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When it comes to architectural experts servicing Johannesburg and the greater Gauteng area, the team at Peridot Architects definitely know what they're talking about. As a multidisciplinary practice, this architectural firm approaches every project with the aim of letting the end result (the building) reflect its own personality and style while also staying true to its core function.
As a seasoned firm, Peridot Architects likes to play with materials, designs, and decorative touches. This is widely reflected in their ever-increasing portfolio, which showcases a diverse range of projects completed in South Africa. In addition to architectural designs, Peridot Architects can also be counted on for space planning and interior design for both the residential- and commercial industries.
Let's see what they accomplished when presented with a brief requesting a row of modern flats…
As per the client's brief to the architects, a modern row of flats was needed that could incorporate a request for a luxurious style. Request accepted, as per these 3D renderings!
All of the units flaunt comfortable layouts that consist of four bedrooms (complete with en-suite bathrooms), a pyjama lounge (a must-have if you want your interiors to have a sense of modern luxury), plus an open-plan living area, kitchen and dining space.
As space is definitely on the decrease, modern-day architects and designers have to continually conjure up new ways in which to make small-scale living more comfortable and stylish. And that's precisely whey the open-plan layout has become the epitome of 21st century living.
See how these modern apartments get to combine cooking, washing, dining, and living areas while also ensuring adequate legroom for moving about. An overall neutral colour palette (consisting mostly of off-whites, earthy beiges and dusty stone hues) ensure the end result looks even more open and visually spacious.
Of course the exterior façade couldn't be left behind, which is why a less-is-more look was opted for to perfectly complement the neutral style of the interiors.
Presenting a subtle look, the exteriors flaunt a minimum amount of materials, with the caramel-tinted timber enjoying prime presence. Glass balustrades and floor-to-ceiling windows / glass doors further promote the modern style that make up these luxury terrace housing.
For a further glimpse into this project, let's see a few more images that detail the exterior design of this modern apartment building.
Getting your house ready for the holidays? See these 4 home renovation ideas to make your summer the best ever.


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1097301 - LaTasha Carpenter
Our mission is to provide the highest quality health and wellness solutions for our customers, helping them achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle. We are also dedicated to creating a worldwide community centered around love and teamwork, offering everyone an equal chance at creating financial success.
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With two billion cups of coffee consumed every day, Café Divina® provides you with a powerful brand-building opportunity. Enjoy a cup of our coffee from a variety of house-style healthy beverages infused with 100% certified organic Ganoderma lucidum any time of the day—hot or cold!
Weight control is the process of making long-term lifestyle changes to maintain healthy body weight. Eating a healthy diet and incorporating physical activity isn't always enough to reach your goals. Vida Divina weight control supplements were specifically designed to help you achieve and maintain a healthy, balanced lifestyle.
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Vida Divina's #1 top-selling product is TeDivina®, originally formulated by our Co-Founder Dr. Ramos. Let TeDivina cleanse your mind and body, creating the foundation for your own Divine Life.
TeDivina contains: Persimmon Leaves, Holy Thistle, Malva Leaves, Marsh, Blessed Thistle, Papaya, Myrrh, Chamomile, Ginger, Cranberry, Siberian Chaga, Ganoderma lucidum, and Fiber.Learn more
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Due to our sedentary lifestyle and poor diet, about two-thirds of adults in the world are overweight. Our obesity epidemic is not only due to lack of exercise or making poor dietary choices, but because the food we eat is lacking essential nutrients. Thankfully, help is on the way! Our Lean Meal Replacement Shakes can help you achieve your ideal healthy weight and lifestyle.Learn more
Vida Divina® offers an affordable and effective way to ensure you and your loved ones are getting the daily recommended intake of essential nutrients. All of our supplements are infused with Ganoderma lucidum and designed for a specific purpose. We take pride in offering the highest quality products to support optimal daily nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.Learn more
Vida Essentials is a premium skincare product line designed to be the backbone of your daily skincare routine. Our skincare products instantly optimize skin tone, texture, and hydration while providing the nourishing benefits of 100% certified organic Ganoderma lucidum and 100% all-natural certified American Emu Oil.Learn more
Ganoderma lucidum (Reishi), Chaga, and Cordyceps are three powerful ancient mushrooms known for their powerful healing properties. They are highly prized in Chinese herbalism for providing a powerful broad spectrum of health benefits. Science has shown that these amazing mushrooms neutralize free radicals while containing strong antioxidant properties. At Vida Divina®, we proudly formulate all our products with these mushrooms, so you and your family can benefit from their long history of supporting a healthy lifestyle.Learn more
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We offer the entrepreneur a unique opportunity to earn unlimited income by enhancing the lives of everyone we touch. We realize that the true measure of a company's success is reflected in the health and wealth achieved by the many, not just a few.Learn more

subset: commoncrawl


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Hamamelis X intermedia 'Arnold Promise' Witch Hazel in My Toronto Garden
My first post, it's kind of exciting. Aside from last week's snow blip, we should be warming up. The sunshine today certainly is welcome.
|"Arnold Promise" witch hazel bloom detail
The 'Arnold Promise' witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Arnold Promise') in the backyard blooms so reliably every March that it is, to me, the true harbinger of warmer days. Besides, what few snowdrops and crocuses I had have been destroyed gradually by the squirrels over the years.
I've seen witch hazels occasionally around the city but more often than not they are the fall-blooming common witch hazel Hamemelis virginiana. There are several groves of fall-blooming H. virginiana in the gardens near the front entrance of Allans Gardens Conservatory.
Backlit, the flowers really glow a clean yellow and provide the only colour, flower-wise, at this time. They have a faint but sweet fragrance too, if you are curious. Visually, they appear to be "spiders" resting on branches, waiting to be reviewed up close.
|A single flower in detail; strangely beautiful and preposterous
Sometimes I cut a few errant branches in late February or early March and put them in water. This process, called forcing, is also done with other shrubs like forsythia where the flowers "bloom" indoors.
My only quibble with my witch hazel is that the leaves persist all winter. But this is so minor! I try to incorporate this shrub in my landscape designs due to its multi-season interest and pest resistance.
|"Arnold Promise" witchhazel
(Hamemelis x intermedia) blooms
|Hamamelis x intermedia
"Arnold Promise" witchhhazel blooms


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Privacy Policy
(MAP) 124 Java Ave., Hershey, PA 17033
*** 2015 Preservation Award - Residental Awards Winner ***
The following newsworthy item appeared in the Lebanon Evening Report on Friday, January 30, 1920:
"R.S. Woomer has planned to occupy one of the new duplex houses on Java Avenue next Tuesday, moving from Cocoa Avenue."
Thus began a new era in Hershey's architectural history, signifying the development of Java Avenue and the many prominent properties still present. Along with the notable properties were, at times, equally notable personalities and families who occupied these residences.
This year's Preservation Awards offer a unique perspective to recognizing and acknowledging the community's architectural heritage. Rather than identifying individual properties, this year's recipients are a grouping of well-known, revered properties that provide an aesthetic connect to Mr. Hershey's taste for Mediterranean Revival architecture. The Java duplexes, noted for their distinctiveness, are reflective of Mr. Hershey's design directives for the town's expansion, as noted in the Community Building and Hotel.
This style of architecture offered a warm, elaborate feel in contrast to the more standardized American styles typically employed in planning models from other Central Pennsylvania communities. Typified by the low-pitched roof, an extended portico or veranda, Mediterranean Revival elements are apparent in the Java duplexes, making them one of the more unique groupings of homes in Derry Township.
Still standing as a testament to the dynamic evolution of the community in the late teens and early 1920's, the duplexes that were home to Sam Hinkle, L.W. Majer, P.A. Staples, and Major Thomas Martin and their respective families, are home to yet another generation of Hershey residents.
We applaud and recognize the efforts of these residents for their investment in preserving these distinguishable properties:
124 Java: Richard Ely
126 Java: Maria Memmi & Philip D'Adderio
202 Java: Mel & Liz Billingsley
204 Java: Wendy Lubell & Mark Snyder
214 Java : Susan & Bryan Anderson
216 Java: Deborah & Robert Bethards


