By Wadner Pierre

This article was originally published by UnlessWeCare.org

Screen Shot 2015-11-06 at 6.34.24 AM It has been over a month since Haiti’s Conseil Electoral Provisoire (Electoral Provisory Counsel), known as CEP, published its foreknown controversial fraudulent results for the first round presidential and second round legislative elections. The CEP’s preliminary results for the presidential elections placed President Michel Martelly’s hand-picked candidate Jovenel Moise of Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale, or P.H.T.K in the first place with 32.8 percent of the popular votes. Jaccéus Joseph, a member of the electoral council, qualified the results as unacceptable.

Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles reported, Joseph refused to sign “the presidential and legislative preliminary results” because of irregularities and frauds that plagued them. Joseph thought his refusal to endorse the results would prompt the Tabulation Center to verify “the allegations of electoral fraud, including checking the voter registration lists against the ballots cast in the Oct. 25” elections to avert an unnecessary electoral crisis.

Joseph said, “We asked the director of the Tabulation Center did he have enough time to thoroughly verify if there was fraud.” According to Joseph, the director told them, “[H]e didn’t have enough time for that.”

Despite Joseph’s insistence on verifying and correcting the irregularities and frauds threatening the credibility of the results, CEP’s President Pierre-Louis Opont decided to publish the tainted results. The electoral crisis that was avoidable is now becoming an inevitable crisis. This man-made electoral dispute could further derail the political and social stability of the country.

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BY WADNER PIERRE

Since the CEP published its tainted and most controversial results for the presidential, second round legislative and local elections early last November, thousands have been demonstrated in the streets of Haiti’s largest cities to reclaim a recount of their votes. Religious leaders and international human rights and advocacy groups have also urged the CEP to investigate irregularities and massive electoral frauds that are no longer mere allegations.

As protests widening, diplomatic talks failed and G8 candidates remaining steadfast in their position, to remedy the situation, Haiti’s PM Evans Paul in an one-page letter sent to the President Michel J. Martelly, proposed a formation of an electoral commission to ensure the credibility of the already festered electoral process.

The commission according to the Prime Minister’s letter will have three days to produce recommendations to the government and the Conseil Electoral Provisoire (Electoral Provisional Council), known as the CEP. The head of the government stated,“ …it is necessary to organize credible, transparent, participative and inclusive elections,” as well as “to do whatever it takes” to create a climate of trust for the actors involving in the process.

The CEP shows no sign that it will abide by the recommendations of the government-formed commission. One of its members Marie Carmelle Paul Austin told a radio in the Haiti’s capital that the electoral council members are ready to depart in bloc should the commission interfere in their work. “If this commission’s purpose is to redo or verify the work that the CEP has already done, the council members will resign,” implied council Austin.

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BY WADNER PIERRE

Nearly two months since Haiti’s Conseil Electoral Provisoire (Electoral Provisional Council), know as the CEP, announced the final results for the first round residential, second round legislative and local elections that plagued with massive frauds. The controversial results for the presidential elections placed Haiti’s ruling Party candidate, Jovel Moise at the first place with over 34 percent of the popular and the former 2010 presidential candidate Jude Celestin in second place. Since then protest against those tainted results have been widened through the country.

After candidates and their backers, religious leaders (Catholics and Protestants) and national and international human rights and advocacy groups urged the CEP to form an independent commission to investigate the electoral frauds that were no longer mere allegations, the CEP rejected such proposition and proceeded to schedule the presidential runoff on Dec. 27 with the two candidates obtained the majority of the vote. Celestin, a member of group of eight presidential candidates, known as G8, who have been protesting the CEP’s results, declared he would not participate at the runoff unless the CEP satisfied the demand of G8.

The United States, a staunch supporter of the current administration, and spent over $30 millions for the organization of these log-overdue elections, sent Kenneth Merten, the U.S former ambassador to Haiti and State Department’s Special Envoy to Haiti to convince candidates, most importantly Celestin, to accept the CEP’s results. Merten, a close friend of Martelly, and one the controversial figures that engineered Martelly’s election in the 2010 controversial elections, failed to his mission.

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Sometime in February, it was clear that the US was headed toward crisis, and every day we don’t take major action would make the crisis geometrically worse. Suburban schools closed first. The last school districts to close are bigger cities, because they had to figure out how to get breakfast and lunch to the kids […]

The post Schools are closed. Kids are home. What’s the long-term impact of that? appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers.

