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10 Best Historical Romance Novels that You Should Surely Read
In the world of heartbreaks and temporary feelings, historical romance novels come as an escape for the modern generation. Historical romance novels present the best and purest forms of love of earlier times.
Yes, the times when left and right swipe wasn't the way of expressing love, the times when lovers used to write sonnets in the admiration of their beloved and when love letters were common.
All that old-world romance and wooing attract today's reader even more. After all, people like us can only witness that type of love in books. So, I'm here with the books that present historical romance in the best way!
List of Best Historical Romance Novels
These top historical romance novels are the best of all the time. So, get ready to witness the historical regency romance by reading the given books.
1. Jubilee Trail by Gwen Bristow
Published in 1950, Jubilee trail is New York Times Bestseller. This classic novel is set in the wilderness of West America. The protagonist Garnet is a school graduated girl who belongs to an upper-class New York society.
She meets Oliver Hale, who is a frontier trader. They both fall in love, and their real journey starts after they get married. Oliver takes Garnet to a new adventure which was beyond her imagination.
Garnet is exposed to the harsh realities of life on the landscape of the Jubilee Trail and find how incompetent she is to deal with all this. The rebelliousness of heroine, the intimacy and the adventures make it a worth-read historic romance of all time.
Read Review on Amazon Buy This on Amazon
2. Knight Secrets by C.C. Wiley
Knight Secrets is published in recent years, but it will surely transport you into the world of Knights and Kingdoms. Set in 1415 England, the story is based on a Knight and a girl – Lady Clarice who wants to know the truth behind her father's treason.
In this quest, she becomes the prisoner of Sir Ranulf, the Knight, whose heart is stirred by this beautiful prisoner. The struggle of a knight to perform his duty by keeping aside his feelings is shown here.
Everything changes when he discovers what Clarice has in her heart. The followed incidents are what make this book exceptional.
3. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Written by the British author Graham Greene, The End of the Affair is a great historical romance novel that presents the love and betrayal in World War II London. The story is so effective that it has been adapted in many films.
The story revolves around three characters – a writer Maurice Bendrix, a civil servant Henry Miles and his beautiful wife Sarah Miles.
Sarah and Maurice fall in love with each other, and their adulterous love affair keeps flourishing until one horrific accident. Maurice survives a bombing attack, and Sarah leaves her without giving any reason.
The real mystery starts to unfold when Maurice crosses path with Henry one day. What happens next makes this novel truly gripping.
4. The American Heiress by Dorothy Eden
The American Heiress is a New York Times Bestseller which is published in 1980. The story is set in World War I era England. The story begins with the marriage preparations of the twenty-one-year-old Clemency Jervis.
Clemency is a rich spoilt girl who is going to marry a handsome Lord Hugo Hazzard in England. Their merriment and joy are short-lived as the ship carrying Clemency and her family is torpedoed by the Germans.
Only some people survive this attack; one of which is Clemency's maid – Hetty Brown. Due to her stark resemblance to her mistress, Hetty plans a deception that provides her power and authority.
The tale becomes more surprising from here as you will encounter various emotions such as love, hate, war and severe consequences of people's actions.
5. A Passion Most Pure by Julie Lessman
Published in 2008, A Passion Most Pure is one book among the series of The Daughters of Boston. Set during the time of horrific World War I, the book talks about an altogether different war brewing in Boston.
Faith O'Connor is a young girl who feels deeply attracted to an Irish rogue Collin McGuire. She feels that Collin is the one true love of her life, but Collin's feels something very different from that.
Collin is a cocky and brash boy who secretly admires the younger sister of Faith. This one thing ruins the whole Boston family.
The captivating story depicts love, compassion, war, betrayal and the longing of women in a chaotic war-driven world.
6. The Bargain by Mary Jo Putney
The Bargain is a regency romance novel that was originally published in 1988. This New York Times Bestseller historical romance novel is about two mismatched lovers who became husband and wife due to a deal.
Lady Jocelyn Kendal has to marry before she turns twenty-five if she wishes to receive her inheritance. To gain her fortune, she decides to marry a badly wounded soldier, Major David Lancaster, who seems to die soon due to his waterloo wounds.
The Major agreed on this marriage in return for Jocelyn's promise of providing for his Governess sister. But, destiny has something else in store for Jocelyn. The soldier starts to show miraculous recovery after the marriage.
Now, the soldier David wants to re-negotiate the terms with his wife because he feels deeply attracted to her. Jocelyn refuses this due to her haunting past relationships. But, the Major is too keen to make Jocelyn his true wife.
Read out to know who wins in the last – the desires of Major or the resistance of Jocelyn.
7. Highland Promise by Hannah Howell
Written by the New York Times Bestseller author Hannah Howell, this book takes you to the fifteenth century Scotland. This is a story of a knight, Eric Murray, who is fighting his family for his rightful inheritance.
In this struggle of power, he meets a beautiful girl, Bethia Drumond, who is also fleeing for her life. Bethia's relatives want to kill her and her nephew in order to inherit their land. She asks the knight for help, and he promised to deliver her safely to her family.
They both start to fall for each other, but everything changes when Bethia came to know that Eric is also fighting for his right.
Not only this, but Eric's opponents are her family's ally. But, will they ever be able to cut their ties due to their families' feud? You can read the book to find this out.
8. The Drop of the Dice by Philippa Carr
If you love to read about love triangles, then you should read The Drop of the Dice. This historical romance novel is set in 1715 England when the Jacobite Rebellion was prevalent.
This twisted love triangle starts when Clarissa Field, daughter of an infamous lady, falls in love with a Jacobite rebel, namely Dickon Frenshaw. But, loving someone wasn't appreciated during those times in England.
So, society ended their romance by sending Dickon for an exile in Virginia. On the other hand, Clarissa was married to a profligate soldier – Lance Clavering.
The story takes you through a long span of Clarissa's life and her struggle between two men, between her desires and her duties. Now, she also has to transform her daughter to follow her legacy. A lot more twists are waiting for you in it!
9. Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas
Published in 2016, Marrying Winterborne is a Victorian romance novel set in Victorian-era London. Rhys Winterborne is a successful and rich man who always completes his every wish and desire.
Rhys starts liking the coy aristocratic lady, Helen Ravenel from the moment he meets her. His liking transforms into the urge to possess Helen soon. From the moment he realized it, he tries everything to woo Helen.
On the other hand, Helen is a down to earth lady having very little contact with the glittering London society. Yet, she starts to feel an intense passion for Rhys due to his constant efforts to gain her.
They get married, but their struggle doesn't end there. Helen believes that her gentle upbringing can change Rhys. But, Rhys's enemies try to make it worse for them by conspiring against them.
10. A Midnight Dance by Lila DiPasqua
A Midnight Dance is a must-read for you if you love the Cinderella fairy tale. Well, it also has a princess, a glass slipper and a prince. But, it also has deception as the princess wants to find his prince charming not for love, but revenge.
Sabrina Laurent is a well to do girl who lives a good life with his family and admires a handsome boy, namely Jules De Moutier. But, the loss of her sister and her family's sudden bad conditions make her a changed girl.
Now, Sabrina blames the family of Jules for all this. Her father's death makes her devastated as now she has to live with her father's mistress and her daughters.
To escape this situation, she plans to seduce her old crush, Jules, and take away his fortune. But, can she control her long-ignored desires for Jules while executing the plan? This is an interesting thing to read.
Final Words – Which Ones are my favorite among all the above Listed Historical Romance Novels
Now, get ready to dive into the world of historical romance by purchasing all these books. If not all, then you can start your journey with one or two of these historical romance novels.
The American Heiress
Jubilee Trail – My Personal Favorite
Highland Promise
The short plot description will help you in sorting out the ones in which you are most interested. Give them a try, and you will surely start desiring to transport back in the regency world for creating your own fairy tale romance!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford. Dr. Basu conducts research on health and social policies to reduce morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes in both the United States and internationally, typically using methods from the fields of computer science, econometrics, and large-scale data analysis.
Dr. Bendavid's work broadly investigates the drivers of population health improvements in developing countries. Dr. Bendavid studies how economic, political, and natural environments affect population health. He uses a mix of experimental, econometric, qualitative, modeling, and demographic tools to produce insights and strategies for improving health.
In perpetual awe of how 'simple' microbial organisms can perturb complex, multicellular eukaryotic organisms, Ami Bhatt has chosen to dedicate her research program to inspecting, characterizing and dissecting the microbe-human interface. Nowhere is the interaction between hosts and microbes more potentially impactful than in immunocompromised hosts and global settings where infectious and environmental exposures result in drastic and sometimes fatal health consequences.
Dr. Carmichael's research focuses on maternal health and pregnancy outcomes such as congenital anomalies, preterm delivery and stillbirth and encompasses a broad of array of exposures such as nutritional, environmental, social and genetic risk factors. Dr. Carmichael has a PhD in Epidemiology and extensive experience with designing, implementing, and analyzing data from population-based epidemiologic studies.
Ben Domingue is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He has two areas of active research. The first focuses on statewide standardized test scores and their uses, particularly how test scores are used in statistical models that evaluate the effectiveness of teachers and schools. On a technical level, he also is interested in the extent to which test scores and the data from which they are drawn demonstrate certain desirable properties. The second area of research focuses on the integration of genetic data into social science research. In particular, he is interested in understanding the genetic architecture of educational attainment and the way in which schools can and do moderate the association between genes and educational attainment.
