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ment as “Other Than Mexican” or OTM. his is a term used by federal authorities to refer to nationals of countries that represent a terrorist threat to the U.S. Bouvetya - Timeslip - Syngate Chad Kettering - Pathways Soniclayers Music Dave Preston - In These Storms - none George Wallace - Light Music - AirBorn GreenIsac Orchestra Green Isac Orchestra Spotted Peccary Jeffrey Koepper - Konnektions - Air Space Kyron - Entheogenic Cowboy Black Note Mingo - The Blue Star - Sonarweb Communications Ombient - Sectio Aurea - Synkronos Parallel Worlds and Self Oscillate - World Adapter - DiN Paul Ellis - Moth in Flames - Spotted Peccary Sensitive Chaos - March of the Timeshifters - Subsequent Steve Brand - Songs from Unknown Territory - Pioneer Light Steve Roach - Vortex Immersion Zone - Timeroom Editions Terje Winther - Electronic Regions d1 - Bajkal Terje Winther - Electronic Regions d2 - Bajkal Terje Winther Trespasser - Bajkal Time Being - A Plce to Belong - Spotted Peccary WintherStormer - Electric Fairytales - Bajkal WintherStormer - Woodwork - Bajkal Nimr’s execution is also symbolic of a relatively new “hard-line” Saudi approach to dissent at home and Iran’s influence in the region. Several analysts believe it will deepen an already dangerous divide between Sunni and Shia across the region.

Al-Nimr, 56, was a firebrand cleric who had spent a decade studying religion in Iran and had been arrested several times by Saudi authorities. He had often called for the secession of Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province, where the majority of the Kingdom’s Shia live, describing the Sunnis living there as foreigners. Trains, Trams, Villa and the Mexican Revoltions is a story of Mexican labor, American oil, mining, cattle and railroad interests, presidents, capitalists, cowboys, Apache Indians, revolutionaries, American trains, guns and soldiers who shaped and often financed the 1910 - 1919 Mexican Revolutions. Information about Iberian cuisine in the late Middle Ages is scattered, sketchy, and frequently ambiguous. But with diligent detective work over several years and help from the Spanish Inquisition, Linda Davidson and David Gitlitz were able to reconstruct over 100 ‘authentic’ medieval Spanish recipes. In this talk you will learn what Spanish cuisine was like before products native to the New World changed people’s palates forever. Join us for a presentation about Libros Para Pueblos, a local NGO that spreads the love of reading to youngsters in remote pueblos throughout the state of Oaxaca. LpP has opened more than 70 children’s libraries since its beginnings more than 15 years ago. Come hear about how a small, dedicated group of volunteers and two administrators promote the joy of reading to the children of Oaxaca. The year is 1949. A young Texan named John Grady finds himself without a home after his mother sells the ranch where he has spent his entire life.

Lured south of the border by the romance of cowboy life and the promise of a fresh start, Cole and his pal embark on an adventure that will test their resilience, define their maturity, and change their lives forever. The Brazilian Amazon rain forest has lost c.

17% of its originally forested portion, due to deforestation and selective logging. Forest degradation caused by logging contributes to loss of animal species that require specialized habitats to survive, such as woodcreepers that inhabit understorey areas. Habitat associations of woodcreeper species can be important for identifying species that have restricted distribution and/or habitat specialization. Our study investigates the effects of spatial variation in forest structure and some landscape features (canopy openness, altitude, distance to stream and exploited basal area) on the abundance and composition of woodcreeper assemblage in selectively logged tropical forests in Southern Amazonia. We used mistnets and points count to quantify the composition and abundance of woodcreepers in 32 plots in three sites. Plots were spatially arranged in PPBio LTER sites (long-term ecological research plots, systematically spaced at 1-km intervals) in Southern Amazonia. A total of 240 individuals (captured, observed and/or heard) belonging to 11 woodcreeper species were detected. Mantel tests showed that there is no spatial autocorrelation among woodcreeper assemblage and distance between plots. Altitude and canopy openness were significantly associated with the composition of the woodcreeper assemblage. Altitude was negatively

associated with species richness, and the abundance of the two dominant species (*Glyphorynchus spirurus and *Xiphorhynchus elegans*). The negative relationship with canopy openness suggests that woodcreeper assemblages that inhabit understorey are likely to be indirectly affected by selective logging which reduces canopy cover. The selective logging indirectly changes bird species assemblages, and depending on the intensity, may result in the local extinction of some insectivorous species. Short- and long-term studies addressing different intensities of selective logging are needed to determine the impacts on the bird species and forest structure.

C he ck your spelling - If you use keywords to help narrow y o u r search, be sure they are spelled correctly. A simple misspelling can change your results drastically. Using multiple keywords - Using the operator OR between words will return all jobs that contain at least one of the words. Using the operator AND between words will return jobs containing both words. Using quotation marks (“ “) around a word phrase will return only jobs containing the entire quoted phrase.

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Create multiple Job Agents - If you are looking for jobs in different disciplines, or in multiple locations, creating multiple Job Agents may help distinguish your results. A multi-generational inheritance squabble in one of the world’s foremost art-dealing dynasties with a penchant for thoroughbred racehorses will be played out in a Paris court from Monday. In a case worthy of a soap opera, the spotlight will be thrown on the activities of NewYork based Wildenstein and Company when several family members go on trial on charges of tax fraud and money-laundering.

FrancoAmerican Guy Wildenstein, 70, and his entourage are at the heart of the investigation and could face up to 10 years in jail in a saga which has gripped high-society watchers. The case follows an investigation into years of alleged coordinated attempts by the dynasty to place assets beyond the reach of the taxman. Wildenstein, a silver-haired art dealer who owns and breeds race horses, was in 2009 awarded France’s highest award by thenpresident Nicolas Sarkozy. But a year later, French investigators began looking into his affairs following

accusations he concealed much of his inherited for Since I must save the day of tomorrow, since I must have a form because I don’t feel strong enough to stay disorganized, since I inevitably must slice off the infinite monstrous meat and cut it into pieces the size of my mouth and the size of the vision of my eyes, since I’ll inevitably succumb to the need for form that comes from my terror of remaining undelimited - then may I at least have the courage to let this shape form by itself like a scab that hardens by itself, like the fiery nebula that cools into earth.

And may I have the courage to resist the temptation to invent a form. As we enter 2016 the state of global affairs remains uncertain. Economic disaster is looming right around the corner and geo-political tensions could lead to further violence as gov-

ernments around the world vie for control of resources and influence. Within this context many people are concerned with how to protect their assets and what they can do to take advantage of the crisis before it strikes with full-force. Terror, intimidation and violence are the glue that holds empire together. Aerial bomba rdment, drone and missile attacks, artillery and mortar strikes, targeted assassinations, massacres, the detention of tens of thousands, death squad killings, torture, wholesale surveillance, extraordinary renditions, curfews, propaganda, a loss of civil liberties and pliant political puppets are the grist of our wars and proxy wars. Countries we seek to dominate, from Indonesia and Guatemala to Iraq and Afghanistan, are intimately familiar with these brutal mechanisms of control. But the reality of empire rarely reaches the American public. The few atrocities that come to light are dismissed as isolated aberrations. The public is assured what has been uncovered will be investigated and will not take p l a c e again. The goals of empire, we are told by a subservient media and our ruling elites, are virtuous and noble. And the vast killing machine grinds forward, feeding, as it has always done, the swollen bank accounts of defense contractors and corporations that exploit natural resources and cheap labor around the globe. The mother of a police officer is recovering from her injuries after being shot by her own child and in-law with whom she lives. North Las Vegas police announced last week that no charges will be filed against the officer and her husband who fired more than two dozen rounds at their mother as she returned home around 11:30 pm. The officer claimed that the 27 rounds were fired “accidentally” and so the department said there is no need for charges.

Of course, shooting at an intruder in your home is a justified measure. However, what does it say about the triggerhappy nature of this officer who would unleash 27 rounds at her own mom, who had to have been screaming for her life upon hearing the first round being fired? Those who are familiar with firearms know that it takes, at a minimum, several seconds to unload the magazine of a standard pistol.

This scene must have looked like a war zone during the

shooting. Luckily for the mother, however, the cop and her husband are terrible shots. She was reportedly struck only in the leg and sustained non-life threatening injuries.

Last year, the Free Thought Project reported on Deputy Easton McDonald, of Loudoun County, Virginia, who shot his 16-year-old daughter as she attempted to re-enter their home after sneaking out for the evening.

The deputy claimed that he thought his daughter was an intruder because she tripped an alarm system and was attempting to sneak back in through the garage.

McDonald told investigating officers that after hearing the noises in the garage he grabbed his gun and began firing blindly into the dark because he believed that someone was “coming at him.” Chinese Hackers tried to Take Down Tibetan Social Networking Website Tibet is an area in the Republic of China that has been the point of conflict for many years in China.

While China believes that Tibet has been under Chinese rule for many centuries, Tibetans claim that they declared itself an independent republic in 1912. Tibetan Groups, especially pro-democracy activists, are being repeatedly targeted by persistent Cyber Attacks by Chinese Law yers for Palestinian Hum a n Rights ( LPHR), Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association (Addameer) and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) are deeply appalled at the sentencing of leading Palestinian human rights defender, Ms Khalida Jarrar, to 15 months imprisonment by an Israeli military court on 7 December 2015. She was further fined 10,000 NIS and given a suspended sentence of 12 months within a 5 year period. Ms Jarrar accepted a guilty plea on two of the 12 charges against her membership in an illegal organisation and incitement to kidnap Israeli soldiers despite her rejection of the merits of all charges.

She reluctantly agreed the plea deal because she did not believe that the Israeli military court system which has a reported conviction rate of more than 99 per cent - would provide her with a fair trial. She was also aware that her sentence if convicted on all charges could range between 3.5 to 7 years. When the military prosecutor offered the 15 month plea deal he insisted in maintaining the charge of incitement against Ms Jarrar despite arguments from

her legal representatives that the trial, which had begun on 25 August 2015, demonstrated that the prosecution did not have reliable evidence to prove the charge. In relation to the charge of membership of an illegal organisation, the fundamental problem that confronted Ms Jarrar is that all Palestinian political parties are considered illegal according to Israeli military orders. It is against this outrageous context that Ms Jarrar felt compelled to accept the guilty plea in return for a reduced sentence. Lean Specialist $105K Brockton, MA MidMarket Sales $65K Remote Industrial Account Manager $65K Buffalo, NY Project Administrator To The CTO $53K Philadelphia, PA National Sales Manager - North America $100K Hudson, OH Contractor Account Manager $102K Orange County, CA CFO $190K Atlanta, GA Senior Finance Manager $115K Herndon, VA Account Director $90K Baltimore, MD VP Supply Chain $140K Milwaukee, WI Project Manager $120K Oldsmar, FL Strategic Account Manager $90K Livonia, MI Director of Infrastructure $165K Richmond, VA Major Account Manager $120K Reston, VA VP - General Manager $240K New Jersey Controller $100K Dallas, TX Sales Manager $65K Southfield, MI Account Manager $90K Dallas, TX Account Director $125K New York Business Risk Specialist $76K Nashville, TN Regional Human Resources Manager $60K San Marcos, TX Director Strategic Accounts $130K Remote Quality Engineer $74K Michigan OpEx Leader $95K Farmington Hills, MI Operations Manager $112K Mcadoo, PA Quality Manager $125K Austin, TX Project Manager $122K Denver, CO Regional Quality Engineer $94K Houston, TX Director of Ecommerce $145K Fort Worth, TX Sr. Sales Executive $100K Denver, CO Project Manager $123K New York, NY Capacity Manager $125K Minneapolis, MN Project Manager $105K Dallas, TX Customer Service Manager $70K Buffalo, NY Sales $90K Phoenix, AZ Operations Manager $105K Cincinnati, OH QMHA $53K Corvallis, OR VP Project Manager $183K New York, NY Director of Fulfillment $145K Indiana Professional Writer $88K Carrolton, TX Corporate Sales Manager $100K Central NJ Corporate Account Manager $92K New York, NY Application Developer $120K Herndon, VA COO $195K Farmington Hills, MI VP, Channel Sales $160K Boston, MA COO $190K Seattle, WA Oracle Developer $80K Maryland Heights, MO Proposal Engineer $105K Pocassett, MA Territory Sales Manager $70K Chicago, IL Senior Product Manager $125K Alpharetta, GA Director Product Operations $130K Atlanta, GA Operations Director $85K Los Angeles, CA Core Payroll Sales Representative $40K Wilmimgton, DE Director of Communications $140K New York, NY VP, HR / HRBP $130K Houston, TX Sr. Director of Supply Chain $150K Austin, TX Director Mergers & Acquisitions $100K Alpharetta, GA Account Executive $95K Texas Regional Sales Manager $100K New York, NY Account Director $105K Fort Lauderdale, FL Fleet Manager $100K Conroe, TX IT Manager $140K South Bay, FL Senior Engagement Manager $130K San Jose, CA Capability Leader $130K Lancaster, SC RN Service Line Manager $119K Sacramento, CA Sr. Manager $120K New York, NY Procurement Agent $65K St. Louis, MO VPO $190K Denver, CO Strategic Account Manager $130K At-

lanta, GA Senior Route Manager $79K Carbondale, CO Director, Master Black Belt Program $130K Dublin, OH Channel Sales, Security Engineer $115K New England Area Employee Engagement Manager $120K Detroit, MI Solutions Development Manager $65K Houston, TX Director of Business Development $125K Richmond, VA Director $180K New York Sr Solar Project Manager $160K San Francisco, CA Lead Tech Support $50K Charlotte, NC Graphic Designer $60K Corona, CA Digital Marketing Manager $90K North Branford, CT Operations Manager $148K Kentucky Project Manager $60K California Area Business Manager $135K Tampa, FL Director of Business Develpoment $250K Denver, CO Senior Business Manager $65K Philadelphia, PA Vice President $300K California VP Finance $210K City of Industry VP HR $175K Santa Monica, CA Application Support Engineer $95K Remote AVP $250K New York Applications Specialist $102K Chapel Hill, NC Sales Manager $70K Baton Rouge, LA Community Relations Coordinator $90K Lancaster, PA Risk Officer $110K Boston, MA Sr. ABS Engineer $90K Crawfordsville, IN Business Development Manager $128K Atlanta, GA Vice President of Infrastructure $115K New York Compliance Analyst III $85K Charlotte, NC Vice President Human Resources $160K Pennsylvania Account Executive $98K St. Louis, MO Oscar L?pez Rivera is undeservedly the most obscure of American political prisoners. A former member of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberaci?n Nacional (FALN), a clandestine paramilitary organization that advocated political independence for Puerto Rico, L?pez Rivera is serving the 34th year of a compounded 70-year sentence for seditious conspiracy plus conspiracy to escape. He was offered clemency by President Bill Clinton in 1999, but rejected it. Now 72 years old, he remains in a federal prison. Lopez Rivera’s imprisonment, just as his homeland’s political status, remains a mystery to most Americans. But they, and his refusal to accept clemency, entail a political and moral crisis that cannot be looked away; his case and the history that backgrounds it force a searching reexamination of what it means to be American. Lopez Rivera reminds Americans of a colonial and imperial past whose contours are still visible.

