text:
BY: Bill Gertz
Cuba's communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents, according to an internal FBI report published this week.
Cuban intelligence services "have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service],"
It notes that the Cubans "devote a significant amount of resources to targeting and exploiting U.S. academia."
"Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service]," the report concludes.
One recruitment method used by the Cubans is to appeal to American leftists' ideology. "For instance, someone who is allied with communist or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because of his/her personal beliefs," the FBI report, dated Sept. 2, said.
Others are offered lucrative business deals in Cuba in a future post-U.S. embargo environment, and are treated to extravagant, all-expense paid visits to the island.
Coercive tactics used by the Cubans include exploiting personal weaknesses and sexual entrapment, usually during visits to Cuba.
The Cubans "will actively exploit visitors to the island" and U.S. academics are targeted by a special department of the spy agency.
"This department is supported by all of the counterintelligence resources the government of Cuba can marshal on the island," the report said. "Intelligence officers will come into contact with the academic travelers. They will stay in the same accommodations and participate in the activities arranged for the travelers. This clearly provides an opportunity to identify targets."
In addition to collecting information and secrets, Cuban spies employ "influence operations," the FBI said.
"The objective of these activities can range from portraying a specific image, usually positive, to attempting to sway policymakers into particular courses of action," the report said.
Additionally, Cuban intelligence seeks to plant disinformation or propaganda through its influence agents, and can task recruits to actively disseminate the data. Once recruited, many of the agents are directed to entering fields that will provide greater information access in the future, mainly within the U.S. government and intelligence community.
The Cubans do not limit recruitments to "clandestine agents," the report said. Other people who do not have access to secrets are co-opted as spies because of their political position or political views that can be exploited for supporting Cuban goals, either as open supporters or unwitting dupes.
"Some of these individuals may not be told openly that they are working for the [Cuban intelligence service], even though it may not be too hard for them to figure out," the report said. "The relationship may openly appear to be a benign, mutually beneficial friendship."
Chris Simmons, a retired spycatcher for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Cuban intelligence has long targeted U.S. academics. For example, Havana assigned six intelligence officers to assist Council on Foreign Relations Latin Affairs specialist Julia E. Sweig in writing a 2002 book on the Cuban revolution, he said.
"College campuses are seen as fertile grounds for the recruitment of the 'next generation' of spies," Simmons said. "Cuba heavily targets the schools that train the best candidates for U.S. government jobs, like Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and George Washington University."
One goal of the Cubans is to recruit students prior to federal employment, a method that allows Havana to direct a recruited agent into targeted key spy targets, like Congress or the FBI, Simmons said.
"A preferred target are 'study abroad' programs in Cuba, as participating students are assessed as inherently sympathetic to the Cuban revolution," Simmons said.
Cuban intelligence has recruited numerous spies in the past that became long-term penetration agents inside the U.S. government. According to the CI Centre, a think tank, there have been 25 Cuban spies uncovered in the United States since the 1960s, including former CIA officer Philip Agee to who defected and worked closely with both Cuban intelligence and the Soviet KGB starting in 1973.
One of the most notorious Cuban spy cases involved Ana Montes, a senior analyst who worked in the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence and policymaking communities.
Montes, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, pleaded guilty in 2002 to spying for Cuba for 17 years. She is serving a 25-year prison term.
Montes was recruited by Cuban intelligence in 1984 while a student at the Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where she was a graduate student and had voiced her hatred of the then-Reagan administration policy of backing anti-communist rebels fighting the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
She was recruited at SAIS by another Cuban spy, Marta Rita Velazquez, who worked for U.S. Agency for International Development and fled the country after Montes was arrested in 2001.
Two other notable Cuban spies were Walter Kendall Myers, a State Department Foreign Service contractor who worked for Cuban intelligence from 1979 to 2007, and his wife Gwen Myers. They were recruited after visiting Cuba. Walter Myers was a leftist who criticized "American imperialism" in a diary entry after visiting Cuba. He held a top-secret security clearance and in 2010 was sentenced to life in prison after a conviction for spying.
Cuba's spy agencies "actively target academia to recruit agents and to support Cuban influence operations."
"Unfortunately, part of what makes academic environments ideal for enhancing and sharing knowledge also can assist the efforts of foreign intelligence services to accomplish their objectives," the report concludes. "This situation is unlikely to change, but awareness of the methods used to target academia can greatly assist in neutralizing the efforts of these foreign intelligence services."
The FBI report was based largely on testimony from José Cohen,
a former officer of the Cuban Intelligence Directorate, known by its Spanish acronym as DGI, who defected in 1994.
The targeting of American spies takes place at schools, colleges, universities, and research institutes. "Cuban intelligence services are known to actively target the U.S. academic world for the purposes of recruiting agents, in order to both obtain useful information and conduct influence activities," the FBI said.
The academic world, because of its openness and need for networking, "offers a rich array of targets attractive to foreign intelligence services," the report said, noting that U.S. government institutions draw on academia for personnel, both for entry level staffing and for consultation from established experts.
Cuban intelligence seeks leftists and others sympathetic to Cuba's communist regime because it lacks funds needed to pay recruited agents, the report said.
The process includes targeting American and Cuban-American academics, recruiting them if possible and eventually converting them into Cuban intelligence agents.
Cuban front groups also are used to recruit spies in the United States, including a network of collaborators and agents in Cuba that make contact with counterparts in the United States.
Specific universities in Washington and New York that were not specified by the FBI are targets because they are close to Cuban intelligence posts in those cities.
An example of the recruitment effort was provided to the FBI by a "self-admitted Cuban intelligence" officer outlining how a spy is recruited at a U.S. university.
"The Cuban intelligence officers located at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York, New York, or the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., obtain a published work by a specific professor or student … from a university the [Cubans] are monitoring," the report said.
A Cuban control agent in Havana studies the work and works together with a co-opted Cuban academic and together the pair analyzes published material and forms a plan of action that may include a personal letter to the targeted individual in the United States.
"The letter will suggest a 'genuine' interest in starting a friendship or contact regarding the topic of the article," the report said. "The personal letter becomes a pretext for the Cuban intelligence officer stationed in the United States to use for initial contact with the targeted individual."
A Cuba spy posing as a diplomat develops a relationship with the academic that can last months or years of assessing motivations, weaknesses, and current future and access to information.
In some cases, the Cubans use compromising video or audio and sexual entrapment to develop U.S. spies.
"Ultimately, when the time is right, the plan will be executed and the targeted individual will be approached and formally asked to help the government of Cuba," the report said.
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· · · · · · ·
|Deutsches Historisches Institut London; International Programmes, Pembroke College, Cambridge
|Datum, Ort:
|06.02.2014–08.02.2014, London
Bericht von:
Tobias Graf, Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
E-Mail: <graf@
Tobias Graf, Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
E-Mail: <graf@
On 6–8 February 2014, the German Historical Institute London hosted the conference "Intelligence in World History, c. 1500-1918" in collaboration with the International Programmes at Pembroke College, Cambridge. For a long time, the history of intelligence has been a poor relation to the study of international relations. On the whole, historians have tended to pay relatively little attention to the kinds of information at the disposal of those who made decisions about war and peace and even less to the methods by which such decision makers acquired the information which underlay the decisions they took. Yet few would question that it did matter what decision makers knew about the world which they reacted to, shaped, and attempted to control. The meeting was organized by Christopher Andrew (Cambridge), Andreas Gestrich (GHIL), Tobias Graf (Heidelberg), Daniel Larsen (Cambridge), and Sönke Neitzel (London) in order to stimulate exchange between historians working on intelligence organizations and issues across traditional boundaries of periodical and regional specialization and thus gain a better understanding of what might provocatively be called the 'long' early modern period of intelligence services.
The event opened with a keynote lecture by CHRISTOPHER ANDREW (Cambridge), the official historian of the British Security Service (MI5), in which he provided a sweeping overview of the development of secret intelligence in Europe from the Renaissance to the end of the First World War. He highlighted the general lack of awareness of the history of intelligence across the ages. In particular, rapid advances in techniques and technologies since the early twentieth century obscure the fact that, for centuries, the West had been far behind its competitors in Asia and the Middle East, particularly in the field of cryptology. Here, European states began to take the lead only gradually from the sixteenth century onwards. These advances, however, remained geographically and chronologically uneven.
