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awildhanmonster · 6 years ago

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More Ado about Characters:

Alright, now for round 2! The following characters are all more one-offs and have no direct relation to each other quite the same was as Nell/Leonora/Barnes do, so let’s see if I can keep this under novel length.

Remy Green, aka Remy: 17 years old in current canon, and still in the last leg of high school, Remy is, for lack of any better term, a reverse werewolf: perpetually stuck in the form of a gangly wolfdog monster on all nights save the brightest of full moons. Originally just a “normal” human kid just trying to survive through graduation, her entire life wound up turned on its head when an out of control werewolf attacked and bit her while out with friends one night. He was subdued and arrested, even later charged for the negligence and violent assault, but the damage had been done and the virus passed on— in the worst ways.

Remy essentially suffered the equivalent of a severe allergic reaction and anaphylaxis during the first shift, which took hours (normal were shifts should be minutes) and resulted in her parents frantically driving her to the ER in tears. She survived, though the diagnosis— for a fragile kid with shaky self esteem— was, at the time, seemingly a fate worse than death. Despite her form, she never seems to suffer the loss of mindfulness or weakened inhibitions of most werefolk during “peak” moon periods.

Remy has since started learning how to cope with life in a new form she didn’t really want or ask for, and she has the full, unwavering support of her parents, though it’s still a lot for a teenaged kid to handle. I’m pretty sure she wound up being pulled from high school and is trying to finish out her last year and a half or so at home, though she could really use some friends she doesn’t think are “obligated” to love her like her parents are. I think she’s pretty lonely and dealing with a lot of depression issues. Luckily she’ll fall in with Wayne at some point, who’s like a sweet (greasy stoner) older brother, and he and the rest of the Losers can adopt the hell out of her as a little sister and teach her how to not give a fuck about what humans think when you’re a weirdo. She’ll earn her happy ending eventually.

Rose Lund: Absolutely 100% a retooling/transplant of one of my dearest, most beloved, super shitty/earnest self-insert characters as a 12 year old on Neopets and I have NO SHAME AT ALL. Rose is a human mage (they do exist!) around 30 or so, a pale/skinny English-Caucasian mutt with green eyes, straight brown hair, and a penchant for fancifully extra looking dyed bang fringies because she’s stopped giving a fuck. She’s one of those rare people who can strike up a conversation with just about anyone, blessed by a very… unique way with words that’s unintentionally contributed to her internet fame as a slice of life blogger about the day to day trials of pet dragon (well, wyrm) ownership.

Rose has been passionate about rare and magical exotic creatures since she was a wee girl, and developed an obsession with dragons (‘wyrms’ being the correct term for all non-sentient varieties) before she was out of grade school. In college she double majored cryptobiology and spell artistry, then upon graduation, acquired a pair of rare pygmy wyrms— from temperate and tundra subspecies— respectively, as pets, both for personal reasons and to aid in her pursuit of a master’s degree in cryptobiological husbandy.

Pygmy wyrms, it should be noted, are generally terrible pets. While only growing to approximately the size of a house cat (10-12 pounds on average) and sporting the appearance of beautifully miniaturized mythological six-limbed dragons any fantasy nut would fall in love with, they are far from domesticated, exasperatingly precocious, and have the charming habit of expelling flammable gas from a myriad of orifices when startled. They have a distinctive, vaguely musky sulfurous smell about them regardless of cleanliness and are just clever enough to ignore training commands when convenient. Imagine giving a very ornery, very clever raccoon flappy wings with a several foot wingspan, feeding it rotten eggs, and strapping a flamethrower to both ends, then rigging it all with an excitable hair trigger. That is a pygmy wyrm. Rose owns two in an apartment complex: Ice Pack (Packy), who is a pale milk white/ice blue, and Sharky (Sharkbite), who is black and burgundy/red.

Needless to say they’re the loves of her lives and she revolves around them, having garnered a massive internet following thanks to her daily posts about their antics and the realities of exotic pet care. They’re harness trained now and reasonably polite, though this is only due to years of hard work and constant reinforcement. She hopes one day to breed more biddable specimens and help contribute to the conservation of the species worldwide. Also, they’ve made her very good at anti-flammability hexes.

Shun —: known only by her first name, a kitsune who moved into the apartment complex fairly recently with her pet pipe fox, Yuzu. It should be noted that kitsune are particularly long lived among mythicals, though how long exactly that is tends to be hotly debated and unknown by all but the foxes themselves. What is known is how they are extremely slow to age after reaching their peak maturity/fitness, with certain individuals reported over 500 years old and, apparently, showing very little of their age beyond a massive swath of grown tails (nine being the highest on known record). Kitsune typically grow to around 30-40 lbs, outwardly resembling a much large. leggier, more willowy silhouette than traditional foxes, and will begin life with a single tail that splits or “buds” and multiplies over time.

Neurologically they are fairly unique among mammals, possessing a kind of distributed intelligence throughout the body that can give the tails a “mind of their own”, so to speak, in much the same way as octopi or other related cephalopods do. In fact, due to the extremely slow rate of cell death/turnover, a severed kitsune tail will continue to move and attempt “functioning” for weeks, even years by some reports, under correct conditions. Which I’ll get into shortly.

Swerving back to Shun herself, she’s an artist by trade who zigzags between traditional and digital freelance work for a living. Conservation of mass is still in place for humanoid shifts— which all kitsune can voluntarily assume— with predictably small, delicate, androgynous bodies that rarely get above 4’5’’ or so in stature. Features like pointed ears or slit pupils/exposed tails can be morphed or shown as desired, though the chronic perception of being childlike or “cute” regardless of how old they are is a pretty common occurrence. Shun is no stranger to this either, and hates shopping for clothes at non-mythical-specific places because she has to do so in the *really* young children’s department for anything to fit.

Back on the subject of pipe foxes, though— Shun is a kitsune with 3 and 3/4 tails. She had an unspecified accident several years ago in which she lost the final quarter of her fourth tail, but managed to retrieve the piece after several weeks of searching, at which point it was already trying to become a pipe fox. Pipe foxes (at least in this world) are the result of a severed kitsune tail’s survival instincts going horribly wrong (or right) and attempting to restructure themselves for survival, and the amount of tail there (i.e. how much was separated from the body) will determine what becomes of it, though the “starting” process is pretty identical no matter what you do.

If a severed piece of tail has no food, eventually, with time, it will die. If, however, you keep it somewhere safe (like a drawer) and you present it with food (which could be, I don’t know, a chicken leg), it will sense it, and you will see the start of a small, gaping fanged mouth begin to grow from the stump. Once this has formed, the tail will wriggle itself to its prize and devour everything it can, sustaining it. Keep feeding the tail and it will continue to grow legs, organs, features, and a face— though not necessarily in that order. Eventually, you will have a small— usually mouse to rat sized— beautiful white magic fox, prized heavily by black market collectors for its splendor and apparent luck giving properties. A true quarter-tailed pipe fox will live somewhere between 5-40 years, unpredictably. The distributed intelligence of the tail will reform/conglomerate into a brain relatively on par with a modern pet dog, possibly smarter (or much dumber) depending on your luck.

If, however, there is MORE than roughly a quarter tail chopped off, with more of the nervous tissue and mass intact, the pipe fox resulting may appear larger and more robust. Many exotic buyers have been lured into purchasing these creatures from traders without realizing, and years later the unlucky recipient will find their precious fox’s skin suddenly flaccid on the ground like a shed cocoon, having erupted into 75 tinier pipe foxes that will summarily swarm the accessible property to spirit off with literally anything they decide is valuable, never to be found again, often raging like an infestation for days or WEEKS before vanishing forever.

Rumor has it that feeding an entire severed tail will result in 75 tiny pipe foxes bursting forth from the cocoon shell that will each burst into 75 more bug sized foxes each, resulting in a plague of nigh biblical proportions. But that’s never actually been confirmed on record.

Needless to say the kitsune have a lot of protocols for dealing with severed tails and will usually destroy half-formed pipe foxes of unknown origin on the spot. Shun keeps Yuzu as a pet due to being intimately aware of the little rat-sized creature’s origins, and she still had to sign SO many extra insurance papers and wavers before the complex would let her move in.

I am not good at keeping it short, am I? Wow. Well, there you have it! I’d be happy to answer any extra stuff I forgot too if someone has a question. I do love these nerds.

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backroombuzz · 6 years ago

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100 Failed Climate Change Predictions Made In The Past 150 Years

Climate Change activists and politicians who cry 'Believe Us Because We're Smart and You're Not' have been declaring that the sky is falling for over 150 years.

Which Climate Change politician said "Planet Earth is sending out distress signals. They carry ominous messages. They tell us that the world is about to grow warmer, warmer than at any time in recorded history and that the warmth will bring catastrophe." Al Gore? Barack Obama? Some moronic UN Official? The Answer is George J. Mitchell. Many will ask "Who in the hell is George Mitchell? Mitchell was the former Democrat Senator from Main who served 15 years in the U.S. Senate, between 1980 and 1995. The quote above is from his 1991 book, World on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth. It just goes to show you that we aren't the first generation to be lectured about how we don't care about saving the planet. And we certainly won't be the first, nor the last to hear "If we don't act now, it'll be too late." (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); 100 Failed Climate Change Predictions 1865 - Stanley Jevons (one of the most recognized 19th century economists) predicted that England would run out of coal by 1900, and that England’s factories would grind to a standstill. 1885 - the US Geological Survey announced that there was “little or no chance” of oil being discovered in California. 1890 - Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade. - New York Times June 23, 1890 1891 - it said the same thing about Kansas and Texas. (See Osterfeld, David. Prosperity Versus Planning : How Government Stifles Economic Growth. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.) 1895 - The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions - New York Times - February 24, 1895 1912 - “Fifth ice age is on the way…..Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” – Los Angles Times October 23, 1912 1922 - The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. - Washington Post 11/2/1922 1922 - The Associated Press reported that coastal cities would be uninhabitable in a few years due to “a radical change in climate conditions” 1923 - Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” – Chicago Tribune August 9, 1923 1933 - America in longest warm spell since 1776; temperature line records a 25 year rise - New York Times 3/27/1933 1939 - The US Department of the Interior said that American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. 1939 - More than eighteen years of observing the fluctuations of Arctic weather conditions in the fifty-eight Soviet scientific stations in the Far North....lead Russian meteorologists to a forecast of warmer winters and hotter summers for the North and South Poles. They believe that the earth is entering a new cycle of warmer weather. 1944 - Federal government review predicted that by now the US would have exhausted its reserves of 21 of 41 commodities it examined. Among them were tin, nickel, zinc, lead and manganese. 1947 - A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a "serious international problem," - New York Times - May 30, 1947 1949 - The Secretary of the Interior announced that the end of US oil was in sight. 1954 - Greenland's polar climate has moderated so consistently that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area's southern waters. - New York Times August 29, 1954 1961- After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder. - New York Times - January 30, 1961 1962 - Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the downslope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age. - Los Angeles Times December 23, 1962 1968 - A comparison of climatic data for the eastern United States from the 1830's and 1840's with the currently valid climatic normals indicates a distinctly cooler and, in some areas, wetter climate in the first half of the last century. The recently appearing trend to cooler conditions noticed here and elsewhere could be indicative of a return to the climatic character of those earlier years. - Monthly Weather review Feb. 1968 1969 - Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two. – New York Times - February 20, 1969 1970 - Get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters--the worst may be yet to come. That's the long-long-range weather forecast being given out by "climatologists." the people who study very long-term world weather trends…. Washington Post January 11, 1970 1970 - Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years (1985 - 2000) unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” 1970 - The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” 1970 - It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness. 1970 - Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” 1970 - Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” 1970 - Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” 1970 - Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate. 1970 - Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any.'” 1970 - Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990. 1970 - Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years (1995), somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” 1970 - Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he claimed. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” 1971 - “In the next 50 years fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age." – Washington Post - July 9, 1971 1971 - New Ice Age Coming---It's Already Getting Colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes…..Los Angles Times Oct 24, 1971 1972 - "Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000." Christian Science Monitor 1974 - "There is very important climatic change (Global Cooling) going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest. It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” – Fortune Magazine February 1974 1974 - A number of climatologists, whose job it is to keep an eye on long-term weather changes, have lately been predicting “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade,” If policy makers do not account for this oncoming doom, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” will result. New York Times - December 29, 1974 1975 - A RECENT flurry of papers has provided further evidence for the belief that the Earth is cooling. There now seems little doubt that changes over the past few years are more than a minor statistical fluctuation – Nature - March 6, 1975 1975- Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. – The Cooling World Newsweek, April 28, 1975 1976: The late Stephen Schneider who went on to become one of the world’s leading Global Warming alarmists claimed A cooling trend has set in – perhaps one akin to the Little Ice Age. 1976- This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976 1978 - An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. - New York Times - January 5, 1978 1978 - The Brutal Buffalo (NY) winter might be common all over the United States. Climate experts believe the next Ice Age is on its way. According to recent evidence, it could come sooner than anyone expected. - In Search of - "The Coming Ice Age" 1978 1980 - Evidence has been presented and discussed to show a cooling trend over the Northern Hemisphere since around 1940, amounting to over 0.5°C - Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society - November 1980 1986 - A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said... Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years - San Jose Mercury News - June 11, 1986 1988 - Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun.” “If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit the year 2025 to 2050…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to … caus sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.” 1988 - Greenhouse Effect Culprit May Be Family Car; New Ice Age by 1995? We may be less than seven years away, and our climate may continue to deteriorate rapidly until life on earth becomes all but unsupportable.... New York Times - Larry Ephron , Director of the Institute for a Future - July 15, 1988 1988 - The West Side Highway will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change. There will be more police cars. Why? Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up... James Hansen testimony before Congress in June 1988 1989 - “Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010.” Associated Press, May 15, 1989. 1989 - Associated Press: “UN Official Predicts Disaster, Says Greenhouse Effect Could Wipe Some Nations Off Map.” The director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) claimed “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.” 1989 - "Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010." Associated Press 1989 - 'New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now,' - St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 17, 1989 1989- Some predictions for the next decade (1990's) are not difficult to make... Americans may see the '80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates. - Dallas Morning News December 5th 1989 1990 " 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots. Michael Oppenheimer, "Dead Heat," St. Martin's Press, 1990. 1990 The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers." Michael Oppenheimer, "Dead Heat," St. Martin's Press, 1990. 1990 - Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert - The giant sand dunes discovered in NASA satellite photos are expected to re- emerge over the next 20 to 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected "greenhouse effect," scientists believe. -Denver Post April 18, 1990 1990 - ''I think we're in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left - we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.'' - ABC - The Miracle Planet April 22, 1990 1990 - The planet could face an "ecological and agricultural catastrophe" by the next decade if global warming trends continue - Carl Sagan - Buffalo News Oct. 15, 1990 1993 - Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late. -- Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution “Real Goods Alternative Energy Sourcebook,” Seventh Edition: February 1993 1995 - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - Based on the findings of three working groups, the IPCC says that the earth’s temperature could rise by between 33 and 38 F by the year 2010 1996 - Today (in 1996) 25 million environmental refugees roam the globe, more than those pushed out for political, economic, or religious reasons. By 2010, this number will grow tenfold to 200 million. - The Heat is On -The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate - Ross Gelbspan - 1996 1997 - It appears that El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they're going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we'll go into a permanent El Nino. You'll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years," he said. - BBC November 7, 1997 1997 - One of the world's leading climate experts warned of an underestimated threat posed by the buildup of greenhouse gases ' an abrupt collapse of the ocean's prevailing circulation system that could send temperatures across Europe plummeting in a span of 10 years. If that system shut down today, winter temperatures in the North Atlantic region would fall by 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit within 10 years said Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University's - Science Magazine Dec 1, 1997 1999 - Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. - The Birmingham Post (England) July 26, 1999 1999 - A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (Malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. - The Guardian September 11, 1999 2000- the Independent March 20th, 2000. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.Britain Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past “Children just aren't going to know what snow is” 2001 - A 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that “(m)ilder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” but increase the number of ice storms. 2001 - THE Arctic ice cap is melting at a rate that could allow routine commercial shipping through the far north in a decade and open up new fisheries...But in 10 years' time, the North-West Passage could be open to ordinary shipping for a month each summer. Peter Wadhams of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge said "Within a decade we can expect regular summer trade there," he predicts. New Scientist Feb. 27, 2001 . 2001 - In ten years time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu's nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels, CNN Mar 29, 2001. 2001 - (1) global warming will cause milder winters and (2) global warming will cause a decline in heavy snowstorm events. IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report. 2002 - In the North Atlantic, an increasing amount of fresh water, perhaps coming from melting ice in the Arctic, has been accumulating and lowering the salinity of the ocean for the past 30 years...that would cause an abrupt drop in average winter temperatures of about 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast. This change could happen within a decade and persist for hundreds of years. - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Sep 6, 2002. 2004 - Without urgent measures to rapidly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the possibility of limiting the temperature rise below a dangerous level will have disappeared within a decade. Report commissioned by Greenpeace and written by Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Philippe Marbaix, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. July 2004. 2005 - The UN Environment Program (UNEP) warned that imminent sea-level rises, increased hurricanes, and desertification caused by Global Warming would lead to massive population disruptions. Especially at risk were regions such as the Caribbean and low-lying Pacific islands, along with coastal areas. The 2005 UNEP predictions claimed that, by 2010, some 50 million “climate refugees” would be fleeing those areas. 2005 - A task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world claimed In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached. - Michael McCarthy - Environment Editor UK Independent - 1/24/05 2005 - Environmental refugees to top 50 million in 5 years --and may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change and other phenomena," says UNU-EHS Director Janos Bogardi. - United Nations University news release - October 11, 2005 2006- NASA scientist James Hansen claimed the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert catastrophe. NBC news . 2006 - A few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up, to put it bluntly - "The End of Nature" Bill McKibben 2006 - Al Gore claims Mount Kilimanjaro Africa’s tallest peak will be snow-free ‘within the decade. 2006 - Summer sea ice will decline as CO2 rises; 2007 marked the beginning of a ‘death spiral’ for Polar bears as CO2 levels rise. 1995 Polar bear population was around 25,000 instead of a "death spiral" their population was estimated to be about 31,000 in 2015 2006 - NOAA announced its predictions for the 2006 hurricane season, saying it expects an "above normal" year with 13-16 named storms. Of these storms, the agency says it expects four to be hurricanes of category 3 or above, double the yearly average of prior seasons in recorded history. The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season was the least active since 1997 as well as the first season since 2001 in which no hurricanes made landfall in the United States 2007- Professor Wieslaw Maslowski “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of Arctic ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007, So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.” 2007 - IPCC AR4 predicts that by 2020, between 75 and 250 million of people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. 2007 - Rajendra Pachauri, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 that if “there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.” 2007 -NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally - Climate models show the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions. - National Geographic Dec. 12, 2007 2007 - "The mid-winter temperatures are now around 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they were 50 years ago." If the trend continues, Bill Fraser, an ecologist with the Polar Oceans Research Group in Sheridan, Montana. predicts that Adélie penguins will be extinct within five to ten years. National Geographic Dec. 28, 2007 2007 - Dr. Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, published a study predicting that Global warming will make Earth spin faster. 2008 - THE vast Arctic sea ice that spreads across the North Pole could disappear during the summer within five years (2012-13), leading ice and snow scientists are warning. 2008 -Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer (2008), David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. - National Geographic News June 20, 2008 2008 Al Gore on 13 December 2008: “The entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years” 2008 - ABC News predicted that NYC would be under water by June 2015. 2008 - The Telegraph, Climate change will force refugees to move to Antarctica by 2030, researchers have predicted. 2009 - The former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown predicted that if they didn’t solve the climate change “impasse” they found themselves in within 50 days, the world was pretty much doomed. 2009 - Prince Charles said, without revealing how he had “calculated” climate change threatens to engulf us all, ”we only have 96 months left to save the world. 2009- A Pennsylvania state government “Student and Teacher Guide” reads: “Some estimates of the oil reserves suggest that by the year 2015 we will have used all of our accessible oil supply.” 2009 - The world has less than five years to get carbon emissions under control or runaway climate change will become inevitable, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has warned. - Oct 19, 2009 2010 - Dr. Morris Bender, from NOAA, and coauthors predict that “the U.S. Southeast and the Bahamas will be pounded by more very intense hurricanes in the coming decades due to global warming.” After 40 years of so-called global warming no increase in hurricanes has been detected, in fact, a very unusual 11-year drought in strong hurricane US landfalls took place from 2005-2016. 2012 - “It could even be this year or next year but not later than 2015 there won’t be any ice in the Arctic in the summer, which he calls “the Arctic death spiral”. - David Vaughan Glaciologist & IPCC scientist - Financial Times Magazine Aug 8, 2012 2013 - For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean….” - Paul Beckwith Sierra Club – March 23, 2013 2014 - France’s foreign minister said that we only have 500 days to stop “climate chaos.” This ABC 2007 video showing what it will look like in 2015... Jackasses! (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); None of the 100 failed predictions above are from the king of Bullshit predictions, Paul R. Ehrlich, because he would have taken up half the list by himself Ehrlich became the poster child for the loony toon climate activist when he published his book The Population Bomb, written with his wife Anne Ehrlich in 1968. Here are some of Paul R. Ehrlich's more notable failed climate change predictions he made in his book as well as other publications. In a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” “Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. Warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…would have a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years). Confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” In 1975, predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.” “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971. “By… some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” 1970 - The First Earth Day “In ten years (1980) all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” Ehrlich admitted that while most of his predictions never came true he added 'they will eventually, just give it some time'... Wait, What? Ehrlich also tried to say while he was wrong, he was also right because '600 million people were very hungry'. Seriously, he actually said this in his defense. Click Here To See What Would The Earth Would Look Like If All The Ice On The Planet Actually Did Melt? Read the full article

