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Iara, a slight, dark-skinned woman of thirty-one, manages the favela of Parque Royal, in Rio de Janeiro, for a gangster named Fernandinho. She calls herself his sub-delegada. When I met her, Iara was organizing a tenth-birthday party for the youngest of her three daughters. She wore a T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and a black baseball cap over a ponytail. Her T-shirt had a message, in Portuguese: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil. John 17:15." There was a bulge where a pistol was tucked into her shorts.
Iara handled "community relations" on behalf of her gang, the Terceiro Comando Puro, or Pure Third Command. (She called it "the firm.") It was a new position, but it was necessary. "Before, there were some problems, mostly disrespect shown by the traficantes toward the locals," she said. Iara usually dealt with problems by "talking to people," but if the problem was big she would "take it up the hill"—a reference to Morro do Dendê, the favela where Fernandinho lived. There had been a problem the previous day: "A husband beating his wife. She wanted to separate, he beat her." Iara didn't spell out how it was resolved, but it had been.
We were walking through the favela—a mess of slapped-up houses of corrugated tin and unpainted brick, dreadlocked tangles of pilfered electrical wiring, and graffiti-covered walls and alleyways where little shops and rudimentary bars selling beer and cachaça jostled for space with storefront evangelical churches. Parque Royal is built on what used to be a mangrove swamp, and Iara's home sits on a litter-strewn bayside promenade. The air stinks heavily of raw sewage, but no one seems to notice. Rough-looking armed young men, drug dealers from her gang, guard the alleyways. She spoke with them so that they would not do me any harm.
Iara had a tattoo of a scorpion on her left arm, surrounded by the initials of the people who were closest to her: her three daughters, her mother, her sister, and a niece and a nephew. Iara's father left her mother when she was a year old. Her mother was an alcoholic, she said, "but she isn't anymore." She was now an evangélica. Iara had played soccer as a girl, and been good enough to practice with professionals—she named a couple of well-known players. She had even been on TV. But her older brother used to beat her. "He said I was a lesbian."
When she was fourteen, Iara had entered the local branch of the Pure Third Command. "I slowly got involved to protect myself from my brother, to get respect," she said. "Once I joined, we had no more trouble from him." Iara's brother was now in Bangu, a prison west of Rio, where most of Brazil's gangsters are sent, and which the gangs also control. "He's in prison for the sixth time," she said. "He was a drug dealer and a robber."
Iara's oldest daughter, fourteen, came up to tell her something. She wore a pink T-shirt and shorts. When she had gone, Iara said proudly, "She's a good girl, very responsible. She even tells me off."
As the gang's woman in Parque Royal, Iara earned a salary of five hundred reais a week—about two hundred and fifty dollars—as well as a percentage of the drug sales. She usually made around a thousand reis a week: "If the product is good, sales are better." It was enough to support her family. "My only problem is I am addicted to maconha"—weed. She laughed. "If it was up to me, I would smoke only four times a day, but the problem is, whenever I go out, there's always someone smoking a joint."
She had "retired" the year before, she said. But, when her successor was shot, Fernandinho's deputy, Gilberto Coelho de Oliveira, whom everyone knew as Gil, had asked her to return to her duties, and she had. Gil, who was Fernandinho's best friend from childhood, was said to be the more violent of the two.
Iara didn't give much thought to the future. The most perfect life she could imagine would be "just living, with my girls."
After a pause, she volunteered that at the same age as her eldest daughter, the one I had just seen, she had been raped. "I was too small, so he cut my vagina with a knife," she said. "I had seven stitches, and was in the hospital for a week." Afterward, she had fled home and gone to live with another man—"the man who became the father of my girls." But he had taken a lot of drugs, and after a time she had left him. She was now on her own.
I asked Iara if she was religious. She wasn't, she said, although she sometimes accompanied her aunt to a church. And she liked Pastor Sidney, a popular local evangelical preacher, "because he talks to everyone, and if there's someone who is going to be executed he goes and talks to the big man," she said. "Everyone knows that if there's a problem there's one guy to go to, to fix it, and that's Fernandinho."
Parque Royal is situated on Ilha do Governador, the largest of the islands that dot the great inland bay of Guanabara. It was named for a colonial-era Portuguese governor who built a sugarcane plantation there, but nowadays Ilha is at the edge of the sprawling metropolis of Rio, linked to the mainland by bridges and raised highways. Rio's main airport, Galeão-Antônio Carlos Jobim International—named for the father of bossa nova—is here, squeezed in with an air-force base, a nature reserve, a shipyard, some petrochemical plants, and almost half a million residents, roughly twenty per cent of whom live in favelas.
Rio's first favelas—the name comes from a fast-growing weed—date back to the years after Brazil's abolition of slavery, in 1888. Freed slaves with nowhere else to live built shanties on open hillsides or in partly drained mangrove swamps. They were joined by unemployed former soldiers and more recently by Brazil's rural poor, who flooded the city, fleeing chronic drought and poverty. Twenty years ago, there were said to be three hundred favelas in Rio. Ten years ago, the number had climbed to six hundred. No one knows exactly how many favelas there are today, but it is estimated that more than a thousand exist, housing perhaps three million of Rio's fourteen million inhabitants.
In Rio, the favelas edge up to the airport highway and spread into the distance. At times, bullets crack overhead, as rival gangs on either side of the highway shoot it out. They have been known to come onto the road with their guns to rob motorists. Most visitors head straight from the airport on Ilha to beachfront hotels in the Zona Sul, the affluent southern part of the city, on the far side of the mountains of Tijuca National Park. But there are favelas in Zona Sul, too; there is no way to completely escape Rio's misery. __
In a pattern that repeats itself all over Rio, Ilha's residents live under the de-facto authority of a gangster and his private army. Fernandinho is a thirty-one-year-old drug dealer whose full name is Fernando Gomes de Freitas. There are eighteen favelas on Ilha, and Morro do Dendê, the slum-covered hill where he lives, is the biggest, and one of the largest in the city. Fernandinho controls all but one of Ilha's favelas on behalf of the Pure Third Command. In addition to running Ilha's narcotics trade, he takes commissions—protection money—from legal businesses such as bus companies, cable-television operators, and suppliers of cooking gas. In 2007, police calculated that Fernandinho earned about three hundred thousand dollars a month from drugs, but they speculated that his other sources of income might dwarf this. He enforces his rule and imposes summary justice through an armed posse. He is a fugitive—one of the most-wanted criminals in Rio. On a police warrant, he is described as "the boss of Morro do Dendê/Ilha do Governador, armed and dangerous, capable of killing anyone who doesn't agree with him or who disobeys his orders." His other aliases are Lopes, Cebolinha (Little Onion), the Lion, and Fernandinho Guarabu—for the favela where he was born. His father was a bricklayer and a drunk, and mistreated him and his mother. He is dead. Fernandinho's mother works as a cashier and is said to have refused his money.
Despite the outstanding warrants, Fernandinho lives openly in Morro do Dendê, essentially hiding in plain sight. He assumed control of Ilha five years ago, after his predecessor, an older gangster named Bizulai, who had taken a liking to him and made him his top lieutenant, was shot dead by military police. There have been several high-profile police attempts to capture or kill Fernandinho. In November, 2005, police raided the favela on the eve of a party that Fernandinho had planned to mark his twenty-seventh birthday and the opening of a community swimming pool that he had had built. The police missed Fernandinho but confiscated ten thousand cans of beer. They tried again in 2007, when Fernandinho threw another party, this time to celebrate the arrest of his archrival, Marcelo Soares de Madeiros, known as Marcelo PQD (the letters are short for paraquedista, "paratrooper"). Fernandinho got away; the police found a four-and-a-half-foot cake decorated with the Twenty-third Psalm, spelled out in icing. They also found an effigy of Marcelo PQD, wearing red panties, hanging from a lamppost.
Marcelo PQD had once been boss of Morro do Dendê. But, after serving time in Bangu, he had lost his position, and switched his allegiance to a gang called the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command. He had intended to kill Fernandinho, and regain control of the favela.
The Pure Third Command started life as a breakaway faction of the Red Command, the oldest and most powerful of Rio's narco-mafias. It grew out of a prisoners' group that was formed in 1979, when common criminals and political radicals were held together at Cândido Mendes prison, on Ilha Grande, in the sea west of Rio. Cândido Mendes was Brazil's Devil's Island, where the country's military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 until 1985, locked up guerrillas it had not already killed. More than twenty years have passed since Brazil's restoration of democracy, and there are no longer any Marxist guerrillas, although several former ones hold positions in the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The Red Command's founders picked up some organizational know-how and a few social ideas from their fellow-inmates. They even adopted the motto "Peace, Justice, and Freedom," which the gang still retains. But by the mid-nineteen-eighties the Red Command and its offshoots had abandoned any political pretensions that their leaders may have once had. The gangs today are purely criminal organizations: they exist in order to sell narcotics to fellow-Brazilians.
Unlike the export-based drug cartels in Colombia or Mexico, Rio's bandidos are wholesale importers—of cocaine from Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, and of marijuana from Paraguay—as well as managers of their own retail distribution networks. At least a hundred thousand people work for the drug gangs of Rio, in a hierarchical structure that mimics the corporate world: favela chiefs are gerentes gerais, or general managers; their deputies are sub-gerentes; the top gang bosses are donos, or "owners."