Last week I received a very long email with instructions for Zeder. This year millions of Jews around the world will log into Zoom, and try to continue a 2000-year tradition of not changing the tradition. We will recall plagues of past like infestation of locusts and raining frogs and we’ll silently scoff that Egypt […]

The post It’s time for Seder, which is Zeder, in our modern-day-plague ravaged Passover appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers.

Each night before I go to sleep, I lay in bed torturing myself with the day’s news. I know we are not supposed to do that, but there are very few vices I can fully engage in when we have five people living in a 1000-square-foot apartment. Screen-time news right before bed is a vice […]

The post I was calm until I read about colleges staying closed until September 2022 appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers.

goo Ranking recently published a straightforward survey on which Pixar movie moved people the most. For me it has to be Toy Story 3, although I’ve never actually seen Monsters University, and I only caught the last 15 minutes of Finding Dory in Japanese once, but it seemed more silly than moving to me! Anyway, […]

I’m back, and with some free time let’s try a translation I started last year; brands that the Japanese were surprised to learn were actually Japan-born. Samantha Thavasa television advertisements have an extremely American feel with supermodels frolicing around New York in fancy frocks, so I too was surprised to find they were actually Japanese. […]

Am vergangenen Donnerstag schoben sie sogar die Kanzlerin vor: Seit Wochen schon versucht die „Bild“-Redaktion, den Virologen der Berliner Charité Christian Drosten schlecht dastehen zu lassen. Sie bemüht sich, Drostens Autorität als Wissenschaftler zu untergraben, arbeitet genüsslich frühere Fehleinschätzungen heraus, stellt ihn als Einflüsterer dar, macht ihn zum Kollegenschwein. Damit dieses negative Bild irgendwie passt, […]

1. ZAPP spezial: Medien in der Corona-Krise (ndr.de, Annette Leiterer & Gudrun Kirfel & Daniel Bouhs & Tim Kukral & Caroline Schmidt & Sebastian Asmus & Andrea Brack Peña) Das NDR-Medienmagazin „Zapp“ widmet sich in einer halbstündigen Sendung den verschiedenen Auswirkungen der Corona-Krise auf die Medienbranche. Es geht unter anderem um Rekordreichweiten durch Corona, um Rettungspakete […]

Robert Ross (a.k.a. Bobby Tables) will be the speaker at the next nycdevops meetup on Wed, une 19, 2019.

Full details and RSVP info: https://www.meetup.com/nycdevops/events/261842702/

NOTE: Different day and location!

• Title: Staying Informed with Kubernetes Informers
• Speaker: Robert Ross (Bobby Tables) from FireHydrant
• Date: Wed, June 19, 2019
• Location: Compass, 90 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10011

Kubernetes state is changing all the time. Pods are being created. Deployments are adding more replicas. Load balancers are being created from services. All of these things can happen without anyone noticing. But sometimes we need to notice, however, for when we need to react to such events. What if we need to push the change to an audit log? When if we want to inform a Slack room about a new deployment? In Kubernetes, this is possible with the informers that are baked into the API and Go client. In this talk we'll learn how informers work, and how to receive updates when resources change using a simple Go application.

SPEAKER BIO:

Bobby is the founder of FireHydrant.io, and also previously worked as a staff software engineer at Namely, and also built things at DigitalOcean. He likes bleeding edge tech and making software that helps teams build better better systems. From deploying Spinnaker, Istio, and Kubernetes, he has cursed at a lack of docs and code spelunked through the code and loves telling the war stories about them.

Full details and RSVP info: https://www.meetup.com/nycdevops/events/261842702/

HEYO! FOLLOW @LAMEBOOK ON INSTAGRAM! PLEASE AND THANK YOU! (WE HAVE MANNERS)

HEYO! FOLLOW @LAMEBOOK ON INSTAGRAM! THANKS!

Does anyone remember watching long movies (like ‘Titanic’) on VHS tape and having to switch tapes in the middle of the movie? Like, halfway through the movie it would just stop, and you would have to get up and find the second VHS tape to watch the second half of the movie? Oof, and sometimes […]

QUARANTINE TIP – Get a new plant for your home, to prove to yourself you can take care of something plastic. Yeah, get a plastic plant. Make it easy on yourself. We can all use a win right now. HI! PLEASE DISABLE YOUR ADBLOCKER OR WHITELIST US! IT MEANS A LOT! THANK YOU!!