Liran Einav is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is directing the Industrial Organization Program. Einav's areas of specialization are industrial organization and applied microeconomics. An important strand of his work is focused on insurance markets, including the development of empirical models of insurance demand and pricing, and empirical analyses of the implications of adverse selection and moral hazard. Einav has also studied consumer behavior and the pricing of subprime auto loans, competition in the motion picture industry, strategic commitment, and more recently peer-to-peer internet markets and healthcare markets. Einav is a co-editor of Econometrica and serves on the editorial board of several other journals.
David B. Grusky is Barbara Kimball Browning Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, and coeditor of Pathways Magazine. His research addresses the changing structure of late-industrial inequality and addresses such topics as (a) the role of rent-seeking and market failure in explaining the takeoff in income inequality, (b) the amount of economic and social mobility in the U.S. and other high-inequality countries (with a particular focus on the "Great Gatsby" hypothesis that opportunities for social mobility are declining), (c) the role of essentialism in explaining the persistence of extreme gender inequality, (d) the forces behind recent changes in the amount of face-to-face and online cross-class contact, and (e) the putative decline of big social classes.
Dr. Hsing is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a co-leader of the Population Sciences Program at Stanford Cancer Institute. A senior fellow for the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University, Dr. Hsing has conducted population-based epidemiological studies on four continents, including North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. She is a leading expert in the epidemiology and etiology of prostate, hepatobiliary, and thyroid cancers as well as in hormonal carcinogenesis and circadian rhythm. Throughout her 22-year tenure at National Cancer Institute, Dr. Hsing developed extensive expertise in molecular epidemiology, global oncology, cancer prevention, and population-based studies in international settings.
Leskovec's research focuses on the analyzing and modeling of large social and information networks as the study of phenomena across the social, technological, and natural worlds. He focuses on statistical modeling of network structure, network evolution, and spread of information, influence and viruses over networks. Problems he investigates are motivated by large scale data, the Web and other on-line media. He also does work on text mining and applications of machine learning.
Paul Oyer studies the economics of organizations and human resource practices. His work has looked at the use of broad-based stock option plans, how firms use non-cash benefits, how firms respond to limits on their ability to displace workers, and how labor market conditions affect their entire careers when MBAs and PhD economists leave school. Oyer's current projects include studies of how firms identify and recruit workers in high-skill and competitive labor markets, with a focus on the markets for newly minted lawyers and MBAs.
Dr. Periyakoil is a member of the study section for the National Institute of Aging, National Institutes of Health, the Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Palliative Medicine and Associate Editor, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. She serves as the Chair of the Ethnogeriatrics Committee of the American Geriatrics Society, the Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine's Hospice & Palliative Medicine SEP Committee, Board member of the Council of faculty and Societies, founding Chair , Diversity Committee of the American Association of Medical Colleges. Her work has been and is funded by grants from NIH, HRSA, foundations as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs.
David Rehkopf's work focuses on the way in which social and economic factors impact health and mortality across the lifespan, with particular attention to the impact of work and earnings on cardiovascular biomarkers and obesity.
Manuel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University in Stanford, California. Manuel has a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Human Genetics from the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at Oxford University where he was a Clarendon Scholar. He did additional training at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he led the Helmsley Inflammatory Bowel Disease Exome Sequencing Program to understand the genetic factors that contribute to ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease risk. See NIH Biosketch for updated CV.
Dr. Nigam Shah is associate professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics) at Stanford University, Assistant Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, and a core member of the Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program. Dr. Shah's research focuses on combining machine learning and prior knowledge in medical ontologies to enable use cases of the learning health system.


The Highway Patrol reports a Princeton man sustained serious injuries when he was ejected from the farm tractor he drove after being struck by a tractor-trailer hit Friday morning.
An ambulance transported 44-year-old Gilbert Lawson to Wright Memorial Hospital of Trenton. Tractor trailer driver 44-year-old Timothy Spickard of Trenton was not reported as injured.
The Patrol reports the farm tractor traveled south on Highway 65, partially on the shoulder and partially on the road when it began a left turn onto a private drive four miles north of Princeton. The southbound tractor-trailer allegedly attempted to pass the tractor before the truck struck the farm tractor in the northbound lane, and Lawson was ejected.
The tractor came to rest on Highway 65 facing northwest and was totaled. The truck continued south, ran off the east side of the road, and overturned onto its driver's side facing south with extensive damage.
The Mercer County Sheriff's Office and Missouri Department of Conservation assisted at the scene of the crash.


Which G Chord Is Right?
This is a lead guitar arrangement of classical composer Maurice Ravel's famous composition "Bolero." This is not a full transcription of the entire composition, but the melody transcribed here gets repeated multiple times in the song. This is a good piece to start with if you're interested in learning to play classical melodies and want to practice something other than scales to develop your technique. It's also a lot easier to memorize since the entire melody takes up only two pages, as compared to Mozart's Symphony 40, which clocks in at 10 pages despite my best efforts to condense it.
Focus on working on phrases, rather than learning a few measures at a time. For example, try learning the first note through the third C note in measure two (the C note on beat 2) and then try adding the rest of the notes in the second and third measure.
There's some sections where you should do economy picking rather than straight alternate picking. In measure 10, play the last three notes, B – A – F with a series of upstrokes, not up-down-up. Try to do a sweep motion across the strings, minimizing the arc of your pick strokes.
The rhythms get a little crazy at the end with the quarter note triplets, but they're not as hard as they look to play by ear. Just listen to any recording of a symphony orchestra playing this to figure it out – don't try to count it. On the other hand, some of the tied note durations are long enough that you are going to have to count them out in order to come back in at the right time (measure 7-8, for example).
My apologies to any subscribers who received the first notification with no transcription. I was using a new blog post editor (Cornerstone), and didn't realize that it immediately published the contents of what I was writing when I pressed the save button (at least I thought that was a "Save" button).


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Home / In Depth / The Story of America's Very First Drone Strike
The Story of America's Very First Drone Strike
The Levant Jun 1, 2015	In Depth, United States Leave a comment 765 Views
By Chris Woods, for The Atlantic–
The CIA's then-secret weapon missed Taliban leader Mullah Omar, starting a bureaucratic fight that has lasted 14 years.
ho the fuck did that?" The words greeting the first-ever combat strike by a remotely piloted aircraft were uttered not in praise but in anger. A botched Hellfire-missile attack by a CIA Predator had just cost the United States a likely chance to kill Taliban Supreme Commander Mullah Mohammed Omar. In response, the U.S. Air Force general in charge of airstrikes in Afghanistan was about to threaten to call off the entire opening campaign of the War on Terror, unless he was given control of the CIA's secret weapon.
It was the night of October 7, 2001, less than a month after 9/11, and from the United States' new Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) in Saudi Arabia, it was the job of Lieutenant General Chuck Wald and his deputy Dave Deptula to coordinate every aspect of the unfolding Afghan air war. Operation Enduring Freedom—the campaign to rid Afghanistan of al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts—was the first offensive of a global conflict that would eventually consume many tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, and see more than two and a half million U.S. personnel sent into battle.
In the autumn of 2001, however, the United States was unwilling to launch a full-scale land invasion in a region 7,000 miles from home. Instead, a plan evolved to send into Afghanistan a small number of CIA agents and Special Forces in support of anti-Taliban militias, with the aid of the U.S. Air Force. That first October night was a powerful display of coordination involving laser-guided munitions dropped from the air and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the sea. General Tommy Franks, who then led the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the military command overseeing operations in Afghanistan, wrote in his memoir American Soldier that the assault involved in total some 40,000 personnel, 393 aircraft, and 32 ships.
But one aircraft did not feature at all in the Air Force's complex planning: a tiny, CIA-controlled, propeller-driven spy plane, which had crept into Afghanistan some hours earlier. Predator tailfin number 3034 now hangs suspended in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., its place in history assured. Yet its actions that first night of the war—in which numerous agencies in the vast U.S. military-intelligence machine each played sharply contradictory roles—remain steeped in controversy.
The southern city of Kandahar was the epicenter of Taliban power in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence officials had identified the home of Mullah Omar in the city and were watching unseen from a CIA Predator drone as a convoy of vehicles left the building complex. "We observed Mullah Omar, or 98-percent probable it was he, coming out of his facility in an entourage," Deptula told me in an interview. When Omar stopped and entered another building complex, the United States had an opportunity to deliver a devastating blow to its enemies in the opening minutes of the war.
But there was a problem. There had never been a lethal action by a remotely piloted aircraft before, and the rules governing the operation of the Predator were blurred and untested. Air Force operators overseen by CIA analysts were piloting the Predator over Kandahar from the grounds of the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia. According to Franks's memoir, though, CENTCOM—not the CIA or the Air Force—had the final say on who would pull the trigger. At the same time, Air Force personnel at the sophisticated CAOC in Saudi Arabia were supposedly in charge of the entire air campaign. According to Deptula, the CAOC already had F-16 fighter aircraft on standby 20 miles to the south, armed with 1,000-pound bombs. "We wanted to use those weapons against the facility where Mullah Omar and his senior Taliban staff were hiding," he told me.
