going to photograph with carly, then making awkward t-shirts for my friand nicks band, who will be playing on saturday.

hurraaa.

  

Limb by limb and tooth by tooth

Tearing up inside of me

Every day every hour

I wish that I was bullet proof

Radiohead

 

james franco up for best actor? +

Rafa lost bc of his fucking hamstring? -

Federer being destroyed? +

But I did ruffle up my skirt and show my slip in the process. I may have pulled a hamstring. too!

Na een helaas iets te ferme sprint (wat resulteerde in een zeer pijnlijke hamstring blessure) werd bij de poort een tweede plaatje geschoten van de 691 terwijl deze zijn sleep wagens het terrein op duwt op de gelukkig bewolkte morgen van 23 juni 2018.

Zakouma is an unusual park when compared to the better-known national parks of East or Southern Africa, because on normal game drives through the park, you simply don’t see elephants, except for the handful of bulls, that hang around the airstrip and the park HQ in the area of the park that is actually called Zakouma, elsewhere you just don’t see them, not unless you are actively looking for them and know in advance where they are. You won’t drive around a corner and find a small herd feeding beside the road as you might in a park like say Ruaha in Tanzania, to understand why this is the case, you need to know the tragic history of Zakouma’s elephants.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters, at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants, as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants, picking one with good tusks. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him, allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs, these if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region, have learned that at the first sign of horsemen, their best defence is to bunch up into tight groups, to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence, the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors, but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd, has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area, in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again, they have not lost an elephant to poaching in 6 years as counted last year in 2021 the population is now 636.

 

This bull is one of the ones that lives in the area around the park HQ, there is always water for them and plenty of food here, and in the recent past this area would have been much safer than the rest of the park.

I think Virginia looks a whole lot like Kim Kardashian here. In my book, that's a huge compliment.

*update* THIS PHOTO WAS SEARCHED AND THE TYRA BANKS SHOW CALLED ME AND ASKED FOR VIRGINIA'S NUMBER. SHE GOT A FREE TRIP TO NEW YORK TO BE ON THE TYRA BANKS SHOW airing April, 2009. You're welcome. :)

 

My website is here: www.jayceg.com

 

hopefully I get some publicity from it also.. but either way, I am so happy for her. I'll catch my big break soon too.

 

strobist: setup is here-

www.flickr.com/photos/jayceg/3347840461/

 

Model - Virginia Raffaele - MM# 674936

Picture of me on the roof of my house taken one week after my last competition in August of 1998. Photos taken by my friend Eric Hart.

He was the rage when I went to Truman High School in the Bronx and was friends with many of my friends too. He and I came grew up in the same Bronx neighborhood.

 

Check out Sunday's Daily News

 

Forgotten Hero

 

Former Met Stanley Jefferson struggles to cope with horror of life as 9/11 cop

 

BY WAYNE COFFEY, DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

 

Four flights up in Co-Op City, at the end of a hallway in Building 26, the big man sits in a big brown recliner, boxed in by four walls and demons and an emptiness that doesn't end. If only it did. If only it were finite, measurable, like the outfields of Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium, or the other big-league parks he once called home.

 

Then Stanley Jefferson might be able to know exactly what he's dealing with. Then he might be able to go outside, go to work, maybe share the things he still believes he has to give, and begin to pick up the shards of a life that sometimes seems broken beyond recognition.

 

It is early in a late-winter afternoon. In Florida the Mets and Yankees are playing their first spring-training games, the sense of renewal as palpable as the palm trees. In Building 26 in the Bronx, the feeling is different, and has been ever since Sept. 11, 2001. Stanley Jefferson, former big-league ballplayer and former New York City police officer, and one of the greatest schoolboy players the city has ever produced, has the remote in his hand, and his beloved Yorkshire terrier, Rocky, on his lap. His wife, Christie, is off at her job at a social-services agency in Westchester. The apartment is crammed with a sectional sofa and a desk and exercise machines that sit unused. Against one wall is a big fish tank. All the fish are dead. Against another is a big-screen television, where Jefferson plays his video games, and watches his comedies, laugh tracks sounding as days pass into weeks, and weeks into months.

 

"Raymond," "Family Guy," "Two and a Half Men," Stanley Jefferson likes them all.

 

"They keep my spirits up, rather than crying or brooding," he says. A faint smile crosses his broad, goateed face. The spirits do not stay up for long.

 

Fifteen years after his baseball career ended with a ruptured Achilles, two years after his police career ended when the department declared him unfit for duty, 44-year-old Stanley Jefferson, former shield No. 14299 and former uniform No. 13, wrangles with the NYPD over his disability benefit, and with a much more debilitating enemy: the ravages of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a condition that the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a division of the U.S. Dept. of Veteran Affairs, defines as "an anxiety disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of a traumatic event." For Jefferson, it has spawned everything from agoraphobia to panic attacks to immobilizing depression to recurring nightmares - one in which he is tormented by a ball of fire reminiscent of the explosion he witnessed when the second plane flew into the second tower a few minutes after 9 a.m. on 9/11, another in which he desperately tries to save a people in peril, but never manages to reach them.

 

Once, in 1983, Jefferson was a first-round draft choice of the Mets (taken one slot after the Red Sox selected a pitcher named Clemens), a blindingly fast, 5-11, 175-pound center fielder out of Truman High School, and Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach. He still might be the fastest player the organization has ever had. He was clocked running a 4.27 40 on a wet track during his Met tryout, and was timed at 3.0 from home to first in college. He had some 120 steals in his first three minor-league seasons, and hit an inside-the-park grand slam. Now he is 255 pounds and speeding nowhere.

 

He leaves the apartment about only twice a week, and even then it's only if he feels safe, if he's meeting someone close to him, such as Steve Bradstetter, 40, a Long Island businessman who is perhaps his closest friend.

 

"I have no life," Jefferson says, in a flat, baritone voice. "I've screwed up a lot of days." He pauses. He wrings his hands, something he does often. "I always thought this was something that would pass. I thought I could overcome anything, because that's just my athletic mentality. I'm ashamed because I never thought that something like this could happen to me."

 

Says Christie, his wife of three years, "This is not the man I married."

 

* * *

Even by the sculpted body standards of professional sports, Stanley Jefferson's physique - ropes of lean muscle on top of thick sprinter's legs - always stood out. When you saw him in motion, it stood out even more. Willie Daniels, 44, a childhood friend of Jefferson's from Co-Op City, played Little League with him, the two of them coached by Everod Jefferson, Stanley's father. They went to Truman High together and then to Bethune-Cookman. Daniels still marvels at the time Jefferson beat out a two-hopper to first against the University of Miami. In one college season, Jefferson stole 67 of 68 bases, getting caught only when his spikes got stuck on a wet track.

 

"I played with Devon White, Shawon Dunston, Walt Weiss, a lot of guys. Stanley is one of the best pure athletes I've ever seen," Daniels says.

 

The Mets did not disagree. Two years after he made his pro debut in the Single-A New York-Penn League and was the league's rookie of the year, Jefferson was one of the sensations of the club's training camp. The year was 1986, and seven months before Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner would become odd baseball bedfellows, Davey Johnson was likening the 23-year-old Jefferson to Chili Davis. Steve Schryver, director of minor-league operations, saw him as a young Bake McBride. Jefferson hit .500 in the spring, and if not for GM Frank Cashen's reluctance to rush him, he probably would've made the team.

 

"How can you not love his future?" Rusty Staub said then. "You look at his skills and think 'leadoff man.' You think about 100 runs a season." Nor was he just a weapon at the top of the order. "If the ball is in the ballpark, Stanley Jefferson will catch it," said Joe McIlvaine, the future GM, envisioning Jefferson spending years alongside Darryl Strawberry.

 

Jefferson wound up fighting injuries most of the '86 season in Tidewater, struggling with a chronic wrist problem and a hamstring pull. Still, he got a September call-up, and picked up his first big-league hit off the Padres' Dave LaPoint. It was supposed to be just the beginning, before the performance of Lenny Dykstra and the lure of a star left fielder induced the Mets to make Jefferson a key part of a winter deal that brought Kevin McReynolds to Flushing. Fourteen games wound up being the entirety of Jefferson's Met career.

 

Jefferson showed patches of promise in San Diego, stealing 34 bases in hitting eight homers and seven triples in 116 games, before a late-season slump left him with a .230 average. A natural righty who was converted into a switch-hitter by the Mets after he was drafted, Jefferson struggled from the left side, and wound up having trouble on his natural side, too. He had a run-in with manager Larry Bowa, and soon found himself on a journeyman's carousel, doing bits of time with the Yankees, Orioles, Indians and Reds before he tore his Achilles tendon while playing winter ball in Puerto Rico after the 1991 season. He says he had tendinitis for years, but played through it. It wouldn't be the last time Jefferson would ignore pain, try to push through it.

 

"Physically, athletically, I had all the tools. I didn't live up to those lofty expectations," Jefferson says.

 

With baseball behind him, Jefferson went to work as a warehouse manager of a lighting company in Mt. Vernon, then spent a couple of years coaching in the minor leagues with the Mets and an independent team in Butte, Mont. His larger goal, though, was to become a New York City police officer. "I always wanted to be a cop, a detective," Jefferson says. He took the exam, went through a battery of psychological and physical tests and was sworn in on Dec. 8, 1997. "He was the perfect package for what you look for in a police officer," says Eric Josey, one of his instructors in the Police Academy. Jefferson graduated in the spring of 1998, posed for a graduation picture with Mayor Giuliani and Commissioner Safir, then was assigned to the 14th Pct., Midtown South.

 

"I would always tell him, 'You got to live your dream twice,'" Willie Daniels says. "Most people don't even get to live their dream once."

 

For almost four years, police work was all Jefferson hoped it would be. Another Labor Day came and went. Kids went back to school. It was a dazzlingly beautiful late-summer morning. It was a Tuesday.

 

* * *

Stanley Jefferson reported for work at 7:05 a.m. on Sept. 11, having flown all night on a red-eye after a family wedding in Seattle. Two hours later, in squad car 1726, he and his partner, Ed Kinloch, were at 6th Ave. and 38th St. They were eating breakfast. Jefferson, his muscled body built up to 210 pounds by regular trips to the gym, was having his usual bowl of oatmeal. A voice on the radio came on. It told of an explosion at the World Trade Center. They started heading downtown before being ordered to stop at Union Square. Jefferson and Kinloch got out of the car. Jefferson looked downtown and got his first glimpse of the remains of the first tower. He saw people jumping. He saw people waving towels, and more smoke than he'd ever seen in his life. He was still trying to fathom it when he watched the second plane rip right through the second tower. There was a ball of fire. It took a second or two for the sound of the horrific explosion to reach 14th St. Jefferson and Kinloch looked at each other.

 

"Oh, bleep," Kinloch said. "Did you see that?"

 

"We've got a problem here," Jefferson said.

 

They were told to stay around 14th St. Jefferson and Kinloch did what they could to help and direct people, and comfort them. "There was a lot of crying, a lot of hugging," Jefferson says. "You try to stay focused and do your job and not get caught up in people's emotions, but it's hard." A series of bomb threats followed. Jefferson worked until 9 p.m., and was back at Midtown South at 4 a.m., on the 12th. On Thursday and Friday, the 13th and 14th, Jefferson was at Ground Zero, according to his memo book. "World Trade Detail," he wrote. Each day, Jefferson worked a 12-hour shift - from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m., on the pile, on the bucket brigade, putting body parts in bags, the carnage seemingly endless, the beeping of the empty oxygen packs of departed firefighters a shrill symphony that never stopped. The packs and other equipment, most of it with burnt flesh attached, were thrown into a makeshift tent.

 

"It was the smell of death in there, a smell you never forget," Kinloch says.

 

Jefferson spent a number of other shifts around Ground Zero in the ensuing weeks, and by the end of the year, began to suffer from coughing spells and nightmares. He didn't think much of it at first, until his symptoms worsened in the spring of 2002, not long after he was transferred to the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB), a move that he hoped would lead to a rapid promotion to detective. He started to experience periodic panic attacks, in which he would sweat profusely and feel his heart pounding as if it were a jackhammer. He also had trouble sleeping. While preparing reports for his IAB work, Jefferson says he began typing the same paragraph over and over.

 

"I didn't know what was happening," he says. He did his best not to think about it, hoping it would go away.

 

"I was in complete denial," Jefferson says. "I wanted to be a detective, period. I just wanted to fake it until I could make it."

 

Bradstetter began to wonder what was going on with his friend. He and Jefferson used to play golf all the time, but now Jefferson had no interest in it. He stopped working out, began gaining weight and found it harder and harder to leave the apartment. First, Jefferson would make excuses to Bradstetter. Later he opened up, just a little.

 

"I don't know what's wrong with me," Jefferson told him.

 

Jefferson's agoraphobia got progressively worse, and so did the panic attacks. His personal datebook shows 41 sick days in the first few months of 2003. Then, in March, days after he underwent an angiogram to correct a 30% blockage in his heart, Jefferson's mother died suddenly, and the combination of grief and the ongoing aftershocks of 9/11 sent him spiraling downward.

