The Democracy Manifesto (go to the manifesto) represents a significant moment as far as the global conversation on democracy is concerned. It is also a moment of new beginnings.  A good conversation is one that produces more of it. I hope this one snowballs into more debates and dialogues. Democracy is worldly, primarily an artifact. Like other human artifacts, it too needs care, continuous attention, ingenuity and passion. The ongoing conversation on democracy, as I can recall from my own experiences, never suffered from dearth of ambition. Yet it has always been an exercise in humility and deep engagement.

Imagine that you go into a ‘sleep mode’ today and are revived after a gap of several decades. What do think will have been the history of democracy while you slept? What narratives will emerge? Will experiences in different parts of the world, particularly in the global south, be a part of the larger story of democracy?

You only need to ask the question to sense the importance of an affirmative answer. If currently existing democracy in India has merely overcome corruption and ensured the rule of law, if China has moved towards democracy, if Brazil continues to have popular government and there are elections in South Africa that change the ruling party, if there is democracy in Egypt (who would have thought of writing that three months ago?) and Palestine… or if there are not any of these things…

It is clear that the dominant ways of thinking of democracy are and continue to be narrow. They tend to make the political clamour, experiments and mobilizations in different parts of the world invisible. But it is surely the case as our experiment shows that if we think of democracy and look forward then the still dominant view is quite inadequate. The future of democracy will be shaped and even decided in countries that are more experimental than its traditional homelands. The ‘frontier’ of democracy to borrow an image, is no longer found in the ‘west’ or the global north.

This is the starting point of our global conversation. It questions the dominant view, and shows that other ways of engaging with democratic experiences are possible. Not only possible but also necessary and now in the public domain. 

First, a bit of history. 

A few years ago a group of scholars and activists from South Asia wanted to reflect on democratic experiences in their countries in the region. They all agreed that knowledge about democracy must be produced in a democratic fashion and that this demands a methodology that does not devalue specificities of experiences. They initiated a conversation within the region and finally produced a report - State of Democracy in South Asia.  The impetus for a further, global conversation on democracy emerged from several regional conversations that followed especially this South Asian one. No doubt, in the past there were discussions on democracy. But this time round, the conversation delves deeply into the fundamental questions regarding the ways in which democracy has to be explained and evaluated.  It attempts to re-define what it means to be democratic.

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), in Delhi, coordinated the initiative, and thanks to the intellectual energy of Professors Rajeev Bhargava and Yogendra Yadav, and a grant from the Ford Foundation, the global conversation took off to a good start three years ago.   During this period, three major international meetings, involving participants from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America, were held (two in India and one in South Africa). Besides academics, a good number of participants came from the world of civil society and social movements.  The conversations thus far have been focused and productive.  

As I write this, activists and ordinary citizens have gathered in different parts of India to raise the issue of corruption in politics and public life. To them, fighting against corruption is a struggle for democracy. Like the continuing upsurge in the Arab World, the mobilization in India reflects the local concerns, dreams and aspirations. In some of these cases, practices on the ground seem to run way ahead of the dominant democratic thinking. However there are occasions when these events fall far short of the high normative standards of democracy. The lack of fit between theory and practice, in the above sense, is what grounds the substance of the ongoing conversation on democracy.

Being conversationalists we decided that we would produce only a draft of a Democracy Manifesto and ask for further thoughts, comments and even asides. Here it is. Let’s see what happens. We already have responses from Anthony Barnett, Laurence Whitehead, Jorge Heine and Melissa Williams. Hope more will join in.

The Democracy Manifesto: Re-imagining Democracy in Our Time 

To the introduction

The Arab democratic upsurge of 2011 inspires democrats all over the world. It has fired up the imagination of all those struggling for self-rule under authoritarianism. It also gives hopes to those engaged in deepening democratic practices everywhere. To all those who see democracy as a shared journey of humanity, it provides an occasion to reflect on what democracy means. This is a moment to re-imagine democratic ideals and practices in our time. 

1. Democracy as a political principle and as a form of government has expanded to nearly all corners of the world. It is recognized now that every human being must have an effective say in the decisions that affect their life. The notion that every government must respect this fundamental principle has greater acceptance than ever before. The ideal of self-rule has begun to fire up peoples’ imagination all over the world.  Democracy may not be a form of government that is experienced globally, but it has become an aspiration that is shared across the globe. This aspiration takes different forms. The ideal of popular self-rule has multiple readings.  Theses will depend on which people are being talked about, what understanding of self is being invoked and what  is accepted as self-rule.  “ The people” could mean all the citizens of a national state, the citizens at a region or locality, or the planet’s entire population. The self could be seen in terms of the individual citizen or in terms of a social community. Self-rule could be interpreted as voice, consultation, consent or consensus in any authoritative and binding decision-making process. A standard understanding is that democracy means free and fair elections, but it can also take other forms.
2. The globally dominant notion of what democracy means, however, does not reflect the journey of democracy. The prevailing orthodoxy about democracy  draws upon the limited experience of a small part of the globe. Selected facts of European and North American history have been turned into abstract principles. One of the many strands of western political thought has been assumed to be the sole repository of the normative imagination for democratic practices in different societies at different points of time.  An idealized notion of western liberal democracy hegemonizes the democratic imagination. It is assumed that capitalism and modernity have an intrinsic relationship with democracy. This hegemony of the western experience and imagination may not always affect popular struggles that are being waged in the name of democracy all over the world. Yet, it does constrain the translation of popular aspirations, practices and struggles into a set of norms, institutions and theories in the Global South. It also constrains the deepening of democracy within the global North.
3. Enriching our democratic imagination in line with the expansion of democracy would involve several things: widening our conceptual apparatus to accommodate diverse languages and idioms of democracy;  enriching our normative standards to reflect multiple histories and traditions of democratic thinking; and  correcting our explanations to account for radically different experiences and trajectories of democracy. Reimagining democracy along these lines is one of the most pressing ethical and political tasks of our times. It is imperative not just for democrats in the ‘aspiring’ and ‘new’ democracies, but equally in ‘established democracies’.
4. The prevailing orthodoxy on the democratic imagination assumes that democracy is strictly the gift of western civilization.  Yet, an honest genealogy of democratic ideas and practices must acknowledge that these are rooted in multiple trajectories. Ancient Greece was but one of the sources of democratic imagination. The ideas of democracy can be traced to Buddhist Sangha, Ganatantra traditions in ancient India, Islamic traditions in many societies and practices among the indigenous communities across the world. Much of the modern ideology and language of democracy has spread to most parts of the world from Western Europe and North America. Many of the well-established democratic institutions and practices in today's world were secured first in Europe through a series of popular struggles. The gains of these struggles are now part of our global human heritage.  Yet the western legacy is neither singular nor unambiguous.  For every advance in democracy, there is also the history of denial of democratic rights. Besides, the history of the expansion of self-rule for one's own citizens was inextricably woven with the history of denial of self-rule to larger subject populations outside and ethnic minorities inside the territory of a ‘democratic’ state. For most of the world, the contemporary practices of democracy are neither a direct off-shoot of the various ancient traditions nor an imitation of the modern west. The democratic aspiration spread to most of the world by way of anti-colonial struggles and the various movements for self-determination and self-rule in the last two centuries.
5. Enriching the democratic imagination requires questioning the simple-minded democracy/non-democracy binary canonized by the dominant orthodoxy. As democracy becomes the most sought after regime label, the quest for self-rule is reduced to a contestation about the latter. This promotes binary, either-or, thinking over a graded understanding of the spectrum from democracy to non-democracy. The dominant orthodoxy’s focus on classifying a country either as a democracy or a non-democracy encourages façade democracies. This binary distinction has resulted in an excessive focus on the threshold of when a non-democracy turns into a democracy.  This summative and static judgment performs the function of putting some ‘established democracies’ beyond reproach. This artificial binary construct must come to an end.  Democratic practices may exist in apparently non-democratic regimes. Established democratic states can embody a vast array of non-democratic practices. There is no "finished product democracy" and there never will be.  The aspiration for democracy is open-ended. Each fresh step opens new horizons.
6. The dominant orthodoxy espouses teleology. Democracy is the ultimate and inevitable destination. This often leads to thinking in terms of stages or pre-conditions to the ‘transition’ to and ‘consolidation’ of democracy. Yet, there are multiple sequences and routes by which different political regimes come to be democratic. The route taken by democracy in the west is but one sequence of many. In turn, there are multiple trajectories within the west itself. Material prosperity and cultural uniformity are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for democracy.  We also need to move away from an instrumental and determinist view of the outcomes of democracy.  Democracy leads to different outcomes in different historical settings.  Democrats need to be aware of the dysfunctions of democracy, and not just in 'new' or 'developing' democracies. The case for democracy cannot rest on dubious and instrumental grounds such as its purported usefulness for desired economic outcomes. Democracy must be cherished for its intrinsic value, for what it means to human dignity.
7. Reimagining democracy requires a fundamental shift. There is a tendency to assume that democracy is an attribute of political regimes rather than that of political practices. This leads to privileging form over substance, to making too much of formal political institutions and to reducing democracy to electoral democracy. An emphasis on practices would require a more careful and painstaking sifting of the substance of political action, its contextual meaning and its consequences.  This also enables us to think of democracy beyond the formal domain of politics. Practices within the domain of the family or the market, for example, need to be viewed in terms of the extent to which they enable or constrain self-rule. Democracy needs to be thought of as a way of life.
8. Questioning the dominant orthodoxy also leads us to the search for an appropriate level of analysis. There is a need to move beyond a fixation with the national state as the natural unit within which one thinks about self-rule. The locus of national power is no doubt the principal level of struggles for self-rule. But to focus exclusively on it side-steps the colossal inequalities among and within nation states. The latter deny vast numbers of people across the globe an effective voice over decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods. The quest for democracy must go wherever effective and binding decision-making occurs.  Shifting sites of sovereignty require that we begin to think of inter-national relations as an arena of democratic contestation. The same could be extended to the level of continents or other groupings of nations. At the same time, the unit of analysis needs to be extended downwards, to regional and local units, for this is the level at which most citizens experience self-rule or its absence.  
9.  The idea of democracy is becoming global, and it acquires multiple meanings. As democracy becomes a global aspiration, it attaches itself to different and often competing values.  This entails a conversation with pre-existing cultural values. Many of these values are contradictory to the democratic ideal; they must go. Some of the pre-existing values are not fully compatible with democracy; they must change. At the same time, the idea of democracy itself does and must undergo a change.  As the idea of democracy is interpreted and re-interpreted in different parts of the world, misunderstandings and misuses will arise. Therefore democracy is and will remain a contested concept.  This contest is resolved by entering on a case by case basis. It cannot be resolved a-priori by insisting upon an original, all-encompassing definition of democracy.  The demand that democracy all over the world must conform to a fixed definition first worked out in one part of the globe is inherently undemocratic. The ideal of democracy requires a respect for the democracy of knowledge. Knowledge production is not limited to some privileged sites, some societies or some period in history. The ideal of democracy has emerged from a dialogue of the various expressions of self-rule in human history. If democracy is anchored in reason, dialogue is the custodian of reason.

10. Current definitions of democracy threaten to reduce it to an institutional checklist derived from idealized notions of the experience of a small part of the globe.  The ideal of democracy is seen to be synonymous with the historical form of liberal democracy in advanced capitalist societies of Western Europe and North America.  Often this is further reduced down to a few key institutional features.  Yet, the historical experience of democracy in most of the world provides overwhelming evidence against this approach.  More often than not, imported institutions do not produce the same consequences that they did in their home context. Similarity of form is no guarantee of democratic substance.  In fact, a search for familiar form is an invitation to cynical and superficial copying for extraneous gains. On the one hand, the experience of ‘established democracies’ shows that the appearance of a democratic form of government can very well go hand in hand with the de facto rule by experts, the dominance of corporate power, social control by private networks and  the decline of citizen participation. On the other hand, the experience of democratic success outside the global North suggests that a departure from the mandated institutional form is often a pre-condition for success.  Mass democracies of post-colonial societies tend to acquire depth through practices that may not have a legitimate institutional expression in the conventional wisdom on democracy.  Institutions are crucial to the formation and strengthening of democracies, but what institutions do depends on the context in which these are located.  We need to shift the focus from the form of an institution to its real- life consequences in a given context. Democracy is an ever-evolving principle that can take different institutional expression at different points of time in different societies.

11. Thus, the principles and practices of democracy have to be open to multiple sources of learning. There are several living 'traditions' of consultation and consensus making all over the world. Such local practices need to be 'critically transformed' in order to make them relevant for democratic practices today. New power sharing arrangements are being worked out all over the world in different contexts, in response to different needs. Various monitoring tools are being invented in different democracies. So far only a few of these appear on the radar of  the democratic imagination. The search for a richer democratic imagination requires that we look for practices, institutions, intellectual traditions and thinkers everywhere to help us reshape democratic theory.

12.  The very notion of exporting democracy is inimical to the spirit of democracy. Democracy promotion can turn into democratic imperialism. Like all ideologies, democracy too can turn into a dogma. Strengthening democracy is about deepening the values which shape the principles of democracy within a society. The 'culture of democracy' of a given society is vital to building democracy. The idea that some people lack 'culture' and are not ready for democracy also goes against the principle of democracy.

13.  To deparochialize the idea of democracy is not to privilege an Eastern or Southern view of democracy over existing Western or Northern views. To the contrary: it means universalizing our understanding of democracy and democratic practices. The insistence on difference and divergence is designed to synthesize the multiple experiences of democracy. This is a necessary condition for reclaiming the global heritage of democracy and for reimagining a truly global future for it. FROM SOUTH TO NORTH.

Of the various values that the idea of democracy attaches itself to, four deserve a special mention.  First, democracy requires individual and collective freedom, for self-rule cannot exist in the absence of a basic guarantee of freedom.  Any kind of coercion or violence thus goes against the spirit of democracy. Second, the idea of self-rule requires that everyone have an equal say in matters that concern them.  Democratic deliberations require a level playing ground, free from widespread inter- and intra-group inequalities. Third, the ideal of self-rule requires a recognition of communities that often constitute the self. Thus democracy requires respect for deep diversity. In a world where most political units contain diverse communities, any attempt at cultural homogenization is not in keeping with the spirit of democracy. Fourth, given that democracy requires maintaining the conditions for democratic deliberations for future generations, it implies an ethic of responsibility towards nature.

First off, I just want to say Thank You to those who joined us both in person and virtually last week at our Impact 2011: Building the Borderless Workplace conference. Personally, I always get energized by these events, especially when I have the opportunity to participate in real-time conversations with the amazing people who make up the leaders, practitioners, solution providers, media market, and researchers of the HR industry. What a passionate and vocal industry we work in!

I wanted to wrap up this week by sharing some insights on what I saw, heard, and personally felt at the conference last week for those who were unable to attend in person: 

What I Saw:

Although we were in the middle of beautiful St. Petersburg, with a view of the water just outside our windows and at a venue that often feels like you've stepped into a 1940’s vintage Hollywood movie set, the conference rooms were packed with passionate HR professionals taking copious notes on topics that ranged from Leadership development, HR Strategy, to What Learning will look like in 2021 (free streamed sessions). The questions and conversations following the sessions, made it into hallway discussions, and often ended up bleeding into lunch conversations. Participants were focused on learning as much as they could from everyone at the conference, especially from each other.

The networking events were lively and provided an opportunity for informal connections that hopefully everyone found positive. For example Laura Ann Preston from Kelly Services was in demand for introductions at every event based on her discussions on talent segmentation and changing the performance management dialogue in her Talent Initiatives panel. I think her exact words were “I was being chased”, but it was said with a smile. HR analytics and workforce planning was another hot topic. I’m sure I personally introduced Akil Walton, from Eaton Corporation to over 30 different people looking to learn more about Eaton’s great experience in building an HR Analytics function.  Everyone was looking to either increase their own knowledge or bring back information that their colleagues could use. 

What I Heard:

Theses discussions started during the pre-conference executive roundtables on Tuesday, which included companies that ranged from the University of Michigan to Darden Restaurants, and continued till Friday afternoon when I had the pleasure of finally sitting down to grab lunch with Starwood’s head of Talent Management and we finished our conversations over a fantastic Turkey Club.

How to implement successful HR Shared Service functions and COE’s; and differentiate this model from centralized HR functions

Restructuring and rethinking HR was a theme echoed throughout the conference. Those attending the HR sessions were interested in learning more about talent integrator roles, optimal HR structures, and the changing makeup of talent acquisition functions.

One of our international solution providers commented that this was the first conference they had heard the term Chief HR Officer used so often. He specifically asked if this role was on the increase and where was the CLO role heading? Well, that was a tough question that I’ll leave for a later blog, but I did share that in our research we are seeing an increase in the use of the titles Chief HR Officer or Chief People Officer.

Practical development of HR, particularly increasing the skills and capabilities of HR Business Partners and Center of Excellence leads

I saw and heard this theme throughout the conference. Comments centered on the fact that the current certification and higher-education programs offered important initial HR development – but they weren’t getting at the heart of what was missing in the HR community, real life experience and on the ground support.

When Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) presented their case study on Developing an Integrated People Services Organization for Strategic Talent Management; they had several audience questions about how they selected key HR roles and expectations for growth and development of their HR department. Their new HR structure has a heavy focus on the value of each area of HR, which promotes job mobility and breaks down traditional unspoken stigmas that often rise up between shared services functions, COE’s, and field HR roles. Sarah St. Clair, VP of HR for BAH even mentioned that her 80 + direct reports are expected to move and change roles on average every 2 years, emphasized by our speaker Kathy Nichols, an HR Director in her organization. 

In our Practitioner Panel: HR Challenges for the Coming Decade: Building Flexibility for the Future all four of our HR panelist's discussed the need to develop business acumen, solid planning, and advisory skills throughout HR.   Ellen Austin, a Senior Business Partner for Human Resources, Business Development Bank of Canada (BDBC) shared that her organization required all HR leadership roles to participate in 6 to 9 month job rotations in business roles throughout the organization. Once they had the experience of being on the front lines and working directly with clients or in other support roles, they became much more aware of the value of their work and its impact on their clients.  

We also found a lot of excitement in the Solution Provider discussions on this topic.  During the small group break outs in Benchmarking HR: Do You Dare to Compare? session we asked about where HR was seeing their budgets increase or decrease. The 15 or so vendors in my group had a great discussion about the increase in hiring and development needs, even for their own internal HR functions. As companies that sell sophisticated learning and HR offerings, they needed to find HR professionals who understand their business and can help them grow. Companies like Allen Communications said that their internal HR capabilities were critical to continuing their current growth rate. Additionally, almost everyone mentioned that they were spending a lot of time educating clients as part of the sales process or the support process in their particular offering areas. Those who had developed this capability felt it was increasing their sales dramatically.

We also saw announcements at the conference from MindLeaders/ThirdForce who launched their new TalentGuides, performance support modules based off of Bersin & Associates research content for HR professionals. (I’ll admit that this is a shameless plug in the middle of the blog, but I had the pleasure of working with the MindLeader’s team in supporting the development of these modules for the last year, and have a soft spot for their efforts). Conference participants who saw demos of the TalentGuides were excited about the simple idea of providing HR professionals performance support on critical talent areas when it was needed most, in front of clients and at decision making points, rather than in a separate classroom.

Our research found that 92% of High Impact HR organizations had formal internal development programs for their HR functions, and that the most effective HR development tools were coaching and mentoring programs and regular job rotations. These are all examples, of how organizations are accomplishing these best practices. 

The role of HR in managing or supporting organizational cultural changes 

Andy Mackay, from SunTrust Banks said it best, “My business is focused on changing our culture, so I need to be focused on our culture”. In Wednesday’s session on Developing a Comprehensive HR and Talent Strategy, I asked how many organizations were working on cultural change initiatives – over half the room raised their hand. As leaders we just know that Organizational Culture trumps HR initiatives – so changing the culture becomes a real focus when it is counter-productive to the company’s success. Several people came up to me after the session and asked, can HR actually change an organizations culture – and I’d have to honestly say “No, not alone”. They can support leadership efforts to change culture, they can ensure that they are nurturing and supporting a culture that has been set by their leadership, and they can coach leaders on the difference between talking about a culture and actually creating a culture. These are all important roles for an HR function – but they can’t set or change culture without leadership. Feel free to let me know if you disagree.

HR measurement and metrics

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the focus on HR measurement, metrics, and analytics throughout the conference. Almost every solution provider we spoke with shared the fact that HR analytic capabilities was a major part of their upcoming product road-map; even service providers were discussing how they were going to integrate analytics with their offerings. We saw unique, and potentially game changing tools like Zapoint's which has taken data collection methods from social sites and brought analysis of that data  to the next level, and Reward Platforms like  I Love Rewards and  Globoforce, talking about analyzing their data to not only connect it to annual engagement scores and turn-over rates, but start to connect it to the flow of recognition in a company, real time engagement notifications, and tracking organizational culture changes.  Everyone is talking about it, but few organizations and solution providers are doing it well.

We offered a small post session workshop on Building HR Analytics Capabilities which originally had 21 people signed up for the session, by the end of the conference we had an additional 12 people extend their stays to participate in the workshop, when they could have been sitting by the pool. This audience was a mix of solution providers and practitioners, and everyone was there to learn. We spent a considerable amount of time in the workshop, talking about how to prepare and develop HR professionals who could appropriately use the data coming out of these efforts. My co-presenter Akil Walton from Eaton Corporation summed it up by saying “None of the technology, or analytics skills, or even dashboard tools matter if your HR department and line managers don’t understand how to use the data to help the business make good decisions”. 

What I Felt:

Proud to be part of an industry that has so much passion and openness. Frustrated that as an industry we were still struggling with some of the basics. Exhilarated at seeing all the opportunities we, as an industry, have to help not only our companies but every person who interacts with our companies at some level.

Finally, I felt like I personally heard a battle cry – it is easy to overlook when learning about new technology implementations or yet another awe inspiring story about HR restructuring and transformation. Without development of the HR function, these initiatives simply don’t succeed. Today’s HR leaders are serious about developing their HR departments. Development that goes beyond a few business acumen courses and focuses on providing “on the job” programs that include experiences, special projects, job rotations, and extensive business knowledge and data interpretation skills.  Without these efforts, can HR actually fulfill on their goals and strategies?

In closing I’ll quote Ellen Austin, from BBDC when she was asked on her panel how she ensured her HR Strategy and Business Plan were solid, she stated  “I simply ask myself, when looking at my plan; if this was a business… would I lend them the money for this plan?”  Can you look at your own HR organization, strategy, and plan and feel confident that you would lend yourself the money?

If you attended Impact this year we’d love to hear about your own experiences, and we look forward to the next chance we can all get together and learn from each other.

Stacey Harris

Principal Analyst

29 U.S. senators have asked President Barack Obama Friday to cut off aid to the Palestinian government if it joins with Hamas, in a previously unreported letter (PDF) obtained by The Cable.

"The decision of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to form a unity government with Hamas - a designated terrorist group - threatens to derail the Middle East peace effort for the foreseeable future and to undermine the Palestinian Authority's relationship with the United States," begins the letter, which was spearheaded by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Robert Casey (D-PA).

