- Airbus 'Glitch' That Went Undetected For Years Risked Failure Of Critical In-Flight Systems
Boeing’s unprecedented stumble with the 737 MAX 8, along with President Trump’s trade war, have taken a toll on Boeing’s commercial aerospace business, as its Q2 earnings report, released earlier this week, confirmed. And although Airbus, Boeing’s greatest rival, is now the undisputed leader in building planes for commercial flight, but a scandal or setback could easily shake investors’ confidence in Airbus, and with good reason: reports about potentially dangerous software glitches like this one shouldn’t be ignored.
The Register, a British tech news website, reports that some models of Airbus’s A350 airliners, the company’s ‘workhorse’ model, still need to be rebooted after exactly 149 hours of continuous use, even after the EU’s aviation authority ordered Airbus to fix the glitch ASAP.
Now, the EU is issuing a reminder to pilots to make sure to turn their planes on and off again after 149 hours of power-on time, or risk the loss of critical systems in-flight.
In a mandatory airworthiness directive (AD) reissued earlier this week, EASA urged operators to turn their A350s off and on again to prevent “partial or total loss of some avionics systems or functions.”
The revised AD, effective from tomorrow (26 July), exempts only those new A350-941s which have had modified software pre-loaded on the production line. For all other A350-941s, operators need to completely power the airliner down before it reaches 149 hours of continuous power-on time.
Of even greater concern, the regulator and Airbus weren’t aware of the glitch until 2017, when the original AD was issued, as pilots started suffering unexplained losses of certain systems, putting them and their passengers and crew in a very risky situation.
And this glitch apparently went undetected for years. It was only after a few planes suffered in-flight systems failures that they started to look into it.
Concerningly, the original 2017 AD was brought about by “in-service events where a loss of communication occurred between some avionics systems and avionics network” (sic). The impact of the failures ranged from “redundancy loss” to “complete loss on a specific function hosted on common remote data concentrator and core processing input/output modules.”
In layman’s English, this means that prior to 2017, at least some A350s flying passengers were suffering unexplained failures of potentially flight-critical digital systems.
The glitch is similar to one of the problems that afflicted Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, as the Register explains.
Airbus’ rival Boeing very publicly suffered from a similar time-related problem with its 787 Dreamliner: back in 2015 a memory overflow bug was discovered that caused the 787’s generators to shut themselves down after 248 days of continual power-on operation. A software counter in the generators’ firmware, it was found, would overflow after that precise length of time. The Register is aware that this is not the only software-related problem to have plagued the 787 during its earlier years.
It is common for airliners to be left powered on while parked at airport gates so maintainers can carry out routine systems checks between flights, especially if the aircraft is plugged into ground power.
The remedy for the A350-941 problem is straightforward according to the AD: install Airbus software updates for a permanent cure, or switch the aeroplane off and on again.
Airlines that own these planes and are thus subject to the order include Air France, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Lufthansa, Air China and Taiwan’s China Airlines.
It also shows that the problem of over-reliance on AI and other advanced software isn’t limited to Boeing: As these technologies become more advanced, and these aerospace companies start to increasingly rely on them, these issues are bound to become more widespread. So, does that make air travel safer, or more dangerous?
- Time Runs Out On Operation Ukraine
Change is now possible in Ukraine. The conflict between it and Russia has been frozen for nearly five years thanks to former President Petro Poroshenko.
He’s gone. Volodmyr Zelensky is in power along with Zelensky’s political party which won close to a clear majority in Verkovna Rada elections recently.
Zelensky’s Servent of the People party won 253 seats out of 450, giving him not only the presidency but no need to build a coalition government with smaller parties of known foreign-controlled players, like Yulia Tymoshenko (Fatherland) or from Poroshenko’s party itself, European Solidarity.
Source: Wikipedia
This was the biggest fear coming into these elections. Ukraine’s system is mixed using both proportional allocation (225 seats) and majoritarian allocation (225).
Zelensky has a mandate now to begin the process of tearing down the barriers to sanity Poroshenko left in his wake. The big one being, of course, the war against separatists in the Donbass.
For the first few months of his presidency Zelensky has sent mixed signals as to what he intends to do on the world stage. He’s offered to meet with Putin, who then asked saliently, ‘to what end?’
He’s tried to pull back on the conflict only to see the shelling continue and, at times, intensify.
Zelensky is dealing with the same kind of bureaucratic revolt against change that Donald Trump has dealt with. In fact, it’s the same people running the both shows.