Sir RICHARD DEARLOVE (Cambridge), former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), complemented the historian's overview with insights from his own experience as an intelligence professional. Crucially, the need of intelligence services for secrecy provides a major obstacle to developing a historical understanding of its activities and role, even for professionals themselves. The same need for secrecy also largely prevents writing the history of intelligence as a human history, even as, not least because of the continued importance of human intelligence, the human factor looms large in the activities and performance of intelligence services.
Sir CHRISTOPHER BAYLY (Cambridge) opened the first thematic session by placing intelligence in a wider framework. Focusing on British India, he highlighted the importance of knowledge management for both the colonial government and those who provided resistance to it. The colonial state could not function without tapping into pools of what Bayly calls 'mundane knowledge'. This form of knowledge collection from local knowledge communities and – from the nineteenth century onwards – newspapers provided a central element of British colonial intelligence.
CENGIZ KIRLI (Istanbul) explained how the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century, particularly during the rule of Abdülhamid II (1876-1909), attempted to tap into precisely such knowledge communities by conducting systematic surveillance of the population in the capital. While such activities had been an integral part of Ottoman governance in previous centuries, they had remained sporadic. Under Abdülhamid, what had originally been a means for identifying and silencing dissent, now served the wider purpose of gathering information as well as monitoring public opinion, which, as Kırlı argued, ultimately opened policy-making to the influence of subjects' political wishes.
Moving back in time to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, MIA RODRÍGUEZ-SALGADO (London), IOANNA IORDANOU (Warwick), and TOBIAS GRAF (Heidelberg) showed that well-organized and often bureaucratic intelligence services had come into being long before the emergence of the modern nation state. The comparison between the Venetian and Austrian-Habsburg intelligence organizations in the Ottoman Empire on the one hand and their Spanish-Habsburg counterpart are particularly instructive. While in the former resident ambassadors in Istanbul took the lead by virtue of their office, the Spanish Habsburgs, lacking formal diplomatic relations with the Sublime Porte, relied on networks of spies and informants run from the fringes of their empire. However, as Rodríguez-Salgado pointed out, such a degree of organizational sophistication was rarely permanent. Rather, agencies and networks developed in response to specific threats and fell into disuse once these threats had dissipated. Only Venice's intelligence apparatus, which Iordanou showed to have been institutionalized in a single centralized office early on in the sixteenth century, presented an exception from this rule.
This is not to say that intelligence was deemed unimportant – on the contrary. Taking the eighteenth-century electors of Saxony August II and August III, who also were kings of Poland in personal unions, as a starting point, ANNE-SIMONE ROUS (Dresden) emphasized just how important intelligence was to early modern rulers as an element of secret diplomacy. Drawing on her case studies, she suggested a refined model of secret diplomacy which divides pertinent activities into three categories according to their aims and means: defensive, offensive, and aggressive.
The contributions by KARL DE LEEUW (Amsterdam) and NEIL KENT (Cambridge) presented historical precedents for the 'special relationship' between the UK and the US. Already during the Nine Years' War (1688-97), William III of England (r. 1689-1702) and Stadtholder in the Dutch Republic (r. 1672-1702) relied heavily on postal interception and codebreaking in England, the Netherlands, and Hanover to thwart French military and diplomatic efforts. However, as de Leeuw showed, even as Great Britain and the Netherlands intensified their military cooperation over the course of the eighteenth century, their former intelligence alliance turned into rivalry out of fear that they were pursuing conflicting interests. Kent, in contrast, demonstrated that, as a direct result of the dynastic connection, Great Britain and Hanover maintained an intelligence alliance throughout the eighteenth century. In spite of intelligence being tainted by its reputation as 'dirty work' at the time, in his various government positions, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768), excelled in putting it to good use, especially to keep the so-called Jacobites, the supporters of the Stuart dynasty which had been deposed in 1688, and their French allies at bay.
Russia provided the geographical focus for the penultimate session which opened with SVETLANA LOKHOVA's (Cambridge) presentation of rare and previously unused material from the archives of the Okhrana, the tsarist intelligence service. DOMINIC LIEVEN (Cambridge) undertook an instructive diachronic comparison of Russian intelligence during the Napoleonic Wars and on the eve of the First World War. Counterintuitively, as a result of the service's professionalization by 1914, Russian intelligence had been more effective in the earlier period. While Russian 'agents' by virtue of their social status freely mingled with the French elite in the early nineteenth century, professional intelligence officers in the latter period had been deprived of this possibility by their specialization. This is reflective of a wider social reconfiguration which resulted in the separation of the largely overlapping premodern elites into more strongly separated segments of political, military, and social elites.
CALDER WALTON (London) highlighted the importance of the colonial experience for the development of intelligence services in Europe. This was especially, though not exclusively, true of the UK where the majority of the personnel in the domestic security and foreign intelligence services had a colonial background. These officers brought with them innovative ideas and practices such as fingerprinting which had been developed and successfully implemented in the colonies.
That the role of intelligence very much depends on a country's political culture became clear from DANIEL LARSEN's (Cambridge) presentation on the role of secrecy in the US before, during, and after the First World War. From publishing all official correspondence on foreign relations in the 1860s, the State Department gradually began to appreciate the importance of keeping information secure to the extent of developing an obsession with secrecy by the beginning of the Cold War. This development did not continue uninterruptedly, however. In the early 1930s laxity of security for diplomatic correspondence had almost reverted to its pre-First World War state.
All contributors highlighted the importance of intelligence for the study of political history while pointing out that this dimension has so far been understudied. The reason for this is perhaps not so much the dearth of source material, but most historians' focus on the outcomes, rather than the mechanisms, of decision-making. Different historiographical traditions in the UK and Germany, as a member of the audience pointed out, explain why British historians seem relatively fascinated by the history of intelligence while the same field has thus far received little attention in Germany. In a context in which history is concerned less with the search for underlying grand narratives, but regarded first and foremost as a sequence of events, it may simply be more credible to believe that intelligence made a difference.
Taken together, the presentations seem to validate this point. Initially, the organizers had hoped that the conference would shed new light on currently ill-understood long-term processes such as the professionalization of intelligence services and their development into distinct bureaucratic agencies. If anything, the papers have shown that there is no clear underlying historical trajectory, but that intelligence services emerged, expanded, contracted, and disbanded according to the needs of the day. Perhaps, then, one important contribution which intelligence history can make to the discipline of history at large is to shed further doubt on the validity of modernization theory as a framework for the study of the past.
Conference Overview
Keynote lecture
Chair: Andreas Gestrich (London)
Chair: Andreas Gestrich (London)
Christopher Andrew (Cambridge), Intelligence in World History from the Renaissance to the First World War
Sir Richard Dearlove (Cambridge), The Status of Intelligence History
Session 1
Chair: Christopher Andrew (Cambridge)
Chair: Christopher Andrew (Cambridge)
Sir Christopher Bayly (Cambridge), Knowledge, Information and Intelligence in Colonial India and beyond
Cengiz Kırlı (Istanbul), Intelligence in the Late Ottoman Empire
Session 2
Chair: Tobias Graf (Heidelberg)
Chair: Tobias Graf (Heidelberg)
Mia Rodríguez-Salgado (London), Intelligence in the Spanish Monarchy in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
Ioanna Iordanou (Warwick), What News on the Rialto? Spies, Informants and the Myth of Venice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Session 3
Chair: Peter Martland (Cambridge)
Chair: Peter Martland (Cambridge)
Tobias Graf (Heidelberg), Austrian-Habsburg Intelligence on the Ottomans in the Late Sixteenth Century
Anne-Simone Rous (Dresden), Saxon Intelligence in the Eighteenth Century
Session 4
Chair: Sönke Neitzel (London)
Chair: Sönke Neitzel (London)
Karl De Leeuw (Amsterdam), Anglo-Dutch Intelligence Collaboration and Rivalry during the War of the Spanish Succession and Its Aftermath, 1704–1716
Neil Kent (Cambridge), Hanoverian Intelligence: Thwarting the Jacobites and France
Session 5
Chair: Neil Kent (Cambridge)
Chair: Neil Kent (Cambridge)
Svetlana Lokhova (Cambridge), From Okhrana to Cheka: Revelations from Russian Archives
Dominic Lieven (Cambridge), Russian Intelligence in the Napoleonic Era and on the Eve of World War I: A Comparison
Session 6
Chair: Sönke Neitzel (London)
Chair: Sönke Neitzel (London)
Calder Walton (London), Victoria's Secrets: Intelligence and the British Empire up to the First World War
Daniel Larsen (Cambridge), Intelligence and the United States in the Nineteenth Century to 1918
Concluding Discussion
Chair: Sönke Neitzel (London)
Chair: Sönke Neitzel (London)
TagungsberichtIntelligence in World History, c. 1500-1918.
