My parents and the Church have always taught me that envy of others' good fortune is a bad thing.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the latest tech billionaire to invest his money in spaceships: on Tuesday, he debuted his space travel company Blue Origin’s newest rocket. Now, those who want to cruise the galaxy can choose between the sleek new rocket and the stubbier model Bezos announced in April – or they can opt to ride with Tesla founder Elon Musk on a SpaceX ship, or hop on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. It's good to be the king...
At this rate, would-be space travelers will be able to choose their favorite tech company, find its richest guy and buy a ticket on his craft of choice. Why does everyone who achieves economic dominance over the planet immediately turn around and try to get off it? I think the main point with privately funded space travel is that it is privately funded. A few years and they'll be building a Death Star, right?
The “boys and their toys” explanation is the obvious one – once you’ve bought all the cars and boats and planes you want, why not buy a rocket? (We don’t have a “girls and their toys” ethos yet because the cards are stacked against women getting to this level of obscene wealth, but I suspect a lot of us would want to buy rocketships, too.) You can always drop your drawers in the presence of the men who have such toys. Hey, it could help.
Girls with that kind of money tend to buy designer clothes, jewelry, and houses, then furnish them. It's less noticeable to those outside their circle, which is why you didn't know, O Guardian commentator.
It couldn't possibly be that they're men with a vision far beyond the writer's capacity to comprehend. Space is inherently cool, and even if it weren’t, space is inherently other – which matters a lot to the man who has everything terrestrial. By the same token, someone who already has a watch that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars can buy a watch that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars but comes from space. That statement doesn't seem to make any sense. Or is it just me? He's too subtle for me, right?
Of course, uber-wealthy tech entrepreneurs aren’t just buying rockets for their personal amusement. They’re founding or investing in space travel – they want to get you off-planet, too. Well, not you-you, but someone like you with much, much, much more money. Jealousy, sarcasm, pettiness, all in a single sentence.
And that’s where the vogue for billionaire space travel magnates gets a little weird –and maybe even sinister. It’s already very true that money expands your world; the person with the funds to have a car is less restricted in her movements than the person without one, and the person with a huge plane and the money to fly it is less restricted still. Warning: Kommie thinking ahead. The expansion of rich people’s travel horizons comes at a price for everyone, both rich and poor. With the exception of America’s weirdly-expensive Amtrak system, cost and luxury scale with fossil fuel consumption; travel that costs more and feels more indulgent is also travel that has a cataclysmic effect on the environment. The faster and further you can afford to travel, the greater your environmental footprint. And often, the people less able to travel are the ones left holding the toxic-chemical and pollution-filled bag. Like the Chinese who are building solar panels so you can feel better about the environment. So pioneering space travel is an environmental hazard? I guess it is, since everything's an environmental hazard.
Companies like Blue Origin are using money and resources to push outwards, to expand the worlds of their rich customers all the way into space. But those same customers – and some of the owners – are making their terrestrial money in the classic capitalist terrestrial way: by working around any obstacle to profit, including environmental regulations and conservation efforts. Yep. That's Jeff Bezos all over.
Almost all industry is environmentally disastrous, after all; truly prioritizing earth-friendliness would destroy most companies. Capitalism is a terrible economic system, but it has been provably superior to any other over the course of human history. If the most objectionable aspect to capitalism is that a small number of people have accumulated wealth for the express purpose of doing whatever they want with it, then I am good with that. Truly prioritizing earth friendliness would have us living in thatched huts and scratching in the dirt with pointed sticks, assuming our betters allowed it, which they likely wouldn't. You don't build solar panels out in back of your shack. Nor do you produce integrated circuits that make computers possible. If all companies were destroyed there wouldn't be any of the little amenities that make life in the 21st century so much better than life was in the fifth or sixth century. There hasn't been a plague to wipe out two thirds of the population of Europe lately. There's a reason for that and it's not prioritizing earth-friendliness.
