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Heroes of the Revolution / Re: Wikileaks Updates-Julian Assange Thread

« Last post by Palloy2 on Today at 08:42:50 PM »

https://kurtnimmo.blog/2018/06/22/the-murder-of-julian-assange/
The 'Murder' Of Julian Assange
Kurt Nimmo
06/23/2018

It was a fool’s errand.

On the day Donald Trump was elected his supporters asked him to pardon the founder and frontman of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. They flooded social media demanding Assange be allowed to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London without arrest and extradition to the United States.

Stone silence from Trump and his administration.

A few months before the election, WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of over 30,000 emails and attachments taken from Hillary Clinton’s not-so private email server.

Trump held no aversion to exploiting the emails. He called them the Crooked Hillary emails and said they endangered the national security of the United States.

Democrats called foul, said Assange had colluded with Putin and the Russians.

In April, they filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Russian government, the Trump campaign, and WikiLeaks. They argue there was a widespread conspiracy to swing the 2016 election.

They have zero evidence of this. Evidence is no longer required. Accusations alone now serve to take down leaders and destroy careers.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are no longer of use to Donald Trump.

He dished out pardons to ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and neocon leaker Scooter Libby. Trump mulled other pardons, including a posthumous one for Muhammad Ali to wipe out his draft dodging conviction. It was reported in June Trump insiders are pushing to pardon the junk bond king Michael Milken and reverse his conviction on securities fraud. The Milken pardon is being pushed by Goldman Sachs alumnus and current Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange is left to twist in the wind.

Both Trump’s attorney general and his former CIA director, now secretary of state Mike Pompeo want Assange extradited to the United States where he will face trial and possible execution for espionage.

AG Jeff Sessions said the arrest and prosecution of Assange is a priority for the United States government, while Pompeo denounced him as a “hostile intelligence service,” never mind he had no problem using the Clinton emails to accuse the DNC of sabotaging the Bernie Sanders campaign.

The US has leaned heavy on Ecuador.

Following a meeting with General Joseph DiSalvo of the Southern Command - ostensibly to discuss “security cooperation”—Ecuadorian president Lenín Moreno rolled back security at the embassy and denied Assange access to family, friends, and doctors. They also shut down his internet connection.

This week Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said his government working on an “exit” plan to remove Assange from the embassy where he has lived the past six years. Valencia told the Associated Press the plan would be “one that encourages an exit, that we do not want to be traumatic... we do not want it to be an exit that may cause dissonance with international law.”

Moreno said Assange interfered in Ecuador’s relationship with other countries by tweeting on political events. He also lamented the “nuisance” of Assange’s political asylum and said the Australian whistleblower is an “inherited problem” left over from the previous administration.

Moreno’s government granted Assange citizenship in a hope diplomatic immunity would be granted and he would leave the embassy. Assange knows better than to fall for this. Immunity or no, he will be arrested the minute he walks out of the embassy.

Activist and filmmaker John Pilger took the Left to task for abandoning Assange.

    “There is a silence among many who call themselves left,” he said in a statement.

    “The silence is Julian Assange. As every false accusation has fallen away, every bogus smear shown to be the work of political enemies, Julian stands vindicated as one who has exposed a system that threatens humanity.”

For the establishment, it’s imperative Assange be arrested, extradited, and brought up on espionage charges in the United States. The message will be priceless, the chilling effect invaluable.

The dirty secrets of war, political subterfuge, election fixing, and assorted other crimes and misdeeds are not for public consumption.

The release of the Collateral Damage video and the war logs of Afghanistan and Iraq should have resulted in a larger and more active antiwar movement. This didn’t happen.

Liberal and leftist opposition to war only occurs when a Republican sits in the Oval Office. Obama effectively destroyed what remained of the Bush era antiwar movement. Eights year of Obama worked like a lobotomy on the Left.

Democrats supported Hillary Clinton’s war on the people of Libya. They didn’t have a problem when she arranged weapons collected from the battlefields of Libya to be sent by the CIA to the “rebels” in Syria.

Democrats call for overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in Syria. They believe Russia got Trump elected and Vladimir Putin spreads lies and false news to undermine and destroy our democracy. Large NGOs, foundations, and think tanks are pushing this nonsense.

