* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: On Thursday, 1 September 2022, US President Joe Biden delivered a speech at Philadelphia's Independence Hall, in which he blasted Donald Trump's MAGA followers. The speech is excerpted below:
QUOTE:
My fellow Americans, please, if you have a seat, take it. I speak to you tonight from sacred ground in America: Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is where America made its Declaration of Independence to the world more than two centuries ago with an idea, unique among nations, that in America, we're all created equal. This is where the United States Constitution was written and debated. This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known with three simple words: "We, the People."
These two documents and the ideas they embody -- equality and democracy -- are the rock upon which this nation is built. They are how we became the greatest nation on Earth. They are why, for more than two centuries, America has been a beacon to the world. But as I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.
... We must never forget: We, the people, are the true heirs of the American experiment that began more than two centuries ago. We, the people, have burning inside each of us the flame of liberty that was lit here at Independence Hall -- a flame that lit our way through abolition, the Civil War, suffrage, the Great Depression, world wars, civil rights. That sacred flame still burns now in our time as we build an America that is more prosperous, free, and just.
... [However,] too much of what's happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.
Now I want to be very clear: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I've been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.
... MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they're working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards -- backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country. They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.
And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections. They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they're determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.
... But while the threat to American democracy is real ... we are not powerless in the face of these threats. We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy. There are far more Americans ... from every background and belief who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it.
... I believe America is at an inflection point: one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that's to come after. And now America must choose: to move forward or to move backwards? To build the future or obsess about the past? To be a nation of hope and unity and optimism, or a nation of fear, division, and of darkness?
MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies. But together ? together, we can choose a different path. We can choose a better path. Forward, to the future. A future of possibility. A future to build and dream and hope. And we're on that path, moving ahead.
... This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it.
This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it.
This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it.
And this is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. We do not encourage violence.
We are still an America that believes in honesty and decency and respect for others, patriotism, liberty, justice for all, hope, possibilities. We are still, at our core, a democracy.
And yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy. For a long time, we've told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it's not. We have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it -- each and every one of us.
That's why tonight I'm asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology. ... Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: we must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to destroying American democracy.
... I want to say this plain and simple: There is no place for political violence in America. Period. None. Ever.
We saw law enforcement brutally attacked on January the 6th. We've seen election officials, poll workers -- many of them volunteers of both parties -- subjected to intimidation and death threats. And -- can you believe it? -- FBI agents just doing their job as directed, facing threats to their own lives from their own fellow citizens. On top of that, there are public figures -- today, yesterday, and the day before -- predicting and all but calling for mass violence and rioting in the streets.
... We, the people, must say: This is not who we are. ... We can't allow violence to be normalized in this country. It's wrong. We each have to reject political violence with -- with all the moral clarity and conviction this nation can muster. Now. We can't let the integrity of our elections be undermined, for that is a path to chaos.
... Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that's where MAGA Republicans are today. They don't understand what every patriotic American knows: You can't love your country only when you win.
... MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair. They spread fear and lies ?- lies told for profit and power. But I see a very different America -- an America with an unlimited future, an America that is about to take off.
... The cynics and the critics tell us nothing can get done, but they are wrong. There is not a single thing America cannot do, not a single thing beyond our capacity if we do it together.
... Look, I know the last few years have been tough. But today, COVID no longer controls our lives. More Americans are working than ever. Businesses are growing. Our schools are open. Millions of Americans have been lifted out of poverty. ... American manufacturing has come alive across the Heartland, and the future will be made in America, no matter what the white supremacists and the extremists say.
... We're going to end cancer as we know it. ... We are going to create millions of new jobs in a clean energy economy. We're going to think big. We're going to make the 21st century another American century because the world needs us to.
... Our task is to make our nation free and fair, just and strong, noble and whole. And this work is the work of democracy -- the work of this generation. It is the work of our time, for all time. We can't afford to leave anyone on the sidelines. We need everyone to do their part. So speak up. Speak out. Get engaged.
... And I have no doubt, none, that this is who we will be and that we'll come together as a nation. That we'll secure our democracy. That for the next 200 years, we'll have what we had the past 200 years: the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.
We just need to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America. And may God protect our nation. And may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy. God bless you all. Democracy. Thank you.
END_QUOTE
Some perceived missteps in the speech, one being that Biden was backlit in red, giving him an ominous appearance; the other being that he was backed by his Marine guards, which some military professionals thought was inappropriate. The red lighting was due to the fact that Independence Hall was spotlit in red, white, and blue, and Biden wasn't well framed against it. MAGA quickly distributed images of the red-lit Biden online, suggesting he was an aspiring tyrant. The supposed gibes backfired; Biden was instead framed as "Dark Brandon", the Marvel Comix superhero version of Biden, created in response to the obscure "Let's Go Brandon" -- meaning "Fuck Biden" -- sneer created by MAGA.
As far as the presence of the Marines went, that was fairly normal for presidents, and it also provided a reminder that Biden is the Commander in Chief of America's armed forces; does MAGA really want to take him on? In any case, MAGA screamed very loud, as if they were being unjustly attacked -- which was to be expected, and only enhanced Biden's approval ratings. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen how the speech will play out in events, most notably in the November mid-term elections. In any case, Congress comes back into session this week after summer recess, and there's reason to think much will happen there.
* The Ukraine War flames on, though there's a news blackout in progress as Ukrainian Army forces press their offensive against Russians trapped in Kherson. However, things are going on elsewhere in public view: somebody hacked into the systems of Moscow's biggest taxicab company, and commanded all the taxis to pick up a fare at the same location. The result was a massive traffic jam.
Wars do have a comical element. The Russians have been claiming they have destroyed a number of HIMARS rocket launchers -- but it turns out they instead destroyed plywood-based decoys. It seems the Ukrainians have a lively decoy industry in operation, but we won't know much more until the war is over.
In other news, it appears that the fringe were projecting 3 September 2022 as "COVID Zombie Apocalypse Day", in which people who had been vaccinated would become zombies. The day was in fact generally uneventful. Looks like we dodged the bullet this time.
* One of the more recent weapons to be fielded to Ukraine is the "Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE)" from L3 Harris. It is based on the "Advanced Precision-Kill Weapons System (APKWS)" missile, which is a classic 70-millimeter rocket with a screw-on laser-seeking head, developed by BAE Systems. Maximum range is 5 kilometers (3 miles). In the anti-air mode, the APKWS is fitted with a proximity fuze and a fragmentation warhead; a new combined-effects warhead is being developed to allow an APKWS to flexibly engage different targets.
VAMPIRE is a palletized system that can be easily mounted on the bed of a pickup truck or other vehicle; it has its own battery power supply system, presumably wired into the truck's electrical system in some way. Along with a four-round APKWS launcher, it has an electro-optic / infrared sensor turret with a laser target designator, the turret being mounted on a telescoping mast. The turret presumably has automatic target detection and tracking, since VAMPIRE is being sent to the theatre as an anti-drone weapon. However, it can engage other types of targets, and the EO-IR turret can be used for scouting and surveillance. The VAMPIRE system could be configured with other turrets or munitions.
* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("UN To Roll Out Global Early-Warning Systems For Extreme Weather" by Gloria Dickie, 23 March 2022), the United Nations is planning to set up a global warning system to provide alerts for extreme weather events. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says: "Half of humanity is already in the danger zone [of extreme weather disasters, and yet] one-third of the world's people, mainly in least developed countries and small island developing states, are still not covered by early warning systems."
Africa is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, which also can impact food security. Parts of the continent are ravaged frequently by drought, cyclones or intense rainfall, but 60% of the population lives in areas that don't have early-warning weather systems.
According to data from the UN World Health Organization (WHO), there are about five times the number of weather-related disasters than there were in the 1970s. The droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms have killed more than 2 million people and inflicted $3.64 trillion USD in losses globally since 1970.
Warning systems have helped cut death tolls by some 76% since the 1970s by giving time for preparation, saving lives and reducing damage. A 24-hour storm warning, for example, can help people reduce damage by about 30%, according to a 2019 report from the Global Commission on Adaptation. That report also suggested that spending $800 million USD on early-warning systems in developing countries alone would avoid up to $16 billion USD in annual losses. Although details are not yet available, the UN wants to have a warning system in place in five years. The project was previously mentioned at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The Ukrainian offensive against the Russians isolated in the city of Kherson continues; this southern push was joined this week one in the north, against Russian lines facing Kharkiv. The northern offensive has pushed forward against disorganized resistance, with the Ukrainian Army capturing so many Russian prisoners that it's problematic to care for them. The cities of Kupiansk and Izyum are on the threshold of being taken.
There are wild rumors of UA advances much deeper into Russian-controlled territory, but they're hard to take seriously for the moment. The Ukrainians do have to advance as far and as fast as they can; millions of Ukrainians remain under Russian control, and there will be mass starvation during the winter if the Russians aren't evicted.
Videos of Ukrainian troops advancing -- sometimes on foot, sometimes on combat vehicles, often in ubiquitous Ukrainian pickup trucks -- show them being greeted by Ukrainian citizens, grannies hugging the soldiers and crying, one man even on his knees with his arms raised. It appears many Russian soldiers are stealing civilian clothes and fleeing.
Videos of strikes on Russian targets continue to be released. Videos of tanks blowing their turrets are common, but one recent video topped that. In the bottom corner of the video, a tank next to a farmhouse was blasted; a few seconds later, something fell from the sky and landed on the farmhouse roof. It was the tank commander, who was apparently standing in the top hatch when the tank was hit. As gruesome as it was, I had to laugh.
* As discussed in an essay from ATLANTICCOUNCIL.org ("Russia May Not Survive Putin's Disastrous Decision To Invade Ukraine" by Janusz Bugajski, 8 September 2022), discussed possibilities for what happens after Russia is evicted from Ukraine. Bugajski writes:
QUOTE:
... the Russian Federation has been unable to transform itself into a nation-state, a civic state, or even a stable imperial state. The approaching rupture of the Russian Federation will be the third phase of imperial collapse following the unraveling of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Russia's numerous economic, demographic, and social weakness are exacerbated by a convergence of factors including over-dependence on fossil fuel exports, a contracting economy, and intensifying regional and ethnic disquiet.
END_QUOTE
Putin's calamitous war in Ukraine has put Russia under breaking strain:
QUOTE:
Although Russia's 1993 Constitution defines the country as a federation, in reality it is a centralized neo-imperial construct. This state is approaching the end of a regime cycle in which the political status quo is becoming increasingly precarious. Not since the fracturing of the Soviet Union have several simultaneous crises become so stark, including government inability to ensure sustained economic development, widening disparities between Moscow and the federal regions, and looming military defeat ... in Ukraine.
... Public acquiescence and regime survival under Putin's rule are based on a combination of aggressive foreign policy, militarism, anti-Western propaganda, and rising living standards. But the failing and costly war in Ukraine will deepen social and regional discontent regardless of Kremlin propaganda.
END_QUOTE
Nobody is expecting a stalemate now. What spells ruin for Russia is that the present government is not sustainable, but there is no alternative to it in the wings. There will be demands for autonomy by the many states of the Russian Federation:
QUOTE:
Disquiet in numerous republics and regions will be driven by an accumulation of grievances including sharply rising poverty levels, stark socio-economic inequalities, falling federal financial subsidies, deteriorating local infrastructure, environmental disasters, collapsing healthcare services, rampant official corruption, and public alienation from central decision-making. Moscow will be increasingly perceived as the exploiting colonial metropolis.
In the coming years, the Russian Federation could face a repeat of either the Soviet or the Yugoslav collapse, or some combination of the two. ... Moscow can try to emulate Serbia in the 1990s by mobilizing ethnic Russians to carve out ethnically homogenous regions from rebellious republics while expelling non-Russian populations, but this will simply hasten the rupture of the imperial state.
END_QUOTE
Of course, the disintegration of the Russian Federation will pose great challenges to NATO:
QUOTE:
... Western governments should simultaneously declare support for democracy and federalism in Russia as well as the rights of republics and regions to determine their sovereignty and statehood. This can help embolden citizens by demonstrating that they are not isolated on the world stage. As the process unfolds, linkages must be developed with emerging states and closer coordination pursued with all of Russia's neighbors directly affected by the rupture of Europe's last imperial construct.
END_QUOTE
The ground is shifting under Vladimir Putin's feet. Moscow municipal officials sent him a blunt message, released to the public:
QUOTE:
Research shows that in countries with regular alternation of power people tend to live better and longer, rather than in countries with leaders who resign only feet first.
You had good reforms during your first and particularly during your second term, but after that all was just awry: doubling of the GDP never happened, minimum wage didn't increase to the claimed rate; smart and capable people are leaving Russia en masse, and we're not even close to promised stability.
Rhetoric that has been used by you and your subordinates for a long time is full of intolerance and aggression that eventually threw our country back to the times of the Cold War. Russia provokes fear and hatred again. We're threatening the world with nuclear weapons again.
In connection with the above, we ask you to resign from your position due to the fact that your views and your governance model are hopelessly outdated, which prevents development of Russia and its human potential.
END_QUOTE
A similar message was sent out by municipal officials in Saint Petersburg. To no surprise, the police went after the officials. That was what the officials expected, of course; they were just trying to make a public plea for sanity, and see if they could get a response. Given the deteriorating state of Russian forces in Ukraine, this is not the end of it.
* As discussed in article from JANES.com ("Dutch Military Orders Smart Shooter's Smash System To Counter UAVs" by Yaakov Lappin, 25 February 2022), drones have become common on the battlefield, leading to work to neutralize them. One of the difficulties is that drones are cheap, and so it doesn't make much sense to use a relatively expensive missile to destroy them.
After evaluating the Smash rifle sight from Smart Shooter of Israel, the Dutch military has decided to obtain it for the counter-drone role. The Smash smart sight has imagers and a laser rangefinder; the shooter points the rifle at the target, holds down the trigger, with the smart sight firing the rifle when the target is lined up. The sight has a degree of night capability, and can also obtain target information from an external sensor.
* Wireless data body implants are nothing new. They were originally used primarily as an ID scheme; an article from BBC.com ("The Microchip Implants That Let You Pay With Your Hand" by Katherine Latham, 16 April 2022) described how they are now being used to make payments.
Patrick Paumen, a 37-year-old Dutch security guard, gets a startled reaction when he pays for things in a shop or restaurant. All he does is hold his hand up to a near-field wireless card reader, and the payment goes through -- thanks to a microchip he had implanted in his hand in 2019. Paumen says: "The reactions I get from cashiers are priceless!"
He got his chip, which is about the size of a grain of rice, from a British-Polish firm, Walletmor, which claims to be the first to have set up a payment system based on implanted wireless chips. Chief executive Wojtek Paprota says that the "can be used wherever contactless payments are accepted." The chip is safe, being encased in a biologically-inert polymer, and has regulatory approval. Like other near-field wireless devices, it doesn't need batteries, being powered through its antenna by the reader device.
Paumen says he's not worried about being tracked. Near-field wireless only works in close proximity to a detector, and any transaction he makes with the chip is no more or less tracked than if he used a charge card: "RFID chips are used in pets to identify them when they're lost -- but it's not possible to locate them using an RFID chip implant."
There is a general concern about the potential for abuse of data rights as we become more internet-connected, but Steven Northam -- a professor at the University of Winchester and founder of the UK firm BioTeq, which has been making RFID chip implants since 2017 -- sees no real problem with the implants. The company's implants are intended for people with disabilities who can use the chips to automatically open doors. Northram says: "We have daily enquiries, and have carried out over 500 implants in the UK ... This technology has been used in animals for years. They are very small, inert objects. There are no risks."
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The quiet, ongoing Department of Justice investigation of Donald Trump and MAGA has been making some waves lately, most notably with the Feds seizing boxes full of classified documents that Trump wasn't supposed to have from his Mar-a-Lago estate ... with the question hanging of what he was doing with them. In another, lesser revelation Mike Lindell -- "My Pillow Guy", the pillow magnate, a major Trump backer -- announced that the Feds had grabbed his smartphone from him at a Hardee's burger joint.
The Feds didn't say a word about it, it only went public because of Lindell. The stony silence of the authorities has a lot of people upset, with loud claims that the DOJ "isn't doing anything" and "nothing will happen to Trump." A Twitter poster named @BlackKnight10K counseled patience:
QUOTE:
Merrick Garland has multiple grand juries looking at the fake elector scheme, Trump's super PAC, the Truth Social app, the largest criminal investigation in history in 1/6, and the largest espionage investigation in history. Please stop asking why he's not done yet.
Given the quality of Trump's legal team, I'm a proponent of the: "Charge him with something, anything!" -- strategy because his lawyers are so bad that they'd find a way to turn a 2-year sentence into the death penalty, but ...
... DOJ is smarter than we are; Garland, the calculated deliberate former judge that he is, is taking so long to indict Trump himself because indictment is plan B and comes with its own set of problems.
I think it's finally clear DOJ is about to roll up everyone around Trump with the idea of getting enough cooperation agreements that they'll have enough evidence to negotiate a guilty plea out of Trump -- which if you just look at all the fallout and pitfalls from a search warrant, makes total sense why they would avoid indicting him if they could.
Death threats, another potential insurrection, right wing terror attacks, Trump appointed crony judges sabotaging the indictment or the legal process like Cannon, the Supreme Court potentially dragging it out for years or ruling he can't be prosecuted ... and other innumerable potential pitfalls, all avoided by a guilty plea. It's also the worst possible outcome for the Republican Party and their base. There wouldn't be anyone to lash out against or fundraise off of. No more grievance.
An indictment might unify Republicans. A guilty plea would fracture them and divided they would lose the ability to fundraise, the Fox propaganda machine would fall apart, and the infighting would give Dems power for 4 more years. And if Trump won't ever plead guilty despite overwhelming evidence, everyone else around him can still be indicted, convicted, and sentenced while he's the lone case that can drag out in court forever.
END_QUOTE
The guy's right, Trump pleading guilty would tie things up neatly. However, to get him to do that, the Feds have to offer him a deal, and the only thing that would be persuasive is home arrest. If Trump spent the rest of his life in a gilded cage with an ankle bracelet on, nobody would bother to rescue him, since he'd be worse off on the run. Besides, he'd need geriatric care in prison, and would be an expensive nuisance to take care of. Sure, he'd need to do a bit of time behind bars, just to get pictures of him in a prison suit, but then we can send him home and forget about him.
In any case, I was chatting on Twitter with a woman about interviews with Garland -- saying that when a reporter asks him a clueless question, one sees Garland hesitate for an instant, as if thinking: YOU IDIOT! -- and give a by-the-book answer. She replied: "It's like a parent trying to talk to an unreasonable teenager." Yep.
[ED: Not much did happen to Trump, but it wasn't because the DOJ refused to act; it was because the case against him was complicated, necessarily time-consuming, and inevitably stretched out by Trump obstruction. The fact that Trump had been POTUS greatly complicated things.]
* I'm planning a road trip from Colorado to Ohio in early October. I'm a little excited, I haven't been on a serious road trip since 2016. Of course, I wanted to get vaccinated for flu and COVID-19 before I left, since the likelihood of picking up a contagious disease will skyrocket, even though I'll be using a mask.
I got the flu shot through Kaiser Permanente, my healthcare provider, and it was no bother -- just a sore arm for a few hours. Getting the COVID-19 vaccination was a bit trickier. I checked with the Larimer County health department, and was pleased to find they were offering the new "bivalent" booster shots that cover both the older and newer COVID-19 variants. I was told to get an appointment through the department web page -- but for a week, all I could see was: NO APPOINTMENTS AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.
I finally called up the health department again and asked: "Has something gone wrong?" The answer was: "No, we really are booked up." However, the person gave me the phone number for a Colorado state office that handles vaccinations, and I called them right up. I quickly got an appointment for a shot on Saturday morning at Front Range Community College, north up the road from Loveland in Fort Collins.
I wasn't sure exactly where I was supposed to go at FRCC, but it turned out it was a drive-through operation in the parking lot -- I couldn't miss it. The shot itself was a little more troublesome than the flu shot, and I got sleepy during the day and had to take a short nap, which might have been due to shorting myself on sleep during the week anyway. I did wake up in the middle of the night, feeling like one big ache; I took a pain-killer and went back to bed. After I got up Sunday morning, I did my normal exercises, ate, and was okay again, though I was a bit up-&-down during the day.
I'm probably feeling more bullet-proof against COVID-19 than I should, but the vaccination effect should still be strong in early October, and there's not more I can do about it anyway. In any case, the USA is by no means done with COVID-19, and too many people aren't getting shots. However, I was pleased to find that shots are pretty easy to get if they're wanted, and the demand is high.
* As discussed in an article by Matthew Fraser, New York City's chief technology officer, in NYDAILYNEWS.com ("What The New LinkNYC 5G Kiosks Will Mean For New Yorkers", 11 July 2022), NYC's government is seeking to provide high-speed internet access to all its citizens. In 2015, the city introduced the first "LinkNYC" kiosks to provide free wi-fi, phone calls, and other digital services. LinkNYC has proven a great success, and is now being upgraded to fast "5th Generation (5G)" with the introduction of the first "LinkNYC5C" kiosks, providing data rates an order of magnitude faster.
About 40% of New Yorkers don't have home and mobile internet access, particularly in underserved neighborhoods, known as "digital deserts". Eventually there will be 2,000 Link5Gs across the city, particularly in areas where broadband options are limited and foot traffic is heavy. The entire city will also benefit from the expansion of thousands of miles of fiber optic cables laid thanks to this program. The fiber links have excess capacity that the city will be able to lease out to service providers.
Alas, the introduction of LinkNYC5G has been marked by the emergence of protests against the 5G, by those who believe 5G is dangerous. Since it isn't, it's unlikely the protests will end up being anything but an annoyance.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have been relentlessly pushing their offensive against Russian invaders in eastern Ukraine, with spectacular results, driving on Luhansk in the north. They're taking so many prisoners that it's not clear how they will be taken care of. In the meantime, off the headlines, at the southern end of the battle line the AFU is grinding up Russians trapped in the Kherson meat-grinder.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded by instituting a partial mobilization, drawing in 300,000 more soldiers. The measure was desperate and impractical; Russia cannot properly train or equip these soldiers, and in fact probably won't have the logistical capability to feed them. A law was passed to give anyone who surrendered ten years in prison. It is unlikely that these troops will be combat-effective in any way -- in fact, there are rumors of Russian troops selling their tanks to Ukrainian forces. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander of the AFU, commented: "We finished off the Russian professional army -- now it's time to finish the amateur one."
Coupled with this was a push by the Russian government to conduct a referendum in the occupied territories, to determine if they should be annexed by Russia. The referendums were internationally condemned as a malign farce, and there were even protest by Ukrainians in the occupied territories. Nobody is impressed. One Philips O'Brien -- a professor of strategic studies at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland -- commented on Twitter:
QUOTE:
Phillips P. O'Brien (@PhillipsPOBrien): Was just talking with a NATO officer about the Russian Army and asked him how long it would take the Finnish Army to seize Saint Petersburg. He said: "Not long -- the only problem they'd face is that the Poles would get there first."
END_QUOTE
* Back in the USA, Attorney General Letitia James of New York slapped Donald Trump and his family with a civil lawsuit, accusing the Trumps of recklessly over-valuing or under-valuing their properties as suited their convenience. The suit claims the Trumps obtained hundreds of millions of dollars by such trickery. It is not clear how well the lawsuit will go in court, though civil cases are easier to win than criminal cases. It has still turned up the pressure on Donald Trump.
* CNN has been a media institution for decades, seen as having a liberal bias, but now it's taken a sharp turn to the Right. One Twitter poster named "@ReallyActivist" took a shot at explaining why, the text being heavily edited here:
QUOTE:
What happened to CNN? I worked there for 18 years. This is what happened.
Each quarter, cable operators release their subscriber base. For seven consecutive years, the cable operators have seen subscriber declines for 84 months. Why? Because of "cord cutters" who are dropping off cable, preferring instead to get news off the internet. 97% of the "Cord Cutters" are under the age of 50. The only people left on cable are old people. That leads to a contest among cable news networks for a rapidly shrinking viewer base.
CNN was a powerhouse in the 1990s, raking in money, but then MSNBC and Fox News came along. MSNBC went high, Fox News went low, CNN was stuck in the middle. CNN still remained the preeminent news source for the USA after the turn of the century, but then it began to fade. Some viewers went Left and turned to MSNBC, though more went to Fox News.
In fact between 2008 and 2016, CNN lost 60% of its 50+ audience. Fox News saw a 70% increase in the same demo during the same period, most white men. Fox News gave the audience what they wanted -- an aggrieved white man perspective -- while CNN had no such focus. That's not to say that what Fox News was doing was good; they were evil to the core.
When Trump came along, CNN got a second wind by being a foil to Fox News, but there was a big difference between appearance and substance. The USA was cutting the cord, while Fox News doubled down on old people. CNN was withering.
There was another factor at work: the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizen's United case, which said that corporations and political action committees were free to spend as much as they liked in political campaigns. They did, and that became a lifeline to news networks -- but the money mostly poured in from the Right, breathing life into Fox News. MSNBC got by well since it was just an element in a wider system of networks, such as USA and Bravo.
CNN? It was going nowhere, so it made a hard Right turn. It won't work for CNN; they can't fight Fox News on their own turf, and the market for all of the cable news networks is in relentless decline. Crazy business.
END_QUOTE
CNN has no future, which is discouraging. However, over the longer run neither does Fox News, since their viewer base is disappearing. Lawsuits against Fox News won't do them any good, either.
* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Supergiant Betelgeuse Had A Never-Before-Seen Massive Eruption" by Ashley Strickland, 12 August 2022), the star Betelgeuse is one of the closest and most visible red supergiant stars in our galactic neighborhood. As of late, it's behaving in an unexpected fashion. In late 2019 the star experienced a strange darkening, and continued to grow dim in 2020.
Analysis of data from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories suggests the star experienced a titanic surface mass ejection, losing a substantial part of its visible surface. The dimming was due to the immense amount of hot material ejected into space, forming a dust cloud that blocked light coming from the star's surface.
Our own Sun experiences coronal mass ejections (CME) every now and then, in which it blows off parts of its corona, or outer atmosphere. They can disrupt satellites and power grids. However, the surface mass ejection Betelgeuse experienced released more than 400 billion times as much mass as a typical CME from our Sun.
Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life in cosmic terms; it has swollen to a diameter of 1.6 billion kilometers (a billion miles) as it burns through its nuclear fuel. Once it runs out of fuel, it will collapse and explode as a supernova that should be visible from the Earth, even in daytime.
With the current outburst, astronomers believe that a convective plume, stretching more than 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) across, originated from inside the star. The plume generating shocks and pulsations that triggered an eruption, blasting off a chunk of the star's outer shell or "photosphere". The blasted-off photosphere, which weighed several times as much as the Moon, was released into space. As the mass cooled, it formed a large dust cloud that blocked the star's light when viewed through telescopes on Earth.
Telescope data has shown that the star's outer layer has returned to normal as Betelgeuse slowly recovers, but its surface remains agitated while the photosphere rebuilds.
* As discussed in a related article from REUTERS.com ("Surprised Astronomers Find New Type Of Star Explosion: A Micronova: by Will Dunham, 20 April 2022), astronomers have now discovered a previously unknown type of stellar explosion, called a "micronova" -- in contrast to the more powerful nova and much more powerful supernova explosions.
Novas are due to a thermonuclear conflagation of material built up on the surface of a superdense white dwarf star, the material having been drained from a companion star, while supernovas are caused by the collapse of supergiant stars. Micronovas are similar to novas, with a conflagration of materials obtained from a companion star, but the explosions are limited to the poles of a white dwarf. Astronomer Simone Scaringi -- of Durham University in the UK and the research lead in the investigation -- says: "The discovery was an unexpected surprise. It goes to show just how dynamic the universe is. These events are fast and sporadic. Finding them requires looking at the right place at the right time."
Micronovas are observed from Earth as bursts of light lasting about 10 hours. They were documented on three white dwarfs: one 1,680 light years away from Earth, one 3,720 light years away, and one 4,900 light years away. They only occur in very specific binary star systems, featuring a white dwarf star with a strong magnetic field, along with a low-mass normal star. The white dwarf drains hydrogen from the companion star, which then builds up at the star's magnetic poles; once the pressure and temperature in the polar columns build up enough, fusion reactions follow, resulting in a micronova.
Of course, micronovas can repeat. Without the intense magnetic field, the hydrogen would build up all over the star until there was enough to start fusion reactions, resulting in a nova. Novas can last for weeks or months, burning through about a million times more mass than micronovas.
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