06.02.2014–08.02.2014, London, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, 05.09.2014,
Copyright (c) 2014 by H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact H-SOZ-U-KULT@
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A federal investigation requested by Gov. Sean Parnell has found significant problems within the ranks of the Alaska National Guard, years after allegations of mishandling of rapes, sexual misconduct and other offenses had begun to surface.
The assessment, conducted by the National Guard Bureau's Office of Complex Investigations and released Thursday by Parnell's office, found "several instances of fraud," "actual and perceived favoritism, ethical misconduct …" and that the Alaska National Guard "is not properly administering justice."
Also on Thursday, Parnell sought and received the resignation of Alaska National Guard commander Maj. Gen. Thomas Katkus, adjutant general and commissioner of Alaska's Division of Military and Veteran Affairs.
"This culture of mistrust and failed leadership in the Guard ends now," Parnell said.
Of particular concern leading up to the investigation was whether sexual assault cases were being properly handled. The OCI's 229-page report stemming from its nearly six-month-long investigation found that while the Guard's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program is "well organized," "victims do not trust the system due to an overall lack of confidence in the command."
"I am extremely frustrated and I am angry that it has taken this long to get to the bottom of these issues. In hindsight it clearly should not have taken this long and I offer my deepest apologies," Parnell said during a late-afternoon press conference at his Anchorage office. "There are a whole range of people who have been hurt and who deserve this to be made right."
Parnell declined to say whether he felt Katkus was personally involved in any of the enumerated misconduct and failings. People can draw their own conclusions from the report, he said, adding that as the Guard's leader, Katkus had ultimate responsibility for what transpired under his watch.
However, the report notes Katkus' unusual position relative to the Alaska National Guard's Recruiting and Retention commander. OCI's investigators found a high level of misconduct within that division, including "misuse of government vehicles, fraud, adultery, inappropriate relationships and sexual assault."
Additionally, Recruiting and Retention had been previously investigated for weapons smuggling, rape and drug trafficking. Lack of evidence and lack of jurisdiction resulted in the cases going nowhere.
During those investigations, the Recruiting and Retention commander reported directly to Katkus, an arrangement described as "deviation from the normal reporting chain."
This unique reporting structure, combined with reports that the Recruiting and Retention commander was Katkus' friend and neighbor, created "a perception that this commander was invulnerable."
Citing an Army regulation that requires senior officials to be investigated by the Army inspector general, the OCI stated it did not investigate the validity of the allegations concerning Katkus and the commander. But the report does state the OCI forwarded allegations of misconduct among senior leaders to the inspector general with oversight of those individuals.
In a separate line of inquiry, the report found that senior leaders were often aware of allegations about "inappropriate relationships and fraternizations," but because the adjutant general -- Katkus -- believed that the Alaska National Guard was "not the morality police," allegations were not addressed until the alleged conduct became more severe.
Katkus had led the Guard for five years, a post he assumed after serving in the Guard for more that 30 years and two decades as an Anchorage police officer.
Alaska Army Guard Brig. Gen. Mike Bridges will serve as acting commissioner until Katkus' replacement is named. Additional staff changes are expected as Parnell further reviews the command structure.
Parnell called for a special investigation by OCI in February, saying he'd grown "deeply concerned" about reports of sexual assaults and other behavior within the Guard. He asked that investigators include fraud cases in their review and that the Guard's command structure also undergo scrutiny.
Parnell said Thursday that while other investigations had been conducted over the years, including by the National Guard Bureau and the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Defense, those reviews had failed to illustrate the depth and scope of the problem or establish the patterns of behavior found in this most recent investigation. Characterizing this newest investigation as "extensive," Parnell said it included a review of both the Army and Air National Guards, thousands of records and more than 185 interviews.
Formed in 2012, the National Guard Bureau's Office of Complex Investigations was created to handle complex administrative matters and sexual assaults, crimes that military criminal investigators and organizations had rarely looked into due to a lack of jurisdiction. Oversight of criminal matters involving Guard members falls to the state. The NGB assembled the OCI with specially trained, hand-picked sexual assault investigators to try to fill the gap.
In requesting the team of Outside investigators, Parnell noted that he was concerned about a "hostile environment and culture" within sections of the Guard, and of harm not only to the wellbeing of victims but also to the Guard as a whole, whose morale and mission were at stake.
Laundry list of findings
The final assessment from the Office of Complex Investigations focused on a range of topics: sexual assault, hostile work environment, fraud, coordination with law enforcement, misconduct and command climate.
Since 2006, the Alaska National Guard has received 37 reports of sexual assault, some of which were investigated by the Guard but most of which were referred to local law enforcement.
The report found that from 2007 to 2011, the Alaska National Guard did not manage sexual assault cases well. Records were not properly maintained or tracked, victims and leaders often were not given case updates, victims were not offered treatment services, and victim information was not kept as confidential as it should have been.
In 2011, a position was created for a trained and qualified sexual assault prevention and response coordinator. According to the OCI report, many of the deficiencies identified in the prior years have been corrected. The program is effective, the coordinator is organized, cases are tracked and victims seem generally satisfied with the support they have received.
Still, perceptions remain, according to the report, that victim information won't remain confidential, that cases won't be managed well and that victims may be perceived as weak if they come forward. Such perceptions, the report found, are ongoing barriers to sexual assault reporting.
Investigators also found instances of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual conduct, including drawings of male genitalia inside aircraft panels, flight instructors having sex with students, and senior leaders sending harassing and inappropriate text messages. Although witnesses reported the conduct, no action occurred as a result.
The OCI found that the Alaska Air National Guard was suffering from "hostile climate issues," stemming from a "general pattern of inappropriate behavior that was not being addressed by the leadership." Examples included the "public display of nude pictures, sexual innuendo and inappropriate touching" within the workplace.
Spanish-speaking Guard members, many from Puerto Rico and serving in Alaska at Fort Greely, told investigators they'd experienced other difficulties. Leaders had told them they weren't allowed to speak Spanish in the "operational" area, a violation of Army policy if the communication is personal and unrelated to military functions.
Inappropriate use of government travel and purchase cards was uncovered, as was one incident of embezzlement and a separate incident involving the misuse of equipment, including a helicopter, and personnel for personal gain. More oversight is needed, investigators found, to detect and prevent fraud.
The investigative team also found that while there were many kinds of misconduct (failed urinalysis, alcohol violations, sexual assault, assault, fraud, etc.), there "was a lack of consistency in the tracking of various cases ..." and "a lack of consistent punishment for like offenses."
Finally, recent surveys of the command climate indicated that Guard members think there continue to be barriers to reporting sexual assaults. These include concerns about social retaliation, lack of confidence in leadership and justice, lack of privacy and trust.
In the last 12 months alone, the surveys, conducted early this summer, uncovered 200 incidents of perceived discrimination or sexual harassment. Fear of retaliation prevented many respondents from filing complaints.
"Overall, the survey reveals a perception of lack of leadership integrity within all levels of command," investigators wrote in their final report.
It also suggests a culture tolerant of ethical misconduct and a willingness to look the other way or measure out lighter punishment when the wrongdoers were commanders or senior enlisted members: for example, allowing reprimanded senior personnel to retire at their current grade or continue service and relocate to another division.
Cleaning up
Changing the culture within the Alaska National Guard, and creating systems that are responsive to complaints and protect witness privacy, will require ongoing work.
The Office of Complex Investigations made numerous suggestions. To implement the recommendations, Parnell said, he will create an independent "Special Project Team," which he has asked the National Guard Bureau to help staff.
Suggested fixes include shifting the culture around sexual assault from one of acceptance to one of accountability; providing adequate resources and personnel to staff equal employment and judge advocate positions; improving training; tracking by the Guard of all police investigations concerning allegations of misconduct and taking appropriate administrative actions; reviewing how money is managed and ongoing anti-fraud reviews; addressing claims of ethical and moral misconduct; increasing transparency to reinforce that justice is being pursued; protecting victims of discrimination and sexual assault from being re-victimized.
"Between me and my office's multiple follow-ups with Guard leadership on these matters between 2010 and 2014, and our congressional delegation's independent reviews by different agencies, I am extremely frustrated that it took so long to get to the root of these issues. Our Alaska Guard members deserve better; and those who have brought complaints forward deserve better," Parnell said Thursday.