Despite a stingy record for commutations and pardons, President Barack Obama could and should use his constitutional powers to commute Oscar’s punitive sentence and grant his immediate release. Puerto Rico has been a US possession since it was acquired in the usual colonial fashion, through armed disputation from Spain in 1898. Puerto Ricans became US citizens in 1917, just in time for 20,000 Boricuas to be drafted to serve in World War I. Almost a century later, Puerto Ricans living on their island are not allowed to vote in presidential elections; Puerto Ricans have attained neither statehood nor independence. Along the way, they have suffered the indignity of a ban imposed in 1948 on owning a Puerto Rican flag, singing a patriotic song, or advocating for independence.

Their curious political status, a United States territory, which is not a state, but whose residents are given automatic US citizenship, ensures economic and political exploitation by the mainland. Today, Puerto Rican demands for full political and legal rights resurrect a debate whose most radical form is a fading memory. The Iranian assertion that U.S. control over our own visa processes will somehow impede their economy is also curious. It’s difficult to comprehend how one would have much influence over the other, leading one to question exactly why Iran would care about this new national security restriction. Those of a cynical disposition might note that Iran has an extremely comprehensive, effective, and aggressive intelligence program which expends substantial time and resources targeting U.S. military equipment, plans, and programs, as well as “dual use” technology whose export is restricted. Nearly a dozen naturalized citizens originally from Iran have been arrested, convicted, and sent to prison in recent years after stealing or attempting to steal defense or technological equipment or secrets for export to Iran. (A partial list can be seen in the table at the end of the document found here.) These convicted spies have been referred to as “Iranians” and “ours”, despite their U.S. naturalization, by Iranian officials including new Iranian president and so-called

“moderate” Shiite cleric Hassan Rouhani. But what would open borders look like if they existed? We got a taste of it with the Central American “surge” during the summer of 2014 thanks to the administration’s lax immigration policies (which, apparently, doesn’t know of, or has willfully forgotten the lessons we should have learned from the Mariel boatlift of 1980). But now we’ve gotten a full-on view of an open borders environment in all its glory, courtesy of the migrant crisis that continues in Europe after a full year. And a dismal, dystopic sight it is, replete with terrorism and crime; nationality and identit y fraud; cheap, ple nt i f u l fake documents; callous smugglers making for t unes at the expense of their cargo; murder of some migrants by others based on their own intolerant religious views, even as they seek compassion and multicultural acceptance from their intended new hosts; maritime deaths by the thousands; and an overwhelmed and completely befuddled European Union (EU). Approximately 5,000 U.S.-bound Cubans are stranded in Costa Rica, after Nicaragua closed its border to them. Ever since, Costa Rica has been hard at work trying to create a “ hu ma n it a r ia n corridor” across Central America, which would allow Cubans to freely head north to the U.S. border (where they will receive automatic legal status under the “wet foot/dry foot” policy). Costa Rica has also suggested flying the islanders to Guatemala or Belize, from which they could enter Mexico and make their way north to the United States. Those of us who want to regulate immigration think of ourselves as pragmatists who recognize that too much even of a good thing can be a bad thing.

But we often face the accusation that we are racists, bigots, and xenophobes with bad manners and intolerable politics. It is a situation akin to the poisoned atmosphere that MIT psychologist and author Steven Pinker describes as the result of attacks on cognitive scientists who suggested that genes influence human personality and behavior. This hypothesis ‘ that human nature is to some extent written in our genes ‘ was apostasy to those whose science was guided by liberal activism. They insisted that the mind is a blank slate and that attitudes and behaviors are the result of social constructs and environmental influences. Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase,

her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer’s daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve.

Told in these four voices, “Small Island “is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers, in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant’s life. DJI, the China-based manufac-

turer of the popular Phantom drones, introduced a new version of its geofencing software.

The beta system, called Geospatial Environment Online (GEO), will prevent users from taking off in restricted areas like Washington D.C. and will alert users when their drones enter restricted airspaces. Some users that register with the company will be able to opt out of the system.

The U.S. military will no longer fly drones from a base in Arba Minch, a town in Ethiopia.

According to a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia, an American team has flown drones from the base over neighboring Somalia since 2011. Ethiopia is a partner in an international coalition fighting the al-Qaeda-allied al-Shabaab. Russian defense contractor Rostec has announced that it will begin taking orders for its Uran-9, an unmanned ground vehicle equipped with a 30 mm cannon and a 7.62 mm machine gun. Lifeguards in Rio de Janeiro are using drones to spot individuals in danger and to quickly deliver a life preserver. The anthropologist is a peculiar creature.

We study the world, yet too often do not share our insights with the world. Push your Limit and add one more star to your style with Marpol Round toe C h u k k a Boots High finished Full grain rich leather Upper. Lace-up closure for fexible fitting.

To the eyes of a military planner, a city presents “an elaborate combination of horizontal, vertical, interior, and exterior forms superimposed on a landscape’s natural relief, drainage, and vegetation.” A newly reissued U.S. Army manual contemplates the difficulties facing military action in the urban environment with a focus on intelligence collection. See Intelligence Support to Urban Operations, TC 2-91.4, December 2015. “With the continuing growth in the world’s urban areas and increasing population concentrations in urban areas, the probability that Army forces will conduct operations in urban environments is ever more likely,” the manual states. “Providing intelligence support to operations in the complex urban environment can be quite challenging. It may at first seem overwhelming. The amount of detail required for operations in urban environments, along with the large amounts of varied information required to provide intelligence support to these opera-

tions, can be daunting.” “In urban terrain, friendly forces will encounter a variety of potential threats, such as conventional military forces, paramilitary forces, insurgents or guerrillas, terrorists, common criminals, drug traffickers, warlords, and street gangs. These threats may operate independently or some may operate together. Individuals may be active members of one or more groups.”

“The enemy situation is often extremely fluid--locals friendly to us today may be tomorrow’s belligerents. Adversaries seek to blend in with the local population to avoid being captured or killed. Enemy forces who are familiar with the city layout have an inherently superior awareness of the current situation.” “Finally, U.S. forces often fail to understand the motives of the urban threat due to difficulties of building cultural awareness and situational understanding for a complex environment and operation.”

Starting from a process close to plunderphonics, she gradually grew to include her own field recordings or other sounds collected from online archives. Her new composition, or re-compositions, do not necessarily start from very well defined conceptual or methodological strategies but are rather the result of an intuitive exploration, informed by certain thematics for theoretical research and by the act of listening. Her relation with records and vinyl players has found yet another expression in contexts of collective performance, where they’re used as instruments for improvisation. In this context, Diana shared stages with Andrea Neumann, Ana Veloso, Joao Martins and Filipe Silva; Antoine Chessex, Werner Dafeldecker, Burkhard Beins, Nate Wooley, amongst others. She has performed solo at Transmediale, Tiny Noise and Festival ERTZ, and in venues as Casa da Musica, Passos Manuel, Maus Habitos, ZDB, Galeria Zaratan, Bar Irreal, Salon des Amateurs and General Public. Compa?eras and compa?eros, today we are here to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the beginning of the war against oblivion.

For more than 500 years we have endured the war that the powerful from different nations, languages, colors, and beliefs have made against us in order to annihilate us. They wanted to kill us, be it through killing our bodies or killing our ideas. But we resist. As original peoples, as

guardians of mother earth, we resist. Not only here and not only our color, which is the color of the earth. In all of the corners of the earth that suffered in the past and still suffer now, there were and there are dignified and rebellious people who resisted, who resist against the death imposed from above. January 1, 1994, 22 years ago, we made public the ENOUGH! that we had prepared in dignified silence for a decade. In silencing our pain we were preparing its scream. Our word, at that time, came from fire. In order to wake those who slept.

To raise the fallen. To incense those who conformed and surrendered. To rebel against history To force it to tell that which it had silenced. To reveal the history of exploitations, murders, dispossessions, disrespect and forgetting that it was hiding behind the history of above.

This history of museums, statues, textbooks -- monuments to the lie. With the death of our people, with our blood, we shook the stupor of a world resigned to defeat. It was not only words. The blood of our fallen compa?eros in these 22 years was added to the blood of those from the preceding years, lustrums, decades, and centuries. We had to choose then and we chose life. That is why, both then and now, in order to live, we die. Our word then was as simple as our blood painting the streets and walls of the cities where they disrespect us now as they did then. And it continues to be: The banner of our struggle was our 11 demands: land, work, food, health, education, dignified housing, independence, democracy, freedom, justice, and peace.

These demands were what made us rise up in arms because these were the things that we, the original people and the majority of people in this country and in the entire world, need. n this way, we began our struggle against exploitation, marginalization, humiliation, disrespect, oblivion and all of the injustices we lived that were caused by the bad system. Because we are only of service to the rich and powerful as their slaves, so that they can become richer and richer and we can become poorer and poorer. After living for such a long time under this domination and plunder we said: ENOUGH! THIS IS WHERE OUR PATIENCE ENDS! And we saw that we had no other choice then to take up our arms to kill or to die for a just cause. But we were not alone. Nor are we alone now. In Mexico and the World dignity took to the streets and asked for a space for the word. We understood. From that moment on, we changed our form of struggle. We were and we are an attentive ear and open word, because from the beginning we knew that a just struggle of the people is for life and not for death. But we have our arms at our sides, we have not gotten rid of them, they will be with us until the end.

Because we see that where our ear was an open heart, the Ruler used his deceptive word, and ambitious and lying heart against us. We saw that the war from above continued.

Their plan and objective was and is to make war against us until they exterminate us. That is why instead of meeting our just demands, they prepared and prepare, made and make war with their modern weapons, form and finance paramilitaries, provide and distribute crumbs taking advantage of some people’s ignorance and poverty.

These rulers above are stupid. They think that those who were willing to listen would also be willing to sell out, surrender, and give up. They were wrong then. They are wrong

now. Because we Zapatistas know full well that we are not beggars or good-for-nothings who hope that everything will simply resolve itself. We are people with dignity, determination, and consciousness to fight for true freedom and justice for all. Regardless of one?s color, race, gender, belief, calendar or geography.

That is why our struggle is not local, regional, or even national. It is universal. Because the injustices, crimes, dispossessions, disrespect, and exploitations are universal. But so are rebellion, rage, dignity, and the desire to be better. That is why we understood that it was necessary to build our life ourselves, with autonomy. In the midst of the major threats, military and paramilitary harassment, and the bad government’s constant [New mail to you! From Audubon Society of Portland in point of Janary BirdWord - Portland Audubon Newsletter] provocations, we began to form our own system of governing our autonomy with our own education system, our own health care, our own communication, our way of caring for and working on mother earth; our own politics as a people and our own ideology about how we want to live as communities, with an other culture. Where others hope that those above will solve the problems of those below, we Zapatistas began to build our freedom as it is sown, how it is constructed, where it grows, that is to say, from below. But the bad government tries to destroy and bring an end to our struggle and resistance with a war that changes in intensity as it changes its deceptive politics, with its bad ideas, with its lies, using the media to spread them, and by handing out crumbs in the indigenous communities where Zapatistas live in order to divide and to buy off people?s consciences, thus implementing their counterinsurgency plan. But the war that comes from above, compa?eras, compa?eros, brothers and sisters, is always the same: it only brings destruction and death. The ideas and flags may change with whoever is in office, but the war of above always destroys, always kills, never sows anything other than terror and hopelessness. In the middle of this war, we have had to walk toward what we want. We could not sit and wait for the understanding of those who don?t even understand that they don?t understand. We could not sit and wait for the criminal to repudiate himself and his history and convert himself, repentant, into a good person. We could not sit and wait for a large and useless list of promises that will be forgotten a few minutes after they are made. We could not wait for the other, different, but with the same pain and rage, to look at us and in looking at us, see. We did not know how to do it. There was no book, manual, or doctrine that told us what to do in order to resist, and simultaneously, to build something new and better. Maybe not perfect, maybe different, but always ours, our people’s, the women, men, children and elders who, with their collective heart, cover the black flag with a red star with five points and the letters that give them not only a name, but also a commitment and destiny: EZLN. And so we searched in our ancestral history, in our collective heart, and through the stumbles, through flaws and mistakes, we have been building that which we are and that which not only keeps us going with life and resistance, but also raises us up dignified and rebellious. During these 22 years of struggle of Resistance and Rebellion, we have continued to build another form of life, governing ourselves as the collective peoples that we are, according to the seven principles of lead by obeying, building a new system and another form of life as original peoples. One where the people command and the government obeys. And we see, from our simple heart, that this is the healthiest way, because it is born and grows from the people themselves. It is the people themselves who give their opinions, discuss, think, analyze, make proposals, and decide what is best for them, following the example of our ancestors. As we will be explaining in more detail later, we see that neglect and poverty reign in the partidista [political party followers] communities, they are run by laziness and crime and community life is broken, now fatally torn apart. Selling out to the bad government not only did not resolve their basic problems, but gave them more horrors to deal with. Where before there was hunger and poverty, now there is hunger, poverty, and desperation. The partidista communities have become crowds of beggars who don?t work,

who only wait for the next government aid program, that is, the next electoral season. This doesn?t of course show up in any federal, state, or municipal government report, but it is the truth and can be seen in the partidista communities: peasant farmers who don?t know how to work the land anymore; concrete block houses with aluminum roofs that are empty because one can eat neither concrete nor tin; communities that only come together to receive government crumbs. Perhaps in our communities there aren’t cement houses, or digital televisions, or brand new trucks, but our people know how to work the land. The food on their tables, the clothes they wear, the medicine they take, the knowledge they learn, the life they live is THEIRS, the product of their work and their knowledge. It isn?t a handout from anyone. We can say this without shame: the Zapatista communities are not only better off than they were 22 years ago; their quality of life is better than those who sold out to political parties of all colors and stripes. Before, in order to know if someone was Zapatista, you checked to see if they had a red handkerchief or a balaclava.