#ClimateAction #ClimateChange #ClimateChangeDenier #ClimateChangeFails #ClimateChangepredictions #ClimateCrisis #Earth #Fail #GlobalWarming #LiberalLies #Parisaccord #PlanetEarth #SavethePlanet

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dermagain · 7 years ago

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So after logging in for the first time in- honestly I wanna say a year 😟- I found a private message from someone asking me what has been helping me get better

and like an idiot I immediately accidentally deleted the message. So, sorry person that I can't message you back, but I'm gonna post this and hopefully you'll see it. I've been through a lot of major life changes in the past couple years and haven't really been on tumblr at all (sadly! I've been on a limited data plan too, so I deleted the app). I hope you've all been well in the meantime and are managing ok

This is going to be a very long post, but I'll try to break it up into paragraphs that will make it easier to skim for what you find useful. Quick warning, I'm going to be mentioning eating disorders a few times, but without going into details. First off, I'll go into a couple of the big developments in my life that are derma-relevant. A few months ago I was finally diagnosed with bipolar II, which consists mostly of depressive episodes, but has to be treated differently than unipolar depression, since antidepressants without a mood stabilizer can cause bipolar cycling. I'm now on a mood stabilizer, which is working well, and I'm finding that without bipolar cycling I have less anxiety, leading to less need for self-soothing rituals, which for me leads to less picking. If you might have an underlying condition that's exacerbating your picking, please go see a doctor/psychologist/psychiatrist if you can and haven't already. It took me several of them over several years to be taken seriously, and I'm going to follow up with a separate post with some of the details on how I finally got through to the professionals, in case that's helpful. Another change in my life is that I've relocated, moving out of state after (mostly) living where I come from into my adult years. Being away from all the places and things that pull me back into old traumas and outdated anxieties has helped A LOT. Of course, moving isn't a solution for everyone, and it requires some money and a lot of freedom, and it's stressful... my point is really just that external circumstances play a big role in how we feel and behave and it's worth making whatever positive changes you can. They won't "fix" your derma, but if you can focus on some of your other goals you may find that you're picking less. But of course, change just triggers some people, so it's very important to take what you know about yourself into account on this one. Now, to address the question I deleted, I'm gonna lay out a bunch of the strategies that were working for me before all that: I read a post by someone in the derma community several years ago recommending the book The Four Day Win by Martha Beck, and read it. I wish I remembered who suggested this or where, so I could give credit, but this was probably 5 years back and I have no idea. It's a diet book, but many of the chapters apply to reducing any behavior that you're trying to break out of, and adapt well to skin picking. I had a hard time pushing through the book because I'm extremely anti-diet and firmly believe that advocating dieting is also advocating eating disorders. Several members of my family have struggled with eating disorders, so there were times when I wanted to throw this book across the room, but ultimately I found it helpful. You can probably get a copy from your local library if you want to read it, but I'm also going to give a capsule version here of what I found helpful/adapted from the book for my own use. The premise is that instead of setting ourselves up for failure by trying to do something difficult *indefinitely* (sticking to a diet or not picking, for example), we only commit to four days at a time, and give ourselves a reward when we complete a four day cycle. The rewards, for me, were something small and concrete, usually buying myself something inexpensive that I wanted. When the four days was up, I was allowed to pick all I wanted, but then would start another four days of not picking right after. If four days is too long to manage, you can always use shorter times. I would often do 3 days, but if 2 or even 1 whole day is more realistic for you it's more important to set a very specific time and then reward yourself at the end. You have to be consistent with the reward, not giving yourself the reward anyway if you do pick, and not sacrificing it (to save money or whatever) if you do make your goal. It's like training an animal, except we are the animal we're training. Make sure your rewards aren't anything you pretty much need, since that becomes a system of punishments for not making it, and in order to work this has to be a system of rewards for doing well. It's an entirely positive system. I would sometimes get myself a larger reward if I didn't pick (or barely picked) between 3 or 4 day no-picking periods, but didn't plan ahead for that because you really need to keep your mind on the short term when doing this. If I did pick when I wasn't supposed to, I would sometimes give myself a reduced version of the original reward if I made it to the end of the original 4 days without doing it again. For instance, if I was going to buy a new set of paint brushes, I might scale it back to choosing an individual brush. Or if I felt like it was realistic, I would start another 4 days immediately after lapsing. Being as realistic as possible is important for this one. Another thing I would do is keep a log of where on my body I was picking, when, how many individual spots I was going at, and any particularly pertinent facts like an unusual mood or triggering event. I was putting it in the calendar on my phone so the time was recorded automatically, and I had a system of abbreviations that kept it easy. An entry might read "f4, a2 (blood), s4. Very anxious", which would mean I picked at 4 spots on my face, 2 on my arms to the point of drawing blood, and 4 spots on my shoulders, and that I was experiencing an unusual degree of anxiety. I would differentiate between my arms and shoulders because my shoulders are a particular problem area for me, but I also pick at my scalp sometimes, so I would indicate my scalp with an "h" for head, since "s" was shoulders. If I picked at an area enough that I couldn't say a specific number of spots, I would just say "bad", like "a2, sbad, l3" would mean I picked 2 spots on my arms and 3 on my legs and really took it out on my shoulders. Of course, you would adapt your log to what is most pertinent or useful for you. The log served a few purposes. For one, just having more awareness can be really helpful, also I would actually sometimes hold off on picking just because if I did it, I would have to acknowledge it in writing. I would sometimes stop myself in time to put down a number instead of "bad". It also makes it easier to see when you've been doing pretty well lately, and feel good about it. Prepping to pick helped too, instead of denying that I was going to do it until the very last minute and then going at it impulsively. I would get home at night or in the afternoon and wash my hands with antibacterial soap first thing, then rinse my face and put on a face mask that I could keep on for a couple hours. Its best if you can do that without being in front of a mirror, which could mean using your kitchen sink or covering your bathroom mirror. If you can't do that, try not to even glance at the mirror if you can manage. I got pretty good at keeping my eyes down completely while going through this routine. When I eventually had to rinse off the mask, if I did get sucked into picking at least my hands and face were clean and the skin on my face was in pretty good shape so the damage was minimized and the spots I picked at wouldn't flare up and get infected from getting all the dirt you pick up outside in them (gross, I know). Honey works pretty well in place of commercial face masks, cause it's a physical barrier and great for your skin, but you have to be more committed to avoiding mirrors, since you can still see your skin through honey. Besides face masks/honey, there were other physical barriers that helped. Pretty much everyone comments on this, but it bears repeating. I would wear shirts at home that were tight in the sleeves so getting at my shoulders wasn't convenient, which honestly is something I need to get back in the habit of doing. As you can probably tell from all the past-tense, I'm doing well lately, but my arms and shoulders are what I go for most when I do pick. If there were only a couple visible spots on my face, I would cover them with band-aids, and I would sometimes wear gloves at home. I've also made lists for myself of anything that's helpful, meaning both practical tips and alternatives to picking (even if they sound dumb or obvious), and information that it's helpful for me to remind myself of. I have an old list in front of me right now, and some of the suggestions on it are super simple, but were actually helpful for whatever reason. Some of them actually strike me as kind of self-shaming now, but inspired me at the time. Whatever works, I guess. Here are some of the items from the list (the not-shamey ones): Wait it out. Later is better than now. Drink some water. Have a snack. Take a nap. Put on long sleeves. Consciously remember not to do it. Turn out the lights. Watch a movie. Read a book. Listen to music. This is an outgrown coping mechanism. This is an internalization of being "picked on." I don't want to let people who have treated me unfairly manifest themselves in me. DON'T do "just one" (it's never just one). Relapse is a normal part of recovery, and it doesn't determine the future. Adherence is the goal, but near-adherence is almost as good. If I can't do 100%, I can try for 90%, or 75%. It's still worth maintaining, even if it's not perfect. No comment made by any idiot is my problem. Relax and breathe. Remember to eat, sleep, and play music. I really don't need to touch my face at all except for daily skincare. Even MH "just stopped". I'll explain that last item. It's a reference to Marya Hornbacher's memoir, Wasted. Marya had a severe eating disorder for years, to the point that it almost killed her (you may know this part, it's been a popular title for a while...) Like I said, my family history is peppered with eating disorders, so I've put in my due diligence reading up on them. She reaches the point of almost dying, and then -like some kind of miracle- she "just stops" the behavior that would otherwise have taken her life. The reason I included that as a kind of affirmation isn't because I think my picking will "just stop", but rather because it's such an extreme example of how people sometimes turn a corner in their struggles and start to get better, no matter how bleak their future looked during their darkest times. Anyway, making lists like this are helpful if you can include whatever helps YOU to remember, not what helps someone else, or only things you don't think are obvious. If it's obvious and it helps you, put it on the list. If it's not clear why exactly it's relevant but it helps you, put it on the list. Then keep your list someplace handy, like on your wall or taped to your desk, or in the back of your journal. I hope some of this helps y'all, sorry it's 5 miles long, but I wanted to include everything I could think of. Love you all. Best.

#Derma #dermatillomania #skin picking #CSP #BFRB #bipolar ii

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travelonlinetipsofficial · 3 years ago

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Travel news live: 24 red-list countries could turn green

New Post has been published on https://www.travelonlinetips.com/travel-news-live-24-red-list-countries-could-turn-green/

Travel news live: 24 red-list countries could turn green

The UK’s traffic light travel system could be simplified to just two lists – a ‘go’ and a ‘no go’, similar to the current green and red lists, say sources.

In the wake of reports by the BBC and The Telegraph last week, The Telegraphis now reporting that double-jabbed travellers will be able to take cheaper lateral flow tests before and after travel to the UK from abroad.

Paul Charles, CEO of the PC Agency, has told the paper that up to 24 countries could move straight from the former red list to a new green list, with the red list expected to be “significantly shrunk”.

The government last week declined to comment on any big changes, saying: “Our international travel policy is guided by one overwhelming priority – protecting public health.

“The next formal checkpoint review will take place by 1 October 2021.”

In other news, more than 300,000 people are estimated to have broken quarantine rules between March and May.

Follow the latest travel news below:

Key points

New traffic system could be narrowed down to two lists: safe and unsafe

More than 300,000 suspected of breaking quarantine rules March-May

Fail to simplify travel rules and UK will ‘fall behind’, warns Heathrow boss

Show latest update

1631546581

Dominican Republic, Indonesia and the Maldives ‘should come off red list’, says expert

A dozen high-profile countries – all with either a big population or very popular with British travellers, or both – should be removed from the UK’s red list, a data analyst and travel expert has said.

Tim White, who tweets as @TWMCLtd, has given his expertise to The Independent.

These are: Argentina, Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Kenya, Maldives, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

He notes, though: “If cautious, Mexico may need to stay a while longer, and Dominican Republic needs help to conduct genomic sequencing.

“Some scientists will say it’s a risk taking South American countries [including Argentina and Peru] off the red list with Gamma, Lambda and the latest “Mu” variant all in circulation to some degree.

“But most scientists believe most of the variants circulating in South America are not more likely to evade vaccines so there is an argument to allow them all off red.”

Simon Calder13 September 2021 16:23

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Argentina, Egypt, Oman and South Africa could come off red list, says expert

South Africa, Argentina and Pakistan are among the countries that should be removed from the UK’s red list, travel industry expert Paul Charles has said.

“There have been no new Covid variants of concern since 11th May,” he tweeted this morning.

“Our analysis shows 24 countries should come off the UK red list immediately, including Argentina, Egypt, Kenya, Namibia, Oman, Pakistan, SouthAfrica, Uruguay, Zambia.”

Charles’s company The PC Agency has researched the red list countries with low enough cases and no variants of concern, to determine possible candidates for a move from the current 62-strong red list to a new “safe” list, that would replace the current green and amber lists.

“With no new variants of concern since early May, and with the UK having higher levels of delta infection than most other countries, there is no reason to keep so many countries on the red list. It can be sharply reduced in size to help global Britain, as well as the travel sector, recover strongly,” Charles told The Telegraph.

“There is no scientific basis anymore on which to prevent travel and enforce hotel quarantine from a vast swathe of the existing list.”

Lucy Thackray13 September 2021 15:41

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Honolulu’s council votes to destroy Hawaiian island’s ‘stairway to heaven’ hiking trail

The Hawaiian island of Oahu is set to destroy its popular ‘Stairway to heaven’ hiking trail, arguing that it is too dangerous and that the influx of tourists climbing it are damaging the natural landscape.

Honolulu’s Haiku Stairs

(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Honolulu City Council voted unanimously last Wednesday to remove the ascending mountain trail, also known as the Haiku Stairs, in a move that will need to be approved by the mayor to go ahead.

The “Stairway to Heaven” path draws around 4,000 hikers every year for its “Instagram-worthy” vistas – even though climbing them is already against the law. Honolulu officials have set aside $1m for their demolition.

Lucy Thackray13 September 2021 15:08

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School trips to the UK hit by Brexit rule change

After The Independent revealed how a Brexit promise will damage inbound tourism still further, reader Jackie Clare has tweeted: “Sad and ill-informed.”

From 1 October, EU citizens will no longer be able to travel to the UK without a full passport.

The move, fulfilling a government Brexit pledge, is expected to reduce inbound tourism – currently 86 per cent down on 2019 levels – still further. It will especially deter school groups from travelling to the UK.

