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Sussex challenges First State's right to terminate animal control services
Jul 21st, 2015 · by Craig Anderson · Comments:
GEORGETOWN — Sussex County's attorney said Tuesday no legal basis exists for the contracted provider of animal control services in Delaware to terminate its responsibilities after Sept. 15 as announced.
Speaking at the weekly Sussex County Council meeting, the attorney, Everett Moore, said the contract with First State Animal Center-SPCA remains valid through Dec. 30.
Through spokesman Chip Guy, Sussex County government issued the following statement:
"After legal review by our attorney, it is the [c]ounty's position that we still have a valid contract with (First State Animal Center-SPCA) through the end of 2015, and any consideration for a stopgap measure between September 15 and December 31 is secondary."
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Guy said Sussex County had not yet communicated its stance with FSAC-SPCA, but would do so "in short order."
FSAC-SPCA Executive Director Kevin Usilton said a clause in the contract referring to an "unforseen catastrophe beyond either parties control" allowed his nonprofit to opt out of the contract. He said the State of Delaware's transition plan to take over animal control would hamstring FSAC-SPCA operations to the point of not being able to provide services.
Earlier he mentioned the potential departure of employees that could not be replaced due to the uncertain future as contracts expired.
Also, Mr. Usilton said, "If Sussex wants to move forward with legal action they're well within their power, but when the state usurps our power and resources we can't fulfill the terms of the contract."
Sussex County Deputy Administrator Hal Godwin said he had been working on assembling a temporary work force to handle animal control issues after Sept. 15, which is unnecessary with a valid contract still active.
Mr. Godwin attended a Monday meeting at Kent County Levy Court in Dover designed to address the upcoming to the State of Delaware for animal control in less than two months.
After a 2 1/2 hour meeting Mr. Godwin said he left impressed by the state's commitment to oversee animal control and "the biggest plus for us is the state is taking over and we really didn't want dog control responsibilities in the first place.
"The state seems fully engaged in forming a plan in the interim that will address issues and people are on board from all interested parties to make that happen."
Thus, Mr. Godwin said, "I am feeling much better about the state's ability to administer the program in the long term."
Short term, all three counties and the City of Wilmington are weighing options when contract expire.
"It's an ongoing process and it's under review," said New Castle County spokesman Antonio Prado.
Attempts to reach Kent County Administrator Mike Petit de Mange on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Hettie Brown, executive director of the Office of Animal Welfare, said Monday's meeting included "an open dialogue to discuss what options were available (to the counties and Wilmington) regarding dog control services" but it was "a little premature to discuss short- and long-term possibilities" at this point.
Ms. Brown said all affected parties would "circle back" after considering paths to move forward and "we continue to work together in a collaborative effort" to find the best solutions for the future.
New Castle County government was notified of Monday's meeting but no representative appeared, Ms. Brown said.
There has been no communication since, she said. Mr. Prado said scheduling issues would not allow a representative to attend.
The state is also weighing options on how to address animal cruelty enforcement and rabies control, Ms. Brown said.
Ms. Brown said the process of transition to state control would remain as transparent as possible, noting that animal control was discussed at public Animal Welfare Task Force meetings in 2012 and 2013. The Office of Animal Welfare published two sets of recommendations after a series of meetings between animal shelters, nonprofits, public and private stakeholders, she said.
Also, the issues were discussed specifically at three General Assembly Joint Finance Committee hearings before being legislatively addressed on the last day of the current lawmaking session with a transition to state control.
FSAC-SPCA had ongoing annual contracts with Sussex County ($682,616), Kent County ($895,041.12), New Castle County ($1,035,000), Wilmington ($600,000), city of Dover ($40,000), Department of Public Health for rabies ($275,520) and Cruelty Reimburse ($106,000).
Contracts were scheduled to run through:
• Sussex County, Dec. 30, 2015
• Kent County, June 30, 2017
• New Castle County, Dec. 30, 2016
• City of Wilmington, June 30, 2016
• City of Dover, ongoing
• Department of Health, rabies, June 30, 2016
• Cruelty Reimburse, June 30, 2016.
Reach staff writer Craig Anderson at canderson@newszap.com
Tags:Animals · Featured · Sussex County


What Does the Future of Bipolar Treatment Look Like?
Bipolar disorder is one of the most difficult mental illnesses to diagnose and treat because of its complicated shifts between different symptoms. At the present time there is no cure for bipolar disorder but strategies such as medication and cognitive behavioral therapy to help minimize symptoms and manage the illness. However some researchers are looking for different methods that could use a more holistic approach to treating the disorder in the future.
Mental illness often are closely related to issues in the brain that lead to certain mood problems and various behaviors. Medications are meant to help balance out chemicals in the brain that may be causing certain symptoms. However, researchers believe that helping to restore nerve cell health in the brain for better communication may go a long way to treat issues like bipolar disorder.
In the past it was believed that bipolar disorder was caused by an imbalance of chemicals like serotonin or dopamine which led to depressed or elevated moods. Researchers now believe that neural plasticity may play a more important role in alleviated the symptoms of mania and depression. People with bipolar disorder tend to have atrophy of neurons in certain brain areas but improving nerve cells in these areas could potentially change the path of the disorder.
Medications like lithium which are used in treating bipolar disorder were recently discovered to actually boost levels of proteins that help neurons maintain their function. This may explain why lithium has been shown to be effective as a long term treatment. Using other methods to improve the health of neurons in the brain may create a more focused and efficient way to reduce symptoms quickly.
Although more research needs to be done to determine long term results, nerve and brain health may be the focus of bipolar treatment in the future.


12/07/2018 Public Works: Engineering document(s) referred to Council .
Bureau of Engineering report, dated December 6, 2018, relative to the final map of Parcel Map No. 2016-4034 located at 2101 South Federal Avenue and 11600-11608 South Mississippi Avenue, lying southerly corner of the intersection of Federal Avenue and Mississippi Avenue.


Creechurch Lane short lets apartments are situated in the close vicinity of St Mary Axe's building, the most recent landmark in the City of London. The apartment building was originally a tea warehouse and has been carefully converted to offer modern short stay accommodation attracting both visitors and city professionals. Decorated in modern, contemporary style, the Creechurch Lane short lets offer all the comforts of a home: large and light bedrooms; bright living space provided with broadband Internet connection; smart crisp bathrooms and fully fitted kitchens with dish washers and washer/dryers. With Creechurch apartment rental you are positioned in the very centre of the London financial district with many fascinating tourist sights nearby including: St Paul's Cathedral, The Monument, Leatherhead Market, Tower of London and the Tate Modern Gallery at Bankside. The River Thames is just a short walk away.
Aldgate, Moorgate, Liverpool Street and St Pauls. The area is served by numerous bus lines and Fenchurch Rail station is a short walk away.