Due mostly to indoctrination as a result of public education and a herd mentality inculcated by leaders and media, it is a relatively easy task for the financial oligarchy and its corporate partners to brainwash the public. It now disguises war and conquest as humanitarianism.

I’m old enough to remember when millions of Americans praised Daniel Ellsberg for releasing the Pentagon Papers. That was then, this is now. Now liberals and progressives want to string up whistleblowers, same as their conservative Republican and neocon counterparts.

Gore Vidal said America suffers from amnesia.

Americans are largely blind to the war and financial crimes perpetuated in their name. Part of this is the result of indoctrination through propaganda media, but to a large degree Americans are incurious and unbothered by the criminality of their leaders and institutions.

Most don’t care Julian Assange is a dead man walking.

They are unable to see the criminal state for what it is - a global Mafia operation that shakes down entire continents and wages wars of conquest and pillage for profit.

2

Geopolitics / Re: The Nuclear War thread

« Last post by Palloy2 on Today at 08:17:53 PM »

"All your satellites are belong us".

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-23/china-steps-us-cyberattacks-trade-tensions-worsen
China Steps Up US Cyberattacks As Trade Tensions Worsen
Tyler Durden
06/23/2018

Despite signing a "digital truce" with the US in 2015 that banned the hacking of private companies, China has been green-lighting plenty of cyberattacks on US defense contractors, along with other targets, lately. And given the rising trade tensions with the US, these types of attacks are only expected to increase, according to Wired. To wit, one state-funded group recently infiltrated a Navy contractor and stole hundreds of gigabytes of information about submarines and undersea weapons, that have by now likely been handed over to the Chinese military.

China

As one source told Wired, China has backed off on intellectual property theft, as it promised to do when it signed the treaty. But it has more than compensated for this by redoubling its efforts to acquire US military intelligence.

    "China’s actually backed off quite a bit on intellectual property theft, but when it comes to military trade secrets, military preparedness, military readiness, satellite communications, anything that involves the US’s ability to keep a cyber or military edge, China has been very heavily focused on those targets," says David Kennedy, CEO of the threat tracking firm Binary Defense Systems, who formerly worked at the NSA and with the Marine Corps' signal intelligence unit. "And the US does the same thing, by the way."

Earlier this week, analysts from Symantec published their research tracking a series of attacks carried out by suspected Chinese hackers  between November 2017 and April. The researchers dubbed the group "Thrip" - and what they have discovered is deeply troubling. The group, which the Symantec analysts have monitored since 2013, has learned to "hide in plain site" by using prefab malware to infiltrate networks, and then manipulate administrative controls to press further without tripping any alarms. Using off-the-shelf tools makes the group harder to identify. Still, the Symantec team found evidence of intrusions at some telecoms firms in southeast Asia, a US geospatial imagery company, a couple of private satellite companies including one US firm, and a US defense contractor.

And in what was probably Symantec's most alarming discovery,  the researchers learned that the hackers had managed to obtain operational control of orbiting satellite, giving them the ability to "disrupt data flows" or the satellite's trajectory.

    The researchers found evidence of intrusions at some southeast Asian telecom firms, a US geospatial imagery company, a couple of private satellite companies including one from the US, and a US defense contractor. The breaches were all deliberate and targeted, and in the case of the satellite firms the hackers moved all the way through to reach the control systems of actual orbiting satellites, where they could have impacted a satellite's trajectory or disrupted data flow.

    "It is scary," says Jon DiMaggio, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Symantec who leads the research into Thrip.

    "We looked at which systems they were interested in, where they spent the most time, and on the satellites it was command and control. And then they were also on the operational side for both the geospatial imagery and the telecom attacks."

We should all be concerned about the increase in hacking of defense contractors because, as one of Wired's sources explains, sometimes an escalation of digital attacks can precede an armed conflict.

    "Hacking can be used as a sign of force in a lot of cases to say 'hey, we’re not happy and we’re going to make you feel some pain,'" Kennedy notes. "They'll use that as a first step instead of having to send fighter jets or something."