But CENTCOM and the CIA had decided instead to use the untested Predator. Wald said he and Deptula were kept completely out of the loop on what happened next, "whether out of malice or incompetence I still don't know. … The first I knew the Predator was [engaged] was when I heard an unknown voice on my radio say, 'You are cleared to fire.'" Instead of striking Omar's facility, the Predator targeted and destroyed a vehicle outside, killing several bodyguards. In the chaotic moments that followed, the Taliban leader escaped. "Mullah Omar and his senior staff piled out of that building and here we are 13 years later and we don't know where he is," said Deptula. He is still angry about the failed opportunity. "What was the rationale of shooting an empty truck when the leadership was in an adjacent building, and where we had, two minutes away, aircraft that could have sent Mullah Omar and the senior Taliban leadership to the nether regions? It was a significant lost strategic opportunity—to put it mildly."
The botched Predator strike led to an immediate three-way fight between the Air Force, CENTCOM, and the CIA, which risked bringing the first night of the War on Terror to a shuddering halt. "To this day," Deptula said, "there is a degree of uncertainty over just who issued that fire order. We both watched the weapon impact and both turned to each other simultaneously and said, 'Who the fuck did that?'" So furious was Wald that he threatened to call off the first night's bombings. As Deptula conceded to me, in the rush to go to war "there had not been a lot of attention paid" to working out who was in charge of the drone. Tommy Franks has put it more bluntly: "In combat there has to be one line of authority. But in this goat rope there had been CENTCOM, the Pentagon, the White House, [and] the CIA."
The regular Air Force and U.S. Special Forces got their own armed drone fleets after 2001. Yet tensions persist even now between the military, the intelligence community, and the White House over where control of America's secret drone killings in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan—outside of declared U.S. war zones—should lie.
It was a pair of Colorado-born brothers, James Neal and Linden Blue, now in their late 70s, who put the world's first armed drone into production. Their business acumen was clear even in 1957, when they hatched a plan to learn to fly and convinced Life magazine to sponsor them for $8,000 on a South American adventure, flying in a tiny borrowed Tri-Pacer plane they nicknamed "Blue Bird." The brothers made the cover that April, two all-American boys squashed into a tiny cockpit under the headline "Great Adventures: Over Andes by Light Plane." The extraordinary trip took them 25,000 miles in 110 days through much of South America.
After leaving university, the pair first tried their hand at farming in Nicaragua. They had met and interviewed the late father of the country's president and dictator Luis Somoza Debayle on their Life trip. Now, in a reported joint venture with Somoza's family, the Blue brothers set up a ranch—complete with airstrip—on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, with the aim of cultivating cocoa and bananas. The project was a failure, the bananas blighted by disease. But their ties to the Somoza family proved important to their later ventures.
In 1986, the duo bought nuclear and defense contractor General Atomics from Chevron for a knock-down $50 million. By then, the Blue brothers had diverse business interests including real estate, construction, ranching, and gas, and they were keen to expand their energy interests. But there was also a more personal agenda. Their friends the Somozas had been deposed by the revolutionary Sandinistas in 1979, and the Reagan administration had authorized the CIA to assist a secret war against Nicaragua's new leaders. The Blues were keen to help, since "the Contras were resisting communism and the domination of the Soviet Union," as Linden put it in an interview with the journalist Di Freeze. As Neal told Charles Duhigg of The New York Times, the brothers were "enthusiastic supporters," though not formally involved in the secret war.
It was Neal who began considering the possibility of using primitive unmanned aircraft on kamikaze missions against Nicaragua's gasoline infrastructure: "You could launch them from behind the line of sight, so you would have total deniability," he told Fortune magazine years later. The duo wanted to use their new General Atomics company to research the possibility. That early project went under the name "Predator," though it was a dead end. It would be another six years before the Blue brothers snared the prototype of the armed drone that now bears that name, acquired from an Israeli-American design genius.
Abe Karem—"the Moses of modern drones," as one senior Pentagon official described him to me—had served as an aeronautical engineer with the Israeli Air Force before running a team of radical innovators at state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries (still a world leader in drone design). In the wake of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the country had "an emerging operational need for real-time intelligence on the front lines," Karem told me via email. On leaving Israel Aircraft Industries, Karem set up his own company aimed at making unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems. Unable to break into Israel's close-knit defense world, he instead moved his family and business to California, where he built early models of his new drone designs in his three-car Los Angeles garage.
Those designs soon caught the attention of the CIA and the Pentagon. In 1983, nearly 300 U.S. and French peacekeepers had died in Beirut in terrorist attacks, starkly highlighting the need to keep closer tabs on radicals in areas like Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Yet such places were difficult to access and harder still to insert human spies into. Satellites and U-2 reconnaissance planes could provide photographs at specific times, but the process was cumbersome and technically limited. What was needed was an unobtrusive aircraft that could fly at lower altitude, loiter at the scene unobserved, and then quickly deliver pictures. Karem's Leading Systems was contracted as part of a $40-million "black " Pentagon project to develop its UAV technology.
What no one gave any thought to at the time was arming such a platform. Major General George Harrison, the former head of the Air Force's Operational Test and Evaluation Center, recalled in an interview that there was huge institutional opposition at the Pentagon and CIA to the idea of arming any surveillance aircraft: "[I]f you were armed it would divert you from your primary job of target development. So there was strong resistance, I mean strong resistance, I can't overstate it."
Karem's two prototypes, the Amber and the Gnat, first successfully flew in 1986. Four years later, Leading Systems was bankrupt—the Pentagon had frozen its funding as a result of inter-services bickering and post?Cold War cuts. In a particular irony, Pakistan at one point considered buying the mothballed prototype fleet. But in 1991, the Blue brothers happened to be looking for a UAV company to buy, and Karem's was it. The Predator was back in business.
When Bill Clinton assumed the U.S. presidency in January 1993, a key priority was the escalating conflict across the former Yugoslavia. A lack of good intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance was hampering U.S. efforts to understand and, if possible, contain the civil wars. The CIA wanted spies in the sky, and agency director James Woolsey played an important role in the Predator's early success. Briefed about the drone's potential at an early 1993 meeting—and concerned about the quality of satellite coverage over the Balkans—the CIA chief is said to have personally flown to California to inspect the new system. Impressed, the agency bought five Gnats on the spot. It also brought into play its own expertise stemming from research it had done on how to remotely pilot an aircraft from thousands of miles away. CIA know-how now merged with General Atomics' expertise.
In record time, General Atomics' prototypes were approved for deployment in the escalating Balkan Wars. Though the Pentagon had also ordered drones from General Atomics, just as with the War on Terror seven years later, the CIA's drones got there first. The agency flew its classified Bosnian missions from the semi-derelict Gjader airfield in Albania. A year later, the Pentagon's own drones arrived in the shape of four modified Gnats (newly christened "Predators"), which operated from Taszar airfield in Hungary and which were controlled by the U.S. military.
The early Predator had major limitations, many of which were ironed out in a literal trial by combat since they were easy prey for Serbian anti-air defenses. At least two were shot down. Wings would also freeze up, sometimes causing a drone to drop expensively from the sky. Missing too was the facility to fly the remotely piloted aircraft from any distance via satellites. Instead, the pilots, sensor operators, and intelligence analysts were all crammed into huts beside the runways. Yet with its ability to stay in the air for almost 24 hours, the Predator was still proving an effective reconnaissance machine. "The bad guys used to just wait for our fighter pilots to leave," recalled Air Force Major General Ken Israel, who headed the Pentagon office in charge of unmanned military aircraft at the time. "They didn't have that option anymore."
It was Osama bin Laden who provided the catalyst for arming the drone. In August 1998, coordinated suicide bombings occurred at two U.S. embassies 400 miles apart in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The FBI later concluded that the attack had been sponsored by bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. But if the United States wanted to deal with bin Laden directly, it first had to find him. For a time, the Pentagon considered placing a giant, hidden telescope on an Afghan mountain in the hope of spotting al-Qaeda's gaunt leader. More sensible heads turned to the Predator, which could not only help find him, but could laser-illuminate his location so Tomahawk cruise missiles could be launched from a submarine in the Gulf.
On September 7, 2000, the first unarmed, remotely piloted aircraft crossed into Afghanistan. Over the next few weeks, the Predator made 10 successful flights into the country, and on September 25, 2000, against all expectations, it apparently found bin Laden. Circling high and unseen above Tarnak Farms near Kandahar, the Predator fed back live pictures of a tall, white-robed man surrounded by a security detail. According to one senior Pentagon official with close knowledge of the operation, in total al-Qaeda's leader was directly observed by the CIA's drones for four hours and 23 minutes over a number of missions.
Yet there was no guarantee that cruise missiles would find the terrorist in the same location by the time orders were issued, coordinates were inputted and checked, lawyers were consulted, and the missile made its way from the Gulf to the target. An armed Predator, on the other hand, could have spotted and killed bin Laden at the same time. "We showed that [bin Laden] video to the secretary of the Air Force, the chief of staff of the Air Force and the assistant vice chief and someone mentioned, 'Let me take Hellfire'"—a lightweight anti-tank missile that could be laser-guided onto its target—"'quick, black, and dirty.' That direction was given, so we moved money and notified Congress." The CIA had developed the Predator as a spying platform. Now the rush was on to turn it into an assassination tool.
General Atomics' newly armed drone was still being tested and evaluated in the fall of 2001 when, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, it was called into service early by the CIA, crated up, and shipped off to the impending war in Afghanistan. Its capabilities and shortcomings would be determined in the heat of battle. It was a shaky start. On October 12—just five days after the Mullah Omar incident—a CIA forward team was almost bombed by an agency drone after analysts apparently mistook its members for al-Qaeda, according to the memoirs of former CIA officer Gary Schroen.
