text:
Q: SVG 3 animating circles So im trying to animate 3 rotating circles (as seen here https://codepen.io/mckenziedave/pen/KEapXa) my problem is it seems the svg's are moving from side to side while animating.
Can someone tell me a fix for this / what im doing wrong.

    .circle {
      position:absolute;
      z-index:3;
        width: 50px;
        -webkit-animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
        -moz-animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
        animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
    }

    .arrow {
      position:absolute;
      z-index:2;
      width: 45px;
      margin-top:2px;
      margin-left:3px;
        -webkit-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        -moz-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    }

    .triangle {
      position:absolute;
      z-index:2;
      width: 60px;
      margin-top:-5px;
      margin-left:-4px;
        -webkit-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        -moz-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    }

    @-moz-keyframes spin { 100% { -moz-transform: rotate(360deg); } }
    @-webkit-keyframes spin { 100% { -webkit-transform: rotate(360deg); } }
    @keyframes spin { 100% { -webkit-transform: rotate(3180deg); transform:rotate(360deg); } }

    @-moz-keyframes spin-reverse { 0% { -moz-transform: rotate(-360deg); } }
    @-webkit-keyframes spin-reverse { 0% { -webkit-transform: rotate(-360deg); } }
    @keyframes spin-reverse { 0% { -webkit-transform: rotate(-360deg); transform:rotate(360deg); } }

    <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 93.95 93.95"><defs cx="0" cy="0"></defs><title>Asset 1</title><g id="Layer_2" data-name="Layer 2"><g id="Layer_2-2" data-name="Layer 2"><path class="cls" d="M8.87,25A44,44,0,0,1,47,3c1.19,0,2.38,0,3.55.14"/><path class="cls" d="M24.37,84.71A44,44,0,0,1,3,47c0-.64,0-1.27,0-1.89"/><path class="cls" d="M86.51,66.27A44,44,0,0,1,47,91a44.68,44.68,0,0,1-4.65-.24"/><path class="cls" d="M66.73,7.68A44,44,0,0,1,91,47c0,.76,0,1.52,0,2.27"/></g></g></svg>

      <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 80 80"><defs cx="0"></defs><title>Asset 2</title><g id="Layer_2" data-name="Layer 2"><g id="Layer_2-2" data-name="Layer 2"><circle class="cls-1" cx="39.67" cy="39.67" r="36.67"/><polygon class="cls-2" points="27.22 19.24 19.24 9.21 10.14 22.93 27.22 19.24"/></g></g></svg>

       <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 110.1 111.2"><defs cx="0"></defs><title>Asset 3</title><g id="Layer_2" data-name="Layer 2"><g id="Layer_2-2" data-name="Layer 2"><polygon class="cls-a" points="40.03 0 38.98 12.77 55 9 40.03 0"/><polygon class="cls-a" points="110.1 40.84 97.42 39.03 100.22 55.25 110.1 40.84"/><polygon class="cls-a" points="67.78 111.2 69.6 98.51 53.38 101.3 67.78 111.2"/><polygon class="cls-a" points="0 70.63 12.8 71.07 8.29 55.25 0 70.63"/></g></g></svg>

A: You need to add transform-origin tags to your css, so they will rotate around the center you define:
.circle {
  position:absolute;
  z-index:3;
    width: 50px;
    transform-origin: 25px 25px;
    -webkit-animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
    -moz-animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
    animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
}

.arrow {
  position:absolute;
  z-index:2;
  width: 45px;
  margin-top:2px;
  margin-left:3px;
    transform-origin: 22.5px 22.5px;
    -webkit-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    -moz-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
}

.triangle {
  position:absolute;
  z-index:2;
  width: 60px;
  margin-top:-5px;
  margin-left:-4px;
    transform-origin: 30px 30px;
    -webkit-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    -moz-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
}

Working fiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/osj9ay64/

A: Wrapping the SVG's in divs screws up the automatic calculation of the transform-origin. So if you just move those classes from the wrapper divs into the SVG, the transform-origin is calculated correctly.
Note that you didn't have the arrow circle in the center of the SVG (should be at 40,40) - so fixed that. And the margin-left was a bit off too.

.circle {
      position:absolute;
      z-index:3;
        width: 50px;
        -webkit-animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
        -moz-animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
        animation:spin 4s linear infinite;
    }

    .arrow {
      position:absolute;
      z-index:2;
      width: 45px;
      margin-top:2px;
      margin-left:2px;
        -webkit-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        -moz-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    }

    .triangle {
      position:absolute;
      z-index:2;
      width: 60px;
      margin-top:-5px;
      margin-left:-4px;
        -webkit-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        -moz-animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
        animation:spin-reverse 4s linear infinite;
    }

    @-moz-keyframes spin { 100% { -moz-transform: rotate(360deg); } }
    @-webkit-keyframes spin { 100% { -webkit-transform: rotate(360deg); } }
    @keyframes spin { 100% { -webkit-transform: rotate(3180deg); transform:rotate(360deg); } }

    @-moz-keyframes spin-reverse { 0% { -moz-transform: rotate(-360deg); } }
    @-webkit-keyframes spin-reverse { 0% { -webkit-transform: rotate(-360deg); } }
    @keyframes spin-reverse { 0% { -webkit-transform: rotate(-360deg); transform:rotate(360deg); } }

    <svg class="circle" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 93.95 93.95"><defs cx="0" cy="0"></defs><title>Asset 1</title><g id="Layer_2" data-name="Layer 2"><g id="Layer_2-2" data-name="Layer 2"><path class="cls" d="M8.87,25A44,44,0,0,1,47,3c1.19,0,2.38,0,3.55.14"/><path class="cls" d="M24.37,84.71A44,44,0,0,1,3,47c0-.64,0-1.27,0-1.89"/><path class="cls" d="M86.51,66.27A44,44,0,0,1,47,91a44.68,44.68,0,0,1-4.65-.24"/><path class="cls" d="M66.73,7.68A44,44,0,0,1,91,47c0,.76,0,1.52,0,2.27"/></g></g></svg>

      <svg class="arrow" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 80 80">
      <defs cx="0"></defs><title>Asset 2</title><g id="Layer_2" data-name="Layer 2"><g id="Layer_2-2" data-name="Layer 2"><circle class="cls-1" cx="39.67" cy="39.67" r="36.67"/><polygon class="cls-2" points="27.22 19.24 19.24 9.21 10.14 22.93 27.22 19.24"/></g></g></svg>

       <svg class="triangle" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 110.1 111.2"><defs cx="0"></defs><title>Asset 3</title><g id="Layer_2" data-name="Layer 2"><g id="Layer_2-2" data-name="Layer 2"><polygon class="cls-a" points="40.03 0 38.98 12.77 55 9 40.03 0"/><polygon class="cls-a" points="110.1 40.84 97.42 39.03 100.22 55.25 110.1 40.84"/><polygon class="cls-a" points="67.78 111.2 69.6 98.51 53.38 101.3 67.78 111.2"/><polygon class="cls-a" points="0 70.63 12.8 71.07 8.29 55.25 0 70.63"/></g></g></svg>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Through a combination of in-person live events, and virtual events, The Author Marketing Institute brings book experts and authors together for immersive learning and networking sessions. Our first event, Author Marketing Live! took place in Cleveland, OH and was attended by authors from all over the world.
Our latest event is available now at Author Marketing Live!
Watch the video highlights from our last event.


After days of dull stock action, we're seeing signs of life as earnings season kicks off.
China blasted out pretty upbeat exports data Friday, setting the tone for what could be an upbeat day, as banking giant J.P. Morgan results came in better-than-expected.
The S&P barely budged this week ahead of earnings season as investors avoided taking risks – the index is up 15% so far this year. "That being said, nobody is rushing to the exits looking to lock in the big gains either," notes Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading.
"What's making me nervous about [the stock rally] is that we seem to be ignoring some of the risks that still remain," Young told MarketWatch in an interview. Unanswered questions remain over whether we'll get an earnings recession, a potential U.S.-China trade deal and Brexit resolved, she said.
A trade deal would be one big catalyst for stock buyers, along with upbeat earnings news, said Young. As for the latter, she said if more than the average 70% of S&P 500 companies beat earnings forecasts, this would be a positive, especially if they are in economically sensitive sectors such as industrials, and those that cater to consumers, along with financials.
Young isn't scared of a correction itself, even as she says recent markets activity has her thinking the chances of a pullback are more likely.
"At the beginning of the year [the rally] was healthy and broad…rather than just the same stocks and narrow leadership," she said. But lately, more "animal spirits" have been creeping in, she says, in reference to herd-like behavior as investors, worried about missing out on gains, have poured money into tech stocks.
"That's the kind of rally that feels frothy and the risk of retracement is higher than it was earlier in the year," she said.
As for how much the market might retreat, Young calculates that each year stocks see a pullback of 10% on average from a recent high, so that ballpark wouldn't be a big worry. And even a minor pullback of 5% to 7% would still leave the S&P 500 retaining a chunk of its gains this year.
"The fourth quarter was hard for people who hadn't seen a pullback like that in a long time. People got scared and pulled money out. I don't blame them," she said. A historical bear market without a recession can mean a pullback of 15% to 20%, while a bear market with a recession can mean a drop of 30% to 40% or more.
"The reason that's important to know is if we don't see a recession coming and we have a pullback of 10% to 15%, that's a buying opportunity," said Young.
 fell. More coverage in Market Snapshot.
 pared losses post data.
Overly bullish stock investors may be pushing this market towards a pullback, says our chart of the day, from Hedge Fund Tips blogger T.J. Hayes.
Hayes points to the recent weekly American Association of Individual Investors Sentiment Survey, which shows bullishness among investors has now pushed past 40%, a level that "usually marks market reversals," as bearishness collapses. His S&P 500 chart below denotes with a red line three other past instances (October, November of 2017, March 2018) when that sentiment level was higher than 40%. As you can see, pullbacks normally followed.
 is still to come.
 announced a $33 billion cash-and-stock deal to buy its rival.
 CEO says crews have made 96 test flights of 737 Max jets in a bid to convince regulators the plane is safe.
 subscription, and the streamer's shares are down.
says it will no longer sell the cheaper $35,000 version of its Model 3 online. Meanwhile, SpaceX, chiefed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, blasted off Thursday with its first paying customer, recovering all three of its rocket boosters safely.
Ride-hailing app Uber has finally filed for one of the most hotly awaited IPOs since Facebook.
Potential Fed nominee Herman Cain may pull his name for consideration, says a report, as several Republicans say they won't support him.
Import prices, followed by consumer sentiment data are on the economic docket for Friday.
"I do think it's ironic that he may be the only foreigner that this administration would welcome to the U.S." — That was former first lady Hillary Clinton on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published emails stolen from her campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Assange was arrested by the U.K. police on Thursday.