 

* * *

To say that Jefferson feels betrayed by the police department he dreamed of being a part of is to grossly understate it. He believes that in his time of greatest need, he was treated with all the sensitivity of a pine-tar rag.

 

Perhaps the first major issue he had came down on June 23, 2003, just when his problems were deepening. Jefferson had a doctor's appointment and told his immediate supervisor, Sgt. Michael Dowd, about it when his shift started. A short time before Jefferson had to leave, Dowd requested that he finish up a case he was working on. Jefferson reminded him of his appointment. Dowd insisted that Jefferson do the work, and Jefferson refused to comply. In an incident report to Capt. Michael O'Keefe, Dowd said Jefferson was profane and belligerent, screaming, 'Who the bleep do you think you are talking to?"

 

Jefferson, in a counter-complaint, says that Dowd was upset because he wanted to leave to play golf. Jefferson subsequently filed a discrimination lawsuit in federal court, a case that he settled out of court for $50,000 last year.

 

Five days after the dispute with Dowd, Jefferson suffered a panic attack as he drove from Co-Op City to the IAB office on Hudson Street. His vision was blurry, his heart pounding. Sweat was pouring out of him. He pulled over and went to the Lenox Hill Emergency Room. Jefferson's bouts with panic - and fears he was having a heart attack - had made him such a regular at the ER in Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in Pelham that one technician gently told him he needed to stop coming. Now here he was in an ER again. He was terrified. He privately wondered when his troubles were going to end, and if he were going insane. He says his department superiors continually ignored his pleas - and the counsel of his therapist - to reduce his caseload and shift him from investigative to administrative work, an opinion that is backed up by Sgt. John Paolucci, another IAB officer who supported Jefferson in a letter to the department Medical Board.

 

"No consideration for his predicament was afforded him," Paolucci wrote, adding that the whole culture of the department tends to make anyone who is incapacitated an outcast. "Most will doubt the veracity of your illness and compassion is out of the question."

 

Police officials declined to address any specifics relating to Jefferson's case.

 

Not even 48 hours after his visit to Lenox Hill, Jefferson, of his own volition, went to the NYPD's Psychological Evaluation Unit in Queens. He had a two-hour intake meeting with a department therapist, Christie at his side. His two handguns were taken from him that day, and have never been returned, Jefferson being deemed unfit for police work. He was transferred to the VIPER unit - the lowest level of police work, involving the monitoring of surveillance cameras. "It's the land of broken toys - where they send anyone with charges pending or a problem that makes them unable to work," Jefferson says.

 

On Nov. 8, 2004, the NYPD moved to place him on Ordinary Disability Retirement (ODR), based on a diagnosis of the department Medical Board of "major depressive disorder." Jefferson later applied for Accidental Disability Retirement (ADR), on the grounds that his condition was triggered by his Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome in the wake of 9/11 - a diagnosis made separately by a social worker and a psychiatrist who have treated Jefferson.

 

The ODR amounts to $1,400 monthly. An ADR - granted to officers mentally or physically incapacitated in the line of duty - would provide Jefferson with just under $4,000 monthly, tax-free. The Medical Board and the Pension Board, citing reports by psychiatrists, social workers and an examination of Jefferson, said his mother's death and his heart problems were major triggers of his condition, and also mentioned the depressed feelings he had when his first wife and two daughters left him, in 1991. The Boards asserted that there was insufficient evidence to support a connection to 9/11 and Jefferson's problems - a finding upheld in State Supreme Court in Manhattan last October.

 

Said Carolyn Wolpert, deputy chief of the pensions division of the city law department, "The city is grateful to Stanley Jefferson for his almost eight years of service as a police officer. Due to medical issues, the Police Pension Fund retired Officer Jefferson with ordinary disability benefits . . . The New York County Supreme Court found that there was credible medical evidence to support the determination that the officer's disability was not caused by his World Trade Center assignment." Jeffrey L. Goldberg, a Lake Success, L.I.-based attorney representing Jefferson, is planning on filing a second application for ADR benefits for Jefferson. Only nine officers who responded to the World Trade Center attacks have been granted accidental disability benefits for psychological reasons, according to a police source. Goldberg believes it is all but a de facto administration policy. "Mayor Bloomberg considers accidental disability retirement a free lunch for a police officer like Stanley Jefferson," Goldberg says. "This is no free lunch. This is the real-life consequence of an officer responding to a tragedy and an emergency. Stanley Jefferson is a hero. He should be aided, not discarded. Hopefully, the city will recognize that and support him as he tries to recover from a terribly serious medical condition."

 

* * *

Last week was a good one for Stanley Jefferson. He made it to Goldberg's office, after canceling a series of previous appointments. His daughters, Nicole, 21, and Brittany, 19, came to visit from Virginia. He went for coffee at a bookstore near Co-Op City, and opened up about every aspect of his six-year ordeal: his shame, his vulnerability, his embarrassment over having such a hard time walking out of Building 26, being in the world.

 

"I know people can't understand it. I can't understand," he says. He talks about the medications he takes to ease his anxiety and his depression, and about the drinking binges - Grey Goose and cranberry - he used to go on to escape his pain. "It's what got me outside," Jefferson says. It also got him into full-blown rages, and a Westchester County treatment center last fall. He didn't want to talk when he got there, before he began to see that his therapist was right: the silent suffering was nothing but fuel for the demons.

 

"I can't let pride get in the way," Jefferson says.

 

Adds wife Christie, "I keep telling him he's got to forget all the machismo right now, and realize he's not the only one who has gone through this in his life, and work on taking care of himself." Steve Bradstetter, Jefferson's friend, will always be grateful to Jefferson for the way he responded when Bradstetter's mother died. It was February of 2000, and Jefferson accompanied Bradstetter on a drive to Massachusetts. "It was about the toughest circumstance I've ever had to deal with, and he was there for me," Bradstetter says. "He was like, 'We'll talk, we'll laugh, we'll try to make sense of it all.'"

 

Stanley Jefferson is a very different person than he was then. He is sad and often distant. When he and Bradstetter arrange to meet at a Dunkin' Donuts or a diner, Jefferson waits in the car until he sees Bradstetter pull up. Only then does he feel safe enough to get out. Sometimes Bradstetter will see his friend start wringing his hands, see the beads of sweat running down his temple, his leg jiggling as it were stuck in full throttle. Bradstetter doesn't know what to say. "It's like his whole body is taken over by whatever issues he's dealing with." He offers what comfort he can. He knows the real Stanley is still in there.

 

Tomorrow afternoon, Stanley Jefferson is supposed to go to Dobbs Ferry to meet with Bill Sullivan, the Mercy College baseball coach. Jefferson finished his degree at Mercy while he was on the force. Sullivan has gotten to know him and like him, and would love to have him help out as a volunteer assistant.

 

"He would be such an asset for our program," Sullivan says.

 

From his big brown chair on the fourth floor, Jefferson looks out a window, toward his terrace and a barren Co-Op City courtyard. He talks about the things he has to share in the world, how maybe he can work with kids. He says helping out at Mercy would be a great start. Jefferson knows he can't cure his illness, but he can face it, and battle it. The towers may be down forever, and his days of getting to first in three seconds may be behind him. But who says the rebuilding of a life can't begin anew? Who says a 44-year-old man can't get back to first and second and third, and all the way back home, no matter how long it takes?

 

The big man leans back in his chair.

 

"I do have optimism," Stanley Jefferson says. "I do believe that I'm strong enough that I will eventually get better. I just have to keep working at it."

 

Originally published on March 4, 2007

...."The Hamstring Band" Toronto Bluegrass band, featuring Chris Quinn.... banjo, Tony Allen....fiddle, Kristine Schmitt....vocals, Mark Roy....guitar & Sam Petite....bass .... Bluegrass music, was first introduced to Canada, via recordings & radio broadcasts by American musicians in the 1930's. By the mid 1940's, it was played by Canadians in the eastern & central regions of the nation. Bluegrass organizations & festivals have emerged in virtually all parts of Canada....

Big storm came through Thursday. So, naturally, I wanted to document the incoming storm clouds. I returned to the park bench which featured in a few of my other photos. I like this bench. It's sturdy, comfortable, and well-placed. Conveniently positioned for colorful sunsets over a grassy park, it's also handy for pre-jog stretches (not that I ever indulged in the jogging, but I have been known to lean here for a hamstring stretch now and then), and it's about the only seat around for a hundred yards. It sees a lot of action. When designing the park, somebody's boss must have said, "This is only one bench left — place it well."

 

The bench is also about 40 feet from my front door. So, I wasn't worried too much about the developing storm: if I needed to bolt back to the house, I could. I felt pretty comfortable just hanging around the bench, using it to compose some shots. Taking my time.

 

That's what you do around benches. You take your time. Nobody's in a hurry when they're sitting on a bench. They're not wasting time, they're passing it.

 

Yet while strolling back to my abode, attempting to maintain my park-bench-casualness, my wife said, "Hurry up, you're the tallest thing in the park!"

 

Okay, so lightning. It's not respecter of park benches.

 

At least, if I'd been struck, I wouldn't have to worry about not having a decent flash when I needed one.

 

[Highest position in Explore: 137 on Monday, August 27, 2007]

 

(2007-08-23-storm-4149-new)

#CapturedPhotoContest_Inhabitat

 

I hadn't expected India's Vihari to survive until the tea break in the third test. Despite a hamstring injury, after tea he started to look solid although why didn't he have a runner, which would have allowed India to entertain prospects of a record win. Of course, a runner would have added to the opportunities to get run out...

 

At 5-272 India were in danger of losing, the most likely result on the fifth day, so Vihari's and Ashwin's effort to keep the Australians out for another 43 overs was exceptional. Notwithstanding that if Paine caught Pant early on (three chances but Pant scored 97), the series could have been decided here.

 

Australia's opener issues mean Warner playing, although he seems far from match fit. Both openers could wear red Star Trek uniforms. But Labuschagne is having a good series, and the Australian bowlers' cartel has remained strong. There's a bit of debate about whether Cummins, Starc, Hazelwood and Lyon are Australia's best attack ever. I'd go for McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and Warne myself.

 

India has had an unfortunate injury count. Their entire front line bowling attack (Bumrah, Shami, Yadav, Jadeja, Ashwin) are all unable to play in the next test. Only Pujara and Rahane will play all the Tests in the series.

 

Sightscreens have grown from a wooden square to now include a massive drape (the red ball stands out against the white background, simplifying the batsman's job of sighting a ball travelling at 145km/h). That doesn't stop batsmen holding up play if spectators (or 'security') move close to it!

So Close Your Eyes.......Hear the sound of that howling wind continuing like its been raging unrelentlessly for years. Your body shakes uncontrollably as the coldness cuts through every section that doesn't have the protection layers required against its brutality. Your hamstrings are cramping with every effort you make trying to retrieve your leg out of what seems like bottomless canyons of snow. And then you pause, focusing your eyes in amazement, on the beauty and light that lays out in front of you. Wondering if a radical movement, like when approaching a butterfly, will make it all dissapear. For a split second, all thought and pain have dissapeared. Im glad I have captured that memory!!

 

Thanks for looking....Stay Safe

Voorste kruisbandreconstructie

 

Uw arts heeft u geadviseerd om de voorste kruisband van uw knie te vervangen en daarmee de stabiliteit van de knie te verbeteren. Deze folder geeft u informatie over hetgeen de orthopeed in het CWZ met u heeft besproken, zodat u na het gesprek alles nog eens rustig kunt lezen en zich voor kunt bereiden op de opname.

 

De knie bestaat uit drie botdelen: het bovenbeen, het onderbeen en de knieschijf. Om de knie ligt een gewrichtskapsel. Buiten dit gewrichtskapsel heeft de knie twee banden, die voor zijdelingse stabiliteit van de knie zorgen. Midden in de knie liggen de voorste en de achterste kruisband. Zij voor- komen dat het onderbeen naar voren of naar achteren verschuift. Daarnaast voorkomen de kruisbanden bepaalde draaibewegingen tussen boven- en onderbeen. In de knie bevinden zich tussen het boven- en onderbeen twee maanvormige schijfjes van zacht kraakbeen (de meniscus). Deze vangen schokken van de knie op en zorgen dat boven en onderbeen in iedere stand goed op elkaar passen. Elk botdeel is bekleed met een laag kraakbeen.

 

Voorste kruisbandruptuur (scheur)

 

De voorste kruisband kan scheuren bij sporten of een ongeluk. Dit wordt vaak ervaren als een knappend gevoel, dat optreedt bij het verdraaien van de knie of het ‘door de knie gaan’. De klachten van een gescheurde kruisband – door de knie zakken of een instabiel gevoel – worden in het begin meestal behandeld met fysiotherapie. Wanneer dit onvoldoende resultaat heeft, kan de arts voorstellen om een nieuwe kruisband te plaatsen.

