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Putin, Montesquieu, and Catherine
In a post-Beslan emergency session in Moscow, Putin met with cabinet ministers and regional governors to overhaul the political system, greatly centralizing authority, all in the name of national security. It's hard to imagine any Russian or post-Soviet state as suffering a "weakness of state executive powers," but so it is.
Within 24-hours the White House said that Putin's centralization was a Russian internal matter and SecState Powell said that it is "alarming" and that it "could take Russia off the path to democracy," an opinion I find bluntly unrealistic and has me favoring the White House over State. When readers hear Powell speak of a "proper balance," they should know how Russian democracy works, and for that I look to Dmitri Simes.
Let me set the stage with comments Simes made in 2001, a decade into the Soviet collapse when some were calling Russia "finished," as a starting point for Putin's consolidation:
[On 'consolidate political power' v. 'repression] Yeltsin, with an exception for a short period in 1996 and 1998, always relied very heavily on security forces. Most unsavory KGB generals were part of his entourage and were instruments of his power. This is not new. I think that the issue today is consolidation and stabilization of the Russian society. There is still a lot of repression. There are many undemocratic practices, but you have to heed the direction and the direction is not toward greater repression. The direction is to restoration of a certain degree of stability.
[On the State] People were raised to believe that the state was an enemy, but also the state was always the authority. You do not bargain with the state, either you fight against the state or obey the state… Or you cheat the state… There is no meaning of truth in the way you have in Western societies, because you have to believe that you will be treated with the minimal fairness by the state. [You] also have a situation of ingrained corruption, generation after generation. I don't think it's something that will stay there forever, but I think it will have to be addressed for several generations before you will see any European-style democracy in Russia.
[Value to US foreign policy] US foreign policy agenda [depends] upon Russian cooperation. [The] Russian position is very important [on] America's most important strategic relationship [China]. What kind of weapons Russia will agree to supply [China]? Would Russia agree to have some kind of tactical alliance with China?... Russian cooperation with Iran. Russian position on proliferation. Russia has a role [in every] major foreign policy. It is not the same role as in the case of the Soviet Union...,but Russia causes a considerable impact primarily on nuclear weapons.
[That Russia is not looking for either an American or a European model] I think that's exactly right. The Russians are not only not ready for western-style democracy; they are not interested in western-style democracy. They believe that they have to find their own way, which in many respects will be European, but which will also be influenced by Russian culture, Russian tradition. They also believe that they have to define their own national interests, which they believe are not antagonistic to the United States, but also are not identical and I think that we will see a very complex relationship between Russia and the United States.
Back to Simes in 2004 for a realistic look at Putin's actions:
Putin was moving in the direction for quite some time. He clearly feels that in order to change things in Russia, and he's got a sense of mission he wants to change things, you need to have real power -- not a performer power granted by the Russian constitution, but real power. [G]overnors today - they are heavily influenced by the Kremlin -- but there is no line authority. The Kremlin cannot tell them what to do. [No one is] truly responsible. [Most of the] so-called independent legislators... are not democrats [but] people connected with provincial corrupt structures and their presence in legislature adds little to Russian democracy.
[There's nothing to 'take away" as] they don't have legitimate local government in Russia. [The] whole government of North Ossetia [is] run by a former Soviet party official, former Soviet diplomat who is part of the old power structure. [Elected yes, but] make no mistake, in fact he was appointed. But the situation was created when in fact they appoint the governors, that's why these people who were in the room with Putin who was talking about eliminating their elect status and yet they applauded him because they do not have the guts to challenge him.
The Kremlin has power without responsibility. Putin wants to concentrate the decision making in the Kremlin [which makes sense but] taken alone it's grossly insufficient. I think that under current Russian conditions where corruption is perverse, where local mayors and governors are frequently associated with criminal gangs [if] Putin wants to change something, he needs to put himself in charge first.
[You] have to have other reforms to start creating legitimate civil society. You should give local mayors, real mayors more power, and you also should have a struggle against corruption. Those reforms were promised by Putin, but he did not begin to implement them yet.
Catherine was fond of quoting the arch-democrat Montesquieu that "a wise ruler who favored reason over passion could best ensure the welfare of his or her subjects" and by extension that Russia could only be run by a firm central hand. Putin would approve.
Putin Moves to Centralize Authority
By Peter Baker
InfoT Public Risk Containment and Pricing Public Strategic Risk Public
Poverty mimics AIDS, only more slowly but with equal impact and with a twist
As the UN-HABITAT released the 2004/2005 edition of The State of the World's Cites, I was struck by the flow of humanity into the world's cities that has produced some 175 million documented international migrants -- and who knows how many undocumented ones -- and an underclass that is mired between desperation and a "race to the bottom" for those 'fortunate' enough to gain work with firms that are part of the supply chain of firms seeking cheaper labor and so drive wages down until they reach a baseline and then shift capital and jobs across borders to lower cost regions. UN-Habitat Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka noted that the volume of slum inhabitants will "double to nearly two billion by 2030" and thereby form 40% of the estimated city population of "nearly five billion people by 2030."
In Bribery is a $1 trillion USD annual business - $2.7 billion per diem, I noted that "Corruption -- the misuse of public office for private gain from whatever source, AIDS, poverty, and famine rank high on my alarm chart for producing dysfunctional or depopulated states that can be exploited for terrorist and criminal purposes." But little will be done, as in Looking past a pandemic tipping point, I note that "AIDS in Africa has taught us that local governments and societies can ignore a disease and its impacts just as successfully as the supposedly distant, well-to-do first world societies." So it will be with this poverty as the more relatively well-to-do, and I include myself, focus on more near-team matters.
Just as I believe that AIDS will get out of hand despite the attention being given to it and the valiant effort of the few, I feel the same will happen with this urban underclass such that extremism will flourish in these global slums as governments will not tackle the poverty in time to interdict its drivers. I agree with Tibaijuka's comment that, ""The poor are not terrorists, but the hopelessness in which people find themselves can create conducive conditions for criminals to manipulate the situation." I do not agree with her hope that this report "will encourage governments to invest in slums and work on solutions to the simmering problems."
[Of the 175 million documented migrants,] the more developed economies attract most of the international migrants (77 million), followed by the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics (33 million), Asia and the Pacific (23 million) and the Middle East and North Africa (21 million). In many cities, lack of affordable housing and discriminatory practices force the newcomers to live spatially segregated lives in ghettos where they suffer labour exploitation, social exclusion and violence.
As you might expect, the migration is not uniformly divided just as urban poverty is increasingly concentrated in particular neighborhoods, "racial minorities in some societies, international immigrant groups in others."
As an aside, I did find two bright spots: While the migrant suffers in their transplant nation, their home nation benefits:
Remittances back home are second only to oil in terms of international monetary flows, providing an important and reliable source of foreign exchange finance. In 2003, for example, the Indian Diaspora sent back US$ 15 billion, exceeding the revenues generated by the country's software industry.
And in Asia and the Pacific region, albeit some of the most recent poor, the impact of globalism has been described as "one of the largest decreases in mass poverty in human history."
Yet in these urban, dislocated pockets of privation, the sufferers will not be dead as with AIDS, but alive, angry, close at hand, seeking redress, and willing to listen to approaches from either criminal or terrorist factions. Despite the present danger of al Qaeda, the net number of their group in the US and much of Europe is small in comparison to the sea of immigrant poor -- soon to be 2 out of 5, and in the case of the UK and France, a very great part of that same urban poor is Muslim.
I hope, but do not believe, that Tibaijuka will be successful in getting host nations to "base their economic policy on basic moral values," and thereby halt the "race to the bottom" by putting a floor under this growing urban poor. I also believe that firms in the host nation all the way up their supply chains to the wealthier end-user nations will largely favor shareholders' profits calls over the provision of basic services to the impoverished.
The sad analogy that I use in these cases is the withdrawing of one's hand from a pail of water. There is a slight ripple, a small change in level, and all is as before.
State of the World's Cities 2004/2005 - Globalization and Urban Culture
ISBN No.: 92-1-131705-3
HS Number: HS/726/04E
Spreading Slums May Boost Extremism: UN Agency
World Bank DevNews
Headlines for Tuesday, September 14, 2004
UN-HABITAT Report Celebrates Multicultural Cities
Barcelona, 14 September 2004
Domodedovo: negating layers of Russian security for as little as 7,000 rubles - $234 USD
Early indicators point to as little as $234 US (7,000 rubles) were able to circumvent the security at Domodedovo, bringing down two airliners. There should be, must be, a lesson here for US, European, and other security groups as similar grey-area 'process gaps' that never appear on the 'as-designed' security map designed to meet a specified group of 'attack scenarios' must surely exist within our own systems. To believe that they do not, is to defy human nature and to invite future disaster.
Consider the difference between defensive and offensive success:
Defensive success: Ability to detect threat in time and check aggressor's plan
Offensive success: Ability to mask intent, plan and implement, and defer discovery until too late for countermeasures
Good adversaries look at the least demanding means of success. They examine the inadequacies of your own security. They exploit things you consider unimportant. They exploit holes in databases that no longer provide appropriate or timely reporting.
Domodedovo had put in place a number of systems and inspections that presumed that individual travelers would engage the system directly. Domodedovo appears to have failed to consider the legions of fixers, scalpers, blackmarketeers, and their apparatchik contacts.
The likely suspects, two Chechen women -- the only two bodies unclaimed of those killed, arrived in Moscow earlier in the day of the flights (short time spans reduce the detection interval) from Dagestan, adjacent to Chechnya. They may or may not have been traveling with explosives -- I think not -- and find plausible the Russian opinion that the two women met a third party who provided the explosives (pre-positioning is a long accomplished skill of Chechen efforts) and the instruction to contact a ticket scalper, very possibly one who was himself innocent but deemed effective in getting people in need onto planes on short notice.
The target was a Krasnodar native, Armen Artyunov, who illegally sold tickets at Domodedovo airport and "who reportedly specializes in securing tickets for sold-out flights."
Artyunov reportedly received 5,000 rubles ($167) for his help in purchasing both tickets. A fee of 2,000 rubles more ($67) went to Artyunov's apparatchik contact at the airport who received two bribes, one to get the first woman onto a Sibir Airlines flight, and the second, when the other Sibir flight was sold out, to get the second woman onto the Volgograd Aviaekspress flight. If early reports are correct, the contact then "helped her pass a security check."
Both women "were seated in the rear of the airplane when the RDX device exploded." I am curious to see if that seating was by passenger request as a detonation in that area would be much more likely to sever control circuits which "would explain the sudden loss of control and emergency power after the explosion," as opposed to an explosive decompression which may or may not have downed the airliners.
In a stroke, all of Domodedovo's security precautions were negated, and for about $234 USD. Depending upon where the RDX was located (on person, in carry-on) and how it was armed (mechanical, RF-trigger, timer, altimeter), it is likely that both aircraft were doomed from the moment that they put wheels in the well. Offensive success at its best. Masterful and elegant in its simplicity.
We must take careful note.
Airline Employee, Ticket Scalper Arrested In Connection With Twin Airplane Explosions
RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Russia Volume 8 Number 172
Robert COALSON
2 Arrested in Russian Planes Probe
Analysis: Who Downed The Russian Jets?
By Roman Kupchinsky
International terrorism in Russia; more Chechen export than Arab import
I am more of the opinion that what passes for 'international terrorism" in Russia and the CIS is highly capable Chechen forces at work there and moving freely to and from other terrorist hotspots in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Given the fluidity of the al Qaeda franchise and the rise of the entrepreneur terrorist, I do not doubt that so called 'Arab' personnel can come in and out on Chechen smuggling routes and that those entities may bring needed items, but I feel that they are as likely to be the junior, at best peer, member when compared to the skills of the Chechens and that Arab forces are useful but not necessary for the Chechens to carry out their actions against CIS assets. See Continued Chechen prowess in the face of superior Russian numbers, 26 June 2004.
Some needed history: There is a very strong Chechen diasporia that has a very strong Turkish-Chechen axis. The Ottoman Empire had long provided a military and religious canopy to Caucasian tribes in their resistance against the Russian Slavs. Russia wrought its revenge following the Russo-Persian wars of 1804-13 and 1826-28 and the Anglo-Persian war of 1856-57 when it forcibly cleared the region, relocating thousands of Chechens and Circassians elsewhere in the czarist empire, a process that Stalin would later repeat under fear of the Chechens offering aid to Germany. Many Caucasus peoples fled to Turkey, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Jordan and the Black Sea littoral:
Turkey is the principal ally of the Chechen independence fighters. Since the days of the Ottoman Empire, almost all the peoples of the Caucasus region -- including Chechens -- have had close ties with Turkey, which though secular is still part of the Islamic world… Each week Turkish Muslim groups and the Gray Wolves organize demonstrations against the Russian government... The Gray Wolves run the mosques and commercial activities in some parts of Istanbul. It is in these mosques, in the suburbs of the city, that offerings are collected after daily prayers for the Chechen refugees. It is money that probably also goes to soldiers on the front lines.
As the conflict in Chechnya has intensified and played out its more dramatic moments, such efforts have multiplied. According to some estimates, there are between 3,000 and 5,000 foreign Mujahedeen in Turkey on their way to fight in Chechnya. Their movements across Turkey certainly could not take place without at least the tacit consent of the Turkish government. Indeed, it is no longer a secret that the main training camp for the Chechen fighters is at Duzce, a town between Istanbul and the Turkish capital of Ankara.
The Chechens have been operating an extensive 'farm team' well beyond the boundaries of Chechnya. The late Fred Cuny wrote:
