text:
Die Axel-Springer-Straße ist eine rund 350 Meter lange Straße in Berlin, die vom Ortsteil Mitte in den Ortsteil Kreuzberg führt. Sie befindet sich im historischen Stadtteil Friedrichstadt. Sie entstand als eigenständige Straße 1996 durch die Abtrennung des nördlichen Teils der Lindenstraße.

Lage
Die Axel-Springer-Straße beginnt an der Oranienstraße und verläuft nach Nordosten bis zur Leipziger Straße am Spittelmarkt. Die Hausnummern wurden nach der Abtrennung des Straßenabschnitts von der Lindenstraße vorerst nicht verändert. Sie verlaufen in Hufeisenform vom Haus Nr. 39 an der Ecke Oranienstraße bis zum Ende und wieder zurück zum Haus Nr. 65.

Namensgebung
Im Jahr 1996 wurde ein Teil der Lindenstraße nach dem deutschen Zeitungsverleger Axel Springer (1912–1985) benannt. Das von ihm begründete Verlagshaus mit dem Axel-Springer-Hochhaus befindet sich in der Axel-Springer Straße 65.

Geschichte

Die Geschichte der Straße beginnt mit der Umbenennung des nördlichen Teils der Lindenstraße.
2011 wurde ein Radweg auf der Fahrbahn der Axel-Springer-Straße und Lindenstraße eingerichtet. Bereits im Zusammenhang mit der Internationalen Bauausstellung (IBA) gab es Überlegungen, einen eigenen Radfahrstreifen einzurichten.

Im Jahr 2012 wurde die Axel-Springer-Straße, die bis dahin an der Beuthstraße endete, bis zur Leipziger Straße am Spittelmarkt verlängert. Damit wurde die historische, durch den Mauerbau 1961 unterbrochene Verbindung des Straßenzug Lindenstraße/Axel-Springer-Straße an das Straßennetz in Berlin-Mitte wiederhergestellt. Nach Ansicht des Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschlands (BUND) führt die vielgenutzte alte/neue Verbindung zu einer Überschreitung der Grenzwerte für Lärm, Feinstaub und Stickstoffdioxid. Weiterhin wurde kritisiert, dass die Baukosten mit 11,4 Millionen Euro für ein Straßenstück von 90 Metern Länge zu hoch wären. Anwohner hatten zuvor versucht, auf dem Klageweg einen Weiterbau der Straße zu verhindern.

Auf der Baustelle des Medien-Campus Axel-Springer-Straße 59–63 wurde 2018 Richtfest gefeiert.
Im Juni 2013 hatte der Springer-Konzern für ein digitales Medienzentrum, das 3500 neue Arbeitsplätze bieten soll und in der Architektur radikal anders ausfallen soll als die bisherigen Hochhäuser, einen Planungswettbewerb ausgelobt und dazu 22 Architekturbüros eingeladen. Die Architektengruppe Rem Koolhaas gewann den Wettbewerb mit einem aufgelockerten Gebäude, dessen Kernstück das über 30 Meter hohe Atrium darstellt. Das Atrium symbolisiert den Verlauf der Berliner Mauer. Das Gebäude soll zwischen Berliner Baublock und dem Axel-Springer-Hochhaus vermitteln, zu dem es sich öffnet. Miteinander verbundene Terrassen und eine öffentliche Arbeitsfläche schaffen eine Umgebung für individuelles wie kollektives Arbeiten. Zur Lindenstraße entsteht ein großes "Auge". Mathias Döpfner, Vorsitzender der Axel-Springer AG, formulierte die Erwartungen wie folgt: "Das Gebäude soll nicht nur überwältigend schön sein, sondern auch der Frage nachgehen: Was bedeutet Materie in einer entmaterialisierten Medienökonomie, was bedeutet ein Büro in einer mobilen Arbeitswelt, die Büros eigentlich nicht mehr braucht?" Das neue Gebäude solle so avantgardistisch sein, dass nicht nur Straßenpassanten staunen, sondern es soll den Digital Natives Möglichkeiten neuer kreativer Arbeit bieten.

Bauten und Denkwürdigkeiten
→ Liste der Kulturdenkmale in Berlin-Mitte/Friedrichstadt

 In der Axel-Springer-Straße 50 erinnert das Mahnmal Blatt an die Synagoge Lindenstraße. Das Werk der drei israelischen Künstler Micha Ullman, Zvi Hecker und Eyal Weizman befindet sich im Innenhof der Barmer Ersatzkasse, die in einem denkmalgeschützten Gebäude mit der Bezeichnung Ort der Erinnerung ihren Sitz hat.
 Außerdem liegen vor dem Haus Nr. 50 zwei Stolpersteine, die an Lotte Rotholz und Siegbert Rotholz erinnern. Sie wurden 1943 ermordet.
 Im Haus Nr. 54a/54b, das vor 1990 dem DDR-Schulbuchverlag Volk und Wissen als Verlagshaus diente, hat die Botschaft Sambias ihren Sitz.
 Am Standort des Axel-Springer-Konzerns, Axel-Springer-Straße 65, steht das 1966 eröffnete Axel-Springer-Hochhaus. Hier werden Zeitschriften und Tageszeitungen wie Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag, die dazugehörigen Online-Ausgaben sowie die bundesweiten Ausgaben der Bild-Zeitung einschließlich der Bild am Sonntag produziert. 1994 wurde ein zweites Verlagshaus im Winkel zum ersten Gebäude angeordnet. Es fällt durch eine große Glasfassade auf. Im Jahr 2004 kam die Axel-Springer-Passage hinzu.
 Vor dem Axel-Springer-Haus steht die vom Bildhauers Stephan Balkenhol geschaffene Skulptur Balanceakt.
 Berliner Mauerweg: Die Straße durchquert die beiden Ortsteile Mitte (Ost-Berlin) und Kreuzberg (West-Berlin), die von 1961 bis 1989 durch die Mauer getrennt waren. Deren Lage wird durch im Boden eingelassene Pflastersteine symbolisiert. Die Markierung verläuft von der Zimmerstraße, über die östliche Seite der Axel-Springer-Straße in die Kommandantenstraße.
 Seit den 1990er Jahren erinnern im Boden eingelassene rote Steine an der Kreuzung Rudi-Dutschke-Straße Ecke Oranienstraße an die im Zweiten Weltkrieg zerstörte Jerusalemer Kirche.
 In der Nachbarschaft begann der Frankfurter Projektentwickler Goldstein mit der Errichtung des Markgrafenkarrees, in dem 365 Mietwohnungen entstehen (Fertigstellung bis 2015 geplant).

Siehe auch
 Liste der Straßen und Plätze in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Weblinks