Ms Clare wrote: “The end of an era. The secondary school trip to the UK was a rite of passage for many schools in the EU.

“This requirement, affecting school children on a short trip, is threatening to weaken the link between English language-learning and visiting the UK.”

Simon Calder13 September 2021 14:40

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Anyone with ‘a kids’ chemistry set from Argos’ could pose as PCR tester, says industry boss

“Anyone could buy a kids’ chemistry set from Argos and set themselves up as a PCR testing company,” a senior travel industry figure has claimed.

With government leaks indicating that mandatory PCR testing for vaccinated travellers may soon be scrapped, Danny Callaghan, chief executive of the Latin American Travel Association, said: “Sajid Javid said that he wants to remove the PCR testing requirement ‘as soon as I possibly can’, but let’s not forget that this is really only an effort to scrap a scheme that has been a government shambles from day one.

“With testing completely unregulated it seems almost as though anyone could buy a kids’ chemistry set from Argos and set themselves up as a PCR testing company, listed on the government website, charging exorbitant fees and not actually delivering any meaningful tests. Or often not actually delivering the test kits at all.”

Simon Calder13 September 2021 13:57

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Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey among most asked-about red list nations

More than one billion people live in the 62 nations on the UK’s current red list of high-risk countries.

At present, arrivals to the UK from these locations must quarantine in a hotel for 11 nights.

The Independent has compiled a list of the 25 nations most frequently named by readers requesting information: Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, the Maldives, Mexico, Montenegro, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Seychelles, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and Turkey.

The paper reported that as many as 24 countries could fall off the red list if the beta variant is a key influence on the new “unsafe” list of countries – and said that two government sources had suggested Turkey could be removed from the red list at the next update.

Here is the current status of the UK’s red list, and the rules attached:

Simon Calder13 September 2021 13:22

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Law firm brings action against UK government over hotel quarantine

London-based PGMBM has previously sought a judicial review of the regulations which require travellers coming from a red list country to spend 11 nights in a quarantine hotel at a cost of £2,285.

This rule is applicable for everyone, even if they are fully vaccinated and test negative for Covid.

PGMBM said a blanket approach was an “unlawful deprivation of liberty” for those who were inoculated against Covid-19 and a violation of their human rights.

Lucy Thackray13 September 2021 11:39

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Testing adds around £100 to cost of trips

Testing is typically adding £100 to the cost of trips abroad, a Business Travel Association (BTA) survey claims.

For passengers going from the UK to destinations for which a PCR test is required, the typical test cost between £50 and £75.

One in 50 travellers also reported that their results did not come back before their flight.

Two-thirds paid less than £50 for their “test to fly” on returning to the UK, while most respondents paid between £31 and £75 for the “day two” PCR test.

Only 24 per cent of those surveyed say it was checked on arrival by UK Border Force.

More than 500 travellers responded to the online poll.

Clive Wratten, chief executive of the BTA, said: “We hope our data revealed today will provide a stark reminder to the government of the many pitfalls of the UK’s current approach to global travel and testing, and we continue to call on them to get global travel moving safely, smoothly and securely once again.”

Simon Calder13 September 2021 11:04

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More than 300,000 suspected to have broken quarantine rules between March and May

Nearly a third of travellers arriving into the UK between March and May are suspected to have broken quarantine rules, new figures show.

Figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request show that 301,076 cases of suspected quarantine rule breakers were passed to investigators during 17 March and 31 May, reported the BBC.

It is unclear how many of these were determined to have broken the rules.

The figures “confirm our worst fears” about the government’s “lax border policy”, said the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, accusing the Home Office of “gross negligence”.

The Home Office has said it aims to follow up all suspects of breaking quarantine with a home visit.

Lucy Thackray13 September 2021 10:28

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Passengers turned away from EU flights due to invalid passports

Several disappointed travellers have contacted The Independent after being turned away from their holiday flights to the European Union this weekend

They had inadvertently breached the EU rules on passport validity that the UK helped to draft while a member, and to which it is now subject.

The European Union says: “If you are a non-EU national wishing to visit or travel within the EU, you will need a passport valid for at least three months after the date you intend to leave the EU country you are visiting, and which was issued within the previous 10 years.”

The Independent has been warning about the passport problems precipitated by Brexit since the start of the year.

But when do you need to renew your passport, post-Brexit?

Simon Calder13 September 2021 09:51

Source link

#Travel News

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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On US-Mexican border, the rules change, but human impulses don’t

By Henry Gass, CS Monitor, June 21, 2018

BROWNSVILLE AND MCALLEN, TEXAS--So much has happened so fast, Joyce Hamilton says, that she has to double-check exactly when her small role in the 2018 border crisis began.

Checking her calendar in a park across the street from the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville earlier this week, her guess is close: 15 days ago.

There had been nothing in the news then, and no one had been talking about it until she heard from a friend of a friend that asylum-seekers were lined up on the bridge connecting Reynosa, Mexico with Hidalgo, Texas--a few miles south of McAllen.

At first she was surprised, says Ms. Hamilton, a retired educator who lives in Harlingen--then eager to learn what supplies the asylum-seekers needed.

Ever since the Trump administration implemented its “zero-tolerance” immigration policy last month--prosecuting everyone caught crossing the border without proper documents, including those requesting asylum--the situation on the US-Mexico border, particularly here in the Rio Grande Valley, has been changing quickly.

After hearing of the line at the bridge, Hamilton and a group of her friends packed their cars with water, snacks, clothes, sun umbrellas, and fans to fight the 100-degree afternoon heat and brought the supplies through the turnstiles into Mexico. There, about 40 asylum-seekers told them they had been waiting at the border for upwards of five days.

When she returned with friends four days later, the line had doubled.

“They were just kind of pleading for specific clothing items, and alimentos, food for the kids,” she says. “They’re not MS-13. It’s not gang people,” she adds. “These are good people from little villages in central America trying to get away from violence.”

Hamilton, who resolved to bring supplies every few days after her second trip to the bridge, says she has found it hard to keep up with the changing situation on the border.

Just Wednesday, President Trump ordered an end to the most controversial aspect of the zero-tolerance policy: the separation of undocumented families caught crossing the border.

The changes at the border notwithstanding, advocates for migrants and asylum-seekers see no let-up in the demand to enter the United States. Almost all the migrants are coming from the “Northern Triangle” of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala--where murder rates exceed even those in active war zones--and are unlikely to be deterred by months in immigrant detention or long waits on bridges over the Rio Grande, the advocates say.

“It’s a life-or-death decision for them,” says Efrén Olivares, director of the racial economic justice program at the Texas Civil Rights Project in Alamo, Texas. “It’s going back to the threat of ‘If I ever see you again I’m going to shoot you in the head’--after they’ve shot your brother in the head.”

Meanwhile, if the reversal of family separations means children as young as 12 months should no longer be detained without their parents, it is unlikely to mitigate--and may even exacerbate--other consequences of the zero-tolerance policy, experts and advocates say. There is no clear plan for how to reunite the more than 2,300 children already separated from their families, the Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday.

“We’re certainly happy that children aren’t being ripped from their parents, but it really does appear that the executive order is trading one humanitarian crisis for another,” says Jennifer Nagda, policy director at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “Children won’t now face immediate separation or long-term separation from their parents, but it appears they’re going to be locked up together in detention facilities” while their cases are processed, she adds.

Most days on the Gateway International Bridge between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, the only sign that you’ve crossed an international border is a change in the tiling of the walkway near the center of the bridge.

Earlier this week, however, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers had set up a small wooden desk at the line, with about a dozen asylum-seekers waiting on the Mexican side. They had all spent weeks traveling here from Central America, and days sleeping and waiting on the bridge.

One of them was Marcos, who said he rode buses for 20 days to escape violence in his native Guatemala. Next to him was a Guatemalan family of four who said they left because of the volcanic eruption there this month.

Alla, a teenager from Honduras in a tattered New York Yankees t-shirt who traveled here with his mother and two younger siblings, wandered back and forth between asylum-seekers sitting or sleeping against the fence and the long line of people making routine crossings from Matamoros.

Near the feet of the CBP officers, a young woman from Honduras, who asked not to be named, waited with her 3-year-old son amid boxes of water, baby formula, and bread, clutching her own backpack.

“I think [the situation] is really bad for the kids,” says Ernie Mascorro, a Brownsville resident who was waiting to enter the US after visiting family in Reynosa.

“Where they’re coming from, they’re poor and afraid,” he adds. “This is not going to stop.”

Even after fleeing to Mexico, many migrants don’t even feel safe, propelling their journey north. Last year a shelter in Tapachula, Mexico, on the Guatemala border, for example, reported gang members in the shelter that were essentially stalking refugees.

While families caught crossing the border will no longer be separated, Mr. Trump’s executive order made clear that the policy of prosecuting every illegal entrant will continue.

Yet recent US polls have found strong public support for immigration as well as strong public opposition to family separation. A record-high 75 percent of Americans think immigration is “a good thing for the US,” according to a Gallup poll conducted in the first two weeks of this month and released Thursday. On Monday, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 66 percent of voters opposed the family separations policy. Ninety-one percent of Democratic voters opposed it and 55 percent of Republican voters supported it.

That public pressure--and political pressure from Republican Party and religious leaders--seems to have prompted Trump’s reversal on family separations.

Besides the fact that migrant families will no longer be separated, there is significant confusion over what the rest of the executive order will mean for the situation at the border. The administration has not clarified if or how families who have already been separated will be reunited.

The government currently faces strict requirements when it comes to detaining children--including keeping them in the “least restrictive conditions” possible while they are detained and placing them with a relative “without unnecessary delay”--but the order directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to try and modify those requirements.

Advocates are also concerned about a section saying the Department of Defense could make “existing facilities available” to house detained families.

“They’re going to detain the families throughout the immigration proceedings, families are going to be detained, imprisoned, incarcerated for over a year,” says Mr. Olivares of the Texas Civil Rights Project. “In some ways the executive order makes things worse.”

Back on the Gateway International Bridge, the two tote bags of supplies that Hamilton had brought are empty. In line to reenter the US, she leans against a railing in exhaustion.

“I feel like they’re between a rock and a hard place, and I’m sorry that we’re part of that rock and hard place,” she says. “These are people trying to get away from danger, they’re not bringing the danger. I just really wish that people would see that.”

#US-Mexico border #family separation #separating children from parents

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friend-clarity · 4 years ago

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Leftists thugs from the 60s now rule

Among their most influential thinkers was Bill Ayers [who nurtured Obama]. He got a windfall from the government’s failure to prosecute him for the bombings he carried out and the mass murders he planned but was insufficiently competent to execute. It was a second career as a “Distinguished Professor of Education” at the University of Illinois. As Sol Stern relates in a 2006 City Journal essay that should be required reading today, this entailed designing curricula used by today’s hard-Left academics, based on what Ayers saw as a moral imperative to convert schools into social-justice indoctrination labs.

The goals of the revolution have never changed. It has simply airbrushed its terrorist leaders into prominent public scholars and “activists” with a passion for “change” and “justice.” The revolution has lots of money, organization, control of the schools, support from one of the nation’s two major political parties, and the media megaphone. That is why the revolution is winning. The 1960s never ended, they just paved the way for today.

The Revolution Is Winning, Andrew C. McCarthyJuly 18, 2020

Thousands of demonstrators march across the Golden Gate Bridge blocking traffic during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in San Francisco, Calif., June 6, 2020. (Kate Munsch/Reuters)

Radicals from the 1960s and 1970s now hold powerful positions in government and academia

This is what the revolution looks like.

Weather Underground terrorists, who made no secret of being anti-AmeriKKKan “small-c” communists, are having more success than they could have dreamed of in the 1960s.

They are dominating the language. You know that whole “white privilege” nostrum that we’re paying universities $60K per year to drum into our children’s brains? It is derived from their lamentation of “white skin privilege.” In their ideology, the revolution to overthrow the capitalist, racist, imperialist system summoned them — lily white radicals — to abandon their privilege and embrace the armed struggle.

Among their most influential thinkers was Bill Ayers. He got a windfall from the government’s failure to prosecute him for the bombings he carried out and the mass murders he planned but was insufficiently competent to execute. It was a second career as a “Distinguished Professor of Education” at the University of Illinois. As Sol Stern relates in a 2006 City Journal essay that should be required reading today, this entailed designing curricula used by today’s hard-Left academics, based on what Ayers saw as a moral imperative to convert schools into social-justice indoctrination labs.

It worked.

Of course, in the days before they brought the revolution into the classroom, they pursued it on urban streets, prioritizing war on cops. To the avant-garde, the police are the pointy end of the oppressive government spear, enforcing its laws and imposing the racist society’s caste system. For the revolution to succeed, the police have to be discredited, defunded, and defanged. For the Weather Underground, that meant branching into such radical offshoots as the May 19 Communist Organization and conspiring with black separatists.

So it was that such Weather confederates as Susan Rosenberg, Kathy Boudin, and David Gilbert, among others, teamed with the Black Liberation Army to carry out the infamous 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck at the Nanuet Mall near Nyack, N.Y. At the time, Rosenberg was already a suspect in the 1979 New Jersey jailbreak of Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army leader who had been convicted of murdering New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster. Chesimard fled the country and was given asylum by Fidel Castro’s Communist regime in Cuba, where she has lived ever since.

In robbing the Brinks truck, the terrorists shot at the security guards, murdering one of them, Peter Paige. In a firefight with Nyack police while trying to escape, they killed Sergeant Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown — the latter a Korean War veteran who had joined the force in 1966, the first African American to serve in Nyack’s police department. Rosenberg went on the lam, finally captured three years later in possession of over 700 pounds of explosives she and her fellow radicals were planning to use in additional mayhem. A federal judge in New Jersey sentenced her to 58 years’ imprisonment.

Boudin and Gilbert had left their 14-month-old son, Chesa, with a sitter in order to participate in the Brinks heist. But unlike Rosenberg, they were captured right after the bloody shootouts. Boudin was sentenced to a minimum 20 years’ imprisonment (with a maximum life sentence), and Gilbert to 75 years’ imprisonment.

With his parents in custody, young Chesa Boudin was raised by their confederates, Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Like Ayers, Dohrn was a Weather Underground leader who became an academic after eluding significant prosecution for their bombings and mass-murder conspiracies — though she did do a short stint of jail time for contempt after defying a grand-jury subpoena to testify about Rosenberg.

In addition to his American academic work, Ayers became a supporter of the late Communist dictator Hugo Chávez’s education programs in Venezuela. There, in a 2006 speech with the strongman looking on, Ayers proclaimed, “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educación es revolución!” Later, Chesa Boudin would follow in Ayers’s footsteps, working as a translator and think-tank researcher for Chávez’s regime.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Ayers and Dohrn seamlessly became prominent in Democratic Party politics. At their Hyde Park home in 1995, they held a coming-out party for an ambitious political unknown, a community organizer named Barack Obama. Two years later, the future president breathlessly endorsed Ayers’s polemic, A Kind and Just Parent?, as a “searing and timely account.” The book is an indictment of the U.S. criminal-justice system, which Ayers likens to South Africa under apartheid. As Stanley Kurtz has recounted, Ayers helped pave Obama’s way into the radical Left’s extensive fundraising networks; the two collaborated as board members of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, doling out more than $100 million to community organizers and education “reformers.”

Susan Rosenberg’s terrorism sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in 2001, part of the scandalous array of clemency grants on his last day in office. (I was then a senior federal prosecutor and had just spent months successfully arguing against her release.) Instantly, she was offered teaching positions at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and, later, Hamilton College, though protests by parents and alumni forced the first to be short-lived and the second declined.

Not to worry, though. By 2020, she was recruited to become vice-chair of the Board of Directors at Thousand Currents, after years as an “activist” in the thriving fields of criminal-justice “reform” and prisoners’ rights. (In the media-Democrat complex and on the campus, former terrorists who’ve found new ways to march the revolution through our institutions are transmogrified into “social-justice activists”). Like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Thousand Currents is a grant-making foundation of the radical Left, similarly tapped into its fundraising networks — such groups as the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (a deep-pocketed non-profit that promotes racial causes and also supports the Tides Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, among other heavyweight donor organizations) and the NoVo Foundation (funded and controlled by the Buffett family).

The principal organizational framework for BLM is the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, run by three women: Opal Tometti, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors — the last of whom, in a 2015 interview, observed, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”

Since George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in late May, BLM has been flooded with donations. Its operations are opaque, however, and it has not qualified for non-profit status. To navigate around this inconvenience, the BLM Global Network Foundation is sponsored by Thousand Currents, which has non-profit status — meaning donors can make tax-deductible contributions to Thousand Currents, which, in turn, supports BLM. The arrangement appears to trace back to 2016, when the Kellogg Foundation provided Thousand Currents with $900,000 for “building the infrastructure and capacity of the national #BlackLivesMatter to support and strengthen their local chapters’ organizing capacity.”

Like Rosenberg, Kathy Boudin has landed on her feet. David Gilbert remains in custody serving his murder sentences (though, as his Wikipedia bio indicates, he has achieved the coveted “activist” status), but Boudin was granted parole in 2003. I know you’ll be stunned to learn that Columbia University quickly rolled out the red carpet for her to pursue a doctorate at Teachers College. She is now not only an adjunct professor at Columbia’s School of Social Work, but also a co-founder and co-director of its, yes, “Center for Justice.”

