text:
1. White tea had high anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-collagenase, and anti-elastase properties and
2. These properties could potentially reduce the risks of developing rheumatoid arthritis, some cancers, heart disease and slow the enzymatic break down of elastin and collagen which accompany aging! Tea can help with stopping wrinkles and sagging skin...yippee!!! Source
Another study at Pace University in 2004 showed that white tea had more anti-viral and anti-bacterial qualities than green tea! White tea is a miracle brew for sure!
My favourite white tea is not only healthy but it is also very beautiful to look at, especially when I serve it in my Royal Albert Chantilly tea cup!
This tea is called a "Buddha Ball" and they are hand rolled full white tea leaves and blossoms.
The white tea opens like a flower while infusing, to display a beautiful pink chrysanthemum at the centre.
The delicate chrysanthemum-scented tea is delicious.
Each ball of tea will make a pot of tea but I put the ball into a cup to show you how it blossoms.
You can add more water to the used leaves for a second or third or even fourth infusion! This cup of tea of mine lasted quite a while...enough time for me to sit down on my comfy couch and catch up on some of my favourite magazines from America, Good Housekeeping and Redbook.
From my comfy couch I can see a new vignette I created on our flatware chest.
I have displayed a plate that I found when Antiquing and my favourite Royal Doulton figurines. Of course, I always have a candle in every corner of our house and this MOR candle is perfumed with green tea....divine!
From my comfy couch I can also see the beautiful Royal Doulton figurines that Mr Attorney gave me as an Anniversary gift a couple of years ago. They are called Sugar and Spice!
I can also see another plate that I have added to my collection! I decided to put this one on a plate stand rather than on the wall. I found it for only $9 at an Antique Centre in New Farm, Brisbane!
I don't know if I am quite ready to get up off my comfy couch at the moment! I think I will spend another 5 minutes here and have another cup of White tea, after all it is good for me and it is doing wonders for my skin!
Best wishes,


text:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Buzzing Bees TablescapeJacqueline April 25, 2012
Chocolat - French for Chocolate. I adored chocolate from a young age when I had to sneak in the cupboard to find where my mother had hidden the Nestle's Chocolate Chips. Having read about the famous chocolat shoppes in Paris, when I finally got there I was determined to try a chocolate from every Paris shoppe. I invite you to share my adventures in creating, in travel, and in life.
you may also like
37 comments:
Each element works beautifully in this design. The bowl is spectacular. I kept wondering if it could be inverted somehow and used as a centerpiece on its own...guess it would depend on the finish on the bottom of the bowl. I'd have been outside, too...soaking up those grand vistas. Thanks for inviting us for a peak. Cherry KayReplyDelete
Like your table setting so sunny !!...love from me...xxx..ReplyDelete
Simply gorgeous and very inviting!ReplyDelete
your tables are always the best!
There is no way you would have wanted to keep this happy tablescape indoors! It was begging to be in the all outdoors where it fit right in with Mother Nature! This is really pretty, Jacqueline. I love yellow, and you did a really great job with this table! While I don't want to share space with real bees when I'm outside (let them stay on their side of the yard, and I'll stay on mine!), they look terrific on your table. The design of the plates is really cool!!!!!! Beautifully done! It hit 87 here yesterday and is expected to top 90 today, then back into highs in the 50s starting on Friday. Such weird weather!!! Have a great day!ReplyDelete
Gorgeous table Jackie, BUT your view has me mesmerized!!! I love all your little bee elements and your new bowl is PERFECT! The yellow is "SHOWING OFF" Your 90degree weather. It's amazing how FAST the temps can change. We had those temps a few weeks back and NOW we are using our fireplace each evening to warm up a little!ReplyDelete
Thank you for sharing this beautiful scape!
LOVED every DETAIL!!!
Big Hugs,
Yellow is such a fun, festive color! Love the bee plates and the flatware is too cute! Great views Jacqueline-enjoy:@)ReplyDelete
This is just gorgeous. I love how you "needed" the bowl...we just got home from a trip and I "needed" a few things too. Funny how that happens. Yellow isn't often my color of choice, but for some reason this year I just love it. Maybe it was the early spring...not sure. The flowers look perfect and I really want some of those bubble glasses...love it!ReplyDelete
I love your sunny & cheerful yellow tablescape. That pewter beehive bowl is gorgeous and so is the mountain view!ReplyDelete
Beee-utiful new bowl Jackie. You decorate with such class too. I really enjoy your terrific tablescapes.ReplyDelete
Everything is bee-utiful!! I love those dishes and your pretty bowl of lemons!ReplyDelete
Thank you for sharing and have a wonderful night!
Aledia @ Plum Perfect
Oh I love your bee plates~ your table is so cheery! I'm glad you had some tulips survive your heat wave! Our pansies are on their last leg with our warmer temps, I always hate pulling them up! Your salad in your bee hive bowl looks delicious with a bright pansy to garnish it!ReplyDelete
What a gorgeous VIEW!
Gorgeous table! All the bees are beautiful. Your view is fabulous.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2012 at 6:34 AM
I love bees and have a few pieces of your pottery as well, love the fresh springy feel, anneReplyDelete
This is such a wonderful table! Your tulips are gorgeous and all the fun and pretty "bee" items are so sweet. Love the bee dishes! A fun and happy table! Visiting from LD!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2012 at 7:32 AM
I'm loving what you've done this time around. Of course, how can yellow not be the source of a very cheery table and with it being in Cabo, all the better!ReplyDelete
Speaking of tulips, about the only way I do well with them in our warm climate is to buy them!
Gorgeous, the table and the view! It is BEE utiful. Those dishes are so pretty, and I covet your yellow glasses! Salad looks delicious, too.ReplyDelete
The new bowl is amazing! Good thing we can't travel, I think I would be in trouble with everything I would like to bring home!
Thanks so much for linking this beauty to Let's Dish!
I love love love this table! It's the bees' knees! I really envy your scenery -- just spectacular.ReplyDelete
Hi Jacqueline, I spotted that bowl in the very first table picture even though I was being distracted by your gorgeous tulips. I posted mine today too and they are just pathetic in size compared with yours!!! Back to the bees. I love all things "bee" and your dishes are wonderful, as are the glasses. But the bowl!!!! It's fabulous and SO is the view! I would be willing to deal with the heat to sit at your bee-utiful table. I'm wearing a fleece right now. It's really cold here today. I'm sure the heat will come. Thanks for sharing this pretty table. LindaReplyDelete
What a sunny table setting for enjoying your view! Love all your dishes.. I'm a bee fan, too.ReplyDelete
What a gun table. I love your new bowl and that view is spectacular!ReplyDelete
Such beautiful elements in your table and I love how you have arranged them so perfectly! The bowl is stunning and the bee's motif in the plates is lovely! I love the sorroundings too. Thanks for your wonderful visit my friend.ReplyDelete
What a beautiful table! I just love your new bowl. Your tulips are so beautiful. It is so hard to cut them but when you know they are going to go, it's time. What a lovely setting!ReplyDelete
I just adore your bee plates! The new bowl is the perfect accompaniment! The sald looks yummy too. I wish I had some time to do a table, we had a STAGER come today and we have ALOT of work to do....in a month....pray for me:):):) XO, Pinky, AKA Exhausted in Landenberg:):)ReplyDelete
Love your beautiful yellow and white table. Gosh it's just fabulous. I loved those plates and flatware when first I saw them, now I'm just sad I didn't get them! We set record highs yesterday with 104 and close to it today.. it's horrid.. sorry for your tulips.. xo marlisReplyDelete
The bright yellow is gorgeous! What a beautiful view you have!ReplyDelete
I want those yellow bubble glasses!!
What a beautiful tablescape! The china, the bowls, the centerpiece...just outstanding!ReplyDelete
Great looking tablescape.....and the view to go with it!ReplyDelete
What a beautiful alfresco dining experience this would be with the lovely tablescape and views all around. It is great how you see one object and it starts a whole experience. I love to do that too. Great ideas.ReplyDelete
Jacqueline, your buzzing bees are delightful. What a view as we dine at that splendid table. love those dishes and the flatware. Someday I hope to have some of both at HFTS. LOLReplyDelete
Beautiful flowers ~ Sarah
Beautiful table, Jacqueline. I have those same bee dishes and the Napoleon Bee flatware and love to set a table with it. The view from your patio is amazing!ReplyDelete
Wow I love this. The yellow is gorgeous, and that silverware is wonderful. I love the whole table it is so happy and summery. YOu do wonderful table settings. And your scenery is very pretty too. Have a blessed week.ReplyDelete
How beautiful! Just the kind of beesReplyDelete
I like, they don't cause any pain!
I have wanted those plates "forever"! LOVE this whole tablescape! I collect bees/beehives and honeypots:) I posted some cookies that might look match your table:) Have a wonderful weekend, Jacqueline!ReplyDelete
Beautiful views from your patio! Your table certainly is bee-utiful!ReplyDelete
Gorgeous table! I love the colors and your view is absolutely beautiful!ReplyDelete
I love your blog. You're so creative!
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
You have the most fabulous views, Jacqueline. I love your pretty bee inspired tablescape...it is so bright and cheerful.ReplyDelete
I had to smile when you commented that your husband has become own "Captain Kirk"! :)
Your comments are the highlight of my day! Leave a comment and then I can come and visit your blog. Have a wonderful day! Unfortunately I have had to block anonymous comments, hope you understand.
Follow me on Instagram
Join My Adventures
Search This Blog
Tales of the Traveling Tote
Thanks for visiting ! Jacqueline
My Treasures
Love My Followers!
Popular Posts
This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.
Beaulah and I thought we should make a cake to celebrate the lucky winner of the Williams Sonoma Copper Soup Station. We fe...
Have you noticed that some restaurants become famous for the breads they serve and the bread is why you want to go there again and ...
Beaulah loves the color green. She feels like it compliments her skin tones. I would agree, they are both green! (I b...
