text:
The civil insurrection in Libya has been far more violent, and forces loyal to the dictator far more violent still, than the recent successful unarmed revolutions against the dictatorships in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. Still, there are signs of hope and important lessons to be learned in the ongoing struggle against the 42-year regime of Muammar Gaddafi, whose days appear to be numbered.
Gaddafi's leadership style has always been repressive, impulsive, and unpredictable. Yet his nationalism, anti-imperialism, and professed socialism led many educated Libyans who formed the backbone of the government to stay loyal despite their misgivings, in large part in reaction to what was seen as punitive and hypocritical sanctions imposed by Western nations and the constant threat of renewed U.S. air and missile strikes against the country, as took place back in the 1980s. It was only when the sanctions and the threats of war subsided back in 2004 that there began to be a dramatic increase in resignations and defections by prominent Libyans who had been members and supporters of the government. In short, the U.S.-led efforts to isolate, punish, and threaten the regime likely contributed to Gaddafi's longevity as dictator. Once relations were normalized and the isolation and threats subsided, Gaddafi was seen less as a strong leader defending his nation against Western imperialism and more as the mercurial and brutal tyrant that he is.
As of this writing, virtually all of the cities in the eastern half of the country and a number of cities elsewhere have been liberated by pro-democracy forces, which launched their rebellion just a few weeks ago and are now clashing with security forces in Tripoli, Libya's capital. In these liberated cities, popular democratic committees have been set up to serve as interim local governments. For example, Benghazi—a city of over a million people—is now being run by a improvised organizing committee of judges, lawyers, and other professionals who have been largely successful at restoring order to the country's second largest city, dispatching young people to coordinate traffic at intersections and assist in other basic services.
There have been resignations of cabinet members and other important aides of Gaddafi, Libyan ambassadors in foreign capitals, and top military officers, many of whom have actively joined the opposition. Pilots have deliberately crashed their planes, flown into exile, or otherwise refused orders to bomb and strafe protesters. Thousands of soldiers have defected or refused to fire on crowds, despite threats of execution. This has forced Gaddafi to rely on African mercenaries, which has only further angered the population against a dictator willing to bring in foreigners to murder his own citizens.
Libya and Beyond: What's Next for Democracy?
Phyllis Bennis on why Libya differs from other pro-democracy uprisings in the region.
These serious challenges to Gaddafi's power comes despite the fact that, compared with the recent successful civil insurrections against dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, the challenges faced by the pro-democracy forces in Libya have been far greater. Under the recently-overthrown dictators, the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes routinely rigged elections and marginalized opposition parties, but at least there were elections and opposition parties. Not in Libya, however. Similarly, Egypt and Tunisia had trade unions, popular organizations, and active civil society groups whose activities were severely restricted and at times brutally suppressed, but at least they existed. Again, not in Libya.
Despite all this, pro-democracy forces are on the offensive, demonstrating that if enough people are willing to risk everything for their freedom, the regime has few options left but brute force—exactly what Gaddafi has been turning to. However, the use of such extraordinary violence usually ends up backfiring in favor of the opposition, which is exactly what appears to be happening in Libya.
Gaddafi joined the Libyan armed forces as a young man, not because of an interest in a military career per se, but because he wanted to become the country's ruler. In the Middle East in those days, if you weren't part of a royal family, the key to political power was through the military. What Tunisia and Egypt have demonstrated, however—along with other successful nonviolent civil insurrections from the Philippines to Poland and from Chile to Serbia—is that political power ultimately comes from the acquiescence of the people. And if a people no longer recognize the leader's authority and refuse to obey the leader's orders, he will no longer be the leader. This is the kind of power the United States and other Western nations must recognize: for democracy to come to the Middle East, it must come from the people themselves.
In Egypt, the relatively short-lived military crackdown by the hated security agencies and pro-regime thugs actually strengthened the opposition, reminding the millions in the streets exactly what they were protesting against. In Libya, the Gaddafi regime seems to have turned that lesson on its head, apparently believing that if their response is violent enough, brutal enough, murderous enough, the opposition will stop.
So far, it hasn't worked. With earlier attacks from helicopter gunships and jet bombers, and with reports of machine gun fire in and around Tripoli continuing at least through February 24, the estimates of Libyans killed range from 300 to more than 1,000 people—but the popular resistance has continued unabated.
What is different in Libya from the earlier iterations of the Arab world's great democratic revolution of 2011 is that the anti-regime, pro-democracy side that has succeeded in ousting the regime from major cities and most of eastern Libya, is now seeing huge sectors of the Libyan military defect directly to the opposition. Libyan civil society democracy activists in Benghazi and elsewhere are apparently taking up arms with and alongside the military units now on their side, both to defend their cities and, reportedly, to prepare to help the people of Tripoli and the west, still under Gaddafi's contested control, finally to overthrow the regime. Libya, unlike Egypt and Tunisia or states where revolutionary upheavals are underway, is moving towards a military confrontation closer to a civil war.
Social, political, demographic, and other conditions in Libya are significantly different than in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain or elsewhere, so it is not surprising that the progress of the revolution has differed too. The first victories—ousting a dictator in Tunisia and, soon after, the monumental achievement of the Egyptian revolution in getting rid of Mubarak—inspired democratic risings across the Arab world and North Africa, with parallel movements emerging in sub-Saharan Africa as well, in Gabon and elsewhere.
Not only the inspiration but crucially the success of Tunisia and Egypt continue to empower the rest. The regimes and societies differ widely, but the dissatisfaction is similar all over: widening gaps between the wealthy and the poor, rising unemployment and a lack of jobs for huge young populations, and most of all, the demand for dignity, hope, and for people to have a say in determining their own lives and how they are governed.
In Libya the opposition movement has actually seized control of cities, and now of whole sectors of the country, even while the embattled Gaddafi regime remains more or less in control of the capitol. The entire eastern parts of Libya, including the key city of Benghazi as well as numerous other cities and the long border with Egypt, all now appear to be in the hands of the opposition, in many cases reportedly with the military forces joining the protesters rather than fighting them or fleeing.
The takeover of cities by the pro-democracy demonstrators seems now to be moving closer to Tripoli in the western part of the country, with reports from the nearby city of Misurata claiming the protesters, backed by defecting army units, have been in control since February 21. The Financial Times quoted a local worker in Misurata describing how "the people are now organising themselves into committees. Some are managing traffic, others are cleaning up after the fighting and the fires of previous days. There are also people handing out water and milk to the population." It looks very much like the self-organization of Tahrir Square in Egypt, in the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain—and very much like the non-violent society-wide mobilization of the first Palestinian intifada of 1987-93.
Misurata is only about 125 miles east of Tripoli—meaning that most of the strategic Mediterranean coast from just east of the capital to the Egyptian border (excepting only the area around Sirte, Gaddafi's tribal homeland) is now apparently controlled by pro-democracy forces. There are reports of a new local council being established in Benghazi, the first city to be taken over by the opposition.
The regime itself continues to splinter, with top officials, including the justice minister and the interior minister, being the latest to resign. The interior minister, responsible for internal security, said he now supports what he called the "February 17 Revolution," and urged the military forces to support the Libyan people's "legitimate demands." Libyan diplomats around the world, including the ambassadors to the U.S., Indonesia, Australia, India, Bangladesh, and elsewhere, as well as virtually the entire staff of the Libyan mission to the United Nations, have all resigned in protest of the violence.
The regimes' responses have differed. Some are desperately trying to make concessions, even before any protests arise.
Meanwhile, in what seems to be an ever-growing list of countries, democracy is rising. New movements demanding democracy are rising in Djibouti, where the U.S. maintains its sole military base on the African continent; in Algeria, a crucial oil-exporting country with its own proud history of independent struggle; in Syria, where the long-standing president has so far vowed only that he will not run again. And of course, many union supporters in Wisconsin claim the Egyptian victory as their own inspiration.
With Libya providing huge percentages of the oil and gas imported by powerful European countries—especially Italy—and with the UK working hard the last several years to burnish Libya's image so that British Petroleum could claim a privileged stake in the Libyan oil industry and General Dynamics UK could sign lucrative weapons contracts, western countries came late and soft to criticize Gaddafi's violent assault. The United States had not moved as far as most European allies in rehabilitating the Gaddafi regime after an initial embrace following Tripoli's agreement to dismantle its nuclear programs in 2003, but still moved too slowly to fully condemn the regime.
Only on February 23 did President Obama explicitly condemn the violence, and called the bloodshed "outrageous" and "unacceptable." He said "these actions violate international norms and every standard of common decency. This violence must stop."
Obama spoke clearly of the importance of international action, and praised the statement released by the Security Council the day before. That UN statement included some important issues, including a condemnation of the violence, a call on the Libyan government to abide by human rights and international humanitarian law and to allow medical, humanitarian, and human rights workers in to the country, and a reference to the need for accountability for perpetrators of the violence.
But the statement was merely a Security Council press release, which lacks the power of enforcement of an actual resolution, and falls even below the status of the formal "presidential statement" which indicates Council unanimity. There was no decision, for example, to freeze all assets of Gaddafi and his family, to impose an immediate end on all weapons sales and a halt any weapons or security goods currently in the pipeline to Libya, or to refer the Libyan regime's violence to the International Criminal Court for immediate investigation and prosecution.
In his speech, President Obama stated he had "asked my administration to prepare the full range of options that we have to respond to this crisis. This includes those actions we may take and those we will coordinate with our allies and partners, or those that we'll carry out through multilateral institutions." His careful distinguishing between what the U.S. would insist on doing on its own, as opposed to actions taken with allies or in multilateral venues such as the United Nations, may be an indication why there was no stronger Security Council response. If the Council had decided, for instance, to hold Libyan officials and soldiers directly accountable for alleged war crimes against a civilian population by referring the issue directly to the International Criminal Court, what kind of a precedent would that set, and what other political leaders or soldiers responsible for civilian deaths might face that same method of accountability? If the Council had passed a resolution stating that top officials of all governments and corporations who provided weapons to the Libyan regime should be held accountable for how those weapons are being used, what precedent would that set for the powerful weapons-exporting governments and corporations now arming military forces where human rights violations and war crimes are routine?
The UN Security Council should reconvene now to pass a binding, enforceable resolution. It should demand an immediate halt to the attacks, call for immediate access for international humanitarian and human rights workers, and refer the issue to the International Court of Justice to initiate on an emergency basis a full investigation and prosecution of those responsible, making clear that not only top decision-makers but all soldiers and mercenaries carrying out illegal orders would be held to account. The resolution should require that governments and corporations with ties to the Libyan regime—especially those in Europe and the U.S.—immediately sever all military ties, cancel military contracts, and withdraw any military equipment that may be in the pipeline.
There has been a growing demand, in the United Statea from powerful neo-conservative war-mongers as well as from some of the most progressive members of Congress, to establish a no-fly zone in Libya. The call has also come from former Libyan officials who have defected from the regime. But at the moment I believe that would be a mistake. There have been no reports of air strikes since February 21; current assaults are relying on heavy weapons on land. While it is certainly possible a desperate Gaddafi could lash out once again by sending his warplanes aloft to attack his own people, it isn't clear he has loyal pilots left to answer his call. The discussion of a no-fly zone in the Security Council could well become the sole means of responding to the Libyan crisis – even though it would likely have little impact on the actual threats currently facing the Libyan people, especially in and around the capitol, and would be serve as a distraction from other actions that might actually help.
Wisconsin: First Stop in an American Uprising?
Madison may be only the beginning.
The political cost of such a decision, given its likely low protection value, must be weighed against the lessons of the 1990s-era no-fly zone established in Iraq by the U.S. and Britain, a unilaterally-imposed no-fly zone which President Bill Clinton and other officials often claimed, mendaciously, was authorized by the United Nations, but which in fact was never mentioned in any Security Council resolution. As documented by the United Nations, enforcement of the no-fly zone in Iraq resulted in the deaths of several hundred Iraqi civilians. It is not clear that any country other than the U.S. could carry out enforcement of a no-fly zone in Libya (there are even questions whether the U.S. military, already stretched in illegitimate wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, could field such an operation, let alone to be prepared to start immediately). But giving a Security Council imprimatur to the U.S. (or NATO, which would still be relying on U.S. air power) to define, impose, determine violations of, and carry out bombing raids in response to those violations of, a Libyan no-fly zone, when it is unlikely to actually protect Libyan civilians but could well result in justifying a much longer-term U.S. intervention than Council members anticipate, does not pass the legitimacy test.
If the fighting in Libya continues or escalates, an accountability-focused UN Security Council resolution authorizing a Blue Helmet contingent of medical, other humanitarian workers, human rights monitors, and investigators from the International Criminal Court, recruited from neighboring countries, sent with armed escort if necessary, would likely be far more useful in providing actual protection to Libyan civilians than imposing a high-profile but likely low-impact and dangerous no-fly zone.
While the Libyan leader escalates his threats, and while the violence may continue for a bit longer, the international standing of the Libyan regime has collapsed. More importantly, the territory, cities, and population still under the regime's domination are all dwindling rapidly. Gaddafi is losing control. Democracy is gaining.
Phyllis Bennis wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Phyllis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power.
More coverage of the pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East and Africa.
In Egypt, Something Rare and Remarkable
From Cairo, a first-person account of the way Egyptians supported and protected one another during the historic protests that led to the departure of President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt's Revolution Behind the Scenes
Al Jazeera reports on the years of organizing that underpinned Egypt's "spontaneous" uprising.
Tunisia, Egypt, and the Big Picture
What the recent uprisings have to do wth the convergence of global ecological, energy, and economic crises.
The influence of the new digital commons in democratic uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain has been chronicled at length in news reports from the Middle East, with Facebook, Twitter and other social media winning praise as dictator-busters.
But the importance of a much older form of commons in these revolts has earned scant attention—the public spaces where citizens rally to voice their discontent, show their power and ultimately articulate a new vision for their homelands. To celebrate their victory over the Mubarak regime, for example, protesters in Cairo jubilantly returned to Tahrir Square, where the revolution was born, to pick up trash.
It's the same story all over the Middle East. In Libya's capital city of Tripoli, people express their aspirations and face bloody reprisals in Tripoli's Green Square and Martyr's Square. In Bahrain, they boldly march in Pearl Square in the capital city of Manama. In Yemen, protests have taken place in public spaces near the university in Sanaa, which students renamed Tahrir Square. Kept out of the central Revolution Square in Tehran by the repressive government, Iranian dissidents gather in Valiasr Square and Vanak Sqaure.
Last week in Tunisia, the name of the main square in Tunis was changed to honor Mohammad Bouazizi, an unlicensed street vendor whose suicide in December in response to government harassment sparked the revolution that toppled the regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
The course of recent history was rewritten by events happening in Prague's Wenceslas Square as dissidents ousted an oppressive regime in December 1989. Those protests were inspired in part by events in Beijing's Tiananmen Square that seized the world's imagination earlier that year when democracy activists unsuccessfully challenged the power of China's dictatorship.
The state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, where thousands of workers now protest the governor's fierce attacks on collective bargaining rights, represents another case of a public commons becoming a staging ground for political resistance. The capitol, which sits right in the heart of downtown Madison, was named by Project for Public Spaces as one of the great public spaces of the world. "This is truly the town square that early Americans imagined as the crux of democracy," the PPS website explains.
The people rallying behind public sector union workers at the Capitol are actually protected by the Wisconsin state constitution, which forbids the legislature from denying public access to the building when it is in session. (State law does permit capitol groundskeepers to clear the building in an emergency, presumably on orders of the governor—but those groundskeepers are also presumably members of the same union the governor wants to crush.)
Reclaim Your Streets: How to Create Safe and Social Pedestrian Plazas
This all shows that the exercise of democracy depends upon having a literal commons where people can gather as citizens—a square, Main Street, park, or other public space that is open to all. An alarming trend in American life is the privatization of our public realm. As corporate-run shopping malls replaced downtowns and main streets as the center of action, we lost some of our public voice. You can't organize a rally, hand out flyers, or circulate a petition in a shopping mall without the permission of the management, which will almost certainly say no because they don't want to distract shoppers' attention from the merchandise. That's why you see few benches or other gathering spots inside malls. The result is that our ability to even discuss the issues of the day (or any other subject) with our fellow citizens is limited.
Of course, public spaces enrich our lives in many ways beyond protests. Local commons become the sites of celebrations, festivals, art events, memorial services, and other expressions of community.
The moment when I first became aware of the importance of public spaces was when the Minnesota Twins won their first ever World Series in 1987. I did not have tickets to the game, but gathered hopefully with thousands of others outside the stadium in Minneapolis to share in the joy of the victory. When the Twins won the game, thousands more poured out of the ballpark into the streets and we all marched to…where? Minneapolis has no downtown square or landmark gathering place so we milled around the streets for a while—an unsatisfying way to celebrate a World Series championship. If it had been the Red Sox, everyone would have headed for the Boston Common (site of protests and public gatherings for three centuries, from a 200-person protest of food shortages in 1713 to a 100,000-strong march against the Vietnam War in 1969). We weren't so lucky.
I've often wondered if this lack of a central commons in Minneapolis and most other American communities somehow inhibits our civic expression. With no place to voice our views as citizens, do we become more passive about what happens to our country and our future? I don't know the answer, but I imagine Hosni Mubarak wishes he had built a shopping mall in Tahrir Square.
Much media coverage of the massive uprising that ousted Egypt's longtime president, Hosni Mubarek, has characterized the protests as largely spontaneous. But while the proverbial fire in Egypt was sparked by the success of a pro-democracy uprising in Tunisia—and fed by widespread anger at corruption and economic conditions under the Mubarek regime—activists had been working for years to create the conditions that allowed it to spread and be successful, Al Jazeera reports.
My heart is bursting from my chest today, tears on my cheeks, my skin covered in waves and waves of goosebumps as my body integrates the beautiful revolution in Egypt.
I am watching Al Jazeera, reading the voices of Egyptians on Twitter, watching and listening as the Egyptian protesters dance and sing and scream and celebrate the success of their revolutionary effort.
In case you don't know yet, Hosni Mubarak, after 30 years of holding the presidency in Egypt, has been forced out of power by the Egyptian people after 18 days of revolution. And it's not just him, it's his entire regime. And it's not just Egypt, it's Tunisia, it's the entire region! And instead of handing power over to the unacceptable vice president he appointed 14 days ago, Mubarak conceded power to the army, which has stated that it will stand with the people and the democratic process in this effort.
There is so much work to come as the people continue to learn how to hold power together. There is so much grief to process for the lives lost in this struggle, the martyrs who sacrificed themselves for something they knew was greater—justice.
And right now, there is this moment of feeling absolutely alive, feeling the absolute best potential of humanity when it rises up against corruption, against oppression, against violence.
If I could do backflips, or be a firework, or transport myself to Tahrir Square, I would.
All I can think is how beautiful it is when people love themselves so much that they cannot continue being compromised, when they must stand up for justice. It is so beautiful I can't take my eyes off of it.
"I feel so proud to be Egyptian," one person writes. "I love my people." This is love, that inner transformation which allows you to be brave and persistent and nonviolent and put others before yourself. This is love, happening at a quantum scale.
And I feel so humbled. I live in the United States, where I constantly hear organizers talking about strategy—how can "we beat them?" I have felt, deeply, that it isn't about the enemy, it's about what is within you. Are you willing to step up, to put your voice and body behind your beliefs, to live in a new way? Are you willing to be fearless? Are you willing to see everyone as a potential ally in larger mission for justice?
In Egypt, Something Rare and Remarkable
From Cairo, a first-person account of the way Egyptians supported and protected one another during the historic protests that led to Mubarak's departure.
But I haven't had enough modern models of love and inner transformation creating tangible large-scale change to draw on. Now, Egypt has given us this gorgeous model. Nonviolent, personal, loving, healing, taking care of each other and their country, and not giving up. Cleaning the streets, inviting the army to stand with the people, setting up recycling centers and medical stations and childcare and creating the society they longed for—that is what revolution can look like.
It is so important to me that this model of love and nonviolence comes to the world from the Arab world, from the very people who have been so internationally maligned and targeted, by my country and others, as "dangerous terrorists." It is important for us all to grasp that, in fact, Egyptians are the current face of people's power, of a new democracy, of a love-based transformational movement.
I am celebrating, I am crying and laughing and overjoyed. I am so grateful.
Thank you, Egypt. Thank you so, so much. Your love has changed the world.
At 1 in the morning on Saturday, January 29th, I watched from the balcony of my Cairo apartment as a mob of young men with crude weapons smashed and looted the Radio Shack store next door. The building's guards shot a rifle vainly into the air, the report so close that it rattled my bones. This was the first moment in the unfolding uprising in Egypt when I realized things were deadly serious. Chaos descended; gunshots crackled throughout the night as looters and shop owners clashed all over our neighborhood.
I would learn later that these trouble-makers were most likely paid by the government to sow chaos so the people would demand that Mubarak remain in power and restore calm. It is one of the regime's tried-and-true tactics (along with pulling the police off the streets at such times, which may explain why they had mysteriously disappeared that night).
The tactic did not work this time, however, and the most amazing thing about the last two weeks in Cairo is that the city's residents not only did not feed into this chaos, but denied it at every turn. In a city of almost 20 million souls, many of them desperately poor, the vast majority have shown that there's no need for an iron-fisted strong man or a brutal police force. In the face of chaos, they have proudly governed their own turf, behaving with responsibility, composure, bravery, and kindness.
Take, for example, the citizens who took it upon themselves to direct traffic in the absence of the usual traffic cops, or the group of men on our street who organized to keep watch all night, every night. These committees formed organically throughout Cairo, led by the bowabs, men whose job it is to care for and protect the city's buildings. In Zamalek, a neighborhood on the island in the middle of the Nile where my husband and I went to stay with friends, the protection committees worked all night in three-hour shifts, guarding make-shift roadblocks at regular intervals and coordinating with each other to keep the streets preternaturally quiet and calm. Those of us who holed up in Zamalek's apartment buildings owe those men our safety and our sanity.
The protesters themselves have displayed an admirable level of restraint and even generosity toward those they are battling. In an incident during the early days of the protests, a few dozen riot police were separated from their retreating battalion as tens of thousands of protesters streamed across a bridge. When the separated police found themselves surrounded and vastly outnumbered by a mob of demonstrators, some calling for blood, peace-minded protesters stepped between the groups, linking hands to form a human chain. When asked by a journalist why he was protecting the police, one young man in the chain explained that these officers are just poor men doing their jobs. They are Egyptians, too, he said.