When I visited another favela, on a hill in north Rio, a woman I'll call Cicliade, the administrator of a privately funded N.G.O. that ran a small community center, told me that the Pure Third Command controlled the hill-top, but that the hillside was the Red Command's territory. (There was an exchange of automatic-weapons fire at the beginning of my visit, which she said was a near daily occurrence.) "On the way up, it's Red Command," she said. "Up here, we can never wear red. If you see a Flamengo fan wearing one of their shirts"—Flamengo is one of the most popular Rio soccer teams—"its colors are black and red; that's O.K., but you can't wear only red." Cicliade gestured at her own dress, which was safely black. Once, she said, a girl came up the hill wearing red clothing. "They didn't kill her, because she was an evangelical Christian, but they cut her clothes off." Last year, in another incident, the traficantes had pulled out a girl's fingernails because she wore red nail polish. "So we don't use fingernail polish anymore," Cicliade said. The hilltop's gang leader was a graduate of the center's computer class, Cicliade added, and his men generally let her do her work.
The state is almost completely absent in the favelas. The drug gangs impose their own systems of justice, law and order, and taxation—all by force of arms. A black market in guns from other countries has abetted a mind-numbing level of violence. As in Mexico, many of Brazil's illegal weapons come from the United States; but Russian arms have begun to show up in recent years, and the weapons have been getting more powerful. Rio's gangsters have been caught with military-issue machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons. Semi-automatic assault rifles and hand grenades are commonplace. Fernandinho's wanted poster warns that he possesses "a Madsen machine gun." (The Madsen fires five hundred rounds a minute.)
Rio de Janeiro is the top-ranked city in the world for "violent intentional deaths." According to officials, there were just under five thousand murders last year, half of them drug-gang-related. (The numbers don't include such incidents as "rape resulting in death" or "riots resulting in death.") Twenty-two policemen were murdered. Rio's police, in turn, kill more people than police anywhere else in the world; in 2008, they acknowledged killing eleven hundred and eighty-eight people who were "resisting arrest," or slightly more than three people a day. By comparison, American police killed three hundred and seventy-one people—classified as "justifiable homicides"—in the entire United States in the same period. "Stray bullets" are said to kill or wound at least one person every day. By any ordinary calculus, public security in Rio de Janeiro is a disaster.
"Rio is one of the very few cities in the world where you have whole areas controlled by armed forces that are not of the state," Alfredo Sirkis, a prominent Rio politician who is also a former guerrilla, said. "Any one of the drug gangs in the smallest favela of Rio today has more weapons than we ever had," Sirkis added. "We had basically one rifle, two machine guns, and a pair of grenades. And with those we had the state in our thrall." He shook his head. "But nobody wants to make revolution anymore. What these people with the guns want today is their immediate share of the consumption culture. It's so childish, and morally childish, and they kill like children, too—like in a kids' war game." If they ever acquired an ideology, they could threaten the state, he said. "For now, they are a totally entropic and anarchic group of young people who have figured out how to get what they want, which is, basically, clothing, cars, and respect."
Indeed, what has happened in Rio applies, in varying degrees, throughout Latin America—most notably in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia. Two decades after the collapse of Communism, the region's Marxist guerrillas have disappeared, only to be replaced by violent drug mafias. __
Sirkis, who is in his fourth term on Rio's city council, is a tall, rangy man of fifty-eight with a mop of fair hair. His parents were Polish Jews who immigrated to Brazil after surviving the Holocaust. Sirkis was born in Rio. As a student in the late sixties, he joined the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard, an urban guerrilla group. Sirkis robbed several banks and, in separate incidents, helped kidnap the Swiss and German Ambassadors to Brazil. (The diplomats were freed unharmed after the military regime agreed to release a total of a hundred and ten political prisoners.) In 1971, as his comrades were being hunted down and killed, Sirkis fled the country. He spent almost nine years in exile, in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Paris, and Lisbon, returning after the military issued an amnesty. Sirkis went on to repudiate political violence in a best-selling book, "Os Carbonários," published in 1980. He is now an environmental activist and a leader of Brazil's Green Party, under whose banner he ran for President, in 1998.
On July 10th, one of Sirkis's son's best friends, a twenty-two-year-old university student, was murdered in Rio. His body was found in a taxi; he and the driver had both been shot; the student's sneakers were missing. Sirkis wrote a despondent letter to the editor in which he noted that this was an event of such banality that it had not even merited a news story. He told me, "The percentage of crimes solved here in Rio is ridiculous—ninety per cent of the homicides go unresolved." Part of the blame went to Brazil's "politically correct culture," he said. "It's all Scandinavian talk in an Iraqi reality. Rio is completely schizophrenic. Everybody's very p.c.—all this violence is seen as coming from some injustice. At the same time, they'd like the favelas to be atomized, à la Buck Rogers, with a Disintegrator."
Sirkis likens the spread of Rio's gang culture to Al Qaeda's appeal to disenfranchised youths in Muslim societies. "There is a culture that permits the constant reproduction of younger and younger recruits," he said. "It's a kind of self-affirmation. You have a social situation that generates a certain kind of person and creates an example that is emulated by the boys who are young, and that example is a trafficker with his AR-15 and his Nike shoes. It's a way to become a man. The girls notice him and he can fight his enemies, who are youths like him. It gives them the sentiment of allegiance."
Every year, the gangsters got younger; now some were as young as ten. It was "like a Middle Ages phenomenon, feudalism and warlordism without any purpose other than living day to day," Sirkis said. "It's a low-intensity, nonideological insurgency."
Not long after Fernandinho took control of Ilha, he and Gil—the two call themselves the "LG gang" (for their nicknames Lopes and Gil)—began making headlines in Rio's newspapers. Fernandinho's generation of bandidos like to party. Gang chiefs are major promoters of funk carioca, or Brazilian gangsta rap. On weekends, they throw bailes funk, street parties attended by youths from outside the favela—from o asfalto, "the asphalt," as the legally constituted parts of the city are known—and hire d.j.s. They provide beer, and sell drugs, mostly cocaine and marijuana, in great quantities. Fernandinho has been filmed partying with his "soldiers," drinking, singing, and bragging about how he dispatched his enemies. At a baile funk in 2005, he rapped:
Tie him up, get him down,
Go on and chop this queer.
Bring the sharp axe,
Send him to Hell.
Now you'll see,
LG has no mercy.
Get the axe down on him,
He'll be a stump.
Why'd you rat on us, you queer?
In another film clip from 2005, Fernandinho is shown at a party rapping into the microphone:
I'm filled with hate.
I'm good, but I'm not a pussy.
I tell everyone, I'm not bad to the locals, I'm not.
I hate Chorrão, PQD, and Noquinha.
If you take their side, I'll cut you to pieces.
You can go to the wrong guy. But when I catch you the Lion will eat you up.
Fernandinho's first murder warrant was issued that same year. Two dismembered bodies were found in Praia da Rosa, a nearby favela. The victims were associates of Noquinha—the rival Fernandinho had mentioned in his rap. Members of Fernandinho's gang were the main suspects in the murder of a policeman, in front of dozens of witnesses, at a religious celebration, in 2007, and in the decapitation of a Dendê man a few months later. (His infraction was having attended a baile funk in a rival favela.) And there were more. A local resident told me that in Praia da Rosa Fernandinho's enforcers were known as os açougueiros—"the butchers." "They take care of the bodies of the people they kill by chopping them up and tossing them into the bay," the man said. "The crabs eat them."
In a high-profile operation in March, 2008, a hundred armed policemen, backed by two helicopter gunships and an armored personnel carrier, came after Fernandinho. There was a shoot-out; five of Fernandinho's men were cornered in a house; several were wounded and arrested. Police said that Fernandinho had been shot but had escaped by leaping from rooftop to rooftop.****
In the reports about Fernandinho—his publicity-seeking extravagances, his penchant for dismembering his enemies, his Scarlet Pimpernel-like escapes—a certain mythology began to accrue. Then there was a new story: Fernandinho had found religion. On August 20, 2007, a banner headline of the Rio tabloid Meia Hora said "THUG BEHEADS THOSE WHO DON'T FOLLOW HIS RULES," and, underneath, "Fernandinho Guarabu, Dendê's boss, uses an axe to execute his victims. The evangelical trafficker forbids even macumba in the favela." (Macumba refers to one of the country's African-derived religions, along with Umbanda and Candomblé, which strict evangelicals see as little more than witchcraft.) That same day, in the broadsheet O Dia, this report appeared: "In spite of his violence, the 'word of God' must always be propagated, sometimes in a radical way. Guarabu has supposedly banned Umbanda and Candomblé rituals, as well as spiritualist séances. At 6 P.M. every day, a pastor's prayer echoes on the narrow alleys."
What had happened was that Fernandinho had become friendly with Pastor Sidney, and had been born again. He took to his new faith with great enthusiasm. He had "Jesus Cristo" tattooed onto one of his forearms in big letters, and Morro do Dendê was soon covered with new religious graffiti. The community swimming pool he had built now had a sign above it saying "THIS BELONGS TO JESUS CHRIST." Also, Fernandinho had supposedly ordered his men not to carry out "violent" crimes, such as carjacking, armed robbery, and murder, although he was still selling drugs.
Leslie Leitão, the top crime reporter for O Dia, has his byline on most of the paper's stories on Fernandinho. I went to see him at the newspaper's offices. A friendly, hyperkinetic man of thirty-one—the same age as Fernandinho—Leitão explained that he often got leads on Brazil's most popular social-networking site, Orkut, which, he said, the police also trawled. Many gang members posted news, video clips, and photographs of themselves on Orkut. The girlfriend of a major traficante posted gossip and revealing pictures of herself. Leitão had never been to Morro do Dendê. He talked to Fernandinho on the telephone. "Of course, he denied things I had written about him," Leitão said. "But he was pretty friendly, and seemed to understand that I was just doing my job."
Brazilian journalists all but stopped going into the favelas after Tim Lopes, a well-known reporter for the O Globo television network, disappeared in 2002, after taking a hidden camera to a baile funk in a favela. Several days later, what was left of Lopes's body was found by police. He had been tortured to death—beaten, then cut into pieces with a samurai sword, then burned—by a Red Command gang leader and his men.