Walk past Hagrid's hut and join me in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Where you can buy Rosmerta's famous ...

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Since 9/11, western powers have behaved more or less like Prince Hamlet, conflicted by doubts and stalemated by niceties that barely register with those who have mounted their version of "slings and arrows" against the West and its allies.
A dozen years following 9/11 should have erased any remaining doubt that Osama bin Laden spoke for many in the Arab-Muslim world who believe Islam is locked in a millennial conflict with the West, and victory will belong to the party that has the faith to take defeats and yet remain on the field of battle as the last man standing.
Bin Laden and his associates might well be described as the crudest expression of this deep-seated conviction of Islamist thinking and practice — that Islam is politics in action, not merely a religion, with the mission to establish its system of government based on the Shariah.
Waging war, engaging in diplomacy, signing treaties, and maintaining or breaking truce are merely means in the pursuit of the end that Islamist doctrine prescribes.
Hamlet's dilemma was how to act commensurate with the knowledge of the crime given him by the ghost of the murdered king, his father.
The tragedy that unfolds in Shakespeare's drama is a result of action delayed and ineptly executed by the Prince of Denmark.
The West cannot play Hamlet, while Islamists have mastered the art of exploiting the West's niceties to their advantage.
It is instructive to note Islamists are most cautious in dealing with Russians and Chinese — that neither Moscow nor Beijing will hesitate in using disproportionate force when needed and will not be troubled by any doubt over actions taken against Islamist terrorism.
But what is worse than playing Hamlet is playing the role at the expense of anothe
The West does this with Israel.
Sitting in the shadow of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem one evening when visiting Israel, it became strikingly clear to me, as it is to most Israelis, that the ground zero of the millennial conflict between Islam and the West is right where I sat.
Islamists have made it amply clear, and the vast majority of Muslims support them, that this millennial conflict will not cease until Israel is annihilated.
Those Muslims small in numbers who repudiate such obscenity are in turn repudiated, ostracized, or killed as apostates from Islam.
Israelis are left with no choice but to act with wisdom and courage in doing whatever is necessary for survival. Yet instead of resolutely supporting Israel, many in the West have parked their discredited anti-Semitism inside mosques to appease Islamists.
In an ancient temple located outside of India's capital are found words inscribed on the wall, "Coincidences, if traced far back enough, become inevitable."
The recurrent conflict between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, as was 9/11 and many similar, can be traced back sufficiently to see a pattern whose message brooks no doubting.
- Israel: Decades-old conflict not about to cease - Saturday November 24, 2012 at 1:56 pm
- The better man lost the U.S. election - Saturday November 10, 2012 at 9:16 am
- The puzzle in U.S. presidential elections - Saturday November 3, 2012 at 8:43 am


text:
On Dec. 3, 2009, the cable channel HGTV announced that the reality design competition Design Star would be produced by famed-Survivor creator Mark Burnett for its fifth season. The unwritten part of the press release was that SallyAnn Salsano, the creator and executive producer of Design Star, had been fired.
That same day, another show she created, Jersey Shore, debuted on MTV. The rest is history: Snooki, The Situation, and Pauly D became household names, and the show set ratings records for MTV. Last Thursday, 8.9 million viewers watched Jersey Shore—more than most of the network shows on that night, and the highest-ever viewership for an MTV series. The network renewed the show, and is sending the cast to Italy to film the fourth season later this spring.
In 1996, Salsano was a finalist for The Real World Miami and nearly became a cast member, which isn't hard to believe given her exuberance and large personality. ( Jersey Shore cast member Paul "Pauly D" DelVecchio told The Daily Beast that she "belongs in the house with us.") Ten years later, she launched 495 Productions and created Design Star on HGTV, and went on to produce series including A Shot of Love With Tila Tequila and the fourth season of Nashville Star. She's about to start production for a docusoap series for TV Guide Network called The Nail Files; and there are two Jersey Shore spinoffs in the works, one starring Pauly D, and one with Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jenni "JWoww" Farley.
How did she go from nearly being a cast member to becoming one of the genre's most successful producers? Like her Jersey Shore cast members, SallyAnn Salsano has a nickname that everyone calls her, SA. She said she is "a huge fan of reality TV. There's not a show that I don't watch. I don't watch it for research, so I can see what the competitors are doing. You know what? I fucking love every second of it," she said in a recent interview with The Daily Beast in Los Angeles, rattling off series ranging from A&E's Storage Wars to TLC's Sister Wives to MTV's Teen Mom. "Whatever it is, I love reality TV. I'm always drawn to the characters, their reaction, and how they perceive the world. And I think that's what makes life interesting."
For Salsano, reality TV is all about its cast members. "A show could be anywhere at any time; it's just who your characters are," she said, citing Jersey Shore. "I always thought it would have a cult following. But I thought it was going to be that little show that could, kind of like [NBC's] The Office."
She attributes part of its success to her inexperience: Having produced only competitions previously, which have a built-in structure, her first docusoap, Jersey Shore, ignored the increasingly standard practice of mapping out a season and leaving the unscripted moments to whatever happens during planned scenes (today, cast members x and y will have lunch, and discuss a and b).
Salsano said that for the pilot, which she produced for VH1 (it was later moved to MTV), "the network execs at the time wanted to partner me with someone else who had done a docusoap because I couldn't possibly know how to do it. And I was like, 'No way.' I can figure it out. I think part of the thing that works about Jersey Shore is that I was so afraid to miss anything or to screw it up is that I shot everything under the sun. So I'm not going to say, 'Hey, I'll be there at 9, let's shoot today mani-pedis, and then we're going to do this,' because that's not what reality is. Reality is: I'm there and something's going to happen."
Jersey Shore was criticized for ethnic stereotyping before it even aired, but Salsano says that accusations that the show is "racist" or "making fun of Italians" is "horse crap. At the end of the day, I'm an Italian girl from Long Island, my dad worked in sanitation, both of my parents drive Cadillacs, my dad wears a diamond-encrusted Yankee symbol around his neck. It doesn't get more guido than in my house. People are like, 'You're making fun of them.' And I'm like, 'No, I am them.'"
Salsano named her production company 495 Productions after the Long Island Expressway, and said, "I'm not poking fun, this is really what it is. It's not something I'm embarrassed of. I was those kids. I was Snooki. I woke up and was like, 'Oh, that was a crazy night.' That's what you do."
Pauly D, who's working on a spin-off reality series produced by Salsano, said that "she could actually be a cast member for the show. She totally gets it, she gets what we're doing. She's just like us."
From her time as an intern on Howard Stern's show and at The Sally Jesse Raphael Show, where she eventually became a producer of the daytime talk show, she began to see that, despite the public judgment of such shows, real people's stories on television were captivating. "There's millions of people watching every day, and there's a reason why, because people can relate to them," she said.
"I'm an Italian girl from Long Island, my dad worked in sanitation, both of my parents drive Cadillacs, my dad wears a diamond-encrusted Yankee symbol around his neck."
That leads her to say, in all seriousness, "I believe that everybody deserves the chance to be on TV. Give everybody a chance. You don't know what's going to hit." Salsano added, "Yes, you can be a more skilled producer, and be a better storyteller, but in the end it's really how it hits the fans, how it hits the viewers."
It helps that she's invested in her subject matter. Pauly D said, "24/7 she's there. I see her passion for the show is like my passion for DJing, I can see that in what she does."
Salsano said, "I throw myself into every show," which made her dismissal from HGTV's reality competition even more painful. "I loved Design Star. Design Star was my baby. There is no show that I loved more than Design Star. To say that I was devastated when I was fired—fired!—from having the No. 1 show on a network, never being over budget, and working my ass off, harder than I've ever worked. It's the hardest show I ever produced."
She attributes that to "a case of people thinking it's super-fancy to work with the fanciest producer in town. And my whole thing when any producer—and this is not directed toward anyone in particular—my thing is, you can pay a producer any amount of money to produce a show. What you can't pay a producer to do is care." (HGTV did not respond to a request for comment.)
Pauly D said Salsano is "always, always, always there for us. If we ever have a problem, or whatever the case may be, it doesn't matter what time of day, it could be 2 in the morning, it could be 10 at night. It doesn't matter. I can text her, she'll text me right back. I'll call her, she'll call me right back. Whatever we're going through in our life, if we need any advice, she's always, always, always there for us, and I like that."
Perhaps that's because she was almost where they are. Salsano said, "MTV's always threatening to pull out my interview" from the Real World audition 15 years ago. But for now, she's content behind the scenes, although the attributes that nearly landed her a spot on MTV's original reality series still infuse her work.
"I always say to my producers and to my cast, 'I will never ask you to do something I would not do myself,'" Salsano said. "But therein lies a problem, because there's not much I won't do."
Plus: Check out more of the latest entertainment, fashion, and culture coverage on Sexy Beast—photos, videos, features, and Tweets.


text:
We're excited to announce that we've partnered with one of the biggest names in wearable fitness tracking: Fitbit!
Just in time to help you hit your New Year's resolutions, you can now connect your Peloton and Fitbit accounts, allowing you to automatically post detailed metrics from every ride you complete to your Fitbit dashboard. It's a great way to track your Peloton progress and ensure every pedal stroke counts towards your goal.
Connecting your Peloton account to Fitbit:
- Once you have completed a ride on the bike, tap Share, then select Fitbit.
- Log in to your Fitbit account.
- Once logged in, metrics from this workout, along with all future completed workouts, will be automatically posted to your Fitbit dashboard.
Every workout that is posted to Fitbit will be logged as an exercise and will include the length of your workout, distance and calories burned, giving you a full scope of how hard you pushed.
Note: Some Fitbit devices automatically track heart rate, which will appear in your Fitbit dashboard, but will not sync with the heart rate feature on your Peloton bike's touchscreen at this time. If you would like to track your heart rate on the Peloton bike, you will need an ANT+ compatible heart rate monitor.
