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Looking at History
My blog looks at different aspects of history that interest me as well as commenting on political issues that are in the news
Arrogance, 'plebs' and politicians
Arrogance has always been a characteristic of politicians, the belief that they are right and always right. They will brook little dissent even in democratic systems of government: 'there is no Plan B'. In a deferential society this may not have been a problem largely because in return for deference from most in society, the political elite had a reciprocal responsibility of 'care' for those lower down the social ladder. Although this may have satisfied the middle-classes with aspirations to climb into the political elite and who, largely through pressure group politics, could exert some influence on the political elite but that was rarely the case with the urban working-classes largely divorced from the persistent deference of rural Britain. For the working-classes, there had already been what Thomas Carlyle called 'an abdication on the part of the governors' as the political elite removed the paternalistic legislation that protected working people from too much exploitation as 'gentlemanly capitalism' replaced any sense of social responsibility. Some sense of social responsibility may have remained, as fictionalised in Downton Abbey, for ones tenants and servants but this was already in terminal decline by the end of the First World War.
Conflict between classes was, and remains, an important feature of British society and in the last two decades this had been evident in the growing gap (however you construe it) between rich and poor and a declining ability of individuals to rise in society, something successive governments have failed to resolve despite the dramatic increase in places and entry into higher education. Keeping the poor in their place is still an important element of some political thinking especially on the political right. The rhetoric of aspiration is parroted by all political parties and bursaries demonstrate that paternalism is alive and kicking but the reality in most people's lives is very different and Britain is an increasingly divided society. There is an elite largely divorced from the lives of ordinary people who frequently do not recognise that their actions have consequences for society as a whole but that do not impinge on their own protected ways of life. That its actions often appear (and are) immoral or at least amoral but are not recognised as such by those involved is the clearest expression of the arrogance of power in society. Banks, for instance, have been shown to have acted immorally and, in some cases, illegally but for many higher level bankers this appears to have been perfectly justifiable and when they are called to account before parliamentary select committees they are, to be generous, circumspect in their understanding of the truth. Where economic prosperity and morality are in conflict it is prosperity that trumps morality every time.
Deference has decayed since the beginnings of the nineteenth century first among the working-classes and, post-1968, among the middle-classes as well and there has been a parallel growth of overt arrogance among politicians of all political colours and across all political institutions, whether local, regional, national or European. Politicians in the first half of the nineteenth century, for instance, may have regarded much of society as plebeian but recognised that, even though 'the plebs' were largely unenfranchised, their aspirations and concerns needed to be taken into account and acted on to prevent the revolutions that characterised much of continental Europe and that the burgeoning middle-classes needed to be brought within the 'hallowed' circles of political power. This sense of connection no longer exists and politicians are regarded as self-serving, money-grubbing parasites who have no real answers to society's problems but are quite prepared to enrich themselves while the rest of society flounders. Whether or not Andrew Mitchell actually used the term 'pleb' is less important than the perception that his actions demonstrates that the notion 'we are all in this together' is palpably untrue. The idea that 'we know best' and an overweening sense of social hubris have never been a solid foundation on which to build effective political power and, as the Romans recognised early in their republic, the patricians in society ignore the plebs at their peril.
Posted by Richard Brown at 11:49 No comments: Links to this post
Labels: Politics and News
Reflections on E. H. Carr's What is History?
E. H. Carr's What is History? was first published in 1961 and remains in print today regarded, whether you agree with him or not, as a 'classic' of its genre. It has, after all, sold over a quarter of a million copies since its first publication, and with good reason. I read it first when studying O Levels and later an undergraduate and on several occasions since. Its droll and incisive prose elegantly attacked the kind of history being taught at school and university that was dominated by high politics and diplomacy, bereft of theory and entirely unaware that it might be serving some kind of ideological or political purpose. This was not lost on the vibrant 'school' of English Marxist historians, who began to publish widely in the 1960s, after most of them had left the Communist Party in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Hungary and devoted themselves to building up the intellectual foundations of the 'New Left'. Historians such as Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Eric Hobsbawm, George Rudé and Edward Thompson did far more to undermine historical orthodoxy in the eyes of those of us who entered the hallowed walls of academe in 1968 than did the godly figure of Sir Lewis Namier, whose work we were supposed to admire as the ultimate in historical scholarship. Today we remember Thompson and his ilk, while Namier whose star flamed so brilliantly and as it turned out briefly is all but forgotten and few of his works remain in print.
Having read What is History?, I looked forward to reading his study of A History of the Soviet Union. It proved a disappointing, turgid experience. In the end he completed fourteen massive tomes that were full of information but simply dull. There were occasional sparks of brilliance as, for instance, in the character sketches of Bolshevik leaders at the beginning of Socialism in One Country but none of the wit, humour and vivacity of What is History? Jonathan Haslam's perceptive biography of Carr makes it clear that he was two different people. [1] On the one hand, Carr was a journalist, sometime deputy editor of The Times, regular writer for the national press, broadcaster and reviewer. What is History? was obviously written by Carr the journalist and was drafted on a sea-journey from England to San Francisco, far from any libraries or archives. Then there was Carr the bureaucrat and A History of Soviet Russia on the other hand was clearly written by the man who had been a civil servant for so long that he instinctively identified with government (of whatever political hue) and was interested almost exclusively in what went into the making of policy. The History, despite getting the story right, reads like an extensive civil service minute devoid of drama and agency. Yet the two books were linked by Carr's insistence that historians should only be interested in causes of historical events because their explanation served the making of policy in the future.
Edward Hallett Carr (1892-1982)
Like many books that are written quickly and originated as lectures, What is History? is fluent in style, something often missing in more considered works and certainly in the History. It contains numerous examples of real historians and from real history books to illustrate his argument it is proposing and in contrast to most introductions to history, it addresses its readers as equals. It is witty, amusing and entertaining even when it tackles the most intractable theoretical problems. It still retains after sixty years its power to provoke. It tackles fundamental questions not just of history but also of politics and ethics. It deals with big topics, and deals with them in a masterly fashion backed by substantial references to historians, philosophers, writers and thinkers. Part of the seductive appeal of What is History? lies in its effortless display of learning. What is History? is important for many reasons, especially Carr's insistence that 'History is a process, and you cannot isolate a bit of process and study it on its own - everything is completely interconnected' . It is the job of historians to study whatever part of the past they chose to examine in the context both of what came before and after it, and in the context of the interconnections between their subject and its wider context. Above all, Carr reiterated that, whether we like it not, there is always a subjective element in historical writing. Historians are people of their time, with views and assumptions about the world that they cannot remove from their writing and research, even if they can hope to restrain them. It is in this respect that Carr has been most influential and his views most widely accepted by historians. For this reason, if no other, his work will endure.
[1] Haslam, Jonathan, The Vices of Integrity: E.H. Carr 1892-1982, (Verso), 1999, pp. 192-217, for his discussion of the writing and reception of What is History?, .
Labels: What is History?
Nineteenth century social history
Those of you who follow my blogs on nineteenth century British social history might like to know that modified and more recent versions of the blogs are available as a series of Kindle books. They have been published in two formats . As five single volumes:
Economy, Population and Transport
Work, Health and Poverty
Education, Crime and Leisure
Or as a single volume: Society under Pressure: Britain 1830-1914. In addition, a supplementary volume Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain 1830-1918 has also been published in both print and Kindle versions.
All of these volumes are available at the click of a mouse from Amazon sites in the UK, Europe and North America and are now also available in India.
Labels: Books, Nineteenth century society, Nineteenth Century Women
Changing courses or the rubbishing of GCESs
People have been rubbishing GCSEs since they were first proposed in the 1980s: the two tier system of O Levels and CSE was better they maintained so why introduce something new, employers don't want it and neither do parents and many schools. Yet, at least initially, it did garner some support especially in schools where heads of department no longer had to make the invidious decision over which exam to enter students for. By the late 1990s, however, a process of systematic rubbishing of GCSEs began and has continued with increasing ferocity until radical reform became inevitable. You might have thought that politicians would have welcomed increasingly improving national examination performance but you would be wrong. Comparison with O Levels suggested that GCSEs were easier and that grades had been inflated to allow incremental improvement in performance. The buzz words became 'lack of rigour' and grade inflation. As far as politicians of all parties are concerned the current system is discredited, a situation aided by the introduction of the modular approach that allows students to re-sit and improve their marks. Yet reform will not occur until after the election in 2015 with students not taking the new examination until 2017 with four years of students continuing to take something that is now regarded as discredited!
Until tomorrow it is unclear precisely what form the new examination will take. What we do know is that there will be no return to the two tier system and there will be an emphasis on a singly end-of-year exam. Mr Clegg had suggested that reform will do three simple things:
Firstly give parents confidence in the exams their children are taking, secondly raise standards for all our children in schools in the country but thirdly and crucially not exclude any children from the new exam system.
Finally, its introduction is not going to be rushed: a good thing given the disastrous experience of the last government in introducing reforms at Advanced Level. These are all positive things though there may be difficulties in applying end-of-year examinations effectively to all subjects. The production of a portfolio in Art, for instance, could well be retained as part of the assessment even if coursework disappears in other subjects. There is also still the unresolved issue of the equivalence of vocational courses that provide motivation for students for whom academic courses have little resonance.
The critical issue is whether reform will improve 'standards'. The difficulty is that standards are rarely defined precisely and have acquired a rhetorical character than far exceeds their actual nature. To reiterate a point I've made on several occasions about the crucial C/D divide: the standard for achieving a grade C, though not absolute, should be a defined standard that remains unchanged for say a five year period. If 55 per cent is the pass mark for grade C one year, there is no logical reason (though their may be a statistical one if you want to limit the numbers achieving it) why the same mark should not apply the following year. It would then be known and consistent over that five year period. Politicians could then say with confidence, standards have improved or not; parents and employers could have confidence in the system and students (remember them, the ones seemingly forgotten in all the rhetoric) would know where they stood. Reform may be necessary but if badly handled we'll just be back into the old and seemingly perennial behaviour of the last half century of rubbishing the examination system.
Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885, Volume 2: The Irish, the Fenians and the Metis
In less than fifty years Canada experienced six major rebellions: in Lower and Upper Canada in late 1837 and 1838, the Fenian rebellions of 1866 and 1870 and the Pembina affair in 1871 and Louis Riel's resistance at Red River in 1869-1870 and his rebellion fifteen years later in Saskatchewan. Each failed to achieve its aims and, in one sense, the two books in the Canadian Rebellion series are studies of political disappointment. The second volume, The Irish, the Fenians and the Metis, considers the impact of the Irish diaspora on the United States and Canada and the rebellions led largely by Irish-American Fenians in the 1860s and 1870s and also the rebellions, led by Louis Riel in 1869-1870 and 1885, by the Metis.
Chapter 1 examines the Irish diaspora to North America during the nineteenth century and focuses especially on the impact of the Famine in the 1840s and 1850s. Chapter 2 considers at the ways in which Irish nationalism maintained a strong political presence in the United States and Canada from the beginning of the nineteenth century and the emergence of the Fenian Brotherhood in New York in 1858. The political impact of this movement was both enhanced and restricted by the American Civil War between 1861 and 1865 yet the Fenians emerged in April 1865 as a powerful, if increasingly divided, force with concrete plans for the liberation of Ireland. Chapter 3 explores in detail at the three Irish-American Fenian incursions into Canada in 1866, 1870 and briefly and debatably in 1871, the impact that they had on Canadian and American politics and how this led to changes in Irish nationalism in the 1870s. Chapters 4 and 5 extend the story geographically beyond Quebec and Ontario across the continent to the unchartered and largely unsettled prairies of the North-West. The importance of rebellion in state-building in Canada is considered in the final chapter.
Series Preface
1 Famine and Diaspora
2 Irish Nationalism in North America to 1865
3 Rebellions in Canada, 1866, 1870 and 1871
4 Riel and Resistance, 1869-1870
5 Riel and Rebellion, 1885
6 A Contested Consensus
Appendix: Who ran colonial government?
Comprehensive narrative and analysis of the context causes, course and results of the rebellions including analysis of constitutional, political, social, economic and cultural influences
Discusses the effects of the Irish Famine and the resulting emigration to the United States and Canada
Examines the influence of nationalism on political developments in the United States and Canada
Considers the role played by individuals such as John Mahony, Louis Riel and John A. Macdonald on the development of competing political agendas
Examines the rebellions in their historiographical context
Posted by Richard Brown at 19:03 1 comment: Links to this post
Labels: Books, Canadian History
Macquarie: opposition and reform
Macquarie's support of emancipists resulted in sustained opposition almost from the beginning of his governorship. Early in 1810 the senior chaplain, Samuel Marsden[1], refused outright to serve with the emancipist justices, Simeon Lord[2] and Andrew Thompson on the turnpike board for the new Parramatta Road. In 1811, Macquarie flatteringly named a street in Parramatta after Marsden, but despite Wilberforce's attempts to mediate there was further controversy between them in 1814, and finally in January 1818 Marsden was summoned to Government House and denounced as a 'secret enemy'. Since the chaplain probably had more influential friends in England than any other colonist he proved a dangerous antagonist. Jeffery Hart Bent, judge of the Supreme Court created under the new Charter of Justice granted in 1814 also proved a vehement opponent.[3] He kept his court closed rather than admit ex-convict attorneys to practise even though there was only one free lawyer in the colony. The governor's growing rift with both Bent brothers led to their recall. Ellis Bent died before this decision arrived, but his brother returned to England and assisted H.G. Bennet in mounting the campaign against Macquarie in the House of Commons that led to the appointment of a select committee on gaols and of John Thomas Bigge as commissioner to enquire into the affairs of the colony.
Macquarie's emancipist policy also led to his falling out with his old friend of Indian days, Colonel George Molle[4], who arrived with the 46th Regiment early in 1814 as lieutenant-governor. Soon after their arrival Molle and his officers complained of high prices and asked for higher pay. They disliked the favour shown by Macquarie to the emancipists, whom they excluded from the regimental mess, even in cases when the governor looked on them with favour. In 1816, William Charles Wentworth insulted Molle in a 'pipe' or lampoon. Next year, during the investigation of its authorship, some of the officers of the regiment insulted Macquarie in his turn, and he felt that his 'old and Much liked Acquaintance' Molle, on whose 'Friendship and Candour' he had relied, had not seriously tried to check the opposition of his juniors to the governor. Molle insisted that D'Arcy Wentworth, William's father, was responsible for his son's libels and demanded that he be court-martialled. To end all this bickering, Macquarie asked that the regiment be removed. Fortunately in August 1817 the 48th arrived to relieve it and Molle left for Madras the following month.
In 1817, concern was expressed by Lord Bathurst, Secretary of State for the Colonies, that Governor Macquarie's humane and liberal policies were undermining the effectiveness of the transportation system as a means of criminal punishment. As a result, John Thomas Bigge was appointed to inquire into the overall effectiveness of the system, with sweeping inquisitional powers. It was clear that Macquarie as much as the transportation system was under scrutiny. From his arrival in the colony in 1819, Bigge's relations with Macquarie were strained. Bigge felt that Macquarie's public works policy was 'absurd' and they disagreed on Macquarie's appointment on 1819 of William Redfern[5], an emancipist, as a magistrate. Bigge could not see the advantages in either the aims or achievements of Macquarie's emancipist policy. The basic difference between Bigge and Macquarie was that they saw NSW in different ways. Macquarie viewed it as 'a Penitentiary or Asylum on a Grand Scale' though he believed that one day it must be one of the greatest and most flourishing Colonies belonging to the British Empire'. By contrast, Bigge was influenced by people such as John Macarthur who saw its potential as a free settlement and wool growing area. Tension turned to antipathy and Bigge found himself more in sympathy with the exclusives of the squattocracy than with the Governor. Bigge was assiduous in assembling evidence in NSW and VDL, but he was far from judicial and impartial in the conclusions he drew. His analysis was unfairly prejudicial of an administration superior to any previously known in the colony that enjoyed widespread popular support among the inhabitants. By that time Macquarie had resigned.