Menendez is the third ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Casey chairs SFRC's Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs subcommittee. The letter was also signed by Democratic heavyweights Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The details of the deal between the PA and Hamas aren't entirely clear. Many of the sticking points between the two Palestinian factions appear to remain unresolved and the contents of the reconciliation deal's classified annex remains unknown, but, as the senators' letter notes, Hamas foreign policy chief Mahmoud al-Zahar has said that "our plan does not involve negotiations with Israel or recognizing it."

Hamas also publicly condemned the May 1 killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in Pakistan.

For all these reasons, the senators want Obama to make it clear that the PA will forfeit  U.S. foreign assistance if it goes through with the plan to join forces with Hamas. The United States gave the PA about $550 million in aid in fiscal 2011, a mixture of project funding and direct cash to the government.

"As you are aware, U.S. law prohibits aid from being provided to a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless the government and all its members have public committed to the Quartet principles," they wrote. "We urge you to conduct a review of the current situation and suspend aid should Hamas refuse to comply with Quartet conditions."

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) agrees. "No taxpayer funds should go, they must not go" to the new Palestinian unity government, she told the Washington Post May 4.

The Obama administration is currently examining the Palestinian reconciliation deal, but officials have repeatedly said in recent days that any unity government must reject Hamas's current policies.

"Any Palestinian government must renounce violence, it must abide by past agreements and it must recognize Israel's right to exist," White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, told the American Jewish Committee on April 28.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner repeated Daley's message at Thursday's press briefing, and implied that a government that includes Hamas would not be able to work with the United States.

"We've said very clearly that we'll work with a Palestinian Authority government that unambiguously and explicitly commits to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations between the parties. And that includes the road map," Toner said. "And our position on Hamas has not changed. We still believe it's a foreign terrorist organization."

"The Obama Administration knows the law prohibits U.S. aid going to a Palestinian government in which Hamas plays any role. That's why the administration has said several times in the past week that the United States will only deal with a Palestinian government that meets the Quartet conditions -- renounces violence, recognizes Israel, and accepts all previous agreements," said former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, now a partner at the consulting firm Davis-Block LLC. "If Hamas wants to transform itself, surely that would be welcome, but it's not likely."

Magnani Caruso Dutton/New York, NY

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What is the name of the script that has execs upending hidden cash coffers to finance entries in a bidding war? One with the unwieldy title Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses, if current reports are correct. Starting yesterday we heard that Matthew Alrdich's script, about "a man who goes on the lam with his daughter on a 3-state crime spree," was earning bids from five interested parties. Now there might be a winner, and one of the other bidders could play a key role. Deadline [1] reported yesterday that Warner Bros, Paramount, Relativity Media, Walter Parkes, and Matt Damon and Chris Moore had all made offers on the script. Now Deadline [2] says that Warner Bros. is set to buy the script, but that Matt Damon is likely to star and possibly even make it his first feature directorial project. The site also quotes the screenwriter saying "The script is not high concept, it's a smallish, very personal, dark but playful road movie about a father and daughter." Matt Damon reportedly has promised to retain the script's voice and work with Matthew Aldrich as a creative partner. Those are good things, and I'm happy to see the sale of another script that isn't a comic book derived project or other high-concept thing. (Though this is the second film in the past week to conjure up echoes of the Clint Eastwood film A Perfect World. Not that there's any problem with that.) I have no idea what to expect out of a film directed by Matt Damon -- will he present a controlled, simple style, or will the movie be more like George Clooney's first effort, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, where he openly showed off the influence of director friends like the Coen Brothers and Steven Soderbergh? I'll be looking forward to seeing what comes of his intent to direct, regardless. [1] http://www.deadline.com/2011/05/father-daughter-time-bidding-heats-up/ [2] http://www.deadline.com/2011/05/warner-bros-buys-hot-spec-matt-damon-circles-as-star-and-director/

Lenovo is backing a new video game system that is expected to launch in the second half of this year in China. The iSec system has Kinect-like motion controls and is aimed at a mass market consumer that doesn’t buy the current game consoles.

Beijing-based Eedoo Technology (spelled eedoo by the company) hopes to cash in on the fact that foreign companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are barred from direct sales in China. Eedoo is funded by Lenovo, China’s biggest PC manufacturer, and it unveiled the iSec (previously known as the eBox) on Friday. The name refers to Sports Entertainment Center.

The iSec uses a 3D depth camera, much like Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system does, so that a user can control the system with hand gestures or body motions. The games that the company has talked about so far focuses on exercise or martial arts. The system also supports other kinds of entertainment such as movies and web surfing or karaoke.

China’s government hasn’t approved the game consoles in the past because they have been focused purely on fun, rather than entertainment. Eedoo has an edge in getting approval because it is locally made and it is family friendly, with a focus on health and entertainment.

Jack Luo, chief executive of the company, said the company will focus on the Chinese market first. He did not disclose the price. China’s online game market based on the PC is going through a boom right now, with overall revenues expected to hit $5.8 billion in 2011, according to Niko Partners. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are still trying to get approval to sell their machines in the country. Zeebo, another low-cost console maker, launched in China with a focus on education titles.

Tags: China, game console, iSec, online gaming, video games

Companies: eedoo Technology, Lenovo

People: Jack Luo

Filed under: Etc., Transportation Alternatives

While the Android market is predicted to finally outgrow Apple's iTunes App Store sometime this year, many mobile software developers still focus on iOS apps before turning their attention to other platforms. That's exactly what Zipcar did with its iPhone app (which, for those keeping score, was released in September 2009). Those who've been wanting to get in on the car-sharing action with their Droid or Nexus S can now finally do so, at least in beta format. Can't have things be too easy for Froyo folks, now can we?

Similar to the iPhone app, the new Android Zipcar program allows members to find and reserve vehicles (you can refine your search by time, where you're at or going to be and type of vehicle). Important for the chronically late: you can also extend your current reservation through your phone. As with the iPhone app, you can now honk your Zipcar's horn using your phone. Life is good.

If you'd like to test out the app and have Android OS 2.1 or higher, you can get it direct from Zipcar here or just search for Zipcar in the market. Users of other mobile platforms (i.e., Blackberries), can, as always, use the Zipcar mobile site to access a lot of the same features. Probably not the honking thing though. That wouldn't be very businesslike.

[Source: Zipcar]

Continue reading Zipcar going beta with new Android car-sharing app

Zipcar going beta with new Android car-sharing app originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 06 May 2011 18:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As the acknowledged leader in Pacific Northwest commercial real estate, Kidder Mathews AMO ®, offers a full spectrum of brokerage, property management, appraisal, construction & project management, sustainability and consulting services. Kidder Mathews currently manages a commercial property portfolio encompassing nearly 23 million square feet, and each year facilitates more than $2 billion in commercial real estate transactions. The firm also provides development, consulting, and valuation services to the top institutions and corporations in the region.

Kidder Mathews is seeking an experienced and qualified Building Engineer to work with our management team on the Eastside (Bellevue, Issaquah, Redmond, and Bothell). Working under the direction of one or more Property Managers, the Building Engineer will:

• Effectively respond to and resolve Tenant service calls
• Manage work orders electronically utilizing hand held device (Blackberry)
• Develop and implement preventive maintenance programs
• Effectively interact with and direct contracted service providers
• Implement safety programs and protocols
• Effectively perform routine building maintenance and repair tasks
• Operate building systems, including; HVAC controls, access controls, fire and life safety systems, steam systems (radiators, steam traps and valves)
• Develop and maintain a courteous and service oriented rapport with customers
• Work with other members of Property Management Team to develop annual property operating budgets and long range capital requirement planning
• Possess clear and effective written and verbal communications skills
• Have demonstrated proficiency and experience in utilizing current technology tools (hardware and software)

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

• Washington State 07 or 07C electrical license.
• Five (5) years experience in commercial building maintenance or related industry.
• High school education or G.E.D.
• Superior time management skills.
• Clean driving record and appropriate and dependable vehicle capable of carrying tools and equipment.
• Evidence of automobile liability insurance coverage and valid Washington state driver’s license.
• Ability to pass background screen and drug test, and must be bondable.
• Available to work occasional overtime and provide after hours on-call emergency response on a rotational basis.
• Neat, clean appearance in accordance with Kidder Mathews’ standards.


This is a full time position, and Kidder Mathews offers a comprehensive and competitive benefits package, including:

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Long term disability insurance
• Paid vacation and sick leave
• 11 paid holidays per year
• Section 125 flexible spending program
• 401(k) plan
• Employee Assistance Program

• Location: Eastside
• Compensation: $24.00 per hour to $29.00 per hour, depending upon experience, qualifications and licensing
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

JOB DESCRIPTION: Responsible for providing water safety and beach control at Medina Beach Park, guarding assigned beach area, enforcing safety rules, appropriately responding to all emergency situations, assisting with grounds and buildings maintenance at beach site, keeping all lifeguard, lifesaving, and first aid equipment in good repair and ready for use, and preparing written reports.

LICENSES/CERTIFICATIONS: Current certification in American Red Cross Lifeguard Training, and American Red Cross First Aid/CPR for the Professional Rescuer required. Lifeguards are required to have Waterfront Certification or attend training scheduled for Saturday, June 18 and Sunday, June 19, 2011.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: Water Safety Instructor (WSI) certification or Northwest Lifeguard certification is desirable. At least one-year of lifeguard experience preferred.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS: Must be able to work outdoors in a typical beach setting with exposure to direct sunlight, rain, wind, or other weather conditions for extended periods of time, must be able to swim and perform water rescues, must be able to hear calls for help and visually detect swimmers or beach users in jeopardy, and must be able to operate a telephone and deliver, receive, and respond to emergency communications.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these essential functions.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: Applicants must be 16 years or older, must be insurable by the city’s insurance carrier, and must be able to pass a criminal history background check as required by law. Ability to work the complete lifeguard season and attend all lifeguard staff orientation, testing, and training sessions scheduled. Lifeguards must be available to work a flexible schedule.

FORMS AND MATERIALS REQUIRED: A city of Medina application form, resume, and letter of interest detailing your background and describing how you meet or exceed the qualifications. Applications may be obtained from (Temporary) City Hall at 8398 NE 12 Street, Medina, between 8:30 am and 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday or from the city’s website at: www.medina-wa.gov.

CONTACT INFORMATION: Inquiries may be directed to Linda Crum at 425-233-6422.

THE CITY OF MEDINA IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

• Location: Medina, WA
• Compensation: $11 to $15 per hour DOQ
• This is a part-time job.
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Phone calls about this job are ok.
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

'Marooned' on a desert island off the Belize coast, the castaways learn to survive using spearguns, machetes and plastic bags

The signal comes from the front. The helicopter is going down: we have to jump. I step out on to the skid, then take another step into air. Seconds later, I'm in the Caribbean sea, swimming for a small patch of sand between thick mangrove trees on a nearby island. Water fills my boots and makes my clothes heavy which, along with the current, means progress is slow. I wade on to the beach, closely followed by my fellow "survivors".

This is what we've trained for. For the past five days, we've sailed the blue waters around remote Turneffe Atoll, 40km off the coast of Belize, setting up rudimentary camps on deserted beaches to learn the essentials of island survival. The staged emergency exit from the helicopter marks the start of our Isolation Phase, in which our group will have to put what we've learned into practice, unsupervised. With air-con and cooling cocktails, these islands might be paradise. But without such comforts as beds, food, water or relief from the intense heat, these are inhospitable environments where survival depends on our ability to find or produce food, water, shelter and fire from our unpromising surroundings.

We were warned it would be tough. "The whole point is to make you psychologically uncomfortable," instructor Ian Craddock told us on day one. "This is not happy camping." He's a former SAS instructor and a mate of Bear Grylls and Bruce Parry, and the new desert island survival course he's put together is refreshingly light on health and safety hang-ups. ("Here's a speargun – point it at what you want to hit, and shoot".) It is also full of genuine hardships and tests of character. Not to be undertaken lightly.

We're in troubled waters from the start: when we set off from Caye Caulker at the beginning of our week's training phase, the sea is so rough that even hardened captain Papa Joe looks perturbed. We spend our first night on a sandy strip of shore lined with gnarly, sun-bleached tree trunks. Our team is, disappointingly, all male – I've never particularly enjoyed exclusively male company. But it's a good group, and over the course of the week, the eight of us – including an Austrian hypnotist, an American web marketer and an aeroplane engineer whose face peels, bleeds and peels again in the sun, making him look like Freddy Krueger's Welsh cousin – form a tight unit.

We spend mornings on the beach learning how to make and start a fire, how to build a shelter, how to scale, gut and cook fish. Ian demonstrates how to use a machete with a 14-inch blade: it's a vital piece of kit that can help provide food (opening coconuts, for example), water and shelter.

Real survival is a world away from TV survival, he stresses: "There are no fancy tricks, no squeezing water from cow poo. It's simple – all you need to do is stay alive."

We learn techniques that produce small but life-saving quantities of fresh water: if you wrap plastic bags around palm tree leaves, they "sweat" and the water vapour condenses and collects at the bottom of the bag. We find and hack open coconuts for the water and flesh inside.

The sun is relentless, the intense heat exhausting. Water is rationed. Food is basic and limited. But the worst thing by far, an absolute drain on spirits and morale, is the bug situation. Mosquitoes and flies pester us from the moment we landed. They make simple tasks difficult and unpleasant and they disturb our sleep (in hammocks under our makeshift shelter). (There's talk of scouting out a group of islands further south for next year's trips, to reduce the problem.) A few days in, my body is covered in itchy red bumps.

But there's great satisfaction, too, in learning skills that are mostly new to me, and in stripping life down to the essentials. The island demands assertiveness. We have to be alert and think ahead because what we do or don't do has direct consequences on, say, our food or water supplies. And in the moments when the bugs are kept at bay by campfires, I enjoy the beauty of our remoteness. There are pink sunsets that make the tropical sky glow, campfires on sandy beaches under crescent moons, mornings swimming alone in the clear sea.

The best parts of the day come when we are out on the boat and diving to catch dinner. I've never speargunned for fish before but find I have a knack for it, bringing in a good share of the group's evening meals. I engage in epic chases over coral landscapes with parrotfish and snappers.

There's a Last Supper-ish feel to the night before Isolation. Ian has deliberately withheld information so that we're unprepared but we know it will be tough. Not everyone completes these courses; some radio in for an early rescue from whatever torment breaks them.

After the helicopter has dropped us from a height of eight metres into the sea and we've swum to shore, we inspect our survival kit – a dinghy and speargun, plastic bags for collecting water, a first aid kit and two machetes – and survey our surroundings.

We are surprisingly efficient. Four of us build a wooden structure with a roof of palm tree fronds. Others collect firewood and coconuts. We set up plastic bags on green leaves and dig solar stills to start the slow process of collecting water. By early afternoon, we're sheltering from the sun in our roomy "hut".

The speargun turns out not to be much use. We go out on the dinghy but there's no reef close to the island on which to fish. (The fish hide in the mangroves close to the island, Ian later tells us.) We manage to keep fires burning through the night, but the insects are still a major annoyance, and with no beds or hammocks, no one gets much sleep. I spend most of the night by the campfire trying to stay warm, feeding the flames with coconut husks and tree branches.

The following day, the group is sapped of energy. Tony (ex-British army) manages to catch a few small crabs and cooks them on the fire. We eat the minuscule amounts of white flesh, but mostly live, Papillon-style, on coconut. Ian checked in briefly the night before, dropping off a few small fish and a bottle of water as rewards for our good work (a cheat, but a welcome one). But we are all hungry, thirsty, tired, itchy from our bites and drained by the heat. We collect wood to keep the fire burning, but otherwise spend lethargic hours in our shelter.

Time slows, which is both a blessing and a curse. There's time here to think and also to talk. We have long philosophical discussions about memory, sexuality, sport, the history of mankind. The group's camaraderie maintains our vital PMA (Positive Mental Attitude, the top tier in the army's triangle of survival needs). There are filthy jokes, games of hangman and I-spy. Inevitably, conversations find their way back to the cold beers and junk food that await us back on Caye Caulker after rescue. This thought sustains us.

But mostly, Isolation is a test of mental fortitude and the capacity to endure discomfort. Rescue can't come quickly enough.

We keep the fires burning through another difficult night, and early in the morning sit together, chewing on small chunks of coconut, watching through a gap in the mangroves for the small yellow boat that will carry us away from the island. When it comes, we board quickly. Relief passes through our bodies, each one of us bearded, dirty, exhausted, but alive.

• Bushmasters desert island survival courses (bushmasters.co.uk) in Belize cost £1,300pp. The next courses are in 2012 and include 2-11 February, 16-26 February, 1-10 March. It also runs jungle survival courses in the Amazon in Guyana. British Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com) has daily flights to Belize with connections via Miami, starting from £889 return. For more information, see travelbelize.org

Sufjan Stevens, On tour

When Sufjan Stevens was last here, his live shows were fantastical affairs with troupes of 50s-style cheerleaders and orchestras wearing butterfly wings. Back then his stock-in-trade was turning the civic histories of unfashionable American states into magical folk-pop songs. However, his 2010 album The Age Of Adz found him feeding his musicians into the shredder, butterfly wings and all, and rearranging their parts in Pro Tools to lend the music an unsettling, hyper-real sound. Who knows how he'll attempt to recreate that sensation live, although, particularly in the case of astonishing 25-minute-long closer Impossible Soul, it'll be fascinating to see him try.

Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Thu & Fri, touring to 19 May

SR

Short Circuit Festial, London

Unlike in rock, pop or hip-hop, where the academically minded are viewed with suspicion, electronica is a genre very much in touch with – if not entirely governed by – its inner nerd. Short Circuit is a three-day festival that blurs the boundaries between gig, nightclub and seminar hall, featuring an impressive range of performers, all generally engaged in applying technology to push music forward. The first day is a showcase for German avant electronic label Raster-Noton, featuring the world premiere of a collaboration between label founder Carsten Nicolai (AKA Alva Noto) and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The other two days are hosted by Mute, which underlines its broad-church approach to electronica by inviting everyone from techno auteur Richie Hawtin to conceptual art-punks the Residents, industrial stalwarts Nitzer Ebb, ragged noise-rockers Liars, and even 80s pop stars Erasure.

Roundhouse, NW1, Thu to 14 May

Sam Richards

Gang Gang Dance, On tour

While Björk has spent the past decade hurtling towards the avant garde in the company of Matthew Barney and assorted Inuit throat singers, Gang Gang Dance have been travelling in roughly the opposite direction. They began as an arty improv noise collective, but over five albums have coalesced into an eclectic unit whose new age impulses are anchored by tribal rhythms and bleeps'n'bass apparently informed by the UK grime scene (Tinchy Stryder even turned up on 2008's Saint Dymphna). Lizzi Bougatsos's breathy melodies make those Björk comparisons unavoidable, although new album Eye Contact actually occupies the kind of kooky cosmopolitan pop territory vacated by Ms Gudmundsdóttir some time ago.

Ruby Lounge, Manchester, Wed; The Great Escape @ Pavilion Theatre, Brighton, Thu; ATP, Butlin's, Minehead, Fri

SR

Reverberations: The Influence Of Steve Reich, London

For all the historical significance of Terry Riley and Philip Glass it was Steve Reich, with his fabulous musical ear and rhythmic acuity, who steered minimalism out of the New York lofts and galleries where it began and into the world's concert halls. If there's a composer whose 75th birthday deserves to be lavishly celebrated, then, it's Reichs, and the Barbican is certainly doing him proud. A weekend of concerts includes six separate programmes featuring not just Reich's own music, some of it new to Britain, but also works by younger composers who admit their debt to him. Performers range from the BBC Symphony to the Kronos Quartet, and the great man himself makes an appearance for his own Clapping Music.

LSO St Luke's, EC1 & Barbican, EC2, Sat & Sun

Andrew Clements

Kyle Eastwood Band, On tour

On his Songs From The Chateau album, bassist-composer Eastwood has shifted back to a more direct and soul-jazzy sound than he adopted on earlier explorations of dance-groove hooks and technology. It's an unpretentiously simple, soul, blues and Latin vehicle, with succinct and punchy tunes that sometimes mirror the economical delivery of Kyle's actor dad, Clint. Some of the music takes on a sensuously sermonising feel, and some of it takes the engaging Graeme Blevins into Sonny Rollins territory, as on the sparky Cafe Calypso. The harmonically smouldering Andalucia, on the other hand – a vehicle for Graeme Flowers's shimmering trumpet – has a Sketches Of Spain undertow. This band aren't staging any jazz revolutions, but are very welcoming for those dipping a toe into the music.

Norwich Playhouse, Mon; The Anvil, Basingstoke, Tue; Concorde Club, Eastleigh, Wed

John Fordham

Twelves, London

Last year they were the Twelves Trio – a jazz threesome exploring byzantine melodic pathways. Now they're just Twelves, and a quartet with the addition of alt-rock guitarist Rob Updegraff. With Updegraff's arrival the band suggests, among many things, Joe Lovano's encounters with John Scofield, with a little of Bill Frisell thrown in. Staccato metallic chord themes alternate with Mark Hanslip's soft sax countermelodies, and guitar/sax unison themes evaporate into drifting improv. On Kerfuffle from their current Adding Machine CD, Hanslip's signature mix of a melodic seamlessness and Wayne Shorter-ish creative hesitancy spins over abrasive guitar, Riaan Vosloo's rock-solid bassline and Tim Giles's lateral snare patterns. They're a band with real vision and the executive powers to match.

Vortex Jazz Club, N16, Wed

JF

The most interesting position in England's batting order is up for grabs and it must be filled by a larger than life player in step with its riotous possibilities

This week the England cricket hierarchy solved in a single stroke what looked to be its most ticklish immediate problems. Gorgeous, pouting, poster-ready Alastair Cook, who previously couldn't get in the squad, will be England's 50-over captain. And pouting, gorgeous, sponsor-catnip Stuart Broad, who refused the chance to play Twenty20 in the IPL because it wasn't a career priority, is now England's Twenty20 captain.

Probably this will all work out just fine. Andy Flower has a good record with these kind of hard-nosed judgments, as should a man who appears literally to have a hard nose, not to mention a head chiselled out of reclaimed Victorian oak. There is another problem, though, that has yet to be solved, and which seems to me more fundamental. The ongoing audition for the vacant slot in England's batting order – billed as the Battle To Fill The Number Six Slot – reached a thick-sweatered fever pitch this week as various hopefuls pressed their suit in county cricket. It is exciting to see the No6 spot attracting such giddy attention, albeit for me there is a sense that this slightly disrespects the No6 spot, which frankly deserves a little better than being bandied about as a clearing house for the nearlies, a side‑saddle, L-plate kind of role.

In fact, No6 is the most interesting spot in any England batting order, particularly at home where the game can nibble and fret and hoop forwards at an alarming rate and No6 is suddenly the keystone for all possibilities. Being a No6 is the direct ideological opposite of being an opener, a position where a mechanical type of player will flourish, just as Cook has, trundling forward irresistibly like a Soviet-era combine harvester ploughing its lone furrow from horizon to horizon. Openers are essentially perfectionists, militant virgins who will throw their hands up and wander off the set at the first crimp in their pristine morning. Behind them three, four and five are often described as "the engine room", but engine rooms are staffed by hoary-handed grease monkeys, whereas the middle order are the prom kings and queens of batsmanship, a cabal of head prefects and silver-spoon merchants.