If there was one thing that has become glaringly obvious over the past three years it is that the coup attempt by the bureaucracy against Trump it is that much of it was cooked up in Ukraine under the dutiful eye of former President Poroshenko.
With Poroshenko out of the way, there is still the inertia of those he put in important positions. Ukraine is practically a failed state so don’t expect good news. If anything it’s become a playground for outside forces to start more fires as Zelensky tries to stamp out the ones currently burning.
All of these fires have one goal in mind, keep Ukraine and Russia separated and in conflict. This is being directed by both U.S. and British interests, if the Steele Dossier tells us anything.
That is the way these things go. But, that said, what Zelensky can have control over are the big issues setting Russia and Ukraine at odds. Obviously the Donbass is the big one.
But what’s really pressing is the gas supply contract between Gazprom and Naftogaz. It’s due to expire in December. I’ve written extensively about the machinations surrounding this and it’s worth your review.
The U.S. is trying to run out the clock on these negotiations by slowing down completion of Nordstream 2 and put Gazprom in the position of not supplying its written contracts with Europe. If Nordstream 2 can’t deliver and there is no supply agreement with Naftogaz then Gazprom can’t deliver contracted gas for the first time ever.
So I found it very interesting that Zelensky is now openly asking for talks with Gazprom and Naftogaz about the supply contract. This is not a difficult deal to get done. But, it has some outstanding issues. From TASS:
After securing control over the Verkhovna Rada, the team of Vladimir Zelensky indicated that it is ready for new gas negotiations with Russia. According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s experts, Kiev’s decisiveness is explained by the pressure from the European Union and Ukraine’s interest in receiving transit revenues from Russia. Meanwhile, the real chances of a new transit agreement have grown, the newspaper wrote. Ukrtransgas has not paid for services since March and its debts threaten the company’s stability and question the reliability of its supplies, the European Federation of Energy Traders (EFET) said.
But none of these issues will be difficult to resolve. Poroshenko left Ukraine at the mercy of Putin and Gazprom because they need the gas and the transit fees while Russia has Nordstream 2 and Turkstream coming on line next year.
Putin energy embargoed Ukraine earlier in the year making things really dicey for Zelensky. At the end of the day, however, Putin and Gazprom will negotiate a deal quickly that will pay Ukraine based on market demand for that gas to satisfy European regulators allaying worries over Ukraine’s finances.
Europe has made it clear it is no longer interested in paying for its failed Ukrainian project. Europe’s gas demand is rising so quickly that there will be room for everyone in the market. The only thing holding up completion of Nordstream 2 is a final permit from Denmark, which Gazprom expects to finally receive in October.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller is not sanguine about the prospects of a deal as there are outstanding court cases involved, but the long-term political dividends of signing some kind of deal, even an extension of the existing one pending a more thorough overhaul, would be immense.
Getting that problem solved would build trust between Putin and Zelensky and could lead to unwinding the problems downstream of 2014’s U.S. sponsored coup against Viktor Yanukovich.
There are so many forces arrayed within the U.S., UK, northern European and Israeli governments against reconciliation between Ukraine and Russia that it will be difficult for Zelensky and Putin to achieve much.
Europe’s new leadership, under Ursula von der Leyen, will be more confrontational with Russia while the jury is out on Boris Johnson’s new UK government and whether he can even remain in power for long.
But it is clear that the people of Europe are tired of these games and want change. The Ukrainian elections are proof of this. And that, by itself, is something worth cheering.
* * *
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- The Tyranny Of The Police-State Disguised As Law-And-Order
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around – they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.”
– Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Enough already.
Enough with the distractions. Enough with the partisan jousting.
Enough with the sniping and name-calling and mud-slinging that do nothing to make this country safer or freer or more just.
We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long.
We are approaching a reckoning.
This is the point, as the poet W. B. Yeats warned, when things fall apart and anarchy is loosed upon the world.
We have seen this convergence before in Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s Russia, in Mussolini’s Italy, and in Mao’s China: the rise of strongmen and demagogues, the ascendency of profit-driven politics over deep-seated principles, the warring nationalism that seeks to divide and conquer, the callous disregard for basic human rights and dignity, and the silence of people who should know better.
Yet no matter how many times the world has been down this road before, we can’t seem to avoid repeating the deadly mistakes of the past. This is not just playing out on a national and international scale. It is wreaking havoc at the most immediate level, as well, creating rifts and polarities within families and friends, neighborhoods and communities that keep the populace warring among themselves and incapable of presenting a united front in the face of the government’s goose-stepping despotism.
