Doc Robinson
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China To Become First To Realize UN Goal Of ‘No Poverty’ (CD)
On the other hand, there’s this story from two days ago:
China province of 80 million claims only 17 people in poverty, sparking debate about official dataTulsi Gabbard drops the F-bomb:
A developing story.
Areas of investigation for Ukraine Airlines crash
By Scott Hamilton, Leeham News, Jan. 8, 2020Some news reports of the Ukraine Airlines crash yesterday in Tehran linking the event to the Boeing 737 MAX crisis are irresponsible. The Ukraine airplane is a 737-800, a highly reliable aircraft with thousands in service around the world.
Drawing any conclusions about the crash at this stage and under the unique circumstances of open, armed conflict in the region is also irresponsible.
None of the news reports LNA has seen so far indicates possible radio communication from the pilot. The flight and voice recorders apparently have been recovered, but no information has been released of what information these contain. It’s unlikely any information has been downloaded at this point.
https://leehamnews.com/2020/01/08/areas-of-investigation-for-ukraine-airlines-crash/
More support for Assange.
Mexico president calls for Julian Assange to be released from UK prison
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday called for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to be released from prison in London, urging an end to what he described as his “torture” in detention….And this from Bob Carr, former foreign minister of Australia:
The only prosecution [following the Collateral Murder war crime] is of the Australian who exposed it. His extradition fight starts in a London court next month and could drag on through appeals for a year…
Whatever Assange did in 2010-2011 it was not espionage, and he’s not a US citizen. His actions took place outside the US. Under this precedent anyone, anywhere, who publishes anything the US state brands secret could be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act and offered to the maw of its notoriously cruel justice system.
American diplomats talk darkly about lives lost because Assange leaked unredacted material. But during the Chelsea Manning trial in 2013 a US brigadier general in counter intelligence was asked to nominate casualties caused by the leaks. First he said he knew of one, an Afghan national. Later he had to retract and say there was none. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell had said in 2010 “there was no evidence that anyone had been killed because of the leaks”…
All said, we [Australians] are entitled to one modest request: that in the spirit with which Barack Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning, and given President Trump’s own objection to “endless wars” in desert sands, it would be better if the extradition of Assange were quietly dropped.
An issue of freedom: US treatment of Assange risks souring alliance
By Bob Carr, The Sydney Morning Herald
January 4, 2020Jailing And Fining Chelsea Manning Constitutes Torture, Top U.N. Official Says
Nils Melzer, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said in a letter that he made public this week that detaining Manning and fining her with the aim of coercing her to testify constitutes a kind of torture that runs afoul of U.S. international human rights obligations.
Jailing And Fining Chelsea Manning Constitutes Torture, Top U.N. Official Says
A “monument to courage” in Berlin, with Manning, Assange, Snowden, and a fourth chair which invites the public to stand with them.
“Anything to Say”, by Davide DorminoFrom a few days ago, more evidence of the DNC’s machinations.
The Democratic National Committee produced a new “unity” fundraising advertisement which featured 10 presidential candidates—but notably left out Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard… She has consistently polled higher than at least two of the candidates who were featured.
Critics blast DNC for snubbing Tulsi Gabbard in “Unity” fundraising video featuring 10 candidates
Some more French support for Assange, published 26 Dec, that’s highly critical of his legal team’s approach.
The strategy of “discretion”… Our conviction, already stated in this edition, is that this strategy is doomed to failure and does not respect Julian Assange: from the point of view of effectiveness and ethics, we strongly condemn it. It is politically undermined by the gigantic conflicts of interest affecting Assange’s lawyers, and although Gareth Peirce is apparently not in direct conflict, her acceptance to do the job ends up sharing her colleagues’ contradictions. On November 6, she met in the United States senator Rand Paul, a libertarian from the Tea Party, just before or after his successful blocking of “a resolution reaffirming the Senate’s support for whistle-blowers protection”. Read our analysis at the end of the article.
The organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF, based in Paris) published this today:
The Boards of RSF include, among others, the head of the Associated Press in Paris, the global news director at AFP, the CBS correspondent in Paris, and some Nobel prize winners.
“After Doctors For Assange, it’s high time for Lawyers For Assange.”
And how about Journalists for Assange? The corporate media coverage is abysmal, but it’s encouraging to see so many individual journalists “speak up for Assange.”