By mid-November 2001, the CIA's drones had reportedly fired 40 Hellfire missiles throughout Afghanistan, although this should be measured against an estimated 6,500 airstrikes by all platforms during the three-month air war. By December 2001, President George W. Bush would himself come out strongly as a Predator fan in an address to cadets at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. Describing what was still a secret CIA weapon, he spoke of how drones were now "able to circle over enemy forces".
Tags The Story of America's Very First Drone Strike
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Ireland Branch Open Day Report
Home Ireland Branch Open Day Report
Web Editor, May 24, 2015 May 27, 2015 , Events, Latest News, Members benefits, 0
The Ireland Branch held its annual Open Day yesterday in Dublin City Library & Archive. About 65 people members gathered to hear three lectures and take part in an individual questions and answers session. Discounted membership of the IGRS was available on the day and a number of new members joined our ranks.
The morning kicked off with a look at the lesser known family history resources at the library & archive. This lecture was given by Dr Máire Kennedy, whose engagement with her topic shone through. Some features people may not be aware of include cemetery records for Deansgrange and Mount Jerome up to 1972, telephone directories for the whole country (with some gaps), early trade directories from 17th and 18th centuries, and the availability of Find My Past for free use in the reading room.
Ireland Branch Genealogy Open Day
Our second lecture was given by Rob Goodbody on the third (of four) volumes on the Irish Historic Town Atlas for Dublin covering the years 1745-1845, a crucial period in the development of modern Dublin, which included the Wide Streets Commission's work. The project is actually Europe-wide and now features 500 atlases covering towns in 19 countries. The atlas takes in a myriad of historical and genealogical sources making it a "must-buy" for those with Dublin ancestors and cartography enthusiasts alike.
After a good lunch, we reassembled to hear our final lecturer of the day. Dr Cathy Swift of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick gave a highly entertaining lecture on the promise, pitfalls and problems with the growing field of genetic DNA. As a medieval historian, Cathy looked at how geneticists have tried to match their DNA findings to history, with mixed results.
The IGRS holds a silent auction on our Open Day and this year, in keeping with our final lecture, we were delighted to offer 2 DNA testing kits, courtesy of Ancestry, who recently launched DNA testing in the Irish market. Other prizes included books, vouchers and bottles of alcohol ensuring that many people came away happy.
Our final session of the day saw some of the genealogists on the committee including Máire Mac Conghail, the Ireland Branch chairperson, and Steven Smyrl, Council chairperson, answering specific questions from individuals on their current brick walls. Hopefully we were able to help!
The day was a great success, with thanks to all the committee and organisers, and the members for attending!
Library closes 3 March 2018
Nick Reddan, March 2, 2018 March 2, 2018 , Latest News, 0
Members and visitors please note due to the bad weather the IGRS Library will not open this Saturday. We...
IGRS Chairman, Steven Smyrl, Elected a Fellow of the Society of Genealogists
IGRS Editor, December 11, 2019 December 12, 2019 , Latest News, 0
IGRS Chairman Steven Smyrl has been elected a Fellow of the prestigious Society of Genealogists (SoG) in recognition of...
The IGRS at Back to Our Past 9-11th October
Web Editor, September 20, 2015 October 5, 2015 , Events, 0
The IGRS is looking for members to help run our stand at Back to Our Past on the weekend...
Lecture in Birmingham Tuesday 29th September
Web Editor, September 16, 2015 September 16, 2015 , Events, Library, Resources, 0
IGRS Vice-President Mary Castelyn will be giving a free lecture at 2pm at Acocks Green Library, Shirley Road, Birmingham...
Ireland Branch Summer Outing
Web Editor, June 15, 2014 October 10, 2014 , Events, Members benefits, Ireland Branch, Summer Outing, 0
The Ireland Branch's Summer outing took place yesterday, Saturday 14th June. A 35 strong contingent left Dublin just after...
St Patrick's Day Competition Results
Web Editor, March 21, 2014 October 10, 2014 , Latest News, competition, 0
Our competition has now closed. We've had an unprecedented number of entries. The lucky 10 winners are listed below. ...
We're in the Papers!
IGRS Editor, October 7, 2016 October 7, 2016 , Latest News, Resources, 0
Out of the ashes – An Irishman's Diary piece on the founding of the Irish Genealogical Research Society Our...
Ireland Branch Open Day 23rd MaySummer Outing for the Ireland Branch


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Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation
Pavel Kishcha, Boris Starobinets, Isaac Gertman, Tal Ozer, Pinhas Alpert, Stefano Vignudelli (Editor)
Department of Geophysics
The Dead Sea is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. Observational evidence has been obtained of unexpected short-term water heating in the 2 m uppermost layer of this hypersaline lake, following a sharp drop in solar radiation under weak winds. This was carried out using Dead Sea buoy measurements. Passing frontal cloudiness mixed with significant dust pollution over the Judean Mountains and the Dead Sea, which occurred on March 22, 2013, led to a dramatic drop in noon solar radiation from 860 W m−2 to 50 W m−2. This drop in solar radiation caused a short-term (1-hour) pronounced temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the sea down to 2 m depth. After the sharp drop in noon solar radiation, in the absence of water mixing, buoy measurements showed that the temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the Dead Sea took place for a shorter time and was more pronounced than the temperature rise under the regular diurnal solar cycle. The water heating could be explained by gravitational instability in the skin-surface layer, when the warm surface water with the increased salinity and density submerged, thereby increasing temperature in the layers below.
International Journal of Oceanography
Kishcha, P., Starobinets, B., Gertman, I., Ozer, T., Alpert, P., & Vignudelli, S. (Ed.) (2017). Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation. International Journal of Oceanography, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/5810575
Kishcha, Pavel ; Starobinets, Boris ; Gertman, Isaac et al. / Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation. In: International Journal of Oceanography. 2017 ; Vol. 2017.
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title = "Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation",
abstract = "The Dead Sea is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. Observational evidence has been obtained of unexpected short-term water heating in the 2 m uppermost layer of this hypersaline lake, following a sharp drop in solar radiation under weak winds. This was carried out using Dead Sea buoy measurements. Passing frontal cloudiness mixed with significant dust pollution over the Judean Mountains and the Dead Sea, which occurred on March 22, 2013, led to a dramatic drop in noon solar radiation from 860 W m−2 to 50 W m−2. This drop in solar radiation caused a short-term (1-hour) pronounced temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the sea down to 2 m depth. After the sharp drop in noon solar radiation, in the absence of water mixing, buoy measurements showed that the temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the Dead Sea took place for a shorter time and was more pronounced than the temperature rise under the regular diurnal solar cycle. The water heating could be explained by gravitational instability in the skin-surface layer, when the warm surface water with the increased salinity and density submerged, thereby increasing temperature in the layers below.",
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Kishcha, P, Starobinets, B, Gertman, I, Ozer, T, Alpert, P & Vignudelli, S (ed.) 2017, 'Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation', International Journal of Oceanography, vol. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/5810575
Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation. / Kishcha, Pavel; Starobinets, Boris; Gertman, Isaac et al.
In: International Journal of Oceanography, Vol. 2017, 2017.
T1 - Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation
AU - Kishcha, Pavel
AU - Starobinets, Boris
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AU - Alpert, Pinhas
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N2 - The Dead Sea is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. Observational evidence has been obtained of unexpected short-term water heating in the 2 m uppermost layer of this hypersaline lake, following a sharp drop in solar radiation under weak winds. This was carried out using Dead Sea buoy measurements. Passing frontal cloudiness mixed with significant dust pollution over the Judean Mountains and the Dead Sea, which occurred on March 22, 2013, led to a dramatic drop in noon solar radiation from 860 W m−2 to 50 W m−2. This drop in solar radiation caused a short-term (1-hour) pronounced temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the sea down to 2 m depth. After the sharp drop in noon solar radiation, in the absence of water mixing, buoy measurements showed that the temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the Dead Sea took place for a shorter time and was more pronounced than the temperature rise under the regular diurnal solar cycle. The water heating could be explained by gravitational instability in the skin-surface layer, when the warm surface water with the increased salinity and density submerged, thereby increasing temperature in the layers below.
AB - The Dead Sea is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. Observational evidence has been obtained of unexpected short-term water heating in the 2 m uppermost layer of this hypersaline lake, following a sharp drop in solar radiation under weak winds. This was carried out using Dead Sea buoy measurements. Passing frontal cloudiness mixed with significant dust pollution over the Judean Mountains and the Dead Sea, which occurred on March 22, 2013, led to a dramatic drop in noon solar radiation from 860 W m−2 to 50 W m−2. This drop in solar radiation caused a short-term (1-hour) pronounced temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the sea down to 2 m depth. After the sharp drop in noon solar radiation, in the absence of water mixing, buoy measurements showed that the temperature rise in the uppermost layer of the Dead Sea took place for a shorter time and was more pronounced than the temperature rise under the regular diurnal solar cycle. The water heating could be explained by gravitational instability in the skin-surface layer, when the warm surface water with the increased salinity and density submerged, thereby increasing temperature in the layers below.