"My goal now is to continue Alaska's wholehearted support for our National Guard members in those things they do so well, and to transform it in areas identified by the Guard Bureau's findings as needing change."
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Ukraine War, and Putin's Comments, Stir Worry in Kazakhstanby email@example.com (Mike Eckel)
At a summer camp north of Moscow attended by youth vetted and groomed by Kremlin-sponsored organizations, Russian President Vladimir Putin was warmly welcomed when he visited recently, taking questions from campers, including one about Kazakhstan. After complimenting longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, Putin then insulted him, dismissing the history of Central Asia's largest country. "He created a state in a territory that had never had a state before," Putin said during the Aug. 29 visit, according to a Kremlin transcript. "The Kazakhs never had any statehood. He created it." The comment touched a major nerve in Kazakhstan, where Russian actions in Ukraine are being watched with fear and where ethnic Russians make up nearly one-quarter of the population. It came also as Nazarbayev himself signaled doubts about a Kremlin-led project called the Eurasian Economic Union, a project whose rejection by Ukraine set in motion the events that have led to war. That all former Soviet republics have been spooked by Russia's actions in Ukraine is without question. The bigger question is how much those actions have changed Moscow's relationships with those countries, and whether the United States benefits from it, analysts said. 'Crimea Was Our 9/11' For elites in Central Asia—intellectuals, policy makers, business leaders, high-placed government officials—Moscow's annexation of Crimea and the military operations in eastern Ukraine were shocking, according to Jeffrey Mankoff, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who traveled to the region in April "Crimea was our 9/11," Mankoff said he was told during his trip. "It's an event that causing a lot of rethinking around the region." "If there's one country that's worried about redrawing borders, it's Kazakhstan," he said. In Kazakhstan, a sprawling nation that shares borders with China and Russia and is nearly twice the size of Alaska, Nazarbayev has reigned since before the Soviet collapse, and consistently walked a fine line with Moscow. He's been involved in negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine, traveling to the Belarusian capital Minsk on Aug. 26 to meet with Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko. On the eve of his trip, though, Nazarbayev told a Kazakh TV channel that Kazakhstan's membership in the Economic Union was not set in stone. "If the rules spelled out in the agreement aren't followed, Kazakhstan has the full right to refuse membership in the Eurasian union," he said. Kazakhstan "will never be part of an organization that presents a threat to (our) independence. Our independence is the greatest treasure for which our forefathers fought. We will do everything possible to defend that." Nazarbayev's comments "were probably more of a reassurance to Kazakhs rather than a thumbing their nose at Putin," said Martha Brill Olcott, a longtime Central Asia scholar with close ties to many elites in the region. Still, "this has to be annoying Putin." At the youth camp near the town of Seliger, three days later, Putin gave what appeared to a retort that, to many Kazakhs and academics, trivialized and misconstrued Kazakh history. He also spoke of the "Eurasian idea" and insisted Kazakhs see the benefit to "remaining in the space of the larger Russian world." Kazakh Umbrage In the days that followed, Kazakhs lit up Internet chat rooms, online media and Twitter feeds. Videos uploaded to YouTube showed Kazakhs abrading drivers in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty for having Russian flags on the cars' dashboards. Nargis Kassenova, who heads the Central Asian Studies Center at KIMEP University in Almaty, said a number of Kazakh experts think Putin's comments were a direct response to Nazarbayev's interview. "The comments and especially the one on lack of statehood raised even more suspicions of Russian intentions since it was the discourse on lack of proper statehood in Ukraine that accompanied Russian actions there," she said in an email interview. Calls and emails to the Kazakh Embassy in Washington seeking further comment were not immediately returned. Putin appeared to have two goals, Olcott said: "One, he's trying to get Nazarbayev's goat and two, any Russian living in Kazakhstan would agree with him. Kazakhstan has one of the largest populations of ethnic Russians living outside of Russia: just under 25 percent, according to the 2009 census. In some northern regions bordering Russia, however, ethnic Russians make up close to half of residents, outnumbering even Kazakhs. Bilateral trade is among the largest for post-Soviet republics, and Kazakh oil and gas extraction is growing substantially, particularly in the multinational-run Caspian Sea fields where Chevron has major investments. Lacking access to international maritime routes, Kazakhstan is overwhelmingly dependent on Russia pipelines for export. And the Kremlin seems to be turning the union into a way to keep wayward republics from going the route of Ukraine, said Alexander Cooley, a Columbia University scholar and author of the 2012 book "Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia." "Kazakhstan never wanted to be exclusively partnering with Russia. Now, they're changing borders. Why can't they change the rules of this organization," Cooley said. "It's credibility as a legal organization is in doubt. How could it not be, given what's happening in Ukraine." For the United States, Central Asia holds less importance than it did during the war in Afghanistan when U.S. military personnel and equipment transited the region. That's changed with the wind-down in Afghanistan. Still, where Washington is concerned, keeping Kazakhstan from being stuck under Moscow's thumb is beneficial. "Anything that projects Kazakhstan in the international arena, rather than strictly a post-Soviet space, would be useful to the US interests," Cooley said.
Read the whole story
· · · ·
THE SPOKESMAN / Archive
By Miguel Rivera Puig, THE SPOKESMAN - 8:17 am
VIEQUES - A group of CIC officers and soldiers arrived in this island municipality by the Superintendent José Luis Caldero and Colonel Juan Caceres, area commander Detective Fajardo, to initiate the investigation of the last two murders yesterday and a series of thefts .
The last of the victims was the continental Gregory Ian Mackintosh, who became the fourth citizen killed in less than a week amid the unstoppable wave of home burglaries that extends across the country.
The officers had received several confidences and sought heels step on the suspects.
The police officers received a call at 9:31 last night, where it was reported a murder in the guesthouse Away Guest House in Captain Bravo end street neighborhood of Boston.
Mackintosh, who was 58 years old, a native of North Carolina was shot dead on the balcony of the second floor of each guest. Last week thieves raided a couple of tourists in one of the houses he owned for rent to tourists, which led them $ 500 in cash and other property.
The murder was the second to be recorded in this island municipality on Tuesday.
At 5:15 pm on Monday, two armed masked men assaulted Marinés Columbus on his home in the city destination in Vieques. The robbers ordered him to open the safe where two pistols and two revolvers were carried. The assailants took bullets, an "iPhone," an "iPad", a computer and a Jeep Wrangler.
Last Thursday the body was found bound and beaten Irish Gary Power Hatswell 65 years of age, at home on the road The Lugo, in the La Hague in Lajas. For this case a marriage and two men are in custody awaiting the filing of charges.
In the early hours of Sunday resort employees Tourist residential Villa Beach # 2, they found in his apartment the body of septuagenarian Julio Dávila Diaz. The victim was the lender.
In the La Barra in Caguas, was killed Sunday Andrés Díaz Robles, 56 years old, while resisting a robbery outside his home.
In other events last night, five armed individuals entered a residence on the street Yunque, in the Summit Hills Urbanization, in San Juan at 10:53 pm and robbed by threat of a computer and several cell to a family that He was terrified.
At 4:30 am today armed robbers entered a home in the fifth section of Levittown, Toa Baja forcing the back gate. Gagged and tied up the victim and seized cash was not specified.
By mid-afternoon yesterday and a residence in the neighborhood Algarrobo Vega Baja thieves appropriated a range hood, oven, nine windows, two freezer, refrigerator, electric cable, eight glasses, four glass doors two air conditioners, two machines pruning program two trimmer and machine washing.
The stolen property was valued at $ 18.399.
Read the whole story
· · ·
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Who's breaking the ceasefire? by CNNInternational
In Ukraine, both sides are accusing each other of breaking the fragile ceasefire.
From: CNNInternational
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Ukraine crisis accelerates Russia-China energy cooperation
Zee News
Russia aims to boost its economic ties with China, particularly in the energy sector, in the face of Western sanctions over Ukraine but this could prove a high-risk strategy. On Monday, far from the fighting in Ukraine and the threat of fresh Western sanctions, ...
NATO agrees to establish 'spearhead' force to bolster Eastern EuropeFox News
Ukraine crisis: Nato shores up defences against a Putin steeped in 'Soviet ...The Independent
West's 'plan to force out Putin will backfire': Moscow claims US is exposing ...Daily Mail
The Star Online -Telegraph.co.uk
all 150 news articles »


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Intel i5 Quad
256mb hash each
3-4-5 piece tablebases
Ponder off
WorldClass2013-1.cgb book
40 moves in 25 minutes repeating (adapted for the CCRL)
4 cycles 52 rounds
All engines 64-bit where available
The top engine will gain automatic promotion. Any other changes of division will be at my discretion and may not necessarily involve playoff matches. This will be the final series that Myrddin is eligible for unless a new version is released.