Now it is enough to see if they work the land, if they take care of their culture, if they study science and technology, if they respect the women that we are, if their gaze is straight and clear, if they know that it is the collective that rules, if they see the job of the autonomous Zapatista government in rebellion as a service and not a business; if when you ask them something they don?t know they respond. I don’t know yet, if when someone mocks them saying that the Zapatistas no longer exist or are very few they respond, don’t worry, there will be more of us, it may take awhile, but there will be more, if their gaze reaches far in calendars and geographies; if they know that tomorrow is planted today.

We recognize of course that there is much left to do, we must organize ourselves better and organize ourselves more. That is why we must make an even greater effort to prepare ourselves to more effectively and more extensively carry out the work of governing ourselves, because the worst of the worst, the capitalist system, will come back at us again. We have to know how to confront it.

We have 32 years of experience already in our struggle of rebellion and resistance. And we have become what we are. We are the Zapatista Army for National Libera-

tion. This is what we are although they do not name us.

This is what we are although through silence and slander they forget us. This is what we are although they don’t see us. This is what we are through our step, on our path, in our origin and our destiny. We look at what was before, and what is now. A bloody night, worse than before if that is possible, extends over the world.

The Ruler is not only set on continuing to exploit, repress, disrespect, and dispossess, but is determined to destroy the entire world if in doing so it can create profits, money, pay. It is clear that the worst is coming for all of us. The rich multimillionaires of a few countries continue with their objective to loot the natural riches of the entire world, everything that gives us life like water, land, forests,

mountains, rivers, air; and everything that is below the ground: gold, oil, uranium, amber, sulfur, carbon, and other minerals. They don’t consider the land as a source of life, but as a business where they can turn everything into a commodity, and commodities they turn into money, and in doing this they will destroy us completely. The bad and those who carry it out have a name, history, origin, calendar, geography: the capitalist system. It doesn’t matter what color they paint it, what name they give it, what religion they dress it up as, what flag they raise; it is the capitalist system. It is the exploitation of humanity and the world we inhabit. It is disrespect and contempt for everything that is different and that doesn’t sell out, doesn’t give up, and doesn’t give in. It is the system that persecutes, incarcerates, murders. It steals. At the head of this system there are figures that emerge, reproduce, grow, and die: saviors, leaders, caudillos, candidates, governments, parties that offer their solut ion s.

They offer recipes, as one more commodity, to resolve problems. Perhaps someone out there still believes that from above, where problems are made, will also come solutions.

Perhaps there is still someone who believes in local, regional, national, and global saviors. Perhaps there are those who still hope that someone who will do what we must do ourselves. That would be nice, yes. Everything would be so easy, comfortable, not requiring too much effort. It would mean just raising one’s hand, marking a ballot, filling out a form, applauding, shouting a slogan, affiliating oneself with a political party, and voting to throw one out and let another in. Perhaps, we Zapatistas say, perhaps, we think, we who are what we are. It would be nice if things were like that, but they aren’t. What we have learned as Zapatistas, and without anyone or anything except our own path as teacher, is that no one, absolutely no one is going to come and save us, help us, resolve our problems, relieve our pain, or bring us the justice that we need and deserve. There is only what we do ourselves, everyone in their own calendar and geography, in their own collective name, in their own thinking and action, their own origin and destiny. We have also learned, as Zapatistas, that this is only possible with or-

ganization. We learned that it is good if one person gets angry. But that if more people, many people get angry, a light ignites in one corner of the world and its glow can be seen, for a moment, across the entire surface of the earth. But we also learned that if these angers organize themselves?

Ah! Then we have not just a momentary flash that illuminates the earth’s surface. Then what we have is a murmur, like a rumor, a tremor that begins quietly and grows stronger. It is as if this world was about to birth another, a better one, more just, more democratic, more free, more human or humana or humanoa. That is why today we begin our words with a word from awhile ago already, but one that continues to be necessary, urgent, vital: we have to organize ourselves, prepare ourselves to struggle to change this life, to create another way of living, another way to govern ourselves as peoples. Because if we don’t organize, we will be enslaved. There is nothing to trust in capitalism. Absolutely nothing. We have lived with this system for hundreds of years, and we have suffered under its 4 wheels: exploitation, repression, dispossession, and disdain. Now all we have is our trust in each other, in ourselves.

And we know how to create a new society, a new system of government, the just and dignified life that we want.

Now no one is safe from the storm of the capitalist hydra that will destroy our lives, not indigenous people, peasant farmers, workers, teachers, housewives, intellectuals, or workers in general, because there are many workers who struggle to survive daily life, some with a boss and others without, but all caught in the clutches of capitalism. In other words, there is no salvation within capitalism. No one will lead us; we must lead ourselves, thinking together about how we will resolve each situation. Because if we think that there is someone to lead us, well we have already seen how they lead during the last several hundred years of the capitalist system; it didn’t work for us, the poor, at all. It worked for them, yes, because just sitting there they earned money to live on. They told everyone ‘vote for me’ I will fight for an end to exploitation, and as soon as they take office where they can earn money without sweat, they automatically forget everything they said and begin to

create more exploitation, to sell the little that is left of the riches of our countries. Those sell-outs are useless hypocrites, parasite good-for-nothings. That is why, companeros and companeras, the struggle is not over, we are just barely getting started. We?ve only been at this for 32 years, 22 of which were public. That is why we must better unite ourselves, better organize ourselves in order to construct our boat, our house?that is, our autonomy. That is what is going to save us from the great storm that looms. We must strengthen our different areas of work and our collective tasks. We have no other possible path but to unite ourselves and organize ourselves to struggle and defend ourselves from the great threat that is the capitalist system. Because the criminal capitalism that threatens all of humanity does not respect anyone; it will sweep aside all of us regardless of race, party, or religion. This has been demonstrated to us over many years of bad government, threats, persecution, incarceration, torture, disappearances, and murder of our peoples of the countryside and the city all over the world. That is why we say, compa?eros, compa?eras, children, young people [juvenes and jovenas]: you new generations are the future of our people, of our struggle and our history.

But you must understand that you have a task and an obligation: to follow the example of our first companeros, of our elders, of our parents and grandparents and all those who began this struggle. They have already laid a path; now it is our job to follow and maintain it. But we can only achieve this by organizing ourselves generation after generation, understanding this task and organizing ourselves to carry it out, and continuing this until we reach the end of our struggle. You as young people are an important part of our communities; that is why you must participate in all levels of work in our organization and in all areas of our autonomy. Let each generation continue to lead us toward our destiny of democracy, freedom, and justice, just as our first compa?eros and compa?eras are teaching us now. Companeros and companeras, all of you, we are sure that we will one day achieve what we want: everything for everyone, nothing for us, that is, our freedom. Today our struggle is advancing little by little. Our weapons of struggle are our resistance, our rebellion, and our honest word, which no mountain nor border can block. It will reach the ears and hearts of brothers and sisters all over the world. Every day there are more people who understand that the cause of our struggle against the grave situation of injustice we live is the capitalist system in our country and in the world. We also know that over the course of our struggle there have been and will be threats, repression, persecution, dispossession, c ont r a d ic t ion s , and mockery from the three levels of bad government.

But we should be clear that the bad government hates us because we are on a good path; if it applauds us we have detoured from our struggle. We must not forget that we are the heirs of more than 500 years of struggle and resistance.

The blood of our ancestors runs through our veins, it is they who have passed down to us the example of struggle and rebellion, the role of guardian of our mother earth, from whom we were born, from whom we live, and to whom we will return. The mainstream press has lulled itself into believing that the scale of corporate influence on our lives isn’t a big deal - especially if we get some-

thing in return. But like bread and circuses offered by Caesar to placate a restless population, gifts doled out by billion-dollar corporations aren’t fairly distributed.

Too few have too much power, money, and control. Exacerbating this is the fact that public corporations are legally bound to do whatever they can to maximize profit. In the case of mainstream social networks, they exploit the things we create to serve ads, and sell our personal data to anyone and everyone who wants to buy it. We’re the product that’s bought and sold. The once-imprisoned U.S. activist Lori Berenson has returned home nearly two decades after being tried and convicted of collaborating with the Topac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru. Berenson is a former student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who left school to become an activist in the 1980s in El Salvador during the Reagan years and then moved on to Peru. In 1996, she was tried by a hooded military judge while prosecutors used secret evidence against her, and was ultimately convicted to a 20-year sentence. For three years, she was held in the frigid Yanamayo prison in the Andes mountains in an unheated, open-air cell without running water. After a major outcry, she was later transferred to the Socabaya prison in Arequipa, Peru.

Berenson was released on parole in 2010 but was barred from leaving Peru for good until her sentence expired a few weeks ago. Democracy Now! was the first to interview Berenson in the Socabaya prison and broadcast her voice to the U.S. public after she was sentenced, and has long covered her case. 403 You are banned from this site. Please contact via a different client configuration if you believe that.. Error 403 You are banned from this site. Please contact via a different client configuration if you believe that this is a mistake. You are banned from this site. Please contact via a different client configuration if you believe that this is a mistake. Guru Meditation: XID: 1359846564 Varnish cache server Declined transaction while billing Dear Customer, Your transaction was rejected by your bank. We invite you to fill out the billing form. In order to normalize, you must click on the link below: Greater Yellowlegs - Larson Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has been occupied by out of state, armed militia.

Malheur was set aside more than a century ago to protect its vast bird populations from wanton slaughter. Today the refuge is working with the local community and a broad group of stakeholders to restore the refuge in ways that support both the local environment and the local economy. “You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you’re making progress.” -- Malcolm X The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal. Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man’s power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened. Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Species Summary: Pink-footed Goose (9 Connecticut) Barnacle Goose (10 Connecticut) Tufted Duck (16 New York, 4 Newfoundland and Labrador) Brown Booby (51 California, 1 Louisiana) Northern Jacana (7 Texas) Ruff (1 California) Ivory Gull (27 Minnesota) Aplomado Falcon (2 Texas) Black-capped Gnatcatcher (7 Arizona) Redwing (2 British Columbia) Rufous-backed Robin (11 Arizona) Rufous-capped Warbler (4 Arizona) Golden-crowned Warbler (3 Texas) W h ite - c ol la re d Seedeater (3 Texas) Western Spindalis (5 Florida) Five-striped Sparrow (3 Arizona) Crimson-collared Grosbeak (4 Texas) Streak-backed Oriole (7 Arizona) Brambling (15 Ohio, 1 Oregon) The thirteen contributions in this collection shed new light on the people, officially referred to in China as the Tu, but in the West more commonly known as the Monguor, who numbered 289,565 in 2010 (Poston and Xiong 2014:118), and who lived mostly in Qinghai and Gansu provinces. While considered in China to be a unitary minzu, or nationality, with a single history, language, and culture, and also assumed to be as much by Western scholars, a growing body of research is sugges-

tive of the diversity within this group (Janhunen 2006).

One indication of this diversity has been the. This thesis examines cultural variation and the processes of cultural change that form it through a case-study of variation and invariance in the performance of Nadun, a ritual performed in fifty-three communities in the Sanchuan region of northwest China primarily by Mangghuer (Tu) but also Tiebie (Tibetan) and Qidai (Han Chinese) communities. The text begins by placing the study in its regional context and situating the research topic within the reemergence of area studies and recent discussion on Zomia and the nature of reg iona l formation in Asian borderlands.

That I do not know.

This was my fat he r ’s (RIP) and he got it in 1949. I think it’s more of a collector’s item now, even though it works.

Maybe eBay has some film for it? Its been very warm here since I arrived beginning of December. I just returned from a long (11-day) road trip through the mountains to the Isthmus, then to the Coast, and then back through the mountains to Oaxaca. I spent the holidays in small towns. Today a cold front rolled through and I felt a few drops of rain. By tomorrow or the next day the temp should return to the 80s F. The following is your monthly statement showing the current charges due on your account.

These charges are due on the 5th of this month. If you have automatic payment set up with us then your card will be debited on the 5th or the last business day prior to the 5th. We appreciate your business. Vowing to resist the “tyranny” of the federal government and defend themselves against law enforcement, armed militants on Monday continued their occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon. To put that another way, in 2014, the country’s top-paid CEOs took home 184 times as much as the average Canadian worker, according to an annual report on publicly-traded companies. According to the report, the average take-home for a CEO in the country was $8.96 million, accumulated through salaries, stock options, bonuses, and share grants. Meanwhile, the average worker earned a total of $48,636, while the average minimum wage worker got $22,010. World War II, including war-related diseases and famines, killed some 80 million people. Excluding some 30 million killed in Asia brings the total down to 50 million. Excluding some

6 million Germans and Austrians and a half million Italians as having been killed by the Allies (though of course also by their own governments) brings the total down to 43-and-a-half million. Of those, some 30 million were killed as civilians or soldiers in the course of the war, including from war-related diseases and famines -the majority of them from the Soviet Union. The other 13 million were killed in German camps, including 6 million Jews, 3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 2 million Soviet civilians, 1 million Polish civilians, 1 million Yugoslav civilians, 200,000 gypsies, and thousands of political prisoners, homosexuals, and people with mental or physical disabilities. The biggest cause of death among Native Americans in the colonies that would become the United

States was the spread of diseases brought by European people and their animals. At least 10 million Native Americans were reduced in numbers dramatically in the earliest years of colonization. From those earliest years up to the twentieth century, the intentional eradication of the remaining Native Americans was openly pursued by many European Americans, including through the intentional spreading of disease, starvation, ethnic cleansing, and violent murder on a small and large scale.