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Cruise, Tom: Depressed folks need help
I am not featured in my high school yearbook as the person most likely to be giving career advice. People were probably thinking, as they signed my yearbook, that I was the person most likely to never even find a career. This is because I have had bouts with mental illness since I was a teenager.
So I'm enraged at Tom Cruise's crusade against effective treatments for depression. Depression is serious. Fifteen percent of clinically depressed people die by suicide.
The World Health Organization ranks depression as the fourth most common disease (after lower respiratory tract infections, diarrheal diseases, and conditions arising in the perinatal period).
Research from Yale University showed that 70 percent of people who saw a doctor for depression were successfully treated. Unfortunately, most do not seek help– probably because the world is full of lunatics like Tom Cruise who belittle the illness and its treatments.
Statistically speaking, depression is a workplace issue. One in five working women suffers from depression. It is twice as common in women as in men, and among women, high intelligence is a risk factor for depression. So I'm probably not the only woman you know who has been depressed.
Depression at work feels like depression anywhere else: A wave of hopelessness overcomes you, and you have no idea why or how to get rid of it. But if you're working, it's more likely to happen at your desk. If you have a door on your office, you lock it. If you have an opportunity to "work from home," you announce you're taking it. These are tactics I have used. But believe me, they don't work for long.
Depression was immobilizing, and when I was depressed I spent most of my time at work covering up my inability to get anything done. For a while, people assumed I was taking care of things because I was a person who always took care of things.
But it's hard to hide depression at work. I started looking weird. People noticed, for example, that I couldn't have a conversation about anything because conversation requires interest, and depression made me uninterested in everything. Everyone has an off day during an important lunch. But you can't have too many of those.
If career success is about building a strong, competent image of yourself over the course of time, then depression is the antithesis– it destroys your image relatively fast. People started to wonder who I really was. And so did I. I couldn't make decisions, I couldn't keep a schedule, I was not reliable and no one knew why.
I was not a mom or a wife when I was depressed, so hiding was relatively easy. The only people who needed me on a day-to-day basis were my teammates at work. So the office was my barometer for how much I was falling apart. I went to a psychiatrist because I didn't want to lose my job. In my depressed mind, I felt that if I destroyed my career, the feelings of hopelessness would kill me.
When friends ask me, "How can you write a career column? How can you care that much about work?" I remind them how my work saved me. Work has been a mirror reflecting myself back to me, and my career has been the thing I ultimately sought to save.
So for goodness sake, don't listen to Tom Cruise. If you think you might have depression, get medical help now.
And keep an eye on your coworkers. Someone in your office is depressed. He or she might be hiding from friends and family, but it's much harder to hide from work. Don't be afraid to recommend that person gets help– stepping up at work to say what you see just might save a life.


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Year 6
Teachers: Mrs Shepherd & Miss Diamond
Main content to follow…….
Please remember that all PE kit should be correctly labelled with your child's name and that the minimum requirement for kit is a white T-shirt, red shorts, sports socks and trainers or plimsolls. Anyone with earrings will need to remove them for PE as this is a safety requirement for participation, and finally all long hair should be tied back. At the end of each week PE kit should be taken home to be washed.


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Courtesy Jorn Barger Wiki
As Business Director for Inner Architect, my first priority is solidifying relationships with prospective clients in our industries of choice. Before we focused on Direct Marketing driven social media marketing strategies for corporations, our first niche of focus was the employment niche.
As early as June of 2008, we began writing about how important blogging would be to job seekers in finding a new position. Throughout 2008 and through Q1 of 2009 we continued to postulate and support blogging as the near perfect method for job seekers to differentiate themselves in landing a job. Unfortunately our messages mostly fell on deaf ears–leaving us no choice but to look for other niches more willing to leverage blogging in their businesses.
In today's world, Corporations, small businesses, and entrepreneurs have adopted blogging in a steady stream since the advent of Web 2.0. The actual number of established blogs is in debate, yet the rough estimate is that their are over 150,000,000 blogs in existence today.
The vast majority of job seekers are not adopting blogging as a method and tool in their job search. Although this group has the need, and blogs are the nearly perfect application, the move to adoption is almost non existent. The following are 10 reasons why job seekers should blog.
10 Reasons Job Seekers Should Adopt Blogging
- Publishing Platform: a blog is the writing platform to begin creating content about you
- Control: blogging allows job seekers the opportunity to control their own information about their expertise and experience
- Delivery: blogs are delivery systems for a job seeker's content. The url for articles can be delivered to potential employers that currently blog
- Networking: a blog allows job seekers to meet other bloggers; hopefully those new connections work for their targeted companies
- New Skills: by adopting blogging, job seekers begin to learn about Web 2.0, social networks, blog software, delivering links, and how the new paradigm shift of information is being formulated everyday
- Perception: job seekers that blog are perceived as being more savvy, as younger due to the perception that social media-blogging is a young person's activity, and more relevant to employers because of these new skills
- Visibility: blogging allows job seekers more visibility as a blog is "open" 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. It is a organic, living resume
- Reputation Management: blogging provides a tool for job seekers to deliver messages that can correct or challenge erroneous information about them online
- Due Diligence: when hiring managers perform due diligence on a job seeker, the first place they begin is with a Google search of that candidate. Hiring managers are looking for information in Google (and online) that will give them a clue as to that candidates' understanding of the internet. Equally important is the fact that hiring managers are also searching for any bad behavior or personal information that might signal the candidate is unfit to become an employee
- Research: blogging requires research. Research requires skills in searching and finding information online which is a new skill for many job seekers. Research into specific subject matters that pertain to a job opening will increase a job seekers knowledge base on that subject


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Ashampoo Snap Business 10.0.3 Multilingual
Ashampoo Snap Business 10.0.3 Multilingual | 53 MB
Ashampoo Snap Business is tailored to fit seamlessly into your business environment. We add your design, logo and watermark + copyright notice to protect your corporate identity and intellectual property. For tighter network integration, we will also add the ability to upload screenshots and videos to a predefined network address, if desired.
With Ashampoo Snap Business
Ashampoo Snap Business turns capturing screenshots and videos into a smoother experience than ever before. Less complexity, a smarter workflow, more creative freedom and enhanced sharing capabilities. Capture images and videos right from your screen in seconds and with pixel precision, illustrate your sceenshots with texts, notes, hints, arrows, shapes and stamps and share your work with others at the click of a button. Ashampoo Snap Business is the ideal solution to capture, illustrate and share your viewing experience.
– Capture rectangular regions
– Use free form capture for maximum flexibility
– Use timers for interval capturing
you have the tools to express yourself visually
– Get your message across with texts, hints and notes
– Command attention with arrows, shapes and stamps
– Use the pencil tool to draw freely
sharing becomes a breeze
– Save your screenshots to common image formats
– Create PDFs without extra tools
– Upload with ease
Accurate text recognition
Instantly obtain editable text from images or PDFs! Ashampoo Snap Business converts image based text into computer-editable text. Access contents from fax messages and scanned or photographed documents. Also ideal for foreign-language documents (German, English, French, Spanish, Turkish and Russian)!
Smoother workflow
Ashampoo Snap Business has all the tools you know and love and improves them. Apply gradients to almost any object, use the new outline style for visual accents, work with curved lines and arrows or 1-click clone objects for simple reuse. Not sure which application window you will later need? Simply use the new Capture all visible desktop windows as objects and capture all of them at once. The windows will then be captured into a single project but remain movable and resizable right from within Snap.
Smarter work environment
Ashampoo Snap Business employs smart background versioning so your original image is never lost and all modifications remain editable. Want to start over? Revert to the original at the click of a button.
For other news, visit my profile every day!
To Unzip the files use 7zip or WinRar.
I recommend to download as fast as you can or you will lose file you need ( Links dead because of Copyright Infringement )


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Aug-20-08 Hannah Shostack Named Executive Director of LUARC
TRENTON, N.J. – The Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization and Consolidation Commission (LUARC) today announced the appointment of Hannah Shostack as Executive Director.
"Hannah's qualifications and experience speak for themselves," said Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria. "She will make a fantastic addition to the Commission as we move forward in examining ways to consolidate and more efficiently serve the people of New Jersey."
Hannah Shostack most recently served as the Assistant State Treasurer for Economic Development. She has also served as Senior Director of Capital Programs in the Governor's Office of Economic Growth, the Associate Executive Director for Research for the Assembly Majority Office, and Principal Research Analyst for the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services. On the local level, Hannah served as a member of the Highland Park Planning Board and Design Review Committee. Hannah has a B.A. in Urban Geography from the University of Toronto, a Masters in Urban Planning from McGill University and a Ph.D. in Architecture and Urban Planning from Princeton University.
"Hannah has the skills and professional experience needed to help the Commission achieve its objective of assessing the best practices and appropriate cost of local governments," said LUARC Chairman Jack Fisher. "Her interaction with the legislature, local officials and familiarity with the governmental processes of New Jersey make her the ideal person for this position. Her professional approach can be trusted by decision makers at all levels of government."
"This is a great honor and I thank Governor Corzine and the Commission for this opportunity," said Shostack. "I look forward to working with the Commission as well as various officials throughout the state as we seek to determine the best and most efficient ways to provide government and services here in New Jersey."
LUARC was established under P.L. 207, Chapter 54 as being in but not of the Department of Community Affairs. The Commission's responsibilities include studying and reporting on the structure and function of county and municipal government, including local taxing districts, their statutory basis, the fiscal relationship between local governments, and the appropriate allocation of service delivery responsibilities from the standpoint of efficiency.
The bipartisan commission will fairly examine the allocation of responsibilities among local units in order to determine which unit of local government is best suited to deliver a given local government service and when consolidation will reduce the property tax burden for pairs of groups of local units. They will then make recommendations to the Legislature for approval by the affected voters in order to make a serious effort to reduce the number of municipalities and other local units in the state.
For more information on LUARC, log on to http://www.state.nj.us/dca/luarc/.


