As students and activists at USR in the 80s, a demonstration was on 24 October in support people to the Italian National Council in spite of other factions of the people to participate. As with the previous demonstrations, we knew that is closed by the University, the Israeli military for some time. Realizing we are demonstrating the next day, a group of mates, including Sharaf, stayed in our apartment in Denver, where me and my younger brother Antonio lived. We played cards, laughed and enjoyed a night without studying.
Nora was the best pal with connections going back to before Khanyounis BZU. He studied chemical engineering. The next morning when we woke up early, Sharaf requested that I put the pot of water on the stove to hot to be. It was clear that he needed to shower. He added, can I borrow a clean pair of underwear, I smiled and said, “but, of course.
We had a quick breakfast with tea and huddled at the car stop in the center of avenue on the campus of the University go to Orlando. Although most of us were engineers, with classes in the new campus, we continued the old campus, where demonstrations usually take place. Over a few hundred pupils heard a short speech by the head of the student council and then we hurried to the center of town and blockades erected Birzeit with stones and rubble to move the Israeli military jeeps to prevent the form to the town. We set fire to old tires as a sign for the detection.

massaaž

On Tuesday morning, Debora completed his latest project. He painted and bolted his little piece of PVC, which he bought last week, at the stroke with an existing stud location. Then with that styro noodle thingy he noted last week, he has a receptacle for the solar industry walkway lights he found at a campsite we visited earlier to leave this summer. Closed now even with the hyphen curtains, it's a little light to greet us when we come home after dark. As Wayne and Garth would say: “I am not worthy.”
We spent the afternoon at pub in downtown Portland and enjoy an open gaming session they hold every other weekend. We played Agricola, a hot new game just released last week. In fact, among the 8 or 9 games held in the room were several this game. It is rather complicated, but they are well designed with an incredible amount of change of the strategy are available through the many cards that come into play. Participating players will receive a 20% discount on all purchases, so we took the deal and bought Amun Re 'and' train to train, both for ourselves introduced by the Frys this summer.

lasteaed

There were so many casualties during the last decade they can’t all be listed – but here are some of the most important in a heavily U.S.-centric list, in no particular order:

R.I.P.: DEMOCRACY passed away in Florida, taking big chunks of the Constitution with it. As the debacle of the Bush/Gore election dragged on for weeks, the very foundations of the Republic seemed at risk. Our political system was exposed as a crass, corrupt, greedy, and incompetent morass of conflicting agendas and cutthroat strategy and tactics. It has yet to recover, if it ever can. Repression of democracy continues in places like Pakistan with the Benezir Bhutto assassination, in Burma where opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains under perpetual arrest, in Iran where anti-government protesters have been killed in the streets, arrested and executed, or simply “disappeared”, and in dozens of other authoritarian countries around the world.

R.I.P.: THE DOT-COM ERA at one time the most spoken phrase in the world, “dot-com” is a depressing chant of failure and disillusionment today. The fantasy that you could make a fortune by essentially providing nothing in the way of product or service died hard, and took a number of companies big and small with it. The only survivors of the “Dot-Com Bubble” were companies like Amazom.com, that actually offered something to consumers.

R.I.P.: VICTIMS OF TERRORISM in New York, At the Pentagon, and in the skies over Pennsylvania, and around the world. A relative handful of fanatic individuals, armed with nothing more than box cutters, showed us just how vulnerable we are. That revelation continues to unfold today as we bluster and blunder our way through Afghanistan, Iraq, and a continuing nightmare of foreign policy disasters.

R.I.P.: NEW ORLEANS’ POOR when hurricane Katrina destroyed the levees that protected the city from the sea. After three hellish days with no help from the outside world, survivors were dispersed to nearby states, camps, and impromptu government trailer parks (where some still languish today). While the rebuilding of New Orleans’ historic and lucrative commercial districts is complete, and the city’s upper-and-middle-income residential districts are once again thriving, the poorer neighborhoods still face challenges. Around the world tsunami, earthquakes, floods, famine, and drought continue to take their toll. The crisis of global climate change grows worse by the day as political factions continue to argue over its existence.

R.I.P.: SADAAM HUSSEIN proving it wasn’t all bad.

R.I.P.: AMERICAN GLOBAL STANDING as a victim of the arrogant, incompetent, and just plain insulting foreign policy of the Bush administration. From “Freedom Fries” to the Merkel back-rub, it was just one boot-marked cow pie after another.

