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Calico over Ethernet fabrics
This is the first of a few tech notes that I will be authoring that will discuss some of the various interconnect fabric options in a Calico Cloud network.
Any technology that is capable of transporting IP packets can be used as the interconnect fabric in a Calico Cloud network (the first person to test and publish the results of using IP over Avian Carrier as a transport for Calico Cloud will earn a very nice dinner on or with the core Calico Cloud team). This means that the standard tools used to transport IP, such as MPLS and Ethernet can be used in a Calico Cloud network.
In this note, I'm going to focus on Ethernet as the interconnect network. Talking to most at-scale cloud operators, they have converted to IP fabrics, and as will cover in the next blog post that infrastructure will work for Calico Cloud as well. However, the concerns that drove most of those operators to IP as the interconnection network in their pods are largely ameliorated by Project Calico, allowing Ethernet to be viably considered as a Calico Cloud interconnect, even in large-scale deployments.
Concerns over Ethernet at scale
It has been acknowledged by the industry for years that, beyond a certain size, classical Ethernet networks are unsuitable for production deployment. Although there have been multiple attempts to address these issues, the scale-out networking community has, largely abandoned Ethernet for anything other than providing physical point-to-point links in the networking fabric. The principal reasons for Ethernet failures at large scale are:
- Large numbers of end points 1. Each switch in an Ethernet network must learn the path to all Ethernet endpoints that are connected to the Ethernet network. Learning this amount of state can become a substantial task when we are talking about hundreds of thousands of end points.
- High rate of churn or change in the network. With that many end points, most of them being ephemeral (such as virtual machines or containers), there is a large amount of churn in the network. That load of re-learning paths can be a substantial burden on the control plane processor of most Ethernet switches.
- High volumes of broadcast traffic. As each node on the Ethernet network must use Broadcast packets to locate peers, and many use broadcast for other purposes, the resultant packet replication to each and every end point can lead to broadcast storms in large Ethernet networks, effectively consuming most, if not all resources in the network and the attached end points.
- Spanning tree. Spanning tree is the protocol used to keep an Ethernet network from forming loops. The protocol was designed in the era of smaller, simpler networks, and it has not aged well. As the number of links and interconnects in an Ethernet network goes up, many implementations of spanning tree become more fragile. Unfortunately, when spanning tree fails in an Ethernet network, the effect is a catastrophic loop or partition (or both) in the network, and, in most cases, difficult to troubleshoot or resolve.
While many of these issues are crippling at VM scale (tens of thousands of end points that live for hours, days, weeks), they will be absolutely lethal at container scale (hundreds of thousands of end points that live for seconds, minutes, days).
If you weren't ready to turn off your Ethernet data center network before this, I bet you are now. Before you do, however, let's look at how Project Calico can mitigate these issues, even in very large deployments.
How does Calico Cloud tame the Ethernet daemons?
First, let's look at how Calico Cloud uses an Ethernet interconnect fabric. It's important to remember that an Ethernet network sees nothing on the other side of an attached IP router, the Ethernet network just sees the router itself. This is why Ethernet switches can be used at Internet peering points, where large fractions of Internet traffic is exchanged. The switches only see the routers from the various ISPs, not those ISPs' customers' nodes. We leverage the same effect in Calico Cloud.
To take the issues outlined above, let's revisit them in a Calico Cloud context.
- Large numbers of end points. In a Calico Cloud network, the Ethernet interconnect fabric only sees the routers/compute servers, not the end point. In a standard cloud model, where there is tens of VMs per server (or hundreds of containers), this reduces the number of nodes that the Ethernet sees (and has to learn) by one to two orders of magnitude. Even in very large pods (say twenty thousand servers), the Ethernet network would still only see a few tens of thousands of end points. Well within the scale of any competent data center Ethernet top of rack (ToR) switch.
- High rate of churn. In a classical Ethernet data center fabric, there is a churn event each time an end point is created, destroyed, or moved. In a large data center, with hundreds of thousands of endpoints, this churn could run into tens of events per second, every second of the day, with peaks easily in the hundreds or thousands of events per second. In a Calico Cloud network, however, the churn is very low. The only event that would lead to churn in a Calico Cloud network's Ethernet fabric would be the addition or loss of a compute server, switch, or physical connection. In a twenty thousand server pod, even with a 5% daily failure rate (a few orders of magnitude more than what is normally experienced), there would only be two thousand events per day. Any switch that can not handle that volume of change in the network should not be used for any application.
- High volume of broadcast traffic. Since the first (and last) hop for any traffic in a Calico Cloud network is an IP hop, and IP hops terminate broadcast traffic, there is no endpoint broadcast network in the Ethernet fabric, period. In fact, the only broadcast traffic that should be seen in the Ethernet fabric is the ARPs of the compute servers locating each other. If the traffic pattern is fairly consistent, the steady-state ARP rate should be almost zero. Even in a pathological case, the ARP rate should be well within normal accepted boundaries.
- Spanning tree. Depending on the architecture chosen for the Ethernet fabric, it may even be possible to turn off spanning tree. However, even if it is left on, due to the reduction in node count, and reduction in churn, most competent spanning tree implementations should be able to handle the load without stress.
With these considerations in mind, it should be evident that an Ethernet connection fabric in Calico Cloud is not only possible, it is practical and should be seriously considered as the interconnect fabric for a Calico Cloud network.
As mentioned in the IP fabric post, an IP fabric is also quite feasible for Calico Cloud, but there are more considerations that must be taken into account. The Ethernet fabric option has fewer architectural considerations in its design.
A brief note about Ethernet topology
As mentioned elsewhere in the Calico Cloud documentation, since Calico Cloud can use most of the standard IP tooling, some interesting options regarding fabric topology become possible.
We assume that an Ethernet fabric for Calico Cloud would most likely be constructed as a leaf/spine architecture. Other options are possible, but the leaf/spine is the predominant architectural model in use in scale-out infrastructure today.
Since Calico Cloud is an IP routed fabric, a Calico Cloud network can use ECMP to distribute traffic across multiple links (instead of using Ethernet techniques such as MLAG). By leveraging ECMP load balancing on the Calico Cloud compute servers, it is possible to build the fabric out of multiple independent leaf/spine planes using no technologies other than IP routing in the Calico Cloud nodes, and basic Ethernet switching in the interconnect fabric. These planes would operate completely independently and could be designed such that they would not share a fault domain. This would allow for the catastrophic failure of one (or more) plane(s) of Ethernet interconnect fabric without the loss of the pod (the failure would just decrease the amount of interconnect bandwidth in the pod). This is a gentler failure mode than the pod-wide IP or Ethernet failure that is possible with today's designs.
A more in-depth discussion is possible, so if you'd like, please make a request, and I will put up a post or white paper. In the meantime, it may be interesting to venture over to Facebook's blog post on their fabric approach. A quick picture to visualize the idea is shown below.
I am not showing the end points in this diagram, and the end points would be unaware of anything in the fabric (as noted above).
In the particular case of this diagram, each ToR is segmented into four logical switches (possibly by using 'port VLANs'), 2 and each compute server has a connection to each of those logical switches. We will identify those logical switches by their color. Each ToR would then have a blue, green, orange, and red logical switch. Those 'colors' would be members of a given plane, so there would be a blue plane, a green plane, an orange plane, and a red plane. Each plane would have a dedicated spine switch. and each ToR in a given spine would be connected to its spine, and only its spine.
Each plane would constitute an IP network, so the blue plane would be 2001:db8:1000::/36, the green would be 2001:db8:2000::/36, and the orange and red planes would be 2001:db8:3000::/36 and 2001:db8:4000::/36 respectively. 3
Each IP network (plane) requires it's own BGP route reflectors. Those route reflectors need to be peered with each other within the plane, but the route reflectors in each plane do not need to be peered with one another. Therefore, a fabric of four planes would have four route reflector meshes. Each compute server, border router, etc. would need to be a route reflector client of at least one route reflector in each plane, and very preferably two or more in each plane.
A diagram that visualizes the route reflector environment can be found below.
These route reflectors could be dedicated hardware connected to the spine switches (or the spine switches themselves), or physical or virtual route reflectors connected to the necessary logical leaf switches (blue, green, orange, and red). That may be a route reflector running on a compute server and connected directly to the correct plane link, and not routed through the vRouter, to avoid the chicken and egg problem that would occur if the route reflector were "behind" the Calico Cloud network.
Other physical and logical configurations and counts are, of course, possible, this is just an example.
The logical configuration would then have each compute server would have an address on each plane's subnet, and announce its end points on each subnet. If ECMP is then turned on, the compute servers would distribute the load across all planes.
If a plane were to fail (say due to a spanning tree failure), then only that one plane would fail. The remaining planes would stay running.
- In this document (and in all Calico Cloud documents) we tend to use the terms end point to refer to a virtual machine, container, appliance, bare metal server, or any other entity that is connected to a Calico Cloud network. If we are referring to a specific type of end point, we will call that out (such as referring to the behavior of VMs as distinct from containers).↩
- We are using logical switches in this example. Physical ToRs could also be used, or a mix of the two (say 2 logical switches hosted on each physical switch).↩
- We use IPv6 here purely as an example. IPv4 would be configured similarly. I welcome your questions, either here on the blog, or via the Project Calico mailing list.↩