It is only the No6, slouching unshaven at the mid-innings tipping point, who carries a sense of libidinous top-order romance. For the No6 decisions must be made even as the world collapses around you. It is a jumping-off point, an improv role, a mix‑another-cocktail‑in‑the-kitchen-at‑2am kind of job. It is also the most heroic of all positions. If Batman played cricket, or Indiana Jones, or the Beat poets of the 1950s, they would all bat at No6 (possibly also in a white helmet and carrying a bat with unusual stickers).

For England the current approach appears to be to identify Some Dude Who's Good At Batting – a Warhol collage of Bopara-Taylor-Morgan-Stokes-Hildreth – and then simply slot him in at six. This is probably very sensible, but it is also depressingly pragmatic. From a romantic's point of view you want the right kind of chops for No6. It has a weird kind of power. It can intimidate as it did in the 1990s when various priestly top-order types – not to mention flavour‑of-the-month bumcrack-and-highlights county favourites – found themselves out of step with its riotous possibilities. No6 can inspire too, as it did on occasion for Graeme Hick, or late‑era Alec Stewart, in that period where he batted with the time‑worn recklessness of a silk‑shirted divorcee in a provincial disco hip‑thrusting through the YMCA. Even Ian Bell has seemed transformed by its seesaw pressures, all beefy crunching forearms and that lazy pull-shot reminiscent of a man heaving his derelict ironing board on to the municipal tip.

Best of all, though, is the specialist No6 batsman, who has aspirations for nothing more and is totally embroiled in the No6 lifestyle. It is impossible not to think of Ian Botham, who stayed concreted in at No6 even as his career congealed. Botham had a lot of what I would ideally want from my No6 batsman. I want him not to wear too much padding, to look like a man who has rushed out to bat from the track, or a night spent at the Grand Hotel in Cannes: helmetless is the dream, but provocatively bared forearms will do. A No6 should more often than not casually hit his first ball for four. He must not be too mannered – not too much bat-twiddling – but instead carry a slouching air of menace. A No6 must hold his bat with coiled purpose, like a power tool or a murder weapon.

Of the current thrusters, Ravi Bopara has an appealingly overblown swagger. Eoin Morgan has the right air of lip-curling self-possession. And Kevin Pietersen could be a great six if he could just give up pretending to be head boy and finally embrace his all-conquering, skunk-haired inner dickhead.

There is plenty of natural six‑iness out there – but it is still necessary to respect the six. Choose your six and let him be simply a six: a reserve of un-homogenised charisma teetering at the not-quite midpoint.

twitter.com/@barneyronay

UPS (NYSE:UPS) has activated its newly-created Logistics Action Teams (LAT) to support the American Red Cross's relief efforts for victims of the recent tornadoes in the southeastern United States. Additionally, the company pledged an additional $100,000 to its original $500,000 commitment to the American Red Cross and made a $50,000 contribution to the Metropolitan Atlanta Chapter of the Red Cross, also earmarked for emergency relief for tornado victims. LATs were established in January to leverage UPS's transportation network, logistics expertise and far-reaching employee volunteer base for the benefit of the Red Cross during natural disasters and emergencies. The LAT approach was modeled after the World Food Programme's Logistics Emergency Teams, which utilize logistics experts from private companies like UPS in times of crisis. This is the first deployment of a UPS LAT team, one of four created so far and assigned to the Metropolitan Atlanta Chapter. In addition to Atlanta, UPS has trained LAT teams to work with the Red Cross in San Francisco, Houston and Louisiana. In addition to the Atlanta team's efforts, UPS also is managing emergency supply shipments to Alabama and Mississippi for the Red Cross's national office. "The UPS Logistics Action Team has been invaluable to our tornado relief operation," said Nancy Brockway, Chief Emergency Services Officer for Metro Atlanta Chapter of the American Red Cross. "Their expertise has helped us be more efficient in transporting meals and supplies to the families who so desperately need them." Mark Krause, a UPS operations division manager, is working directly with the Red Cross's Logistics Command Center in Atlanta. His current assignment is working with the local Red Cross Bulk Distribution Manager to help coordinate relief efforts in Georgia. Projects underway include:

• Bulk distribution of clean-up supplies to the hardest hit areas.
• Pick-up and delivery of hot meals to fixed feeding sites.
• Transportation of documents, equipment and supplies from warehouses to service delivery sites.
• Operation of daily pick-up and delivery routes between Red Cross warehouses and affected areas.

This week, UPS volunteers saw the benefits of recent donations of time and labor. On April 15 in Atlanta, the employees on their day off cut huge donated linoleum sheeting for use to protect school gymnasium floors used for shelters. That sheeting has been delivered to schools around the region. UPSers also got a "thank you" from the mayor of Geiger, Ala., who asked UPS to lend the town two 53-foot trailers to protect personal items that were retrieved after the storms. The Red Cross partnership and recent activation in the Southeast are extensions of The UPS Foundation's innovative use of logistics experts for humanitarian relief around the globe. Yuki Muramatsu, UPS Japan, has been assigned to the World Food Programme Logistics Emergency Team (LET) in Tokyo to support relief efforts for earthquake victims there. She began on March 23 and continues to serve as the LET lead coordinator, responsible for handling all incoming relief shipments for the WFP including warehouse management, customs clearance and transportation to the impacted areas. Other recent UPS humanitarian relief activities include grants to the Red Cross of Columbia (Cruz Roja Colombiana) after extensive floods and mudslides; shipments of relief supplies to refugees in Tunisia and Liberia for CARE and the UNHCR, respectively, and continued shipping of goods for Japan relief efforts. Since its founding in 1907, UPS has built a legacy as a caring and responsible corporate citizen, supporting programs that provide long-term solutions to community needs. Founded in 1951, The UPS Foundation, which celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2011, is responsible for facilitating employee involvement in the local, national and global communities. In 2010, UPS and its employees, active and retired, invested more than $95 million in charitable giving around the world. The UPS Foundation, which has urgent humanitarian relief as part of its core focus giving areas, can be found on the web at UPS.com/foundation. To get UPS news direct, visit pressroom.ups.com/RSS.

Mike Elk, a third-generation union organizer who writes for the Campaign for America's Future has a post up at Alternet, which should be of considerable interest to both the labor movement and the Democratic Party. Elk's post, "Major Union Victory for Rite Aid Workers Offers Roadmap for Labor Movement," is important to the Democratic Party because labor unions function as a pivotal source of funding and volunteers for Democratic candidates. When unions grow, the Party's resources will expand.

Elk's insights about the highly successful campaign of the International Longshoremen Workers Union to organize Rite Aid workers at the company's southwest distribution center should prove instructive for future campaigns. First, a little history:

The victory is a testament to the resolve of the workers and organizers -- it's a success five years in the making. It reveals how tough the environment for rehabilitating the labor movement is, but also how it is still possible to win through creative, direct action.

"We're excited about winning this victory, even if it took longer than it should have" said Carlos "Chico" Rubio, a 10-year warehouse worker who was on the union bargaining committee. Unlike many unions that do win a good contract, the union was quick not to praise the boss for agreeing to a contract, but to point out instead that the process was a long and costly one. Workers decided to first start organizing a union in March of 2006 and hoped to have a new contract within several months, not five years.

Rite Aid management responded with the typical toolbox of anti-union tactics. They hired a team of expensive union busters to hold anti-union intimidation sessions and captive audience meetings. They threatened to fire workers if they supported the union and even fired two workers for wanting to a join a union. They asked a delay of over 18 months from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on scheduling a vote so that they could have more time to run intimidation sessions to make workers wary of joining a union. Finally after two years of organizing and despite massive anti-union attacks, workers voted to join a union 283 to 261 in an NLRB supervised election in June of 2008.

Elk reports that Rite Aid stalled with bad faith or "surface bargaining" for a full year after the vote. Then the union and workers got creative:

...Workers started by attending yearly stockholder meetings and opening lines of communications with stockholders and board members. They released detailed reports about how much money the union busting efforts of Rite Aid was costing the company. Workers were able to persuade some stockholders to put pressure on Rite Aid to negotiate a fair and equitable contract.

Likewise, they used their leverage against Rite Aid by expanding the fight across various unions and the country. They formed a coalition of nationwide Rite Aid workers from various unions including UFCW, SEIU, and Teamsters who coordinated their strategy. Workers reached out to powerful community allies with groups like United Students against Sweatshops and Jobs with Justice. They held protests in nearly 50 cities across the country against Rite Aid and promised to apply more heat if Rite Aid didn't settle the contract dispute in California.

After creative coalition-building comes economic withdrawal, a.k.a. 'hardball':

Most importantly, the workers union had a strong presence within the distribution center in Lancaster, California. Workers even engaged in "work to rule," where they purposely slowed down movement in the distribution center in order to put pressure on the company to settle a contract. Even last year, 75 workers walked off the job for a day in Lancaster, California to protest Rite Aid's lack of good faith bargaining.

Finally, when negotiations seemed to be breaking down at the last second, they launched a "pinpoint" boycott campaign at two Rite Aid workers at two Rite Aid Stores in San Pedro, California on April 1, 2011. They persuaded hundreds of seniors to switch their prescriptions to other pharmacies. The threat of a larger boycott spreading forced Rite Aid to finally settle the contract a month later.

To put the Rite Aid campaign's success in perspective, Elk points out that "fewer than 1 in 6 organizing drives ever results in a union contract for workers in the workplace."

It looks like the ILWU and Rite Aid workers have developed a promising organizing template for the 21st century union movement. It's an especially welcome development, coming soon after the Wisconsin protests and the awakening of many workers to the unexpected consequences of voting Republican.

An invigorated labor movement is also critically-important for insuring the integrity of the Democratic party. As Joan Walsh notes in her Salon.com post today, data provided to her by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka indicates,

...Democrats have become almost as reliant as Republicans on corporate money (Republicans get 79 percent of campaign contributions from business; Democrats get 72 percent, and the share from unions has dropped in half in just the last decade.)

Restoring a larger share of contributions from unions to Democratic candidates will help make the Party less beholden to their corporate contributors -- and more responsive to the priorities of working families. But the challenge is made more difficult, as Walsh reports, by the AFL-CIO's recent decision to invest more of current resources in shoring up the Federation's structure and programs, and less on federal candidates for office. In her interview with Trumka, he explains how the allocation of the Federation's resources will be different going forward:

...We're going to do a full-time, around the calendar political program that's going to be mobilizing and educating people 12 months a year, 24 months a cycle, as opposed to doing it till Election Day and dismantling it. We're going to keep people in place, and actually make people pay a price [if they don't keep promises]. We'll start running some of our own, in state races.

Democrats face a tough challenge in the short run in raising funds for candidates to make up for the expected shortfall resulting from the AFL-CIO's new priorities. If they can raise the needed funds through other means, a stronger union movement could result in a more mutually beneficial relationship down the road. In the longer run, what it comes down to is that Democrats must do a better job of supporting unions and their priorities, so unions can grow and return the favor.

Location: Clearwater, FL
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EXCLUSIVE: Is Jillian Michaels the next daytime talk show star? The popular Biggest Loser trainer has signed a multi-year deal to join the daytime syndicated talk show The Doctors as a co-host next season. Additionally, she will serve as a special correspondent on Dr. Phil. Both talk shows are produced by CBS TV Distribution and exec produced by Phil McGraw. When she announced in December that she would leave The Biggest Loser after the current 11th season, Michaels tweeted she was planning to "focus on becoming a mommy." While that is still very much in the cards, Michaels said she had been open to doing something in the daytime space when she was approached to join The Doctors, created and exec produced by Jay McGraw, as well as Dr. Phil. "This was an opportunity to do something that I love and help so many people, so I couldn't possibly pass it up," said Michaels, who has appeared about a dozen times on The Doctors for the past three seasons. She also relishes the opportunity for "people to see the 360-degree version of me" vs. the somewhat "caricature" character that she plays on Loser, where she is known for being very tough on the contestants. "I will still take a tough-love approach when necessary, but this is a platform that will allow me to have a direct connection with ... Read More »

I’m a blog ambassador for NOOK Color from Barnes & Noble, but to tell the truth, I would tell everyone I know how much I love my NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet even if I weren’t an ambassador. I am SO impressed with this product. It’s easy to use, has a color touch screen, brings you books within seconds… I could go on and on about the wonderful benefits and features of NOOK Color. But what I really want to focus on today is that NOOK Color keeps getting better and better. My newest free upgrade from Barnes & Noble includes more Android apps, Email, Read and Play books for kids, new newsstand offerings, an enhanced web experience, and a new NOOK Friends feature!

The Read and Play feature is very cool. It brings children’s picture books to life! For example, in the book, Go Dog Go, kids can tap on ferris wheel cars and watch them spin around. This is great for younger children who can’t read a lot or are just getting interested in books. For the “older” set, like my 7-year-old boys, there are more than 12,000 children’s chapter books available! I downloaded a Junie B. Jones book for my sons, and they were so excited to read it together on my NOOK at bedtime.


They’re also excited about trying out all the new Android apps on my NOOK, like Angry Birds, Bubble Popper, Uno, and Drawing Pad. As for me, I love Match 3 games, so I downloaded the Aces Jewel Hunt app. It’s so much fun when I want to take a little break from reading my favorite books. But NOOK’s apps aren’t just for game-playing. Check out the video at the end of this post to learn more about the wide variety of apps that have been carefully selected to appeal to NOOK Color readers!

I can also check my email on the NOOK Color. It took seconds to link up my Hotmail account, and now I can read my email and respond to it via the onscreen keyboard. (NOOK’s email feature supports all the top webmail services, such as Yahoo, GMail, AOL, Hotmail, and more.) Through NOOK Friends, I can share all my favorite books with my friends. And great magazines and newspapers are also available for the NOOK Color, such as National Geographic in gorgeous color! I love that you get a 14-day free trial on magazines and newspapers, and then you can decide whether to become a subscriber or just purchase single issues.

At just $249, the NOOK Color is definitely the best value in the Tablet market. Consider getting one for a special mom for Mother’s Day or even as a gift for yourself! Not only are they available at Barnes & Noble, but you can also purchase a NOOK Color at Best Buy, Walmart, Books-a-Million, and Staples.


One lucky winner will receive a $50 Gift Card from Barnes & Noble! You can put it toward a NOOK Color or any other item at a B&N store or BN.com. To enter, watch the following video about NOOK Color’s terrific selection of apps. And then leave a comment on this post with the answer to this question: “Which app would you download first?” This is mandatory to enter the giveaway.



[Email subscribers, please click on the title of this post to access the video online. You can also see a full list of NOOK apps at http://bit.ly/jKuUt2.]

After fulfilling the mandatory entry above, you can earn optional, additional entries if you... (leave a separate comment for each)

- Follow Barnes and Noble (@nookBN) and Susan Heim on Parenting (@ParentingAuthor) on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway. Use the hashtag #nookcolormoms in your tweet. You may tweet up to 3x a day. (Please space them at least an hour apart.) Leave a separate comment with the URL of each tweet. (1 entry per tweet) You can use this tweet if you wish:

RT @ParentingAuthor Mother’s Day #Giveaway for a Barnes & Noble $50 Gift Card! http://t.co/mEabGr9 Ends 5/19 @nookBN #nookcolormoms

- Like Barnes and Noble on Facebook. (1 entry)

- Like Susan Heim on Parenting on Facebook and/or follow on Networked Blogs. (1 entry for each)

- Subscribe to Susan Heim on Parenting via email, RSS and/or Kindle (see sign-up options on left sidebar). Leave a comment for each subscription method. (1 entry for each subscription method for up to 3 entries)

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- Place a button for Susan Heim on Parenting on your blog (the code is in the upper right-hand column of this site) and/or a text link on your blog roll. Post a comment with your blog’s URL. (1 entry for button; 1 entry for text link)

- Enter another current giveaway on Susan Heim on Parenting. (1 entry per giveaway entered)

- Post this giveaway on your blog with a link to this page. Leave a comment with a direct link to the post. (3 entries; leave a separate comment for each)

One winner will be randomly selected from the qualified comments received by Thursday, May 19, 2011, at 11:59 PM ET. Please leave an email address on one of your comments if it’s not available on your Blogger profile. Winner must respond within 72 hours or another winner will be drawn. Contest is open to US residents only.



DISCLOSURE: I will receive a B&N gift card as a thank-you for sharing this information.

Henry Ford once said that a business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. Impact investing takes that thought to a new level.

Impact investors look for businesses that have a positive social or environmental impact as well as the potential for financial return. These enterprises can be anything from schools to mobile carriers serving the poor. Can profit-led companies solve social problems? Impact investors think they can.

One of the pioneers in the field is the Omidyar Network, created by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and his wife Pam. Amy Klement, who leads Omidyar Network’s Access to Capital initiative (and previously headed up payments at PayPal) told me that Omidyar’s approach to philanthropy was formed by eBay. “By providing tools and a platform, he saw what people could do with opportunities. Ebay created more than 1 million new entrepreneurs” Klement said.

The Omidyar’s initially created a non-profit, family foundation but quickly realized that this imposed a lot of restrictions on what they could do. It was very difficult to make for-profit investments in social enterprises. “According to the tax laws, if something is a business it can’t be for good.” explained Klement. ”Through eBay the Omidyars had seen that businesses can have social impact and lasting social impact. They are sustainable, they are scalable in a way that non-profits generally aren’t.”

So the Omidyars created a new organization that could invest. The network uses a range of tools including non-profit grants, direct equity investments and debt investments, and it also invests in funds like the Ignia venture capital fund (which I’ll get to shortly). It has made grants to, or invested in companies like Wikipedia and P2P microfinance lenders Kiva.

Profit and loss is easy to measure, but how do you measure social impact? Klement explains. “We look at reach and engagement. Reach you can think of as breadth — the number of lives touched. And there we look for scale. We want to touch hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives. Engagement is depth — to what extent are we touching those lives. How deep is the impact?”

One of the network’s current investments is in Bridge International Acadamies, a chain of schools based in Nairobi, Kenya, and founded by an ex-technology entrepreneur. “He founded this school-in-a box model. It’s a highly replicable franchise model where he can scale these schools quite quickly. The education system in Kenya is completely broken. Teachers show up about 50 percent of the time. Even when they do show up, the average teaching time per day is about 90 minutes. The free government schools are not really free by the time people pay for uniforms and supplies and often bribes to the teachers,” said Klement.

The Bridge International schools cost less than $4 per pupil per month, which is in line with the costs of the government schools. There are now 25 schools making Bridge International the largest chain of schools on the African continent, and that will expand to 100 by the end of the year. Within 5 years the schools will serve a million children.

Another investment is D.light which makes solar lanterns to replace kerosene lamps. Kerosene causes millions of burns a year and serious respiratory system problems. One use is equivalent to smoking 2 packs of cigarettes. D.light has shipped more than a million lanterns to India, Africa, and Haiti and is poised for exponential growth.

Klement told me that once you screen for social impact, this type of investing is similar to traditional VC investing but “We are prepared to take more risk because we are entering markets that are less developed” like India and Sub-Saharan Africa. The network invests in the range of $1 to $3 million per deal. The Omidyar Network is also one of the investors in the $100 million Ignia fund, a VC fund based in Mexico that invests in businesses that provide products and services to bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) people, the poorest sector of society, but expects venture capital-level returns.

I asked founder Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui why he started the fund. “There is tremendous lack of access to basic, quality products and services in the base of the pyramid,” he said. The poorest people often pay over the odds for goods and services. If you don’t have a credit history, you can’t get a post-paid mobile phone plan, and pre-paid minutes are a lot more expensive. If you live in an area with no electricity, you have to pay someone more to charge your phone.

Ignia’s definition of positive impact is the following: ”If you provide this product or service to the BOP, will it improve their quality of life? The way we define our impact is providing access to basic products and services to as many people as possible as soon as possible. The only way to grow as fast as possible is through returns. The more profitable you are, the faster you grow and the faster you deliver on your mission.” Ignia invests in a range of sectors from healthcare to financial services and telecommunications.

Rodríguez Arregui started fundraising for Ignia in November 2007. It was a challenge. There was the small matter of the financial crisis, and Ignia invests in a company for up to 15 years, a longer horizon that most investors are used to. But there was a more fundamental problem. ”We are at the intersection of VC and impact investing. The biggest challenge was definitely fund-raising because not many people believe that intersection exists. Because of the way we have been educated, we believe that it is either impact or returns and that there is a conflict between those two in that there is an embedded philosophy which is ‘profit is bad’. We don’t believe that is the case.”

“I am a huge believer that businesses with purpose end up being significantly stronger than those that don’t have a purpose. I am convinced that when you wake up in the morning every day to try to address a mission, it’s a much stronger motivator than when you walk into the office every day and just want to make a buck,” he said.

It’s early days for Ignia, but its star investment Finestrella has grown 9-fold in the last year. Finestrella provides affordable, post-paid mobile phone plans to the BOP. 86 percent of people in Mexico have access to a mobile phone, but they only take incoming calls. Outgoing calls are made on public pay phones, which are much cheaper than pre-paid minutes. People still spend up to 30 percent of their income on mobile services.

Finestrella has defined a set of algorithms that it uses to assess the creditworthiness of people who don’t have an official employment history, bank account or credit rating. If they meet the criteria, customers are offered a post-paid mobile phone plan at much lower rates than pre-paid.

Finestrella started in 2010 and will have 35,000 customers by the end of this year. It already has $8 million in revenue (which is considerable in a country like Mexico) and is growing exponentially. The target is to have 800,000 customers by 2015.  A couple of Silicon Valley VC funds, one of which is Storm Ventures, have also invested in Finestrella.

One of Ignia’s investment team, Joshua Motta, explained why BOP businesses can make excellent returns. “Those activities which have the highest financial returns tend to have the highest social returns. Major corporations and even entrepreneurs have overlooked the BOP segment of the population and dismissed them outright simply because of their low earning power. But aggregated (BOP is 70 percent of the population in Mexico), the BOP actually has a huge amount of disposable income” according to Motta.

Motta maintains that corporations often don’t understand the needs of the BOP and just sell their standard products more cheaply in emerging markets. This strategy is often ineffective. Procter and Gamble discovered this with its detergent. ”In Western markets the quantity sold per unit is quite large. The BOP can’t afford a gallon of detergent. What P&G discovered was that if it used smaller packet sizes, literally single-use tablets, it was able to sell substantially in the BOP,” said Motta.

I asked Klement and Rodríguez Arregui what trends they see in impact investing. Both see momentum picking up and more money coming into the sector. Companies like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan are putting money into this new asset class. Rodríguez Arregui thinks that a lot of the talent in the social investing world comes from the non-profit sector rather than business and that more business expertise is needed.