1022 signatories from 91 countries so far
https://speak-up-for-assange.org/The Spanish newspaper El Pais had the scoop about the spying on Assange, and they currently have more thorough coverage about Assange than most news sources.
Asked by the prosecutor Carlos Bautista and his lawyer in Spain Aitor Martínez, Assange said that the security cameras at the embassy were changed in late 2017. He said he suspected that he was being spied on by the staff of UC Global SL, and that he asked whether the cameras could capture audio, which he was told they could not.
The 48-year-old Australian activist denied having given the Spanish company permission to pass on to third parties all the information that was being recorded without his consent.
“We’re going to sell everything in the hotel [the embassy] to the American client,” reads an email sent by David Morales, the owner of the security company, to his employees. Morales and his company are being investigated in Spain for violation of client-attorney privilege, among other charges.
“Did you give your consent to having your visitors’ passports photographed, their cellphones opened up and their private correspondence read?” asked Martínez. “Under no circumstances,” replied Assange.
Judge De la Mata questioned Assange after sending a European Investigation Order (EIO) on September 25 requesting assistance from British authorities. As part of the request, the judge said that David Morales, owner of UC Global SL, “invaded the privacy of Assange and his lawyers by placing microphones inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London without consent from the affected parties.” The request also stated that the information thus collected was distributed to other people and institutions, including “authorities from Ecuador and agents from the United States.”
Documents and videos revealed by EL PAÍS in July, months before Assange took legal action against Morales, show that UC Global SL spied on the cyber-activist’s conversations with his lawyers, at meetings where they were designing his defense strategy to avoid extradition to the US. Morales allegedly delivered these and other conversations to US intelligence services, this newspaper revealed. Morales was arrested and released pending trial to face charges of violation of client-attorney privilege and illegal arms possession.
The EIO used by the Spanish judge is a new tool for judicial cooperation introduced in 2018 meant to facilitate transnational investigations, and it represents a step up from the old letters rogatory, which took longer. With an EIO, a legal authority from a EU member state can ask a legal authority from another EU country for assistance in obtaining evidence or means of evidence, including witness statements.
It is an automatic procedure, and requests can only be rejected in exceptional cases. In this particular case, the Spanish judge ran into objections from the United Kingdom Central Authority (UKCA), the body in charge of processing and responding to EIOs. Rashid Begun, who signed the response from the UKCA, demanded more details and, in his first response, questioned the jurisdiction under which Spain claims to be investigating the case.
Assange was questioned for an hour. His defense had asked the judge to keep the questions as short and concise as possible due to his client’s health. The UN special rapporteur on torture has issued a report stating that the WikiLeaks founder is being subjected to “cruel and inhumane” conditions. At the London prison where he is being kept, he is allowed out of his cell for one hour a day, and he is being kept isolated from the other inmates.
Cablegate: Assange suspected a Spanish security firm was spying on him in London
@ John Day:
The invention of the transistor-based logic engine, the integrated circuit, turned 60 this year. Today, humanity fabricates 1,000 times more transistors annually than the entire world grows grains of wheat and rice combined. Collectively, all those transistors consume more electricity than the state of California.
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2018/12/11/energy_and_the_information_infrastructure_part_3_the_digital_engines_of_innovation_jevons_delicious_paradox_110368.html
Energy and the Information Infrastructure Part 3: The Digital ‘Engines of Innovation’ & Jevons’ Delicious Paradox
By Mark P. Mills, December 11, 2018What’s up with Assange’s legal team? A long article from Mediapart (published in August, and translated from French), titled The Ghost Lawyers of Julian Assange, looks at this issue.
In court, there are procedures. Recourse. Jurisprudence. I swear, I swear! There are even procedural defects; illegal acts committed by prosecutors, Parquet, Crown Prosecution Services. We would never dare thinking that the Daughty Street Chambers, a venerable human rights institution, an unfathomable reserve of lawyers who delivered to Assange Geoffrey Robertson, one of its founders, Jennifer Robinson, Amal Clooney, Gareth Peirce, John Jones, do not know enough international law, national laws, jurisprudence? The barristors of Daughty Street Chambers and their international reinforcement would have forgotten the dictator, criminal and torturer Augusto Pinochet, escaping prison for reasons …. of health condition ? Remember, it was happening in a well-known western city ; in an island separated from a continent by an arm of the sea; a continent that contains Sweden. Bingo! It was in London, in the year 2000.
According to Sputnik News, Assange’s lawyer Gareth Peirce presented a precedent where another judge “recently intervened with [Belmarsh] prison authorities to ensure an imprisoned defendant had better access to his lawyers and case file.”