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How revealing
As predictable as ever, right-wingnuttia is all aflutter with charges that the New York Times damaged national security by revealing that the Bush administration, in defiance of federal statutes, has been spying on American citizens without warrants.
It always helps, of course, when President Bush himself makes that charge on national television:
My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. You've got to understand -- and I hope the American people understand -- there is still an enemy that would like to strike the United States of America, and they're very dangerous. And the discussion about how we try to find them will enable them to adjust.
Acting on cue, the right-wing Wurlitzer is rumbling into action. Helping lead the charge, as always, is the Washington Times, which headlined its lead story today: "Bush calls leak 'shameful'".
Even before Bush spoke, right-wing blognuttia was pushing this line, including such luminaries as PowerLine and Michelle Malkin, plus the usual cast of thousands. Similarly, right-wing columnists like NRO's James S. Robbins weighed in along identical lines.
But then, remember the incident that Bush used to illustrate the problem in his press conference:
Let me give you an example about my concerns about letting the enemy know what may or may not be happening. In the late 1990s, our government was following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone. And then the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak. And guess what happened? Saddam -- Osama bin Laden changed his behavior. He began to change how he communicated.
... And again, I want to repeat what I said about Osama bin Laden, the man who ordered the attack that killed 3,000 Americans. We were listening to him. He was using a type of cell phone, or a type of phone, and we put it in the newspaper -- somebody put it in the newspaper that this was the type of device he was using to communicate with his team, and he changed. I don't know how I can make the point more clear that any time we give up -- and this is before they attacked us, by the way -- revealing sources, methods, and what we use the information for simply says to the enemy: change.
What Bush conveniently neglected to mention to his audience was that it wasn't the New York Times, nor any other organ of the "mainstream media," that published this information.
It was the Washington Times.
As I have pointed out several times, this incident was described in some detail in Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon's The Age of Sacred Terror, both having worked on counterterrorism in the Clinton administration.
According to Benjamin and Simon, the turning point when al-Qaeda became America's greatest enemy was not on Sept. 11, 2001, but rather on Aug. 20, 1998 -- the day President Clinton launched missile strikes against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and the Sudan, the latter being a pharmaceutical plant at al-Shifa that was being used to develop chemical weapons. From pp. 260-261:
For a brief moment, the operation appeared to be a qualified success. Al-Shifa was destroyed. Six terrorist camps were hit and about sixty people were killed, many of them Pakistani militants training for action in Kashmir. The Tomahawks missed bin Laden and the other senior al-Qaeda leaders by a couple of hours. This in itself was not a great surprise: no one involved has any illusions about the chances of hitting the target at exactly the right time. The White House recognized that the strike would not stop any attacks that were in the pipeline, but it might forestall the initiation of new operations as the organization's leaders went to ground.
The months that followed, however, were a nightmare. The press picked apart the administration's case for striking al-Shifa, and controversy erupted over whether Clinton was trying to "wag the dog," that is, distract the public from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The Washington Times -- the capital's unabashed right-wing newspaper, which consistently has the best sources in the intelligence world and the least compunction about leaking -- ran a story mentioning that bin Laden "keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones." Bin Laden stopped using the satellite phone instantly. The al-Qaeda leader was not eager to court the fate of Djokar Dudayev, the Chechen insurgent leader who was killed by a Russian air defense suppression missile that homed in on its target using his satellite phone signal. When bin Laden stopped using the phone and let his aides do the calling, the United States lost its best chance to find him.
According to a later Washington Post report, the Washington Times piece was in fact later determined to be "a major intelligence setback."
But did any of you hear any of these right-wing pundits now braying "treason" at the New York Times complaining back in 1998, when the Washington Times in fact genuinely harmed our national security interests, in a way that later contributed to thousands of American deaths?
Er, no. They were all too busy playing the same damned "wag the dog" game.
Funny how things work over there in Conservative Land. If a conservative mouthpiece actually harms national security in the pursuit of attacking a liberal president or policy, well, then, that's just good old hardball politics. Just ask Valerie Plame.
And besides, you can always just give it a few years. Then, when everyone's forgotten who actually caused this security breach and why, a smart, Orwellian conservative figurehead can always use the incident later to bash the "mainstream media" for doing its job.
On the other hand, if the mainstream media catches a conservative president breaking the law by spying on American citizens, then suddenly the alarms are being sounded about the press harming national security (mostly under a bunch of scenarios stolen from bad TV scripts).
Nice racket.
Killing the message
One of the real signs of Republicans' growing extremism is what Chris Mooney calls their "War on Science," because it reveals a mindset in which factual reality is discarded and replaced with one constructed out of whole cloth.
As always, this constructed reality comes into conflict with the real world, at which point its adherents typically try to assert themselves by outshouting the messengers or shutting them up.
In the case of the attacks on science, we know what happens next, inexorably: a slow-motion disaster for the public. In some cases, as with stem-cell research, real advances in medicine are forestalled. In others, as with the intended imposition of "intelligent design" curriculum in our schools, it means a serious degradation of the sciences in public education. In yet others, as with the management of endangered species like salmon, it results in massive degradation of our national resources and natural heritage.
Exhibit No. 25846 in this ongoing debacle is the recent decision by Sen. Larry Craig, the Idaho Republican, to cut funding for one of the major sources of data that is currently available on Columbia River salmon.
You've got to love Craig's explanation, which is a classic case of projection:
"Data cloaked in advocacy create confusion," Craig said on the Senate floor this month, after successfully inserting language in an energy and water appropriations bill that bans all future funding for the Fish Passage Center. "False science leads people to false choices."
It sure does. And it's quite clear that Craig's definition of "false science" is "any science that runs counter the policies I wish to promote."
"Idaho's water should not be flushed away on experimental policies based on cloudy, inexact assumption," Craig said in a news release.
Nor should taxpayers' dollars be flushed away on ridiculously expensive, and plainly ineffective, measures like the barging of salmon smolt currently favored by the Bush administration.
And, like all good Republicans these days, Craig distorted and falsified the record while justifying the line cut:
On the Senate floor this month, he justified elimination of the Fish Passage Center on the grounds that "many questions have arisen regarding the reliability of the technical data" it publishes. Craig quoted from the report of an independent scientific advisory board that in 2003 reviewed work done by the Fish Passage Center.
But one of the report's authors, Charles C. Coutant, a fishery ecologist who retired this year from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said Craig neglected to mention that the board found the work of the center to be "of high technical quality."
"Craig was very selective in reflecting just the critical part of a quotation from the report," said Coutant, who has worked on Columbia River salmon issues for 16 years. "It did give a misleading impression about our board's view of the Fish Passage Center."
Craig also said on the Senate floor that "other institutions" in the Northwest now do "most" of the data collection work done by center. He said getting rid of the center would reduce redundancy and increase the efficiency of regional fish programs.
But according to another recent independent scientific assessment of the work of the center, there was little duplication of data collection between the center and other organizations; it recommended that the center continue to receive funding to meet a substantial need in the Northwest for information on salmon survival.
Fish and game agencies in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, Indian tribes with fishing rights on the river and the governors of Oregon and Washington have all said that eliminating the Fish Passage Center is a bad idea that would reduce the quality of information on endangered salmon.
As Chris Mooney points out:
Craig's "scientific" rationales for killing this scientific agency don't add up. It's clear that this was about politics -- and about appeasing Craig's political allies in the hydropower industry.
Paul Vandevelder explained in the P-I the other day just how grotesque a piece of bad government this move by Craig really is. The significant point is that cutting out the center means silencing one of the real sources of actual data that proved, beyond any question, that the Bush salmon recovery efforts were failing. It's an effective way of silencing your critics:
Scientific data gathered by an independent agency, the Fish Passage Center, showed that the BPA's strategy of trucking and barging fish around dams has been a $3 billion boondoggle. Under the care of BPA hydrologists, fish survival rates have plummeted. In June, the judge set aside the projected loss and ruled in favor of the fish. Within days, Idaho Sen. Larry E. Craig (named "Legislator of the Year" by the National Hydropower Association) inserted language into a Senate energy bill that would "zero out" funding for the Fish Passage Center.
The FPC, as it is known, was established in 1984 after Congress passed the Northwest Power Act, a toothsome law that put salmon protection on an "equal footing" with power generators, barge operators, ratepayers and irrigators. For more than 20 years, the FPC has collected and distributed scientific data to state, tribal and federal fisheries biologists and the courts. The center's longtime manager, Michele DeHart, admits that data has put politicians between a rock and a wet place by proving, conclusively, that the hydro-power infrastructure kill fish.
Nevertheless, "I guess I am flabbergasted," says DeHart, whose agency is now scheduled to vanish in March. "We are biologists and computer scientists, and what we do is just math."
The rider that Craig attached to the Senate energy bill is a shot across Redden's bow. As the man responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act on the Columbia and Snake rivers, Redden relies on scientific data to make sound decisions. "I think it would be a drastic mistake for them (Congress) to yank the subsidy from the center (FPC) which has been giving out neutral information for many years," said Redden at a hearing on Sept. 30. "I hope that does not happen."
Craig attempted to explain his action in a speech to the Senate, in November, by claiming that data gathered by the FPC is "cloaked in advocacy" and that "false science leads people to false choices." Inexplicably, neither Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden or Washington Sens. Patty Murray nor Maria Cantwell, challenged Craig's nonsensical assertions.
Two decades of scientific data supports neither the BPA's recovery strategy nor the senator's make-believe world. When the spill concluded last September, the FPC announced that smolt survival rates in the lower Snake River were the "highest recorded in recent years," a year-over year jump from 30 percent to 74 percent. Craig finessed that embarrassing detail in his speech to the Senate. Nor did he mention that the BPA actually reduced its late summer wholesale rates by 1.6 percent thanks to surplus power sales that exceeded forecasts by $20 million.
No wonder they want to kill the messenger: they want to kill the message. That's how you maintain that constructed version of reality.
But the real version of reality, as always, has its own way of asserting itself. And it can be very, very painful when it does.
The action-hero presidency
I used to wonder, back when George W. Bush was doing things like flying in a fighter jet onto aircraft carriers while wearing well-endowed jumpsuits, and then getting action figures made to commemorate the event, how many times he had been watching Air Force One. Because it was self-evident that Bush was going to model his presidency not after his famously wimpy father, but after Harrison Ford.
You've seen Air Force One, right? I thought the movie was a clever idea: the president as action hero. Personally, I most liked the climactic scene where a really pissed-off Ford finally shoves the evil terrorist Gary Oldman out the back end of a plane. Boy, talk about satisfying.
And then there was the speech he gave:
Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.
Sounds like ... a George W. Bush speech.
Of course, like all action films, Air Force One is terribly cheesy in execution, and all slathered with the usual moral fable: the instinctive action of the hero is always superior to the overwrought intellectualism of his enemies, not to mention their morally feeble enablers.
It's the same in every action film: In addition to the actual enemy, the hero must also overcome the limp-wristed hang-wringers who think too much: they worry about things like constitutional rights and whether or not the enemy is being mistreated. Sometimes these people are politicians or law-enforcement officials; sometimes they're members of the media. But it's always the same: They're nearly as noxious as (and sometimes share the fate of) the enemy himself.
Clint Eastwood was especially good at films like this: Dirty Harry is a classic of the genre, replete with an interfering DA who handcuffs our hero at every turn. Bruce Willis also made a lot of flicks like this; the first two Die Hard films featured both FBI agents and local reporters who cause trouble for our hero.
Then there are more recent permutations, particularly on network TV (think action shows like 24) in which the hero is forced to push the boundaries of what's legal in order to achieve results -- especially when it comes to saving thousands of lives from a terrorist attack.
Now, to hear folks on the right talk, you'd think that George W. Bush was indeed cut in the mold of Harrison Ford and Kiefer Sutherland, with a dash of Bruce on the side. Don't these wimps complaining about his surveillance of American citizens without warrant or oversight know we're in a war on terror?
I mean, what good is the Constitution if all it does is enable evil terrorists to endanger the lives of us all? Right? We should be able to pick and choose whose rights we protect, because you never know when someone is gonna set off a nuke in your kids' playground.
It's too easy to say that George W. Bush and his cult of defenders on the right have watched too many of these action films. Rather, what is more noteworthy is that this public response taps directly into those well-established sentiments about heroic action. It's actually rather a brilliant stroke: Republicans are appealing to an American public already profoundly propagandized by a steady diet of Hollywood-produced action flicks and revenge melodramas. Movies in which such niceties as civil rights are readily discarded in the pursuit of justice.
Mind you, it matters little that the reality is that 24-type situations, in which life-and-death issues hang on questions of torture and surveillance, are so extremely rare that their likelihood is nearly nil. Moreover, the system of justice is designed so that considerations like preventing the deaths of innocents can be readily taken into account later.
These "annoying" laws exist for a reason fundamental to the very foundations of modern society: This is a nation of laws, not men. And while it's easy and convenient to discard those principles in the flimsy context of a movie, doing so in real life has profound and lasting complications.
I think what you can say is that the Bush team is cynically manipulating public sentiment for the sake of pushing the limits of presidential power. It's a brilliant move, really, tapping into an aspect of the psyche that has been preconditioned by a hoary myth that has been perpetuated over the years by Hollywood: the notion that the action-driven hero's instincts for "saving lives" are superior to careful reasoning and principled restraint.
But it sure is weird for a bunch of people who make a living out of deriding "Hollywood values."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