Finally, Rodríguez Arregui explains that people need to be clear on why they want to get into impact investing. ”Do you want to do good, or do you want to feel good? It’s much easier to feel good by giving away meals to starving kids in Sudan, but you are not going to solve any systemic problem in the world by doing that. The outcomes of impact investing are much more long-term. This is business, and business is messy and you have to make hard decisions. When your only purpose is to feel good, you are not willing to make those hard decisions,” he said.

Tags: impact investing, investing, Venture Capital

Companies: Bridge International academies, D.light, Finistrella, IGNIA Fund, Omidyar Network

People: Pierre Omidyar

Whether you drive the majority of your revenue from channel partners, or simply count on a loose partner network to drive referrals, we can all stand to have better relationships with those who also have access to your current and potential customers.

Most often, we manage these relationships too narrowly. We focus on the sales pipeline and processes/procedures to increase its output. Clearly that's important, but every partner values far more than direct sales. To differentiate yourself and drive significantly greater value to your partners (which in turn will mean more attention and customer volume back to you), have a strategy for delivering value in these areas as well.

Relationships & Introductions
This isn't just about customers. It's about other potential partners, service providers, industry influencers, press, potential employees - the list goes on and on. Know your partners well enough, and listen frequently enough, so you know who else they need to work with.

Expertise
If you understand the product, market or industry better than your partner, take this as an opportunity to educate. Most training programs with partners are formal and focused on the product. Make sharing expertise with your partners a regular thing. Articles you've found, analyst reports, new research all count, help your partners sell better, and deliver immediate, progressive value.

Access
Especially for your most important partners, open up your organization. Give them access to executives, product managers, researchers. If you trust them not to make regular late-night calls, give them your cell number. Even if they don't use these things very often, the fact that they can will make a difference.

Leverage
There are countless ways you can help your partners appear bigger than they are. List them on your Web site. Invite them into your next trade show booth. Promote them on your blog, in your next ad campaign. Help them take advantage of discounts by bundling buys with you. Leverage comes in big and small packages, but each can mean a lot to a partner who wouldn't otherwise have access to that opportunity.

New Ideas
When's the last time you brainstormed for or with your partners? Whether or not they're involved in the idea creation process, they'll appreciate whatever you can give them.

Execution
I guarantee your partners don't have as much bandwidth to execute as they'd like, no matter how big they are. Can you help? Would it be easy to add their needs to a project you're already executing? Can you offer to bundle buys or email campaigns or even just shipping stuff to the next event?

I'd love to hear your other ideas for differentiating and driving value to channel partners. What's worked for you in the past or currently? As a recipient partner, what are you or would you look for in addition to the list above?

• Al-Qaida concedes that Osama bin Laden is dead
• Barack Obama to meeet members of Seal Team 6
• Follow developments live here

3.41pm: With US-Pakistan relations under greater strain than ever, Congress is not about to make matters any easier amid moves to cut aid to Islamabad. The White House may head off such moves but noisy debates about Pakistan's "perfidy" can be sure to rankle Pakistan. Josh Rogin writes on the Foreign Policy website:

Most of the sticks being contemplated on Capitol Hill involve the cutting of foreign aid. And while there likely will not be one overarching bill to cut off all aid to Pakistan, lawmakers and staffs are finalizing plans to reduce or restrict assistance. And unfortunately for Pakistan, this debate will take place within the larger context of a budget debate that includes an emphasis on cutting foreign aid.

The issue of how to deal with Pakistan divides both parties and both chambers. Traditional conservative/liberal distinctions do not apply, and lawmakers are bringing their long-held scepticism of Pakistani aid into the debate. In each party, there are roughly two camps -- those who want to withhold or at least reduce aid now, and those who want to wait to see if information is forthcoming that Pakistani officials were actually involved in supporting bin Laden's efforts to evade capture.

3.26pm: Before al-Qaida confirmed Bin Laden's death, most Pakistanis did not think he had been killed by US special forces. This comes through in a YouGov-Cambridge university poll conducted after the raid. According to the poll, 66% say the man killed was not Bin Laden. What was striking was that the sample focused on more educated people among the three big cities, Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. Opinions about Bin Laden, however, were divided.

- 48% of Pakistanis say he was not a true Muslim leader.
- 35% believe he was a mass murderer of Muslims, compared with 42% who disagree.
- 35% think he actually declared war on Pakistan, with 45% who disagree.
- Roughly half of all respondents feel negative about the idea of an association between Pakistan's national intelligence agency (the ISI) and al-Qaida.
- 75% disapprove of US actions in hunting Bin Laden on Pakistani soil.
- Less than a quarter think he authorised the 9/11 attacks.

And despite Obama's efforts to reach out to Muslims in his Cairo speech two years ago...

- 74% believe the US government does not respect Islam and considers itself at war with the Muslim world.
- 70% object to the Pakistani government's policy of accepting economic aid from the US.
- 86% oppose the government's allowing, or having allowed, US drone attacks on militant groups.

3.10pm: One of three wives living with Bin Laden never left the upper floors of the house for the whole six years that she was there. Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah and the other two wives are being questioned by Pakistani intelligence, says AP and their testimony could shed more light on Bin Laden's operations.

2.58pm: The US operation in Abbottabad may have been successful militarily, but questions surrounding the raid's legality are surfacing. The Guardian's Peter Walker writes about UN interest in the case.

Two United Nations human rights watchdogs have asked the US to provide details about the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, in particular whether it ever included the possibility that he could be captured alive.

A series of questions have arisen about the potential legality of the mission after it emerged that four of the five people killed when US Navy Seals raided the house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, were unarmed, Bin Laden among them.

Pentagon officials initially talked of "a great deal of resistance" from inside the compound, but it was revealed that American forces only came under fire in the first few minutes of the operation.

2.48pm: US intelligence analysts say Bin Laden played a direct role for years in plotting attacks from his hide-out in Abbottabad, the New York Times reports.

The documents taken at the Abbottabad compound, according to American officials, show that Bin Laden was in touch regularly with the terror network he created. With his whereabouts and activities a mystery in recent years, many intelligence analysts and terrorism experts had concluded that he had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role in current and future al-Qaida operations.

A rushed examination of the trove of materials from the compound in Pakistan prompted Obama administration officials on Thursday to issue a warning that Al Qaeda last year had considered attacks on American railroads.

The documents include a handwritten notebook from February 2010 that discusses tampering with tracks to derail a train on a bridge, possibly on Christmas, New Year's Day, the day of the State of the Union address or the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said. But they said there was no evidence of a specific plot.

2.29pm: Confirmation of Bin Laden's death by al-Qaida came as President Obama is scheduled to thank those who carried out the successful attack.

White House officials say that at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Obama will express his gratitude privately. But the president, joined by vice president Joe Biden, also will address soldiers who have returned recently from Afghanistan, so it will be interesting to see what tone he adopts. So far the president has avoided taking a triumphalist attitude.

Obama yesterday laid a wreath at the site of the World Trade Centre, where as the Guardian's Ed Pilkington reported, the president spoke no words. "But then he didn't need to: the location and the identity of the individuals gathered round him spoke for him."

1.52pm: The Associated Press has more, saying the al-Qaida statement warns of retaliation, saying that US "happiness will turn to sadness". It said the statement could not be independently verified but was posted on websites that had previously carried messages from the group.

The message says:

We stress that the blood of the holy warrior sheik, Osama bin Laden, God bless him, is precious to us and to all Muslims and will no go in vain. We will remain, God willing, a curse chasing the Americans and their agents, following them outside and inside their countries.
Soon, God willing, their happiness will turn to sadness. their blood will be mingled with their tears.

In the statement, al-Qaida also called on the people of Pakistan "where Sheik Osama was killed" to rise up in revolt against its leaders. It also said that an audio message bin Laden recorded a week before his death would be issued soon.

1.48pm: The news comes from Reuters, which quotes the Site monitoring service as saying: "Al-Qaida released a statement on jihadist forums on May 6, 2011, confirming the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden."

1.45pm: Hello and welcome to our continuing coverage of the aftermath of the US raid to kill Osama bin Laden. We begin our coverage today with the breaking news that al-Qaida has released a statement conceding that the terrorist organisation's leader is indeed dead.

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The recent publication of the EIA review of Shale Gas has caught the world’s attention, and led to the perception that the coming decades may well see natural gas become the dominant fuel. It suffers, however, a couple of disadvantages that, for some countries, make it not always the fuel of choice. India and Pakistan, have serious energy shortages as Tom Whipple recently pointed out.

In Pakistan the electricity is now turned off for 18-20 hours some days in many cities and 20 hours in rural villages. The onset of summer temperatures, shortages of fuel oil for thermal generation and falling water levels have increased the power shortfall to record levels. Without electricity to run the pumps urban water supplies quickly shut down. Without power to run the mills, exports are falling, leaving the country without money to import oil. In short we are seeing a classical downward spiral.
At the same time, in India, the domestic natural gas supply is falling, requiring increased, and more expensive imports that can only be achieved using LNG resources.

There have been discussions for years over the possibility of running gas pipelines from Turkmenistan and Iran down through Pakistan and into India to provide the natural gas needed to help. The TAPI pipeline from Turkmenistan is currently at a stage where it may be moving forward. Pakistan is ready to commit to purchasing gas by this July, but . . .

In the four nations’ ministerial meeting last week, both India and Pakistan had agreed to the broader aspects of the gas sales and purchase agreement (GSPA), but crucial things like the price of gas and transit fee are yet to be decided.

At present the Turkmen are expected to demand at least $7 to $7.50 per kcf, which is the price that they are getting from China. And transit fees to get the gas through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India will be added to that. (In context that is about the same price as LNG when it is currently delivered in India, and above the $4.94 to $6.42 price of domestically produced gas).

The current hope is that the pipeline will be started in 2013, with full flow to all three countries by 2016. The pipeline will have to run a thousand miles before it reaches India. And this highlights one of the problems with natural gas. It is harder to deliver than other fuels.

Oil can be put on rail cars, or tankers, as well as being piped, as can coal (though there are very few places that use pipelines to move coal). But natural gas either requires a direct pipeline, or it has to be condensed to liquid form for shipment. When large volumes are involved turning the NG into LNG requires construction of both a condensing plant at the supply end and a re-gasification unit at the customer end. Both require time to build. And one the gas is regenerated, the customer has only a limited capacity for storage, and depends on the flow coming through the delivery pipe to keep power being generated.

Coal at the other extreme used (in my youth) to be delivered to our house from the back of a horse-drawn cart. It was dumped in the street, and we shoveled it into the “coal bin” out of which we then hauled it, a bucket load at a time, into the house, and dumped it on the fire. Logistics were a lot simpler, and we kept at least a couple of weeks supply in reserve in the bin.

Times have changed somewhat, for although shovels may still dig out the coal, they now can load a hundred tons, rather than a few pounds. Rail cars can haul 120 tons apiece in unit trains of 100 cars, and power stations may use 10,000 tons of coal a day to generate 850 MW of baseload power. But the coal is often still dumped in heaps at the power station, to be used when needed. Stations will usually keep 60 to 90 days of supply on hand.

India is aware of these advantages, but has internal problems with developing enough domestic coal supplies for the power that it needs. Coal India has said that it can only deliver 100 million tons against the 330 million ton increase in demand that, over the next five years, that power stations now being built will need.

With domestic coal production floundering amid a sharp upsurge in power capacity addition, over 40,000 MW of new generation capacity could get stranded over years for want of fuel. This is close to 70 per cent of the power capacity slated to come up during the period, most of which is being set up by private developers.

With a current generation capacity of 173,626 MW, this threatens the generation of some 42,000 MW.

There is a catch with using imported coal to meet all the shortfall, because of the construction of the Indian boilers. They blend about 10% of the higher thermal content imported coal with domestic coal but there are technical problems with a higher concentration that limit how high it can be raised, as well as the additional cost factor. However new construction can be built to handle higher concentrations of imported coal, it just costs more – which is expected to be a problem in relatively poor parts of the country.

Seeing this as an opportunity, however, Adani Enterprises, an Indian coal company, has just bought the Abbot Point coal terminal in Australia, after buying coal properties in Queensland last year. Over the next five years they will bring the mines on line and be able to feed up to 50 million tons into the Indian subcontinent. It is not enough, in itself, to meet the shortfall, but it is evidence that firms in India are aware of the problem and are moving to find answers. They will do so, however, in the face of stiff competition from China. And this competition underlines the conclusions that I drew in an earlier post about the unrealistic projections of future coal use by folk such as Tad Patzek and Dave Rutledge.

Unfortunately also this does not solve the immediate problem that India faces with a current shortage of available fuel. Nor does it get Pakistan any closer to finding a short-term solution to power shortages in that country. There comes a certain point where, when warnings go unheeded, the consequences must be suffered, though sadly often not by those who weren’t paying enough attention.

By. Dave Summers

David (Dave) Summers is a Curators' Professor Emeritus of Mining Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology (he retired in 2010). He directed the Rock Mechanics and Explosives Research Center at MO S&T off and on from 1976 to 2008, leading research teams that developed new mining and extraction technologies, mainly developing the use of high-pressure waterjets into a broad range of industrial uses. While one of the founders of The Oil Drum, back in 2005, he now also writes separately at Bit Tooth Energy.

E Source /Boulder, CO

Description
The Director is responsible for managing all aspects of the Customer Experience service lines which are delivered to many of the largest US and International Electric and Gas Companies. The portfolio of customer experience products and services includes the E Source E Business service, Utility Communicators service and the Utility Customer Care service. The position reports to Executive VP of Sales & Member Services, and is responsible for delivering overall value to members and driving renewals. In addition, this position would require travel (at least 20%), public speaking at conferences and to utilities, supporting research, and responding to member inquiries.

Responsibilities included:
· P&L responsibility for the three customer experience subscription services and associated products.
· Manage customer relationships with senior utility executives in Customer Service and Communications.
· Provide thought leadship on the following topics: customer experience management, call center, IVRs, websites, online self-service, billing and payment, corporate communications, brand development and social media.
· Understand customer business drivers and translate then into service deliverables and research topics
· Develop and deliver workshops, and conference presentations.
· Account management of strategic accounts for E Source – managing all aspects of the account relationship especially ensuring customers receive value from their E Source memberships and renew their subscription services along with targeted growth.

Specific Practice Area Responsibilities
· Leads product/service group within the E Source Utility Member Services organization.
· Responsible for scoping and directing the research agenda for the customer experience portfolio.
· Provides thought leadership to members and E Source staff in customer experience.
· Contacts members to ensure customer satisfaction and for renewal purposes.
· Responds to member inquiries.
· Networks with industry subject matter experts to stay current on industry issues.
· Seeks out speaking engagements for industry conferences.
· Meets the gross margin and revenue targets for their practice area.
· Responsible for overseeing the quality of the content delivered in practice area.
· Serves as executive editor/content reviewer for their practice area and other services as required.
· Identifies and develops new product and service offerings within their service areas.
· Organizes and supports customer experience and E Source events incluing the E Source Forum, Council meetings, roundtables, webinars, and conferences.

Sales Responsibilities
· Assists sales team with prospect identification and closing sales.
· Leads annual renewal effort and account growth with existing clients.
· Develops and executes marketing plan with support of marketing department.


Staff Management Responsibilities
· Responsible for managing the hiring, professional development and direct management of staff.
· Conducts annual review for direct reports.

Minimum Requirements
· 10 to 15 years of energy industry experience including 5 years within a utility company
· At least an Masters degree and preferably a PhD in business or social science, or equivalent management experience
· Energy industry experience with:
o Customer service strategies
o Benchmarking studies
o Communication strategies
· Strong communication, presentation and writing skills
· Strong public speaking skills
· Strong interpersonal skills

To apply, fill out one of our online applications at www.esource.com/public/careers. E Source is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Apply To Job

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's BioWare is developing its first-ever MMORPG in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the publisher is betting big that the project will be a huge success. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says development alone cost an estimated $80 million, with marketing and distribution adding in another $20 million. The good news is it shouldn't take much to break even. 'We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers (this is exceedingly conservative, and the actual figure is probably closer to 350,000), meaning that with 1.5 million paying subscribers, EA will have 1 million profitable subs,' Pachter noted." They're now aiming for a release late this year, but acknowledged the possibility that it could slip to January 2012. If you're curious about the current state of the gameplay, Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (PvE, PvP) both posted write-ups of some recent hands-on time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Global power and automation technology group ABB has received a $20m contract from Vermont Electrical Power Company (VELCO) to upgrade a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission station in the US.

Advertise here with BSA

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at several questions from the same freelancer who is working with a tough employer. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.

I am a web developer (who sometimes gets lumped in as a web designer, as I can kind of fly front-ends) and I have been working for a very small (me + the owner) graphic design company. I have been having a number of issues with him, due probably to a combination of me being new to freelance contracting on a mid-to-long term basis (I have contracted on ad-hoc work before). I would also suggest the problem is due to his inexperience at moving away from design and becoming a project/business manager and having had little experience working with freelancers.

So, I have a few qualms, issues, and queries to share here, feel free to publish any you want, answer those of interest, and ignore the rest.

My employer thinks that he should be able to pay a freelancer the same rates as he would pay a full-time employee (albeit an underpaid full-time employee). I have discussed this with him on a number of occasions, pointing out that, as a freelancer, I have to cover additional taxes (above the standard income tax), my operating costs (equipment, internet, communications bills), my own leave pay (as I am not granted any paid leave under the contract), my own insurance, etc. But, he refuses to revise his rate to allow for these expenses. Are there any online resources I can direct him to which explain the differences in contractor versus employee pay?

My employer is a web design company, and he is constantly distracting me by asking me to switch between projects at the drop of a hat. He does not understand (as much as I try and tell him) that doing so means that I am losing productivity as it may take an hour or longer for me to delve back into the original project to the same depth as before the distraction and to get my mind back into the correct gear. Even worse, he insists on talking to me about feature requests and bug reports over the phone (whilst I am doing other work) or having me come into the office (I work remotely) rather than writing the details down so I can refer to them at a later stage. Have you any suggestions on how I can manage him better?

My employer never provides me with a written specification for any project. Yet, he demands that I provide him with a solid and definitive quote before we commence the work. He keeps telling me that quotes (as opposed to estimates) are the standard within the design business, and does not agree with my replies that I can only provide estimates based on the provided information, and that those estimates will need to be adjusted as more information comes to hand, or, in the case of remedial work, the extent of the damage/work required becomes apparent. Are fixed quotes standard within the web design industry? Is it normal for remedial work (recovering and/or rebuilding an existing website) to also be done under a fixed quote? What is the current industry stance on fixed quotes versus estimates?

My employer has, on occasion, advised me that he has no work for me on a specific day. The terms of my contract state that I have a guaranteed per day minimum pay, so would it be wrong of me to still charge him for a day which I did not work, but I had been prepared to work (especially as I had 1 hour’s notice that I was not needed)? On these days, it is also not uncommon for him to still send me a number of emails, or SMSes, expecting a reply that day. Should I charge him (at the minimum) for the time it took to reply to these requests, or should I have pushed back and told him that I would handle those inquiries on my next paid day? I worry that I am giving up too much of my own time (outside of hours, or on these down-days) for no extra pay, on a job where the pay rate is so low that I would almost be better working at McDonald’s.

As you can see, a pretty grim picture. I have struggled, and strained, and tried to reinforce to my employer that he is running a losing business, and is only doing so because he is not charging enough for the work we do, and, as such, is not paying either of us enough. He has been through a number of people working in my role in the past (I am not sure of their reasons for leaving, but I can guess), and I am one good offer and half-a-heartbeat away from following their path out the door (which, for a small company like this one, where he is not web-savvy, would basically mean shutting him down until he employed someone new to repeat the cycle).

Contractor Versus Employee Pay

You are absolutely correct in requesting a higher pay rate as a freelancer: remind him that he is not paying payroll taxes and at the very least, you should be getting that amount. To be perfectly honest, I would walk away from a client who can’t grasp that there are differences between an employee and an independent contractor. There’s not a specific resource that I would say is guaranteed to change this type of client’s mind, unfortunately. You might consider looking at this article on what to consider when setting your rates in order to make sure that you’re covering everything, though.

However, based on your description of your work situation, it sounds like you are effectively an employee, rather than a contractor — at least in terms of what the IRS will think. You may want to sit down with this guy and tell him that by making sure that you’re actually more of a freelancer — including paying you appropriately — will insure that he’s not hit with the penalties that go along with misclassifying an employee as a contractor.

Managing a Client Better

Having a sit down with your client and telling him about how you can work more effectively — possibly framing it in terms of how your approach can save him money in the long-term — is likely the only way to get him to change his behavior. There’s no guarantee that it will get the job done, either. You might also ask him why he prefers to work in such a manner and see if you can describe your concerns in a way that works with what he needs to get done. He may feel that his time is too valuable to write up full explanations of changes and the phone is faster, for instance.

Quotes and Estimates

Fixed quotes are not necessarily the norm in web design: there are many freelancers who do provide fixed quotes (usually because they work on very similar projects over and over again) as well as many freelancers who provide estimates and then go from there. There isn’t a universal industry standard in this case. Since recovering a website or rebuilding it is often a fairly straightforward task, though, it is more likely to see a standard rate for such a process — although, once again, it can vary.

Guaranteed Minimums

If your contract states that you get a guaranteed minimum, you should absolutely take your guaranteed minimum even if you aren’t working. And if he’s notified you that he doesn’t have work for you that day, answering multiple emails and other messages can likely wait, unless he’s willing to bump up your daily minimum to at least cover the time you’ll spend on those messages. If you were a full employee and you took a day off of work for any reason, few bosses would expect that you would spend an hour or two on the phone with them despite being out of the office.

The Overall Situation

As a freelancer, you can take a hard line and refuse to work on any terms other than your own. It may be worth issuing an ultimatum to this client that you expect to be treated as a full contractor, which means operating on your terms on issues like how to submit revisions. From your description, such an ultimatum may mean that you’re looking for a new client, but it may also get this client to actually listen to you.

You say that you’re making marginally more than you might make at McDonald’s, though, and going looking for a new client or working arrangement may be a very good idea at this point. When a situation is not working out, despite having tried to talk to the client, sometimes the only thing you can do is let that client go.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Yuri Arcurs.

TX-Dallas, Position SummaryThe incumbent in this position is a staff therapist who participates in the evaluation and treatment of patients based upon current principles and practices of PT. These functions are performed in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations and Children's Medical Center philosophy, policies, procedures and standards.Essential Duties and ResponsibilitiesProvide direct PT eva

TX-Dallas, Position SummaryThe incumbent in this position is a staff therapist who participates in the evaluation and treatment of patients based upon current principles and practices of OT. These functions are performed in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations and Children's Medical Center philosophy, policies, procedures and standards.Essential Duties and ResponsibilitiesProvide direct Occupa

Looking for a highly qualified lead technician
The position is full time (5-6 days a week) and you must be able to work Fridays and Saturdays.
We offer:
• Simple IRA (401K) with highest match possible by law (We double what you contribute).
• Up to 2 weeks Paid Vacation
• Medical & vision plans
• Flexible hours
Techs pay is based on hours billed with a minimum guarantee
Our current rate ranges from $18 (trainee) - $27 (Proven Master tech)

MUST have at least five years ON THE JOB experience
MUST have your own tools!
MUST be able to work QUICKLY, ACCURATELY and multi task.
Must be comfortable working on most types of cars.
Must know how to do: Alignments, Belts (Timing/serp.), Brakes (drum/disk), Diagnostic, Hoses, Shocks, Struts, Maintenance and Tires efficiently and accurately.
Current ASE's are a plus. If yours are not current we will pay you to get them current after you have been with us 1 quarter.