Despite hearing of this new precedent which Assange’s lawyer said meant that Judge Baraitser could intervene with prison authorities, the Judge said the most she would do would be to state in open court that “it would be very helpful if” Assange was provided proper access to his lawyers and his case file.
Peirce contrasted what Judge Baraitser is prepared to do with the Old Bailey judge who “is on the phone to [Belmarsh] prison saying ‘do it’”.
Judge in Assange’s Case Ignores Precedent of Another Judge Intervening With Belmarsh Prison
For the full context, that comic strip from Bill Watterson begins with Calvin saying,
“The problem with people is they don’t look at the big picture”
and ends with Calvin saying,
“… it puts a bad day in perspective.”Wise words.
And then we have the case against Julian Assange.
From the same Guardian article that Ilargi quoted:
“He spoke to confirm his name and date of birth and to clarify he was Australian, after the court’s legal adviser mistakenly suggested he was a Swedish national.Are we all supposed to go say “I didn’t know” -“Ich hab es nicht gewüsst”- like the Germans did, and all those who collaborated with them across Europe?
In some ways we, as a society, are more complicit now, since it’s easier to know about the injustices (if we really wanted to know), and most of us aren’t living under a brutal regime that will shoot whoever dissents.
“There are parties left who love feeding off of your free money teats, but they’re not the markets or even market participants. They’re rich socialists.”
More like cronyism than socialism.
Dr. D: “I’d like to hear the short story of all Shorpy/Lange’s people—if you drilled in, the Oregon or Bust people yesterday had a tale.”
Here’s the story from one of the 5 travelers shown in yesterday’s photo, “Oregon or Bust”. Keywords: Model T spare parts. The video also shows him as an old man with his car from the 1970s. No extra pounds on that guy.
Vernon Evans was a young man working as a hired hand around Lemmon, South Dakota, when the Depression hit. He was let go and couldn’t find other work. So, Vern, his wife Flora, her sister, her brother and another friend left for Oregon where other friends were already living. Vern was lucky to find a job with the railroad the first day they were in Oregon. Vern and Flora lived in Oregon for nine years until his dad died. The returned to the farm in South Dakota and stayed. But the other people on the trip stayed in Oregon and only returned for visits.
“Well, we was all without jobs here. And the jobs was so few and far between at the time we left that you couldn’t even buy a job. We decided we had friends that we knew out in Oregon, and we decided we was going to go out there and see if we could find some work. We had $54 between the five of us when we started out from here to go to Oregon. And when we got to Oregon, I think we had about $16 left. We had absolutely no idea what we was going to do.
“We all got in an old Model-T and started for Oregon. We started out, and, I don’t know, we got out six miles and broke the crankshaft. This old rancher, he had some old Model-T motors laying around. He said we was welcome to a crankshaft if we wanted one. So, we went back and proceeded to tear the motor out of the old Model-T and put the crankshaft in. And that night we made Baker [laughs] which is a matter of 24 miles from the night before.
“Well, then we had pretty good luck all the rest of the way. But we got around Missoula, [Montana] and we was having a good time. See somebody along the road or something. And here was this car sitting alongside the road, and a guy sleeping in it. So, we honked and hollared at him, having a good time. Pretty soon, this car was after us. We’d heard they was sending them back [police sending migrants back at state borders], wasn’t letting ’em go on through. So, we thought, ‘Well, here’s where we go back home.’ He motioned for us to pull over to the side of the road. Anyhow, he come up and introduced himself [as Arthur Rothstein] and said he was with the Resettlement Administration [the precursor of the FSA] and asked us questions about the conditions here and one thing or another. Where we was headed for. This ‘Oregon or Bust’ on the back end was what took his eye. Then, he asked us if we cared if he took some pictures of us. Oh, we said, ‘I guess not.’ I think he took eight different poses. And then after we was out there [in Oregon] I guess probably it was that fall or winter, why these pictures started showing up in the different magazines and papers. Anyhow, we got out there and I went to work on the railroad.
“In the winter of ’45, my father passed away. And then I quit working on the railroad to get ready to come come back here. And been here ever since. [Laughs.] Oh, we’ve had our ups and downs. I think I’ve been hailed out probably five, six times, and dried out three, four years. And one year we rusted out [from a plant disease called ‘rust’].”