University of Malawi's (UNIMA) first founding Vice-Chancellor Dr. Ian Michael has past away at the age of 99.
Dr. Michael is reported to have died about two weeks ago.
Born in 1915, Dr. Ian Michael was appointed the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malawi in 1964 but resigned in 1973.
In November 1973, Dr. Michael became the Deputy Director of the Institute of Education and resigned in1978.
Dr. Michael was also the founding member of the Textbook Colloquium (established in 1988), together with Christopher Stray which was established to promote the interdisciplinary study of textbooks, especially from a historical perspective.
As the chancellor, Dr. Michael helped set the foundation for what has become of the University of Malawi today, expanding it from one constituent college to five, namely: Bunda College of Agriculture, Chancellor College, Polytechnic, Soche Hill College and Institute of Public Administration (IPA).
Chancellor College merged with Soche and IPA and moved its campus from Blantyre to Zomba in 1973.
Dr. Michael's cremation was scheduled to take place today.


since i uploaded new pdf files the thumbnail navigation in the bottom toolbar not working on firefox.
On Safari Browser all is fine. On Firefox i can´t click the thumbnails to navigate trough the pdf.
Please let me know if you still have this issue.


Documentary collections allow you to keep control of the goods and to raise additional finance as a result. How documentary collections work is that an overseas bank, acting on your bank's behalf, will only release the documents necessary for your customer (i.e. the importer) to take possession of the goods once they (i.e. the customer) formally accept the terms of a bill of exchange - the most common form of documentary collection. In accepting the bill of exchange, the customer essentially pays the overseas bank (i.e. they essentially "buy" the bill of exchange from the bank).
A bill of exchange is a written document in which 'the drawer' requires 'the drawee' to pay a specified amount. The drawer is yourself, while the drawee is usually your customer. If a bill is being used with a term letter of credit, the drawee is usually the customer's bank. The bill will also specify when payment should be made. The bill can either request immediate payment ('at sight' or 'on demand'), or it can specify payment at a later date ("the term" - e.g. 30 days after sight). The terms of the contract usually require your customer to accept the bill immediately even if it is for later payment. New exporters may find that their bank is not initially willing to provide them with term bills. Drawees become legally liable for payment once they 'accept' (agree to pay) the bill. A bill is often referred to as a "draft" until it has been accepted. 'Negotiable' bills specify payment 'to the order of' the drawer. This allows you to negotiate the bill, i.e. to sell it to another party (usually your bank) to raise finance.
Should the bill of exchange not be accepted by the customer, you will still have ownership and control of the goods, but in your customer's country. There is also a risk that you may not receive payment, unless the bill has been guaranteed by the bank ("avalised"). You will have a strong basis for pursuing legal action against the customer but again in the foreign country.
The bill of exchange can specify any credit period that you negotiate with your customer. For example, you can specify immediate payment, payment after a set number of days, or payment by a given date. Once the bill has been accepted, you can use the bill of exchange to raise additional finance.
You should be aware that in the case of a bill of exchange, both your local bank and the overseas bank will charge a commission. Your terms of trade with your customer must specify who is responsible for paying these charges. Documentary collections are typically used for exports to customers you have an established relationship with.


text:
import { Component, ElementRef, forwardRef, Inject, Injector, OnInit, Optional, ViewEncapsulation } from '@angular/core';
import { FormControl, ValidationErrors, ValidatorFn } from '@angular/forms';

import { InputConverter } from '../../../decorators/input-converter';
import { IRealPipeArgument, ORealPipe } from '../../../pipes/o-real.pipe';
import { NumberService } from '../../../services/number.service';
import { Util } from '../../../util/util';
import { OFormComponent } from '../../form/o-form.component';
import {
  DEFAULT_INPUTS_O_INTEGER_INPUT,
  DEFAULT_OUTPUTS_O_INTEGER_INPUT,
  OIntegerInputComponent
} from '../integer-input/o-integer-input.component';

export const DEFAULT_INPUTS_O_REAL_INPUT = [
  ...DEFAULT_INPUTS_O_INTEGER_INPUT,
  'minDecimalDigits: min-decimal-digits',
  'maxDecimalDigits: max-decimal-digits',
  'decimalSeparator : decimal-separator'
];

export const DEFAULT_OUTPUTS_O_REAL_INPUT = [
  ...DEFAULT_OUTPUTS_O_INTEGER_INPUT
];

@Component({
  selector: 'o-real-input',
  templateUrl: './o-real-input.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./o-real-input.component.scss'],
  inputs: DEFAULT_INPUTS_O_REAL_INPUT,
  outputs: DEFAULT_OUTPUTS_O_REAL_INPUT,
  encapsulation: ViewEncapsulation.None
})
export class ORealInputComponent extends OIntegerInputComponent implements OnInit {

  @InputConverter()
  minDecimalDigits: number = 2;

  @InputConverter()
  maxDecimalDigits: number = 2;

  @InputConverter()
  step: number = 0.01;

  @InputConverter()
  grouping: boolean = true;

  protected decimalSeparator: string;
  protected pipeArguments: IRealPipeArgument;
  protected numberService: NumberService;

  constructor(
    @Optional() @Inject(forwardRef(() => OFormComponent)) form: OFormComponent,
    elRef: ElementRef,
    injector: Injector
  ) {
    super(form, elRef, injector);
    this._defaultSQLTypeKey = 'FLOAT';
    this.numberService = this.injector.get(NumberService);
  }

  setComponentPipe(): void {
    this.componentPipe = new ORealPipe(this.injector);
  }

  ngOnInit(): void {
    super.ngOnInit();
    this.pipeArguments.decimalSeparator = this.decimalSeparator;
    this.pipeArguments.minDecimalDigits = this.minDecimalDigits;
    this.pipeArguments.maxDecimalDigits = this.maxDecimalDigits;
    this.pipeArguments.truncate = false;
    if (!this.isEmpty()) {
      this.ensureOFormValue(this.value);
    }
  }

  resolveValidators(): ValidatorFn[] {
    const validators: ValidatorFn[] = super.resolveValidators();
    if (Util.isDefined(this.maxDecimalDigits)) {
      validators.push(this.maxDecimalDigitsValidator.bind(this));
    }
    return validators;
  }

  ensureOFormValue(arg: any): void {
    super.ensureOFormValue(arg);
    if (!this.isEmpty() && Util.isDefined(this.pipeArguments)) {
      this.value.value = this.numberService.getRealValue(this.value.value, this.pipeArguments);
      if (Util.isDefined(this._fControl)) {
        this._fControl.setValue(this.value.value, { emitEvent: false, emitModelToViewChange: false });
      }
    }
  }

  protected maxDecimalDigitsValidator(control: FormControl): ValidationErrors {
    let ctrlValue: string = control.value;
    if (typeof control.value === 'number') {
      ctrlValue = ctrlValue.toString();
    }
    if (ctrlValue && ctrlValue.length) {
      const valArray = ctrlValue.split(this.decimalSeparator ? this.decimalSeparator : '.');
      if (Util.isDefined(this.maxDecimalDigits) && (this.maxDecimalDigits > 0) && Util.isDefined(valArray[1]) && (valArray[1].length > this.maxDecimalDigits)) {
        return {
          maxDecimaldigits: {
            requiredMaxDecimaldigits: this.maxDecimalDigits
          }
        };
      }
    }
    return {};
  }

  protected initializeStep(): void {
    if (this.step <= 0) {
      this.step = 1 / Math.pow(10, this.maxDecimalDigits);
      console.warn('`step` attribute must be greater than zero');
    }
  }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


With Sugar, the follow-up to their powerful debut feature Half Nelson, the writer/director team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden defied the expectations and conventions of the baseball movie to an almost perverse degree. It simply refused to give audiences the heartwarming payoffs they're accustomed to getting. The arthouse duo appears to be making up for lost time, however, with It's Kind of A Funny Story, an adaptation of a popular young adult novel that lovingly embraces all the crowd-pleasing formula that Sugar and Half Nelson eschewed.
Keir Gilchrist stars as an earnest young man who checks himself into a mental hospital over stupid teenage stuff: He's nursing a painful crush on the girlfriend of an overachieving friend and is aquiver with anxiety over applying to a prestigious summer school program. Gilchrist hopes to pop in, resolve his issues, then pop out, but discovers that he must stay in the hospital for a minimum of five days. Gilchrist soon falls under the sway of Zach Galifianakis, a charismatic but troubled older patient who takes him under his wing.
Galifianakis' magnetic performance suggests murky psychological depths the film doesn't have the substance to plumb. Beneath his gnomic surface lies a surplus of pain and rage that slips out at inconvenient moments. It's revelatory work, but Fleck and Boden too often relegate Galifianakis to the background to concentrate on the less compelling story of Gilchrist experiencing years' worth of character-building life lessons in five action-packed days. Especially in its final act, Story trades verisimilitude for hokey clichés and embraces a painfully banal romantic subplot where Gilchrist has to choose between the dream girl for whom he's long been pining and a quirky, self-destructive patient played by Emma Roberts. Though engaging and sweet, with a nice feel for the purgatory-like blankness of mental hospital life, It's Kind Of A Funny Story suffers from a serious, if not quite fatal, attack of the cutes. The only known antidote for this crippling, depressingly ubiquitous affliction is a straight dose of the truth—a quality that, for all its good intentions and strong supporting performances, the film lacks.