A federal judge dealt a significant blow to the U.S. Women’s national team’s fight for equality on Friday. While the U.S. women’s team’s claim of unequal working conditions can go forward, a federal judge rejected the player’s claims of pay inequality. In March 2019, the USWNT filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The suit alleges the U.S. Soccer Federation’s has federally discriminatory payment practices, arguing that they pay women less than men “for substantially equal work and by denying them at least equal playing, training, and travel conditions; equal promotion of their games; equal support and development for their games; and other terms and conditions of employment equal to the MNT.” Judge R. Gary Klausner wrote in his decision that USWNT members did not prove wage discrimination under the Equal Pay Act because the women’s team played more games and made more money than the men’s team. Furthermore, the women’s team also rejected a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) where they would have an identical pay structure to the men’s team in favor of a different CBA. This CBA guarantees players are compensated regardless of whether they play, while the men’s CBA does not. “This approach — merely comparing […]

Amidst great economic and political pressure to reopen in the fall, American colleges and universities must choose between enormous risk and liability if they do open and bankruptcy if they do not. Colleges and universities are among the most vulnerable institutions to disease outbreaks and would serve as efficient grounds the spread of coronavirus as students on campus share close spaces. Students are in close contact in classes, dining halls, clubs, sports, dorms, parties, events, games, assemblies, and meetings. Students could bring the virus to campus upon arrival and bring it home during breaks and holidays. Schools are worried about lawsuits in the case of outbreaks on campus, adding to the risk of reopening in the fall. If schools choose not to reopen this fall, they could lose half of their revenue and ultimately not recover, either filing for bankruptcy or closing permanently. Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are being hit the hardest by the financial burden of the pandemic and because African Americans are bearing a disproportionate share of the pandemic, school populations of HBCUs are more likely to be impacted by Covid-19. In response to political pressure from the GOP to reopen in the fall, schools are […]

On Sunday, May 3rd, the body of 28-year-old transgender woman Nina Pop was found in her apartment in Sikestown, Missouri. She had been stabbed multiple times, according to police. While police have not determined a motive, they are looking into the possibility of a hate crime. The LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign reported that Pop’s murder is at least the 10th violent death of a transgender or gender nonconforming person this year, and the fifth in the past month. All five of the recent victims were transgender women of color. Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for HRC’s Transgender Justice Initiative, wrote in a blog post, “for the past four weeks, we have seen the deaths of five transgender women of color in this country. We are seeing an epidemic of violence that can no longer be ignored. Transgender and gender-nonconforming people, especially trans women of color, risk our lives by living as our true selves — and we are being violently killed for doing so”. Transgender and gender nonconforming people lack expansive, explicit federal legal protections to safeguard against the vast discrimination they receive. While they are covered under the state’s hate crimes legislation, they are not explicitly […]

 A 57-year-old man from El Salvador who was being held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in California died from Covid-19 on Wednesday. This is the first confirmed death from the coronavirus at an ICE detention center. Carlos Escobar-Mejia has been detained at the center since Jan. 10 after having lived in the U.S. for 40 years. While at the detention center, he was on a list of people who are medically vulnerable to the virus and are therefore eligible for immediate release but was hospitalized before the list was fully put together. According to ICE, 705 out of 1,460 detainees tested positive for Covid-19. At the Otay Mesa center alone, there are 140 cases of Covid-19 out of the 649 detainees there, making it the facility with the largest number of positive tests among detainees. The Otay Mesa center is owned by the private prison company CoreCivic, which has not commented on the situation there. ICE maintains that it is caring for its detainees in light of the pandemic, but detainees have said that they do not have enough space to socially distance, that they do not have enough clean masks, and that guards are not adhering to CDC […]

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has issued the final version of a new rule governing how schools must handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The new 2,033-page regulation increases privileges for students and faculty accused of assault and requires colleges to conduct live hearings to adjudicate allegations, a drastic change from the more survivor-friendly Obama-era policies. “This new regulation requires schools to act in meaningful ways to support survivors of sexual misconduct, without sacrificing important safeguards to ensure a fair and transparent process,” said DeVos in a statement. But women’s rights and survivor advocacy groups have condemned the rule changes since they were first proposed in 2018. They argue that the new rule unfairly favors those accused of assault, reduces schools’ responsibility for addressing harassment, and discourages survivors from coming forward. The regulation gives college students accused of assault the right to have representatives cross-examine their accusers in a live hearing, which advocacy organizations say will discourage survivors from coming forward. The regulation also reduces colleges’ responsibility to investigate allegations, only requiring investigations for complaints made to certain designated employees such as Title IX Coordinators, through a formal process. […]