We are definitely in desperate need of a populace that can stand united against the government’s authoritarian tendencies.
Surely we can manage to find some common ground in the midst of the destructive, disrupting, diverting, discordant babble being beamed down at us by the powers-that-be? After all, there are certain self-evident truths—about the source of our freedoms, about the purpose of government, about how we expect to be treated by those we appoint to serve us in government offices, about what to do when the government abuses our rights and our trust, etc.—that we should be able to agree on, no matter how we might differ politically.
Disagree all you want about healthcare, abortion and immigration—hot-button issues that are guaranteed to stir up the masses, secure campaign contributions and turn political discourse into a circus free-for-all—but never forget that our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain principles that should be non-negotiable.
For instance, for the first time in the nation’s history, it is expected that the federal deficit will surpass $1 trillion this year, not to mention the national debt which is approaching $23 trillion. There’s also $21 trillion in government spending that cannot be accounted for or explained. For those in need of a quick reminder: “A budget deficit is the difference between what the federal government spends and what it takes in. The national debt is the result of the federal government borrowing money to cover years and years of budget deficits.” Right now, the U.S. government is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation’s sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating.
Yet no matter how we might differ about how the government allocates its spending, surely we can agree that the government’s irresponsible spending, which has saddled us with insurmountable debt, is pushing the country to the edge of financial and physical ruin.
That’s just one example of many that shows the extent to which the agents of the American police state are shredding the constitutional fabric of the nation, eclipsing the rights of the American people, and perverting basic standards of decency.
Let me give you a few more.
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. The U.S. military empire’s determination to police the rest of the world has resulted in more than 1.3 million U.S. troops being stationed at roughly 1000 military bases in over 150 countries around the world. That doesn’t include the number of private contractors pulling in hefty salaries at taxpayer expense. In Afghanistan, for example, private contractors outnumber U.S. troops three to one.
No matter how we might differ about the role of the U.S. military in foreign affairs, surely we can agree that America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin.
All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which they might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump. These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.
Yet no matter how we might differ about how success or failure of past or present presidential administrations, surely we can agree that the president should not be empowered to act as an imperial dictator with permanent powers.
Increasingly, at home, we’re facing an unbelievable show of force by government agents. For example, with alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, and all the government does is shrug and promise to do better. Just recently, in fact, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals cleared a cop who aimed for a family’s dog (who showed no signs of aggression), missed, and instead shot a 10-year-old lying on the ground. Indeed, there are countless incidents that happen every day in which Americans are shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, or challenge an order. Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.
No matter how we might differ about where to draw that blue line of allegiance to the police state, surely we can agree that police shouldn’t go around terrorizing and shooting innocent, unarmed children and adults or be absolved of wrongdoing for doing so.
Nor can we turn a blind eye to the transformation of America’s penal system from one aimed at protecting society from dangerous criminals to a profit-driven system that dehumanizes and strips prisoners of every vestige of their humanity. For example, in Illinois, as part of a “training exercise” for incoming cadets, prison guards armed with batons and shields rounded up 200 handcuffed female inmates, marched them to the gymnasium, then forced them to strip naked (including removing their tampons and pads), “bend over and spread open their vaginal and anal cavities,” while male prison guards promenaded past or stood staring. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the entire dehumanizing, demoralizing mass body cavity strip search—orchestrated not for security purposes but as an exercise in humiliation—was legal. Be warned, however: this treatment will not be limited to those behind bars. In our present carceral state, there is no difference between the treatment meted out to a law-abiding citizen and a convicted felon: both are equally suspect and treated as criminals, without any of the special rights and privileges reserved for the governing elite. In a carceral state, there are only two kinds of people: the prisoners and the prison guards.
No matter how we might differ about where to draw the line when it comes to prisoners’ rights, surely we can agree that no one—woman, man or child—should be subjected to such degrading treatment in the name of law and order.
In Washington, DC, in contravention of longstanding laws that restrict the government’s ability to deploy the military on American soil, the Pentagon has embarked on a secret mission of “undetermined duration” that involves flying Black Hawk helicopters over the nation’s capital, backed by active-duty and reserve soldiers. In addition to the increasing militarization of the police—a de facto standing army—this military exercise further acclimates the nation to the sight and sounds of military personnel on American soil and the imposition of martial law.
No matter how we might differ about the deference due to those in uniform, whether military or law enforcement, surely we can agree that America’s Founders had good reason to warn against the menace of a national police force—a.k.a. a standing army—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution.