Bigge's reports were important for the future constitutional and political development of Australia. He emphasised that the population of the colony had grown enormously and now included many free settlers. His three reports, published in 1822 and 1823, questioned the autocratic style of government that had existed since Governor Phillip's administration. [6] Collectively they prompted the insertion in the New South Wales Act (4 Geo. IV, c. 96) of clauses to set up limited constitutional government through a Legislative Council, to establish VDL as a separate colony, to enable extensive legal reforms and to make new provisions for the reception of convicts from England. Bigge's first report, The State of the Colony of New South Wales, focused on four principal themes: general colonial conditions, the convict system, relations between social classes and Macquarie's programme of public works. Much was made of the alleged mismanagement of convicts but Bigge was unconcerned that the convict system was working better than ever before in the colony, that Macquarie's methods had produced and maintained 'peace if not harmony' and that he had ended most brutality and violence. Bigge also criticised Macquarie's emancipist policy and disapproved of the standing emancipists were allowed in society. He thought the governor's building programme was wastefully expensive and used his authority to discontinue some projects and to make changes in the construction and intended use of other buildings. Macquarie's opinion that the report 'gave no knowledge of the present state of the colony' was justified by the commissioner's lack of balance. Bigge failed adequately to explain the colony's history or contrast the orderly society that he found to the virtual anarchy existing just before Macquarie took office. While Bigge properly exposed inefficiency in district constables, theft of government medical stores, flaws in the ticket-of-leave system for convicts, inadequacies of country education, poor accommodation for female convicts, faulty regulation of liquor traffic and a multitude of similar defects, he failed to account for the very real achievements of government.
If the first report was candid, the second report, The Judicial Establishments of New South Wales and of Van Diemen's Land, was evasive and indirect. Its analysis of the colonial legal establishments was superficial and he reserved his most valuable conclusions for private dispatch to Bathurst. Bigge's supplementary instructions allowed him to report privately on matters of this kind but, having elected to do so, he allowed the public report to become a vehicle of insidious attack on Governor Macquarie. In his public report, he relied on statements by Mr Justice Barron Field[7] and Judge-Advocate (Sir) John Wylde[8] disparaging Macquarie but privately admitted that he placed little confidence in either of these officers. Bigge's lengthy treatment of the old libel case Marsden v. Campbell was calculated to discredit Macquarie since John Campbell had been the governor's secretary from 1810 to 1821.[9] Most of the recommendations in the report affecting the civil jurisdiction originated from Field and, while Bigge deserved some credit for suggesting reforms in criminal jurisdiction, his part in framing the reconstitution of the courts in 1824 was comparatively small. He simply supported submissions of the colonial lawyers, and especially the earlier recommendations of Judge-Advocate Ellis Bent.[10] Bigge opposed popular demands for legal redress, refused to approve the introduction of jury trial or the modification of the military tribunals that composed the criminal courts. Bigge was the first lawyer of any distinction in the colony yet made surprisingly little personal contribution to founding a sound legal system. His concern was to draw attention to Macquarie's abuses of his limited legislative and prerogative powers and to condemn the governor's 'insensibility to the controlling power of the law'. Like so much of his analyses, it was correct in terms of the letter of the statute book, but was unrealistically applied to a colony where the rule of law was still in an embryonic form.
The third report, The State of Agriculture and Trade in the Colony of New South Wales, was the most impartial and least contentious. It afforded a generally clear picture of farming and grazing in the Sydney district and west of the Blue Mountains. It did not sufficiently acknowledge the important developments of the Illawarra district and tended to suggest incorrectly that agriculture had stagnated under Macquarie. Otherwise it was well presented and included useful accounts of the state of revenue, trade and the country's economic position.
Macquarie was the first to see beyond the limits of the convict settlement or the opportunities for self-enrichment that had characterised the early colony. His vision, by 1821, was shown in a public building and town-planning programme that had established a solid infrastructure for the colony. Exploration had reached deep into the inland and settlement and agriculture were following, north and south along the coastline and inland beyond Bathurst. Agriculture was, in fact, creating the conditions for the colony to become almost economically self-sufficient. The non-Aboriginal population of the colony including VDL was approximately 37,000, of whom at least 8,000 were free settlers or had been born in the colony. However, frustration and recurring bouts of illness led him to submit his resignation on several occasions. A serious illness in 1819 almost proved fatal, and the pressures of Bigge's commission of inquiry into the state of the colony reinforced his desire to end his term of office and return home to defend the charges made against his administration. Finally at the end of 1820, he learned that his third application for resignation had been accepted though it was not until 12 February 1822 that he and his wife and son departed for England. Macquarie had converted NSW from a rebellion-torn penitentiary to a settlement of substance. His broad sense of justice and humanity was radical by Georgian standards and was expressed in his willingness to readmit emancipated convicts to society without regard for their past.
By 1822, a colony created by transportation had begun to evolve away from its penal origins. Although free settlers had begun to arrive in the colony in the early 1790s, it was not until after 1815 that in both NSW and VDL, there was sustained growth and new land was brought into cultivation.[11] Constitutionally, NSW was founded as an autocracy run by the Governor, although the early governors effectively ruled by consent, with the advice of military officers, officials and leading settlers and exercised their powers within the restraints of British law. By the early 1820s, it was widely believed that the deterrent effect of transportation had declined and there had been a blurring between the respective positions of emancipists and free settlers. Bigge's reports sought to restore transportation as 'an object of real terror' by calling for greater severity in the treatment of convicts, an end to free grants of land at the end of their sentences and a continuance of their subordinate status by not admitting them to positions of social responsibility. For Bigge, the future of the colony lay with the free settlers who would possess the land, employ the convicts and produce wool. Free immigration was no longer incidental to the purposes of settlement and this meant that the autocratic system needed to be modified and a system of government more suitable for free subjects of the Crown introduced. This, for Bigge, meant a legislature to curb the autocratic tendencies of governors and a judicial system that safeguarded the rule of law. This restraint on rule by decree exacerbated the existing tensions between exclusives and emancipists and opened up a three-way contest for power between successive governors and these two groups that dominated colonial politics until the 1850s.
[1] Yarwood, A.T., 'Marsden, Samuel (1765-1838)', ADB, Vol. 2, pp. 207-212.
[2] Hainsworth, D.R., 'Lord, Simeon (1771-1840)', ADB, Vol. 2, pp. 128-131.
[3] On conflict between Macquarie and the Bent brothers, see
[4] Macmillan, David S., 'Molle, George James (1773-1823)', ADB, Vol. 2, p. 243.
[5] Ford, Edward, 'Redfern, William (1774-1833)', ADB, Vol. 2, pp. 368-371.
[6] Bigge's Reports were printed in three volumes. Vol. 1: The State of the Colony of New South Wales, The House of Lords, (Papers 119), printed, 5 August 1822, facs ed., Adelaide, 1966; Vol. 2: The State of Agriculture and Trade in the Colony of New South Wales, The House of Lords, (Paper 119), printed, 4 July, 1823, facs ed., Adelaide, 1971; and, Vol. 3: The Judicial Establishments of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Lands, The House of Lords, (Paper 118), printed, 4 July 1823, facs ed., Adelaide, 1966. See also Ritchie, J., (ed.), The Evidence to the Bigge Reports: New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 2 Vols. Melbourne, 1971 and Bennett, J.M., 'Bigge, John Thomas (1780-1843)', ADB, Vol. 1, pp. 99-100.
[7] Currey, C.H., 'Field, Barron (1786-1846)', ADB, Vol. 1, pp. 373-376.
[8] Mckay, R.J., 'Wylde, Sir John (1781-1859)', ADB, Vol. 2, pp. 627-628.
[9] Holder, R.F., 'Campbell, John Thomas (1770?-1830)', ADB, Vol. 1, pp. 199-201. The 'Philo Free' letter, was published on 4 January 1817 in the Sydney Gazette, of which Campbell was official censor. This elaborately sarcastic review of the missionary activities of the 'Christian Mahomet' of the South Seas was obviously directed at Samuel Marsden who instituted a criminal charge against Campbell. He was found guilty of allowing the libel to appear, but no sentence was passed. Marsden then brought successful civil action and obtained £200 damages. Campbell, in his official apology sent to the Colonial Office by the governor, said that the 'hasty and inconsiderate Letter' was inspired by his indignation at Marsden's 'marked disrespect' to the governor's orders in not attending the meeting of Aboriginals at Parramatta a few days before. Undoubtedly this indignation had been growing for some time over the clergyman's open defiance of and devious attacks on the governor's authority and policy.
[10] See Judge-Advocate Bent to Under-Secretary Cooke, 7 May 1810 and Judge-Advocate Bent to Earl Liverpool, 19 October 1811, HRNSW, Vol. 7, pp. 310-377, 621-630.
[11] In 1809, there were an estimated 300 free settlers in NSW and VDL though this figure does not include children. By 1820, there were 1,307 free immigrants.
Labels: Australia
Shuffling the pack or how not to change your ministers
Ministerial reshuffles are always a mixed bag. Sometimes it's a case of rearranging the chairs on the Titanic while occasionally reshuffles represent the beginning of a new direction in policy. Yesterday's reshuffle was neither of these. Although the government is, not surprisingly mid-term, languishing in the polls, it has yet the achieve the Titanic status of the last Labour government. Despite the many comments that this was a re-launch of the government, it resembles the beginning of part 2 of a drama (or tragedy depending on your viewpoint). Part 1 was reform, part 2 presentation and delivery so there remains a continuity of policy but no new direction (well in most areas). The only problem with this approach is that if the policies are wrong, presenting them in a more dynamic way to the public makes little difference.
There are, however, several things that were significant about the changes in ministerial briefs. First, they demonstrate a weakness at the heart of government. The top posts have not changed at all: Osborne remains Chancellor, Hague at the Foreign Office and May at the Home Office and Duncan-Smith would not accept a move to the Ministry of Justice. No 'night of the long knives' here. Secondly, where there were changes at the higher level of government, the moves were concerned with moving the reform agenda on to its delivery stage. With Hunt replacing Lansley at Health you have a presenter replacing a thinker even if his thoughts on health do not have significant support among professionals or public. At Transport, it appears that Justine Greening has been moved for stating government policy on the third runway at Heathrow and replaced by an established politician whose constituency will not be compromised if (or more likely when) the government alters its policy. Finally, there has been promotion for some of the 2010 intake that represents a shift to an even more free-trade, market oriented, small state approach to policy.
The critical question is whether this really matters to people outside the Westminster bubble. Most of those promoted, even to relatively senior positions, are largely unknown outside Parliament. Will replacing Baroness Warsi with Grant Shapps or the lamentable decision to bring back David Lawes after his period in purdah actually make any difference to the general public? Well, no. It is clear that policies are not going to change and that the government intended to deliver (or not) them in the next thirty months. At one level this is a commendable position to take, develop your policy and then implement it. However, there is always a danger of not having (or at least not publicising) a Plan B since policies can be thrown off-course is things beyond government's control. There is always a joker in the pack!
Examinations, justice and persistent change
GCSE examinations should be 'thoroughly overhauled' Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, said on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. Few would disagree with him especially those students whose futures may have been blighted by the failure of the system in English this summer. Never in all my years' teaching have I witnessed such an obvious case of injustice in examinations. It's nothing to do with rigour or the weasel words of the head of Ofqual that those in January were just lucky to have the grade boundary between C and D ten points lower than in the summer. Yes students do get grade D when they are predicted, perhaps too optimistically, a grade C, often a crude belief in hope over expectation but what has occurred is, by any definition of the term, unjust.
I must admit I have never fully understood why grade boundaries have to change year on year (and it should be year on year) unless you are statistically seeking to limit the number of people who get particular grades. If it is right that a student who scores 55 per cent gets a grade C one year, then I can see no reason why a student who gets 55 per cent the following year should not also get a grade C. Although it's been my experience in an option subject that some years are 'better' than others, over say a five year period the relative ability of students levelled out. The only way you can really judge whether one cohort of students has done better or worse than the previous cohort is for the grade boundaries that do not change each year. There is no reason why after grade boundaries set at one level should not be pushed up after a period of time as a means of encouraging progress but this should be known in advance so that teachers can prepare their students and students know what they have to achieve to achieve the omnipresent grade C. In that way you would have identifiable and known standards at GCSE.
This begs the question of whether we now need GCSE at all and, if we do, where it fits in the evaluation of student progress. With the increase of the education leaving age at 18, there is a case for examinations at 18+, whether A Levels, vocational qualifications or achievement in apprenticeships as the medium through which schools are judged not GCSEs. There is also a case for examination of students in all subjects at 11, 14, 16 and 18 but only if the aim of those evaluations is to be able to demonstrate how individual students have progressed. I would much rather see a school judged, not by the percentage of students who get five A*-C including Maths and English, by the percentage of those students who have shown progress over their performance in the previous evaluation.
Sir Michael may be right when he says that 'Our youngsters, when they leave school, will be going into a global marketplace, they [just how many is unclear]have to compete not just against competitors here but the rest of the world' but they won't do so if the curriculum and examinations keep changing. Neither will the persistent rhetoric from politicians that they intend to reverse 'dumbing down' that they initiated in the first place. Mr Cameron said in the Mail on Sunday that there would be 'no more excuses for failure in schools, no more soft exams and soft discipline'. Careful for what you wish for David, the apple never falls far from the tree! It little behoves politicians with their rhetoric of success and the reality of failure to lecture the public on what they will or not accept.
Christopher Moore's History News
History of twitterstorians
Chartist Ancestors Blog
Chartism Day 2019: from electoral strategy to votes for women, via loaded juries and Yorkshire miners
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The Mystery of DB Cooper
One afternoon a day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a guy calling himself Dan Cooper (the media mistakenly called him D.B. Cooper) boarded Northwest Airlines flight #305 in Portland bound for Seattle. He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie and was described as a business-executive type. While in the air, he opened his briefcase showing a bomb to the flight attendant and hijacked the plane. The plane landed in Seattle where he demanded 200K in cash, four parachutes, and food for the crew before releasing all the passengers. With only three pilots and one flight attendant left on board, they took off from Seattle with the marked bills heading south while it was dark and lightly raining. In the 45 minutes after takeoff, Cooper sent the flight attendant to the cockpit while donning the parachute, tied the bank bag full of twenty dollar bills to himself, lowered the rear stairs and somewhere north of Portland jumped into the night. When the plane landed with the stairs down, they found the two remaining parachutes and on the seat Cooper was sitting in, a black tie.
Jets, a helicopter and a C-130 aircraft had been scrambled from the closest air force base to follow Cooper's plane. The military was called in days after the hijacking and approximately 1,000 troops searched the suspected jump zone on foot and in helicopters. The Boeing 727 used in the hijacking was flown out over the ocean and the stairs lowered and weights dropped in an attempt to determine when Cooper jumped. The SR-71 super-secret spy plane was sent in to photograph the entire flight path but no sign of D.B. Cooper was ever discovered.
Nine years later in 1980 just north of Portland on the Columbia River, a young boy named Brian Ingram was digging a fire pit in the sand at a place called Tena Bar. He uncovered three bundles of cash a couple of inches below the surface, with rubber bands still intact. There was a total of $5800, the Cooper serial numbers matched, and the first evidence since 1971 came to light. The FBI searched and analyzed the beach, the river was dredged by Cooper Hunters, and the theories on how the money got there supercharged the Legend of D.B. Cooper.
Colm Flynn reports for RTÉ Radio 1 in Ireland.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The labor required from Mr. Wright is simply immense. You ought to come to Chicago and spend two or three days in his office and you would then better understand how they are able to arrive at, and create such homes. Mr. Wright showed me several sheets of paper on which he had been drawing designs for the glass for your barn [carriage house], and had only just arrived at what he wanted. Any one of the designs that he had discarded would have satisfied an ordinary man, and only he knows when the thing is right or wrong, and unless he gets it right he keeps on trying.
It is the same throughout the house. His tracing cloth shows the results of his labors, as it is ragged in many places where changes have been made repeatedly.
Later, Wright himself would say "an architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking bar at the site." Fortunately, not all of Wright's experimental sketches for the Martin carriage house glass design were erased: one variation of the window design remains, on the same sheet with the ultimate design (below).