Ready to ride towards your resolution? Connect your Peloton account to Fitbit today!


text:
Recent advances in genomics and systems biology have provided a powerful new platform for biomedical and translational research, with the potential to transform clinical practice. The Division of Medical Genetics brings together UC San Diego's world-renowned strengths in biomedicine, basic and clinical science, pharmacology, bioengineering and computer science to accelerate discovery and translation in genetics and genomic medicine.
HIV Infection Prematurely Ages People by an Average of Five Years: Epigenetic changes also associated with 19 percent increased risk of mortality - Trey Ideker, PhD, is co-corresponding author of report in Molecular Cell published online on April 21, 2016.
New Computer Program Can Help Uncover Hidden Genomic Alterations that Drive Cancers: Tested on large tumor genomics database, REVEALER method allows researchers to connect genomics to cell function - Jill P. Mesirov, PhD, is co-senior author of paper published April 18, 2016, in Nature Biotechnology.
Genetic Changes that Cause Autism Are More Diverse Than Previously Thought - Keith Vaux, MD, is a coauthor on the study report published online in The American Journal of Genetics on March 24, 2016.
GenomeSpace "Recipes" Help Biologists Interpret Genomic Data - UC San Diego press release covers publication of Nature Medicine report announcing creation of GenomeSpace by Dr. Jill Mesirov and coworkers.
UCSD Genetics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Colloquium
Salk Institute for Biological Studies Science Events
The Scripps Research Institute: Scientific Calendar
Conference room locations are here
View All
ABMGG Clinical Laboratory Fellowship Applications
Official Web Site of the University of California, San Diego.


text:
As America's morbid celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden begin to fade, we are left with a new landscape of risks ? and opportunities ? created by his slaying at the hands of a U.S. Special Forces team at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The range of those future prospects could be found in Wednesday's Washington Post. On the hopeful side, a front-page article reported that the Obama administration was following up bin Laden's death with accelerated peace talks in Afghanistan. On a darker note, a Post editorial hailed bin Laden's slaying as a model for "targeting" Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and his sons.
So, while there is the possibility that the United States might finally begin to wind down a near-decade-long war in Afghanistan, there is the countervailing prospect of the United States consolidating an official policy of assassination and violence as the way to impose Washington's will on the Muslim world.
If the Post's neoconservative editors get their way and the U.S. military is officially transformed into a roving assassination squad ? a global "Murder, Inc." ? it may turn out that future historians will view this as bin Laden's final victory.
Having already helped create the climate for George W. Bush's administration to overturn longstanding American principles ? regarding civil liberties, aggressive war and torture ? bin Laden could go to his watery grave with the satisfaction of officially branding the United States as a nation of assassins.
If assassination becomes the preferred calling card of U.S. foreign policy, it also is a safe bet that the lines at al-Qaeda recruiting stations will grow longer, rather than shrink, and that more rounds of retaliatory violence will follow.
However, if Rajiv Chandrasekaran's speculation in the Post's news article is closer to the mark ? that bin Laden's death may clear the way for negotiations with the Taliban and a peace settlement in Afghanistan ? then something truly positive might be salvaged from this grisly episode. Not only might the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan start coming home in significant numbers in July, but the United States might finally begin to repair its badly stained reputation as a "beacon" of liberty and the rule of law.
Targeted Killings
The circumstances surrounding the targeted killing of bin Laden remind us how far the United States has strayed from its principles.
Though clearly bin Laden represented an extreme case ? as the leader of an international terrorist organization that has slaughtered thousands of innocent people ? his killing was not unique. Over the past decade, U.S. Special Forces and sniper teams have been authorized to kill significant numbers of suspected militants on sight.
For instance, in 2007, a case surfaced regarding two U.S. Special Forces soldiers who took part in the execution of an Afghan man who was a suspected leader of an insurgent group. Special Forces Capt. Dave Staffel and Sgt. Troy Anderson were leading a team of Afghan soldiers when an informant told them where the suspected insurgent leader was hiding. The U.S.-led contingent found a man believed to be Nawab Buntangyar walking outside his compound near the village of Hasan Kheyl.
While the Americans kept their distance out of fear the suspect might be wearing a suicide vest, the man was questioned about his name and the Americans checked his description against a list from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan, known as "the kill-or-capture list."
Concluding that the man was Nawab Buntangyar, Staffel gave the order to shoot, and Anderson ? from a distance of about 100 yards away ? fired a bullet through the man's head, killing him instantly.
The soldiers viewed the killing as "a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement," the New York Times reported. "The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him."
Staffel's civilian lawyer Mark Waple said the Army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded that the shooting was "justifiable homicide," but a two-star general in Afghanistan instigated a murder charge against the two men. That case, however, foundered over accusations that the charge was improperly filed. [NYT, Sept. 17, 2007]
According to evidence in a court martial at Fort Bragg, the earlier Army investigation cleared the two soldiers because they had been operating under rules of engagement that empowered them to kill individuals who have been designated "enemy combatants," even if the targets were unarmed and presented no visible threat.
In September 2007, a U.S. military judge dismissed all charges against the two soldiers, ruling it was conceivable that the detained Afghan was wearing a suicide explosive belt, though there was no evidence that he was. [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Turns US Soldiers into Murderers."]
In other words, the killing of Osama bin Laden was within well-established "rules of engagement" started under President Bush and continued by President Barack Obama. Obama's proud announcement on Sunday evening that "a small team of Americans" had killed bin Laden reflected not an anomalous action but a pattern of behavior, made distinctive only by the prominence of the target.
"At my direction," Obama said, "a small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. ? After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."
Revised Accounts
On Monday, John Brennan, Obama's special assistant on terrorism, claimed that bin Laden either had a gun or was reaching for a gun when he was shot, but the White House on Tuesday amended that statement to say that bin Laden was unarmed when killed.
Further U.S. revisions of the official story followed on Wednesday, as U.S. officials acknowledged that the "firefight" in Abbottabad was extremely one-sided. They told the New York Times that only one of bin Laden's "couriers," Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, fired at the U.S. team from a nearby guesthouse before he and a woman with him were slain.
After the U.S. troops entered the main building housing bin Laden, they assumed people they encountered might be armed, the U.S. officials said. According to this account, a second "courier" was killed inside the house as he was believed to be preparing to fire. One of bin Laden's sons who reportedly lunged toward the attackers was killed, too.
Upon reaching the third-floor room where bin Laden was, the U.S. team spotted him within reach of an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol, the U.S. officials said. The commandos then shot and killed him and wounded a woman, apparently one of his wives.
It is, of course, difficult to second-guess the split-second decisions of commandos on a dangerous nighttime mission as to whether there was a reasonable prospect of taking bin Laden alive or whether he did constitute a lethal threat.
But their rules of engagement clearly were to shoot first and ask questions later. As CIA Director Leon Panetta explained in TV interviews, the commandos were authorized to kill bin Laden on sight, although they were prepared to accept his surrender if there was no sign of resistance.
Put differently, the orders were to "kill or capture" rather than "capture or kill." And the "kill" option appeared to be the favored choice.
Obama himself suggested that priority in his Sunday address, disclosing that at the start of his presidency, he ordered Panetta "to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al-Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network."
Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, has come a long way in accepting the frame of reference created by his predecessor who smirked at the niceties of international law and whose White House counsel Alberto Gonzales mocked the Geneva Conventions as "quaint" and "obsolete."
Dangers Ahead
As details of the bin Laden raid ? and then the corrected details ? spill out over the next several days, it is hard to predict the reaction in the Muslim world, and particularly in nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the targeted killing took place. Extremists of all stripes may be given extra incentive to upend governments that acquiesce to American violations of their sovereignty. There are also heightened dangers of anti-U.S. terrorist attacks.
In Pakistan, where U.S. drone strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, have been a major bone of contention, the bin Laden assault has already increased the turbulence in U.S.-Pakistani relations.
According to both governments, Obama chose not to inform President Asif Ali Zardari until the nighttime raid was finished, apparently fearing that Pakistani authorities might tip off the bin Laden compound. Only after the fact did Obama reach Zardari by telephone to let him know what had just gone down.
The Pakistani government responded with a stern official statement of the obvious, that the "unilateral" attack had violated Pakistan's "sovereignty." But there was embarrassment, too, that the world's most hunted terrorist had been found living in a million-dollar compound just down the road from Pakistan's top military academia and a military base.
That fact set ? and the history of Pakistan's chief intelligence agency, the ISI, playing double games regarding Islamic extremism ? were factors in Obama's decision to go it alone, Panetta suggested in an interview with Time magazine.
"It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission," the CIA director said. "They might alert the targets."
Still, the impression of the U.S. running roughshod over the Pakistani government will make it more difficult for senior Pakistani military and government officials to cooperate ? or even pretend to cooperate ? with the U.S. war across the border in Afghanistan. Zardari is already in a peck of trouble. His very position as president is in jeopardy.
That means Zardari will be under still more pressure to demonstrate his independence of Washington at a time when Pakistanis perceive they have been subjected to a string of indignities, even preceding the high-profile controversy over the bin Laden raid.
Whether or not the Pakistani military decides to allow President Zardari to remain in office, many Pakistanis are likely to react strongly against the U.S. at a time when bilateral relations are already at their nadir. Since Sunday, many U.S. officials have harshly criticized Pakistan for harboring bin Laden, with some suggesting major cuts in U.S. aid, which has totaled about $20 billion over the past decade.
For its part, Pakistan can retaliate by blocking the resupply of U.S. and NATO forces along roads to the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. This extremely long logistics line may well prove the Achilles heel of the entire U.S. war effort. No one knows this better than the Pakistanis who have already shown themselves ready to use the leverage afforded by NATO's dependence on the difficult supply line.
Ignoring Other Options
In favoring killing over capture, it also appears that the United States passed up the prospects of questioning bin Laden about al-Qaeda in favor of killing him, all the better to avoid the messy legal complications of how to proceed against him.