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the Chechens reacted swiftly. The Chechens, under their newly elected president, Dzhorkar Dudayev, declared their unilateral independence and proceeded to set up a separate state. As the Chechens say, the business of Chechnya was business--in all its forms. Dudayev allowed the local Chechen economy to deteriorate and unemployment to rise: but he and his associates grabbed some planes from Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, and began trading with the newly independent, former Soviet states to his south and east. He also established links to Iran and Turkey and soon a variety of goods were entering Chechnya marked for destinations further north in Russia. Opium, heroin, and hashish were among the more profitable commodities sent northward. Dudayev and his colleagues were also able to engage in the profitable business of exporting arms. As the Russian army pulled back from the Caucasus and Central Asia, large amounts of its equipment were sold illegally to the Chechens, who then offered them to anyone with cash. Apparently, Muslim nations supporting Bosnia were among their better clients.
I should add that there is a school of thought that radical Islam began to take hold only after the 1994 Russian invasion, that "Chechnya's ever-closer embrace with radical Islam was by no means inevitable [at the time]," and that it was a later internal rebellion that raised the stature of the Islamists.
However, I again vote with Cuny:
For three years the Russian government ignored Chechnya's declaration of independence and its other embarrassing activities; Russia had other problems. But by mid-1994, Dudayev had gone too far. He was courting Muslim radicals in Iran and the Middle East, toying with declaring an Islamic state and imposing Shariah law, and continuing to send millions of dollars worth of untaxed goods into Russian's markets.
[Yeltsin] believed that the Russian people, who generally have deep contempt for the Chechens as the perceived kingpins of Moscow underworld, would support a quick military intervention to bring them to heel. They also believed that the Chechens would flee in the face of Russian army.
Major miscalculation that. The Chechens are quite able to fend for themselves, buttressed by their criminal activities, a point ignored by Chechen apologists. They have developed exceptional skills above and beyond those talents that are now for sale.
Chechen Rebels Mainly Driven by Nationalism
By C. J. CHIVERS and STEVEN LEE MYERS
Analysis: Is Al-Qaeda Operating Inside Russia?
Istanbul: Gateway to a holy war
By Ali Isingor
Special to CNNItalia
Continuance of denial and hubris are not grounds for success
Ba'athist, jihadist, and national/personal militia terrorists have established new camps in central Iraq, often in areas thought safe, as US Central Command acknowledges that "more areas in Iraq are under rebel control today than there were last year." The Sunni triangle, including Fallujah and Ramadi, is seeing the formation of new camps and the fortification of earlier ones. Convoy attacks and kidnapping are rising along the Baghdad-Najaf highway. Arms and personnel smuggling is rising accordingly.
Ismail Zayer, editor-in-chief of the independent daily Sabah al-Jedid:
"There are terrorist camps. They have stored lots of arms and ammunition. They have equipment for forging documents and passports. They have positioned themselves to have contacts with people in places like Ramadi and Fallujah, as well as with people in the south."
To the south, Shi'ite militias flourish. It appears that the Shi'ite Hezbollah "has deeply infiltrated Basra and surrounding areas, so much so that it virtually runs the province, with the help of Shi'ite militias, and is committed to establishing vilayat-e-faqih (rule by the religious clergy according to the Shi'ite faith)." Iranian revolutionary guards "have already established pockets, especially in Ammarah and Basra." Iranian intelligence operates under the auspices of the Sayyed al-Shohada party which calls itself a branch of the al-Majlis al-Alla (Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq - SCIR). Iranian monies from religious "welfare funds" underpin it all.
The US-appointed interim Allawi government is being made to look hollow for its promises to uproot armed opposition, and I can only expect their situation to worsen as their security forces suffer increasing casualties yet have neither the resources, skill, support (from Iraqis either frightened or waiting to side with a more likely winner), and intelligence to accomplish the mission.
One should expect this impotence to continue until the US rehabilitates the Ba'ath Party and its banned Arab nationalists (a ban already partially relaxed), the armed forces, and tribal chiefs that operated under Saddam, i.e., in the absence of viable US power, restore those whom the US defeated but can run the shop. Even that may now be impossible as we have let Shi'ite militias fill the vacuum we ourselves created.
I follow Francis Fukuyama, who while describing himself as a neocon, proposed a very different version than that of Charles Krauthammer's "democratic globalism" which came to dominate neocon philosophical underpinnings, and think that he has much good to say (and now that he has broken openly with Krauthammer will no doubt have more to say.)
Fukuyama is one of the few to separate nation-building (creating or repairing the cultural, social, and historical ties of a people) and state-building (creating or strengthening governmental entities to include its armies, police, judiciary, tax and banking, health, education, et al). Nation-building commences with security stabilization, disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, infrastructure rebuilding, restarting economic activity. Fukuyama rightly observes that this capacity is within the ability of the US and the UN. The creation of "self-sustaining [Fukuyama emphasizes this level in order to produce stable institutions] political and economic institutions that will ultimately permit competent democratic governance and economic growth" can only follow once stability is underway. Expecting to decapitate Baathist leadership, turning over a working government to new leaders, the US completely failed to prepare contingency plans against the possibility of a general state collapse, while baring the UN from attempting to do so.
Larry Diamond, recently a Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, had this to say about security:
In postconflict situations in which the state has collapsed, security trumps everything: it is the central pedestal that supports all else. Without some minimum level of security, people cannot engage in trade and commerce, organize to rebuild their communities, or participate meaningfully in politics. Without security, a country has nothing but disorder, distrust, and desperation-an utterly Hobbesian situation in which fear pervades and raw force dominates. This is why violence-ridden societies tend to turn to almost any political force that promises to provide order, even if it is oppressive.
Without security, political, economic, and social reconstruction " grinds to a halt." In an NPR interview, Diamond calls it the "seminal failure [in Iraq] from which other miseries flowed." Without the fruits of security, the nascent government -- it is not remotely a state -- is deprived of legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens, attackers, and other states, and so is open to predation.
Fukuyama cites the "most serious post-war planning mistakes" by the US as:
Afterthought establishment of a post-war reconstruction organization
Insufficient authority granted to it
Placing it under Pentagon control
Reconstruction in Afghanistan is no better, merely crowded out of the limelight. If we are going to rebuild anything, including our credibility, we must immediately adopt realistic, corrective actions not blinkered by Unipower ideology.
Rebels extend control in Iraq
By Peyman Pejman
After Muqtada, the militias ...
What Went Wrong in Iraq
By Larry Diamond
Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004
Nation-Building 101
by Francis Fukuyama
The Atlantic Monthly | January/February 2004
Imperial Rome became Italy; de Tocqueville's America becomes what?
While I have often wondered how Romans became Italians, I have only recently begun to wonder what became of de Tocqueville's American citizens and what has replaced them. That painful quandary was laid bare by Menand's The Unpolitical Animal, which starts off well enough with political philosophy that de Tocqueville would recognize: individual rational choice, appreciation of consequences, voter rationality between the preferred philosophies of governance by left and right, and the undecided who see any rote commitment as curiously fanatic, et al.
That opening paragraph is the last thing that de Tocqueville would recognize as Menard cuts to a collection of articles drawn from the pages of Campaigns & Elections: The Magazine for People in Politics, and the message could not be more different:
Don't assume that your candidate's positions are going to make the difference. "In a competitive political climate," as one article explains, "informed citizens may vote for a candidate based on issues. However, uninformed or undecided voters will often choose the candidate whose name and packaging are most memorable. To make sure your candidate has that 'top-of-mind' voter awareness, a powerful logo is the best place to start." You want to present your candidate in language that voters will understand. They understand colors. "Blue is a positive color for men, signaling authority and control," another article advises. "But it's a negative color for women, who perceive it as distant, cold and aloof. Red is a warm, sentimental color for women—and a sign of danger or anger to men. If you use the wrong colors to the wrong audience, you're sending a mixed message."
It goes downhill from there, but back to first principles: Converse's 1964 The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics in which Converse saw two classes of voters:
Ideologues: the ten percent "of the public [that] has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system," who "have a reasonable grasp of "what goes with what"—of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy."
Non-ideologues: the all-others, whatever their preferred label, who "basically don't know what they're talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of "constraint": they can't see how one opinion… logically ought to rule out other opinions."
These non-ideologues either "vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self-interest…, form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad… or from factors that have no discernible "issue content" whatever."
But what about public opinion? Converse believed that people feel compelled to voice an opinion, but survey analysis indicates that "people tended to give different and randomly inconsistent answers to the same questions," i.e., the public holds "opinions that are essentially meaningless—off-the-top-of-the-head responses to questions they have never thought about, derived from no underlying set of principles."
Fast forward to today, three theories jostle:
Electoral outcomes are essentially arbitrary, the will of the people being carried by "slogans, misinformation, "fire alarms" (sensational news), "October surprises" (last-minute sensational news), random personal associations, and "gotchas.""
"Democracies are really oligarchies with a populist face," i.e., in the face of incomplete information, people's opinions and preferences are dictated by elite opinion. Political campaigns essentially become "struggles among that elite," those able to draw ideological differences and see policy implications.
People use shortcuts, "heuristics," to reach judgments about political candidates. This intuitive "low-information rationality" is a good enough substitute for the richer data set.
Only heuristics offers me hope, but it makes me queasy that voters can consistently substitute cue interpretation and elite selection for informed, reasoned judgment.
Continuing Converse, Morris Fiorina feels that the electorate is not polarized and that there are very modest differences between red-blue states. It is the elites that are highly ideological, polarized -- what I have to come to call "shouters," most of whom are on the right and many of those are on Fox and talk radio -- a fact that continues to frighten me as so many of these sources alternately use bogus and biased data and badger those that disagree.
If the elites polarize and then one side can shout down/blot out the other, then I despair that the electorate can get the accurate shortcuts and cues to vote for the foreign policy, and those who would implement it, that is in the electorate's long term best interest.
Parle Italiano?
The Unpolitical Animal
How political science understands voters
by Louis Menand
Issue of 2004-08-30
Democracy in America
Volume I, 1835 and Volume II, 1840
Alexis de Tocqueville
The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics
Philip Converse, 1964, In Ideology and Discontent. Edited by David Apter. New York: Free Press, 206-261
Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America
Great Questions in Politics Series
by Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams, Jeremy C. Pope
When fiction exposes a fault line in fact: CDC, NIH and NBC
- Gordon Housworth [ 9/9/2004 - 19:16 ] #
Hamlet may not have had detective TV in mind when he said, "For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ," but NBC's premiere of "Medical Investigation" did just that when its dramatization of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) assigned organizational ownership to NIH Bethesda instead of CDC Atlanta, i.e. terrific publicity going to the other guy.
Sometimes called the "medical CIA" or the "virus hunters," CDC is justifiably proud of the EIS established in 1951 at CDC Atlanta, Georgia, as a combined training and service program in domestic and international applied epidemiology. Staff that pass through its 2-year program go on to become its eyes and ears, much like retired FBI staff at Kroll became a farm team for serving FBI agents, and can be recalled to support an essential mission.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) are but two units of Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) whose mission is to protect the health of Americans and provide essential human services. Just as with law enforcement fault lines between federal, state, and local units, so do barriers and competition exist among our health care guardians. On a variety of issues and disease preventions and interdictions, "both the NIH and CDC continue to behave as if on-campus interests were all that mattered." That competition is mirrored across a swath of states and universities beyond the federal patch, and those institutions have relationships that are stronger with one federal entity than another.
While the AMA article is kind enough to speak of the series as a "hybrid NIH and CDC agency," the Post article can only allude to the competition, even partisanship, that is propelled by zero-sum contributions to ego, professional recognition, and funding.
At the kindest level, some CDC members and supporters in the wider public health community see a tilt to the wealthier NIH, a tilt sanctioned by DHHS Secretary, Tommy Thompson. It is true that:
The CDC, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has long had to beg for help in its investigation of mysterious death and disease. It acquired the property for its main Atlanta campus only after Coca-Cola Co. baron Robert Woodruff helped give the agency land on the cheap in the 1940s.
NIH says no slight is intended, that they "never said they wanted it this way" and after all, "the show is not a documentary but entertainment." The struggle has continues at a low boil to prevent retribution. NIH says that it tried to tell NBC that the "show's heroes were on the wrong federal payroll." Opponents say that NIH did not try very hard.
Personally, I think that some at NIH feel that they were fortunate to get something for nothing, i.e., that the bland NIH acquired a bit of the macho CDC image, never a bad thing in the gentle battle for funding before Congress, a process that I think modeled the funding presentations of the military intel units to NSA, a process that the Air Force won handsomely, followed by the Navy, with the Army taking the hindmost.
NBC says that they will mention CDC more in future episodes. Vigilant eyes will continue to survey the epidemiological fault line in our biological defense structure.
A CDC Drama, Starring the NIH
Some See Conspiracy in NBC Show's Inaccuracies
By Rick Weiss
Taking medical mysteries to prime time
By Susan J. Landers
AMNews staff. Aug. 23/30, 2004
Vying for biodefense dollars
By Peg Brickley
The Epidemic Intelligence Service in the United States
Stephen M. Ostroff
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Eurosurveillance, Vol 6, #3, March 2001
Domodedovo to Beslan: pursuing a terrorist war in the face of public distrust
Commencing with a strike against Domodedovo International in Domodedovsky district south of Moscow, one of Russia's best international and CIS/domestic airports, certainly preferable to Sheremetyevo-2, and continuing thorough the attack against the opening day festivities of Beslan's School No. 1 in North Ossetia, Chechen insurgents handed the Russian Federation what is called its "9/11" equivalent. I use the term "continuing through" as these are but two memorable, closely spaced attacks in a series of operations in which the Chechens have counterattacked Russian assets.