    [...]

    "All of these pieces fit together," Symantec's DiMaggio says of Thrip. "It’s not targets of opportunity; it’s definitely a planned operation."

Of course, China has many options for retaliating against the US as the trade war with President Donald Trump worsens, including the so-called nuclear option: Dumping its US Treasury holdings. China's military still lags the US in terms of firepower, but the government is quickly closing that gap, and its provocations in the South China Sea could cause the already tenuous relationship between the two countries to further deteriorate.

3

Energy / Re: The Tesla Thread

« Last post by Palloy2 on Today at 08:05:18 PM »

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-22/musk-went-ballistic-inside-story-teslas-feud-federal-regulators
Musk Went Ballistic" - The Inside Story Of Tesla's Feud With Federal Regulators
Tyler Durden
06/23/2018

Given the bizarre outbursts and increasingly grandiose performance-related promises (even as his company's Fremont factory has continued to struggle), many have speculated that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been cracking under the pressure. In one sign that the pressures of running Tesla (not to mention SpaceX and Neuralink) have been weighing on the CEO, some have pointed out that he's becoming increasingly vindictive toward anybody who doubts or questions him: for example, he recently spent $25 million of his own money on Tesla shares just to blow up a few shorts after tweeting threats of "unreal carnage".

In a story that lays bare Musk's obsession with his public image and his  inability to tolerate criticism or dissent from his employees or the media, Buzzfeed published a piece late Thursday that's packed with alarming details, including the story of Musk's meltdown during a conversation with regulators from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Musk

An outburst from Musk that ended the conversation prompted the NTSB to announce that Tesla would no longer be cooperating with the investigation. In a separate incident, Musk went "ballistic" during a conversation with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after a representative informed Elon Musk that the agency would be announcing an investigation into a May 2016 crash involving a Tesla Model S in Florida.

    No one lectures Elon Musk. In April, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board discovered this after a call about his organization’s investigation into one of Tesla Motors’ autopiloted vehicles devolved into a heated exchange, leading the billionaire entrepreneur to hang up on the federal regulator. That fiery interaction eventually leaked to the press and ricocheted around the internet as further evidence that Musk was losing it.

    [...]

    For example, in June 2016 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had contacted Tesla as a courtesy heads-up that it would be announcing an investigation into a May crash that killed the driver of a Model S sedan on Autopilot. It was the kind of call that, at most companies, would require executive restraint and sensitivity. Musk was not originally supposed to be on the call with NHTSA officials, Tesla’s general counsel, and the head of its Autopilot team, but chimed in as the conversation got underway. It was unfair that NHTSA was targeting his company, he said, noting that skeptics would just use the public investigation as evidence that Tesla was in trouble.

    After failing to convince the government officials to keep their investigation private and forgo their announcement scheduled for the next day, Musk went ballistic and embarked on a profanity-laced tirade. He threatened to sue NHTSA for what he saw as unfair scrutiny and then abruptly disconnected the phone, leaving the people left on the line shocked.

    "I couldn’t believe it," said a former Tesla employee familiar with the call.

Musk's recent behavior isn't a deviation: It's more or less how he's always acted around his employees.

    But the thing is: None of this is new for Musk. He has always been the architect of his own image and has long run roughshod over journalists and his own communications team alike. In interviews with BuzzFeed News, nine people who previously worked with Musk, and who requested anonymity to preserve their personal and professional relationships, said that while the level of scrutiny on the CEO may be new, his behavior is not. What we are seeing is less a crack in his well-being than his facade. It is Elon unbound.

His short temper has "long been legend" inside Tesla and SpaceX, according to Buzzfeed. The only thing that's changed, they say, is that Musk's profile - and the company's share price - has risen.

    What’s changed is simply that Musk’s profile has risen while his staff’s ability to keep him in check has waned. As pressure continues to mount and Musk sheds the executives who once provided advice and insulation, he’s no longer just the Mars-bound genius with a promising electric car company. Depending on who you ask, he’s an icon, an environmental champion, or an attention-hungry micromanager, wielding Steve Jobs–level influence in 240-character Twitter diatribes, occasional public appearances, or mocking conference calls with analysts. But no matter which Elon you choose, it’s become more apparent that there’s no one who can rein him in.