and your arms wrap around me and I am satisfied.
eddies of meaning in the delta.
as their tense, their mood come to light.
in the portico, peeping through the cracked wall.
Or what she said to keep her away.
Persephone would have liked to know.
filled by the purlings of the Styx.
insomnia as she tosses her tired head this way and that.
where she was desirable as a wife.
stretched to crows' feet as she smiles.
rising up through her thighs.
her soft legs parting for Hades.
what would be a good outcome.
like thong weed in the sea.
I let it all hang out.
to rise up to its thin skin.
You turn me around and change the frame.
when the wind dies down.
as it comes in from the sea.
with red and gold at sunset.
Mary Madec was born and raised in Mayo. She studied at NUI, Galway (B.A., M.A., H.Dip Ed.) and at the University of Pennsylvania from which she received a doctorate in Linguistics in 2002. She has published widely (Crannóg, West 47, The Cuirt Annual, Poetry Ireland Review, the SHOp, The Sunday Tribune, Southword, Iota, Nth Position, Natural Bridge and The Stand Orbis, The Fox Chase Review,The Recorder among others. Her first collection, In Other Words, appeared with Salmon Poetry in 2010 ; her second collection, Demeter Does Not Remember also with Salmon Poetry at the end of 2014. She has received several awards and prizes most notably the Hennessy XO Prize for Emerging Poetry in 2008. She co-founded a community writing project and she teaches a residential course at Kylemore Abbey every summer. She works for Villanova University in Ireland.


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Total War: Rome 2 Coming To SteamOS
Nov. 7. 2013 11:15 AM
Despite the rocky launch, the divisive fallout between fans and the developers over the bugs, missing features and broken gameplay mechanics, Creative Assembly has undertaken a task to restore the faith that the community once had in them by unleashing new DLC, new patches, new fixes and a pledge of allegiance to Valve's new SteamOS.
As noted on an official Steam community post, Valve employee Greg Coomer made it clear that Creative Assembly is on board with the new SteamOS, which is part of Valve's three-point stance to overthrow Microsoft and bring open-source systems to mainstream PC gaming.
Creative Assembly's Rob Bartholomew let the community know that...
At Creative Assembly we want our customers to be able to play on as many platforms and in as many locations as possible, so today we are announcing future support for both SteamOS and the Steam Controller.
We've always wanted the Total War franchise to be enjoyed by living room gamers, but the limitations of traditional hardware made our style of game play impossible. Last month, when Valve invited us to test out the new Steam Controller and unveiled their plans for SteamOS - we were impressed.
ROME II will be launching on Linux early next year, with full Steam Controller and Big Picture support to be added as soon as Valve gets us a controller dev kit.
This is pretty great news. Despite some gamers still having issues with Creative Assembly over the launch of Rome II, we still have to admit that it's a fairly powerful series and commands a lot of weight in the PC gaming community. In addition to this, one of the big concerns from gamers is that SteamOS is a great venture by Valve but could potentially hit hang-ups do to the lack of support, especially by established brands and publishers.
Creatively Assembly stepping forward to offer support for the SteamOS is a great sign of goodwill toward their fanbase, and during these turbulent times it's nice to see something like this pop up in the news to ease some of the tension that's been bloating up like a giant white, puss-filled pimple on a pencil-necked teen's face.
For the most part, the Reddit community, the forum community and the Steam community seem to be responding with quite a bit of positive feedback regarding the game arriving on SteamOS.
Much of the vitriol that took flight like a kite being swept up in the autumn winds across the flat plains of Cumbernauld, Scotland have died away. Thankfully the pent up rage of gamers subsided as Creative Assembly rolled out more patches and now it's a matter of fans easing back into the cuddle of CA's arms. The blood and gore DLC is still questionable, though, but I digress.
As noted in Bartholomew's post, Rome II will be available on Linux and SteamOS supported platforms in early 2014. This weekend the game will be 25% off and those who purchase early will gain instant access to the Linux version once it becomes available.
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Miller/Coors Distributor: 'Side Loaders Way to Go'
Home » The Mickey Spirit » Miller/Coors Distributor: 'Side Loaders Way to Go'
When Ted Hudson talks about delivering beverages off a truck, he brings a little more perspective into the conversation than your average Operations Manager, the position he currently holds for Bonbright Distributors, a Dayton, OH-based distributor of Miller/Coors and a slew of other brands, including imports and crafts.
That's because before he took this job, Hudson spent 14 years as a driver in a route sales system. "But our portfolios got so big that driver-sell went out the door in favor of pre-sell," he explains. "You can't afford to put anything on that truck that is not accounted for or pre sold, because every inch of space is needed to carry all the brands in the warehouse." Bonbright offers 150 beer brands in about a thousand different packages – "20 packages for Miller Lite alone." For that reason, "Side loaders, by far, are the way to go." In fact, the only beer that does not go on a Bonbright side loader is draft; kegs are delivered via rear-load trailers.
Bonbright's Ted Hudson gets side loaders ready to go.
Bonbright delivers across 8 counties to several thousand accounts representing virtually every retail format, and "side loaders are the most versatile units we can buy," says Hudson. "Compared with straight trucks or tractor trailers they drive better, turn better, stop better – they do everything better. With side loaders we get all the beer on the truck and the driver can unload the right beer in the right order at the right stop. He has easy access to all the beer." During the holidays, when the route count escalates, Hudson may use some of the company's draft trucks to deliver hand-built orders that are shrink wrapped on skids to the back dock. "But building separate orders for each account takes so much more time that it's really not cost effective in a 100% pre-sell system," he explains. "Side loading is the natural way to deliver."
(Editor's Note: A nationwide analysis conducted by Mickey Truck Bodies using capital, operational and refurbishment cost data from 20+ customers, found that distributors can lower per-case delivery costs to convenience stores by 4-6 cents versus rear loaders. Contact your Mickey representative for details of the study.)
Bonbright's fleet consists primarily of 18-bay single axle side load trailers, which it has been buying from Mickey Truck Bodies since 1998. "We're pretty much all Mickey," says Hudson. "They make a quality product and offer it at a fair price. And they always give us what we're looking for in terms of special bay configurations and weight limitations."
That last part is particularly significant since Bonbright delivers to such a diverse base of retail footprints, including convenience and drug stores, supermarkets, small "mom-and-pops" and warehouse clubs. "In a delivery system like ours, where we service all accounts from the same truck, Mickey's custom bay configurations are critical," according to Hudson. "We put the heavier orders on the bottom of the bays and the smaller ones on top, and let the driver 'stack down'." Some of the routes include warehouse clubs and require wider bays to hold skids.
"Mickey has always delivered what we need, when we need it," says Hudson. He relates a "case in point" earlier this year when the distributor procured another beer brand and needed an additional trailer to carry the load. "They came through without a problem. They are always willing to work with us. It's good to know they're there for us when we need them."