 

Diagnose en onderzoek

 

De arts stelt de diagnose aan de hand van de aard van de klachten, het lichamelijk onderzoek, röntgenfoto’s en eventueel een arthroscopie (kijkoperatie) of MRI-scan van de knie.

 

Wat houdt een voorste kruisbandreconstructie in?

 

Wanneer besloten is om de voorste kruisband te reconstrueren, dan kan men uit verschillende operatie-technieken kiezen om de kruisband te vervangen. Op de plaats van de oorspronkelijke kruisband wordt een nieuwe band gemaakt van lichaamseigen materiaal. Een goede methode is om gebruik te maken van het middelste gedeelte van de knie-pees (patella-pees) met twee botblokjes, die daar aan vastzitten. Het voordeel hiervan is dat de twee botblokjes stevig met twee schroeven in boorkanalen in het boven- en onderbeen vastgezet kunnen worden.

 

Een nadeel

 

is dat de revalidatie soms gepaard gaat met langdurige pijnklachten aan de voorzijde van de knie; de plaats waar de pees is uitgesneden.

In het CWZ wordt daarom niet vaak voor deze methode gekozen.

In het CWZ wordt hoofdzakelijk gebruik gemaakt van de hamstrings-pezen. Deze bevinden zich aan de binnenzijde van de knie en worden via een apart sneetje uitgenomen. Het voordeel is dat de revalidatie vlotter gaat omdat het minder pijnlijk is. Ook zijn de hamstringpezen extra stevig, doordat ze dubbel geklapt worden. Voor het vastzetten van de pezen, wordt gebruik gemaakt van een soort ophangband aan een plaatje dat door het boorkanaal getrokken wordt en na kanteling blijft zitten (endobutton®). In het onderbeen worden de pezen vastgezet met een ‘oplosbare schroef’ en eventueel een metalen kram.

De operatie wordt via een kijkoperatie (artroscopie) uitgevoerd. Daarbij wordt een buis in de knie gebracht, die via een camera met een monitor is verbonden. Er worden drie kleine sneetjes van ongeveer een centimeter lengte in de huid gemaakt. Via het eerste sneetje gaan de artroscoop en vocht naar binnen. Het tweede sneetje zorgt voor de afvoer van het vocht. Via het derde sneetje kunnen instrumenten in de knie worden gebracht.

Buiten de kruisband wordt de rest van de knie ook bekeken en worden eventuele beschadigingen van kraakbeen en meniscus bijgewerkt. Sommige meniscusscheuren kunnen zelfs gehecht worden, wat uiteindelijk beter is voor een goed functioneren van de knie. De operatie duurt ongeveer vijf kwartier.

Om een helder beeld te houden, wordt het kniegewricht met vloeistof gespoeld en wordt de operatie ‘onder bloedleegte’ uitgevoerd. Het bloed wordt uit het operatiegebied weggestreken en met een opgepompte bloeddrukband wordt het gebied ‘bloedleeg’ gehouden.

De dag na de operatie start u met een intensief fysiotherapieprogramma.

U moet zich realiseren dat de hamstringpezen nog in moeten groeien en door het lichaam omgebouwd worden tot levend pees- weefsel. Dit duurt ongeveer negen maanden tot een jaar en in deze periode is uw nieuwe kruisband extra kwetsbaar. Op de plaats waar de hamstringpezen uitgenomen zijn, groeit weer nieuw weefsel, dat op de oorspronkelijke pezen lijkt.

 

Voordelen van een voorste kruisbandreconstructie

 

Na de operatie en de revalidatie zal de knie steviger aanvoelen en is het ‘door de knie gaan’ bij de meeste patiënten verdwenen.

De nieuwe kruisband blijft echter altijd zwakker dan de oorspronkelijke. Een nieuw letsel is zeker niet helemaal uit te sluiten. U moet zelf uiteindelijk beslissen of u het risico van een nieuwe beschadiging neemt. De kans op nieuw letsel is groter bij contactsporten zoals voetbal en hockey.

We also found a lot of over molds and v1 stuff

Zakouma is an unusual park when compared to the better-known national parks of East or Southern Africa, because on normal game drives through the park, you simply don’t see elephants, except for the handful of bulls, that hang around the airstrip and the park HQ in the area of the park that is actually called Zakouma, elsewhere you just don’t see them, not unless you are actively looking for them and know in advance where they are. You won’t drive around a corner and find a small herd feeding beside the road as you might in a park like say Ruaha in Tanzania, to understand why this is the case, you need to know the tragic history of Zakouma’s elephants.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters, at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants, as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants, picking one with good tusks. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him, allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs, these if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region, have learned that at the first sign of horsemen, their best defence is to bunch up into tight groups, to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence, the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors, but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd, has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area, in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again, they have not lost an elephant to poaching in 6 years at the last count in 2021 the population had reached 636.

 

Zakouma had become famous for what was often described as the largest elephant herd in Africa, simply because the majority of the park’s elephants were congregating together in a huge unnatural mega-herd, that would include bulls that would normally have been pushed out. Besides sticking together for protection, the elephants also like to remain in the thick bush and woodlands, avoiding open areas of the park, this is why you just don’t see them when driving around. Just in the last couple of years the elephant herd has started to split into several big herds instead of just one, but they still stay deep in the bush, doing their best to avoid people entirely.

 

The best chance of seeing them is at the Bahr Salamat, where they have to come every day to drink, if you can anticipate which part of the river they will come to, and position yourself so that they won’t be aware of your presence, you can have an amazing elephant experience. When we tried to find them, despite receiving tracking information from the park HQ, (some of the elephants are wearing tracking collars) and having a ranger to assist us, we were not lucky, instead of seeing the whole herd come to drink where we had chosen to wait, we just saw two single bulls. The herd did come to drink but at a different stretch of the Salamat, not too far away, unfortunately we missed them.

Model - Virginia Raffaele - MM# 674936

Strobist: see comment below.

The United States Border Patrol is a federal law enforcement agency within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Its 20,200 Agents[1] are primarily responsible for immigration and border law enforcement as codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Their duty is to prevent terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States and to deter, detect, and apprehend illegal aliens and individuals involved in the illegal drug trade who enter the United States other than through designated ports of entry.

 

Additionally, the CBP enforces federal controlled substances laws (as codified in the Controlled Substances Act) when violations occur or are found during the enforcement of federal immigration laws, via delegated authority from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

 

Note that there are two personnel segments of U.S. Customs and Border Protection that people often confuse with each other, the CBP Officer [1], who wears a blue uniform and the Border Patrol Agent [2] who wears a green uniform.

 

Contents [hide]

1 History

2 Strategy

2.1 1986: Employer sanctions and interior enforcement

2.2 Inspection stations

2.2.1 El Paso Sector's Operation Hold the Line

2.2.2 San Diego Sector's Operation Gatekeeper

2.2.3 Tucson Sector's Operation Safeguard

2.3 Northern border

2.4 Border Patrol moves away from interior enforcement

2.5 The new strategy

3 Capabilities

4 Expansion

5 Special Operations Group

5.1 Other specialized programs

6 Border Patrol organization

6.1 Border Patrol Sectors

7 Training

7.1 Uniforms

7.2 Border Patrol (OBP) Ranks and Insignia

7.2.1 Border Patrol Shoulder Ornaments

8 Awards

8.1 Newton-Azrak Award for Heroism

9 Border Patrol Uniform Devices

10 Equipment

10.1 Weapons

10.2 Transportation

11 Line of duty deaths

12 Armed incursions

13 Ramos and Compean

14 Criticisms

14.1 Ineffective

14.2 Allegations of abuse

14.3 Corruption

15 National Border Patrol Council

16 National Border Patrol Museum

17 In popular culture

17.1 Books

17.2 Film

17.2.1 Documentaries

18 See also

19 References

20 External links

21 External Video

21.1 GAO and OIG Reports

  

[edit] History

 

Immigration inspectors, circa 1924Mounted watchmen of the United States Immigration Service patrolled the border in an effort to prevent illegal crossings as early as 1904, but their efforts were irregular and undertaken only when resources permitted. The inspectors, usually called "mounted guards", operated out of El Paso, Texas. Though they never totaled more than 75, they patrolled as far west as California trying to restrict the flow of illegal Chinese immigration.

 

In March 1915, Congress authorized a separate group of mounted guards, often referred to as "mounted inspectors". Most rode on horseback, but a few operated automobiles, motorcycles and boats. Although these inspectors had broader arrest authority, they still largely pursued Chinese immigrants trying to avoid the National Origins Act and Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. These patrolmen were Immigrant Inspectors, assigned to inspection stations, and could not watch the border at all times. U.S. Army troops along the southwest border performed intermittent border patrolling, but this was secondary to "the more serious work of military training." Non-nationals encountered illegally in the U.S. by the army were directed to the immigration inspection stations. Texas Rangers were also sporadically assigned to patrol duties by the state, and their efforts were noted as "singularly effective".

 

The Border Patrol was founded on May 28, 1924 as an agency of the United States Department of Labor to prevent illegal entries along the Mexico–United States border and the United States-Canada border. The first two border patrol stations were in El Paso, Texas and Detroit, Michigan.[2] Additional operations were established along the Gulf Coast in 1927 to perform crewman control to insure that non-American crewmen departed on the same ship on which they arrived. Additional stations were temporarily added along the Gulf Coast, Florida and the Eastern Seaboard during the sixties when in Cuba triumphed the Cuban Revolution and emerged the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

Prior to 2003, the Border Patrol was part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), an agency that was within the U.S. Department of Justice. INS was disbanded in March 2003 when its operations were divided between CBP, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

 

The priority mission of the Border Patrol, as a result of the 9/11 attacks and its merging into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is to prevent terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States of America. However, the Border Patrol's traditional mission remains as the deterrence, detection and apprehension of illegal immigrants and individuals involved in the illegal drug trade who generally enter the United States other than through designated ports of entry. The Border Patrol also operates 33 permanent interior checkpoints along the southern border of the United States.

 

Currently, the U.S. Border Patrol employs over 20,200 agents (as of the end of fiscal year 2009),[3] who are specifically responsible for patrolling the 6,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian international land borders and 2,000 miles of coastal waters surrounding the Florida Peninsula and the island of Puerto Rico. Agents are assigned primarily to the Mexico–United States border, where they are assigned to control drug trafficking and illegal immigration.[4] Patrols on horseback have made a comeback since smugglers have been pushed into the more remote mountainous regions, which are hard to cover with modern tracking strategies.[5]

 

[edit] Strategy

[edit] 1986: Employer sanctions and interior enforcement

 

Border Patrol Agents with a Hummer and Astar patrol for illegal entry into U.S.The Border Patrol's priorities have changed over the years. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act placed renewed emphasis on controlling illegal immigration by going after the employers that hire illegal immigrants. The belief was that jobs were the magnet that attracted most illegal immigrants to come to the United States. The Border Patrol increased interior enforcement and Form I-9 audits of businesses through an inspection program known as "employer sanctions". Several agents were assigned to interior stations, such as within the Livermore Sector in Northern California.

 

Employer sanctions never became the effective tool it was expected to be by Congress. Illegal immigration continued to swell after the 1986 amnesty despite employer sanctions. By 1993, Californians passed Proposition 187, denying benefits to illegal immigrants and criminalizing illegal immigrants in possession of forged green cards, I.D. cards and Social Security Numbers. It also authorized police officers to question non-nationals as to their immigration status and required police and sheriff departments to cooperate and report illegal immigrants to the INS. Proposition 187 drew nationwide attention to illegal immigration.

 

[edit] Inspection stations

United States Border Patrol Interior Checkpoints are inspection stations operated by the USBP within 100 miles of a national border (with Mexico or Canada) or in the Florida Keys. As federal inspection stations are also operated by the Mexican government within 50 km of its borders where they are officially known as a "Garita de Revisión." or Garitas, they are known also by that name to Latinos.

 

[edit] El Paso Sector's Operation Hold the Line

El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent (and future U.S. congressman) Silvestre Reyes started a program called "Operation Hold the Line". In this program, Border Patrol agents would no longer react to illegal entries resulting in apprehensions, but would instead be forward deployed to the border, immediately detecting any attempted entries or deterring crossing at a more remote location. The idea was that it would be easier to capture illegal entrants in the wide open deserts than through the urban alleyways. Chief Reyes deployed his agents along the Rio Grande River, within eyesight of other agents. The program significantly reduced illegal entries in the urban part of El Paso, however, the operation merely shifted the illegal entries to other areas.

 

[edit] San Diego Sector's Operation Gatekeeper

 

A Border Patrol Jeep stands watch over the U.S.-Mexico border at San Ysidro, California.San Diego Sector tried Silvestre Reyes' approach of forward deploying agents to deter illegal entries into the country. Congress authorized the hiring of thousands of new agents, and many were sent to San Diego Sector.[citation needed] In addition, Congressman Duncan Hunter obtained surplus military landing mats to use as a border fence.[citation needed] Stadium lighting, ground sensors and infra-red cameras were also placed in the area.[citation needed] Apprehensions decreased dramatically in that area as people crossed in different regions.