Einzelnachweise

Straße in Berlin
Berlin-Kreuzberg
Berlin-Mitte

Straße in Europa
Axel Springer als Namensgeber

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Gun Restrictions Have Always Bred Defiance, Black Markets
For reasons of their own, most people, in many countries, defy anti-gun laws
J.D. Tuccille | 12.22.2012 1:00 PM
I doubt I ever would have gone to the black market to purchase an illegal assault weapon if it wasn't for New York's annoyingly restrictive gun control laws. Wait. Let me back up a bit. New York State passed the Sullivan Act back in 1911. The law required people to get a government permit to own or carry any weapon small enough to be concealed—handguns, in particular. Issuing the permit would be a matter of official discretion, which is a policy continued to the present day.
The motivation for passing the law was no secret. During debates leading to the ultimate passage of the gun control law, The New York Times editorialized:
Such a measure would prove corrective and salutary in a city filled with immigrants and evil communications, floating from the shores of Italy and Austria-Hungary. New York police reports frequently testify to the fact that the Italian and other south Continental gentry here are acquainted with the pocket pistol, and while drunk or merrymaking will use it quite as handily as the stiletto, and with more deadly effect. It is hoped that this treacherous and distinctly outlandish mode of settling disputes may not spread to corrupt the native good manners of the community.
Well … guilty as charged. My family (I'm descended from immigrants originating in those suspect regions of Europe) has long had a habit of owning, and often carrying, weapons in and around New York City.
But we got to this country—most of my ancestors, anyway—just about the time the Sullivan Act became law. Which means all that carrying and brandishing of weapons took place despite the law, because nobody in my family bothered to get a pistol permit through several generations of residency in New York City.
Until me.
There are downsides to owning guns illegally. The big one, from my perspective, was that I couldn't go shooting at a range. The folks at the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range probably had as dim a view of permits and registration as I do, but they weren't about to risk their own freedom just to let me put a few holes in paper targets.
So I applied for a permit to purchase a .45-caliber Model 1911 and keep it at home.
The sales clerk at the gun shop was helpful—he should have been. I paid a premium to have my paperwork submitted to the proper city paper-pushers by experts retained by the store. Although the term was never used, I assumed that meant the store made use of New York City's peculiar breed of middlemen known as "expediters" to get the permit processed. Eternally controversial, expediters are known for their detailed knowledge of the city's byzantine regulatory procedures, their working relationships with bureaucrats, and their willingness to grease palms to make sure clients are given favorable consideration.
Even so, I waited. And I waited. And I finally blew my stack.
As the saying goes, I knew a guy who knew a guy. It took an email, a phone call, and a friendly meeting, and for less than 300 bucks, I was the proud owner of a semi-automatic variant of an AK-47—the famed assault rifle of the old Soviet bloc and of guerrilla fighters everywhere. It was legal in much of the United States, but strictly verboten in New York City.
And it cost me about a third of the ultimate price of that legal pistol.
As it turned out, the illicit rifle was not only cheaper and easier to obtain than the legal pistol, but the seller was much more pleasant to deal with than the cops administering the official process. The police officers at New York City's One Police Plaza, once I actually got into the place, were flat-out rude. They weren't abusive as much as surly in a special bureaucratic way, backed up by the implied threat that they could punish back-talk with a simple nudge of your papers into the trash can. I bit my tongue, but everybody has their own limit. A "customer" at an adjoining desk in the cramped warren stood up, announced loudly that rather than put up with this treatment he'd buy his gun on the street, then stalked from the room.
Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. I'll never know if that guy went to the black market. But plenty of New Yorkers have chosen to own guns outside the official system. In a city that, as I write, has roughly 37,000 licensed handgun owners and about 21,000 rifle and shotgun licenses, the running guesstimate of illegal firearms stands at two million, give or take a bit. That's the number the U.S. Department of Justice has used in its official publications in recent years.
Basically, far more guns are owned illegally within the boundaries of New York City than are held legally. Government officials wanted tight restrictions on firearms, and they got them—but that doesn't seem to have deterred many people from owning the things.
New York City officials blame states with looser laws for the flow of illicit guns. Mayor Bloomberg has famously waged a campaign of "straw-man" purchases against gun shops in states such as South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia to which firearms found in New York City have been traced. The mayor's proxies purchased guns in their own names, illegally intended for transfer to other people. Lawsuits followed against the stores where the purchases were permitted. That raises interesting questions about why mere citizens who make such purchases get sent to prison, while government agents acting far outside their jurisdiction get a free pass.
But if guns are currently coming from legal dealers in more permissive jurisdictions, there's nothing to say that's the only possible source, or that imposing tighter laws elsewhere will cut off the flow. After all, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and other drugs find their way to New York City in generous quantities in the absence of any legal source within the United States—or outside it, for that matter.
In fact, New York City's situation with guns is mirrored in Europe, where countries with tight restrictions also find themselves awash in illegal firearms without any clear parallels for the relatively liberal laws of Virginia or South Carolina to blame. According to the Small Arms Survey (PDF) at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland:
Contrary to widely-accepted national myths, public gun ownership is commonplace in most European states. It may appear to some outside observers—especially Americans—that Europeans have blindly surrendered their gun rights (Heston, 2002). The reality is that the citizens of most European countries are better armed than they realize. …
Regulations tightly control gun ownership in only a few European countries like the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom. In much of the rest of the continent, public officials readily admit that unlicensed owners and unregistered guns greatly outnumber legal ones. …
"Greatly outnumber?" Just how greatly?
Well, says the Small Arms Survey, a research outfit established by the Swiss government, the United Kingdom, with just shy of 1.8 million legal firearms, has about four million illegal guns. Belgium, with about 458,000 legal firearms, has roughly two million illegal guns. In Germany, the number is 7.2 million legal guns and between 17 and 20 million off-the-books examples of things that go "bang" (a figure with which the German Police Union very publicly agrees). France, says the Survey, has 15-17 million unlawful firearms in a nation where 2.8 million weapons are held in compliance with the law.
Small Arms Survey
Even those numbers may understate the case. While the 2003 Small Arms Survey report put the number of legal guns in Greece at 805,000 and illegal guns at 350,000, just two years later, the Greek government itself nudged those figures up, just a tad, to one million legal guns and 1.5 million illegal ones.
So New Yorkers aren't alone in being armed to the teeth outside the law.
It's not that governments haven't tried to grab those guns. One government after another has implemented schemes for registration, licensing, and even confiscation. But those programs have met with … less than universal respect.
In a white paper on the results of gun control efforts around the world, Gun Control and the Reduction of the Number of Arms, Franz Csaszar, a professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, Austria, wrote, "non-compliance with harsher gun laws is a common event."
Dr. Csaszar estimates compliance with Australia's 1996 ban on self-loading rifles and pump-action shotguns at 20 percent.
And even that underwhelming estimate gives the authorities the benefit of the doubt. Three years after Australia's controversial ban was implemented, when 643,000 weapons had been surrendered, Inspector John McCoomb, the head of the state of Queensland's Weapons Licensing Branch, told The Sunday Mail, "About 800,000 (semi-automatic and automatic) SKK and SKS weapons came in from China back in the 1980s as part of a trade deal between the Australian and Chinese governments. And it was estimated that there were 1.2 million semi-automatic Ruger 10/22s in the country. That's about 2 million firearms of just two types in the country."
Do the math. Two million illegal firearms of just two types, and only 643,000 guns of all types were surrendered …
The Australian Shooters Journal did its own math in a 1997 article on the "gun buyback." Researchers for the publication pointed out that the Australian government's own low-ball, pre-ban estimate of the number of prohibited weapons in the country yielded a compliance rate of 19 percent.
But maybe success is in the eye of the beholder. After the expected mountains of surrendered weapons failed to manifest themselves, then-Australian Attorney General Darryl Williams's office revised its estimate of total firearms in the country to a number lower than its pre-ban estimate of prohibited firearms, and declared victory.
Inspector McCoomb, like the Australian Shooters Journal, concluded the ban "has failed."
The situation in other countries was much the same. Canada pulled a similar numerical sleight of hand when the government responded to widespread resistance to a new firearms registration law by dropping its estimate of the number of gun owners from 3.3 million in 1998 to 2.4 million in 2001. Gary Mauser, a firearms policy expert affiliated with the Fraser Institute, an independent research organization with offices in Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, countered with his own estimate that the actual number of gun owners stood at 4.5 million through those years. They weren't disappearing from the Great White North; they just weren't complying with the registration law.
Again and again, governments have encountered massive resistance to their efforts to identify gun owners and track gun ownership.
Csaszar points out that, after Austria prohibited pump-action shotguns in 1995, only 10,557 of the estimated 60,000 such guns in private hands were surrendered or registered.
And when Germany imposed gun registration in 1972, he says, owners complied by filing the appropriate paperwork on 3.2 million firearms. This was a bit awkward, since estimates of civilian stocks were in the 17-20 million range.
The low level of compliance with registration laws gives a good idea of where many of the world's illegal guns come from, but it isn't the whole story. If people are keeping firearms in defiance of their governments' wishes, they obviously want to own guns no matter what the powers-that-be intend. And as has proven true in so many cases, demand usually provides its own supply.
Small Arms Survey reports that, for Europe, illegal guns tend to flow from East to West. In need of the hard cash that black market dealings can provide, and suspicious of state power after decades of heavy-handed rule, Eastern Europe has become a major source for manufacturing and distributing illegal weapons—and of overall defiance of gun restrictions.
In central and eastern Europe, quiet resistance to over 40 years of socialist rule created a pervasive culture of non-cooperation with public authorities. When communism collapsed, leaving power to be inherited by weak and disorganized democratic regimes, innumerable opportunities arose for people to acquire and hide personal guns. It is no wonder that in much of the region registered guns appear to be the exception.
If skepticism toward the wisdom of disarming at the request of the current pack of politicians drives the supply side of the equation in the East, it may also explain demand in the West. After all, within living memory, most of Europe has been under the control of one nasty regime or another, whether home-grown or imposed from outside. Communist governments were the last to fall, but as recently as the early 1970s, Greece, Portugal and Spain suffered under dictatorships.
Whether or not that's the explanation for mass resistance to gun laws in Europe, there's no doubt that the black market is thriving. Drawing from Hungarian media reports, World Press Review reported in July 2001 that the Odessa mafia had shipped 13,000 tons of guns to Croatia and Bosnia. That impressive shipment included 30,000 Kalashnikovs, 400 remote-controlled ground missiles, 50 launching stands, and 10,000 antitank missiles.
A black market that can supply embargoed armies with missiles has no difficulty feeding the civilian appetite for pistols and rifles.
Underground suppliers aren't always so large-scale, of course. The BBC reported in 2007 on the conviction of two British soldiers in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment for smuggling guns out of Iraq for sale in Europe. Their operation was apparently sufficiently sophisticated that the smugglers prepared a catalog that included photos and descriptions of available wares.
In an example of the convergence of underground markets, one of the soldiers admitted during his court martial to accepting cocaine as payment for the guns. He then sold the drugs for additional profit.
Such connections can be found elsewhere in the world, too. Flush with money made satisfying Americans' appetite for intoxicants out of favor with U.S. government officials, Mexico's drug gangs have eagerly armed themselves, the better to squabble with one another—and to battle the police and even the army. While popular mythology blames the flow of guns to Mexico on purchases in America's legal weapons markets (Mexico has tight restrictions on private firearms ownership, including outright bans on guns in calibers used by the military), the gangs have increasingly fielded grenades, rockets and machine guns—firepower unavailable in the average Texas gun shop.
But such weaponry is available from underground dealers. Says the Los Angeles Times:
These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.
"There is an arms race between the cartels," said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government. "One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them."
That the black market in guns flows freely into the black market for drugs—or other illicit goods and services—should come as no surprise. Csaszar emphasizes that this convergence between illegal markets is to be expected.
[I]nterconnections between the black market in arms and other, more general black markets should be taken very seriously. Viewed from the side of the illegal arms buyers this integration of markets will happen only with a very tiny fraction, namely those individuals already involved in other criminal business. For the great majority it will remain an isolated breach of a gun law only. However, viewed at a general level from the provider side there can be no doubt of the worldwide integration of drugs and arms markets.
So, by imposing restrictions on one type of product, governments have driven people to the black market where all forbidden products and services are available, and likely increased the wealth and power of active sellers in that market.
If you were trying to enrich and empower the folks who thrive beyond the reaches of polite society, you couldn't come up with a better plan.
Hmmm … but those guns come from somewhere, right? Before black marketeers turn them into illicit commodities to be sold alongside cocaine and tax-free cigarettes, they have to be manufactured. So, what about putting tighter controls on the companies that make these killing machines and cutting off the supply?
Good luck on that.
In 2007, Suroosh Alvi, a co-founder of Vice magazine, pulled a few family strings in Pakistan to gain access to the turbulent Northwest Frontier Province. Specifically, he wanted to see the gun markets that are feeding a steady supply of arms to Afghanistan. More specifically, he wanted to see just how modern firearms were being cranked out in wholesale lots under the most primitive conditions imaginable. His opening comment in the resulting video documentary—"I've seen kids making guns with their bare hands in caves"—only barely overstates what he presents. Thousands of 9mm pistols, knock-off AK-47s, machine guns, and anything else you can imagine are manufactured there over wood fires with hand tools—and so is the ammunition to match.
Pakistan isn't alone. Danao, in the Philippines, has a thriving underground gun-manufacturing industry that is reputed to employ as much as 20 percent of the local population. Starting decades ago with crude revolvers, the "paltiks" turned out by the backyard gunsmiths of Danao now include working replicas of modern assault weapons manufactured with basic technology.
Just how do you shut down underground craftsman who don't seem to require much more than their skills, some scrap metal, and access to Third-World tools that barely begin to compare to the equipment in the garages of many Western suburbanites?
That's a rhetorical question. The evidence suggests that underground manufacturers will step up to meet any demand that arises.
But those are just foreigners who insist on swapping out their presidents and prime ministers for generalissimos every few decades! Isn't Europe where the Italian and Austro-Hungarian hoodlums The Gray Lady found chasing each other around with pocket pistols a century ago came from? What does their experience have to do with the way Americans respond to gun laws in a country with a (mostly) unbroken history of democratic government?
Well, maybe Americans have been corrupted by foreign fears and ideas smuggled here by the likes of my ancestors, but folks on this side of the Atlantic have proven no more submissive to firearms regulation than Australians and Germans.
The high water mark of American compliance with gun control laws may have come with Illinois's handgun registration law in the 1970s. About 25 percent of handgun owners actually complied, according to Don B. Kates, a criminologist and civil liberties attorney, writing in the December 1977 issue of Inquiry. After that, about 10 percent of "assault weapon" owners obeyed California's registration law, says David B. Kopel, research director for Colorado's Independence Institute, a free-market think-tank, and author of The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy, a book-length comparison of international firearms policies.
That one-in-10 estimate may have been generous. As the registration period came to a close in 1990, The New York Times reported "only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state have been registered."
Maybe gun owners are getting more ornery as time goes on. Or perhaps they're just getting more distrustful of the authorities. In fact, American gun owners may have good reason to be skeptical of common assurances that registration records won't ever be used for anything more than tracking lost and stolen weapons. In New York City, the center of agitation for tighter U.S. gun laws, the registration system for long guns such as rifles and shotguns, established in 1967, was used in the 1990s to confiscate previously lawful semiautomatic rifles.
California state officials pulled a similar stunt, though with a shorter grace period. After the registration of so-called "assault weapons" subsequent to the passage of the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989, Attorney General Dan Lungren reversed official position in 1997 to declare one of the rifles considered legal and subject to registration just a few years earlier—the SKS Sporter—to be illegal. Owners who had complied with the law were forced to surrender their weapons or transfer them out of state.
Whatever the motivation, Kopel found no more than one percent compliance with Denver's law requiring registration of semi-automatic weapons, as well as Boston's and Cleveland's bans on such guns.
Likewise, in New Jersey, said The New York Times in 1991, after the legislature passed a law banning "assault weapons," 947 people registered their rifles as sporting guns for target shooting, 888 rendered them inoperable, and four surrendered them to the police. That's out of an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 firearms affected by the law. The Times concluded, a bit drily, "More than a year after New Jersey imposed the toughest assault-weapons law in the country, the law is proving difficult if not impossible to enforce."
Well … yes. As it turns out, no matter where you are in the world, when governments impose gun laws that are widely disliked by the people to whom they apply, people disobey those laws. And disobedience isn't just the stubborn reaction of a few holdouts or a sizeable minority—it seems, invariably—to be the policy favored by most of the people subject to the objectionable statute.
As with so many other areas of human life, gun ownership is effectively regulated only to the extent that gun owners and would-be owners are willing to comply with the proposed regulations. Try to stuff unwelcome restrictions down a target population's throat and … well …
Perhaps the best assessment comes from Professor James B. Jacobs, Director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University. Summing up the prospects for banning handguns in his book, Can Gun Control Work?, he wrote:
Prohibiting possession would require disarming the citizenry; whether done quickly or over a long period, it would be a monumental challenge, fraught with danger. Millions of citizens would not surrender their handguns. If black market activity in connection with the drug laws is any indication, a decades-long "war on handguns" might resemble a low-grade civil war more than a law-enforcement initiative.
Low-grade civil war?
Hmmm. Maybe that AK-47 I bought was a wiser purchase than I anticipated.
I jest—I've never doubted the wisdom of that purchase.
But why are people so resistant to weapons regulations, of all the possible laws they could resist?
Well, the hundreds of millions of people happily rendering gun controls unenforceable around the world probably have a variety of reasons for doing so. But the near-universal resistance to such laws suggests some commonalities.
As mentioned earlier, even much of modern, democratic Europe was under dictatorial control relatively recently. A hypothetical 80-year-old retiree shuffling today around the house in which he was born in Potsdam would have lived under four governments without ever having called a moving van or packed a box. Two of those regimes (Hitler's Nazi state and the East German Communist government) would have been among the more evil governments to ever give a secret policeman a leather trench coat, and one (the Weimar republic) was chaotic and inept.
That retiree's contemporary in his family home in Marseille would have lived under the tottering Third Republic, the collaborationist Vichy regime, the Provisional Government, the unstable Fourth Republic, and the Fifth Republic.
And both of them would, today, be eyeing the rise of the yet-unproven European Union.
The past century has seen the emergence of the bloodiest regimes ever to exist on the planet. During the 20th Century, the People's Republic of China slaughtered over 76 million people, the Soviet Union murdered roughly 62 million, and Nazi Germany put another 21 million in the ground.
The Nazi regime rose out of a functioning—though deeply flawed—democracy, so even regular elections are an uncertain barrier to tyrannical rulers.
But even a perfectly stable democracy is no guarantee against the future. Not content to engage in mass murder within their own borders, totalitarian armies have exported mayhem to neighboring countries.
Those are only the headliners. According to R.J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii and author of Death by Government, autocratic regimes with a variety of ideologies, or no ideologies at all, shed blood around the world, raising the overall death toll inflicted by governments to 262 million over the course of the 20th Century.
Democratic regimes weren't nearly as bloodthirsty as their authoritarian counterparts, though they did commit atrocities—especially in their colonial holdings. They also had a nasty habit of being invaded and occupied by their jackbooted neighbors.
Given that track record, why would even the inhabitant of a stable democracy, who is perfectly happy with the current political set-up, have any confidence that the government perusing firearms registration records ten years down the road will bear any resemblance to the government gathering those records now?
Keeping a few unregistered guns may well look like an insurance policy against a future that could all too easily resemble the past.
The United States has been happily free of dictators, purges, and occupation, but it doesn't take a large dose of paranoia to look back over history and wonder if this one country is necessarily a permanent exception to the troubles that have engulfed the rest of the planet.
And even if America never proves to be Weimar Germany with weaker beer, or to have the border integrity of France's Third Republic, elected officials, like those in New York and California, do their reputations no favor when they violate promises that registration records will never be used to ease confiscation schemes.
That said, the underlying point of all of this evidence of extremely well-armed scofflaws around the world is this: the scofflaws' motivations don't matter; agreement with their reasoning doesn't matter; sharing or even respecting their values is entirely irrelevant. All that matters is that, from one country to the next, across barriers of language and culture, government officials in even the most benign, stable democracies that have attempted to disarm their subjects, or to limit the weapons available for legal ownership, or even to do no more than track gun owners and register guns, have run into overwhelming resistance. Mass defiance has crippled registration programs, hobbled confiscations schemes and made a mockery of licensing programs.
Given a choice between complying with restrictions on firearms ownership and defying the law, a clear majority of people in most jurisdictions have chosen rebellion. The tighter the law, the more obvious the rebellion, to the point that the vast majority of firearms in civilian hands in Europe are owned outside the law.
If history is any judge, that's probably a good thing. But even if you don't agree, this is a world in which civilians are well-armed, and intent on staying that way.
NEXT: Egypt's Vice President Resigns
J.D. Tuccille is a contributing editor at Reason.
Guns Gun Control Second Amendment
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
SFA offers new safety-focused app
Lumberjack Guardian app screenshot
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - The Stephen F. Austin State University Department of Public Safety (DPS) recently launched the Lumberjack Guardian mobile phone app to enhance campus safety through real-time interactive features creating a virtual safety network of friends, family and the DPS.
Lumberjack Guardian fits into today's mobile lifestyle with its virtual technology.
"We at the Department of Public Safety are pleased to offer this app technology feature to our university community to better enhance campus safety and personal protection by providing immediate connections to trusted resources," Marc Cossich, DPS chief of police, said.
Lumberjack Guardian is available for iPhone and Android devices and is free to download. Students, faculty and staff members can download the app by selecting the Rave Guardian app in the appropriate app store.
The app is designed with four safety features: safety profile, panic button, tip texting, and personal guardians and safety timer.
Upon opening the app, users must create their personal profile by entering their SFA-issued email address and phone number. Safety profiles are user-created and contain information such as residence details and medical information. Individuals' profile data is privately and securely stored within Rave Mobile Safety's databases. The information is shared with pre-designated personal contacts and/or safety officials only when users initiate an alert or a set safety timer expires.
The panic button alerts DPS to the user's exact location using GPS services and delivers the user's personal information from the safety profile to DPS.
Tip texting enables anonymous two-way communication and crime-tip reporting through text and images.
The personal guardians and safety timer offers two functions. Users can assign anyone they trust the role of "Guardian" through the app, including friends, family and DPS. During a timer session, guardians can ensure the user reaches his or her destination in the allotted time frame. For example, if a student was going on a date, he or she could set a timer for an hour. If the timer goes off or is not deactivated by the user at the end of the hour the app notifies the user's guardian. Then, the guardian can try to contact the user or the DPS.
Furthermore, the guardian will automatically receive the user's Lumberjack Guardian profile to proactively identify and check in on the individual.
"The Department of Public Safety has researched this technology and found that the benefits offered to our university community are immeasurable and give our stakeholders a tangible indicator of the university's commitment to personal safety," Cossich said.
Lumberjack Guardian supplements the JackAlert system already in place at SFA. JackAlert notifies the SFA community of major emergencies and class cancelations, while Lumberjack Guardian serves as a personal safety system.
Cossich encourages the SFA community to sign up for both systems.
Anyone who needs assistance with the Lumberjack Guardian app or registering for JackAlerts can contact the Department of Public Safety technology division at updtech@sfasu.edu or (936) 468-2252.


