Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized for the government’s decision in 1939 to turn away a ship full of Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany. “Today I rise to issue a long-overdue apology to the Jewish refugees Canada turned away,” Trudeau said Wednesday in a speech to Parliament Canada denied asylum to the 907 German Jews on board the MS St. Louis when it arrived on its shores. Cuba and the United States also denied entry to the refugees and, after they returned to Europe, about one-quarter of those on board died in the Holocaust. “In 1939, Canada turned its back on 907 Jewish refugees, deeming them unworthy of a home, and undeserving of our help. Today, I issue an official apology on behalf of the Government of Canada to the passengers of the MS St. Louis and their families for this injustice,” he said in both English and French. “While decades have passed since we turned our backs on Jewish refugees, time has by no means absolved Canada of its guilt or lessened the weight of our shame,” he said.
Words now are cheap.
I'm not sure how to make things right, or if it is even possible, but hopefully some lessons learned.
Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema opened up a lead Saturday night over Republican rival Martha McSally in the U.S. Senate race in Arizona as officials count mail-in ballots, raising the prospects of Democrats winning a long-held GOP seat. Sinema now leads McSally 49.51 percent to 48.15 percent, according to results provided by election officials at 7 p.m. Eastern time Saturday. The two congresswomen were separated by 28,673 ballots cast statewide, with a Green Party candidate lagging far behind. More than 2.1 million votes were cast. The contest is to replace retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, one of the more outspoken Republican critics of President Trump. Without any evidence, President Trump suggested foul play in the Arizona vote count in a tweet on Friday: “Just out — in Arizona, SIGNATURES DON’T MATCH. Electoral corruption — Call for a new Election? We must protect our Democracy!” the president tweeted. In response, Flake tweeted: “There is no evidence of ‘electoral corruption’ in Arizona, Mr. President. Thousands of dedicated Arizonans work in a non-partisan fashion every election cycle to ensure that every vote is counted. We appreciate their service.”
It's still not certain, Arizona has a large proportion of vote by mail ballots, but it looks promising, though Sinema has recently been very Blue Dog, so she is the definition of winning poorly.
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner has formally ordered a machine recount in three statewide races: U.S. Senate, Governor and Agriculture Commissioner. “I hereby order the canvassing boards responsible for canvassing [the three races] to conduct a machine recount of the votes cast in the race,” reads an order from Detzner sent to elections supervisors in all 67 Florida counties. Separate orders were sent for each race subject to a recount. The Secretary of State’s office also sent procedures to be followed for the machine recount. Totals as of 12:30 on Saturday shows Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott leading incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by 12,562, Republican Gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis beating Democrat Andrew Gillum by 33,684 votes, and Democratic Agriculture Commissioner candidate Nikki Fried ahead of Republican Matt Caldwell by 5,326 votes. All three races fall within the 0.5 percent margin to trigger a statewide recount. For now, only a machine recount has been orders and that remains the focus of elections officials.
Once again, I do find it odd that every time we examine elections in the Sunshine State, EVERY error cuts in favor of the Republicans.
It has been known for some time that the Vampire Squid (Goldman Sachs) was heavily involved in the the Malaysian government's fabulously corrupt 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
Years before Goldman Sachs Group Inc. arranged bond deals now at the heart of globe-spanning corruption probes, the firm’s then-CEO Lloyd Blankfein personally helped forge ties with Malaysia and its new sovereign wealth fund, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Blankfein was the unidentified high-ranking Goldman Sachs executive referenced in U.S. court documents who attended a 2009 meeting with the former Malaysian prime minister, the people said. The meeting was arranged with the help of men who are now tied to the subsequent plundering of the 1MDB fund, according to U.S. court documents unsealed last week.
………
The high-level gathering laid the groundwork for a relationship that would prove profitable for the investment bank. Since then, the use of $6.5 billion that Goldman raised for 1MDB has sparked investigations across several nations, and entangled the U.S. bank in a high-profile corruption probe
This is not a surprise.
Laundering ill-gotten gains is a major profit center for big finance, but their involvement in 1MDB is downright criminal.
In fact, they were doing so well before the repeal, because the FCC didn't have time to find and fine them.
Capitalism at its finest:
US cellphone networks are all throttling video to some extent, providing lower-quality stream to their customers, and some are purposefully undermining Skype as an alternative to their services.
That’s the upshot of a ten-month study by Northeastern University's College of Computer and Information Science set up to see what impact, if any, the end of net neutrality rules had had only ordinary users.
On the pure question of whether the FCC's decision toscrap its own rules has changed cellphone operators' behavior, the answer is no, they haven't – they were throttling before and they have continued to do so.
However, the authors note that such throttling was actually banned under the previous rules. So it was likely the case that there was not enough time for the FCC's enforcement department to clamp down on that behavior before the rules were rescinded.
As to the throttling itself, intriguingly it is not consistent across video providers or operators, suggesting that there may be deals between certain mobile phone networks and certain video streaming companies to let their videos pass through unthrottled.
And if that's the case, then of course there is a pressure point that cellular networks can use to extract money from video companies – which is exactly what net neutrality advocates are concerned about. But there is no smoking gun as such.