 

[edit] Tucson Sector's Operation Safeguard

California was no longer the hotbed of illegal entry and the traffic shifted to Arizona, primarily in Nogales and Douglas.[citation needed] The Border Patrol instituted the same deterrent strategy it used in San Diego to Arizona.

 

[edit] Northern border

In 2001, the Border Patrol had approximately 340 agents assigned along the Canada – United States border border. Northern border staffing had been increased to 1,128 agents to 1,470 agents by the end of fiscal year 2008, and is projected to expand to 1,845 by the end of fiscal year 2009, a sixfold increase. Resources that support Border Patrol agents include the use of new technology and a more focused application of air and marine assets.

 

The northern border sectors are Blaine (Washington), Buffalo (New York), Detroit (Selfridge ANGB, Michigan), Grand Forks (North Dakota), Havre (Montana), Houlton (Maine), Spokane (Washington), and Swanton (Vermont).

 

[edit] Border Patrol moves away from interior enforcement

In the 1990s, Congress mandated that the Border Patrol shift agents away from the interior and focus them on the borders.

 

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security created two immigration enforcement agencies out of the defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). ICE was tasked with investigations, detention and removal of illegal immigrants, and interior enforcement. CBP was tasked with inspections at U.S. ports of entry and with preventing illegal entries between the port of entry, transportation check, and entries on U.S. coastal borders. DHS management decided to align the Border Patrol with CBP. CBP itself is solely responsible for the nation's ports of entry, while Border Patrol maintains jurisdiction over all locations between ports of entry, giving Border Patrol agents federal authority absolutely[dubious – discuss] nationwide[dubious – discuss].

 

In July 2004, the Livermore Sector of the United States Border Patrol was closed. Livermore Sector served Northern California and included stations at Dublin (Parks Reserve Forces Training Area), Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield. The Border Patrol also closed other stations in the interior of the United States including Roseburg, Oregon and Little Rock, Arkansas. The Border Patrol functions in these areas consisted largely of local jail and transportation terminal checks for illegal immigrants. These functions were turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

 

[edit] The new strategy

 

Cameras add "Smart Border" surveillance.In November 2005, the U.S. Border Patrol published an updated national strategy.[6] The goal of this updated strategy is operational control of the United States border. The strategy has five main objectives:

 

Apprehend terrorists and terrorist weapons illegally entering the United States;

Deter illegal entries through improved enforcement;

Detect, apprehend, and deter smugglers of humans, drugs, and other contraband;

Use "smart border" technology; and

Reduce crime in border communities, improving quality of life.

[edit] Capabilities

The border is a barely discernible line in uninhabited deserts, canyons, or mountains. The Border Patrol utilizes a variety of equipment and methods, such as electronic sensors placed at strategic locations along the border, to detect people or vehicles entering the country illegally. Video monitors and night vision scopes are also used to detect illegal entries. Agents patrol the border in vehicles, boats, aircraft, and afoot. In some areas, the Border Patrol employs horses, all-terrain motorcycles, bicycles, and snowmobiles. Air surveillance capabilities are provided by unmanned aerial vehicles.[3]

 

The primary activity of a Border Patrol Agent is "Line Watch". Line Watch involves the detection, prevention, and apprehension of terrorists, undocumented aliens and smugglers of aliens at or near the land border by maintaining surveillance from a covert position; following up on leads; responding to electronic sensor television systems and aircraft sightings; and interpreting and following tracks, marks, and other physical evidence. Major activities include traffic check, traffic observation, city patrol, transportation check, administrative, intelligence, and anti-smuggling activities.[4]

 

Traffic checks are conducted on major highways leading away from the border to detect and apprehend illegal aliens attempting to travel further into the interior of the United States after evading detection at the border, and to detect illegal narcotics.[3]

 

Transportation checks are inspections of interior-bound conveyances, which include buses, commercial aircraft, passenger and freight trains, and marine craft.[3]

 

Marine Patrols are conducted along the coastal waterways of the United States, primarily along the Pacific coast, the Caribbean, the tip of Florida, and Puerto Rico and interior waterways common to the United States and Canada. Border Patrol conducts border control activities from 130 marine craft of various sizes. The Border Patrol maintains watercraft ranging from blue-water craft to inflatable-hull craft, in 16 sectors, in addition to headquarters special operations components.[3]

 

Horse and bike patrols are used to augment regular vehicle and foot patrols. Horse units patrol remote areas along the international boundary that are inaccessible to standard all-terrain vehicles. Bike patrol aids city patrol and is used over rough terrain to support linewatch.[3] Snowmobiles are used to patrol remote areas along the northern border in the winter.

 

[edit] Expansion

Attrition in the Border Patrol was normally at 5%. From 1995-2001 attrition spiked to above 10%, which was a period when the Border Patrol was undergoing massive hiring. In 2002 the attrition rate climbed to 18%. The 18% attrition was largely attributed to agents transferring to the Federal Air Marshals after 9/11. Since that time the attrition problem has decreased significantly and Congress has increased journeyman Border Patrol Agent pay from GS-9 to GS-11 in 2002. The Border Patrol Marine Position was created in 2009 (BPA-M). This position will be updated to a GS-12 position sometime in 2010 or 2011. Border Patrol Field Training Officers may possibly be updated in 2010 to a temporary GS-12 pay rate. In 2005, Border Patrol attrition dropped to 4% and remains in the area of 4% to 6% as of 2009.[7]

 

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (signed by President Bush on December 17, 2004) authorized hiring an additional 10,000 agents, "subject to appropriation". This authorization, if fully implemented, would nearly double the Border Patrol manpower from 11,000 to 21,000 agents by 2010.

 

In July 2005, Congress signed the Emergency Supplemental Spending Act for military operations in Iraq/Afghanistan and other operations. The act also appropriated funding to increase Border Patrol manpower by 500 Agents. In October 2005, President Bush also signed the DHS FY06 Appropriation bill, funding an additional 1,000 Agents.

 

In November 2005, President George W. Bush made a trip to southern Arizona to discuss more options that would decrease illegal crossings at the U.S. and Mexican border. In his proposed fiscal year 2007 budget he has requested an additional 1,500 Border Patrol agents.

 

The Secure Fence Act, signed by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2006, has met with much opposition. In October 2007, environmental groups and concerned citizens filed a restraining order hoping to halt the construction of the fence, set to be built between the United States and Mexico. The act mandates that the fence be built by December 2008. Ultimately, the United States seeks to put fencing around the 1,945-mile (3,130 km) border, but the act requires only 700 miles (1,100 km) of fencing. DHS secretary Michael Chertoff has bypassed environmental and other oppositions with a waiver that was granted to him by Congress in Section 102 of the act, which allows DHS to avoid any conflicts that would prevent a speedy assembly of the fence.[8][9]

 

This action has led many environment groups and landowners to speak out against the impending construction of the fence.[10] Environment and wildlife groups fear that the plans to clear brush, construct fences, install bright lights, motion sensors, and cameras will scare wildlife and endanger the indigenous species of the area.[11] Environmentalists claim that the ecosystem could be affected due to the fact that a border fence would restrict movement of all animal species, which in turn would keep them from water and food sources on one side or another. Desert plants would also feel the impact, as they would be uprooted in many areas where the fence is set to occupy.[12]

 

Property owners in these areas fear a loss of land. Landowners would have to give some of their land over to the government for the fence. Citizens also fear that communities will be split. Many students travel over the border every day to attend classes at the University of Texas at Brownsville. Brownsville mayor Pat Ahumada favors alternative options to a border fence. He suggests that the Rio Grande River be widened and deepened to provide for a natural barrier to hinder illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.[13]

 

The United States Border Patrol Academy is located in Artesia, New Mexico.

 

[edit] Special Operations Group

 

A Border Patrol Special Response Team searches room-by-room a hotel in New Orleans in response to Hurricane Katrina.

CBP BORSTAR canine team conducting rappeling trainingIn 2007, the Border Patrol created the Special Operations Group (SOG) headquartered in El Paso, TX to coordinate the specialized units of the agency.[14]

 

Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC)

National Special Response Team (NSRT)

Border Patrol, Search, Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR)

Air Mobile Unit (AMU)

[edit] Other specialized programs

The Border Patrol has a number of other specialized programs and details.

 

Air and Marine Operations

K9 Units

Mounted Patrol

Bike patrol

Sign-cutting (tracking)

Snowmobile unit

Infrared scope unit

Intelligence

Anti-smuggling investigations

Border Criminal Alien Program

Multi-agency Anti-Gang Task Forces (regional & local units)

Honor Guard

Pipes and Drums

Chaplain

Peer Support

[edit] Border Patrol organization

 

David V. Aguilar, Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border ProtectionThe current Acting Chief of the Border Patrol is Michael J. Fisher who succeeded in 2010 David V. Aguilar, who is now the Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

 

[edit] Border Patrol Sectors

There are 20 Border Patrol sectors, each headed by a Sector Chief Patrol Agent.

 

Northern Border (West to East):

 

Blaine Sector (Western Washington State, Idaho, and Western Montana.) - stations; Bellingham, Blaine, Port Angeles, Sumas.

Spokane Sector (Eastern Washington State)

Havre Sector (Montana)

Grand Forks Sector (North Dakota)

Detroit Sector (Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Michigan) - stations; Downtown Detroit, Marysville, Gibralter, Sault Sainte Marie, Sandusky Bay.

Buffalo Sector (New York) - stations; Buffalo, Erie, Niagura Falls, Oswego, Rochester, Wellesley Island.

Swanton Sector (Vermont)

Houlton Sector (Maine)

Southern Border (West to East):

 

San Diego Sector (San Diego, California)

El Centro Sector (Imperial County, California)

Yuma Sector (Western Arizona)- stations; Wellton, Yuma, Blythe

Tucson Sector (Eastern Arizona)

El Paso Sector (El Paso, Texas and New Mexico) - stations; Alamogordo, Albuquerque, Deming, El Paso, Fabens, Fort Hancock, Las Cruces, Lordsburg, Santa Teresa, Truth or Consequences, Ysleta

Marfa Sector (Big Bend Area of West Texas) - stations; Alpine, Amarillo, Big Bend, Fort Stockton, Lubbock, Marfa, Midland, Pecos, Presidio, Sanderson, Sierra Blanca, Van Horn

Del Rio Sector (Del Rio, Texas) - stations; Abilene, Brackettville, Carrizo Springs, Comstock, Del Rio, Eagle Pass North, Eagle Pass South, Rocksprings, San Angelo, Uvalde

Rio Grande Valley Sector (South Texas) - stations; Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Falfurrias, Fort Brown, Harlingen, Kingsville, McAllen, Rio Grande City, Weslaco

Laredo Sector (South Texas) - stations; Cotulla, Dallas, Freer, Hebbronville, Laredo North, Laredo South, Laredo West, San Antonio, Zapata

New Orleans Sector (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and West Florida)

Miami Sector (Florida East and South)

Caribbean

 

Ramey Sector (Aguadilla, Puerto Rico) and the Virgin Islands, it is the only Border Patrol Sector located outside the continental United States

[edit] Training

All Border Patrol Agents spend 15 weeks in training at the Border Patrol Academy (if they are fluent in Spanish) in Artesia, New Mexico, which is a component of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC).Those who are not fluent in Spanish spend an additional eight weeks at the Academy. Recruits are instructed in Border Patrol and federal law enforcement subjects.

 

Border Patrol courses include: Immigration and Nationality Law, Criminal Law and Statutory Authority, Spanish, Border Patrol Operations, Care and Use of Firearms, Physical Training, Driver Training, and Anti-Terrorism.

 

FLETC courses include: Communications, Ethics and Conduct, Report Writing, Introduction to Computers, Fingerprinting, and Constitutional Law.[15]

 

The physical aspects of the Border Patrol Training Program are extremely demanding. At the end of 55 days, trainees must be able to complete a one and a half mile run in 13 minutes or less, a confidence course in two and a half minutes or less, and a 220 yard dash in 46 seconds or less. This final test is much easier than the day to day physical training during the program.[15]

 

[edit] Uniforms

The Border Patrol currently wears the following types of uniforms:

  

CBP officers at a ceremony in 2007Dress uniform – The dress uniform consists of olive-green trousers with a blue stripe, and an olive-green shirt, which may or may not have blue shoulder straps. The campaign hat is worn with uniform.

Ceremonial uniform – When required, the following items are added to the dress uniform to complete the ceremonial uniform: olive-green Ike jacket or tunic with blue accents (shoulder straps and cuffs, blue tie, brass tie tack, white gloves, and olive-green felt campaign hat with leather hat band. The campaign hat is worn with uniform.

Rough duty uniform – The rough duty uniform consists of green cargo trousers and work shirt (in short or long sleeves). Usually worn with green baseball cap or tan stetson.

Accessories, footwear, and outerwear – Additional items are worn in matching blue or black colors as appropriate.