Meanwhile, Chesa Boudin, the son of Boudin and Gilbert raised by Ayers and Dohrn, is a rising political star. Just 39, he has authored the memoir Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America, studied at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, gotten a law degree from Yale, completed a stint in a big-city public defender’s office, and, just last year, been elected that city’s chief prosecutor — district attorney for San Francisco.

Boudin’s candidacy was backed by the Left’s financial network, BLM, and such luminaries as Communist icon Angela Davis and Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), the avowed socialist, who appears to be the most influential supporter of the Joe Biden presidential campaign. At the victory party the night of Boudin’s election, ecstatic supporters chanted “F*** POA!” (i.e., the Police Officers Association). He had run on a platform of ending what he sees as undue law-enforcement focus on people of color, thwarting federal action against “undocumented” immigrants, and prioritizing investigations of — not by — the police.

He’s making good on these promises. For example, he has stopped bringing charges that include a sentencing enhancement California’s legislature enacted to curb gang violence, fretting that it is disproportionately applied to people of color.

Just a few weeks ago, moreover, he announced a new initiative: The district attorney’s office will no longer charge cases that rely on information from police officers said to have engaged in misconduct — including excessive force or racial bias. Of course, while police must on occasion use superior force in order to subdue criminals, we’ve seen in recent months that any law-enforcement use of force is now liable to be condemned as excessive. And racial bias, even in the absence of proof of conscious discrimination, is claimed to be “unconscious”; it is derived from statistical voodoo that scrutinizes the race and ethnicity of suspects in police encounters while studiously ignoring the offensive behavior that may have prompted police action. Boudin explained that his office has established a “Trial Integrity Unit,” which is compiling a list of cops as to whom there have been misconduct claims. The list is to be updated regularly.

That is, it is an ongoing, open-ended investigation of the police department, for the benefit of criminals.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. @AndrewCMcCarthy

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eknowledgetree2015 · 5 years ago

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Beginner’s Guide to Raising Backyard Chickens

It’s one of these days you might want to add a few chickens to your backyard or homestead. You will certainly have tons of questions regarding how to raise backyard chickens. In this post, we will go over those points, which will help you get started. From ordering chickens to transitioning them to outdoors, this guide has got it all covered. We will further discuss topics relating to chicken coop and runs. Why you want chickens? First of all, you need to ask yourself why you want chickens. More often than not, people want it for eggs, meat or self-sustainability. It helps parents to ensure nourishment for their kids through natural eggs. In addition, some fancy having chicken as pets. Your choice of a breed should be based on the reason why you want chickens in your backyard.

Choosing your breed

Urban vs. Rural Besides the purpose of chickens, your living conditions do have a say on your choice of the breed as well. If you live in an urban setting, you may want to keep things quiet. In addition, you can’t overlook other factors such as availability of space, compatibility with kids, etc...A breed like ‘silkies’ is fluffy cute, less noisy, less space demanding and kid-friendly. They are perfect for your urban home. Silkies are decent laying birds as well. You might also want to check out some of the fancy-looking breeds that can serve as pets.

Egg vs. Meat vs. Heritage If you have over a couple of acres and want a free-range, you can aim for eggs and meat. Simply put, you can go for larger birds that are better on production. Breeds like black australorp and buff Orpington are definitely good for dual purposes. If you want to focus solely on egg production alone, we recommend going with a breed like Red Sex Link or white leghorn. Alternatively, if you want to focus mainly on meat, go for the Cornish cross. Meat birds are something to be called at the end of the year. If you want self-sustainable meat, go for some heritage breeds. A classy option would be ‘dorking’, which is a slow-growing heritage breed. If you want to move down the heritage path without compromising of chicken’s growing speed, you can go for a rainbow ranger. Regardless, heritage breeds bring in the best of flavours in the meat. You can also offset with a variety of breeds. One group of chicken will provide for eggs while another gets you the meat. Regardless, you need to do detailed research on your breeds. Make sure these breeds can survive in your region without air conditioning.

How to get chicken?

You can get chicken via few routes now - online hatchery, local breeder and craigslist. The easiest route as of now is ordering via online hatcheries. These hatcheries give you the option to vaccinate your chicks. We leave that choice up to you since we don't consider vaccination absolutely essential. Moreover, they do not vaccinate bantam chickens, which are otherwise called miniatures. In regards to local breeders, you can do your research on what breeds they have. Generally, local breeders do not have a wide range of breeds. The local breeders usually carry 2-3 different types of breeds. Without proper research, you might end up driving around different breeders to get the right mix. On the other hand, the chickens are not being shipped in an uncomfortable position. In addition, you are establishing solid relationships with the local breeders. An interesting option to get chickens is via craigslist. You can find tons of chickens being given away or sold crazy cheap. If you are looking for some good bargain chicken, craigslist is where you need to be. You might find people who are giving their chicken for cheap since they are moving out of state. If you are dealing with a hatchery or breeder in craigslist, make sure they are NPIP certified. It ensures you are not introducing disease to the current flock if you have one. Try to know who the seller is, and how they are taking care of the chickens. Did you know? All chickens have something called the egg tooth. It is what helps them to break out of the eggs. They will eventually lose them in 1-2 days.

Getting the chickens home...

Sexed chickens: Roosters, hens & straight run When you order chickens, you can order roosters, hens or straight runs. Roosters and hens are obviously sexed chickens. A specialist looks into the vent to tell you about its gender before you order them. Whereas, a straight run translates to chickens which are not sexed. You can't be sure what will you get. As a rule of thumb, it's usually 60 per cent roosters and 40 per cent hens. Going to a hatchery rather local breeder introduces you to the advantage of picking chicken based on gender. Moreover, auto-sexed chickens can be told on the gender-based on their colors and stripes. When should the chickens arrive? Most people want their chickens to arrive in April because of its Easter time. Moreover, it's easy to involve kids around this time. However, if you want some heritage breeds, there is no point waiting till March/April. The rarer breeds sell out quickly, even in large hatcheries. If you want them for April, start planning by November. Once you place your order by November, you get a selection of dates for the chickens to arrive in your doorstep. Choose the date that is convenient for you. You need to be home during the day and even the corresponding week. The chickens may arrive at any time of the day or week. With the kind of postal service for chickens, ignore the tracking number. They are seldom updated or precise. Chickens are good to survive for 3 days in the mail. Your chickens should be indoors for at least 4 weeks post-delivery. When you move them outside, the temperature should be - 75 degrees. If not, you need to provide the supplementary heat. There are mini-thermostats that can precisely set a temperature these days.

Nurturing newborn chickens

For the first month, the chickens need to stay indoors. Considering there is no hen around to nurture them, you should rely solely on gadgets. Using an EcoGlow brooder or heat lamp becomes essential. You need to have the right setup prior to the arrival of chickens. As far as supplies are concerned, you need to invest in chicken feed, electrolytes and vinegar solution. Setting it up... Firstly you need a plastic tub to keep the chickens for about a week. You should put in an inch of pine shavings in the bottom. A few breeders suggest using a paper or sheet to cover the base of the tub. But, using a paper sheet may cause the chicken legs to frequently slip and result in splay legs. You can then place a water container for electrolytes and lid for chicken feed. Selection of brooders As far as brooder is concerned, our first choice is definitely EcoGlow. It’s nothing but a warming plate that acts just like a mother hen would. The chickens can go under them to get warm and toasty, whenever they feel like it. You can control the temperature that’s under the brooder. We suggest keeping a temperature of 90-95 degrees during the first week. You can reduce the temperature by 5 degrees every week thereafter. Alternatively, people can use a heat lamp for the same purpose. Using a red lamp or amphibian light helps avoid pecking from the little chickens and doesn’t prevent them from sleeping. Nevertheless, chickens prefer heat plates.

Supplies

The first supply you need is chick starter. It has higher protein content than grower feed and layer feed. Optionally, you can choose medicated feed, which helps prevent Coccidiosis, a parasitic disease affecting the intestinal tract of chickens. However, medicating the feed is not absolutely necessary. We suggest going with non-medicated organic starter feed and medicating when necessary. Organic being 100 per cent natural, has a default appeal to it. The immediate next thing you need after starter feed is electrolytes. Electrolytes will provide your chicken with energy. It’s almost like Gatorade for chicks. After being shipped, chickens tend to be dehydrated. Giving water after mixing with little electrolytes gets them perked up. Apple cider vinegar is good to have in your supply kit. Putting a splash of it on your feed supplies your chicken with potassium and energy. It also has anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-parasitic properties. More often than not, you can stumble upon a good organic brand in vinegar as well. A little board above the pine shavings can be used to place the water container. You can supply water with electrolytes and vinegar through the container. You can put in the feed on small lids. Ironically, a good treat for chickens would be scrambled eggs. You can also give them corid amprolium, which prevents the intake of b1 vitamin, thereby preventing the formation of Coccidiosis. The first thing you need to do with your chickens is to pick them up and dip their beaks in the water. If helps in finding out whether they have arrived healthy and fine. Secondly, you should tap on the feed to show them where the food is. After they have tasted the food, make sure they have access to food and water at all times. Ensure your chickens have arrived nice and warm.

Transitioning to backyard

Transitioning to the backyard is never straight forward in case of chickens. You should introduce them to a bigger structure after the first week. Regardless, for the entire month, the chickens should stay indoors. A week prior to bringing them outdoors, you should introduce them to the native soil. For this purpose, add the native soil mixed with wood ash to their indoor shelter. Chicken coop and runs The one-month-old chickens which have been properly nurtured are considered fit to be introduced to the outdoors. You can either use self-built or industry made coops to house your chickens. My Chicken coop provides some of the best coops for chickens, hens and roosters. The extensive catalogue has deluxe chicken coop, premium chicken coop, super large chicken coop, villa chicken coop and more. You can also purchase chicken coop with the large run to enable chickens to roam freely. You can place all the add-ons such as nesting boxes, chicken drinker and chicken feeder inside the coop. The hens and roosters can be introduced safely as well. Predator-proofing your backyard Coops are so essential for raising chickens in the backyard. Besides coops, you need additional protection as well. You need to know every possible predator in your area. From foxes to raccoons to black snakes, there are many ground predators. Using an electric fence effectively prevents the intrusion of ground predators. To combat digging ground predators, you can dig down under the coop and put some mesh down there. For aerial predators such as owls and hawks, string up colored mason lines 2 feet above the ground. It is because the bigger birds do not like to dive down in an area where they are likely to get trapped. They will fly over, come close, but won’t come past the colored mason lines.

Final steps...

For the first two days, the chickens should be locked inside the coop. They need to make the coop their home before introducing them to the grass area. This way, they will know to get back to the coop during the night. To assist the transition, drop-in pine shavings in the coop. After a couple of days, you can open gates to the run. The chickens shouldn’t get past the run for at least 4 weeks. They shouldn’t meet the larger fowl before they are at least 8 weeks old. Move the coup regularly around your backyard. Make sure to close the gates before night, to lock the chickens safely inside the coop. when they are 8 weeks old, let them in and out of the run using a small chicken door. Read the full article

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polixy · 5 years ago

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Q&A: How Pew Research Center evaluated Americans’ trust in 30 news sources

Q&A: How Pew Research Center evaluated Americans’ trust in 30 news sources;

Americans are sharply divided along partisan lines when it comes to the media outlets they turn to and trust for their political and election-related news, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew Research Center

More Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents trust than distrust most of the 30 outlets in the study, but the reverse is true among Republicans and GOP leaners. And while Democrats’ trust in many of these outlets has remained stable or in some cases increased since 2014, Republicans have become more alienated from some of them, widening an already substantial partisan gap.

Amy Mitchell has directed the Center’s journalism research since 2012 and oversaw the new study, which is based on an online survey of more than 12,000 U.S. adults. The study serves as the framework for our new Election News Pathways project. In this Q&A, she answers key questions about how the analysis was done and what it says about Americans’ news habits as the first votes of the 2020 presidential election cycle loom.

The study examines public trust in 30 U.S. media outlets for political and election news. How did you choose these outlets? Why weren’t some well-known outlets included?

With today’s vast and fractured media landscape, our goal was not to do anything like a census. Instead, we wanted to choose a variety of news outlets with substantial audiences across different platform types. To that end, we included major broadcast and cable TV networks, public broadcasters, political radio shows, high-circulation national newspapers, high-traffic digital news outlets and international news sources with a substantial readership in the United States, among other kinds of outlets. Most of the outlets we studied were part of a similar study we published in 2014, which allowed us to track whether partisans’ trust in them changed over time.

One group not included here are wire services like The Associated Press and Reuters. While those organizations certainly produce a great deal of original reporting, our study is not an assessment of news brands, but an analysis of outlets Americans turn to for news and the trust levels of those outlets. Most Americans get news from the wires through another news outlet that carries their syndicated content. We also took into consideration things like web traffic, topic focus and responses to open-ended survey questions about people’s main sources for political news.

Social media sites as a source for political news were asked about separately and will be a part of a future analysis.

How did you measure Americans’ trust and distrust in these outlets?

We first asked our survey respondents whether they had heard of each of the 30 outlets. If so, we asked them if they trusted it for political and election-related news. If they didn’t indicate trust in the source, we asked them if they distrusted it. After all, there’s a difference between simply not expressing trust in an outlet and actively expressing distrust of it. In cases where respondents had heard of a source but didn’t indicate that they trusted or distrusted it, we classified the response as “neither trust nor distrust.”

These questions allowed to us to measure things a few different ways. For example, we could examine trust gaps between different groups of people for different news outlets. We found that CNN is trusted by 70% of self-described liberal Democrats, but only 16% of conservative Republicans – a gap of 54 percentage points. Conversely, Fox News is trusted by 75% of conservative Republicans but only 12% of liberal Democrats – a 63-point gap.

Asking about both trust and distrust also allowed us to examine the “ratio” between these two measures for each outlet. Fox News, for instance, is among the sources in this study trusted by the largest percentage of Americans, with 43% of U.S. adults saying they trust it for political news. But it is also among the sources with the largest portion who distrust it – 40% of Americans express this view. Since that’s the case, we classified Fox News as “about equally trusted and distrusted.”

Besides asking our survey respondents about their trust and distrust in different outlets, we also asked them if they had gotten political or election-related news in the past week from any of the sources they told us they had heard of. This allowed us to surface some other interesting findings, like the fact that some Americans use news outlets even if they don’t express trust in those outlets.

How did you measure changes in trust over time?

We examined political polarization in Americans’ media habits in a major 2014 report, and since 20 of the 30 media outlets we examined in our new study were also part of the earlier report, we could assess how trust in these outlets has changed.

One of the biggest changes we saw was increased distrust among Republicans for 14 of the 20 news sources included in both studies, with particularly notable increases in distrust of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post – three frequent targets of criticism for President Donald Trump. While there has been far less change on the Democratic side, two exceptions are The Sean Hannity Show and Breitbart News, which are now distrusted by a larger share of Democrats than in 2014.

It’s important to point out that because of differences in methodology and survey design, the new study is not comparable in all ways with the 2014 study. For example, the new survey is representative of the total U.S. adult population, while the older survey was based only on web-using U.S. adults. And the questions asked, while similar, are not identical in all cases. But there are more points of continuity than differences, and we feel confident in the broad changes in trust and distrust that we’ve documented in the two studies.

The study refers to the audiences of different news outlets as “left-leaning,” “right-leaning” or “mixed.” How did you make these determinations? And are you saying that some of these outlets themselves are “left-leaning” or “right-leaning”?

“This study doesn’t make any determination about where news outlets themselves fall on the ideological spectrum based on either the content of their reporting, their self-identification or the views of their editorial boards.”

I’ll answer the last question first because it’s a crucial point to understand. This study doesn’t make any determination about where news outlets themselves fall on the ideological spectrum based on either the content of their reporting, their self-identification or the views of their editorial boards. This project wasn’t designed to evaluate outlets themselves or the content they produce.

Instead, we used an approach that grouped each outlet according to the ideological composition of its audience, based on where our respondents told us they get political and election-related news and how they describe themselves ideologically – liberal Democrat (including independents who lean Democratic) or conservative Republican (again including leaners). We’ve used this same system in past studies about the media.

In the new report, outlets classified as having “left-leaning” audiences are those with at least two-thirds more liberal Democrats in their audience than conservative Republicans, and outlets with “right-leaning” audiences are those with at least two-thirds more conservative Republicans than liberal Democrats. Those whose audience does not fall into either of these are classified as having more mixed audiences.

Here are three real-world examples that show this system in action. The share of Business Insider readers who identify as liberal Democrats is at least two-thirds higher than the share who identify as conservative Republicans (40% vs. 20%, or 100% larger), so we classified Business Insider as having a “left-leaning” audience. On the other end of the spectrum, the share of Washington Examiner readers who identify as conservative Republicans is at least two-thirds higher than the share who identify as liberal Democrats (44% vs. 14%, or 214% larger), so we categorized the Examiner as having a “right-leaning” audience. Then there’s the middle: The Wall Street Journal is defined as having a more “mixed” audience because the share of its readers who identify as liberal Democrats is not two-thirds higher than the share who identify as conservative Republicans (31% vs. 24%, or just 29% larger).

It’s important to keep in mind that just because we classified a news outlet as having a “left-leaning” or “right-leaning” audience does not mean that majority of its audience identifies as either liberal Democrat or conservative Republican. In fact, relatively few of the outlets we studied have audiences that consist mostly of liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans.

Why does the study include more outlets with left-leaning audiences than right-leaning audiences?

We selected these outlets based on a number of factors, including their audience size and platform type, but not based on the ideological orientation of their audiences, which we didn’t measure until later in the research process. Using this method, we ended up with 17 outlets whose audiences are left-leaning, six outlets whose audiences are right-leaning and seven outlets with mixed audiences.