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Here's the redband trailer for Movie 43, the upcoming ensemble comedy starring Emma Stone, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Chloe Moretz, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, Richard Gere, Kristen Bell and pretty much any other actor that you can imagine. Apparently, it's a Garry Marshall style tale of intertwining storylines, although I don't remember Valentine's Day having quite so many jokes about disabled people.
Movie 43 could turn out to be an fantastic dark comedy, but judging by this trailer, it's looking more Scary Movie than Fargo.
Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows


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Abraham Lincoln Playground
Lincoln Playground
Located on the southeastern corner of Fifth Avenue and East 135th Street, this playground, as well as the adjacent Abraham Lincoln Houses, honors the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Born to migratory farmers in the backwoods of Kentucky, Lincoln had less than one year of formal schooling. Still, he was a voracious reader. The Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, and Parson Weems' Life of Washington were among Lincoln's favorite works. In 1831, a young Lincoln settled in New Salem, Illinois. There, he worked as a storekeeper, surveyor, and postmaster while studying law. In 1834, Lincoln was elected to the state legislature and, in 1836, became a lawyer. Although he served in the House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party (which later became the Republican Party) from 1847 to 1849, he lost two bids for Senate in 1856 and 1858. Nevertheless, Lincoln made a reputation for himself over the course of seven debates with his Democratic opponent, the incumbent Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861).
The Republican Party nominated Lincoln as its presidential candidate in 1860. He proved to be a controversial choice, polarizing national opinion over slavery. Lincoln won the election, but received less than 40 percent of the popular vote, much of which came from non-slaveholding states. By his inauguration day in March 1861, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, and four more states followed in April. On April 12, 1861, with Confederate forces firing upon the federal garrison in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the Civil War began.
For four bloody years, Lincoln guided the nation through its most devastating conflict, though again, with considerable controversy. Invoking what he called "the war power," Lincoln curbed civil rights in the North even as he mobilized the nation for war and moved toward freeing slaves in the South. He jailed suspected Confederate spies and sympathizers without trial. Lincoln also called out the militia without securing a Congressional declaration of war.
On January 1, 1863, again without the approval of Congress, Lincoln unilaterally issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in those Confederate states not under Union control. Criticized for these actions and others, Lincoln never wavered from his commitment to preserve the Union. He understood all too well what the Civil War meant, a fact aptly demonstrated by his short but moving Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863): "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."Â
Elected President again by a razor-thin majority in 1864, Lincoln vowed to bring the nation back together, "with malice toward none and charity for all." Unfortunately, this was not to be, for on April 14, 1865, a Southern nationalist and actor named John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) assassinated Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln's death brought considerable sadness to Americans, North and South, even though his presidency had divided the country. In recent years, historians consistently rank Lincoln as America's greatest president.
In 1944, the City of New York acquired this playground as part of the Abraham Lincoln Houses. Two years later, the land came under Parks' jurisdiction, and was simply named the Abraham Lincoln Houses Playground. In 1985, Parks shortened the playground's name to Lincoln Playground. Two years later, Parks completed an extensive rehabilitation of the property, planting London Planetrees (Platanus acerifolia) and Shadblow serviceberries (Amelanchier canadensis), renovating the comfort station, installing new concrete and asphalt pavements, adding new kindergarten swings, and removing the playground's original sandpit. Today, the playground offers ample open space for neighborhood children to play, and the well-kept basketball court is host to tournaments in the summer months. Lincoln Playground is more than a welcome place of recreation; it is a memorial to a dedicated public servant whose character serves as an inspiration to all.


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Skye is an environment enthusiast. She especially loves marine biology and has done much reading and research on the subject. It disturbs her to find trash discarded carelessly, especially plastics washed up on the beach. She has been conscientious about recycling, and is often frustrated by all the plastics being used excessively and unnecessarily, or to see people not bothering to recycle.
Several months ago, Brent and Skye attended a lecture by Waynflete about plastics. There they learned about a program called Rippleffect. Its purpose is "to promote youth development and leadership through adventure, healthy communities and living sustainably." Skye was very enthusiastic about it, and proceeded to apply for the CELP, the Cow Island Environmental Leadership Program for high school age teens. She was accepted into the program, and excitedly made preparations for her 4-week stay at Cow Island.