Spectacular WestWing home - 5 bedrooms, 4.5 baths & 1 BR/1BA separate guest quarters. Majestic iron door leads into a large courtyard with entry to the guest casita & main home. Inside, an oversized formal or second family room & dining or office space. Remodeled kitchen features expansive island w/breakfast bar seating, stainless appliances & granite counters. Kitchen opens to large family room with fireplace & an abundance of windows. Trimmed to perfection throughout w/ plantation shutters, wood/travertine flooring, 12' ceilings & crown molding. Spacious bedrooms each w/en suite baths & a master suite fit for royalty! Smart Home features everywhere. Backyard built for large scale entertainment, sporting multiple seating areas, newer pool & putting green. A must see!
East on West Wing Pkwy to Black Rock. South on Black Rock Blvd. South to 90th Ave. East on 90th Ave to property.


Remote controls activate the air conditioner and HDMI TV/DVD Player. Off street and undercover parking is available for two guest vehicles, while a network of paved or concrete paths provide access to the gardens and property – featuring a host of bromeliads!
* Your private en suite (wet room) has a shower & basin one end and a dual flush toilet at the other – fixtures meet the Australian Government Disability Services Standards check list.
A welcome letter and complimentary box of chocolates are provided in your room – Enjoy.
Access to the room is through a top hung easy slide folding door, your room has a Double Bed, side chests with bed lamps, clock radio and information booklet. Your private en suite (wet room) is attached with the shower &; basin one end and the dual flush toilet the other – fixtures and fittings in accordance with the Australian Government Disability Services Standards check list. This room is suitable for guests relying on a manual wheelchair. Remote controls activate the Fujitsu Inverter air conditioner and TV /DVD Player. Also included is an Iron, Ironing Board, all bedding, towels ( and pool towels) complimentary toiletries and chocolates are provided.
March – $50, April – $60, May $70, June $80.
Includes light Aussie Continental Breakfast.


SAIL is all about giving hands-on learning experience to students. In the last 4 years, more than a dozen undergraduate students and five graduate students from Embry-Riddle's Engineering Physics program have worked on SAIL affiliated projects. The projects have included designing sounding rocket instruments, CubeSat instruments, high altitude balloon payloads, plasma chamber experiments and much more. Students in SAIL also work with various telescopes for optical observations of small satellites, specifically CubeSats, and other orbital debris.
SAIL faculty and students are always looking for new projects and challenges. Students with a strong hands-on aptitude and interested in working in SAIL are encouraged to contact Dr. Aroh Barjatya who currently directs SAIL.
Browse our pages (using the menu at the left) and contact us if you have any questions.