One factor that may be at play here is that Republicans have a more compact media ecosystem. They rely to a large degree on a small number of outlets and view many established brands as not trustworthy. Democrats, on the other hand, rely on a wider number of outlets.

What do you hope readers will take away from this study?

It’s often tempting to use studies like this one to “rank” media outlets against one another in terms of trust or distrust, but that wasn’t the purpose of this research. Instead, we wanted to offer insight into the news sources partisans rely on for political news, and the degree to which there is common ground or division. That’s especially important in an election year like this one. (Throughout the campaign, in fact, we’ll be applying this research to do additional analyses as part of our Election News Pathways project, which will let users do their own analyses with an interactive data tool.)

Overall, these findings reveal sharp divides in the use and trust of political news sources. They don’t reveal completely separate media bubbles. There are some news sources that both Democrats and Republicans turn to, but even those areas of overlap can be hard to fully gauge since using a news source doesn’t always mean people trust it.

; Blog – Pew Research Center; https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/24/qa-how-pew-research-center-evaluated-americans-trust-in-30-news-sources/; https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/FT_20.01.22_PathwaysQA_feature.png; January 24, 2020 at 10:31AM

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raygoodwinbaphotographyjournal3 · 5 years ago

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PHOT301 - Mileage May Vary - An Evaluation

The first portion of this project has gone already? Those people weren’t lying when they said it’ll go fast once third year comes around. And this evaluation marks the end of PHOT301, which is the early stages of the FMP, featuring all of the research and planning of ones project. Although this is only the beginning for what I finally titled ‘Mileage May Vary’. This project is the culmination of a majority of previous works all the way back to my access course, which started in 2016. The seeds of MMV were planted all throughout my tenure at university, with elements from PHOT103, 104 and 201.

Rover 75 - Mamiya 6 IV - Cinestill 800T

PHOT202 is where my work took a turnaround. That whole project was a massive mistake: start to finish. It had the right intentions from the get go, and was meant to let off where Alienated Spaces left off. However, I felt alienated about a project about alienation as I was trying to convey something that had dwindled over time. This lead to me leaving anything contextual behind and focusing purely on taking images for the sake of images. It was during this time of making images without any substance, I thought of a project that documented cars that managed to escape the 2009 Vehicle Scrappage Scheme. Annoyingly, this thought came to me when I was a good way through PHOT202 and wasn’t able to go through with changing an entire project, but I wanted to keep hold of it for a summer project, which then turned into my third year work.

The summer time isn’t a conducive time of year for my to be working, as I find the harsh sun and long days uninspiring and the weather is always too hot. That may come across as whiny, but it is just how I feel about the summer. I managed to get one measly shoot in before university started again in September, yet it was interesting to see where my head was at, in terms of composition and creating images. This managed to lead me into a practice that as mostly self lead, but also included an amount of research to back up what I am doing. Although, I piqued up my reading on hauntology, and came to the realisation that it has been omnipresent without my knowledge since the very early days of the degree. Hauntology is something that took me a long time to get my head around, as the first interaction of it was convoluted. However, with much more reading on the internet, and Mark Fisher’s writing made it a lot easier to grasp the spectral haunting of our society. Fisher has always been an accessible writer to me, and makes somewhat complex theories by making them link into something contemporary, which I find a lot easier to digest. I found Derrida’s original text about hauntology was difficult to take in and only made me hate it. Fisher does a good job in making some palatable without dumbing it down.

The other aspect that informed my practice was governmental data about the VSS. Thankfully in 2014, the government released the numbers from the scheme, which detailed how many vehicles were scrapped between 2009/2010. However, there are some detailed discrepancies with the data as it was all taken from different sources, and those sources were each and every dealership that received candidates for scrapping. Despite this, it was interesting to see the ‘reality’ of the numbers regarding the vehicle scrapping. Perhaps in the final stages of MMV, I should look at the highest number of scrapped cars and document them.

Shooting the project was potentially the easiest experience as of yet. The process of finding subjects was mainly walking the streets of towns and cities. There is no way to gauge what one is going to find as its impossible to know what cars are on what street, with the only way to know is to find out. Finding the right subject was a form of trial and error, with a lot of the cars mainly on the streets now won’t be affected by the VSS as they didn’t exist. Some models did however, but the date on the registration plate would place it after the scheme. The technical aspect was no problem either, as I am now fully proficient and reliant on shooting film for personal projects.

There also wasn’t many issues regarding shooting apart from the exposure issues, which was down to me, and the same roll being slightly damaged by the processing provider. These can be overcome by making sure the equipment is in place, and changing where I process my film for colour. Whilst that may cost slightly more and take longer, its the peace of mind knowing that it probably won’t be damaged by a rushed process.

Volkswagen Type 2 - Canon EOS-1 - 50mm F1.8 STM - Kodak Ektar 100

Taking the photos was a breeze, as I knew what I was looking for and taking. Although, what is included in the photographs has varied over the course of the project. It started with composing the majority of the vehicle in frame, but after talking to Jack Latham, it seemed like a good idea to focus more on the details of the car. I was including things like scrapes and dents, as this shows that it has been used and knocked over the years. But, I was featuring these points whilst the vehicle was mainly in view. I have mixed these together instead of limiting myself to one kind of composition.

One thing I would improve upon is shooting more medium format images for the higher fidelity of negative. I only shot one roll of medium format during these stages of the project, and this was the roll of which I had a shutter speed issue and the roll of soiled by MyPhoto. One thing I would like to experiment with the Cinestill CS41 kit, which allows one to develop colour film at home, with the same process as B&W. This makes it a lot easier to develop colour, as it is a finicky process with tight tolerances with temperature. I also decided to disregard shooting black and white, as I wanted to document the pragmatism and realism of the vehicles.

The photo book is something that I feel my work lends itself to, as it can contain a narrative bundled together in a handheld package. At this stage, I didn’t want to produce a self published book as it is still the early stages of MMV. However, I did want to make something that contained these elements, but had a level of experimentation to it. This is where the ‘zine’ comes into fruition; although I am not sure what to call it, as its a mix of a photo book and work in progress documentation of what I want to create further down the line. I made the online/PDF version on Canva, as it is a free and powerful tool to create graphics and documents. Once I knew what images I wanted and how to display them, it was rather easy to create. The cover was the most challenging aspect to this, as I knew I didn’t want to just have a photograph on the cover, and I wanted to resurrect my graphic design work. For this, I utilised one of my images and editing it with GIMP, a free alternative to Photoshop. The cover contains semiotics to the entire project: cars are the sole image on the cover which reflects on the project’s subject, which is coloured red to signal the Labour government’s scheme and the bitmap effect was to give the illusion of newspaper articles about the scheme/news. This is a style that I would like to go back to and hopefully keep using for the next portion of the FMP.

Being informed and influenced is something that I written about being somewhat difficult for me. Whilst I do digest photography on a regular basis, only some of that actually makes an impression. I can appreciate a nice photograph, but it rarely gets my creative juices flowing. Although once in a blue moon I will stumble across a practitioner that just gets me. Once of those is the little known Vlad Tretiak; a Russian based photographer with a partial social media following. His work manages to intrigue me in a technical aspect as he shoots medium format at night time, as well as the subject themselves. I have always had a fascinating with anything Russian and Soviet related, and this manages to meld in my love for cars. Chris Dorley-Brown was tuned into me by Jack Latham, and Dorley-Brown’s work focused on the portraits of motorists stuck in traffic during the summer of 1987 in East London. I rarely enjoy photographs containing people, but it made me think that my work as portraits of the cars themselves. I also was inspired by Franck Bohbot, who I looked at during PHOT104′s Economy project. These practitioners, as well as the contextual research of hauntology has spearheaded me into a well informed project, which after PHOT202 was much needed.

Citroen Berlingo Aftermath - Canon EOS-1 - 50mm F1.8 STM - Kodak Colour Plus 200

Where does this lead me for the final stage of the FMP? With all of the now previous work, I feel as if I have a good project on my hands and that I can take it far. It feels as if I am finally undertaking a project that I am actually enjoying to shoot to produce, in addition to not feeling like it’s died as soon as it has been handed in like previous projects. The premise of this project was on my mind for a while and I am happy that I can finally undertake it, and take it into the future to wherever it will take me. What I have produced is something that I am proud to have my name to, and it has garnered some good feedback and constructive criticisms. The work flow shall continue after PHOT301, and any film started before, and hasn’t been finished before the deadline shall be used for the second portion of the FMP. With the continuing stages of MMV, I plan to still use the compositions of full car and close up detailed shots, but I would like to incorporate the numbers/statistics of the cars that were scrapped - possibly even photographing a selection of the most scrapped vehicles from the government spreadsheet. The prints will also progress, as I plan to print at least A0 for Free Range and accompany them with a layflat ‘coffee table’ style book, detailing an edited down selection of all vehicles photographed during the project. Technically, I would like to utilise more medium format and find a more uniform visual aesthetic in regards to tones. This would mean possibly shooting one type of film and edit them accordingly. Although I would like to use some expired film to add to the hauntology of the photograph, as well as using a film stock that co-exists with potential vehicles in frame. If multiple stocks are used, I shall to the best of my ability edit them so they are visually similar with little difference between them.

I feel that this has been the most enjoyable project to date, as it has been totally up to me with what I do, instead of interpreting a brief and making my work fit it some how. With this, I have been totally free to create what I want to create in a professional and informed manner. I am looking forward to seeing what the future brings for this project.

#PHOT301

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vitamininfusiontherapy · 5 years ago

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IV Therapy Benefits You Need to Know

Over the past couple of years, IV treatment, which injects vitamins straight, has actually come to be a growing number of preferred. The therapy's surge in appeal was perhaps as a result of its usage by stars, including Adele, John Legend, and also Rihanna. Currently, many others have actually sought the therapy program for the countless wellness advantages it can provide.

When utilized legally, IV treatment could be rather helpful. However, as the popularity of IV drip treatment has actually increased, so also has the variety of clinicians with little to no clinical background offering these services. If you want to use IV treatment, it's critical that you research the center you're utilizing beforehand. Listed below, you'll find a brief introduction of what IV treatment is, together with the advantages as well as possible dangers of IV treatment.

What Is IV Therapy?

When you take your early morning dosage of vitamins, the best absorption rate you can anticipate is just between 50-60%. That means that as much as fifty percent of the supplements are literally going to waste, as in right out of your body using your urine. This is discouraging taking into consideration supplements are commonly costly. IV hydration methods, on the other hand, have a 90-100% absorption price.

An infusion can take 20 mins to a hr and is done at a clinical office under the guidance of a certified professional. By absorbing the nutrients through an IV, you are allowing them to go into the blood stream much faster than if you ingested them.

In the past, those who sought IV vitamin treatment were people who aren't able to eat enough food or have an ailment that interferes with nutrient absorption. Newer utilizes for this therapy consist of dehydration alleviation after severe workout or alcohol consumption, a boost for the body immune system, and an increase in energy levels. Most healthy people can obtain sufficient nutrients from a balanced diet regimen, however that takes longer as well as calls for regular maintenance.

What Are the Advantages of an IV Drip?

IV drip therapy can provide lots of wellness benefits. However, there hasn't been much research concentrated on IV therapy explicitly, with numerous studies being unscientific. However, there is substantial evidence supporting the possible health and wellness advantages of high dosages of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids for middle-aged grownups, especially when infused straight. The absorption prices of oral supplements are marginal, especially when contrasted to the absorption rates of straight shots.

To get an IV drip, you will certainly get a needle injected right into your blood vessel that's linked to a tube attached to a bag filled with vitamins. The drips include fluid that might have a combination of vitamins and also antioxidants. It typically takes about 45 to 60 mins to complete.

An intramuscular injection (shot) of vitamins is the fastest means to get vitamins and also there is no IV access called for. An intramuscular shot is pushed into your gluteal or deltoid muscle and also takes only 10 seconds. The dosage is a lot smaller sized due to the fact that the muscular tissues can not deal with as much volume, however the absorption rate is almost as high as an IV drip.

Everyone is various, so normally, the clinic will establish your requirements based upon your private wellness.

Why Not Simply Take Vitamins By Mouth?

Statistics show that nearly half of males and females over the age of 50 make use of an oral multivitamin supplement, with sales coming close to $11 billion yearly [R] When you take a vitamin supplement, it needs to degenerate entirely within 20 minutes of ingestion for you to receive its full benefits. Or else, the vitamin goes to waste.

One research evaluated supplements on the Canadian market to discover if they absorbed as rapidly as the tag suggested [R] The study hinted at false advertising and marketing, claiming that lots of manufacturers utilized terms as well as statements to "include pseudoscientific and unjustified worth to the item." It wrapped up that "today's customers can not presume that the item they acquire will certainly have an appropriate high quality with regard to the fragmentation behavior."

In addition, the American Fda does not manage vitamin supplements. As well as, the absorption rates of dental supplements is rather reduced. For example, if you take a calcium supplement, your body's digestion system takes in 20-30% of the pill. You will certainly urinate out whatever your body does not absorb, indicating that you're squandering money on supplements.

Likewise, studies have located that the body takes in about fifty percent of an oral vitamin B12 supplement. The research study also discovered that the absorption rates decrease when the dosage of the vitamin is higher. It's reasonable to conclude that injecting high-dose vitamins into your bloodstream by means of IV therapy is one of the most reliable method for your body to absorb B complicated and also various other essential vitamins [R]

Does It Actually Work?

If you're going to drop a pair hundred dollars on a solitary therapy session, you would like to know if it functions. Since there are few research studies available now that have evaluated the effectiveness, it is hard to definitively say if it is advantageous for major or chronic problems.

There may be a placebo impact with this treatment. Refresher course: The sugar pill result is basically a mental "technique" where you believe you are feeling much better even if the medicine has not functioned yet.

What Is in the IV Drip?

The most usual components found in an IV drip are vitamin C, B vitamins, magnesium, as well as calcium. There are likewise leaks that include amino acids and also anti-oxidants, such as glutathione. If you're familiar with how to build muscular tissue, you might know the benefits of amino acids, the building blocks of protein.

There are no limitations to which vitamins as well as nutrients can be administered, however the best ones are those that can be gauged with degrees to make sure that the infusion is delivered at a healthy dosage.

Who Can Take Advantage Of IV Treatment?

IV therapy might assist people from different histories, including:

Professional athletes

Recuperating from extreme training is what aids you do much more intense training as well as get faster, bigger, more powerful. By replacing your electrolytes and also obtaining B vitamin doses, your power can return, as well as dehydration goes away. Amino acids, electrolytes, and also other vitamins can boost endurance, and also this recuperation does it without energy beverages, pills, drinks, and the undesirable negative effects of the ingredients in many of them. It can additionally eliminate lactic acid, making the treatment a good choice pre- or post-workout or event.

Runners

Marathons are grueling. Specialized trickles can offer you expanded immune support, helps detox, as well as keeps you stimulated and also freshened. There are also hydration as well as antioxidant representatives included. Be cautioned, however-- some events, leagues, as well as sporting activities do not enable IV treatment due to the fact that it can alter your efficiency, so be sure to check before you participate.

People in Their 30s

In your 30s, you're most likely to be burning the candle at both ends much faster than you can also get even more candles. In between job as well as play, IV therapy might supply you with the energy increase you need to keep all things you are doing while looking terrific.

It's also OK to be straightforward as well as confess that you're most curious regarding IV therapy for hangover relief. There are mobile centers that most likely to concerts and also events to offer this solution. With IV hangover treatment, you obtain hydration, a high dosage of vitamins, antioxidants, as well as micronutrients so you can help your liver detox and also get your power back.

Individuals in Their 40s

Power levels are possibly your main concern now. If you simply had a little a lot more oomph you might get even more done at the office, workout on a daily basis, have fun with the youngsters, and also fix the globe's problems.

People in Their 50s and also 60s

Retirement is so close you can taste it. If you have been desiring for taking a trip and occupying your leisure activities full time, you want to have the power and toughness to do it. A general dosage of vitamins works to reduce inflammation, muscle mass pain, exhaustion, and stress and anxiety.

Just how much Does the IV Treatment Price?

IV therapy is not affordable. Depending on the center as well as combination of vitamins, it's most likely going to run in between $75 as well as $200 for one therapy session. If that seems like too much, consider this-- your body just absorbs concerning half of the vitamins as well as nutrients that you take by mouth, suggesting you lose your hard-earned money. The money you spend on IV treatment is totally made use of the way you want.

Sorts Of IV Treatment

Modern IV treatment was derived from the work of Dr. John Myers, that established what ended up being referred to as the "Myers Mixed drink." The exact formula of the mixed drink is not exactly clear since Myers did not release any composed material on the therapy and patients were not able to supply full info. The most effective estimates think Myers carried out a slow IV press of a combination of magnesium chloride, calcium gluconate, thiamine, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, calcium pantothenate, vitamin B complex, vitamin C, and weaken hydrochloric acid.

Myers's individuals got monthly, weekly, or two times regular injections for approximately 25 years to deal with chronic concerns such as fatigue, depression, upper body pain, as well as palpitations [R]

A customized variation typically utilized currently has magnesium, calcium, B vitamins, and also vitamin C. This mix has actually been effective in treating migraines, fatigue, fibromyalgia, severe muscle spasm, top respiratory system infections, chronic sinusitis, seasonal hay fever, heart disease, as well as other things.

Not Just a Hangover Cure

You may have heard of IV therapy being utilized as a hangover "cure," however there are additionally extremely genuine advantages for your daily life.