subset: commoncrawl


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Story highlights
Japan imports 10% of its crude oil from Iran
Japan is ready to reduce that amount "in a planned manner," the finance minister says
U.S. Treasury secretary says he appreciates Japan's support of efforts to pressure Tehran
Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions are imposed
Japan is prepared to gradually reduce the amount of oil it imports from Iran, Finance Minister Jun Azumi said Thursday, as the United States seeks to muster international support to put fresh pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.
Japan imports 10% of its crude oil from Iran at the moment, Azumi said at a news briefing after meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The country is ready to decrease that level "in a planned manner," he said.
"What I told the secretary is that we have already reduced Iranian oil imports by 40% in the past five years," Azumi said, standing next to Geithner. "The nuclear development issue is an issue that the international community cannot overlook, so we very much understand the U.S. action."
The United States is exploring ways to cut off Iran's central bank from the global financial system and reduce the country's oil revenues, Geithner said at the briefing.
Washington is in "the initial stages of consulting with allies around the world about how best to achieve those goals," he said, adding that Japan's support was appreciated.
"We are working very closely with Europe and Japan and countries around the world to substantially increase the pressure we bring on Iran," Geithner said.
The announcement is a plus for Geithner, after his efforts on Iran were rebuffed by senior Chinese officials during his visit to Asian countries this week.
"I think 'small victory' is a fair categorization," said Michael Levi, a Council on Foreign Relations' expert on energy policy and national security.
From January to September 2011, Iran exported 13% of its crude oil to Japan, according to the International Energy Agency.
Levi said Iran is likely to absorb this and find alternatives – unless those drop out as well.
"As long as Iran has a substantial set of potential buyers, it's going to make as much money as it made before," Levi said.
Levi said Japan wants to phase out its imports from Iran slowly so it can smoothly transition to other sources.
"That same slow speed gives Iran the opportunity to transition to other customers," he said.
Geithner had made a similar push for China to reduce its Iranian oil imports. But Beijing said that its imports have nothing to do with Tehran's nuclear program and rejected new U.S. sanctions on foreign financial institutions that conduct business with the Iranian central bank.
There was notably little mention of Iran in the comments made by Geithner and Chinese leaders Wednesday.
China relies on imports for half of the oil it consumes. Iran exported 22% of its crude oil to China from January to September last year, the IEA said.
Japan's government faces a difficult balancing act, trying to meet the needs of its closest ally and at the same time fuel its energy-strained country.
Japan has been facing an energy crisis since last March's earthquake and tsunami, which triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.
While making the announcement of plans for a gradual decrease in Iranian oil imports, Azumi did not specify how quickly his country would carry out the action. He said that Japan also needed more time to deal with how to reduce non-crude oil imports.
Iran threatened in late December to block the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions were imposed on its oil exports. France, Britain and Germany have all proposed such sanctions to punish Iran for lack of cooperation on its nuclear program. Those countries and others believe Tehran may be trying to develop nuclear weapons, but Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy production.
The strait is a critical shipping lane, through which 17 million barrels of oil passed per day in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
CNN's Jethro Mullen and Joe Sterling contributed to this report.