That unifying spirit has been on display throughout the events in Egypt. Women in Tahrir Square have reported a notable absence of the sexual harassment they usually face in Cairo's streets. Children have been present, waving flags and chanting with the best of them. Sectarian schisms seem to be nonexistent. In fact, Christians stood guard while Muslims prayed in Tahrir Square, the Muslims returning the favor the next day.
Those who want to help the protesters in their fight have been volunteering to bring food, water, and medicine, sometimes at grave risk. My friend Rana, a courageous woman who has alternated between protesting and volunteering with several organizations to bring in supplies, was stopped by pro-Mubarak thugs on her way to Tahrir Square with a bag full of first-aid materials on Thursday, February 3rd. Brandishing their swords and guns, the men searched her bag for cameras, money, or weapons and demanded to know whom the supplies were for. Rana lied, telling them she was provisioning pro-Mubarak supporters, and the men let her and the three other volunteers with her pass.
"I lied to live," Rana told me in an online chat, then added in her charming English: "You can't imagine how scary they was. The man who was with us, he was close to get heart attack." The youngest among them, a 17-year-old woman, fainted from fright under the impression that the men might rape her. Rana managed to help her off the bridge and into Tahrir Square, where she revived and found her place among the protesters. "Now she call me to say that she will be going to protests every day," said Rana.
Rana herself has felt from the very start that there is no turning back. Despite her own work grinding to a halt and pressure from colleagues anxious about their livelihoods, she will not stop protesting. "I'm totally different now," she told me. "It feels different to be in the street and going there carrying your soul and you know that you may die or be hurt for Egypt."
In the United States, despite our country being born of revolution, it is hard to appreciate the profundity of what the people of Egypt are going through right now. But the amazing way they are banding together to help each other and demand a new government, makes it clear that we are witnessing something rare and remarkable. Hope is in the air. Empowerment breeds respect for oneself and others. As Rana said of this new era dawning in her country, "you feel like you're reborn again."
Despite the natural subsidence of dramatic demonstrations on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, as many protesters return to jobs and catch their breath, there is little question that the pro-democracy struggle in Egypt has achieved lasting momentum, barring unexpected repression. As with other kinds of civil struggles, a movement using nonviolent resistance can ebb and flow. There may have to be tactical retreats, times for regrouping or resetting of strategy, or a focus on negotiations with the regime before broader operations that capture the world's attention resume.
Those who were expecting a quick victory are no doubt disappointed, but successful People Power movements of recent decades have usually been protracted struggles. It took nearly a decade between the first strikes in the Gdansk shipyards and the fall of communism in Poland; Chile's democratic struggle against the Pinochet regime took three years between the first major protests and the regime's acquiescence to holding the referendum which forced the dictator from power.
Most successful unarmed insurrections against authoritarian regimes take a much shorter time, but they usually take weeks or months rather than days. As of this writing, the Egyptian protests have only been going for two weeks. It took ten weeks of struggle in East Germany during the fall of 1989 before the Berlin Wall came down. It took three months before the first student demonstrations in Mali and the downfall of the Traore dictatorship in 1991. Indeed, the pro-democracy movement in Tunisia which many credit as having inspired the Egyptian uprising took nearly a month, and they are still struggling to ensure that the end of the Ben Ali regime will also lead to real democracy.
Despite the failure of the protests in Egypt thus far to dislodge the hated Mubarak regime or force the president's resignation, there have been some notable victories.
Millions of Egyptians, in direct defiance of emergency laws banning public demonstrations, have taken part in pro-democracy protests. A remarkable cross-section of Egyptian society was visible in these demonstrations in Cairo and other cities across the country: young and old, Muslim and Christian, men and women, poor and middle class, secular and religious. Despite waves of attacks by plainsclothes police and paid squads of young toughs, clearly unleashed by the regime—and comparable to the notorious Basiji in Iran or Mugabe's green bombers in Zimbabwe—which the regime hoped would disperse the protesters and cower them into submission, the pro-democracy activists in Tahrir Square have held fast. Moreover, there have been key defections among prominent journalists and intellectuals who were previously willing to parrot the government's line or keep quiet—for example, the president of the Arab League joined the protests at one point. The movement has also provided cover and legitimacy for opposition political figures who would have otherwise been jailed or ignored.
Equally importantly, the movement has forced the United States and other western governments to end their unconditional support for the regime and press for Mubarak to step down. These shifts illustrate that, despite the longstanding sense of fatalism among Arabs that Washington and London will ignore what happens on the 'Arab street,' it has proven itself capable of disrupting expectations in Washington and London.
Weapons of Mass Democracy
Evidence that nonviolence is the most powerful tool to promote democracy and overthrow tyranny.
Specifically, the demonstrators have forced Mubarak to renounce plans for re-election or to have his son run in his place, making him a lame duck. Their exposure of the ruling party's corruption has led leading figures to formally resign from the party, including Mubarak and his son. They have forced the government into negotiations with representatives from the opposition.
Above all, events of the past couple of weeks have changed Egyptian society. German anthropologist Samuli Schielke, who was present at the demonstrations, observed that the sense of unity and power experienced by the protesters in Tahrir Square and elsewhere is necessarily transient. Negotiations, party politics, tactical decisions and other processes that will inevitably arise during the course of a democratic transition are going to be messy and not produce the incredible energy of coming together in the popular contestation of public space and saying "no!" However, he observes, "thanks to its utopian nature, it is also indestructible. Once it has been realised, it cannot be wiped out of people's minds again. It will be an experience that, with different colourings and from different perspectives, will mark an entire generation."
Similarly, after covering both the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, British journalist Peter Beaumont emphasized the significance of this shift in attitude: "A threshold of fear has been crossed. For what has happened in both countries is that the structures of a police state have been challenged and found, to the surprise of many, to be weaker than imagined." He goes on to note that regardless of how soon Mubarak is forced to leave, "a transition of power is already under way"—not as a result of formal negotiations or diplomatic efforts by the United States or the European Union, but from the people effective seizing power for themselves. The bold actions by what were once relatively small bands of activists "have been embraced by a wider population no longer afraid to speak or to assemble."
For years, the Mubarak regime has offered short-term fixes and various small concessions which have failed to pull up the roots of the country's problems. A combination of paternalism and repression by the regime had fostered an atmosphere of apathy and cynicism. Now, however, a whole new generation has been empowered and the regime, with its feet to the fire, realizes more significant changes are necessary if they are going to survive. Yet each new concession demonstrates the regime's relative weakness and the movement's growing power, thereby emboldening the activists to press forward with their demands for an authentic democratic transition.
The movement will have to think strategically as to how it might be able to achieve victory. A recent article by Maciej Bartkowski and Lester Kurtz compares the Solidarity movement in Poland, which was able to force the Communist regime to negotiate a series of compromises which eventually led to multi-party democratic elections in which the Communists were defeated, with the youthful pro-democracy activists on Tiananmen Square during that same period whose all-or-nothing demands failed to budge the regime and resulted in a massacre and the crushing of the movement. Sometimes a movement will have to be temporarily satisfied with a series of relatively minor concessions, declare a partial victory as a testament of their power and the vulnerability of the regime to pressure, then regroup for another round of public resistance and demands, and continue this process until the government has given away so much they no longer effectively rule. What makes this more feasible in the Egyptian case than perhaps in other movements that have so far been unsuccessful, as in Iran, is that the Egyptian Army has plainly been unwilling to engage in general repression. This seems to have created a viable political space for the movement, where effectively none existed before except through the Internet and organizing out of sight of the authorities.
Tunisia, Egypt, and the Big Picture
Egypt lies on the fault lines of the convergence of global ecological, energy, and economic crises—and thus, on the frontlines of deepening global system failure.
It is also important to recognize that successful unarmed insurrections against dictatorships have usually engaged in a multiplicity of tactics other than the mass demonstrations and multi-day sit-ins. For example, the movement could take advantage of the government's economic vulnerabilities. Already, as a result of the de facto 12-day general strike and other disruptions, including the exodus of foreign tourists and the regime's decision to shut down the Internet for a period, the country lost well over $3 billion in revenue. The desperate xenophobic campaign by the regime—including Mubarak's thugs attacking foreign journalists, human rights workers and others—has undoubtedly scared away not only tourists but inhibited business visitors.
Other potential tactics by the opposition, such as periodic work stoppages and slowdowns, one-day general strikes, tax resistance, selective international sanctions targeted at the regime and its supporters, or a boycott of particular industries or institutions controlled by the government, armed forces, ruling party or pro-Mubarak families, would squeeze further the regime's ability to demonstrate that it has any meaningful control of events going forward.
It is critical that, whatever tactics are employed, there needs to be long-range strategic planning, a logical sequencing of tactics, and an awareness that—as in any campaign—one needs to take advantage of one's strengths and target the opponent's weaknesses.
The dramatic events of recent weeks have illustrated that for democracy to come to the Arab world, it will come not from foreign intervention or sanctimonious statements from Washington, but from Arab peoples themselves. Even if a government has a monopoly of military force and even if a government has the support of the world's one remaining superpower, it is still ultimately powerless if the people refuse to recognize its legitimacy and withdraw their cooperation from business and life as usual. Mubarak and his enablers have lost their long primacy in Egyptian affairs and it is doubtful that either he or his vice president Omar Suleiman, the notorious former head of military intelligence, will be able to regain it. Supplanting the regime with a legitimate government that emerges from free and fair elections will be no easy task. But the most important steps, the dissolution of the status quo and the empowerment of the people, have already been accomplished.
The toppling of Ben Ali in Tunisia in the wake of mass protests and bloody street clashes is likely to signify a major transformation in the future of politics and geopolitics for the major countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The Tunisian experience triggered the escalation of unprecedented protests in Egypt against the Mubarak regime. The question is: 'Will events in Tunisia and Egypt have a domino effect throughout the Arab world?'
The potential fall of Hosni Mubarak is serious stuff. Egypt is "the most populous country in the Arab world," viewed by the United States, Britain and the West as "a strategic pivot" and a "a vital ally" in the 'War on Terror'. No wonder then that activists across the world are holding their breath in anticipation that one of the world's most notorious dictators, and one of the West's most favored client-regimes, might be overthrown.
What is happening in Tunisia and Egypt is only a manifestation of a deeper convergence of fundamental structural crises, which are truly global in scale. The eruption of social and political unrest has followed the impact of deepening economic turbulence across the region, due to the inflationary impact of rocketing fuel and food prices. As of mid-January, even before Ben Ali had fled Tunis, riots were breaking out in Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and Jordan. The key grievances? Rampant unemployment, unaffordable food and consumer goods, endemic poverty, lack of basic services, and political repression.
In many of these countries, certainly in both Tunisia and Egypt, tensions have simmered for years. The trigger, it seems, came in the form of food shortages caused by the record high global prices reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in December 2010. The return of high food prices two to three years after the 2008 global food crisis should not be a surprise. For most of the preceding decade, world grain consumption exceeded production—correlating with agricultural land productivity declining almost by half from 1990–2007, compared with 1950–1990.
This year, global food supply chains were again "stretched to the limit" following poor harvests in Canada, Russia and Ukraine; hotter, drier weather in South America cutting soybean production; flooding in Australia, wiping out its wheat crops; not to mention the colder, stormier, snowier winters experienced in the northern hemisphere, damaging harvests.
So much of the current supply shortages have been inflicted by increasingly erratic weather events and natural disasters, which climate scientists have long warned are symptomatic of anthropogenic global warming. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10–20 percent drop in rice yields over the last decade. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20–40 percent due to climate change alone.
But climate change is likely to do more than generate droughts in some regions. It is also linked to the prospect of colder weather in the eastern United States, east Asia, and northern Europe—as the rate of Arctic summer sea ice is accelerating, leading to intensifying warming, the change in atmospheric pressure pushes cold Arctic air to the south. Similarly, even the floods in Australia could be linked to climate change. Scientists agree they were caused by a particularly strong El Niño/La Niña oscillation in the Tropical Pacific ocean-atmospheric system. But Michael McPhaden, co-author of a recent scientific study on the issue, suggests that recently stronger El Niño events are "plausibly the result of global warming."
The global food situation has been compounded by the over-dependence of industrial agriculture on fossil fuels, consuming ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy produced. The problem is that global conventional oil production has most likely already peaked, having been on an undulating plateau since 2005—and forecast to steadily and inexorably decline, leading to higher prices. Although oil prices dropped after the 2008 crash due to recession, the resuscitation of economic activity has pushed up demand, leading fuel prices to creep back up to $95 a barrel.
The fuel price hikes, combining with the predatory activities of financial speculators trying to rake in profits by investing in the commodity markets, have underpinned worldwide inflation. Just as in 2008, the worst effected have been the poorer populations of the South. Thus, the eruption of political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the context of accelerating ecological, energy and economic crises—inherently interconnected problems which are symptomatic of an Empire in overstretch, a global political economy in breach of the natural limits of its environment.
Indeed, Egypt is particularly vulnerable. Its oil production peaked in 1996, and since then has declined by around 26 percent. Since the 1960s, Egypt has moved from complete food self-sufficiency to excessive dependence on imports, subsidized by oil revenues. But as Egypt's oil revenues have steadily declined due to increasing domestic consumption of steadily declining oil, so have food subsidies, leading to surging food prices. Simultaneously, Egypt's debt levels are horrendous—about 80.5 percent of its GDP, far higher than most other countries in the region. Inequality is also high, intensifying over the last decade in the wake of neoliberal 'structural adjustment' reforms—widely implemented throughout the region since the 1980s with debilitating effects, including contraction of social welfare, reduction of wages, and lack of infrastructure investment. Consequently, today forty percent of Egyptians live below the UN poverty line of less than £2 a day.
Due to such vulnerabilities, Egypt, as with many of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, now lies on the fault lines of the convergence of global ecological, energy and economic crises—and thus, on the frontlines of deepening global system failure. The Empire is uncrumbling. The guarded official statements put out by the Obama administration only illustrate the disingenuous impotence of the U.S. position.
While Vice President Joe Biden insisted that Mubarak is not a dictator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama lamely condemned "violence" and voiced moral support for the right to protest. The slightly muted response is understandable. For the last 30 years, the United States has supported Mubarak's brutal reign with economic and military assistance—currently providing $1.3 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing (FMF).
The U.S. Congressional Research Service reports that additionally:
Egypt benefits from certain aid provisions that are available to only a few other countries. Since 2000, Egypt's FMF funds have been deposited in an interest bearing account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and have remained there until they are obligated... Egypt is allowed to set aside FMF funds for current year payments only, rather than set aside the full amount needed to meet the full cost of multi-year purchases. Cash flow financing allows Egypt to negotiate major arms purchases with U.S. defense suppliers.
The United States also happens to be Egypt's largest bilateral trading partner. It is "one of the largest single markets worldwide for American wheat and corn and is a significant importer of other agricultural commodities, machinery, and equipment." The United States is also the second largest foreign investor in the country, "primarily in the oil and gas sector."
Perhaps Biden's denial of Mubarak's dictatorial qualities are not that difficult to understand. Since the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981, Egypt has officially been in a continuous "state of emergency," which under a 1958 law permits Mubarak to oversee measures unnervingly similar to the USA Patriot Act—indefinite detention; torture; secret courts; special authority for police interventions; complete absence of privacy; and so on, ad nauseam. Not to mention the fact that inequality in the United States is actually higher than in Egypt.
Yet ultimately, the U.S. administration cannot absolve itself. Successive State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Egypt, while still conservative, catalog the litany of routine police-state repression inflicted on the civilian population over the last decade by Mubarak's security forces. When asked about the shocking findings of the 2009 report, Clinton herself downplayed the implications, describing Mubarak and his wife as "friends of my family." So it is not that we do not know. It is that we did not care until the terror became so unbearable that it exploded onto the streets of Cairo.
Egypt: Lessons in Democracy
Could 2011 be to the Arab world what 1989 was to Eastern Europe?
Egypt is central among a network of repressive Arab regimes which the British and Americans have actively supported since the early twentieth century to sustain control of cheap oil "at all costs," as Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd noted in 1956, as well as to protect Israel. Declassified British Foreign Office files reviewed by historian Mark Curtis show that the Gulf sheikdoms were largely created by Britain to "retain our influence," while police and military assistance would help "counter hostile influence and propaganda within the countries themselves"—particularly from "ultra-nationalist maladies." The real danger, warned the Foreign Office in 1957, was of dictators "losing their authority to reformist or revolutionary movements which might reject the connection with the United Kingdom."
No wonder then that the chief fear of Western intelligence agencies and corporate risk consultants is not that mass resistance might fail to generate vibrant and viable democracies, but simply the prospect of a regional "contagion" that could destabilize "Saudi oil fields." Such conventional analyses, of course, entirely miss the point: The American Empire, and the global political economy it has spawned, is unraveling—not because of some far-flung external danger, but under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It is unsustainable—already in overshoot of the earth's natural systems, exhausting its own resource base, alienating the vast majority of the human and planetary population.
The solution in Tunisia, in Egypt, in the entire Middle East, and beyond, does not lie merely in aspirations for democracy. Hope can only spring from a fundamental re-evaluation of the entire structure of our civilization in its current form. If we do not use the opportunities presented by these crises to push for fundamental structural change, then the "contagion" will engulf us all.
Copyright © 2011 Le Monde diplomatique — distributed by Agence Global
Together, the unarmed insurrection that overthrew the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia and the ongoing uprising in Egypt have dramatically altered the way many in the West view prospects for democratization in the Middle East. The dramatic events of recent weeks have illustrated that for democracy to come to the Arab world, it will come not from foreign intervention or sanctimonious statements from Washington, but from Arab peoples themselves.
While many observers have acknowledged how unarmed pro-democracy insurrections helped bring democracy to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa, they had discounted the chances of such movements in the region, despite Tunisia being far from the first.
There has actually been a long history of nonviolent pro-democracy struggle in North Africa and the Middle East. Egypt wrested its independence from Great Britain as a result of a massive nonviolent resistance campaign launched in 1919. In Sudan, military dictators were ousted in nonviolent insurrections in 1964 and 1985, though the democratic experiments that followed were cut short by military coups a few years later. In 1991, in a nonviolent struggle succeeded in ousting the Traore dictatorship in Mali, despite the massacre of hundreds of peaceful protesters by the armed forces. Though it is one of the poorest countries in the world, Mali has been one of the most stable and democratic countries in the region ever since. The recently published book Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance in the Middle East documents numerous other popular pro-democracy movements throughout the Arab world.
The current struggle in Egypt—the center of Arab media, scholarship, and culture—has enormous ramifications for the region as a whole. The predominantly young secular activists who initiated the struggle reject not only the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak but also conservative Islamist leaders; they have put together a broad coalition of young and old, Muslim and Christian, poor and middle class to challenge a brutal corrupt regime which has held power for nearly thirty years. Like-minded civil society activists are organizing elsewhere. Indeed, 2011 could be to the Arab world what 1989 was to Eastern Europe.
In the early days of the uprisings, top U.S. officials defended the United States' close ties with the authoritarian leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and, making lukewarm statements about the need for "reform" and urging "both sides" to refrain from violence (despite the far greater violence from state authorities). They refused to back the pro-democracy movements, call for democratic change, or threaten the suspension of U.S. military aid. However, the very day Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia, President Obama came out with a strong statement lauding the pro-democracy movement and criticizing the dictator's oppression. Similarly, in the early days of the Egyptian protests, Obama administration officials made similar calls for "restraint" on "both sides," speaking only in terms of reform from within Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime. By the fifth day of the demonstrations, however, apparently not wanting to be on the wrong side of history, the Obama administration started speaking in terms of a transition to democratic rule and making it clear that large-scale repression of nonviolent protesters—which would presumably be implemented with U.S.-supplied weaponry—would be unacceptable.
These shifts illustrate that, despite the longstanding sense of fatalism among Arabs that Washington will ultimately impact what happens on the "Arab street," the Arab street has proven itself capable of impacting what happens in Washington.
This change is long overdue. The Obama administration, in rejecting the dangerous neoconservative ideology of its predecessor, had fallen back onto the realpolitik of previous administrations by continuing to support repressive regimes through unconditional arms transfers and other security assistance. Indeed, Obama's understandable skepticism of the neoconservative doctrine of externally mandated, top-down approaches to democratization through "regime change" turned into an excuse for further arming these regimes—which then use these instruments of repression to subjugate popular, indigenous, bottom-up struggles for democratization.
At the same time, there was a subtle, but important, shift in the U.S. government's discourse on human rights when Obama came to office two years ago. The Bush administration pushed a rather superficial structuralist view. It focused, for instance, on elections—which can, in many cases, be easily rigged and manipulated—in order to change certain governments for purposes of expanding U.S. power and influence. Obama has taken more of an agency view of human rights, emphasizing such rights as freedom of expression and the right to protest, recognizing that human rights reform can only come from below and not imposed from above.
How We Brought Down a Dictator
10 years later: A conversation with Srdja Popovic, a leader in the the nonviolent overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic.
Until now, this had largely been rhetorical. Even now, as of this writing, the United States still needs to take a firmer stance toward Mubarak and the Egyptian military. And, regarding U.S. policy in the region as a whole, the United States needs to stop propping up other Arab dictators and supporting the Israeli occupation through ongoing military assistance.
However, the Obama administration has been reminded of where power actually comes from: Even if a government has a monopoly of military force and even if a government has the support of the world's one remaining superpower, it is still ultimately powerless if the people refuse to recognize its authority. Through general strikes, filling the streets, mass refusal to obey official orders, and other forms of nonviolent resistance, even the most autocratic regime cannot survive.
One cannot help but admire the Egyptians, who—like the Tunisians, Serbians, Filipinos, Poles, and many others before—have faced down the teargas, water cannons, truncheons, and bullets for their freedom. However, as long as the United States remains the world's No.1 supplier of security assistance to repressive governments in the Middle East and elsewhere, the need for massive nonviolent action in support for freedom and democracy may be no greater than here.