R.I.P.: THE WORLD ECONOMY driven into the ground by corporate greed, political indifference and collusion, and just plain stupidity. We will be wearing bandages and band-aids for years  to come. It seems the developing nations of the world were hurt the least, mainly because they already had so much less to lose.

R.I.P.: CIVILIAN AND MILITARY CASUALTIES OF WAR never have so many given so much to gain so little.

R.I.P.: ???? leave a comment to add your own casualties to the list.

I give a tip of the hat to Joe Scarborough, the cast of Morning Joe and their primary sponsor, Starbucks, for their efforts when the show aired in a volunteerism-focused visit to New Orleans on Friday (November 20). “Morning Joe’s” title sponsor and the show’s partner in its drive to spark volunteer efforts around the country presented a $125,000 check which boosted a donation total of more than $200,000 to John McDonogh High School – not counting the overtime donation of a new gym floor sparked by an on-air challenge by guest Digger Phelps!

Additional donations announced during the show came from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. (700 textbooks and professional development curriculum for teachers), the NBA and Spalding sporting-goods company (new hoops and backboards for the gym), NBC News (a free one-year subscription for the school to NBC News Archives on Demand and a donation to McDonogh’s college tour for ninth-graders).

The gym-floor donation came after Phelps Googled sports-floor companies and called one out on the air — Robbins Sports Surfaces of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Joe Covington Jr., of the Birmingham, Ala.-based Covington Flooring Co. – the regional distributor-installer for Robbins — happened to be in New Orleans on Friday for a business trip, and immediately began to field e mails and cell phone calls from people in his company and Robbins.

Covington arrived at John McDonogh, measured the space to be resurfaced, quickly consulted with a Robbins decision-maker, and the donation was decided.

Though “Morning Joe” had already left the air, Covington and Robbins meeting Phelps’ “Google and Guts” challenge so quickly prompted an unplanned live follow-up report — featuring Covington surrounded by the “Morning Joe” cast — during “Morning Meeting.”

“It was pretty wild,” said Covington, estimating that the value of the new floor will range from $80,000 to $150,000 depending on the material chosen for the job.

Then Saturday’s volunteerathon was dubbed “Brewing Together Day of Service.” (Starbucks recently rebranded one of its coffee lines to Gold Coast Blend, Morning Joe Edition.)

“I saw (President Obama) go down last month, for the first time, for a couple of hours before flying out to his fundraiser in San Francisco,” Scarborough said. “We had a discussion about it around the table, on the air. You sit there and wonder what else has to be done to draw focus on New Orleans and Mississippi. That wasn’t done over the past four years, and how could we still be – what’s the (Dick) Cheney word on Afghanistan? Dithering? – how could our federal government and state governments still be dithering four years later in reaching out and helping New Orleans and helping out Mississippi and helping everyone who was so dramatically impacted by Hurricane Katrina?

“So many people come on our show and talk about what they talk about in Washington and what they promise to do,” said “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, whose family named its Katrina rescue dog Cajun. “This is our way to say, ‘OK, you guys can keep talking, but anyone who actually wants to do something, come join us. Seriously, come out here. What you have to offer, offer. Let’s do it. Let’s help these people.’

I am pleased and surprised to see this group using their position and status to actually do something rather than just complain that the government isn’t doing enough. If more people in Washington, New York and Hollywood would follow the example set by the Morning Joe crew and Starbucks, the country would be much better off.

I experienced the immense pleasure of watching APKGK along with two of my friends on Friday Night. APKGK is a film coming from the house of Rajkumar Santoshi after, you can say, an era. The Rom-com was hilariously witty replete with great music and situational comedy moments. The actors have performed to the par and have done full justice to the roles they were assigned to. When it comes to comedy, the timing holds a pertinent space and APKGK displays a striking coordination of Screenplay, Dialogues and Acting.

Situations within the movie had the uncanny ability to make the people laugh naturally without the slightest effort on their part to understand the same completely. Some of the powerful ones like, Prem slapping the backside scalp of the bald-headed man, Prem accidentally knocking on the forehead of Katrina’s father etc. were brief and yet they simply knocked me off my seat! I was laughing my ass off continuously in the scene where Jenny is taking a bath and Prem and his mom try to create a diversion for Prem’s father. And it becomes a comic hysteria when Prem comes asking for the Jenny’s clothes trying to communicate to his father that they are his clothes!!