If you find yourself sleeping better, being more kicked back, and also able to educate tougher and also a lot more regularly, you are likely to stick with the treatment program. You do not need to be a singer, celeb, or in a consistent event setting in order to profit. Many who seek IV therapy are regular people that just need a boost.

Research Your Medical Professionals Prior To IV Treatment

When looking for IV therapy, it's important that you investigate the clinic you want to use. Some facilities make fraudulent claims regarding IV treatment, giving clinical suggestions that they are not authorized to use. Over the past couple of months, the Federal Profession Compensation has punished entrepreneur' administration of IV treatment without proper licensing [R] Make sure you locate a company with a seasoned clinical history who you depend administer your intravenous therapy.

As well as Now?

While couple of research studies have actually been published thus far that have actually tested the efficiency of IV vitamin therapy, it can be a valuable therapy when offered by a medical professional. As it ends up being more popular and gathers even more focus, more research and also screening will likely be done to verify the benefits.

If you are searching for remedy for a persistent problem or if you just stayed up far too late enjoying the night life with your buddies, IV vitamin therapy can be an outstanding choice for you.

Visiting well-informed medical professionals will dramatically raise the possibility that your intravenous therapy succeeds. At Prime, we have actually made it simple for you to start and also discover the treatment program that's right for you.

The post “ IV Therapy Benefits You Need to Know “ was first appeared on PRIME

In Toronto? The IV Lounge is a full service IV vitamin therapy clinic offering intravenous infusions such as Myers cocktail, Hangover IV, and high dose vitamin C just to mention a few.

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thechasefiles · 5 years ago

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 5/12/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Thursday, December 5th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS), Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

AUTHORITY READIES MOVE ON ILLEGAL CONNECTIONS – One day after it was revealed that four illegal water connections were found on the premises of the now condemned Liquidation Centre, Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams says the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) will be cracking down on persons and companies who steal water. This morning Abrahams told Barbados TODAY that while he was not prepared to comment on the findings in the Bay Street building owned by Asha Mrs Ram Mirchandani, the issue of illegal water connections is a festering thorn in the side of the BWA. He noted that it has been the BWA’s policy in the past to show leniency to offenders, but this approach may soon change, and more muscular methods would be adopted. “We keep finding illegal water connections and we have been very decent with these people up to now. We have back-billed some of these persons for what they would have used but there has been no real prosecution taking place. I expect the Barbados Water Authority to start cracking down in a major way on people who persist in this behavior and if it has to involve the police then it has to involve the police because it is a criminal action,” said Abrahams, who made it clear that he was putting both commercial and residential offenders on notice. The Minister pointed out, “In the past if you didn’t have a title deed to the land or didn’t get permission from the landlord, you couldn’t get a water connection. So, there were some people who did what they thought they had to do in order to get water into their house for basic sanitary needs. The policy has now changed and anybody who is living on a piece of land can now apply for a water service, so there is no reason now to have an illegal water connection.” Noting that the issue of illegal water connections was quite a widespread problem, the Minister told Barbados TODAY that while it is well known that the state-owned water company is unable to account for 40 per cent of the water it pumps, many may not be aware that burst pipes and illegal water connections are the main culprits. “We have an issue with illegal water connections, and it accounts for a significant portion of our non-revenue water. We have about 40-60 per cent of our water that we can’t account for and while a significant amount is due to breakages in the system, a large amount is also as a result of illegal connections,” he said. Abrahams also explained that these illegal connections can pose a health risk to the water supply, as some of them were done in a very haphazard fashion and could allow for dangerous bacteria to enter and compromise the system. “It is not just simply connecting to the system and people who take it upon themselves to do these illegal connections are not just putting themselves at risk, they put our water supply at risk. If your connection is not a sound one or it is not properly done and stuff infiltrates the system because of the connection that you have made, then you are putting other people at risk. In many cases these connections are not just servicing one household, so that one source may put numerous people at risk,” he stressed. Last night Attorney General Dale Marshall informed the country that the Liquidation Centre, which has been compulsorily acquired by Government and is the subject of a legal battle, that the Water Authority discovered several illegal connections to the water mains there. He also revealed that the premises are vermin-infested and four Government agencies have condemned the warehouse as a fire hazard and a serious threat to humans. (BT)

BARBADOS ‘NO LONGER IN DEFAULT’ ON FOREIGN CURRENCY DEBT – Weeks after Government cemented a deal with external creditors, regional credit ratings agency Caribbean Information and Credit Rating Services Limited (CariCRIS) today lifted its foreign currency sovereign debt rating out of default territory. In a release, CariCRIS said it had removed its CariD (Default) Regional Scale Foreign Currency Rating of the Government of Barbados and has assigned a rating of a CariBB-, with a stable outlook. CariCRIS said: “This rating action places the Regional Scale Foreign Currency Rating one notch below our current Government of Barbados Regional Scale Local Currency rating.” The local currency rating is currently at CariBBB. Immediately after the Mia Mottley administration came to office and announced a debt restructuring deal, CariCRIS had put the island on a “rating watch”. But today, the Port of Spain-based agency said its decision to upgrade the rating on the Barbados government’s foreign currency debt was driven by the successful closure of the exchange offer for external commercial debt. It said: “The [Government of Barbados] has indicated that the closure of the transaction allows it to immediately reduce its outstanding external debt principal by 25 per cent and accrued interest by 35 per cent, and to meet its debt-to-GDP target of 60 per cent by 2033/34. “In total, the GOB immediately benefits from the cancellation of just over US $200 million in debt and would generate approximately US$500 million in cash flow savings over the next five years.” CariCRIS declared that repayment of the restructured foreign currency debt should not harm either the foreign exchange reserves or its primary balance. The statement said: “We are informed that the new bonds consist of (i) a US $547 million, 6.5 per cent semi-annual (April 1 and October 1), 10-year bond, due October 1, 2029, and (ii) a US $32.5 million, 6.5 per cent semi-annual (April 1 and October 1), 3-year bond, due February 1, 2021. “The latter bond would be used to settle interest that has accrued since June 1, 2018, when debt repayment was suspended. The 10-year bond would be amortised but with a grace period ending April 1, 2025. “Additionally, a Sinking Fund for meeting repayments will be established. “The bonds will also benefit from ‘natural disaster clauses’, making their repayment structure more sustainable. “Participation in the exchange invitation was near universal, at upwards of 93 per cent; significantly above the 75 per cent required to give the government of Barbados the power to mandatorily replace all of the relevant debt.” As she addressed the Queen’s College prizegiving and award ceremony, Prime Minister Mia Mottley acknowledged the CariCRIS upgrade, saying she expected more to come. Mottley told the QC students: “Yes, we are solving the debt issues, and yes, by next week of the new bonds for external debt will be behind us, yes, we have gone from 176 per cent [debt to gross domestic product (GDP)], and by next week we will be around 114 per cent of debt to GDP. “Yes, we have investments to do and all of them are starting to unfold but all of that will come to nothing if we don’t get the equation right for you to be the future of this country to help us with future Barbados and for you to understand that as you do it the measurement of your success is not in scholarships and degrees along, but in the content of your character, in your ability to live good with one another and your ability to be able to manage conflicts.” CariCRIS said it would be releasing its full rating rationale on Barbados later this month. This is the third upgrade the island received in the last year, the first coming November 2018 when Standard & Poor’s (S&P) raised its long and short-term local currency ratings for the island from selective default (SD/SD) to B-/B. S&P had also assigned a B- local currency issue rating on the domestic debt issued in the debt exchange a month earlier. Then in July, ratings agency Moody’s announced that it had raised Barbados’ foreign and local currency issuer ratings to Caa1 from Caa3, affirmed the foreign currency senior unsecured bond rating at Caa3 and maintained a stable outlook. (BT)

ARTHUR: OUT WITH OLD – Former Prime Minister, Professor Owen Arthur, says Barbados has to urgently build “a new economy”, warning that “the boat is pulling out of harbour and we are not on it”. Arthur, professor of practice at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill, said Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley kept him “very, very busy” helping Government on several matters, including the development of a new industrial policy, and the arrangements for next year’s United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 15) quadrennial meeting here, October 15 to 23, 2020. He cautioned Government that Barbados could no longer rely on unique tax benefits and preferential trade arrangements, and instead must focus on technology and innovation. (DN)

CHANGES IN REGION’S TIES WITH CANADA – Former Prime Minister Professor Owen Arthur has expressed concern about a diminished bilateral relationship between Canada and the Caribbean. Describing the region’s relationship with Canada as one that was based on valuable attributes, shared development outlook and common interest and common objectives” dating back over 100 years, Arthur said the relationship “has demonstratively been our most valued relationship as regards to other countries”. However, Arthur argued that while the relationship between the North American country and the Caribbean continued to be a “rich” one, Canada’s interest had changed somewhat, and that country now had “a more global focus” to its international relationships. Singling out the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), bilateral trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the US, which came into force in the early 1990’s, Arthur said it has had “severe implications for the Caribbean. One result has been the demise of the once flourishing textile industry. Stating that the region lost thousands of jobs as a result of the NAFTA agreement, Arthur said: “I would go so far as to say that the Caribbean industrial sector, which used to be dominated by textiles exports, has never fully recovered because of the absence of parity with Mexico.” “Canada still has a relationship like that of our other traditional partners with the Caribbean, but it has progressively sought to reduce its bilateral relationships with our countries and sought increasingly so to have relationship with us through regional programmes or multilateral programmes,” he said. “It is a matter that has to be of concern because the intimacy of our relationship with Canada was strong because it was largely bilateral but a large part of our relationship with Canada now is through Canada’s relationship with multilateral institutions of which we are in need. I would like to suggest that in certain respects it is making the relationship not as wonderful as it used to be,” he said. The economist said the reduction in the content and vibrancy of bilateral relations was not unique to Canada. He was addressing a Vice-Chancellor’s Forum at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination on the topic Evolving Canada – Caribbean Relations. Arthur said as a result of the reduced relationship, there has been “a financial void” at a time when it is strongly needed. “But mercifully for the Caribbean, and this has to be said without apology, that financial void that has in part been left by the diminution of our bilateral relationship with our traditional partners, has had to be filled by China and Venezuela,” said Arthur. Stating that people were now becoming “concerned” about the Caribbean’s financial relationship with China and Venezuela, the question should be asked “If those relationships did not take place what would have happened to our Caribbean at this time of the most dire financial need in our history?” He predicted that if the Canada-Caribbean relationship was not addressed there would be a deeper and deeper drift. Arthur suggested that the region “revisits” its relationship with Canada with the intention of moving beyond just market access arrangements. “We want to have development cooperation at the centre of it,” said Arthur. “We can no longer build an economy on preferential trade arrangements. We cannot build an economy on the unilateral tax benefits like arrangements we had with Canada. That is unsustainable. It is an economy that has to be rooted in something that is more substantial and we are now living in a world where more economic activity is being driven by technology and innovation, and the sooner we get on that platform the better,” said Arthur. In her presentation, High Commissioner of Canada to Barbados Marie Legault outlined the development of the relationship between Canada and the Caribbean over the years, while agreeing that there had been a change in the support the region received from the North American country. However, she said the change was in support of institutions that the Caribbean countries themselves have created. “It is true that in accordance to the OECD research and analysis, we have shifted our aid cooperation from bilateral relationship to regional relationship to make sure that we have a bigger impact. This has had some results,” said Legault, who said she disagreed that the shift had left a financial void. “We still invest quite a lot in the region every year especially in areas for which the region is vulnerable like public financial management, disaster risk management, crisis recovery after natural disasters, and also in new aspects like the blue economy and green economy. (BT)

BRITISH-EUROPEAN AID ‘STILL ON … FOR NOW’ – Barbados will continue to benefit temporarily from Britain’s pact with the European Union to provide aid to poor and less-developed countries, the Senate heard today, as they sought to amend an economic partnership agreement in anticipation of Brexit. The United Kingdom has agreed to continue contributing to EU-UK development cooperation until next year with its withdrawal from the EU. The changes to the economic partnership agreement between the Caribbean Community and Dominican Republic – CARIFORUM – and the UK are included in the Economic Partnership Agreement (Amendment) Bill, which was introduced by Senator Kay McConney. She told the Upper Chamber lawmakers: “[Development cooperation] was an important part of the EU/Cariforum EPA agreement. “It lends assistance to poor countries to help them develop. “This is usually administered through the European Development Fund. “The UK is the second-largest contributor with 5.8 per cent as part of the EU family. “The UK has agreed that [it] will continue until 2020 to contribute to the EU for development cooperation.” One other change of benefit to Barbados is the change in the wording of the agreement which allows the country to still be eligible for “preferential access”, she added. She said: “The new wording allows goods to transit Europe without having to change their origin. “There are certain criteria goods have to make in order to make their way to the UK. “It allows us to ensure that when our products have to transit through Europe before it gets to the UK and any of these processes have to be applied to them that they will still be deemed originating in Barbados and be eligible to the preferential access.” Making the case for the adjustment to the original EPA with the EU she said: “We need to care about our internal relationships as we would our domestic relationships.“When change happens internationally Barbados has to respond in a manner that safeguards our interest and where possible leaves opportunities open for our people and our businesses.” Senator McConney lamented the fact that the changes were not of Barbados’ or the CARIFORUM’s making but had to be made in order to respond to the “divorce between the UK and EU”. She said: “Barbados had no active part of the decisions or the outcome yet we are here seeking to pass legislation to deal with repercussions of actions taken by the UK. “We are not in this alone, [there are] other members of CARIFORUM who are party to an agreement pre-existing this situation. “We are here as a result of a divorce between the UK and the European Union.” (BT)

FORMER DLP CANDIDATE SUES OVER DISMISSAL – A former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who was appointed by the last Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Cabinet to manage the Hilton Barbados Resort Hotel, is suing his former employers over his dismissal in April this year. Henderson Williams, who also unsuccessfully contested the City seat for the DLP in the May 2018 General Elections, appeared today in the High Court with his attorneys Neil Marshall and Hal Gollop Q.C., but the hearing was adjourned until January 30 because of a no-show by the Government team. According to court documents filed on November 13, this year – copies of which have been obtained by Barbados TODAY – Williams is suing Needham’s Point Holdings Limited, the first defendant and Needham’s Point Development Inc., the second, on 11 grounds. But the document first placed the history of the termination into perspective as the claimant sought to show how the actions of the defendants led to him suing the State. It claimed that by letter dated March 4, 2019, Williams was suspended with immediate effect pending disciplinary investigation into undisclosed “alleged conduct”. However, by letter dated April 30, 2019 and hand delivered by a messenger of the company, Williams was informed that his employment had been terminated with immediate effect for reasons of gross misconduct. The letter also told him he had the right to appeal, which he did. And by correspondence dated July 26, 2019, the appellate body of the board confirmed his dismissal. Williams is condemning the actions of the directors from March 4, 2019 to April 30, 2019 stating that the same people who charged him, were the same ones who suspended him, investigated him, adjudicated the hearing into the complaint as a disciplinary tribunal, found the charge to be proved and then fired him. He is therefore asking the court to rule that these actions amounted to an administrative act or omission that is unauthorized or contrary to law; an excess of jurisdiction and a breach of the principles of natural justice. The claimant’s request for a judicial review is also grounded in what he said is a failure by the company to satisfy or observe conditions or procedures required by law; that the defendants’ action was unreasonable, irregular and an improper exercise of discretion; and an abuse of power. Williams also claims that the company committed an act of fraud and bad faith actuated by improper purposes and irrelevant considerations. He sought to back up his claim of fraud in his affidavit filed in the High Court. Williams noted that on or about October 26, 2018 he had an unscheduled meeting at his office with company chairman Junior Waldron and his deputy Alfredo Weatherhead. The claimant stated that he was given two letters from the chairman addressed to him; one which was unsigned and dated October 26, 2018 with the caption “Termination of contract of employment as chief executive officer of Needham’s Point Holdings Ltd and Needham’s Point Development Inc”. The affidavit went on to say that the correspondence purported to have acknowledged and accepted “your letter of resignation dated October 26, 2018” and wished him continued success in his future endeavours. The second letter, also unsigned and dated the same date, purported to be written by Williams and addressed to the chairman, tendering his resignation as CEO of Needham’s Point Holdings Ltd and Needham’s Point Development Inc ‘with immediate effect’. “At no time did I ever write a letter of resignation to the first or second defendant and neither did I ever have a conversation with the chairman or any other person related to the first and second defendants concerning any possibility of my resignation from the employment of the first and second defendant,” the claimant said in his affidavit. He submitted to the court that “the unlawful actions of the first and second defendants left me financially embarrassed to the extent that, not only am I unable to satisfy my creditors, but I had been unable to properly retain legal counsel for the purpose of filing an earlier claim in this matter.” He revealed that since his termination he attended two interviews for employment and on both occasions the issue of his political affiliation, his past employment with the hotel company and the circumstances surrounding his departure have been raised as problems. “The issue of my political affiliation, exposure and involvement in the last General Election was given by one of my interviewers as the distinct reason for denying me an employment opportunity,” the unsuccessful DLP candidate stated in his affidavit. “I am of the view that despite my best efforts, given the current economic environment and the circumstances as they relate to my political affiliations, that I am unlikely to find gainful employment commensurate with my qualifications in Barbados in the near future,” Williams submitted in his court documents. He is therefore asking the court for relief in the form of damages, costs, and orders and declarations to quash the decisions of the company to fire him. (BT)