The Department receives, reviews and approves permits for building, change in use, sediment control and new signs. Applications are available and are returned to the planning office. Those who need help filling out the application may do so in the planning office, where staff answers questions, takes permits and fees. Once received, the permit is forwarded to appropriate agencies, such as the Health Department, Building Inspector, Department of Water and Wastewater Services, County Roads or State Highway Administration, or Soil Conservation District. Staff reviews permits for consistency with floodplain, Critical Area, and Land Use Ordinance regulations. Staff maintains information on the status of permits and eventually issues the permits. Copies of the issued permits are sent to the Assessment Office. The original permit is kept in the planning office for future reference.
Site plan review is required for new and expanding industries, new and expanding commercial uses, new and expanding marinas, public uses, multi-family dwellings and most special exceptions. A site visit is always required, usually prior to Technical Advisory Committee review. For site plan review procedures, click here.
All proposals to adjust boundary lines or to divide land must be reviewed by the Technical Advisory Committee and approved by either the Director of Planning or the Planning Commission. For review procedures for major and minor subdivisions click here. An adjustment of lot lines follows the same procedure as a minor subdivision. Staff visits each site as a part of the routine review.
The Planning Commission reviews most special exceptions and variances for consistency with the Comprehensive Plan and Land Use Ordinance. Planning staff receives the application, schedules the application for review, prepares staff recommendations (after a site visit), forwards the application and Planning Commission recommendation to the Board of Zoning Appeals, and posts notices for the Board of Zoning Appeals hearing.
Administrative variances and special exceptions: The Planning Director, or the Director's designee, may authorize upon application a public hearing for certain variances and special exceptions.
As a part of the capital improvement program, the planning staff provides written comments on each project proposed for inclusion in the capital improvement program for consistency with the Comprehensive Plan and when possible current ordinances.
Projects involving state or federal money receive clearinghouse review. The planning office reviews project descriptions and review forms and forwards them to other agencies as may be appropriate. When all comments are received, the planning office returns the comments to the Maryland Department of Planning.