text:
Raymundo Arenas – AXA Mexico
Insurance attorney sees litigation as a last resort
Written by: David Harry
Produced by: Diana Carrillo
He's a veteran litigator managing cases for one of Mexico's largest insurers, but Raymundo Arenas freely admits the last place he wants to be on company business is a court room.
Following advice from his mentor, John F. Munger, to be "a fearless advocate and courteous foe," Arenas strives to settle claims and legal matters long before anyone appears in front of a judge.
Raymundo Arenas | Head of Litigation | AXA Mexico
Arenas is the head of litigation for AXA Mexico, and when he chatted with Vanguard near the close of 2020, he noted that more legal challenges are on the horizon for his company and industry as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Insurance is a trust business," he says. "People trust their cars, homes and businesses to the company, and what they expect is the company honors the contract when a loss occurs."
Still, the bounds of trust may be stretched. Pandemic-related economic damages have occurred throughout the economy and companies are seeking relief.
"I am involved in complex litigation; it's large and sensitive," Arenas says. "I'm also involved directly with operation teams working in complex cases, to be sure, from the legal standpoint, whether there is an obligation to pay or not."
Going any distance
From its beginnings as a mutual insurer in Normandy, France, in 1958, AXA has become a global provider of property, casualty, individual and group life insurance, as well as asset management. The company began operating in Mexico in 2008.
Arenas joined AXA Mexico in 2011 as a legal counsel, bringing commercial law and litigation experience from his work in Mexico and the U.S. What he did not bring was a wealth of industry knowledge, he concedes. While he may be ahead of many auto policyholders in that he read the policy, that was also the extent of his industry knowledge.
That changed quickly as he and his team of seven attorneys focused on claims disputes and questions about what policies specifically covered. The team also took on potential fraud cases when needed. It's not always pleasant work, but Arenas must still verify claims.
"In those ways, I participate on avoiding litigation and making a strong settlement," he says.
Though AXA insures customers throughout Mexico, one of the biggest professional challenges Arenas faced crossed the border into the U.S. to break paradigms on where cases could be heard and how legal documents could be delivered during the discovery phase.
In 2019, AXA was the plaintiff in a civil action where the defendant was a Mexican citizen and resident of Texas, Arenas explains. The defendant was elusive and attempted to evade service before moving to dismiss the case in the U.S. and move it to Mexico.
Working with outside counsel, Arenas and AXA served the defendant via text messages, which Arenas called a creative and unprecedented method. In addition, AXA obtained an injunction enjoining the defendant from transferring any of his assets in the U.S. and prevailed in opposing the motion to dismiss.
"It was quite technical," he says. "The most difficult thing was to convince a judge why this case should be tried in the United States and not in Mexico. It was not easy, and we continue in this fight."
Awards and initiatives
The kind of innovative thinking that went into the fight to deliver discovery documents to a defendant who wished to remain undiscovered, while fighting to keep the case in the U.S., has not gone unnoticed, Arenas adds.
In fact, he and his staff were also celebrating being named the top litigation team in Latin America by legal news publishers, Lexology, as part of its annual Global Counsel Awards.
"It was very satisfying that a prestigious firm, such as Lexology, looked at us as a 'best in class team,'" Arenas notes. "My colleagues were very proud of this recognition and very motivated to continue working on getting things done."
But as he is quick to point out, they're not basking in the glory when there's still work to be done. This includes an ongoing project with AXA's operations team to improve how the units work together with a new system set to launch in January 2021.
It's an approach Arenas says is designed so AXA Mexico can be there when its customers are most in need. As part of the effort, his legal team is also reviewing processes to prevent disputes, with new key performance indicators that identify root causes of disputes and litigation.
"AXA is changing the operating model to follow its mission to better protect more Mexicans," he summarizes. "The goal is to align strategies and operations. We're focused on simplicity and efficiency."
Learning to litigate
Born and raised in Sonora, Mexico, Arenas initially chose a law career "for the ideal of justice," but as he pursued his law degree at Universidad La Salle Noroeste A.C., he became more and more interested in how law applies to business, too.
While working for the law degree he earned in 2005, he was a paralegal, then joined Urrea Abogados in 2004 and became an associate attorney after graduation.
This marked the start of his litigation career as he worked on civil and commercial matters that included family law, real estate, contracts, and estates and trusts.
A desire to broaden his expertise brought Arenas to the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where he earned his Master of Law degree in international trade and business law in 2009.
His studies also brought the opportunity to learn about U.S. law as an attorney with the Tucson, Arizona, firm of Munger Chadwick PLC. Though not yet licensed to practice, he did legal research and analysis while preparing memoranda and other legal documents.
There, founding partner John F. Munger mentored Arenas, imparting lessons he'd take back to Mexico, most especially about the demeanor needed to settle cases.
Sought in part for his international experience, Arenas joined AXA Mexico as legal counsel in March 2011, coordinating and overseeing non claims-related litigation while advising business units on contract, corporate and real estate law.
He became litigation manager for claims in April 2016 and head of litigation in November 2017.
"I am a litigation director and many good and bad things can be said about this position," Arenas concludes. "We contribute to AXA's mission by avoiding litigation and doing it only when necessary. Unfortunately, there are times when we must tell clients that their request is invalid, because we must take care of all clients by preventing deviations in individual cases."
regions: Latin America
categories: Insurance, Latin America
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Oscar Ortiz – Brightstar Mexico
Renee Robles – Nike Mexico
Javier Oroz Coppel – AXA México
Karla Baez Elizondo – Grupo Idesa
Alma Hawk – AT&T Mexico
Alvaro Gutierrez – RB
Mañón Quintana Abogados S.C.
De la Garza & Acosta
Sánchez-Saldaña & García Sánchez