REMAND FOR MAN ACCUSED OF STEALING – A 34-year-old unemployed St Michael man accused of breaking into two houses and stealing items worth well over $1,000 has been remanded. When Raymond Damian Cenac of Eversley Road, Brittons Hill appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sergeant in the District ‘A’ Criminal Court this morning, he pleaded not guilty to those two charges as well as a third one of assault. Cenac is charged that on October 1, 2019, he entered the house of Lasaunta Cenac as a trespasser and stole a box of milk valued at $2.19; one bag of sugar that cost $6.75; a pack of soap powder worth $4.95; a tin of hot dogs priced at $2.09; two tins of corned beef valued at $9.00; one pack of drink mix for $2.15; two packs of macaroni which cost $4.78 and a pack of tea mix for $3.30. The items with a total value of $35.21 belonged to Lasaunta. Cenac is also accused of entering the house of Nathaniel Brathwaite as a trespasser between November 6 and November 8 this year and stealing three windows worth $1,161 and a door valued at $264. The third charge against him is for assaulting Destiny Johnson on November 25, 2018, occasioning her actual bodily harm which he also denied. The prisoner has been ordered to return to court tomorrow. (BT)

RESIDENT TESTIFIES IN ST LUCY MURDER TRIAL – A total of 23 state witnesses are scheduled to testify in a murder trial in which Jamaal Kamal Husbands of Husbands, St Lucy is accused of taking the life of former Broomfield resident Wayne Albert who was gunned down on April 24, 2015 while at Husbands Drive in the same parish. The case, which started last week, heard today from state witness Natori Bob, a resident of the area. Bob told Madame Justice Jacqueline Cornelius that he was awoken by a number of loud explosions while at his house on the evening of the shooting. He testified that he looked through his window from upstairs and saw “an individual” going towards the main road at a moderate speed. He said the person was wearing a “reddish” shirt and was of a slim build.However, under cross examination by defence counsel Safiya Moore, who is appearing in association with Kyle Walkes, Bob admitted that he could not clearly identify the person because outside was “getting dark” at the time. As the cross examination continued, the witness said he only saw the person for “a fleeting moment”. “I could not see if the person was holding anything in their hand,” he went on to tell the court under questioning by the attorney for the accused. After being shown a photograph of a strip of road taken by police on the day in question, Bob pointed out the part of the street where he saw the person. He said he saw a man on Husbands Drive close to the end of the same road. Bob also told the court that when he first looked through his window he heard his grandmother’s voice prompting him to go downstairs. He said when he got downstairs he peered through the window panel of his door and saw his grandmother and little brother standing outside of her house located within walking distance. In his evidence, the witness told the High Court that he soon afterwards called out to his grandmother and when she came to him she seemed scared and erratic. He said he spoke to her, but she did not say anything. Asked by the defence counsel if he had seen his uncle when he looked out his window on the day of the shooting, Bob replied “no”. When Principal Crown Counsel Krystal Delaney queried the nature of the relationship he had with his grandmother and with his uncle, the witness was adamant it was “good”. One of nine police witnesses was also called today. Acting Station Sergeant Trevor Stewart escorted the body of the victim from the scene in St Lucy to Two Sons Funeral Home. That was the extent of his involvement in the matter before the court. It was at this point that Delaney told the judge all three doctors in the case would be available to give their evidence tomorrow as well as to continue hearing testimony from the other investigators. Seven of the 23 witnesses are left to testify in the hearing which resumes tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. (BT)

ANTI-VIOLENCE PUSH – The Barbados Football Association (BFA) is so concerned about violence in society that last Sunday’s Capelli Super Cup final between Weymouth Wales and Ellerton was entitled Final Against Violence. President Randy Harris told NATION SPORT yesterday that the association used the platform of the climax of the inaugural out-of-season tournament at the Wildey Turf to highlight its campaign. “It is time to stop the violence against each other. We had a big final and we knew there would be some attention towards it. “We thought we should try to do something to bring awareness to what is going on, especially in this time when as a people we should be really supporting each other rather than be looking to destroy each other,” he said. The long-serving football administrator said the BFA has adopted a zero-tolerance approach to violence in football and in general, with the launch of its Stop The Violence campaign in 2017, warning players, officials, clubs and supporters that they could face disciplinary sanctions, including expulsion from the BFA for serious offences. (DN)

PM ENCOURAGES MORE HUMAN INTERACTION – Prime Minister Mia Mottley wants there to be more intergenerational interactions across Barbados to deal with some of the emerging problems including the growing concern about mental issues among young people. Addressing the 2019 prize-giving and award ceremony at her alma mater Queen’s College in Husbands, St James, Mottley expressed concern that a lot of young people were spending more time playing video games and on their cell phones than getting involved in a sporting activity or interacting more with each other. Mottley, who dubbed her discourse The Pursuit of Truth and The Pursuit of Excellence, said her administration was keen on “creating a nurturing environment” for young people to succeed. Adding that she was worried there was less emphasis on team sports, Mottley disclosed that her administration was in the process of developing a “major initiative in cricket” that would create an avenue for young people to learn from older generations as they interact. “If we want to create the platform for intergeneration communication and intergenerational support and interclass support and all of the things that made us a balanced and safe society then we need to go back and create these institutions in our communities,” said Mottley. Reminding the boys and girls that the pursuit of excellence was “a journey and not a destination”, Mottley said while emphasis was often placed on individuals who did not excel, students that are exceptional in their capacity to learn and reason could also be “at risk” and they too should be encouraged. “I have been meeting with the fourth and fifth formers, and sixth formers where applicable, [to start that talk with them], because until we learn the heart of listening, until we share perspectives and understand where our children are and let them understand where we need them to go, and why certain values are important, we are not going to get anywhere,” said Mottley. “The conversations I find particularly enthralling as I move around this country and this region talking to persons under the age of 30 years old is their concern about mental health issues. I believe that a large part of it comes from not understanding how to negotiate and navigate success and failure,” she said. Mottley said while there was need for parental education and for teachers to help lead, families, communities and the wider society had to do a better job at talking with young people and not [talking]at them. Encouraging parents to become more active in their communities, the Prime Minister also called on young people to start using technology to their advantage and not to be limited by their geographic space. Noting that excellence was more than academics and extended to the ability to “manage people, manage relationships and manage friendships, Mottley pointed out that while economic issues were being addressed there was need to examine other areas. “All of that will come to nothing if we don’t get the equation right for you to be the future of this country, to help us with future Barbados and for you to understand that as you do it, the measurement of your success is not in scholarships and degrees alone, but in the content of your character, your ability to live good with one another, your ability to be able to manage conflict,” she told the large audience. (BT)

NO LONG TALK – Calling for an end to talk, an Anglican priest used the funeral of slain student Temario Holder to call for a national effort to quell violent crime that has claimed a record number of lives this year. As he delivered the sermon for the 16-year-old Frederick Smith student who was killed by a peer last month, Canon Curtis Goodridge called on Barbadians not to allow the teenager’s death, which sent shockwaves throughout the nation, to be in vain, but rather a wakeup call for action. He told a packed St Lucy Parish Church that Barbadians staying in their corners and worrying about the crime rate won’t resolve the issue. Canon Goodridge said: “The home, the school, the church, the Government, the private sector, all in the positions of authority, indeed all heads from the lowest to the highest must come together and seek the solution. “For I say to you, with God’s help, we shall come up with the solution. For God will provide us, once we put our heads together, with the wisdom, the knowledge and the understanding. “It must be arrested and arrested now. And I want to say to you this evening that if we are to deal with the violence in our schools we must first deal with it in society. “We must get to the root of this violence and those roots are spreading far and wide in this nation. “If it is to be dealt with in a serious manner, then the time for talk has long passed. “While we are talking, it is getting out of hand. We no longer need a lot of long talk; the time for action is now.” He said many of the nation’s children were in crisis and have been crying out for help and attention. He told the St Lucy’s congregation that Barbados could not afford to allow the future of the nation to fall by the wayside. He noted that all in society must play a role in rescuing them. Canon Goodridge said: “We all know that our country today is faced with many problems. “And no doubt, these problems are in some way impacting on the lives of our children. “ As a result, we have a lot of troubled, disturbed, angry and wrestles children with emotional problems. “And some seem to believe that the only way out is to act in a rash manner, to display deviant behaviour, a behaviour that was once foreign to this fair land.” The Anglican cleric also said that he believed the nation was suffering as a result of too many parents neglecting their parental responsibility and not taking their children to church. He charged parents to take the responsibility of raising their children more seriously. He declared: “Sometimes I wonder who is controlling who? Is [it] the parents controlling the children, or the children controlling the parents? There are some parents in this land who seem to be afraid of their children and instead of being in control; they are being controlled by the children. “Some parents are afraid to correct their children and that ought not to be. “Parents take charge of the children. Parents take charge of the home.” Canon Goodridge also criticised parents for rushing to their children’s defence even though they know they were in the wrong, describing it as a trend that should not be tolerated. He then advised the nation’s youth not to give others reason to speak ill of them. He advised: “Young people, don’t let nobody wash them mouth on you. Live a Godly life. Live a good life. “Your conduct must be impeccable. It must be of the highest standard. “If today’s young people would live out that advice given by St Paul, life in this country would be a lot better. “If only our young people would live out Paul’s advice to them, there will be respect for law and order in this country. “There will be respect for the sanctity of human life. “People will do to others as they would have others do to them. And believe me, brothers and sisters, we would have a little heaven down here.” Canon Goodridge also remarked that there were too many selfish people in society who only think about themselves and those close to them while remaining unbothered by what does not affect them directly. (BT)

TEARS FOR TEMARIO – Tears flowed this afternoon as hundreds gathered at the St Lucy Parish Church to bade farewell to 16-year-old Temario Holder, the Frederick Smith Secondary student who was stabbed to death at the Trents, St James institution on November 8. It was a difficult send off as Temario’s family and friends struggled to say good-bye. His distraught mother Sabrina Bishop cried out as she mourned the loss of her first born. Even before the service started, as scores streamed into the church, Bishop stood at the side of her son’s peach and white casket, in tears. For several minutes, she sat in a chair at the side of the casket grasping that final opportunity to look at his face. Students from Temario’s upper fifth year group wept quietly throughout the service, and several of them were supported by counsellors present. The tears continued to flow at the gravesite, especially as Temario’s casket was lowered. The teenager’s relatives hugged and supported each other. His hurting classmates huddled while teachers, many of them with tear stained cheeks, embraced their students. “I want him to come back,” one voice shouted amongst the tears. Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw, several other Cabinet Ministers and leader of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Verla DePeiza, were amongst those officials who attended the funeral. Ministry officials, including Deputy Chief Education Officer Joy Adamson were also present. Temario was remembered as a caring son and loving big brother who was protective of his siblings. Those who gathered heard about how he took his role as a prefect seriously and that he proudly looked forward to graduation day. As he read the eulogy, Member of Parliament for St Lucy Peter Phillips shared some of the memories communicated to him by Temario’s family and friends. Phillips said he was told that Temario was the handyman of the house as he was talented and tried to fix anything that was broken and most of the time he was successful. “Another descriptive term that can be associated with Temario was fun-loving. His mom recalls those times spent together and in particular, visits to Flindt Restaurant. As they entered holding hands and enjoying their time together, Temario noticed that persons were staring quite intently and as if to read their minds, he said quite loudly, ‘don’t worry, she is my mother’. He loved his mom just as much as she loved him but he had one rule for her, that was no PAPP – no parental affection in public places, Phillips said. His dad Dane Miller recalled the times he and his son spent together and described Temario, a former student of Half Moon Fort Primary School, as a talkative individual who asked many questions. Miller pointed out that Temario was always willing to learn and had the ability to grasp things quite quickly as demonstrated when he was being taught to drive. Phillips said Temario’s grandmother and aunts reminisced about his culinary skills, especially his “mean” white rice and frizzled salt fish, and his ability to produce some of the “ugliest” but nice tasting bakes. The MP recalled that he met Temario six years ago at a popular liming spot in the constituency. “Today we’ve gathered to give thanks for the life of Temario or TeTe and we share in the pain associated with this moment with our tears, our words of comfort to his parents, relatives and friends. Let his life be a light and let this moment propel us to take time to care for our youth in particular and mankind in general,” Phillips said. Upper 5th year head Sandra Gilkes who delivered a tribute on behalf of Frederick Smith School said like a typical teenager, Temario had his days of following the crowd, but eventually became settled and started working steadfastly on his studies, particularly furniture making which was his passion. Gilkes said he was the life of his class as expressed by Principal Major Michael Boyce who taught him Career Guidance. She said his friends all spoke lovingly of him and they enjoyed his sense of humor. Gilkes explained that after showing an interest in bettering himself as well as his peers, Temario was selected to be a prefect. “Two weeks later, at the form level meeting, I told his mother that I was so happy and impressed by the changes I saw in Temario. She too was elated and expressed her gratitude to all the teachers who contributed to this turnaround. “During the meeting, I noticed the mutual love, respect and even playful banter between a son and his doting mother. At the end of the session, Temario said, “Mam, put down my name for graduation,” Gilkes recalled. One week later Temario was the toast of the school, having made it to the finals of the WorldSkills Barbados Juniors Competition in Cabinet Making even though he did not have much exposure to the use of the woodwork shop. “Yet another week later, Temario was taken from us,” Gilkes said. “I will certainly miss his goofy antics and his infectious smile. To his parents, your world was turned upside down and you unfortunately have to deal with all of this but you can be assured that you don’t have to bear it alone because the Frederick Smith Secondary School family will be there for you as we share your loss,” she added. Gilkes also remarked that even though the tragic situation “floored” her, she was hopeful that Temario’s death would be the catalyst for change in schools and will cause Frederick Smith Secondary, like the proverbial phoenix to rise from the ashes. “Come July 3, 2020 Temario will not be physically with us at our graduation but I will put his name and I am positive that his spirit will be there,” she said. Frederick Smith students carried Temario’s casket into the church. And the school’s choir rendered a beautiful tribute in song. It was a touching moment when Toni Hinds sang Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All. Delivering the sermon, Canon Curtis Goodridge asked those gathered to remember Temario’s close relatives and friends who are hurting. “But we must also remember in our prayers the other family, for they too are hurting, they too are in pain and we must also pray that God will strengthen them. God will give them the grace to continue,” Goodridge said. (BT)

SIR WARRICK PASSES – Sir Warwick Franklin passed away last night. The 81-year-old held various posts within the Democratic Labour Party administration from 1986 to 1994 and was awarded the Knight of St Andrew in 2017 on the occasion of Barbados’ 51st Anniversary of Independence. Sir Warwick served as Member of Parliament for St Philip North from 1981 to 1994 and held the ministerial portfolios of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Labour and Consumer Affairs and Trade. “I feel very privileged to be alive and to know that in some small way I contributed to my parish, my community and my country. I am very thankful for all of my supporters,” he said in 2017 when the honour was conferred. Sir Warwick was married to Grace for more than 50 years and had four children. (DN)

SENATORS WELCOME PRIDE OF BARBADOS AWARD – Senators were united across the party divide in giving their support to a new series of national awards – the Pride of Barbados – to recognise previously unsung heroes who have worked to improve the lot of people within their communities. In introducing the bill, the acting Leader of Government Business in the Senate Senator Kay McConney stated that the award, to be introduced as part of the We Gatherin’ 2020 initiative, empowers the Governor General to confer the award on the advice of the Prime Minister. The awards are to given throughout the year-long We Gatherin’ 2020 initiative, and thereafter each April 28 – National Heroes Day. Senator McConney announced: “There will be 20 awards per month, with ten people in Barbados and ten outside of Barbados in the Diaspora. “Any citizen of Barbados or person entitled to be a registered citizen of Barbados, or permanent resident of Barbados, who has worked diligently to make an outstanding contribution to community life, and the improvement of social and economic conditions in a particular parish of Barbados will be eligible.” She added that people living within the parish or who once resided within the given parishes will be able to nominate potential recipients who have contributed in terms of their humanitarian, social, religious or educational work. Opposition Senator Caswell Franklyn praised the Government for establishing the award. He noted: “I have always complained that people in Barbados who really deserve honour don’t get it. “We have community practitioners who go out and spend their own money to do everything, and the only thing they get is a big funeral because everyone loved them; they are not recognised while alive.” Senator Franklyn, along with Senator Toni Moore, were of the view that such an award would inspire other Barbadians to go out and do more for their communities knowing that they would eventually get recognised for their work. The Opposition lawmaker recommended further perks for the awardees in addition to a badge or medal, suggesting “they should get some other type of special privilege, not necessarily a monetary reward, but perhaps a diplomatic or official passport”. Senator Moore said the recognition of these individuals would go a long way in rebuilding community spirit, something she said the country was presently lacking and was in urgent need of as the country rebuilds the economy. She told fellow senators: “The trade union and credit union movements were built on communities coming together, and this unity is what we need now more than ever to get where we need to go as a country. “This award has the potential to inspire others to follow in the footsteps of those being recognised. (BT)

CHRISTMAS CHEER . . . GG AND QEH OFFICIALS SHARE JOYS OF THE SEASON – Governor General Dame Sandra Mason today made her annual visit to the Pediatric Ward of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) to spread Christmas cheer. Dame Sandra presented gifts to the young patients and took time out to chat with them and to give them a gentle touch and smile. Dame Sandra was accompanied by recently appointed Executive Chairman of the QEH Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland; Acting Chief Executive Officer Louise Bobb; and Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Anton Best, amongst other officials. Speaking to members of the media following the Governor General’s visit, which she described as a special occasion, Sutherland-Bynoe commented that this time of the year was usually difficult for some patients, particularly the elderly receiving long term care, who do not see or hear family or friends. As a result, the Executive Chairman encouraged churches, volunteers and people who are civic-minded to play a role in supporting these patients. “It may not seem like a lot, but take the time to spend it with someone, to read with them, to pray with them, to hold their hands and to show care is really important. At this time of the year, this kind of activity is particularly meaningful, but it is needed throughout the year,’ she said. The Executive Chairman announced that come 2020, QEH would be expanding its philanthropy and volunteer programme, which she said would go a long way in assisting the hospital staff to help meet the needs of all patients. “We are going to need a very strong volunteer effort. We are going to support and encourage volunteers much more actively than we have been, giving them rewards and recognition for their contributions. There are organisations [such as ] the League of Friends, Barbados Cancer Society, Cancer Support Services who every day in this hospital lend support to people,” she said. (BT)

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY FOR SCHOOLS NEXT WEEK – Public schools will close for the Christmas holidays next week. The last day of the Michaelmas term for students will be Thursday, December 12, and the following day for teachers. Three weeks have been allotted for the vacation, following which Term II (Hilary) begins for teachers on January 6 and students on January 7, 2020. The 12-week term will be punctuated with activities to mark African Awareness Month, in February, as well as the annual sports events, including the National Primary Schools’ and the Barbados Secondary Schools’ Athletics Championships. The second term ends on March 26, 2020, for students, and March 27 for teachers. (DN)

There are 26 days left in the year Shalom! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps #bajannewscaps #newsinanutshell

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wayward-marvel-sommer1196 · 7 years ago

Text

Tag Game

Rules: you must answer these 85 statements and tag 20 people

Tagged by @kdfrqqg It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these lol. I wasn’t even in the SPN fandom the last time I did one.