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, disguised as “the better good,” marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and carried out by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions. For example, in Pennsylvania, a school district is threatening to place children in foster care if parents don’t pay their overdue school lunch bills. In Florida, a resident was fined $100,000 for a dirty swimming pool and overgrown grass at a house she no longer owned. In Kentucky, government bureaucrats sent a cease-and-desist letter to a church ministry, warning that the group is breaking the law by handing out free used eyeglasses to the homeless. These petty tyrannies inflicted on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace are what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.
No matter how we might differ about the extent to which the government has the final say in how it flexes it power and exerts its authority, surely we can agree that the tyranny of the Nanny State—disguised as “the better good,” marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and inflicted on all those who do not belong to the elite ruling class that gets to call the shots— should not be allowed to pave over the Constitution.
At its core, this is not a debate about politics, or constitutionalism, or even tyranny disguised as law-and-order. This is a condemnation of the monsters with human faces that have infiltrated our government.
For too long now, the American people have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.
Yet the unavoidable truth is that the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
No matter how you rationalize it, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
So how do you fight back?
How do you fight injustice? How do you push back against tyranny? How do you vanquish evil?
You don’t fight it by hiding your head in the sand.
We have ignored the warning signs all around us for too long.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government has ripped the Constitution to shreds and left us powerless in the face of its power grabs, greed and brutality.
What we are grappling with today is a government that is cutting great roads through the very foundations of freedom in order to get after its modern devils. Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow.
Therein lies the problem.
The consequences of this failure to do our due diligence in asking the right questions, demanding satisfactory answers, and holding our government officials accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law has pushed us to the brink of a nearly intolerable state of affairs.
Intolerable, at least, to those who remember what it was like to live in a place where freedom, due process and representative government actually meant something. Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we now find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives.
The hour grows late in terms of restoring the balance of power and reclaiming our freedoms, but it may not be too late. The time to act is now, using all methods of nonviolent resistance available to us.
“Don’t sit around waiting for the two corrupted established parties to restore the Constitution or the Republic,” Naomi Wolf once warned. Waiting and watching will get us nowhere fast.
If you’re watching, you’re not doing.
Easily mesmerized by the government’s political theater—the endless congressional hearings and investigations that go nowhere, the president’s reality show antics, the warring factions, the electoral drama—we have become a society of watchers rather than activists who are distracted by even the clumsiest government attempts at sleight-of-hand.
It’s time for good men and women to do something. And soon.
Wake up and take a good, hard look around you. Start by recognizing evil and injustice and tyranny for what they are. Stop being apathetic. Stop being neutral. Stop being accomplices. Stop being distracted by the political theater staged by the Deep State: they want you watching the show while they manipulate things behind the scenes. Refuse to play politics with your principles. Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils.
As British statesman Edmund Burke warned, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing.”
- Mapping All The Major Bitcoin Forks
The emergence of Bitcoin took the world by storm through its simplicity and innovation. Yet, as Visual Capitalist’s Ashley Viens details, plenty of confusion remains around the term itself.
The Bitcoin blockchain – not to be confused with the bitcoin cryptocurrency – involves a vast global network of computers operating on the same distributed database to process massive volumes of data every second.
These transactions tell the network how to alter this distributed database in real-time, which makes it crucial for everyone to agree on how these changes should be applied. When the community can’t come to a mutual agreement on what changes, or when such rule changes should take effect, it results in a blockchain fork.
Today’s unique subway-style map by Bitcoin Magazine shows the dramatic and major forks that have occurred for Bitcoin. But what exactly is a Blockchain fork?
Types of Blockchain Forks
Forks are common practice in the software industry and happen for one of two reasons:
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Split consensus within the community
These forks are generally disregarded by the community because they are temporary, except in extreme cases. The longer of the two chains is used to continue building the blockchain. -
Changes to the underlying rules of the blockchain
A permanent fork which requires an upgrade to the current software in order to continue participating in the network.
There are four major types of forks that can occur:
1. Soft Forks
Soft forks are like gradual software upgrades—bug fixes, security checks, and new features—for those that upgrade right away.
These forks are “backwards compatible” with the older software; users who haven’t upgraded still have access to the network but may not be able to use all functionality in the current version.
2. Hard Forks
Hard forks are like a new OS release—upgrading is mandatory to continue using the software. Because of this, hard forks aren’t compatible with older versions of the network.
Hard forks are a permanent division of the blockchain. As long as enough people support both chains, however, they will both continue to exist.