Organization patches – The Border Patrol wears two:

The CBP patch is worn on the right sleeves of the uniform. It contains the DHS seal against a black background with a "keystone" shape. A "keystone" is the central, wedge-shaped stone in an arch, which holds all the other stones in place.

Border Patrol agents retain the circular legacy Border Patrol patch, which is worn on the left sleeve.

The Border Patrol uniform is getting its first makeover since the 1950s to appear more like military fatigues and less like a police officer's duty garb.[16] Leather belts with brass buckles are being replaced by nylon belts with quick-release plastic buckles, slacks are being replaced by lightweight cargo pants, and shiny badges and nameplates are being replaced by cloth patches.

 

[edit] Border Patrol (OBP) Ranks and Insignia

Location Title Collar insignia Shoulder ornament Pay grade

Border Patrol Headquarters Chief of the Border Patrol Gold-plated Senior Executive Service (SES)

Deputy Chief of the Border Patrol Gold-plated SES

Division Chief Gold-plated SES

Deputy Division Chief Gold-plated GS-15, General Schedule

Associate Chief Gold-plated GS-15

Assistant Chief Silver-plated GS-14

Operations Officer Oxidized GS-13

 

Border Patrol Sectors Chief Patrol Agent (CPA) Gold-plated SES or GS-15

Deputy Chief Patrol Agent (DCPA) Gold-plated SES/GS-15 or GS-14

Division Chief Gold-plated GS-15

Assistant Chief Patrol Agent (ACPA) Silver-plated GS-15 or GS-14

Patrol Agent in Charge (PAIC) Silver-plated GS-14 or GS-13

Assistant Patrol Agent in Charge (APAIC) Oxidized GS-13

Special Operations Supervisor (SOS) Oxidized GS-13

Field Operations Supervisor (FOS) Oxidized GS-13

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent (SBPA) Oxidized GS-12

Senior Patrol Agent (SPA) (Note: Being phased out through attrition) No insignia Currently GS-11 (Will be upgraded to full performance level GS-12 sometime during the 1st quarter of 2011)

Border Patrol Agent (BPA) No insignia GS-5, 7, 9, 11 (Upgrade to GS-12 pending)

 

Border Patrol Academy Chief Patrol Agent (CPA) Gold-plated GS-15

Deputy Chief Patrol Agent (DCPA) Gold-plated GS-15

Assistant Chief Patrol Agent (ACPA) Silver-plated GS-14

Training Operations Supervisor (TOS) Oxidized GS-14

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent (Senior Instructor) Oxidized GS-13

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent (Instructor) Oxidized GS-13

 

[edit] Border Patrol Shoulder Ornaments

     

[edit] Awards

Newton-Azrak Award for Heroism Commissioners Distinguished Career Service Award Commissioners Exceptional Service Medal Commissioners Meritorious Service Award Commissioners Special Commendation Award Chiefs Commendation Medal

No Image Available No Image Available No Image Available

 

Commissioners Excellence in Group Achievement Award Purple Cross Wound Medal Academy Honor Award Winner Border Patrol Long Service Medal 75th Anniversary of the Border Patrol Commemorative Medal

No Image Available No Image Available

  

[edit] Newton-Azrak Award for Heroism

The Border Patrol's highest honor is the Newton-Azrak Award for Heroism. This Award is bestowed to Border Patrol Agents for extraordinary actions, service; accomplishments reflecting unusual courage or bravery in the line of duty; or an extraordinarily heroic or humane act committed during times of extreme stress or in an emergency.

 

This award is named for Border Patrol Inspectors Theodore Newton[17] and George Azrak,[18] who were murdered by two drug smugglers in San Diego County in 1967.

 

[edit] Border Patrol Uniform Devices

Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue Unit (BORSTAR) Special Response Team (NSRT) Honor Guard Border Patrol Pipes and Drums Cap Badge

No Image Available

K-9 Handler Chaplain Field Training Officer Peer Support

  

[edit] Equipment

[edit] Weapons

 

A Border Patrol Agent carrying an M14 rifle.Border Patrol Agents are issued the H&K P2000 double action pistol in .40 S&W. It can contain as many as 13 rounds of ammunition (12 in the magazine and one in the chamber).

 

Like other law enforcement agencies, the Remington 870 is the standard shotgun.

 

Border Patrol Agents also commonly carry the M4 Carbine and the H&K UMP 40 caliber submachine gun. The M14 rifle is used for mostly ceremonial purposes.

 

As a less than lethal option, the Border Patrol also uses the FN303.

 

[edit] Transportation

Unlike in many other law enforcement agencies in the United States, the Border Patrol operates several thousand SUVs and pickup trucks, which are known for their capabilities to move around in any sort of terrain. This vehicles may have individual revolving lights (strobes or LEDs) and/or light bars and sirens. An extensive modernization drive has ensured that these vehicles are equipped with wireless sets in communication with a central control room. Border Patrol vehicles may also have equipment such as speed radar, breathalyzers, and emergency first aid kits. Some sectors make use of sedans like the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor or the Dodge Charger as patrol cars or high speed "interceptors" on highways. The Border Patrol also operates ATVs, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and small boats in the riverine environment. In 2005, all Border Patrol and ICE aircraft operations were combined under CBP's Office of Air and Marine. All CBP vessel operation in Customs Waters are conducted by Office of Air and Marine.

 

Color schemes of Border Patrol vehicles are either a long green stripe running the length of the vehicle or a broad green diagonal stripe on the door. Most Border Patrol vehicles are painted predominantly white.

 

The Border Patrol also extensively uses horses for remote area patrols. The U.S. Border Patrol has 205 horses As of 2005[update]. Most are employed along the Mexico–United States border. In Arizona, these animals are fed special processed feed pellets so that their wastes do not spread non-native plants in the national parks and wildlife areas they patrol.[19]

 

[edit] Line of duty deaths

Total line of duty deaths (since 1904): 105[20]

 

Aircraft accident: 14

Assault: 2

Automobile accident: 28

Drowned: 4

Fall: 4

Gunfire: 30

Gunfire (Accidental): 3

Heart attack: 6

Heat exhaustion: 1

Motorcycle accident: 2

Stabbed: 2

Struck by train: 3

Struck by vehicle: 3

Vehicle pursuit: 2

Vehicular assault: 3

[edit] Armed incursions

On August 7, 2008, Mexican troops crossed the border into Arizona and held a U.S. Border Patrol Agent at gunpoint. Agents stationed at Ajo, Arizona said that the Mexican soldiers crossed the border into an isolated area southwest of Tucson and pointed rifles at the agent, who has not been identified. The Mexicans withdrew after other American agents arrived on the scene.[21]

 

[edit] Ramos and Compean

In February 2005, Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were involved in an incident while pursuing a van in Fabens, Texas. The driver, later identified as Aldrete Davila, was shot by Agent Ramos during a scuffle. Davila escaped back into Mexico, and the agents discovered that the van contained a million dollars worth of marijuana (about 750 pounds). None of the agents at the scene orally reported the shooting, including two supervisors. The Department of Homeland Security opened up an internal affairs investigation into the incident.[22] See also [23][24][25]

 

[edit] Criticisms

[edit] Ineffective

In 2006, a documentary called The Illegal Immigration Invasion[26] linked the scale of illegal immigration into the United States chiefly to the ineffectiveness of the Border Patrol. The film claimed that this is due to the lack of judicial powers of the Border Patrol and the effective hamstringing of the agency by the federal government. The film interviews people that deal with illegal immigration on a daily basis, as well as local citizens living in the border areas.

 

[edit] Allegations of abuse

There are allegations of abuse by the United States Border Patrol such as the ones reported by Jesus A. Trevino, that concludes in an article published in the Houston Journal of International Law (2006) with a request to create an independent review commission to oversee the actions of the Border Patrol, and that creating such review board will make the American public aware of the "serious problem of abuse that exists at the border by making this review process public" and that "illegal immigrants deserve the same constitutionally-mandated humane treatment of citizens and legal residents".[27]

In 1998, Amnesty International investigated allegations of ill-treatment and brutality by officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and particularly the Border Patrol. Their report said they found indications of human rights violations during 1996, 1997 and early 1998.[28]

An article in Social Justice by Michael Huspek, Leticia Jimenez, Roberto Martinez (1998) cites that in December 1997, John Case, head of the INS Office of Internal Audit, announced at a press conference that public complaints to the INS had risen 29% from 1996, with the "vast majority" of complaints emanating from the southwest border region, but that of the 2,300 cases, the 243 cases of serious allegations of abuse were down in 1997. These serious cases are considered to be distinct from less serious complaints, such as "verbal abuse, discrimination, extended detention without cause."[29]

[edit] Corruption

Incidences of corruption in the U.S. Border Patrol include:

 

Pablo Sergio Barry, an agent charged with one count of harboring an illegal immigrant, three counts of false statements, and two counts of making a false document.[30] He plead guilty.[31]

Christopher E. Bernis, an agent indicted on a charge of harboring an illegal immigrant for nine months while employed as a U.S. Border Patrol agent.[32]

Jose De Jesus Ruiz, an agent whose girlfriend was an illegal immigrant, he was put on administrative leave pending an investigation.[32]

Oscar Antonio Ortiz, an illegal immigrant[33] who used a fake birth certificate to get into the Border Patrol admitted to smuggling more than 100 illegal immigrants into the U.S., some of them in his government truck,[34] and was helping to smuggle illegal immigrants and charged with conspiring with another agent to smuggle immigrants.

An unidentified patrol agent who was recorded on a wire tap stating that he helped to smuggle 30 to 50 immigrants at a time.[33]

[edit] National Border Patrol Council

National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) is the labor union which represents over 14,000 Border Patrol Agents and support staff. The NBPC was founded in 1968, and its parent organization is the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO. The NBPC's executive committee is staffed by current and retired Border Patrol Agents and, along with its constituent locals, employs a staff of a dozen attorneys and field representatives. The NBPC is associated with the Peace Officer Research Association of California’s Legal Defense Fund.[35]

 

[edit] National Border Patrol Museum

The National Border Patrol Museum is located in El Paso, Texas. The museum exhibits uniforms, equipment, photographs, guns, vehicles, airplanes, boats, and documents which depict the historical and current sector operations throughout the United States.

 

[edit] In popular culture

[edit] Books

Border Patrol by Alvin Edward Moore

The Border Patrol by Deborah Wells Salter

EWI: Entry Without Inspection (Title 8 U.S.C. § 1325 Improper entry by alien) by Fortuna Testarona Valiente

Tracks in the Sand: A Tale of the Border Patrol by Kent E Lundgren,

On The Line: Inside the U.S. Border Patrol by Alex Pacheco and Erich Krauss

Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas by Robert Lee Maril

The U.S. Border Patrol: Guarding the Nation (Blazers) by Connie Collwell Miller

My Border Patrol Diary: Laredo, Texas by Dale Squint

Holding the Line: War Stories of the U.S. Border Patrol by Gerald Schumacher

The Border Patrol Ate My Dust by Alicia Alarcon, Ethriam Cash Brammer, and Ethriam Cash Brammer de Gonzales

The Border: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican Divide by David J. Danelo

Beat The Border: An Insider's Guide To How The U.S. Border Works And How To Beat It by Ned Beaumont

West of the Moon: A Border Patrol Agent's Tale by D. B. Prehoda

The Journey: U.S. Border Patrol & the Solution to the Illegal Alien Problem by Donald R. Coppock

Border patrol: With the U.S. Immigration Service on the Mexican boundary, 1910-54 by Clifford Alan Perkins

Border Patrol: How U.S. Agents Protect Our Borders from Illegal Entry by Carroll B. Colby

In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security by Tom Tancredo

[edit] Film

Border Patrolman, a 1936 film in which a Border Patrolman Bob Wallace, played by George O'Brien, resigns in protest after being humiliated by the spoiled granddaughter of a millionaire.

Border Patrol, a 1943 film starring William C. Boyd, Andy Clyde, George Reeves, and Robert Mitchum

Borderline, a 1950 film noir starring Fred MacMurray about drug smuggling across the U.S./Mexico border

Border Patrol, a 1959 syndicated television series, starring Richard Webb as the fictitious deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol

Borderline, a 1980 movie starring Charles Bronson about a Border Patrol Agent on the U.S./Mexico border

The Border, a 1982 film starring Jack Nicholson

El Norte, a 1983 film portraying Central American Indian peasants traveling to the United States.

Flashpoint, a 1984 film starring Kris Kristofferson

Last Man Standing, a 1996 film starring Bruce Willis and Ken Jenkins as Texas Ranger Captain Tom Pickett who is investing the killing of an unnamed Immigration Inspector (played by Larry Holt) across the border in Mexico.

Men in Black, a 1997 science fiction comedy action film starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith and Vincent D'Onofrio. The Border Patrol was portrayed as Immigration Inspectors

The Gatekeeper, a 2002 film by John Carlos Frey about the struggles of migrants at the Mexican/US border.

The Shepherd: Border Patrol, a 2007 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme

Linewatch, a 2008 film starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., as a Border Patrol agent defending his family from a group of Los Angeles gang members involved in the illegal trade of importing narcotics into the United States.