But, the essence of the movie not only lies in the outright humor but also in the emotional upheavels, traumas, dejections etc., that Prem goes through. The Audience sympathizes with the protagonist when he helps Jenny despite knowing the fact that she is already in love with someone. And I should say that the character of “Prem” has been laid-out well. Hopelessly in love for reasons unknown and the resulting unselfish devotion to “Jenny”, efforts to change the mind-space of Upen patel (with whom Jenny is in love) etc. reveals the continuing clash of vices and virtues occurring within. But then, Prem realizes that it is about her and not him and from that point onwards he gets real serious to solve Jenny’s problems. And yeah in the end, True Love conquers all (if Guru Dutt would have been the director then it would have been a romantic tragedy)

Climax is typical of a Bollywood Comedy movie where a flurry of characters meet in the end amongst ensuing chaos and mirthful confusion. Great comic timing and uproarious consummation of what the director attempted to do.

And it is with great inertia, I state here that Ranbir has the ability to give the Big khans a run for their money! This lad’s performance improves everytime I watch him, be it in comedy or in the tragic overrun of his character’s emotions. Katrina and Upen remain the same in the acting department despite doing so many films but thanks to Ranbir’s overshadowing actiligence (Diligence in Acting, for beginners) we don’t even notice it (well, some of you might have, but what the hell!!). Prem’s parents especially Smita Jaykar (Prem’s mom) did a commendable performance and for that a standing ovation to them.

Music was remarkably brilliant. I could feel my feet slightly floating above the ground, ready to tango on the beats of “Main tera dhadkan teri”. “Tera Hone laga hoon” was spectacularly ear-catching. The same goes for “Tu Jane Na”, but scratch the “Ear” and replace it with “Heart”.

The climactic tagline: “Go for Ranbir and Katrina. Go for Rajkumar Santoshi’s irrevocable brilliant direction. And yeah, become a member of “Happy Club”"

Katrina Kaif will miss the promotional events of her film De Dana Dan as she is down with jaundice and a low hemoglobin count , Just when she needed to go all out to promote her film De Dana Dan, Katrina Kaif has been diagnosed with jaundice and a low hemoglobin count. She has been advised complete bed rest by her doctor. The actress had been feeling queasy and weak since quite a few days but she kept ignoring the warning signals because of her hectic schedule. This was until Sunday morning, when she couldn’t drag herself out of bed. “That’s when Katrina realised something was seriously wrong. She was taken to the doctor who performed a series of tests on her. It was found that her hemoglobin count had gone down drastically,” says a close friend of Katrina. On Monday evening, Katrina was seen entering a suburban hospital looking pale and weak. She was in the hospital for nearly five hours. Finally, on Tuesday afternoon she was diagnosed with jaundice. Katrina has been forbidden to move out of her home for the next couple of weeks but she insists on getting back on her feet much sooner because of her professional commitments. Katrina’s business manager said, “She’s trying to rest so that she can fulfill her commitments as soon as possible. The doctor has advised her complete bed rest.”

President Obama has decided to increase the troop commitment to Afghanistan by 34,000. If John McCain had won the Presidency, he would have increased the commitment by 40,000. This is a difference worth a campaign?

The Obama administration is committed to a withdrawal from Iraq identical to the plan adopted by the Bush administration.

Obama will close Gitmo — some day.

Obama strongly pushed for healthcare reform with a public option; oh well then, without a public option but with a requirement that the uninsured buy insurance from private insurance companies. That’s a reform the Insurance Industry can live with.

Oh, and Pharmaceuticals? The White House signed off on a deal protecting Big Pharma from having to negotiate prices on their high-cost drugs.

Hunger is rising among the nation’s children — the White House feels bad about that and promises to do something by 2015. One can only hope the nation’s hungry kids will live so long.

The nation’s supply of vaccine is insufficient to provide shots to children and the elderly but the Administration intervened to provide the vaccine to investment bankers on Wall Street.

The plethora of credit swaps and derivatives overwhelmed a fragile financial system leading Candidate Obama to promise reform — President Obama’s reform is to ask the financial industry to regulate themselves.

The Administration, like the previous administration, thinks that it can reconstruct Afghanistan and yet almost 5 years after Hurricane Katrina, two Presidential regimes have failed to restore the dispossessed of New Orleans to their pre-storm status. If Ward 9 of NewOrleans cannot be reconstructed how is the U.S. going to reconstruct an entire country?

What is the difference between the Bush & Obama administrations? The REAL difference? Barack Obama talks pretty.