Some people with a great deal of money care more about the fate of the world than others, but they’re all willing to cut corners if it affects the bottom line. You can tell because they have a great deal of money; you can also tell because they’re willing to spend it on a ride in a spaceship. That reasoning is so circular it made me dizzy. All wealthy people have one other thing in common, perhaps you failed to mention. They have risked their money, their very substance so that they can earn a profit providing better goods and services for a reasonable price. Those products arguably have made life on this planet better. How do they do that? By spending money.
Which raises the question: are they just gearing up to wash their hands of the planet and leave the rest of us to clean up? By pushing outward while ignoring the problems it causes back on the home turf, are they effectively creating a galactic upper class that rests on the backs of the earthbound? Even if that’s not literally the plan, it may be the ultimate outcome. But if they all take off into space and move to Jupiter or Alderan then those of us left behind can get on with prioritizing earth-friendliness.
#1
Now, those who want to cruise the galaxy can choose between the sleek new rocket and the stubbier model Bezos announced in April – or they can opt to ride with Tesla founder Elon Musk on a SpaceX ship, or hop on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
#5
Of course after the collapse of the First Soviet Empire, we came to find the Communists did greater harm to the environment than anything in the West. Squirrel.
#1
Counter response to this Muslim post here on Rantburg
A Muslim teen, fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, bought a strange ticking device to his school, MacArthur High School. His device caused alarm and fear, and he was detained for having what his teacher perceived as a bomb. Police officers said the electronic components and wires inside his Vaultz pencil case (which is the size of a briefcase) looked like a “hoax bomb,” according to local news station WFAA.
When questioned about what the device was, Mohamed wouldn’t answer. Now terror-tied Islamic groups like the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), their media lapdogs, and even Barack Obama are waging jihad against the school and the local police.
When police questioned the boy, WFAA reports, they said he was “passive aggressive” and didn’t give them a “reasonable answer” as to why he had brought his contraption to the school. “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school,” said James McLellan of the Irving Police Department.
This whole thing smells like a setup. With ISIS in America, and young moderate Muslims fleeing to Syria to join the terror group, the response of MacArthur High School officials was rational and reasonable. At my website, PamelaGeller.com, I run news stories on a weekly basis of American Muslim teens who have been arrested for trying to join ISIS. Just this week, a Muslim teen from Philadelphia was arrested for an alleged plot to assassinate the Pope during his visit to the United States.
#5
Since the father has had incidence of pushing Islamic issues against Christian priests (notably one in Florida) the school in question *should* have known the family was up to stuff like that and acted appropriately.
Then again no tolerance laws and administrations bullying the children over wearing flags are common place so appropriately is pretty hard to pin down these days.
2) Ideologies make people do things. For instance the Aztec religion had thousands of people having their hearts ripped of their living bodies. I am quite sure First Amendment would be quite different if Founding Fathers had been in contact with the Aztecs.
3) Since ideologies, be they religious or political, make people do things it is legitimate to question what they try having people to do and be phobic of them
4) The Guardian and similar leftiist crap gets the hissy fits about "biiiiiiggots, repuuuublicans, faaaaaaaaar riiiiiiight, zioooooonists". In the bname of what do they deny to others the right to get them about Islam?
#7
No Grom. This is far worse. In a dry run you try to avoid getting caught. Here the boy was trying to get caught because his goal and his father's was to use the publicity in order tpo make the task easier for future bombings and harder for the police. And Obama did his utmost to help. As usual.
#8
Nearly all or all of the terrorism in this country and others have been done by Islamics. This has been going on for some time too. It's not an unfounded fear if it's true. Islamophobia is one of those red herrings the left loves to drag out. A variation of blame the victims. Personally, IMO we ought to go viking on these arseholes--take your pick of the left or the Islamics. However, you can choose both.
Reporters without Borders press release.
Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the situation in Burkina Faso, where the soldiers who staged a coup d’état yesterday have silenced most privately-owned radio and TV stations and are controlling the state-owned national TV broadcaster, RTB.