One of the unifying elements of this affair -- beyond the difficulty of Russian and regional authorities have in combating terrorism -- is their struggle to gain the trust and forbearance of a populace expecting the worst of administrative incompetence and feeble efforts to shift any responsibility. The Russians shatter every rule of crisis management and seem to have learned little, if anything, from the likes of the 12 August, 2000, Kursk submarine debacle in which naval command first said "the Kursk had "encountered difficulties", and had been allowed "to drift to the sea bed"." and then tried to blame a collision with a US sub before it emerged that the bow of the vessel was blown off by an inadvertent weapons detonation, and that a small group of survivors in the stern were allowed to suffocate.
In the case of the Domodedovo attack, Chechens simultaneously downed two airliners taking off from what is considered to be one of the most secure Russian airports at the heart of the Russian federation, Moscow. An Itar-Tass news item of the same day of the attack, Domodedovo Airport boasts of newest security systems, since scrolled to archive, noted:
The airport "is literally crammed with surveillance cameras, and specialists analyse the current situation on-line."
At the beginning of the year, the airport installed new British metal detectors and baggage scanners. "It is impossible to carry arms, an explosive device or a banal pocket knife through them."
Ticket office personnel maintain constant contact with Interior Ministry officers. Each suspicious passenger is checked out through the ministry's main information centre.
That did not keep two Chechen women, roommates said to be ""clean" of demonstrable rebel ties" from the same apartment in Grozny, Chechnya, from paying cash at the last moment and boarding a Tupolev Tu-134 and Tu-154.
In the case of the Beslan attack, Chechens struck on one of the most festive days in a region where the first day of classes draws children, parents, family, and teachers en mass, all in their best clothes, the children carrying flowers. The death toll was extraordinary and many were from the youngest.
In the face of almost certain terrorist cause, the airliner crashes were laid to the "nearly unbelievable," "mathematically unlikely" alternatives of human error and mechanical malfunction, the latter only gaspingly credulous due to "an airline industry so old and poorly maintained that two planes might go down by accident at the same time." Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief for the radio station Echo Moskvy, who has already come "under fire from the Ministry of Press for its coverage of the Durbrovka [Theatre Centre on 23 October, 2002] events noted that "the government cannot acknowledge anything like a terrorist act comparable to 9/11." Venediktov went on to say that "To admit this is more than a weird accident would be to admit defeat in their war on terrorism."
The Beslan school event commenced in the same manner, as the government withheld the scale of the carnage, including appalling video. A political analyst, Sergei Markov, "said the deadly outcome of the school standoff had left Putin at a loss" and that "They don't know what to do." Markov went on to say that "it had been clear that the government had engaged in a clumsy coverup... Everybody understands they are lying... Everybody can do the math and know there were more than 1,000 people inside the school."
Possibly in an effort to shield Putin, the Kremlin-controlled Rossiya TV network broke tradition of previous mass fatality crises and admitted that it had minimized the magnitude of the hostage crisis, blaming "generals and the military and civilians" for failing to act "until the president gives them ideas of what to do."
While it is true that Rossiya did not include an apology or acknowledge that the hostage-takers had demanded an end to hostilities in Chechnya, it is a remarkable about face.
Even flatworms learn, as I like to say.
Russians Caught Between Unacceptable, Unbelievable
By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Russia Admits It Lied On Crisis
Public Was Misled On Scale of Siege
Basic Principles for Crisis Communications
The Global PR Blog Week 1.0
Controlled failure is not generally acceptable foreign policy: attrition is not victory
It is so easy to answer Richard Holbrook's question as to "How can a man in a cave outcommunicate the world's leading communications society?" We only get half of Marshall McLuhan whereas bin Laden gets it all. While we focus on the medium, bin Laden focuses on the message, gets the message perfectly tuned for his audience, uses our medium to disseminate it, while we broadcast things that are unintelligible short of their ability to insult that same target audience. Mr. Holbrook is a very bright fellow, so why is this so hard?
Permit me this example. In August 2002, I wrote this in a private note on the death of Abu Nidal:
"In this case, the death of Abu Nidal is the end of an era. This was a bit of a falling "Arab Wall" so to speak. Along with Carlos the Jackal, he was nearly the al Qaeda of his day. Born Sabri al-Banna, Abu Nidal was accused of having killed or injured 900 people in attacks in 20 countries since 1974. He was wanted in the US, UK and Italy and was condemned to death by the PLO. While the AP said that "Abu Nidal was born in Jaffa in 1937 [in] British-governed Palestine[,] later moved to Nablus, and he left the area to organize opposition to the establishment of Israel," it does not tell you that he was the son of the most prosperous orange grower in Jaffa, a child born with a silver spoon who attended French and Arabic schools, that was around the age of eleven when his family was thrown off their orchards and thrust into a refugee tent in Gaza. I never supported what he did, but I could understand why he did it. Whenever I told his story to Israeli supporters, they invariably looked at their shoes until I changed the subject. Abu Nidal was monomaniacally focused and ruthlessly effective. In a way, I shall miss him. But I only have to wait as we are breeding a generation in Palestine to replace him."
The flaw in my forecast was underestimating how little time it would take. Multiply that anger by hundreds of thousands and one begins to get a flavor of the hatred, hopelessness, and opportunity void that marks Palestinians and has seeped into the fabric of Arabs and a goodly number of Muslims. Go to the (tame by comparison) English al Jazeera and look at The Sharon Land-Grab Segregation Wall. Look at the maps of proscribed land, the walls, the isolation adjacent to relative plenty, and ask yourself what would you do in their place. I believe that the Security Wall is a failure of imagination, and will not bring Israel long term security as it will insure the economic collapse of what I call "Paltustan," the Palestinian Bantustan on its doorstep.
Staring at one's shoes has, of course, not been an effective response for either Israelis or Americans who are chained to Israeli action in the minds of Arabs who perceive Israel as a US client state but vastly overestimate our control over it. Abu Ghraib was the toxic icing on the cake which in Arab eyes showed them that we were as duplicitous and base as the Israelis. Leave aside what they do among and to themselves; a completely different yardstick is used against us whether we like it or not.
Current US policy to the Middle East is less effective than shoe-staring. I caution readers not to brand me anti-Bush as it not clear that a Clinton or other Democratic administration would have done better, but while Democratic performance is an unknown, we have prima facia evidence that the policy on offer is merely controlled failure that our weapons and technology will not overcome in isolation from cooperative diplomacy and a sustained multi-administration, multi-generational hearts-and-minds campaign that should have a Marshall Plan level of focus and commitment.
Shibley Telhami speaks of our failure to see or deal with Arab anger that continues to rise even as our overwhelming force on the ground is unable to achieve our aims:
No matter what else we do in the region, the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the "prism of pain" for Arabs through which they read U.S. intentions, in the same way that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and associated terrorism are now the prism of pain through which Americans will continue to see the Arab and Muslim worlds...
First, it is impossible to succeed in our reform policy without having in place a robust Arab-Israeli peace process that commands regional trust. Second, we cannot succeed if we continue to ignore public opinion in the region. The gap between governments and publics increases the rulers' incentive to repress at the same time that it decreases our leverage with them.
As I believe that we have no mechanism for, or even see a need for, trust building; no chance of a Marshall Plan option; and that US opinion will not shift; then we must continue both our failure to win the war of ideas and our robust attrition -- where we are the force being attritted -- until we are forced to withdraw.
Double Blow To Mideast Democracy
By Shibley Telhami
Winning the war of ideas
By William Fisher
The Jordan Times
Did Stanford merely meet Abu Ghraib or is there more?
As I try to digest the Schlesinger Report, I am struck by three themes:
The effortless path by which unsupervised, regardless of how well trained or intelligent, guards become prison monsters noted in Linear connection from Abu Ghraib to the Stanford Prison Experiment was indeed at work at Abu Ghraib, but is not sufficient in totality to describe the excesses.
The lack of systemic planning and attention to the overall resources and management needed to both win a war and administer an occupation, the omissions of interrogation at Abu Ghraib being mimicked in the "inefficient-to-shoddy intelligence practices" noted in Operation OUTREACH from the Army's Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL).
The rising level of aggressive interrogation in global counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, many techniques of which actually rose from training US forces received to resist expected interrogation if captured as cited in A survey of US POW interrogation and Abu Ghraib in particular, Part I and Part II.
It would appear that the Abu Ghraib excesses which have demolished what might have remained of US respect in the Arab and Muslim world were visited on common criminals rather than valid intelligence subjects and were carried out for the amusement of unsupervised, untrained, effectively isolated, and I would say partially disorientated soldiers, many of those reservists. Left to their own, especially on a predominately "night shift" that is all too often devoid of "management oversight," military or commercial, the descent into the Stanford and Yale documented conditions was assured.
Next is the matter of who 'left them to their own' and how far responsibility and culpability should rest. The reader's answer will say as much as to their politics as to military efficiency, given the polarization over the current US administration. While US myopia in unfamiliar land has in the past shown no single political stripe, the inability of the administration to assign any culpability to its members is without recent precedent.
By comparison, the US military has in the post-Vietnam era made good efforts to perform a lessons learned exercise after each major action and does a better job than civilians in fixing cause, defining change, and assigning culpability. What bothers me is that the military has begun to shield some of those key lessons learned due to their embarrassing conclusions of ineptitude or unpreparedness. Is it the military or the administration, or both, that is doing the shielding?
I lean to disciplinary action against the immediate commanders as they did not execute unit oversight and showed political tone deafness to Arab and Muslim reaction to these excesses. They failed the "above the fold in the Times" test miserably. My concern is that assigning higher culpability mixes military mismanagement and responding to civilian/administration demands for 'better results.'
My personal feeling is that the military is being left to take the blame when it was not they who set the manning levels to accomplish a greatly underrated task.
Relevant notes:
Rationalizing military accountability with systemic design faults
Systemization of aggressive interrogation
A survey of US POW interrogation and Abu Ghraib in particular, Part II
A survey of US POW interrogation and Abu Ghraib in particular, Part I
Linear connection from Abu Ghraib to the Stanford Prison Experiment
Abu Ghraib 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE report now on-line
Abu Ghraib debacle
Excerpts From the Schlesinger Report
Wednesday, August 25, 2004; Page A13
Senior Officers May Be Charged
By Daniel Williams
Pentagon panel: Top brass was lax in Abu Ghraib oversight
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 9:10 p.m. ET Aug. 24, 2004
Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations
Chairman, The Honorable James R. Schlesinger
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Other than being a common beverage that many people enjoy, alcohol is also very addictive. Excessive consumption of this substance in any of its many forms can bring about numerous problems both in the short-term and in the long run. There are many great people who have had their careers ruined and their lives destroyed because of alcohol addiction.
This is why it is important to seek help if you feel that you are becoming addicted or know somebody who is addicted to alcohol. You can read through this article and get a decent idea of exactly what is coming down the pike with the continuation of one's drinking habit. There are a lot more long-term effects of alcohol past just health implications. Alcohol addiction can have a seemingly nefarious grip on one's life, taking everything away before eventually putting them in jail, or even worse.
There are many financial problems brought about by alcohol abuse. Anyone who is maintaining any form of drinking with some regularity is going to need to spend money to continue. This is the type of thing that sneaks up on someone, for they may have started off enjoying just one or two drinks for a drinking occasion.
They will eventually start needing more than one or two, and these drinking occasions start taking place more frequently, potentially every day.
This translates to greater costs for anyone who is continually increasing their alcohol intake over a period of time. In the long run, alcohol-related spending will in turn consume a large portion of one's income.
Someone who is developing a drinking habit that is starting to require a large portion of their earnings may even start tapping into their savings. After they blow through their savings, they will need to find other sources of money for their alcohol.
Some people even go to the extent of selling some of their household goods just to raise the money to satisfy their thirst. They may also start borrowing money from financial institutions and from friends and yet they do not have any feasible means of paying this money back. This leads them to being bankrupt and losing most of their friends. There usually follows some sort of trouble, which is often with the law.
Alcohol addiction can affect your family ties. If alcohol becomes a problem, your children and spouse will lose trust in you. If you are someone who has a family to support, you will find it increasingly difficult to support them financially because you spend most of your money on alcohol and very likely have to rely on your spouse to cater for basic needs such as buying food and paying rent.
Your children will also lose respect for you. You may rarely be home and the few times that you are you are likely either drunk or nursing a hangover. The children will slowly lose respect for you and when you tell them to do some of the tasks you expect of them they may simply disobey you. When they have had enough of your addiction, your partner or spouse may decide to pack their things, take the kids, and leave. In some severe situations, they may even file for a divorce.
The tragic aspect of how alcohol affects families is that actions are usually taken when it is pretty much too late to reverse a lot of damage. Very often the individual needed to be brought to a breaking point before taking any sort of stand, as they may have hoped things would change. There are often many forms of hurt that have happened, whether emotionally or even physically, that are impossible to take back, often leading people to their last straw, which is sad, for the alcoholic often has less awareness of this than one may think.
By abusing alcohol, you are putting your life in a lot of unnecessary danger. There are countless other negative health effects that come along with extended periods of drinking. Then there are troubles that one may get in such as that of drunk driving or fighting, which will bring about trouble with the law. This includes such things as getting arrested, spending some time in jail, having to pay a very large fine, and often this involves all three.
However, there are things that are worse than this. By driving under the influence of alcohol, you endanger your life as well as those of your passengers and other drivers. In the worst case scenario, you may kill yourself, your passengers (who could be your family or friends) and even the people in a car you may have crashed into. Once there is any sort of problem with alcohol that is detected, one should seek help as soon as possible, and all of this can be avoided. The aforementioned long-term effects of alcohol need not be a part of your life or that of a loved one.