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Let me begin with a story that does not feature in Chibber's book, even if "Postcolonial Theory" makes up the first and most important half of its title.
The Joinville psychiatric hospital at Blida, Algeria, constituted a society on the margins of the surrounding one, without for that reason being very different. It was a city within the city. An unmistakably colonial air hung over the whitewashed buildings, from the patients' pavilions to the staff villas and the grand main entrance, and permeated the institution's organization. Two thousand patients were separated according to sex but also according to ethnicity. Algerian inmates were in the "native," or, later "Muslim" wings. But French-Algerian and native alike were united in the misery of their situation and condition. The incarceration of the ill of Joinville was accompanied with a brutality that raised the question of how punishment could exist so freely without crime.
Frantz Fanon arrived in Joinville in 1953 with a rare display of sartorial elegance, monogrammed handkerchiefs ready to wipe his brow, and progressive notions of mental illness. He was black, from Martinique, and a recently graduated psychiatrist who had not yet turned 30. He had, however, the previous year published his groundbreaking Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), an analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonial racial discourses in which the "native" others had to wear the "mask" of whiteness to succeed. Already during the introductory tour of Blida-Joinville Fanon criticized the wide array of repressive measures wielded at the hapless patients. The new colleagues observed him with curiosity. What mattered more than his history and style of radical engagement was that he was a newcomer, green, for all intents and purposes a Frankaoui (a term with locally flavored Arab ending used by the Franco-Algerians to describe their kin from the mainland) in foreign waters. His enthusiasm would soon succumb to the blistering sun and the reality on the ground.
Influenced by the work of François Tosquelles at the asylum of Saint-Albain in Lozère, Fanon began with a program of "sociotheraphy" in the European women's wing under his charge, in order to break the confinement and apathy of the patients. A number of collective activities were organized. Religious holidays were celebrated, workshops started and cultural events offered. There were also meetings with doctors, nurses and patients in which all were allowed to raise their concerns. The turn from repression and isolation to social engagement, to the irritation of his upstaged colleagues, soon proved to have been a success. Already after one month a large and elaborate Christmas celebration took place with staff and patients.
The subsequent move to repeat the experiment with the native men under his charge proved more difficult, as Alice Cherki chronicled in her Fanon biography from 2000 (in English translation 2006). Fanon spoke neither Arabic nor Kabyle and had to resort to an interpreter when explaining his project to the interns who remained impassive as the activities got underway. The detractors among his colleagues saw it as a clear case of not understanding an inherent backwardness of the Muslim mind. Fanon soon realized the problem: he had insensitively implemented a Western program on a society whose difference he did not grasp. The political situation compounded the challenge as Fanon's invitation was easily understood as a colonial imposition. The Muslim men had interpreted the experiment as a call to live up to a western model of behavior by the dominant power and preferred, Bartleby-style, not to participate. Fanon concluded that there was nothing atavistic in this reaction; it was a sign of resistance.
As Fanon continued his explorations at Blida-Joinville the surrounding society was thrown into turmoil by the nascent war of Algerian independence. The fallout soon reached the institution. More and more of the patients became those having suffered torture at the hand of the French authorities, neatly mirrored by an influx of torturers who had suffered as a consequence of their trade. Fanon began working with the clandestine opposition to colonial rule and eventually quit his post at Joinville in 1956, two years into the bloody war. Though he had only a few years left to live before succumbing to leukemia in 1961 he wrote the important works L'An V de la révolution algérienne (A Dying Colonialism) and Les damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth).
Fanon's analysis of the racially divided universe of colonialism and the forms of resistance against its formidable physical and noetic power would form one of the building blocks in "postcolonial" thought. His world was drastically changing and these, often violent, upheavals would have far-reaching political and intellectual consequences. Political maps were entirely redrawn. The 19th-century scramble for colonizing the Global South had reached such frantic levels that by 1900 more than 90 percent of Africa, 56 percent of Asia and 99 percent of the Pacific was under colonial rule. The movement began to reverse after World War I and the reversal intensified after the World War II. By the late 1970s formal territorial colonialism was practically over, mostly thanks to wars of liberation like the one in Algeria. The human cost of both colonialism and its dissolution begs belief. In one of the most infamous cases, the Belgian Congo, between 10 and 13 millions Africans died. Today the poverty of the Global South remains as the deep scars in the landscape through which the disaster traveled.
The work of understanding colonialism and the process of decolonization that Fanon had been so instrumental in developing would take an unexpected turn when Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978. The volume on the construction of the image of the "Orient" by Western scholars at first seemed so marginal that Said had difficulties interesting a serious publisher. It appeared as a highly specialized discussion apt to only interest the experts in the field. In a matter of a few years, however, the colonial "other" and the process of "othering" became commonplace in academic parlance. At the same time literatures from previously colonized areas were read more extensively and analyzed in the West as a counter-canon, a means to question the continuing "hegemony" (after the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci) of the "occidental" logic that had underpinned the colonial enterprise. The colonial reality of the majority of the world would in earnest become part of the discussions of Western academia, thanks to pioneers such as Said who had studied and challenged the previously reigning stereotypes of the colonized mind. A returning question became: who was it that had been denied a voice and had only been spoken for? Marxist "history from below" was, importantly, given a new lease on life as it turned to the vast, poor and oppressed underbelly of the Global South. The vague and empathic posture that had characterized the Third-Worldism of the 1960s and 1970s was replaced by seemingly more refined theoretical tools that also helped uncover continuing colonialism in a way of thinking: the Western essentialising of natives, which could be as present in the metropole as among the Western educated postcolonial elites themselves. Formal independence had not been enough to free either the west or the former colonies from a legacy that showed a remarkable resilience and still shaped the relationship between north and south.
According to Vivek Chibber, it was around this time, the early 1980s, that everything started going wrong.
Chibber does not pretend to supply an intellectual history of the larger field of "postcolonial theory," but there is a mini-history of origins that places its occurrence at the "cultural turn" in academia in which anthropologists and historians started to interest themselves in a brand of cultural analysis focused on the discursive formation of reality, taking the cue form literary theory. Postcolonial theory had first reached academia through departments of literature and cultural studies. Chibber would have preferred it not to spread from there. He reduces its role to having brought literature from previously colonized and marginalized voices into the canon. This he calls a "salutary achievement." But the leakage of models and techniques from literature departments into its more socially scientific minded neighbors spelled trouble. The postcolonial theories did not only claim to analyze but also to guide political action. This familiar combination made it possible for its proponents to take over an academic Marxism that had found itself in a rut in the 1980s. Although profoundly Marxian in background, many postcolonial scholars took issue with the universalist assumptions of historical materialism. To believe that capitalism would function in the same way in the south and the north was, according to many, another result of the arrogant Western assumption that its models and history were the blueprints for the rest.
The agenda of bringing excluded voices into the discussion or, at least, questioning the existence of such exclusion gives much of the field of postcolonial theory its most important justification. Its proponents argue, however, that the colonial wound does not constitute a historical wrong that can be cured just by the admittedly political act of adjusting the canon and the reading lists and bringing into visibility the previously oppressed. Chibber surely does not believe so either, but still puts his money on a standard Marxist approach to a world that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has called "post-colonial" and at the same time "neo-colonized". He fears that the Enlightenment universal of reason will become collateral damage in the postcolonial critique of "Western" epistemic dominance, that such theories will undermine their own instruments of radical critique when they move from a study of culture to political activism. However, his premise that postcolonial theory can be kept in neat isolation in literature departments is erroneous. Fanon, to begin with, would tell us that psychiatry was politics, especially so in the colonial context. Said would add that academic practices were equally permeated by colonial politics. But this evidently does not automatically mean that postcolonial research, whatever discipline it might find itself in, should be excused any inconsistencies just because of its politics. The "salutary achievement" of Chibber's book lies exactly in highlighting some of the failures of postcolonial theory, although this does not mean that this theory should retreat to the implied "fussy world" of the humanities. Chibber will unwittingly drive the second point home himself.
If there is one true adversary in Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital it is a use of postcolonial thought in India. The author shares many of its concerns, having worked on the topic of the country's industrialization, explaining more directly this need to write a book that he did not want to write. The theories under attack came into being in relation to the annual series Subaltern Studies that was first published in 1982. The main thinkers associated with the school were, to name a few, Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Homi Bhabba and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. They had all come of age in post-independence India, completing their first degree there before moving on to western academia (Guha, born 1928, being the exception). Both Subaltern Studies and the individual volumes on Indian historiography produced by the members would have a profound impact on postcolonial theory. Chibber directs his critique mainly against Guha's Dominance Without Hegemony from 1997 and Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe from 2000. He stealthily avoids direct confrontation with Spivak and her engagement with poststructuralist French theory, though he indirectly delivers a familiar incrimination of concept creation and neologisms in general. Orwell's advice in "Politics and the English Language" from 1946 hovers menacingly in the background as yet another specter.
Subaltern Studies tried to understand the divergent developmental paths of India and the West and argue that the model of capital's universalizing drive fails in India, leaving a different image of the power relations created by capitalism. The implication is that the Western model of studying the nation's development has to be questioned as it is permeated by Eurocentric assumptions. The main among these assumptions is that part of capital's universalizing tendency is to bring with it political and cultural changes all around the world. Guha and other subaltern theorists agree that this happened in Europe where a capitalist bourgeoisie rose to hegemony, the position of being able to represent all the other classes like the proletariat, overturned the feudal order and moved towards liberal democracy. If this supposedly happened in Europe, it did not happen in India. The native bourgeoisie failed to press for revolution, worked alongside the landed classes, and did not take it upon themselves to speak for those without a voice, the subalterns (following Gramsci's terminology). Capitalism was implemented not through bourgeois hegemony but by colonial dominance, physical force in other words. Dominance without hegemony came to identify the colonial condition, and by extension, also the postcolonial.
The evident ironies in Guha's position are not lost on Chibber. Guha puts forward a critique of the liberal idea of universalizing categories, that produce the exclusion of the subaltern, through a decidedly Whiggish argument that it is the bourgeoisie that necessarily creates liberal politics. But the premise, in Subaltern Studies, that the European revolutions were the result of a capitalist bourgeoisie that started to reform society in a more democratic direction is not correct. The long-lasting effect of the British Civil War and the French revolution was, as Chibber points out, to strengthen the state rather than capitalism or democracy. The advances towards democracy were the result of the subaltern working classes rising and pressuring the bourgeoisie rather than following their lead. The subaltern studies vision of the universalizing drive of capital is flawed and there is thus no reason to say that it does not apply to India. Chibber convincingly argues that capital's universalizing drive exists, but that it is merely a matter of capital extending to more and more markets. Capitalism is not supposed to bring democracy, capitalists are happiest the more control they have over their workforce. The preeminent example of the nature of capital's universalizing drive to make all local markets dependent on it, we might add, is obviously China. Capitalism fits perfectly with state communism as has been made evident for all to see.
The difference between the ex-colonies and the West was thus not that capitalism failed to universalize. Rather, the colonial problem was that it was allowed to universalize all too well. If capitalists only rule by consensus when forced to, otherwise being quite at ease in relying on coercion, the key question is, as Chibber points out, that of subaltern agency, given that it is only this class that can force politics to take a radical direction. But this thesis becomes problematic in the framework of Subaltern Studies, where the psychology of the Indian peasant is heralded as impossible to comprehend through western, and falsely universal, categories. The discipline has described the Indian subaltern as motivated by a sense of community rather than utilitarian calculations. It is these kinds of statements that Chibber dismissively refers to as "canards" with such frequency as to risk his narrative sounding like a culinary digression. Familiar with the topic, he convincingly argues that the Indian peasantry was motivated by the same range of material concerns that can be found all around the world. The arguments of Subaltern Studies on the contrary, and this is Chibber's coup de grâce, contributes to an orientalising image of the "East."
The charge of postcolonial orientalism becomes even more pronounced in Chibber's discussion of Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe. Chakrabarty sought to contrast two ways of understanding history. The first was dominated by universal categories framed in "Western" discourses of rationality. According to this model the postcolonial world will reach the same level of modernity and industrialization as the West, eventually. It just got on a later train. All local dissonances and particularities that do not fit in with this universal trajectory will be shed at some point or another as the world homogenizes. But this idea is based on a specific notion of how capitalism should spread. Having rejected capital's universalizing tendency, the subaltern scholars turned to a study of the particularities of the lower classes of India, the second mode of understanding history, contributing to a descent to what Chibber calls a "seemingly fascination endless with religion, ritual, spirits, indigeneity, and so on." If they had placed more emphasis on the relationship between capitalism and dominance, rather than hegemony, in both the Global North and the Global South, the analysis might have looked very different. Subaltern Studies would not have had the same need to insist on the Eurocentric, and colonial, nature of rationality and all-universal theories. The critique of the post-independence nationalist leaders might also have been different. Nehru did not press for "industrialization, scientific research, modern administration techniques, and similar practices" because he was in the thrall of a colonial Enlightenment rationality, as Chibber objects, there was simply no way to feasibly make an alternative path outside of capitalism.
It is hard not to sympathize with Chibber's two charges against Subaltern Studies of "obscuring capitalism" and "resurrecting orientalism." His case is well argued and the notion of a shared rationality makes possible any kind of meaningful dialog about arguments in the first place. But Chibber also neatly trips himself up in his attempt to indict the entirety of postcolonial theory through the specific example of Subaltern Studies. His insistence on the pitfalls related to idealizing the European bourgeoisie as harbingers of democracy and orientalising the Indian peasantry as community and tradition oriented subalterns outside of the Western logic is an eminently postcolonial analysis made possible through postcolonial practices. Arguments about the impenetrable divide between the West and the East belong to the murky Manichean universe of colonialism. Exploring "othering" only makes sense with the presupposition of a shared humanity. Chibber thus proves that postcolonial theory is well able to formulate its own debates, even by employing those voices that, like his, profess to stand outside the field of the same postcolonial theory.
Chibber does a good and important job criticizing some of the fundaments of Subaltern Studies. Postcolonial Theory is a book that should be read by all engaging with postcolonial theory, though keeping in mind that the biggest canard in Chibber's text is that postcolonial theory would necessarily have to stand in antagonism with Enlightenment rationality. It is on the contrary the case that postcolonial critiques often deal with colonial failures to extend notions of the universal to the colonial world, instead treating this world as an economic, political and ethical exception. It also points to the fact that all colonial, and postcolonial, interactions have to undergo complicated processes of translations and mediations because of the history of violent colonial domination. These processes of translation often have the aim, as in the example of Fanon at Joinville with which I began, of repairing the application of universal systems of values that colonial systems have interrupted.
Fanon, faced by the refusal of the Muslim patients of Blida-Joinville to participate in his sociotheraphy, did not content himself with the colleagues' explanation that it was the consequence of an "oriental" Muslim mind. After first concluding that it was rather a healthy resistance against a colonial imposition Fanon began to reflect over his own program together with the local nurses and his co-worker Jacques Azoulay. The holidays around which he had proposed that the patients celebrate held no meaning for them. They had not wanted to participate in the choir because singers were seen as itinerants and outcasts. Basket weaving was a female activity and therefore problematic for them. Fanon revised the program and built up a traditional teahouse for the patients, replicating the meeting place of the men in society. He also started to celebrate Muslim holidays and brought in troubadours from the outside. His idea of therapeutics was both rational and universal but it had to take into account cultural difference as well as the wound of colonial domination.
Postcolonial theory naturally reflects the society around it, much like Blida-Joinville. It exists in a world, a shared universe, preoccupied with the vexed notions of difference and translation just as Fanon's clinical work was. Chibber's Postcolonial Theory and the Spectre of Capital is an important engagement with Subaltern Studies. Rather than negating the premise for the analytical framework of postcolonial theory, however, it reinforces its raison d'être. The categories developed in postcolonial scholarship, instigated by forerunners such as Fanon and Said, have given invaluable tools to probe failed drives to universalize and identify those that show more promise to be able to take colonial history into account. In a twisted final irony it is the postcolonial term 'orientalism' that will colonize Chibber's language and argumentation, inscribing him in a tradition whose breadth and importance he underestimates.