1. Drink? Pepsi

2. Phone call? My dad

3. Text message? My sister

4. Song you listened to? Say You Won’t Let Go by: James Arthur (literally gives me goose bumps every time I listen to it.)

5. Time you cried? 4th of July (Don’t ask)

6. Dated someone twice? No, I’ve only ever had one REAL boyfriend and a bunch or near misses

7. Kissed someone and regretted it? Never kissed anyone

8. Been cheated on? Nope

9. Lost someone special? Yes

10. Been depressed? Yes, like all the time

11. Favorite colors? Purple, Blue, and recently Red

In the last year, have you… 15. Made new friends? Yes

16. Fallen out of love? Love-love no, semi-love yes

17. Laughed until you cried? I dont think I’ve ever laughed til i cried??? Laughed until my stomach hurt sure but not til i cried

18. Found out someone was talking about you? Unfortunately

19. Met someone who changed you? Yes, not in a good way

20. Found out who your friends are? 100% yes I love my girls so much

21. Kissed someone on your facebook list? No one that wasnt in like a family matter

General 22. How many of your facebook friends do you know in real life? a solid 97% only because some are family that ive never met.

23. Do you have any pets? No Dad hates pets, but do babies count? because they are equally as frustrating and I live with two under the age of 3.

24. Do you want to change your name? yes too many jokes and annoying nicknames

25. What did you do for your last birthday? Got my hair done, had some pudding cake, and went to Iguana Mia for a free lunch with my mom and her boyfriend and then binged Gilmore Girls b/c mom didnt feel well so we went home and did nothing after like 2.

26. What time did you wake up? 7:30 because of the babies I live with but didnt get out of bed till 8:15

27. What were you doing at midnight last night? On here actually

28. Name something you can’t wait for: Graduating College but that ties with Getting Married

29. When was the last time you saw your mom? a few weeks ago?? I know im horrible but her work schedule is all over the place and my life is so unpredictable but i do try and talk to her every other day.

31. What are you listening to right now? My family messing around

32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom? yes

33. Something that is getting on your nerves? my job not giving me shifts and my step nephew with his lack of respect for adults

34. Most visited website? Tumblr

35. Hair colour? Dark brown with a tint of burgundy because I havent gotten it dyed since december (my bday) and red washes out real fast but leaves subtle traces especially in the sun

36. Long or short hair? As of now on the shoter side, like shoulder length, but if you would have caught me a month ago it would have been hella long got 10 inches cut off

37. Do you have a crush on someone? As of now NO because my last crush stomped on my heart and crushed then ran it over with a semi so I have sworn off men unless celebrities count????

38. What do you like about yourself? Honestly, right now nothing thats one of my issues. BUT if I had to pick I guess my loyalty??

39. Piercings: just your standard, run of the mill ear piercing

40. Blood type: 0+

41. Nickname: Don’t have one because I refuse to share what my mom called me throughout my childhood. So i just go my full name Sommer

42. Relationship status: single and hating men

43. Zodiac: Sagittarius

44. Pronouns: She/Her

45. Favourite tv show: UGGGHHH too many. SPN, most superhero shows, most crime dramas, Greys Anatomy, and more. I used to be a tv addict and started watching a bunch of shows and although i dont watch them much anymore doesnt mean i dont still love them

46. Tattoos: Yes, on my right foot. Its part two to a quote that me and my sister got together. “....but thankful for the one ive got.” she got “A perfect sister i am not.....”

47. Right or left handed: Right

48. Surgery: If getting my wisdom teeth taking out (all four of them at once) counts then yes other than that no.

49. Piercing: Already answered

50. Sport: None, I suck at all sports and hate them all too. I was and am more of a book person than a ball person, but I do enjoy a leisure swim on occasion

51. Vacation: Would love to take one but im broke. My last was a high school trip right before i started my senior year where we traveled through five states making stops in each until we ended in indiana for the convention we needed to go to and then came back.

52. Pair of trainers: don’t know what this means

53. Eating: I wish I was lol My dinner sucked ass. Man, I wish I had a nice juicy steak right now with a baked potato and asparagus yum

54. Drinking: at the moment nothing but the last thing I drank was at like 2 pm and now its almost 10 (oooppps) and that was a mocha coffee from DD

55. I’m about to: take a shower then outline some god damned stories that are haunting me right now

56. Waiting for? something good to happen in my life for once

57. Want? To be prettier, but I am slowly losing weight which is helping that problem. OOOOHHH and my best friends to be with me right now

58. Get married? I would love to at some point. Not anytime soon, but I also have to find someone who can put up with my difficult moody ass for the rest of our lives sooo..... that could be awhile

59. Career? Now none after college hopefully a forensic scientist/CSI since that is what my degree is going to be in

60. Hugs or kisses? Bith

61. Lips or eyes? On an S/O eyes hands down on me i guess my eyes

62. Shorter or taller? On an S/O taller I guess I have a type lol a bit of a height kink. On me shorter im only 5′2

63. Older or younger? Older although if it was only like 2 years younger Ii would be cool with that just not any further

64. Nice arms or nice stomach? These questions are so superficial and I feel superficial for answering them but I guess in a S/O stomach on me I have neither soo...

65. Hook up or relationship? Relationship, im a sappy sappy romantic at heart a hook up is too impersonal and so crass I want the feelings

66. Troublemaker or hesitant: hesitant

67. Kissed a stranger: No

68. Drank hard liquor: Being that I am only 19 I’m legally obligated to say no, but my oldest sister is a horrible influence so I may have had a taste a few times

69. Lost glasses/contact lenses: No but I have lost a retainer, twice, in the garbage. Yeah my parents werent to happy with me

70. Turned someone down: Depends? for a date no. for anything havent we all. sex never been offered.

71. Sex on the first date: Virgin, so no and I’ve only had one real boyfriend that wasnt really a relationship anyway so yeah

72. Broken someone’s heart: I want to say no, but I guess I have not in a relationship way but you can break anyones heart for any nimber of reasons

73. Had your heart broken: Hell the fuck yeah but so many damn people

74. Been arrested: No, close once but the store guy let me go on a warning

75. Cried when someone died: Yes, doesnt everyone unless the deseased is like an axe murderer or something

76. Fallen for a friend: Ugh this question. I hate it so much. Yes, that boyfriend I mentioned that was the situation and that didnt end well. And then my sophomre year I was like in LOVE with this kid I had known back in elementary school and he was my best friend and he was out of my league and let me down gently. Then i fell for my frenemy my senior year, but he neber knew and it was just a phase for me I guess it didnt last long

Do you believe in… 77. yourself? Wish the answer was yes, maybe come again another day?

78. Miracles? sometimes

79. love at first sight? I would like to but Ii just can’t

80. Santa claus? I wish, but I am glad to pretend for my niece and nephew

81. Kiss on the first date? Sure if it went well

82. Angels? Nope. Sorry

Other 83. Current best friend’s name: Well, I got three. They are my girls, my squad. Weve all been best friends for going on 4 four years. Sam, Dana, Solange

84. Eye colour: Brown, boring I know

85. Favourite movie: Can’t choose just one so like the entire Marvel franchise? Can I do that? Too bad I just did

Im supposed to tag 20 more people but honestly my hands are cramping its after 10 and I really need a shower so if you want to take a crack at this I totally encourage you too.

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gibsongirlselections · 4 years ago

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Beware of George Soros’ Trojan Horse Prosecutors

Cities across our nation are being burned and looted. Yet, some prosecutors are releasing rioters without charging them for their crimes. Still others are choosing not to prosecute whole categories of criminal activity. Why are they failing to execute the laws set out by each state’s legislature?

The answer is that wealthy radicals led by billionaire George Soros have poured over $100 million in hard-to-trace dark money to fund political activities in races for state and local prosecutors. Their goal? To install far-left prosecutors to undermine the American justice system at every level. This may sound like another conspiracy theory. But the facts are well documented. And it requires a concerted effort by those who believe in criminal justice reform—and also prioritize public safety—to act before more people are hurt and damage to the system becomes permanent.

Like the horse the Greeks presented to the Trojans as a peace offering, the prosecutors installed by Soros and his allies are not what they seem. These radicals are actually intent on destroying the criminal justice system. These purported “protectors of the rule of law” are actually its enemies, waging war from the inside.

Soros and his network of wealthy radicals believe the criminal justice system is so corrupt, so hopelessly racist, that justice is literally impossible. They have little interest in reforming the system. Instead, they want to destroy it from within.

They don’t engage the electorate by having an open debate about the criminal justice system. These billionaires seek to circumvent the entire democratic process by electing candidates who will refuse to enforce laws passed by the people through their representatives.

Equally disconcerting, these Trojan Horse prosecutors drop any pretense of impartiality. They bring a highly charged political viewpoint to an office that is supposed to be apolitical. It’s no wonder that Soros-funded prosecutors like New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. have harassed President Trump with never-ending investigations and subpoenas. AG James is also trying to disband the NRA. Like Captain Ahab chasing after the white whale, they are obsessed with undermining the President, and ultimately our nation.

Sadly, the millions in contributions from the Soros network have allowed their far-left candidates to overwhelm their opponents by outspending them by as much as 3 to 1. One Democrat who was unseated by a Soros acolyte said, “This is an election that was bought, not won.”

Soros and his allies have installed “woke” prosecutors in 31 cities and counties, among them San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland, Dallas, and St. Louis! The tens of millions of Americans who live in those jurisdictions are paying a dear price for allowing Soros to buy prosecutors’ offices and weaponize the raw power that comes from the enforcement (or lack thereof) of the law.

Here are a few examples of the havoc that Trojan Horse prosecutors have brought to their communities. (Contributions from Soros-funded entities and allies are in parentheses):

After St. Louis erupted in violence, arson, and looting, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner ($307,000) dismissed all charges against the 36 people arrested for that violence. In the last few days eight St. Louis police officers have been shot.

At the same time, Gardner rushed to file charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the homeowners who brandished (but did not use) guns at protestors who had entered the private street where the McCloskeys reside.

In Chicago, Illinois State’s Attorney Kim Foxx ($817,000) refused to prosecute rioters who violated the curfew imposed to quell the violence. “The question it comes down to is, is it a good use of our time and resources? No, it’s not.” What does she think would be a better use of her time and resources?

You probably remember Foxx. She dismissed the charges against Jussie Smollett, the actor who reported a hate crime attack against himself that turned out to be bogus. A judge removed Foxx from the case and assigned a special prosecutor who filed six new charges.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner ($1.7 Million) announced he won’t prosecute people arrested for the violence that rocked his city for days with widespread looting and many cars torched. His excuse for not holding the mob accountable for their violence was laughable. “Prosecution alone will achieve nothing close to justice—not when power imbalances and lack of accountability make it possible for government actors including police or prosecutors to regularly take life or liberty unjustly and face no criminal or career penalty.”

Given that Krasner’s career prior to his election had consisted of filing over 75 cases against the police and representing Occupy Philadelphia and Black Lives Matter, his cynical efforts should come as no surprise. Indeed, Krasner’s hostility toward police was on display when his supporters repeatedly chanted “F*ck the police, F*ck the police” at his victory party.

US Attorney William McSwain commented that Krasner “is not even pretending to be a prosecutor. He calls himself a public defender with power. It’s almost like letting a fox into the hen house. Once he’s in, he’s trying to cause as much havoc as possible.” McSwain was right about Krasner. The DA has dropped charges on more than 60 percent of shooting cases, and he has dropped 37 percent of illegal firearms cases. Shooting incidents in Philadelphia are up 57% from last year, and there have been 201 homicides so far this year, up 24%. Finally, the Legislature stripped Krasner of his authority to prosecute gun crimes and gave it to the state’s attorney general.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin ($620,000) is the beau ideal of the Trojan Horse prosecutors. “The criminal justice system isn’t just massive and brutal, it’s also racist,” according to Boudin. He refuses to prosecute “quality-of-life crimes, such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc.” No wonder San Francisco has had to develop a special app to help pedestrians navigate piles of feces on their streets!

Under Boudin’s non-prosecution policies, homicides in the city are up 25%, burglary is up 42%, motor vehicle theft is up 31% and arson is up 45% compared to the same time period last year. Car break-ins have reached epidemic proportions, with roughly 70 smash-and-grabs a day.

Boudin’s background was perfect for Soros and the other billionaire revolutionaries. He moved to Venezuela to serve as an advisor to the brutal dictator Hugo Chavez because he admired the Communist’s use of power. Boudin’s parents were members of a Marxist terrorist group known as the Weather Underground. They participated in an armed robbery of a Brinks armored car. Two police officers and a security guard were gunned down and died in the botched robbery. Now, their son is picking up the flag of radicalism and carrying it forward.

When Boudin won, the crowd at his victory celebration repeatedly shouted “F*ck the POA (Police Officers Association)”— just like Krasner’s supporters did in Philadelphia.

In Portland, DA Mike Schmidt ($230,000) refuses to prosecute the rioters who have burned and looted his city for over 90 days straight. He said he would not prosecute “interfering with a peace officer, disorderly conduct in the second degree, criminal trespass in the first or second degree, escape in the third degree, and harassment and riot when it isn’t accompanied by a charge separate from this list.” He explained that the rioters “represent the instinctive reactions of people who have been gassed repeatedly, who have been struck with kinetic projectile weapons.”

These Trojan Horse prosecutors are really “social justice warriors.” They believe that prosecutors should make a priority of addressing social issues such as poverty, racism, sexism, and income inequality. Thus, public safety ranks below those social issues.

The radical funders have no interest in supporting prosecutors who have a solid record of working to fix the system. In fact, they have poured millions into campaigns to defeat respected prosecutors who have implemented proven reforms such as special courts for veterans, drug courts, and mental health courts.

Since 2018, Soros has made Virginia the focus of his efforts. And it has paid dividends. Trojan Horse candidates have taken over five of the largest prosecutor’s offices in the Commonwealth: Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Albemarle, Portsmouth, and Loudoun.

The Loudoun County race is a prime example of the Soros strategy. Soros-funded groups spent $850,000 to defeat Nicole Wittman, a much-admired career prosecutor in Loudoun County, Virginia, who backed specialty courts, reformed the juvenile justice system, and prioritized violent crimes over casual marijuana use. The candidate who beat her was an attorney whose prosecutorial experience was limited to traffic violations for a municipality outside the county. But it’s hard to win when nearly a million dollars is spent on TV ads and community organizers on the ground working against you.

Now, Soros has the Los Angeles District Attorney in his sights. He and his allies have spent well over $1 million to defeat Jackie Lacey, a highly respected prosecutor who has made remarkable progress in diverting non-dangerous persons with mental illness into community treatment, freeing up costly jail beds for serious and violent offenders. Ironically, Lacey is an African-American woman. The candidate running to oust her? George Gascon, district attorney in San Francisco until recently. The white male progressive is running on a platform to bring San Francisco values to the City of Angels.

Matthew Vadum of the Capitol Research Center sums up the effort to radicalize prosecutors’ offices well: “George Soros’s push to radically reshape the judiciary and elect extremist district attorneys across the country to weaken law enforcement and protect lawless sanctuary cities is bearing fruit… He wants to cripple police in order to advance the neo-Marxist abstraction known as social justice that simplistically breaks the world down into race, class, and sex or gender.”

The public will suffer when politically driven prosecutors focus not on public safety but on social issues. The police will be marginalized, communities will live in fear of violence, and the needs of victims will be ignored – all in the name of “social justice.”

Justice Brandeis famously wrote: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” It is time for us to “shine some sunlight” on the disastrous policies of these Trojan Horse prosecutors, inform the voters so they can “disinfect” America’s prosecutor offices to make public safety the priority of our justice system again.

Pat Nolan is the Director, Center for Criminal Justice Reform at The American Conservative Union Foundation.

The post Beware of George Soros’ Trojan Horse Prosecutors appeared first on The American Conservative.

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