text:
I've heard rumors that if you keep Vette's shock collar on, and shock her every chance you get, then she will eventually become twisted and start to prefer the dark side dialogue choices that she normally dislikes. Can anyone confirm if this is true?
In my case, I've gotten to the point where I keep getting the same dialogue cutscene with her, where she demands that I take the collar off, and if I shock her she says something like "fine, but don't expect any more help from me". I've heard from people that she will continue giving this same cutscene over and over until I remove the collar, which clearly contradicts the other rumors that I described above.
However, my affection with her is still low (just below 1000), so I'm not sure if I'm stuck on this cutscene because the rumors of being able to corrupt Vette are untrue, or just because I need to artificially raise her affection in order to proceed with the corruption.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A Category is a broad classification of a topic. By assigning one or more categories to your event, you allow our site visitors to quickly identify a listing of a particular type of event. At least one category is required per event. Our categories are: Arts, Athletics, Conferences - Symposia, Dates - Deadlines, Free Food, Open to the Public, Programs, and Speakers.
A Tag is a label that further defines content using simple keywords. You can use Tags to assign additional classification to your event. Site visitors will be able to search on popular Tags to surface events based on their particular interest.
Some useful and popular Tags have been pre-populated and associated with Categories (e.g., the Tags film and live comedy are associated with the Arts Category). Those Tags will be suggested to you as create an Event and are also viewable in your Group's Tag Library.
If a Tag is not already in your Group's Tag Library, you can enter a new Tag and it will be added to your Group's Tag Library.
When you select a Category, some useful and popular Tags will be suggested to you as you create an event.


