent oral and written reports to IDG; respects and encourages input from all disciplines.
• Communicates accurately and completely to physicians, staff members, patients, families, and supervisors; utilizes positive approaches when working with others.
• Supervises patient care given by other nursing team members (i.e., LPNs, Hospice Aides, and contract nurses).
• Performs other duties as assigned.
Physical Demands for Post Offer/Pre-Placement (The demands described below are representative of those that must be met by an individual to perform the essential functions of the job, with or without reasonable accommodation.):
While performing the duties of this job, the following abilities are required: see; hear; talk; walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel.
Frequently required to: stand; sit; reach with hands/arms; lift; bend; balance.
Occasionally required to: pull; push; stoop/crouch; kneel; climb stairs.
This position requires consent to drug and/or alcohol testing after a conditional offer of employment is made, as well as on-going compliance with the Drug-Free Workplace Policy.


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(sage, rosemary and parsley doing well - thyme, not so much) |
(Ivy - the garden thief) |
Here's one of things I've enjoyed most in the garden this year. I planted a patch of marigolds in hopes of harvesting the flowers to use for dyeing and it's been a joy to pick off all the flowers and in just a few days, find that the plants are full of blooms again. I'm thinking how great the garden would look next year if I planted a row of marigolds right down the middle of each raised bed (and, it would likely discourage some pest problems, too). The coreopsis I put in, also for dyeing, has done well and I'm planning to expand the selection of dye plants next year to fill out a whole raised bed.
Those towering tomato plants (over 6 feet tall) are producing enough tomatoes that it's time to think about putting some in the freezer for soups and chili during the winter. That mess on the right is what happens when you don't cage a cherry tomato - it becomes a corgi snack bar! (Notice the electric mesh fence in the background - works for corgis and chickens, but not peacocks!)


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It is a horrible month. This is the month of Halloween and breast cancer awareness. I am emotionally scarred and at the same time very appreciative of an event I succumbed to. One of the sororities on campus's did a beauty pageant of Disney princesses in order to raise money for Breast Cancer awareness.
Except, they had the fraternities become the princesses.
Now let's start back at the beginning of this week. When the burlesque Jenny Lewis tells me about this wonderful event. Of course I am excited. I don't talk about RuPaul enough, but I am obsessed. I love him. Everyone loves him. He's RuPaul. So, I want to see this drag show. Of course I am scheduled to work. My employer always seem to insist on ruining my life. Thank you for that. So, I am not able to go to this little charity event. However, my beautiful co-worker agrees to take my shift. Thanks boo. |
The, event started late. It was supposed to start at 7:00. 7:20 that has not happened. So, Jenny and I are sitting there together. Not really a group, but just sitting there talking.
When this large group of blondes is walking towards us. We know all of them. I am going to be sociable, acknowledge the fact that I know my English class. Who also happen to be the people we spent the weekend with. They refuse to look at us.
The show starts with a choreographed dance. These frat boys were not prepared for this. I wasn't prepared for this. It was horrible.
The swimsuit competition was worse. Considerably worse. I didn't expect this to be part of the night. At all. I already knew they weren't attractive. This did not help anything. This is also where they finally introduce who all of the princesses are. There was so much cultural appropriation going on. Mulan was black. Tiana from The Princess and the Frog was white as hell. Snow White or someone like that was black. It was just rough all the way around. In a hundred years, I need video of this never to be found.
Some of the boys also kept their beards. They had to sign up for this by the way, so they weren't forced into it. Own your role. Shave your beard. You are not Conchita Wurst. This is not cute. A lot of them were not that outgoing. Something about putting a boy in a dress makes them uncomfortable. I don't know why. |
This is where you knew it was a straight boy. His legs were all open. Slut. Close your legs to married men.
Interviewer: What do you like best about Neverland?
Tinkerbell: All, the pretty little boys.
It might have been funnier in person.
The one that got me was Rapunzel. She answered her question in a feminine voice as she did in all other parts of the competition. Then, when asked if she had any facts about breast cancer, he used his regular voice.
It was my math tutor. I didn't recognize him until he dropped his voice. I have been tutored by a drag queen. All of a sudden I wanted him to win.
He did not. Jane did. That cunt. I was not here for it. I did not like Jane. I wanted Mulan. I wanted Rapunzel. But, no because the all male judging panel thought the football skit was funny, she won. That skinny bitch.
Will I go next year? I don't know. I still need time to recover.