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When I first moved to Australia I noticed 2 things about the wine: there was a lot to choose from, and it costs twice as much (if not more) than the exact same Australian wine brands I'd bought back in NY. The selection is mostly a great variety from Australian and New Zealand vineyards, and the price is largely due to taxes. Thankfully, because of a glut in production, there was good wine to be found at a more reasonable price in cleanskins .
But now it looks like the days of the $7 bottle of wine are drying up.
Last week, I spent a few days in the Southern Highlands, where I tasted some excellent wine at the Blue Metal Vineyard. There, I talked to Chris about their wines and the state of how the years of hot, dry weather has affected both the quality and quantity of Australian wine, and also what the coming year will be like.
The drought has badly affected, among many things, the wine grape harvest, and there is speculation that the 2008 yield could be less than half the normal volume. This, naturally, puts vineyards in a position to better control (i.e raise) prices. But besides the expected price hike, it means that those tasty cleanskins will be unavailable.
"I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity."
- From "Sideways "
According to the Australian government, cleanskins are not available for export, so for my Australian mates: stock up now, while the cleanskins are still on the shelves. And for my International friends: you might want to grab a few Aussie favorites from your local bottle shop and hang on to them, as prices are expected to soar.
And despite the disappointing news about the 2008 wines, Chris assured me that Blue Metal won't be raising their prices. Good on ya, Chris!
Disclaimer: The links and mentions on this site may be affiliate links. But they do not affect the actual opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.


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Researchers from several universities are working to learn whether a gas well that blew wild last week off the Louisiana coast has polluted the Gulf of Mexico.
Joseph Montoya, a Georgia Tech biology professor, was leading a research project on a vessel near the site of the 2010 BP oil spill when the gas well, owned by Houston-based Walter Oil & Gas Corp., suffered a blowout on July 23 and later caught fire. All 44 people aboard the Hercules 265 rig working at the site in 154 feet of water were evacuated safely. The rig is owned by Hercules Offshore Inc., also based in Houston.
The well spewed gas and small amounts of oil that produced occasional light sheens on the Gulf surface. Late Wednesday, the well choked itself off. Authorities believe sand and sediments blocked the flow of gas and the fire that damaged the rig burned itself out.
The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Monday that its Gulf of Mexico Regional Director, Lars Herbst, was organizing a panel investigation to determine the cause of the accident.
"The panel will be led by a BSEE Gulf of Mexico Region engineer and membership includes BSEE investigators and engineers from both the Gulf Region and Headquarters," the agency said in a news release. BSEE will also work with the coast guard to find the cause of the blowout, determine whether any safety violations were involved and make recommendations to prevent future blowouts.
Meanwhile, Montoya and the team of academics hoped to find any hints of environmental damage.
"We organized a rapid-response cruise to get some of our scientists out here," Montoya said Saturday while near the Hercules rig.
A 10-member crew used buckets, hoses and canisters to collect water samples to measure levels of methane gas, radon gas, bacterial abundance and activity, among other things. The Coast Guard wouldn't let their boat closer than 5 miles to the rig.
They also released surface floats that will drift with the current, tracking the likely path of any contamination from the damaged rig. The "drifters" have global positioning devices and transmitters.
As the researchers worked in choppy Gulf waters, federal and private vessels bustled around the Hercules rig, about 55 miles southwest of Grand Isle, La.
Federal officials said natural gas detectors and high-capacity water hoses were being installed on the rig, while another rig was readied to drill a relief well for a permanent plug.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said it approved Walter Oil's permit to drill the well, and crews were preparing the Rowan EXL-3 rig for drilling. Once the drill gets into the original pipe, drilling mud and then cement will be pumped in as a permanent seal.
Because the well was natural gas, not oil, experts said the pollution threats were far less than those posed by some previous accidents. BP's Macondo well, which blew wild in April 2010, lost an estimated 200 million gallons of crude oil as well as natural gas. It fouled marshes and beaches across four states before being capped.
"People don't seem to get excited about natural gas the way they do about oil, because you can't see it, you can't smell it, and it doesn't wash up all over your beaches," Montoya said. "But it's a very potent greenhouse gas."
He said it has the potential to feed into the planktonic food web and impact offshore ecosystems.
Scientists were focusing on surface water since methane and hydrocarbons are less dense and rise to the surface.
While the BP blowout happened in deep water — the well was about 5,000 feet below the Gulf surface — the Walter Oil & Gas well provided an opportunity to study hydrocarbon transport in shallower waters, said Nathan Laxague, a University of Miami researcher.
"They may wash ashore in a matter of days or be taken out to sea depending on these shallow water air-sea dynamics," he said.
Saturday's research was performed aboard a roughly 50-foot research vessel that launched out of Cocodrie, La.
The journey took about 18 hours, in part because travel was prolonged by high winds and rain that made for choppy seas. It took several hours to collect all the needed water samples and sediment, then another two hours to release the surface floaters around the rig.
The trip was organized by Samantha Joye, director of science for the Ecological Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf, known as ECOGIG.
"I wanted to get a ship out there ASAP to collect samples for establishing a baseline of biology, chemistry and physics so that any potential future impacts could be quantified," she said.
The research is being funded through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative launched with roughly $112 million pledged by BP after the 2010 oil spill for the study of the effect of oil and gas on the Gulf's ecosystem.
Associated Press reporter Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.
Filed Under: Industrial automation