text:
Cell Strikes Again By KrilinMGG
What if...? Cell strikes again? Read, fans only... and... no lemon, just the beginning of the process...
"Juuhachigou!!!" Kuririn screamed from the water. All the Z warriors, and their families, turned around to see Kuririn swimming with Gokou, then both waved at everyone. Juuhachigou rolled her eyes, sighed hysterically and went to the kitchen. Kuririn lowered his arms, and his Gokou-like grin was replaced with a sad puppy-face. The 13-years old Marron followed her mother, to find out why didn't Juuhachigou at least secretly smiled at Kuririn.
"Kaa-san? Why did you do that?" Juuhachigou, who was seating at the table, with her arms crossed and her head over them, jumped when she heard Marron.
"Huh? Umm... Cause he's being... huh.... childish.... and huh.... he's got to learn a lesson....?" Marron rolled her eyes, as much as her mother did, and smirked.
"Tell me... why?"
"Ok! Ok! I'll tell ya.... When you grow up!" Juu smiled warmly at her daughter. Then Kuririn entered the kitchen, but he didn't say anything, he ignored Juuhachigou.
"H-h-h-hi.... Kuririn...?" She asked innocently. Kuririn was looking for something to eat in the freezer, so she couldn't see his face, only his back. "Tou-san?" Marron asked.
"Yes, Marron?" He responded in a very unusual tone in his voice.
"Kuririn... Don't eat that! That's for dinner tomorrow!" Juu said, when she saw Kuririn eating the turkey. He turned around, glared at Juu, and got out of the kitchen with the turkey.
"You see that?! COME BACK WITH MY TURKEY, KURIRIN!!!" Juuhachigou ran out of the house, following Kuririn.
"What's happening Marron?" Bulma asked, as Marron walked fast through the living room. "I don't know... I don't care!" She ran upstairs to her bedroom. Bulma gasped madly and commented.
"Ha! Look how Kuririn hadeducated his daughter!" Vegeta rolled his eyes and groaned.
"Kuririn...!" Juu lowered her voice, as Kuririn seated down on the sand. "What? You want some turkey?" He asked as if it didn't occurred anything before.
"Uh... Yeah!" She tried to follow his 'little game'. When she was about to grab the turkey leg that Kuririn offered her, she touched his hand. "Do you know how much I love you?" He asked, without looking at her.
"Yeah. But I hate you..."
"I know. But did you love me when we made love thirteen years ago?"
"I love you! Silly! And yes! I alsothink that you're a great love-maker... And I want to make love again, tonight..." She said as she laid her head over his legs, using them as a pillow.
"... Will you make love with me tonight?" She asked him. Kuririn smiled, and slid a hand under her shirt, massaging her belly, and upper. "Kuririn! Not now..." He smiled wider and kissed her.
"Come on..." He begged.
"Your friends are still inside the house..." He took away his hand from her shirt as he remembered. She choked and placed a hand on his face. "You're so dumb!" She said.
"You didn't remember your friends!" He shook his shoulders, and then, he kissed her again. "Let's go... Or they'll think we're already making love!" Kuririn said, as he pulled Juu's head off him. They got up and joined the party.
In the lab, Gero's lab, the central computer activated it self. "Central's central computer.... BEEP activating Cell number two....... BEEP
activating new egg...... BEEP.... egg-activation failed...... Cell-Two activation..... competed....... BEEP..... one hour to free Cell-Two.........." The computer announced. In a tank, Cell-Two, who looked just like Cell on his fist state, moved his tail, and opened his red eyes......
Bulma was calling Chichi on the phone. Just then, Chichi answered.
"Moshi-Moshi?" Chichi asked.
"Hi! It's me, Bulma! Listen! You have to come here, NOW! Ok?"
"Because, it's something important! I've discovered something about Dr. Gero! I need Gokou and your sons!"
"Hmp! My sons won't fight again, or risk their lives!!!" And Chichi hung down the phone.
Bulma sighed. When she turned around, Vegeta was staring at her.
"What did you mean with 'Dr. Gero', woman?"
Bulma sighed again.
"I discovered something: he didn't just do a Cell, he did more that one. And I think they're going to activate at any moment! And I need to call Gokou and warn him, but Chichi doesn't understand!" Vegeta nodded, Dende knew why.
"We can call Kuririn, and tell him, to tell Kakarrott... If you use your head, you'll come up with nice ideas!" He said. Bulma shook her head.
"No... not Kuririn... he'll just... try to find Cell, and he will be get killed... I think he loves Juuhachigou too much"
Vegeta groaned, rolling his eyes. "Love... awful love!!! It's giving me a headache!!!"
Vegeta said, as he got an aspirin. "Maybe Trunks can talk to Goten!!!"
Bulma screamed. "TRUNKS!!!!"
The phone rang, but no body answered it. Chichi, Gokou, Goten, Gohan, Videl and Pan, were at the table, quietly listening to the phone. Goten looked at his mother, but she glared at him, so he had to look away.
"Mom... can I get the phone? Maybe it's Yamcha!" Goten started.
"No! I'm sure that it's Trunks or Bulma! And, we're having dinner!!! We CAN'T get up! We have to learn how to be nice at the table!!!" Chichi almost screamed. So no body got the phone.
"No, mom.... no use.... Maybe Chichi it's mad at you...." Trunks said.
Bulma sighed.
"Come on! Cheer up, mom!" Bra said.
"Yeah, you're right, kids! Perhaps we can go to Goten's house our selves!" Bulma said, smiling.
"You see!" Trunks and Bra said in unison.
"So... what did you say this afternoon, about making love?" Kuririn asked. He and Juu were in the bed, and it was 11:00 p.m. "Yeah, I
remember. I said that tonight we're going to make love..." Juuhachigou answered, and kissed Kuririn...
"Target found: Kuririn, Juuhachigou, unknown, Master Roshi, Turtle, Oolong, baby forming......." Cell-Two said to himself. He turned around
and added. "Target found: Son Gokou, Son Gohan, Chichi, unknown, unknown, Videl" He turned around, to another direction. "Target found: Prince Vegeta, Bulma Briefs, Trunks, unknown, Dr. Briefs" Cell-Two blinked, and turned around. "Target found, mission: Absorb Juunanagou. Power level: double than... seventeen years ago...." His eyes turned from the yellow color that he had, when he searched for the warriors, to the normal red eyes. "I'll have to go to the forest, and... absorb Juunanagou!!!" Cell-Two yelled. He took off, towards Juunanagou's location.
"Well... you have been haunting so badly, that I think you're going to get into trouble..." Juunanagou said. Two illegal haunters stared at
him, and laughed. Suddenly, a monster grabbed one of the men by the collar, and absorbed him. The other man hid behind Juunanagou. He froze, as the monster kept walking towards him, he could hear the man crying like a baby. "D-d-d-d-don't worry fella... If I throw you away, will you run and look for... Gokou? Remember that name.... Gokou..... tell him.... that Cell is back..... that he absorbed Juunanagou, I'm
Juunanagou......." And with that, Juunanagou grabbed the man by his jacket, and threw him away. The man fled across an entire country, and fell in the sea. "Juunanagou, you're an idiot!" Cell-Two ran, and hugged Juunanagou, and then, he absorbed him.
Two hours later, a man ran over the fields, screaming 'Gokou'. The police caught him, just a few kilometers away from Gokou's house. Somehow, Gokou heard him.
"Can I talk to him?" Gokou asked. The police officer looked at him, then at Videl. She nodded. "Yeah! Sure!" He said. Another man leaded Gokou
to the 'crazy man'. "Hi! I'm Gokou! I heard that you were looking for me!" At the hearing of this, the man jumped and hugged him.
"A guy called Juunanagou... said that I must warn you.... Cell is alive, and he absorbed Juunanagou...... He saved me from Cell....." Gokou gasped.
"So Cell is back.... What's your name?"
"I'm Ghost!" Gokou nodded, he turned around, and to see how did Videl took it. She was smiling, but tears ran across her face. "Don't worry Videl, tell Gohan and Goten, but tell them... not to fight.... call everyone to go to Kami's Palace, and.... don't tell them why" Gokou said. "I'll go there, but first I have to get Uub" He added. Then he turned to Ghost. "Climb on my back, we're going to search a kid, but we're going flying..." Ghost nodded and got on Gokou's back.
"Now! I'll get Juuhachigou!" Cell-Two said. He was still in the forest, seated. "I gave that guy a lot of time to warn Gokou, now that he's preparing for the fight of his life... I'm gonna get the next cyborg!!!" Cell-Two took off.
Kuririn and Juuhachigou were sleeping, very close to each other. They were naked and tired, cause.... you know why. Suddenly, a boom made wake up everyone in the house. When Kuririn looked around, the wall in his bedroom was all destroyed. And Cell-Two was standing there, he looked just like Cell in his second state. Kuririn managed to grab quickly his boxers and put them on. "Juuhachigou, take Marron away from here!" He yelled as he got up. She was about to follow Kuririn, when he punched her. "I SAID GET OUT OF HERE, WITH MARRON!!!" He yelled, then he took off, taking Cell-Two by his tail. Juuhachigou ran downstairs and grabbed Marron, and took off with her, to Kami's Palace.
"Oh! You think you can stop me Kuririn?!" Cell-Two said, as he kicked Kuririn away. The monster blasted the area were Kuririn had fell. But he
appeared behind Cell-Two, and punched him. "Die!!!" Cell-Two yelled, as he did a kame hame ha, and Kuririn got killed. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! You see?! I killed you!!!" He stopped laughing, and went to the island, but he found just Roshi, Oolong and the Turtle, and they didn't know where was Juuhachigou.
Juuhachigou arrived, with Marron in her arms. Bulma's and Chichi's families were there.
"Juuhachigou!" Gokou yelled.
"Where's Kuririn?" Bulma asked. Juuhachigou had no idea, but she didn't want to make her daughter sad or worry so she lied. "He said he's bringing Roshi and Oolong"
Gokou nodded. "She's Juuhachigou? Do you know Juuna-" Ghost was interrupted by Bulma.
"Well!!! This is important!!!"
"Wait! Who called you, Juuhachigou?"
"No one... Cell attacked us..."
"WHAT?!" Everyone, except Gokou, Ghost, Vegeta and Bulma (and of course, Juuhachigou) yelled.
"Let me explain you!!! I was going to tell Gokou first, but Chichi didn't let me!!! Anyway, I found Juurokugou's chip.... about three years ago, and there it says that there are other Cells. I thought one of those were going to wake up, I guess I was right"
"Well?" Vegeta asked.
"Oh! Yeah!
He already absorbed Juunanagou. And, maybe he's looking for Juuhachigou, but don't worry, we'll protect you" Gokou said grinning. "We'll
prepare a plan when Kuririn comes back" Trunks added.
"Maybe we shouldn't wait for him..." Dende said.
Piccolo blinked, he did, but at the same time, didn't understand him. "Why do you say that?" Goten asked smiling at the God. Dende sighed. "Kuririn..."
Juuhachigou fell on her knees, tears ran across her face, as she quietly cried. Bulma kneeled at her side, and Juuhachigou hugged her.
"... is dead" Dende finished.
Gokou stood shocked, as he remembered all the things he and Kuririn use to do when they were children. "Kuririn is dead" Dende repeated. "How? When?" Gohan asked, loudly.
"About a few minutes ago, he let Cell... Cell-Two kill him...." Dende explained.
"W-w-w-w-why?" Trunks asked. "I don't know, Trunks, I just don't know" Dende sighed.
Cell-Two stopped at Karin's. He killed the white cat, and stole all the beans he could. Then, he blasted away the place, so if anyone wanted the beans, they wouldn't take them. "Just one more" Cell-Two said, as he ascended to Kami's Palace.
"So... that's what's happening, right?" Enma-sama asked. Kuririn nodded. The red giant sighed. "Well, I'll do it! Just because this Cell guy
can came here and kill me..." Kuririn smiled, and when he looked at the crystal ball that Uranai Baba had, he saw Cell-Two approaching to
Dende's, his smile faded.
"Quickly! Or Cell will absorb her!!" He yelled.
Enma-sama nodded. "Now, your daughter's soul has been transported here. And I'm transporting her body, and making it grow... maybe... till...
she gets.... sixteen years old.... READY!!!" Just then, a young lady, black hair picked up in a pony tail, the same blue eyes than Juuhachigou, and the shape of Kuririn's eyes, and as tall as Bulma maybe, appeared in front of Kuririn.
"This is she?!" Kuririn asked, shocked. As he looked over the girl's shoulders to Enma-sama, he saw him nodding at him.
"This... is... your daughter..." Enma-sama concluded.
"H-h-h-hi..." Kuririn greeted his new daughter, who was frowning with
her eyes closed.
"I'm sorry I made you come... But we have to save your mother.... I'm... Kuririn.... your father...."
"Oh... Hi dad!" The girl said, like a cowgirl. Kuririn blinked, as his daughter patted him on the back playfully, but brutally.
"You're pretty strong!" Her father said.
"And I ain't using all my strength!!!" She said loudly.
"Do you know how to fight?" Kuririn asked.
"Yeah! The ugly guy made me grew up with all your skills, pa!"
"Why do you talk like a cowgirl, huh?" Her father asked, dying of curiosity.
"Because my ma was a cowgirl before that evil Dr. Gero turned her into a... what's da name? Oh... Cyborg! That's why, pa!" "Can you call me 'dad'?" Kuririn asked, frowning, but smiling.
"Oooo K, dad! And by the way! I would like to be Sophia! Sophia the invincible!" She said.
"OK! You'll be Sophia, Sophia the Invincible. But now, we HAVE to go!"
Sophia nodded.
"You can't go, Kuririn" Enma-sama asked. "WHAT?! I NEED TO GO! MY WIFE WILL GET KILLED, ABSORBED AND WE'RE GOING TO BE IN TROUBLE!!!" "WELL SEND SOPHIA ALONE!!!!!!!!!" Enma-sama yelled. "You're going straight to Great Kaioh's Planet!" So Kuririn
got dragged to that planet. And Sophia appeared a few kilometers away from Dende's Palace.
"I have to hurry! Or my kaa-san will get absorbed!" Sophia yelled at herself. She begun to increase her ki, and fled straight to her mom's
So everybody was planning something.
"We can't go to fight..." Gokou was interrupted by...
"Cell-Two..." The monster said.
"Cell-Two?" Trunks asked, staring at Cell's brother.
"Everyone is going to... DIE!!!" He yelled. Trunks, Goten, Gohan, Gokou and Vegeta launched towards
ell-Two. He kicked and punched each one aside. Then, Tien, Yamcha, Chaotsu and Juuhachigou were the next to attack him. But again, he hit them as if they were just dolls. He grabbed Juuhachigou, and made her stand up.
"You know something...?" He asked her. Everyone, even the guys that were trying to stand up, heard him.
"... You... are... pregnant..." Juuhachigou's eyes opened wide, a little, sad, smile formed on her face. "...
But anyway you're going to..." Juuhachigou closed her eyes, as tears ran across her face, waiting to be absorbed. Then, she heard a loudly noise in front of her, and when she opened her eyes, Cell-Two was not facing her anymore.
"If you ever try to absorb my mother again...!" Juuhachigou looked around her, trying to see if it was all about Marron. Nope, Marron was behind Bulma, and there was a girl, black hair and everything, holding Cell-Two by his throat. "Who are you?!" Cell-Two asked, trying
to get her off him. "I'm Sophia... the Invincible!!!" Cell-Two, and everybody else blinked, Sophia rolled her eyes and moaned. "I'm Kuririn's
daughter!!!! Remember you were sayin' that Juuhachigou was pregnant?! Well... I'M THE BABY!!!!" The baby... err... Sophia said.
"HOW? WHO? WHERE?" Cell-Two screamed, as he got his neck away from her hand.
"Cause HE sent me HERE to fight YOU!!!" Sophia yelled back.
"Come on! Get up lazy men and help this nice lady to fight the monster! And... m-m-m-mom... get big sister away from here!" Juuhachigou remembered how Kuririn had yelled at her something similar, she knew he didn't meant to punch her, not after he sent his unborn daughter to save her. She smiled and nodded at her daughter. "Let go gentlemen! Let's fight! Yeeha!" Sophia yelled, as a cowboy, and launched towards Cell-Two, with Goten, Trunks, Gohan, Gokou, Vegeta, Tien, Chaotsu, and Yamcha. They all combined their attacks, and together, they hurt Cell-Two a lot.
"AND NOW, THE FINAL BLAST!!! KA... ME... HA... ME... HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Sophia yelled. A big blue kame hame ha blasted away Cell-Two.
"Yeeha!!!" She yelled, raised her fisted hand and jumped up and down.
Everyone went back to the platform, and stared at her.