Thanksgiving is coming up and there is so much to be thankful for. Life is inspiring.

When one gives thanks, one often wants to give back. I recently had the amazing opportunity to go to New Orleans and work on homes with Habitat for Humanity.

Co-sponsored by Cutco Cutlery and Vector Marketing, the group you’ll see in this video had such a good time doing good work. Not only did we help build four homes, we raised almost $10,000!

I hope you like this special JPB vlog.

While photographing LA Boxing in Brentwood for a 110 Magazine feature story one member of their staff really took to the camera.  In image after image it was apparent that Katrina was a natural.  When I asked her how long she has modeled, she laughed and said that though she was a NOS Girl she had no experience… but did like taking pictures.  Well I decided to change all that and schedule a photoshoot for Sunday.

Katrina arrived 30 minutes early (LOVED THAT) and waited for me inside the production theater we used as a meeting point.  When I reminded her that we were not shooting inside the theater but around downtown Antioch you could clearly see the disbelief in her eyes.  We tossed her stuff in the truck and headed to our first location, a bog of chest high reeds near a train track.  I asked her to change into her dress and heels while I set up the lighting and exposure.  Five minutes later she appeared and walked down the steep slope to the location.

As is my method, I assured her what we were about to do, which part of her would be in the shot and some small posing do’s and don’ts.  After a half dozen test shots, we took a few basic images to get warmed up.  I then walked over and showed her the first image.  “I like that ALOT”, great I thought… we now have buy in.  I could hear her thinking, “maybe this guy knows what he’s doing (lol).”  As you can see, Katrina looked amazing in her snake skin dress so a shot in the reeds was a no brainer.  While I laid on the dirt with mysterious critter-like noise coming from behind me, Katrina started to pose and the images came out beyond my expectations.

We then moved over to the pier for the next series of images.  When we go there the sky was pretty gray and unflattering.  I tried to boost contrast and warm it up a bit but nothing really worked.  I am a big fan of Joe McNally (though he uses the wrong camera) and the way in which he creates mood with gels and color temperature.  I decided to try to make day turn into night and dialed the temperature deep into the tungsten level, then use my 580ex reflected into a partially closed umbrella to cast a little neutral light only onto Katrina.  After a few minor adjustments it started to take shape.  I asked Katrina if she had red lipstick to create a little more of lady vampire vibe but she responded that red just doesn’t work on her.  When I brought the image into Photoshop I decided to see for myself.  She may have been wrong.

The shoot only got better from there and I think the following video really captures the day.  Thank you Katrina for being such a pleasure to work with.

Bildkälla: dn.se

Egentligen är budskapet om jordens klimatproblem enkelt. Vi måste förändra våra vanor. Ändå verkar det som om många beslutsfattare och vanliga människor väljer att vända andra kinden till. Detta trots att miljöforskare världen över är överens om den allvarliga situationen. Varför tar vi då inte miljöproblemen på större allvar?

Jorden har feber. Många av våra viktigaste ekosystem, de som skapar våra livsvillkor, är på väg att försvinna. När de väl försvunnit går det inte att återskapa dem. Febern stiger då till över 42 grader och patienten – det vill säga jorden – dör.

De två senaste åren har klimatdebatten verkligen dragit igång och varje dag kan vi se samma budskap på nyheterna eller läsa om det i tidningarna. Vi måste rädda världen. Men kanske är detta ett alltför stort krav att ställa på helt vanliga människor. För vad gör vi egentligen?

Trötta på klimatet

När vi pratar runt med våra kompisar och rannsakar oss själva är resultatet nedslående i förhållande till jordens framtid. Det visar sig att många är trötta på klimatet, att de inte längre ser artiklarna i tidningarna och att bilderna inte påverkar dem nämnvärt.

Vi som stoppar huvudet i sanden har blivit allt fler. Vi ser helt enkelt inte längre alla artiklar som hotar om naturkatastrofer, massflykt, massvält och smältande glaciärer. Vi har slutat låta oss skrämmas och förhåller oss numer apatiskt till mediernas rapportering av miljöförändringarna på jorden och varningarna om vad dessa förändringar medför.

Relatera och förstå

Bilden ovan porträtterar den amerikanska staden New Orleans efter orkanen Katrina och dess framfart över området i augusti 2005. Naturkatastrofer som denna sägs bli allt vanligare och allvarligare i och med att medeltemperaturerna världen över höjs.