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Media Objectivity in Canada: a Timeline of Social Events
November 30, 2007
Without an informed civil society there can be no robust conversations in a renewed democracy.
"(A) democracy cannot function unless the people are permitted to know what their government is up to (Commager, Henry Steele)."
Citations from Hackett and Zhao's useful publication (1998 ) entitled Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity 1
The regime of objectivity refers to an "ensemble of ideals, assumptions, practices and institutions" that is tied to concepts of democracy, public responsibility, public life and public good. There is an assumption that interest groups, social movements, politicians and the media operate under a regime of objectivity (Hackett and Zhao 1998:1).
Mass media has become the leading institution of that realm of social life called the public sphere, "where the exchange of information and views on questions of common concern can take place so that public opinion can be formed (Hackett and Zhao 1998:1)."
Liberal-democratic capitalist mode of governance is the dominant mode of governance in Canada. Quebec has a stronger history of advocacy and participant journalism (Hackett and Zhao 1998:12).
"These recent shifts in media ownership and policy might be seen as the equivalent of a non-violent coup d'etat, a metaphor evoking the inherent link between media power and state power — between the colonization of the popular imagination and the allocation of social resources through public policy and market relations. Communications scholar Herbert Schiller suggests that what is at stake is "packaged consciousness": the intensified appropriation of the national symbolic environment by a "few corporate juggernauts in the consciousness business."" (Hackett and Zhao 1998:5)
"The late French social theorists Michel Foucault, during the 1970s, wrote of "discursive regimes" — of how power is imbricated with knowledge, not by directly imposing censorship or coercion from outside, but indirectly and internally, through the criteria and practices that "govern" the production of statements (Hackett and Zhao 1998:6)"
"Scott Lash's concept of "regimes of significance" is composed of a cultural economy and a specific mode of signification. A cultural economy is comprised "of relations and institutions by which cultural objects are produced and consumed." Mode of signification is a "typical way by which cultural objects become meaningful to those use them." "Lash and other theorists make distinctions between discursive and figural, modernist and postmodernist, and cognitive and aesthetic ways of seeing and knowing (Hackett and Zhao 1998:6)."
Foucault collapses all truth claims into power, self-interest and the internal validity rules of particular discourses (Hackett and Zhao 1998:7)
Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication," subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Legal scholar Harry Glasbeek "predicted that the Charter's freedom of expression clause could be used "to defend individuals generally and the media in particular from state controls, but not individuals or their defender, the state, from private interests," thus helping the private press "to retain its sovereignty as a purveyor of information and opinion.47" In effect free speech is interpreted as a property right of corporate entities, not as a human right of individual citizens (Hackett and Zhao 1998:80). "Subsequent court rulings seem to bear out this prediction. Because freedom of the press includes the freedom to be biased, the print media (by contrast with broadcasting) are not legally required to be objective or balanced. Nevertheless, these concepts are often viewed as professionalistic criteria to be respected and relied upon in court decisions protecting media owners' property rights. Canadian or U.S. citizens have sometimes sought court-ordered access for their opinions or rebuttals in the pages of newspapers or magazines. The courts have consistently refused such a right of reply or access, citing the integrity and responsibility of journalists in producing "balanced" and "objective" reports. "
Market liberalism describes the right-wing movement that upholds a faith in the market mechanism. "It advocates minimum government, deregulation, privatization of public services, and more economic freedoms for the private sector. It espouses an extreme version of individualism. It displays hostility towards unions, collective bargaining, and the progressive social movements that struggle for economic and social rights for various disadvantaged groups. Market liberalism is also called neoliberal, neoconservative, and the new right. Preston Manning, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Newt Gingrich are champions of market liberalism. It is basically a revolt of the rich — the upper middle class — in a crusade against the poor. It is presented as a commonsense revolution. The shift towards market liberalism began in 1980 (Hackett and Zhao 1998:151).
Canadian press has media blind spots. This includes "…tax breaks for the wealthy, Canada's cosy trade-and-aid relations with regimes, such as Indonesia, that violate human rights and Canada's substantial participation in the international arm's trade, contrary to its self-image as a peacekeeper (Hackett and Zhao 1998:182)."
"In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: the massive deregulation of telecommunications; $167 billion in annual subsidies to business, whose elimination could enable the U.S. government to balance its budget without slashing social programs; lax enforcement of U.S. child labour laws, resulting in thousands of injuries and even death of children in the workplace; $100 billion or more lost annually in medical fraud; ABC's cancellation of a hard-hitting documentary on the tobacco industry at the same time as a tobacco company filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC; the U.S. chemical industry's fight to prevent the banning of methyl bromide, a toxic zone-killing pesticide; the death through error or negligence of up to 180,000 patients in US hospitals each year (Hackett and Zhao 1998:182)."
1700s Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine were pioneers of social thought of the Enlightenment. Reason can control nature. All men have natural rights. Rousseau described nature as God's creation. Rousseau described nature as rational, benign and inherently harmonious.
1700s Thomas Jefferson was one of the early promoters of democracy.
1835 A jury acquitted editor/politician Joseph Howe accused of criticizing the authorities. The law of seditious libel was effectively struck down (Hackett and Zhao 1998:15).
1800s The press was both partisan and sectarian. It did not present the news with honesty or accuracy (Hackett and Zhao 1998:15).
1815 – 1836 The English working class used newspapers as a vital way of contributing to an unfolding class consciousness (Hackett and Zhao 1998:27).
1800s Independent penny press papers were published heralding the age of independent, non-partisan and socially responsible journalism. (Hackett 1998:16)
British Stamp Duty is a government tax on newspaper sales.
1800s The labour press began to publish. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:16) The labour press described a social landscape in which the rights to justice, equality and property of artisans, mechanics, trades people were impeded (Hackett and Zhao 1998:21).
1800s Utilitarianism advocated the goal of the greatest good of the greatest number instead of democracy based on natural rights and reason. Utilitarianism was better accepted by the ruling order, the middle class. They were concerned that democracy would lead to mob rule (Hackett and Zhao 1998:19) Utilitarianism and democracy are held in a long-standing tension in the United States.
1820s – 1830s Craft unions developed in some Canadian cities (Hackett and Zhao 1998:21).
1830s United States entrepreneurs launched daily newspapers in the 1830s. The popular commercial daily papers took full bloom in the 1870s (Hackett and Zhao 1998:24).
1850 – 1867 "Both the Leader and the Globe in their views of democracy expressed the central position of mid-Victorian liberalism. Both declared for a wide, popular electorate but still wanted a qualified franchise to recognize property and intelligence, and to prevent the rule of ignorance and mere numbers…. There was in this mid-century Canadian press little of the spirit of American Jeffersonian or Jacksonian democracy with their faith in the natural worth of the common man."
1850s – 1900 The trade union movement developed in Canada.
late 1800s The popular commercial daily papers emerged as the first version of journalistic objectivity (Hackett and Zhao 1998:18).
late 1800s Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism foreshadowed the competitive, exploitative laissez-faire market economy. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:18).
1872 The Ontario Workman was founded. The labour newspaper expressed Enlightenment sentiments: "Co-operation is a principal that has shone upon the world through the progress of intelligence, and that it will gradually grow with the intelligence of the masses we have no doubt. It, or some like system, will gradually supersede the serf system of the past(Hackett and Zhao 1998:21)."
1880s The US founded Knights of Labor was spreading across Canada (Hackett and Zhao 1998:28).
1891 T. P. Thompson was Canada's most prominent labour journalist. He was forced to close his newspaper when his readers turned to the commercial dailies. "It is much to be regretted that the wage earners are so stupidly blind to their own interests that they cannot see the advantage of having a live outspoken journal to plead their cause (Hackett and Zhao 1998:28)."
1917 The Russian Revolution
1920 Walter Lippman and Charles Merza accused The New York Times of reporting the Russian Revolution by "seeing not what was, but what men wished to see (Hackett and Zhao 1998:40)."
1930s Great Depression
1935 Leni Riefenstahl's documentary Triumph of the Will celebrated the Nazi Regime. It is the classic propaganda film.
1935 The American Newspaper Guild's code of ethics upheld the value of objectivity: "The newspapermen's first duty is to give the public accurate and unbiased news reports (Hackett and Zhao 1998:40)."
1937 Quebec's "authoritarian premier, Maurice Duplessis introduced the Padlock Act to shut down what it considered to be "Bolshevik or communistic" publications. The Supreme Court overturned the Padlock Act in 1957 (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79)."
1950s Alberta's Conservative Premier Ralph Klein described the 1950s as a Golden Age when Canadians "looked to the newspapers for their information, and … to governments for answers." Klein and many others were convinced that in the 1950s "The news simply reported on "reality," and political journalism treated politicians and authority figures with enough respect that they could communicate with their publics without worrying about the distorting lenses of the media (Hackett and Zhao 1998:136)." This cognitive certitude was pervasive. It existed in academia as well.
1958 The C.D. Howe Institute's origins go back to Montreal in 1958 when a group of prominent business and labour leaders organized the Private Planning Association of Canada (PPAC) to research and promote educational activities on issues related to public economic policy. Under the leadership of Robert M. Fowler, and with a small but dedicated staff, the PPAC soon became the Canadian co-sponsoring organization for the Canadian-American Committee (CAC), which had been established in 1957 to study and discuss the economic factors affecting the bilateral relationship between Canada and the United States.
1960s Conservative think tanks, business, politicians and media scholars describe the 1960s news media as left-liberal and anti-authority. A new breed of journalists was branded as adversarial, "gotcha", disruptive and cynical (Hackett and Zhao 1998:136).
1960 A French language CBC journalist complained that the CBC reporting was "objective to the point of being virginal (Hackett and Zhao 1998:39)."
1960s Third world national liberation struggle.
1970 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act during the October Crisis. 450 activists, journalists and writers were arrested under suspicion of being sympathetic to the separatist movement (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79).
1970s "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police placed left-wing groups and periodicals under surveillance (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79)."
1970 "The Davey Commission sparks debate on media ownership vs. freedom of the press (CBC Radio 1970)."
1971 New York Times Co. v. United States Decided June 30, 1971.
"I can imagine no greater perversion of history. Madison and the other Framers of the First Amendment, able men [403 U.S. 713, 717] that they were, wrote in language they earnestly believed could never be misunderstood: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press . . . ." Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions, or prior restraints. In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do."
1971 Ben Bagdikian predicted that "more independent channels of communication to each information corporation and into each home will end the homogenizing of news that now occurs because it must be prepared for such a wide spectrum of consumers" (Bagdikian 1971, 20).
1973 A bloody military coup, with U.S. connivance, overthrew Chile's elected Marxist president Salvador Allende…. The new military regime unleashed a reign of terror that saw thousands of Chileans arrested, tortured, murdered, and/or exiled. Political parties were banned, the press was censored, and freedoms of speech and assembly were restricted. The junta pursued decidedly free-enterprise economic policies, but it took sixteen years for some semblance of liberal democracy to be restored (Hackett and Zhao 1998:166)."
1974 The Fraser Institute was established. The Fraser Institute is a pro-business think tank and lobby group.
1978 The Business Council on National Issues was established. The Business Council on National Issues is a pro-business think tank and lobby group.
1980 Canada's competition law watchdog sparked a federal inquiry into a corporate takeover of two newspapers companies (Hackett and Zhao 1998:5).
1980 – 1981 The Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers reported that "The great majority [of Canadians] believe that newspapers and the mass media in general, have responsibilities to the public different from those of other businesses." The mass media is expected to function in public interest, not just economic self-interest. (Hackett 1998:1) "It is those newspapers with a large advertising market to protect and with a readership all social classes of society that have taken the initiative of setting up existing press councils…. The various press councils established in Canada until now are seeking to perpetuate the social consensus which has ensured the success of the so-called omnibus newspapers …. Whose formula is specifically designed towards advertising led consumer patterns and whose basic unit is the traditional family (Hackett and Zhao 1998:92)."