Musk's inability to let go of anything remotely negative spouted by his critics and the media makes working on his communications staff - whether at Tesla or at SpaceX - a waking nightmare.

    This obsession with the media makes working in communications under Musk, whether at Tesla or SpaceX, an unpredictable and grueling gig. Multiple former staffers recalled being kept up late or woken up in the middle of the night because Musk was upset about a headline or an article. Two other former senior employees described Musk as notoriously thin-skinned. "He'll read an obscure critical post by, like, some Belgian blogger at 3 in the morning and he'll wake up people on the comms team and demand this person be crushed," one former employee said. "It's all utterly disproportionate in response."

If you're thinking that some of Musk's tendencies - particularly his treatment of the media - sound familiar, well, former Musk employees would agree. Several of Buzzfeed's sources independently compared working for Musk with working in the Trump White House, the outlet said.

    The lack of control and continual need to put out PR fires wore on professionals, even those who personally liked Musk and believed in the missions of Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla is known for a high rate of turnover, and some communications staffers only last a few months. Some have done multiple stints, though have left or were fired after clashing with the chief executive. Three people familiar with Musk’s communications team independently compared the pressure and publicity, and chaos of the job to working in President Donald Trump’s White House.

This has already been a rough week for Tesla. Musk has already had to downsize Solar City's residential solar business and finish laying off 9% of Tesla's staff (while continuing to deny that the company is having funding troubles). And this embarrassing Buzzfeed story is one more distraction for the mogul, who's desperately trying to bring Model 3 production up to 2,500 cars a week by the end of June. If he fails at that task, we imagine there will be another round of outbursts as Musk continues his crusade against the Tesla bears and everybody else who doubts his vision.

4

Geopolitics / Re: The Nuclear War thread

« Last post by Palloy2 on Today at 07:52:19 PM »

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/22/star-wars-redux-trumps-space-force/
Star Wars Redux: Trump's Space Force
Karl Grossman
06/23/2018

If Donald Trump gets his way on formation of a Space Force, the heavens would become a war zone. Inevitably, there would be military conflict in space.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which designates space as the global commons to be used for peaceful purposes—and of which Russia and China, as well as the United States, are parties—and the years of work facilitating the treaty since would be wasted.

If the U.S. goes up into space with weapons, Russia and China, and then India and Pakistan and other countries, will follow.

Moreover space weaponry, as I have detailed through the years in my writings and TV programs, would be nuclear-powered—as Reagan’s Star Wars scheme was to be with nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.

This is what would be above our heads.

Amid the many horrible things being done by the Trump administration, this would be the most terribly destructive.

    “It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space,” Trump said at a meeting of the National Space Council this week.

    “Very importantly, I’m hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon,” he went on Monday, “to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces; that is a big statement. We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal, it is going to be something.”

The notion of the U.S. moving into space with weaponry isn’t new.

It goes back to the post-World War II years when the U.S. government brought former Nazi rocket scientists from Germany to the U.S.—mainly to the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama—to use “their technological expertise to help create the U.S. space and weapons program,” writes Jack Manno, who retired last year as a professor at the State University of New York/Environmental Science and Forestry College, in his book Arming the Heavens: The Hidden Military Agenda for Space, 1945-1995.

     “Many of the early space war schemes were dreamt up by scientists working for the German military, scientists who brought their rockets and their ideas to America after the war,” he relates. “It was like a professional sports draft.”

Nearly 1,000 of these scientists were brought to the U.S., “many of whom later rose to positions of power in the U.S. military, NASA, and the aerospace industry.” Among them were “Wernher von Braun and his V-2 colleagues” who began “working on rockets for the U.S. Army,” and at the Redstone Arsenal “were given the task of producing an intermediate range ballistic range missile to carry battlefield atomic weapons up to 200 miles. The Germans produced a modified V-2 renamed the Redstone….Huntsville became a major center of U.S. space military activities.”