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JO - International Journal of Oceanography
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Kishcha P, Starobinets B, Gertman I, Ozer T, Alpert P, Vignudelli S, (ed.). Observations of Unexpected Short-Term Heating in the Uppermost Layer of the Dead Sea after a Sharp Decrease in Solar Radiation. International Journal of Oceanography. 2017;2017. doi: 10.1155/2017/5810575


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Articles tagged "kabul"
Mes Aynak, One Of The World's Great Archaeological Treasures, Is About To Be Destroyed
by Dave Seminara on Nov 28, 2012
Time is running out to save one of the world's great archeological sites. On Christmas Day, archeologists who have been working to preserve Mes Aynak, a stunning archeological site in Afghanistan with more than 5,000 years of history, will be forced off the site to make way for a Chinese mining company that plans to extract copper from beneath the site.
The Chinese government owned company, China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC), plans to destroy Mes Aynak's temples, monasteries, thousands of Buddhist statues, and a mountain range in order to extract what they believe is $100 billion worth of copper. But Brent Huffman, a Chicago-based documentary filmmaker and others are still hoping for a last-minute solution that could preserve the site.
Huffman, 33, is making a documentary about Mes Aynak and we caught up with him before he departed for what may be his final trip to Mes Aynak before it's completely destroyed to learn more about this site and to find out if there's anything that can be done to save it.
What is the historical significance of this site?
The top layer of Mes Aynak is a Buddhist city that is about 2,400 years old. There are monastery complexes, temple structures, and over 400 life-sized Buddhist statues. Underneath that, there's a 5,000-year-old Bronze-Age site. Archeologists are just starting to make discoveries in the Bronze Age site.
You've been there more than 10 times. How do you get there?
I can't spend the night there because it's in Logar province, which is Taliban country, so when the sun goes down, it's too dangerous. The Afghan archeologists don't stay the night either. It's about 25 kilometers southeast of Kabul, but because the road is so crude, it can take an hour or an hour and a half to get there. And it's dangerous, you have to travel through a few villages that are supportive of the Taliban and have a history of firing rockets at cars passing through or placing landmines on the road. So it's nerve-racking just getting to the site.
Is it easy for Americans to visit Afghanistan?
People are surprised how easy it is. I go on a tourist visa. You need a letter of recommendation from your employer, but that's about it. Emirates flies there, Turkish Air flies there. I'm going back to Afghanistan in December and I'll take Turkish Air through Istanbul, then a direct flight from there to Kabul.
In your piece on CNN, you compare this site to Machu Picchu. Is it as awe inspiring as that?
Yes. The first time I saw it, I was blown away. Awe-inspiring is the right phrase. It's a very Indiana Jones feeling. It's an enormous site in a very isolated location.
Why isn't Mes Aynak a UNESCO protected site?
I can't really say for sure. This is just a rumor, but I've heard that UNESCO is going to leave Afghanistan altogether in 2014, which would leave the Buddhas of Bamiyan completely unguarded. A lot of NGOs in Afghanistan think it'll be too hard to operate in the country after the troops pull out, so that may be part of their thinking.
Does the fact that this is a Buddhist site explain why the Afghan government hasn't protected it?
Not exactly. The copper that is under the city is worth more than $100 billion. For a country where some citizens are starving, any economic activity like this sounds pretty good.
So this Chinese company, MCC, plans to destroy the site to extract what could be $100 billion worth of copper?
The contract was signed in 2007 for a 30-year lease of Mes Aynak and MCC paid a little under $3 billion for the exclusive rights to mine the site. MCC paid a first installment of $800 million and they were accused of bribery. The former Minister of Mines was allegedly paid a $30 million bribe in Dubai but he's no longer in the government. The Chinese were never told that the Buddhist site exists before they signed the contract.
How could they not notice it?
I don't think they actually visited the site.
And MCC eventually agreed to allow archaeologists to have three years to excavate the site?
Yes. There was a highly critical story about their plans in the Wall Street Journal, and MCC saw it as a PR nightmare, so they gave a three-year reprieve starting in 2009. And for the archaeologists, it's been a sporadic three years because the area the site is in is so dangerous.
Who are these archaeologists?
There are three groups. The main group is a French organization, DAFA. And then there's a team of Afghan archaeologists who are doing all the work, they are kind of the heroes in this story. They are the ones risking their lives every day to excavate the site. And then there's an international team working underneath the Ministry of Mines, who are staying inside the Chinese MCC compound and you can see the conflict of interest there. The three groups are all doing different things and not working very cohesively together.
And now they need more time to excavate the site?
Right. Philippe Marquis, who is heading the DAFA team, said it should be a 30-year project to properly excavate and preserve the site and to discover these layers of civilizations.
I assume that there is no way to mine copper while preserving the site?
It might be possible to save the structures by using a different mining method but MCC proposes to use the open pit mining style, which is the cheapest and fastest, but most environmentally destructive method. Mining experts are telling me the Buddhist sites and the mountain range will be destroyed and they've already destroyed six villages in the area to prepare the site.
Were the people in the villages bought off?
Right now, the locals are extremely angry and they're part of the violent attacks that have occurred at the site – rockets have been fired, land mines have been placed in the road – MCC and the Ministry of Mines negotiated with the villages, but the people were promised money and I don't think they were ever paid, so now you have a lot of angry, homeless people in the area that used to live there and are now fighting back.
Have the archeologists themselves been attacked?
Yes. When MCC came in, they brought in members of the Kabul police force, so they have some officers protecting the mine. Eleven of those officers were killed recently and a landmine killed four Chinese workers. And one of the Afghan archeologists accidentally dug up a landmine at Mes Aynak. It blew up in his face and he lost his eyesight.
What about you, aren't you concerned about your own safety?
I am. I love the site and I'm passionate about Afghanistan but it's very difficult. I have a daughter who will turn 1 on December 12, right before I leave for Afghanistan. It's very dangerous – every trip to Mes Aynak, I feel it.
So why are you willing to take the risk?
It's a good question. My wife doesn't understand it. My mother hates that I do this too. It's really a love of Afghanistan. I started traveling there in 2004 and I fell in love with the country. To me, this destruction of this cultural heritage in Afghanistan, it represents something far greater than just this site. I fear that this will set a precedent where lots of cultural heritage sites could be destroyed.
If the international community could rally, we could stop this from happening and prevent a horrible precedent from being set.
How did this site survive when the Buddhas of Bamiyan were attacked? Why was this site spared?
It has been heavily looted already. It wasn't flat out blown up like the Bamiyan Buddhas. The huge irony is that with MCC arriving on the scene with the Kabul police, they have served to protect the site. If MCC left, the Kabul police would go with them and because of all the press Mes Aynak received, it would be completely destroyed by looters. If UNESCO or someone like them doesn't get involved to protect the site, it doesn't look good.
And time is running out, MCC is set to start mining on Christmas day. Is there time left to save this site?
The December 25 date is when archeologists will be forced off the site. I won't be there on Christmas but I don't think they'd allow me to film the destruction of this site anyways.
What is the U.S. government's stance on this issue?
Recently, because of my Facebook page and others who are working to spread awareness, Thailand has gotten involved to save the site in a huge way. Thais protested outside UNESCO's office in Thailand to save the site.
I've also been working with the Smithsonian, who has been talking to the State Department. So we're trying to stop this altogether or at least buy more time.
But has the U.S. government been supportive?
They have not been supportive of my efforts and my project. I've had contact with the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and I think they are very intent on having the mining project begin, because they want to see private industry in Afghanistan succeed. That sounds good, but because of the level of corruption and environmental destruction and China's record of mistreating workers, I don't think it's good for the country.
You don't buy the argument that this project will create jobs and benefit the local economy?
No. There's a great example of a Chinese mining company in Peru that promised many of the same things and delivered on none of them.
If this site is demolished will this be one of the world's most important archeological sites to be destroyed?
Absolutely. This site has a 5,000-year history; it was a major hub on the Silk Road. Mes Aynak is the missing link that shows how important Afghanistan was in the history of the continent.
I suppose that the idea of attracting tourists to Afghanistan is so unrealistic at this point that no one in the Afghan government sees an opportunity in preserving the site?
Yes, unfortunately that's right. Bamiyan is getting very dangerous as well. It was dynamited in 2001.
But it wasn't completely destroyed?
No. And it is a tourist destination still. There are direct flights into Bamiyan but it's pretty dangerous to get there.
For those who want to do something to help save this site, what should they do?
Check out my Facebook page. And we have two petitions, one is to have President Karzai intervene and stop this from happening, and the other is to appeal to UNESCO to have them get involved. And I have a Kickstarter campaign, which is 92% funded at this point, which does three things: 1) it will help me finish the film, 2) continue to raise awareness about Mes Aynak, and 3) 10% of the proceeds will go to Afghan archeologists to buy them computers and cameras and other equipment they don't have.
When can we see your film?
It should be out in February or March. We have a trailer but we're not done filming (see trailer above).
So what would happen in a best-case scenario here? Who would reimburse MCC if they aren't allowed to mine the site?
MCC could mine in a less destructive way around the site – but I know they won't do that because it isn't cost effective. In a perfect world, the site becomes like Machu Picchu, and becomes a huge tourist site. I would love it if mining wouldn't happen there at all.
[Photo credits: Photos of Mes Aynak courtesy of Brent Huffman and Jerome Starkey on Flickr; Bamiyan photo courtesy of Hadi Zaher on Flickr]
A Traveler In The Foreign Service: The Petraeus Fallout – Keep Your Pants On And Watch Out For Honorary Consuls
In the wake of the David Petraeus-Paula Broadwell-Jill Kelley scandal, many Americans are wondering why General Petraeus felt compelled to resign. Shouldn't consenting adults be allowed to cheat on their spouses, so long as it doesn't impact their job performance? The most recommended comment on a New York Times story in the immediate aftermath of Petraeus' resignation follows this line of thinking.