CmcChess 2.6 64-bit
TJchess 1.3 64-bit
Ares 1.005.2 64-bit
Shallow r694 64-bit
Orion 0.3.0 64-bit
Myrddin 0.87 64-bit
MadChess 2.0 64-bit
Nemeton 1.41
Waxman 2015
Jazz 840 64-bit
Gibbon 2.69a 64-bit
Absolute Zero 184.108.40.206 64-bit
Fischerle 0.9.70 SE 64-bit
Schooner 1.5 64-bit

subset: commoncrawl


text: The Staggers 18 March 2011 Budget 2011: shock doctrine in the UK George Osborne's Budget will attempt a radical social re-engineering of the UK. Sign UpGet the New Statesman's Morning Call email. Sign-up So will next Wednesday's Budget be "Shock and Awe: phase II" for the UK? The government's mantra of a "budget for growth" would have us believe otherwise. But even if we are spared any bombshells of the 20 per cent VAT variety, we can still anticipate what Pentagon planners call the "smart war" approach. Expect the Budget to be a more precision-guided follow-up to the original onslaught – and with the words "enemies of enterprise" chalked all over the warheads. But, smart bombs or otherwise, the underlying coalition programme remains the same: a refashioning of the balance of power between social classes and public and private interests that George Monbiot lambasted last year (referring to the bestseller by Naomi Klein) as tantamount to the UK's very own "shock doctrine". Klein's book of the same name shows how vested interests may capitalise on times of crisis to impose the sort of economic restructurings that folk would normally reject as sheer folly. It is becoming increasingly clear that, from cuts to tax breaks, the coalition is taking all the steps it can to refashion the country along pro-market, anti-equality lines. Against such accusations, the government claims it is merely being level-headed: paying off all that burdensome debt and warding off the markets that prowl about our neighbours. But just as Margaret Thatcher proselytised the virtues of private ownership to cover her clawing away at public institutions, so today does David Cameron preach about devolved responsibility to hide the true intention behind making the cuts. The Iron Lady's cold individualism may appear to have been shuttered out from this by talk of the "big society", but in truth Cameron has simply tacked up the garish swags of community empowerment in its place. Either way, we are left with little more than window-dressing for an ideological crusade. Which is why we can expect further moves in this direction from the Budget. Cue the anticipated setting aside of money for the sort of "enterprise zones" that Thatcher tried to introduce. These will be hoped-for pockets of success to be pointed to later, against the tide of the country's widening geographical inequalities. And watch out for Osborne's preference for Pareto optimality as a policy tool: outlawing any policy intervention on behalf of the needy if it stands to impinge even marginally on the interests of the rich. These may well be interests he is now reliant upon to kick-start the economy. But at times of cutbacks it is the least well-off who need most protection, and women among those most of all (one analysis of tax and benefit cuts after the June Budget shows that women bore 72 per cent of the cutbacks). Their basic needs are hardly the "enemy" of future growth. Add to this the government's ongoing "war" on bureaucrats and the ratcheting up of a culture of aggression against "the forces of stagnation", the government's assault on local councils, the housing benefit cuts driving poorer people into cheaper rental "sinks", the cuts to and reshaping of the education system, and we are already well up to our necks in the sort of social re-engineering that Klein would be only too pleased to call a shock doctrine. A land that Thatcher would have been only too pleased to call home. And with the Budget coming before the cuts agreed to last year start to make themselves properly felt, we have some chastening longer-term consequences to look forward to. As a recent study has shown, the combined effect of the ongoing and anticipated further precision targeting of welfare benefits and public expenditure will be to render the UK's public expenditure even less than that of the United States by 2014/2015. If fully implemented, this "unprecedented" development will equal, in the words of the study's authors, "a radical new departure in British policy directions". Is this the brave new world that favours the boldness extolled by George Osborne at Davos in January this year? It may be for the decreasing few who can avail themselves of its pleasures. For the rest of us, it won't be a step towards the future at all. When Osborne's economic surgery is complete, it is more likely we will wake to find ourselves back in the night-time of Thatcher's Britain. Only now the lights will have gone out, too. And the trains still won't run on time. Simon Reid-Henry is a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London. › Seven in ten think the coalition's cuts are too fast Simon Reid-Henry is Associate Professor in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London and the author of the forthcoming Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the West Since the Cold War, 1971-2017. Subscribe For daily analysis & more political coverage from Westminster and beyond subscribe for just £1 per month!


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5 Things You Won't Be Able To Do When You Hit The Age Of 50
Once you hit the age of 50, it will quickly dawn on you that the changes to your body are no longer on the way but they are already here. Good or bad, the following are the kinds of shifts you can expect to start happening in your body, along with some other things you might not or would not be able to do again at this age.
Enjoy Some Foods Like Before
This is because the taste of some foods will be different. Why would this happen? It is due to the decrease in your cells that are responsible for deciphering aromas and they are not being replenished at the same rate at which they are reducing.
This also affects the signals that go to the brain from your nose. They tend to decline and because of this, your sense of smell is affected. It becomes harder for your brain to recognize what the aroma coming in from the nose.
Some of your medications might also cause this. Being over 50 comes with diminish in your taste bud. The effect occurs in the sweet and salty taste, then later the sour and bitter.
2. Little Problem Getting Out Of Bed In The Morning
Am sure you already have an idea why this would have. And yes, you won't be as agile as you used to be. This isn't your fault. Your tendons, ligaments and muscles are just not the way they were when you were 30 or 40.
You can expect that lifetime of tear and wear to start taking over from when you are over 50.
However, having trouble turning your back to check out something is not considered normal aging. Over 50 training guide will be a good way to start your journey to working on your muscles and body.
3. Go At A Speed Of Your Will While Walking Or Running
Your legs simply won't keep up.
Hearing from people that being over 50 slows down your life, it might have literally meant that your will become slow with your legs as well.
Your legs aren't really the problem here; your muscles aren't just receiving the right signals from your brain. The cells of your brain responsible for shooting the commands of motor-control are sliding.
4. Recover Fast After Sustaining An Injury
It will just take longer, that's what I mean. Naturally, the muscle mass declines and the effects are even more noticeable at the age of 45. You can blame your body mechanism for that. You know that one responsible for rebuilding of protein and body repair? Yes, that mechanism is slowing down in your body.
By the time you are over 50, there is already a 10% drop in your bone density. This results in a longer recovery time if you sustained injury and also a reduction in your physical strength as well.
According to some studies, at your age, you are 15 to 18% slower in recovering from the same type of injury with a 30 year old adult. Check out Over 50 training routines to work on your core muscles a few times in a week.
5. Freely Do your business anytime you want
Constipation is another common challenge for over 50, and there are lots of reasons for this.
Ok, let me just mention few of them.
The movement of the muscle in the colon becomes slower. Another reason is the changes that are now occurring in some of the body mechanisms that are involved in this process.
You can also blame some of your medications for this constipation. Also, some health conditions can result in this too. Such health challenge could be irritable bowel syndrome and diabetes.
You will also experience constipation if you don't take enough water or living a sedentary lifestyle.
What To do?
For Changes in Food Taste
Don't try to heighten the flavour of your foods by adding more salt, just do an exploit with variety of seasonings. They can help you enhance your favourite meals.
Difficulty Getting Out Of Bed
It's ok to experience certain levels of stiffness after a long care ride or just getting out of bed. However, when this stiffness start giving you pains, then a visit to your doctor won't be a bad idea.
Speed Problem
This usually happens even before you are 50. About 10 years earlier. Over 50 workout plans have been proven to help with this. They have good ways of challenging the brains and muscles. So, exercise your body and try new workout routines as well.
Longer Time Recovering From Injury
This is one impact of aging that you can counter by building resistance and strength training 2 or 3 times in a week. Take calcium daily to help your bones. Daily walking is also another way to work on your core muscles.
Add more high-fiber foods such as fruits, whole grains and vegetables to your meals. Be sure to drink plenty of water. Another thing that plays a major prevention role in this is regular exercise.
That you are over 50 does not mean your glory days are over. You just need the right nutrition, mindset, exercise and workout plan to start your journey to a healthier you and achieve your goals. All these are what Fred Schafer promised with his over 50 Fit program.