"You're my daughter...?" Sophia nodded, shyly. "That means you're my big sister!!!" Marron yelled as she hugged Sophia, she hugged her back. Juuhachigou smiled and hugged her new daughter. Just when they separated, Sophia yelled.
"WELL!!! We have to wish back.... TOU-SAN!!!"
"But he died here, SO we'll have to go to Namec!" Dende said.
"Oh no! You're not going anywhere!!! I'm going... anyway, I have to wish him back as quick as possible, I want
to say good bye to him before going home!!!" Sophia said laughing.
"Home?" Juuhachigou asked.
"Home..." Sophia said, pointing to Juu's belly, her mother just blushed. "OK!!! Enma-sama! I'm ready!" And she disappeared.
"Hi!!! I'm Kuririn's second daughter, I want to wish him..." A namec nodded.
"We know.... POLUNGA!!!! KATERO KURIRIN JUJOILOJ!!!" The namec yelled, then smiled at Sophia. "Let me guess, namec?" The namec laughed.
"YOUR WISH HAVE BEEN GRANTED!!!" Polunga said. "Ok! That's all, thanks!" And she went back to Earth.
"Well... I guess I gotta go... Bye big sister, bye guys, nice fight.... and... bye mom....." She said crying, she bravely smiled and turned around, just in time to greet the red beam that came from the sky. "See you in nine months TOU-SAN!!!" As she was turning into a white ray, she
raised an arm. The red ray went turning into a known figure, Kuririn, and he had an arm raised. When they both clapped each other's hand, Kuririn turned normal, the red light that surrounded him disappeared; and Sophia turned into a white beam. Kuririn watched how the white beam went flying into Juuhachigou's belly. He laughed, a long with his daughter Marron, for a while. Just then, Juuhachigou joined them, and later,
everybody at the palace was laughing, and crying.
Nine months later, a baby girl was born. She was Juuhachigou and Kuririn's second daughter, her name was.... Sophia, alias 'The
Invincible'.......
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text:
Iraq: 5 years on – Invasion & occupation
March 24, 2008 senan Iraq
An unmitigated disaster
Socialist View, magazine of the Socialist Party (Ireland)
Article from the new issue of Socialist View, magazine of the Socialist Party (Ireland). Subscribe.
pdf version of article.
5 years on – Invasion & occupation
As the fifth anniversary of the fateful decision to launch the invasion of Iraq passes, the claims by the US administration that the 2007 troop surge has succeeded in quelling the insurgency and checking the slide to sectarian break up – claims that were being made loudly at the start of this year – are becoming fainter by the day.
More recent events have given pro-surge enthusiasts a cold shower, confirming that violence and instability remain the order of the day despite the extra 30,000 US troops.
A series of suicide bombings, including the late February attack on Shi'ite pilgrims making their way to the shrine of Iman Hussein in Kerbala, which left at least 40 dead, have served as a reminder of how little has changed for ordinary Iraqis and how precarious and fragile is the political and sectarian balance that constitutes present day Iraq.
So also has the other "surge" – the mini invasion of the Kurdistan Region by 10,000 Turkish troops. This was ostensibly to attack and destroy the mountain bases of the separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), but in fact it was intended more as a warning to the rulers of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq not to push too hard for independence. This invasion showed the potential for the Iraqi nightmare to very quickly escalate into a regional conflict.
Then, to cap it all, the US administration has had to put up with the spectacle of Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on a stately visit to Baghdad. On his arrival he was warmly greeted by Iraqi government ministers; a salutary reminder to George Bush that his military adventure in Iraq, designed in part to lessen the influence of Iran in the region, has had precisely the opposite effect.
Of course a real balance sheet of the invasion and occupation has to be measured over five years, not a few months. Looked at in this way there is no question that the whole thing has been an unmitigated disaster.
A disaster, first of all for the US establishment, especially the neo-conservative cabal surrounding Bush, who were the architects of this war. It was conceived firstly as a war for plunder, particularly intended to put US and other foreign oil corporations in control of the Iraqi oil fields, which contain the second largest known reserves in the world. Five years on, the idea of cheap oil gushing through Iraqi pipelines has faded. Production, at 2.4 million barrels a day, has not yet reached pre-war levels.
The war was also about prestige; it was meant to provide the world with a brutal demonstration of US military prowess. Instead, it has shown the limits of US power, exploding the myth that superior technology, devastating ordnance and control of the skies are all that is necessary in modern warfare. The US has the military capacity to destroy any force put in its way, but Iraq – and now also Afghanistan – have shown that holding ground that has been gained is a different matter.
The US military has been seriously overstretched by the Iraq conflict. Soldiers now have to endure gruelling 15 month tours of duty with obvious effects on morale. The five star chiefs at the Pentagon are well aware that the surge troop levels are unsustainable.
Almost 4,000 troops have been killed and around 60,000 injured. Troops today are provided with better body armour and better medical care than in previous wars. Because of this soldiers who are injured have a higher chance of survival, but this means that many of the 60,000 wounded are going home with severely life-changing injuries and disabilities.
$500 billion and rising
All this comes at a cost to the US of some $500 billion and rising – rising in fact by $275 million every day, with projections that expenditure will eventually reach $1 trillion or even $2 trillion, depending on how optimistic you are about the war.
And in military terms for what? US and British forces are not in control of Iraq. They are bunkered in fortified bases from which they make heavily armoured raids along the main thoroughfares, into town and city centres and some residential areas.
The Iraqi police and army are not in control either. Successive attempts to build local forces, made up of and commanded by Iraqis who would take the front line in the fight against the "terrorists", have failed. In the main the first loyalty of the ranks of the police and the army is not to the government, but to one or other of the sectarian-based militias.
It is little wonder that opinion in the US has swung decisively against the war. Three out of every five people in the US want the troops home.
This is not to say that the war has been bad news all round! There are some people who have done very nicely indeed out of this mess. Iraq has been a bonanza for the private companies who have been handed lucrative no-bid contracts for security, construction and reconstruction and for provision of supplies and services in this the most privatised of all wars. In the wake of the US troops who charged into Baghdad followed the biggest army of private contractors ever assembled in a war; at one point there was one contractor/mercenary for every US soldier.
Death toll mounts
These profiteers aside, the Iraqi debacle is now a major headache for the US establishment. But whatever anxiety and discomfort they have been made to feel pales into insignificance when set alongside the catastrophe that has befallen Iraq and its people. Iraq Body Count records the number of civilian deaths at just under 90,000. This is the figure for documented deaths, but since the US has not bothered to keep an accurate count and since their accounting methods deliberately understate the true figure – only those shot through the back of the head are regarded as victims of sectarian attack by militias, while those killed in some other way are recorded as criminal killings and therefore not counted – the true figure is much higher. Some estimates put it at 600,000, some at closer to a million – and this in a country of 28 million people!
On top of this are the deaths due to malnutrition, poverty and disease. The Iraqi economy and most of its public services have been devastated. Official figures put unemployment at 17% and underemployment at 38%. The true figure is much much higher and in impoverished areas like the massive east Baghdad Shia slum, Sadr City, home to more than 2 million people, around 70% are out of work. Most Iraqis now have electricity for one or two hours a day. Many have no access to clean water. Services are at breakdown point in a country where everything is paralysed by war, occupation and civil war. Patrick Cockburn, journalist for The Independent, recently asked a Fallujah doctor what his hospital lacked and was told: "drugs, fuel, electricity, generators, a water treatment system, oxygen and medical equipment." A woman patient cradling a child added: "The Americans provide us with nothing. They bring us only destruction."
The US invasion destroyed the Iraqi state apparatus and put nothing in its place. In local communities, militia like the Mahdi army or the emerging Sunni groups have stepped in to fill the vacuum. They hope to build and consolidate their support base by organising and providing rudimentary services which the state no longer provides – much as Hizbollah has done in parts of the Lebanon.
Real power in Iraq has now become localised. It is the rival and warring militias who now have effective control. With the breakdown of the central state and centralised economy has come the emergence of parallel localised economic activity and, with it, the development of corruption on a massive scale.
The 2006 Baker Report estimated that 500 million barrels of oil per day were being stolen. One Iraqi expert has recently estimated the annual cost of corruption by state officials (insofar as it can be estimated) as $5-7 billion. A recent and quite ominous development has been the switch by farmers in large areas to the north and east of Baghdad from growing oranges, pomegranates and other fruits to cultivating poppies for opium.
Another Afghanistan
If Afghanistan, with its growing insurgency and its suicide bombers, has become another Iraq, then Iraq, with much of its territory now under the control of local militias – some seeking to fund themselves through the heroin trade – is fast becoming another Afghanistan.
This is the backcloth against which any claims about the success of the surge must be measured. It is true the number of soldier and documented civilian deaths dropped off in the last months of 2007. All such figures are, however, relative. The figures are down on the horrific upsurge in killings that took place in 2006 and the first half of 2007. But the civilian death toll for the last six months of 2007 is higher than it was in the first years of the occupation.
As far as military casualties are concerned, 2007 saw more US and other coalition soldiers killed than in any previous year since the invasion. The British were effectively pushed out of Basra by Shia militias, especially the local groups linked to the Mahdi army, and are now bunkered in their last main base in the airport.
The reason the violence dipped for a time – figures for February 2008 show that it has started to rise again – had little to do with extra troops guarding intersections in Baghdad. The real explanation lies in the decision of Moqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi army to call a six month ceasefire from August 2007 and, alongside this, the emergence of a 70,000-strong Sunni militia, the Awakening, which has co-operated with US forces in taking on the Iraqi variant of Al Qaeda in its former strongholds in the Anbar province and other Sunni districts around Baghdad.
The answer to the question of whether the recent fall in the death toll was a temporary blip, or whether it indicates a longer term trend, is to be found in the reasons these militias have acted as they have.
Leaving aside the occupying forces who have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, the violence over the last few years has fallen into two main categories. On the one hand there has been the insurgency conducted mainly, but not exclusively, by various Sunni militias targeting the occupying troops. On the other, there has been a sectarian conflict, mainly between Shia and Sunni groups, but at times involving fighting between Arabs and Kurds in divided northern cities like Mosul and Kirkuk.
Most commentators now point to the February 2006 destruction of the Shia Askariya mosque in Samarra by the Sunni-based Al Qaeda as the event that sparked civil war. In fact the Samarra bombing was one of a series of atrocities carried out by Sunni groups going back to the killing of Shia leader Al Hakim and 94 of his followers in Najaf in 2003. The main Shia Militias, the Madhi army and the more directly Iranian-linked Badr Brigades, have retaliated with a campaign of assassinations, carried out with the co-operation and assistance of their members in the police.
Battle for Baghdad
However, there is no doubt that in the aftermath of Samarra the battle between Sunni and Shia reached new levels. The conflict centred on Baghdad, home to 25% of the Iraqi population, where Sadr's Mahdi Army launched a major offensive to drive Sunnis from large parts of the city.
The battle for Baghdad, which lasted into 2007, was won by Sadr and his Shia fighters. Two thirds of the city was left under Shia control with the Sunnis driven out; some to the remaining Sunni areas in the city or to surrounding provinces, others to join the 4.2 million refugees either in exile or in the desert camps that have been set up in Iraq to accommodate them.
Facing the prospect of military defeat at the hands of the Shia, a section of the Sunni population was prepared to lean on the US to get some military breathing space. The Awakening militia was formed by Sunnis to crack down on Al Qaeda, whose bombing campaign was fuelling the Shia backlash and whose attempt to declare a Sunni Islamic state in their areas of influence was alienating big sections of the Sunni population.
The US, acting on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, agreed to provide this force with weapons and pay its recruits, ignoring the fact that these were, in the main, former insurgents including former members of Al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, the loosely organised Mahdi army was growing and local units were determined to extend the sectarian offensive beyond Baghdad. Sadr called a six month ceasefire, which has now been extended, in order to consolidate the gains made in Baghdad and gain a firmer control over his forces – in part to curb some of the excesses which threatened to repel sections of his own support base.
Not surprisingly the violence dipped. All that the extra US troops have done is draw military lines around the new sectarian realities created by the Shia gains in the battle for Baghdad. Twelve-foot walls are being built, Belfast-style, to separate the rival communities.
International parallels
In any conflict of this character there will be pauses, even temporary periods of equilibrium where the rival forces balance each other out and the protagonists choose to step back for a time. In Northern Ireland the exhaustion of a generation of paramilitaries who had fought for thirty years led to the decision to call a halt to their campaigns. The civil war in Lebanon ended when Syrian troops intervened, effectively freezing in place the front lines that had been established in 15 years of fighting.
In neither case did the end of the fighting represent a solution or even a step towards a solution. Peace processes left in the hands of the same old sectarian forces are nothing more than a continuation of conflict by other means. They will be prone to break down at any point.
The particular conditions of Northern Ireland and the Lebanon have meant that the equilibrium has lasted for an extended period. There is no such prospect in the turbulent conditions of present day Iraq.