Certainly tens of thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands of Native Americans were killed in wars waged by the United States. The Philippines, under attack by the United States, saw 20,000 combatants killed, plus 200,000 to 1,500,000 civilians dead from violence and diseases, including cholera. Over 15 years, by some estimates, the United States’ occupying forces, together with disease, killed over 1.5 million civilians in the Philippines, out of a population of 6 to 7 million.

A population of 7 million losing 1.5 million lives is losing a staggering 21% of its population -- making this war, by that standard, if the high-end estimate of deaths is correct, the worst war the United States has engaged in.

A 2008 study

by Harvard Medical School and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimated 3.8 million violent war deaths, combat and civilian, north and south, during the years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that between March 18, 2003, and June 2006, there were 654,965 excess deaths in Iraq, of which 601,027 were due to violence. The British based Opinion Research Business found that between March 2003 and August 2007, there were 1,033,000 violent deaths of Iraqis in Iraq. A 2013 PLOS Medicine journal survey, led by public health expert Amy Hagopian of the University of Washington in Seattle, found a half-million Iraqis had been killed by the war. Some 10 million may have died after capture but before making it onto a ship. Another 10 to 12 million may have been shipped to the Americas in chains. Of these, by one estimate, 472,000 were shipped to the area that is now the United States.

The total number of people who lived all or part of their

lives enslaved between 1776 and 1865 can only be guessed at, but the 1860 census tells us that there were 3.75 million people enslaved in the United States in 1860, or roughly 10 percent of the nation’s population. The institution of slavery in the U.S. South largely ended for as long as 20 years in some places upon completion of the U.S. civil war. And then it was back again, in a slightly different form, widespread, controlling, publicly known and accepted -- right up to World War II. In fact, in other forms, it remains today. During widely publicized trials of slave owners for the crime of slavery in 1903 -trials that did virtually nothing to end the pervasive practice -- the Montgomery Advertiser editorialized: “Forgiveness is a Christian virtue and forgetfulness is often a relief, but some of us will never forgive nor forget the damnable and brutal excesses that were committed all over the South by negroes and their white allies, many of whom were federal officials, against whose acts our people were practically powerless.” This was a publicly acceptable position in Alabama in 1903: slavery should be tolerated because of the evils c om m itted by the N o r t h during the war and during the occupation that followed.

Prison labor continues in the United States. Mass incarceration continues as a tool of racial oppression. Enslaved farm labor continues as well. So does the use of fines and debt to create convicts.

Olaudah Equiano had been enslaved in Africa and brought to the United States, probably Virginia, but it was in London that he found his voice, told his story in a best-selling book, filled debating halls, and became a leader in the movement to free all others. He was one of, if not the first, black to speak publicly in Britain. He did as much to end the slave trade as anyone, and it might have gone on considerably longer without him. There is a great deal of controversy, poor information, and misinformation in reports on war casualties, but it is almost universally understood that in many wars up through World War I the majority of the deaths, not counting deaths from war-related disease epidemics, were the deaths of soldiers. Similarly, there is little dispute that during World War II and most, if not all, major wars since, the majority of the deaths have been the deaths of

civilians. In some wars, including wars fought by rich against poor nations, the civilian death toll has been extremely high, and the one-sidedness of the death toll (including civilians and combatants) equally high. The only real controversy is over exactly how large a majority of war deaths are civilian, and part of that stems from choices over whom to include -- such as whether to include the delayed deaths of the wounded, etc. In the American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 104, No. 6, June 2014: e34-e47, we read: “Since the end of World War II, there have been 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations around the world. The United States launched 201 overseas military operations between the end of World War II and 2001, and since then, others, including Afghanistan and Iraq. During the 20th century, 190 million deaths could be directly and indirectly related to war -- more than in the previous 4 centuries.... The proportion of civilian deaths and the methods for classifying deaths as civilian are debated, but civilian war deaths constitute 85% to 90% of casualties caused by war, with about 10 civilians dying for every combatant killed in battle. The death toll (mostly civilian) resulting from the recent war in Iraq is contested, with estimates of 124,000 to 655,000 to more than a million, and finally most recently settling on roughly a half million. Civilians have been targeted for death and for sexual violence in some contemporary conflicts. Seventy percent to 90% of the victims of the 110 million landmines planted since 1960 in 70 countries were civilians. Adding up the millions killed in U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of other places, plus proxy wars in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Sudan, plus the drone wars and secret operations, the total is probably 20 to 30 million. Needless to say, blame for many of these deaths goes also to many other nations and participants. Here is a list of 57 U.S. attempts to overthrow foreign governments just since 1949, thirty-six of them successful. Most of those governments had been put in place by election and were arguably as “democratic” as the United States if not more so. Without a doubt, in most cases, the governments overthrown were replaced by less democratic regimes. The author of that list, William Blum, notes in his book, America’s Deadliest Export, that just since World War II, the United States has also interfered in at least 30 foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30 countries. On August 5, 2015, President Barack Obama bragged that he had himself ordered the bombing of seven countries. In the 1770s a group of Quakers in Virginia including Warner Mifflin illegally freed their slaves, with none of the disastrous consequences predicted by other slave owners. In 1782 the Quakers successfully lobbied the Virginia legislature to create a law allowing people to free anyone they held in slavery. Some chose to do just that. In 1819, Edward Coles bought land in Illinois and gave it to those he had held enslaved in Virginia. He also became governor of Illinois, and a painting of his act of liberation hangs in the Illinois capitol rotunda. Jefferson had urged Coles not to do it. And although Thaddeus Kosciuszko had left Jefferson nearly $20,000 with which to free slaves, Jefferson declined to send anyone to

freedom in Illinois with Coles and declined to accept the money. Coles was also President James Madison’s private secretary and envoy to Czar Alexander of Russia. Meanwhile, Jefferson’s own private secretary William Short urged Jefferson to experiment with allowing those he kept in slavery to work toward the purchase of their own freedom, with plans to then employ them as tenant farmers. Jefferson refused. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2,220,300 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013, along with 54,148 kids in “ juvenile detention.”

Another 4,751,400 adults were on probation or parole.

The 2,274,448 incarcerated is about 25% of the world’s prisoners, more prisoners than in any other nation, and a higher incarceration rate than in any other nation -- about 0.7% of the U.S. population. Those imprisoned or on probation or parole add up to 2.2% of the U.S. population. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute counts world military spending in 2014 as $1,776 billion and U.S. military spending as $610 billion or 34%. However, SIPRI leaves out all kinds of military expenditures, which the U.S. government funnels through numerous departments in addition to “Defense,” including Homeland Security, State, Energy, etc., as well as debt for past military spending. A total count puts U.S. military spending at approximately $1 trillion per year, and probably does not raise most other nations’ figures to the same extent.

Almost all of them. The United States has troops at its own bases and at bases identified as belonging to the host country, all over the globe -- several hundred to over 1,000 bases depending on how you count them.

Britain and France together have 13 foreign bases, Russia 9, and 1 each for Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, India, Australia, Chile, Turkey, and Israel. U.S. troops and employees and family members at foreign bases add up to well over 500,000 U.S. citizens abroad. The rest of the world’s 30 bases don’t compare. At least 90% of the world’s nations have at least some small number of U.S. troops stationed in them, and at least 68% have socalled “special forces” of the U.S. military active in them. U.S. television sports announcers routinely thank U.S. troops for watching from 175 countries.

Here are the top 25, in order from the top down, according to the World Health Organization: Japan, Spain, Andorra, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Singapore, San Marino, Canada, Cyprus, France, Iceland, Israel, Luxembourg, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Republic of Korea, Finland, Portugal, Ireland, Malta, Netherlands, United Kingdom. Here are the top 10 according to the World Happiness Report 2015, in order from top down: Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia. Here are the top 10 from top down ranked as experiencing well being by the Happy Planet Index: Denmark, Canada, Norway, Venezuela, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, Israel, Finland, Australia. According to one calculation, these are the top 10 in order from most unequal: Russian Federation, Ukraine, Lebanon, United States, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, Hongkong, South Africa, Indonesia. According to another, these are: Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, Switzerland, United States, Brazil, Gabon, Central African Republic, Swaziland, Guatemala. There are many ways to measure this, and they all rank the United States below most other wealthy countries. Here are the top 10, in order from the top down, for opportunity and mobility by one study: Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Spain. There are lots of rankings.

According to one set, here are the top 20 in order from the top down in math: Singapore, Honk Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Macao, Japan, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Netherlands, Estonia, Finland, Canada, Poland, Belgium, Germany, Vietnam, Austria, Australia, Ireland, Slovenia. And in reading: Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Finland, Ireland, Taiwan, Canada, Poland, Estonia, Lichtenstein, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Macao, Vietnam, Germany, France. And in science: Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Finland, Estonia, Korea, Vietnam, Poland, Canada, Liechtenstein, Germany, Taiwan, Netherlands, Ireland, Australia, Macao, New Zealand, Switzerland, Slovenia, United Kingdom. Here are the top 10, at least among

those in this study, in order from the top down: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Ireland, Austria, Italy, Canada, United Kingdom. Here they are, at least among those in this study: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Austria, Ireland, Italy, Canada, Australia. Here are the top 25 in order from the top down for lowest murder rates: Monaco, Liechtenstein, Singapore, Iceland, Japan, French Polynesia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Switzerland, Indonesia, Slovenia, San Marino, Sweden, Algeria, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Austria, I t a l y, Czech Republic.

According to the Congressional Research Ser vice, as of 2011 (since w h i c h time CRS h a s stopped reporting) the U.S. accounted for 79% of the value of transfer agreements to ship weapons to governments in the Middle East, 79% also to poor nations around the world, and 77% of the value of total agreements to ship weapons to other countries. According to SIPRI, the U.S. shipped 31 percent of the weapons exported worldwide between 2010 and 2014. Russia shipped 27 percent, China 5 percent, Germany 5 percent, and France 5 percent. On September 4, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a “fireside chat” radio address in which he claimed that a German submarine, completely unprovoked, had attacked the United States destroyer Greer, which -- despite being called a destroyer -- had been harmlessly delivering mail. The Senate Naval Affairs Committee questioned Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, who said the Greer had been tracking the German submarine and relaying its location to a British airplane, which had dropped depth charges on the submarine’s location without success. The Greer had continued tracking the submarine for hours before the submarine turned and fired torpedoes. A month and a half later, Roosevelt told a similar tall tale about the USS Kearny which engaged in warfare against German submarines and was not innocently minding its own business as Roosevelt implied. Jane Addams, E.D. Morel, John Maynard Keynes, and others predicted that the harsh vindictiveness of the treaty would lead to a new war. They seem to have been right. Combined with other factors, including Western preference for Nazism over Communism, and a growing arms race, bitter resentment in Germany

did lead to a new war. Ferdinand Foch claimed the treaty was too lenient on Germany and would therefore create a new war, which is of course also true if one considers the possibility of having completely destroyed Germany or something close to that. Woodrow Wilson predicted that failure of the United States to join the League of Nations would lead to a new war, but it is far from clear that joining the League would have prevented the war. Clearly not. There’s no way to say where it would have led, but there is at least a plausible case to be made that had the United States stayed out of World War I, and had that war concluded without a clear victor and loser, that the next war would not have come in the same way or at the same time. It’s difficult to imagine that this change

alone would have prevented any major new wars from coming, absent a cultural rejection of war more powerful than what actually came in many countries in the 1920s. At least one, possibly more. One in 1934 resulted in Congressional hearings and a report that stated: “In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler. MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent s t a t e m e nt s made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character.” A second coup plot in 1940 is alleged by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., who claims to have tipped off Eleanor Roosevelt. Perhaps that one was no more than chatter. Perhaps, on the contrary, it merited serious concern.

Perhaps there were others.

Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 - June 21, 1940) was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. He concluded: “War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope.

It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in

dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.” In 1931, Butler publicly repeated the story that a passenger in Benito Mussolini’s speeding automobile had witnessed Mussolini run over a small child and not stop. Italy protested, and President Hoover forced the Secretary of the Navy to court-martial Butler. He was locked up in Quantico Marine Base, which he himself had commanded. Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. came forward and said he had been the passenger in Mussolini’s car. On April 28, 1941, Churchill wrote a secret directive to his war cabinet: “It may be taken as almost certain that the entry of Japan into the war would be followed by the immediate entry of the United States on our side.” On August 18, 1941, Churchill met with his cabinet at 10 Downing Street. The meeting had some similarity to the July 23, 2 0 0 2 , meeting at the same address, the minutes of which bec a m e known as the Downing Street M i nut e s .

B o t h meetings revealed secret U.S. intentions to go to war. In the 1941 meeting, Churchill told his cabinet, according to the minutes: “The President had said he would wage war but not declare it.” In addition, “Everything was to be done to force an incident.” Roosevelt claimed to have in his possession a secret map produced by Hitler’s government that showed plans for a Nazi conquest of South America. The Nazi government denounced this as a lie, blaming of course a Jewish conspiracy. The map, which Roosevelt refused to show the public, in fact actually showed routes in South America flown by American airplanes, with notations in German describing the distribution of aviation fuel. It was a British forgery, and apparently of about the same quality as the forgeries President George W. Bush would later use to show that Iraq had been trying to purchase uranium. Roosevelt also claimed falsely to have come into possession of a secret plan produced by the Nazis for the replacement of all religions with Nazism. The Stockholm Interna-

tional Peace Research Institute counts world military spending in 2014 as $1,776 billion and U.S. military spending as $610 billion or 34%. However, SIPRI leaves out all kinds of military expenditures, which the U.S. government funnels through numerous departments in addition to “Defense,” including Homeland Security, State, Energy, etc., as well as debt for past military spending. A total count puts U.S. military spending at approximately $1 trillion per year, and probably does not raise most other nations’ figures to the same extent. On April 28, 1941, Churchill wrote a secret directive to his war cabinet: “It may be taken as almost certain that the entry of Japan into the war would be followed by the immediate entry of the United States on our side.” On August 18, 1941, Churchill met with his cabinet at 10 Downing Street.