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Twin Rivers is a real slice of what fly fishing in New Zealand is all about. Hiking up rivers through majestic forests, rock hopping towards the next pool, this is the sport that Kiwis know and love.
The West at it's Best!
Surrounded by the wilderness of New Zealand's largest Conservation Park, Twin Rivers is a truly secluded location that is suited to the angler that seeks the true rustic kiwi experience.
Guests fish primarily for brown trout on a huge variety of rivers and streams. Dry fly and nymph, sight fishing is the only way to go.
The fishery is limited to 4 rods to ensure you experience true angling solitude.
Twin Rivers, -, Reefton, West Coast, New Zealand.


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The Marshall Plan Holds Lessons for Present Tensions With Russia, Benn Steil Writes in New Book
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Walking Away From World Order: Weighing Trump's First Year of Foreign Policy
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text:
Goães foi uma freguesia portuguesa do concelho de Vila Verde, com 3,57 km² de área e 546 habitantes (2011). Densidade: 152,9 hab/km².

População

História
Pertencia ao concelho de Penela do Minho, com sede na freguesia de Portela das Cabras. Em 1855 passou para o concelho de Vila Verde.

Foi sede de uma freguesia extinta (agregada) em 2013, no âmbito de uma reforma administrativa nacional, para, em conjunto com Duas Igrejas, Rio Mau, Godinhaços, Pedregais, Azões e Portela das Cabras, formar uma nova freguesia denominada União das Freguesias da Ribeira do Neiva.

Lugares
Aldeia, Amarela,Assento, Borrainho, Boucinha, Calçaperra, Carrapata, Casa Nova, Casais, Caselho, Cedofeita, Costeira, Coura, Eirinhas, Fonte Fria, Gestosa, Guarda e Leiras, Hospital, Loureiro, Monte da Ribeira, Monte e Pico, Montinho, Mourisco, Outeiro, Quintães, Residencia, Ribeira, Ribeiro, Rimos, Sandelhas, Santo Tirso, Soutelo, Trigães, Veiga e Vilar.

Antigas freguesias de Vila Verde
Antigas freguesias de Penela do Minho

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


This mutant green-house-boat, AKA Jellyfish Barge, is a floating crop cultivator that doesn't rely on soil, fresh water or chemical energy. Say what? Yep, this beauty purifies salt and/or polluted water thanks to desalination units that produce up to 150L of clean H2O per day. But wait, there's so much more. Did you want Jellyfish Barge to float on recycled plastic drums? It does. Did you want to monitor and control your Jellyfish Barge remotely? Of course you can. Were you wondering how it's all powered? With solar panels, duh.


Welcome to the "Nebraska Seabees" web site! Our Nebraska Seabee Monument was dedicated in 2005, at the Veterans Memorial Gardens of Antelope Park, Lincoln, Nebraska. To view images of our monument click here Nebraska Navy Seabees Monument. To enter our website click here..... (Enter).
to order a Bronze Seabee Seal/Flag Holder.


text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net.Configuration;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace Sid.WebServices
{
    /// <summary>
    /// This is a trie of uri segments, not characters (as is more frequently the case).
    /// It's responsible for storing the segments of all the endpoint paths (RootPathAttribute
    /// plus BaseRouteAttribute concatenated) and building pathRegexes for them so that
    /// Path Parameters can be resolved properly, and the requests can go to the correct
    /// method.
    /// </summary>
    public class Trie
    {
        // The segment that belongs to this Trie.
        public string Segment { get; set; }

        // Terminal nodes have EndPointDescriptors.
        public IEndPointDescriptor EndPoint { get; set; }

        // Child Nodes.
        public List<Trie> Children { get; set; }

        public bool IsPath {
            get {
                return Path != null;
            }
        }

        public string Path { get; set; }

        public bool IsPathRegex {
            get {
                return PathRegex != null;
            }
        }

        public Regex PathRegex { get; set; }

        public bool IsNodeReplaceableToken { get; set; }

        // Used for expressions like "{path*}".  We're not supporting anything more
        // sophisticated.
        public bool IsGreedyStar { get; set; }

        public bool Terminal { get; set; }

        /// <summary>
        /// The default constructor is used for the root of the Trie.
        /// </summary>
        public Trie()
        {
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// This constructor is used when a child Trie node is being created.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="segment">Uri segment.</param>
        /// <param name="replaceableToken">Is this a replaceable token node?</param>
        /// <param name="greedyStar">Is this a 'greedy star' node, e.g.' {path*}</param>
        public Trie(string segment, bool replaceableToken, bool greedyStar) {
            Segment = segment;
            IsNodeReplaceableToken = replaceableToken;
            IsGreedyStar = greedyStar;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Given a request, returns the EndPointDescriptor for making the call, and a
        /// pathRegex for use in resolving path parameters.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>An EndPointDescriptor.</returns>
        /// <param name="uri">The Uri to resolve.</param>
        /// <param name="pathRegex">(out) an optional regex for use when resolving path
        /// parameters.</param>
        public IEndPointDescriptor ResolveRequest(Uri uri, out Regex pathRegex)
        {
            pathRegex = null;

            var segs = GetSegs(uri);
            var trie = this;
            var i = 0;
            while (trie != null && i < segs.Length) {
                trie = trie.Next(segs, i++);
                if (trie == null || !trie.IsPath) {
                    continue;
                }
                if (i == segs.Length || trie.IsGreedyStar) {
                    pathRegex = trie.PathRegex;
                    return trie.EndPoint;
                }
            }
            return null;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Given a Uri, returns the segments as a string array, with the whacks ('/') trimmed
        /// off.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The segments as string array.</returns>
        /// <param name="uri">The Uri input.</param>
        static string[] GetSegs(Uri uri)
        {
            var segs = uri.Segments.Select(s => s.Trim('/'))
                .Where(ss => !String.IsNullOrEmpty(ss)).ToArray();
            return segs;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Standard Trie stuff.  Walks the Trie.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="segments">List of segments.</param>
        /// <param name="currIndex">Current segment we're processing.</param>
        /// <param name="merging">We're in middle of merge</param>
        public Trie Next(String[] segments, int currIndex,
                            bool merging = false)
        {
            var segment = segments[currIndex];
            if (Children == null) {
                return null;
            }