The coup began when members of the Presidential Security Regiment (RSP) – former President Blaise Compaoré’s praetorian guard – stormed the presidential palace during a cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon and took transitional President Michel Kafando, Prime Minister Isaac Zida and other government officials hostage.
At the same time, other members of the RSP quickly surrounded RTB headquarters, forced privately-owned radio and TV stations in Ouagadougou to suspend broadcasting, and roughed up several journalists.
This morning an army officer read out a statement on the air at RTB announcing that the “National Council for Democracy” had taken power.
“We call on the RSP and the rest of the army to act with restraint towards the civilian population and journalists and to allow the media to operate freely,” said Clea Kahn-Sriber, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Africa desk.
“In their address, the army said they want inclusive elections. For this to be possible, it is essential that all radio and TV stations are allowed to broadcast without any restrictions and that their reporters are free to move about the city in order to cover developments. Firm orders must be issued to this effect.”
Privately-owned broadcasters among RSP’s first targets
At Radio Oméga – a leading Ouagadougou-based radio station that provided objective coverage of last October’s uprising – RSP soldiers told editor in chief Albert Nagréongo that he should suspend all live broadcasts if he did not want the station to be burned down.
The station’s staff complied but the soldiers nonetheless fired in the air as they left and set fire to several motorcycles in the courtyard. The station’s personnel and equipment were spared but the soldiers warned that, “if we come back, it will be worse.” Station manager Alpha Barry asked “the heads of the RSP to make their troops see reason.”
At least two privately-owned TV stations were forcibly closed yesterday. At one of them, BF1, members of the RSP manhandled and even whipped journalists and the station is now closed. Privately-owned Burkina Info TV is also closed.
Several journalists were the victims of RSP violence while out reporting. Burkina 24 said one of its reporters was injured when soldiers dispersed a crowd that had gathered in Ouaga 2000, near the presidential palace and not far from BF1’s headquarters.
A Droit Libre TV crew that was trying to cover developments was roughed up and its cameras were seized.
The signals of radio stations broadcasting from Ouagadougou, including local retransmission of Radio France Internationale (RFI), were disconnected yesterday. According to some sources, RFI retransmission resumed this morning. Newspapers appeared but it is unlikely that the Ouagadougou population was able to buy them from newsstands.
Ranked 46th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, Burkina Faso has enjoyed diverse and good quality media, but they have suffered as a result of the unrest that has shaken the country since President Compaoré’s removal last October.
Boureima Ouédraogo, the editor of the newspaper Le Reporter, was sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of 300 euros in a libel case in July – a surprising decision given that, a week before, the transitional government approved a bill decriminalizing media offences.
[SuckerOnParade] Hillary Clinton's troubles continue to mount: from falling poll numbers, rumors of Clinton Foundation corruption, email server scandals and congressional committee investigations, people high up in the intelligence community leaking stories to the press, word of an Obama instigated backstabbing in way of a DOJ investigation, and rumors of a possible indictment looming. We also hear from released email just how vicious this woman and people around her can be. Last June, leaked emails revealed that Hillary henchman Sidney Blumenthal had orchestrated news stories undermining Caroline Kennedy while she was vying to be appointed to Hillary's Senate seat in 2008. A thread back to the Clintons had been unprovable until the Guccifer hacking disclosed incriminating emails.
"Blumenthal, who made his bones with Hillary by sliming Bill's intern Monica Lewinsky after it became public knowledge she had been performing her services under the desk in the Oval Office, really outdid himself smearing Caroline. Blumenthal had an arrangement with Tina Brown where he could, as a freelance consultant, commission stories to be written for the Daily Beast.
He generated stories kneecapping Kennedy including two pieces critical of Kennedy, one referring to her as a "puppet" and the other describing her candidacy as an "insult" because the Clinton's feared that if she secured the Senate seat she could become a rival for power. Brown, a longstanding Clinton ally, facilitated the smears. She now says she was unaware Blumenthal may simultaneously have been on the Clinton Foundation payroll.