Pollentia Rentals work with various bike hire companies around the north of Mallorca. We can have your bike delivered to your villa ready for your arrival. From relaxing quality town bikes, tag-alongs to top-end road bikes for more serious cyclists.
Book your car hire through us and receive preferential rates. Cars are available locally or from the airport.
Want a break from cooking? We can provide excellent chefs for your entire holiday or just for a special occasion. Ask about our recommended chefs who offer everything from BBQ evenings, paella, tapas, gourmet nights and home from home cooking. Cooked in your villa or delivered ready to eat.
Everyone needs a break. Especially parents! We can help match you with friendly, fun and fully qualified nannies for your entire holiday, ad hoc days or evenings. This is a very popular service, so book early, especially in peak season.
We partner with Pollensa Care who are experts in providing specialist nursing care for your holiday. Making it a holiday for all of you.
Enjoy meals out guilt-free by booking a session with a local personal trainer. We can recommend coaches who offer classes at your villa – either one-on-one or for your whole party. Or join a local boot camp or yoga class in Pollensa! Ask for details.


If wine could smile, the Sextant Wheelhouse would always be ready for its close-up. A vibrant profile features wild strawberry and raspberry signatures as spice and earthy tones appear on the mid-palate. The finish is smooth, laced with a hint of satisfying tartness. While so enjoyable by itself on a care-free afternoon, it's also quite versatile to pair with dishes later in the evening: barbecued tri-tip, roasted artichokes, spicy Thai beef on a bed of lemon grass, or French onion soup dripping with Swiss Gruyère. Simply uncork at dinner parties then listen to the raves amongst grateful smiling faces.
Our flagship Zinfandel is sourced entirely from RBZ Vineyard, our estate vineyard in the El Pomar District of Paso Robles. Blended with 15% Petite Syrah for color, and 9% Syrah for a savory edge we aged this wine for 20 months in a mix of French, Hungarian, and American oak barrels.


text:
Bălești is a commune located in Vrancea County, Muntenia, Romania. It is composed of a single village, Bălești.