Demand and supply
It could be that the throttling is activated to tackle network congestion: as available bandwidth is consumed by people streaming and downloading stuff over the airwaves, operators may limit speeds to ensure an even level of quality-of-service for everyone in a particular cell, neighborhood, or city.
What is worrying, though, is the fact that some mobile operators are throttling a clear competitor in the form of Skype. Sprint seems to be the worst offender but Boost was also seen to be throttling the voice-and-video streaming service.
FYI, Boost is Sprint, in the US at least, so the rat-f%$#ery is actually from the same company.
Rule one of telecommunications and last-mile connectivity providers are that they contemptible greed-heads who need to be kept on a short leash.
Bill Gates believes the world needs better toilets.
Specifically, toilets that improve hygiene, don’t have to connect to sewage systems at all and can break down human waste into fertilizer.
So on Tuesday in Beijing, Mr. Gates held the Reinvented Toilet Expo, a chance for companies to showcase their takes on the simple bathroom fixture. Companies showed toilets that could separate urine from other waste for more efficient treatment, that recycled water for hand washing and that sported solar roofs.
Two points:
Toilets need to be more reliable than you average machine.
Bill Gates only qualification to be an "expert" s that he's obscenely rich, which something profoundly f%$#ed up about our society.
This sounds like it will make the F-35 debacle look like the Skunk Works:
Very little has changed in the configuration and performance of airlifter and air-refueling aircraft since the mid-1950s. Lockheed Martin’s C-5A dramatically expanded payload volume in 1968, and Boeing’s C-17 introduced a strategic airlifter with the ability to make short takeoffs and landings on unprepared runways. Besides those improvements, the U.S. Air Force’s mobility mission has been almost untouched by the survivability requirements that drove radical changes to the design and operation of fighters, bombers and intelligence-gathering aircraft in the last half-century. As Air Force planners now embark on the early stages of a process to acquire a new class of refuelers and airlifters over the next two decades, there is a clear emphasis on designs that overcome the vulnerability of existing aircraft to detection and interception. That potential shift in the requirements follows a new strategy of air warfare that transforms the role of mobility aircraft from a purely supporting one to an active part in combat operations as forward-based command-and-control nodes and even strike platforms.
And in case you are wondering just how far overboard the USAF is planning to go, have a slice of this guaranteed winner in the next bullsh%$ bingo competition:
It is a transformation that senior Air Force officials are still trying to socialize with the community of cargo and tanker crews. Underscoring the unfolding transition was a key theme of Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein’s address at the Airlift Tanker Association (ATA) annual conference on Oct. 26. “I had the chance to fly the KC-46 a few weeks ago,” Goldfein said before several hundred ATA members. “But what I strapped on was not an aircraft. What I flew was a node in our future network, [with] computing capacity that we can connect at the speed of light to other platforms, sensors and weapons to bring creative solutions to the fight.”
If they are at this level of complete bullsh%$ at this stage of the program, this presages a Death Star sized debacle.
And it now appears that soon to be former Texas judge Glenn Devlin is the most Florida man judge in all of Texas, whichis remarkable, because he had to beat out the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which has assumed facts not in evidence in order to execute a guy.
Devlin was defeated for reelection, largely because he had a policy of sending an inordinate number of black and brown children to juvie.
After losing his bench in a Democratic sweep, Harris County Juvenile Court Judge Glenn Devlin released nearly all of the youthful defendants that appeared in front him on Wednesday morning, simply asking the kids whether they planned to kill anyone before letting them go.
"He was releasing everybody," said public defender Steven Halpert, who watched the string of surprising releases. "Apparently he was saying that's what the voters wanted."
In court, prosecutors voiced their concerns about the seemingly indiscriminate release of those accused of everything from low-level misdemeanors to violent crimes.
………
In total, at least seven kids were released, prosecutors said, including four facing aggravated robbery charges.
………
The longtime Republican jurist — whose seat was among 59 swept by Democrats in Tuesday's election — is one of two juvenile court judges in Harris County whose track records favoring incarceration contributed heavily to doubling the number of kids Harris County sent to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department in recent years, even as those figures fell in the rest of the state.
Houston Chronicle investigation last month found that Devlin and Judge John Phillips accounted for more than one-fifth of all children sent to the state's juvenile prisons last year. The two jurists not only sent more teens to juvenile prison, but they also sent them younger and for less-serious offenses than the county's third juvenile court, where Judge Mike Schneider presides.
……… With the dust still settling from a massive shake-up in the local judiciary, Devlin showed up for Wednesday's detention hearing docket apparently ready to surprise. ……… Criminal justice advocates, however, were critical of the decision.
"Judge Devlin appears to be abdicating the basic responsibility of any sitting juvenile judge," said Elizabeth Henneke of the Lone Star Justice Alliance, a group that works to get young people out of the justice system and into treatment programs.
It being Twitter, some asshat with the name of Jo Offord took exception, and in a since deleted Tweet, replied, "Harry, brave young men died so that idiots like you would have the freedom to spout your rubbish. Be more respectful."