Kennedy's timely endorsement of the little-known Barack Obama over Hillary in 2008 was significantly helpful in him gaining the nomination. It's said Caroline Kennedy is furious over the revelation that a confidant of Hillary Clinton secretly sabotaged her bid to become a Senator and Kennedy may seek her revenge by backing veep Joe Biden if he runs for president.
Is it any wonder democrats are starting to turn on her, and saying things in private they not dare say in public....at least not yet. They smell blood in the water and she's losing support daily with the drip drip of news of this woman's dealings, and is about to be exposed for what she is, a vicious uncouth politician, and criminal.
And the more we learn, the more she becomes red meat for people the Clinton's have wronged over the years, and for the natural enemies she made by aligning herself with the Obama administration. When the fall finally comes, it's not going to be pretty at all, and an opportunity for Clinton enemies to feed publicly on the the blood of the fresh red meat.
#4
Rancid indeed. How far back in the 'Burg would we have to go to find that Hillary was exposed for what she is, a vicious uncouth politician, and criminal.
Oh, wait. Rantburg has only been in existence for 14 years.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2015 7:51 Comments ||
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#5
If she tacks any further Left to compete with Sanders, she'll be nothing but Red.
#6
...and Kennedy may seek her revenge by backing veep Joe Biden if he runs for president.
If anyone's familiar with the Kennedys, they wrote the book on dirty tricks; Clinton & Obama merely wrote the latest chapters. This is the bare minimum the Kennedy clan will do to the Clintons.
#10
Kennedy's timely endorsement of the little-known Barack Obama over Hillary in 2008 was significantly helpful in him gaining the nomination.
Caroline Kennedy is like, a like, moron, you know. Like if her name wasn't Kennedy, you know, she'd be a waitress at a tourist dive serving lobster rolls. You know?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2015 20:29 Comments ||
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Nawaz appears to be systematically building toward another war with India. Naturally, nuclear weapons will be used because that's what they have them for.
[DAWN] THE establishment of the India Rapid Reaction Cell at the Pentagon should be cause for much disappointment among peace-minded people in both India and Pakistain.
The cell is designed to streamline the coordination required for India's procurement of American arms; its creation shows the eagerness with which the US government wants to tap into India's growing weapons procurement drive.
The idea for the cell, the only one of its kind, had its origins in President B.O.'s visit to Delhi in January. The cell is set to ramp up its work in the months to come.
It is already working on the development of an aircraft carrier for India, and its work goes far beyond simply streamlining coordination for procurement, as it also facilitates the design of weapons systems and other measures to enhance technological collaboration.
As India ramps up its conventional capability, Pakistain increases its reliance on non-conventional capabilities as a cheaper alternative
Over the past few years, India has emerged as the world's largest buyer of weapons systems as the arms build-up gathers momentum. Many of the weapons systems in which India is showing an interest make little sense for a country that faces no serious conventional threat from any of its neighbours.
This procurement is fuelling an inevitable arms build-up in Pakistain too, which is in the midst of a weapons acquisition drive of its own. When India demonstrated its keenness to buy the French Rafale fighter jet in early summer, for instance, Pakistain announced its interest in buying the SU 35 from Russia.
And more worryingly, as India ramps up its conventional capability, Pakistain increases its reliance on non-conventional capabilities as a cheaper alternative.
This arms build-up by the two countries is hardly necessary in a region that badly needs to sow the seeds of cooperation rather than increase rivalry.
And it is disappointing, as well as self-defeating for America that it should be facilitating the arms race for its own commercial purposes, especially since its foreign policy objectives in the region call for greater harmony and integration.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
a significant number of muslim fanatics vaporized by their own hands
OK
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2015 20:31 Comments ||
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[SultanKnish] Obama accused Iran deal opponents of being responsible for the Iraq War, but it's his deal that once again ratifies Iranian authority in the region in general and in Iraq specifically. Deal supporters claim that letting Iran go nuclear will dispose it to work with us on Iraq. The State Department claimed Iran and the US had a "shared interest." Kerry had already suggested last year that Iran could help in Iraq.