text:
Agia Elisavet Chapel - Agios Amvrosios Village
Agia Varvara Church, Salamiou
Agia Vryaini Chapel - Mandria
Agion Andronikou and Athanasias Church, Mandria Village
Agios Amvrosios Church
Agios Efstathios Church- Kolossi
Agiou Efrem Church – Agios Amvrosios
Agiou Georgiou (Saint George) Chapel, Pissouri
Agiou Georgiou (Saint George) Church
Agiou Georgiou Chapel – Agios Amvrosios Village
Agiou Prodromou Church, Erimi Village
Archangelos Michael Chapel - Moniatis Village
Panagia Odigitria Church, Moniatis Village
Panayia Akonopetra Chapel
Prophet Elias Chapel, Pissouri
Agiou Efrem Church - Agios Amvrosios Village
The Agiou Efrem Church is located in the community of Agios Amvrosios in the Limassol district, situated along the Limassol – Omodos – Platres main road.
Architecturally the church is built in a cross-shaped basilica with a dome, and can accommodate a capacity of about 400 people operating as a parish church for the community of Agiou Amvrosiou.
The wooden carved templo is a replica of the oldest one of the 18th century. The complete structure is a jewel for the area as well as a spiritual location of jubilation and relaxation.
The church construction began in 2004 and was completed in 2006. The church was open to the public on the 7th of December of 2006, and on the 10th of December, the church operated for the first time. On the 12th of December 2008 the church was inaugurated by the Archbishop of Nea Ioustiani and Cyprus Mr. Chrysostomou II, and the Metropolite of Paphos Mr.Georgiou.
Holy Mass takes place every Sunday as well as other Despotic and Theomitrical celebrations. Everyday Mass takes place in the old church of the village, which is dedicated to Agio Amvrosio Episcope of the Mediolanes. The church is located in the centre of the village and is under the protection of the antiquity department.
The saint is celebrated on the 5th of May as well as on the 3rd of January, which is when his remains were found. A piece of the Holy remains of the saint is on display for veneration during the weekends.
Agiou Efrem Church - Agios Amvrosios Village photos:
agios efrem
agios efrem agios amvrosios village
agios efrem church
agiou efrem church
Agiou Efrem Church - Agios Amvrosios Village location map:
Nearby Places and things to do (within 5 km radius)
Zambartas Winery - Agios Amvrosios
The Zambartas Winery is located in the village of Agios Amvrosios in the Limassol district. Even though it is a young winery, its labels ...
I.M. Gaia Oinotechniki Winery - Agios Amvrosios
The I.M Gaia Oikotechniki Winery is located in the Agios Amvrosios Village in Limassol. It is a small winery which stands out for its inn...
Agios Amvrosios Village
The Agios Amvosios Village is situated on the main road of Limassol – Omodos – Platres at a distance of about 29 kilometres northwest of...
The Agios Amvrosios Church is situated in the centre of the village of Agios Amvosios in Limassol. It is a real jewel for the communit...
The Agia Elisavet Chapel is situated three kilometres south of the village of Agios Amvrosios in the Limassol district. More specifically th...
The Agiou Georgiou Chapel is situated in the old village of Ktiri about 6 kilometres from the village of Agios Amvrosios in the Limass...
Agios Mnasonas Chapel - Potamiou Village
To the west side of Potamiou village in the district of Limassol, are the ruins of the chapel dedicated to Agio Mnasona. It is a church o...
Apostolos Andreas Church, Pissouri
The Apostolou Andrea Church is situated in the village of Pissouri in the Limassol district. More specifically it is located in the centre o...
Timios Stavros Church - Pelendri
Ancient monument, Attraction, Church
Timios Stavros church is located in the village of Pelendri in the Limassol district. It is one of the nine churches of Troodos which are...
Agios Mamas Church - Louvaras Village
The church of Agios Mamas is located at the south part of the Troodos mountain range, at the village of Louvaras at a distance of about 27 k...
Agiou Therapon Church - Agios Therapontas Village
The church of Agios Therapon is located in the centre of the village of Agios Therapontas in the Limassol district. The construction...
Agia Marina Chapel - Fini Village
A little further out from the village of Fini, in-between the plain at the location vines, surrounded by trees and bushes and at a close dis...


Dr. Susie O'Callaghan is a TILDA research fellow undertaking a PhD under the supervision of Professor Rose Anne Kenny. She also works as a geriatrician in the Falls and Blackout Unit in St. James' Hospital and is an assistant professor in medical gerontology in Trinity College School of Medicine.
She graduated from Trinity in 2005 and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland (RCPI) in 2009. She then enrolled in a dual training Higher Specialist Training programme in General Internal Medicine (GIM) and Geriatric Medicine. She is certified in GIM since 2013 and has extensive experience in all domains of Geriatric Medicine including acute medicine, stroke, orthogeriatric medicine, movement disorders and rehabilitation medicine. Her subspecialty interest is in falls and syncope and she has completed a Diploma in Syncope and Related Disorders with the RCPI.
Her research interests include neurocardiovascular instability and cognition. She has published in Age and Ageing, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, The Irish Journal of Medical Science and Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.