There are multiple sources of danger for journalists. Last year, a pair of reporters for O Dia and their driver were abducted and tortured for several hours inside a favela. Their torturers, who were later apprehended, turned out to be policemen, members of a vigilante "militia." Beginning about a decade ago, policemen and firefighters formed such militias in order to attack the drug gangs, murdering their members until they were wiped out. At least a hundred favelas in Rio are now in the hands of these militias, which have become gangs in their own right. (I met with a militiaman named Silva in a favela that he helped control near the Cidade de Deus—the City of God—and I asked him if there was a danger that the militias would become mafias. "They're already mafias," he said. He claimed, though, that they didn't deal drugs. Silva's expertise, I was told, was "disappearing bodies.") The sole favela in Ilha not dominated by Fernandinho, right outside the air-force base, is controlled by a militia.****
"Today, if you live on Morro do Dendê, you have to count on Fernandinho," Leitão said. "If they arrest him tomorrow, Gil, his No. 2, will take over. Fernandinho is just one more dealer. How long will he be there—ten years? At most."
Leitão didn't know whether Fernandinho's religious faith was genuine or an attempt to concoct a new public image: "It could be either."
To learn more about Fernandinho, I met with a former drug dealer named Washington Luiz Oliveira Rimas, also known as Feijão—Beans. A short, plump black man of thirty-three, wearing electric-blue Nike gear and a gold chain, Feijão had been a chefe, a favela chief, for the Pure Third Command, but he had "retired" and tried to reinvent himself as a real-estate developer. The police still wanted him, however, and in 2006 he was arrested on a stolen-military-weapons charge. Feijão spent most of his savings on his defense and was released after a month in prison. He considered resuming "the life," but was dissuaded when a close friend was executed by the police. Feijão is now employed by an unusual N.G.O., AfroReggae, which tries to mediate between the state and the gangs, and sponsors a band.
Feijão said that he has known Fernandinho for years. "Fernandinho, he's a maluco!"—a maniac—he said. "Fernandinho's wild. He's crazy. He smokes and drinks a lot. He parties too much. The problem is, Fernandinho is very wanted by the police. He's got a good side, but he's got a brutal side, too. He killed a lot of people and left their bodies in the streets, and he got himself into the newspapers—there are photos of him dancing with a gun on his shoulder. He has a lot of weapons up there, and stolen cars." Feijão went on, "And the thing is, here, if you do a lot of shit, they will come for you. And if he goes down he's not getting out."
I asked Feijão if he thought Fernandinho's highly publicized religious awakening was real. He pondered and said, "I think he probably does believe, because in this life you soon learn that only God doesn't betray you."
Pastor Sidney Espino dos Santos, the man who I was told had been responsible for Fernandinho's conversion, lives in Parque Royal, a few blocks from where Iara lives with her daughters. His home was modest and well kept, a two-story building on a dirt street. A short, burly black man with a shaved head, Pastor Sidney received me with wary politeness, and invited me inside to sit on the upstairs terrace. He wore black trousers, a well-pressed beige shirt, and a striped tie, and had a tamped-down physicality that I hadn't expected to find in a preacher.
He had been a Catholic until he was twenty-one, he said, and then became a Protestant evangelical. When I asked what had caused his conversion, Pastor Sidney looked away. He said that he had played music in a band, gone out with "a lot of women," and been "overwhelmed by anxiety and depression." Pastor Sidney is thirty-five years old, and had been married for fifteen years. He and his wife had three children. He had also been an Army paratrooper, and for most of the past twelve years had worked on offshore oil platforms as a deck supervisor. He had been to Angola several times, he said, and also to Trinidad and Tobago. His last job had ended two years earlier, after some trouble he had had with an American co-worker.
Pastor Sidney explained that he had got to know Fernandinho in 2007, when some community leaders came to see him. There had been a series of shootings involving Fernandinho and his rivals—people associated with Marcelo PQD. "It was like a war zone," Pastor Sidney said. "It was very dangerous, and the community was afraid." He had already been preaching in some of Ilha's toughest neighborhoods, and this had earned him some respect. "I was working among the traficantes. I was going out and praying in the streets. I approach them all the same way, as if they were possessed by demons, and found that they accepted it, because there's something supernatural about it. But I had avoided Fernandinho. I'd heard things about him that I didn't like."
Eventually, he said, "Fernandinho came to me himself. He watched me preaching. He saw people falling on the ground. And he asked me for a prayer."
Protestant evangelical sects have made astounding inroads in Brazil—traditional Catholic territory—in recent years. In some of Rio's favelas, there are scores of little churches where, night after night, the Lord is praised amid shouting and amplified music. In Pastor Sidney's church, the Igreja Assembléia de Deus Ministério Monte Sinai, he and his deacons, who include several former gangsters, sing and play instruments, creating a wall of sound that blends ska and hip-hop and Brazilian gospel rock. Parishioners dance, go into trancelike states, and fall to the ground as their demons are exorcised.
Pastor Sidney explained how it was that he could see demons: "People who are possessed tend to look at a fixed point and have a coldness around them—their eyes don't blink. The persons themselves are absent." Whenever he saw them, he would "ask Jesus to take them, and the angels come and grab the demon from them." It also helped, he said, to invoke the name of the Lord. "Traditional religious faith helps ground you, as do demonstrations of God's power."
I said I'd heard that Fernandinho had stopped killing people because of his influence. Pastor Sidney looked skeptical. Did he think that Fernandinho really believed in God? "Only God knows what's in a man's heart," he said. "But in my opinion Fernandinho is far from accepting God. He moved some—he changed a bit compared to what he was before. He uses less violence than before, he reduced his killing considerably, this is true. Before, they would come down from Dendê and rob houses and cars—now that is forbidden. Now his guys mostly just deal drugs."
But things between him and Fernandinho had deteriorated lately, he said. "We like Fernandinho, but we want to pull back from him, so that he can see what's around him and where he stands." Some men had been executed a few weeks earlier. "The killings made me feel disrespected," Pastor Sidney said. "So now I am fed up with going to Morro do Dendê. When I go up there now, I just go among the people of the community. I'm not trying to convert the traficantes anymore. I pray for them only if they seek me out." He was also irritated by the appearance of some rival evangelicals, who had ingratiated themselves with Fernandinho. "They are telling him what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear." (Last week, a police raid in Praia da Rosa turned up a backpack with a rifle and ammunition, hidden in a day-care center housed in another Pentecostal church.)
I asked Pastor Sidney whether, in spite of their tensions, he might still introduce me to Fernandinho. He frowned. He didn't want to see Fernandinho yet, he said, but he would take me to Morro do Dendê and make the necessary introductions. The rest was up to me.
One night, while waiting to see Fernandinho, I rode through the city's northern suburbs with a man I'll call Célio, a former Special Forces commando. He worked for a unit of the fire department which picks up dead bodies from the streets in a vehicle called a Ravecão. (Later, Célio gave me the tally for the Ravecão that day: forty-eight bodies retrieved.)
We drove to a neighborhood where Rio's paved streets turn to dirt. There we found a couple of men in uniform under a street light, pulling a body out of the trunk of a car, with difficulty; rigor mortis had set in. A car with several men and women in it drove up behind us. It was the dead man's family. A woman got out and identified the body. The dead man was young, wearing only red underpants. As they lifted his body, a jet of blood arced some eight feet into the air out of a bullet hole in his back, perhaps in his lung. More bullets had been fired into his skull. His hands and his feet were tied behind his back, tightly, with plastic wire. He had been executed about three hours earlier.
To judge from his appearance and the way he was killed, the dead man was probably a drug dealer. His executioners were as likely to be members of one of the death squads organized by policemen or firefighters—Célio's colleagues—as they were to be traficantes.
A member of Rio's civil police force, Beto, readily admitted to me that the police executed criminals. He held out his hands in appeal. "It's because we are men!" he said. "We have feelings, you know? And these guys shoot us. So there are times when I have saved lives. . . . I have seen one of my friends"—Beto mimed the movements of a policeman about to execute someone—"and I have said, 'Don't do it, leave it. Come on.' And other times I haven't been able to. There are times, you know, when you just can't. And then honestly there are times when you don't want to, you don't care."
On a daytime drive through the city, Beto kept his pistol unholstered and tucked between his legs. His police badge was his "death certificate," because if gang members found it on him they'd kill him. They regarded Rio's ten thousand civil police as only marginally better than its forty thousand military policemen. "The M.P.s are mostly really inexperienced and bad—corrupt, criminals themselves," Beto said. "The gangsters will kill them without hesitation." In his case, he said, "they might hesitate a minute, but they would still kill me."
In March, 2005, twenty-nine civilians were killed by off-duty policemen in a poor neighborhood of northern Rio. The police carried out their massacre to protest the arrest of other policemen who, in turn, had been filmed dumping the bodies of men they had murdered. There have been coördinated attacks on the police as well. In December, 2006, Red Command leaders ordered their gunmen into the city to wreak havoc. Police stations were attacked with automatic weapons and grenades; a dozen city buses were torched. At least nineteen people died.
Alfredo Sirkis, the councilman, told me, "The police are paid protection by the gangs in the favelas, and the police who aren't paid go and kill everyone and hand the operations over to another gang. The police have an extermination association with the gangs."
The problem, Sirkis said, was that the police weren't paid enough. "Every policeman, without exception, has a second job," he said. "Policemen work twenty-four hours on and seventy-two off, so there is no continuity, no professional routine. There are no foot patrols, no contact with the civilian population—they just go around in patrol cars. Seventy per cent of the policemen who are killed in Rio are killed off duty. What does this tell you?"