Manno writes about former German Major General Walter Dornberger, who had been in charge of the entire Nazi rocket program who, “in  1947, as a consultant to the U.S Air Force and adviser to the Department of Defense…wrote a planning paper for his new employers. He proposed a system of hundreds of nuclear-armed satellites all orbiting at different altitudes and angles, each capable or reentering the atmosphere on command from Earth to proceed to its target. The Air Force began early work on Dornberger’s idea under the acronym NABS (Nuclear Armed Bombardment Satellites).”

For my 2001 book, Weapons in Space, Manno told me that “control over the Earth” was what those who have wanted to weaponize space seek. He said the Nazi scientists are an important “historical and technical link, and also an ideological link….The aim is to…have the capacity to carry out global warfare, including weapons systems that reside in space.”

But then came the Outer Space Treaty put together by the U.S., Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. In the 2001 TV documentary I wrote and narrate, “Star Wars Returns.”

[embed=560.315]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7bdMzE3N5iw" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

Craig Eisendrath, who had been a U.S. State Department officer involved in its creation, notes that the Soviet Union launched the first space satellite, Sputnik, in 1957 and “we sought to de-weaponize space before it got weaponized…to keep war out of space.”

Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966, it entered into force in 1967.  It has been ratified or signed by 123 nations.

    It provides that nations “undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in space in any other manner.”

Atomic physicist Edward Teller, the main figure in developing the hydrogen bomb and instrumental in founding Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, pitched to Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California visiting the lab, a plan of orbiting hydrogen bombs which became the initial basis for Reagan’s “Star Wars.” The bombs were to energize X-ray lasers. “As the bomb at the core of an X-ray battle station exploded, multiple beams would flash out to strike multiple targets before the entire station consumed itself in in a ball of nuclear fire,” explained New York Times journalist William Broad in his 1986 book Star Warriors.

Subsequently there was a shift in “Star Wars” to orbiting battle platforms with nuclear reactors or “super” plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generators on board that would provide the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.

The rapid boil of “Star Wars” under Reagan picked up again under the administrations George H. W. Bush and son George W. Bush. And all along the U.S. military has been gung-ho on space warfare.

A U.S. Space Command was formed in 1982.

    “US Space Command—dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into war-fighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict,” it trumpeted in its 1998 report Vision for 2020. It laid out these words to resemble the crawl at the start of the Star Warsmovies. The U.S. Space Command was set up by the Pentagon to “help institutionalize the use of space.” Or, as the motto of one of its units declares, to be “Master of Space.”

Vision for 2020states, “Historically, military forces have evolved to protect national interests and investments-both military and economic.” Nations built navies “to protect and enhance their commercial interests” and during “the westward expansion of the United States, military outposts and the cavalry emerged to protect our wagon trains, settlements and railroads. The emergence of space power follows both of these models. During the early portion of the 2lst Century, space power will also evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare.”

“It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen,” remarked U.S. Space Command Commander-in-Chief Joseph W. Ashy in Aviation Week and Space Technology (8/9/96):

    “Some people don’t want to hear this, and it sure isn’t in vogue, but—absolutely—we’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space…. We will engage terrestrial targets someday—ships, airplanes, land targets—from space.”

Or as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Keith R. Hall told the National Space Club in 1997: “With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it and we’re going to keep it.”

The basic concept of the Pentagon’s approach to space is contained in The Future of War: Power, Technology & American World Dominance in the 2lst Century. Written by “arms experts” George and Meredith Friedman, the 1996 book concludes: “Just as by the year 1500 it was apparent that the European experience of power would be its domination of the global seas, it does not take much to see that the American experience of power will rest on the domination of space. Just as Europe expanded war and its power to the global oceans, the United States is expanding war and its power into space and to the planets. Just as Europe shaped the world for a half a millennium [by dominating the oceans with fleets], so too the United States will shape the world for at least that length of time.”

Or as a 2001 report of the U.S. Space Commission led by then U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserted:

    “In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on the earth and in space.”

Nuclear power and space weaponry are intimately linked.

“In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic conflict,” stated New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century, a 1996 US Air Force board report. “These advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many kills.” However, “power limitations impose restrictions” on such space weaponry making them “relatively unfeasible,” but “a natural technology to enable high power is nuclear power in space.” Says the report: “Setting the emotional issues of nuclear power aside, this technology offers a viable alternative for large amounts of power in space.”