text:
Can I Take A Moment To Thank Pemberducky?
So last week I posted a question asking for help in finding a Fat Unicorn shirt. I mentioned it was for a friend who has had some really tough breaks lately. Like really tough. We were talking and I showed her the Fat Unicorn shirt she thought it was the greatest thing ever. So I asked if anyone could help me find one. Several people offered some excellent suggestions.
Friday night when I got home there was a Woot Envelope at my front door with a Fat Unicorn shirt in it!! Seriously!!
I caught @ADQ on DWChat that night and she spilled the beans that it was @Pemberducky.
I gave my friend the shirt last night and she was speechless. All night long she was showing it everyone she could and couldn't stop thanking me. She had a smile on her face like I haven't seen in a while now. She also said it's now her favorite shirt ever. :)
Thank you folks for showing why Woot has the best people ever. And thank you for helping make my friends day a little brighter when she really needed it.
18 Answers answer
Oh, and I did make damn sure she knew exactly how and why she has that. No way I was taking that credit for that - it was all you folks at Woot. Think it's safe to say you also have a new customer now!
It's things like this that gives me hope for Woot! It may have changed over the years (much for the worse it seems), but every now and then something like this happens and it's a +1 to Woot.
@pemberducky: that was a very considerate gesture. While I may have my issues with wOOt of late. It is the actions like this from the deals.woot staff that keeps me coming back in to this site. Karma points to you.
Way cool! I like how the staff is present and active here. Great surprise!
Wow! That was really sweet of her! @pemberducky, you are just too sweet! Seeing the kindness of the mods, and even fellow wootizens is what keeps me here!
Yay @pemberducky and yay Woot! And thanks @bingo969 for sharing a great story.
Nice move @pemberducky. Now could we get you to pose for an ohcheri deal or two? ;)
You made me get all misty eyed. Stuff like this is why there is a community here.
@Pemberducky - you rock.
Tags for posterity: tags: staff * thanks * pemberduckyrocks
And @pemberducky does indeed rock! She's awesome - and what a wonderful display of the strength of this community and what makes it so special.
sure you can...why do you need to "ask" us? thank her yourself. this questions nonsense is ridiculous amirite?
@pinchecat: Because I'd like to do it publicly. Pemberducky deserves some props for doing that completely without prompting or asking. And Woot deserves some props for empowering staff to be able to do things like that. While my guess is that neither PB or Woot did it for the press as there was no note, name or other notification about it I think they deserve it. It's a small item sure but it still shows they are active, paying attention and give a box of craps.
@woot & its employees are so awesome, you should be able to eat them with a spoon!
More good humans are needed in this world. Nice to know @pemberducky is one of them xoxo
Way to go @pemberducky!
@pinchecat: Those negative votes are like caffeine to you, aren't they?
oh, you are so very welcome! sorry for not responding sooner - i've been out of the office.
i sure do appreciate your wonderful words, but i can't take credit.
the hard-working, behind-the-scenes customer service peeps got that shirt to your door.
so glad it made her happy. it sounded like she deserved a smile.
like i said - you're a really good friend.
You the Man!, er Person!, er Duck!
@jsimsace: oh man. nobody wants that, trust me.