Thirty years ago, Sirkis said, "the bandidos seldom killed a policeman. And if they did they didn't get away with it. Now the police have lost all respect, and they are seen as rivals in the same business—so the bandidos kill them."
The first thing that needs to be done, Sirkis said, "is to end the control of drug gangs over territory in the city. Turn it back to the situation of cities everywhere, where the dealers sell their drugs on corners, but where they are not in control of territories. This can be done, but it can only be done by improving the police."
In July, I spoke to the new chief of Rio's civil police, Allan Turnowski. I asked him if the security situation in Rio was calamitous.
"Calamitous?" he said. "No. If it was, there would be no way to turn it back. And we can. This isn't Baghdad yet, or Mexico. We have the capacity to control any part of the city we want. The problem is we can't stay to finish the job." Turnowski spoke boosterishly about a campaign to combat the police-linked militias; his plans to increase the number of police officers; and hopes of improving training and salaries. He mentioned a recently cleaned-up and walled-off favela, Santa Marta, where the government had invested in infrastructure, as a model for the future. I pointed out that Santa Marta was only one favela, and there were a thousand or more others still unattended. He nodded, and said, "It will take time."
Pastor Sidney led the way to his car, a late-model Chevrolet Meriva. We drove through the streets of Ilha. After turning off a residential street, we entered an unlit corner of a favela. Pastor Sidney had switched on the interior lights and rolled down all the windows, so that we could be seen. At the first crossing, youths with pistols and assault rifles blocked the car. They wore baseball caps and T-shirts with athletic logos, surfer shorts, and rubber flip-flops. They came up to the window and, recognizing Pastor Sidney, gave us a thumbs-up.
A curious ritual ensued. One after the other, each gunman handed his weapon to a comrade and then came to Pastor Sidney's open window. Each would stand there with his hands at his sides and his eyes closed and, as Pastor Sidney spoke to him in loud, rapid-fire Portuguese, making some kind of Biblical invocation, would go into a trance. Pastor Sidney would then reach out and, laying a hand on the gunman's forehead, yell, "Sai!"—"Leave!"—repeatedly. Finally, he would blow hard at them, or mock-whack their heads, at which point they would come to, open their eyes in a startled way, and smile dumbly, thanking the pastor.
Throughout these proceedings, one of the youths always remained at the guard post—a plastic chair and an oil drum—at the entrance to the alley. The guard had a weapon, too, and a large plastic bag open in front of him, filled with packets of cocaine. It was a boca de fumo—a "mouth of smoke," Brazilian slang for a spot where drugs are sold.
We drove slowly down the alleyway, past men and women who had to squeeze against the walls for us to get through. I smelled marijuana and, once or twice, the burning-rubber whiff of crack. We were stopped again; Pastor Sidney repeated his exorcism ritual. We drove into a big dirt plaza—we were in Praia da Rosa, and there were gunmen everywhere. The atmosphere was tense; something was going on. (I found out later that the Rat, one of Fernandinho's sub-gerentes in another favela, had come to seek justice that night from Leo, one of Fernandinho's gerentes—and Iara's direct boss—because one of Leo's soldiers had gone to his turf and pulled a gun on him. Leo made his man apologize to the Rat, averting bloodshed.)
After three more checkpoints, we came to a junction where the street divided, running along both sides of a wall painted with messages about Jesus. We had arrived in Morro do Dendê.
The drug dealers greeted Pastor Sidney with deference, and asked if he was going to see the chefe. "No. I'm only coming this far," he said. "He knows why." They looked nonplussed, but nodded. Pastor Sidney said that he wanted someone "responsible" to take me to see Fernandinho. The men conferred; one went away and spoke into a radio. Then a corpulent, bare-chested man in his late thirties stepped forward. Pastor Sidney told me, "It's O.K., you can go with him. You're in your own home." He drove away.
The man led me up a steep street, past curious onlookers. At the top of the hill, he stopped and motioned for me to wait for him, and then vanished. There were a few armed men in sports clothes across the street; people were coming up and buying cocaine from them. Baile funk lyrics blared: "You're not worth the dick you suck," and then the refrain, repeated over and over, "Pau que chupa, pau que chupa." "Dick you suck, dick you suck."
Fernandinho appeared. Six bodyguards holding assault weapons fanned out around him. I recognized him from a photograph; he had the Jesus Christ tattoo on his right forearm in big Gothic letters. He was wearing a baseball cap and shorts and a sleeveless São Paulo soccer jersey emblazoned with the letters "LG," the logo of its corporate sponsor. He wore a huge gold-link chain and pendant around his neck, oversized gold rings on most of his fingers, and a heavy gold wristwatch. Everything sparkled with diamonds.
He was white, boyish-looking, of medium height and build, with close-cropped brown hair. He greeted me amiably. He suggested that we go to his home for a chat. His bodyguards moved with us. They were all teen-agers, and they carried AK-47s and AR-15s. We went down some stairs, then an alleyway, made a couple of turns, entered a house, and walked along a narrow hallway, and into Fernandinho's bedroom.
It was not particularly large; his bed occupied most of the available space, and it was covered with a cartoon-character bedspread. There were shiny religious stickers, and several framed Psalms on the walls. In one corner was an aquarium; in another was an exercise bike. A big plasma television dominated the wall opposite the bed. Fernandinho sat on the edge of the mattress and cleared some clothing off a small sofa next to it, so that I could sit there. His bodyguards stayed down the hall.
A pretty young pregnant woman came to offer us something to drink. After she left, I asked Fernandinho if she was his wife, or if she was pregnant with his child. No, she was just a friend—his wife wasn't there, he said, and then corrected himself. "We haven't been properly married." He had six children, with two more "on the way." He said that his wife, who was pregnant with their first child, didn't know about any of the children except the oldest one, a boy who was in primary school, in the asfalto. He looked at me questioningly, and said that he'd been considering telling her about the other children after she'd given birth. I said that it would probably be a wise move.
His function in Morro do Dendê was not that different from a mayor's, Fernandinho said. "People come to me with their problems and I look after them." He handed me the gold pendant he was wearing. It showed a palm tree—dendê is Portuguese for the African oil palm—and a few houses clinging to a hill. It was the symbol of his office. "I designed it myself," he said. "It weighs half a kilo." He was a trafficker, yes, but he sold drugs only because others consumed them. I mentioned the murders for which he was notorious. He said that he did not have to kill people himself—there were people who carried such things out on his behalf.
"As a boy, I wanted to be a soccer player," he said. "Eventually, I realized that was just a fantasy." He had joined the gang as a runner and a lookout when he was eight or nine. I asked him if he could imagine his life being any different from what it was now, whether he could be capable of changing it. "No," he said. "I have so many arrest warrants against me, I can't even leave the favela." He had not been out of Morro do Dendê for two years, and had been out only twice before that since 2003.
What crimes was he wanted for? "Everything, even if it isn't true," he said.
Fernandinho kept his television switched on. It was tuned to the Brazilian version of the Discovery Channel, which was airing a true-crime docudrama about the so-called Sleepwalker Killer. A reënactment in which a man walked into a bedroom and bludgeoned a sleeping couple was played repeatedly in slow motion. Eventually, Fernandinho flipped to a local news station. It was broadcasting live footage of a shoot-out between criminals and policemen in São Paulo.
"Is that what's it's like?" I asked. "Yeah, sometimes," Fernandinho said. But he tried to avoid confrontations with the police, he said. Whenever possible, he and his men went into hiding when the police invaded the favela.
Fernandinho opened the door of his wardrobe and rummaged around. At length, he produced two bottles of men's cologne, still in their boxes. One was Issey Miyake, and the other was Givenchy Pour Homme. "Take them," he said. "They're yours."
He prayed a great deal, he said, and he even prayed for his enemies. As if to demonstrate the truth of his claim, he closed his bedroom door, went to the edge of his bed, and got down on his knees. He prayed like a child, with his hands clasped, his eyes closed, and his lips moving in murmured prayer. He went and found his Bible and, sitting in front of me on his bed, he opened it to a page where he had a tassel marker, about a quarter of the way in. He said that he was determined to read all the way through.
I congratulated Fernandinho for his effort. But then, pointing out the contradiction between his religious faith and his continued life as a drug trafficker, I asked, "For you, where is the dividing line between right and wrong?"
Fernandinho smiled, and said, "Who's deciding?"
A couple of days later, I returned to Parque Royal to see Pastor Sidney. He invited me to a meal of feijoada, a traditional Brazilian stew of pork and black beans, in a tiny restaurant he owned on the square of the favela. He asked me how the meeting with Fernandinho had gone. I said that Fernandinho had spoken a lot about his religious faith.
Pastor Sidney nodded. I sensed that he might be willing to talk more explicitly about his feud with the gangster. "What happened?" I asked him. "I thought Fernandinho had promised to stop the killing."
"Yes, and that's why I am staying away from him, because he's broken his word."
He blamed Gil, Fernandinho's deputy. Gil had been in the hospital, and while he was gone things had been good. Then Gil had returned. Pastor Sidney said, "He's very bloodthirsty. I foresaw it, and told Fernandinho that within a week the killings would start again. And, within a week, they did." Pastor Sidney had heard through the grapevine that four informants had been captured and condemned to death. He had rushed up to Morro do Dendê to try to save their lives. He had gone to see Fernandinho, but his bodyguards had said that the boss was resting, and couldn't be disturbed. He had asked about the detained men, and they had told him, "Don't worry." He went away.
Later, he heard that they'd been killed, and he felt betrayed. "I went to Fernandinho and told him that the alliance we had made was broken," Pastor Sidney said. "For two years, they had made a vow that no one would be killed. I reminded him that during that time none of them had been killed or been arrested." Pastor Sidney went on, "I predict some of them will be killed soon."
"What did Fernandinho say?"
"He didn't respond at all. I could see the demons coming back into his eyes."♦