A former U.S. Marine machine gunner who may have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder burst into a Thousand Oaks bar packed with college students late Wednesday night, tossed a smoke bomb into the crowd and opened fire, authorities said.
Eleven people were killed, in addition to a sheriff’s sergeant responding to the scene who was gunned down by the assailant minutes later. ………
The suspected gunman, Ian David Long, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a back room at the bar. The amount of blood inside the bar made it difficult to tell whether he shot himself or was killed by law enforcement, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said. ……… The bar’s patrons also frequent the Stagecoach country music festival in
Indio, and some were also survivors of the mass shooting at the Route
91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas that left 58 dead last year.
This was not a slip of the tongue. This was a not particularly subtle appeal to supporters of the racist National Front, because he is concerned that his policy of f%$#ing the average French worker like a drunk sorority girl will lead to a further rise Marine Le Pen which would threaten his hold on power.
It is a chickensh%$ move from a chickensh%$ politician:
Something tells me that this was not caused by Trump suddenly "discovering" that Session is an unrepentant racist:
Senior Republicans led a chorus of public warnings that the special counsel Robert Mueller must be allowed to continue his Russia investigation after Donald Trump finally fired his attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
As Trump replaced Sessions with a senior aide, Matthew Whitaker, a critic of Mueller’s inquiry, Senator Susan Collins was amongst the first Republicans to warn: “It is imperative that the Administration not impede the Mueller investigation … Special Counsel Mueller must be allowed to complete his work without interference.”
Mitt Romney, who won the race on Tuesday to become a senator for Utah, aimed his first broadside at Trump, tweeting: “It is imperative that the important work of the Justice Department continues, and that the Mueller investigation proceeds to its conclusion unimpeded.”
Yeah, like the Mueller investigation is going to be unimpeded.
If I were Mueller, I'd find a pumpkin in which to stash a memory stick of his work to date.
Please don't rehabilitate Jeff Sessions because Trump fired him, he remains an evil racist demagogue.
In terms of the Senate, the Democratic incumbents who lost, Donnelly, McKaskill, and Heitkamp, were profoundly weak tea.
I wish that Manchin was included in that list, because while I understand that the dynamics of the Democratic Party tends to promote narcissistic preeners who are basically useless (the aforementioned Donnelly, McKaskill, and Heitkamp), they should never promote Disloyal Democrats.
Also Bob Menendez, because he's corrupt as hell and would be in jail but for the Supreme Court making it impossible to prosecute politicians for corruption.
The only bright side in terms of incumbents being turfed out was Dean Heller of Nevada.
On the House side, there is a bright side, Dwems retaking the house, David Brat being defeated in VA, as did Dana Rohrabacher in California, and Pete "The Stupidest Motherf%$#er in Texas" Sessions.
On the not so bright side, you have Duncan Hunter, Jr., who won even though he is under indictment for embezzling campaign funds, and virulent racist Steven King (R-IA) won narrowly.
In governor's races, the Democrats picked up 7 seats nationwide, but none pleased me more than the loss of Scott Walker.
Florida and Georgia are still technically in play, but I won't hold my breath
In state houses, about 300 seats were picked up by Dems, erasing about 1/3 of the seats they lost under Obama.
Also, 7 state houses flipped, most notably the New York State Senate, whose Republican Senate was decisively flipped, much to the chagrin of Andrew "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo, who has tried to ensure Republican control so that he won't have to veto progressive legislation. (See Democrats, disloyal)
We also had a fair number of initiatives.
Anti-abortion initiatives in West Virginia and Alabama passed, and failed in Oregon.
Three initiates in California were defeated under a deluge of Wall Street money, price controls in response to profiteering by dialysis clinics, and a public bank for Los Angeles were deleted.
Redistricting reform passed everywhere it was on the ballot, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Utah, along with a sort-of redistricting reform in Ohio.
Weed also did well, with victories in Michigan, Missouri, Utah, and North Dakota.
Medicaid expansion was on the ballot in 4 states, with it passing in 3 states. ( Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah, and a loss in Montana)
There are also three new Democratic governors who will likely implement the policy.
On criminal justice reform, there were some significant ballot measures passed, most notably restoring voting rights to 1½ million felons in the Florida, which should make a difference in future elections.
Louisiana repealed a Jim Crow law that allowed for 10-2 guilty verdicts for most felonies.
Washington passed changes to standards for police shootings, so prosecutors no longer have to show actual malice.
All in all, last night was not good as I had hoped, but not as bad as I had feared.
My only question now is, "How will Nancy Pelosi f%$# this up?"
Russia’s Biggest Problem Will Soon Be Ours (Rolling Stone) I profoundly disagree with Taibbi here: Population decline can make things better for people in the US, it just makes our informal empire less tenable.
We're Not Gluten Intolerant, We're Glyphosate Intolerant (Return to Now) It turns out that reactions to Glyophosphate (Roundup®) are almost identical to gluten issues, and farmers drench their fields with the stuff a week before harvest so that they can harvest all at once.