Yet, there are commonly accepted legal ways to capture and bring such people to a court of law ? yes, even violent "bad guys" like Osama bin Laden. It is difficult ? especially given the complexities with Pakistani authorities and the risks involved in grabbing a dangerous target ? but it can be done.
That bin Laden might have had extremely valuable information to impart to interrogators is a no-brainer. But some of that information also might have been embarrassing to important elements of the U.S. government, especially considering his longstanding relationship with the CIA going back to the 1980s and the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Much as some prominent U.S. officials breathed a sigh of relief when Iraq's deposed dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged in 2006 ? avoiding a thorough investigation that might have exposed unwelcome secrets dating back to the 1980s ? some operatives from the same period probably are glad that bin Laden's secrets are now buried at sea.
Yet, despite the future risks for the United States and the Muslim world ? and the fact that the U.S. assault was a fairly clear violation of international law ? the killing of bin Laden paradoxically does offer a possible route back from the institutionalization of American lawlessness.
Since bin Laden and his actions on 9/11 created the shock that allowed the Bush administration to lead the United States into the "dark side" of "enhanced interrogations," "preemptive wars" and a wholesale assault on civil liberties, it could follow that the death of bin Laden will permit a retracing of those steps.
The first step in that journey would be a serious attempt to negotiate a political settlement in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of American and NATO troops. If enough public pressure is brought to bear, there could even be a full-scale reassessment of U.S. priorities focusing on what economists call "opportunity costs."
Only with strong grass roots pressure, including nonviolent civil disobedience when appropriate, will there be any real hope that the demon of "terrorism" periodically resurrected by the politicians can be exorcised. That, in turn, could bring an early end to the squandering of $2 billion a week into the stalemate in Afghanistan; the allocation of those resources to job creation and educational opportunity for tens of millions of Americans; and stanching the alarming erosion of the liberties the Constitution was carefully crafted to guarantee and the President solemnly sworn to enforce.
Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 years. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: firstname.lastname@example.com.
A shorter version of this article appears at Consortiumnews.com.


text:
Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany (1933 – 1945) fierily worked under the motto: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it".
Goebbels wasn't the first politician in history to rely on the power of spoken words repetition in shaping attitudes and beliefs. Vladimir Lenin (communist revolutionary and Soviet Union Premier from 1922 till he died in 1924) used the technique of achieving belief in lies or half-truths as absolute truths also. His motto was: "A lie told often enough becomes truth".
The first written trace of this abominable but powerful trend can perhaps be pinned down to the American philosopher and a father of modern Psychology William James who wrote in his work "The Will to Believe", published by New World in 1896 these words: "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."
Having in mind the ICTY (Hague) judgment on 29 May 2013 against the 6 Croats from Herceg-Bosna,
which also names the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and his close officials (all of whom had passed away before the ICTY indictments in the case) it is absolutely essential to consider the evolution of the now seemingly accepted version (however untrue) of the story (initially spun by Stjepan Mesic, the former president of Croatia) that Croatia was an aggressor against Bosnia and Herzegovina because it's leaders planned and executed a joint criminal enterprise in Herceg-Bosna to get rid of the Muslims there and secure the territory for Croats.
The regretful reality is that the ICTY Trial Chamber has accepted as truth the contents of the testimony that the former president of Croatia Stjepan Mesic first gave as witness for the prosecution in ICTY (in Closed/confidential session at Mesic's/ prosecutor's insistence!), in the case against Tihomir Blaskic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is of note that Mesic's testimony was that of personal opinion, views and hearsay, which pointed the finger at Franjo Tudjman as having planned and executed a joint criminal enterprise in Herceg-Bosna with the aim to cleanse that area of Bosnian Muslims and have it all Croatian.
Stjepan Mesic spoke in his testimony of March 1991 meetings in Karadjordjevo between Franjo Tudjman and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and although he, himself, was not present at these meetings (which, by the way, would be nothing unusual for any country in the world when one [Croatia] was seceding from the other [communist Yugoslavia], and Serbia was fiercely against this), he insisted that Tudjman and Milosevic had at these meetings agreed to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia and agreed to start the war!
Of course, since Mesic's testimony was secret/closed/confidential it was impossible to react to it or refute it publicly at the time or any time before Tudjman's death in 1999. Mesic used to voice the same allegations about Tudjman-Milosevic meetings publicly before and after his appearance in the Hague – all from the time when he set his eyes on Tudjman's job, around 1992/93, and commenced a horrid campaign of vilification against Tudjman, conducting it ever since ever since. While Tudjman's public reaction to Mesic's ICTY testimony would have been called for, reacting to Mesic's verbal vomit in the media prior to that time would have meant dignifying it with a reply. Gradually, though, the world media happily picked up on Mesic's scandalous stories and opinions – it never stopped to ask the question: where is the proof other than that he said/she said, where are the minutes or notes from 1991 meetings between Tudjman and Milosevic? Certainly, there were ample statements and opinions by numerous Croatian identities refuting what Mesic and his followers were saying, but much of the world's media decided it would run with the Mesic version – his was more scandalous and attention grabbing in the scheme of things that swelled the tides against Tudjman whom they considered a nationalist and an autocrat(!).
Needless to say the ICTY prosecution must have loved Mesic; he seemingly provided it with a "believable" framework around which it could build the theory of joint criminal enterprise and after all, Mesic was the second person in Croatia at the relevant times – so he must be credible!? (Mesic served as Prime Minister, as president of the Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ Executive Council, then Speaker of Croatian Parliament until booted out in 1994, when reportedly caught/proven a liar by many but also Tudjman.)
There is no doubt that horrible crimes were committed against Muslims (and Croats, and Serbs, I might add) during the time and across the territory of Herceg-Bosna covered by this ICTY indictment and eventual conviction on 29 May 2013. However, to reduce the perpetration of these horrid crimes to a joint criminal enterprise, to some collective guilt based on political motives as fed to the court through wild verbal testimony, and with not a shred of evidence that these 6 Croats from Herceg Bosna had committed a single one of these horrible crimes contained in the indictment, is absolutely distressing.
Setting aside the presiding Judge Antonetti's dissenting opinion, which clearly says that joint criminal enterprise by Croatia against Muslims of Herceg-Bosna did not exist, one needs to wonder what powers are afoot in the ICTY to stamp a lie – or at least a most unsafe verbal testimony – into a truth? A striking resemblance to how Goebbels would have gone about getting lies to be adopted as truths. I shudder to think that just because Stjepan Mesic had high positions in Croatia, including being the President after Tudjman's death, the ICTY Trial Chamber took his veracity and honesty of his words as unquestionable! It certainly appears to have done that.
So the accused and all of the convicted did not actually commit war crimes – murder, rape, wanton destruction … – but as members of the so-called joint criminal enterprise (constituted of these war crimes), according to the ICTY Trial Chamber's judgment " … secured personnel and coordinated the operations on the ground to carry out the crimes," judges concluded!
Furthermore, it is absolutely scandalous that the ICTY Trial Chamber concluded that since the accused did not commit the crimes that were otherwise proven to have been committed (by someone!) it's logical to pin these crimes against the accused and the Croatian leaders by way of participating in the joint criminal enterprise. From the Summary of Judgment: "The Accused are charged under all the forms of liability set out in Article 7 (1) of the Statute (including commission through participation in a joint criminal enterprise) and command responsibility under Article 7 (3) of the Statute. Considering the extent of the crimes charged against the six Accused and found proven by the Chamber, the Chamber finds, by a majority with the Presiding Judge dissenting, that analysing their responsibility by virtue of their participation in a joint criminal enterprise is the obvious legal approach. Consequently, the other modes of participation alleged in the Indictment have only been considered for those crimes that do not come under the joint criminal enterprise".
"Obvious legal approach"! Can you believe this political prop and an attempt to justify the apparent painfully pathetic and unjust ways the ICTY prosecution and Trial Chamber have conducted this case!?
Obvious for whom!? It certainly isn't obvious to me – and I bet it isn't obvious to everyone who pursues safe verdicts in criminal justice.
Whichever way one tosses and turns the evidence from the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina one WILL NOT find any significant cooperation between Serb and Croatian forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina that would even provide an inkling of support for Mesic's claims that there was the intention/agreement to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina between them! Muslims, though, seemed to have perceived themselves as being trapped between the two and their resistance was fierce. 1993 Vance Owen Peace Plan giving Croats command over areas where Muslims lived as ethnic majority would have fueled such perceptions decisively – but ICTY Trial Chamber gave no consideration to this fact! In fact, the fiction work by Mesic seems to have been more important to ICTY Trial Chamber than the sorry truth of calamitous and anger provoking interference by the international community in addressing the complex ethnic issues of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A full ICTY Trial Chamber judgment from 29 May 2013 reportedly contains over 2,600 pages and it's being prepared still; it was not published at the same time as its summary – extraordinary! Intending no disrespect towards the victims, I can't wait to read the gruesome details of crimes proven to have been committed by unnamed and unknown individuals and not by those who have copped the guilty by association or motive verdict!
The verdict of joint criminal enterprise perpetrated in order to create an independent Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna, and eventually join it to the Republic of Croatia suggests that the very idea of secession is, in itself, now considered a criminal act! Why has the international community tolerated and accepted the created Serbian Republic within Bosnia and Herzegovina (which records all manner of war crimes, including Srebrenica genocide) since Dayton agreement of 1995!? Croatia's, Bosnia and Herzegovina's, Slovenia's and Macedonian secession from former Yugoslavia during those years was not and is not considered a criminal act, so a certain domino effect of secession attempts at that time must have been expected to spill within the seceded states of former Yugoslavia and facts show that there were in fact several: Croatian Serbs with the aid of Belgrade led Yugoslav Peoples Army attempted to secede their self-proclaimed and brutalised Serb Republic of Krajina from Republic of Croatia, Serbian Republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina did the same, only with better success; Kosovo has been attempting the same – to secede or gain independence from Serbia. No one though has yet been prosecuted for the act of secession! The means to achieve secession seems to be the focal point of the ICTY prosecution, i.e. war crimes. If that is the case, and it certainly seems to be, why has the ICTY not gone after the actual individual perpetrators of those crimes? The answer could very well lie in political plots, which seem to favour one nation of people or one leader more than others – in attempts to judge history and not real criminals.