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I'd like to take this time to note that Imperial Agent is awesome. I won't get in too deep, but it's interesting to see how Imperial Intelligence regards the Sith as a bunch of petulant, self-centered man-children that they have to clean up after and how the Imperial military basically has to do all the legwork to hold the Empire together since the Sith are too busy having temper tantrums to run it properly.

subset: commoncrawl


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Northwest Kansas Technical College 1209 Harrison St Goodland, KS 67735 Phone: (785) 890-3641
General Information About Northwest Kansas Technical College
The mission of Northwest Kansas Technical College, as an institution of higher learning, is to prepare individuals for gainful employment in technical and professional careers, productive personal lives, and lifelong learning.
Institutional statistical data was gathered from the U.S. Department of Education - Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, 2009-2010.
Institution Type
- 2-year, Public
Special Learning Opportunities
- Distance learning opportunities
Student Services
- Remedial services
- Academic/career counseling service
- Employment services for students
- Placement services for completers
- On-campus day care for students' children
Credit Accepted
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- The acceptance of credits for work experience or military experience are subject to review by the school and cannot be guaranteed.Advanced placement (AP) credits
Religious Affiliation
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Federal Aid
- Eligible students may receive Pell Grants and other federal aid (e.g. Direct Loans).
Degrees/Certificates offered
- Less than 1 year certificate
- 1-2 years certificate
- Associate's degree
- 2-4 years certificate
Campus Setting
- Town: Remote
Disability Services Student
- 3% or Less
Admission Total Applicants Full Time Retention Rate 76%
Student Demographics Total Enrolled 354 Native American 1.0 Asian 0.0 African American 1.0 Hispanic 33.0 Enrolled FullTime Undergraduates 329 Enrolled FullTime Graduates 0