It is understandable that you have a tight schedule or busy lifestyle, trying to balance work, family, aging parents, adapting to your own aging body among others, however, create time to visit a fitness centre once or twice a week. There are best fitness centres you can check out and they have branches in most cities. Detroit is a good place to start checking.


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Canton School District – Canton, MA
Nearly two years after unveiling a set of enhanced lockdown protocols, the Canton school system is prepared to take the next step this year with a series of drills and training sessions designed to prepare both students and staff for various emergencies — including the worst-case scenario of a violent intruder on the premises. For faculty and staff, this training began in earnest on the first day of school in late August as school employees took part in a large-scale "active shooter" simulation at Canton High School led by members of the Canton Police Department's newly formed Family Services Unit. For the enhanced lockdowns, Canton will employ a proactive model called the ALICE program. The program utilizes environmental design, technology, communication, and human action to improve one's survival chances when faced with an immediate danger. Read more


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Best Medical Technologies
Medical field is constantly developing and evolving to provide better health care facilities. While some of these medical technologies are ready to be implemented, others are still being worked upon. But one thing is certain, in the years to come these medical technologies are going to have a drastic impact on medicine and healthcare. Here are some of the best medical technologies.
1. 3-D Printing
With above 95% of all hearing aids being 3-D printed today, this technology has already made its mark in the field of medical technology. From printing braces to prosthetics, 3-D printing has come a long way and very soon we might as well see 3-D printed facial prosthetics.
2. Flexible Microelectronics
Lot of teams around the world are working on this technology and very soon we will have this medical technology working in our bodies. Flexible microelectronics iscapable of wrapping around irregular tissue shapes and sustains their motion in order to sense and respond to different physiological parameters. It is expected to be a healthy and painless experience.
3. Smart power Prostheses
Future amputees will not be so dependent on others due to the introduction of smart powered prostheses. The system is still in development and this medical technology will enable the wearer to regain his/her own abilities. The prosthetic hand has tactile sensors located on the fingertips that let the user feel what is being touched.
4. XStat Rapid Hemostasis System
Lead poisoning can occur in various forms and patients who are severely bleeding may not be helped sometimes even with gauzes and external pressure. This is where the XStat device enters the picture. The device was unveiled to efficiently and quickly stop deep bleeding wounds. It works by injecting a bunch of tablet sized pellets that fill up the wound by quickly expanding. It can be used as a syringe.
5. Diabetes Monitoring/ Glucose Control
The medical technology comes to aid for diabetic patients who have to get their fingers pricked every time to get a diabetes test. The new genteel lancing device offers nearly pain free pricks anywhere in the body. The laser based glucometer which is being developed at Princeton University will make pin pricks obsolete. It makes use of infrared light to determine glucose levels.


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April 11, 2016
Block & Leviton Defeats Motion to Dismiss its Claims Against Putnam
Block and Leviton's action in support of employees' rights successfully cleared an important milestone when Massachusetts District Court Judge William G. Young ordered that the case proceed against Putnam. The suit alleges that the defendant companies charged excessive fees and failed to properly invest retirement funds, in violation of ERISA.
Older Post Lesley Weaver of Block & Leviton LLP appointed to Steering Committee for Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche diesel emission scandal
Newer Post The Law Firms of Block & Leviton LLP, Finkelstein Thompson LLP, and Green & Noblin PC Announce $5.2 Million Dollar Drywall Class Action Settlement Alleging Price Fixing


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Wonderful Pulte 4 bedroom + den house with lovely backyard! Kitchen has counter-heighth breakfast bar and large walk-in pantry! Master has tub/shower, double sinks and spacious walk-in closet! Wood flooring downstairs! Ceiling fans throughout! Fresh paint, crown molding and skip-trowel finish on interior walls. Great southwest location! Huge corner lot! Beautiful rock waterfall in backyard! Must see!
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31 Oct The Importance of Quality Furniture: Reclining Edition
Don't you love relaxing and binge watching Game of Thrones on Netflix?! In order to have a positive experience, you need to make sure you are sitting in a piece of reclining furniture that is giving you the proper support. If you are constantly moving around, you might miss Daenerys and her dragons or the Night King and his army of the undead.
Welcome back to our blog series about the importance of purchasing quality furniture. Today we are going to fill you in on what you should look for when purchasing reclining sofas, love seats and recliners.
Below are a few important things to pay attention to when you are in the market for new, reclining furniture:
- The frame should be constructed of hardwood or laminate, glued and corner blocked, and covered by a multi-year warranty.
- The seat cushions should be of high density foam and covered under a multi-year warranty. We LOVE working with Flexsteel because they offer 4 different cushion options; ranging from luxury to down-filled!
- The suspension system should have a steel spring system rather than rubber webbing.
- The reclining mechanism should have a thick gauge and be covered by a multi-year warranty.
Below are some great new additions for your reclining furniture:
- Smartphone control: Instead of using a remote, you now have the power to control your furniture by an application on your phone.
- Lumbar Support: The newest thing in the reclining world is the addition of lumbar support! Now you can enjoy countless hours of Game of Thrones with no lower back pain.
- Power Headrest: Save your neck and maintain a perfect viewing angle for TV or reading with a power headrest! As you recline back, you now have the option to tilt your head up for a perfect view of your TV.
- USB Charging Station: Since you already need to plug in your power recliner, it only makes sense to have a built-in USB port for charging your phone and other devices.
Brands we trust: Flexsteel, Southern Motion, Stressless by Ekornes and Lane
If you have any questions on the frames we carry, check out our website or feel free to give us a call.


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Should I drop this show, or what?
I liked Penguindrum, but this show just isn't doing it for me.
What's /a/'s opinion? Haven't been around here in a while.
If you don't like it then don't watch it. Are you retarded?
Well I didn't really like Penguindrum so I wouldn't know.
that's retarded advice and you should feel bad about it
but yeah OP I guess it's well past the 3-ep rule so it's probably ok to drop.
though Penguindrum and Utena didn't start revealing their cards until half way through the series so you should probably keep tabs.
I'm retarded, yeah.
I feel like I want to like this show. Been waiting for it to get interesting, but it hasn't.
See...that's kind of what I'm worried about. I wonder if I drop it now if it might get interesting later.
I watched Penguindrum after it aired, so it was easy to push myself along. I might have thought about dropping penguindrum too if I would have been watching it week-to-week.
That's why I'm having trouble deciding.
remember first half was just Anthy getting slapped around by the local bitches
second half Akio shows up and seduces the entire cast
First half of PD was a dumbass trying to steal a diary from a yandere under orders of a bitch
Second half you get child broilers
Wonder what the second half of YB is? I also wonder why no one is trying to predict it
I myself am only here for the yuri
>I liked Penguindrum
What's wrong with you?
Definitely good points.
I think I'll just keep watching it. I've finished plenty of much worse shows than this.
But at this point I'm mostly in it for the Shaba de doo.
I'll be the first to admit that I have shit taste.
What's wrong with you?
As a patrician and high brow casual anime viewer and major ikuhara fan, I think this show is great. He doesn't have as long to do his usual stuff so its just a hyper condensed visual spectacle that appeals mainly to his fan base. If you don't like it its understandable, but you're objectively a philistine
>/a/ likes gatari series which is fan service for its own sake with no substance
>hates ikuni shows which are the same thing but with more merit
Guess its just 3deep5them
Honestly, I think you have your answer, then. Unless you like coming to Yurikuma threads and circle-jerking with all the people who think it's super profound, you're probably not going to miss much.
At this point it's hard to imagine what would instantly bring it up to awesome, and even if it does manage that, you can just go back and watch it, right?
Drop it, it's awful. I'm still watching it but I hate myself for it.
I don't know, I'm watching it because I find the bears cute
Opening single when?
my theory is that everyone is bears and they've been infiltrating and blending in for so long that they don't even know they are bears.
There is some allegory for lesbianism in there somewhere too.
the opening is shit, gibe dat ending tho
In utena interviews ikuhara said he chose lesbianism because its the first thing he thought of when trying to tackle just the "outsider" sensibility, he hates Japan and criticizes it heavily in all his work, I guess he has a weirdo obsession with teen Yuri because he feels its pure and that two fish swimming upstream together makes for a good vehicle for him to drive (literally. Do you get it yet?) His points home.