The three types of hard forks are:
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Planned
Scheduled upgrades to the network, giving users a chance to prepare. These forks typically involve abandoning the old chain. -
Contentious
Caused by disagreements in the community, forming a new chain. This usually involves major changes to the code. -
Spin-off Coins
Changes to Bitcoin’s code that create new coins. Litecoin is an example of this—key changes included reducing mining time from 10 minutes to 2.5 minutes, and increasing the coin supply from 21 million to 84 million.
3. Codebase Forks
Codebase forks copy the Bitcoin code, allowing developers to make minor tweaks without having to develop the entire blockchain code from scratch. Codebase forks can create a new cryptocurrency or cause unintentional blockchain forks.
4. Blockchain Forks
Blockchain forks involve branching or splitting a blockchain’s whole transaction history. Outcomes range from “orphan” blocks to new cryptocurrencies.
Splitting off the Bitcoin network to form a new currency is much like a religious schism – while most of the characteristics and history are preserved, a fork causes the new network to develop a distinct identity.
Summarizing Major Bitcoin Forks
Descriptions of major forks that have occurred in the Bitcoin blockchain:
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Core
The first iteration of Bitcoin was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Future generations of Bitcoin (aka Bitcoin 0.1.0) were renamed Bitcoin Core, or Bitcore, as other blockchains and codebases formed. -
BTC1
A codebase fork of Bitcoin. Developers released a hard fork protocol called Segwit2x, with the intention of having all Bitcoin users eventually migrate to the Segwit2x protocol. However, it failed to gain traction and is now considered defunct. -
Bitcoin ABC
Also a codebase fork of Bitcoin, Bitcoin ABC was intentionally designed to be incompatible with all Bitcoin iterations at some point. ABC branched off to form Bitcoin Cash in 2017. -
Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, Other Fork Coins
After the successful yet contentious launch of Bitcoin Cash, other fork coins began to emerge. Unlike the disagreement surrounding Bitcoin Cash, most were simply regarded as a way to create new coins.
Some of the above forks were largely driven by ideology (BTC1), some because of mixed consensus on which direction to take a hard fork (Bitcoin ABC), while others were mainly profit-driven (Bitcoin Clashic)—or a mix of all three.
Where’s the Next Fork in the Road?
Forks are considered an inevitability in the blockchain community. Many believe that forks help ensure that everyone involved—developers, miners, and investors—all have a say when disagreements occur.
Bitcoin has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Crypto investors should be aware that Bitcoin, as both a protocol and a currency, is complex and always evolving. Even among experts, there is disagreement on what constitutes a soft or hard fork, and how certain geopolitical events have played a role in Bitcoin’s evolution.
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- Pentagon Wants 16-Year-Old Kids To Fight The Empire's Wars
Authored By Kurt Nimmo via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
The Pentagon is desperate. Far too many millennials are criminals, so luring them in to become the latest crop of bullet stoppers for the state is a nonstarter.
Solution? Recruit 16-year-olds. Most have yet graduated to petty and violent crime, although a lot of them are in video game training for a future of violence and self-destructive stupidity.
It’s not being widely reported in the media. Recruiters are ready to go after tenth-graders. They are itching to snag kids before they engage in a life of crime, or before they have fully-mature brains (well, some of them) and decide to kill and be killed isn’t much of a career choice.
First, though, the state will have to give these little darlings the “right” to vote for a crop of handpicked carnival barkers, euphemistically called representatives of the people.
I don’t know about you, but when I was sixteen all I thought about was cruising in my father’s car with a freshly minted state permission to drive card in my wallet as I searched desperately for girls willing to make-out in the backseat.
It took a year or two before I was politically aware, mostly as a result of Richard Nixon’s plan to “draft” me (polite speak for slavery) into the meat grinder he inherited from LBJ, aka the Vietnam War, where I would either be minced, traumatized for life, or lucky enough to stay behind lines and scrub latrines while other kids fought and senselessly died.
Around this time college, high school students, and millions of other concerned Americans marched against the war, a truly remarkable one-time event now impossible in America because the military is “volunteer” and our wars are “humanitarian.”
COMMENTARY: Why we should lower the age for recruitment to 16 https://t.co/CKn974qxis pic.twitter.com/y3BKi6z3PK
— ArmyTimes (@ArmyTimes) July 11, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Most of these so-called volunteers “joined” the military because they have so few other career options (if you consider killing other people a career choice). Brought up in largely single-parent homes and taught all manner of nonsense in public schools that now resemble locked down prisons, these “volunteers” are completely ignorant of the reason the state needs them to fight and die.