            // Look for a literal exact match first.  That always wins.
            var exactMatch = Children.SingleOrDefault(c => c
                .Segment.Equals(segment, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));

            if (exactMatch != null) {
                return exactMatch;
            }

            // If we are merging, we do NOT consider a replaceable token as a match; when
            // merging, if you hit a replaceable token node in the destination (merged-to)
            // data structure, that immediately means you need a new sub-route. On the other
            // hand, insertions are always done on a brand-new empty Trie, and so there's
            // nothing to discover.  The third case, at request time, you do want to look for
            // replaceable token nodes, in order to see if this portion of the incoming
            // request path represents a match.
            if (!merging) {
                var matchingChild = LookForReplacableTokenPath(segments);
                if (matchingChild != null) {
                    return matchingChild;
                }
            }

            return null;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Looks for a child with a replaceable token path in it.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The Trie node that matches the input segment.</returns>
        /// <param name="segments">Segments.</param>
        private Trie LookForReplacableTokenPath(string[] segments)
        {
            /* ********************************************************************************
            if you have intermediate paths in the trie for routes like:

            /a/b
            /a/{id}     --  where {id} means a replaceable token i.e. PathAttribute
            /a/{siteId}\settings
            /a/c

            which sorta looks like:

                             (a)
                     ________ |  ______________________
                   |               /    \              |
                  (b)          ({id}  {(siteId}       (c)
                                             |
                                           (settings)

            You need to be able to disambiguate between these.   The path '/content/sites/2345'
            looks very similar to the Trie (from a single-node standpoint) to
            '/content/sites/2345/settings'.), if you only look at each Trie node in isolation.

            To disambiguate these, we leverage the fact hat every single terminal node (with
            replaceable parameters in the path) in the Trie is storing a complete Regex - it's
            already there, was created at startup time; it's ready for use.

            So, in this example, when at point (a), and the current segment is named '2345', to
            find a path to choose from, first look at (b) and (c), and see if a literal match
            exists. If so, that always takes precedence.  If not, then look at {id}, and
            {siteId}, and get the regexes from their terminal Trie nodes, and match it
            against the entire path (e.g. a/{siteId}/settings).

            There can only be one at best one match, and the code will throw an exception if
            more than one appears; this means developers have created un-disambiguatable
            endpoint paths (which is entirely possible), and they need to change one of those
            paths to restore uniqueness.
            **********************************************************************************/

            // Look for all the kids with replaceable tokens.
            var tokenKids = Children.Where(k => k.IsNodeReplaceableToken).ToList();

            // If any, then we have a potential match.
            if (!tokenKids.Any()) {
                return null;
            }
            // If only one, we're good.
            if (tokenKids.Count == 1) {
                return tokenKids[0];
            }

            // If more than one, we have to disambiguate which one it is.  This is
            // where we're going to have to match on the regex.
            var path = string.Join("/", segments);
            var pathRegexes = new List<KeyValuePair<Regex, Trie>>();
            foreach (var tokenKid in tokenKids) {
                pathRegexes.AddRange(tokenKid.GetPathRegexes(tokenKid));
            }
            var matches = pathRegexes.Where(kvp => kvp.Key.IsMatch(path))
                .ToList();

            if (matches.Count == 0) {
                return null;
            }
            if (matches.Count > 1) {
                throw new Exception(
                    string.Format("Path {0} matches more than one endpoint regex, matches {1}",
                                path,
                                string.Join(" and ", matches.Select(m => m.Key.ToString()))));
            }

            // Found the trie node that matches.
            return matches[0].Value;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Given an intermediate node, gets the list of terminal regexes for the various
        /// sub-paths that sprout from it.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>A list of regexes, paired with the trie from *this* level that is the
        ///root to the matching sub-path.  Basically, each one just uses the passed-in trie
        /// as a value in the keyvaluepair, but this is called for each child, and aggregated;
        /// there's a different trie for each 'batch' of these.</returns>
        /// <param name="trie">Trie.</param>
        IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<Regex, Trie>> GetPathRegexes(Trie trie)
        {
            var regexes = new List<KeyValuePair<Regex, Trie>>();
            if (IsPathRegex) {
                regexes.Add(new KeyValuePair<Regex, Trie>(PathRegex, trie));
            }
            if (Children == null) {
                return regexes;
            }
            foreach (var child in Children) {
                regexes.AddRange(child.GetPathRegexes(trie)); // pass in parent Trie.
            }
            return regexes;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Merges a single path trie to an already-existing one.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="trieToMerge">Single path trie to merge.</param>
        /// <param name="trieToMergePath">Path for merging trie.</param>
        public void Merge(Trie trieToMerge, string trieToMergePath) {
            var thisTrie = this;
            var segs = trieToMergePath.Trim('/').Split('/');

            var i = 0;
            while (i < segs.Length) {
                trieToMerge = trieToMerge.Next(segs, i);
                if (trieToMerge == null) {
                    break;
                }
                var next = thisTrie.Next(segs, i, true);
                i++;

                // If Next returns null, or the segment it returns does not equal this
                // one, and it's not a replaceable token, then create a new one here.
                if (next == null ||
                    (!next.Segment.Equals(trieToMerge.Segment) &&
                    !next.IsNodeReplaceableToken)) {
                    if (thisTrie.Children == null) {
                        thisTrie.Children = new List<Trie>();
                    }
                    thisTrie.Children.Add(trieToMerge);
                    return;
                }
                thisTrie = next;
            }
            ShallowClone(thisTrie, trieToMerge, trieToMergePath);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Returns the replaceable tokens for a segment for a given path.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="path"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public List<string> GetReplaceableTokens(string path) {
            var trie = this;
            var tokens = new List<string>();
            var segments = path.Split('/');
            //foreach (var segment in segments) {
            for (var i = 0; i < segments.Length; i++) {
                trie = trie.Next(segments, i);
                if (trie == null) {
                    throw new Exception(String.Format("FATAL ERROR - could not find segment " +
                    "{0} in Trie when searching for replaceable tokens for path {1}",
                        segments[i], path));
                }
                if (trie.IsNodeReplaceableToken) {
                    tokens.Add(trie.Segment.TrimStart('{').TrimEnd('}', '*'));
                }
            }
            return tokens;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Clone the trie node, but not its children.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="source">source</param>
        /// <param name="trieToMergePath">Path for node.</param>
        /// <param name="destination">Destination.</param>
        static void ShallowClone(Trie destination, Trie source, string trieToMergePath)
        {
            destination.Path = trieToMergePath;
            destination.Terminal = source.Terminal;
            destination.IsGreedyStar = source.IsGreedyStar;