About us:
Sunland Tire Co. is located in Covina
We have been in business over 25 years
We are a full service automotive repair shop.
We are direct with Bridgestone, Firestone, Pirelli, Nexen and several other suppliers.
Please fax work history to Fax to 626-332-6366 Attn: Joseph
or Email the Craigslist email address.

• Location: Covina
• Compensation: Negotiable based on experience. Base garantee + commission on worked billed out
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

The Sony gaming fiasco strikes me as a combination of generic corporate hubris combined with the maddening Japanese bureaucratic tendency toward ostrich behavior and stonewalling when trouble appears. Perhaps Sony's arrogant, feckless response to a massive invasion of privacy will only serve gamers to remain in more secure clouds, away from Sony. In this case, don't blame the cloud, blame the idiots who “manage” it. So it does seem as if Cloud Computing will continue its current arc of progress when it comes to the gamers of the world. With this view, I recently had another chance to interview Les Thomas, Producer for the Cloud videogame "Sybil Danning's Ruger" (with an upcoming tie-in television movie shooting in Canada next year). He noted right off the bat that “no one takes the Cloud for granted anymore. It has been integrated into nearly every facet of computing. And Cloud Computing has roundly been touted as the replacement of traditional videogame hardware.” Me: Surely you jest. There are millions of fans of all the particular platforms, whether Xbox, Playstation, and the Wii. Les: While this is an overstatement in its denial of the psychology of the gamer and brand dedication, it is, by all analysis, an approaching reality. In fact, the most elite of videogame analysts, Michael Patcher, recently predicted that all gaming will be delivered via cloud by 2030.” Me: So Cloud will just take over some day... Les: Not precisely. I recently spoke with Michel Guillemot at CES 2011. He said Cloud gaming is the future of gaming, but that “it could not stand alone. It must be ancillary to a larger system.” Me: I see... Les: He was on hand to promote the exclusive deal between his Gameloft company’s Cloud gaming service in concert with Panasonic’s upcoming Viera Tablet and SmartTVs. Such devices are the means to an end in Cloud gaming for industry elites looking for the commercial payoff. Me: How does that work? Les: “Cloud consoles” like OnLive and Gaikai offer tremendous savings with on-par gaming experiences, often with the same games available on traditional consoles. These thin clients are my choice for the most viable business model because they play to the psychology of the gamer--console-, control-, and franchise-driven) and the need for experiences similar to their contemporaries. (Within this context), the most effective business models will be based on scaling--or tailoring--to the location of the server. Continent-specific servers and technical support could be an effective way for start-ups to integrate into the current staff of the Cloud gaming field. And because the market is emerging, with exponential growth for decades to come; new service companies should begin their wares now, so that servers are not only consolidated in usual tech sectors. Imagine a server in Africa providing the gaming needs of the continent, for example. Me: Not all continents are equal in their capacity to deliver through the cloud, though. Les: Sure. So in countries with less sophisticated means of connecting to the cloud, such as a DSL connection of 1.5 mbps for use with a standard-definition television, the processor and the Internet connection would be scaled according to their set up, so as to provide the highest quality game experience based on their hardware. Thin clients or “Cloud consoles” that exist could be modified for cost, or the delivery could be drastically scaled back in cost, so that as better connections become available, new hardware per se would not be needed. Me: What's the final picture going to look like then? Les: Whether consolidating and virtualizing servers or full-on Cloud services will win out, in the short term transition as the market tips the scales is unclear. Efficiency is met by either means. So a lot will depend on where the revenue is sought, whether it's local or outsourced. But consolidation, especially in the short term, offers the obvious benefit of improved hardware, software and bandwidth availability with less effort. This is important in the browser and stand-alone online gaming field. Still, I believe Cloud will rule the day. “Cloud consoles” are highly technical, efficient machines, and this overshadows the benefits of consolidation, because that is essentially what they do best. These models can co-exist in the next two, and perhaps last two, lifecycles of traditional consoles. They will promote play for the hardened PC player and videogame enthusiast from poorer nations and those who look gleefully to the cloud, realizing that if you have the right “Cloud console,” you’re doing what the other guys are. You're playing current-generation games at a drastically reduced price.

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At 12.15pm last Monday afternoon, I turned on ABC News24 and was told that Barack Obama was due to appear on television at 12.30pm.  There was no information on what he intended talking about. Since this was 10.30pm on a Sunday night in Washington, you didn't need to be particularly bright to work out that something was up. 

Obviously there was an announcement that couldn't wait.  Without really thinking about it, I assumed it was related to Afghanistan or Iraq. 

I had work to do and didn't get back to the television until 12.35pm.  Obama had not yet appeared.  I opened up my Twitter client, TweetDeck, and discovered reports that Osama bin Laden was dead. By about 12.50pm, multiple media outlets were claiming they had confirmed these reports. 

Many of these claims were tweeted.  Some tweets contained a link to a website report. Between 12.30pm and 1.35pm when Obama finally appeared (at 11.35pm Washington time) most television stations and every cable network were all over the story.  Twitter was heaving.

A number of people retweeted Keith Urbahn, chief of staff to Donald Rumsfeld.  Urbahn is now seen as the man who first published the news about bin Laden. 

He has since pointed out that his source was a "network TV news producer".

During this time, I also became aware of a Twitter user @ReallyVirtual, who had unwittingly tweeted about the assault on bin Laden's compound as it happened. 

Many hours later, I looked at his account, read the tweets, and laughed at his dry humour.

By the time Obama appeared, I had read a number of articles on various US media websites, mainly CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times. 

The Times site was hard to reach, such was the traffic.  Most of these articles had little to say, apart from claiming that various sources were anonymously confirming the death of bin Laden.  Some ran profile pieces and timelines from 9/11.

Obama's appearance was far from an anti-climax because no details were available on what had taken place in Pakistan.  Until Obama spoke, no-one even knew the killing of bin Laden took place in Pakistan.  The short address confirmed what had been swirling on the internet and on television, and provided some brief details of what had occurred.  Many questions were left unanswered.

For the next couple of hours I relied on television and so-called mainstream media outlets for information and analysis.  There was much to read on media websites.  The people and organisations I choose to follow on Twitter provided links to articles of interest.

Television showed scenes of rapturous crowds outside the White House and at other places around the United States.  These pictures were punctuated by an army of commentators confidently pontificating on the significance of the occasion.

By late afternoon, Australian time, there was little new information to be had.  Aside from the people celebrating in the streets, the United States was fast asleep. I was out and about, so I turned to the car radio.  As always, you can rely on ABC radio's PM program for solid reporting, context and sensible analysis.  I think I learned more of value in those 40 minutes from 6.10pm than I had over the previous hours since 12.15pm. 

In fact, if I hadn't heard of bin Laden's death until 6pm, I would have been just as informed as any other average news consumer by 7pm.

Back home, I watched the evening news and 7.30.  The story continued to rest as we waited for the Americans to wake up.  As most Australians were going to bed on Monday night, new information emerged from briefings and interviews on American media outlets.

What's my point? 

Simply that I continue to marvel at the silly talk about Twitter and social media whenever a major event takes place. This was a "CNN moment", some said, on a par with that network's on-the-spot coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. This was another moment that showed the irrelevance of traditional media, some said.  "I get all my news from Twitter now," one enthusiast tweeted.

New media, social media, has outgunned traditional media, went the argument. Am I missing something? 

Yes, I learned about what had happened from Twitter.  I am a prolific user of Twitter.  I use it to monitor the news.   But Twitter is a tool, not a media outlet.  It's a platform.  Like Facebook and other social networking tools, it's a means of disseminating information.  It connects people.  And, yes, these days breaking news, some of it from non-journalists, tends to appear first on Twitter.

But so what? 

What did I really gain from just happening to be on Twitter in the hour before Obama appeared on television?  Very little.  If you're a news junkie, the buzz from watching an event unfold on your computer screen is quite absorbing and I happily admit I love these occasions.  But they don't amount to anything much.

Before going to bed on Monday night, I read a number of articles in the Australian newspapers and quite a lot from the American press, especially The New York Times.

Twelve hours after news of bin Laden's death leaked out, I was only just beginning to get my head around its significance and importance.  I'm still doing so, days after the event.

It's absurd to value the speed and immediacy of news over the completeness, complexity and understanding that only time, more information, reading and reflection can deliver.

It's absurd to value the instant judgements of journalists, pundits and assorted "experts" who appear in the media in the first minutes and hours after an event of significance.

Commonsense, let alone an appreciation of history, should tell us that we are a long way from comprehending the significance of the last couple of days. We certainly shouldn't get too excited about a tweet which delivered a piece of news before a television journalist did so.  These things may excite those whose livelihoods depend on the kudos of being first with the news but they don't have any practical effect on the rest of us.

It's far better to see the new platforms and technologies as complementary.  As this article by Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch says, Twitter doesn't supplant other media, it amplifies it.

Don't forget, much of the material being tweeted last Monday afternoon came from Twitter users watching television or reading online media sites. That's why the traditional media outlets have set about colonising Twitter and dominating it.  Promotion of mainstream media publications, websites and television stations is ubiquitous on Twitter these days. 

If you’re interested in news, politics and current affairs, they’re hard to avoid, particularly when a presenter or a journalist is encouraged or required to tweet on their employer’s dime.

Unless it’s one of those events where ordinary citizens can contribute original eye-witness material, such as people did during the recent spate of natural disasters, the cacophony of social media chatter is often just as meaningless and diversionary as the more glittering babble offered up by the mainstream media.

Any knowledge and understanding I have of what happened in Pakistan on Sunday is derived primarily from traditional journalism delivered by traditional media outlets.  Much of this material was fed to the media by the US government at a time of its choosing and in the form it chose.  It came to me via traditional media outlets, even if Twitter was used to direct me there.

It's still down to me to maintain my interest in the things I think matter.  It's down to me to read widely, to think and to learn.  It’s my job to remain sceptical and questioning.

Most of all, it's down to me to not get distracted by the gaudy baubles of the media, mainstream or social.

A version of this article first appeared on Malcolm Farnsworth’s website AustralianPolitics.com.

• Read all responses to this article

Anvartec has announced the release of version 1.1 of SOLight offering full support for Apple's iPad2. The user enjoys the advantage of the bigger display mainly when using the augmented reality Live-View on the new iPad2. SOLight shows in a simple and quick way the sun paths throughout year. SOLight is used whenever you want to know how long there is direct sunlight. SOLight calculates the exact sun paths for your current GPS location.

Barnes & Noble to Release New E-reader, According to Securities Filing, http://engt.co/mvGpIi eBooks: Almost 4 Million Editions from Open Library Now Include OCLC Numbers and Direct Access to WorldCat Bibliographic Records, http://bit.ly/lyOLXt CNET Sued over LimeWire, Blamed for "Internet Piracy Phenomenon," http://bit.ly/kKWJZP Q&A on Open Access with Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and [...]

After the Japan broadcast on Tokyo MX TV and the Asia broadcast on Animax Asia, Culture Japan is now available to the rest of za warudo on Crunchyloll.
For folks who are not beknowist, Culture Japan is a TV show that I direct and present on that introduces Japanese Pop Culture and the more traditional Japan. Filming Season 2 as we speak and will be on air on Tokyo MX TV and Animax Asia this October.

You can check out the Culture Japan Channel or jump to each episode below.

• Episode 1 - Shiori Mikami, Wonder Festival and Japanese Festivals
  The very first episode of Culture Japan, featuring Shiori Mikami as a guest in studio. This episode brings us to one of the biggest figure events in the world - the Summer Wonder Festival. We also take a look at how exactly figures are made in the Good Smile Company figure factory in China, and finally take a visit to a Japanese Festival.

• Episode 2 - Ninja Shenanigans in Edo Wonderland
  The lovely Shiori Mikami joins us once again as an in studio guest as we take look at Edo Wonderland in Nikko, where one can experience life just as it was in the Edo Period of Japan, as well as experience life as a ninja! We also take a look at otaku rooms from all over the world.

• Episode 3 - The Milky Holmes Girls
  This episode's guests are the wonderful Milky Holmes girls, who give us a look into the world of Milky Holmes and explain what it's like to be an anime voice actress. We'll also take a look at the festivities that went on at the Tokyo Game Show 2010.

• Episode 4 - Cultural Festival at Tokyo Metropolitan High School
  Asanon, the P.R Manager of Good Smile Company, joins us as a guest in this episode. We take a look at a Japanese cultural festival taking place at Tokyo Metropolitan Kokusai High School - there are loads of games to play, a ton of food to enjoy, and even some performances to watch!

• Episode 5 - Akihabara Tour
  In this episode we head out to Akihabara, the holy land of otaku. First we visit a 'clone factory', which prints out 3D clones. Next we head out to Hobby Station - a huge trading card store - where we take a look at what sort of goods they have on sale. We've also got coverage of the Volks store in there too.

• Episode 6 - Ita-G Festival
  In this episode we take part in the 2010 Ita-G Festival - an event filled with 'itasha', which are cars covered with cute anime characters - but there are also bicycles and even motorbikes that also look just as great! We even take a look at how these itasha are made, from start to finish. Afterwards we take a look at Japan's underground bicycle storage systems, and how they are improving space problems around Japan.

• Episode 7 - Fujisawa High School
  In this episode we visit Fujisawa High School and take a look at everything that goes on during a typical Japanese school day - from the various classes, break time, cleaning up the classroom and even afterschool activities, it's just like spending a day at a Japanese school for the day! Afterwards we take a look at a Japanese shopping street, where you can find all sorts of goodies, from food to 100 yen stores.

• Episode 8 - Japanese Archery and Pachinko
  In this episode we visit Yashio High School where we take a close look at 'Kyudo', or Japanese archery. We then head to the headquarters of Sammy, a company who create pachinko machines and are also the creators of the popular Twin Angel anime series. After learning a little about pachinko we then head out to a real pachinko parlor with the adorable Sammy girls and give it a go!

• Episode 9 - AFAX Special
  This week we visit Singapore and take a look at the 2010 Anime Festival Asia, which featured a number of famous Japanese music artists and voice actors, figures, cosplay competitions, trading card competitions and much more!

• Episode 10 - Shibuya Tour
  In this episode we are joined by the beautiful Eri Otoguro as we take a look all over Shibuya. We have a look at all sorts of places you can do some shopping - from the famous '109' building which is filled with all the most current fashions down to the popular otaku store 'Mandarake'. We even take at some of the wonders you can find in the Shibuya electronic stores.

• Episode 11 - Anime & Manga
  In this episode we make a visit to Production I.G. where we take a look at how anime is made - from the frame drawing to the coloring. We then visit Yuko Azami-sensei, an illustrator responsible for creating Danny's mascot character Mirai-chan! Finally we pay a visit to 'Web Technology', who are the developers of the software 'Comipo', which helps anyone make manga quickly and easily!

• Episode 12 - Food Samples, Dolls and Ryokan
  In this episode we take a look at how the various food samples displayed all over Japan are made. After that we head down to the headquarters of Obitsu, a company responsible for making absolutely lovely dolls, and they take us through the process used to make dolls. Finally we also head to a traditional Japanese inn or 'ryokan', where we take a look at how one should spend their day when staying in one of these traditional rooms.

Episode 13 + 14 will be uploaded at a later date. The first 6 or 7 episodes have my profile at the beginning which become tedious after a while but my producer insisted that we put them in for the Japanese audience - will make sure they are not there for the second season!
Each show runs ads at the beginning which I cant do anything about - I've turned them off for my YouTube channel but Crunchy does need to make a wee bit O cash to run the service so hope this is fine with you.

Trailer for the first season below.

And a 1 hour digest below which includes some of episode 14.

Behind the scenes Culture Japan photos posts below.

DC-Washington, Large DC based Law firm seeks a Network Operations Manager for full time direct hire/permanent placement.Experience working with a law firm is a plus.Day to day responsibilities includecollaborating with the CIODiscover, diagnose and resolve all network issuesCreate a term plan for meeting short and long term needs of the firm for current and future requirementsDesign the network architecture capa

Congress is up in arms over the Pakistan government's possible involvement in the sheltering of Osama bin Laden, and lawmakers are readying a long list of ways to place pressure on Pakistan until it gets answers.

Most of the sticks being contemplated on Capitol Hill involve the cutting of foreign aid. And while there likely will not be one overarching bill to cut off all aid to Pakistan, lawmakers and staffs are finalizing plans to reduce or restrict assistance. And unfortunately for Pakistan, this debate will take place within the larger context of a budget debate that includes an emphasis on cutting foreign aid.

The issue of how to deal with Pakistan divides both parties and both chambers. Traditional conservative/liberal distinctions do not apply, and lawmakers are bringing their long-held skepticism of Pakistani aid into the debate. In each party, there are roughly two camps -- those who want to withhold or at least reduce aid now, and those who want to wait to see if information is forthcoming that Pakistani officials were actually involved in supporting bin Laden's efforts to evade capture.

In the Senate, two top Democrats who control the writing of key legislation that allocates Pakistani aid have been particularly critical: Senate Armed Services chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Senate Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT). They are joined by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA), who issued a blistering statement on Thursday criticizing the administration's handling of the military assistance to Pakistan.

"Under the current legislative scheme, I don't think our military assistance is serving the interests we are intending it to serve," Berman said in a Thursday interview with The Cable. "What I'm asking the administration to do is focus on getting Pakistan to change its approach and go after extremist groups. If they're not successful, we should reconsider giving this money."

Berman was critical of the administration's decision to certify that Pakistan "demonstrated a sustained commitment towards combating terrorism," a requirement under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill passed last year, which is worth $7.5 billion over five years.

He also argued that a huge fund to reimburse Pakistan for counterterrorism operations, known as the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF), has not been effective. That fund was transferred to the State Department last year, but the administration decided to give it back to the Pentagon in the fiscal 2011 budget deal, in order to trim State's overall budget number.

That places it back under the jurisdiction of Levin's committee, which is starting work on its fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill now. And PCCF is one of many ways that lawmakers are preparing to use aid funding as leverage over Pakistan.

"There are plenty of ways to hold the funds up. There needs to be a real form of tough love," said one senior Democratic aide said. "We're not trying to hamstring the administration, we're trying to give them leverage with the Pakistanis."

Berman's focus on the military aid is shared by other top Democrats, including Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), who sits on both the defense and foreign ops appropriations subcommittees.

"We should cut off the military aid but not the economic development aid," Moran told The Cable Thursday. "We should insist the aid be used for education and economic development, but not for subsidizing the military presence on the border with India, which is what its being used for now."

Leahy is among those who never believed that the economic aid to Pakistan was being spent in an effective way, or with proper planning and oversight. His staff crafts the Senate's funding bill for Pakistani aid, but that bill won't surface for months, because all appropriations bills are on hold due to the ongoing budget debate.

The fiscal 2011 foreign aid allocations still have not been finalized, giving appropriators another avenue to trim the money going from U.S. taxpayers to Pakistan. The budget deal struck to keep the government running last month set overall allocations, but didn't get into the details of how the aid would be disbursed.

"We have to work with a smaller number overall for foreign aid, so that invariably will affect amounts for Pakistan," said one Senate appropriations staffer.

Several congressional aides told The Cable that other options include slowing the transfer of Kerry-Lugar money to Pakistani coffers, enforcing other provisions in the law that require the administration to consider Pakistan's progress on issues like corruption and human rights, or adding new legislative conditions on Pakistan aid.

There is already one bill in Congress, sponsored by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), that would require all aid be frozen until the Pakistani government proves it was not complicit in hiding bin Laden. But that bill is not likely to see the light of day on the House floor and several aides said it didn't make sense.

"How do you prove a negative? It's just ridiculous," one Republican House aide said.

But there are other ways to condition aid short of making Pakistan prove its innocence. Congress could require the administration to certify that Pakistan is cooperating with the bin Laden investigation. Or Congress could add conditions that have nothing to do with bin Laden, such as requiring Pakistan to raise its famously low tax rate for the rich before the United States provides any more direct budget support.

On the other side of the debate, an uneasy alliance of senior national security-focused lawmakers are stressing the importance of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and warning that abandoning Pakistan could have dangerous long term effects, as it did after the U.S. cut off aid in 1990.

That group includes Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA), Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ), and Senate Appropriations State and Foreign Ops ranking Republican Lindsey Graham (R-SC). On the House side, both heads of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee, Kay Granger (R-TX) and Nita Lowey (D-NY), are urging a go-slow approach, although Granger has said she wants to examine cash payments to the Pakistani civilian government, known as "direct budget support."

Even House Foreign Affairs chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) -- who has pledged to cut aid to countries not cooperating with the United States -- is urging caution.

"They are an important partner. We would be jeopardizing our security if we cut off aid," Ros-Lehtinen told the Washington Post.

As more information in the bin Laden back story emerges and lawmakers get their ducks in a row, what's certain is that each and every aspect of aid to Pakistan is going to be scrutinized carefully.

"This is a delicate and balanced assessment that we have to carry out," said a senior GOP House aide. "There are enormous pressures on Congress to do something and everyone is in agreement that the relationship has to be assessed. The difficulty is finding what levers are most effective."

What is likely to happen in the end? If the Obama administration argues aggressively that the money is needed on national security grounds, they are likely to get their way.

"If the president, Gates, Clinton, and Panetta all stand up publicly and say we really need the aid, they'll probably get the aid," said one GOP senate staffer. "The Pakistani accounts may get a haircut, but they won't go down to zero."

Incremental improvements to agriculture have been which have included adoption of two-year crop rotations, precision agriculture technologies, classically bred and genetically engineered crops, and reduced- or no-tillage management systems.

US David researchers are recommending innovative agricultural systems such as organic farming, grass-fed and other alternative livestock production systems, mixed crop and livestock systems, and perennial grains. And it would require significant changes in market structures, policy incentives and public funding for agricultural science, according to the report.

Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century (570 pages)

Modern American agriculture has had an impressive history of increasing productivity that has resulted in affordable food, feed, fiber, and more recently, biofuel crops for domestic purposes and agricultural exports. Although the U.S. domestic and international markets are much larger than they were in the 1900s, farmers of the 21st century produce enough agricultural products to meet the current demands of both markets on the same acreage as a century ago. In addition, the average percentage of disposable income spent by U.S. consumers on food has declined from about 21 percent in 1950 to 9.4 percent in 2004.

Although small and medium-sized farms represent more than 90 percent of total farm numbers and manage about half of U.S. farmland and other farm assets, U.S. agriculture has become increasingly dependent on large-scale, high-input farms that specialize in a few crops and concentrated animal production practices for most U.S farm products. In 2007, the largest 2 percent of U.S. farms were responsible for 59 percent of total farm sales. Large farms have rapidly increased their share of total U.S. farm production value, while midsized commercial family farms that are important to rural community social and economic life are declining in number and importance. These trends can be partly attributed to technical innovations, economies of scale, and the increasing consolidation of food processing, distribution, and retailing sectors.