References

Communes in Vrancea County
Localities in Muntenia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: cordova/phonegap app - load js css and html from server I'm developing an cordova app for Android which has a lot of logic (js) and design (html/css) same as my web application. I want to share these assets among web app and android app. Now I had compiled all these js and css in apk, but when some code is changed, I have to prepare an update and put in the play store. If it would be possible to load code and css from server after app started, it would reduce need for upgrading. Is there any way?
I'm considering loading shared resources via ajax and dynamically creating stylesheets and scripts in DOM, but maybe there is better approach, isn't it?

A: You could download the files from server every time, but i think that is not what you want because it would not be availibe offline at all and if the app it big and the connection bad it will take much time to download.
a better way is to download the files if they change. you can do that with FileTransfer.download() yourself or use a ready solution like the cordova-standalone-hydration
BUT your app will not be accepted by for example Apple because they deny an app with code they can not check

A: I found a plugin where you can update all your files in the WWW folder on startup or later.
Link: https://www.npmjs.com/package/cordova-plugin-dynamic-update

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Outcesticide III: The Final Solution è un bootleg di canzoni inedite e di cover del gruppo grunge americano Nirvana. Fu pubblicato nel 1995 dalla casa discografia Blue Moon Records.

Tracce

 Rape Me - 2:49
 Pennyroyal Tea - 3:54
 Drain You - 3:47
 Marigold - 3:07
 Dive - 3:38
 Mr. Moustache - 3:36
 Blandest - 3:52
 Even In His Youth - 3:16
 Polly - 2:35
 Smells Like Teen Spirit - 4:34
 Serve the Servants - 3:24
 Dumb - 2:36
 Tourette's - 2:07
 Aneurysm - 4:43
 Oh, The Guilt - 3:17
 Dive - 4:07
 About a Girl - 2:42
 The Money Will Roll Right In - 2:15
 Verse Chorus Verse - 3:14
 Curmudgeon - 2:51
 High On the Hog - 2:10
 Raunchola - 4:05
 Beans - 1:16

Voci correlate
 Nirvana (gruppo musicale)

Collegamenti esterni

Bootleg


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You shuffle the cards and cut the cards before handing the cards to the spectator to do the same.
The Spectator Shuffles the deck then gives them a cut.
Nothing funny totally mixed deck no prearranged order.
You then pick up the deck and remove a prediction card.
Leaving it face down on the table in full view you riffle the cards and cut them exactly where the spectator stops you.
This packet is set on the table.
You have the spectator select three cut packets in total.
Each a completely different amount of cards and locations where they are taken.
Every that has happened is recapped to emphasize the obvious fairness.
Your prediction is revealed but all the credit is given to the spectator because they stopped you at the exact locations of the other 3 matching cards.


Large capacity of order folder or documents. The integrated storage compartment holds the necessary order folders conveniently.
SChlecht verarbeitet, Material falsch montiert. Verpackung war total verdreckt.