text:
Limited Spots Remain for AU Women's Soccer Winter ClinicJanuary 6, 2014
ANDERSON, S.C. – With the New Year beginning on Wednesday, the Anderson University women's soccer team still has openings for its Jan. 25 camp open to all female soccer players ages 7-18.
Up until Jan. 10, participants can still receive the early bird offer of $70 for a half-day and $100 for a full day. After Jan. 10, the half-day price will rise to $80 and the full day cost will move to $120. If wanting to a group of eight or more participants, each player will receive a $10 discount, but must contact head coach Samar Azem prior to signing up. For all Anderson University employees, there will be a 10% discount applied.
The Samar Azem Anderson Soccer Academy is designed to offer both elite and developing soccer players an opportunity to train in an environment geared towards the individual's preparation for the next level at our minicamp.
Our academy's goal is to enhance each camper's comprehensive development and experience in a unique training and learning environment.
We utilize NCAA Division I and II championship winning coaches focused on skill instruction and tactical development with a commitment to relaying our knowledge of the game to eager young hopefuls. Additionally, each coach will be assisted by current collegiate players who will not only demonstrate but will compete with and against each camper in our elite training environment.
For more information of the Samar Azem Anderson Soccer Academy College Prep Winter Clinic, click here.


text:
Meet and Communicate with Fun Singles Near You on BlackSingles.com
Register now to search thousands of members and post your FREE profile!
See who's on BlackSingles.com:
heyyy my names brit!! im currently a student at CWI in nampa idaho. Im going to major in the medical field. in two years ill be a sergi...
119674325 is a 23yr-old single woman in Carlile, WyomingView Profile