Vernon Evans — Oregon or Bust
https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/movies/evans_money_06.htmlThe Library of Congress title for this photograph:
“Vernon Evans and family of Lemmon, South Dakota, near Missoula, Montana. Leaving the grasshopper-ridden and drought-stricken area for a new start in Oregon or Washington. Expects to arrive at Yakima in time for hop picking. Makes about two hundred miles a day in Model T Ford. Live in tent”Of course, “The Fed Detests Free Markets.”
Freedom cannot be controlled.Government intervention to prop up prices in certain markets is now so commonplace that it can seem normal for our ‘capitalist’ system. For example, instead of allowing foreclosures to be a matter between banks and borrowers to work out (with the banks potentially granting a principle reduction and restructuring the debt, keeping the borrower in the house), there is a push for the government to intervene by buying up foreclosed houses and slowly putting them back on the market, to prevent the normal downward movement in home prices caused by the increase in supply following foreclosures.
6.4 Government Purchase of Distressed Houses
The final policy intervention we consider is a government facility to purchase distressed homes and then slowly re-introduce them to the market… we use our quantitative model to compare several policies. The most cost effective policy we consider is a government intervention that holds foreclosures off the market until demand rebounds, thereby rectifying the dynamic imbalance of supply and demand caused by foreclosures.How Do Foreclosures Exacerbate Housing Downturns?
Adam M. Guren and Timothy J. McQuade
Boston University and NBER; Stanford University
August 12, 2019
https://web.stanford.edu/~tmcquade/foreclosures.pdfJohn Day: “Tulsi Gabbard. Her campaign says she was the most googled candidate again.
( I couldn’t find any tally yesterday when I looked)”I didn’t find any news articles that mention who was the most searched candidate, which seems strange. So I checked at the google trends site, compared Tulsi with Pete, Kamala, Elizabeth, and Bernie, and the result was not surprising. Tulsi Gabbard was by far the most searched candidate at the November debate.
Screenshot of my search result, the blue line is Tulsi (apologies if it doesn’t post correctly here):
.he has told his mother the Queen that his appearance on the BBC Two Newsnight special was largely a ‘great success’
it went so badly for Prince Andrew it should spark a police investigationAndrew doesn’t have to worry about jail time, because his Mum can give him a royal pardon (royal prerogative of mercy). And due to sovereign immunity, he supposedly can’t even be arrested for anything while he resides at a royal palace.
In the English and British tradition, the royal prerogative of mercy is one of the historic royal prerogatives of the British monarch, by which he or she can grant pardons (informally known as a royal pardon) to convicted persons. The royal prerogative of mercy was originally used to permit the monarch to withdraw, or provide alternatives to death sentences; the alternative of penal transportation to “partes abroade” has been used since at least 1617.[1] It is now used to change any sentence or penalty.[2] A royal pardon does not itself overturn a conviction.
The monarch is immune from arrest in all cases; members of the royal household are immune from arrest in civil proceedings.[37] No arrest can be made “in the monarch’s presence”, or within the “verges” of a royal palace. When a royal palace is used as a residence (regardless of whether the monarch is actually living there at the time), judicial processes cannot be executed within that palace.[38] The monarch’s goods cannot be taken under a writ of execution, nor can distress be levied on land in their possession. Chattels owned by the Crown, but present on another’s land, cannot be taken in execution or for distress. The Crown is not subject to foreclosure.[39]
Wikipedia
Trump On Fed: Others Have Negative Rates: ‘Give Me Some Of That Money’
The US had some negative rates on T-bills in 2015.
Joe Sixpacks with at least $100 of savings could be invested in T-bills.Interest rates on U.S. Treasury bills went negative in 2015. That happened because of expectations the Federal Reserve was sticking to its near-zero rate policy into the following year due to global economic worries.
For U.S. yields to turn negative for an extended period, a key factor would be whether there is U.S. recession, analysts said.
Steps taken by China and the United States since last week [August 2019] are seen bringing them closer to an all-out trade war that threatens the global economy and financial markets.
Moreover, the Fed Reserve would have to cut rates to near or below zero and restart its quantitative easing program to combat an economic downturn, analysts said.
“We doubt the Fed leadership would seriously entertain the idea now,” Wells Fargo Securities strategists wrote in a research note.
Africa stands out on the map showing The Countries Most in Debt to China. Yet, according to the Jubilee Debt Campaign, only 20% of African debt is owed to China.