So when a photographer you respect asks you to shoot her wedding what do you do?!? I was humbled and honored! Christina M. Felice is a talented fashion photographer hailing from Philly and working in Los Angeles. Mike Merriman is an artist manager from Colorado also working in Los Angeles. They met on a photo shoot 8 years ago, and after merging their lives together, they married in the desert outside Palm Springs. Having known Christina for a long time, I was very inspired to make a great body of work for her and Mike. I know it would be an opportunity to combine fashion, portraiture, and documentary photography. We had hard desert daylight, warm magic hour light, and pink sky sunset light. Then the dance party took over. Stay tuned for that in part two!
For our engagement shoot, we collaborated on a Polaroid project of tight, close-up images of Mike, Christina, and the beach landscape; tiled together to create an abstracted version of a portrait of the two of them. I shot it, and Christina and Mike created the layout together. The final product was displayed at the wedding for guests to sign.
Lastly, the Star Wars theme rocked. They have a dog named Leia and they both have the same Millennium Falcon tattoo with Han Solo's quote "Never Tell Me The Odds." He had Millennium Falcon cufflinks and the tables were named for different Star Wars planets. The Cake? The Millennium Falcon was exploding out of it.
Great shots Mike. Looks like a great wedding.
These are some truly amazing wedding pictures…all other wedding photos pale by comparison!
WOW! These are fantastic. Love love love the gorgeous bride. The necklace, the shoes, the dress – so pretty!


Harrisburg, PA – Following a colder-than-average winter and weeks of dramatic temperature swings, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation acting Secretary Leslie S. Richards today advised Pennsylvanians that PennDOT crews are aggressively tackling the growing number or potholes appearing on state-owned roadways.
In addition to the potholes addressed through continued monitoring by PennDOT crews, more than 3,600 pothole concerns have been reported to PennDOT and nearly 3,500 of those concerns have been addressed since March 1. With Pennsylvania's aggressive freeze-thaw cycle, roadways will always experience potholes. PennDOT's force of nearly 5,000 equipment operators are working vigorously to repair pothole damage on nearly 40,000 miles of state-owned roadway.
So far this year, PennDOT has invested more than $17.5 million to repair potholes. To further supplement the department's efforts, an additional $21.6 million in emergency funds have been released to address pothole repairs statewide. This distribution was possible because Act 89, the state's transportation funding plan, allowed projects for which emergency funds were being reserved to be scheduled for repairs.
PennDOT crews will work as quickly as they can, but because of the numbers of potholes, it may take some days until the crews can work through the priority lists. PennDOT's priority is to start with the higher volume roadways, but will work through the entire state-owned road system as soon as possible.
With Pennsylvania's high levels of traffic, the fifth-largest state-maintained highway network in the country and drastic freeze-thaw cycle, the potholes that naturally occur on the state's roadways are exacerbated by colder weather. PennDOT crews across the state have been repairing potholes as weather permits since winter began loosening its grip, though dramatic temperature swings and available materials can affect how long repairs last. Because of Act 89, nearly 5,000 miles of state roads will see resurfacing and longer-term improvements this year statewide. Without Act 89, roughly 2,700 miles of roads would have seen mostly short-term repairs.
On average over the past five calendar years, PennDOT used nearly 63,000 tons of asphalt a year to repair potholes at an annual cost of more than $31.5 million. Last year, PennDOT used more than 80,000 tons of patching material. So far this year, PennDOT has completed more than 24,000 tons worth of asphalt repairs and currently has an additional 25,500 tons of work planned.
The hotline is staffed between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. After 4:30 p.m., and on weekends and holidays, calls are recorded by a voicemail system.
Motorists are asked to be as specific as possible when providing locations of maintenance concerns. Motorists should report the county, municipality, street name and state route number, which can be found on small black and white signs posted along state highways. In addition, a description of any familiar landmarks would be helpful for PennDOT to locate the problem area.
To learn about how potholes form and how PennDOT addresses them, view the department's "Pothole Patrol" video on its YouTube page.
Join the conversation on social media with #PotholePatrol. Visit PennDOT's Facebook page or visit us on Twitter at @PennDOTNews.
For more information, visit www.dot.state.pa.us.


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HomeOther NewsLiberian Import Taxes (2.5% To 25%) Versus Export Taxes Of 0%
Liberian Import Taxes (2.5% To 25%) Versus Export Taxes Of 0%
October 5, 2021 Joel Cholo Brooks Other News 0
By: Yanqui Zaza – October 5, 2021
AN APPEAL TO THE LIBERIAN GOVERNMENT ESPECIALLY THE LIBERIA REVENUE AUTHORITY (LRA) AND A CALL TO POLITICAL PARTIES, CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS AND CONCERNED LIBERIANS.
J. Yanqui Zaza
This is an appeal to the Liberian Government, especially our Liberian Lawmakers to reduce the import tax rate (ranging from 2.5% to 25%) and remove the 0%tax rate and re-institute the 10% tax on goods sold to buyers outside of Liberia. Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf replaced the 10% with 0% tax rate on exported goods on December 5, 2016.
This is also an appeal to the Liberian Revenue Authority to request ArcelorMittal Steel and Liberian Firestone Rubber Plantation, to file the Withholding Tax Returns to report export taxes that they should have collected based on goods sold to buyers outside of Liberia before December 5, 2016, if there is no Liberian Tax Law that exempts and/or prohibits (for example, Liberian Law on Statute of Limitation) the two Liberian taxpayers.
What is export tax? "Export taxes are taxes on goods or services that become payable when the goods leave the economic territory…the taxes are a credible policy, yielding the government some revenue," says Mr. Roberta Piemartini, ERSD, World Trade Organization.
Mr. Piemartini added that "…Export taxes are mainly used by developing and least-developed countries (LDCs). Of the 15 LDCs reviewed in the context of the WTO Trade Policy Review Mechanism, 10 impose export duties, while only 3 of 30 OECD countries use them. The research shows that Ghana and Sierra Leone do not impose tax on export, yet Ghana, according to Figure 6 of Natural Resources Revenue (2000-2013 and 2014-2017), percent of Gross National Product, collected more revenue than revenue collected by South Africa, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, or Liberia.
Liberia collects minimal revenue from natural resources due to many reasons, according to page # 20 of the Liberia Domestic Revenue Policy Notes dated May 20, 2019. The Report stated that, "…despite relatively rich natural resource base, especially in iron ore, rubber… Liberia collects minimal public revenues from these activities." Adding, the Report stated Liberia
Does not devote enough attention to enforcement of the applicable tax legislation.
Grants tax exemptions in a discretionary and non-transparent way; and
Does not apply fiscal transparency rules related to natural resources (see Box 1 below)." (pubrights@world.org)
The differences between revenue collected from tax on export and revenue from tax on import support the conclusion on page # 20.
Liberia's Rev. Export Tax: USD $3.7M in 2012; USD $0.5M in 2013; and USD $0.5M in 2014
Liberia's Rev. Import Tax: USD $148M in 2012; USD $148M in 2013; and USD $155M in 2014
Prior to December 5, 2016, tax imposed on goods exported was 10%, according to page # 161 of the Liberian Revenue Code of Liberia Act 2000 of Section 1703. It stated then, that "Customs export duties shall be levied on, and paid by the exporter…" However, on December 5, 2016, former President of the Republic of Liberia, Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf signed the Amendment stating that, " …the rate of goods tax is (10) percent of the Section 1004 taxable amount, except that if the supply is an export of goods, the tax rate is zero (0) percent."
Iron ore exported: USD $373M in 2014; USD $325M in 2013; and USD $117M in 2012.
Rubber exported: USD $106M in 2014; USD $132M in 2013; and USD $176M in 2012.
So, did Liberia receive USD $119M revenue (USD $119M ($37M+ $32M + $11M + $10M + $13M + $17M) for tax periods 2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively, based on 10% tax rate imposed on latex and iron ore exported to buyers outside of Liberia? Or did the Liberian government exempt these exported goods from the 10% tax rate? What was/were the economic reasons for exempting outside buyers from paying the tax on exported goods? If no exemption, who, other than the government, receive the revenue?
Presumably, the public believes that Firestone's owner/parent, located outside of Liberia, bought the exported goods produced in Liberia. This is because common suggests that the owner/parent of Liberian Firestone Rubber Plantation, Bridgestone, the Japanese Company, would not allow its subsidiary (Liberian Firestone Rubber Plantation) to sell raw materials (latex) to a competitor.
Liberian officials awarding sweetheart deals such as tax exempt and/or collecting and pocketing government revenue from natural resources companies is not new. Records do not show that Liberia received its share of dividends/profits that Liberian American Swedish Mineral Company (LAMCO) Liberia Liberian Mining Company (BMC) distributed, for instance. The government of Liberia did own 37% interest in Liberian American Swedish Mineral Company (LAMCO) or and 50% shares of the Liberian Mining Company (BMC), according to (www.archive.unu.edu/unupress/unpbooks/un29me/uu29meOb.htm).
Some economists argue against the imposition of tax on exported goods. They claimed that "Export tariffs raise the price for domestic companies to export their goods. Other experts see export tariffs as harmful to the domestic economy. Liberia's companies are not competing because none of these companies is adding values, rather, they are selling raw materials. And, unfortunately, records do not show the prices (i.e., market price or parent's dictated price) for latex and/or iron ore.
Arguing in favor of export tax, Mr. Richard Goode, Mr. George E. Lent, and P. D. Ojha of the IMF eLIBRARY, 2021 Richard Goode, George E. Lent, and P.D. Ojha stated that revenue purpose is okay. Additionally, export taxes compensate the devaluation of a country's currency and as a means of stabilizing the economy during a period of fluctuating prices.
This is a call to Political Parties, Civil Society Organizations, Religious Institutions, etc. to use the May 20, 2019, Report of the World Bank and encourage our elected Officials to re-institute the tax on exported goods and reduce tax on imported goods. Let us wakeup and end Liberia's reliance on loans and donors' contributions to fund Liberia's programs. Also, remember that the revenue collected from the tax on imported goods is paid by residents of Liberia, which increases the cost of living.
Yanqui Zaza
https://revenue.lra.gov.lr/08/REVENUE-CODE-LIBERIA-REVUNEU-CODE-AMENDMENT-2016-CUSTOMS.pdf
https://eiti.org/files/documents/fy2013-2014_liberia_eiti_report.pdf
https://eiti.org/document/20112012-liberia-eiti-report


Set on 75.75 hectares or 188 acres approximately and located just 64km north of Mudgee or approximately 2.5 hours from Newcastle via tar sealed road.
Predominantly open grazing country, fantastic rural views and multiple house sites. Build the dream home as this property has dwelling entitlement.
A fantastic property nestled in picturesque settings just 40 minutes north of Mudgee. Don't miss your chance to build the dream on ideal acres.