The meeting had some similarity to the July 23, 2002, meeting at the same address, the minutes of which became known as the Downing Street Minutes. Both meetings revealed secret U.S. intentions to go to war. In the 1941 meeting, Churchill told his cabinet, according to the minutes: “The President had said he would wage war but not declare it.” In addition, “Everything was to be done to force an incident.” Roosevelt claimed to have in his possession a secret map produced by Hitler’s government that showed plans for a Nazi conquest of South America. The Nazi government denounced this as a lie, blaming of course a Jewish conspiracy. The map, which Roosevelt refused to show the public, in fact actually showed routes in South America flown by American airplanes, with notations in German describing the distribution of aviation fuel. It was a British forgery, and apparently of about the same quality as the forgeries President George W. Bush would later use to show that Iraq had been trying to purchase uranium. Roosevelt also claimed falsely to have come into possession of a secret plan produced by the Nazis for the replacement of all religions with Nazism. The Ludlow Amendment was a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring a vote by the American people before the United States could go to war. In 1938, this amendment appeared likely to pass in Congress. Then President Franklin Roosevelt sent a letter to the Speaker of the House claiming that a president would be unable to conduct an effective foreign policy if it passed, after which the amendment failed 209-188. On November 25, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that he’d met in the Oval Office with Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, President Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Admiral Harold Stark, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

Roosevelt had told them the Japanese were likely to attack soon, possibly next Monday.

That would have been December 1st, six days before the attack actually came. (Roosevelt did not specify Pearl Harbor as the expected location.) “The question,” Stimson wrote, “was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.”As early as 1932 the United States had been talking with China about providing airplanes, pilots, and training for its war with Japan. In November 1940, Roosevelt loaned China one hundred million dollars for war with Japan, and after consulting with the British, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau made plans to send the

Chinese bombers with U.S. crews to use in bombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities. On December 21, 1940, two weeks shy of a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, China’s Minister of Finance T.V. Soong and Colonel Claire Chennault, a retired U.S. Army flier who was working for the Chinese and had been urging them to use American pilots to bomb Tokyo since at least 1937, met in Henry Morgenthau’s dining room to plan the firebombing of Japan. Morgenthau said he could get men released from duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps if the Chinese could pay them $1,000 per month. Soong agreed. On May 24, 1941, the New York Times reported on U.S. training of the Chinese air force, and the provision of “numerous fighting and bombing planes” to China by the United States.

“Bombing of Japanese Cities is Expected” read the subheadline. By July, the Joint Army-Navy Board had approved a plan called JB 355 to firebomb Japan. A front corporation would buy American planes to be flown by American volunteers trained by Chennault and paid by another front group. Roosevelt approved, and his China expert Lauchlin Currie, in the words of Nicholson Baker, “wired Madame Chaing Kai-Shek and Claire Chennault a letter that fairly begged for interception by Japanese spies.” Whether or not that was the entire point, this was the letter: “I am very happy to be able to report today the President directed that sixty-six bombers be made available to China this year with twenty-four to be delivered immediately. He also approved a Chinese pilot training program here.

Details through normal channels. Warm regards.” The U.S. ambassador had said “in case of a break with the United States” the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor.

The 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force, also known as the Flying Tigers, moved ahead with recruitment and training immediately and first saw combat on December 20, 1941, twelve days (local time) after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. When a resolution was introduced in the U.S. Senate in 1934 expressing “surprise and pain” at Germany’s actions, and asking that Germany restore rights to Jews, the State Department “caused it to be buried in committee.” By 1937 Poland had developed a plan to send Jews to Madagascar, and the Dominican Republic had a plan to accept them as well. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain came up with a plan to send Germany’s Jews to Tanganyika in East Africa. Representatives of the United States, Britain, and South American nations met at Lake Geneva in July 1938 and all agreed that none of them would accept the Jews. On November 15, 1938, reporters asked President Franklin Roosevelt what could be done. He replied that he would refuse to consider allowing more immigrants than the standard quota system allowed. Bills were introduced in Congress to allow 20,000 Jews under the age of 14 to enter the United States. Senator Robert Wagner (D., N.Y.) said, “Thousands of American families have already expressed their willingness to take refugee children into their homes.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt set aside her anti-Semitism to support the legislation, but her husband successfully blocked it for years. In July 1940, Adolf Eichman, “architect of the holocaust,” intended to send all Jews to Madagascar, which now belonged to Germany, France having been occupied.

The ships would need to wait only until the British, which now meant Winston Churchill, ended their blockade. That day never came. On November 25, 1940, the French ambassador asked the U.S. Secretary of State to consider accepting German Jewish refugees then in France. On December 21st, the Secretary of State declined. By July 1941, the Nazis had determined that a final solution for the Jews could consist of genocide rather than expulsion. It buried its reporting on the holocaust and on the treatment of Jews in Germany on back pages of the paper. The paper later admitted to this awful failure.

A column in the New York Times explained: “This reticence has been a subject of extensive scholarly inquiry and also much speculation and condemnation. Critics have blamed ‘self-hating Jews’ and ‘anti-Zionists’ among the paper’s owners and staff. Defenders have cited the sketchiness of much information about the death camps in Eastern Europe and also the inability of prewar generations to fully comprehend the industrial gassing of

millions of innocents -- a machinery of death not yet exposed by those chilling mounds of Jews’ bones, hair, shoes, rings. No single explanation seems to suffice for what was surely the century’s bitterest journalistic failure. The Times, like most media of that era, fervently embraced the wartime policies of the American and British governments, both of which strongly resisted proposals to rescue Jews or to offer them haven. After a decade of economic depression, both governments had political reasons to discourage immigration and diplomatic reasons to refuse Jewish settlements in regions like Palest i n e .

Then, too, papers owned by Jewish f a m i l ie s , like The Times, w e r e plainly afraid to have a society that was still widely a nti- Se mitic misread their passionate opposition to Hitler as a merely parochial cause. Even some leading Jewish groups hedged their appeals for rescue lest they be accused of wanting to divert wartime energies. At The Times, the reluctance to highlight the systematic slaughter of Jews was also undoubtedly influenced by the views of the publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. He believed strongly and publicly that Judaism was a religion, not a race or nationality -- that Jews should be separate only in the way they worshiped. He thought they needed no state or political and social institutions of their own. He went to great lengths to avoid having The Times branded a ‘Jewish newspaper.’ He resented other publications for emphasizing the Jewishness of people in the news.” The day after the attack, Congress voted for war with Japan. FDR’s first draft of a declaration was for war on Germany as well, but he held off. Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R., Mont.), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II (just as Congresswoman Barbara Lee would stand alone against attacking Afghanistan 60 years later). One year after the vote, on December 8, 1942, Rankin put extended remarks into the Congressional Record explaining her opposition. She cited the work of a British propagandist who had argued in 1938 for using Japan to bring the United States into the war. She cited Henry Luce’s reference in Life magazine on July 20, 1942, to “the Chinese for whom the U.S. had delivered the ultimatum that brought on Pearl Harbor.” She introduced evidence that

at the Atlantic Conference on August 12, 1941, Roosevelt had assured Churchill that the United States would bring economic pressure to bear on Japan. “I cited,” Rankin later wrote, “the State Department Bulletin of December 20, 1941, which revealed that on September 3 a communication had been sent to Japan demanding that it accept the principle of ‘nondisturbance of the status quo in the Pacific,’ which amounted to demanding guarantees of the inviolateness of the white empires in the Orient.” Rankin found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been “cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade

by the Allied blockade.”

Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the slogan “kill Japs, kill Japs!”) had given instructions to him and others to “shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea.” Prescott Sheldon Bush’s early business efforts, like those of his grandson George W. Bush, tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker who installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick.

From then on, Prescott’s business dealings went better, and he entered politics. The Thyssen in the firm’s name was a German named Fritz Thyssen, a major financial backer of Hitler referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as “Hitler’s Angel.” Many Wall Street executives viewed the Nazis as enemies of commun i s m .

A mer ica n investment in Germany increased 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940 even as it declined sharply everywhere else in continental Europe. Major investors included Ford, General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Texaco, Inter nat iona l H a r v e s t e r, ITT, and IBM. Bonds were sold in New York in the 1930s that financed the Aryanization of German companies and real estate stolen from Jews. Many companies continued doing business with Germany through the war, even if it meant benefitting from concentration-camp labor. IBM even provided the Hollerith Machines used to keep track of Jews and others to be murdered, while ITT created the Nazis’ communications system as well as bomb parts and then collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damage to its German factories.

U.S. pilots were instructed not to bomb factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. companies.

When Cologne was leveled, its Ford plant, which provided military equipment for the Nazis, was spared and even used as an air raid shelter. Henry Ford had been funding the Nazis’ anti-Semitic propaganda since the 1920s. His German plants fired all employees with Jewish ancestry in 1935, before the Nazis required it. In 1938, Hitler awarded

Ford the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, an honor only three people had previously received, one of them being Benito Mussolini. Hitler’s loyal colleague and leader of the Nazi Party in Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, had an American mother and said her son had discovered anti-Semitism by reading Henry Ford’s The Eternal Jew. The companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers later sued the U.S. government and Bush’s heirs for $40 billion, but the suit was dismissed by a U.S. court on the grounds of state sovereignty. Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush’s business interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to the United States. After World War II, the U.S. military hired sixteen hundred former Nazi scientists and doctors, including some of Adolf Hitler’s closest collaborators, including men responsible for murder, slavery, and human experimentation, including men convicted of war crimes, men acquitted of war crimes, and men who never stood trial.

Some of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg had already been working for the U.S. in either Germany or the U.S. prior to the trials. Some were protected from their past by the U.S. government for years, as they lived and worked in Boston Harbor, Long Island, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, Alabama, and elsewhere, or were flown by the U.S. government to Argentina to protect them from prosecution.

Some trial transcripts were classified in their entirety to avoid exposing the pasts of important U.S. scientists. Some of the Nazis brought over were frauds who had passed themselves off as scientists, some of whom subsequently learned their fields while working for the U.S. military. Weeks before the first bomb was dropped, on July 13, 1945, Japan sent a telegram to the Soviet

Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s codes and read the telegram. President Truman referred in his diary to “the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.”

Truman had been informed through Swiss and Portuguese channels of Japanese peace overtures as early as three months before Hiroshima. Japan objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but the United States insisted on those terms until after the bombs fell, at which point it allowed Japan to keep its emperor. “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” This was a plan drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 that called for the CIA or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against U.S. civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The plan was not acted on, and was successfully kept secret for 40 years. The U.S. government quickly claimed that al Qaeda and/or Iraq was to blame, and the U.S. media repeated this many times. There was no evidence for it. The FBI blames a U.S. government employee. Congress members and others doubt that conclusion. The anthrax has been identified as coming from the United States. The U.S. government has settled lawsuits from victims without admitting guilt. Michael T. Flynn is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and chair of the Military Intelligence Board from July 24, 2012, to August 2, 2014. Prior to this he served as assistant director of national intelligence.

He says: “We’ve tended to say, drop another bomb via a drone and put out a headline that ‘we killed Abu Bag of Doughnuts’ and it makes us all feel good for 24 hours.

And you know what? It doesn’t matter. It just made them a martyr, it just created a new reason to fight us even harder.” He also says: “When you drop a bomb from a drone... you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good. The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just... fuels the conflict.”

Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Michael Scheuer says the more the U.S. fights terrorism the more it creates terrorism. Admiral Dennis Blair, the former director of National Intelligence wrote in the New York Times that while “drone attacks did help reduce the Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, they also increased hatred of America” and damaged “our ability to work with Pakistan [in] eliminating Taliban sanctuaries, encouraging Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and making Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal more secure.” The Guardian reported on January 7, 2013: “Michael Boyle, who was on Obama’s counter-terrorism group in the run-up to his election in 2008, said the US administration’s growing reliance on drone technology was having ‘adverse strategic effects that have not been properly weighed against the tactical gains associated with killing terrorists... The vast increase in the number of deaths of low-ranking operatives has deepened political resistance to the US programme in

Pakistan, Yemen and other countries.’” The New York Times reported on March 22, 2013: “Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a favored adviser during Mr. Obama’s first term, expressed concern in a speech here on Thursday that America’s aggressive campaign of drone strikes could be undermining long-term efforts to battle extremism.

‘We’re seeing that blowback. If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.’”

“The CIA station chief in Islamabad thought the drone strikes in 2005 and 2006 -- which, while infrequent at that time, were often based on bad intelligence and had resulted in many civilian casualties -- had done little except fuel hatred for the United States inside Pakistan and put Pakistani officials in the uncomfortable position of having to lie about the strikes.” -- The Way of the Knife, Mark Mazzetti, Kindle loc. 2275.

A leaked internal CIA document admits the U.S. drone program is counterproductive. You wouldn’t know this from New York Times reports, but a New York Times editorial blurts it out as obvious: “Of course, we already know that torture and drone strikes pose a profound threat to America’s national security and the safety of its citizens abroad. After all, the murderers of the Islamic State did not dress their victims in orange jumpsuits for no reason; they did it to evoke the horrors of the Guantnamo prison camp.” Clark: Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000 Wesley Clark claims that in 2001, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld put out a memo proposing to take over seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Blair: The basic outline of this plan was confirmed by none other than former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who in 2010 pinned it on former Vice President Dick Cheney: “Cheney wanted forcible ‘regime change’ in all Middle Eastern countries that he considered hostile to U.S. interests, according to Blair. ‘He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it -- Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.,’ Blair wrote.

‘In other words, he [Cheney] thought the world had to be made anew, and that after 11 September, it had to be done by force and with urgency. So he was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.’”

A number of countries may owe their safety to the difficulties the United States had for years in Iraq. But Libya and Syria and Sudan can’t say that anymore, and Iran is constantly threatened. In a 2014 Gallup poll, 68 percent of Italians said they would NOT fight for their country, while 20 percent said they would. In Germany 62 percent said they would not, while 18 percent said they would. In the Czech Republic, 64 percent would not fight for their country, while 23 percent would. In the Netherlands, 64 percent would not fight for their country, while 15 percent would. In Belgium, 56 percent would not, while 19 percent would. Even in the UK, 51 percent would not participate in a UK war, while 27 percent would. In France, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, and Switzerland, more people would refuse to be part of a war than would agree. The same goes for Australia and Canada. In Japan only 10 percent would fight for their country. The United States manages 44 percent claiming a willingness to fight and 31 percent refusing.

By no means is that the world record.

Israel is at 66 percent ready to fight and 13 percent not.