It’s all about the psychopathic dominance of a tiny elite. The elite doesn’t send its Harvard-bound kids into its neoliberal meat grinder (because so many of these silver spoon darlings have bone spurs and such).
But this system is breaking down, mostly because the state upholds standards that worked in the 1940s and 50s, but are completely irrelevant now. They insist it is not permissible to fill the empty ranks with criminals. Hired killers must be held to the highest moral standard.
So, like the United Kingdom, the US is looking to 16-year old kids to fight in the name of the corporate state and, of course, our freedom to live hand-to-mouth in a political and cultural cesspool.
Democrats like the idea of 16-year-old voters. Most are far more impressionable and less cantankerous than your average middle-age deplorable. They also approve the idea of feeding kids into the military, but you don’t hear a lot about that because Democrats and progressives don’t think much about war. It’s a big blind spot for them. There are more important issues, for instance trans-gender bathrooms.
I don’t think this is going to turn out like they think it will. Far too many 16-year olds will flunk out of basic training. Most don’t have what it takes, never mind all those formative years killing bad guys on computer screens.
If The Donald gets us into a big shooting war over in the Middle East or in the South China Sea, the mandatory servitude of conscription will be required. It won’t be a turkey shoot like Iraq or Libya. It will be an existential threat, so all males —criminally inclined or not — between 16 and 45 will be inducted, same as they were after FDR tricked the Japanese into invading Pearl Harbor, or Johnson said the North Vietnamese attacked our warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
But the kids are oblivious. They were taught to be so. And the propaganda machine will tell them they’re sacrificing their lives (or limbs and mental health) for the noble cause of star-spangled democracy, which most of them know close to zero about.
- US Targets Vast 'Food Corruption Scam' In Fresh Venezuela Sanctions
Though international and mainstream media have largely moved on from Venezuela following a failed US-backed coup against socialist president Nicolas Maduro, the US continues to hit the economically collapsed country with more sanctions.
On Thursday the US Treasury announced it’s taking aim at a vast “food corruption network,” imposing sanctions on 10 people and 13 groups alleged to be running a Venezuelan food subsidy scheme, the proceeds of which went straight to lining Maduro’s pockets.
The Treasury called it a “vast” corruption network profiting from “overvalued contracts” tapping to into Caracas’ food subsidy program, and spearheaded by Colombian national Alex Nain Saab.
Maduro and Alex Nain Saab, Source: Semana Newspaper Reuters reports, based on the Treasury statement, that “Saab bribed Maduro’s three stepsons to win no-bid, overvalued government contracts, said Sigal P. Mandelker, under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.”
“Alex Saab engaged with Maduro insiders to run a wide-scale corruption network they callously used to exploit Venezuela’s starving population,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Thursday.
“Treasury is targeting those behind Maduro’s sophisticated corruption schemes, as well as the global network of shell companies that profit from” the country’s military-controlled food distribution program, Mnuchin added.
Saab’s operation is said to have imported “only a fraction of the food” that was supposed to go to the poor and needy of Venezuela, all while reaping major profits from overvalued contracts. Other individuals considered close to Maduro were also named as part of the new sanctions roll out, including a stepson of the Venezuelan president.
Alex Nain Saab, left. The Treasury also detailed how Saab was previously involved in a secret scheme to swindle gold from the cash strapped Latin American country, which benefited corrupt Maduro government elites. Reuters detailed further:
Saab also began in 2018 to help the Venezuelan government liquidate gold mined in Venezuela and convert it into foreign currency, Treasury said. The gold was then flown to destinations including Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, it said.
The United States imposed sanctions on the Venezuelan gold sector last year. U.S. envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams estimated on Wednesday that Maduro’s government had sold roughly $1 billion in gold in 2019.
Interestingly, this week new Miami Herald report detailed that the Trump administration “appears willing to offer guarantees to Nicolas Maduro that the U.S. will leave him alone if he leaves Venezuela.”
Though originating from an unnamed “high official” in the US administration, it’s the first time any Trump officials have suggested the US may be willing to “negotiate” an exit for Maduro.
- Escobar: How To Kill 10 Million Afghans And Not Win
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
Afghanistan, bombed and invaded under the Cheney regime, was never a just war…
“We’re like policemen. We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. But I don’t want to kill 10 million people. Afghanistan could be wiped off the face of the Earth. I don’t want to go that route.”