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I am a student of the design your data structures first school of programming1. My first proper language was C and in that language pretty much all you had was typedef struct and a handful of primitive types.
Despite the fact that I now spend most of my time programming with dynamic languages (emacs lisp and perl), I still believe it is important to think about your types before you start programming. Eh, but what's that? Dynamic languages don't have types? Au contraire mon ami. Not having static type-checking is not the same as not having types.
So, enough handwaving, what about a real example?
Extensible Vectors
In C++, one of the data structures I use most is the STL vector. But in emacs lisp, the vector is a very different animal as it doesn't automatically extend. If I want an extensible vector type (an evector), I have to implement it myself (or find a library containing one, but that wouldn't make a good example).
So, first of all, I need to know what pieces of information each evector will need. There will be the vector itself, plus the current end of the vector and the current size before we need to resize it. If we want to use fibonacci to get the next size of vector we need another slot for the fibonacci counter. So each evector will look like this:
['evector [...] <end position> <fib counter>]
The constructor is generally called make-<typename> so the implementation (assuming we want a vector that starts with 8 slots) is:
(defun make-evector () (vector 'evector (make-vector 8 nil) 0 5))
We also need a predicate for checking if a variable is of type evector.
(defun evectorp (object) (eq (aref object 0) 'evector))
What does the push-back operation look like?
(defun evector-push-back (object elem) (let* ((vec (aref object 1)) (pos (aref object 2)) (len (length vec))) ;; increase the size of the vector if necessary (when (<= len pos) (let* ((new-size (+ len (aref object 3))) (new-vec (make-vector new-size nil)) (i 0)) ;; copy the original vector into the new one (while (< i len) (aset new-vec i (aref vec i)) (incf i)) (setq vec new-vec) (setf (aref object 1) vec) (setf (aref object 3) len))) ;; set the vector element and update end position (aset vec pos elem) (incf (aref object 2))))
Hmmm… referring to the member variables by position looks error prone and inflexible. What can we do about that?
If you're thinking accessors, you're on the right lines. Fortunately, because of
setf, you only need a getter.
(edit: fixed, thanks Jisang)
(defsubst evector-data (object) (aref object 1)) (defsubst evector-end-position (object aref object 2)) (defsubst evector-fib-var (object aref object 3))
But even better, there is a macro that does defines your constructor, predicate and accessors for you,
(defstruct evector (data (make-vector 8 nil)) (end-pos 0) (fib-var 5))
Yet another advantage of using defstruct, is that the error messages are clearer than with my basic accessors.
(evector-fib-var 'x) [basic accessor] Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-number-of-arguments (lambda (object aref object 3)) 1) [defstruct accessor] Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "evector-fib-var accessing a non-evector") signal(error ("evector-fib-var accessing a non-evector")) error("evector-fib-var accessing a non-evector") ...
edit: apologies to those who arrived from ironman perl. This isn't a perl related post so I hadn't tagged it as such. I didn't realise that posts that mention perl anywhere get picked up.
1. Although it might not come across in my examples 🙂


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Last spring's Japanese tsunami and resultant nuclear meltdown was one of the more significant and significantly unsettling tech stories of 2011—but it already feels long ago. Frontline's documentary on the crisis, "Nuclear Aftershocks," should be a terrific refresher.
Watch Nuclear Aftershocks Preview on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
The doc, which covers the disaster itself along with its implications for our nuclear future, should be airing on most PBS stations tonight, but you can check your local listings here. I'll be watching with you. [PBS]


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Newt Gingrich – whose candidacy for president last year was helped enormously by a billionaire supporter – condemned a new effort to support more viable Republican candidates as "a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates."
The former House speaker, who benefited as a 2012 Republican presidential candidate from the super PAC Winning Our Future, lashed out against Karl Rove, the former Bush political guru and founder of several Republican super PACs, on Wednesday for his effort to bounce GOP primary candidates who might fare poorly in a general election.
How does the Grand Old Party get younger? MSNBC's S.E. Cupp and John Goodwin, the former Chief of staff to Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who founded a group dedicated to bringing younger people into the party, join The Daily Rundown to discuss how to bring younger people to the Republican party.
RELATED: Conservative thinkers: GOP should cut 'stale' policies loose
Gingrich wrote in the conservative publication Human Events:
I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states. This is the opposite of the Republican tradition of freedom and grassroots small town conservatism.
No one person is smart enough nor do they have the moral right to buy nominations across the country.
That is the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine. It should be repugnant to every conservative and every Republican.
Chris Keane / Reuters
Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at a rally on the night of the New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware primaries in Concord, North Carolina April 24, 2012.
The former House speaker joined a series of conservatives to pile on Rove's Conservative Victory Project, a new initiative associated with the super PAC American Crossroads to ensure more electable congressional candidates. Rove's effort is meant to discourage GOP voters from nominating candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, the candidates for Senate in Missouri and Indiana, respectively, who lost races that many Republicans regarded as more easily winnable.
Of course, Gingrich was the beneficiary of billionaire largess, too. Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-based casino magnate, and his wife, Miriam, donated a total of $20 million to the pro-Newt super PAC Winning Our Future last year, according to Federal Election Commission records.


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Par 5s at Augusta cost Rory McIlroy a shot at major
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Don't be surprised if Rory McIlroy spends some extra time on the par-5s before next year's Masters.
The pre-tournament betting favorite, McIlroy cost himself any hope of winning the green jacket by playing the par-5s at even par. Compare that with Bubba Watson, who played them at minus-8 and won his second green jacket in three years.
BUBBA WATSON:Wins for a second time
"You just can't do (that) out here," McIlroy said of the par-5s. "You're looking to play the par‑5s somewhere around 10 to 12‑under par. And obviously if I had of done that, it would have been a different story."
OLIVER GOSS:Finishes as low amateur
CHRISTINE BRENNAN:Columnist urging golf to change
McIlroy finished at even-par for the tournament. At least he had his best finish at Augusta National, tied for eighth.
Though McIlroy called this week "frustrating," he learned some things that could pay dividends both later this season and at next year's Masters. He realized on the sixth hole Sunday that his aim was off on some of his putts, and he putted the ball better after correcting that.
And he finally feels comfortable at Augusta National, no longer having to think his way through every hole.
"I feel like I can go out and play my game and hit the shots," he said. "I'm definitely not as tentative around this place as I used to be. I'm becoming a lot more aggressive and hitting iron shots closer."
Now he just needs to take advantage of those chances – particularly on the par-5s.
"I know I can do well here," McIlroy said. "It's just a matter of making the most of my chances because I gave myself plenty of chances here this week. If I had converted a few more and just as I said played the par‑5s better, it could have been a different story."
PHOTOS: Sunday at the Masters


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Nanoleaf Light Panels Smarter Kit - Rhythm Edition
Nanoleaf Light Panels Smarter Kit (Rhythm Edition) beautifully blends lighting design and technology, and gives you easy control from the Home app on your iPhone or iPad. Visualise your music, wake up to the sunrise, improve your mood with stunning colours and seamlessly automate your lighting to fit your life — all at the touch of a button or with Siri voice control.
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Control using the Apple Home app (iOS 10) or customise with the free Nanoleaf Smarter Series app
Colour-changing light — choose from 16.7 million colours
Nanoleaf Rhythm module transforms your music into colour and light in real time
Supports up to 30 panels per control unit
Double-sided mounting pads for no-holes, no-hassles installation of light panels
New features added regularly via the Nanoleaf Cloud
Express your creativity with panels that snap together in any shape you want
Each panel weighs about as much as a cup of sugar and connects with other panels along any side
Easily schedule your Scenes to seamlessly integrate with your life
What's in the Box
Nine modular light panels
One Rhythm upgrade module
One Light Panel Controller Unit
One power supply unit (Universal VAC)
Nine panel connectors
28 double-sided adhesive mounting strips
Nine mounting stencils
Quick start guide
Tech Specs
Other Features: HomeKit Compatible, Wireless
Connections: Wireless
Power Source: AC
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Length: 26.67 cm/10.5 in.
Width: 33 cm/13 in.
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Operating System: iOS 9 or later
Manufacturer Information
Part Number
UPC or EAN No.: 740016551638
Note: Apple's One Year Limited Warranty does not apply to products that are not Apple-branded, even if packaged or sold with Apple products. Non-Apple branded products may have the benefit of a manufacturer's warranty provided by the product manufacturer - Please see your product box and literature for details. Rights under the product manufacturer's warranty are in addition, and not instead of, any rights that you have under consumer protection laws.
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- 9.7-inch iPad Pro
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Apple TV Models
HomePod Models
- HomePod
iPod Models
Answers from the community
Do the Nanoleaf panels produce sound, or is an outside speaker needed to sync with the lights?
- Asked by Carly R from Livingston
- on 17/07/2018
No they do not, while when the Nanoleaf Light Panel is connected to a device that plays music, it wi No they do not, while when the Nanoleaf Light Panel is connected to a device that plays music, it will control the lights to dance along to the song. They do not produce sound, they dance to it.
- Answered by Logan D
- on 8/01/2019
Compatibility: Requires iOS 11.0 or later.
Nanoleaf Smarter Series
Operating HomeKit-enabled smart lighting has never been easier—the Nanoleaf App features support for the Nanoleaf Light Panels, Rhythm, and Zigbee HA1.2 smart lights. Perfect light is only a finger tap, or a voice command away.
Download now to own this ultra-advanced light switch!
The Nanoleaf App supports voice control through Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa. You can use the Nanoleaf App to turn your smart lighting on and off, control brightness, group lights by home and by room, create and use Scenes, and control all of the lights in a room through HomeKit. The Schedules feature of the app enables you to automate your home's lighting—turn the lights off at night, wake up to light in the morning, or remind yourself to exercise… just a few of the nearly limitless ways that smart lighting can support your smarter life.
For Nanoleaf Light Panel users, there's an included Discover Community that enables sharing and downloading of scenes created by other Light Panel users, as well as a built in design generator that provides suggestions for ways to layout the panels. …