And since I'm writing about Stjepan Mesic and his public statements he has always said that individuals and not politics are responsible for war crimes and must be prosecuted – he had evidently held a different candle when he told his story to the ICTY Trial Chamber hearings.
Visiting Switzerland, Buchs, in March 1992, Stjepan Mesic was asked: Are the claims about an agreement between Tudjman and Milosevic regarding the territorial division of Bosnia and Herzegovina at all true? Mesic replied: "They are not. There are no agreements between Tudjman and Milosevic. We have talked with Milosevic because we had to find out what the thief wants." This is the translation into English from the March 1992 Buchs video that follows here below:
When seen through the politically strategic and copious instances of Mesic's media statements with the same or similar content (that Tudjman and Milosevic agreed to start the war in 1991 and to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia), before and after his testimony at the ICTY, one must, absolutely must, question the truth in what he says and said on the matter.
It is utterly regretful that, after confidentiality was lifted from his ICTY testimony, there have been no attempts by the Croatian government to bring the matter to some court proceedings in order to pin down the truths and the lies of Mesic's claims. After all each of these has affected and will affect Croatia and its people gravely in the future. Perhaps the reason for this lies in the ugly truth where die-hard communists are and were (after Tudjman's death) occupying the most important positions of government bodies. It is in no way beneficial to wait for years on end in the trust that an Appeal will overturn the verdict of joint criminal enterprise (as it had done in the Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac case). Mesic's words are an immediate and urgent problem Croatia needs to solve for the benefit of its people, not for some argy-bargy historical entry into the journal of the breakup of former Yugoslasvia. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)


text:
The History of the United States Capitol Building since 1793
Curated/Reviewed by Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
The history of the United States Capitol Building begins in 1793. Since then, the U.S. Capitol has been built, burnt, rebuilt, extended and restored. The Capitol that we see today is the result of several major periods of construction; it stands as a monument to the ingenuity, determination and skill of the American people.
In accordance with the "Residence Act" passed by Congress in 1790, President George Washington in 1791 selected the area that is now the District of Columbia from land ceded by Maryland. He also selected three commissioners to survey the site and oversee the design and construction of the capital city and its government buildings. The commissioners, in turn, hired the French engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant to plan the new city of Washington. He located the Capitol at the elevated east end of the Mall, on the brow of what was then called Jenkins' Hill. The site was, in L'Enfant's words, "a pedestal waiting for a monument."
L'Enfant was expected to design the U.S. Capitol Building and to supervise its construction. However, he refused to produce any drawings for the building, claiming that he carried the design "in his head"; this fact and his refusal to consider himself subject to the commissioners' authority led to his dismissal in 1792. In March of that year the commissioners announced a competition, suggested by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, that would award $500 and a city lot to whoever produced "the most approved plan" for the U.S. Capitol Building by mid-July. None of the 17 plans submitted, however, were wholly satisfactory. In October, a letter arrived from Dr. William Thornton, a Scottish-trained physician living in Tortola, British West Indies, requesting an opportunity to present a plan even though the competition had closed. The commissioners granted this request.
Thornton's plan depicted a building composed of three sections. The central section, which was topped by a low dome, was to be flanked on the north and south by two rectangular wings (one for the Senate and one for the House of Representatives). President Washington commended the plan for its "grandeur, simplicity and convenience," and on April 5, 1793, it was accepted by the commissioners; Washington gave his formal approval on July 25.
1793 – 1829
President Washington laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol in the building's southeast corner on September 18, 1793, with Masonic ceremonies. Work progressed under the direction of three architects in succession. Stephen H. Hallet (an entrant in the earlier competition) and George Hadfield were eventually dismissed by the Commissioners because of inappropriate design changes that they tried to impose; James Hoban, the architect of the White House, saw the first phase of the project through to completion.
Construction was a laborious and time-consuming process: the sandstone used for the building had to be ferried on boats from the quarries at Aquia, Virginia; workers had to be induced to leave their homes to come to the relative wilderness of Capitol Hill; and funding was inadequate. By August 1796 the commissioners were forced to focus the entire work effort on the building's north wing so that it at least could be ready for government occupancy as scheduled. Even so, some third-floor rooms were still unfinished when the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the courts of the District of Columbia occupied the U.S. Capitol in late 1800.
In 1803, Congress allocated funds to resume construction. A year earlier, the office of the commissioners had been abolished and replaced by a Superintendent of the City of Washington. To oversee the renewed construction effort, Benjamin Henry Latrobe was appointed architect. The first professional architect and engineer to work in America, Latrobe modified Thornton's plan for the south wing to include space for offices and committee rooms; he also introduced alterations to simplify the construction work.
Latrobe began work in 1804 by removing a squat, oval, temporary building known as "the Oven," which had been erected in 1801 as a meeting place for the House of Representatives. By 1807 construction on the south wing was sufficiently advanced that the House was able to occupy its new legislative chamber, and the wing was completed in 1811.
In 1808, as work on the south wing progressed, Latrobe began the rebuilding of the north wing, which had fallen into disrepair. Rather than simply repair the wing, he redesigned the interior of the building to increase its usefulness and durability; among his changes was the addition of a chamber for the Supreme Court. By 1811 he had completed the eastern half of this wing, but funding was being increasingly diverted to preparations for a second war with Great Britain. By 1813, Latrobe had no further work in Washington and so he departed, leaving the north and south wings of the U.S. Capitol connected only by a temporary wooden passageway.
The War of 1812 left the Capitol, in Latrobe's later words, "a most magnificent ruin": on August 24, 1814, British troops set fire to the building, and only a sudden rainstorm prevented its complete destruction. Immediately after the fire, Congress met for one session in Blodget's Hotel, which was at Seventh and E Streets, N.W. From 1815 to 1819, Congress occupied a building erected for it on First Street, N.E., on part of the site now occupied by the Supreme Court Building. This building later came to be known as the Old Brick Capitol.
Latrobe returned to Washington in 1815, when he was rehired to restore the U.S. Capitol Building. In addition to making repairs, he took advantage of this opportunity to make further changes in the building's interior design (for example, an enlargement of the Senate Chamber) and introduce new materials (for example, marble discovered along the upper Potomac). However, he came under increasing pressure because of construction delays (most of which were beyond his control) and cost overruns. He resigned his post in November 1817.
On January 8, 1818, Charles Bulfinch, a prominent Boston architect, was appointed Latrobe's successor. Continuing the restoration of the north and south wings, he was able to make the chambers for the Supreme Court, the House, and the Senate ready for use by 1819. Bulfinch also redesigned and supervised the construction of the Capitol Building's central section. The copper-covered wooden dome that topped this section was made higher than Bulfinch considered appropriate to the building's size (at the direction of President James Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams). After completing the last part of the building in 1826, Bulfinch spent the next few years on the Capitol's decoration and landscaping. In 1829, his work was done and his position with the government was terminated. In the 20 years following Bulfinch's tenure, the Capitol was entrusted to the care of the Commissioner of Public Buildings.
1830 – 1868
The Capitol was by this point already an impressive structure. At ground level, its length was 351 feet 7-1/2 inches and its width was 282 feet 10-1/2 inches. Up to the year 1827–records from later years being incomplete–the project cost was $2,432,851.34. Improvements to the building continued in the years to come (running water in 1832, gas lighting in the 1840s), but by 1850 its size could no longer accommodate the increasing numbers of senators and representatives from newly admitted states. The Senate therefore voted to hold another competition, offering a prize of $500 for the best plan to extend the Capitol. Several suitable plans were submitted, some proposing an eastward extension of the building and others proposing the addition of large north and south wings. However, Congress was unable to decide between these two approaches, and the prize money was divided among five architects. Thus, the tasks of selecting a plan and appointing an architect fell to President Millard Fillmore.
Fillmore's choice was Thomas U. Walter, a Philadelphia architect who had entered the competition. On July 4, 1851, in a ceremony whose principal oration was delivered by Secretary of State Daniel Webster, the President laid the cornerstone for the northeast corner of the House wing in accordance with Walter's plans. Over the next 14 years, Walter supervised the construction of the extensions, ensuring their compatibility with the architectural style of the existing building. However, because the Aquia Creek sandstone used earlier had already deteriorated noticeably, he chose to use marble for the exterior. For the veneer, Walter selected marble quarried at Lee, Massachusetts, and for the columns he used marble from Cockeysville, Maryland.
Walter faced several significant challenges during the course of construction. Chief among these was the steady imposition by the government of additional tasks without additional pay. Aside from his work on the U.S. Capitol extensions and dome, Walter designed the wings of the Patent Office building, extensions to the Treasury and Post Office buildings, and the Marine barracks in Pensacola and Brooklyn. When the Library of Congress in the Capitol's west central section was gutted by a fire in 1851, Walter was commissioned to restore it. He also encountered obstacles in his work on the Capitol extensions. His location of the legislative chambers was changed in 1853 at the direction of President Franklin Pierce, based on the suggestions of the newly appointed supervising engineer, Captain Montgomery C. Meigs.
In general, however, the project progressed rapidly: the House of Representatives was able to meet in its new chamber on December 16, 1857, and the Senate first met in its present chamber on January 4, 1859. The old House chamber was later designated National Statuary Hall. In 1861, most construction was suspended because of the Civil War, and the Capitol was used briefly as a military barracks, hospital and bakery. In 1862, work on the entire building was resumed.