1982 Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication," subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Legal scholar Harry Glasbeek "predicted that the Charter's freedom of expression clause could be used "to defend individuals generally and the media in particular from state controls, but not individuals or their defender, the state, from private interests," thus helping the private press "to retain its sovereignty as a purveyor of information and opinion." In effect free speech is interpreted as a property right of corporate entities, not as a human right of individual citizens. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:80).
1983 REAL Women organization was created.
1984 Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada.
1984 Robert Hackett wrote an article in 1984 on the limitations of using objectivity and bias as evaluative standards for journalism. He worked with Newswatch Canada (then called Project Censored Canada) that covers blind spots in the media.
1988 Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada.
1989 Yuezhi Zhao's 1989 MA thesis was on the discourse and politics of objectivity in North American journalism. Zhao grew up in a peasant family in rural China.
1992 Barry Mullin's column criticized his own paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, for its coverage of the Los Angeles riots. The continent's major news story was carried on the back pages while front page carried soft stories. Mullin had been an ombudsman for the Winnipeg Free Press. But the new Thomson appointed publisher disagreed with Mullin's level of independence (Hackett and Zhao 1998:93).
1994 The response of the Mexican government to the Chiapas rebellion may have been more moderate because of the Zapatistas' use of the Internet to communicate with their sympathizers world wide (Hackett and Zhao 1998:191)
1995 Sovereignty Referendum in Quebec
1995 "In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: "In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: the massive deregulation of telecommunications; $167 billion in annual subsidies to business, whose elimination could enable the U.S. government to balance its budget without slashing social programs; lax enforcement of U.S. child labour laws, resulting in thousands of injuries and even death of children in the workplace; $100 billion or more lost annually in medical fraud; ABC's cancellation of a hard-hitting documentary on the tobacco industry at the same time as a tobacco company filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC; the U.S. chemical industry's fight to prevent the banning of methyl bromide, a toxic zone-killing pesticide; the death through error or negligence of up to 180,000 patients in US hospitals each year (Hackett and Zhao 1998;182)."
1995 – 1996 There were unprecedented multibillion-dollar-mergers in North American media.
1996 The US Congress passed The Telecommunications Act that "raised the ceiling on the size of national TV networks and virtually removed restrictions on the ownership of different types of media in the same market (Hackett and Zhao 1998:4)."
1996 Hollinger took over Southam, Canada's largest newspaper chain.
1996-05 "The Winds of Change conference, which took place in Calgary in May 1996, brought together approximately 70 leading right-wing thinkers and activists in an effort to bring unity to conservative forces before the next federal election, expected in 1997. The goal, according to organizer David Frum, was to discuss the prospects for a merger between the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties. The stark reality facing Conservatives is that a continued fracturing of the right-wing vote is likely to ensure not only a victory for Jean Chretien's Liberals in 1997 but that the Liberals remain in power indefinitely. Frum believed that a vigorous airing of views behind closed doors, steps to develop a common agenda, and the bon amie of personal contact would create the momentum that was needed. . . . First, in the 1980s and 1990s the corporate community has funnelled considerable resources into so-called think tanks. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute (1974), the C. D. Howe Institute in Toronto (1958), and the Canada West Foundation (1970) in Calgary are among the most influential policy-oriented research institutes. They often make headlines with timely and sometimes controversial reports on public policy issues, do contract work for governments, hold conferences and seminars, and do their own community outreach and media liaison work. Right-wingers might argue that the left in Canada has its own think tanks in the form of some university-based research centres. Of course, even the most objective scholarship might seem threatening to those who hold strong ideological views. These centres lack both the financing and the muscle that is available to the corporate-sponsored institutes. Indeed, as university budgets and federal funding for basic research have been cut back, corporate money has become more important in financing research. Corporations tend to support projects from which they can benefit directly (Taras 1996).
Late 1990s The Federal Government cut the CBC budget dramatically. CBC cut its workforce by a third.
2000 The Sarejevo Commitment At the beginning of the 21st Century men and women of the media register their commitment to integrity and public service. This document was launched at a World Media Assembly, SARAJEVO 2000, and signed by participants on 30 September 2000.
We, men and women of the media – professionals at all levels, from publishers and producers to cub reporters and students of journalism; from the print and digital media, television and radio, book publishing, cinema and theatre, advertising and public relations, music and the performing and creative arts – met here in the bruised, historic and beautiful city of Sarajevo, pay our homage and respect to the millions of humanity whom we inform, entertain and educate.
2001 In the wake of 9/11 there was a dramatic increase in the number of blogs.
2001 The producers of the series West Wing created a pivotal episode entitled Isaac and Ishmael where real, virtual and everyday embodied real were inextricably linked. The series exists in the liminal space occupied by docudrama, fictionalized journalism, news as fiction, psychodrama, realpolitical analysands, flesh and blood real and the imaginary real. The series reveals behind-the-scenes ethical sell-offs of the fictional (or nearly real) political epicentre of the planet. The Democratic President capable of blinking has a real world Ivy League CV . He is an economist trained in the London School of Economics.
2006 in An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim, Al Gore described how the mass media provides misinformation about consensus in the scientific community regarding climate change 2004 showed. He contrasts the findings of 928 Science magazine survey of all peer-reviewed scientific studies of climate change in which there were no articles questioning the fact that global warming caused by increased carbon dioxide in the earth's environment is occurring at a rate and speed greater than any climate event in the past. Concurrently 53 percent of articles, etc in the mass media articles concluded that there is conflicting and/or inadequate evidence regarding global warming. Until Gore's film was released consumers of the mass media who relied solely on them for information regarding climate change received deliberate misinformation preventing them from responding democratically to environmental risks.
2008 Guardian journalist Nick Davies published Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media in which he critically examined the changing face of journalism in the UK since the 1970s. This reporter with a distinguished record in investigative journalism claims that "the British newspaper industry, its regulators and the PR machine that supplies it" accept, report and spread "lies, distortions and propaganda" in a culture of "churnalism" not objective, investigative reporting (Riddell 2008). "Il documente les règles permettant à n'importe quel rédacteur d'usiner une « information » sans chair, sans risque et parfois sans vérité — mais respectueuse des principes du marketing : privilégier les enquêtes au rabais, éviter de froisser les institutions, se porter au devant des désirs supposés du lecteur, alimenter la panique morale… (Davies 2008-07)." He revealed how the public has come to accept misinformation (the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) as it is so widely spread by a mass media culture in which fewer journalists are hired and those that remain are discouraged from taking the time to verify the credibility of sources.
Webliography and Bibliography
Bagdikian, Ben H. 1971. The Information Machines: Their Impact on Men and the Media. New York: Harper & Row.
Bagdikian, Ben H. 1997. The Media Monopoly. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Barlow, Maude; Winter, James. 1997. The Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black. Toronto: Stoddart.
Bird; Roger?; Winter, James. 1998. "The End of News: How the News Is Being Swamped by Information, Manipulation and Entertainment. And How This is a Threat to Open, Democratic Society." Canadian Journal of Communication [Online], 23(4). January 1. Available: http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=493.
CBC Radio. 1970. "How free is Canada's press?" March 23, 1970.
CBC. 2007. "Media Ownership in Canada: a timeline."
Chomsky, Noam. 1989. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Toronto: CBC Enterprises.
Davies, Nick. 2008. Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto & Windus.
Davies, Nick. 2008-07. "Qui veut en finir avec le modèle de la BBC: L'émotion n'existe pas? Alors, inventez-la!" Le monde diplomatique.
Franklin, Ursula. 1990. The Real World of Technology. Concord, ON: Anansi.
Grant, George. 1969. Technology and Empire. Concord, ON: Anansi.
Hackett, Robert. 1991. News and Dissent: The Press and the Politics of Peace in Canada. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Hackett, Robert; Gilsdorf, Bill; Savage; Philip. 1992. "News Balance Rhetoric: The Fraser Institute's Political Appropriation of Content Analysis." Canadian Journal of Communication. 17:1: 15-36.
Hackett, Robert A.; Zhao, Yuezhi. 1998. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto: Garamond Press Inc.
Hackett, Robert A.; Gruneau, Richard. 2000. The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada. Ottawa: Centre for Policy Alternatives/Garamond Press Inc.
Hallin, Daniel. 1989. The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Herman, Edward, and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.
Herman, Edward, and Robert McChesney. 1997. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism. London, UK: Cassell.
Kellner, Douglas. 1992. The Persian Gulf TV War. San Francisco, CA: Westview Press.
Ligaya, Armina. 2007. "Media monopoly: Media consolidation: Can Aussie model stop the moguls? CBC News in Depth. September 19.
McQuaig, Linda. 1995. Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths. Toronto: Viking.
Menzies, Heather. 1996. Whose Brave New World? The Information Highway and the New Economy. Toronto: Between The Lines.
Postman, Neil. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. New York: Penguin.
Riddell, Mary. 2008-02-03. "Failures of the Fourth Estate: Flat Earth News by Nick Davies turns the spotlight on the workings of the press." The Observer.
Silva, Edward. 1995. More Perishable than Lettuce or Tomatoes: Labour Law Reform and Toronto's Newspapers. Halifax, NS: Fernwood.
Taras, David. "The Winds of Right-wing Change in Canadian Journalism." Canadian Journal of Communication. 21:04.
Tichenor, Phil. 1970s.
Winter, James. 1996. Democracy's Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2002-. "Media Objectivity: a Timeline of Social Events1." >> Speechless.
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. "Media Objectivity: a Timeline of Social Events 1." >>"Google Docs. November 29. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp3qxmz_362fxcz5h
[1.] This is a personal teaching learning and research tool using my EndNote 8 and Zotero bibliographic databases compiled over a 14-year period, current events articles from various on-line and print sources. It is available for use under the Creative Commons license which is a license requiring any one who uses copyrighted work to attribute the work to its author, to not use the work commercially, to share any derivative work with the same license as this. For the sake of expediency I am uploading a timeline I developed in 2002. The vast majority of the entries come from a provocative, extremely concise, well-written publication by Hackett and Zhao (1998). For anyone teaching urban studies, critical ethnography, sociology, anthropology, economics, human rights, communications, public policy, history, political science not to mention journalism, this book is a must. It is entirely readable and its logic is impeccable. This has been uploaded in December 2006 to my WordPress blog and it will be updated in slow world time. Last updated July 2008.
I began this particular timeline while teaching First Nations and Inuit adult students in Off-Campus programs. One of the first questions asked of me during an information session on course content was put forward by the grandson of Jessie Oonark. The life and times of Jessie Oonark (1906-1983) Inuit artist, Order of Canada, Royal Canadian Academy member has been a part of my everyday life since the early 1990s I first began to investigate how understanding of her deceptively simple but content-rich work could be enhanced. By the time I met her daughter, a colleague teaching at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, Nunavut, had dinner at the Frobisher Inn in Iqaluit, NU with her son, cultural activist, father, political worker, William Noah in Iqaluit and her nephew, I was already confused, ashamed and angered by the stories of social injustice that I had collected. Her progeniture asked me, "Will we be examining the way the mass media portrays Inuit?"
Filed in democracy, philosophy and society, Politics, Social History Timeline, society, timelines
Tags: churnalism, Conrad Black, corporate crime, democracy, democracy's oxygen, disinformation, EndNote, Flat Earth News, fourth estate, Fraser Institute, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Hackett and Zhao, Mary Riddell, mass media, media blind spots, media concentration, media objectivity, mergers and acquisitions, Nick Davies, self-regulation, Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers, wikileaks