Or as General James Abrahamson, director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, put it at a Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion, “without reactors in orbit [there is] going to be a long, long light [extension] cord that goes down to the surface of the Earth” to power space weaponry.

Thus nuclear power would be needed for weapons in space.

Since 1985 there have been attempts at the UN to expand the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 to prohibit not only nuclear weapons but all weapons from space. This is called the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty and leading in urging its passage have been Canada, Russia and China. There has been virtually universal backing from nations around the world for it. But by balking, U.S. administration after administration has prevented its passage.

Although waging war in space was hotly promoted by the Reagan and Bush administrations and ostensibly discouraged by the Obama administration and Clinton administration, all U.S. administrations have refused to sign on to the PAROS treaty.

In my book Weapons in Space, I relate a presentation I gave at a conference at the UN in Geneva in 1999 on the eve of a vote the next day on PAROS. I spoke about the “military use of space being planned by the U.S.” being “in total contradiction of the principles of peaceful international cooperation that the U.S. likes to espouse” and “pushes us—all of us—to war in the heavens.”

I was followed by Wang Xiaoyu, first secretary of the Delegation of China, who declared: “Outer space is he common heritage of human beings. It should be used for peaceful purposes…It must not be weaponized and become another arena of the arms race.”

The next day, on my way to observe the vote, I saw a U.S. diplomat who had been at my presentation. We approached each other and he said he would like to talk to me, anonymously. He said, on the street in front of the UN buildings, that the U.S has trouble with its citizenry in fielding a large number of troops on the ground. But the U.S military believes “we can project power from space” and that was why the military was moving in this direction. I questioned him on whether, if the U.S. moved ahead with weapons in space, other nations would meet the U.S. in kind, igniting an arms race in space. He replied that the U.S. military had done analyses and determined that China was “30 years behind” in competing with the U.S. militarily in space and Russia “doesn’t have the money.” Then he went to vote and I watched as again there was overwhelming international support for the PAROS treaty—but the U.S. balked. And because a consensus was needed for the passage of the treaty, it was blocked once more.

And this was during the Clinton administration.

With the Trump administration, there is more than non-support of the PAROS treaty but now a drive by the U.S. to weaponize space.

It could be seen—and read about—coming.

    “Under Trump, GOP to Give Space Weapons Close Look,” was the headline of an article in 2016 in Washington-based Roll Call. It said “Trump’s thinking on missile defense and military space programs have gotten next to no attention, as compared to the president-elect’s other defense proposals….But experts expect such programs to account for a significant share of what is likely to be a defense budget boost, potentially amounting to $500 billion or more in the coming decade.”

Intense support for the plan was anticipated from the GOP-dominated Congress. Roll Call mentionedthat Representative Trent Franks, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and an Arizona Republican, “said the GOP’s newly strengthened hand in Washington means a big payday is coming for programs aimed at developing weapons that can be deployed in space.”

In a speech in March at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station near San Diego, Trump declared:

    “My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea. We may even have a Space Force—develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force; we’ll have the Space Force.”

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, notes that Trump cannot establish a Space Force on his own—that Congressional authorization and approval is needed.  And last year, Gagnon points out, an attempt to establish what was called a Space Corps within the Air Force passed in the House but “stalled in the Senate.”

“Thus at this point it is only a suggestion,” said Gagnon of the Maine-based Global Network.

“I think though,” Gagnon went on, “his proposal indicates that the aerospace industry has taken full control of the White House and we can be sure that Trump will use all his ‘Twitter powers’ to push this hard in the coming months.”

Meanwhile, relates Gagnon, there is the “steadily mounting” U.S. “fiscal crisis…Some years ago one aerospace industry publication editorialized that they needed a ‘dedicated funding source’ to pay for space plans and indicated that it had come up with it—the entitlement programs. That means the industry is now working to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and what little is left of the welfare program. You want to help stop Star Wars and Trump’s new Space Force. Fight for Social Security and social progress in America. Trump and the aerospace industry can’t have it both ways—it’s going to be social progress or war in space.”