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In a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineering flight technicians Sam Reyes and Duncan Cogswell install the flight scanner into the MISE instrument. The scanner was provided by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, in Maryland.
Related content pages
MISE
NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will conduct a detailed survey of Jupiter's moon Europa to determine whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life. Europa Clipper will carry an advanced suite of science instruments to discover whether Europa hosts environments suitable for life.
Meet the spacecraft ›
This image is a very high resolution view of the Conamara Chaos region on Europa.
Icy Cliffs at High Resolution
A test model of the boom that will be used for the magnetometer aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft is readied in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Europa Clipper Magnetometer (ECM) Boom
This view of Jupiter's icy moon Europa shows a region shaped like a mitten that has a texture similar to the matrix of chaotic terrain, which is seen in medium and high resolution images of numerou...
Mitten Shaped Region of Chaotic Terrain on Europa
Diurnal temperature color image from the first light test of Europa Clipper's thermal imager.
Thermal Imager's First Light Color Image
An engineer inspects the radio frequency (RF) panel of NASA's Europa Clipper.
Inspecting Europa Clipper's RF Panel
This image of Europa's surface was obtained by the Solid State Imaging (CCD) system on board NASA's Galileo spacecraft during its fourth orbit of Jupiter, Linear features with bright central stripe...
Near-Terminator Image of Europa
Pwyll crater on Jupiter's moon, Europa, was photographed by the Solid State Imaging system on the Galileo spacecraft during its sixth orbit around Jupiter.
Pwyll Crater on Europa
An engineer prepares the ion detector for integration to the SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) sensor head at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulde...
Dust Analyzer Ion Detector
The Europa Clipper Solar Array Mechanical Simulator is shown installed on the spacecraft's propulsion module.
Solar Array Mechanical Simulator
Engineers and technicians in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, integrate the tanks that will contain helium pressurant onto the propulsion module of NASA's ...
Europa Clipper Propulsion Module: Integration Underway
A plasma instrument sensor assembly is mounted on a vibration table.
Plasma Instrument Vibe Testing
Europa Clipper project scientist Robert Pappalardo presents the Monolith Award to Karla Clark.
Europa Clipper Monolith Award
Galileo orbiter near-infrared observations of Europa overlayed on a Voyager map.
Near-Infrared Mapping Coverage of Europa
Europa Clipper's surface dust analyzer instrument was delivered to JPL in September 2022.
Europa Clipper's Dust Analyzer Delivered to JPL
Engineers stand next to Europa Clipper's wide-angle camera in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, following its delivery in June 2022.
Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, prepare for a propellant tank to be inserted into the cylinder in the background at left. The cylinder is one of two that mak...
Prepping Europa Clipper's Propulsion Tanks
The flight model of Europa Clipper's Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE) instrument in a cleanroom at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
MISE Assembly