text:
Rosalyn Carson-DeWitt, MD
The goal of treatment is to:
Treatment involves the following:
There are no surgical procedures for treating uncomplicated pneumonia.
Pneumonia symptoms diagnosis and treatment. American Lung Association website. Available at:
http://www.lung.org/lung-disease/pneumonia/symptoms-diagnosis-and.html. Accessed October 3, 2012.
Pneumonia. National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI) website. Available at:
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/pnu. Updated March 1, 2011. Accessed October 3, 2012.
Pneumonia in adults. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at:
http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed. Updated August 27, 2012. Accessed October 3, 2012.
Pneumonia in children. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at:
http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed. Updated August 27, 2012. Accessed October 3, 2012.
Last reviewed May 2015 by David L. Horn, MD, FACP
Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
Copyright © EBSCO Publishing. All rights reserved.


text:
This is my first project in Interaction design. I'm planning to design a portal for on-line florist. If I'm planning for a face to face interview with florists, What kind of information should I gather from them??.
closed as not a real question by JonW♦ Sep 26 '12 at 8:44
It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, visit the help center.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
You have the two sides of the equation: the portal and the users. Both areto be understood.
From the portal side, there are the business goals, whether its a for-profit portal or not.
From the user's side, you have to find out what are their goals against the site.
Also, you might be able to sort the users according to their behaviour pertaining the scenarios or UCs.
I'm cramming a lot into an already rather long text. All this is explained in Alan Cooper's About Face book, among others.
More recommendations:
Don´t ask the users what to do, in the sense of how to do it. They will give you answers they are not entitled to provide, because they are not UX men. You are.
There is a design step between when you find out what the users want (the goals thing) and the production of the Use Cases or whatever docs you create in order to document interaction.
I don't really understand if the portal is for florists or from florists (eg. send-flower-online), perhaps that's because I'm not a native English speaker, I'm sorry.
Most of what Juan says stands, it's only that in case it's about ordinary people (not florists) buying flowers, your users are those people mainly and not the florists.
(The florists are so-called secondary users in case they're to upload content to the site, they provide services to the primary users)
Usually I ask people to tell stories. Usually the questions are like this:
When I understand enough of the goals and tasks in general, I usually start to draw the stories as mockups and flows, there, in front of the interviewed user (or at least try to re-tell the stories in my own words). "So, you said, you want to do this..., right? for that you need...." "and then you want to do that?" "okay, and then what happens?" "what else could happen?"
These are not necessarily the final flows (that comes after all of the interviews anyway, and after balancing alternatives), it's just to help people's imagination. I sometimes even do comic sketches, although I'm pretty far from an artist.
I usually say it's like creating a "facial composite" (their name in my language is much more to the point here: we call them "phantom pictures") of an imagined system. I try to be sparse of the details, but still it helps users foster their imagination.
So, I guess storytelling, and helping imagination with trying to do visual storytelling is a good technique.


text:
Students at the University of Colorado Law School, under the supervision of the school's public service program lawyer and a Boulder attorney, won the right for USA women and men elite amateur boxers to compete in a "box-off" for the 2011 Pan American Games qualifiers, a precursor to the 2012 Olympic Games. Working with the U.S. Olympic Committee Athlete Ombudsman John Ruger, a Boulder resident and Olympic biathlete, Colorado Law's Andy Hartman led students in representing the elite athletes, who could not afford counsel. Ruger approached Colorado Law at the end of February to assist the athletes with their grievance. The "box-off" took place March 17?–20, 2011 at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The four second-year Colorado Law students—Sarah Abelson, John Dwyer, Nate Jewell and Kira Robinson—represented elite boxer Caroline "Carrie" Barry in her successful claim against USA Boxing. Under U.S. Olympic Committee rules, the case also affects approximately 20 female boxers and 60 male boxers. USA Boxing was ordered to conduct a single elimination "box-off," similar to a basketball tournament bracket, at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs before the end of March.
Barry had been captain and a member of the USA National Boxing Team since 2004. She filed a grievance, asserting that USA Boxing improperly changed its rules for sending boxers to the Pan-Am qualifiers, thus violating her and the other affected athletes' rights under the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and U.S. Olympic Committee rules.
Hartman, Colorado Law's Experiential Learning Director and Paul Gross, a Boulder attorney, filed a grievance on behalf of the students with the official arbitrator on March 1, 2011, and a hearing was held on March 7, 2011 in Denver. While originally filed only with women's boxing in mind, upon request from USA Boxing, the arbitrator joined male boxers as athletes affected by the arbitration.
This increased the significance of the proceeding since women compete only in three Olympic weight classes, while men enjoy 10 categories. The arbitrator issued his ruling on March 8, 2011 in favor of Barry and indirectly in favor of the other athletes who will now have the chance to compete in the box-off.
"It took guts for the athletes to pursue this case, but given their success in the ring, we were not surprised," said Hartman. "This win, however, goes to the students—they made the opening and closing statements and examined most of the witnesses."
As stated by the arbitrator, in December 2010, USA Boxing found itself in a difficult position regarding sending athletes to the Pan-Am game qualifiers. USA Boxing realized that its existing qualifying system was not in compliance with international rules. USA Boxing believed that boxers could win spots for the USA team during the qualifying rounds, and thereafter USA Boxing would decide which athletes would fill the spots earned. In fact, the rules stated that boxers could only qualify individually, not for team slots. Thus, in order to comply with international rules, USA Boxing would have to change its own rules retroactively. It is this rule change that the arbitrator found to be null and void in ordering the box-off.
"Kira, Sarah, John, and Nate's outstanding work on behalf of these talented women is what it's all about at Colorado Law—we have a commitment to educating our students and serving those in need," said Hartman. "The students made us proud today."
Colorado Law has a long history of providing pro bono assistance to Colorado's underserved communities. In addition to the public service program directed by Hartman, Colorado Law houses nine clinics staffed by clinical faculty serving hundreds of clients in important areas such as family law, criminal matters, juvenile law, entrepreneurial law, civil law, technology, natural resources, appeals, and American Indian rights.