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With all of the positive changes coming up in my life, I've been thinking about the direction of my blog and my desperate desire to be a more frequently poster. As I was thinking about all of the DIY's and projects I have coming up, it dawned on me that it may be fun to start incorporating videos into my blog. So in the upcoming weeks, be on the look-out for tutorials, DIY's, and glimpses of my favorite things. I thought a haul video would be a fun place to start because I love watching hauls myself. In true recessionista form, almost everything in my haul was found on sale...woo hoo!
Please forgive me for the poor quality and choppy editing. I'm learning as I go and accidentally had my computer in the wrong setting as I was recording. I'll get better as I go =) And be sure to let me know if you like the idea of incorporating videos in my blog and want to see more.


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So, Nate, why put the music in your posts?
Well, that's a question I've been asking myself… and I'm not sure how it's been going over, but I like it. It offers a little more creative expression and adds some emotion to an otherwise sometimes hard to read subject. Hardcore and staunch economists may feel that it takes away credibility from the site, but I say that if you don't like it, don't press the play button! The work, and truth, will stand on its own merit.
And what is music anyway? Music is made up of waves – the same as all of nature and the markets as well. Good music, like the markets, also has math that underlies the waves. There are relationships that can make beautiful music or music that is off key. I'll bet that you will find Fibonacci relationships in the waves if you look, just as you see them in the number of pedals on a flower or appendages on your body.
Marketing people strive for this relationship on a visual level. Fibonacci relationships are pleasing to the eye as well as the ear. That's why credit cards measure approximately 3.4 inches in width and 2.1 inches in height. The difference between them is 1.3 inches, which when divided by 3.4 equals 38.2… a prime Fibonacci relationship! Another way to state this is that the height of the card is 61.8% the width of the card! Measure one and you'll see.
But more importantly, I'm not currently upbeat about the economy – the news flow is depressing. Many people can't even bear to look, so they ignore it. If you're reading my site, that's probably not you. You can face reality and deal with it, meeting it head on. That's me… while I don't like what's happening, I am optimistic about the future and life in general. One could spend day after day reading economic reports and listening to the dry news, there's certainly plenty of it out there. You can feel trapped by it if you let it. Same for people who are in debt or are facing a very difficult future because they bought into the must have everything now (on credit) mentality. They face a future of work as they have already reaped their reward by borrowing against future earnings. In this way they have become debt slaves – they are prisoners of the system as are all Americans who now face higher taxes and must toil until late in the year just to pay their taxes. And even those who have done "the right thing" are victimized as well. They watch their retirement savings collapse as they are told that pouring money into their 401k's and IRA's is a good way to ensure a future free from work.
Music is one way to interrupt the negativity and to return to nature just a little. Music is an art form that can be inspiring and can offer HOPE. That's what Obama is selling after all – HOPE. He may be doing all the same things as before, but people always like to hope.
I ran across a video clip of the Shawshank Redemption the other day and found the ending clip interesting. YouTube also has a Shawshank clip about music. I thought it was funny as it got me thinking about why I like the EconoTunes…
The first clip is the music scene, and the second clip picks up in the cafeteria overlapping for about a minute:
The Shawshank Redemption - Music Scene:
The Shawshank Redemption - Hope:
If you like the music and videos intertwined with stories, let me know by voting on the "cool" button below… if not, well then don't click "play"! ;-)
Construction Spending Increased 1.3% in October
3 hours ago


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March 4, 2018 (UNIAN) The two Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics in Donbas, Ukraine's east, claim they are ready to introduce an "absolute ceasefire" starting from 00:00 Kyiv time on March 5. The so-called military command of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" ("DPR") says it is ready for an "absolute ceasefire." "The command of the Armed Forces of the Donetsk People's Republic supports the agreements reached at a meeting of the [Trilateral] Contact Group held in Minsk on the introduction of an 'absolute ceasefire' in the armed conflict zone from 00:00 Kyiv time on March 5.
A respective order on the strictest observance of the truce was issued and sent out to all commanders and every serviceman," "Deputy commander" of the "DPR" operational command Eduard Basurin was quoted by the militant portal DAN as saying, the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda reported. Special representatives of the "command of the DPR armed forces" will be sent on Sunday evening to all units located along the contact line. Their task will be to monitor the execution of this order. The other self-proclaimed Donbas republic, the "Luhansk People's Republic" ("LPR'), said in turn it would support the introduction of the "absolute ceasefire" regime from March 5.
The full article is available on UNIAN: https://www.unian.info/war/10030133-self-proclaimed-republics-in-donbas-pledge-absolute-ceasefire-from-march-5.html


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The reason most often mentioned for the lack of progress in improving sanitation worldwide is that it is a taboo subject and that access to toilets and clean water are subjects not fit for fine society.
Not so says the heir to the Dutch crown, the Prince of Orange, His Royal Highness Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.
The Prince has been a prominent advocate in raising awareness and urging action worldwide to improve the global water and sanitation situation. He has been Patron of the Global Water Partnership since 1998 and Chairperson of the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation
In that capacity he attended the launch last spring of "Sustainable Sanitation: The Five-Year-Drive to 2015," a major push by the UN to improve the health and well-being of millions of people worldwide. The Prince noted that sanitation is arguably the most overlooked and less advanced MDG target.
"It is unglamorous, yet vital," he stated. "Neglecting the need for proper toilets allows a slow moving crisis to continue."
The main messages of the new drive, the Prince added, are that sanitation is vital for health, brings dignity, equality and safety, represents a good economic investment and sustains clean environments.
Sanitation maybe unglamorous sanitation but it is vital. The definition is access to, and use of, excreta and wastewater facilities and services that ensure privacy and dignity, ensuring a clean and healthy living environment for all.
"Clean water and sanitation are not only about hygiene and disease, they're about dignity, too. "Everyone, and that means ALL the people in the world, has the right to a healthy life and a life with dignity. In other words: everyone has the right to sanitation," says Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.
The Brussels based United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe - UNRIC provides information on UN activities to the countries of the region. It also provides liaison with institutions of the European Union in the field of information. Its outreach activities extend to all segments of society and joint campaigns, projects and events are organized with partners including the EU, governments, the media, NGOs, schools and local authorities.
United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC Brussels)
Residence Palace, Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 155, Block C2,7th and 8th floor, Brussels 1040, Belgium
Tel.: +32 2 788 8484 / Fax: 32 2 788 8485


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Hair implant with your ski trip? Turkish tourism branches out
ISTANBUL - Sitting in a private clinic in an upscale neighbourhood of Istanbul, Saleh, a human resources executive from Qatar, is preparing to leave Turkey with a smile on his face and more hair on his head.
Having previously brought his wife and children to Istanbul for sightseeing and shopping, Saleh has returned as the new kind of high-spending visitor Turkey is increasingly seeking to attract: a medical tourist.
"There's a social pressure to look good," the casually suited executive, declining to give his family name, told Reuters as he sat waiting for a check-up a day after having hair follicles implanted in his balding scalp.
"Two of my brothers and half of my friends had hair implants in Turkey. It was an easy choice after that."
As it tries to boost tourism revenues and narrow its current account deficit, its main economic weakness, Turkey is on a mission to diversify away from the all-inclusive package tours to its sun-drenched Mediterranean shores which, local businesses complain, often do too little for the local economy.
Of 37 million tourists visiting Turkey last year, about 270,000 came for surgical procedures, from moustache implants and liposuction to operations for serious ailments, generating $1 billion in revenues and representing a small but growing fraction of tourism receipts.
"They usually come for three days. We offer them shopping or skiing tours, they get well and have a short vacation," said Kazim Devranoglu, the medical head of Dunyagoz Group, which has 14 eye care clinics in Turkey and branches in western Europe.
Around 10 percent of the group's patients - some 35,000 people a year - are now coming from abroad, he said.
"They are mostly from western European countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, as well as from Algeria and Azerbaijan."
There are various factors behind Turkey's appeal.
People from countries with heavily congested health systems welcome the opportunity to choose the time of their surgeries, while those from less-developed nations are attracted by Western-trained medics and new facilities sprouting up as Turkey's private healthcare industry flourishes.
The moustachioed stars of Turkish soap operas, popular across the Middle East and North Africa, have also prompted an influx of men seeking a virile addition to their upper lip.
Health professionals and patients say plastic and corrective eye surgery costs, including travel and accommodation, can be up to 60 percent below comparable programmes in western Europe.
The government aims to double medical tourist numbers to half a million a year over the next two years and raise revenues to $7 billion by attracting them to higher-margin healthcare.
"We see Turkey as a prime destination for medical tourism," said Dursun Aydin, head of the international patients department at the Health Ministry. "We have experienced doctors. Hospitals are new...Turkey is relatively inexpensive and the temperate climate helps too."
The phenomenon is a boon not only for Turkey's tourism industry, which risks locking itself into a price war with rival destinations such as Greece and Spain, but also for its booming private healthcare industry.
Parliament passed new regulations in February to make private investment in the healthcare sector easier, a move it hopes could unlock billions of dollars of investment over the next few years.
Private equity investors favour Turkey's fast-growing services industries, including healthcare and education, because of a near tripling of nominal, per capita gross domestic product over the past decade and a young population of 75 million.
Foreign institutions including Malaysia's state investment arm Khazanah Nasional, U.S. private equity firm Carlyle, emerging markets investor ADM Capital, Qatar's First Investment Bank and the World Bank's International Finance Corp (IFC) have put money into the Turkish healthcare sector.
Turkey's status as a medical tourism destination could add to the allure. Though the idea is still on the drawing board, the government is considering airport-accessible, tax-free health zones which would aim to attract up to 85 percent of their patients from abroad, while offering tax incentives for investors.
Under the new law passed in February, which facilitates public-private partnerships, the state will rent city hospitals built and run by the private sector for 25 years.
"The aim is to revitalise ageing hospitals. While built primarily for Turkish citizens, they'll be luxuriously equipped and will aim to draw at least some of their customers from abroad," said the Health Ministry's Aydin.
Growth has already been phenomenal, said Tolga Umar, chief executive of Visit and Care, a patient and doctor matching service which helps visitors from the Middle East and Europe.
"We've been matching patients and doctors for six years now. Back then there were few other players, but now hospitals have international patient management departments doing direct marketing," he said.
"Even tour operators ask prior to a visit whether you want to have a dental exam or corrective eye surgery."
Boosting tourism revenues is key to keeping a lid on Turkey's current account deficit, which narrowed to around 6 percent of GDP in 2012 from roughly 10 percent in 2011. Net tourism receipts reached $21.6 billion last year, while the current account deficit stood at $47 billion.
Turkey is the world's sixth top destination by tourist arrivals, according to the World Tourism Organization, but it may require strategies such as the medical tourism drive to maintain that status.
"Decreasing prices in Greece and Spain since the debt crisis mean that the competition for tourists is more intense," said tourism consultant Fehmi Kofteoglu.
Timur Bayindir, head of Turkey's TUROB tourism industry association, said: "What the industry needs is alternative tourism channels like medical and shopping tourism."
That could mean men with red dots on their heads - a tell-tale sign of freshly implanted follicles - becoming a more common sight as they stroll through Istanbul's designer malls, snapping up a last few purchases at the end of their medical tours. (Editing by Nick Tattersall)