Many modern agricultural practices have unintended negative consequences, or externalized costs of production, that are mostly unaccounted for in agricultural productivity measurements or by farm enterprise budgets. Loss of water quality through nitrogen and phosphorus loadings in rivers, streams, and ground water contributes to dramatic shifts in aquatic ecosystems and hypoxic zones. Agricultural pesticides can contaminate streams, ground water, and wells. Excessive use of certain pesticides could be harmful to agricultural workers and might pose food safety risks. The nutrient density of 43 garden crops (mostly vegetables) has been shown to have declined between 1950 and 1999 in the United States, suggesting possible tradeoffs between yield and nutrient content. Agriculture contributes to total greenhouse-gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) from synthetic agrichemical production, nitrous oxide (N2O) from soil management activities, and methane (CH4) from enteric fermentation. Some modern agricultural practices adversely affect soil quality by affecting soil physical, chemical, and biological factors through erosion, compaction, acidification, and salinization. They also reduce biological activity as a result of pesticide applications, excessive fertilization, and loss of organic matter. Industrial confinement of livestock systems is associated with the decline in a number of minor breeds and the accelerated development of genetically similar hogs, poultry, and beef and dairy cattle. Concerns have been raised about the welfare of animals that are kept in large-scale confinement operations. Although on-farm productivity has been increasing, the aggregate value of net farm income received by farmers has not changed dramatically over the last 40 years, primarily due to rising prices of external inputs, including cost of hybrid and genetically engineered (GE) seeds, fuel, and synthetic fertilizers. More than half of U.S. farm operators work off-farm to supplement their income and to obtain health care and retirement benefit plans. The profitability of many U.S. farms, especially large grain producers, is partly determined by federal government commodity support programs.

Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainability has been described as the ability to provide for core societal needs in a way that can be readily continued into the indefinite future without significant negative effects. Accordingly, measuring progress toward sustainability will be inherently subjective if different groups in society have different goals and objectives for agriculture. Even with broad agreement for certain goals, the relative importance assigned to one goal over another will be highly contested. Developing a widely accepted vision of what agricultural sustainability should be is beyond the scope of this report. However, four generally agreed-upon goals help define a sustainable agriculture:

Satisfy human food, feed, and fiber needs, and contribute to biofuel needs.

Enhance environmental quality and the resource base.

Sustain the economic viability of agriculture.

Enhance the quality of life for farmers, farm workers, and society as a whole.

The committee concluded that if U.S. agricultural production is to meet the challenge of maintaining long-term adequacy of food, fiber, feed, and biofuels under scarce or declining resources and under challenges posed by climate change and to minimize negative outcomes, agricultural production will have to substantially accelerate progress toward the four sustainability goals. Such acceleration needs to be undergirded by research and policy evolution that are designed to reduce tradeoffs and enhance synergies between the four goals and to manage risks and uncertainties associated with their pursuit.
Measuring Progress Toward Sustainability

Sustainability is best evaluated not as a particular end state, but rather as a process that moves farming systems along a trajectory toward greater sustainability on each of the four goals. For this report, the committee’s definition of sustainable agriculture does not make a sharp dichotomy between conventional and sustainable farming systems, not only because farming enterprises reflect many combinations of farming practices, organization forms, and management strategies, but also because most types of farming systems can potentially contribute to achieving various sustainability goals and objectives. Pursuit of sustainability is not a matter of defining sustainable or unsustainable agriculture, but rather of assessing whether choices of farming practices and farming systems would lead to a more or less sustainable system as measured by the four goals.

Finding ways to measure progress along a sustainability trajectory is an important part of the experimentation and adaptive management process.

If U.S. agriculture is to address the challenges both incremental and transformative changes will be necessary. Therefore, the committee proposes two parallel and overlapping efforts to ensure continuous improvement in the sustainability performance of U.S. agriculture: incremental and transformative. The incremental approach is an expansion and enhancement of many ongoing efforts that would be directed toward improving the sustainability performance of all farms, irrespective of size or farming systems type, through development and implementation of specific sustainability-focused practices, many of which are the focus of ongoing research and with varying levels of adoption. The transformative approach aims for major improvement in sustainability performance by approaching 21st century agriculture from a systems perspective that considers a multiplicity of interacting factors. The transformative approach would involve:

Developing collaborative efforts between disciplinary experts and civil society to construct a collective and integrated vision for a future of U.S. agriculture that balances and enhances the four sustainability goals.

Encouraging and accelerating the development of new markets and legal frameworks that embody and pursue the collective vision of the sustainable future of U.S. agriculture.

Pursuing research and extension that integrate multiple disciplines relevant to all four goals of agricultural sustainability.

Identifying and researching the potential of new forms of production systems that represent a dramatic departure from (rather than incremental improvement of) the dominant systems of present-day American agriculture.

Identifying and researching system characteristics that increase resilience and adaptability in the face of changing conditions.

Adjusting the mix of farming system types and the practices used in them at the landscape level to address major regional problems such as water overdraft and environmental contamination.

Soil and plant tissue tests, nutrient management plans, and precision agriculture technologies help farmers increase productivity, input-use efficiency, and economic returns, by reducing unnecessary use of agricultural fertilizers, pesticides, or water. Experimental and long-term field studies suggest that the impacts and economic benefits of those practices and tools can be variable across time and space.

Manure, compost, and green manure, as often used in organic systems, can reduce the need for synthetic fertilizer and hence reduce the energy used for fertilizer production. Many farms featured as case studies in this report make successful use of on-farm inputs for soil fertility (for example, animal and green manure), which insulates them from fluctuations in costs of synthetic fertilizer. Published studies, however, show variable results as to whether systems using commercial fertilizers or systems using cover crop-based or animal manure-based nutrient management have higher profits. Those studies often do not include environmental costs and benefits. Because the release of nutrients from manure, compost, and green manure depends on various factors, including temperature, soil properties, and microbial activities in soil, their application has to be timed appropriately to maximize nutrient uptake by plants, and hence productivity and net economic return.

Integrated pest management (IPM) research has identified promising options for improving soil suppressiveness and inducing crop resistance to some diseases and pests in addition to classical biological and ecological pest management. The need to study weeds, diseases, pests, and crops as an interacting complex has been recognized. Adoption of IPM has been reasonable on some crops, but overall IPM use is lagging despite its potential for reducing chemical use.

Livestock genetic improvement can contribute to improving sustainability by increasing feed-use efficiency and by selecting traits to improve animal health and welfare. Improvements in feed conversion through genetics, nutrition, and management have reduced manure and nutrient excretion per unit animal product produced and reduced land required for production.

Business and Marketing Strategies

Diversification of farm enterprises can provide multiple income streams for farming operations. Producing a range of farm crops and animal products can enhance the stability and resilience of farm businesses and can decrease the volatility of farm income. Studies that document the economic effects of modern strategies for enterprise diversification are sparse.

In addition to using production strategies that reduce costs, farmers can increase their farm-level income by increasing the value of their products through sales to niche markets (such as organic or health-food markets) or by selling their products directly to consumers (direct sales) to obtain a larger proportion of the consumers’ dollar spent on the product and to gain control over the prices they get for their products.

Practices for Improving Community Well-being

Diverse farm systems, diversified landscapes (for example, inclusion of non-crop vegetation), and farming practices that improve water and air quality can contribute to community and social well-being. Some direct marketing strategies, such as direct sales at farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture, farm-to-school programs, and agritourism, connect farmers to the community and can contribute to community economic security, but lack underpinning research and extension.


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An optical antenna-diode for photodetection. (A) Band diagram for plasmonically driven internal photoemission over a nanoantenna-semiconductor Schottky barrier (ϕB). (B) Representation of a single Au resonant antenna on an n-type silicon substrate. (C) Scanning electron micrograph of a representative device array prior to ITO coating, imaged at a 65° tilt angle

Science - Photodetection with Active Optical Antennas

Nanoantennas are key optical components for light harvesting; photodiodes convert light into a current of electrons for photodetection. We show that these two distinct, independent functions can be combined into the same structure. Photons coupled into a metallic nanoantenna excite resonant plasmons, which decay into energetic, “hot” electrons injected over a potential barrier at the nanoantenna-semiconductor interface, resulting in a photocurrent. This dual-function structure is a highly compact, wavelength-resonant, and polarization-specific light detector, with a spectral response extending to energies well below the semiconductor band edge.

Basic scientific curiosity paid off in unexpected ways when Rice University researchers investigating the fundamental physics of nanomaterials discovered a new technology that could dramatically improve solar energy panels.

Full article

"We're merging the optics of nanoscale antennas with the electronics of semiconductors," said lead researcher Naomi Halas, Rice's Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. "There's no practical way to directly detect infrared light with silicon, but we've shown that it is possible if you marry the semiconductor to a nanoantenna. We expect this technique will be used in new scientific instruments for infrared-light detection and for higher-efficiency solar cells."

More than a third of the solar energy on Earth arrives in the form of infrared light. But silicon -- the material that's used to convert sunlight into electricity in the vast majority of today's solar panels -- cannot capture infrared light's energy. Every semiconductor, including silicon, has a "bandgap" where light below a certain frequency passes directly through the material and is unable to generate an electrical current. By attaching a metal nanoantenna to the silicon, where the tiny antenna is specially tuned to interact with infrared light, the Rice team showed they could extend the frequency range for electricity generation into the infrared. When infrared light hits the antenna, it creates a "plasmon," a wave of energy that sloshes through the antenna's ocean of free electrons. The study of plasmons is one of Halas' specialties, and the new paper resulted from basic research into the physics of plasmons that began in her lab years ago.

It has been known that plasmons decay and give up their energy in two ways; they either emit a photon of light or they convert the light energy into heat. The heating process begins when the plasmon transfers its energy to a single electron -- a 'hot' electron. Rice graduate student Mark Knight, lead author on the paper, together with Rice theoretical physicist Peter Nordlander, his graduate student Heidar Sobhani, and Halas set out to design an experiment to directly detect the hot electrons resulting from plasmon decay.

Patterning a metallic nanoantenna directly onto a semiconductor to create a "Schottky barrier," Knight showed that the infrared light striking the antenna would result in a hot electron that could jump the barrier, which creates an electrical current. This works for infrared light at frequencies that would otherwise pass directly through the device.

"The nanoantenna-diodes we created to detect plasmon-generated hot electrons are already pretty good at harvesting infrared light and turning it directly into electricity," Knight said. "We are eager to see whether this expansion of light-harvesting to infrared frequencies will directly result in higher-efficiency solar cells."

Although the devices presented here enable us to investigate hot electron generation by plasmonic antennas, further optimization can significantly increase their quantum efficiency (at present, 0.01% of photons absorbed by each nanoantenna are converted into photocurrent). The role of the titanium layer appears to be quite critical: Numerical simulations show that the 1-nm layer is responsible for producing nominally 33% of the hot electrons, which would increase to more than 50% for a 5-nm thickness. Further experimental studies have indicated that reducing extraneous Ti oxidation during the fabrication process, improving ohmic contacts, and increasing the conductivity of the uppermost ITO layer can collectively increase device efficiency by more than an order of magnitude. In addition, a reverse bias of 1 V increases the photocurrent by a factor of 20. Together, these improvements would boost the quantum yield to nearly 2% over the spectral range of the device. A thin dopant layer could also boost efficiency, increase responsivity, and expand the spectral response of the devices by reducing the Schottky barrier height. Applying antireflection coatings or multipass geometries will also further increase the quantum yield.

The range of potential applications of this device concept is extremely diverse. As a silicon-based detector capable of detecting sub–band gap photons, this device could find widespread use in on-chip silicon photonics, ultimately eliminating the need to integrate additional semiconductor materials as detectors into chip designs, which would lower fabrication costs. The photodetection mechanism is compatible with existing, above–band gap photodetectors, which when combined could greatly extend the spectral range of silicon light-harvesting devices, such as silicon-based solar cells, into the infrared region of the spectrum. The broad infrared sensitivity of these devices could enable low-cost silicon infrared imaging detectors that may replace costly InGaAs detectors in this same spectral range. Antenna-diodes also offer functional aspects of photodetection not previously realized. By exploiting nanoantennas as a direct light-harvesting and carrier generation element, both polarization- and wavelength-selective detectors can be realized without additional optical components. We believe this mechanism of photodetection may give rise to additional unforeseen applications in photosensing, energy harvesting, imaging, and light detection technologies.

Science - Hot Electrons Cross Boundaries

When light hits the surface of gold or silver, it can excite collective oscillations of the conduction electrons called surface plasmons. The sensitivity of surface plasmons to changes in the surface region forms the basis of analytical tools such as surface plasmon resonance detection, which can be used in lab-on-a-chip applications to detect biomolecules. The excitation of surface plasmons also underlies surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. The surface plasmon of silver and gold surfaces that are rough at a nanoscale greatly increases local electric fields and boosts the signal from adsorbed molecules. The wavelength that excites surface plasmons can also be tuned by creating nanoparticles of different sizes, and on page 702 of this issue, Knight et al. exploit this effect to create a detector for near-infrared light. They fabricated a device consisting of rod-like nanoantennas that harvest light and convert a portion of the resulting plasmonic energy into an electric current without the need for an applied bias voltage.


Plasmons to electricity.

(A) Light excites surface plasmons (depicted as regions of positive and negative charge, top and bottom) that can decay into charge carriers, electrons e− and holes h+. Plasmons in shorter nanorods are excited at shorter wavelengths. The nanorods were grown on a titanium (Ti) buffer layer, 1 nanometer thick, on n-type silicon. (B) An energy diagram showing how excited electrons created by plasmon decay encounter a Schottky barrier at the metal-silicon interface, which share a common Fermi energy EF. Highly energetic electrons are either directly injected into the conduction band of silicon above its band edge, EC, or tunnel through the barrier. The barrier is less than the band gap energy (the difference between EC and valence band edge, EV). Holes and electrons produce a measurable photocurrent collected at the indium tin oxide and indium electrodes. "CREDIT: P. HUEY/SCIENCE"

Plasmonic systems can be designed to cover much of the solar spectrum, so this approach suggests a photosensitization strategy, much like the one exploited by Grätzel in dye-sensitized photovoltaics, but avoiding the problem of easily photodegradable organics. Although Knight et al. report very low quantum efficiencies, there is no physical reason why efficiencies cannot be much larger and lead to applications in energy conversion and photodetection.

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Measurement geometry. In the three-terminal device measurement geometry, a current is applied to contacts 1 and 2, and a voltage is measured across contacts 2 and 3. Electrical spin injection produces spin accumulation in the transport channel under the magnetic contact 2 and a corresponding output voltage. When a magnetic field Bz is applied, the injected spins precess and dephase, and the spin accumulation decreases to zero. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Researchers in the Materials Science and Technology Division of the Naval Research Laboratory have recently demonstrated electrical injection, detection and precession of spin accumulation in silicon, the cornerstone material of modern device technology, at temperatures up to 225 degrees Celsius. These results provide the first demonstration that spin accumulation in Si is viable as a basis for practical devices which meet the operating temperatures specified for commercial (85°C), industrial (100°C) and military (125°C) applications. This is a key enabling step for developng devices which rely on electron spin rather than electron charge, an approach known as semiconductor spintronics that is expected to provide devices with higher performance, lower power consumption and less heat dissipation

Nature Communications - Electrical injection and detection of spin accumulation in silicon at 500 K with magnetic metal/silicon dioxide contacts

The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors has identified the electron's spin angular momentum as a new state variable that should be explored as an alternative to the electron's charge for use beyond the size scaling of Moore's Law. A major obstacle has been achieving control of the spin variable at temperatures required for practical applications. Here we demonstrate electrical injection, detection and precession of spin accumulation in silicon, the cornerstone material of device technology, at temperatures that easily exceed these requirements. We observe Hanle precession of electron spin accumulation in silicon for a wide range of bias, show that the magnitude of the Hanle signal agrees well with theory, and that the spin lifetime varies with silicon carrier density. These results confirm spin accumulation in the silicon transport channel to 500 K rather than trapping in localized interface states, and enable utilization of the spin variable in practical device applications.

Using ferromagnetic metal / silicon dioxide contacts on silicon, NRL scientists Connie Li, Olaf van 't Erve and Jonker electrically generate and detect spin accumulation and precession in the silicon transport channel at temperatures up to 225°C, and conclude that the spin information can be transported in the silicon over distances readily compatible with existing fabrication technology. They thus overcome a major obstacle in achieving control of the spin variable at temperatures required for practical applications in the most widely utilized semiconductor.

To make a semiconductor spintronic device, one needs contacts that can both generate a current of spin-polarized electrons (called a spin injector), and detect the spin polarization of the electrons (spin detector) in the semiconductor. Because the magnetic contact interface is likely to introduce additional scattering and spin relaxation mechanisms not present in the silicon bulk, the region of the semiconductor directly beneath the contact is expected to be a critical factor in the development of any future spin technology. The NRL scientists probe the spin environment directly under the magnetic metal / silicon dioxide contact using the three terminal geometry illustrated in the accompanying figure. Demonstration of spin precession and dephasing in a magnetic field transverse to the injected spin orientation, known as the Hanle effect, is conclusive evidence of spin accumulation, and enables a direct measure of the spin lifetime, a critical parameter for device operation. The NRL researchers observed Hanle precession of the electron spin accumulation in the silicon channel under the contact for biases corresponding to both spin injection and extraction, and determine the corresponding spin lifetimes.

Electronic states can form at the contact interface and introduce deleterious effects for both charge and spin transport. These undesirable states can serve as traps which prevent propagation of either charge or spin in the silicon channel. In bulk silicon, the spin lifetime is known to depend upon the carrier density, and generally decreases as the electron density increases.. "In this study we show that the spin lifetime determined from our measurements changes systematically as one changes carrier concentration of the particular silicon sample used," adds Jonker. "Our results were obtained for a number of different carrier densities and show this trend, thus making it very clear that we obtain spin injection and accumulation in the silicon itself rather than in interface defect states." The result of this research rules out spin accumulation in interface states and demonstrates spin injection, accumulation and precession in the silicon channel.

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Marking another milestone in its advance towards commercialization, Joule Unlimited, Inc. today announced the signing of a lease agreement providing access to 1,200 acres in Lea County, New Mexico, with the potential to scale the project up to 5,000 acres for production of renewable diesel and ethanol directly from sunlight and waste CO2. The agreement with Lea County is the first to be completed as part of Joule's production facility siting program

Unlike the energy-intensive, multi-step processes required to produce fuel from algae or other biomass sources, Joule's Helioculture™ platform produces infrastructure-ready diesel and ethanol directly and continuously from sunlight and waste CO2, with no dependence on arable land or fresh water. The diesel process yields long-chain alkanes, the majority component of diesel fuel, as opposed to a low-percentage blendstock like biodiesel. As a result it can immediately "drop in" to the existing diesel infrastructure with no need for refining or chemical processing.

Joule's production facilities will employ the next generation of the company's novel SolarConverter® system, which manages the direct, continuous process from photon capture to product synthesis and separation with efficiencies that are up to 50X greater than those of biomass-dependent processes. At full-scale production, Joule expects to deliver diesel and ethanol for as little as $20/bble and $0.60/gallon respectively, including current subsidies.

Peer-reviewed article addresses the advances made by Joule to achieve direct, continuous conversion of solar energy to renewable diesel at 15,000 gallons/acre/year.

• Based on empirical measurements, Joule can directly produce 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre annually, as compared to 3,000 gallons of biodiesel produced indirectly from algae.

• The solar-to-product conversion efficiency of Joule's direct, continuous process for producing diesel, ethanol and chemicals is between 5 and 50X greater than any biomass-dependent process, and gains additional efficiencies by avoiding downstream refining.

• Joule's combined advances in genome engineering, solar capture and bioprocessing result in photosynthetic conversion efficiency of more than 7% relative to available yearly solar energy striking the ground, many times greater than prior industry assumptions.



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From Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics

The Natural History of Acute Hepatitis C

Clinical Presentation, Laboratory Findings and Treatment Outcomes

Abstract and Introduction

Abstract

Background Acute hepatitis C has variable modes of presentation and frequently results in chronic infection. Its optimal management has yet to be defined.
Aim To establish natural history and complications of treatment of acute hepatitis C.
Methods Data from all patients presenting with acute hepatitis C to the National Institutes of Health between 1994 and 2007 were reviewed.
Results Twenty-five patients were identified. Symptoms were reported by 80% and jaundice by 40%. Aminotransferase levels and hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA levels fluctuated greatly; 18% of patients were intermittently negative for HCV RNA. Five patients recovered spontaneously whereas 20 developed chronicity or received interferon-based therapy during the acute phase. Among 15 patients treated during the acute phase with peginterferon with or without ribavirin for 24 weeks, all became HCV RNA negative within 4–8 weeks, and all except two (HIV-positive) achieved a sustained virological response. Side effects (particularly psychiatric) were common and limited treatment in 30%.
Conclusions Among 25 patients with acute HCV infection, fluctuating illness was common and spontaneous recovery occurred in only 20%. Anti-viral treatment with a 24-week course of peginterferon and ribavirin was highly effective, but marked by frequent and severe side effects.