"I fail to see how Petreus' (sic) private life has any bearing on his effectiveness as a public servant," wrote a reader from Minnesota identifying himself as Skeptical.
But the truth is that there is no real work/private life separation for CIA spooks, Foreign Service diplomats and anyone else with a top-secret security clearance that gives them access to classified information. As the director of the CIA, Petraeus is a huge fish, but even much lower level government employees have seen their careers go up in smoke based upon allegations of infidelity.
I know of a few cases where Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) had their security clearances suspended for allegedly cheating on spouses but for every one of those situations, there are several others where the employee keeps their security clearance while their "corridor reputation" is essentially shot.
It might seem unfair, but anyone who has access to classified material – and that includes someone way down at the bottom of the food chain like Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower, all the way up to someone like Petraeus – is susceptible to blackmail if they have secrets they don't want anyone to know about.
A lot of Foreign Service hopefuls stress out about getting a security clearance. They worry that they may have smoked too many joints or their dicey credit score or a cranky old neighbor who might rat them out for some real or imagined offense. But the truth is that investigators are mostly digging around to see if the applicant is susceptible to blackmail for any reason – infidelity, debts, sexual orientation, etc.
The bottom line is that if you have a security clearance, you'd better be faithful to your spouse. (And even if you don't, it's a pretty good rule of thumb, don't you think?) So if you want to join the Foreign Service, it's probably best to forget about wife swapping, swinger's parties, soliciting prostitutes and anything else that could spell the end of your career.
There are no hard stats on divorce rates in the Foreign Service, but there is anecdotal evidence that the Foreign Service lifestyle can be hard on marriages. In an era when our biggest posts are unaccompanied and more FSOs are being asked to live without their spouses for a year or more at a time, it's easy to understand how respected people like Petraeus could go astray.
People who are put together in a highly stressful, claustrophobic, foreign environment, away from their families are more susceptible to temptation. That is not to excuse it, but if you read books like Kim Barker's "Taliban Shuffle," you get a sense that there's a lot more partying and infidelity among the expats in Kabul than one might expect.
The other diplomacy-related takeaway from the scandal is Jill Kelley's bizarre claim that she has diplomatic immunity, based upon the fact that she is apparently an honorary consul for South Korea.
"I'm an honorary consul general so I have inviolability, so they (the press), um should not be able to cross my property," she said to a 911 operator. "I don't know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well." (See video below.)
Honorary consuls don't have diplomatic immunity and their lawns certainly aren't "inviolable" as embassies and consulates are, but give her credit for trying. The truth is that there are a lot of very bogus people, like Kelley, trying to pawn themselves off as diplomats. The Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger exposed the murky world of pay-for-title sham diplomats in his terrific film "The Ambassador," which is available on iTunes, but even he might have to laugh at Kelley's audacity.
Read more from "A Traveler In The Foreign Service"
[Photo credits: Michal Spocko, Mike Licht, and The Tim Channel on Flickr]
National Museum Of Afghanistan Struggles To Rebuild
by Sean McLachlan on Sep 10, 2012
Afghanistan has a rich heritage. As a crossroads of trade it spawned numerous civilizations that were influenced by cultures as far away as Macedonia. There was even a thriving Buddhist culture in Afghanistan that created art inspired by Classical Greek models.
It's also been rocked by decades of war that saw the destruction of many of its ancient sites and museums. The National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul was especially hard hit. During the 1990s it was shelled and caught fire. When the Taliban took over, they destroyed about 2,500 of the museum's statues for being un-Islamic. Gold and silver artifacts were stolen and melted down or sold on the international antiquities market.
Now the museum is slowly rebuilding, Art Daily reports. An international network of police forces and museums has been tracking down the museum's stolen artifacts, as well as those illegally excavated in lawless parts of the country, and returning them to Kabul.
The museum staff surprised the world in 2003 by producing a wealth of artifacts they had hidden during the years of Taliban rule. These included thousands of pieces of gold jewelry and coins from the Bactrian era, more than 2,000 years ago. Those pieces are now on tour around the world as part of the exhibition "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul." The exhibition just closed in Norway and is now headed to Australia.
There are still problems for Kabul's museum. Power cuts are a regular occurrence, and the Taliban still threaten countryside. They and other Islamic extremists would love to smash a few thousand more statues. Moderate Muslims, like the staff at the museum and the locals who come to visit, see the Buddhist statues and other pre-Islamic artifacts as the heritage of their nation, not threats to their religion. One hopes that moderate Islam wins out in a country flattened by warfare, and that Kabul's archaeology museum, once the finest in the region, can keep its doors open without fear.
Check out the photo gallery for a sample of Afghanistan's magnificent ancient heritage.
Traveling Photo Exhibit Shows A Different Side Of Afghanistan
by Jessica Marati on Aug 28, 2012
Beauty often isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Afghanistan. However, a new traveling photo exhibit from non-profit organization Mountain2Mountain aims to change that.
"Streets of Afghanistan" features life-size images from both Afghan and Western photographers that challenge the perceptions most people hold about this complex country. The intention is not only to showcase a side of Afghanistan not often celebrated, but also to spark conversation, engage viewers and connect communities through art. The exhibit also features video projections, live music, kites and people, resulting in an experience that is both interactive and immersive.
The exhibit was first unveiled at the Denver Art Museum in April 2011, but organizers have long yearned to bring it back to the very place that inspired it: Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul. In order to make that dream a reality, Mountain2Mountain recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the $20,000 that is needed for shipping, logistics and security. To learn more about the exhibit and make a contribution, visit the campaign on Kickstarter.
[Image by Wakil Kohsar, courtesy of Mountain2Mountain]
Christmas in Afghanistan: Safer than New York City?
by Tom Johansmeyer on Nov 22, 2010
Nothing beats Manhattan for the holidays. I'm already seeing signs of Christmas appear all over the city. Lights are already wrapped around trees on W. 58th Street, and gigantic fir candy cane sculptures are beginning to adorn the city's skyscrapers. There's no doubt that the holiday season is nothing short of magical in New York City, and if you're looking to experience Christmas away from home, this is the place to do it … unless you're listening to the NATO.
Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative, has called Kabul, Afghanistan a safe place for kids, saying they "are probably safer here than they would be in London, New York or Glasgow or many other cities," according to The Independent.
Of course, Sedwill is already backing away from his original comment, saying, "I was trying to explain to an audience of British children how uneven violence is across Afghanistan."
%Gallery-106020%The Independent continues:
"But, in cities like Kabul where security has improved, the total levels of violence, including criminal violence, are comparable to those which many western children would experience.
"For most Afghans, the biggest challenges are from poverty – the absence of clean water, open sewers, malnutrition, disease – and many more children are at risk from those problems than from the insurgency."
So, is that where you're going to go to watch the tree-lighting?
%Poll-56052%
[Via Gawker, photo by zedwards via Flickr]


Coordinate the largest large amount of tourist buses companies throughout Europe.
Transfers and visits in and out the cities.
Luxury Cars (up 4 seats).
Minivans (up to 8 seats).
Mini-buses (9 seats and over).
Regular buses (from 35 up to 55 seats).
Buses up to 71 seats.
Adapted buses for handicapped passengers.
Mini-buses and coaches VIPS-HIGH LUXURY.


text:
The 15-Year-Old Who Taught Me About Suicide
India's suicide problem goes up close and personal
This is well outside the realm of stories that Asia Sentinel normally publishes. However, we were surprised and impressed by its quality and sensitivity, especially from a recent journalism student. It was made available to us through an agreement with the Journalism and Media Studies Center of the University of Hong Kong. We hope you will find it as valuable as we did –the editors.
By: Ruhi Soni
On a late evening last September, I stood in a dark hallway on the ninth floor of my building, watching people beg a 15-year-old girl not to jump off the edge of the window on which she was standing. She had been spotted barely half an hour earlier. As she wrestled with and shrieked at the building guard who had been the first to arrive on the spot and was holding on to her tightly (so tightly that she had a red mark on her arm even hours later), she drew a crowd of masked onlookers – trickling in at first, then rapidly. The dark hallway on the ninth floor was bursting at the seams, until people began waiting on lower floors, hoping for the best outcome.
I stood back a few feet from her. The temperature that night must have been in the upper-20s Celsius, but I was trembling. My father was trying to pull me back. He was afraid of the packed crowd that was forming in the hallway whilst our country, India, was reporting 5-digit new COVID-19 cases every day. He was afraid of the front-row view from which I was watching the chaos unfolding. And he was afraid of my own history with suicide.
I had attempted suicide when I was 19 – when I was just a few years older than the girl before me. I had survived the attempt unscathed while my loved ones were not even aware of what had happened. My failure to end my life was the push I needed to seek out professional help – if I couldn't succeed at dying, I might as well learn to live. It took years of anti-depressants, rigorous therapy, and being surrounded by determined and patient friends and family. But that night, when I watched the young girl try and fail to end her own life, it was the first time I watched through the eyes of an outsider the events that could have happened to me if things had been different.
The girl, petite but stubborn, was dragged off the edge by six grown adults. Stubbornness gave way to resignation. Her shoulders slumped. She sat down and eventually lay down on the floor, cycling between silent tears, blank stares at the ceiling, and angry screams. I stood silently as the panicked adults around me tried to calm her down. "You are more than your grades!" "No breakup is worth it!" "Think of your parents!" "Do you want to see my pet puppies? I'm sure you can't say no to puppies!"