As the new wings were constructed, more than doubling the length of the Capitol, it became apparent that the dome erected by Bulfinch no longer suited the building's proportions. In 1855 Congress voted for its replacement based on Walter's design for a new, fireproof cast-iron dome. The old dome was removed in 1856, and 5,000,000 pounds of new masonry was placed on the existing Rotunda walls. Iron used in the dome construction had an aggregate weight of 8,909,200 pounds and was lifted into place by steam-powered derricks.
In 1859 Thomas Crawford's plaster model for the Statue of Freedom, designed for the top of the dome, arrived from the sculptor's studio in Rome. With a height of 19 feet 6 inches, the statue was almost 3 feet taller than specified, and Walter was compelled to make revisions to his design for the dome. When cast in bronze by Clark Mills at his foundry on the outskirts of Washington, it weighed 14,985 pounds. The statue was lifted into place atop the dome in 1863, its final section being installed on December 2 to the accompaniment of gun salutes from the forts around the city.
The work on the dome and the extensions was completed under the direction of Edward Clark, who had served as Walter's assistant and was appointed Architect of the Capitol in 1865 after Walter's resignation. In 1866, the Italian-born artist Constantino Brumidi finished the canopy fresco, a monumental painting entitled The Apotheosis of Washington. The Capitol extensions were completed in 1868.
1869 – 1902
Clark continued to hold the post of Architect of the Capitol until his death in 1902. During his tenure, the U.S. Capitol underwent considerable modernization. Steam heat was gradually installed in the Old Capitol. In 1873 the first elevator was installed, and in the 1880s electric lighting began to replace gas lights.
Between 1884 and 1891, the marble terraces on the north, west and south sides of the Capitol were constructed. As part of the grounds plan devised by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, these terraces not only added over 100 rooms to the Capitol Building but also provided a broader, more substantial visual base for the building.
On November 6, 1898, a gas explosion and fire in the original north wing dramatically illustrated the need for fireproofing. The roofs over the Statuary Hall wing and the original north wing were reconstructed and fireproofed, the work being completed in 1902 by Clark's successor, Elliott Woods. In 1901 the space in the west central front vacated by the Library of Congress was converted to committee rooms.
1903 – 1970
During the remainder of Woods's service, which ended with his death in 1923, no major structural work was required on the Capitol Building. The activities performed in the building were limited chiefly to cleaning and refurbishing the interior. David Lynn, the Architect of the Capitol from 1923 until his retirement in 1954, continued these tasks. Between July 1949 and January 1951, the corroded roofs and skylights of both wings and the connecting corridors were replaced with new roofs of concrete and steel, covered with copper. The cast-iron and glass ceilings of the House and Senate chambers were replaced with ceilings of stainless steel and plaster, with a laylight of carved glass and bronze in the middle of each. The House and Senate chambers were completely remodeled, improvements such as modern air conditioning and lighting were added, and acoustical problems were solved. During this renovation program, the House and Senate vacated their chambers on several occasions so that the work could progress.
The next significant modification made to the Capitol was the East Front extension. This project was carried out under the supervision of Architect of the Capitol J. George Stewart, who served from 1954 until his death in 1970. Begun in 1958, it involved the construction of a new East Front 32 feet 6 inches east of the old front, faithfully reproducing the sandstone structure in marble. The old sandstone walls were not destroyed; rather, they were left in place to become a part of the interior wall and are now buttressed by the addition. The marble columns of the connecting corridors were also moved and reused. Other elements of this project included repairing the dome, constructing a subway terminal under the Senate steps, reconstructing those steps, cleaning both wings, birdproofing the building, providing furniture and furnishings for the 90 new rooms created by the extension, and improving the lighting throughout the building. The project was completed in 1962.
1970 – Present
Following the 1971 appointment of George M. White, FAIA, as Architect of the Capitol, the building was both modernized and restored. Electronic voting equipment was installed in the House chamber in 1973; facilities were added to allow television coverage of the House and Senate debates in 1979 and 1986, respectively; and improved climate control, electronic surveillance systems, and new computer and communications facilities have been added to bring the Capitol up to date. The Old Senate Chamber, National Statuary Hall, and the Old Supreme Court Chamber, on the other hand, were restored to their mid-19th-century appearance for the nation's 1976 Bicentennial celebration.
In 1983, work began on the strengthening, renovation and preservation of the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. Structural problems had developed over the years because of defects in the original foundations, deterioration of the sandstone facing material, alterations to the basic building fabric (a fourth-floor addition and channeling of the walls to install interior utilities), and damage from the fires of 1814 and 1851 and the 1898 gas explosion.
To strengthen the structure, over 1,000 stainless steel tie rods were set into the building's masonry. More than 30 layers of paint were removed, and damaged stonework was repaired or replicated. Ultimately, 40 percent of the sandstone blocks were replaced with limestone. The walls were treated with a special consolidant and then painted to match the marble wings. The entire project was completed in 1987, well ahead of schedule and under budget.
A related project, completed in January 1993, effected the repair of the Olmsted terraces, which had been subject to damage from settling, and converted the terrace courtyards into several thousand square feet of meeting space.
As the U.S. Capitol Building entered its third century, restoration and modernization work continued under the guidance of Alan M. Hantman, FAIA, who was appointed Architect of the Capitol in 1997 following George M. White's 1995 retirement, and Stephen T Ayers, FAIA, LEED AP, who was appointed Architect of the Capitol in 2010 after serving as Acting Architect of the Capitol since Mr. Hantman's retirement in 2007. Major projects included conservation of the Rotunda canopy and frieze and the Statue of Freedom, creation of murals in three first-floor House corridors, and replacement of worn Minton tiles in the Senate corridors. Permanent television broadcasting facilities were installed in the Senate Chamber, and the subway system linking the U.S. Capitol with the Dirksen and Hart Senate Office Buildings was replaced with a new system. Repair and restoration of the House monumental stairs was completed in 1996. A program of barrier removal begun in the 1970s continues in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Opened in 2008, the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center is the newest addition to the historic Capitol Building. At nearly 580,000 square feet, the Visitor Center is the largest project in the Capitol's more than two-century history and is approximately three-quarters the size of the Capitol itself. The entire facility is located underground on the east side of the Capitol so as not to detract from the appearance of the Capitol Building and Grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1874. The Capitol Visitor Center contains exhibits, orientation displays, theaters and other facilities to make the visitor's experience in the Capitol more informative and meaningful.
Originally published by the Architect of the Capitol to the public domain.


text:
Hi Frank: Thanks for setting me straight on this. That's how I had remembered things- it was only when I saw another post that I thought differently. Seems like the dedicated ADC (PCM1808) is better than codecs in this regard. I was interested to see you had also used various STM32 MCUs with SDR software. I have a STM32F746 Discovery board which I thought would be great for such projects as it has a beautiful 4.3" capacitive touchscreen and a WM8994 audio codec. I used it for some projects but cannot get the audio line in and audio line out to work simultaneously (microphone in and line out is OK). Others have had the same problem, but I expect someone out there has figured it out.
I've tried to use the STM32Cube IDE but find it very difficult to get used to, but I've been more successful using the Mbed platform- it's somewhat like the Teensy in good support, libraries etc.
I just figured out that the Audio library ADCS component has not yet been ported to the T4.x, so my idea of using the internal dual 12-bit ADC is a non-starter.


text:
1D is taking the world by storm and you can check out their audition in a video below, just in case you missed their original audition for Simon Cowell and friends.
Nickelodeon has recently announced that One Direction or 1D as they are sometimes called will be getting their own TV show on the network. This will not be their first stint on Nickelodeon since the band has already appeared on Nickelodeon's hit iCarly this year and has toured with Big Time Rush.
One Direction seems to in fact have joined the Nick family. They have their own page on Nick.com and are listed on the Nick Stars page of the site.
You can check out the one Direction Auditions in this video below:
One Direction seems to be the new "British Invasion" that is making young girls swoon across the globe. With such a huge fan base, this new show will no doubt be a huge hit.
The group has been burning up the pop music charts and tickets sales for their 2013 tour is rumored to be worth millions. Many sites have said that One Direction is the most popular boy band since the Beatles in the 60's receiving the same type of fan attention.
1D also has a documentary in the works that will follow the band around to capture their loves both on tour and off. It will let their millions of fans get a glimpse into their daily lives and personalities.
"What Makes You Beautiful" is their hit song and a TV show about 1D will no doubt cement their stardom and keep their momentum rolling.
For anyone not familiar with 1D, they are a British-Irish boy band whose members are Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. They signed to Simon Cowell's record label Syco Records after appearing on X-Factor. So X-Factor, did indeed make these boys stars and their talent and popularity has brought about a new age of the classic Boy Band. The One Direction craze has now found its way to America and the gang is working on projects in the U.S.
Members of 1D are
- Niall Horan
- Zayn Malik
- Liam Payne
- Harry Styles
- Louis Tomlinson
The boys already have a huge audience and a new One Direction sitcom or docu-series seems like a natural next step that will expose them to millions more and create some huge viewership numbers for their show and the Nickelodeon network.
Since the new show is still in the making, we can maybe expect filming to begin later in 2012 for the show to begin airing in 2013.
Besides their new TV show, One Direction has tons of other projects in the works which include collaborations, tours, promo deals, guest spots and some ads. Yes, these boys have been very busy lately. 1D is taking America by storm and that storm is about to get larger.
The new 1D TV show is still in development so no word yet as to where they will be filming or if they will holding any casting calls for extras or others. I am sure many fans are waiting in anticipation to get more details about the new show and if there is even a chance for fans to attend any casting calls or see a live taping for the new One Direction TV show.


text:
Since the very beginning of his career, Amir Khan has been more than just a boxer. He has been a symbol — well, more like symbols. One fighter, whose ethnic background, birthplace, and blinding hand speed mean very different things to different groups of fans. Khan himself has little control over how the people watching him choose to interpret his success.