Racial slur spelled out at high school halftime (Atlanta Journal—Constitution) The team's mascot is the "Broncos". They spelled out the word with the middle 4 letters. Welcome to Trump world.
Some appropriate music for the end of the campaign season:
Midnight: Kansas Governor's race has been called, and Kris Kobach, the man who is arguably the worst politician in America (he is patient zero for the plague of voter suppression in America) will not be the next governor of Kansas. Congratulations to Governor-elect Laura Kelly.
Heidi Heitkamp, who has been down by double digits for the entire campaign, lost in North Dakota.
The Democrats have taken control of the house, picking up 28-30 seats, the Republicans have picked up 2-3 Senate seats, and the Democrats have picked up a at least 4 governorships, and I am finishing my 2nd beer, and I am going to sleep now.
Here is hoping that the Democrats subpoena Trump's tax returns
11:30pm: Despite massive contributions by the head of Nike, the Dems hold onto the Governor's mansion in Oregon. (F%$# Phil Knight, who thinks that he owns the state)
California polls have closed, so the Senate race, between two Democrats, and an indicted house member should make that interesting.
11:00pm: Gillum has conceded the Governor's race in Florida, and it looks like the West Virginia anti-abortion amendment has passed.
I'm switching to the Daily Show for coverage.
10:30pm: The New York Times calls it for Ted "The Human Sh%$bag" Cruz for Texas Senate. Crap.
10:30pm: Governors races: Pickups by Dems in Michigan, New Mexico, Governor's race.
10:00pm: Looks like a Democratic pickup in Colorado. And they are calling the Maryland Governor's race for Larry "Governor Ratf%$3" Hogan, which is not a surprise, Ben Jealous's campaign was really not too visible, and the party establishemtn was sitting on their hands.
In Illinois, the Governor's race has been called for JB Pritzger, which is a step up defeated incumbent Bruce Rauner, but only a little one.
9:30pm: 2 pickups in Pennsylvania. Court ordered redistricting making a difference here. Charlie is done, so I get to start adding beer to my pretzels!
9:15pm: Ammendment 4 in Florida, restoring felon enfranchisement, look set to pass. Should make 2020 VERY different Florida election, because that ads potentially 1½ million voters to their rolls, and these voters are overwhelmingly minority.
In Virginia, there are two incumbent Republican Congressmen, and a Barbara Comstock has lost to Jennifer Wexton.
9:05pm: I just went to the NYT wiggling needle, and saw an ad for F-Cup size brassieres. What the hell? Manchin looks to be in good position, he is up by 8 points with 1/3 of precincts reporting, which is the one Dem I really want to see lose this evening. There is also an anti-abortion constitution change on the ballot which is close.
It appears that Joe Donnelly (incumbent) has lost in Indiana, and Bresden in Tennessee, which which basically closes the door on the Democrats picking of the Senate. My guess is that they will actually lose Senate seats.
8:40pm: Democrats need to pick up seats in the worst way, and, at least in Florida, the union-busting former university president Donna Shalala has picked up a seats for the Democrats. This was really her race to lose, because the district has been blue for a long time, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is retiring held onto the seat ONLY because she is a FDWS (Friend of Debbie Wasserman "Clusterf%$#" Schultz), who kept her opponents weak.
8:35pm: Had to go out on an unsuccessful run for race lasagna, so I've just got to the keyboard.
Charlie is still at the polling place, so no beer yet, though I have had some pretzels (sourdough),
Also, unlike Reed, Andrea Long Chu actually gets into the weeds of the book, and not how Soloway looks, or dresses, etc., which to my mind puts her a pretty big step above Reed.
She demolishes the recollections of a narcissistic asshole on their own terms:
As a lightweight behind-the-scenes look at a critically acclaimed television series, Jill Soloway’s new memoir She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy is just south of worth purchasing at the airport. As a book about desire, power, or toppling the patriarchy, it is incompetent, defensive, and astonishingly clueless. This is a story about someone who responds to criticisms of her TV show by taking “a glamping writers’ retreat” to El Capitan: “We had a shaman come. She did magic incantations as we lay on the floor of a yurt.” It is an unwitting portrait of a rich Los Angeles creative type with a child’s knack for exploiting the sympathies of others, a person whose deep fear of doing the wrong thing was regularly outmatched by an even deeper distaste for doing the right thing. The nicest thing that can be said of this oblivious, self-absorbed, unimportant book is that it proves, once and for all, that trans people are fully, regrettably human.
They meticulously tiptoe around what is the most obvious answer, that a large proportion of their members actively support right wing racists.
There are 4-5 stories in this report where somehow or other the authorities "mysteriously" screwed up and allowed these folks to walk away after engaging in acts that would ordinarily end up with a 10-20 year sentence.
This happens because they actively support the actions and goals of right wing terrorists, whether as the cop on the beat, or as a prosecutor who offers administrative inefficiency as an alibi.
If these folks were black or brown, they would be in jail or they would be pushing up daisies.
Beer and pretzels, actually and I will be updating regularly.
I'll start on the beer once I pick up Charlie from his election duties, and it will be beer and pretzels, because ……… What part of beer and pretzels don't you UNDERSTAND?