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The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, & Will Make You Happier
- 5h 45m 4s
- Cy Wakeman
- Recorded Books, Inc.
- 2020
The key to understanding how your manager calculates your real value - and how to boost it.
More than anything else, you need to understand exactly how your employer evaluates you, and your annual performance review doesn't tell the whole story. In The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, Cy Wakeman shows how to calculate how your true value to your organization by understanding your current and future potential against your "emotional expense" - the toll your actions and attitudes take on the people around you. With Cy's clear, straight-to-the-point advice, you can confront and reduce your emotional costliness, become an invaluable member of your team, and even learn to love your job again.
- Reveals a formula for measuring your current performance, future potential, and the biggest detractor, your emotional expense
- Shares real-world advice for quickly boosting your value and becoming a highly-valued, sought after employee and teammate
- Builds on the lessons in Reality-Based Leadership, Cy Wakeman's first book for leaders and managers
The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace is the essential guide for boosting your value, owning your career, and becoming the kind of employee no organization can afford to lose.
In this Audiobook
Chapter 1 - Your Current Performance
Chapter 2 - Your Future Potential
Chapter 3 - Your Emotional Expensiveness
Chapter 4 - Rule #1—Your Level of Accountability Determines Your Level of Happiness, so DON'T HOPE TO BE LUCKY. CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY.
Chapter 5 - Rule #2—Suffering is Optional, so DITCH THE DRAMA!
Chapter 6 - Rule #3—Buy-in is Not Optional. YOUR ACTION, NOT OPINION, ADDS VALUE.
Chapter 7 - Rule #4—Say "Yes" to What's Next. CHANGE IS OPPORTUNITY.
Chapter 8 - Rule #5—You Will Always Have Extenuating Circumstances. SUCCEED ANYWAY.


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"Assault on Wall Street," directed by Uwe Boll and starring Dominic Purcell, takes the liberal agenda to a whole new level. Every possible liberal ideal – anti-gun, anti-capitalism, the evils of health insurance companies, crazy gun supporters – is depicted in this 1 hour and 39 minute movie, which was released on May 10 in limited theaters and on Amazon instant video.
Within the first ten minutes, viewers were introduced to evil Wall Street executive Jeremy Stancroft (John Heard) saying, "Our responsibility begins and ends with our partners and shareholders and that is it."
Jim Baxford (Dominic Pucell) had a very sick wife, Rosie (Erin Karpluck), and their insurance reached a coverage cap. "Basically if you read the fine print, it says If you get too sick and it's too expensive, they stop f*****g paying," he told a co-worker.
To try to make money to help pay for his wife's expensive treatments, Baxford puts money in stocks on Wall Street – predictably, the stocks go bad and thousands of people across the country lose their money. The companies, however, are bailed out through government funds … something that hits close to home for many Americans today.
Baxford's wife realized how much debt they were in and that they can't afford her treatments anymore since the insurance company won't cover them … so she committed suicide. Jim Baxford went unhinged.
The final chapter of the film depicted Baxter methodically targeting and hunting down different executives on Wall Street and executing them. Like any serial killer, he had pictures of his victims on his apartment wall and crossed them off after every kill – this is the man audiences were supposed to empathize with. Baxford bought his guns off the street from a gun enthusiast, promising he needed them for "self-defense."
The grand finale comes when Baxford shot down his old broker along with hundreds of others in a massacre on Wall Street before he finally came face to face with CEO Stancroft. "The problem with guys like you is that you're always bragging, so when the rest of the world is suffering, you're making sure that every magazine in the country knows all about your triumphs," he told Stancroft.
As if the rest of the movie wasn't bad enough already, the real kicker came when Stancroft defined what capitalism supposedly is. "It's the bankers and the owners and the advisers who get rich and it's the little people who buy their stock that always lose in the end. People like you," he declared. "That's capitalism."
In reality, what Stancroft described is not capitalism at all. A rigged system is not the free market, despite what the left believes. Cronyism and favors for big companies based on their relationship with lobbyists is not capitalism. Capitalism allows anyone to come up with ideas and try to market a good or service. The market decides who rises and falls, not the government.
The irony of this movie is that it was only a few months ago when many in Hollywood were in the "Demand a Plan to End Gun Violence" video. Not only does this movie propagandize every liberal talking point for 2013, but it promoted malicious murder of those on Wall Street. In a recent Culture and Media Institute study, the top five movies for the weekend of Jan. 11 included 65 scenes of violence, 38 of which were specifically gun violence, and depicted 185 individual victims.


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Iran's Role in the Syrian Civil WarMasters and Servants
When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appeared on television to say that Damascus has the means to strike back, he did so standing alongside a member of the Iranian Security Council. For his part, Iran's deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, predicted that Israel's attack on Syria will have "grave consequences" for the city of Tel Aviv.
This performance made it perfectly clear just who will be striking back. Bashar al-Assad no longer has the power to really do so on his own. In fact, it appears that the leadership in Tehran is already pulling the strings in Damascus, even though the Syrian dictator never tires of emphasising that he will not tolerate anyone getting involved in the domestic affairs of his country.
But Iran is already heavily involved and not only since Israel's recent bombardment of an as yet undefined target in Syria either. Syria claims that a military research laboratory was hit; the USA says it was a weapons convoy. One aspect, however, is not disputed by either side: Iranian citizens were among the dead.
Party to the Syrian civil war
It is no secret that the Islamic Republic has been helping the Syrian regime ever since the start of the rebellion almost two years ago. As events have unfolded, this help has grown and grown. While it was initially a case of covert deliveries of technology and weapons, the dispatch of military trainers and political advisors and the provision of secret intelligence, Tehran is now openly a party to the Syrian civil war.
Special units of the "Iranian Republican Guard" (IRG) are fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Syrian army against the insurgents. But it doesn't end there: according to well-informed sources in Baghdad, the plan is that regular members of the Iranian army's infantry will serve in Syria, replacing the soldiers who have defected from the Syrian army.
They will be transferred from Iranian Azerbaijan and Iranian Kurdistan near the border with Iraq to Syria. There, they will not fight on the front line, but will instead guard weapons depots and be tasked with the upkeep of military bases.
The best evidence of the presence of Iranian personnel in Syria are the 48 men that were kidnapped by rebel groups in Damascus in September 2012 and were only released in early January 2013 in exchange for 2,000 members of the opposition being held in Syrian prisons. The Syrian government described the Iranian hostages as Muslim pilgrims; the hostage-takers, however, claimed that they were members of Tehran's Republican Guard.
In the meantime, an IRG commander, General Salar Abnoush, openly admitted in an interview with an Arab newspaper that Tehran is "training the Syrian security force and secret service".
Iran, he said, is "involved in fighting every aspect of a war, a military one in Syria and a cultural one as well." The General did not explain what he meant by "cultural". One can safely assume that he did not mean pilgrims. It is more likely that he was referring to members of the al-Quds Force, which also operates in Syria.
Qassem Suleimani: "secretly running" Iraq
According to American intelligence, the most powerful man in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, met with the Iranian Security Council in order to discuss what should happen if the Syrian regime were to fall.
It is said that Khamenei issued commands for the al-Quds Force to carry out operations against the West and its Allies, because of their support for the Syrian opposition. He is quoted as saying that Tehran could not just stand by while its national security was under threat. He appointed Major General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the al-Quds Force, as the contact person for Syrian President Assad, so that they could crush the rebellion together.
The al-Quds Force is a special unit within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) and is responsible for carrying out extra-territorial operations. The Arabic word "Quds" means "Jerusalem". The force is very well known in Iraq.
In accordance with their mission to support forces allied with Iran, the members of the force have really been pushing the advancement of the Shia community in Iraq. They have used every possible means at their disposal to reach this end. It is said that members of the al-Quds Force were involved both in attacks on US forces and later also in the bloody confrontations between Sunnis and Shia.
Suleimani is also a well-known figure in Iraq. The US administration put him on its terrorist list. Nevertheless, it is said that there were secret meetings between him and high-level US functionaries in the office of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, something that the Americans consistently deny. The British broadsheet The Guardian once referred to Suleimani as the Iranian general who is "secretly running" Iraq. It is no surprise, therefore, that he is now being dispatched to Syria.
In 2006 – while war raged in Iraq and US President George W. Bush referred to both states as "rogue states" in the Axis of Evil – Syria and Iran concluded a mutual defence pact. Since then, Iran has continually expanded its influence in the region and established the so-called "Shia crescent": from Iraq and Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, Tehran has steadily increased its sphere of influence.
An "Axis of Resistance" to the West
For this reason, the Islamic Republic views the uprisings in Syria as a surrogate war with the USA, Israel and other Western states, which would otherwise increase their influence in the Middle East.
This is why the leaders in Tehran see their alliance with the Alawite regime in Syria and the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon as the "Axis of Resistance" to the West.
"It is no exaggeration to say that Iran is one of the supporting pillars of the Syrian regime," says Loay Safi, member of the opposition Syrian National Council. "Tehran is supplying Damascus with political, technical, military, intelligence, and financial support. The consequence of this is that Iran is increasingly trying to take control of a variety of political initiatives."
It would not, therefore, be surprising if the al-Quds Force were to live up to its name and to set its sights on storming Jerusalem. Through their involvement in Syria, they are already dangerously close to Israel.
Birgit Svensson
© Qantara.de 2013
Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan
Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de