text:
Celebrating with Cara
W's September cover star brought all the cool kids to our London party.
What: A dinner and after-party to celebrate W's September issue and its cover star Cara Delevingne.
When: Saturday, September 14
Where: Ian Schrager's newly opened London Edition hotel
Who: Kate Moss, Damien Hirst, Harry Styles, Tim Walker, Juergen Teller, Kelly Osbourne, her fiancé Matthew Mosshart, and Alexander Wang who took a quick break from working on his Balenciaga collection and flew in from Paris.
Why: Because, as Lynn Hirschberg writes in her story on Delevingne, ever since the rebellious model "arrived in the fashion world four years ago, she was an instant sensation—a face that captivated."Follow Us:
Most popularFollow us on Facebook


text:
The new XJ is Jaguar's pinnacle saloon car, the perfect combination of cutting-edge technology, sporting vehicle dynamics, and opulent luxury.
- CO2 EMISSIONS g/km
- As low as 149
- FUEL ECONOMY Combined l/100km
- From 5.7
The new XJ is Jaguar's pinnacle saloon car, the perfect combination of cutting-edge technology, sporting vehicle dynamics, and opulent luxury.
The new XJ is Jaguar's pinnacle saloon car, the perfect combination of cuttng-edge technology, sporting vehicle dynamics, and opulent luxury.
XJ redefines what a luxury car should be. It's a dramatic combination of beauty, luxury and power. It provides agility and delivers a refreshingly dynamic driving experience. For the passenger, the cabin is built for stretching out and relaxing.
XJ now features full LED headlamps and tail lamps as well as InControl Touch Pro as standard, along with a range of other enhancements both inside and out.
No car looks, or feels, like XJ.
Cashew Bond grain leather seats with Truffle upper facia, Ivory Morzine headlining, Satin Rosewood veneer and Truffle carpets.
Standard Wheelbase (SWB) or Long Wheelbase (LWB), every XJ is the perfect environment for work or leisure. LWB models also feature over a metre of legroom and a unique 'limousine' ride with revised air suspension settings for even greater comfort.
XJ is now bolder and more assertive with features that include an imposing, more upright new front grille, more powerful full LED headlamps and eye-catching new tail lamps. XJ's powerful character is reflected in the low, wide stance and long, taut waistline.
Exceptionally luxurious, you'll discover a quality of craftsmanship throughout the XJ interior that sets it apart. You never just travel in XJ, you are transported to another place.
Every XJ engine delivers an outstanding combination of performance, refinement and efficiency. The range extends from a new version of our 3.0 litre V6 Diesel engine, now with 221KW and 700Nm of torque, and a 3.0 litre V6 250kW Supercharged Petrol to the 5.0 litre V8 375kW and 404kW Supercharged Petrol engines. All models feature an 8-speed automatic transmission for responsive, smooth gear changes.
XJ's all-aluminium body architecture is not only strong and rigid but also extremely light. Riveted, and without a single welded joint, the 100 percent aluminium monocoque chassis and body structure makes this one of the lightest car in its class. The excellent power-to-weight ratio improves all aspects of performance and the monocoque construction offers increased rigidity for improved handling as well as excellent safety benefits.
InControl Touch Pro - standard on every XJ - is Jaguar's brand new, state-of-the-art infotainment system and takes the idea of the 'connected car' to another level. An 8 inch Touch-screen in the centre console and a customisable, High Definition, 12.3 inch TFT instrument cluster provide user-friendly interfaces and a range of innovative features. A 10GB hard drive is also included for the storage of personal media.
XJR combines supercar performance with the highest levels of craftsmanship. From its 5.0 V8 Supercharged 404kW engine and advanced driving technologies, to the signature 'R' styling and contemporary interior, this is the ultimate expression of sporting luxury.
Browse XJ's line-up and discover your perfect combinations of performance, handling and comfort.


text:
Why are some wines kosher and some not?
Sign up
- Anybody can ask a question
- Anybody can answer
- The best answers are voted up and rise to the top
The Torah prohibits wine offered as a libation to idols (Shemos 34:15). Based on a generalization that non-Jews are devout practitioners of their religion, wine made, touched, poured, or tapped by someone who is not an observant Jew was prohibited by the Sages (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 123:1, see also Chochmas Adam 76:1) out of concern that it might have been offered to an idol. (Incidentally, in an unrelated discussion a certain work I read mentioned that the Greeks, whose culture was highly influential during the time when the Sanhedrin formalized many Rabbinical laws, held wine libations in particularly high esteem). Additionally the restriction was meant to restrain social interaction somewhat to lessen the possibility of inter-faith marriage (Taz 123:1, Shach 123:1, based on the Gemara)
Wine which has been cooked loses quality and is no longer fit for libation. As such the restrictions no longer apply once wine has been cooked (mevushal) provided it was still kosher up until that point (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 123:3).
The process from the harvesting of the grapes until the completed wine product is sealed in the bottle is performed by Observant Jews.
The question and the answers mostly deal with the spiritual aspects of wine. I am not disagreeing with them. But, it should also be remembered that although wine is a vegetarian product, it still must be prepared in accordance with the laws of kashrus. In other words, all equipment and any additives need to be in accordance with kashrus. The equipment used must be kosher, just like any other food preparation equipment. Some wineries might use products that are not kosher in finishing and aging. Kosher wine will only be made using additives that are also kosher and when a kosher certification is present, we know that the wine was produced as a food product in accordance with laws of kashrus.
If the grapes are from Israel, the wine must have truma and maaser taken from it. If truma has not been taken from Israeli wine, it may or may not have the punishment of spiritual cutting off, depending on separate arguments. Thus perhaps drinking some non-kosher wines is worse than eating pig.
For all wines there is a rabbinical decree that a non-Jew cannot touch it. If it is cooked there is no decree on such wine, since it was not common to drink cooked wine. What is called cooked is of course a disagreement, and the OU has 3 different mevushal heckshers depending on how the wine was cooked. Also whether the wine or grape juice was cooked is called mevushal is another disagreement, which may or may not be a problem for Herzog wines. For wine made for idol worship which excludes most/all wineries today see Yirmeahus answer.
If a Jew breaks Shabbat in public, he has the halachic status of a non-Jew. What is called breaking Shabbat in public and where it does and does not apply is a separate argument.
On one hand, I heard that some interpret the rabbinic decree as being that a non-Jew cannot even look at wine, or it becomes yayin nesech. That is a stringent opinion, which is supposedly observed by certain chassidic communities.
One the other hand, I heard the following leniency in the name of Rabbi Yaakov Etlinger: even if someone is not a sabbath-observer, it doesn't necessarily mean that he denies that Hashem created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. I believe that the Hebrew term for this is mumar leteiavon. Most people nowadays don't actually believe that there are other gods, so according to him, wine cannot acquire the status of "idolatrous libation wine," which really is quite a chiddush. You might have atheists nowadays, but they don't pour libations to gods that aren't.
(Similarly, this is why Rav Kook says that atheism is one step closer to Judaism than pantheism. Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar disagrees based on the verse (Deut. 6:4) Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one, because first we should consider it as if there are other gods and that Hashem is our God, and then we reject that there are other gods and that Hashem is the only God, Hashem Echad).


text:
I have bought an NN5 while ago but never used it.
I have a Nikon D3 with several lenses and would like which one would you recommend to make a 10x1meter pano of a city from a lighthouse.
The lenses I have are :
14-24 2.8
24-70 2.8
70-200 2.8
and a 80-400 5.6
Also could you tell me where could I find the nodal points for the 70-200 @ 200 and the 80-400 @ 300 and 400.
All the best


text:
Portland Trail Blazers Tickets
Come and feel the electricity as the Portland Trail Blazers fight to bring back the "Spirit of '77" and secure another NBA title. Always one of the most exciting venues to watch a game, reserve seats at the Moda Center with Trail Blazers tickets for an upcoming game.
Filter Results
Featured Events
- Atlanta Hawks
- Boston Celtics
- Brooklyn Nets
- Charlotte Hornets
- Chicago Bulls
- Cleveland Cavaliers
- Dallas Mavericks
- Denver Nuggets
- Detroit Pistons
- Golden State Warriors
- Houston Rockets
- Indiana Pacers
- Los Angeles Clippers
- Los Angeles Lakers
- Memphis Grizzlies
- Miami Heat
- Milwaukee Bucks
- Minnesota Timberwolves
- New Orleans Pelicans
- New York Knicks
- Oklahoma City Thunder
- Orlando Magic
- Philadelphia 76ers
- Phoenix Suns
- Portland Trail Blazers
- Sacramento Kings
- San Antonio Spurs
- Toronto Raptors
- Utah Jazz
- Washington Wizards
Oct 11, 2016
NBA Preseason - Portland Trail Blazers at Los Angeles Lakers
Staples Center - Los Angeles, CA
Oct 24, 2016
2016-2017 Portland Trail Blazers Season Tickets (Includes Tickets To All Regular Season Home Games)
Moda Center - Portland, OR
Portland Trail Blazers Ticket Information
Vivid Seats is the place to buy affordable Trail Blazers tickets for seats inside Portland's raucous Moda Center to experience live NBA action throughout the year. From the team's championship glory with Bill Walton to the incredible show put on by Clyde "The Glide" Drexler, this West Coast city has backed the Blazers and made the experience of seeing them in-person unforgettable. We have a commitment to getting you into these amazing live matchups, so we strive to make Portland Trail Blazers tickets available for every game in every price range. When it comes to postseason, we even make finding affordable Trail Blazers playoff tickets an easy process.
- You'll find seats for every game on the Trail Blazers schedule by viewing the individual listings above. Vivid Seats has made it easy to filter your results, with sortable options ranging from home and away games to specific months or opposing teams.
- Once you've selected a date, specify your choice of Trail Blazers tickets by setting your price range, sorting by row, or clicking directly on the seating chart. If you have any questions, contact our team at 1.866.848.8499, or reach out to us via Live Chat at the upper-right corner of the page.
- Vivid Seats accepts credit cards and PayPal as forms of payment, with a variety of secure delivery methods like FedEx and near-term options for last-minute orders. Rest assured, you'll be sure to get your Portland Trail Blazers tickets before the day of the game with our 100% Buyer Guarantee.