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Gabriele G. Carey, director of History Associates' Western Area Office, was recently appointed to the California Historical Records Advisory Board (CHRAB) by Nancy Zimmelman, the California State Archivist. Her term on CHRAB will run from January 2007 through December 2009. Dr. Carey will begin her service at the board's next meeting in June.
The CHRAB works in partnership with the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to serve the needs of California constituencies involved in the management and preservation of historical records. Under federal regulations, the state board's two principal roles are to act as the coordinating body for historical records activities throughout California and to review NHPRC grants from California organizations and make recommendations to the national commission. Dr. Carey looks forward to joining the nine other board members who represent various state agencies, as well as archival and historical organizations, in conducting the work of the board.


Denver is full of unique neighborhoods. Our city is an ideal spot for everyone, from condo-living urban dwellers to those who prefer single family homes on tree-lined streets. Read more about each neighborhood by clicking on the images below, and learn more about the areas that make up our diverse city.


websites can easily be a number of the very most susceptible for getting hacked due to the level of popularity from the system. The majority of the moment when people communicate for assistance, it's considering that their website was hacked when, they fixed that– and afterwards this was hacked once more.
When your website site acquires hacked for a 2nd time, this is actually typically because of a backdoor developed due to the hacker. This backdoor makes it possible for the hacker to bypass the ordinary treatments for entering your internet site, getting authorization without you recognizing. In this short article, I'll detail ways to locate the backdoor and also correct this in your website website.
A "backdoor" is actually a term referring to the approach website malware removal service from bypassing regular authorization to receive into your web site, therefore accessing your web site from another location without you even recognizing. Backdoors normally survive site upgrades, so the website is susceptible till you cleanse it completely.
Backdoors may be simple, making it possible for an individual merely to produce a covert admin user profile. Where is the backdoor situated?
Due to the fact that folks frequently do not think to log right into their internet site to inspect updates. This can easily also at times crack functionality on a website. Since there are 10s of many thousands from free plugins, some of them are very easy to hack right into to start along with.
2. Themes – It's certainly not so a lot the energetic theme you're making use of however the other ones saved in your Themes folder that can open your website to susceptibilities. Cyberpunks can easily grow a backdoor in among the themes in your listing.
Media Uploads Directories – Most folks possess their media documents prepared to the nonpayment, to produce listings for photo files based on months and also years. This produces lots of various directories for pictures to be uploaded to– and lots of opportunities for hackers to be actually capable to vegetation something within those folders.
That's one of the first places to appear when you've possessed an assault, given that this's one from the very most typical files to be actually struck through hackers.
5. The Includes file – Yet an additional usual listing due to the fact that this's instantly set up along with website, yet who examines this folder regularly?
Cyberpunks additionally sometimes plant data backups to their backdoors. While you could cleanse out one backdoor … there might be others living on your server, nested away securely in a directory site you certainly never look at. Smart hackers also disguise the backdoor to seem like a routine website data.


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301 N. Canon Drive Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Sun-Thu: 11:30am - 10:30pm Fri-Sat: 11:30am - 11:30pm +310-275-2900
Via Alloro Restaurant
Restaurant Food & Dining
About Via Alloro
Upscale Italian restaurant owned by renowned chef Giacomino Drago, with a patio & celeb clientele
301 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Sun-Thu: 11:30am - 10:30pm
Fri-Sat: 11:30am - 11:30pm
Copyright © 2020 Via Alloro Restaurant Terms of Use Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2020 Via Alloro Restaurant


NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—With the roll-out of the controversial PARCC standardized testing earlier this week, New Brunswick, along with much of New Jersey, saw a relatively uneventful introduction to the test.
PARCC, short for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is a multi-state coalition attempting to develop a new form of standardized testing.
The standardized testing includes a combination of mathematics and language arts to ensure there are uniform achievement levels relative to each grade.
Roughly 100,000 tests were administered on laptop computers to students beginning on Monday, March 2.
New Jersey is among the first states to implement the test. The state's 900,000 students are among five million nationwide to take the test this spring.
Only 19 students opted out of the PARCC testing, according to New Brunswick School Superintendent Richard Kaplan.
With an enrollment of over 7,200 students in grades 3-11, this comes to less than 1% of the student body.
Kaplan took a stance against students opting out of the exam, saying in an email that he would not recommend such an action.
As Superintendent of an urban school district, his stance follows in step with statewide trends.
In the past week, decisions by the parents and children to opt out of testing, as well as support from school administration to opt out, have come largely in more affluent communities.
Livingston Township, the Essex County suburb where Chris Christie grew up, saw 1,100 students opt out, while Princeton Township saw nearly half its students opt out. Ridgewood in Bergen County saw nearly 200 students opt out.
On the other hand, Bergenfield saw just four opt-outs, and Hackensack and Paterson both saw less than 20 each.
State Education Commissioner Davide Hespe stated that if more than 5% percent, or 45,000, of New Jersey students between grades 3 and 11 opt out of taking the test, the state could begin to lose federal funding to its school districts.
The tests would not become a judgement tool or graduation requirement for students until 2019, where they will be administered to grade 11 students.
One of the more vocal critics of the testing, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), has expressed its concerns that performance on the test could be used as a form of teacher evaluation.
As the primary teacher's union in the state, the NJEA had gone to considerable lengths to lobby against the adoption of PARCC.
In Colorado, similar moves against PARCC testing by state Board of Education, namely providing school districts with an option to opt out entirely from the testing, were struck down by the Colorado Supreme Court.
The ruling stated that the Colorado Department of Education, not the State Board of Education, had the sole authority to allow entire school districts to opt out of testing.
PARCC testing reflects the larger national movement towards the controversial Common Core Standards, supported by President Barack Obama in an effort to adopt national education standards.