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Maybe that's a little melodramatic. But it's what I was thinking of seeing the two of them, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain yesterday in Cannes.
Mia, as you know, is currently one of the most well regarded young actors of this generation. She's exquisite, and she's SO talented, and so many people know it already and she keeps working and working and working. It's exciting to me what will hopefully come from her. That we're watching the beginning of what become a monumental career. Hyperbole? Oh but that's what starmaking is about, isn't it?
This is Mia representing Restless with Gus Van Sant last night. I wish I could have had a chance to screen it. As noted already, I went to We Need To Talk About Kevin instead. There wasn't enough time to do both. Haven't had a chance to catch up with colleagues on it and since I don't have a f-cking laptop (!!!!!!) I can't get online. Will let you know what I hear.
Mia then caught up with Jessica Chastain who's about to be the new Mia on Monday when Tree of Life finally premieres. Jessica seems to be in everything that's due for release. And seemingly came out of nowhere. She also has a part in The Help and a movie with Gerard Butler and something else with Terrence Malick - she's wanted, they're all talking about her, and she appears to be able to back it all up.
I heard her speak yesterday at the TimesTalk IFP women in film panel discussion yesterday. She was slight, serene, more content to observe, seemed really long and lean, reminded me in demeanor a little of Angelina Jolie. Then, later on, at the CK party, I almost didn't recognise her. Like, she didn't look the same at all. This time it was a little more Sydney (Sidney? The redhead?) from Melrose Place. Freaked me out. I mean I'm not even sure if the first person was actually her. But it was!
Anyway, Mia and Jessica - young, in demand, amazingly poised, two new bright contenders, experiencing Cannes together. I wish we could know if these pictures will mean a lot more, have a significant context, in 10 or 20 years.
Just as a comparison for example - Vanessa Hudgens and Rosario Dawson have been all bff-y here in Cannes. So it's not like you can say that about any two people hanging out, with all due respect to Dawson.
Photos from Fotostore/KCSPresse/Splashnewsonline.com
The Future?
Maybe that's a little melodramatic. But it's what I was thinking of seeing the two of them, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain yesterday in Cannes.


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SALISBURY — Looking to ignite growth downtown, the Salisbury Council discussed strategies for generating development in the area Monday.
"You have to understand that it's not the equivalent of flipping a switch," said Planning and Zoning Director Jack Lenox. "This is not going to happen overnight."
Lenox explained that the city has been having "a discussion on downtown for decades" and that triggering growth in the area is a long-term project.
"There are lots of very good ideas, but very little details on how to get that done," he said.
Perhaps the biggest issue facing the revitalization of Salisbury's downtown is that no one wants to be the first private entity to take the initial step, according to Lenox.
"We've got some difficulties attracting development," he said, explaining that developers are more interested in properties in established neighborhoods. No one wants to be out there alone, he added.
Another issue, said Lenox, is the perception of parking issues downtown.
"There is an obvious concern about the parking," he told the council.
Spurring development would necessitate the elimination of several of the downtown's seven parking lots. However, a recent study conducted by the city found that even with the elimination of five lots, significant parking would remain in the area if parking garages were sufficiently utilized.
A third worry Lenox touched on has to do with the distribution of EDUs. Revitalizing derelict lots downtown could in many cases mean that the use of those properties would change significantly. What was once a clothing store could become a restaurant, for example, and would have greater water and sewer needs and therefore would require more EDUs.
While EDUs can be transferred, it is a complicated process and one Councilwoman Debbie Campbell pointed out would be cumbersome.
"It raises a lot of issues," she said.
Lenox estimated that by 2020 the downtown will have 750 new residents in 500 new housing units and hopefully will support 300 new jobs. Councilman Tim Spies said that he is in favor of growth but wondered what kind of demographic the city should be attracting to the area.
"We want people not just to come downtown but to come down again and again and again," he said. "To whom are we going to make it attractive?"
Spies reasoned that downtown would probably be appealing to a younger generation, such as students, graduates and young families looking to settle down.
"We need to look to the future," said Spies.
That would be a good crowd to attract, agreed Lenox. He told the council that the next step will be to coordinate with private developers and that the best results will be seen by combining city and private investments.
"So we need to look at the city's overall programs, overall policies," he said.
The council was receptive to the discussion, but Campbell pointed out it is still early in what is guaranteed to be a lengthy process.
"We haven't really had the opportunity to really consider the legal issues and policy implications of this … this is six months ahead of the council," she said.
Council President Terry Cohen was in favor of encouraging growth downtown but reminded the council that there needs to be a focus not just on a short-term "jolt" of development but on sustaining new and established business.
"We need to take care of what we have," she said.


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DEVIL YOU KNOW, the creative union of Howard Jones (ex-KILLSWITCH ENGAGE), Francesco Artusato (ALL SHALL PERISH) and John Sankey (DEVOLVED), have posted an interview explaining the creative process that went into their debut album, »The Beauty of Destruction« here: http://
Another video interview entitled "Meet the band" can be streamed here: http://youtu.be/
Check out the first single 'Seven Years Alone' from their upcoming debut at http://goo.gl/ERvQce. The track will also be released as a digital single on 3/18 (North America) and 3/21 (Rest of World) via iTunes.
DEVIL YOU KNOW's highly-anticipated album, »The Beauty of Destruction«, will be made available on both physical and digital formats on April 25 (Europe) and April 29 (North America/UK/France) via Nuclear Blast Entertainment. The record was produced by Logan Mader (5 FINGER DEATH PUNCH, GOJIRA) and mixed by none other than acclaimed producer/mixer Chris "Zeuss" Harris (HATEBREED, CHELSEA GRIN).
Artwork was created by noted painter and illustrator Travis Smith (OPETH, DEVIN TOWNSEND). "When Travis Smith presented us with the initial sketches we were blown away," commented Jones. "He captured the concept of the album perfectly. It's hugely different than anything that's out there and will be immediately recognizable as DEVIL YOU KNOW."
Fans can now pre-order the album with or without an exclusive shirt design here: http://smarturl.it/DYK-
»The Beauty of Destruction« track listing:
1. A New Beginning
2. My Own
3. Embracing The Torture
4. For The Dead And Broken
5. Seven Years Alone
6. It's Over
7. A Mind Insane
8. Crawl From The Dark
9. The Killer
10. I Am The Nothing
11. Shut It Down
12. As Bright As The Darkness
13. Sacrifice (bonus track – vinyl LP only)
"The stage is really being set for something incredible to happen" says Australian born drummer John Sankey. It was Artusato's musical collaboration with Sankey (also a collaborator with FEAR FACTORY) that caught Jones' attention in late 2012 when demos were passed through mutual acquaintances. Based on the strengths of the two musicians' efforts, Jones emerged from a two-year hiatus following his decade-long tenure fronting KILLSWITCH, during which the Massachusetts metallers racked up two gold records and a Grammy nomination.
A demo version of a new song called 'Shut It Down' can be streamed on DEVIL YOU KNOW's Facebook page www.facebook.com/
DEVIL YOU KNOW is:
Howard Jones (Ex-KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, BLOOD HAS BEEN SHED) – Vocals
Francesco Artusato (ALL SHALL PERISH, THE FRANCESCO ARTUSATO PROJECT) – Guitar
John Sankey (DEVOLVED, FEAR FACTORY, DIVINE HERESY) – Drums
Ryan Wombacher (BLEEDING THROUGH) – Bass
Roy Lev-Ari – Guitar