Oswin enjoying her first supervised enrichment activity. It ended when the nearby construction made a loud upsetting bang. #cat https://ift.tt/2TSjmef

Trapped! https://ift.tt/3aDPZSz

Today’s walk ended just as a few drops of rain fell. https://ift.tt/2xhdL7X

Advice for those who are trying to get published or who want a longterm career in the publishing industry: you need to develop a thick hide when it comes to criticism. 

No matter what stage you are in your career, if you are putting yourself and your work out there for people to see (whether it's agents or editors or art directors or reviewers or other readers), you WILL get criticism. It might be criticism in the form of critiques from a trusted group of writer or illustrator friends. It might be a form rejection letter or detailed rejection letter. Even after you get a contract, you will be getting feedback and change requests from your editor or art director. After your book comes out, some people will not like your book -- and some of those people may be reviewers.

If you are sensitive to harsh judgement, you need to find a way to cope with this early on if you want to stay in the game. Just don't do it in public!

For critiques of your work, never make changes right away. This is especially important for those who are insecure about their own skills! Let the feedback sit for at least a day or two (longer if you can wait), THEN come back to it with more objectivity. Do you agree with the feedback? Don't blindly make a change to your manuscript if you don't agree or understand why.

And never, ever respond to negative reviews in public.

Some useful resources:

Gail Carson Levine has great advice about how to take criticism, particularly from a critique.

11 Writers On How They Deal With Criticism - by Jason Diamond.

6 Top Tips For Dealing With Criticism Of Your Writing - from WritersEdit. This piece advises AGAINST reading all (if any) of your reviews in Goodreads and other places geared toward readers; I've heard this piece of advice from a prominent author in her workshop as well.

Deal With Criticism Like A Pro - by Bryan Collins on WritetoDone. This advice is mainly geared toward negative feedback from an editor; Bryan is a nonfiction freelance writer.

I only have 8 more pages to write for the Doris Encyclopedia, which is Doris 19-27 plus a bunch of new writing, interviews, and articles I wrote for MaximumRockandRpll and other zines! I'm taking pre-orders on a fundraising website called Kickstarter. click here to link
Spread the word!
thanks so much!!!
It's scheduled to be printed by the end of July!!!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/369768719/the-doris-encyclopedia

My book is coming out next week!
Upcoming Reading Tours:
August 11: Asheville NC, Malaprops Bookstore 7:00
September 23: Baltimore MD, Anarchist book fair; 6:00
September 24: Philadelpia PA, Wooden Shoe Bookstore; 7:00
September 25: NYC, Bluestockings Bookstore
September 26: Brooklyn, Bookthug Nation
September 27: North Hampton, MA, Food For Thought
September 28: may be somewhere in Vermont
September 29-30: Montreal
October 1-2:
October 3: Toronto
October 4: Pittsburgh

I switched my theme to fix Google Search Console errors. It complained that I had pages and posts with breadcrumb issues, and switching the theme was the easiest way to fix it. You can understand the importance of Breadcrumbs in this article.  If you don’t fix these errors, then your site is less likely to […]

Believe it or not, social media is a valuable marketing tool for real estate businesses. Many landlords, property managers, and real estate agents use it for marketing their businesses and attracting more customers. If you haven’t been using social media to promote your rental properties, you’re likely missing out on a variety of benefits. Let’s take...

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There’s a lot of financial advice out there – and some of it is really, really good. We like to think that we publish some of it. We like to think that some of it finds its way home to readers like you and is found helpful. But today, members of our contributing staff (who...

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Saturday Oct. 5th

Honda Stage
The Cure 8 - 10 PM
Billie Eilish 6 - 7 PM
Brittany Howard 4 - 5 PM
The Kooks 2 - 3 PM
Men I Trust 12:30 - 1:15 PM

Saturday Oct. 12th

Honda Stage
The Cure 8 - 10 PM
Billie Eilish 6 - 7 PM
Brittany Howard 4 - 5 PM
Denzel Curry 2 - 3 PM
Orville Peck 12:30 - 1:15 PM

Please obey your watch… Photo courtesy of Joe Pace.