            // Don't allow new shorter terminal paths to override the replaceable token nature
            // of longer paths that share a subpath.
            if (source.IsNodeReplaceableToken) {
                destination.IsNodeReplaceableToken = source.IsNodeReplaceableToken;
            }
            destination.PathRegex = source.PathRegex;
            destination.EndPoint = source.EndPoint;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Loads up a trie with a complete path.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="path">Path to break into nodes and store.</param>
        /// <param name="endPoint">EndPointDescriptor to store at the terminus.</param>
        public void Insert(string path, IEndPointDescriptor endPoint)
        {
            var createRegex = false;
            var t = this;
            var inputSegments = path.Split('/');
            var regexPathSegments = new List<string>();

            var i = 0;
            foreach (var segment in inputSegments) {
                var greedyStar = false;
                var regexString = CheckIfReplaceableToken(segment, out greedyStar);
                regexPathSegments.Add(regexString ?? segment);
                var segmentIsRegex = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(regexString);
                createRegex = createRegex | segmentIsRegex;

                var next = t.Next(inputSegments, i++);
                if (next == null) {
                    next = new Trie(segment, segmentIsRegex, greedyStar);
                    if (t.Children == null) {
                        t.Children = new List<Trie>();
                    }
                    t.Children.Add(next);
                }
                t = next;
                if (greedyStar) {
                    break;
                }
            }
            t.Terminal = true;
            t.Path = path;
            t.EndPoint = endPoint;
            if (!createRegex) {
                return;
            }
            t.PathRegex = new Regex("^/?" + string.Join("/", regexPathSegments) + "$",
                RegexOptions.Compiled);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Looks for replaceable tokens, e.g. "{termid}", notes if found with the necessary
        /// bit of regex pattern text.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The if replaceable token.</returns>
        /// <param name="segment">Segment.</param>
        /// <param name="greedyStar">Greedy star.</param>
        private string CheckIfReplaceableToken(string segment, out bool greedyStar)
        {
            greedyStar = false;
            if (!segment.Contains('{')) {
                return null;  // This is the normal, non-tokenized case.
            }
            // This is all done at startup, so it's reasonable to take the computational time
            // to check for silliness.
            if (!segment.StartsWith("{") || !segment.EndsWith("}")) {
                throw new Exception(String.Format("Path segment {0} badly formed", segment));
            }

            segment = segment.TrimStart('{').TrimEnd('}');
            greedyStar = segment.EndsWith("*");
            var regexString = String.Format(greedyStar ?
                "(?<{0}>.+)" : "(?<{0}>[^/]+)", segment.TrimEnd('*'));
            return regexString;
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
1Pronunciation
4Economic development
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town
Regions with significant populations
English, Mvskoke
Protestantism, traditional tribal religion
Related ethnic groups
Other Muskogean peoples, including Alabama, Coushatta, Miccosukee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town is both a federally recognized Native American tribe and a traditional township of Muscogee Creek Indians, based in Oklahoma. The tribe's native language is Mvskoke, also called Creek.
An item in the Tulsa World explained: "The sound of the "thl" is usually spelled with an "r" in the Muscogee language and is pronounced in English by placing the tongue halfway between the "th" position and the "l" position."[2]
Sign to Tribal Town
The Muscogee Creek confederacy was composed of autonomous tribal towns, governed by their own elected leadership. The Creek originated in the Southeastern United States, in what is now Alabama and Georgia. They were collectively removed from the southeast to Indian Territory under the United States' Indian Removal Policy of the 1830s.[3]
Before 1832, the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town split from a larger town. It was removed to Indian Territory in 1835.[3] The members of the town settled in an area south of Okemah, Oklahoma, in what would become Okfuskee County, on lands that were originally occupied by the Osage and Quapaw. Those tribes ceded their lands to the US by 1825.[4]
During the American Civil War, Thlopthlocco Tribal Town was briefly the headquarters of Confederate Col. Douglas H. Cooper. Greenleaf Town, located five miles northwest of Thlopthlocco, was the headquarters of Opothleyahola, a Muscogee leader who worked to resolve conflicts between the Creek factions during the war. He and 5000 others moved north to Kansas to avoid the Civil War. After the war, the Muscogee Creek collectively signed the 1866 Treaty with the United States and freed their slaves. The treaty also called for the Creek Freedmen to have membership in the Muscogee Nation. The freedmen settled new townships in Okfuskee County, including Boley, Bookertee, Clearview, Chilesville, and Rusk.[4]
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town retained its tribal identity despite allotments of land to individual households under the Dawes Commission of 1896. From 1898 to 1906, members among the Five Civilized Tribes were registered on what have come to be known as the Dawes Rolls. After making allotments to households registered with the tribes, the US government declared other formerly tribal land as surplus and sold it to European-American settlers after 1906. This further broke up tribal communal territory.
The Thlopthlocco Tribal members organized as a distinct tribe under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936, which followed the national Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.[3] The original headquarters for the tribe was the Thlopthlocco Methodist Episcopal Church, located between Wetumka and Okemah.[5]
In August 2012, National Indian Gaming Commission gave a notice to Thlopthlocco Tribal Town for their violation of Indian Gaming Regulatory Act by allowing two casinos without a management contract.[6]
In August 2014, Thlopthlocco Tribal Town received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of their partnership with Euchee Butterfly Farm to expand butterfly farming.[7]
Government[edit]
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town is now headquartered in Okemah and Clearview, Oklahoma. Tribal enrollment is 845, with 728 members living within the state of Oklahoma, and is based on lineal descent. Ryan Morrow is the elected Mekko, or Town King.[1] He succeeded Vernon Yarholar.[8]
The tribal jurisdictional area of Thlopthlocco is within Creek, Hughes, Mayes, McIntosh, Muskogee, Okfuskee, Okmulgee, Rogers, Seminole, Tulsa, and Wagoner Counties.[1] The tribe maintains a close relationship with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and falls under the jurisdiction of their tribal courts.
Economic development[edit]
Thlopthlocco operates its own tribal housing program, smoke shop, and the Golden Pony Casino, located in Okemah. The tribe's economic impact for 2011 was $12,500,000.[1]
Two Atlanta, Georgia-based companies, named Titan Network LLC and Mercury Gaming Group LLC, operate casinos in the town, including Golden Pony Casino.[9]
^ a b c d 2011 Oklahoma Indian Nations Pocket Pictorial Directory. Archived 2012-04-24 at the Wayback Machine Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission. 2011: 35. Retrieved 8 Feb 2012.
^ Tulsa World. "Rough pronunciation for Thlopthlocco: Thlop-thloc-co." January 19, 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2013.[1]
^ a b c Moore, John H. "Thlopthlocco Tribal Town." Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture (retrieved 8 April 2009)
^ a b Wilson, Linda D. "Okfuskee County", Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. (retrieved 20 July 2011)
^ "Thlopthlocco Tribal Town | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture". www.okhistory.org.
^ Writer, SUSAN HYLTON World Staff. "Thlopthlocco Tribal Town in Okemah is hit with federal violation over casino". Tulsa World.
^ Writer, NOUR HABIB World Staff. "Thlopthlocco Tribal Town receives $500,000 grant for butterfly farming". Tulsa World.
^ Oklahoma Tribes, American Indian Cultural Center & Museum, 2009 (retrieved 8 April 2009)
^ Hylton, Susan. Tulsa World. "Tribal town hit with federal violation." Retrieved February 16, 2013.[2]
Tlopthlocco Tribal Town, official website
Constitution and By-Laws of the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, Thorpe College, University of Oklahoma
Native American tribes in Oklahoma
Federally
Absentee Shawnee
Alabama-Quassarte
Cheyenne and Arapaho
Citizen Potawatomi
Delaware Nation
Delaware Tribe
Eastern Shawnee
Fort Sill Apache
Kialegee
Kickapoo
Muscogee (Creek)
Otoe-Missouria
Pawnee
Ponca
Quapaw
Sac and Fox
Seneca-Cayuga
Thlopthlocco
United Keetoowah
Tribal languages
(still spoken)
Chiwere (Iowa and Otoe)
Koasati
Hitchiti-Mikasuki
Mescalero-Chiricahua
Mesquakie (Fox, Kickapoo, and Sauk)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thlopthlocco_Tribal_Town&oldid=1097519357"
Muscogee tribal towns
Federally recognized tribes in the United States
"Related ethnic groups" needing confirmation
Articles using infobox ethnic group with image parameters
This page was last edited on 11 July 2022, at 05:49 (UTC).