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Alfresco's Cloud API for Mobile Apps Now AvailableOctober 3, 2012 No Comments
SOURCE: Alfresco
London, U.K. — October 2, 2012 — Today Alfresco announced an open application-programming interface (API) for Alfresco in the cloud. The new cloud API is based on the most popular content management open standard, content management interoperability services (CMIS), pioneered by Alfresco and further developed by the Apache Chemistry project.
Alfresco's new cloud API gives application developers who are creating business and productivity apps for iOS, Android or the cloud a true, enterprise alternative to consumer file-sharing APIs such as Dropbox, Box and iCloud. Later this year Alfresco will be releasing software development kits (SDKs) for iOS and Android to make it even easier for mobile developers to embed Alfresco capabilities within their applications.
The recently announced Alfresco Connector for Salesforce.com is the first enterprise cloud integration to use the new cloud API. Development teams for popular mobile applications such as Moprise and PDFPen for iPad and iPhone, in addition to cloud applications such as Filepicker, Otixo and Ephesoft have already started to adopt the new cloud Alfresco API. Additional partners include:
- Office Squared HD for iOS by ByteSquared
- Ephesoft
- Filepicker.io
- Coaxion for iOS by Moprise
- Otixo.com
- PDFpen by Smile Software
"Consumerization of enterprise IT is creating a wave of web and mobile applications that rely on content interoperability across platforms such as Alfresco, Dropbox, Box and Google Drive. Building these applications with the right user experience and minimal engineering effort is a big challenge," said Anand Dass, co-founder and developer advocate at Filepicker.io. "By partnering with Alfresco, Filepicker.io solves this problem for enterprise developers of content-centric business applications. With Alfresco's new release, we can take the pain out of supporting disparate cloud storage APIs, unreliable file transfers, inaccurate content conversion and inconsistent hosting infrastructure."
"At Smile Software, we are targeting business users and enterprises with our powerful mobile apps for document editing and annotation, PDFPen for iPad and iPhone. Alfresco's new cloud API is a perfect fit for our target market because its cloud content service was designed for business users and is focused on productivity," said Philip Goward, founder of Smile Software.
"We are proud to be one of the first companies to embrace the new Alfresco cloud APIs making both Ephesoft Enterprise and Ephesoft Cloud compatible with Alfresco," said Ike Kavas, CTO of Ephesoft, Inc. "With the help of Alfresco's technical team, Ephesoft has certified the Alfresco cloud APIs to bring the best-of-breed cloud technologies together for everyone to enjoy."
Alfresco's open source enterprise content management (ECM) platform has been downloaded more than three million times and is popular for enterprise developers who need to build content-centric business applications. With the addition of the new cloud API, Alfresco in the cloud now opens up much of that capability to a wider audience of mobile and cloud developers who need to access enterprise content for their apps.
"As a pioneer of open standards for content management, Alfresco understands what it takes to better service developers who are building robust, content-centric applications. With our new cloud API, we enable developers to build powerful content apps in the cloud and for mobile devices," said Jeff Potts, chief community officer at Alfresco. "We plan to rapidly extend the Alfresco cloud API, based on constructive feedback from our community, to expose even greater capabilities of the Alfresco cloud content platform."
Alfresco is demonstrating the new cloud API at JavaOne this week in San Francisco. With Alfresco, Java developers no longer have to worry about building a content repository for their apps, no matter if they are enterprise apps, cloud or mobile apps. Jeff Potts will share more during his "Building Content-Rich Java Apps in the Cloud or On-Premises with the Alfresco API" presentation at JavaOne on Tuesday, October 2 at 8:30am PDT in the Parc 55 hotel in room Powell I/II.
Additional Resources:
- Developers can get started today and request an API key at alfresco.com/develop
- Register as an Alfresco Developer
- Register for Alfresco's DevCon in either Berlin, Germany or San Jose, California
- Sign-up for Alfresco in the cloud and get up to 10GB of storage for free
- Alfresco One announcement
- Learn more about CMIS from OASIS and Apache
- Connect with Alfresco on Social Content, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook
About Alfresco
Alfresco is how great businesses share, organize and protect content. Nearly seven million people in more than 180 countries use Alfresco Enterprise, Cloud, Mobile and Community to manage over three billion files worldwide.
Whether on the go or in the office, Alfresco empowers today's teams to do great work. Founded in 2005, Alfresco is headquartered in London with U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information about Alfresco, please visit: http://alfresco.com.


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Citroën Navigation System Product
Touchscreen 7" Scandinavia - 2022-2023
New GPS Map 2022-2023 Edition
This is a download product. This means that no product will be sent to your postal address. Once you have entered your vehicle information in your account, you will find a download link in your order history.
This download product contains your Citroën Touchscreen 7' Europe 2022-2023 map update Q4/21 edition for Scandinavia and covers 6 251 135 additional kilometres compared to the previous version.
Reach your destination by driving efficiently, saving time and money. Studies show that vehicles with a navigation system use 12% less fuel than those without*.
6 942 Points Of Interest have been updated for ease and convienece of your day to day journeys. And on long journeys your Citroën GPS becomes a travel guide showing you best places visit, where to stop and eat and arriving at your destination relaxed. Essential to any vacation, this edition contains airports, hotels, ski resorts, amusement parks, ferry terminals, cinemas, museums and parks.
*Source: HERE navigation Benefits Study (2009).
To identify the software version of the navigation system, follow this procedure:
• Press and hold (for 5 seconds) the 'SRC' key on the left touch screen.
• Select: System version.
View the version of the displayed software and use the compatible update according to the following versions:-
• For version 3.x 4.x or 5x: please choose preferred region Touchscreen 7' (SMEG+ iV1) map.
• For a 6x version: please choose preferred region Touchscreen 7' with Mirror Screen (SMEG+ iV2)map.
This download product contains your Touchscreen 7" map update 2022-2023 edition for Scandinavia.
Map data collected as of Q421
- Denmark
- Finland
- Iceland
- Norway
- Sweden
Contact Us
You can reach an agent at the following numbers, which are free for most of Western Europe:
00800 18 23 53 22
0800 914 478 (France)
800 781 145 (Italy)
0800 181 6065 (Germany)
08081 013885 (United Kingdom)
0031 555 384 245 (not toll free)


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Millions of Americans suffer from depression every year, a disabling disease that can end up fatal (due to suicide). In my last blog post, Treating PMS with Saffron, I noted remarkable benefits of the spice saffron on the emotional and physical symptoms of premenstrual syndrome. The researchers noticed a significant drop in symptoms of depression as well, and so decided to put saffron to the test. See my 2-min. video Saffron vs. Prozac for the head-to-head test of the simple spice versus the drug Prozac for the treatment of clinical depression.
Remember saffron from my videos Saffron for the Treatment of Alzheimer's and Saffron Versus Aricept? See my blog Natural Alzheimer's Treatment for some context and my post on other natural remedies: Amla: Indian Gooseberries vs. Cancer, Diabetes, and Cholesterol.
If one little flower can do that, what might a diet full of plants achieve? Studies have found less depression among vegetarians, but maybe people who are happier go on to eat healthier rather than the other way around. One can't prove cause and effect unless you put that to the test too, which was done last year. Researchers found that by removing all meat, fish, poultry, and eggs from people's diets they could significantly improve mood scores after just two weeks! It can take drugs like Prozac a month or more to take effect.
The way drugs like Prozac work is by elevating levels of serotonin, the so-called happiness hormone. Did you know there's serotonin in plants? I certainly didn't, but there's serotonin, melatonin, dopamine, and all sorts of human neurotransmitters in plants. So much so that there's been a call to start treating depression with "high-content sources of serotonin" such as pineapples, bananas, kiwis, plums, and tomatoes. And what are the side effects–maybe you'll get a tomato seed stuck in your teeth or something?
For more, check out my videos on the wrong way to boost serotonin by taking potentially dangerous tryptophan supplements, better ways to boost serotonin to fight disorders like premenstrual depression, and perhaps the best way exemplified by findings from a double-blind, placebo-controlled study on the successful use of butternut squash seeds to treat social anxiety disorder.
–Michael Greger, M.D.
PS: If you haven't yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 – 2015 presentations Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death, More than an Apple a Day, From Table to Able, and Food as Medicine.