The post How to Create a Pep Ventosa Inspired Still Life appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.

Pep Ventosa is a Catalan artist who creates incredible images that explore the boundaries of photography. Made from multiple layers of similar photographs, they create an abstract and often surreal effect with a painterly feel. Ventosa usually creates pictures outside, but you can borrow his ideas to create a Pep Ventosa inspired still life. This […]

The post How to Create a Pep Ventosa Inspired Still Life appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.

The post The Sony a7S III May Be Announced in Late June appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Over the past several weeks, rumors of a new Sony full-frame camera have been on the rise. And, taken together, it looks like we may have a Sony a7S II successor before the summer is out. One rumor, originally reported by Sony Alpha Rumors, suggests that a Sony full-frame camera (and a full-frame lens) will […]

The post The Sony a7S III May Be Announced in Late June appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Plato, through the character of Socrates, advances a now classic argument against democracy. When it comes to a matter that requires knowledge and skill, such as a medical issue, it would be foolish to decide by having the ignorant vote …

If you've only ever had refried beans from a can, this should be the next recipe you cook. Homemade refried beans are a game-changer. Use just the right amount of olive oil to cook well-minced onions along with the beans and plenty of their broth. Smoked paprika adds a hint of smoky depth you can't quite put a finger on, my secret ingredient is a finishing splash of freshly squeezed lemon juice. I think it's the element that helps keep the beans from seeming too heavy, and the acidity counters the starchiness of the beans.

Continue reading Homemade Refried Beans on 101 Cookbooks

VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIEW: It’s Complicated (2009) Claire: 4.2/5 stars, 8.2/10. Carolyn: 4/5 stars, 7.6/10. Native ratings: 3.7/5 stars Netflix, 6.5/10 IMDB. A romantic comedy, but in this case the emphasis is on the romance: It’s a Romance-Comedy not a Comedy-Romance. And yet, for some reason I could stand it. It was done very well. Streep […]

How do I correct wrongly assembled PAX toe kick? I have recently moved into my first own apartment and invested in a new IKEA Pax System. It consists of two separate corpuses, 100cm and 75cm, both 227cm high. We have already built them, screwed the two together and added the doors. Now to the problem:  On the […]

The post Q: Need help with IKEA PAX crooked toe kick appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

Converting an IKEA PS 2014 lamp to resemble the iconic Star Wars’ Death Star is hands down one of the most popular hacks on IKEAhackers. Star Wars fans can’t resist exploding the Death Star in their own living room. Many have attempted it with slightly different approaches. Find one that suits your DIY level and […]

The post All you need to know about building a Death Star lamp appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

When we renovated  our bedroom last year we built in lots of PAX storage. We built a large wardrobe with grey gloss sliding doors. Photo: IKEA.com We then used the 35cm deep frames to create open storage opposite the end of the bed. IKEA items: White PAX Frame White KOMPLEMENT Drawers This provides open shelving […]

The post Q: How to reduce KOMPLEMENT Drawer Spacing? appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

I love the clean and simple lines of the IKEA GODMORGON sink and wall cabinets for the bathroom. However, they can sometimes look a little standard or low grade. In this IKEA hack, we upgraded the GODMORGON vanity look with a live edge white oak countertop, chrome handles, Kohler top-mount sinks and wall-mounted Grohe faucets […]

The post IKEA bathroom vanity gets a luxurious live edge upgrade appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

We had space in our kitchen for more counters, but to get the real thing easily cost double or triple this PLATSA hack!  This was incredibly easy to assemble, and bonus we can move it around if we wish for a kitchen trolley (which is also double the cost of this hack). I do wonder […]

The post Easy kitchen countertop from an unexpected storage unit appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

The first issue of my new Boom!Box series, WICKED THINGS, is out today (March 18)! The Giant Days team of me (writing), Max Sarin (art), Whitney Cogar (colours) and Jim Campbell (letters) reunite for an all-new story of Bad Machinery’s Charlotte Grote (and Little Claire), as they are sucked into a fiendish world of metropolitan mystery. 

Get it from your local comic shop (if you can’t get there, you can order it from Page 45 in the UK and Midtown Comics in the USA) or digitally on Comixology.

Here’s an interview I did with CBR about the new series and here’s a six-page preview of issue 1.

Purple Listerine is definitely the tastiest one. No one ever gargled Listerine like Christian Bale in “Vice”. He musters a really bubbly spit that it’s great fun to emulate.