Even considering the rolling annals of demented Trumpism, bolstered every single day by a torrent of outrageous tweets and quotes, what you’ve just read is simply astonishing. Here we have the President of the United States asserting that, 1) The US is not fighting a war in Afghanistan; 2) If the US wanted a war, the President would win it in a week; 3) He would kill 10 million people – although he doesn’t want it; 4) “Afghanistan” as a whole, for no meaningful reason, could be wiped off the face of the Earth.
Trump said all of the above while sitting alongside Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan – who, in a deft move, is trying to appease the White House even as he carefully positions Pakistan as a solid node of Eurasia integration alongside Russia, China and Iran.
When Trump says the US is not fighting a war in Afghanistan, he’s on to something, although it’s doubtful that Team Trump have told the boss that the real game in town, from the beginning, is the CIA heroin rat line.
It’s also doubtful Trump would ask for input from his hated predecessor Barack Obama. Obama may not have killed 10 million people, but the forces under his command did kill scores of Afghans, including countless civilians. And still Obama did not “win” – much less “in a week.”
Barack Obama did entertain the notion of “winning” the war in Afghanistan. After deliberating in solitary confinement for 11 hours, as legend goes, he “methodically” settled for a two-step surge, 21,000 troops plus 30,000. Obama believed the war on Afghanistan was a noble crusade and during his presidential campaign in 2008 always defined it as “the right war.”
Obama defended his surge on humanitarian imperialist grounds; “For the Afghan people, the return of Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people, especially women and girls.” The New York Times and the Washington Post applauded.
But, Kabul, we got a problem. Afghanistan, bombed and invaded under the Cheney regime, was never a “right” or “just” war. There was never any established Taliban connection to 9/11. Plotting and financing for 9/11 involved Saudis and cells in Germany, Pakistan and the UAE. Mullah Omar never dispatched any “terra-rists” on one-way tickets to America.
Nevertheless, the Taliban leadership in Kandahar did agree to a deal – brokered by Moscow – to surrender Osama bin Laden, who, without even the hint of an investigation, was proclaimed the evil 9/11 culprit only a few hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers. The Cheney regime rejected the Taliban offer, as well as a subsequent one, to hand over Osama to a Muslim nation for trial. The Cheney regime only wanted an extradition to the US.
The SCO steps in
With puppet Hamid Karzai barely reigning in Kabul, and the neocons already focused on their real target, Iraq , the occupation of Afghanistan was handed over to NATO. This had already been decided even before 9/11, at the G8 in Genoa in July, when it became clear Washington had a plan to strike Afghanistan by October. The Cheney regime badly needed a beachhead in the intersection of Central Asia and South Asia not only to monitor Russia and China but also to coordinate a drive to take over Central Asia’s massive gas wealth.
Notoriously fickle history in the Hindu Kush ruled otherwise. Incrementally, the Taliban started to get their mojo back throughout the 2010s, to the point that now they control as much as half of the country.
Even that fountain of vanity Gen. David Petraeus – who had crafted the (failed) Iraq surge – always knew the Afghan war was un-winnable. Disgraced Gen. Stanley McChrystal at least was more surgical: “We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number, and to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat.”
Still, certified fun and games were assured by stuff such as Lockheed Martin’s high mobility artillery rocket system laying waste to Pashtun villages and devastating wedding ceremonies. Pentagon propaganda about “low collateral damage” never disguised the absence of real, actionable intel on the ground.
Seymour Hersh argued that Obama’s version of the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 was an elaborate work of fiction – subsequently duly enshrined by Hollywood. One year later, Obama’s surge still had 88,000 soldiers in Afghanistan plus nearly 118,000 contractors. The surge then died a slow, ignominious death.
Anyone remotely familiar with the fractious geopolitics at the intersection of Central and South Asia knows that, for the US military-industrial-security complex, to withdraw from Afghanistan is anathema. Trump may be emitting some noise – but that’s just noise. Bagram air base is an invaluable asset in the Empire of Bases to monitor the evolving Russia-China strategic partnership.
The only feasible solution for Afghanistan is a pan-Eurasia mechanism being advanced by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with Russia and China at the helm, India and Pakistan as full members and Iran and Afghanistan as observers. Afghanistan will then be fully integrated as a node of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as well as the Indian mini-Silk Road through Afghanistan towards Central Asia starting from the Iranian port of Chabahar.
This is what all major Eurasia players want. This is how you “win” a war. And this is how you don’t need to kill 10 million people.