It started early, when Khan was 17 years old and won a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. He became not only the "pride of Bolton," his hometown, but also "the great young hope of British Boxing." Khan decided to turn professional soon after, but days before his debut, the mood around Khan's celebrity changed. The coordinated bombings on London's transport system in July 2005 were the largest terrorist attack in British history. Three of the four bombers were, like Khan, of Pakistani origin, and all of them hailed from within a hundred miles of Khan's home in Northern England. Khan, whose Olympic run established him as the country's most prominent homegrown Muslim athlete, had no choice but to speak up. "I hope, by stepping into a ring, I can show all young kids in Britain, whether they are white, Muslims, or whatever, that there are better things to do than sitting around on street corners getting into trouble and mixing with bad people." Ten days after the attacks, Khan proudly held the Union Flag when he walked to the ring. It was embroidered with the word "London" in black ribbons to mourn the victims. Moments after Khan wrapped up a first-round TKO victory, the police issued a red alert for a bomb scare and evacuated the arena.
At the ripe age of 18, Khan was not only a professional fighter, but also an unofficial spokesperson for Muslims and Asians in the U.K. Like it or not, he was a role model for underprivileged children caught at the crossroads of drugs, poverty, and now international terrorism. He also became "the best thing to happen for race relations in Britain." All this translated into tremendous box office appeal. Before his London debut, for example, Khan visited Brick Lane, a large South Asian neighborhood on London's East End, to promote the fight. "We brought him to the heart of the Asian community and we hope they will turn out and support him," promoter Frank Warren said. They did. His next fight, against Belarussian Vitali Martynov, sold 10,000 tickets. It was Khan's fifth professional fight.
Seven years later, it's more of the same. Wherever Khan goes, he seems to carry the aspirations and insecurities of fans from all over the world. At the time of his last fight, on December 10, 2011, I was in Pakistan, a few miles away from Khan's ancestral home, near Rawalpindi. Pakistanis aren't die-hard boxing fans, but the sport isn't completely unknown on the national scene. Of the two Olympic medals Pakistan has won in individual events, one is in boxing. Before every Khan fight, highlights from his previous bouts and flashy promos amped with heavy metal soundtracks start running on a loop on Pakistani television. Local governments set up big screens in public markets, and dense crowds arrive to cheer for Khan. Everything from his ring entrance to his punches to his post-match interviews are parsed and analyzed for how they reflect on Pakistan and its people.
In Pakistan, the buildup to Khan's December bout with Lamont Peterson was feverish even by the local media's distorted standards. Exactly two Saturdays before the fight, a swarm of American jet fighters and attack helicopters swooped into Pakistani territory from bases in neighboring Afghanistan and let loose a barrage of missiles targeting two Pakistani military posts. When the smoke cleared, 24 Pakistani soldiers were dead. The reaction was something like what it might have been if a Pakistani helicopter had flown into American territory and killed two dozen American soldiers: People cried bloody murder. America refused to apologize for the attack and instead blamed Pakistan for provoking it. In response, Pakistan cut off the American military supply routes that run through its territory to deprive U.S. forces in Afghanistan of equipment and food. The resulting standoff was the closest the two countries had come to all-out war after a decade of complex military rivalry.
While the world watched the diplomatic stare-down between two nuclear states, Pakistanis looked to Khan's fight for a taste of vengeance. Khan's opponent wasn't just a real-life American — he was a real-life American from Washington, D.C. And in Pakistan, Washington is not just the name of another American city (never mind that the Washington from which Peterson hails bears little resemblance to the government monoliths that most Pakistanis associate with the city). Vashing-tone is the dark lair from which Obama orders the drone strikes that hit Pakistani villages every week. Vashing-tone is the Pentagon that drops American Special Forces into Pakistan in the dark of night to take out Osama. It's akin to what the Kremlin meant to Americans during the Cold War. Actually, it's not unlike what the word "PACK-istan" conjures up in many Americans' minds today.
The Peterson fight would be Khan's fourth in the United States, and this time he would enter the ring accompanied not only by the Union Jack, but also by the green flag of Pakistan with its white crescent. Unlike the battlefield, the American was the underdog in this fight, which ended up being one of 2011's best. At the end, two questionable point deductions by the referee cost Khan the bout, and he lost on the scorecards. Khan let the alarm bells ring before he'd even left the ring. "It was like I was against two people in there, Lamont and the ref himself," he said. Golden Boy Promotions appealed the decision a week later and the IBF began an investigation into the scoring of the fight.
Two weeks later, Khan flew to Pakistan. He travels there every so often to visit his parents' homeland, but this time he visited to lend some star power to a Pakistani boxing tournament. When Khan arrived in the country, this is what you might have found while flipping through the dozen-odd local news channels: a steaming-mad middle-aged man calling for war against America; a montage from the Khan-Peterson fight showing Khan's best combinations and Peterson hitting the mat again and again and again; an elaborate computer-generated graphic re-creating the American attack on the border posts; a field of caskets draped in Pakistani flags; Khan at a press conference calling the judges' decision "disgusting" or saying something like "let's take the fight somewhere neutral and I'll see if he's the same man." The TV channels almost didn't need different talking heads to discuss the two conflicts. The narrative was essentially the same: Americans play dirty, and when they feel like they're losing, they cheat.
It was in the middle of such channel flipping that I found Amir Khan on my screen, being interviewed on Khyber News, a regional outfit that telecasts in the Pashto language to the Pashtuns, most of whom live along Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan, including in the troubled tribal areas. Khan was seated on a plush, bright orange-and-yellow sofa, watching the tournament at ringside. The interviewer threw questions at him in Urdu and Khan answered in English, but that was no problem — Khan demonstrated a solid understanding of the questions in Urdu. It was the substance of the questions, which were less interested in Khan's boxing career than in exploring the prospects of an interviewer, a TV channel, an ethnic group, and a nation's hopes for itself on the global stage. Here are excerpts:
["Khyber" is what Pakistanis call the northwest Afghan border regions. Inshallah means, "If Allah wills it."]
INTERVIEWER: Does Amir Khan like the international popularity more or the love he gets from Pakistanis?
KHAN: Ummmm … it's the same, you know. It's the same in England. And in Pakistan, very same. You know? I'd say it's the same everywhere we go. The two places where we get a lot of love is in England and also in Pakistan …
INTERVIEWER: Khyber News wants to show your fights live. I just talked to your father about this as well, but in the future do you think you will have a relationship with Khyber News?
KHAN: Yeah, definitely, I think it's a good idea. We're happy to work with anybody. To work with Khyber News will be, maybe good, you know. Let me speak to my team and inshallah the next fight for me will be in April or May against Lamont Peterson — I want a rematch — so maybe it can be on Khyber News. Let's see what happens. I will try and speak to my team also …
INTERVIEWER: Wouldn't it be nice if there were a 'Khyber' logo next to the 'Khan'?
KHAN: Khyber Khan? Yeah, you know, maybe [Laughs uncomfortably.]
INTERVIEWER: One more question, we've heard you have found your life partner and she lives in USA, I think. Is she Pakistani or is she from there?
KHAN: No, no. She's Pakistani.
INTERVIEWER: Where from in Pakistan?
KHAN: Her father's from Multan and her mother's from Lahore.
INTERVIEWER: So she's Punjabi?
KHAN: Yeah, I think so.
INTERVIEWER: When are you going to get married?
KHAN: Oh, not for a long time. I'm getting engaged next month so inshallah I'll let the engagement happen first. Step at a time, brother.
INTERVIEWER: Will you keep fighting after the marriage?
KHAN: Yeah, yeah, it's my job. It's my job. I love boxing.
Any final thoughts? "To everybody in Pakistan, I want to say I hope they watch my next fight. Inshallah I'll win for them. I'll do it for my people in Pakistan."
Khan seems to have understood what's expected of him.
Where is Amir Khan from? The question follows Khan wherever he goes. Without a doubt that same question was asked when he arrived in New York to defend his WBA light welterweight title against Paulie Malignaggi in 2010. At the weigh-in, a group of 40 or so Pakistani-British fans who call themselves "Khan's Army" caused pandemonium. Their fervent support for Khan was reminiscent of British football supporters, but with a Muslim twist. "If anyone can, Khan can," they bellowed. "Amir, Amir, Amir." This was punctuated several times with the loudest call of all: "Allah-o-Akbar." While Khan and Malignaggi engaged in a stare-down for the flashing cameras, their supporters were in the throes of a full-fledged brawl.
Khan's Army is no jihadi outfit. This is just how they show love for their fighter. But America was understandably tone-deaf to Khan's Army when the latter first arrived in the country. How many times in the previous decade had a large group of brown men chanted "Allah-o-Akbar" with such confrontational zeal in New York City? You could probably ask any Pakistani immigrant — a taxi driver in New York or a heart surgeon in Chicago — or even a Pakistani in Pakistan and they would all tell you with equal certainty: It is not a good idea to gather in large groups with other men who look like you and scream "Allah-o-Akbar" for any reason whatsoever, especially in New York. But then, Khan's Army is not Pakistani; nor is it Pakistani American. They are British Pakistanis and they are part of a different culture, one in which "Allah-o-Akbar" often has more to do with ethnic pride than with Allah.
Khan was born in a town called Bolton, on the outskirts of Manchester in northern England, a fact he demonstrates by failing to pronounce the letter t when it comes in the middle of a word. Long before Manchester became famous for its football clubs, the city was an engine of the industrial revolution. The region's textile mills attracted thousands of immigrants from the former British colonies in South Asia. Khan's family arrived in the 1970s from the northern Punjab region of Pakistan.
Today, "Asians" — that's what the British call South Asian immigrants from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh — make up about 5 percent of the population of England, and together they are the country's largest minority group. A large majority of British Asians are Muslim, and a vast majority of Muslims are Pakistani immigrants. Khan's father did well as a scrap metal merchant, and although Khan grew up in a comfortable home, his family still lived in a depressed part of Bolton. In general, Pakistani immigrants are some of the poorest people in Britain, living in some of the more violent and drug-ridden neighborhoods in London and the big cities of the North.