text:
Category Archives: Tanzania
Christian Churches Attacked in Kenya on Christmas
1 DecamSat, 28 Dec 2013 11:58:04 -06002013-12-28T11:58:04-06:0011 2009 – 11:58
There was good news and bad news on the front against Jihad in Africa this Christmas.
The good news was that there were no reported attacks on Christians in Nigeria by Boko Haram, something that has happened in the past few years on Christmas Day, as well as just about every other significant day on the Christian religious calendar.
The bad news is that there were attacks on churches in Kenya. These attacks seem to have been on the order of mob violence, rather than organized terrorist attacks, but they were still an act of Jihad.
More bad news: the Reuters news agency, whose parent company has extensive ties to Shariah-compliant finance, filed a terribly researched and misleading report on these attacks which can be found on India's First Post news site.
It is no mere coincidence that Jihad has erupted across the African continent in recent years. We have seen active Jihadi violence in Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and the Central African Republic. If you subscribe to the so-called "mainstream" media for an explanation for this phenomenon, you'd believe that it was caused by "sectarian tensions," poverty, or general lawlessness.
These explanations are balderdash. Africans of various ethnicities, faiths, tribal origins and nationalities have lived in close proximity to each other for centuries. Unlike past violence, the recent wave of Jihadi violence has two common threads: Islam and Jihad. Past violence may have been due to local differences, but Boko Haram operating in Nigeria and Cameroon, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operating in Mali and Niger, and Al Shabaab operating in Somalia and Kenya all have the same doctrinal basis for their violent campaigns: Islam.
We can deny it all we want, but it doesn't make it untrue.
With regard to the Christmas Day attacks in Kenya, "youths," (codespeak in mainstream media like Reuters for young Jihadis) threw Molotov cocktails at Christian churches:
Youths threw petrol bombs at two Kenyan churches on Christmas day, police said on Thursday, in the latest bout of violence against Christians on the country's predominantly Muslim coast. Police and witnesses said the churches on the edge of port city of Mombasa were attacked in the early hours of December 25 after churchgoers held services to usher in Christmas. Police had no suspects but were exploring the possibility that the attacks may have been launched by Muslim militants…
Now, here's a significant clue as to the actual origin of this violence:
Police said Muslim youths believed to be controlled by radical preachers with links to Somali militant group al Shabaab might be behind the attacks, which left one church completely destroyed.
For years we have been hearing over and over again that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, yet for years and years we see reports of Muslim Imams and clerics admonishing Muslims to commit violence. We have seen it around the world: from Anwar al-Awlaki in San Diego, Denver and Northern Virginia; from the Blind Sheikh in Egypt and then Brooklyn, New York; from Anjem Choudary in the UK; from Sheikh Yussef al Qaradawi in Egypt and Qatar; from Hezbollah cleric Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon; from Mufti Taqi Usmani in Pakistan; from a host of Saudi clerics and, last but certainly not least, from the Ayatollahs who rule the Islamic Republic of Iran.
How do you suppose that ideological supporters of Al Shabaab came to be clerics in mosques in Kenya? It doesn't just happen by osmosis. It happens through dawa operations (missionary work) funded by petrowealth in nations such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Mosques have to be built and funded. Clerics and Imams have to be paid. The money doesn't grow on trees in the African bush.
Now we get to the typical Reuters apologetics for Islamic jihad–the part where Reuters blames the Christian victims of Jihadi violence for being attacked:
Many Muslims on the Indian Ocean coastline feel marginalised by Kenya's predominantly Christian government and the historically cordial relations between the two communities have suffered strains in recent years.
"The churches are located in an area mainly inhabited by Muslims, and church members had reported threats before from some youth who told them to close the churches down," said Robert Mureithi, the Likoni area police chief.
Clearly this is Reuters' pathetic attempt at "balance." The inference here is that the churches were attacked because the Muslim community has been mistreated in some way by the Kenyan government. Oh, and the churches were in a predominantly Muslim area, and we all know that having a Christian church in a predominantly Muslim area is "provocative." One wonders whether these churches will be rebuilt, or will the congregations decide to worship elsewhere? Because that is exactly what the Jihadists want. They want to impose Shariah, first locally, then nationally, then regionally and eventually globally.
Under Shariah, it is forbidden to make repairs or improvements to Christian churches. The Jihadis will see to it that Shariah is enforced one way or another. We should not at all be surprised if the churches are not rebuilt, if attacks on churches continue and if eventually churches and Christians disappear from these areas altogether.
Today it is the coast of Kenya, the nation that saw the horrific Jihadi attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi not terribly long ago. But it most certainly will not end in Kenya.
When will the West wake up?
http://www.firstpost.com/world/kenyan-police-seek-youths-over-christmas-day-church-burnings-1308953.html
By terrortrends | Also posted in Africa, al Shabaab, Al Shahab, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Algeria, Anwar Al-Awlaki, Boko Haram, Cameroon, Egypt, Hezbollah, Islam, Jihad, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Possible terror attack, Somalia, Sudan, Terrorist attack | Tagged al shabaab, Christmas, Jihad, Kenya, terrorism | Comments (2)
Terror Alert Sign of Resurgent Al Qaeda
1 AugpmSun, 04 Aug 2013 12:59:21 -06002013-08-04T12:59:21-06:0012 2009 – 12:59
The terror alerts issued by the US State Department, Interpol and the foreign offices of Great Britain, France and Germany should worry Westerners very much.
US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen
If there is indeed specific information about a credible threat that closed down US embassies in 22 nations, grounded 6 international airline flights (so far) and resulted in the most serious global travel advisory put out by the US State Department in several years (covering an entire month) then it is an indication that Al Qaeda is not only NOT "on the run," but is evidently more prolific than ever in terms of its reach.
Under such circumstances, it's not a question of "if" Western targets will be struck again, but "when."
We have been lied to about the magnitude and scope of the Jihadist terrorist threat. That is the unmistakable conclusion.
Some cynics and skeptics seem to think that the whole issue has been contrived by the Obama administration for political purposes, but this makes no sense at all.
Obama has repeatedly declared victory over Al Qaeda. He essentially declared that the killing of Osama Bin Laden placed the terrorist organization on the ropes and all but announced an end to the war on terror, complete with a re-orientation of the US military toward a significantly smaller force primarily focused on the Asia-Pacific region.
Moreover, his policy of drone strikes was supposed to have decimated Al Qaeda's leadership structure.
Apparently none of what Obama told us was correct.
So for Obama now to use that same terrorist threat to improve his political fortunes makes no sense at all.
Think about it: So when Obama repeatedly says Al Qaeda is on the run and for all practical purposes defeated—-it's regarded as propaganda for the masses. And then when the State Dept issues a global travel advisory and closes 22 embassies because of a threat from Al Qaeda, that's also propaganda for those same masses?
It doesn't add up. I think Obama lied about Al Qaeda in the first place. It was in his best interests to remove a major national security threat from the public sphere and, with the aid of a compliant media, he successfully did so. But it was never anything more than words on paper and talk in pretty speeches.
Al Qaeda isn't on the run. They aren't defeated. And this terror alert, unfortunately, isn't phony.
The alert coincides with the end of Ramadan, a holy month in Islam in which America has often restrained itself in fighting Islamic enemies, but during which Jihadists have actually escalated their attacks. The closure of the embassies comes on the Ramadan "Night of Power." Without getting into obnoxious detail about Islamic doctrine, all you really need to know about the "Night of Power" is that it was the day on which the USS Cole was attacked in Aden harbor in Yemen in 2000. And this is the same week during which the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in east Africa were bombed back in 1998.
So, when intelligence emerges suggesting that US targets will come under attack at this time, it is something to take seriously, especially given the fact that Al Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri released a statement in the past week instructing Al Qaeda's followers to attack US targets now.
Perhaps the most significant evidence that this terror alert should be taken seriously comes from the fact that France, Germany and Great Britain have all shut their embassies in Yemen down as well and issued travel advisories to their citizens. Unless they're in on some scheme to help Obama's approval rating, my guess is there is a real threat out there.
German diplomatic post in Yemen
Al Qaeda is real, folks. They've been real for decades now and they're deadly. To assume otherwise is suicidal. To make matters worse, there is evidence to indicate that they are now as capable as they have been at any time since 1998.
Consider the fact that in the past month there have been large-scale prison breakouts in nine Islamic nations, including Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. The timing and scale of these breakouts in which mostly Jihadi fighters made their escapes, is unprecedented. Interpol suspects Al Qaeda involvement and coordination and has issued an advisory to that effect. On 22 July, 500 Jihadis, including senior level Al Qaeda operatives, escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Five days later, on 27 July, 1100 inmates escaped from a prison near Benghazi, Libya. And four days after that, on 31 July, the Taliban led a breakout from a prison in Pakistan in which an unknown number of Jihadis escaped.
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
These operations were almost certainly orchestrated and coordinated, most probably with help from the inside in each country. This was a massive undertaking that demonstrates Al Qaeda's military as well as political power in the Islamic world. With so many Jihadis back on the loose, Westerners better brace themselves.
By terrortrends | Also posted in Africa, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), escape, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Kenya, Kuwait, Libya, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Possible terror attack, Taliban, terrorist plot, United Kingdom, Yemen, Zawahiri | Tagged Al Qaeda, Jihad, Night of Power, Ramadan, terrorism, Yemen, Zawahiri | Comments (1)
Four Saudis Arrested in Attack on Catholic Church Holding Mass in Tanzania
1 MayamTue, 07 May 2013 07:16:11 -06002013-05-07T07:16:11-06:0007 2009 – 07:16
As if more evidence was needed implicating the people of Saudi Arabia as one of the major fountainheads of Jihad, four Saudi nationals have been arrested in an attack on a church in Tanzania as it was holding a Catholic mass.
We already know that Saudis made up the largest segment of foreign fighters who entered Iraq to fight US GIs there and we already know that wealthy Saudis and Saudi charities have been a major source of funding for jihad around the globe.
Now it appears that Saudis have turned their Jihadist sights on kafirs in other parts of the world, namely the East African nation of Tanzania, which was also one of the countries whose US embassy was bombed by Al Qaeda in 1998.
This latest story is multifaceted.
The attack occurred on Sunday in a brand new church in Arusha, Tanzania in the northern part of the country. Among those conducting the service was the Pope's envoy to Tanzania, Archbishop Francisco Montecillo Padilla. The fact that the church was newly opened and that the Pope's envoy was on-site certainly suggests planning and coordination.
The nature of the attack involved an explosive device being thrown by an assailant on a passing motorcycle.
Three people were killed and 59 were wounded. One of the dead was a 16-year old boy.
Along with the four Saudis two Tanzanians were arrested.
Tanzania's Minister for Home Affairs, Dr Emmanuel Nchimbi, told news bureaus that the nation had seen attempts to cultivate hatred between Christians and Muslims in traditionally peaceful and tolerant Tanzania. (This certainly sounds like Wahhabism to us.) Tanzania is 34% Muslim and 54% Christian. This is not the first incident involving violence aimed at Christian worshippers in Tanzania. Gunmen opened fire on and killed a Catholic priest in Zanzibar, Tanzania on 17 February. On Christmas Day, gunmen on a motorcycle shot and wounded another Catholic priest in Tomondo, Tanzania. Last October, at least 11 Christian church buildings were set ablaze across the country by Muslims angered by an urban legend that a 12-year old Christian boy had urinated on a Koran.
By terrortrends | Also posted in Africa, Jihad, Saudi Arabia, Terrorist attack, terrorist plot | Comments (1)
Islam, Muslims, Violent Jihad and Shariah
1 ApramSat, 20 Apr 2013 09:06:22 -06002013-04-20T09:06:22-06:0009 2009 – 09:06
By Christopher Holton
The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not commit acts of violent Jihad, but that does not mean that there isn't a doctrinal basis for it in Islamic scripture.
I am not talking about just a few violent verses in the Quran. The Islamic trilogy is replete with it: the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah. (The Hadith are traditions and stories of the life of Muhammed and the Sirah is the biography of Muhammed). Moreover, in the Quran, the principle of abrogation bestows the most violent verses with the greatest strength as compared to earlier, peaceful verses.
These are facts, and if you read what the Jihadis themselves talk to each other about, EVERYTHING they do is based on contemporary interpretation of Islamic scripture.
We're not talking about a fringe element here, folks. We're talking about entire regimes (the Ayatollahs in Iran and Taliban Afghanistan are examples) and scores of violent Jihadist organizations around the world such as, Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Lashkar e Taiba, Abu Sayyef, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Jemaah Islamiyah, Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Muslim Brotherhood…and many more.
To assign these beliefs to EVERY SINGLE Muslim of the 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet is wrong. But to deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for all of this violent Jihad is just as wrong and it is preventing the West from coming to grips with the global war with which we are faced, whether we want to believe it or not. There is a reason why we see Islamic terrorist organizations as well as individual Jihadis waging violent Jihad in places as geographically diverse as Boston, Los Angeles, Fort Hood, Little Rock, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires, London, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Madrid, Moscow, Beslan, Marrakech, Algiers, Benghazi, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yaounde, Nairobi, Mogadishu, Timbuktu, Kaduna, Dar el Salam, Sana'a, Istanbul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Karachi, Islamabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mumbai, Amritsar, Dhaka, Hat Yai, Yala, Bali, and Mindanao.
In warfare, your enemy's reality becomes your reality. To defeat him, you better understand him. You better understand his motivations and his goals. In short, you need to know what makes him tick. We understood what made the Nazis tick, we had Mein Kampf as a doctrinal guide. We understood what made the communists tick, we had The Communist Manifesto and other works as a doctrinal guide. But we REFUSE to even TRY to understand what makes the Jihadis tick because we fear that the reality will be too frightening. We are in willful denial: "The violence simply cannot have anything to do with Islam because there are too many peaceful Muslims in the world."
That is missing the point entirely. The fact that the majority of Muslims do not know Islamic doctrine and thus do not adhere to it is not particularly remarkable or surprising. How many Catholics are truly highly familiar with the doctrinal aspects of their faith?
The fact remains that there are violent Jihadists around the world who commit acts of war and they both justify it on Islamic scripture and carry out these acts to promote Islam. The doctrinal basis is found in Islamic law, known as Shariah. The Jihadists' goal is to impose Islamic law and Islamic law is the code which they follow. (If you are skeptical of this, go pick up a copy of the excellent work by Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, and read what the enemy writes and says.) To deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for violent Jihad is becoming more and more suicidal as a civilization with each new incident that we in turn deny.
The latest example is of course in Boston. Two Jihadis, perhaps members of a Jihadist organization, or perhaps so-called "lone wolf" actors, committed atrocious acts of violent Jihad, killing several innocents and wounding many more. Despite evidence on social media and YouTube, as well as accounts of the Jihadis' devout Islamic beliefs, the simpletons in the news media and even in our own government are pondering aloud what their motivation could possibly have been. Hours and hours of TV coverage in the so-called "mainstream" media go by with nary a mention of the word "Islam." The elephant in the room is being ignored.
Some "experts" are quoted as taking comfort in the belief that the two Tsarnaev brothers may not have had any operational connection with any known terrorist organization, such as Al Qaeda. This is 180 degrees out from reality and these "experts" completely miss the point.
The fact that the Tsarnaev brothers may have "only" been inspired to commit Jihad on their own is not cause for celebration or relaxation. It is cause for alarm and it would seem to be part of a disturbing pattern that has been emerging over the years:
• Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, apparently acting on his own after receiving terrorist training in Yemen, shot two US Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office, killing one, Private William Long and wounding another.
• Major Nidal Malik Hasan, apparently acting on his own, after years of conversing with Al Qaeda Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, shot and killed 13 fellow US Army soldiers and wounded 39 more.
These types of attacks are indicative of a revolutionary critical mass in which centralized direction and control is no longer necessary. Jihadis around the world are now waging violent Jihad in Al Qaeda-like fashion after reading web postings and listening to sermons. This presents a whole new series of challenges for security services and makes the use of military force much less effective. Infiltrating organizations such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah has been extremely difficult. But how does one infiltrate lone wolf actors like the Tsarnaev brothers? Who does the US military go after in the wake of the Boston attacks?
This new reality makes identifying and understanding the Islamic doctrinal basis of our Jihadist enemies all the more important, yet with each passing attack, we seem to be getting further and further away from doing so.
By terrortrends | Also posted in 5th Column, Al Qaeda, al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Boston Marathon bombings, Carlos Bledsoe, Fort Hood Massacre, Great Britain, Hezbollah, Homegrown Jihad, Homeland Security, India, Indonesia, Islam, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jemaah Islamiyah, Jihad, Kenya, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Lebanon, London transit bombings, Madrid train bombing, Mali, Morocco, Mumbai attack, Muslim Brotherhood, Nidal Malik Hasan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Sharia, Shariah, Somalia, Syria, Taliban, Terrorist attack, terrorist group listings, Thailand, The Netherlands, Toulouse, Tsarnaev brothers, United Kingdom, Yemen | Comments (3)
Ex-Gitmo Detainee Ahmed Ghailani Cleared of All but One Charge in U.S. Embassy Bombings
1 NovpmWed, 17 Nov 2010 18:20:17 -06002010-11-17T18:20:17-06:0006 2009 – 18:20
Ahmed Ghailani was found not guilty on all but one charge Wednesday by a civilian jury in New York.
Ghailani was acquitted on 224 murder charges in connection with the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He was found guilty for only one charge of conspiracy to destroy government buildings.(So he did take part in the operation to blow up the buildings in which the 224 people died, but he only gets punished for destroying the buildings.)
The judge had earlier decided that a star witness would not be allowed to testify because of coercive techniques that were used to get the witness' name from Ghailani.
(The judge is a traitor.)
Jihadis walk and we get our crotches felt up by government employees who couldn't get hired at McDonald's…
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/17/gitmo-detainee-ahmed-ghailani-guilty-terrorism-charges/
By terrortrends | Also posted in Al Qaeda, Guantanomo, Kenya, Terrorist attack | Comments (0)