text:
Torture Inc. America's Brutal Prisons
By Truman On 26 Maggio 2005 145
Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?
By Deborah Davies
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It's terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you're not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying. The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. 'Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.'
If a prisoner doesn't drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There's a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.
Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can't crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes.
Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking.
Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards.
The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar. These were exactly the kind of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that shocked the world this time last year.
And they are similar, too, to the images of brutality against Iraqi prisoners that this week led to the conviction of three British soldiers.
But there is a difference. These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone. They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4 that will be broadcast next week.
Our findings were not based on rumour or suspicion. They were based on solid evidence, chiefly videotapes that we collected from all over the U.S.
In many American states, prison regulations demand that any 'use of force operation', such as searching cells for drugs, must be filmed by a guard.
The theory is that the tapes will show proper procedure was followed and that no excessive force was used. In fact, many of them record the exact opposite.
Each tape provides a shocking insight into the reality of life inside the U.S. prison system – a reality that sits very uncomfortably with President Bush's commitment to the battle for freedom and democracy against the forces of tyranny and oppression.
In fact, the Texas episode outlined above dates from 1996, when Bush was state Governor.
Frank Carlson was one of the lawyers who fought a compensation battle on behalf of the victims. I asked him about his reaction when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year and U.S. politicians rushed to express their astonishment and disgust that such abuses could happen at the hands of American guards.
'I thought: "What hypocrisy," Carlson told me. 'Because they know we do it here every day.'
All the lawyers I spoke to during our investigations shared Carlson's belief that Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few rogue individuals, was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time. They pointed to the mountain of files stacked on their desks, on the floor, in their office corridors – endless stories of appalling, sadistic treatment inside America's own prisons.
Many of the tapes we've collected are several years old. That's because they only surface when determined lawyers prise them out of reluctant state prison departments during protracted lawsuits.
But for every 'historical' tape we collected, we also found a more recent story. What you see on the tape is still happening daily.
It's terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you're not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.
In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a 'restraint chair'. His hands and feet are shackled, there's a strap across his chest, his head lolls forward. He looks dead. He's not. Not yet.
The chair is his punishment because guards saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head and he refused to take it off. The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia. Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair. And two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment.
The tape comes from Utah – but there are others from Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Arizona and probably many more. We found more than 20 cases of prisoners who've died in the past few years after being held in a restraint chair.
Two of the deaths we investigated were in the same county jail in Phoenix, Arizona, which is run by a man who revels in the title of 'America's Toughest Sheriff.'
His name is Joe Arpaio. He positively welcomes TV crews and we were promised 'unfettered access.' It was a reassuring turn of phrase – you don't want to be fettered in one of Sheriff Joe's jails.
We uncovered two videotapes from surveillance cameras showing how his tough stance can end in tragedy.
The first tape, from 2001, shows a man named Charles Agster dragged in by police, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. Agster is mentally disturbed and a drug user. He was arrested for causing a disturbance in a late-night grocery store. The police handed him over to the Sheriff's deputies in the jail. Agster is a tiny man, weighing no more than nine stone, but he's struggling.
The tape shows nine deputies manhandling him into the restraint chair. One of them kneels on Agster's stomach, pushing his head forward on to his knees and pulling his arms back to strap his wrists into the chair.
Bending someone double for any length of time is dangerous – the manuals on the use of the 'restraint chair' warn of the dangers of 'positional asphyxia.'
Fifteen minutes later, a nurse notices Agster is unconscious. The cameras show frantic efforts to resuscitate him, but he's already brain dead. He died three days later in hospital. Agster's family is currently suing Arizona County.
His mother, Carol, cried as she told me: 'If that's not torture, I don't know what is.' Charles's father, Chuck, listened in silence as we filmed the interview, but every so often he padded out of the room to cry quietly in the kitchen.
The second tape, from five years earlier, shows Scott Norberg dying a similar death in the same jail. He was also a drug user arrested for causing a nuisance. Norberg was severely beaten by the guards, stunned up to 19 times with a Taser gun and forced into the chair where – like Charles Agster – he suffocated.
The county's insurers paid Norberg's family more than £4 millions in an out-of-court settlement, but the sheriff was furious with the deal. 'My officers were clear,' he said. 'The insurance firm was afraid to go before a jury.'
Now he's determined to fight the Agster case all the way through the courts. Yet tonight, in Sheriff Joe's jail, there'll probably be someone else strapped into the chair.
Not all the tapes we uncovered were filmed by the guards themselves. Linda Evans smuggled a video camera into a hospital to record her son, Brian. You can barely see his face through all the tubes and all you can hear is the rhythmic sucking of the ventilator.
He was another of Sheriff Joe's inmates. After an argument with guards, he told a prison doctor they'd beaten him up. Six days later, he was found unconscious of the floor of his cell with a broken neck, broken toes and internal injuries. After a month in a coma, he died from septicaemia.
'Mr Arpaio is responsible.' Linda Evans told me, struggling to speak through her tears. 'He seems to thrive on this cruelty and this mentality that these men are nothing.'
In some of the tapes it's not just the images, it's also the sounds that are so unbearable. There's one tape from Florida which I've seen dozens of times but it still catches me in the stomach.
It's an authorised 'use of force operation' – so a guard is videoing what happens. They're going to Taser a prisoner for refusing orders.
The tape shows a prisoner lying on an examination table in the prison hospital. The guards are instructing him to climb down into a wheelchair. 'I can't, I can't!' he shouts with increasing desperation. 'It hurts!'
One guard then jabs him on both hips with a Taser. The man jerks as the electricity hits him and shrieks, but still won't get into the wheelchair.
The guards grab him and drop him into the chair. As they try to bend his legs up on to the footrest, he screams in pain. The man's lawyer told me he has a very limited mental capacity. He says he has a back injury and can't walk or bend his legs without intense pain.
The tape becomes even more harrowing. The guards try to make the prisoner stand up and hold a walking frame. He falls on the floor, crying in agony. They Taser him again. He runs out of the energy and breath to cry and just lies there moaning.
One of the most recent video tapes was filmed in January last year. A surveillance camera in a youth institution in California records an argument between staff members and two 'wards' – they're not called prisoners.
One of the youths hits a staff member in the face. He knocks the ward to the floor then sits astride him punching him over and over again in the head.
Watching the tape you can almost feel each blow. The second youth is also punched and kicked in the head – even after he's been handcuffed. Other staff just stand around and watch.
We also collected some truly horrific photographs.
A few years ago, in Florida, the new warden of the high security state prison ordered an end to the videoing of 'use of force operations.' So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners.
But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals. Photographs taken by their lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his hip. Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks.
'They usually use fire extinguishers size canisters of pepper spray,' lawyer Christopher Jones explained. 'We have had prisoners who have had second degree burns all over their bodies.
'The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit. Prisoners report that cardboard is shoved in the crack of the door to make sure it's really air-tight.'
And why were they sprayed? According to the official prison reports, their infringements included banging on the cell door and refusing medication. From the same Florida prison we also have photographs of Frank Valdes – autopsy pictures. Realistically, he had little chance of ever getting out of prison alive. He was on Death Row for killing a prison officer. He had time to reconcile himself to the Electric Chair – he didn't expect to be beaten to death.
Valdes started writing to local Florida newspapers to expose the corruption and brutality of prison officers. So a gang of guards stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs, punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die.
Several of the guards were later charged with murder, but the trial was held in their own small hometown where almost everyone works for, or has connection with, the five prisons which ring the town. The foreman of the jury was former prison officer. The guards were all acquitted.
Meanwhile, the warden who was in charge of the prison at the time of the killing – the same man who changed the policy on videoing – has been promoted. He's now the man in charge of all the Florida prisons.
How could anyone excuse – still less condone – such behaviour? The few prison guards who would talk to us have a siege mentality. They see themselves outnumbered, surrounded by dangerous, violent criminals, so they back each other up, no matter what.
I asked one serving officer what happened if colleagues beat up an inmate. 'We cover up. Because we're the good guys.'
No one should doubt that the vast majority of U.S. prison officers are decent individuals doing their best in difficult circumstances. But when horrific abuse by the few goes unreported and uninvestigated, it solidifies into a general climate of acceptance among the many.
At the same time the overall hardening of attitudes in modern-day America has meant the notion of rehabilitation has been almost lost. The focus is entirely on punishment – even loss of liberty is not seen as punishment enough. Being on the restraint devices and the chemical sprays.
Since we finished filming for the programme in January, I've stayed in contact with various prisoners' rights groups and the families of many of the victims. Every single day come more e-mails full of fresh horror stories. In the past weeks, two more prisoners have died, in Alabama and Ohio. One man was pepper sprayed, the other tasered.
Then, three weeks ago, reports emerged of 20 hours of video material from Guantanamo Bay showing prisoners being stripped, beaten and pepper sprayed. One of those affected is Omar Deghayes, one of the seven British residents still being held there.
His lawyer says Deghayes is now permanently blind in one eye. American military investigators have reviewed the tapes and apparently found 'no evidence of systematic abuse.'
But then, as one of the prison reformers we met on our journey across the U.S. told me: 'We've become immune to the abuse. The brutality has become customary.'
So far, the U.S. government is refusing to release these Guantanamo tapes. If they are ever made public – or leaked – I suspect the images will be very familiar.
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo – or even Texas. The prisoners and all guards may vary, but the abuse is still too familiar. And much is it is taking place in America's own backyard.
Deborah Davies is a reporter for Channel 4 Dispatches. Her investigation, Torture: America's Brutal Prisons, was shown on Wednesday, March 2, at 11.05pm.
To View Video: Click here
www.informationclearinghouse.info and BBC. May 2005
www.globalresearch.ca 23 May 2005
Tragedia, commedia e farsa
Think different ?
INTO THE WILD – AFFASCINANTI RITRATTI DI EUROPEI CHE HANNO ABBANDONATO LA…
L'AUTOMOBILE ? E' MORTA