…of external debt owed by African governments, around 20% is owed to China, 35% is owed to multilateral lenders [such as the World Bank], 32% to private lenders and 13% to other governments. However, interest rates tend to be higher on private sector loans, which therefore account for 55% of interest payments, compared to China which accounts for 17% of interest payments.
The briefing also investigates who debt is owed to by the countries that currently have the greatest debt problems. Of the 16 African countries rated by the IMF as in debt distress or at high risk of being so, on average 15% of their debt is owed to China. China is therefore on average a less significant lender in debt crisis countries, than across the whole continent.
Tim Jones, Economist at the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said:
“Debt problems are worsening on the African continent, but many lenders bear responsibility, not just China. We need new rules to make all lenders publicly disclose loans to governments at the time they are given. Furthermore, the IMF needs to stop responding to debt crises by giving loans which bailout other lenders, from China to Western companies, incentivising them to continue lending recklessly. Instead, lenders need to be made to restructure and reduce debts.”https://jubileedebt.org.uk/press-release/african-governments-debt-payments-double-in-just-two-years
That unverifiable Anonymous book is propaganda with a price tag.
Of course, Fox News puts out a lot of propaganda too.
Competing narratives selling doses of self-righteous outrage.“Humans may owe their place as Earth’s dominating species to their ability to share and cooperate with each other”
Humans certainly don’t have a monopoly on sharing and cooperating. Some species seem to do it better than humans.
The whole community is a support system for each individual, everyone is there for each other. Overt violence or aggressive behaviour between individuals, even among males, has never been observed. Instead, orca society is marked by co-operation, co-ordination, communication, trust and acceptance.
Off the top of my head, wolves and orcas share and cooperate with each other. The orcas are particularly impressive, with communities comprised of clans, clans comprised of pods (extended families), pods comprised of maternal groups, and maternal groups consisting of a mother and her individual children. “The whole community is a support system for each individual, everyone is there for each other.”
Living in a pack not only facilitates the raising and feeding of pups, coordinated and collaborative hunting, and the defense of territory, it also allows for the formation of many unique emotional bonds between pack members, the foundation for cooperative living.
Wolves care for each other as individuals. They form friendships and nurture their own sick and injured. Pack structure enables communication, the education of the young and the transfer of knowledge across generations. Wolves and other highly social animals have and pass on what can be best described as culture. A family group can persevere for several generations, even decades, carrying knowledge and information through the years, from generation to generation.
Wolves play together into old age, they raise their young as a group, and they care for injured companions. When they lose a pack mate, there is evidence that they suffer and mourn that loss. When we look at wolves, we are looking at tribes—extended families, each with its own homeland, history, knowledge, and indeed, culture.
livingwithwolves.org/about-wolves/social-wolf/
Orcas are very social animals. They live in small nuclear and extended families that we call pods, clans and communities…
Beyond the central maternal groups, the pods are extended families of closely related mothers that are daughters, sisters or cousins, and their children. A pod can be defined as those orcas that are usually seen travelling together…
Orca “clans” are defined in terms of the acoustic traditions of pods within an orca community. Pods which share common calls belong to the same clan. Separate clans are composed of pods which do not share calls…. Pods from separate clans commonly socialize with each other within the community, even though they do not share calls.
In Washington and British Columbia the Resident orca pods form two distinct Communities: Southern and Northern. These two communities total about 300 individuals (just over 200 in the Northern Resident and over 90 in the Southern Resident group). The Northern Resident Community has 16 pods, whereas the Southern Resident group has three main pods. All these pods are comprised of a collection of different maternal groups. The whole community is a support system for each individual, everyone is there for each other. Overt violence or aggressive behaviour between individuals, even among males, has never been observed. Instead, orca society is marked by co-operation, co-ordination, communication, trust and acceptance.
Ilargi wrote
The only approach that makes any sense, is to use and consume vastly less ‘energy’. From a rational point of view, that would seem an easy thing to do: it should be possible to transport yourself at a higher efficiency rate than 0.5%. But at the same time, that’s not at all what we are doing. We, like all organisms, are obeying the Maximum Power Principle: we grab all the energy we can, and we use it in whatever way we can.
Ilargi’s writings here can be a springboard for diving deeper and learning more. My comments include what I learned today, not quite an entrenched position. The baseline energy efficiency of the human body (along with the embodied energy content of food) seem relevant to the topics of waste and energy. The Model T and 2CV examples seem to illustrate the trend to “grab all the energy we can” instead of trying to “scarcely burn any gasoline”.