As Robert Anderson of New Mexico, a board member of the Global Network, puts it:

    “There is no money for water in Flint, Michigan or a power grid in Puerto Rico, but there is money to wage war in space.”

Or as another Global Network director, J. Narayana Rao of India, comments: “President Donald Trump has formally inaugurated weaponization of space in announcing that the U.S. should establish a Space Force which will lead to an arms race in outer space.”

Russian officials are protesting the Trump Space Force plan, “Militarization of space is a way to disaster,” Viktor Bondarev, the head of the Russian Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee, told the RIA news agency the day after the announcement. This Space Force would be operating in “forbidden skies.” He said Moscow is ready to “strongly retaliate” if the US violates the Outer Space Treaty by putting weapons of mass destruction in space.

And opposition among legislators in Washington has begun. “Thankfully the president cannot do it without Congress because now is NOT the time to rip the Air Force apart,” tweeted Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.

“Space as a warfighting domain is the latest obscenity in a long list of vile actions by a vile administration,” writes Linda Pentz Gunter, who specializes in international nuclear issues for the organization Beyond Nuclear, this week. “Space is for wonder. It’s where we live. We are a small dot in the midst of enormity, floating in a dark vastness about which we know a surprising amount, and yet with so much more still mysteriously unknown.”

“A Space Force is not an aspiration unique to the Trump administration, of course,” she continued on the Beyond Nuclear International website of the Takoma Park, Maryland group, “but it feels worse in his reckless hands.”

5

Energy / Re: How long before the world runs out of fossil fuels🦖?

« Last post by RE on Today at 07:24:46 PM »

RE: That graph only goes through 2004.  What do the latest real data points look like?

BP(2018) shows production in 2004 was 81.1 Mbpd and in 2017 was 92.6 mbpd - that's a 14% increase in 13 years. (1.01% / year, after 20 years of 1.6%).  That includes fracked oil , tar sands and Natural Gas Liquids.  The split between Crude and Condensate is unknown since nobody collects the data ( ! ) so we can't tell how much is fracked.  However we do know fracking only came on stream in 2006, just in time for the Peak in Crude Only in 2005.  Fracking has never made a profit and as soon as USG/Fed stops backing the losses, the whole lot will collapse in a heap overnight, causing a major financial shock, which will bring down the Dollar and Industrial Civilisation.

Amazon, Tesla, Facebook and numerous other Industrial Civilization ventures have never made a profit either, but that doesn't stop the  TBTF Banks from buying their corporate paper with money borrowed from Da Fed.  In fact, Steve's analysis shows no industrial enterprise from the railroads to carz to planes ever made a real profit, all these industries grew on credit and eventually went BK, to then be bailed out by Da Goobermint and the debt shifted (in theory) to the tapayer.  The taxpayer of course can't afford to retire this debt either, so the total debt keeps increasing as long as the enterprises are kept running.

Since as you say they must have an endless credit line to keep running, it's unlikely Da Fed will cut off that credit because then it means not just the end of Industrial Civilization but the end of their hegemony over the world, through the credit they issue to the MIC to buy planes, drones and bombs.  There will either have to be some sort of credit lockup or the resources become unavailable no matter how much credit you issue.  Another possibility is that the resource controllers who actually still have some oil left underground they can pump up stop taking the credit in payment, aka they abandon the Dollar.  However, since they hold so much of their reserves in Dollars. this amounts to cutting off your nose to spite your face.  It's why nobody has quit on the whole system yet.  It will of course inevitably occur, but the timeline on it still remains obscure.

RE

6

Environment / Major oil spill spreads across Iowa floodwaters

« Last post by Palloy2 on Today at 07:13:09 PM »

Officials say they don’t know what caused the train to go off the rails, perhaps the track foundations slumped in the flood?

https://www.rt.com/usa/430673-train-derailment-oil-spill/
Major oil spill spreads across Iowa floodwaters, forcing evacuations after train derails
23 Jun, 2018





Drone footage released by authorities in Iowa shows oil spreading across flooded fields following a devastating train derailment. Dozens of damaged cars are seen piled on the broken train tracks near the Rock River.