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As I wrote last week, I emailed each of the eight candidates in the primary for California Senate District 26 to ask for their comments about bicycling and transportation issues, just as I did for the recent city council election.
You'd think that a group of relatively unknown candidates would jump at the chance to reach local voters — especially when they can do it for free. And as we've seen, it doesn't take much to influence a local race with so many candidates.
Yet as of today, I haven't received a single response.
As a result, I've emailed each of them again today; you can read the full text of the email below. But it does raise an interesting question:
If they won't respond to us now when they need our votes, just how responsive will they be once one of them gets into office?
Dear (Candidate),
You may recall that I contacted you last week to offer you an opportunity to discuss bicycling and transportation issues with voters in the 26th District.
As you may be aware, there are nearly 379,000 registered voters in this district. Of these, statistics suggest that at least 46,996 — and possibly as many as 144,000 — ride bikes.
Many of these cyclists are very concerned about current state laws and regulations that put the safety of riders at risk and needlessly inhibit riding levels. These riders are highly motivated to vote in the upcoming election — and they are looking for a reason to vote for you.
As I indicated before, I write a popular blog about bicycling in Los Angeles, and I am offering you, as well as the other candidates in the race, an opportunity to address these voters directly — at no cost to your campaign — by turning this forum over to your campaign for one day.
You can discuss anything you want, from reforming state law to mandate a minimum safe passing distance, or revising California Government Code Section 831.4 to protect cyclists and pedestrians from known hazards on off-road (Class 1) trails. Or you could discuss the role bicycles can play in reducing traffic congestion, improving air quality and reducing the high level of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, or any other subject you think will be of interest to the cycling community.
I will publish whatever you send — unedited and without comment — in the order that it's received. All I ask is that you send a statement in the body of your email or as a Word attachment. You may also submit a small photo or campaign logo to appear along with your comments.
It may only be seen by a few hundred voters; yet in a race with eight candidates and an expected low turnout, that alone could be enough to determine the outcome. More likely, however, your statement will be linked to by other sites and forwarded to countless readers, with the potential to be seen by thousands of local voters.
Of course, nothing says you have to participate; as cyclists, we're used to be ignored by politicians and our elected officials. But we care about this election, and most of us are still uncommitted, even though this election is less than one week away.
All I'm asking is that you give us a reason to vote for you.


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The Combined Pill — e.g. Microgynon, Rigevidon, Ovranette, Yasmin
We can offer a telephone/video review rather than having patients attend the surgery unnecessarily. Below there are links to information
You will need an up to date blood pressure reading before you complete the online details. This can be easily organised using a home monitoring machine or through local pharmacies and Gyms. Please record this before you complete the application.
Different Contraceptive Choices
Combined pill including new ways to take it


text:
Stages to remixing a resource
There are three stages to remixing a resource Write, Describe, and Submit.
Describe your remixed resource
Once you have created your remixed resource, you are ready to give it a description. Describing your resource helps others easily find it in #OhioLINK. The metadata from the original resource will be pre-populated in the describe step. You will want to update it as needed.
- Describe what changes you made to the resource in the Abstract field.
- Select the General Subjects to which the resource is applicable. You may choose more than one.
- Select the Primary User.
- Select an Educational Use. You may choose more than one.
- Select Level, Language, and Material Type.
- Add Learning goals for the resource you have created.
- Enter Keywords. Note: Hit Enter after each keyword.
- Select Educational Standards and follow the dropdown prompts.
- Click the Next Steps: Submit button