Back when the national speed limit was 55 mph, a European acquaintance was only half-joking when he suggested to me that the ideal car for drivers in the US would be the Citroen 2CV (produced from 1949-1990). With a weight of only 500 kg, the 24-hp version had a top speed of 63 mph, and the 30-hp version could do 75 mph.
Today, there is not one car which comes even close to these figures. The smallest model of Citroën now on the market, the C1, weighs 810 kilograms (despite the use of lighter materials)… Compared to the first 2CV models, the weight of the smallest Citroën today has almost doubled, while the top speed more than doubled and the maximum power output rose by a factor of eight. Surprisingly, the fuel consumption remained more or less the same. The C1 consumes 4.6 litres per 100 kilometres (61 miles per gallon), the 2CV consumed on average 4.4 litres (64 miles per gallon).
It is obvious that the engine of the C1 is many times more energy efficient than the engine of the 2CV, since the latter needed the same amount of fuel to power a much lighter and much slower vehicle. In other words: if we would apply this modern technology in a car that is as light and slow as a 2CV from the fifties, we would now drive cars that scarcely burn any gasoline. Unfortunately, all technological progress was devoured by more weight, more power, more speed, more comfort and more electronics.
Kris De Decker, Low-Tech Magazine
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/06/citroen-2cv.htmlSomeone crunched the numbers and found that the “fuel efficiency” for the human body while walking is roughly equivalent to a gasoline-powered vehicle that gets 180-340 MPG. On a bicycle, the human body achieves the equivalent of 720-1300 MPG.
But there is typically a large amount of embedded fossil-fuel energy in our food. If the average is 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food, then those human MPG figures get divided by 10.
For a fair comparison, the MPG of automobiles should be similarly reduced by the embedded energy required to produce each gallon of fuel, and the embedded energy in the vehicles and related infrastructure should also be included in the accounting.
The human body’s MPG can increase significantly with a locally grown diet that’s lower on the food chain.
(Your mileage may vary.)This should in no way be taken to suggest setting aside the bike or boots for a car that gets better performance. Rather, we should consider ways to make our agriculture or eating habits less energy-intense. By necessity, we once spent less than one kilocalorie of energy on each kilocalorie of food delivered to the plate—otherwise we would have starved ourselves out of existence. So we know that we don’t strictly require a 10:1 ratio of input energy to output energy. Choosing our food sources and food type can make a big difference here.
Ilargi: “I’d give Sondland an F- on credibility.”
Did he ever have any credibility as ambassador? Sondland is called a “diplomat” in headlines but he’s a hotel developer who donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, leading to his selection by Trump as ambassador to the EU. Fiona HIll, who resigned from Trump’s National Security Council a few months ago, “viewed Sondland as a U.S. national security risk because he was so unprepared for his job,” according to Wikipedia.
Sondland has also been a vocal opponent of the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would transport gas across the Baltic Sea to the EU. He has argued that the pipeline would leave the EU dependent upon Russia for its energy needs and increase Russia’s leverage on key U.S. allies in NATO. Sondland argued that “Putin uses energy as a political weapon. The EU should not rely on a bare-chested version of the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort as a supplier, even if his gas is a bit cheaper.”
Those Boeing 737 cracks are not trivial, and the repair takes weeks (not a few hours or days).
The attachment frames with their pickle fork reinforcements are a so-called safe life design (see below for more on this) which means they shall last well above the life of the aircraft, in this case, 90,000 flights. The cracks were found on ex-Jet Airways of India passenger planes which were converted to freighters for Amazon with more than 33,500 flights behind them. When doing these conversions the airframes are stripped bare and the cracks were found… The 737 NG pickle forks are a safe life design, according to our information. This is what makes the cracks worrying. They shouldn’t be there on an airframe with only 37% of its design life behind it.
https://leehamnews.com/2019/09/30/boeings-737-in-another-pickle/
Boeing CEO pleads cluelessness at yesterday’s hearing.
Yeah, right.Boeing’s CEO was at a loss for words when he was interrogated by Congress over the company’s attempts to move lawsuits filed by the families of those killed in one of the 737 Max crashes to Indonesia…
Peter DeFazio, the chair of the committee, later hammered Muilenburg, questioning how, as CEO of the company, he could not be aware of the company’s legal strategy in dealing with the two 737 Max crashes, which killed 346 people.