The 33-car freight train carrying oil from Alberta, Canada, derailed on Friday morning near Doon in Lyon County, Iowa. The BNSF Railway Company has not revealed how much oil the tankers were carrying, and said it doesn’t know how much oil has leaked, but that a clean-up is underway.

Some of the cars soon began leaking crude oil into the Little Rock River floodwaters, prompting an evacuation of nearby houses and sparking fears of drinking water contamination. A number of towns downriver from the spill take their drinking water from nearby wells. Within hours, the oil had spread five miles downriver.

Officials say they don’t know what caused the train to go off the rails, although a local, Jacob Faber, told the Des Moines Register that there was water on the train tracks.

7

Energy / Re: How long before the world runs out of fossil fuels🦖?

« Last post by Palloy2 on Today at 06:54:59 PM »

RE: That graph only goes through 2004.  What do the latest real data points look like?

BP(2018) shows production in 2004 was 81.1 Mbpd and in 2017 was 92.6 mbpd - that's a 14% increase in 13 years. (1.01% / year, after 20 years of 1.6%).  That includes fracked oil , tar sands and Natural Gas Liquids.  The split between Crude and Condensate is unknown since nobody collects the data ( ! ) so we can't tell how much is fracked.  However we do know fracking only came on stream in 2006, just in time for the Peak in Crude Only in 2005.  Fracking has never made a profit and as soon as USG/Fed stops backing the losses, the whole lot will collapse in a heap overnight, causing a major financial shock, which will bring down the Dollar and Industrial Civilisation.

8

Doomsteading / Re: Meanwhile back at the 'stead

« Last post by Palloy2 on Today at 06:26:05 PM »

If I remember rightly, mangoes have 4 plants (germ plasma) inside each seed.  When the seed germinates, the plants don't all germinate necessarily.  You should not rush to plant, so you can count the plantlets, then pinch off all but the strongest and then plant-out.  Keep the soil damp-looking all the time, with thick mulch to stop the drying out.  Don't start hydroponics till you can take care of it every day.

9

Doomsteading / Re: Meanwhile back at the 'stead

« Last post by David B. on Today at 06:16:48 PM »

That would work and I have the hoop house already, although it needs to be recovered. I even have good new plastic.

I've mostly fiddled with the trees at the place in town, though, after my debacle with a prior tree growing project I had going outdoors at the stead. I lost my drip irrigation during a long trip to Mexico and lost a a whole bunch of  trees I had in buckets at the stead.

I'd brought them back from Florida when Florida agriculture was in the toilet and trees were very cheap there after the 2008 crash. It gets so hot here. You have to really stay on top of watering trees, especially when they're small and in containers. At the house, if i forget, someone else might just water for me.

Of course, I don't travel as much now, and I'm out there every three days at least. The hoop house is a neglected project. I have other things I'd like to do in it too. Like get my aquaponics set-up up and running.

you are getting past the point of needing a hired hand! too many projects as the sand of time flows. I'm having one of those days. Nothing is getting done and the property is a mess. Next week is the last school week then kids home everyday. There goes the spring productivity. Maybe this is the year they help more then they slow me down. I love the little beggars of course but I miss the intensity a kidless person can bring to things.

10

Doomsteading / Re: Meanwhile back at the 'stead

« Last post by Eddie on Today at 06:02:06 PM »

That would work and I have the hoop house already, although it needs to be recovered. I even have good new plastic.

I've mostly fiddled with the trees at the place in town, though, after my debacle with a prior tree growing project I had going outdoors at the stead. I lost my drip irrigation during a long trip to Mexico and lost a a whole bunch of  trees I had in buckets at the stead.

I'd brought them back from Florida when Florida agriculture was in the toilet and trees were very cheap there after the 2008 crash. It gets so hot here. You have to really stay on top of watering trees, especially when they're small and in containers. At the house, if i forget, someone else might just water for me.

Of course, I don't travel as much now, and I'm out there every three days at least. The hoop house is a neglected project. I have other things I'd like to do in it too. Like get my aquaponics set-up up and running.