But the last thing that Iran will be doing on its victory lap is helping America.
Obama's sanctions relief will help Iran increase its funding to sectarian Shiite forces in Iraq and the flow of cash to its terror militias. Meanwhile the deal sends the clear message that Iran beat America. That will further alter the balance of power in Iraq while driving more Sunni and Shiite internecine warfare.
The next Iraq War may already be here. When it drags in our soldiers, it will be because Obama's Iraq policy continues driving a civil war by favoring Iran over Iraq's Sunnis. The nuclear deal gave Obama the opportunity to avert that war by sending a clear message to Iran. Instead Obama sent up a white flag.
The current phase of the war in Iraq was caused by Obama's original Iranian political solution. The next phase of the war will be caused by the fallout from his latest dirty deal with Iran.
Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 ||
09/18/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Time to vote in the coming elections for everyone who is not a Leftist and has not had experience in government.
#2
Back in '94, I was hired as a consultant by HUD. I asked what they wanted and I was given a BS task to occupy time. This was just after the republicans took the Senate back under Gingrich.
After a month, I asked what was up. A high up confided that at that time, HUD had 94 separate IT systems. It only needed four to do its job. The rest were pork created by democrats to funnel money to supporters. I was brought in to advise on the house cleaning they thought that the republicans would start. After a month they said never mind. I chewed my managing partner out and left to go back into private industry.
Outsiders are sorely needed.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
09/18/2015 14:53 Comments ||
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[The Nation] Tim Shorrock is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. He was raised in Japan and South Korea and has been covering the intersection of national security and capitalism since the late 1970s. During the Vietnam War he was active in the peace and antiwar movement and writes and comments frequently about US military policies in Asia and the Korean peninsula.
He published his first article for The Nation in 1983, when he wrote about the repercussions of a North Korean attack on a South Korean government delegation to Burma. Since then, he has published many investigative stories here, including ground-breaking exposes of the Carlyle Group, the Bush administration's failed attempt to privatize Iraq, and the AFL-CIO's intervention in Chile and other countries during the Cold War. He was the first journalist to interview the four National Security Agency whistleblowers who exposed corporate corruption at the NSA and its extensive program of domestic surveillance.
Shorrock has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now! and his stories have appeared in many publications, including Salon, Mother Jones, The Progressive, The Daily Beast and the New York Times. You can find much of his past work at his blog, Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears. He has lived in Washington, D.C., since 1982, and is a big fan of Bob Dylan and American blues and folk music.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
My parents and the Church have always taught me that envy of others' good fortune is a bad thing.
Space is inherently cool, and even if it weren’t, space is inherently other – which matters a lot to the man who has everything terrestrial. By the same token, someone who already has a watch that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars can buy a watch that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars but comes from space.
The expansion of rich people’s travel horizons comes at a price for everyone, both rich and poor. With the exception of America’s weirdly-expensive Amtrak system, cost and luxury scale with fossil fuel consumption; travel that costs more and feels more indulgent is also travel that has a cataclysmic effect on the environment. The faster and further you can afford to travel, the greater your environmental footprint. And often, the people less able to travel are the ones left holding the toxic-chemical and pollution-filled bag.
[SuckerOnParade] Hillary Clinton's troubles continue to mount: from falling poll numbers, rumors of Clinton Foundation corruption, email server scandals and congressional committee investigations, people high up in the intelligence community leaking stories to the press, word of an Obama instigated backstabbing in way of a DOJ investigation, and rumors of a possible indictment looming. We also hear from released email just how vicious this woman and people around her can be. Last June, leaked emails revealed that Hillary henchman Sidney Blumenthal had orchestrated news stories undermining Caroline Kennedy while she was vying to be appointed to Hillary's Senate seat in 2008. A thread back to the Clintons had been unprovable until the Guccifer hacking disclosed incriminating emails. 