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Questions of Cash: January 2014
Q. I am trying to obtain an up-to-date bill from Scottish Power. I have an online account, but for over a month the website has displayed a 'temporary' problem preventing me accessing my account. I have made three requests for a bill, left messages on Scottish Power's Facebook page and unsuccessfully tried countless times to phone. Emails receive the automated response that I will be contacted within five days, but they have not responded. I have sent a letter of complaint, but there was no reply. I am single, work long hours, with gas central heating. I use a shower rather than a bath and live in a small terraced house where only two rooms are heated regularly. I pay by direct debit, but I believe I am in credit, as the amount taken from my account – £145 a month – seems far too high. I am interested in switching provider, but I want to be refunded whatever is owed to me. JM, Birmingham.
A. Scottish Power confirms you have overpaid your account and apologises for your difficulties in contacting the company. Its spokeswoman says: "The issue with [the reader's] online account seems to have been caused by an error with her email address. This has now been corrected and the password has been reset. There is a credit balance on [the reader's] account of £461.18. We have arranged for a full refund and also a goodwill payment of £50 for the delay in responding to her enquiry. [The reader's] gas consumption seems to be quite high [so we have offered] some energy efficiency advice, [but] this was declined." You should now be in a position to compare energy costs from various suppliers. It would be sensible to also obtain energy efficiency advice.
Q. We adopted a Jack Russell terrier dog, Joss, in 2005. In 2006 it was diagnosed with Addison's disease. We paid vet bills of £2,000 and took out pet insurance with Sainsbury's Finance, which excluded cover for treatment related to Addison's disease. In 2008, she was again ill and as the illness was not connected with Addison's, the insurance policy covered the costs of treatment. After that, the monthly premium rose from under £16 and by the end of 2012 it was £57.69. I complained in 2011 at the cost and was given £30 in Sainbsury's shopping vouchers, but the premiums continued to rise. In July 2013, Joss was again taken ill. Our vets diagnosed a renal problem and put her on a drip for three days. This cost us £510.70. The vet said the illness was nothing to do with Addison's. But Sainsbury's has not met our claim. Initially Sainsbury's said this was because it had contacted our vet, who did not respond, and so Sainsbury's closed the claim. I spoke to the vet who said they had not been contacted by Sainsbury's. Then in October we were told the claim had been rejected as the illness was "the same as an illness or injury that showed clinical signs before your pet's cover started". We have appealed and the vet supports our appeal. We have been told it could take three months for the appeal to be decided and our policy is now up for renewal. I have asked Sainsbury's why we should renew the policy in these circumstances, but they have not replied. PS, Buckinghamshire.
A. Sainsbury's Bank apologises. Its spokeswoman explains: "We initially turned down [the reader's] claim as Addison's can be a condition linked to renal disease, which Joss had previously suffered, thereby making it a pre-existing condition. We did however request further information from the vet so that we could investigate the matter further and confirm if the two aliments were connected or not, so that we could process the claim. Unfortunately it turns out that the vet never received our request and it would also appear that we did have further information available to us from previous file notes. This resulted in the delay in settlement. We have now paid the claim and are very sorry that we did not pay it sooner. We are committed to the very highest levels of customer service and in this case we have fallen short. As well as our very best wishes, we have sent [the reader] a cheque for £80 for his family's distress and inconvenience."
Q. I put my car up for sale in Auto Trader. It should have been listed as a Volkswagen Golf V5, but instead the website automatically generated a listing for a Golf Sport TDI DPF Diesel. I did not choose this. When this was published, I requested a correction, but was told this was impossible. When I repeated the request, there was no response. Auto Trader is in breach of its contract with me, as the description was incorrect. It has acknowledged poor customer service and refunded the advertising fee of £56 and also offered a £50 goodwill payment, but the car sold for £500 below its market value, so this is not adequate. MA, by email.
A. Auto Trader rejects your argument. A spokesman says: "When a customer places an advert, the information they enter will automatically bring up details of the vehicle. Sometimes the details we hold may differ slightly, so the customer has the option to manually select a variant for their vehicle. In this instance, our records indicate that the customer selected a 2.0 Sport TDI DPF 5dr Diesel Hatchback, rather than the 2.0 GT Sport TDI 170 DPF 5dr Diesel Hatchback. That meant the [information] included in the advert text was incorrect. However, our team failed to respond to [the reader's] complaint, or identify what had happened, quickly enough. When the issue was identified, a full refund for the advert was offered, plus an additional amount as a gesture of goodwill. [The reader] chose to decline this. As a result of this complaint, our team has been re-trained to ensure that customer inquiries are dealt to the speed and standard expected."


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Západní Kordillera, , je jeden ze dvou hlavních hřebenů And v Ekvádoru. Rozkládá se ze severu k jihu v délce okolo 600 kilometrů. Společně s východně ležící Východní Kordillerou tvoří rozsáhlou hrásť o šířce 150 až 200 kilometrů, která se zvedá o 4 000 metrů výše nad okolní západně ležící tichomořskou nížinu a východně ležící Amazonskou nížinu.
Nejvyšší horou Západní Kordillery je nejvyšší hora Ekvádoru stratovulkán Chimborazo (6 267 m). K dalším nejvyšším vrcholům náleží Iliniza (5 241 m) a Carihuairazo (5 020 m).

Geografie
Přestože se v ekvádorské Západní Kordilleře nachází Chimborazo, je užší a nižší než Východní Kordillera. Hlavní horský hřbet je rozčleněný řadou údolí s řekami směřujícími do Tichého oceánu. Mezi Západní a Východní Kordillerou bylo původní údolí v mezozoiku na více místech přehrazeno výlevy láv. Vznikly tak příčné vulkanické masivy, které střídají pánve. Pramenící řeky odtud míří buď do Tichého oceánu nebo do Amazonie.

Reference

Pohoří v Andách
Geografie Ekvádoru

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Some things you just have to learn by doing.
This is a capable young woman, smart as a whip, aces tests, papers. She's logical, athletic, coordinated, beautiful and she has no idea how to cook a chicken breast.
Some things you're not born with and nobody sits you down to explain step by step on the chalkboard. (Although truth be told, we did make numerous efforts to teach her the basics, to which she responded, "Pfft. I know how to do that.") Some things you just have to learn by doing.
I have found life is that way for me. Sure, there are cookbooks. Yes, as a Christian I have the Bible. And I believe the recipes for life are right there. But I must be about working out the details in order to get it right. A pinch more of this. A dash more of that.
things burned to a crisp that beg me to listen for the oven beep.
desperate efforts to extract the tablespoon that was supposed to be a teaspoon of that.
forgotten ingredients because I was in a rush.
substitutions made because I forgot to put THAT on the grocery list.
Nope. I am not a great cook. But I do make a mean zucchini bread. And I am learning that tossing ingredients in the crock pot just to see how they taste often works out just fine. Hey, if not, we chew and smile and make a note not to make THAT again.
And isn't that the Christian life, really? Read the Book. Follow the directions. Taste and see. Evaluate your effort. Repeat.
Somehow in the doing, we get better and better. Funny how we obsess about what we bring to the table. Christ told us bread and wine was enough. Our families, however, demand chicken and rice. I can do that.
Posted on November 2, 2012, in Uncategorized and tagged Christ, Communion table, cooking, dinner, kitchen, recipes. Bookmark the permalink.	2 Comments.
Great way to illustrate our faith journey — absolutely relatable (sp?) I have also found these last few monthd how long we can go with 'toss-off' meals. not long. people get grumpy and it's not the same communion meal as when there's time invested.
time and a bit of creativity — without the fun, I'm the one who gets grumpy!!


text:
<?php
# Generated by the protocol buffer compiler.  DO NOT EDIT!
# source: google/cloud/eventarc/v1/trigger.proto

namespace Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1;

use Google\Protobuf\Internal\GPBType;
use Google\Protobuf\Internal\RepeatedField;
use Google\Protobuf\Internal\GPBUtil;

/**
 * Represents a target of an invocation over HTTP.
 *
 * Generated from protobuf message google.cloud.eventarc.v1.Destination
 */
class Destination extends \Google\Protobuf\Internal\Message
{
    protected $descriptor;

    /**
     * Constructor.
     *
     * @param array $data {
     *     Optional. Data for populating the Message object.
     *
     *     @type \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\CloudRun $cloud_run
     *           Cloud Run fully-managed resource that receives the events. The resource
     *           should be in the same project as the trigger.
     *     @type string $cloud_function
     *           The Cloud Function resource name. Only Cloud Functions V2 is supported.
     *           Format: `projects/{project}/locations/{location}/functions/{function}`
     *     @type \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\GKE $gke
     *           A GKE service capable of receiving events. The service should be running
     *           in the same project as the trigger.
     * }
     */
    public function __construct($data = NULL) {
        \GPBMetadata\Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\Trigger::initOnce();
        parent::__construct($data);
    }