Introduction
Acute hepatitis C has been a focus of natural history and immunological studies at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health during the last 15 years. Because of publications on the success of therapy of acute hepatitis C in 2001, subsequent patients were offered therapy during the acute phase of disease using the combination of peginterferon α-2a and ribavirin for 24 weeks. This study describes the clinical course of 25 patients with acute hepatitis, some relevant virological features and responses to anti-viral therapy

Methods
All patients underwent an initial history and physical examination and had a battery of blood tests including routine liver tests (ALT, AST, alkaline phosphatase, albumin, direct and total bilirubin and prothrombin time) as well as serological tests for acute hepatitis A (IgM anti-HAV) and hepatitis B (HBsAg and IgM anti-HBc). Patients were tested for HCV RNA by qualitative polymerase chain reaction (Cobas Amplicor, Version 2.0; Roche Diagnostics, Branchburg, NJ, USA; lower limits of detection of 100 IU/mL) and for anti-HCV using ELISA (Abbott, North Chicago, IL, USA). Selected samples were tested for HCV RNA levels using the Cobas Amplicor Hepatitis C Virus Monitor Test, Version 2.0 (Roche Diagnostics; lower limit of detection 600 IU/mL). HCV genotyping was performed by hybridisation (InnoLipa; Innogenetics, Ghent, Belgium). Other testing included complete blood counts, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, total immunoglobulin levels, a heterophile test, Rapid Plasma Reagin, routine urinalysis and abdominal ultrasound. Patients were then followed up in the outpatient clinic at 2- to 4-week intervals until either 6 months after treatment ended or having three negative tests for HCV RNA, and at 3- to 6-month intervals thereafter. On each occasion, symptoms of hepatitis were assessed using standardised questionnaires and visual analogue scales.
The time of documented or suspected exposure to HCV was used to calculate incubation period as well as time to seroconversion and recovery. In cases that patients did not recall the specific date of exposure, an approximation was made, based upon best recall.
Most patients (n = 20, 80%) were symptomatic and 10 patients (40%) were jaundiced. The most common symptoms were fatigue (68%), dark urine (60%), abdominal pain (60%), low-grade fever and chills (44%), loss of appetite (40%), itching (36%), muscle aches (36%), mood disturbances (32%), joint aches (24%), dyspepsia (16%) and diarrhoea, and confusion (8% each). The most common clinical sign was icterus, which was reported in 10 (40%) patients. Two patients developed acute liver failure marked by hepatic encephalopathy and ascites, but both recovered symptomatically and subsequently responded to anti-viral therapy with clearance of HCV RNA. Acne was reported by two patients and maculopapular skin rash by one. The average time from exposure to onset of signs or symptoms was 4 weeks (range: 2.5–8 weeks).
Laboratory testing showed ALT levels greater than 10 times the ULN in 17 patients (70%) and peak bilirubin levels above 2.5 mg/dL in 11 (44%). Prothrombin time elevations occurred in the two patients with encephalopathy and ascites. Anti-HCV seroconversion was documented in 20 patients (80%). The remaining five (20%) of the patients were anti-HCV positive at the time of presentation. The average time from exposure to seroconversion was 9 weeks (range: 6–12 weeks). All patients tested positive for HCV RNA. The mean peak HCV RNA level was 5.3 × 10⁶ copies/mL (range: <600 to 27.8 × 10⁶ copies/mL). During follow-up and while not on therapy, four of 22 patients (18%) who had frequent monitoring of HCV RNA levels were intermittently negative and 15 patients (68%) had >1 log (10-fold) fluctuation in viral levels. The calculated mean difference between the peak and nadir pre-treatment viral levels was 2.2 log₁₀ copies/mL (P < 0.01). Three patients had extreme fluctuations in viral levels with intermittent negativity (Figure 1). In most patients, fluctuations in viral levels were present only during the first 24 weeks after exposure, but these fluctuations continued beyond 24 weeks in at least one patient, and most others were started on treatment before 24 weeks.

Figure 1.

Fukushima is not Chernobyl, Prime Minister Naoto Kan insists. His government draws comfort from the fact that Fukushima emitted only a fraction of the radiation released at Chernobyl in 1986, that Chernobyl caused a number of deaths and thousands of cancers. In Chernobyl, the exploding reactor threw radioactive material high into the atmosphere, spreading it over a wide area of Western Europe. In Fukushima, apart from the radioactivity released to the sea, the contamination is concentrated within some 400 square kilometers around the plant. Fukushima caused no deaths, at least not so far.

Photo by liebeslakritze

 

However, in some ways Fukushima looks more worrying than Chernobyl, and more hopeless.

Portrait of a pressure group: the nuclear village

The disaster at Chernobyl was triggered by a botched experiment to improve the reactor’s safety in case of an emergency shut-down. The disaster at Fukushima was triggered by a natural catastrophe, a tsunami, but it was allowed to happen, because Tepco, the plant’s operator, and subsequent Japanese governments ignored ample warnings, an earthquake or a tsunami of this magnitude might knock out the emergency back-up systems.

Tepco systematically violated safety rules. In more than 200 instances between 1977 and 2002, the utility submitted false data to the authorities, as stated by a commission of the Japanese parliament, the Diet. The nation’s nuclear safety authorities and government were complicit in Tepco’s blunders.

The Soviet Union was a system in decay, even before Chernobyl. To outside observers, it was no surprise when things went wrong. Japan sees herself at the pinnacle of technology, a major exporter of nuclear power. Despite the fact Japan’s nuclear industry has suffered a substantial number of accidents before, the country did not have any contingency plans to deal with a nuclear accident as it happened in Fukushima. Six days into the catastrophe, Japan had no idea how to get the plant under control. In a desperate attempt, seawater was dumped from a helicopter to cool spent nuclear fuel. Despite warnings, Tepco failed to prevent hydrogen-explosions.

Photo with thanks to daveeza

 

Japan, a nation proud of her safety standards and disaster preparedness, was totally unprepared for an accident that had been predicted by experts. The nation of the industrial robot did not have a single machine to mitigate the crisis. Japan has not learned anything from Chernobyl.

On March, 11, Japan suffered one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history, followed by an enormous tsunami. The three nuclear power plants located on the coast hit by the tsunami withstood the tremor, but at Fukushima I the waves knocked out all cooling systems. Although it had been suggested to Tepco, there were no mobile cooling systems on stand-bye.

To make things worse, Tepco initially underestimated the developing crisis. Knowingly or not, the utility did not react with the urgency necessary. The Kan government trusted Tepco, and, according to Japanese press reports, rejected the first offers of foreign assistance, notably from the US to help cool the reactors. It might have been possible to prevent some or all of the four hydrogen-explosions that caused major damage to unit 1,2 and 4, blew off their roofs and splattered the plant with highly radioactive debris.

Photo with thanks to daveeza

 

Fukushima I was not designed to survive a tsunami, any surge of the seawater higher than 5.7 meters would have been fatal. However, the villages and fishing harbors nearby all had tsunami-barriers.

It has been estimated that the waves that hit the plant were about 14 meters high. In some areas further north, they reached 30 meters. Tepco, the Japanese nuclear watchdogs and government officials claim such a tsunami was beyond expectation. When driving along the devastated coast on a hilly road, however, one regularly crosses the line up to which the tsunami wrecked everything. Climbing on, a few meters above that line of destruction, one encounters a road sign, “End of Estimated Tsunami Inundation Area”. In some places, the water flooded these signs, but not by much, in many others, the tsunami did not reach as high as the sign. One can but conclude that Japan’s road bureau and the local authorities knew they had to expect a tsunami the heigth of March, 11, but not Tepco and the nuclear safety authorities.

As historic evidence shows, earthquakes of a similar magnitude struck this region in the years, 869, 1498, 1896 and 1933, causing tsunamis of a comparable strength. For the Jogan-earthquake in 869, Professor Koji Minoru of Tohoku University has shown with the help of sediments that in the Sendai area the tsunami reached 4 kilometers inland. The 1933 tsunami is still remembered by surviving witnesses, there are even historical film documents.

A few years ago, it had been discussed in a Diet commission if such historical evidence of major tsunamis should be taken into account for the safety guidelines for nuclear power plants. There cannot be any doubt that the government and Tepco were aware of the risk of a major earthquake and tsunami, but ignored them to cut costs. In 2006, the guidelines for the safety of nuclear power plants were revised, but their wording remained fuzzy, the threat of a tsunami is only mentioned at on the last two of some 140 pages. Before an earlier revision, Tepco had managed to postpone their implementation so that they would not be applicable for a unit then under construction.

The most detailed warning was made in 2008 by Kobe University’s Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi. In front of a Diet commission, he drew a scenario of an earthquake knocking out all cooling systems of a nuclear power plant. This would be followed by hydrogen explosions and a massive release of radioactivity into the atmosphere, said Ishibashi. That is exactly what happened at Fukushima I. Only, Ishibashi developed his scenario for the plant in Hamaoka, west of Tokyo. Hamaoka is considered to be the most dangerous nuclear power station in Japan. With certain winds, Ishibashi said, Tokyo might become uninhabitable. Despite his insistence, the majority of Diet commission saw no need to act.

The “atomic village”, as the collusion of the nuclear industry, the nuclear watchdogs and the government has come to be called, didn’t want to hear any of it. “If you were criticizing nuclear power, you were treated as an enemy of the state”, former governor of Fukushima prefecture Eisaku Sato says. He ruled the stricken prefecture from 1988 to 2006, when he was arrested for corruption – on doctored evidence, as he claims.

With a number of lawsuits, concerned citizens tried to force the operators of Japan’s nuclear power plants to improve on their security standards, notably in Fukushima. One of these lawsuits is aimed at shutting down Chubu Electric’s Hamaoka plant, the one Ishibashi developed his scenario for.

As a witness of the defense, Haruki Madarame, then a professor at the University of Tokyo, said in court: “There needs to be a line drawn somewhere. It would be impossible to design a nuclear plant if engineers had to consider every single possibility.” Last year, the same Madarame was elected to chair Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, the government’s highest body for the safety of nuclear power. Thus, the governments top expert for the safety of the nuclear plants is someone who in court said relative safety is good enough for nuclear power plants.

Japan has clearly accepted insufficient safety standards, and her nuclear authorities failed to to strictly enforce even those inadequate standards.

In Chernobyl, once the magnitude of the disaster had become obvious, the authorities acted with urgency. 36 hours after the explosion, within a period of 2 1/2 hours, they evacuated 49,000 people. In Japan, it took Prime Minister Naoto Kan more than 30 hours to declare a nuclear emergency. Only after four explosions and more than four days of disorientation, he subjected Tepco’s wanting crisis management to his direct control. It took Japan six days to effectively start cooling the reactors and the spent fuel.

For several weeks, the Japanese government refused to publish the results of SPPEDI, a computer program to determine its the effective contamination. The head of Japan’s weather service Hiroshi Niino feared, “this would cause a panic”, as he later said. When the data were finally out, the government failed to draw the obvious conclusion and adjust the zone of evacuation. Only a week after a recommendation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, it decided to do so. To this day, not all evacuation orders have been executed.

The earthquake and tsunami were natural disaster, the nuclear catastrophe could have been avoided. Tepco, Japan’s nuclear authorities and the government bear the responsibility for this calamity, particularly Japan’s previous governments. They allowed the “atomic village” to develop, a quagmire of corruption. The current government made things worse by reacting too slowly, and naively.

The clean, ignored alternatives

Japan has no alternative to nuclear energy, subsequent governments have been insisting for decades. Fact is, Japan has never seriously explored alternatives. Some Japanese companies produce world class generators for renewable power such as wind turbines and solar panels, but they sell them mostly abroad.

When the threat of CO2 to the planet’s climate materialized, Japan’s prime reaction was to redefine her nuclear program as “green”.

The main alternative to energy consumption is saving it. While Japan's industry achieves the highest efficiency in the world, the state, the service sector and the consumers are wasting electric power. Japan consumes about 15 percent more electricity per capita than Germany, a similarly industrialized country. Japanese houses, assembled from prefabricated parts, are hardly insulated at all. In winter, the Japanese are wasting electricity to keep warm, in summer, to keep them cool. In recent years, Tepco encouraged their customers to use more (nuclear) power, namely to switch from gas to electricity to increase the utility’s business.

The low quality of Japanese housing is often explained by high land prices. People who bought land do not have much money left for quality, they say. Japanese companies are manufacturing some of the best insulation windows worldwide, but almost exclusively for export.

The Japanese government justifies its prioritizing nuclear power because of its lack of oil. Japan’s substantial coal reserves are expensive to mine and in remote places. Some critics of Japan’s nuclear program stress further that, although Tokyo has no intention to acquire nuclear weapons, the possession of nuclear technology, especially its reprocessing facility, makes it a virtual member of the nuclear club.

Japan’s proponents of renewable energy believe the “atomic village” is deliberately obstructing hydro-, wind-, thermosolar-, photovoltaic- and geothermal energy.

Currently, about 2.5 percent of the worldwide electric energy is generated by wind-power, a number rapidly increasing. In Japan, a very windy country, the wind’s share is as low as 0.4 percent. To this day, the Japanese government has not adopted standards for wind power, as Eitaro Takayama of Mitsubishi Heavy, a producer of wind turbines, complained in Tokyo early this year.

Japanese companies such as Hitachi, Sharp and Sanyo were pioneering solar energy. In 1980, Japanese households had installed 2.8 million square meters of solar thermal panels. These are simple solar energy collectors used for heating water. By 2005, only a tenth of this capacity remained in place. Helped by the government, the utilities waged a price war against decentralized renewable power sources. They squeezed solar thermal energy generation out of the market. The Tokyo Institute for Sustainable Energy calls this a "political disaster".

In photovoltaic energy generation, solar panels that convert sunlight into electric power, Japan has lost its global leadership both in terms production and installation. In Europe, Japanese companies have been selling photovoltaic solar panels to retail customers for years, but not in Japan where feed-in-tariffs were abolished almost a decade ago (they were reintroduced recently).

Japan is a mountainous country. It has more than 3000 reservoirs, of which only a small fraction is used for hydroelectric power generation. The others were built for drinking water reserve and flood protection. An additional purpose of these dams was pork barrel politics, as is widely acknowledged today. The Liberal Democratic Party, LDP, that ruled Japan for 54 years, used to offer local construction companies large scale jobs. In turn, those companies secured the votes for the LDP to stay in power.

Many of these reservoirs could be used for small hydropower plants for local consumption. But Japanese bureaucrats favor grand solutions.

Japan has 108 active volcanoes, there are more than 10,000 so-called onsen, or hot springs. Geothermal Power is the most important untapped energy source in Japan. A geothermal power plant works just like an oil, coal, gas or nuclear power plant. It produces steam to drive turbines.

After the first oil crisis in 1973, geothermal power was proposed as the ideal solution for Japan, 19 stations were built. However, the government went for nuclear power. Geothermal stations would be located near hot springs, and thus tourist spots, it argued. Additionally, it said, geothermal is too expensive. The “atomic village” killed this clean source of energy.

According to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), a kilowatt hour (Kwh) of nuclear generated electricity costs about 5 US-cents, geothermal power is estimated at 11 US-cents. However, the price given by METI does not include the disposal of nuclear waste, and neither the cost of the clean up of Fukushima I, currently estimated at some 300 billion US-Dollars.

According to Tetsunari Iida of the Tokyo Institute for Sustainable Energy, METI refuses to release its basis for determining the price of nuclear power at some 5 cents per kwh. He therefore calls this price fiction.

Professor Hiroaki Niitsuma of Tohoku University, blamed the state for this clean energy’s demise. Keiji Miyazaki, Professor emeritus of Osaka University, a staunch supporter of nuclear power even after Fukushima, claimed recently that geothermal power plants smell bad. Fortunately for those poor people in Fukushima, radiation doesn’t smell.

The politics of nuclear absolutism

According to her constitution, Japan is a democracy. Eisako Sato, the aforementioned ex-governor of Fukushima prefecture, says, when it comes to nuclear power, “Japan is almost a fascist state.” Japan:s doctrine has been, “nuclear power is absolutely necessary for Japan, so it is absolutely safe”, he says. Because it is so important for the nation, Sato goes on, many officials thought it legitimate to cover up accidents and flaws. He calls that “Japan:s nuclear absolutism.”

Originally accepting nuclear power as a necessity, Sato became a critic after whistle-blowers revealed to him how much Tepco was violating safety rules and falsifying protocols. As a consequence, he withdrew his approval for Tepco to use MOX in Fukushima I, a dangerous mix of uranium-plutonium. After that, the prosecution office started to investigate him for corruption.

Behind the governor’s back, Tokyo sent a flock of nuclear missionaries to the 23,000 households around the Fukushima I plant. Their task was to convince the people that MOX was safe, despite what their governor said. These households are now evacuated.

Maybe  Sato was corrupt. But if so, his was at most the petty corruption common among Japanese politicians. If all Japanese MPs guilty of this kind of corruption were banned from parliament, the hall would be half empty, it has been said. Japan’s prosecutors have a free hand to determine whom they prosecute and when; or to turn a blind eye. Thus, Sato’s allegation that he has been singled out for political reasons, namely his opposition to nuclear power, is at least plausible.

The “atomic village” stands for corruption on a much grander scale. The nuclear industry, scientists, bureaucrats and politicians have created a tight network of institutionalized and legitimized corruption. Reciprocity, a crucial point to prove corruption, is not required in the “atomic village”. Its members provide “the village” with construction jobs, research grants, promotions and votes, probably believing it is for the good of the nation. They don’t tolerate criticism. The leading media have been on good terms with this network. They have ignored the critics of nuclear power, including their many lawsuits against unsafe plants, including  Fukushima.

A crucial component of the “atomic village”, as of other tightly knit Japanese networks between politics and the private sector, is “amakudari”, literally “descent from heaven”. Japanese bureaucrats retire at the young age of 55. “Amakudari” is the institutionalized practice to help them join those companies and organizations they used to control before retirement. Thus, while still working for the government, they can expect to be rewarded in the future with the high pay of an adviser for smoothing a company’s dealings with the state. After switching side, they also use their connections and their intimate knowledge of the controlling authority to facilitate permission procedures for the company. This practice has been called the “hidden fabric of Japan’s Economy.” At the time of the Fukushima accident, two former bureaucrats were on the board of Tepco, and the former boss of the nuclear division of Tepco was rewarded by the LDP with a mandate in the Upper House of the Diet.

On top of this, there are the family networks. Many leading Japanese politicians are sons, son-in-laws, grandsons or nephews of top-politicians. They inherited their relatives’ constituencies, and also their networks.

Fukushima prefecture’s current governor, Yuhei Sato (he’s not related to his predecessor) is a nephew Kozo Watanabe, one of the surviving grand old men of Japanese politics. The only job Watanabe never held was Prime Minister, as they say. An MP for Fukushima since 1969, Watanabe was once an independent, then a member of the LDP; now he’s a crucial actor in PM Kan’s DPJ. He is on the record saying nuclear power allows the people to live longer, because it has helped Japan solve its energy problem.

After taking office, Yuhei Sato re-approved the use of MOX at Fukushima I. As a direct consequence of this decision, there were now traces of Plutonium contamination around the plant.

Most of Japan’s nuclear power plants are clustered on remote coastlines in poor prefectures. Tokyo gets the power, the people in Fukushima the problems, one can hear these days. Former governor Eisaku Sato stresses, in Japan, decision are made from top down, from Tokyo to the provinces. However, there’s another side to this equation.

One of the main architects of the “atomic village” was Kakuei Tanaka, PM from 1972-1974, and one of the most powerful men in postwar Japan. Under his premiership, Japan declared nuclear power to be a top priority.

A farmer’s son from rural Niigata, Tanaka served in the Japanese army in Manchuria. There he made his first contacts with the group that was to lead Japan’s post war economy. In hindsight, the command economy Japan imposed on Manchuria, de facto a Japanese colony, served as a laboratory for Japan’s reconstruction. Back in Tokyo, Tanaka married the heiress of a construction company and went into politics, thus becoming part of both sides of the corruption, almost an incarnation of it.

Not only did Tanaka try to get as many construction jobs for his company, but also for his prefecture Niigata. This would help him get reelected, and improve his and his prefecture’s standing in Tokyo. He managed to get his remote province connected to the national highway system and the bullet-train network long before bigger cities. The biggest price, construction work for more than a decade, was erected literally at the doorstep of his birthplace: the world’s largest nuclear power plant, Kashikawazaki-Kariwa.

When he was a member of the LDP, Kozo Watanabe belonged to Tanaka’s faction. Just like his mentor, he helped bring nuclear power plants to his own prefecture, Fukushima.

In the Soviet Union, the communist party was ubiquitous. To ensure loyalty to the party, it sent a representative into every institution, the party secretary. Their second task was to keep the government informed about the needs and achievements of their enterprise. Japanese networking, namely amakudari, other mutual dependencies and the family ties, do the same trick. In its heyday, the LDP was almost as ubiquitous as the CPSU in the Soviet Union.

Chernobyl forced the Soviet authorities to their first steps of glasnost, or openness. Late in 1986, a local youth newspaper in the then Soviet republic of Estonia dodged censorship and published a story of young Estonian liquidators who were exposed to high dosages of radiation. This was the beginning of the liberalization of the Soviet media. Thus, Chernobyl can be considered as one of the starting points to the process that finally led to the collapse of communism.

Just as with the Soviet Union at the time, Japan needs fundamental reforms. For two decades, Japanese politics have been stagnant and petrified. Some academics see the nuclear power plants as monuments of Japanese corruption.

Other than the Soviet Union, however, Japan is an open society with free elections that respects human rights. All the levers for reform should be in place.

Reform?

Will Fukushima trigger the changes Japan has been waiting for? In the Soviet Union, well educated people had lost faith in a system that lied to them and failed to provide them with their daily needs, enough milk or toilet paper. They helped to topple the government, and the system.

Japan’s is still an affluent society, the new poverty that emerged in the last decade is hard to discern, since it is marginalized to the provinces and to the fringes of society. The urban middle class still has a very good life, it has too much to lose to ask for change. In their eyes, the Tohoku region hit by the earthquake, the tsunami and the radiation crisis, is a remote place. The media is already stepping back from the more controversial position it adapted at the culmination of the crisis. The government is preoccupied with fighting assessments of Fukushima I that differ from its own. It calls these “harmful rumors”. And the opposition is back to its petty bickering.

There is no Japanese Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Andrey Sakharov, not even a Mikhail Gorbachev, no moral authority and no politician who could lead the nation to reforming itself, and not much can be expected from a government that barely manages to survive. Thus, Fukushima, unlike Chernobyl, looks unlikely to set off the chain reaction of reform that would be the only good to come of it.

Sideboxes

Related stories: 

Japan: from tsunami to change

After Fukushima

Nuclear Follies

As a key member of the Executive Management team, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) provides both operational and programmatic support to CSBA. The CFO supervises the finance department and is the chief financial spokesperson for CSBA. As fiduciary for the Association, the CFO is supervised and evaluated by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and bears responsibility for the highest level of fiscal reporting to, and communication with, the CSBA Board of Directors. The CFO works closely with the senior management team on all strategic and tactical matters as they relate to budget management, cost benefit analysis, forecasting needs, the securing of new funding, various analyses, financial negotiations and partnership compliance.

Primary Responsibilities
 Provides leadership in the development for the continuous evaluation of short and long-term strategic financial objectives
 Participates in developing new business, specifically: assists the CEO and senior management team in identifying new funding opportunities, the drafting of prospective programmatic budgets, and determining cost effectiveness of prospective service delivery; evaluates and advises on the impact of long-range planning,
 Conducts regular evaluations of product and services offered and their impact to CSBA revenue streams; make recommendations on service improvements and/or discontinuation of services.
 Ensures the credibility of the finance department by providing timely and accurate analysis of budgets, financial trends, and projections.
 Ensures that effective internal controls are in place and ensures compliance with GAAP and applicable federal, state, and local regulatory laws and rules for financial and tax reporting.
 Evaluates, makes recommendations on, and coordinates changes and improvements to the automated financial and management information systems for CSBA.
 Develops/revises and implements finance, accounting, billing, and auditing procedures.
 Establishes and implements short and long-range department goals, objectives, and other operating procedures for the finance department.
 Interacts with other managers to provide consultative support to planning initiatives through financial and management information systems analyses, reports, and recommendations.
 Serves on planning and policy making committees.
 Ensures a disaster recovery plan is in place.
 Oversees business insurance plans and health care coverage analysis.

Additional Responsibilities
 May represent CSBA externally to media, government agencies, funding agencies, and the general public.
 Trains, supervises, and evaluates department staff; evaluates duties of staff and finance department structure to ensure appropriate separation of duties, staffing levels, and general provision of high-quality customer service.