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An Ex-militant's Journey of Faith
(Rate Now)
Format: Trade Paperback
Pub. Date: Jul. 05, 2006
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What caused an ex-militant Muslim who fought Christians during the Lebanese Civil War to leave his baggage of hatred behind and learn to love his enemies?
Jerry Rassamni's story begins with his "physical Jihad" (physical struggle) against Christians during the bloody Lebanese Civil War. After recounting his gripping early years, the narrative briskly shifts to Jerry's "personal Jihad" (spiritual struggle into enlightenment) as he attempted to refute the Bible. This book reveals the gripping evidence that led Jerry to abandon Islam and embrace Christ at his Lord and Savior.
While describing his search for the truth, Jerry exposes the pagan roots of the Muslim god and the feet of clay of its founder, while providing a careful apologetic for Christianity, Jerry shares the evidence the evidence that compelled him to abandon Islam and undrapes the "Five pillars" to expose the skeletons of Islam:
* Allah, is he the eternal God of the Bible?
* The Qur'an, it is the true word of God?
* The prophet Muhammad, was he a Biblical prophet?
* Man, is he born in fitrab (pure state)?
* Abadith (Muslim customs and beliefs), are they from God?
Editorial Reviews
"This powerful manuscript is a potential best seller. It is meticulously researched and documented. It is a careful apologetic for evangelical Christianity, made even more potent because it is written by an ex-Muslim."
Dr. David Shibley,
President, Global Advance
Meet the Authors
Jerry Rassamni was born a Muslim and grew up in Lebanon during its bloody civil war. He became a militia fighter at a young age. His heart burned with hatred toward his blood enemies, the secular Christian militias. Upon examining the Scripture, Jerry was convicted of his sin and had a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. Jerry is multilingual and is a popular evangelical and apologetic speaker. He currently resides in Texas with his wife Jennifer and their three children. Visit: www.fromjihadtojesus.com
Customer Reviews
(Rate Now)


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The ASIANetwork Board of Directors is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Gary DeCoker as the next Executive Director starting 2014. We wish to express our sincere thanks and congratulations to Dr. DeCoker on this appointment. The Board looks forward to working with Dr. DeCoker and to his leadership in the coming years as we continue our mission of promoting Asia in the liberal arts.
Dr. DeCoker is professor of Japanese Studies at Earlham College and professor emeritus of education at Ohio Wesleyan University. Since 2003, he has been director of Earlham's Japan Study program, a consortial program that promotes educational exchange and faculty development between Waseda University in Tokyo and the member colleges of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. Dr. DeCoker served on the AN Board of Directors from 2007 to 2010 and currently directs the AN – Luce Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow Program.
Dr. DeCoker received his M.A. in Japanese Studies and Ph.D. in Comparative Education from the University of Michigan. His research interests include educational reform and education in the arts. He is the editor of two books published by Teachers College Press at Columbia University, National Standards and School Reform in Japan and the United States (2002) and Japanese Education in the Era of Globalization (2013), and numerous articles and book chapters on contemporary Japanese education, the teaching of the Japanese traditional arts, and current issues in U.S. education. His publications have appeared in Harvard Educational Review, Education About Asia, Monumenta Nipponica, Education Week, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Dr. DeCoker has been awarded research grants from the Japan Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Japanese Ministry of Education, and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission.


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The first dynamic photos of the new FF
Maranello, 4 February – Due to the outstanding interest created by the new FF and the numerous requests to see the car in movement, Ferrari is pleased to issue some additional photographs of the new four-seater in action on snow. The photo material, showing an advanced prototype and a final model, have been added to the images published by Ferrari in recent weeks. Meanwhile the incredible success of the video dedicated to the car continues: over the last few weeks hundreds of thousands of clicks have been registered on www.ferrari.com and other Ferrari channels on Youtube and Facebook.


text: An Imaging tool is software that contains a set of techniques which allow a greater dynamic range of exposures in order to create or design any kind of picture or any application. Many imaging tools are used to create websites. Imaging tools also facilitate in personalizing any image like, adjusting the color, framing it, rotating it or even add other special effects. Whereas a photography tool allows a user to add various effects to any photograph. A person can give animation effects to a photograph, change the background of any photo, and can even create a photo album with the help of a photography tool. Many imaging and photography tools are available on the internet for free also.


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Series: Lost Lords of Pembrook #3
Published by HarperCollins on 2013-04-30
Genres: Historical
Source: Publisher
Reviewed by Miranda
Three young heirs, imprisoned by anunscrupulous uncle, escaped—to the sea,to the streets, to faraway battle—awaiting the day when they wouldreturn to reclaim their birthright . . .Lord Rafe Easton may be of noble blood, but survival taughthim to rely only on himself and to love no one. Yet when he setseyes on Miss Evelyn Chambers, an earl's illegitimate daughter,he is determined to have her, if only as his mistress . . .After her father's death, Evelyn Chambers never imaginedshe would be sold to the highest bidder, yet circumstancesgive her little choice but to accept the lord's indecent proposal. Rafe is wealthy, as well as ruthless. Yet his coldnessbelies deep passion and deeper secrets. If she must be his,Evelyn intends to lay bare everything the Lord of Pembrookis hiding. But dark discoveries threaten to destroythem both until unexpected love leadsthe last lost lord home . . .
Evelyn Chambers recently lost the father she always adored. She may have been his bastard but she loved him dearly. Now her brother is in charge of the rest of her life and all he cares about is selling her to the highest bidder, but she doesn't know that. When Evelyn is escorted amid a room full of men she has no idea she is the item up for sale. Most of the men give her chills but there is one that sparks her interest…too bad he's the only one determined never to love.
Lord Rafe Easton is the youngest of the famous Lost Lords of Pembrook. He resents the title and does everything he can to distance himself from his brothers. They've tried but have yet to manage to break through Rafe's steely exterior. When one of his debtors invites him to his home with the assurance that by the end of the night Rafe will have his money, Rafe is surprised to find himself going home with extra baggage.
While Rafe would like Evelyn to be his Mistress she has other ideas. Evelyn wants a husband to love her but isn't sure Rafe is capable of real emotion, much less love. However, she has little say in her future any longer and Rafe is used to getting his way. Will she be the woman to light a fire in the heart of the last Lord of Pembrook?
Wow! Lorraine Heath's conclusion to The Lost Lords of Pembrook series, Lord of Wicked Intentions is scintillating! Rafe is the brother I was worried the most about. There was no doubt he had been traumatized as a child after he was separated from his brothers. Any woman that entered his life was going to need to be made of stern stuff. Evelyn seems pretty wimpy at first but she grows up really fast, proves that she has a heart made of gold and the strength to go after what she wants.
The connection between Rafe and Evelyn is instantaneous and beautiful. I could not put this book down! I had to find out what happened with this couple before I could do anything else! Lord of Wicked Intentions haunts the reader with the overwhelming emotional connections Ms. Heath makes with her characters and readers and then makes us melt with a romance to be remembered. Rafe and Evelyn will forever stick in my mind as an all-time favorite couple. Lord of Wicked Intentions is a definite Joyfully Recommended Read! Grab your copy today and savor it!


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BA Handbook Forward
This handbook has been prepared for you as a reference. Its purpose is to help prepare you and provide you with a clear outline of the requirements for the program. It is to be used in conjunction with the University catalog.
BA students should retain both the catalog and the student handbook. It is also suggested that the student keep a copy of the Schedule of Classes for the semester that matriculation begins.


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Kansas To Add 3 Names To Walk Of Fame
KSCB News - October 10, 2012 8:15 am
Three more names of distinguished Kansas
residents are being enshrined on the grounds of the Statehouse as
part of the growing Walk of Honor.
Aviator Amelia Earhart, Vice President Charles Curtis and
microchip inventor Jack Kilby will join U.S. Sen. Bob Dole on the
sidewalks in Topeka. Bronze plaques honoring the three will be
unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Sam Brownback and the Kansas Historical
Earhart, born in Atchison, was the first woman to fly solo
across the Atlantic Ocean. Curtis was the first and only American
Indian and only Kansan to serve as vice president, joining the
ticket of President Herbert Hoover.
Kilby was a Nobel Prize winning engineer who invented the
microchip and changed technology for generations.