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Includes updates and/or revisions.
At a time when many states are ratcheting up their high school graduation requirements, critics say Louisiana's new "career diploma" appears to represent a lowering of standards and expectations for students who aren't headed to a four-year college.
But some state education leaders who had misgivings with the legislative effort this year to mandate the new diploma say they've been working hard to make sure that—within the constraints of the law—it holds real value for graduates. In fact, the state board of elementary and secondary education was ultimately handed considerable discretion to hash out some important details. State officials say the board is expected to complete its work on the diploma this month.
"We can shape it some, and I think we have, and we will continue to try to make sure the rigor is there," said Charles E. Roemer, an elected board member from Baton Rouge. "My original contention was that we ought to be raising the bar, not lowering it. ... Unless the career diploma has proper rigor in it, I don't believe we're preparing our kids for the future."
Proponents of the legislation, which won unanimous backing in the state Senate and a large majority in the House, say the new diploma is intended to stem the state's dropout rate.
"This legislation gives us an opportunity to reach students that might otherwise slip through the cracks," Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, said upon signing the measure in July. "Now ... we can cultivate these students' interests and skills and help align them with a successful career path."
Democratic Rep. James R. Fannin, the lead House sponsor, bristles at suggestions that the new diploma lowers standards.
"How much lower is your standard for that student that you push out and put on the street?" he said. "You tell me how we're lowering it any lower than that."
Dropout Concerns
Recent state data suggest that about one-third of Louisiana's nearly 700,000 public-school students do not graduate from high school on time.
The state board of education, which has already voted on many issues related to the new diploma, including curricular requirements, is expected at a meeting this month to wrap up its work fleshing out the new pathway. It has relied on the state's broad-based High School Redesign Commission to provide recommendations in key areas.
About a dozen school districts began to implement the new diploma route this fall; the rest were granted waivers until next school year.
Paul G. Pastorek, the state superintendent of education, says that while he believes the legislative architects had good intentions, early on he had deep concerns with their approach. But he argues that, through negotiations on the bill and the state board's more recent actions, the state is now on track to ensure the career diploma will have integrity.
"I feel very comfortable with where we are now, but it was hard to get here," he said in an interview. "I'm sure there may be some people who still have some misgivings. It all happened very quickly, and it was not driven by the education community, it was driven by the legislature."
The legislation comes amid a growing push in states and at the national level to establish a more demanding set of core expectations that all students should meet to be ready both for college and a career.
Most notably, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are spearheading an initiative to devise common academic standards across states. Louisiana is one of the 48 states that have joined that effort. In September, a draft of college- and career-readiness standards was issued. ("New Standards Draft Offers More Details," Sept. 30, 2009.)
Louisiana itself recently completed a separate, and exhaustive, process to craft new graduation requirements, based on recommendations from its High School Redesign Commission. The state made the so-called Louisiana Core 4 Curriculum—which seeks to make students both career- and college-ready—the default for all students entering the 9th grade. Students may opt out after the sophomore year and pursue a regular diploma through the Basic Core Curriculum.
Daria L. Hall, the director of K-12 policy at the Education Trust, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, said she was surprised to see the new career diploma emerge in Louisiana. She said the state has been making "strong movements" toward setting high expectations for students, but she sees the new diploma as reversing course.
"This policy creates a path to lowered expectations and diminished opportunities for some students, and we know from experience in other states that 'some' often means low-income students, and students of color."
Some observers say the career-diploma law creates a loophole in the state's high-stakes testing program.
Louisiana has long required all students to pass tests in both reading and mathematics in the 4th and 8th grades to advance to the next grade. The new law says that 8th graders who wish to pursue the career diploma and are 15 or older need a passing score in only one of those subjects.
"That was one of our objections—the idea of lowering the standards that we've worked so hard to get in place and adhere to," said Karen M. Rowley, a policy analyst at the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a research institute and government watchdog. "If they can't read or write or do basic math, how are they going to succeed in any career track?"
Mr. Pastorek, the state schools chief, said that he, too, was concerned about that legislative provision, but is comfortable with how the state board has responded.
"What we said was, go to the 9th grade building, but you must take and pass a remediation course before you go to 9th grade algebra or 9th grade English," he said. "What we're requiring, while not maintaining the full integrity of the [high-stakes testing] program, creates an alternative method, and I'm comfortable [with it]."
Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States, in Denver, said Louisiana's new career diploma appears to be unusual "in the sense that few, if any, other states are explicitly setting lower expectations for students following a career/technical pathway."
She noted, for instance, that some states, such as North Carolina and Georgia, have recently revised their graduation requirements, replacing systems in which students had to choose either a college-preparatory or technical pathway, and adopting a college- and work-ready curriculum for all students.
An Electrician, a Welder
The Louisiana law lays out some course requirements for students seeking the career diploma, that are different from the college-preparatory curriculum, with more room for electives relevant to a particular career path.
"If you want to go and be an electrician, or it you wanted to be a welder, your first two years [of high school] are pretty similar," said Rep. Fannin, but later courses could be "more relevant to what your career looks like."
In math, students on the state's college-preparatory pathway must take four units, including Algebra 1, Algebra 2, geometry, and one other advanced math course, such as precalculus. Students pursuing a career diploma must also take four math units, but the law's only explicit requirement is Algebra 1.
Matthew Gandal, the executive vice president of Achieve, a Washington group established by business leaders and governors that advocates tougher academic standards, said omitting Algebra 2 for career-diploma students was troubling.
"It might significantly reduce the opportunities for those students," he said. "Many other states are making advanced algebra the requirement."
In general, Mr. Gandal said, he has no objection to vocationally oriented courses, but "our concern is when it's a substitution for a rigorous core academic curriculum."
Brigitte T. Nieland, the education director for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, said even students who are not going to college need more skills and knowledge than in the past.
"It's a sophisticated world, and it's getting more sophisticated by the millisecond," she said.
Mr. Pastorek said recent state board actions will ensure that students pursuing the career diploma will take meaningful courses in math and other subjects.
"We've approved a whole list of courses that would satisfy some of the blanks left in the law," he said, "and we ended up with courses that will have integrity."
In addition, he emphasized that, if the state school board approves a recommendation just set forth by the High School Redesign Commission, students seeking the career diploma will have to pass the same end-of-course exams all other Louisiana students will face as of next school year, when the state replaces its high school exit exam with end-of-course tests in several subjects.
As a result, "there is still a stringent accountability piece in place," Mr. Pastorek said.
'Easy Pathway'
Penny M. Dastugue, a state board member appointed by Gov. Jindal, said she still has misgivings about the career diploma.
One concern is that students who earn it will not have met all the course requirements to be eligible for a state scholarship under the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, or TOPS. The merit-based program helps pay tuition at community colleges, technical colleges, and four-year colleges.
"They can go to a two-year college [with the diploma], but it has taken them out of getting a scholarship," Ms. Dastugue said.
More broadly, Ms. Dastugue worries that students and their families are being asked to make a big decision in the 8th grade that may keep a four-year college out of reach.
"Some kids, ... they're going to want to take the easy pathway," she said.
At the same time, the state board has approved a measure allowing students one annual opportunity to switch into or out of the career-diploma pathway.
The 23,000 student Rapides Parish school district, in Alexandria, La., is among those that have begun to make available the new graduation path this school year.
"We already had some career offerings, welding, hotel management; we had career clusters anyway, so it was fairly easy for us to start," said Gary L. Jones, the district superintendent and the president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents.
Mr. Jones admits that he was initially skeptical of the career diploma.
"I'm one of the ones who believes there really is only one high school standard, but the legislature saw the need for it," he said. "But I'm convinced now that ... it is something that kids will benefit from."
Ultimately, he added, a lot rests with districts to make sure they offer a quality program.
"I think we can do that," he said, "and salvage a bunch of kids who otherwise might have gotten pushed off to the side."
Coverage of efforts to promote new routes to college and career success is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
A version of this article appeared in the December 02, 2009 edition of Education Week as Diploma Sparks College/Career Dialogue in La.


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Native Plants
Welcome to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's collection of 82,857 plant images.
This site is not designed for commercial use
or publication. All images are copyrighted and are the property
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Yucca glauca
Yucca glauca Nutt.
Soapweed Yucca, Narrowleaf Yucca, Plains Yucca, Beargrass, Great Plains Yucca
Agavaceae (Century-Plant Family)
USDA Symbol: YUGL
Image InformationPhotographer: Flaigg, Norman G.
County: Murray
State: OK
Accession date: 1990-09-25
Filename: PCD1172_IMG0040.JPG
Slide Index: L12 90-675
Restrictions: Unrestricted
Collection: Wildflower Center Slide Library
Original Format: 35 MM
Orientation: Landscape
Shot: Flower(s)
Date Taken: 1990
NPIN Image Id: 1691
Image VerificationThis image has not been verified. If you can verify this image, please contact the Native Plant Database Manager. Please include the NPIN Image ID in your correspondence.
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