There are any number of directions from which things can quickly unravel. Past precedents of arming and financing "former" insurgents will give the US generals little comfort in their dealings with the Awakening. In the spring of 2004 they faced the threat of a simultaneous revolt by Sunni militias and the Mahdi army. Their recently constructed Iraqi army fell to pieces, its forces deserting or going over to the insurgents en masse. Having failed to capture Fallujah, they formed and armed a Fallujah Brigade and handed the city over to them. The Fallujah Brigade was made up of the very people the US had been fighting. Thomas Hicks, in his book Fiasco, accounts what happened next: "It wasn't long before the Fallujah Brigade became indistinguishable from the insurgency. Wearing their old Iraqi uniforms some of their members, far from being "helpful" began shooting at Marines….The eight hundred AK-47s issued to the Brigade wound up in the hands of insurgents, as did some heavy machine guns and rocket propelled launchers."
The relationship with the Awakening militia is likely to have a similarly unhappy ending. The group has already been involved in skirmishes with the police and government forces, who are also armed by the US. An Awakening member recently told The Independent correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, that they "intend to renew the battle for Baghdad whenever they think they can win it."
The decision of the US to partially depend on armed Sunnis is only one of many lit and smouldering fuses that could easily and rapidly set off a rapid re-escalation of the violence. Another is the situation that is brewing in the north – up to now the only area of the country that has remained "stable" since the occupation began.
Kurdish inpendence
The Kurdish region is now independent of Baghdad in all but name. Because Turkey refused to allow invasion forces to enter from the north, the entire Kurdish area was seized by the militias of the two main Kurdish parties, the PUK and the KDP. They are nominally united, running a common list in elections, but in reality they have divided the region between them.
There has been no open declaration of independence, but in practice the Kurdish region is now a separate entity. Officially it is known as the Kurdish Region of Iraq, but its representatives routinely drop the words "of Iraq". It is the Kurdish flag and not the Iraqi flag that is flown.
So far the Kurdish leadership has accepted this status of statehood without a formal state, because they know that to openly take the next step could provoke a Turkish invasion. The Turks for their part, are using the waning influence of Baghdad to secure their interests in the region. The Turkish government is negotiating oil concessions with the Kurdish "Regional" government and Turkish companies have been heavily investing in the area.
Another key factor in staying the hand of the Kurdish leadership is the still unresolved status of the major cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, both of which have mixed populations and are ethnic tinderboxes primed to explode.
Kirkuk is of key importance as it sits on top of massive oil reserves that would be essential to fund a Kurdish state. A referendum, due at the start of 2008 on whether Kirkuk will become part of the Kurdish "Region", has been postponed for six months. The Kurds are using the extra time to try to increase the Kurdish population of the city, thus establishing facts on the ground that they hope will decide the referendum in their favour.
The White House may in public be sticking to the strategy of building up a centralised power-sharing Iraqi government and alongside it, a national army that will take the front line in the battle against insurgents. But in practice what the Americans are doing on the ground is somewhat different. Along with their lapdogs in Downing Street, they have in effect ceded power in Basra and the south to rival Shia militias, in and around Baghdad they are now building a Sunni militia. In the north it is the Peshmerga who are in control.
Iraq is being torn apart as an entity. However, the idea that there can be a solution to all this through the emergence of three new ethnically homogeneous and therefore stable, states – a Kurdistan, a "Sunnistan" and a "Shiastan" – is well wide of the mark.
The ethnically mixed population of the major cities where the majority of Iraqis live, and the fact that Baghdad – geographically in the Sunni centre – is mostly under Shia control, rules out any such clean cut division. Any attempted partition would follow the Bosnian, not the Slovakian, model.
A more likely scenario is that there will be more of the same; a continuation of the chaotic fragmentation and the ever present danger of overspill into much worse conflict – not only in Iraq but with its neighbours drawn in. Turkey has already demonstrated its military intent. Had its recent invasion been extended, it could have been the final nail in the coffin of any notion of a unified Iraq.
Teheran's increasing influence
The fragmentation of Iraq and the rise of the Shia has massively increased the influence of Teheran. The current situation suits the Iranian government who are happy to see US troops bogged down in this quagmire, knowing that this and the threat of massive retaliation by the Shia militias make it much more difficult for the US to launch any form of military assault against them.
Teheran's support for the Shia militias does not mean that they want to see a separate Shia state. A genuinely independent Shia state controlling the Basra oil fields and with close ties to Iran's minority Arab population could destabilise rather than strengthen Iran.
Similarly Saudi Arabia would view with apprehension the emergence of what would probably be a radicalised Shia state on its doorstep, fearing that it could trigger a revolt by its Shia minority, who just happen to live where much of the oil is.
Faced with this mess of its own making the US has no workable exit strategy. Ultimately the Americans may be forced into a Saigon style exit. Otherwise they will be forced to wheel and deal with the various forces that emerge, hoping against hope that circumstances will arise some time in the future that allow them to pull back most of their forces while leaving the oil wealth in friendly hands. A Democrat in the White House would no doubt tweak things, but would be faced with the same dilemmas as the current occupant.
Among serious commentators there is now almost universal agreement that the crude methods employed at the start of the occupation fuelled the insurgency and brought about the present mess. There is no doubt that this is the case. However in the arguments that are put forward, there is also an inferred opposite conclusion that is not true.
This is the idea that if they had gone in with enough troops; if they had employed Iraqis, not outside contractors, on reconstruction; if they had not sacked thousands of public servants through de-baathification; and if they had not stood down the Iraqi army; things might have turned out ok.
This idea that there could have been some kind of benign invasion by a velvet-gloved imperialism is false. In Northern Ireland it is now generally accepted that the crude repressive methods of the Heath government, including internment and Bloody Sunday, were mistakes that swung the Catholic working class youth behind the IRA.
This does not mean that, had the British State acted differently, the upheavals of the 1970s would have been largely avoided. By the time internment had been introduced the options open to the British government were limited. A different approach by the government would only have meant that the Troubles would have unfolded in a different manner – unless, that is, the working class had been able to intervene to stop the development of sectarianism and the emergence of powerful sectarian organisations.
The same is true in Iraq. With the decision to invade, the die of a violent backlash that would most likely lead to the disintegration of Iraq was cast. The Iraqi state, like other Middle Eastern states, was an artificial creation of Imperialism carved out of the crumbled Ottoman Empire. Under Saddam Hussein it was held together by the coercive methods of a brutal military state machine.
Blunders and mistakes
The US invasion toppled this machine, but could not replace it. Had they gone in with a larger force it would have made little difference in the long run. The invading troops were never going to be seen as anything other than an army of occupation. Even those Iraqis who welcomed the overthrew of Saddam Hussein had the attitude; "thanks very much – now go". Resistance in some form was inevitable.
In order to attempt to rebuild an Iraqi administration, Rumsfeld, and his underling in Iraq, Paul Bremer III, decided to lean on the majority Shia and turn a blind eye to the Kurds. De-baathification and the decision to stand down the army were concessions made to try to keep the Shia groups onside.
Had they chosen differently and decided to keep the administrative and repressive structures of a beheaded Saddam regime in place, they would have been forced to base themselves on the Sunni minority and would have faced a revolt by the Shia majority. The country would still have unravelled – but from a different direction. Whatever the US had decided to do to consolidate their hold on Iraq would gone down in history as a "mistake". The real mistake was the invasion. Once there, the army did what imperialist armies do in such circumstances. They embarked on a policy of brutal and blunt military repression, indiscriminate killing and torture, all intended to bludgeon the population into submission.
This does not mean that sectarian civil war, chaos and division was inevitable from the outset. If an opposition to the occupation had developed which united the people of Iraq – Sunni, Shia and Kurd – things could been very different. Indeed it has all along been the greatest fear of the US that such an opposition could emerge – as their obvious nervousness at the co-operation between Sunni and Shia militias at the time of the 2004 seige of Fallujah clearly showed. They have preferred to deal separately with the various sectarian-based militias, parties and religious leaders, balancing them off against each other, partly to make sure the Iraqi people stay divided.
There is no possibility of a united resistance so long as it is led by tribal and religious leaders, or by those who act as local shadows of outside powers like Iran. This fact alone makes a nonsense of the stance imposed on the anti-war movement by the Socialist Workers Party in areas like Ireland, where they run the movement in a typically undemocratic manner. The SWP's refusal to criticise either the policies or the methods of any of the insurgent groups and militias in Iraq leaves the questions and doubts workers and young people have about what is going on unanswered and thereby limits the support the anti war movement can develop.
Workers' struggle
Over the past five years there have been significant struggles that have brought workers into confrontation with the occupying forces, the government and tribal and religious organisations. There have been demonstrations by the jobless, strikes over wages and powerful campaigns against privatisation. Last June oil workers took strike action against the new draft oil law, which will, in effect, hand control of Iraq's oil over to the foreign oil companies.
These movements have faced stern opposition. Demonstrations demanding jobs have been attacked. The British have used thugs supplied by tribal leaders to break up the picket lines of oil workers on strike for wage increases. One of the first acts of the Bremer administration was to cut wages, while maintaining Saddam's anti-union laws that prohibit strikes in the public sector, which is defined that it includes virtually the whole workforce. The al-Maliki government responded to last year's oil workers' strike by calling out the army and issuing arrest warrants for the union leaders involved.
The only way a united opposition to imperialism can develop in Iraq is if is built around class issues and is based on the working class and the urban and rural poor. This means adopting an independent class position – not only against the occupation forces, but also independent of and in opposition to the present al-Maliki-led government, the sectarian religious parties and any sectarian attacks carried out by their militias. Much time has been lost, but there still exists the basis for the emergence of such a class-based movement in the workplaces and the communities.
How could this be done? If there were, for example, a campaign against privatisation that fought for the industry and resources of Iraq to be publicly owned and run democratically under a system of workers' management and for the wealth created to be used to provide jobs, electricity, clean water and proper services, could, even at this late stage, gain major support among the working class.
These issues are already linked in the minds of the Iraqi people with the Occupation. Any struggle to take democratic control of the resources of the country would be inextricably linked with the struggle to force the occupying troops out. This is not just a military question, but one also of ideas and programme. A socialist programme that offered a real answer to the day-to-day problems faced by Iraqis could unify the resistance and leave no safe haven for the Occupation. It would also allow the resistance to appeal to the US troops in a class language they would understand. Given the discontent already there among the troops, this could lead to levels of discontent not seen in the US military since Vietnam.
Similarly an emerging socialist movement would immediately come face to face with the problem of sectarian attacks and with the forces who carry these out. The emergence of the Awakening militia and the Madhi army ceasefire have shown, albeit in a distorted form, that there is opposition among ordinary Iraqis to the atrocities carried out by the religious based militias.
The question that is now to the forefront is the need to organise defence of all working class communities, not just against the occupation but also against attack by sectarian forces. Northern Ireland has shown that mass mobilisations by the working class can have an impact on even quite powerful paramilitary organisations.
Democratically organised defence committees in every community could organise this defence and – again as Northern Ireland has shown – these bodies are most effective when they establish links across the sectarian divide. It goes without saying that under present conditions in Iraq where virtually every home has a weapon, such a defence would be an armed defence.
The National Question
Then there is the national question. A socialist movement would need to take account of the reality that there is no longer a unified Iraqi state and that the aspiration of the Kurds is unquestionably for independence. 80% of Kurdish adults voted in an unofficial referendum in 2005 and 95% of them opted for independence. A socialist programme for Iraq, as well as guaranteeing the rights of all national and religious groups, would also need to include support for the rights of the Kurds to set up an independent state.
An Iraqi socialist federation would certainly be faced with the unrelenting opposition of every surrounding regime. Rather than trying to resolve this through diplomatic deals, an emerging Iraqi socialist movement, for the sake of its own survival, would need to establish links with the working class of Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. This could prepare for mass opposition in these countries to any attempt by these regimes to intervene militarily. It could also lay the basis for "regime change" on a regional basis and the building of a socialist federation of the region, in which boundaries that genuinely reflect the wishes of the local populations could be established.
This might seem a tall order – and indeed it is. But, there is no other way out that does not offer a future of unrelenting suffering to the people of Iraq and its neighbours. Those who find the idea of a socialist solution too hard a task should consider the question – is the alternative presented by US capitalism which has led already to perhaps 600,000 deaths and over 4 million refugees and which offers a future of hell without end, any easier?
more articles on Iraq
Britain: Socialist Party 2008 congress
World economic crisis: The consequences for workers' struggles in Europe