    /**
     * Cloud Run fully-managed resource that receives the events. The resource
     * should be in the same project as the trigger.
     *
     * Generated from protobuf field .google.cloud.eventarc.v1.CloudRun cloud_run = 1;
     * @return \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\CloudRun|null
     */
    public function getCloudRun()
    {
        return $this->readOneof(1);
    }

    public function hasCloudRun()
    {
        return $this->hasOneof(1);
    }

    /**
     * Cloud Run fully-managed resource that receives the events. The resource
     * should be in the same project as the trigger.
     *
     * Generated from protobuf field .google.cloud.eventarc.v1.CloudRun cloud_run = 1;
     * @param \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\CloudRun $var
     * @return $this
     */
    public function setCloudRun($var)
    {
        GPBUtil::checkMessage($var, \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\CloudRun::class);
        $this->writeOneof(1, $var);

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * The Cloud Function resource name. Only Cloud Functions V2 is supported.
     * Format: `projects/{project}/locations/{location}/functions/{function}`
     *
     * Generated from protobuf field string cloud_function = 2 [(.google.api.resource_reference) = {
     * @return string
     */
    public function getCloudFunction()
    {
        return $this->readOneof(2);
    }

    public function hasCloudFunction()
    {
        return $this->hasOneof(2);
    }

    /**
     * The Cloud Function resource name. Only Cloud Functions V2 is supported.
     * Format: `projects/{project}/locations/{location}/functions/{function}`
     *
     * Generated from protobuf field string cloud_function = 2 [(.google.api.resource_reference) = {
     * @param string $var
     * @return $this
     */
    public function setCloudFunction($var)
    {
        GPBUtil::checkString($var, True);
        $this->writeOneof(2, $var);

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * A GKE service capable of receiving events. The service should be running
     * in the same project as the trigger.
     *
     * Generated from protobuf field .google.cloud.eventarc.v1.GKE gke = 3;
     * @return \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\GKE|null
     */
    public function getGke()
    {
        return $this->readOneof(3);
    }

    public function hasGke()
    {
        return $this->hasOneof(3);
    }

    /**
     * A GKE service capable of receiving events. The service should be running
     * in the same project as the trigger.
     *
     * Generated from protobuf field .google.cloud.eventarc.v1.GKE gke = 3;
     * @param \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\GKE $var
     * @return $this
     */
    public function setGke($var)
    {
        GPBUtil::checkMessage($var, \Google\Cloud\Eventarc\V1\GKE::class);
        $this->writeOneof(3, $var);

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getDescriptor()
    {
        return $this->whichOneof("descriptor");
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


How informal advisory groups help your business grow.
As a business owner, Mike Sewart says it can be difficult soliciting feedback when faced with a challenge. That's why he values his membership in The Executive Committee (TEC), a professional development group for business owners and executives where they can freely share ideas, opinions and information.
The owner of Milwaukee-based OnCourse and Vibrant Graphics, Sewart joined TEC 10 years ago and found the connections he's made invaluable.
I thoroughly agree with Sewart about the benefit of informal advisory groups. Earlier this year, I joined a TEC group and am grateful for the advice and information I have already received. With members from different industries, informal, confidential advisory groups provide a much-needed outside perspective, along with other people to bounce ideas off of.
Business owners with advisory groups benefit from receiving a diversity of opinions and access to a larger network, since members have different contacts and may be able to pass on the name and number of a professional who can provide helpful advice.
Sewart has seen these benefits. When he first became a TEC member, Sewart was an executive at OnCourse. Later he purchased the company which provides technology and services to more than 1,000 clients nationwide to help them achieve their organizational goals, strategies and processes.
"TEC helped us get where we are today – a growing, successful business," he said.
TEC is just one example of an advisory group. Several industries have their own such groups, and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) also offers confidential forums like the Council of Small Business Executives (COSBE), where business leaders can gather to discuss vital issues.
Through his involvement with TEC, Sewart met several people who have helped his business.
Looking to join TEC or another advisory group to help your business?
Come ready to listen: The individuals gathered around the table have their own experiences and expertise to share and can provide vital information or advice on your business' key concerns. As you listen, do not just think about your current business state, but also the future. Is there anything being said that could help you down the road?
Come ready to share: This piece of advice is similar to the first one. Be prepared to talk about your business' successes and shortcomings. Is there something you want to change at your company, but unsure of how to do it? Don't be afraid to discuss it with other members. You need to be honest if you expect to get the most from your participation.
Be prepared: A facilitator may preplan some discussion topics. If you know there are going to be certain subjects discussed, do your homework and think about possible responses in advance. This allows you the necessary time to track down any information you may not know off the top of your head, which will lead to a more productive discussion.
Be polite: There's no guarantee everyone in the group will have the same opinion, but remember this is a group of peers and you need to respect each other and all suggestions. What works at one business may not work for another, so keep that in mind. And – this probably goes without saying – what is shared in the discussion stays in the group.
Milwaukee-based OnCourse has more than 35 years of experience helping a variety of businesses and organizations with their goals, strategies and processes, whether it is providing small, paper-based document systems or comprehensive company-wide electronic solutions. Learn more at www.oncourseinfo.com.
If you're interested in having your business featured in an upcoming article, please contact Elizabeth Borst.


Fast and good quotations, informed advisers to help you choose the correct product that suits all your needs, a short production time, responsible quality control and different services for paying and shipping affairs for Very Induction Pans , very induction pans , Heavy Induction Base , to have a bright future together.
"Well-run equipment, expert income workforce, and far better after-sales expert services; We are also a unified large family, anyone stick to the corporate value ""unification, dedication, tolerance"" for Very Induction Pans , very induction pans , Heavy Induction Base , We insist on "Quality First Reputation First and Customer First". We've been committed to providing high-quality items and good after-sales services. Up to now our goods have been exported to more than 60 countries and areas around the world such as America, Australia and Europe. We enjoy a high reputation at home and abroad. Always persisting in the principle of "Credit Customer and Quality" we expect cooperation with people in all walks of life for mutual benefits.


John Gotti's former son-in-law took a plea deal Thursday to avoid prison, but he will pay $180,000 to cover the cost of the investigation into him and his businesses.
Carmine 'The Bull' Agnello was arrested two years ago for suspicion of operating a $4.2 million dollar scam involving stolen cars and scrap metal in Cleveland.
The 56-year-old plead guilty to three low-level charges - being a felon in possession of a weapon, defrauding a towing company and polluting the environment.
In addition to no jail time, Carmine Agnello will be allowed to continue operating his scrap yard, which was believed to be the base of his Cleveland operation.
Gotti's former son-in-law, who was married to reality TV star Victoria Gotti, was accused of weighing down cars with sand and dirt and selling them for scrap metal.
Prosecutors claimed Agnello carried out this scheme over the course of three years, defrauding Ferrous Processing and Trading, a scrap metal company, of $4.2 million.
Undercover law enforcement personnel used wiretaps to listen to the 56-year-old's conversations with alleged mafia members in New York starting in 2013.
Carmine Agnello's lawyers, one of whom called the plea deal 'fair and just,' reportedly said the allegations against their client were nothing more than an attack on his past connections.


This familyhas come forward with three testimonies.
They are three sisters of which two are here – Anitha Murali and Ajitha Binu.
soon enough her creatinine level rose to normal and her urine was clear without any trace of blood.
level rose to normal and all the swelling left her body.
She has joined the Palakkad Blessing Centre and is now ministering for the Lord.
The badge she is wearing shows her ministry.
with child. But suddenly her BP shot up and there was bleeding.
She was admitted to the hospital and the doctors diagnosed that her condition was very precarious.
On learning of the situation, Anitha visited her sister. She had a Prayer Diary with her.
The wornout state of the Prayer Diary indicates that this book has been well-used.
child in my sister's womb. This is her first conception, let this child be born to her.
growing normally. There would be no need for surgery.
Centre at Cochin Blessing Centre for prayer.
Now the child is 4 months old and weighs six and a half kilograms.
new life. Now he has been brought here to this Blessing Centre.
stomach pain, nausea and could not take any food.
In this situation too, Anitha wrote in the Prayer Diary and prayed for her sister. She was soon healed.
Not only did she not need any surgery, she did not even have to take any medication for her problem.
3 testimonies from this family.
Father God, we thank You for the 3 testimonies of these sisters.
those who stand in faith. Thank You Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen.
reside in Bangalore because of work.
They are present here with two testimonies.
This couple have been attending Blessing Festivals and had also purchased a Prayer Diary.
met up with Bro. Damien to have him pray over their predicament.
conceived and now cradles a one-year old baby boy in her arms.
Meaning, after 4 long years Jesus helped her to conceived the very next month after prayer.
They have named the child Aaron.
This is the first of the two testimonies.
changed hands and the current management was putting great pressure on the employees to perform.
Undergoing a lot of stress, the couple decided that Sinu should resign and search for an alternate job.
After praying with Bro. Damien at the Blessing Festival, the couple had faith and continued to pray.
deciding to present it on the January 1, 2017.
Sinu had also put in an application with a U.S. based concern.
position in an investment banking corporation.
Our God raise him up from his current position.
God has done two great miracles for this couple.
You are at a Blessing Festival. Do you want a miracle?
Only believe and God can work a miracle in your lives in a matter of days.
Lift up your hands in prayer.
their gift, we serve a prayer-answering God.
When we have faith in You, You will respond to that.
You are a rewarder of those who seek You diligently. Once more we bless this family.
may receive greater miracles and speak great testimonies in the name of Jesus.