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Download the Text-Only version of How You can Identify and Help Women at Risk of Abuse
How You can Identify and Help Women at Risk of Abuse
Are you concerned about someone you think is being abused, but don't know what to do? This Neighbours, Friends and Families brochure describes the warning signs and the steps you can take to help.
Warning Signs of Abuse
You may suspect abuse is happening to a neighbour, friend or family member, but do not know what to do or how to talk about it. You may worry about making the situation worse, or be concerned about what to do. By understanding the warning signs and risk factors of woman abuse, you can help.
If you recognize some of these warning signs, it may be time to take action:
He puts her down
He does all the talking and dominates the conversation
He checks up on her all the time, even at work
He tries to suggest he is the victim and acts depressed
He tries to keep her away from you
He acts as if he owns her
He lies to make himself look good or exaggerates his good qualities
He acts like he is superior and of more value than others in his home
She is apologetic and makes excuses for his behaviour or she becomes aggressive and angry
She is nervous talking when he's there
She seems to be sick more often and misses work
She tries to cover her bruises
She makes excuses at the last minute about why she can't meet you or she tries to avoid you on the street
She seems sad, lonely, withdrawn and is afraid
She uses more drugs or alcohol to cope
(While most abuse occurs in intimate heterosexual relationships, it can occur in gay and lesbian relationships as well. The suggestions in this brochure are equally applicable.)
Signs of High Risk
The danger may be greater if:
He has access to her and her children
He has access to weapons
He has a history of abuse with her or others
He has threatened to harm or kill her if she leaves him: He says "If I can't have you, no one will."
He threatens to harm her children, her pets or her property
He has threatened to kill himself
He has hit her, choked her
He is going through major life changes (e.g. job, separation, depression)
He is convinced she is seeing someone else
He blames her for ruining his life
He doesn't seek support
He watches her actions, listens to her telephone conversations, sees her emails and follows her
He has trouble keeping a job
He takes drugs or drinks every day
He has no respect for the law
She has just separated or is planning to leave
She fears for her life and for her children's safety or she cannot see her risk
She is in a custody battle, or has children from a previous relationship
She is involved in another relationship
She has unexplained injuries
She has no access to a phone
She faces other obstacles (e.g. she does not speak English, is not yet a legal resident of Canada, lives in a remote area)
She has no friends or family
Statistics indicate that women who are under 25 years of age, women with a disability, Aboriginal women and women living common-law are at higher risk of abuse. (Statistics Canada: Family Violence in Canada. A Statistical Profile 2005)
Ways to Support Her
Here are some of the ways you can help when you recognize the warning signs of abuse:
Talk to her about what you see and assure her that you are concerned. Tell her you believe her and that it is not her fault.
Encourage her not to confront her partner if she is planning to leave. Her safety must be protected.
Offer to provide childcare while she seeks help.
Offer your home as a safe haven to her, her children and pets. If she accepts your offer, do not let her partner in.
Encourage her to pack a small bag with important items and keep it stored at your home in case she needs it.
Know that you or she can call the Assaulted Women's Helpline, your local shelter, or, in an emergency, the police.
If she denies the abuse:
Assure her she can talk to you any time.
Don't become angry or frustrated with her decisions. It is important to understand that she may be afraid or not ready to take the next steps.
Try to understand why she might be having difficulty getting help. She may feel ashamed.
Offer to go with her if she needs additional information or support.
If she has children, let her know gently that you are concerned about her and her children's safety and emotional well-being. She may be more willing to recognize her situation if she recognizes her children may also be in danger.
Overcoming Your Hesitation to Help
Here are some concerns you may have about whether you should help:
Points of Concern
Points to Consider
|You feel it's none of your business
|It could be a matter of life or death. Violence is everyone's business
|You don't know what to say
|Saying you care and are concerned is a good start
|You might make things worse
|Doing nothing could make things worse
|It's not serious enough to involve the police
|Police are trained to respond and utilize other resources
|You are afraid his violence will turn to you or your family
|Speak to her alone. Let the police know if you receive threats
|You think she doesn't really want to leave because she keeps coming back
|She may not have had the support she needed
|You are afraid she will become angry with you
|Maybe, but she will know you care
|You feel that both partners are your friends
|One friend is being abused and lives in fear
|You believe that if she wanted help, she would ask for it
|She may be too afraid and ashamed to ask for help
|You think it is a private matter
|It isn't when someone is being hurt
Always keep yourself safe. Don't get in the middle of an assault. Call the police in an emergency. Everyone can work to prevent woman abuse.
The Assaulted Women's Helpline at 1-866-863-0511 offers a 24-hour telephone and TTY 1-866-863-7868 crisis line for abused women in Ontario. The service is anonymous and confidential and is provided in up to 154 languages.
Helpline staff can support you in helping the abused woman or abusive man. They will discuss the warning signs of abuse you have seen and give you practical advice on ways to help.
For more information about the services of the Assaulted Women's Helpline visit: www.awhl.org
In an emergency, call your local police service.
Most Ontarians feel a personal responsibility for reducing woman abuse. Recognizing it is the first step. Take the warning signs seriously. For further information visit: www.neighboursfriendsandfamilies.ca
June 2006
Download the Text-Only version of How You can Identify and Help Women at Risk of Abuse


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Fake Card California California Fake
|Effective: 4/25/1994
Revised: 11/1/2013
FIN 121: ASU Identification Numbers and Tax-Exempt Status
To identify various identification numbers assigned to ASU
Internal Revenue Service
State of Arizona
Dun and BradstreetServices - Facebook Pharmacy Twinkle Medical And Home
ASU identification numbers are used for university business only. All university academic and administrative units must use the identification numbers shown below and are prohibited from applying for their own identification numbers. The vice president for finance and deputy treasurer should be notified if a department has established a separate identification number.
ASU student organizations and other ASU-related organizations are not to use the ASU IRS identification number when opening a bank account or for any other identification purpose. Such separate organizations need to apply to the IRS for their own identification number by submitting Form SS–4 to the IRS. This form can be obtained from the IRS at 1–800–829–FORM or www.irs.gov/formspubs/. D
|ASU Identification Numbers
|Internal Revenue Service (IRS) number
|Arizona State Sales Tax (Privilege Tax) ID number
|Dun and Bradstreet (Data Universal Number System [DUNS]) number
|Sponsored Projects
|Fake Card California California Fake General University
For federal income tax purposes, ASU is tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code section 115, with the exception of unrelated business income (see - Crown - Thors-drivers-license Mazda Thors-drivers-license Thors-drivers-license - Mazda Crown, "Unrelated Business Income Tax"). Charitable contributions made to ASU are deductible under Internal Revenue Code section 170.
Copies of the official letters regarding ASU's tax-exempt status are available at the Financial ServicesTimes Id Policy Changes New Phoenix To Comply Real With License Driver's Arizona Web site.
ASU is occasionally asked to provide IRS Form W-9, "Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification." ASU responds to W-9 requests with a substitute W-9 document that can be found at the same site.
State law does not exempt ASU from sales tax on its purchases, and vendors generally charge ASU the applicable sales tax; see FIN 108, "Sales Tax," for a listing of sales tax rates. However, there are statutory exceptions for certain qualified purchases; see Studentenausweis Gefälschter - Lichtbildausweis Schülerausweis Legal Ausweis de ✅fake-id, "Sales Tax Exemption for Purchases."
Vendor Number
The vendor number for ASU in the State of Arizona accounting system is 18601966960.
Mail Codes
Payments made to ASU by the State of Arizona must be mailed to one of the following state mail codes: D
|State Mail Codes for State Payments
|State Mail Code
|180Western Bensonhurst 6218 pay-day Brooklyn Utrecht Ave Phone Yelp Ny New Loans Number - Check Union Cashing
|Fake Card California California Fake Financial Services
|West campus
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|ASU Insurance Services
New mail codes may be set up only with the approval of ASU's vice president for finance and deputy treasurer.
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Qatar Airways may be the first airline due to receive the A350, but it will not be the first cabin to see the light of day.
Airbus will have two cabin-equipped A350s as part of the flight test program. The set-up: 42 business class seats and 210 economy class seats.
But it will be some time before any of those materialize.
Airbus has just mated the fuselage of the first A350, the static test aircraft, which is now moving to Station 40 for wing mating.


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Daily Archives: October 16, 2012
The Year of Faith and how we're called to live it
By Archbishop Chaput (Source: Archdiocese Philadelphia) In leading us into the Year of Faith, which began October 11, Pope Benedict calls on each of us as believers to "rediscover [God's] joy," to "radiate [God's] word," and to make our Christian … Continue reading
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