- Iran Just Test Fired A Medium-Range Ballistic Missile: Pentagon
Pentagon officials confirmed Thursday night that Iran has test fired a ballistic missile, which occurred late Wednesday, in a new show of defiance amid soaring tensions related to both the continued detention of the British-flagged Stena Impero and Iranian threats that it will resist any US-led or European efforts to “secure” the Strait of Hormuz for Persian Gulf shipping. Fox reports the breaking news as follows:
Iran successfully test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile Wednesday which flew more than 600 miles from the southern part of the country to an area outside the capital, Tehran, in the north, a U.S. official told Fox News
File image of a prior Iranian-made Shahab-3 missile test. “We are aware of reports of a projectile launched from Iran, and have no further comment at this time,” a senior administration official said.
It’s been identified as the Shahab-3 missile, an Iranian-made medium-range, liquid-fueled, road-mobile ballistic missile with a maximum range of 800 miles, and designed to reach regional targets in the Mideast region. Notably it’s theoretically capable of reaching Israel.
Citing the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA), the report noted it’s “not clear whether Wednesday’s test was in violation of any sanctions against Iran.”
CNN’s Barbara Starr said separately based on Pentagon sources, “While the Shabaab-3 missile did not pose a threat to shipping or U.S. bases, the intelligence assessment is [that] it’s part of Iran’s efforts to improve the range and accuracy.”
This comes as contradictory and accusatory statements have continued to fly this week between Tehran and the Pentagon related to last week’s controversial Iranian drone downing. The US Navy says it destroyed up to two Iranian drones after they came within 1,000 yards of the USS Boxer in the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran has continued to deny it lost any drones, with even the suggestion from Iranian officials that the US may have taken out its own drone.
The new missile test has also been made public just as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made very surprising remarks, saying in a Bloomberg television interview Thursday that he would travel to Iran for direct talks “if necessary”. Asked if he’d contemplate the dramatic step of going to Tehran, Pompeo said:
“Sure. If that’s the call, I’d happily go there… I would welcome the chance to speak directly to the Iranian people.”
However, he could quickly walk back the statement following news of the latest deeply provocative Iranian missile test.
- Ron Paul: Forget Russiagate, Look At FBI-gate Instead
Yesterday, the Democratic Congress had their big moment – the testimony of Russiagateprobe figurehead Robert Mueller, whose 448-page report detailing the findings of his nearly-two-year-long investigation into alleged “Trump-Russian collusion” and alleged “Russian interference” in the US 2016 elections.
After no evidence of collusion or interference could be found, the remit was then shifted over to “possible obstruction of justice. ” And when no evidence of obstruction could be unearthed, the Democrat and Mueller position then became, ‘the Mueller Report has not cleared Trump of obstruction,’ or the report does not exoneration of the President. Here they are trying to prove a negative, something which could be said about about any unproven accusation leveled against anyone – which makes that spurious declaration meaningless.
Even the most ardent Never Trump partisan journalists, like NBC News political director Chuck Todd, admitted that the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s performance in front of the House Judiciary Committee hearing was a “disaster” and did nothing to advance the cause for impeachment.
As the dust subsides from yesterday’s debacle, the real issues are finally coming into focus.
Former US Congressman Dr Ron Paul highlights some of the deeper, fundamental problems with the Russiagate fiasco. RT International reports…
The Democrats’ dream of impeaching President Trump over the Russiagate scandal has “totally failed,” its fate confirmed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s disastrous showing in Congress, former congressman Ron Paul told RT.
The utterly anticlimactic hearing saw the ex-special counsel serving up reheated details of his two-year probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, reminding both the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees that there was no proof that members of the Trump campaign conspired with Russia.
“Hopefully, this will end it all, because Mueller did not have any evidence,” Paul said.
“I think we should never use the word Russiagate again. I think we ought to use the FBIgate because there was a conspiracy to try to frame Trump.”
“If they have impeachment hearings next year, it is going to backfire on them, just as I think this hearing today backfired on the Democrats,” Paul said, suggesting that lawmakers should instead investigate the origins of the Russia probe – in particular the Steele dossier, which was partially funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party. The document, produced by Fusion GPS, was full of unsubstantiated tales about Trump and helped to kick off the FBI probe, yet when pressed on the key role of the opposition research firm, Mueller didn’t even appear to be familiar with the organization.
Both parties have much bigger problems, Paul pointed out, marveling at how Democrats and Republicans are “bosom buddies,” marching in lockstep on “more debt, more interference, more involvement overseas, more welfare-ism,” yet “they hate each other’s guts when it comes to power.”
“The empire’s broke, the empire’s in trouble, yet [both parties] don’t want to talk about that.”
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