[edit] Documentaries

Border Patrol: American's Gatekeepers A&E with former United States Attorney General Janet Reno

Investigative Reports: Border Patrol: America's Gatekeepers A&E Investigates

History the Enforcers : Border Patrol History Channel

[edit] See also

Border Protection Personnel

United States portal

Law enforcement/Law enforcement topics portal

List of United States federal law enforcement agencies

Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Border control

Ignacio Ramos

Illegal immigration

H.R. 4437

Minuteman Project

MQ-9 Reaper

No More Deaths

Office of CBP Air

United States Mexico barrier

United States-Canadian Border

la migra

[edit] References

^ "Reinstatements to the northern border". CPB.gov. US Customs and Border Protection. 2008-05-19. www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/reinsta.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/border_...

^ a b c d e f "Boarder Patrol overview". CPB.gov. US Customs and Boarder Protection. 2008-08-22. www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/border_.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ a b "Who we are and what we do". CPB.gov. US Customs and Boarder Protection. 2008-09-03. www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/who_we_.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Gaynor, Tim (2008-01-23). "U.S. turns to horses to secure borders". Reuters. www.reuters.com/article/inDepthNews/idUSN2323280820080124.... Retrieved 2008-01-24.

^ www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/border_security/border_patro...[dead link]

^ Nuñez-Neto, Blas (2006-010-25) (PDF). Border security: The role of the U.S. Border Patrol. Congressional Research Service. p. 35. digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs//data/2006/upl-meta-c.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Coyle, Marcia (2008-03-03). "Waivers for border fence challenged: Environmental groups take their complaints to Supreme Court". The Recorder.

^ Archibold, Randal C. (2008-04-02). "Government issues waiver for fencing along border". New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/us/02fence.html. Retrieved 2008-04-02.

^ "Conservation groups call for an immediate halt to construction of border fence in San Pedro National Conservation Area". US Newswire. 2007-10-05.

^ Gordon, David George (May 2000). "A 'grande' dispute". National Geographic World: p. 4.

^ Cohn, Jeffrey P. (2007). "The environmental impacts of a border fence". BioScience 57 (1): 96. doi:10.1641/B570116. www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1641/B570116. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "Expansive border fence stirs fights over land". Tell Me More. NPR. 2008-03-03.

^ 2007 State of the Border Patrol video[dead link]

^ a b "FAQs: Working for the Border Patrol-basic training". CPB.gov. US Customs and Boarder Protection. 2008-05-29. www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/careers/customs_careers/border_career.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Spagat, Elliot (2007-08-16). "Border Patrol uniform gets first makeover since the 1950s". North County Times. www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/17/news/sandiego/18_64_3.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "Border Patrol Inspector Theodore L. Newton Jr.". The Officer Down Memorial Page. www.odmp.org/officer.php?oid=9933. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "Border Patrol Inspector George F. Azrak". The Officer Down Memorial Page. www.odmp.org/officer.php?oid=1368. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Rostien, Arthur H. (2005-06-09). "Border Patrol horses get special feed that helps protect desert ecosystem". Environmental News Network. www.enn.com/top_stories/article/1731. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "United States Department of Homeland Security - Customs and Border Protection - Border Patrol". The Officer Down Memorial Page. www.odmp.org/agency/4830-united-states-department-of-home.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Meyers, Jim (2008-08-06). "Mexican troops cross border, hold border agent". Newsmax.com. newsmax.com/insidecover/mexican_troops_border/2008/08/06/.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "Glenn Beck: Ramos & Compean - the whole story". The Glenn Beck Program. Premiere Radio Networks. 2008-07-29. www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/13098/. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "Error: no |title= specified when using {{Cite web}}". Ramos-Compean. ramos-compean.blogspot.com/. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "2 Border Patrol agents face 20 years in prison". WorldDailyNet. 2006-08-07. www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51417. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "Ramos and Campean - court appeal". www.scribd.com/doc/219384/Ramos-and-Campean-Court-Appeal. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ (Google video) The illegal immigration invasion. October Sun Films. 2006-04-06. video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1451035544403625746. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Jesus A. Trevino (1998). "Border violence against illegal immigrants and the need to change the border patrol's current complaint review process" (PDF). Houston Journal of International Law 21 (1): 85–114. ISSN 0194-1879. www.hjil.org/ArticleFiles/21_1_10.pdf. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ United States of America: Human rights concerns in the border region with Mexico. Amnesty International. 1998-05-19. web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510031998. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Huspek, Michael; Roberto Martinez, and Leticia Jimenez (1998). "Violations of human and civil rights on the U.S.-Mexico border, 1995 to 1997: a report" (Reprint). Social Justice 25 (2). ISSN 1043-1578. findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3427/is_n2_v25/ai_n28711.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

The data compiled in this report suggest that law enforcement in the southwest region of the United States may be verging on lawlessness. This statement receives fuller support from announcements emanating from the INS. In December 1997, John Chase, head of the INS Office of Internal Audit, announced at a press conference that public complaints to the INS had risen 29% from 1996, with the "vast majority" of complaints emanating from the southwest border region. Over 2,300 complaints were filed in 1997 as opposed to the 1,813 complaints filed in 1996. Another 400 reports of "minor misconduct" were placed in a new category. Chase was quick to emphasize, however, that the 243 "serious" allegations of abuse and use of excessive force that could warrant criminal prosecution were down in 1997, as compared with the 328 in 1996. These "serious" cases are considered to be distinct from less serious complaints, such as "verbal abuse, discrimination, extended detention without cause.

 

^ June 23, 2005 "Border agent accused of hiding an illegal entrant". Arizona Daily Star. 2005-06-23. www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/81082.php June 23, 2005. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "Border agent pleads guilty to harboring illegal entrant". Arizona Daily Star. 2005-09-22. www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/94491.php. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ a b "U.S. border agent indicted". Arizona Daily Star. 2005-03-11. www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/65117.php. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ a b "Boarder agent said to also be smuggler". SignOnSanDiego.com. Union-Tribune Publishing. 2005-08-05. www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20050805-9999-.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ Spagat, Elliot (2006-07-28). "Border agent gets 5 years for smuggling". The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/28/.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

^ "About NBPC". National Border Patrol Council. 2008-08-14. www.nbpc.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&a.... Retrieved 2009-06-01.

[edit] External links

Official US Border Patrol website

US Border Patrol history

National Border Patrol Strategy(PDF)

Border Patrol official recruiting page

Border Patrol Supervisor's Association (BPSA)

Border Patrol agents killed in the line of duty

Large Border Patrol site

Border Patrol Museum official site

National Border Patrol Council official site

National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers

Friends of the Border Patrol

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding the U.S. Border Patrol

Civilian Border Patrol Organizations: An Overview and History of the Phenomenon by the Congressional Research Service.

Border Patrol hiring forums and information for potential agents

National Border Patrol Museum

Pictures of Border Patrol vehicles

Crossing Guards in Training LA Times report on Border Patrol training.

The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration

Border Patrol unofficial Auxiliary NOT a Government Agency and not affiliated with the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

[edit] External Video

Border Stories

[edit] GAO and OIG Reports

GAO Report: Border Patrol - Southwest Border Enforcement Affected by Mission Expansion and Budget August 1992

GAO Report: Border Control - Revised Strategy is Showing Some Positive Results December 1994

g96065.pdf GAO Report: Border Patrol - Staffing and Enforcement Activities March 1996

GAO Report: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION - Southwest Border Strategy Results Inconclusive; More Evaluation Needed December 1997

USDOJ OIG Report: Operation Gatekeeper July 1998

GAO Report: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION - Status of Southwest Border Strategy Implementation 1999

GAO Report: Border Patrol Hiring December 1999

GAO Report: Southwest Border Strategy - Resource and Impact Issues Remain After Seven Years August 2001

National Border Patrol Strategy March 2005

GAO Report: Effectiveness of Border Patrol Checkpoints July 2005

DHS OIG Report: An Assessment of the Proposal to Merge Customs and Border Protection with Immigration and Customs Enforcement November 2005

[hide]v • d • eBorder guards

 

Asia Bangladesh · China · Israel · Hong Kong · India (Border Security Force · Indo-Tibetan Border Police · Rashtriya Rifles · Indian Home Guard · Special Frontier Force · Assam Rifles) · Pakistan (Frontier Corps · Rangers) · Singapore · Taiwan · Thailand

 

Europe Estonia · European Union · Finland · France · Germany · Italy · Latvia · Lithuania · Norway · Poland · Romania · Russian Federation · Switzerland · Ukraine · United Kingdom

 

North America Canada · United States of America

 

Oceania Australia (Department of Immigration and Citizenship · Australian Customs and Border Protection Service) · New Zealand (Immigration New Zealand · New Zealand Customs Service)

  

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol"

Categories: Federal law enforcement agencies of the United States | Border guards | Specialist law enforcement agencies of the United States | History of immigration to the United States | United States Department of Homeland Security | Borders of the United States

Hidden categories: All articles with dead external links | Articles with dead external links from June 2009 | Articles with broken citations | Articles needing cleanup from December 2009 | All pages needing cleanup | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from February 2007 | All accuracy disputes | Articles with disputed statements from December 2009 | Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2005 | All articles containing potentially dated statements

St. Catherine's Well or Kate's Well is a historical natural spring well of significant interest and sits on holy ground, at the foot of Kirk O' Shott's Parish Church, otherwise known as (Shottskirk) in the village of Salsburgh, North Lanarkshire. The well dates back to the 14th century, and derives from the church's former past when it was once a Catholic place of worship as St. Catherines Chapel, which has origins from Catherine of Sienna.

 

The water runs off from nearby hills and has a jovial longstanding joke within the nearby village of how the water runs through the Shottskirk cemetery bodies, which of course is neither true or founded.

 

Kate's Well is also the scene of the local legendary giant Bertram de Shotts's demise; a gripping tale is told how a young man, namely Willielmo De Muirhead, 1st Laird of Muirhead, killed the Giant. With cunning patience he ambushed Bertram de Shotts, immobilising him by slicing both his hamstrings as he lay down to drink at Kate's Well. Disorientated, Bertram de Shotts was then decapitated in an unpleasant death. A proud, and now wealthy, De Muirhead then carried the blooded head to the King and was rewarded with a 'Hawk's Flight' of land. This land subsequently became Muirhead's Lauchope estate.

-----

youtu.be/3Ca6_b5HXQE

---------

Originally taken and posted for the GWUK group.

 

Now replaced with the un-edited version

 

Guessed by Brokentaco

Redbubble | Blog | Twitter | Live Journal | MySpace | Facebook | HITTP

 

I went to the AFL at the MCG last night. Unfortunately Collingwood lost, but I got some good shots. Dane Swan is my current favourite. Here's a little bit about him from Wikipedia:

 

Dane Swan (born 25 February 1984) is an Australian rules footballer in the Australian Football League. In 2006, Swan made a name for himself impressing as one of the most improved players in the league, and having an incredible impact off the bench. Swan played 21 games, missing two with a hamstring injury. He averaged over 23 touches, and was one of the league's biggest ball magnets, comparing time played and disposals. He also became a solid contributor in front of goal, kicking 19 goals, with most coming in the first half of the year. He bought up his 50th career game also. In 2007 he continued to improve vastly and notched up 595 disposals and 20 votes in the Brownlow Medal despite not being there on the night.

 

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mk II

Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM and Canon Extender EF 2x II

Exposure: 1/250 sec

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal Length: 400 mm

ISO Speed: 1600

Accessories: Expodisc for white balance

Date and Time: 18 July 2009 6.33pm

Post Processing:

Exported to CS3

Background layer

Magic Wand tool to select background

Noise reduction on selected area

Curves layer for contrast

Re-imported back into Lightroom

Sharpening in Lightroom

Added keyword metadata

Exported as 3000 x 2000 JPEG

 

View On Black

 

View Original Size

or "see God everywhere or not at all"

Typically used for ship-breaking and other heavy demolition work, Venusian Saw-Spider mechs only "weapon" is the massive oscillating saw mounted underneath the main body. However, during the Second Great Uprising, daring workers used these saws to devastating effect by slipping under the defenses of Corporate Authority mechs and "hamstringing" them.

 

Really like how the saw arm came out, I kinda want to iterate on it in some kind of crab mech...

314:365

 

"growing love"

My first tattoo*. Got it this morning as a birthday present to myself. Thanks to Jamie, Marc (and Julie) and Aaron for keeping me company, giving me a hand to squeeze, documenting the event and trying to distract me with stories of torn hamstrings. Love my new tat, and love you guys!

 

(for the record, you have no idea how difficult it is to photograph something on your ankle and keep the whole thing in focus.)