…DeFazio: This took me 30 seconds with a Google search. June 13th, Business Insider: “The company is arguing for the cases to be moved from the US to Indonesia.” And you would have us believe that you are not aware? Your legal team, they’re so far distant from you? You don’t talk to them? This hasn’t been discussed on the board?
…You’re looking at hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of claims — you’re trying to move to a country, and this expert says [quoting Business Insider’s story again]: “Having a trial in a another country, with a different legal culture, less scope for close scrutiny of Boeing, would render the cases ‘worthless.'”
And you don’t know that that’s happening, that you’re making that pleading?
Muilenburg: Congressman, I’m aware of those articles … but … as I stated earlier …
DeFazio [interrupting]: Would you please respond to the committee, after you consult with your lawyers, have they filed to move these cases to Indonesia, in any court in the United States, or do they intend to?
Muilenburg: Mr Chairman, we’ll follow up with that information.
…
Brian Kabateck, a lawyer representing multiple families of those killed in the first crash, told Business Insider that the cases should stay in the US as: “These aircrafts were designed in the US, conceived in the US, built in the US, sold in the US.”“I think everything critical that went wrong on that aircraft happened as a result of something that happened in the United States,” he said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-ceo-congress-grilled-moving-737-max-cases-indonesia-2019-10
It’s infuriating to hear people who know better to imply that the pilots were at fault. From yesterday’s hearing:
“In the two accident flights”, [NTSB Chairman] Sumwalt said of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines disasters, “pilots did not perform in accordance with the scenario that Boeing expected.”
blog.seattlepi.com/flyinglessons/2019/10/30/no-proof-of-muilenburgs-claim-boeings-self-certification-makes-skies-safer/
From an article I linked in a Sept 19 comment, which explains how the pilots performed:
It wasn’t the usual flight path of a pilot who’d lost control of a plane. Twenty-two times the demons had violently jerked down the nose, and 22 times the pilot had corrected with equivalent force. “I get so mad at Boeing trying to tar this captain when he was actually the most proficient pilot of all of them,” said Bjorn Fehrm, a former Swedish air force pilot whose technical blog on the aviation web site Leeham News is a 737 MAX must-read…
The Lion Air pilot was certain he could turn off whatever was trying to crash his plane, so he temporarily handed over the controls to his co-pilot and scanned the manual. Ninety seconds later, everyone was dead. The co-pilot, said Fehrm, “was not prepared for the powerful beast of MCAS.”
As it happened, the beast would strike again, four months later, with the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 outside Addis Ababa, claiming 157 more lives in conditions nearly identical to the Lion Air catastrophe….
The Ethiopian pilots had followed the Boeing checklist. They had switched the stabilizer trim cutout switches to the “cutout” position and attempted to turn the nose of the plane back up using the manual crank—they just couldn’t. In accordance with the prescribed fix for an alert they were getting on the flight control computer, the pilots had been flying extremely fast, and above the speeds of about 265 miles per hour at which the manual trim wheel became unbearably heavy. This issue wasn’t specific to the MAX; it was a well-known bug in the 737 generally…
The upshot was that Boeing had not only outfitted the MAX with a deadly piece of software; it had also taken the additional step of instructing pilots to respond to an erroneous activation of the software by literally attempting the impossible. MCAS alone had taken twelve minutes to down Lion Air 610; in the Ethiopian crash, the MCAS software, overridden by pilots hitting the cutout switches as per Boeing’s instructions, had cut that time line in half.
Boeing’s products kill people intentionally, too.
CodePink says that Boeing is the “top Yemen war profiteer with 6,000 guided missile kits linked to 180 deaths!”
And let us not forget the nuclear side of Boeing’s business:
Boeing is contracted to help keep the Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles operational in the US nuclear arsenal until 2030. Boeing is also producing the guided tail kit for the new B61-12 US nuclear gravity bomb (the ones meant to be deployed to Europe). In addition, Boeing also has contracts for key components for US and UK Trident II (D5) nuclear weapons.
dontbankonthebomb.com/boeing/“the [Dutch Central] bank announced it would soon be moving a large part of its gold reserves to “the new DNB Cash Center at military premises in Zeist.”
The current value of all the Dutch gold reserves wouldn’t even cover one year of the Netherlands’ military spending.
Looking at the per capita amounts of the gold reserves, that’s about one ounce of gold per person in the Netherlands, which is slightly more than the US reserves, but about the same as Germany, Italy, and France.Switzerland has about 4 ounces of gold reserves per person, while the UK gold reserves are barely one-eighth of an ounce per person.