text:
Daily Trojan Editorial Board
Is military withdrawal from Afghanistan the right choice?
By DAN MORGAN-RUSSELL, POINT / SHERIDAN WATSON, COUNTERPOINT
February 13, 2013 2 Comments/in Columns, Featured, Opinion
Removing more than half of America's troops from Afghanistan will allow the government to focus on other matters.
Tuesday night, in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of 34,000 American troops from Afghanistan. Though the decision comes with concerns, drawing down the number of American troops in Afghanistan is the correct policy to effect.
Robert Calcagno | Daily Trojan
The first problem with the United States' engagement in Afghanistan is that the war is making the situation worse. The goal of the war was originally to disable al-Qaida, but the goal has since become to stop the Taliban insurgency and create a stable and independent Afghan government. To accomplish this goal, the U.S. military has made it a priority to eradicate Taliban insurgents and an attempt to make Afghanistan self-sufficient.
The American invasion, however, has led to an increase in the number of Taliban fighters. From 2001-11, Taliban fighter numbers increased from 200 to 30,000, according to The New York Times. As Australian counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen explained, this is largely because U.S. involvement is so overbearing that many moderate Afghan civilians move to an extremist position as their friends are killed or their neighborhoods are destroyed. An American presence, it appears, is the single greatest recruitment tool for the Taliban. Pulling out now eliminates the motivation to fight for more moderate Afghan civilians and Taliban insurgents.
Undoubtedly, extremist and fundamentalist Taliban fighters will continue to fight the Afghan government for control of the country. However, the Afghan government, the United States and the world will benefit more from withdrawal than from continued engagement.
The next reason to withdraw is because even if United States troops remain in Afghanistan, the United States cannot win the war. Since taking office, Obama has not pledged enough troops to the fight in Afghanistan; his predecessor, President George W. Bush, did not send enough troops during his time in office, either. The current levels of troops are too low for the United States to effectively fight the Taliban, provide security for civilian populations, train replacement Afghan troops and help rebuild infrastructure.
Consequently, U.S. action in these matters is ineffective at best and harmful at worst. The best the U.S. military can do now is to leave the situation. It's arguable that the U.S. had created a worse situation in Afghanistan than before the war. Nevertheless, continued involvement will do more harm than good in Afghanistan.
Finally, the goal of fighting terrorism is best achieved by focusing attention elsewhere. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a speech given on campus last fall, posited that terrorist threats now come from unorganized states. Afghanistan is unstable but far more stable than some other failing states.
If the U.S. government wants to stop terrorism, it should turn its efforts toward aiding fragile and failing states. The government has already taken steps in this direction by helping to stabilize Libya and Egypt after the overthrow of leaders Moammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak, respectively. The United States needs to expand these policies, and reallocating resources from Afghanistan to other sensitive areas is sensible policy.
Dan Morgan-Russell is a freshman majoring in international relations.
The U.S. should wait until Afghanistan is ready to fight terrorism without international aid.
Since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 4,488 military men and women have died. This number is truly astounding because of the fact that these deaths were largely avoidable.Therefore, there was a collective breath of relief when Presidet Barack Obama announced his decision to pull out over half of the troops currently stationed in Afghanistan and bring them home. By this time in 2014, these troops will have returned, and power over military operations would begin to shift to the Afghan government.Though the idea of returning troops is picturesque and heartwarming, the truth is that America is not ready to leave the Middle East.The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should never have been started, but unfortunately, the past cannot be erased and the government must live with those consequences. At the time, Congress was on the lookout for Osama bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction and the dictator Saddam Hussein. Once both were taken care of, the military lingered.It was through this lingering that the United States has landed into the mess that this country is in now. There is no doubt that the military has overstayed its welcome and almost made matters worse for millions of Iraqis and Afghans. Though the country should be ashamed of its decision to go to war, the United States should be even more ashamed for quitting when things are at their worst.
If the embassy attacks in Egypt and Istanbul are any indication, terrorism and anti-American sentiment are coming to a head. Now is the time that the military shows its strength, not the time it backs away. It would be cowardly to remove ourselves from the situation before the safety and welfare of our citizens is assured.
One only needs to look at the disaster known as the Vietnam War for evidence. Retreating with its tail between its legs, the U.S. military became a laughingstock of the world, one that went down in the record books. It is still possible to "fix" Afghanistan, but it requires more work, something that the United States seems incapable of. Instead of giving up, the country needs to put in the effort to fix the problems that it largely started. The American presence in Afghanistan antagonized many, and though it's nice to think that everything will be OK by simply leaving, it's naïve to think that's the case.
It is also imperative to mention the fact that Afghanistan is in no way ready to take control of their military. Still a relatively new democracy, the country still deals with the raging lunacy of the Taliban. By leaving the country, the United States is basically inviting the Taliban back in. The American military provides a sense of security for Afghanistan. This security can back down only when there is an adequate military ready to take its place — and Afghan forces just won't cut it.
Americans want their troops home, but they need to comprehend what they would be leaving: a country barely holding itself together, a country ruined by their acts, a country that still needs a helping hand.
Yes, the United States has its own problems, but it is time that we show the world that we don't give up, and we take accountability for our actions.
Sheridan Watson is a junior majoring in critical studies. She is also the Editorial Director of the Daily Trojan.
Tags: afghanistan, al-qa'ida, army, Barack Obama, george w. bush, robert gates, state of the union address, vietnam war, withdrawal of troops
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Arafat says:
'The only religion I respect is Islam. The only prophet I admire is the Prophet Muhammad.' — Adolf Hitler
In May 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, met with Tripoli's ambassador to London, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. During their discussions, they questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the infant US republic. As Adams and Jefferson later reported to the Continental Congress, the ambassador said the raids were a jihad against infidels. Adja was reported to have said:
" … that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise. "
To quote the scholar Andrew Bostom, "an aggressive jihad was already being waged against the United States almost 200 years prior to America becoming a dominant international power in the Middle East.
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Q: Ubuntu Server 18.04 Freeze with crazy screen I have a server setup with Ubuntu Server 18.04 it works perfectly fine but after about 20-30 hours uptime the system feezes completely. No services on any ports reply. Plugging a monitor into the box gives the login prompt as it should and once the freeze happens the attached image occurs.
How can I go about diagnosing this? I have already ran a memory check for 4 full passes and got a 100 percent pass rate.
Monitor photograph after freeze

A: I'd recommend doing basic hardware diagnostics. Since you aren't using Windows, I've found some links to Ubuntu Questions for that.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/389084/system-testing-tool-for-ubuntu
https://askubuntu.com/questions/109935/are-there-any-hardware-diagnostic-tools
This link below is about fixing a failed upgrade, but the steps seem relevant to any possible OS repair scenario.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/748289/how-to-repair-ubuntu-installation-after-interrupted-dist-upgrade-without-losing
The askubuntu.com site is part of the StackExchange family of sites, so you might want to consider asking there, since it might get your some better answers. Because it focuses on Linux, specifically Ubuntu, you're more likely to get the experts who actually know what they're talking about. This forum is a mix of Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other systems.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange