DayVectors

* 21 entries including: capitalism & socialism (series), liberal agenda (series) , Raskin on Ukraine war | attack on Pelosi home, USAF loyal wingman drone program & air mobility networking, Galileo Project for SETI, UKR warns invaders | crazy Giuliani & midterm election, cockatoos V dumpsters | dolphins buddy up, Pelosi V Trump | Alex Jones nailed | Biden's China EOs | UKR fights, platinum V palladium | Moto Edge 30 Ultra | fuel cell power cube, store brands, Judge Dearie deals with Trump lawyers | smartphone metronome, paralytics walk with electronic help | bionic hand, sinking cities & rising cities | eruptions seen in ice cores, Putin's bad week | Finland & Sweden as NATO members.

[MON 31 OCT 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 44

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: At the beginning of the week, Representative Pramila Jayapal (D:WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, drove the release of a letter calling for the White House to push for negotiation with Vladimir Putin to avoid escalation of the war in Ukraine. The reaction among the Democrats was loud consternation and outrage, since it is obvious that Putin has no interest in diplomacy except as a smokescreen for aggression.

The letter had been signed by 30 Members of Congress -- but it had actually been written in July, and many of the signatories were appalled that it had been released so close to the November election. It was not at all clear why the letter was released, but it was immediately withdrawn. There was much talk that it cause the Democrats damage, though it appears it mostly damaged Jayapal, her stature in the House being diminished. Otherwise, it gave those willing to defend the war a good chance to make their case. Her House colleague Jamie Raskin (D-MD) gave a particularly articulate response:

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In late-breaking news, the Russians reported a drone attack on their Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea, apparently involving both air and sea drones. The Russians claim to have foiled the attack, but it appears to have inflicted significant damage. The Ukrainians had no comment.

* In the dark hours of the morning of 28 October, one David Depape broke into the San Francisco house of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, a businessman involved in venture capitalism and real estate. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington DC at the time; Paul Pelosi was injured by the intruder using a hammer, but managed to call 911.

Depape's social media was loaded with anti-Semitic memes, Holocaust denial, links to far-right websites, QAnon content, plus vaccine and election conspiracies. He kept asking: "Where's Nancy?" Paul Pelosi suffered a fractured skull and other injuries. Right-wing media responded to the attack by claiming it was a false-flag incident, a spat between gay lovers, and other preposterous lies. How the attack plays out against the election coming up soon remains to be seen.

[FRI 28 OCT 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (18)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (18): The USA escaped the First World War relatively unscathed; in contrast, it upended European society. Nowhere was this more true than in Russia, which suffered defeats from the Central Powers from early in the war, leading to a revolution in 1916 that overthrew the Tsarist monarchy. In the turmoil that followed, a Russian Marxist revolutionary named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870:1924), who had taken the revolutionary name of "Lenin", was smuggled back into Russia by the Germans, to lead a revolution in 1917 that, after a brutal civil war, led to the creation of the world's first communist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Karl Marx had never been very specific about what a communist state would look like -- he had believed that a communist revolution would only be possible in advanced industrialized countries, not a relatively backwards and agrarian land like Russia -- and Lenin had to figure the specifics out, the end result being "Marxist-Leninism". Its primary features were:

• Full state control of the means of production, with industries directed by central state ministries.
  
  
• Limited right to private property.
  
  
• A monopoly of political power by the Communist Party, with voting becoming largely meaningless.

After Lenin's death, power fell into the hands of Josef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili (1878:1953), who had taken the revolutionary name of "Stalin". Stalin ruthlessly eliminated his rivals in the government, implementing a reign of terror on the Party and, through largely arbitrary mass arrests, on the public -- with vast numbers of people executed or dying of mistreatment. He forced collectivization on the peasantry and drove great public projects, often based on prisoner labor.

It was unlikely that a poor, backwards nation in a state of chaos after World War I could have avoided authoritarian rule, but Stalin's was as absolute and brutal as they came. The result was not really the "dictatorship of the proletariat" that Marx fuzzily envisioned; it was an undiluted dictatorship, a "command economy" ultimately directed by a single person, Stalin. Economic theory in the USSR was reduced to verbose and obscure recitations of Marxist-Leninist theory, with a tendency towards the grand but meaningless, lest a scholar say something that annoyed the authorities and led to the scholar's arrest.

* The rise of the Soviet state led to reaction elsewhere, a particular example being America's "1st Red Scare", lasting from 1917 to 1920. There were fears of communist subversion by radicals and unions, with a mass uprising to take place on May Day -- 1 May, the International Worker's Day, a festival for the Left since 1889 -- in 1920. In reality, nothing much happened, with the worries about Reds going on the fade for the moment.

During the 1920s, the USA went through an economic boom, establishing the "Roaring 20s". Warren Harding died in office in 1924, being replaced by his vice president, the notoriously taciturn Calvin Coolidge (1872:1933), who was re-elected to serve until 1929. He was then replaced by another Republican, Herbert Hoover (1874:1964). All three of these presidents believed in limited government, with little or no enthusiasm for regulation or state interventions. The environment encouraged financial speculation, leading to runaway stock-market speculation, and instability in the markets in the fall of 1929 -- with a deep crash on 24 October 1929, which became known as "Black Thursday".

A disastrous economic downturn followed. It appears that the crash was much more a symptom of the country's economic problems than a cause, but in any case the "Great Depression" went from bad to worse, with commerce stagnating and great numbers of Americans thrown out of work. Hoover kept projecting an end to the crisis, but it just got worse. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 27 OCT 22] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: There's been considerable work on "loyal wingman" drones (LWD), intended to accompany and support piloted combat aircraft. As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("US Air Force B-21 & NGAD Programs Spawn Autonomous Shadow Aircraft" by Steve Trimble & Brian Everstine, 18 March 2022), the USAF is seeking an ambitious LWD for the service's Northrop Grumman B-21 bomber and future Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) aircraft programs.

Most LWDs being introduced these days are intended to be relatively cheap and semi-expendable or "attritable". The B-21 / NGAD LWD proposal, however, calls back to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's "Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS)" effort, which was intended to provide a capable, sophisticated, and expensive combat drone -- before the program was canceled in 2006. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says: "We're looking for [uncrewed] systems that cost nominally on the order of at least half as much as the manned systems that we're talking about for both NGAD and for [the] B-21,"

Given the expense of these aircraft, that implies an expensive drone. In the past few years, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has demonstrated a series of low-cost attritable aircraft platforms typified by the Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie, with a cost of $3 million to $4 million USD. The AFRL has defined an "attritable" drone as in the cost range of $2 million to $20 million USD. Given that the unit cost of a B-21 is expected to be over $600 million USD, a drone that cost half that much is not attritable. This is a conscious choice, Kendall saying: "The nominal 'one-half' is sort of an estimate of what we should shoot to achieve as a minimum at this point. I'd love it to be lower."

The concept is clearly to expand the forces available at reduced cost. Instead of sending multiple B-21s on a mission, a B-21 and LWDs could do the job instead. The USAF has indicated they want an aircraft with subsonic speed, a range of at least 2,775 kilometers (1,725 MI / 1,500 NMI), a minimum payload of 1,815 kilograms (4,000 pounds), and the ability to survive in an environment dense with adversary radars and other detection / tracking systems. The Air Force is waiting on responses from industry to see how realistic the idea is. There's talk of a formal program for an LWD to begin in FY 2024, but it may not be the same program.

* The US military has been moving towards a force linked together by networking. As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("USAF Wants Beyond-Line-of-Sight Data For Its Mobility Fleet" by Brian Everstine, 1 October 2021), the latest component of this effort is a push by the US Air Force to connect its heavy airlifters and refueling tankers with beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) datalinks, with a Request For Information issued to the defense industry.

The RFI covers the USAF's C-5s, C-17s, C-130s, KC-135s, and KC-46s, with the objective to get them datalinked by 2025. The effort is part of the Pentagon's "Joint All Domain Command & Control" push, with the RFI stating that "the need for full-spectrum, seamless, and resilient communications and adaptable data pathways out to the tactical edge is critical." states.

The Air Force's Air Mobility Command (AMC) wants a BLOS system that can switch from primary, alternate, contingency and emergency communications. For example, a C-17 flying a normal supply mission would use a communications profile with the minimum required bandwidth to maintain situational awareness. However, if that C-17 is reassigned an aeromedical evacuation or a palletized munition mission and more bandwidth is needed, the BLOS should be able to handle that change seamlessly.

The increased use of data links has been a priority for AMC in recent years, but implementation is thin at present. For example, the KC-135 fleet has long had the "Roll-On Beyond-line-of-sight Enhancement (ROBE)" terminal to connect the Stratotanker with satellite communications and data links -- but there's only a handful of them, and they're owned by Air Combat Command, not the tanker community. KC-135s also are now obtaining the Link 16 capability as part of the "Real-time Information in the Cockpit (RTIC)" upgrade beginning in 2020.

Earlier in 2021, the Air Force also installed a SpaceX Starlink antenna on a KC-135 to evaluate the effectiveness of that connection. Lockheed Martin C-130Js are also getting Link 16 as part of the Block 8.1 modification. The Boeing KC-46 is ahead of the game, having been delivered with a Tactical Data Link system.

Small-scale experiments have also been performed. During the AMC's MOBILITY GUARDIAN 2021 exercise in May 2021, a KC-10 fitted with a Situational Awareness Data Link system passed data to an A-10 Warthog, while a ViaSAT satellite communications system allowed C-17 crews to access SIPRNet to connect to an air operations center. During the same exercise, a C-5 crew used a field radio and ultrahigh-frequency antenna on their aircraft to obtain an aeromedical evacuation tasking via satcom.

The Air Force wants a comprehensive solution over the longer run. There's even consideration of incorporating Link 16 capability into simulators to ensure that crews will have the background to make the best use of it.

[WED 26 OCT 22] THE LIBERAL AGENDA (7)

* THE LIBERAL AGENDA (7): John Maynard Keynes saw the liquidity of money as of critical importance. Investing in material assets, such as property, had its attractions, but meant a commitment; those with stacks of money, in contrast, could make any acquisitions they wanted at any time -- or they could keep their money. If people really wanted to maintain their freedom of choice, they would give up money only if material assets seemed like the irresistibly better deal.

Unfortunately, low asset prices meant not so much money being pumped into those assets, or in other words low capital spending -- with the result of low production, employment, and earnings. The low prices of assets would reflect low value. Low investment led to falling incomes, to unemployment, to an economy not firing on all cylinders and wasted potential.

This was obvious from the start of the Great Recession in 2008, with estimates of up to 100 billion lost work-hours in consequence. Keynes has long been accused of a reckless disregard for fiscal rectitude -- but that's only on a spreadsheet account of money lost, money saved, money changing hands. In the bigger picture, mass unemployment was economically ruinous, an ugly waste of resources.

Very well, Keynes reasoned, then if private entrepreneurs couldn't or wouldn't invest enough to maintain high employment, the government needed to step in. He favored ambitious programs of public works, including rebuilding South London. In his letter to Hayek, he said his agreement with THE ROAD TO SERFDOM was moral and philosophical; it didn't extend to economics.

In his 1936 book THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, & MONEY, Keynes outlined his ideas, prescribing "a somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment". His most savage critics have jumped on the illiberal, even totalitarian implications of that phrase. However, Keynes was more interested in macro-economics than political systems, its workings being broadly the same in authoritarian and liberal societies.

That leads to the reverse question of whether Keynesianism has a place in a liberal society. Some thought not, believing that Keynes was wrong in his recommendation for using spending to get out of a recession. They instead recommended a freer labor market to ensure efficient reallocation of labor, and restraints on central banks -- lest they maintain low interest rates that result in an economic bubble that will end in a bust. There was also the stoicism that didn't care if Keynesianism was right or not, government planning was an unacceptable assault on public liberties.

In his time, this mindset was implicit in Victorian institutions such the gold standard, free trade, and balanced budgets, which tied the hands of governments. However, by 1925, society could no longer tolerate such pain -- partly because Keynes had suggested they didn't need to. Some accepted Keynes' basic thinking, but didn't trust government spending programs as the fix, instead preferring to use monetary policy. If the interest rate would not naturally balance saving and investment to produce high levels of income and employment, central banks could lower it until it did.

The criticisms have counter-criticisms. If liberal governments don't actively fight downturns, voters are inclined to turn to illiberal governments that do, jeopardizing the freedoms the government's pious inaction was meant to respect. Keynes was all for easy money, but he didn't think it was enough to fight recessions. The Great Recession of 2008 suggested that monetary policy wasn't as effective as hoped, and was inclined to the meddlesome anyway. Central bank purchases of assets, including some private securities, inevitably favored some groups over others. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 25 OCT 22] SEARCH THE SKIES

* SEARCH THE SKIES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org (Project launched to look for extraterrestrial visitors to our solar system by Daniel Clery, 26 July 2021), in 2017 a cigar-shaped asteroid about a kilometer long -- given the name "'Oumuamua", Hawaiian for "scout" -- came falling into the Solar System from deep space, to loop around the Sun and be thrown out into deep space again. Astrophysicist Avi Loeb of Harvard suggested that it might have been an alien artifact from another star system.

That idea wasn't taken too seriously, but there was enough interest in such unusual objects that he was able to obtain non-governmental funding for an effort, named "Project Galileo", to look for more of them. The effort will use a network of existing and new telescopes to systematically look for mysterious space artifacts -- satellites hiding in Earth orbit, interstellar objects -- or even objects lurking high in Earth's atmosphere. Loeb is not saying he expects to find alien artifacts, he simply wants to look in dark corners to see if there's anything there: "It doesn't really matter if it's a natural artifact or a relic. If we look, we will find something new."

After Loeb published a book, EXTRATERRESTRIAL, which made the case that 'Oumuamua was an alien artifact, a number of wealthy individuals got in touch with him, unprompted, to offer funding for new research. He ended up finding four donors who provided seed funding of $1.75 million USD. Loeb put together a research team, including prominent astronomers and researchers from other fields -- though he admits he also ran into a lot of skepticism.

The project intends to use data from existing and upcoming survey telescopes, such as the 8-meter Vera Rubin Observatory under construction in Chile, to look for more objects like 'Oumuamua. Loeb also would like to work with space companies or agencies to stage space missions that would inspect incomers at close quarters.

Some researchers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) like Galileo. Astrophysicist Adam Frank of the University of Rochester says: "We should definitely be ready for the next 'Oumuamua. We'll learn a lot about these things whatever they are." Others point to existing searches for interstellar objects, and wonder if Galileo brings anything new to the party.

Alan Fitzsimmons of the Queen's University Belfast -- co-lead of the 'Oumuamua investigation team organized by the International Space Science Institute -- points out that existing alert networks already sweep through telescope data on an hourly basis in search of incoming interstellar objects. Fitzsimmons adds that the European Space Agency is working on a Comet Interceptor mission, to be launched in 2028, that will sit in orbit waiting for an interesting target of opportunity, a comet or an interstellar object, and then venture out to meet it.

The Galileo Project also wants to look for alien artifacts closer to home. The US Director of National Intelligence released a report to Congress not long ago, discussing 144 reports from military and intelligence sources of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), aka unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The report concluded most UAPs weren't illusions, but the reports were so sketchy that there was no way to know if they were "clutter" like weather balloons and drones, still-secret programs by US or foreign agencies, or something else.

Loeb wants to get more data. He points out that a 1-meter telescope with a modern sensor can see details as small as a millimeter on an object 1 kilometer away, and such an instrument can be ordered off the shelf for $500,000 USB. Given enough funding, he would station tens of telescopes at strategic locations across the globe, scanning the skies for UAPs, possibly aided by radar and infrared sensors. Again, not everyone sees investigating UAPs as particularly relevant to astronomy, Fitzzimmons calling the idea "bollocks".

A third part of the project would involve looking for mysterious satellites in orbit around Earth, using artificial intelligence techniques to process data from existing survey telescopes. Again, skeptics wonder if that is worth the bother, noting that government agencies already have sophisticated surveillance of everything in orbit around the Earth larger than 10 centimeters in size.

Loeb had not always been patient with the skeptics, notably getting into a spat in early 2021 with SETI pioneer Jill Tarter. He's become more diplomatic, admitting that his ideas are outside of many people's "comfort zone", focusing on discovering the unexpected, no matter what it is: "We'll find whatever we find, and look at the evidence."

[MON 24 OCT 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 43

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The battle in Ukraine has taken a turn for the worse for the Ukrainians, thanks to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Russians made a deal with Iran for Shahed-136 kamikaze drones and tactical ballistic missiles, and have been using them to good effect to badly damage Ukraine's electric power grid and water systems.

Videos of the fighting are getting uglier, with imagery of Russian soldiers being bombed by drones and killed, or chased out of trenches and gunned down. One wishes the war was over, but it will be fought to the end. One Yuriy Gudymenko, a junior sergeant (corporal) in the Ukrainian Army, put it bluntly:

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The Russian blitz on Ukraine's cities is not going to win the war for Russia. It has little impact on the battlefield, where the Russians are clearly losing, at brutal cost to which Putin seems indifferent.

Ukraine is split between those whose first language is Russian -- incidentally, that includes Volodymir Zelenskiy -- and those whose first language is Ukrainian. However, Ukrainians are only becoming more unified in their resistance. The well-known Mal Nance, an American NCO in the UKR Foreign Legion, commented:

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* Back in the USA, we're headed into the closing stretch of the midterm elections. The news media keeps claiming the race is very close, but one wonders. In Georgia, Raphael Warnock utterly crushed Herschel Walker in a debate, while in Ohio Tim Ryan humiliated JD Vance, and in Pennsylvania John Fetterman has similarly put down Dr. Mehmet Oz. Those are all Senate races, but it's hard to see the GOP is doing much better in the House races.

Still, there's no certainty in how the election will go. Polls don't mean much in unstable times; it's easier to predict the road ahead when the road behind is consistently straight, not so easy when it's crooked. However, most of the indicators, such as the Senate race debates, suggest the GOP is weak. President Joe Biden said: "The polls have been all over the place. I think we're going to see one more shift back to our side in the closing days."

The election may be disappointing for the Democrats, but that's not the way to bet. The GOP no longer stands for anything but Trump-MAGA, and that doesn't have a future. Trump is sinking slowly, and without Trump MAGA just becomes obnoxious noise with no sense of direction. Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani recently said that the USA is now a fascist country, adding:

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Giuliani has lost his mind, as has the rest of Trump-MAGA. They don't sound like winners. Nonetheless, we'll have to wait and see what happens.

[FRI 21 OCT 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (17)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (17): A general war began in Europe in 1914, with Germany and Austria-Hungary taking on Russia, France, and Britain. After rapid action at the outset, the war turned into a bloody, grinding stalemate. Woodrow Wilson tried to keep the USA neutral, successfully running for re-election in 1916 on the slogan of: "He Kept Us Out Of War". However, in 1917 attacks by German submarines on US shipping forced Wilson to reluctantly declare war.

The Wilson Administration ramped up war production, in parallel with establishing a "National Research Foundation" to direct scientific investigation into improved technologies that could be produced to help win the war. In reality, by the time the war ended in 1918, the USA had introduced little in the way of new technologies -- there hadn't been enough time. The USA did make a decisive contribution to winning the conflict by providing raw materials and large volumes of useful and necessary products.

The First World War I did mark the global emergence of the USA as an industrial and economic superpower. The industrial boom that had taken place in the USA from the late 19th century was accelerating, with transformational technologies coming into wide use. The telephone had been becoming more widespread since the 1880s, permitting individual long-distance communications, with the phonograph emerging in parallel, providing the first practical means of recording music. Up to that time, if people wanted to listen to music, they had to attend live performances, or perform it themselves.

Cameras had been around since before mid-century, but they had been clumsy and really only for professional use; the introduction of film roll cameras allowed everyone the ability to record images. By the 1920s, silent movies were commonplace, and broadcast radio was emerging. The end result was the emergence of media companies and radio networks -- as well as a necessary regulatory system for radio broadcast, which in the USA would emerge as what would ultimately become known as the "Federal Communications Commission (FCC)". Of course, radios implied electricity, with electrical networks arising to provide electric services to homes, businesses, and other establishments.

Even more importantly, the automobile was emerging, in principle providing rapid transport for everyone. Henry Ford introduced his low-cost "Model T" in 1908, introducing the "assembly line" in his factories in 1913, starting a revolution in manufacturing, also aided by the introduction of electrical machinery. Of course, worker specialization in manufacturing was not new, but the assembly line -- in which a product was assembled as it rolled down a conveyor system of some sort -- reduced it to a robotic process, later satirized in the 1936 movie MODERN TIMES by Charlie Chaplin (1889:1977).

Whatever else might be said about the assembly line, it was certainly productive, with automobiles and trucks becoming relatively cheap and commonplace, and a highly competitive auto industry arising, and the oil industry booming to fuel the cars. Government entities built roads for the cars, and passed traffic laws.

The automobile was complemented by the rise of the farm tractor, which further boosted farm productivity. Aircraft also increasingly came of age, though early on their primary commercial use was carrying mail. Flight in those days was particularly hazardous, with government regulatory agencies arising early on -- leading to what would become the "Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)".

In any case, the benefits of America's industrial boom were not spread evenly, and the economy did have its ups and downs. Woodrow Wilson's administration, in the end, did not prove popular -- in particular because of its willingness to harass and prosecute opponents of the war in Europe, and its push towards heavy taxation of the wealthy generating rich opponents. Warren Harding (1865:1923) won the presidency in 1920, with Harding calling for a "return to normalcy", translating to an end of the push for reform. The Progressive Era was over. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 20 OCT 22] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for September included:

[02 SEP 22] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4C / YAOGAN 33-02 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 2344 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put a secret "Yaogan 33-02" payload into orbit. It was apparently a military surveillance satellite.

[05 SEP 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-20 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0209 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 51 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The launch also included the Boeing "Varuna Technology Demonstration Mission (Varuna TDM)", intended to test V-band communications for a proposed constellation of 147 non-geostationary broadband satellites. Varuna was hosted on a Sherpa LTC2 Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) from Spaceflight INC, which raised the hosted customer payload to a 1,000-kilometer low-Earth orbit. The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[06 SEP 22] CN JQ / KUAIZHOU 1A / CENTISPACE 1 S3 & S4 -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A (KZ1A) booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0224 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Centispace 1 S3,S4" satellites into orbit. The first CentiSpace-1 satellite, S1, was launched in 2018 on the same rocket configuration, while the second payload failed on a Kuaizhou 11 in July 2020.

These two Centispace satellites were made by Future Navigation, a Beijing startup company. Assuming they were the same design as the last launch, they used the WN-100 bus by CAS micro space as a platform and carried a set of test payloads, such as laser inter-satellite communication links. They had a launch mass of 97 kilograms (214 pounds).

[06 SEP 22] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2D / YAOGAN 35 05 -- A Chinese Long March 2D booster was launched from Xichang at 0419 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 35 Group 5" payloads into orbit. It was a triplet of satellites and may have been a "flying triangle" naval signals intelligence payload.

This was the fifth launch of Yaogan triplets was launched. The first one launched in November 2021, and the last one launched a few weeks previously on the same rocket configuration. The satellites are built by DFH Satellite.

[07 SEP 22] / ARIANE 5 ECA / EUTELSAT KONNECT VHTS 24 -- An Ariane 5 ECA booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 2145 UTC (local time + 3) to put the "Konnect Very High Throughput Satellite (VHTS)" geostationary comsat into orbit for Eutelsat. It provided internet services for Eutelsat's European customers, as well as in-flight internet access for airlines and unspecified communications services for the government of France.

Konnect VHTS was built by Thales Alenia Space in partnership with the French space agency, CNES, and the European Space Agency. It was based on the Spacebus Neo platform, with a launch mass of 6,400 kilograms, (14,110 pounds), a payload of Ka-band transponders, and a design life of 15 years. It featured electric thrusters for orbit-raising and station-keeping.

[11 SEP 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-2 & -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0120 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 34 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The launch also included "BlueWalker 3" prototype satellite for AST SpaceMobile's cellular broadband constellation.

The Starlink satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The BlueWalker 3 satellite was the second prototype satellite to be flown by AST SpaceMobile, as they work towards deploying a constellation of satellites that can provide broadband service directly to normal cellphones.

BlueWalker 3 had a mass of about 1.5 tonnes (1.65 tons) and had a set of phase-array antennas to handle its communications. It was tested in partnership with mobile network operators around the globe, including AT&T, Vodafone, Orange, and Rakuten Mobile. The full AST SpaceMobile constellation will consist of 243 satellites in low Earth orbit in three planes. The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[13 SEP 22] CN WC / LONG MARCH 7 / CHINASAT 1E -- A Long March 7 booster was launched from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island at 1358 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "ChinaSat 1E" geostationary comsat into orbit. Details were not released, and it was presumably a military satcom.

[15 SEP 22] NZ / ELECTRON / STRIX 1 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 2038 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put the "Strix 1" SAR satellite into orbit for Synspective, a Japanese Earth-imaging company. It had a launch weight of 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and carried an X-band SAR. Synspective is developing spacecraft for a planned constellation of more than 30 small radar observation satellites to collate data of metropolitan centers across Asia on a daily basis that can be used for urban development planning, construction and infrastructure monitoring, and disaster response.

[19 SEP 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-34 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0018 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 54 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[20 SEP 22] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2D / YAOGAN 33-02 -- A Long March 2D booster was launched from Jiuquan at 2315 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Yunhai 1-03" weather satellite into orbit.

[21 SEP 22] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1A / SOYUZ ISS 68S (ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 1354 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Soyuz ISS 68S" AKA "MS 22" crewed space capsule into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) mission. The crew included commander Sergey Prokopyev, Russian flight engineer Dmitry Petelin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.

[24 SEP 22] USA-C VB / DELTA 4 HEAVY 9 / NROL 91 (USA 337) -- A Delta 4 Heavy booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 2225 UTC (local time + 7) to put a classified payload into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was believed to be a KH-11 optical spysat, the last to be launched. The mission was designated "NROL 91". This was the last Delta IV launch from Vandenberg.

[24 SEP 24] CN JQ / KUAIZHOU 1A / SHIYAN WEIXING 14 & 15 -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A (KZ1A) booster was launched from Jiuquan at 2225 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put "Shiyan Weixing (Experimental Satellite) 14 & 15" into near-polar Sun-synchronous orbit. Shiyan 14 was described as a research satellite, while Shiyan 15 was described as a remote sensing satellite.

[24 SEP 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-35 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2332 UTC (local time + 4) to put 52 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[26 SEP 22] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2D / YAOGAN 36 -- A Chinese Long March 2D booster was launched from Xichang at 1338 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 36" payloads into orbit. It was a triplet of satellites and may have been a "flying triangle" naval signals intelligence payload.

[26 SEP 22] CN TY / LONG MARCH 6 / SHIYAN 16,17 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 6 booster was launched from Taiyuan at 2350 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put two more "Shiyan Weixing" satellites into orbit, including "SY 16" and "SY 17". Details were not announced; SY 16 may have been a dual payload.

[WED 19 OCT 22] THE LIBERAL AGENDA (6)

* THE LIBERAL AGENDA (6): In 1944, Friedich Hayek got a letter that praised the Austrian-born economist for his book THE ROAD TO SERFDOM, which argued that state economic planning meant a loss of freedom. The letter said: "Morally and philosophically, I find myself, in a deeply moved agreement."

The letter was written by John Maynard Keynes, on his way to the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, where he would be a prime mover in planning the post-war economic order. The letter would be surprising to those who know Hayek as the intellectual godfather of free-market Thatcherism, and Keynes as the patron saint of a state-guided capitalism.

Keynes, however, was by no means a Leftist. In a 1925 essay, "Am I A Liberal?", he wrote: "The Class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie," he said in his 1925 essay, "Am I a Liberal?". He later described trade unionists as "tyrants, whose self-serving and factional pretensions need to be vigorously opposed." He accused the leaders of Britain's Labour Party of acting like "sectaries of an outworn creed", "mumbling moss-grown demi-semi-Fabian Marxism". And he stated that "there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth" -- if not for the big gaps that existed in his day.

So where did Keynesianism come from? The obvious answer is the Great Depression, which reached Britain in the 1930s, shattering many people's faith in unmanaged capitalism -- but that wasn't all there was to it.

Keynes belonged to a new breed of liberals who were not slavish believers in laissez-faire, the idea that "unfettered private enterprise would promote the greatest good of the whole". Keynes judged that doctrine was not necessarily true in principle, and was no longer useful in practice. What the state should leave to individual initiative, and what it should shoulder itself, had to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

In making those decisions, he and other liberals had to contend with the threats of socialism and nationalism, revolution and reaction. In response to the Labour Party's growing political clout, a reform-minded Liberal government had introduced compulsory national insurance in 1911, which provided sickness pay, maternity benefits and limited unemployment assistance to the hard-working poor. Liberals in favor of such actions saw unemployed workers as national assets who should not be "pauperised" because of events beyond their control.

This faction of liberals believed in helping those who could not help themselves, and accomplishing collectively what could not be achieved individually. Keynes's thought was along such lines. He considered entrepreneurs who could not profitably expand operations unless others did the same, and on savers who could not improve their financial standing unless others were willing to borrow. Neither group could succeed through their own efforts alone, and their personal failures led to collective failures.

In explanation, Keynes observed that economies produce in response to spending. Low spending meant low production, employment and income. One vital source of spending is investment: the purchase of new equipment, factories, buildings, and so on. The big problem, as Keynes saw it, was that private entrepreneurs, left to themselves, would not want to invest enough to make a difference. He once argued, provocatively, that America could spend its way to prosperity -- with the corollary that they could underspend their way to poverty.

Earlier economists were more optimistic, believing that if the willingness to invest was weak and the desire to save was strong, the interest rate would fall to bring the two into alignment. That isn't how Keynes saw interest rates, saying that raising interest rates encouraged people to get rid of money and hold less-liquid assets instead. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 18 OCT 22] COCKATOOS VERSUS DUMPSTERS / DOLPHINS BUDDY UP

* COCKATOOS VERSUS DUMPSTERS: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Australia's Cockatoos Are Masters Of Dumpster Diving -- And Now They're Learning From Each Other" by Cathleen O'Grady, 22 July 2021), cockatoos are very smart birds, and inclined to the mischievous. As a case in point, sulfur-crested cockatoos living in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, have become expert "dumpster divers". They've figured out how to open up trash cans, where they can find lots of tasty things to eat.

The most interesting aspect of this habit is that cockatoos have been teaching it to each other. In addition, cockatoos in different locations use slightly different methods in opening the cans, as determined in a study led by behavioral ecologist Barbara Klump at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. The research team used social media and email lists to survey scientifically-inclined citizens of Sydney -- who were asked if they had seen such behavior.

They got 1300 responses. Before 2018, cockatoo dumpster diving had only been reported in three suburbs. By late 2019, it had spread to 44 out of nearly 500 in the survey. The spread had a clear and obvious pattern, working out from the three original suburbs, and fading off in suburbs that were more remote. Clearly, the cockatoos were propagating dumpster-diving by "word of mouth" -- though the behavior was also seen in one remote neighborhood, suggesting the cockatoos there had figured it out on their own. Klump says there are anecdotal reports of the behavior elsewhere in Australia.

To get a close-up of what the cockatoos were doing, the researchers caught and tagged 486 birds in some of the garbage can?opening hot spots. After filming 160 successful dives, they noted several common steps: First, a bird lifted the can's lid at the front corner with its bill; then held it slightly open while waddling back towards the hinges; and finally flipped it open. There were variations by locale: some held the handle of the can's lid, while others held onto the lid itself; some held it with both bill and claws, while others just used the bill. The variation increased with difference.

Local cultures, or "dialects," have been found in parrot calls, but this is the first time it has been found in parrot foraging. Further observations may reveal other "cultural" variations in cockatoo behaviors.

* DOLPHINS BUDDY UP: In other news of animal behavior, as discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Dolphins Learn The Names Of Their Friends To Form Teams" by Virginia Morell, 22 April 2021), it is known that dolphins have, by animal standards, sophisticated vocal communications capabilities. As it turns out, male dolphins can call in other males to assist in tasks, such as collecting and defending females in heat, which is not so surprising; what is surprising is that they can call the "names", the signature whistles, of individual males.

Male dolphins usually cooperate as a pair or trio, in what researchers call a "first-order alliance." These small groups collaborate to find and corral a female in heat. Males will also cooperate in "second-order alliances" of as many as 14 dolphins, which defend against rival groups trying to steal the female. Sometimes second-order alliances join together in even bigger "third-order alliances".

Dolphins often change partners in their first-order alliances, but they maintain the structures of the second-order groups for decades, as known through long-term behavioral studies at Shark Bay in Western Australia. The second-order alliances are the core unit of the societies of males. Stephanie King, a behavioral biologist at the University of Bristol, says the males "stay together for their lifetimes," at least as long as 40 years.

Maintaining such groups requires the ability to identify individuals. Every dolphin learns a unique signature whistle from its mother, which it keeps for life; they are effectively names that dolphins recognize and remember. To investigate in detail, King and her colleagues turned to a population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) living in Shark Bay, setting up an array of underwater microphones in 2016 to listen in on the voice traffic.

In 2018 and 2019, the researchers placed a speaker underwater and played back whistles of males to other males in their various alliances. The males ranged in age from 28 to 40 years old, and had been in their groups for all their lives. The researchers flew a drone to observe the reactions of the dolphins, Shark Bay having notably clear alliances.

The researchers expected that playing a whistle from a particular male would get a response from its first-order alliance partners -- but the response was stronger from partners in the long-term second-order alliances. King says: "It was so striking -- in 90% of experiments, dolphins who heard whistles of second-order alliance members turned immediately and directly toward the speaker."

She adds that, like humans, dolphins appear to have a "social concept of team membership, based on an individual's previous cooperative investment, rather than how good friends they are." However, researchers have a long way to go before they figure out the language of dolphins.

[MON 17 OCT 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 42

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This last week had the final public hearing of the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol Building. It was mostly just a summing up of things, but did end with the committee saying that Donald Trump would be subpoenaed to testify before Congress. He almost certainly won't and the committee knows it, so it appears they just want to make him squirm.

The hearing also had videos taken of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that day by her daughter Alexandra, a journalist, showing Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer desperately calling around to get help.

Earlier, as things were starting to heat up, Terri McCullough, told Pelosi that Trump had been dissuaded from coming to the Capitol Building: "They told him they don't have the resources to protect him here. So at the moment, he is not coming, but that could change."

Pelosi, clearly furious, replied: "I hope he comes. I want to punch him out. This is my moment. I've been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds. I want to punch him out, and I'm going to go to jail, and I'm going to be happy."

In other recent news, a jury passing judgement on conspirobot Alex Jones -- who was hit with a civil suit for telling incendiary lies about the parents of children murdered in a 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook School in Newton CT -- awarded the plaintiffs almost a billion dollars in damages. They'll never collect more than a fraction of that, but that's not the point: Jones is ruined for the rest of his life.

The Twitter buzz in response was: "Now take on Fox News." No worries, Fox is staring down the muzzle of a huge civil suit from Dominion Voting Machines for claiming their voting machines were rigged. More generally, the judgement against Jones suggests the day of mass-media trolling is coming to an end. The case against Jones created a legal infrastructure that can and will take on the big trolls, and make their lives very miserable.

* As discussed in an article from MIT's TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.com ("What's Up With All Of Biden's Executive Orders" by Zeyi Yang, 20 September 2022), the Biden Administration has proven entirely willing to continue Donald Trump's aggressive actions against China, with President Joe Biden signing a series of executive orders to target China -- without naming names. In recent weeks, there have been three such orders, with more expected to follow:

• EO 14080, intended to boost the domestic semiconductor industry,
  
  
• EO 14081, intended to build a strong domestic biotechnology industry and reduce reliance on foreign countries
  
  
• EO 14083, the last of the three, which clarifies the scope of the work of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS).

The first two promote US technology development and constrain Chinese access to it. The CFIUS order is a little less straightforward. CFIUS has been around for about 40 years. It is an interagency committee spanning 16 Federal departments, including Treasury and Defense, and is one of the major tools the Federal government has long used to stop Chinese companies from acquiring US companies and technologies.

Its official goal is to protect national security interests from all sources of foreign investment. It has stopped Chinese buyers from acquiring, or forced Chinese owners to sell: Grindr, MoneyGram, hard drive maker Western Digital, and several semiconductor companies. Under the Trump administration, it notably almost forced ByteDance to sell off TikTok in 2019. The Biden EO doesn't really change anything about CFIUS, in instead clarifies its mission, which has been frustratingly vague.

The new order is specific, listing a handful of industries that CFIUS should prioritize -- microelectronics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and biomanufacturing, quantum computing, advanced clean energy, and climate adaptation technologies -- and also singles out threats to personal data protection. These provisions could be used by the committee could use to justify blocking deals in consumer tech that aren?t traditionally seen as a national security risk.

The days when the USA was easy-going about Chinese trade. These new policies follow the same playbook that China has used for decades: generous industry subsidies, government funding for academic institutions, and entry barriers for foreign competitors to protect domestic companies. They are fundamentally protectionist measures, being labeled "economic nationalism". Protectionism has a long and bad history, but as of late it has become evident that economic interdependence on hostile foreign regimes is not a good thing. As the author concludes:

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* The war in Ukraine grinds on. After an operational pause, Armed Forces Ukraine have ramped up their assault on Kherson again, and are making good progress. Many Russian soldiers are surrendering -- aided by a "surrender hotline" set up by the Ukrainians in September, which tells the Russians how to surrender and even, it seems, makes arrangements for them to do so. The line has got thousands of calls, many of them from wives trying to help their husbands surrender.

Following an attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Crimea to Russia, the Russians launched a mass wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. It went on for several days, causing substantial if not critical damage and killing dozens of civilians. Russian President Vladimir Putin finally announced the attacks would relent, meaning they were running out of missiles. The attack on the bridge was supposedly by a huge truck bomb, but there was considerable skepticism, with suggestions that it was either a long-range missile or an AFU Special Operations Forces attack.

Anyway, one of the Russian missiles hit Shevchenko Park in Odesa. A reporter talked to nine-year old Askold, who had played there since he was a toddler and was appalled at the destruction there:

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After running low on drones and missiles, the Russians are now turning to Iran as a supplier. Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones proved quite a nuisance for a time, but after one fell into Ukrainian hands, the loss rate of the drones to the AFU skyrocketed. Iranian ballistic missiles are expected to come into use soon.

[FRI 14 OCT 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (16)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (16): The Progressive Era in the USA started out from the grass roots, in large part due to the "muckrakers", investigative journalists who dug into political corruption and the failings of the American capitalist system, such as child labor, unsafe working conditions, as well as unsanitary and cruel food processing -- the best-known example of muckraking being the 1906 novel THE JUNGLE, an expose of the meat-packing industry by Upton Sinclair (1878:1968).

The Progressives were, in general, believers in industry and science, believing that "scientific methods" were the means of constructing a better society. Ironically, Progressivism was boosted by philanthropic foundations established by capitalist leaders of the Gilded Age, such as Andrew Carnegie (1835:1919) and John D. Rockefeller (1839:1937) -- who, having made huge fortunes, felt an obligation to contribute to the good of society. Teddy Roosevelt was the effective leader of the Progressives, establishing or helping to establish a series of major reforms:

• Establishing government regulation of food and drugs through the Pure Food & Drug Act of 1906, which set up what would become the modern US Food & Drug Administration. In an earlier day, the safety of food and drugs was not a public concern; it was accepted that people took their chances with them.
  
  
• Breaking up "trusts" -- monopolistic assemblies of companies -- in particular taking on the railroads, which had acquired enormous power with government assistance.
  
  
• Setting up America's national parks, on the basis that the country's natural treasures should not fall under the control of private entities, instead being accessible to all.

Despite his Progressive inclinations, TR was hardly even a socialist, not even a state socialist; he had little focus on programs to benefit Americans as individuals. Although sympathetic to organized labor, he tried to be even-handed in dealing with labor and the bosses, preferring to find negotiated solutions to labor strife. As he commented:

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TR was followed in office by his vice-president, William Howard Taft (1857:1930), who proved less enthusiastic about Progressive policies, leading to a dispute between Roosevelt and Taft that cost the Republicans the 1912 election -- with Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1856:1924) winning the White House. Wilson did continue Progressive policies, however, notably establishing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to police antitrust law, and re-establishing a US national bank, in the form of the Federal Reserve, which was actually a network of banks under government charter. He also reduced tariffs and introduced an income tax -- with the US Federal government gradually shifting away from a reliance on tariffs for revenue and obtaining it from income taxes instead. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 13 OCT 22] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Russia Risks Speed Up Automakers' Switch From Palladium To Platinum" 15 May 2022), the Ukraine War has led to a global economic shift as materials sourced out of Russia have dried up. One facet of this shift that automakers are switching from palladium, a metal used as a catalyst in catalytic converters, are switching to platinum instead.

Russia is a major supplier of palladium, accounting for from 25% to 30% of the global supply -- but a much smaller player in platinum, accounting for from 8% to 10% of the global supply. Neither metal has been sanctioned since the start of the Ukraine War, but manufacturers are seeing the writing on the wall.

Platinum is expensive, at about $33,500 USD per kilogram, about half again as much as palladium. Automakers use over 70 tonnes of platinum and over three times that much palladium. However, platinum is now facing a glut on the market as purchases decline. Platinum was, early on, preferred for use in catalytic converters, but palladium proved more cost-effective. Now the tilt is back towards platinum. It would be nice if a catalyst could be found that wasn't a precious metal, but so far nobody has found one.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Motorola Goes Camera Crazy With 200-Megapixel Edge 30 Ultra Smartphone" by Paul Ridden, 9 September 2022), Motorola has now upped the ante in camera smartphones with the "Edge 30 Ultra", featuring a large-aperture 200-megapixel rear camera.

Motorola says the camera will produce "crisp, bright images even in the dark", thanks to "pixel-binning" that combines 16 small pixels in a large "Ultra Pixel" to capture more light. In addition, the camera will be able to record 8K UHD video at 30 frames per second, or 4K UHD at up to 60 FPS. Along with the main camera, joined by a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera with macro capabilities, plus a 12-megapixel telephoto portrait lens with a narrow depth of field.

The front selfie camera has 60 megapixels, being embedded in a 6.67-inch 2,400 x 1,080-pixel OLED display that boasts a refresh rate of 144 Hertz. The Edge 30 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 mobile computer-on-a-chip, supporting up to 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. The phone runs 5G and Wi-Fi 6E, and can be powered up with fast and wireless charging.

* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("GM Targets Hydrogen-Powered Generators In Expansion Of Fuel Cell Business" by Tina Bellon, 19 January 2022), US auto giant GM is looking forward to a low-carbon future, and accordingly has decided to invest in hydrogen-driven fuel cells.

GM is now providing fuel cell modules -- with the name of "Hydrotec Power Cube (HPC)" -- to US big-truck maker Navistar. Each HPC can provide 80 kilowatts (110 horsepower), with several being used in a big hauler truck. GM says they could also be used in railroad locomotives, airport ground equipment, or even submarines. GM is in discussion with other manufacturers for such applications. A big hauler could drive more than 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) without refueling.

The company also plans to sell site generators based on the technology. GM's roadmap envisioned the end of production of fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035, with the company becoming carbon-neutral by 2040. However, the company is primarily focused on battery-powered vehicles.

[WED 12 OCT 22] THE LIBERAL AGENDA (5)

* THE LIBERAL AGENDA (5): Why did the American Revolution succeed and the French Revolution did not? The most obvious factor, according to Tocqueville, was the decentralization of power: the Federal government in Washington DC was subject to checks and balances within itself. Power also devolved to the lowest levels -- through the states, cities, townships, and voluntary civil organizations -- while the French revolutionary government went towards centralization of power under Napoleon. The second factor was what Toqueville called "manners". Like many French liberals, Tocqueville was an Anglophile. He saw that America had inherited many of Britain's best traditions, such as common law and a ruling class that was committed to running local institutions.

America also had the great advantage of freedom of religion. True, Tocqueville believed that a liberal society depended ultimately on Christian morality. Christianity preached the equality of humanity and the value of the individual, values not always asserted in other religions. However, the French ancien regime had corrupted Christianity by making it an arm of the state.

America's decision to make religion a matter of personal conscience created an alliance between the "spirit of religion" and the "spirit of liberty". America was a society that "goes along by itself", as Tocqueville put it, not just because it dispersed power but because it produced self-reliant citizens who were capable of creating solutions to the nation's problems, enlisting the government if need be, instead of simply relying on the authorities to handle everything.

Tocqueville understood the faults of American democracy -- most prominently slavery, a profound contradiction in a nation devoted to liberty. He comforted himself that it would pass; he would not live to see how violent its passage would be, much less to see that slavery, even in extinction, would create problems for America in the following centuries. Anticipating America in the age of Trump, he worried that the "cult of the common man", what we now call populism, would result in the elevation of charlatans, contempt for intellect, and persecution of noncomformists.

Tocqueville exerted great influence on those who shared his fears. In his "Autobiography", John Stuart Mill thanked Tocqueville for sharpening his insight that government by the majority might hinder noncomformist intellectuals from influencing the debate. In 1867 Robert Lowe, a leading British Liberal politician, argued for mass education on the Tocquevillian grounds that "we must educate our masters". Some Liberal politicians argued against extending the franchise, on the curious grounds that liberty could not survive so much of democracy.

More recently, American intellectuals have worried about the rapid growth of the Federal government, inaugurated by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program. Transferring power from local to the Federal government; empowering unaccountable bureaucrats to pursue social engineering goals; and undermining the vitality of civil society tends, they fear, to destroy the building blocks of Tocqueville's America.

Today, along with the worry about the hazards of big government, we also face the hazards of big companies -- particularly the big infotech firms -- and the hookup between the two. Giant tech companies enjoy market shares unknown since the Gilded Age. They are linked with government through lobbying and the revolving door that has government officials working for them when they leave office. By providing so much information "free", they are starving media outlets that attempt to perform conscientious journalism; they use algorithms to disseminate information in such a way as to stoke extremism.

Modern China provides a counter-example to Tocqueville's vision for the United States. China is built on centralization with authoritarianism, with its state and submissive tech firms controlling the flow of information to its citizens. China embodies everything that Tocqueville warned against: power centralized in the hands of the state; citizens reduced to atoms; a collective willingness to sacrifice liberty for a comfortable life.

Before the revolution in France in 1848, Tocqueville warned that the continent was "sleeping on a volcano ... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon." In the third decade of the 21st century, populism and authoritarianism are engaged in a global struggle against democracy and liberalism. It is too early to see how it will turn out. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 11 OCT 22] STORE BRANDS

* STORE BRANDS: The business of store-brand products has been discussed here in the past. As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("The Hidden Makers Of Costco's Kirkland Signature & Trader Joe's O's" by Nathaniel Meyersohn, 6 August 2022), store brands -- such as Kirkland Signature, Two-Buck Chuck, Simple Truth, Cat & Jack, Great Value, & Amazon Basics -- have never been more popular. They've had their ups and downs, but with inflation on a roll, American consumers have flocked back to them; they account for about a fifth of sales in the $1.7 trillion USD sales of America's grocery industry.

The attraction of store brands is obvious: they're from 10% to 50% cheaper than name brands. What's not so obvious is who makes them. Retailers don't offer much information about the companies that make their brands -- while manufacturers have little incentive to reveal that they're creating similar products to their name brands under a different label sold on the cheap.

Many leading national brand manufacturers create private labels for multiple retailers. What sense does that make? The reality is that, though store brands would seem to be a threat to name brands, manufacturers often have excess capacity on their production lines. To generate additional profit, some will use that extra capacity to make private labels. Other brand manufacturers will produce store brands under the assumption that it will build a relationship with the stores, who will then push the name brand. In turn, retailers try to use store labels to negotiate better deals with makers of name brands.

Most brand-label manufacturers who make store-label products say little about doing so, since they fear undermining their brand name. However, there are exceptions. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies diapers, produces Kirkland Signature diapers for Costco, while Duracell produces Kirkland Signature batteries. Georgia-Pacific, the maker of Brawny and Dixie paper towels, also produces store brands. So does Henkel, the manufacturer of Purex and Dial.

Store brands are nothing new; they've been around since the rise of consumer brands late in the 19th century. Macy's, Montgomery Ward, A&P, and most notably Sears -- with its highly-regarded Craftsman tools -- all had store-label products. However, for most of the 20th century, brand labels like Jello, Heinz, and Campbell dominated their markets, with competing store labels seen as cheap and inferior. In the 1970s, stores accepted the lowly status of their brands and introduced bargain-basement "generics", labeled with big black letters on white backgrounds as BEER, SOAP, COLA, BEANS, and so on. From that time, however, private labels began to gain ground, as retailers got more serious about them -- though they couldn't have got much less.

Stores today may develop a distinctive private brand to compete directly with brand labels, in an effort to give a store label brand recognition. Costco, for example, may decide to make a Kirkland Signature product because a leading brand won't sell to the retailer; or instead believes the name brand's prices have gotten too high, and it can make its own similar-quality product, selling it for 20% less. Costco CFO Richard Galanti says that the company hasn't lost any relationships with suppliers by launching its own Kirkland products, but those brands are not usually happy when Costco introduces one,

Stores often start small with their own brands. Grocers, for example, will often first introduce a shelf-stable product like pasta, flour, sugar or rice that's easier to make and where brand loyalty within the category isn't strong.

Retailers have sometimes passed the line into a sort of product counterfeiting. The owner of golf ball-brand Titleist sued Costco for patent infringement, while Williams-Sonoma sued Amazon for selling "knockoffs" under its own brand. Both cases were settled.

The US House Judiciary Committee and other lawmakers and regulators around the world have investigated whether Amazon uses data from sellers to create its own brands, and unlawfully favors its own brands on its website. Amazon has said it doesn't use the data from individual third-party sellers to inform the development of its own private brands, and does not favor its own products on the site.

In any case, so who actually makes the store brands? Product recalls are often revealing. In 2021, for example, Dole recalled fresh salads and vegetables, including private brands for Walmart, Kroger and H-E-B. Smuckers recalled certain Jif peanut butter products in 2022, as well as store-branded items it made for Giant Eagle, Wawa and Safeway. Big companies such as Conagra and McCain Foods have recalled products from Trader Joe's.

There are companies that only supply to private label manufacturers, such as Treehouse Foods, which makes snacks under the labels of supermarkets, big-box chains and other retailers. Some large retailers also make their own private labels. Kroger, for example, makes about 30% of its own private products. Some retailers that make their own private-label products actually also make them for competitors: Safeway-owned Lucerne Foods manufactures private labels for Safeway's rivals.

[MON 10 OCT 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 41

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from VANITYFAIR.com ("Trump's Mar-a-Lago Special Master Gambit Has Hilariously Backfired in Every Possible Way" by Bess Levin, 29 September 2022), on 8 August 2022, FBI agents raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, seizing a pile of classified documents he wasn't supposed to have.

In response, Trump did what he always does: raise legal obstacles, His lawyers demanded that a "special master" be appointed to oversee a review of the documents, in order to remove any supposedly covered by executive privilege. That was preposterous, effectively like saying the FBI needed to prove the classified documents really were classified. However, Federal Judge Aileen Cannon granted his special master request and temporarily blocked the Department of Justice from using the records taken from MAR as part of its criminal investigation.

It seemed for the moment that Trump's delaying tactics had worked, thanks to Judge Cannon's willingness to humor him -- with loud criticisms of the judge following, to which she seemed entirely indifferent. Her judgement promptly began to disintegrate, with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals saying that the review could continue, but the Department of Justice could still access the documents in the meantime. The appeals court judgement said: "For our part, we cannot discern why Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings."

That wasn't even half of it, since the Federal judge appointed to play special master -- Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee -- demonstrated little inclination to humor Trump. At an initial hearing, Dearie made clear his impatience with Trump's lawyers, who would not give the court any information to show that the 100 documents obtained by the FBI were unclassified.

The judge -- a veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which provides warrants for secret surveillance -- indicated that he was uncertain about what he was supposed to do if the government says certain documents are classified and Trump's side disagrees, but doesn't offer proof to challenge that. Dearie said his only criteria for classification of government documents was if they were marked as such: "What [else] am I looking for? ... As far as I am concerned, that's the end of it. What business is it of the court?"

Trump lawyer James Trusty told the judge: "We shouldn't have to be in a position to have to disclose declarations and witness statements." The expression on Dearie's face was not recorded, but he was clearly not happy with Trusty, telling him: "You can't have your cake and eat it, too."

A few days later, Dearie demanded that Trump's legal team back up the former president's claim that the Feds planted evidence during their search of his Palm Beach resort residence. Again, they could provide no evidence.

According to former FBI official Peter Strzok, Trump continues to put his attorneys at a disadvantage every time they face a judge and have to explain claims he keeps making. Strzok told an interviewer:

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The story of the documents review is by no means over, but it appears the DOJ doesn't see it as anything but a nuisance, and it isn't likely to seriously delay the investigation of Trump. It is, after all, only a small part of the greater case against him.

* I've been struggling for the last number of years to adjust my work schedule so I can get everything done, and I finally managed to get a system that works. It's fascinating that I can get more done in the same amount of time just by rearranging the schedule.

One of the things I did was shift practicing on my Yamaha keyboard to early in the morning. Since I live in a duplex house and my neighbor's bedroom is only separated from mine by a wall, that meant I had to use headphones -- which was fine, except that I couldn't hear the metronome.

I got to tinkering with ideas about bluetooth connections that went nowhere, except to the extent that I started to think about using a smartphone as a metronome -- the main idea being that it could provide me with visual indicators to keep the beat. On considering the matter, I realized there had to be metronome apps for smartphones, it was just too easy to do; I quickly found an app named "Modern Metronome" and downloaded it.

It turned out to be very easy to use, and a big improvement over my ancient stand-alone metronome. I could sit it up next to the sheet music while I was practicing, and keep an eye on it. Later I found out I could store settings in files, so I didn't have to enter them all the time.

It turned out to be a bit tricky to read a score and keep track of the metronome, but I learned to merely take glances at it every now and then. I suddenly realized that metronomes were now obsolete; any old smartphone could do the job. Incidentally, there is a free version of the app, but I paid $1.99 USD for the "pro" version. It wasn't much different from the free version, but I didn't mind shelling out a trivial bit of money in appreciation.

[FRI 07 OCT 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (15)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (15): The boom in industrial capitalism did not sweep away socialism; in reality, capitalism and socialism were not incompatible. This was demonstrated by the rise of what was known as "state socialism" in the 1880s. Germany had long been a patchwork of small, mostly agrarian small states, but it was unified in 1871 under the "Iron Chancellor", Otto von Bismarck (1815:1898), and began to rapidly industrialize -- with a particular emphasis on chemical manufacturing.

The emergence of Germany as an industrial state led to the rise of an industrial labor class, and the rise of the German Social Democratic Party, based on socialist concepts. Bismarck, an autocratic ruler, attempted to suppress the Social Democrats, but with limited success. Unable to get rid of them, Bismarck decided to try to beat them at their own game.

The result was the German Health Insurance Law of 1883, the world's first national health-care law. Both employers and employees paid into insurance funds, with the German government verified workers' enrollment and threatening employers of uninsured workers with fines. That first step was followed by the Accident Insurance Bill of 1884, and the Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889. They were not fundamentally new ideas, the ancient craft guilds having often provided support to members who fell on hard times, and more recently they had been provided by voluntary societies among labor groups. However, this was the first time a government had provided comprehensive social guarantees. Other European nations took notice of the German measures.

The German measures defined "state socialism", which had no close resemblance to socialism as it was generally understood -- meaning public ownership of the means of production. State socialism left the means of production in private hands and wasn't dependent on taxpayer money, instead pooling money from employers and employees. The German social-insurance schemes were also far from universal, being focused on industrial labor, and excluded rural laborers, small farmers, and self-employed craftspeople.

The major driving force behind Bismarck's adoption of such measures was apparently to sideline the Socialist Party -- though it didn't, the Socialists remaining alive and well among the voters. It did prove successful at sidelining Socialist initiatives, providing a safety valve against social pressures; the Socialists consistently tried to vote down Bismarck's reforms, recognizing how limited and selective they were. On the other side of that coin, however, the German ruling classes could see that a state that cared for the welfare of its citizens was a stronger and more prosperous state.

The German state socialism exercise also did not slow down the emergence of large-scale labor unions. Trade unions had emerged in parallel with the Industrial Revolution; there was a parallel evolution of trade unions across the industrial world, marked in the USA by the emergence of the Knights of Labor in 1869, which was replaced by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886. The AFL, influenced by Marxist thinking, was able to take large-scale labor actions -- though with no assistance from the US government, and in fact often in the face of government hostility.

Nonetheless, there was drive towards government reform at the time, emerging in the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt (1858:1919), who during his time in the White House from 1901 to 1909 pushed through a new agenda, establishing what became known as the "Progressive Era". [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 06 OCT 22] WALKING AGAIN / BIONIC HAND

* WALKING AGAIN: As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Nerve-Stimulation Device Helps Paralyzed Patients Walk" by Nancy Lapid and Ari Rabinovitch, 8 February 2022), three paraplegics who were crippled by spinal injuries, can now walk, cycle, and swim using a nerve-stimulation device controlled by a tablet computer.

The patients' injuries to a region called the "thoracic spine" -- below the neck and above the lowest part of the back -- were suffered one to nine years before receiving the treatment. The patients were all men -- ages 29, 32, and 41 -- and all were injured in motorbike accidents. They were able to take their first steps within an hour after neurosurgeons first implanted prototypes of a nerve-stimulation device, remotely controlled by artificial-intelligence software.

Over the next six months, the patients regained the ability to engage in the more advanced activities, such as walking, cycling, and swimming in community settings outside of the clinic, by controlling the nerve-stimulation devices themselves using a touchscreen tablet.

Gregoire Courtine and Jocelyne Bloch of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne were the study leaders. Other researchers have tried to help paralyzed patients walk by stimulating nerves through the back of the spine, using broad electrical fields emitted by implanted devices originally designed to control chronic pain. Courtine and Bloch and their team redesigned the devices so that electrical signals enter the spine from the sides instead of from the back, which permits much more specific targeting and activation of spinal cord regions.

They then devised artificial intelligence algorithms that instruct electrodes on the device to emit signals to stimulate, in the proper sequence, the individual nerves that control the trunk and leg muscles needed for various activities such as getting up from a chair, sitting down and walking. The software has to be calibrated to each patient's anatomy.

When the device was implanted, patients could "immediately activate their legs and step," Bloch said. However, their legs were weak from disuse, so they needed to condition themselves while figuring out how to use the technology.

The researchers noted that while the patients were able to learn to perform various activities, including controlling their truck muscles, for "extensive periods," they did not regain natural movements. However, Bloch says: "The more they train, the more they start lifting their muscles, the more fluid it becomes."

If this study's early results are validated in larger studies, people immobilized by spinal cord injuries may someday be able to open a smartphone or talk to a smartwatch, select an activity such as "walk" or "sit," then send a message to an implanted device that will stimulate their nerves and muscles to make the appropriate movements happen. Improved software will likely result in more natural movements. Courtine and Bloch and have established a Netherlands-based technology company named "Onward Medical" to commercialize the system. The company expects to launch a trial in about a year involving 70 to 100 patients, primarily in the USA.

* IONIC HAND: As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Bionic Hand Can Be Updated With New Gestures" by Paul Sandle, 16 August 2022), Australian swimmer Jessica Smith lost a hand when she was little. She was then encouraged to wear a prosthetic, but it didn't go well: she upset a kettle of boiling water and badly scalded herself.

However, she was intrigued when Covvi -- a startup in Leeds, northern England -- to try out its Nexus hand, an advanced prosthetic. It converts electrical impulses from the muscles in the upper arm into movement powered by motors in the hand, enabling a user to hold a glass, open a door, or pick up an egg. The idea is not entirely new, but Simon Pollard -- who founded Covvi in 2017 -- wanted to build a bionic hand with a bluetooth interface, so it could be updated with a smartphone, and commanded to perform different actions.

Smith, who is a speaker and children's author, said Covvi was creating new movements for her. She said: "I've had a few kids ask if I can do different hand gestures, some polite some not so polite. I asked Covvi this morning, and I know that will be done in the next couple of hours."

She said the kids were fascinated by the Nexus hand: "They think it's amazing and I'm like half human-half robot." She sees the visibly high-tech nature of the hand as a plus, preferring that to trying to fake a human hand: "I'm not trying to hide who I am. I'm adding and expanding on who I am by being able to access technology that's never been available before."

[WED 05 OCT 22] THE LIBERAL AGENDA (4)

* THE LIBERAL AGENDA (4): Alexis de Tocqueville is the odd man out among liberal philosophers. Liberalism is mostly rooted in the Anglo-American middle classes; Tocqueville was a French aristocrat, and not embarrassed by it -- indeed, he viewed the middle class with a certain amount of disdain. He also was unusually pragmatic in a domain where upbeat optimism is the norm, believing that an element of pessimism was in order -- that a liberal future was not just going to happen, it would require an enlightened government and sensible policies. The drive toward bureaucratic centralization did not necessarily support such goals.

Tocqueville is nonetheless in the top rank of liberal scholars, having written classic studies of two engines driving the emerging liberal order: DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (1835:1840) and THE OLD REGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1856). In his own country, he was both intellectually and politically influential. In the 1820s, he was a significant participant in the "Great Debate" between liberals and ultra-Royalists about the future direction of France. In 1849, ten years before his death, he served briefly as foreign minister.

Tocqueville strongly believed that the collective business of society is best done by the people themselves, through voluntary effort, rather than by the government. He rested his philosophy on two fundamental principles:

• The significance of the individual. The goal of politics was to protect people's rights, particularly the right to free discussion, and to give them room to develop their abilities to the full.
  
  
• A deep belief that the future belonged with democracy -- not just a parliamentary democracy with elections and broad suffrage, but a society rooted in equality.

The old regime had been fundamentally class-conscious: there was the class that ruled and the class that served. Some of the aristocracy, such as Tocqueville's family in Normandy, also believed that responsibility came along with privilege, that aristocrats had to serve their country and their people -- but how were they best served?

Many of Tocqueville's class thought that democracy was an accident and a mistake: an accident because it only came about because of the failure of the old regime to control events, a mistake because it destroyed the old regime. Tocqueville believed such notions were absurd, and saw the effort to restore aristocratic privilege as doomed, a waste of effort. Tocqueville believed all were born inherently equal, that class distinctions were no way to run a society.

The dominant question in Tocqueville's thought is the tension between liberty and democracy. Tocqueville knew that liberty required democracy, but also worried that democracy might not mean liberty. It might end up with a consolidation of power in yet another ruling class, and could not rule out the suppression of independent thinking in favor of conventional wisdom.

Tocqueville worried that states might use the principle of equality to accumulate power and ride roughshod over local traditions and local communities, sidelining self-government and diverse expression, promoting coercion. He recalled how the French revolutionaries of the previous century had, in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity, crushed dissenters and slaughtered aristocrats, including many members of Tocqueville's family. His parents were spared, but his father's hair turned white at 24 and his mother was reduced to a nervous wreck.

The bloodshed had been transitory, but there was a subtler threat underneath it. The monarchy had created an over-mighty state, as French kings sucked power from aristocrats towards the central government. The revolution completed the job, abolishing local autonomy along with aristocratic power and reducing individual citizens to equal servitude beneath the "immense tutelary power" of the state.

Tocqueville believed that America had done a better job at establishing democracy. His stated reason for crossing the Atlantic, in 1931, was to investigate the American penal system, then regarded as one of the most enlightened in the world. His deeper goal was to understand American democracy. He was impressed by the New England townships, with their strong local governments, but he was equally taken by the egalitarianism of the frontier. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 04 OCT 22] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("Coastal Cities Around the Globe are Sinking" by Katherine Kornei, 14 April 2022), it no longer possible to sensibly dispute that the oceans are rising due to climate change, putting coastal regions in danger of flooding. To make things worse, on the average the ground under coastal cities is sinking.

Matt Wei, an earth scientist at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett, and colleagues studied 99 coastal cities on six continents, using two European radar satellites and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques. With InSAR, they could track changes of as little as a millimeter on a cycle time of 12 days.

The researchers found that the worst subsidence rates, up to five centimeters per year are mostly in Asian cities like Tianjin, China; Karachi, Pakistan; and Manila, Philippines. 33 of the cities are sinking in some places by more than a centimeter a year. The researchers suspect that the subsidence is largely caused by people, being due to groundwater extraction. As water is pumped out of aquifers, the land tends to settle. However, there is some modest cause for optimism, in that cities such as Shanghai and Jakarta in Indonesia were sinking by more than 10 centimeters per year, on average. Now subsidence in those places has slowed, possibly due to recent governmental regulations limiting groundwater extraction.

* Not all coastal areas are sinking. As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("A Drop In The Ocean" by Ivana Kottasova and Temujin Doran, April 2022), inhabitants of the village of Hoefn -- pronounced "hup" -- is finding that access to the ocean is becoming more troublesome as coastal lagoons become shallower.

How does this make sense? Isn't climate change resulting in rising seas? Generally, yes, but it is also melting ice. Hoefn sits in the shadow of Iceland's largest ice cap, Vatnajoekull. For centuries, the vast weight of Vatnajoekull has compressed the ground underneath it -- but climate change means the ice is gradually disappearing. At the rate it's going, all of Iceland could be iceless by 2200.

As the ice melts, the ground underneath rises, and the water runs into the oceans. In addition, the ice masses exerted gravitational pull that drew seawater towards them, and that gravitational pull went away. The pull is not so much from Iceland, but from relatively nearby Greenland, with its huge and shrinking ice sheets. The net effect, in any case, is the sea recedes. It varies from place to place in Iceland, but it amounts to about 2 to 4 centimeters a year. The sea continues to rise in general, but much more noticeably on the other side of the world. The receding waters have to go someplace.

* As discussed in a press release from the University of Copenhagen ("Ancient Ice Reveals Scores of Gigantic Volcanic Eruptions", 22 March 2022), every now and then a volcano somewhere on Earth blows its stack, with repercussions all over the planet. A group of University of Copenhagen researchers investigating the history of such eruptions since the last Ice Age took ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland to nail them down with unprecedented precision, the analysis finding dozens that were bigger than any eruption in modern history. Research lead Anders Svensson -- an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute -- says:

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The study -- which followed an earlier effort to match up ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland -- revealed the timing, quantity, and intensity of volcanic eruptions over the last 60,000 years. The researchers identified 1,113 volcanic eruptions in Greenlandic ice cores and 740 eruptions in Antarctic ice cores. 85 of the eruptions identified were observed by researchers at both of Earth's poles. 25 of these were larger than any eruption in the past 2,500 years, while 69 were larger than the 1815 Tambora eruption, the largest volcanic eruption on record in the last 500 years.

[MON 03 OCT 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 40

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This has not been a good week for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Having implemented a large-scale mobilization program to shovel up Russian lads, then send them to Ukraine with little training or equipment, Putin has been suffering progressive defeats there. Russian casualties in Ukraine are now estimated at over 60,000. Putin's been talking big about going nuclear, but it seems mostly like theatrics. NATO hasn't changed its direction, and he's made no move to use nukes. He realizes that using nukes won't win him the war, and will likely make things much worse for him. Of course, so far his judgement has proven extremely bad, so there is doubt he can act with sense.

In the meantime, for lack of anything better, Putin ran a fake referendum in the occupied territories to validate their annexation by Russia. The YES vote for annexation was like 98%, which nobody believed. It was an unconvincing attempt to declare victory. On top of that, somebody blew up the North Stream pipeline pumping gas from Russia to Europe, resulting in a huge methane release.

The Russians denied responsibility and accused the USA of the sabotage. That was nonsense of course, but still left the question of why the Russians would have broken the pipeline instead of simply shutting it off. The answer is that shutting it off would have invoked contractual penalties, while sabotaging the pipeline would not. Everyone believes it was the Russians who did it, but proving that may be tricky.

* As discussed in an article from AP ("Finland, Sweden Offer NATO An Edge As Rivalry Warms Up North" by Ellen Knickmeyer, 20 August 2022), Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has had a wide range of follow-on effects, none of them good for Russia. One of the significant ones was the request of Finland and Sweden to join NATO.

The two nations -- which US President Joe Biden calls "our allies of the high north" -- are significant military powers, with well-led, well-trained, and well-equipped armed forces. The US Marines found that out in the spring of 2022, when they sent in a helicopter assault force during an Arctic exercise. They landed right next to a well-concealed Finnish command post, with exercise umpires saying the Marines were soundly beaten.

A NATO that includes Finland and Sweden would be a poke in the eye for Vladimir Putin, empowering the dalliance in a strategically important region, surrounding Russia in the Baltic Sea and Arctic Ocean, and extending NATO along Russia's western border for more than 1,300 additional kilometers (800 miles). Lord George Robertson, previously a NATO secretary-general, commented in the summer of 2022: "I spent four years, my term, trying to persuade Sweden and Finland to join NATO. Vladimir Putin managed it in four weeks."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that Russia in recent years has been "rearming up in the north, with advanced nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles and multiple bases. Russia's threats, and Russia's military build-up, mean that NATO is strengthening its presence in the north." Biden has been part of bipartisan US and international cheerleading for the two countries' NATO candidacies. Reservations expressed by Turkey and Hungary keep NATO approval from being a lock.

Both Sweden and Finland downsized their militaries after the end of the Cold War. Five years ago, Sweden's entire tiny national defense force could fit into one of Stockholm's soccer stadiums, one critic noted. However, as Russia grew more confrontational, Sweden reinstated conscription and otherwise moved to rebuild its military. Sweden has a capable navy and a high-tech air force. Like Finland, Sweden has a valued homegrown defense industry; Sweden is one of the smallest countries in the world to build its own fighter jets.

Finland's defense force was not downsized so severely, and has a formidable history. In 1940, Finland confronted a Soviet invasion and mauled it savagely. The Finns were forced to cede some territory, but retained their independence.

Finland's constitution makes rallying to the national defense an obligation of every citizen. Finland says it can muster a 280,000-strong fighting force, built on near-universal male conscription and a large, well-trained reserve, equipped with modern artillery, warplanes and tanks, much of it of Western origin.

The USA and NATO are likely to increase their presence around the Baltic and Arctic once the two countries sign up. Zachary Selden -- a former director of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly's defense and security committee, now a national security expert at the University of Florida -- says: "Just looking at the map, if you add in Finland and Sweden, you essentially turn the entire Baltic Sea into a NATO lake," with just two smaller bits of Russia lining it,

Russia will become the only non-NATO member among countries with claims to Arctic territory, and the only non-NATO member of the Atlantic Council, an eight-member international forum created for Arctic issues. Selden foresees a greater NATO presence in the Baltics as a result, possibly with a new NATO regional command, along with US military rotations -- although probably not any permanent foreign base. It is likely that the disastrous failure of Putin's Ukraine adventure will destabilize Russia, and the NATO alliance will become more important than ever.