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Depression and anxiety is rising among young people in the U.S..
LAURIE SANTOS: Some surveys say that as high as 37% of teens are experiencing poor mental health. Teen mental health is not great, and it is getting worse over time.
That's Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale and host of the podcast "The Happiness Lab." She started a free online class called "The Science Of Well-Being For Teens" to share strategies for a happier life.
MARTÍNEZ: Santos says that well-intentioned parents often overemphasize getting good grades or getting into a good college, but that may not ensure happiness.
SANTOS: The happier students tend to have the worse grades.
FADEL: What can help is being kinder to yourself.
SANTOS: If that was your friend, you wouldn't give them advice and say, well, you're horrible, you know, why do you suck so much? But this is often the way we talk to ourselves.
MARTÍNEZ: Another piece of advice from Santos is to focus on others.
SANTOS: Happy people tend to be very other-oriented. In other words, they're focused on making the people around them happy. They volunteer more. You know, in adults, they donate more money to charity.
FADEL: And when life gets difficult, remember...
SANTOS: It's normative to feel sad or anxious. The key, though, is just we have to listen to these emotions and know how to regulate them and use them productively.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So the takeaway, kids - cut yourself some slack, reach out to others and get more sleep. Adults, same goes for you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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As the commercial entity behind the framework, and established by Larry Masters, founder of CakePHP, we know your project like no one else. From startups and social networks, to e-commerce and enterprise level applications, we provide the highest quality CakePHP development available.
We've learned that transparency is key to successful collaborations, so all of our communication is out in the open, with evidence of our progress and results readily available.
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We provide a QA process which is integrated directly into our development iterations, and that's based upon clear specifications and acceptance criteria which define our goals.
All of our work is fully testable by default, meaning that everything we deliver is provided in-hand with unit tests to validate our efforts and guarantee it's functionality.
During the development we offer a full continuous integration of your project to our private staging servers, which provides us essential insight into code quality, test coverage and impact areas.
We provide 3 managed environments to support our git workflow and ensure development, quality assurance and acceptance testing activities are isolated and visible to the client at all times. Deployment is automated, providing insight about the unit test coverage, code quality metrics and build status. Full automation and milestone based iterations provide a stable and predictable release cycle, reducing the overall time to market for the project and helping the Project Owners to successfully deliver their features as expected.
We offer an array of development services, each covered by years of experience and our collective talent.
Sometimes you need the extra experience and sound judgement to make the right decisions on your project. We can help with the areas which need special attention and a trained eye, allowing you to rest assured that you've got all bases covered.
A thorough requirements analysis is the most important step in any project's timeline. We'll listen to your needs and outline your project's specifications before development begins. Because applications must often change over time, our experts will also help to "future-proof" your project, planning for extension and ensuring simple maintenance down the road.
If you need your current CakePHP application upgraded to the latest version of the framework then look no further than CakeDC. As the experts behind the framework we can handle a full migration of your existing code base, leaving you with an application which takes advantage of all the enhanced security features, performance benefits, and ready for the latest tech available for CakePHP.
The following are some of the main reasons to review the existing source code on a project:
We provide the CakePHP code review to help you on these points, concrete examples of what to fix, the recommended steps to fix it, and the best enterprise practices. You know that good code quality pays off on the long run.
Get a full featured CakePHP code review document containing:
All covered in a structured easy to follow document:
Trust the experts behind the CakePHP framework. Let us provide you piece of mind, and actively help you reduce technical debt and extend the longevity of your code base.
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Our comprehensive training sessions teach the tools, knowledge, concepts and best-practices of CakePHP, helping your developers create code that is:
Our standard CakePHP training course is around 4-5 hours in duration, with a short pause mid-session. The course is accompanied by a live example application, and is conducted via video streaming and chat, where you'll have direct access to ask any questions necessary. So why not join us, and start enjoying the measurable, long-lasting benefits of expert code training today.
Visit the CakePHP Training site to view the scheduled courses which are currently available. Some sessions may already be at maximum capacity, and no longer have positions available for additional attendees. Sign ups are only valid for a session until 24 hours previous to the scheduled time.
Don't forget to look out for CakeFest the annual CakePHP conference, where you can attend in person a live workshop presented by a core framework developer. Highly recommended for those who want to network with other CakePHP developers and meet the people behind the project.
Additionally, if you'd prefer to have a more tailored training session for you or your team we can provide specific training sessions as part of our consultancy services, contact us for more information.


text: Everyone needs a Crazy Horse in their life! Attach this guy to your keys to ensure you never forget what a wild ride your life is. He will scream, whine, laugh and neigh you into your own stable or even a funny farm. Everytime you take a look at this keychain you will go wild and set your ambitions loose. Don't be surpised if you start bucking and thrashing everything around you with the wildest horse neighing ever! It's time to take your life into your own hooves and go CRAZY! Keychain stands around 4.5 tall and is activated by the squeeze of his stomach.


text: One of my favorite events at each year's Noise Pop music fesitval is the screening of a silent film at the Castro Theater with a live rock band performing the score. This year, they asked local indie rock favorites Oranger to reprise the score for Man with a Movie Camera, apparently originally created by Oranger for the L.A. Independent Film Festival. The movie was a collage of images from daily life in a Russian city, abstract but beautiful, and a great pairing for Oranger's rockin out. AND there was even ample usage of theramin.