While I will not be good to drive, I don't expect to get truly hammered.
I deferred to my daughter on choice of beer, because she's the only other one in the house who can drink beer (Sharon* is allergic to malt, and Charlie is under age.), which somewhat unfortunately is Natty Boh (National Bohemian).
The beer is actually a good metaphor for the establishment backed Democratic candidates this evening though, it is generic and uninspiring.
I'll start live blogging around 7 or so, by which time we should start getting returns from the states with early poll closings.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
I just dropped Charlie off at Cedarmere elementary school.
He will be spending the next 15 hours or so as an election judge, which means that he will be one of the half dozen or so people looking up voter registration records, offering assistance to voters, and handing out "I voted" stickers.
The title is a term for floating solar panels on water, and while the initial costs are larger there are some significant advantages:
A total of 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of solar have been installed around the world as of September, according to a new report by the World Bank (PDF). That's similar to the amount of traditional solar panel capacity that had been installed around the world in the year 2000, the report says. The World Bank expects that, like traditional solar 18 years ago, we're likely to see an explosion of floating solar over the next two decades.
That's because floating solar is not simply "solar panels on water." Solar panels prevent algae growth in dammed areas, and they inhibit evaporation from occurring in hotter climates. (According to Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, major lakes in the southwestern US like Lake Mead and Lake Powell can lose more than 800,000 acre-feet of water to evaporation per year, and the adorably-described "floatovoltaics" could prevent up to 90 percent of that evaporation.") Additionally, floating solar avoids taking up space on land that is priced at a premium. In Northern California, for example, a floating solar installation was added to a nearby reservoir because the land around it was better used for growing grapes.
Another benefit of floating solar is that ground doesn't have to be leveled before the plant is installed. Usually, fixed-tilt panels are attached to a floating platform that's moored to the bottom of the reservoir. Most systems send electricity through floating inverters, although in some smaller installations the inverters are situated on land.
The downside is, of course, cost. Floating platforms and water-resistant wiring are more expensive for water-dwelling panels than for their land-based counterparts. As solar PV panel prices have been falling, however, the extra cost to make a floating system might save it from being considered too expensive.
………
Floating solar and hydroelectric dams actually work in a pretty nice symbiosis. In some areas, hydroelectric dams produce energy in an extremely predictable manner. In these cases, the electricity can be used to augment the more variable solar energy coming from the panels. In other cases, hydroelectric energy wanes in times of drought, and solar energy can be used to augment hydroelectric power when water levels are low. "Floating solar may therefore be of particular interest where grids are weak, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of developing Asia," the World Bank writes.
………
The market for floating photovoltaics has been growing. Until this year, no floating solar systems had more than a 100 megawatt peak capacity, but as of 2018, several 100 MW floating solar systems have been connected to the grid, the largest being a 150 MW floating plant. "Flooded mining sites in China support most of the largest installations," the World Bank writes.
Large reservoirs are large areas that are not available for other development, and their placement on things like the 3 Gorges Dam, where algae blooms have occurred, might ameliorate the some of the impacts of that particular clusterf%$#.
This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference on Friday. The justices did not add any new cases to their docket for the term – they did that on Friday afternoon – nor did they call for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in any cases. But one order today in particular was significant: The justices declined to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholding the Obama administration’s “net neutrality” rules, which (generally speaking) required internet service providers to treat all traffic on the internet equally.
The rules, which were issued in 2015, have since been replaced by a 2018 order by the Federal Communications Commission eliminating net neutrality, so the justices were not expected to weigh in on the merits of these cases. Instead, the real question was the fate of the D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding the rules: Would the Supreme Court allow it to stand – which would mean that it could serve as precedent for future cases – or would the justices instead invalidate the D.C. Circuit’s decision and send it back with directions to dismiss the cases as moot (a doctrine known as Munsingwear vacatur), because the net neutrality rules are no longer in effect?
Roberts and Kavanaugh both recused, which is probably why the precedent was allowed to stand.
Implied, but not directly stated is that these crimes were basically racist cops busting kids because they were black. The vernacular term is, "Contempt of Cop," and this is a well-deserved f%$# you racist law enforcement:
President Reuven Rivlin and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called on members of the Ethiopian community who have criminal records for disturbing public order to submit requests to have them purged, in honor of the holiday of Sigd.
“Out of a desire to complete a process of healing the rifts, and to increase Ethiopian immigrants’ trust in the law enforcement and judicial authorities, the president and the justice minister call on Ethiopian minors and young people who have been tried in the past for disturbing public order and who were not given jail terms to submit requests to purge their criminal record,” the statement said.
………
Two years ago, the Committee for Eradicating Racism Against Ethiopian Immigrants published a report stating that the Israeli authorities discriminated against Ethiopian immigrants in various areas, including law enforcement.
The report, which was adopted by the government, noted that the number
of criminal cases and indictments against Ethiopian Israelis was significantly higher than their proportion of the population. ……… “The power of the institution of pardons is the ability to discuss
Israeli issues that demand going beyond the letter of the law to serve
the public interest,” said Rivlin.