How to successfuly apply a Juwelier-schmuck coupon?
Juwelier-schmuck coupon not working ?
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The project "Additive Manufacturing for Extra Large Metal Components" (AiM2XL) aims at the production of large-scale (~1 to >10 m) additively manufactured metallic components for maritime applications. To accomplish this, you will develop sensing techniques as well as actuators in order to reliably manufacture of such products using a high power laser source.
The start of the project is as soon as possible. We also invite applications from candidates, who expect to graduate soon. Your application should be submitted before 15-6-2018.
Minimum of 29 holidays per year in case of full-time employment.


You SAY you want something.
But when push comes to shove, you don't act on it.
You chose to raise your price – but the next time you talk to a potential client you mention your old price.
And you tell yourself this was a wise decision because you may have lost that client at your higher fee.
You wish to work with your ideal clients only – and then you make an offer to a client who is definitely not ideal.
And you tell yourself it's OK, because this person is almost ideal, so it's fine.
Or you tell yourself this was a smart decision, given that your rent is almost due. There will be plenty of time to be picky when money isn't so tight anymore.
You don't like to do certain projects anymore – but as soon as you get the chance to do one, you go for it anyway.
Hey, work is work and money is money, right? Can't turn down a good opportunity when you have no new projects waiting for you.
You don't want to offer a certain service anymore – but when you get a chance to sell it again, you do it.
Yes, well, if people still want that from you… who are you to say no? This work still has value for your client.
And since you don't have your new service up and running yet, it's wise to offer your old service for now.
The things you tell yourself to justify your decision sound rational and true.
Most people will agree and tell you it's smart to not burn your bridges.
To not throw away your old shoes before you have new ones.
But when you continue to say YES to things you no longer want, you'll NEVER get what you DO want.
You can't keep dating people who are wrong for you if you want to find the right one.
You can't keep eating crap if you want to eat healthy.
You can't keep sitting on the couch if you want to exercise more.
You can't keep working with non-ideal clients if you want to only work with ideal ones.
You can't continue to charge the same prices and raise them at the same time.
You can't change course in your business if you stay on the course you're at.
And you can't create time for yourself and space in your schedule if you keep filling it.
You can ONLY get to your YES! life if you say NO to what you no longer want.
You HAVE to start saying NO some day.
Did you say YES! to it yet?
And what can you say NO to right now to honor that 'yes'?
P.S.: Need help saying YES! to your true dreams you have for your business & life – and say NO to everything else?
My 1-1 coaching can help.


text:
Q: Display of Asian characters (with Unicode): Difference in character spacing when presented in a RichEdit control compared with using ExtTextOut This picture illustrates my predicament:

All of the characters appear to be the same size, but the space between them is different when presented in a RichEdit control compared with when I use ExtTextOut.
I would like to present the characters the same as in the RichEdit control (ideally), in order to preserve wrap positions.
Can anyone tell me:
a) Which is the more correct representation?
b) Why the RichEdit control displays the text with no gaps between the Asian Characters?
c) Is there any way to make ExtTextOut reproduce the behaviour of the RichEdit control when drawing these characters?
d) Would this be any different if I was working on an Asian version of Windows?
Perhaps I'm being optimistic, but if anyone has any hints to offer, I'd be very interested to hear.
In case it helps:
Here's my text:
快的棕色狐狸跳在懶惰狗1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

apologies to Asian readers, this is merely for testing our Unicode implemetation and I don't even know what language the characters are taken from, let alone whether they mean anything
In order to view the effect by pasting these characters into a RichEdit control (eg. Wordpad), you may find you have to swipe them and set the font to 'Arial'.
The rich text that I obtain is:

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang2057{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Arial;}}{\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sa200\sl276\slmult1\lang9\fs22\u24555?\u30340?\u26837?\u33394?\u29392?\u29432?\u36339?\u22312?\u25078?\u24816?\u29399?1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0\par\pard\'a3 $$ \'80\'80\cf1\lang2057\fs16\par}

It doesn't appear to contain a value for character 'pitch' which was my first thought.

A: I don't know the answer, but there are several things to suspect:

*

*There are several versions of the rich edit control.  Perhaps you're using an older one that doesn't have all the latest typographic improvements.

*There are many styles and flags that affect the behavior of a rich editcontrol, so you might want to explore which ones are set and what they do.  For example, look at EM_GETEDITSTYLE.

*Many Asian fonts come in two versions on Windows.  One is optimized for horizontal layout, and the other for vertical layout.  That latter usually has the same name, but has @ prepended to it.  Perhaps you are using the wrong one in the rich edit control.

UPDATE:  By messing around with Wordpad, I was able to reproduce the problem with the crowded text in the rich edit control.

*

*Open a new document in Wordpad on Windows 7.  Note that the selected font is Calibri.

*Paste the sample text into the document.

*Text appears correct, but Wordpad changed the font to SimSun.

*Select the text and change the font back to Calibri or Arial.

The text will now be overcrowded, very similar to your example.  Thus it appears the fundamental problem is with font linking and fallback.  ExtTextOut is probably selecting an appropriate font for the script automatically.  Your challenge is to figure out how to identify the right font for the script and set that font in the rich edit control.

A: This will only help with part of your problem, but there is a way to draw text to a DC that will look exactly the same as it does with RichEdit: what's called the windowless RichEdit control. It not exactly easy to use: I wrote a CodeProject article on it a few years back. I used this to solve the problem of a scrollable display of blocks of text, each one of which can be edited by clicking on it: the normal drawing is done with the windowless RichEdit, and the editing by showing a "real" RichEdit control on the top of it.
That would at least get you the text looking the same in both cases, though unfortunately both cases would show too little character spacing.
One further thought: if you could rely on Microsoft Office being installed, you could also try later versions of RichEdit that come with office. There's more about these on Murray Sargent's blog, as well as some interesting articles on font binding that might also help.

A: ExtTextOut allows you to specify the logical spacing between records. It has the parameter lpDx which is a const pointer to an array of values that indicate the distance between origins of adjacent character cells. The Microsoft API documentation notes that if you don't set it, then it sets it's own default spacing. I would have to say that's why ExtTextOut is working fine.
In particular, when you construct a EMR_EXTTEXTOUTW record in EMF, it populates an EMR_TEXT structure with this DX array - which looking at one of your comments, allowed the RichEdit to insert the EMF with the information contained in the record, whereby if you didn't set a font binding then the RTF record does some matching to work out what font to use.
In terms of the RichEdit control, the following article might be useful:

Use Font Binding in a Rich Edit Control
After character sets are assigned, Rich Edit scans the text around the
  insertion point forward and backward to find the nearest fonts that
  have been used for the character sets. If no font is found for a
  character set, Rich Edit uses the font chosen by the client for that
  character set. If the client hasn't specified a font for the character
  set, Rich Edit uses the default font for that character set. If the
  client wants some other font, the client can always change it, but
  this approach will work most of the time. The current default font
  choices are based on the following table. Note that the default fonts
  are set per-process, and there are separate lists for UI usage and for
  non-UI usage.