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My brother Pat wrote me:
Check out "Alone in the Wilderness" featuring Dick Proenneke living alone in Alaska. It's on our PBS affiliates a lot here (in Florida). He is a true pioneer, a 1960's "maker" at work, building everything by hand, using tools he made. He has no electricity. Shoots it all on his Brownie camera. Awesome techniques he demonstrates!
I especially like how he builds handles for his tools. Proenneke says that building a cabin in the wilderness was just "something he had to do" and by doing it test himself. The YouTube video below covers ten minutes of the show and shows him building a cabin just before winter sets in.
According to an article about him in Wikipedia,
Proenneke remained at Twin Lakes for the next 16 months, when he left to go home for a time to visit relatives and secure more supplies. He returned to the lakes in the following spring and remained there for most of the next 30 years, going to the lower 48 only occasionally to be with his family.
He passed away in 2003. The complete set of his videos are available.
Ever dream of living alone in the wilderness? I have, especially after reading "Call of the Wild" but I would not be able to do it. Now I can vicariously through Dick Proenneke, and idly sit by and watch him do it all. Incredible.


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Magic at Kings game preview
Game time: Friday at 10 p.m. ET
TV: FOX Sports Florida
With Tyreke Evans back in the lineup and getting the job done from 3-point range, the Sacramento Kings just returned to the win column.
Orlando Magic rookie coach Jacque Vaughn knows that Evans and the Kings are improving from beyond the arc, but he's more concerned about stopping them from getting into the paint.
Sacramento will try to win two in a row for just the second time this season Friday night when the Magic look to bounce back from one of the worst 3-point shooting efforts in franchise history.
After missing the previous two contests with a bruised left knee, Evans hit two late 3s and finished with 23 points Wednesday as the Kings ended a three-game slide with a 107-100 home victory over Toronto.
The fourth-year guard has never been known for his outside touch - he's a career 25.8 percent 3-point shooter - but he's 7 for 15 from beyond the arc while averaging 20.3 points in his last seven games.
"I'm happy for (Evans), especially on his outside shooting," said center DeMarcus Cousins, who finished with 25 points and 13 rebounds Wednesday. "If Tyreke gets confidence in that shot he's going to be an incredible player."
Getting to the basket with more regularity could also help Evans raise his career-worst 15.5 scoring average. He went to the foul line a season-high 12 times Wednesday -- hitting seven -- as Sacramento (5-12) shot a season-high 34 free throws.
The Kings, 5-2 when they take 22 or more foul shots, also extended their streak of games with six or more 3s to nine.
Vaughn, though, is focused on protecting the lane, as Sacramento scored 56 points in the paint against the Raptors.
"Our ability to contain penetration -- it boils down to that," Vaughn said. "They have guys who can, at the end of the day, break you down one-on-one and score the basketball, whether it's Aaron Brooks, Tyreke Evans, you can go down the line, John Salmons and even Cousins at the center position doing it one-on-one."
The Magic (7-11) don't have the same type of athletes on their team, and the result is a league-low 17.0 free throws per game.
Orlando has taken a different offensive approach under Vaughn, shooting 16.1 3-pointers per game compared to a league-high 27.0 a season ago, but the team's success still has much to do with its ability to knock down shots from beyond the arc.
The Magic are 0-8 when hitting four or fewer 3s after missing 14 of 15 in Wednesday's 87-81 loss at Utah.
It was the lowest 3-point percentage ever by Orlando when it had at least 15 attempts. The team opened its five game trip by hitting 8-of-23 3s against both the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State in a pair of wins.
The Magic have won two straight and seven of eight in this series, averaging 112.0 points during that stretch.


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Hartsville, SC
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|Major City
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|South Carolina
|Primary City
|Hartsville, SC
|Cellco Partnership DBA Verizon Wireless
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Mobile numbers are usually written as "NPA-NXX-XXXX" for example, 843 307 6683, a fictional mobile number, could be written as (843) 307-6683, 843-307-6683, 843-3076683, or 843/307-6683. The modern format for mobile numbers globally is +1NPAXXXXXXX with no spaces, hyphens or other characters.