“Ethiopian immigrants have experienced discrimination from the
establishment and Israeli society; they suffer from stigmas and negative
stereotypes and are exposed to exclusion and prejudice, and even from
physical and verbal violence."
“It is our duty as a society to do everything to deal with the racism within us and uproot it, and all the authorities are obligated to
combat the phenomenon of labeling, exclusion and discrimination of any
kind,” Rivlin continued. “Our call is another step in the war against
labeling and exclusion, another step toward healing the rift that has
been created between Ethiopian immigrants and the establishment and
society.”
Retraining the police, and firing the racist ones would be a good next step.
Needless to say, not even this weak of this could possibly happen in the United States, because it would be followed by a sh%$ storm from the racist right, including hand wringing from the right wing talking heads, and death threats from their followers.
I came across the 2nd image online, and thought, "Is that Mr. Spock using a circular slide rule in the 23rd century?"
Why yes, yes it is.
Given Gene Roddenberry's background, he flew aircraft in WWII and was an airline pilot for TWA after the war, I'm thinking that at least one of these probably came from him.
Spock and slide rules: This is like a total geek-gasm.
How to tax digital companies (Tax Research UK) Basically, taxes based on gross revenues and users in country. Should apply to any company that uses subsidiaries in tax havens **COUGH** Ireland **COUGH** and dodgy profit shifting.
BREAKING: Major law enforcement agency in #Ukraine caught out spying on main synagogue in #Kiev with bugging devices. Chief Rabbi of Kiev appeals to int’l community for help https://t.co/Hk5HtqrgVZ This is just bizarre. Why would they be bugging a synagogue??
Last year, an enterprising advertising executive based in Boston, Massachusetts, had an idea: Instead of using his sophisticated mobile surveillance techniques to figure out which consumers might be interested in buying shoes, cars, or any of the other products typically advertised online, what if he used the same technology to figure out which women were potentially contemplating abortion, and send them ads on behalf of anti-choice organizations?
The executive—John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising—set to work. He put together PowerPoint presentations touting his capabilities, and sent them to groups he thought would be interested in reaching “abortion-minded women,” to use anti-choice parlance.
Before long, he’d been hired by RealOptions, a network of crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in Northern California, as well as by the evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services.
Flynn’s endeavors quickly won him attention in the anti-choice world. He was invited to speak at the Family Research Council’s ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit in January this year, and he got a few write-ups in anti-choice press.
In an interview with Live Action News—the website for Live Action, the group run by anti-choice activist Lila Rose that is responsible for bogus attack videos against Planned Parenthood—Flynn gave some details about his strategy. He sends advertisements for his clients to women’s smartphones while they are sitting in Planned Parenthood clinics, using a technology known as “mobile geo-fencing.” He also planned to ping women at methadone clinics and other abortion facilities. His program for Bethany covered five cities: Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; St. Louis, Missouri; and New York City.
“We are very excited to bring our mobile marketing capabilities to the pro-life community,” Flynn told Live Action News.
This is why the self-described "disrupters" in the tech industry need to be kept under a tight regulatory leash.
If you don't find this completely terrifying, you have not been paying attention.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy's $13. Billion carrier of the future, does not have functioning bomb lifts, another "ground breaking" technology that they still have not gotten to work:
The $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets.
Previously undisclosed problems with the 11 elevators for the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. add to long-standing reliability and technical problems with two other core systems -- the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land.
The Advanced Weapons Elevators, which are moved by magnets rather than cables, were supposed to be installed by the vessel’s original delivery date in May 2017. Instead, final installation was delayed by problems including four instances of unsafe “uncommanded movements” since 2015, according to the Navy.
While progress was being made on the carrier’s other flawed systems, the elevator is “our Achilles heel,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer told reporters in August without providing details.
The elevator system is “just another example of the Navy pushing technology risk into design and construction -- without fully demonstrating it,” said Shelby Oakley, a director with the U.S. Government Accountability Office who monitors Navy shipbuilding.
Gee, you think?
Every attempt at making a technological leap on the Ford class carrier has been problematic, whether it's the catapults, arrestor gear, and now, the munitions lifts.
We've seen similar things with the LCS and the Zumwalt class destroyer, and it's all driven by an almost pathological need to minimize crewing.
In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducted that allowed astronomers to get a better idea of its size and shape, while also revealing that it had the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid.
Interestingly enough, there has also been some speculation that based on its shape, 'Oumuamua might actually be an interstellar spacecraft (Breakthrough Listen even monitored it for signs of radio signals!).
A new study by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that 'Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin.
The study – "Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain 'Oumuamua's Peculiar Acceleration?", which recently appeared online – was conducted by Shmuel Bialy and Prof. Abraham Loeb. Whereas Bialy is a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA's Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC), Prof. Loeb is the director of the ITC, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, and the head chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee.
The object has been accelerating away from the sun, which might be caused by out-gassing, but there was no out-gassing on the way in, and the object's rotation has not changed, which would normally happen with out-gassing.