Qualifications

1. Knowledge of:

 Budget development and control methods; methods of calculation of revenue from CSBA sources of income; audit systems and procedures; payroll systems; accounting systems and procedures; purchase systems and procedures; duplicating equipment and processes; maintenance and repair of facilities and equipment; health, life, liability and disability insurance programs; facilities planning, construction and modernization; personnel systems and procedures for staffing; familiarity with current computer software, technology, and technology infrastructure needs as they relate to operations.
 Knowledge of organizational development, human resources, and general business operations.
 Knowledge of the K-12 Public School System and the California state budget and its impact on K-12 education.

2.Ability to:

Write clear and concise letters and reports; make presentations in a clear manner; communicate effectively with subordinates, peers, members of the Cabinet, Executive Director, Executive Committee, Board of Directors, and the community; represent CSBA to the community in a professional manner; analyze complex situations and develop straightforward solutions that are easily understood; direct and evaluate assigned personnel in a fair professional and effective manner; establish and implement realistic goals and provide leadership and guidance to assigned personnel for the accomplishment of CSBA goals. Interpret and apply policies, rules, and regulation of CSBA to state and federal governmental agencies.

3. Training, Education and Experience

 Six years of responsible accounting, budget development and financial record management and reporting experience. Knowledge of K-12 educational organizations and not-for-profit associations or corporations are desired attributes.
 Demonstrated experience in the areas of budget development and control, payroll systems, accounting systems, purchasing procedures; good exposure to data processing systems; good grasp of facilities planning and construction programs; good understanding of employment practices.
 Previous experience working with school boards and solid understanding of their practice; and/or prior experience working in a membership driven organization or local government agency.

 Experience in strategic planning and execution; development of budgeting philosophy and standards in alignment with corporate goals and structure.
 Possession of exemplary personal qualities and human relation skills essential to a highly visible leadership position; possession of a high degree of judgment, strategy, and diplomacy in dealing with a variety of people; have an entrepreneurial attitude; possess a high level of ethics, integrity and honor

 MBA and/or CPA

Working Conditions

General Conditions
 Working conditions are normal for an office environment.
 Work may require occasional weekend and/or evening work.
 Vacations may be restricted due to operational priorities.
 Must possess a valid driver’s license, proof of insurance and reliable transportation for use on Association business.

Physical Demands
 The physical requirements indicated below are examples of the physical aspects that this position classification must perform in carrying our essential job functions. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
 While performing the duties of this job, the employee will exert 10 to 25 pounds of force frequently to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects.
 This type of work will involve sitting most of the time, but will involve walking or standing for extended periods.
 Perceiving the nature of sound, near and far vision, depth perception, providing oral information, the manual dexterity to operate business related equipment, and handling and working with various materials and objects are important aspects of this job.
 Sufficient vision to read volumes of printed materials; sufficient hearing to conduct in person and telephone conversations; sufficient physical mobility to move about the office and drive a car; ability to speak in an understandable voice with sufficient volume to be heard in a normal conversational distance, on the telephone, and in addressing groups; physical, mental and emotional stamina to endure long hours under sometimes stressful conditions.

Application Procedure

Applicants must visit the CSBA website (www.csba.org) to download and complete the application from the “careers” section under the “about me” tab. Cover letters and resumes should be submitted in Word or PDF format as an attachment and emailed to jobs@csba.org. The application may be scanned and included. Please include “Chief Financial Officer ” in the subject line of your email. Your application packet may also be faxed with a cover page to the attention of Human Resources at 916-371-3407. No phone calls please. EOE

• Location: West Sacramento
• Compensation: Depending on experience
• This is at a non-profit organization.
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
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TITLE: Resource Services Specialist I



ACCOUNTABILITY: The Resource Services Specialist I works under the direction of the Resource Services Program Manager to

provide resource services and act as case manager for an average of 60 clients.



QUALIFICATIONS



1. Three years progressively responsible field experience as a direct client service provider, preferably

in a community mental health setting. Candidates will be expected to demonstrate a working

knowledge of the problems and needs of special populations including the homeless, disabled and

mentally ill; of mental health diagnostic categories; and familiarity with the DSM IV diagnostic

manual; AA degree desired;



2. Interpersonal flexibility, strong teamwork, clear, concise communication skills and a proven ability to

work successfully with minimal supervision;



3. Solid organizational skills including prioritizing, multi-tasking and thoroughness; internet and

computer literacy, including Microsoft Word proficiency;



4. Proof of a valid and current driver license, current auto insurance, and an acceptable Motor

Vehicle Report are required;



5. Bilingual Spanish/English proficiency highly desired.



RESPONSIBILITIES



1* Case management including intake, screening and enrollment; implementing treatment plans in

coordination with the staff psychologist; documenting interventions according to Medi-Cal

standards; coordinating inter and intra agency services and collaborating with external treatment

sources including making referrals hence this position involves regular travel within Contra Costa

County;



2* Budgeting, documentation and reporting: Includes designing client budgets, requesting

disbursements and distributing checks; data capture and entry at all points of client interaction

and the accurate and timely reporting of same per agency standards;



3* Staff Backup Coverage: Includes rotating caseload and locations as needed to cover staff shortages.



4. Outreach to prospective clients and liaison to outside agencies including the County Department of

Mental Health, the Social Security Administration, SHELTER, Inc., and Phoenix Programs, etc;



5. Attend in-house and inter-agency meetings and perform other duties as assigned.

* Indicates essential duties. To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty

satisfactorily. The requirements listed above are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable

accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.



HOURS: This is a full-time, non-exempt position



HIRING RANGE: $16.95/hour - $18.65/hour depending upon skills and experience. An additional 5% of salary may be granted for proven English/Spanish bilingual proficiency.



Excellent benefits include health plans, paid vacation and sick leave, employer sponsored 403(b) plan.



NOTICE: This description is to be used as a guide only. It does not constitute a contract, commitment or promise of any

kind. Rubicon reserves the right to change, add, delete, upgrade or downgrade the position as dictated by business

necessity at any time with or without notice.



TO APPLY: Send us a Rubicon Applicant Tracking Form with either your resume or with a Rubicon Employment Application.



How to Obtain Forms

Visit our website:

www.rubiconprograms.org/careersatrubi

con.html

OR

Email, fax or mail your name,

contact info and request to:

hr@rubiconprograms.org

fax: 510-412-9029

Rubicon Programs HR

2500 Bissell Avenue

Richmond, CA 94804

OR

Visit us in person. Just ask at the

front desk:

2500 Bissell Avenue, Richmond

or 1918 Bonita Street, Berkeley



Where to Submit

Send your completed Applicant Tracking Form

(www.rubiconprograms.org/docs/Applicant_Tracking_Form_Data_Entry_2008.06.11.doc) with your resume

or your Employment Application (www.rubiconprograms.org/docs/Employment_Application_2008.04.30.pdf)

to:

Rubicon Programs Inc.

Human Resources

2500 Bissell Avenue

Richmond, California 94804

Fax: (510) 412-9029

Email: hr@rubiconprograms.org



DEADLINE: This position is open until filled and may be closed at any time.

Rubicon is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and values diversity of culture and

thought. We seek talented, qualified individuals regardless of race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation,

disability, age or any other protected classification under law.



Rubicon is using E-Verify to validate the eligibility of our new employees to work legally in the United States.

• Compensation: $16.95/hour - $18.65/hour depending upon skills and experience. An additional 5% of salary may be granted for proven English/Spanish bilingual proficiency.
• This is at a non-profit organization.
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Experience the joy and personal satisfaction of one-to-one interaction in a desirable home care setting with Arcadia Home Care and Staffing.

Arcadia Home Care and Staffing, a Licensed Home Health Agency, equal opportunity employer and industry leader for 15+ years, seeks exceptional,
qualified Physical Therapists (PT) to service its Skilled Intermittent Home Health patients in San Jose and the surrounding communities.

Positions are Per Diem and flexible, depending on your current schedule.
► Positions require 1 year professional experience.
► Many therapists look to us as their primary source of employment; others work with us part time/Per Diem.

For immediate consideration, please email a cover letter and résumé to:
► Director of Recruitment at Arcadia Home Care and Staffing at employment@arcadiacare.com
► Email is the preferred submittal method
► Attach cover letter/résumé as either a Word/.doc or PDF attachment or paste in the body of the email
► Please include “San Jose PT Employment” in the subject line
► OR fax to (408) 904-7169
► Do not contact our offices directly

For more information about Arcadia, please view our website at http://www.arcadiacare.com.

Join us at Arcadia and experience the joy of home care with the support of a company that embraces the pursuit of excellence.

ARCADIA’s High-Level Standards Provide:
► Always the highest pay possible
► Flexible Scheduling Options
► Access to Low-Cost Medical/Dental/Vision Insurance
► 401 (k) Retirement Program
► In-Services
► Direct Deposit
► Mileage Reimbursement

• Location: San Jose Area
• Compensation: Competitive pay
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Why did the United States choose to launch a raid against al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, rather than bombing it? It wasn't because of a "law enforcement mindset." And it wasn't compelled by human rights law. Rather, it was the best option based on the military objectives, available intelligence, and the law of armed conflict. 

On the one hand, practical considerations dictated this riskier kind of raid. The United States needed to have a body to prove, once and for all, that the hard-to-kill bin Laden was in fact dead. The recent media fascination with whether the U.S. will release photos of his body lends credence to this concern.

A second issue prompting the raid was that the Obama administration was worried about collateral damage. This problem is more serious than some may initially suspect. Abbottabad is a heavily populated city, with nearly 1 million residents. Moreover, numerous civilian residences and the Pakistani military academy were near bin Laden's "drone-proof compound." There's little doubt that the risks to nearby residents certainly weighed on the minds of senior policymakers and President Obama. The matter of collateral damage alone, though, may not have been enough to tip the scales away from a bombing operation.

Instead, the issue may have been the uncertainty over whether bin Laden was even in the compound. Nation-states are simply not permitted to  drop bombs in the hope they will kill the right person; they need to be reasonably certain they are attacking the right target. That fact leads us to the legal concerns that may have necessitated a raid rather than a bombing operation.[[BREAK]]

The Requirement to Positively Identify a Target

Most contemporary discussions of collateral damage skip the threshold legal question likely posed by the Obama administration, namely whether bin Laden or some other lawful military target was actually inside the compound. Unless that question could be answered to a reasonable degree of certainty, any bombing operation would have been unlawful, even with no or minimal collateral damage to surrounding persons and objects.

This reality flows from the principle of distinction, (or "positive identification" in U.S. military parlance) a fundamental tenet of the law of armed conflict. Armed forces are required to "at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives." Positive identification, according to U.S. policies, requires that commanders know with reasonable certainty that "a functionally and geospatially defined object of attack is a legitimate military target." In short, directing attacks against civilians (in this context, non-uniformed personnel) is not permitted, unless they are directly participating in hostilities.

This requirement closely tracks with the text of Protocol I Article 52(2), of the Geneva Conventions, which defines military objectives as "those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to the military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage." This definition, by implication, includes enemy personnel as legitimate military objects. In the case of "civilians," such as bin Laden and those with him in his compound, this identification task also required that those civilians meet the requirement that they are "directly participating in hostilities." As al-Qaeda's leader, bin Laden would easily satisfy this definition, as would his bodyguards and couriers, if only they could be positively identified. 

If the U.S. cannot positively identify a lawful target, the law of war and U.S. policies instruct that no bombing operation can take place. This is not to say that the law of armed conflict requires perfection in positively identifying a target (look to America's ongoing CIA drone campaign in Pakistan to see examples of when mistakes have been made); rather, the drafters of the law of armed conflict intended these rules to be a guide to decision-making in warfare, and recognized that bright line rules and fixed borderlines between civilian and military objectives might be difficult to distinguish. However, in the case of uncertainty about identity, the law stands firmly in favor of presuming civilian status, hence the U.S. requirement of positive identification. Thus, the burden is on the attacker to exercise discretion and caution, and they are judged by whether they acted reasonably and honestly in the exercise of those responsibilities. 

The positive identification test does not involve any balancing of potential collateral damage against military advantage. Instead, the focus in this case would be on whether the target is a civilian directly participating in hostilities, whose killing furthers a definite military advantage. Of course, those concerned with collateral damage should not overlook the importance of the positive identification step, as its relationship to collateral damage cannot be overstated -- failed positive identification is, according to research I have conducted, one of the leading causes of collateral damage in current U.S. military operations .    

Applying the Requirement of Positive Identification to the bin Laden Operation

It turns out that the Obama administration was not particularly certain about bin Laden's presence at the compound. Recent reports suggest there was a 20 percent - 40 percent chance that he wasn't in the building. Granted, substantial circumstantial evidence suggested some high value target was in the compound -- but this was not the type of information that would lawfully permit a bombing operation anywhere, let alone one deep in the heart of Pakistan. 

Rather, what the law requires, and what the U.S. government needed, was a positive identification of at least some of the building's residents. Eventually one man, bin Laden's courier, was tracked to the compound. The intelligence community also believed that the courier's family, his brother's family, and an unknown third family that matched the description of bin Laden's family were also in the home. They even believed a tall man who never left the house was also inside. Tally it up and you have one positive identification - of the courier, not bin Laden -- and a building full of maybes. 

Realistically, President Obama and everyone else at the White House who considered the bombing option probably thought about the fact that bin Laden might have been in the compound. But that chance, as a matter of law, was simply not part of the calculus because he wasn't positively identified as being present. Thus, when the value of the courier (the only known target) was balanced against the likely collateral damage, the obvious conclusion was that a bombing mission could not take place. A contrary choice would have been a gamble, and that gamble takes place in a context of heavy scrutiny and criticism of U.S. counterterrorism policies by allies and various other groups. Those political realities certainly impacted the administration's judgment. For this mission, only boots on the ground could positively identify bin Laden, minimize collateral damage in a heavily populated area, and bring him (or his body) back, thus justifying this deep incursion into Pakistani territory. 

Success This Time Does Not Spell The End of Drones and Bombing

But just because a raid was used effectively this time does not mean that in all future operations the U.S. must first try the SEAL Team Six (DEVGRU) option. It also does not mean that the raid was required by human rights law, or that all future operations should be conducted pursuant to law enforcement rules. Rather, it was simply the best option among many military strategies. This time, the mission was reportedly accomplished with no civilian or military casualties. If, in the coming months, al-Qaeda figure Ayman al-Zawahiri or radical cleric Anwar al-Alwaki are found and can be targeted from the air rather than risking a human operation, nothing about the manner of bin Laden's demise should alter the decision to bomb either of them. 

Bin Laden was long thought to be hiding in a cave somewhere in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). As it turns out, he was in a mansion in an affluent neighborhood in Abbottabad. Had he chosen to hide in a cave, a missile or a bomb would have been a perfectly appropriate means by which to kill him. Of course, that's likely why bin Laden chose Abbottabad -- he knew that U.S. concerns over collateral damage were his best defense. What he didn't count on was that various detainees and intelligence assets would provide clues to those around him, that President Obama would be willing to authorize a raid rather than a bombing mission, and that the U.S. military would be able to carry out such an operation. Sunday's success did not prove that bombing and drones are no longer valuable as counterterrorism tools.  Rather, it taught us that they are one of many options available to the military when engaging terrorists.

Gregory S. McNeal is an associate professor of law at Pepperdine University, and blogs at LawandTerrorism.com  

Whether you know it or not, your database of current and past clients is your best source of new clients.  "Prospecting" for a new client is time consuming and expensive.  If you can find a way to increase your sales without the time commitment and expense of cold calling, mass direct mail, advertising or purchasing leads, would you be willing to implement it?  Of course, you would.

At Baselworld 2011, Patek Phillipe SA demonstrates unsurpassed watchmaking skills with the release of a Ladies watch sporting a skeletonized movement.

The manually wound watch is ultra thin, gracefully decorated and engraved by hand. Both front and back of the 31.40mm case are protected by a scratch resistant sapphire crystal with brown tinted parameter creating a window to the Caliber 177 SQU movement. A slender yellow gold linked bracelet elegantly encircles the wrist.

Comprised of 110 components and 18 jewels, this Patek Phillipe SA timepiece is an example of worth.

.


Hublot's Big Bang Leopard is a Timepiece of note. In the wild leopards are elusive secretive creatures, who spend much of their time in trees. On the other hand Hublot's Big Bang Leopard is meant to be noticed.

The dial is decorated with a leopard rosette pattern and matching leopard print denim strap. Matching smoked quartz, andalusites, and citrine baguette cut stones punctuated by Hublot's signature H-shaped screws accentuate the bezel. The 18k red gold ,41mm case house a HUB4300 automatic chronograph movement. 18k red gold hands and yellow diamond hour markers indicate the time.
A timepiece created for the inner wild.





Van Cleef & Arpels awakes the spring in its latest unique Poetry of Time Haute Jewelry timepiece. It is a jungle scene. A pink flower in full bloom supported by diamond vines shelter a dial beneath its sapphire encrusted petals. If the skies fill with rain, the flower moves over and protects the dial. Monkeys crafted in white gold and set with high quality hand picked stones, as with the entire timepiece, frolic among leaves of emeralds and sapphires. Alternating bands of onyx and diamonds accentuate their tails crafted to simulate their boundless energy. With this timepiece Van Cleef and Arpels has, for now, come to the end of its Voyage Extraordinaire and what a voyage it has been.
The white gold case ,ringed with diamonds, houses a Swiss Quartz movement. A jewelry bracelet set with diamonds completes the look.


Flowers, jewelery or timepiece? Flowers, jewelry or timepiece? What does a women want? Breguet has solved this dilemma with its Petite Fleur Haute Jewerly watch. 43 baguette-cut diamond petals attached to hidden pivots flutter and quiver with the movement of the wrist. The concave dial is set with 141 diamonds arranged in the snow setting technique concealing the white metal dial beneath. Blued steel hollow tipped hands are hand molded to precisely move across the concave surface of the dial. A domed sapphire Crystal baring the individual number of the timepiece protects the dial. A sapphire Crystal case back displaying high quality finishing ,including circular grained bridges and barleycorn guilloché motif embellishing the platinum oscillating weight, has earned the mechanical automatic timepiece the Geneva Seal.

DeWitt Golden Afternoon Collection is quite fitting for this blog - being an entire collection dedicated to women. The collection was inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites ,a group of English painters, poets, critics who formed a brotherhood in 1848 in celebration of women, romance and symbolic nature. They were none to pleased with the current state of affairs at the Royal Academy and wished to enrich the Academy with a more direct and honest artistic expression overflowing with details, color and complex compositions.

DeWitt's The Golden Afternoon Collection embraces the stages of a women's life capturing her changing perspectives as time moves on. Adding a light sense of fantasy, DeWitt intertwines poetry and art to create a moving collection. The Golden Afternoon Dial depicted to the left, is a mother-of-pearl garden of delicate flowers which seem to float towards the dial. Dark clouds serve as the backdrop adding a powerful contrast quality to the dial. Feathers or "the wings of an angel" dial hands ,depending on how you wish to interpret the dial, indicate the time with the aid of 12 diamond hour markers. A DeWitt logo seems to waft across the dial on a sudden breeze in preparation of a storm. This watch creates a sense of powerful symbolism. Stay tuned for more remarkable additions to DeWitt's Golden Afternoon Collection.

To all the Mother's out there - HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY.

New York is "hailing" a new era of urban mobility today, as the city with the nation's largest taxi fleet has selected Nissan to design and supply the next-generation "Taxi of Tomorrow." The announcements were made today during a City Hall press briefing that included Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Nissan Americas Chairman Carlos Tavares.

 

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) selected the Nissan NV200 as the exclusive taxi of New York City beginning in late 2013. The award comes after a rigorous selection process that occurred over more than two years. The competition built upon more than a century of taxi industry heritage to drive the design and creation of a purpose-built vehicle, tuned to the city's streets. The other two finalists included Ford Motor Co. and Karsan, a Turkish vehicle manufacturer.

 

"Nissan is proud to provide the next generation of taxis for the City of New York," said Tavares. "The NV200 taxi will give Nissan the opportunity to showcase our dedication to vehicle quality and urban mobility to more than 600,000 passengers every day."

 

The Nissan NV200 taxi will be produced in North America at Nissan's facility in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The Nissan NV200 taxi will be a modified version of the compact commercial vehicle currently available in global markets including Japan, Europe and China. Total manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) of the vehicle, with all planned standard features, will be around $29,000.

 

As part of the program, Nissan also will work with the City and taxi owners on a pilot program to study the use of zero-emission, electric vehicles as taxis. Nissan will provide up to six 100-percent electric Nissan LEAFs to taxi owners for testing in 2012 as well as the charging stations to support their use.

 

"The city's Taxi of Tomorrow is the Nissan NV200 - and it's going to be the safest, most comfortable and most convenient cab the city has ever had," said Mayor Bloomberg. "We started this process to leverage our taxi industry's purchasing power to get the highest quality taxi, one that that can expand and redefine the legendary image of New York City taxicabs. The new taxis will be custom-designed to meet the specific demands of carrying 600,000 passengers a day in New York City traffic and the vehicle meets the top priorities identified by the public in our on-line survey."

 

Planned innovations, which respond to direct input from drivers, owners and passengers, include:

- 2.0L 4-cylinder powertrain, engineered to enhance the emission performance and fuel efficiency of the taxi fleet;
- Ample room for four passengers and their luggage, substantially improved over current taxi models;
- A low-annoyance horn with exterior lights that indicate when the vehicle is honking, helping reduce noise pollution;
- Sliding doors with entry step and grab handles, providing easy entry and exit;
- Transparent roof panel (with shade) that will provide unique views of the city;
- Independently controlled rear air conditioning with a grape phenol-coated air filter to improve cabin air quality;
- Attractive, breathable, antimicrobial, environmentally friendly and easy-to-clean seat fabric that simulates the look and feel of leather;
- Overhead reading lights for passengers and floor lighting to help locate belongings;
- A mobile charging station for passengers that includes a 12V electrical outlet and two USB plugs;
- A six-way adjustable driver's seat that features both recline and lumbar adjustments, even with a partition installed;
- Standard driver's navigation and telematics systems.

 

Nissan also focused on passenger safety when designing the NV200 taxi. Key safety features include:

- Front and rear-seat occupant curtain airbags, as well as seat-mounted airbags for the front row;
- Standard traction control and Vehicle Dynamic Control (VDC);
- Sliding doors to reduce the risk of pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists getting struck by doors opening unexpectedly;
- Lights that alert other road users that taxi doors are opening.

 

With more than 13,000 taxis traveling a cumulative 500 million miles per year, durability was a key factor in the "Taxi of Tomorrow" selection process. Nissan will train taxi fleet operators to conduct routine in-house service and repairs, and Nissan Commercial Vehicle dealers will provide prompt service by providing the first available service bay to taxi operators needing service.

 

Source: Nissan

AnandTech takes an in-depth look at NVIDIA's latest and greatest high end graphic card, the GeForce GTX 590. The card is comprised of dual GTX 580 GPUs although running at slower clock speeds than the single GPU card. The GTX 590 is aimed as a direct competitor to AMD's recently launched dual GPU Radeon HD 6990. Both cards command a $700 price tag. TDP is in the range of 365W thus requiring high end power supplies and adequate breathing room. Performance falls in line with what's expected from this type of card: slower than a pair of SLI GTX 580 but significantly faster than any current single GPU offering.