Over the years, I had become familiar with these platitudes too. They were already cliché to begin with, but now they had lost all meaning, the way words do when one hears and reads them over and over and over again. For a moment, I imagined myself in the girl's head. I imagined what it must feel like to have complete strangers who have never seen your marksheets tell you that no grades are worth ending your life over. What it must feel like to have people you've never spoken to tell you that no breakup is worth killing yourself.
I felt annoyed and frustrated. So much so, that I sat down next to the girl, leaned towards her, and said, "Hey, why the hell were you trying to kill yourself with your mask still on?" She broke her gaze away from the ceiling and towards me. Finally. In the hour that had passed, it was the first time she had looked at someone in the eyes. We both stared at each other for a moment and then laughed. The adults looked on, clearly bewildered at our insolent laughter during such an emotionally sensitive situation.
In the years that have passed since my attempt, when loved ones ask me why I tried to end my life, I still can't pinpoint a singular circumstance that had alone flipped the switch for me. No single bad day on which I had transformed from a happy child to a suicidal teenager. Instead, what comes to my mind are the random trains of thought I used to have constantly. For example, "I missed my school bus" became "My teacher is going to mark me absent" became "My teacher is going to have a bad impression of me" became "My teacher is going to give me bad grades" became "I'm going to fail school because of the bad grades" became "I won't get into a good university" became "I'm not going to get a good job" became "I'm going to die because I won't be able to put food on the table" finally became "Oh God, I should just kill myself now". I know now through therapy that these absurd, far-fetched, spiraling trains of thought are called "catastrophizing". They are very common among people with severe depression. And they are a much better hallmark of people with suicidal tendencies than any singular poor report card, family argument, or ended relationship looked at in isolation.
My age group of 18-to-29-year-olds leads India's suicide statistics year after year, the latest being about 35 percent of all reported suicides in 2019, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Statistics from this same bureau neatly reduce the complexities of choosing to end one's life to one explanation, one "Cause of Suicide" chosen from a short dropdown list of tragic circumstances such as "Drug Abuse/ Addiction" to "Love Affairs" to "Failure in Examination" to "Property Dispute". Our nation is so hungry for simple answers that arguably the single most headline-grabbing and TRP-generating news of 2020 was the death by suicide of a Bollywood actor, and the morphing of his legacy into conspiracy theories as people searched for why someone of his stature would willingly end his life.
Back in the dark hallway on the ninth floor, after the girl and I laughed together, we began talking. Or rather, she did. I stayed silent, only stopping her to ask more questions. I learned who she was. I learned her name. I learned her age. I learned that she loved her friends deeply, that she came from a caring family, that she was doing well in school, that she was an excellent digital artist. One moment, she reminisced about her closest friend, who was leaving the city soon. The next moment, she joked that the handwriting in her suicide note was terrible. In just a few minutes, she transformed into someone who was so, so much more than just an angst-ridden girl who failed to kill herself. She was human, with a rich and complex life that we could never have learned about in that dark hallway until we all shut up and listened to her and stopped chalking up her decision of trying to end her entire life to one hypothetical bad day.
At the end of the ordeal, she had spoken so much that she was too drained out to re-attempt. We forgot pandemic protocol for a bit and hugged each other, tears and snot and awry mask and all. She promised me that she would stay alive for one more night. Which was fine. Reimagining life as something more than a dead-end was not something she could do overnight anyway. But one more night was a step in the right direction. It was the first step she needed to take to finally be heard and understood.
Ruhi Soni lives in Bangalore, India. She is a recent graduate in journalism at Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Center, which made the article available to Asia Sentinel. She also studied biology and is pursuing science journalism. She can be reached through Twitter at @rookarmeremanko.
Hunter Farrar
a very sad story
Rich Samuel
Revealing and touching...


text:
By Stephen Basdeo on 9 Jul 2020 • ( 1 Comment )
I once heard it said (in a book somewhere, tho' I've never the time nor the inclination to look up the reference), that if you're a politician or an activist (in its broadest sense) and people are mocking you, then you probably have them rattled.
Such was the case with G.W.M. Reynolds, the subject of my next book.A leading Chartist activist who spent the years leading up to and after 1848 touring the country and speaking publicly on the need for political reform, his newspapers and novels were so incendiary that the army banned sales of them to soldier.
So, in 1848, the year of the great Chartist rally, a poor imitation of Punch, a magazine called The Man in the Moon, decided to mock Reynolds and imply that he was a bit of a wimp.
Dips into the Diary of Barabbas Bolt, Esq.[1]
APRIL 1. — This day I left that cradle of infant freedom, the city of Smokely-on-Sewer, to proceed to London, there to help in the glorious work of overthrowing the tyranny which holds to the grindstone the flattened face of merry England. I was accompanied to the station by a band of patriots who, as I paid the three pewter half – crowns, destined by the local association for my third – class fare, knelt upon the earth and solemnly swore never to wash their faces until the Charter became the law of the land. For my own part, I vowed to return with the glorious tidings, or be brought back pickled in a cask, a corpse to the cause of freedom.
In a moment I was on the platform. There stood train, its three classes, first, second, and third. "Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, and are not men equal? Have not these cursed distinctions of rank been yet levelled by the roar of the speeding steam? But I, for one, will never give in to aristocratic institutions.
So saying, I got into the coupée of a first-class carriage. A myrmidon of tyranny—a guard, advanced and asked to see my ticket, and I was forced to submit. Gracious heavens! And is this a land of liberty? Under the vile and insidious pretence of its being a third-class ticket I was dragged—yes dragged, for I refused to walk—from my seat, and forced into a miserable uncushioned sheep pen upon wheels! In a moment I saw a bloated aristocrat take what ought to have been, what was my place. Ha! Ha! Ha! But I forbear. Leaning back in the carriage I muttered "Oh! For one hour of Maximillan Robespierre."
April 3.—I have been two days at London. The Convention is sitting, and the regeneration of humanity may be expected next week. The operation is to take place on Kennington Common,—that Eden, where first will stir the enfranchised limbs of Republicanised Britannia. In my leisure hours, I pace the streets of the vast Metropolis. I see stately mansions, while I live in a "two pair back." How is this? Are not all men descendants of Adam and Eve? Are not all men flesh and blood? Are not all men brothers? Why then should I be debarred from my brother's house? Oh! The accursed system of worldwide primogeniture, which prevented me from smoking my evening pipe in the boudoir of the Duchess of Devonshire. Oppressed with these feelings this evening, I hurried home, and caught my landlady drinking tea with a female friend in my parlour. I was paralysed. Could such things be? Here was I, paying, or promising to pay, a certain weekly stipend for the possession of a room, and within it were ensconced a couple of fat, elderly, vulgar females. But I soon bundled them out, and sat down to write these reflections—to pierce and impale upon my steel pen, and to roast before the furnace of my virtuous indignation, the bloated satyrs who revel in gilded halls, in which were an unbidden patriot to set foot, he would be kicked down stairs by plush-clad flunkeys! Out! Out! Vile aristocracy of England! But thank Heaven, I sigh not for luxuries or for wealth.
Wrote down to my constituents for more cash.
April 4.—A great day at the Convention. Government are evidently besides themselves with terror. We have determined to do or die. Ha! Ha! Ha! Blood! Blood! Blood! I spoke for an hour and a half. I spoke as a slave to slaves. I demanded whether they were prepared to undergo the rack, and to be broken on the wheel. With a hoarse shout of acclamation, they roared "We are." That Convention will march to death, as to a jubilee. In a week from this day we shall be sitting as a Provisional Government, either in Buckingham Palace, Downing -street, or Somerset House. All is determined upon but the choice between these three seats of power. There is a strong party for Buckingham Palace; the more moderate men incline to Somerset House; I stand up for Downing-street. This question must be decided; it is the only one in which our minds are not thoroughly made up.
Purchased a democratic cravat, ornamented with blood-red representations of the guillotine.
April 5.—This day I devoted to the composition of a grand Chartist Anthem, destined to be sung by that magnificent barrow-tone, the Vox Populi, during the convulsions which will herald the installation of a Provisional Government. I subjoin a stanza or two:—
Sons of labour!
Pass the Charter.
That's what you should
All be arter.
Under tyrants
We've been smarters;
Cut it short—or
Die like martyrs.
Plunder toilers' hard-earned hordes,
Down with Peers; but live like Lords!
Brandish pikes, and
Level rifles:
Patriots should not
Stick at trifles.
Blazon rich with
Tyrants' gore,
Our new-invented
Destined to outflaunt that rag,
The tatter'd, worn-out, British Flag!
Talk of your old "God Save the Queen" and "Rule Britannia" after that! I should even say that the "Marsellaise" was inferior; and as for the "Mourir pour la patrie," it's mere doggerel in comparison. I leaned thoughtfully back, and wondered how it would sound, sung, as it will be on Monday next, by a million and a half of men, on Kennington Common. Ha! Ha! Ha! You won't hear the roar of artillery through such a choral crash.
But I could not give up the day to the inditing of patriotic songs; a more prosaic, but not less necessary duty was before me.
Ere midnight had struck (it is one o'clock now), I had manufactured 3981 signatures for our monster petition. Call this not an unworthy artifice. It is a patriotic contrivance. Under the monstrous system which oppresses us, education is neglected, and many of the people cannot write their own names. Is it not, therefore, the part of a brother to set down their signatures for them?