Not only the fan service or the general allegory (penguindrum deals heavily with the subway gassing which I'm sure Japan loves to ignore) but the more subtle aspects of hating modern souless Japan is why he has shit time slots and no dvd sales. These aren't shows for otaku, they're for ikuhara fans. At this point I feel like there are more in the US
>shit taste


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Opinion by AAABTonto:
"A responsibility to take action"? The President is not worried about making good on his word—he is worried that he looks like the cowardly ass that he is. We, as Americans, are not obligated to agree with the President on ANYTHING, regardless of the malcontent liberal opinion that ANY criticism of Obama is racist. And we're not obligated to be the World's police force—Obama said that himself! The President, with his "Red Line" statement, shot his mouth off and wrote a check he cannot cash. Now, the arrogant demagogue is determined to stick his nose into a fight where there are NO good alternatives and NO 'good guys' to back.
The president's foreign policies are an unmitigated disaster. Obama continues to act with authority he does not legally possess and no one seems willing to stand up to him. The American people are ill-informed due to the journalistic malpractice of the "main stream media" and are unaware of the seriousness of our circumstance. My good friend and fellow patriot, Brent Allen Parrish (aka Sard) recently wrote a very good article explaining the complications of U.S. military action in Syria:
The Syrian Quagmire: The Dangers of U.S. Involvement
There is more evidence to suggest that Syrian rebels are responsible for the recent chemical attack east of Damascus. From a Washington Times article by Shaun Waterman dated May 6, 2013:
Testimony from victims strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin nerve gas during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior U.N. diplomat said Monday.
Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof," that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.
But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons, according to the BBC, but she added that more investigation was needed.
UN Panel implicates Syrian Rebels in Chemical weapons attacks
* * *
Syrian Rebels discuss using Sarin Gas
Whatever the case may be, there are no U.S. strategic interests in Syria. The only thing that I see that would be a good choice of military action in the Middle East would be a concentrated, coordinated and significant strike on Iran's nuclear ambitions with Israel as a co-participant. However, given Obama's zeal for insulting our allies, I seriously doubt that any such effort will be made.
Or, are there U.S. strategic interests in Syria? What about European strategic interests in Syria?
Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern
President Barack Obama Syria FULL Statement. 8/30/2013
Then there is the unspoken possibility that U.S. military action in Syria would provoke an attack on Israel, not to mention the ire of Russia and Iran. This action, if taken, is poorly conceived and does not take into account the repercussions that will surely result. It only serves to placate the anxieties of an over inflated ego and possibly the pockets of his crony capitalist supporters.
Attacking Syria is a fool's errand …


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Wednesday, 18 December 2013
2013 Chronicle (Year in review) part 1 - Best of the Rest from 2012
So here they are, a bunch of albums that I missed the first time around in 2012 and didn't discover them for whatever reason until much later. Some of these albums I was able to give full reviews of or feature elsewhere, but some I've never mentioned either here on the blog or on the facebook page but are albums that I've come to love. I chose 15 of them to run down in chronological order of release because I'm a dork. Now, let's get busy ...
January 27 - VELVET ROBE (La Seance Haunted) - This seldom seen Ice Dragon related black metal tinged side project first appeared on bandcamp with this album which was full of conjuration, invocation and annihilation. Though the album is a half hour long there's spooky clips and eerie atmosphere enough for one thrice its length. Velvet Robe released a split with Merlin and two horrific videos earlier this year and released a four song EP as lately as a week ago which you can grab from the same page at the link. I recommend it. Get it here. Highlights include: "Kharis Lives" and "In Visible Shadow". Rating 4/5
February 21 - MOUNT CARMEL (Real Women) - Bluesy southern rock and roll peeled right off the strip of the seventies, Mount Carmel is the closest you can actually get to the seventies without slipping backwards through the cracks of time. This is a damn impressive album full of heavy guitars, funky riffs and blue-eyed soul. Get it here. Highlights include: "Real Women" and "Oh Louisa". Rating 4.5/5
March 28 - ARC OF ASCENT (The Higher Key) - New Zealand based psychedelic doomsmiths Arc of Ascent released what may have been the best album in 2012 that I never actually heard in 2012. It's heavy as sin, full of great riffs, hyper-making drums and swirling psychedelic freakouts. There isn't much to not love here so stop being a bonehead like I was for some 14 months and shoot yourself into the Arc of Ascent with one of your new favorite bands. Get it here. Highlights include: "Land of Tides" and "The Celestial Altar". Rating 4.5/5
March 29 - BANDA DE LA MUERTE (Pulso de Una Mente Maldita) - This album was on my radar for what seemed like forever, but it wasn't until the band released their 'Seis Canciones' covers EP in April of this year [review here] that I finally embraced their earlier full-length album. It was a good job I did too. This Argentinian quartet moves through 9 tasty slices of punky stoner rock to mess up your face. Get it here. Highlights include: "El Miedo" and "Espíritu en Paz". Rating 4/5
May 4 - NORTHWINDS (Winter) - Here's another of the greatest albums I'd never heard. This one was just crazy, it was doom, but it was also prog (but not proggy), it had an awesome album cover and the keyboards were highly cinematic. There was the Saint Vitus cover ("Clear Windowpane") and Hammer Films clips ("Gorgon"). This one had it all and in a way that had never been heard before, not by these ears. Original review here. Get it here. Highlights include: "Black Tower" and "Land of the Dead". Rating 4/5
June 1 - THE GENTLEMEN BASTARDS (ST) - From the virtual stoner doom vacuum of Alabama come this pack of well-dressed lads with a bad attitude. It turns out that rock n roll still sounds dangerous in a dress shirt. Who knew? A band like this one will restore your faith in the power of rock n roll. Original review here. Get it here. Highlights include: "Deja Vu" and "Big Bad Wolf". Rating 4/5
June 12 - SANCTUS BELLUM (The Shining Path) - I have no idea how I missed this one last year, but I did. This Houston-based quintet makes muscly doom metal in the mold of Argus, Pale Divine, Las Cruces, Maligno and Mala Suerte, many of whom Sanctus Bellum actually shared stages with this year. Traditional metal and epic doom merge in well-developed landscapes with explosions of shredding guitar. Great stuff. Get it here. Highlights include: "The Shining Path" and "Dumb Luck Divinity". Rating 4/5
June 19 - BLACKHAND (And the Devil Rode Forth) - How's about a little Jersey metal? This hard knockin' stoner metal quintet dropped a terrific five song debut that flew right over my head. I never saw it coming until it was too late to write it up in last year's rundown. This album is definitely worth a peek, especially if you want doom with a little more energy. Get it here. Highlights include: "The World Has Moved On" and "Blood Debt". Rating 4/5
July 13 - COLD BLUE MOUNTAIN (ST) - This album was in my bandcamp wishlist forever. Thankfully, this sludgey Californian quintet released a video for album opener "Branch Davidian Compound" recently which reminded me that CBM was one of my "most wished for" albums on my wishlist, one listen reminded me why. It's just nine quick blasts of midtempo, though energetic metal, along the same lines as Pyres & Crowlord from this year. Get it here. Highlights include: "Branch Davidian Compound" and "Dark Secret". Rating 4/5
July 17 - THE HOWLING WIND (Of Babalon) - Here's a break through from my "I don't usually listen to this genre" list. Actually, I started digging around into blackened doom and black metal after discovering Head of the Demon and came up with this American duo on Profound Lore Records. The Howling Wind is at their best when they pour their black metal through a Doom filter. Get it here. Highlights include: "The Seal Upon the Tomb" and "Scaling the Walls". Rating 4/5
October 12 - DOPEFIGHT (Premature Neanderthal Idiocracy) - Sadly, I didn't discover Dopefight until they had already seized operations but they were kind enough to leave the world with a hefty bag of unreleased demos that were to have made up a second album to have been released in early 2013. This is just pure stoner sludge metal at its finest. Get it here. Highlights include: "Pathetic" and "P.N.I.". Rating 4.5/5
October 29 - CROWNED IN EARTH (A Vortex of Earthly Chimes) - This UK duo blasts out space prog like it's attached to a fire hose. I discovered them way late in the year after an interview they did with Aleksei on the Temple of Perdition blog [R.I.P., still in shock here]. Glad I did to say the least, fuzz and space rock are piled upon by layers of prog. Get it here. Highlights include: "World Spins Out of Key" and "Winter Slumber". Rating 4/5
October 31 - BLACKQUEEN (March of the Obsidian Triumvirate) - I discovered BlackQueen the way everybody else did, when they became a surprise invitee to play the Housecore Horror Film Festival. This King County quartet worships at the altar of Goblin combining abrasive metal with a horror film soundtrack sensibility which they call "witch metal". They only just released a 14 minute mini-film / music video for "BabeGhostWitch". Get it here. Highlights include: "The 2nd Key" and "BabeGhostWitch". Rating 4/5
November 6 - DECEPTOR (Chains of Delusion) - This album is rad. This UK power trio combines elements of old school power metal with old school thrash. This four song, 6 track EP came late to me because I was late on catching up on Shadow Kingdom releases, one of the most consistent labels on the planet. Get it here. Highlights include: "To Know Infinity" and "Sentient Shackles". Rating 4/5
November 27 - CRAG DWELLER (Magic Dust) - This pyrotechnic pyramid of power from Portland sadly packed it in this past year. But before they split, they left us with a 7-song document of face melting fury. The good news is, at least one member [Travis] is moving forward with a project that may prove to be even cooler than Crag Dweller by the end of it, but that's a pretty tough act to follow. One down the hatch for the boys in Crag Dweller! Original review here. Get it here. Highlights include: "Chrononaut" and "Gotta Have It". Rating 4.5/5
Other notable break-ups in 2013:
The Gates of Slumber
The Devil's Blood
Iron Mtn (damn!)