If you haven't set the characterset, then it further explains that it falls back to ANSI_CHARSET. However, it's most definitely a lot more complicated than that, as that blog article by Murray Sargent (a programmer at Microsoft) shows.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Thank you Hass Avocado Board for Sponsoring this recipe, video and the chance to win $200 dollars to one of the SpicyLatinaMom fans.
Avocado Toasts, four ideas to prepare them for breakfast, lunch or snacks. Fresh avocados are so versatile: on a toast, tacos or in a salad,… avocados are the perfect combination for almost any dish! Today, I'd like to share with you 4 easy ideas for a perfect breakfast, a light dinner or a nice snack at any moment of the day.
These are alternatives for a healthy and delicious lunch your kids will enjoy a lot, providing them with fiber and folate. I bet you all will become an avocado fan.
Fresh Avocado Toasts…Yumi! Here we have four quite easy and quick options to fix a snack, a light dinner or breakfast. We are featuring Fresh Avocado, usually mistaken as a vegetable. Yep, the avocado is actually a fruit that is so versatile. You can combine it with both salty and sweet ingredients.
Nutritionists advice to include fiber, usually in vegetables and fruits for they help to reduce the risk of a heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.
The good news is that fresh avocado is a good source of fiber (3 gr per 50 gr serving). Dietary fiber adds bulk to the diet and can help you feel fuller faster, which can increase satiety and help manage weight.
Moreover, its folic acid may reduce the risk of premature births and births defects.
Fresh Avocados – Love One Today is giving a $200 dollars prize all you have to do is: Share this video from SpicyLatinaMom on your facebook and comment on the video which of the toasts is you favorite.
*One (1) prize of a two-hundred dollar ($200) gift card. You must be 18+ and a US Citizen.
Directions: Julienne the sweet peppers. Spread avocado on a toast.
Add julienned peppers- better if combined. They'd look tasty!
Directions: Cuts boiled eggs in slices. Spread avocado on a toast, and add slices of eggs.
Show me how your recipe came out on Instagram with #SpicyLatinaMom and #LoveOneToday , and don´t forget to subscribe to my Youtube Channel and social media for everyday inspiration and more delicious recipes.
For more recipes and avocados nutrition facts visit the website LoveOne Today and daily inspiration their Facebook page.


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Sick care in America: 70,000 ways for doctors to bill the government for your diseases and symptoms
Tuesday, January 05, 2016 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: healthcare, ICD-10 codes, rising costs
(NaturalNews) If you've ever doubted the fact that conventional healthcare is an unsustainable financial behemoth, consider the new rules developed for doctors and healthcare practitioners that provision billing schemes for some 70,000 different sicknesses and disease symptoms – practically none of which involve prevention through nutrition or herbal therapies.
According to reports, all healthcare providers operating within the U.S. will now be required to use an international coding system known as ICD-10, which contains 70,000 unique codes for billing Obamacare on the taxpayers' dime. These codes cover all sorts of wild scenarios, including the cost associated with treatment for someone who gets bitten by a parrot.
Adding fuel to the fire of America's already skyrocketing $2.9 trillion-a-year healthcare system, the ICD-10 billing requirements will make it easier than ever for doctors to bilk the system for alleged health conditions such as "Problems in relationship with in-laws" or "Burn due to water skis on fire."
The adoption of ICD-10 codes replaces the former ICD-9 coding system, which is now officially retired. And despite this transition to the new system, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), whose job it is to track such numbers, says it has no idea what the total cost will be for the change.
"Little is known," stated the GAO in an August report, about the total financial burden associated with the ICD-10 adoption.
"Beyond the estimated costs reported by CMS [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services], little is known about the costs that providers, clearinghouses, and insurers incurred for updating their Medicare claims submission systems," the report states.
"Such costs were not identified by the professional associations we contacted or by industry studies that we reviewed."
Healthcare is the single biggest drain on American taxpayers – that and constant war overseas!
HCA Holdings Inc., a Nashville, Tennessee-based hospital chain, identified its costs just for the year 2015, and the total came out to about $30 million, according to Bloomberg. And many other hospital groups across the nation will likely report similar figures in the coming months.
At a time when healthcare is at a premium – think massive increases in monthly premiums as a result of Obamacare – the adoption of a whole new set of billing codes for ridiculous scenarios like getting sucked into a jet engine hardly seem prudent. Chalk it all up to more government irrationality and waste in this time of societal collapse.
And yet, there's still considerable doubt about whether ICD-10 will even be fully implemented as planned. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has repeatedly postponed its implementation, and some contend that based on the reality of how many times this agency has kicked the can down the road, so to speak, it's an inevitable failure and waste of government resources.
"ICD-10 will never happen," stated one health system CIO to a colleague at the College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME) gathering, according to Government Health IT.
ICD-10 was supposed to be fully implemented in 2011, but this got postponed to 2013, and then to 2014. It is still pending as a comprehensive industry standard to this day. And the reason, of course, is mostly due to costs – costs for doctors, costs for insurers, and costs for taxpayers.
"ICD-10 won't happen," wrote one Government Health IT commenter. "It would put too many providers out of business."
GAO.gov[PDF]
GovHealthIT.com
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Aqua Fun, the inflatable water park is back at The Beach at Jumeirah Beach Residence, and it is now bigger than ever.
An extension has been unveiled, and the 5,000 square metre attraction now features an 'I love Dubai' design, in the city's signature pink and turquoise colours.
The park claims to be the world's largest inflatable aqua park, and is accessed via The Beach at JBR. Tickets to the park cost Dh120 per child, per day and Dh150 for adults. It is open from 9am until 6.15pm, daily.
It has been updated as part of an initiative from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, following the success of Love Lake at Al Qudra.
There are over 100 obstacles that make up the park, including ladders, slides and towers. Visitors can expect to work hard at the park, but have fun while taking on the challenge.
It's also worth booking with friends, because groups of four and more will pay Dh110 per person.
The update to the attraction was announced on the Dubai Media Office Twitter.


Envoy Air Flight MQ3933 connects Chicago, United States to Traverse City, United States, taking off from Chicago O'Hare International Airport ORD and landing at Traverse City Cherry Capital Airport TVC.
The flight distance is 360 km / 224 miles and the average flight speed is 380 km/h / 236 mph. In the last 30 days, the average delay of the flight was 3 minutes and the flight was on-time 83% of the times. The average flight time is 56 minutes.
This Envoy Air flight can also be referenced as ENY3933, MQ 3933, ENY 3933.
MQ3933 Flight Delay Compensation up to 600€!
There was a total of 255 flights connecting Chicago to Traverse City, operated by 21 different airlines in the past. At this time there is a total 9 flights connecting Chicago to Traverse City, operated by 4 different airlines.


This listing is courtesy of Nicole Contreras from Nourmand & Associates-BH.
Marina Del Rey Stunner! Gorgeous, Bright 3 bedroom townhouse plus den with expansive master, large outdoor patio and roof top deck and additional patio off the master. Lives like a house with two car attached garage. Open living room dinning room floor plan, den can be used as a 4th bedroom or makes a great office. Close to beach, shops, restaurants, lax, and freeway. Community has a pool and spa! Please email for all showings!


This was one of the most significant cultural events on Merseyside in many years. The world famous China National Peking Opera Company rarely visit the UK (they were last here 10 years ago) and when they do rarely perform outside London. They'll be at Sadlers Wells next week, but it was both flattering and appropriate that their only other appearances should be in Liverpool, home of course to Europe's oldest Chinese community (many of whom were amongst the enthusiastic audience, which was also marked by a strikingly wide age range).
A lot of people are likely to be familiar with the award-winning film Farewell My Concubine, in which the opera of the same name forms the backdrop to a story about the relationship between two performers who regularly appear in the piece. Here though was a rare opportunity to see the opera itself, in all its epic, spectacular glory.
And 'spectacular' is the operative word when it comes to Chinese opera, which much more than its Western counterpart incorporates dazzling costumes, acrobatic dancing, atmospheric music and elaborate use of mime as well as dramatic, emotional singing. The singing itself is different too, with a wailing, high-pitched intensity that adds to the mesmerizing strangeness of it all. There was plenty of dialogue as well, delivered less like natural speech than a kind of heightened, rhythmic version of it. Screens displayed English subtitles, which ensured all of the audience could follow what was going on.
Traditional Chinese operas are based on ancient myths and legends, and Farewell My Concubine tells a story from the third century BC. Two warrior lords, Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, have been waging a titanic struggle for power over many years and are now readying themselves for a final cataclysmic battle. When the honourable but somewhat foolish Xiang Yu is tricked and appears to be facing defeat, his devoted concubine Yu Ji refuses to desert him. It's a classic tale of pride, treachery, tragedy and love, with an immensely moving finale.
The cast included one of Chinese opera's leading stars, Yu Kuizhi, who played Liu Bang's shrewd, calculating chief commander. The battle scenes were a breathtaking spectacle, and contrasted wonderfully with the more intimate, heartbreaking episodes featuring Xiang Yu and Yu Ji.
Following the Chinese tradition, there were spontaneous bursts of applause and cries of 'Hao' ('Bravo') throughout, before a rapturous ovation at the end for the superbly talented performers (and the equally impressive orchestra), who'd given the audience an evening none of us are likely to forget.


It's kind of odd visiting home again, from a societal point of view. Ohio's economy is much, much larger than Maine's; there are certainly many more people, but it seems like there are more stores and places to buy Stuff(tm) per capita.
2-3 decades ago, I grew up in northern Cincinnati, in a town called Springdale, which was the outer edge of suburbia. All the main retail outlets were near us, it was glittering and shiny new. You could tell there was money there.
Now, all these glitzy new buildings are 2 or 3 decades older, and show wear and tear. Even the houses look older, which of course they are.
Last night, my wife and I had a dinner & movie date, and we headed further north, a couple exits up the highway, to the restaurant and the theater. There, 5 miles north of where I grew up, now looks like my area did when I was a kid. The radius of Cincinnati, or at least the suburban sprawl, is expanding.
It occurred to me that this sprawl expansion must look something like a nuclear shock wave in slow motion. Things heat up as they go outward, leaving slow decay in its wake.
Kind of a crude metaphor, I suppose. But it was an image that struck me, and I wanted to record it here for posterity. Perhaps I'll develop the idea more.