Afghanistan is at 76 to 20. Russia, Sweden, Finland, and Greece are all ready to fight with strong majorities. Argentina and Denmark have ties between those who would fight and those who would not. Luckily almost everyone who says they would fight fails to show up at a recruiting station, but their responses still reflect a cultural climate.

Here are the top 25 in order from the top down: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malawi, Indonesia, Yemen, Niger, Burundi, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somaliland, Afghanistan, Morocco, Egypt, Comoros, Thailand, Cameroon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Philippines, Cambodia, Senegal, Ghana, Zambia, Qatar, Algeria. For at least 90 percent of humans’ existence our ancestors were hunter gatherers who did not know war. Some complex sedentary societies over the past 10,000 years, and mainly over the past 5,000 years, have known war, while others have not. Societies have abandoned war for centuries and then brought it back again, or not brought it back again.

Even in some societies that wage far more war than most, the vast majority of the population has no involvement in it. Only for the past couple of centuries has war even remotely resembled what it often is today. And war is changing so rapidly that one might even reduce that to the past half-century. The United States. That’s the only one. Various reasons have been offered but it’s worth noting that the United States routinely violates the terms of this treaty, sentencing kids to life in prison, recruiting kids into the military, failing to protect children’s rights. During the 1970s, when Congress was attempting to exercise oversight over the CIA, foreign governments allied with the United States secretly pooled their resources in order to keep doing, together with the CIA, exactly what they wanted to do, without having to ask Congress for funding. They called this operation the Safari Club. During the 1980s Congress denied President Reagan funding to arm rightwing militias in Nicaragua, so he secretly raised funds selling weapons to Iran. That operation became the Iran Contra Scandal. The Safari Club never became a scandal. Fighting in wars, officially 4488 in the latest wars in Iraq, 2229 in Afghanistan, not counting “contractors” or those who die later of their wounds or those who commit suicide. Foreign terrorism since 2001, including 9/11: 3380. Gun violence during that same time period: 406,496. Cigarettes: over 480,000 dead in a single year. In 1921, a labor struggle in Logan County turned violent, becoming the Battle of Blair Mountain, during which the United States bombed its own citizens from the air. Who was Claudette Colvin? The first activist arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks.

The movement was not yet ready.

World War II. And, following an established pattern, it remained in place after the war.

Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 30, as he and his allies argued elsewhere, for the federal power to tax precisely because the federal government might need to fight wars. Between 1789 and 1815, tariffs produced 90 percent of government revenue. But taxes were needed for wars, including wars against protests of the taxes -- such as President Washington’s quashing of the Whiskey Rebellion. A property tax was put in place in 1789 in order to build up a Navy. More taxes were need-

ed in 1798 because of the troublesome French. But taxation really got going with the War of 1812. Congress passed a tax program in 1812 that included a direct tax on land, and excise taxes on retailers, stills, auction sales, sugar, bank notes, and carriages. And in 1815, Congress created lots of new taxes to pay for the disastrous war. The idea of an income tax was raised but rejected. The income tax was created for the Civil War, by both sides. But with the end of war came the end of support for taxes, and the income tax and the inheritance tax lapsed temporarily in 1872, only to be restored

by World War I. New taxes were created in 1914, 1916, 1917, and 1918.

The income tax was now back in a big way, along with the estate tax, a munitions tax, an excess profits tax,

and other heavy taxes on corporations. The munitions and profits taxes were results of an ongoing debate through most of U.S. history over how to tax war profiteering. Until the current century, profiting financially from war was widely considered unacceptable.

Following World War I, various taxes were no longer needed. In 1921 and 1924 Congress repealed the excess profits tax but left the income tax in place, rather than adopting a sales tax favored by business groups. The top rate of taxation on income was reduced from 77% to 25%, but that was still more than double where it had been before the war. Meanwhile, the estate tax remained in place, and corporate taxes were actually increased during the 1920s. Taxation and progressive taxation survived the outbreak of peace. But nothing resembling modern taxation levels was seen until World War II, when income taxes began to be paid by a much larger number of people. Corporate taxes were increased as well, with a top statutory rate of 95%, and generating almost a third of wartime revenue.

An excess profits tax came within a month of the draft, both of which came before Pearl Harbor. In 1943 Congress overrode a presidential veto to shift the tax burden more heavily onto working people.

Corporations would never again to this day shoulder the share of public funding that they had in the early years of World War II. But personal income tax levels have remained roughly where they were during the war. The U.S. occupying army’s Douglas MacArthur and a longtime peace activist Japanese prime minister put it there, using roughly the language of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. The United States then tried to compel Japan to remove it during the Korean War, the War on Vietnam, and ever since. An organization established in 1898 to oppose the expansion of U.S. empire. Member included Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Jane Addams, Felix Adler, Edward Atkinson, Ambrose Bierce, George S. Boutwell, Gamaliel Bradford, John G. Carlisle, Andrew Carnegie, Grover Cleveland, Donelson Caffery, Theodore L. Cuyler, John Dewey, Finley Peter Dunne, George F. Edmunds, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Samuel Gompers, William Dean Howells, Henry James, William James, Henry U. Johnson, Reverdy Johnson,

David Starr Jordan, William Larrabee, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, William Vaughn Moody, Hazen S. Pingree, Carl Schurz, John Sherman, Moorfield Storey, Mark Twain, Morrison I. Swift, William Graham Sumner, Oswald Garrison Villard. She received the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize as one of that minority of Nobel Peace Prize winners over the years who actually met the qualifications laid out in Alfred Nobel’s will. Addams worked in many fields toward the creation of a society capable of living without war. In 1898 Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose the U.S. war on the Philippines. When World War I began, she led international efforts to try to resolve and end it. She presided over the International Congress of Women in The Hague in 1915. And when the United States entered the war she spoke out publicly against the war in the face of vicious accusations of treason. She was the first leader of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919 and of its predecessor organization in 1915. Jane Addams was part of the movement in the 1920s that made war illegal through the Kellogg -Briand Pact.

She helped found the A C L U and the N A A C P, helped win women’s suff r a g e , helped reduce child labor, and created the profession of social worker, which she viewed as a means of learning from immigrants and building democracy, not as participation in charity. She created Hull House in Chicago, started a kindergarten, educated adults, supported labor organizing, and opened the first playground in Chicago.

Jane Addams authored a dozen books and hundreds of articles. She opposed the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and predicted that it would lead to a German war of revenge. Founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1838, its work would influence Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi. It was formed in part by radicals upset with the timidity of the American Peace Society which refused to oppose all violence. The new group’s Constitution and Declaration of Sentiments, drafted primarily by William Lloyd Garrison, stated, in part: “We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human government... Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind... We register our testimony, not only against

all war -- whether offensive or defensive, but all preparations for war, against every naval ship, every arsenal, every fortification; against the militia system and a standing army; against all military chieftains and soldiers; against all monuments commemorative of victory over a foreign foe, all trophies won in battle, all celebrations in honor of military or naval exploits; against all appropriations for the defense of a nation by force and arms on the part of any legislative body; against every edict of government requiring of its subjects military service. Hence, we deem it unlawful to bear arms or to hold a military office... “ The New England Non-Resistance Society actively campaigned for change, including feminism and the abolition of slavery. Members disturbed church meetings to protest inaction on slavery.

Members as well as their leaders often faced the violence of angry mobs, but always they refused to return the injury.

The Society attributed to this nonresistance the fact that none of its members were ever killed. Armistice Day was transformed into Veterans Day after the Korean War in order to turn what had been a day of opposition to war into a day of support for war. Senior Ronald Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of weapons to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped thereby to secure the release of several U.S. hostages, and to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the U.S. government had been prohibited by Congress. In no case has Congress declared war. The Constitutionality of an open-ended “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” is dubious, but a great deal of U.S. warmaking has not been covered even by one of those. For example, the 2011 war on Libya. In March 2011 the African Union had a plan for peace in Libya but was prevented by NATO, through the creation of a “no fly zone” and the initiation of bombing, to travel to Libya to discuss it. In April, the African Union was able to discuss its plan with Ghadafi, and he expressed his agreement. NATO, which had obtained UN authorization to protect Libyans alleged to be in danger but no authorization to continue bombing the country or to overthrow the government, continued bombing the country and overthrowing the government. Seymour Hersh reports: “Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission.

Then we’ll need standby searchand-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely

eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.” Most nations have banned it, but 37 still allow it, and 22 used it in 2014. Six killed more than 25 people that year.

Here they are in order from the country that killed the most people down to the least: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, North Korea, the United States. In order from the top down: Costa Rica, Lesotho, Bhutan, Paraguay, Albania, Iceland, Mozambique, Zambia, DRC, Nepal, Ethiopia, Burundi, Norway, Belize, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Namibia, Malawi, Central African Republic, Togo, Brazil, Uganda, Colombia, Afghanistan, Austria, Mali, Kenya, Georgia, Cameroon, Burma, New Zealand, Sudan, Angola, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Guatemala, Latvia, Fiji, Venezuela, Madagascar, Canada, Panama, Uruguay, Republic of the Congo, Switzerland, El Salvador, Sweden, and dozens more before the United States makes it into the list. The ongoing Western interventions, civil wars, power conflicts between Middle Eastern governments, reactionary dictatorships, and ethnic and sectarian fighting have intensified and there is no end in sight. Death, misery, starvation and migration are the orders of the day for tens of millions of people. Desperation and hatred of the West roil the region. No less than eight countries and numerous ethnic, religious and political factions are involved in the tragedy of Syria, the conflict which has most recently contributed to intensified military action, the growth of terrorism, mass migration and despair. IS/ ISIS/ISIL/Daesh (four names for the same entity) has emerged from the militarized misery now afflicting the Middle East with far greater power than any (non-state) terrorist group of the last 40 years, and the recent attacks show that they are now actively pursuing an international strategy.

ISIS’s leadership has its origins as part of al-Qaeda in the war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 where the U.S. helped recruit, organize and train them to fight the Soviets.

After the Soviet defeat the terrorists trained their guns on the often corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and on the West. They gained new life and momentum in response to the U.S. wars in Iraq and the Middle East in 1991 and since September 11. In 2012 ISIS formed from a split with al-Qaeda. Due to the U.S.’s fatal construction and backing of a sectarian Shiite regime in Iraq and that regime’s sharp attacks on the Sunnis, ISIS was able to recruit segments of Saddam Hussein’s regime (Sunni political and military leaders) as well as Sunni tribal chiefs, and to win economic and political support from some of the former Iraqi ruling classes and social base. ISIS now controls swaths of land, economy and population, including significant oil areas in Iraq and Syria, and is trying to move into and recruit in Libya. Their military capacity now rests on this economy and political support and is greatly bolstered by the expertise of many of the battle hardened generals and command staff of Saddam Hussein’s army. Their influence extends into Africa, West and South Asia, and Europe. Their goals are utterly reactionary: the establishment of a theocratic dictatorship (Caliphate) premised on a brutally hierarchical and patriarchal version of Islam that runs counter to that of the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Unless they (and other terrorist groups) are defeated, or at least attacks in Boston and San Bernardino appear to have been carried out by people who supported and were inspired by extreme Islamic terror groups but whose attacks were not directed or organized by any group. It is not clear whether ISIS has attained organized operational capacity in the U.S., but it seems a likely goal ‘ the prevention of which is a high priority. In the U.S. the political atmosphere is pervaded by mass shootings (often racist or misogynist in motivation), racist police murders and the terrorist attacks internationally, but also in Boston and now San Bernardino. It has recently been revealed that, on average, there is a mass shooting in which four or more people are shot every single day in the U.S. The New York Times reports that ‘Since Sept.

11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and

other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims.’

Until the recent spike in foreign terrorist attacks it seemed that the antiracist forces, spearheaded by BlackLivesMatter and mobilizing against state violence, were gaining important momentum, and that the rightwing might isolate itself with its bombastic rhetoric. But the Islamic extremist terrorist attacks are providing a basis for the rightwing to reinvigorate their call for a hard militarist/police line against all who they brand as ‘criminals,’ domestic or foreign. The racist far right has been seething since the election of the country’s first B l a c k president.

It is enraged by what is sees as recent attacks on the police and law and order

by BlackLivesMatter and criminal justice reformers.

And now their wrath has been energized by the ultraright presidential candidates and the prospects of a new ‘war on terrorism at home and abroad. The result of weeks of cutting cane with Cubans, as well as with revolutionary guests from struggles around the world, and traveling across the country in a remarkable 100bus caravan, changed my life. The world was aflame with liberation movements in all continents and the US anti-war, women’s and Black and Latino liberation movementswere in full swing. Although new to left movements in the US, when the Cubans, including Fidel, told us we were revolutionaries I figured, who was I to argue? In essence, thetrip set me on a course of a life-time as a participant in many progressive movements, especially labor, seeking to create social and economic justice everywhere. I have never regretted that decision for a single second.

It is hard to explain the viciousness of the blockade. There is no similar practiceimposed by the US in our history.

Any company in the world who does business in Cuba cannot do business in the massive US marketplace without massive fines. And this imposition is rigidly enforced, even since the onset of diplomatic relations. In 2014 the French bank BNP Paribas was forced to pay a staggering $6.5 billion fine for doing banking business with Cuba in order to have continued access to the US market. Also recently the Canadian owned division of Master Card, which was popular with the more than one million Canadians a year who travel to Cuba, was recently bought by Bank of America (suspicions that it had US government support) and im-

mediately Canadian MasterCards could not be used in Cuba.

The impact of the blockade on the Cuban economy is massive and the country is poor, even using horse and carriages as regular public transport in the rural areas. But education is free through the university level, excellent healthcare is available to all, homelessness seemed non-existent compared to the rampant epidemic in US cities, basic food stuff are supplied to all, public transportation is virtually free and jobs are available for all, albeit at low salaries. At the same time there is little in the stores to buy beyond the basics. Cuba is expanding worker owned cooperative businesses and privatized services such as taxis in the large old US cars, small restaurants and bed and breakfast accommodations in peo-

ples’ homes to meet the needs of the growing tourist trade. Changes are happening and the Cubans are trying to figure out how to accommodate them within a socialist framework. One good example is Major League Baseball which is drooling over the chance to legally get its hands on so much untapped talent.