Tulsi Gabbard on the betrayal of the Kurds:
Donald Trump isn’t removing our troops from Syria. He’s just moving them from the northern Syrian border, allowing Turkey to invade Syria & slaughter the Kurds. Trump lied to the Kurds, promising them our support while simultaneously preventing them from reconciling with the Syrian government and coordinating a common defense against Turkish invasion. The impending slaughter & ethnic cleansing of the Syrian by Turkey is happening because Trump refuses to end our efforts to overthrow the Syrian government.
The Kurds are just another casualty of this regime change war which is supported by war-mongering Republicans, Democrats, and corporate media. The hypocrisy of war-mongers like Nikki Haley, Senator Graham & others who have demanded that we continue our regime change war in Syria, who are now crying crocodile tears for the Kurds, is nauseating.
Starving the Syrian people through draconian sanctions, strengthening terrorists like AQ and ISIS, wasting billions of dollars, creating a refugee crisis, & now this impending genocide & ethnic cleansing of the Kurds — the warmongers consider these costs to be a small price to pay in their effort to change the Syrian regime.
Dr. D “We are never going to pay this. Obviously. So make it $9 or $900 TRILLION instead. What’s the difference?”
Reminds me of this from the great Finnish comedian ISMO:
Almost all countries in the world are now in debt…
There is actually more debt, in the world, than there is money.
So, yes, probably it’s gonna get paid.
As soon as we borrow something from another planet.
Like, “We got this paid now, but we owe ten billion to Jupiter.”
It’s so weird, how the whole planet can be in debt.
But, I think it’s possible, because countries don’t owe money to each other,
but countries owe money to banks.
And, if the countries owe money to banks, how stupid are the countries to pay?
Like, ’cause a country, has an army.
The bank has four cashiers, and a cleaning lady.
“We have to pay!”
“They have threatened us!”
“They sent us a letter!’
“If we don’t pay now, they might send ANOTHER letter!”
“What do we do then?!”
“We have a nuclear submarine…
but they have a stapler!”
It so weird, like, I’m sure that if, for example,
Genghis Khan would have, in his time, borrowed some loan, some mortgage, from some bank.
I’m sure that he would never have paid.
The bank’s at the door like, “You have to pay.”
“Uh, well I have ten thousand horsemen, with spears.”
“Do I really have to pay?”
“Uh, well, uh– n– no.”
“But–
but it will affect your credit rating!”— Ismo Leikola
“I have someone who when she is logged in, can’t comment. Her profile says “Comments Off”. I have no idea where that comes from or how to fix it. Suggestions?”
Perhaps her IP address somehow got onto your Comment Blacklist at some point in the past?
If you just want to stop users with a specific IP address from leaving a comment on your site, then you can do that inside your WordPress admin area.
Head over to Settings » Discussion page and scroll down to ‘Comment Blacklist’ text box.
Blacklist IP addresses in WordPress comments
Copy and paste the IP addresses that you want to block and then click on the save changes button.
WordPress will now block users with these IP addresses from leaving a comment on your website. These users will still be able to visit your website, but they will see an error message when they try to submit a comment.
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-block-ip-addresses-in-wordpress/
“Establishment & Media Sympathize With Greta. So How Is That A Protest? (RT)”
I don’t believe that the “Establishment” sympathizes with Greta’s message about the love of money and “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” Some pretend sympathy, maybe, while they hope she goes away soon.
The Establishment’s real attitude seems to be encapsulated in this quote from an article which is unabashedly against Greta Thunberg:
There are only better and worse ways to deal with coming changes. Contra Thunberg, the better ways don’t demonize economic growth as a problem but as a solution. “The most inexorable feature of climate-change modeling isn’t the advance of the sea but the steady economic growth that will make life better despite global warming,” writes science journalist…
How embarrassing, a decimal point error, should be 1 refugee per 10,000 residents, but it doesn’t change the point about my small town of 3,000.
And the US can easily absorb those numbers.
Back in 2017, when the US government resettled about 33,000 refugees (almost double the new limit), this was still only 102 refugees per one million US residents, which is about one refugee per 100,000 residents. About one refugee added to the population of a small city. I’ve lived in a small town of 3,000 that could easily absorb one refugee per year.
Refugees resettled per one million residents (2017)
United States 102
Norway 528
Australia 618
Canada 725https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/overview-us-refugee-law-and-policy