Apparently fueled by anti-Semitism and the bogus narrative that outside forces are scheming to exterminate the white race, Robert Bowers murdered 11 Jewish congregants as they gathered inside their Pittsburgh synagogue, federal prosecutors allege. But despite long-running international efforts to debunk the idea of a “white genocide,” Facebook was still selling advertisers the ability to market to those with an interest in that myth just days after the bloodshed.
Earlier this week, The Intercept was able to select “white genocide conspiracy theory” as a pre-defined “detailed targeting” criterion on the social network to promote two articles to an interest group that Facebook pegged at 168,000 users large and defined as “people who have expressed an interest or like pages related to White genocide conspiracy theory.” The paid promotion was approved by Facebook’s advertising wing. After we contacted the company for comment, Facebook promptly deleted the targeting category, apologized, and said it should have never existed in the first place.
Our reporting technique was the same as one used by the investigative news outlet ProPublica to report, just over one year ago, that in addition to soccer dads and Ariana Grande fans, “the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of ‘Jew hater,’ ‘How to burn jews,’ or, ‘History of “why jews ruin the world.”’” The report exposed how little Facebook was doing to vet marketers, who pay the company to leverage personal information and inclinations in order to gain users’ attention — and who provide the foundation for its entire business model. At the time, ProPublica noted that Facebook “said it would explore ways to fix the problem, such as limiting the number of categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed to buyers.” Rob Leathern, a Facebook product manager, assured the public, “We know we have more work to do, so we’re also building new guardrails in our product and review processes to prevent other issues like this from happening in the future.”
Leathern’s “new guardrails” don’t seem to have prevented Facebook from manually approving our ad buy the same day it was submitted, despite its explicit labeling as “White Supremacy – Test.”
Facebook is really a seriously evil organization, and it has been baked into it from the very beginning.
The measles outbreak continues to grow, thanks to the anti-vaxxers, and now some Shuls are sending a strong message to them.
According to TLS, a few Shuls in Lakewood have sent out letters to their Mispallelim that they should not bring anyone who was not vaccinated into the building.
A number of Lakewood schools have also taken a stance, and have informed their parent body that children who are not vaccinated are not permitted into school.
………
The Viznitz Monsey Girls School announced that any child who is not immunized, can’t return to school for 21 days. No “religious exemption” is accepted. A religious exemption does not work when there is a measles outbreak.
Rockland County’s Commissioner of Health, Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, announced Wednesday that all schools in the Village of New Square are now required to keep students who are un-vaccinated or under-vaccinated against the disease home until 21 days have passed since the last case of measles is confirmed in the county.
A group working to deradicalize white supremacists had been set to receive funding from the Department of Homeland Security until Trump aide Katharine Gorka worked to eliminate its grant.
This is what happens when you employ actual Nazi sympathizers on your staff.
Fines are just a cost of doing business, but if Zuckerberg or Page, or Brin or Pichai spend 24 (or 240) months behind bars, there will be a deterrent effect:
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a comprehensive new privacy bill he claims will finally address the lack of meaningful privacy protections for American consumers. Wyden says his Consumer Data Protection Act is a direct response to the ocean of privacy scandals that have plagued the internet for the better part of the last decade. The Senator’s proposal would dramatically beef up Federal Trade Commission authority and funding to crack down on privacy violations, let consumers opt out of having their sensitive personal data collected and sold, and impose harsh new penalties on a massive data monetization industry that has for years claimed that self-regulation is all that’s necessary to protect consumer privacy. Wyden’s bill proposes that companies whose revenue exceeds $1 billion per year—or warehouse data on more than 50 million consumers or consumer devices—submit “annual data protection reports” to the government detailing all steps taken to protect the security and privacy of consumers’ personal information. The proposed legislation would also levy penalties up to 20 years in prison and $5 million in fines for executives who knowingly mislead the FTC in these reports. The FTC’s authority over such matters is currently limited—one of the reasons telecom giants have been eager to move oversight of their industry from the Federal Communications Commission to the FTC.
It does not have a snow-ball's chance in hell of passing, but putting prison on the table is the only way to reign these guys in.
How do you say “dead woman walking” in German? Today, the answer to that question is “Angela Merkel” after the German leader announced that she would be seeking neither re-election as chancellor in 2021, nor re-election as head of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this December.
In truth it's more serious than this witticism posits, as Merkel, taking the baton from Gerhard Schröder, did some very bad things:
But there’s another side to this story. However highly regarded, Chancellor Merkel has repeatedly led governments, coalition or otherwise, that championed the neoliberal dismantling of the country’s “social market economy,” especially in services. Her government also pushed and prodded the rest of the European Union in a comparable direction. In Germany specifically, the end result has been the growth of a two-tiered economy, which has heightened economic insecurity, created declining living standards for much of the population, and exacerbated inequality. In other words, too little “social,” too much “market.”
The combined beggar thy neighbor/beggar thy citizenry policies have been a disaster, but they are integral to the neoliberal project.
What is notable is that the two rotors are further apart than those of the S-79, it has wings, (and canards) and the propulsor is a turbofan rather than a propeller.
First, it's pretty clear from this that the rotors are probably not as stiff, and that the controls are less sophisticated, requiring more space between the two rotor disks to avoid the blades striking each other.