text:
La Mer
The Hydrating Facial
Product Actions
Utterly sumptuous, this pure cotton mask saturates dry, dehydrated skin on contact with Hydrating Ferments and tourmaline - encouraging it to feel hydrated, nourished and conditioned. Potent marine extracts help diminish visible signs of aging to reveal a more youthful vitality. Skin looks smoother, feels soft and supple to the touch.
Born from a personal quest to heal chemically burned skin, aerospace physicist Dr. Max Huber created La Mer's signature Miracle Broth™, composed of nourishing sea kelp and other potent ingredients, to transform the look of skin. Among the diverse collection of the brand's nutrient-rich skincare products is the best-selling Crème de la Mer™, one of the most sought after products in the world for healing dryness, diminishing the look of wrinkles and restoring skin's radiance.
Need Help? Have Questions? Contact Us.
Please call 1.888.222.7639 to speak with a Customer Service Representative.
We're here to help you:
Monday - Friday, 9 AM - 9 PM (ET)
Saturday - Sunday, 10:30 AM - 7 PM (ET)
If you prefer email, we can be reached anytime at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Free Shipping & Returns on all U.S. Orders. See Details.


text:
I ran across this recurrence relation in a paper by Medina and Zeilberger [MZ] (who got it from [CR]):
$$f(h,t) = \max \left( \frac{1}{2} f(h+1,t) + \frac{1}{2} f(h,t+1) ,\frac{h}{h+t} \right) \;.$$
The "base" condition of the recurrence is that, for $h+t = \infty$, $f(h,t)=\frac{1}{2}$. This function $f$ represents the expected gain in a paricular coin game ($h$ and $t$ are heads and tails), explained in this MSE posting. I had not before encountered recurrence relations whose "initial conditions" are "at infinity," and was surprised to learn that there is no known explicit solution for $f$. (However, one can compute particular values numerically by limiting to $n$ trials and letting $n \rightarrow \infty$. For example, $f(5,3) =\max ( 0.62361957757, 5/8 )$. See [W].)
My question is:
Is there a class of recurrence relations that includes the above example, and for which some theory has been developed for solving such equations?
Thanks for pointers and references!
[MZ] Luis A. Medina, Doron Zeilberger, "An Experimental Mathematics Perspective on the Old, and still Open, Question of When To Stop?" arXiv:0907.0032v2 [math.PR]
[CR] Y.S. Chow and Herbert Robbins. On optimal stopping rule for $S_n/n$. Ill. J. Math., 9:444–454, 1965.
[W] Julian D.A. Wiseman web page.


text:
Click the title of any of the items below to learn more.
Show the country that you took part in the democratic process with Corey's new "I Voted!" QuickPix freeware icon.
Desktop picture for the left monitor to accompany the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics icon set from Talos.
Over 300 buttons, arrows & widget icons for the web.
The Iconfactory search engine is a great tool to help you find whatever you are looking for. We have associated keywords with all of the content available on the site. These keywords span icon sets, desktop pictures, iPulse Jackets, software products, support items, design services projects and even news page postings.
In order to make it easy for you to find what you are looking for, we have built some features into our search engine that allow you to customize your search:


text:
Top Definition
a rat bite is when you place one finger in someones anus and another finger in the vaginal and you attempt to snap your fingers
de chaddeus 26 mars 2007
Trending Now
A cruel sexual act where someone inserts their middle finger and thumb into the ass and vagina of another person (female) respectively - and snaps their fingers.
Amanda broke-up with Doug because he gave her a rat bite.
de Jaybird34 7 avril 2009


text:
05 Feb 2011, Tenis Club de Argentino, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Clay, Outdoor
© ITF Licensing (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved. No portion of this website may be duplicated, redistributed, or manipulated in any form. By accessing any information beyond this page, you agree to abide by our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.


text:
Larsmont Cottages is about a 3-hour drive from Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Coming from the South
- Take Interstate 35 to its end in Duluth.
- Follow the signs for North Shore/Highway 61/London Road.
- Follow London Rd North through the east end of Duluth.
- Take the Hwy 61 Expressway towards Two Harbors and continue about 14 miles North to Mile Marker 20.
- Take the first Right after Mile Marker 20, where you will see the first Larsmont Cottages sign.
- Continue to follow the signs to Larsmont Cottages.
- The address is 596 Larsmont Way (you will turn left at the silver mailbox with our address).
- Follow the signs to Registration and Lodge.


text:
Seattle Parks and Recreation Jesús Aguirre, Superintendent
|Centers & Pools
|Reservations & Permits
|Projects & Planning
|A - Z Index
Kinnear Park
Back to Off-Leash Areas
General Parks Information: (206) 684-4075 | Contact Us
Kinnear OLA is a permanent off-leash area located in lower Kinnear that opened in early 2013. In 2006 after an extensive public process Seattle Parks recommended that off leash areas be built on Magnolia at Magnolia Manor Park and on Queen Anne at Kinnear Park and in 2008 funding became available through the Parks and Green Spaces Levy.
The 5,400 square foot dog park is located in the west section of Kinnear Park. The site is a corral configuration on a relatively flat incline beneath a towering forest. A steep nature trail runs past the site and offers views of Elliot Bay. The trail connects upper with lower Kinnear Park and leads to Myrtle Edwards and Elliott Bay parks along Puget Sound.
The off-leash area is surrounded by a 4� fence and has a double gate entrance with a single gate emergency exit in the rear to ensure dog safety. It includes a kiosk, natural feeling wooden fencing, wood chip surfacing, logs and rocks, a bench and native plantings on the adjacent hillside.
On weekends and after business hours the site enjoys a dedicated parking lot behind Queen Anne Upholstery at the end of W. Mercer Street. (Enter at 904 Elliott Ave. W). Mercer is a busy street.
Dog owners should take care to leash their dogs outside of the off leash park on trails and between OLA and parking.
Lower Kinnear does not meet the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility standards. For ADA accessible off leash areas in the vicinity, try Magnolia Manor or Denny Regrade or Plymouth Pillars.
Download off-leash area map
*Note: To view a PDF, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader. Download it for free at www.adobe.com.
Updated March 27, 2012
|Home | Partnerships | Park Board | Volunteer | FAQ | Parkways | Facebook | @SeattleParks | Flickr


text:
I'm kind of disappointed that the question here was never sharpened.
The Laplacian $\Delta$ on the upper half-plane is $-y^{2}(\partial^{2}/\partial x^{2}+\partial^{2}/\partial y^{2}))$. Suppose $D$ is the fundamental domain of, say, a congruence subgroup $\Gamma$ of $Sl_{2}(\mathbb{Z})$. Eigenfunctions of the discrete spectrum of $\Delta$ are real analytic solutions to $\Delta (\Psi)=\lambda \Psi$ that are $\Gamma$-equivariant functions in $L^{2}(D, dz)$, where $dz$ is the Poincare measure on the upper half-plane. These eigenfunctions evidently carry quite a bit of number theoretic information. Frankly, this point of view on number theory sounds incredibly interesting...
Question: Would someone please suggest a readable introductory account that tells this story?
(I imagine that answers will include the words Harish-Chandra, Langlands, etc...)
Also, if experts are inclined to write a short overview as an answer, that would also be much appreciated.


text:
When Your Baby Dies Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth
by Louis A. Gamino and Ann Taylor Cooney, Augsburg Fortress,www.augsburgfortress.org
, 2002.
This is a small book, only 48 pages and slight in size, but one with much good information for families dealing with this special kind of loss and the grief it brings. Both authors experienced an infant death and write with great sensitivity and comfort. For Louis Gamino, it was his son who was diagnosed before birth with a cardiac condition that was incompatible with life. For Ann Cooney, it was the unexpected death of a younger sister at birth for then ten-year-old Ann. Special attention is given to the sometimes varying grief needs of mothers, fathers, grandparents and siblings. Issues of spirituality are touched upon and both authors write from the Christian tradition. Descriptions of various emotional responses for families, practical suggestions such as naming the baby, and memorial ideas are included. A comforting and insightful resource for parents in this deeply painful and often misunderstood type of loss.
Always My Brother
by Jean Reagan, illustrated by Phyllis Pollema-Cahill, Tilbury House, www.tilburyhouse.com
, 2009.
Becky has a brother, John, with whom she shares laughs and love. When they practice soccer together, Becky is the scorer and John is the goalie. After John dies (no reason given-could be any reason), Becky struggles to feel normal and gradually begins to feel some relief in her grief. Soccer season returns and Becky feels ambivalent-can she play without her brother? Should she? Eventually she decides to play again and be a goalie like her brother. As she and her parents walk to the field for her first game since John's death, Becky shows her parents how she and John used to walk together, hands not touching but their shadows holding hands.
The story is straightforward and well-told from the perspective of a grieving sibling. The watercolor illustrations are comforting, nicely fitting and detailed in ways that complement the words. A good choice for elementary children who have experienced the death of a brother or sister.
The Mourning News - February 2011
Call Us: 501-364-1100 or TDD 501-364-1184


text:
We are talking about algebras in the universal algebraic sense, that is, a set that $A$ is equipped with a set $F$ of finitary operations on $A$.
Definition: An algebra $(A,F)$ is said to have finite essential arity if there exists a number $n \in \mathbb{N}$ such that each of its term functions depends on at most $n$ variables.
I am mostly interested in the case where $A$ is finite. I have read some results about this, but I am not sure what exactly is known about these kind of algebras.
I am particularly interested in identities that hold (or don't hold) for algebras of this kind. I know a few conditions on identities that imply finite essential arity, but not so many that are required or even equivalent. Thus, I would be very interested in examples of this kind.
To ask one more specific question that goes in the same direction: Are there (finite) algebras with finite essential arity that are not strongly abelian? What would be an example for that?