Cult of the Headless Witch
Witchcoven (double damn!!)
Aniara (formerly known as Oak)
Posted by LK Ultra at 18:51
Labels: 2013 Year in Review, Arc of Ascent, Banda de la Muerte, BlackHand, BlackQueen, Cold Blue Mountain, Crowned in Earth, Deceptor, Mount Carmel, Northwinds, Sanctus Bellum, The Gentlemen Bastards, Velvet Robe
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Beer ruling goes down the drain
Published: Monday, August 15, 2011, 8:12 AM
By George Lenkermasslive.com
In the words of Roseanne Roseannadanna: "Never mind."
I couldn't help think of the classic Gilda Radner character from "Saturday Night Live!" last week when the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission reversed its ridiculous decision regarding farmer-brewers, which it had handed down a week earlier. As I mentioned in last week's column, the ABCC had ruled (arbitrarily, it seems) that farmer-brewers had to either grow, or buy from local vendors, 50 percent of their malt and hops.
Since there are not nearly enough malt and hop producers in the state to even come close to the demand this ruling would have created, a hue and cry rose from all corners (including this one). Our calls to the ABCC asking why this ruling was issued without any input from farmers or brewers (along with my question: where on earth did they come up with the random 50 percent threshold?) seemed to have garnered the attention of state treasurer Steven Grossman, who oversees the commission. To his credit, Grossman announced last week that the ruling was being rescinded and that officials were eager to meet with brewers and and hold hearings. Grossman also stated that the ABCC wants to foster craft brewing, not stifle it, and will work to that end.
This is pleasing news on many levels. First, it means smaller breweries aren't suddenly in trouble. Second, it means that rather than issue arbitrary rulings, the ABCC is now on the hotseat to make sure it nurtures craft brewing. Third, it means at least once in a while, government works as it should. Sure, the ABCC made a mistake. Everyone does. But it was refreshing to see how quickly the mistake was acknowledged and corrected. A pat on the back goes to Grossman and others from this column for doing so.
The Northampton Brewery will hold another beer social on September 6 from 6-8 p.m. The event will feature Master Brewer Ben Roesch of Wormtown Brewing in Worcester (which would have been one of the breweries affected by the now-rescinded ABCC ruling). As usual at these beer socials, will be several beers from both breweries, accompanied by an array of food, featuring fresh produce from J.O.E.'s farm. The menu will be a collaboration between the brewery's current Head Chef Chris Ware and his replacement, Nate Wagner. (Ware is leaving to re-open Jake's, a legendary local breakfast spot that closed earlier this year.)
Slated to be on the menu are such treats as caramelized onion, goat cheese and duck pizza; drunken mussels (featuring Northampton's Belgian-inspired Bier de Boog); local bread and cheese table; and much more. As always, Northampton Head Brewer Donald Pacher will break out some special treats (vintage beers or a special cask). Roesch is supposedly bringing Wormtown's pumpkin ale. The cost for the whole shebang is $30, which also gets you a commemorative tasting glass. Call (413) 584-9903 for more information.


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At first glance, the Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant which opened up a few months ago on Azusa Ave. in Hacienda Heights is just one of a few hundred authentic Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. Yes, Mongolian Hot Pots are not as common as Hong Kong style cafes, but in the past decade there's been a healthy choice of restaurants of this genre that diners could patronize. But few restaurants have the intriguing past, as well the interesting future, associated with Little Sheep.
Little Sheep first came to my attention in 2003, when suddenly Dragon Regency Restaurant, a stalwart of Hong Kong style food for roughly two decades, was replaced by a new restaurant whose interior decor was a gigantic mural of the Chinese countryside with sheep roaming all over the landscape. This brand new Little Sheep restaurant, which introduced the Mongolian style hot pot to Los Angeles, was allegedly a branch of a famous restaurant chain in China. It proved to be a big hit, so much so that additional branches opened up in San Gabriel and on Azusa Ave. in Hacienda Heights.
Moving forward to 2007, a couple of interesting things happened. First, a poster on one of the Chowhound message boards noted that the main Little Sheep website in China did not mention any Los Angeles area branches, even though they did have a listing of their branches in North America. Subsequently, the Little Sheep locations in Monterey Park and San Gabriel both changed their names--the Monterey Park restaurant changed first to Little Fat Sheep and then Hot Pot! Hot Pot!, while San Gabriel became Sheep Young Young. The Hacienda Heights location closed down altogether. As it turns out, we had been punked. These were not really branches of the Chinese chain, but clever imposters.
Now this isn't the only time that locals have purportedly opened branches of famous Chinese restaurant chains. The Hui Lau Shan dessert restaurants in San Gabriel and New York not only stole the menu from the real chain, but they replicated the furniture from the real stores. A fake 85°C Tea House operated in San Gabriel until the real Chinese chain opened up in Irvine, and a fake Din Tai Fung has successfully operated in Toronto for many years. However, Little Sheep was an elaborate deception, which even fooled restaurant critics who routinely described the ersatz restaurants as being part of the Chinese chain.
But all that is in the past and now there is a real Little Sheep in Hacienda Heights, in the same shopping center but not the same exact space as the imposter from several years ago. But in the future, will there now be a Little Sheep on every corner? I just read in the New York Times that Little Sheep is going to be acquired by Yum Brands, parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Now this isn't totally off the wall, as the Little Sheep chain is hundreds strong in China. But as you know, besides independent freestanding locations, Yum Brands also operates mini-food courts having a KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut sharing space with each other. Do you think we'll be seeing Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot operations being added to these courts?


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Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Financial, Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Related to resources: natural resources
re·source(rē′sôrs′, -zôrs′, rĭ-sôrs′, -zôrs′)
1. Something that is available for use or that can be used for support or help: The local library is a valuable resource.
2. often resources An available supply, especially of money, that can be drawn on when needed.
3. The ability to deal with a difficult or troublesome situation effectively; resourcefulness: a person of resource.
4. A means that can be used to cope with a difficult situation; an expedient: needed all my intellectual resources for the exam.
a. resources The total means available for economic and political development, such as mineral wealth, labor force, and armaments.
b. resources The total means available to a company for increasing production or profit, including plant, labor, and raw material; assets.
c. Such means considered individually.
[Obsolete French, from Old French, from feminine past participle of resourdre, to rise again, from Latin resurgere : re-, re- + surgere, to rise; see surge.]
resources(rɪˈzɔːsɪz; rɪˈsɔːsɪz)
pl n
1. (Economics) sources of economic wealth, esp of a country (mineral, land, labour, etc) or business enterprise (capital, equipment, personnel, etc). See also natural resources
2. financial means; money
3. formal personal qualities such as intelligence, imagination, etc
The forces, materiel, and other assets or capabilities apportioned or allocated to the commander of a unified or specified command.


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Looking Back: Contributions needed after fire destroys dormitoryBy STAFF,
65 years ago, July 8, 1954
"Sidney Head and Bill Lampton of Columbia were named on the Dean's List for the second semester at Millsaps College. … Sidney Head is the son of Sidney Head of Mt. Olive and the late Mrs. Head of Columbia. Bill Lampton is the son of Mr. and Mrs. George Ben Lampton of Columbia."