See more Rover Pipeline construction photos over on flickr: here and here.
For the last couple of days, I've been travelling with Bill Hughes, observing some of the impacts of the Rover Pipeline construction in Tyler and Wetzel counties in West Virginia.
Almost daily since August, when the surveying started, Bill's been monitoring this site, two miles east of Sistersville, WV. This spot is at about what Energy Transfer Partners labels mile point 28 of the 713-mile Rover Pipeline.
Bill brought me here two days in a row. Each time we stayed probably less than an hour—that was about all I could take as the diesel fumes, rock dust from the drilling and excavation, and noise levels were close to intolerable. Imagine having to endure this for weeks so close to your formerly quiet rural home! (In the shot above, notice the light fixture. Some activity goes on after dark, too.) Imagine being one of the workers constantly subjected to these pollutants!
Above: Notice the smaller, darker blue pipe crossing at the top of the photo, above the fellows who are welding together two sections of the 36-inch diameter pipeline (in other areas, the Rover Pipeline is 42-inch). Lashed with pipe-wrap insulation tape to that blue pipeline is a white water line. Also attached to the blue pipe are a heat tape and an an extension cord (plugged into a stinky diesel generator). Since we could see no sign of the water line having been severed by excavation equipment (although that could be the case), Bill speculates that the blue pipe was strung across the work area to help support the water line, and the assorted heating elements—added after the family notified the construction crew that they had no water. Speculation: the intact water line may have frozen the night after it was exposed.
One area resident, who is an active military member and had been a WV State Trooper, told Bill he's gravely concerned about his community's safety. He says he knows the inherent dangers of firearms, having worn a sidearm for decades, but he is much more fearful of the close location of this high-pressure, high-volume, highly explosive gas pipeline (the gas will flow in the pipe at approximately 1400 PSI). The resident says he can control his firearm, but he can't control the Rover Pipeline in his backyard, from now to forever.
The eight homes in this community are located an average of 350 feet from the pipeline. Should a malfunction occur, the incineration zone for the pipeline is a radius of approximately 1000 to 1400 feet. That is, should a blast occur, everything within about 1000 feet will be incinerated.
Below are some more photos from this particular area, along with a little video footage illustrating the aforementioned dust. Rover, Rover, why oh why did you come over so close to these families?!
I am one of the "eight homes". You have exaggerated the situation and vilified the workers. The rock dust does not come close to the amount wood smoke from area homes that burn for the heat. And it only takes days to bust up the stone. It's not an ongoing issue. The light towers you mentioned are needed because it gets dark by five o'clock this time of year. Those lights are for safety! These are day workers only. And the worry of shooting the pipeline? Have you noticed how deep the pipeline is buried? Please stop using scare tactics! Instead you should mention how many jobs have been, and will be created through this expansion, how we as a country become less dependent on other countries for our needs. Your "resident source" was paid for the inconvenience he's experienced. Yet you vilify workers for a mistake any worker, construction or homeowner, could make. The pipeline workers have been very mannered, and are hard workers. Give them some respect. Oh, and did you get the permission of the workers in these pictures to show their faces? I doubt it.
Thanks for taking time to read and comment on the post. I feel you may have misread some of what I say.
Bill and I are sorry that you feel we vilified workers. We differ with that opinion: we mentioned a concern for their health as they are subject to these conditions day in and day out. (As an aside, no doubt if you live or travel near this site, you will have noted the license plates on the worker's vehicles—so many from out of state!) And yes, actually, we did intend to blur out any visible faces to underscore that this is not about the workers. There was one photo published where a worker's face would be visible if someone enlarged the photo, but that error is being fixed.
Bill took time to convey to me that the pipeline construction workers are doing excellent work, regularly complying with all professional standards, in dangerous conditions and in all kind of weather on very steep hills. We feel it is truly a credit to them that they work so safety and professionally and get the job done well and in a timely manner. Many of these workers are working with subcontractors that strive to do good work. It is the parent corporations that are a big concern. In this case the parent corporation is Energy Transfer Partners, located in Texas.
If you are not concerned about safety, perhaps the impact of pipelines on property values will be of concern to you, or at least to the county commissioners.
Or perhaps you might be concerned to know that there's most likely an overcapacity of pipelines already, but these corporations press ahead to churn out the interstate pipelines, bullying those reluctant into signing right-of-ways, threatening and using eminent domain (for private gain!) because these corporations are authorized by FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) to recoup all of their pipeline costs from us, the ratepayers… plus 14 percent!
If this kind of greed, greed that disrupts human lives and costs property owners is not a concern to you, perhaps another factor will be of concern. In this post, we did not elaborate on one main point. This 1400-foot long section of pipe near Greenwood Road and Route 18 in Tyler County, (which is the section described here) did not have to be where it is. This section of pipe could have more safely been installed on the hill above and come down the hill near the WV highway property where no one lives. Energy Transfer Partners decided on pipeline route placement. The installation contractor has no choice but to work with the given route chose by Rover, even if the route is not the best one available. This route was clearly a poor choice and now has permanently endangered residents of at least eight homes.
Thanks to FERC, Energy Transfer Partners had eminent domain for this Rover Pipeline project. The corporation knew it could take anyone's land it that it wanted to take and Rover did take whatever land it wanted. Only a few neighbors were give some money for their lifetime danger. Once the route was chosen by Rover, the pipeline contractor then must do the best it can with what ever route is chosen by the pipeline owners.
Dear commenter, please do reread the section where we refer to the one resident's worries, as you do seem to have misread that. We said nothing about shooting at pipelines! The resident was comparing the possible danger of sidearms with the permanent and now unavoidable danger of a nearby high pressure, explosive, large-diameter gas line near many homes.
The welding operations shown here, the inspections and weld testing going on are no doubt professional. However, keep in mind that the professional welding was being done on imported pipe, made in Greece. The "Made in Greece" label is stamped inside each section of pipe; we can't be confident that the pipe was manufactured to the high quality we could trust were the pipe manufactured in the USA. Even excellent quality pipe joint welds done on inferior grades of pipes of questionable metallurgical specifications might present a long-term danger for these eight homes. We can trust the welder here, but can we trust the foreign-made pipe? I reckon most people would feel a lot more confident with high quality pipe made in America by American (USWA) steelworkers. Some of the pipe Rover is using is made in India. Same problem.
You are right that the rock dust was only for a week or so, right there near Route 18 and only a problem for those nearby. Except of course, for the workers who may be exposed over and over to those kinds of conditions, depending on the geology of the area they are working in. And there's the long-term exposure to those off-road diesel fumes.
Yes, the text says, "…should a blast occur, everything within about 1000 feet will be incinerated." This was an underestimation, an attempt to err on the side of caution, if such a thing can be done when discussing blasts zones. Bill calculated the incineration zone to be more than 1500 feet. Within that range, should a blast occur, there will be major impact, scorched earth, and structural damage. The average distance of the eight homes in this area is not more than 350 feet or so.
Bill and I are both very sorry that you have to live in one of the home that appears to be at risk if there is ever a problem with the pipeline. It's also upsetting that the value of your home may well be reduced should you ever wish to sell!
Bill worked up a chart which I am unable to post in this reply format, but the details are this: Home one is 500 feet from the pipeline, home two is 370 feet, home three is 320 feet, home four is 470 feet, home five is 90 feet, home six is 260 feet, home seven is 350 feet and home eight is 400 feet from the pipeline. Total = 2810 feet, and that means the average is 351 feet. The incineration zone reaches 1500 feet.
Earthquakes are associated with fracking related activity. All the deep well bores drilled into the earth can never be closed. The amount of water used in fracking is staggering; much of the water is now removed from the water cycle. The long term impacts on the geology of our regions are at this time unknown. These pipelines too, seem to lock us into more and more of this drilling and reliance on climate crushing fossil fuel use, at the very time when we should be making an all-out push on renewable energy.
I would be interested to see Ms. Vivian's sources and their credibility she is referencing, especially since this article (and likely this site) only has three comments.
Also, what was Ms. Vivian's fossil fuel carbon footprint driving to this location to stay less than an hour to draft this enviro-fascist article?
This will impact their lives forever, or until one of those 8 homes decides to move. The value of their home will drop. God forbid there is a blast bc all eight homes will be incinerated and IF anyone in those homes survives, you can rest assured they will not be properly reimbursed. Look up Mayflower oil spill. All of this so these corporations can EXPORT this gas.
The pipelines will only invite fracking wells, which are very disruptive to any standards of our current lives. This has caused fracking to have been banned by several states. In December of 2012, a 30″ pipeline exploded, smaller than the Rover pipeline, at Sissonville, WV, and melted four lanes of I-77, flattened four homes, and damaged five more homes. Our rural areas being turned into industrial sites is ruining our beautiful scenery and may be affecting our tourism industry. I believe that our reliance on fossil fuels is very unwise, and that sustainable energy is the cleanest and most readily available sources that God has given to humanity. I am a lifelong resident of West Virginia, and my family has lived in the Appalachian region for four generations, that I can easily recall.
Vivian, thank you for this report. Our county in VA is in the path of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 42 inch, high pressure fracked gas pipeline. Your report is the stark reality of the construction mayhem of these pipelines. The company responsible for ACP has a record of disregard for the law and usually gets what they want because they are rich, powerful and own our politicians. We remain in constant fear of the destruction, loss of property values, water quality and quantity damage, and disrespect this project will bring to our communities. Please remain steadfast in your reporting.


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