The Cubans are proposing that multi-million dollar contracts include clauses that allow substantial amounts of thesalaries to go back into Cuba to, among other things, develop sports facilities for Cuban children. Long Flaxen Synthetic Heat Resistent Hair Wave Wig Long Wave Tokyo Ghoul OneEyed Owl Cosplay Wig Red Synthetic Heat Resistent Hair Wave Wig Long Flaxen Synthetic Heat Resistent Hair Wave Wig Long Wave Tokyo Ghoul One-Eyed Owl Cosplay Wig Red Synthetic Heat Resistent Hair Wave Wig USD $11.65USD $16.59 USD $13.56USD $18.82 USD $11.65 USD $16.59 The snow r e a l l y brings the birds in: p u r ple finches, a few siskins, a lone evening grosbeak, acouple of v a r i e d thrushes and a white-throated sparrow joined an overflowing crowd of juncos and other regulars today. Off-topic: Maybe a trip by a bunch of birders this spring to MalheurWildlife Refuge is in ord e r !

C a s h strapped Chicago doled out $5.5 million in reparations on Monday to 57 victims of the Jon Burge police torture era after a painstaking claims process that will do nothing to healthe wounds of more recent police shootings. When the City Council agreed last spring to make Chicago the nations first major city to pay reparations, there were high hopes that the $100,000 checks to individual torture victims would restore public trust between citizens and police in the AfricanAmerican community so undermined by the convicted former Area 2 commander and his cohorts. But damage done by the police dashcam video that showed white police Officer Jason Van Dyke pumping 16 shots into the body of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was black, has added a new and equally ugly chapter in the history of the Chicago Police Department. So has the more recent police shooting of 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier and the accidental shooting of LeGriers neighbor, 55-year-old Bettie Jones.

T

he conveyance and discussion of the fellow’s own work occurs parallel to the development of the individual proposals.

The public events take place in series.

The focus of these series of events is determined by the respective emphases of the various fellows’ works.

Within theframework of this discursive format, the fellows (or their guests) can present various points in their investigations, open up theirworks-in-progress to critical discussion, interact with experts who they invite, work through content with the public, and/or try out new ways of working.

The fellowship year ends with a group exhibition curated by the director of the Fellowship Program.

Ireland underwent a massive prehistoric wave of immigration from the Middle East and eastern Europe, which could explain how modern farming arrived in the region, researchers said in a study released on Monday. The major finding, traceable via in genome sequencing, may end a long-running debate among scientists, some of whom thought local populations abruptly switched from being hunter-gatherers to using organized farming techniques simply as part of local adaptation. In fact, the changes came with this massive influx of people from the Middle East and eastern Europe, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). The Middle East was where modern farming was developed about 10,000 years ago. And while Ireland is often thought of for its wailing-pipes Celtic connection, its history is a bloody quilt of many invasions and influxes -- Celts, Vikings, Normans -- all before becoming the first outpost of the British empire. Thus when we present evidence of improved grasp and so understanding of our subjects by means of computing, with implicit if not explicit argument that we should be thinking of them in this new way, is not the process of naturalizing the machine well underway? The problem I see here, often exacerbated by promotionalism, is the unspoken imperative that we should redirect rather than enlarge the scope of our attention. The new way, whatever it is, means a tradeoff, a loss as well as a gain.

Losing the loss seems to me a real loss. On December 23, the Department of Justice announced that it was suspending a program that made it easier for local police

departments to confiscate property seized from citizens.

The program, called equitable sharing, gave law enforcement the ability to prosecute asset forfeiture under more lenient federal law. Under federal law the police could keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize, regardless of whether or not a crime has been charged. According to a report issued by the Institute of Justice, between 1997 and 2013, 87 percent of DOJ seizures were civil, and only 13 percent were criminal. This means that only 13 percent of the victims--that’s right, 13 percent of the victims--of asset forfeitures were charged with a crime. The raids that DHS announced days before Christmas seem to have started in the Atlanta area on January 2nd. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents barged into homes, even when asked for warrants at the door, removing mothers and children as young as 4 years old. By midday the phone at the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) was ringing regularly as families and neighbors reported ICE activity and sought support for loved ones taken away. Israeli forces on Monday afternoon detained former Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, most famous for undertaking two grueling hunger strikes to secure his release from Israel’s prisons.Witnesses told Ma’an that an Israeli military vehicle stopped a private car Adnan was driving near Silwad village east of Ramallah and took him to an unknown location.Adnan was released in July last year after he undertook a 55-day hunger strike to protest his administrative detention -- internment without trial or charge.” All the guarantees which Sheikh Khader asked for have been obtained, and so he triumphed over the occupation state after 55 days of hunger strike,” Adnan’s wife told Ma’an at the time. However, Adnan’s release was only made possible after he withdrew his demand that Israel agree never to hold him in administrative detention again. His hunger strike, which brought him near death by the time it concluded was the second he had carried out, following a 66-day long hunger strike in 2012 that also ended in his release. Solo exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (CT), Laguna Art Museum (CA), Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OK), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS), ZieherSmith Gallery (NY), Rokeby Gallery (London), Unosunove Arte Contemporanea (Rome), and Division Gallery (Montreal). In addition to her inclusion in prestigious film festivals around the world, her films have garnered multiple awards, including Best Experimental Animation at Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2014. Her work has also been shown at the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture (Scotland), Garage Center for Contempora r y Culture (Moscow), Hammer Museum (CA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), Santa Barbara Museum of Art (CA), San Diego Museum of Art (CA), Contemporary Arts Museum (LA), German Institute for Animated Film (Germany), Canada (NY), Lehman Maupin (NY), The Hole (NY), Acme (CA), and Hangar-7 (Salzburg), among many others. Allison Schulnik’s work is in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), Santa Barbara Art Museum (CA), Muse de Beaux Arts (Montreal), Farnsworth Art Museum

(ME), Laguna Art Museum (CA), Montreal Contemporary Art Museum (Canada), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (CT), and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada). Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is almost invisible because it is so normal.

Species Summary: Pinkfooted Goose (10 Connecticut) Barnacle Goose (1 Connecticut) Tufted Duck (5 New York, 2 Newfoundland and Labrador) American Flamingo (2 Florida) Brown Booby (18 California) Hook-billed Kite (1 Texas) Northern Jacana (12 Texas) Ruff (1 California) Ivory Gull (25 Minnesota) Aplomado Falcon (5 Texas) Redwing (2 British Columbia) Rufous-backed Robin (2 Arizona) White-collared Seedeater (2 Texas) Western Spindalis (2 Florida) Crimson-collared Grosbeak (4 Texas) Streak-backed Oriole (7 Arizona) Brambling (14 Ohio) History is recorded on illuminated parchments with glorious descriptions of noble deeds. But history’s seeds are almost always first planted in a dung of hate, greed, whisky, ambition,and fear. HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. History is written by the victors. “False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news. Anyone who thinks that it is still possible to effect positive change in the US by voting is a conspiracy theorist of the most miserable, deluded kind. The body of a German man was found Monday after he drowned himself using his wife’s head in a concrete block to weigh him down in an Austrian lake. The 71-year-old man had strangled and dismembered his wife before killing himself, and her body was found Sunday in two suitcases floating close to the lake’s shore. Officials said the concrete block was in a bag attached to the man’s hand. German officials have announced that about 1,000 young men, many of them drunk, were involved in a coordinated attack against at least 90 women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. The women were harassed, molested, raped, and robbed by the men in an assault authorities described as ‘unprecedented’ in both scale and nature. Police Chief Wolfgang Albers said it was ‘a completely new dimension of crime,’ adding that a volunteer policewoman was one of the victims. The assault went unreported for days in most cases. Cologne police described the majority of attackers as young men ‘who appeared to have a North African or Arabic’ background.

That description was reportedly based on testimony from victims and witnesses and has resulted in a national outcry. Americans pay 40 percent more for prescriptions than Canadians, the next most expensive industrialized country. The federal government gives billions in government contracts to companies like Pfizer, which has hundreds of billions in untaxed profits stashed offshore.

And sleazy CEOs like “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli gouge customers on life-saving medications. As mentioned on the previous email, the replacement will be process as soon as the tracker you sent back is received in our warehouse. According to the tracking number we must receive it by Thursday January 7th, after we confirm this the replacement will be process. Dear Sir/Madam Thanks for your order in our store. It has past 15 days since we shipped the item, you should have receive it now, right?

If received, please leave a positive feedback, with Detailed Seller Ratings” over 4 stars per each criteria. If not receive, maybe the package was delayed on the way, just wait for one more week, you will receive it soon. This is an Auto email from our system, please DONT reply it if you agree to wait patiently or you have already received your items! If any problem, please reply to this message before leaving negative/neutral feedback or opening eBay/ Paypal dispute, we will provide a satisfied solution to you. PS: Please don’t contact us by the eBay message subject of “Item not received or Item not as described”, otherwise the eBay case will be opened automatically, which will bring much inconvenience for both of us. Please contact us by other message subject, such as “a question about item”. Highly appreciate for your understanding and help. Best regards, -fashionwomensale Major flooding is occurring or forecast on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers & tributaries in Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky, with record flooding at several

locations. Major flooding is also occurring on the Arkansas River & tributaries in Arkansas. Floodwaters will move downstream over the next couple of weeks, with significant river flooding expected for the lower Mississippi into mid-January. Read More... After Colchester we stopped in at the Olympic Park in London. The distinctive Aquatics centre was designed by Zaha Hadid, who is well known here in Japan for having designed the new olympic stadium but then having the design rejected. There are some design similarities between the two projects, and I have no idea what the general opinion is but I quite like it. I also liked her The tens of thousands of children and parents who have been criminalized by Homeland Sec u r it y, designated as those who have received ‘a final order of removal’ as of January 1, 2014, are actually seeking refuge from drug-war violence, political instability, epidemic poverty, and the utter failure on the part of the governments of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to protect vulnerable communities’a slow-burning social unraveling in which Washington’s policies have played a considerable part.

Overall, roughly 100,000 family members have arrived from Central America over the past two years, primarily mothers with children, many of them seeking asylum, along with some 100,000 unaccompanied migrant and refugee children.

There was also a spike in the number of unaccompanied children and family members entering the United States in October and November, more than 23,000, exceeding the previous year’s migration rate. One migrant teenager, Lilian, recalled in an interview how she felt threatened constantly in her home community in El Salvador: ‘I didn’t feel safe because everyone lived with the same fear of being killed one day.’ When I would walk along the street, I had the feeling that someone was going to come up behind me and hurt me. I decided to come to the United States. I felt really sad because I had to leave my mother all alone. But I was sure that I would be safer here.’ Thousands of stories like Lilian’s have been piling up in court dockets. Yet, instead of listening to their pleas, the White House has sought to ‘dispose’ of their cases by making migrants fear the United States just as they feared for their lives in Central America. Whether in a Texas courtroom or on a Salvadorean street corner,

the feeling is the same: Nowhere is safe. One of the major information gaps in this entire period has been the concealment of what is happening in the countries governed by neoliberalism.

You might get the impression that everything is going marvellously there and that the only problems in Latin America are in the other countries. But in fact this is a monumental media distortion.

It’s enough to look at the situation in Mexico, a country that has extremely high levels of crime, destruction of the social fabric and huge regions rife with drug trafficking. Or to see the situation of Central American countries decimated by emigration, by the predominance of crime and with presidents like the one in Guatemala, who have been removed from office over corruption scandals. Or take the

Chilean economic model, which is in a quite critical situation with significantly reduced growth and now the appearance of corruption in a country that has made a show of transparency. Family indebtedness, labour precariousness, inequality, and the privatization of education have begun to surface. And Bachelet’s government is paralyzed.

Those reforms in pensions and education, which it thought it would carry out, are now delayed. Associations between seabirds and marine mammals are a common event in all seas and oceans of the world. Several authors have called these associations as commensal, opportunistic or parasitic relationships, depending on the result of such interaction effect on one or two related species. In order to describe the presence of associations among *Sotalia guianensis *and sea birds in the southern region of the Gulf of Venezuela, from June 2011 to June 2012, observations of groups of this cetacean and seabirds were made on mobile platforms, using the ‘*group follow*’ protocol following an ‘*Ad libitum sampling*’. All sightings were geo-referenced and annotations about the occurrence or non-association with seabirds, species and number of birds present at the association were made.

During the sampling period 721 sightings were recorded, of which 197 events of aggregation between seabirds and *S. guianensis *were registered. The resident seabird species most frequently presented at each event associated with *S. guianensis *were: *Fregata magnificens *(49%; n=98), *Phalacrocorax brasilianus *(29.5%; n=59) and *Pelecanus occidentalis *(22.5%; n=45); being *Thalasseus maxima *(71%; n=142) the only migratory species. During all sampling sightings was observed only one interaction between a swallow species (*Riparia riparia*) and *Sotalia guianensis*. These bird-dolphin associations were only observed when a notable congregation of fish was registered and a dolphin or a group of dolphins were performing any activity with large movements of water that allowed birds to find and locate their preys with low energy cost. Yesterday, as I left work for home at a little after 4:00 PM, driving along Hot Lake Lane (a road that forms the boundary of Ladd Marsh Wildlife Area) I saw a large group of hawks with one

bird of greater size than the others. I stopped to investigate what looked like a mobbing. What I saw was about 15 Northern Harriers flying with a Redtailed Hawk but they weren’t really mobbing it. Now and then one would fly at it half heartedly but this didn’t look like serious attempt to chase the red-tail. As I watched I saw more birds joining the “flock.” More and more Harriers appeared out of a slate grey sky in fading light. I started to leave once but saw another bunch coming so I stopped and watched again. They did not form a tight bunch but were loosely associated over about a 20 acre area.