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Trainers – Help others transform their approach to child development.
Could you be a Thrive Trainer?
Thrive Trainers work with teaching staff, SENDCos, school leaders, social care and health staff to train them in applying the Thrive Approach in their setting. Thrive is a specific way of working with children and young people that supports emotional well-being and has consistently shown a positive impact on attainment. It is already used in over 3,000 settings across the UK and we are always looking for more trainers to supply the demand for courses.
Becoming a Thrive Trainer is as demanding as it is rewarding and there are several possible routes depending on your experience and skills.
Take this quick self-assessment and discover the best route for you. Once you've done the assessment, hear from one of our experienced trainers about what being a Thrive Trainer means to her and follow the links for the course that best meets your circumstances.
Training to be a Thrive trainer is a demanding course whichever route you take. It's important you take the self-assessment (above) before making any decisions and feel free to call us for advice at any time.
Once you've made your decision to join us, there are a number of ways you can make it work for you.
You can run open courses on our behalf and we will pay you to run the course. You will need to be flexible on locations and dates.
If you can find a group to provide training to yourself, you pay us a licence fee but keep all of your income from your delegates. You are in control of the dates and locations.
If you are a school wanting to fund a trainer (see information on finance for schools and our packages) as long as you run one Thrive Licensed Practitioner® course a year, you can generate income for your school, MAT or cluster by running open courses in your area.
However you finance the training, you can recoup your investment once you've run two 10-day courses yourself.