 

*not actual size

Zakouma is an unusual park when compared to the better-known national parks of East or Southern Africa, because on normal game drives through the park, you simply don’t see elephants, except for the handful of bulls, that hang around the airstrip and the park HQ in the area of the park that is actually called Zakouma, elsewhere you just don’t see them, not unless you are actively looking for them and know in advance where they are. You won’t drive around a corner and find a small herd feeding beside the road as you might in a park like say Ruaha in Tanzania, to understand why this is the case, you need to know the tragic history of Zakouma’s elephants.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters, at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants, as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants, picking one with good tusks. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him, allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs, these if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region, have learned that at the first sign of horsemen, their best defence is to bunch up into tight groups, to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence, the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors, but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd, has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area, in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again, they have not lost an elephant to poaching in 6 years at the last count in 2021 the population had reached 636.

 

These bulls live in the area around the park HQ, there is always water for them and plenty of food here, and in the recent past this area would have been much safer than the rest of the park.

Model - Virginia Raffaele - MM# 674936

 

strobist setup shot below

Zakouma is an unusual park when compared to the better-known national parks of East or Southern Africa, because on normal game drives through the park, you simply don’t see elephants, except for the handful of bulls, that hang around the airstrip and the park HQ in the area of the park that is actually called Zakouma, elsewhere you just don’t see them, not unless you are actively looking for them and know in advance where they are. You won’t drive around a corner and find a small herd feeding beside the road as you might in a park like say Ruaha in Tanzania, to understand why this is the case, you need to know the tragic history of Zakouma’s elephants.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters, at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants, as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants, picking one with good tusks. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him, allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs, these if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region, have learned that at the first sign of horsemen, their best defence is to bunch up into tight groups, to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence, the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors, but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd, has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area, in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again, they have not lost an elephant to poaching in 6 years at the last count in 2021 the population had reached 636.

 

Zakouma had become famous for what was often described as the largest elephant herd in Africa, simply because the majority of the park’s elephants were congregating together in a huge unnatural mega-herd, that would include bulls that would normally have been pushed out. Besides sticking together for protection, the elephants also like to remain in the thick bush and woodlands, avoiding open areas of the park, this is why you just don’t see them when driving around. Just in the last couple of years the elephant herd has started to split into several big herds instead of just one, but they still stay deep in the bush, doing their best to avoid people entirely.

 

The best chance of seeing them is at the Bahr Salamat, where they have to come every day to drink, if you can anticipate which part of the river they will come to, and position yourself so that they won’t be aware of your presence, you can have an amazing elephant experience. When we tried to find them, despite receiving tracking information from the park HQ, (some of the elephants are wearing tracking collars) and having a ranger to assist us, we were not lucky, instead of seeing the whole herd come to drink where we had chosen to wait, we just saw two single bulls. The herd did come to drink but at a different stretch of the Salamat, not too far away, unfortunately we missed them.

Stretching her legs, getting her hamstrings nice and warm, with a pretty pair of tights on to help the process. And love how wonderfully slim her waist looks in the leotard, showing how great ballerinas take care of their bodies to keep themselves physically agile and fit while being as dainty as cherry blossoms! And yes, I would stare at this picture all day long..I just love this dancer's attractive body! <3 ^_^

So...I look at the weather report on my phone and it states "intermittent clouds"......"intermittent clouds my frozen @$$!!!" I worked hard for this shot! I knew where these owls were,and I needed to walk through the deeper snow drifts to get in the best position for the light. Did you ever have to walk through deep snow for 200 yards? You use leg muscles you don't normally use for easy walking! Half way to my spot I got stabbing muscle cramps in both hamstrings! I was damn near in tears! Laughing at my self for being so out of shape, I made it to the outer corn stalk stack and this bird was about 3 stacks away. I used the stacks of corn as cover and worked to where this lovely lady was in the next stack 10 yards away. Thats when I really noticed that the so called "intermittent clouds" were actually very dark clouds full of snow and bitter wind.... just my luck! So...I stood there...and stood there...and stood there some more, my back against the cornstack facing away from the Owl. As my feet get numb and the wind is burning my face, I can see the warmth and dry security of my truck 200 yards away...I almost gave up....and I don't do that...BUT I was @&%$ing cold! There are patches of blue sky directly over my head, but it wasn't helping me one damn bit. The sun was much lower in the sky!.....after over 3 hours of standing in one spot the sky opened up long enough for me to turn around, and peek around the stack and snap some pictures. The evening sun lighting up the corn stack and her face with that dark, snow filled sky as a background.....I suddenly wasn't so cold anymore!

 

My last post of the year is sort of dedicated to 2 friends here on Flickr. The first is my best friend Aaron. He has helped me so much with my photography, and motivates me to think outside the box. The time spent with Aaron in the field with our cameras has been some of the funnest times I can long remember! "thanks buddy!"

 

The second person I dedicate this shot too is a person I only know through Flickr. His photography is phenomenal, and I consider my self lucky to be one of the chosen few to view his professional work! His work inspires me to get out with my camera, and work for some great shots. "Thanks for the inspiration Howard!"

The last of the series, in more ways than one.

 

Arielle's comment on this photo:

What this picture implies: Look at me, I'm awesome and strong doing splits on a chair. What's really going on: "OH @#$% BILL I HAVE TO STOP TAKING PICTURES NOW, I TOTALLY JUST BLEW OUT MY HAMSTRING"

 

All too true. About a half-second after snapping this shot, the chair suddenly slid away to the left, catching Arielle unawares and causing her to fall to the floor. Unfortunately, the chair didn't slide far enough for Arielle's foot to fall free from the chair, so she overextended her left hamstring. She was in a lot of pain and couldn't dance for the better part of 3 weeks. She took it all "in stride" (so to speak) and is actually looking forward to shooting again in this outfit. Love this lady!! :-)

 

Photo by Bill Tricomi

Sooc throw

 

Last night it was getting late around 10pm and Danny was getting hungry for a snack,so he headed into the kitchen to look for something to eat, after scanning the fridge and cupboards he realized his options were down to ---leftover 2 day old pizza in the fridge, some random pea soup or just make some of the "past the expiration date but still good bread" that was out on the counter, and stale or not theres nothing some peanut butter cant fix. As Danny was plugging in the toaster he could hear some noise coming from the other side of the kitchen, at first he dismissed it as just the house shaking as the transport went by--the house always shook when that happened but then about 13 seconds later as he was reaching into the cupboard for the peanut butter he heard a noise again but this time it sounded like some dishes and metal utensils hitting the floor, it startled danny and as he turned around the next thing he knew all he could see was a flying knife headed straight for his good eye--- the light shinning off it and glowing as it jetted towards danny but luckily with his cat like reflexes danny dodged to the right and then to the left threw his hands up in the air as everything was in slow motion and he felt like Neo from the matrix in those moments and then just as the blade was inches away from his face danny did a double sideways twisted barrel roll out of the way landing with a bang on the hardwood floor pulling a hamstring on the way down,then jumped back up bad leg and all and darted out the front door to safety.... Some people might call him a hero i dont know why they would but lets face there was no hero here --its a ghost i tell ya -----This was Day 88 --Knife Attack Survival Mode

  

Specs and Strobist

Sb800 1/20th power camera back left (zoomed 24)

Sb800 1/50th power camera front left (zoomed 105) just aimed at where the flying knife was suppose to be in the air when i threw it and to get that bright highlight off the knife was most important to the shot. Both flashes were fired via nikon cls on self timer mode as i threw the knife in the air just before the self timer fired and took the photo.

sooc

 

Currently on light duties as I've knackered my hamstring and quads, and apparently ignoring it for a month was not the best of ideas. Gentle walks to ease up the muscles + Naproxen & rest are the theme of this week.

 

Summer in the woodlands, especially in the early morning, holds the promise of Autumn. Warm light makes me excited about what is to come.

It's more the occasion than the photo that makes this I know but I felt like uploading it anyway!

 

I managed to get hold of tickets for the 100m final, a truly unbelievable experience; as obvious as it sounds they are immensely quick! You could feel the tension and excitement in the build up to the race and by the time their names were announced the atmosphere was incredible. Then as they took to their blocks the stadium fell silent, and exploded into a multitude of cheers when they burst from their blocks. What a race!

 

Obviously I wanted to watch the race live and not through the lens of my camera so I put it on automatic and burst mode, roughly pointed at the track and half heartedly tried to follow the runners while immersed in the race. When I got home and looked through the results I had them in frame at the start and then the camera was shaking all over the place, but then they came back into frame for the finish. Surprisingly it was straight and showed the vast number of people focused on the action. That's what I like about it so much and why I haven't cropped it. I just made it B&W in order to focus on the runners. Definitely needs to viewed as large as possible in my opinion!

 

Clearly Bolt is the one dipping for the line! If you look closely at the bottom of the track you can see Asafa Powell's head (he pulled a hamstring) and then it goes: Richard Thompson, Tyson Gay, Yohan Blake 2nd, Justin Gatlin 3rd, Usain Bolt 1st, Ryan Bailey and Churandy Martina.

52 #01

 

after a year of daily selfportraits i'm back but on a weekly basis :-)

 

what happened in this month since 365? well i now live closer to the beach, i have a job (civil engineer) and i'm almost recovered from my hamstring injury (as you can see here) yay :-)

i dont want this to be another 365 so i set myself some rules:

- more "photography based" photos and less photoshop (doesnt mean i wont use it, it means it will be secondary - i'm leaving the effects heavy ideas for another project i'll start soon). i want to grow as a photographer and yes i still have only a point and shoot but i want to learn and grow.

- more fun. i hope that i can at least smile looking at the photo :-)

- more color.

so here's me for another year on flickr to have fun, be inspired and have a happy (new) year, care to join me? :-)

   

*and in the photo i have the company of Douro the nicest labrador ever;-)

After that SP shot things got interesting. I went over to the Skunk train (California Western) station and figured I'd introduce myself to the crew and tell them I'd be along the way during the day. I suppose I could've been more couth but the Engineer kinda went off the deep end. Gave me the whole line about security and the TSA. Honestly I stop listening to that shit from ANYBODY after the second sentence. But then he said something that got my attention. He threatened to have me arrested if he found me on the property. All this on a tourist train which exists only to take photos and what not.....

 

I was shocked more than pissed. It has been an incredibly long time since I've experienced anything like this. I drove away considering driving 100 plus miles back to the bay. I knew I had put too much thought and expectation in to this day trip though. Google maps showed a road that got me to within half a mile of Summit Tunnel. After a million curves I got to the end of Ridge Road, which came to a cul-de-sac over half a mile short of where it showed to end. I started loading my bindle as air horns sounded hundreds of feet downhill a few miles away. The hike in at some points was a steep enough grade to pressure the knees while descending. An hour and a couple of wrong trails later I reach my meadow overlooking the railroad's summit.

 

It was 55 and breezy. Not exactly warm. I got there in time to shoot the 10:30 return. It was time to wait it out, at 11:30 the sun was barely on the afternoon side. Only 2 hours later here at 1:30 the shadows had swung enough to nearly hit the rails where the locomotive would be. A dry fall has not added much more than a green tinge to the hills. The winter light though adds so much contrast.....

 

Every sound can be heard up here. Someone working in their garage on an adjacent hillside half a mile away. The ringing in my ears. And two to go as the 1pm departure leaves Willits 5 miles away. Clear as a bell! Later I wouldn't be able to hear the departure signal from half a mile away in town! 20 minutes later the faint sound of a working 567 as the former SP geep dug in to the coast range. Stronger now as they signal their approach to the siding here. Two more toots as the nose pokes in to my clearing. The aforementioned Engineer transitions to dynamic as the coaches (no open air car!!) roll through the frame. Sound disappears into the tunnel and I can hear the ringing in my ears again.

 

Ten minutes later the shadows are across the far rail where the locomotive is in this photo. We're only 20 minutes or so from the return trip but it'll be all for naught with the shadow. I begin my walk out. I get a bunch of the easier footage taken care of before the sound of a 567 re-emerges. From where I was at the time I could see the train shove through the curve. I press on. Erie is spooking deer ahead of us. I'm trying my best to be silent. I'm absolutely buried on private property (did I forget to mention that?) and in the middle of illicit weed country where grows are defended with trip wire security systems and shotguns. To that point I actually left a comment on Facebook letting people know where my car was in case I didn't return.

 

It got to the point where I was making the hill about 20 feet at a time. Erie was leading ahead, which was a concern. I'd rather have someone shoot me than him. The second house that we skirt within a couple hundred feet of we get noticed. Well really, Erie got noticed. Their dogs made a racket and came out to greet. I yelled "how ya doin'!" and luckily didn't have my greeting returned with gunfire! A thousand more feet and I'm back at the RAV with burning hamstrings and a sense of accomplishment. I will not be coming in here via the trail again. Fuck that Engineer!

 

All for one shot, of a tourist train.