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Big Theory
It could explain the Chronic Fatigue Initiatives pathogen study results. It could show how an infection could cause chronic fatigue syndrome, and then seemingly disappear. It integrates two of the biggest players in ME/CFS; the autonomic nervous system and the immune system. It focuses on the herpesviruses. It includes sensory nerves, an increasingly hot topic in ME/CFS/FM, and it follows an established model of fibromyalgia.
It's the Vagus Nerve Infection Hypothesis (VNIH) for chronic fatigue syndrome, and it could change how this disorder is viewed, researched and treated.
Created by Michael VanElzakker, a Tufts neuroscientist, the VNIH proposes that nerve loving viruses trigger a difficult to detect immune response which produces the fatigue and other symptoms present in chronic fatigue syndrome.
Location, Location, Location
VanElzakker proposes that an infection triggers ME/CFS, but if his theory is right the most important thing about that infection is not what it is but where it is. That 'where' is the biggest nerve in the body; the vagus nerve – a 'wandering nerve' that stretches over much of our torso and sends its roots into most of the organs of the body.
The vagus nerve isn't just any nerve; it's the nervous system's immune conduit to the brain. VE believes that an infection there doesn't need to be large to cause havoc in the brain; it just needs to be present.
In some ways, vagus nerve appears, in fact, to be ripe for infection in ME/CFS. As it 'wanders' through the body it comes into contact with virus havens such as the esophagus, stomach, lungs and spleen, all of which have likely at one time or another harbored the herpesviruses (HHV6, HHV-5 [cytomegalovirus], HHV-4 [Epstein-Barr virus]) that have been thought to be associated with ME/CFS for decades.
Most humans carry several of these herpesviruses in latent form unless some stressor or biological event allows them to become reactivated.
VanElzakker believes that upon reactivation these viruses replicate and move outside the nerves where they run into glial cells that attempt to gobble them up. The glial cells perk up remarkably in the presence of viruses, releasing all manner of pro-inflammatory and neuroexcitatory compounds (proinflammatory cytokines [IL-1B, IL-6, TNF-a], glutamate, prostaglandins, nitric oxide and free radicals. )
Receptors on the vagus nerve that sniff out these alarm signals tell the brain an infection is present, which then shuts the body down by sending out signals (fatigue, flu-like symptoms, pain, etc.) that slow the body down, tell it to stop moving, stop eating, stop thinking.
Because these infections are localized right on the main immune conduit to the brain, VanElzakker believes they don't need to produce the outsized cytokine response researchers have been looking for. All they need to do is tweak the vagus nerve and let it and the brain the do the rest.
You don't need a 'big' infection to produce ME/CFS; all you need is a little infection in the right place.
The Key Component – Glial Cells
The glial cells that surround and protect the vagus nerve are the key. Once thought to be mere structural scaffolding for the nerves, these cells (e.g., astrocytes) are now known to regulate nervous system signaling, a fact that's been borne out in chronic fatigue syndrome's sister disease, fibromyalgia.
Glial cell release of cytokines, glutamate, free radicals, etc. in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord causes increased pain sensitivity and allodynia in susceptible individuals. At some point the constant production of these excitatory substances causes a switch to get flipped sending the pain response spiraling upwards instead of shutting down.
At its most extreme (allodynia), the nervous system can interpret even the slightest touch as eliciting pain. The pain response system at this point, as VanElzakker, puts it, has become, 'pathological'.
That model of pain production has been solidly documented. VanElzakker proposes the same process causing pain sensitization in the dorsal horn is causing fatigue and other symptoms in chronic fatigue syndrome, except this time it's associated with glial cells surrounding the vagus nerve.
A New Model of Fatigue
There is no reason to suspect that vagus-nerve associated glia would function any different than pain associated glia. VanElzakker
Nobody knows what a herpesvirus infection of the vagus nerve would look like, but VanElzakker doesn't see any reason it should look any different from an infection in other parts of the body.
We know a herpesvirus infection of your trigeminal nerve gets you shingles and chronic pain. Researchers believe a chronic infection in the dorsal horn of your spinal cord will can get you fibromyalgia and allodynia. Would an infection of the vagus nerve get you sickness behavior and chronic fatigue syndrome?
There's a good chance it might. Animal studies indicate that fatigue/flu-like symptoms go gangbusters when the vagus nerve gets infected. In fact, it's possible the flu-like symptoms associated with infections wouldn't even exist without the vagus nerve. Rodents with their vagus nerves cut don't act sick even after they've been infected with a pathogen; the fevers, fatigue, the desire for isolation – are gone.
What if the vagus nerve receptors were…ceaselessly bombarded with these cytokines? The symptoms of sickness behavior would be severe and intractable.
If the glial cells surrounding the vagus nerve function the same way they do in the dorsal horn, a lingering or even a 'smoldering' infection (aka Dr. Lerner's theory), could trigger the similar type of hypersensitive reaction in the vagus nerve. In this 'immune sensitization' model, it takes only very small amounts of cytokines to trigger fatigue and flu-like behavior.
In fact, VanElzakker suggests chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia could both be 'glial cell diseases'.
How to Have an Infection That Doesn't Show Up in the Blood
"Cytokines Responding to a Local Infection Stay Local" VanElzakker
If VanElzakker is right, the same group of viruses are wreaking havoc in different locations in different ME/CFS patients. The problem is it's just darn hard to get at them. You can't find them in the blood and you sure as heck can't biopsy the vagus nerve.
A series of fascinating studies exploring how central nervous system infections cause chronic nerve pain may, however, illuminate what's happening in ME/CFS. First, researchers mimicked a localized nervous system infection by dropping an HIV protein known to activate glial cells into rodents' spinal cord.
They found that the glial cells reared up and starting producing pro-inflammatory cytokines to take care of the intruder. Not surprisingly, the rodents looked and acted sick – the cytokines were doing their job to keep the animal down and isolated – but no trace of those cytokines could be found in their bloodstream. Only if the animal's spinal cord was sampled near where the 'infection' was it possible to find any evidence of increased cytokine levels.
If VanElzakker is right, then blood cytokine levels in ME/CFS are a function of where your vagus nerve is infected. If it's infected in your abdominal area, you might find cytokines in the blood, but it might be hard to find them in your spinal fluid. If your vagus nerve is infected near your brainstem you might find cytokines in the spinal fluid, but you probably won't find them in your blood.
Wherever the infection is there's a good chance you may not find cytokines in the blood at all. This isn't a completely surprising fact or even restricted to the vagus nerve infections; cytokines in mice with lung infections, for instance, showed up only when the lungs themselves were sampled.
Next Steps
VanElzakker suggests animal studies to better understand infections of the vagus nerve and to ultimately to build a chronic fatigue syndrome rodent model would be helpful. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be able to detect viral lesions in central nervous system tissues. It is not yet known if PET scans can detect the activation of a different type of glial cells; the satellite glia that are in vagus nerve ganglia and paraganglia, but special PET scans might be able to be used to assess microglial activation.
Cadaver studies of people who had ME/CFS definitely aren't his first choice, but they could find activated glia, inflammation and viral infections of the vagus nerve and associated structures. Finally, novel protocols should be developed to assess the vagus nerve and brainstem functioning in ME/CFS. The severely ill should be given a prominent place in future studies.
A New Treatment Approach
"Glial cell inhibitors could become standard treatment for CFS (caused by CNS vagus nerve infection)" VanElzakker
Glial Cell Inhibitors
If VE's theory is correct then glial cell inhibitors to stop the immune activation, antivirals to attack the pathogens, vagus nerve stimulation and surgical alteration of the vagus nerve might be possible treatments sometime in the future.
Glial cell inhibitors have a good safety profile, have been helpful at curbing neuropathic pain and are not used much in chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia.
Ibudilast (AV411/MN166), a drug used mostly in Japan, knocks down glial cell activation by inhibiting the production of a proflammatory cytokine called macrophage-migration-inhibitory factor (MIF) and TNF-a. Reduced levels of TNF-a could provide a bonus by increasing the breakdown of a excitatory neurotransmitter called glutamate that may be helping to keep your central nervous system on edge.
Ibudilast is also known to have neuroprotective and vasodilative effects and is usually used to treat asthma and stroke. It's ability to suppress glial cell activation has made it useful in the treatment of neuropathic pain, and it's currently undergoing clinical trials to treat neuropathic pain in Australia. Ibudilast can also prevent viral activation of the microglia.
The NIH is funding Ibudilast trials in the US to see if it's effective against drug addiction. If successful the drug could be available here for off-label use in ME/CFS in three or four years.
Other general microglial inhibitors exist (minocyline, pentoxyfilline, propentfylline) but have undesirable side effects.
Stopping glial cell activation may be easier than getting at the viruses themselves. Herpesviruses living in the sensory ganglia may be protected from antiviral drugs and antibodies. (One new herpesvirus drug may be coming on the market soon, however.) Alternately, viruses other than the herpesviruses could be infecting the vagus nerve.
Behavioral Therapy
VanElzakker also notes that while behavioral therapies are not curative and may only apply to a subset of patients, they can help moderate symptoms and improve quality of life in some.
The VNIT may be able to explain more puzzling aspects of chronic fatigue syndrome than any other. Next up we talk with Dr. VanElzakker about how he got interested in ME/CFS and what his theory may mean for this disorder.
- Follow VanElzakker on twitter here.


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5 Days away from Fundamentally Restoring our Constitution
Good evening patriots, we are just 5 days away from fundamentally RESTORING our Constitution. Each day from now until election day, Tea Party Patriots will be updating its blog with information from each Tea Party Patriots Regional Support Team (RST) Coordinator on efforts leading to November 6.
With only five days until the most important election in a generation, it's critical that grassroots activists work together to promote the core principles of Tea Party Patriots: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally-limited government, and free markets. With this in mind, we urge you to reach out to your respective local leaders so they can help you work with your RST to find out how you can most effectively help activists in and around your area.
Coordination is key to any victory of principle over the corruption of Washington. However, individual effort can never be discounted. This is why it's important that – in addition to contacting your local leaders – you participate in the Tea Party Patriots Call From Home Program. Participation every day from now through Election Day means over 100 undecided voters will be touched by your stand on principle. It also means you will get a free T-shirt after call 60, and each call you make puts you in the running for one of two iPads.
To keep up with all that is going on with Tea Party Patriots around the country, keep checking our video page on a daily basis!
We're less than a week from taking America back. Keep it up!


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Brothers stick together whether in good or bad health, or so it goes with the Villefort brothers Yuri and Danillo.
The pair were set to fight Travis Bush and Antwain Britt, respectively, at this Friday's Strikeforce Challengers 16, which takes place at ShoWare Center in Kent, Wash., and airs on Showtime.
Then fate intervened. Two weeks ago, Danillo sustained an injury to his neck, and five days later, Yuri blew out his knee.
"It was crazy for us," Yuri Villefort (6-0, 0-0 SF) today told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "We were excited to fight the same day on a big card in a big promotion. But God always does something for a reason.
"Sooner or later we're going to find out why God did that."
Yuri, of course, got the worse of the injuries. With a torn ACL and meniscus, he recently underwent surgery to repair his knee. Although his timetable for return is undetermined, he is walking again and, naturally, thinking about going into the gym.
"But I can't," he said. "I'm focused on therapy and rehabbing so I can get back sooner."
Brother Danillo will have a head start. He said today that he's been cleared by a doctor to resume training and could be ready to fight again in a month – if he stays healthy.
"I've just got to be smart with training," Danillo said.
Manager Glenn Robinson said a fight in Strikeforce should be on the near horizon for the UFC and WEC vet.
"They want to get him back in there pretty quickly," Robinson said.
Danillo Villefort (13-3 MMA, 0-0 SF) was looking for his fifth consecutive victory prior to his injury. In his six years as a pro, he's bounced between the welterweight and middleweight divisions and most recently scored decision victories over notables Joey Villasenor and Matt Horwich.
The undefeated Yuri's most recent appearance was one year ago when he earned a submission victory over Jason Fitzhugh in regional competition. He plans to document his return to health in a new web series called "I Just Want To Fight," which will be hosted on his recently-launched official website, YuriVillefort.net.
(Pictured: Danillo Villefort)