text:
ARI Parent Holman Named Top Workplace
June 17, 2019 • by AF Staff
ARI's corporate parent Holman Enterprises has been named to the 2019 Best Places to Work in IT list by IDG's Computerworld, as No. 42 among large organizations. This is the second consecutive year Holman has made the list.
Holman was also ranked at No. 4 among 100 organizations for career development.
"Fostering a workplace culture that provides a rewarding career and a better life for our employees and their families is among the core tenets of our corporate philosophy," said Steve Haindl, Holman's executive vice president of technology and innovation. "Accolades such as this award further reinforce our belief that our people are truly our organization's greatest strength and that our unique culture continues to be a key differentiator for Holman Enterprises."
Holman Enterprises was commended for its workplace culture. The company was also praised for emphasizing transparent communication and promoting professional growth through opportunities to work on challenging projects using the latest technology.
The company was recognized for its continued investment in its people through various educational and wellness initiatives along with its award-winning Partners in Excellence recognition program which engages employees and celebrates their remarkable achievements.
Related: Holman Parts Distribution Gains NAFA Accreditation
Read more about Holman Enterprises ARI Top Workplace Recognition
ServiceMaster Contracts With Merchants Fleet
Under the agreement, Merchants will provide vehicle leasing and services to ServiceMaster's core fleet of over 10,000 vehicles.
LeasePlan Makes Changes to its Managing Board
LeasePlan announced changes to its managing board following the leave of its chief risk officer and chief strategic finance and investor relations officer.
Merchant Fleet's Taylor Named One to Watch
Merchants Fleet's Kurt Taylor has been named a Ones to Watch winner by IDG's CIO and the CIO Executive Council, the fleet management company announced.
In Memoriam: Dealer, Fleet Leasing Pioneer Joe Holman
Joseph Holman, chairman emeritus of Holman Enterprises, passed away on Dec. 12. He was 93.
Strategy to Create the LeasePlan of the Future
Matt Dyer discusses his strategy as CEO of LeasePlan USA centered on the Customer First program, implementing a digital transformation roadmap, creating flexible mobility solutions, and sustainability with a focus on EVs.
Enterprise Names Chrissy Taylor CEO
Taylor will become one of the highest-ranking women among the world's largest travel companies and one of the top female CEOs across all industries, based on company revenue.
Merchants Developing Connected Vehicle Program
Merchants Fleet is developing a connected vehicle program designed to help businesses identify vehicles in need of maintenance, monitor driver behavior to improve safety, detect and mitigate fraud, and track vehicle location for scheduling and route optimization.
Could Novated Leasing Work in the U.S.?
Novated leasing has primarily been contained to Australia due to a tax situation, but these leases provide three other specific benefits that could allow them to work in the U.S.
Holman Promotes Trio, Including ARI's Foursha
Holman Enterprises has promoted three executives, including ARI's Anthony Foursha to executive vice president of sales and service excellence with the fleet management company in a role that will carry more global duties.
ARI's 2019 Fleet Conference in Pictures
ARI's fourth annual Best in Fleet conference was hosted at the Ritz-Carlton in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from Nov. 5 to 7. David Feherty, television personality and former professional golfer, was the conference's keynote speaker.


On Monday, the New York Times revealed that during her four years as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton did not have a government email address, and used her private email account to conduct government business, possibly violating the Federal Records Act.
In a statement from Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, he defended Clinton and said that her use of private email has been public knowledge for several years.
Jason Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration told the New York Times that Clinton's use her private email is not a common practice and should not have been allowed.
"It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario – short of nuclear winter – where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business," Baron said.


In the last few weeks, I wrote a lot about user engagement factors.
Today, audience engagement has become an important part of search engine optimization. Not only because you need a lot of visitors; also because you need quality clicks (I will explain the term later on so keep on reading!).
There is a high correlation between classic link building techniques and audience engagement. In fact, it is hard to start your audience engagement optimization if you haven't done any search engine optimization before that.
Simply put, no matter how good your content is, you won't attract enough attention if your website doesn't have any authority or positions. Visitors will never trust an advice from a guy that isn't popular within a particular community.
SEO experts usually say that you need links from high quality websites to boost your rankings. These links are a measure of success and as long as you get them, your blog will flourish. But, what if I told you there is more to this?
When you get a link from a big website, Google sees this as a vote of confidence – the biggest experts in the field have suggested your content and as such, this content has to be regarded as valuable.
Besides Google, website visitors will also follow this link which will result in long, quality clicks.
Quality clicks refers to a situation where a person clicks on something, visits a website and shows a high level of engagement (long sessions, low bounce rate, long dwell time, additional clicks etc.).
This is where things get even better.
This is precisely why such links are in a high demand. Mix of all these positive factors shows Google that your article should be ranked higher.
Links and high audience engagement are even greater.
Before you do anything else and start boosting your audience engagement, it is necessary to build up your website through old-fashioned SEO. Yes, you can add some guys on Facebook and LinkedIn but I wouldn't recommend full-time engagement with audience until you get some authority. Otherwise, people will not take you seriously.
Here is the best way to approach things after achieving some initial success.
When you start with a brand new website, the first thing you wanna do is create an influencer list. You will use influencer outreach hoping to get some initial links. Given that this is a one-time deal (that benefits only you), you will quickly have to abandon such a strategy.
After a while, you will have to focus on establishing more meaningful relationships.
When performing audience engagement, it is necessary to transform all these guys from link givers to article readers.
Their websites depend on news, new ideas and concepts. If your blog has reached a certain level of development and if people recognize you as a valid source of information, this means that influencers will also benefit from staying in touch with you and reading your content.
Instead of focusing on single links, influencers will become the most valuable segment of your audience.
Besides the fact that this strategy will increase your audience engagement stats, it will also provide a long-term source of links given that influencers will start linking to you naturally. This is a great way to scale things.
There are so many benefits to having a big subscriber list.
Emails are the best channel to boost your conversion and audience engagement stats. Unlike cold pitches or sharing your content with random people, you can be certain that the email subscribers are truly interested in your content.
Subscription list becomes that much more important given that user engagement metrics are more of qualitative than quantitative stats. In that regard, it is much better to have a lower number of visitors who are highly engaged than a bigger number of people who don't care about your blog.
By receiving an email, you can be certain that subscriber actually saw the message. In fact, it will stay in their inbox until they personally erase it which also means that can easily access it for future reading.
Make sure to use popups for subscription. However, avoid forceful, bullying messages and overspaming. These things can drive away a visitor. Instead, focus on the positives and all the benefits person can gain by subscribing.
There are only a handful of places on a blog where a visitor can contact the website owner. Comment section is the best and most interactive one.
Unlike contact page, comment section is a non-formal way of communication.
So, what's the biggest benefit of a comment section?
In most of the cases, visitor's first impression is based on reading an article or watching a video. If the experience was positive, some visitors will want to share their opinion. Comment section prolongs and augments the entire experience. This increases the chances of following the blog and subscribing.
As a blog owner, your task will be to make comment section accessible and to stimulate interaction. Also, make sure to delete anything that looks spammy or irrelevant. It can interfere with visitor's experience.
It is obvious that good content will attract more people and lead to a higher audience engagement. But, there are also some small tricks that will increase quality clicks from a landing page.
As you well know, you need to create highly actionable content that will help a person with his issues. But, you should also try to focus on the main topic while avoiding further explanation of related terms. Instead, make sure to link to articles that will explain these terms.
If you wish to focus on high user engagement, you need to create pages as if you are writing a book. One article will help with a single problem but in order to understand the entire topic, you will have to browse some other pages.
I will not get into detailed content creation as this is not the main focus of the article and it will take too much time. Just wanted to share this trick.
Before anything else, you need to find the best converting social networks for your industry.
After that, you are ready to increase the followership.
As mentioned, you should always start with influencers. In this case, their biggest value is the value of a share. Each one of them has massive followership and whenever they share something with their audience, there is a high chance that some of their visitors will spill over to your website and/or social networks.
After getting the initial traction, people will come to your blog through friends. However, the first step is crucial. You do not wish to approach people who have no interest in your website.
Proper targeting is crucial for high audience engagement.
I would recommend building your audience from LinkedIn and then, adding those people on other networks. Given that LinkedIn has such a sophisticated filtering, it will be really easy to find colleagues and potential clients.
Besides social profiles, it is also good to create groups on social networks.
Unlike simple following, where person follows your Facebook or LinkedIn page, membership within a group allows for a two-way communication.
Followers are also able to create their own posts and start discussion. This is the best method of engagement as it allows them to get answer to their questions, not only from you but also from other knowledgeable members.
How does your blog benefit you might ask?
Given that group members are much more engaged than the simple blog followers, there is a much higher chance that they will check out your content when you post it. There is also a bigger chance that they will start a thread within a group which will include even more targeted audience into a discussion.
You need to take audience engagement seriously.
There are so many questions regarding the future of SEO. User engagement will definitely be a big part of that future so it is better to prepare in advance.
Which methods do you use to improve user engagement on your website? Do you have trouble attracting targeted traffic? Share it in the comment section below!
Hello Nikolay, You are exactly right. A website with higher engagement rate is considered as a good website by Google. Backlinks from websites that have a higher domain authority will help to makes Google believe that the website is endorsing another website, that it trusts the website.
Yeah, Nikolay, customer engagement strategy through will earn higher ranks in SE. One more thing i would like to say, Maintain business profiles & listing properly, it will beneficial for the point of user trust.
Great post indeed. Having a successful content strategy can be both easy and hard at the same time. Actionable and useful content always make a positive impact. Determine your goals as a business, find your target audience, target keywords, create and share your content is the simple yet difficult task. To create and distribute content you must study your niche keywords. If executed correctly, it is the best SEO content strategy.
Glad you liked it, Nisha!
I always believe in SEO marketing for our product because customer engagement and interest of our product is very important.