Zakouma is an unusual park when compared to the better-known national parks of East or Southern Africa, because on normal game drives through the park, you simply don’t see elephants, except for the handful of bulls, that hang around the airstrip and the park HQ in the area of the park that is actually called Zakouma, elsewhere you just don’t see them, not unless you are actively looking for them and know in advance where they are. You won’t drive around a corner and find a small herd feeding beside the road as you might in a park like say Ruaha in Tanzania, to understand why this is the case, you need to know the tragic history of Zakouma’s elephants.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters, at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants, as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants, picking one with good tusks. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him, allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs, these if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region, have learned that at the first sign of horsemen, their best defence is to bunch up into tight groups, to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence, the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors, but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd, has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area, in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again, they have not lost an elephant to poaching in 6 years at the last count in 2021 the population had reached 636.

 

Zakouma had become famous for what was often described as the largest elephant herd in Africa, simply because the majority of the park’s elephants were congregating together in a huge unnatural mega-herd, that would include bulls that would normally have been pushed out. Besides sticking together for protection, the elephants also like to remain in the thick bush and woodlands, avoiding open areas of the park, this is why you just don’t see them when driving around. Just in the last couple of years the elephant herd has started to split into several big herds instead of just one, but they still stay deep in the bush, doing their best to avoid people entirely.

 

The best chance of seeing them is at the Bahr Salamat, where they have to come every day to drink, if you can anticipate which part of the river they will come to, and position yourself so that they won’t be aware of your presence, you can have an amazing elephant experience. When we tried to find them, despite receiving tracking information from the park HQ, (some of the elephants are wearing tracking collars) and having a ranger to assist us, we were not lucky, instead of seeing the whole herd come to drink where we had chosen to wait, we just saw two single bulls. The herd did come to drink but at a different stretch of the Salamat, not too far away, unfortunately we missed them.

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs which if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region have learned that at the first sign of horsemen their best defence is bunch up into tight groups to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped, there hasn’t been a single poaching incident in 5 years, as soon as the elephants started to feel secure, they began to breed again, at the last count in 2021 the population has reached 636.

 

All of this poaching led to Zakouma’s elephants forming a single large dysfunctional herd that included adult bulls, that would ordinarily have been pushed out of the herd, perhaps because of how much the population has grown, the big herd does seem to have started to split into several large herds rather than one single one. Although they are now safe, elephants have long memories, they remain extremely nervous and are difficult to find and approach. Your best chance of seeing them is to wait for them to come to the Salamat River to drink, having established from park HQ where they are first, so that you know where best to wait. This is not fool proof, we tried this and missed them, finally chancing upon this big herd in the south of the park, they didn’t remain in the open for long and quickly ran back into the bush, even though we were a long distance away.

Zakouma is an unusual park when compared to the better-known national parks of East or Southern Africa, because on normal game drives through the park, you simply don’t see elephants, except for the handful of bulls, that hang around the airstrip and the park HQ in the area of the park that is actually called Zakouma, elsewhere you just don’t see them, not unless you are actively looking for them and know in advance where they are. You won’t drive around a corner and find a small herd feeding beside the road as you might in a park like say Ruaha in Tanzania, to understand why this is the case, you need to know the tragic history of Zakouma’s elephants.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants, as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants, picking one with good tusks. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him, allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs which if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region, have learned that at the first sign of horsemen, their best defence is bunch up into tight groups to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence, the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors, but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd, has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area, in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again, they have not lost an elephant to poaching in 6 years at the last count in 2021, the population had reached 636.

 

Zakouma had become famous for what was often described as the largest elephant herd in Africa, simply because the majority of the park’s elephants were congregating together in a huge unnatural mega-herd, that would include bulls that would normally have been pushed out. Besides sticking together for protection, the elephants also like to remain in the thick bush and woodlands, avoiding open areas of the park, this is why you just don’t see them when driving around. Just in the last couple of years the elephant herd has started to split into several big herds instead of just one, but they still stay deep in the bush, doing their best to avoid people entirely.

 

Driving down to a crossing point on the Salamat, we unexpectedly came across this bull walking along the bank towards us, he was clearly intending to cross the river as well, whilst we had to follow the road and bounce over the rocks, he just waded through the not very deep water and wandered off up the other bank. This was a lucky sighting, as we were nowhere near the HQ area, and by the time we were driving along the other side of the Salamat he had melted back into the bush, had we reached the river somewhat earlier or later we might not have seen him at all.

Slow Strong Flow Workout, ft Backbends - Slower is Stronger! youtu.be/x4c85QkWAWs Invigorate, rejuvenate and uplift with this fantastic slow flow yoga class taught by Raquel Jordan at The Springs in Downtown Los Angeles. This is a slower, stronger yoga flow class that will help open your upper back, shoulders, chest, heart and lungs, as well as strengthening and opening lower body, hips and hamstrings. About Raquel: Yoga taught Raquel how to love and honor herself. It brings her back to her true essence; keeps her open, clear, strong, centered and relaxed so that she's functioning at her optimal level. Connection to the body and breath are key components to her teaching style. She loves incorporating props and walls when implementing the concept 'power of opposition'. Raquel holds a 200 hr certification through YogaWorks under the tutelage of Joan Hyman and Carmen Fitzgibbon. She is also trained in restorative/ therapeutic yoga led by Jillian Pransky. Raquel continues to take workshops and intensives which inform her practice and instruction. She teaches classical Raja yoga, including; Alignment based yoga, Vinyasa Flow, Yoga Nidra, Restorative and Guided Meditation. Website: RaquelJordanYoga.com Instagram: RaquelJordanYoga Check out some of our other Yoga videos here: Yin Yoga with Laila Garsys www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5iXeyYKytM Yoga Detox with Gloria Baraquio www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0YtOcsKJAQ Prayer of Surrender Meditaion with Gloria Baraquio www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAh31KtABhQ 30 Minute Cardio Flow Yoga Workout youtu.be/cRJlOKb_chs Slow Strong Yoga Flow with Raquel Jordan www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHUVUhJlyIk Astavakrasana pose breakdown with Michelle Goldstein Click below to subscribe to our channel: youtube.com/heartalchemyyoga Our Sites www.heartalchemyyoga.com facebook.com/heartalchemyyoga instagram.com/travlinyogini twitter.com/travlinyogini

Standing Forward Bend

Elephants very quickly learn where they're safe and where they're not, this bull is one of a small group that hang around the Zakouma HQ area during the dry season. After everything that these elephant's have been through it's remarkable that any of them are willing to trust humans at all. However they are such intelligent animals that not only do they know where there safe but they also know who their friends are and these bulls that come to the Park Director Rian Labuschagne's house have learned to take water from a garden hosepipe.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs which if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region have learned that at the first sign of horsemen their best defence is bunch up into tight groups to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again the population now stands at around 470.

Double Boat Pose, Navasana with the most incredible young person I know, my daughter, Karlisse. She made Mother's Day special, but in all honesty, I am blessed and beyond grateful to say that every day is a special day that I have her in my life. I truly hope all the yogis that fill the role of mom had a wonderful Mother's day. Also, I am happy many moms were present for the complementary Mothers Day special yoga class yesterday. Practice Boat pose to strengthen your core, to lengthen the spine as well as your hamstrings. Imagine sunshine on your chest, and don't round your spine; engage your core the entire time and breathe deeply. Enjoy & see you on the mat; find your Bliss!

I have a healthy obsession for how ballet does for one's legs...how stretching does for the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, Achilles heel...making a dancer's legs very trim and also very fit...and looking their absolute prettiest with a pair of tights on! And there's also the tummy and waistline where stretching and flexing also help in keeping them so trim and helping make all those costumes and leotards look so stunning and slim-fitting! Oh, and I'd prefer doing these stretches when it's chilly outside during the fall...not like wintery cold, but cold so as to offer a nice challenge for the hamstrings, as I find these conditions most conductive for ballet stretching! That said, I love this picture for all these reasons...plus doing them with tights and pointe shoes on! 💖

Taken at the floating restaurant at Loopen Marin AB (or is that the name of the restaurant?). It's near Hornstull. The restaurant is known for it's cheap looking fake palm trees. However, it gets pretty good reviews (and I concur) despite that bit of cheesinss.

 

As you can see, the clientele is interesting, too.

 

Shameless plug:

Check out my sets: www.flickr.com/photos/question_everything/sets/.

 

Check out my collections: www.flickr.com/photos/question_everything/collections/.

 

Or my galleries: www.flickr.com/photos/question_everything/galleries/.

Lizard Pose- Utthan Pristhasana is an excellent yoga posture for anyone with tight hips (my favorite hip opener of all times). It opens the hips; releases the hamstrings, as well as groins & hip flexors; strengthens the adductor muscles (inner thigh muscles on the front leg); eases tightness in the chest, shoulders & neck. This posture is also a prerequisite for deeper hip openers and hamstring stretchers such as the Split/Hanumanasana as well as King Pigeon/Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana; the forearm can be resting down or on a block (another variation). This pose would be easier when practiced on a mat or something not moving, like a SUP, but I do enjoy stand up paddle-boarding as well as a great challenge. :-) Photo taken over the weekend on Lake Champlain, NY.

Zakouma is an unusual park when compared to the better-known national parks of East or Southern Africa, because on normal game drives through the park, you simply don’t see elephants, except for the handful of bulls, that hang around the airstrip and the park HQ in the area of the park that is actually called Zakouma, elsewhere you just don’t see them, not unless you are actively looking for them and know in advance where they are. You won’t drive around a corner and find a small herd feeding beside the road as you might in a park like say Ruaha in Tanzania, to understand why this is the case, you need to know the tragic history of Zakouma’s elephants.

 

For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants, as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants, picking one with good tusks. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him, allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs which if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region, have learned that at the first sign of horsemen, their best defence is bunch up into tight groups to ensure that no individual can be separated out.

 

Today this is no defence, the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors, but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd, has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area, in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped and the elephants are breeding again, they have not lost an elephant to poaching in 6 years at the last count in 2021, the population had reached 636.

 

Zakouma had become famous for what was often described as the largest elephant herd in Africa, simply because the majority of the park’s elephants were congregating together in a huge unnatural mega-herd, that would include bulls that would normally have been pushed out. Besides sticking together for protection, the elephants also like to remain in the thick bush and woodlands, avoiding open areas of the park, this is why you just don’t see them when driving around. Just in the last couple of years the elephant herd has started to split into several big herds instead of just one, but they still stay deep in the bush, doing their best to avoid people entirely.

 

Driving down to a crossing point on the Salamat, we unexpectedly came across this bull walking along the bank towards us, he was clearly intending to cross the river as well, whilst we had to follow the road and bounce over the rocks, he just waded through the not very deep water and wandered off up the other bank. This was a lucky sighting, as we were nowhere near the HQ area, and by the time we were driving along the other side of the Salamat he had melted back into the bush, had we reached the river somewhat earlier or later we might not have seen him at all.

advanced yoga workout 8 21 2015 youtu.be/QAPs5wX6p8s Challenge your practice with this Advanced Yoga Flow video. In this advanced yoga class renowned yoga teacher Michelle Goldstein infuses mindfulness, philosophy, technical alignment and humor with a strong cardiovascular yoga flow, including arm balances, and deeper floor stretches. Stretch and strengthen arms, shoulders, upper back, lower back, hips, hamstrings. Learn the arm balances Eka Pada Galavasana, Eka Pada Koundinyasina and Bakasana (crow pose), and deepen your breathing and mindfulness practice. About Michelle: About Michelle Goldstein: Michelle has maintained a daily yoga practice for 15 years. A protégée of renowned Yoga teacher, Bryan Kest of Santa Monica Power Yoga, Michelle has been teaching yoga flow and meditation for 8 years. Michelle leads workshops, immersions & retreats worldwide as well as teaching at Santa Monica Power Yoga, Yogaraj & Equinox Fitness Clubs. Known for her creative vinyasas (sequences of yoga asana) and pranayama, Michelle Goldsteins teaching integrates influences from various forms of movement and meditation set to powerfully inspiring backdrops of music. Approaching instruction with a deep spiritual reverence for the sacredness of yoga coupled with a joyous playful sense of humor, Michelles classes offer a safe, nurturing and challenging environment for students to come and explore their mental and physical boundaries. Check out some of our other Yoga Videos here: Yin Yoga Stretch for Athletes with Laila Garsys www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfK8vfUd64oYoga on the Wall w/ Gloria Boraquio www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgnc9... Yoga Workout Yoga Flow w/ Gloria Boraquio youtu.be/4_mOELQh9m8 Yoga for Weight Loss www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxpxh... 30 Minute Cardio Flow Yoga Workout youtu.be/cRJlOKb_chs Bikram Yoga inpsired Class with Maggie Grove youtu.be/V5i5Qz2IGJE Strong Yoga For Beginners Workout youtu.be/xglmLhDppmo Meditative Bhakti Yoga Flow youtu.be/mQnAvEbDNPg Cardio Yoga Workout youtu.be/hy-qss2Takg Yoga Workout 1 hour Yoga For Weight Loss youtu.be/yUtK7v3dsr0 Power Yoga Flow youtu.be/XpGnuK_u4gQ Bhakti Yoga Class youtu.be/K9scEzgir-8 Yoga for Beginners youtu.be/EaKZ3Xtxf5A