Amir "King" Khan was arguably the best thing that ever happened to this community. So when Khan left his English promoter to join Oscar de la Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions in 2010, some in Britain saw the move as more than just a desire for big money. Maybe Amir was trying to get away, to base his career in a country where every business decision he makes and every punch he throws is not fraught with ethnic, religious, and class symbolism. And how did that reflect on Britain itself? Kevin Mitchell, the Guardian's boxing correspondent, blamed "the small crew of British bigots who have taken against Khan" and driven him out of the country. "Over there, living quietly and comfortably in the Californian sunshine," Mitchell lamented, "he is accepted without question by the fans — black and white Americans, Filipinos, Mexicans, all of them."
Khan's other British fans didn't seem to mind the move as much. They just started traveling en masse to the United States for his fights. Khan's Army remains as die-hard as ever, but it seems that they've toned down the "Allah-o-Akbar" — at least in America.
Amir Khan will step into the ring Saturday night with undefeated light welterweight champion Danny Garcia. The bout has been a long time coming for Khan — the seven-month layoff since his December loss to Peterson is as long an inactive period as he has had in his career. He was scheduled to fight Peterson in a May rematch that was canceled after Peterson tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Peterson also admitted to having the banned substance in his system before the first Khan fight, and that led the WBA to reinstate Khan as its 140-pound champion earlier this week. The Pakistani press had a ball with the news about Peterson's failed drug test, but it sent Khan scrambling to find a new opponent. The Islamic holy month of Ramadan was coming up in mid-July, and Khan, as always, planned to fast. After that, he probably wouldn't be in fighting shape until winter. Khan has already fought almost every credible opponent in the 140-pound weight class and so Garcia, the current WBC champion, seemed like the best option, even if Khan would be a heavy favorite in the fight.
Ever since the match was set up, Angel Garcia, Danny's father and trainer, has been calling Khan an "overrated" fighter. But that's not all he's saying. He proclaimed that he has "never, ever, ever in my lifetime, that I've been living 49 years, I ain't never met a Pakistani that could fight." Then, somewhat nonsensically, he dismissed Khan as a "European fighter from Europe." Finally, for good measure, he went after Khan's religion: "I know Khan's god already. His god is a punishing god. And my god is a loving god." At the press conference in Los Angeles to announce the fight, Garcia senior cut off everyone from team Khan and began ranting about "magic carpets" and a "genie." Boxers and their camps always play up their mutual dislike to promote fights, but Angel Garcia seems genuinely perturbed by Khan. It was at the end of the presser, when Angel was practically spitting with rage, that the elder Garcia yelled what he was really getting at this whole time: "Where you from, man? Europe? America? Where you from?"
California has been good to Khan. Since relocating to Los Angeles to train at Freddie Roach's Wild Card gym, he's been spotted sitting courtside at Laker games, he's been featured in a GQ fashion spread, and he's been photographed on the red carpet for the L.A. Spider-Man premiere. He even got to throw the first pitch at a Dodgers game this month, and it reportedly zipped right over home plate. With the exception of Angel Garcia, America and Amir Khan seem to be getting along just fine.
Islam, Pakistani, Muslim, European — none of those are necessarily flattering descriptions in America these days, but Khan continues to hold together the various strands of his identity and carry the dreams of people halfway across the world, and perhaps that's what's most appealing about him. Which flag is he going to carry into the ring this weekend? Will he someday add the Stars and Stripes to his collection? At the end of the day it doesn't really matter. What matters is that there will be people spread across a dozen time zones, all of whom will root for Khan, all for their very own personal and selfish reasons. And as long as he keeps delivering, Khan's Army will be there, too, in ever-growing numbers. Khan said once about his fans that "they might not be boxing fans, but they might be Amir Khan fans, y'ge' me?" It's a figure like this who can transcend boxing's current status as a niche sport and grow from a prizefighter to a global sports figure.
Shahan Mufti is a freelance journalist whose work has been published in Harper's Magazine, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Atlantic, among other places. He is at work on a book about Muslim identity in Pakistan that comes out next year. This is his first piece in Grantland.


text:
I'm equally as likely to be spotted playing sports with my LGBTQ+ kickball and bowling teams in Philadelphia, as I am to invite you out to see a rom-com movie in the suburbs. I love my dog (Biden), Reba McEntire, the Chicago Cubs, and eating out (aka not having to cook). My hobbies include watching reruns of Frasier, all things pop culture, and booking vacations on cruise ships that I can't really afford. In addition to being on-air with Chris & the Crew, I'm the digital and music guy here at 94.5 PST, which really means I get to have fun all day long at the station.
Simone Biles to Compete in Final Balance Beam Competition
Simone Biles will compete in the final event of the women's Olympic gymnastics competition, the balance beam. The event will take place on Tuesday in Tokyo.
Simone Biles Out of Team Competition at the Olympics
Simone Biles will not be competing in the remaining events in the women's gymnastics team finals, which were taking place Tuesday.
WATCH: Derek Chauvin Found Guilty in Death of George Floyd
A verdict has been reached in the trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin.
Jennifer Lopez & Alex Rodriguez Officially Confirm Breakup
Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez have officially split up. After weeks of speculation, the couple confirmed the news in an exclusive statement issued to NBC's TODAY Show early Thursday.
Pfizer Says Their Vaccine Is 100% Effective in Teens
Pfizer says its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and strongly protective in kids as young as 12.
'Saved By the Bell' Star Dustin Diamond Diagnosed with Stage Four Cancer
Dustin Diamond, best known for his role as Screech Powers on the '90s sitcom 'Saved By the Bell,' has been diagnosed with stage four cancer.
President Trump & First Lady Melania Trump Test Positive for COVID-19
President Trump announced that he and his wife, Melania Trump, have tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump shared the news on Twitter early Friday morning.
You Can Spend a Night Inside the Last Blockbuster Store For A Totally Rad '90s Sleepover
Movie lovers are invited to book one of three 1-night stays inside the world's last standing Blockbuster store.
Joe Biden Announces Kamala Harris as VP Pick
After months of speculation, Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that Kamala Harris will be his running mate in the 2020 election.
Terrifying Explosion in Beirut Captured in Amateur Videos
The exact nature of the incident was not immediately clear, but it's believed that many have been injured in the blast.
Disney World Announces Phased Reopening of Theme Parks, Beginning July 11
Disney World plans to begin the lofty process of reopening their large Orlando theme parks in a post-COVID-19 era on July 11, officials just announced.
MLB Team Owners Approve Proposal for July Baseball Start
The Associated Press and ESPN are both reporting that Major League Baseball's team owners have approved a proposal for an 82 game season, which would begin in early July.


text:
Main page » Ceramic Urns » Animal urns San Marino Edition Colour: velvet sky blue
Animal urns San Marino Edition Colour: velvet sky blue
The ceramic urns in the San Marino edition have a velvet surface. They seduce because of their simple elegance.
They are available in nine different colors for dog, cat, only 0.5 ltr volumes. and 1.5 ltr. are available with or without tea-light-holder in memory of your dearly departed companion.
Ashes are placed inside, with or without plastic bag (not supplied).
Nothing can fill the absence of your little companion... Thanks to this urn, you can prolong this bond so strong that you share with your dog, your cat....
We advise you to choose an urn with a slightly higher volume because the indicated weight of the animal is calculated on the basis of a normal corpulence.
0,5 ltr. 1 - 8 kg
1,5 ltr. 8 - 21 kg
2.8 ltr. 35 - 65 kg
We propose for this urn 3 ways of personalization:
♦ Sticker - you can customize - Add a name, date of birth, date of death your pet
♦ photo
♦ swarovski stone
The photo must be of good quality for the customization option (digital or normal photo)
If you are interested in the customization option, add this option to your cart
Customer reviews
Unfortunately there are no review yet. Be the first who rate this product.


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
Judges plead guilty to jailing kids for kickbacks
PA youngsters jailed for MySpace pranks
Two corrupt judges have admitted getting paid for sending young offenders to private jails, often against the advice of probation officers and other court officials.
Bent judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, both of Pennsylvania, admitted receiving $2.6m in kickbacks as part of a plea-bargaining agreement that will see each jailed for a minimum of seven years. The deal sparked protests from friends and relatives of youngsters affected by the case, some of who have already launched lawsuits.
The judges took part in agreements "guaranteeing placement of juvenile offenders with PA Child Care, LLC and facilitating the construction of juvenile detention facilities," according to court papers, AFP reports.
Pennsylvania Child Care and Western Pennsylvania Child Care are implicated in the scandal.
More than 5,000 adolescents from 13 to 18 were found guilty between 2002 and 2007 during the period when the judges were active in Luzerne county, Pennsylvania. More than 2,000 were sentenced to detention. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered a judge from outside the area to review the cases.
Ciavarella jailed one in four juvenile defendants between his court between 2002 to 2006, compared to an average rate across the state of 10 per cent, AP reports.
Marie Roda, a spokeswoman for the Juvenile Law Center, which represents youngsters in trouble with the law and helped uncover the abuse, said many of the jailed youngsters came from poor families who had little access to legal help a factor that made them "easy targets" for abuse.
The Juvenile Law Center and in some cases the families themselves have launched lawsuits. The lead complainant in one lawsuit is the mum of Berandine Wallace, 14, who was convicted of "terroristic threats" after getting into a slanging match on MySpace, AP reports.
Hillary Transue, now 17, was imprisoned for three months in 2007 after she admitted the creation of a spoof MySpace page mocking her school assistant principal, the New York Times adds.
Youngsters with clean records were jailed for months on misdemeanor charges. Those in violation of probation orders were also imprisoned, often against the advice of their probation officers. ®