Yannis Pantazis received his PhD on Signal Processing from the University of Crete, Greece in 2010. From 2010 to 2015, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst funded by various DOE grants. His research interest include Stochastic Processes, Dynamical Systems, Sensitivity Analysis, Uncertainty Quantification, Estimation Theory and Bioinformatics. Recently, he received the bronze medal (3rd place) on DARPA's Forecasting Chikungunya Challenge.


text:
package org.sakaiproject.emailtemplateservice.service;

import java.util.List;
import java.util.Locale;
import java.util.Map;

import org.sakaiproject.emailtemplateservice.model.EmailTemplate;
import org.sakaiproject.emailtemplateservice.model.EmailTemplateLocaleUsers;
import org.sakaiproject.emailtemplateservice.model.RenderedTemplate;

public interface EmailTemplateService {

   /**
    * Field for the current user's email
    */
   public static final String CURRENT_USER_EMAIL = "currentUserEmail";

   /**
    * field for current user's first name
    */
   public static final String CURRENT_USER_FIRST_NAME ="currentUserFirstName";

   /**
    * Field for current user's last name
    */
   public static final String CURRENT_USER_LAST_NAME = "currentUserLastName";

   /**
    * Field for the current user's diplay Name
    */
   public static final String CURRENT_USER_DISPLAY_NAME = "currentUserDisplayName";

   /**
    * Field for the current user's diplay Id
    *
    */
   public static final String CURRENT_USER_DISPLAY_ID = "currentUserDisplayId";

   /**
    * Field for the local LMS name (e.g., CamTools, CTools, Vula)
    */
   public static final String LOCAL_SAKAI_NAME="localSakaiName";

   /**
    *  Field for the local LMS url
    */
   public static final String LOCAL_SAKAI_URL="localSakaiURL";

   /**
    *  Support email address
    */
   public static final String LOCAL_SAKAI_SUPPORT_MAIL = "localSupportMail";

   /**
    * Get an email template in the default locale
    * @param key the template key which identifies a template
    * @param locale the locale for the template
    * @return an email template with this key or null if none can be found
    */
   public EmailTemplate getEmailTemplate(String key, Locale locale);

   /**
    * Get a list of all the email templates in the system
    * @param max limit the number of items returned (0 for all)
    * @param start start with this item (0 for the first one)
    * @return a list of templates
    */
   public List<EmailTemplate> getEmailTemplates(int max, int start);

   /**
    * Get a rendered Template in the specied locale
    * @param key the template key which identifies a template
    * @param locale the locale for the template
    * @param replacementValues a set of replacement values which are in the map like so:

    * key => value (String => String)

    * username => aaronz

    * course_title => Math 1001 Differential Equations

    * @return the processed template
    */
   public RenderedTemplate getRenderedTemplate(String key, Locale locale, Map<String, String> replacementValues);

   /**
    * Get a template in the appropriate locale for a user - is the user has no preferred locale set the system default will be used
    * @param key the template key which identifies a template
    * @param userReference the unique reference for a user (e.g. /user/aaronz)
    * @param replacementValues a set of replacement values which are in the map like so:

    * key => value (String => String)

    * username => aaronz

    * course_title => Math 1001 Differential Equations

    * @return the processed template
    */
   public RenderedTemplate getRenderedTemplateForUser(String key, String userReference, Map<String, String> replacementValues);

   /**
    * Save a template to storage
    * @param emailTemplate an email template, cannot be null
    */
   public void saveTemplate(EmailTemplate emailTemplate);

   /**
    * update a template
    * @param emailTemplate an email template, cannot be null
    */
   public void updateTemplate(EmailTemplate emailTemplate);

   /**
    * INTERNAL USE: get an email template by the unique id
    */
   public EmailTemplate getEmailTemplateById(Long id);

   /**
    * Utility method for getting templates for many users messages to many users
    * @param templateId
    * @param user references e.g. "/user/admin"
    * @return
    */
   public Map<EmailTemplateLocaleUsers, RenderedTemplate> getRenderedTemplates(String key, List<String> userReferences, Map<String, String> replacementValues);

   /**
    * Utility method that will construct the Mesages and send them
    * @param key template key
    * @param userReferences list of user references (e.g /user/admin)
    * @param replacementValues
    */
   public void sendRenderedMessages(String key, List<String> userReferences, Map<String, String> replacementValues, String from, String fromName);

   /**
    * Takes the list of paths supplied and looks up the XML files using the services classloader. Each file is parsed
	* into an EmailTemplate and saved.
    * @param templatePaths A List of template path Strings
    */
   public void processEmailTemplates(List<String> templatePaths);

   /**
    * Export a given template as xml
    * @param key
    * @param locale
    * @return
    */
   public String exportTemplateAsXml(String key, Locale locale);

   /**
    * Does a template for the key exist in this locale?
    * @param key
    * @return
    */
   public boolean templateExists(String key, Locale locale);

}


text:
Egyptian photojournalist released after 5 years in prison
KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images(CAIRO, Egypt) — Well-known photojournalist Mohamed Abu Zeid was released from prison in Egypt on Monday after more than five years of detention. Abu Zeid, widely known under the name Shawkan, was arrested in August 2013 while taking pictures of the forceful dispersal of a sit-in protest by supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Mohamed Morsi.
Along with hundreds of others, Shawkan faced charges that included vandalism and belonging to an outlawed group. He remained in pre-trial detention for five years, until he was sentenced to five years in prison last September.
"We are relieved to hear that Shawkan is finally free after spending over five years in jail and call on authorities to end their shameful treatment of this photojournalist by removing any conditions to his release," the Committee to Protect Journalists' Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, Sherif Mansour, said.
ABC News was unable to reach Shawkan for comment.
Shawkan's release is conditioned on probation that would require him to spend the hours of 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day at a police station for the next five years. His lawyers plan to appeal for the probation to be lifted, according to CPJ.
Photos shared on Twitter following his release show Shawkan smiling at his family home in Giza.
In one photo he poses with his now-famous gesture of mimicking holding a camera in his empty hands, in reference to a photo of him that went viral, where he stood behind bars pretending to take pictures.
Shawkan is a recipient of CPJ's International Press Freedom Award and the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Press Freedom Prize.
The government of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has been accused of cracking down on journalists and barring freedom of speech.
There are more than 30 Egyptian journalists detained in the country, according to a January report by Reporters Without Borders, a NGO that advocates on issues relating to freedom of information and freedom of the press.


Are You Social Selling...or Hard Selling?
Are You Social Selling…or Hard Selling?
If you take a hard selling approach instead of social selling, you'll enjoy the benefits of social media marketing for B2B. Engaging on social media is a fine balance and the focus shouldn't just be on selling but providing value. If you come on too strong with a sales pitch and a hard sell, they'll go running; if you don't engage enough, you'll never be able to build a foundation of qualified leads. The following tips will help you find the right balance and realize the many benefits of social media in the B2B world.
Before you take on social selling, set achievable goals, goals you'll stick too. You can always expand on them later. Consider how many people you would like to make contact with on a daily basis. Think about how many leads you'd like to generate. Once you have the answers you'll be able to stay focused which will make it easier to measure success. When it comes to social media, or just about any kind of marketing for that matter, it's never a good an idea to just "wing it". Taking on social media without a plan will stifle your efforts from the get-go. Without clearly defined goals and metrics for success, you won't be able to measure your progress and adjust your social strategies to achieve optimum results.
Social selling is all about one interaction, which eventually spills over into other audiences when your comments go viral. You need to engage on a personal level, similar to how you would at a networking event or even a casual cocktail party. Never steamroll over your prospects with the "hard sell" approach; this simply doesn't work with social media and repeatedly blasting your marketing messages isn't going to help you build fruitful relationships or provide value. Imagine having a casual conversation with someone about newsworthy items, or industry standards and someone walks up, interrupts your conversation, and starts talking about themselves. Hard selling just doesn't work with social media.
Social media site users have no problem pointing out sales people working an angle just to try to sell them on their services. Instead, be yourself; show them your human side. The more honest and personable you are, the faster you'll earn the trust of your prospects. If you try to fake your way through the social selling process, your heart won't be in it and social users will feel it and it's not a quality that they'll trust. Social selling starts with trust.
When you engage with your clients and potential clients, it's crucial that you always add value to your conversations (posts/tweets). With social selling you can help your social sphere solve a problem; provide them with interesting information about the industry, or useful tips that they'll appreciate. Social Media sites are great places to initiate a sale, but terrible places to try to close. In other words, if you blindly pitch your services, you'll end up forcing what you're selling into the discussion far too early in the sales cycle.
Social media sites are incredible places to gather useful information like your competitor's attributes, learn industry news, discover your potential/current client's pain and pleasure points and much, much more; all you have to do is take the time to listen and take note. If you only visit your social media sites to blast out your salesy messages and not paying attention to what's being said, you're wasting a huge opportunity to research, listen, learn and participate. Social selling requires social listening.
At the end of the day, there's only one way to actually close a sale via social media and that's to establish yourself as an industry leader and a trusted resource. Once you've earned your target audience's trust, everything else will fall into place.


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