text:
Os rios atmosféricos,  também conhecidos como rios voadores ou rios aéreos, consistem em fluxos concentrados de vapor de água em médios e altos níveis da atmosfera. Embora se use a terminologia "rio" para o fenômeno, os rios atmosféricos são invisíveis e não tem margens claramente definidas, ao contrário do que é observado nos rios terrestres.

Importância
Os rios atmosféricos têm um papel preponderante no ciclo hidrológico global. Todos os dias, os rios atmosféricos respondem por mais de 90% do transporte global de vapor de água no sentido meridional (norte-sul). Contudo, sua atuação recobre menos de 10% da circunferência da Terra.

Esses fluxos atmosféricos também são a principal causa de eventos de precipitação extrema que causam inundações severas e deslizamentos de encostas em muitas localidades, principalmente nos setores costeiros ocidentais do mundo, incluindo a costa oeste da América do Norte, Sudeste da América do Sul, Europa Ocidental, costa oeste do norte da África, Península Ibérica, Irã e Nova Zelândia. Igualmente, a ausência de rios atmosféricos em determinados períodos tem sido atribuída à ocorrência de secas em várias partes do mundo, incluindo África do Sul, Brasil, Espanha e Portugal.

Rios atmosféricos na América do Sul
Na América do Sul, o fenômeno dos rios atmosféricos tem início a partir de certas regiões da Amazônia. Estes fluxos são alimentados pela umidade fornecida pela floresta, transportando umidade e vapor de água advindos da evapotranspiração das árvores para outras regiões. No Brasil, normalmente estão relacionados ao registro de chuvas intensas e duradouras nas regiões sudeste, sul e centro-oeste.

A umidade evaporada a partir do Oceano Atlântico próximo à linha do equador é transportada pelos ventos alísios, formando nuvens capazes de causar muita precipitação. Quando chegam sobre a floresta amazônica, essas nuvens geram chuvas. Posteriormente, as árvores que absorveram essa água sofrem evapotranspiração, devolvendo para a atmosfera a umidade absorvida, na forma de vapor de água. Dessa forma, o mecanismo é retroalimentado e o ar continua sendo transportado até setores no entorno do estado brasileiro do Acre. Devido à presença da Cordilheira dos Andes, as massas de ar não  conseguem continuar no rumo em que seguiam (oeste), sendo desviadas no sentido sul, avançando assim sobre o leste da Bolívia e Paraguai, chegando posteriormente aos estados brasileiros de MT, MS, MG, SP, PR, SC, RJ e RS. Ao longo desse processo, essas massas de ar também causam precipitações significativas em trechos da porção oriental dos Andes centrais, dando origem a diversos rios da bacia amazônica.

Capacidade
A vazão dos rios flutuantes é equivalente a vazão dos rios amazônicos, lançando cerca de 200 000 m3/s. Isso acontece porque uma árvore bombeia para a atmosfera mais de 300 litros de água, em um dia, sendo que uma árvore maior, pode evapotranspirar mais de 1 000 litros por dia. Imagina-se que haja 600 bilhões de árvores na Amazônia.

Importância
A umidade levada para o sudeste e centro-oeste brasileiro garante a esta região capacidade para não se tornar um deserto, uma vez que outras regiões na mesma faixa subtropical são desertos, como o Australiano, Kalahari, Namíbia e o Atacama, localizados nas regiões próximas da latitude de 30° sul.

Atmosfera
Climatologia
Meteorologia tropical
Circulação atmosférica


How to change character skin in Yandere Simulator?
How to change the look of Yandere-chan (character skin) in Yandere Simulator? How to add custom textures?
Go to the folder where you usually include Yandere Simulator and click on the folder which is located next to the icon start the game.
Go to the folder StreamingAssets, here are the textures!
In this example we will use the... Sailor Mercury Skin.
Save every texture in the folder StreamingAssets. Right-click on the image and click "save image as...".
Rename them. Right click and click on rename.
If you no longer need the texture, remove them, or rename.


text:
Okres Galan-Čož (, ) se nachází v jihozápadní části Čečenské autonomní republiky Ruské federace na severním Kavkaze. Na jihu sousedí s Gruzií, na západě s Ingušskou autonomní republikou, na severu a východě s čečenskými okresy Urus-Martan, Ačchoj-Martan, Itum-Kali a Šatoj.

Historie

Do roku 1944
Okres byl vytvořen v roce 1925 a do roku 1944 byl jedním z největších okresů na území Čečenska a Ingušska. V roce 1939 měl dle statistik 9499 obyvatel, z čehož jich 9090 bylo čečenské národnosti. Náboženstvím obyvatel byl sunnitský islám, úředním jazykem byla ruština a čečenština. Na záčatku roku 1944 bylo v okrese Galan-Čož 140 vesnic (aulů) a jednotlivých hospodářských usedlostí, administrativně rozčleněných pod 12 samosprávných středisek. Těmito středisky místní samosprávy byly obce: Akka (Акка), Jalchoroj (Ялхорой), Baloj (Балой), Galan-Čož (Галанчож), Pešchoj (Пешхой), Chajbach (Хайбах), Magusty (Магусты), Bavloj (Бавлой), Nikaroj (Никарой), Meši (Меши), Erdyči (Ердычи) a Merža (Мержа).

Deportace
V únoru roku 1944 bylo veškeré obyvatelstvo horského okresu násilně vysídleno a transportováno na práci do kazašských stepí. Tam, kde by byl transport kvůli neschůdnosti cest v zimě obtížný, bylo obyvatelstvo, včetně žen a dětí, zabito na místě (Chajbach 27. února 1944). Okres byl zrušen a jeho území bylo rozděleno mezi okresy Ačchoj-Martan, Sunženský a Itum-Kali.

Návrat obyvatel a obnovení okresu
Příslušníkům většiny národů, deportovaných za stalinské éry, byl umožněn návrat do vlasti po roce 1956, kdy N. S. Chruščov na XX. sjezdu KSSS odhalil praktiky předchozí vládnoucí garnitury. Obyvatelé galančožského okresu se vrátili do Čečenska v roce 1957. Nesměli se ale nastěhovat do svých bývalých domovů, zrušený okres Galan-Čož zůstal i nadále pustý a neobydlený.

V letech 1992–1997 byla existence galančožského okresu uznávána v rámci tehdejší takzvané Čečenské republiky Ičkerie. V období první a druhé čečenské války probíhaly některé bojové operace i na území galančožského okresu - například na jaře roku 2000 se podle odhadů v okolí jezera Galan-Čož vyskytovalo na 500 - 600 čečenských bojovníků. K oficiálnímu obnovení okresu Galan-Čož spolu s dalším podobně postiženým okresem Čeberlojevským došlo až na podzim roku 2012. Dne 18. října 2012 na svém 179. zasedání schválil Parlament Čečenské republiky změnu ústavy země v souvislosti s obnovením obou zmíněných okresů.

Odkazy

Reference

Související články
 Velký Kavkaz
 Druhá světová válka
 Čeberlojevský okres
 Malchista

Externí odkazy

Okresy v Čečensku
Státy a území vzniklé roku 1925
Zaniklo 1944
Deportace v SSSR
Argunská památková a přírodní rezervace
Státy a území vzniklé roku 2012