Trots att vi ser bilder som den ovan är det svårt att förstå vad Katrina faktiskt innebar för de drabbade eftersom katastrofen skett för långt bort rent geografiskt. Vi människor är enkla varelser, vi behöver något att förstå och relatera till.

Närmare Sverige

Därför kan vi förstå hur orkanen Gudrun påverkade södra Sverige sju månader innan Katrina drabbade USA. Detta eftersom Gudrun slog till i vår del av världen. Tsunamin i Thailand, i sin tur en månad innan Gudrun, fångade också vår uppmärksamhet eftersom så många svenskar drabbades, över 500 svenskar dog.

Problemet är att när hoten på riktigt börjar närma sig Sverige och underlättar vår förståelse för allvaret är det redan för sent. Media måste på allvar ta tag i sin uppgift och förändra sitt förhållningssätt. Idag är rapporteringen om klimatet inte anpassad för att vi mottagare ska kunna ge en konstruktiv respons snarare än att reagera med rädsla och ”stoppa huvudet i sanden” – attityd.

Dags att agera

Patienten jorden är sjuk. Diagnosen är ställd. Symptomen är tydliga – hög feber och begynnande uttorkning. Nu måste kraftfull behandling sättas in. Här måste vi alla hjälpas åt. Framförallt måste media, politiker och forskare ta sitt ansvar som auktoriteter i denna fråga. De måste få oss att förstå. De måste få oss att agera.

Av: Alexandra Lövgren, Astrid Lindberg, Rebecka Gustafson

To view the latest news in bollywood and hollywood, subscribe to the http://www.youtube.com/user/b4u4you

All the latest Garam Gossip and news from Bollywood and Hollywood are showcased here.

Aish

During the press conference when Aishwarya was asked by the media, how she felt about Katrina’s Barbies hitting the market in first week of December, Aishwarya instantly answered that she was the original choice for Barbie.

Aishwarya told, “I was asked by that brand (Barbie), not just now but, I think, since Miss World, then at the turn of millennium, then when my movies were raging success after Canes and this year was the fourth time actually that I was requested by Barbie to walk the ramp on a particular day.”

She adds, “But I was a committed professional working with Vipul Shah and he needed my date on that day so I was unable to accept that offer to walk the ramp that particular day for them.”

Aishwarya Rai discovered that she did not regret not becoming a Barbie girl and wished Katrina Kaif good luck for her Barbies.

All right, I think that it’s just a little messed up that there  is a set curriculum floating around Texas right now (C-Scope), which promotes the concept of man-made global warming.

Let me begin by saying that I personally believe in the concept of man-made global warming. Or, I should say that I believe that it has not been disproven; and that it is therefore more prudent to believe it may exist.

What alarms me is the fact that the mandatory curriculum at my school not only shows An Inconvenient Truth, but also submits no rebuttal to Al Gore’s view. Now here’s the kicker: We are also teaching lessons centered on Hurricane Katrina in the same week, both before and after the students have watched this video.

So what is my objection, since I agree (de facto) in global warming? It is a matter of ethics. I am not allowed to teach these students my personal beliefs or politics because they are impressionable. True, I could not steer them toward my beliefs with a cattle-prod if I told them that it was the “best thing for them,” but students do put a faith in their teachers (often by accident). That faith is that they believe what their instructor teaches is fact. If I taught them that my beliefs were incontrovertible fact, then they would write it down and pass the quiz.

Now, some students are independent learners who will question what they are taught, but there are others that are just trying to follow what their teachers are teaching– and having a tough go of it. Which one of these two profiles do you think is the majority? Do you want to bet on it?

Now if I was going to teach my beliefs, I would bring in my copy of Penn & Teller’s B.S. and have them watch the episode where they call BS on global warming. not on the scientific concept, but on the political posturing. It does a great job of showing the hustle behind carbon credits and Al Gore.

Al Gore was lambasted for having a monumental carbon foot-print. His defense was that he bought carbon credits, and he did. From his own carbon credit company.

When talking about Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans with the volunteers last week, I realized that I wasn’t very good at explaining it in words.  So, here is a link to a flash video of the flooding:

http://www.nola.com/katrina/graphics/flashflood.swf

Its pictures and captions will surely do a much better job than me in describing what happened on the South Shore during August 29th – September 1st, 2005.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t deal much at all with what happened on the North Shore during Katrina – which is where PCO has focused most of its work in the last four years.  Look for more information in the near future about how Katrina hit and flooded Slidell and the rest of the North Shore.