The wings, and the turbofan propulsion, imply that it is designed for a much higher speed, probably at the expense of range, noise, and low speed accelleration
That being said, I am profoundly dubious of their claim of a top speed of 700 km/h (440 mph/370 kts) for any rotorcraft:
Pictures of a Kamov design for an advanced attack helicopter have appeared on a Russian website. The images appear to have been leaked amid competition between the Kamov and Mil Moscow Helicopter design bureaus within Russian Helicopters to develop the country’s future high-speed combat helicopter, called SBV. Russian Helicopters announced at the Army 2017 forum in Moscow last September that it had signed a two-year contract with the Russian defense ministry to refine concepts for a high-speed attack helicopter, with both Kamov and Mil working on designs. ……… The leaked photographs show Kamov General Designer Sergei Mikheyev presenting the bureau’s concept, a winged coaxial-rotor, twin-turbofan compound helicopter reportedly capable of up to 700 kph (380 kt.) This compares with a speed of more than 400 kph claimed for Mil’s single-main-rotor design. ……… Propulsion is provided by what appear to be a pair of turbofans mounted in the aft fuselage and driving the rotor gearbox via a pair of shafts that project forward from the engines—an arrangement reminiscent of the shaft-driven lift fan in the Lockheed MartinF-35B. The engines likely direct most of their power forward to shaft-drive the rotors for takeoff, hover and low-speed maneuvers, then shift more of the power to thrust as forward speed increases. The rotor system has a pair of contra-rotating three-blade rotors with swept tips.
On Thursday, Russian space officials held a news conference to lay out their findings into an October 11 accident that involved the launch of a Soyuz FG rocket and its spacecraft. The crew of NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin escaped safely, but the rocket was destroyed.
The problem, the officials said, boiled down to a "bent" sensor on one of the rocket's four boosters that failed to properly signal stage separation. This caused one of the booster stages to improperly separate from the rocket, which can be seen in the video released by the space agency. This booster then struck the core of the rocket, causing a significant jolt and triggering one of the Soyuz spacecraft's automatic escape systems.
According to the officials, the sensor rod was bent by a little more than 6 degrees, and this happened during assembly of the rocket. The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, has classified this as a handling error. To fix the process, Soyuz rockets already assembled for launch with their booster packs will be disassembled and reassembled to assure that similar mistakes have not occurred.
It should be noted that, by the standards of man-rated boosters, the Soyuz is quite safe, and the escape system functioned as it should have.
Still, a bummer for the astronauts/cosmonauts and ground crew, no doubt.
Soon after she assumed office to represent Arizona’s Tucson-based district in the House of Representatives, Martha McSally voted for a Republican-backed measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act. McSally’s “aye” vote for H.R. 596 was recorded on the evening of Feb. 3, 2015, and came as her party was intent on undoing, tweaking or rolling back the controversial 2010 health care law implemented by President Barack Obama and Democrats. A year later, McSally voted again to repeal the law. ……… And in May 2017, McSally voted for the GOP's American Health Care Act, which revived their hopes of repealing central portions of the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare." That legislation, if passed, would have reduced the federal deficit but resulted in 23 million more uninsured Americans through 2026, a Congressional Budget Office analysis found, though McSally's campaign says that estimate was based on "bad projections" about the Affordable Care Act that never materialized. McSally urged her colleagues, gathered on the day of that 2017 vote in a private meeting, that it was time to get this “f---ing thing” done, according to the Associated Press.
………
McSally told The Arizona Republic on Saturday that she's being "character assassinated" by her critics on health care.
………
"Well, Sean, I did vote to repeal and replace Obamacare on that House bill — I’m getting my ass kicked for it right now because it’s being misconstrued by the Democrats," she said. "They’re trying to, you know, invoke fear in people who have family members or loved ones with pre-existing conditions."
………
Everywhere she goes, [McSally's Democratic opponent Kyrsten] Sinema said, people "are concerned about Martha's attempts to roll back protections for people with pre-existing health conditions, which she has done several times."
(emphasis mine)
It's a well deserved ass kicking, stop whining.
You deserve every bit of opprobrium that you have earned for trying to take people's (still pretty dysfunctional) healthcare away.
Truth be told, I do think that many of these problems can be fixed, but since any meaningful action would involve the systematic dismemberment of Facebook, they ain't the ones to do it.
Michael Olenick: The Real Story of "MAGA Bomber" Cesar Sayoc's Foreclosure (naked capitalism) "I can’t vouch for Sayoc’s skills as a stripper but in most other areas of life he seems to be a bumbling idiot, an easy target for Countrywide, Indymac, Stern, Goldstein, and Obama with his ignored promises for hope and change. Then, finally, like so many others who’d been abandoned and forgotten, Donald J. Trump."
Let's have former volunteer fireman, and sometime TV producer, and writer, Rod Serling talk about bigotry: (start at about 13:15 if you do not want to listen to the whole 96 minutes)
This speech is no less on point today than it was 42 years ago.
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I find that if I wait until year's end I miss stuff from earlier in the year.
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