My final count was 50+ Northern Harriers, 1 Red-tailed Hawk and 1 Rough-legged hawk. I am at a loss to explain this. We “always” have harriers on the wildlife area over winter but generally not in high numbers. That depends on the weather - I suspect as the weather worsens and hunting is harder more move on to easier pickings as evidenced by fewer observations. We do not have particularly nasty weather that would have driven them in nor were they clustered around a p r e y source. I have seen ( p r e sumed) family groups of harriers flying together in late summer and I have seen groups in the spring as males court females. I have never seen numbers like this. As the terrorist group ISIS is pushed out of northern Iraq, archaeologists are resuming work in the region, making new discoveries and figuring out how to conserve archaeological sites and reclaim looted antiquities. Several discoveries, including new Neanderthal skeletal remains, have been made at Shanidar Cave, a site in Iraqi Kurdistan that was inhabited by Neanderthals more than 40,000 years ago. Many argue a machine is creative if it simulates or replicates human creativity (e.g. evaluation of AI systems via a Turing-style test), while others have conceived of computational creativity as an inherently different discipline, where computer generated (art)work should not be judged on the same terms, i.e. being necessarily producible by a human artist, or having similar attributes, etc. This symposium aims at bringing together researchers to discuss recent technical and philosophical developments in the field, and the impact of

this research on the future of our relationship with computers and the way we perceive them: at the individual level where we interact with the machines, the social level where we interact with each other via computers, or even with machines interacting with each other. and quaint terminology, archeological cyber-anything, virtual worldings returning the grit of the body to shapeless and groundless grit-physics representative of the wired body recording spasms and its own infrastructures on closed and unhacked circuitry casting off shell after shell of imagery almost representative of a central core or kernel from which pushbacks and pullouts, pushouts and pullbacks, can be conceptualized, the locals of a topoi or places as if they were originary, origin lying in the sensors, the wires, the programs, hardly in the apparatus of the body which is already corrosive, still un-gene-spliced, falling, failing, flailing apart, the core of flesh returning through a barycentric arcing from the configurations of slaughter, the removal of temples and other archaeological debris, and here is the debris caved in within the body, the body electric signaling to the world, body touching body, spasmodic body grounded in the struggle for breath and mouthings, muscles loose and taut, pleasure and carapace or shells thrown from it, wave after wave, recordings stuttered in the apparatus of the virtual world, as if there were always a return, this electric body, this non-electronic body or one running from the diodes and wires elsewhere to and from the machines taking note of whatever the shuddering or shattering might speak of, for within the body itself, such are unspeakable, incapable at these times of speech or thoughtful thinking, indeterminate, letting it run on as if there were streams flooding the interior of the virtual worlds, shortcircuiting, burning, everything around, the cliffs, the waters, the recording devices, the muscles, the skin, the flesh beneath the skin, the tissues of the flesh, the organs beneath, the ruptures and sutures, the belongings and castings, the operations, the inoperables, the espionage from within, the careful and unordained movements of arms and legs, mouths and fingers, the encodings and decodings, murmurs of the machinic, the soft machines, the soft, the inordinate, the gatherings and castings-aside, the Terror, intimidation and violence are the glue that holds empire together. Aerial bombardment, drone and missile attacks, artillery and mortar strikes, targeted assassinations, massacres, the detention of tens of thousands, death squad killings, torture, wholesale surveillance, extraordinary renditions, curfews, propaganda, a loss of civil liberties and pliant political puppets are the grist of our wars and proxy wars. Countries we seek to dominate, from Indonesia and Guatemala to Iraq and Afghanistan, are intimately familiar with these brutal mechanisms of control. But the reality of empire rarely reaches the American public. The weather outside is frightful, but at least you can imagine yourself sunning at a dreamy winter beach destination, exploring Hawaii’s volcanoes, discovering Mexico’s ruins, or indulging in The Big Easy’s legendary food. Thank you too all those who?ve trusted who we are, and been with us for a long period of time and also those of you who?ve recently joined us, and wish to carry on collaborating in building something special that challenges the usual top-down, elite systems across

art culture, techno-culture and academia. We may not be perfect, but we’re trying our best and it has not been easy as many of you know. Yet, we always actively try and take on what people have said, whatever position, class, race or gender. Unlike some other groups out there, we’ve stuck to our guns while also adapting, and remaining grounded whilst being fresh and relevant. In fact, we?ve managed to continue a strong dedication to our shared values, humanity and respect for the world we live in, and our artistic contexts, ethics and socially informed intentions, in spite of the everyday pressures of neo-liberalism. Pyongyang said Wednesday it had successfully tested its first ‘miniaturized hydrogen bomb,’ in a surprise announcement that came after a South Korean weather agency reported seeing signs of an ‘artificial quake’ near a North Korean nuclear test site.If the claims are true, it will mark a big step in North Korea’s development of nuclear warheads that would be capable of reaching the U.S. Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered the testing on Dec. 15, according to the North’s state-run news agency. South Korean ministers called an emergency meeting over the latest incident while Japanese officials were also convening to discuss the matter. White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said Washington has yet to confirm the claims, but condemns ‘any violation of UNSC resolutions and again calls on North Korea to abide by its international obligations and commitments.’ The UN Security Council will meet Wednesday in New York to discuss the alleged test. 16F, bright and hazy. Egg sandwich, grapefruit.

Coffee. It is a common problem: Home Wireless Router’s reach is terrible that the WiFi network even does not extend past the front door of the room. My house also has all kinds of Wi-Fi dead zones, but can we fix it? The answer is: YES. The problem will improve with a future, longer range version of Wi-Fi that uses low power consumption than current wireless technology and specifically targets ... SCADA system has always been an interesting target for cyber crooks, given the success of Stuxnet malware that was developed by the US and Israeli together to sabotage the Iranian nuclear facilities a few years ago, and “Havex” that previously targeted organizations in the energy sector. Now once again, hackers have used highly destructive malware and infected, at least, three regional ... The role of armed forces in an open society may be likened to a potent medicine that is life-saving in the proper dosage but lethal beyond a certain proportion. Military forces have proved to be indispensable for securing the political space in which free institutions can flourish, but they may also trample or destroy those institutions if unconstrained by law and wise leadership. A rich and thoughtful account of how the U.S. military has protected, supported, clashed with and occasionally undermined constitutional government in this country “In the middle of the twentieth century, [troops] helped integrate Southern schools and universities, and they were sent into cities around the country to help control race riots. Federal forces were also used to suppress political protests during the Vietnam War. All the while, the unique capabilities of the military were welcomed in communities recovering from natural disasters.” Whether a president has inherent constitutional authority, or may be authorized

by Congress, to order the military imprisonment of a civilian without charges, perhaps indefinitely, is a question that has not yet been definitively answered by the courts. As a practical matter, however, the president may do so if no court will intervene. Without a larger reform of police culture, the drug war and militarization, abuse by law enforcement will endure.

Nicholson Gregoire, a 25-yearold biology student at Nassau Community College, was walking his puppy pit bull, Blue, around 5:00 pm on December 15 when he noticed police conducting “stop and frisk” searches, according to the New York Daily News. Police noticed the dog wasn’t restrained by a leash and asked Gregoire for ID. Gregoire reportedly was granted permission to go inside his Queens Village home to find the ID, but he closed the door, prompting two officers to repeatedly ring the doorbell. Gregoire’s 87-year-old grandfather, Roleme, came down the stairs to answer the door, but from there, the police and Gregoire tell different versions of subse-

quent events. According to Gregoire’s lawyer, the police claim that his client “dragged them inside,” which is just bizarre. The arrest report alleged that Gregoire refused to hand over his ID, but a video shot by Gregoire’s girlfriend, showing police struggling with him on the stairs, has Gregoire holding up his hands showing the ID. Whatever happened in the house, they had no reason to stop him or ask him for ID. He was walking his puppy on the street where he lives. The police created a dangerous situation where none had existed before. And this happens many times each day, all over the country.

Gregoire was arrested and faces seven years in prison for resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, and strang ulation.

He’s been suspended from his job a n d missed his final exam. Congratulations! How are you doing today? We hope this email finds you well. Your email is among the 5 email addresses selected by a Google powered email newsletter software operated by registered British freelance tech experts upon our request to receive a cash donation of 1million from our family, payable by our affilate payout bank as part of ongoing celebrations to mark our massive Euromillions win. A win which made us the 10th British EuroMillions winners. We are glad about our win and we would like to give something back, a good reason why we are conducting this email financial donation project. To receive this financial donation from our family via our affiliate payout bank, please reply for details on how to claim. Richard & Angela Maxwell The water surface is a threshold between two soundworlds and two entirely different listening experiences. An ambisonic experience over eight audio channels in vertical alignment. I have looked all over.

The only disc of unknown content has your writing “GiP pg 6. The video you showed me was well defined. Good luck. Aunt Helen is 81 today. I just phoned her and she is not feeling too well, a bug of some kind. She’d love to hear from you.

Almost 60 years since the world’s first commercial nuclear power station began to deliver power to the UK’s grid, the industry remains as far from being able to cover its costs as ever, writes Pete Dolack. But while unfunded liabilities increase year by year, governments are still willing to commit their taxpayers’ billions to new nuclear plants with no hope of ever being viable. If the

owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full costs, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build a reactor today, and anyone who owned one would exit the nuclear business as quickly as they could. The ongoing environmental disaster at Fukushima is a grim enough reminder of the dangers of nuclear power. But nuclear does not make sense economically, either. The entire industry would not exist without massive government subsidies. Quite an insult: Subsidies prop up an industry that points a dagger at the heart of the communities where ever it operates. The building of nuclear power plants drastically slowed after the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, so it is at a minimum reckless that the latest attempt to re-

suscitate nuclear power pushes forward heedless of Fukushima’s discharge of radioactive materials into the air, soil and ocean. There are no definitive statistics on the amount of subsidies enjoyed by nuclear power providers - in part because there so many different types of subsidies - but it amounts to a figure, whether we calculate in dollars, euros or pounds, in the hundreds of billions. Local economies and livelihoods, cultures, and sustainability around the world are being challenged by wide ranging social and environmental changes. Despite many negative impacts, these changes also bring opportunities to initiate and implement innovations. Island communities are experiencing the forefront of much such action, particularly since they are often highly local and localised societies. Yet in many cases, global changes are being imposed without adequate support to the communities for dealing with those changes. The key question investigated by this paper is: How can local responses to global issues be improved for island commu n it ie s ?

Examples of successes and problematic approaches, as well as those exhibiting both, are described in this paper. A research and action agenda on islander innovation is presented for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to highlight local responses to global issues. Island communities encapsulate many of the sustainable development challenges facing humanity today (Connell, 2013 and Lewis, 1999). From the densely populated, 100% urban island of Mal, the capital of Maldives, situated at sea level, through to the poor and corruption-ridden Hispaniola experiencing severe resource overexploitation--with strong differences nonetheless seen between Haiti and the Dominican Republic--islands emerge in numerous sizes and with varying characteristics.

In many instances, global changes are imposed on island communities without adequate support forthcoming to address those challenges. Through the question “How can local responses to global issues be improved for island communities?”, this paper provides and explores examples of successes and problematic approaches, as well as those exhibiting both, in order to propose a research and action agenda on islander innovation for research-

ers, policy-makers, and practitioners with island interests or who might wish to learn from island experiences. Japanese, Australian, and Canadian citizens will also have their visa requirements waived for the Summer Olympics. Brazil is in a pretty steep recession right now, so in terms of exchange, it’s one of the best times to go.

And, should you want to go to Brazil but not deal with the crowds of the Olympics, there’s plenty of time in this window to visit before and after the games. This oneday conference sponsored by the Humanities Research Centre will explore contemporary forms of political activism and their relationship to the arts.

We will explore the world of social media, not only as a means to inform and organise real-life demonstrations, but also as a discrete arena of discussion and activism. We will analyse the practice of demonstration and occupation from a multidisciplinary approach, including sociological, geographical and political analysis.

We will also investigate the aesthetic and political value of performance, drawing connections between arts practice and political protest. Activism is a very wide topic and o f f e r s many oppor t unities to t h i n k about the role of groups in our society and in the space surrounding us, the way we stand for our political beliefs and how we create, disseminate and express values. This conference will maintain an interdisciplinary perspective, hoping to attract staff and students from various academic fields, including Geography, Theatre Studies, Sociology, Politics and International Relations to name but a few, as well as creative professionals. Painting and swimming share immersion and a certain loss of control that is simultaneously wild and structured. The body in nature; we see ourselves situated in relationship to the deep other. In Bradford’s paintings there is often a clear differentiation between swimmer and water, yet one senses she enjoys painting both equally. Bradford’s swimmers are not lit from some external light source but seem to generate their own brightness. The world seems milky and dreamlike. This comes from the act of painting, the painter breathing light and life into her canvasses. Bradford spends months and sometimes years

building up the surfaces of her paintings, slowly changing the paintings through repeated application of thinned out acrylic paint or scuffed on thicker stuff. The fact that this gradual activity creates animation and a floating quality is something close to miraculous. The act of moving a figure a little to the left or right then becomes both the history and the surface of the final painting. To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.The chains of military despotism once fastened upon a nation, ages might pass away before they could be shaken off. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience... therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring. Species Summary: Pink-footed Goose (3 Connecticut) Tufted Duck (4 New York, 2 Newfoundland and Labrador) Brown Booby (4 California) Northern Jacana (11 Texas) Ivory Gull (28 Minnesota) Aplomado Falcon (3 Texas) Sky Lark (1 British Columbia) Redwing (3 British Columbia) Rufous-backed Robin (2 Arizona) Tropical Parula (1 Texas) Western Spindalis (3 Florida) Crimson-collared Grosbeak (9 Texas) Streak-backed Oriole (1 Arizona) Brambling (20 Ohio) Burrito is really good!

And that was just the perfect amount! Thank you so much for your hard work. It was much appreciated. Pacific University is a small but diverse community, where students thrive in a personal academic environment.

Tracing its roots back to 1849, when it began as a school for orphans of the Oregon Trail, Pacific has long been devoted to making a difference in people’s lives. Nestled in the valley at the base of the coastal range and Mount Hood, the university is only a half hour to the Portland metro center. Today, students study in a unique combination of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs in the liberal arts and sciences, optometry, education, health professions and business. Pacific University has campuses in Forest Grove, Hillsboro, Eugene and Woodburn, Ore., as well as an office in Honolulu. In addition, a variety of Pacific University health and eye clinics throughout the Portland area serve patients and provide students with practical experience. At Pacific University, students and faculty engage in discovery through close, nurturing relationships that provide extraordinary learning experiences.

International study, service learning, internships and co-curricular activities have been integral parts of the education of nearly 25,000 alumni