Magdalen Green has the distinction of being Dundee's oldest city park having been in use for some 400 years and has long been used for both meeting and recreational purposes.
The bandstand built in 1890 has become a Dundee icon and hosts concerts on Sunday afternoons during the summer. Built at the Saracen Foundry by Walter Macfarlane & Co of Glasgow it was restored in 1991. The summer of 2009 saw the start of much needed repairs to make it safe for future public use.
In early 2010 Magdalen Green became an integral part of Dundee's flood defences. Four large water tanks were installed by Scottish Water to hold excess rainwater during periods of high tide.
An active volunteer group – the Friends of Magdalen Green helps look after the green, and raises funds for new facilities.


text:
"You'll tell me the whole truth."
Karen Boyd May 22, 2022 2 min read
The intruder will finally admit that she did not have a speech impediment, which makes Goff's companion angry.
for every Joao Almeida
05/21/2022 – 17:14 PM Brazil time
© Reproduction / GlobeJuma and Muda will have a serious conversation
In the next chapters of the novel wet landGive Globo TVAnd Fri (Alanis Jilin) and seedlings Bella Campos will have a final conversation to settle it. The intruder will finally admit that she's never had trouble speaking, leaving Goff's companion (Jesuta Barbosa) angry because he lied to him all this time.
Even suspicious, Juma would end up ignoring the fact that Moda mysteriously got back in the conversation because the two of them had become friends. However, Pantanera will be surprised by the girl's confession Who, in fact, came to the Pantanal to avenge his father's deathGilles (Enrique Diaz), Juma's father, was killed in the conspiracy.
While bathing in the river, Juma comments, "Now that I've talked, we can talk," he says. "I can always talk," Moda reveals. "What are you talking about?" asks a Jaguar girl. "Truth, Juma. We're both here, alone, I can tell you," she says. And the stranger continues: "I was not silent, nothing."who concealed her real name, Ruth.
"Then why did you pretend so long?" asks Maria Maroua's daughter (Juliana Paes). Moda in turn shows that she regrets the revelation when she learns of Juma's powerful genius. Pantanera takes her by the arm to find out the whole story, but Moda manages to run towards rolling. Gomaa catches up with her and says, "We are both going home! And she'll tell me the whole truth… Your mother suspected you since you set foot here… She suspected you even after you died. You see she was right, right?"suggests.
Karen Boyd
"Social media pioneer. Pop culture expert. Very humble internet enthusiast. Author."
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text:
Q: rsync ESXI 5.5 out of memory in receive_sums I statically compiled the latest rsync (3.1.1) & can successfully execute the command on my ESXI server. I am getting the following error from rsync however:
ERROR: out of memory in receive_sums [sender]
rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util2.c(102) [sender=3.1.1]
rsync: [generator] write error: Broken pipe (32)

Do you know how I could go about making this work? The command I am using is:

rsync -vrltH --delete -pgo --stats -S -D --numeric-ids --bwlimit=50 -A
  -X --exclude-from=/home/files/porchefiles/2014.08.03-08.58.10/exclude --link-dest=/home/files/porchefiles/2014.08.02-21.48.13/tree hq.porchecars.com:/home/
  /home/files/porchefiles/2014.08.03-08.58.10/tree

Both sender & receiver are on 3.1.1.
Thanks

A: This doesn't look like something you should be rsyncing to/from an ESXi host. VMware is NOT a general-purpose operating system and the use of rsync is not supported. Hence the fact that you had to compile a static version of the utility.
Can you find another approach to move/copy the data you have? If this is for backups, you really should be using something with a VMware API or a purpose-built utility.
Also see: Why don't people just use rsync to back up vmware guests?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Алексе́евская во́лость — историческая административно-территориальная единица Старобельского уезда Харьковской губернии с центром в слободе Алексеевка.

По состоянию на 1885 год состояла из 10 поселений, 11 сельских общин. Население — 8 469 человек (4 259 мужского пола и 4 210 — женского), 1 237 дворовых хозяйства.

Поселение волости по состоянию на 1885 год:
 Алексеевка — бывшая государственная слобода при реке Белая в 18 верстах от уездного города, 1 233 человека, 174 дворовых хозяйства, православная церковь, 2 лавки, 2 ярмарки в год.
 Бунчуковка — бывший государственный хутор, 979 человек, 220 дворовых хозяйств, молитвенный дом.
 Заиковка — бывший государственный хутор при реке Белая, 641 человек, 220 дворовых хозяйств.
 Коноплянка — бывший государственный хутор, 530 человек, 78 дворовых хозяйств.
 Нещеретово — бывшая государственная слобода при реке Белая, 2 365 человек, 339 дворовых хозяйств, православная церковь, школа, 2 постоялых двора, 3 лавки, ежегодная ярмарка.
 Паньков — бывший государственный хутор, 557 человек, 74 дворовых хозяйства.
 Целуйков — бывший государственный хутор, 905 человек, 142 дворовых хозяйства.

Крупнейшие поселения волости состоянию на 1914 год:
 слобода Алексеевка — 2041 житель;
 слобода Нещеретово — 3753 жителя;
 слобода Целуйков — 1667 жителей;
 слобода Заиковка — 1174 жителя;
 слобода Бунчуковка — 1671 житель.

Старшиной волости был Николай Арсеньевич Светличный, волостным писарем — Алексей Андрианович Головко, председателем волостного суда — Тимофей Трофимович Царенко.

Литература
 Волости и важнѣйшія селенія Европейской Россіи. По данным обслѣдованія, произведеннаго статистическими учрежденіями Министерства Внутренних Дѣл, по порученію Статистическаго Совѣта. Изданіе Центральнаго Статистическаго Комитета. Выпускъ III. Губерніи Малороссійскія и Юго-Западныя. — Санкт-Петербургъ, 1885. — V + 349 с.
 Памятная Книжка Харьковской губерніи. Издана Харьковскимъ Губернскимъ Статистическимъ Комитетомъ. — Харьковъ: Въ Университетской типографіи, 1862. ІV + 234 с.
 Харьковская губернія. Списокъ населённыхъ мѣстъ по свѣдѣніямъ 1864 года, томъ XLVI. Изданъ Центральнымъ статистическимъ комитетомъ Министерства Внутренних Дѣлъ. — Санкт-Петербургъ, 1869. — XCVI + 209 с.

Примечания

Ссылки

Волости Харьковской губернии
Волости Старобельского уезда
История Луганской области
Белокуракинский район


I'm one of those people who really loves a good walk. I spent most of my adult life in Manhattan, where I walked everywhere. Now, as a travel writer, I find that walking around is really the best way to get to know the ins and outs of a new place. So when I was asked to take on an assignment where I had to walk before every meal for a month, I immediately agreed, feeling a bit smug about how easy it was going to be.
Before I started the experiment, though, I wanted to see if there was anything else in this for me besides a pay check. According to research from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, walking just 30 minutes a day can significantly decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and depression—even when it's broken down into shorter intervals. And University of Tennessee research found that the more steps you take, the more likely you are to be at a healthy weight.
The science is less straightforward when it comes to walking before meals specifically, says Angel Planells, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, but it's promising. "Studies that look at how appetite and weight are affected by pre-meal activity are split. I've found that holds true with my clients, too. Some overeat after moving around, while others become less hungry and may lose weight. It really depends on the person."
Challenge accepted. Here's how my month of pre-meal walking went.
My schedule took a hit—though not as bad as I expected.
Before the walking experiment started, I'd gotten into the habit of working out first thing in the morning. Adding walking to the equation, though, meant that I had to wake up even earlier so I'd have enough time to walk to and from the gym. I had to tweak my lunchtime routine, too. Before starting this assignment, I would usually take a walk after lunch, as moving around always helped me lose that groggy over-stuffed lunch feeling. But I changed things up and started walking before lunch, instead. Happily, shifting things around was surprisingly easy.
I actually started to crave veggies.
I was shocked that walking before I ate didn't make me hungrier. It actually helped satiate my appetite, even just the short, 10-minute walks I usually took. I don't know if it was the endorphins or what, but it also put me in a healthy state of mind, making me more inclined to reach for a salad or a piece of chicken with vegetables.
Despite initial kid reluctance, it became a fun family activity.
Figuring out how to fit in a walk before dinner wasn't easy. I'm usually running around like crazy between my kids' various sporting activities and trying to squeeze in cooking dinners I wouldn't feel guilty about, so adding one more thing to the mix seemed more than a little daunting. Plus, the kids are always starving once they get home, so going out for a walk was the last thing they wanted to do. But in a moment of mom-inspiration, I decided to make it into a game: Every time my boys and I went out for a little pre-dinner walk, I'd let them select the route around our neighbourhood—no matter how windy or odd it might be. Then we'd test each other to see if we knew any kids from school who lived along the way. Bonus: We'd often see neighbours and fellow walkers while we were out, which made me feel more like a part of my community. Our pre-dinner walk soon became a much-anticipated event in my home.
It didn't impact my weight.
While I rarely missed a walk, the number on my scale didn't change. But that didn't really surprise me. I had started a healthy regimen a year earlier, giving up booze, limiting my refined carbs, and working out regularly, so I felt like I was in a pretty good place, health- and weight-wise. Also, since I knew I'd be taking three daily walks, I wound up taking fewer steps throughout the day—like walking less and taking the subway more when I was in Manhattan—which couldn't have helped with the weight loss.
But to be honest, I didn't say yes to this assignment to lose weight. I saw it as a way to get more fresh air and get the kids into walking—and I succeeded on both counts. It also made me determined to make it a habit to start walking more with my boys; I want to instil in them a love for walking, just like mine. I'm happy to say that we're still walking at night when we can, though I've got to admit that it's often after dinner.