April 8.—This is Saturday night. In eight-and-forty hours I will be Minister for the Home Department. The dispute I hinted at is settled. Downing-Street is to be the seat of the Provisional Government. I must see about a van to transport my things, as I presume the pressure of business will be so great as to necessitate my sleeping there.
The speeches to-day have been of a cheering description. Every second word was "blood," and every third "bayonets." We are now pledged to fight. What do we care about artillery? What's artillery, grape shot, canister shot, chain shot, against Liberty? Hurrah! Victory and Power, or Immortality! The country is ready for a rising. Upwards of 1,341,789 armed men will come by special train from Manchester—907,518 from Birmingham—3,000,421 from Liverpool—and 2,619,433 from Leeds. Against such an array, added to the quota of 4,999,999 which the Metropolis alone is expected to furnish, what are a handful of disaffected troops, cook-maid-courting police, or whipper-snapper Specials? Glorious France! We follow in thy wake. With a prophetic eye I see the future. Monday has come. Seven Millions of fighting men are in arms. The Queen has abdicated. Lord John Russell has fled. Buckingham Palace is in flames. The Tower in ruins. Wellington is trembling in a cellar of Apsley House; and the Convention are filling their pockets in the Mint. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Liberty or Death! Blood! Blood! Blood! I can hardly keep myself down: I want to fight—to fight the troops of England, of Austria, of Russia—to fight all the word! Hip hip hip hurrah!
But I must calm myself. This is the last night but one of aristocracy in England—I shall go and see how it looks, in one of its accustomed haunts—I shall go to spy at it—to wink at it—to spit at it—I shall go to the Italian Opera, at Covent Garden.
Midnight.—"Waiter, "Three-ha'porth of Coffee, and pen, and ink."
I am in a humble coffee-shop. Gods! For calm to write what has happened. Oh! Aristocracy of—But I forbear; your days are numbered. Kicked! Shade of Danton! I went to the Royal Italian Opera; I paid my money honourably; because I could not have got in if I did not; I walked through spacious salons and brilliant corridors, soon destined to be the halls of Equality, and vestibules of Liberty; until, just as I was turning to the right towards the pit, at a low grated entrance, I was stopped.
"You cannot pass, Sir," said the malignant minion of despotism.
"What!" I exclaimed, "and is it come to this?"—
"Gentlemen must be in evening dress," scowled the fiend of oligarchy, and he pointed to my guillotine cravat.
"Liberty or Death!" I shouted, making a rush past. In an instant a ferocious policeman dragged me back.
"Very sorry sir, but rules must be attended to," grinned the hypocritic savage. "Black or white cravat, sir;" and I was handed into the street. Yielding to necessity, I purchased a white cravat and took my seat. The opera was "Semiramide" – a story of Kings, and Queens, and murder. I glared round at the boxes — I gnashed my teeth — I muttered "Aristocrats, your hour is come." The curtain fell only to rise again to the peal of Grisi's voice singing "God save the Queen," aye, and singing it too as though she meant it. The house rose — as a man. Hurrah after hurrah from boxes, pit, and gallery answered every gushing note. Now was my time — "Hiss-s-s-s-s! The Charter for ever! No more Queens! No more tyrants!" The rest is a whirl of half-remembered riot. The crash of the band, the deep rolling surge of Alboni's voice, the howling of the rascal loyalists around me, their scowling faces, their threatening arms, the toes of their boots . Yes, I felt them — kicked — kicked from the pit half down Bowstreet! Vengeance!
A French patriot sits opposite me. I know he is a patriot, for he emptied the sugar-basin into his pocket when the waiter's back was turned. He sees me—understands me—we fraternize—we embrace—I am soothed. He is an emissary from a club in the Rue aux Feves. Hurrah we shall have vengeance!
Sunday Evening—In twelve hours the tocsin is to sound. I am armed—eight pistols, a rifle, a pike, a broadsword, and a rapier. I had tied the bolster to the bed-post, and passed the day lounging at it with the pike, crying "Thus will I serve the Duke." My enthusiasm rises as the time draws on. I can scarcely keep from cutting my landlady's throat. Blood , gore! Ha! ha! ha! Robespierre, axes, nooses, gallows! Hurrah! Oh for morning!
Monday—The glorious day has come. How I regret that a cold in the head prevents my joining the band of patriots. I listen for the cannon. Ha! What's that? A rap at the door! A policeman! Good heaven, what have I done? I am not at the procession. I'm a loyal man. God save the Queen! Please sir, it wasn't me. I'm a special constable. Oh o'o'ogh! Let me go and I'll never do the like again. Let me this once, and I'll be one of the Queen's flunkeys without wages. Oh—oh—oh. I'll be hanged for treason.
"You're not wanted for treason, but for smashing. See these three bad half-crowns, paid by you at the Railway Station at Smokely-on-Sewer. Come along."
The pen falls from my hand. Tyrants! Tyrants! Ty——"
We have reason to believe that Mr Bolt is now resident at the Middlesex House of Correction, where any visitor (with a magistrate's order) will be sure to find him at home.
[1] Anon. 'Dips into the Diary of Barabbas Bolt, Esq.' The Man in the Moon, Vol. 3 (1848), pp. 236–44.
Categories: 19th Century, Chartism, g w m reynolds, George William MacArthur Reynolds, History, Radical Newspapers, Radicalism, Satire, The Man in the Moon
Tagged as: g w m reynolds, George William MacArthur Reynolds, Radicalism, Satire, The Man in the Moon
Lines Written by a New York Homeless Woman
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The Striking Scorpion Exarch is able to take war-gear called Scorpion Chainsabres that allows him to re-roll hits and wounds in hand to hand. My question is, are these sabres like other scorpion chain swords at strength 4 or do they just re-roll hits and wounds at strength 3?
I think its at strength 3, but I just wanted to be certain.
I don't have my codex handy at work, but unless the chainsabres rules explicitely states that you have a +1S then you use S3.
Unfortunately, they are indeed strength 3. I you do the math the Sabres are better vs units if I'm not mistaken. But you will not be able to glance vehicles or assault MC (because toughness will be to high). Ow and you also get your extra attack for 2 CC weapons.
I've only ever seen Scorpions with a Claw excarch. I'm just wondering is the Bitting Blade that bad? It has high strength and you strike at initiative so normally first.
I usually use the biting blade my self, it can be pretty nasty. I honestly don't like the scorpion claw because its only a strength six power fist that strikes at normal power fist initiative... How un-Eldar.
I was asking because I have two exarchs and I didn't want them set up the same, then spent a few hours doing some conversion work for the Chainsabres. By the way, trying to find an eldar left arm with a clenched fist that isn't already pre-attached to a model is a royal pain in the arse. I eventually used the Dire Avenger twin shuricat left arm, but I really didn't want to since it was so...well, straight. Looks alright in the end though.
Maybe go crazy and give him nothing!
is the Bitting Blade that bad?
No, I only have a biting blade exarch and he does just fine. All that extra strength makes him better than a fist at tank hunting (provided they didn't move too far) and generally gets him up to a similar S at a much higher I.
Agreed. I'm generally not impressed by a power fist on an Eldar model, I'd rather take the potential for S8 and striking at I6, especially consider the opponents my scorpions tend to get stuck in with.
Incorrect. 2 base attacks from profile, +1 from Mandiblaster, +1 on charge. 4 attacks, and against the rear armor of a stationary tank, that's four S8-auto hits.
I outflank with a small squad of Scorpions and am often pleased (or irritated from wrong outflank rolls) to find that my enemy has not moved that Basilisk from the corner of the map or that Hammerhead from the rear line. I have taken down SO many large threats with a Biting Blade exarch in my time, and the guys who play me regularly at my shop know nowadays not to hug any board edge except the back one when I'm fielding Scorpions.


text:
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Components of the Fiscal Cliff Deal
The Editors | January 4, 1:58 pm
Faced with a New Year's deadline, Congress and the White House reached an last-minute agreement to avert the impending tax hikes and spending cuts collectively known as the fiscal cliff. The package, signed into law on Jan. 2, makes the Bush-era tax cuts permanent for most Americans while delaying the onset of the sequester by two months.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that extending the tax cuts without limiting spending will add $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, as outlined above. Congress came up with offsets to defray the costs of the two-month reprieve from automatic spending cuts and the one-year delay of a scheduled reduction in Medicare payment rates to physicians. A one-year extension of emergency unemployment benefits was not paid for.
Unlike the 2010 compromise between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, which extended all rates for two years, the fiscal cliff agreement makes the Bush-era rates on ordinary income, dividends and capital gains permanent for individuals making less than $400,000. The income threshold for the alternative minimum tax, which previously had to be patched each year to keep up with inflation, has now been permanently fixed, a provision that accounts for nearly half the deal's total cost.
Other components of the new law are far less permanent. Most prominently, $85 billion in automatic cuts are now set to take effect March 1, around the same time that the Treasury Department will run out of "extraordinary measures" to delay default on the government's debt. A partial farm bill extension that is part of the package will expire Sept. 30, while the fix to Medicare payment rates and the extension of dozens of tax provisions will run out at the end of the year.
All cost and savings estimates were produced by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. The two relevant sources from CBO are a summary of budgetary effects and a detailed breakdown of law's health care provisions. For a complete list of all tax provisions, including all 52 tax extenders, see the JCT report.
January 26, 4:00 pm
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